Initial investment

[Bankuei]

Hi folks,

I'm not sure if there is an official term for this, so I'm just calling it "Initial Investment"*- basically how much effort folks need to undertake before actually getting to play of any given game(assuming that we're dealing with a current group, or folks who all know each other and have a functioning social contract).

Initial Investment is going to change based on the group, the game, the Creative Agenda and a variety of factors.  

First and foremost, investment depends on familiarity.  If a group has been playing together a long time, they're usually comfortable with their social contract and chosen ways to play a given Creative Agenda.  Folks have a lot of investment to do to if they are trying out a new Creative Agenda, or trying a different method to the same one(the rift between different types of Gamism, for example).  

Familiarity with the actual explorative elements also shortens investment time.  Some games and groups only require a quick reference, often one that is familar to most people("Inspectres is like Ghostbusters, Dust Devils is like Unforgiven").  Others require deep knowledge, which changes, again, depending on Creative Agenda and group.

Gamist play demands knowledge of system, and the investment time increases depending on how complex the system itself is.  "No system" means figuring out how to cajole, bully, convince, or manipulate others into buying your suggestions is a strategy unto itself.

Sim play demands enough knowledge to fulfill the genre expectations of the group.  In some groups this is pretty light and hazy, such as what you might know from passing knowledge("Yeah, I saw one of the Star Wars movies").  In other groups this is scholarly and quite scary to new players("No, no, no, Hazien V has four moons, that means the holy day is shifted on the leap week...").

Nar play demands the ability to understand how to address premise in a way acceptable to the group(preferably enjoyable).  In this way, the major focus is knowing what actions are acceptable or not, AND reading cues from the folks around you.  

This isn't to say that there may not be high focus on other elements as well for any given CA, but typically they will at least focus on the methods above.  Overall, the deeper the knowledge of any or all of the elements necessary to play, the longer and harder the investment is going to be in order to familarise oneself enough for play.

Anyway, with all of that, things that generally minimize investment:
-Familiar genres or settings("Old West", "Star Wars", etc.)
-Simple systems or familar ones, which explains both the easy pick up of Inspectres and the popularity of universal systems.
-Easy to understand settings- using words familiar to the group, easy to remember("The Sun God vs. Yazagash the Kalbordian")
-Clear objectives about play("You fight monsters")

Things that increase initial investment:
-Long character creation
-Required setting details("Here, read from page 20 to page 153.")
-Required creation of setting details before play("...and I expect a family tree back 7 generations.")
-System, IF, the group expects the player to be self sufficient in utilizing the mechanics (such as most gamist play).
-Completely unfamiliar explorative elements("Here's my homebrew on the world of Azanarsh, using my Quibble system!")

I've been thinking about this a lot in terms of trying to come up with techniques or ways to reduce the amount of initial investment overall, especially for investment heavy games, such as Heroquest.  

Comments, thoughts, modifications, or suggestions welcome.

Chris

*I would also say there is "Continuing Investment", such as having to design a new plot every session, write up stats, draw maps, or design bangs, etc.

[jc_madden]

I think your question mostly answers itself.  If you listed factors that increase investment in time then find ways of reducing those factors.  Now for specific ways of reducing them you're going to have to give more info on what your player makeup looks like and the specific system you'll be using.  I'm not sure that there are any general rules that can be laid out that are helpful at all.

The only example I can give is when I had a group that never had anything ready before a game that would take hours chreating characters and eat up our precious game time I finally just started bringing sealed manilla envelops with pregens in them.  Then I passed them out.  IF the players weren't happy they could trade if someone else agreed.  A heavy handed solution to be sure but they had their OWN characters ready for the next session.

[Andrew Morris]

Chris, does Initial Investment refer specifically to new systems (i.e. games that none of the participants have played before)?

