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I was writing my power 19 and I started encountering questions that definitely got me thinking about things. To begin, I need to provide you some background on my game development. I am a gamist player, as I enjoy a long campaign with character advancement.  However, I enjoy narrativism just as much!  The failings of the existing gamist games (as well as about half the players who play those games) in the narrativism sector has given me the desire to make my own game. I've found this has become a huge project and as such, I've started to lose sight of my target.  I've made a very good gamist game, but it has probably entirely missed the mark as far as role play and story encouragement goes. I wanted to go through issues or conflicts I'm having, over a few posts, so I can try and remedy this. 
(A goal I have with this project is to be able to take a group of players who aren't adverse to roleplay, they just don't know how to do it, and through the natural course of the game, become better roleplayers than they were before.)

Today, I wanted to look at questions 5 & 6. 

5.) How does the Character Creation of your game reinforce what your game is about?
So far, I have a pretty standard, choose a race, choose a core proficiency, pick a few skills system. Is this insufficient?  Would it be wise to include a personality guide/trait guide? Do I want to reward it mechanically? If I did, I would want to reward players with a "gamist" reward only if they expressed their traits during game play.*

6.) What types of behaviors/styles of play does your game reward (and punish if necessary)?
As a gamist game, it inadvertently rewards power playing, which is undesirable. While balancing it is important, there will always be an optimal combination somebody discovers. Unfortunately, I am unsure of the proper way to deal with this as an author, likely because I haven't been able to successfully deal with power playing in my own games. 

*I had one idea for one mechanic.  The way it would work is players pick out several primary personality traits. Each session, the GM would reward each player individually for how many of their traits they successfully expressed that evening. But I have reservations about using a mechanically driven trait system.
A. Making a complete/comprehensive list is futile
B. Players will likely choose "Greedy" "Liar" or "Bloodthirsty" not because it adds to their character, but it's very easy to be a greedy, lieing, murderer in an RPG.


My answers to 5 & 6.

Quote
5.) How does the Character Creation of your game reinforce what your game is about?
   Character creation allows the players to pick a race, many of which are unique to the setting.  Each race fills a unique niche in the world, giving them a strong sense of background, and encouraging them to have a well defined basis of where they came from.  This also allows for unique character interactions. 
   They then choose a class, which gives them a sense of purpose, where they are headed. Each of the classes carries a strong flavor that does not burden the player with duty.

6.) What types of behaviors/styles of play does your game reward (and punish if necessary)?
   The game rewards players for attending every session, without victimizing them for missing sessions.  It rewards them for choosing abilities that help their allies and forces them to cooperate as a group. It rewards them for paying attention during the game. It punishes them for using their money on power-ups. It rewards them for playing in a way that the Director approves of.  It rewards them for contributing to the game.

Well, if I understand it correctly, gamism is ABOUT having fun with "powerplaying", ie., making the most of your play by acting as optimally rules-wise as possible. And there´s nothing wrong with that. You play chess, you try to beat me as hard as you can. Chess WORKS when you do that. Chess sucks when you try playing elss than optimally. That´s what a gamist game (weeee) should do, too. Make up a game that works best when everybody tries beating it.
If you DON´T want a game where "powerplaying" (what?) is encouraged, what else should be encouraged? I say, you don´t want powerplaying? Look at these rules: http://www.lumpley.com/archive/148.html
There is no way to be better with the dice than somebody else. You won´t derive any fun from "having more dice" than the other players in this game, so you won´t even try it. You´ll try telling a nice story.

What is your game about? Say your game is about tactical swordfighting. At character creation, don´t talk about meaningless things like "morals", "religion", give the players 500 different tactical choices about their characters´ swordfighting capabilities. Say your game is about behaving morally in an amoral world. At character creation, don´t talk about meaningless things like "dual-bladed wielding", "aim-for-the-eyes", but make sure every player clearly fleshes out his characters´ moral system.

I don´t like the idea of the players being rewarded for "acting out personality traits". I say, let the characters play determine what their personality traits are.
I´m pretty sure making sure the characters behave "appropriately" isn´t gamism nor narrativism, but simulationism. If you WANT the game be about characters behaving like their paper tells them to, I guess you would reward them for that, but why?

See, you got "role play" and "story encouragement" and it´s supposedly a "gamist" game. That´s what, like 3 different creative agendas. Won´t work, I´m pretty sure. It would be like WoD games: GM wants to tell a story, players want to do gamism, rules support sim, everybody is unhappy.
So, make up your mind about your goals: do you want players to game, to simulate people (acting out personalities), or to help you telling a story? Whatever you chose, that´s what rules should be about. Want to game? Rules should be balanced and reward creative use. Want "roleplay"? Don´t care about balancing, just make sure noone even tries to game by telling them not to and provide the means to roleplay. Want to tell tales? Rules should center around the plot (reward players for introducing moral challenge, for adressing premise).

We need to discuss GNS here. (Soundmaster is basically right, but the topics needs to be expanded upon to be understood easily.) Also, as a separate concern, David should tell us more about the sort of substance he wants to get out of his game, using just natural language; his use of the term "gamist" is occluding the initial post so much that I'm not entirely certain what his design priorities for this game are.

I'm too knackered right now to write at length about this, though. Need sleep. If nobody else comes in to discourse about how David can recognize his Creative Agenda and support it before Wednesday, somebody remind me about this.

Dave,
  I don't want to step on anyone's toes. It looks like Eero wants to address some real concerns. But I want to address the OP from a different perspective:
You are not doing it wrong.

  Seriously, you can't design a game incorrectly. The only caveat being, if when you are done, if you would love to play this game, you did it right.
  So, if you want to make a bog standard chargen, more power to you. The point of Power 19 is twofold: One, to get you to ask questions of your self about your design intent. Two, to allow you to communicate your design intent to anyone who might read it and make suggestions about your game.
  The point of focused design is that each mechanic or system component reinforces what the game is about. In a very real sense, D&D is a focused design, everything in the game is about adventure, combat and exploration. You can see it in the design, it is direct and it makes no apologies for what it is. You can be that way too. But in order to do that you have to decide what the design is about.

  So, to get back to your questions:
So far, I have a pretty standard, choose a race, choose a core proficiency, pick a few skills system. Is this insufficient?
  Only you can answer that question. The point of #5 is to get you to ask yourself, how is chargen about what my game is about? So, for instance, if you used the standard 6 D&D traits for an Emily Bronte game, then chargen is not about what the game is about. I don't think it matters what Heathcliff's Strength stat is, do you?

Would it be wise to include a personality guide/trait guide?
  Only if it is relevant to the game you are making. For instance, Pendragon has stats for virtues and they work wonderfully in that traditional/gamist game. But, if those personality traits don't have a bearing on the setting (e.g., all of the characters made for the game have a similar personality), then it would be meaningless, no?

Do I want to reward it mechanically?
  Reward mechanisms should come from players engaging in behaviors that you think are part of the fun of the system. That's why the original rules for D&D only included XPs for fighting, that is where the fun was. If you look at other focused designs, you will see that the reward systems follow that same pattern. Reward people for using the fun parts of the game.

  I think your idea of rewarding players for playing in character is a good idea. I would suggest you look at "keys" from Shadow of Yesterday/Solar System. In this system, players pick a drive/motivation and the only way to get XPs is to hit criteria that matches that drive. For instance, one of the keys is Key of Compassion, you get 1 XP for helping someone, 3 XPs for helping someone in such a way that it puts your character at risk and 5 XPs for helping someone in such a way that they can help themselves in the future. I don't think it is exactly what you were proposing, but I do think its a good example of something like this working in a more traditional RPG.

  Good luck with your design man!

Even having only skimmed over The Shadow of Yesterday, I would argue that Keys are fundamentally different from "rewards for good role-playing", but other than that, yes, great suggestion.

You might want to read this: http://files.crngames.com/cc/tsoy/book1--rulebook.html#keys

J,
 

QuoteI had one idea for one mechanic.  The way it would work is players pick out several primary personality traits. Each session, the GM would reward each player individually for how many of their traits they successfully expressed that evening.

That description almost sounds exactly like Keys. The only difference is the end of the session portion as apposed to the immediate reward of Keys. I didn't quote it before, sorry.
  Thanks for the linkage, I guess I was being lazy.

You guys ask tough questions, I'm glad I come here, haha.

Ok, let me first address the GNS issues we are having here. I have read Ron's articles, and it is actually rather complex. This is my interpretation of the model.

Gamist games tend to have lots of crunchy bits.  They reward you for using tactics or having the biggest modifier. Using Chris Bateman's audience model http://onlyagame.typepad.com/only_a_game/2005/07/the_state_of_th.html (http://onlyagame.typepad.com/only_a_game/2005/07/the_state_of_th.html) Gamist gamers tend to be type 1 conquerers and type 2 managers.

Narrativist games tend to have few crunchy bits.  They reward you for advancing the story and entertaining the group with good story telling. Narrativist gamers tend to be type 4 participants and type 3 wanderers.

Simulationist games typically emphasis reality or verisimilitude above all else. They are more interested in the referendum of play. I imagine the quintessential simulationist game theme is zombie survival. Simulationist gamers tend to be type 3 wanderers and type 2 managers.

QuoteWell, if I understand it correctly, gamism is ABOUT having fun with "powerplaying", ie., making the most of your play by acting as optimally rules-wise as possible. And there´s nothing wrong with that. You play chess, you try to beat me as hard as you can. Chess WORKS when you do that. Chess sucks when you try playing elss than optimally.

I think we need to go further into this subject for us to have a good discussion.  First of all, power playing is really defined by the social contract.  In some groups min/maxing is power play, in some groups it is using 15 books to create a character and in some groups there is virtually no limit. (I once knew a guy who played in a level 40 epic gestalt D&D game...)  Despite this, I feel there is a very good definition for power gaming. Using traditional RPG archetypes, power gaming is when one player eclipse other player(s) roles in the game, either through sheer power (I'm so strong I can defeat an army by myself, I'm so tough I can walk through this trap without it hurting me) or by horizontal competency (I can do defense, attack, utility and healing, all by myself, just as well as anyone else in the group.)
Secondly, my game, like many others, is meant to be played cooperatively.  Yes, players are attempting to beat the obstacles thrown at them by a GM, but that should be the extent of the competition.

So revisiting my game goals. I want to create a game where players are have characters that are well defined mechanically that allows them to use tactics within combat and other situations, like performing acrobatics.  However, I want the game to encourage players to create a character personality that they express during the game. A player should be encouraged to do what is part of their character's personality, not just whatever is best for their character in meta-game. A character should be rewarded for developing how their character fits into the world.  A well developed character should have background (where I came from, how I was raised, what events shaped my life), personality (how would you react in a given situation, how do other characters react to you), and connections (I know this person, and they are my friend/love BECAUSE of this, I know this person, and they dislike/hate me BECAUSE of this.) 

