Fractayle: The Collision of Worlds

[fractayle]

Hi everyone,

I am old to gaming, but new to this forum...so I hope that I do not post this in the wrong section or topic etc.

I have (for the last 6 months) been developing a new role-playing game and a new two worlds/settings (sci-fi and fantasy) for the game to work in.

All details can be found at: http://www.fractayle.com

For those that have the time and are interested please have a look at the site and give me feedback:

1.) Do you like the site?
2.) Do you like the rules and do they appear to work for you (you could be play testing them or just reading them and thinking about it)?
3.) Do you like the world(s)?

As I assume that most people on this forum are mature role-players I would greatly appreciate any and all comments and ideas on the site, the game, the rules, and the world.  Furthermore, I have installed a forum on the website, thus if all comments and suggestions could be directed to that forum I would greatly appreciate it (this is because I am post this question across many different forums all around the world and expect to get many different response.  I am trying to centralise these responses for my own ease of answering and responding to them).

Thank you for reading this!

Kind regards,
The Bard

[hix]

It's cool to see a rotating GM role embedded into the game through the Bardic stat. Using it to determine who has authority in the next scene is very interesting indeed.

What stage of development is Fractayle at? Have you playtested it? Have other groups (that you're not a part of) playtested it? How interested are you in people at the Forge taking apart the rules and seeing what makes them tick or suggesting changes?

Also, I have two questions after looking at the conflicts in the example of play:

1) Does anything interesting happen (in the story) if a PC fails a roll?
2) My skimread of the rules suggested that players initiate conflicts if they disagree with the GM, but the example shows the GM initiating conflicts. Am I misreading this?

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The site looks good, and I appreciate the hyperlinks to specialised concepts.

Great work getting the game this far along!

[fractayle]

Hi Hix,

Thanks for taking the time to look at my site and read the rules.

Fractayle at the moment is sitting on the web in a (basically) first-draft stage.  I haven't completed all the material for it yet, but the rules are finished.  What I still need to add is more color to the world and I still need to re-re-reread it all to remove mistakes and tie in concepts better and make sure the material is not conflicting.  Fractayle has not been play tested yet, although I would l love to have tried it out by now...unfortunately I (and my local friends) have not had time yet.

So....if anyone wants to play test it with their group I would really appreciate feedback on this!  Basically, Fractayle really needs you guys at the Forge to take apart the rules (or the lack thereof) and give the game a bash (please try out the world too!) and lmk how it goes?

To answer you questions:

1) If a PC fails a roll then it is the Bard that determines the outcome of that failed roll.  It depends on the playing style of the group when this outcome is communicated:  he might say before or after the dice is rolled what will happen if the character fails it.  But, when there is conflict it all comes down to the Bard for the casting vote...unless Bardic rolls are used against him and the Bard changes.

2) I assume you are talking about the example of play found at http://www.fractayle.com/examples.htm where Karel tries to make a hole appear in the starship when Lilian fails her spell roll.  Lilian and Alex combine Bardic and challenge this successfully and decide that the hull of the ship begins to melt slowly rather (hence giving them time to get away).  I might be misunderstanding your question...but the player have challenged the Bard here.  So, the players are initiating conflict due to a disagreement with the Bard that gets settled with dice and play continues in a different direction.  Have I answered this question correctly...?

Thanks for the feedback again!

Kind regards,
The Bard

[hix]

No worries, Fractayle, and welcome to the Forge, by the way!

My "who initiates conflicts" question is probably a minor issue. I'll clarify what I mean in a minute. My big question is about the 'Bardic' ability.

Is there any reason why players shouldn't initiate Bardic conflicts all the time? Whenever the GM provides adversity, players could technically just make a Bardic challenge, right? I mean, I know that wouldn't lead to a fun game, but I'm just trying to clarify whether there's something I'm missing.

(One idea that occurs to me is, for example, that when you win a Bardic challenge, your Bardic score is reduced (making you less likely to win future challenges).)

