This past week we got to run another Reckoning playtest while we were at Unco11. The playtest was drifting the system a bit, outside the settings (modern) for which it is designed. The situation was that the players would be in the midst of the Fourth Crusade, either Latins or Greeks. If they had chosen to be the Greeks, they would be inside the city, centered on one of the monasteries in Constantinople, and their horror would be the impending doom coming down on them from the west.
The players chose to be Latins - their horror would be the horror of moral culpability as they sack and destroy cities of their brethren (Zara and then Constantinople itself).
The playtest went really well - the system works. It does what we want it to do. People have fun. Every group tells us that character creation is the best part of the system, and it led to a lot of interconnection and buy-in among the players.
The players were basically a group of five who normally play D&D (one has called every character Ham Samich since he started playing in middle school) and one player deep-friend in the simmering vat of story games, someone with an entirely different gaming background, different expectations at the table.
What I suspected, what was reinforced, is that not only is Reckoning not a story game, it is potentially not fun for story gamers, unless they are interested in playing something like a hybrid.
It was interesting to see this person's discomfort. We spent three hours after the session discussing the game, and it seemed like our story gamer enjoyed parts of it, but felt a lot of anxiety around the idea of a GM having lots of control over what was happening.
The thing is, the game is solid. We know a little better about our target audience - basically, people who play D&D or other similar games will have a lot of fun with Reckoning and be introduced to a few ideas that don't exist in D&D.
We did what we set out to do. We wanted to create an excellent horror rpg that we would want to play more than any other horror rpg. That's what we have. As a wonderful bonus, most other people who have played the game in the past have a great time with the game - all but one, actually, though I don't want to imply it was something wrong with this player. It's just - well, not everyone is going to enjoy a given game.
This thing is sharp, man. It does what it's supposed to do from a design standpoint. We got some good advice from the one less-satisfied player that we need more time to consider, but what we really need is a rough draft to start having readers look at.
Showing posts with label Play. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Play. Show all posts
Monday, May 23, 2011
Monday, November 2, 2009
Fun Theory and RPG Theory
I was turned on to a Scandanavian group called The Fun Theory. The theory that the espouse is that it is possible to encourage people to change their behavior for the better by making the behavior more fun. The three behaviors they try to change are: encouraging more transit customers to take the stairs rather than the escalator, encouraging more people to recycle their glass bottles, and getting more people to throw away their trash rather than throw it on the ground.
In all three experiments, they seem to have been successful. There is a video for each one showing what they did and explaining some of the short-term impact that what they did had.
I realized that each example applies to roleplaying games as well. RPGs are ultimately about different kinds of fun. Many use the GNS theory or Big Model to talk about what those kinds of fun are. I am going to propose a very simple model describing three kinds of play that I personally enjoy: exploratory play, competitive play and conceptual play. I will also try to give examples of when these kinds of play come up - not in games that exemplify them, but when in a game that the various kinds of play emerge and what I find fun about them.
Exploratory play can take three different forms in my experience. The first is exploring your character. This process happens through the decisions that your character makes when a lot is at stake, and is supported by whatever advancement system is in place in a game system. Your character's capabilities, relationship to self and relationship to the world change over the course of a game, and this is a lot of fun for me.
The second way that exploratory play functions is exploration of the setting. This is the classic sand-box method of running a game, where all of the NPCs and set-pieces are in place, and the PCs get to run wild and interact with everything, learning as they go. This also comes up a lot in movies, when the main character is suddenly initiated into a new organization or is transformed, and there are big reveals for the character and the audience as to what is really going on (examples: Men in Black, Transformers, Interview with a Vampire, etc.)
The third way I see exploratory play happening is exploration of the game system itself. This happens a lot with games among my friends because we tend to love house rules. It can also be fun to explore a new game system, to see how the various rules and methods work (or don't work) and why. If I had unlimited free time, or was independently wealthy or something, I would try playing through the same story with the same character concepts but using two different systems in order to see how the story elements changed.
Competitive Play: The Bottle Bank Arcade
Competitive play is simple - you are trying to "win". This is what the majority of people probably think of when you say the word "game", and applies to football, Monopoly and chess as examples. There is a winner, or winners, and a loser, or losers. On the surface it seems like a zero-sum game, where one side's loss is another side's game.
Even a zero-sum game can have some emergent fun, however, whether one wins or loses. When my wife and I play a game, and she wins, I get some enjoyment out of her winning. I can also enjoy being just barely beaten in a closely-fought game that comes down to the wire. I'd probably enjoy winning more, but the tension over what will happen is in itself fun.
I really love games where the players collectively play against the game itself, like Shadows Over Camelot or Pandemic. In this case, you get all of the competition, but fewer of the hard feelings that might come up when people compete against each other (except for the filthy traitor of course!).
Conceptual Play: The World's Deepest Trash Bin
Conceptual play in my experience is when I am using a game to work something out that isn't necessarily related to the game. I might be using the game to work through what happens when a character is made a messiah against his will by an oppressed people, or to think through what it is like in the day-to-day life of a vampire. I might be using a game like Mage: the Ascension to play through metaphysical theories or to express what I really think about the world and our place in it.
Exploratory play is playing a game for it's own sake. Competitive play is playing a game for the sake of the thrill of victory and, in some ways, the agony of defeat as well. Conceptual play is using the game as a vehicle for something else. Unsurprisingly, collaborative games are an excellent way to do this conceptual work. Role-playing is used in therapy, for example, to work through relationship issues, and some games have been designed with the expressed purpose of working through a game-designer's issues (I am thinking of Clyde Rhoer, Paul Czege or Vince Baker as examples of designers with this goal).
Things don't have to be that deep either. A conceptual game might be something like "Hey, how about zombies in a Western?" and hence, Deadlands is born. Genre mash-ups can work out really well, like Eberron, the fantasy-pulp-noir setting by Rich Baker for D&D.
Anyway, those are the thoughts I wanted to get out there based on what I saw in The Fun Theory. So far, this is a more helpful way of thinking about games than GNS has been for me, in part because these are three kinds of fun that I have had in a game that I can identify. I still don't think I've experienced 'pure' Narrativism, and I've never heard Simulationism defined by someone who actually does it and enjoys it (only with, at best, well-hidden contempt).
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Mouse Guard Rules!
I just finished running a session of Mouse Guard for Free RPG day at my Friendly Local Game Store, and it was one of the most fun times I've ever had running a game. Mouse Guard is clearly the culmination of all of that work Luke Crane put into Burning Wheel and Burning Empires, and it surpasses both in every way in my opinion (well, not in complexity, but in every other way).The Scenario and Actual Play Impressions
The scenario was pretty simple. The players polished off their Guards by writing Beliefs, Goals and Instincts, and filling in a single Wise that I gave each of them but left blank. (One chose Weasel-wise which was hugely helpful later). It was winter, and the four Guards were called out of R&R to find out what happened to a pair of Guards who were sent west from Sprucetuck with important messages some time ago. They never returned, and the worst is assumed.
After getting into a scrape with an owl and learning some details, they arrive at a small new settlement near the eaves of the Darkheather. There they get into a social conflict with the head mouse of the settlement, who wants them to stay with them all winter and protect them from weasels. The Guard, however, knows that a terrible winter storm has been predicted by the sciencemice of Sprucetuck, and they have to convince the settlers to return east with them and winter in Sprucetuck - or they'll likely freeze to death.
The PCs win, but with a big compromise - the settlers want proof that the local weasels are dead before they'll move. The PC Guardmice set up an ambush for the weasels and completely own them. By Action 2, the weasels are dead. Nice job!
The last conflict is between the Guardmice, who are leading the settlers through the snow, and the onrush of the first part of the predicted winter storm. So I, the GM, get to play as winter and try to freeze them all to death. That was a lot of fun.
One of the most fun parts of the game, for me, was when the players would shoo me away from the table so they could strategize and then call me back when they were ready. I really love player empowerment.
As winter, I win with a major compromise, so I killed one Guard and a third of the settlers, but the rest arrived in Sprucetuck Hungry and Thirsty and Sick.
Every one of us had a great time for almost 100% of the session, which with RPGs is largely unheard-of. Well done, Luke. Well done.
From the GM's Point of View
This five-hour scenario for four new players took me all of three or four hours to prepare last night - usually the best ratio I get is one-to-one for games that require prep, and if you were willing to leaf through the book more and were more familiar with the rules, I bet you could do with a lot less. This is my first time running, remember.
Comparing it to my first time running Burning Wheel, this was 1000x easier to learn, prepare for, and teach to new players. I didn't have to change anything about the game to run it the first time. We took about the 30 minutes I predicted to explain the character sheets, basic rules and conflict sheets, and then we dove right in.
