Please play 'Mighty Ones'

[algi]

This is my first "complete" RPG, but it is not yet fully developed. The last playtest left the notion in me that the game is already very enjoyable and highly playable. I am planning further tests, but I'm really interested in your opinions right now. I welcome any comments about the game in this thread, but I would be most happy if someone would play it once after reading it and send some comments in the Playtesting forum. Thanks.

The first incarnation of the game was developed in 24 hours using Mendel's holistic approach. After it went through many iterations mostly based upon the experiences of some playtests. The players are mighty "beings", maybe "gods", who at the start of the game can create anything as they want without any chance to botch it. But as the game goes on, their power fluctuates - not only decreasing, but even wandering to other areas: ruling and destroying. My question was: what would a player do with such a might and invincibility? In the playtests the game gave some very interesting answers: power struggling, goalseeking, etc. My initial approach was to get the players know themselves and each other better.

The system is turn based, and the players have disjunct turns in every round. Only one 6-sided die is needed, but if the session gets too long, much paperwork will be done. The mechanic is simple: if you roll under the intended value, you succeed. If you roll under other values, too, you make something else than you intended.

The GM is substituted by the "worldjudge" who decides the distortions of these effects and the decisions of the creatures.

Gabor

[greyorm]

Greetings Gabor and welcome to the Forge!

I haven't had more than a chance to skim the document, but the game sounds like it is up my alley and I'd love to try it out sometime. I'd also love to hear about the sessions you played already and how they turned out, what happened in them, etc. Any chance you would be willing to write up an Actual Play report and post it?

And I noticed your link to the game isn't working (I believe it has been formatted wrong). This should work for those interested.

[Vulpinoid]

I'll give this a try shortly.

I've been working on some similar concepts myself lately an I wouldn't mind seeing what someone else's take on the subject is.

[masqueradeball]

After reading the document I feel rather uncertain about what to do with the game. Right now what I see is a set of rules for playing out a sort of give and take world building session, which sounds fun, but... what are my goals as a mighty one? Do I decide goals for my mighty one myself, if so, out of what context. Do the mighty ones even have personalities, i.e. do the players interact with one another "in character?" Do they have a physical presence in the world?

I guess what I'm saying is this: I think you've made a really exciting tool here, I can see all kinds of potential uses, but I'm a little stumped as to what I'm actually supposed to do with it.

I think your question at the end, about when to end the game, is a very good one. I think if you come up with an answer it will give readers a big clue as to what there suppose to do during play, besides sort of experiment with what can be done.

Hopefully this helps, and to make it clear, I think this is a really good idea... it just seems a little unfocused and at the risk of treading muddy water, I'm not sure that in its current state I'd even identify it as a roleplaying game (not that my classification systems need to be important).

Anyway, I hope to see more and good luck with your playtests, if you could clear up the things I asked about I'd love to give your game a shot.

[algi]

Thank you very much for the comments, I didn't hope so many in so short time. You make me happy.

True, the correct link is this: http://algi.web.elte.hu/rpg/teszt/mighty_test.pdf

Raven,

Thanks for the link correction. I hope you will like and enjoy the game. I am planning to write an Actual Play report, but my memory is faulty and I am still looking for the notes we used to play (and I will need some time for that, too). So, it's coming.

Michael,

Thanks, I look forward to your opinion.

Nolan,

It is true, that this medium wich is at the border of our imagination and our personality and is traditionally called "character", is not present in the gamerules. I didn't want to overcomplicate the game, hence I threw out all the crap wich would normally escort a traditional RPG. A threw out the "character", but I think the game implies to the experienced roleplayers, that they can roleplay deities or anything like that, if they want, but I don't want to enforce the usage of characters on the players. Maybe I will make a chapter wich explains that this game can be played with characters and without characters.

But I want to keep that the players are themselves called mighty ones, etc., because it just complicates things that I explain, that "you imagine that you are playing someone else, but this someone else isn't you, etc.", because if you get a classical, typical, traditional board game, for example Catan, and it states that "You are a settler of Catan", then it works without any character thing.

The physical presence is definitely not there. The mighty one appears physically in the imagined world in two occasions: 1. (s)he destroys in that round, wich calls for him/her to appear on a place, 2. creates a creature wich has a characteristic, that states that this creature is the physical presence of XY mighty one. (There are interesting possibilities wich aren't described in the document, but maybe should be, for example this avatar-creation wich is possible by the rules, but needs some creativity on the part of the players.)

