Metagame Structure for a Story Game (no name yet)

[jb.teller4]

This is my first post on the Forge.  I've been working on a game for a couple weeks now and I wanted to get some feedback and suggestions on a few specific points.

First, let me give a very high-level view of what my game is and what some of my main goals are.  Then I'll jump into the specific questions I have.

My goals are:

* to create a Story Now game
* that is driven by a back-and-forth between the GM and players, where neither side can control or guide the story completely.
* for the players to have clear Flags as the heart of their character sheets
* to have Goals specific to that scene to drive every scene
* to have the dice spew out complications and twists more than to model simple success or failure
* to model a story structure similar to many movies and some novels
* to be flexible for many settings and genres (though it's not truly universal, since it pushes a certain structure of story)

In the past, my group has played primarily traditional games (D&D, World of Darkness, etc.).  In the last two years, I've been introducing new games (Spirit of the Century, Starblazers and Burning Wheel so far).  Those games have gone over pretty well and have been a lot of fun.

However, I've been vetoed on running some other games I'd really like to run (like Don't Rest Your Head, Polaris, Dust Devils and Dogs in the Vineyard) for various reasons, but usually because my players say they aren't interested in the settings and/or they're uncomfortable with how different the rules are.

A big part of working on this game is to be able to take elements similar to the games I've been vetoed on running but use them to create a story structure that will be more to my players tastes (and so be more likely to actually be played in my group).  A lot of the mechanics I'm using are inspired by other games--I'll try to give credit where it's due.

Alright, that's enough on my group and high-level goals.

The main mechanic I wanted feedback on was how I'm planning on structuring scenes and chapters to drive the story from the beginning, through rising action and to a dramatic end.  The "meta-structure" (the beginning, middle and end of the story) are implemented through the interaction of three systems:

First, each player character has a "Character Scale" that shifts towards the end of the scale.  When the Scale hits the end, the character is forced to have a Crisis Scene that resolves their character arc and removes them from the game (hoepfully in a cool, satisfying way).  This is very much inspired by Dust Devils; however, rather than the character getting weaker (less dice) until they finally hit the end, this Scale will make them more powerful as they slide along it, right up to the end.  In that way, it's more inspired by Polaris of Don't Rest Your Head.  I'll probably make a separate post about some of my questions and issues with the Scale, but for now I just needed to put it in because it interacts heavily with the scene system, which is what I really want to focus on now.  Comments are still welcome, of course.

Second, the scenes alternate between Player Scenes and GM Scenes.  Each Player Scene is framed and begun by one specific player and it rotates, so each player gets the same number of scenes.  Other player characters can be in the scene, but the player controlling the scene is dominant.  Also, there are several types of scenes (like Burning Empire) so its possible to have no player characters in a scene.  Like the Character Scale above, I have more to say on this, but I'll save it for a separate post.

Third, (and this is the part I want to focus on in this post), the game is split up into "Chapters".  Chapters are driven by specific "Goals" and last a minimum of two scenes (one Player Scene and one GM Scene). There is no technical limit, but practically they won't tend to last more than 6 or so scenes at most (I'd guess).  The duration and make-up of the Chapter is an organic process, driven by the introduction and resolution of the Goal, rather than a more "top-down" approach.

A new Chapter begins when one or more players declare a new Goal (so yes, if the players are separated, there can be parallel Chapters simultaneously). I'll talk more later in this post about when and how Goals are chosen. Also, not every character has to be in a Chapter at all times. They can be "between Chapters" temporarily. They won't want to stay there, because they're missing out on system rewards, but it can be a good time for Character Scenes or "downtime".

Chapters always start with a Player scene (this isn't just arbitrary, but will happen naturally based on the system). The first scene can be any kind of scene, but only a Conflict scene can "complete" or "win" a chapter. Other scenes have tactical uses, too (gaining bonuses, "healing", changing Character Keys, showcasing something cool but not directly related to the Chapter Goal, etc.), but Conflict scenes are how Goals are accomplished and the plot is driven forward.  Any character who is involved in the Chapter can start a Conflict Scene to resolve it.

When a player starts a Conflict Scene in a Chapter (whether it's their first Player Scene of the Chapter or not), they try to complete the Goal.  If the Goal can't conceivably be completed in one Conflict scene, then it should broken up into a couple smaller Chapters. The player(s) play out the scene and the dice hit the table.  Based on the results of the roll, they'll "take damage" and advance (i.e., their Character Scale can shift).  I'll talk more about that later.  More importantly for this post, they either succeed or fail at the Chapter Goal.

After each Player Scene (of any type, whether COnflict or not), there's a GM scene. What the GM can do depends on what type of scene the Player scene was and what the outcome was. The exact details are pending, but I'm just focusing on the Chapter structure now so I'll only talk about what happens after a Conflict Player Scene.

After any player Conflict Scene, the GM runs one of two special kinds of GM scene, depending on whether the scene was resolved (the players succeeded or failed and accepted failure) or if the scene was failed but the players want to keep pushing on.

If the Chapter is resolved (either because the players(s) succeeded or failed and gave up the Goal), then the GM runs a scene where the antagonists strike back hard. Not only that, but it has to introduce some new twist or reveal something or show some unexpected consequence of the players actions or in some other way change the story in a way out of the player's control.  For now I'm calling this a "Reveal" scene.

Following that "Reveal", the player(s) must come up with a new Goal. Then the new Chapter begins with the player's next scene.

On the other hand, if the Conflict scene isn't successful (i.e. doesn't successfully complete the Goal) and the player(s) doesn't want to give up the Goal, then the player(s) is setting themselves up for a world of hurt. In that case, the GM does an "Escalation" scene. I don't have the exact details of Escalation scenes, but they are more "dangerous" and more is at stake. These showcase the situations when the hero is bruised and broken but refuses to give up. Expect the blood (actual or metaphoric) to flow.

After that Escalation scene, the player can still choose to give up the Goal by doing a Character or Color scene showing their "surrender". That is followed by a "Reveal" scene by the GM as if they had given up before the Escalation scene (so the player gets kicked twice, but the GM should often be relatively nice about it).

But if the player still wants to go for it, then that player(s) and the GM continue to go back and forth, both using Escalation scenes. Each round intensifies the danger and pain.

Eventually the player(s) wins, surrenders or is pushed to a Crisis Scene because their Character Scale hits the end. Regardless, they'll suffer much more than an early victory, but have a cool, epic struggle to brag about. Also, there will be some kind of "hero point" system (like artha or Fate Points) and it will favor Ecalation Scenes (because I want players to escalate for things they care about). In fact, if players win every Chapter on the first Conflict scene, they'll probably have a pretty low pool of points.  Plus, getting beat up (having your Scale shift) makes characters more powerful right up until ther Crisis Scene hits.

Regardless, the GM still runs a "Reveal" scene after the Chapter is resolved (successfully or not) and the player(s) still has to pick a new Goal and then start a new Chapter.

And so it goes...

...but not indefinitely. Crisis scenes can knock players out of the game, so that's a way to "lose" or end the campaign. Also, eventually a player or GM (I might limit it to players only) is going to announce the Climax Chapter. This is a chapter that, as part of its Goal, will end the Campaign one way or another. It's the end-game. It has to fit the flow of the narrative and (more importantly) the other players have to agree that it a) makes sense and b) is a cool time to do it. Other than consensus, there aren't hard-and-fast rules on when the Climax Scene can be done. It can be the end of the first session (for a one-shot) or after years of epic campaigning. (I'm undecided how to handle campaigns where the characters are still split at the end, but I can hold off on that discussion for now.)

Assuming everyone is on board, the Climax chapter begins....

It basically works the same as normal Chapters, except for two differences. First, it starts out as Escalation Scenes and ramps up really fast. It's all Conflict scenes and it's brutal. Second, you can't "surrender" (well, more accurately, surrendering the Chapter means surrendering the whole Campaign, so you can't try again later). This is it. You're going to keep going until you either win or you die or you just give up like a loser and go home.

