Seven-Part Pact: Consequences

Continuing my posts about The Seven-Part Pact (7PP) and some of its nifty mechanical design ideas, I want to discuss this game's approach to consequences.

Jay has often explained this design idea by articulating a distinction between "laws" and "rules," but I personally have some quibbles with the particular language and framing and blablabla. Well, this is my blog, so I get to explain it how I want to. But the underlying idea is what's important, not the terminology.

The role of rules

When you play soccer, unless you're the goalie, you're not allowed to touch the ball with your hands. That move would be "illegal," incurring a penalty.

But when you play a video game simulating soccer, you can't touch the ball with your hands. It's not that it's illegal. It's impossible. Not unless the developers programmed it into the game.

In a video game, your options are constrained by the programming and confined to the buttons on your controller. But in tabletop RPGs, your options are limited only by your imagination. As you know, this is called "tactical infinity." RPGs' main advantage over video games is this very flexibility, their potential for infinite possibilities.

Yet I'm surprised that this potential doesn't seem to be reflected in the rules we create most of the time. RPGs almost always take more interest in defining what's "impossible" rather than what's "illegal," despite the latter being something they're better equipped to explore than video games can.

In RPG design discussions, rules are often compared to laws. But it's never, like, human laws. They're almost always more analogous to to scientific laws. When D&D offers you rules for things like falling damage, partial cover, visibility in darkness, etc. these are ways of trying to model the in-game reality. Laws of physics and chemistry and whatnot. They describe how the game world functions in "objective" terms. You can't break the rules for HP and damage for the same reasons you can't "break" Newton's laws of motion. That's just how it works.

But there's no reason why we couldn't instead treat rules more like human law, the way they do in sports. Instead of saying, "here's the line; you can't cross it," we could say, "here's the line; if you cross it, then this happens." Just like legislation in real life, no rule is complete without also providing a consequence.

Seven-Part Pact does exactly that, as often as possible. Almost every rule in the game can be broken.

Surpassing limits has consequences...

I've already mentioned a few instances of this in previous posts. When describing the procedure for Spending Time, I said that you're supposed to always assign one token to the Wizardmoot each month, right? But technically, you can skip it if you want to. And it's not like you'd be going against the designer's intent by doing so. If the game didn't want you to have that option, then you wouldn't be given four Spend Time tokens! Instead, you'd be given three tokens, and then told "you spend the fourth week of each month attending the Wizardmoot" and that's that.

Or think back on the rules for Companions. If you have a vacancy in any of the four slots, you need to fulfill that care yourself. Doing so requires you to assign a Spend Time token on that care each month, leaving you less time to do other things. But technically, you can neglect to fulfill your cares. And if you do, there's a consequence for it: your element is reduced to 0. But again, that doesn't mean you can't cast spells with that element. Technically, you can still cast the spell anyway... but again, there's a consequence.

Probably the most prominent example of this principle is in the rules for spellcasting. You already know about how the elements figure in. But now let's talk about the "limits" of magic:

Each Spell is accompanied by a set of Limits, restrictions upon the scope and ability of the magic which if dismissed will cause the Spell to act out of turn. If a Spell's Limits are violated, it will result in a specific Consequence, which varies dramatically according to the Spell. A Wizard may knowingly and intentionally violate these Limits if he is willing to accept the Consequences.

Let's go through a few spells to get an idea of what this looks like. First, the Hand of Power, allowing you to conjure a duplicate of your hand to use at a distance.

The Limits of this Spell are: Observation, for the Hand cannot venture beyond the Wizard's vision; Duration, as the Hand cannot last for more than a day before crumbling apart; and Sympathy, as any pain suffered by the Hand is felt too in sympathy by the Wizard's own hand, and vice versa. Should the Wizard reject these limits, the consequence shall be Exhaustion, as the Wizard will physically collapse from exertion, unable to muster the strength to move his own body until the end of the month, and cannot perform magic again until he Spends Time resting.

So just like in most other fantasy games, spells have constraints and components like you're used to. But you can just ignore those... if you're willing to pay the price. I'm sure you can imagine that the spell is still quite potent when cast within its limits. But you could also imagine circumstances where these limits would be deal breakers for your purposes. And most importantly, I'm sure you could imagine a situation where suffering Exhaustion for the rest of the month might just be worth it, shitty though it is.

Here's another spell: Summoning 1,001 Imps.

The Limits of this Spell are: Compensation, as the Wizard must provide some sort of payment for his Imps appropriate to his method of Summoning; Distance, for the Imps cannot travel more than the span of the archipelago of Isha away from the Wizard; and Respect, as the Wizard must not himself harm one of his Imps unless that Imp has failed him. Should the Wizard reject this limit, the consequence shall be Treachery, as his Imps will actively work against him the moment they've completed their summoned task.

"Treachery? Ehhhh that sounds like a problem for future me," said the foolish, foolish Wizard. But hey, there's no problem that can't be solved by more castings of Summoning 1,001 Imps. And as long as you're rejecting one limit, you might as well reject the rest.

But you want to know what's really interesting?

So 7PP models even its "physical mechanics" as though they're human laws, bendable and breakable. But it also has a ton of human laws! The kingdom of Isha has rules, the religion has rules, the Pact itself has rules, etc. All of them social and legal constructs, rules that exist "in-universe" rather than as mechanics of the game system.

And because this game invites you to challenge the rules of, like, the behavior of time or magic or other "properties of reality," I think that primes you to be much more likely to challenge the "human laws" of the game's setting as well. Once you've cast a spell of duplication to acquire more Spend Time tokens each month, cheating the stars themselves to buy more time for yourself, then breaking the laws of the king seems petty by comparison.

