City by the Sea

[BWA]

I want to design a game, and I need some help.

I don't want to design a game because "I have no words and I must design", or design a game so it can be published and argued over on RPG.net. I want to design a game because there's a game I want to play with my friends, but, sadly, it doesn't exist.

My gamer friends and I, who live in different cities, do a fair amount of gaming online, but it's mostly online versions of tabletop games (like Diplomacy, or the games hosted at MaBiWeb), or World of Warcraft. I want an honest-to-goodness role-playing game we can play that isn't just an unsatisfying play-by-email adaptation of an existing RPG.

THE IDEA: Here's how I want the game to work...

Gameplay all takes place over email. Each player creates a unique faction or group in a fictional city. Nothing about the city is defined before play, it is defined through the creation of the player-factions. So if one player creates a magician's guild, then the city has magicians. If another creates a powerful merchant family that traffics in rare stained glass, then that is an important aspect of the city. And so on.

Gameplay will progress in turns, with each player submitting his/her actions to the GM via email. After all the actions are in, the GM will update the game website with publicly-known information ("The king's chief magistrate was slain by assassins and the Royal Inspectors believe the Stained-Glaziers' Guild was involved."), and email each player with privately-known information ("Your overtures to the Big Head gang were rebuffed, and the messenger was found floating facedown in the river. However, your shipment of Kargish rifles made it through undetected by the Royal Boundary Guards...").

I want the game to feel more like an RPG and less like a table-top game, so there should be very few restrictions on what a player could attempt with his/her actions.

THE PROBLEMS: Here's the things that I'm stumped by...

1. Character creation: For this to feel like a role-playing game, and not just a freeform role-playing online thing, there need to be definite attributes that define a character ("faction"). And I'd like it to be on a movable scale, so to speak, so that one player could create a powerful noble family, and another could create a beggar clan, and both could have equal influence in the game.

But I can't think of how this might work. My only idea so far is to come up with five attributes (say, Resources, Status, Wealth, etc), and let players rate them on a scale of 1 to 5, using each number (so you'd have one attribute rated at each number). And maybe you could take advantages (ie - Resourceful Agent) or disadvantages (ie - Notorious Leader) to get more points.

But what could these attributes be, and how can I make them all affect game-play somewhat equally?

2. Narrative control: It would be nice for the game to be based around a strong narrative control mechanism, so that a player could spend currency to affect events. But the game has to be turn-based, and has to work over email, so I can't see how to do this.

I don't like the idea of an open chat board or email thread for game-play, because some people sit in front of a computer all day at work and have lots of time for that, and some don't. I definitely want each player to have a single "turn", where they assess the situation, make their own decisions, and send their actions in to the GM, without interacting directly with other players.

In fact, in an ideal situation, the players wouldn't even know which faction was controlled by which player. ("Really? Troy was the Mathematician's Guild? I thought he was the Queen's assassins."). Then, if the game progressed, and was fun, a player could abandon his/her faction (which would then become an NPC faction), and start a new one.

3. Action resolution: I don't have a clue how actions would be resolved in terms of game mechanics, but I definitely want there to BE game mechanics, so it isn't just collaborative fiction. Hopefully this will answer itself after I come up with answers to the first two points.

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This post is already longer than many people will care to read. And, despite Ron's wise admonishment to ask specific questions and post specific information, I'm afraid this may fall more into the "Here's a pile of ideas" camp, for which I apologize. I really am just looking for some guidance from wiser, more experienced heads.

[Bill_White]

Brian --

This is a cool idea.  I'm reminded of Chris Engle's Matrix Games, which work by allowing a GM to rule on the "strength" of players' proposed actions or events and then rolling to see which occur; conflicts are resolved by "rolling off" between competitors.  This kind of system, with its fairly open-ended procedures and character description, might be adaptable for the thing you want to do.  I know Chris has run e-mail-based games in the past.

