Minis, Narr Techniques, and my 9 year old daughter [long]

[komradebob]

I've been working on the idea of creating a minis game that uses some of the narr supportive techniques that folks around here have developed. A discussion of those possibilities took place a long while back in a thread called Minis and rpgs:thoughts on new directions?. My goal has been to create a kid friendly game that gamer parents can use to introduce their young'uns to rpgs generally, and to encourage proactive, collaborative/cooperative play styles in those kids. My more sinister and previously unrevealed goal is to encourage adult gamers to play with minis more by getting them to think about the minis as more than just place holders for positioning or tactical considerations. I'd like to encourage the use of minis in a fashion similar to the use of the vision cards in Everway, as a jumping off point for the creation of play material.

Inspirations:
Besides just plain liking minis personally, I've found the H.G. Wells' relatively unknown book, Floor Games ( downloadable in pdf here) to be a primary inspiration for the style of game I'm looking for. Closer to home, Universalis, Chris Engle's Matrix Games, The Nightime Animals Save the World, and Shadows have all served as inspirational material in terms of possible techniques I'd like to borrow. Prime Time Adventures, the newest addition to my game library, also provided some very important inspiration, despite my initial trepidation about using the character-issue based conflict res that is the core of that game (For more about my personal phobias, go over here; incidently, I got over it).

The play:
The game started off in a style that my daughter, Threnody, and I have used before and essentially follows the same pattern that Wells used with his sons all those years ago. We pull out the toy collection, as much of it as we feel like bringing out, and start setting up the Village and countryside cooperatively ( unlike Wells, we generally limit ourselves to a tabletop rather than an entire rooms' floor). Once an agreeable set up has been put out, we begin populating the village from the collection of figures available.

In our case, we use traditional rpg/minis game figures. The collection is a little biased at this point. It tends to favor civillians, fantasy villagers, and some intersting monsters. Mixed in with that are Victorian and 1920s adventurer types from CoC. Clearly military types are generally shunned, although being rpgs figures there tends to still be a fair bit of weaponry floating around. The type of figures in the collection has a huge impact on the style of games. Wells also noticed this effect, and goes in to some detail in his book about his desire to see more civillian and less soldier figures produced to play with ( to the extent of having a page sized illustration of figure types he wants- I personally like the Suffragette best-check out the pdf linked above).

The Village:
In this case, the geography took the form of the Green Griffon Inn ( a collection of fantasy pub resin pieces that has been the core location in our prior games), a couple of paper model fantasy houses downloaded from various internet sites surrounding the pub, a bridge and river at the outskirts of the village, and a haunted house on the opposite side of the river inhabited by a pair of witches ( sisters), their familiars, and a brood of naughty vampire children. The village inhabitants wereprimarily fantasy villagers, a few anthromorhic Cat people and a smattering of CoC characters.

Once we were set up, I attempted to use some rules I'd cooked up and called A Cauldrn of Magic Beans. As it turned out in play, those rules, well, suck, so we quickly dumped them.

First lesson I learned: Sometimes that lovely design just doesn't deliver. Scrap and run with what works. Keep it for later reconsideration and influence on a better design.

How we actually ended up playing:
We took turns starting scenes. Thren didn't want to jump in quite yet on setting up a scene, so I took some suggestions and we decided the first important* scene would be in the pub, would involve four female explorers/adventurers who'd wandered into town by some undescribed magical effect, and would involve a very conservative merchant who would accidently cause conflict by trying to help the "obviously lost and incapable ladies who were without the benefit of male protection".

[*We'd actually attempted a couple of other scenes that while expanding on the setting and providing background, ended up not being very engaging. It was the realization of just how unengaging those scenes were that caused me to try a more PTA style approach to this scene and the subsequent scenes.]

In this scene, I took the part of the merchant, and really tried to play up his attitudes about women, something almost certainly guaranteed to rile up Thren! Threnody ran with it, playing up the reactions ( first person) of the lead explorer ( a Maggie Mead-esque type named Carmen) and a sympathetic waitress at the Inn. When things were really coming to a boil, I called for a conflict resolution. I asked Threnody what she wanted to happen, then stated what I wanted to happen, making sure that either result would leave open more opportunities for later conflicts. We ended up doing a simple coin flip, with the end result that the waitress took it upon herself to throw the merchant out and the adventurers made a connection at the pub (Thren's result).

Second lesson learned: This narr stuff is some kinda cool. By the time we'd reached resolution, both Thren and I were pumped. I also discovered that my own fear of reaching the boiling point, stepping back and discussing options, then drawing ( well, flipping) a result would kill the momentum was unfounded ( my major concern with PTA upon my first reading).