I had a lot of fun in the argument conflict playing the leader of these settlers trying to wheedle and coerce the Guard into staying to protect them, and I had a lot of fun playing winter and figuring out what a "Maneuver" action was when you are playing a season. But I loved the image of winter as a character in the story actively trying to kill the mice - that is very dramatic, and made me think of the blizzard on Caradhras in the Fellowship of the Ring. I've never seen a system that replicates that kind of experience, and it is probably the thing I am most greenly jealous of as a game designer. Again, well done.
"4th Edition Burning Wheel" Wins
I give this game a 5 out of 5 in every category I can think of. It is hands-down one of the best systems I have ever played. My only consolation is that it took Luke Crane four tries to get to this point with the Burning Wheel system.
It is cold comfort...but a hot, hot, hot game.
Monday, February 9, 2009
10 Most-Played (Analog) Games
Apparently this is going around, so I thought I'd put in my two cents (thanks Mike Mearls!)
Here are my 10 most-played analog games with a little bit about how and when I played them.
1. GURPS
Through middle school and a big chunk of high school, I ran GURPS games for a couple of my friends. I also ran one in the high school cafeteria during my senior year. Yeah, big freaking dork. So sue me. Most recently, I helped work out and then played in an adaptation of GURPS to the Midnight setting.
2. Dungeons and Dragons
This is what I started out with, in middle school, playing in the Dragonlance setting. Then I stopped for years, because Advanced Dungeons & Dragons sucks as a game. But then 3rd edition came out from WotC and my interest in D&D was rehabilitated in one fell swoop. A terrible game had become a workable game, and my gaming group picked it up and ran with it. I also ran a year-long game set in Eberron that was a lot of fun a lot more recently.
3. Chess
Chess is the one game where, for some reason, I get really competitive. My aggression just comes out. Even when a coworker taught me Chinese Chess recently, I ended up taking the game more seriously than she had in mind.
4. Vampire the Masquerade
This is me in college. At least once a week. I don't give a crap if you're an indie game designer and you hate this game. I love it. This is one of the two games I've been willing to play over AIM for crap's sake. Maybe I just got lucky and had a fantastic group of friends for the past ten years, I dunno, but I've had a lot of my best gaming moments playing Vampire.
5. Mage the Ascension
Given the choice, I'd actually play this game before Vampire. Mage is awesome. I have a huge load of house rules for running it that my friends have basically adopted. Its probably become its own game at this point, but still, the book we use has Mage: the Ascension on the cover. This is the other game that I've been willing to play over AIM.
6. Changeling the Dreaming
I've been in a couple of Changeling games and I've run one as well. Changeling is a fun system, once you break it and remake it so that it makes sense. But once you do that, it can be pretty fun.
7. Heroes of Karia Vitalus
This started out as a hack of Big Eyes Small Mouth and grew into its own system that we're now working on getting a playtest version together for. This game is awesome. It is better than your game. I guarantee it.
8. Poker
Poke is awesome. It is a great combination of aggression and deception - a fantastic release for all those things that are immoral when used outside the context of the game. You attack, defend, deceive, threaten and then move in for the kill when the time is right. No matter how good you get, there is someone else better than you. I guess this is the other game where my competitiveness comes out.
9. Settlers of Catan
This is the main game I play with my friends who live near me at seminary. We play it a lot. Most of the time, I lose, but occasionally I don't. I really like Settlers because it is simple but effective. Its an elegant game (which reminds me to work on that post about elegance in game design...) and it brings together hardcore players like myself and much more casual players like my friend's wife.
10. Canasta
This makes the list because of a summer I spent living with my mom in the apartment complex where I live now. I was a lot younger (about 12) and she was a student at the seminary where I am now a student. We played canasta and she kicked my ass. I got it into my head to play until I could beat her, and it took all summer, playing many times a day every day. But when I finally did, by a wide margin no less, God almighty was that sweet...
***
Feel free to post in the comments section your own top ten games - no need to limit them to analog if you don't want to (I just did because it makes things simpler - maybe a digital one can come up next)
Here are my 10 most-played analog games with a little bit about how and when I played them.
1. GURPS
Through middle school and a big chunk of high school, I ran GURPS games for a couple of my friends. I also ran one in the high school cafeteria during my senior year. Yeah, big freaking dork. So sue me. Most recently, I helped work out and then played in an adaptation of GURPS to the Midnight setting.
2. Dungeons and Dragons
This is what I started out with, in middle school, playing in the Dragonlance setting. Then I stopped for years, because Advanced Dungeons & Dragons sucks as a game. But then 3rd edition came out from WotC and my interest in D&D was rehabilitated in one fell swoop. A terrible game had become a workable game, and my gaming group picked it up and ran with it. I also ran a year-long game set in Eberron that was a lot of fun a lot more recently.
3. Chess
Chess is the one game where, for some reason, I get really competitive. My aggression just comes out. Even when a coworker taught me Chinese Chess recently, I ended up taking the game more seriously than she had in mind.
4. Vampire the Masquerade
This is me in college. At least once a week. I don't give a crap if you're an indie game designer and you hate this game. I love it. This is one of the two games I've been willing to play over AIM for crap's sake. Maybe I just got lucky and had a fantastic group of friends for the past ten years, I dunno, but I've had a lot of my best gaming moments playing Vampire.
5. Mage the Ascension
Given the choice, I'd actually play this game before Vampire. Mage is awesome. I have a huge load of house rules for running it that my friends have basically adopted. Its probably become its own game at this point, but still, the book we use has Mage: the Ascension on the cover. This is the other game that I've been willing to play over AIM.
6. Changeling the Dreaming
I've been in a couple of Changeling games and I've run one as well. Changeling is a fun system, once you break it and remake it so that it makes sense. But once you do that, it can be pretty fun.
7. Heroes of Karia Vitalus
This started out as a hack of Big Eyes Small Mouth and grew into its own system that we're now working on getting a playtest version together for. This game is awesome. It is better than your game. I guarantee it.
8. Poker
Poke is awesome. It is a great combination of aggression and deception - a fantastic release for all those things that are immoral when used outside the context of the game. You attack, defend, deceive, threaten and then move in for the kill when the time is right. No matter how good you get, there is someone else better than you. I guess this is the other game where my competitiveness comes out.
9. Settlers of Catan
This is the main game I play with my friends who live near me at seminary. We play it a lot. Most of the time, I lose, but occasionally I don't. I really like Settlers because it is simple but effective. Its an elegant game (which reminds me to work on that post about elegance in game design...) and it brings together hardcore players like myself and much more casual players like my friend's wife.
10. Canasta
This makes the list because of a summer I spent living with my mom in the apartment complex where I live now. I was a lot younger (about 12) and she was a student at the seminary where I am now a student. We played canasta and she kicked my ass. I got it into my head to play until I could beat her, and it took all summer, playing many times a day every day. But when I finally did, by a wide margin no less, God almighty was that sweet...
***
Feel free to post in the comments section your own top ten games - no need to limit them to analog if you don't want to (I just did because it makes things simpler - maybe a digital one can come up next)
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Endgame III: Back to the GM
I wanted to take some time to comment on what Doug said in the previous post, to elaborate a bit, and to speak from the GM's perspective on what the ending of our Heroes of Karia Vitalus campaign was like. I too found the game very rewarding, and I learned a ton through this campaign about GMing and game design.
It Actually Ended
Doug is right, having a game come to a definitive conclusion is important. I wrote a lot about how to accomplish a good ending in the first post in this series. What I do want to say here though is that the ending ought to be big enough to account for the breadth of your story. My biggest task in this game since we'd built such an impressive scale was to come up with a way to end things that didn't feel like it left any major questions unanswered. I wanted the players to walk away satisfied that they hadn't missed out on any content. That involved a lot of accounting for the variety of storylines in play over the last 5 sessions. I literally spent 5 whole sessions trying to wrap up storylines I knew I wanted resolved. Finally, I ended up asking players to provide epilogues for characters who could use even more resolution.
Player Created and Managed NPC's
Having players create and control certain NPC's ended being and awesome aspect of this game. I am a story/plot driven GM. When I sit down to write a session of a campaign I begin by asking what plot points I want to come up during the evening. I try and find gentle ways of introducing those elements that don't feel like railroading, but nevertheless it is my starting point. Given that, I often find that my NPC's need more depth or they end up being tools in the service of my plot rather than full-fleshed characters. Having players involved in the NPC creation process freed me up to focus on plot more while knowing that the game would be populated with fascinating people. The favorite NPC's of the campaign all ended up being player creations (with the exception of one burly Gogajin hero of mine).
