Layers of Epic Level
In the chapter on Information, Bluesheets were presented as a way to supply pre-game information to multiple members of the same group. Many Guild games have a competitive structure that consists primarily of group versus group conflict, rather than individual versus individual. Instead of creating and facilitating a competitive system that must be robust and entertaining enough to engage players attempting to fulfill twenty to fifty unique goals, GMs often prefer to approach the problem as three to five generalized competing forces. The savings in preparation time can be considerable, leaving more time for san-checking.
Many players, however, prefer to play characters that are unique from others in a game. However, by layering multiple levels of group conflict on top of each other, GMs can create a game that gives each character a unique set of goals by assigning them a unique combination of groups. For instance, a layer of competition in a game may have five separate groups in opposition. With only three such layers, the game has the potential to support sixty unique combinations of group affiliations, assuming that some characters may have two groups in common. This simplifies the workload from sixty unique character sheets to fifteen unique group Bluesheets. As an example, a character may be a member of a corporation engaged in economic negotiations, a member of a family pursuing a vendetta and a secret conspiracy to eliminate the head of state. Other characters may be members of other corporations or other families, and may be working to brainwash, replace or protect the head of state.
This simplification has some unintended side effects. Experienced players have described the basic three-layer conspiracy game as “the plot that is your cover, the plot that gets you killed, and the plot that you really care about,� implying jadedness that comes with the overuse of the format. For groups on any one particular layer to serve as effective competition for their opponents, the groups must be given goals that are approximately the same in difficulty, complexity and motivation. A group that is merely trying to find some private documents to balance their accounts would pose little threat against a group that needs those same documents to destroy the world. The phrase “epic level� describes the stakes of a competition as understood by a player. Assuming that all the competing groups on a particular layer are operating on the same epic level, players will often note that one layer is more grandiose than the rest, relegating the other two layers to serve as convenient cover stories or worthless risks and thus not really being goals at all.
This issue is accentuated when GMs deliberately write goals for groups with this sort of ascending order of epic level in mind. However, there are some ways to make the competition more interesting. By wording the text and designing the setting of a game to glamorize some of the lower epic level goals over the higher epic level objectives, players may come to different conclusions as to which layer is actually their highest priority. This thrusts greater responsibility onto the leaders of groups to motivate and inspire their lieutenants to focus on a particular set of tasks. Groups with members that can all perceive and agree on the significance of their goals will have a greater chance of success in such games. Spies and traitors can also complicate the game by making a character a member of multiple groups on a single layer but only loyal to one.
In games with varying loyalties and spies, players should not be misled into thinking that they should trust their associates completely when their success actually hinges on winning over or suspecting their teammates. Characters can be completely deluded about the game world but players expect to know the attitude with which they should approach the circumstances of the game. If teammates may betray their group because they are spies or because not all members may have the same priorities, players generally want to know ahead of time that this is a possibility. If not, betrayals may be misconstrued as players breaking the rules of the game or may lead players to question the reliability of the rules and the GMs.
Of course, not all Guild games treat group conflict strictly within layers of epic levels. Many games include groups that operate on multiple epic levels, and with sufficient complexity, it becomes pointless to expect group goals to fit neatly into any given layer. Simple variations to factors, such as the sizes of the groups, can dramatically influence the flavor of the conflict. A group-versus-group struggle might have a very different tone compared to a character-against-the-world paranoid quest, although the amount of work on the part of the GMs is similar. GMs often create more groups than are necessary to provide minimal variation between characters, allowing the assignment of groups to fit the description of the characters rather than the other way around. Games that approach pre-development by focusing on character personalities instead of group goals often find this approach to be the most flexible and faithful to their original ideas.