At the beginning I made this game in 24 hours to try out this holistic approach. I highly enjoyed the development and loved the game, but after some time I asked myself: "What the heck is this game good for? Why am I doing this? What is the rationale behind it?" But then I play it with a couple of friends and everybody enjoys it. It surprises me, too.

The lack of the goal of the mighty ones is an interesting problems. But if I think about it, all the roleplaying games have this problem. What's the goal? The gain more EXP? Okay, there are chapters wich talk about: "how to roleplay?" or "for what should you give/get EXPs?", but my experience tells me that every party decides for themselves what these goals are. I never met any GM who gave EXPs based upon wich game (s)he played. I only met GMs who decided for themselves without caring about what the game said.

Of course that doesn't mean that I couldn't think about some goal wich the mighty ones should follow. I mean, it would be fun if the mighty ones would have a motive to create a universe. I love this idea, but don't know how to implement. Maybe there could be a beginning phase where the players decide on a goal, etc., but I don't know how to do that without restricting the mighty ones. It's a concept that the mighty ones are truly mighty. For example at the beginning of the game, there is 100% chance that you succeed creating. And it is only up to you if that chance decreases. I don't want to lose that.

I hope this made things clearer.

And, yes, this can be "just" a tool, too. I mean, take your favorite fantasy world and let the players play the highest power mages or gods in it with these rules. It is possible. Or I thought about the possibility of the mighty ones travelling from one world to another. I just had this idea: what if the role of worldjudge would change from world to world? So, you can use this tool for other games, too.

Thanks again, I'll be back later.

[masqueradeball]

Your point about goals makes sense, but I wonder how familiar you are with all of the Forge terminology. I won't go in to anymore than I have to to make a basic point. Right now the Forge's lexicon comes from something called The Big Model (you can read about in the articles) which recognizes three Creative Agendas. They are Step on Up, The Right to Dream and Story Now. Step on Up or gamist play is about playing to win and achieve in-game victory, which currently isn't supported at all by Mighty Ones. The Right to Dream is all about portraying a given set ("the package") effectively and protecting each players right to participate, I find this to be the most likely candidate for Mighty Ones, but I can't see what the package is from your text... what are mighty ones, what are they doing, why are they doing it... and finally Story Now, which is about using play to tell story's with strong themes, once again, I don't see that there's anything in Mighty Ones to support this kind of play.

Now, of course, anyone could use Mighty Ones as presented to reach any of these goals, but that's not the point. The point is is that from reading your game the only impetus I can find for doing anything as a player is "just because," and frankly that leaves me very cold. Not that it couldn't be fun, but its little more than a thought puzzle... what would happen if I did this kind of thing. I guess its arguable that the same is true  of all RPG's to some degree, but I (and I'm being very subjective here) don't feel that way when I look at say Dungeons & Dragons.

Maybe I'm just looking at the whole thing wrong, but I wonder if your interested in creating some more focused goals for the game. Perhaps their could be a list of various goals and approaches provided, allowing players to choose which goal to go for. With a little nudge I could see a great potential for competitive play, simulating gods in any of the worlds mythologies, etc...

Oh, and if I'm just repeating myself, tell me and I'll drop the issue, just know that the reason I'm looking so hard at this is because I find your game really exciting in its potential.

Also, what are your goals, as a player, when you take on the role of a Mighty One. What goals did you see others have while playing. What were your inspirations for the game (it reminds me quite a bit of Black & White (the video game)).

[algi]

Nolan,

You are not at all repeating yourself and I'm very happy that you go into this game in such detail. I read the articles about the Big Model, but I have some problems using its terminology, because I sometimes screw up wich can cause many misunderstandings. Right now as I see it Mighty Ones supports rather Right to Dream, because all the game is about imagining a working world. I think it's totally senseless to play Step On Up with it (at playtest we tried and it was totally boring and really stupid things happened). By introducing a goal for the mighty ones (not the players) it could be made into a heavily Story Now play. (I am thinking about that if the mighty ones have a goal, than the creatures will have a purpose, and under creatures the players will understand themselves, the humans, the humanity, etc., so they would make important statements about the purpose of the humanity and themselves.) Maybe this would do the game good, because the Right to Dream mode (the enginge) is always there.

I'm not used to using the Big Model terminology, so please tell me if it has no sense what I say.

But I really wouldn't like to make this into a competitive game. It's not that I don't like competitive games, but I don't think it's possible to do it without losing the important thing, that the mighty ones are untouchable. And I think it would ruin the freedom of choice when creating a creature. I think that's another game, but tell me, if I overlooked something.