Quote

    * Type 1 Conqueror play style is associated with challenge and the emotional payoff of Fiero - triumph over adversity. This correlates with what Nicole Lazarro has called "Hard fun". We associate Type 1 play with players who aim to utterly defeat games they play - they finish games they start.
    * Type 2 Manager play style is associated with mastery and systems. Victory for people preferring this play style seems to be the sign that they have acquired the necessary skills, not a goal in and of itself. They may not finish many games that they start playing.
    * Type 3 Wanderer play style is associated with experience and identity. This correlates somewhat with what Nicole Lazarro has called "Easy fun". Challenge is not especially desired, but may be tolerated - what they enjoy is unique and interesting experiences. Stories and mimicry are key draws.
    * Type 4 Participant play style is associated with emotions and involvement. It connects with what Nicole Lazarro calls "The People Factor". Participants seem happiest when they are playing with people, but they also enjoy play which is rooted in emotion. Any game which allows the player an emotional stake is a potential Type 4 game.

QuoteThat description almost sounds exactly like Keys. The only difference is the end of the session portion as apposed to the immediate reward of Keys. I didn't quote it before, sorry.
  Thanks for the linkage, I guess I was being lazy.

Yes, it does sound very similar to keys. 

Quote
Even having only skimmed over The Shadow of Yesterday, I would argue that Keys are fundamentally different from "rewards for good role-playing", but other than that, yes, great suggestion.

Could you please go into more detail about how keys are different? More specifically, what would you consider a reward for good role-playing? (Other then itself being a reward, which is good, but cyclical. I want to try and help initiate the cycle.)

I´m not sure we (you) actually need a GNS discussion. Just forget terminology. Make up your mind what kind of fun you want to have and of you go.

Concerning "powerplaying": you are clearly right that it isn´t well defined enough to be used meaningfully. Concerning "gamism", on the other hand, could mean many different types of competition: BETWEEN players (am I better than the other players?) or against, for example, adversity provided by the GM. You want players to cooperate in competition against these GM-provided obstacles, not compete with each other? How about you give them tactical options that need to be adressed as a team?
Say, for example, that your game world is full of Evil Deathfrogs. To beat an evil deathfrog, you need to pin it to the ground, open his mouth and make him eat fire. So you would need a strong dude pinning him, a second strong dude holding his mouth open and a smart dude casting a fire spell. Say players get overwhelmed constantly by hordes of evil Cros (like orcs, but red). Say, these Cros are for a change not completely stupid: if they meet a lone warrior, one attacks from the front, the other from behind. So every warrior needs someone watching his back.
If you want competition but cooperation, that´s how I would look at it. Concerning the power19, question 6: if you want your game to be about tactical cooperation, you should REWARD tactical cooperation.
You don´t need to explicitly reward them for doing what you want them to do. Just appeal to their inner powergamer (after all, you want to appeal to gamists): it is the tactically sane choice to cooperate, they will.

Ok. Now, that´s the tacital part. How to encourage "role-appropriate behaviour"? I don´t know. I think it´s boring, anyways. I´d say, just don´t make it unwise to act thusly. At no point should the player who behaves "right" be hindered in his tactial options. Let´s see, an example... So if, for exampel, you don´t want your players, who are supposed to be "moral" because they are "good guys", to steal this magic sword - don´t reward them for it. Make sure that the magic sword they might steal just isn´t worth stealing (because all swords do the same damage, magic swords just glow a little). Make the areas never touch at all. At no point should what happens outside of tactical choices reflect on tactical choices et v.v.
If there is no danger, no bad side to having your guy act appropriately, they will if they think it is fun. If they actually don´t think it is fun, they should play another game.

How about that?

Ah, and concerning keys: I never played those. But, to use terminology, they seem to be a narrativist tool. You want your characters´ story to be about love, you say you get rewarded if your characters´ acts concern love.
What you proposed is a simulationist tool, if I see it right. You want your characters to be like THIS, so you reward their players if their character acts like THIS. I don´t know. Maybe I just don´t get simulationism. What is the fun in that? I tell my character like I want him to (if I am not punished for it), like I think is the most fun. If I for some reason think what´s the most fun is having him run around, raping nuns, that´s what I´ll do cause it´s fun, not cause you are forcing me to do so by reward mechanisms. So, character is derived empirically in play. I act like this, so my character is like this. If I acted differently, I would be a different character.

Sorry, I fear I just don´t get sim.

David,

I think you need to decide what you want to get out of this particular thread. Do you want to learn about the Big Model and GNS, as defined in Ron's articles on this site, OR would you prefer to focus on the specific design issues of your game. Trying to do both at once will only mess things up.

If you want to talk about your game design problems, I suggest that you drop all terminology and just try to state as clearly as possible, in plain jargon-free English, what your problem is. Be specific and give examples if necessary.

If you want to discuss GNS, that is another matter entirely, as it will take some time and effort to deal with properly. The thing is, and I'm not trying to be mean or snobbish or anything like that, that you have completely misunderstood the terms gamism, narrativism, and simulationism as they are used around here. That's okay. It is not a big deal and I am most certainly not thinking less of you beacuse of it.

I'm just saying that I don't think it is rational, or even possible, to deal with both issues in the same thread. The decision is yours. You can always start a new topic to discuss the other thing. 

Quote from: Peter Nordstrand on November 03, 2008, 08:01:35 PM
If you want to talk about your game design problems, I suggest that you drop all terminology and just try to state as clearly as possible, in plain jargon-free English, what your problem is. Be specific and give examples if necessary.

Well, apparently I don't understand the model.  At least now, I understand I don't understand the model.  So lets do what you suggest and go down the path of my individual design concerns.  I will reread the GNS model discussions later, and perhaps make another post if I am still confused.

In my game, players will create a character with well defined attributes.  They will know how successful they are at given tasks relative to the enemies, and can advance their characters through game play.  While I feel this sector of my game design has been successful, there is another area I wish to have and have yet to develop sufficiently.  This area of the game attempts to get players to act less like robots and more like a being.  I will give a few examples of desired play and undesired play.

Cros burned down a village and kidnapped some of the villagers. The villagers ask the players to help.
'robot' response, "What's the reward?"
a valiant character, "Of course we will save your loved ones!"
a cold mercenary, "We don't work for free, pal."

A sultry woman walks up to the group.
'robot' response, "cool, does she look rich?" or "sweet, I try and sleep with her"
a tomboyish female, "Look lady, we don't associate with the likes of you."
a boorish wizard, "...oh yes, don't startle me like that, oh did you need something?"

In the undesired situations, the players treat each encounter as a road sign and look immediately for the quickest path to the next promise of treasure.  For players who enjoy just dungeon crawls, this is OK, but this is not my target.  Now lets go back to one of my previous statements.

Quote(A goal I have with this project is to be able to take a group of players who aren't adverse to roleplay, they just aren't very good at it, and through the natural course of the game, become better roleplayers than they were before.)

Now, one step I have already taken is I de-emphasized the rewards gained through combat.  Experience is handed out for any conflict. You might receive a lot of treasure, but there is a limit to what you can use at any given level. Another thing I have done is created rewards for having a home.  For example, a wizard will find himself better able to research spells in his library, while a blacksmith needs a forge to craft.  The last thing I have done is created a setting that (hopefully) is intriguing and draws the player into the world.

I have a laundry list of ideas that I could add, but I feel they may just be bloat and will still be treated as road signs, instead of opportunities to develop your character. And I do realize there are people out there that are just adverse to roleplaying. I am trying to reach an audience that would LIKE to roleplay more, but simply do not have the skills and experience to do it on their own. 

Quote from: soundmasterj on November 03, 2008, 07:15:43 PM
Ah, and concerning keys: I never played those. But, to use terminology, they seem to be a narrativist tool. You want your characters´ story to be about love, you say you get rewarded if your characters´ acts concern love.
What you proposed is a simulationist tool, if I see it right. You want your characters to be like THIS, so you reward their players if their character acts like THIS. I don´t know. Maybe I just don´t get simulationism. What is the fun in that? I tell my character like I want him to (if I am not punished for it), like I think is the most fun. If I for some reason think what´s the most fun is having him run around, raping nuns, that´s what I´ll do cause it´s fun, not cause you are forcing me to do so by reward mechanisms. So, character is derived empirically in play. I act like this, so my character is like this. If I acted differently, I would be a different character.

Sorry, I fear I just don´t get sim.

I think you're looking at it backwards.  The player decides they want their character to be a "Cold hearted mercenary." They then would have traits like, "Cold" "Standoffish" "Pragmatic" and "Scarred past."  If they succeed in portraying their character as they intended, they would be rewarded.  Something about keys, that I like, is that if your character *changes* or *evolves* there is a mechanic to let this happen naturally.  After all, stories are about transformation, and I think RPGs are more interesting if they're about story.
If the character was supposed to be a nun rapist, then that would be a trait he picked.  But the behavior I want to avoid is, having a player make a Valiant Paladin, who then rapes a nun, because somebody offered him 50 xp and a flaming sword if he did it. That's not valiant, nor is it paladin like, it is doing whatever grants the greatest metagame reward.

I think I'm starting to figure out what David is looking for in his game. You want to make the fiction of the game matter more, right? The actions of the characters should match their in-fiction concerns and form a believable narrative of events.

The part that is still a bit vague to me is the role of reward-grabbing here: you say that your players will undoubtedly be interested in improving the lot of their characters by going after whatever mechanical rewards are available, but you also say that you want to reward depicting consistent, colorful and varied character personages in the game. Would you say that it's important to you that the players choose between challenges, take them on and complete them to progress their characters, but that this needs to happen within the imaginative context of the game for it to be interesting? Or would you rather say that what you're interested in is depicting the varied and colorful adventures of interesting characters, and you can do that by giving character-efficiency rewards to players who decide to play along?

(Insofar as anybody cares, off-hand this is either gamism or simulationism, depending on which of the above is David's intention. There probably isn't incoherence here, it's just that we need to find out what David is actually trying to do below all this adventure game clutter. I agree with Peter in that it's probably better to deal with GNS in some simpler and less cluttered context, though. David could start an actual play thread about his rpg history, for example.)

QuoteWould you say that it's important to you that the players choose between challenges, take them on and complete them to progress their characters, but that this needs to happen within the imaginative context of the game for it to be interesting?

QuoteOr would you rather say that what you're interested in is depicting the varied and colorful adventures of interesting characters, and you can do that by giving character-efficiency rewards to players who decide to play along?

Before I can give you an answer, I need some clarification. I need a better definition of "character efficiency rewards."  The other part is, when you say "to players who decide to play along" my instinct says that sounds like the setting/GM has exclusive narrative power, and that the players are asked to play the script handed to them. I prefer the idea that the players develop their characters, and the GM incorporates this dialogue into the larger story. 

QuoteDavid could start an actual play thread about his rpg history

I'm unsure of what you're asking for, here. When specifically are you referring to when you say rpg history? The a play summary of a session of the game I have created?

Quote from: David C on November 03, 2008, 11:56:51 PM
Before I can give you an answer, I need some clarification. I need a better definition of "character efficiency rewards."  The other part is, when you say "to players who decide to play along" my instinct says that sounds like the setting/GM has exclusive narrative power, and that the players are asked to play the script handed to them. I prefer the idea that the players develop their characters, and the GM incorporates this dialogue into the larger story. 

