Introduction: Arcadian and Silvervine Games

[Adam Dray]

"I'm a firm beliver in 70% of any game is up to how the GM runs it so we try to give a base for the GM to build off of."

I think that's true if the game design gives the players (including the GM) only 30% of what they need. The theoretically perfect design gives its participants 100% of what they need in terms of social framework, procedure, and system. In such a system, all the participants have to do to have a great game is to play exactly according to the game text. The text can give firm rules, firm procedures, or general guidelines. These are all part of the system.

Certainly, some things can't be helped, like players who don't want to participate or GMs who want to ruin the game for everyone (consciously or not). You can't design for everything. But you can try to make that 70% that you say is "up to how the GM runs it" into a 25% or 10%.

The question for you is, how does your game design guide the GM and players towards the kind of game you want it to be? How do you tighten up the margin for error caused by a bad GM or a GM having an off day?

[Arcadian]

I think that's true if the game design gives the players (including the GM) only 30% of what they need.

Hmm. Well I can see that if a game design only gives a certain amount of guidance they're going to trail out into any direction they want.  I"m quoting there though something which really struck me. It was from Robins laws of good game mastering. The logic, which I agree with, is that no matter how much you define or say this is how it should happen once the book/game/etc. leaves your hands what the purchasers do with it is fully up to them.  A GM who enjoys an action rules-set but runs a story game because his friends prefer it tweaks for more action as a matter of subconcious desire, and vice-versa.   Most GM's are going to run by the rules that are presented, I agree. 

The theoretically perfect design gives its participants 100% of what they need in terms of social framework, procedure, and system.

I don't know that I"ve ever seen a theoretically perfect system in anything, especially gaming.  I've seen so many people dissatisfied with one system, so many dissatisfied with another, there are at least 7 well defined archetypes of gamers and an infinite amount of sub-categories and cross over gamers.    I don't think we're aiming to be perfect or to appeal to all, but that people have fun in their ability to do what they want.  I choose to build this character in a way that lets me get out X idea when the system calls for it.  I can take skills that build up to that even if I'm not defined that way by my archetype.  My barbarian warrior is quite the linquist because of his 3 skill level in languages and 4 skill level in body language.  My small froofy actor is a whiz kid with his 3 in knife so while he is mainly there for the acting and the deception and the social status I gave him just a bit of edge for the combat time, but everything else points to his acting skills.

The question for you is, how does your game design guide the GM and players towards the kind of game you want it to be? How do you tighten up the margin for error caused by a bad GM or a GM having an off day?

We try to give general guidlines that move across most all instances. A standard system equation that covers most situations with modifiers being based on the situation and the chance of conflict resolution based off of the characters abilities and skills.  We bsed it off of 10 sided dice because of the common sense and ingrained "on  a scale of 1 to 10".  We also try to give guidelines to what those numbers from one to ten should mean.

Difficulty Factor   Meaning
10   Near Impossible – use appropriately
9   Nightmare (watch em squirm
8   Extremely Difficult
7   Hard
6   Challenging
5   Normal
4   Easy
3   Incredibly Easy
2   No challenge
1   Automatic

Of course there are more rules to conflict resolution than that, but this is part of the root foundation of the system. 
We also try to let conflict resolution against others (even NPC's) go against their attributes.  The difficulty numbers can be made up from others attributes (especially in spell casting) but also in combat, bartering, thieving, etc.  They can be modified by the GM and the situation but can be set for anything against another person.

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

The setting gives a fairly wide variety of options for the player to choose from.  It is entirely possible in cyrus to play a typical knight, ninja, mage, etc.   The setting does not limit what that particular knight, ninja or mage can actually do.  There are orders of knights that people can join, (whytegaard) but which have many different classes within them.  It isn't uncommon for a knight of whytegaard to be well versed in poetry, guns, herbalism, etc or for the knights to not wear armor (bladesingers) or to wear standard steel armor (palladin masters).  These classes though don't actually effect the way the mechanics give the character bonuses. They are archetypes the character can fit into .

-I'm seeing some pretty heavy exploration of character in your game.  Awesome!  I'm going to restate something I said before real quick just for clarity.  I'd really like to know about the mechanisms in place in your game that takes a character from being a humble gardener to an archmage.  What triggers these changes?