I ended up seeing my primary role as the GM being that of "Master Weaver". I spent most of my time trying to find clever ways to weave together the material my players provided me in a way that fit with the meta-story I'd already created. This brings me to a point I'd like to make about how I think this kind of story game works, which is that the GM retains a significant degree of control over the story. From the beginning it was clear to everyone involved that any NPC created or fact added to the story or the world was mine to do with as I pleased. Out of respect for my players and because the goal of a game is to have fun, I tried to use their NPC's in ways that I knew they would approve of, however, I felt free to co-opt their characters in service of the central plot. In fact, that is partly what made the process so cool - they got to see their creations become a major part of the ongoing story. It was a mutual process of discovery. I saw new elements pop into existence which added depth and provided new opportunities for story, and they got to see those elements develop in unexpected and surprising ways.
For example, one character Jin-Kalys, was originally created as a possible alternate PC if we experienced a PC death. However he ended being worked into the story to such a degree that, though he never became a PC, he was pivotal in central plot events. We could not go back and tell the story of this game without including his contribution. Yet he was not in my design from the outset. The same is true of another favorite NPC, Aimi, who was created as an adversary of one PC and a sister of another. I took Aimi and used her for a series of great encounters and as a way to complicate the storyline, which would never have happened if she hadn't been created for me by my players.
The importance of having one person, probably the GM, kind of overseeing the story is that most players get to enjoy the experience of not having the big picture - only seeing what is right in front of them. Someone, however, needs to be actively tying these things together or you end up with a scattershot of disconnected story bits that could be pretty unsatisfying.
The Game Blog
The blog was really where alot of this back and forth storytelling happened. The process of shared story is alchemical and mysterious, but there are some elements I can identify which might help encourage it.
First - Get everyone to agree about the setting and the kind of story your telling. If you all are familiar with the genre and style it will help. Use common inspiration. For this game we were all familiar with Anime in general as well as specific inspirations like the Final Fantasy series of games. We could all speak the same language and envision similar situations. This is crucial to building shared imaginary space.
Second - Have the primary storyteller do a fair amount of preparation getting the backbone of the story in place and making it clear to your players what the meta-plot is. In our case the meta-plot was saving the world from destruction by the return of "The Enemy". Simple, but enough for players to be able to anchor their smaller stories into.
Third- Have the players create characters together and begin telling stories about them right away. Get everyone in the habit of telling stories into the shared imaginary space, filling it in with more detail and richness. After the PC's are created, the players can go on to create NPC's in the same way, telling stories about them that enrich the world and fit within the meta-plot the GM has provided.
Fourth - the GM takes those stories and people the players are creating and weaves them into the meta-plot. The GM should work to keep the stories connected, and at a manageable number. I freely killed off NPC's or otherwise ended their storyline if I didn't feel I had a good way to integrate them further into the story. Other NPC's I took and did much more with than the player probably expected because they fit my story well.
Genuine Tragedy
There is a special kind of suspension of disbelief required for a game. In order for a game to be a game there has to be uncertainty about the outcome. On the other hand, it would be horrendously unsatisfying to play a 40 session campaign just to have the PC's die ignominiously in the final session. Everyone secretly knows and agrees that the triumph of the heroes is the preferable outcome, but it would be pretty disappointing if that weren't felt to be in some kind of jeopardy. So how do we pull off this double trick? Tragedy. The more that the players have real experience of failure, loss and costly sacrifice during the game the more they can buy the premise that the outcome is uncertain. As Doug says, this shouldn't be done sadistically. In a heroic game tragedy is always a setup for a future triumph. It is satisfying for the PC's to get whipped by the main villain in a first encounter, because that makes their eventual victory sweet indeed.
Players were allowed time, but not too much
A key aspect of my planning for this entire campaign was to treat every session like an episode of a TV show. Thus I wanted each session to have a flow that included peaks and valleys of action a beginning and an ending (though the ending was often a cliffhanger). I thought of things in TV terminology, using establishing shots for scenes, injecting humor and drama at various points. Making frequent use of flashbacks and dream sequences to break up the action and insert exposition in more interesting ways that just having an NPC talk for a long time.
One aspect of all this thinking about game flow was not wanting their to be such a divide between "role-playing time" and "combat time". I wanted, if possible, for everything to be role-playing time. So I used the gems to encourage people to do interesting things in combat at least descriptively, but I also just encouraged and deliberately inserted role-playing interludes into combat sequences. Think about when you watch a combat sequence in a movie how it is rarely just 10 minutes of fighting. It is almost always fighting punctuated by dialogue, or they intersperse a scene of combat with another scene.
The best thing about this group of players is that I never had to force them to role-play. Frequently these interludes were even started by the players and all I had to do was to let them happen and then inject them back into the action before things got too bogged down. Everyone intuitively got into the rhythm of fight/dialogue/fight/dialogue so well that I never had an instance where they attacked an NPC prematurely who I intended them to dialogue with - a common occurrence in most games I've played in before.
Eucatastrophe
Boy, Doug is right that this is the heart of a good story. I saw it as my number one priority throughout the whole campaign to find a way of making "unexpected" good things come out of the tragedies I already talked about above. Actually surprising players can be challenging, so I'm not sure that I ever really shocked them, but I think a few times they were pleasantly surprised, and even better, I think we all appreciated the poignancy of having NPC's and situations we've been watching build to a climax for a long time have a great story payoff. I consciously worked for their to be iconic "good" NPC moments - such as having Ichirou accept a duel with Ryuunosuke, but using his Mecha. Or for Aimi to reveal that she had not killed Amuro Namie after all.
The final battle was full of Eucatastrophe in the classical Tolkeinian sense. The Gogajin showed up to fight. The Zipsum decided not to attack the refugees. The Prill rescued the Cheldrun by freezing the lake. The Laughers showed up and took care of Kufu. And perhaps the greatest Eucatastrophe - the Kyo Tee Shee turned out to be useful after all when they devoured the Oni at the very end. Really I think a good heroic story can be summed up as Tragedy-Eucatastrophe. Master those two things and you'll have a great story every time.
Production Values
We did a lot with this game that could be called set-dressing or props. The players each had individual folders for their characters, color-coded, with dice bags and stuff attached. We started each session with our theme-song and the announcing of the title. These things and many others really helped establish the feel of the game, to mark off the space ritually, and I think did a lot subconsciously to make the game feel like 'an experience'. These things reinforced the feel that it was an episode in an ongoing TV series, and they served as visual reminders of important game concepts - like the fact that the PC's represented universal concepts and were attached to a specific spirit called a Kyo Tee Shee.
One of my favorite things, that Doug didn't mention, were the cards used for the Story Kata - final big events in the game each player could activate. These cards were simple decorated pieces I handed out when a player chose to activate their Story Kata, and the reason I liked them is it made the moment into an event distinguished from other events in the game for which I did not hand out cards. It really nailed home the idea that this was significant. Furthermore, the Story Kata themselves were designed to be rewards for the player - fulfillments of their character concept in a world-spanning sort of way. So handing out cards increased the sense of this event as a reward, something the player gets to hold and see and interact with.
I would encourage doing something similar in almost any game. It is simple to take a 3x5 card and do a little art on the back depicting the reward in question. It is also a great way to handle consumable items or very limited resources. We used the same idea in a Changeling game we ran a while back, and it worked similarly well.
It Actually Ended
Doug is right, having a game come to a definitive conclusion is important. I wrote a lot about how to accomplish a good ending in the first post in this series. What I do want to say here though is that the ending ought to be big enough to account for the breadth of your story. My biggest task in this game since we'd built such an impressive scale was to come up with a way to end things that didn't feel like it left any major questions unanswered. I wanted the players to walk away satisfied that they hadn't missed out on any content. That involved a lot of accounting for the variety of storylines in play over the last 5 sessions. I literally spent 5 whole sessions trying to wrap up storylines I knew I wanted resolved. Finally, I ended up asking players to provide epilogues for characters who could use even more resolution.
Player Created and Managed NPC's
Having players create and control certain NPC's ended being and awesome aspect of this game. I am a story/plot driven GM. When I sit down to write a session of a campaign I begin by asking what plot points I want to come up during the evening. I try and find gentle ways of introducing those elements that don't feel like railroading, but nevertheless it is my starting point. Given that, I often find that my NPC's need more depth or they end up being tools in the service of my plot rather than full-fleshed characters. Having players involved in the NPC creation process freed me up to focus on plot more while knowing that the game would be populated with fascinating people. The favorite NPC's of the campaign all ended up being player creations (with the exception of one burly Gogajin hero of mine).