Also, what are your goals, as a player, when you take on the role of a Mighty One. What goals did you see others have while playing. What were your inspirations for the game (it reminds me quite a bit of Black & White (the video game)).

When I played this, my goal was to create a world, a universe wich I like. If someone else did something that I didn't like, I tried to do something against it. As much as I can percieve, others had the same goals.

If you mine inspirations as other games wich inspired me, I can't think of any. As I saw in most RPGs the players have to cope with difficulties of the characters against the world. For example climbing a wall, killing a monster, etc. The idea was to make an RPG where there are no external restrictions on what the players can do. Of course it has no sense to say "Do whatever you want", wich meant for me that the players should have internal (psychical so to say) restrictions. Wich means, that there would be creators and rulers and destroyers (I called them in the beginning artists, tyrants and dragons). The creators can creat whole universes without any problem, the dragons can destroy whole worlds if they want without a chance of failure. But creators can't destroy, destroyers can't create, etc., only if there personality gets distorted. Wich means the players have to be wary of themselves. If a player creates a mighty warrior or a huge dragon, (s)he will soon find him/herself without the full capability of creating and unintentionally destroying things.

That's how the basic concept evolved, and if it can be called an inspiration, the inspiration were those RPGs wich have a very slow character-developement curve and start at a very low power level.

Okay, the next post will be the playtest, I promise.

[algi]

We played this session with an earlier version. It means that the distortions of the deeds were phrased by the mighty one, not by the world judge. After it we decided that the world judge has not enough tasks. The other thing is that we used another table for the change of traits. After 5 rounds the game broke down because of arising "what if" questions that couldn't be answered, this problem is corrected in the latest version.

There were three players: Balu (a pal of mine), Dóri (my girlfriend) and me (Gábor). We played three sessions one after another. At the beginning I rolled who will be the worldjudge, because I didn't want our prejudices to influence the decision. Dóri became the worldjudge, who played only once before a roleplaying game (Coming of Age).

So Balu and I have 6 creation points and we can only create, so we roll the die to decide who comes first. Balu wins.

He creates a mountain in the world. (Amount: one, name: mountain, place: the world.)
He makes up 6 characteristics, because he doesn't want to lose any points:
- It's rocky.
- It's snowy.
- It has a regular shape.
- It's 4000 meters high.
- It's like the Kilimanjaro.
- It has zonal plant cover.

There's a bit of clarification of what can be one characteristic and what can be two. I explain him that he can say it as he likes. For example "It's rocky and snowy." could be one characteristic if he wants, it won't do any harm.

As there is no chance of unsuccessfulness, nor of distortion, the mountain is created. My turn.

I create 1000 highlander people on the mountain. (Amount: 1000, name: highlander, place: on the mountain.)
I make up 6 characteristics not to lose any points.
- They're living from the mountain.
- They're tough.
- They don't like other people.
- They endure height.
- They're deeply religous.
- They don't like to move (from one place to another).

They're created. Dóri, the worldjudge decides that some of the highlanders start to worship the mountain as a god. I ask her, how many of them, she says 500. This gives us +1 rule trait.

2nd round.

We roll again and Balu comes first again. He creates the mountain goat. 10 000 of them and on the mountain.
The characteristics are:
- They endure height.
- They're living from the mountain.
- They're tough. (He stole these three from me.)
- They're the food of the highlander people.
- They pullulate (swarm) easily.
- They're tame.

Balu has a creation of 6, but a rule of 1, so he rolls the die. It's 4, so the creation won't get distorted.

My turn again, I create the mountain leopard. An amount of 89 on the mountain.
Their characteristics are:
- It's a big cat.
- It's a predator.
- It has a long, smooth hair with leopard spots.
- It's shy, rarely seen.
- They don't wander.
- Very agile.

I have the same traits as Balu (6, 1, 0), so I roll the die, it turns up 2. Almost distroted, but it gets through.

Dóri decides that the goats pullulate, wich causes the leopards, too. (They are not anymore rarely seen.) The highlander people start to be afraid from the leopards. This means for us -1 creation and +1 rule, wich means things will get more interesting.

3rd round.

We both create and we both have the same trait of creation, so we roll again and Balu wins again. (He always rolls 4-6, I always roll 1-3. Maybe have to swap dice.)

We sort of get bored of the mountain, so do something else. He creates a desert in the world. The characteristics are:
- sandy, rocky
- at day it's hot, at night it's cold
- humidity is very rare
- it's big
- living things are rare here
- there are sandstorms sometimes

He has a creation of 5 and a rule of 2 and a destruction of 0. He rolls the die wich turns up 2, wich means that he is succesful, but the deed gets distorted by the rule. He adds a seventh characteristic wich will oppress other creatures:

- It grows.

