[Literati] A story game for the bibliophile...

[Kesher]

Howdy, all.

I started writing this game because I needed to read a bunch of books this last summer to get ready for teaching them this fall (I teach high school English.)  I wasn't that excited to dig in to most of them, so I decided to see if I could use the experience to write a game that would allow a group of players to literally re-create the narrative possibilities of a given novel's stetting.  My focus, from a design standpoint, was Premise-addressment in the GNS Narr sense, centered on the creation of a Theme by novel's end (inevitable in actual literature, as far as I can see.)  While starting out as what in eduspeak we might call an "assignment motivator", it swiftly became more; it kept me up at night more than once trying to see clearly how conflicts actually happen in novels, and how that might transfer to gaming; my wife gave me odd looks as I carried my notebook with me into restaurants, scribbling away if she got up to go to the restroom (well, I didn't want to be rude...); I wrote madly whenever my infant son deigned to take a nap.  Here's some rough text from the introduction:

The purpose of this game is to provide a generalized framework for turning the Setting of any novel into a dynamic environment for telling new stories based on teh questions present in the original work.  To accomplish this, mechanics are presented that represent tropes from both literature and literary criticism:

1. The presence of Objects and Environments existing solely to apply narrative pressure to characters in pursuit of an eventual theme;

2. Models of conflict that include characters' struggles within themselves;

3. A character hierarchy to determine relative importance and main purpose for each character in the story;

4. A flexible system of character effectiveness which encourages creation of "literary" characters and allows for character change along "literary" lines;

5. A novelistic narrative model that supports stories with a beginning, middle and end;

6. An overall narrative focus on the question (problematic human issue) being asked in the original work;

7. A framework of group authorship guided by whomever holds the Narrative Thread at any given time.

Anyhow, I'm going to be posting parts of the system that I'd like critiqued; any relevant suggestions, thoughts, improvements or requests for clarification that anyone can give me would be greatly appreciated.  I'll try to be as clear as possible as to my thoughts on how the part fits to the whole.  I'll guide my posting of future threads based on the direction of interest (if any!)  My goal is to hack out a rough draft over winter break (the last two weeks of December; being a Jew has its perks: no Christmas obligations!)  Thanks in advance.


CHARACTER QUALITIES

Character Qualities were designed in an attempt to delineate characters in a more "literary" fashion, mixing flexible description with system-effectiveness.  Originally, I had two layers of stats: Mind, Body and Heart as base "attributes", with Perceptions, Capabilities and Relationships layered beneath, basically functioning as skills.  As I went on, however, it became clear that there was no reason for the layering (I was doing it out of habit), and that using only Perceptions, Capabilities and Relationships wove the characters more directly into the Setting itself (parts of which, termed "Environments", could also be assigned Qualities.)  A "skill" category, in combination with a "skill-centered" ability score,  when looking at things from a literary standpoint (meaning, "how I understood things being described in books"), didn't seem to make sense.  In books there are no quantifiable, fine gradations of "skill" between respective characters, whatever the field; skills are always related to the larger story at hand.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Here are the Qualities as currently defined:

PERCEPTIONS

The ways in which a character makes ideological sense of the world and communicates it to others; their attitudes and beliefs.

CAPABILITIES

Concrete things a character can do in the Setting; their abilities and expertise.

RELATIONSHIPS

Things (people/places/objects) in the Settng with which the character has an emotional attachment; their loves, hatreds and memories.


In a narrative sense, Qualities are used to describe the relevant essence of characters at any given moment.  By relevant, I mean relevant to the Story-at-that-point ("Story" being understood as the addressing of a question in inevitable pursuit, concluded at the Story's end, of a Theme.)

Qualites have a score of 3, 6 or 9; each type of character (Main/Round/Flat) has a maximum number of Qualities that they can possess in the course of the story (9/6/3, respectively.)  They may or may not have all their "slots" filled at the beginning of the game.

Qualities can be gained, lost or modified during play due to the outcomes of different Conflicts (Major or Minor) during play.

Modifications to Qualites may be permanent or temporary, given the context of a particular conflict.

Characters do not need to have descriptors in any pariticular Qualities if it wouldn't make narrative sense.

Qualities are also used to describe Environments and Objects in the Setting; used in this way, the Qualities are usually static, however, if it's decided that they should change, it must make contextual sense (e.g., exorcising a haunted house.)[/list:u]

Gamewise, Qualities are the sole determiner of character Effectiveness (in the GNS sense.)  Basic conflict resolution (not to branch too far out into a seperate topic) is essentially achieved through comparison of Qualities and a d6

Crucible die, potentially modified by scripting dice.  Major and Minor conflicts (not unlike HeroQuest), compare the achieved results differently, but even a character with a significant Object (having its own Qualities) or in a dynamic Environment (also having its own Qualities) would only add or subtract whatever might be relevant before beginning the conflict.

I sense myself trembling on the edge of spewing too much, so I'll leave it alone right there for now.

Thanks!

Aaron