The Game A Day Project

FilliN' Up: Situation Creation for OctaNe

2006-05-11T13:33:00.000-05:00

[This is by no means an offical anything for OctaNe.]

So, you and yer buds wanna play a game of OctaNe, right? Well, yer gonna need some Rock'N'Roll. So, you guys all figger out what Rock'N'Roll song y'all like - it's gonna kinda be the basis of yer game, so make it a good one (hint: anything by Johnny Cash or Elvis is a rockin' default). So, y'alls siddown with a piece o paper and a pen, and y'all listen to this Rock'N'Roll song. Pay attention! and write down this stuff: the mood of the song; the style or genre of the song; individual words that stand out; lyrical phrases that stand out; what the song makes you think and feel. No talkin'!

Now, when the songs over (just listen the once), go through what y'alls wrote. The GM is gonna make a master list out of all yer lists. He'll go through each thing - for mood and style, yer all gonna agree on one thing. Everyone will say what they wrote, and y'all need to see which one you can agree on. The mood will be the mood of yer game - upbeat, trippy, grim, wutever. The style will be a broad thing that covers the stuff, the color of the game - country & western will have lots of cowboys and pickups, surf rock will have...surfing, space rock will have aliens and robots, and so on.

For the other stuff, the GM will add each entry to the master list, with the number of times it was on a list in descending order next to it. That doesn't make sense, so here's an example: if y'all have 4 people, and y'all each write "Cowboy", the GM will put "Cowboy 4 3 2 1" on his paper. If y'all have "Prison" on two lists, thats "Prison 2 1" and so on. The numbers are the number of uses each entry will get for the game.

So, when y'all are done, you'll have a list with the mood and style of yer game, and a number of words and phrase with numbers next to 'em.

Now, when you make yer characters for OctaNe, you can use any of the entries on the sheet as Skills, Gear or Description entries. If y'all do, the GM crosses off the highest number next to the entry, reducing it's uses by one. Y'all don't need to use the entries if you don't wanna.

In the game, all these things count as "call-ons." A player can use a call-on to give himself an extra dice for any roll. Make sure y'all know which dice is the call-on dice. Whoever narrates the roll has to incorporate the call-on into the result. So, if I use "Fulsom Prison" as a call-on, and I get to narrate, I might say how my characters experience in Folsom gave him a particular skill, or that he knows the drifter cuz they were in Folsom together, or wutever. The GM can use a call-on to incorporate that thing into his narration, and remove a dice from a players roll before you resolve a conflict roll.

[I need to reread OctaNe one more time, cuz I want to do something with whether the call-on dice rolls higher or lower than its uses remaining, but I dunno what will be good. Will update when I figure it out.]

Fluxx

2006-04-07T09:56:00.000-05:00

Fluxx is a great mellow game. If you're not familiar, you start with a basic rule (draw 1 card, play 1 card), and you can play new rules (from drawing and playing more cards, to randomly playing cards, to getting bonus's for certain game conditions, and so forth) in addition to goals and the cards you need to fulfill the current goal and win the game. The problem with it is that playing it is way more fun than winning it. You only need a combination of three cards (in general) to win the game, and the chances of having the right three cards at any given time are fairly random. So play consists of playing crazy rules and shtuff, and then at some point someone will be all "I win!"

The issue, I think, is two-fold. First is that player skill has very little to do with who wins. The second is that there is no way to effect someone else on their turn in order to keep them from winning if they have the right cards. So, you have a situation where the stated goal of play (winning the game) is at odds with the fun part of the game (playing crazy rule combinations).

Lesson? The goal of play and the fun part of play should at least have synergy and feed into each other. Ability to affect each other on a strategic level is necessary for challenge.

I'm thinking of house-ruling (heh) and playing where you keep a goal when you win it, but the game continues until the last card is drawn, and the person with the most goals wins. I want to see if this makes it into a more fulfilling game for my play preferances.

[Edit]

So, I've played a couple of games with my house rules, and I do indeed find it more fun. The changes are as follows:

Play normally. When you would win the game, instead take that Goal and place it on your side, out of play. Continue playing normally. The game ends at the end of the turn in which the last card is drawn out of the deck. Whoever has the most Goals on their side wins. Break ties by number of Keepers, and then by cards in hand.

To avoid an "infinite deck" combo, the card that reshuffles the discard into the draw pile is placed out of play once it is played. Or, hell, keep it in and prepare to be in for the long haul.

Alternately, you reshuffle the deck as per normal when you run out, and you set a number of Goals (5 is good) that you need in order to win. Whoever wins that number of Goals first wins the game.

It's totally still not a serious strategy game, but it does give an element of player-vs-player challenge that I find engaging.

Noir Games?

2006-01-18T14:53:00.000-05:00

I'm reading a book about the origins of film noir right now, and it got me to thinking two things. One, are there any Noir games out there? and Two, how would I approach a Noir game? If you know anything about the first, shout out. As for the second...

One of the cool things about Noir is how incredibly tightly the genre is bounded (aesthetically, technically, narratively) without creating cookie-cutter stories and characters. I can see a Noir game as a GM-less setup, probably for 2-4 players. There's a cast of main characters (the femme fatale, the antihero/protagonist, the unabashed criminal, the representative of the law) which are further defined in the beginning process. They are all co-owned, in that different people can play them in different scenes, but I think it would be worth it for each player to have final say over...something..for one character, mainly because of buy-in issues.

The characters move up and down on different scales, representing emotional connexion/distance to each other, as well as having a progressive measure for the macguffin (the big score, the discovery of the truth about the girl, whatever). I can definitely see a lot of Karma resolution here, with tight resources and consequences for the slighest screw-up.

To be really Noir, it also has MLWM-esque endgame conditions, but with pretty tight pre-determined events (getting gunned down, suicide and the like for the anti-hero, being betrayed and brought in, getting away with it, and the like for the femme fatale, etc). I'd have to watch more noir to really get this right.

This would also be a good scenario for my thoughts on 1-on-1 adversity, and maybe worth being the "default" for that kind of game.

Conflicts & Scenes

2006-01-17T11:53:00.000-05:00

I have yet to see this in a game (though I'm sure it's out there, somewhere).

