Rez Points, Killing Blows and Stealth Mechanics
the emphasis that Guild games have on attaining and securing goals, players often like to have access to some consistent and reliable means of ensuring that opposing characters stay out of their way once they have been removed. Otherwise, a game might either end in an unsatisfying standoff with no clear victor or be a foregone conclusion from the very beginning. Many games featuring rezzes thus provide a way to impede the rate at which players can return to the game. A game featuring rapidly breeding aliens will often have a “queen� character that will stop breeding new creatures when killed. Other games have wall signs marking areas, known as “rez points,� where players of “dead� characters can rez. A rez point often represents some sort of portal that allows attacking characters to enter the game world. Players may be given a means of disabling the rez points or killing the queen character, thus stemming the flood of rezzing characters.
In other games, some characters may not die immediately after taking enough damage in the thick of combat. In the five to ten minutes that it takes for the character to die, the combat may end and victorious allies might administer medical aid. However, this would mean that players who are trying to dispose of their opposition in a quiet corner would have to guard their dying targets for five to ten minutes, a process that wastes time and discourages risk-taking among players.
To address this issue, the Standard Rules includes a means for players to ensure that a character is dead. This is known as a “Killing Blow,� a mechanic that represents the willful, quick and certain termination of a character’s life.
- Any Character not in a position to resistâ€â€immobile or unconsciousâ€â€may be killed almost instantly. To do this, be within Zone of Control and declare “Killing Blowâ€? towards your victim. Anyone within ZoC of you or your victim who can move can stop you; the rescuing Player just says “Noâ€? or “stopâ€? or “I prevent youâ€? or anything indicating that you are opposed, within two seconds.
The Killing Blow and medical mechanics make possible the coexistence of the ability of characters to minimize casualties in combats by assembling multiple allies and opportunities for clean, quiet assassinations. This has also allowed GMs to add powerful characters that would require multiple assailants to assassinate with any reasonable probability of success. In games with cohesive groups that are transparent to the members of the group, players could potentially coordinate their groups to deal with excessively dangerous individual characters. However, with more complicated group structures featuring questionable loyalties among members, GMs have found it necessary to find ways to allow individual players to take down their opponents, no matter how outclassed the assailants may be.
Instead of removing powerful characters from the rosters of games, however, GMs have recently relied on stealth mechanics to achieve these affects. These combine competitive and verisimilar tensions to represent characters attacking characters by surprise. Players are required to hold an easily recognizable hand sign behind another player’s head for a few seconds. If the victim fails to notice the hand during that time, the attacker immediately declares a successful mêlée attack, regardless of the victim’s combat ability. Once the victim is incapacitated, the attacker can perform a Killing Blow.
Stealth mechanics encourage players to form alliances with their opposition to maximize opportunities for catching their enemies off guard. In that sense, individual players can be far more deadly than an easily noticed group of assailants. Instead of attempting to display their strength in numbers, groups spread out their members and confer in secret to prevent targets from noticing affiliations and becoming suspicious.
Rez points, Killing Blows and stealth mechanics are relatively simple mechanics in concept and implementation. However, they can all dramatically change the attitude and strategies that players can adopt in their efforts to achieve their characters’ goals. They also provide new angles for GMs to explore in their aim to design and balance mechanics and systems that players will enjoy competing over.
