Oscura: Heirs to the Throne (Initial Questions)

[Don Lag]

Hi all.

Historical Note:

I began Oscura a looong time ago while improving a D&D game at the beach wth some friends. I had a few ideas for a few new races, a few interesting house rules and what proved to be some very fun plot ideas and great NPCs.

As we continued playing during our normal sessions, the aspects I most cared for started distillig from the rest of the paraphernalia up to the point I thought it would be more rewarding (to me) to actualy create the game from scrap.

It wasn't long before I started focusing more on the game mechanics than anything else, and I eventually came up with a very cool, absolutely innovative, incredibly flexible dice mechanic. I would eventually find out that the basics of this game mechanic are being used (with variations) in games as Heavy Gear and Sorceror. That's what happens when you play D&D too long I guess. I also came across The Forge and posted some stuff and (I think) came to look at game designing from a much more enriched perspective.

I had two test sessions, one went pretty much awful and the other went much better. It took that to realize that I really didn't care very much for adventuring games at this point in life. I was much more interested in developing the NPCs that ruled the world than fanning out plot ideas (or "kickers" even) for the adventure-focused characters.

I've re-directed development on Oscura into this "new" game. It uses the same setting as Oscura and possibly the same mechanics but is focused at another premise. In this sense, if Oscura and Oscura:Heirs to the Throne (hereafter OHT) ever get finished then they could possibly run as parallel stories of a same campaign. I'm not trying to work this out yet though, but it's something I would realy love to eventually work out.

On to the game then:

The objective of this post is to gather feedback regarding the premise of the game and the few mechanical aspects I've worked out this far. The setting is presented very roughly so I guess any comments regarding would be more useful once I flesh out something a little more detailed. Oh, and don't hesistate to point out any grammar or spelling mistakes you might deem important; I'm an english native speaker but I use it as a second language so I'm always a bit rusty.

Setting:
"A golden age of science, organized religion, peace and economy has come to a grinding halt. Decadence is sweeping the Empire as extreme religious factions permeate the social structure, science is all but extinct, regional warlords battle fiercely backed by noblemen struggling for control of the now scarce mineral and agricultural resources."

Premise:
"The characters are in a position that could allow them to influence the events that are to shape the coming era by dominating the conflicts that are to arise."

Mechanics:
I'm sticking to the reduced attribute set originally used in Oscura which are Mind, Body, Soul. Where Body takes care of all physical performance issues, Mind of all intellectual, Soul of all spiritual. I have this much better defined somewhere, but it isn't what I'm focusing on at this point ad is pretty much obvious anyay (IMHO).

Now this is the part I'm working on as of now, and which I deem the most important and characteristic aspect of the actual game:

First of all, I'm considering that the game models character action as conflict resolution. What I mean is, all character action that isn't viewed as an important/decisive/non-trivial conflict is irrelevant to the mechanics. Thus, opening a door, mounting a horse, etc. are not intended to be modelled by the mechanic unless they become transcendent conflicts.

Conflicts are themselves viewed as instances where two or more entities struggle to dominate the other up to a point where conflict resolution is possible.

For example, under this perspective, in relevant hand-to-hand combat (always a favorite topic for examples huh?) the struggle for domination can be understood as the skirmishing where combatants maneuver, probe, feign, etc. in order to bring themselves to a position where effectives blows are possible (and probable). The actual blows are actions taken from standpoint of domination that are aimed towards resolution and can result in actual resolution, greater or sustained domination, or in lesser or even reversal of domination (with a succesful dodge a defender who might have been hardly managing to stay on his feets might position himself for an effective counterattack).

My hope is that this concept of domination can be applied to other types of activities; even though it had arisen from designing-the-better-combat-system. For example, during a negotiation the confict can or might be understood as attaining the greater benefit from the transaction. Here domination could indicate the degree to which a participant in the negotiation has been able to correctly assess variables of the transaction and introduce new variables with hidden values (that the other participants wil hopefully underestimate). At a point where the participant has sufficient domination of the conflict (i.e. the upper hand) he can opt to resolve the conflict (or at least try to), obviously this resolution would be to his advantage if succesful.

