[Madcap Tea] My First Stab at a Short Game

[Anna B]

So, I don't think this will be published other then maybe being stuck on a website somewhere. It's fairly simple one time game, that I'm working on for pratice.

The game is about dramatic tea parties, socail rules, and people working at cross purposes. Hopefully it will handle the spectrum of tea parties from Alice in Wonderland to Jane Austen.

The characters attend a tea party, obey social rules (mostly), and pursue goals.

The players direct the actions and goals of one character each, eat cookies, drink tea, gesture dramatically, and make up socail rules.

So the rules:

First all the player discus the setting and situation. They should answer the questions Why is there tea party? Who's hosting it? and What's going on in the backround? When everyone is happy with the answers to these questions then they should move to the next step.

Next each player creates a socail rule. These should be clear and no more than two sentences long. (e.g. "Don't pour milk into your cup before the tea" "You may not make eye contact with the person sitting on your left" "No one can say anything bad about Mr X") If there a very few players each person might want to make up two rules. No one can Veto these rules. After every player has created there allotted number of rules, new rules can be added but only if everyone consents to them. Socail rules should be written somewhere easy to see.

Each player now comes up with a name, an adjective, an occupation and three goals for their character. (e.g. Mrs. A a respectable gentlewoman who wishes to interstest Mr B in meeting her daughter, learn gossip about her neighbors, and impress everyone with her good taste.)

Now play can began. Character should start arriving at the tea party.

Each player gets a pool of six tokens for everyday use. They also get six tokens for each goal. During play, when players come in to conflict each player bids tokens without telling the others how much they are biding. If the conflict relates to the characters goal the play may explain why to use points from that goals pool. If the characters adjective or occupation would help them in this conflict the player may explain how to get an extra token. (I think cookies would make great tokens.) The person who bid the most tokens wins, and may chose any other player to narrate the events. In the case of a tie both players must agree on some one to narrate the events.

If someone breaks a socail rule they win the conflict (assume the rule breaking was related to the conflict) but everyone else gains a token and the rule breaker loses a token. Tokens gained this was can be placed in any pool the player wishes. Similarly tokens lost by rule breakers can be taken from any pool. If both people break a socail rule then they tie as above. If you break a socail rule not related to a conflict you the stuff with the tokens still happens.

The game ends when everyone is out of tokens or everyone decides the game should end.

My comments:
The socail rule creation should determine the wackiness level of the game, wacky rules lead to a wacky game.

I like the idea of rules like "No one tell Mary that Jake wants to marry her" but don't think the system supports them very well.

I thought about giving players a reward for achieving their goals, but I realised that I didn't want goal completion to be and important part of play. I think the pursuit is more intresting than the fulfillment, and that it could be pretty entertaining to fail utterly.

[Josh Roby]

Any game that involves the real players eating real cookies wins points in my book.

Anna, where do the tokens used in bids go?  Are they just discarded?

How are conflicts started?  Are stakes explicitly set or not?

Do I read correctly that, if I "win" a conflict, somebody else narrates that success? (Which isn't bad, I'm just checking.)

Can new social rules be created through the conflict resolution system, or do you have to stop roleplay to propose and ratify new rules?

Instead of "No one tells Mary that Jakes wants to marry her" what do you think of "No one says anything about marriage plans?"

[Anna B]

Used tokens just go away. If they are cookies you can then eat them. (I image players sitting at a table with a plate of cookies in the center, and taking cookies when they gain a token or tie a bid into their occupation or adjective and putting cookies on the plate when they bid or lose a token.)

I'm not sure how conflict should be started. I'm used to things just being clearly conflicting. I'll have to thing about it more.

Stakes are another area where my thinking has been fuzzy, but I do think they should be stated explicitly.

Yes, other people narrate your successes-- you get to chose who. I think this will help keep everyone involved with other peoples actions.

The current rules don't allow for new socail rules to be created through conflict, but that would be cool if I could figure out how to make it work.

"No one says anything about marriage plans" doesn't convey the same level of tension as "No one tells Mary that Jake wants to marry her" the personal-ness of the latter makes much more intense to me.

[Callan S.]

Hi Anna,

In a recent parralel, I recently spoke with my close friends girlfriend about roleplaying. She compared the play between us boys to be rather grim, and by contrast her own previous play experiences had been about stuff like being vampires just deciding to have a picnic under the a starlit sky.

I don't get it...well, not when using the vampire system. Too much trying to work out the significance of each roll, since you can't just get around them. But I digress...