When I've played trad games without explicit scene-framing rules, I've noticed that theres little to no corrolation between scenes and conflicts. This is partly a function of task resolution systems (Storyteller, I'm looking at you...), and partly a function of there being no mechanical support for one way or the other.

Many Indie games, on the other hand, either call for or seem to imply one-conflict-per-scene play. Which is fine (it was my thought for Carry), but, in my head, is just starting to feel more and more stilted.

My thought: explicit mechanical support for seeding, entertwining and then resolving conflicts through a series of scenes. Something along the lines of a conflict pool that you can add and remove dice from depending on your characters stake in the conflict, which may not get resolved until many scenes after it begins.

F'rex: Jimmy and Danny are two sailors on a 16th century Ship of the Line. They run afoul of the mean-spirited Bosun (? i think). Jimmy's player seeds a conflict (writes down on a note card, or something) "embarrass the Bosun in front of the men." Danny's player seeds "get in Bosun's good graces." They both put some amount of dice on the conflict.

A couple scenes later, the situation comes up that Jimmy steals some grog, in order to bribe another sailor to help him set up the Bosun. Danny sees him, and reports him. Danny puts some more dice on his conflict, while Jimmy takes some off of his in order to seed "prevent Danny from becoming the Bosuns nark."

Whenever a player gets to a point that they think is appropriate for the conflict, or when they think they have enough dice, is when you actually do some rolling and resolve the conflict.

You could do all kinds of things with giving the right to call for resolution to different people around the table, as well as mechanical limits and rules for when and how dice are transferred. Also, lending (or stealing) dice to (from) others conflicts; people seeding conflicts for other people; and rollover from resolved conflicts into related ones.

I think this would be nice in terms of breaking conflicts out of the "one-roll" paradigm and enabling them to scale in terms of time and buildup, in addition to sheer mechanical size.

If there are examples of this kind of thing out there, shout out!

Strength Of Concept

2006-01-11T14:20:00.000-05:00

I'm thinking about this in context of using it for Imp.

So, when people make up a character, they naturally have cental things that are important to their concept for that character. Like, last time I played D&D, I wanted my fighter to have a terrible, mysterious curse. Now, I talked to the DM about it, and we pulled something together mechanically, but it's totally something that I can see being entirely in my head, and pulling it out at some point during the game, with no system support whatever. In a more pernicous form, this is the old my-guy-is-a-complete-badass problem with starting characters, where their chances for success are often low enough that the character that you envision as a complete badass fails at lots of things. Your image of the character is dissonant from how he actually plays.

I've been thinking about this solution: on your character sheet, you have a couple of different areas, Central; Important; and Interesting. As you may imagine, these mean "Central to my concept of this character," "Important to my concept of this character," and "Interesting but unnecessary part of my concept of this character." The first step of conflict resolution is Karma - compare whatever trait/s you are using. If one person is using a Central trait and the other isn't, the first wins without resorting to Fortune. If one is using Important and the other is using Interesting, the Important one gets a significant advantage to the Fortune resolution. If they are both using the same level, it goes to unmodified Fortune resolution.

I think there would also be a currency expenditure in there so that you can temporarily bump up to match the other person, if they have a higher trait then you. So there is room for underdogs.

Advantages: Flagging. It's all there on the character sheet, for everyone to see. Reduces handling time, as I envision people will tend to want to use their Central traits as often as possible.

Disadvantages: Easy to "game," I suppose. Flat-feeling resolution if you consistently face lower-trait opposition.

An interesting thing to add onto it, I think, would be something where only other people can decide if your play demonstrates a change form whats on your sheet. Like, Bob could look at Charlies sheet and be all "Dude, you haven't used "Hard Drinker" at all, and its in Central. I'm moving it to Interesting." In the context of Imp, this may very well be a power reserved for each characters Imp. Mmmm, I like that idea.

Zooming

2006-01-10T02:07:00.000-05:00

I know that people talk about it sometimes, but I have yet to see a game that allows for seamless zooming from one level of "character" to another. Which I think would be really interesting.

Take a medieval setting, divine right of kinds, all that good stuff. There are the following "levels" of character available: Human Being, Army, Country, God. They are linked thusly: A God bestows it's blessings on a Country, which enforces its interests with an Army, which is composed of Human Beings. The character sheet has a list of attributes down the left side, and the four levels across the top. So, going from left to right, you might have:

Strength|Lightning|Farmlands|Sorcerer Corps|Punching

Which means that the God's Strength is Lightning, the Countries Strength is its Farmlands, the Armies Strength is its Sorcerer Corps, and the Human Being in questions Strength is in Punching. So whenever you get into a situation that you need to resolve with Strength, you get a bonus by using that levels strength in your narration, or whatever.

I can see this being a framework for collaborative group-play centered around the saga of a given Country. You make up the details for each level (Calaberous, the God of Lightning; the Country of Greenswald; the Glorious Army of Greenswald; Karabash the Red, general of the Army), and give each one a number of positive and negative traits, and players bring in the different traits against each other when playing a scene with that level of character.

The Army level could be any gathering of people - a church congregation, a village, a household - anything thats more than a couple people. Also, maybe you could make a number of characters on each level, which relate to each other in interesting ways.

But the essential points are that the resolution system uses the "generic" traits, which get plugged in with the specific traits for whichever level of character you're playing, and thusly you can move seamlessly through the levels throughout play. Maybe with some kind of currency that you spend to access different levels (starting at individual, going up to group, and then country, and then god) for more gamist-y play.

If I ever pull together the Simmy wargame I've been thinking about, I may look into doing this kind of thing as an integrated RPG in the same setting.

"The" Combat System

2006-01-09T13:55:00.000-05:00

(shhh....this was totally posted on Monday...)

I've been working on a combat system like this in a couple nascent designs, and it keeps on sucking. Basically, I want something where there's an element of tactics that come into who strikes first and such, which propogates through the rest of the combat. In the past I've toyed with something along these lines:

Stats are measured by die size. Each character has a Tactics stat. They can choose any dice up to the Tactics stat size (so, if you have a d8, you can choose a d4, d6 or d8). Each player in the combat does this behind their hand, secretly.