The second scene flowed pretty naturally from the first, with the waitress having a showdown with the Pub owner, her gruff ex-( fantasy) adventurer brother-in-law regarding authority in the bar. Again, a bit of back and forth first person roleplaying was followed by a boiling point moment. Following the success of the previous scene, we followed the same method for resolving this one. Stakes were named ( If I won, Fryd would re-establish himself as the alpha male and his hot-headed sister in-law would follow his lead regarding conduct in the Inn in the future. If Thren won, Griselda would come into her own and Fryd would be forced to treat her as an equal in the future. Thren won.)

In scenes three and four, Thren was grooving on how this whole thing worked and took the initiative to frame the next two scenes. Scene three took place outside of the pub and involved fall out from the conversation prior to the merchant conflict. The primary characters were two of the adventurers, Carmen ( the explorer) and the Duchess ( a bad girl dilettante who was funding the expeditions rthe explorers had been going on). [We were using a very hybridized version of Cauldron of Magic Beans at this point-tokens were expended to establish characteristics and backstory much like coins in Universalis, but with a much broader ability to add details than a single coin gives in Uni].

This scene involved intercharacter conflict between the two primaries, and centered around class and friendship issues. We actually felt comfortable enough at this point to flip between first person and OOC regularly to ask for and offer suggestions about where we wanted the scene to go. The conflict/stakes turned out to be whether Carmen and Duchess would learn to respect one another and become better friends or become more estranged over their differences. ( Okay, take a guess who won and how it turned out...).

Scene four involved a conflict between Carmen and Duchess'  twin, Elena*, who'd observed the previous scene from the side lines. The conflict here was about Elena's friendship with Carmen, basically dealing with sibling jealousy and the idea of a person only having one best friend. I honestly forget how that one turned out, though since I don't recall having won a coin toss up til this pint, I can only assume Carmen and Elena worked things out in some fashion.
[* For reference, Elena and Duchess are two of the three figures from the RAFM CoC Dilettante Investigator figure 3-stage blister. Duchess is in a gown and stole with a cigarette holder, Elena was the same character but decked out for Safari]

Scene Five again flowed from the previous scene. We decided to switch things up a bit and introduced one of the catpeople rushing through the midst of the four adventurers, all in a huff. I have no idea why this character was in a huff, but it turned out not to matter. The action started because of the Cat woman, but the conflict ended up not involving her. Instead, it centered on the last member of the adventuring quartet, a girl named Brigid. Brigid's figure was a very properly dressed Victorian girl in a broad brimmed hat. Some negotiating and token spending established that Brigid was the poorest member of the team, looked up to Duchess as a sort of idol as well as an object of envy. Brigid was well aware of her penniless origins, and always held herself back, acting and dressing very properly in an attempt to fit in with a group she considered her social and intellectual betters. Thren and I roleplayed through some of the reaction of the other three characters to the cat woman's appearance and her pushing aside of the Duchess as she stalked throught the location. We decided that the key part of this thing, the issue conflict, was really about Brigiid's reaction to the pushing aside of the Duchess. If I won, Brigid would step up and confront the Cat woman and stop being mousy, the end result being that she would come into her own much the way Griselda had with Fryd. If Thren won, Brigid would become even more mousy and run away, having seen the team member she had built up such a heroic vision of simply treated as insignificant by the cat woman. ( I'm not sure that makes sense, writing it out. It made sense to us at the time...)
Thren won, and Brigid ran off, followed by Duchess who it turned out actually appreciated Brigid more than Brigid herself realized.

After this point,we played out a couple of other scenes, but we were fairly exhausted and ended up packing things up after the next two scenes really failed to spark the emotions the way those above did.

Third Lesson learned: I wish I'd played with Barbies as a kid. My god, little girls are something else, with the interpersonal conflicts they come up with. I can honestly say, I probably would have never come up with half the stuff Thren did, not immediately latch on to it as a source of pressure and story drive. She grabbed this concept with both hands and ran with it.
As a counterpoint, in previous games, we've had our share of derring-do and fisticuffs as well. I don't want to give you the impression that everything is soap opera. I will say that the general concept of conflict resolution as a core mechanic for any sort of decision making is awfully cool. I really do see the potential now in a way hadn't before playing this session.

I also wonder what effect having a more balanced gender distribution in rpg designers from early on would have had on the current state of the hobby.