This is at its best when you begin to notice the nuances in how rules are often phrased in this game. For example, the first time you read the laws of the Pact, you might misinterpret them. "Wizards are men, without exception. It is well known that women cannot practice magic." You might initially assume that this means women are incapable of doing magic, right? I mean, that sounds plausible enough. It's fantasy after all. Magic isn't real. Who's to say it couldn't work that way? Doesn't uhhh Wheel of Time have gendered magic or something? Yeah, that's probably what it means.

…So it may be some time before you realize that women are merely forbidden from doing magic. And that's a whole different ballgame.

...but consequences have a limit

While most of 7PP is designed with this principle of "rules are meant to be broken," there are exceptions. Some more obvious than others.

For example, some spells will have consequences that you just... can't really roll with. They literally make the spell impossible to take any effect. Let's look at the spell Weaving of Labyrinths, allowing you to construct a maze to trap someone in.

The Limits of this Spell are: Observation, as the Wizard must be able to see the site of the Labyrinth; Solvability, as the Labyrinth must contain a True Solution which one could find to solve it (although it may be tricksy or unintuitive); Attention, as the Subject must remain still and within the Wizard's complete focus for the amount of time it takes for the sundering to complete, which is determined by the Import of the Spell; and Physicality, as the Labyrinth must be composed of physical materials, and is thus susceptible to its destruction. Should the Wizard reject these limits, the consequence shall be Collapse, as the Labyrinth fails to function as a Labyrinth at all, but instead a tangled web of walls and doors, which breaks down into itself.

So really, you can't reject the limits. If you fail to fulfill those requirements, the spell simply doesn't work. But at least you get an explanation of what happens when you try.

That said, Jay has avoided designing spells like this as often as possible. Previous drafts of the Grimoire included many more spells that were "impossible to reject the limits." For example, it used to be that when you tried to cast Duplication but you rejected its limits, then the duplicate would just collapse into mud. A perfectly fair answer, perhaps. But is that as fun as letting you do it anyway and then making you suffer for it?

There are also less-obvious "unbreakable rules." Things it probably doesn't even occur to you to challenge. Like, let's say you're in combat. You take an action, and the rules say "doing this action passes the initiative." You can't just say "no thanks, I think I'll keep the initiative, actually." There's no consequence prepared for what happens if you break that rule. It's not possible.

Or take the elements, for example. There are only four elements, so if you said "I cast the spell using a different, fifth element!" then... I dunno, it doesn't work? Nothing happens? It's not just that the game has no consequence prepared. It's that you'd have to create some kind of new material just to "break" this rule.

You don't notice these because this is exactly the kind of rule design you're used to. Like I said at the beginning, most rules in most RPGs are about defining what is and isn't possible, about modeling the reality of the game's world. Most rules in RPGs are like "scientific laws," which will probably always be inevitable. Yes, even in the game about playing as reality-bending wizards.

And if nothing else, there will always be one ultimate scientific law governing the game world: the Celestial Audience says "hmmmm that doesn't really seem plausible."

Implementing elsewhere

Somewhere I do see this principle show up with some frequency is party games. "You can't say a word with more than 1 syllable. If you do, you get bonked on the head." Growing up, it's often taken to be that "breaking a rule means you made a mistake." A moment of buffoonery. And that's all well and good, but even then we're missing out on some really good stuff. We rarely embrace the possibility of people choosing to break rules on purpose, and accepting that as a valid and interesting part of the game.

First of all, I would love to see more RPGs including some "human laws." Because honestly, I've played a lot of systems as this point. I know how to approximately simulate the physical bounds of an imaginary world using conversation and dice and all kinds of tricks. What I want to know about is the rules of your game world's societies.

In Paranoia, the rules don't say, "you can't be a mutant." They say, "you're not allowed to be a mutant." Which, as we all know, just means that every single party has at least one mutant in it. That's the kind of stuff I'm talking about.

But also, you can still find ways to apply this principle of rules-with-consequences even to the physical laws of the world. Personally, a formative experience I had in embracing this design was a few years ago when I was working on Brave. I had been using the standard OSR "item slot" mechanic that came with Knave, right? "You can carry up to X items in your inventory." But one of my players was being a big baby and whining about this limit.

"What happens if my slots are full and I try to pick up another item?"

"You can't. That's the maximum."

"Yeah, but what happens if I try? Does my character just explode or something?

"I... I don't know. That's the rule, okay? There's gotta be a limit somewhere."

"But I want to carry more stuuuuuuff!" 

Sure, this annoyed me. Can't a player just accept the damn rules of the game? But I caved to the pressure and modified the mechanic. Here's what it says now:

Characters may use item slots beyond their number available but become encumbered for doing so. This applies a temporary -1 penalty to their STR and DEX for each extra slot they use.

And honestly, I actually think that's a better rule than before! Instead of just saying "no," I can let my crybaby player opt into a penalty if that's what they really want. More freedom for them, yet still a reasonable limit to help me maintain a sensible simulation.

"Pick your poison" mechanics are a great place to start applying this principle. For example, think about timeout effects in combat. The electricity elemental zaps you with a shock and you get stunned for one turn. Sucks, right? But what if you could choose to take a turn anyway, but suffer some damage for doing so? I know some players who'll take that option every damn time, and boy howdy I'm gunna kill them with it.

Which brings me to the main appeal of this principle: player agency.

We're always talking about how to provide the players enough freedom to satisfy them, right? Down with railroads, up with sandboxes, blablabla. But sometimes, counterintuitively, the presence of walls can actually contribute to freedom. Yes, they may obstruct your path and constraint your options. But if it's a wall that can be broken, the player will be inspired. By breaking through that wall, they'll appreciate their agency more than if they had just walked through an open field.

To put it another way, sometimes the campaign that feels the more free isn't the sandbox, but rather the "derailed railroad."

-Dwiz