Western Game: Trying to Take the Next Step

[typo]

Being a big fan of the genre, I've long wanted to write a game based on TV and film Westerns.  Recently, I brainstormed up a concept for a non-historical Western-styled setting that I think would work extremely well as an RPG setting.  It's gotten me pretty inspired to start working on an actual game.

Unfortunately, I'm having trouble taking the first steps at the game itself. 

What I DO have is a basic concept / gimmick:  I want the gameplay to mimic playing poker, including betting, bluffing, chips, and various hands.  I want to immerse the players in that great Western cliche from the outset, and I think the popularity of poker will help tempt people to give it a try.

I simply can't come up with any great mechanics to make it work.  For what it's worth, I don't really want to make a GM-less game, and I want the PCs to be heroic characters (the game will hopefully promote a "Magnificent Seven"-ish group dynamic).  I've had a few ideas, but nothing really jumps out and says, "Hey, THIS would be a fun and effective system!"  I think the biggest setback is that I can't really figure out ways to make the players compete mechanically without necessarily making the characters compete.

If anybody has any little ideas or advice, I'd love to hear 'em.  I really want to get over this roadblock, but I know I'm biting off a lot trying this.

[JohnG]

You may want to take a look at Deadlands as the system is heavily influenced by poker.  Perhaps for now the best idea for you is to work out a simple system to work with and add the gimmicks later for that poker influence.  If you focus too hard on how to fit the poker theme into the system you suddenly lose sight of the fact that you've got no place to put them lol!

[Simon C]

I'm always a bit reluctant to jump in to suggest games that do what a new design's trying to accomplish.  I don't want to come accross as telling you that what you're doing isn't interesting in of itself, or that it's been done before.

That said "Dust Devils" is a western game that uses cards and poker chips for resolution, and it does so very successfully.  Checking out what Dust Devils does, and working out how you want to do things differently could be a good step for your design.

I think you're onto a good thing wanting to reproduce a "Magnificent Seven" kind of dynamic in play.  It's good to have a clear idea of the kind of story you want to tell, and that's some exciting stuff to do in an RPG.  The major hitch for me in that kind of game is that every single person wants to play a surly loner who's only in it for the money.  Trying to make a game that's based on a party dynamic with a cast of characters like that can often lead to frustrated GMs and players.  What you need is a way for people to play characters who have conflicting motives, but manage to get along anyway.  Some good social conflict rules might be helpful for that, so that players can have their characters convinced to help out, without it turning into a gunfight every time.

I'm not sure how familar you are with theory terminology, but something that I think could be really important to your game is the concept of "stake setting".  Stake setting is how you decide the consequences of success or failure of a roll.  A lot of games have very weak stake setting rules, or leave it up to the GM - for example in D&D, if you fail a "Gather Information" roll, the text doesn't tell you what happens because of that.  I think it would be cool (and in keeping with the theme) if in your game the players could choose how to set their stakes, just like in poker.  They can raise "I find out where the Clanton gang is hiding" and then the GM can set the stakes at "you get beat up by the Sherrif for nosing into things that don't concern you".  The player considers their hand, and decides whether to lay down cards, or fold.

[Filip Luszczyk]

So, a few years ago our group wanted to play some fantasy western, and having no good system that would handle it (Deadlands or Gunslinger not being the best options for us), we got down to making our own game, surprise, based on Poker. We didn't move too far with the design back then, and now I can see that we've been approaching it in a rather problematic way. However, some time later I learned about Dust Devils, which is a western game that uses Poker mechanics in an apparently functional manner. You might want to take a look at it.

It doesn't mean Dust Devils is necessarily a solution for you, though.

What do you want the gaming experience to be like? Is it all about immersing the players in the atmosphere of Wild West or emulating the genre cliches? Or, maybe the group dynamic is more important - if so, how exactly would you like the dynamic to work, and why? Or, maybe there's something else?

As for the competition part, there certainly are ways to introduce the competition between players without having it between the characters. However, this would probably work best if this part of the rules concerned something different than in-fiction events. You could have the players competing for authority and narration, for spotlight, or for resources that could later be spent to affect fiction in general or the results of character's in-game actions.

What if, for example, each round of poker was an equivalent of a scene or an extended conflict, and the chips were a resource that the players and the GM could allocate among diferent aspects of in-game fiction? A number of chips could be allocated to achieving character's small-scale goals, others could be used to establish some facts etc. Maybe characters would have traits that determine the cost of achieving certain things (i.e. the lower shooting, the more you can shoot, the higher fast-talk, the less you can fast-talk). Then, after each such phase of allocation, things could happen and be narrated, and then the chips could go back into their owners' pools, and you could have some betting. This would change the amount of chips available for the next allocation, and ultimately some characters would loose their means influence in the scene. After a number of such allocation-narration-betting phases someone would win the round of poker, and he could spend the chips for final resolutions. Then, possibly the player (or GM) would have to distribute his winnings among the rest of the group, rewarding their input during the scene. That way, you'd have some competition as the players fight for spotlight and potential to do their things, but they would still have to deal with the GM-provided adversity and in the end, the group would benefit anyway as the chips are redistributed by the winner.

