Explorer (My first playtest)

[masqueradeball]

I just got done play testing a game I'm working on that's tentatively called Explorer. Since this is the first time I've mentioned the game on The Forge I'd like to give a little overview of it, state my goals and then go over the first session to see what people think. Also, I'd like everybody to treat this as an invite to playtest the game.

First off, Explorer started with D&D. My friends still run it often so I find myself making a lot of characters in that system and I basically got fed up because of how much I knew that the game was giving anyone in our group what we wanted. What we wanted (I think) is a game about character and setting exploration where narrative and world building are primarily the priority of a fixed GM but where the players have a variable amount of co-creator status.

The game works like this:

1) Everyone names a genre convention that fits into the "traditional fantasy" mode that the game is set in. This is done in the open. Players gain Strength (game currency) for following/incorporating these conventions.

2) Each player writes down (in secret) three facts about the world they'll be playing in that set it apart from the real world/most fantasy settings. They then pass these sheets to the right where that player writes a fact about there facts and so on until each player receives their original sheet. The world facts are read aloud, checked for inconsistencies and then recorded.

3) Each player creates a character that consists of twenty "list items" 10 of which provide Strength (game currency) and 10 of which drain it. These are not causal, in that they do not represent things that the character is good at doing, instead they are single nouns that state something that expresses the character in "narrative" terms. For instance, a player wants to play a traditional knight. He writes down ten things that make him think of knights (say Battle, Swords, Horses, Maidens, Honor, Nobility, Heraldry, Strength, Chivalry and Courage) and then ten things that seem to counter the "knight concept" (say Deceit, Cruelty, Lechery, Books, Frailty, Farming, Caution, Poverty, Equality and Humility).

4) Each player explains their character.

5) Each player states possible relationships and other players offer for their characters to take them. A certain level of interconnected is established between the player's characters where no character is more than one step removed from any other player's character.

6) The GM poses a question that will me the goal of the story to answer. The idea behind this is that the question will be vague but intriguing. The journey here is the thing. The rest of play will be spent exploring the setting in order to a) establish the question, b) invest the characters in answering it and c) reaching that answer. The question for are game was "Will the sun rise again?" Note that nothing had been established thus far to give this question any significance whatsoever.

7) Each of the players poses a similar question. Exploring these questions will make up the play for the first chapter. A chapter ends when all of the given questions have been established and satisfactorily answered.

[masqueradeball]

OK, so I know that's not a play example yet... I started typing it out but I'm too tired for the full transcript. I'll get it up tomorrow though. Still, maybe some food for thought there.

[masqueradeball]

Okay, sorry about the delay: here's the actual play part of this.
So the game consists of me (Nolan= N) and three of my friends and long time gaming buddies: Braden (B), Clark (C) and K-Rad (K). This first section shows all of are preliminaries: genre conventions, world facts and characters.

The first round, creating the genre conventions went like this:
(N) Honor affects people's physical appearance.
(K) Good is drawn to light and evil is repulsed by it.
(C) Good is in the hands of the few.
(B) Xenophobia is practically non-existent.

The World Facts ended up looking like this:

(N)
Tonal (Mayan-style spirit animals) exist.
(B) Great destinies generate powerful tonal.
(C) If some one's tonal is captured, they can be affected.
(K) This order was imposed by the old gods.

The dragons have all been killed off.
(B) Those of dragon blood are feared and respected by the fey.
(C) There are rumors of dragons living elsewhere though.
(K) Dragons refer to the original gods of creation.

A "black word" was spoken centuries ago that made it so you could not know the name of god.
(B) All that is known these days is that the speaker was a dying priest.
(C) It is believed this black word was the spark that created sorcery.
(K) This word is rumored to be in a tome in some long lost tomb of the priest.

(B)
Everything has a spirit which can be reached by the properly trained.
(C) When someone is killed their spirit goes to the spirit courts.
(K) These courts resemble the mortal realm.
(N) These courts exist in the skies above the earth and in the rivers and caverns beneath the grounds.

