QUINCY: Emergent Game/Sim

[Aaron Blain]

Synopsis: I want to approach gamish sim through with a nar-ish sim procedure, using a very simple ruleset that utilizes the players' conception of "tactics" instead of attempting an exhaustive encyclopedia. Very simple karmic task resolution (always 1-5) is modified through resources and circumstances, and negotiated conflict resolution is used to create new circumstances. As a cohesive shared vision of the source material, "tactics" gradually emerges through the setting of conflict-resolution precedents, a reasonable expectation of consistency enables the players to "play several moves ahead". Any takers?

I have a draft, but I imagine it is more helpful to introduce and explain my concept and my needs.

I've been gaming for about five years, often two games a week. I have played a great deal of 2nd and 3rd edition DnD as well as some World of Darkness. But the only game I ever looked forward to playing was 1st edition L5R. This was back when the game rules were still mercilessly lethal. One good hit from a katana left you with just enough life to try and escape. Now, I'm not harping on "realism" here, but a one-hit-kill paradigm radically changes the combat dynamic. It's like the difference between Contra and DOOM, and that's the kind of excitement, challenge and danger I prefer. A DnD character never says, "I can't go out there! I might get shot!" I was the Crane, handome and educated, the "face" and tactician of the party, and the swiftest swordsman. The Crab, exceedingly stout, was the anvil, and I was the hammer. "Hm, could be archers on the roof, better stay on the left side of the street or I could be a dead sucker." That is the joyful feeling I want to isolate and magnify.

You know that scene in Yojimbo where he suddenly kills four guys who aren't expecting his attack because he's got them paying attention to tea and conversation? There are lots of scenes in Conan stories where, unarmored and with only a long knife. He gets the jump on a half dozen guards, and because he has the initiative, his eyes have adjusted to the darkness, and he comes from behind striking as quickly as possible, he's able to take down four of them before they know what's going on. That's what I want as the bread and butter of my gaming. Dangerous, vivid, fluid adventures flavored like Howard, Burroughs and Moorcock.

Before I go any further I want to point out the difference in games that have an "awesomeness allowance" (hero points, whatever you want to call them) and games that enable awesome performance through a sensitivity to their operation. It might sound like I need "pure game" finitude but that's exactly what I want to escape -- the multiple-choice nature of hardcore game/sim hack'n'slash.

Yes, I am a strategy gamer, but I believe that the concept of "strategy" can and should be treated like any other source material intended to be explored and caressed through ("simulationist") RPG procedure, rewarding players for faithful enactment of the source material. You succeed in Werewolf by avoiding silver, creatively utilizing the Umbra, and paying attention to which clan has grudges against which. I want a game that works exactly the same way, except that you succeed by keeping the sun behind you, keeping your eye on the person most likely to strike first, and fooling your opponent into attacking nothing. I could almost be happy with straight up sim/nar rules but replacing "Mage: The Awakening" with "Soldier: The Flanking." Dig?

My ideal game-as-played exists almost entirely in the minds of the gaming group. We all have our opinions as to whether a barded warhorse can dodge a pike, or whether a scutum offers more protection than a hoplon. No tome of quantifications is going to perfectly satisfy any grognard and I think history has shown that it can lead to madness to try. (We're all familiar with FATAL, right? I shiver at its mention.) It is always subject to a judgement call. I want to throw out the encyclopedia and START with the judgement call. If you're thinking I'm talking about something a hair away from freeform, that's exactly right.

I have a great deal more to expound. In fact, I pretty nearly have it in a testable form. But, given my gaming background, I'm pretty unsure about the SIS-negotiation issues I need to deal with, especially the sharing of authorship. I have looked very closely at The Pool, The Window and The Shadow of Yesterday, and I hope it's clear from my post that none of them is quite what I'm looking for. I don't want "meaning", I don't want to deal with moral boundaries or question my outlook on life, I don't even want "drama" to necessarily be an explicit part of the rules. I want a game that rewards the players for faithful, creative enactment and exploration of the "source material", which instead of the usual "feed on the blood of living humans" is "make the other bastard die for HIS country."

I don't think this is actually very radical or ambitious at all. Do any of you vacillate between "hard" Thus-Spake-Zoroaster Hackmaster Total-Control pounds-of-dice-and-charts simulation and "soft" almost freeform simulation? It's kind of odd, actually, that I'm envisioning a game about ambushes and supply lines that ideally can be played around a campfire.

I think before I go any further, I'd like some help getting a very firm grip on my creative agenda. It might sound like I'm all over the map here, but I'm pretty sure what I'm going for here, at least in my rule set, is pure simulationism. Not a terribly popular topic around here, it seems, but one on which I hope to find some insight.

