How do you reduce Sim prep

[CSBone]

Hey guys, thank you so much for jumping in...

I'm going to start with Ron's question about what happened in general and then try to answer the rest of the questions after that. This is going to be LOOOONNNGGG.

Ron,

I'm not quite sure how much detail you'd like me to go into but I'll start and we can see what might be useful to this discussion.

First things first, IMHO Keep is the best module ever written. The game in question was not the first time I had run Keep on the Borderlands. I had gotten it when I picked up my original Red Box. I don't rightly remember if it came with it or not, I think it might have. In any event I'd run Keep at least a few times as written before I ran this one.

The Players were:

MB – My brother. A 6'2" gentle giant, he ALWAYS ran dwarves. His character sheet is still in my notes. I watched him roll a full handful of 18s for stats and he named him Thorin from The Hobbit. Because I'd already had some experience with not having enough hit points so he started with max 8+3. As he leveled I never saw him roll lower than 7 for hit points so he was a tank. According to my notes he had a +1 Cursed Sword which I know is from the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide, Plate Armor and a +1 shield at 5th level. I believe he may have started with that sword. As a Player he loved the thing. His character hated it because it was Elven made and he was always talking about how he was saving up enough gold to get a remove curse cast on him. Never happened.

JP – A good friend. He and I used to argued Mormon vs Jewish religion. He started play with a Cleric who got whacked by the kolbolds on our first foray into the Caves and then he started playing an Elf. The Elf had an 18 Dex and a longbow and wore "Elven" Chain +1 from the start and I remember him picking up a pair of Elven Boots at some point. JP and my brother used to go round and round in the "dumb dwarf" "stupid plant" vein and since both my brother and JP loved creative cussing (remember, Mormon...no profanity) it was a riot.

RT—A friend of JP's. RT was the Other GM and his games ROCKED. Looking back it was pure obfuscated illusionism...but he was good at it. His first character was a Theif, who got whacked when JP's Cleric did and so he started playing one of the Curate's acolytes as our party Cleric and the Curate too.

There was also RP, JP's brother and KT a friend of his who played some of the game and they played mercenary Fighters of whatever level everybody else was when they played.

We never did have a Magic User.

We played once a week for the first half of the summer on weekends and 2 of those including the last one were monster, 12 hours till even caffeine couldn't keep us awake, pizza in the morning, go to Mormon Church and play till 5 or 6 pm sessions.

The first session was just me MB, JP and RT and we spent a great deal of time meeting all of the people in the Keep and then they went out looking for trouble and ran into the Spider Lair and the Mad Hermit. Upon their return they got to talking with the Priest with the silent acolytes and he pointed them in the direction of the Caves of Chaos.

The next session they took the Priest's directions and headed to the Caves...and the fun really got started. They hit the Kolbold's first and were feeling pretty stompy until the Theif and the Cleric fell into the pit trap and got killed by spears. My brother's dwarf  Thorin had gotten hammered in the first encounter and so he was in the back and he tried to save them, failed and then ran. When he got back to the Keep RP and KT had just showed up so 5 strong  (the Curate had healed Thorin) they went back and kicked the kolbolds in the teeth.  Feeling good they rested in the Kolbold Lair and we called it a night.

The third session, the next morning I decided that the Orcs and goblins had heard the ruckus and ambushed them on the way out. From there it was a running fight back to the Keep in which the Players got hammered but they made it out without loosing anyone. When they woke up the next morning the Keep was under siege.

The fourth session was the beginning of the siege. Originally it was only the 30 Orcs, 20 Goblins, 2 Ogres, 24 Hobgoblins, and 14 Gnolls. And they had taken up position just out of ballista range on the path to the Keep. I know the Players spent the entire session working up their direct frontal assault on the attackers and nothing but planning got done.

The fifth session was that battle. We broke up the Keep defenders into groups and everybody played some and I rolled for the humanoids That first battle between the defenders and the humanoids was a disaster. Without any mucking around I handed them their ass. Because of the narrow path they could have had the advantage but they charged into the open and got creamed. Those that survived (RP and KT's Fighters didn't) holed up in the Keep. The humanoids lost about half of their people. The Players and the Keep lost most of the defenders.

From there I think we had a session of trying to get the rest of the Keep ready to defend themselves for the coming horde because I'd ignore the "the humanoids can't get reinforcements" thing and had them send runners for more help. This was followed by
two weeks of serious siege battles where the levels went to just under 6th from killing humanoids and just about all of the Normal Man NPCs ended up with 2-3 Fighter levels.

The tide was turning because we could have held that Keep as long as we didn't run out of ammunition...until I had the evil Priest and his silent acolytes open the gates. From there the fight raged from the outer Bailey to the Inner Gatehouse, the humanoids took the balistas and catapults from the outer walls and battered down the Inner Gatehouse and the final retreat dragged everyone back to the Keep Fortress where we finally turned the attack due to good rolling and great tactics.

The last monster session finished at 8 am and we all went to church hyped on adrenaline and then crashed. When we woke up Thorin became the new Captain of the Guard. JP's Elf became the Castilian (the old one having died in the final assault) and the Curate stepped down in favor of RP's Cleric.

