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June 8th, 2007
12:19 am - Additive vs. Negational, and Blocking
Paul Tevis' A Few Games More #3 discussed improv acting techniques and made a particular point about blocking. "Blocking" is a term in improv for denying what someone else said. Usually, improv encourages people to always accept what the other person says as true and then elaborate. I was interested, and immediately thought back to my January 2006 post Push/Pull and Additive/Negational.
Also, via Joshua Newman's post "End", I read an Actual Play thread on Primetime Adventures: "END/Sexitricity", where Remi said that for the pitch "I insisted (quite strongly at one point) that there be NO negative input, only positive. I think that for a compressed game, this is the only possible way to eventually reach consensus. It also has the added effect of everyone adding information and no one getting denied on their Big Thing and disengaging.".
A similar subject came up on a Story Games thread on Forge Glossary stuff where Adam Dray explained about "Constructive Denial" -- a phrase used by Ron Edwards in a November 2005 Forge thread "ignoring the subjective" and elaborated on in another Forge thread "Constructive Denial?". Basically, this is a term for cancelling input that crosses certain lines of the game -- but it is tied up in conceptions of GNS Simulationism. cf. TheoryTopics Wiki entry for a summary.
Additive Play
So I discussed some about what additive play is in the Additive/Negational post. So, additive play is play where there is no negative input. If someone suggests something, that thing is accepted as truth. Everyone else accepts that and goes on to add other things to the fiction.
Taken broadly, this applies even to questions. For example, if in an improv scene, I were to ask you "Are you on your way to the Chesterfield meat market?" -- then the non-blocking thing to do is to say "Yes." By saying no, you would be shooting down my idea. By asking that question, I introduced the element of the Chesterfield meat market -- and additive play is based on the idea that each element should be used and built upon. In comic improv, you might respond with an elaboration like "Yes, I'm taking this ostrich there to be slaughtered." This accepts the meat market, and adds the ostrich.
In Paul's podcast, he expressed that one of the problems of blocking in improv was that it can turn into a status clash -- where the actors are trying to put down or deny other actors' input. I think that is true, but there is also plenty of room for status clash within additive play. Actors vie to dominate the scene by jumping in first to define more. By keeping a steady stream of output, a fast-talking improv actor can easily dominate others in the scene.
This rewards aggressiveness and speed of judgement in terms of the social discourse. This is a good thing in many ways. It means that you have fast pacing, and that you will likely get through any resolution quickly. However, the only way to have limits is for players to understand in advance what the lines are and not go over them. By definition it would be non-additive to block, if something goes past limits, then it is negational to block them.
It also can end up skewed pretty far from what you would get by consensus.
Negational Play
Negational play means that someone can put a stop to something that someone else said. Good example are the phrases from Polaris: "You Ask Far Too Much" and "It Was Not Meant To Be" and "It Shall Not Come To Pass".
In a two-person exchange, status conflicts seem similar to additive but slower paced because more assertions are denied. However, among a larger group there is an important group difference. In additive group play, the person fastest at asserting dominates. In negational play, there is a veto power. If other players can negate -- especially if multiple players can negate -- then you can stick closer to what everyone likes.
The point is that it is easier to negate than to create. If someone isn't a fast creator, then they'll simply be overshadowed. Negation -- either by a gamemaster or by some sort of group actions -- allows the more creatively dominant players to be reined in.
Tabletop Resolution Systems
For the most part, dice-using resolution systems -- and even other ones -- are negational. One side or the other is negated in favor of some other result. If there is some sort of suggested goal that was being attempted, then failure to achieve the stated goal is negating that element -- i.e. blocking the person that suggested it.
I suspect the idea of non-blocking will be strange to many tabletop role-players. Even among the indie games, there are still generally conflict resolution systems that can end in the failure of someone's suggestion. In improv terms, this is blocking, regardless of the scale of the resolution (i.e. "I shoot... You miss!" or "I try to kill him... You fail!").
There are some systems that can be used in an additive fashion. Amber and Everway, for example, are systems that don't have any mechanical definition of failure. You can play that everyone succeeds. Everway's tarot card system allows there to be colorful results from a suggestion that don't deny introducing it.
I haven't tried it, but (via Paul Tevis' latest Have Games Will Travel), Joshua Bishop-Roby's Sons of Liberty sounds like a more additive system as well.
Balancing Input
As I consider these two approaches, it seems like what is primarily at stake is (1) keeping up pacing; vs. (2) balancing player input.
In my experience, this has been an art rather than a science, especially #2. If I am GM, I'll try to draw in the less active players and rein in the more dominant ones. If I am a player, I'll draw out less active players by having scenes with them and not pick up as quickly on what dominant players want.
Conjecture: Turn-Taking
One way to control additive dominance without negation is by strict turn-taking. However, the result isn't necessarily a best of both worlds. For example, there is Ferry Bazelmans' Soap: The Game of Soap Opera Mayhem where everyone takes a turn adding in a sentence. A similar mechanic is the newsreel in Lee Short's The Star, The Moon, and the Cross, where each player picks a tarot card and adds it to the sequence. In practice, though, this means that pacing is blocked -- because often someone will have trouble coming up with something on their turn.
Still, it is something to consider.
I have other thoughts on this, but I think I'll first toss the reflections out there for comment.
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November 13th, 2006
11:44 am - Player Knowledge, Planning, and Intent
So, I'd like to discuss the use of player intentions in resolution systems. This follows on a couple of threads: notably Fred Hicks' (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) drivingblind's) LJ post featuring his diagram of "Clarity & Relevance of Player Intent". This relates to a couple of threads: TonyLB's RPGnet thread, "[Craft] Why I won't take task resolution seriously", along with a couple of threads on Story Games: first, "Intentions in Task-Based Resolution", and then two follow-up threads which I attempted: "Intentions in *ANY* Resolution" and "Player Knowledge, Planning, and Intent".
First, let me clarify what I mean. I'm mostly fine with Fred's diagram, though I disagree on some of the conclusions about the nature of play. A slight nitpick is that true player intent can't be taken into account by mechanics -- only declared intent or perceived intent. Games only work based on declared game actions -- though note that I say "game actions" which is different than "character actions". The game actions can always be done with different intents. For example, I can take a game action in Polaris by saying "But only if his hand is chopped off". There are many reasons why I might declare that: I might be trying to tempt the other player into accept that, or trying to get him to drop, or even just trying to get a particular reaction regardless of whether the hand gets chopped or not.
For any success check system, there is a scope of what will happen from a single application of the mechanics (sometimes called the "Stakes"). If the full situation is known, then it may be that a number of steps are needed to apply the mechanics. For example, for breaking into a safe, first you must find the alarm, then disarm it, then circumvent the lock. However, there is a potential problem if the player doesn't know what steps need to be done to get what they as a player are after.
Here's an example. Suppose the players know that someone was shot in a Dogs in the Vineyard game. They want to catch the killer. However, they can't simply resolve finding the killer in a single conflict -- and in that case they may not have a definite number of steps to get what they want. As a parallel case, the PCs might be trying to find a secret entrance to the castle somewhere in the sewers -- but they don't know how to find that out.