And the GM still gets a last scene afterwards. What the GM does will really depend on the needs of the story and their feel for what would fit best. It can be the breakneck escape as the villain's lair built in a volcano starts to crumble and the volcano is erupting. It can be a last speech by the antagonist before they die or are dragged off to prison. It can be the antagonist having a change of heart and begging for forgiveness. It can be a Color Scene, letting the GM describe the battle field in the bitter-sweet aftermath. Part of that is that the GM can do any type of scene (Conflict, Color, etc.) that they think fits best.

And then the very, very last scene is the Denouement. It's all wrapped up in a satisfying bow and the campaign is over. Frodo sails West and Sam has a family. Luke and Han and Leia get medals in a ceremony. The camera pauses a moment on a lonely grave, showing the poignant epithet. The girl gets the boy and they kiss as we fade to black. Again, whatever.

I don't know who gets to describe the Denouement scene. Maybe it's collaborative. Maybe it's always the players. Maybe it's which ever side lost (or won or has the most "points" left). I'll clarify eventually, but it's not critical yet so consider it pending.

And... cut.  The story's over.



So my questions are:

Are there any problems with this that I'm not seeing?

Will the Chapter structure (particularly the Goal at the heart of the chapter, and the Reveal scene followed by having to pick a new Goal) give enough of a structure to lead to clean beginnings, rising action and a satisfying ending, or does it need something more?

Any thoughts, warnings or advice on handling multiple players, since I want them to be able to be doing separate things at the same time?  (Hell, they can be in the same place at the same time and still be in different chapters because they aren't working towards the same Goals).

I didn't talk about GM scenes much.  I anticipate them being largely a mix of responding to Player Scenes, introducing unexpected twists and dangers and attacking the players and messing up their goals.  Is that sufficient?  Do I need the GM to create separate Goals for the antagonists and so have "Chapters" of their own, or should I keep GM scenes more closely integrated with player scenes?  I lean towards the second, but want advice.

I know it's not as helpful to ask for general feedback and advice, but please feel free to give any other feedback you might have.  I'm particularly interested in any actual play experience with systems that are trying to do something similar and what did or didn't work.  Several games do something similar (Burning Empire has GM and Player scenes; Dust Devils, Polaris and Don't Rest Your Head all have a variant of "Character Scales" that slide towards the end) but I haven't played any of those yet, just read them, so I don't have any play experience to draw on.

And finally, since this is my first post, I'm open to any advice or criticism on how to use this forum to its best advantage.

Thank you all in advance for you comments.

-John Bogart
Amateur Game Designer

[jb.teller4]

I wanted to ask some more questions about some ideas I had for the "meta-structure" of the game I'm designing.

First, before making you read through my mini-essay below, let me start by saying what I'm looking for with the specific ideas and questions in this post.  I want to create a certain type of story structure with the game I'm designing.  The first several paragraphs below are describing what I want.  Then I have a couple specific ideas to try and accomplish that, but a) I'm not sure if the ideas will work the way I want them to and b) I'm very open to suggestions or other ideas.  So I'm looking for feedback and suggestions and criticism.

Also, I use some terms like "reward" and "flag" in ways that I think are consistent with how they're used in Forge theory, but I'm still new enough to a lot of the theory stuff that I may be way off.  I'd be appreciative of comments on how I'm thinking about theory terms, if applicable.

Finally, is this post too long?  Should I have broken each question up into a separate thread?  All the ideas seemed to hang on each other, but it might just be too much to reply to...?

~~~~~

For the game I'm working on, I've been thinking about emulating the story structure of many movies and some novels where the protagonists (read: players) have a fairly clear goal from the beginning and are opposed by an antagonist (read: GM), all while working out and (hopefully) resolving some inner flaw that's been messing up their lives (and likely hurting those around them).  The protagonists pursue that goal, but of course things don't go smoothly.  They are, as a rule, "losing" for the first chunk of the movie before reaching a low point where everything seems lost.  Throughout the story there are reveals and twists that force the protagonists to reevaluate and change their direction and tactics, and it's a similar reveal that shows them their seeming defeat isn't actually defeat after all, propelling them into the final approach and showdown.  Further, there's both an internal and an external track to the story. 

The internal, or moral, element of the story is the "heart" of the story: The protagonist's flaw is central, they usually become increasingly desperate and even immoral as they are losing, and the final conflict is ultimately a contest between competing moral codes or ways of living with any conflicts often being metaphors or externalizations of that moral conflict, and the resolution shows the protagonists in their new lives (whether improved or sunk even further into their flaws).

The external, or action, element of the story is the plot: Stuff happens, the protagonists are pulled into the plot, they're in danger, they have successes and failures, they have a final showdown and they win or lose or die or get the girl or whatever.

~~~

So, anyway, my point is that I want to design my system to support and reward that story structure.

In my first post above, I talked about the system idea I have for setting up "chapters" and scenes (alternating Gm and player scenes, chapters being based around a Goal and a system for resolving the Goals and closing the Chapters, etc.).  See that post for more details.  I don't think the systems perfect, but it's a good starting point for what I want and I'm sure it will get tweaked and revised as I keep designing and get to play testing, etc., and since there have been no replies to that post so far, I'll assume nothing is obviously broken about the idea...

But something I'm still working on is the rewards to the players.  Yeah, a satisfying story is nice (and it's what drives me as GM), but it's not what drives my players.

One of the major rewards I'm planning on using is tying "advancement" to "damage" and the moral track.  I touched on this briefly in the first post above.  Each character will have a "scale" that starts at zero and slides upward as they take "damage".  In fact, it is probably the only type of "damage" in the system.  As the scale goes up, the characters get more powerful.  However, when it hits the end, then the character's next scene will be a Crisis Scene that centers on their Need (see below).  Crisis scenes are dangerous and are one of the only situations where the character can "die" (i.e. be removed from the story in whatever way) based on the dice rather than on character choice.  Also, Crisis scenes always change the character profoundly (both on the character sheet and in their story, Need and Want).  It's the "climax" of the character's internal "Heart" line in the story.  Note that it's not my goal to require a Crisis scene for every character in every story.  It's fine if it happens, but the players will have some control over how much they want to focus on the "scale" vs. staying fairly unchanged and stable (like many action heroes who don't really evolve in the story).

As another thought, I'd like to encourage Crisis Scenes to happen at dramatically appropriate times (such as right before the Climax or right after it), but in order to keep the Crisis Scene as a danger to put pressure on the player, I don't want it to be too predictable or too desirable.  So I'm leaning away from trying to tie it more tightly into the overall story flow.  That's not set in stone, though.

~~~

Next, I'm planning on having each player choose both a Need and a Want for their characters at campaign creation (not necessarily character creation--this is tied to the campaign and can shift from story to story for recurring characters). 

The Need is their character's moral or psychological or social flaw.  What is wrong with the character that is keeping them from living right?  Whether the character would see it as a flaw or not isn't important--the players are the ones choosing the themes they think would be fun to play out.  From the system's perspective, having the Need of being too sensitive is just as valid and potentially fun as the Need of being too jaded and cold.  That Need is inextricably tied to their character "scale" (see above) as it slides and will be the heart of their Crisis Scene, if they reach one.  Therefore this Need will come up a lot in play and will most likely change (it's the foundation of the character arc) and the player should pick what they think would be awesome to play out.  So the Need is the core of the Heart Line.  For characters that continue across multiple stories, there will probably be some kind of carry-over of the Need, but I'm not too concerned about that yet and it should be fairly easy to decide that later.

In contrast, the Want is what the character wants to accomplish in that specific campaign.  The character knows what it is, but doesn't necessarily know how to accomplish it yet.  This is the Core of the Action Line.  I don't really have the systems in place yet for the Want.  What I want to do is tie it closely to a "hero points" or other type of reward that can be spent to help rolls or something similar.  I also want to relate it to the Goals that drive Chapters (see the thread linked above).  I see the Want being the campaign-level goal, with the Chapter Goals being smaller goals that are steps towards the larger Want.  (Really, the Want and chapter goals have a lot in common with Beliefs, especially how it ties to gaining artha, the "hero points", in Burning Wheel and BW is definitely my biggest inspiration for Goals and Wants in general.)  The Want can and will evolve throughout play (e.g. if a character wants to become king, they could decide later that they've met the "true king-to-be" and change to helping that other character get the throne instead).

