[dungeonkind / S&S] Digging for hidden gold (long)

[Kesher]

Howdy all.

Sean Stidd (aka "Calithena") and I recently discovered we were both working on games that were trying to approach our original, gut reactions to Dungeons & Dragons, back when we were kids.  Though our actual designs are very different, we've both gotten interested in the similarities and differences between how we're approaching the (essentially) Narr core of our respective games.  After some discussion, we thought it might be an interesting experiment to post a "joint-design" thread, soliciting comments on both games at the same time (hopefully with some fruitful compare/contrast conversations.)

Evolving rules for both games can be found on Sean's forum,  here.  The original discussion of dungeonkind on this forum can be found here.  The core of the rules are basically the same, though it's already been expanded quite a bit past its generative two or so pages (sorry to all of you who liked it's brevity...)  If anyone would
like the raw rules document as it currently stands, just lemme know via pm.

On to the discussion:

Sean's game, Sorcerers & Swordsmen, asks: "How are you a Hero?  What will your Destiny be?" ("Destiny" here meaning, "effect on the world")

dungeonkind asks: "Why are you an Adventurer?  What do you seek in the wide and lonely world?"

Sean's asking a "how" question and I'm asking a "why" question, both buttressed by a "what" question which, as a sub-question (if you will) of the primary query, leads directly into the mechanics of each game.

We're both trying to find, through the reason the characters adventure in the game, a connection to whatever it was we once experienced through Exploration (in the Forge sense) of the D&D game world (or maybe atmosphere, since it wasn't really any coherent "published" world that ever really excited me, anyhow...)  i.e., Exploring D&D Color (which, at least for me, included paging millions of times through the rules and supplements themselves), soaked into a self-created Setting, with a traditional focus of SITUATION/Character which slowly mutated into CHARACTER/Situation, both without much luck, since both combinations were hampered by System.  (Sorry for the jargon overload, but it helps me think...)

For me, the pure Color of D&D, hamstrung as it was by a System that said it accessed that Color, but actually didn't, burrowed into my youthful brain like an imaginal parasite that has never been expunged.  So much so that the brokenness of the System itself has now become desirable Color to me.  So much so that I've added it into the game as a goddam resource for characters.  Whew. 

Anyhow, we've both got Narr-engine games going now; however, dungeonkind is definitely higher octane Narr.  Sean's take, from an email, goes thusly:

My goal is really to produce an experience that I actually got with D&D (this is important and a place where I think maybe I differ a little bit from most other people in our situation - now and then me and my friends actually got satisfying play on the mythopoetic
level out of D&D and our subsequent homebrews), although heavily drifted versions. If that's a Sim experience or a Nar experience or an Incoherent experience that's all OK with me, because it was a satisfying experience.

dungeonkind pushes harder at the Narr center, I think, with a very non-traditional mechanic (thank all the gods for Vincent Baker!) that, when I first understood its potential, blew my mind.  It's double-good, in that it supplies conflicts that have the potential to flow like the conflicts in books or movies, and is all about players making their characters do what they want them to do!
However, this first bit we want to talk about is really the gateway to our respective actual mechanics. 

In dungeonkind, each player chooses a BEAST for their character; this is the reason they Adventure.  The BEAST has four HUNGERS, all of which must be sated in order (divided into character-level groups) for the player to win the game for that particular character.  Each BEAST also has CLAWS, player-chosen triggers and pressures (a Person, an Emotion and a Fear) for the DM to vex them with during play.

This'll be clearer with an example:

Character: Morgan Ironwolf, shield warrior from Ice Fang

THE BEAST THAT GNAWS MY HEART
I seek the Black Ring of Ithiquil in order to damn my husband's killers to the 9th level of Hell.

CLAWS OF THE BEAST
Person: Ghost of my dead husband
Emoton: Love
Fear: Betrayal

FIRST HUNGER (levels 1-3)
I must raise money for a ship and crew to sail to the Isle of Dread; there I will find inscriptions on certain ancient monuments that will tell me how to find the Tomb of Ithiquil.

SECOND HUNGER (levels 4-6)
I must have the inscriptions deciphered and find my way to the Tomb; there I will recover the Black Ring.

THIRD HUNGER (levels 7-9)
I must gain power over the Ring; then I can force the devil whose talisman it is to do my bidding.