The intent solution to this dilemma is that the player says what they're trying to eventually accomplish, and the GM guides them towards what steps they need to get there. As Brand Robins put in a late post on the thread: The big thing here is that because the Player isn't letting the GM know what his end goal is the GM can't help steer him at it until the end -- assuming the GM would want to steer the player. The player never knows which roll will end up with him at the sewers, or near the sewers, or if he can even get to the sewers. So pretty much he keeps trying different things until he finds one that will work. Task by task, no clear intent.
While this works, it's not ideal to me. The problem is that before the example even starts, we have player ignorance. The GM knows what the PC would need to do to accomplish his goal, but the player doesn't. Both as GM and as player, I would prefer to give the player enough information to accomplish things before resolution begins. Then I don't have to steer the players, they can steer themselves.
As a small-scale example of this, if I'm going to play out a combat in detail, I will generally lay out a diagram of the area and describe it. Now, I could instead have my own vision and tell players what they would need to do to, say, surround an enemy. But I find it is more interesting if the players can come up with plans that I wouldn't have thought of... as opposed to me steering them to a plan based on what they tell me they want.
In general, I would say that if the player can't make informed decisions about what game actions she needs to take to accomplish what she wants, then resolution is at the wrong level. Either the player needs to be given more information such that she can make informed decisions, or the resolution should be done at a higher scale. For example, if the players don't have enough information to determine what they should do to find the sewer entrance, then I might simply have them make a single roll (say, Gather Information in D20) to find it. If I don't want it to be a single roll, then I have to provide them with enough information to make informed decisions.
All other things being equal, if there is only one player decision point, then there should be only one player roll. If the players have something they want, but don't know how to get it, then they should ask questions and I'll give them more information. However, I don't want to steer them with what they should do.
A particular pet peeve of mine is times when hiding intent is effective. In my experience, when informed of the player's intent, the GM often makes it hard for them to get what they want, in order to be challenging. This leads to the intent paradox that the players can accomplish some things more easily if they lie (or at least are deceptive) about what they're trying to do. In traditional games, this would often involve being deceptive about the PCs' plan. In some recent resolution systems, this moves onto a meta-level where it can be easier to effect something if it isn't the stakes.
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September 11th, 2006
09:20 pm - Terms for Resolution Systems
Some more general thoughts here on resolution systems. brand_of_amber has some comments from earlier about stakes. This is driven in particular from more resolution system discussion, on theRPGsite and on Story Games. I find that the terms "stakes", "task", and "conflict" are overloaded with baggage -- so I'm going to take a shot at broader alternate definitions.
Resolution Systems
So let me start more generally about resolution systems. So, in general, a resolution system is a mechanical procedure for bringing a resolution to a situation with unclear outcome in the game. At the end of invoking a resolution system, things should be more defined than prior. So, this doesn't include things like wandering monster rolls, random event roll, Whimsy Card play, or Plot Twist buying -- because they introduce situations, and tend to not resolve them.
Success Checks
Now, I'm open to suggestions for better terminology here -- but I'm going to try a classification. A subset of resolution systems is a "Success Check". This is where a character is trying to accomplish something, and you invoke a mechanic (such as a die roll or card play) to determine whether it is a success or failure. There may be other results as well, but this is the core.
Success Check mechanics include things like a generic skill roll, a combat to-hit roll, a conflict resolution roll, and so forth. As long as it scales between success and failure, then it's a success check.
Non-Success-Check mechanics might include something like Everway's Law of Fortune. There a custom tarot card is drawn, but that flavors the outcome rather than specifying success or failure. Polaris' negotiation mechanic is an edge case: it involves some elements of a Success Check (i.e. the key phrase "It Shall Not Come To Pass", which goes to a die roll), but many elements which are not part of it.
Consequence
I would suggest using the term "Consequence" to indicate the central meaning of the roll in a Success Check. In other words, what happens upon success versus what happens upon failure. In the case of a to-hit roll, for example, the Consequence may be whether or not your attack hits. In the case of a spellcasting roll, the Consequence may be whether the spell takes effect.
There are many ways that the Consequence can be defined. It can be specified by the system (as in the case of the hit roll or spell roll). It may be defined by the GM. It may be defined by the GM but openly declared. It may be defined by open negotiation between the GM and the players.
Note that every Success Check by definition has Consequence. The questions are how it is determined, and when and how it is declared.
System-defined Consequence
This is common in many traditional systems, but usually does not cover the complete range of situations. Usually combat and magic rolls have clearly defined Consequence. Other rolls vary. For example, to make an NPC more friendly to you in the D20 system, you can make a Diplomacy check with a difficulty defined by their present attitude (on a named five-step scale).
Freeform Consequence
This is common for systems with player-defined skills, or most uncommon situations in any system. The group defines in some way what the check will mean.
There are some important qualifiers here. At what point in the process does the Consequence of the check get defined? Who knows it, and when is it declared? Many games don't define this. Some define that the Consequence needs to be defined, but don't specify when or a concrete procedure how.
Retries and Extended Consequence
Sometimes, the results of a roll may be tracked into the future of play. One of the most common is disallowing a retry. For example, in the D20 System, you might try a Decipher Script roll. This has no retry allowed, so you cannot decipher a given document in the future unless certain conditions occur.
This is sometimes tricky because the extended consequence is a meta-game restriction which might clash with other parts of the game.
Level of Abstraction
This means how much needs to be specified for the Success Check to be made. For example, consider the following range of results:
Very High Abstraction:
In a high-level political game focusing on the long-term fate of the nation, the player says, "I want to go to the town of Swinton and solve the unrest there." The GM says, "OK, roll your Leadership and add Perception." The player rolls dice, and upon success the problems in the town are solved.
Less Abstraction #1:
In an epic conspiracy game focusing on a nationwide conspiracy, the player says, "I want to question everyone in town, gather what everyone knows, and find the top suspects for the crime." The GM says, "OK, roll a Gather Information check." The player rolls dice, and depending on the level of success, the GM outlines the complete situation and everyone's opinions.
Less Abstraction #2:
In an investigative game, the player says, "I want to go the town's sherriff Joe and question him, and see if he's hiding anything." The GM says, "OK, roll your Interrogation skill." The player rolls dice, and depending on the level of success, the GM tells her varying amounts about what information the sherriff is hiding.
Less Abstraction #3:
In a more detailed investigative game, the player is in the midst of in-character dialogue with the sherriff when she doubts the sherriff's story about what he saw last night. She says, "I'd like to see if he seems believable about that last part." The GM says, "OK, roll Detect Lie skill." The player rolls dice, and if he succeeds then he knows whether that was a deception or not.
So, that's what I have at present. I'm trying to outline a framework and a way of talking about different resolution systems which can cover talking about them in more detail.
So in principle, I might want to talk about how Everway, D&D, Dogs in the Vineyard, Amber Diceless, and The Burning Wheel all differ from each other. But I don't want to do it by classifying them into one of two camps, but rather by contrasting different aspects of them.
