Art of the RetCon

Master of Malfeasance

Master of Malfeasance

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If anyone has ever read the Gamma World GM's guide, there is a blurb about the "Art of the RetCon"


This isn't so much a topic beginning with a question as it is an explanation of this concept to STs just starting out.


Also, all third person pronouns are him/he/his/it.  This is not to draw attention to the latent superiority of males, but to give my poor, tortured fingers a rest.  If you're an easily offended female, no loss; we probably wouldn't ever have been friends anyway.  I am a chauvanist pig.


The RetCon, or Retroactive Continuity is a temporal way of making your plots fit together.  We are all human, except maybe Jakk, who I think is a ghost who has possess the WW game studio building.  Being human, we make mistakes.  Yes, you heard me say it, STs make mistakes.


But a good ST doesn't make mistakes.  If he is good, his stories are divinely ordained (by him, of course), and therefore, beyond reproach.  How do you, the ST, mold yourself into the stuff of legend before the suspicious eyes of your players?


There are a lot of ways, and they're pretty easy until you stumble and make a mistake.  You handle this in one of two ways:


You can fall like Christopher Reeves and actually backtrack your game.  Do this once, and your players might let it slide, twice, and they will run you over like the orient express and suddenly, the mongrel race which comprises your players will be asking stupid questions at every turn because they will no longer trust you know the game front to back, all of their character's abilities, dots, familiars, masturbation habits by rote and can parrot them back to the player at any time.


Or, you can roll with it.  This is easier said than done, but the rewards are many and varied.  This tactic, called the RetCon, can be as simple or as complicated as you want.  Here are some examples:


Simple RetCon:


(players are walking through a forest, my 5 senses description of the forest has been omitted so I won't have to kill you and eat your children for copying my style)


me:  Hey, you!  (throws die to get player's attention.. okay, I'm not THAT much of an asshole)  You suddenly find yourself under attack as a creature explodes out of the underbrush to attack you.


player #1:  hey, don't I get an initiative roll?


me:  (gives the player an eye roll instead)  Why would you get that?


player #1:  I have thermal senses, I can see things that give off heat.


me:  (Makes note to himself to throw his player's guide into an induction furnace)  


-Wonder Years-esque pause for Fred Savage (played by me) to yammer some-


Now, since I haven't thought this encounter out beyond "creature attacks party, is smacked down, party becomes wary," I could back the game up at this point and have him roll initiative to slay my rabid lemur outright, and then every time I opened my mouth, I could expect to see the animal cunning-intensive brains of my players creating questions like the Army creates useless paperwork.  I hate paperwork, and I despise questions that don't deal directly with the setting or the game.


Or, door #2, RetCon; I heave a sigh and examine my knowledge of how thermographic vision works.  I decide that Arnold's example in the movie "Predator" will do nicely and the following scenario unfolds:


me:  and that matters because...?


Player #1:  well, I should have seen it coming...


me:  First off (because my sentences start with caps), even if you said you'd been looking, which you didn't, your thermal sense wouldn't have picked up this particular opponent because of the copious mud that is now getting everywhere as the creature tears into you.  (I also decide at this point, that every time the player argues, I'm going to ratchet up the difficulty a level)  


[power level:  Weak; still a muddy, rabid lemur]  We'll see how long this lasts


Player #1:  That's bullshit, I should even get to see it through the mud!  The Predator got to see hazy things in the mud!


[power level:  Not too bad; a muddy, mutant, rabid lemur]


me:  (Now he's asking for it) That's probably true.  Maybe if you survive to reach civilization, you can create an artifact with your non-existent Craft skill that will hone your existing heat sense.


Player #1:  If it allowed me to hunt in the wild before I was Exalted, why doesn't it work now?