FOURTH AND FINAL HUNGER (levels 10 on up)
I must track down each of my husband's five killers one by one and send them screaming to the lowest level of Hell.

The character either achieves their goal (and retires: The blacksmith/Lord of the Keep/whatever, who used to be an Adventurer) or is destroyed trying (choosing to die or retire:  The bitter, often maimed, former Adventurer.)  They must sate each HUNGER by the end of the level-grouping or begin to suffer system-based consequences (extra Threat levied against just them, in a contextually relevant conflict category(ies), which will push them towards death or maiming fairly quickly.  The extra Threat can be removed by sating the previous hunger.

Each BEAST is stated with the above formula: "I seek _______ in order to _______ ."
Each HUNGER, similarly, "I must _______ (sometimes a second clause separated by a ;) ."

CLAWS are chosen randomly, one for each character in a given adventure (yes, Sean, I am already stealing from you...)  The DM is expected to work them into the action at hand, giving the bare bones of each character's story a chance to take on flesh (so, y'know, it can be more fully GNAWED upon.)  Thus if the DM were to draw, say, "Love" for Morgan while setting up an adventure, she would be expected to include that emotion somewhere in the potential event-field; e.g., a couple whose betrothal is threatened by an outside force, a hideous undead lich infatuated with an innocent peasant girl, a princess scornful of an admirer who happens to have Morgan's ear, etc.  At character creation, at least one CLAW is chosen for each category; I'm thinking that, at each new level group, another CLAW will need to be chosen.  This may be in addition to those already existing, or it may be a change to an existing CLAW.  Decisions about these things would be made contextually.

SO, with all of this, (look out for jargon), I'm reaching for Exploration of Character through a roughed out, player-guided Situation (later added to by the DM), using D&D Color as an actual resource in play (which I can certainly describe more here if needed), filtered through the System and as the substantial meat of both Setting and Character concept.  Am I hitting the mark?  Any obvious flaws?  Hopefully Sean will shortly be posting his Destiny mechanics for cross-comparison...

Aaron

[Calithena]

Thanks for firing this one up, Kesher!

So anyway, because our imaginative ideas are so close together, and because our mechanical approaches are so very different, we thought a joint design thread might be (a) highly beneficial to us and (b) interesting from a theoretical point of view. Here's how Kesher laid it out to me in an email:

I've gotta say, as I read more of your game, we're definitely working on the same wavelength; at one point we both actually say "make the character you want to play."  Perhaps early experiences of hopes vs. frustrations with DnD fell along very similar lines for many people...  You've got Destiny, I have THE BEAST THAT GNAWS MY HEART (the driving force behind each Adventurer); you have larger-scale Destines as characters go up in lvl, with goals that must be met to advance without consequences, I have level-based Stages of Satisfaction for the BEAST, which if they are aren't met cause a spiral of negative mechanical consequences.  Anyhow, I don't need to go on; you can just read the game and see for yourself.  Needless to say, I was smiling as I read.

Kicking things off with Destiny mechanics seems as good a way to start as any for Swordsmen & Sorcerers, though they're part of a big overall structure involving a lot of components. In reply to Paul Czege on making the same character over and over

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?t=1095

part of the idea with the Destiny mechanic is that you make a character to do something, and then you do it. So in that sense what I'm doing is all about wish fulfillment, getting that stuff out of your system. But also about placing it in a larger context that's created by the group.

So here's the mechanic Kesher wanted me to post. Thanks to Ron Edwards for help with terminology/categorization (in Sorcerer & Sword, natch):

Destiny and Winning the Game. A player wins the game when his character attains its destiny. To attain your character's destiny, you must successfully guide that character through an adventure where your destiny is the goal of the adventure. After you have attained your destiny, your character is retired to whatever position in the realm their destiny leaves them in.

