On 2-3-05, Ben Lehman wrote:
I want you to talk about mechanical, rigorous system that is not about conflict resolution at all.
I don't care what else it is about. That's a wildcard. But Dogs has a bunch of it, so I can tell you've worked on it before.
yrs--
--Ben
P.S. I also want to talk about your "what makes a character a protagonist" bit. I think you're missing something.
On 2-3-05, Keith, Goat Master wrote:
Being new here and not having a chance to read everything there I may mention something already covered. Feel free to smack me upside the head. I would like to see something on:
1) Activities and interactions that occur between play and how they help or hurt play
2) Endgames for games without defined endgames
3) Mixing gaming approaches (Offline with Online)
On 2-3-05, Emily Care wrote:
Player input mechanics like fan-mail(PtA) and trust(tMW), and the dynamics they create between players.
Providing adversity to yourself and others. Creating a social contract the lets you take the kid gloves off while staying friends.
On 2-3-05, Chris wrote:
-The hows and whys of folks throwing on blinders and becoming unable to recognize the quite obvious nature of roleplaying at the table, that is, its just people talking, credibility, etc.
-How people can use creative limitations(focus the elements) to add momentum and direction to play("You're all Dogs!") and what that means for players, for GMs, and the group as a whole
On 2-3-05, Matt wrote:
The division of authority, and new ways to spread it around (cf. GOG, Universalis).
On 2-3-05, Brennan wrote:
I don't have anything specific to ask about, although I am very interested in where this will go.
On 2-3-05, Weeks wrote:
How about you summarize the state of the art as you see it. You've been talking "this is better than that" and you've mentioned obsolescence in game designs a couple times recently. Want to synthesize it all?
On 2-3-05, Eric Finley wrote:
The elements of adversity. We've got Stakes. We've got uncertainty. We probably have back-and-forth stuff to extend and stretch that uncertainty (this is where Dogs kicks some of my current designs' asses). What else? What's the checklist? Given that infrastructure, I think we could do a lot more to answer your question in your other today's post, about how you determine the GM for a character.
Also ties in to the last point in Emily's comment. How do you take the kid gloves off so that the adversity level goes through the roof with everybody having fun with it?
On 2-3-05, inky wrote:
This is both a softball and impossible to answer, but my basic RPG problem is I don't have as many cool things happening per minute as it seems could be happening. Any insight?
-Dan Shiovitz
On 2-3-05, TQuid wrote:
Try Chaos Magic[k]. You don't have to believe in it, except in the provisional, experimentalist way you describe. It's pure deconstructionist goodness. _Liber Null & Psychonaut_ seems to be the major text as a how-to kit.
Really advanced Chaos Mages (*cough*) seem to end up disproportionately as musicians and other kinds of artists as their notion of what constitutes "magick" mutates.
On 2-3-05, Ninja Hunter J wrote:
Yeah, I think Eric's got the idea here. I want a summary, too.
Here's the stuff I see going on, the problems I see people confronting, and I want to know where it fits into your theoretical structure, and I want to know what, and if, you think is relevant.
- Mechanical support for inter-character support.
- Mechanical support for player contribution to non-character plot elements.
- Ways to contribute conflict when it's needed to prevent dead-ball and make story jump when otherwise it gets the slowest.
I'm wicked into Emily's question about the kid gloves, too.
On 2-3-05, Chris wrote:
Dan/inky - email me @ yeloson at earthlink dot net.
On 2-3-05, Tim Alexander wrote:
I'd like to hear Vincent's take on how contributions are valued in games. Does it take an equal share to work? Is it better with an equal share, does it matter? Specifically related to the trend for GM/Player specialization, i.e. the one guy that always runs the games because no one else wants to, can, feels up to it, etc. This relates to the kid gloves question of Emily's as well, and I see it being wrapped into authority issues too.
-Tim
On 2-4-05, xenopulse wrote:
Vincent,
Your writing reflects a lot of what I've learned through many years of freeform roleplaying. Especially the pieces on character death and actual play. I was going to elaborate, but alas, no discussion in this thread. :) So, as far as topics go, I'm interested in more on Putting the Action into Actual Play.
Thanks for sharing.
- Christian
On 2-4-05, Chris Goodwin wrote:
I'd like to see you discuss task resolution vs. conflict resolution (a la here) in the context of GNS.
On 2-4-05, Chris wrote:
Good situation building!
On 2-5-05, Tony wrote:
Roleplaying game vs Storytelling game. Which one am I? How do I tell?
Cheers,
Tony
On 2-6-05, Jasper Polane wrote:
Any mechanics that are not resolution.
On 2-7-05, Emily Care wrote:
Hear, hear to Jasper's suggestion. We need a taxonomy of what mechanics can & do do.
On 2-7-05, Id wrote:
Pacing.
On 2-8-05, Dave Ramsden wrote:
I'd like to discuss LARPs and how they differ from tabletop play (compressing IIEE, player responsibility for input without direct oversight, etc.) but that may not be everyone's cup of tea.
On 2-8-05, Charles wrote:
One thing I keep wondering about is the idea of using high mechanics systems for short periods within a larger low-mechanic game. The strongly narrativist mechanics seem to offer the most interesting possibilities.
What would it look like to play out a couple of sessions of an existing game (with highly developed characters, ut probably relatively low narrative movement per session) using a system that emphasizes stylization and narrative movement?
On 2-9-05, Tom wrote:
If I want to make a new class for d20, what are the major factors to consider? I'm interested in both the underlying math (how to make sure class features keep pace with other classes and rising CR levels) and more subtle issues around keeping the class interesting to players and useful to the overall party.
Failing that: Underpants for monkeys. Boxers or Briefs? Why?
On 2-10-05, Dav wrote:
What, exactly is the benefit of freeform roleplaying vs. a more traditional structured roleplaying. If the answer, in the end, boils down to: aesthetics, then that's fine, but I s'pose not truly worthy of discussion.
My question, to be a bit more narrow, would be: your games have little in the tradition of a few players and a gm... is this because you are sick of it, because commie-storytelling is better, or because of something else entirely (such as, it just happens to fit your games better, as a coincidence).
Also, check-out Jared's darkpages thing, that's kickass.
Also, how'z trix and what have I missed? When did this start?
Dav
On 2-11-05, Tobias wrote:
(when designing) - setting the strength of setting and premise tight enough to give powerful play, but not so tight that every game´s the same (or results in the same decisions to hard choices)
On 2-16-05, anon. wrote:
Can Task Resolution be combined with Conflict Resolution if part of laying out a Conflict is to explicitly state the tasks which are to be done within it?
On 2-16-05, Dave Ramsden wrote:
Can Task Resolution be combined with Conflict Resolution if part of laying out a Conflict is to explicitly state the tasks which are to be done within it?
On 2-20-05, Piers Brown wrote:
The role of flexibility in game design--how much 'give' or 'play' do systems need to make room for the players?
What I'm getting at--in DitV all the pieces (see and raise, "say yes or roll the dice", fallout, town building, random characters, etc) are necessary, but at the same time the don't quite meet up; there is a sort of space between them in which the players and GM mediate between the different parts of the system. How does that work?
On 2-23-05, Ben Lehman wrote:
A complete textual redaction criticism of AD&D 1st edition.
Also, a pony.
And a spaceship.
yrs--
--Ben
P.S. I'm ribbing you. If anyone else who reads anyway wants to work on this, though, I will be super-happy.
On 3-1-05, Chris wrote:
- The defense mechanism of folks to focus on the imagined content rather than what's happening at the table.
- Self esteem of the actual players and how that affects play
- Why Sim is the hardest way to get non-gamers to buy-in
- How DitV really does the Sorcerer premise "You've got the power, now what do you do with it?" and how it scares people shitless :)
On 3-1-05, luke wrote:
Hi Vincent,
I was wondering if you could open up a thread so I could grill you about some of the stuff you said in Conflict vs Task Resolution and A Small Thing About Character Death.
thanks!
-Luke
On 3-4-05, Matt Snyder wrote:
Chris, it's cool. I understand what you're saying, and why you're saying it. Maybe I should have held my fire, because my comments were for you and Vincent directly, and not for people working through the distinctions you and Vincent have made throughout this good thread. Don't want to muddy the waters! Carry on, all!
On 3-4-05, Eric wrote:
Fleagh. I think I'll just withdraw from this sucker; I'm happy that I understand what I'm talking about, and while I do not understand why Vincent chooses to draw links (that I see as unnecessary) and then defend exclusivity of modes on the basis of those links... it's his privilege to do so.
It's right down to the definitions level. Vincent uses "non-thematic" as a category, which to me looks like ignoring his positive definition of Sim. I don't buy the "non-thematic" as a defining characteristic of anything except, well, non-Nar play. Vincent, take a look back at your positive definition of Sim - with "or" explicitly between the bits you list. Ignore GNS; to assert your positive definition of Sim, you have to assert that if we "realize this ideal, enact this vision, celebrate this source material, fulfill these wishes!" then we are somehow by consequence not addressing premise. In one specific case (reverence as you've defined it) this works; but that case is not your definition, and I do not buy the logic that all of these exclude address of premise.
You're fabricating a taxonomy which posits exclusivity, using that to define Sim, and then looking for a "positive definition" which somehow inherently brings along an exclusive relationship to this other positive definition. As though "non-thematic" and "realize this ideal" had some intrinsic deep-level tie. I don't think it's defensible, dude; it's just bad logic. Which is why "reverence of source material" looks to me like a special case being stretched and twisted to cover something it can't.
But I think my own take on it's been sufficiently articulated here that anything more is just banging a drum. Apparently you see an a priori reason why the GNS modes should be exclusive of one another. 'Kay. I don't.
On 3-4-05, Vincent wrote:
Eric: "Ignore GNS; to assert your positive definition of Sim, you have to assert that if we "realize this ideal, enact this vision, celebrate this source material, fulfill these wishes!" then we are somehow by consequence not addressing premise."
Yeah, that's precisely what I'm asserting.
Can we agree that play can't be in the any of the yellow regions on my dart board and simultaneously in the green region? That is, it can't simultaneously be non-thematic and thematic, nor non-player-empowered and player-empowered?