So, if you can imagine, each player creates a faction and maybe three facts about it.  The GM pulls the various descriptions together and possibly introduces some NPCs in order to create a general situation to begin the game with ("The coronation of the new prince will take place in nine days, and all the powers of the city seek to curry his favor...").

Then each player submits a set of "moves" (propositions about events occurring in the city, giving reasons based on the known facts about the city and its factions) that if successful will have the effect of establishing new facts about what has happened in the past or is happening right now.  "Damage" to a faction is just another kind of fact, which makes it easier to act against them and harder for them to act for themselves.

Universalis is also probably worth looking at in this context.

[masqueradeball]

You not what might be a good basis for your game? The Influence rules from White Wolf's Minds-Eye Theatre stuff (their live action line), or actually, the variation that I've always used and have seen used by many other Storytellers running Masquerade/Apocalypse/Whatever.
Basically, there are various areas of influence (transportation, crime, government, etc...) and character (or faction, in your case) has a level of influence in each that describes what they can get accomplished in X amount of time w/o straining their resources. If players wish to risk it, they can strain their permanent resources by spending over their normal limit. Each point spent over their normal limit reduces their permanent rating by one, meaning that its rather costly. Characters can also save their current influences to use later, to use on gaining influence over other areas and to block the use of influences by others. The action resolution is really just a numbers game, but since all the players e-mail their influence expenditure for the round, than the game play becomes strategic. Well anyway, that's one idea. If I were going to do something like what your trying to accomplish, I would start by creating a limited pool of influences available in the city, I would have players bid (a la Amber) for control of various influences, and then I would play the game in rounds, with each round having two turns, one in which the player faction talk (e-mail each other, sending copies of their conversations to the GM) and then a second turn where each faction posts their bids. I don't know if this would accomplish what you want, but I hope it might be a place to start.

[Steven Stewart]

When I read through your post I thought of the following two techniques I have seen in other games:

(A) The structure of a turn based game seems similar to other RPG that have very structured scene sequences, Contenders comes to mind when each player has to choose what type of scene you can use. I know there are others I just don't have a lot of exposure to them, others with more exposure could comment better.

(B) Similarly a rules mechanic that just popped into my head cam from the same type of game. Which is you basically set some sort of stakes, (e.g. you are trying to get so much money during your non-fighting work). Then have some sort of mechanism to determine who wins, and then another sub-aspect that gets to determine who narrates this.

(C) Any type of game that uses an email structure should definetly try to take advantages of the pluses of email gaming. (Some folks don't see any, but as a guy who used to do a lot of Play-by-post which is similar there are. (i) the ability of the players to think longer than a few seconds to respond to something (ii) the ability to craft some nice narrative rather than the "he tells the king is great" in an email you can really go town with the descriptions and such. (iii) the ability to have complex rules, not saying you have to, but handling time becomes a little less important when the major time drag is the reply not the unwinding of rules (iv) if you have a moderator of some sort, you could (should) take advantage of blind emails for "turns" meaning other players don't know what they are doing. That can add some real suspense to the game.

Off the top of my head those are some thoughts, for a "turn" I could see where each player sets stakes (possibly from a standard list of options similar to many computer "civ sims". The players all send their email to the moderator with what they want. You could choose to have some sort of voting thing as well where players vote who has the most descriptive and narrative post describing what they want to happen, (but you can't vote for your own), which gives a bonus to the resolution. Somehow you resolve who wins. Parrallel stakes can allow to be done at the same time, but opposing stakes only the winner gets what they want. But use some other mechanism to determine who gets to narrate what happens. With this system each turn takes 2 emails I know, so it is not the best. (btw in contenders they use red cards for success but the highest gets to narrate).

Again, these are just "first thoughts" to your first thoughts but maybe there is something there that can spark your next steps. I will tell you that I definetly would be interested in a good well thought email system that provided some resolution faster than a snail moving, and had some interesting narration. It is the holy grail of island gamers (I know I was relegated to the snail pace of Play by Post while I was in the middle east for 1.5 years, I think in three months we got a group of 8 dwarves out of the city and to the first "encounter" - it was like watching paint dry).