~~~

Finally, another thing I've been trying to emulate is to have the characters "losing" the first part of the story and keeping the pressure up.  The characters should only have the advantage firmly on their side somewhere between the middle of the story through right before the Climax.  This is an area I'm definitely looking for help on.  I don't really have answers yet, so the below paragraphs are just some thoughts I'm playing with in no particular order or cohesion.

The "character scale" helps with part of this, because getting "hurt" earlier on both makes them more powerful while also shining the spotlight on their Need and their consequent character arc.  But I don't think it's enough.

I really like how Burning Wheel emphasizes failure adding complications or twists, rather than necessarily meaning you fail.  I'd like to use something like that, too.  If I'm going to make the characters "lose" a lot in the beginning, then I need to be really careful not to make them feel powerless.  Actually, keeping it rewarding and fun for the player is far more important than this whole goal of emulating losing the first part.  I want it to be fun and tense and I think failing is often more fun in game than winning, so I still think I can pursue this goal.

So maybe they shouldn't be "losing" in the beginning.  I think there needs to be some other angle (maybe as simple as being careful how I define it).  I do want the antagonists to be hitting the characters hard and for the players to feel the pressure rising, however it plays out in the system.

I think on of the biggest opportunities here is that every other scene is a GM scene, so the players have their scenes where they're pursuing a Goal (and succeeding or failing and facing the consequences), but the GM also has scenes.  There might be an opportunity to use GM scenes to help accomplish my goal here.

Also, I as GM have a tendency to be too nice and focused on cooperating with the players.  I want the system to both force me to be "mean" to my players and to help my make the challenges I throw at them challenging and fun.

Another rough thought I have is that I want the mechanics to emphasize the cost or consequences much more than success or failure.  If I add enough guidance and/or systems to reliably lead to Chapters being built with appropriate Goals and to have GM scenes used to their best effect, then succeeding or failing at the Chapter Goal is interesting and drives the plot forward and all, but the real question is how much you suffer before giving up or succeeding.  This is really based on the meta-structure idea on my first post above.  So the question is how to make sure that the system is creating the right kinds of Chapters for the story.  Again, suggestions are very welcome.

~~~

I suppose I should add here that I don't really have the dice mechanics worked out.  I've been intentionally leaving them vague, because I know from past experience that it's an area I tend to get caught up in cool ideas and lose sight of what's really best for the game.  So I'm trying to really figure out what I want the dice to do, and then find the best mechanic, rather than thinking up cool mechanics and trying to fit the game around them.  I can say that I'm leaning towards a simple system similar to Don't Rest Your Head, with variable pools of d6's and with the dice telling not only who "wins" but also what aspect of the scene is "Dominant" and colors the results.  I also want to make narration rights part of the system so that the narrator can shift from scene to scene.  I have more details than that, but I'm trying not to get married to any dice mechanics so I won't say more.

~~~

Thanks in advance for any help (comments, suggestions, criticism, etc.).

I often don't get replies when I post to forums so I suspect that there's an underlying reason (such as tending to write long threads with multiple questions or points).  This is only my second post on this forum, but I still would appreciate any criticism.


-John Bogart

[Eero Tuovinen]

Welcome to the Forge, John. Don't be anxious about not getting replies on your posts or whatnot. A part of it can certainly be about writing very heavy and complex posts, but most really depends on luck. It's easy for something to get ignored simply because many people happen to be busy with other things at the time and miss the thread altogether, for example.

First, an observation from my own play. The primary benefit many games get from drama arc mechanics - which is what you're doing here - is that having the rules handle the arc allows the GM and other players to focus on the momentary choices; they get to play against the constraint of the rules, in other words. Another, related effect is that the dramatic rules constrain player choices and thus may support creativity by forcing players to take the game to unexpected directions.

An important lesson related to drama arc mechanics is, however, that they're not always needed, and they can even be harmful to creating a Story Now game. This is typically the case when the design is concerned with creating a story with the "correct" form. It's also what many think of first when thinking of drama arc mechanics: they exist to enforce a good form for the story. However, in most successful designs this is not actually the case. To take an example, what does My Life with Master, an early example of this thing, actually do with the rules-imposed dramatic constraints? The short answer is that the requirements of the game's focused scope force and direct the players to play through a situation and events that they normally would avoid. The players give up their ability to just release their character from their unhealthy situation to get an opportunity for addressing just that sort of situation. You can't play a slave without having the rules enforce the slavery.

What we learn from My Life with Master is that the dramatic constraints on scene types or whatnot are not there simply to enforce an Aristotelian story structure - they have specific meaning for the sort of play and interactions the game supports. I tend to think of a game that has drama arc mechanics without this sort of direct reason for it simply overstructured: players are quite capable of shaping their own story to follow a structure without having the rules of the game mechanize the process.

I'm harping on the right and wrong ways to use drama arc mechanics mostly because I see that you've put a lot of thought into how your game shapes the structure of the story, but I haven't seen anything about how you're going to make players care about it. When I've played games with story structure but no story content, it has usually felt rather empty and meaningless. There needs to be something to make me care, and mechanics that tell me what sort of scenes I get are not that. What are the players focusing on while playing? Perhaps the answer is in some scenarion-creation rules you haven't discussed yet?

A side-point, by the way: what you call a Scene seems like it'd be more fruitfully labeled a "story node" or something like that. At least they don't sound like scenes in the traditional manner.

Anyway, let me know if I missed your central issues here. Your posts were pretty long and while they were full of useful information about your planned game, I might have missed something that makes my comments unnecessary.

[jb.teller4]

Thanks for your reply, Eero! 

(Also, anyone let me know if I'm quoting too heavily below...)

The primary benefit many games get from drama arc mechanics - which is what you're doing here - is that having the rules handle the arc allows the GM and other players to focus on the momentary choices; they get to play against the constraint of the rules, in other words. Another, related effect is that the dramatic rules constrain player choices and thus may support creativity by forcing players to take the game to unexpected directions.

Both of those are very much what I'm going for (though I hadn't articulated them as clearly, even to myself).

I've been GMing for over 15 years (since I was 12) and most of that time I've tended to focus a lot on the dramatic arc in any campaign I've run.  I'm pretty good at it, but I think I'm not as good at making the conflicts as tense as they could be.  Like I said in my last post, I'm too "nice" usually.  Having the structure built more into the system would (I hope): a) bring the players "in on it" more (about half my players really like having their characters go through an arc and make choices to play those out regardless of the system), b) free my up to focus more on the scene at hand without worrying as much about the overall arc and c) give me more license to be "mean" because "hurting" the characters is rewarding to the players because it lets them get more powerful and shine the spotlight on the character arc that they chose (with Needs, Wants, etc.).

Also, I do like a certain amount of system restraint because several of my players like figuring out how to work the system and they tend to be more than willing to go in unexpected directions if the system requires/encourages it.

An important lesson related to drama arc mechanics is, however, that they're not always needed, and they can even be harmful to creating a Story Now game. This is typically the case when the design is concerned with creating a story with the "correct" form.

It's also what many think of first when thinking of drama arc mechanics: they exist to enforce a good form for the story. However, in most successful designs this is not actually the case.