You reveal at the same time. The highest die size strikes first, but those with lower get to add their dice to whatever their roll is, and adding another dice will probably mean you win, if the initial strike doesn't kill ya. So, the trick is to get the largest die you can while still "losing" the reveal.

In practice (yes, I did playtest this), it was just...awkward. And the guys I was playing with, who are pretty sharp in general, didn't internalize it by the end of the session, so I had to explain it each time. Maybe it's just wierd that way.

But I like the basic idea, that you get rewarded for not doing the basic/easiest thing (go with your highest die, all the time), and the way that it balances out uneven opponents (a guy with a low stat will almost always get the bonus against a guy with a high stat). But thats also a problem, because it means that there's little reason to have a high fighting stat.

Some thoughts: Attach it to a dice pool system w/target numbers and sucesses. Your rating is the maximum number of die you roll in your pool, and you choose any number up to that number. If you choose lower than your opponent, you're target number is lowered by 1. If you're number is higher than your opponents and you choose lower, than your number is lowered by 2 (so thats part of the advantage of having a better Tactics skill). An easy way to visually do this: set out a number of dice equal to your full score, put your hand in front, remove down to your number choice, unreveal.

Also, part of your effectiveness can be temporarily lowering your opponents Tactics score for the duration of the combat, so if you're being stomped, you can work on that instead of trying to injure them, or whatever, to level the playing field.

A big sticking point: multiple opponents. I see something Dogs-like (and Tunnels & Trolls like, from what I understand) where a group of opponents just means bigger or different stats, not more rolls. Damage goes into reducing stats, all that good stuff.

Let's Take A Stab...

2006-01-06T12:54:00.000-05:00

...at what Vincent's been on about.

Let's start with something bog-standard, for ease - fantasy dungeon crawl, kill things and take their stuff in order to kill things better and take more stuff. GM and players, with character creation that emphasizes niche protection.

Except that the (small-p) premise is that the characters start out going into the dungeon, with no mention of how they got together or why they're doing it. Part of the game is establishing those background things through play. But you're characters all start out with stats'n'shtuff thats angled towards either killing things, taking their stuff, or doing either with flair.

Now, there's another section of the character sheet, that has entries for all kinds of cool background things - like, social status, family connections, wealth, inherited weapons and armor, kewl powerz, etc. There's currency to purchase those things - which trigger little "flashback scenes" about where those things came from.

How do you get that currency? You point at someone else's character, and say something like "Hey, Killer the Red, why aren't you using your Axe of Killing Stuff? Remember when we...." and then you narrate a flashback scene. Boom, Killer the Red has an Axe of KIlling Stuff, and you have currency to raise (no purchasing! only raising/adding bonuses to/etc) your background stuff that others establish).

But you get more currency if you give him something baaad - like, a cursed Axe that always misses the deathblow, or something. And the GM gets adversity currency for giving the PCs stuff as well, again more for bad than for good.

Bad and good are totally a dial thats up to the group in question, of course. And one would tend to think that, theres good bad and bad bad, in that sometimes you'll give someone something that he goes "holy shit, thats awesome, my dude is sooooooooo screwed!", and sometimes he'll be like "dude, why are you such a prick." No backsies!

Now, that would hilight dysfunction, I think....

Anyway. I wonder if thats anywhere close to what Vincent's talking about.

Best Of: December 2005

2006-01-05T21:08:00.000-05:00

As promised, the first month of Game A Day in review. Below are the three posts I find of most interest, slightly revamped to include further pondering and the inclusions of comments. See the original posts for the literal comments, etc.

Saturday, December 17, 2005: Limited Resource Adversity Systems

What ways are there to institute mechanically limited adversity in GMed games? What are effective ways to curb or eliminate GM fiat in generating adversity for characters?

Soft guidelines, where theres some kind of rating that is meant to inform the GMs choice of adversity. Very common, and easily blends into GM fiat in adjudicating adversity.

Hard limitations, where theres a resource spent on adversity that is finite and dependent on some other mechanical system (your proto-NPC rolls in DitV, the characters Scene Presence in PtA). Needs to be well-designed and implemented in order to provide appropriate levels of adversity.

Interaction-dependent limitations, where theres a resource spent on adversity that is finite, and dependent on the good will of other players (dice exchange in Carry, kinda). The mechanic demands that players decide how much power of adversity they want to face, and then place the currency for that power into the GMs hands. SImilar to Player-generated intentional resource.

Hard guidelines. You can only present a party of 4 7th level characters with a CR 7 monster, etc. There seems to be no intrinsic advantage of this over a soft guideline, unless the system is fine-tuned enough to make those kinds of blanket guidelines applicable. The potential for sheer inapplicability seems pretty large.

Player-generated intentional resource. The players only assign the GM (or another player, or whatever) currency or resources to generate adversity when they want to face it. While having this be very strict could lead to easy violation of the Czege Principle, I think, having some kind of system where the player decides when the GM get resources, and the GM (or another player, or the system, or something) decides how much resource could be interesting.

Player-generated required resource. Whenever the player does X, the GM gets Y resource with which to present challenge. Creates choices for the players between doing things that may be easy or smart and giving the GM more resources for adversity, or doing dumb or hard things and not facing that challenge. Can be tweaked to encourage/punish whatever kinds of behavior is appropriate.

Hard mechanical adversity. If your character has X stats, he will face opposition with Y stats, calculated in some way via the system. GM still presents and plays the opposition, but its composition and resources are completely contingent on the players choices. Alternately, the GM has some kind of resource with which to modify the hard stats given by the system.

Soft mechanical adversity. Like above, but with guidelines instead of hard rules, which are then interpreted by the GM.

Player-limited scope. GM has the authority to present any kind of adversity, but players have power to veto, change or otherwise ameliorate it's severity. Alternately, players have power to adjust it up, as well.

Random adversity. Roll on a table, get a monster or encounter. To make this more interesting, perhaps the players can narrow down a range of possible challenges, one of which is then selected randomly, as a form of Challenge. I can also see this for No-Myth /Bricolage Sim play, where you generate a challenge randomly, and then work it into the overall narrative, etc, post facto.

