[Power 19] Spellbound Kingdoms and introduction

[FrankBrunner]

Hi everyone! I'm working on a new game and thought I'd post a Power 19 here and see what everyone thinks. I'll put the specific points that I want feedback on after the Power 19. I'm a big fan of the "directed feedback" idea that happens here (obviously, or else I wouldn't be posting here, I guess!).

A bit about me, by way of de-lurk. I started publishing in the RPG industry back in 2001 with Dungeon magazine, and I stayed with WOTC (and Paizo) for a long time, working with them on things like Incarnum, Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords, and Player's Handbook II (for 3.5e). I haven't self-published anything yet, but Spellbound Kingdoms is where I'm going to start. I like all sorts of games, but I spend the most time playing D&D, whatever other RPG I'm looking at for the moment (from Nicotine Girls to Savage Worlds to Arabian Nights), and board games like Settlers, Ticket to Ride, and Arkham Horror. A lot of mainstream stuff, but a lot of indie rpgs too, and I read more than I play. Oh, and lately I've gotten Spellbound Kingdoms to the point where I can (and do) playtest that.

So here goes with the Power 19!

1) What is your game about?

Fantasy adventurers. The unofficial subtitle for the game is Love, Fear, and Magic. Love and fear play a central role in a character's story, and magic shapes society and the physical world. The core of the game is the development of each character's story. The game is designed to support many different types of fantasy adventure stories: dungeon exploration, wars, court intrigues, ancient prophecies whose hour comes round at last.

2) What do the characters do?

The characters go on adventures and pursue happiness. Usually the happiness takes the form of something that the character loves, like gold or an NPC. It may require overcoming something that the character fears, like a kobold or a Port Governor who's angry about you spending time with his daughter. And sometimes the happiness is just killing monsters and taking their stuff.

3) What do the players do?

The players play their characters through dialogue, combat, chases, explorations, and investigations, and the GM GM's. Depending on the group and the campaign, the players may also engage in player-vs.-player activity and/or cooperative worldbuilding. There is more rules-supported player-vs.-player and cooperative worldbuilding in SK than in many other RPGs.

4) How does your setting reinforce what the game is about?

Both the social and physical settings reinforce the themes of adventure, love, fear, and magic. Because of the nature of magic, secrecy and tyranny are common. Fear is a constant for many. When a character's loves are threatened – and threats are plentiful in this brink-of-the-renaissance society - there is an impetus to adventure.

The physical setting is informed by magic, although the actual practice of magic is made less than common by both politics and nature. The setting picks up at an age of discovery, and there are newly discovered fantastic locations to explore. When combat (physical, social, mass) or a cooperative encounter occurs in a location, the environment in that location colors the scene and provides bonuses and penalties. SK also supports the apparatus of literary art - foreshadowing, symbolism, metonymy, and the like - and the setting is a means to convey this support.

5) How does character creation reinforce what the game is about?

Character creation gives players a chance to define not only how they will accomplish their adventuring goals – their abilities, talents, and so on – but it also helps them to define what their adventuring goals are. The character creation process makes a player think about what type of adventures his character is suited for, and it makes him codify that in a concrete way so that the rest of the players and the GM can understand this character's role in any party. Specifically stating some of a character's motivations during creation also helps the GM understand what the player is looking for out of his gaming time.

6) What types of behavior does your game reward or punish?

The game rewards play that is adventurous and risky. The rewards take standard forms such as experience, treasure, and reputation, as well as non-standard forms such as increased security, the ability to appear in more scenes, and increased narrative control. The game punishes boring and non-participatory play. It does so chiefly through opportunity costs in the form of missed rewards.
   Play also rewards non-disruptive player-vs.-player action. In most campaigns, players will still be working together toward an ultimate goal, but they compete against each other for glory, influence, NPC relationships, and more.

7) How is behavior rewarded or punished?