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September 5th, 2006
05:22 pm - Stakes and "Chesting"
So, I thought I should at least reference the debate which is going on regarding "Conflict Resolution" and "Stakes".
There is one line of threads which apparently started with a discussion that I was present for at GenCon Indy. Ron Edwards was outlining what he felt the problem was with negotiating stakes at the start of a conflict. This was discussed on The Forge as part of a thread on "Just a cool Dogs scene", then on Story Games as "Big Gencon stakes discussion". There was also a long discussion of conflict-vs-task resolution on the rpg-create list recently.
I should mention ewilen's "An interesting read, sort of", and following, immlass's "A word to the wise". Ginger's post had an amused comment from follybard, as she read the metaphor for the problematic behavior described: Imagine two people trying to occupy the same space, arms at their sides, pushing at one another and shifting their weight to throw the other off-balance, with their chests.
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And imagining that thought mainly about how painful it would be for those two people to try to push each other with their chests. I suspect the metaphor is intended for those people who imagine "people" as men.
More generally, though, negotiation always involves pushing back and forth (whether done with one's chest or other body part). Ron includes a PDF diagram which I've posted in easier-to-read image form below. His note about fictional time interestingly ties in with my post on Thoughts on IIEE and Linear Progression.
He suggested two solutions to the problem of "chesting": Solution 1: State your intentions (goals) for the conflict at hand; do not let players request any other fictional content than their goals before the conflict is solved.
Solution 2: Articulate a ruled negotiation for setting stakes, and make it the main conflict resolution mechanism (like Polaris?)
The first seems to be about narrowing the possibilities of conflict, so that it becomes more like arm-wrestling rather than chesting. I'm inclined to look for more solutions, though, which move beyond this paradigm. I think that the gender issues aren't just coincidental. There are a lot of studies of gender and power dynamics which might suggest other solutions. At Knutepunkt 2005, Anna Karin Linder and Tova Gerge gave a talk on "Non-suppressive Techniques" where they talked about how to reduce suppressive techniques within one's play -- which definitely includes "chesting".
I think my issue with the first solution especially is that it just seems to be an aesthetic change. The two sides will still be pushing back and forth over the fiction, just that they're constrained to do so within the limits of their characters goals. It seems like this will encourage players to have PCs who attempt more grandiose goals. They'll still be more restrained than otherwise, but it seems pretty similar to me.
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August 25th, 2006
04:31 pm - Thoughts on IIEE and Linear Progression
So out of GenCon discussions, I'd like to take a few moments to consider things. The first of these is IIEE, an acronym coined by Ron Edwards, short for "Intent, Initiation, Execution, Effect". cf. the Theory Topic Wiki entry on it for links.
So, what might not be clear, but after thinking about it, this sequence seems to be simulationist, in the rgfa sense of following from cause to effect. For example, in principle, there's no reason why intent needs to be mentioned or considered at all. If we look at games with rules for narration, like Pantheon or Polaris, they don't have this progression. You jump straight to effect by narrating what happens. That statement might be rolled back such that it didn't happen, but there wasn't an in-between of establishing the rest.
Now, I like the linear progression of IIEE for the most part -- but I think it's interesting to question what it is good for and when it should be used. I think IIEE gives a sense of the flow of fictional time. Specifying fictionally "future" events messes with this. In Scandinavian larp terms, this is called Fateplay -- though that usually is applied to only specifying things which will happen by the end of the scenario, not simply specifying what will happen at the end of an extended resolution.
A weak form of future-fixing is specifying "counterstakes". This means establishing a specific effect that will happen if someone loses in an extended conflict resolution. (I want to go more into stakes later, but for right now I just want to focus on the future-fixing aspect of this.) For some conflicts, all that is specified at first is the difference of intent. For example, in Dogs in the Vineyard, a player might specify that her character is trying to get the Steward to come with them to somewhere. The stakes then are defined as what the character's intent is.
Counterstakes generally mean specifying results beyond intent, such as specifying as a counter that if the Dogs intent fails, the Steward will shoot them. This isn't an intent, it is a possible outcome which isn't initially intended. As such, it breaks out of the linear progression of fictional time to specify this. There's nothing inherently wrong with this, but if causal logic is thrown out then there should be techniques to replace it. Polaris does this with its negotiation system, but there are other possible approaches, I think.
A particular pitfall for future-fixing is escalation. i.e. In order to dissuade a player from doing something, I may (even unconsciously) raise increasingly bad counterstakes. On the other hand, a potential pitfall of not having counterstakes is that it gives an advantage to the aggressor. i.e. The person who specifies his intent first and starts resolution has the potential to get what he wants.
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July 13th, 2006
12:03 pm - "Mother May I", Goals, and Meaning
So I've added on a link to João Mendes' blog, Lisbon Gamer. In a semi-recent series of four post, he talks about his view of "Mother May I" play. The term applied to RPGs, as far as I know, was coined by Mike Mearls and first appeared in a March 2005 post of his called "The Metagame of RPGs".
Part I is rules to the children's game that titles the series.
Part II is a description of how certain ways of playing RPGs are similar to the game.
Part III describes of two exceptions to Mother May I play.
Part IV describes techniques to get away from this sort of play.
Upon reading and reflection, what I find peculiar about this is his view of "meaning" and "creative input". So it seems to me that his view of meaning is inherently the effect on the wider world. So, if someone gives a rousing speech, the "meaning" isn't what the words of the speech are -- but only in how the crowd reacts to them.
The key point here is that it seems that the words and actions of the primary characters have no meaning. The only thing with meaning, in his view, are the consequences. This seems rather alien to me -- but I guess that it comes from trying to affect the larger game-world as a goal. i.e. If your goal is to defeat the Empire, then yes, playing the traditional Star Wars RPG is engaging in "Mother May I". That's because what you as player are asking for is larger consequences outside of the scope of the action resolution mechanics.
In contrast, I feel that who the main characters are and what they do is inherently meaningful. So when the protagonist gives a speech in a play, I think his words have meaning -- and that those words are creative input to the whole. As an analogy: Suppose two people say they collaborated on writing a dramatic screenplay. I ask what they each did -- the first says "I wrote all the lines of the main characters"; and the second says "I wrote the lines of the secondary characters and villains, and the narration." If anything, it sounds to me like the first had more input (though that will vary depending on the film, of course). For that matter, I think that traditional actors bring a lot of creative input into a play or movie. That is, the film would be quite different if you substitute another actor as the lead. This despite the fact that not only what happens to them, but also all of their spoken words, are determined by someone else.
I don't think that this usage is wrong exactly -- but I think it's a fairly narrow view of creative input. I'd like to try to generalize about what it means. So here is what he says about play only by controlling a main character: It may feel like you're deciding stuff. But, all the content that provides context for any decision you might want to make is provided by the GM; and the content that derives from your decisions, which is the consequences, or in other words, the real meaning behind those decisions, that's all GM-land too.
So I think I can get behind this with a qualifier. If you are focused on a goal of affecting the larger game world, then what you care about is entirely in the hands of the GM. A traditional GM can kill or save your character, as well as control whether his actions are followed by doom or bliss.