Domination itself will probably be a consecuence of accumulating succeses on successive challenge rolls relating to the conflict at hand. I'm considering what seems to be a Sorceror-type roll. A pool of d20s are rolled (the pool will probably be of size equal to the experience in the relevant Mean -as in Ways & Means - more on that further below) against an oppossing pool. Whoever gets the highest roll adds the number of dice greater that beat his challeneger's highest die to his domination. Example: suppose Gustav already has a domination of 3 over Jacob at trying to seduce Mlle. Marié. Suppose Gustav has a pool of 4 dice, and Jacob a pool of 3. Gustav rolls 8, 9, 12, 18. Jacob rolls 2, 6, 10. Tha means Gustav adds 2 to his domination since both 12 ad 18 are greater than 10 (Jacob's highest die). Gustav therefore has a domination of 5. At this point he might try to make a definitive move for Mlle. Marié (thus far they've both just had brief dialogues with her or have boasted before her). Gustav aproaches her and after little nonesense makes clear his intentions towards her. I'm supposing Gustav would roll a pool having some relation with his domination. For example, rolling his usual pool of 3 + 5 for domination for a total of 8 dice, against Jacob's measly 3. Mlle. Marié would have a certain difficulty to being seduced (I guess), let's say it's 6. This would mean 6 successes are necessary for seducing her. This makes Gustav's domination vital for any chance of success. An observation would be that in effect Jacob has made it easier for Gustav to succeed. If Gustav were to try t seduce Marié directly (not competing against Jacob) then maybe her difficulty would express a difficulty pool. Gustav's 4 would be against her 6 and at the same time 6 successes from Gustav would be necessary for succesful resolution. So I guess the competition makes Gustav more attractive to Marié's eyes. I think this is incorrect so far, since the worse the competition, the more domination Gustav would be able to get, thus making him look even better... this makes no sense, especially when translated to other situations I think. Maybe a better interpretation is that the resolution of the conflict between Gustav and Jacob is only the elimination of the competition, so Gustav wouldn't have to beat Mariés 6 but rather Jacob's 3 directly. Having beaten Jacob,he'd have cleared the way, and now must try to seduce Marié on his own accord: now that Jacob's out of the picture he's up against Mariés 6.

I know it's weird, I'm just starting to work out the actual mechanism so that it works on all types of conflicts and situations. A few things I immediately think might be considered (as a consecuence of domination acting as an ad-hoc currency) are:
* Limits to the domination a character can acquire.
* Ways of taking risks by part of the character being dominated so he can aspire to regain domination (especially necessary so low dice pools still stand some sort of chance again higher dice pools): hopefully this would rely on player creativity.
* Clear definitions or guidelines at least on how to recognize multiple conflicts that must be resolved in succession (as in the seduction example).

A positive consecuence I hope this element has in the game is that actions competing for domination seem to be able to correspond to rich narrative elements rather than pure gamist decisions (because I'm aiming for more narrativist than gamist play): "I run a few long sweeps against my enemy trying to distract him from the dagger in my left hand", "As he attacks me I use my free hand to throw obstacles at him (chairs, candletick) and slow him down" <-- both of these combat actions would probably have the exact same roll requierd with the same effect: competing for domination. I'm aware combat is still more tricky than this and I hope it might provide insight to more complete domination managment rules.

I can think of a few more positive and some negative aspects (in the sense of what the intended gameplay is) but I'd rather wait for some feedback.


I'll expand on the model of domination->resolution if it needs further clarification. I have no information of other games using this model explicitly, but then again I don't buy or browse that many games (I'm hoping that will change soon).


The element that should be fundamental to describing the characters mechanically are Means. Most of all the terminology I'm using is sadly provisional, but this part is moreso. I'm not comfortable wit the term Means yet (because mean is so polysemic) and neither am I with the names the Means actually have for now.

A Means is a method (perhaps they can be called Methods?) of dominating. Each means has 4 spheres of influence: personal, collective, local, massive. I'm not sure about the names for these spheres yet, but I'm sure I'll work them out sooner or later. I'll refer to them as spheres 1,2,3 and 4 respectively.

I consider for the meantime 4 Means, their (provisional) names, their descriptions and the descriptions of the reach of each of their spheres are:

Transaction: dominating through the correct estimation and assessmet of mutual benefits arising from trade.
1 - Haggle, bargain face to face over individual items.
2 - Carry long-term business and/or relating to many items on small scale, such as a shop or a trade route.
3 - Manage business on a local scale (such as a city or town), organizing imports/exports storage, optimizing returns, dealing with local commerce authorities.
4 - Organize business on a regional level. Establish trade/production networks between different sectors.

