since The Wheel...

[Jack Spencer Jr]

After what seems like decades of talk I've finally typed down my game The Wheel.

It's a little rought but if you email me at eeville@dreamscape.com I'll happily send you a copy to peruse.  Plain text in the message body.  Never trust attachments.

However it is a very, very rough first draft.  So much so I expect that it's incomprehensible.  I hope not but I fear this may be so.

I need help and I'm hoping that the users here at The Forge will kindly offer there insights in my little game.

Thanks in advance.

Jack

[ This Message was edited by: pblock on 2001-09-25 00:39 ]

[Jack Spencer Jr]

To make it easier, I've gotten a Geocities site and converted The Wheel to HTML.

You can look at it here:

http://www.geocities.com/greencatgames/WHEELrd1.htm

BTW there's nothing on the main page.  I just cobbled it up w/ Page Wizard a few minutes ago.  It took all of my willpower to not use the Hello Kitty theme.

Jack

[Jack Spencer Jr]

To those who glanced at The Wheel with any interest, Rolling The Bones has been cut from the game.  I had been considering this but when I let a non-gamer friend read it, she said that she didn't really see how it should be used.  Neither did I TBH.  I don't know why I had it in the first place except that part of my reasoning was to hold on to dice.

Funny.  This is also in On Writing when he mentions "kill your darlings."  My initial response even started "Yeah, but" oddly enough

This is an interesting notion.

Has anyone here had to kill any darlings in their games?  Anyone have any darlings they fear may need to be put down?

No problems.  I have a .22 a shovel and know of a place (several actuall) where no one would ever think to look.

[hardcoremoose]

I'm glad you know a place, 'cause the lime pit in my backyard is nearly full.

Just tonight, in fact, I realized I may have to put down most of an entire game.  Human Wreckage just isn't working right, and I'm going to have to do away with a whole lot of what I thought was pretty clever stuff.

Good luck with any future mercy killings.  :smile:

- Moose

[Ron Edwards]

Hey,

One of my treasured concepts in the first design of Sorcerer combat was "mutual carnage," in which two combatants rolled dice once, and that handled both offense and defense for both of them. This has been done successfully in some recent games, but my design for it was absurd. I really, really wanted to get away from offense/defense rolls for both people, but every version I came up with was more complex and difficult than the last and irritated people no end in playtesting. So I finally killed the idea, tearfully, and realized that Zero's sequence/announcement design was brilliant, so I used that as the foundation for the eventual combat rules for Sorcerer.

Best,
Ron

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Hey, Ron.

That sounds appalingly similar to Tunnels & Trolls.  As someone who has tried his own hand hand at a T&T-like combat system....yeah they do get worse every time you try to fix them.  I don't know why that is.

Simplicity is best kept simple, I guess.  T&T combat doesn't give you a lot of detail, but it works.  WHen you start adding detail, including "official" house rules to that effect, you lose that simplicity.

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Moose  (Scott, right?)

Killing most of a game it like...I dunno.  The way you've written it, it almost sounds like you're about to shake the Etch-A-Sketch and more-or-less start again.

Don't do that.  First of all, you may be second guessing yourself about what works and what doesn't.  However, you probably got plenty of feedback from playtesters, so maybe not.

But keep this in mind:

Were I there when D&D was first written, the first thing I'd probably try to ax would be Alignments.  Many would and they don't seem to do that much.  But I wasn't there and Alignments do have a purpose.  Since then, they had created a whole list of spells, magic items, etc that function off of Alignments.  You must be Lawful Good to wield this sword.  If you're Evil, it will burn you.  That sort of thing.

Personally I've always thought that was a despirate attempt to make an otherwise useless mechanic useful.  The problem with my opinion is it worked.  If they were to remove Alignments from D&D at this point, they'd do so at their own peril.

You have feedback.  Some stuff doesn't work.  There may be a way to make it work.  Figure out why it doesn't work and see if it can be changed so that it does.

Rolling The Bones didn't work because it was yet another fortune mechanic in the game.  I already had the Inspiration Deck so Rolling The Bones was redundant.

Actually, since I've posted I'm going to cut it, my mind has been working to find a reason to keep it.  It is my darling after all.