I included that info in #6 above. Though there is a "kill things and take their stuff" component to the game, experience is not generated solely by beating down monsters. Hacking the eyestalks off a beholder might earn a character some experience, but so could dialogue, espionage, trade, or many other scenes. A character may not earn full experience if he does not participate in enough scenes – or enough of the right type of scenes (the theme of the adventure determines the "right" type).

How are responsibilities of narration and credibility divided in your game?

The players have more narrative control than in many RPGs. The GM is the final arbiter. In many cases, the stakes of a scene are known before the scene is played out: "On the cliff top at dawn, Igor and Frau Blucher are drawn and rushing at each other, about to clash in contest for the hand of Lady Garr," or, "I'm going to bargain with the rug merchant and see if I can't get that erotic tapestry for only 10 gold." The GM may step in and adjust the stakes if something absurd is being offered. Once the GM ok's the stakes (usually tacitly), the scene begins. The winner of the scene narrates the conclusion.

9) What does your game do to command players' attention?

Pace is the most important thing. Sometimes RPGs get bogged down by dice or inconsequential scenes, and they end up moving at the pace of an opera. That slow pace usually hurts the game. Spellbound Kingdoms is designed so that play is speedy and multiple players are participating at once.

In addition to the pace, the standard attention-getting devices are here: thrilling combat, dangerous journeys, lurking evil, non-lurking evil, the promise of treasure and power, and the threat of death and dishonor.

Finally, the rules help form the game into a story (with a real beginning-middle-end plot), and the story helps to keep players' attention.

10) What are the resolution mechanics of your game like?

The core is a roll-over-target-number dice-based mechanic. The dice are in increasing sizes, somewhat like Savage Worlds (or even Shab al-Hiri Roach).

11) How do the resolution mechanics reinforce what your game is about?

The core resolution mechanic ignores unimportant things. There's no Use Rope skill: if you want to tie a rope, then you can tie a rope, no mechanics needed. If you want to escape from the Devil of Marigar's manacles, on the other hand, then there is a resolution because there's a conflict. First and foremost, the mechanics support the game's theme of adventure by only coming in to play when there's actually an exciting conflict to resolve. Everything else just goes according to the narration of the GM or player who is in control of the scene. It's kind of like My Life with Master in that regard: the story's the thing.
   The action points mechanic allows a character's loves and fears to influence his rolls. Even the most mundane sword strike can be colored by love, and the mightiest spell can fail because of fear. This mechanic constantly points to the emotions and values at the heart of the game.

12) How do characters in your game advance?

Characters earn experience from adventures. All kinds of adventures. Slaying monsters is an adventure, but so is flirting with the queen while the king is at the war front. So is talking to a mad god. So is leading an army across the mountains to lay siege to the Ris temple.
   As characters gain experience, they gain new abilities. There is a class and level system. There are also talents that reach across class boundaries. Organizing groups - armed legions, churches, secret societies - is also a fundamental feature of advancement.

13) How does the character advancement reinforce what your game is about?

Character advancement requires participation in adventure of some sort.

14) What kind of effect do you want the game to produce in players?

Fun. However they define it. I'm working hard to make the system flexible enough that it can accommodate different notions of fun. But fun is definitely the goal: fun from the story, fun from combat, fun from roleplaying, and fun from creating and exploring a world with your friends.

15) What areas of your game receive extra attention and color?

Dialogue is colorful and distinct from social combat in most other RPGs. Combat also gets a lot of attention, as it is a perennial high point in RPGs. Character development, too. It's a balance because if you're bogged down in the details, then you're not playing, and if you run out of interesting choices, then you run out of game. The environments have also received a lot of attention, as has mass combat.

16) Which part of your game are you most excited or interested about?

That is a very hard question, of course! If I had to pick just one feature, it would be the game's ability to support dramatically relevant scenes at both the individual level and the regional level. The rules are light, but they cover mass combat, politics, shadow wars, guilds, and governance while also detailing individual armed combat, social combat, and emotions such as love and fear.