Wednesday, December 21, 2005: Musical Creation(combined with Part Deux)

Play a song at the beginning of the session. Everyone has a pen and blank sheet of paper. Draw lines to make three columns. In one column, write down every noun you hear in the song. In the next, write down every verb or action you hear. In the third, write down every descriptive word you hear. If you feel unsatisfied with your lists, listen to the song again. If you listen to it three times, that should be enough, or you should pick another song.

The nouns are Setting and Character elements. The verbs are Skills/Powers/Cool Shit. The descriptive words are modifiers that can be attached to any of the above.

Now, you see what nouns are everyones sheet. All that stuff has to go into the Setting. If someone wants something to go in and its on a majority of sheets, it goes in. If its not, its up to a vote. Or something. It would probably be valuable to devise some kind of bidding/sacrifice interaction for this step. Once all of the elements off the sheet are in place, the group fleshes out the setting/world through kibbitzing and conversation.

Now, characters get all the stuff they have under the second column on their character sheet. They also write down all the descriptor stuff in a different place on the sheet.

Resolution is along the lines of spending stuff on your sheet, and using the modifiers to re-spend them.

Once all the Setting elements have been chosen, there's a number of dials that you set. Something along the lines of: Genre, Key, Tempo...maybe more? I know next to nothing about music as such.

Anyway, Genre would be a musical genre, and also the genre of the game (sometimes this is contiguous, and sometimes it'll need interpretation. I mean "Country" is pretty easy, or "Punk Rock". But, like, "Egyptian Orchestral"? Or even "Classical" could lead to many different kinds of games. "Bollywood" - now that would be some crazy shit). Maybe this is the genre of the song you played, or maybe it's not. In either case, the dial setting is how strictly the setting adheres to the genre, with some kind of mechanical effect in there somewhere. Maybe penalties for going outside genre? I dunno.

Key would be kinda funky. I'd need to talk to some music theory people and ask about what keys are standard for what "sounds" of music - like, calming, angry, progressive, whatever. Anyway, you set a number of keys (oh, a chord!) that corresponds to those themes/moods/whatever are in the setting. Maybe three, maybe five, depending on how extensive actual key corrolations are. Now, this is entirely in my head, and I don't know if it would make sense to people that actually know music.

Tempo would be a certain number that would have a lot of mechanical weight - something like, your actions push your personal Tempo up and down, and when its within certain ranges of the main Tempo it does stuff - too under and you get penalties to active things and bonuses to passive thigns, too over and it's vice versa, or something like that.

Other music stuff that would translate to fun mechanics?

Overall, I'm starting to get an idea of an Everway/Multiverser kind of thing, where theres an infinity of worlds, or at least locations, that are each musically-linked in this manner. You could pre-gen a number of them, as examples for creating your own, and characters from those worlds are always built on songs of that genre.

So I'm still missing grippy Situation creation, but I'm feeling better about the rest.

Saturday, December 24, 2005: Branching Out A Little

Ok, so Sim-supporting miniatures game. First, let's get rid of two big minature game staples:

Point-based unit purchasing

Single-race civilizations that field armies all of that race

First, I think that there should be a populated world, rife with conflict, and all that stuff. Political and ethnic divisions should be seperate - as in, some countries/kingdoms/whatever have majority-ethnic populations, others are totally mixed, most fall somewhere on the spectrum. Of course, there's a large contingent of mercenary forces and non-affiliated beasties that are ripe for recruitment.

Building an army is kind of like using Lifepaths, as I understand them, from Burning Wheel. There's a number of options for why the army is in existence - raised by the nobility to prosecute a war, a rebellious mob, a megalomaniacal cult of personality, a democratically raised militia, whatever. Each of these base choices gives you a number of unit choices. Units are classified by metrics of race/ethnicity and social class, maybe others (magical ability?), as well as the basic organization of the army. You build your base army from this. Write down all the officers/important people, as well as any interesting thoughts about backgrounds, etc. Maybe each army gets a "signiture unit" of your choice.

Each choice has a "army path" tree, which further adds/removes options, changes the organization, gives access to cool stuff, whatever. You probably make two choices past your base choice. Stuff like "co-opted by the forces of evil" or "independent means" or "naval force". You make your first choice, promote officers into new slots, fill from the bottom with recruits, etc. Keep track of these changes, you're building the history of your army. Your second choice, you do it again.

Now, maybe each "strata" of unit gives you a certain number of bodies to divide amongst the units, or you have a total force that you divide among them all, something like that. For the most part, fighting effectiveness is based on history/background of the unit, with some options, which you set when you get the unit. Weapons are pretty much color, for the most part, except for really special stuff.

So, when you're done with the army, you have something with a whole background, including (probably) bonuses in combat from using certain themed tactics, stuff like that. The text comes with sheets for recording what happens to each unit - casualties, successes, etc. At certain benchmarks they become eligable for promotion to new unit status, new options, etc. You can keep track of this on your own, or have it be part of a campaign. There will be good and bad changes, that, if you keep track of them, should cancel over time in terms of army effectiveness.

Now, the actual mechanics would have to include some mechanisms for meta-control, I think, in order to simulate close, back-and-forth battles. Maybe each player gets two "reversals of fortune" that give an advantage to their side for a little bit, etc. Maybe some armies get certain meta-options (the patriotic rebellion army gets a phat bonus once it takes mad casualties, for example) that are theme-specific.

Of course, a lot of work would have to go into either A) balancing all the options or B) making the mechanics such that badly matched forces still get close, exciting battles.

What does actual gameplay look like? Well, armies will have a number of goals, some established when you create them, and some that you choose from depending on the battle in question. There will be rules for how to play armies of vastly different sizes against each other, as well - the victory conditions for the little guy are very different than those for the big guy, and equally possible to acheive. Sydneys suggestion about getting credit for saving your own guys lives as well as killing the other guys is a great one. The record-keeping would be such that you can track the status of each individual in each unit (unless you're playing unrealistically huge armies, I suppose) - but I envision an "average" force of being between 30 and 50 models. Forces are small, most battles are skirmishes, that kind of thing.

Part of this, to reiterate, is that it would be totally possible to make an army, and play that same army in every game you ever play, keeping track of its fortunes and failures, until it meets an appropriate end, or you decide to disband it.

