Suspense in mechanics

[Mike Holmes]

Hmmmm... how many Jenga blocks in a stack? I'm trying to convert from SAN to Jenga. Also, there are three starting Jenga blocks in each layer, IIRC. That means that you can't get down below one third of your SAN and still rebuild your tower to its original height.

So, lets say there are 75 blocks in a Jenga set (25 layers high). That would mean that, over time you could theoretically lose 50 blocks and still make you're tower. So, One Jenga block per 2 SAN lost? Might work. Howsabout if you lose an odd number by the roll, you have to take another out, but can replace it after a second?

OTOH, that means that remaking your tower after even twenty five are lost is going to be difficult. Hmmm... Perhaps one per three? That would mean that total insanity would begin at about 33 (time 3 is 100) Jenga blocks lost. Might be more workable.

Anybody got the accurate figures, or a better rate of exchange?

Mike

[Bankuei]

Since my question kinda disappeared.... I'll run with what's going on...

For those of you considering using Multiple Jenga stacks for players, perhaps a twist in the rules might involve taking out blocks from stacks, and people who roll real bad getting extra(3 people lost blocks, one unfortunate person got those 3 stacked on top of his shaky tower....) to represent the weak link...

You also might consider making some players take multiple turns if you're using a single stack for the whole group... :smile:

Of course, does it become more important that a particular character survives sane more than others?  Can players be willing to take a mental spill so that someone else can hold out longer?

Chris

[Epoch]

Sorry, Bankuei, this is another tangent.

You asked whether or not people would be willing to "take it for the team," losing SAN so that a more valuable member of the group didn't have to.

I'm reminded of my experience with the Buffy boardgame.  Very brief summary for those who haven't played before:

There were (in this case) three "Good" players, on a team.  Madeline controlled Buffy, Damian controlled Xander and Willow, and I controlled Oz.  Victory conditions were that we had to kill the evil leader before he could kill Buffy.

We won.  Oz was killed in like the last three turns.  I was quite pleased (none of us good-team players had played before, while the evil player had some experience).  Madeline and Damian looked concerned and said that they were sorry Oz had died.  I looked at them strangely.  We had won, hadn't we?  Who cared if my piece had died -- especially so late in the game that I didn't have a significant amount of time out of play?

Anyhow, to address your actual question, I think that some people (me-lookalikes) would be happy to take it for the team, and other people (Damian and Madeline lookalikes) are more focussed on their relationship with their personal characters, and would be less likely to sacrifice their characters for a strategic advantage.

[Osric]

Bankuei originally wrote:
[Jenga] has the terrible suspense of each and every turn being critical in the game.  There's also the satisfaction of completing your turn and making it one more round.  The satisfaction increases as the difficulty increases as well.

I was trying to put that into my Persona system with the reroll mechanic.  I was wondering if anyone has attempted to include suspense(of resolution) in their mechanics or knows of systems that have.

I'm not sure what you mean by "suspense (of resolution)"...  I think with Jenga, much of the suspense derives from the fact that drawing a block takes a certain amount of time, and everyone can watch and ooh and ahh as it is happening.

If that's what you're after, I'm not sure whether that can easily be built in.  Given a big pool of dice I suppose you can roll them one at a time...

Harnmaster has 20% of results being criticals, but instead of computing the chance of this by dividing the chance for normal success by 5 (as in RQ impales), it just says any d% roll in which the 'units' die comes up 5 or 0 will be a critical.
If -- as I do -- you roll the units first, rather than rolling both d10s simultaneously, one in five rolls has the suspense of "it's going to be big" without knowing whether it'll be a critical success or a critical fumble.  That's at least partway suspenseful.

But just when it looked like I was dragging this back on-topic, this leads into a tangent of my own.  
Harnmaster, RQ, and various other systems use attack rolls compared with parry rolls.  If absolutely destroys the sense of identification if you get to roll a successful hit (Yay!)only for the other guy to invalidate it with a successful parry (Boo!).
But you can turn this around by making the defender roll his parry first.  Then his defences are there for everyone to see, and it becomes can be suspenseful to know what you're up against before you make your attack roll.

Does this help?
-- Nev.

[Bankuei]

  Actually, the tension level is pretty high even if no one else is around to watch you take your turn...It's sort of like Operation or Perfection in the way Jenga raises  your blood pressure and tension levels.   In terms of die rolls, everyone remembers getting tensed up when it came to those critical "instant death" saving throws for D&D, even if it wasn't your character.

 I wasn't necessarily thinking of making initiative, hit, parry, location, damage, etc. the method of creating suspense, it somewhat just drags out combat that way, more like the tension that you get knowing something major is on the line.  