If so, then there are exclusive modes of play at that level. Right?
Now, I go on to say this: to realize someone's ideal, we have to defer to their vision, giving up empowerment. To celebrate source material, we have to hold it static in the face of Premise, giving up theme.
Taken together, those two describe the play in the yellow region.
Don't they?
On 3-4-05, Eric wrote:
They describe examples of play in the yellow region. Do they necessarily span it? I don't think so.
But nevermind that, I'm taking issue with the whole chart. Your above logic assumes that "Yellow=Sim" is a meaningful label, which it is only if you use a negative (not-Thematic nor Competitive) definition of Sim. If you use a positive definition of Sim - or for that matter Gam - then the structure of the chart is simply meaningless. Is there any a priori reason why Thematic Play and Competitive Play don't overlap at all? I don't see one in logic, and I don't see one in my gaming.
My version of the chart would have to include three circles in a Venn diagram arrangement; Thematic play in one circle (everything outside is not), Competitive in another overlapping circle (everything outside is not), and Celebratory or some such in the third. Because I don't grant you that there's any reason to deny the existence of play that is simultaneously Thematic and Celebratory - your examples do not make a rule. At most, you could contend that play has to be more one or the other; but that's like saying that no matter how close, either the drum or the guitar is louder - null statement, not relevant.
If you want to eliminate regions of that more complicated chart - such as the Thematic-and-Competitive region that's on mine but not yours - then by me you have to show why it is not possible for an instance of play to satisfy both positive definitions simultaneously. And I've seen lots of examples, but not only can examples not suffice for this task... I can also personally think of counterexamples.
Players tend to enjoy one mode more than another, and tend to have more fun when sharing the same mode (coherence); this makes GNS useful, makes it worth designing coherent games, but in no wise needs exclusivity to exist. You can play a song for guitar fans, and indeed to please the guitar-appreciation streak in anyone... but you do not (and should not) claim that it's "exclusively a guitar song." It's meaningless and not useful, leading to discussions just like this one. "The guitar sure was rockin' in that set" is the nonexclusive equivalent... and far more useful. You're trying to say that there're "guitar songs" and "drum songs" and there are reasons X and Z why good guitar and good drum are exclusive of one another. I say bullshit; at most, the overlap makes it harder (because we have finite audio bandwidth), which is all your examples say to me.
On 3-4-05, Emily Care wrote:
I think a priori is the right term. GNS is predicated on mutual exclusivity of the modes. One of the prereqs for naming a "fourth mode" is finding one that is mutually exclusive with the existing three. I find it frustrating.
However, illustrating the theory as it stands, if we look at it in band terms, the different instruments are not what define the CA but what is played on them. CA conflict occurs when someone is playing brahms on the piano and someone else is playing hendrix on the electric guitar. By modern music standards, this might actually end up being edgy and interesting, but in usual terms it would be seen as incoherence.
On 3-4-05, Neel wrote:
Some questions, based on your comments:
Can we agree that play can't be in the any of the yellow regions on my dart board and simultaneously in the green region? That is, it can't simultaneously be non-thematic and thematic, nor non-player-empowered and player-empowered?
If so, then there are exclusive modes of play at that level. Right?
Okay, this is the law of the excluded middle. I'll buy that, so I'm with you so far.
Now, I go on to say this: to realize someone's ideal, we have to defer to their vision, giving up empowerment. To celebrate source material, we have to hold it static in the face of Premise, giving up theme.
Here's where you lose me. I literally go "whah? hunh?" here. Why is reverence necessary for Sim? Every single time I've gone off and run a game as a small-s simulation, I haven't considered fidelity to any kind of source material as even remotely important. The fun I'm chasing is like the roleplaying equivalent of what you get when conlanging, playing with legos, programming, or worldbuilding. It's us, making OUR OWN stuff that's what's important. Y'see?
On 3-4-05, anon. wrote:
If I may offer an alternate diagram...
The intent here is one circle each for Thematic, Competitive, and (for want of a better term) Stylistic. Each is split into the middle segment ("with player empowerment") and the outer ("without"). I didn't bother labeling the circles; each can be any. This shows just how complicated the middle could be if we assume we could be Empowered in just one, any two, or all three.
But, IMO, the important thing here is the fact that there are overlaps, not the tiny intersections of the XYZ chart. This was what completely threw me for a loop earlier. SIM and NAR don't barely touch one another (or, they do in theory, but NOT in practice -- it's an old joke now to say that in theory there is no difference between theory and practice and in practice there's no relationship between theory and practice). I think I now understand what Vincent is trying to do. He's trying to define the area in the SIM circle that isn't in either other circle WITHOUT saying "it's play that lacks conflict and theme".
Which means the idea that what I've call "genre-loyal play" is down there is true, but it's misleading. Most genre loyal play is informed with NAR or GAM or both. What is in the pure-SIM area is much more unique. It's things like the improv games shown on "Whose Line"... Characters lack names or perhaps there aren't even characters, there's just a rule for how you must talk/act. Down here, what matters is STRUCTURE. Genre is a structure. So is Setting. So are character Archtypes. Heck, so are the rules of poetic form, the "must sing all dialog" rules of pure Opera, the traditions of No, etc., etc.
So, I'm back to the SimCity model. That game provides a structure, a set of items with behaviors you can create, assemble, and observe. If you like, you can create NAR or GAM objectives to color this, but at hear it's pure SIM. And that's what a pure-SIM game is. It's a big-ass box of LEGO that you dump out and play with, linking and creating and destroying. You don't try to build a house or a car or something, that'd be drifting toward NAR. You don't try to out-build someone else, that GAM. You just build for the joy of building.
A pure SIM RPG? Well, I think the episodic TV model holds. Rocky and Bullwinkle are always themselves, every new story, and those stories always circle back to where they started. Ranma and Akane will tease the audience and each other that this time it'll finally work out, but in the end it's always right back to square one. Paranoia Clones (in ZAP style and pretty much in Classic, too) are pretty much "crunch all you want, we'll make more", differentiated barely at all. In pure SIM, we want that fixed archetype or faceless replacability, because we don't want NAR to intrude more than just a little. We want our pieces to bounce off each other for a while, as we observe their interactions, then we put them away (or, in the faceless case, throw them away), to be pulled out (or recreated) for the next time. We don't want a big carefully-planned mystery with hurdles and problems to solve (too GAM), just a situation we can explore and interact with.
Yeah... I've run and played a LOT of TFoS that fits fairly well into that niche. It's not the main style of gaming I do (though it was for one summer when I ran TFoS almost every weekend and a friend ran Paranoia when I wanted a break. It was fun. It wasn't the same style of gaming we'd learned with D&D, T&T, and V&V (this was maybe 1985, so there weren't THAT many games around), the pursuit of character-building was replaced with the goal of just having fun now, even if that meant making a new character for the next session.
And have I "grown out" of that now that I have more sophisticated games to play? Not a chance. Heck, I'm scheduled to run a TFoS/Amber cross-over at AmberCon in just hours under four weeks. If it's anything like the last time I ran this idea, it'll be a blast.
So there's the "pure SIM" world, IMO. Games with neither over-arching competition or theme, just the interaction of roles in a setting. Yes, it develops mini-stories and mini-competitions here and there, but it's never about those things. It's about being your role in a given setting with presented other roles to interact with. All the rest is happenstance.
Yes, I understand what you were going for with the "reverence" issue earlier... I still disagree. The issue isn't that you can't change the setting for human reasons because the setting is sacred, it's that you don't need or want to, because doing so violates the nature of the structure. The players don't change the rules during the game (though perhaps they do BETWEEN games). In-game, they deal with the structure as presented.
On 3-4-05, Ghoul wrote:
hmmm... that came out smaller than I wanted.
Try just clicking on this and it may come in larger and clearer.
On 3-4-05, Chris wrote:
Hi Neel,
It's us, making OUR OWN stuff that's what's important. Y'see?
Reverence to your own stuff also counts in Sim. Reverence to "reality", to canon, to the GM's notebook of world notes, to the stuff in his or her head, to the random stuff we create when we have non-structured Universalis play minus thematically charged conflicts, etc, etc, etc.
On 3-4-05, Ben Lehman wrote:
I'm not going to reconstruct the history of this, nor work especially hard to defend it, here on my blog. If you want either of those, I'll see you at the Forge.
Guys?
I think we've reached the point where you are not saying "I want to learn about this model" but rather, "I am interested in tearing this down." Perhaps this journal isn't the best place for it?
yrs--
--Ben
On 3-4-05, Vincent wrote:
Four things and then let's call it a night. We can come back to this when we need to.
Thing One. Everybody who thinks that thematic play, competitive play, and reverent play can coexist: please take a few days, first to decide if you actually care that much and whether we need to keep discussing it, and then second to read up on the process of creating a theme. When we pick it up again, you should be prepared to talk about the process of creating a theme, the process of assessing another's guts, and the process of realizing someone's vision. I'm absolutely willing to consider that those processes needn't interfere with one another - that is, that there's overlap between Nar, Gam and Sim play. But if you want to make that case, you should know what the processes are, and you should have some ideas about how a group could work around their apparent contradictions.
I've written some about the process of creating a theme here, and it's a thing I love to talk about, so if anyone wants a refresher just say so.
Thing Two. Everybody who thinks that GNS Simulationism isn't the yellow region of my dart board, I don't know what to tell you. Maybe try reading Ron's The Right to Dream essay with my explanation in mind, see if the two click together.
Thing Three. Everybody who thinks that Simulationism shouldn't mean the yellow region of my dart board - believe it or not, I agree with you. I wish we could talk about Simulationist approaches to collaborative thematic play, about collaborative thematic play based on solid Sim techniques. I wish that Sim meant what you think it means. Maybe in the next world.
Trying to change this world - I need to design games instead. If you come up with a workable plan though, seriously, tell me what and I'll help how I can.
Thing Four. Everybody who's still here and who cares should read my friend Ed's reflection on this thread, here at Esoteric Murmurs. It's very good. Wipe your shoes first.
Thanks, everybody!
(Neel, I feel like I maybe owe you a post about reverence, authorship and group creation. Let me know if you feel like I do too.)
