Giving Teeth to Topos, based on Mike Holmes' comments

[ejh]

Topos is described in the thread "Ed Designs a Game: Topos" and a copy of the rules is available at http://www.remove-this-part-lostthoughts.org/phpwiki/index.html/Topos .

IMHO, it has evolved to a point where the rules are pretty near perfect for what it is (though the presentation could use some work; new players often find it confusing or incomprehensible -- I think the terminology needs work).  What the game is is now at stake.

The indefatigable Mike Holmes has complained somewhat that right now Topos is nothing but freeform roleplaying with some formalities added on to it.  I responded that you could describe any RPG that way.  He pointed out that the formalities are optional in Topos.  I responded that that's also true in any RPG.  But he has convinced me that Topos's slim difference from freeforming is especially egregious.  There is nothing in Topos that ever *makes* you play in any particular way.  The rules never *force* you to do anything.  Ever.  The worst thing that can happen to you if you play offensively is that the other players start ignoring you because you annoy them.

I like Topos the way it is, but Mike's challenges have made me curious whether there could be a version of Topos that has more "teeth" that still fulfills my design goals.

Key design goals include:

* smoothly handling the communications latency inherent in email gaming

* smoothly handling the issue of player defection -- dropping out completely or not posting for significant periods of time should not paralyze the other players

* not relying on a GM or any other authority figure for decisions (because the GM may himself defect).

The last criterion is suggested by my own experience; I once ran an email game that went really well except that other things in my life led me to defect; the players still had momentum and the game probably could have gone on well without me if it were GMless somehow.

Topos as it stands handles all the above design goals very well.  All it doesn't have is "teeth" -- something to give players serious limits they have to work within.

The particular set of teeth I'm thinking of grafting into the game is the concept of objective reality.  You see, the game as it stands does not take a stand as to "what really happened."  There is no "what really happened," there are only various pages which describe things happening; consensus between pages is the only indicator of objective reality.  In other words, there is no objectivity, only commonalities between subjectivities.  All very pomo, but I didn't design it that way on purpose, it just evolved that way to satisfy my design criteria.

Anyway, I thought I'd start this thread to discuss some possible ways to implement this.

I thought that I would implement "objective reality" by introducing a criterion to determine which of two Pages is true, assuming that they contradict each other.

The two things I have considered are:

The Modernist assumption that Newer is Truer: Under this assumption we are constantly improving our picture of reality, and discarding ancient myths and superstitions.  Therefore, by default new paragraphs take precedence over old ones in the case of a conflict.  It takes extraordinary action to Canonize a Page so that it will take precedence over later Pages rather than being superseded by them.

The Medievalist assumption that Older is Truer: Under this assumption the classical ancients possessed great wisdom, to which we should always  defer.  Therefore if two Pages are in conflict, the older one is assumed by default to be true.  It takes extraordinary action to De-Canonize an older page and allow it to be superseded by a later page.

In either case, you would Canonize/De-Canonize a page by spending a resource that represented the accumulated goodwill of other players.

OK, that's one idea.

The other idea isn't actually about objective reality determination, it's just another Teeth thing.  This idea is to allow something like Topoi but binding.  Call it an Edict.  You are simply not allowed to violate an Edict.  (Similar to De/Canonizing above, you would create an Edict by spending a resource that represented the accumulated goodwill of your fellow players.)  If you do violate the Edict, something bad happens, I guess -- your page goes away and you lose any goodwill Points you got for it, or something like that.  You can quash an Edict by a similar process to the one that created it -- spend goodwill-based resources.  You can also simply ignore an edict and hope that the creator of the edict doesn't mind -- enforcement of the edict is up to the creator.  This way, the edicts of inactive players will naturally drop out of the game.

So that's what I'm considering for Teething it up -- objective reality, or Edicts.  What do people think?

[Bob McNamee]

I've been thinking about the Modernist / Medieval divide.

I'd choose the Medieval (What is already written is truer, and to de-Canonize history costs)

Since the posted Pages and current Topoi are all that new people coming to the game have to go by when they join in, it would be comforting to know that you can take the older posts as reliable story-to-date.

Another idea about Teeth, that might be tough to bookkeep, is to state that the only Pages that represent Canon, are those pages that have received points for addressing one or more Topoi. Thus, pages that meet group approval have more protection.(more subtle encouragement of topos use)

Another thought, that would change Topos perhaps more than you would like, is to allow each player to have one single non-changeable Group Topos each. This unchangeable pool of Group Topoi represent Topos that any player can visit, including the player that introduced it in the first place.