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February 3rd, 2006
12:44 am - Clarity of Narration vs Dialogue
OK, so I'm pondering about narration vs dialogue -- after Keith Senkowski's rant against actors, Thor Olavsrud's "Immersion, Accepted Wisdom, and Internal Conflict", and an RPGnet thread on "Story Before Rules - What's your opinion?". Here by dialogue I mean first person: the player speaking what a character says and to some degree describing what the character attempts. By narration I mean third-person describing of events in the game-world. Technically describing what your character is doing is also narration -- but I'm including it here as close to first-person.
In "Cutting up the rpg pie", Emily wrote: Why all this position identification with the character? Why, when there is so much to author out there, do we keep wrapping up our authority into people shaped packages? I want to know is this just habit? Is it coincidence that it's been an end point for two divergent strains of the same form? I think there are reasons built within the form for it. These are much the same reasons that theater tends to feature a lot of first-person action and dialogue; and little narration. Humans can be good narrators, but they're also very good at portraying humans (arguably better than, say, describing car chases).
Now, I've always been in favor of strong, clear rules. I've done acting and I use what I learned in my games, but I'm still relatively introverted and a geek. I prefer a formal, explicit system of playing to the freeform socializing of a party. In the past, my most popular published rules were the Hero System; my strongest voiced dislikes have been Amber Diceless and various White Wolf games. This has been an important reason for my favoring of character ownership. "Player A controls Character X" is a very clear rule. What player A says, Character X says or does.
In contrast, most social conflict systems put this in a sea of subjective decisions. There are typically vague stakes which are negotiated between the players during the game. Then these are rolled at some unclear odds. And then for a period of time after, the play of the influenced character has to be judged against the stakes. They allow a type of power which might not otherwise be available, but the power is fuzzy.
Fuzzy rules have the pitfall that they tend to reward aggressive, dominant play. The player who is most willing to toe the line of the social contract, and argue her point, gets the most power. On the other hand, first-person dialogue also has the potential to allow certain players to dominate the spotlight -- the ones most active and flamboyant. (Matt Machell calls these "alpha players" in comments on Keith's blog.) My usual solution to this is to give the "beta players" strong and clear qualities which put them in the spotlight.
Systematically, this can be done by a niche. For example, in our Buffy game, Cynthia and to some degree Heather are the less alpha-y players as far as dialogue. We decided that Cynthia's PC was to be the CEO of the company that the PCs created, and later was further made the appointed guardian and controller of an interdimensional nexus. Heather's PC is a kick-ass hacker and super-powerful witch (though the magic isn't quite as clear as I would like).
It can also be done systematically through strict turn-taking, as in Polaris and My Life With Master -- two games we played in the Buffy group. Every player has to have a spotlight scene in each round of play.
This can also be done through the game situation. For example, in my Amber game at ACNW, I had one player who made (prior to the convention) a PC who was a mousy girl who wanted to be a palace handmaiden. The other PCs were Random, Prince of Amber; Lorna, captain of the palace guard; and Vialle, secret trump master and future Queen of Amber. Here's clearly a non-alpha player, who I learned later was a teenage girl. So in the situation that I set up, her and her choices were at the center of the adventure. (The macguffin was a "primal stone" that she was unknowingly attuned to.)
Going back to dialogue/first-person and narration/third-person. To avoid spotlight hogging, I think it's important to give players clear, solid power. The key, I think, is to not make it dependent on fuzzy/subjective rules. The power should be absolute and dependable or at least predictable by the player. For example, Drama Points in Buffy in principle allow plot twists, but that isn't a guard against dominance -- because it has a high threshold of aggressiveness to declare a plot twist and put down the point. I think either first-person or third-person power works as long as it follows these principles.
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December 28th, 2005
12:29 pm - Tarot Use in Buffy
So in the last session of our Buffy campaign, we tried out something a little different. We briefly used a tarot mechanic based on lee_os's game, Star, Moon, Cross (ed.), which I had tried out at AmberCon NorthWest a few weeks earlier.
So at this point in the campaign, I felt we had a bit of a problem. I had game-mastered episodes 3.04 to 3.06, but I felt that in episode 3.06, I had stomped on player choices made in 3.05. So in episode 3.05, they eventually let a chipped vampire (i.e. who was prevented from harming humans) and a zombie go, rather than destroy them. In episode 3.06, those two both caused further problems and they destroyed them. I think that was harsh, but also pushed the both characters and players to make tough decisions. However, talking in particular with zdashamber, I think it was clear that the characters needed more information on which to base their decisions.
This could come as a info dump from the GM, but I thought it would be more interesting to make it an exercise. So I made a pitch to the other GM, Bill. We game-master alternate sessions -- he did 3.01 to 3.03, then I did 3.04 to 3.06, and he is now doing the next three. Each episode is based on a short pitch from the other GM. Here was my pitch for episode 3.07: 1) Trying to find out what is going on with Shub-Niggurath, the crew try a magical tarot ceremony with Rufus to reveal what is going on.
NOTE: My idea here is to try out a one-off mechanic based on a game I tried at AmberCon. Basically, we have a tarot deck, and all of the players go around drawing cards either off the top or from a nine-card face-up "kitty". Each player gets to make one suggestion, and then there is a round of other players adding elaborations to that suggestion. The player would make up something about the background, which the character is divining as truth in the ceremony. So Bill took this idea, and game-mastered an episode around it. The key difference from the Sun, Moon, Cross mechanic is that here, all of the information is learned in-character by the PCs as part of the ceremony. This was intentional -- the point was not to move to more out-of-character stance in general, or to continue with the mechanic, but rather to re-set the campaign.
A summary of the session is on my website as 3.07 "In the Cards". So we've got a bunch of established facts for the PCs to go on -- some vague, some less so, but overall good. It didn't go as well as the "Amber Shadows" game which Lee ran at ACNW, meaning I think there were not (ed.) as many definite or strong choices in the events. Partly this was because the players (two in particular) were relatively low-energy on a Friday night. So there will be some more elaboration of the ideas presented happening later.
I pondering about using this as a technique more in the future, but I think I have to wait and see future episodes to really judge how well it worked.
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December 17th, 2005
06:20 pm - Authority and Authorship
I had a post a little while ago about standard rants I was considering. I noted Matt Snyder's two recent posts on referring to Amber play: A trumper and Prince of Chaos Theory. Now, I don't disagree in principle with most of what he said, but the slant of many comments prompted this.
Authority is not the same as authorship.
A referee can have authority in a sports game or other contest. This means that he can make judgements of the players and has final say over whether a goal counted, whether a player is allowed on the field, and so forth. This is not the same thing as authorship. i.e. A referee does not author the action of the game. The players have defined means to input, and that input is the center of the game. Now, it is certainly possible for a referee to control the game, by constantly ruling against one side and never the other. But that isn't the norm.
The same principle applies to role-playing games. By giving the GM authority, it is possible for her to shut out input from the other players -- but the result can also be a game with equal input or even dominated by the players.