On 3-5-05, Ben Lehman wrote:
Identity politics have been with the theory since the beginning, when it was GDS, and have haunted about it since, its shadow.
To keep them out is a constant struggle.
I'm happy to not talk about it here. But let's not give up yet, please?
On 3-5-05, LordSmerf wrote:
Interestingly enough I was talking about this over on my LiveJournal today.
My basic stance: GNS is still as useful as it ever was. We just need to clearly understand what it can and can't do, which I think has been lost somewhere along the way...
Thomas
On 3-5-05, Chris wrote:
Hi Vincent-
There is no 100% way of communicating anything for 100% understanding all the time. Understanding is a meeting point between two places. You can communicate as best as you might, and people have to meet you half way.
Sometimes folks have no personal experience to draw upon, and that's why they can't reach you. Consider the inability of many folks to grasp Narrativism or Simulationism depending on their own play experiences. More words never make it as clear as actual play experience and relating it to that.
Then add in the fact that society in general has trained more people to argue on the principle of establishing dominance rather than information exchange and discussion. Even if that isn't how you personally run things, it becomes easy to be defensive surrounded by that kind of intercourse. Identity politics are part of our societal conditioning, whether we like it or not.
Failed? Only if our goal was to make everyone understand(if not agree). In which case we can look to several other figures who were much more persuasive in history and dealing with much more serious issues and failed to get their point across to everyone(say, Gandhi). Thankfully, we're only talking about games, and we're a lot less charismatic and persuasive. It doesn't matter what you're talking about, or how clear headed you make it, someone, somewhere will misunderstand due to accident, selective reading, or simple laziness and the desire to support or oppose it without understanding. Words are clusmy tools, but they're all we got.
But- as far as your blog, it's your blog, and this might be the best decision. Especially since all you added was a chart talking about what has been at the Forge for years now, and having to start completely over from scratch. Instead of progress and building on what was there, it was back to square zero. If you want to deal with that kind of stuff again, I might suggest that you just throw up some links and go, "Review THIS" :)
On 3-5-05, Ben Lehman wrote:
Policy question --
Does this apply to the whole Big Model or just the G, N and S divisions in Creative Agenda?
yrs--
--Ben
On 3-5-05, Neel wrote:
Hey Vincent, you don't -owe- me anything, but I'd be totally interested in anything you have to say.
Clinton, Chris -- is it okay if I start a thread at 20x20 or someplace to carry on our conversation? I'd like to talk publically, if you don't mind, but Vincent has indicated he's tired of it here, so we should continue elsewhere.
On 3-5-05, Vincent wrote:
Ben: Just the words themselves: Gamism, Narrativism and Simulationism.
The Big Model, being as far as I can tell the only accurate description of roleplaying available, is very much within policy.
On 3-6-05, Chris wrote:
Neel- I'm down for it :)
On 3-6-05, Matt Wilson wrote:
Legos?
On 3-6-05, Per wrote:
I understand and acknowledge your line in the sand, Vincent. I don't see it as failure, though, it's probably very sound to discuss what happens during roleplaying without using those...well, particular words. Thematic player-empowered play is exactly what I want anyway, and I want to know how it works, how I approach it, how I make sure that I get it, and how I explain it to other people (roleplayers or not) why I want it and how it works.
I have discussed with a lot of roleplayers who haven't even given these things a moment of thought. At least people responding to your blog feel passionate about RPG theory - and practice ;)
On 3-6-05, Eric wrote:
Did he do the drawing, or is the drawing your transcription? And how old is that kid? I just acquired an 11-year old on Friday... I kid you not, we're foster parents... and totally need to work on, like, "What's a good gaming kid look like at this age?" He's not ready yet, but I can see it on the horizon.
On 3-6-05, Vincent wrote:
Legos, yes. Sebastian's 8. He built the little thing and I drew it.
It's a microfig-scale motorcycle!
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On 3-6-05, Ninja Hunter Ja wrote:
That kid's a genius! It took me months to come up with one, and his is great!
For context, I was trying to come up with a microcycle and consulting with Vincent and Seb along the way, most of the time getting big nixes from the two of them.
Here's one: http://joshua.swingpad.com/microcycle/
These are for my sucky tabletop game Roroga.
On 3-7-05, Luke wrote:
I'm right to feel guilty, aren't I? Not that I ever fucking called my self a Simulationist (it's like calling myself a Borg or something). Still, I feel guilty. I've hurt this blog.
:(
S'okay, GNS is shite anyway...
;)
Let's talk about Character Death! Task and Conflict resolution!
-L
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On 3-7-05, Vincent wrote:
Luke: "Still, I feel guilty. I've hurt this blog."
Feh.
What "hurt" this blog was a Forge thread yesterday morning. There it is, onto its second page, somebody saying "where do I fit in GNS?" and it's all people answering who don't know what they're talking about. Not a single correct answer in the two pages.
I'm looking at it and I'm going, how much work would it take for me to step in and correct all the misconceptions? Answer: a little bit of work. And I'm going, but how likely is it that the thread would then become another unholy shitstorm? Answer: very, very likely.
And that's the vibe I get: everybody who knows the answer is looking at the thread going, is the shitstorm worth it? Which of us has to be GNS cop this time? And the wrong replies are mounting.
People feel ownership of the words even though they don't understand them, and thus resist understanding.
I don't think that's you, Luke. You, I'm like "here's the definition" and you're like "that's a shite definition," but you're not like "that's not the definition," as though I might not know the fucking definition of fucking Simulationism.
I'm done fighting with them (and now I'm done venting about them too). I want to establish a venue where I don't have to keep fighting. That means leaving the contested words behind.
Next up: tidying the open house's loose ends as best I can, talking a bit about my design process, making the posts that I owe you and Neel, and making a post about the process of creating theme. Probably not in that order.
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On 3-7-05, Brennan wrote:
I would like to continue talking design theory here, Vincent. I know that last thread turned into a shitstorm, but I really have a hard time with GNS. I am very happy to talk about all the other crap, though, and avoiding GNS discussions won't bother me a bit.
On 3-7-05, Luke wrote:
I don't think that's you, Luke. You, I'm like "here's the definition" and you're like "that's a shite definition,"
very true. and very cool. I look forward to many fruitful hours of lurking.
-L
On 3-7-05, Eric wrote:
Wow. That's one smart - and lucky - kid. If and when you decide to open up with the design process and/or punt for playtesters, you know you got 'em.
On 3-7-05, Pete wrote:
Heh. I'm stealing my 6 year old's idea for my best selling kids book. I say go for it.
On 3-7-05, Ben Lehman wrote:
For what it's worth, here's what *I* got out of this thread:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/benlehman/63124.html
On 3-7-05, Matt Snyder wrote:
Man, this hits me on so many levels.
First, yeah, that's me designing too. I've got stacks of notebooks half-filled with sketches, ideas, and numbers.
Second, design to expose yourself? For me, designing games is an outlet where I can be honest with people. It hasn't worked for me in creating other stuff. This, it works. Right on.
Third, designing in the open is hard on the designer. This isn't to say it's wrong or a wholly bad idea. I am not speculating.
Fourth, Red Sky A.M.? Brilliant. Skip that kid a few grades already!
On 3-7-05, Luke wrote:
keep it secret, keep it safe.
On 3-7-05, Judd wrote:
That's about the sweetest game design story ever in the history of game design stories.
On 3-7-05, Matt Wilson wrote:
Awesome. Sebastian is like a way cool version of Doogie Hauser. You should ask him to do the artwork for it. That'd take your game right to the edge right there.
I also do 3-4 games at a time, but they're all the same goddamn game, back and forth, and it makes me and the baby jesus cry.
BTW, If I had a game group that was functional, I'd totally offer to playtest. I'm still offering, but you know, with a caveat.
On 3-7-05, Ben Lehman wrote:
I'm happy to do that... thing... that I did with Dogs, whenever you're ready for it, if you want it.
yrs--
--Ben
P.S. Dude, man I was just talking up Red Sky AM last night, to the players who played Dogs.
On 3-7-05, xenopulse wrote:
Honestly, this is why I think efforts like Nate's (Theory Without Jargon articles) are so important. Yeah, I probably have many misunderstandings on the theory. It might be my fault, though I usually am a theory type of person (with an M.A. in political philosophy and international relations theory). But several times, I've encountered things like "Well yeah, that's what that article says, but since then things have changed, and here are the five threads about that." So I am constantly playing catch-up.
Example: You said in the Shitstorm Thread (TM) that the decision-by-decision take on GNS is incorrect. But in the GNS and Other Matters of RP Theory article, Ron wrote in chapter 2:
"Much torment has arisen from people perceiving GNS as a labelling device. Used properly, the terms apply only to decisions, not to whole persons nor to whole games. To be absolutely clear, to say that a person is (for example) Gamist, is only shorthand for saying, 'This person tends to make role-playing decisions in line with Gamist goals.' Similarly, to say that an RPG is (for example) Gamist, is only shorthand for saying, 'This RPG's content facilitates Gamist concerns and decision-making.'"
Now, I can see, after the Shitstorm Thread, that your position is that we need to look at groups of decisions and not individual ones. But that's not the vibe I got from this article. In fact, the article seems to warn that we shouldn't lump them together because that leads to labeling.
So we can stop talking about things like this, or someone can sacrifice their valuable time and effort to bring the theory up to speed in one place, in an understandable fashion. I'd do it, if I understood it properly. But the place for that is the Forge, anyway, and you should use your blog to do your thing.
In any case, thanks for sharing your wisdom.
- Christian
On 3-7-05, ScottM wrote:
When you first mentioned it, it sounded like you were thinking of it as a cool structure for a PTA game. I suspect you're not going to design the game to be a PTA clone... at what point did you decide that it needed to be its own game, not a cool PTA game?
[Note: I'm not invested in seeing this as a PTA game, of course, I'm just trying to get some non-specific designer info into the world. Yup, selfless questioning here...]
On 3-7-05, Vincent wrote:
Christian: "So we can stop talking about things like this, or someone can sacrifice their valuable time and effort to bring the theory up to speed in one place, in an understandable fashion."
Because doing that never turns into a shitstorm where you have to defend it. Because when I say things clearly, nobody ever argues with me or replies with entrenched nonsense.