Choosing a Destiny. There are many possible types of destiny for your character to attain. Here are some standard choices, which are by no means mutually exclusive or exhaustive of the possibilities:

• To attain some position: Emperor, King, Overlord, High Priest, Right Hand of the God, Demon Lord, and so forth.
• To stand at the crux of some conflict: With this sort of destiny, a great struggle (political or metaphysical) hinges on the characters' decisions. The character's ultimate meeting with his destiny might involve tipping the balance in a war between two kingdoms, or bringing on the final battle between Law and Chaos or two factions of gods, or other things. To make this kind of destiny interesting, the character should choose lots of connections (see below) to entities on both sides of the conflict, and should try to keep both sides real choices until the adventure where the destiny comes to pass. The goal of such adventures will be to decide which side of the conflict prevails. Not deciding is a kind of failure here, and in addition you may have to see your decision through to win the game.
• To become an Immortal Power: characters who win through their 20th level without declaring any other destiny become Immortal Powers, hero-demigods and archmages whose many deeds define them less than their nature as champions, scourges, guides, and mentors to others seeking their own destiny. Such characters will never become kings, or do the very greatest deeds their world offers by themselves, or make the ultimate decisions that guide the fate of gods and kingdoms; rather they have devoted themselves to guiding others to this end, both during their own career as the companions of destiny-achieving heroes, and subsequently in their life as Immortal Powers.

When Can I Attempt to Realize my Destiny? As soon as you have specified your destiny and your character reaches the appropriate scale (rank?) to qualify for it, you can attempt it. Let the GM know you wish to try for it, and the next adventure will have your Destiny as its goal. (See below.) You must declare your intention to the GM as soon as you reach the highest level in the appropriate level range, if you have not already. Your character's level relates to his or her destiny with respect to what's at stake in it. If your destiny is just to return your father's sword to the family hearth before the winter chill sets in, that could be attempted any time, even at first level. On the other hand, if your destiny is to save the world, or to be the one who decides the battle between the old gods and the new, you're looking at something firmly in the province of 20th level characters. Here's a chart relating character level to what's at stake in your destiny:

Character Level What's at Stake
1-3 Your own family, local community, small village, etc.
4-7 Populous farm valley, substantial town, etc.
8-11 Large city, barony, etc.
12-15 Kingdom, large duchy or barony, several city-states, etc.
16-19 Empire, continent, large kingdom, several kingdoms, etc.
20 The whole world, the gods, Immortal Power, etc.

Interpreting this chart for position-obtaining destinies should be pretty self-evident. Priests should have their religious authority evaluated in terms of equivalent temporal power. Characters who wish to gain status as divine agents, demon lords, and that manner of thing are actually angling for an Immortal Power destiny with a particular twist, as the agent of a deity. Monster-slaying destinies depend on what the monster/s are threatening. (This allows us to place Beowulf between 4th and 7th level.) 'Crux of the conflict' destinies depend on who the conflict is between; rate them according to the stronger side of the conflict. (A character who is the crux of a conflict between several city states has a level 8-11 destiny, therefore, not a level 12-15 one as a character who was trying to conquer all those same city-states and bring them under his yoke would be.)

The GM's Role: When a character with a declared destiny reaches a level where he or she can seek it, and the player of that character wants to seek it, the GM designs an adventure with the goal being for that character to attain his or her destiny. The GM should really pull out all the stops for such an adventure, using every single one of the destiny-driven character's connections for complications during the adventure (in addition to the one or more coming from the other PCs).

There are a couple of restrictions on this. First, if two or more players' characters qualify for a destiny-fulfilling adventure at the same time, the GM may choose one or more of them to run for first, with the others to follow in subsequent adventures. Sometimes it works well to weave fates together, but sometimes it doesn't. Second, the GM always has the option to postpone a destiny adventure for one full adventure after the destiny was declared. That is, if someone decides early in the first adventure that his character's destiny is to inherit his family's land by cleaning out the spirits haunting their ancient manor house during character creation, the GM doesn't have to provide an adventure in which this destiny can be achieved until the second adventure. He can do it right away, of course, but GMs often need more time than this to prepare.

When Should I Decide on my Character's Destiny? This is a mostly individual question. Some people know from the very beginning of the game that they want their character to carve a kingdom out of the wilderness, say, or to save the world. Others may not have any idea. Furthermore, if you're content to be a supporting character, you can still win by making it all the way through 20th level and becoming an Immortal Power. And it can be fun to start a character based on a loose idea ('he's a Dwarf') and only later discover in play that he's descended from the Dwarven Lords of Eld and is entitled to re-establish his Kingship Under The Mountain, except for this one small problem with a dragon that's taken up residence there. It's often good to establish the destiny a few adventures before you're ready for a destiny-fulfilling adventure, because then the GM can build up to it a little, and the play experience will often be more meaningful. But if you arrive in a great city-state at 7th level, and determine you want to rule it, and there aren't conflicting destinies from other characters, you might find yourself in the position of Invincible Overlord of Valyr before 8th level is even over!

