[Quirky Cops vs. Things From Beyond] Rules mock-up

[Jeremy L.]

A note on my design considerations before we start.

The kinds of games I'm interested in are ones that tell a great genre story. Right now, the genre I'm interested in capturing is that of a TV show like Twin Peaks or The X-Files. These stories feature quirky investigators with something to prove, maybe with troubled pasts, confronting supernatural horror — horror which, though they aren't any more able to face it than anyone else, it is their duty, or even destiny, to fight. These stories feature a host of recurring characters, some sympathetic, others sinister. Comic relief is sparing but effective and iconic. Once I'm comfortable with that style, I intend to start shifting to a more philosophical exploration of perception, sanity, and comfort, turning the game into something more like Mage: The Ascension promised to be, or maybe like its new incarnation Mage: The Awakening promises to be.

As far as rules: I wanted something very, very pared down. For my purposes, die rolling should be something that contributes to suspense without leaving story-time suspended; it should be something that can be eyeballed quickly based on story logic, not something that has to be determined to the minutest detail with fine-grained scales and charts aplenty. In order to emphasize story and genre style, I wanted to avoid numerical values (even numbers pretending not to be, like FUDGE's scale of adjectives). I wanted there to be basically one mechanic to govern all game conflict, with no significant permutations. I also wanted to keep game investment to a minimum, so a few six-sided dice should be enough to get started.

I think I'm on the right track to realizing all these goals, thanks to some inspiration from great looking games like The Pool and FATE. But I still have a couple of questions about how my system might work out in practice. I haven't had a chance to play test it yet. Actually, it's been stewing in my brain in a nebulous form until last night, when I sat down and typed out everything I wanted, straight through. I haven't made contact with very many gamers in my area yet, and I'm hesitant to try until I have a better idea of what kind of player I'm looking for; so I might not get a chance to play test for quite some time to come. So, that's one thing I'd like to ask: Is this something Forgers might want to play? And if it is, and you do: What are the strengths, and what the weaknesses?

With all that in mind, now the specifics:

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CHARACTER CREATION

Begin by writing a short paragraph about your character. Tell us who he is, what he's like, where he comes from, and what he cares about. Tell us about his background, his training or education, and his relationships.

From this description, you can define four Traits. These represent dice you can invoke to get your character through in-game conflicts and challenges that pertain to that Trait. (Optionally, you can take a fifth Trait, but only by taking a "negative" or handicap Trait on top of it; this is a die that can be invoked by OTHERS in conflicts against your character.)

Example: Special Agent Dale Cooper has the following Traits:

[*]FBI Special Agent;[*]Charming;[*]Preternaturally observant;[*]Has cryptic dreams and visions granting him special insight.[/list:u][/i]

Your character should also have a goal that describes what sort of life-objectives he's currently working towards. When this goal is achieved in the story (or when it is fatally compromised), your character can gain a new Trait that pertains to the circumstances surrounding how the pursuit of that goal affected him.

The troupe must approve your character. If they want to veto your description or Traits, they'll give you some suggestions on how to bring your character in line with their understanding of the game's style, mood, and theme.

My notes: Having a fixed number of Traits is a reflexive move to conserve something like balance. I'll be revising this anyway to allow for something more like Ars Magica-style troupe play, in which there are blatantly more and less powerful characters but everyone plays both kinds. I wonder whether balance is really necessary at all, or whether I could just say "Anything pertaining to your character description can be invoked as a circumstance in your favor if it applies to the present situation", with some added strictures about what can and can't go into a descriptor (eg., no lists). If I did that, though, I'd still be inclined to have a dice pool that is depleted like Traits are depleted under the current rules (see below). It just feels uncomfortable to me to go without some balance, and I'm not quite sure why yet. Is this a "balance bias" on my part? Or am I intuiting something about how play would unfold that I can't put my finger on?