But yeah, I promise, a year from now, two years from now, the theory will be better elucidated and more widely understood than it is now. I'm making a step toward that: I'm going to stop provoking fights by using a word people kind of like to mean "crap roleplaying." I think that'll work out better.
(Hey, and if you'd like to ask me about the apparent contradiction between my position and Ron's wrt individual decisions and GNS, PM me at the Forge.)
On 3-7-05, Michael S. Miller wrote:
Lookin' forward to Red Sky A.M. Let me know when you're in the market for playtesters.
As for the private design vs. public design, I suggest looking at all the indie games on one's shelf. Separate them into two piles: Those that were designed in public and those that were designed in private. Which stack is bigger? Definitely the privately designed stack.
Now, if I could only follow my own advice...
On 3-7-05, xenopulse wrote:
Because doing that never turns into a shitstorm where you have to defend it. Because when I say things clearly, nobody ever argues with me or replies with entrenched nonsense.
Do I smell some sarcasm here? :)
I understand that there are a lot of preconceived notions out there, and those always prove to be a problem to theories in any field. I guess one would have to start at the very beginning. And that would require a whole book, given the complexity and amount of aspects of the theory by now. So yeah, that won't happen.
Anyway. I'll send you that PM soon. Thanks for being willing to discuss all this stuff, still.
On 3-7-05, Vincent wrote:
Scott: "...at what point did you decide that it needed to be its own game, not a cool PTA game?"
Pretty much when the lightning struck. Sans lightning, it could easily have been a potential (and maybe eventually real) PTA game for the rest of its life.
Hints?
A GMed game, with everybody else playing two characters, a marine and a civilian. Play will alternate between the front and the home front, with resource feedback between them.
Both at each front and operating between them, the dynamic is "who's giving up what for whom?"
Also: strict but sufficiently fearsome limits on the GM's mechanical resources.
On 3-7-05, Brennan wrote:
Very cool. Sebastian sounds very sharp. I really love this age (Crispin just turned 9), because they are still kids, but they have these flashes of grown-up sophistication. Awesome.
Crispin just pulled one of these the other day. Krista has been talking about the iPod as her "Precious" for weeks now, and she comes into the room carrying it while Crispin is doing his homework. He looks up and says, "Gimme the iPod." Krista says, "Why?" and Crispin says, "Because it's my birthday and I want it."
Oh, and I am an eager volunteer for playtesting.
On 3-7-05, timfire wrote:
Could I squeeze in one last question before you close this, err, thread? Hopefully I can phrase this in a way that makes sense...
Could you discuss granting players' broad directorial powers -- the extreme example being Universalis -- versus granting players very narrow or specific directorial priviledges -- like I've done with Fates in tMW? How does this effect the creation of theme in actual play? How does this effect the feeling of "authorship"? Is there really a noticable difference in play, or am I just confusing myself?
In other words, many games, when they do grant directorial power, grant very broad directorial power (ala the generic "drama points"). Players can mostly do whatever they want. But in tMW, players can only use directorial power if it plays into their Fate, and they can't effect another player's Fate. Do these 2 approaches cause a noticable difference in actual play?
Thanks!
On 3-7-05, Vincent wrote:
That 99 sitting there was just too tempting, huh?
Everybody, Ben wins the 100th comment prize. I knew somebody was gonna.
Here's Ben's link, linkinated.
On 3-7-05, Ben Lehman wrote:
Yeah, I suck. ;-)
yrs--
--Ben
On , anon. wrote:
On 3-7-05, Clinton R. Nixon wrote:
I'll be short and to the point:
Yay!
Man, I've been looking forward to hearing more about Red Sky A.M. ever since you first posted about it.
On 3-7-05, anon. wrote:
Link's broken, though. Try this one.
(Man am I going to feel stupid if I break this one as well :)
- Christian
On 3-7-05, Kaare wrote:
I'm feverish as I write this, but this might be the "war"game I've always wanted to play.
On 3-7-05, Chris wrote:
Hi Vincent,
I'd like to think I have some passing GNS understanding, but if I fit into being one of those entrenched bugaboos you mentioned, please email and help me understand if I'm tripping somewhere along the line :)
yeloson at earthlink dot net
On 3-7-05, Mike Holmes wrote:
Have you asked Sebastian yet? I don't want to sound all doomsdayish, and he'll probably say yes (if he hasn't already). But there are some potential problems with "stealing" the idea. Let's say that your game does well, but he doesn't manage to get his comic completed. Don't you think he might resent you for stealing his thunder? Even if that's just a rationalization on his part? And that's just one scenario.
Just be sure it's OK with him. Even if the game payed for his entire college costs, it's not worth your kid's trust. So, again if you haven't, tell him your plan. Chances are he'll love the idea. But don't even start on it without asking first.
Just my $.02
Mike
On 3-7-05, Vincent wrote:
Mike, yes! I talked to him about it a few days ago (after I was sure I wasn't losing interest in it) and got his approval. He was kind of nonplussed, like "huh? that old idea? Whatever dad, sure."
Funny.
On 3-7-05, Sebastian wrote:
Joshua, I think yours are really cool, too. I've often heard you complain that you think they are lousey, but I think they're really good. Good enough, at least. You may not believe it, but you introduced the subject of "micro-cycle" to me, and that's how I got inspired.
On 3-7-05, Poh Tun Kai wrote:
God, that's cool. I remember you mentioning Red Sky A.M. way back, and it is such an awesome name that I envy you and Sebastian thoroughly.
Colour me very interested!
On 3-7-05, Keith wrote:
You kid is wicked smart Vincent. I love the idea of you paying for his college with a game based on his idea. That rawks!
On 3-8-05, Chris Goodwin wrote:
Andrew is three. I hope that when he is eight he is as cool as Sebastian.
On 3-8-05, Matthijs wrote:
Resource feedback between home & front sounds like a great mechanic! Sounds like a good game. But yeah, you should probably keep design private - it's hard enough to kill your own darlings, and if everyone else starts having darlings as well, it can get even harder to kill'em. In addition, if you take a pause in the process, it looks bad if you're doing it in public ("did the game die?"). If you do it in private, nobody will know, and it's easier to get back to the game again.
Putting my 3-year-old Benjamin to bed was the inspiration for the bedtime story game "A trip to the moon", btw.
On 3-8-05, Meguey wrote:
Ok, now I want to hear more about "A trip to the moon"
On 3-8-05, Emily Care wrote:
Trip to the moon is on our list of games to play, as a matter of fact. It's a keen one. I think I mentioned it at dinner over your house one night, and Seb was really into it!
On 3-8-05, xenopulse wrote:
Well, Matthijs posted "Trip to the Moon" to the Forge. It's something I might try when my Aidan gets old enough. I'd love to give a link, but it looks like the site's been hacked and is down :(
And this Red Sky AM idea sounds very cool indeed.
I've actually just implemented some things from Dogs in my current freeform game. I'll post details to AP once the game gets started.
- Christian
On 3-8-05, Ninja Hunter J wrote:
You've known where I've stood on Red Sky A.M. from the breeding grounds, not even the starting gate, V.
Spin me some rules!
On 3-8-05, Else wrote:
You asked for a "trip to the moon" link?
downloading can happen here : http://www.rollespill.net/konkurranser.php
The title in Norwegian : Reisen til månen
And getting ideas and inspiration from kids is a great way of comming up with things, after all, it is playing we are doing. ;)
Red sky A.M really sounded like a great idea, btw.
On 3-8-05, Else wrote:
Note; I have no idea if this link is translated or not.
On 3-8-05, anon. wrote:
On 3-8-05, Ninja Hunter J wrote:
Thanks, Seb! I'm happy I inspired you to make something so cool.
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On 3-9-05, TonyLB wrote:
To elaborate a little in the direction of one of my own personal pet peeves: Most GM-ful games do a sadly inadequate job of giving the role of GM a proactive agenda that they can whole-heartedly pursue.
Take D&D for instance. What's the GM agenda? Try to hurt the party? Damn, it better not be. Because if they whole-heartedly pursue that (i.e. find the nastiest monster available in any of the books, then have one hundred of them ambush a part of first level players) then it ruins the fun of the other players.
Instead, the GM in D&D is walking a constant mental tight-rope between making things too hard and making them too easy. They cannot whole-heartedly pursue any one agenda, because their goal is inherently conflicted: the game does not give them the structure to unleash their full power without risk of damaging the players fun.
It is like telling an olympic runner "Okay, go out and run with these folks, but make sure you don't finish more than five seconds ahead of the second place runner". They can do it, but it's not likely to be fun for them.
By stark comparison, let's look at My Life With Master. The Master's agenda, as described to me by Michael Miller, is to torture the players. So if they want their characters to be happy, you punish them. If they want their minion to be miserable, you reward said minion.
There is, as far as I can see, no extreme to which the Master can go that will make the game less fun for the other players. In fact, the nastier the Master is, the better horrific fun it is for the minions. That's a game where the GM is allowed to actually cut loose.
If a game has that, I don't care whether it's entirely GM-fiat or as freeform as possible.
On 3-9-05, Neel wrote:
D&D is a badly-chosen example, because it has rules telling the GM what kind of opposition they can properly send against the PCs, and then assumes that, given those resources, a GM plays as hard as he or she can to win.
The Challenge Rating system a lot like DitV's town-creation system, really.
On 3-9-05, Michael S. Miller wrote:
Tony said:
There is, as far as I can see, no extreme to which the Master can go that will make the game less fun for the other players. In fact, the nastier the Master is, the better horrific fun it is for the minions. That's a game where the GM is allowed to actually cut loose.
You took the words right out of my typin' fingers, Tony. One of the reasons I so deeply, truly love to GM MLwM is that I don't need to walk that mental tightrope. I have one job and I can focus all my energy and creativity on doing that job, just like an enthusiastic player might in that traditional RPG.
A functional, creatively-constrained GM role takes the doubt out of GMing. You don't have to ask yourself "Is this what I should be doing now? Am I being too hard? Am I being too soft?" The game tells you what you need to do. Just do it.