RP had by that time picked up a copy of G1-G3 and we decided to play that and never got back to the Keep to finish the Caves of Chaos.

C. S. Bone

[CSBone]

Jim,

If you have the temperament for it and the right system, genuine Live the Dream, "virtual nonfiction" Sim can be done with a lot of GM improvisation. It's simply a matter of whether the value controlling the improvisation is "I'll put this there because it makes the richest, truest tapestry" or "I'll put this there because it makes a nice test of the party's abilities" or "I'll put this there because it plays to X's ethical concerns (or "passions" or whateve)." Improv for the first reason is Sim.

I completely understand the concept of "IC with the world" but how do you define the line between adding to the game and illusionism? Your idea of lists of people and "proto" NPC I've used for years but once they've been pulled into use I feel you have to finish them, unless they are cannon fodder, and that adds time to prep. In a game where running away rather than fighting to the last hit point is more common your list of non-throwaway NPC can get pretty big.

John,
Your Simulation Explained" article ROCKS! Explains to a "T" what I like about gaming. Problem is, how do you SUPPORT IT?

Nathan,
My biggest problem with what you are calling "No-Myth" is that in order for the stuff to mean something later you still have to back prep encountered places and things if Characters might return to them. While I find I love the discovery process as much or even more than the Players, I don't find it reduces prep time if I want the kind of concrete "Yeah, I feel like I've been there," Sim I really want. Am I missing something?

Joshua,

It's like thinking that when Joss Whedon was writing the first season of Buffy: the Vampire Slayer, he was always thinking of the First Evil, the Big Bad of the last season.  Chances are, Mr Whedon might have had a very sketchy outline of Buffy confronting the Master at the end of the First Season, and only that because he'd need the outline to pitch the show to get funding.  There are counter examples, of course, but they're the exception, not the rule.  And I usually point out that while J Michael Strazinsky of Babylon Five fame plotted out the entire five year arc of the series, he didn't get to finish it the way he wanted anyway.

You make a good point, B5 and  Buffy seemed to get more concrete as it went. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Tommi,
My problem with, "let it ride" improve is that I've found it gets "cardboard cutout" in a hurry. As for D&D characters, right up until 3E I used to make what Ron calls "pop rocks" characters so fast it used to annoy the other players. Now, not so simple.

So if I am getting y'all correctly here is what we've got so far:
Improv and No Myth is the key to lowering Sim prep.
Using generic Templates, Lists of Names etc and filling them out latter, as you need them, will allow you to prep a smaller portion of the world.
Let the Players help prep sections outside the scope of the regular play I.E. flavor.

Did I miss something? If not I've got more questions.


Ron,
Having gone back through my notes—and my memory  (which may NOT be so clear), I think I stand by my statement that there was no railroading and no rules changes other than modding the scenario to add more humanoids which seemed appropriate to me. I do notice however that the game was a lot shorter that I remember it being. In thinking about it I also notice that the game was "okay" right up until we lost two out of 3 Characters to the pit trap and it screamed from there until the end...but I'm not sure I had anywhere to take it after the big final battle.

I think that might be what is bothering me. How do you keep a game going after a HUGE thing like that? D&D's more levels make you cooler never worked for me, level 3(cause you need the damn hit points) to level 6-10 depending on the character type was the sweet spot. After that it became too, I guess, Gamist for my taste. I'm not sure what to do with that.

In relation to my Space Ranger project I guess this is my question. How do you create a realistic crunchy world with solid verisimilitude and strong moral and physical dilemmas while still maintaining low prep time and low handling, high speed, high variety mechanics? Space Ranger falls flat on high variety already and prep of just the first scenario for playtest has taken up more time than all of my other writing for it combined. I'm not feeling this is a "feature".

Can you use what I've said so far to help me figure out where I need to go from here? I beleive how you prep, what you prep and what techniques you use to maintain verisimilitude is key. I'm just not sure what tools I should be looking at.

In all cases please use examples other than "Look at this system over here." If the answer cannot be stated without a specific system, I'm not sure I can use it.

C. S. Bone

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Chris,

H'm. That was a lot more battle-strategy heavy than your first post led me to believe. I'm not really seeing the "multicultural political hotbed" you mentioned, at least, not as I interpreted the phrase ... instead, a rather good example of playing a non-railed combat campaign without making the foes stupid. Very much in the classic D&D ideal in which the wargame/campaign (in the technical sense of the word) provides the context for the individual or squad-level tactics, negotiations, and skirmishes, and the individual and squad level results then feed back up to the next event at the wargame/campaign level.

All of which is, if you're interested in taking it as such, praise.

Now let's go back to your questions, which I think need to be revised a little.

Number one – Is there a way to get that level of verisimilitude without that level of prep?
Number two – What happened to make people not realize that this is what needed to be done to make the kinds of games that G. Gygax and D. Arneson were playing when they started?