That makes sense.  I didn't say it in the post, but I've been thinking about that for awhile now.  I'm not really as concerned that the story having the "proper" form.  I want to avoid too heavy of a "top-down" approach to the dramatic arc mechanics.  I'd rather have the mechanics encourage a certain type of behavior from the players (whether by restraining them, rewarding them for the "desirable" behaviors, both of the above, etc.).

It's good to hear from others who've actually had experience at the table with dramatic arc mechanics.  Like I said in my first post, I really haven't.

Let me ask how systems like Polaris and Don't Rest Your Head and Dust Devils fit into a discussion of dramatic arc mechanics?  I have all three but haven't played any of them.  Those three seem to use "character scales" (Zeal--Weariness, Exhaustion and running out of a pool respectively) to create a character arc, but not directly a dramatic arc.  In Dust Devils, for example, the character arc is the dramatic arc because the whole game seems to be built to tell the story of a western hero or anti-hero who eventually has to face their devil.  It forces that story structure.  I really like that story structure, but my group favors a plot-based story, with the character arcs secondary.

To take an example, what does My Life with Master, an early example of this thing, actually do with the rules-imposed dramatic constraints? The short answer is that the requirements of the game's focused scope force and direct the players to play through a situation and events that they normally would avoid. The players give up their ability to just release their character from their unhealthy situation to get an opportunity for addressing just that sort of situation. You can't play a slave without having the rules enforce the slavery.

I haven't seen My Life with Master, though I've heard it mentioned.  I'll need to track down a copy.  Can you tell me a little more how it works?  If I'm reading you right, then playing a slave character requires you to deal with issues related to slavery.  You can't "gloss over" the slave part.  I'm guessing that the game lets you choose what issues to focus on?  So you chose to be a slave (and if you didn't want to be a slave, you'd simply choose other issues)?  So by choosing an issue, a) you have to deal with it and b) you get to deal with it?

What we learn from My Life with Master is that the dramatic constraints on scene types or whatnot are not there simply to enforce an Aristotelian story structure - they have specific meaning for the sort of play and interactions the game supports. I tend to think of a game that has drama arc mechanics without this sort of direct reason for it simply overstructured: players are quite capable of shaping their own story to follow a structure without having the rules of the game mechanize the process.

Hmm.  I'm trying to really think about my goals now.  I've started righting several responses, but I think I want to let it stew some more before replying.  I want to really think about why I'm trying to do this.

I'm harping on the right and wrong ways to use drama arc mechanics mostly because I see that you've put a lot of thought into how your game shapes the structure of the story, but I haven't seen anything about how you're going to make players care about it. When I've played games with story structure but no story content, it has usually felt rather empty and meaningless. There needs to be something to make me care, and mechanics that tell me what sort of scenes I get are not that. What are the players focusing on while playing? Perhaps the answer is in some scenarion-creation rules you haven't discussed yet?

Yeah, I actually am planning on using scenario-creation system.  I'm not sure why I didn't think to mention it either of the earlier posts; probably because it's an area I have little idea how to do yet and haven't focused on yet.  Right now I basically have the nebulous plan of having a "Story Creation" process as a collaborative process between the GM and the players.  The broad-strokes of the setting, the antagonist(s), the consequences if the characters fail, some types of conflicts the players would like to see,  as well as why the characters will get involved (the Needs and Wants of characters would be created in this phase, not character creation) should all be outputs of that process.  But... besides knowing I want to do it, I don't know much else.

The last two games I've run (including the one I'm currently running) we did a sort of semi-formal scenario-creation and it rocked.  They've been two of the best campaigns I've run in years, in part because the players were invested and excited about the plot and also in part because in the collaborative process I'm given a framework to work within rather than creating something completely myself and I not only enjoy it more, but I find that the restraints improve my creativity and spark ideas I wouldn't otherwise have thought of.

A side-point, by the way: what you call a Scene seems like it'd be more fruitfully labeled a "story node" or something like that. At least they don't sound like scenes in the traditional manner.

Interesting.  I'd like to hear more about this, actually.  To me, they actually feel more like scenes in a movie sense.  I once read (about script writing) that you should start a scene at the last possible moment you can start it and still have it make sense and end it at the first possible moment.  Everything else is probably extraneous.  Also, movie scenes aren't usually continuous.  Each scene is often discrete, creating a string of separate short moments that together convey the story.  I know that when GMing, I have a hard time keeping scenes succinct.  My scenes tend to ramble on too long and take too long to get to the point.  Having each scene have a very specific Goal or purpose that is fairly rapidly resolved (one way or the other) and then ended cleanly is a strong goal of mine, though I hadn't articulated it before.

Something I may not have said about creating scenes are that I picture it somewhat like in Primetime Adventures where the GM or player starts framing the scene (with the others at the table being encouraged to offer suggestions) until they get to the conflict and then the dice are busted out.  The other piece is that I love cut-away scenes, flashbacks, little vignettes briefly introducing or advancing a character arc without needing a roll or having a conflict, etc.  And my players tend to like them, too.  The different scene types are largely about giving both the GM and the players the framework to do things like flashbacks or cut-away scenes, while also giving a mechanical system and benefits for doing so.  The benefit of conflict scenes is tackling Goals.  I haven't really talked about the other scene types yet.

It's probably obvious that lately I've tended to think about GMing and role-playing very much in cinematic terms--I even refer to camera angles explicitly lately.

So I'm curious if there is a disconnect between what I've written and what's in my head (very likely) or whether we're using the same term in different ways.

Anyway, let me know if I missed your central issues here. Your posts were pretty long and while they were full of useful information about your planned game, I might have missed something that makes my comments unnecessary.

All your comments were very helpful.

I think my main question to the forum is whether the mechanics I've thrown out for resolving chapter goals (see the first post) along with the character arc rules (the scale and crisis scenes) will be enough to drive the dramatic arc and how they can be improved.  Adding the "scenario-creation" rules is critical to this.  Your comments clarified a lot of points and really helped me think about the questions differently.  I'm still looking for more feedback on whether the systems would work and how to improve them. 

The main question that I'm taking away from this to think about some more is whether these mechanics are necessary and why I have them.  Are they tied closely to a very specific goal of the game or are they just meant to "create a proper story"?  That's great food for thought and I'm sure I'll comment more on that. 

Again, thanks for your reply.


-John Bogart

[jb.teller4]

So I spent some time last night thinking about what I was trying to accomplish and why I wanted dramatic arc mechanics. 

What I came up with is that I know how my games run and I know my strengths and weaknesses, so I'm trying to emphasize my strengths while compensating for my weaknesses (and since I don't think my group is particularly unusual, I hope that my system will be fun and useful to others as well).

The two things that I really want to get out of the dramatic arc system are Urgency and Makin'em Bleed. 

Urgency: Basically, I want to put the pressure on early and keep it on; it's not what I'm best at (I think I'm okay, but not great).  I also play with a fairly large group (5 players) and "drag" in the game is much more common than I'd like.  Keeping the pacing brisk is important for that reason.  So is balancing "screen time" and influence between the players; half my players are outgoing and active and the other half are more reserved and can get overlooked if I'm not on top of it.

