[Six Bullets] Revelation Maps

[andrew_kenrick]

This is something I've been toying around with for a while now, but I've finally pinned down some of the ideas and put them to paper. The point of it is that it's meant to provide a reason for players to tie their revelations and scenes in with what has gone before, rather than at the moment throwing the players into the game and hoping that it all comes together. I suspect that only playtest will tell if it's useful to the game or a hindrance to play.

At the centre of Six Bullets, acting almost like a map or character sheet for the entire game, is the revelation map. The revelation map shows the protagonist and each of the antagonists, connecting them together with events and occurrences, forming a web laying out the intricacies of the story.

At the start of the game the revelation map is blank, save for the protagonist's name. As the game proceeds players add names, character traits and other details, filling in the story as it is played out. Everything written on the map is called a revelation, even when it's not actually revelatory in nature.

New revelations are simply written on the map and connecting lines are drawn to other connected revelations. Connections between revelations must make sense and must be narrated – lines cannot be arbitrarily drawn between otherwise unconnected revelations unless some justification has been made.

To encourage players to make use of what is already on the map and to tie their own revelations into the story, bonus dice are rewarded for incorporating existing revelations into their scenes and for connecting new revelations to existing revelations.

When a player incorporates one or more existing revelations into a scene, he gains 1 bonus die.

When a player adds his own revelation to the map, and that revelation connects to one or more existing revelations, he gains 1 bonus die for each connection he adds.

On with the questions:

1. is this too wordy? (i'm trying to work on my writing as i have a tendency towards the verbose)

2. does the revelation map sound like a way of encouraging players to play with the story and to build on one another's ideas, or just as a cheap way to get bonus dice? (which are a good thing btw - they help the players control narrative and build the story in their direction)

3. does it seem too much like hard work/not very fun?

4. do you think it will be a help or a hindrance to my goals?

[Malcolm Craig]

Hi Andrew,

I think that it sounds like a very worthwhile exercise for several reasons. We improvised something similar during our recent Contenders game, a blank sheet of paper that the names of characters, places and events were scribbled down on. Now, there was no mechanical reward for doing this, simply the reward that came from the enjoyment of cross-referencing each others stuff, bringing NPCs from the first session back in and so forth. A mechanism that encourages this by providing some form of reward would seem like a good way to make it used and liked.

However, is there any form of management of the reward? For example, if a player brings in a place and three people from the revelation map, is the bonus multiplied by four? By bringing all of this stuff in, is there a risk that it promotes a kind of behaviour that you're not trying to encourage?

Finally, if everything that is written down on the sheet isn't a revelation, why call it a revelation map? Connection map? Story map?

Cheers
Malcolm

[andrew_kenrick]

However, is there any form of management of the reward? For example, if a player brings in a place and three people from the revelation map, is the bonus multiplied by four? By bringing all of this stuff in, is there a risk that it promotes a kind of behaviour that you're not trying to encourage?

Finally, if everything that is written down on the sheet isn't a revelation, why call it a revelation map? Connection map? Story map?

I put an arbitrary limit on it for the purposes of getting bonus dice for including existing revelations, but didn't for linking new revelations to old ones. I'm starting to think I should, just to stop it being abused.

I like the name revelation map :-) But it is meant to be predominantly revelations, revealed through play, rather than a map of everything.

[andrew_kenrick]

Earlier I introduced the concept of revelation maps in Six Bullets, which are intended as a way to reveal the story throughout the game. After the invaluable feedback I've received I've tweaked and changed how it works somewhat, so thought it best to begin a new thread about it all.

Revelations now work like this:

Just like attributes, revelations have a number of dice attached to them, which can be rolled as part of a conflict if you can work them into your narrative. The more dice a revelation has, the more important and integral the players have deemed it to the story, and the harder it is to get rid of.

Revelations can only be created if you win a conflict. They're one of the rewards. Originally I made them one of a list of different rewards, but now I've bumped it so you choose a reward AND add/change a revelation. I'm hoping this promotes them as being integral to the game.

As a reward, you can either create a new revelation (with 1 die in it, plus 1 die for every other rev it links to), add a die to an existing rev or remove a die from an existing rev. Adding or removing dice from revs allows you to change the revelation too, either making it closer to its original meaning or undermining and changing its original meaning.

