[GroupDesign: Schrodinger's War] Doug's Draft Rules

[Sydney Freedberg]

Doug Ruff has put a pleasantly hefty set of draft rules online. There are some interesting convergences with Tobias's draft -- notably strongly structured collaborative setting design -- and some interesting divergences. Doug in particular has three key questions:

At this stage, I'm not looking for layout advice - it's a draft document, and I know it looks awful!

There are Notes (DN) and questions (DQ) all over the document, any comments on these welcomed. However, there are three questions about the overall design of the game that I specifically want to talk about in this thread.

(1) Do the mechanics for the game adequately support the feeling that it's a game about time travel?

(2) Do the rules, as written, adequately support the declared premise that this game is about what it's like to be human? How would you like to see this emphasised (in mechanics or otherwise)?

(3) Are the Conflict rules (including the Example Conflict) clear enough? Feel free to ask specific questions to check your understanding of them (in otherwords, to make sure that I've written them up correctly.) As a bonus question, do the conflicts look manageable?

[TonyLB]

Comments, in order of most recent read-through:[list=1][*]Setting:  "Change history according to their own desires."  Why?  What do they care about?  Even two quick sentences like "What those desires are is the most important thing you, personally, contribute to the game.  Anything is legitimate, as long as it puts your character in motion and conflict trying to change or preserve something."
[*]DQ: Should the player have to declare the whole of their plan at once? I've chosen this for simplicity, but it may not be necessary.  The rules get a bit funky if one of the tasks is optional (like "We want to get the combination to the safe, so we don't have to dynamite it... failed?  Ah well, dynamite it is, then!")
[*]I like the Strength/Weaken Traits aspect of character development.  Is that all of the Hosts taken by that Archivist (i.e. he now knows Love better than he used to) or all of the Hosts everywhere (i.e. Love is now more important through time, in a way controlled and defined by one player)?
[*]Fade Triggers:  Can temporary Transcendance be greater than Permanent transcendance?  If so, wouldn't your second standard ("If the Archivist's current permanent Transcendence is less than the total number of active Host Traits") be a subset of your first ("If the Archivist's current temporary Transcendence is less than the number of active Host
Identity traits")?  If so, does that trigger two episodes?[/list:o]

[Doug Ruff]

Hooray - feedback! Thanks, Tony.

In order:

(1) Yes, you're absolutely right - I know that the current draft is weak in terms of 'why do Archivists about any of this?' but it doesn't hurt to hear it. And those two quick sentences are fantastic - expect to see them (or something very similar in the next Draft.)

(2) Hmmm, now you've got me wondering - the main reason this rule is here is that if the acting player fails a single Task, they blow the whole lot. Thinking again, this may not be necessary - but this requires some careful thought.

As it stands at the moment, I'd say that the relevant Task in your example, is 'Open the Safe'. Trying for the combination is one attempt to win the Task. If this doesn't work, the Archivist can Rewind Time get the dynamite.

But, what if there isn't a time pressure for this Task? Then the Archivist doesn't need to Rewind Time, they can just give up the Task, and move to a different time and get the dynamite. This would cost an additional (temporary) Transcendence, but wouldn't incur the other penalties for a Rewind.

Does this make sense, and is it worth it?

(3) The latter, and that's deliberate. Your "Love is more important through time... " description nails it squarely.

(4) Oh, rules vagueness. The first trigger condition compares the Archivist's permanent Transcendence to the total of all Host Traits (ie. Ability and Identity). The second trigger compares temporary Transcendence to Host identity Traits only.

The reason for the first is that an Archivist can only possess a Host with total traits less than or equal to the Archivist's permenent Transcendence. The second rule is because, if an archivist overexerts themselves, they can get into trouble.

The second rule is more important, so I may ditch the first. In fact, the way the game balances now, I'm tempted to say that an Archivist can attempt to possess anyone - if they try and use a 21 Trait Host, that's 7 Traits the other players can use to screw them over. My money's not on the Archivist.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Oh, for comparison:

The thread about Tobias's draft is here.

[Tobias]

I will be playing in Doug's (PBEM) playtest, as soon as he gets one out there.

I think posting in my thread is against Forge resurrection rules, but anyone who has suggestions for my draft as a result of reading doug's version, PM me.

I've read Doug's 0.1 and commented on it, now skimmed 0.2. Again - well done, Doug! The added examples are very good for understandability.

As to the three DQ's at the beginning of this thread:

1. The 'rewind time' mechanic looked awesome to me from the get-go, expect something like that (in feel, anyway), to appear in my draft as well.

2. Like my draft, I think your draft right now more feels like a  'changing time' game than a 'what it's like to be human' game. Not surprising, given the elements we've all put up front as under investigation. Playing it will be the 'proof is in the eating'.

3. conflict rules - haven't re-read them, and only skimmed the example, but I feel they're fairly clear. Did you pay extra attention to 'who speaks when' since draft 0.1?
(The clarity may be because I've written a set of rules myself - I can relate to what you're trying to achieve. Of course, this may also mean I am filling in blanks with my own (wrong) notions. We'll have to see).

