[Conquer the Horizon] It Followed Me Home...

[Kirk Mitchell]

Its funny how these games just sneak up on you like that, particularly after you've spent a while here. I haven't the time to have a really in-depth look at the thread at the moment, but after skimming the first few posts, yes I immediately got Disney's Pocahontas in my head. Then Interplay's Fallout series. Also various other "New World" films and books that I think would be awesome to cram together and play (Columbus, El Dorado, Swiss Family Robinson...). I'll save the thread and come back tomorrow, hopefully with some constructive comments!

One thing I really think you should keep is the fun and slightly playful feeling that everybody seemed to get (or at least you and me with the Disney movies). The mechanics can be all crazy cutthroat and tactical, but the playful nature, or at least the potential for being playful is what struck me immediately, and I think that's wonderful.

Kirk

[TonyLB]

>cough< Dune >cough, cough<

[Kirk Mitchell]

That one never occured to me...strange, because it is my favourite book(s) of all time. Yeah, I can see how that works, but the theme and tone doesn't seem to gel for me. Perhaps like a prequel or something...I could just imagine what it would be like for the first people to discover spice...

Kirk

[TonyLB]

The spice is just the McGuffin.  Nobody has to discover that, it's the New in New World.  But there are plenty of other resources.

The worms are a native race, as are the Fremen (by the time the Atreides family gets there, anyway).  That cavern complex with the water is a resource.  The wind is a resource ("desert power").  The family Atomics are supplies, spent to exploit the Desert Power resource.

I can't quite trick out who gets their winning conditions.  Archaeologist looks good, as there are, indeed, multiple races all of whom talk about each other incessantly.  Bene Gesserit Missionary had a great start, but got shafted by a well-played Qualification.  In fact, the whole final confrontation could be seen as the narration of Archaeologist just barely edging out Conqueror in the winning conditions.

But then, I've been thinking heavily about Dune while reading Sorceror and Sword.  So maybe I'm just seeing applications everywhere.

[Josh Roby]

One thing I really think you should keep is the fun and slightly playful feeling that everybody seemed to get (or at least you and me with the Disney movies). The mechanics can be all crazy cutthroat and tactical, but the playful nature, or at least the potential for being playful is what struck me immediately, and I think that's wonderful.

I really hope it plays out this way -- I might con some folks into playing it tonight.  You mentioned El Dorado, which was also somewhat stuck in my head, or at least the sequence where the main characters are following the map, going past all the different amazing and improbable geographic features.  As there is no built-in realism-censor mechanic in Conquer the Horizon, the players should have free reign to describe all sorts of fantastic things, full of color and beauty and danger.

Actually, danger is the same way -- with no hit points, no rules on how to die or lose effectiveness, players should be liberated to describe all sorts of incredible dangers, and how the characters get into and out of them.

[Emily Care]

Best of luck with the playtest, Joshua.  This game has some great ideas in it.  Having to Qualify the ideas of others in order to get dice into your own pool, by which you can accomplish your own goals through exploitation.  And any old dice will do--put that in your pipe and smoke it role playing world!  I'll be curious to see how the dynamics play out, and if there are issues with establishing conditions for the goals, ie will people rush right out and finish up, while others are taking their time sight seeing the world?

Also, I'd put the indigenous folk in as a player.  They are/were a part of the alliances & issues going on in situations like this. Our view of history overlooks this rather shamelessly, leaving just faint traces like Pocahontas, and forgetting Tecumsah and Crazy Horse.  Leaving them out would both be a shame from a player perspective and, frankly, a continuation of the original dispossession.  With North America the disease war could just as easily have gone in their favor as ours--guess it's a matter of isolation & exposure.  In Dune, the fremen make all the difference, though their leader is an off-worlder. 

I'd love to talk to you about Breaking the Ice some time, if you're interested. Definitely related stuff.  And Polaris was the big inspiration, huh? Funny. : )

best,
Emily   

[Josh Roby]

Thanks, Emily.  We played the game a bit last night (Actual Play thread coming soon), and the qualifications really worked well, bolstered by and bolstering the dice mechanics.  We had a really nice synthesis of simple exploration and self-serving exploitation, too.

As far as the 'natives' go, they're not in the game as a played character because the game is about Discovery -- what fun is it to play an Algonquin and roll dice to say "Hey look, the Appalachians!  How'd those get there?"  I certainly understand why they were important historically and how it is important not to gloss over them or marginalize them in-game.  Given that our playtest last night involved a civil war among the natives over the intrusion of the explorers, I think that danger of marginalization is not, at least, systemic.  The natives will be involved in events as much as the players make them involved -- which is about as good as you can get in game design.  Also keep in mind that the natives might be zombies or ewoks (as in last night's game) -- not to mention that you can play the game as some native americans paddling across the Atlantic to 'discover' Europe.  I guess it's an "equal-opportunity" game.