The humblest beginnings lead to the greatest ends, if guided by virtue.
(C) Children and younger people are considered virtuous.
(K) Great beginnings often lead to ruin.
(N)  Astrology has arisen to see where on a path a person is. For they fear greatness at the beginning of things and humility at the end.

The Gods mysteriously left a long time ago.
(C) Divine temples and gifts still have power.
(K) New gods have come and gone, but their powers wane quickly.
(N) "Gods" are manifestations of the one God, but few people understand it.

(C)
Human kingdoms have been nearly demolished.
(K) The king of the largest died in battle and left no heir.
(N) One such kingdom chose to invite in Fomorians to flesh out its population and became a nation of half-men.
(B) The strongest nation was the first to fall and is now blighted by ghosts and undead.

Elvin magic is the strongest in the world.
(K) It is related to an ancient deal between them and demons.
(N) The elves used sorcery to dement the Fomorians, knocking them from their place as keepers of magic.
(B) Elves normally live to be 10100 years old, but this is reduced by a factor of 10 every time they cast a spell. There 101st spell hold immense power.

Dragons have their own sky kingdom.
(K) The kingdoms rove the skies rapidly.
(N) These dragons exist "in the sky" which is literally heaven, the after life, etc...
(B) The only way to visit the sky kingdom is by taking a tincture of potent plants and drugs.

(K)
There is only one kingdom of Men left and they are on the brink of destruction.
(N) This destruction was caused by a plague.
(B) Life in the kingdom is harsh and merciless in order to weed out the weak.
(C) The plague victims are bound together in a separate city.

Dragons are mostly kind and rule many nations and cities.
(N) These dragons are spirits only and their rule is delivered through mediums.
(B) Worship of dragons has replaced worship of gods.
(C) There are five different kinds of dragons which rule over different aspects of society.

Many unguarded, ancient ruins lie bare for pillaging.
(N) Many, if not most, of these places have been occupied by chaotic and elusive fey.
(B) They will barter and aid anyone's quest for the right price.
(C) Magic items are currency with the fey.

[masqueradeball]

There was some confusion on the difference between a genre convention and world fact, and I think we came to the conclusion that something was a world fact if the character in the world could actively perceive the phenomena and genre convention when it was more of an above board concept.

Still, I think B's "The humblest beginnings lead to the greatest ends, if guided by virtue." World Fact was misplaced and would have work better as a genre convention. I didn't bring it up at the time but in retrospect I think it need further clarification and discussion.

When dealing with the contradictions in the world facts (that mostly dealt with dragons and gods, because those words came up a lot) we just talked out a solution... we ended with the idea that the dragons were first and they created God who "created" all of the other gods who disappeared and that people only stated worshiping dragons after all the other gods appeared.

I wont write everything about people's characters but K ended up playing a sort of mercenary with little or no social skills who was perceived as being stupid. C) played the captain of a citizen run militia and B) opted to play an intelligent talking lion that was some unstated persons tonal.

No one accepted any of the relationships offered up by other players, but we quickly found that everyone had the same motive: restoring the human kingdom.

[masqueradeball]

Finally, the meat of the game was a little short and unfortunately not very meaty.

I started with the premise question, the one that, when answered, would end the story: "Will the sun ever rise again?"

The each player wrote up their questions:
B) "Who is St. Alister?"
C) "Why are the wilds growing?"
K) "When will the war with the elves begin?"

