[Boulevard] Taking some cues.

[joepub]

So, I've got this great idea for a game. I'm just having trouble translating idea into game. Or idea into mechanics, or structure.

The game is called Boulevard.
The basis is: You are a presuming, pretentious punk. You are an aggressive, militant kid who has all these edgy, oh-so-important issues you cling to. You are living on your own, in the shitty part of town, and you hate everybody.

The game is about fighting for Causes you don't really understand, in a world you are afraid to believe in. It's also about being a fucking hellraiser and damning the world. It's about being punk, in the most tragic and naive sense of the word.

Salt Lake City Punk! is a major inspiration source. The kids are savage punks, and they are self-destructive. They burn hard, and eventually they burn out.

Fight Club is also a major inspiration source. People are pulled from their mundane worlds into something raw, primal, and awakening. They don't really know what it is that they are fighting for, but they like it - and they want more of it. The movement becomes dizzying and nausiating, until the leader collapses under his own confusion.

***************************************************************

That much is all background. Apologies for my lack of brevity.
(I think every time I re-state that background, though, it becomes a little more clear to me. So that's good.)

Anyways, I've been reading Invisible Monsters, by Chuck Palahniuk. Brilliant read, but a few pages in I shot up and said, "This is how Boulevard should play."

Basically, they start with everything aflame. Literally.
A house is burning down around the characters. Someone lies shot and bleeding, and someone else is holding a shotgun.
And everyone in this scene wants it to be about them. They want the attention.
The pain, the blood, the fire... it's all secondary to their little issues with each other.

And then we pan out. The scene ends.
And we are told that this will not read like a novel. It will read like a fashion magazine.
Everything airbrushed a certain way.
Nothing is in the right order.
You start a story here, but you finish it on page 78.
Everywhere you turn, some half naked woman trying to sell you perfume.
(I'm not kidding. It literally says this. Read it.)

And then the book procedes to jump backward. then forward.
Then all over the place.

Everything is out of chronological order, but oddly enough follows this weird IDEOLOGICAL order.
Everything makes sense in how it is so jarringly cut-and-pasted.

And, this is what Boulevard should play like.
You start with the death of the character. You start with when all shit hits the fan, and that character's world collapses.
Maybe this is the character's physical death.
Maybe this is an arrest. The day he or she breaks down in tears and calls mom. Maybe he or she gives up and commits suicide.
Maybe he or she just stops being punk, and gets a real day job and cleans up.
Whatever it is, it is tragic and it is world-shaking.
It doesn't have to be aiming a shotgun at your best friend, while the house burns down around you... but that's definitely an option.

You define the tragic, pitiful ending. And then you jump backward to contextualize it.
You play non-sequential scenes. You fuck around with order.
You tell a story about when the character was 17, then you jump to when she was 24, and tell a story that has an oddly parallel structure.

You tell the story in a chaotic fashion, but the chaos comes together in this weird pattern.

The character sheet is a TIMELINE.
You record your "death". Somehow, this will mechanically affect the character.
You mark down where your Causes started, and where they died. When you open a scene, you simply mark where on your timeline it takes place.

So maybe in scene #11 you have already lost faith in Feminism, but have gained a Cause of Marxist Communism.
And then in scene #12 you have jumped back chronologically, to when you still believed in Feminism and marxist theory was all greek to you.

[Adam Dray]

Sign me up. Can I play this yet? Why the hell not? ;)

This needs some kind of mechanic for Slapping You Down. These kids feel slapped down at every turn. Society slaps them down. Their parents slap them down. The cops slap them down. And when this happens, you should earn some kind of reward, so the player starts to look forward to his character getting the shit slapped out of him, figuratively or literally.

At first I thought these kids didn't care, then I thought about it and realized that they act like they do because they care a lot. They're just disenfranchised so they act out. How's that for some armchair pop psychology? "Fuck you, world! (for not loving me)."