CONFLICT RESOLUTION

For every action, declare your intent, and the narrator will respond by telling you the outcome. Generally speaking, anything a normal person could do without notable challenge, or anything that would be routine for a character with your Traits (such as a doctor diagnosing a common disease or injury), your character can accomplish without a die roll.

If there is some mitigating circumstance but still a chance of success, the narrator can invoke that circumstance as a challenge Trait. You must then bid one of your character's Traits, one that is pertinent to the situation and could contribute to an outcome in the character's favor. If your character has more than one Trait that is pertinent, you can bid all that apply. Likewise, if the narrator has presented you with a particularly difficult or sensitive situation, he may invoke more than one Traits to challenge you.

For every Trait bid in their favor, each party to the conflict rolls one die. The highest single die value wins. (So if you roll a 6 and I roll two 5's, you win.)

If you win, you lose the use of that Trait for challenges for the rest of the day in game time, though you may still use it for routine uses. (If you succumb to one of your own negative Traits, it can't be invoked against you for the rest of the day in game time.)

If you lose, your character fails the challenge and is defeated, impeded or inconvenienced. Your character is not chronically affected (or afflicted!) unless you consent to it. Other players can secure your consent by offering Destiny Points (see below). A typical affliction would be a negative Trait, such as a wound that impedes the character's physical abilities, or a derangement that makes it difficult for him to interact socially. Such an affliction may be temporary or it may be permanent, depending on the terms of the DP award that have been negotiated.

Whether you win or lose, the narrator describes the outcome of the situation.

My notes: A consequence of this system is that, for the most part, conflict is generated by compelling considerations expressed in terms of in-story causes. This means the narrator has to do a lot of improvising, and has to be able to eyeball difficulties in order to have a sense of how many and what kinds of mitigating circumstances to throw at players in order to gauge the conflict appropriately. That is to say, there's no such thing as a generic "difficulty" number; the narrator has to have a good reason why the character shouldn't accomplish what the player intends, and moreover that "good reason" has to be something derived from the premise, setting, or color of the game (rather than, say, story considerations, which might result in railroading). I don't necessarily have a problem with this; I think it empowers players, aids the suspension of disbelief, and emphasizes exploration of the premise. I am wondering, though, whether I'm overlooking anything here.


DESTINY

Every player (including the narrator) has a pool of points called Destiny Points. They are awarded in-play by others; this requires a nomination and a support, so it takes two players to award another a Destiny Point. Usually this will be for outstanding role-playing or storytelling, cunning problem-solving, effective comic relief, or compromising the playability of your character in the name of enriching or advancing the story. Awarding DP's is purely discretionary. The normal reward is 1 DP.

Destiny Points can be also given by one player to another from their own pool. This doesn't require any other player's support.

A Destiny Points may be spent to gain some narrative control over a scene. This control can be relinquished at any time before the scene ends, or it can be usurped by another player spending one of his own DP's. If two or more players are at odds regarding the direction the story should take in this scene, they can try to outbid one another with DP's; the highest bidder will lose his bid DP's, and will have input into narration for that scene. (Those who fold from the bid retain their DP's.)

My notes: Okay, here's where I really feel confused as to how to proceed. I want these points to be spent in order to give players added control over the narrative. In Forge theory terms, I guess I want to give them some access to a Director stance, in a controlled way; and I want this mechanism to be the main way of developing a Narrativist strain to the game, by rewarding narrative considerations with narrative say. Typically, I imagine a player doing this in order to give his own character a more prominent dramatic role. However, I don't want to disempower the narrator here; he's still got to be the facilitator, and no doubt he's got lots of mysteries and surprises he doesn't want the players to just make claims to by spending points. So, I'm not quite sure what scope of Director stance I want players to get through these points. What would you recommend? "Co-narrator for a scene"? The right to frame a scene that takes advantage of the character's abilities or ties in somehow with his background? How much do I want just to leave to common sense, courtesy, and attention to continuity, and how much would I rather be better off making explicit and formal?

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Thanks in advance, all, for your input.

[Jeremy L.]

Oh, one more point.