The answer to your question #1 is "yes." But clearly, what has to get jettisoned is the commonly-favored progression that looks like this:

Book/module -> GM internalizes -> GM notes -> GM dialogue + player reception

I believe it was a Pendragon scenario that stated it most clearly, in some phrasing like, "Of course, the GM is the window through which the players experience the game world." This has to be put aside, unless you want to be a martyr on the cross of "entertain everyone else, forever."

There are dozens of ways to do this, and the insight you must internalize to achieve any of them is a hard pill to swallow for people who've become committed to the standard model. The insight is, all of us at the table must be windows for one another. Boy, there's a whole lot more to say here, but we'll leave it at that for now. I do want to say that in many functional applications of this insight, you do not have to jettison the whole GM/player structure entirely. A lot of people mistakenly think you do. You don't.

For your question #2, you'll have to rephrase it, as follows.

A) Let's lose the "vision of the prophets" rhetoric, shall we? As I see it, for instance, the two Names you mentioned never shared one iota of common goals or procedural preferences in play. Do you especially feel like entering into a 5-page debate about that? Neither do I. I suggest instead just flushing the whole need to characterize or represent "the way Gary and Dave played" as an ideal or standard.

B) What "this" are you talking about? Major, intensive, exhausting prep? Or some alternative to it, i.e., however you answer #1?

C) What people are you talking about? Be accurate with your answer to this one. It's crucial.

Best,
Ron

[Ron Edwards]

Whoops, missed that last bit in your latest post, Chris.

1. I think you're starting to post a little emotionally, because you're contradicting yourself ... in your first post, you accused yourself of railroading to start the game, and I said, you did not. So don't start defending yourself as if I said you were railroading.

2. Can't help you out on the techniques, at this point. The field of possibilities is too large. Without the insight I mentioned in the last post, none of them will make sense, and without a little more focus on what you'd like play to be like, I'd have to lay out all of them in a huge monstrous matrix. So let's get through talking about the points I made in the above post, and then more into what you'd actually like to see in play, among the people. Right now all I can get is how you felt about it - I'd like to know more about what you actually visualize everyone doing.

Best,
Ron

[Nathan P.]

Nathan,
My biggest problem with what you are calling "No-Myth" is that in order for the stuff to mean something later you still have to back prep encountered places and things if Characters might return to them. While I find I love the discovery process as much or even more than the Players, I don't find it reduces prep time if I want the kind of concrete "Yeah, I feel like I've been there," Sim I really want. Am I missing something?

Chris,

I think the most valuable way to look at it would be if you give me an example of your play that was particularly prep-intensive, and I'll tell you how I would have approached it from the No-Myth perspective. The key is, as Ron says, we must all be windows for each other (mmmm, good phrase).

That said, this discussion is under the umbrella of what Ron is talking about, so if you want to hold off on talking Technique (or spin it off into its own thread), thats fine.

[CSBone]

Ron,

You are probably right about the political hotbed thing. Through the glasses of time it seemed more so that it probably was. During the siege there was a LOT of Player Character to NPC interaction but I think you are probably right that the wargaming aspect was more paramount. The politics of the humanoids was of interest only to me as the GM and looking back not really relevant beyond the fact that rather than fighting each other they came as a huge group with tactics to kick ass on the Players and the Keep.

And I'll take the praise. (Not emotional, tired...sleep is good.)

So:

Question One:

Is there a way to get that level of verisimilitude without that level of prep?

Need new model for prep and verisimilitude creation.

Question Two: 

What happened to make people not realize that this is what needed to be done to make the kinds of games that G. Gygax and D. Arneson were playing when they started?

One piece at a time:

A) Let's lose the "vision of the prophets" rhetoric, shall we? As I see it, for instance, the two Names you mentioned never shared one iota of common goals or procedural preferences in play. Do you especially feel like entering into a 5-page debate about that? Neither do I. I suggest instead just flushing the whole need to characterize or represent "the way Gary and Dave played" as an ideal or standard.

B) What "this" are you talking about? Major, intensive, exhausting prep? Or some alternative to it, i.e., however you answer #1?

C) What people are you talking about? Be accurate with your answer to this one. It's crucial.

A: Flush. Some day I'd like to read that, but you're right, it isn't relevant to this conversation.
B: I guess "this" was "Major, intensive, exhaustive prep," but has to be whatever the answer to "Question One" becomes.
C: People. I was imprecise and it seems my initial "people" may no longer be the ones I'm addressing. So lets try "people" defined as GMs and Players creating the Sim environment via the new model that is the answer to "Question One".

I'm not sure that is clear but lets start from there.

SO:

Question One: What kind of a model and techniques do I need to learn and address to bring a real world level of verisimilitude to a game without major, extensive, exhaustive prep.
Question One A: As a designer I how much work do I need to do and background do I need to provide to make sure that GM and Player prep is as low as possible without compromising verisimilitude.

Question Two: How do I get as GMs and Players creating the Sim environment, via the new model (however it ends up), to buy into and understand the level of prep required for a game, (which it seems should be less) so that they have a screaming good time doing things and being people they can't be in real life because when you are pushing that much risk losing doesn't just suck, it makes you dead.

