[Aware] mechanics feedback- longish

[Demonspahn]

Hi everyone,

A couple of years ago I started working on a game called Aware.  It was basically a post apocalyptic setting where animals had gained human level intelligence.   It's about playing intelligent animals (a bit about the conflict between instinct and reason) and probably won't be for everyone.

I've revamped the original system recently in an effort to make it more free flowing and allow the group to concentrate more on telling a story than number crunching.  I use a simple Fortune mechanic for task resolution, however, I also included an optional Drama mechanic and that's the one I want to get some thoughts on.  

Aware adventures are broken down into 5 basic Story Elements:  NPC, Situation, Complication, Hook, and Reward.  The storyteller uses these five elements to create future stories.  The thing is, the players are allowed to introduce NPCs, Situations and Rewards by spending Story Points (experience points) during game play.  

This happens during task resolution.  The way I envision it, is if a character seems to have no chance of completing a task (a mouse trying to enter a sealed bank vault), or the player wants to ensure an outcome of success (a dachshund beating a lion in a fight), he spends a Story Point and gets to narrate the success.  

There are only two guidelines to the narration.  

1. The narration must take the form of a stroke of luck (while scurrying over the keypad, the mouse accidentally taps out the vault's combination).

2. The narration must introduce either an NPC, a Situation, or a Reward Story Element (NPC: a friendly hawk scoops the dachshund out of harm's way; Situation:  the dachshund runs into a thicket - the lion is injured trying to follow and limps off; Reward: the dachshund convinces the lion not to eat him by telling him about a larger food source nearby).

As the players introduce Story Elements, the storyteller works them into the next adventure by adding Hooks and Complications.  I'm hoping some of the game's appeal will be the players having a hand in adventure creation.

I do have a few concerns.  One is that I'm afraid that Reward might blend too much with Situation, especially in the example I gave above.  The Reward is supposed to be something beneficial to the character, but in some cases, that is open to interpretation, so in the example, the Reward might turn out to be the lion coming back to help the dachshund out later.  

But, I guess I'm mainly worried that the mechanic might be too subjective to be playable.  

Any thoughts?  

Pete

[xenopulse]

Hi Pete,

I don't think that this is too subjective.  Just think of the way that a lot of people play: the players suggest a course of action, and the GM tells them whether that's feasible or not (in your example, the mouse player might have already said that the mouse entered the vault, but the GM said that that won't work without a story point). There is often already a negotiation going on between players and GM.

So how about guideline 3 to make this explicit: the GM has veto, but the player gets to try again (or negotiate) until they agree on a way to solve the situation.

I think the mechanic can work just fine. I'd even let players bring in Complications, too ("My character opens the vault, but thereby triggers an alarm," or "releases something that was imprisoned in the vault").

[Demonspahn]

Thanks Christian.  I like the GM veto.  It probably does need to be spelled out.  

As to the story elements, I had originally thought it would be neat if PCs could introduce all 5, but hooks and complications seemed really difficult to get right.  I may include it as an optional rule though.

Thanks for the comments,

Pete