"Character efficiency rewards" are rewards that are given in the form of character efficiency. All of the rewards you have mentioned here have been in the form of experience points (to presumably increase character skills and whatnot, to make them succeed more often and in larger context) and magic items (same purpose). There are other ways of rewarding players as well - I might go as far as saying that much of what is dysfunctional in rpg design comes from trying to use character efficiency rewards to do the work better suited to other ways of rewarding players.

As for playing along, correction noted. What I wanted to ask was whether you want to encourage believable, interesting fiction by giving character efficiency rewards to players who help you in doing that.

Quote

QuoteDavid could start an actual play thread about his rpg history

I'm unsure of what you're asking for, here. When specifically are you referring to when you say rpg history? The a play summary of a session of the game I have created?

Well, it's often been the case that GNS has been best discussed in context of real-life play experience; as Vincent Baker memorably put it, this is because most people have only ever played rpgs with one Creative Agenda, and are thus constantly trying to reflect the completely different agendas others discuss on this narrow experience base of their own. So I'm interested in hearing about what sort of rpgs you've played, and perhaps about some games and experiences that have been particularly important to you - especially good games, especially bad games, games you feel like you understand especially well. All that gives us more context to point to real things and some idea of what things we should discuss theory-wise in the first place.

No pressure to do this, though; start something if you feel like it. Read what others have written in the Actual Play forum, too.

Quote"Character efficiency rewards" are rewards that are given in the form of character efficiency.

I'm afraid I still don't understand.  Nor can I find "Character Efficiency" in the Forge's provisional glossary. What constitutes a character efficiency reward? You make it sound as if experience points are not in this category.

QuoteThere are other ways of rewarding players as well - I might go as far as saying that much of what is dysfunctional in rpg design comes from trying to use character efficiency rewards to do the work better suited to other ways of rewarding players.

You can't just say something like that without elaborating. =)

Unfortunately, I am only aware of the following reward types.
1. Character "advancement."  XP, Treasure, point-buy points
2. A mechanic I've heard commonly on the Forge, that I'll call, "Narrative Control Tokens" but I'm sure you have a better name. 
3. The action in itself as a reward. "I helped those people." "Wasn't that situation funny/exciting?" "That dialogue was fun."

Is there anything I should read up on, that you have in mind?  Or can you explain further?

QuoteSo I'm interested in hearing about what sort of rpgs you've played, and perhaps about some games and experiences that have been particularly important to you - especially good games, especially bad games, games you feel like you understand especially well.

It's long, I'm sorry if it's "too long." http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=26963.0 (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=26963.0)

Well, I´d guess it means: the character is getting better at what the game is about. So if your game is about bashing Orc skulls in, character efficiency rewards would mean he character getting better at bashing Orc skulls in. XP as well as Gold in D&D would be one example.
If your game is about building the best ship to escape a dying planet, character efficiency rewards would be anything that made the character better at building his ship.

An alternative would be rewarding players with what you call "Narrative Control Tokens". Say, your game is about bashing Orc skulls in. Say you can´t use these Narrative Control Tokens to make your character any better in combat (you can´t narrate your character, for example, finding a magic sword). Now, they don´t touch character efficiency so they aren´t a reward of character efficiency.
(Shouldn´t it rather be "character effectivity"?)

Did you read the first of my pair of replies? The one where I´m talking about Death Frogs? I think you should :) Also, what helped me the most in understanding what traditional boundaries were holding me back was reading Vincent D. Bakers´ Otherkind. It teaches FitM, IIEE, Conflict Resolution, Narrativism like THIS. It´s v. good. If others agree, I might want to seriousy advise you reading it.

But still. It´s unclear to me what you want. If you are mainly concerned about believable characters, why have a combat system? Why not simply, say, roll 2 dice, who rolls higher wins, now lets get back to character interaction, where most of the games´ focus lies? Those are the questions power19 was designed to make you adress.

Ah, I'm sorry David, I must not be expressing myself very clearly today. "Character efficiency" is not a theory term, it's just my faulty English at work - I mean character effectiveness. A character is effective when it succeeds in overcoming the obstacles the player chooses to tackle. Character effectiveness rewards are all the discretionary things you have in a given game that make a character better at doing the things he does - experience points, magic items, vis pawns, whatever it is that the given game uses in determining how powerful a character is. These rewards are historically very important, because D&D started very early providing these things as the primary motivation (and thus, reward) and gauge of success for the characters and players both. Today we get a lot of game design where the designer tries to bribe the players into acting the way they want by showering the player with character effectiveness rewards, which is often inefficient and ass-backwards: the reason that giving out character effectiveness rewards in D&D works is that the player can use that effectiveness to open up new possibilities in the game, but this is often not the case in other games. The typical example of this sort of backwards design is when players are rewarded with experience points for "good roleplaying", with the intent of encouraging players to focus on roleplaying this way. But what that sort of reward encourages is focusing on what you can do with experience points, which generally has nothing to do with being a good roleplaying and everything to do with getting more to-hit bonuses and damage per round. The end-result is an incoherent design where you're trying to bribe players to do thing A by giving them tools for doing thing B as a reward. It's like giving out football shoes as prizes for winning an  ice hockey tournament.

I like your list of reward types, those are the sort of things that games often use to reward players. There are many different categories of rewards, however - your third one is important because it's non-mechanical, I like it very much that you mention such; it's usual to ignore the non-mechanical rewards, when those are often the most important ones in a game.

In the larger context, though, reward is really a rather zen-like concept - anything that a player feels "rewarding" in playing a game can be a reward if the game is planned to consistently deliver it. Furthermore, we have different sorts of rewards that do different things. For example, the main reasons for experience points being rewarding in D&D are that a) gathering xp opens up new adventure options and tools of victory, such as new spells, and b) as a transference, the mere fact of gaining or having lots of experience points entails satisfaction. Here the first reward is just an instrumental value - the different sorts of adventures have been separated into different power levels in the first place to provide a sense of prestige, changes of pace and a more intricate fantasy world; the reward really just is there as part of how the system works. Meanwhile, the latter, psychological reward is about victory, beating the challenge - it's not instrumental for the on-going campaign, but an intrinsic value immediately realized.

Reflecting this back to your design, the thing that drew my attention in the first place was that you wanted to give out xp to the players as a reward for fulfilling a character archetype. You can see how I critique the concept above. However, I don't want to say that this is inherently a bad idea, it all depends on the larger context. There is a game that does this sort of thing really well, Runeslayers (http://www.thalcos.com/rq.htm). (This one's a free pdf, and an extremely high quality product for that - one of the best values for a free game out there in many ways.) It might take some figuring out how the game should be played, but if one settles on a gamist interpretation, the reward system of the game becomes pretty interesting. The primary rewards in the game come in the form of character nature tickmarks which the GM awards to the players at the end of individual sessions. These character natures are things like "Coward" or "Lustful" or whatever, basic characterization stuff; they're chosen at random from a pool determined by the warrior cult the given player character belongs to. The trick to making this work in a gamist environment is that the player has a choice in whether he takes the risks in following his character nature in a spectacular manner - if he does, he's sure to get the tickmark and amazing cult powerz that come with it, but that might also bring him into some fatal trouble. So as you can see, it's not quite your average "play your character correctly and gain rewards" scheme - the player has to look for opportunities to demonstrate his character's "Faithfulness" or whatever, preferably in some manner that doesn't get him killed. And because the nature changes every session, the challenge refreshes each time we sit down to play.

I'd like to point you to something useful to read about rewards, because they're a really important topic in game design, especially when you get to manipulating reward cycles intentionally, which is when the designer is really cooking with fire. I'm really bad at pointing people to random threads from the past, though, and I don't remember off-hand that anybody'd written a more comprehensive treatise worth shit. Perhaps somebody else can point us to some useful general account on the topic.

@ Sound
I wanted to progress what you were talking about. We've established that if a reward does not touch the primary goal of the game, it is not character effectiveness.  However, does that mean any reward would be a character effectiveness reward if the goal of the game was changed?  As an extension of your orc bashing example, lets say these Narrative Control Tokens can be used to establish social connections or make a convincing argument.  If the goal of the game was changed from "orc bashing" to "political intigue" are they now character effectiveness rewards?  Could we then effectively say that they are in truth, "Secondary Character Effectiveness" rewards?
If this is the case, we can change my list to.

1. Character Effectiveness Rewards
2. Secondary Character Effectiveness Rewards
3. The action is its own reward.

What other rewards are out there? Unfortunately, most discussions I've read on that topic are more video game related and pertain to reward cycles, since video games focus almost exclusively on mechanical rewards (for obvious reasons.)

Still @ Sound
I read your other replies.  I think, in essence, what you are describing is a "group combo."  This is a combination of actions that can only be performed with multiple people, that results in greater reward.  A great example of a group combo is flanking. Now, I've tried to incorporate this in the combat section of my game. However, before reading your post, I feel like I was looking at the problem through a mirror around the corner, and now I can see it with my own eyes.

Is Otherland a game that one would purchase? Or is it something else (like "the forge"?)  

You mention that you find roleplay boring, would you mind telling me what happens during an ideal game for you?

@ Eero
I believe my answer is that I want to create "believable, interesting fiction."

But could you also clarify what you mean by "that this needs to happen within the imaginative context of the game for it to be interesting"?

The part about Runeslayers is interesting. There is something I need to explain about my game, as well.  It uses experience and levels, but not in a traditional manner.  Experience is spent to advance your character, and once you've spent 100, 200, 300 etc. experience, you advance a level, giving you more options.  I also have tried to make purchasable abilities that are only useful within a social setting, or outside of combat. It might make no difference, since a player can use their "rp xp" to purchase combat abilities, but presumably, they could use it to purchase social abilities. Therefore, it might avoid the "football shoes for playing hockey" problem. 

Although, I'm not even convincing myself that that's a stimulating reward...

I guess I could make characters have a social "level" and a combat "level" but this seems convoluted. But this is almost what Runeslayers has done, as well, hmm....

One of my game design goals was to cut down on complexity at every opportunity, without sacrificing important functionality. This has served me well, so far. I would like to maintain this and I feel adding another "resource type" like "RP XP" would overburden the game.  As there are several resources already in place.

Earlier in my design, I had come up with a mechanic called "Destinies."  The way it worked was you would invest some character XP in the destiny.  You would then write a short background to the destiny (Evil Dude killed my Loved Person) how it affects your character's values (I will protect people at any cost to myself) and how you believe your destiny may be fulfilled (I avenge my Loved Person's death by killing Evil Dude.)  After your destiny *was* fulfilled, you got your XP back with interest, depending on how long it took you to fulfill your destiny and how hard it was. I wonder if I should revisit this mechanic or mechanics like it? Hmmm...

Quote from: David C on November 04, 2008, 06:43:10 AM
I wanted to progress what you were talking about. We've established that if a reward does not touch the primary goal of the game, it is not character effectiveness.  However, does that mean any reward would be a character effectiveness reward if the goal of the game was changed?  As an extension of your orc bashing example, lets say these Narrative Control Tokens can be used to establish social connections or make a convincing argument.  If the goal of the game was changed from "orc bashing" to "political intigue" are they now character effectiveness rewards?  Could we then effectively say that they are in truth, "Secondary Character Effectiveness" rewards?