According to the Destiny Points rules as put, you'll notice that I said the GM has to get DP's, just like other players. You might have guessed what I intended here: The GM can't simply veto a player's narrative consideration when DP's are on the line. The GM has to pay to preserve control in that situation, and he can only pay if he has the trust and support of his players (in DP's).

I was specifically thinking of some of the possibilities and problems of troupe-style play, here. It represents a big compromise of the GM's "omnipotence".

[Danny_K]

Since none of the Forge sifus has posted yet, I'll weigh in with some comments.  I'm a newbie to design (but a long time lurker), so take them with a grain of salt.

The Premise
It sounds fine. Investigators vs. the Unknown is great, although it covers a whole lot of ground, from X-Files to Delta Green to standard Call of Cthulhu to Ghostbusters.  "Quirky Investigators versus Things from Beyond" is more evocative.  Perhaps the concept of investigators that don't fit in this world searching for creatures that don't fit in is intriguing.

However, I'm not seeing a lot of places where your proposed rules directly support your stated goals for the game, though.  Maybe we just haven't gotten to that part, but I'd be really interested in any ideas for personality mechanics or horror-specific rules that you have.  

Chargen:

The list of traits without any numerical value has the effect of making all the traits equally valuable.  Since you only get 4 of them, players seem likely to load up on cool combat-enhancing traits rather than  making well-rounded characters.

When you're taling about "Balance Bias", do you mean balancing characters versus each other?  I wouldn't think that's too much of a problem, as everybody gets the same number of traits and each trait is just as valuable as every other trait.  


Conflict Resolution:

This is where your design choices start seeming a little murky to me.  

First, it seems really old-school, in that all narrative authority is reserved to the GM -- the combination of rules-lite and very little narrative authority for players means the GM is going to have to be working hard all the time, even in unopposed actions.  When it comes to opposed actions, this narrative control issue is even bigger. I know as a GM, I have a hard time coming up with colorful combat descriptions, even for a game which is pretty crunchy with specific combat manuvers like "Buffy".  So a highly abstract combat system is going to give the GM even less to work with.  

Second, I notice that you can only use a Trait once a day.  That kind of hoses the players as currently written.  For example, Dale Cooper the PC  spends his "FBI Agent" trait once to find the clue, and then is helpless when he finds the suspect and tries to restrain him and put the cuffs on, unless he loads up with combat/survival traits during chargen.

Third, the negative trait system sounds very workable, but also suscentible to abuse by the GM -- there's nothing to keep the GM from sending one adversary after another at the PC that take advantage of the weakness.  This is a problem most RPG's have, but still a potential issue.

Destiny Points:

Have you already looked at Prime Time Adventures, especially the "Fan mail" mechanism?  It's definitely worth a look if you're not familiar with it, as it seems to be addressing some of the same issues you're looking at with DP's.  I personally don't think it's realistic to expect the players to be giving DP's routinely to the GM in most games -- the power dynamic makes this problematic.  

Finally, I think you're absolutely right that you're getting stuck at the end of the paragraph about Destiny Points.  The vagueness of the phrase "A Destiny Points may be spent to gain some narrative control over a scene" suggests to me that there's a big gap here, and that the question of how DP's work is really a facade concealing a big design quandry.  

My humble suggestion is that the really big issue for you at this time is something like, "How do I distribute narrative authority in the game to keep things interesting while keeping the framework of investigation and mystery?"  That's a really tricky question.  Looking at some of the other threads on the Dog Eared Designs forum about doing mystery games with PTA might be helpful here.

[Jeremy L.]

Hi Danny. I appreciate your taking the time to answer me in such detail! You've given me a lot to think about.

Let me give you some more specific answers:

However, I'm not seeing a lot of places where your proposed rules directly support your stated goals for the game, though.  Maybe we just haven't gotten to that part, but I'd be really interested in any ideas for personality mechanics or horror-specific rules that you have.

