Mythophany

[J. Tuomas Harviainen]

To elaborate, what are some of the specific traits of the live-action and internet chat media that need to be taken into account when designing a variant system for LARP, PBEM, and chat games?

When designing for those platforms, the primary intent should be maximal fluidity. That means less reliance on mechanics and more player autonomy. In all these game forms, the less players need to wait for the GM's rulings or another player's dice rolls in order to complete their actions, the better.

A secondary trait is that /if at all possible/, the game should be written in such a manner as to support trust among players. In Forgean terms, this often means making it as Gamism-unfriendly as possible, but as the Karma bidding system of Mythophany doesn't rely on an element of chance, that isn't the case here. By removing the main cheat-risk factor, you've significantly lessened the risk of cheating without making the game less Gamism-friendly. (This doesn't apply to larp, because there's no log that would show people lying about their Karma, but it works nicely with electronic rpg forms.) The lovely thing is that the system easily permits GM "cheating", all kinds of under/overbidding by NPCs that is made in the interests of the story.

-Jiituomas

[Green]

Yeah, the question with LARP games is how to make sure players actually record or keep track of spent resources.  Do you stop and go to a main table or something and put them there?  Do you have players record where all their own karma (and sometimes dharma) went?  However, that may be a decision best left up to each individual game, but having some suggestions handy would be helpful.

Anyway, I'll be following up with an example of spending karma without bidding.  After that I'll get to bidding.

[Green]

To recap from the previous example, these are Hans' relevant dharma aspects and what they give him:

Psyche (4D, 3K): Hans hopes to find a loving home. He cares deeply about Greta.
Background (3D, 3K): Hans and Greta grew up without a mother for most of their lives. The only mother they knew was abusive towards them. She and their father abandoned them.
Conflict (3D): He wants to find a loving home, but he is afraid that he and Greta will find another home like the one they left.
Strengths (2D, 1K): Hans is clever, quick, gentle, and patient. He knows enough about the woods to survive there for a while.
Cosmetics (1D): Hans is a handsome young boy dressed in rags.

This brings Hans' total dharma and karma to 13 and 7, respectively (the previous total is incorrect).  Now, let's see how Hans can use karma and dharma to affect his story.

Slight change: After looking at it a bit, I think I'll allow players to exchange dharma for karma whenever they want, as long as the dharma used is relevant to one of the dharma aspects.

Hans and Greta are lost in the woods.  The last of their rations is gone, and they need food and shelter.  It is close to nightfall, and Hans decides to make camp.  Hans asks Greta to help him gather firewood and stones to make a small fire pit.  Hans' player spends 1 karma to make some of the stones found be flint, so he can start a fire.  Hans and Greta go to bed hungry but warm.

The next day, Hans makes it his mission to get food, especially for Greta.  His player spends 2 karma to make traps for small animals and birds that actually catch enough for Hans and Greta to eat each day.  Pheasants, rabbits, and squirrels make the bulk of their daily meals.  Hans' actions show his love for Greta and his concern for her well-being, so the Narrator allows Hans to gain 1 karma.

Hans and Greta spend the summer and fall living in their little corner of the wilderness.  Soon, the birds have all migrated or hidden themselves, and many other animals are hibernating.  The nuts and berries have been gathered or scattered.  Winter is coming, and if they don't find something soon, either hunger or winter will take them.

When winter comes, the children look even worse than they did when they were left to starve in the wilderness.  They are barely clothed, and their ribs are easily visible.  Greta is so very hungry, and always crying because she's going to die without a mother and father who care for her.  Hans does the best he can to give her hope and comfort, but he's barely hanging on himself.  They keep trekking through the wilderness, hoping and praying that there is a village on the other side, but each day brings more dense forest.

As his last act of hope, Hans prays.  He asks God for some sign to show that He has not abandoned them, to show him a way to a new home, or at the very least to spare Greta from hunger and misery and death.  Hans' player spends 3 dharma to gain 6 karma, using Hans' faith and love for Greta as the driving force behind it.  After this, Hans' player spends 10 karma for Hans and Greta to come upon a house made of candy and cookies with a small yard that winter has not touched.  Hans' player only has 1 karma left, but Hans and Greta are safe- for now.

[Mike Holmes]

Yeah, the question with LARP games is how to make sure players actually record or keep track of spent resources.

Drifting a tad off topic, but there are many ingenious ways. Often they involve destroying little bits of paper to represent using points up. Refresh is more difficult to handle.

The question is a classic game theory one. That is, the tearing up papers method is usually enforced by the player who witnesses the use of them. The question is whether or not there's an incentive for the player watching to do so. Collaboration can occur, for instance, and two players can both cheat to get a lot done without using up their resources.

The best thing to do is to ensure that the player really doesn't have any incentive to cheat. That is, if there's some advantage to having less of a resource, then spending it is really just a choice. Not easy to engineer all the time, but just a thought.

Mike

[J. Tuomas Harviainen]

That is, if there's some advantage to having less of a resource, then spending it is really just a choice. Not easy to engineer all the time, but just a thought.