Fourth lesson: Narr is emotionally draining. Actually, I don't really know if this session was narr, but I certainly tried to pull in narr supportive techniques I'd encountered. They certainly do live up to the Play Now! idea, though.

Lessons for my design: I haven't totally scrapped ideas from Cauldron of Magic Beans, though the mechanics need a major rewrite. I do think there is a distinct possibility of minis with narr support techniques and plan to follow up on this. In terms of overall approach, mechanics will focus primarily on the player level, rather than on modelling the characters in any mechanical fashion. There was no necessity in the way we played this game and its predecessors to model any skills, attributes or whatever. Nor was there any particular need to write anything at all down ( although we do, just for our own enjoyment- primarily in a cast of characters format).

Also, this last game confirmed a couple of trends that I'd noticed. First, both locations and miniatures can take on meaning through repeated play, provided that one of the participants takes an active interest. That meaning/background follws those physical pieces despite never having the same overall village or countryside set up twice. Again, Wells discusses something similar in his own experiences with his kids.

Further, the overall game takes on a sort of morphing and refinement as the game is played. When Thren and I started off, neither of us really knew where the events were going to go. We just followed our nose and went with what seemed most interesting at that moment. Whole areas of the board were simply left alone as the spotlight danced around certain key characters and locations. I think this would be somewhat unnerving for more traditional minis game players, but perhaps I'm wrong. It does seem to come very naturally to Thren, and I suspect that other adults playing a game of this style will quickly remember their own childhood and how they often actually played with character toys prior to experience with rpgs or minis wargames.

[komradebob]

Nothin? No response?
Ouch.

[Mark Woodhouse]

both locations and miniatures can take on meaning through repeated play, provided that one of the participants takes an active interest. That meaning/background follws those physical pieces despite never having the same overall village or countryside set up twice

No terribly insightful or constructive response, but what you posted about the power of objects and tokens to ignite play is certainly mingling fruitfully with stuff I'm working on. I could draw an analogy with the role of the pre-defined NPCs in Shab al-Hiri Roach.

Thanks for the post. I wish I had a more fully-baked response to give it.

[Arturo G.]

Hi!

Have you read this post? Prydain, the Hobbit, Pendragon ... Fun for Kids!

I think that a narrative game for children is really demanding, but in that thread it looks quite easy, isn't it? I assume that being experienced in narrative style games is important. I have the feeling that is something that may be trained.

Cheers,
Arturo

[komradebob]

Hi!

Have you read this post? Prydain, the Hobbit, Pendragon ... Fun for Kids!

I think that a narrative game for children is really demanding, but in that thread it looks quite easy, isn't it? I assume that being experienced in narrative style games is important. I have the feeling that is something that may be trained.

Cheers,
Arturo

I love that thread. Ironically, I find that the opposite is true-kids take to narr like ducks to water.It's old sim-hugging gamer dads ( well in my case, anyway) that have the hard time...

[joshua neff]

I think this is very interesting, Robert. My daughter is going to be 9 in a few months, and I'd really like to get her into RPGs. She loves playing games (the whole family just finished a game of Monopoly Jr that she asked to play) and she loves fantasy stuff such as the Harry Potter series, the Secrets of Droon series, the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings movies, and the book Dragonology. She's shown an interest in minatures when I've taken her to gaming stores, but we don't have the money to invest in any right now, so I think I'll be going the pencil-paper-people route. But I'll be using this thread as a touchstone, that's for sure.

[komradebob]

I think this is very interesting, Robert. My daughter is going to be 9 in a few months, and I'd really like to get her into RPGs. She loves playing games (the whole family just finished a game of Monopoly Jr that she asked to play) and she loves fantasy stuff such as the Harry Potter series, the Secrets of Droon series, the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings movies, and the book Dragonology. She's shown an interest in minatures when I've taken her to gaming stores, but we don't have the money to invest in any right now, so I think I'll be going the pencil-paper-people route. But I'll be using this thread as a touchstone, that's for sure.

I'm going to post later tonight in design with some preliminary revamp. In the meantime, this is what I originally bought to play with, and expanded out from there:
Discount Hobby Villagers Pack They're recasts of old-school figs. If you decide you're interested, but want to stay on a budget, I also have a bunch of links for freebie paper models of houses and so on ( you'll need to print and construct them, but...). That's what Threnody and I use.

[joshua neff]

Thanks for that link. I'll keep those minis in mind.

[Tony Irwin]

Hey Robert, this is fantastic! Good for you for following through on those earlier threads.