Also, you've obviously made a deliberate choice to alternate play between the story-based/'can I control the story' level and the character-based /'can my character do this' level. To me, the story-based stuff seems to encapsulate the character-based stuff. I'm interested in why you decided to not just have the Bardic stat & scrap everything else.

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My question about who initiates conflicts was actually based on a misreading of the rules. In the section on Bardic, you write:

During any scene in which the current Bard tells a part of the tale in a way which any other player or any group of players disagree with they may challenge the just vocalized segment of the tale ...

Let's call those 'story-based conflicts'. When I was reading the example you link to above, I thought the same applied to 'character-based conflicts' too. By 'character-based', I mean normal sort of stuff like "I hit him with the sword", "I try to hack into the ship's computer."

I wondered whether this was a game (like The Pool) where the GM can just throw adversity and challenge at the players, and the players actually have to initiate the conflicts in order to get things to really go their way.

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One last thought - we tend to use real names on the Forge. Mine's Steve.

[fractayle]

Hi Steve (sorry about the names...still learning the rules of this forum),

Fractayle is aimed at mature role-players who understand that there is no "winning" in a role-playing game.  The unfolding of the tale and the interaction of imaginations are the true components of fun and (upon this assumption) I have tried to build Fractayle.

I do realize that a player with a weak physical attribute could use their bardic to prevent a roll (i.e. change the last decision of the Bard) instead of using their physical attribute...but don't forget that players can combine Bardic rolls.

In this case I have the following logic that explains why I believe Bardic will work effectively*:

1.) If all the players combine against the Bard (and he will probably loose) then they are all either attempting to "win" or they truly disagree with the decision by the Bard.  In the case of the latter then the Bardic mechanism is working as intended.  In the former with all the players trying to "win" the group as a whole will end up simply telling the tale they want to hear while ignoring character attributes...and having fun.  Thus, I feel, in both cases the Bardic mechanism has provided an auto-adjust to satisfy all and every group's needs.
2.) The only other alternative that I can think of is that only the one player tries to use his Bardic to help his own character.  He might pull this off once or twice, but eventually the group will see this for what it is and begin to lump their Bardic rolls with that of the current Bard and against that lone player. (Remember that it is not always simply players versus Bard...but can and should often be mixed)  In this way they will simply disallow the player from using this technique of avoidance and force his character to begin making the rolls.  In this second alternative Bardic once again produces a result which seems to work.

[*Note that when I say "effective" above I mean that the point of gaming is to have fun.  People have fun doing what they want to do (i.e. they know better how they will have fun than I do about themselves).  And by creating a mechanism (Bardic) that adjusts to all playing styles within the context of a game I believe that people should have fun]

You are right in noting that I decided to alternate play between story-based (Bardic) and character-based ('can I hit that') play, but if I scrapped everything except Bardic then I would take away the personality (scores and numbers that hold strong psychological value for humans) of each character.  People tend to need a loose framework to operate in, even if there is significant freedom within that framework.  If I were remove the character-side of Fractayle then I wouldn't even both about Bardic at all (as all players would have the same Bardic score anyway) and make a simple "tayles" based (narrative) game where people discuss the world and events.  You will notice that when creating a character the player has a set number of points to allocate to his three "character" attributes and to Bardic.  In this way the "strong" characters will have less "say" in the story, but be better able to handle any rolls thrown at them.

Once again you might get groups that are very into the character-side of the game and tend to almost never use Bardic, while some groups might be into the story-side of the game and use a lot of Bardic rolls while not really ever rolling for their characters.  The important thing, I believe, is that for the first group Bardic exists and, for the second group, that character attributes exist.  In both cases the mere existence of the "other-side" will help the game psychologically by adding the "risk" element that "things might just flow", i.e. the story cannot just wander in any direction and a character might actually have to roll against something.

I have taken your point about dropping Bardic by a point (using it up) each time it is used...but this has two problems:

1) The game might reach a point where no one has any Bardic...what then?
2) The game might reach a point where only one character has Bardic...and can then do whatever they want without being challenged.

