Tightening the System: Terminator Line

[JamesSterrett]

You can read the IGC entry this posting refers to at the top of the page here.

The system is *intended* to produce a game that plays very quickly: conflict resolution instead of task resolution, for example.  The system is built to be rules-light.

What I'm not so happy with is the degree to which the rules reinforce the Setting's Premise ("What will you do to survive?")  Any thoughts on tweaking the system to better support it?

[There's a bit of a deadline on this, since I'd like to submit this for Jonathan Walton to host in time for his RPGnet column next week sometime.]

[Shreyas Sampat]

Reading this game, I saw constant references to the time stress of the situation...and no hard mechanics to back that up, except a suggestion to use an egg timer or something to just cut off a scene at some point. I'm going to assume a Gamist design here; with some minor tweaks, I think it can be Drifted to Narr with ease.

This was my big sticking point with this design, which I thought was overall quite tasty. I think that the provided time limit mechanic is rather shaky. One idea I had was for there to be a Resource called "Time"; this would do several things:

Every time you performed any action, it costs some amount of Time. (You can adjust the granularity of Time here for different levels of stress.)

You can spend extra Time on an action to get extra effectiveness. One of the more mathematically-inclined people here can suggest a sufficiently interesting Time-to-effectiveness function. This has the added benefit of contracting scenes so that play time is shorter than gameworld time if used enough.

Spare Time rolls over onto the next post-leap resource-gathering period; after each jump you add 30 minutes (or whatever) to your Time bank. (Narr twist: You travel slower when carrying more people.)

At the end of the game, more banked Time gives you a chance to get more people to safety.

[JamesSterrett]

Thank you!

Gamist with Nar drift - ouch, I was aiming in the opposite direction.  :)

Failing to make the timer an integral part of play was, frankly, a failure to have sufficient balls.  I'd like to put the players under time pressure, as well as the characters - putting people into stressful situations doesn't give them time to sort things out well.  Thus the timer.  However, if the clock is too fast, people just get ticked off because there's not a reasonable amount of time in which to try to actually play through the events, even when played fast.

I think you're pointing in the right direction, though, when you point up making Time a resource that can be traded off against saving other people.  I'll chew on that.  My worry is that it easily drifts into a much more rules-heavy mechanic than I want, if players wind up paying very close attention to how much time actions take, instead of the import of those actions.  Perhaps broken into 5-minute blocks, one "scene" per time slot per character, and expend Mana to get extra actions in the time block?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi James,

Whoa! Doesn't ...

... players wind up paying very close attention to how much time actions take, instead of the import of those actions.

(if you replace "instead of" with "in tandem with")

... fully agree with ...

the Setting's Premise ("What will you do to survive?")

...?

It seems like a good fit to me. And simply rating actions by the amount of Time you must spend seems like an excellent idea; in-game time therefore simply takes care of itself as a side effect. Nifty, I think.

Best,
Ron

[Walt Freitag]

Perhaps the problem is that your characters' actions will have very little import except insofar as they affect their own chance of survival, because everyone on the islands they're visiting is going to die horribly within an hour or so no matter what they do. What does it matter if the player-characters steal their goddamn fish, or for that matter, rip the livers out of their children? You've done an excellent job of crafting a scenario in which the only thing that matters is survival, and the only reasonable basis for decision-making is expediency.

Of course, not every player would agree with me, and I could certainly see playing a character with a very different point of view (especially if my character didn't trust the Spirits). But the outlook is skewed very much in favor of pure survivalism, and I suspect that viewpoint would quicky become prevalent in most play.

Now, if you had to weigh your survival against others' survival, the moral decision-making could become much more complex. What if the island peoples' Spirits had workable survival plans of their own, incompatible with yours? What if you had to bring a few of the people you meet along with you; how would you decide whom to choose?

- Walt

[Paul Czege]

I think you're pointing in the right direction, though, when you point up making Time a resource...

Check out Jared Sorensen's http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=6058">Time To Kill for a very cool implementation of time as a resource.

Paul

[JamesSterrett]

Thank you to all of you - useful commentary.

Walt - your concerns are founded on my failure to provide more guidance in making scenarios.  In my conception of the game, I assumed (and we know how it's spelt :)  ) that the GM would include dilemmas such as the ones you describe.  In addition, when you note that not everybody would agree with your obvious-choice decision, it opens up the possibility (probability?) that something interesting can happen in play when different players disagree.

