Applied Design: Star Wars Shadows

[Shreyas Sampat]

This idea's been bubbling in my head for awhile, so I thought I'd toss it up in here as an example of what you can do with a cool game like Shadows and some critical thinking.

Thought 1: Shadows has a really cool way to distribute player power while retaining that collaborative feel.
Thought 2: The Star Wars setting is fun to play in, and most games seem to miss the point by caring more about Jedi pow3rz than on the whole cool Light Side/Dark Side battle. Which makes it uncool to play non-Jedi. Ick.

So, this is how you change things around to play SW with Shadows:

Materials: You'll need two dice of the same number of sides and different colors. You'll also need two piles of tokens -poker chips or those little plastic bingo markers are probably ideal for this. You should try and find tokens that are the same color as your dice. In the best possible situation, you have a white die and a pile of white tokens, and a black die and black tokens. Lastly, you should find some drawing materials.

Setup: Give each player two tokens of each color. You don't need any more. Each player should draw two pictures representing his character - a Light Side picture and a Dark Side picture. You can pile your Light tokens on top of the Light picture and so on. Before you start playing, you can trade tokens with other players.

Darkside Rolls: Narrate events that benefit the Light Side and the Dark Side of the Force. Roll both dice. Add the number of Dark Tokens that your character has to the Darkside die, and the number of Light tokens to the Lightside die. The higher total wins. If the totals are tied, the side that the character has fewer tokens of wins. If you're balanced, then someone has to force a reroll; see below.

If a die that rolled lower wins anyway because of your modifier, you're allowed to change your narration a bit to describe how the Force affected events supernaturally.

Rerolls: Give a player one of your Tokens. It doesn't matter which color. Then pick a die to reroll. Compare the totals again. These rerolls have the same applicability restrictions as those of Shadows.

Fancy Equipment, Special Powers, and So On: Optionally, you can have one of these things; draw it on your character sheet. Tokens placed on this item don't affect the totals of your rolls. You can put a token on this instead of your portrait when you recieve it, but you should have less than half your tokens on the item at all times. If you're using this option, then everyone should start with three tokens of each color, and can optionally move up to two tokens onto their item before the game starts.

If you're balanced and someone's rerolling you out of a tie, you can't put the token onto your item.

Notes: Now, since Tokens modify rolls, Token spending becomes a way for the other players to decide how good or evil a character becomes, while at the same time managing the affiliation of their own characters. I haven't playtested this, so I don't know how well it'll work, but I imagine it'll be interesting. The Items rule should give some window for mathematicians to fiddle around with their Lightside/Darkside alignment, as well as help kids develop some basis math skills.

[Marhault]

Hey Shreyas.

You should check out Knights of the New Republic.  Andrew Martin had a pretty similar idea.  It's not too surprising, the Dark/Light side of the force seems like a natural for the Shadows dice mechanic.  Not to mention the undeniable kid appeal of the Star Wars universe.

At first glance the only major difference between the two adaptations (aside from the setting writeup in Knights) is the Items and Powers rule in this one.

[Victor Gijsbers]

Actually, I've been thinking to use a modified Shadows-mechanics for a campaign in the good old Ravenloft setting. Give all the players three dice: one white, one black, one red. (I just happen to have many white, blakc and red d6s.) White stands for their ideals of the good; black stands for their dark temptations; red stand for fear, horror, madness: the loss of one's self. If a significant situation comes up, I'll ask the players to pick two dice, narrate outcomes for both, pick a preferred die (the one that wins ties) and roll them. Seems quite servicable to me, for my narrativist-inclined group.

[Shreyas Sampat]

Victor, that sounds like a lot of fun. But I would pretty strongly recommend that you have a fixed preference hierarchy; it's not only an effective way to impose cosmological effects you want, but it also masks a player's preference.

Marhault, I didn't see that thread. Thanks for the link!

[Victor Gijsbers]

Thanks for the advice Shreyas. I think I see what you're saying (and it makes a lot of sense), so I'll try and rephrase your concern; please tell me if I'm interpreting you correctly. Players should think up different ways for the story to go, and their task is to think op alternatives BOTH of which are fun and engaging. By letting them express their preferences every time, you undermine the precept "think up two things which are equally fun", and emphasise the question "which of the two do you want most"? This goes against the spirit of the system.

What would you think of a circular hierarchy? (Only possible with my three dice, not with Shadow's two, of course.) White is preferred over black, because you will not fall to the darkness or its temptations as long as you hold on to your ideals. Red is preferred over white, because the horrors of Ravenloft are so - well, horrific, that no man can face up to them. Black is preferred over red, because the Dark Powers grant those who give in to their inner darkness a bit of control over Ravenloft.

It actualy might have the same problems, because deciding which dice to use now becomes partly a 'tactical' decision. But it reinforces the basic metaphysics of Ravenloft, where no one _forces_ you to do evil, but giving in to evil does give you power.

[Shreyas Sampat]

Yes, Victor, that's exactly what I was talking about - though in play it doesn't always work out this way. In the thread that Marhault linked to, one of the players realizes that he can control what result occurs by devising a pair of outcomes of this kind:
One that he likes.
One that another player dislikes enough that he will spend tokens to prevent it.
This is fully supported by the system, and it's actually a really perceptive and difficult way to play, requiring pretty good ideas of what your fellow players want out of the game and what they'll put at stake for that. What's completely insanely cool about it, though, is that in the end you'll end up with an outcome that all the players are basically excited about and engaged in, simply because the manipulation requires you to pay attention to what stokes the other players' engines. The problem with expressing preferences is partly that, and partly that it bothers me that it makes it so easy for the other players to determine what you want. One of the most exciting parts of Shadows play is trying to figure out how you can manipulate the other players, and I suspect that the preference thing will damp that excitement a bit.

I really like your idea of the circular hierarchy, and I'd definitely like to see your Ravenloft Shadows in play at some point. Maybe we can get a game going on indie-netgaming?

[Victor Gijsbers]

I'd really like to try it out on indie-netgaming (for which I tried to apply a few days ago, btu I have not yet had a reaction). Unfortunately, because of holidays, it would be extremely impractical for me to play such a game starting anywhere before the 10th of August. Shall I contact you by that time and see if you're still interested? :)

[Jesse Paulsen]

Shadows seems to be an eminently adaptable system. I'm in the process of starting a superhero PBEM using a Shadows-derived mechanic with Good and Shadow replaced by Hero and Villain.

While working on that, it occurred to me that one could have a game with all players sharing a single character, affected by a shadow roll with Good and Shadow replaced by Angel and Devil, of the on-the-shoulder variety. Kind of like "Everyone is John"

Maybe it shouldn't be a surprise that elegance, simplicity, and fundamental dichotomies find wide applicability.