[FH8] A nearly functional Fantasy Heartbreaker

[Eric Provost]

Oh!  It just occurred to me that when you said "What if you run out of cards?", you probably meant "What if you can't find any more Advantages or Twinings to let you draw cards?"

Duh.  Of course that's what you meant.

Here's the answer (really long version):

You start out with 5 pts in Twining, 15 points in Advantages, up to 4 from your H/V score, and 5 coins which can be converted into 10 temp Advantage points.  That's 24 cards on your character sheet, and up to 10 bonus cards.  A far cry from the 44 max possible draw.  Heh.  On purpose.  

You only NEED 1 card per round, so the max cards you could NEED in a conflict is 10.  Starting with an middling H/V and a smallish Twining should get you 4(3+1) cards to start on average I think.   So that means you'll need to narrate in a minimum of 3 more cards from Advantages to stay in.  If you wanna be able to play doubles, tripples, and 4 of a kind plays, you'll wanna narrate in even more.

The intent of the thin number of starting cards is to tempt the player to use the Auspices that they set aside as secondary and tertiary.  There's three cards sitting in the smallest Auspice, so are you willing to pull them out to get the deed done?

The answer (really short version):
If you run out of cards to play then you've gotta give up.  Yer done.  You loose.

So, if you really wanna win, yer gonna do some narration to save yer butt.

Oh... that reminds me... there's a few tidbits I left out of the Delta version that need to go in.  Like:  If you can't think of any narration to bring in something from your sheet, then you can narrate in the use of some found item, the boon of some surrounding geographical feature (etc) to draw a single card.

The intention there being that you're never really out of play due to lack of cards if you don't want to be, and if you're willing to add to the setting a bit (on a small scale) you can glean some small reward.

-Eric

[Eric Provost]

Well, I think I've got something for Creating Setting.  It's only half the picture of what I want to make, but I think it's pretty solid.  Nothing really earth-shattering here.  I'll be satisfied with entertaining and functional.

The Big Picture
Every setting needs to start out with a Big Picture.  The overall encompassing idea that will provide the assumptions that allow us to introduce more specific elements of setting which are likely to fit into all the players idea of what the world looks like.  For example, if you've agreed it's a "medieval oriental setting and someone narrates in jade jewelry, ornate katanas, and endless rice patties, then you might agree that these elements are appropriate based upon your assumptions about what should be in a medieval oriental setting.

FH8 doesn't come with much of a big picture.  What it does come with are some formal rules for creating it.  

In the first session, when you've gathered your friends to play, before you consider what your character might be like, everyone needs to sit down and hammer out the Big Picture.  Now, you could just as easily make open suggestions across the table and come to an organic agreement about where and when you'd like the story to be set, but then it's likely that someone's ideas would be left in the dust just because they didn't speak up at the right time and not because their idea wasn't popular.  

Start by taking a few cards out of a nearby deck.  Ace through 6 will be good.  If you've got six players then just distribute the cards randomly between them.  If you have less than six then you'll want to add cards until you've got enough for two for every player.  The cards you add should be of some other value than ace through 6 and when drawn are basically blanks.  They won't mean anything to those that draw them.  Then everyone should get five tokens.  Anything will do.  The card that you get determines what aspect of the Big Picture it's your responsibility to describe.  Those six aspects, in order from ace to six, are Geography, Society, Technology, Theology, History, and Prophesy (the future).  Without discussing it with the other players yet, write down as little as a single word and as much as a single sentence about that aspect in relation to the setting you'd like to play in.  

In order from lowest to highest, each player reveals what he or she has to say about the setting.  When you hear someone else's description you've got a choice.  You can either approve the description and agree that you'll enjoy playing with it or you can object to it, propose a better description for that aspect of the setting, and prepare to defend what you think is better.  If there's an objection and another proposal everyone should take the time to discuss which one they like better and why.  After everyone's had something to say any player can call for Put Up or Shut Up time.  At that point anyone who has an opinion on which description is better can throw some or all of their tokens in on their side of the debate.  Once everyone has put as much in as they'd like, the side with the most tokens enters their version of the description into the game and we move onto the next player.  Tokens used this way are lost.  But then, these tokens are only good for this part of the game, so you may as well voice your opinion when it comes to you.