I'll try to give these two at the same time since I think the answer is fairly the same.  We like to encourage roleplaying above action, but leave in the action elements as well.   The system encourages you to bring out your character in your roleplaying and to have background reasons for most of your skills or other focuses (generic term for non skills).   I'm a firm beliver in 70% of any game is up to how the GM runs it so we try to give a base for the GM to build off of. There are rewards (low to high) for roleplaying your character, for engaging in action scenes, for developing your characters skills and keeping to the same path.

-Cool.  You've answered what kinds of behaviors are rewarded.  And I can see where you're going with this.  Not bad.  But I'm still unclear on how the PCs are rewarded. It's my fault for not being more clear.  So let me put it another way.  What kinds of rewards exist in your game?  What do the players and characters get for doing the things you listed above?

Peace,

-Troy

[Arcadian]

I think I'm having trouble making my words match my thoughts.  The concepts of the game have become so ingrained that I just accept them as part of game reality.

I'd really like to know about the mechanisms in place in your game that takes a character from being a humble gardener to an archmage.  What triggers these changes?

At character creation characters kind of fit two paradigms. 
One as the person they are without any of the adventures skills they have now.  This is shown by their profession basic.  Something non combat, non adventuring regular joe lifestyle job.  Tailor, gardener, farmer, banker, librarian,scholar, etc. 
One as the person that is capable of going on these grand adventures, saving the world and being the historical figure.  This is the result of all of their character creation.  This is the point where the player decides how much he wants these two lives ingrained.  Has his character always been the elven ranger? Was he raised by rangers and took it up? or has his life led him to the point where he begins this.  Maybe he lives in a town working as a tailor with his father, the ranger who protects the borders barters services. He trains them in the ways of hunting and woodsmanship for free clothing, maybe food, etc.   The skills the character has picked up as a tailor still reside within him. He may have taken up being a ranger, but he hasn't forgotten how to be a tailor. His time may be spent in going off to fight orcs, but in between being called up to do that he goes back to his shop and sews clothing.

-Cool.  You've answered what kinds of behaviors are rewarded.  And I can see where you're going with this.  Not bad.  But I'm still unclear on how the PCs are rewarded. It's my fault for not being more clear.  So let me put it another way.  What kinds of rewards exist in your game?  What do the players and characters get for doing the things you listed above?

I'm sure I"m being unclear, it's hard to unpackage my thoughts. I'm heartened by the fact that every playtester has adapted well to the system though.  Let me try to explain the reward system here and I'll post a condensed version in a reply on it's own. 

The standard reward system is a set experience awarded at the end of the session.  Characters gain experience by the way they play their character.  This expierence is used directly to purchase new skills, attributes, focuses, hit point bumps, etc.    The experience categories are varied so it's possible to gain experience off of playing different types of characters.  If you are a tactician you might gain experience by achieving a goal.  The GM would the be final arbitrater of how much experience is awarded.  This I don't think is a problem because the GM is the one developing the story and controlling most of the world.  If you play a warrior archetype and your prime character action is fighting then you can get experience for that.  If you play a social character or one good in town situations you could get good ROLEPLAYING EXPERIENCE.  If you play a military leader or a schemer, goal achieved, etc.    In essence the character isn't awarded experience, but the player is awarded for playing their character as fully as possible.

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

One as the person they are without any of the adventures skills they have now.  This is shown by their profession basic.  Something non combat, non adventuring regular joe lifestyle job.  Tailor, gardener, farmer, banker, librarian,scholar, etc. 
One as the person that is capable of going on these grand adventures, saving the world and being the historical figure.  This is the result of all of their character creation.  This is the point where the player decides how much he wants these two lives ingrained.

Awesome.  Does the player create two character sheets duing character generation or just one?  Like does he make a character sheet of what he is at the begining of the campaing and what he wants to be once he achieves his Big Goal?

The standard reward system is a set experience awarded at the end of the session.  Characters gain experience by the way they play their character.  This expierence is used directly to purchase new skills, attributes, focuses, hit point bumps, etc.    The experience categories are varied so it's possible to gain experience off of playing different types of characters.  If you are a tactician you might gain experience by achieving a goal.  The GM would the be final arbitrater of how much experience is awarded.  If you play a warrior archetype and your prime character action is fighting then you can get experience for that.  If you play a social character or one good in town situations you could get good ROLEPLAYING EXPERIENCE.