The stones mechanic linked to by Paul is interesting.  I'm not sure I'm thrilled by the randomness angle of it, but I'm afraid of accidentally drifting this into TimeKeeping: Watch The Clock! if I make time tracked explcitly (though Ron's slap to my head is well deserved.  :)  )

Thanks again - it's all helpful.

[Shreyas Sampat]

I'm afraid of accidentally drifting this into TimeKeeping: Watch The Clock!

Isn't that basically what the game is about, though? You have very small increments of time in which you must, against escalating resistance, perform inexplicable and time-consuming tasks, Or You And Everyone You Care About Die.

The interesting part of that isn't really in the Or You Die part, to me...it's in the part where you decide who dies, and when, and what that buys for you. Survival isn't about your boyhood friend. It's all about you.

[JamesSterrett]

Shreyas - yes, but.  :)  The "but" is that I don't want the game system to bog down in time determination.  

I should have time to take a good crack at this again tomorrow, and I'll post the result here for comment.

Thanks again to all of you for taking the time to comment!

[JamesSterrett]

Well, one thing rolled over another, and Saturday is several days behind us.  However: Additions and changes from your commentaries (further comments are, of course, welcome)....

Timekeeping:

"As the players arrive at each new island, the GM should start a timer, setting it to 30 minutes plus any time left over from the previous island.  When timer reaches zero, dawn reaches the characters and transforms them into crispy critters.  Players may add one minute to the timer at a cost of 1 mana per player.

   The GM should engage in reasonable time assessment for actions that take a significant amount of time, but can be dealt with quickly by the game, such as fishing."

Answering Walt's comments more directly in the game text,

"   Having arrived, the players must quickly decide on a course of action - assault the locals, stealthily rob them, or negotiate with them? - and get on with the business of ensuring their own, and their Dependent's, survival.

   The GM should set the stage such that the player's decisions are implicitly moral: what will the players do to survive?  Condemn others to death by robbing them of vital supplies?  Sacrifice the innocent in a cruel and bloody manner?  Sacrifice their Dependents?"

and, in "Considerations",

"- This is not a game for the squeamish.  However, keep in mind that it is not necessarily losing the game to decide that there are thing you won't do to survive, accepting death before some form of dishonor.  The GM's job is to push your personal-morality envelope and find its edges."


Plus, all of you added into the "Thank you" section.  :)

[JamesSterrett]

Well, not just Walt and Mike, but a few others have now told me that the game needs to tighten up enforcing that there is some sort of moral quandary.

This is a You Told Me So First posting for Walt.  :)

Thoughts so far include:

- Something akin to a Humainity stat, and only let the N players with the highest stat actually board the rescue craft.  Trouble is that it seems overly mechanical.

- I'm highly tempted to try to map out some means by which the players and their actions shift some markers around a map, which determines both a) the Truth of the situation and also their current moral condition.  Truth being divided between "the crisis is real and exactly as described", "there is no crisis, the Spirits are lying", "the Terminator Line only kills Spirits" and "the Terminator Line only kills humans".  Trouble is, I've no real idea how to accomplish that.  On the other hand, we're spending some 30 hours driving over the next few days, so there's time to think.  :)

[Mike Holmes]

There's a sort of structural question that I'd like to address. Some of the people have spirits besides PCs. It's assumed that if they have a spirit that they know why you're here according to the text? That is, they're aware of the impending event? Then why haven't they left already? Or are these people that the PCs are "catching up with?" Or people who are simultaneously coming to the same points as the PCs at the same time?

Put it this way, when did the spirits learn of the event? Do they communicate? If so, then certainly they've told the people ahead of the event? Or do they only do the PCs bidding? If so, or they can't communicate, then each spirit must become aware of the impending event just before it happens. I mean, given that the PCs show up in the first scene with half an hour to use, this means that the spirits must be noting it when it's half an hour off, right? Or less if the spirits were powered up and jumped earlier from that from station 1.

If that's the case, then when arriving on an island with more than half an hour, the locals shouldn't become aware of the problem until the timer is down to half an hour, or less if you like.

So, which is it? It makes some difference. That is we a couple of possible scenarios:

1. The people with the spirits are "foreigners" like the PCs (the ones with whom communication has occured having left already), and therefore will probably not be attached to the local population, instead themselves foraging for their needs.
2. You'll have both locals with spirits on whom this is dawning, and newcomers arriving potentially.