Thanks for your attention and thoughts.

[Simon C]

Hey, no, that's an interesting idea! Let me rephrase it, so you can tell me if I've understood it correctly:

You like tactical gaming, and you want to make a game that gives the advantage to characters who utilise setting appropriate tactics.  However, you're not interested in the specifics of the tactics.  You don't want to create a set of "realistic" rules which reward your idea of good tactics by listing minutiae like armour vs. weapon tables, lighting penalties, initiative and so on.  Rather, you think that "good tactics" is somthing that can be reached by consensus.  You want your game to reward good descriptions of tactics, that sound plausible/setting appropriate to the group.  So in your game, hypotherically, there's no "bad lighting modifier", rather, the player who says "I'm attacking in the dark, carfully averting my eyes from the campfire, which will have ruined their nightvision" will get a bonus.

Does that sound like what you mean?

If so, I'm gonna go ahead and suggest you take a look at Wushu.  I haven't played this, but I think an adaptation of these rules might do what you're trying to achieve.  In Wushu, you get more dice based on how elaborately you describe your action.  "I hit him" gets one dice.  "I hit him in the neck, crushing his windwipe and causing him to emit an awful choking sound" gets three dice.  All you have to do is stipulate that the descriptions must reference tactics that the group finds plausible (with right of veto, as per the normal Wushu rules), and this does basically what you want.  "I hit him" gets one dice.  "I creep up the left side of the street to avoid possible archers, and draw my dagger, I'll need a precise strike to find a chink in their armour.  I'll wait by the corner of the building, and ambush the first one to come around the corner" gets four or five dice. 

Wushu might not do everything you want, but I'd suggest it as a good place to start.  Good luck!

[Paul T]

I agree with the previous post. I think the first question I would look at is:

Do you want to reward player creativity/smart thinking to give the game a feel of tactical maneuvering? Or do you want to try to simulate "what would actually happen"?

The Wushu example (post above) should show what I mean.

Secondly, you're talking about simple and around-the-campfire, which suggests certain limitations on rules and procedures. But what about background or world preparation? Would you be happy with a 300-page book of details about a world or situation, or do you want the "soft" game material to be light as well?

Or, how would you feel about tactical decisions setting up precedents, which would then need to be recorded and referenced? Good? Bad, and to be avoided?

Should a good tactic always work (from game to game), or is it more of a fluid environment where things may change depending on the players?

Interesting, anyway!

Best,


Paul
Sounds interesting!

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

Synopsis: I want to approach gamish sim through with a nar-ish sim procedure, using a very simple ruleset that utilizes the players' conception of "tactics" instead of attempting an exhaustive encyclopedia.

Aron, I admire your enthusiasm, but man, I don't see this working out for you at all.  That's a pretty bad train wreck of Creative Agendas.  In fact, you know what, I wouldn't even worry about Creative Agendas at all at this point in your design process.  Instead, imagine what you'd like a session of your game to look like.  What would it look like?  What would the players do?  What would the characters do?  Instead of listing the Creative Agendas you want to support, why don't you just tell us what your game would look like if we were watching people play it?

Peace,

-Troy

[Aaron Blain]

Thanks, guys! Paul and Simon pretty well have it so far. I vastly shortened my initial post. Those monolithic initial messages can be so wearisome.

I agree with you that it might sound like a train wreck at first, but isn't it strange that the veteran philosophers have decided to use the same word to describe what seem like vastly different game types? I agree with them, though. Your fair skepticism makes me extremely happy, for some reason. Thanks. You wanna know what my ideal game would look like? Lord-a-mercy, I could go on for pages . . .

I wasn't throwing around jargon in a bid for respectability or grasping at "game-fixing magic words" as I'm sure they're often seen, rather I : 1) did everyone the courtesy of boning up on such things before asking for help and 2) am trying to address the severe schizophrenia of inherited game habits which has kept me from having fun. Now that I've introduced my concept, I'd love to dispense with jargon as much as possible. I know the word "strategy" is throwing this way off, but what I think what I'm after is really just soft sim tailored for a particular subset of source materials.

My rules-as-written are mostly just a paradigm for putting a given situation in mechanical terms.

The narrator sets a scene. Everything is potentially just capital-cee Color. When there is conflict, we turn to the five fingers. At this point the narrator has the power to promote pieces of Color and give them mechanical weight. The other players can also make nominations.

"The goblin runs at you. He is a bad swordsman, but he has the high ground."
"I am a good swordsman. I kill the goblin."
"You are still off-balance from recent event xyz"

Goblin = bad [1] + high ground = 2
PC = good [3] - off-balance = 2

Barring further modifiers, a coin toss makes the decision.