Card Mechanics

2005-12-29T20:18:00.000-05:00

Why no, I'm not spending a lot of time thinking about these because I want to use cards for Imp...

This is also based off of some half-remembered posts by Ron about how cards are usually not used to their full capacity as determinents.

So, what qualities do (a normal deck of playing) cards have that can be used in resolution?
- numbered cards (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
- face cards (jack, queen, king, ace)
- color (red, black)
- suit (diamond, heart, spade, club)
- (sometimes) jokers
- face up vs. face down
- number of cards in hand
- and all the combinations of the above

Thats a lot of options. I think there's a lot of potential for depth and interaction here.

I think a good stategy is to identify which of those basic qualities you think will be most useful to how your game works. Try to keep it to one or two.

*Example: Stats are 1-10. Draw a card, if it's equal to or below your stat you succeed, if its above you fail.

Then see which of the others could be used to complicate the main qualities, and for what reasons. Look at what things you want to be connected in with resolution, go for those first.

*Example: If you draw a face card, you fail at the action but you get to keep the face card. Using kewl powerz requires you to spend face cards.

Then, look at the other options, and ask what happens if. You can say nothing, but think about it:

*Example: What happens if I draw a red card? What happens if I draw a black card? Nothing. I don't want that to matter.
*Example: What happens if I draw a certain suit? Hmmm...what about, you can key the skills to certain suits, and if you draw one of that suit it counts as being one lower. And the suits mean things - like, clubs means violence, hearts means emotions, etc. So, if you key your "Fast-Talking" skill to Clubs, it means that you incorporate violence into your fast talking - getting really close and pushy, stuff like that. Expanding on that, whichever suit you draw colors your action - which means that you need to declare intent, then draw, then describe.
*Example: What happens if I can play cards face down? Oooh....put bluffing into it, for contested actions. Instead of just drawing, you draw a number of cards (figure out way to determine how many), and then you can play them face up or face down. Time to brainstorm how bluffing should work.

The lesson here? Try looking at all the possible ways to use your resolution medium to generate results, and then figure out which ones are appropriate, which ones can be used to complicate matters, etc.

A Simple Mechanic

2005-12-27T23:54:00.000-05:00

I'm going to go ahead and blame the holidays for the break in posts here. Damn holidays!

Anyway, a simple, but I think interesting, die mechanic. You're in a conflict, and you're rolling a dice to do something. Now, whatever you roll, you can apply it to that action, or you can hold it. If you hold, you don't succeed at the action, but you add that dice to the next dice you roll. Now, with the next dice, you have the same option - hold, or apply. If you hold, you now have those two die, plus the next one you roll. It's cumulative. Hell, you can even hold that stack of die from the end of a conflict that you lose, to apply to the next one.

The point? Lot's of tactical circling - do you each hold until you have monster die stacks, do you go for the smaller, but more constant, wins, or what? Emulative of some sources - like getting beaten down and beaten down until the big climax, when you totally kick ass.

Some modifications/complications - skill levels limit how many die you can stack. You have to use some kind of ability or currency to carry from one conflict to another. Combine it with the Otherkind mechanic, and you have a stack of die which you choose to put towards different things in the conflict, when you use them. Opposed rolling, only the winner can stack. Opposed rolling, only the loser can stack. You can only stack if the next action directly follows from the one you just did. You can only stack if the next action does not directly follow. Etc.

Branching Out A Little

2005-12-24T14:48:00.000-05:00

This is coming from my latest Hamsterprophecy post.

(I've never read or played a historical miniatures game, and have no idea if they tend to have the same or different problems. Just, FYI)

Ok, so Sim-supporting miniatures game. First, let's get rid of two big minature game staples:

Point-based unit purchasing
Single-race civilizations that field armies all of that race

Sci-Fi Setting

2005-12-23T23:03:00.000-05:00

It's a fairly standard (by standard, I mean Geek standard, not really-real-science fiction standard, mainly cuz I don't know much about really-real-sci-fi) "gritty" sci-fi setting. Something along the lines of a planet completely covered with constructed matter, one world-sized city, ruled by a petty and bureaucratic oligarchy. Oppressive government structure, but its so big that it can't possibly keep an eye on everything, so there's lot of illegal/extralegal activities. Everyone is kinda generic human. Fairly standard setting-Sim kind of game, skill trees, different splats to be a part of, etc.

This game is kinda like Mike Holmes's Cell Gamma (from the No-Press Anthology), in that the GM really, really knows something that the players don't. But, there is a twist that the players know - their characters all have to be adults (above 21, or something of the like), and their memories don't go back farther than their 18th birthday. Nobody, no NPCs, no-one, has memories of childhood or adolescence.

There's certain guages on the character sheet that track stuff thats useful to the matters at hand - like bravery, or honor, or willpower, that kind of stuff. At some point in the continuing campaign (oh, it's designed for long-term play. Oh, oh yes) there's a Breaking Point. A situation comes up where it's resolution is absolutely dependent on something coming up from the pasts of the characters. The text would, of course, have buckets of tips and help for putting situations together for different amounts and kinds of characters, that involve all of their backgrounds.

Anyway, the Breaking Point. The only way out is to bring something up from the past - and each character has a dramatic flashback. There's a number of options for their true origins, dictated by those guages I mentioned above. I'm thinking, some are vat-grown to the age of 17, have a year of basic "skills" training, then have their higher faculties activated at 18. Some are from various other planets or worlds, who were smuggled onto this one, but part of the deal is that they wipe the memory, so the smugglers can never be found out. Some were criminals, who had their developmental years erased so as to purge the elements that made them criminal. And some, the fewest, are plain, born-n-raised humans that, when they leave the public educational system, are wiped so the government can fit them into the places they need them in society.

Did I mention that the determinent of the "truth" is entirely dependent on how the player managed their players guages?

