[New Game, New Designer] My first steps into the pool

[Trevis Martin]

Ok, so trust is still a big issue.  Perhaps some mechanical way to tell when people are lying as well as to lie.

So I'm taking it from your discussion that you are looking for the game to emulate the physics of the game world.  I'm thinking that this is what you mean when you refer to 'realistic' and 'unrealistic.'  Consider that what you are doing when you have skills and stats and whatever forms the core of your character is that you are defining the character's effectivness in the game.  Now there are many that games that slice a character's effectiveness up into little bits that corrospond to different physical, mental and social qualities and skills.  And there certainly is a long tradition of this in rpgs.

But there are a lot of ways to slice that pie.  None of them are really better than others so much as more or less appropriate for the game concept at hand.  A lot of people around here have made great, hard hitting games that slice that pie much differently from what might be considered the standard.

Sorcerer, one of the best games I've ever played or experienced only gives you Stamina (a general body stat), Will (a general mental stat), Lore (your level of sorcerous ability), Cover (a rating in your 'day job'), Humanity (how close you are to being unredeamably corrupted)

Along with these scores you choose descriptors which justify the rating you gave the score.  But more importantly a high Stamina in sorcerer, though it can be interpreted as a body builder or a wiry survivor, isn't really about the character's physicality.  It is about how effective you as a player want your character to be in the realm of physical conflict.

Other games, like Trollbabe, derives all its stats (which aren't many) from only one number between one and ten, chosen by the player.   The scale below the number is the character's physical effectiveness, the scale above the number is the character's magical effectiveness and the scale below and including the characters number is the characters social effectiveness.  ( I think that is right)  All three stats from one number!

Primetime Adventures your primary attribute is your Screen presence for that episode.  You have some advantages and relationships to call on for other dice but Screen presence is really your central attribute.

The advantage of many stats/skills is that you can get a high variance of ability between characters.  If that's something that pleases you and works for your concept than cool.  The advantage of fewer stats, IMO, is the ability for the player to make a clear statement about where they want their character's primary effectiveness to be.

In art they always told us to carefully examine our default assumptions and make sure that when we choose something its really because we want that rather than being the only way we've ever done it.

best

Trevis

[MarkMeredith]

Ok, so trust is still a big issue. Perhaps some mechanical way to tell when people are lying as well as to lie.

I'm thinking that the Intuition may help with that. You may not even hear that person talk, and yet say "I know that whatever comes out of that person's mouth is going to be a lie".

So I'm taking it from your discussion that you are looking for the game to emulate the physics of the game world. I'm thinking that this is what you mean when you refer to 'realistic' and 'unrealistic.'

That is what I'm talking about. I'm not trying to completely make the game "like real life". That's not what I mean by Realistic. I mean that I want people to look at the game and say, "Okay, the game's fairly realistic". See, what I'd like to have, is a balance between the physical, mental, and emotional, about 10-12 Base Attributes, with simple Feats to modify these.
What sets this apart from say... Gurps, Cthulhu, D20, etc. Is that you don't have to sit there and decide "Okay, I wanna add +5 to my Diplomacy, +2 to my Swordplay..." Instead, you say "I'm going to go with "Diplomatic", because my character is a diplomatic type of person. Your Base Attributes affect all else. That's the big difference. I've got a character sheet idea, but I have to work out the kinks.

[dalek_of_god]

From what you've written so far, it looks like all of your settings have conspiracies and secrets in common. Ferreting out and/or stumbling upon them would seem to be a big part of the game. That and the effects these discoveries have on character's beliefs.

I think an interesting experiment for you would be to take each of the attributes you currently have and ask the following question: How could a character use this attribute alone to succeed in discovering secrets. You've already started down this road with the Intuition attribute. I think it would help with determining whether or not some of the other attributes should be kept, discarded, merged or split. When you start adding in genre specific feats this same task will help you determine where to focus your effort.