I wouldn't say this, mostly because it's not character effectiveness if the players has meta-level means of influencing the game. It's still power, certainly, but it's a somewhat different sort of power, used differently.

Narrative level control of the play environment works for some things, but it's no good when it is used to specifically get around the in-character challenges the game is supposed to be about. I see this now and then in gamist rpgs that are experimenting with new mechanics: the game actually gets actively less interesting if, instead of vanquishing the brutal savages under your feet, you can just spend some tokens and say that something else comes along to remove the risks the character was about to undertake.

One thing narrative control has been used for successfully is narrativist games where the player can use these extraordinary powers to maneuver his own or somebody else's character into situations that are relevant to their thematic issues. Because the player is not trying to get around the conflicts in the game but rather complicate and progress them, he is using his meta-level powers constructively. So it's a very different sort of effectiveness than what a character would possess: character effectiveness is for the character to succeed in resolving his problems, while meta-level narrative control is usually used to cause those problems in the first place. These powers are often opposed against each other, so it's no wonder they're controlled by separate players in the traditional set-up.

Quote
Is Otherland a game that one would purchase? Or is it something else (like "the forge"?)  

Otherkind is an unfinished rpg by Vincent Baker. It had many pretty impressive and even influential notions in it. Can't find it in the 'net off-hand right now, though.

Quote
I believe my answer is that I want to create "believable, interesting fiction."

But could you also clarify what you mean by "that this needs to happen within the imaginative context of the game for it to be interesting"?

Ah, yes, that's an interesting bit. You see, a lot of gamist game design and play has lately been suffering under a false dichotomy, the notion that a well-defined gamist rpg would by necessity be a thing of rules, procedures and unambiguously outlined goals. This notion has made it rather difficult, to say the least, to even discuss gamist play intelligibly, being that people don't often enough even realize that their play is gamist, or that gamist play could be fun and rewarding. The truth of the matter, however, is that the core successes of gamist rpg design have time and again been strongly textured, colorful and based on a strong imaginative context for anything that happens in the game. It's the vanquishing of the dragon that's the point of play, not reducing a hitpoint pool to zero.

But that was just something that you reminded me of with your discussion of power play and paying players xp to play their characters believably. People are often confused about how to get a gamist group to care about the fiction, but the solution is not to throw more mechanical rewards at them - the ideal solution is to get the group to agree and get excited over the idea of playing a roleplaying game, this roleplaying game, in the first place. If they're not interested in slaying the dragon, then all the imaginative color invested in the dragon is a waste of time. If they don't want to play a heroic archetype, then paying them to do so seems just weird.

Anyway, I think I'm leaning towards the impression that gamist play is not really what you're about here, anyway. Would you like to show me the notes for your game? The part about experience levels unlocking new character improvement options while xp is spent freely sounds very smart, I'd like to see what you've done with it. I'm pretty sure that I can be more on the point after looking at the game itself. Many of the ideas you mention in passing sound interesting, but often enough getting everything to work together is the challenge, especially if there are parts in conflict with each other in the game.

This:

QuoteHowever, before reading your post, I feel like I was looking at the problem through a mirror around the corner, and now I can see it with my own eyes.

This is really beautiful.
Paul said something similar:

QuoteWhen I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face.

(1. Corinthians 13)

:)

Well, Role-Playing games... First, I completely concurr with Eero. One thing I´d like to stress: If 90% of your rules are about combat, your game will be about combat. Whoever reads your game naturally thinks it´s about combat and how to use the dice most effectively for bashing Orc skulls in.

You seem to carry a great dislike for "falling out of character". You think it concerns good storys (it doesn´t, but that´s another thing). Well - Eero said something similar like the following, let me state it slightly different: Players will not play their character "appropriately" AND BE HAPPY ABOUT IT if they are rewarded for it. They play their character egoistic, opportunistic, without morals because the game PUNISHES them if they don´t (the game is about combat? When a character DOESN´T steal a magic sword, he effectively loses out on a primary effectivenes improvement). So what you do is, you don´t punish them for acting role-appropriately and what they will do is they will play the role that is fun to play for them. That´s what you want them to do, I guess: not playing according to some stereotype, but how they would like to. When rules reward egoistic barbarians, everybody will play as one. When rules treat all kinds of moral behaviour equivalentely, everybody will play like it´s fun to him. Some will play morally, some ambivalently, some evil, whatever.
Think about this really simple rule: whenever there is conflict, we roll dice. You as the GM roll 2, I roll 3. When my total is higher, I may narrate that and how my character succeeds. Say, there is a magic sword I want. We roll dice, I get 11, you get 5.


Your idea

Well, I posted the previous message incompletely.

ok, cont´d.

I roll higher. Say, it´s fun to me to play my character morally. I narrate how I speak to the owner of the magic sword, tell him how I am out on a quest, how I want to save the good princess. The owner gives the sword to me, I narrate.

Say I roll higher, say, it´s fun to me to play an asshole. I narrate how I steal the sword from the owner.

Do you see what I mean?

Ok.. Your Idea about "gaining back XP with interest after solving a quest" is really really interesting. I like that a lot. It is a tool I could see quite well in a gamist-narrativist mashup like The Shadow of Yesterday.

Concerning the questions you directed explicitly at me:
1. Another sort of reward might be not character, but player reward. Say, when you reward me, I get one dice that I may use as a bonus gift FOR OTHER PLAYERS ONLY.

2. What would be an ideal game for me? I basically like two kinds of play:
-> those where I act tactically sound. I know the rules by hard and I play them to my best interest In creative ways for beating obstacles. Like, if I use this kind of gun with this kind of ammunition, I will perform really good against this kind of enemy. If we throw smoke grenades, we get -4, our opponents get -4, too, but we start with more dice, so our chance of hitting is still 50%, theirs is 12%, we throw smoke grenades and win. That´s what I like. Here, I like winning.
-> those where I get to tell, cooperating with the other players, a really dramatic story. I posted a thread in playtesting about a game I had friday that really touched me. It was... That game, it wasn´t about dice and winning, it was about dice telling a story about betrayal, anger, loyalty and more betrayal and finally, revenge. It´s like, we tell a story. Not, we play those characters, but we tell a story. Here, there is no winning against others, it´s only creating a story. Uh, a Story.

The impression I'm getting from you guys is that I've mistaken role play or "being in character" with plot, story or "fiction."  It seems to me that "being in character" is part of the simulationist branch, while story is narrative branch. 

The argument I would make is that if players do not form some sort of "personality" that they stick to, you cannot have a cohesive story.  So lets say that you've got a Police Officer and a Doctor.  The story is about a murder that took place within the hospital.  If the Police Officer begins by being the "plucky guy who is going to clean up the town" but then changes over to a "self centered power mad man" and then into "the heroic guy who throws his body in the way of the doctor to save his life", you don't really have a coherent story. Natural character transformation aside, of course.

@ sound
The destiny (or for a more generic/accurate term) quest mechanic is some of what I've been trying to bring to the game. Right now, though, I have that same feeling of "This could be better" that I get before spending the time and effort to come up with a real break through. 

Quoting this for selfish reasons.

Quotecore successes of gamist rpg design have time and again been strongly textured, colorful and based on a strong imaginative context for anything that happens in the game. It's the vanquishing of the dragon that's the point of play, not reducing a hitpoint pool to zero.

Also, copyright being the monstrous thing it is, what happens if I copy+paste something directly out of my "copy righted book" directly onto the forge? Like, the first two paragraphs of my setting, for example. I know copyright isn't productive conversation, but this question seems relevant and there must be some common knowledge about that specific instance.

Quote from: David C on November 05, 2008, 02:22:12 AM
The argument I would make is that if players do not form some sort of "personality" that they stick to, you cannot have a cohesive story.  So lets say that you've got a Police Officer and a Doctor.  The story is about a murder that took place within the hospital.  If the Police Officer begins by being the "plucky guy who is going to clean up the town" but then changes over to a "self centered power mad man" and then into "the heroic guy who throws his body in the way of the doctor to save his life", you don't really have a coherent story. Natural character transformation aside, of course.

Absolutely, I find it excellent that you naturally grog to this; many gamers I've known have built an inborn conviction to the very opposite - I've had to explain the role of character integrity in building a story too many times to count when players have decided to damage the protagonism of their characters for petty short term gain.

I would argue, though, insofar that it's useful for this conversation, that the character created for the purpose of story does not necessarily have to be painstakingly constructed - the character can also grow naturally. In fact, I usually put very little stock to pre-game claims about how this character is "greedy" or this one is "humble"; it's all just noise until rubber hits the road and we find out the choices the player really makes for the character. These player-originating choices are such an important part of creating story together that trying to constrain them artificially before play starts by having the player describe his character and then try to stick to the description feels somewhat counterproductive. If the player was mistaken in his description and finds out during play that the character he wants to play and needs to play for this story is somebody else, then having some rules-stick punishing him for this revelation seems very problematic. Ever more problematic, in fact, when we consider that often enough the sort of natural flash of inspiration that turns a character from a cold-hearted bastard into a hero is the very core and turning point of the story! Trying to mechanize and prevent this from happening can be directly against any sort of story forming at all, as you remove the internal struggle from the supposed protagonist.

Quote
Also, copyright being the monstrous thing it is, what happens if I copy+paste something directly out of my "copy righted book" directly onto the forge? Like, the first two paragraphs of my setting, for example. I know copyright isn't productive conversation, but this question seems relevant and there must be some common knowledge about that specific instance.

Ah, for this one we actually have a simple and unambiguous answer: what happens to your copyrights if you decide to publish a part of your work here or elsewhere in the Internet? The answer is, nothing - legally it's just the same as if you'd printed the text on paper and distributed it in that manner. You still own any other rights to your text, can use it however you want and may require others not to distribute it any further (to other websites, say). You can't easily and practically take it off the Internet after publishing, not the least because this and other forums usually reserve the right to keeping the posts we make up in perpetuity, but that's a minor enough worry for anything you intented to put up in the first place.

The practical danger of publishing your work is often cited as being that somebody else will steal it and republish it for themselves. This is a real danger in one manner: many things, such as ideas, are not actually protected by copyright, so I, for example, have a full right to get inspired by something you publish and then write something similar myself. It is, however, a completely baseless fear in another regard, and that is practice: not only is the world full of ideas, not only are artists an independent lot who want to work on their own ideas instead of stealing from others what may be freely and easily invented or found lying around, but also the fact remains that we have a thriving game design community here, and many others all over the Internet, where publishing drafts and playtest versions of games is considered a beneficial practice for the designer himself. We might all be wrong, but so far it seems that being very open with your work is only beneficial to the project: you get real feedback by having people read it, you get advance publicity for when you finally get your game done, you gain valuable contacts and so on and so forth.