Whilst creating new revelations and to them no longer feeds back directly as a reward to you, the more you make use of them and include them in your narrative and conflict, the more dice you roll in the conflict and the more likely you are to win AND THEN get rewarded. So it's kinda circular, and hopefully less likely to be abused.

Now my hope is that this iteration of the rev-map sees them as more streamlined, more integrated into the mechanics and more integrated into the core of wha the game is about. Oh, and less open to blatant abuse.

Do you think it achieves these goals? How do you think it compares to the previous incarnation? Do you foresee any big gaping holes?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Here's my suggestion:

1. Yes, the map is cool. Have it out there, see it added to, make it the central piece of the physical space of play.

2. Remove any and all bonus dice or minor rewards associated with it. I think they detract badly from its importance, and from the basic enjoyable acts of play.

Let me know if you have any questions about this recommendation. I think I'll do well with specific questions; it's hard to explain this point at a general or abstract level.

Best, Ron

P.S. Side note: Keith Senkowski's art for this game (see Bob Goat Illustrations is top notch. I can't wait to see the design and production come together.

[andrew_kenrick]

Hey Ron -

When you say remove any rewards attached to it, do you mean giving people bonus dice for contributing to it? Or do you mean having the various revelations have dice attached to them that can be used in conflicts, much like attributes?

In what way do you think the offering of rewards detracts from the use of the map? Do you think that it "cheapens" it in some way?

I'm loving the artwork too - I intend to pull out all the stops and playtest this thing into the ground to make the game design live up to the quality of the art.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Andrew,

I mean anything about the dice - all the stuff you mentioned. The map gets written during play, yes. No bonuses for putting things on it, and no bonuses for using things on it.

I'm tempted to say "trust me," but I know that's not a fair statement. Let's see if we can do it through the questions.

In what way do you think the offering of rewards detracts from the use of the map?

Because those aren't rewards. They're distraction. That would be like giving bonus dice for using Connections in My Life with Master, when the fact that Connections are created and present in play has larger and productive effects already. It's gilding the lily, and not even with gilt.

So (a) they aren't rewards, and (b) they are distractions, not detractions.

With that in mind, my answer to this question:

Do you think that it "cheapens" it in some way?

is no. I am a champion of mechanics-based rewards. However, I think that the phenomenon I'm seeing a lot lately, what I'm calling the bread-crumbs design tactic, is exceptionally badly conceived and poorly considered.

Here's another example. One of the most exciting game designs under way at the moment, for me, is Grey Ranks. Without giving anything about it away, the characters are Warsaw teenagers during the brief transition from Nazi to Soviet occupation, and every scene concerns some paramilitary or political action on their parts. Well, part of the system involves "vignettes," which is to say soap-opera like subsets of each scene. Outcomes of both the actions and the vignettes are hugely important to the larger-scale concerns of play (the real reward system mechanics, which operate over scenes and also at the end of the game).

All right. In one playtest version, Jason had some sort of bonus die mechanic for introducing a vignette into a mission scene. I strongly advised that he remove it. I think (and I hope you'll forgive me, Jason, for bringing in this level of personal interpretation), that Jason did not trust the players (the ones in his mind) to buy into the inherent drama of the teenage crisis embedded in this military/historical crisis. So he put in a bread-crumb as a kind of operant conditioning, hoping he'd bribe them into doing it.

It doesn't work. It has never worked. It will never work. You cannot bribe people into playing a way that they do not want to play, or are not inspired to play. You must begin with the idea that the game is for those people who get it. Did you feel a surge of interest in my brief description of Grey Ranks, above? I always feel it when I read Jason's introductory text or paraphrase for myself, as above. Jason should design his game for people who feel that.

In that case, as a Grey Ranks participant, I do want rewards that highlight and fuel my participation. But I don't need so-called rewards that are there to remind me that I'm interested and to tell me what to do, when it's what I want. It's like having someone in the passenger seat who continually instructs you about upcoming stop signs and turning on your turn signals a second before the reasonable moment of braking or turning on the signal. A real reward is emergent, not routine for routine actions.

