A Crazy Dream, Ron Edwards, and a Different take on character advancement

[Bailywolf]

So, I dreamed last night that Ron Edwards was writing a new game, and I was pumped about the promo and sample material he was putting out for it. 

It was based around a different take on character advancement- rather than characters advancing as a byproduct of having adventures, character advancement is the point of play, and adventures are there to facilitate character growth and advancement...  rather than building up XP until you can buy a better stat or power or a new character level, character advancement is keyed directly off a formalized series of framed scenes.  Rather than use a 'training montage' as a justification for buying up a stat, the montage itself becomes the mechanical mode by which the stat increases. 

In the dream, Ron even had cool six panel comics demonstrating how these scenes might work, with a character learning a new Kung Fu style, and the play within the scene determined how well this was learned, and how powerful the resulting advancement.  In the examples, players got mechanical bonuses within the advancement scene in part by pantomiming the cool 'fu poses their characters were practicing.  "Fire Mantis style is powerful!"

Perhaps this was a result of all the Kung Fu movies and TV series I've been watching, all the wuxia comics and novels I've been reading... but these capture a different kind of advancement arc for a character, where learning new and cool things is often the point of the story rather than a byproduct of the adventure. 

These stories tend to follow a predictable advancement arc...  the character confronts adversity, and is inadequate.  He then, either because this motivates him, or through some dump luck coincidence, learns some new Kung Fu which vaults him beyond the previous adversity into a new plane, where again, he'll confront something he isn't ready to deal with, and again has to learn something new... the skipping stone of the Wuxia protagonist's advancement.  You can see this really clearly in the Condor Heroes trilogy... and in Star Wars, come to think.

Kung Fu characters often get into trouble advancing to fast to soon- throwing their internal energies out of whack by rushing for greater power.... also in Star Wars, come to think. 

It seems advancement scenes are 'bought' with different kinds of currency- sometimes with luck (Wuji finds a secret ultimate kung fu manual in a giant ape's stomach tumor), sometimes with social influence or charm (Yang Guo is quick to make friends, and Ouyang Feng likes him so much, he adopts him and teaches him the powerful and infamous Toad Style), sometimes with drive and motivation (the Golden Haired Lion King Xie Xun, driven by the murder of his family, masters a dozen deadly and powerful styles). 


"I know Kung Fu."

"Show me."

But rather than learning stuff during downtime or during a brief cutscene, building up to advancement scenes becomes significant- learning the style is as interesting as using it in a fight, and... as a result, there is no safe plateau.  Keep learning, keep advancing, keep getting better, keep getting back up when you're knocked down.  And each new trick you learn is a link- something further connecting you to other characters, the setting, or the history.  Yang Guo's Toad Style gets him in as much trouble as it gets him out of.

Back in the dream for this game, it got even cooler when I saw some of the mini-settings Ron had cooking... one was basically Exalted with the numbers filled off...humans empowered by astrological associations.  Another was about intelligent magical animals in a fantasy setting... another a classic kung-fu soap opera... another a cyberpunk thing where getting upgraded and learning to use bodymods and augments was the core of the thing... another for cinematic supers like Spiderman, where learning your powers and learning to use them in different ways was the key.



All in all, it was really really cool... and I was pretty disappointed to realize I'd just dreamed the thing up.


-Ben

[Eero Tuovinen]

Huh, I'm not the only one having weird game designer dreams? I dreamed about a game designer last night also, except my dream had the Finnish old-school designer Ville Vuorela, and he didn't so much design a game as critique a ballet performance I went watching with him. Much less interesting, let me tell you, especially as he was just as crotchety about ballet as he is about games.

As for your dream-Ron, I don't know what it means, but in 2005, when Ron was visiting Stockholm, I told him about a game idea that was almost exactly like what you have here. My game also had the idea that the "surface story" about evil warlords and dragon orbs or whatnot would be completely framed and plotted by a GM, with player input only coming in through battle, interpersonal and training scenes, each having their own specific rules. So for what it's worth, we have a documented factor of contagion pointing to Ron in the other end as well. Apparently this idea was meant to go to you ;)

[GregStolze]

Y'know, last night I had some dream with a card and dice game... in fact, it was an evolution of "Ancient Committee is an Emo Band" where each card represented one song and if you played it well you got more dice for your next song but the difficulty went up, or some damn thing.  I dunno.

With the dream of "Ron Edwards Presents: Wuxia, Bitches!" it seems to me that the neat way to do it would be to start out the game with NO concrete "combat resolution" mechanics, but rather a meta-mechanic for developing a specific set of rules during the course of play.  From the character perspective, it would be like "discovering" or "learning" how to fight, but what the rules and players would be doing is DEFINING how the mechanics privilege different actions and moves.

Wow, did I sound all Ivory Tower there or what?  Let me put in an example to dumb it down to the point that I could understand it if I was reading it, instead of writing it.

Ron and Bailey are playing "Wuxia, Bitches!"  It's early days, the first fight scene.

RON: I do a full power straight punch. 