In a way, these games could be seen to "lessen" the role of the GM. Getting closer to "banker" of a board game and farther from the "GM is god" role of traditional games. It is wonderfully counter-intuitive that less power brings less responsibility to make everything fun, and thus greater enjoyment. Give me a stripped-down and clearly-defined GM-role any day.
Tony also said:
If a game has that, I don't care whether it's entirely GM-fiat or as freeform as possible.
I'm going to assume this was a flash of rhetorical exhuberance, since "entirely-GM-fiat" and "creatively-constrained GM role" are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Am I right?
On 3-9-05, Michael S. Miller wrote:
Screwed up the blockquote tags above. Sorry. I'll keep it simple from here on out.
On 3-9-05, xenopulse wrote:
Both kinds will suck without functional rules.
I assume you are refering to System (a la your very own Lumpley Principle). It can definitely work well without mechanics, I've seen that a lot in my freeform time. But yes, you need to agree on basic rules of credibility. In true freeform, this usually comes down to total character ownership and some form of courtesy, plausibility, and/or creative judgment decisions on non-character input. Often, blocking is deeply frowned upon.
I care about how the people treat one another's contributions.
That's exactly on point. With the right people, this can work in most games (which is why a lot of RPers always talk about how great their GM or group is). But with the right kind of game, this can be assured much more profoundly (like Tony said). So that's definitely one area good RP design should focus on.
- Christian
On 3-9-05, Tim Alexander wrote:
One more if there's time. Can you talk about how you're specifically applying the modified version of the Otherkind rules to your Ars campaign? You've mentioned some stuff (like dropping the narration die) but I'm curious to see more fully how you guys have implemented it in a troupe fashion.
-Tim
On , anon. wrote:
On 3-9-05, Kat Miller wrote:
Hi,
I've done quite a bit of "Freeform" role play with GM Fiat.
When it was good it was natural and amazing so that I thought all Freeform role play must be good.
Change playmates without adressing rules and WOW what a difference. . .less fun. Much invested time to learn why. Much, much, much invested time.
I thought that "Freeform" meant no rules, but there were a whole bunch of implied rules that when it worked well, never needed addressing and when it didn't work, since we never really address "Rules," it came down to "Either I must suck, or you must REALLY suck!"
Now that there are words and ideas to describe why things sucked, WOW what a difference.
-kat
whim@enter.net
On 3-9-05, Vincent wrote:
Christian, Kat - exactly.
"Rules," means something like "reliable procedures of play." They don't have to be written down or even said out loud.
Saying them out loud, as always, is a very good way to make sure everybody knows what they are. (Writing them down is a minimum first step toward making them portable to other gaming groups.)
Now to go a little further:
Formal rules can create dynamics in your group that you could never create socially. "Formal rules" means reliable procedures calling upon cues: dice, numbers, life stones, turn taking, stuff like that.
Some such formally created dynamics make for better play, depending what you want out of a game. Particularly, if you want intense in-game conflict, formally created dynamics will always serve you better than socially created ones.
On 3-9-05, Ninja Hunter J wrote:
(did this fix the quote thing?)
On 3-9-05, Ninja Hunter J wrote:
(Whew. I was reading this whole post as though it were said in a tense whisper.)
JasonN, I think we can assume that asshead formal rules like the ones you just described are out of the picture. Nonetheless, if you had informal rules (as in a gaming group of mine from years ago) that were that assheaded, I'd take the formal rules anyday. There'd be less sleeping-with-your-girlfriend-gives-me-+6-because-it-proves-I'm-bigger kinds of rules.
I think what Vincent is saying is that, without formal rules, the big personality wins. That can be the guy who's always negative about everyone else's ideas, but forwards plausible enough ones himself. It can be the guy who brought the chips. It can be the one you want to sleep with*. Whatever.
With formal rules, all those people are, of course, still playing their games - it's what we monkeys do - but that system matters so much less to the experience, the story, the world you create when the mechanics encourage contribution and everyones' use of those contributions.
*I'm not talking about literally sleeping. It's a euphemism.**
** For sexual intercourse.
On 3-10-05, Tobias wrote:
On the (im)possibility of 1-player (solitaire) RPGs.
I'm thinking this because of all those RPG books we all buy, that read as really cool, but never get around to playing.
I have some vague design ideas for it for now, centering around player memory and ability to 'cheat' (there's no moderator other than yourself, after all), but there are issues - like which types of RPGing agenda's would be viable for 1-person play, and if it's att all sensible to talk about 'playing a role' when all you do is make stuff up without sharing it with anyone else (other than what's written for the game).
When there's no audience other than yourself, does it make a sound when the tree falls on you?
On 3-10-05, Vincent wrote:
Jason, no, not every set of formal rules is going to be better than any set of informal rules.
But the best formal rules are going to be for certain better than the best informal rules, for my one precise objective: maintaining intense in-game conflict of interest, without hurting the real-world relationships.
It's a matter of permission and expectation. If we treat play as an extension of our usual interactions, our real-world commitment to agreeing and willingness to work together will become, naturally, agreeable and not-very-contested events in the game. It takes an unnatural structure - the right formal rules - to create in-game conflict out of our real-world collaboration.
Somehow we have to grin together and cheer each other, enthusiastically embrace, while you're dedicated wholly to hurting my character and hurting her until she's transformed by grief and pain. This doesn't come instinctively to us! We won't just fall into it by treating the game as a natural conversation. To accomplish it, we need a well-designed, formal, unnatural structure.
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On 3-10-05, Matthijs wrote:
I haven't been smoking, but...
The formal structure is like an amoeba's cell membrane. The stuff I need to play is what's inside my amoeba. Around it is a protective wall to make sure nobody else messes with it. When my stuff meets your stuff, the cell wall keeps us from hurting each other for real. Without it, we could still play, but we couldn't play rough at all. (Because our mitochondriae would get entangled).
On 3-10-05, Vincent wrote:
Oh and I meant to say - this question matters to me a lot just now. Red Sky A.M. absolutely must deal effectively with PC death. PC dismemberment and crippling and psychological destruction, too.
On 3-10-05, Emily Care wrote:
"Good boundaries, good neighbors make..."
On 3-10-05, Emily Care wrote:
Or rather, good membranes. : )
On 3-10-05, ScottM wrote:
I firmly agree with your point three: if character death punts you from the game, you should have to agree for it to happen. Or have some easy work around-- take over characters, Universalis style-- the stuff you mention in point four.
Dying in a way that vindicates your character is much better than dying randomly. If your concept is "best brawler around" then it's much worse to die in a street brawl than in a way that emphasizes that you're unbeatable in a brawl-- undermining your concept AND killing you all together is cruel.
On 3-10-05, Matt Wilson wrote:
Seems like you could tie in character death with new player privileges. So you lose all the authorship that you normally associate with playing a character, but you gain new directorial powers.
How about this: when your character dies (in this hypothetical game) you get a handful of dice, and you can spend them to help other players whenever their characters are doing something related to your character's death. You have something to do, and your guy's death has a continuing effect on the story.
Say the game is a Firefly game, and Zoe is killed (aww), so Zoe's player gets 5d10 of "mourning dice," and whenever Zoe is brought up related to a conflict, Zoe's player can apply a d10 in some way. Once the dice are spent, everyone's done mourning, and the player can make a new character.
On 3-10-05, Thor Olavsrud wrote:
Luke and I sat down over lunch and had a long talk about this last week.
The question was: given your [Vincent's] statement that PCs only get to die to make a final statement, how does that jibe with a character that dies pursuing another character's goal? For instance, your character wants to kill the duke and asks my character to come along. Then my character gets killed in the process.
Now, clearly, this is only going to come up in a "traditional, party-play" situation.
My response was that character motivations don't matter. Characters don't exist! Only player motivations matter. Assuming functional play, I'm going to get my character involved in that scenario because something going on in it is interesting to me, the player. And so, by getting my character involved, you create a reason for that character to care about the conflict at hand.
At that point, the player knows the stakes (trying to kill the duke could lead to death or imprisonment), and has a reason to get involved. The player cared enough about the conflict that he was willing to risk his character's life to tackle it. If the character dies, he has made a statement about that conflict.
Is this the sort of thing you were getting at Vincent, or am I way off base?
On 3-10-05, Thor Olavsrud wrote:
Oh! And as far as Red Sky A.M. goes, it seems that the death of a character at the front would immediately zoom the camera focus in on that character's family back home. Funeral, war hero, all that sort of stuff!
On 3-10-05, Ninja Hunter J wrote:
Yes, Matt, and more. You have to be able to continually effect the story. Now, I like the idea of having a walkdown period after a character dies, but the player doesn't have much to do in your example.
Now, let's say that, when you die, you have a finite number of widgets to use that represent the effects you've had on the world. This isn't just 'Zoe would have talked one guy down here and shot the other'. It's that play veers toward Zoe's effects in the world. You essentially have a story devoted to what Zoe did in her life: rivals show up to settle their hash, or it turns out she had a big secret that comes knocking, or Wash goes apeshit, or what-have-you.
In Mountain Witch, you still have a direct effect on the course of the game when you die. You just have to act by supporting other characters with your dice.
(I'm taking this as notes for my current project, by the way. Character death has to matter a lot, and this might be a way to do it. )
On 3-10-05, Chris wrote:
Hi Vincent,
Do you think the "unnatural-ness" of it all is rooted in the fact that as a group everyone is cooperating while at the same time conflict is produced through (a form of) competition? People learn to do one or the other throughout life, but doing both at the same time seems to throw people for a loop?
On 3-10-05, Chris wrote:
I always tend to look at "tightness" or focus as pressure nozzles on a hose... the tighter you make it, the more pressure you get from the water- the more directed and faster it goes and the more momentum you get from it.
The strength of DitV is that you have Character, Setting, and Situation pretty tightly focused, a little wiggle room on Color, and a solid system. From character creation to full on play, the group makes directed choices, they're never left floundering. On the other hand, you have stuff like GURPs where the group has to tighten stuff all around in order to get a good momentum going on.
I think a lot of the crap play("Hey, yeah, stuff is happening, I guess") is due to unfocused designs coupled with groups and GMs that have no idea how to focus and produce conflict(which, of course, the game should have told them something about).
