Democratic Mechanic?

[Daniel Solis]

(Pasted from Theory)

One could in theory devise a system where the player and the referee each propose an outcome of an action, and everyone votes (perhaps as simple as a colored chip or marble held in hand and displayed simultaneously) on the outcome they want to see happen.

That's brilliant! Has this been implemented anywhere else? I'd love to see it executed.

[Ben Lehman]

One could in theory devise a system where the player and the referee each propose an outcome of an action, and everyone votes (perhaps as simple as a colored chip or marble held in hand and displayed simultaneously) on the outcome they want to see happen.

That's brilliant! Has this been implemented anywhere else? I'd love to see it executed.

BL>  TFOS (Teenagers From Outer Space) uses a similar mechanic to determine social damage -- everyone votes on the severity of the insult and the average result is the damage that the target takes.  This means that unpopular kids take insults worse than popular ones :-)
 Never seen it as a general resolution mechanic, though.

[Hardpoint]

James Bond 007 from Victory Games had a Bidding System for difficulty ratings, but that's the only one that I know of off hand.

For example, (Lower numbers meant task is harder) as a player I want to do some task, like pull a bootlegger reverse in my Aston Martin. The GM asigns a difficulty of 7 initially. Since the difficulty rating used will be used not only by me making the driving task, but also the pursuit cars trying to keep up with me, I bid lower to make it harder for them. I counter with a 5. GM counters with 4, I accept and have to make the roll at Difficulty 4 (range is from 10 at easiest to 1/2 at hardest). I make the roll, but now the chase cars have to make their roll at the same difficulty I did.

[Hardpoint]

BL>  TFOS (Teenagers From Outer Space) uses a similar mechanic to determine social damage --

I forgot about that one. Haven't played TFOS more than once or twice, but yeah that's another example.

[Shreyas Sampat]

I believe that Cold Mountain did something along the voting lines as well.  Basically, each player could cast a stone into a bag; white for or black against a disputed proposition, and the narrating player would draw a stone, and keep drawing as long as all the stones were the same color.  The number of stones would determine the intensity of the result.

[Hardpoint]

That's a very interesting mechanic. Amber had a sort of democratic method for building characters, in that no one was allowed to have the same "shtick" as another character. Jon is the strong one, Mark is the Quick one, etc.

[iago]

That's a very interesting mechanic. Amber had a sort of democratic method for building characters, in that no one was allowed to have the same "shtick" as another character. Jon is the strong one, Mark is the Quick one, etc.

Amber did?  I'd say it had a competitive mechanic -- everyone "bids" points for each of four attributes, in what ya call an auction.  It was fairly metagamey and fun in its own right, but it was pretty much all about who got to be the best at a thing, and never really seemed to have any notion of schtick preservation.  What you're describing definitely doesn't match my out-of-the-book understanding (or past years of experience) of the ADRPG rules ... though, it probably is the way they should be rewritten, that said. :)

And actually, that's put me off on an interesting direction of thought with regards to the "auctions".  It'd probably be more interesting -- and more immersive in the "politicky" aspect of Amber -- if you had an attribute *election*, rather than an auction, in some fashion.  Sure, everyone could just vote for themselves -- leaving everyone in that attribute fairly weak and on an even footing with one another -- but people who played the game right, traded and owed favors, and so on, would end up on top in that attribute, with the most votes in their favor.  Hm.  Worth thinking about for codification, at any rate.

One notion that strikes me, certainly, is giving everyone a single or pair of cards for each attribute, representing their "starting rank" in that attribute.  They would also each have a stack of cards that read "You owe (my name here) a favor."  Attributes would then be determined by everyone running around and bartering their cards to one another -- "I'll owe two favors for a strength card!" "I'll trade psyche for warfare, one for one!" -- and so on.  Could be very interesting *and*, with the favor cards in play, you'd also have an instant "social web" linking the PCs to one another.  Pretty tasty, that.

