[Circle of Hands] Region, setting, world

[Ron Edwards]

Where in the world is this? Near the equator, near a pole? What is that crescent bay, half of an inland sea, or the coast of an ocean? What isolates it from the surrounding areas, where are the trade routes of other human populations located?

I'm dealing with a Nordic-German Dark Ages analogue culture in a region which resembles a pre-desert Levant more than anything else. That's ... ummm? Baltic? Or Black Sea?

What is this world? Is it a world, in the sense of a planet going around a star? Is it an other-dimensional Earth? Or is it something completely different, like a ... dare I say, like a lozenge?

What are the overall weather patterns (into which the described seasons fit), how long is a year? In fact, what's the whole sky like? Is the sun a sun? Is there a moon, like our moon, and does it do the same things, visually?

You can probably see where I'm going with this: I don't know and I don't want to know. To a great extent I'm letting the region's isolation do the work for me - staying close to the culture's knowledge level lets me play stupid about world-building, and that's the way I like it.

So, at present anyway, I'm pulling the remarkably non-intellectual move of assuming the sun, moon, and stars are either just as we know them, or so close that the people's experience of them can't be distinguished from ours.

The question is whether this studied ignorance is viable for publication purposes.

[John W]

I think it is suitable for publication purposes, and in fact I prefer a game that doesn't come with a complete atlas and encyclopedia.  Required reading is a barrier to entry for players and/or a stumbling block to play (because you will always have at least one player in the group who didn't do the reading).  You want to provide enough info to tantalize and inspire, but not enough to exclude any ideas that are not your own, and not so much that few players will be able to or bother to learn it all.  Basically, leave blank spots in the map (history, cosmology...), especially around the edges.  Create knowns that hint at more unknowns.

That's not to say that you shouldn't address the undefined aspects at all.  Perhaps a chapter addressed to the GM that's full of advice about how to make these unknowns important to the PCs, how to introduce or discover or create the answers in play, some suggestions for exploration (from real history, from fiction, from your head).

This brings me to a more general matter that I think is relevant here: I feel like the game as written so far has focused on the session scale of play and the short-term campaign.  Is this intended to be the limit of this game, i.e. would a grander campaign be counter to this game's creative agenda?  There are a lot of questions, and in fact a lot of potential, around long-term play.  I think you've said somewhere that how the PCs' actions affect the regions and culture of the Crescent Land over time is up to the GM and individual play groups, but I think this advice bears expanding with more specific suggestions in terms of how to structure (or bang) a longer campaign arc.  Should there be campaign-level mechanics?  What can a GM do to challenge well advanced PCs?  What guidance would you give about bringing in lands and cultures beyond the Crescent Lands?  How would you bring the war of magic to a head?

I'm not saying to tell us what to do, but just to discuss what sort of extensions would continue to support your creative agenda for this game.

Cheers,
-J

[Ron Edwards]

Hi John,

All these are things I'd like to express to the playtesters and see how well they work. Most of my answers aren't very RPG-hobby friendly, but I've bucked that stereotype before and come out ahead. Maybe I can do it again.

I feel like the game as written so far has focused on the session scale of play and the short-term campaign.  Is this intended to be the limit of this game, i.e. would a grander campaign be counter to this game's creative agenda?

You nailed it: I do think a grander campaign is counter to this game's creative agenda. But to explain that, we need to dissect the term "campaign" again.

There are a lot of questions, and in fact a lot of potential, around long-term play.

Yes there are! The first is to think about what long-term play means. Literally, all it means is lots and lots of sessions, and I'll throw in a couple qualifiers like long-term individual participation, a lot of building/accumulative fictional material, and perhaps some element of change in one or more fictional units.

I'm saying this is a real-world, real-people phenomenon. You do not get a "grander campaign" merely by saying that your game at the table will be one, or by claiming that your game design is supposed to be one. The only thing that can make long-term play happen is that people are not only getting value out of playing, they see that more and new kinds of value arise from playing again.

Therefore I think most discussion of "grander campaigns" as intended goals is ass. A lot of it is empty promises in a social sense, to a group of potential players, with it falling apart over and over, or existing only in the GM's mind as the roster of participants constantly changes and stutter-starts. A lot of it is empty promises in a design-and-publication sense, putting out rules for getting to 30th level and practically no one ever actually doing it.