I thought instead, a largely freeform system, where each player is a forrest spirit - full of immense magic and power. Your life is not at stake or anything, instead the issue is that your immortal, but bored. So you head to town, a human town. There, traveling invisibly (or not, if a player wishes), we enter the town and have a type of carnival, because forrest spirits can mind control/hypnotically suggest at a whim. The GM (who also plays an forrest spirit), writes up a few heart twisting human stories that are going on, before play. He introduces these, if himself and the other players aren't already stirring up enough issue to keep themselves happy.

Basically the only mechanics I had in mind is that every player (including the GM) has three fatigue stones. Every time their PC finds something tiresome (ie, the player doesn't like it), they can throw away one stone. Or if they feel the end of the game should be close, they can throw away one. You can throw away all three at once if you wish. Once anyone has thrown away all their stones, the forrest spirits magic seeps away and they all disspear back into the forrest to sleep. In other words, the game ends for everybody. It's basically a control mechanic each player uses to help guide from 'unpleasant carnival types'. It's also used in a positive way, to bring about endgame.

Would that be of use in your game system at all? And if you have any feedback, that'd help me a bit too! :)

[Anna B]

Callan
In one D&D game I ran they players' favorate part of the game was roleplaying their characters eating dinner together. There were no rolls involved, they just talked in character with each other. Also one of my favorate session of the LARP I used to run involved the characters hanging out and playing drinking games. In that case the rules were used only to see how drunk the characters became. So I understand your friends girlfriend's style off play.

At the same time I want this game to have more tension then just eating dinner. That's why everyone has several goals.

Your game seems like it could be fun. Would it work equally well if everyone got to create a human story? Also I'd like to see the forest sprites be a little more defined. Maye if each sprite had some fairy-style rule they had to follow. Like having to obey any human who knows their name, not being able to cross running water, or not being able to touch iron. Because if anything is possible very little is intersting.

(Tell me if this not appropriate feedback, I'm not sure I understand the SC of the forge yet.)

I thought about people eating the tokens (if they were cookies) and decided that I didn't need a rule against it but I couldn't see why anyone would want too. (At least if there were extra cookies.)

I'm not sure how the end game is going to play out, but I will consider ending play when one person is out of tokens if play seems to drag on.

[Bill Masek]

Anna,

This game looks like a lot of fun.  I like the social rules and how players can break them to succeed.  The character creation system is elegant and beautiful.  It gives everything you need to have an intricate social tea party without excess rules bagage.  A very nice start.

In regards to your worries, consider these minor tweaks:

1.  A character's goal require either another character to do something for this character or another character to change in some way.  (So convincing Johnny to join the fraternity would be a valid goal.  Convincing Susie to marry your son would also be fine.  Eating all the sugar cakes would not be.)

2.  Players only create two goals for themselves.

3.  Players make up two rules each (or three in a small group) and one goal for another character.  One of these rules is just like you said.  The other goal specifically limits the goal this character made up for another character.  "No one tell Mary that Jake wants to marry her" angle.)

4.  When a characters goal either succeeds or fails they may add an additional social rule.  The tokens left in that goal are transferred to their main pool.

Another feature I'd love to see in this game are secrets.  Perhaps at the beginning of the game, each player writes down a secret and puts it in a hat.  They are shuffled and each player draws one.  A player may hit at their secret.  If they do they get an token.  If their secret is guessed the person who guessed it gets 3 tokens and the person who's secret was guessed may not hit at it for the rest of the session.

Best,
        Bill

[Callan S.]

Your game seems like it could be fun. Would it work equally well if everyone got to create a human story? Also I'd like to see the forest sprites be a little more defined. Maye if each sprite had some fairy-style rule they had to follow. Like having to obey any human who knows their name, not being able to cross running water, or not being able to touch iron. Because if anything is possible very little is intersting.

I'm not sure how much this will help you out, but it might. It's actually supposed to be uninteresting to play the forrest spirits in terms of physical actions. This keeps the action firmly on the humans in the village. The forrest sprites are actually an excuse to have GM to GM level conversations at a in game, tea party level

"Oh, I do so love when humans run along the roof tops...of their own church - a pity they fall off half the time (the player indicates he's going to roll a 50% chance of this). I think that human your fond of would be especially entertaining!"
"My my, how could you be so cruel? I'll make him sure footed with my magic!"
"My Ent forrest spirit rolls his eyes" *player starts reaching for a fatigue stone*
"Oh, very well you grumpy old tree! But it's fairer to my eye if theirs only a tenth (10%) of a chance of him falling and ending his mortal life! And if he makes it, he draws the attention of that lady you've kept him seperate from all this time!"
"Ha! You didn't say 'positive' attention!"
"Oh, you've always fallen back onto semantics, you old creature!"
etc

Normally these discussions would be held at a GM level. That's kind of boring. See, although these spirits seem uninteresting due to their power, as they negotiate about the humans, you find out a little more about their own personalties. Find their vulnerabilities not in their phsical selves but in personalty, by the humans they feel for and even the humans they torment. Plus the human action is amusing in itself.