[komradebob]

Some thoughts, in no particualr order:

1) Inthisstyle has some tips for putting together convention scenarios, which are probably applicable here:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=13764

2)A long time ago, I asked folks here for ideas about what I termed "scenario oriented design". Basically, all it means is what would a design be like if the scenario in question was the only thing that existed for a game. People's responses and mulling them over gave me a couple thoughts:
A) You only really need what is applicable for the scenario, built with a system for what it does in the scenario. Example: The scenario has a spaceship. Scenario has a space battle. Mechanics only really need to cover this particular spaceship in this particular battle. They don't need to include everything for all spaceships in all battles.

B) Several folks who responded had experience with creating LARP events. Not so much MET/WW style ongoing events, but more one off personally crafted events. They were good about suggesting ways to introduce a large number of people in very short order to a game system. They also concurred with A) above, putting them solidly in the "System Matters a whole bunch" camp. One example that stuck with me was regarding a gun. In the example, what the gun did was allow a player to threaten folks and escape. No need for big complex combat rules and gun variants, because that wasn't why the gun was in the scenario.

3) On a personal note, I think a game can be tied together by setting, and not have universally applicable rules. Individual scenarios, with quick, scenario-specific rules (handouts might be nice here) can explore a setting with a variety of different CA orientations. Feedback from my fishing excursion regarding such a hypothetical product suggested a lack of commercial viabilty, but that may or may not be an issue.

Having said that, however, I would think that rules would tend to have a similarity between scenarios, if only because they were being designed by a single individual or small group working together.

I've read posts from folks here and at other sites that suggest I'm not the only setting monkey out there. It's clear that they really love their setting, but then bog down trying to create mechanics for their setting. I would propose that creating scenarios+rules with a taste of setting might truly be a better approach to such designs. I guess you might call it a shared universe anthology approach, sort of the game design equivalent of Thieves World or Wild Cards.

I hope some of that sparks ideas to help you with the initial time investment question,
Robert

[Bill Cook]

I've been thinking about this a lot in terms of trying to come up with techniques or ways to reduce the amount of initial investment overall, especially for investment heavy games, such as Heroquest.

If you have a game that's got a mechanic for everything, I find it helpful to pick the top five you want to focus on. I guess I'm just echoing what everyone said about only introducing what's relevant to the scenario. I tend to first make my system selections and then write a collection of situations to feature them.

When you read the one-sheet, I recommend a running monologue without interactive exercises. To me, its purpose is exposure. Then, when it comes up in play, give a command for each step of the exercise. (e.g. "Ok. It's a standard test of your Persuasion skill. Pick up that many dice, and roll two or more successes." I got three! "Cool. Now describe what happens." etc.)

In general, playtest your way to confidence, as part of your preparation. (This paragraph is more toward the context of a campaign, I guess.) If you can involve your players in playtesting, prior to the real thing, even, during another, ongoing campaign, that helps a lot, also.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I suggest that sexual foreplay offers the perfect analogy.

1. Either it does the job or it doesn't, given that "the job" is to get fully engaged in sexual intercourse. (accept that assumption for purposes of this discussion)

2. It results in all the participants being enthusiastic about moving into the next phase.

3. It provides (or results in) all sorts of specific physical circumstances which make the next phase possible.

4. It does not, itself, provide 100% satisfaction. (again, accept this assumption for the analogy for present purposes)

None of the above dictates how long foreplay should be, how much of it there should be, or the specific actions which must be included. Most of us would agree, I think, that dictating any of these things as general rules has a counter-productive effect.

So Chris, I think that the whole of the "before we play" process has to be extremely local and specific to the social and creative interests of the group in question. This raises quite a problem for the role-playing author, as he or she cannot help but make assumptions about how foreplay is "done right," and in most cases, cannot help but write the game as if the groups who use this game already agree.

Best,
Ron

[Keith Perhac]

Disclaimer: still asleep

I've been thinking about initial investment for games lately as well. I've always seen a massive barrier to TRPGs being that you have to read a huge ass book before you can even try out the game. That and the fact that in most cases, people need to have read enough of the rules to at least make a character, and understand which character traits will be useful in the game.