17) Where does your game take players that other games can't/won't?

I hope it takes people to a place of emotion while simultaneously leaving them with a feeling of going on a rip-roaring adventure. The dialogue system takes them to a "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" place of fun, humor, and dramatic improv if the group chooses to play it that way. Combat feels less like a wargame and more like a case of "opponents measure each other, feint and jab to expose weaknesses, then clash, then retreat, re-assess, circle warily, and then clash again." The game also guides players toward a literary story: environments and adventures have themes and motifs, and players are rewarded for embracing this symbolism in dialogue and action. Finally, the design goal is to build a system with one of the highest rules-depth to rules-complexity ratios in the industry, that is, a system with light or light-medium rules with deep strategic space to explore.

18) What are your publishing goals for this game?

Possibly Lulu, but I know that some games have had bad luck there. I like the idea of a print-on-demand service for all the obvious reasons, but if the quality isn't there, then I may spring for a traditional publisher. Or perhaps I will go for a two-tier print run, with a short run from a known publisher and further copies available from Lulu. Regardless of what happens in print, I also plan to have .pdfs for sale through the usual channels (drivethrurpg and rpgnow, e23, et al.). There will also be a free Quick Start – Basic Rules guide online.

19) Who is your target audience?

My target audience is current gamers and their friends. Ideally, I'd like to reach their currently non-gaming friends too. I think that keeping Spellbound Kingdoms toward the rules-light end of the spectrum will help bring those NGFs into the fold.

Whew! Ok, some areas that I'd like specific feedback on are:
a) The game tries to balance narrative elements with gamist elements by "switching lenses": zoom in for gamist elements like individual combats and dialogue, zoom out for narrative elements like characters meeting, people falling in love, kingdoms becoming corrupt, new holidays being established, and so forth. Perhaps think of it as My Life with Master (one roll to resolve an entire narrated scene) mixed with Dungones and Dragons combat (although much simpler, more Savage Worlds). Any thoughts on this as a model? How about easing the transition between one type of scene and the other? How about when one player is acting on a time scale different from another player, like one is in a prolonged combat (15 minutes of real-time) and another player is waiting for the next in-game week to roll around?

b) In combat, there is no initiative. Everyone acts simultaneously, the round's actions are resolved, and then we go to the next round. It seems to be going well in playtest, but does anyone have experience with similar systems? SK's system is most similar to Gemini's, I think, among published games.

c) Mood is measured as a character attribute like hit points. Is that too restrictive, as some find alignments, or is it conducive to role-playing? It depends how it is handled, to some extent, but what do you think in general?

d) Right now there is no emotional piece to advancement. Any ideas on how to include it? The game tracks Love, Fear, and Mood (and possibly other values/emotions).

Thanks for reading!

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

Welcome to the Forge!  I hope that you find this a useful place to help you get your game published

1) What is your game about?

Fantasy adventurers. The unofficial subtitle for the game is Love, Fear, and Magic. Love and fear play a central role in a character's story, and magic shapes society and the physical world.

The way that you phrase this makes the game sound very interesting to play.  I like the description so far.

2) What do the characters do?

The characters go on adventures and pursue happiness. Usually the happiness takes the form of something that the character loves, like gold or an NPC. It may require overcoming something that the character fears, like a kobold or a Port Governor who's angry about you spending time with his daughter. And sometimes the happiness is just killing monsters and taking their stuff.

The parts of your answer that I bolded are the parts I feel you should concentrait on.  There are systems out there that are very adept at supporting the killing of monsters and the taking of their stuff.  IMHO, you game should strive for something a little different.  If that's what the players really want, they'll make it happen without any textual support. 

4) How does your setting reinforce what the game is about?

Both the social and physical settings reinforce the themes of adventure, love, fear, and magic. Because of the nature of magic, secrecy and tyranny are common. Fear is a constant for many. When a character's loves are threatened – and threats are plentiful in this brink-of-the-renaissance society - there is an impetus to adventure.