The Pool does a great job because you are effectively gambling Story points/Experience points when you choose to gamble dice away, and its the sole means of you gaining extra dice in your pool.   Likewise HeroWars makes each resolution into a gambling of Action points, with the odds modified by your ability level in a given contest.

A lot of the narrativist games do a great job of simplifying rules so that you can have a few(or just one) roll for resolution, but you can often lose the joy of that critical, "This is it" roll at the climax of a event.   Because oftentimes the roll narrates the entire conflict, you roll first and then narrate the event, while most other types of games go intent, roll, outcome.

I want to keep the authoritorial freedom and rules simplicity, but I also want to have the mechanics support and emulate and escalation of tension.   I was curious if anyone else has seen this idea of escalation of tension, raising the stakes as a scene goes on, built into mechanics, or has considered puttting it there.

Chris

[Le Joueur]

Bankuei wrote:

I wasn't necessarily thinking of making initiative, hit, parry, location, damage, etc. the method of creating suspense, it somewhat just drags out combat that way, more like the tension that you get knowing something major is on the line.  

[Snip.]

A lot of the Narrativist games do a great job of simplifying rules so that you can have a few (or just one) roll for resolution, but you can often lose the joy of that critical, "This is it" roll at the climax of a event.   Because oftentimes the roll narrates the entire conflict, you roll first and then narrate the event, while most other types of games go intent, roll, [and] outcome.

I want to keep the [authorial] freedom and rules simplicity, but I also want to have the mechanics support and emulate and escalation of tension.   I was curious if anyone else has seen this idea of escalation of tension, raising the stakes as a scene goes on, built into mechanics, or has considered putting it there.

Although it is still somewhat difficult to read, Scattershot has mechanics designed to support this kind of technique.

One part of Scattershot's discussion of techniques of play (not included in this series of articles, which was about the mechanics only) talks about the idea of using pacing to maintain and support a steadily increasing tension level (and looking for an appropriate climax, if one shows up).  To that end, the mechanics have a number of features built in to allow participants (especially the gamemaster) to 'speed up' or 'slow down' the pacing of a game while it's happening.

While Scattershot has no specific mechanics for directly manipulating tension (I don't know if that's even possible), but talks a lot about techniques for gleaning what the involved players value and how endangering that affects the 'tension spiral.'

And as far as "initiative, hit, parry, location, damage, [and et cetera]," Scattershot talks about shifting from Specific to Mechanical play specifically for the purpose of raising the tension level.  While most gamers are familiar with having combat at the Mechanical play level, few seem to have realized that it can be handled as Specific play or at a higher degree of Scope as ways of downplaying the climatic sensation of playing out a combat mechanically (thereby not interfering with the tension level).

Though I understand some game systems use a 'conflict resolution system' rather than a 'task resolution system' to achieve this effect, as far as I know Scattershot is one of few games that has both and subsequently talks about using whichever is the most appropriate to the tension level.  This directly reflects on your comment about "simplifying rules so that you can have a few (or just one) roll for resolution" which Scattershot makes optional and instructs ways of using the option to affect to de-emphasize tension escalation.

Does that answer your question?  I'm not sure.

Fang Langford

[Edited so that I can eat my own words! :wink:]

[ This Message was edited by: Le Joueur on 2002-01-02 16:34 ]

[Paul Czege]

Hey,

Though I understand some game systems use a 'conflict resolution system' rather than a 'task resolution system' to achieve this effect, as far as I know Scattershot is the only one that has both and subsequently talks about using whichever is the most appropriate to the tension level.

Story Engine defaults to a scene level resolution system, in which individual contributions from player characters participating in the scene are pooled, but has "quick take" mechanics that enable players to have their characters engage opponents individually, which draws any dice the opponent would be contributing to scene resolution away into a featured one-on-one. When that's resolved, the quick take mechanics then determine what dice go back into affecting the scene resolution. So it provides both the GM and the players with the ability to tweak the tension level by choosing when and where to focus attention on individual conflicts.

Paul

[joshua neff]

Plus, with Story Engine, there's always the option of resorting to the simplified Story Bones mechanics, which can be used for specific tasks, rather than scene resolution.

[Mike Holmes]

Hero Wars is similar, too, with extended vs. regular conflicts.

Mike

[Bankuei]

I've seen both, which have impressed me and given a lot of ideas as far as how task resolution should be flexible enough to encompass the players' needs.  I think I should clarify my question a little more...

I'm asking specifically, mechanics wise only, what in general have people seen built into systems for the building of tension, and what has worked well.  For example, Hero Wars has its ever critical Action Points for extended actions, D&D has hit points, the Pool has the pool of dice, the 2 Page Action Movie Game has its "build-up" special move list, etc.  

