[Magicians of England] Help me refine my challenge mechanic

[tonyd]

Hi All, I'm new to the Indie Game Design forum. Please don't go easy on me.

Magicians of England is a gamemasterless storytelling RPG set in a Victorian England where magic is real, but no one really knows how to use it... yet. The game has some similarities to Universalis, but the design goal is to enforce a little more control over how scenes are constructed. I'm shooting for relatively tight scenes with an intro, some plot twists, and a resolution. The rules govern who can narrate what types of things, when they can do it, and how to resolve disputes among the players.

A key peice is the idea of the plot twist. A plot twist is something that can be introduced into a scene to drive conflict. When all the outstanding plot twists are resolved, the scene comes to an end. The canonical example from the first playtest is this: a character is standing in an alley. He knocks on a door. Plot twist: the door is locked and he can't get in. The scene can't end until this is dealt with in some way.

My difficulty is in how to frame plot twists so that they are easy to set up and don't derail the game. I am familiar with (and admire) how Dogs in the Vineyard uses stakes to determine what happens. Everyone know what happens when the conflict comes to an end. However in Magicians of England, there is no gamemaster to act as adversary and set stakes that compete witht he players' goals. Instead I have a sort of collaborative bidding game where people compete to narrate how the plot twist plays out.

Some of my specific worries are:

• what if the plot twist isn't anything that anyone finds interesting, and they're inclined to ignore it
• what if the "plot twist" is just a piece of furniture. For example, if it's a locked door, does that mean I have to try and get through it to resolve the plot twist?
• should I allow players to just "give up", and what happens if they do? I don't want a string of scenes in which the players affirm that they don't care about

the challenges they're encountering

[Halzebier]

Hi Tony and Welcome to the Indie Design Forum!

Have you looked at "Capes"? It's gamemasterless and addresses the problem of 'plot twists noone finds interesting', albeit in a different framework.

Players introduce goals (not quite the same as twists, I know) and get rewarded if they are pursued by fellow players. So there is (a) a tangible reward to throw out stuff that gets someone else's blood pumping and (b) there'll be multiple goals on the table, so it's pick and choose. The boring, non-engaging duds just get ignored in favor of the strong, heady stuff.

To learn more, go to the Muse of Fire Games forum or check out the website:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?board=52.0
http://www.museoffire.com/Games/

You can also download a free, lite version of the rules there. It may or may not be what you need, but it's definitely food for thought.

Regards,

Hal (whose copy arrived two days ago)

[Jasper]

Hi Tony,

I'm actually addressing somewhat similar issues with my Geomancers game, specifically defining stakes and when to allow dropping out. I don't think the absence of a GM is a big problem. Have you seen Polaris? It has two players take opposing sides in the conflict, while the remaining players act as arbitrators. And another thing you might want to borrow from there is not even having set-in-stone "stakes" at all -- rather, it's simply about describing things that happen around the identified conflict. How you combine that with bidding, I don't know, but you might not need bidding after all then. Do your conflicts only involve two opposing sides, or do each of the players make their own bid?

Also, I don't want to get hung up on terminology, but it doesn't seem like a locked door is really a plot twist. A plot twist is unexpected and also big: it reorders the whole situation, so goals have to be reevaluated. A locked door is just an obstacle. Maybe that was just an off-the-cuff example, and not really what you're thinking about? But it also doesn't seem to me that a plot twist can really be "resolved." Frex, my long-trusted companion turns out to be an enemy agent. That's a twist, and demands I react. But I can't undoe that twist; I can't make it go away (well...I could, but it would be really lame). I simply have to react. Twists are kind of like "bangs," and it seems impossible to measure when one is really resovled or not. Obstacles, on the other hand....

[tonyd]

Thanks Jasper and Hal. I am aware of Capes, but haven't read either it or Polaris.

That's helpful feedback. Maybe I need to think more about what kind of gameplay I want to produce and be less hung up on how I'm doing the mechanic now. I like the idea of coming up with plot twists that the other players are interested in. It fits with the "collaborative and yet competitive" feel of Magicians of England.

How the bidding works currently is that a player suggests how his character is going to overcome the plot twist. Other players can then suggest competing resolutions. Everyone then makes bids backing one or the other resolution.

As for the words "plot twist", I don't like that term either. I've tried "conflict" "adversity" and "challenge", but none of them seem to fit (or they fit some other mechanic in the game better). Anyone got a suggestion?

[Jasper]

As far as terminology goes then, it would help to know what exactly counts as a bidding-war worthy situation. Are we talking exclusively about challenges the characters perceive and face, or are any sort of pivotal moment in the plot (e.g. "Does your whife arrive safely by coach?") ?

[Eric Provost]

Hiya Tony,

I have a few observations I'd like to share with you, and I hope you find them useful to you.

