[Final Day] overview of a new game with some design questions

[rrr]

Hello all.

*deep breath*

Well here it is, my game.  I started designing this a while ago, after the idea just popped into my head thinking about what would you do if the world was ending.  I'm about halfway through the proper write up of the game, but I wanted to get some feedback and ideas before finishing the writing.  I'm pretty sure there's some stuff that needs ironing out and there are a couple of specific issues I'll be asking about.  This is an overview of the game which chould be ok for the kind of questions I want to ask.  Once I've finished the full write-up I'll be posting that.

In terms of Publishing, I'm planning on making this available as a free PDF at first, and if there is much interest I may start charging.  I suspect it's too much of a little throw away novelty game to garner much commercial interest, so a free download is the most likely story. Anyway, let's get down to cases:

Final Day

The World is going to end today.  Fact. 
Let me repeat that so there is no doubt.
The World is going to end, in little less than 24 hours.

What are you going to do?

Hell, we all have dreams, we all have regrets, we all have things we just gotta do.  It's just that most of the time we don't do a damn thing about it. 

We just put our desires on hold indefinitely... "I'll get round to that tomorrow"

But now there is no tomorrow..  Kind of puts all of that procrastination into perspective don't it?

This is a game about what you do on that Final Day.


The Game
Final Day is a short, one-shot role-playing game designed to be played with around 4-6 players over the course of about one or two hours.

The game has a fairly traditional GM-player split, with some modification in that the players frame all scenes subsequent to the first, and these scenes are always tied directly to a character aim.

The basic idea is that the world is going to end in approximately 24 hours.  It is up to the GM to decide exactly how the world is ending... (Aliens, meteor strikes, zombies, Judgement Day, nuclear war, dinosaurs whatever...)  Each player controls a character who is a normal everyday office worker doing his or her job in the office when the news is announced that the world will end today.  Play revolves around the attempts by these normal average people to survive against the mounting destruction around them, and their efforts to try and gain some kind of closure in their personal issues before the world ends.

Characters have two types of stats: Traits (descriptive sentences about the character which are assigned a dice pool) and Resolutions, which are in a sense unfulfilled aims or desires which the players then attempt to fulfil in the Final Day, thus hopefully giving the character some kind of closure in his or her life. 

Resolutions have a few values attached to them.  The most important are Despair (a measure of how difficult it will be for the player to achieve closure in the Resolution) and Obstacle (a measure of how long it will take to accomplish any closure) A fixed number of points are distributed between these two stats, such that if a player assigns a low number to Despair (i.e the Resolution is easier to fulfil) then the Obstacle will thus be higher (it will take longer to fulfil)

The central mechanic is conflict resolution based on players rolling their dice pool versus the GM's dice pool.  All dice are d6 and rolls of 4 or above are considered successes.  Player's pools are figured from any applicable Traits.  Whoever gets the most successes wins. Simple as that.  If characters are working together in a scene and more than one have applicable Traits to the conflict at hand, then the characters may pool their Traits together for the conflict.

Where it gets a little more complicated is that the GM's pool in all conflicts is partially dependant on character stats.  Every scene in the game will be linked to a Character Resolution in as much as during this scene a character will be trying to fulfil one.  The GM rolls a pool equal to the player's Despair rating for that Resolution.

So the player has control over how many base dice the GM will roll for each Resolution.  But they have also specified how long it will take them to fulfil it by setting the Obstacle.  Specifically the Obstacle determines how many different scenes the character will have to go through before they can fulfil the Resolution.  Once a character has played through enough scenes, they can call for a scene in which the fulfilment of the Resolution is played out.

The next complicating factor is that as the Final Day wears on, life becomes ever more difficult and chaotic for the characters.  Every 5 minutes of game play gives the GM an extra dice in the Chaos pool.  The Chaos pool is added to any Despair Pool for any roll the GM makes.  This gaining of Chaos dice is in real time every five minutes.  The GM must keep a timer running from the moment play starts and monitor how long the game has been running.  Players should not be allowed to see the timer, and really all other timers and watches should not be visible for the duration of the game.

So here's the point.  The players can choose to make their Resolutions easy to attain, but at the cost of taking longer to do so.  And the longer they play the more Chaos dice the GM accumulates.

Finally, the players must decide amongst themselves who gets to frame a scene.  Remember all scenes are proposed by the players, and specifically linked to a Resolution for their character.  And obviously getting your scenes in early is desirable.  The method of deciding on who gets to frame the next scene is that each player bids for it.  They state a number of complications they will overcome in the scene before the scene is considered complete.  Whoever bids the highest number of Complications wins the right to frame the next scene.  Each Complication is one dice conflict, to be set up and described by the GM and rolled on the dice.  If a player fails two conflicts in a row in one scene, the scene ends with the character fleeing the scene and bidding starts again with that player excluded from the bid process for this turn.  If a player completes a scene they are also excluded from bidding for the next scene.  Note that characters may be part of a scene even if it is not tied to one of their Resolutions.