And Paul really nailed what I should have emphasized: this creates a precedent. The narrator has shown that he accepts these two game-facts has having mechanical weight. In the future, the players will try to get the high ground and unbalance their enemies. The reward for winning a conflict is to create a game fact, which can potentially garner an advantage in subsequent conflicts. "You successfully kick his shield, knocking him off balance."

Thank you for asking this, and I want to be clear that I am not talking about the same criteria for success as WuShu. I want to reward faithfulness, not creativity. If I am running a game of classy swashbuckling among the red men and green Tharks of Burroughs' Mars, I won't reward a player for his descriptions of a 40k-style Blood Angel, no matter how creative or extensive. I don't want drama-based resolution at all. Faithfulness is not a stipulation for me ; it's a virtue in itself. It sounds like the purpose of WuShu's mechanic is to get the players to give as long and detailed of a description as possible. I don't want that. I want them to think hard about it, looking for just the right thing to say. In a conflict, a character can only do one thing at a time. A sequence like you described could occur, but it would unfold gradually, with a potential challenge at each step. I'm not looking for a system to engender an interesting story -- I want the entire game to ride on the shared enthusiasm for the setting.

I am not talking about ME, game designer, simulating ANYTHING. I am talking about a procedure for the gaming group to reach a consensus about "what would really happen." They are "thinking strategically about what tactics would be effective", but that is just an exploration of the agreed-upon setting. As new situations are explored, we reach a consensus about how they work, and that gives us a frame of reference to try and figure out how to gain the advantage. I'm aiming for a front-and-back PDF.

About preparation - either extreme is fine, although the players should try to attain a similar vision of the setting's operations before starting to play. We can say, "Right - purple tiger men fighting with nives on . . .Venus. Possible damsels in distress. Go!" Or, I can round up some guys who have read GATES OF FIRE two or three times apiece, and that right there would constitute almost all of our "prep".

"Time to kill some Persians, boys."
"Ooh, I'm a Thracian skirmisher. Excellent with a javelin [4], but I can't ride a horse or shoot a bow very well [1,1]."
etc. on down the line.

There is a raid, and the PC's find themselves facing some Persian spear-carriers with wicker shields. Some of The Ten Thousand Immortals, just to make it interesting.

Skirmisher : "I go around to the left and threaten one of the Persians with a readied javelin."
Hoplite: "I attack that same guy."
This Spartan isn't one of the consummate badasses [5] who fight next to Leonidas, but he's still pretty dangerous [4].
The Immortals, of course, are excellent at what they do. [4]

Fingers go up.
Narrator: "You're even, so it'll be a coin toss."
Skirmisher : "I'm threatening him with a readied javelin."
Narrator : "Which side are you on again?"
Skirmisher: "Our left. His right."
Narrator: "Ah, his unshielded side. That would make him pretty nervous."
Narrator lowers a finger.
Barring anything further, the Spartan wins automatically.

As we get the hang of this, I bet it can go REALLY fast. Once there is a good assortment of established factors that we know the narrator will grant power, I am hoping there will be a HUGE amount of jockeying for advantage, with the players exploring the situation thoroughly before committing to the scarier life-and-death tests. The narrator decided that the skirmisher player had a good idea (with respect to the agreed-upon setting), so next time he might try to think of some way an enemy would contest the skirmisher's flank manouevre (in the context of the agreed-upon setting). Which in turn shows the players what they can do in the same situation etc. etc. etc.

Later, a Persian skirmisher joins the fray.
The Spartan player's inner monologue:
"Crap, an enemy skirmisher. I bet he's going to come around to my unshielded side to threaten me while his buddy the spearmen attacks me. Maybe if I . . .Oh, but then he could just . . . unless I . . . "

This line of thought is what gets me really excited.

[Simon C]

Ok, cool.  I've got a better idea of what you're trying to do here.  It seems like what you're describing is a workable system, so long as there's a strong consensus between the players on what constitutes "good tactics" in the setting. I can imagine this being fun for a group that is all on the same page about the setting. 

It gets problematic, I think, when there are differences of opinion about what works and what doesn't.  What happens when one player says "ok, my knife will be really useful for finding chinks in his armour", and another player says "no, he's wearing chainmail underneath", "no, but my knife can pierce that" "no it can't" "yes it can"...  If you enjoy long debates about theoretical combats in the middle of your game, then you're fine.  Be aware that you're in a minority, though.  What does your game do to resolve these conflicting ideas about the setting? Be aware that many players will be dissatisfied with GM fiat of these issues.  For most people, it's not fun to play "guess the GM", trying to find tactics that fit with the GM's perception of the setting. 