Anyway, now a new phase of the game begins. Only very few people on this planet "Break," and they have an entirely different, and secret, society that operates alongside and beneath "normal" society. It's obsessively caste-oriented (Vat people are the bottom rung, goes up through immigrants, criminals, and the highest is pure-bred human) and paranoid, with fingers in all the pies. There are ample, ample reasons for nominally normal people to abhor this society, but once you've Broken you can't go back - and they will find you out. I'm also thinking that, once you have access to all of your memories, you can start to learn or develop supernatural powers, probably stuff along the lines of "things that go bump in the night" - turning into shadow, drinking blood to gain more power, generating fear and paranoia in others, that kind of stuff. Creepy stuff, that helps them keep their hold on the shadows.

There's a lot of goals there that may conflict (like, the coolest part is the part that no-one other than the GM is supposed to know, makes it kinda hard to sell), but it's interesting.

Musical Creation, Part Deux

2005-12-22T23:56:00.000-05:00

Is this cheating? Mayhaps.

Anyway, I had some more thoughts on this whole musical creation thing.

Once all the Setting elements have been chosen, there's a number of dials that you set. Something along the lines of: Genre, Key, Tempo...maybe more? I know next to nothing about music as such.

Anyway, Genre would be a musical genre, and also the genre of the game (sometimes this is contiguous, and sometimes it'll need interpretation. I mean "Country" is pretty easy, or "Punk Rock". But, like, "Egyptian Orchestral"? Or even "Classical" could lead to many different kinds of games. "Bollywood" - now that would be some crazy shit). Maybe this is the genre of the song you played, or maybe it's not. In either case, the dial setting is how strictly the setting adheres to the genre, with some kind of mechanical effect in there somewhere. Maybe penalties for going outside genre? I dunno.

Key would be kinda funky. I'd need to talk to some music theory people and ask about what keys are standard for what "sounds" of music - like, calming, angry, progressive, whatever. Anyway, you set a number of keys (oh, a chord!) that corresponds to those themes/moods/whatever are in the setting. Maybe three, maybe five, depending on how extensive actual key corrolations are. Now, this is entirely in my head, and I don't know if it would make sense to people that actually know music.

Tempo would be a certain number that would have a lot of mechanical weight - something like, your actions push your personal Tempo up and down, and when its within certain ranges of the main Tempo it does stuff - too under and you get penalties to active things and bonuses to passive thigns, too over and it's vice versa, or something like that.

Other music stuff that would translate to fun mechanics?

Overall, I'm starting to get an idea of an Everway/Multiverser kind of thing, where theres an infinity of worlds, or at least locations, that are each musically-linked in this manner. You could pre-gen a number of them, as examples for creating your own, and characters from those worlds are always built on songs of that genre.

So I'm still missing grippy Situation creation, but I'm feeling better about the rest.

Musical Creation

2005-12-21T23:19:00.000-05:00

Play a song at the beginning of the session. Everyone has a pen and blank sheet of paper. Draw lines to make three columns.

In one column, write down every noun you hear in the song. In the next, write down every verb or action you hear. In the third, write down every descriptive word you hear. If you feel unsatisfied with your lists, listen to the song again. If you listen to it three times, that should be enough, or you should pick another song.

The nouns are Setting and Character elements. The verbs are Skills/Powers/Cool Shit. The descriptive words are modifiers that can be attached to any of the above.

Now, you see what nouns are everyones sheet. All that stuff has to go into the Setting. If someone wants something to go in and its on a majority of sheets, it goes in. If its not, its up to a vote. Or something. It would probably be valuable to devise some kind of bidding/sacrifice interaction for this step. Once all of the elements off the sheet are in place, the group fleshes out the setting/world through kibbitzing and conversation.

Now, characters get all the stuff they have under the second column on their character sheet. They also write down all the descriptor stuff in a different place on the sheet.

Resolution is along the lines of spending stuff on your sheet, and using the modifiers to re-spend them.

Whats missing? Situation, probably some kind of baseline stats for characters. An example - maybe next time.

Airplane

2005-12-20T16:22:00.000-05:00

First of, an idea - a game that is basically a collection of one-shots, designed to be played in a seqence (maybe with the same characters, maybe not), but any could be lifted out and played on their own.

Next, an idea for one of those oneshots - the characters are all on an airplane, an international flight. Part of character/scenario creation is decided where the flight is going, and why each character is on it. None of them know each other. They also generate a number of events that will happen on the flight. The GM takes those, adds them to a couple "standard items" if they haven't come up (like an elderly passenger has a heart attack, stuff like that), and either randomly determines or chooses hour marks for them to happen on (Event A happens at 4 hours, Event B at 6, etc.)

There's a clock, and the resolution mechanics include advancing the clock. Maybe the better you succeed, the less time it advances, so you have more time to deal with an event before the next one comes around.

Characters are defined by capability to deal with stress, general adaptability, friendliness, and maybe a handful of specific attributes or skills. Each of them has an NPC foil, who opposes them at every turn for whatever appropriate reason. Maybe there's a group foil. Airline attendents are standard foils, but an early Event should serve to undermine their authority enough that the characters will end up taking charge.

There's real stakes. If things go badly enough, the plane crashes into the ocean and everybody dies, for example. (Thought - for connected oneshots, if this kind of thing happens, its a relative or a close friend of the character than that player then takes for the next oneshot. If the character makes it through, then they can use the same one down the line).

This needs some kind of teeth, but I think actually writing it would be required to find them. But I think it's a cool idea.

Setting Thoughts

2005-12-19T11:03:00.000-05:00

I see a planet thats flat. On each side is a world. No one from either side has ever ventured past the end of the earth, except for lone explorers who are lost to the annals of history. Each thinks that they are alone on a flat earth.

One side, the side that tends to face towards the sun, is a world of lush forests, deep jungles and broad, sparkling oceans. The civilizations that have arisen are rich in woods and ores, and enjoy a diversity of plant and animal life on the majority of the large islands that make up a global archipelago.

Political divisions tend to be along the lines of the tides, and which clusters of islands use the same part of the sea for fish and trades. There is an ever-shifting system of alliances and agreements among the merchant-nations. Between these states exist independent isles, undiscovered archipelagos and the odd pirate federation, drifting on the tides in a network of lashed-together ships and detritus, feeding off of all that comes their way.

At the center of the sea is a giant whirlpool, a vortex that no man has ever been known to return from alive. Getting within mere miles is enough to feel its pull, and many a ship has been lost to its irrestable swirl. At the edges of the earth, the sea pours off a knife-edge between the water and the stars.