BAILEY: I dodge out of the way. 

(They roll a d6 each.  Bailey gets a 5, Ron gets a 2.) 

RON: Okay, you won that one, so we write down "Dodge > Full Power Straight Punch."  Now you roll a d8 when dodging a d6 power punch.  Dodge needs to be balanced against something else, and since I lost the confrontation I get to decide the next time dodge is used.  Your go.

BAILEY: I'm going to duck under your punch and go for a clinch.

RON: Hm... see, I don't think a dodge would REALLY work against a clinch -- just aesthetically.  So I'm going to counter with a BOOT TO THE HEAD!

(They roll.  Bailey gets a 6, Ron gets a 5.)

BAILEY: Clinch trumps head kick.  Clinches now roll a d8 when matched against that attack.

RON: Yeah, and now I get to decide what clinch sucks against. 

BAILEY: ...AND what dodge fails against.

RON: If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.

BAILEY: Let's test that hypothesis!

...and so on.  Once all the "this trumps that" networks are established, you move up to some next-level system for determining "Special Moves" that give a d10 against something in some circumstance, and then other stuff that forces a d4 on your opponent, on through "Mastery Actions" which lets you roll a d12 when someone would force a d4 on you, up through the "Grand Supreme Ultimate Master Scroll" which lets you roll a d20 on some move or other.  And then you're playing D&D!

Wait, no, you're not.  Anyhow, it would be a mutating, resource-management, more-gamist-than-gamist token wanking game that would be different every campaign.  ("Dude, I keep forgetting that dodge works against clinch this time!  Last summer's campaign, dodge was totally ass against clinch.")

-G.

[Jason Morningstar]

The idea of a self-generating rules set really appeals to me.  It reminds me a little of Emily Care Boss's Sign In Stranger, where you sort of learn by trial and error which alien device is a toaster and which is a shotgun.  Old assumptions about form and function are out the window and you collectively build a new reality.

For the fighty game, you'd need to constrain options somehow, either by setting an arbitrary limit to the number of maneuvers that can be introduced ("we shall discover the twelve lost techniques") or by just having a list, or by slowly making "new" techniques less effective.  Discovering the matrix of possibility and dependency would be really fun.  I could see a game of Byzantine diplomacy working well, maybe combined with Polaris-style ritual phrases. 

[Filip Luszczyk]

Ooh, nice ;)

But why the need to constrain maximum number of maneuvers? I'd say it could be fun if trying some technique till it finally worked against something was possible. That way, it would be difficult to "breed" an uber-attack, as it would always be possible that it fails against some new technique. And voila, you have a continuous learning, kind of like an arms race. "You may have defeated my Fivefold Monkey Leap, but now I'll show you that your Gnawing Tiger Attack has no chance against my newly learned Thousand Mammoths Blow!"

I'd rather go for scripted combat, so that players didn't know what the other side tries before choosing their own maneuver. "Will he try dodging this time, or will he go for clinch since I've been using clinch-vulnerable twisted strike two times already?" Possibly, scripting series of attacks in advance could give more power for successive attacks. E.g. third attack in a combo would have an additional +3 modifier, but if the opponent scripted two-attack combo, you would be open in this third exchange and he would chose his maneuver knowing yours.

[Jason Morningstar]

That approach would work too, with the maneuvers being novel and essentially disposable.  I was thinking you'd develop a "series bible" over time that told you how all the moves interrelated.  Maybe when you had tried every possible move against every other possible move, it triggered endgame.

[GregStolze]

I think the problem with an unlimited number of attacks is that, as long as there's an advantage to developing new ones, you'd run the risk of bogging down your handling time.

BAILEY: I'm going to use the triple-spinning hook kick against that jab!

RON: Have we tried the triple-spinning hook kick against the jab?

(They sift through three pages of notes.)

BAILEY: Okay, we didn't.

RON: Roll 'em!

-G.

[GB Steve]

You could just enter the attacks and defences in a grid to keep track of them, and you might limit the total number of moves anyone can know.

[Bailywolf]

 Rather than specifc moves, you could use this to map styles- which style is superior and which is inferior.

"Seven Sahdows Fist will destroy you!"

"But you have not yet seen my secret style, my Heart Breaking Blade!"

Which is better?  That's what the duel determines, and from then on, it is so.

-B

[Andy Kitkowski]

Which is better?  That's what the duel determines, and from then on, it is so.

I like this a lot.

[Asa]

My first thought when you started talking about advancement in-game was that you could stake conflicts on advancement, much like in the game I'm working on.  Given some of the other ideas here, one way to incorporate this would be to have the challenger in a duel (whether it be a duel of fists or a duel of diplomacy) be able to demand that the challenged teach him some style or skill if defeated.  Or perhaps any duel would result in each participant copying one of the other's traits onto his sheet, as decided by the winner.  Or perhaps one participant names the style she wishes to learn and the other names the price.  What sort of price may be named depends on the result of the duel.  You could also have training sequences that are played out like duels between the character and the setting or the character and himself.