[hardcoremoose]

Hey Jack,

Here's the deal with Human Wreckage - it just doesn't work right.  And to get it to work, some major changes are going to have to be made.  But they will be made - sooner or later - and the game will go.  It has to - Ron Edwards has played it!  A review of it exists at The Forge!

But even when those major changes are made, the game probably won't look that different.  Some of the ideas do work, and even as problematic as our session last night was, we still came up with a pretty original horror-movie plotline.  There was fun to be had - it was just hampered by a poor definition of how currency works and too much resource management.

Thanks for the encouraging words.  Good luck with the Rolling the Bones thing. :smile:

- Scott

[Mike Holmes]

Actually, I think that you are entirely wrong about the idea that Rolling the Bones is not important. I think that it is a fascinating idea. Just like the thread below where we are discussing the idea of how a metagame mechanic can affect plot flow, what you have designed (whether or not it works perfectly, yet) is a method to affect plot flow that is mostly random. If you can get it to create a decent flow, I think that you really will have accomplished something. So, from one guy's perspective, it's worth working on.

Mike

[Jack Spencer Jr]

On 2001-10-03 10:07, Mike Holmes wrote:
Actually, I think that you are entirely wrong about the idea that Rolling the Bones is not important.

Well, here's what I've got on that train of thought and you tell me.

Currently, in The Wheel I have:

The Words which defines in a vague way what a character can/can't would/wouldn't do.  

Character Agendas for guiding the flow of the action so that the players have some idea where the story is goiong.  I have yet to cobble up the section on Hidden Agendas where you prepare what you'd like to see happen to other people's characters.

Tokens which allow players to Object or Suggest events on another person's character.

Then there's the Inspiration Deck which is a random element to help should you get completely stuck and don't know what happens next.

In other words, I have a system that require preparation on the part of the players for their own (and the other) characters, a method for interaction to alter this preparation in play, and a random element to help you if you get stuck.

Where does Rolling the Bones fit in?

Personally, I've been toying with a chart or table in place of an Inspiration Deck.  But I don't know if I will or not.

[Mike Holmes]

Like I said, the dice would be for pacing. When do you raw a card? Perhaps on certain die rolls. Combine the methods. Th ethink that I liked was that the dice could make for a random period of escallation of tension during resolution. So on a roll of a seven the conflict is over immediately, if you roll an eight draw a card, interperet the action, and roll again until you get an 8 or crap out. Consider that the game developed as the most interesting thing that you could do with two dice as far as creating tension to get people to bet. I think that could make it good for pacing an RPG. Might need tweaking, but the concept intrigues me.

Or if you really don't like how it fits in at all, maybe you can include it in another game. If not, can I steal it?

Mike Holmes

[Jack Spencer Jr]

On 2001-10-05 10:00, Mike Holmes wrote:
Like I said, the dice would be for pacing. When do you draw a card?

When you get stuck.  The purpose of the deck is not to resolve action or scenes but to help create them when you can't do it yourself.

In fact, none of the mechanics are about resolving action aside from the Tokens, and the Tokens are about the other players' interaction to your scene.  So the real resolution mechanic isn't anything on paper, but the other people playing with you.  If some thinks an action is impossible or unlikely or just not good, they can veto it with a token.  You (or another player) may appeal this.

The thinking that I liked was that the dice could make for a random period of escallation of tension during resolution. So on a roll of a seven the conflict is over immediately, if you roll an eight draw a card, interperet the action, and roll again until you get an 8 or crap out.

Interesting, but the idea is for the mechanics to be like training wheels (wheel again.  get it?) that help you keep your balance but you're doing better the less they touch the ground i.e. are used.

What you suggest is more like a tricycle.  No balance required.  It may still get you there, but not with the same feeling of freedom a bicycle does in my mind.

Consider that the game developed as the most interesting thing that you could do with two dice as far as creating tension to get people to bet.

Bet? Where?  I don't recall having betting.  Let me check....

Or if you really don't like how it fits in at all, maybe you can include it in another game. If not, can I steal it?

I may use it in another game.  I actually used an odd version of it in a Road Trip-inspired game over on the GO forums.  heh heh heh

Here a little aside.  I found this going through some old notebooks & papers:


Wheel
  Stat = higest number
  Skill = # of dice Rolled
          & # of dice that can be ignored


Aw man. Who farted?

I have no idea where I was going with this.  All I kept was the title, apparently.