War: dominate through physical menace.
1- Hand-to-hand / personal combat skills.
2 - Command a small military unit (no more than 50 me) at small scale confrontations (compromising small geographical areas).
3 - Command an army of about 1000 men, develop strategies for controlling large scale geographical sites.
4 - Choose and direct other generals, organize and execute a war.

Persuasion: dominate through practical or ethical reasoning and argumentation.
1 - Interpersonal debate.
2 - Establish a coherent and convincing (persuasive) set of objectives around which a small group of people can assemble and interact constructively.
3 - Establish influence networks on a local scale answering to common objectives.
4 - Organize influence networks on a regional scale built on likewise regional objectives.

Seduction: dominate through charismatic behaviour and empathy.
1 - Generate empathy, interest towards oneself in another individual.
2 - Assemble a small group of people (i.e. a circle of friends, or a group of loyal subjects) who appreciate the character as a natural leader.
3 - Charismatically collect a number of followers to one's cause (around 1000 people).
4 - Establish a personal leadership of followers at a regional scale.

Now, a character may have experience levels for separate spheres under separate Means (indicating the number of dice in his pool when relevant). Thus, a character may have 3 expierence in Persuasion-2 (collective), and 5 experience in both Combat-1 (personal) and Combat-4 (massive). This would be expected, for example, for a character described as a military general with good team leadership skills and experienced hand-to-hand combat training.

An unfortunate consecuence of the name War for example, is that it might seem to relate to the ability to successfully perform in war at cretain scales of action. This isn't the correct idea, since bringing a war to successful conclusion needs not only of correct consideration of strict "military" matters but also of an adecuate inclusion of economics, political skills and maybe even a superior charisma. The means try to refer to specific sets of skills or abilities which should be often combined to manipulate conflicts under different contexts.


In principle all sphere are independent, i.e. massive is not considered to include personal. But the mechanics should allow for characters to utilize some experience from one sphere to another adjacent sphere.... maybe for each 3 levels at a collective sphere one can add 1 experience to personal or local actions executed by the same means.

[Ring Kichard]

Premise:
"The characters are in a position that could allow them to influence the events that are to shape the coming era by dominating the conflicts that are to arise."

Hmm, I'm not sure that's a Premise, at least not the way we tend to talk about them around here. Although, "What is it like to be a character in a position that could allow you to influence the events that are to shape the coming era by dominating the conflicts that are to arise?" would probably be one.

Of course, "Can you succeed as a character in a position that could allow you to influence the events that are to shape the coming era by dominating the conflicts that are to arise," would be one with a different focus, probably.

I know that you're not used to writing in English, by the way, but I think you're trying to hard. More direct sentences might be easier for you to write, and would be easier for us to read. The above could probably be stated as "What is it like to shape the future through conquest?" Or "Can you dominate your enemies in a dangerous future?"

For example, rolling his usual pool of 3 + 5 for domination for a total of 8 dice, against Jacob's measly 3. Mlle. Marié would have a certain difficulty to being seduced (I guess), let's say it's 6.

I think one of your problems here is that you are confusing characters that roll their skill with characters that act as difficulty tests. While this is an interesting commentary on seduction (it's a test or a competition, depending on which mechanics you use) it poses consistency problems. Leaving the issue of whether seduction is a competition aside, for now, you should decide how you plan to handle contested actions.

If you are going to stick with the idea of the upper hand then I would recommend rolling all tests between characters, and not representing any character's attribute as a number.

A positive consecuence I hope this element has in the game is that actions competing for domination seem to be able to correspond to rich narrative elements rather than pure gamist decisions (because I'm aiming for more narrativeist than gamist play): "I run a few long sweeps against my enemy trying to distract him from the dagger in my left hand", "As he attacks me I use my free hand to throw obstacles at him (chairs, candletick) and slow him down"

I think there's a pretty important difference between abstract and naritivist. While your system would be abstract, it could just as easily be used in an abstractly gamiest fashion. Narrativist rules (it seems to me) tend to support play that centers on players writing detail and direction into the story. While an abstract mechanic doesn't get in the way of this, it doesn't really encourage player investment in the story, and doesn't encourage the players to fulfill the narrative demands.  