I thought of two solutions to this.

First, is just to make smaller games. Make games that are limited in scope and story. You don't have the whole world detailed out. You come up with a general theme, detail a town, and say "this game is set in this town. These are the things that are happening. etc" The game world takes about 10 minutes to read, the rules about the same, and the character generation about the same. I've spent more time installing Counterstrike than that.

The Second, I like a bit more. That is have a series of WELL-WRITTEN adventures and scenarious that can be played out of the box. The scenarious can cover a wide range of themes, stories, etc. But the important thing is that the rules for every situation that they come across is written in a sidebar on the side. Premade characters, with how to use each power on the sheet. If the characters have to take a car someplace, a sidebar in the book that says how to drive a car.

The GameMaster just has to read in order what happens, and follow the choices like a Choose your Own Adventure book.

Then, after the 3 scenarious, the rest of the book, the rest of hte rules, the whole complete game is waiting for them if they have an interest.

You can compare the scenario/whole game introduction method to a video game. The game Black and White as well as Sacrifice (and a lot of others) had a tutorial you had to play before you could start the game. It was 30-40 minutes long and involved things like "knock over the boulders. Move forward. Look at the monkey" and stuff like that. It was not interesting. It was not fun. It was the Video Game equivelent of reading a 300 page book. GTA on the other hand sets me off in the world. I read in the instruction manual how to move my character. Took 3 seconds. I get in a car, the instructions on how to drive a car pop up on the screen. I learn by doing in a natural way, instead of being forced to do something just to learn it. That's the scenario side

Sorry if I just rambled on there.

[komradebob]

Tangent:
Is Initial Investment inherently longer for campaign oriented play? I admit that there are several different common usages of "campaign" out there, so already the waters are muddied a bit. It seems like many games are designed with the idea that "campaign" play is the appropriate model to follow. Which, in my earlier years, with more free time available, I would have probably wholeheartedly agreed with. Today, with many personal responsibilities and a hard time getting together with other gamers and/or press-ganging my non-gamer friends into a session, I'm personally looking for other sorts of designs.  Succinctly, I want something that not only has a low Initial Investment, but that can be played to completion in 2-3 hours, in one evening, and is complete in and of itself.

Over at rpgnet, there's a guy ( Matt Turnbull) writing a column called "Fill in the Gap". He's got 3 one-shot scenarios up that pretty much fit the bill for me. They might be worth looking at to give you some ideas.
http://www.rpg.net/columns/index.phtml

Ironically, the author of the column in the first post suggests that these scenarios are something to "Fill in" between the real gaming ie: campaign play ( my interpretation).

Sigh. Some people are blind to their own potential...

Robert

[edited to site author, add link and give correct column title]

[Bankuei]

Hi folks,

Overall, I was thinking about ways on the part of a pre-existing group(not necessarily designers) to cut down the amount of investment.  Initial Investment was intended to include any effort before play, whether we're talking a group that is totally familar with the system and simply starting a new campaign("This time, GURPS Space Opera!"), or a completely new system and setting("Fireborn?").

And yeah, I'm right there with you Ron, on note of what it supposed to be about.  I figured I would state the generalities and see if I missed anything major in my analysis...

Robert, I don't necessarily think Initial Investment needs to be particularly higher for campaigns vs. one-shots.  I DO think that pre-generated characters cut the investment down significantly.  Consider that playing D&D for a shorter or longer period of time, making a character remains mostly the same for the players, while the amount of effort put forth by the DM depends on how long play is expected to last and whether modules are being used or not.  I'd say the bigger issue is how much effort needs to be put into familiarizing oneself with the explorative elements or not.

All that said, I would be interested in concrete techniques that folks may have for reducing Initial Investment and making it an easier transition for the group.

