Letting your players win is GOOD (and what Mythic Bastionland has to do with it)

Like most people who have played it, I'm a Mythic Bastionland evangelist. I want to put an example of my thesis from the title at the start for two reasons: one, I hope it convinces you to try Mythic Bastionland if you haven't already; and two, it gives me a chance to talk through what I was thinking at the table and how that resulted in the gameplay.

THE GAMEPLAY

The players spent most of the session encountering omens from the Chariot myth. Huge craters, destroyed farmsteads with displaced families, things of this nature. Eventually the Charioteer himself descends from the Heavens and starts boasting to the players about how powerful he is. "I shaped the moon, my hammer blows carved its cratered surface! I dug out the sea and terrified the trees with my strength so they no longer wander as people do..." 

Amy (a player who has lost a character in every single game we play) calls his bluff and he lands in front of the party. I knew that Amy would probably die in a straight fight with the Charioteer, so I stole the game from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (if I seem to be a bit obsessed with it know it is because I am, I always have been and always will be) where the Charioteer invites Amy's knight to land a single blow against him, that he will return in kind. Amy takes a while to think it over, but hits on a great idea:

"Can I attack the chariot?"

"Ooh! Absolutely, roll for damage!"

The Chariot does not have much health and Amy splits it in two with a single strike. The Charioteer laughs heartily, but with a tinge of shock. He admires such boldness and was not expecting this, but he also has an idea for his return blow. He takes his hammer and strikes Amy's horse so hard it disappears off the edge of the hex map, killing it instantly, before thanking her for the game and riding off on the back of one of his tigers that formerly pulled his chariot.

The players are distraught at the death of the horse and the strength of the Charioteer, but they also now know his weakness! He can't refuse a challenge. They next encounter him at the nearby settlement of Wildwall, ruled by a seer that is fused into a great tree at its centre. The Charioteer feels the seer is weak and wants to usurp him, but the players arrive in time to challenge him. At this point I take a quick break and let my table scheme a solution. I'm not expecting anything! I have the stat block for the Charioteer and his two tigers so I'm ready for a fight, but I'm hoping the previous encounter has taught my players to be clever enough to try and weasel out some kind of advantage. When I'm sat down again the players have come up with a solution, and they ask Amy to throw down the gauntlet:

"You boast of all the things you can do,

 but there is one thing we have already done that you cannot. 

We have taken the oath and become knights!"

Now it's my turn to be caught off-guard, which helps as the time I take to think of a response builds the tension. The session has to end in less than in hour as people have places to be but I feel what we need is some kind of dramatic closure so that the players feel a whole story took place. The Charioteer lowers his hammer and laughs again, this time with some resignation:

"Very well. I accept your challenge!"

He turns and kneels before the seer and requests to be knighted, which the seer grants willingly. Cheers all around the table! We wrap up early. My players (who are normally more into the familiar trappings of 5e D&D) talk about how they loved the system and want to do a campaign after one of the 5e ones we were already in reach a conclusion. Success!

WHY LET THEM WIN?

We are looking to encourage a certain kind of behaviour and engagement with our players, and we do that by giving them victories! When your players scheme and try to wriggle out of negative consequences by matching the tone of your game, you should let them win. They'll feel like Odysseus and you'll feel like Homer. They'll learn that taking the setting seriously rewards them with cinematic moments.

You do need to be aware of the tone the ruleset implies to achieve this. I've also run both Old School Essentials and Electric Bastionland for these players and found that because the games revolve around acquiring wealth, they run better as heist-type adventures. Discworld-esque vibes better suit these games than Lord of the Rings-esque epic romance. The rewards of these games are mechanically related to the currency in each player's pocket, so thematically you should give them opportunities to tell stories of greedy excess and comedic hubris. Letting them win looks more like giving them so much gold it becomes impossible to spend, they have to melt it down to ingots or start a casino to launder the coins into the economy, as possible examples.

Mythic Bastionland makes a point to not use currency at all and gives each player the oath to follow, so if there is a big climatic arc in which the very safety of the realm is at stake, the players don't just go along 'because that is the adventure we're running that week', they do it because the game rewards them mechanically with Glory and thematically with opportunities to be clever or make heroic sacrifices. In short, they WANT to do it.

TL;DR Next time you run a game, think about:

1. What does the game want my players to chase after?

2. How do I reward them on a narrative level for chasing after those things?

Thanks for reading! I can't promise the next blog post WON'T be about Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in some way, but we'll see what I come up with. <3