The CA I think I'm trying to reward is, "Your Character is THERE. You as the Player are the little voice that makes your Alexander conquer the known world, or your Allan Quatermaine find the treasure of Solomon, or your Ocean's Eleven team knock over the casino, or your Ranger laugh in the face of insurmountable odds and succeed in your task or fail in such a spectacular manner that the bad guys don't EVER want to try THAT again."

Failure is an option and should be embraced as part of the FUN!

".22, double tap, behind the left ear, 'cause he wasn't looking," is NOT.

C. S. Bone

[Josh Roby]

Let the Players help prep sections outside the scope of the regular play I.E. flavor.

Think you can ditch this part?  Cause if you can, you're golden.

[CSBone]

Nathan,

Got an easy one from the game. First Battle of the Keep. From the fourth to the fifth session I generated all of the humanoids and their tactics in great detail as well as all of the NPCs from the Keep. 90 some odd humanoids some with magical weapons and items that needed backgrounds because they might fall into PC hands plus tactics. And then all of the NPCs from the Keep. Each with a name, list of physical and emotional quirks so you could identify them and with them. Stuff, armor, weapons. Not to mention sketches of some of the more unusual stuff. To be fair about half of each ended up as throwaways, but I didn't know which half so I prepped them ALL. No stormtroopers, no endless mass of screaming monsters. Each had identity. And I used those identities. I truly believe that the Players hated the humanoids more because they could identify the meanest and nastiest and felt a real sense of loss from losing, not just another level 1 Fighter but, Rogge the short fat one who laughed as he pushed down the scaling ladders.

Lot of prep.

C. S. Bone

[Josh Roby]

Just as a tip, the 'Post' button is on the left, and the 'Preview' button is on the right, and getting them mixed up like I did is not a good idea.

Let the Players help prep sections outside the scope of the regular play I.E. flavor.

Think you can ditch this part?  Specifically, the part where players only contribute 'flavor' (we call it Color round these parts) and nothing substantial?  Cause if you can, you're golden.  To my mind, this is the biggest step to take from GM illusionism into full on collaborative play.  Everybody should be throwing in good stuff, and that good stuff should have an effect on roleplay.  Once you can start doing that, lots of other things fall into place.

One of the ways I think of it goes like this: one GM, working alone, spends eight hours writing up stuff, and then four hours reviewing and editing it, for a total of twelve hours prep for a six hour game.  Now, if all four players at the table collaborate on writing stuff up, you could say that those twelve man hours get cut down to three a piece, but that's missing the fact that working collaboratively, all content is constantly being reviewed as it's being articulated.  Since the GM spent four of his hours editing his own stuff, we could go so far as to say that the eight hours of GM prep (sans self-edit) can then be split up between the four players for two hours each.  And then the last bit, the cherry on top, is that it's fun to do.  So it's not "we set everything up for two hours and then we started in on the fun parts."  It's more like "we sat down and made up this awesome story."  Really good designs even incorporate this set up into the roleplay itself (Go get Capes.  Free lite version.  Go go go.).

Question One: What kind of a model and techniques do I need to learn and address to bring a real world level of verisimilitude to a game without major, extensive, exhaustive prep.
Question One A: As a designer I how much work do I need to do and background do I need to provide to make sure that GM and Player prep is as low as possible without compromising verisimilitude.

There are lots more than one answer to both of these questions.  Unfortunately, the best way to answer both is by recommending finished products for you to review.

My personal preference on the question is sort of a two step approach.  The first step is providing a strong, evocative direction that is written with the sole purpose to get the players on board for creating a gaming experience in that direction.  If the focus of that direction is a world or setting, this will superficially look like a description of that world, but it's not -- it's an exemplar showing the players what roleplay should look and feel like, not what roleplay should be.  The second step is the harder part -- trust your players to understand what you're talking about, judge it according to their preferences, and then charge off in that direction (or something similar) on their own.

Question Two: How do I get as GMs and Players creating the Sim environment, via the new model (however it ends up), to buy into and understand the level of prep required for a game, (which it seems should be less) so that they have a screaming good time doing things and being people they can’t be in real life because when you are pushing that much risk losing doesn’t just suck, it makes you dead.

Is your question "How do you get players to engage when they could lose their investment through character death?"  My solution is simple: remove character death.  Presto.  The slightly longer version is "divorce player authority from character status" -- so that everybody, no matter who they happen to be playing and what is happening to that character, retains the ability to contribute to the unfolding game.

[John Kim]

Got an easy one from the game. First Battle of the Keep. From the fourth to the fifth session I generated all of the humanoids and their tactics in great detail as well as all of the NPCs from the Keep. 90 some odd humanoids some with magical weapons and items that needed backgrounds because they might fall into PC hands plus tactics. And then all of the NPCs from the Keep.

This sounds similar to what I did for something like my Vinland game.  I would again recommend Jonathan Walton's upcoming PUSH, which has an article delving more into this in detail.  But since it's not out yet, here are some short points:

1) For all of what comes below, make sure prepping is interesting and fun for you.  Hopefully, you can enjoy it the same way that some people enjoy knitting, or reading a book, or whatever. 

2) As other people have said, involve the players.  There are good reasons to limit player knowledge of the opponents, but in the above example you could easily have had the players help with keeping track of the NPCs in the keep. 

