[The Committee for the Exploration of Mysteries] Creating Cohesive Story?

[Eric J. Boyd]

I'm doing further development of my Game Chef 2006 entry (link is below). The game features GM-less storytelling, with pulp heroes sitting in the Committee's posh club room and reporting on their recent expedition to far-off lands to the gathered Committee. The goal of telling these tales is to emphasize your glorious exploits, impress your fellow Committee members and earn points of Acclaim in hopes of getting the reputation and attention necessary to attain your character's Desire. At the end of the game, each player in descending order of Acclaim gets to narrate an epilogue for their character. Each must be more grim than the last, so after a few epilogues it's likely the character's Desire will go unfulfilled.

As a substitute for a GM, each character has another player who serves as that character's Opposition, who frames various hazards that the character overcame and narrates complications as part of hazard resolution.

I'm focusing on devising mechanics to ensure that gameplay forms a cohesive story, rather than a loosely connected series of exploits of each character. My stab at this is an expedition log, a piece of paper divided into sections for each location on their route as well as the expedition site itself. After some brainstorming with a friend, my current thought is to allow the player and the Opposition in each scene to choose to "invest" a point of their Acclaim in an NPC, object, or idea they introduced in the scene and want to see used again - making it a story element that they draw on the expedition log.

If a player serving as Opposition in a later scene reuses the element, they get an Acclaim award equal to the current investment. The investor player can get double their investment back immediately by cashing out their investment in the story element, get a "dividend" of one Acclaim and let the original investment ride for now, or reinvest the dividend and hope for more returns later on their larger investment. This reuse and continuing investment will be marked in some way on the expedition log as well. The investor player can reuse their own story element when acting as Opposition, but they don't get to receive Acclaim or change their investment (no doubledipping).

At the end of the game, any investments still in place are lost and don't get added to your final Acclaim tally. So you want to get your story elements reused frequently, but not get too greedy as the tales of the expedition near their end.

So do you think such an investment mechanic will yield the cohesive story I'm looking for? I want some competitive behavior, but I don't want to inadvertently create a gamist mechanic that overwhelms the storytelling. And since there are a lot of cool uses for Acclaim besides investing in story elements, I'm hoping the mechanic will be used but not abused (playtesting will reveal all).

I'm also thinking of adding a mechanic to connect story elements together (e.g., the "mysterious weather phenomena" is actually being caused by the "Nazi occultist"!). Does the possibility of getting extra returns by reusing two existing story elements in one scene already do this enough, or does formalizing the connection in some way seem useful too?

Any problems you see with the investment mechanic or other thoughts on making it hang together with the rest of the game would be greatly appreciated.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Eric,

You're right that playtesting is probably the next step, but a couple of details in your post sort of jumped out at me.

1. Not Gamist? What? What do you mean, not Gamist?? I feel like a big dog who doesn't know which way the ball bounced. You have a bunch of dudes at a British club talking over their exploits, and this isn't a Gamist context? What??

2. I speculate that the increased Acclaim for using multiple story-elements at once will be sufficient for the effect you're talking about ... if the currency doesn't inflate (i.e. become less valuable per unit) as play proceeds.

Best, Ron

[Eric J. Boyd]

Ron,

Thanks for your comments.

1. You're totally right that the game is gamist as all get out. What I meant to express was that I don't want the "game within the game" of reusing story elements to trump the overall game of gaining Acclaim for telling entertaining stories. I'm trying to balance the rewards so that players don't create scenes where everything and everyone shows up just to score Acclaim. A jumbled chaotic mess of repeated elements seems as bad or worse than disconnected tales of exploits.

2. The point about currency inflation is a good one. Right now the currency uses stay the same throughout the game and tend to cost anywhere from one to five points of Acclaim. I'm hoping to see a shift in the mid-game from using Acclaim as you get it to keeping the final tally in mind and saving some for a good epilogue. Sort of like the shift between earning money and earning victory points in board games like Puerto Rico. Hopefully the varied uses of Acclaim keep it from inflation.