I started by narrating the story of four boys playing a prank on a wandering farmer who then chased them into a field. One of the boys cut his foot on an artifact churned up the the harvest and at that point C decided to walk his character Lucea (don't let the name fool you, the character's male) on to the scene.
I played the villagers as being dodgy and fearing anyone in armor. Lucea traced down the artifact that the boy had been injured on and dug it out from the now frosted ground. While he did this, K had his character Arthuren "Half-Witted" Malkas (wtf?) walk on. He began trying to inquire into what the boy had, but the boy resisted.
Arthuren gave up quickly and walked down the path that the man had been heading on, in the opposite direction which was away from the nearest village, Piraster. On the road he found a glade that had plant and animal life as lush and active as if it was mid spring instead of late November.
While Arthuren was exploring the glade B's lion arrived and asked after why he was there. Being an animal of the forest, I told B that his character has seen this phenomenon occurring often through out the woods. After talking for a few moments Arthuren decided to head to the village and B had his nameless lion follow in order to learn whatever the villagers knew about the phenomenon.
By the time they reached the village Lucea had uncovered the artifact and found it containing a word that seemed to be in his language but that seemed completely incomprehensible. The relic, a large round emblem, contained a picture of St. Alister and an inscription identifying him, but no one had ever heard of him. Lucea headed to the village with the relic to see if the locals knew anything.
All three character made it to the public house where the fearful villagers decided to consult their local dragon oracle who elected that one of the towns men follow Arthuren to the glade to confirm his tale. While in the common house Lucea noticed a fresco of the saint, but no one present was old enough to remember its meaning or origins and no one knew of any similar sights.
So, the three characters and the man from the donkey cart who had been "volunteered" to go with them by Piraster's elder went to the glade, whose green effect had grown far nearer the village .
While walking the lion smelled two elves he had seen in the village but could not see them, but a snapping twig revealed their invisible presence. They both revealed themselves and informed the characters that they were scouting how far the green had grown. They claimed the effect was caused by what was if effect "slash-and-burn magic." It would cause the land to become greener more quickly but would waste the land when applied over time. They also claimed the magic was Fomorian in origin and that they blamed humans for spreading it by inviting the Fomorians into one of their kingdoms (the kingdom of half-men from the facts sheet). After that the elves teleported away once they began to feel pressured to offer assistance, saying that they would apprise their king of the situation. There the game ended for the night.

[David Berg]

Nolan,

1) That brainstorming session sounds like a blast.

When you guys were going over the "world facts" sheets, how did you edit?  Did you, as main GM, exert any authority?  Was everything voted on, with everyone having an equal vote?  Of the 48 statements thrown out, was there any discussion of "which should see the light of play?" or was it intended for the 4 questions to determine that?

2) About the 4 questions:

It appears that there was no intent to connect the 3 player questions with the afore-stated GM question.  Is this because figuring out how to connect them should be a fun part of play?  If so, who's supposed to do it, and who's supposed to enjoy it?

Your description also makes it sound like the players gave you their 3 questions right before play started, leaving you no time to prep or think things through.  Would it have been better to do that at the end of the brainstorm instead?

You state that "A chapter ends when all of the given questions have been established and satisfactorily answered."  It strikes me as obvious that the answering should be played, but it seems from your play example that the "establishing" was played too.  Why?  Was this fun?  Would it have been more or less fun to do the establishing before getting into character?  (E.g., "Okay guys, you've all seen that the forests have been behaving strangely, starting a month ago but getting more drastic of late...")

I am looking at the 3 player questions, and my own GM brain decodes them thusly:
1) I want to pursue a mystery centered on an interesting individual (suggestion: a saint with a British name!)
2) I want to explore how a weird piece of the world works (suggestion: expanding foliage!)
3) I want there to be a war with the elves (I mean, does "when" really matter?  it's either "during the game" or "not during the game" at this stage of development)

I'd decode, because the decoded versions would be more useful to me in giving the players what they wanted.  But I might decode wrong.  So maybe I'd ask them to give me feedback in a different form.

Do you think the 3 questions you received effectively helped you to make the game fun for the players?

3) Finally, on using the brainstormed material and 3 questions in practice:

Was it hard for you to work in the requested material?  How much was prep and how much was improv?  What parts did the players get most excited about?  How did the excitement relate to the brainstorms and questions?

4) After you answer these questions, I'll probably have more specific questions about which players did what and when.  Your current description of actual play is an excellent framework to partially set the stage for discussion, but like you said, there's no "meat" on it yet in terms of player behaviors to show whether or not any of your methods succeeded.

Ps,
-David

[masqueradeball]

hmmm... lets take it from the top...

