[Deoraíocht/Parepidemos]

[Brandon Parigo]

Deoraíocht/Parepidemos

   This is the core mechanic for my newest game.  My goal is to have this game ready to be sold online as a pdf in 6 to 9 months, and hopefully have a print version before Gen Con.   I'm posting it here to gather opinions on if the rules meet my design goals.  My design goals are based highly on the setting. Which is:

Setting Summary
   You play members of the Race of Exiles, who were once gods, but are now ugly, ignorant little human like creatures, resembling Goblins. You live in The Land. The Land is a terrible island, of storms and other nasty random weather. Most of the Race does not know that they were once gods, but you do. You see the spirals, and understand the languages of the gods. You know the way to unlocking your true power, and you will do it, if the gods don't stop you first.

   I hope to simulate a gods desire filtered through a less organized mind.  I also hope to provide a rules set up where the setting of each scene is just as important as the the things the characters have.

   Does it do these things?  I have just now started playtesting it, and so far it works, but I think it needs a bit of tweeking.  Do you all think it does what I want it to from reading the basic rules mechanic? Does it need more mechanics to support the characters searching to become the gods they once were?

               I'm posting a link to the first playtest document because its five pages long.  If I should post it here instead let me know.  Currently the games setting is under a rewrite, so you can skip most of that and go straight to the mechanics.  Those start on the second page.  Character creation is not how it is going to end up either.
   
http://www.brandonparigo.com/parepidemos05.pdf

[Andrew Morris]

Heya, Brandon. I'm a terrible person to look at rules and extrapolate how that will translate to play, so take my comments with a grain of salt.

I hope to simulate a gods desire filtered through a less organized mind.

I don't see anything to support or hinder this.

I also hope to provide a rules set up where the setting of each scene is just as important as the the things the characters have.

From my interpretation of the the rules, it seems like creatively altering the scene is one of the most important abilities. So, yeah, it certainly seems like this meets your goals.

[Brandon Parigo]

I hope to simulate a gods desire filtered through a less organized mind.

I don't see anything to support or hinder this.

Andrew,

The gods desires would translate into the players desires, which would be hindered by the rules.

So far the only mechanic that I have put into the game to support it is limiting scenes to three rounds, and the bonuses you get for doing crazy things while doing your actions.  My intention is to force players to try to do as much as possible and use as much of the enviornment of the situation as they can in a short amount of time.     

I'm hoping that those two things can give the impression that I want.  If not I think I have a mechanic in mind that might help it out. 

Thanks for the feedback!

Brandon

[Sydney Freedberg]

This is interesting. You've got some really neat, innovative stuff that may need to be cut loose from some encumbering assumptions derived from traditional RPGs.

What's cool is how everyone participates in setting the scene and introducing story elements, simply by going around the table and taking turns adding something. (If this isn't a formal procedure, but just the way you wrote your examples, may I suggest making it a formal procedure?). And it looks as if once Player A has said something, no one else -- not even the GM -- can say, "no, that doesn't make sense, that doesn't happen." That kind of free-for-all group endeavour should do a lot to get the tone you want, I think: the players are godlike, in that they can create anything they want, but hardly organized.

What's probably in the way are assumptions like "the GM determines modifiers such as +2 or -1" and "every round in combat consists of a discrete physical action." If you really want making use of the environment to crucial, then (1) the environment bonuses or penalties should be bigger than the base atttributes and (2) the GM shouldn't get to determine them, the players or some impartial mechanic should (draw playing cards, red is a penalty and black is a bonus? That's pretty random, but a thought). And I'd strongly recommend reading up on "conflict resolution" as opposed to "task resolution"; the archives of Vincent Baker's site www.lumpley.com might be a good place to go, besides the Forge.

[Brandon Parigo]

Sydney,

I think maybe I didn't explain things well in that document.  That will be fixed in future updates to it. 

The round robin set up for the game session and the scenes is part of the rules.  There is one exception that can force a player to change what they say, that is if the group doesn't agree with it.  If the group is fine with it then it stands. 

I dig on Vincents stuff.  His archive is what made me buy his game Dogs in the Vineyard.   In this game I tried to do a bit of a combination of Task and Conflict resolution.  Each scene starts out with someone in the group starting a Conflict by doing a Task. That task is really just the spark that starts the conflict scene.  At the end of the scene, the conflict is resolved.  No dice are rolled until that point.  Each 'action' and 'defense' in each round, is not a task ( i think it may seem like that in the document, but I'll clear that up) but a collection of tasks.  Much like Raises and Sees in Dogs.  Although in this game they are a little bit more structured and don't have the ability to do as much as Raises and Sees. 
The biggest thing that makes it seem more like tasks resolution is that I keep "whats at stake" to be understood by the group, and not stated out loud.  In the original design I had a step in there after the first player grabs for dice, that had each player state what they hoped for in the in the scene.  This hoping set the "whats at stake" for the scene for each player.  It was interesting but I though not needed in this game.  I could be wrong.

I wanted to keep a bit of GM control around.  I didn't want this game to go to far away from 'standard' rpgs.  The GM does have ultimate authority on the characters he controls and over enviornmental penalties.  However the bonuses that he gives to the players are totally in the ultimate control of the group.  The group can say, "hey, that was way to cool to not be worth a +3".   

Thanks for your comment.  You got me rethinking how to present these things in the document.

Brandon