3) Reduce the size of the scope.  Seriously, this might seem a bit obvious, but imagine an outpost a quarter of the size (i.e. fewer NPCs) attacked by fewer monsters -- and perhaps a smaller number of slightly more powerful monsters.  A big shift in my gaming over the years has been reducing the size of the scope.  So where before the PCs might have been based in a big city, now they are based in a small village. 

4) Use pregenerated materials.  I tend to set games in the real world, because this lets me use real maps, real cultures, and so forth.  For my Vinland game, I used USGS maps.  However, there are also options for fantasy.  These days for D&D you can buy PDFs for a ridiculous number of things: customized sets of treasures, items, opponents, and so forth. 

5) Simplify the numbers.  A simpler system in general is ideal, but even with a system like D20 there are options.  There are software programs for handling sheets for NPCs, including templates. 

[Josh Roby]

3) Reduce the size of the scope.  Seriously, this might seem a bit obvious, but imagine an outpost a quarter of the size (i.e. fewer NPCs) attacked by fewer monsters -- and perhaps a smaller number of slightly more powerful monsters.  A big shift in my gaming over the years has been reducing the size of the scope.  So where before the PCs might have been based in a big city, now they are based in a small village.

<Insert emphatic agreement here.>  We watch movies that have giant special effects and entire armies and the suggestion that there are hundreds if not thousands of people involved in the action.  And then we go off and we try to replicate the hundreds and thousands when we should be replicating the suggestion of hundreds and thousands.  The next time you take in a movie, watch a teevee show, or read a book, count how many individual characters the main characters interact with for more than a line of dialogue.  In almost all cases, it will be under twenty.  In most cases, it will hover around ten.  Those ten or twenty may suggest lots more peope -- think West Wing, here -- but when it all comes down to it, the number of fleshed-out characters is pretty small.

Reducing the scope of the setting can do this for you in pretty straightforward terms.  Going from a big city to a small village is good.  You also can do this without leaving the big city -- instead of canvassing the entire city, focus on a neighborhood.  Focus on one guildhall that the PCs are based out of.

I didn't grok this one until Tribe 8.  In that game, 80% of play happens in a burned-out post-apocalyptic Montreal.  60% of play happens on a small island that's an amusement park in Montreal.  You get this familiar, powerful, intense sense of place and character; it's awesome.  And you don't need to prepare reams and reams of NPCs; you recycle a handful of them over and over.  And yet for all the "small scope" of the setting, the fate of the world and more hangs in the balance!  You can do just as much from a small-scope setting, but the smaller the scope is, the more personal and powerful whatever you're doing tends to get.  Nevermind lower prep time!

[Callan S.]

Hi Chris,

Does this thread resonate with you?
Gamism In Action or Why I Hate Arts and Crafts

Also, how does 'all of us at the table must be windows for one another' feel for you? Do you have any concerns over feedback issues, eg a player says "Don't worry, from the looks of it there are just kobolds at this level", but instead of this being taken as an estimation of game reality, it becomes the game reality. The ability to judge if he was right, has been lost?

[CSBone]

Guys,

Y'all are asking some deep questions and I don't want to just punch off a set of short answers so this might get long and ramble a bit. If I get off track somebody drag me back.

Joshua,

Let the Players help prep sections outside the scope of the regular play I.E. flavor.

Think you can ditch this part?  Specifically, the part where players only contribute 'flavor' (we call it Color round these parts) and nothing substantial?  Cause if you can, you're golden.  To my mind, this is the biggest step to take from GM illusionism into full on collaborative play.  Everybody should be throwing in good stuff, and that good stuff should have an effect on roleplay.  Once you can start doing that, lots of other things fall into place.

My personal problem with this is from the POV of exploration. I can see having Players helping with what you are calling Color because from an exploration POV that gives you more hooks to build verisimilitude. However, what I like is t how much fun it was to end up someplace unexpected and have individuals do the unexpected and I'm not sure how having the group designing things would assist this.

Example from my game of Keep: My Players were truly surprised and delighted and their Characters appalled when the humanoids took the unconventional, from their POV, route of actually working together and chasing them back to the Keep. The humanoids tactics took them equally by surprise and the betrayal of the evil Priest was icing.

I am having a hard time understanding how a collaborative build could have done the same thing. Can you explain?

By the way I think Color, in Sim, IS substantial.

One of the ways I think of it goes like this: one GM, working alone, spends eight hours writing up stuff, and then four hours reviewing and editing it, for a total of twelve hours prep for a six hour game.  Now, if all four players at the table collaborate on writing stuff up, you could say that those twelve man hours get cut down to three a piece, but that's missing the fact that working collaboratively, all content is constantly being reviewed as it's being articulated.

I'd absolutely agree that this would make building Color easier but, again if your adventure is about how the local political system is a morass, how does knowing how the various NPC are going to react, add to play?