The physical setting is informed by magic, although the actual practice of magic is made less than common by both politics and nature. The setting picks up at an age of discovery, and there are newly discovered fantastic locations to explore. When combat (physical, social, mass) or a cooperative encounter occurs in a location, the environment in that location colors the scene and provides bonuses and penalties. SK also supports the apparatus of literary art - foreshadowing, symbolism, metonymy, and the like - and the setting is a means to convey this support.

So how is magic viewed by the common individual in your setting?  What about those who are wealthy or powerful?  What about those who are revolutionary or subversive?  I don't want to color your answer by adding my thoughts on what your answer seems to communicating.  So could you expand on that narrow topic for just a bit?

Peace,

-Troy

[FrankBrunner]

Hey, thanks for the comments. I hear you about the fact that many games already support killing monsters and taking their stuff. I totally agree that this game (or pretty much any game) needs to stand out by doing something different or doing something very significant in addition to that.

The Love and Fear mechanics are part of the story pacing and character development. Loves and Fears are like action points. A character can attempt tasks and conflict resolution without risking a Love or assuming (or confronting) a Fear, but he's going to be a lot more successful if he does. So the game rewards characters who take the time to create relationships, invest in Loves, and develop and confront Fears. It also works for villains (whether they're played by PCs or NPCs) because the villain's Loves are often the targets of PC action. Once the PCs have removed his Loves or whipped up his fears - talking to his mistress to win her over, stealing his items of power, spreading rumors of the king passing him over for a new title - only then can they focus on the villain. Before then, with his Loves and Fears strong and controlled, the villain is too powerful to confront head on. As Love dwindles and Fear grows, options diminish, driving PC and NPC alike to a direct conflict. This helps pace the story.

So how is magic viewed by the common individual in your setting?  What about those who are wealthy or powerful?  What about those who are revolutionary or subversive?  I don't want to color your answer by adding my thoughts on what your answer seems to communicating.  So could you expand on that narrow topic for just a bit?

Some commoners hate magic, and some see it as a salvation, but those are the extremes. The typical commoner mistrusts magic and casters but envies them their power. He would like the power turned to his own good, but he is leery and resentful of its random nature and the nature of those who seek to control it. He also resents the control and restrictions placed on magic by his superiors (a king, a wizard, whoever is the local authority figure). Authorities almost always control magic strictly for two reasons. First, "magic hates magic." There is a finite amount of magic in any kingdom, and a second wizard inevitably lessens the power of the first. Second, magic is power, and most of these brink-of-the-renaissance kingdoms are more along the lines of Louis XIV than Frederick II. The existing powers want to maintain power at almost any cost. There are, of course, revolutionaries and subversives. That may be where the PCs come in... or it may not, depending on the campaign.

I'm not sure if that's the sort of answer you were looking for. What do you think?

[Creatures of Destiny]

A lot of your thoughts are similar to what I've been brewing up, though you seem far ahead of me in development. Especially the advancement through achieving goals and overcoming falws - not something I've seen elsewhere in RPGs but common in screenplay theory and Heros journey - is that where you took it from too?

a) The game tries to balance narrative elements with gamist elements by "switching lenses": zoom in for gamist elements like individual combats and dialogue, zoom out for narrative elements like characters meeting, people falling in love, kingdoms becoming corrupt, new holidays being established, and so forth. Perhaps think of it as My Life with Master (one roll to resolve an entire narrated scene) mixed with Dungones and Dragons combat (although much simpler, more Savage Worlds). Any thoughts on this as a model? How about easing the transition between one type of scene and the other? How about when one player is acting on a time scale different from another player, like one is in a prolonged combat (15 minutes of real-time) and another player is waiting for the next in-game week to roll around?

