What can the dice determine?

[Paganini]

So, I was bored this evening, and thinking about the bent my game-design thinking has been developing along. I appologize in advance for the rambling nature of this post. :)

You all are probably familiar with the path I've been following here: moving towards explicitly designated divisions of power.

The more I study the issue, the I gravitate toward the idea of specificaly identifying *separate* play issues, and handling them individually. Games like Otherkind and Draconis are (to my point of view) self-evidently sensible. They've touched on the most obvious, logical way of handling power distribution.

Now to specifics. Otherkind has 4 elements governed by the dice. Draconis has 3, I think. I'd like to come up with a large list of elements that *could* be so governed. Each entry should be a separate concept. (Remember what I said about the Pool a while ago? I love the idea of the mechanics determining "who says it," but I wanted to separate that right from character success / failure. I wanted players to narrate character failure, and GMs to narrate character success.

So, I want to create a list of such things. In this list I'm going to be giving specific definitions to kinds of "power," using terms that seem appropriate. I believe I remember Ron saying in a thread once that terms like "Director Power" are misleading when used in conjunction with stances. To that end I'd like to define the terms such that they deal with the same concepts that the stances deal with, but do not refer to the stances themselves.

Things That Dice Can Determine:

Authorial Power - The right to deliver a given narration. (Who gets to say it.)

Directorial Power - The right to control the universe. (What he gets to say.)
       1. The right to determine the outcome of a given conflict.
       2. The right to create new conflicts.
       3. The right to change the setting / situation via alterations and additions.

It seems to me that 1, 2, and 3 share a web-like relationship. A player might be allowed to determine the outcome of a conflict, as long as the outcome didn't change the setting. A player might be allowed to determine the outcome of a given conflict, as long as succeeding creates a new conflict. Etc.

They could also be combined. For example, a "Complication," could be defined as an alteration or addition to the situation / setting that resulted in a new conflict. "The lock clicks open!" "As soon as it does, the door bursts open and a horde of black-clad Shadow Ninjas boil out!"

Breaking it down like this has other interesting side effects. Otherkind and Draconis make an assumption about 1 - namely that the player will always want outcomes to favor his character, while the GM will want the opposite. This is taken so far that a roll for the right to narrate indicates character success if the player wins, but character failure if the player loses. But I'm thinking of something like this... wouldn't it be cool if these were not pre-defined? This would allow players to guide their characters into courses of action that the player wants the character to fail (I can think of many narrative reasons to do this).

Other games handle this in a sort of (to me) backwards way, because they assume that if the character doesn't want it, the player doesn't want it. This means that characters have negative traits (in the form of Complication, Quirks, or whatever) that the GM invokes against them. I've seen supposedly narrative games that work just this way. In a narrative sense, flaws are what make characters interesting. Does it really make sense to construct the game so that, right up front, a neccessary element of the game is presented as being undesireable?

I'm hoping this will gel into a specific mechanic to handle these different situations. I've got a couple of ideas, but nothing complete enough to post yet. I'm hoping maybe some of the replies to this thread will spark some ideas. :)

[lumpley]

Just want to point out that in OtherKind (and Draconic too), the right to narrate doesn't equal character success.  In OtherKind there are three possible rolls: all good, all bad, and mixed, with mixed being the most common.  On all good, you get to narrate your character's success.  On all bad, the GM gets to narrate your character's failure.  Most of the time, you have to trade off narration and success: would you rather narrate your character's failure or let the GM narrate her success?

OtherKind says that the right to narrate is worth as much as your character's success, such that sometimes you'd rather narrate than succeed.  Narration and success are all tied together and enmeshed, but the one doesn't mean the other.

Anyway, I don't think this takes anything away from your actual point, and I'm interested in where you're going.

-Vincent

[Paganini]

Just want to point out that in OtherKind (and Draconic too), the right to narrate doesn't equal character success.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. It was late when I made that post. I was reading over it just now before I came to your reply going "Doh! Doh! Doh! That's not how it works!" :)

[Mark D. Eddy]

You may want to break out more subsets of Authorial Power.

To use a TV analogy, the Producer sets the setting and characters, and (in many cases) the full season's story arc. The authors then come along and write stories to help flesh out that story arc. The directors then take those stories and bring them into being while the actors flesh out the characters, their quirks and episode-to-episode existence.

Any of these levels may be useful for dice determining level of control. If that's what you're asking.