When I look at those promises, I see an ideal of play implied as well, best summarized as "the system provides you with difficult challenges to your character's survival, the setting provides you with an epic saga that builds and builds to an awesome resolving spectacle." Different groups and games differ in their emphasis, with some claiming a perfect synthesis of the two and others dialing one end up and one down.

I won't go into my thoughts on why this ideal is so often broken in practice. Here, I just want to look at what I see at the tables.

First, it hurts, but I have to eliminate fancy from the facts, putting aside all those empty promises mentioned above. What I see is that a lot of "grander campaign" games are no such thing in practice, either as people-and-table events or as publications.

And because I am cynical, even when play does continue for a long time, I have to eliminate mere inertial situations based on sunk cost, geek social fallacies, effort spent on endless prep without much play, or effort spent on the presumed fantasy novels as opposed to play.

So how much "grander campaign" stuff really and actually happens? I can think of a few tables out there worth looking at. What they tell me is that "solve the setting's problem" + "you become the hottest bad-ass ever if you survive," either as a 50:50 combination or as a skewed, isn't the most useful model if the end is to play nigh-indefinitely. Or if it's sustainable, not by me, and not by games I'm interested in designing.

So what about Circle of Hands? I'm saying that although "grander campaign" content as described above is not consistent with the creative agenda, playing many sessions is. This sets up cognitive dissonance in gamers' minds, because the false but much-loved dichotomy is "campaign," implying big changes in the characters and/or setting, vs. "one-shot," implying one session.

So my task is to discover how to articulate the longer-term benefit which continues to prompt multi-session play, which happens not to be either "solve the setting's problem" or "you become the hottest bad-ass ever if you survive."

I think you've said somewhere that how the PCs' actions affect the regions and culture of the Crescent Land over time is up to the GM and individual play groups, ...

Uh oh ... that's not what I said. I said that the larger story of the Crescent land over time, specifically the fate of Rolke, is not itself a play mechanic or even an expected feature of play. Whatever that saga is, yes, to the characters, the Circle is instrumental in the outcome. But play and we as people don't make it happen through our actions and ideas at the table, i.e., not as a direct effect of the adventures we play.

... more specific suggestions in terms of how to structure (or bang) a longer campaign arc.  Should there be campaign-level mechanics?  What can a GM do to challenge well advanced PCs?  What guidance would you give about bringing in lands and cultures beyond the Crescent Lands?  How would you bring the war of magic to a head?

These questions are themselves revealing and deserve deconstruction. I think I hit the first one already: "No." So I need to come up with a way to explain the softer, social, intangible satisfaction I see the game fulfilling, or potentially doing so. The second seems to me to correspond to my "become the hottest bad-ass ever" variable, which I said wasn't to be a primary feature/reward ... although in softer, minor form, it's involved because it's fun to see your character round out a little and get tougher in specific ways based on what's happened.

The third and fourth are really the most interesting, though. For one thing, they're not very compatible - the third being about getting a bigger perspective, broadening the scope, thinking about the larger setting; the fourth being about zeroing in on the Crescent land and focusing attention precisely on its crisis. I mean, they could be compatible (see some talk below about this), but they're not very compatible.

For another, they both in their way make the drama of an individual Circle knight "smaller." That's my main concern in practice. I'm prioritizing emergent story for individuals, much as the fictional development and personal fates of Batiatus or Gannicus or any other important character in the recent Spartacus series was the emergent story, not the fate of the slave rebellion.

When thinking about this, I like to consider the hobby history of Glorantha. The published setting originally encompassed a pretty small area, with implied "more stuff out there," but with a phenomenal amount of mythic and magic history concentrated in that small area. I have to stress this: the geographically tiny area and its own physical history contained the whole damned pantheon and mythic-events saga. A variety of activities expanded the focus of the publications and play, such that by 1980 there were big continents labeled mostly with big open spaces and a few tantalizing hints, and by 1990 there were whole sourcebooks and complicated philosophies and cultures filling in those spaces.

