So, let's look at Conan. There's a lot of interesting design in this game--I love the "zones" system for handling distances and the battle space, for one, as well as the very genre-savvy set of mental attacks that include things like brandishing the severed head of your enemies to intimidate your remaining foes. But the real heart of the 2d20 system, in my view, is found in two things--scene framing, and the push-pull of Momentum and Doom. These two elements, working together, both constrain the GM's freedom of action in a way that increases player buy-in, while providing the GM with an "mini-game" that keeps him or her engaged in the play experience, all the while still allowing the GM to be a GM and express his or her creative and narrative freedom.
As to the first element, Conan instructs the GM to think about the game narratively in terms of a series of set-piece scenes. It's the job of the GM to frame those scenes, and the GM is basically given unlimited discretion in this framing. A key component of this framing is to provide the scene with a series of what you might call in video game terms "interactive elements"--different things that can be triggered or activated by different players in the scene. The most obvious form of interactive elements are NPCs, but Conan also includes like terrain effects and other sorts of non-living elements as part of the tool-box for the GM to be included in a scene. [Here, it's worth mentioning Infinity's "psyops" or social interaction rules that provide a very robust platform for running non-combat encounters in a way that doesn't just turn into an unstructured/freeform pure roleplaying experience.] Once the GM frames the scene, the players and their characters are let loose into that space, and the action begins.
There are a number of games that focus on scene framing and scene elements. 7th Sea 2nd Edition was the first one of these I encountered, and my understanding is that FATE works this way as well. But the key thing is that once the scene is framed by the GM, once it is "released into the wild" as it were, the GM is constrained in the manner in which he or she can manipulate or change the parameters of the scene. In other words, once the GM sets up the scene and puts the pieces in place, he or she is now bound by the rules of the scene and is truly "playing the game," albeit with a different palate of options than the other participants.
The game that the GM is playing is defined in terms of the GM's Doom pool. In an abstract sense, these pools are a quantized version of the "hard moves" of the PbtA games, as the GM spends points out of his or her pool to either boost the actions of the NPC antagonists, or to activate elements of the scene in a way that makes the players' lives harder. So, the GM can, for example, introduce enemy reinforcements into the scene, but only by spending points out of the pool. Likewise, the GM could activate an environmental element in a scene (say, the trees in a forest catching on fire) by spending points out of the pool. The things the GM can do via Doom are, like PbtA hard moves, broad enough as to allow the GM to basically do anything he or she might want to do in a particular situation, but always constrained by the number of points that are in the pool that could power the GM's ideas. Moreover, the pool system is transparent--the players know how many points are in each of the pools at any time, and all of the spends are constrained by the rules, facilitating player buy-in.
Even better, the source of the Doom pool is the actions of the players themselves. The basic dice mechanic in 2d20 is that you roll a series of d20s (and, as the name implies, the default is 2), and try to roll under a fixed target number based on your attributes and skills on each die to get a series of successes. Any "extra" successes can either be spent immediately to generate some bonus effect, or can be banked for future use. In the case of the players, the bank is called Momentum, and can be used for, among other things, buying more dice on particular tests. This creates a feedback loop--more dice spent on tests means more successes, which can mean more Momentum to be spent later to generate more successes. But the players can also engage in "deficit spending" by giving the GM Doom points instead of spending Momentum on a 1-for-1 basis. So, the players can buy the chance to do some big cool thing, or buy a chance to set up some cool thing down the line, by handing the GM the tools to make their lives harder at some point in the future. And the Momentum pool usually starts at zero at the beginning of a scene, so the players are likely to "jumpstart" their efforts by buying Doom, especially early on in the scene.
This back and forth creates a natural escalation effect. The players doing something cool usually requires the players to give the GM the tools to up the stakes and match the efforts of the players. But, because this is embedded in a very transparent mechanical framework, it doesn't feel like the GM is screwing over the players or just "treadmilling" the adventure to keep things interesting. The GM is playing the game "by the book" and according to the rules, and I think this aids in getting player buy-in. And I think the constraints make it more fun for the GM, who gets to throw things at the players with more abandon, knowing that the players have some degree of mechanical control over the escalation. If the players decide to wipe out the henchmen by loading up the Doom pool, the GM shouldn't feel bad about turning around and spending that Doom to cause more henchmen to appear, or making the bridge collapse under the players--after all, the players handed the GM the stick with which to club them.
As to the first element, Conan instructs the GM to think about the game narratively in terms of a series of set-piece scenes. It's the job of the GM to frame those scenes, and the GM is basically given unlimited discretion in this framing. A key component of this framing is to provide the scene with a series of what you might call in video game terms "interactive elements"--different things that can be triggered or activated by different players in the scene. The most obvious form of interactive elements are NPCs, but Conan also includes like terrain effects and other sorts of non-living elements as part of the tool-box for the GM to be included in a scene. [Here, it's worth mentioning Infinity's "psyops" or social interaction rules that provide a very robust platform for running non-combat encounters in a way that doesn't just turn into an unstructured/freeform pure roleplaying experience.] Once the GM frames the scene, the players and their characters are let loose into that space, and the action begins.