On 3-10-05, Vincent wrote:
Chris: "Do you think the 'unnatural-ness' of it all is rooted in the fact that as a group everyone is cooperating while at the same time conflict is produced through (a form of) competition?"
No, not really, not competition. When I'm trying to hurt Emily's or Meg's character to death and rebirth, it's not a competitive thing. It's more like super-constructive criticism, like I say.
Hm, yeah. Kind of like how a painting class will create a formal, unnatural structure for criticism. Outside of class, your friendships with your fellow painters are based on supporting and loving. Criticizing your friend's paintings can be hurtful. But when everybody's paintings are on the wall and the teacher's established that it's that day, the expectations and permissions change: it's hurtful if you don't criticize.
On 3-10-05, Vincent wrote:
But - jeez, this is hard, this is unestablished vocabulary.
Me being Soraya's GM is not the same thing as me criticizing Emily's contributions. I'm not saying - here, here's how you could make Soraya better. I'm not Emily's teacher or anything fucked up like that.
Me striving to hurt, hurt, hurt Soraya is me doing my part to fulfill Soraya's potential. It's me doing my part to give Emily what she wants out of Soraya.
So in that sense, it's not like portfolio review day in a painting class at all.
On 3-10-05, Vincent wrote:
In that sense, Universalis is just as focused as The Mountain Witch.
On 3-10-05, Emily Care wrote:
A major issue with character death is that normally a) players only have one character and b)the only way that players contribute substantially is via their character. Change either of those things, as the suggestions already given do, and you've got a way different dynamic. Like Ben said recently, he didn't even have a character when we played Primetime Adventures with him, and he felt like he contributed more than in trad games he'd played.
Other thoughts:
If you're fielding 10+ characters, for example, you might be much more vested in killing one/some off for a purpose. Makes me think of the movie Troy: the myrmidons were clearly all XP for Achilles: they got peeled off one by one while he stayed alive. The ones that mattered died to forward his story thematically.
How death is handled matters. Just cause the character stops being corporal doesn't mean it loses effect. (eg jedi, ghosts etc) Natch flashbacks.
Oh, and I just played Werewolf last night. Talk about character death! It's not rpg, of course, and game is quick so you get to take your turn killing and being killed, but what I noticed was that it was kind of fun being dead. You slip into audience mode 'cause you get to see the secret werewolf et al business. But if the hands were longer, it'd probably be a drag.
Final thought, when your character dies that puts you in a unique position: you lose some of that conflict of interest Thor talked about. You could be free to do more protagonizing etc.
On 3-10-05, Vincent wrote:
Uh, cryptic on my part. In the sense of "from character creation to full on play, the group makes directed choices, they're never left floundering," Universalis is just as focused. It achieves its focus via System entirely. It has a rock-solid System for creating Setting, Character, Situation and Color, in whatever mix you like - you just don't start play until you've established enough to not flounder.
On 3-10-05, xenopulse wrote:
You guys know by now that my main focus for many years has been GM-less freeform playing, with total character ownership (I get to decide about anything that happens to my character, so no death or even scratch without me introducing it into the SIS). That actually made for a good lab experience, because you can see under what circumstances people let their characters die.
For most people, it's never. They get too attached. I think this makes them potentially miss out on some intense play, but then again, a lot of people play for the social interaction, so they settle in their Comfort Zone. They don't want to lose their play input and player connections. Others let their characters die very often, but get resurrected right after, therefore making the death near meaningless.
For those of us who are really into intense stories and can handle starting over, however, it turns out that Vincent's assessment in the Hardcore thread (I think) was quite on point. I killed a close friend of mine's long-standing character (2 years of almost daily play) at the climax of a story. Similarly, two of my characters were killed in highly dramatic situations (one actually took his life as he was about to be overwhelmed by the enemy, in good old Aliens fashion). But when random idiots attack me, there's no way I'll let my character die just for their satisfaction, even if it would be "realistic" or plausible according to the events. It has to MEAN something, make a big impact, or--as you said--be a final statement.
I can therefore from my own experience only reinforce the two main points:
a) People don't want to be left out through character death (but in a freeform environment, there's little to no input without a character).
b) The death needs to be thematically meaningful to be satisfying. This includes death not being easily undone.
- Christian
On 3-10-05, Emily Care wrote:
s'all good. Portfolio day is just peer review. It's feedback. Not on what is good or right, but just more information.
An audience watching a show gives the performers an idea of what is working, and more energy to go on to do what they want to do. If you're protagonizing someone's character, you're doing that too, but you're also making creative contributions that you think mesh with what they've already put into play. It's more like jazz or a drum circle than a concert.
An opponent when you're sparring helps you push yourself to your real limits, and there are all kinds of formal limitations on that. This seems most analogous to the way the GM role has been used to push players. This is a very competitive model. If the model we use was something like dance, then how we look at it might be very different.
And if you say "how could dance be collaborative, it has to be choreographed to work", check out contact improv. (didn't know it originated at Oberlin, cool.)
On 3-10-05, timfire wrote:
My game was sorta already mentioned, but I thought I would elaborate. In the Mountain Witch, I did alot of what people have suggested. The default for being "Taken Out" isn't death. If the GM (or another player) intends to kill a PC, they must announce it upfront, giving the player the choice of engaging the conflict or not.
Also, after character death, players can still influence the story via Trust. In fact, the influence of Trust is even stronger for dead PC's, as dead PC's can Aid, Betray, etc. in ways a living PC can't.
In regard to Red Sky AM, I wonder if random character death might actually be *appropriate*. That happens in War, doesn't it? Having a family member in the military during a time of conflict means an ever-present fear that you might get "the phone call".
On 3-10-05, timfire wrote:
I'm trying to digest this a bit. I'm not sure you really answered what I was trying to get at, but maybe you did and I'm not quite seeing it. But I have a feeling this statement is likely my ultimate answer:
"We don't have enough examples, we can't draw any conclusions yet. When we have a dozen loose games to go with our one dozen tight games, we can start to consider it."
On 3-10-05, Vincent wrote:
Tim, you know it.
I've been watching Band of Brothers again. I talked about this with Luke a little bit already. There's a feeling you get, watching Band of Brothers, about the main characters. They're the main characters because they survive, you feel, not they survive because they're the main characters. It's not like they have script immunity. Maybe it's just because you don't know - any of the main characters might be one who doesn't live through it after all.
Band of Brothers also plays another trick. When it's a character's episode, you can be sure that either he's going to live or his death will mean something. But next episode, the episode after, the episode after - he's just another guy. He can die for nothing, part of the carnage surrounding the current main characters. That's a pretty emotionally compelling trick; I don't think that I can adapt it to Red Sky A.M. though.
In Red Sky A.M. right now, named but non-PC marines can just die, while PC marines are subject to life-threatening injury at either the player's or the GM's hands, and then you roll to see. If your PC marine dies, you take a non-PC named marine to be your new PC.
The game starts with a squad of twelve named marines, including the starting PCs. They die or go home wounded and are replaced over time, of course - and the game ends when the last of the original twelve is gone.
On 3-10-05, Chris wrote:
Hi Vincent-
Right, competitive isn't the word, constructive opposition perhaps? Maybe just constructive conflict, after all, that's what it is.
In terms of unnatural-ness, I mean generally in society at larger, we're taught either competitive/antagonistic conflict or non-conflictual(word?) cooperation. Of course, there is such a thing as "good sportmanship" or "constructive criticism" but we see how rarely both of those happen compared to not...
On 3-10-05, JasonN wrote:
Permission and expectation - that's the missing piece I needed. Thanks.
On 3-10-05, Olman Feelyus wrote:
This is a very interesting discussion (and a very interesting blog).
Perhaps a greater emphasis in the game structure on setting and situation may bring down the player's attachment to their characters, making death an acceptable (and enjoyable) part of the game. So the player who died gets to return immediately as a different character (who may or may not have already existed as an NPC in the situation), but one who is still connected to the events. The character experiences them from a significantly different perspective, while the player still has all the meta-knowledge from his previous character. Those elements could interact in a way that would bring out the next chapter in the story in a rich and interesting way.
For example, the setting is some sort of courtly intrigue. You play the prince whose elderly father is slowly losing his grip on the kingdom. There is a plan to murder the king. You become involved and end up getting killed. Now you take a new character, maybe the king himself, one of the plotters or the sergeant-at-arms who is supposed to protect the king, etc. Now the story carries on from your new perspective.
Or, perhaps you play the story back from the beginning, but as this new character and now with your knowledge of what happened before, you change what happened... I don't know, thinking kind of far afield now. But my main point is that emphasising the growth of the story over the growth of a single character may be a way to address character death.
(conanp@gmail.com)
On 3-10-05, Brennan wrote:
I'm thinking about the random death thing, you know, being overwhelmed by a group of thugs, or taking an accidental blade to the gut. I think this form of character death, while seeming meaningless, actually has a purpose. The point being made by deaths like these is that the world is random and harmful. Now, if that's the point you want to make with your play, then this kind of character death makes sense.
The other thing character death does is it sets the stakes. If there is no risk of catastrophic failure, then it isn't as fun. One of my friends, probably one of the greatest role-players I have ever met, takes this position.
On 3-10-05, Ben Lehman wrote:
Guys --
We need need need to seperate out two roles:
Critic -- person who says "no, that's dumb, let's do this." This is usually the GM. Also, the person who says "yeah, that's cool!" The arbiter of cool, essentially.
(In Polaris, this is the role of the Moons.)
Shit-giver -- person who gives opposition, gives the character things to do, to make the character cooler. This is, usually, also the GM, but it is a different role.
(In Polaris, this is the role of the Solaris Knight / Ice Maiden.)
So that's that.
yrs--
--Ben
On 3-10-05, Meguey wrote:
Just reading along, and I have to say:
"The game starts with a squad of twelve named marines, including the starting PCs. They die or go home wounded and are replaced over time, of course - and the game ends when the last of the original twelve is gone."
made me say "Ack! Cool!" I was just talking to Emily about how cool it is to have games with finite scope/sessions.
On 3-10-05, Eric wrote:
You beat me to it, Ben, though I think that's another discussion than this one.
