As requested, The Journal

[RangerEd]

Eero,

The Journal is definitely not the grail. It is hopelessly derivative, actually. It is a personal taste, I think. How much basil does one put into curry? I like to chew the leaves in every bite. I have concocted a homebrew for my friends. I may be like that guy that finds a brand of shoes he likes and never buys anything else. Yeah, I will try a sandal for the beach or wingtips for a nice evening out, but there's still those old comfy shoes waiting at home.

The twice a year thing is mostly driven by my desire to warp my kids into their own chosen form of subversive, thoughtful happiness. I do not want my kids to fall for the same authority-by-position, pedagogical crap I did growing up. Another competition for time comes from career. I have found an organization dumb enough to pay me to do what I love. Stupid suckers. Although, I have to move across the country in 12 to 36 month intervals for at least seven more years. Mix in the willingness to walk out on a local game with simulation inconsistencies or social dysfunction (after a couple of months of trial and attempt to offer gentle help, of course), and Ed has to fly to California or Missouri or Arizona or wherever to role-play for a few days on a long weekend.

I agree I'm handicapped on timeline to playtest and refine. Instead of weekly iterations for avid indie game developers, mine will be as much as 25-times longer. That is why sites like this are great. This group of folks is accelerating my timeline by providing meaningful and experienced feedback. I also employ every bit of theory I can find to test and evaluate the game. The reason I am optimistic is I know I'm walking a well-trodden path, and strangely, those who have come before me are willing to help.

Ed

[RangerEd]

Over the last two days, I have had several email exchanges with my buddy who helped me playtest a previous version of The Journal. His comments and concerns for the latest version relate to things such as a +1 here or there, and d6's versus fixed values of 3 to 5. He doesn't answer my questions outside of explicit mechanics. Not that there is anything wrong with considering explicit mechanics, but the juxtaposition of this forum and such an email exchange is, well, confounding. It feels similar to the first time I returned to my small home town after traveling abroad. Perhaps D&D culture is more like small town life than religious orthodoxy: "Narrati-what-ism? You ain't from around here, are yeh?"

[RangerEd]

I want to lift a post I made over on Ron's drawing topic. The discussion ought to be here instead of me creating rude tangents for Ron's posts.

"By exposing me to The Quiet Year and Chronicles of the Skin, you have broadened my idea of what roleplaying can be. Although the exposure is limited to reading their websites and watching the posted links, I can easily envision a situation where I bring one of these games to the table for a game with my friends or a meetup group and having them reject the game in short order. That makes me sad.

"Thinking more carefully about what may cause such divergence in the willingness to accept a game, I return to another rephrasing of my question (allowing ignorant people to ask a question can be annoying, because they often cannot ask the right question, sorry). What part of your theory might explain players of a game being unable to visualize an imaginary person (a character with motivation) well enough to interact with a setting (create story by triggering events) without a requisite number of specified mechanics?

"My friends, having been exposed almost exclusively to D&D-like games, must have D&D-like character stats and mechanics or they struggle to role-play. What actions might I consider to help broaden their horizons such that I could buy these games and expect them not to occupy a brown box in my basement? I do not accept that there is nothing I could do, but showing up with the game probably won't work without a specific approach to help them have fun."

Ed

[RangerEd]

And another pertinent post, unfortunately also a hijacking. I didn't realize I was such a rude forum member until now. Jees.

The Post was in response to Mike's questions about calvinball games and my friends' style of roleplaying with regards to rule following and behind the screen behavior.

"The rules for the game were available to anyone who wanted to try and understand them. That did not happen much. I did eventually read them because I wanted to offer the DM a break. He ran a weekly game (give or take) for nearly six years. He was using them, but had many, many on the spot rules he would bring into play. Some of which caused contention because I disagreed with the simulation mechanic or the ruling broke some critical part of the character I was playing. Right or wrong, though, he was consistent as an atomic clock.

"On the curtains drawn behavior of some DMs, if forced to choose as a player, I would lean towards an outcome of a fun game over the obligation to follow the rules. Although, there are two are two sides of a dialectic reasoning argument going on here from my perspective. Dialectic reasoning has its flaws, but I like it for bounding a linear space between to opposite extremes. The thesis I think most gamers tacitly assume speaks to rule-based gaming, but strict adherence to rules can diminish fun at the table. Any of us could formulate examples of rule-following-gone-bad from our own experiences. The antithesis is something like continuously applied rule 0 or calvinball, which can be equally disruptive for a fun game. Your posts above demonstrate that idea. The synthesis is likely somewhere in the middle. Judgment of which to lean towards on the line then becomes the challenge.

"I would like my players to believe I am a strict rule follower. That desire is what puts me up against the wall as a DM for 3.5, especially at stepped increments around 7th, 13th, then 20th character level games. Holding that many interrelated sets of character stats all at once taxes the hell out of me. I end up leaving players alone and ignored in some ways on the other side of the screen as I manage the NPCs, tracking tactical implications of 5-foot steps, and adjudicating situational modifiers. I have no idea if the players are having fun or if a story is even going on. I am mentally running (anaerobically) to keep up with the pace of the action. Mistakes get made that come up later in post-game conversations over tacos; important ones that would have dramatically altered the outcome for the player characters. All I can say is sorry, but wasn't it fun?