What is the goal of restricting what characters can do in a "round" in your game? You don't seem to have formal "rounds", so what or who decides how much can be done in a single "action"?

[joepub]

I want to reward faithfulness, not creativity.

That's a REALLY interesting design goal.
I like it.

So, I want to flag a couple potential things I envision happened with this:

1.) I imagine players really stretching narration to try to gain the upper hand.

Is there a max cap of "conditions"? Because otherwise you'll have both sides tallying 18 different circumstances in order to get an edge.

I'd suggest: saying that "you can only have 2 conditional modifiers" or something similar.

2.) If you keep setting precedent, play could get very repetitive.

This could be cool, if that's what you're going for. Certain genres (westerns and wuxia come to my mind, personally) do re-incorporate elements to great effect.

One thing is that... maybe if I win in a conflict against you, it destroys the precedents that you were calling into effect. Like, "Oh, through the Mystic Dragon technique, I have proven higher ground can be as much a foe as friend."


Cool stuff, so far.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Aaron, hi.

You know, I was having a similar dilemma... wait, first let me say this is a cool idea and if it works, it's even cooler. Now, I was having the same problem, with this wargame I 'm making, board-based with figures and all. My problem was that the normal paradigm for wargames' desing is to quantify everything, in ways that make sense  to the game itself, but are clearly arbitrary if you take them out of context.

I mean, sure, when you get charged in the flank, you should get a disadvantage to your combat efficiency- but what exactly should it be? A "-1" doesn't really describe what's going on at that point. For that matter, what is it exactly that is going on when you 're flanked by an enemy unit? I tried to find an answer to that particular question in the bibliography, but nobody will ever explain it- it seems to go without saying for the sources of the times when that actual manoeuvers where executed, but the later sources don't bother to explain it either, so what the hell is happenning there? Are the men in the flank of the unit unable to turn around and fight on their side? A phalanx sure would, but what about skirmishers? Or Legionnaires? Are they just freaked out that the enemy just showed up inside their guard? Were they looking at something else on the battlefield? What?

I ended up asking some of my reenactor friends for advice- their verdict was that it's the "Oh Shit, They 'Re Behind Us" that's important. Sometimes, they told me, you are indeed so caught up in the battle you really don't know when you 've been flanked- a friend was telling me about the times he was trying to look through the ranks ahead, until someone touched him with a sword on the back when he wasn't expecting it. I mean, in the middle of battle!

So I wove that into my game, but this is not my game we 're talking about. What I 'm saying is that I think you should describe a very concrete, very precise physics engine for your game worlds, a tactical fighting engine, as it were. Describe how exactly people fight- not with numbers and stats, but as you would explain it to a new recruit you were training. Say, for example, "A man on the right flank on a phalanx attacked by an enemy on that flank cannot use his shield to protect himself", or "a warhorse weighed down by heavy barding cannot turn on a coin at the end of a full gallop" (so there) and similar caveats.

You 'll still have a lot of controversy in your hands, of course, but that's the fun part of strategy games, innit? I mean, I posit that Cataphracts could have been just as efficient as western knights of the late middle ages; you say, poppycock. We have some fun discussing the matter. But it does detract from the game, so you 'll have to explain where you are making assumptions or educated guesses and where you are following the scientific consensus. I 'm assuming of course, you 'll actually make a rules document, instead of letting each GM make their own rules. Yes? No?

In any case, I think this will work best with players who already have an interest in tactics, you know, the kind that would sit around a table and discuss whether a Landsknecht with a zweihander would beat the crap out of a highlander with a Claymore, or not, even if they weren't playing a formalised game. On the other hand that's why I think you need a physics engine.

Anyway, great idea. Why didn't I think of it first? Heh.

[Aaron Blain]

Thanks again for your replies. Real life has severely reduced my internet access lately.

Your sequence of replies has nearly explained things for me, actually.

Simon: This is getting at the heart of what I'm going for: nearly total freeform, but limiting the Narrator's power in certain specific ways. A friend and I discussed the notion of freeform strategy gaming, and I quickly deduced that it would degenerate into precisely what you have said, "guess the GM."

- The real core of it is the incredibly broad strokes of the measurement system. A given assignment of a value should be obvious to everyone most of the time. One is unarmored, Five is a cataphract. The NR's job is to decide whether a legionary counts as a Four or Five. When his decision annoys some of the other players, one point shouldn't be an earth-shattering thing.

- The NR is always at the mercy of his own precedent, so it is in his best interest to judge as fairly as possible.