Playtesting here I come. Thanks again.

Eric

[Josh Roby]

Eric, normally I'm not a big fan of hard limits, but this might be a case in which they're appropriate.  If there's nothing to stop me from sinking an inordinate number of Acclaim points into an element to be reused, I suspect that this sort of doubling of investment will take five Acclaim at the beginning of the game and turn it into 160 by the end -- and that's only five re-usings.  I'd either cap the number of Acclaim that can be invested in an element or change the get-back-double to something more modest (like get back investment plus one).

[Eric J. Boyd]

Joshua,

Yeah, an investment cap is something I'm thinking about, but the numbers don't get as out of hand as you suspect. Each initial investment is only one Acclaim, and cashing out ends the investment completely. Here are the numbers I worked up assuming you reinvest your dividend each time:


         

Reuse #/	Cash Out Return/	Dividend/	New Investment if Dividend Reinvested
1	2	1	2
2	4	1	3
3	6	1	4
4	8	1	5
5	10	1	6

Even so, I may institute an investment cap of five, forcing you to take your dividends or cash out once you reach that level.

[Thunder_God]

But what if the whole "Cash out return" is reinvested?

[Eric J. Boyd]

It's possible that the whole cash out return will be reinvested if the player narrates some new things on their next turn playing their character or acting as Opposition and turns these things into story elements. But if you spread yourself too thin, then no one is going to be reusing some of your story elements (you cannot score Acclaim for reusing your own) and that invested Acclaim will be lost at the end of the game. Basically if you set out to abuse the mechanic by investing in many things that the other players don't find cool, then you'll get little, if any, reward.

Perhaps each player should have a limited number of story elements they can be invested in? Say 5 or 6?

[Josh Roby]

Oh, initial investments are always one?  And no doubling?  I humbly retract my comment; I don't expect you'll have problems.

(Oh, I see my confusion: you were all "he can get double back his initial investment" and you meant "he invested one, he gets one more, that's double."  Everything becomes clear!)

[Jason Morningstar]

Eric, I'm delighted to see you moving forward with this!

Anecdotally, I can tell you that having an external mechanism (acclaim in your case) to motivate players works well, sometimes almost mysteriously well.  People will latch onto the reward machanism and play very, very hard. 

[Eric J. Boyd]

Joshua,

My first explanation of the mechanics weren't the clearest. Let me try again:

The initial investment is always one. When an Opposition reuses your story element, you have a choice: (1) cash out and receive 2x your current investment; (2) receive a "dividend" of one Acclaim now and let your current investment stay the same; or (3) take that dividend of one Acclaim and add it to your current investment ("reinvesting"), receiving nothing now.

So there is doubling, but it takes multiple reuses before the numbers get very large because your investment can only grow by one Acclaim at a time. So on the fifth reuse, if you've reinvested every time, you can cash out your current investment of 5 and receive 10 Acclaim in return. That's what the table above is showing.

I'm thinking that an investment cap of 5 is probably a good idea, so 10 is the most you could receive all at once. Limiting the number of story elements in which you can be invested is another option.

Does that still address your concern or just bring it back again more strongly?

[Eric J. Boyd]

Eric, I'm delighted to see you moving forward with this!

Anecdotally, I can tell you that having an external mechanism (acclaim in your case) to motivate players works well, sometimes almost mysteriously well.  People will latch onto the reward machanism and play very, very hard. 

Thanks Jason.

I've had a chance to read and play The Roach since Game Chef, and I was very impressed at how the pursuit of Reputation drives the scenes along. Your game has been a big influence on my development process, and I'm hoping some similar play synergy emerges between using and pursuing Acclaim and crafting awesome tales.

[Josh Roby]

I think that'll work, Eric.  Now get it to playtestable form so we can hear AP about it. ;)

[Ron Edwards]

Seconded!

This thread is the very model of the way First Thoughts is supposed to work. Thanks to everyone for awesome comments, listening to one another, clarifications, and solid goals.

Best, Ron