[power level:  making me mad; a muddy, mutant, rabid lemur that is the familiar or representative of a local spirit]


me:  Have you ever read about an Exalt who was a mutant?  Last I checked  (I didn't, of course, it's my damn game and I own all the books.  The only opportunities the players get to read them is when I'm in town), there weren't any.  Either mutants don't Exalt, or Exaltation corrects mutation.  Which would you prefer?  (a small RetCon in and of itself)


Player #1:  C'mon, I specifically bought this ability to be able to see around in forests.  I want a roll!


[power level:  Ire aroused; a muddy, mutant, rabid lemur that is the familiar of a nearby Lunar Exalted]


me:  (looks at player #1 expectantly)


Player #1:  Besides, it's not a mutation, it's a gift from... oh hell, I forgot the name


[power level: geysers of the purest rage, radiating waves of animosity visible to the naked eye; the rabid lemur is an extremely powerful first age Lunar who saw a lover who spurned her in the party and wants BLOOD]


Players will eventually catch on to this, but it is your job as the god-like ST to always keep them guessing.  It helps to have a few such encounters in the back of your head at all times to get the ball rolling.  


Also, never, ever, under any circumstances, allow any merit like common sense, or danger sense.  Soliton radar as a sensory ability should probably also be right out.  Just like me.  I'm too tired to exist.
 
A ghost. Ohhhhh... spooky.


The Gamma World GM's Guide is one of the best products to come out for a long time for Newbie GM's. Better than Gygax's guide a few years back, but it's not surprising, since Sword & Sorcery Studios is a part of White Wolf.


The example you gave with the Rabid Lemur of Lunar Rage is a clumsy example of the retcon.  I retcon my games all the time, but you have to be careful about using it, for the exact reason that the Rabid Lemur is clumsy.


Your players trust you to be fair, and to be prepared. That you forgot about the thermographic sight is a lapse that is easily fixed.  You take notes--a good ST, the God Like ST of your dreams keeps paperwork. And the art of the retcon demands that you keep detailed notes, because if you want to plug in details, you have to know what happened, who, what, where, why, and how things went down.  Beggars on the street, urchins who attempt to pick pockets, names of contacts, names of local players, the whole shebang.


The art of the retcon is art of weaving a more intricate plot.  Every encounter can have further significance. The PC's encounter a beggar, and they tell him to piss off. Not a big encounter, could have just been flavor text in your initial plot. But, being a good ST, you made a note that tney told the Beggar to sod off, and this encounter is a possible point to pick up later--because anyone who has any dap with myth knows, that it's always the Bad Seeds in the Faerie tales that tell beggars to piss off, and it comes back to bite them on the ass.  Your flavor text beggar can then become a Sidereal who was testing the PC's, scouting them out either for the Gold or Bronze factions. Maybe a Wyld Hunt scout, who is keeping tabs on them.


Tiny encounter, can be made more significant later on. Not now, not in this moment, but you've made a notation and you can then reference it later. The art of the retcon is in the details. Because you can assign importance to small events, or even large events later on. Encounter with thugs in a market shaking down villagers can be used as fodder to introduce a Bandit Chief later on, as those were his thugs. The passage that the PC's didn't take was where a party of Dragon Blooded adventurers were exploring, and maybe they encountered a trap, and need a rescue, or it kept them busy and they picked up on the PC's trail once they got done with dealing with the citadel's inhabitants. Your notes have nothing about a party of DB adventurers, but it seems like too good an opportunity to pass up to throw them a little party.  In the case of those adventurers, and they  get rescued, you may decide that they were hired by the Bandit Chief from the earlier thug episode, and they have decided that engineering a 'rescue' was the best way to get close enough to the Solars to slide a dagger in their backs--and wait a minute, maybe those Dragon Bloods are agents of the Sidereal who the PC's encountered as a begger. Either as a test, an assassination squad, or even something for the Sidereal to come and 'save' them from, engineering the whole encounter, knowing that he'd betray his own employees so that the PC's would owe him a favor, and put him in their good graces.


The retcon allows you to weave more intricate plots, by allowing you to assign signifcance to small events, and build plots from these details.