My turn, I create the desert monster. (Amount: 1, place: desert.)

I dare to change my emphasize of traits and come up with 4 characteristics:

- It's powerful.
- It's fearful.
- It destroys those who stumbles into the desert.
- Human being can't harm it.

I roll the die. It's 4, the monster is created without distortion. I lose 1 creation, it drops to 4.

Our traits are right now: Balu (5, 2, 0), me (4, 2, 0). Dóri decides that the growing desert messes with the bioculture of the mountain, and 500 highlanders are disillusioned by the mountain and move to the growing desert. Some of them start to worship the desert monster, wich in turn won't eat them. This is a long chain of oppressing each other and a moving away. -1 creation, -1 rule, +1 destruction. Balu (4, 1, 1), me (3, 1, 1).

4th round

Balu decides to create, I decide to rule. (In this version creation comes before rule.)

He creates gravitational anomalias in the desert.
- They change their location.
- Thay change their numbers.
- They destroy everyithing wich comes into range.
- In it vicinity it creates huge gravitation in varying directions.
- You can't see it with your eyes.
5 characteristics are enough to raise his create trait by 1.

He rolls a 1 wich meant that rule and destruction distorts the creation. (Now it would mean that only one of them.)
He adds two characteristics:
- It doesn't let the desert to grow further. (Oppresses the desert.)
- It draws living beings. (This will make him destroy them.)

His creation trait raises by 1 to 5.

My turn. I command that all of the gravitational anomalias to stop moving. (This one simple command would oppress many characteristics of the anomalias.)

I roll, it's 3. It's higher than my rule trait, wich means that nothing happens. (Not even if it isn't higher than creation.)

My rule trait raises by 1 to 2. (3, 2, 1)

Dóri decides that the higlhander people living in the desert and the desert monster are destroyed by the gravitational anomalias. This means -1 creation and +1 destruction for Balu, because I didn't have a successful deed in this round.
Our traits are Balu (4, 1, 2), me (2, 2, 2).

5th round

Balu decides to destroy, I decide to rule again, wich meant that I come first.

I command every gravitational anomalia not to move and become highly visible.
I roll a 3, wich is higher than 2, nothing happens.
My rule trait raises by 1 to 3, because my command would have oppressed at least 3 of the characteristics of the gravitational anomalias.

Balu appears in the desert and destroys the gravitational anomalias.
He rolls a 1 and the game breaks down, because we can't figure out what exactly to do when destruction is distorted by creation and ruling. This problem is solved since then.

I hoped, this helped to imagine how to play this game. I have still another session wich we enjoyed even more than this first try, wich I will tell about later.

Gabor

[greyorm]

Thanks for the play report, Gábor! I look forward to the next one you said you enjoyed more.

[Kevin Smit]

Looks like a very interesting game.  I'll definitely try it out with some folks.  Right off the bat I have a few observations for you.  First, I think that judicious use of post-it notes would make the game much easier to manage.  Maybe placing them on a wall where they can be moved and seen easily by all players would be a help.

Secondly, I think that the rules for creation could be further clarified such that a player may create either a Place or a Thing.  I say this because I'm unclear about the rules for changing destruction stats.  For instance, You have mountain folk on the mountain.  A player creates fleas on your mountain folk.  Angered, you show up and destroy the fleas.  Next turn, a player creates bears which begin eating the mountain folk.  You show up and destroy the bears, pleading with the other mighty one to stop pestering your mountain folk.  So, do you get -1 to destruction the second turn because you destroyed something that was still contained in the mountain, or is it in a different place because before you were "at the mountain folk?"

A better mechanic for the world judge might be that each turn, the world judge chooses 1 creature /place/ thing for EACH mighty one to act.  This way, each mighty one gets a chance to see his creatures interact, and also for his stats to change.

You mention in the rules that when destruction occurs, the mighty one must materialize at that place.  It might be interesting, at the beginning of the game, to have your first creation be your mighty one.  That is, you create your mighty one with 6 traits that describe his/her/its motivations.  If you wanted to make the game into more of an active competition, you could have players earn "points" when their creatures' actions oppress the traits of the mighty ones directly.  Alternately, you could earn points when one of your creatures takes a big step towards happiness, with the game ending when a player gets to, say, ten points.

I'll write more after some play testing.  The version I saw seems fairly rough around the edges.  It could stand some editing to make it read more smoothly.  I like the concept though.  It seems like a lot of fun.