Why Should I Choose a Destiny? Fantasy RPG characters, in my view, are (or can be at least) avatars in an imaginary realm of the player's personal fantasies. What is fantasized about is as varied as people themselves, and will be constrained to some degree by the setting of the game. But getting that wish fulfilled in imagination is a big and satisfying part of play for a lot of people. These rules are ultimately here to help you do that. When you imagine a character, many of us also imagine what that character is there in the world to do; if so, that's his or her destiny, from the first moment they are conceived. The setting materials that come with the game can be good motives for picking out a destiny this way. You might find that decadent empire in the southwest quadrant of the world map alluring, for instance, and think "I'd like my character to be a gladiator who rises through the ranks to rule that place." If you can overcome the challenges the GM puts in your path, that's exactly what you'll get to do with this system in place.

If nothing like this occurs to you at the beginning, no worries. Play your character like you always do, and wait until something that you really want, that's good enough to be the defining event of your character's life and story, comes up in play. Then, when you know what it is, declare that to be your destiny and start angling towards it!


Here's an additional related bit that may amuse old hands from the character creation section:

Level 1-3 characters are Exceptional People. They may be relatively young, or older but untested, but characters of this level are people to be reckoned with, or at least watched out for. They have abilities well beyond the ordinary. Many fantasy characters start out their careers at this level.

Level 4-7 characters are Heroes. Characters of this level have virtually always slain a dangerous monster, performed heroically in battle, saved at least one small town or isolated valley from ruin, discovered some arcane secret of import, or generally done something to distinguish them as a person to be reckoned with. They are well known and respected or feared in the areas they have traveled, and somewhat beyond. Beowulf and Cugel the Clever both finish up in this power range.

Level 8-11 characters are Superheroes. A character of this power might have slain a giant, saved an entire city from destruction, served as general over a king's armies, ruled a small region, or achieved some notable arcane discovery. All the notables of a given fantasy world will likely have heard of characters in this level range, at least if they are on the same continent. Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser are characters who eventually reach this power level, as is Bilbo Baggins.

Level 12-15 characters are Warrior-Queens and Sorcerer-Kings, characters whose potent ambition and grand destiny lead them to decide the fates of large nations or great religions. Their names are known throughout the world, often for centuries after they die. Dragonslayers and wizards for whom spells are named are common at this power level. Arthur and Conan fit comfortably at this level range.

Level 16-19 are Epic Heroes, beings who transcend normal mortal limitations to rule empires and hold the destinies of whole peoples and ages in their hands. Demon lords and demigods are suitable foes for heroes of this level, and they raise and lower empires, world-spanning religions, and magical civilizations with their actions. Their names are remembered as long as men draw breath, and even supernatural powers pay such persons heed. Kull, and Elric at the time of "The Dreaming City", are examples of Epic Heroes.

Level 20 characters are Demigods, individuals who become forces of the world in their own right, like Hercules or Kane. Classic wizards like Gandalf or Merlin are level 20 characters as well, 'immortal powers' who guide other heroes to their destiny. Heroes whose actions directly save or destroy whole worlds, like Elric in Stormbringer (who does both), also qualify as level 20 characters. These characters can conquer nearly any foe, rule nearly any kingdom, and master nearly any magic, and probably already have.

[Levi Kornelsen]

THE BEAST THAT GNAWS MY HEART
I seek the Black Ring of Ithiquil in order to damn my husband's killers to the 9th level of Hell.

CLAWS OF THE BEAST
Person: Ghost of my dead husband
Emoton: Love
Fear: Betrayal

FIRST HUNGER (levels 1-3)
I must raise money for a ship and crew to sail to the Isle of Dread; there I will find inscriptions on certain ancient monuments that will tell me how to find the Tomb of Ithiquil.

SECOND HUNGER (levels 4-6)
I must have the inscriptions deciphered and find my way to the Tomb; there I will recover the Black Ring.

THIRD HUNGER (levels 7-9)
I must gain power over the Ring; then I can force the devil whose talisman it is to do my bidding.

FOURTH AND FINAL HUNGER (levels 10 on up)
I must track down each of my husband's five killers one by one and send them screaming to the lowest level of Hell.