For example, I ran an Amber Diceless game at AmberCon NorthWest, entitled Princesses in Rebma. As GM, I resolved all actions through fiat. However, the players had strong authorial input. There was no fixed plot for them to go through, and their decisions among themselves were central to the plot. I have played and game-mastered games where this was even more true -- such as the Night Fever larp at Knutepunkt 2005. There everyone created their own characters and there were no NPCs. The organizers had the authority to step in at any point, but they never did that I saw. Instead everything that happened was determined by the players.
Yet somehow, many people seem to inexplicably confuse authority with authorship -- such as saying that an Amber game must inherently involve listening to a story being narrated to you by the GM. This is pretty demonstrably false.
The resolution mechanics are only a small part of authorship. I had a lesson in this particularly at the "Amber's Watchdogs" game at AmberCon NorthWest -- which used a variant of the DitV resolution mechanic but almost nothing else from that game. As Pôl notes in an thread on ACNW 2005, the results were nothing like a canonical Dogs game.
With just the Dogs resolution mechanic, the GM can arbitrarily set the difficulty of a conflict in many ways. Mostly critically, the GM can narrate in more NPCs to help with a conflict and thus get arbitrarily more d6's. They can also (1) add in blank traits and relationships; (2) judge what PC traits can get added in; and (3) choose amount of escalation. In short, if a Dogs GM wants to beat the PCs, she can. Even if they win a conflict, the GM can potentially improvise new background to eclipse the result -- such as saying that the NPC they just overcome was actually working for a greater sinner.
There are many things which empower the players in Dogs. The most critical aspect is the background which places the PCs as the authoritative judges over the townspeople. There is also the town creation rules -- i.e. the sequence of Pride, etc. -- and the pseudo-NPC method which restricts characters. If followed faithfully, this strictly limits how much the GM can set up a town to be a linear plot.
Now, there are some games which genuinely limit GM authorship mechanically. For example, games like Ben Lehman's Polaris or Lee Short's Sun, Moon, Cross don't have a singular GM -- so obviously that control goes away. But many other games still give effective authority over resolution to the GM, but still allow for partly or primarily player-authored games.
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December 16th, 2005
04:54 pm - More on Hârn and Stakes
So the long adventure which I'd been playing in my Hârn game concluded yesterday. In a comment on my last post on stakes, badgerbag noted:But the issue seems to be that he wanted/figured/was steering you to fail and therefore discover the hook to the story, or the clue in the pits or whatever.
It is so annoying when the GM wants to give you information and can't figure out how and goes "make a notice roll" and then tells the group anyway what it is.
I think it has to do with a basic discomfort with non-linear plotting (i.e. not railroading) and not with the mechanics of rolling, which in this particular GM's case are just a symptom of something else. I'm not sure how to fix that! I think this is a good point, and I think the issue of setting stakes is connected to the larger picture of how the flow of action works. I should fill in a bit more on the adventure. The GM, David, has put up nice session summaries in a Campaign Journal. We've also had a lot of email discussion following the conclusion. There is also a Hârn Forum Thread about the campaign.
The short form is this: The adventure was loosely based on "Forbidden Planet" -- a powerful light/air mage with a young female apprentice (and lover) were doing research at a remote place of great magical power -- the Earthmaster site, Telumar. Others of their expedition had been killed over the past year by a mysterious whirlwind, save for a somewhat insane local barbarian. The PCs arrived there knowing of one one person almost killed at the site.
We investigated and had some theories about what was happening. After some initial digging, we had a theory that the mage was responsible for the whirlwind attacks -- which always occurred while he was sleeping. However, we had no proof nor any clear means to get it, and further had no means of fighting the whirlwind if we encountered it. We set up a plan to wait until the whirlwind appeared and then wake him up -- however, when we tried it, rather than approaching us the whirlwind appeared elsewhere and killed the local barbarian, then disappeared. We then confronted the mage, and then knocked him out in a brief fight when he resisted being held for questioning. We brought him unconscious out of the site, but then outside a PC mage inexplicably fell unconscious, and another PC (Embran) promptly killed him.
On a social level, we have four players. Both Dennis and Daniel are playing non-mage characters, and they had very little to do during this adventure. Jim and I, playing mages, were interested in the investigation of the site and the strange phenomena -- but still felt awkward. We had the theory about the mage in Session 7, but by the time we enacted the plan we were in Session 9. In short, Dennis and Daniel were both a bit chomping at the bit. Personally, I think Dennis' character Embran killing the mage Lepridis was reasonable -- but then Daniel wanted to have his PC mutilate the body in a gory hypothesized Ivinian death ritual, the "blood eagle". He was talked down from this on a player (i.e. metagame) level.
We are discussing this in the Hârn Forum Thread, but since I've got this blog here I thought I'd expose it out of general interest. The short form is that I think Liz is right -- the stakes problem stems from a larger problem with plot and pacing. I don't have an immediate answer to this. I know it doesn't usually come up in other games of mine, but I don't have a definite answer as to why it appears here and how to fix it.
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December 9th, 2005
12:06 pm - Avoiding Trivial Stakes
So there's been some more talk on stakes and resolution mechanics on Actual Play. Nathan Paoletta had an interesting post, Never Going Back. "It throws into clear relief one of the greatest things about recent, indie, conflict-resolution based RPGs. When clear intent and stakes are determined, it excises boring play."
Now, they're talking about a particular issue in play -- where the GM calls for a roll, and if it fails then the GM gives a dull token penalty and then the PC can try again. So basically the player can keep trying until he succeeds, and play is stalled until that happens. I am certainly familiar with this -- and I think in particular of the last session of the HârnMaster campaign that I played in.
In that session, I observed a classic case of the phenomenon. We were exploring a set of ruins, and there were a four halls, each of which ended with a series of five pits, eighty or so feet deep, which had a one-foot ledge around them. Not wanting to fall, we went and got rope and then got enough people so we could cross them while secured by rope. The GM insisted that we roll Agility for each crossing -- even though the most that could happen was that if we fell, we'd be tied and had to climb back up. To make it worse, when we got past the first set we discovered it was a dead end, but saw some clues that there was something at the bottom of the pits. We didn't have enough rope (only 50 feet), so we had to go and improvise more rope, test it, and then make climbing rolls to be lowered and pulled up.
Now, if I was game-mastering this, I would generally just say "OK, you explore the twenty pits and here's what you find..." To me, that's not a strange new concept. I mean, no system suggests making rolls for driving around town, or making a hundred hit rolls if you spend a few hours at target practice. Better systems asssume diceless resolution for simple tasks, like D20's "Take 10" rule, or automatic success in systems like CORPS or the Unisystem. However, I realize it's not a universal practice. In a fast-resolving game like Buffy I will often ask for a quick roll for small but still significant things, but never more than one roll on the same skill.
What I'm trying to figure out is what situations and mechanics this practice is associated with. On The Forge, many people associate non-trivial rolls with explicit negotiation of stakes before the resolution roll -- notably Primetime Adventures and Dogs in the Vineyard as examples of this. The principle is that if you negotiate the stakes clearly, then trivial stakes become even more obvious and are thus avoided. This makes sense in principle, but as GM I've never felt that it was necessary. My problem with this is that negotation seems slow -- you have to determine in advance by committee what each result should mean. The traditional solution for me is for the GM simply to not call for rolls which are too easy or which have trivial stakes.
