Hillfolk is another RPG that I have never played, but it's one of the most useful I've ever used!
Created by Robin Laws (last seen in this blog with Feng Shui and Heroquest Glorantha), Hillfolk is meant to model prestige TV shows. According to Laws, there are generally two sorts of conflicts in fiction: procedural ones, against an external challenge, and dramatic ones, which are internal. RPGs are traditionally good at handling procedural challenges, but bad at dramatic challenges. Part of that is that in conflicts, characters often seek some sort of emotional response from people that they care about, which they may or may not receive. Furthermore, they may be pulled in multiple directions as different drives and emotions conflict within them. How often in a game do characters have opposing goals or ideals for their characters, and then dig in their heels rather than compromising or yielding to their opponent, because 'it's what my character would do'?
In Hillfolk, players are the members of a tribe in the Iron Age Levant. Or you can use one of the many, many other pitch ideas provided or come up with your own idea. Unlike other storytelling games, this one does use a GM, but as more of a moderator. Each session has the players taking turns to propose scenes with the other players. Players earn meta-currency for conceding the emotional stakes of the scene to the other player, which they can use to influence the story in turn. There are rules for procedural challenges, but these are quite perfunctory - the core of the game is about the dramatic relationships between the characters, and the characters' internal conflicts. In fact, Hillfolk says that you can just jettison the entire task-resolution system and use the game of your choice instead, and that's what we experimented with doing, and it worked well. In addition, concepts from Hillfolk like dramatic poles (a character's two conflicting values) have become a basic part of how we define characters now.
Character Creation: I wasn't feeling inspired by the Iron Age Levant, but I do have another world which features dramatic relationships between complex characters, and it's my home RPG world of Tirenia. Tirenia is like a fantastical version of the Italian Renaissance, except the princes in charge of the different city-states are different broods of dragons. I invented it about ten years ago for Dungeons & Dragons, and I've run a number of short campaigns in different systems in it, with each one changing the world and becoming part of a larger continuous narrative.
Conte Galeotto d'Armonia is a background NPC who's cropped up a few times. He's a philosopher, scholar and magician in Fiumenze (inspired by Florence, but ruled by blue dragons.) He's secretly a humanist, which in Tirenia means he's working for the liberation of humanity from the tyranny of the dragons. However, he's also friends with Zaffiro 'il Magnifico' di Fisici, the dragon ruler of the city. So he has pretty conflicted loyalties. He seems like a good person to turn into a Hillfolk character!
The first thing I have to answer about him is what he desires. This isn't his goal, but the emotional need that underlies his desires. For Galeotto, I think it's admiration: he's an egotist and he wants people to think he's smart and noble and wonderful. His dramatic poles are the two warring forces inside him. I've put this as knowledge versus wisdom. 'Knowledge' in this case means being an intelligent, proud, learned and hypocritical ally of the dragons, doing magic research and being very rich. 'Wisdom' means being self-sacrificing, actually throwing in fully with the humanists, and humbling himself in order to work for the greater good.
Next, we record all the other characters, their dramatic poles, and what we want, emotionally, from them. I decided to just do the two other main NPCs with whom Galeotto is connected. Zaffiro the blue dragon is Galeotto's patron, whose own dramatic poles are about power versus enlightenment - he's trying to decide if it's better for a prince to be loved or feared. Galeotto wants money from him, but more than that he wants respect and to be considered a peer. Meanwhile, Fra Salvatore is an itinerant firebrand preacher who's strongly anti-dragon. Galeotto wants absolution from him, to be pronounced a good man. Salvatore's own dramatic poles are following church orthodoxy versus his own personal integrity.
Finally we have the traditional RPG 'what are you good at'? There's seven different skills; you rank two as Strong, three at Middling and two at Weak. You also say your specialty in that skill, which could get you a bonus. Galeotto is Strong at Knowing and Making. He's middling at Enduring, Fighting and Talking. He's weak at Moving and Sneaking.
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