The Impractical Wheel

[Jack Spencer Jr]

This is linked to my Practicality thread over in RPG Theory.

Basically, I took a step back from my game and noticed a serious flaw, or I think it is. I invite people to comment and to do the same with their own designs, although for the sake of clairity, you should probably start a new thread for your own game :)

Anyhoo, my game is found here. Or at least it will be there until Geocities gets around to deleting my site since I had canceled that account. There will be no updates on that page.

This is how I see the game working:
A group of players, ideally of 4-5, get together. There is no GM since this is a collaborative/GM-less thing. Each player has come prepared with an idea for what will happen to their character. The players take turns presenting this to the group.

Character creation is sketchy because I had gotten the idea in my head that the character should be fleshed-out during play. This way, you can't wind up with stuff on your character sheet that you never use. (This happened in GURPS for me. My GM let us take the 6 extra points for quirks but didn't bother making us play them nor assign anything to them. In fact, my wife was playing out one of hers {odius personal habit: constant humming} and he told her to stop because it was annoying.  Well, duh)

To keep this from simply being round-robin storytelling, I have a couple contrivances in place.

There is a deck of cards with generalized items on them that are meant to inspire a player who may have become stuck. Draw a card and then try to work what is on the card into the story. To mix things up, each player draws a card at the begining of the game. They must work this card into their story for a bonus of Tokens.

The Tokens is fairly similar to Baron Munchausen or SOAP, but different anyway. Players use tokens:

[*]to Object to an event or similar item that has occurred for any reason, but the player should be prepared to back up their objection with a reason. The player telling the story can either accept the Token and modify their story or pay the Objecting player a Token and continue. This is where it ends. One Token to object, one Token to refute the Objection, that's it. No bidding war as in Baron.
[*]to Suggest an event or other item that seems like a good idea. This works similarly to Objecting but is a more positive creative input. Perhaps separating them is foolish
[*]when a secondary character is introduced, a player my "purchase" this character and play it.
[/list:u]

Tokens used, not gained but ones actually brought into play are recorded. This total is used to reward players at the end of the session. This is because Tokens represent player participation. The more players participate, the greater the reward. Therefore, this encourages players to participate. The reward is simply extra Tokens for the next session

There is a dice & card mechanic, but those are important for the discussion here. Way I see it, those are just random elements meant to help the story along, not the gas in the engine.

The problem is, I used to think that the Tokens were the gas in the engine, and mechically they probably are. But the real gas is the simple "a player starts telling a story."

This how my game is one of those generic RPG since you can start telling any kind of story and the others interact with it via the Tokens etc. Since there are no mechanics in the traditional sense, I can't see how any of that could support one genre or another, to use the traditional term (Forge terms being stuff like Color, Situation, and so on). In fact, I don't see how any RPG mechanic can produce a story as effectively or any better than simply making it up yourself.

Andrew Rilstone wrote somewhere: "Genre based RPGs codify and articulate unstated genre assumptions, which the player (who is, we assume, not clever enough to spot these assumptions for himself) uses as a matrix to create a shared narrative that in some sense resembles the original genre."

I had only read this recently, but it does illustrate where my mind has been on the subject by showing where most other RPGs are. You know: "I am here. Everyone else is here."

The issue of genre as a valid or useful term aside, what gets me is that the RPG in play "in some sense resembles the original genre." In a way, it reminds me of pinball. Like the pinball game based on, say, Star Wars Episode 1, the game contains most of the key elements from the movie yet is not the movie nor is playing the game the same as watching the movie. It's a game based on the movie. RPGs don't abstract things nearly as much as pinball but hopefully you get the idea.

I didn't want an abstraction, or to be more accurate, I didn't want to have to deal with the abstraction if it got in the way of a good story, even if it was once in a hundred years. Besides, way I saw it, I could either conceive an abstraction that in some way fullfills Mr. Rilstone's criteria or I could just get to the heart of it which is let player create their own story. To my mind, if any system could effectively replace storyteller, Stephen King, Michael Crichton, John Grisham et al would've been out of a job long ago. Or such is my opinion on the matter.