A couple of problems arose, or problems to my way of thinking. Hmmm, OK ... either the setting becomes a whole lot of trivia surrounding and dependent upon the one small important part, or everywhere becomes incredibly important and complex in its own way, with our original - and stll-designated historically pivotal spot - becoming merely one among many. The latter trend seems to be where HeroQuest has gone, with "play anywhere!" "the Hero Wars are everywhere!" being the operating principle. But I find myself looking at poor little Dragon Pass and saying, "So, you were just one blip among many all along? So why are so many of the pivotal mythic events concentrated there?" (Granted they did expand some stuff, such that Arkat's saga is mainly not in Dragon Pass, and the Lunar Empire is getting at least some geographical love at long last, but you can see my point about the myths, right?)

To apply this to the Crescent land, how big a deal is the magical war? If it's not occurring anywhere else, then who cares about this admittedly cultural backwater and what happens to it? If it is occurring somewhere else, then why aren't we there, where people can pipe hot water into tiled bathrooms and everyone can read? Just as I felt the older Lightbringers Mythos and the schismatic but historically rooted Lunar Mythos were thematically and culturally integrated with Dragon Pass and its peoples, I find the black/white magic war to be thematically and culturally integrated with the Crescent land. I really don't want to be in the bind of "Hey! What else is in Glorantha?" in which answering puts me into two potential equally undesirable outcomes.

Or maybe I'm merely too close to it at present.

[John W]

What you're saying about long-term play has the ring of truth to it.  You can't engineer it or will it into existence, the best long-term play is an emergent phenomenon, just like the best story is.  So you don't want to provide rules or content for expanded play, because YOUR expanded play won't be THEIR organically-arising expanded play; and for the other reasons that you mentioned (the "Glorantha phenomenon").

So, does the game in its current form support (or inhibit?) emergent long-term play?  Imagine a group that has played a dozen or two scenarios with their 8-10 Circle knights (with a few fatalities along the way).  They want to continue, they want to do more, but... are they running out of things to do?  Are they growing while the game remains the same?

I think about long-running games and strings of games that I've been involved in.  My mind goes out along two avenues.  I'll share them not exactly as suggestions but for sake of discussion.

1.  The players (incl. GM) love the game, and want to see what else it can do.  They tweak the setting ("let's take it 400 years into the future", "let's introduce foreign invaders," "what if Spurr conquered Rolke?"), or they lift the system entirely and port it to another setting either familiar ("let's try sword & sorcery using this system") or of their own design.

This is something that we do when we love a game.  We don't keep playing it as-written, we don't try to explore and pacify every corner of the setting, we don't try to reach level 30.  We lift the hood and monkey with it.

2. The Circle knights (and players) take greater control over their fates.  Maybe the knights decide, rather than take opportunities as they come up, to pursue a certain goal: could be something like : free Tamaryon of White magic, or convince all the great houses of Spurr that peaceful commerce is more profitable than raiding; or to open up a stable trade route between Rolke and a nation outside of the Crescent Lands.  They pick a grander purpose, a Great Work to leave the king.  An initiative that would inform the next dozen scenarios.  Then, mechanically, the players take more of a hand in defining each adventure.  A cooperative process with the GM: e.g. the players say "Step 1, we're going to visit all the villages along the route West, and ask them to build and maintain a permanent road."  And then the GM rolls and adds adventure components as complications to that plan.

Not finished suggestions, but food for thought.

-J

[Ron Edwards]

That is really helpful, John. Wheels are turning.

[Mitch R]

I am one of the play testers in John's game.  I'd like to pipe in if I could.

From my perspective the game, as it is currently written, feels like it is somewhere between a board game (think Catan, Puerto Rico, Stone Age, etc.) and an RPG made by one of the big publishers.

CoH has elements of role playing, character creation and development, adventure, and some rolling to make things a little more random: RPG.  However, the "session by session" settings and almost a "reset" of the conditions (as evidenced, for example, by Ron's apparent difficulty in deciding whether a location could be revisited or not) makes it feel more board game-like.

I wonder if your reluctance to force people into a specific style of playing, combined with a desire to have campaigns easier to set up and play (without all of that mucking about with creating settings, maps, characters and the like), yet still having a specific world in which to play and rules for which to play it has let to my interpretation of the game.