This needs some kind of mechanic to make the player desperate. These kids are desperate. They have no place else to go. They're not burning out; they're burning up. They're turning their anger outward half the time and inward the other half of the time. They're bored because they don't have anything meaningful to do, but they really want to do something meaningful so they make up causes. Each character has a Cause, probably totally misguided. "Stop the war! Stop the violence! Or I'll kill you!"

[joepub]

Thanks for the comments, Adam! They are totally bang on.

At first I thought these kids didn't care, then I thought about it and realized that they act like they do because they care a lot. They're just disenfranchised so they act out. How's that for some armchair pop psychology? "Fuck you, world! (for not loving me)."

Wonderful, Adam. This summarizes their fundamental push so well I wish I'd said it. :P

This needs some kind of mechanic for Slapping You Down. These kids feel slapped down at every turn. Society slaps them down. Their parents slap them down. The cops slap them down. And when this happens, you should earn some kind of reward, so the player starts to look forward to his character getting the shit slapped out of him, figuratively or literally.

Totally agree.
Which is where the cap guns come in. This part is my favourite. (It's the only mechanical decision I have so far.)
You have a cap gun with a single cap in it.
The barrel is spun so that the gun is loaded for Russian Roulette.
You spend Anger to fire the gun.
You point the gun at another player (or at an external force in the world) and fire. If the cap goes off, you've destroyed this person, somehow.

Now...
The interesting thing about a non-sequential, non-chronological, juxtaposed timeline game is this:
There is a seperation between character and player.
By controlling the timeline, you can have something affect the character, but have the player avoid it by playing before that point.

And, somewhat similarily... you can skip everything good and wonderful in the character's life, and just keep hitting the player over the head with deaths (this is a mechanical term, meaning "major loss of faith or commitment".)

So, does The Gun destroy the character?
Or does the gun destroy the player?

I could have it be that every time I point the gun at you, Adam Dray, and the cap goes off... The next scene is your death scene.
Your end scene.

To the point where you are just reliving that scene, OVER and OVER.
Until you have enough Anger to make me, as a player, relive my character's death scene OVER and OVER.

Alternately, I could have it be that every time I point the gun at your character, and the cap goes off... That point in your timeline is marred by devastation and tragedy. Everything from that point onward in your timeline is affected by it.

The player can still avoid this punishment by avoiding those segments of timeline... but the character is forever changed by it.

So, yeah. Seperation of player and character as targets.
Hm. This is an idea to explore, for sure.

This needs some kind of mechanic to make the player desperate. These kids are desperate. They have no place else to go. They're not burning out; they're burning up. They're turning their anger outward half the time and inward the other half of the time. They're bored because they don't have anything meaningful to do, but they really want to do something meaningful so they make up causes. Each character has a Cause, probably totally misguided. "Stop the war! Stop the violence! Or I'll kill you!"

Exactly. How is that desperation achieved, on a mechanical level?
I don't want the players to simply care about their characters...
I want them to feel an URGENCY about their character.
This sense that there are only so many scenes left to define this kid as a human being, before it all hits The End. The End, which has already been predetermined as ugly and tragic and heartbreaking.

I want there to be some kind of ratcheting, ramping-up effect in the game.
And I want it to be associated with the timeline.
So that even though there might be a million more happy moments for the CHARACTER, the player feels that they only have a few more scenes to explore them with this character, before it all hits the breaking point.

Is that a way to achieve a sense of urgency/desperation/franticness in players? Or rather... to have those senses translate from character TO player?

Sign me up. Can I play this yet? Why the hell not? ;)

When it's reached Hella Cool stage, you can playtest it.
But it isn't there yet.