The character either achieves their goal (and retires: The blacksmith/Lord of the Keep/whatever, who used to be an Adventurer) or is destroyed trying (choosing to die or retire:  The bitter, often maimed, former Adventurer.)  They must sate each HUNGER by the end of the level-grouping or begin to suffer system-based consequences (extra Threat levied against just them, in a contextually relevant conflict category(ies), which will push them towards death or maiming fairly quickly.  The extra Threat can be removed by sating the previous hunger.

Each BEAST is stated with the above formula: "I seek _______ in order to _______ ."
Each HUNGER, similarly, "I must _______ (sometimes a second clause separated by a ;) ."

I don't know if you're hitting what you want to, but this is pure, undiluted awesome.

[Calithena]

OK, Aaron, here's a question for you:

How are you intending to deal with group play? Like, if you've got 3 characters with different Beasts, how do you weave all that together in play?

One way is to do parallel adventure construction - again, check Sorcerer & Sword for ideas.

Something that might work is to constrain the steps by way of their setting/location. Like if your sample above was one of three characters in a game, the constraint would be that that stage all happens on the Isle of Dread.

A vague literary antecedent for this would be Moorcock's The Vanishing Tower, or possibly the quest for the Holy Grail, where it all leads to the same castle in the end.

It's actually not a super-common literary set-up though, and could even seem slightly hokey - but it's very D&D.

But whatever you think of that, what are your plans for working out multi-player games?

[Kesher]

First, Levi, thanks for the kind words!  If you wanted to expand on what you like so much about it, that'd be awesome too!  :)

Second, Sean, well, that's a good question, and one I haven't completely answered.

Something that might work is to constrain the steps by way of their setting/location. Like if your sample above was one of three characters in a game, the constraint would be that that stage all happens on the Isle of Dread.

Actually, it's funny that you took this tack, because it's more or less what I have in mind, at least at the beginning.  I'm thinking that all the characters created at the beginning of play have the same, somewhat large, geographic location in mind as a frame for their first HUNGER.  That being said, I'm not really sure how to encourage "togetherness" beyond that. 

One way might be to have the first Adventure involve their zeroing on a central goal (getting to the Isle of Dread, in this case.)  That sort of thing happens all the time in the literature, though usually it's the "main" hero (Conan or whoever) accreting fellow rogues just for that story.  However, I'm building up some ideas about the "Adventurers Guild" as a recognition by these outsiders that, however different their end goals may be, they all have a BEAST to contend with, and that fact binds them together on a deep level.  I want to make this a concrete resource as well, some sort of "boon companionship" bonus for players to use whose characters have Adventured together a certain number of times.  This will follow characters even if a given group of Adventurers splits up, only to reconnect later.

Which brings me to another thought about the actual group of Adventurers perhaps being fluid; after the journey to the Isle of Dread, say, if one of the players wants to use a new character for awhile, they simply connect their HUNGER to the general location of one of the remaining character's second HUNGER, and go from there.  The thing is, there'll be plenty of time for Adventures that aren't directly focused on sating a HUNGER; and, even if the Adventure is aimed more at one character, all the others still have active CLAWS to be used by the DM.  I really like the idea of echoing themes within a given character's story, of greater and lesser intensity, being played out while a different character grapples with larger issues.  Pressure is key.

I do, however, also like the idea of occasional parallel Adventures.  I haven't read Sorcerer & Sword since last May; one of my friends borrowed it, and I've yet to get it back, though it sounds like I need to!  I wouldn't mind some more advice or source material on structuring parallel scenarios, though I suppose that's a bit off-topic.  Actually, as I sit here and write, I more and more like the idea of mixing the two, group and cut-scene parallels.

One last thought:  I've also toyed with the idea of, for lack of a better term, "preludes".  They were about the only things I liked in Vampire and Werewolf, this idea, as a type of Kicker, really, of what propelled the character onto their current path.  Each character would get a short prelude in the initial play session which, if handled correctly, would invest everyone present in everyone else's characters.  I'd actually like to include the other players somehow in the (predetermined) action/outcome.

Aaron

[Levi Kornelsen]

First, Levi, thanks for the kind words!  If you wanted to expand on what you like so much about it, that'd be awesome too!  :)

All righty...

The specifics of calling it 'the beast' is slightly a overblown, dramatic statement, and thus perfectly gets across the point that this isn't just a set of motives for this character, it is, in many ways, the set of motives for this character.  Which is good.