Well I think players and the GM could choose when to zoom in. To take a D&D example, high level characters might zoom out for  acombat against a mass of kobolds and resolve it in one roll, zoom in for an important duel, zoom out for some minor narrative stuff "Okay so we trawl the city looking for clues" and zoom in for a specific narrative encounter  - perhaps the clue leads them to a specific NPC they have to deal with - a narrative encounter that might get zoomed into. As for players in different times - you could determine where the set piece sits in narrative time and how it may affect events - resolve them in order of cause effect (for example if one character is recruiting knights and the other scene is a battle, then it's logical to play the knights scene first/ wheras if the fight is for the crown and the narrative plot is political wranglings between kingdoms then the oppositie is the case). You could use flahbacks and cut scenes that might create tension (so you start resolving the batle, did Sir Rudolf manage to convince the knights to send aid? Cut to the narrative play and continue on the recruitment scene before cutting back to the battle for the conclusion).

b) In combat, there is no initiative. Everyone acts simultaneously, the round's actions are resolved, and then we go to the next round. It seems to be going well in playtest, but does anyone have experience with similar systems? SK's system is most similar to Gemini's, I think, among published games.

Again I was thinking of something similar - I'm using opposed rolls, where aat some points characters may compete in time (so if two guys are rushing for a weapon then it's a contest of speed/wit/reactions adn the winner gets there first). Idem for quickdraws and similar. For hand-to-hand, the important thing is simply, who hit who and how hard - the hit roll is not "whether you it" but "whether you hit them before they hit you" (because in a fight, given time you'll always hit, it's just that usually you don't have time!)

c) Mood is measured as a character attribute like hit points. Is that too restrictive, as some find alignments, or is it conducive to role-playing? It depends how it is handled, to some extent, but what do you think in general?

Are you using carrots or sticks? I think people find D&D alignment restrictive because it's all sticks - a paladin lose his powers for commiting evil. By using carrots - a Paladin gains bonuses whenever doing good it might feel less restrictive. So with each mood you gain bonuses for a certain type of behaviour - you're free to do somehthing else though.

d) Right now there is no emotional piece to advancement. Any ideas on how to include it? The game tracks Love, Fear, and Mood (and possibly other values/emotions).

This seems to me to be tied to mood. Perhaps you can play points for bonuses as you want - for example you can play Love for bonuses to aid your loved one, Fear for bonuses to escape and avoid ambushes and kill people and Mood to push your character from one mood to another (say from angry to calm or confused to resolved).  The more you usea given pool the bigger it gets - so those that use Fear acumulate fear points, those taht use Love gain love points etc...

Really liked this Power 19, very well written and thought out.

[FrankBrunner]

Thanks for the comments. The flashback idea is great. Flashbacks are a favorite of mine. Just like the old Kung Fu TV series - they let you play around a lot with narrative, characters, setting. Wow, yeah, good idea. The mechanics of it might be a little tricky, but that is what playtesting is for! I also really appreciate your comments on carrots vs. sticks and advancement... more below.

A lot of your thoughts are similar to what I've been brewing up, though you seem far ahead of me in development. Especially the advancement through achieving goals and overcoming falws - not something I've seen elsewhere in RPGs but common in screenplay theory and Heros journey - is that where you took it from too?

Partly, but not exclusively from either of those. More a gestalt of literary theory in general plus some indie-type games which, for the life of me, I can't think of right now. That will teach me to post late at night on a board where you can't edit your posts! The literary theory is also where I come from when I try to keep all the talk possible during a game session away from things like, "My dice pool is X, and I'm devoting three to initiative, so I have an attack rating of X-3." I think talk like that takes people out of the game world just like John Gardner talks about in "The Art of Fiction" when he says that writing off-topic takes people out of the fictional world being created.

Are you using carrots or sticks? I think people find D&D alignment restrictive because it's all sticks - a paladin lose his powers for commiting evil. By using carrots - a Paladin gains bonuses whenever doing good it might feel less restrictive. So with each mood you gain bonuses for a certain type of behaviour - you're free to do somehthing else though.