[dindenver]

Hi!
  This is a cool idea. Some things come to mind:
1) Maybe you can give each player a set number of tokens (I was thinking 4, Establishing scene, Rising conflict, climax, anticlimax). When players have something to say, the spend a token. But the token goes to the bank, no one else gets it, its a dwindling reesource.
2) To pump up the urgencey, Maybe use the cap to steal a token or "kill" a token? And maybe instead of always getting just one Cap, You get one Cap for each token you have pent?
  I think that there is other cool ideas. Like what if the Player (not the character) has a key phrase tha tells you when the Scene is closing? Not as just some kind of gimmiick, but as a way to have a thread that ties the scenes together since they are not chronological.
  Anyways, sounds like you are on the right track, good luck man!

[Tim Alexander]

Hey Joe,

Very evocative stuff. Have you thought about how long this plays out at all? Is it intended to be open ended, or at some point does all the context run out and you're splat? The reason I ask is because what I'd really like to see from it is that initial moment, where the character is fucked? It's open ended. It's the breakdown where maybe they lose out completely, but maybe they're redeemed, and all the context that went before it results in a some mechanical force that let's you figure out how it ends. Sort of My life with Master's epilogue, but frontloaded.

-Tim

[joepub]

Very evocative stuff.

Thanks, dude.

Have you thought about how long this plays out at all?

I'd like the game to play out in 2-5 sessions, depending on what the players want.

Is it intended to be open ended, or at some point does all the context run out and you're splat?

I... don't know yet.

The reason I ask is because what I'd really like to see from it is that initial moment, where the character is fucked? It's open ended. It's the breakdown where maybe they lose out completely, but maybe they're redeemed, and all the context that went before it results in some mechanical force that let's you figure out how it ends. Sort of My life with Master's epilogue, but frontloaded.

Okay. I'm not 100% sure I follow, so let me say it back to you and see if I've got it right:

-You start with a tragic destruction point.
-You jump backwards to add context.
-You keep jumping non-sequentially, adding context and conflict to this character.
-You do this until you hit...

ENDGAME: Somehow the scenes you've played out... have a mechanical effect.
There's your tragic destruction point epilogue already in place, but the mechanical "wave" from other scenes determines if you can move past that tragedy and become a "regular human being".

Is that... correct?
Vaguely?
Not at all?

If so, that's cool.
I get the feeling I am misinterpretting somehow though.

[Tim Alexander]

Hey Joe,

Yep, you've got it exactly. In practice I think you may want to consider some sort of diminishing currency to handle that sense of urgency you're talking about. Obliquely, say you've got tokens, and each scene will cost a certain number of tokens to play out. How the scene resolves will determine whether the tokens become a force for the player in the end scene, or the opposition. When you're out of tokens, it's time to find out if the character's life has amounted to anything and you compare, or roll. It doesn't even have to mean the character survives, it could strictly mean that there's a validity to the struggle as opposed to all being cursing in the wind. I'd say it's actually important to let that come about during play, and that the final endgame mechanics gives some narrational authority based on the outcome of that test.

-Tim

[joepub]

When you're out of tokens, it's time to find out if the character's life has amounted to anything and you compare, or roll. It doesn't even have to mean the character survives, it could strictly mean that there's a validity to the struggle as opposed to all being cursing in the wind.

Oh yes!
I very much like this.
Except... Does it have to be limited to endgame - the proving of validity?
Or can it... somehow... be a constant doubt and constant concern, that keeps resurfacing?

***************

Also, second thought/concern - Will this make players concerned about having "productive scenes", and scenes where people are ALWAYS trying to prove their validity? Because I definitely want scenes of blind self-destruction.


Hm.
Random tangent sidenote: The movie Slaughterhouse 5 (based on the Vonnegut book which I haven't yet read) captures scene framing in Boulevard to a "T".
Watch it, and watch how the scenes flip between modern day, alien abduction and WWII based entirely on thematic parallels.
It's wonderful.

Also... there's a scene where the wife TOTALS her cadillac...
Then it flashes back to a birthday scene where her family gives her the car.
Then it flashes back forward to the car-totalling scene, where she finally crashes it and dies.

WOW. So perfect.