1) Editing: We didn't really, there was some discussion to the effect of "what did you mean by that" where things were rephrased a little before being finally written down. We just talked about how we thought everything fit together. The player who wrote the fact would answer questions to make sure that everyone understood what it was that they meant.

2) The idea of Explorer is to probe out the game world by connected what are, in effect, a series of dots. The characters are dots, the questions are dots and the world facts are dots. Ideally, the result would be everyone creating the SIS through speech until everyone could clearly see where all the lines were drawn. I still think this is a great idea, but at this point I think the basic outline has failed. World building is really fun, and I could spend night after night playing through these little mental exercises, but I think it failed to click.

3) The players did give their question right before play, and I have to admit that thats just my personal preference. GM-ing for me is a lot about the mental game of using info effectively and creatively right out of the box. I HATE prep, because I've found it universally sabotages me. I can do it. I can come up with ideas that I think are good or even great, but once their too thought out I feel it undermines what I want "my games" (meaning, games I run) to be about, which is using the raw creative material (in terms of various forms of input) I get from the players, to make a good experience for them using my creative abilities.

4) DECODING! Your a genius! Thats such a great technique that if I get to play test explorer more (the holidays killed my gaming life for a while, and my friends and are flighty to the extreme) I would definitely use it. It goes along my lines of thinking about character sheets... I think if you "decode" a character sheet in most games, you'll get a clear idea of what the players want.

5) No, the questions didn't help because we didn't play long enough to effectively explore the questions and the players were slow to get involved because they felt unsure about the system and I didn't really know how to offer support without creating new mechanics that give them more traditional abilities...

6) It wasn't hard for me, improv's my thing. I think my biggest weakness is that I expect others to be equally good at it. It creates a feeling of pressure that makes people back down and just "go along for the ride," which is unwanted.

Let me throw a question at you. I've obviously been following your posts (Rat Island and the earlier ones) and I think I get the picture of what style of games you like/where your coming from. Any advice, based off my current outline, of where I should go with this... my goal is to create a totally unabashed Sim game with a focus on Setting and situation that captures FANTASY in a way that D&D has failed to do for years...

[David Berg]

Nolan,

Crap, I kinda forgot about this, and now it's a little fuzzy in my head.  Here's the first big thing that jumps out at me:

my goal is to create a totally unabashed Sim game with a focus on Setting and situation that captures FANTASY in a way that D&D has failed to do for years...

That sounds like a fine goal, and I won't debate your usage of Forge terminology.  Here's the thing though: this description makes no mention of what seemed to be the coolest part, to you, of your playtest.  My impression is that you really enjoy creative contributions to the setting, not just during prep, but during the course of play.

What if you could sit down with some like-minded players, and have a way to basically engage in hours of, "let's look over here in the fantasy world and make up what we find!"?  In some structured way that ensured you wouldn't just be disagreeing with each other or running out of inspiration?

I think that would be awesome, but very different than the mode I have the most experience with, in which players contribute to the SIS almost exclusively via the actions of their characters.  I don't wanna give you advice on something that would be less cool to you than the sort of creative smorgasboard that Explorer could be.

FANTASY, to me, is largely about discovery and awe.  I need to encounter the unknown and these encounters need to have an impact.  Well, I find that to be impossible when my encounters are with my own imagination.  Fantasy as a writer/GM is of course a different bag.  It's about providing the aforementioned experience to others.  This division of labor is fundamental to my play history and my play goals with Lendrhald.

I'm going into all this because I'm assuming FANTASY means something different to you in terms of RPG application than it does to me (if not, Explorer makes little sense to me).  Can you tell me your own definition?