There aren't any half-measures; this is a do-or-die quest.  It's perilous.  It's ugly.  I can see plenty of ways for it to fail, end tragically, burn out the character, result in the fateful words "so, do you say anything as you die?" from the GM.  And adding more perils on the way would be dirt simple.  Which is great.

The structure you've got for it supports that end very well, and very simply.  Which is awesome.

As an example - If I were to take this, fleshed out with some advice on creating good Beasts and Hungers, even expanding the Hungers to one per level, and start a completely standard D&D game using goals built like this as a flat-out replacement for experience points, my play group would be riveted.  Which is pure, undiluted awesome, because flooring my players is good.

So, I'd say you're on the right track.

[Calithena]

You'll have to decide what's right for you, Aaron, but here's my take: let's think concretely about what the players do. They make these characters with a Beast: that seems individual. So then you've got the paladin who wants to slay the god she serves, the revenge killer in your core example, and the barbarian buccaneer who wants to rule the seven seas. What the fuck are these people going to do together?

My design essentially says: character (a) is going to be a minor character in character (b)'s saga sometimes, and vice versa other times, and eventually as characters die or work out their destiny everyone gets a turn. That's a solution with some drawbacks, but I've reconciled myself to those.

Your design by contrast (and I really definitely recommend Sorcerer & Sword to get lots of good ideas for GMing techniques here - let your friend keep the copy and buy another one - Ron deserves the custom) seems to demand, with the stages, that everyone is going after their own thing.

That's why it seemed to me that your only viable option for content was the setting. You sit down to play: everyone's got the beast and you're playing out a new stage, right? (Your game elegantly solves the high level/low level problem if I understand it correctly: no reason a first stager can't join up with a third stager, is there, mechanically speaking?) So what do you do next?

It seemed to me that the thing to do next is to get the players to agree that all these stages would play out in the same place: the Isle of Dread, the Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl, the Free City of Haven, wherever. This gets hammered out by the players, maybe taking some cues from Universalis on how to negotiate what the place is like, in advance.

So then we at least know that all these stages are going to get worked out in the same place, which makes bangs and crosses and weaves and just in general connected NPCs and issues across the adventures much easier to prep.

The one drawback I see to the idea here is that you can't really do that at the beginning of a session and expect the GM to do much to prep the collaborative location you've put together. So you'd either have to do it at the end of the previous session - which might be exhausting and/or difficult - or else via email/whatever between sessions, which doesn't work for a lot of groups.

But anyway, the basic idea of using the stage locales as a unifying tool for bringing together characters with disparate Beasts seems like it has some promise to me. The question is just how exactly to work it into play. My solution was effectively to have the GM design the stages (goals in S&S) with player input of various kinds, but given what you're going for in terms of play experience I think that won't work for you.

[Calithena]

(responses to offline discussion)

The question I was addressing above, as I see it, relates to managing the experience of play.

You've got a small group of characters with a series of Hungers. And then the question is, is each adventure going to address all the Hungers, or are you going to break things out to focus on one Hunger per adventure?

My thought was that the more challenging and potentially more rewarding answer is to get everyone's Hunger in there for each adventure. (This is not what I do in S&S, but I think if you can swing it it's a better way to go, and I think your mechanics have a shot at helping you do it.)

But this is tough. If you have adventure input = 3 different characters with 3 different hungers, and you don't want to constrain character types or creation especially, there's a challenge in unifying all that imaginary material. One way to do it, a way you'll probably have to take and for which Sorcerer & Sword will be invaluable, is to run criss-crossing adventures.

My modest suggestion was just that when you sit down with a group to play it all happens in the same imaginary location: a creative constraint on situation. So if they're all at an item stage then they're off to a tomb that has all the items together, maybe, or if one needs an item and one needs to cast a terrible spell and one needs to secure a favor from a prickly ex-lover all those things are together somehow at the Tower of Indomitable Circumstance. I don't know if this works or not but it might make GM prep more manageable and I do know that in general creative constraints like this are very useful.

I do think rather than just including CLAWS (like my including connections rule) you should try to have everyone's Hunger on the table every time, if you can swing it. I think you'll get a more powerful play experience that way. (Anyone who's played Otherkind or has a sense for dungeonkind want to chime in on this? It's a pretty central question for the design IMO.)