Makin'em Bleed: I've mentioned it several times now, but I want the characters to bleed.  I want them to take risks and get beat up.  Thinking back, the dramatic failures are usually the scenes that get the most engagement from the players and get talked about the most afterwards.  And I tend to be too "nice".  So I want the system to push and support me to hit the characters hard, but I want to make sure that the players are having fun.  I want them to still take risks, even though they'll likely get beat up, so I want to reward them for taking risks.

~~~

Okay, so how does the dramatic arc system as I have it support either of these?  I'll tell you how I hope it will (and why I came up with the mechanics the way I did).  I'll also try to (briefly!) touch on all the major mechanics, even ones I haven't mentioned yet.  Whether the mechanics succeed and how they can be improved is the question I'm hoping to get feedback on from all of you.

At the start, everyone involved will create the scenario and come up with an overarching challenge.  I didn't say this last time, but an important part of that is defining what happens if the characters fail or do nothing.  Then the players hook their own characters into the story with their Needs and Wants.  Hopefully that gets both the players and the characters engaged and interested.

The GM scenes (which I haven't talked about as much and haven't entirely worked out) are where the GM actively hits the characters and/or pursues their own goals that are counter to the characters.  Originally I had planned on making it sort of a race or contest, like Burning Empires, where each side is trying to "win" first, but I didn't really like the ideas I came up with (and BE does it well already).  So what I decided is to have GM scenes work on the prinicple of escalation.  This system isn't completely worked out yet (the GM scenes that follow player Conflict Scenes--Reveals and Escalations--are part of this, but not necessarily the whole system), but the idea is that the antagonists (read: GM) don't win by completing their goals first, but by pushing the characters over the edge into their Crisis Scenes before they can win or by winning the final Climax scene.  I want the game to end climactically; this way the final scenes  are either Crisis Scenes (where the character arcs are resolved) or Climax Scenes (where the final conflict determines who "wins" the story scenario).  Hopefully this system (when developed) will force and help me as GM to make my characters bleed while making it more fun for my players.

The GM scenes also include rules and mechanics for color scenes, cut-away scenes, etc., because I like doing them anyway and like making them have weight.  Hopefully this will emphasize one of my strengths as a GM and also encourage (and reward) the players to join in in that type of storytelling (without forcing them to).

Hopefully the alternating GM and Player Scenes (rotating through all players in turn) with clear beginnings, goals and endings to scenes, will keep the pacing faster and keep all my players more engaged.  The dice mechanics for conflicts (which I've barely touched on) will definitely be on a conflict-resolution level, not a task-resolution level.

On the flip side, the characters have two "paths" they have to worry about.  The "heart line" is handled with their "Character Scale" (I really need to come up with a name--names are not my strength), which is tied tightly to their Need, contains how they get hurt, their character arc mechanics, the advancement mechanics, as well as hard choices about whether to voluntarily raise the scale (increasing their power but also pushing them closer to Crisis and increasing the odds of the scale increasing involuntarily) or else try to face challenges straight, knowing that the odds are against succeeding without raising the scale.  Also, the scale advances as the "damage" system.  There's more to the system, but the critical point is that the "heart line" mechanics are hard-wired into the conflict and action mechanics.  Hopefully this will keep the pressure up and also get all my players (even my gamist players) involved in the "heart line" stuff because it's so tied into the action system.

The other path, the "action line" is trying to win the scenario.  This is where the Wants come in.  It's also where the Chapter Goals fit in and Conflict Scenes (the heart of the action system) are about advancing.   This is the system laid out in the first post.  In very brief recap, players can keep trying to win until they succeed or they can give up with they fail.  Each retry significantly escalates the danger and potential damage.  Ultimately, the conflict system is about the price of victory and whether you're willing to pay it more than if you'll succeed.  Also, chapter goals that tie into the character's Want (which many or most should) or to certain other aspects of the character sheet are how "hero points" and certain "heart line"-related rewards I haven't worked out completely are gained, so the "action line" is hard-wired into character rewards.

The structure of the "Chapters" and how the story progresses towards the Climax is not any more structured than having the "Character Scale" act as a prod to keep active because poking along slowly increases how often you're hit before reaching the Climax Scene.  The Climax Scene happens organically with no mechanics requiring a certain timing.  Hopefully this will both allow players the freedom to develop the structure organically without being overstructured while also keeping the pressure on.

Players "lose" in one of two ways--hitting and failing a Crisis Scene because their character scale slid all the way to the end or failing the Climax scene (which is the one crisis scene that can't be retried).  Players "win" by succeeding in the Climax Scene.  Hopefully this will make each scene matter because there's strategic as well as narrative weight to each type of scene, but the timer from the "character scale" and the escalating GM scenes mean that players won't have time for every scene they want and so will have to pick carefully.  Hopefully this will also keep the action rising and make the ending satisfying.

Characters takes "damage" and suffer consequences in both their own scenes and GM scenes.  The antagonists don't take "damage" in any mechanical way.  The details are all narration.  Speaking of narration, narration rights are competed for in the dice system.  An antagonist getting away vs. being killed is primarily a matter of who narrates and having to fit it to the dice results. 

The GM "wins" if the "players" "lose"; all of the mechanics are player- and character-centric.  Hopefully this will keep my players active (changing a tendency in my players to wait and react to the GM instead of initiating is another goal I hadn't mentioned before--my players are already shedding that tendency with games like FATE and Burning Wheel, but it's still a journey in progress).

~~~

So... yeah.  Urgency and Makin'em Bleed.  How does it look?  Obviously more tweaking is in order (and there are whole mechanics that aren't developed yet)--plus play testing will rip it all up and put it together stronger--but do you think I'm going to get the behaviors and outcomes I'm aiming for?  What pitfalls are there?  Any suggestions or criticisms to improve things?  Any thoughts or suggestions for the mechanics I've mentioned but haven't developed yet?


Thanks!
John Bogart

[Eero Tuovinen]

Let me ask how systems like Polaris and Don't Rest Your Head and Dust Devils fit into a discussion of dramatic arc mechanics?

Of these I know Dust Devils very well, Polaris somewhat and DRYH only by reading. Let's see an analysis:

Dust Devils indeed has an embedded drama arc in the form of debilitating attributes. The logic of the game goes roughly thusly:
1. The Dealer provokes characters with various situations that lead to conflicts.
2. Players make choices as to where to back down and where to see the conflict through. This is an opportunity for addressing premise - where is the character willing to go for violence when it means suffering for one or both parties?
3. The characters inevitably lose conflicts at some point, which hits their attributes. Winning conflicts becomes more difficult and the risks are bigger, so characters will start to only go to conflict when it really matters to them.
4. Generally speaking, a character will only get killed off in a very important conflict. This is because those are the only ones where the player will risk a showdown.
The Devil is something of a red herring in regards to the drama arc in Dust Devils; it's a big fat flag used by the group to coordinate play, but that coordination per se is unstructured. The real structure comes from the debilitation of the attributes combined with the ease with which characters may back down from conflict. (It's correct play in DD to refuse a conflict and lose it in the fiction to preserve your mechanical strength for later. Likewise it's correct to make healing a very sparse resource.)

Polaris has an explicit drama arc for each character individually in the form of the experience attribute. The real drama rule in this case is the experience roll rule, though: the only way to refresh the character is to get an experience check, which you only get by laying groundwork for the eventual corruption of the character. The dramatic constraints (midway you meet the Solaris knight, at the end you betray the people) are only instructive for the actual play of the game, they aren't really constraining mechanics. I wouldn't call this a drama arc mechanic at all if it weren't for how the experience check interacts with the progress of the experience attribute. But as it is, the situation is a bit like Dust Devils: the forthcoming betrayal is the big fat flag at the end of the dramatic road (fixed in Polaris, note, unlike Dust Devils), while the experience check rules force the player to choose when and where the character's integrity as a knight starts to slip.

I haven't really played Don't Rest Your Head, but my understanding of the rules is that there is no drama arc mechanic per se. Rather, the game's drama is managed by the dramatic coordination of the GM: the GM gets the answers to the player questionnaire and uses those to construct a scenario that meaningfully resolves the character's kicker. The structure of the drama in the game depends almost entirely on the normal "freeform" give and take between the GM and the players, most obviously controlled by the scene framing done by the GM. (The coin resource system is not a drama arc system, by the by; it's just a self-correcting resource cycle.)

I haven't seen My Life with Master, though I've heard it mentioned.  I'll need to track down a copy.  Can you tell me a little more how it works?  If I'm reading you right, then playing a slave character requires you to deal with issues related to slavery.  You can't "gloss over" the slave part.  I'm guessing that the game lets you choose what issues to focus on?  So you chose to be a slave (and if you didn't want to be a slave, you'd simply choose other issues)?  So by choosing an issue, a) you have to deal with it and b) you get to deal with it?