I strongly support this idea. It would
a) bring more play balance. (I've seen a similar idea work extremely well in Orpheus, where stockpiling too much power to your character makes hostiles notice him more easily.)
b) more importantly, fit the style of the game exceptionally well. The idea of people with a strong destiny being constantly tied up by events is classic drama, from Homer's epics to Wagnerian opera. The most accurate effect would be a "karma leakage" of some kind, affecting the people around you adversely (Ulysses' men getting eaten and drowned, Boromir coveting the One Ring, etc.) Sort of like the reality demanding a greater tale from those with a greater grasp of destiny, through "spontaneous" obstacles and tragedy.

-Jiituomas

[John Wick]

The amount of dharma a character has depends upon how developed the character concept is. The more fleshed out and three-dimensional, the more potent the dharma.

The amount of karma a character has depends upon how fleshed out certain aspects of its dharma are as well as the meaningful choices made during the course of its story.

So, my amount of dharma represents how developed my character concept is and my karma (this should be spelled "kharma") represents how fleshed out certain aspects of my character's concept is?

Dharma = Character Concept
Kharma = (Certain aspects of) Character Concept

Could you give me a real example to clarify?

[Green]

Sorry for not being more up-to-date on things.  I'd been expecting email notification of responses, so I thought nobody was responding.

To answer John Wick's question first.  Dharma governs what would normally be called character concept.  It is the force of your character's identity, which is shaped not only by his nature and destiny, but also his past, his relationships, his personal conflicts, his strengths and liabilities, and his appearance and mannerisms.  Basically what you describe as character concept.  Karma represents the cosmic weight of your character's choices, actions, and experiences.  It is basically what your character has done or what your character can do.

Jiituomas brings up an excellent idea that I hadn't considered before.  It makes a great deal of sense for those with great potential or who have done great things to in turn be affected in other ways.  In general, events twist around such characters to resolve the issues directly related to their identities.  The consequences for success, failure, or inaction determine the course of that person's life and progress.  This would certainly be the case moreso with characters who have archetypes than with those that don't, but that's not a hard-and-fast rule.  In the simplest of terms, power attracts attention.

I do not know if or how I would represent this mechanically.  I'd need to have a concrete example of what you mean.  You could say that not expending resources means you don't do anything of importance, which can be good or bad for everything else.

[J. Tuomas Harviainen]

I do not know if or how I would represent this mechanically.  I'd need to have a concrete example of what you mean.  You could say that not expending resources means you don't do anything of importance, which can be good or bad for everything else.

One idea that comes to mind is that whenever a character's Karma goes above a certain level, his/her "Epos" pool gets that many points, which will then later at some point (preferably when he/she doesn't have as much free Karma) a) be available to his opponents or other obstacles as extra Karma, or b) reduce the Karma of people important to him, resulting in tragedies.

The threshold of when the Epos pool would rise might be nicely tied to Dharma, and the way it would mostly manifest to archetypes. So for a heroic knight, Epos might cause more classic tales - by transforming simple robbers to evil knights, killing the fathers of pretty girls so that they'd be in suitable distress, and so on. In the case of a martyr knight, it might suddenly reduce the Karma available to his squire so that he dies a horrible-yet-dramatic death. Other uses of Epos could be the dissolution of any relationship not pivotal to the main quest (the "Bond girl" effect vs. "My One True Love"), the burning of your home when you're being heroic elsewhere, etc. Or, in the case of more pacifistic tales, Epos might result in increase of bickering at the monastery, obliviousness of all listeners except one at a crucial speech ("only one understood the significance of the flower, and was Enlightened"), etc.

All this of course means extra bookkeeping, and a lot of extra trouble for larp adaptations. I nevertheless suggest you make some assessments, Green, and see if it would be more beneficial than encumbering.

-Jiituomas

[Green]

I've been considering a rule whereby if your karma exceeds your dharma, some . . . interesting things happen.  These things almost always involve aspects of your dharma directly.  Which aspect affected depends upon the amount of excess karma.  I am not precisely sure of the exact numbers involved just yet.  I'm thinking of having the dharma aspect involved directly proportional to the karma excess.  Everything at or below your level of karma excess can be invoked.

For instance, if you have 15 dharma and 18 karma, that gives you 3 excees karma.  With that amount of excees, samsara may involve anything worth 3 dharma or below.  This could be your background (which includes significant relationships, home, life experiences), conflicts, strengths, weaknesses, or cosmetics.  Samsara may twist events to force a character into situations that involve people and issues related to his dharma.

That is all I have for now.  I've been pretty busy.

[Green]

Reading through the text, I have found some places where things can be fleshed out more and made more evocative.  In particular, the part talking about the setting and the part talking about archetypes.  I haven't yet had a chance to really rewrite these, but suffice it to say that I'm really aiming to make the text describe as well as support story-oriented play.  If anybody's still interested in these developments, I'd apperciate a PM or something since reposting a lot of text is probably not very feasible.