Sagas and RPGs

The great thing about college is that I have to take a bunch of classes that seem pointless but that actually end up fascinating. One of those classes is, as my professor has called it, "Blood & Thunder: A Study of the History and Culture of the Vikings."

Dude has wing ears.

It is as metal as it sounds.

Right now we're discussing the Saga of the Volsungs, the first of a couple of sagas we'll be reading. The study has been pretty damn interesting.

Some notes on how Sagas work in terms of characters etc:

• Character development is not a priority. Characters enter, die, or fade away without much fanfare. Some still develop, however.
• Plot is the most important thing. The Saga is trying to tell you a story of these badass things, or teach you a lesson, or show great honor to something.
• Sagas are fast paced. Massive timeskips of 1-15 years or more. All the time.
• Sagas aren't about nobodies or peasants. In the Saga of the Volsungs, Odin personally interferes with each generation. Valkyries marry into the family. They are all kings or princes, or incredible badasses.
• Odin is literally using the Volsungs as a farm for Valhalla-worthy heroes.
• Mysticism is accepted as a way of life. Sigmund and his son get turned into wolves for years and just accept it until they turn back and move on with their lives.
• Constant death. Almost all characters die, since dying after killing dozens is pretty much how one gets into Valhalla. 
• Incredible heroic feats. Killing a dragon, fighting your way through the ranks 8 times, etc.
• Women are just as badass as men, though usually in different ways. There are lots of women schemers, but also women warriors in a huge supporting role, or in a main roll (Brynhild). 
• Extremes. There are extremes everywhere. Kill your children, trick your brother into incest to create a powerful heir, several verses of death-monologue by a dragon after it gets fucking bodied.
• The story spans generations. Many of them.

Sigurd after fucking a Dragon up.

While some of these things are in D&D games and other RPGs, you don't really see Saga play that often. DCC has part of it with the character funnel, but that needs to stretch over the course of the campaign. Storygame systems or meta-currency systems like 2d20 get close for heroic feats/plot points but focus too much on developing single characters.

Saga-Play has to take into account that players will be playing 6-10 characters over the course of the Saga. They'll be taking on crazy roles, from witches, to valkyries, to kings, to werewolves, to paragons, etc. There characters may last only a session or a half-dozen sessions but they will leave the saga the moment they no longer have relevance or when their death can impact the story.

GMing a Saga-Play game would be kinda demanding. There have to be plot points but you can't railroad the PCs--their decisions need to have impact for the game to matter. Even when the PCs learn their fates you can't say what they are because you, the GM, don't know. Foreshadowing is a big thing too. Sigmund's son dies because he can't drink poison, which we learn a few verses beforehand. I think once grasped though it'd be rewarding. Saga-Play is pretty much a free card to put in some crazy shit and to create really weird plot points that are strung together. 

I think I'll draft up some rules for playing a game that emulates a Saga. Not like a full system, but more like guidelines for a style of play.

1. No death saves of any kind. At 0 hit points your character dies and you either get a heroic feat or a death speech.
2. New characters have to be related (in terms of blood or story connections) to the previous characters.
3. When you're bored of a character, you can just roll up another and write your current one off. "And so the King left the Saga." <-- This line is almost directly used a few times in the Saga of the Volsungs.
4. No rest systems apply. Things reset between sessions or large timeskips. 
5. Minion rules are in full effect. Unless an enemy is named or is something mythical, players slaughter enemies. But even hordes can break down characters-Volsung fought his way through the ranks of a king and back again 8 times before dying. Being "bloody to the shoulder" is the highest compliment and one a character should look for before death.
6. The system should be around OSR crunch for making characters, so you can reroll characters at the table and get back into the sprawling story. I suppose 5E can do this too if you are proficient, and other systems, but something like Burning Wheel wouldn't be too good for this.
7. I don't think meta-currencies have a big spot here. Players have to deal with their Fate, and they don't have the ability to change the situation through anything more than what their character can do. Maybe a meta-currency for Gods intervening, such as Odin does many times, would be interesting though?

I'll work on writing a big table for "plot points" that a GM can roll on to construct an outline for a Saga-Campaign. Maybe some more defined rules too for applying to your system. I think a GM should only roll 1-3 times on the table, so they know what events they should see they can include in a session, but never construct the whole campaign with the table before play starts. That'd lead to railroading and probably unnatural decisions.

Odin sticking the magic blade into the hall tree.