[Tim Alexander]

Oh yes!
I very much like this.
Except... Does it have to be limited to endgame - the proving of validity?
Or can it... somehow... be a constant doubt and constant concern, that keeps resurfacing?

First of all I'd say, of course it doesn't have to be limited, you just need to make sure the game supports that in the end. I'd say that focusing the final resolution to endgame would be what keeps it in doubt. I'd suggest that fortune weigh in heavily during the end, so that you can't be certain whether or not it's a 'happy' ending or not no matter what you've managed to accrue during the game. I'm thinking in this case of the way that in say Sorcerer a small pool still has a legit chance of beating out a large pool in spite of the large pool's advantage. In whatever you decide you'll need to work it out so that the accrual during the game doesn't feel futile, but in the end may still not be enough. Is that making sense?

Also, second thought/concern - Will this make players concerned about having "productive scenes", and scenes where people are ALWAYS trying to prove their validity? Because I definitely want scenes of blind self-destruction.

Just make sure that the game rewards the self-destruction scenes as well as it rewards 'productive' ones. This makes sense to me anyway, since bottoming out is often where you find some amount of clarity in self destructive cycles.

Hm.
Random tangent sidenote: The movie Slaughterhouse 5 (based on the Vonnegut book which I haven't yet read) captures scene framing in Boulevard to a "T".
Watch it, and watch how the scenes flip between modern day, alien abduction and WWII based entirely on thematic parallels.
It's wonderful.

Also... there's a scene where the wife TOTALS her cadillac...
Then it flashes back to a birthday scene where her family gives her the car.
Then it flashes back forward to the car-totalling scene, where she finally crashes it and dies.

WOW. So perfect.

I haven't seen the film, but this makes me ask whether scene framing itself will have mechanical restraints? It might be time to go into the think tank and do some development, maybe set yourself a 24hr deadline to get a bare bones game put together. You've got some reinforcement that the material seems sound, go do something neat with it and bring it back to us.

-Tim

[joepub]

It might be time to go into the think tank and do some development, maybe set yourself a 24hr deadline to get a bare bones game put together. You've got some reinforcement that the material seems sound, go do something neat with it and bring it back to us.

Hey, Tim... I want to work on the Power 3 questions before a rules blitz-ing.
I really am not sure about "What do the players do?"

Also... I'm trying to get away from the quick-blitz style of game design.
Perfect went from initial concept to being on shelves in 4 months, and I'm not 100% sure I'm happy with that process.
I'd much rather have a 100% CLEAR idea of what I want, thematically and player-interaction-wise before I go all design-the-rules mode.

I'd suggest that fortune weigh in heavily during the end, so that you can't be certain whether or not it's a 'happy' ending or not no matter what you've managed to accrue during the game. I'm thinking in this case of the way that in say Sorcerer a small pool still has a legit chance of beating out a large pool in spite of the large pool's advantage.

What does this fortune bring to the game?
See... I'm currently thinking this:
-The character's fate should be sealed. It's affected not by chance, but by player decisions.
-The PLAYER'S fate is up in the air. If there is random chance, it affect's the player, not the character.

Because, like I've stated before... Becoming "unstuck in time" (To steal a phrase from Slaughterhouse 5) allows us to seperate player fate (where in the timeline you are, with what timeline-control resources you have) from character fate (what happens to the actual character, in a particular moment.)

Does that make sense?

So... in light of that musing, what does chance affecting the character bring to the game?
Why should I have randomizers or dice at all affecting the character?

(I'm not saying I shouldn't, just challenging a potential presumption.)