MLwM is one of my favourite games, it comes highly recommended to anybody interested in this sort of game design. The basic notion of the game is that the play group creates a Master, a mighty gothic horror authority figure, and a bunch of Minions, which are the player characters. The story is a twisted reflection of gothic horror fiction, with the minions acting as the viewpoint characters and true protagonists. The rules of the game limit the types of scenes you are allowed to frame and the types of resolutions you are allowed to have. Character development happens constantly, and when the minions reach certain attribute thresholds, they finally gain the strength of will to overcome and cast down the horrible monster that is the Master. Afterwards there's a bunch of epilogue narrations that depend on how the characters shaped up - they might kill themselves, become Masters themselves or integrate into society. A very Aristotelian game in all, as the game's rules are largely intended to screw down on the issues of self-worth and abusive relationships, with a grand katharsis at the end when the minions rip the Master apart.

MLwM has one of the tightest practical drama arc systems in that play is essentially required to focus on resolving the dysfunctional and in all ways unsustainable social situation each of the minions finds himself in. The game doesn't even have rules for anything except disagreeing with the Master, doing the Master's bidding (with Violence or Villainy, no other choices) and reaching out to other, genuine relationships. Depending on the rules interpretation some even run the game as a rigid cycle of these types of scenes with no scene framing choice involved at all. The game can't end in any other way than with the destruction of the Master and the resolution of the fates of the minions, so in that regard it is very structured as well.

...

Anyway, other things. Scenario creation, for one: have you read Legends of Alyria? It's free, and is built very much around the notion of creating a solid scenario before play and then playing through it. A very important design historically, and such an alluring game that it's constantly waiting for me to play it on my table here. Might be useful.

Also, scenes: the reason I suggested questioning your choice of terms was that it seemed from your text that you'd be having a lot of run-on scenes in the game, without a cut and a new frame in between. It's just a petty terminology issue, and definitely something that can be ignored. In my own game Zombie Cinema (which has a pretty interesting drama arc technique, too, now that I think of it) player turns are called scenes just like here, and I explicitly allow these "scenes" to continue without a new frame from the last turn. If this were the default behavior I'd have called them something other than "scenes", but as it is, the game benefits from implying that a new frame is the default behavior. Zombie Cinema is very much about pushing players to progress the story forcibly, so suggesting a "new scene" constantly helps them to learn those skills.

...

Now, why have drama arc mechanics, again? I like the goals you list, they remind me a lot of With Great Power, another game with powerful drama arc mechanics. It's perhaps the most intricate implementation of that sort of thing that I know, too.

However, both pacing and character pressure (to use more familiar names for the factors you identify) are also things that are very successfully dealt with by less elaborate rules than drama arcs, which is why I can't quite shake a suspicion that trying to kill them with explicit scene type limits, scene budgets and all that Burning Wheel stuff is a bit like killing flys with bombs. Let's look at a couple of games and how they deal with these issues:

• The Mountain Witch, one of my favourite games of all times, has an interesting drama arc system in that while the arc is completely explicit, it is also entirely unmechanical. However, let's look at the game's pressure system, because that's quite smart: the game's dicing mechanics are set up in a way that allows player characters to overcome basically anything the GM decides to throw at them as long as the characters trust in each other and cooperate. The short of it is that trusting PCs get to sum their die rolls with each other, while the GM-controlled enemy horder just pick the highest individual roll to oppose the players. What this means for character pressure is that the GM has a very simple job: he just needs to push more adversity than he'd ever dare, and the players will adapt to it. This is better than a complex budget system or a drama arc mechanic that tells the GM when to push the adversity, because it's simpler to use and gets the same result of pushing the PCs intensely.
• The aforementioned Zombie Cinema, my zombie game is also very concerned with pacing and letting all players get their share of the spotlight. It doesn't use a drama arc to get to these goals, though. Instead, the game requires a single player in turn to both frame and cut each scene, which means that the player in question is socially responsible for making sure that the game does not drag. The way the game ensures enough spotlight for each character is somewhat more cruel: the disinteresting characters get eaten by zombies, which in the mid-long term means that the characters who deserve it get lots of attention. Perhaps not what you're looking for, but there it is...

There are of course many other ways of getting to those two goals, too, and perhaps drama arc mechanics are one. It's also a good idea to question what drama arcs are even good for in the first place? It seems from my own overview here that in most games their point is to coordinate players towards a certain scheme of play with a commonly acknowledged game plan that is perhaps also enforced with some rules that either draw play towards a direction (like Dust Devils, which doesn't strictly enforce the game to end with the Devil encounter, just encourages it) or force a certain direction (like My Life with Master, in which there is no choice but to follow the drama arc). But the overall most important reason for having a drama arc seems to be a desire to make the structure of the story-to-be-played explicit for the whole group of players. It makes a big difference when you have an instructive model you can point to and say out loud what to expect.

Finally, a suggestion: you might benefit from writing a rough playable draft of everything you have laid down on the game so far and posting it in a new thread. As far as I can decipher, you already have hammered the cycles of the game into shape, but I don't know if I'm tired or if you're writing in an unstructured manner, but I find comprehending the whole picture more difficult than I usually do when reading these Forge postings about new game projects. Explaining things procedurally (as in, what players should do and when) and using a lot of captions might help, and perhaps attract others to take a look at this. I think I understand your overall push here, but the details about character scales and whatnot are getting mixed up in my head. This might easily be because I'm terribly busy and really shouldn't be idling at the Forge this week, but perhaps you could also structure the material in a way that'd make it easier for my dull Yule-brain to comprehend?[/list]

[jb.teller4]

Thanks for the thorough reply, Eevo.  I think you're right that my next step should be to write up a rough playable draft of the rules all together.  I'll get that written up and I'll link to it in a new thread.  It will probably take me some time, based on my schedule the next bit.

I did want to make a couple quick comments in response to your reply, though.

I haven't really played Don't Rest Your Head, but my understanding of the rules is that there is no drama arc mechanic per se. [snip]  The structure of the drama in the game depends almost entirely on the normal "freeform" give and take between the GM and the players [snip]

I was thinking about the Exhaustion spiral when I asked about a drama arc mechanic in DRYH.  When I read the rules, that's what jumped out at me as being the pivotal driver of how the game would flow.  Like the degrading attributes in Dust Devils, though it can go up very fast, but there are also ways to lower it.  Like I said, I haven't played DRYH yet, but my guess is that it would have a similar impact as in Dust Devils.

Thanks for your comments on the three systems I asked about.

MLwM is one of my favourite games, it comes highly recommended to anybody interested in this sort of game design.  [snip]

I can definitely say that you got me interested.  Somehow I had gotten a very different idea of what the game was about.  I'll be checking this out soon.

The rules of [MLwM] limit the types of scenes you are allowed to frame and the types of resolutions you are allowed to have. [snip]

This fascinated me (along with the details you gave about how it worked).  I don't have much else to say, except that it's beem percolating in my brain since I read it.

Anyway, other things. Scenario creation, for one: have you read Legends of Alyria?

Thanks for the link.  I hadn't heard of it.  I've started looking at it, but haven't gotten far enough to say much yet.

Also, scenes: the reason I suggested questioning your choice of terms was that it seemed from your text that you'd be having a lot of run-on scenes in the game, without a cut and a new frame in between.[...]

This is a place where I think my presentation was unclear.  I am intending to have clear cuts between scenes and to frame new scenes.  Part of the reason I think I hadn't talked about it yet is that it's more tied to how I'm thinkin about the dice mechanics (with scenes being a tight group of 1-3 conflicts and the dice resolving them fairly quickly).  When I write up a rough playable draft, hopefully this will be clearer.

Now, why have drama arc mechanics, again? I like the goals you list, they remind me a lot of With Great Power, another game with powerful drama arc mechanics. It's perhaps the most intricate implementation of that sort of thing that I know, too.

