RPG/CCG hybrid scam; Monetary Awards in RPGs more generally

[Calithena]

In another thread, Mike Holmes wrote:

"The one thing that I always bring up regarding [the integration of games into real life - Cal] that we have this scorekeeping device that we use in every day real life that serves as a really potent driver for player behavior. In fact, it's used as the "score" in most of the sample games from Game Theory. We call it money.

Ever note how M:tG and other CCGs drove player behavior and Gamism? I've just never been able to figure out how to use this in a RPG. :-) "

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Well, you have to get people to buy in, and that involves a truly massive amount of advertising money etc., and the 'cool' factor, and then you have to hope it 'takes' with the kids.

But my idea on how to do this would run as follows. You create a very modular gamist RPG - with non-levelable stuff like 3e's feats rather than levelable skills, and plenty of magic items, etc. - and people can build a character out of whatever cards they have. So the more you buy and trade for, the more 'rares' you get, so that Stormbringer or Ginsu Hurricane technique, etc. is something your opponents likely don't have. You make the game sessions completely modular (so you belly up to the table with a character defined by the cards you have) and then you play.

Then you have separate "GM Decks" with the nastier monsters and traps also being rares, etc.

How to solve the problem of 'earning' magic items? Well, maybe some ubercards can only get activated as treasure after beating a level x baddie.

And then if it takes you have 'league play' with special cards for that, that cost more and you have to be a member to get them, etc. And you leave some aspects of dungeon design (maybe the map, say, with parameters for maximum cards/room) up to individual GMs so people can pretend they're doing something creative with their time when they play this game.

I think something like this could be designed fairly easily. If it had cool art it might even be a hit. Let me see: you need race cards, class cards, feat cards, magic item cards, skill cards for the players; trap cards, monster cards, etc. for the 'GM'...

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The other thing you can do that's much simpler is have everyone kitty up dollars to the GM at the beginning, with survivor bonuses, MVP bonuses, workhorse bonuses, and all the rest, so that it becomes a competitive activity, with the competition adjudicated by vote. Maybe you take 10% off the top each for the GM and for the host of the game so that those factors don't interfere.

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Back before the dot-com bust there were GMs in San Francisco making ten bucks per hour per kid as a form of childcare. I don't know if the culture is still supporting that or not.

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Then there's integrating money into play itself. Here's a simple, evil mechanic for that: you pay for extra dice or die modifiers, at any time. Open the wallet, you get the extra rolls. Then, at the end of the session, again the GM splits up all the money paid into the game between the players, less 10%, as survivor money, treasure money, 'good roleplaying' bonus, MVP, etc. in shares. You like that character? Pay for the +5 on your saving throw, buddy! That's $15...

I like this idea, actually. First of all, the more you pay, the more chance you have of staying in, hence the more chance you have of getting your money back (assuming survival means at least a partial share of the ending pot). The reason I like this is that it produces the same phenomenon you get in poker, where people throw good money after bad over and over and over just to hopefully realize a return on their investment. (These people are known as 'suckers', and do not understand the concept of edge odds.) Second, it transfers wealth from the richer players to the poorer, presuming the latter will be less likely to pay. So yeah, the rich players get a disproportionate IG reward, but the poor players effectively get paid to play. The key thing is that you can only buy bonuses, not automatic success or failure.

[MachMoth]

I'm a little lost on the cause/effect we're getting at here.  Are we saying CCG's and what not produce a driven gamist effect because of money, or are we saying that money can be made from driven gamist behavior?

[Andrew Martin]

Back before the dot-com bust there were GMs in San Francisco making ten bucks per hour per kid as a form of childcare. I don't know if the culture is still supporting that or not.

Some time ago on RPG.net, there was a post describing how three men paid their GM to work full time on AD&D adventures for their weekend adventure sessions. The GM gave up her job to be a full-time GM.

[Calithena]

Hey, MachMoth -

I'd say both, actually. But each deserves separate discussion.