- A limited initiative system exists in order to prevent filibusters. For example, in an ancient setting, I'll generally allow a character to do something with his arms, something with his legs, and something with his head before he loses the initiative. This won't work at all unless a player is forced to choose the fewest, best things for his character to do.

- Quincy is the name of the game. You can pile on bonuses and penalties all night, but you're never going above five or below one. The immediacy of the digital representation and the endcaps of the values are crucial to keeping things slick.

- I am also working on a way to limit the NR's veto power. I'm going with a slightly Poolish solution here. Normally, the player will say things like, "I grapple him with my superior strength in order to pull him away from the ship's helm." Depending on how feasible and appropriate the NR thinks that is, he can assign a one point bonus or penalty. However, it is always possible for the players to say, "I chop the melon in order to dismantle the Roman empire." The NR can assign a one point penalty, for free, to the character's melon-chopping skill, and he can spend his "GM luck" as a way of saying, "please don't do this", and he always has the option to posit a horrendous risk, and he can offer a different goal with different modifiers and risks, but if the player sticks to his guns, the empire is kaput. I am hoping that giving this deadly power to all the players will persuade the group to respect it. Everyone has the experience of being frustrated by a perverse GM, and I think no one really wants to be that fun-destroying force. However, what I lack is a good mechanic for the NR gaining luck. Possibly just a point or two each session per player, but I'd like something a little more dynamic than that.

- You're starting to hit on what I really want. I WANT it to get repetetive. Do pawns move sideways on Thursday? No! If we have a very good idea of exactly what is going to happen, we can plan ahead. For example, take any really good western. Watch the climactic fight, such as in Once Upon a Time in The West, or GB&U ON MUTE. What happens? Some guys are walking around, looking at each other, looking around. One brushes something off his shoe. Deedley-doo. Now, rewind, and turn up the volume. The music is ROARING. Why? Because there is a titanic invisible battle being waged. Each man is intently watching his opponent, guessing his intentions, watching his eyes and his every gesture. "If I do this, he'll do that, but then I'll do this, and he'll do that, but what if he does this, and I do that? If I turn my head just so, maybe I can bait him, and then maybe he'll . . ." whole avenues of action are created and cut off every moment, and when the bullets start flying, the outcome has already been decided.

- About that dragon technique canceling out high ground : Well, the body of precedent is absolutely sacred to everyone. If a player says, "I use my superior intelligence to figure out that flanking is in fact a terrible idea," the game explodes, and we all go home.

- And finally to the last reply, that's exactly why I titled this thread the way I did. "Emergent Game/Sim." I'm not looking to design a fighting-game engine. I'm looking to perfect a procedure that will allow me to form a fighting-game engine as I go along. I have my own ideas about whether a samurai could beat a highlander with a basket-hilt and a targe, but I'm not trying to deal with that right now. I want to have a satisfying, consistent way of dealing with stuff like that when I run a game in the English Civil War, and one guy wants to be a friggin Ronin. I am absolutely not going to make a rules document. If anything, this is is just a "meta-ruleset" for each group figuring out their own "fighting engine." Catch my drift?

Thanks again.

[Aaron Blain]

On further reflection, I want to add a little better response to that last reply.

The goal of a Quincy player in a given task+conflict resolution is to create a particular game fact, which does not contain inherent mechanical task-resolution data. It is, so far, what the Forge vets call, "color", an agreed-upon fact that decorates the imaginary space. "The tapestry is partially torn." When we go to resolve a task, the players can nominate such facts to become mechanical modifiers in the task. "He grabs the tapestry to pull himself up." "But the tapestry is partially torn." "Ah, the tapestry rips and he falls down."

This is a fundamentally fluid paradigm for relating game facts to mechanical modifiers. In your standard "pure game" sim game, there is a finite, one-to-one relation between game facts and their mechanical effects, to a degree that the details of the imagined gameworld become mere icons. "His horse is tired" means -2 to movement speed. And that's ALL it means! I hate that to death, and it has ruined my gaming fun countless times.

What I am trying to do is to make the correlation between game facts and mechanical data the reponsibility of the gaming group, arbitrated by the Narrator. Of course, this means that my system might be utilized, much to my horror, by gaming groups with entirely inferior understanding, playing in games of horrifying ridiculousness. Oh well. I feel like the purpose of all these competing rule tomes is to prevent individual gaming groups from playing "inaccurately". So what if they do? I know there are hardcore historians that would be outraged over the inconsistencies I'll perpetrate in my games. Big deal. What's important is that it makes sense to everyone in the room.