People often come to public art communities with an inflated sense of care for their work, which is why I'm harping on this one point: it's far more likely that you'll make your own progress difficult by being protective of your work than that you irreparably damage your chances of publishing the work in the future as a commercial product. The latter is technically possible: for example, you might want to sell the work to some prickly guy who finds it annoying that there is an 80% finished playtest draft of it floating out there in the Internet, but the chances of this being any sort of problem (especially if you're interested in self-publishing) are rather minuscule. Certainly there is no real and observed negative impact on sales; often enough the best marketing a small press guy can do is to have a very public game design and playtest phase, which allows early adopters to fall in love with the game and start doing grassroots publicity for it. In this information age it is the least of our problems as artists that somebody might wish to steal our work - the real challenge is in getting to be noticed at all!

In other words: you certainly shouldn't worry about posting anything from you game that makes it easier to conduct this conversation. If I were in your shoes, I'd just throw the whole thing into a pdf and link to it so others could form an overall picture of it. As an example of the sort of thing people do around here all the time, my original introductory post (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=21681.0) from a couple of years ago for a project I'm still working on. It's not exactly up to date in details for the project, but when I wrote it that was pretty much the whole state of the game, with nothing held back.

In addition to what Eero already said about character integrity versus story: Yes, enforcing "role-playing" is sim, enforcing storytelling is nar. Story does not come from role-playing. However, role-playing comes from story!

I´m pretty sure that, as I said before, people who like telling their character roleplaying (and those who don´t won´t anyways) will do so as long as they are not punished for it. If you enforce teling stories, people will tell their characters consistensely. Here, this:

Consistent characters don´t make stories, but stories need consistent characters. (Characters are not a sufficient, but a necessary condition for story.) You actually stated that, too. So if you succesfully enforce story, characters will be consistent. You don´t need to enforce character explicitely. Really, I tried it. It works that way. Don´t reward character consistency, reward storytelling and players will play consistently (and don´t punish character consistency! That goes in both ways. Sometimes, you need amoral characters for good stories: a torn character makes for a nice story. So enforce neither).
Look at how Otherkind doesn´t punish you for playing in character at all, nor rewards you for playing any special kind of character. If neither happens, character consistency will naturally emerge IF PEOPLE LIKE TO PLAY CHARACTERS CONSISTENTLY. If they don´t, well, forcing them wouldn´t work, neither.

Your quote:

Quotecore successes of gamist rpg design have time and again been strongly textured, colorful and based on a strong imaginative context for anything that happens in the game. It's the vanquishing of the dragon that's the point of play, not reducing a hitpoint pool to zero.

Is "wrong" in the sense that a gamists goal of play is beating some kind of obstacle. Gamism in itself does not differentiate between beating "color" or "no-color". Look at chess: it´s gamist and completely abstract. "Color", as in "painting the hitpoint in dragon", is a nice thing, but it is neither gamist nor non-gamist.
This further reenforces my interpretation that you want narr and just don´t know it yet:)

Read up about "color" in the Glossary and the articles about narrativism and gamism if that should confuse you.

The mechanism you wrote about ("destiny") is a really really good example for a number of things:
- Flags. Meaning: Players explicitely tell the other players (especially any kind of GM) what they want their characters´ story be about. Flags are a prime narr tool.
- Rewards for adressing the story, not rewards for "roleplaying". You said you don´t get XP for, say, writing down you are insecure and playing like this, but you get XP for writing down you are out for revenge and making a complete story (story: character, obstacle, resolution. Make sure destinies contain an obstacle, because character and resolution are already implied).

I would really try out destinies with my characters. Few things to note, though:
Make XP not rewards where you get better in combat. Make them more general. If, however, you make them general and 90% of your rules are about combat, suggesting to players that combat is what your game is about, they will spend those XP for combat. Therefore, they will not see story as an end in itself, but only as a thing to "beat" to get better at combat. So, don´t do that.
I don´t like the "time" part (the earlier you beat those, the better). Sounds like a computer game. It makes the design gamist. I think it would be a GOOD gamist design, and if you wanted to do gamism, it would be a great thing to do. However, consider this: when making the story shorter brings in more rewards, players will make their stories as short as possible. Are shorter stories better? No. Quite the opposite; what I would do is, I would make shure that all stories took as long as they needed to and give XP based on how good they were. How about this: 1. make EVERY conflict risky. If it isn´t risky in the slightest, don´t roll. At least every 3rd contest should really hurt the player. 2. Count every conflict. 3. When a story is resolved/a destiny fulfilled, give 1 XP for each conflict the player needed to win.

That, I think, would be a VERY good mechanic. (1 is so players don´t aimlessly make up conflict to max XP. 3 is so that stories get as much time as they need to; also, to get more conflict, because if your conflict mechanics are good, every conflict will be fun.)
What I would suggest is you post the destiny mechanic in "first thoughts" and have a discussion about it exclusively. Please do that, I like the mechanic. It also could make a very good gamist mechanic, too: here, the time-sensitive part should remain.

I have a similar mechanism in my current design, but it works completely in the opposing way. You should look it up (I posted rules in "playtesting"). It works like this: you make up a "mission" (p. much a destiny). In conflict, you may earn "mission dice". When you have earned about 4 to 5, you may beat the mission. You may ONLY beat your mission in this way. If your mission is to beat Lord Evil, he may not die in any other way but by beating the mission; when, however, you beat the mission, you have to narrate how Lord Evil dies.
After beating the mission, you may write down 2 sentences on your character sheet or on the common "world sheet", things like: Sir Good-Man made the northern lands more secure by beating Lord Evil. Or: In the battle where he slayed Lord Evil, Sir Good-Man earned himself a nasty scar on his chin. Or: After Lord Evil died, a new terror arose: Lady Cruel, the babyeater.
So your reward is 1. having the narrative authority to change something in the game world (whatever your mission was) and afterwards framing the game world or your character in a certain way.
If you make beating the mission the goal in itself, if you don´t get rewards for beating the mission, but rewards (mission dice in my case) allow you to beat the mission, beating the mission emerges as the players´ goal.

Note how (in my opinion) this is like your destinies, but exactly the other way around! Both should work fine, I guess. (Mine does, I tested it.)

J - perhaps we should tone down the theory talk here, it's liable to steal focus from David's actual concerns, considering that we don't really have any true picture of the Creative Agenda his game would or should promote. It also doesn't help that you're encouraging some common misconseptions about the details of GNS theory; I don't know if this is because you're expressing your own understanding in a way I find difficult to understand, or because you have some sort of misunderstanding going on yourself. It sounds to me like you're conflating explicit game mechanics and character-based reward systems with gamist play, which is not necessarily the case; for example, TSoY, for which I'm currently writing a new edition, is a good example of a very pure-bred narrativist game with explicit mechanical efficiency currency.

(Not saying that I'm any sort of authority in this myself, understand - it's just that I disagree with what you said here about some pretty intricate issues, and we shouldn't hijack this thread for hashing that stuff out. If you want to discuss how gamist play deals with fiction, I suggest starting an Actual Play thread about it; I'll be happy to discuss my recent experiences on the matter in more detail.)

Rather, let's focus on the original and actual topic of the thread: David told us that he's worried about how his game rewards character optimization and challenge orientation in lieu of roleplaying. I think that we've established it pretty clearly that David potentially has some mechanics going at cross-purposes in this regard in his game. As I understand it, it might be most useful for us at this point to point at some methods David might wish to consider for rewarding other directions of play; I don't know that we'd be in any position to say what direction David should take his own design, but we can show him how other designers have solved similar predicaments.

For example, let's take The Shadow of Yesterday (http://tsoy.crngames.com/), because it's in many ways a familiar sort of game, while completely repudiating the sort of challenge-oriented character optimization David fears. (It's also easily available for reference, which is a plus.) TSoY has experience points and kewl powerz aplenty for player characters to pursue. How does it encourage roleplaying and consistent characterization instead of opportunistic nihilism on the part of the characters?

The answer in this case lies in reward agnosticism: because the players set their own experience scheme in the game, character advancement in the game is actually just as trivial as the player wants it to be. Furthermore, once the player has determined a set of xp rewards via the Key mechanic, he can at any point gain a major xp reward for doing the opposite of the scheme; in other words, there is never a pressure on the player to act in a certain way just because it allows a reward - acting in any way at all gains some reward. Going forward, the role of experience points in the game is different from traditional in that it is actually completely trivial to optimize character success, and you can actually make your character the best possible in just one or two sessions of concerned play; after the character becomes a Grand Master, though, he soon leaves play in a dramatic manner. What all of this boils down to is that xp in TSoY is not a tool of winning - it's a tool of character development: players gain xp and use it, not to make their character stronger, but to make him deeper, to reflect the experiences of the character and his changing, shifting identity. When this growth process ends and the player doesn't have anything better to do with xp than pumping up skills, the character is soon removed from play for being the legend he is.

You can easily see how, although the tool of reward in TSoY, experience points, is the same as in D&D, the system environment changes the meaning of this traditional reward currency into a completely different thing. When xp is not hunted to win the game with it, but to enable the player to mold his character, there is no longer a need to focus single-mindedly on winning at any cost; it is quite viable to play TSoY in such a manner that different players gain vastly differing amounts of xp during the campaign. Characters can also reside in different power levels in the game without a problem, as they are not used as tools for defeating challenges, but as protagonists in a story.

There are many other games that have different mechanical incentives for story-crafting - is this sort of direction useful for us to pursue, David?

Dave,
  Here is a link to Otherkind:
http://web.archive.org/web/20040707171558/www.septemberquestion.org/lumpley/pdfs/otherkind.pdf

  When Vincent updated his site, he neglected to carry this forward.

  I guess to me, it depends on your definition of Story. If its, a bunch of stuff that  happened, then every RPG fulfills the need to make a story. Whether you like the story it tells or not is a matter of taste though, right?
  But, if you like your story with a beginning, middle and end, then the mechanics need to support that.
  I think that might be the touchstone on all this confusion, story. What does it mean to you and what kinds of stories do you want to tell with your design?

  This can be done mechanically with Narrative Control Tokens or other narration control tools. This can be done organically with a vibrant setting. Or it can be done systematically with all of the elements of the system pointed at this goal (like the only traits available are those that help tell the type of story you want the players to tell). There is no wrong answer, but the tools should match your goal or you get incoherence. Does that make sense?

I'm going to go ahead and move the entire Destiny mechanic to a new topic. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=26973.0 (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=26973.0)

Eero, that's very interesting about TSOY. I can see how every element of the game supports the play you are trying to get across, and I think if I had found TSOY or Solar System awhile ago, I might be contentedly playing them. (Probably not, I've always been a fiddler. I'd probably be altering them to handle space ship battles or some other nonsense)

Quote
  I guess to me, it depends on your definition of Story. If its, a bunch of stuff that  happened, then every RPG fulfills the need to make a story. Whether you like the story it tells or not is a matter of taste though, right?
  But, if you like your story with a beginning, middle and end, then the mechanics need to support that.
  I think that might be the touchstone on all this confusion, story. What does it mean to you and what kinds of stories do you want to tell with your design?