As it stands now, the techniques I have in my bandolier of tricks are:

-One sheets(or a couple of sheets, usually detailing setting and concept)
-Reference Sheets for rules
-Doing some basic "test resolutions" to run through most mechanics
-Introducing the simple mechanics to the more complex
-Movie/comic/book references
-Pregenerated characters/pregenerated modules/scenarios
-Visual references("Castle Morgenstein looks like THIS!")
-Index cards with basic info about things("The Sword of Serati was renowned for...")

If anyone has any other concrete techniques, I'd be very interested in hearing more.

Chris

[M. J. Young]

I thought of two solutions to this.

First, is just to make smaller games....

The Second, I like a bit more. That is have a series of WELL-WRITTEN adventures and scenarious that can be played out of the box.

I find it odd that a third did not occur to you.

I have never once played a role playing game where I, as a character player, had to read anything before creating a character or before playing the game. We had played dozens of card games and scores of board games before we discovered role playing games, and we handled them the same way we handled any other kind of game: one person read the rules and told the rest of us what we had to do to get started. Since those role playing games all required a referee, he was the obvious candidate to do the reading.

Sure, there are games where you have to do a bit of reading to create a character--point-based character generation strikes me as notorious for this--but I can think of at least three other ways to create a character (randomized, lifepath, and freestyle) which require only that the referee understand what is required and be able to answer player questions.

All that said, I would be interested in concrete techniques that folks may have for reducing Initial Investment and making it an easier transition for the group.

All right, this was a lesson that took us a while, and it's particularly effective in Multiverser, but I think it could be adapted to just about any sort of game. We call it On the Fly Character Creation.

The gist of the system is rather simple. We're going to start playing in about five minutes; we need to get characters together before we start. Take this piece of paper (we use specialized character sheets for this), and let's fill in whatever values are going to be important for this character. If he's supposed to be particularly strong, let's put down his strength. If he's got great skill at hacking computers, let's get a number for that. We'll put down the most important bits of equipment you can think of. Now let's play. As we play, we'll fill in the rest as we need it. Oh, we need to know how smart you are now; obviously you aren't claiming genius, or you'd have put it down already, so that means you're somewhere between below average and above average, let's agree on a number. Later, we come to water, and you want to cross it. Can you swim? How well? Obviously, you're not an Olympic swimmer or you'd have mentioned it already. That means you've got an amateur ability, and we just need to decide how good.

The way I see it, any score that is near average in ability doesn't have to be written down more precisely than that until we need to know it. So we start with the fragments that are outstanding about this character, and then we play, and then we fill in the gaps as we go.

I think this is somewhat analogous to the way Legends of Alyria handles equipment: if at the time you need it, if it's reasonable that you would have it, you always had it. If it's possible, but questionable, we'll talk about it.

This pushes a lot of the "prep time" into play, but since you're only going to fill in a score here and there over the course of the first couple sessions, and maybe one or two later on in play, the brief interruptions to get the numbers when you need them aren't really problematic.

Anyway, it works for us.

I should note in this connection that since Multiverser is an I-game, the player is a template for the character, and the question is whether you can do something and/or have ever done it. With a fictional character, we are in the more difficult area of whether you had imagined a character who could do this or not, and that would be problematic in gamist play particularly. Still, it's not unworkable.

--M. J. Young

[Keith Perhac]

I have never once played a role playing game where I, as a character player, had to read anything before creating a character or before playing the game. We had played dozens of card games and scores of board games before we discovered role playing games, and we handled them the same way we handled any other kind of game: one person read the rules and told the rest of us what we had to do to get started. Since those role playing games all required a referee, he was the obvious candidate to do the reading.

Actually, this is the standard way for me to play a new TRPG, and I thought it was for everyone else as well.  What I was more thinking of was 0 prep time games. Wherein you go to the store, buy the game, bring it home and can be playing in about 10-20 minutes.

I feel that a big barrier for RPGs (besides the whole geek factor, or people not understaning it) is that they take a ton of time to learn. Although usually there's a mentor type to introduce people to gaming, especially in my case, there was no such person. I spent 2 weeks reading all three D&D books cover to cover and still had no idea what the hell I should be doing.