Now, it's quite an interesting concept, what you're talking about, a "gaming engine" that exists apart from abstract math. I agree with you, and it's exactly what I'm going for. So many times my friends and I have been infuriated. "No, he's a veteran, he has the terrain advantage, the element of surprise, and his equipment is tailored to the enemy's weakness! He should just win! Stupid dee-twenty!" But if you try to nail that down, to prevent the horror of inaccurate gameplay, to control people you'll never meet, you're going to end up with a flowchart the size of Ganesha's trousers. "Pikeman beats horseman from the front unless he's wearing sandals and had gruel for breakfast, except on tuesdays after a hard rain in July . . ." I want a system that will gradually form such a flowchart as the game is played.

I personally plan to have lots of large-scale battles, but it will be using something like those colored boats. My problem with hard rules is that they pretend to cover every eventuality, when obviously they don't. I want to admit an infinity of possibilities at the outset, at every moment of gameplay. That's the beauty of tabletop games. A computer game has no choice but to be utterly objective, but the gameplay will always be "multiple choice". I feel the admission of human subjectivity is a worthwhile risk for the infinity of gameplay it will allow.

By the way, I know several people who love Hackmaster. I don't know anyone who has ever played it. I don't want to bash the game (actually, I'm hoping to try it sometime soon), but it's the perfect example of a ruleset trying to take the place of live human arbitration. "The rules say you're dead -- it's not on my hands. chum." Even if it does work, it's obviously not very efficient.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Catch my drift?

Hehe, absolutely.

I hadn't seen what you were trying to do there, with the "emergent" part of the game. I think it's a beautiful idea and one I haven't seen done before. Despite what you say I think it is a step ahead, definitely for wargames if not for RPGs. Wargaming needs to evolve at some point (Ok, this is roleplaying, but bear with me) and this is the direction I would like to see things heading towards, as opposed to going gradually back to having to roll on sixteen tables to resolve half a combat.

I 'd still like to see a base engine of sorts already in place before the game begins, but it doesn't have to be used to resolve particular situations. Rather you can have it in place as a guide to judge new situations as they arise and set the relevant precedent. A rule like "fatigue decreases performance", basic like that. OK, you do understand that it's just my version of your vision and I had to say it, so let's move on.

Also I agree with your prediction: if you let your players have free reign, they will do whatever they like. But as you say, so what? If they 're having fun... the grognards are going to do what they do best anyway -whinge- (and it's not like the proponents of historical "accuracy" don't try to make it work to their advantage first...)

On the other hand, the games I 've seen where the players go out of control, tend to end a bit like that Pinky and the Brain episode. Brain makes a gun that turns him and Pinky into titans, but then, by accident, the gun fires on the whole world and magnifies everything else too, so Pinky and the Brain are tiny again. It does render the game pointless after a while, but if a group is smart enough (being smart is compatible with being a munchkin) they will soon realise that they 'll have more fun if they exercise self-restraint than otherwise.

So if I got it correctly this time around, your game would turn into a complete information type game. After a while, all or most of the cards would be on the table and only a few unknown situations would arise each session, which would then become part of the precedents. That means that in the end, to outplay each other, the players will have to think like chess masters. Well, that's bloody cool.

There was an episode from a TV series, don't remember which, where someone visits a school for wizkids and sees some sitting around a table, looking really intense, but not doing anything obvious. He asks them "what are you doing?" and they tell him "we 're playing chess". "But there's no board" he says. "We 're keeping it all in our minds" they answer. "Wow, that's really hard, you must be really clever". Then one of the kids points at another table with kids seemingly staring at the bare surface and goes "that's nothing, you see those guys there? They 're playing monopoly."

About your agenda, I think tactical thinking mixes with campfire stories just fine. What would you imagine Alexander Ceasar and Napoleon talking about around a campfire? Recounting great deeds would soon just be an excuse for them to match wits and see who really is the best general. Before long they would start launching tactical riddles at each other and trying to outsmart each other "on paper". And it would work because generals like them would know "what goes" because they wrote the bloody book!

I 'm not very familiar with the GNS and the Big Model and I 'm not sold on them yet, but if I understand some of it correctly, then your game would actually be an agenda blend. Narration as simulation, so, a kind of accurate narration. Or not?

Anyway, it's a very interesting idea. I 'm looking forward to a release of some sort from you. I would like to say that I 'll get one of my playgroups to try it out, but the role players are a bit too stuck on D&D (couldn't even get them to try bloody Vampire!) and the wargamers are too hung up on Warhammer... but there's always hope for them I think.

[Aaron Blain]

If you're reading this, Ron, I apologize for letting this slip to the second page. I won't make it a habit. I'm hoping my next thread will be in Playtesting.