In the above example, you can turn two somewhat random encounters into a devious plot by a Sidereal of either faction, who is onto our heroes. And it makes the Sidereals look even more devious and scheming.


You can use the retcon to cover your mistakes, but it's easier not to make simple mistakes, like the thermo vision thingie, by just keeping notes on the player's characters. Me, I make copies of everyone's sheets, or at least keep a pad with pages on each character, listing their Charms, Artifacts, equipment, ect. Just a quick jot on "Got new sword in Gem" can open up some possibilities as the sword it turns out was stolen from the barrow of a Barbarian Chieftan, and his family wants it back.  Great new shiny blade, bought in a market opens up a new plot line. And it takes the merchant from just another schmuck with goods to sell, into a grave robbing schmuck who has been pissing off the locals for some time. Plot tumbled into by the PC's when the barbarians come for Daddy's sacred blade.


Yes, you could make the lemur into a Tower of Lunar Rage, but the question is does it make sense for the plot?


Retcon is a tool to make more complicated plots, but the key is not to overuse it.  Retcon allows you a more fluid way of building plots, opportunistic as you feed from the players' decisions and choices, and then plug them back into your internal plot generator, but you have to be careful. Sometimes a flower is just a flower, not a hidden Spirit who is watching over them. Overuse the idea, and your PC's are going to be overcome with the signifcance of every minor detail, and they'll slow you down as they try to anticipate what may or may not be important.


A better way to handle the Lemur of Doom is to say: "You know, the brush was thick enough to hide it with the cool of the leaves around it, but I will let you take a roll to hear it rustle before it pounces."


You erase your mistake in forgetting about the thermo vision, and then you are fair by giving the player a chance--that to be honest, they should have had with their hyped up Super Mythic Hero rep. You wanted an encounter to build their awareness, and the Lemur has served its purpose. You can still make it more significant later, but turning every encounter into a hidden Tower of Power is overkill. Use your encounters to weave plots, not as an excuse to indulge in a little ST powergaming trip of your own. Pulling Super Monsters out nowhere gets them dubbed "Grudge Monsters" and it just isn't fair to your players.


So you keep notes. Yes, paperwork is a pain, but you get into the habit of keeping notes, your games will improve, and you train your memory as well. You write it down, you have the physical memory of the process, as well as the verbal cue, and the visual memory of the note to call up--and three chances to catch a mistake before it happens, rather than just the verbal memory of the player telling you something in passing.  You also retain a plot generator that is tailored to your PC's, and you can then reference each encounter, to build a quick Way Back Machine with a quick descriptive flash of that encounter, which helps reinforce your plot.


As the Sidereal reveals himself, the player shakes his hand, and gets a flashback of the hand of the beggar that he shook when he gave him a gold coin. Or gets a flash of the look of disdain that the beggar gave him as the player booted him aside.
 
Wow. You two are going to get along great. You both love to filibuster.


-S
 
No filibuster here


Art of the Retcon, the Short Form:


1. When you don't know, lie.


2. When you've lied about something before, lie the same way again next time.


3. When you lie, make it an interesting lie.


4. Before the players you lied to learn the truth (as they will), make sure that both the lie and the truth can work together.
 
We use retconning as an official part of our game. Whenever we come to a scene that is plot-crucial but nobody can come up with a way to change from boring to interesting, we wave our magic plot-sticks and say "I don't want to list everything Dead Sun Oracle packs on this sea voyage. Can I roll Intelligence + Bureaucracy every time I want to pull something unusual out of my trunk?" or more relevant words to that general effect.
 
I know that it wouldn't have been a bother if the lemur had attacked from behind.  Disturbingly enough, the above example is a watered down version of a several hour long argument.  The names and faces were slightly altered to make sound funny rather than infuriating and sad.