Let me ask if I understand you correctly.  PCs earn experience points, but there are different kinds of experience points.  Each kind is divided into a different "pool", so for instance you might have a Combat, a Social, a Magic, and a Religious pool of Exp.  The kind of Exp you earn determines where you can spend those points.  Is that correct?  I believe this is what you said earlier, but I just want to double check :)

This I don't think is a problem because the GM is the one developing the story and controlling most of the world.

This I want to caution you about.  If a GM creates the whole story, then he must also decide what the characters will do.  If he decides what the characters will do, what is the job of the players?  They're left with just adding personality to the decisions the GM has already made for them.  He's created the initial conflict, the rising action, the climax, and the resolution before the players even roll the first die.  Bleh. I would highly encourage you to make the game more about what the players want.  Create a mechanism where the players tell the GM what they want to do that day.  Let's say that a player needs some money.  He tells the GM, "I want to earn a bag of gold so I can buy a ship to sail to a far off land."  It would then be on the GM to facilitate that goal by giving the character an opportunity to earn the money, buy the boat, and then set sail.  Now I'm not saying the character succeeds 100% flawlessly, but the GM now knows what the player wants and the story is more driven by the people playing the main characters.  Make sense? :)

I look forward to your answers.

Peace,

-Troy

[Arcadian]

I hope this gives the idea of what we've got in place. It seems to me like a pretty standard video game experience system but instead of just based on killing things it's based across many different types.


SVGAMES EXPERIENCE SYSTEM: CYRUS

Experience and Levelling Up

Once you've created your character and have taken them out on the road a bit you'll find that the skills you started out with are not quite adequate to deal with new threats and challenges.  You'll also find that you've grown and changed as a character and may have picked up new skills. Like the character creation process the leveling up process is based on a point buy system.  You can buy new skills, increase old ones get focuses, but you can also increase your characters attributes, you can raise your hit points or use some experience to ensure basic success on an action once per session. 

At the end of every session you will be awarded with experience points. The experience points you are awarded are based on how you play your character. A character can be played in many ways and you have probably molded the character to fit certain needs.  They may be a fighter and made to do well in battle scenes.  They may be a thief and do well with stealing things by sneaking into buildings.  These would be rewarded with more points in the action category.  You may be very socially oriented and deeply involved within the story that the GM has set up.  If your character has impact on the story working his way through the twists and turns you may receive story impact experience.   If you are working towards certain types of goals and you achieve those goals then you may be rewarded with experience because of that.  If you put your non combat skills to good use, using merchant skills to negotiate with an innkeeper or archival skills to find that one tome of magic with just the right spell in it, etc, then you would be rewarded here.  Of course roleplaying your character and developing them within the game are awarded as well.  The GM may choose to add other categories into this as well to define the flavor of the game they wish to run. 

Experience also levels your character up.  When you gain a certain amount of experience points you raise in level. At this time your character gets a free hit point bump and their manna raises as well if they are ritualized. There will be a place on your character sheet to keep track of how many Experience points you've accrued, as well as how many you have left to spend. The amount you've gained never lowers but the amount you have left to spend goes by the cost of what you spend it on.  The experience system is kind of like a monetary system for skills. It is gained by the work you put into your character rand then used to build up what your character is capable of doing well. It is very important to keep track of this as the character and as the GM.

Not sure how good this table will come out, but we'll see.

)     )    

Category	None	Basic	Good	Great
Action (GM	0	1	2	3
Role-playing (GM)	0	1	2	3
Story Impact (GM)	0	1	2	3
Character Development (ASK)	0	1	2	3
Goal Achieved (ASK)	0	1	2	3
Good Skill Usage (ASK/GM	0	1	2	3
Archai Rules (If ritualized 1EXP per rule followed)	0	1	1	1
Unique Solution(Optional) (ASK/GM)	0	1	2	3
Code of Ethics (Optional)(ASK/GM)	0	1	2	3
Record Keeping (optional) (GM)	0	1	1	1
Game Contribution   (optional) (GM)	0	1	1	1

Extra Things to Buy with Experience

You can spend your Experience on a few other things than just skills. 