Another example of play:

I was playing Shadowrun as a combat decker and our Characters spent two whole sessions figuring out where we had to go to get the information (definitely just a McGuffin, but that was the target). We talked to a half dozen individuals, bribed, threatened or cajoled a half dozen more and got ourselves in to the Mazatlan facility where we found out that it was a setup to get their hands on our Street Sam's Alphawear wired reflexes. When the feces hit the rotary blades we pulled up the facilities maps we had acquired (real architectural drawings from a building in town) found a maintenance corridor that wasn't on the official floor plan (we had a picture of those too) and made it out through a roof access. Now admittedly our GM was a little bit more of a detail nut than I am but the fun of that game was figuring out these kind of things and then afterwards we spent a good 4-6 sessions tracking down the jerks who had set us up and explaining our displeasure in as many creative ways as we could.

I really don't see how Capes could have pulled off that kind of a game. It was not the immersion, but the detail that I dug. You could make an argument for it being a very Gamist scenario, but that would miss the in Character prep we did. Sure we were looking for an advantage, but I loved the interactions even more than the winning through in the end.

I've actually got a copy of the free version of Capes and as soon as I get some money I want to buy the full version, but I have a very hard time seeing how it would support the kind of discovery from a Character's POV that I have found that I identify with the most satisfying gaming I've done. Perhaps you can explain.

My personal preference on the question is sort of a two step approach.  The first step is providing a strong, evocative direction that is written with the sole purpose to get the players on board for creating a gaming experience in that direction.  If the focus of that direction is a world or setting, this will superficially look like a description of that world, but it's not -- it's an exemplar showing the players what roleplay should look and feel like, not what roleplay should be.

Can you give me an example in play?

Is your question "How do you get players to engage when they could lose their investment through character death?"  My solution is simple: remove character death.  Presto.  The slightly longer version is "divorce player authority from character status" -- so that everybody, no matter who they happen to be playing and what is happening to that character, retains the ability to contribute to the unfolding game.

Not exactly my question, but a good one to address. I am trying to address that idea in Space Ranger but how would you do this in D&D where death due to lack of hit points seems to me implicit in the design. Also, I don't know how much D&D you've played, but two of the worst games I was in were because everybody knew that you could be and WOULD be Resurrected if you died. Somebody even went so far as to get Resurrections put on Contingencies (I actually think it was against the rules but I'm not sure) just so that if you died you were back up before the next ROUND of combat. Combat turned into – Flamestrike, Resurrection, Harm, 30 hit points of damage from a sword blow, Resurection...rinse, repeat. The other Players and GM got upset with me and my character, who was a Pixie, because I had no problem with 1d3 hp damage from my bow and detailing called shots that would succeed only on a natural 20 because they were interesting. I remember one in particular where I detailed first called shots to the eyes (The combat went so long I got to shoot out BOTH with natural 20s) to blind the NPC and then I started shooting off the fingers on his sword hand starting with his thumb.

John,

1) For all of what comes below, make sure prepping is interesting and fun for you.  Hopefully, you can enjoy it the same way that some people enjoy knitting, or reading a book, or whatever.

I do like prep that way, but I like gaming more. My problem is I don't have that kind of time anymore. One of the reason's I'm working on my own game is to get more out of my prep.

2) As other people have said, involve the players.  There are good reasons to limit player knowledge of the opponents, but in the above example you could easily have had the players help with keeping track of the NPCs in the keep.

Actually, I did have the Players playing the NPCs during the big fights. Are you suggesting that I should have had the Players doing the prep on those NPCs as well?

3) Reduce the size of the scope.  Seriously, this might seem a bit obvious, but imagine an outpost a quarter of the size (i.e. fewer NPCs) attacked by fewer monsters -- and perhaps a smaller number of slightly more powerful monsters.  A big shift in my gaming over the years has been reducing the size of the scope.  So where before the PCs might have been based in a big city, now they are based in a small village.

I think this is one of the best suggestions so far, and I wish I'd thought of it myself. My question for you is how do you do something like house breaking in Lanhkmar (Fahfrd and the Grey Mouser series by Fritz Leiber) or capture and escape from the Death Star (Star Wars Ep IV) without railroading. We are talking some big places. Actually, the big place thing is one of my biggest problems. Same question for Joshua.

4) Use pregenerated materials.  I tend to set games in the real world, because this lets me use real maps, real cultures, and so forth.  For my Vinland game, I used USGS maps.  However, there are also options for fantasy.  These days for D&D you can buy PDFs for a ridiculous number of things: customized sets of treasures, items, opponents, and so forth.

I do and I intend to make my own for my own game. The question I always have is how much is a good thing vs. padding a system. To be sure .pdfs turn the whole distribution thing on it's head so the answer might be more is better.

5) Simplify the numbers.  A simpler system in general is ideal, but even with a system like D20 there are options.  There are software programs for handling sheets for NPCs, including templates.

A good thought, but how do you simplify the characters or the places or the things? And how simple is too simple. I don't like cardboard cut out caricatures. How would you typify the line between simple and flat. Is there a rule of thumb?

Callan,

Does this thread resonate with you?
Gamism In Action or Why I Hate Arts and Crafts

Absolutely with two changes. Number one, I like what they call arts and crafts, I just don't have the time. There has  GOT to be some useful rules for reducing the "Arts and Craft" to a level of bare bones that will let me have my game and play it too.