In most of these cases it becomes more critical to succeed as a set of resources(points, dice, etc) deplete, just as it becomes harder but more satisfying to succeed in Jenga as the blocks continue to be pulled out.

While there are plenty of ways to narrate a great paced story, with wonderful tension building and release along the way, that's not specific to mechanics, which is the avenue I'm currently exploring.

Hopefully that makes my line of inquiry a little more clear :smile:

Chris

[Le Joueur]

Mike Holmes wrote:

Hero Wars is similar, too, with extended vs. regular conflicts.

Okay, now that I've had time to digest (the crow).  Can someone knowledgable about Story Engine and Hero Wars, tell me about how well they satisfy those old Simulationist urges, specifically the personal level hit, parry, dodge, injury, kind of things?  I guess I am wondering if these are actually melee level battling mechanics or a scene-level resolution systems 'reaching down' to the individual action level.

And (what I am much more curious about) do they include much instruction on using these particular features for the sake of manipulating tension?

Ever your student,
Fang Langford

[ This Message was edited by: Le Joueur on 2002-01-04 00:38 ]

[Bankuei]

  Well, Hero Wars uses an extended resolution system, which involves each contestant with a pool of action points, which you bid to gamble on your next roll.  You could narrate each roll as a single attack, maneuver, or feint to increase your advantage.  As far as a particular manuever being more likely to succeed than another, it really doesn't get into that level of simulation.

 Story Engine actually has a simple enough engine that you COULD use it for a initiative, hit, parry, damage, etc type resolution, but that's like using a PC Powerbook to hammer in nails...

I found Story Engine does a good job of raising tension, particularly when you have a bad situation to start with, since using the quick takes, you can then use smaller actions to improve your odds with the scene resolution, so each roll becomes important.  And, since each quick take only gives you extra dice for the scene resolution, you aren't guaranteed success in the end.  It makes for a very dramatic resolution.

Chris

[Mike Holmes]

Fang,

Hero Wars has whole paragraphs set off by a little symbol (one of those thingies that they clap together to start a scene in a movie; mental block on the name) that indicate that they are about how to drive drama and suspense, etc. One describes how the extended resolution system should be emplyed in order to manipulate the tension level. Small bids mean low tension and rising action, large bids relate to critical moments in the conflict, etc. Mr. Laws has it all laid out very well right there.

The simple tests are what you find in most other games. Roll versus the appropriate stat plus bonuses trying to get under the Target number generated. It does not spend a lot of time focusing on lots of combat detail, though it does give methods for generating it should you want to. In this way it is not a scene mechanic "reaching down". Both methods exist in parallel.

In this way a Hero Wars GM could Transition (to use your term) from Simulation to Narrativism by using more extended conflicts (the reverse is even more true). Not that I think Laws even considered any of this in design, and not that your system couldn't do it better. Just that it seems to fit the bill.

Mike

[joshua neff]

I don't think Story Engine does that kind of fight scene breakdown (into individual swings, misses, hits, etc) very well--you could use it that way, although the way the game is structured, you won't really get bonuses for specific tactics the way you would in, say, D&D or the old Runequest. Which is probably why I like it, because that kind of ultra-specific combat bores the absolute crap out of me. I'm much, much happier with abstracted combat that you can make specific through player narration, like you do in Story Engine. And I'm not a big fan of mechanics that are different for fighting (breaking every movement down into separate rolls) than anything else (for example, picking a lock is generally resolved through one roll for the whole action).

Side note: while watching Lord of the Rings, I kept seeing things in Story Engine & Hero Wars terms, as extended contests of conflict resolution & scene resolution, rather than task resolution.

[ This Message was edited by: joshua neff on 2002-01-04 11:16 ]

[Ian O'Rourke]

On 2002-01-04 11:14, joshua neff wrote:

Side note: while watching Lord of the Rings, I kept seeing things in Story Engine & Hero Wars terms, as extended contests of conflict resolution & scene resolution, rather than task resolution.

[ This Message was edited by: joshua neff on 2002-01-04 11:16 ]

I must admit I've read Hero Wars again recently, and I read it again basically because I saw Lord of the Rings and I wanted the next fantasy game I run to be 'like that'. I say next, I've never ran a sword and sorcery game of any kind, but if I did....

I realised specific action/reaction with unique bonuses, etc, for each was not what was needed. Hence I re-read Hero Wars. The whole of Moria is just one or multiple extended contests ain't it? As is the breaking of the friendship.

Still don't understand resolving unimportant combats by simple contests, but I'll get there.