RPG Errata: Blood Red Sands, and Competition

Blood Red Sands, by Galileo Games, is an exploration of Competitive RPGs.

I must admit, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a game quite like it. When I talked earlier about Competition in RPGs, I focused mainly on the idea of what competition meant in a largely collaborative medium. I talked about how characters might fight each other, but the players themselves never should, and the differences between seeing RPGs as “Non-GM Players vs. GM,” or “Players vs. the Adventure,” or even “Players vs. the Story.”

Now, here comes Blood Red Sands, an RPG that throws out those rules and gives the players Victory Points.

Victory Points!

A little context: If you are unaware, a lot of the more complex board games measure who wins by tracking victory points — you can think of them like poker chips. There is almost always a very clear and/or specific method for gaining victory points, but usually the players have some limit on how many they can gain in a turn. The game will then provide methods for increasing the amount of victory points available to a player on a turn by providing other actions or economies.

In short, as a player, you are trying to purchase cards, win buildings, collect resources, or what have you; all in the hopes that you will then be able to use these assets to acquire more victory points than the person sitting next to you. Sometimes the VP are acquired throughout the game, sometimes all at once at the end. Either way, the goal of the game is VP.

But you don’t have VP in an RPG, do you? You can’t “win” an RPG.

But you do try to get points: Experience points. XP is an easy analog to VP in board-games, isn’t it? At least they are in the old-school way of playing, but even that reward-system was cast aside by contemporaries like Pendragon or Boot Hill. And even if we were to count XP as VP, the goal of RPGs is progression rather than resolution. Any reward given to your teammates improves everyone’s chances. If, in the confines of an RPG, one player decides to actively compete against a fellow player, the chances of success in the game have gone down. That’s also why there are so few cooperative board games with competitive elements.¹

But we are sidestepping one important aspect of competition; yes, players should all work together in a collaborative fashion, but do characters have to?

Consider the fact that in the early editions of D&D, high level characters would eventually get to build strongholds and gain followers. The game slowly pushed players into the roles of Barons and Duchessess, with followers, political power, farther-reaching influence, mass-combat, and oh, hey, we’re playing Chainmail now. In that situation, would all the characters hole up in the same stronghold? Become roommates?

Or would they be forced to build their strongholds some distance apart? Would they start to focus their energies less on wandering the countryside and poking their noses into dungeons, and more on taxes, levies, and ensuring the money-hungry Earl next door doesn’t try to annex their land? And what happens when a famine strikes the Warrior’s lands while the Cleric’s people are enjoying a healthy harvest?

Of course, the same stories can still be told, just with a bit of a twist. Instead of being approached by a cloaked man in a dark tavern, the Wizard sends letters to the old gang, with warnings of dire portents and a quest for a McGuffin. Now, instead of a few folk poking around a cave, it’s multiple caravans-worth of troops and mighty heroes marching towards a skull-fortress.

But with larger scope comes more stories. Stories of the established Duke growing old, and which of his offspring succeeds him. Stories of a cruel tyrant and the poisonous assassins waiting to be hired. Stories about alliances and treaties, resources and logistics. Where once a Cleric had to only worry about four other characters’ hit-points, now they have to worry about the souls of a province.

And what happens when goals misalign?

I mentioned these types of stories when discussing Uneasy Lies the Head, a game of political jockeying and intrigue. From Game of Thrones to Battlestar Galactica, we know how power and friendship often collide. Indeed, when discussing Mission Accomplished, I made the case that cooperation and competition were impossible goals to marry cleanly. Eventually, the choice always becomes “Compete, and risk everyone losing,” versus “Cooperate, and risk someone else winning.”

It’s the same challenge with friendship and power: “Help a friend at the risk of losing power/assets,” versus “Protect my station at the risk of losing a friend.” Having friends and allies comes with expectations, as does having a title and the power of leadership. When two responsibilities collide…

We have ludo-narrative. We have drama. We have a story.

And if the goal is a great story, then is that competition even real? When the legions of Warhammer meet on the field of battle, are the players really fighting each-other?

In his discussion of The Morality of Shadow of the Colossus, Dan Olsen of Folding Ideas reminds the viewer that while the game is participatory, “it is not about that participation.” Unlike Spec Ops: the Line, the game isn’t trying to get you to think about what you are doing, but rather asking you to “play a role” like an actor in a play. You aren’t a bad person, you’re just playing a bad person.

One of the more interesting ideas in game-space is that separation, the moral protection gained by playing a role. If I chose to play Tyranids in Warhammer 40k, I’m morally absolved of the responsibility to avoid slaughtering everyone I come across to absorb their biomass. If I chose to play a greedy and nihilistic assassin in D&D, am I not absolved of the responsibility to not be an opportunistic asshole?

Could we go further than games with established game-narrative? What about games like Life, Clue, or even Chess? But then we get into the conflict between story and strategy, and we have to consider whether we must play in a manner that would win, or in a manner that our role would play.

That’s what makes Blood Red Sands so interesting to me. It tries to square the circle, creating a game that proudly and unashamedly tries to have its cake and eat it too. You are supposed to fight your friends. This isn’t a game where we all win as long as no one loses, this is about victory!

Do I want to play this game? Good Gods, no. It sounds like my own personal brand of hell, but that ultimately is my point. I can choose not to play those kinds of games, so long as I know, going in, that it is that kind of game. This underscores, yet again, the critical necessity of a Session Zero that goes beyond a simple “let’s make and talk about our characters and discuss the game lore” session.

Next time, I’d like to talk about a game that I think actually manages to combine the nebulous Competition vs Collaboration thicket. Next time, we’re talking about Orks.