In Six Bullets for Vengeance, if the players are not already fascinated and inspired by the ability to build a story retroactively through several dangerous, dramatic, and murderous climactic scenes, then they don't want to build the map or use it in the first place. They just don't. Trying to bribe them to do it when they don't want to is a lost cause.

Conversely, if the players are already chomping at the bit to do it anyway, distracting them with fiddly bonus dice is annoying to them. The reward that suits them should operate among scenes.

How does that work?

Also, are you familiar with the reward system of Nine Worlds? It has three levels (and two "back-peddle" options, each at two of the levels). I strongly recommend checking it out; it's a textbook example of a fairly complex and layered reward system that does not fall into the bread-crumb trap.

Best, Ron

[andrew_kenrick]

Thanks for that Ron. I'm still a little sceptical - do you think it churlish that I should want to try both versions of the mechanics for myself?

You're right when you say that players who are interested in creating these revelations and introducing and using them in play, will do so anyway whether there is an attached mechanic or not. This has happened in all of the playtests so far.

However, one of the reasons I introduced the map and the attached mechanics was the maxim about "if it happens at the game table, it should exist in the game" - we were introducing revelations into the story as we went along, but at no point was the existence or introduction of revelations present in the game itself.

In addition to the dice mechanics I introduced the rule that a revelation could only be added after a conflict, and then modified this so that after a conflict a revelation had to be added.

Now, do you think that the very presence of the revelation map is incentive enough (incentive might be a poor choice of words - maybe I mean impetus?) for the formulation of revelations? Or do I still need that mandate that revelations should be added after a conflict.

[Matt Machell]

While giving out cookies for using the revelations may be distracting, I think there is value in keeping track of which revelations gain most attention. That is to say, adding the physical dice to revelations is useful for more than just using those dice to get a bonus, it's a useful visual marker of which elements of the situation we've hammered lots, which we've only begun to explore (or may no longer wish to), how the situation is growing and evolving and in which directions.

-Matt

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Andrew, you wrote,

the maxim about "if it happens at the game table, it should exist in the game"

I'm unaware of the maxim and consider it badly flawed as stated. It sounds like something that someone who's played nothing but traditional RPGs who encounters My Life with Master for the first time might say. Having never seen a Love or a Fear mechanic before, he or she is addled by the novelty and comes up with a maxim like that. In doing so, the person would be missing the crucial point - that there is no score called Defiance in the game, at all. There's a reason for that.

Best, Ron

[Ron Edwards]

Um, that was a slightly rude post, wasn't it?

I should say as well that I do agree with you that any of these points should be examined via real playtesting. None of my posts here are presented as directives or as a substitute for that, despite the tone that I discovered in them, or at least the last one, upon re-reading. My apologies for that.

Best, Ron

[andrew_kenrick]

No need to apologise - I'd hardly characterise that as rude. I'm probably misquoting the maxim anyway.

I definitely think it worth trying both variations of the revelation map out, but I suspect I will find that you are right, that it's a case of me trying to lead the players along by the hand, trying to dictate that they do what they would do anyway.

Now to go back to using your example of MLWM's connections, although you don't get a bonus for using them or introducing them, they do provide a central purpose to the mechanics of the game - they are the means by which players generate Love, and we all know that love makes MLWM go round. Should revelations have a similar impact, because the way I'm seeing it right now is that if all you're doing is writing them down, they're little more than glorified notes.

As Matt points out, a side effect of the dice mechanic was a way of flagging up important revelations, as well as providing a way to change and destroy them. What other ways can this be achieved, and is it even necessary?

[Ron Edwards]

Here's my armchair call: just you wait, and you'll see the revelations playing a similar role as you describe about the Connections, without bonus dice, but definitely with their written presence on the map (as recommended in #1). That's what I'm hoping for, anyway.

I'm looking forward to the next play report!

Best, Ron

[andrew_kenrick]

I ran an excellent playtest at Conception over the weekend, trying out the new rules but leaving aside any sort of reward for using the revelation map. As Ron predicted, the players really, really didn't need any sort of incentive and I think the game was quite strong enough as it is. I'm currently writing up a rather indepth playtest report now.