As-Yet-Unnamed-Game [Fantasy]

[lumpley]

Better and better. More questions.

Do you envision the PCs working generally together, or generally opposing one another?

Are you interested in the human costs and components of ambition - who will the character screw over to get his way? does the character deserve the loyalty of his people? - or just in the, I dunno, logistical effort involved?

Either way, what opposes the characters? What defines the forces or people or circumstances that stand between them and achieving their goals?

This last question is key - think about it a lot. The relationship between the characters and their opposition creates your game. That's the foundation you'll build your rules from, and also the dynamic you'll build your rules to create.

Now this is not easy stuff. This leads into a big, challenging theoretical conversation about the social dynamics of roleplaying. You'll need your rules to precisely coordinate the players' interests, the characters' interests, and the evolving in-game situation - "roll to hit, roll damage" is not gonna cut it. Neither is "players should stick to in-character knowledge, GM should fudge when necessary."

Having read probably hundreds of different mechanic systems I would conclude that the vast majority are irrelevant variations of other systems, and often are more complex and less useful than the systems they vary from.

I absolutely agree with you.

Is that good enough for your game?

If it is - you don't need our help. You've already got the tools you need. Go write it and don't expect too much.

It happens that there are people here at the Forge who're qualified to talk about genuine innovation in RPG design, though, if you're interested.

-Vincent

[Ben Lehman]

Better and better.

Quite

or just in the, I dunno, logistical effort involved?

This is really just to note that, while Vincent puts logistical effort last, there are many really fun games which are devoted entirely to the logistical effort of pulling something off.  It is just a very different sort of game.  Shades of boardgaming, really, but that is far from a bad thing.

yrs--
--Ben

[Eero Tuovinen]

Greed: a personal question, but one that I feel will help in helping you design your game. Are you one or more of the following:
a) Randist?
b) proponent of the Austrian theory of economy?
c) Objectivist?
d) Anarchist?
More importantly, do you feel that any of these could be the central theoretic background for your game?

There is a twofold reason for asking:
1) Certain of the above, which I won't name to avoid offending anyone, have in the past commonly offered the kind of cheeky opinions you evidence. In their case it's because they think their personal philosophy so superior that they don't have to participate in discussion, they can just concentrate on dissing people. By losing the attitude you get more from the discussion. I refer to how you feel that all games just repeat familiar patterns - I feel the same way about mainstream games, but man, are you mistaken about new independent design!
2) If any of the above should be central to what you want to say in your game, by bringing the ideology forth you can get real help in getting to your design goal! I really love games that truly show colors, and there are many people here who could help you if your real goal is to affirm an ideology or educate others on it.

My suspicion about you having a philosophical agenda stems from what you said about the conceptions of feudalism and magic in the game. I've never met anybody who wanted to debunk fiction that way and didn't have a really strong convinction in the background. Normally people just accept the premise of the fiction and work with it. If this is the case, maybe the best game for you would be one where you can blatantly address that convinction: make a game that educates the player about it, or one that offers a symbolic grounds of discussion between players of (possibly) different philosophical ilks. Or make a game of affirmation, only meant to be played by people who already subscribe to the philosophy!

In any case, if you should have a yearning for this kind of game, tell us about it. Such an agenda goes deeper than just the milieu or setting of the game - system does matter, after all! There's all kinds of stuff to do if you have something to say. I won't offer suggestions without hearing that there really is an ideological background, but rest assured that there is all kinds of stuff. Just look at My Life with Master, the game that proclaims proudly the dictum "Only Love can set you free!"

If my guess was amiss, just say so and we'll drop it.


Oh, for others: I'd better note that I specifically don't want to discuss personal belief as anything but a facet of the game design problem we have here. It'd be nonsensical for us to try to talk about the generic sim fantasy game when Greed is so obviously trying to integrate his own beliefs in there. To help him, we must at least ascertain that he indeed has an ideological goal. That will make everything so much more clear.

[GreedIsGod]

Do you envision the PCs working generally together, or generally opposing one another?

PC cooperation would be generally a better game simply because the PCs will actually spend some amount of time being together, but they could be opposed if they wished to.

