[Beast Hunters of Chel'qhur] It's All About the Challenge

[xenopulse]

Well, I just lost my long post on this because something closed my browser window.  So this one will be shorter.  I hope it'll still catch your interest, because I'm very excited about this one.

Here it is:  Beast Hunters of Chel'qhur.

This is the fruit of several months of work, a Gamist design based on the lessons I learned from P/E and our discussions here on exploration v. address of challenge.  This game has a challenge negotiation core that focuses on the type of creative addresses of challenges that many of us enjoy in RPGs.  After all, that's what sets RPG challenges apart from other kinds of game challenges: you can come up with your own solution instead of just going through the game's mechanics.

The basics: You play a Beast Hunter, member of a tribal order.  The hunters track down and kill magical beasts that threaten their communities, and out of their blood make ink for ritual tattoos that transfer part of the creature's power to themselves.  This makes them better able to protect their tribe.  They also serve as mediators within and among the tribes, leading to social as well as mental challenges.

Once the player encounters a challenge, wants to change the status quo, or wants to prevent something from happening (i.e., enters a conflict), play moves to the challenge negotiation with explicit stakes.  It has three phases: 1) address; 2) elaboration; and 3) execution.  In any of these phases, the GM can give (i.e., accept the other player's solution), move on to the next phase, or decide to use dice (in this case called Conflict Resolution or CR).  During CR, every time the hunter player narrates an offensive or defensive action, the GM offers a certain amount of advantage.  The hunter can take it or roll dice instead if s/he feels the action wasn't properly valued.  Overall, this presents the opportunity for creative and cool actions at every step of the way, with immediate in-game rewards, as well as the opportunity to risk the certainty of the advantage offer for a higher (or lower) roll.

For the adversity in the game, the GM has a limited budget and a maximum per-challenge level that the hunter player has determined at the beginning of the adventure.  The GM then buys adversity ad hoc as appropriate for the particular challenge.  This allows for flexibility as well as promotes accepting the player's addresses of challenges, because that way the GM saves more adversity points for later.  It reinforces the "say yes or roll the dice" rule from DitV by adding a cost to the rolling of dice. It also saves the GM from having to prepare painstakingly balanced encounters or challenges.

This alpha version of the game is substantial; it contains all the rules for negotiation as well as conflict resolution, character creation and development, basic setting, a sample of beasts to hunt, advice on how to create cool challenges and run adventures, a character sheet, and more.

Feedback is much appreciated, and if anyone can give this an actual spin, I'd be thrilled.

Some particular questions:
1) Does the negotiation structure make sense? Is it awkward or too formal?
2) Does it actually encourage the GM trying to understand and embrace the addresses of challenges?
3) Any holes, exploitable parts, idiosyncracies you can see?

Thanks for reading this far, and I hope you'll look at it and get something out of it :)

[Callan S.]

I suck at reading PDF's, so rather than trying to get through the whole thing before posting (and who knows what page this thread will be on by then), I'll add a quick comment now and more as I get through more.

The quick comment is, damn that salute is such a striking design consideration! It just says so much about how to take the game! :)  And to say it's not optional...how dare you! :) That's so...in your face! You can't just say 'Oh, it's gamism, I'll take it as all light and fluffy shit". You just shook each others arms by the elbow! That adds so much more weight and there's no sneaking out because the only way to play the game as written is to do that (since you state it's not optional).

Oh, and I think the 'hunt monsters and turn them into magic ink' is pretty damn cool for a whole bunch of reasons (but I wont bore everyone with typing my reasons)

[Josh Roby]

I'll chime in that the salute is pretty keen.  I'm also all about two-player RPGs, so this sounds like lots of fun. I love the character generation sequence; I think it will very strongly encourage very tribal members steeped in the setting.  Nice.

Clarifications:

In play, you've got points that the Challenger spends to buy stuff and Advantage Points that both players gain and lose with some frequency.  Should these be tracked with pencil and paper, or something tangible like poker chips or counters?

Once you activate a trait, it stays active throughout the rest of the adventure, applying to later challenges?  So activating a trait is sort of introducing it into the story, so once it's been established that you have Masterful Footwork, your character is dancing around his enemies the rest of the adventure?  Do I have that right?  If so, is there any way to deny or deactivate a Trait?

Things I'd like to see:

More detail on the beasts.  On the beast table, it just has "+3 Defense Trait" but doesn't say what it is.  Given the description that precedes the table, I'm sure I could fudge it, but is there a reason why it doesn't just list "+3 Defense, Rock Skin" or the like?

