Assassination. No, I’m not talking about the classic college campus game, I’m talking about assassination within the context of tabletop role-playing games. It’s really hard to do well. This is the subject of this month’s RPG Blog Carnival.
There’s something fundemental about assassination that doesn’t gel with games. In reality, assassination is just about the furthest thing from a game. It’s generally done quickly and without preamble of any sort. There’s no warning – you’re dead before you knew that there was any threat. Whereas the purpose of a game is to have fun in enacting a story, the purpose of assassination is to kill as effectively as possible. The combat rules of most RPGs with which I’m familiar don’t lend themselves well to handling the mechanics of an assassination.
Player Asassins
If you’re running a game wherein the players are the asssassins, their job can be separated into four phases, each of which can make for enjoyable gameplay.
1. Planning
This can vary depending on how well-guarded the mark is, but any good assassination should involve a lot of planning. This phase is the domain of the thinkers and the planners. Indeed, this phase of the mission will often take the majority of the characters’ time, if not the majority of the players’ time. Research must be done on where the target will be and when, and care should be taken to ensure that the target and his protectors have no warning of any threat. The location can be scouted, the protectors can be researched, confederates can be enlisted, props may be planted. The asssasins can envision possible points of failure and create contingency plans. And any points of failure that are not identified can be fuel for possible complications that the GM can introduce during subsequent phases.
2: Positioning
Whether it’s conning their way into a party, setting up camoflage at a good sniper position, or taking out the guards and stealing their uniforms, taking an appropriate position to prepare for the assassination is critical. This phase is the domain of the spies and the rogues. It’s espionage-heavy, and can involve a hefty amount of sneaking, bluffing, lock-picking, and mugging. It can also involve a lot of terrain negotiation, whether that’s climbing the exterior facade of a building, approaching a lake house underwater, or climbing through air ducts.
3: Execution
This is what is all comes down to: the kill-shot, poisoning the glass of wine, or ambushing the caravan. It may be quick and silent, or it may be explosively loud. This is the domain of the sniper and the brawler. What the players need to keep in mind here is that their goal is not to win a battle; their goal is to kill one individual and make their getaway. To that end, the situation should often be set up such that a traditional battle isn’t feasable. Perhaps there are a large number of innocent bystanders. Maybe the target’s protectors comprise overwhelming forces who can’t immediately be brought to bear, granting the characters time to escape if they’re quick. This brings us to…
4: Escape
This phase may not always exist. Escape may often be as simple as walking away. But it has the potential to be the most exciting phase of the assassination. It may be that in one instance the execution of an assassination is ridiculously easy and the escape is the truly hard part. Chase scenes are another thing that all RPG systems aren’t set up to run well. But whether you need to set up house rules, design a skill challenge, or play a mini-game, you as the GM have the potential to make the escape more harrowing and fun than players might ever expect.
Complications
Many RPG systems use complications as an actual game mechanic. Whether or not the system you’re playing has such a mechanic, you can make complications an integral part of the assassination game. After all, if everything always ran one hundred percent according to plan, the game wouldn’t be very interesting. As a GM, your job is to make the complications interesting and surprising.
For example, if during the positioning phase a player bluffs badly and a guard is onto him, you can let the players know that if the situation escalates into combat the target will be warned and the assassination plan is ruined. Thus it is to the players’ benefit to allow that PC to be taken captive – if the target’s group feels that they are still in control and have nothing to worry about, the players’ plan can proceed.
Player-as-assassin games aren’t common, but they can be done well. Involving assassins in your game as NPCs, however, can be more of a challenge.
NPC Assassins
Assassination generally happens quickly, often quietly, and if it’s done right there’s no warning and no chance for retaliation. In the immortal words of the late Pat Morita, If do right, no can defense.
This means that if a PC is a target, assassination is totally unfair, because it would amount to the GM simply telling a player that his character is dead. No die rolls, no narrative escape route. So instead, if the assassin is an antagonist, then the target must be an NPC.
Plots where the players must discover the assassin have been done plenty. The issue is that if the PCs are tracking down the assassin, it’s very possible that he may find out. If so, he’s going to deal with the players the same way that he deals with targets. He’s got no reason to expose himself in a toe-to-toe fight when it’s so much simpler to work from the shadows, as he’s accustomed to doing. And exposing the PCs to assassination is off the table for the reason mentioned above. If the players know that they’re never at risk of being unceremoniously picked off when they least expect it, it robs the assassin of his teeth. It removes what makes an assassin truly scary. The feeling that while you’re a target, you’re never ever safe – no matter where you are. Your dinner could be poisoned. There could be a bomb in your refrigerator or your toilet, or a tiny poisoned needle in your pillow. And if you ever plan on going to sleep, watch out.
The problem is that in most games, players won’t want their character killed off unfairly. It simply isn’t fun. But there are a number of ways you can make it work.
For one, you could decide upon a time period, and without telling the players exactly what that is, decide that (for example) once per 12 hours or once per 36 hours, there’s a certain chance (50%-100%) of an assassination attempt on the PCs. If an attempt occurs, you need to make sure that it has a good chance (more than 50%) of killing a player character. If you go this route, you need to make sure that your players understand and that they’re okay with having a character killed off this way if they take too long.
Another approach might be to reverse the planning phase as described above. Instead of researching and planning an assassination, players need to set up defenses, gather information about the assassin, and overall stay paranoid. This kind of game can be tense and thrilling. If you’re running a game of this sort, I encourage you to throw in red herrings and jack-in-the-box type false alarms. Insert evil laugh here.