Are you interested in the human costs and components of ambition - who will the character screw over to get his way? does the character deserve the loyalty of his people? - or just in the, I dunno, logistical effort involved?

There are no 'human costs' if one is speaking in terms of long-term benefits such as respect and wealth that sort of thing is best produced via division of labour, IE Capitalism (which isn't fully developed in this world, as it was not in the Feudal Age).  If they are interested in political advancement (remember, many of these places are not states at all, have no Body Politic and no 'State') then they will have to either create a crisis to use the Hobbsian myth to justify their imperial coercive powers (most common method use by monarchs and also by Caesar) and in any case a political state and advancement in it is neccesarily 'sum-zero', as it is simply exporpriation for the benefit of the rulers and their friends.  In this case the human cost should be obvious and in the monarchistic states I will make this clear in the reduced freedoms and standard of living of people.

Either way, what opposes the characters? What defines the forces or people or circumstances that stand between them and achieving their goals?

Most generally it will be people who have specific aims that contradict PC goals, such as relatives who feel they are entitled to inherit a manor and require a military action to establish their claim.  Other possible obstacles could be scheming would be politicos, religious leaders and of course monsterous races interfering with them, such as attacking a town they are attempting to build or some such.  Rules will be in three forms one for basic non-intellectual actions such as bashing things, the other will be open-ended rules for social practices that will give the PCs leeway to speak for their character and the third set of rules are largely going to be realistic systems for tracking a logical (but, of course, unrpedictable) feudal economic structure that would allow for more interesting and realistic reactions to PCs flooding a border town with gold, or the building of castles and so forth.

Greed: a personal question, but one that I feel will help in helping you design your game. Are you one or more of the following:
a) Randist?
b) proponent of the Austrian theory of economy?
c) Objectivist?
d) Anarchist?
More importantly, do you feel that any of these could be the central theoretic background for your game?

a) Ayn Rand was inconsistent, but useful to some extent.
b) I do not agree with Austrian praxeological theory, but their practical methods are useful and their conclusions are often sound.  I am a logical empiricist.
c) No
d) Anarchism is subsumed in my general belief, which I would call something like Egoistic (in the sense of Stirner) Free-Marketism.

I will put my economics learning to effect when shaping the realities of the political practices and so forth, but I will most definitly refrain from putting utopianism into play.  I feel anarchy would be a great place to live in, but with efficient markets and low crime rates it would only be interesting to live in not play in.  So I depict Feudalism as I understand it from good historians (most of whom are not, by any means, Libertarians or the like) and what I have learned and observed myself about politics and economics.  Thus Feudalism will be viewed as a decent setup (but not fully developed as AnarchoCapitalism) and governmentalism and centralization will be viewed as bad - the 'empires' will be depicted as the inefficient hellholes they were, while the Monacos will be the centers of prosperity.

I've never met anybody who wanted to debunk fiction that way and didn't have a really strong convinction in the background.

I debunk fiction habitually.  I think most of it is entirely, infinitly nonsensical and only adds to the problem of craziness, misconception and stupidity which wrecks the world.  Glorification of militarism, villification of greed, promotion of charity, nonsensical attitudes about decentralization and deontelogical morality are so contrary to logic that I cannot often stand things that contain them.  It is not even so much of an idealogical agenda (although I do have a certain extreme-right anarcho-libertarian sort of agenda) but simply the fact that these things don't make sense and never have, even before I got into economics and philosophy.  I like guns just as much as the next person, but that doesn't change that the police are a bunch of evil bastards.

Or make a game of affirmation, only meant to be played by people who already subscribe to the philosophy!

It will certainly point to what I feel is a realistic depiction of these societies and economics, but the gameplay is entirely social and could be played by people who have different convictions just as it is entirely possible for people to have statist notions while surrounded by the glories of Capitalism.  Character ignorance and distorted worldviews are by no means unrealistic.

So this is not so much a 'capitalist' fantasy (I think Vance is better equipped for that than I), nor some sort of anarchist bent, just a revisionist logical empiricist approach to fantasy in order to make a more coherent, realistic and complex game.

At some future point I would no be opposed to making a game from a 'Natural Order' Anarcho-Capitalist viewpoint, probably sci-fi.