I ended up seeing my primary role as the GM being that of "Master Weaver". I spent most of my time trying to find clever ways to weave together the material my players provided me in a way that fit with the meta-story I'd already created. This brings me to a point I'd like to make about how I think this kind of story game works, which is that the GM retains a significant degree of control over the story. From the beginning it was clear to everyone involved that any NPC created or fact added to the story or the world was mine to do with as I pleased. Out of respect for my players and because the goal of a game is to have fun, I tried to use their NPC's in ways that I knew they would approve of, however, I felt free to co-opt their characters in service of the central plot. In fact, that is partly what made the process so cool - they got to see their creations become a major part of the ongoing story. It was a mutual process of discovery. I saw new elements pop into existence which added depth and provided new opportunities for story, and they got to see those elements develop in unexpected and surprising ways.
For example, one character Jin-Kalys, was originally created as a possible alternate PC if we experienced a PC death. However he ended being worked into the story to such a degree that, though he never became a PC, he was pivotal in central plot events. We could not go back and tell the story of this game without including his contribution. Yet he was not in my design from the outset. The same is true of another favorite NPC, Aimi, who was created as an adversary of one PC and a sister of another. I took Aimi and used her for a series of great encounters and as a way to complicate the storyline, which would never have happened if she hadn't been created for me by my players.
The importance of having one person, probably the GM, kind of overseeing the story is that most players get to enjoy the experience of not having the big picture - only seeing what is right in front of them. Someone, however, needs to be actively tying these things together or you end up with a scattershot of disconnected story bits that could be pretty unsatisfying.
The Game Blog
The blog was really where alot of this back and forth storytelling happened. The process of shared story is alchemical and mysterious, but there are some elements I can identify which might help encourage it.
First - Get everyone to agree about the setting and the kind of story your telling. If you all are familiar with the genre and style it will help. Use common inspiration. For this game we were all familiar with Anime in general as well as specific inspirations like the Final Fantasy series of games. We could all speak the same language and envision similar situations. This is crucial to building shared imaginary space.
Second - Have the primary storyteller do a fair amount of preparation getting the backbone of the story in place and making it clear to your players what the meta-plot is. In our case the meta-plot was saving the world from destruction by the return of "The Enemy". Simple, but enough for players to be able to anchor their smaller stories into.
Third- Have the players create characters together and begin telling stories about them right away. Get everyone in the habit of telling stories into the shared imaginary space, filling it in with more detail and richness. After the PC's are created, the players can go on to create NPC's in the same way, telling stories about them that enrich the world and fit within the meta-plot the GM has provided.
Fourth - the GM takes those stories and people the players are creating and weaves them into the meta-plot. The GM should work to keep the stories connected, and at a manageable number. I freely killed off NPC's or otherwise ended their storyline if I didn't feel I had a good way to integrate them further into the story. Other NPC's I took and did much more with than the player probably expected because they fit my story well.
Genuine Tragedy
There is a special kind of suspension of disbelief required for a game. In order for a game to be a game there has to be uncertainty about the outcome. On the other hand, it would be horrendously unsatisfying to play a 40 session campaign just to have the PC's die ignominiously in the final session. Everyone secretly knows and agrees that the triumph of the heroes is the preferable outcome, but it would be pretty disappointing if that weren't felt to be in some kind of jeopardy. So how do we pull off this double trick? Tragedy. The more that the players have real experience of failure, loss and costly sacrifice during the game the more they can buy the premise that the outcome is uncertain. As Doug says, this shouldn't be done sadistically. In a heroic game tragedy is always a setup for a future triumph. It is satisfying for the PC's to get whipped by the main villain in a first encounter, because that makes their eventual victory sweet indeed.
Players were allowed time, but not too much
A key aspect of my planning for this entire campaign was to treat every session like an episode of a TV show. Thus I wanted each session to have a flow that included peaks and valleys of action a beginning and an ending (though the ending was often a cliffhanger). I thought of things in TV terminology, using establishing shots for scenes, injecting humor and drama at various points. Making frequent use of flashbacks and dream sequences to break up the action and insert exposition in more interesting ways that just having an NPC talk for a long time.
One aspect of all this thinking about game flow was not wanting their to be such a divide between "role-playing time" and "combat time". I wanted, if possible, for everything to be role-playing time. So I used the gems to encourage people to do interesting things in combat at least descriptively, but I also just encouraged and deliberately inserted role-playing interludes into combat sequences. Think about when you watch a combat sequence in a movie how it is rarely just 10 minutes of fighting. It is almost always fighting punctuated by dialogue, or they intersperse a scene of combat with another scene.
The best thing about this group of players is that I never had to force them to role-play. Frequently these interludes were even started by the players and all I had to do was to let them happen and then inject them back into the action before things got too bogged down. Everyone intuitively got into the rhythm of fight/dialogue/fight/dialogue so well that I never had an instance where they attacked an NPC prematurely who I intended them to dialogue with - a common occurrence in most games I've played in before.
Eucatastrophe
Boy, Doug is right that this is the heart of a good story. I saw it as my number one priority throughout the whole campaign to find a way of making "unexpected" good things come out of the tragedies I already talked about above. Actually surprising players can be challenging, so I'm not sure that I ever really shocked them, but I think a few times they were pleasantly surprised, and even better, I think we all appreciated the poignancy of having NPC's and situations we've been watching build to a climax for a long time have a great story payoff. I consciously worked for their to be iconic "good" NPC moments - such as having Ichirou accept a duel with Ryuunosuke, but using his Mecha. Or for Aimi to reveal that she had not killed Amuro Namie after all.
The final battle was full of Eucatastrophe in the classical Tolkeinian sense. The Gogajin showed up to fight. The Zipsum decided not to attack the refugees. The Prill rescued the Cheldrun by freezing the lake. The Laughers showed up and took care of Kufu. And perhaps the greatest Eucatastrophe - the Kyo Tee Shee turned out to be useful after all when they devoured the Oni at the very end. Really I think a good heroic story can be summed up as Tragedy-Eucatastrophe. Master those two things and you'll have a great story every time.
Production Values
We did a lot with this game that could be called set-dressing or props. The players each had individual folders for their characters, color-coded, with dice bags and stuff attached. We started each session with our theme-song and the announcing of the title. These things and many others really helped establish the feel of the game, to mark off the space ritually, and I think did a lot subconsciously to make the game feel like 'an experience'. These things reinforced the feel that it was an episode in an ongoing TV series, and they served as visual reminders of important game concepts - like the fact that the PC's represented universal concepts and were attached to a specific spirit called a Kyo Tee Shee.
One of my favorite things, that Doug didn't mention, were the cards used for the Story Kata - final big events in the game each player could activate. These cards were simple decorated pieces I handed out when a player chose to activate their Story Kata, and the reason I liked them is it made the moment into an event distinguished from other events in the game for which I did not hand out cards. It really nailed home the idea that this was significant. Furthermore, the Story Kata themselves were designed to be rewards for the player - fulfillments of their character concept in a world-spanning sort of way. So handing out cards increased the sense of this event as a reward, something the player gets to hold and see and interact with.
I would encourage doing something similar in almost any game. It is simple to take a 3x5 card and do a little art on the back depicting the reward in question. It is also a great way to handle consumable items or very limited resources. We used the same idea in a Changeling game we ran a while back, and it worked similarly well.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Endgame II: Reflections from the Player's Perspective
We recently ended a long-running campaign of Heroes of Karia Vitalus. The HoKV game started out using the BESM system with a lot of changes, but has since basically grown into its own system that we're going to be working on in the future as a stand-alone.
But I wanted to talk about the game, how it ended, and the things that made it amazing overall.
First: it actually ended
So many games never come to a satisfactory end, and they need to. You need to have at least a chance to resolve the issues that your character has built up during the game and to bring some kind of closure to the story. If nothing else, you need to show that you have follow-through so that next time the players will stick with you to the end, knowing that the game won't just drag along and then die of neglect.
Player-created and player-managed NPCs
I've decided that this almost has to happen. I loved creating NPCs for Heroes of Karia Vitalus and having them woven into the story, even when it was only a small overlap. But the more I did this, the more I felt deeply invested in the setting, which made me a better player and made the game a better game for everyone.
If there is a way for players to create NPCs, then the GM also has a great idea of what interests the players and what they want to see - and a lot of the busy-work is already done, enthusiastically.
The game blog
This is the third or fourth experiment I've been part of with maintaining a blog for a game I'm in or running, and it worked out great. It provided story before as well as story after, a place to foreshadow or tie up loose ends if that is what was needed, to introduce new storylines and characters, and so on. Also, in-character write-ups of all of the 40 sessions helped us all develop our character's voice, personality, psychology and so on.
The scale was immense, but was built steadily over time
The scale was always large, but we as PCs were buoyed up into it gradually, like a surfacing diver avoiding the bends. By the end, we matched the scale - in a lot of ways, we were as big as the world - but not quite big enough to save the day without a great cost.
Downtime was overt, and otherwise the tension and pressure was almost constant
When we had downtime, it was clear - "Ok, you've got six weeks of downtime, after which, you won't have time to rest or prepare. So how are you using it?" I've experimented with various ways of handling downtime, and the best seems to be to just put it out on the table. It also lets you keep up constant pressure during the up-time, ratcheting the tension constantly.