Ps,
-David

[masqueradeball]

Hmmm... Okay, so let me start by addressing what I mean by FANTASY. What I mean is this: I really liked Dragon Lance... I mean, those books, for a while, defined my adolescence. We already played D&D and to me those books told what D&D should feel like. Later, there were movies: Willow, Dragon Slayer, Legend and more books (Pern, Howard's Conan, etc...). I like these things,and these worlds. I've played Dragon Lance with various rules (AD&D, AD&D 2e, Saga, D&D 3/3.5)... and I've run and played in a ton of D&D campaigns where we tried really hard to feel like what we we're doing was exploring the kind of world you'd find in those fantasy books and movies. It never really worked. Moments worked, but thats because we cheated, when it really counted. I mean, at the time I thought we played by the rules, but I've never balanced encounters, or rolled for treasure, or awarded experience by the book or any of those things. That was the early days of my roleplaying, when we did D&D and fantasy and dreamed big and enjoyed it all because it was new.

The Vampire came along and changed everything. Other games followed but fantasy, in the traditional since of those sources I mention above, never really came back. Then it did. D&D 3 came out and it was exciting enough that we revisited it and we played and honestly the CCG/Board gamer in me and in a lot of my friends loved a game where your character's stats were, in effect, your CCG deck, and where each new book was an new set of cards to choose from, but my tastes as a roleplayer almost always collided with the game when other people ran it, because the game as written really doesn't at all support a player's (in the "PC" sense of the word) Right in the Right to Dream... the only person who can honor and protect that right is the DM, and the rules often don't help him there.
Still, we played D&D. I did it mostly out of a sense of loyalty to my friends and they did it because the crunch gave everyone something to do while not actually playing (reading the new books and talking about how to maximize the characters were big distractions) and it was the only fantasy game anyone was comfortable with. They played WW's line of games (from Vampire on down) and some others I think in large part because I ran the games and was always willing to take all the responsibility of knowing and managing the system. No wanted to learn anything new, but everyone wanted to run a D&D game so they could explore there cool fantasy premises and everyone wanted to play D&D so that they could explore there cool fantasy character, and through there character introduce some of their own cool premises to the DM's pre-established ones.

With explored I wanted to formalize this process without dramatically moving away from what I would call traditional role-playing (no extensive scene framing, limited player input outside of their character as instrument of input, etc...). I want to do this so that we can play games that simulate fantasy fiction while inserting our ideas of what and how the fantastic elements should be settled.

If I were to narrow my explanation down so that it wasn't just "fantasy fiction as I know it" I would have to go with something Steven King talked about in "On Writing." He said that "Stand by Me" was in effect the same story as Lord of the Rings or Watership Down. What he meant is that those stories are about people coming together as friends and struggling through adversity that brings them together through travel. Its a very core fantasy conceit, the setting and the world are all there to add a little fun to the whole thing. Dragon Lance, Willow, LotR, His Dark Materials etc... they all use this central premise...

[David Berg]

Ah, yes, I missed something... add "saving the world" to "discovery and awe". 

With explored I wanted to formalize this process without dramatically moving away from what I would call traditional role-playing (no extensive scene framing, limited player input outside of their character as instrument of input, etc...). I want to do this so that we can play games that simulate fantasy fiction while inserting our ideas of what and how the fantastic elements should be settled.

Well, unless you give the characters the power to control the whats and hows of the fantastic elements, then giving the players "limited input outside their characters" will also give them limited power to control the whats and hows of the fantastic elements.

How you intend to balance this would be a defining feature of the game in my mind.

Imagine you're a player in the ideal Explorer game.  What do you want to spend your time doing?  What's gonna be the most fun part of that, that would make you want to do it again?

Does it involve inventing the world?  Discovering a world that someone else invented?  Changing the world via your character -- saving it, conquering it, gaining status within it, etc.?  Or do you want to use something with DragonLance Color to play "people coming together as friends and struggling through adversity that brings them together through travel"?

[masqueradeball]

The ideal Explorer players primary enjoyment would come from two potential sources that I guess could be competing but I think would be able to be supportive of one another: 1) Getting that "click" when an idea they came up with (during world building and character creation) is influenced by the ideas of others in such a way that the end product would be "better" than their original idea as it existed in the vacuum of their own mind and 2) Getting a different "click" when their exploration did the same by revealing angles of the established facts/points to light that would never have in the vacuum of their own mind. In short it can be boiled down to a few words: collaborative exercise in imagination.