[Hardpoint]

That's the funkiest (in a good way) system of making characters I've ever heard. Bravo. The character creation session alone would be filled with interesting roleplaying, watching the players debate and poltick one another would be fascinating. I know a GM, whom I tend to refer to as voyeuristic in his GMing style, who would love to have a game like that.

[Mark Johnson]

That's brilliant! Has this been implemented anywhere else? I'd love to see it executed.

Has anyone one used Nomic (//www.earlham.edu/~peters/nomic.htm) as a role playing game?  Although, not an RPG per se, the game can become one with the proper amendments.

[iago]

That's the funkiest (in a good way) system of making characters I've ever heard. Bravo. The character creation session alone would be filled with interesting roleplaying, watching the players debate and poltick one another would be fascinating. I know a GM, whom I tend to refer to as voyeuristic in his GMing style, who would love to have a game like that.

Actually, to refine it a bit, the players should, instead, have cards which say "(my name) owes the holder of this card a favor" (the inverse of my original proposal).  I suggest this because, really, the cards you have should all be currency.  And because I like the idea of person A owing a favor to person B, but person B then turning around and bartering person A's favor to person C, A's arch rival...

You get the idea. :)

[Hardpoint]

Actually, to refine it a bit, the players should, instead, have cards which say "(my name) owes the holder of this card a favor" (the inverse of my original proposal).  I suggest this because, really, the cards you have should all be currency.  And because I like the idea of person A owing a favor to person B, but person B then turning around and bartering person A's favor to person C, A's arch rival...

You get the idea. :)

That's evil! I like it.

[contracycle]

Has anyone one used Nomic (//www.earlham.edu/~peters/nomic.htm) as a role playing game?  Although, not an RPG per se, the game can become one with the proper amendments.

There have been a couple of attempts.  But I think a better model for the above is Matrix gaming, which rests purely on propositions from the players to create in game action.  There is a referee though; the GM rates the proposition by how likely it is to be true, and single D6 roll determines whther it is, in toto, or not.

Matrix games can be found here: http://www.io.com/~hamster/

[simon_hibbs]

That's a very interesting mechanic. Amber had a sort of democratic method for building characters, in that no one was allowed to have the same "shtick" as another character. Jon is the strong one, Mark is the Quick one, etc.

Amber did?  I'd say it had a competitive mechanic -- everyone "bids" points for each of four attributes, in what ya call an auction.

How else would you suggest a game shoudl determine who gets which 'schtick'? After all, if two players both wan their characetr to have the same 'schtick', that's bound to get competitive eventualy.

It was fairly metagamey and fun in its own right, but it was pretty much all about who got to be the best at a thing, and never really seemed to have any notion of schtick preservation.

Despeite the fact that this is exactly what it did, and was quite explicit about saying so?

It'd probably be more interesting -- and more immersive in the "politicky" aspect of Amber -- if you had an attribute *election*, rather than an auction, in some fashion.  Sure, everyone could just vote for themselves -- leaving everyone in that attribute fairly weak and on an even footing with one another -- but people who played the game right, traded and owed favors, and so on, would end up on top in that attribute, with the most votes in their favor.  Hm.  Worth thinking about for codification, at any rate.

In amber everyone has a fair chance, whatever their personal qualities and relationships with other players before the game starts. In-game politicking starts with character generation, rather than having out-of-game politicking (I'll vote for you because you're my flat-mate) interfere with the in-game situation.

One notion that strikes me, certainly, is giving everyone a single or pair of cards for each attribute, representing their "starting rank" in that attribute.  They would also each have a stack of cards that read "You owe (my name here) a favor."  Attributes would then be determined by everyone running around and bartering their cards to one another -- "I'll owe two favors for a strength card!" "I'll trade psyche for warfare, one for one!" -- and so on.  Could be very interesting *and*, with the favor cards in play, you'd also have an instant "social web" linking the PCs to one another.  Pretty tasty, that.

