Who Influences You?

[Tim C Koppang]

And I will again try my hand at design...

http://www.students.uiuc.edu/~koppang/roleplaying/content/Influence_Draft.pdf

I'm posting a link to a game I've been working on (in my spare time - what spare time?) sinse December. I'm in the middle of rewriting the rules for clarification, and I was hoping for a bit of input along the way.

The game is called Influence, and more or less it's about character motivations. I envision a very hero based setting with these mechanics, one where the characters come from a long lineage of ancestors.

When I started writing the thing I was very interested in the Bid Roles Concept presented in the rules, but I've kinda shifted focus to the entire idea of memories. Here's where I'd like some input. How can I push the idea farther?

Other highlights (if I can toot my own horn):

It uses drama for a guaranteed success mechanics.

I'm really kinda diggin the idea of simultaneous scenes wherein all the action still has to focus around the main characters.

Other Question:

How do people fell about the competitive nature of Bid Roles and Chips?



I'd appreciate any input.

[Mike Holmes]

Pretty neat. Lots of interesting ideas. The system empowers players a lot, however I don't see what the premise is. You may want to indicate that the GM should insert a strong premise, or even give rules to do so. Otherwise all I see is that characters have motives. That's a bit broad.

One clarification. You state that a Bid Role can step outside that role to play a larger or smaller role in that scene (at the loss of their reward for the scene). But then you say they cannot employ the powers of that role. This seems somewhat contradictory. What can you do when you change Roles, and what can't you do?

I was a bit confused by the actual bidding mechanics, too. Do bid chips go to the pot? Why the specific size of the pot (players x 8)?

Mike

[Tim C Koppang]

Mike,

Premise
The premise is still in the works, or rather it's in flux.  When I first began, I wanted to design a game that, as you said, empowers the players a lot - and so I put all my effort into developing the Bid Role Mechanics.  From there I came up with the Char Creation Rules & all the stuff about Freedoms and Restricts etc., but all the while my premise was murky.  If you didn't notice, there aren't really any explicit Char Adv rules included beyond Memories, which allow you to take more wounds in the future.  This idea intrigued me, and I consequently began to develop the idea of memories as influencing people's actions.  So, yes as the game stands the GM needs to insert his own premise, but I think that as I continue to develop the game I'll eventually come up with something a bit more explicit.

Motives
As far as motives are concerned - these serve a similar purpose to kickers in Sorcerer, but with a much broader scope.  They are meant to give the GM a tool to frame scenes with, and to provide an immediate set of goals of which provide emotional significance for the characters/players.  On the other hand, I link them directly to memories and battle scars.  When your character has received more battle scars then he currently has active motives for, then that character will die.

The system is meant to encourage character death.  I want previous characters, that a player has run, to influence and develop the character that player is currently playing.  I see memories and motives as a way to encourage this.  The reason I linked motives/memories and battle scars to death is so that as a player continues in a campaign he will have compounded and complicated influences/issues to work with and experience.

Bid Roles
Just a disclaimer: your confusion about bid roles is somewhat expected.  That's the part of the rules in most need of a rewrite.  But I'll try to clarify nonetheless...

I see the powers (directorial power, etc.) of the Bid Roles as separate from the amount of influence a character has in a given scene.  In other words, powers are separate from spotlight time.  When I say they can step outside the boundaries of their Bid Role I am talking about gaining more or less spotlight time.  When I say that the player does not ever gain the powers of a more or less influential role, I mean that he does not ever gain directorial power etc.  Does that make sense?  I wanted to regulate spotlight time, but leave room for adjustments on the fly.  At the same time, I didn't want to have everyone gaining directorial power at just the cost of their scene rewards.

Bidding Mechanics
At the start of every new scene their is a new bid round - the result of which will determine who is a main character, who is a supporting character, and who is a background character.  The bid works exactly like a poker game, except that their are no "calls."  In other words, if you want to keep bidding for a more powerful/influential role, then you have to raise the bid.  Chips that are bid are place in the center pot.  The only way to earn new chips is from the center pot.  When all is said and done the Bid Roles are divvied up according to the highest bidders.  For example, if their are four players and the group is using the default chart then the top bidder gets to be a main character, the second highest a support character, and everybody else is background.

The pot starts out with a certain number of chips so that players can earn chips as soon as play starts.  The chips in the pot at the beginning of the game act as kind of a buffer to make sure that the pot isn't emptied too fast.  I chose # of players X 8 arbitrarily until I can do some play-testing to refine the number.