Definitely using carrots and sticks. There are rewards for good Mood: it's easier to start a new Love, you are happier and more resilient in conversation and argument, you might even run faster or fight better (if you can somehow narrate how your Loves or Mood helps you do that). And there are sticks, too. For instance, if you get upset or heartbroken in a certain way, you can only participate in scenes in your home because you're too depressed to go anywhere else. That's way, way down there though - very unlikely to happen unless a player wants it to.

This seems to me to be tied to mood. Perhaps you can play points for bonuses as you want - for example you can play Love for bonuses to aid your loved one, Fear for bonuses to escape and avoid ambushes and kill people and Mood to push your character from one mood to another (say from angry to calm or confused to resolved).  The more you usea given pool the bigger it gets - so those that use Fear acumulate fear points, those taht use Love gain love points etc...

Right. Nice. The "more you use it the more you get" was already in there for Fear. Thinking about it again and thinking about what you're saying, I think it should be there for Love too. I like that a lot. Tying advancement to Mood is the key, I think. A different sort of a Mood can lead to a very different sort of advancement: darker, brighter, apathetic, ambitious, etc.

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

Some commoners hate magic, and some see it as a salvation, but those are the extremes. The typical commoner mistrusts magic and casters but envies them their power. He would like the power turned to his own good, but he is leery and resentful of its random nature and the nature of those who seek to control it. He also resents the control and restrictions placed on magic by his superiors (a king, a wizard, whoever is the local authority figure). Authorities almost always control magic strictly for two reasons. First, "magic hates magic." There is a finite amount of magic in any kingdom, and a second wizard inevitably lessens the power of the first. Second, magic is power, and most of these brink-of-the-renaissance kingdoms are more along the lines of Louis XIV than Frederick II. The existing powers want to maintain power at almost any cost. There are, of course, revolutionaries and subversives. That may be where the PCs come in... or it may not, depending on the campaign.

That's a fine answer.  Make sure you keep it in mind as you design both your system and your setting.  These beliefs and customs should show up both in play and in the reading material for your game.  It's nice to state design goals like this, but it's another to implement them. 

I'm not sure if that's the sort of answer you were looking for. What do you think?

6) What types of behavior does your game reward or punish?

The game rewards play that is adventurous and risky. The rewards take standard forms such as experience, treasure, and reputation, as well as non-standard forms such as increased security, the ability to appear in more scenes, and increased narrative control. The game punishes boring and non-participatory play. It does so chiefly through opportunity costs in the form of missed rewards.
   Play also rewards non-disruptive player-vs.-player action. In most campaigns, players will still be working together toward an ultimate goal, but they compete against each other for glory, influence, NPC relationships, and more.

7) How is behavior rewarded or punished?

I included that info in #6 above. Though there is a "kill things and take their stuff" component to the game, experience is not generated solely by beating down monsters. Hacking the eyestalks off a beholder might earn a character some experience, but so could dialogue, espionage, trade, or many other scenes. A character may not earn full experience if he does not participate in enough scenes – or enough of the right type of scenes (the theme of the adventure determines the "right" type).

What do experience points in your game get the players?  How do they use them?

Peace,

-Troy

[FrankBrunner]

Absolutely. There's all the difference in the world between stating a design goal and actualizing it. I realized that none of the first few articles I had posted on my site talked about magic this way. I put up some newer ones now, and I hope they give a better sense of the role magic plays in the world. There are definite mechanical consequences, too, that reflect the "magic hates magic" rule.

I'm going the traditional route with experience in SK. I think people like talent trees, a plethora of powers to choose from, and different consequences for different career and relationship choices. So that's pretty much what experience gets you: advancement in one of those regards. Talent trees, powers, career options, relationships. That may change a lot, though, since playtesting hasn't even touched anything close to that yet.