Ok, well first let me talk briefly what I enjoy in a game.  I enjoy finding out what's happening and mostly *why*?  Usually, this involves a lot of shared narrative control, and sometimes includes advancing a personal agenda. But then, I like to do gritty, task resolution, tactical combat, where the GM has almost all narrative control. Let me give an actual play example.

QuoteIn a recent campaign, we were playing the villains. for a change of pace. We were trying to get some evil artifact out of the keep of a local town. At one point, we met a young lady who we began manipulating for our own goals.  I basically narrated to the GM, "I'm telling these two vampire spawn (who were kind of cohorts at the time) to break into this girls house and drain the parents and sibling, but to leave the girl alone. Then, I'm going to wait a moment until I'm sure they've had time to do their dirty work, but not too long, because they might still be hungry, and then I'm going to kill the vampire spawn and "save the girl." We then did a couple rolls (Did I wait too long, did the vampires follow my orders? But then we went from l conflict resolution into task resolution as I killed the the spawn.)

Like the other players, we were advancing personal agendas (my character began caring for the young lady) while progressing the larger plot (getting this evil artifact.) As an important part of this story, my character went under some transformation. He went from being self centered and power hungry, to caring (however crudely) for this girl. Another important part was the eventual twists the story took.  (We sort of failed doing things discreetly and the city burned down) The betrayals and actions of other players (The wizard we were working for grabbed the artifact and left in a hurry, leaving us to the fate of the local law.  Meanwhile, one of the other players had created a fake artifact and replaced the real one with it.)  All of these things together was what made the "Story" for me. 

One thing I should mention is, while I prefer a multiple story arc, game.  So while I like my story to have a beginning, a middle, and an end, I like there to be multiple stories within the same game.  An example is, in my previous play, while we ultimately were at odds with the wizard, and ultimately dealt with him, we meanwhile angered some good organization that antagonized us.  So we concluded the one story, but meanwhile, another has begun.

Now, I could focus narrowly on my game and turn it into a purely gamist game.  I feel this is what they did with 4th Edition D&D, and this is probably why I don't like playing it at all, but many other people enjoy it immensely.  I think what is right for me, is to make a game that has gritty, tactical battle, but outside of the scope of battle, there is a whole world of possibilities. I'd rather fail trying to do the latter, then succeed at making a purely gamist game.

QuoteThis can be done mechanically with Narrative Control Tokens or other narration control tools. This can be done organically with a vibrant setting. Or it can be done systematically with all of the elements of the system pointed at this goal (like the only traits available are those that help tell the type of story you want the players to tell). There is no wrong answer, but the tools should match your goal or you get incoherence. Does that make sense?

Maybe I am making some kind of elementary mistake, but wouldn't it be best to strive for all three? Lets look at otherkind for a moment.  It mechanically deals with narration control. (If you get a 4 5 or 6 on the narration dice, you narrate), it has a vibrant setting (numina and iron), and systematically (you can only be a numinous creature, you can't be a human.  You only track how many people you kill, not how many berries you have to eat.) 

That part about crunchy tactical combat and resonating world is interesting, and perhaps useful to us. How do you visualize the flow of influence between the combat part and the rest of the game? If you imagine the combat system as a big black box that is taking input from the rest of the game, what sort of input is it? When does the rest of the system turn on the combat machine, and why? What sort of output does the combat box bring out for the rest of the system to deal with, and how does that output affect further events?

What I'm getting at here is that combat has been used inventively in many roles in different games, and there is no reason why you couldn't have it play a role in yours, especially if you can figure out the role it plays in your game. For example, in Call of Cthulhu played in a gamist manner combat is a failure endstate of sorts, as it's only engaged when the players make mistakes. In 4th ed. D&D combat is a prepared encounter the players are railroaded to, and is pretty much the point of play, as the most interesting part of the game. In Ars Magica combat is an evolutionary remainder with little role except to convince people that it's a "complete rpg". Don't just create combat rules - make a point of understanding when and how and why combat is segued into in your game, and how combat affects the rest of play. Thinking of this might help you figure out how you should handle the whole character strength issue, as combat is so tied up with that.

Now, we get to the root of the problem that I had in the first place, without me realizing what my problem was.  (I've learned so much in the past few days, wow!) I'm going to answer the questions, but I feel I'm "missing something."  Like, there's something I know needs to be there to make it all work, but I'm not sure what it is.

QuoteHow do you visualize the flow of influence between the combat part and the rest of the game?

I think combat's primary purpose is to "correct" a mistake, or resolve a plot point.  For example, a combat might be entered because a player fails to convince (a "mistake) the mad wizard to give him back the blacksmith's daughter. (a plot point) In other words, it gives "motion" to the story. At other times, it is entered in unfortunate circumstances, almost as a punishment. (You insulted that group of orcs, and now you have to fight them before you can get further along.) Kind of like a tar pit...

QuoteIf you imagine the combat system as a big black box that is taking input from the rest of the game, what sort of input is it?

Hmm, I'm not sure how to answer this question, I'll give it a shot, though.  The input it takes is what the story is delivering.  If the characters are traveling through orc country, and one of them decides to blow a horn, a bunch of orcs might attack.  If a mad wizard has kidnapped the blacksmith's daughter, you might fight him and his magical contraptions.

QuoteWhen does the rest of the system turn on the combat machine, and why?

In addition to what I've already mentioned, I think the combat machine gets turned on because it brings on the dramatic and atmosphere.  This room is dangerous... explore further and you'll encounter something grisly. This mad wizard is going to be a tough opponent to bring down.  Your cult member disguise was just blown in the middle of a dark ritual. You decide to try and steal that flaming sword from the shopkeep... It should be a natural evolution of the story, and there should definitely be story reasons NOT to go into combat some of the time.

QuoteWhat sort of output does the combat box bring out for the rest of the system to deal with, and how does that output affect further events?

In some cases, the output would be further motion of the story.  (Now that we've dealt with the mad wizard, we can reunite the blacksmith with his daughter) In other cases, it would allow you to escape a "very big mistake" (Fighting your way out of the cult's hideout). In some cases, you've merely dealt with an obstacle getting to the guy you really want to kill.

In cases where combat is not desired, the output is change in reputation or ability to progress down a certain path. For example, lets say the party decides to kill the blacksmith and just take their "reward."  Well, now they can't progress towards saving his daughter, because only he knew where their tower was.  Not only that, but they've gained a reputation as murderers.

I think I'm getting an understanding of how the reward system needs to work. So, basically, I want to encourage players to do two things. 1) Contribute to narration and story development.  2) Address problems in non traditional manners

My first thing I'm going to change is how social encounters are explained. In the explanation, I'm going to emphasis conflict resolution. Also, I think I'm going to change how success is defined.  Players are going to declare "I'm going to intimidate this person, in order that I can do THIS."  They then roll, and if they succeed by 5 or more, they then gain the ability to narrate as well as succeed.  (Notice that they never narrate a failure... what to do?) Beyond this, I was thinking of a way of making a player be able to narrate no matter the result, provided they expend a resource.  So before they roll, they could choose to expend a resource to guarantee narration. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that I have a resource for that.  What do you feel about having an XP purchased resource that replenishes periodically?

Oh, before I move on, let me explain the context of "Social Encounters" for you.  Social Encounters are where *something* is at stake, but not the character's life (except in the case where he's thrown in jail or something.) Basically, as soon as their life is at stake, it becomes combat.

The second thing I'm going to do is change how rewards are given.  Primarily, combat encounters will now reward a set amount of XP *or* treasure. The only time combat encounters will reward both XP and treasure is if it is a story milestone.  The mad wizard's minions don't have treasure on them, they grant xp, though. The butler, while formidable, wasn't a learning experience, however he did have a gold pocket watch. The mad wizard, though, he was both challenging AND his robes were full of stuff! My only reservation about this is, while clear what the intentions are, it will break verisimilitude for some players (the butler didn't give ANY xp?)

In addition, social encounters are going to have rewards as well.  I think 1 xp per conflict resolution might be appropriate, with about 10 xp granted at a milestone (100 xp to level, remember). I might also decide to give Influence at social encounter milestones, as well. If I decide to use that mechanic (I'm leaning towards it more and more.)  I think if I use influence, it could also be saved up to get a "big favor." Like maybe the mayor gives you a house for all your services... (10 influence...)

QuoteSo before they roll, they could choose to expend a resource to guarantee narration. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that I have a resource for that.  What do you feel about having an XP purchased resource that replenishes periodically?

Oh, before I move on, let me explain the context of "Social Encounters" for you.  Social Encounters are where *something* is at stake, but not the character's life (except in the case where he's thrown in jail or something.) Basically, as soon as their life is at stake, it becomes combat.

I find this interesting.

I´d have them spend the point for guaranteeing narration rights AFTER rolling dice. It´s always great to have more tactical options after rolling dice.
How about a ressource that refreshes
- either as a resolut of conflict (ie., you need to enter conflict to replenish it)
- or as a result of another "fla"; ie., the palyer decides, "my character refreshes his pool of whatever thusly", for exmaple, one by sex, one by having a bath. (That´s pretty close to "reward for good roleplaying, but somehow I like it. IIRC, there´s a similar mechanic in TSoY)

Now concerning your definition of combat. Tell me if I get it:
I fight a child with a wooden sword, my goal is: do I impress the boys´ mother with my friendliness? It´s not combat.
I fight a lone goblin because I´m pissed of (maybe I regain my token tool by fighting). I am Conan. The goblin doesn´t stand a chance. It´s not combat.
I fight barefisted with a drunkyard. If I lose, worst case is a black eye and I have to pay his drinks, too. It´s not combat.

I fight to the death, but it´s a game of chess with the evil lord. If he wins, I die. It´s combat.
I am in a contest with my lovers´ other option. What we are doing is we are racing horses. If I lose, I will commit suicide. It´s combat.
I am accused of treason. If I can´t convince the king I´m innocent, they will hang me. It´s combat.

Is that what you´re saying? If so, 1. I love it. 2., you NEED to read TSoY, especially "Bringing down the pain". It does something similar.

A link to the mentioned part of TSoY: http://files.crngames.com/cc/tsoy/book1--rulebook.html#bringing-down-the-pain

I think you should seriously consider (as many designers did) just using TSoY, that´s how good it is.

Dave,
  One thing to consider is, roleplaying is the feed into and out of combat and roleplaying situations are the output.
  It sounds like that is what you want, so maybe you should consider something like Pendragon.
  In this game, you character doesn't have stats like Strength, Intelligence, etc. You stats are the 7 virtues, humility, bravery, etc. the idea was that you play a knight of the round, and in that milieu, might does not make right, only the most virtuous soldier of god can defeat evil, right? Now, you haven't said exactly what your game is about, so I can't give you a appropriate example for your game, but maybe you can do something like that with your design. Like maybe your stats are compassion, confidence, self control and self esteem. And if a player gets into a conflict, they roll these instead of double-specialized, long sword. So that the feeds into combat are the characters feelings, hopes and aspirations. And then define the stakes of the fight before it starts so that the out put is whether or not they achieve these hopes and dreams? This might be a way to use the fighting mechanics tyou have and preserve a role playing context for fights.
  I mean with the XP/Treasure system you outlined, the only way to get treasure is to fight. You can get XPs from both fighting and social conflict, but you can only get treasure from fighting.
  Also, for some genres your definition of social conflict will not work. For a samurai-era game, every conversation can get you killed. Samurai had the right and ability to behead any fool who said the wrong thing to them. It doesn't sound like that is the genre you are going for, but I thought this little tidbit might help you refine your definition a little.
  Good luck on your game man!