You've absolutely nailed it, Queeney! I'm planning for the game to start out somewhat awkward for first-time players, but then quickly pick up speed. Any new setting would carry over relevant precedents, although the relativity factor would throw all the assigned values out of whack. (I would call segmentata a 4, but when the Chaos Legion shows up, it becomes a 2).

I think perhaps the whole point of this thread was to see if this idea made sense to anyone other than myself.

I haven't mentioned the specific rules yet (there are just a few) because the issue that concerns me most for my first playtest is authorship negotiation.

I just composed a great big post, then have stumbled onto an idea (thanks, Forge!) that made it unnecessary : rules-arbitration will follow the authority paradigm of republican Rome. During wartime (play) the Dictator (perhaps that's what I'll call the "player-in-chief") will have arbitrary power, and is committed to a particular decision for the rest of the session (if sun-in-eyes affects one resolution, it behaves identically for the rest of the night). During peacetime, lawmaking is democratic. All players can raise an issue (whether encountered in play or not), which will be put to a vote, and then stamped into the stone Table of Roman Law, which the Dictator must honor. Eh? Eh? Sounds pretty snazzy to me.

Oh, and to mention some of those specific rules: most stuff I'll take for granted across settings where the players control one homo sapien. The resources are STR/DEX/WIT - effort expenditure, reflexes and focus allocation which are spent and regained in the usual ways. STR adds to one value for one contest, DEX allows one extra action, WIT is bonus points allocated either to a particular skill for all actions, or to a particular target for all reactions. The on-the-fly skill system is a simple zero-sum principle. You are mediocre (2) at EVERYTHING, and when a new task comes along, you can decide to be good (3) at it, but then you have to pick something to be bad (1) at. Or bad at two things to be excellent (4), etc., and never ever anything below one or above five. The GM keeps a note of your strengths and weaknesses, and uses them to design challenges for you. So it behooves you to have weaknesses where your friends have strengths (I.e. a legendary swordsman who is terrible at starship repair might be in for a rough surprise).

All my friends are coming back from vacation, so I hope to try this within a few weeks.

[Aaron Blain]

P.S. I also meant to mention that you are again very closely guessing my intent, with your image of Caesar et al around the campfire: I want to get wargaming closer to the original form practiced by Frederick, where dice were sometimes used to represent unpredictable, uncontrollable factors, but decisions were usually just arbitrated by a veteran. Problem is, we're fresh out of veterans, but everyone thinks he's an expert.

My Warhammer friend almost romanced me into the game with visions of how a properly-constructed IG army could use Napoleonic tactics. But I just can't swallow the rules of that game, for Napoleonics or for post-linear squad tactics or anything at all. (The movement and initiative rules really get me, for starters . . .) This contributed to my taking a fundamentally different approach.

I seem to remember something like that anecdote on The Simpsons. I was thinking of the same sort of thing, actually.

[Myrmidon]

Reading your description of the interplay of arguments for the effectiveness of each side's action and preparation, I wonder if you could make any use of the way a Engel Matrix Game works.  There are a lot of variants that can be played.  But it's basic nature is that the Judge (e.g. your Narrator) establishes elements of the setting and scene .  Players make a single argument, with one or more supporting facts, for a round.  The Judge assigns a Strength to the argument based on the plausibility of the argument and weighing preceding successful arguments that it builds on as well as setting appropriate factors.  Players can make arguments independent of each other or make an argument in reaction to another players ("Yes, And", "Yes, But"; "No, Actually").  When all players have made an argument, each is rolled against its strength to determine which have succeed.  Successful arguments become facts that can be used as support future arguments.

http://www.io.com/~hamster/englematrixgames.html

Here's some other links that illustrate uses of engle matrix games:
http://www.mapsymbs.com/wdmatrix.html
http://www.onr.com/user/bturner/far_colony/fc_setup.html
http://www.balagan.org.uk/war/dbx/dba_a_load_of_gauls.htm
http://www.soa.org.uk/resource/rules/pbom.htm

By their nature Engel Matrix Games are very portable, and could be a useful model for some of what you are trying to accomplish (if I understand correctly your intention).

[Aaron Blain]

I find those profoundly sexy. Thanks. I'd studied a bunch of "small" games for guidance, but hadn't found this one yet. I know several people who would have more fun with those than what they normally do.

EMG is the nearest of anything I've seen to what I want to play. Looking at it has indeed helped me to further refine my intention. I like thinking of conflict resolution as a series of arguments vying for existance (I've phrased and re-phrased similar thoughts many times in provisional drafts).