Example of Failure.  In your example of play, you have two example challenges, both of which the PC wins.  I'd like to see one where he fails, but the story continues on.  I'm sure I could figure out how to do this, but I'd like to see how you'd approach it.

Lastly, have you gotten to playtest this yet?  I'd love to hear an AP report!

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Christian,

Wow! Exciting and cool game. Like everyone, I like the salute.

Your text is very clear on how to play, and I thank you for that. My biggest issue with it right now is in resolution. Why a d20? It's huge, and as written, it seems like randomness will have more of an effect than your abilities.

The striking mechanic in resolution is so damn hot that I'm very envious right now. Really sweet stuff there.

I'm not sure if the similarity between phase 3 and the dice rolling is awesome or not as awesome. I think awesome, in that one's a negotation and the other is almost the same, but negotation with a third party, the dice.

Anyhow - amazing first stab. I'm going to try and get a playtest in and let you know what I think.

[xenopulse]

Thanks for the response, guys.

First, the salute--yeah, I thought that was long overdue in a Gamist situation.  I should insert a note that making it this obviously ritualistic was probably inspired by Meguey's Essay on Rituals, specifically the section on Containment.

As to the questions:

- keeping track of points: I like using tokens, but I'm afraid they will get too numerous.  If you have an adversity pool of 75 points, that's a lot of tokens.  I guess if you have a coin dish, you could use pennies :)  Maybe I'll put that in as a suggestion.

- preactivated traits are only preactivated for that particular challenge.  The idea here is that it will make you diversify, i.e., you need to bring in different traits along the way.  If traits were active all along, people would just have one or two superhigh traits instead of branching out.  Furthermore, it's supposed to be an expendable resource that allows you to emphasize which challenges you really want to win.  I think this needs to be playtested to see how it comes out.

- details on beasts: yeah, I was getting impatient.  They will definitely have named traits and more flavor, and there'll be a whole lot more of them.

- example of failure: that's a good suggestion, I'll definitely incorporate that.

- the D20: it's big for a reason, and that is to make using it risky.  Two reasons for this: 1) If you could be reasonably certain about your abilities, you'd be less likely to try and win the challenge in the negotiation and just wait for the dice; and 2) the same applies on a smaller scale for accepting the adversity point offer, in that you're definitely taking a risk when you reject it.  Keep in mind that the conflict resolution is a fallback mechanism for when the negotiation fails, not the standard way of handling all challenges.  Also, a few points in traits make a big difference.  If your offense is 5 points higher than the other's defense, you gain on average 6.35 advantage points with every offensive maneuver.  In the reverse, if their offense is 5 points lower than your defense, they only get 1.35.  If you also have 2 points in both your resources where they have 0, you only need 4 maneuvers to get an incapacitated result as average if you strike whereas they need 25 on you.  (Yeah, I spent some time running the numbers on this; that's what an hour of commute every day is there for.)

And Clinton, if you could get around to playtesting it, I would be thrilled.

Thanks again for everyone's feedback so far!

[Josh Roby]

- keeping track of points: I like using tokens, but I'm afraid they will get too numerous.  If you have an adversity pool of 75 points, that's a lot of tokens.  I guess if you have a coin dish, you could use pennies :)  Maybe I'll put that in as a suggestion.

Hell, with 75 points, you could use pennies and nickels and dimes.

[xenopulse]

Alright, point taken.  I'll encourage using coins for the adversity pool (since it's an expense) and, heck, matches for advantage in combat, representing tribal spirit sticks or something.

[Josh Roby]

Tribal spirit sticks would be keen.  Manipulables that foster a sense of the setting are very good things to have.

Also, is it just me or would Nomad make for a good soundtrack to play this game by?

[Jason Morningstar]

OMG this looks pretty cool.  I see a lot of grim saluting in nerdRTP's future! 

How long do you think individual challenges will take?  I could see this as a good warmup kind of game. 

[xenopulse]

Joshua,

I need to look (listen) into Nomad.  I just know that when I get to the grittier fights, I'll slam some Sepultura into the stereo (Ratamahatta would be perfect, or maybe Bloody Roots, for example).

Jason,

Thanks for reading it over, I hope you can give it a whirl :)  I don't think the individual challenges should take too long.  If you can solve it through the negotiation, that should only take a couple of minutes.  The conflict resolution might take 15-30 minutes, depending on how involved it is.  Or shorter, if the Hunter can make the Challenger give.