Genuine tragedy
Once you've bought into your character and the setting deeply, losing something of value is going to hurt, and that is going to connect you to the game in a deeper way. It shouldn't be done sadistically, and there should be some warning that a particular storyline will take a tragic turn as the game progresses - if nothing else, then so the player can give warning if that will be too much of a downer. One of our players was clear that she didn't want horrible things to happen to her, and played a character who was sort of disconnected and self-contained as a way to reinforce this. Others of us reveled in it when Horrible Things happened to our characters and those they cared about.
Self-sacrifice was central, and there was always a cost
Heroes are heroes because they sacrifice themselves for the good of others. That's about it. Some games and some systems will support this better than others, but there should be something in there, some cost for victory. The higher the cost, the more dear the victory.
Players were allowed time, but not too much
Even as the tension was kept high, there was time for little moments between characters, as the outside action slows and the focus zooms in while something poignant happens. We had a few of these moments during the Big Ending, and they were excellent. Its good to stretch rules about timing, about turns and rounds of combat, so that these things can happen organically, because they are often worth it.
Eucatastrophe is the heart of good stories
Eucatastrophe is the unexpected turn of something horrible and hopeless into something beautiful and triumphant. It is help from an unexpected quarter, mercy in the midst of suffering; it is a cry of "The eagles are coming!" in The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. It is what tells us, reassures us, that tragedy is not the end and that loss and defeat are not the final word. It is why we tell stories to each other and why those stories are so powerful. At least, its why I do it.
The story led to more stories the whole time
There needs to be some outlet for the stories inspired by the storyline of the game in question. Great stories give life to further stories. They grow beyond their bounds and last long after the official telling is complete. There needs to be room for this.
Preparation and production values
We should probably post images of some of the things that went into this game. Full-color hand-drawn maps, custom color symbols for all of the races, individual folders with attached dice-bags and individual covers, color stickers for player awards at the end of each Season...you really can't substitute anything else for production values in a game. They tell the players that this game is worth investing in. They build the trust that the game will be worked on, that it will be kept up, that it is building to a climax that will pay off. Things like this make me way to become artsy-craftsy - maybe someday I will.
Next up, Specifics of the system that made it great
Gems, Gems, Gems
Multiple distinct levels of power and threat
The Kata Kariana
The Story Kata or Final Kata
But I wanted to talk about the game, how it ended, and the things that made it amazing overall.
First: it actually ended
So many games never come to a satisfactory end, and they need to. You need to have at least a chance to resolve the issues that your character has built up during the game and to bring some kind of closure to the story. If nothing else, you need to show that you have follow-through so that next time the players will stick with you to the end, knowing that the game won't just drag along and then die of neglect.
Player-created and player-managed NPCs
I've decided that this almost has to happen. I loved creating NPCs for Heroes of Karia Vitalus and having them woven into the story, even when it was only a small overlap. But the more I did this, the more I felt deeply invested in the setting, which made me a better player and made the game a better game for everyone.
If there is a way for players to create NPCs, then the GM also has a great idea of what interests the players and what they want to see - and a lot of the busy-work is already done, enthusiastically.
The game blog
This is the third or fourth experiment I've been part of with maintaining a blog for a game I'm in or running, and it worked out great. It provided story before as well as story after, a place to foreshadow or tie up loose ends if that is what was needed, to introduce new storylines and characters, and so on. Also, in-character write-ups of all of the 40 sessions helped us all develop our character's voice, personality, psychology and so on.
The scale was immense, but was built steadily over time
The scale was always large, but we as PCs were buoyed up into it gradually, like a surfacing diver avoiding the bends. By the end, we matched the scale - in a lot of ways, we were as big as the world - but not quite big enough to save the day without a great cost.
Downtime was overt, and otherwise the tension and pressure was almost constant
When we had downtime, it was clear - "Ok, you've got six weeks of downtime, after which, you won't have time to rest or prepare. So how are you using it?" I've experimented with various ways of handling downtime, and the best seems to be to just put it out on the table. It also lets you keep up constant pressure during the up-time, ratcheting the tension constantly.
Genuine tragedy
Once you've bought into your character and the setting deeply, losing something of value is going to hurt, and that is going to connect you to the game in a deeper way. It shouldn't be done sadistically, and there should be some warning that a particular storyline will take a tragic turn as the game progresses - if nothing else, then so the player can give warning if that will be too much of a downer. One of our players was clear that she didn't want horrible things to happen to her, and played a character who was sort of disconnected and self-contained as a way to reinforce this. Others of us reveled in it when Horrible Things happened to our characters and those they cared about.
Self-sacrifice was central, and there was always a cost
Heroes are heroes because they sacrifice themselves for the good of others. That's about it. Some games and some systems will support this better than others, but there should be something in there, some cost for victory. The higher the cost, the more dear the victory.
Players were allowed time, but not too much
Even as the tension was kept high, there was time for little moments between characters, as the outside action slows and the focus zooms in while something poignant happens. We had a few of these moments during the Big Ending, and they were excellent. Its good to stretch rules about timing, about turns and rounds of combat, so that these things can happen organically, because they are often worth it.
Eucatastrophe is the heart of good stories
Eucatastrophe is the unexpected turn of something horrible and hopeless into something beautiful and triumphant. It is help from an unexpected quarter, mercy in the midst of suffering; it is a cry of "The eagles are coming!" in The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. It is what tells us, reassures us, that tragedy is not the end and that loss and defeat are not the final word. It is why we tell stories to each other and why those stories are so powerful. At least, its why I do it.
The story led to more stories the whole time
There needs to be some outlet for the stories inspired by the storyline of the game in question. Great stories give life to further stories. They grow beyond their bounds and last long after the official telling is complete. There needs to be room for this.
Preparation and production values
We should probably post images of some of the things that went into this game. Full-color hand-drawn maps, custom color symbols for all of the races, individual folders with attached dice-bags and individual covers, color stickers for player awards at the end of each Season...you really can't substitute anything else for production values in a game. They tell the players that this game is worth investing in. They build the trust that the game will be worked on, that it will be kept up, that it is building to a climax that will pay off. Things like this make me way to become artsy-craftsy - maybe someday I will.
Next up, Specifics of the system that made it great
Gems, Gems, Gems
Multiple distinct levels of power and threat
The Kata Kariana
The Story Kata or Final Kata
Monday, May 12, 2008
The Keys to a Great Game...
...are great players, preparation and buy-in.
This realization comes from three sources - listening to a lot of actual play recordings, the end of our Heroes of Karia Vitalus campaign Friday, and trying to run a D&D game for 7 middle-schoolers Saturday.
Actual Play Recordings
I've been surprised with, in honesty, how boring some of these recordings have been. Part of the problem is that indie games tend to be pickup games, so you're listening to people who have very little investment in the story or in their characters, and who possibly have not played together before. But even when I listen to an established group playing, there just isn't much there a lot of the time.
I think that this is because of a lack of buy-in. If you've just picked up a story game, very little preparation has gone into things - and it shows. A lot of story games are powerful ways to produce story now (whatever that is, I still probably don't get it) but they do this at the expense of preparation, or story before. It means that the story you're creating is just being pulled out of thin air, and even with a great system that churns out conflicts, it is still a story out of thin air. It lacks depth and interconnectivity.
And then there are these pauses as dice are rolled to find out what happens next. The dice rattle on the table, and then someone starts interpreting what's happened. Its almost like the dice are playing the game with themselves, and the players are translating. Its really weird to listen to, being someone who mostly plays "traditional" games.
(In experience, Mortal Coil can avoid this problem to a degree because the players create the world and the rules that govern magic together, meaning once they've done this, they've bought into the setting to some degree already. There are probably other indie games that address this in some way, but I think the point still stands.)
Heroes of Karia Vitalus
Holy shit this was a good game, a good campaign, that ended with a bang. There are a lot of reasons it was so good, but I can narrow them down to good players and incredible buy-in. You can have a good GM and a good storyline and still have a game fall sort of flat, but good players, perhaps more accurately, a good group overall, will make magic out of any kind of garbage they pick up.
I'm going to talk more about Karia in the future, but I wanted to mention the buy-in. Half of the 100+ NPCs were made by the players in the game. Loads of scenes and conflicts and stories were created entirely by the players. A lot of this happened on the Heroes of Karia Vitalus blog, and more of it happened in-game.
A weakness of most story games, I think, is that this depth of buy-in is impossible if you just sat down to play with maybe a sentence of story worked out ahead of time. This limits how good the game will be, in my opinion. To be powerful, a story has to be nestled in a system of stories, in a larger story that contains it. It has to be part of what I think I'll call a storysystem of interlocking characters, scenes, conflicts, history and future, breadth and depth. No way around it - this kind of storysystem requires preparation.