All I know about Polaris is that it runs off of a "Yes, but"/"Yes, and"/"No" negotiation mechanic, which sounded interesting.  CtE just doesn't have the "No" option -- poison pill, instead.

[TonyLB]

But aren't the natives making Discoveries about the colonists?

[Emily Care]

Great, Joshua.  Sounds like you've got some great material to work with here. I look forward to the actual play.

And as for the indigenous people, I'll provide some more arguments, though it is of course your call to make.  If you leave them out of the roles:
1) you lose the ability for players to make alliances for the interests of the local folk,
2) you place the people there on the same level with respect to narration as the land, plants & animals, and
3) they will remain tools in the hands of the players to be used to gain the goals of the non-natives. 

That's fine, it reflects the views of the indigenous folk by European colonizers and explorers of the period(s) you're portraying, but it's also a choice you are making with this game right now.  The metaphor of Discovery is just that, a metaphor.  If the players hold the position of people already occupying the land, it won't change how the mechanics work any, and will probably enrich the players' experience because it will be a less one-sided representation of the events.  The inhabitants of the land are obviously already exploiting the resources within it, narration about it would reflect what had been so.  You are establishing what is in the world, how long that had been known by the character isn't in question really.

The only issue I can see would be if the conflict of interest between the indigenous peoples & the newly arrived is so great that it sows dischord among the players.  Given the real events of history, I can absolutely see that being the case. Also, having one role be indigenous and all the rest be foreign is problematic since so many more of the actual people there would have been native. 

So, that's more to think about.  I'd suggest play-testing it with a broader view & see if it hurts your vision.  If not, why not include more? If it does, then you'll have hard experience showing you why you're making that choice rather than preference & simple aesthetics that may end up supporting the whole, usual racist cultural shebang we're all a part of.

Hope that's useful to your endeavor.

Best,
Emily

[Emily Care]

1) you lose the ability for players to make alliances for the interests of the local folk,
2) you place the people there on the same level with respect to narration as the land, plants & animals, and
3) they will remain tools in the hands of the players to be used to gain the goals of the non-natives. 

Actually, that's not accurate. You don't "lose the ability", it simply is much less likely due to the dynamics of play. It is a mechanical difference that seems likely to have very strong affect on the narrative content.

The others, I will stand by.

respectfully yours,
Emily

[Josh Roby]

Emily, I think you corrected yourself as I was going to.  The players can certainly make alliances for the interests of the local folk if they think that:
(a) they can get something out of it later, citing that discovery as support for their later discoveries and exploits,
(b) it can be in-line with an exploit right then (the Missionary providing medical care for the people he converts, for instance), or
(c) it can block another player's goals (strengthening a native race so that they are in a position of power, so that the Governor can't be in charge regarding them).
And there's the very real (d) "I just like the New World when it includes this element where the natives have X".

It does place the indigenes on the same level as the plants and animals -- but then, we do that all the time by making some 'people' in the game NPCs and some are PCs.  They will serve the goals of the PCs just like the nameless mook guard at the door serves the purpose of 'displaying character competence'.

That said, as Tony points out, the natives could discover things about the explorers; I could see a 'Native Guide' role whose goal was to learn about/exploit the invaders.  As a role, it would sometimes be involved, and sometimes not, and not significantly change the focus of the game as a whole -- something which 'the players play the indigenes too' worries me on.

[Josh Roby]

Playtest Notes!

[TonyLB]

Okay, I started yammering design issues over on Actual Play, but then realized it would be better off here.

About establishing group consensus about what types of New World are possible, and integrating character roles:  I'm going to recommend that this is the role of the Journey From Home.  Folks can describe the vessel they travel in (hide-bound skiff or chrome space-cruiser) and what they do to annoy/occupy the crew and colonists during the voyage (showing what archetype they're playing).

If you wanted to get totally wonky, you could have people using the Discovery/Qualification mechanic to discover (and maybe Exploit) things about each other, but that's probably too loony-tunes.

[Josh Roby]

I don't know if it's too looney-tunes.  It could certainly work, I just don't know if it would contribute to the overall design goals.  I tried to make character creation a hurry-up-and-it's-over sort of thing, so the players could get to the 'meat' of the game -- creating the world.  It's also a sort of easing-in to the collaborative creation.  Not quite propose/qualify/ratify/reject, but propose/accept.

Mostly, though, I want to avoid the situation described in this thread.  Freeform is great and all, but it needs context or else it quickly goes  incoherent (literal sense, not Forge-speak).  By giving the players a forum which allows them to toss out ideas and have them ratified or rejected, they can come to consensus on context in a relatively quick and easy fashion.

In the end, it doesn't really matter if you get to Bush's New Order or whatever you determined was in the New World.  What matters is that the Discoveries you make share the same sort of flavor.  Of course I need to do more playtesting to verify that it actually does this, but at least the first time through lived up to expectations.

All that said, a character creation where the entire group contributed elements for each other which were then peer-reviewed sounds neat -- just for a different game. ;)