On the other hand, given that these sorts of trivial rolls do happen, what should be done about them? More specifically, should I push for change in the HârnMaster game, and if so how? I've played Dogs in the Vineyard with that group, which might be seen as a first step. But I don't think that explicit stake negotiation is the only correlation, and I think there are other things to do. In a recent Forge thread, "Setting Stakes", judd_sonofbert wrote: I was GMing on auto-pilot and just couldn't put a coherent thought together. I felt like I had been punched (more on how that happened in another post, that situation of Social Contract breach isn't what this is about) but a player got into a Duel of Wits with this Balrog-inspired bad-ass.
And I was still punched, dazed, reeling. I couldn't put coherent stakes together.
The Duel of Wits was flat and lame. This was a violent Orc having a Duel of Wits with a Balrog. It was flat. It was just that the stakes were...dull.
So what else can be done? Some genres seem less susceptible. For example, superhero games are not the same as fantasy games scaled up. In a superhero game, you'll generally be fighting a flashy supervillain rather than spending time over mega-pits. I also think there is task system pacing -- i.e. does combat, for example, tend to resolve in twenty rounds or three? I also think that the larger picture helps: having a driving motivation pushes PCs to more risks, and it's important to make sure that they can take risks without risking the game. (Specifically, finding ways to dodge PC death.) In the HârnMaster campaign, we could use more active enemies, I think.
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September 15th, 2005
01:17 pm - Stakes and Freeform Play
So I am pondering the contrast of my Dogs in the Vineyard game and my Buffy game at ConQuest. This touches on the distinction between what are called "Task Resolution" and "Conflict Resolution" on the Forge. Unfortunately, the TheoryTopics wiki is down at the moment, but for definitions I can point to "[Vocab] Task versus Conflict" (from The Forge May 2005). That didn't exactly resolve things. But the rough agreement is that Dogs in the Vineyard has Conflict Resolution while, say, GURPS has Task Resolution.
In practice, both games are fairly freeform much of the time. That is, walking around and talking to people generally involves no die rolls. Instead, that is handled by the players saying what their characters are doing and I as GM responding with what they see and/or what the NPCs say in response. Since Dogs has a fairly lengthy resolution system whereas Buffy has an extremely fast one, I found that in Buffy the resolution system was invoked more commonly. A difference is that in Buffy, the results of resolution outside of combat are not explicit. In Dogs, you explicitly gain the stakes. However, the stakes are arbitrarily set through group agreement.
In Setting Stakes: Pre-Flight Checklist #1, John Harper describes this as follows:
Buffy's player assumes Buffy can dust one vamp. Conflict with a vamp comes up. The stakes are "Does Buffy dust this vamp?" The player is invested only in protagonizing Buffy by showing off her bad-assitude. An outcome of "No, she doesn't dust him," will crash this player's game experience. This is task resolution masquerading as the resolution of stakes. 50% of the time, when I hear people complaining about stakes resolution systems it's because of this error in stakes-setting.
In short, in Buffy we roll first and then interpret what the result exactly means. In Dogs, we establish the stakes first and then roll. So for both, the results are ultimately determined by freeform agreement. In most cases this works smoothly. If we have a clash, in Dogs it will happen before the roll -- i.e. when we settle what the stakes are. In Buffy, it will usually happen after the roll. I don't have a strong opinion about the difference. The Buffy approach is slightly faster, because we only have to settle what (say) success means if the roll succeeds, whereas we don't have to resolve failure. On the other hand, Dogs is designed to make the roll more pivotal overall. i.e. In Buffy, any roll is very fast. In Dogs, each conflict is a major event which takes up considerable spotlight time.
In the past, I have preferred to minimize the spotlight time of die rolls. I preferred fast one-roll systems like CORPS or Buffy to lengthy dice pool rolls or especially extended contests. However, I like Dogs. I guess one thing is that it has a more interesting element of choice in its extended contests, as opposed to most extended contests which I often feel are just repetitive rolling. (Hero Wars has a variable AP stake, but that's not a very interesting choice, in my opinion.)
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August 1st, 2005
06:38 pm - More on Buffy
I've been meaning to write more about the Buffy campaign that I've been playing, but it will take some time to write up in more detail. In older comments, chgriffen had some questions about the Buffy campaign I've been playing. He writes:
Let me just ask one thing--what are the rolls in the Buffy RPG for? I.e., do you resolve the combat and only the combat with the dice?
That's where most traditional RPGs are at, and that's why I'd rather play PtA. I don't want to let the dice decide whether Buffy kills the vampires. I know she will. I want the dice to figure out whether the fight helps her to overcome her self-doubt, or whether she can do it without going so far off the deep end that she scares all of her friends.
I want rolls to be about the character's issues, not the fight. The "wargame with an RPG on top" history is so evident in games where what you roll for is blow by blow combat and you have to insert the issues manually.
Some people can do that well. But they're the people who can twist and tweak any game. Heck, I've been playing "freeform" (dice-mechanic-less) for ten years. But most people stick with what the game text gives them, and in many instances, it's a combat simulator with some vague personality and issue ideas attached.
We use dice in general for the success and failure of tasks -- of which magic and combat are key ones, but Influence, Notice, and technical skills also play a role. I guess that is a key distinction. We don't roll dice for issues like whether Iffy feels vengeful or who is in love with whom. Dice are for the action, whereas the issues are handled by player choice. Physical action (combat and otherwise) and tension over it are a vital part of the drama, I think, and those are the parts that we use dice for. Character and plot decisions are made by the players. (Note also that this is not mystery, so Notice rolls are rarely pivotal by design. It is fairly trivial for players to solve mysteries by plot twists.)
I'd like to consider a sequence from the climactic final multi-part episode last season as an example.
In the game, the crew had just found that a horrendously dangerous magical ceremony had been performed at a morgue where the body of a girl they had known was. When they heard that people left just five minutes ago, the two fastest PCs (Iffy and Dot) immediately ran out. They caught an Indian woman and two men in the parking lot outside, and the two men drew guns while the woman started the car. We moved into combat, and as her first action, Iffy unleashed her full power on one, immediately downing him with 36 Life Points of damage. She then flew down past the other and drew a sword to hamstring him. Dot jumped through the front windshield of the car into the passenger seat and grabbed the woman to stop her. Moving out of combat, Iffy smashed through side window to grab and threaten the woman. Afterwards, I followed the Buffy damage mechanic for negative Life Points for the men. The result was that by the time they got back, one of them died while the other one was stabilized by another PC and brought to a hospital.
Now, all that was expressed solely as action and dialogue. According to some rhetoric that I have heard about representational mechanics, this scene was thematically meaningless. Because there was no "Fury" stat or rule for Iffy's Issue, the action was purely a cold simulation of fighting with no drama or meaning to it. However, I felt quite differently about it. I felt there was great dramatic power in letting the actions and their simulated consequences speak for themselves. All of the players were pretty shocked at Iffy's actions here, and especially at the results.