When we talked about this previously I mentioned that my experience of trying to do a minis roleplaying game was that it was "fragile fun". It worked, I know it worked because we were loving it and spectators wanted to be a part of it, but I'm not really sure how. I guess it was like drama resolution with a really small group where everyone is on the same page (playing HeartQuest was like that for me). We knew what should happen next (or what narrow range of outcomes should happen next), and rolled dice simply because it was fun to do so. I'm not sure that I could "replicate" the experience. We abandoned most of our rules, and the ones we kept... well I'm not convinced they were what was shaping play.

I kind of get the same vibe from your play report. Like it was great fun, but it could just have easily have turned out not to be fun. Is that a fair observation?

I love the way you facilitated play for your daughter, picking conflicts that you knew would draw her out. Are you effectively GMing the game for her?

Were your conflicts about deciding whether a character gets what they want, or more about deciding who a character is and how they behave and feel?

Look forward to hearing more,

Tony

[komradebob]

Tony:
GMing the game? Hmm. Not really sure. I feel I was definitely acting as initiator of the conflict in the scene with the merchant, and again with the barman. The follow up scenes with the interaction between the adventurers was pretty much Thren initiating the conflict, and me adding color/dialog and suggestions.

Background:
My daughter doesn't live with me, so we got in the habit of making up stories when we talk on the phone. No dice or anything, just back and forth story add ons.If anything, Threnody is a little railroad conductor storywise, mostly turning to me when she runs low on steam. The minis game seems to follow a similar pattern.

I kind of get the same vibe from your play report. Like it was great fun, but it could just have easily have turned out not to be fun. Is that a fair observation?

Actually, both the first couple scenes, which I skipped over, and the last couple of scenes were flat or directionless.Incidently, they were also somewhat disconnected from the core scenes.

One thing I'm considering for a structure to play is to add the concept of a set number of scenes ( two per player, rotating) and then a required breakoff period. I think the intensity of jumping into character issue related conflicts (a straight lift from PTA) may actually require it.

When we talked about this previously I mentioned that my experience of trying to do a minis roleplaying game was that it was "fragile fun". It worked, I know it worked because we were loving it and spectators wanted to be a part of it, but I'm not really sure how. I guess it was like drama resolution with a really small group where everyone is on the same page (playing HeartQuest was like that for me). We knew what should happen next (or what narrow range of outcomes should happen next), and rolled dice simply because it was fun to do so. I'm not sure that I could "replicate" the experience. We abandoned most of our rules, and the ones we kept... well I'm not convinced they were what was shaping play.

This was somewhat my experience with this, as well as our earlier mostly freeform Floor Games. The fun is definitely fragile, but I'm scrapping some of the structured rules I had thought to use, in favor of formalizing the rules as actually played.

I'm still thinking along the lines of a lottery+drama/fiat as the resolution mechanic for the scene when it hits that " Well what happens now?" boiling point. [Trying to describe how the players hit that boiling point is giving me fits right now, though.] I think this might be a little like your small group of players on the same page. What we tried (eventually) was something like giving each player a chance to state an outcome related to the drama, then flip to see whose version came into play. The result, and any extra narration was handled by negotiation.

Joshua Neff:
Up in the resources links here, there is a page with some wonderful color fantasy and science fiction figures to print out and use ( Patrick's cut outs, I think). Also, the more I think about this in terms of a written out system, the more I think that really any toys could be used for this sort of thing. The rpg minis are my own personal crack, but I don't see why toy soldiers, Barbies, or even stuffed animals couldn't be used as easily, although you might want to consider going off the tabletop and going for a more on the bedroom/playroom floor approach. As for locations, our very first game or two was played with whatever was at hand. Blocks, notebook paper teepees, lego play sets, wine corks, really, whatever was there. As a starting point, a location or two per player and maybe 3 x number of players of distinct character figures of some sort should get things underway.

I'm almost thinking that having too many figures actually muddled up both the early and final scenes of our session ( the ones I glossed over).


On a related note, when we play, gm/pc duties are really dispersed and players flip between characters and stances readily, even when they have a decided preference. In this, it isn't altogether different from Universalis.

[Tony Irwin]

GMing the game? Hmm. Not really sure. I feel I was definitely acting as initiator of the conflict in the scene with the merchant, and again with the barman. The follow up scenes with the interaction between the adventurers was pretty much Thren initiating the conflict, and me adding color/dialog and suggestions.

All the fun that you were able to help make happen for her - do you anticipate being able to formulate a set of simple rules that she could use to make that same kind of fun for you? Or do you see this more that when you eventually publish your rules (because you must publish this in some kind of form - its too good not to share) that it will be as a game where the parent does most of the facilitating of play for the kids?