Whoever fulfils all their Resolutions first, and should they feel so inclined, gets to stand up, pick up all the game sheets and other paraphernalia, and throw them in the air shouting "BOOOOOM!" as the world ends.  This is not obligatory, the game can continue at that player's discretion.  If no player has fulfilled all their Resolutions and the game reaches 2 hours in length the GM is free to do the same, should he or she wish to.



The Questions

i) there is no reward mechanic as such.  Character's don't really gain anything other than the in game satifaction of having completed their Resolutions.  Also you could consider the character to have "won" in some sense if they acheive closure before everyone else and then destroy the world.  Now my question is:  Is it a problem that there is no real reward mechanic in the game?  I feel like players may feel there isn't a point in playing if they don't gain XP or develop kewl powerz or whatever.

ii)  I'd like to try and make sure that everyone is involved at all times, but I suspect the game could easily lend itself to almost solo style play, with one player having a scene on their own followed by the next player having a scene on their own and so on as each tries to complete there own Resolutions against the clock and before the other players.  How can I make sure that everyone is participating at all times?

iii) do I need a way for the characters to die/be removed from play? Currently they don't die until the world ends, which is kind of beside the point as the game ends at that point too.  Be there isn't actually any mechanism which punishes characters for failure except the increase in time and thus Chaos Dice.  Is this a problem or am I just too hung up on "hitpoints"?  I am toying with an idea where by characters loose a point of Desperation in certain circumstances, and if they reach zero Desperation they are considered dead.  What do people think?

iv) should I change the accumulation of Chaos dice to be based on an in game increment such as "gain a die every scene" rather than tying it to an actual clock? I want to instill a sense of urgency in the game and the time element seemed like a nice way to do it. But now I'm not sure.

iv) does this game make any sense whatsoever?

Thank you, and I hope people find the idea of interest


Drew

[Justin Marx]

Hi Drew,

First of all I think it is a cool concept and it makes perfect sense to me. Not to cheapen your game, but it reminds me of when Homer Simpson eats the poisonous fish and has only a few hours to live.... and a powerful concept. I feel I can only answer question iv) (the one about chaos dice, not the making sense one). I think the actual play time accruement of chaos dice can work, but I think that its a little short for starters. Is their provision in the game for taking a leak, eating pizza, talking to one's mother etc.? I would suggest a little longer period, with a longer time span of the game, perhaps 15 minutes (realtime goes REAL fast when playing, something that the morning sun constantly reminds me of) for each chaos dice, and maybe a little more time for the game perhaps? Three or four hours? The system seems to have low handling time, but narration can take up a lot of time as well. Of course putting the pressure on is the point of the game, I guess you should playtest it and see from experience how long this actually takes and what is suitable.

Also scene framing counts a lot. What if the narration is heavily bogged down in a short-gametime scene, and you spend two hours narrating a game-time of two hours? Will the world end after two hours instead of 24? (This could actually work though, and may increase the urgency, if the actual time the world ends is not precisely known in gametime and as such could be ridiculously short - I'm thinking of a Goodies episode along the same lines, where their clock was fast and the world ended after they thought it would...). To accrue the chaos dice would then have to be based on gametime considerations, and as it is fairly important to the story and something the players will be watching intently, then some detailed guidelines on the gamelength of actions would be required. Furthermore, if the Obstacle trait matters to how long something takes in gametime, but not in realtime, then scene time is utterly necessary. Otherwise, it doesn't matter how long an action takes in gametime - if the world ends in real time, then why bother with obstacle at all? Or does the Obstacle trait increase realtime resolution (so the player has to go take a crap or have a smoke while his result is being adjudicated??) Perhaps I have confused a portion of your rules, but if not, why not tie in Chaos dice with Obstacle as well? The two seem to be related after all.

Justin

[Adam Dray]

Heya, Drew.

You have a neat game here. I'm eager to see you develop it. I'm working on an idea of my own with similar problems (young adults in a remote village have to steel themselves to go fight a dragon in a short number of days and must learn what it means to be a Hero -- the idea of approaching doom, time urgency, and achieving goals is like your game).

i) You have a reward mechanism: a player is rewarded by achieving goals (Resolutions). This seems to be a Narrativist game, suggested by the tools of conflict resolution and scene framing, and by the seeming premise, "When the End of the World is nigh, what will you do?" If you want to strengthen your Nar rewards, consider giving players some kind of currency when they achieve goals. That currency probably helps them win other Resolutions. You're right that a game doesn't have to give players kewl powerz or XP when they succeed for it to be a fun game.

ii) Participation is important. There are other games that have single-player scene framing. Check out My Life with Master as an example. The trick seems to be to make the players invested in everyone's story, not just their own. You can do this through collaborative setup procedures, through reward mechanics, and so on. Consider adding something like the Budget / Fan Mail setup in Prime Time Adventures (the GM has a few points called Budget to use to make conflicts harder; when he uses them, the tokens go in a community bowl; players take tokens out of the bowl and give them to the GM to award a player, as Fan Mail, for excellent play; the tokens become Budget again). Another tactic is to give the players the ability to complicate each other's stories. Or they can play NPCs in other players' stories.

