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Heya,

Gothic is my very tentative name for a fairly narrativist game of -- well -- gothic horror. The name itself is a loaded one and I think wrongly suspect because of the effect of White Wolf's games on the industry. That doesn't bother me, because I'm looking to be more faithful to the actual genre. The game is designed to play out stories which are similar to those of the actual gothic literary movement rather than quirky visions of trendy, "tragically hip" teenage angst.

Characters in the game are your "typical" gothic villains -- deeply flawed and cursed by darkness, but not without deep shades of grey -- covering a variety of very different possibilities. The rules are designed to allow you to recreate your favorite fictional creatures (like vampires, werewolves, etc) or create a more unique, different type of monster. Monster is not a particularly good term though as they are as likely to be more common people endowed with dark gifts -- precognition, sensitivity, power to cloud men's minds, etc -- as blood-drinking, metamorphosing beasts.

The current system that I am using for it is a very rules-lite and early version of my Flux mechanics and I may possibly elaborate on this aspect as my development of that ruleset advances. The two -- Gothic and Flux -- are in some ways separate designs and in others related.

I'm working fast to get you guys a ready, working set of the game, but I have a few specific areas of concern before I can present my stuff. First one is the premise statement and the second is choice of attributes.

I don't consider myself very good with wording premise statements yet as that is sort of new territory for me, so I'll happily ask for your input. As the game is about gothic villains, the current premise I'm working off is "that which curses us, empowers us." That is because the initial malady of a gothic character is often the beginning of their supernatural entanglement and really the point of interest in the stories. The character's curse or ailment often comes from the mundane, but it becomes the fount of power for him and the source of a dark hunger. Any thoughts on how to phrase this better?

Second, I hate coming up with attributes. That stuff doesn't flow for me. The system has only attributes and no skills, so I need the selection to cover up all the possibilities for resolution, but at the same time I want them to echo with gothic resonance, ie. they must feel appropiately named. My current set is as follows:

Finesse (application of skills, adroitness)
Fortitude (staying alive, persistance, willpower)
Force (strength, capability to exert power, intimidation)
Etiquette (social talents and skills, social adeptness)
Insight (a measure of the character's mental capabilities)

The list is "okay" in my view, but I'm looking for better ideas.

I'd be happy to hear your thoughts or questions!

- Joachim Buchert -

Joachim,

Your first step, I think, is to lose those "attributes" as you currently conceive them. What you have is the Traditional Six dressed up in new vocabulary - and that won't do, for something that you want to "move" in a different way altogether.

One word. One. Word. Whatever "it" is, that describes the kind of characters you are talking about - name it accurately, once.

That's the mechanic you need to be the center of the game. I don't care if it's an attribute, a skill, a resource, a reward indicator, or what. Build "how the game works" off of it, and any other numbers should only be its modifiers or feed into it somehow.

Lose the Traditional Six and begin where you need to begin.

Best,
Ron

You know I've seen this alot around here taken as an assumption, but I've never seen an explanation for it.  I can't possibly concieve even at this late date how one attribute can possibly be granular enough to cover the wide range of situations that a protagonist (even in a very focused campaign) is libel to get into.

I can see how you can have a central characteristic driving everything...but I see no reason to then just eliminate everything else.  In fact that seems to me to be just a flat out logical fallacy of the nature of A B and C, A is the most important therefor B and C can be ignored entirely.

So far I've yet to see a convincing arguement to justify this.  I definitely understand not including attributes out of some sense of "thats how things are", but I don't see any magical empowerment coming from one.

Pruneing is great, but if you prune to much the plant just dies.

So I guess my question is this.  Please elaborate on what you've stated above because I don't see where that will offer any improvment over what he has.

Hi Joachim,

well, I have one remark. You say that you want to be more faithfull to the gothic genre and after that you mention vampires, werewolves...but the classical gothic movement isn't focused upon such "monsters". Is this something voluntary on your part or not ?

For an aproch of the "classical gothic" , here's what can be considered good core "gothic tales"

- Walpole Horace: The castle of Ottranto (considered as the first     gothic tale)
- Lewis Gregory: The Monk
- Maturin Robert: Melmoth the wanderer (the last of the classic period)

For dark tragic character you can also go the germanic romantic way with Goethe's Suffering of the youg Werther (not sure about the exact phrasing as i read it in french).

Of course, gothic tales haves been done after that (and some are very very good), but it's just to give you more material if you didn't had it already.

As for the system...hum...I'm think I would rather go the "Ron way"...that is clearly define what sort of characters the players gonna play, and go around that.
I would advise you to take a look at Wurthering Height (link avaible in the resouces library), as a good exemple of a system "simulating a genre" (even if it's parodic, there's some good stuff in here).

For your premise question.
Well, it's depends o lot about what "gothic" you choose. Based upon what you say i think of something like : "can there be strengh in darkness ?" or " If what empowers you destroys you, will you embrace it or fight it?"

Fabrice.

ps: I hope you won't take these remarks the bad way. I'm really interested in your project because it's something I'm reflecting upon for some time now. So please, don't read this post a personnal attack, but more as some pationate guy's attempt to help !!

(edited to fix some bb code)

Quote from: Valamir
I can see how you can have a central characteristic driving everything...but I see no reason to then just eliminate everything else.