"5th edition seemed like the road to Abilene from the playtest materials. Wiki-development was creating a game design by committee. OSRIC relieved many of the pressure factors that 3.5 and Pathfinder built up, but was too confining for the level of personal detail my friends and I wanted in our snowflakes. I was truly frustrated. I wanted both sides of the dialectic: rules I could follow and have enough horsepower left to guide story creation. The Journal is the game I put together so I could do both. The reason I bring up the game, my dissatisfaction with D&D editions, and the behind the curtain behavior is as context for what I am about to admit. On the first playtest, I fudged dice rolls on my side of the screen to keep the action rising when I identified a local climax to the emerging story. I was the wizard of oz, hoping no one paid attention to the man behind the curtain. My dilemma is that I think the friend that helped me with the playtest would be disappointed if he knew I fudged the dice rolls. I think he needs to feel as though everything boiled out of the mechanics. My rationalization for that hypocrisy is that sometimes, I don't want probability to interfere with events, even if those events should technically adhere to the rules for contested actions.

"Could I be hiding a CA divide between my friend and I with my little secret?"

[Eero Tuovinen]

Ed, it just occurred to me that you might find it enjoyable to read the Solar System. It's available for free at that link, and it's highly relevant to the issues of D&D and narrativism in certain ways; in some ways it is one possible end-point of the sort of development you're doing with Journal.

[RangerEd]

Eero,

The link does not work for me. Says invalid address. I played around with variations on the address to no avail. I did find the game and will get a pdf copy soon. The description indicates a lot of similarities to my efforts, in purpose and intent.

Looking forward to it,
Ed

[RangerEd]

Well, my mathematically inclined buddy found the weak link in the mechanics and proved to me multiple success will not work with the way I have them in version 8. They are okay in a sense, but will not support our established method of play, which was the intent of The Journal all along. I am strangely ecstatic. This presents an opportunity for me to drastically simplify the written rules to be that much closer to The Pool on the sliding scale of cogs in the machine. I can also bring the narrativism to the forefront a bit more by eliminating rules, assuming explanation space indicates a style of play (it seems to be true that narrative-centered games have fewer resolution mechanics). The kicker is it will be his idea.

I know have plans for the weekend.

[RangerEd]

All,

The Journal v9 can be found at the following link: https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=8F9106052E03292C!400&authkey=!APp6mxGSi0s245A

The game is the exploration of an identity in the face of a disquieting and unforgiving world of magic and violence. For my best attempt at truth in advertising, it is a D&D hack that employs a hodgepodge of rule mechanics to support a specific style of play that my friends and I enjoy. We are narrativists and purists for system, such that we have simulationist-by-habit tendencies. Experiences related to the Steve Jackson Murphy's Rules comics informs our purist for system concern for interactions of rules.

I feel like it is good enough to simply play it and stop reworking it. Thanks for everyone's help and patience here.

Ed

[Mike Holmes]

I'm also interested in the answer to Eero's question. Will your game address playing so infrequently? Or should you, instead, maybe find a way to play more? :)

[RangerEd]

Mike,

Funny you mention it. Yesterday I had a conversation with a friend of mine from work. We were talking about a game he plays with his kids, where they each draw a card with a picture on it (beach balls, slides, socks, and other kid things) and add to an ongoing, collaborative story involving the pictures. I told him about The Journal and asked if he would want to try it sometime. He was interested. The collaborative, emergent story concept mixed with genre-independence (I offered historical fiction or zombie apocalypse as options) seemed to be the crucial selling point. Distancing RPGs from D&D was very important, though. He knew of and had no interest in being a D&D misfit. We agreed that being invited to role play with a D&D group can sometimes be as creepy as being invited to a swinger's party.
 
The interaction makes me consider attenuating the D&D-specific color from the game a bit more. It might be as simple as changing the order of presentation for some thing, like placing firearms description before hand-to-hand weapons descriptions. I asked him to give the guide a read through and mark where he was lost or confused. I think he will find those D&D-experience-dependent passages and call them out, where I may be blind to them.

Recruiting,
Ed

[RangerEd]

Mike,

After rethinking it, I dodged your actual question to tell a personal story. As of now, priorities keep my gaming periodicity limited. The Journal employs journaling to overcome the poor or false memory skills we all have. Through the journaling rule mechanic, a story can stand the six-month break. Although to be fair, the first play test came to a fairly satisfying ending after about 38 hours of play during a three day trip to visit me long-time roleplaying partner. The evidence is in the text boxes of example play I pulled from my buddy's journal I had him send me. He provided an epilog, but I countered with greater story potential, essentially doubling down by dangling an opportunity for the character to impress his newly-reunited-with father. We'll see if me buddy wants to continue the next time he has to solo.

As for now, I am preparing for a group game for the holidays here in the U.S. Several old friends converge near my hometown about that time. I continue to refine and expand the explanations of the game offered in the game guide. I've added some helpful figures and additional topic sentences I left implied in earlier version. Overcoming the virgin-narrativism (as Ron called it) takes a lot of effort and I continue to iterate.

In totality, this game design project is an finely-tuned, uber-personalized solution to meet my gaming needs, which includes lack of regular gameplay.

Ed

[Mike Holmes]

It's funny you should mention the problem of memory. Even playing my weekly games as I do, I regularly forget the names of important NPCs, or even that I left the characters in the midst of a cliffhanger. And my players do too. Fortunately a lot of my play is by IRC, and the program keeps chat logs. It's not 100% reliable (sometimes my client doesn't save for some reason). But between myself and several players somebody will either remember or have the log on hand.

Interesting how that parallels your needs.

[RangerEd]

Well, well, well,

I finally found the input I was looking for at the Forge. Troy's Standard Rant #3, The Power 19. What a great opportunity to test The Journal. I wish I could search that forum with an engine instead of poking through manually. Eh, persistence pays off.

Ed