If I am reading you correctly (and I'm not sure that I am), you want characters to explore, learn, and grow in this world that you have created.  However, you want the story to come out of the storytelling itself.  I have no problem with the Crescent Lands being kind of like a fractal set - where the deeper you go, the more you find.  I imagine you could play as many sessions as you'd like and still keep yourself within the four kingdoms.  The game play, too, could work similarly - you delve deeper into your characters, grow them, learn how to play them and how they interact with others.  The individual scenarios created by the GM may repeat, or become repetitive in and of themselves (OK - today we're doing an unknown mystery, presence of Amboryon, and a monster) but we are asked as players and GM to use this as a base on which to build our ever-expanding saga.

If I am even remotely on the mark, then that kind of thing needs to be written in, and done so explicitly in the rule book.  It doesn't have to be "here's how you make sure that Rolke expands the king's powers to the rest of the lands, everyone gets to level 30, and you all become known in the land as the most bad-ass dudes" - and I don't think I have to tell you that because there's no way you're going to do it anyway.  However, a list of suggestions of the MANNER in which you can move the story forward, and recommendations/examples would be helpful for the new or uninitiated player/GM.  It feels like you're shying away from that kind of thing in fear that you might stifle the creativity of the people playing the game, but you are the creator and developer so you've got to have some control and put some boundaries on play (it's unavoidable, really).  Besides, the forbidden fruit is always sweetest: even though you may tell us (even vaguely or briefly) how a "campaign" might sort itself out in a long-running series of sessions, it is in our nature (especially, as John has mentioned, if you love the game) to bend and break your original rules anyway, and accomplish what you (the creator/developer) have set out to do in the first place.

- Mitch

[Ron Edwards]

... the Crescent Lands being kind of like a fractal set - where the deeper you go, the more you find.

There's a phrase I needed. Thanks Mitch!

[Vernon R]

I dont know if it's intentional but the current setup reminds me of Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur where there is a big story going on but most of it is an individual tale of a certain knight and who he meets whilst travelling through yon woods. etc.  I also have vague memories of some sci-fi military series from the 80's that worked in a similar fashion and maybe the Alien Legion comic worked in somewhat that way to an extent.  I was about to say that it goes against a lot of RPG history but when I think about it that is how I played D&D back in the 80's with a dungeon subbing in for a venture.

I have thought about using some sort of framing device in play.  Like prepare a bunch of adventures, make a pile of the ones from a similar area and then run "The campaign for Spurr" which isnt realy anything different than by the book but it adds a bit of color, makes it seem like something bigger is going on.  I fully buy into the concept that the game is about revealing something about these characters in this situation and dont want to make any larger campaign take over or strategizing going on about how to "win" the campaign level. 

[Ron Edwards]

I keep vacillating between using Malory as a touchpoint for that exact, very exact point, and avoiding Malory for fear of invoking the kind of Arthuriana/high-medievalism I don't want in the game.

[Vernon R]

As a friend of mine used to say Excalibur is an awesome movie until their armor goes all chrome, or yeah there's a lot of problematic elements once you get to Arthur.  Those stories really did work though.   You'd get a little story where Knight X would show off how he was a bad ass, then he'd have another and screw up and get himself in trouble, then he'd pal around with another knight and be a badass again, then Merlin would come and prophesy about his future then he'd run into someone more famous, then he'd end up dressed up as someone else and tragically kill his brother while also suffering a mortal wound.    In the couple playtests I've had so far it seems to really match up.  We dont learn everything about the characters right away, it's something that will develop over time.  It now occurs to me that a lot of the stories in Mallory are supposed to be folk stories collected by an author which sort of matches with multiple people playing a character over time. 

 

[Rafu]

I keep vacillating between using Malory as a touchpoint for that exact, very exact point, and avoiding Malory for fear of invoking the kind of Arthuriana/high-medievalism I don't want in the game.

That might be one thing for which the "don't do this" style of writing works.

One of the very first bells ringing in my head upon reading the early draft of the CoH Kickstarter page was: "Oh, he's doing one of those almost-historically-correct, forget-about-conventional-pop-culture versions of the Knights of the Round."