But the problem is, with a simple statement: "The player starts telling a story" I've put a huge weight on the player with little help in accomplishing this task. I suppose, based on all that I wrote above, that I don't believe that the players really need help in this regard or that those who'd play my game  shouldn't, anyway.

Perhaps this is the problem with the genric version of my game, or any game for that matter. The game says,"Here's a nifty dice-rolling mechanic. Do whatever you want with it." and then the player says," Thanks," and puts it on the shelf. Perhaps I should do one of those specifc versions I keep toying with but never do any actual work. This would require something akin to what Ron did in Sorcerer & Sword for heroic fantasy.

Oh, well. Comments anyone?

[jjkahrs]

But the problem is, with a simple statement: "The player starts telling a story" I've put a huge weight on the player with little help in accomplishing this task. I suppose, based on all that I wrote above, that I don't believe that the players really need help in this regard or that those who'd play my game shouldn't, anyway.

You're right, you are putting a lot of weight on to the players. This has some advantages and drawbacks. On the plus side, everyone gets to play. You don't get one person stuck as the GM who has to do all the work and be creative week after week. The work is distributed. The downside is, the work is distributed. You've got story going in several different directions and it might never get any focus. My other concern would be that it would turn into round robin storytelling and that the pacing would get kind of bogged down eventually.

In the end it's all about what you want to get out of the gaming experience. Me personally, I just want to be entertained with friends for an evening, so take my opinion for what its worth.

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Hey, JJ.  
Thanks for replying.

Part of my reason behind the design is the Search for a Decent GM. You know. There aren't that many good GM's out there so gaming sort of hinges on finding, and then sticking with someone who is at least decent at GMing. This and a common complaint I've heard from GMs is that they never get to play anymore. By going GMless, I change this bit it does mean that the entire group must tow the line that used to be the GM's job.

I think that it would wind up being 4-5 stories going in their own directions but this is part of play. I'm considering putting a six degrees of separation rule in there somewhere so that it's not 4-5 unrelated stories going on. But those six degrees can be fairly broad. For instance, if you had Robert Howard in your group, you could have a Conan story going on as well as a Kull story, since they're related (Kull is Conan's grandafther IIRC) Throw in HP Lovecraft as well and you get the idea.

However, this may be disconcerting to some. Kull and Conan may be similar, but Lovecraft's tales of the old ones just aren't the same. But this doesn't concern me either since people will channel surf on TV watching a sit com, then a drama, then a reality show, a game show, etc. So shifting from story to story is like changing the channel or, more likely, like when one show ends and another comes on. And stories with different colors can be related. Lou Grant was a spin-off of the Mary Tyler Moore Show and Trapper John MD from MASH. Drama from comedy.

Hmm.. maybe six degrees is a good idea, maybe I should also allow for a single story to be played out each week. I'll have to dwell on this.

One thing I definately need to put into the text is the importance of discussing the game before each session. I am reminded of the introduction to The Three Musketeers in my copy of the book in which Dumas's collaborators were described. According to the piece, Dumas didn't write his books in their entirety but had people do the writing for him and he would put it all together. I see the players discussing what will happen beforehand for the most part, in general term, maybe like "Your character needs to fall in love" or something to that effect. A genral statement of what will happen but not much of the hows of it or the consequences thereof since that's what play is for.

I believe I'd said this before on this forum, but I liken it to programing languages. High level languages such as BASIC provide tools for building programs, but also provide protection to keep the programmer from doing any damage to the computer. Lower level languages like C or assembly also provide tools, better tools some would say since they can be used more efficiently that the tools in BASIC. Therefore, you can do more with less work with C than BASIC. But, that protection isn't there so you can mess up basic functions in the computer, like how it does math and turn your computer into a $1000 paper weight. In short, you can do more with greater efficiency with a lower level language, but you'd better know what you're doing or it will turn out bad. Really, really bad.

In this sense, pace will only get bogged down if the players let it get bogged down. Same with other possible problems. Like Spider-Man, the game give you great power/freedom. But with that power comes great responsibility.

I get what you're saying about just being entertained, but that's sort of the point of any RPG, isn't it? Besides, I can be entertained w/ my frieds watching the D&D movie on tape. We just sit around laughing and shouting rude things at the screen