As it happens I spent a couple hours today writing "how to" text for those roles in my game, separated (like in Polaris) among different people. Hope to finish the document tonight (knock on wood), in which case I'll post a link here as cogent to that discussion.
One role is in validation of contributions. Another is in contribution itself - of adversity. The latter, plus the role of that adversity as an additional contribution to the protagonist, is the main thrust here. I suggest we leave the first role - validation of cool - for a different thread.
On 3-10-05, Eric wrote:
Hear, hear, Meg. I am reminded of an interview with Neil Gaiman about how he needed to bring the Sandman to a close. He says there was an initial incident - the imprisonment and loss of Morpheus' "stuff" - and when that, plus its attendant ramifications, was done... so was the series.
Vincent, personally I kind of like the Band of Brothers trick with mortality being (in essence) inversely proportional to spotlight. Make all twelve Marines as PCs, play troupe-style to swap some in and out; encourage changeover between stories. And then explicitly have two kinds of death; NPC-marine deaths (which serve to illuminate the brutality of it) and PC-marine deaths (which fit your diagnosis in the head post here). I'm envisioning a system where the primary advancement engine for an "onscreen" Marine is to have an "offscreen" Marine who you have played die a secondary-character's death. This gives you the resource juju to use the current one at his full value... including making him worth more points for if he bites it later. Make this your choice, not others'.
Mind you that might work as well with "onscreen death" substituted where you see "offscreen death" in the idea. It's just teasing at me right now.
I think it has to do with the players, as a group, being able to treat the original twelve as a nonreplenishable resource, one which is somehow necessary for peak performance (like Trust in tMW).
On 3-10-05, Vincent wrote:
Hmm.
Like I say, I don't think I can make it work, because of the surrounding structure already in place.
But it'd be nice, wouldn't it?
Oh wait, I know how. Never mind. You'll find out. Thanks, Eric!
On 3-10-05, Kat Miller wrote:
I'd like to talk about Immersion and Character Ownership.
If you don't have exclusive ownership of a character, then can a player still have anykind of Immersion experience?
I don't know about other players, but one of the perks I get out of playing is a happy zen about my characters and I'm possessive about that. Yes, I want to enjoy whats going on with my fellow players. I want collaborative play, but I also want to feel that sense of Immersion.
I like Universalis but its a completely different gaming experience and my happy Zen is missing. I want to know how to achieve open collaboration on story and still have enough ownership that I get my Zen. Is this an impossibility?
thanks,
-kat
whim@enter.net
On 3-10-05, JasonN wrote:
I'm gunna work my way to a point and question.
To start with, I like it when games make participants out of audience. These are social events, right? "Wanna play? Cool, we'll figure it out. Sit down, have a beer."
Sometimes, when we say 'audience' we mean 'players whose characters are not in the scene right now'. Sometimes, we mean people who are sitting in, but aren't full-blown players, as we have the term constructed in our heads.
There was a Forge thread a while ago dealing with PTA, about someone visiting someone else's game, and they let him sit and kibitz -- and wish they let him dish out Fan Mail, too. That's the kind of stuff I'm talking about. You don't need to have a PC to be a participant. Just look at the GM.
Anyway, in a game where audience (of either type, but in particular the former) is encouraged and empowered to participate, a character's death doesn't really cut them out of the action. PTA, right? Comes around to you, and you call your scene, right? You're still not as actively involved in the action as the players who have characters, but that's because games are *made* that way, today.
I play with a GM who likes to run Call of Cthulhu. Somtimes he runs one-shots. Character death happens from time to time, as you may know -- especially in one-shots. So in certain games, when your guy dies, and the scene ends, he calls a break and takes the player in the back room, gives them the secrets, and lets them take over the action of at least one of the bad guys. If more people die, the number of players working on the bad guy stuff grows, and you look across the table, and you feel like, wow, we're almost outnumbered. By people who know us. And now they have all the secrets.
That's kinda cool -- but it's not thematic play, as Vincent originally framed the question. So.
I guess, in Forgese, the question is this: in collaborative thematic play, is it possible to address Premise as audience, that is, as anyone who doesn't have an active character, but is still participating in the game?
If so, character death should still be a big deal, but it's not the participation-killing event it might otherwise be, for the player.
On 3-5-05, John wrote:
On 3-10-05, Meguey wrote:
I want to talk about playing cross-gender, if/why we do and what our reasons are. Also, I want to talk about the gender make-up of our gaming groups.
(There's another question too, about gaming with kids and how 'pretend we're wolves' becomes Werewolf. Watching kids 'pretend' seems to be a potentially rich source of pratical gaming info. (Elliot, age 5, says "That's true! When me, Sebastian and Emily play pretend, we are sometimes werebeasts!"))
On 3-10-05, luke wrote:
I'm so copping out of this thread. I need time to think on it, actually. Believe it or not, my views on the matter have substantively changed in the past two weeks!
I recognized that I'm concerned with one thing and one thing only: when and how a player is removed from play.
Having this happen in a random, haphazard fashion does not facilitate the play I designed for in Burning Wheel. It actually just creates problems.
But, like Vincent, I'm currently interested in rpg design that strongly acknowledges character death through violence--where it's a feature of play, not an unlucky incident. So this is very much on my brain. How do you account for a violent, soulless world? Personally, Mr Baker, I think your observations about BoB are spot on, and I think you're copping out thinking you can't replicate or amplify that in a game. Especially a game about emotional attachments.
-Luke
On 3-10-05, luke wrote:
may i attempt to reparse? You're saying that so long as the mechanics explicitly state the effects* of success and failure, it's conflict resolution, aka "good rules"?
*Not "you do it" or "you don't do it", but "you achieve your intent or not"
Sorry, it's not in my nature to let you off easy.
-L
On 3-10-05, timfire wrote:
"But, like Vincent, I'm currently interested in rpg design that strongly acknowledges character death through violence--where it's a feature of play, not an unlucky incident."
I think the Mountain Witch does this. It's a classic Blood Opera. I'll have to wait and see after it hits the market, but I believe it'll be a rare game where noone dies. In particular, I believe player v player violence will be extremely common.
But I also wanted to say this -- thus far, based on my own personal experience, I think it's easier to deal with the death of a PC in a closed-ended game. For me personally, knowing that there will be an end frees me from worrying that I might "screw things up" by killing my PC.
On 3-10-05, Piers wrote:
Both Jonathan Walton's Argonauts and an old design of mine did something interesting in the context of this question by tying character death to a Fate or Doom. What they essentially had was a switch with two states--Doomed to Die, and Sure to Live--and a rachet-like mechanic (easy to move forward, difficult or impossible to move back) that controlled when the character switched from one state to the other.
What's interesting about this is that is breaks out some (but by no means all) of the questions that ball up around the issue of character death and allows you to address them separately:
--What's at stake for me when I know that my character is sure to live? (What's as bad as dying? What am I not afraid of if I can't die?)
--What's at stake for me when I know my character is going to die? (What will I do to make my death meaningful? How will I act if I know my death has no meaning?)
and
--What's at stake around moving between these states of knowledge? (How sure do have to be that I can't die? What am I willing to risk death for? What will I do to escape death?)
On 3-11-05, Ben Lehman wrote:
Character death...
I keep talking about Polaris, but it's really what's on my mind these days.
See, one of the things I've always found frustrating about RPGs is how much people are afraid of death. No one will do anything daring or dashing or foolish or heroic because they are worried that they are going to die.
The common solution to this, common because it is a good one, is to assure players that daring or dashing or foolish or heroic things will not get their characters killed. And that's all well and good, and it works, but it doesn't really fix the problem.
In a novel, in a movie -- death is cool. It is just an awesome moment. Putting death off in moments where characters act like protagonists is a good way to get characters to act like protagonists, but it isn't a good way to get the cool death.
In a novel, a character might get death as the response for acting like a protagonist. And that isn't bad. That just makes it even more awesome, really.
Polaris is all about making it okay to lose. In Polaris, as I keep saying, death is the good ending. Death means that you were just that awesome. That you were strong willed enough to stand against evil. I want Polaris players to want death. To thirst for it. To just wait for the moment that they can get it.
We'll see how it goes.
yrs--
--Ben
On 3-11-05, luke wrote:
On 3-11-05, luke wrote:
oh, and if you could answer Thor's questions, I think we might actually be on track for this discussions, rather than wanking about our cool games.
I'm not going to repeat 'em here. you can scroll back up and read his post for yourself.
-L
On 3-11-05, Eric wrote:
Was trying to come up with a good way to address that. I guess to me it's kind of a PTA thing. Except maybe in Red Sky A.M., possibly, I'm not sure it's possible for a character to die a Good Death while pursuing a story that's not their own. [Note that this is quite distinct from pursuing another character's goals, as Thor points out.] If there's something going on that is MORE important to the players than the appropriate death of a PC, then holy shit you have the intensity turned up to six thousand volts, and I want to be in your game.
Mostly, that's not gonna happen. So the apt death of a character should always be the most important thing happening, which means that even if it was someone else's story before, you'd better hijack it first to focus on the sacrifice, before you bring down the knife. Any PC must, as a precondition to a good death, have a PTA screen presence of 3+ on a scale of three.
Does that address what you were gunning for, Thor?
On 3-11-05, Charles wrote:
I'd like to talk about how roleplaying games can handle love and friendship. While I've seen games that let characters do horrible things to each other with gusto without turning players against each other, I have only very rarely seen games that allowed characters to fall in love or develop deep friendships except as expressions of player-player relationships. Am I missing something, or is this an underdeveloped area?
On 3-11-05, Charles wrote:
But I also wanted to say this -- thus far, based on my own personal experience, I think it's easier to deal with the death of a PC in a closed-ended game. For me personally, knowing that there will be an end frees me from worrying that I might "screw things up" by killing my PC.
I so totally agree with this. Character death in a short run game can easily say something as interesting as the character could say by staying alive and being able to do more stuff. Character death in an on-going campaign means the end of something that is likely to have been built up into an incredibly subtle and powerful tool for saying things.
