Thread by @AlexandraErin

I'm playing Hitman mostly in short stints because I think I need to be much better at it before it's a game I can just lose myself in.

One thing I appreciate about its mechanical and level design is how, so often, killing the target isn't a challenge. It's the before and after.

Like in the first mission in Hitman, right after you walk into the place one of your targets makes a big appearance on a grand staircase. Right out in the open. Absolutely nothing stops you, if you're halfway quick, from pulling a gun and shooting him.

But then you're in a crowd of people surrounded by security, and even if you can escape from that situation you've severely limited your options going forward and your mission isn't over.

I'm on the second mission and in exploring the layout of the target's house I've managed to get into a position where I can shoot the second target through a door. If I go into the room I'll be caught, but nothing in the game can stop me from getting her.

It's just that I don't have any good options for what happens next.

Which is probably why the game has so many breadcrumb-based "mission stories" that maneuver you into position for particularly good opportunities or elegantly deniable kills.

In a movie or a book, Agent 47's cunning strategy for infiltration, execution, and exfiltration would work because the person writing his actions is also dictating the actions of all the other people and moving parts.

To get that same level of precision in a video game with any level of detail and verisimilitude, you also need to have the writers on the players' side. To my knowledge based on what I've played and watched on streams, none of the stories they present are red herrings.

Like, there may be unexpected complications and also moments where the story dictates a failure or reversal, but it's not "Oh, 47, this model has your exact profile, you could take his place." and it turns out the target has a secret passcode phrase only the model knows.

Or if there was a mission like that, the story would alert you to the fact and guide you to where the passcode could be learned.

I think this is the kind of thing that people running tabletop games should think about when designing missions/adventures: how much of the really cool stuff in books and movies and yes, interactive video games happens because the storyteller is on the protagonist's side in it.

I think one of the underdiscussed pitfalls of game running is when the runner starts thinking of the players' ideas in terms of, like, how insulted they would be for someone to think they personally would fall for this ruse or not plan ahead against this tactic.

Like Dungeon Masters who unironically refer to the Evil Overlord List and mentally adjust things in response to the players' ideas with a justification of "Well, if I were protecting my lair from plucky heroes, I would simply put bars on that window."

I'm not saying that *every* entrance should be unguarded and unlocked or that *every* ruse or gambit the players come up with should work, but, like, your goal in running the game should be to provoke players to come up with cool ideas, not to guard NPCs against those ideas.

It would be trivially easy to design a Hitman level where it's impossible to kill the targets. The targets are only present in the game map because the level designer placed them there. In-story, Agent 47 is only there *because* this situation is an opportunity to get them.

Apart from emergent play strategies, the gaps in the security around the targets exist because the people outside the game who decide who and what goes where are specifically designing a game where it's possible to assassinate the target.

And things like this are why I go further in tabletop RPG philosophy than saying that the game runner should not take on an adversarial role to the players. You should try (and I don't always succeed) to be their collaborator, their accomplice.