The canonical example from the first playtest is this: a character is standing in an alley. He knocks on a door. Plot twist: the door is locked and he can't get in. The scene can't end until this is dealt with in some way.

While I think I know what you're getting at, I have to say I think that this is a terrible example.  When the PC knocks on the door we don't know what the intent of the player is.  Does the player want the character to gain access to the building?  Does he want a particular character to answer the door so that his PC can converse with that character?  Is he trying to ascertain the sturdyness of the door?  Or is he simply trying to escape from someone who's chasing him down the alley and the door looks like his only means of escape?  See what I mean?

So, for the purpose of exploring what you're really looking for, let's give the player and the character some kind of goal that we can clearly see;

"The PC is in the alleyway looking for the secret entrance to the Obscure Occult Gentleman's Club.  He finds the door which was clearly described to him by the Gnarled Old Chinaman from Scene 27, but it's locked tight."

So, with that example in hand we'd know that the player wants the PC to find and enter the Club.  We also know that the locked door is an obstacle.  I'm guessing that's the word you're looking for;  "obstacle"

...what if the plot twist isn't anything that anyone finds interesting, and they're inclined to ignore it?

That's the funny thing about obstacles;  You can go over them, around them, or just walk away from them entirely.  But that's ok.  I'll get back to that in just a minute.

...should I allow players to just "give up", and what happens if they do? I don't want a string of scenes in which the players affirm that they don't care about the challenges they're encountering.

Yes.  You must allow the players the option of giving up.  If you don't then you're taking away their ability to deal with the things that they do find interesting by wasting their time on the things that they don't find interesting.  The trick is to make sure that ignoring an obstacle is just as interesting of a story as addressing the obstacle.

The way to make the obstacles interesting begins with making the goals interesting.  If I, the player, don't really care about getting into the Club, then there's no way that I'll care about the locked door.  None.  On the other hand, if I am really interested in getting my character into that Club then it's pretty likely that I'll be interested in any obstacle that I have a reasonable chance of overcoming.  It's important, so I'll repeat that;  I must have a reasonable chance of overcoming the obstacle to be interested in it.  And I've got to know that I have a reasonable chance to overcome it.  For instance, a locked door is something that I can imagine just about any PC could overcome in some way or another.  Pick it, smash it, blow it up, etc.  On the other hand, if the player providing the obstacle gives me an obstacle that I don't immediately see a way through ("It's magically locked quite past your character's skill level to bypass.") then I will no longer be interested in that obstacle.  I'll try to go around it.  Or maybe even just ignore it and move on.

Since writing up my four act structure for The Villains of Safinubi, I've taken plot twist to mean; "A change in the situation which requires the players to consider if their goals will change."  (That's me and my game, not 'official' jargon.)  To use the previous example, discovering the Queen's insignia just inside the door to the Club would make for a good plot twist.  Now I know, and my character knows, that the Queen is backing this little endeavor.  So, do I really want to mess with these guys?  I might, but now I really do have to reconsider it.

So, I hope I've been helpful.

-Eric

[tonyd]

Wonderful feedback! I've had a bit of a brainstorm on this topic.

I like the idea of rewarding the creation of plot twists that other players like. I also want plot twists to feel more like events than inanimate objects (more like blows in a fight, or turns in an argument than like a locked door).

First of all, in case this wasn't clear before, Magicians uses poker chips to denote different levels of narrative control. Similar to Universalis, one chip equals one bit of narration, or one unit of importance assigned to a story element. Each player has a store of chips they can spend.

When a player creates a plot twist, they place a chip on it from the bank, then narrate the plot twist. Examples: "the butler slips poison into Mortimer's tea", "Delia tries the door, but it is locked". The only limitation is that the plot twist must leave something unresolved. The player may also spend more chips from their own store to make the plot twist more involved (and also more important), but these don't go onto the plot twist, they just go into the bank. The twist stays in play in front of the player (i.e. they own it) until it is resolved or someone else chooses to run with it.

A player may choose to run with someone else's plot twist. When they do so, the player who owns it gets paid a chip from the bank for every chip already on the plot twist. The new player adds a chip to the plot twist from the bank and then narrates some further development to the plot twist. Examples: "Mortimer is about to pick up the tea when Lady Darling enters the room to warn him that the butler is up to something", "Delia is desperate to get through the door because a dark figure is pursuing her." The new player now owns the plot twist, which means that they have the potential to get a payoff from it.

At some point, a player may choose to resolve someone else's plot twist. When they do so, they don't get a payoff, but they do get narrative control over how the twist is ultimately resolved. Examples: Mortimer ends up prone upon the floor while the butler rifles through his safe, Delia escapes the gibbering changeling in the alley (for now).

I'm not going to go into the process of resolving the plot twist here, because I think that's a separate issue for now. There may also need to be a limit to how large a plot twist can get before it must be resolved.