[Doug Ruff]

'Who speaks when' is still a weak point in the rules, so far. Let's talk about it.


I want:

(1) All players to be able to speak during each other's chargen. I think I've made that clear in the example, but it should also be a rule. Big question, what if player A wants a trait for his sheet, and the other players don't like it? My current thought is that they would have to accept it, but not sure if this is healthy.

(2) The active player to speak when it comes to framing Tasks - most of the time. The game presumes a certain amount of 'scouting' through time in order to select a suitable moment - which means that the active player already knows the circumstances of this Task. This should also be made clear in the rules, does it make sense here?

(3) The other players also need to be able to speak during the active players turn. Throwing suggestions etc. is part of this, but it's a trivial part. They also need to be able to provide effective opposition. There is already an implied rule in the examples, that when the other players reveal an unassigned trait, they can introduce a change to the scene to accomodate it. This represents the Archivist's 'blind spot', as it were.

However, I'm thinking that this should be separated out. How about: for every point of Task Difficulty, the other players can introduce one element, obstacle or Fact of their choice, which the active player cannot write out of the scene. Do you think this will work?

(4) I've been very lazy, and not specified which other players get to speak when. I think that unassigned traits and narration rights should be shared around the table; the first trait (or fact) goes to the player on the acting player's left, the next one to the player on that player's left etc.

(5) The player to the left of the active player rolls the Opposition dice, always. Turn order also passes to the left.

[Tobias]

I want to say stuff, Doug, but I want to see some other reactions first. (Because it will also have bearing on what I'm writing).

[Sydney Freedberg]

Let me throw some observations out there.

1. Convergent Evolution: Shared Setting Design
One of the cool aspects of both Tobias's and Dougs's drafts is that customizing the setting gets as much attention and structure as creating the characters (rather on the model of My Life With Master). I think this is an essential aspect of the game.
And as Doug writes in an aside, the temptation to tweak the primary passions (Love Hate Hope Fear Desire) is going to be overwhelming for a lot of game groups, so you might as well have rules for it and make that a formally supported part of system customization.

2. Conflict Resolution
Caveat: I'm not a big fan of dice pools or die matching in general, and I suspect a hard Karma system might be thematically most appropriate for this game anyway; so that's one aspect of both Doug's and Tobias's draft I would suggest relooking.
That said:
This is a hell of a conflict resolution engine, with a lot of crunch but crunch that is expressed in meaningful narrative terms: Do I sacrifice my host, myself, or my mission? Do I turn success into transcendence or social change? It's in these options, not the die-matching bits, that the crunch value lies. It's very cool.

3. Opposition
Doug's putting this right up top -- that players must disagree (if only as devil's advocates) about things -- is a big deal. I think we're struggling a bit in the playtest of Tobias's draft because we've dispensed with a GM role but don't have a clear provider-of-adversity. In terms of objectives, strategically, we've got disagreement among characters, but it's not institutionalized. I'd suggest, building on Doug's idea, that the disagreement be given a mechanical function: if player A is acting on issue #1, at least one player (B) must disagree with A on that issue, and that player rotates into the role of the "designated adversary" for that conflict, playing the GM-adversity function.

4. Social change
The "social change" option for Reward once you've won a conflict is... wow... yes. Excellent. It is the thing, above all else, that potentially takes the two themes of "screw around with time" and "what is human" and blends them together, because (if I read it right, and it's subtle, and easy to miss) it explicitly makes your messing in time affect all humans -- or at least the ones who show up as characters, which is after all what you care about. I think this aspect of the rules might want to be set off in flashing neon lights and explored further: It could be the engine to drive the "mix your own metagame" idea that we've struggled with in the past.

All in all, I am really heartened that two such strong drafts are now in play, as it were.

[Doug Ruff]

Sydney, thanks for the kind words and constructive feedback.

I've shied well clear of strict Karma resolution for this game. This is partly personal preference, partly because I only want the future to be known before the Archivists start mucking about with it, and partly because the random rolls provide more of a challenge (although other players need to be doing this as well!)

However, conflict is still very messy. here's an attempt at clearing it up. You'll need to refer to the rulebook for this to make total sense.

There is still a Support total and opposition Total, and they are both worked out as before.

So, Support Total = highest scoring set of Support dice which match pips.
Opposition Total = total of all Opposition dice

There is also a Risk level for the conflict, this starts at 1.

However, the tactics are simpler. The Archivist strategies are now:

(1) Burn: Remove any Host Identity trait from the Host to remove the lowest valued Opposition dice on the table. (Dice are no lonker 'linked' to specific Host traits)
(2) Push: Spend 1 temporary Transcendence to Roll an extra Support die (make sure any extra dice are a different colour from the dice you got from Traits.)
(3) Rewind: Pick up all of the dice (support and opposition) and reroll them. This increases the Risk by 1 each time you do it.

Acting player calls as many of these strategies as they want, untill they give up or succeed. Once either of these happens:

(1) for every Host trait they Burned, Archivist must roll for all their own Identity Traits that match (burning a Love Trait still risks all of your love Traits. burning 2 Love Traits risks all of your Love Traits twice and so on.)

For any roll that comes up equal to or less than the Risk value at the end of the conflict, lose the Identity Trait.