You might be able to get around this requirement if you are playing in an established setting that everyone is familiar with, but I still think it would take preparation to connect your story with the larger setting-story. And even if it doesn't, because you're in an established setting, a lot of the preparation work has been done for you.
D&D Game for Middle-Schoolers
In this case, all I really had going for me was preparation. They buy-in was close to nil and the players varied from enthusiastic to completely unfamiliar with D&D. Even the ones who said they'd played before looked blankly at me when I said things like "make an attack roll" or "make a Reflex save".
This was a great example of system mattering a lot. Knowing that I didn't have a strong group of players and had no buy-in to start with, it would have been a great situation for a story game. I'm thinking The Prince's Kingdom, for example - but I was brought in to run D&D, so that's what I had to do. (I had a lot of experiences that night of D&D's rules actively killing the fun).
Part of having great players is having a strong group template and social contract at the table. We had a group template of sorts - I pre-created characters who all had relationships with each other and had different pieces of a mystery/puzzle that the game revolved around. But there was no social contract. The players were all there with completely different agendas and modes of play and priorities.
I'd love to have been able to watch them play D&D on their own before I ran a game, but I had to come in blind, so even my preparation, the only strength I had, didn't get me very far because you have to know the players you are preparing for.
In Conclusion (for now)
Great players: who like to make the game more fun for each other, who move from stance to stance easily as the game allows, who know the system and who have a strong group template and social contract at the table
Preparation: the night's story is connected to a storysystem that has a past, a future, breadth and depth before the game even begins. This doesn't have to be all the GM's job, but it needs to be there
Buy-in: there need to be ways that the players are invested in their characters and in the setting as well. It has to matter to them what happens and why. They should be participating in creating the story and the storysystem together as the game progresses - people buy into stories involving characters and situations they helped create. I prefer, in this case, if the dice serve the players, rather than the other way around...
I can already see I'll need to unpack this in the future, but this was just on my mind.
This realization comes from three sources - listening to a lot of actual play recordings, the end of our Heroes of Karia Vitalus campaign Friday, and trying to run a D&D game for 7 middle-schoolers Saturday.
Actual Play Recordings
I've been surprised with, in honesty, how boring some of these recordings have been. Part of the problem is that indie games tend to be pickup games, so you're listening to people who have very little investment in the story or in their characters, and who possibly have not played together before. But even when I listen to an established group playing, there just isn't much there a lot of the time.
I think that this is because of a lack of buy-in. If you've just picked up a story game, very little preparation has gone into things - and it shows. A lot of story games are powerful ways to produce story now (whatever that is, I still probably don't get it) but they do this at the expense of preparation, or story before. It means that the story you're creating is just being pulled out of thin air, and even with a great system that churns out conflicts, it is still a story out of thin air. It lacks depth and interconnectivity.
And then there are these pauses as dice are rolled to find out what happens next. The dice rattle on the table, and then someone starts interpreting what's happened. Its almost like the dice are playing the game with themselves, and the players are translating. Its really weird to listen to, being someone who mostly plays "traditional" games.
(In experience, Mortal Coil can avoid this problem to a degree because the players create the world and the rules that govern magic together, meaning once they've done this, they've bought into the setting to some degree already. There are probably other indie games that address this in some way, but I think the point still stands.)
Heroes of Karia Vitalus
Holy shit this was a good game, a good campaign, that ended with a bang. There are a lot of reasons it was so good, but I can narrow them down to good players and incredible buy-in. You can have a good GM and a good storyline and still have a game fall sort of flat, but good players, perhaps more accurately, a good group overall, will make magic out of any kind of garbage they pick up.
I'm going to talk more about Karia in the future, but I wanted to mention the buy-in. Half of the 100+ NPCs were made by the players in the game. Loads of scenes and conflicts and stories were created entirely by the players. A lot of this happened on the Heroes of Karia Vitalus blog, and more of it happened in-game.
A weakness of most story games, I think, is that this depth of buy-in is impossible if you just sat down to play with maybe a sentence of story worked out ahead of time. This limits how good the game will be, in my opinion. To be powerful, a story has to be nestled in a system of stories, in a larger story that contains it. It has to be part of what I think I'll call a storysystem of interlocking characters, scenes, conflicts, history and future, breadth and depth. No way around it - this kind of storysystem requires preparation.
You might be able to get around this requirement if you are playing in an established setting that everyone is familiar with, but I still think it would take preparation to connect your story with the larger setting-story. And even if it doesn't, because you're in an established setting, a lot of the preparation work has been done for you.
D&D Game for Middle-Schoolers
In this case, all I really had going for me was preparation. They buy-in was close to nil and the players varied from enthusiastic to completely unfamiliar with D&D. Even the ones who said they'd played before looked blankly at me when I said things like "make an attack roll" or "make a Reflex save".
This was a great example of system mattering a lot. Knowing that I didn't have a strong group of players and had no buy-in to start with, it would have been a great situation for a story game. I'm thinking The Prince's Kingdom, for example - but I was brought in to run D&D, so that's what I had to do. (I had a lot of experiences that night of D&D's rules actively killing the fun).
Part of having great players is having a strong group template and social contract at the table. We had a group template of sorts - I pre-created characters who all had relationships with each other and had different pieces of a mystery/puzzle that the game revolved around. But there was no social contract. The players were all there with completely different agendas and modes of play and priorities.
I'd love to have been able to watch them play D&D on their own before I ran a game, but I had to come in blind, so even my preparation, the only strength I had, didn't get me very far because you have to know the players you are preparing for.
In Conclusion (for now)
Great players: who like to make the game more fun for each other, who move from stance to stance easily as the game allows, who know the system and who have a strong group template and social contract at the table
Preparation: the night's story is connected to a storysystem that has a past, a future, breadth and depth before the game even begins. This doesn't have to be all the GM's job, but it needs to be there
Buy-in: there need to be ways that the players are invested in their characters and in the setting as well. It has to matter to them what happens and why. They should be participating in creating the story and the storysystem together as the game progresses - people buy into stories involving characters and situations they helped create. I prefer, in this case, if the dice serve the players, rather than the other way around...
I can already see I'll need to unpack this in the future, but this was just on my mind.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Game Mechanics That Fail
...in my estimation, of course.
Every game has mechanics that are supposed to represent something, or are supposed to evoke a response. They reinforce player behavior, lend flavor to a game, and create fun...or they don't. While listening to the Brilliant Gameologists (yes, yet another gaming podcast I listen to now) Episode 2 I believe, the topic of Call of Cthulhu's Sanity mechanic came up. It seemed like the hosts all liked the mechanic, but in the past, running Call of Cthulhu or playing in it, I've felt the exact opposite. This got me thinking about some central mechanics to popular, often-mentioned games, games I've had a lot of experience playing and running, which...fail. I came up with three right off the top of my head. After each example, I'll suggest a fix for that mechanic, on the off chance that anyone out there agrees with me about these things.
Call of Cthulhu and Sanity Points
I think that going insane is clearly central to stories in the Mythos, but that the Sanity mechanic fails. Running the game, I feel like it gets in the way of evoking genuine reactions from players. Playing in the game, I feel like it distances me from the horrific things that are going on. The problem is that you end up marking off points, and this is a pause in what is going on, a little calculation, or some erasing, that takes what might actually be creepy or frightening and makes it into the equivalent of taking damage in D&D (which I talk about below) - you just mark off some points and move on. It works sort of like this:
GM: "Boo! You're scared."
Player: "Uh, no I'm not."
GM: "Yes you are. Mark off four points. That means you're really scared."
Player: "Ah." Marks off points on sheet. "I see. Now I'm scared."
Actually, running a Call of Cthulhu game, and then playing in another that was relatively awful, is a lot of what convinced me to work on Horror!, which I've written a bit about on this blog thus far, and may do so again once Parsec is finished and sent to the publisher.
The Fix
To fix this, I can suggest a few methods. The best one, I think, its not to tell the players how much sanity they have left. Things should get creepier and creepier, until maybe they start getting downright freakish for one of the player-characters because she's coming completely unhinged. You can pass little notes to the players to help them get an idea of what's going on and to ratchet up the paranoia as each of them hears something, or feels something, but none of them are sure what's real and what is just a symptom of their minds breaking apart under the strain. With some preparation, you can come up with frightening or evocative images or little vignettes and prepare them ahead of time to reveal at the right moment.
Actually scaring players in a horror game is probably the most difficult task a GM can have, but I think that the Sanity system makes it almost impossible. At least for me.
D20, Dungeons and Dragons etc., and Hit Points
I realize I'm stabbing a sacred cow here. You'll just have to deal.