Good stuff here.

Quote from: David C on November 06, 2008, 03:32:22 AM

QuoteHow do you visualize the flow of influence between the combat part and the rest of the game?

I think combat's primary purpose is to "correct" a mistake, or resolve a plot point.  For example, a combat might be entered because a player fails to convince (a "mistake) the mad wizard to give him back the blacksmith's daughter. (a plot point) In other words, it gives "motion" to the story. At other times, it is entered in unfortunate circumstances, almost as a punishment. (You insulted that group of orcs, and now you have to fight them before you can get further along.) Kind of like a tar pit...

Would you say, then, that it's not part of the GMing methodology in this game to force combat encounters? It's fine with you if the players are combat-averse?

Quote

QuoteIf you imagine the combat system as a big black box that is taking input from the rest of the game, what sort of input is it?

Hmm, I'm not sure how to answer this question, I'll give it a shot, though.  The input it takes is what the story is delivering.  If the characters are traveling through orc country, and one of them decides to blow a horn, a bunch of orcs might attack.  If a mad wizard has kidnapped the blacksmith's daughter, you might fight him and his magical contraptions.

How are the strength levels of the encounters determined? Is there some monster manual where you can look what an individual orc weights in system terms, and how many orcs are involved in a random encounter? Or will the GM balance the encounter based on the characters? How about the terrain? If the country's been established as hilly and woody, how, if anyhow, this translates when going into the combat box? How about weather and such? Can the players control the number and type of their opponents, terrain, weather, somehow?

How about positioning and supplies, how do they affect the input the combat box is getting? Is it important to get to surprise the opposition? Are there lots of cumulative advantages a party can gather against their foemen if they know a battle is coming and want to prepare for it? Are there non-specific preparations that help against any combat encounter aside from the already established "gain xp and grow more powerful" and "gain magic items"? Are there specific preparations that need to be set up at a definite time or definite place or against a definite opponent or that have such crippling penalties for some non-combat things that you can't keep them up all the time?

How does the combat system handle subversive input? Will it be used at all if the player characters do their very best to ride the countryside with an army of NPCs, or will the players control those NPCs in the fight, or will combat only be entered when the characters are separated from their army, or is it presumed that such won't happen? What if somebody refuses to fight, what happens then? What about escape, surrender, fighting not to kill but to capture?

Are there dramatic issues that the combat box needs to know about? Is the combat any different between Darth Vader, the random encounter, or Darth Vader, the evil father of one of the PCs? How about Darth Vader, the loved one of one of the PCs? How about two PCs fighting for fun? To the death?

You don't have to answer the above array of questions, I'm just providing them as examples of the extent of the field that can be dealt with when inputting stuff into the combat box. Some games use all, most, some or none of the above; my negative experiences with 4th ed. D&D, for example, come largely from the fact that when played according to its own instructions, the game takes almost no input at all from anything except the static abilities of the characters and the occasional surprise round. Segregated subgame more than an organically flowing part of the larger system, that.

Quote

QuoteWhen does the rest of the system turn on the combat machine, and why?

In addition to what I've already mentioned, I think the combat machine gets turned on because it brings on the dramatic and atmosphere.  This room is dangerous... explore further and you'll encounter something grisly. This mad wizard is going to be a tough opponent to bring down.  Your cult member disguise was just blown in the middle of a dark ritual. You decide to try and steal that flaming sword from the shopkeep... It should be a natural evolution of the story, and there should definitely be story reasons NOT to go into combat some of the time.

Would you say that a monster is invented and the combat system is turned on to deal with it because the room is dangerous, or is the room dangerous because the monter is in there? Who decides whether a character's disguise is blown, resulting in a fight? Is the decision to turn on the combat machine objective, or can one or more players decide to not to do it in some circumstances?

Quote

QuoteWhat sort of output does the combat box bring out for the rest of the system to deal with, and how does that output affect further events?

In some cases, the output would be further motion of the story.  (Now that we've dealt with the mad wizard, we can reunite the blacksmith with his daughter) In other cases, it would allow you to escape a "very big mistake" (Fighting your way out of the cult's hideout). In some cases, you've merely dealt with an obstacle getting to the guy you really want to kill.

In cases where combat is not desired, the output is change in reputation or ability to progress down a certain path. For example, lets say the party decides to kill the blacksmith and just take their "reward."  Well, now they can't progress towards saving his daughter, because only he knew where their tower was.  Not only that, but they've gained a reputation as murderers.

So the output of the combat system comes mostly in the form of fictional events both rewarding and punishing, according to the internal logic of the story? How about wounds and fatigue, do they linger? Permanent crippling? Fears and psychological costs? Vendettas and such are already intimated, but is there systemic support for those coming about, or is it all up to the GM to bring in?

Then there is experience and treasure, which have already been mentioned. The important point in looking at what sorts of inputs and outputs a phase of play like combat takes is that this allows you to determine whether the combat system is doing its job as part of the game. If it's being used for the right reasons and brings about the desired dynamical change in the game, then all is well. To take a simple example, Dust Devils combat is pretty much about having the player exchange his character's mechanical well-being for fictional achievements - it's up to the player to determine when the stakes are such that he's willing to make this trade, as taking on all comers will soon reduce the character into a wreck who'll fail to defend the things he actually cares about. As a consequence of this role combat plays in DD, the inputs it takes are simply fictional situations with some very simple rules for gauging the strength of the current opposition - and outputs are equally simple, mostly just a determination of who won and who loses how many points of ability strength.

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I think I'm getting an understanding of how the reward system needs to work. So, basically, I want to encourage players to do two things. 1) Contribute to narration and story development.  2) Address problems in non traditional manners

I like your goals, and I like how you're going about fulfilling them. Perhaps one angle you might consider is that giving the ability to narrate a situation as a reward encourages the player to use the narration right as a tool for manipulating the fiction to his benefit. You need to realize this and deal with it in some manner, even if that manner is just to accept it. An alternate approach is to not make such a big deal of the right to narrate, and focus more on how to get the players into an inclusive, active mood where they'll feel like participating a lot in developing the fiction. One way of substantiating this is to make narration a pre-condition of success rather than a result of the same - Wushu works like this, players get explicit effectiveness bonuses in conflict for taking the trouble to create some fiction. This is the main source of effectiveness, actually. Many other games have similar rules to some degree. Another way of encouraging participation is to give players explicit, real responsibilities - in The Mountain Witch, for instance, the players know that it's their responsibility to develop an interesting story out of their characters; the GM doesn't have the required knowledge to do it for them. The players have no other motivation, but they have the right and the power to participate in shaping the story, so pretty often they do.

Addressing problems in creative ways is a good goal. Probably the way to make this happen is to have the rules support inventive solutions to problems. Modern D&D is a major example of a game that actively works against this by providing a comprehensive rules system that specifically strives to balance level-appropriate challenges to provide a well-rounded opposition for anything you might decide to do. There simply aren't any inventive ways of dealing with opposition, because if your opponent were able to be defeated with some much easier method than the one the designer planned for, then he weren't of the challenge rating he was supposed to be in the first place. Your example from the other thread about the dragon fed into the ticket machine is exactly an example of the sort of stuff that's anathema to the modern D&D rules.

You mention a need for an expendable resource. My incomplete understanding of the style of your system inspires me to suggest that you could just have the players expend some xp to buy a resource pool. Like, you spend 100xp or whatever to gain a "Contacts Pool" at one point, and every 30xp more you spend increases its size by one. Then you can spend these points to introduce new, useful NPC contacts the character has met in the past. And you replenish the pool by some specific action, like simply staying a week or two in a specific community and getting to know people there. Similarly you could develop a "Willpower Pool" or other such expendable resources, whatever makes sense for your game.

QuoteWould you say, then, that it's not part of the GMing methodology in this game to force combat encounters? It's fine with you if the players are combat-averse?

The system is neutral, the rewards are not greater from slaying the wizard, or convincing him to give the daughter back.  The system can be played with the players avoiding all combat (although, I don't think this will be my target audience, since it will still have a robust combat system, and there are other games that nail "avoiding all combat".)  However, it will be up to the GM if a combat can be avoided or not... he can always DENY them the chance of convincing the wizard.  I'm going to try and discourage this "combat rail road" behavior with the GM, but ultimately, it's his story. 

QuoteHow are the strength levels of the encounters determined? Is there some monster manual where you can look what an individual orc weights in system terms, and how many orcs are involved in a random encounter? Or will the GM balance the encounter based on the characters? How about the terrain? If the country's been established as hilly and woody, how, if anyhow, this translates when going into the combat box? How about weather and such? Can the players control the number and type of their opponents, terrain, weather, somehow?

I think you'll have to wait for the design doc :P 

QuoteHow does the combat system handle subversive input? Will it be used at all if the player characters do their very best to ride the countryside with an army of NPCs, or will the players control those NPCs in the fight, or will combat only be entered when the characters are separated from their army, or is it presumed that such won't happen? What about escape, surrender, fighting not to kill but to capture?

So far all of my play tests have been levels starting at 1 OR 5, lasting 1-3 sessions, with just a few level ups.  (Well, there was a play test that was closer to 8 sessions, but the game has changed a LOT since then, but it did help immensely.)  Right now, though, I'm writing a long, serious campaign where the players do just what you describe.  They raise an army... 

Their are a few abilities that focus specifically on escape.  I would say surrender probably turns off the "combat engine" and turns on the "world engine."  Fighting to capture an enemy and fighting to kill an enemy is the same thing, the player simply declare that they're going to capture them, not kill them.  To encourage capturing enemies, some enemies will "surrender" before they'd normally be forced to "surrender."  Other opponents might try to die, which requires an opposed roll...

QuoteAre there dramatic issues that the combat box needs to know about? Is the combat any different between Darth Vader, the random encounter, or Darth Vader, the evil father of one of the PCs? How about Darth Vader, the loved one of one of the PCs? How about two PCs fighting for fun? To the death?

Hmm... right now, no.  I'm curious now, do you have an example?  Like "Even though that Zombie is my Mum, we've still got to kill her"  but I'm reluctant to do it, so my effectiveness is reduced?  That kind of thing?

QuoteWould you say that a monster is invented and the combat system is turned on to deal with it because the room is dangerous, or is the room dangerous because the monter is in there? Who decides whether a character's disguise is blown, resulting in a fight? Is the decision to turn on the combat machine objective, or can one or more players decide to not to do it in some circumstances?