Kesher wrote:

How do characters go up a level in S&S again?  Is it entirely goal-related?

Yep. You get 1 level per successfully met adventure goal, and half  level per unsuccessfully met one. Connections let you redefine success relative to the GMs parameters. That's it. Nothin' for combat or roleplaying or any of that stuff.

I loved that idea of Levi's of breaking the HUNGER down into level-by-level goals, with the completion of each one determining your raise in level.

It is a nice idea, but if I were you I'd keep the Hungers as the 'levels' and stick with a relatively small number of them (3-6 say, with 4 as you have it already seeming just right to this armchair quarterback). I've wanted to do this with my six scales several times (having level and scale both in S&S is aesthetically unsatisfying) but then I have to completely redesign the combat system, etc. which is why I haven't. So that Morgan's career is, effectively, four adventures, spread out over 4-10 game sessions say. I really think that's the sweet spot you're looking for with your design. But this is something you need to decide for yourself, how long those character arcs are going to take to play out. I would try to go for a shorter number on this, though, because that's where an engine like yours can kick the ass of an engine like mine, let alone the games that inspired us long ago.

[Kesher]

My thought was that the more challenging and potentially more rewarding answer is to get everyone's Hunger in there for each adventure. (This is not what I do in S&S, but I think if you can swing it it's a better way to go, and I think your mechanics have a shot at helping you do it.)

I agree with this.  CLAWS can still function as an extra goad, but yeah.

My modest suggestion was just that when you sit down with a group to play it all happens in the same imaginary location: a creative constraint on situation. So if they're all at an item stage then they're off to a tomb that has all the items together, maybe, or if one needs an item and one needs to cast a terrible spell and one needs to secure a favor from a prickly ex-lover all those things are together somehow at the Tower of Indomitable Circumstance. I don't know if this works or not but it might make GM prep more manageable and I do know that in general creative constraints like this are very useful.

The really tricky thing with this, as you've previously mentioned, is how to do it without the process seeming completely contrived (I mean, the whole GAME is a contrivance, but you don't want it to feel that way...)  One possibility is to start characters in disparate locations and bring them closer together as HUNGERS are sated, to culminate in a common situation.  The literary model for this can be found in some fantasy novels, but is seen more strongly in Stephen King/Dean Koontz, etc. books, where protagonists are "drawn together" by a larger destiny at a central location.  I could see this relating to the idea that all Adventurers suffer torment from essentially the same BEAST.  I think I need to write out some "progressions" involving several characters (instead of just our beloved Morgan) and see what it looks like.

I also agree that my "progression of play" needs to be clearer.  Your text for S&S is great; it's very obvious who's doing what and when.  That's also a very attractive feature of other games like Polaris, Dogs, etc.  Not too hard to argue that it's become a defining feature of what many would call a "successful" design.

It is a nice idea, but if I were you I'd keep the Hungers as the 'levels' and stick with a relatively small number of them (3-6 say, with 4 as you have it already seeming just right to this armchair quarterback). I've wanted to do this with my six scales several times (having level and scale both in S&S is aesthetically unsatisfying) but then I have to completely redesign the combat system, etc. which is why I haven't. So that Morgan's career is, effectively, four adventures, spread out over 4-10 game sessions say. I really think that's the sweet spot you're looking for with your design. But this is something you need to decide for yourself, how long those character arcs are going to take to play out. I would try to go for a shorter number on this, though, because that's where an engine like yours can kick the ass of an engine like mine, let alone the games that inspired us long ago.

Hah, "My game can beat up your game!"  Maybe we could get a Celebrity Game Death Match going...  Anyhow, yeah, after sleeping on that one, I came to the same conclusion.  A HUNGER per level would be too much scripting, and make it I think almost impossible for multiple players to get anything done.

Now, swinging the other way, with each HUNGER being, essentially, a level, is a tremendously intriguing idea.  I'm very pissed that I didn't come up with it myself, actually :)  That would solve some problems I've been noticing with the amount of Grit that characters would build up as they went up a traditional level-ladder and how it would allow them to pretty much neutralize any Threat a DM might try to vex them with.  Absolutely.  And players would determine their own story-arc-length, deciding to go individual, or having everyone with a similar arc. 

Arrgh.  There's the bell.  Time to go supervise the lunch room...

Aaron