Good Luck!

[BWA]

Thanks, guys. The are exactly the sorts of ideas I was hoping to get.

I will check out the Matrix engine, although I'm hoping to get the game up and running without using any randomization (ie - no dice-rolling). I'll also pick up a copy of Universalis, which I've heard nothing but good things about.

So, if you can imagine, each player creates a faction and maybe three facts about it.  The GM pulls the various descriptions together and possibly introduces some NPCs in order to create a general situation to begin the game with ("The coronation of the new prince will take place in nine days, and all the powers of the city seek to curry his favor...").

Then each player submits a set of "moves" (propositions about events occurring in the city, giving reasons based on the known facts about the city and its factions) that if successful will have the effect of establishing new facts about what has happened in the past or is happening right now.  "Damage" to a faction is just another kind of fact, which makes it easier to act against them and harder for them to act for themselves.

That's a good way to look at it. I hadn't thought about the GM having such an active role, but now that I do think about it, it will probably make the game work better. It will also have the effect of focusing player actions, so they're all talking about the same thing (ie - the coronation), instead of everyone chasing their own ideas (which is fine in face-to-face play, but I think would have the effect of isolating everyone in email play).

I really like the idea of areas of influence. That fits the theme of "factions" much better than attributes. I don't have any experience with White Wolf games at all. Is the basic game engine online anywhere?

Using a bidding system is another idea I like, but it would seem difficult to implement in a turn-based email game.

[Bill_White]

Thanks, guys. The are exactly the sorts of ideas I was hoping to get.

I will check out the Matrix engine, although I'm hoping to get the game up and running without using any randomization (ie - no dice-rolling).

If you want to avoid dice, you might consider cribbing from Brennan Taylor's Mortal Coil and giving each player a pool of points (call them Influence) that are distributed each turn among the player's "moves" (actions, propositions, declarations) to reflect the strength of the move.  If moves come into conflict, the one with the greater strength wins (comes true).

You can tie this to the spheres of influence idea by having players tie their influence points to the facts they've created about their faction, e.g., "My faction is the Sword Cult, a secret society (3 points) with members throughout the mercenary companies and private militias of the city (5 points).  They are dedicated to furthering an ideal of martial virtue (2 points)."

More on this later...

[BWA]

If you want to avoid dice, you might consider cribbing from Brennan Taylor's Mortal Coil and giving each player a pool of points (call them Influence) that are distributed each turn among the player's "moves" (actions, propositions, declarations) to reflect the strength of the move.  If moves come into conflict, the one with the greater strength wins (comes true).

That's exactly the kind of mechanic I'd like to use. But how do I get player conflicts to intersect with one another?

If you're all sitting around the table, you can all feed off each other's decisions. But if you're just sending email, will that happen? What if one player goes after a shipment of rifles (4 points), and another sends an emissary to the grand vizier (3 points) and a third attempts to bribe the Clockmaker's Guild (2 points)? Or does the game need more of a GM role in decising conflicts, as Bill suggested earlier? (ie - "The coronation of the new prince will take place in nine days, and all the powers of the city seek to curry his favor...").

[Steven Stewart]

I think there are couple of ways to address this:

(A) Constrain the setting informaiton such that conflicts will naturally occur to oppose each other. But that may be taking it in a direction that you don't want to go.
(B) Another way would be to have some sort of default "target number" to beat if no one is opposing the conflict. As a mechanic you could stretch this as well to be somewhat based on what other people are doing to give it a bit of an unknown.

Assuming that you are going diceless with resource allocations (e.g. each player has so many action points per "turn"), you could basically catergorize all conflicts having to fit into a category, for example (and the list is of course just for example purposes),

*Obtaining Resources
*Influencing Factions
*Influencing Leaders
*"Attacking Other Factions" - with the definition of attack being somewhat loose, maybe destablize is an attack or something.
*etc.