Number two, I think you could easily substitute Sim for Gamism.

Also, how does 'all of us at the table must be windows for one another' feel for you? Do you have any concerns over feedback issues, eg a player says "Don't worry, from the looks of it there are just kobolds at this level", but instead of this being taken as an estimation of game reality, it becomes the game reality. The ability to judge if he was right, has been lost?

Big time! This is in fact one of my biggest problems with the idea of co prep with your Players. I can see how it might engage them, but I can also see how it might ruin the game too. To take your kolbolds example, at least in D&D3E, once you add character levels kobolds can be TOUGH! Even discounting the half-dragon kolbold, a kolbold Sorceror or Barbarian could ruin a Player's Character's day and really spice up an encounter...but only if the Player doesn't KNOW.

Ron,

Right now all I can get is how you felt about it - I'd like to know more about what you actually visualize everyone doing.

I'm not quite sure if I really know how to answer that question, but I'll try. We may have to take a few swipes at it.

I visualize the GM creating the basic world, defining a conflict or two to get the ball rolling and then STEPPING BACK and letting things play out. The GMs long term job is to maintain the world itself and make sure it keeps running in the background and to react to the Characters so that the playing experience is seamless. I see the GM as the Player of everything not under the purvey of the other Players. As far as creating conflicts, I think the GMs job is to build into the world reactions to the PC Kickers (this is a new concept for me so I'm not sure if I understand it yet). Other than that he is running a world and things HAPPEN! if the Players don't directly react, thier inactions have their own effects. Skillfully done, the GM is not running a world in which the PCs are insignificant gnats. If he's doing his job right, the PCs are the axle around which events turn not because he caters to them in the center but because they choose to affect the world he creates and maintains and reacting to them is the logical choice. The PCs then are the Luke Skywalkers not the Biggs Darklighters.

For the PCs, I see them as engaging with the world and jumping in both feet, enjoying the fact that they are working without a safety net. Ultimately they are involved in living, for a few hours a week, in a fictive world doing things they can't do in the real world. To me this is the height of fun. Reading about it is great. Doing it, even in a limited gaming environment, in my mind, is BETTER! I want to cater to those players who want and the GMs who make that kind of play possible.

From a purely personal POV I think playing powerful, unique characers that move their worlds has made me a person who feels empowered in some small way to move my world. I think RPGs can be a powerful tool for that kind of transformation...if I can figure out how to make it possible for people like me to play those kinds of games.

Alright, I think I got everybody.

C. S. Bone

[Josh Roby]

However, what I like is t how much fun it was to end up someplace unexpected and have individuals do the unexpected and I'm not sure how having the group designing things would assist this. ...I am having a hard time understanding how a collaborative build could have done the same thing. Can you explain?

I'd absolutely agree that this would make building Color easier but, again if your adventure is about how the local political system is a morass, how does knowing how the various NPC are going to react, add to play?

You've raised a lot of examples of the players being surprised by the GM.  If you open up things like I and others have suggested, this allows the players to surprise the GM, or the players to surprise each other.

I really don't see how Capes could have pulled off that kind of a game. It was not the immersion, but the detail that I dug. You could make an argument for it being a very Gamist scenario, but that would miss the in Character prep we did. Sure we were looking for an advantage, but I loved the interactions even more than the winning through in the end.

So here you say that you liked the details and you liked the interactions.  How are either dependent on the GM doing the prep and revealing that prep work to the players during roleplay?  You can just as easily furnish details and interesting interactions by having the players create/reveal such things as play progresses.  And the bonus is that everybody is continually surprised throughout the game.

By the way I think Color, in Sim, IS substantial.

In Simmy games, Color is essential but that doesn't mean it's substantial.  By substantial I mean that it would impact the System (the means by which the players agree on the development of the Fiction).  Essential is what you're after -- all those juicy details -- but that doesn't mean that they determine the development of the Fiction.

My personal preference on the question is sort of a two step approach.  The first step is providing a strong, evocative direction that is written with the sole purpose to get the players on board for creating a gaming experience in that direction.  If the focus of that direction is a world or setting, this will superficially look like a description of that world, but it's not -- it's an exemplar showing the players what roleplay should look and feel like, not what roleplay should be.

Can you give me an example in play?

I might not have been clear; that's a design strategy.  A play example of a design strategy is like apples and oranges.  Unless you mean a play example that is drawn off of a design that used said strategy?

[CSBone]

Joshua,

You've raised a lot of examples of the players being surprised by the GM.  If you open up things like I and others have suggested, this allows the players to surprise the GM, or the players to surprise each other.

Do you suggest that the Players don't have the ability to surprise themselves and each other through the roleplaying of their Characters?

Honestly, I am not discounting the idea of including the Players in the prep but I know for myself the kind of gaming I am trying to understand how to support would not be improved by the ability to take Author stance through out the entire session.

An example from still another AD&D game (if you can't tell I've played a bit): I was playing a Halfling who was a fighter/thief. His shtick was that he carried dozens of daggers all over his body and had Iajutsu, Ambidexterity and a 19 Dexterity, which made him a dagger throwing submachine gun until the daggers ran out.

