Sacrifice, and Narrative Conflict

Sacrifice is a universal RPG system, though only technically. In practice, Sacrifice is a deconstruction of the entire RPG medium and dramatic storytelling.

There is, in fact, only one simple set of rules: your character can do anything that the narrative has established your character can do. When they want to do something that the narrative hasn’t established they can do, then they roll 2d6. If they roll a 12, then they succeed. If they don’t, they fail… unless they sacrifice something.

It can be anything; their shoes, a pouch of gold, their health, their social status, anything the GM accepts. They sacrifice, they succeed, they move on.

Ludo-narratively, it is a game about tragedy, about steadily losing yourself as you strive ever onward to victory. Perhaps you are a noble hero, sacrificing everything to save your loved ones. Perhaps you are an Ahab, seeking your own destruction. Maybe a Don Quixote, chasing an impossible dream.

What fascinates me about Sacrifice is how it so simply deconstructs the RPG medium. Stripping away the extraneous, Sacrifice is not about the things you can do. Most RPGs urge GMs to be judicious with die-rolls, sparing the effort unless there is a specific expectation of failing forward. If characters can reasonably succeed and there is no significant downside to failure, just let them succeed.

But like all RPGs, we don’t usually want to play games where we “just succeed.” Like I said before, even dice-less games have challenges. Our real focus is on the situations where we can’t stroll casually through the castle gate, slip a sword into a dragon, and claim half a kingdom and the princess before lunchtime.

In these situations of struggle, we have to sacrifice.

It could be hit points, potions, or magic-item charges. It could be innocence, ideals, or allies. It could be comfort, effort, it could even just be our time. Whatever it is, RPGs are about these moments of “sacrifice.”

We’ll go into detail later, but for the moment I want to talk about how sacrifice works in the ludo-narrative: A strange alchemy happens when your character loses something in the story at the same time that you lose something in the game.

The easy example is combat — your character is worried they will die, and you are likewise worried you will run out of hit points — but nowadays we’ve expanded this simple interaction. Some games have “Bonds,” which provide bonuses and penalties based on your relationships with other characters, causing the player to seek out relationships that the character would likewise want. In strategic games, limiting individual players to specific roles forces teamwork. Horror games usually have lower max hit points, or sometimes do away with them altogether. Detailed disease mechanics make players fear illness. Supply mechanics encourage players to worry about survival.

In his review of the Lisa series of video games, hBomberguy details how it’s one thing to punish a player narratively, to say they made a bad choice; but to punish them mechanically as well — by losing ammunition, arms, or allies that have kept you alive through the game — makes for a more visceral and impactful experience.

This is the intersection of game- and ludo-narrative.

If my character sacrifices an eye, have I sacrificed anything? It’s one thing to sympathize with my persona, to feel bad that this manufactured character has suffered some imagined trauma, but a whole other thing to empathize with them if I am now hindered mechanically. I wasn’t just telling a story about my character’s sacrifice, I was actively sacrificing my ability to play the game. I gave up something to help someone else. I took the hit that was meant for them. I saved my friends, not the person I was pretending to be.

See my posts on Mythic Mortals or .dungeon for more on that idea, but what happens after all the sacrifices have been made, our resources drained, and our strength spent? There is a point where we will scratch our heads before looking up at the GM and saying “I don’t think I have anything else to sacrifice.”

But the cruel and vicious GMs know that when that happens — when the hit points are gone, the spells all cast, the ammunition spent and the rations eaten — what the player really means is: “I don’t have anything else I’m willing to sacrifice.”

And when that happens, we GMs have a choice to make ourselves. Do we accept player agency, or do we take?

FATE encourages players to “concede” conflicts, giving players the ability to dictate terms of their failure. If the challenge seems too great then the player can salvage their resources and escape their cruel consequences. If they do not concede and are “taken out,” then it is the GM’s duty to make their failure as punishing as possible; FATE suggests that death is too lenient. Even less harsh narrative systems usually want the players to be active participants in the deciding of their character’s fate. They want players to be mini-GMs, offering sacrifices to progress.

But some systems shrug their shoulders and say “well, then I guess that’s it for you. Take the loss, better luck next time, here’s a new character sheet.” D&D’s rules do not include players offering limbs to stay alive, or narratively sacrificing loved ones to bring their characters to their low-points and spur on their eventual victory over the tyrannical warlord. In fact, the slaying of loved-ones can happen arbitrarily at the GM’s discretion.

When a dragon fries your character because of a lucky attack roll, you didn’t offer that. If a battleaxe cuts your character’s arm off, did you choose that sacrifice? Or was it taken from you?

RPGs have a fine tradition of empowerment; you gain levels, spells, new ships, reputation, and advance through the story as a more “powerful” version of yourself. There are few systems that also embrace regular dis-empowerment, through the loss of limbs, mental scarring, and trauma. Fewer still that encourage the player to take an active part in it.

Offering a sacrifice is a far more empowering and satisfying act than having something taken from you, whether because of your own actions or arbitrarily due to the game’s rules, but I’ve been talking about sacrifice as a concept. What about something a little more practical? After all, we can sacrifice HP, gold, ammunition, energy…but all those things eventually come back. What does sacrifice mean when it is transient?

Next time, we’ll talk about Economies.