Also, one way you could try would be to write down whatever rules come to your mind and crash-testing it with your group. It certainly won't work effectively, but after such an initial tryout you should have a better grip of what you actually need. I've found that a single playtest, never mind how much of a trainwreck it is, gives me more food for thought than weeks of pondering the rules.

[Nathan W]

I can't add a lot that the other members haven't already said, but I like your idea in general.

I imagine a system where each significant encounter turns into a quick round of poker with the GM and each player involved vying for control of the outcome. Each player would have a pool of points, represented by chips, that they could wager to effect the story.

Example: Two PCs are held up by a couple of bandits.

Each player and the GM are dealt a hand.
Player 1 sees that he has a bad hand and folds right away. He's not going to risk any chips on this encounter.
Player 2 has a good hand so he adds a couple of chips to the pot and raises the stakes: "I draw my six-shooter."
The GM also has a good hand so he meets those stakes and raises them again: "One of the bandits grabs a nearby innocent and holds the gun to her head."

When the round is up, anyone who hasn't folded reveals their hand and the events are narrated in the favor of the player/GM with the highest hand. One way you could encourage player cooperation is by allowing players to share their chips. So Player 1 might not have a good enough hand to stay in the game, but he lets Player 2 borrow some of his chips so that he can keep up with the rising stakes.

Just some random thoughts.

[Vulpinoid]

A few questions that seem simple on thje surface...

Would a "poker-based" conflict resolution system take into account the skill levels of the participants?

How would you resolve this issue?

V

[typo]

Thanks for all the suggestions!

I'm a longtime lurker here, so I have a decent handle on terminology.  I don't really think in that language though, so I apologize if I lapse into using made-up terms for some things.

I'm aware of Dust Devils -- I'm kinda purposefully avoiding it at this phase.  I'm afraid that it'll either feel too close to what I want to accomplish and kill my buzz for this concept or possibly just make it harder to really do something different.  Perhaps not the most rational reasoning, but I'm hoping to come up with something fresh here.  My plan was to really take a hard look at Dust Devils and Deadlands once I have my own fundamentals in place.

I've seen some comments that are really helping to get my mind rolling.  I'm aware that the "party of loners" can be a hassle, so I will definitely address that.

As for skill disparity, well, I think that's simply part of having a system that's somewhat skill-based.  My intention is that the game will be solveable enough that skill disparity will mainly show up in bluffing ability and risk management -- kinda like real draw poker.  Part of my inspiration here is "Capes," which I've long felt is an RPG wrapped around gameplay mechanics that would still actually be kinda fun if you almost entirely stripped away the roleplaying.  My intention is to start with an established game that I KNOW is fun in itself and then weave the roleplaying into functional gameplay.  In other words, I'm not really aiming to make a standard RPG with some poker trappings, I'm almost trying to make an odd poker variant with roleplaying built in.  The obvious trouble is that, while I have this hazy picture of how I want the game to play and feel, getting there is tricky. 

If I wanted a GM-less, aggressively narrativist system, I'd be almost there at this point.  It's pretty straightforward -- chips represent narrative influence, you win them from each other to control the story round-by-round, different PC traits allow for players to call variant rules or trade cards or influence the card hierarchy. Maybe the first to fold in each round deals the next, and gets the first narration (but with very little narrative power).  Sit down, play poker, tell a story with your winnings.

Unfortunately, that's not really the game I want to play, nor is it the game that most of my players would be sold on.  Ideally, I want to craft a game with a single fairly-strong GM and a more traditional PC role.  Attaching the same mechanics to this causes a little bit of trouble.  If the chips just always go to the winner and everybody's got a hand, then GM basically always has a 1/x chance of winning, where x is the number of players.  That doesn't quite sit right, although a system in which the GM cannot fold and each player's hand is compared to the GM's individually has more potential (this sounds more like a poker / blackjack hybrid, which isn't necessarily a bad thing in my mind).  At the same time, though, this system sacrifices inter-player competition and thus loses much of it's pokerishness.  At the same time, it DOES retain bluffing between players and the GM, and will certainly still feel like a card game.  And it could still be fun to play on its own, since it would be something akin to video-poker-meets-blackjack.  I can even think of some rules that would encourage a tiny bit of both player competition and teamwork.  This has definitely gotten me thinking.