Now, it is entirely possible that we could have conveyed something more explicitly. So, for example, Iffy's player Bill could have declared (Note: This example is now edited with corrections from Ben Lehman.) "I'd like Protagonist Development scene, where Iffy savagely attacks Rupa and the men in the parking lot." (specifying Focus, Agenda, and Location). Now, I don't mean to disparage that approach -- but I at least don't see that it's inherently superior. I do intend to try PtA at some point, but at the moment we're all pretty psyched about the Buffy game, and looking forward to its third season.
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July 17th, 2005
01:52 am - Buffy vs PtA
While it would be interesting to see how the Slayer stacks up against school moms, this is about the Buffy RPG system and Primetime Adventures...
In response to Vincent Baker's post on Setting and Source Material, John Harper recently posted "The Right Tool for The Job", where he writes:
Now it's our turn, as RPG players, to pick up the Firefly RPG and create a new story. What tools do we get? Do we get anything even remotely like what the writers were using for their creative, collaborative endeavor? No. Instead, we determine things like how strong Jayne is, on a scale of 3-18. And how many hull points Serenity has. And how many days travel it is from Persephone to Cheyenne. And how much "damage" an Alliance stunner does. And, gods preserve us, what River's "carrying capacity" is.
The writers didn't need any of that crap to create new Firefly material. And yet, RPG books are full of it.
and
What do we do, if we don't want to wargame and roleplay on top of it? Matt Wilson has an answer. He wrote a clever little game called Primetime Adventures. It actually takes that functional creative process that the Firefly writers use, and turns it into a fun activity you can have with your friends over a few evenings. And you know what? If you follow the steps in the game text, you can create some pretty nifty stories of drama, adventure, and relationships -- kinda like those wiley Mutant Enemy folks.
So this is something of a poser to me. To explain, I am currently co-GMing a campaign using C.J. Carella's Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG, which I am enjoying very much -- entitled Silicon Valley Slayage. Now, Carella's BtVS system most certainly has Strength ratings for the Slayer and all other characters, damage ratings for the weapons used, and so forth. I post the character sheets online, if you're interested. So it seems like our game is what John Harper is talking about.
However, I am pretty satisfied with how things have been going. All the players have been very positive about the game and its direction, and moreover felt that it has lived up to the standards of the show. For example, at the end of one episode (I forgot which), a player raved that she thought it was better than any of the Buffy episodes she remembered. Also, in contrast to his view, I have never felt the urge to make the game more like scriptwriting. Quite the opposite. I've felt at times that treating the game like scriptwriting has been a problem for play.
As I ponder it, I'm not sure I see the screenwriting parallels in a first place. For a television series, a screenwriter will generally get a series bible, which is a document mostly covering background and characters -- reading often like an RPG sourcebook with the mechanics stripped out. The only example I could find online is the He-Man Series Bible. Then again, many in the industry (like Lee Goldberg) dismiss the usefulness of such bibles.
So I'm trying to picture what the game would be like using Primetime Adventures instead of Eden's system. Now, I haven't played PtA, but I've bought it and read it thoroughly now. I've played Theatrix and Soap and My Life With Master and Dogs in the Vineyard -- so hopefully I should have some credibility. But offhand, here are my thoughts: - As a Buffy game, I'm attached to blow-by-blow combat. This is an action series, after all. I feel that it's pretty solidly in the spirit to have a rousing blow-by-blow combat.
- I don't like explicit an explicit singular issue per character. While I'm not thrilled with Eden's Drawback system, I would be equally unthrilled by singular issues for this campaign. I have enjoyed the characters being emergent and seeing what they're about over time rather than being "issue characters".
- The plotted story arc also concerns me. For Silicon Valley Slayage, I have avoided preplanning character arcs beyond an episode or two ahead. Too often, a player is missing, or simply too tired, or simply didn't click with what was being presented. Many of the character story arcs have taken very unexpected turns based on the in-game events -- like, say, Dot and Max getting together (in Season One) and having a baby (in Season Two); or Chip's various ill-fated romances; and so forth.
- PtA's fan mail is more continuously used, while Buffy's Drama Points are bigger chunks used relatively rarely. This isn't a huge deal, but I have a mild preference for big chunks.
This isn't to say that PtA wouldn't work -- but rather to say that different things have worked in our Buffy campaign. Anyhow, I don't mean to pre-judge PTA -- I intend to try it at some point. But on the other hand, I did feel like I should justify my choice of Carella's Buffy system. Still, I'm curious what other PtA players think.
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June 29th, 2005
02:31 pm - RPG Design Innovations, Part 2
OK, so now I'd like to talk about the development of the RPG adventure. This is something that isn't explicit in character creation and action resolution rules, but is an absolutely vital part of the game. i.e. How does the GM prepare and run a game? What do characters do?
Here is my list of adventure models:
Location Crawl
Not necessarily in a dungeon, this technique is having a keyed map where each marked location on the map has a static description. According to the plan, whenever the players go to location #17, they will find what is in the key for location #17. This is the approach of original D&D/AD&D for both dungeons and towns. Note that the players control the pacing here.
Battlegrounding
This technique usually uses a mapped location, but there is little description or detail (i.e. the location is not interesting in itself). Instead, a set of NPCs are described and given objectives. This is used in some Traveller (1977) adventures but most notably in Champions (1981). Here control of pacing can go either way, depending which side is the aggressor. Champions is very character-centric. The guide for an adventure is the set of NPC villain character sheets, not a map.
Timetabling
This technique has a mapped location, but rather than static descriptions, what the players find at the locations depends on a timetable of what the NPCs will do. The problem here is that NPC behavior after the PCs interfere with them is unclear. This is used in several Top Secret (1980) adventures and Thieves Guild (1984) adventures. Here the GM has more control over the pacing, though the players still have a fair amount.
Trailblazing
This is a technique of having a series of disconnected locations, where each location has an encounter as well as clues which lead to the next location. The players are free to wander but there is nothing of interest prepared outside of the trail. This is to some degree extremely linear. However, the players can engage in diversions and subplots of their own devising between locations. This is used in certain outdoor adventures such as Gamma World (1978). This lacks the direction-choosing of a location crawl, but shares the player control of pacing.
Hybrid
It is worth noting that there have been a number of adventures which use a mix of mobile NPCs and static encounters. Notable is the seminal adventure for AD&D, Ravenloft (1983). This combines the Champions approach of having a mobile master villain (the vampire Strahd) with many lesser location-based encounters. It added in randomized fortunes within the landscape. James Bond 007 adventures tend to combine the trailblazing and timetabling approaches -- i.e. a mostly linear sequence of locations along with a villain timetable.
Illusionism
This is a technique of trying to bring GM-controlled pacing into Trailblazing, often intended for more cinematic feel. This is also prepared as a series of encounters, but the GM is encouraged to use a variety of techniques to quickly bring the PCs to the next encounter. One is "Schroedinger's NPC" -- which means preparing an encounter with indeterminate location, so that wherever the PCs choose to go, that's where the next encounter is. Another is "Waiting in the Wings" -- which is where something happens as soon as the PCs show up. This is used explicitly in Torg (1990), Feng Shui (1996), Deadlands (1996), and many other games.
