[Urban Mythos] Yet another Tarot system & narration issu

[Rich Stokes]

Previously in "Life of Rich":

I'm working on Urban Mythos still.  Slowly and painfully.

Some other posts can be found here, here and here.

I came up with a cool resolution mechanic about 18 months ago, playteseted it a bit and it appears to work.  Unfortunately I've been tied up in other things and haven't really had the energy to write the system up properly.  In that time though, I've seen some really cool things I hadn't seen before.  Things like Donjon, MLWM and InSpectres and a bunch more.  Things I like.

The system looks like this:

This is essentially a "Card Pool" high number matching mechanic.

Characters have Attributes (rated between 1 and 5) and Talents (rated between 0 and 5).


When attempting anything:

1) The player declares what they are trying to do.

2) GM assigns difficulty.  10 for an average task, higher or lower depending.

3) The player adds the appropriate Attribute to the appropriate Talent and is dealt that many cards from a tarot deck.

4) Looking at the cards in his hand, the player takes the highest value suit card, and adds one to this value for each trump in his hand.  He then compares this to the difficulty number of the task: If it's higher he's succeeded, lower and he fails.  On a draw he has partially succeeded.

Wrinkles:

a) Players and GMs should be encouraged to work the trumps used into the description of the result of the test.  These represent the dramatic flourishes in the narrative.

b) Each character has a Positive and Negative significator.  Each of these is  trump, chosen at charcter creation.  The Positive is the character's strength, an advantage they have.  The Negative is their weakness, a flaw they trip over.  The player choses these and then decides which trump is most appropriate for each.  If these cards are in his hand, a special effect happens: For the Positive card, something nice happens as a side effect of the test, and for the negative card it's something nasty.

c) If a player wants to succeed really well at something, you look at the number of ways they could beat the difficulty.  Counting each card once, build as many hands as possible to better the target number.  Each extra successful hand that can be built gives the character an extra degree of success.  I'm not 100% sure exactly how this should be reflected, possibly by Donjon style narration rights.  Certainly a stellar success in a critical situation ought to be rewarded in some way.  Currently I'm thinking that that should be by giving the player more influence over the advancing plot.  The easiest way to do this is to simply give the character some Popularity Points which the player can spend later to improve future tests.

d) If you don't want to use cards, you can sub in d20s.  Count 1-14 as a that number and 15-20 as a trump for +1. Works mechanically, but obviously you lose all the flavour you get from the cards.

I've been kicking some ideas around with my group about the current version of the Urban Mythos rules.  They really wanted me to run another couprle of sessions, everyone really got into the first playtest I did an enjoyed it immensely.  After a while of continuous hassle, I agreed to run a short adventure for 2 players. Characters were created and I had a couple of ideas for how things would come together in the plot.  Unfortunately, work took a major upturn last week, plus I was ill so I really didn't have time to devote to the plot.  Tuesday rolled around and the guys arrived, but I really didn't have anything well formed ready.

My GMing style generally relies on setting something up, usually with 3 or 4 possible plot threads that I second guess the players will want to follow one of more of.  I spend the first session letting the players fell about and after that I usually have a decent idea of the direction they want to go in.  I tend to revise what I've written after the first session, and in all honesty things tend to write themselves from there.  This time though, I didn't have that first bunch of material to jumpstart things.

So I thought what the fuck, and decided that I'd rip a core idea from Donjon, just for the evening and just to get me out of a fix:

Looking back at Wrinkle (c), I let each extra successful hand be another fact about the success.  Adjust difficulty depending on how much of a clue I (as GM) have about where I want to take the plot.

And you know what?  It worked reasonably well.  Not ideal, the setting isn't that well suited to this kind of play, but the session was fun and didn't give me brain cramp.  What I really want is a way to do the following:

i) Incorporate some way to share narrative control.  GM contoling when players fail is not really what I want.  I'm kinda thinking that a "GM calls when you get a chance to narrate" would work well, and also gives GMs the ability to totally ignore the whole issue if their group doesn't want narrative rights (as many don't).  Ideally I want some way to formalise this, but I can't help thinking that such a thing is impossible within the bounds of what I want.

ii) A way to encourage players and GMs to use trumps in the descriptions of what happens.  Possibly that you only gain the +1 for them if you can describe how they appear?  Or maybe a penalty for not taking the trouble to incorperate them in you descriptions?

