Mooks Gone Haywire

This is related to the Smart Everyman thing, but in ways that may not be immediately obvious.

If you haven't seen it, Steven Soderburgh's Haywire is a great movie. As with Mamet's Spartan it's an action movie by a very talented director (and writer, in Mamet's case) who does not normally delve into the action genre. The result is something that feels very different than the standard action flick because it does not proceed fromt he same assumptions.

Now, whether you think that's a good or bad thing is going to hinge on several issues of taste, but if you're as inclined to overanalysis as I am, these views on common things through an unfamiliar lense is utterly compelling.

Numerous elements of Haywire are noteworthy (the chases, in particular, are awesome) but the fights are what really caught my eye from the perspective of gaming. They were great fights, mostly hand to hand, that were brutal, intense and very engaging, but they were also where some of the biggest deviations from the traditional action formula could be observed[1]. Two if them in particular have stuck with me, guns and mooks, and today I'm going to talk about mooks.

In Haywire, there were no mooks. Every fight was dangerous and intense, but even faceless opponents were dangerous. Fights against them were quicker, but still involved several exchanges.

In a standard action game, this would be weird. Feng Shui's mook rules have become a de facto standard for genre[2] emulation, but that becomes a problem when you want to tweak or grow the genre. Removing them from film hilights what removing them from play might suggest - more danger and more attention.

Attention's an interesting one. Mooks do not just emulate genre, they speed gameplay, and it's taken as a given that this is a good thing, but the reality is a bit more complicated. Consider, let's say you think combat's should take a half hour. Mook rules let you squeeze more into that half hour without increasing the time and bookeeping required, and that's a win. However, if you're not pushing for any kind of structure, then mook rules can just mean faster and less interesting fights.

Less interesting fights is a fascinating point to get snagged on, because there's so much implicit assumption in RPGs that fights are (provided they're well run) intrinsically interesting. That is to say, we (usually) do not complain about "too many fights" in D&D because fights are a large part of the expected experience. The fight is supposed to be fun.

But heavy use of mook rules allow for fights that end up at approximately the same level of engagement as picking a lock. That's not automatically bad, but it requires more work on the GM's part to create extrinsic engagement because it's nto intrinsically rewarding.

However, there's a flipside - if there are no mook rules, every fight can be a potential drag on play, especially lopsided ones. There comes a point in many bad D&D fights where it's clear how its goign to go, but the fight can't end until the party has finished "grinding down" the opponenent's hit points. No one wants to get in that situation either. There are mechanical tweaks that can address that, but more broadly it really depends on the fight having genuine tension, and havign that tension be maintained consistently.

This is a pretty complex topic, and the reality is that it does not have a simple lesson. Mook rules can be super useful, but can also be problematic - there's no one right solution that fits all situations. But it does reveal something critical and fragile - If you rely on fights being intrinsically engaging, then you are walking a very fine line, and it's easy to slip off. If, on the other hand, you are ALSO making sure that fights have some external reason to maintain tension and engagement, the rest of these potential problems tend to evaporate.

In a purely mechanical sense, this idea ended up in the Tempo rules with the idea that a single hit takedown[3] is VERY hard on the intial exchange, but becomes much easier after you have established an advantage. In theory, this allows a highly skilled character to take down an opponent quickly, but usually requires at least a single exchange to establish advantage. Still needs more testing, of course, but I'll be curious if it captures that Haywire kind of feel.

1 - At this point it's also worth calling out that a lot of the fight quality also came from Gina Carano's ability to sell the fights convincingly. She was fantastic.

2 - Super nerdy aside - there are a lot of fine gradations of genre which I am casually ignoring here, but which are actually relevant to the conversation.  Action is a wide umbrella, but the nature of threat and violence actually varies greatly across the range, from the virtually superheroic highs of James Bond and gun ballets to intensely grim, lethal stuff.  Most action movies tend towards the former, but its worth noting that a lot of action-in-context films (which includes a large swath of espionage) are further down the spectrum.  Haywire is nominally a spy movie, so it's no surprise it leans gritty, but that's also no guarantee, since spies also bring us James Bond.

3 - As an aside, if a game has a high stealth component, single hit/mook rules can be applied situationally to relfect that. That is, targets caught unawares are treated as mooks. This is a simple way to capture the feel of certain games like Dishonored or Deus Ex.