Increasing One Attribute Point
75 EXP
You can raise on of your attribute points by one.

Extra HP Bump
15 EXP
Add an extra hit point bump.

Will bump
10 EXP
You can spend 10 Experience points one time per session to guarantee success on one action.  You must have that much Experience at the time of spending.

Reflexes Cap Buyoff
By armor
You can spend experience on your armor as well.  You can pay the Experience listed in the reflexes modifier buyoff column and completely buyoff the reflexes cap.

[Arcadian]

Awesome.  Does the player create two character sheets duing character generation or just one?  Like does he make a character sheet of what he is at the begining of the campaing and what he wants to be once he achieves his Big Goal?

Well a person isn't really two personalities, we try to make the character sheet reflect both parts. He is still just a person in the world, but one who chooses to take up arms against a sea of troubles.    Maybe I'll incorporate a free previous life skill.  Get a skill of 1 in gardening if you were a gardener for your Profession. 

We've got a focus called profession basic.  Every character has one for what they do outside of adventuring.  Whenever they attempt a task that their training in that profession would help they get an extra dice to roll along with their attributes.  This could cover a wide variety. Being a scholar might give you a wide variety of actions that it helps if you can describe it well.  Searching for books sure, remembering stuff, sure, combat, no but if you were a scholar who studied combat styles you could get an extra dice to understanding how someone is going to attack or figuring out what style they are using.

Let me ask if I understand you correctly.  PCs earn experience points, but there are different kinds of experience points.  Each kind is divided into a different "pool", so for instance you might have a Combat, a Social, a Magic, and a Religious pool of Exp.  The kind of Exp you earn determines where you can spend those points.  Is that correct?  I believe this is what you said earlier, but I just want to double check :)

No they earn one set of experience points.  But you get that experience points by what you do.  If you don't do fighting that's fine you could be highly useful to the group inside of a negotiation and would earn experience for that. The only way you don't get decent experience is when you don't do much in the game. 

We are kind of styling this in the playing style of old school DND but with more open options for characterization.  So the experience doesn't really reflect what you can do with it, but in how you can achieve it.  We went this way because we felt it was best for a player to decide if they want to take their character in a new direction.  The person who starts as a tailor may find himself in more and more combat and want to get better at it. The fighter may be helpless in a social situation and decide to broaden his horizons. 

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

At the end of every session you will be awarded with experience points. The experience points you are awarded are based on how you play your character. A character can be played in many ways and you have probably molded the character to fit certain needs.  They may be a fighter and made to do well in battle scenes.  They may be a thief and do well with stealing things by sneaking into buildings.  These would be rewarded with more points in the action category.  You may be very socially oriented and deeply involved within the story that the GM has set up.  If your character has impact on the story working his way through the twists and turns you may receive story impact experience.   If you are working towards certain types of goals and you achieve those goals then you may be rewarded with experience because of that.  If you put your non combat skills to good use, using merchant skills to negotiate with an innkeeper or archival skills to find that one tome of magic with just the right spell in it, etc, then you would be rewarded here.  Of course roleplaying your character and developing them within the game are awarded as well.  The GM may choose to add other categories into this as well to define the flavor of the game they wish to run. 

Experience also levels your character up.  When you gain a certain amount of experience points you raise in level. At this time your character gets a free hit point bump and their manna raises as well if they are ritualized. There will be a place on your character sheet to keep track of how many Experience points you've accrued, as well as how many you have left to spend. The amount you've gained never lowers but the amount you have left to spend goes by the cost of what you spend it on.  The experience system is kind of like a monetary system for skills. It is gained by the work you put into your character rand then used to build up what your character is capable of doing well. It is very important to keep track of this as the character and as the GM.

-I've read everything over very carefully.  I have to say that I'm struggling very hard to see something that your game accomplishes that other games, already published and with much greater entrenchment, don't already do.  Character classes and levels are cool with me.  They're just as good as any other mechanic.  But what does trouble me is how you are using them.  I'm not seeing an origonal take anywhere.  You talk a lot about starting as something simple (tailor, blacksmith, runt) but don't incorperate that into your rules very well, if at all.  It's sorta up to the players and/or GM to decide what the PCs start out as, what they do to advance, and how they end up.  You might ask, "But isn't that the way it's suposed to work?  Give them a bunch of freedom and they'll love it!"  The answer is no.