Now that is an interesting, and fun idea! I can see some pretty awkward problems with implementation though. How to make sure that everyone has a fair chance at getting the character concept they want? Out of game factors could also influence character generation ("No way I'm trading strength to you, after your character screwed mine in the last game"... etc). In amber, everyone is equal.


Simon Hibbs

[iago]

How else would you suggest a game shoudl determine who gets which 'schtick'? After all, if two players both wan their characetr to have the same 'schtick', that's bound to get competitive eventualy.

Well, what I suggested later boiled down to "there's one schtick of each type available, negotiate for which one you get".  I don't think the auction system did that in Amber, but it's been roughly five years since I actually read any portion of the rules (I mean, you learn them once in about 15 seconds, no real refer back need), so maybe I missed the bit about them saying it helped preserve schtick.  Certainly never quite seemed the case in actual play, though.

This is all quite orthogonal to the point of this thread, though. :)

Now that is an interesting, and fun idea! I can see some pretty awkward problems with implementation though. How to make sure that everyone has a fair chance at getting the character concept they want? Out of game factors could also influence character generation ("No way I'm trading strength to you, after your character screwed mine in the last game"... etc). In amber, everyone is equal.

You make some assertions here that don't make sense to me vis a vis comparing it to how the auction method works.  But let's put this idea out there: if you're looking to preserve schtick (where one and only one person gets to be The Strength Guy, one and only one person gets to be The Ace Pilot, etc) then you cannot make sure everyone has a fair chance at getting the character concept they want.  Two people want to be the Ace Pliot -- guess what, one of them won't be.

Look at what I suggested this way: with X number of players in, say, the Strength attribute, there's a fixed amount of Strength "pips" (chits, cards) to go around among all the PCs.  This regulates the strength (or any other "carded" attribute) schtick quite well.  An auction style system involves everyone spending a huge amount of points trying to be first, and you can have a lot of clustering as a result -- everyone has, say, 100 generic "points" that can buy anything.  In my proposed "barter" method, by contract, those "points" only buy specific things.  Say you have 5 people with 2 strength cards apiece.  If ultimately one guy barters for 3 more strength cards, he'll have a total of 5 of them, which pretty much solidifies him as the majority "shareholder" in the group-as-a-whole's strength total.  Thus, to some extent, you have the competition -- bartering to get "what's best" -- but you also have the dealmaking cooperation aspect -- where the group as a whole is saying who is getting which schtick, through the deals they make.  Personally, it's that dealmaking cooperative element that I think is lacking in the auction style approach, and since cooperation plays counterpoint to competition -- thus producing tension -- especially in a genre like Amber, that's something I really want.  The source material's full of instances of people not trusting one another but working together all the same.  Simply introducing a competitive element into the character creation process, without an complementary cooperative one, seems to keep you getting only half of the "feel" right.

[Rob Donoghue]

Amber did a better job in theory than in practice, if only because of the mis-weighted values of the stats, and the fact thatthe other half of the system (powers) did not use the auction.  In theory, there were about 8 or 9 potential Schticks:

Fighting Guy
Brainy Guy
Strong Guy
Tough Guy
Advanced pattern Guy
Chaos Guy
SOrcery Guy
Trump Guy

Sometimes there was also Gadget Guy, and there could be two chaos guys (logrus guy and Shapeshifting Guy).  The problem being, some of these tended to run together (brainy guy was often also a powers guy, and strong guy was often also tough guy, since STR and END often went for fewer points than WAR or PSY).  Worse, it was entirely possible for someone to end up with no schtick if they tried to be moderate with things. (Complicate this further by the giant schism between GMs who judge by rank and those who judge by numbers, and things get really wacky).

I've seen a number of ways to address this: Include powers in the auction, base the game around roles with stats derived from that rather than vice versa and so on. So full props to the DRPG for getting as far as it did, and I think the idea is valid, but I think it can be taken a lot farther.

-Rob D.