Suppose you go with this idea, then the "target number" is based on how many other players are doing similar actions. For example, say 2 players go for obtaining resources, then the difficulty is some base number of Base+Number of Players. So if you are the only one doing it is easier, but if another player is doing it, then it is harder. They don't have to be over the same resource, but just the action of "obtaining resources" so if one player is going for rifles, but another is collecting food to feed the army, those are both obtaining resources. Now I think here is where it could interesitng, make the base number high enough so that it actually makes sense to compete with other players.

So say a turn you have 10 action points. Lets say that going for resources is 3+number of players. If you say go for rifles 3 and another player says go for food 2, they both would fail. But if one player says go for rifles 3 and the other says go for the same rifles 2, then the first player would win even though it didn't beat (3+number of players going for resources)=5.

Taking the above example, to facilitate that, again you may want every "turn to be 2 emails" the first email is declaring the actions but with no points. At this point the players may change say 1 action based on what others emailed. Then the next email is the final commitment including the action points or whatever you call them. In this system you don't really need to have a GM create the conflict, the players themselves may decide it is worth while to create conflicts if you make PvP conflicts have the potential to be easier to "win" for less resources than non-PVP conflicts.

Not trying to say how you should do it, just giving another perspective on how it could be done or to give some more ideas to bounce off of.

[Bill_White]

But how do I get player conflicts to intersect with one another?

If you're all sitting around the table, you can all feed off each other's decisions. But if you're just sending email, will that happen? What if one player goes after a shipment of rifles (4 points), and another sends an emissary to the grand vizier (3 points) and a third attempts to bribe the Clockmaker's Guild (2 points)? Or does the game need more of a GM role in decising conflicts, as Bill suggested earlier? (ie - "The coronation of the new prince will take place in nine days, and all the powers of the city seek to curry his favor...").

I think some aggressive GM "scene framing" can help, but even in the absence of that, you can "force" conflicts by assigning each declaration to one of a limited set of "domains," just as Steven suggests.  You should create the domains or categories that seem to you to occupy the widest possible ground.  For example, you could say that you're going to categorize each declaration into categories of confrontation (direct action), subterfuge (indirect action), negotiation (direct communication) and deception (indirect communication). 

And then you could say that the declaration with the most influence assigned to it is a success, while those with lesser amounts fail by greater or lesser degrees.  Depending on the number of players, you may want  more domains, and to conceptualize second place and so forth as lesser degrees of success rather than outright failure.  One way of thinking about this is that the relative amount of effort determines who gets the least complicated success.

This then gives players the option of putting all their efforts into one big thing, or dividing their effort among multiple tasks, some of which may unexpectedly succeed.

So imagine that you're running "City by the Sea" for two players, me and Steven.  I've created the Sword Cult ("a secret society (3 points) with members throughout the mercenary companies and private militias of the city (5 points).  They are dedicated to furthering an ideal of martial virtue (2 points)") and Steven has created House Donatine, a minor mercantile family (3) with many ships (3) and agents in the city and overseas (2) that has ambitions to become a noble house (2). 

Notice that I've (inadvertantly) formulated a faction description as consisting of (a) a definition, (b) one or two descrptive elements, and (c) a goal, objective, or ideal.  I don't know whether or not you'll want to make that a rule.

Here's where you as GM framing up the situation for us is critical, I'd say.  If you look at the two factions that have been created, you see that they differ along a number of thematic dimensions:  secretive vs. ambitious, martial vs. mercantile, moved by an ideal of virtue vs. oriented to self-interest.  What's a situation where these might come into contradistinction if not conflict?  Hmm...how about war?

So you say:  "The City by the Sea is troubled by rumors of war.  The pirates of the Circine Sea have become increasingly aggressive in their raids on shipping and attacks on settlements in the Circinese where we have colonists.  The Grand Duke has called for a punitive expedition to the Circinese to destroy the pirates and capture or kill the Pirate King."