[Wheeler]

You can't just have an arbitrary set of 'spells' because that, basically, doesn't make any sense. Okay, if you had deities you could have them (by fiat) handing out edicts, but why in the world would they do that? Not to mention a host of other logical issues with superintelligent, superpowerful immortal transdimensional beings who can't see to conjure up fission power and are obsessed with the actions of little monkeys. So the list-o-spells system clearly isn't going to work as it's neither rational nor internally consistent.

Now here is a magic system that I came up with...(There is) ...a single species which has capacities of quantum probability manipulation, limited by the amount of energy they can produce but overall they are fantastically potent, essentially impervious to harm, immortal and locally omnipotent.  The Solars engage in a game whos origin is unknown but is effectively a kind of transgalactic Chess, where they pit members of less evolved species against on another for reasons of entertainment and experiment.  Their exact motives are rather mysterious as their mental capacities and psychological construction must obviously be different from humans, but general observation leads to the conclusion that it is a sort of game or experiment...those who are under their auspices are often convinced these Solars are some sort of 'gods' and form various cultic practices around them, especially if they are wont to grant powers and/or communicate with their 'followers'.

Magic is essentially delianated into 'effects', which are similar to spells except being combineable and applicable in clever ways which take into account their literal forces (something not done in your basic AD&D system).

'Researching' spells is either the creative combination of existing effects or by 'petitioning' one's patron Solar (or perhaps some other Solar) to generate some effect, and that petition is then negotiated among the Solars and is reckoned to be accepted or denied.

So your objections to previously discarded magic systems has led you full circle to a system that's based off of omnipotent beings granting spells to their followers based on their own mysterious reasons which are beyond human comprehension.

Essentially what you've done is come to a conclusion that others have already made and called it your own.  You say this system is different because you can combine effects in 'clever' ways but there are suggestions for such things in various rule sets and a good GM would allow these sorts of things anyway as long as it didn't unbalance the game.

[lumpley]

Are you interested in the human costs and components of ambition - who will the character screw over to get his way? does the character deserve the loyalty of his people? - or just in the, I dunno, logistical effort involved?

There are no 'human costs' if one is speaking in terms of long-term benefits such as respect and wealth that sort of thing is best produced via division of labour, IE Capitalism (which isn't fully developed in this world, as it was not in the Feudal Age). If they are interested in political advancement (remember, many of these places are not states at all, have no Body Politic and no 'State') then they will have to either create a crisis to use the Hobbsian myth to justify their imperial coercive powers (most common method use by monarchs and also by Caesar) and in any case a political state and advancement in it is neccesarily 'sum-zero', as it is simply exporpriation for the benefit of the rulers and their friends. In this case the human cost should be obvious and in the monarchistic states I will make this clear in the reduced freedoms and standard of living of people.

Damn. If you make me write any of that shit out on my character sheet, I'm ditchin' out of the game.

"Okay, you score a full success on your Create a Crisis roll. What's your Hobbsian Myth factor?"

"Six! I get a bonus of +3 to my Justify Imperial Coercive Powers test!"

Snerk.

No, the question is, this "reduced freedoms and standard of living of people" thing: do you expect the players or the characters to be morally concerned about the people they're making to suffer?

"Yes" and "no" are both fine answers, I'm not fishing for either in particular. Which answer you choose will have an enormous effect on how your game develops, but it can be a good game either way. As Ben suggests, I know which I'd choose for my game, but your game is your game and I just need to know which.

Most generally [what opposes the characters] will be people who have specific aims that contradict PC goals, such as relatives who feel they are entitled to inherit a manor and require a military action to establish their claim. Other possible obstacles could be scheming would be politicos, religious leaders and of course monsterous races interfering with them, such as attacking a town they are attempting to build or some such.

Groovy.

Now we're talking about rules:

What do those four opponents have in common that's definitional to their opposition to the PCs? That's the thing you need your NPC rules to capture. It's not - obviously - how strong, fast or smart they are.

Rules will be in three forms one for basic non-intellectual actions such as bashing things, the other will be open-ended rules for social practices that will give the PCs leeway to speak for their character...