A Means is a method (perhaps they can be called Methods?) of dominating.

Yes, I think method would be a better choice.

I think the names of your four areas of skill might be better suited by other names: commerce, combat, debate, and leadership.

Overall, you've got some strong ideas, but they're obscured behind a complicated set of rules you haven't tuned together. At this point you have a pile of lumber and not a house. I'd recommend doing an inventory of the situations you want your rules to cover and then specifically detailing exactly what rules should apply in that situation.

[Don Lag]

Thanks for the feedback.

I see what you say about Premise, the first two examples are basically what I'm pointing at.. I just wasn't aware of the way Premise is expected to be formulated, now I am :)

I think one of your problems here is that you are confusing characters that roll their skill with characters that act as difficulty tests

I'm sorry, you've been mislead. At this point I'm just so familiarized with what I'm considering to be the mechanics that I forgot to be more explicit. When I say Marie has a dificulty of 6 to being seduced I mean that she has a pool of 6 dice against which all attempts of seduction are rolled. Actually, there is no thing as a dificulty test... or rather, a "dificulty test" is inextinguishable from a competition. ALL ROLLS ARE COMPETITIONS. This is the main idea of the game, to model character interaction solely through conflict. There are no target numbers, and all actions are pool vs. pool.

While your system would be abstract, it could just as easily be used in an abstractly gamiest fashion. Narrativist rules (it seems to me) tend to support play that centers on players writing detail and direction into the story. While an abstract mechanic doesn&#8217;t get in the way of this, it doesn&#8217;t really encourage player investment in the story, and doesn&#8217;t encourage the players to fulfill the narrative demands.

Well, I guess it kind of depends on exactly what definition of Narrativist your using. I'm just using the one that comes naturally to me, so if there is a solid working definition being used currently I'm probably off it. I think I'd better just avoid using those terms.

I've been working on a few more details regarding the mechanics, that might tangentially relate to your comment.

First of all, something that was somewhat implied should be made clear: there are 2 "types" of actions. Actions of domination and actions of resolution. Actions of domination are actions that aren't commited to actually resolving the conflict but rather gaining a better domination over the adversary (it seems sometimes that "domination" could be replaced by "advantage", I'm not totally sure which term to go with). Actions of resolution are actions commited to resolving the conflict. Examples are: when bargaining one might discuss many options, suggestions and interpretations for the matters at hand and these would be considered actions of domination, while a final offer would be an action of resolution since the character is then commited to resolve the conflict (even if he might not succeed at it).

I'm considering the idea that any action of domination must be justified narratively. One shouldn't be allowed to just say "My character tries to dominate his adversary even more!". I'm trying to work out some sort of rule by which other abuses might be disencouraged, for example if one uses "I feign an attack at his left flank" as an action of domination, then either succesive uses of this action are disallowed, or penalized  (an accumulated -1 die for each repeated attempt or something like that). This would be to avoid monotonous descriptions of actions and might also be useful to simulate the incremental  predictability that a monotonous character has.

Again, I resign from trying to make a Narrativist (or narrativist freidnly) game. I'm just trying to make rules that allow colorful descriptions while keeping the mechanics simple, concise and consistent throughout variuos situations.

I think the names of your four areas of skill might be better suited by other names: commerce, combat, debate, and leadership

The first names I thought of were: Commerce, Politics, War and Seduction.
Commerce, Politics and War proved to be lousy choices. I commented them with a friend and he was immediately mislead to believe they referred to the types of situations a character can engage in. Under this belief he commented that there was heavy overlapping since, for example, War had much of politics, economy and carisma invloved. Even worse with Politics!

So I'm avoiding names that suggest types of situations. Rather, the focus is on the means (or methods) by which one can intend to act in these situations. So, to win a war actions of Seduction or Transaction might be vital.

I'm still unhappy with "War", but I think "Combat" isn't exactly what I'm looking for. It suggests the actual realisation of physical damage; what I'm really aiming for is the capacity to present a physical menace, not the mere concretion of this menace into actual damage.