At this point, it's possible that you might as GM want to say that you have influence points that you're going to distribute among the categories to reflect the situational realities.  You make the rule be that you have to assign your points 4 3 2 1 among the four domains.  You decide that confrontation gets 4, subterfuge gets 1, negotiation gets 2, and deception gets 3.  This will shape the possible outcomes of player declarations, but you don't tell us how you've assigned your influence points.

We players submit our moves, "simultaneously."  A move is one sentence, consisting of a subject (an agent of the faction, another faction, or an NPC/F), a verb (the action), and a predicate (consisting of a direct object, an indirect object--helper or instrument--or both).  Its strength is determined by the extent to which it draws upon previously established facts plus the influence dedicated to it.

And let's make it a rule that once we've assigned influence to a move, it stays there until we move it out.  So things that don't become true right away don't fail, necessarily:  they may just take longer to accomplish.

And let's also make it a rule that if we don't have at least 1 point of influence "in reserve," we temporarily lose a point of influence for three turns, to reflect the drain on our resources.

The Moves:

Sword Cult --
1.  Mercenary captain Ogier Otranto receives a commission to join the expedition from the Grand Duke (3 influence).
2.  House Donatine hires more mercenaries to guard its ships (3 influence).
3.  In the Circinese, pirates attack a prosperous island settlement (3 influence).

House Donatine--
1.  A House Donatine treasure fleet arrives safely from the Circinese (5 influence).
2.  The Pirate King abducts Maid Melissina, the Grand Duke's niece, and holds her as a hostage for ransom (4 influence).

Confrontation (4):   House Donatine Move 1 (5) Sword Cult Move 3 (3)
Subterfuge (1):      House Donatine Move 2 (4)
Negotiation (2):     Sword Cult Move 1 (3), Sword Cult Move 2 (3)
Deception (3):

You compare each move with the other moves in the same category and your resistance, giving each its lowest value.

So now you're allowed to say that House Donatine's treasure fleet arrives safely (+1) but the pirate attack on the prosperous island settlement is beaten off with little loss (-1), although the Pirate King does capture Maid Melissina during the raid (+3).  Ogier Otranto is given a minor commission to provide the expedition with guards for its encampment (+0), and House Donatine hires more guards of proven loyalty from a village in the hinterlands where the Donatine family is well-known and well-liked (+0).

[BWA]

Thanks, guys. Both of those last two posts were really useful. I'll have to take some time to digest them both.

I'm coming around more and more to the idea of a strong GM hand in scene framing, at least to get the game going in the first place. My original idea was to let player goals drive the action, but a big, unmistakeable conflict right off the bat that affects everyone (a bang, I guess) is probably a better way to get things moving.

Besides, who doesn't love a Pirate King?

[Bill_White]

Two things before I let you go off to work by yourself on your own game:

(1)  Your influence assignments could let you as GM introduce "random" (i.e., not player-introduced) events.  So, for example, in the example above nobody made any deception moves, which meant that the GM essentially "won" that category.  You could say that that kind of situation permits the GM to add something to the turn results:  "An emissary from the Sultan of Sarysina arrives bearing gifts for the Grand Duke and an offer of alliance."  Notice that the players won't necessarily know which turn results are the product of such GM moves and which are the product of other player's declarations.

(2)  The outcome of each turn can have game-mechanical effects that affect subsequent play.  For example, you can make it so that a faction gains an expendable Confrontation, Subterfuge, Negotiation, or Deception point for every +3 result or better it gets.   These points can be spent to gain a temporary boost in that kind of action for one turn.  And maybe 5 points (or 1 of each type) can be expended to gain a permanent +1 influence increase or to reduce the influence of another faction.

In any event, I'm interested in what you come up with.  Let me know if you need another pbem playtester.