Tony

[komradebob]

GMing the game? Hmm. Not really sure. I feel I was definitely acting as initiator of the conflict in the scene with the merchant, and again with the barman. The follow up scenes with the interaction between the adventurers was pretty much Thren initiating the conflict, and me adding color/dialog and suggestions.

All the fun that you were able to help make happen for her - do you anticipate being able to formulate a set of simple rules that she could use to make that same kind of fun for you? Or do you see this more that when you eventually publish your rules (because you must publish this in some kind of form - its too good not to share) that it will be as a game where the parent does most of the facilitating of play for the kids?

Tony

You know, these sort of inciteful (and annooyingly hard-to-answer) questions will lead you to being called upon to help look over what I've written when it gets posted in a day or so.

I think I'm going to put down the initial rules with the assumption that they'll be used initially by at least one adult, with one or two children participating.

[komradebob]

I meant "insightful", although I guess the other word could also be appropriate, too (heh).

[Arpie]

Hey, Robert, thanks a bunch for those links!
Great stuff!

I don't know how much this has to do with 9 year olds, but I'd like to see so more "Cute" in minis, anyway. Bright colors, simple shapes. For example, my favorite figs for a while have been those munchkin guys, I think something like a little plastic chibi DnD set would go over big.

This is mostly materials related, but there was an old playskool toy I use to dig which really got me into gaming, and that was Richard Scary's Puzzletown. It was just a bit simpler than legos, but had an attractive, easy-to-assemble feel that made it feel like creating your own pop-up book.

I find my old sets when my parents moved a few years back (I've since e-bayed them to make rent) and tried to cut out some Nightmare Before Christmas buildings to go with other toys and it worked OK ascetically. More importantly, it got my anti-gaming wife to attend a couple games with me, integrating her into my then-group a little more, which is a plus any day.

Yeah, uh, I guess what I'm trying to say is what my wife says she liked was both the colorfulness of the figures and the tactile aspect of it. It made a good bridge from playing pretend to game to adult passtime. The idea of a playing piece links it closer to chess in people's mind, even if it is a kid's toy or a toy soldier.

As for playing pretend, kids are generally pretty good at it. The problem is making rules seem like part of the fun and an inviting part of adult life at the same time, eh? What kinds of rules liberate rather than oppress? What kinds of rules encourage rather than punish? What kinds of rules would you rather follow and which do you have to follow to make the game work? Hmmm....

What do you really want a developing mind to keep track of? I'm not a parent, so I can't answer this one. But playing pretend, I'm sure that's a kid's forte.

[komradebob]

Thanks Arpie.

I also find that physical pieces make for an easy intro to rpgs for a lot of folks. I've seen non-gamer parents and guardians at game shops eyeing the wargame minis with barely concealed (hopefully positive) interest. There is something just joyous about playing with toys, even as an adult. I hope the game I'm working on will give them just the excuse they need to do that.

Having said that, I'm going to add sidebar suggestions about playing these Village games with toys that are already around, or are less expensive than gaming miniatures. Not everyone is a commited miniatures hobbyist, enthralled with painting and model asssembly. I want my game to be accessible to non-modellers and folks working on a limited budget ( a common situation for most parents). Plus, I want players to be able to get going with playing, rather than making village gaming one of those projects that is always being worked on and never really played.

What do you really want a developing mind to keep track of? I'm not a parent, so I can't answer this one. But playing pretend, I'm sure that's a kid's forte

My approach right now is to keep the rules at the player level, rather than the character level. That's to say, the rules deal with order of scene introduction and set up, rather than any physical/skill modelling of the characters. I want to keep reading and writing to a minimum, and ditch math altogether ( no character sheets, no charts, some cards for introducing scenes [ I have the strong urge to call them "chapters"], colored beads rather than dice for conflict resolution/stakes). OTOH, paying attention to story developments is vitally important, because there aren't any written references to fall back on once the game is underway.

I'm also really big on emphasizing the co-operative nature of this game. I poked around the kids' section of a couple of bookstores looking primarily for ideas about physical qualities of kids' books. I ran across a couple of books on co-operative kids' imagination/proto-roleplay type games and discovered that the general approach used was very similar to what I am shooting for with this Village game. I can't quite describe the difference in approach, but a lot of rpgs still seem to have an undercurrent of distrust of other players as a normal situation- The classic Cops'n'robbers Conundrum referenced in sooo many rpg texts.