While such things are surely useful in short run games, it seems to me that long run games actually have even more of a need for some method of valorizing choosing the option of character death. Christian mentioned the tendency of most players (if they are given complete control over whether their character has script immunity (is that common parlance?) to never make their characters die, and that that deprives them of the intense experience that can come from having a character die. It seems to me that methods that ensure that the game gives a lot of focus to characters who die might help to convince players that character death is worth experimenting with.
On 3-11-05, Vincent wrote:
Um... For broad meanings of "mechanics," yes, exactly.
On 3-11-05, anon. wrote:
Most systems have some set of things where the rules systems will tell you "This is what happens".
Most gaming groups have some set of things that they want to figure out.
When the answers the system is giving you match the questions your group is asking, life is good. When they aren't, it isn't.
If the question you are asking is "do we live or die?" then any game with a combat system will work for you. If the question you are asking is "do we acquit ourselves in heroic fashion?" then a system that only tells you whether you live or die is not helpful. In fact, it may dissuade you from asking the question about heroism, because you know you won't get answers.
So, Luke, when you say "the system explicitly states whether or not you achieve your intent", I think you're skipping an interesting phase where rules (good or bad) influence how you frame and communicate your intent.
On 3-11-05, TonyLB wrote:
... and I forgot my handle. And since I rather like this post, I'd like credit for it.
On 3-5-05, Dredd wrote:
On 3-11-05, Vincent wrote:
Well, it seems that we all crave death and we're all not sure how to get it. Many of us are designing games about it right now! That means that in a year when we revisit the question, we'll have lots more concrete rules and play to talk about.
As Luke wishes, though! Thor: "Is this the sort of thing you were getting at Vincent, or am I way off base?"
You're way ON base.
Here's a Band of Brothers example. What makes a good leader? A whole bunch of PCs die or are maimed to answer that question. From their point of view, they weren't trying to answer the question at all, they were trying to survive shelling in Alsace. It's from our point of view as the audience, looking at the episode (and series) as a whole - as players, looking at the game as a whole - that we even see the question and the answer.
On 3-11-05, luke wrote:
Actually Tony, I think you're addressing the perennial problem of SCOPE -- "what exactly can a player ask for via his intent?"
Achieve intent or not is resolution. What can I ask for and hope to achieve is scope.
Vincente: Gimme so time to do some chewing and playtesting. I'm going to give you the "this seems fine" with a dash of "but let me think about it some more."
s'okay?
-L
On 3-11-05, Vincent wrote:
Tony: I agree fully that "how do your rules provoke and constrain your intent?" is very, very interesting - far more interesting than "do your rules actually resolve or do they just foist resolution off on the GM?" - but like I say I want this one short. How about I owe you a post.
Luke: poifect.
On 3-11-05, Eric wrote:
Hear, hear.
In this thread about a TRoS space-opera sister game, I pitched a device where an Arthurian-style courtly romance would exist between the pilot and his technician. I've since pitched that game to the guys at Driftwood/Empire, and expanded a lot upon that concept. Looking for something where the interpersonals between the two individuals play out as game effects on the starfighter dogfights.
I have some neat ideas on that, we'll see if George and Brian jump at it. (I'd rather see it as a true TRoS sister-game if possible.)
As to Emily's games, I think that part of the point will be trying to make them comfortable to play. Faith and doctrine isn't a topic most groups would be hugely comfortable dealing with either, except as an occasional Stakes... but Dogs is comfortable to play. So three cheers to her - Breaking the Ice is fascinating - but here's hoping 'approachable' can be built in as well.
On 3-11-05, Emily Care wrote:
Few roleplaying groups will be equipped to play them, I predict; most will find them just plain too uncomfortable.
Yeah, I'm getting myself psyched for them to remain gedenken-spiel (thought-games), since when I talk about the premises (falling in love, competing for a lover, exploring polyamory) most folks get all oogy. You got it, Eric. That'll have to be one of the goals.
There are other games out there, though: Bryant's Into the Sunset which was recently pointed out to me, and Shouju Story. Shouju Story isn't necessarily about romance, but the genre it emulates is way into the relationship field. Into the Sunset creates a great & simple structure to construct a quick family-romance story out of, and Shouju Story uses playing cards to guide the players into bringing the main character's "big day" into happening.
Soap and Wuthering Heights are two that explore relationships in a big, dramatic, over the top kind of way. The sturm und drang variety of love story.
Whoa--unless I'm missing the reference to a referee in Wuthering heights, all of these games are completely collaborative. Wonder if that's due to the alt views of folks that would tackle making a game about relationships, or if there is something inherent about it that influences design?
On 3-11-05, xenopulse wrote:
BADLY underdeveloped.
IMO, that's one reason that freeform chat-based gaming is:
a) higher in popularity with women than regular RPGs; and
b) often very much focused on relationships.
That's not to say that men aren't interested in playing relationship stories; otherwise, there wouldn't be many of those going on in freeform environments, and there are. But the typical hack&slash gaming (just like FPS shooters on the computer, for example) don't seem as popular with most women. (I hope I'm not causing some mistaken gender-equality backlash... I'm a true egalitarian, my wife and I both took a new last name together when we got married.)
My wife Lisa is a good example. She loves to RP romantic stuff, not the kind where things work out usually, but more the tortured, dramatic, star-crossed-lovers-are-kept-apart sort of story. Now that's by far not all she plays, but it's definitely something she gets no mechanical support for in any RPG I know (that's one reason she's a dedicated freeform player, aside from not wanting to be constrained in her creativity and input).
If any of you can find a way to make a game that mechanically not only enables but encourages and intensifies dramatic relationship stories, it'll have the potential for a major impact on the gaming world.
- Christian
On 3-11-05, Chris wrote:
I have a vaguely developed game idea called, "Phantom Hearts", where you play as a human in love with a spirit or ghost ala Chinese Ghost Story, along with all the drama that entails with ghost-love stories :) I need to take some time to more tightly focus the conflict to the relationships and figure out how to better design the relationship factor...
On 3-11-05, Emily Care wrote:
It seems like friendships get even shorter shrift than love affairs. I've always wanted there to be a game that ties in do-or-die loyalty among friends like in a John Woo flick. Ah, if only chalk outlines was workable.
Oh, and the obvious thing is that resolution in Dogs is great for handling all kinds of conflict, social etc. The conflicts in dogs are heavily relationship oriented, prolly because it is about the cracks in the structure of the society.
On 3-5-05, dfgdfshjaa wrote:
On 3-11-05, Meguey wrote:
I so *very* much want to reply in depth to Christian's post above. Dratted smashed finger. Can we pick that up again when the swelling goes down? Also, I agree with Emily about to-the-death loyalty.
On 3-11-05, xenopulse wrote:
Sorry to hear about your fingers, Meguey...
We can certainly pick it up another time. I just hope I haven't triggered anything with my implication that there may be some basic differences in interests among genders in our culture :)
And yes, Emily might be right.
And go John Woo!
- Christian
On 3-11-05, Matt Wilson wrote:
My wife won't play unless the game heavily addresses relationships. Needless to say it influences my design goals. Also narrows the playing field to about 2 games.
So Emily, if you want a playtester without gamer baggage (and we all have it, damn us) I gots one for you.
On 3-5-05, dfgdfshjaa wrote:
On 3-11-05, Eric wrote:
The thing I've been trying to get a handle on is how to manage the downsides of love and affection.
We all agree that we'd like to see a game mechanically handle love & friendships. "Mechanically handle" can mean a lot of things; it can be a kind of stakes, a means of resolution, a factor in resolution/reward (a stat or score), lots of things. The thing is, because we're looking at making it come up in our games, we tend to reward it. And in doing so, we run into some pitfalls.
It may be that it is harder to model frustration, ennui, curiosity outside the pair, and so forth... than to model affection itself. And without these, we get a one-sided situation which doesn't do anybody any good.
It happened to me. In 1st ed. Pendragon, there's a roll on your Love score to get a significant bonus on acts associated with that passion. It's like an early version of SAs. Quite costly/difficult to increase. My PC was a lovestruck fool, and I made those sacrifices and eventually by the time we wrapped up had, if I recall correctly, a score of nineteen - twenty-one when you included a magical gift from her. Which was huge, insane, ridiculous for a roll-under on d20 system. As a young knight I challenged Lancelot to a joust in the hopes of proving that Milady was fairer than Guenevere... that sort of thing. I was devoted beyond belief.
And you know what? It was stale. Happily, it was part of the character's mores that one can and must love where the heart finds it, so I also had as many secondary Love scores on my sheet as the rest of the group put together, and about thirty bastards all over Britain. And that - that was fun. Conflicted, not always friendly, and a blast.
The problem was that I had, statistically, put so much into the primary relationship between Arylle and Katrina that the GM running Katrina (my wife) felt seriously constrained in terms of what she could do with her. Kill Katrina and a PC drops to literally half the man his compatriots are. Threaten her and he becomes halfway to invincible in her defense. Quarrel with him and he moves heaven and earth to re-earn her favour - and invariably succeeds, cf. killing her.
Frankly, Katrina was a dull character. She was cardboard, too constrained to be much fun to interact with. The relationship itself was a good seed (get landed and lauded so her father will look at you twice, etc) but the character itself was deformed by expectations.
One lesson from this, for me, is that those rules included no way to prompt us for permission and expectation on the downsides of love. There was no downside to loving with all one's force. (Well, a failed passion roll had a lovely "run into the woods and be melancholy" consequence, but it was awkward to use and not hugely game-relevant even when invoked.) There was a mechanism for love... but none for ennui, cabin fever, crossed wires. Partly this is genre, of course - but there was no mechanism for the tension of sexual frustration in courtly love, either.
I'm finding the same sort of thing in working on the space opera game mentioned above. What's the downside to a happily devoted amour-fou between pilot and engineer? If having their relationship run smoothly gets him bonuses in his fight, then how to prevent Arylle and Katrina from cropping up over and over?
Having said that, of course, at least one solution is obvious. Don't give bonuses for a smooth-running love. Give it for snarks, fury, jealousy, and even cheating. Give it for the burn, not the toasty warmth. Balance that against the emergent benefits of things running smoothly between the one who flies the ship and the one who keeps it flying; neither solution "wins", both are rewarded. Yum. Because it's a heroic game, give the same bonus for valour when it's