The quotes and reactions were pretty close though, as is the ratcheting of the power level.  I also typically do keep notes of what I can remember and if I have to retcon around people's merits more than once in a game, I will usually throw an encounter at them that plays to their merits nicely so they don't think that I'm ignoring their merits when my plot donkeypunches my characters.


On that note, a fantastic session went down last night, though it was frought with reminiscing and jokes, my players came out of their shells.  I would have danced a jig had I been less tired.


Our newly Exalted Solars are in Onyx, enjoying the hospitality of the living quarter, when they start taking odd jobs from the inhabitants.  Suffice to say, they make a lot of money in Soul Tokens, enough that they can start buying soulsteel items (not artifacts, just regular weapons and gear) because I opted to say that soulsteel is a big export item from Skullstone (what are they going to use it for?).


He browbeats the party into letting him buy articulated plate and a greatsword, and having it engraved precisely like the silver plated armor he is currently wearing which is the ceremonial ruler's armor of the kingdom of which he is prince.  He realizes that even though it has been made from the souls of rapists and murderers, that this soulsteel stuff is cramping his style and making him feel all gothic and dark, so he never wears it.


The party was incensed.


This was the day that Crown Prince Keat's life fell apart.


They took the Moon Silver Grand Daiklave Voidstalker and sold it for about 2/3 its value.  They don't know this, but the Bodhisattva Anointed etc. bought it for use with his few Deathknights.  They divided the Soul Tokens equally amongst themselves, and through the resplendent art of RetCon, the following took place:


Real life:  An old Army buddy gets out of the Army and comes back to play Exalted with his old friends.  Enter the veteran gamer with over a decade of experience.  He pulls my players straight out of their rut and catapults my plot forward just through good roleplaying.


In Game:  Players were sent by the CotI to find a girl who's essence had previously been in line with theirs to Exalt.  They found the girl, and the last session ended without much description of her on my part.


The new (okay, old) guy says he wants to play the girl, and he wants a high influence.  After much conspiring, we conclude that this girl is actually Crown Prince Keat's younger sister...  Younger by a couple of MINUTES.  They are fraternal twins, and in an effort to stem her almost violent ambition, their father sent her far and wide around the world to secure trade contracts and build relations with other countries (influence of 4, contacts of 4, resources 4).  This ought to be good.  Either CPK's player will rise to the occasion, or CPK will have to step down in favor of his sister who will probably be quite the despot (despotrix?).


Finally, we get our General's son back who missed the game session where CPK released everyone's essence shard and is now a Dawn caste.  The players tell them of CPK's refusal to wear the armor and weapons that they went to an obscene amount of trouble to outfit him with and Ramsas, the warrior, says "I'll take it!"  And refits the (royal) soulsteel plate to his own dimensions and takes up the (also royal) soulsteel greatsword.


Crown Prince Keat comes back from his daily trip to the bath house to find his artifact weapon has been sold, his backup armor and greatsword are gone, and his sister is back in his life, Exalted, and wants him dead.


Limit break.  No rolls, no reading, I haven't even had time to explain limit break to my players, CPK (and his player) lost their minds and the prince basically threw a tantrum.  All of the crew left the ship, the captain (an outcaste Water aspect), had the ship put under guard and the other characters ran for their lives.  We were all paralyzed with laughter.
 
I'd just make the lemur a lizard: Cold blood, so thermal vision is useless. End of problem. RetCon, but no major changes to plot. There's no need no make major changes to cover your mistakes.
 
Wow.  Reading all of this was amazing.  I feel as though I should be kneeling down before the Altar of Wisdom that you guys offer instead of lounging in a chair typing on my 'puter.  Stuff like this shows me just how much more I have to learn to be as good of a ST as I'd like to be.


I'm very glad to have joined this compendium.
 
Indeed... Jakk's advice as well as 'Mom's method is how I go about it...


You have to be ready to improv. and than lie thru your teeth and be ready to keep it consistent.


Otherwise, when your players throw you for a loop... you'll be stuck. And your players WILL throw you for a loop.
 