The other side of this planet, the side facing away from the sun for much of it's year, is a colder, crueler place. A world of rocky mountains, glaciers and barren tundra, its people organize themselves under fierce warlords and self-proclaimed prophets. This world has much in the way of precious metals and gems, but the pockets of more usable resources are fiercely contested.

In the midst of these wastelands, a handful of glittering cities have arisen, heated by underground pockets of molten magma and hot gases. These principalities revel in their riches, even while trying to bring the most powerful of the warlords and most holy of the prophets under their sway. The arts reign supreme, with a well-crafted portrayal of a ruler being his greatest compliment. By the same token, the harsh words of a few respected critics can bring the city to its knees.

At the center of this world lies it's icy heart, an ever-shifting frozen geyser endlessly pushing the glaciers outwards and outwards. Legends tell of great riches and buried secrets in the heart of the ice, but none have returned from such an adventure. On the edges of the world, a deafening roar eclipses the hearing as a dense mist erases sight. It is said that those who venture too far into the mists are lost, forever.

This is as it has been for centuries. But now, something is changing. The seafarers of the top side have detected changing currents, and some say that the islands themselves are starting to move. Explorers on the bottom side report that the glaciers are moving faster and staying frozen longer, and the frozen geyser is getting larger and larger. And, on both sides, reports come from the remote corners of the world that strange things have began to emerge from the center of the earth....

Conflict System - Sim?

2005-12-18T17:00:00.000-05:00

A conflict system with escalation, totally ripped off from Dogs mechanics. This is something that may, some day, make it into a project.

Characters have three umbrella things - Mental, Physical, Spiritual. When you get into a conflict, you choose which thing you're approach to the conflict falls under. It doesn't have to be the same for all participants. You roll a number of d10s equal to some derived effectiveness stat, somewhere between 3 and 10 dice. So, once its been established that there's a conflict, and you establish the stakes as well, every rolls and has a pool of dice.

Now, every action has a certain number range associated with it - like, a "basic attack" would be 3-8, or something like that. Your kewl powerz, equipment, advantages, etc that do stuff have narrower ranges depending on how powerful or effective they are (like, crazy face-kicking only works on a 7 or 8, etc.). Theres also kewl powerz/etc that let you re-roll a dice, change it one number up or down, etc. You can only do stuff if you can spend a dice or a combination of dice equal to one of the numbers in its range. If you go over, it still happens, but you get some kind of fallout.

Every action and attached die expendure goes towards some overall conflict scale, that measures whos on top. Something like you add all spent die, or you collect all the physical die, something like that. Anyone, once everyone in the conflict had either given up, or run out of stuff to do/aren't willing to escalate/can't spend more dice, whoevers higher on this scale wins the conflict.

If you don't have the dice to spend, or aren't willing to take the fallout from going over on actions, you can escalate by switching what thing (Physical/Mental/Spiritual) you're fighting with. You roll all the die from that stat and add them to your action pool. You can do this twice (moving through all three) in a conflict.

Whats the qualitative difference between the three? Well, hooking in with the setting, you take physical damage, mental damage or spiritual damage, respectively. Physical damage is the easiest and cheapest to heal (including ressurection), mental damage is harder and less understood, and spiritual is the hardest to harm but once it's gone, it's gone. All fallout you earn during and after a conflict goes towards damaging the realm you were using when you got that fallout. Also, it would make sense for there to be some initial barrier to starting outside of the Physical realm, or maybe there's a declaration system/order, and declaring a Realm outside of your opponents has some kind of minor but surmountable penalty.

Whats the point here? Well, I love DitV-style escalation, and want to explore it more. I would like to link this to a setting that has a heavy divide between the physical, mental and spiritual realms, but also interplay between them. I also want to have lots of crunchy bits with real effects on resolution, and the interplay between these bits and randomly-generated numbers will, I think, create the kind of tactical bite that I would enjoy. In my head, it leads to making choices among a restricted field of options, with the knowledge that certain choices (escalation, going over a number) will lead to fallout.

Theoretically, I think this could be very supportive of constructive denial. It's certainly denial (of your full range of choices). Now, for the constructive part - if it links into supporting the Source in some way - perhaps by having some kind of ideal vision of your character, and performing actions in support of that vision, even when facing fallout, gets you some kind of reward - that would be cool. Hard to talk about without having more of the Source detailed out, though.

Limited Resource Adversity Systems

2005-12-17T14:55:00.000-05:00

This meme is still kicking around in my brain. What ways are there to institute mechanically limited adversity in games? I basically want to look at ways to curb or eliminate GM fiat in generating adversity for characters.

In D&D 3.5, the Challenge Rating is a soft guide towards scaling adversity, but as thousands if not millions of forum topics show, it's by no means a perfect system, if it's adhered to at all.

In DitV, the GM gets a certain number of dice on his side of a conflict, and when they're gone they're gone.

In Carry, the GM has a pool of dice that he spends for adversity, and can be refreshed by being given dice from the players.

In PtA, the Producer has a certain amount of Budget depending on the characters and their Scene Presence.

So, from these few examples, we have a couple of different design patterns (check this if you don't know what I'm talking about. I haven't gotten through the whole document yet, so if I'm retreading old ground - oh well).

We have soft guidelines, where theres some kind of rating that is meant to inform the GMs choice of adversity.

We have hard limitation, where theres a resource spent on adversity that is finite and dependent on some other mechanical system (your proto-NPC rolls in DitV, the characters Scene Presence in PtA).

We have another kind of limitation (soft? negotiable?), where theres a resource spent on adversity that is finite, and dependent on the good will of other players.

What about:

Hard guidelines. You can only present a party of 4 7th level characters with a CR 7 monster, etc. There seems to be no intrinsic advantage of this over a soft guideline, unless the system is fine-tuned enough to make those kinds of blanket guidelines applicable.

Player-generated intentional resource. The players only assign the GM (or another player, or whatever) currency or resources to generate adversity when they want to face it. While having this be very strict could lead to easy violation of the Czege Principle, I think, having some kind of system where the player decides when the GM get resources, and the GM (or another player, or the system, or something) decides how much resource could be interesting. This idea dovetails with my previous idea, I think.