Obviously most players won't make characters that rely on only one of the options provided. But if you want a game about intrigue, then everything you give your players should support that. If it doesn't, then either the game won't be about intrigue or those players that make the wrong choices won't have much fun. (Or some options will never actually be used. But in that case, why bother to include them in the first place?)

(Of course, if you don't really want a game about intrigue substitute in whatever it is that you do want.)

[Andrew Morris]

Mark, I just want to reinforce what Trevis said about realism. You might want to check out the Plausibility, Realism and game design goals [an essay] thread.

[Trevis Martin]

Here's a thought too.  The real central thing to how your game works is not really the stats or anything it's two things, your resolution system and your reward systems.

the trick of any of these games is to get players to do and say the cool things you envision them doing and saying.  Then they can say "How cool!  I'm playing this game and its rewarding me for doing the type of play it wants."

reward systems aren't only things like XP.  Take a close look at the way Artha works in Burning Wheel.  (Do you have the new edition or the old one?  It works differently a little bit in the newer one.)  

The other part of reward systems are the parts that punish.

Here's what I'm thinking, perhaps, since trust and sincerity are big factors in the game, perhaps a character in your game would have a trust rating for every other character and major NPC that he meets or knows.  That rating might add in whenever he is dealing with that person trying to persuade them or manipulate them or just find out information.  A very high trust rating for an npc might give the player a large bonus to persuade them to do what he says or tell him what he wants to know.

Maybe when a character is exposed in violating the trust of another, then the player makes a roll to see if the trust rating is reduced, giving him less influence over that person.  

Something like that anyway.

best,

Trevis

[MarkMeredith]

I like the Trust Rating.
However, I don't want to limit the game to just exploring doubt and trust. I want more than that.

Okay, thinking about Doubt and Fears: Really, every great epic is about Doubts and Fears. par exaple:
Star Wars is about Luke's doubts and fears in himself, and his overcoming of them, to bring his father back from the Dark Side. ("I'm not afraid!" "You will be... You will be..."
Lord of the Rings is about Frodo's doubts of success. His best moments are when he doesn't beleive that he can go on. To a smaller degree, it's about the rest of the fellowship's doubts of Frodo's success. ("Is there any hope, Gandalf?" "There never was very much hope. Only a fool's hope.")
Odyessy is about the fears of Ullysee's(*sp) crew, as they struggle for SEVEN YEARS to make it home.
The Belgariad is about Garion's doubts that he can actually slay a god.
So that's what I want to focus on. I would love to have a game where you had DOUBTS, FEARS, BELIEFS and DESTINY all in a mechanical concept that you could play on.

I just thought up a new mechanic, too. "Despair". How would that factor in.

"I can't go on Sam." "Sure you can, Mr. Frodo!"[/list]

[Andrew Morris]

So that's what I want to focus on. I would love to have a game where you had DOUBTS, FEARS, BELIEFS and DESTINY all in a mechanical concept that you could play on.

Aha! There you go -- that's your game, right there. When you talk about about a universal, percentile-based system, my eyes kinda gloss over. When you say this, I sit up and pay attention. I'm not a fan of universal systems, but if you pitched your game to me this way, I'd check it out. The "universality" and percentile mechanics aren't half as important as what you say here.

[Eric Provost]

Yeah!  

Would it be too much of a brain-bender to suggest that you totally toss-out any idea of physical attributes/mental attributes in favor of making "DOUBTS, FEARS, BELIEFS and DESTINY" your core attributes?  

After all, do you really care how much these characters will be able to lift, or how much their IQ is?  If a character in this game wants to... say... lift a city bus over his head to rescue someone, instead of looking at a STR stat you could compare his Doubt in himself, his Fear that he'd be killed in the attempt, his Belief that it's the right thing to do, and his Destiny to be heroic.

How's that fit?

-Eric

[Sydney Freedberg]

Would it be too much of a brain-bender to suggest that you totally toss-out any idea of physical attributes/mental attributes in favor of making "DOUBTS, FEARS, BELIEFS and DESTINY" your core attributes?