-When someone picks up a new game they are looking for an experience they have never had before.  It's unlikely that your game will be carried and advertised by the likes of Wal-mart, Barnes and Noble, or Target, so the people who check your game out will, in all likelyhood, be quite familiar with RPGs.  They likely will have played not just D&D, but also stuff like Rolemaster, GURPS, FUDGE, Deadlands, L5R, and Vampire.  And those are just the popular ones.  How many times in those games do you think they've gone from scrub to legend?  Lots.  I promise.  So what you have to do is give them a new way to do it.  That means constraining them some.  It means offering descrete, but not suffocating paths to advancement, rewards, and fun.  It means a little bit of telling them what to do.  Too much freedom can become an enemy of creativity.

-Your game has to give the players something they've never had before.  That's what will attract their attention and their business.  Same thing with cereal.  Kellog's Corn Flakes is an amazingly popular cereal.  They sell millions of boxes all over the world every year.  If a new cereal company wants to start up and make cereal, they'll look at Corn Flakes and think "If we just put our own flakes in a flashy new box, people will buy them by the truckloads!  Maybe we'll even include a toy for the kids!  That'll work, right?"  No it won't.  Look at your cereal isle at the grocery store.  There's tons of different kinds and I'd be willing to be there's more out there that your store doesn't even carry. 

-That's the problem you face as a RPG designer.  Your corn flakes are probably quite tastey.  I bet you have a great recipe.  But there's no way they'll notice your box, regardless of how flashy it is, in an isle with a hundred other boxes more narrowly focussed to appeal to their personal tastes.  Your game must find a niche, or better yet make one.  We can look at D&D or GURPS or Vampire and say that they appeal to a large and diverese group of people.  Okay.  Cool.  But after them, the market is horribly segmented.  Unless your game zeroes in on a target group of people and offers them a play experience they've never had before, the customers will just keep pushing their cart down the aisle- especially with the ease of shopping the Internet grants them. 

-So I'll end by asking a question I hate to ask.   I hate to ask it because it's almost a last ditch question, almost a flippant question.  But here it is, "What can your game do that no other game can?  Where can it take players that no other game is capable of taking them?"

Peace,

-Troy

[Arcadian]

I guess I wouldn't say that we are really trying to be original or have a breakout game, but to present a style of gaming that exists between the two extremes of fully story driven and fully combat driven.  We're aiming for a more character driven in your options for creating unique characters with enough combat and action based numbers and rules to satiate the power gamers and the butt-kickers in the groups.

See we're not really aiming to do something new or unique or change the paradigm, just to give a different option inside of it. 

We're trying to make our rules easy to follow, your character choices high and the use of your rewards from how well you bring out what you wanted to of your character.  Sure this leaves it very open to personal interpretation, but that's the point.  A lot of people I've played with say well I'm playing this character because it's the closest to what I"d go for, but it's not perfect.  We're just trying to open up that style of play more and go for a system that emphasizes roleplaying and story.   

It is still supposed to appeal to the types of people that go out and play mainstream games.

I bet you have a great recipe.  But there's no way they'll notice your box, regardless of how flashy it is, in an isle with a hundred other boxes more narrowly focused to appeal to their personal tastes.

I think that tends to do more with what you do to market it, and now adays the internet has numerous ways to get to those people you want effectively.   I doubt our game will ever be on the same store shelves as DND and vampire, but I've rarely seen gurps on those same shelves even at comic book stores.  I've rarely seen palladium or most other smaller press games.  We've got some good ideas and groundwork laid out for our marketing to get to the people we think would be intersted in this.

I do notice that most games on development here tend to be more focused and niched.  I've always found those games fun, but not very lasting.  After playing ninja burger a few times I'm ready to do something else where the goals are different or I can explore more options.  That is the essence of where we are going.  Explore more options with your character. 

We may be skating the line between paradigms but that is the goal we were looking for.  I still plan to post the level 0 guide we are in the process of making up here and hopefully that will  reinforce the stance or give a better concept.    Our main goal is not that people playing this feel like they've done anything different but just that they have fun in doing so and got to keep a little more of the choice to themselves.