Help classify Ygg & why would you play it?

[Christoffer Lernö]

When I first came here to the Forge I got trashed (I know you didn't mean it that way, but that's how it felt like :) ) presenting Ygg. I didn't even call it Ygg at that time, I only came up with that for convenience remember?

Anyway, I had a hard time answering your questions about WHY one should play Ygg and how it was different.

I'd like to revisit that discussion now, and hopefully I'll have more useful answers for you this time. Feel free to trash me mercilessly as usual if I'm barking up the wrong tree. :)

Now, I can't really answer why YOU would play it. I can only answer why I would play it (and not an AD&D clone).

I'm not gonna put this in any particular order other than taking the stuff most easy to explain first.

* Colour. Ygg has it's own brand of colour with quaint details like demonic magic and savage elves. This is a personal taste kind of thing.
What might interest more than me is my philosophy towards it though: "don't put in filler material". Here I'm a little inspired by computer and video games. They have to capture the imagination with EVERY single unit (at least this is the philosophy in games like Blizzard's Starcraft and their upcoming Warcraft III). So rather than doing a lot of mediocre stuff, try to do a few things really really really cool so people want to keep playing them.

* Setting. This is not so much the history and background of the game but the openess of the setting to create new adventures. I still have to make sure it will work like that, but it's something I want to enjoy while playing it. I remember how I had to break pretty much every fantasy setting I ever used because I couldn't fit in my epic story. This has already been covered in other threads though. Still it's remarkable how many fantasy RPGs there are out there with unplayable settings. Usually they are unplayable because they either: a) fix the setting too much b) provide practically no setting aside from some names and cosmology (many free rpgs on the web fall into this category) which doesn't help at all, c) create an insanely unplayable (although it might be cool and interesting to read about) world or d) don't provide any world whatsoever.
I want to provide enough world for the GMs to have something to start from. Kind of a "this is an Ygg town, this is what you can set your first adventure in, and if you wonder about how in general things can be expected to be, it's a little like this, but we won't tell you limiting things you can't use"

* System. Although it (my system) might not turn out to be anything revolutionary, at least I can remove those pet pevees I can't stand in fantasy. Like too random skill resolution (if you'd run the olympics in most fantasy RPGs you'd have people doing the long jump evenly distributing their jumps between 0 and 10 metres. Even with bell curve die mechanics the situation is usually not much better). Or bizarre combat situations (in BRP the better you and your opponent are, the more likely you are to hurt each other and in AD&D it doesn't matter if your opponent ever fought a single bout, as long as he's well armoured it's gonna take insanely long to hit him anyway, not to mention that few games are up to the task of simulating sucker punches and the like). It doesn't mean my system's gonna be perfect, I'm just gonna think about those glaringly obvious things you run into if you play a "run around and be a hero" kind of campaign.

It's not more than that. So why don't I do a D20? Well because D20 is a combat system I can't abide. And skill resolution I can't stomach. And a magic system I can't use (if one is thinking about AD&D), so there's not really much left of the D20, is there? Otherwise I could have used it. And in fact in the beginning, when my idea was much more primitive I intended to base it around some other game mechanic instead. I've done a lot of tweaked fantasy worlds before.

Of the reasons I have though, I like to think that the stuff about "no filler material" is the most important.

Now, over to something else. The GNS of Ygg. Or rather, what GNS is Ygg designed for. Here are some ways to play Ygg:

* Explore the unchartered world where ancient mysteries lie hidden and discover forgotten races and monsters (Sim/setting)
* How is it to grow up to be a hero in this world, how does it feel to encounter strange monsters and alien beings (Sim/character)
* Explore and find treasure and defeat ever more powerful monsters without dying (gamist)
* Become the most powerful and famous hero (could be facilitated by introducing a "fame"-metagame mechanic to keep track of it) (gamist)
* Telling a story about heroes battling to save people from monsters (narrativist)
* Telling the story about young friends growing up to be heroes (narrativist)

As Ron already pointed out, these are just a few ways to play it. But what's the friggin focus? The whole point of the GNS analysis is to move the game from incoherence to coherence. Right?

So I'm pondering here, what the heck do I want out of Ygg?

Well before my inner eye I see this group of friends, neophyte adventurers. They're all dressed differently, you know just like the typical 4 person D&D party with the difference that they don't look like they're taken from D&D. But the idea is the same. They're different from each other, they're all very well defined (which explains why I eventually decided that character classes was the way to go). They all wandering along some old path in a forest. Autumn must be coming because there is plenty of leaves on the path. They all seem to dressed for adventure. Maybe they're heading towards some old ruin or something. Maybe they just heard of legendary treasure being buried there, maybe it's the home of the monsters that are raiding the villages around here. In any case they seem confident in their abilities - for now.

What does that tell me? Well you could be playing anything, and I already made a game example, right? So I can only answer it myself, and my interpretation is that the characters just as well as the players don't know what's gonna happen. They expect the GM has some plan and they're eager to find out what the mystery is. Unlike AD&D, the mystery doesn't need to be a battle, although it's very likely to be one. They're neophyte adventurers, indicating that they will keep adventuring and the players will follow their adventure becoming greater heroes. It's not about exploring the players themselves though, as much as experiencing the adventure (which seems to hint at Sim/Situation?). It could be played in a gamist fashion any day, but that's more of a side-effect.

I'm too new on GNS to give a correct analysis I fear.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Christoffer,

Based on this post and also on our (extensive) private conversations, I'm seeing Simulationism with a solid Situation focus, all the way. Since no Narrativist Premise seems to be happening in your description, "what happens" is very much a matter of what the GM has cooked up, blended in play with immediate and highly "let's see!" reactions on the players' parts.