Everyone's character sheet will have a place to record these six setting aspects.

It needs some polishing and some detailing, like WTF do I expect from descriptions of Society, Technology, Geography, Theology, History, and Prophesy and how should they all be handled once the story begins... But I'm hoping you agree that it's a really interesting bit there.  

I'm gonna go mow the lawn and contemplate the second part, which will be making specific bits of setting explicit during play, while I'm mowing.

-Eric

[xenopulse]

That must be a big lawn :)

Interestingly, the first serious design I put forward on the Forge (torn) also uses a card resolution system.  

It does seem like there'd be enough cards; maybe you want to spell out that one can draw on more than one trait per turn.

Overall, I agree that the setting creation starting point is good and interesting. Maybe the players could save those tokens, however, for later debates about setting specifics? You know, most players don't like to waste resources. After all, you're starting your players out with currency anyways, and that way, they can decide whether they care more about general setting or specifics.

Now the important part will be tying in in-game setting creation and character advancement, and how those are intertwined.

[Eric Provost]

I totally spaced.  Mowed the lawn and crashed.  That's two hours of cardio that is.

I wanna adress your concerns first, then I'm gonna tell ya where my mind has been concerning Creating Setting.

It does seem like there'd be enough cards; maybe you want to spell out that one can draw on more than one trait per turn.

Do you think it's necessary to spell it out?  I mean, I'm not opposed to it, but dosen't "Draw whenever you can narrate." already say that?

If I were to write into the final text "Hey, don't forget you can draw as many Advantages as you can narrate in a single turn!", would that be more help or more words in the way?  As I don't expect this game to get more than two degrees of seperation from me I don't think I need to worry about writing for the masses yet.

Overall, I agree that the setting creation starting point is good and interesting. Maybe the players could save those tokens, however, for later debates about setting specifics? You know, most players don't like to waste resources. After all, you're starting your players out with currency anyways, and that way, they can decide whether they care more about general setting or specifics.

I thought about this.  My concern is that players (especially my players) might take to hoarding instead of spending.  I want players to exercise consensus control over the Broad Strokes instead of just letting everyone have their piece of the puzzle with no discussion or debate.  So, with no other use for them, the players are much more inclined to use their tokens to shape the Broad Strokes.

Now the important part will be tying in in-game setting creation and character advancement, and how those are intertwined.

A direct connection between creating setting and advancement?  I hadn't really considered that.  Heck, I hadn't even considered that as an entertaining possiblity.  

To be honest, I haven't given Advancement much thought in the past weeks.  All I've got in mind is that Advancement should be balanced against Consequences so that the character is really just -changing- all the time.  An ebb and flow of Twinings, H/V, and Advantages.  I'll probably try to lean the equation a bit in favor of an increase in power for the player, but not by too much.  I think that a quick increase in the number of cards that one can draw will probably not have too big of an impact, but too many different Twinings and Advantages at once will probably dilute the impact of the individual traits.  I wanna avoid players ever having to pour over their character sheets hunting for information.

Okies.  Back to Creating Setting and what I've been pondering.

First, I think that the Broad Strokes rules I posted before the mow are a bit.. heavy for my taste.  They just sit there in my stomach not doing anything.  What I've been pondering to whip it up a bit is to say that, when you propose a change to someone's Setting Aspect you can neither just throw it out nor ignore it.  What you have to do is edit it.  It's Polaris that has the word-editing function, right?  Well, that's what made me think of an idea-editing function.  Like, if you get Geography as your aspect and propose "It's a world of tiny islands dotting a glistening blue sea." I couldn't return with "No, it's a world of mountains and lava!" because I didn't build on your initial idea at all.  On the other hand, I could propose the change of "It's a world of tiny islands floating in a sky of silver clouds."  Then we could bid on which one was going to be incorporated.