I'm planning on checking this game out, too (along with Zombie Cinema and Mountain Witch from below).

[...]both pacing and character pressure (to use more familiar names for the factors you identify) are also things that are very successfully dealt with by less elaborate rules than drama arcs, which is why I can't quite shake a suspicion that trying to kill them with explicit scene type limits, scene budgets and all that Burning Wheel stuff is a bit like killing flys with bombs.

You've really got me thinking with this.  I will say that my plan is to write up my game as I currently see it (including dram arc mechanics) so that I can see it all more clearly before I decide.  The question of overstructuring is percolating in my brain, too, though.

(And I have the suspicion that part of it is that I'm currently playing Burning Wheel and am reading Burning Empire, so that design has a lot of my head-space right now....)

Oh... and thanks for the terms.  Those terms are much cleaner than mine and shared terminology is a good thing.

Let's look at a couple of games and how they deal with these issues:

• The Mountain Witch [...] has an interesting drama arc system in that while the arc is completely explicit, it is also entirely nonmechanical.
  

I'm very curious how this works.  Does it effectively work as guidance so the Gm and players can talk about expectations clearly, or is there more to it than that?

I was also very interested in what you said about the character pressure mechanics (around trust).  More thoughts percolating...

• The aforementioned Zombie Cinema [snip]
  

You're right that I probably won't go the same route, but that was also very intriguing...

It seems from my own overview here that in most games [a drama arc mechanic's] point is to coordinate players towards a certain scheme of play with a commonly acknowledged game plan that is perhaps also enforced with some rules that either draw play towards a direction (like Dust Devils, which doesn't strictly enforce the game to end with the Devil encounter, just encourages it) or force a certain direction (like My Life with Master, in which there is no choice but to follow the drama arc).

Hmm.  I do like the idea of having a commonly shared, explicitly stated scheme of play.  I want the players to drive the plot forward, but I still want the story to have a cohesive thrust, so I want the players to be driving the plot in roughly the same direction and in the same sheme as each other and as me as the GM.  Unexpected twists are great (and a big part of the reason I enjoy empowering the players), but I want the framework.

On your other point, I've been thinking about enforcing vs. encouraging the drama arc.  Again, I don't have an answer yet, so I'll write up what I currently have before making any major revisions.

But the overall most important reason for having a drama arc seems to be a desire to make the structure of the story-to-be-played explicit for the whole group of players. It makes a big difference when you have an instructive model you can point to and say out loud what to expect.

Yes, yes, yes.  But adding to that, I really want the character and player rewards in the system to back it up.  I don't just want to say "you should do this because it says so on page XX"--I want to say "you want to do this because then you'll get X reward that you want."  For example, in my current BW campaign, the advancement system in the game has had a huge impact on how it's played.  Because you need tough tests (that you'll likely fail) to advance, my players are seeking out situations that in the past they would have wisely avoided like the plague.  And tying the artha system to Beliefs, Traits and Instincts has driven them to come up with their own agendas and look for ways to complicate their character's lives.

That doesn't necessarily tie directly to the drama arc mechanics, but I think there's a strong relationship.

It also has me thinking that I'm leaning towards a softer "encourage the story arc" approach (like Dust Devils) rather than a more enforced, tight drama arc mechanic (like My Life with Master).

[...]I don't know if I'm tired or if you're writing in an unstructured manner, but I find comprehending the whole picture more difficult than I usually do when reading these Forge postings about new game projects. [snip]