So the GM's responsibilities are (a) to cook up something way cool to do or see, and (b) to respect the players' reactions and be able to "fit" them into a path for another way cool thing later.

And the players' responsibilities are (a) to enter into situations enthusiastically, as in, "A wood-elf maiden stumbles into our path, pursued by a demon wolf? Holy crap! We're on it! What's up with this?"; and (b) to enjoy the imaginative elements involved at all points.

Do I have it? If so, it's big-time Simulationist, priority on Situation, I think, probably with a lot of functional Illusionist technique required on everyone's part. Sounds coherent to me.

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

Christoffer,

Your above analysis proves that it's probably the game for you. But it doesn't say anything about anyone except for you. Is your assumption that, if you like it then others will?

I think it may well be coherent as Ron points out, but that just means it's not going to annoy anyone with incoherance (GNS is really a small thing). Are you concerned at all about whether other people will like it? I forget if you have aspirations of people besides yourself playing.

Mike

[ks13]

I don't think that you should get hung up on this. Trying to squeeze everything into a single concept or premise might be counterproductive. Let the game go into play-test mode, and the actual play might reveal the best aspects. It will be whatever you and the players always tend to gravitate to, the common threads and themes that will crop up from game to game. You can try the different modes of play, and see which one fits the best.

If you want to center everything around a common theme, I would say that the magic system should take center stage. That's certainly what caught my attention. The fact that your game doesn't offer any specific individual bit that is so revolutionary that everything else in the game revolves around it, means that you shouldn't try to artificially create one.

Your lists of reasons for wanting to play Ygg is exactly why I would give a try. The method of game play that I would use would be "game exploration" (I don't think that is a GNS method). I want to go through the system to see all of the cool parts of the rules and settings, and then try them out in play. See how they work. That would be my approach to an open-ended system such as you are proposing.

[Mike Holmes]

The method of game play that I would use would be "game exploration" (I don't think that is a GNS method). I want to go through the system to see all of the cool parts of the rules and settings, and then try them out in play. See how they work. That would be my approach to an open-ended system such as you are proposing.

That would be Exploration of System, a well defined mode of play. One of my favorites in a way. In any case, I think that parts of Ygg, especially the magic system (if/when it gets refined) as you mentioned, KS, would work well for exploration of system.

Mike

[Christoffer Lernö]

And the players' responsibilities are (a) to enter into situations enthusiastically, as in, "A wood-elf maiden stumbles into our path, pursued by a demon wolf? Holy crap! We're on it! What's up with this?"; and (b) to enjoy the imaginative elements involved at all points.

I think you have it (except I'd often play the coward turning out to be the bravest one in the end who'd suggest we should run the other direction instead, but might be besides the point).

Sim/Situation? Ok I'm cool with that.

[Christoffer Lernö]

Your above analysis proves that it's probably the game for you. But it doesn't say anything about anyone except for you. Is your assumption that, if you like it then others will?

Well, the first priority is to make it something I like, because that's a good starting point. If I don't like it, what's the odds others will?

I think I'm getting to the point I feel pretty sure it's moving towards a game I'd like to play, so along the way now I'm trying to gather people's opinions and see if there are stuff I can change which will keep it a good game for me and which will improve it for others than me. Trying to having coherence is one thing I can improve, so that's why I feel I should look into that.

As the game is still not fully conceptualized, especially some important decisions regarding the magic system, I can't be sure if suggestions are due to misunderstandings or not. So if I sometimes does not seem eager to change things this might have a little to do with it. But I do listen to everything you say.

Of course, you cannot please all people all of the time and I accept that. I'll just try to do the best I can. Game testing will probably be the most important way to make it playable to "everyone else", but I've yet to reach that stage (I did playtest it half a year ago, but Ygg today is different in many way). Unfortunately playtesting might have to wait a long time as I'm in Taiwan at the moment. But on the other hand it give me time to try to develop concepts further.

Does that answer your question Mike?

[Christoffer Lernö]

Let the game go into play-test mode, and the actual play might reveal the best aspects.

Yes, unfortunately it's not possible at the moment, but I agree it's extremely useful. When I have the game in a more coherent state I'll send it to a friend to playtest in Sweden. That's the best I can do right now unfortunately.

If you want to center everything around a common theme, I would say that the magic system should take center stage. That's certainly what caught my attention. The fact that your game doesn't offer any specific individual bit that is so revolutionary that everything else in the game revolves around it, means that you shouldn't try to artificially create one.

Hmm.. yes, people have been looking at the magic and being interested, but I myself see it only as a piece of colour. I think the neat stuff about the magic and taint is that it produces some neat "tragic heroes", because those people using magic are doomed to succumb to demonic influences in the end despite their noble goals.

(There is actually a wealth of stuff I have yet to work on, like the whole "magical items" thing. I have dwarven made things, which pretty much duplicates the usual "magical item" of AD&D clones, and then the demonic variety which magicians can create themselves. An interesting (and quite possible) path for warlocks would be to create magical artefacts they could use instead of their spells because that would reduce the taint they would get. Of course using demonic items can be bad too, and it's certainly not supposed to be as nice and flexible as using spells, but it provides a way out. Aside from these things, there are many types of talismans and other protective devices to ward off evil. And we haven't even ventured into the realm of dwarven runes and the troll and witchpeople's ritual magical seals. Again this is a result of me working from first principles rather than trying to invent add-ons)

If I reach my goal then everything should be as colourful as my magic. Races, monsters, fighting, skills & professions. All of it.