Overall, you've got some strong ideas, but they're obscured behind a complicated set of rules you haven't tuned together. At this point you have a pile of lumber and not a house. I'd recommend doing an inventory of the situations you want your rules to cover and then specifically detailing exactly what rules should apply in that situation.

I couldn't agree more. I'm posting first because I'd love some feedback on the preliminary idea of whether sucha game would be fun. And if the specific model of conflict - domination - resolution as a core mechanic is appealing (although probably not totally original). I'd also like to familiarize the reader with the 4 methods (ok I'm starting to stick to that term) I'm currently considerating along with their 4 spheres of influence: are there any other methods or spheres I could be ignoring?
The actual mechanics are somewhat inexistant, but provided only to try to sketch the conflict-domination-resolution scheme. As I continue to crystalize the final mechanics I'll post them to gather some more comments.

As I have more certain elements regarding the final game I'll try to post them in a better organized document, certainly taking in account some of the deficiencies in my presentation that you've helpfully pointed out.

Thanks again for the comments.

[damion]

Various Comments:
In general, I like it. I really like the Dominion mechanic.
Some  ideas.
Need mechanics for loss of dominion. In general this would probably on an interruption.
Also, perhaps a persons who looses a contest looses one dominion. (Loss of all dominon I think would be to crippling)

If Gustave left for a week, he would loose all his dominion over Jacob. Jacob might have had a chance to gain a little.
Possibly add a scale for actions-your Seduction example would probably be days. So for  every day Gustav is gone, Jacob gets to roll and reduce Gustav's dominon and gain some of his own.
Combat would have a scale of rounds, unfortuantly getting distracted in combat would probably loose all your dominon.
Thus that gives us two types of contests, which I would call Sustained and Continuios. All contests have a time frame.
In a Sustained Contest the opponent gets a free roll in any time frame one opponent does not concentrate on the contest. The absent opponent cannot gain dominion on this roll. (alternative would be to reduce dominion by 1 per missed time frame--third type of contest?-)
In a continuios contest missing a time frame loses ALL dominion. Combat would be an example.
Just an idea.

Methods I find confusion, although I think I see where you are going.
For instance, nothing appears to be relevent say swinging on
a rope.
Also, Seduction and Persuation appear pretty similar above the individual scale. (They only really differ in the type of leadership.)

Just some ideas

[Mike Holmes]

Arrgh. The original premise was a perfectly good premise, KR. Didn't need any adjustment at all. Your tweaks would simply make the premise absolutely Simulationist. Which is fine if that's what Don wants, but I'm not sure that's the case. Anyhow, it was fine exactly as it was.

Your point about abstract/narrative is a good one (even though narrative is not the same as Narrativist). That is abstraction may allow such play, but does little to actively encourage it specifically. OTOH, this is very easy to fix. Simply requiring the GM to require such narration is a start, frex.

Mike

[Ring Kichard]

Arrgh. The original premise was a perfectly good premise, KR. Didn't need any adjustment at all. Your tweaks would simply make the premise absolutely Simulationist. Which is fine if that's what Don wants, but I'm not sure that's the case. Anyhow, it was fine exactly as it was.

After re-reading Ron's essay, I've realized my error. Thank you for pointing it out, and saving Don Lag from my hypercritical nature. I'd seen premise phrased as a question so often that I was blinded to the other possibilities. Don, follow your heart.

[Don Lag]

Tnanks for the feedback guys.

I'm glad the Premise passed the test :)

I've given some thought to your comments damion, but haven't posted any reply because my initial reply snowballed on me (I finally saved the 11KB answer I had prepared) and now I have to deal with tons of ideas and solve an essential problem: whenever I come down to thinking about the conflict-domination-resolution mechanic I keep getting tugged towards the simulationist-gamist benefits that such a model could display (IMHO), I think this is because I ted to think of combt examples which really aren't centra at all in this particular game.

I have to keep reminding myself that I've taken the decision to split the game into an adventure oriented one (Oscura) and a political-intrigue-sociological one (Oscura: Heirs to the Throne).

I need a mantra or something.

Seriously though, I think I'd most benefit from Roy's suggested method at this point (stating an example of how the game should be played). Otherwaise I'll probably get tangled up in the usual mess I come up with when thinking too abstractely. That will save us all from a useless (and excessively long) premature response :)

Thanks again for the useful feedback.[/url]