Very cool.
Another game recommendation if you want to see how something like that might work: Matt Snyder's Nine Worlds (which has a forum under "Independent Games" on this site) in which each character's most important stats are his or her goals and how close they are to being reached; and, for a way to combine this with a traditional combat system, the Spiritual Attributes in Jake Norwood's The Riddle of Steel.

Oh, and check out this thread where I asked people for ideas about mechanics for emotion.

{EDITED to add more links and author's names}

[MarkMeredith]

Would it be too much of a brain-bender to suggest that you totally toss-out any idea of physical attributes/mental attributes in favor of making "DOUBTS, FEARS, BELIEFS and DESTINY" your core attributes?

Hmm... That'd kind of make it "there is no spoon". In theory, I like the idea... I'll have to work on that and see how it works for me. Thanks!
BTW, everyone, today I joined the Navy!

[MarkMeredith]

Hey, Syd, you said this in thread "Emotions Mechanics II: Emotion as Power":

Pain that makes you angry gives you power -- power to strike back. (Look at the climax of Return of the Jedi, or real-world soldiers going beserk at the death of a comrade). Horrifying sights that make you afraid gives you power -- power to run like hell, or to fight like a cornered rat if you can't run. A kind word that inspires hope gives you power -- power to carry on. (Look at the Sam-Frodo relationship throughout Lord of the Rings).
*SNIP*
If emotional reactions are a source of power at least as important as a character's skills or strength or equipment, they need to have an equal impact in terms of game mechanics.
*SNIP*
What I'm talking about, in essence, is making emotional reactions a "power-up": not something which dictates specific behavior, but which makes certain courses of action much easier -- which presents players with the interesting dilemma of surfing the waves of their characters' emotions or swimming against the current.

THIS is what I want! Okay, here we go...
While waiting for all the Navy guys to get their paperwork in order for me, I came up with the following Rules Change. Drumroll please...

There are only 3 Base Attributes
Physical
Mental
Emotional
Now, each one of these has 4-5 SUB Attributes, but Emotion plays just an important part as the other two. You may be fancy with a gun, but nobody cares, if you're wetting yourself behind a crate. Your Fears and Doubts dictate what you do, and how you do it.

HARD AND FAST CHARACTER CREATION
Step 1:
You have 100 points to split between the 3 BASE ATTRIBUTES.
(Example: You spend 40 in Physical, 30 in Mental, and 30 in Emotional)

Your Emotional Attributes are: Resolve (I can't go on!), Intuition (I have a Bad Feeling about this!), Finesse (Who's scruffy-lookin'?) and Nerve (Hide!)

Eh? Eh?!

[Eric Provost]

I'm impressed.

No, not with your game.  With your progress.  You've come across with some leaps and bounds already.  Hell, I'm jealous.  Took me months to get what you seem to have gleaned in three days.

What I'm going to try to do now is to hide a bunch of Forge jargon in a simple, yet complex question.  If the three goals of playing a role playing game can be described as overcoming obstacles, simulating a situation, and telling a story, then which one do you think is most important for your game to support?  I mean, of course it'll probably do all three, but which one will be the focus of the game?  The challenges to overcome, the simulation,  or the story?

And I'm going to ask you to really think about that.  To think about what it is you really like to come out of your games.  A year ago, I would have answered wrong out of habit.

-Eric

[MarkMeredith]

Crap...

I knew I had to decide on the GSN model sooner or later... I guess now's the best time... I know for a fact that it's not Gamist. But as far as S&N go... That's one to think on... Thanks for your support, Techno. No, I'm not being smart assed. Thank you for your encouragement. I've gotta think good and hard now...

[Eric Provost]

Well, I hope that you don't think too hard about any "model".  I'm hoping more that you can find the right answer in your own self about what you want from your game.

That's the tricky part.

-Eric

[MarkMeredith]

I've got it!

I really am a Narativist at heart. I'm constantly Fudging rolls when I'm playing with my friends to keep the game more cinematic (they haven't caught on yet) and I really like "complications" like in Burning Wheel, which is very Nar in its approach.