If people are involved in a real-life process of competing and wagering self-esteem, as well as the value of their in-game token, they will pay (witness player splatbooks, and the game of poker) endless amounts of money to support that. Just paying the GM for better rolls seems abhorrent, but if you are paying into a pot that gets split up to support the kind of game you want to play, then it seems less so.

On the other hand, people also like real-life processes of spending money, and games that allow them to fill that need may be successful in their own right. I know a woman who is principally into d20 because every time she goes to the hobby shop she can buy five or six different new books. One of the main things I find abhorrent about the system is actually a draw for her: collector's mania. Collector's mania drives CCGs too. CCGs have the additional advantage that some of what you collect, the 'rares', get you in-game benefits that people who didn't collect them don't get.

Being able to own lots of stuff in real life is an incentive for some people to play games, and if the stuff you own helps you in a gamist competition, then you have a kind of mutual support here of game-play and purchasing. More purchasing makes you better at the game, and the excuse of being better at the game allows you to indulge your purchasing fetish.

[contracycle]

I nearly bought a book of photos the other day called "men and collections", it being nothing more than single B&W images of men, with their collections, accompanied by a brief title.  A brief google shows its on Amazon, for the curious.

Whatever the basis of the drive to collect stuff, its going to be exploited and the beneficiaries might as well be RPG's.  So in general terms I'm in favour of the idea.  Furthermore, I see a couple of other things that card-based games might do well, such as disposing of table lookups and bringing big chunks of strong colour right there to the table.  A simple display rack could be fashioned out of folded paper quite easily.

One thing I considered recently is a card system substituting for big chunks of a melee resolution system.  That is, a card could be drawn with little line diagram vignettes of two characters exchanging blows ala the Fechbuch diagrams; the point of the card is to represent a moment of decision, opportunity.  The mechanism resolves the card draw, and then the card, with its diagram of the state of play, can carry optional modifiers and so forth.  The downside to all this is the degree of specification, that is, do you need one deck of combat exchanges for an opponent with a rapier and another for an opponent with a broadsword and shield?  OTOH, this could be quite thematic, with a given game - say, vikings - having a combat deck for vikings, another for saxons, and so forth.  Potentially, this would better express the particularities of a particulur cultures mode of warfighting, and also be employed to represent formaitons.  Dunno; I have not got a finished idea here, just the germ of one.

Another thing is that I would happily, ectstatically, pay for a whole batch of cards that was nothing but character portraits for use as PC's and NPC's.  If this could be produced at the same sort of price range as CCG's, I think that would be a marvellous bargain.  Unlike CCG's, though, I would certainly want all such portraits done in one style and preferably by one artist.  Cards representing places and things can be had too; a given "scenario" would then ship with a deck appropriate to showing off its notional material contents as props.  Such a set of cards might conceivably be used in other ways, as a random generator or the like.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Maybe I'm not understanding something, but it seems to me as if the "pay to play" and "pay to be better during play" process has been very well established and exploited by certain LARP organizations.

By paying more, you upgrade your membership and therefore have access to better in-game effectiveness values.

Is that something like what this thread is discussing?

Best,
Ron

[MachMoth]

Well, my next comment was going to be a about how I wouldn't be so hasty to attach collector mania with the expenditure of funds.  While, I still think that, I don't want to draw too much a way from what we've got here, because it has merit.  Money does seem to have a driving force on making something enjoyable.  However, in the case of collecting, the two don't really fit as one and the same, but two driving forces, working in tandem.  Pokémon was a resonable example.  On it's own, the game promoted itself with collectors ambition.  You worked to collect Pokémon.  There was no 'monitary' value lost in collecting, but simply the effort spent.  However, bring Pokémon cards and toys into the equation.  Together they produced far more sales than the game ever could.  Collecting seems to imply there is a personal value, or utility.  When you make a purchase, you assume you are acquiring something of equal or better utility than the money (and effort put into acquiring it) lost.  To a collector, this value is obviously going to be higher.  Thus, WotC's ability to almost literally produce cardboard currency.  So, if you want to increase somethings value to people, you bouce it off of one of their personal drives.  Collecting is a drive many people share, thus it's success.  Same with Ron's example.  There is a drive to have a better character, and it seems perfectly sensable to spend money in doing so.  To someone like me, that seems perfectly rediculous.  D20, for all it's flaws, produced a very 'socketed' system, in which unlimited numbers of suppliments could not only be made, but desired.