[Tim Alexander]

Hey Joe,

I'm not sure I'm getting your distinction about fortune effecting the player but not the character and I'm furthered confused by your statement that the character's fate is sealed and only effected by player choice. I think you're talking strictly about the first/last scene conditions here, but could you give me an example of how you see play going that highlights those intents? Basically though, when someone talks about wanting to keep the urgency high, or keep players in suspense, I almost always think of fortune first. Fortune is predictable only in the largest statistical sense, and so it's useful for injecting conditions that are unexpected. That can obviously be a positive or a negative depending on your intent, but in this case let me reiterate my Sorcerer example. Have you played Sorcerer? Basically in Sorcerer you're rolling opposed pools of dice and the high die wins. While a larger pool has a distinct advantage there's almost always a reasonable chance of upset from the smaller, and in practice this means you're always sweating the rolls. It keeps the suspense high because you can't guarantee success. You can have a tangible effect, but no guarantee. Compare this with My life with Master, where the epilogue conditions are set in stone, but the suspense is maintained by fortune through the fight against the master. You might have only a round or two, but depending on how those scenes turn out you may have more. If you happen to be gunning for a particular ending that can keep the tension quite high. I have a feeling though that you're aware of this, so I wonder if maybe I'm missing the point altogether?

-Tim

[joepub]

I'm not sure I'm getting your distinction about fortune effecting the player but not the character and I'm furthered confused by your statement that the character's fate is sealed and only effected by player choice. I think you're talking strictly about the first/last scene conditions here, but could you give me an example of how you see play going that highlights those intents?

Okay, let me try for a third time here.
It's hard for me to state this concept clearly, but I'm trying my best:

A player controls a character.
There is no linear timeline.
Scenes will jump forward and backward.

This is a sample sequence of scenes. The number represents where in the character's life the scene rests, whereas the order represents where in the player's game the scene rests:
5, 4, 1, 3, 2.

Okay, with me on this?

So... let's hypothetically say that there are MECHANICS which determine where (chronologically) the next scene takes place.

Suddenly, there are two ways that I can affect you.

We can affect what is on your character's timeline. (Ex. I do x to put this horrible, life-altering event on your character's timeline. It's situated between these two events, chronologically.)

We can affect where on the character's timeline your next scene lies. (Ex. I do x to ensure that the next scene you frame will be right here on your character's timeline, between your father's death and your girlfriend's kidnapping.)

Although both are altering Tim's game...
The Blue example is affecting Tim's Character, directly. (affects character)
The Red example is affecting Tim's control over scene framing, directly. (affects player)

Do you see the line I am drawing?

Is it a superficial observation, or is there not a seperation between player and character here, created by the fact that we aren't FOLLOWING the order of a timeline?

Personally, I see a divsion which arises by "being unstuck in time". How do I use that, and incorporate it?
Is it something I want to ignore, acknowledge, or manipulate?

...Am I making more sense now?

[Tim Alexander]

Hey Joe,

I see the distinction you're drawing, but without something more concrete as to how you're envisioning play I don't know that I have anything meaningful to say about it. Both of your options effect the player, they just impose different restrictions, and by the same token they both effect the character. I don't see a disjointed timeline as doing anything meaningful to decouple the character/player relationship. You certainly could decouple them, but in and of itself a non-linear timeline doesn't do so. I do think that a non-linear timeline gives you plenty of interesting fodder to play with, and that mechanics beyond "use a non-linear timeline" sound useful if that's a focus of the game. So, what about your distinction makes you go, "Ohh.... that would be neat"? What do you see the people at the table doing and how do you see it changing the way they approach/play/enjoy the game?

-Tim

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

Joe, I'm really excited about this game.

[joepub]

Joshua, thanks dude. Sometimes its good to just get a stamp of approval.

Joshua, and anyone else besides Tim,
do you have a perspective on the disjointed-timeline-seperates-player-and-character thing?

Basically, to resum it:

This game utilizes a disjointed timeline. You play scenes in a very back-and-forth order.
That means that there is a seperation of player and character - you can affect the player by altering WHERE on the timeline their scenes take place. That doesn't affect the character, it affects the player.
Alternately, you can say "this event happens to the character at point 37 on the timeline". Unless the player has a scene at Point 37 on the timeline, there is no effect to player.

Is that only a perceived perception? Is it USEFUL in any way?