There are a number of games that focus on scene framing and scene elements. 7th Sea 2nd Edition was the first one of these I encountered, and my understanding is that FATE works this way as well. But the key thing is that once the scene is framed by the GM, once it is "released into the wild" as it were, the GM is constrained in the manner in which he or she can manipulate or change the parameters of the scene. In other words, once the GM sets up the scene and puts the pieces in place, he or she is now bound by the rules of the scene and is truly "playing the game," albeit with a different palate of options than the other participants.
The game that the GM is playing is defined in terms of the GM's Doom pool. In an abstract sense, these pools are a quantized version of the "hard moves" of the PbtA games, as the GM spends points out of his or her pool to either boost the actions of the NPC antagonists, or to activate elements of the scene in a way that makes the players' lives harder. So, the GM can, for example, introduce enemy reinforcements into the scene, but only by spending points out of the pool. Likewise, the GM could activate an environmental element in a scene (say, the trees in a forest catching on fire) by spending points out of the pool. The things the GM can do via Doom are, like PbtA hard moves, broad enough as to allow the GM to basically do anything he or she might want to do in a particular situation, but always constrained by the number of points that are in the pool that could power the GM's ideas. Moreover, the pool system is transparent--the players know how many points are in each of the pools at any time, and all of the spends are constrained by the rules, facilitating player buy-in.
Even better, the source of the Doom pool is the actions of the players themselves. The basic dice mechanic in 2d20 is that you roll a series of d20s (and, as the name implies, the default is 2), and try to roll under a fixed target number based on your attributes and skills on each die to get a series of successes. Any "extra" successes can either be spent immediately to generate some bonus effect, or can be banked for future use. In the case of the players, the bank is called Momentum, and can be used for, among other things, buying more dice on particular tests. This creates a feedback loop--more dice spent on tests means more successes, which can mean more Momentum to be spent later to generate more successes. But the players can also engage in "deficit spending" by giving the GM Doom points instead of spending Momentum on a 1-for-1 basis. So, the players can buy the chance to do some big cool thing, or buy a chance to set up some cool thing down the line, by handing the GM the tools to make their lives harder at some point in the future. And the Momentum pool usually starts at zero at the beginning of a scene, so the players are likely to "jumpstart" their efforts by buying Doom, especially early on in the scene.
This back and forth creates a natural escalation effect. The players doing something cool usually requires the players to give the GM the tools to up the stakes and match the efforts of the players. But, because this is embedded in a very transparent mechanical framework, it doesn't feel like the GM is screwing over the players or just "treadmilling" the adventure to keep things interesting. The GM is playing the game "by the book" and according to the rules, and I think this aids in getting player buy-in. And I think the constraints make it more fun for the GM, who gets to throw things at the players with more abandon, knowing that the players have some degree of mechanical control over the escalation. If the players decide to wipe out the henchmen by loading up the Doom pool, the GM shouldn't feel bad about turning around and spending that Doom to cause more henchmen to appear, or making the bridge collapse under the players--after all, the players handed the GM the stick with which to club them.
The GM section of the Conan corebook goes out of its way to emphasize that Doom is not an adversarial tool, pitting the GM against the players. That's true in a macro sense, as I think Conan is ultimately a game with a strong narrativist agenda, focused very tightly on the players and the GM working together to recreate the feel of the original Conan stories by Howard. But in the context of a particular action scene, there is a sense in which the GM and the players are adversaries, and I think that's a good thing. GM/Player adversarial play is usually seen as a problem because, as I mention in the previous post, it is by definition not a fair fight. If the GM can just press the "I win" button at any time, then a competitive relationship between players and GM is ultimately no fun for anyone. But if you give the GM rules and limitations, all set out transparently for all involved, then adversarial play can work, and can be fun for everyone involved. After all, competitive board games are fun even though the participants are adversaries, or at least they can be.
This structure works particularly well in the specific context of a game that is trying to emulate the Howard stories. I am in the process of reading these stories now, and the two things that jump out at me about them is (1) how scene-based they are, with cuts from set-piece to set-piece; and (2) how many setbacks and reversals they contain. A GM who pours on the Doom and puts the characters under strong pressure in a scene, and then cuts away to another scene is staying well within the genre emulation dimensions of the game, so the narrative agenda and the mechanics support each other.
Ultimately, the real benefit for me of the 2d20 system set forth in Conan is that it allows the GM to feel like he or she is still playing a game, while also still getting to be a GM. Yes, the GM is a story-teller, but he or she is also a player, and can feel free to push the Doom pool all the way to the redline, and thus correspondingly push the PCs to the redline. Limiting the GM's freedom of action via the amount of Doom in the pool also takes away a big part of the sense of obligation on the part of GMs to dictate the play experience. If you are getting burned out as a GM with the "story concierge" experience I mentioned in the previous post, then I think Conan or the other 2d20 games provides a nice antidote.
