In Terras Incognitas

[Paul Czege]

Hey Ed,

Example Qualities:

* war
* kinship
* mystery
* confusion
* pain
* enlightenment
* bondage/slavery
* addiction
* love
* deception
* magic
* the dead
* honesty
* monsters
* the sea
* mountains
* feasting

I just want to say, this is a great list. In the past month or so I've written several pages of notes toward a RPG that relies on a number of lists, so maybe I'm just attuned lately to noticing and evaluating them. A great list, in my mind, extends the user's thinking beyond easy first notions, while simultaneously reigning in any thoughts of spurious or crazy notions, and it does so with a moderate number of elements.

Paul

[ejh]

resolution mechanic idea --

This is an alternative to the "reroll" thing that still allows resolution to be read off a table based on a six-sided die.

The base resolution die is, let's say, a White Die.

The player, rather than "calling for rerolls," can use the same resources that would have given them rerolls, to add Green Dice to the table.  The characteristic of Green Dice is that you roll them along with the White Die and take the highest number.

The GM can add Red Dice to the table.  Red Dice are like Green Dice except that you roll them and take the lowest number.

Red Dice and Green Dice cancel each other out, leaving the difference on the table.  So you're never rolling Green Dice and Red Dice at the same time.

The dice are rolled when nobody is willing to add more dice to a conflict (there's your brinkmanship, I guess.)

The resolution table now looks like this:

1-2 things go badly for the character.  GM narrates.
3   things go badly for the character.  Player narrates.  
4   things go well for the character.  GM narrates.
5-6 things go well for the character.  Player narrates.

Would that address your "don't do rerolls" and "have some kind of resource-spending brinkmanship" suggestions, Vincent?

Does it sound like a usable system?  (It's vaguely a rip off of InSpectres...)

[ejh]

Thanks Paul!  I really appreciate it.

Thanks to the guys in IndieRPGs we have a micro-fragment of playtest:

http://www.edheil.com/playtest1.txt

[lumpley]

This bit!

efindel: Can I make up stuff about the land?
ed: heck yeah!
efindel: Cool.  
ed: go all Director on me if you want.
efindel: Ryan ducks under the water, swims down and along, coming up on the other side of the boat.  He hangs on there, listening, and quickly recognizes the language they're speaking from his studies.  He can't understand much of it, but he does understand that they're going to sacrifice an innocent girl... and he knows he can't let them do that.
ed: awesome!

Systematize that.

Including the question! Systematize the player asking "do I get to make stuff up about this challenge?" and the GM answering yes or no.

Or partly. "Partly" should maybe be the most common answer.

-Vincent

[ejh]

You mean beyond this?....

Since the Land is necessarily being created during the game, there
should be no problem with the player fabricating relevant aspects of
it during narration.

[lumpley]

Yes!

I want to be able to say to the players "now you must create, within these constraints." Also, "you don't get to create this, hands off." I want rules about these, and that means, ultimately, points spent and dice changing hands.

Here's one possible approach, just to give you a sense of what I'm after:

When I introduce a challenge as GM, I announce three questions about it. "Cultists: What are they up to? What will they do to the PC? What's their weakness?"

Then I invest conflict points in them. Each point I invest is double-duty: first, it gives me the reroll or red die or whatever you finally decide. Second, it marks one of the questions as mine, I choose which question. Any questions I don't mark as mine, the player must answer.

So if I invest 2 conflict points in the cultists, I say: "I'm going to decide what they'll do to the PC and what their weakness is. You: what are they up to?"

-Vincent

[arete66]

I like it. I like it.  

Some comments on the playtest rules:

1)  To flesh it out, examples of Qualities, Edges, and changing land qualities into conflicts are definitely needed.  Also, it might help to give examples of how qualities justify rerolls.

2)  On the Distance chart upon leaving a land, is the 4-5 result supposed to be Distance *decreases* by 1 rather than increases?

3)  Examples of play would help greatly, obviously.  But I think that's true of most any Indie RPG design because the framework is often new to readers.

Overall, a really cool game concept.  I'd buy it in finished form. :)

It's generic enough to apply to many different genres, but structured enough to cut down on the chaos.  Very accessible, too.  There are so many stories about "getting home" that I think you'd be hard pressed to find *anyone* who doesn't implicitly understand the core issue at hand.

Also, I'm also absolutely nuts about games that have endgame mechanics and the Going Native versus Getting Home endgames are classic.

Cheers,
Tom

P.S.  I'm a technical writer with 15 years of experience in the field.  I'll edit the final draft for you for free, if you like.   (Please pardon my conversational tone in this email.  It's how I write online correspondance. :) )

[ejh]

Thanks, Vincent and Tom!

You're right, more explicit constraint about narration would very much help the structure of play.  I am going to ponder that, Vincent.

And Tom, I WILL take you up on that offer.  I'm sure that with the amount of tweaking these rules are undergoing they will need help with editing towards the end.

Good catch on the "increases instead of decreases" thing too.

[ejh]

Just a ping -- I'm still working on this.  Trying to find the time to sit down and rewrite the conflict rules.  Time very scarce over the holidays, having two kids and too many distractions.

Considering a name change to "Odyssey" from the provisional "Strange Lands," since the Odyssey is arguably the most ancient Western archetype for this kind of tale.  And as far as I can tell no RPGs of that name exist.  And I've always liked the name "Odyssey." :)

That will also give me an excuse to introduce the technical term "nostos" to signify the final goal.  That's Homeric Greek for "homecoming," and it is what Odysseus was after.

Considering whether I should be choosing a default setting/scenario for the game, rather than leaving it open and specifying the plot -- in order to make it more accessible.  Though the response here has been gratifying I think in general people like having a defined setting and scenario.

I'd want to make it easy to swap out though.  Like My Life With Master.  The setting is there but it's obvious that you could play MLWM in any of a hundred different settings and contexts.

Oh, I thought of a really fun setting: use Odyssey/Strange Lands to play gods or angels stuck in our real world and trying to reascend to their divine plane.  That would make "going native" a really interesting option.

anyway, just wanted to ping and say YES I'm still working on this, just not as fast as I'd like, and thank everyone for their support.

[ejh]

I'm gonna pay for staying up this late, but if I didn't do this eventually I'd never make progress.

http://www.edheil.com/odyssey.txt

That's the current rewrite.  There are several big holes in it labeled TODO.  But I think it's a considerable upgrade from the previous version in clarity and precision.