(2) Check all the extra dice which you rolled from Pushing. If any of these are equal to, or less than the Risk value, the acting player must Pay the Price. This is now a choice from:

- Lose 1 permanent Transcendence
- Wound the Host

(In other words, you can't burn the host after conflict, you have to do it during. I've dropped Twisting for now.)

This is still pretty crunchy, but I think it runs cleaner now. Comments welcomed.

Also, here's a list of things I want to do with the next draft:

(1) A whole chapter on creating custom campaigns. This will trhow together all of the stuff about deciding:

- Scale of the game (where Archivists can go and who they can possess)
- Setting custom Identity categories
- introducing NPC Archivists (especially Nemesis) and GM responsibilities
- special rules for 'armageddon' scenarios and other optional features

I'll also slap in some example settings - I particularly want to throw in a 'Sengoku' example with the usual identities (Love, Hate, Hope, Fear, Desire) replaced with more setting specific ones (Love, Hate, Honour, Duty and Ambition) and rules for 'Victory Points' to reflect which clan is winning.

(2) Rules for getting more than one Archivist in the same place. More on this later.

(3) A much clearer approach to determining who controls what parts of the SIS. I'm considering making this very explicit in the text, perhaps devoting a whole section to player Authority.

Tobias, you ready to speak yet?

[Sydney Freedberg]

I've shied well clear of strict Karma resolution for this game. This is partly personal preference, partly because I only want the future to be known before the Archivists start mucking about with it....

Which makes a lot of sense, actually, especially given our working title is a quantum intedeterminacy in-joke about things not being known until observed. Okay, I'm sold on dice.

But dice pools... grumble grumble grumble grumble.

[Doug Ruff]

I've shied well clear of strict Karma resolution for this game. This is partly personal preference, partly because I only want the future to be known before the Archivists start mucking about with it....

Which makes a lot of sense, actually, especially given our working title is a quantum intedeterminacy in-joke about things not being known until observed. Okay, I'm sold on dice.

But dice pools... grumble grumble grumble grumble.

I know, it still ain't pretty, is it? Let's approach this another way:

Can we find a more elegant system that preserves as many of the following features as possible:

(1) becasue of Archivist and Host chargen rules, the active player will nearly always have many more traits in Support than traits in Opposition. Something is needed to even the playing field so that conflicts remain risky.

(2) There must be tactics for Time Travel (currently Rewind), Burning the Host, and Pushing during the conflict. These are fundamental game concepts.

(3) There must be an element of risk. When the active player decides to Push or use Time Travel, they cannot guarantee success. I'm happy for Burning the Host to allow a sure success (this is the game equivalent of the Dark Side)

(4) When the other (non-acting) players reveal one of the 'unassigned' Host traits, this must provide significant opposition to the acting player.

If so, then maybe we can chuck the dice pools.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Preliminary thought: Why not hybridize your tactical options & multiple upside/downside consequences with Tobias's system derived from Vincent Baker's Otherkind?

Say you have a whole bunch of elements, each of which could go well, badly, or indifferently. The host could gain a new trait, lose an old trait, or stay the same; the Archivist could gain, lose, or break even on transcendence; the world-changing goals could be advanced, set back, or unaffected; etc. etc. Then you allocate limited resources (e.g. dice) among them.

This is very nascent; I'll think more about it and post something less infuriatingly sketchy.

[Tobias]

Yeah, I'm ready.

Sydney's suggestion is interesting, and it is what we might end up with. But let's not do that to Doug's work before it's seen some playtest. (Unless Sydney wants to come up and post his own non-nascent non-infuriating version. ;) ).

I like Doug's simplifications. However, I would go one step further with the terminology. I'd present it as:

1. Roll.
2. Accept or Activate power (burn, push, or rewind).
3. If Power Activated, then Pay the Price for that Power.

Paying the Price for Burn is checking possible loss of compatible traits.
Paying the Price for Push is losing transcedance or wounding the host.
Paying the Price for Rewind is accepting increased Risk.

Whether Opposition works and is in balance - playtest!

[Doug Ruff]

1. Roll.
2. Accept or Activate power (burn, push, or rewind).
3. If Power Activated, then Pay the Price for that Power.

Paying the Price for Burn is checking possible loss of compatible traits.
Paying the Price for Push is losing transcedance or wounding the host.
Paying the Price for Rewind is accepting increased Risk.

That's a good summary: I'll still need to add details for each stage, but I think that this summary should appear near the beginning of the section - thanks.

Sydney: Do still post any other suggestions you have for different mechanics. There's no reason we can't build another system for testing!

Re: playtesting. I'd like to clean up the latest draft, and playtest that. This may take a couple of weeks or so (sorry.) Because the draft has got so damn big, I'm finding it quite hard to do the rewrite.

[Tobias]

I say - F that.

Leave it as it is, make a single page summary cheat-sheet with all the rules people need to play, leave out the fluff but debug it, say "we're playing the cheat-sheet, for explanation of terms see the bigger text."

Then clean up the bigger text based on real experiences, instead of assumptions. :)

Why? Cause I get to play earlier! ;)