Thanks a lot for the input, Steve, I am finding this very-very useful.

Kind regards,
Keith

[hix]

Hi Keith,

I notice that you are looking for playtesters. That's a good next step. However, looking at the information on your web site, and how you've presented the game here, it strikes me that you might also want to work on a grabbier pitch for the game - to give people a reason to check it out.

Here's what you've got on your website so far:

Sci-fi and fantasy merge into a seamless whole in a perfectly scalable world and dynamic rules framework that allows gaming groups to play what they want and how they want.  Be it a fantasy, sci-fi, horror, gothic, or fusion campaign the experience is guided by a dynamic rules framework which automatically adapts to accommodate a Game Masterless environment through a multifarious and exhilarating multi-dimensional megaverse and multiple realities.

And beyond all words and legends at the shadowy heart of each Fractayle always lies the ancient and mysterious Passage and how it connects two realities of infinite differences in a collision of two worlds.

When I read this, I see:

-- multiple genres
-- no GM (when what you actually mean is a 'rotating GM')
-- the clash between two worlds.

Of all of those, the collision between two worlds seems the most interesting.  It's even the subtitle of your game!

Given that you've already got a playtest draft together, I'd suggest taking a crack at answering Jared Sorenson's Big Three questions about your game:

1. What is your game about?

2. How is your game about that?

3. How does your game enforce/reinforce what it's about?

That should give us some stuff to work with in creating a pitch. If you're not familiar with this, check out Troy Costisick's blog for further explanation about these questions (and you might find the link there to the Big Three interesting too).

[fractayle]

Hi Steve,

Hmmm...some good advice...

Well, I've had a relook at my front page and the link to Socratic Design was very useful for background reading.  I found the big three questions http://socratesrpg.blogspot.com/2005/12/what-are-big-three.html to be the most useful, but I'll also try to address the "little" three.

I thought long and hard about it Fractalye's answers to the 3 questions are the following:

1.) What is your game about?  Fractayle is about telling a tale.  A group tale with twists and turns and surprises, wonders and horrors and adventure and intruige...but, when it comes down to it, Fractayle is about telling a tale.

2.) What do the players do?  The players become the rules, the world, and the characters and develop a personal gaming system dedicated to their group.  No two groups will run the same (or even similar) Fractayle campaigns.  Through the players interaction with the Bardic mechanic the tale (see #1 above) comes alive via the intersection of the rules, the world, and the characters.  If I had to put this into one single sentence it would be this: Fractayle is about telling a tale and the players are the taletellers/Bards.

3.) What do the characters do?  This was actually the hardest question to answer, as my first thought was that this varies from group to group and depends on each player.  Thinking some more, though, I see that the concept of the "tayle" is central to Fractayle.  So, when the game is broken down to this concept the role of the characters becomes clear: the characters are the psychological connection between the player and the tale.  The characters act as main characters in the tale.  Furthermore, when looking at the various worlds (i.e Far World and Realms of Wonder) you can see that each world is in a critical stage of history and conflict and change is widespread due to the opening of the Passage and the collision of the two radically different worlds into each other.  There are many different factions, races, and sides for a character to choose and this will dictate (in a micro way) what the character will do.  It will influence the characters motivation.  The motivation will drive the player's choices as the Bard.  And the tale will progress by being told, and it will be told as the average route of all the players' character's motivations through the rotating Bard.

In this way, I believe, all three questions interact to produce the Fractayle gaming effect.

To answer the little three questions is simply a derivative of the above answers:

1.) What is your game about? Telling tales.

2.) How is your game about that? Through the use of a rotating GM, a rules light personalised world, and the intersection of rules, world, and characters by the Bardic mechanism that encourages groups to tell tales that they want to hear.

3.) How does your game enforce/reinforce what it's about?  Bardic.

This was a good exercise, thanks for the link and advice, Steve!

I will look into adapting my front-page summary....

Kind regards,
Keith

[hix]

Thanks for the answers Keith.