Branching
This is a variant of trailblazing where a number of different paths are prepared. A good example is Millenium's End (1992), which explicitly presents the Clue Trees as a technique and uses it in adventures.
Relationship Mapping
This is a technique where locations are not particularly detailed, but instead NPCs are. The characters then move between one character encounter and another, collecting information and interactions. This was first attempted in Vampire: The Masquerade (1991) -- notably the sample adventure in first edition was a social gathering where the characters were all described but the house was not. Some later adventures had graphical relationship maps of NPCs showing relationships. This was developed more explicitly in the "Sorcerer's Soul" supplement for Sorcerer (2001) and Dogs in the Vineyard (2004). It is aided by rules which allow either the GM or the players to skip to declaring that the PC or PCs encounter a particular character, regardless of location (i.e. Scene Framing).
Randomized Events
This is a set of techniques which can be added to any of the above. It tends to add interest and boost pacing, but can interfere with controlled pacing and plot development. The simplest is D&D's random rolls for wandering monsters. On a more sophisticated level, the original two Ravenloft modules also incorporated random fortune telling and card draws into the plot.
Bangs
This is a technique of the GM (or possibly players) throwing in defined events into the adventure structure. I would trace this back to Ars Magica's Whimsy Cards. It explicitly appears as a GM technique in Sorcerer (1998).
There are a number of questions in my mind about developments here, since there are an awful lot of modules which I haven't seen. For example, I can see from Ravenloft adventures how the hybrid approaches of the original Ravenloft and Ravenloft II turned into more Illusionist adventures of later Ravenloft in AD&D2. But there are probably lots of development bits that I'm missing here.
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01:49 pm - RPG Design Innovations, Part 1
OK, well, Vincent nicely cited me in his blog anyway as John Kim on Craft and Innovation. I had some comments there on the development of innovations in the history of RPGs which I promised to expand on. So I'm first going to run through resolution mechanics and character generation. In a second post I'm going to address game structure and background.
Unified resolution mechanics
Traveller (1977) put everything into 2d6 rolls against a target number, but it was explained differently each time. The first landmark game was RuneQuest (1978), which made combat and skill use both into rolls under a percentile skill. However, it had special-case rules for combat rolls (specials, criticals, hit location, etc.). The solid landmark was James Bond 007 (1983), which had a true universal mechanic that used level of success in both combat and other activities.
Point build character creation
Steve Jackson's Melee (1977) first had point-based design. However, Champions (1981) was the real landmark design as fully building out the concept as a role-playing game.
Personality mechanics
Bushido (1980) deserves mention for its honor system, but that was followed quickly by Insanity in Call of Cthulhu (1981) and Psychological Limitations in Champions (1981). Insanity is integral but not very personal. PsychLims are personal but optional. After that, nods to Pendragon (1985) for an integral, personal mechanics for all characters.
Level of Success
RuneQuest (1978) introduced specials and criticals for combat. But James Bond 007 (1983) was the first to integrate level of success in every aspect of the system.
Hero Points - player resource modifiers to resolution
Top Secret (1980) had Fortune/Fame points which weren't really player-controlled. James Bond 007 (1983) clinched the approach, though. Ghostbusters (1986) had the dubious distinction of combining hero points and experience points -- an approach which usually doesn't work well, in my opinion.
Dramatic modifiers to resolution
Champions (1981) included bonuses for "surprise maneuver" which was a cool move as described by the player. But as for explicit modifiers for drama per se, I'd say Paranoia or Toon (both 1984).
Mechanics for social resolution
The landmark game was again James Bond 007 (1983) as the first game to handle social interactions as an integral part of the system. There were prior implementations, though, which I don't know as much about.
Modular Rules
Worlds of Wonder (1982) was the first universal system in the sense of core rules + varying genre-specific add-ons. The next major landmark would of course be GURPS (1986) which really developed and popularized the concept.
Directed Rewards (other than for killing monsters or showing up)
There are rewards for skill use and/or training in Traveller and RuneQuest. Rolemaster (1980) greatly expanded what XP were given for. But the first to approach rewards as a way to direct play was Marvel Superheroes' Karma (1984), giving Karma for good deeds to encourage superheroic behavior.
Dice Pools
Ghostbusters (1986) was the first to vary number of dice rolled as a primary resolution mechanic (i.e. not just for damage) -- the origin of West End Games' D6 System. This gives a much more tangible aspect to play, but summing 10 or more dice is cumbersome. Shadowrun (1989) introduced target number dice rolls which simplified the counting required.
Additive Fixed-Die Rolls
Virtually all early games, when they had a universal mechanic, used a mechanic of rolling under stat or skill (i.e. roll under skill on 1d100 or 3d6, usually). Rolemaster (1980) had percentile rolls plus modifiers and compared to a chart where 100 or over was a success. This became a more general mechanic with Character Law in 1982. Ars Magica (1987) used a universal mechanic of attribute + skill + 1d10 where the total is compared to a difficulty number (as opposed to difficulty being a modifier). Since then, additive rolls are now the standard for non-dice-pool games.
(Edited to add Rolemaster)
Character Templates
There were several games which concentrated on premade characters, notably Marvel Superheroes (1984). But the popularizer of templates was Star Wars (1987).
Instant Rewards
James Bond 007 (1983) has immediate rewards for hero points although not for experience points. As for all rewards being instant, I'm not sure.
Scene Framing
Torg (1990) was among the first games to have explicit mechanics based on "scene". Probably Theatrix (1993) after that for making scenes central to the mechanics.
Meta-game control/Director Stance for players
Ars Magica (1987) allowed this through Whimsy Cards and troupe style play. Prince Valiant (1989) had more open-ended options in storyteller cards. Most fully was Theatrix's plot points and improvisations (1993).
Freeform Character Traits
Several earlier games had token nods at to make your own traits with GM approval as an option, but Over the Edge (1992) was the first to really take this as a primary method.
Player right to introduce conflict
I'd put this first as Champions (1981) for allowing the players to define their own Hunted and frequency of Hunted which show up on an objective scale rather than GM choice. But after that, Ars Magica, Prince Valiant, and Theatrix as in Director Stance above.
Well, that's about all I have for the moment. I'll eventually want to organize this all into a nice coherent article. But part two (game structure) is much more important, I think.
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June 9th, 2005
10:23 pm - Whimsy Card Use
OK, so a little on Whimsy Cards and their use.
I've used Whimsy Cards or close equivalents in three campaigns. I'd first encountered them in Ars Magica during college, but only briefly. In early grad school, I played in a Champions campaign which used Storypath cards -- the "Path of Intrigue". Later, I played in a Victorian campaign using Call of Cthulhu rules (GMed by Chris Lehrich and Alex Dent-Young) where we used standard Rider-Waite tarot cards for roughly the same purpose. Then after moving to the Bay Area, I gamemastered a campaign using RuneQuest rules where I used the original Whimsy Deck with some modified cards.
( Details of the three campaigns behind the cut )
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