Player-generated required resource. Whenever the player does X, the GM gets Y resource with which to present challenge. Creates choices for the players between doing things that may be easy or smart and giving the GM more resources for adversity, or doing dumb or hard things and not facing that challenge. Can be tweaked to encourage/punish whatever kinds of behavior is appropriate.

Hard mechanical adversity. If your character has X stats, he will face opposition with Y stats, calculated in some way via the system. GM still presents and plays the opposition, but its composition and resources are completely contingent on the players choices. Alternately, the GM has some kind of resource with which to modify the hard stats given by the system.

Soft mechanical adversity. Like above, but with guidelines instead of hard rules, which are then interpreted by the GM.

For the sake of completion, random adversity. Roll on a table, get a monster or encounter, with no thought towards how it intersects with the characters. To make this more interesting, perhaps the players can narrow down a range of possible challenges, one of which is then selected randomly, as a form of Challenge.

That's it for now. More thoughts on limited-resource adversity design patterns, as well as examples of games that do use some of those presented above, are welcome.

Upgrade Fetish

2005-12-16T16:08:00.000-05:00

One thing that really appeals to me on some level is the notion of upgrading character abilities and equipment. Some thoughts:

What I like about upgrading, as a concept: It gives concrete goals to strive for, and a sense of acheivement when you gain those goals. It adds tremendous amount of color to a character. It's fun to geek out about weapons and powerz.

What I don't like about upgrading, as I've seen in games: Cookie-cutter effects with different dressings. Goal of upgrading becomes only goal for character development. Upgrades handed out by GM fiat, or random tables.

Thoughts on upgrade systems: Characters start with some kind of signiture weapon, power or ability with a sympathetic link to that character (Arthur & Excalibur, etc). The overall system is fairly crunchy with a number of interactions between die types, rolls, sizes, etc. There's a certain set of base mechanical effects that can be associated with these signiture things, maybe you pick three. All of these mechanical effects have a unique "thing" that they do, with "medium" effects - allow the player to re-roll and have the GM pick a number, for example, or re-roll and drop the highest, stuff like that.

Now, the GM has a limited resource pool to provide adversity to the characters. Through the reward system, players get some kind of resource that they can save towards upgrading their signiture thing (or maybe buying a new one, as well). When they hit the upgrade threshold, they can either gain new signiture effects, or bump their existing effects to "good" (straight re-roll, roll and drop the lowest, add +1 automatically, stuff like that). This also refreshes the GMs adversity resource, allowing him to present the characters with stronger opposition now that they have stronger weapons at their disposal.

These new effects then have to be reflected in the character - maybe they add or change traits on the character sheet, or put new limits on resource pools - but its the players choice of upgrade that then impacts the characters being, not the other way around. More powerful upgrades have heavier fallout for the character.

The keys here are that striving for the upgrade, and then choosing to receive it, are both entirely the players choice and involve some kind of fallout that drives the characters progression as a character, as well. Also, I like the scalability - the characters get things that are just strong enough to overcome the opposition they are about to receive, not after the fact or randomly from a treasure table.

Of course, if there are games out there that already have something like this, I would love to check 'em out.

Political Issues

2005-12-15T20:14:00.000-05:00

A brainstorm on the required elements for a setting that supports true political struggle.

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Core Thoughts:

There have to be a variety of interests (personal, social, ethical, whatever) that are opposed to each other.

These interests not only need to be important enough to strive for, but acheiving these interests also needs to be within the realm of possibility. Part of this should be that the fallout for not acheiving these interests needs to be sufficiently negative to drive characters towards acheiving them.

No one party can be powerful enough to get their interest without a struggle.

All parties can't be close enough in power that they deadlock.

There needs to be more than two umbrellas of interests, so as to avoid all parties clumping into two opposed groups.

Acheiving an interest cannot set that party up as an untouchable power (unless thats the end of the game, or something). Ideally, once an interest is acheive, it re-distributes power rather than focuses it.

---
Supplementary Thoughts:

Outside events should have impact on the distribution of power.

For more personal tension, each party should have opposed interests that fulfill the requirements above (essentially extended bangs).

Perceptions of power and its realitys must be two different things.

Adversity & The Loner

2005-12-14T12:00:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking a lot about adversity lately, as well as about 2-person gaming. The concept for this game would be that it focuses on loner archtypes - the superspy, the rogue cop, the samurai with a shadowed past, the berserker who goes into voluntary exile to avoid hurting those he loves. There's a couple of ways to structure the roles of the two players vis-a-vis each other:

One player has a character, the other provides the adversity.
Both players have characters, and they switch off providing adversity for each other.
Both players have characters, and they provide adveristy for each other while simultaneously playing those characters.

The first is easy and kinda boring at first glance. The last is really interesting, and would require some work to pull off. The middle one seems to strike a good balance (and I submit Scarlet Wake as an excellent example of revolving GM authority).

[Quick review: I agree with the Czege Principle. "When one person is the author of both the character's adversity and its resolution, play isn't fun."]

In any case, the idea would be that the characters player would create the adversity for his character, and authority for that adversity would then pass to the other player. Keep everything focused on the character, nothing extraneous. Nothing happens that that player hasn't set in motion, though it can (and should) mutate and grow past the original conception.

What does adversity mean in this context? Well, characters could have a Dust Devils-esque Issue or Problem, with associated problems cascading from that. I think it would be appropriate for the reason that they're a loner to be a BFD. It would be valuable for part, if not all, of character creation to be playing through their "origin story," with various characters and situations spiraling out of that. Assiging post-fact mechanical-ness to things that come up in a more free-narration kind of setup.

[Another note: I only know Dust Devils through AP posts, so if the comparison isn't accurate, my bad.]

Also, I think it would be valuable to explore the characters player proposing situations, which the adversity player then files away and brings out later. Like "at some point, I'm going to have to choose between my honor and my pride" or "I will fight a wolf for her cub," very concrete situations that the adversity is then to take and spin back out farther down the line. The system should mediate self-generated adversity into other-enforced adversity - or to put it another way, a player can propose adversity for their character, but that adversity is provided by the other player.