Personally, I reckon it'd be good for you to go deeper than that in your answers.  For instance:

-- You could describe most games as being about telling a tale.  What makes tales in your game different from other games?

-- "About" is deeper than a brief description of the end result of the game.  It's the reason why you would want play, and what you expect to get out of playing.  It's the conflict, the meat, the vital, beating heart of your game.

-- What are the top 5 duties of the real-life players at the table when they are playing Fractayle?

-- I did quite like your answer to what the characters do. Can you specify what role they would play in the future setting, the fantasy setting, and the clash between the two? By role, I don't just mean their character class, or position in society - I mean what does the game expect them to do when they are confronted with situations and conflict?

-- "Bardic" is not a sufficient answer to how your game enforces or rewards what it's about.  Perhaps you could explain how it enforces or rewards. 

-- There's a whole body of thought here at the Forge about reward systems and currency. I don't have time to search for links at the moment (hopefully someone will point out a few choice threads), but I'm really interested in if (and how) characters change, and whether players gain the ability to affect the fictional world.

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I also think it would be very useful if you could provide a .pdf for page on your web site that combines all rules into one spot.  That would make it easy for interested people to read it.

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Here's how I would reduce your pitch, above:

It's the collision of two worlds.  One science-fiction, and one fantasy. Play characters from both trying to [ ... I don't know what, yet].  Compete to be the game master in each scene, and adjust the rules to suit your group.

That's boiling down what you provided above.  I also recommend checking out this thread at Story Games, where people pitched each other's games. It might give you some ideas.

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I'm going to be working for the next three days, so I won't be able to contribute to the thread.  Hope this gives you stuff to chew on, and isn't too challenging.  I just feel you need to dig deeper, to communicate to a wider audience what your game is really about.

[fractayle]

Hi Steve,

The link was very interesting, thank you.

I'm going to have to think more on the questions you are posing, so I'm not going to answer them just yet.  What I have come up with for the moment is the following pitch that I have placed now on the front page.  It is derived from your pitch, my views, and reading and thinking about the game in light of your questions.

"Play in tales of magick and sci-fi as two worlds collide in Fractayle where characters fight for a place in the changing megaverse while their players compete to be the Bard of each scene creating the world and the rules as the Tayle is told."

I'm not sure if this is going to be my final pitch, but it is a definite improvement from the more theoretical one (that is now sitting below it as a further explanation).

When I have some more time I will put all the rules into a single (or as few as possible) .pdf file.  Its a good idea and I have been planning to do it for a while...just wanted to finalise the rules and world (cause I want to include a mind-map to the worlds in it too) before dedicating a pdf to it.

I hope work goes well and thanks again for your input, Steve.

Oh, i've added a forum to the site (I might have mentioned this) so that as people develop personalised rules etc and/or come up with story developments for the world they can post it here and allow everyone to see..thus growing the world and rules organically.  (see http://www.fractayle.com/forum/index.php)

Does anyone else have any thoughts they could share with me..?  I'm very eager to hear people's opinions on the setting (both the Far World and the Realms of Wonder), as I've put a lot of effort into these two worlds trying to build up enough of a setting that people can start playing without needing to prepare (beyond reading the settings), but leave it loose enough for them to fill in their particular group's details.

Kind regards,
Keith

[fractayle]

I was contemplating character progression and I've come up with a wonderful idea for character progression that hinges around both the Bardic mechanism and the three attributes.

For the sake of saving space I won't post the text here, rather follow this link: http://www.fractayle.com/tech&magick.htm

Kind regards,
Keith

[hix]

I've been thinking about your settings, Keith.  You've got two realms, one fantasy and one science fiction, and an intersection between them.

Could you summarise the main conflicts in each realm?
Could you summarise the ways each realm is affecting the other?
Could you summarise the main conflicts between the two realms?

I suspect that the meat of your game is in the conflict between the two realms.  I further suspect that the strongest PCs are going to be people who are caught between realms.  People who are:

-- defending one realm from the other
-- trying to make sure the two realms amalgamate smoothly
-- caught in a situation they don't understand, one that involves this mysterious new realm invading their universe
-- trying to take advantage of the changing situation
-- ... doing something else that leads to a conflict.