We turned a corner in the dungeon we were in and ran into 13 drow elves. They racked off 13 hand crossbow bolts in the first round of combat and through bad luck dropped two of our fighters and our magic-user. It looked like we were hosed and everybody started trying to back up through a door small enough to limit the range of combat, the theory being we could fight them a few at a time and maybe survive. I charged instead. Surprising everyone including myself I dropped two drow in the first round and dove THROUGH the group pitching daggers all over the place and came up at the end of 5 rounds having killed 8 myself, the others having pitched in when the Drow began focusing on killing me.

From a Player standpoint I fully expected to lose my halfling but I grabbed my balls saw an opportunity to have everybody go, "Dude that ROCKED!" and dove in.

If I knew he couldn't have died, the moment wouldn't have been as cool. If I'd known the Drow were there I would not have shocked everybody by charging rather than the tactically sound choice of retreating. If I'd had Author stance I would not have felt the deep sense of accomplishment by winning by the skin of my teeth against seemingly impossible odds. In short if I'd been part of the prep for the scenario beyond what I did creating my Character I would not have had that experience. And it is that experience of one Character kicking ass in a hostile world that rocks...to me.

Another example different game: I played a half ogre who was strong as a troll, dumb as a stump and friendly as a puppy. The GM let me play him as a cleric in spite of the fact that his Wisdom was only 6. We came to a door that was locked and the thief tried to open it and it wouldn't go so I walked up to it and with my 20 Strength smashed the door in (Maxed a Bend Bars Lift Gates roll but that was the described effect) blasting the Troll behind the door against the wall. I hastened to help him up much to everybody's horror. At which point he bit me. "Bad big green man," says I and I tore his arm off and then mortified I tried to put it back and cure light wounds it into place. He critically failed a moral check and tried to escape in fear. The resulting hilarity of a paladin good dimbulb chasing a troll around the room with it's own arm trying to reattach it because I was sorry for pulling it off in the first place is one of my best memories. Could you show me how I might have had the same good time from a different Player stance? The fact that as a Player I had no earthly idea and NO CONTROL what was going to happen and the fact that as a Character my ogre should have been rended limb from limb by the troll added to the ultimate absurdity of the whole scene. I probably could have framed the same scene in a collaborative game like Capes but I think it would not have had quite the same impact. I could be wrong.

So here you say that you liked the details and you liked the interactions.  How are either dependent on the GM doing the prep and revealing that prep work to the players during roleplay? 

Joshua, I'm going to take a swing at this but if I don't make sense tell me and I'll try again.

There is a lot of talk of role-playing as collaborative story telling and it can be. But it does not have to be. The kind of Author stance playing that you suggest empowers the Players to affect the story in an overt manner but having given that power to the Player I feel you lose the power of the Character to affect the story. Some might not see the problem, but I feel you end up with railroading of another variety.

In a GM created environment you can explore Man against "X" from the POV of the "Man". I don't think it is quite so easy to do in a collaborative story telling environment. And not Sim as I understand it. Having limited ability to affect the collaborative environment through your Character and yet still doing so, I feel, is the fun in roleplaying gaming as I understand it. I playing one Character in your Empire and winning through to my New Republic is a completely different game and gaming style and requires a different System than the same story told in a collaborative Author stance environment. Not better. Different.

You can just as easily furnish details and interesting interactions by having the players create/reveal such things as play progresses.  And the bonus is that everybody is continually surprised throughout the game.

I do not doubt the possibility, but even you admit the game is going to be fundamentally different. I'm not saying worse. Different.

In Simmy games, Color is essential but that doesn't mean it's substantial.  By substantial I mean that it would impact the System (the means by which the players agree on the development of the Fiction).  Essential is what you're after -- all those juicy details -- but that doesn't mean that they determine the development of the Fiction.

Perhaps we need to use a different word that Color because I am getting the impression that implicit in the definition of the a word is the idea that it does not have a concrete effect ons the shared information space. In Sim as I understand it, nothing is further from the truth.

A dark and stormy night isn't just a narrative description, it is also:

• mud on the ground that makes things slippery and might require different shoes or a Dex check when fighting in it
  [li]cold dark miserable weather that give the sentry a –2 to Spot and Search checks
  [li] wind and rain that make keeping a lantern lit a chore (check every turn to see if your lantern is blown out and you have to stop and make a Firestarting Check to relight it)

In short it has definite concrete effects on the Play.

My personal preference on the question is sort of a two step approach.  The first step is providing a strong, evocative direction that is written with the sole purpose to get the players on board for creating a gaming experience in that direction.  If the focus of that direction is a world or setting, this will superficially look like a description of that world, but it's not -- it's an exemplar showing the players what roleplay should look and feel like, not what roleplay should be.

I might not have been clear; that's a design strategy.  A play example of a design strategy is like apples and oranges.  Unless you mean a play example that is drawn off of a design that used said strategy?

Heh! I'm afraid I am a simple man with simple needs. A sample of that how that design strategy is implemented and an example of the play it creates or supports would do me just fine.

C. S. Bone