In my experience, when players buy some twink element for their characters (like thermal vision) they want to see it in use. If you refuse to let it take focus from, or give too much undue attention to your otherwise unimportant ambush you retcon (the lemur was a lizard/it attacked from behind/it is special mutated lemur with thermal shielding). But the player is not satisfied if he doesn't feel his twink power is twinking. So you should probably think about introducing an other ambush or sircumstance, where his thermal vision saves the day. I don't think it helps to cowe the players into submission. More often it helps to con them and make them feel, that they control the game.
 
I despise when players take twink abilities.  I despise the idea of twink abilities.  When I buy a book, I go through with a sharpie and put a line through any sort of infallible/danger sense charm/ability/talent/twinkness that I come across.


Anyone who brings to my attention that I missed one is executed.  Anyone I see skip over one and not say anything is then tortured and executed.


The few times that I take my mind off of the dizzying number of tasks it must undergo to manage even a simple encounter with the level of detail and personality that I want to put into my encounters, the last thing I want is to have a guy look at his character sheet and go "oh shit, I just realized, I have danger sense/thermal vision/night vision/twink vision/super hearing/giant lead balls where my brain should be/eidetic memory/trivia buff vision."  I want to grab the guy's neck and squeeze until his eyeballs pop out.


You see that, players?  READ THAT!  I hate you all!  Every last one of you who ever so much as *considered* a twink ability for which you had no intention of forking over the chips (essence motes--I usually have no problem with charms that let you see stuff).


I think I'm through with my rant.
 
I think that someone needs to up the dose of their medication!  lol :wink:


I must confess that even I, mild mannered reporter for the Daily Planet, have succumbed to the urge to have some power-tripping talent that could unhinge the well crafted plots of a ST.  Its the little devil on the shoulder making me do it!  Its not my fault!
 
You know, back in the glory days of gaming when I got to do something other than run the @#%^&Y##@ game (like play.  More rant about that below), I would play up my character's strengths through bluster, through creative roleplaying and getting into the character.  Holy shit... I know... I know, it's crazy, and it's unorthodox, but way the hell back in the day, they didn't have shitty merits and flaws.  That's not really how the real world works.  I'm not fat and out of shape because I can do incredible things with my mind, or move objects across the room or fire a shotgun any better.  I'm out of shape because I got a nasty injury that required surgery and fantastic quantities of physical therapy and I've been fighting it since I was a kid.  I didn't get anything back for it (except a lot of crap from uncle sam).


Maybe my example is overly cynical, but I think in future games, I'm going to make players roll a die.  Whatever that die comes up is the number of points in flaws they have to take in order to evade my never-ending wrath.  Here's the crazy part:  they don't get anything back.  Now the game is no longer about who has the highest firearms, it's about who can manage the damage.


On the note of actually playing a game:


I cannot remember the last time I played a game (any game; not just Exalted, though that seems to be all that I run lately).  I enjoy storytelling, I really do.  Not for the power, but for the desire to see my story told.  To know that a buddy is having problems at work or with his (in)significant other and to work those into my game and see my players looking at me like expectant fathers to see what I'm going to hatch next, even though I have fallen asleep at the table... I love that feeling.  But there's something missing.  I haven't played in such a long long time... so very long... and I'm an angry little (6'4" 300 lbs) Army gnome because of it.


It's why I'm the master of malfeasance.  My malfeasance is my release.  All of the dirty tricks I pull on my players, all of the browbeating for getting out of character or just pissing me off is really the little apprentice of malfeasance inside me screaming that he just wants to turn the brain off and play.  


Here's the real art of the RetCon:  find yourself a nice balance where you're happy with the current mix of hobbies you have.  Oh yeah, don't get injured, too.  Then you can work on the specifics.
 
Sherwood wrote:
I think that someone needs to up the dose of their medication!


You, perhaps?


Who, me?  <Innocent blink>  Why, Still, whatever do you mean?  lol
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