[Kevin Smit]

So I bounced around some ideas with a friend of mine.  She agrees that the game needs some sort of direction.  At least a way to know when the game ends, even if not a way to "win." 

I thought that each creature/ place should be given a goal; some way for that creature/ place to achieve happiness along with 5 traits.  That way is a step toward having some sort of resolution conditions while keeping the basic idea of the traits.

I thought the Stat adjustment could use some tweaking too.  The current mechanics feel a bit crunchy and could, I think, be simplified as follows:

Creation

The player created a place or thing with a goal and 5 traits: +1 creation
The player created a place a thing with a goal and 3-4 traits: no change
The player created a place or thing with no goal, or less than 3 traits: -1 creation.

Rule (Can this be changed to command?  It seems a bit closer to the actual meaning)

The player's command caused a creature's traits or goal to be oppressed: +1 Rule
The player's command stopped a creature from taking some action: No change
The player's command neither stopped a creature from acting nor caused a creature's traits or goal to be oppressed: -1 Rule

Destruction

The player destroyed a thing this turn and the last: +1 Destruction
The player destroyed nothing last round: no change
The player destroyed a place: -1 Destruction.

The reason for the distinction between places and things becomes more important here.  It should also be clarified that creatures, when they create, will always create a thing, not a place.  Thus there will be more things than places, an the players get rewarded for weeding out some things and penalized for destroying places, which can mess with the flow of the game.

Another suggestion for end conditions that I thought might work would be for each player to have a secret agenda.  It might be, "create 10 things that are red," "destroy 10 things that destroyed something last turn," "oppress the essential nature of 10 places," or more.

Ooh, synapses firing: what if the mighty ones themselves don't know what the goal is?  What if the worldjudge decides on a secret agenda ahead of time and then tells a player, at the end of the round, that they've been awarded a point.  That way, players can be eventually clued in to what the game is about and try to take actions that achieve that result.

The rules for stat change as i've laid them out above can lead to crafty players arranging for their scores, on average, to always rise.  To prevent this, we need to find a way of incentivizing otherwise undesirable actions.  For instance, it might be a rule that things/ places with no goals cannot be destroyed by creatures, and places/ things with no traits cannot be destroyed by the Mighty Ones.  This way, players will sometimes create thing/ places with no traits or no goals in order to give their creations some extra protection.  For instance, you might create love, whose goal is to be held by all.  Love would then be indestructible to the Mighty ones, but not their creations  To make an incentive for destroying places (in spite of the -1 destruction for doing so) you could say that destroying a place also destroys all the things in that place (other than objects with no traits).  A Mighty One commanding one of their creations to take some action that helps it to achieve happiness can be a powerful tool, so it might sometimes be beneficial to make a command that does not stop an action and does not oppress a creature's goal or traits for that purpose.

Let me know what you think.

[algi]

Wow, thanks for giving it a shot, it's a lot of idea you give me.

One thing is that English is not my mother tongue, so that surely causes some problems with comprehension, phrasing, etc. That caused for example the trivial mistake of naming the second deed/value rule wich makes harder to refer to the rules of the game. Certainly it would be better to be called command, so it will be changed in the next version.

I have to tell you, that it will be really difficult to make me change the basics of the trait changing rules. Some engineering is okay, but I don't know if I want a totally different mechanic here. That's why (and because of the possibility of generalizing) I would like to keep that places and things are the same. The problems of travel when destroying can be solved by phrasing the rules more precisely. And I don't think that destroying places would cause big problems. It's just needs some explanation in the rules text, but can be easily dealt with in the game.

But I do really like your ideas about the creatures and/or the mighty ones having goals. The thing is I was stumbling towards this myself, but now as I read your comment, I realize that it's totally something wich I should incorporate somehow. I was thinking about the traits of the creatures (their basic nature) to define their goals. If they follow it, they become happier. But this nil-creatures (wich don't have goal xor nature) are really fascinating, so maybe there should be some kind of heterogenity among their traits. This could even make even more fun to command wich is somewhat a middle-child.

And about creating yourself at the beginning of the game: that's exactly what I would like the game to do. That players would come up with ideas like this. For example creating avatars (or as you say even themselves). Or traits wich reflect happening and/or deeds in the real world. (For example once we created the creature 'time' wich could be turned back. So we could literally undo things by giving commands to time.) These things are possible and there are things wich I didn't think about, wich are great, and players will think of and hopefully even do it. I would like to present only a framework for the game and don't want to limit anyone in anything.

Thanks again, you gave me a big inertia.