The Group Topos would ideally be created initially before the first Page of play. I know I'd prefer to see these used after group discussion to lock in tone, genre, subject matter, themes etc.

Players coming later would also get to add one when they join a game, allowing them to have a permanent influence of the story focus.
Point payment for visiting Group Topoi could be decided by the posting player probably, but I would be inclined to have it be an other player in the game.

I'm not a big fan of Edicts myself... it would get down to... Who enforces it?

Well, that's some thoughts anyway...

[ejh]

I'd choose the Medieval (What is already written is truer, and to de-Canonize history costs)

I haven't seen anyone prefer the Modernist style yet.  That seems best to me.

Another idea about Teeth, that might be tough to bookkeep, is to state that the only Pages that represent Canon, are those pages that have received points for addressing one or more Topoi. Thus, pages that meet group approval have more protection.(more subtle encouragement of topos use)

There are the seeds of something brilliant here.  What if you could choose to take the Points you got for a given Page -- and ONLY those points --  and instead apply them to Canonizing that page?

I must think on this. :)

Another thought, that would change Topos perhaps more than you would like, is to allow each player to have one single non-changeable Group Topos each

This is close to what Topos started like.  My initial reaction is, no, because we want the game to always track the interests of the current players.  However, I believe there is something to be said for stability and unity.  The difficulty of course is deciding who gets to enforce such things.  It's amazingly difficult to make such things work in a GMless game where "Majority Vote" is not a practical option.

I'm not a big fan of Edicts myself... it would get down to... Who enforces it?

You'd have to allow the person who created it to enforce it -- however if an Edict could be overridden somehow, it might not be particularly abusive.  If someone is a dick with their edicts, people will slap them down by revoking it.  Sure, both will lose a point of karma in the process, but someone who plays like a jerk is likely to have less karma to begin with.  (Karma = measure of total points you've ever earned in the game)

[Mike Holmes]

I'm not a big fan of Edicts myself... it would get down to... Who enforces it?

You'd have to allow the person who created it to enforce it -- however if an Edict could be overridden somehow, it might not be particularly abusive.  If someone is a dick with their edicts, people will slap them down by revoking it.  Sure, both will lose a point of karma in the process, but someone who plays like a jerk is likely to have less karma to begin with.  (Karma = measure of total points you've ever earned in the game)

Yeah, this is definitely not a problem. We assume that players will abide by the rules of the game. It's cheating if not (breaks the social contract). As far as adjudication of when a violation occurs, well, I think that Ed's comments above make sense. I mean a player could Edict in "Everyone has to do what I say," but that would get slapped down instantly. The only limit on Edicts is that they must not limit another player from being able to eliminate that Edict. So, no, "Everyone must do what I want, and no Edict quashing allowed from now on," Edicts are involved. Basically, Edicts should only be allowed to add rules, not negate the framework for play that already exists.

I like the name, reminds me of Cosmic Encounters.

Mike

[ejh]

Huh!  You've moved to meta-rules edicts there, Nomicizing the game a bit!  I hadn't considered that -- I'd thought of them as in the same category as Topoi -- but it's an interesting idea.

I was thinking of some kind of heirarchy like this:

Consensus is always free.  An edict nobody objects to doesn't cost anything.

If anyone objects, then it costs a point of Karma to make the change over their objections, and it costs a point of karma in turn to reassert the status quo.  And so on.  Basic challenge mechanics.  You'd need a timeout of some sort...

[ejh]

reposted from topos playtest mailing list, another thing I'm thinking about...


I really like the general mechanic that players who have "played nice" with other people and accumulated voluntary rewards are given story power.  But I'm not 100% thrilled with this particular incarnation of that idea.

Another thing that occurred to me was something about dividing up authority inside the game-world.

There would be some mechanic whereby one could take control of one area of the game, and become the authority on that.  For example, "this city is mine" "this character is mine" "this order of magicians is mine" "magic is mine" "faster than light travel is mine."

It would be possible for your domain of authority to have holes in it carved out by other players' domains of authority.  Traditional tabletop RPG play would be the equivalent of one player saying "the whole universe is mine" and the rest carving out character-shaped holes in his authority.

Everybody has to defer to the other players in areas of their authority.  Interesting things happen on the borderlines -- interfaces -- between areas of authority.  I was thinking of a Fortune based mechanic that weighed people's Karma scores against each other to make decisions in interface areas, which could be overridden by spending Karma points.