Hit points are the least flavorful way to handle wounds that I can imagine. Getting hurt hurts. You naturally flinch, cry out, pull back, and shy away from things that could injure you. Unless you're playing D&D. Then, you're just keeping track of a total until it falls low enough for you to go from 100% capacity to unconscious. Hit Points have the power to make being eaten by a Dragon boring. Or to make being backstabbed by an assassin worthy of a yawn. In an adventure game, this is unacceptable.
The Fixes
Unearthed Arcana provides one fix for this that D20 Star Wars 2nd Edition (the one before Saga) used as well - Wounds and Vitality. So you have a pool of Vitality points that you can lose and regain quickly that aren't a big deal. They just represent getting worn down and tired and bruised. Then, you have Wounds, when you lose when someone scores a critical hit on your or when something else serious happens. As soon as you lose even one Wound, you take a penalty. When you lose Wounds, this means that the DM should take a moment to make the wound visceral. The immediate consequences make you shy away from situations that could really hurt you. Running and playing in a game that used Wounds/Vitality, I thought they were a huge imporovement on Hit Points.
Ideally, you should track every significant injury a character sustains. They should all be described vividly and have consequences for the PC. But once you start doing that, you're not playing D20 anymore.
Vampire the Masquerade and Path Scores/Humanity
Its definitely in vogue to give Vampire a lot of crap as a system, but I'm not jumping on that particular bandwagon. I played Vampire and ran Vampire avidly for about eight years or so, and enjoyed almost every session of every game. I wrote and ran huge (80-100 player) LARPS on two occasions and loved those as well. And look! I'm not even brain-damaged. (Sorry, couldn't help myself)
Obviously, the Storyteller system isn't perfect. I've never seen a system that doesn't have holes I could drive a truck through, frankly, so its all a matter of increments to me. One of the most glaring problems is the Humanity/Path system. In most of my games, Path has played a central role, and I've always had house rules galore. As written, your Humanity is just something you grind down as quickly as possible by committing atrocities at every turn. There's no reason not to (except that one Dementation power is, for some reason, resisted by your Path score). Its just holding you back. Ironically enough, the Path system, as written, has no teeth.
The Fixes
The most recent version of Vampire the Dark Ages to come out before Requiem was released actually dealt with Paths a bit better. They added rules for what they called an Aura - it is basically the sense that others get about you, whether you are a seething pustule of moral corruption or a shimmering paragon of virtue. If you had a high path score, your Aura was beneficial in social situations - it was easier to convince people to trust you, for example, or to appear human to a casual onlooker. Those with high Path scores had trouble with both.
I also added a house rule about the order in which PCs woke up at night and got sleepy as morning approached. So with a higher Path score, you got a chance to go out and accomplish things as a PC before others were even awake, and were less likely to fall asleep in a dangerous situation. This added to the Aura as incentive to actually maintain a Path score.
Of course, there was still the fun of plunging into depravity - but now there was a bit more of a feeling that you were losing something.
Every game has mechanics that are supposed to represent something, or are supposed to evoke a response. They reinforce player behavior, lend flavor to a game, and create fun...or they don't. While listening to the Brilliant Gameologists (yes, yet another gaming podcast I listen to now) Episode 2 I believe, the topic of Call of Cthulhu's Sanity mechanic came up. It seemed like the hosts all liked the mechanic, but in the past, running Call of Cthulhu or playing in it, I've felt the exact opposite. This got me thinking about some central mechanics to popular, often-mentioned games, games I've had a lot of experience playing and running, which...fail. I came up with three right off the top of my head. After each example, I'll suggest a fix for that mechanic, on the off chance that anyone out there agrees with me about these things.
Call of Cthulhu and Sanity Points
I think that going insane is clearly central to stories in the Mythos, but that the Sanity mechanic fails. Running the game, I feel like it gets in the way of evoking genuine reactions from players. Playing in the game, I feel like it distances me from the horrific things that are going on. The problem is that you end up marking off points, and this is a pause in what is going on, a little calculation, or some erasing, that takes what might actually be creepy or frightening and makes it into the equivalent of taking damage in D&D (which I talk about below) - you just mark off some points and move on. It works sort of like this:
GM: "Boo! You're scared."
Player: "Uh, no I'm not."
GM: "Yes you are. Mark off four points. That means you're really scared."
Player: "Ah." Marks off points on sheet. "I see. Now I'm scared."
Actually, running a Call of Cthulhu game, and then playing in another that was relatively awful, is a lot of what convinced me to work on Horror!, which I've written a bit about on this blog thus far, and may do so again once Parsec is finished and sent to the publisher.
The Fix
To fix this, I can suggest a few methods. The best one, I think, its not to tell the players how much sanity they have left. Things should get creepier and creepier, until maybe they start getting downright freakish for one of the player-characters because she's coming completely unhinged. You can pass little notes to the players to help them get an idea of what's going on and to ratchet up the paranoia as each of them hears something, or feels something, but none of them are sure what's real and what is just a symptom of their minds breaking apart under the strain. With some preparation, you can come up with frightening or evocative images or little vignettes and prepare them ahead of time to reveal at the right moment.
Actually scaring players in a horror game is probably the most difficult task a GM can have, but I think that the Sanity system makes it almost impossible. At least for me.
D20, Dungeons and Dragons etc., and Hit Points
I realize I'm stabbing a sacred cow here. You'll just have to deal.
Hit points are the least flavorful way to handle wounds that I can imagine. Getting hurt hurts. You naturally flinch, cry out, pull back, and shy away from things that could injure you. Unless you're playing D&D. Then, you're just keeping track of a total until it falls low enough for you to go from 100% capacity to unconscious. Hit Points have the power to make being eaten by a Dragon boring. Or to make being backstabbed by an assassin worthy of a yawn. In an adventure game, this is unacceptable.
The Fixes
Unearthed Arcana provides one fix for this that D20 Star Wars 2nd Edition (the one before Saga) used as well - Wounds and Vitality. So you have a pool of Vitality points that you can lose and regain quickly that aren't a big deal. They just represent getting worn down and tired and bruised. Then, you have Wounds, when you lose when someone scores a critical hit on your or when something else serious happens. As soon as you lose even one Wound, you take a penalty. When you lose Wounds, this means that the DM should take a moment to make the wound visceral. The immediate consequences make you shy away from situations that could really hurt you. Running and playing in a game that used Wounds/Vitality, I thought they were a huge imporovement on Hit Points.
Ideally, you should track every significant injury a character sustains. They should all be described vividly and have consequences for the PC. But once you start doing that, you're not playing D20 anymore.
Vampire the Masquerade and Path Scores/Humanity
Its definitely in vogue to give Vampire a lot of crap as a system, but I'm not jumping on that particular bandwagon. I played Vampire and ran Vampire avidly for about eight years or so, and enjoyed almost every session of every game. I wrote and ran huge (80-100 player) LARPS on two occasions and loved those as well. And look! I'm not even brain-damaged. (Sorry, couldn't help myself)
Obviously, the Storyteller system isn't perfect. I've never seen a system that doesn't have holes I could drive a truck through, frankly, so its all a matter of increments to me. One of the most glaring problems is the Humanity/Path system. In most of my games, Path has played a central role, and I've always had house rules galore. As written, your Humanity is just something you grind down as quickly as possible by committing atrocities at every turn. There's no reason not to (except that one Dementation power is, for some reason, resisted by your Path score). Its just holding you back. Ironically enough, the Path system, as written, has no teeth.
The Fixes
The most recent version of Vampire the Dark Ages to come out before Requiem was released actually dealt with Paths a bit better. They added rules for what they called an Aura - it is basically the sense that others get about you, whether you are a seething pustule of moral corruption or a shimmering paragon of virtue. If you had a high path score, your Aura was beneficial in social situations - it was easier to convince people to trust you, for example, or to appear human to a casual onlooker. Those with high Path scores had trouble with both.
I also added a house rule about the order in which PCs woke up at night and got sleepy as morning approached. So with a higher Path score, you got a chance to go out and accomplish things as a PC before others were even awake, and were less likely to fall asleep in a dangerous situation. This added to the Aura as incentive to actually maintain a Path score.
Of course, there was still the fun of plunging into depravity - but now there was a bit more of a feeling that you were losing something.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Combat in Gaming
A recent experience with a pretty horrible D&D one-shot got me reflecting on rpg's, their history, central mechanics and GMing as a craft. Yeah, a lot of disparate stuff. This is gonna be stream of consciousness so go somewhere else if that bugs you.