On human stories I thought all players would create them game (they simply declare they are using their powers to set it one in motion "That human over there, I see in his mind that he pines for that woman. I think it's time he acted on his feelings *zzzap!*"). I think I only considered a GM making the stories in advance, so as to differentiate him a little from other players - really ensure he's seen as the group trouble maker, basically.

[Anna B]

Bill,

Thank you!

I really like the idea that goals should be to change other characters. I'm not sure about your other ideas becuase they might make things too complex. I think too many socail rules could be hard to keep track of. Hopefull I'll be able to run a play test and get a better idea of where the problems lie.

Callan,

Sorry, I didn't understand what you were getting at.

[Graham W]

Hi Anna,

I think this is lovely. Just to check: this is a LARP, is it? The players talk in character, act in character and actually drink tea? So when you say "The characters arrive at the tea party", do the players actually come in, one by one, and sit down?

When you playtest it, what sort of setting will you use, or will you let the players decide? A Jane Austen setting would be very different from An Alice In Wonderland setting. In a sense, I'd prefer that the game focussed on one setting rather than the other. It's easier (for me) to think about the rules as they're applied to a single setting.

What happens if I break a social rule but have no tokens left? If there's a dispute, who decides whether a social rule has been broken?

By the way, could I recommend you some games to read? Since you were talking about stakes: the text of Clinton R Nixon's The Shadow of Yesterday explains them very well. Your token system and goalds remind me of Adam Cerling's Ends and Means, which is also a LARP: at the end of this thread, there's some links to threads which discuss the game. And the third game I was going to point you towards was Greg Stolze's Executive Decision, but I can't give you a link at the moment because AOL's not working.

Good luck with it.

Graham

[Chris Goodwin]

The socail rule creation should determine the wackiness level of the game, wacky rules lead to a wacky game.

I like the idea of rules like "No one tell Mary that Jake wants to marry her" but don't think the system supports them very well.

I totally love this.  By establishing this rule, you've also created a fact: Jake wants to marry Mary, no matter whether this was true beforehand.  If one or both of them are not players, you've established them as NPCs -- but it would be much more awesome if they were both players. 

[Anna B]

Graham,
I'm glad you like it.

I guess it is a LARP, though unless one has a box of consumes at hand, there won't be much dressing up. Also people will have to change out of actor stance to reslove conflict, which feels un-LARP like to me, but probably isn't really. So yes people should go out of the room and then enter it.

I will let the players chose what setting when I playtest. I see the game as more about at situation (a tea party{*} where everyone wants something) rather than a setting.

Maybe if you break a socail rule when you don't have tokens you lose access to your adjective or occupation. (You are no gentlewoman!)

Thank you for recommended reading.

Chris,
Thanks, but I worry if someone makes a rule that no one will pick up on it in character creation, but maybe socail rules should be made after character creation, but I think having some socail rules in place feels right for the game. Maybe I'll convice people to playtest it twice and try both ways.



{*} though other socail events might work too

[Arpie]

I like the way you've taken a setting with the illusion of civility and turned it into a battleground.

I wonder if there's a way to encourage the tea goers to try and out-do eachother? To push one another to break the social rules?

Perhaps, once the social rules have been put forward and everyone has chosen a goal, each player then picks one other player and indicates that they must oppose that goal? Or the other player must think of a reason to oppose that goal?

That might give you a few more things to do with tolkens - and the excruciating challenge of NOT EATING YOUR DELICIOUS COOKIES. Oh, too cruel! Especially if you have clotted cream to hand.

PS. I'm trying to get some practice editing. I'm not real good, but I'm free... if you'd like help with layout or something when it's near completion... ?

[Callan S.]

I wonder if there's a way to encourage the tea goers to try and out-do eachother? To push one another to break the social rules?

Perhaps, once the social rules have been put forward and everyone has chosen a goal, each player then picks one other player and indicates that they must oppose that goal? Or the other player must think of a reason to oppose that goal?

That might give you a few more things to do with tolkens - and the excruciating challenge of NOT EATING YOUR DELICIOUS COOKIES. Oh, too cruel! Especially if you have clotted cream to hand.

I agree, it is cruel. :)

But I wonder if you could use that to actually drive play? Here's a rough idea: Imagine that if you can convince another player to break someone elses social rule, you get to eat your biscuit but without any points penalty.

Then that biscuit will be sitting there, continually taunting you via it's tastyness, to try and get someone else to break a social rule.

In fact, I wonder if there are any RPG's which use RL physical craving for a comestable, to help drive play?