EMG revolves around two elements I specifically want to eliminate: whim and chance. My original idea for Quincy was something like, "What if I played 1e L5R, but removed all dice-rolling, substituting a flat five points per die? What if I played a game whose resolution was 'all bonuses'?" I can't have a game that is "all bonuses" unless there is a consistent framework for their valuation. It always bugged me that difficulty ratings were often left to the GM's judgement. I worked through three significant paradigm shifts of game design looking for a specific procedure for assigning mechanical values, eventually realizing that if the valuation of a given factor is inflexible and consistent enough (i.e. when we meet Conan in Quincy, no one has to stop to ask what his swordfighting skill is), then dice are not necessary. I am a born-again karma fanatic.

In DnD, there is a very specific, wholly objective procedure for assigning core mechanical values (THAC0, etc.), but an almost entirely whimsical non-procedure for assigning newly-encountered values and modifiers to either kind. (20 = "hard"). What I want is a rather specific, largely objective procedure for assigning all mechanical values and modifiers. Old-school games rely on dice here. New-school games rely primarily on personal whim or "drama". I am looking for a procedure more generalized than "10 (DEX-10)/2 + Armor + Deflection . . . = AC" but more objective than "That sounds pretty cool."

I have decided to call him the Dictator after all. I initially imagined the primary role of the "special player" to be the nearly unregulated source of new game facts. The "Narrator" sets the scene, directs the supporting cast, etc. Through this discussion, I have decided that the primary purpose of this "special player" is to make judgement calls. The "furnishing" of the SIS is actually much more of a dialogue. The Dictator sets a very basic scene, and the other players allocate their character's focus points in anticipation of potential conflicts. "He goes to speak to the bartender, keeping an eye on the dame in the corner booth." That's one point of focus on each of them (emphatic language would imply two or more points of focus on one target). The character is paying attention to these two things, and the Dictator is now specifically prompted to supply details for those things. It's a specific, recurring, active process in place of the usual "The DM says some stuff".

The description of task resolution, too, is largely delegated. The Dictator will be more generous toward modifier nominations that are presented in a supportive manner. In their endless jockeying for position, the whole group will strain to make every sword-swipe burst with vivid color.

D : "Telamonian Aias stoops and hefts a great boulder, hurling it at Hektor, hoping to crush the life out of him."
P1 : "Aias' hands are still covered in blood from the man he has just killed in close quarters."
D : "And his slippery fingers can't find quite the purchase he expected."
P2 : "Hektor's horses are unnerved by the closeness of the melee, and his chariot is shaking."
P3 : "Poseidon is smiling on the Achaians today."

etc. etc. etc. It's not as if the DM is a video game and the players are just pressing buttons to make stuff come out of him. [Sudden idea -- if a nomination gets the dictator's blessing, he will indicate it by finishing the thought. If he's not convinced, he'll shrug or shake his head. If it's good, but not good enough for a modifier all by itself, he'll nod. When enough has accrued to count for a point, he'll synthesize everything into a reply. O Forge, how I love you.]

I don't have any plans for a rule to cut this procedure short. I want the game to progress with fewer, more vivid contests. One swipe of a sword is a negligible event in DnD. It is a pretty big deal in 1e L5R. In Quincy, I want it to be a TITANIC life-changing event. I don't want endless Errol Flynn sword-slapping -- I want the duel in the field near the beginning of Seven Samurai. The fight lasts a few seconds, there's only one blow, and most of the time is spent gauging the opponent. There is some concern that this open-ended jockeying for position could lead to game-stalling filibusters. I think it will be kept in check by three factors. 1. Precedent tells the player, with certainty, before he opens his mouth, if a particular factor definitely will or definitely will not affect the outcome. 2. Infinite detail can always be supplied, but in a given situation, the returns for added detail will always quickly diminish into negligibility. When you're down to "He has a hangnail, and he's irritated because Nasdaq is down three points." it's obvious to everyone you've got nothing left. (I am concerned that players will use this as a tactic to "buy time to think of something better") 3. Conjecture is never allowed. Only game facts that have come from the Dictator's mouth, either freely or won through conflict resolution, can be nominated for bonus/penalty status. You can say, "Maybe he just happens to have catastrophic diarrheah this morning," and he'll get a penalty, but you have to spend a point of luck. Concerns or suggestions about this whole business?

Some things I have realized:
- I need to outline specific taboos for all players regarding their scope of influence, which the Dictator does not have to spend resources to forbid (affecting other PC's, disregarding the initiative limitations, that sort of thing)
- I need a crystal clear procedure for task/conflict negotiation ("You can achieve your goal with a penalty or my substitute goal with a bonus", etc.)
- A short, platonic example game will be crucial reading for a new player.

This has been really helpful so far. I'm feeling better and better about giving this a test run. Thanks, guys.