A general aim of games that are baked (developed) here is to give players a clear idea of what to 'do' with your game when they start playing it.  Answers to the questions above should start give me and anyone else who is reading a handle on what we do in your game, and how your settings create situations for us to play.

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I have this quirk where I find it nearly impossible to read settings like the ones you've presented - but I have a friend who I think will absolutely geek out on this.  I'll point it in his direction and see if he wants to comment.

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All my questions about what your game is "about", above, were to allow us to make suggestions that are appropriate to your aims for the game.  Check out this conversation started by Fred Hicks (iago on The Forge, and driving blind on livejournal) for example of how this approach works.

[fractayle]

Hi Steve,

Before I answer your questions, let me explain the rationale behind having a sci-fi and fantasy setting. Initially I wanted a game that anyone could play and anyone could find a point that they could love.  Thus, I wanted to make a sci-fi world for those that played sci-fi, and make a fantasy one for those into magick etc.  In this way I could capture both markets.

The next step in my thoughts led me to realize that some people would like to play a fusion (i.e. sci-fi and fantasy) game.  To do this I would have to either combine both the worlds (and alienate those that wanted to play a "pure" fantasy or "pure" sci-fi game) or find a way of making the worlds fusion "customizable".

Enter the Passage...

With the Passage (and the fact that it had only recently been opened) I now had a mega-setting with two separate but connected worlds.  This connection and the fact that it was recent gives players the ability to choose the level of fusion between sci-fi and fantasy that they want.  This, once again, adds to the dynamic-theme of Fractayle and Bardic.  It would be just as easy for a group to play a purely fantasy campaign set in the Icy Wastes with blood-thirsty barbarians or a purely sci-fi setting of a Deep Web runners hacking media-pods and dodging the law as it would be to run a fusion campaign with survivors of the Pendragon's fall battling it out in the City of Aur against the Imperial Kingdom guards or...really...any other excuse for a fusion.

For this reason I built

I chose the title "Collision of Worlds" as a greater metaphor with a number of meanings.

• Firstly, the sci-fi and fantasy worlds are obviously colliding and all sorts of things can and will happen from this collision.
  Secondly, the bardic mechanism will lead to the collision of each player's personal world with each other player's personal world through the use of a collective imagination.
  Thirdly, within each world there are race's and organisations that differ significantly clashing.  Like the Hordes attacking the Imperial Kingdom, like the Moriati and the Rebel Factions turning against the Lunar Government....all of these involve a significant collision of "worlds", cultures, beliefs....and--probably--weapons.
  Finally, the setting actually has a "greater" Tayle that I (for now) will only call the Cycle.  I am going to write a novel based on this setting and its two worlds and a lot more will be revealed in this...much later...

I know I haven't answered your questions yet, Steve, but I am building the foundation for you to understand the way the Far World and the Realms of Wonder organically grew together and why.

The main conflict within the Realms of Wonder would be the Hordes attack into the Imperial Kingdom (physical) and the crumbling of the state religion due to the Passage opening (meta-physical).  Within the Far World the numerous rebellions against the corrupt Lunar Government and the distant movements of the Exiles abducting planets leads to the main conflict (physical) and the opening of the Passage leads to universal dissent over the Lunar Government (meta-physical).  Still...this is all too summarised, as there is so much more happening in each world...

I need to think more on the conflicts between the worlds, but I have decided to leave the language question blank: groups can decide whether both worlds can communicate easily or not/talk the same language.  My personal preference is that both worlds speak the same common tongue, but with vastly different accents.  This maintains the flow of the game, keeps the individuality of the different worlds, and makes it easy to spot an "outsider".

Thanks for the link, it was very interesting reading...and I would greatly appreciate you referring my site to your friend.  The more input and (positive) criticism of "Fractayle: The Collision of Worlds" I get the better rounded it will be!

Kind regards,
Keith