Whatever. Don't marry this.

...and the third set of rules are largely going to be realistic systems for tracking a logical (but, of course, unrpedictable) feudal economic structure that would allow for more interesting and realistic reactions to PCs flooding a border town with gold, or the building of castles and so forth.

This, on the other hand - if you get these rules right, they'll be worth the price of your game. "Right" means three things: 1) they suggest concrete actions and attitudes for named NPCs to take, but 2) in a flexible, inventive, non-repetitive way, and 3) functioning at the moment-to-moment of play - no between-session crunching required.

Nail those three things and you'll have rules that let the GM immediately, realistically, viscerally heighten the situation, no matter what the PCs do. That'd be sweet.

You're also going to have to look beyond - what were they? - AD&D1, GURPS Conan and CoC to do it.

-Vincent

[GreedIsGod]

So your objections to previously discarded magic systems has led you full circle to a system that's based off of omnipotent beings granting spells to their followers based on their own mysterious reasons which are beyond human comprehension.

Well they're not omnipotent and they're not 'supernatural', and their reasons are logical-comprehensible just not precisely known because no one 'talks' to them.  The main issue was the reason, not the form, of it.  Get rid of the supernatural, make the gods less than all-powerful and it starts making more sense.  I also came up with that whole thing ages ago for no reason and it just seemed to mesh well.

do you expect the players or the characters to be morally concerned about the people they're making to suffer?

Up to the player.  The game has no moral normatives implied (although there will most likely be some among the societies).

This, on the other hand - if you get these rules right, they'll be worth the price of your game. "Right" means three things: 1) they suggest concrete actions and attitudes for named NPCs to take, but 2) in a flexible, inventive, non-repetitive way, and 3) functioning at the moment-to-moment of play - no between-session crunching required.

I intend to base the rules on the economics I find in "Man, Economy and State" basically having customer value, customer wealth and product availability to determine what is bought and how much is paid for it.  This will create real scarcity and show how when you give the farmer gold for all the wheat in his field he's probably going to be wearing some nice pants next time you see him.

[greedo1379]

I kinda like your idea of the Solars playing with the universe.  They would give the game a kind of a sci fi twist though.

[GreedIsGod]

I kinda like your idea of the Solars playing with the universe.  They would give the game a kind of a sci fi twist though.

There is an entire list of the different species and how they relate to one another, although they have nothing to do with this game.  There are the man-like Immortals who can't be destroyed and can sap power from others, the D&D Epic-Level Wizard types, the omnipotent Entities...

[contracycle]

Damn. If you make me write any of that shit out on my character sheet, I'm ditchin' out of the game.

"Okay, you score a full success on your Create a Crisis roll. What's your Hobbsian Myth factor?"

"Six! I get a bonus of +3 to my Justify Imperial Coercive Powers test!"

Snerk.

Eh?  Why?  I'm surprised to see you say that, Vincent.  It seems entirely appriopriate to me to systemitise such things if your game seeks to address them.  And more, I think games should address them every bit as much as they address other aspects of our social order.

The sample of play you have just given would have been roughly do-able in Aria, for example, becuase of its use of philosophical positions as part of expressing the identity of a society; and it did indeed, for example, give bonusses to the arguments for the use of force in a society that exhibited expansionism or imperialism as political ideals.

I would go so far as to endorse such attempts becuase they allow games to enter a level of political discussion far more sophisticiated than simple approval or disaproval of moral "issues" and rather set the focus on the formal engineering of the social contract, which I think is much more interesting and much more likely to provoke introspection.

[lumpley]

Y'know Gareth, I was thinking about that after I posted, and you're absolutely right.

I hope RJ finds easier, more intuitive language to express it in, is all. A game that captures the dynamics he's interested in - and makes them easy to understand and easy to manipulate - that could be a fun and powerful game.

-Vincent

[GreedIsGod]

Between HL2 and working ten hours a day I've had hardly any free time, but this monday I'll collect my notes and put up some additional work.
Tangental aside to anyone else playing HL: Wouldn't it be just great to replace the Dr. Breen model (in HL 2) with GW Bush and the Combine soldiers with police and marines?