I don't think he implied that one should eliminate everything else. In fact he mentions "the other numbers". What I think Ron is suggesting is starting with a core mechanic, then creating stuff like stats that add on to the mechanic, and just ignoring ones that don't. If he can find a use for all the stats he has, then fine. It's just a bad idea to start from there and hope that the rest of the game matches the chosen stats.

When all is said and done, this just seems like the standard suggestion to keep the game focused. Which is good advice to me.

Mike

Mike's correct. I am not suggesting that the finished system have a single number. My post refers to a functional design process that I think would help Joachim in this specific case.

Best,
Ron

I understand what was said:

Quote
Build "how the game works" off of it, and any other numbers should only be its modifiers or feed into it somehow.

This says that the game should define 1 core attribute and that any other numbers should be modifiers of it.  

What I was asking is clarification on how this helps.  What is gained, and why is this believed to be superior.

Yes, I understand about getting to the heart of what the game is about, but it seems to be an awfully big leap to get from there to the above quote.  What's the logic in between?

I guess what I'm saying is that Ron's initial message was such an abbreviated summary that I'm having trouble following what his suggestion actually is.

Given Joachim's initial post, I'm not sure he can follow your suggestion any better than I can.

Sigh ... am I doing that "D and 7" thing again, instead of A-B-C-D?

Let me try again. The eventual game might have ten or twelve attributes or even more. It might have seven different skill categories, it might have two hundred listed skills. It might have an extensive resolution system with two dice rolls per character. All of these elements might have a variety of names and point-costs.

In other words, imagine the most nuanced possible role-playing system ever played, and expand from there.

My claim is that such a system will do best if the key value of play (and there will be one) is its core, rather than an add-on. In D&D, that core value is "level," and as such, playing D&D means being focused on levelling-up processes and consequences. Conversely, in Cyberpunk, the Humanity value is not a core, it's an added-on constraint - hence playing Cyberpunk means tolerating the constraint of Humanity and trying to subvert it via rules-lawyering or house-rules whenever possible.

Perhaps that core value itself becomes a set of variables, as in the Spiritual Attributes of The Riddle of Steel, or the three-way interaction between the three attributes in Le Mon Mouri. Note that in the first example, they are metagame mechanics, and in the latter, they are both attributes and direct-effect resolution mechanics.

Is this any clearer? I am not advocating that all role-playing processes require a single number. I am talking about the process of design.

Best,
Ron

Ahh, well that makes alot of sense.  Of course I understand that.  I didn't read that at all in your first post, maybe it was just me, missing the obvious.

Yup.  Ron was calling for a conceptual pivot around which to design the rest of the game.  Makes a lot of sense to me.  But don't sweat it, Valamir.  Sometimes a lot of what you guys discuss takes me awhile to "get."  When that happens, it's generally because I misread something or spaced a key concept from an earlier discussion.

Best,

Blake

Thanks for showing interest guys.

Having read the conversation, I think I'm the root of the confusion here. In fact, I have pretty much used (as I understand it) Ron's approach in designing the game. The issue was (or is) that I'm just not satisfied with the attributes I have -- that's not saying anything else of the system or at what point of design I am in.

Now, in the interest of taking this discussion further, I poked myself between the ribs and hurried my work on this. It is not final by any measure, nor have I playtested it, but it has all the parts I had been thinking about. Also, my apologies for the presentation ... though my idea was to really put an effort on it, I haven't been able to with the haste. So, if it is a bit hard to read, my apologies. Even more apologies for the ads which really destroy any attempted setting of mood, but I only had access to a free web provider at this moment.

So, the link is http://www.angelfire.com/retro/blaze/gothic.html

Read it, and let rip.

Now some other comments ...

Quotewell, I have one remark. You say that you want to be more faithfull to the gothic genre and after that you mention vampires, werewolves...but the classical gothic movement isn't focused upon such "monsters". Is this something voluntary on your part or not ?"

You are very correct. Part of what drove me to write this is that I'm not satisfied with how the genre is treated in RPGs, but apparently I'm saturated enough with the very images that I'm dissatisfied with and fell into my own trap. Quite fitting, considering the premise.

Nevertheless, my point is that the villains in these stories can be -- and I urge that they should be -- much more subtle, with the supernatural being hard to pinpoint and draw out in the open. That's not to say that I don't want to support werewolves, vampires and these better known monsters with the game, because I do, but they are only one end of the spectrum.

That said, the sample characters I've briefly written up (they are very lacking, and possess only the stats for the supernatural part of things) try to provide a quick look at the variety of different characters that can be created, but it is still sorely lacking the more ingenious ideas.

So, now that you've read the game as it is now, I want to go back to my questions:

a) I'm maybe a bit dissatisfied with the (mundane) attributes as they are. Any ideas?

b) How to word the premise of the game?

c) The terminology is still in progress. For example, the Angst trait is named in pretty tongue-in-cheek fashion, though I do like it having rolled it around enough. However, I don't want it to appear cheesy, which it slightly does now. I'm torn. Any ideas?

d) How to expand upon the Angst rules? More ways to gain and lose Angst, anyone?

e) And oh yes, I'm working on more character advancement issues for the supernatural side of things, but that is very much a work in progress. All thoughts regarding that will be well received.

f) One more -- is the background picture (with the word Gothic) showing? I had some peculiar issues with that, so I'm just making sure.

Thanks,

- Joachim -

(edited to fix code)