I'd say the room is dangerous in appearance (as the GM describes it.) In some cases the room is dangerous looking BECAUSE of a monster (Shelob's lair).  However, the conflict is that there's a very dangerous room, probably inhabited by a monster.  Failure to go *through* the room without attracting attention turns on the combat machine.  There's often a way for the characters to back out, but to do so, they are sacrificing...  I'm not sure how to ironclad this in the rules, but currently there's two things.  A purchasable ability called (what else?) Run Away! that allows the players to *leave* an area, but only from the way they came from.  There's also a spell that allows the players to do that (only one player needs either thing for the whole party to "use" it.)   

So right now, the sacrifice is motion and whatever the GM decides to do for running away (like, the monster could be prepared for them next time they come back).  If I had "reputation" as a mechanic, I might have it lower their reputation, but I don't...   Maybe I should make it so any encounter they run away from, the enemy is automatically "prepared" for them (surprise round).  Possibly also a lowered reward for beating the conflict? 

Characters have to make a roll under two circumstances.  Risk and Exposure.  Climbing (exposure) a cliff (risk) requires a roll.  Talking with another cultist or coming under scrutiney (saying the wrong words during a chant?) would be exposure, and the risk is there. 

QuoteSo the output of the combat system comes mostly in the form of fictional events both rewarding and punishing, according to the internal logic of the story? How about wounds and fatigue, do they linger? Permanent crippling? Fears and psychological costs? Vendettas and such are already intimated, but is there systemic support for those coming about, or is it all up to the GM to bring in?

Wounds and Fatigue linger until restored in a specific manner.  Permanent crippling... not specifically permanent, but fixing them comes at a higher cost.  One thing I'm abolishing is a "Healer" constantly pumping full a "Tank" with health.  Getting hurt and worse is much harder to remove than being high enough level.  Psycological ailments are probably going to be like an "effect" you either have or don't have. 

Perhaps I should have a section on "Ailments."  Certain things trigger ailments, and the GM can reference different categories of ailments to place on the player.  For example, the "ailment" of vendetta might mean somebody has placed a bounty on your head, and a bounty hunter might show up at any time. 

This reminds me of another idea I had awhile back.  It was basically a deck of notecards that had 50% of them written on with things like "a random piece of equipment breaks" or "you trip embarrasingly."  Each time a player rolled a 1, they'd flip a card. However, if somebody had, say, a vendetta placed on them, they'd take one of hte blank cards and write "vendetta" on it.  If that card came up, something would happen.  But I cut this out, cause of bulk...

QuoteAddressing problems in creative ways is a good goal.

This is the "majority" of what I was going to do on that topic.  For GMing advice/guide, I was going to say something like "If the characters come up with a creative solution to a problem, let them do it, even if it disrupts the 'normal course of events.'  However, there is a limit to this, called "Burning Down the Docks."  I had a friend who's group figured out that the best way to break into a store was to distract the town by burning down the docks.  It's an effective strategy, but thereafter, whenever they encountered the same problem, they always burned down the docks.  So as a rule of thumb, a creative solution to a problem only works once.  If the players try it again, it's always fails to work again. Players should likewise be aware of this rule." 

I tend to place a lot of trust in GMs, not because I've had good GMs (80% weren't), but I've yet to encounter a system that "fixes" bad GMing...  I should probably address this.

@ sound

QuoteI think you should seriously consider (as many designers did) just using TSoY, that´s how good it is.

my thinking is "Picasso was a fantastic artist, Mozart was a fantastic composer, should that mean people should give up being artists and composer, and to stop coming up with their own work?"  For some people, the right thing to do is use TSoY, I just think I can do something different, that is also good.

@DinDenver

QuoteAlso, for some genres your definition of social conflict will not work.

Hmm... While writing it, I knew there was some contexts where the line was blurred.  I think the thing is what happens is the social encounters segue into combat.  Lets say the samurai insults another ronin... now they're in combat.   Another context that was blurred was, lets say they're a prisoner of a wizard, and pissing off the wizard will result in being turned to stone... that's not "combat."   I'm not sure I need to worry about this though?

QuoteI mean with the XP/Treasure system you outlined, the only way to get treasure is to fight. You can get XPs from both fighting and social conflict, but you can only get treasure from fighting.

Well, ideally I'll work out the kinks so either avenue is equal. 

The comment about my stats and stuff is appreciated, but I'd like to finish my game sooner or later, and if I gut the combat system now, I might as well start over, heh.

Thanks for all the comments guys, I have a LOT of thinking to do, and these last few posts are definitely at the root of my problem.  More feedback is always appreciated. :)

RE: dramatic elements, your zombie example is the sort of thing I was thinking of. Psychological and purely dramatic elements that influence events - certainly not necessary (not using such in my current fantasy adventure campaign, for example), but if the design confesses to an existence of a story structure it is trying to work with, there's little reason not to give the hero a major boost when he's trying to save the love of his life. (Nobody interpret this as a necessarily narrativist technique, either - could easily do gamism where this sort of thing is on the table.)

For what it's worth, I'd say that your system sounds quite different from TSoY (aside from having a focused and aesthetically pleasing build with modular crunch), perhaps much closer to the aforementioned Runeslayers - and this from the guy who has all motivation to convince somebody else to start writing stuff for TSoY ;)

Regardless, I think we'd all benefit from taking a look at an overview design document at this point. With no intent to impunge on your powers of explanation, we'll get only so much from spot questions and your own impression of what your game does. An experienced eye will see so much more by looking at mechanics and how they hang together; I've lost count of how many games I've looked into and seen that the actually written material is doing something interesting but completely different from the words the designer uses to explain himself - he's bringing old fights into the discussion and using terminology that misleads us all about the real focus of the game. For instance, what you're painting for me here is a picture of an alluring gamist game with strong texture and internal value placed on interesting fiction, but I can't say for sure whether this is the case, really - and J and others are advocating for a story-focused drama game, so perhaps that's what you're doing. It's a conundrum of communication best resolved by looking at the facts of what your game does - perhaps it's doing what you want and it'll tell us what that is, or perhaps we'll tell you what we're seeing and you can tell us that that's actually not what you were trying to do.

No haste with this, mind you - we'll still be here in January, for instance. Take your time, I imagine that it'll take some time to gather your materials in a major fantasy adventure design like this. Lots of materials floating around from different design eras, with a constant churn - from what you've said, I intimate that you've approached this design largely by playing and adding things in layers, which often results in a design that requires a very critical eye in later stages to cut all the chaff successfully before the final push for a completely rounded product.

QuoteI tend to place a lot of trust in GMs, not because I've had good GMs (80% weren't), but I've yet to encounter a system that "fixes" bad GMing...  I should probably address this.

My guess? 80% of your GMs were bad because they played games that encouraged bad GMing. That, at least, is my experience. Rules won´t neither fix bad GMing nor bad non-GM-playing, but bad rules (like overvaluing GM fiat in respect to player decisions) encourage bad GMing. If the GM has all the power, he will play as a power trip. Taking serious player input (like with your destinies) is they way to steer against this. I´d make sure every player has a certain role and the GMs´ is not being the final arbiter over everything: if I roll well enough, I get what I want, fin. I decide what my game is about; if I decide, not about combat, so be it.
Of course, to have players chose a non.combat game over a combat game (IF that be your goal), the non-combat rules need to be at least as engaging and interesting and deep as the combat rules. 4 pages of weapon modificators, 1/2 paragraphs on diplomacy? Well, guess what I´ll do!

I like your idea of how damage in social conflicts is resolved. I get hurt in social conflict, next roll, an assassin might turn up and ruin my day. I get hurt in physical conflict, next roll, my wounded leg might give in and ruin my day.
I would make sure both are resolved in the same way, personally.

Quotefailure to go *through* the room without attracting attention turns on the combat machine. 

Your next few sentences somewhat soften the impact of this, but fundamentally, I´d see this as an example of combat domination the game. If I have to expect combat as the default fallback, if social may fail, it in some cases defaults to combat, combat will be way more important than social and every group needs to maximize combat effectiveness or lose out on choices.

Next thing is, reward mechanicms - again combat seems dominating. What I would do is, two choices:
1. Away with treasure, only XP. Every item that improves your effectiveness has to be bought by XP.
2. Combat gives treasure, non-combat XP. Both are needed.

Agreeing with Eero, I think most or all of what we are discussing is as applicable to gamism as it is to narrativism.

Part of my logic behind thinking players will try social before combat is two reasons.  1) Resource expenditure. Every type of "character combat path" a player takes involves resource expenditure.  A character can easily blow their whole day's worth of resources, leaving them vulnerable and weakened.  2) "efficiency"  If there's no greater reward for going into combat, and it *does* take more time and emphasis, won't it be preferred to try and "skip" every battle possible? 

I still have treasure, but it's effects on character efficiency are weak.  When first starting, some money is useful in getting all your preferred equipment (Plate mail instead of leather).  However, magic items are only rewarded at milestones (which does not matter how they are reached.) Magic items are, in a way, priceless, and the only way to get a different magic item from a "merchant" is to trade him one with the same "rarity" (1 star - 5 stars.)  Plus money, because they're merchants after all.  My goal with this was actually to make it so that players that used their money as "flavor" would be better rewarded.

So lets take a look at a progress of the Mad Wizard campaign.

Blacksmith - talk to him, players may kill him and get his stuff, this stops this route, however.  If you ask the right questions, you might find out helpful information... You might be able to convince him to give you "plate mail" or something else to aid you in your quest... 
Award XP, Motion, and Treasure (from talking) or XP and Treasure (from combat)

Travel Through Orc Country
The players get separated, they can reunite by blowing a horn (but as the GM explains, this might result in orcs finding them.) Or, they can use their wits and noncombat skills to reunite silently. 
Award XP, Motion and Plot from either. (Orcs use inferior bone implements that are heavy and worthless.) Also, if they fight the orcs, they're told that the orc leader is planning to raid a village (plot.)  If they don't find the orcs, they find *evidence* that the orc leader is planning to raid a village.

Arrive at the Mad Wizard's Tower.
An animated carpet "trap" sits in the entree way.  They  can use their wits and noncombat skills to avoid the "trap" or they can stumble on it, going into combat (it activates and they fight it.)
Award XP and Motion

A lone golem patrols the hallway back and forth...  The can use their wits and noncombat skills to sneak around it, block it off... (many possible solutions to this that I can think of.)  Or they can attack it.
Award XP and motion.

They are halted by the butler. (Like a miniboss) They can talk to the butler and convince him that the mad wizard has stepped over the line, but you don't want to hurt him.  The butler gives you his pocket watch, which gets you through the barrier to the Wizard's chamber.  Or you can kill him, and get his pocket watch.
Award XP, Loot and Motion.

The mad wizard. They can talk to him, or they can kill him.  Killing him gives them *his* stuff.  Not killing him means the blacksmith gives them treasure (or extra treasure, anyways), as well as the whole town throwing a party.  (The meta reason for this is, the town *likes* the wizard, since he spends a lot of time fighting orcs and keeping them busy). 
Award XP, Loot and Motion.


Now, then and again, there might be a combat encounter the players are forced into, like if the mad wizard was only "killable."  Likewise, however, there might be a social encounter the players are forced into, like talking to the crowned prince (where attacking him would be guaranteed death, either from being outmatched, or becoming wanted criminals.)