iii) You don't have to provide a way for characters to die or disappear, but you have to address the question one way or another. You can write in your rules, "Avoid any story thread that will kill a character or cause them to leave the story," but then you better suggest how to handle player-vs-player conflict or suicidal characters. For a game with a fixed length (till the End), you probably don't need hit points. I think the punishment for failure is a loss of opportunity. Consider a Doomsday Counter or something. Put 2-4 hours' worth of glass beads into a glass bowl on the table and draw one every time you generate a Chaos die. When the bowl is empty of beads, the End has come. Fini. Then an opportunity to get a scene is very important. Time marches on and if you fail, you lose a chance to accomplish a goal before you die. Best, the players have a sense of urgency as the bowl empties.

iv) I think the effect of basing Chaos dice on time or a per-scene basis is about the same. The question for you is how you recommend handling a player who takes 20 minutes for his scene. Does that mean the group as a whole gets three fewer opportunities to accomplish their Resolutions? If you make it per-scene, it's easier to track (no timer required) and players are not punished for long scenes or bathroom breaks. ;)

Asides:

I seriously doubt 4-6 players will conclude many Resolutions in 1-2 hours. I estimate that a play group can churn through 2-6 scenes per hour, assuming they're kibitzing and role-playing.

Instead of having a scene counter for a Resolution's Obstacle, make it points and allow dice successes to decrease the value. So if you have 8 points in your Obstacle for "I want to have sex with my secretary," and you get 3 successes, you decrease it by 3 points. Of course, you must add your 5 Despair to it for the attempt, so you're now at 10. If you play with the numbers, you can make it work.

If you ditch the d6's for d10's you can probably get rid of the opposing GM roll, too. A player then just rolls d10 and counts as a success any die equal to or greater than his Despair.

Hope this helps!

[rrr]

Thanks for the feedback guys.  It's really interesting to have different perspectives on an idea.

Justin:

A comparison to the Simpsons?  That's not cheapening it at all!  I remember the episode you mention... it's great, and actually has exactly the kind of feeling I wanted for the game (without quite so much crazy comedy, although I'm hoping there will be elements of humour in there)

As for the time limit, you're probably right that a dice every 5 minutes is a bit fast.  I'm trying to get my group to play test the game for me a few times (no luck yet) and I think the actual increment will only be settled by playtesting.  You're exaclty right that the idea was to try and put the pressure on the players to act.

Regarding when the world ends (2hours? 24 hours?), that's a really good point that I will have to think about thoroughly.  Thanks for bringing it up...  To clarify, there is no set time limit in-game for how soon the world will end.  And the characters should not have a clear idea of when.  The only thing they know is that it WILL end, and it is imminent. 

Adam:

i)  I like the idea of giving the players som ekin dof currency for completion of Resolutions and actually was toyng with an idea along those lines.  I didn't mention it in the overview, but the players have another pool called "Desperation" which can be gambled on conflicts.  Using it adds in several dice, but if the conflict is lost the player may loose Desperation dice.  Gaining a dice of Desperation would be a nice reward for completing a Resolution.

ii)  On your recommendation I've just ordered MLWM in order to check out it's implementation of single-players scenes. I was aware of the game, but for whatever reason hadn't got round to buying it.  You just clinched the sale!  I'm hoping that generally players will choose to work together in scenes.  Another idea not mentioned in the overview is that players can combine resolutions into a scene so they all benefit, assuming they can frame the scene appropriately.  And obviously the number of Complications is applied per character, so the scene will be more difficult.  However, if more than one player is engaged in a conflict, all applicable Traits from all players are pooled, so the chances of success when working together are higher than when not.

iii) all good points.  I'm gonna have to print off both of these posts and really think through them.  The only thought that  immediately occurrs to me is I don't want the players to be able to tell definitively when the world might end, so the counters in a bowl is probably not going to work.  The timer is supposed to be hidden from everyone except the GM and all other clocks/watches etc should be removed.

iv)  That's a really good point.  How do I deal with the fact that a player penalizes other players if they take a long time in a scene?  I was hoping that issues such as these would create tension between the players, but hadn't really thought it through at all.  I'm really going to have to formalise these kind of elements into rules I think.

Many many thanks for the comments guys!  I really appreciate the help.

Suddenly the game seems a damn sight less near completion than I had thought before posting!

I shall mull over these ideas and finish writing the first draft bearing them in mind.  Also a playtest it vital as soon as possible I think.

Drew

[Adam Dray]

You won't be disappointed with MLwM, I promise. =) Grab Prime Time Adventures and Dogs in the Vineyard, too, if you don't have them yet. I think there are new editions of both due out soon.

I think you do want the players to know definitively when the world will end. The characters don't know but the players should. That tension will create some very interesting play, especially as the last few counters tick away. Players will get more desperate and try more intense things. You probably want your players in Director stance for much of play, or at least in Actor stance. That means they know the script...

As for iv), just go with the per-scene counter and you'll be fine. =)

Yes, playtesting is vital. Your game's shape will change as you see it in action.