Yeah, it probably is because I'm writing unstructured.  I haven't really tried to write it all up yet.  I had a specific sub-system in mind when I made the first post.  I didn't try to give a cohesive overview because the forum rules say not to post the whole system and I don't have it written up elsewhere that I can link.  But I will write it up and that should help.

~~~
Thanks again for your replies.  They've given me a lot to think about.

-John Bogart

[Eero Tuovinen]

I haven't really played Don't Rest Your Head, but my understanding of the rules is that there is no drama arc mechanic per se. [snip]  The structure of the drama in the game depends almost entirely on the normal "freeform" give and take between the GM and the players [snip]

I was thinking about the Exhaustion spiral when I asked about a drama arc mechanic in DRYH.  When I read the rules, that's what jumped out at me as being the pivotal driver of how the game would flow.  Like the degrading attributes in Dust Devils, though it can go up very fast, but there are also ways to lower it.  Like I said, I haven't played DRYH yet, but my guess is that it would have a similar impact as in Dust Devils.

Could be this way, yeah. We'd need real play or somebody with such experience to gauge how irreversible, and thus story-structuring, the exhaustion in the game is. From my superficial reading it seems like there's a bit of push and pull on the issue in the rules, as they don't quite agree on whether characters should be able to recuperate and continue adventuring indefinitely. For instance, the new supplement Don't Lose Your Mind puts a lot of thought into new ways to get rid of permanent madness, which would seem like a non-issue if the slide into madness were really considered as a strict drama arc. But then, I have no idea how effective these sorts of things are in real play in stemming the slide, so it might be that the designer is just giving out false hope and in reality the players need to buckle up and start thinking of how to end the story before their characters become nightmares.

Now, why have drama arc mechanics, again? I like the goals you list, they remind me a lot of With Great Power, another game with powerful drama arc mechanics. It's perhaps the most intricate implementation of that sort of thing that I know, too.

I'm planning on checking this game out, too (along with Zombie Cinema and Mountain Witch from below).

It's quite a reading list, but those are all good games that approach these things from slightly different directions. I could think of worse ways to reflect on design than reading what others have done.

The Mountain Witch [...] has an interesting drama arc system in that while the arc is completely explicit, it is also entirely nonmechanical.

I'm very curious how this works.  Does it effectively work as guidance so the Gm and players can talk about expectations clearly, or is there more to it than that?

The short of it is that The Mountain Witch is a game about a bunch of ronin (think 7 Samurai) who journey up Mount Fuji to seek and slay the great O-Yanma, the witch of the mountain. There is a great reward for the head of the witch, but each character is also ridden by his own dark fate - one might be the witch's servant, another trying to avenge her dead husband by masquerading as a man, a third bringing an offer of alliance from the Shogun... whatever the players device. The game's structure is completely obvious with the ronin climbing up the mountain, finding O-Yanma's castle, finding the witch himself and slaying him, or not. The key to the game, however, is that the GM paces these events to allow room for the players to reveal the dark fates of the characters. As the GM himself doesn't know at the beginning what is the deal of each nameless, pastless figure, he needs to give space for the players to bring the facts into play.

As we can see, this game has a rather clear drama arc, just as clear as My Life with Master. However, there are not exactly any rules in there for keeping it together, it's all up to the group actually wanting to follow the arc. In practice players don't have their characters go haring off to Kyoto or wherever unless the story brings them to this logical conclusion - and if they do, that usually means that the character walks out of the story alive, rather than becoming part of the blood opera that inevitably breaks out when honor, duty and friendship start clashing up on the snowy banks of the mountain.

So this is as close as we can get to a mechanicless drama arc, perhaps it allows us to see clearly what those things are for. In The Mountain Witch the drama arc is really nothing more than an agreed-upon situation and some GM guidelines for how to pace and in what order to present things on the mountain. It's not even very elaborate in this regard, as it's pretty obvious that for the story to make sense the characters first need to climb the mountain, then search the witch's castle (if he has one in this play-through) and then slay or not, each according to their motivations.

Yes, yes, yes.  But adding to that, I really want the character and player rewards in the system to back it up.  I don't just want to say "you should do this because it says so on page XX"--I want to say "you want to do this because then you'll get X reward that you want."  For example, in my current BW campaign, the advancement system in the game has had a huge impact on how it's played.  Because you need tough tests (that you'll likely fail) to advance, my players are seeking out situations that in the past they would have wisely avoided like the plague.  And tying the artha system to Beliefs, Traits and Instincts has driven them to come up with their own agendas and look for ways to complicate their character's lives.

Burning Empires reminds me of something related to this - having scene budgets for players is not necessarily a part of drama arc mechanics, either. The real reason for budgeting scenes might be to spread around the protagonist spotlight. In BE the reason seems to be that the players use the scenes as a resource for accomplishing things, which is also fine.

On the other hand, in some other game drama arcs might well be enforced through budgeting scenes just like you're doing. Polaris has a bit of that going on - each character has one scene where he meets the Solaris knight and one in which he betrays the people, all "budgeted" and ready for the rules to require that scene to come about. But are there other games that do more of that sort of thing? Most games live in the gaps between enforced content, making the "cutscenes" the real bulk of play seems like it'd get boring quickly - people don't much like having to play through a scene where all the exciting issues have already been resolved for them.

Yeah, it probably is because I'm writing unstructured.  I haven't really tried to write it all up yet.  I had a specific sub-system in mind when I made the first post.  I didn't try to give a cohesive overview because the forum rules say not to post the whole system and I don't have it written up elsewhere that I can link.  But I will write it up and that should help.

We have that sort of rule? Funny, I must have missed that. Perhaps it's meant as strategic advice for engaging a more fruitful discussion; we get a lot of folks who lay out their whole game and ask for general feedback, which is often a bit hard to grasp as well. In this case, though, we'll probably get a better handle on this by looking at the whole picture.

Also, start a new thread with a jazzy name, and you attract a whole new readership. I'm sure we've already lost everybody else with the long and convoluted posts ;-)

[JoyWriter]

Here are my intuitions about this game, it'll be a little while before I have a more concrete response:

Needs/Wants seems to focus on a sort of internal/external approach to character development, here's how it looks to me:

In a needs ending, you get characters who leave for personal reasons, the world changes them in that they make peace with it, die, or else move from a state of action to inaction. In this ending, the old soldier forgives himself for his role in tyrants oppression and retires from the world.
In a wants ending, you get characters who achieve some change in the world instead, making it suit them a little more, in this ending, the old soldier defeats the tyrant and releases his local villages from his grip.

Now here's the problem I see; wangling the plot structure so it makes sense for both of these resolutions seems like it could be tricky; if the old soldier is driven by his guilt, how is loosing his fight with the tyrants guards going to push him towards self-forgiveness? As I see it, making defeat relate to the fulfilling of needs seems a surreal structure, but that is no bad thing, as Polaris is definitely surreal. I seem to remember that some forge type game had a death mechanic that behaved somewhat like this (shadow of yesterday?), but it didn't specify at the beginning how that resolution would occur. Another interesting angle on the mechanic is if you make needs resolution a limit on the gambling, so you tie the events more into your story with the risk that you will resolve your characters features before you're finished with him.

More broadly, the system would seem to encourage characters to find the events becoming more and more personal as the stakes raise (possibly via partial player authorial control: "That's my daughter!"), as they shift from thrill seeking questers to coming into contact with their own core problems.

Now obviously if you have choice there is always this one, what if players surrender all the time? The ability to surrender seems an under-appreciated feature of rpg design. How does the GM who has been going "hardcore opposition" on the players deal with their characters giving in and surrendering to the tyrants rule? Equally, what happens if they choose not to include their characters personal traits? And I think this should be an option; if damage goes streight onto the same resource they use to gain success, then it all gets a bit of a calculated gamble that might be quite dissimilar to kind of thinking you probably want.

So what is death in such a world? If the alternatives are victory over adversity, and facing your demons, it seems quite appropriate for players to choose for their characters to have meaningless deaths. Providing the player can buy their way out at any time if they choose to, they should be able to let their characters go, as conflicted and contradictory as they were in life. As a way of adding poinience (sp) to the event you could do a sort of family and friends approach. Playing out a little scene about what they have left behind. Now this may seem overkill, but hey, if your going to go dramatic with apotheosis and nirvana, you might as well include loss as well.

As I understand this games intent, it seems designed with mechanisms in it to end it, and with a finality that can expanded on but not revoked (the next quest, the hidden need, the response to sacrifice rather than the reset button). You could consider tuning this device to different lengths (if it works), depending on how paced or fraught you want the campaign to be.

[jb.teller4]

JoyWriter, you raised some good points.  I don't have a lot of time right now, but I wanted to reply briefly.

In response to your points about the relationship of the plot and the resolving of personal issues, let me clarify how I was thinking about Needs and Wants and how they fit into the game a little.

As part of the scenario-creation process, the idea is that the player has to tie both their character's Need and Want into the story and that they should be also closely tied to each other in the sense that pursuing the Want against the antagonist should tend to force the Need to be addressed.

But I'm reconsidering how the "scale" should tie into the Need.  I like the Need and character arc stuff to come up when it's interesting and tying it to the damage mechanics may be too rigid and lead to a surreal game.  I like surreal, personally, but half my players specifically don't.

Hmm.  When I first started working on this system, the character scale wasn't as tied to the Need.  It was tied to "Desperation" or "Hardness" (in fact "Hardness" was my first working name for the scale).  The idea was that as the story progressed and the character pressure intensified, the characters would tend to become more and more hard and even immoral.  They could raise their Hardness (choosing to start crossing the lines) and it could be raised for them (as they reacted to paing by hardening their resolve or desperation).  So it was actually generally in the opposite direction of resolving their Need.  I originally conceived of the Crisis Scene being more of a turning point (often between the half-way point and the Climax scene, though I didn't plan on rigidly timing it), rather than resolving the character one way or the other.  The Need, like the Want, would have other mechanics and would be something the player had to pursue and work on.  The two mechanics would interrelate, but there would often be tough choices where you kind of had to choose one over the other.  I had the rough idea that "Hardness" made you more competent and better in every scene except the Climax, where the conflict would tie to the Need rather than straight power. 

I switched gears towards tying Need into the character scale pretty early on, so I never got to developing the mechanics to do that.  But I'm starting to think that separating Need and the character scale (and making them play off each other) might not only lead to more interesting play, but also remove some of the situations that JoyWriter brought up. 

Hmm.  Thanks again, JoyWriter.  You and Eero have really helped me think about my system differently.

~~~

And on an unrelated note, is "story-mapping" a common term or specific to Legends of Alyria?  I like the term, but I'm not sure if it's open to use.

-John Bogart

[Eero Tuovinen]

The history of story-mapping is interesting. The technique is in common use, but people commonly call it "relationship mapping" in the mistaken belief that it's the same thing that is represented in the influential Sorcerer supplement Sorcerer's Soul. I for one would use "story mapping" as an explicit term if that were, in fact, what I was doing or advocating in a game, just to be clear about it. Alyria is much more influential than it is given credit for, mostly because it's perhaps not very known outside of a smallish circle of designers who've introduced its ideas to the larger public.

[JoyWriter]

I'd say that people use the word "relationship mapping" first because it is the most appropriate for the concept "mapping the consistent relationships between elements of the shared imaginary space", and then drop the term out of deference to Ron. I wonder whether the Sorcerer's Soul system should be renamed "personal relationship mapping" to allow wider and inoffensive use of that lovely elegant term with all it's systemic philosophical background. But hey, we can still call it dynamic mapping, to allow for tracking events that people might not consider "story worthy", merely persistent. I also like that because of it's relationship to the systems dynamics method. But leaving dictionary making aside:
Eero do you think it is still worth getting a copy of Alyria? Or have enough of it's ideas permeated into the stratosphere by now that I would have heard most of it? I've been trying to work out what should be in my "perfect GM library", and that sounds like something I might be interested in.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Alyria is made to work around the storymapping process, which is not true of many games. The actual verbiage devoted to it is not very much, though. Regardless, I recommend going to the original sources in almost anything rather than relying on random internet forums to fill you in.

The game is available for free in a slightly annoying blog format, though, so you should check it out yourself. No reason to rely on hear-say.