Ideas?  Input?  Questions?  Cautionary Tales?  Rotten fruit?

[Shreyas Sampat]

Hi, Rich. I have some unformed thoughts that you might find useful.

Suppose that extra successful hands get you two things:
(1) A fact.
(2) You may keep a single trump that you drew.

Then, change the narration requirement to "you must incorporate the (highest-numbered or lowest-numbered, pick whichever you like and stick with it) trump factored into your actual successful hand into your narration."

Allow players to give others trumps that they are holding. These trumps are always figured into the final hand; the player has no choice. Explicitly, this is an inroad to shared narration; by picking their trumps wisely, players can insert elements into events where they are not actively involved (inspired by Court of 9 Chambers and Card Captor Cabal). I don't, personally, like "optional narration" mechanics of any kind, incidentally.

[Rich Stokes]

I've always shied away from letting players keep cards.  This has historically been because I didn't like the idea that the composition of the playing deck could change.  Having said that I can't really see it as a big problem unless players can keep hold of their cards for a long time.  So the idea that a player can keep trumps, but only for a; short time makes a lot of sense.  Maybe there's a reward for spending these trumps and you can only hold one at a time.  Maybe you can only hold trumps for a set time (one scene or one session?) and then they go back into the deck.

I don't, personally, like "optional narration" mechanics of any kind, incidentally.

What is it you don't like?  Is it the fact that it's optional (so that players may ignore the narration if they wish) or is it giving the players narration in the first place?

[clehrich]

Hi Rich,

I've been struggling with some of these same questions for a while.  You can take a look at an old draft of my game at the weblink below; the mechanics sections (action resolution, magic, etc.) present one way of dealing with the issues.  You can also take a look at the criticisms some Forge-ites raised with respect to the game at this thread and this later thread.

A few specific points:

I've always shied away from letting players keep cards.  This has historically been because I didn't like the idea that the composition of the playing deck could change.

If you shuffle together more than one deck, the statistics will significantly alter.  At the same time, why don't you like that idea?

Maybe there's a reward for spending these trumps and you can only hold one at a time.  Maybe you can only hold trumps for a set time (one scene or one session?) and then they go back into the deck.

My thought was (and is) to encourage people to spend cards one way or another; if you end up with too many or something, you can (or have to) spend them on character advancement or whatever.  Note that this has the potential to reward people for not playing cards, though.

What is it you don't like?  Is it the fact that it's optional (so that players may ignore the narration if they wish) or is it giving the players narration in the first place?

Almost certainly the former, knowing Shreyas.  I think if you're going to have mechanics that permit people either to narrate or not to do so, there is a certain possibility that you will end up rewarding them for not narrating.  I still don't understand, for example, why this isn't the case with The Pool, except that the system is so rules-lite that there isn't really any system fun unless you narrate.  Since your system is going to be more complicated, I suggest that you want to have narration as normative, and have (if anything) a kind of wimp-out clause: you get very mildly punished for not narrating when you are supposed to.

Chris Lehrich

[Shreyas Sampat]

I like the idea that players can only keep cards for a limited time; that not only puts pressure on them to use them, but it's a great tool for "breaking" between sequences that you don't want to be related. The reason I suggested exactly the mechanic I did is that, in combination with mandatory restrictions on narration (including the restriction, "Don't fail to narrate!"), it gives intelligent players descriptive effectiveness, and one they realize this, it's an incentive to spend their cards. On top of that, trumps removed from the deck limit their effectiveness, so they will (likely) want to replace them at the earliest good opportunity, if they have taken time to think critically about the system.

Chris is absolutely right in his guess at interpreting my statement. I think that any game which gets a significant part of its Color from description mechanics cannot allow those description mechanics to be optional; if they are, then the game can be completely hamstrung (by which I mean "fail to produce the play the designer wants to produce") by players who choose not to narrate.

In (ii), you state that you want to have players use trumps in their descriptions of what happens. I'll argue that "I want you to use trumps in your descriptions", if you put that in a game with neither risk nor reward to reinforce it, will go ignored, or at the very best, fail to have as strong an impact.

I hope that made sense and didn't look too much like a "System Does Matter!" rant (though in part it is one.)