That's tastier I think.

Then the specific bits of setting.

I've been thinking about that a lot. Quite a lot.  The question I've been really working on is; When should players be encouraged to introduce new and interesting elements of setting?  I considered the idea of having a between-scenes phase where someone could make a proposal and everyone would have to approve it or there would be a bid.  But I decided I didn't like that.  I think it would disrupt the flow too much and put too much focus of the game on creating the setting.  I want the creating setting part to fit into the creating story part, not the other way around.  

So, what I'm toying with right now is to incorporate the specifics of creating setting into the scene framing rules.  I think all I need are some smooth rules for sharing the authority and responsibility for setting the scene.  Then, if a player wants there to be sunglasses in the setting all he needs to do is narrate an NPC who shows up wearing a pair.  If someone wants to introduce a castle on a high mountain surrounded by mist, all they have to do is narrate it.  Then, if another player objects to the existance of sunglasses or castles or mist they can say so (and prepare to put their currency where their mouth is).

I'm sitting in a hotel with about seven hours to kill before my next flight, so I think maybe I'll work on that scene framing bit a little.

Comments help keep my brain greased.  Keep 'em coming.

-Eric

[Eric Provost]

Okies.  I'm back.  For a few minutes.

The scene framing connection to creating setting was kicking my ass and it took me all day to realize that it was because of those 6 keywords in The Big Picture chapter above.  Those 'ologies' were kicking my ass.  I realize that I was going to have to explain what I meant by each of them and as I tried to jot down a quick explination for each I realized that I didn't really know what I meant by them.  So, I scrapped them.  I need to keep 6 cards for the draw there, as I want to make sure that in a 6 player game everyone has a distinct card to draw.  This is my replacement list.

[list=1][*]Places
[*]People
[*]Things
[*]Places + People
[*]Places + Things
[*]Things + People[/list:o]

If there are 3 or 6 players then all 6 cards are used.  If there are 4 or 5 players then the first 4 or 5 cards are used.

A player who draws one of the first three cards will be expected to say something vague and all-encompassing about the Places, People, and Things in the world.  A player who draws one of the last three cards is expected to say something specific about two of the elements, and how those two specific things are interconnected.  

I've got some more explination for that if anyone's curious, but my time is really short, so I'm gonna move forward for now.

For scene framing, I've decided to have a piece of the GM work be mobile.  At the beginning of each scene the players have to decide who's going to be the Setting Director for that scene.  I have some vague ideas about guidelines for who's supposed to be the SD when, but I'll save those 'till they're ironed out.  While every player is still encouraged to suggest ideas for the setting of the current scene the buck stops with the SD.  While acting as SD if a player encorporates a new bit of setting element that is not blocked by other players and does not fit under the assumptions created by the Big Picture then they're eligable to earn bonus currency.  

Once I get the specifics of all this ironed out, I'll add it to the next update for FH8.

Before closing, I want to include some notes I took while working last night on how I want to present these bits to my readers as I think they may help you understand where I'm going with this.

Use this opportunity to go crazy.  Don't let the other players just sit silently and agree with every bit of setting you present.  Make their teeth rattle.  Make their eyes water.  Don't think Tolkien.  Think Heavy Metal.

If all the other players agree that the setting you've presented is boring then you'll just have to try again.  

If you're thinking of some pseudo-historical setting and you're not going to be happy with some wild juxtopositions, then I think you suck.

-Eric

[Eric Provost]

I've updated the Creating Setting chapter in Delta.

I expect to write the Scene Framing / Setting Director chapters next.

Time to go shopping.  I need a new bag to carry about all my ConSwag.

-Eric