[BWA]

I haven't had a chance to put much thought into this game since these initail posts, but I did some work (including bringing in a gamer-friend of mine as a creative partner of sorts and putting our rough draft thoughts in a wiki). If anyone is interested, the "rough draft" rules are at http://bwa.wikispaces.com/

I don't have any specific issues or mechanics yet, so I won't ask "What do you think?", but if anyone is interested and has any thoughts, please let me know. Hopefully we will get a play-test off the ground soon, and then I'll really have some questions to bring back to the Forge.

Bill, a couple of your ideas made their way verbatim into the rough draft, so I hope that is taken as a compliment.

[BWA]

Taking some ideas from this thread (Bill's and Nolan's posts in particular), here's the "character creation" system my partner and I have come up with for our game:

Each player creates a "faction" as a character, an organization of any kind that operates in the city. Each faction has a name, a short description, and one or more goals, all decided on by the player. There are no limits on what the player can create, and whatever he/she creates becomes part of the game's shared setting.

In game mechanical terms, each faction is described by one to four "Attributes", which are short sentences that serve as the faction's permanent abilities. The player has 10 points to spend among these. (ie - The Harborside Magician's Guild might choose "We have spies in high places 4" and "We can call upon powerful supernatural allies 3" and "We have deep pockets 3" as its Attributes).

Each of these attributes must fit into one of four categories: Martial (direct action), Clandestine (indirect action), Diplomacy (direct communication) or Information (indirect communication).

In addition to Attributes, each player has a pool of 10 Influence points to spend each turn. These can be used for any action at hand (ie - "Uncover the true identity of the Queen's assassin 5" or "Bribe the harbor guards to look the other way on Friday night 3"). These influence point expenditures must also fit into one of the four categories above. Players can combine their Attributes with their Influences if the Attribute could conceivably affect the outcome. (ie - The Harborside Magician's Guild could add their 4 points from "We have spies in high places" to "Uncover the true identity of the Queen's assassin 5" for a total of 9).

Players can also increase their maximum number if Influence points each turn by permanently spending Attribute points. (These can be rebuilt slowly, at cost).

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We're still working on the rules, and I'll post again once we are ready to do some playtesting. I just wanted to show the members of this thread how much specific help their ideas were to us. Thanks!

[Bill_White]

Brian -- This look likes good stuff.  But remove the rule that says, "Each of these attributes must fit into one of four categories: Martial (direct action), Clandestine (indirect action), Diplomacy (direct communication) or Information (indirect communication)" because you don't really mean it; the real rule is "Players can combine their Attributes with their Influences if the Attribute could conceivably affect the outcome." 

Now each action will have a strength that's the sum the influence allocated plus one (only one?) attribute.  The question now is, what does a particular strength mean?   The action may or may not be contradicted by other actions, and it may or may not be resisted by "the world" in general.  You might simply establish a scale, such that you look at the strength of the action minus any contradicting or resisting effects, and use that as a guide for the GM, e.g., "+11 or more:  Complete Success, with Unexpected Favorable Consequences!"

So, for example, if the Harborside Magicians are looking for the Queen's assassin at 9 and the faction that put him up to the job intends to "Silence the Queen's assassin 4" aided by their attribute "We are cunning and ruthless 2", then the Harborside Magicians are at +3 (and the other faction at -3).  You might decide that +3 is a partial success, which a GM could read as suggesting that the magicians find the assassin's body after he's been killed.  The other faction might be told that the Harborside Magicians are on to them!

The only question is what to do in cases where there isn't stated opposition by one of the player factions.  Does the GM need to make specific moves for them in order to get some sense of the strength of the opposition?  Does the GM get a pool of points to divide among the faction moves as he or she sees fit?  Does the GM assign a general resistance score to each of the general categories of action (Martial, Clandestine, Diplomacy, Information) depending on his or her sense of the general situation? (This was my original suggestion).

I have some other ideas about adjudication; I'll share them with you when I get a chance to write them down.

Bill