I'm guessing 2 is the one you want. If some of these things are optional, then the text should remind the players of these ramifications.

In any case, won't the locals be somewhat suspicious, if not outright informed? I mean, sure, you could argue that if you had a spirit, and learned of the impending doom, that you wouldn't tell anybody else on your island, because it might make an easier end for them. But what if the islanders in question have beliefs, or just choose to tell the others. I mean, as a spirit traveler, I would probably deduce that others in flight might be arriving, or already have arrived. So wouldn't I mention that in order that the friends that I have to leave behind would be able to defend themsleves better?

Anyway, lots of reasons why the spirited might tell those without spirits what's going on.


I sorta like the idea of shifting the "reality" of the situation around to create a differing moral context. But I'm not sure if it's going to really be effective, or just gimmicky. And I'm not sure that you need mechanics that measure anything, so much as a point at which the system makes the moral choice become highlighted in some way.


I also have a problem in that I'm having trouble seeing more than two basic quandries that could come up. One is that you have to choose whether or not to steal something from somebody. Which seems like a really easy choice given what Walt and I have pointed out (BTW, we came to that conclusion completely independently - I wasn't allowing myself to read threads like this while judging). The other is that some non-spirited human gets in the way of what I need. In which case, the question is whether or not the ends justify the means. The person is going to die, so there's really not much I can do that's going to be that harmful to them, relatively speaking. At most I'm shortening their life by 30 minutes or making it a very painful 30 minutes.

The worst dilemma is that of other spirit travelers with whom I'm competing. If there's only so much stuff, then it's me or him, and the question is only whether or not I value my life over others.

These are the only potential conflicts that I'm seeing. Are there other potential categories that I'm not seeing? How many interesting variations can there actually be on this theme? Maybe the first guy I kill is an enemy? And then later they're more and more well known? Seems unlikely with the increasing distance from home. Start with killing elderly, and work on down to kids? Men then women?

What am I missing? Give me a few examples of moral conundra that can come up in this scenario.


I like the real time element. I invented an ran a game with a far more intense real time element, and it went really well, though it was really exhausting.


Lastly, I think that the default should be much less than 12 scenes. For one, that's a 6 hour game. For another, if you cut down on scenes, that's less prep for the GM, and less potential problem the lack of sorts of moral situations represents. I'd go with half that - six scenes, three hours. Probably be exhausting at that.

Mike

[btrc]

I'm coming to this discussion a little late, but a few thoughts.

Survival: If the Spirits are working for the optimal survival situation given the circumstances, then the limited number of "shuttle seats" provides a built-in hook.

Actions that players take which are "anti-social" cost them some level of "humanity". When everyone arrives at the shuttle, those who have the lowest humanity (those who were most pragmatically vicious) are left behind.

So, if you are able to rescue people and bring them along, this simultaneously decreases your chances, but it also probably increases -your- humanity, and if you choose the right people (i.e. high humanity (but lower than yours)) to save, forces less charitable players to either become a little more human, or a lot more brutal (by decreasing the number of survivors to ensure their 'seat').

To make things more annoying, the number of "seats" should be randomly determined, since other groups assisted by Spirits may have already been loaded aboard. So, the -players- don't know how many slots there are until they finally get there.

Time: Each island is different. Could you set up an island to have certain fixed resources (village, beach, storehouse, etc.) and then assign a random die roll to each to represent distance or some other time consuming factor? Then, certain actions would have a built-in time penalty (in minutes), shifting 'location' on an island has to be worth it timewise, and people can go in different directions.

Sorry if I've repeated someone else's thoughts on this.

Greg Porter
BTRC

[JamesSterrett]

Thank you for posting your comments!  Sorry on the slow reply; I was 800 miles away for the weekend at a wedding.  (Too bad I couldn't sacrifice fish to the spirits for fast travel!  :)  )

I don't have a reply yet - still thinking - so this is simply to thank you for taking to time to reply.

[Dav]

I realize this is off-topic but... I want Terminator Line in the IGC Publication.  I really do.  I really really do.  In case you haven't seen it, there is a bit posted about it in the Connections Forum.  Sorry to jump off the topic, but I just want to put it out there.

Dav

(And if Shreyas is reading: goes for you too!)