So, to conclude my hypothesis, spending money drives a person, because that person feels they are recieving something better in return.  Collecting is a powerful force in this respect, because the two play well off each other to produce empty pockets.

EDIT:
Well, I completely ignored gamism in that analysis.  *sheepish grin*  I do that.  Anyways, it fits too.  Simply put, the desire to, say, increase the effectiveness of one's deck, or tweak out one's character, also increases the personal utility of an item.

[Mike Holmes]

That's why we always suggest charging an appropriate fee for your game, even if it's a small fee. Because people just can't believe that a free game might be worthwhile. It doesn't matter if loads of people download your free game if nobody plays it. :-)

The idea of the CCG RPG was first proposed here by Fang Langford way back. I was working on one at the time (I think I still have my notes somewhere, it was heavily influenced by the ICE ME CCG). I'd still be interested in the idea but...

... it was first done a long time ago in the form of Dragonstorm (IIRC). Apparently it wasn't too successful. But that might be potentially due to the implementation which seems kinda, ehh. Hard to say.

In any case what I'd worry about is that the Gamism would go too overboard, and smash any other effect in the game.

Mike

[xiombarg]

Just to make sure, as a quick aside, y'all are aware that someone did try to fuse CCGs and RPGs?

http://www.dragonstorm.com/

[Drifter Bob]

One thing I considered recently is a card system substituting for big chunks of a melee resolution system.  That is, a card could be drawn with little line diagram vignettes of two characters exchanging blows ala the Fechbuch diagrams; the point of the card is to represent a moment of decision, opportunity.  The mechanism resolves the card draw, and then the card, with its diagram of the state of play, can carry optional modifiers and so forth.  The downside to all this is the degree of specification, that is, do you need one deck of combat exchanges for an opponent with a rapier and another for an opponent with a broadsword and shield?  OTOH, this could be quite thematic, with a given game - say, vikings - having a combat deck for vikings, another for saxons, and so forth.  Potentially, this would better express the particularities of a particulur cultures mode of warfighting, and also be employed to represent formaitons.  Dunno; I have not got a finished idea here, just the germ of one.

I think this is a FANTASTIC idea.  Especially for a Germ.  You could have a standard set of attacks and counters, and then a whole series of nuanced ones, as well as cards for different weapons and types of armor.  If you were going based on actual historical stuff, you could really have a huge amount of possibilities.  

If you are ever looking for someone to collaborate with on this idea, email me!  If you ever make this game, let me know!  i want it!

JR

[damyano]

Another thing is that I would happily, ectstatically, pay for a whole batch of cards that was nothing but character portraits for use as PC's and NPC's.  If this could be produced at the same sort of price range as CCG's, I think that would be a marvellous bargain.
<snip>
Such a set of cards might conceivably be used in other ways, as a random generator or the like.

*raises his hand*
I remember using MtG cards for portraits of major NPCs, and even Jyhad cards randomly drawn to determine events in an IRC game. Way back in the day I carried a deck of cards from a boardgame called... er... been a long time. Shadowlords? Anyway, it featured a big deck of character portraits with names. Very handy, wish I still had it.

I found the little icons on the Jyhad cards handy for remembering abilities or certain circumstances in an encounter. Don't know if pre-printing a set of icons to suggest these things would be good, or if it would be best to mark it yourself somehow.