D&D came out of tabletop strategy games. At its heart it always has been (and probably always will be) a combat simulator with some roleplaying elements appended to it. Sure, you can run a D&D game where roleplaying is primary, but you'll end up doing it almost entirely outside the system. The vast bulk of the rules, the massive energy of WoTC R&D and the preference of most of its players keeps D&D focused on battle. Hell, your character has a base attack bonus! What is it for if you're not whacking things on the noggin? Yeah, when you get right down to it, D&D is about combat.
Since it is the granddaddy of our hobby almost every other game out there has similar issues at heart. The Indie gaming scene of late has been fantastic about trying to put story at the center of their games and White Wolf has for a long time been working on more immersive story experiences, rather than hack 'n' slash, but a huge majority of games still include combat as a central element, or the central element of the game. Flip open almost any RPG manual and you might find alot of different things in there, but there is almost bound to be a section on resolving combat. And most players I know, even the hardcore roleplayers, wouldn't be satisfied with a game if combat didn't play a role somewhere in it. It's part of the genes of this hobby that the characters we play end up in violent conflict.
Partly, as I said above, this is due to where RPG's come from - tabletop strategy games. Maybe it's more profoundly anthropological than that. Maybe it's because the root of all games is the kind of playful interaction that teaches baby tigers how to be good predators. Maybe gaming itself is a way that humans have of preparing for warfare. Or maybe we just have such a hard time imagining interesting stories that don't involve violence because we are saturated with it everywhere else in our lives. Movies, television, novels, real-life - violence is a big part of it all. Most likely violence in gaming is just an extension of all that.
Whatever the reason that RPG's are so violent, it is worth having a look to see how much time and energy you put into "combat" as an aspect of your gaming. WoTC, for example, doesn't seem to even ask questions like "why are 90% of our rules about fighting?" Consider the number of man hours being spent on system design so that you and your friends can beat up some orcs. Consider how much time your GM puts into preparing combats (and it's ungodly with D20). Then think about how much time around the table is spent with the mat and minis out. Is that really what this game is about?
D&D came out of tabletop strategy games. At its heart it always has been (and probably always will be) a combat simulator with some roleplaying elements appended to it. Sure, you can run a D&D game where roleplaying is primary, but you'll end up doing it almost entirely outside the system. The vast bulk of the rules, the massive energy of WoTC R&D and the preference of most of its players keeps D&D focused on battle. Hell, your character has a base attack bonus! What is it for if you're not whacking things on the noggin? Yeah, when you get right down to it, D&D is about combat.
Since it is the granddaddy of our hobby almost every other game out there has similar issues at heart. The Indie gaming scene of late has been fantastic about trying to put story at the center of their games and White Wolf has for a long time been working on more immersive story experiences, rather than hack 'n' slash, but a huge majority of games still include combat as a central element, or the central element of the game. Flip open almost any RPG manual and you might find alot of different things in there, but there is almost bound to be a section on resolving combat. And most players I know, even the hardcore roleplayers, wouldn't be satisfied with a game if combat didn't play a role somewhere in it. It's part of the genes of this hobby that the characters we play end up in violent conflict.
Partly, as I said above, this is due to where RPG's come from - tabletop strategy games. Maybe it's more profoundly anthropological than that. Maybe it's because the root of all games is the kind of playful interaction that teaches baby tigers how to be good predators. Maybe gaming itself is a way that humans have of preparing for warfare. Or maybe we just have such a hard time imagining interesting stories that don't involve violence because we are saturated with it everywhere else in our lives. Movies, television, novels, real-life - violence is a big part of it all. Most likely violence in gaming is just an extension of all that.
Whatever the reason that RPG's are so violent, it is worth having a look to see how much time and energy you put into "combat" as an aspect of your gaming. WoTC, for example, doesn't seem to even ask questions like "why are 90% of our rules about fighting?" Consider the number of man hours being spent on system design so that you and your friends can beat up some orcs. Consider how much time your GM puts into preparing combats (and it's ungodly with D20). Then think about how much time around the table is spent with the mat and minis out. Is that really what this game is about?
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Character Success Vs. Player Success
In more than one of the games I've played in over the years, truly terrible things have happened to my characters - and almost all the time, I'm happy about it. The reason for this is that I have a distinct view of character success and player success.Character success is easy to like. You roll well, or spend points well, or however the system works, and your character wins in the conflict or gets what she wants. I think that at a very basic level, character victory = player victory. When I first started playing, I felt great when my character won and frustrated when he lost.
Over time, though, I started t realize that the two need not be the same. I had a few situations where things went bad for my character, but it was funny, or exciting, or made the game more interesting, and I forgot to be frustrated and had a good time. As time went on, my victory as a player became more and more independent of my characters' victories.
I started to play with this idea more and more. I would do things that I knew would be detrimental, but would be fun or make things more interesting. Not in the obnoxious sense of escalating every situation or doing things that made no sense just to derail the game - I was thinking about how I could improve the game by my characters' successes and their failures.
This led to more thinking about the game-as-such, which I've continued to develop as I've become aware of a lot of Indie games and RPG theory (the pretension-lite versions) that deals with the game-as-such more in their rules and thinking.
I think this results in a win-win situation for the game as a whole. If your failures are thoughtful, even planned like this one was last night, then the game is improved when things go well and when things to terribly...for your character. Either way, its more fun for you as a player.
--> As a side-note, this is also a great way to get over cheating on the dice, or to help other players stop doing that. In RPGs, when you roll the dice, there are usually so many modifiers that you can fudge a roll if you feel you have to - I've done it in the past and I've seen it done in most games I've been in at one point or another. Realizing that player victory does not have to equal character victory gets over this.
--> On the other hand, sometimes its just dramatically better if you win. In this case, I prefer games with some kind of mechanic that lets you weight some rolls or actions more than others - White Wolf has Willpower (and Vitae, Quintessence and other spendables), Burning Wheel has Artha, Mortal Coil uses tokens for everything, Exalted has stunt dice, BESM has Energy (and my friend has come up with a cool token system to use as well), D&D has the optional Action Points...you get the idea. I think these kinds of things are absolutely necessary - but its a lot better if you use resources like this with the overall game in mind, and not just your character's victories.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
I recently ran my first session of Vampire the Requiem as a one-shot for my usual gaming group. We were taking a break from this for a night and I had an idea for a game. Overall, I think it went ok. Not great, but ok.I generally don't like the dice-mechanic for the New World of Darkness as much as I liked the mechanic for the Old World of Darkness. I like having two variables, number of dice and difficulty, to manipulate in a game in different situations. In the NWoD, everything is difficulty 8, and the only variable is number of dice.
WW also took a turn toward D20 with the NWoD that I don't like. They added Merits that are obviously based on Feats, even to the point of replicating some Feats almost exactly. Maybe this is what other gamers are looking for who knows?
I think that, in general, to enjoy Vampire you have to want to play a vampire. There has to be something about you that likes when you finally frenzy and tear into people, doing things that you know you'll regret later. There's a particularity about vampires that isn't always there in other games. Even in Mage, there are a lot of kinds of Mage games, but Vampire is a little more limited, especially in tone.
As for me, I really like Vampire - both manifestations. I remember my first game, feeling sort of contemptuous of these stupid Goth kids and their Vampire game, hoping I could talk them into something else after this game was over. Turns out, Vampire is awesome. It does what it does very, very well. It also has the cool effect of combining the potential for severe, visceral violence, while still making it difficult to actually kill a PC. For modern games especially, this is very difficult to do in a way that makes sense.
Requiem works well, I thought. Its pretty intuitive. The dice mechanic is a step backwards from the last editions, but the rest of the game is a step forward. Five major Clans representing five archetypes of vampires themselves: sexy and dangerous (Daeva), bestial (Gangrel), intelligent and arcane (Mekhet), terrifying (Nosferatu) and manipulative (Ventrue). Under each Clan are a multitude of Bloodlines - I think there are four listed in the main book, and they have a lot of others in other expansions as usual.
Disciplines are a little more streamlined and a bit more logically laid out, and there are also multiple kinds of blood magic which I think is an excellent move. Making that available to any Clan, usually through their faction, means that you don't have to play a Tremere to use blood magic.
I also like that there are five major political factions, with other minor factions listed as well. It makes the political intrigues potentially richer and more interesting, since you have Clan politics going on, faction politics, and also the city's overall political structure. This makes it easier to involve player-characters at multiple levels.
One hallmark of the NWoD is the incredible production values in the core rulebooks. The paper stock, artwork, graphic design, and especially the incredible covers are all beautiful and evocative. The expansions move to a lower quality paper stock and no shiny foil in the covers, but that's ok. They're expansions. I think that when VtR came out, the cover especially was as embarrassingly better than other games as the original VtM cover was back in the early 90's.
Basically, its an awesome game if you like violence, political intrigue, and night-time. Having run it, I'd give it 4 stars - and I'd give Vampire the Masquerade 4.5 stars. The change in rules makes a difference.
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