At this point, I'm planning on a certain flavor of a campaign, but these design notes come from a desire for a general system that can be adapted to a lot of different premises. But I do have in mind a particular style of play that I enjoy, so I'm searching for ways to incorporate that.

However, I want to do so without significantly increasing the complexity of the rules. In particular, I don't want 'personality mechanics' per se -- I want rules that allow personality description to have an influence on play (which I've tried to include with Traits), and I want rules that encourage players to roleplay their characters' personality in-play (which I've tried to include with DP's).

Horror mechanics, I envisioned as a function of negative Traits awarded for bonus DP's -- I wanted to take a cue from the Eldritch Tales discussion on this forum, and use horror (and wounding, for that matter) as a chance to give players more of an opportunity in the story, not less.

The list of traits without any numerical value has the effect of making all the traits equally valuable.  Since you only get 4 of them, players seem likely to load up on cool combat-enhancing traits rather than  making well-rounded characters.

How do you see that? Combat isn't a big part of my campaigns (which is why I've always been frustrated by extremely detailed, blow-for-blow systems that I felt bogged down plot progression). If I make that clear up-front, I should hope they'd take the hint.

On a general note, I'm not trying to plan for poor personal troupe dynamics. I'm not trying to make rules that obviate good communication between players. If the GM and the players can't make their expectations clear, or if the GM is going to contrive the story to antagonize the players (like picking on their weaknesses), I don't count on the rules being able to do anything about that. So I'm not going to pull my hair out trying to fix the rules so people can't play badly; I'd rather use introductory text to emphasize the importance of trust.

When you're taling about "Balance Bias", do you mean balancing characters versus each other?  I wouldn't think that's too much of a problem, as everybody gets the same number of traits and each trait is just as valuable as every other trait.

Right. I'm wondering whether I should bother making sure this is so.

First, it seems really old-school, in that all narrative authority is reserved to the GM -- the combination of rules-lite and very little narrative authority for players means the GM is going to have to be working hard all the time, even in unopposed actions.  When it comes to opposed actions, this narrative control issue is even bigger. I know as a GM, I have a hard time coming up with colorful combat descriptions, even for a game which is pretty crunchy with specific combat manuvers like "Buffy".  So a highly abstract combat system is going to give the GM even less to work with.

In my campaigns, I want combat to be rough, unstylish, and over quickly. GM preparation shouldn't consist in reaves of stats for mooks, but it should consist in knowing in advance what combat might look like in this or that situation, and what the stakes are.

I'd rather have an essay on what combat can look like and how to describe it, than to have rules governing the details. Does that make sense?

Second, I notice that you can only use a Trait once a day.  That kind of hoses the players as currently written.  For example, Dale Cooper the PC spends his "FBI Agent" trait once to find the clue, and then is helpless when he finds the suspect and tries to restrain him and put the cuffs on, unless he loads up with combat/survival traits during chargen.

Yeah, that's a big problem. I'm really going to have to think about that one.

Have you already looked at Prime Time Adventures, especially the "Fan mail" mechanism?  It's definitely worth a look if you're not familiar with it, as it seems to be addressing some of the same issues you're looking at with DP's.  I personally don't think it's realistic to expect the players to be giving DP's routinely to the GM in most games -- the power dynamic makes this problematic.

No, I haven't heard of PTA before. I'll try to get a hold of it.

My friends are pretty good for mentioning if I'm doing something right (or wrong!), so I'd trust them to give me the DP's I would need to keep things on track. This presupposes, of course, that they understand why I'd need them, but I don't think this'd be hard to show. I'd envisioned using a pool of glass counters to represent DP's, so it would be a somatic gesture, which I hope would encourage it. It's the sort of thing a troupe would have to get into the habit of doing, of course.

My humble suggestion is that the really big issue for you at this time is something like, "How do I distribute narrative authority in the game to keep things interesting while keeping the framework of investigation and mystery?"  That's a really tricky question.  Looking at some of the other threads on the Dog Eared Designs forum about doing mystery games with PTA might be helpful here.

I'll keep this in mind. Thanks!