Or perhaps the GMs role is more as a moderator -- setting the stakes and minimum wagers depending on in-game actions.  But, in that case, where does outside conflict really come in?  This basically ensures that the winning player will always "win" in game, making the gameplay simply a case of "who gets to have the spotlight and do the cool thing now."  I'd prefer a system in which meaningful failure for the players IS possible.

Realistically, I think my job has to be figuring out some form of asymmetric poker, in which the GM is involved, but is not simply competing with the players  on an even field (and which discourages the players from gaming the system and "ganging up" on the GM).  I'll keep thinking.  Any further thoughts would be much appreciated.

[Filip Luszczyk]

I want to craft a game with a single fairly-strong GM and a more traditional PC role.

Out of curiosity, could you specify what exactly you see as "more traditional role"? In my experience, there is no single approach that would be consistently present among "traditional" games - even though their text often fail to communicate player and GM roles clearly.

So, what do you want the GM to do in your game? What do you want the players to do?

[Matt Snyder]

Hi, typo. What's your name? Mine's Matt.

So, I created Dust Devils! And, my advice to you is to check it out. I think you're just as likely to do harm to your design as you are to do good if you ignore something so closely aligned with your design here. I mean this earnestly, not in a BUY MY GAME AND PAY ME MONEY PLEASE way.

Yes, you might "poison the well" of your creativity if you read it. But, then, consider, you'd be discarding a game design that won't succeed because it didn't differentiate itself from an established game. But, just as likely is that you'll create a game, then read Dust Devils, and have to go back and change stuff. That's no fun, I can tell you from other design work I've done!

Learning to discard some ideas is one of the steps of becoming a designer. Many, many designers I know agree with this. It's part of learning to hone one's design skill.

This is NOT to say  I think you shouldn't proceed. I think you should, and do so well-informed. I'm always happy to see more Westerns out there in the world, I assure you!

[typo]

So, what do you want the GM to do in your game? What do you want the players to do?

Apologies for being vague.  Basically, I want to make a game in which the players have control over a single PC, making choices and trying to overcome challenges presented by the GM (whose role is providing most of the scene-setting narration, giving voice to NPCs, and generally adjudicating).  Pretty broad roles, I'm aware, but I really just mean that I want to avoid a game in which PCs don't really have any chance of failure or in which the players are responsible for controlling a lot of things outside their character.  I certainly don't want to make poker-ish D&D with six-shooters, but I do enjoy the "adventure game" style and that's really how I envision this game working, albeit adapted to function in a very different setting.

[typo]

So, I created Dust Devils! And, my advice to you is to check it out.

Heya, Matt.  Scott here.  I certainly will be buying your game in the near future.  In fact, I came VERY close to doing so at GenCon 2005 (I believe...), but my budget was spreading thin. I'm a big fan of the genre, and would love to see another's take on it.

That said, I'll be waiting until a little further into the design process.  I tend to think of game design as basically being three parts, each part answering a different question.

1.  What do I want this game to be like?
2.  What should I adjust to make the game play smoothly?
3.  How do I explain all this to others?

I'm planning on reading Dust Devils as soon as I'm more-or-less moving on two stage two.  If I decide I'm stepping on toes and want to call the whole thing off at that point, I'm fine with that.  The first step is, for me, a lot of fun intellectual exercise, so I'm intending to let my own ideas run their course.  My worry is pretty straightforward: if you've got a good system going, it might make it hard to think of something completely different rather than just somewhat different.  Just trying to keep the landscape clean, as it were.

[Simon C]

Here's a game I just made up in my head.  It's called "Quickdraw Poker".  It's inspired by duelling from "The Mountain Witch", and, of course, Poker.  It's a two-player poker game.  You might be able to play it with more players, I'm not sure.  You'll need a full deck of playing cards, and each player will need an extra three cards each, a red ace, a black ace, and a joker.  They should probably have different backs to the full deck.

First, deal out four cards face up.  These work like the "flop" in Texas Hold 'em.  Then, deal both players a single card, face down.  Each player pays ante.  They look at their card, and then place, face down, one of their three extra cards.  Then, both players simultaneously flip their cards.

Red Ace: Wait:  If both players reveal a red ace, both players get dealt an extra card, face down.  They must also pay ante again.
Black Ace: Shoot.  If either player flips a black ace, they reveal all their cards.  The player with the highest combination of five cards wins the stakes.
Joker: Run:  If a player reveals a Joker, and the other player chooses "Wait", then the Running player can turn in their cards without losing the stakes.

I think you can maybe make a "Mexican Standoff" version of the game where each player chooses to wait, or shoot one of the other players, and maybe everyone chooses who they're aiming at each round.

Is this the kind of mechanic you're thinking of?

[masqueradeball]

Here's my pitch, see what you think.

Each player controls a single character that has a goal in the game that's defined before play begins but changes (maybe) from session to session. The GM takes on a pretty direct adversarial role, or maybe, there a regular Judge/Narrator and another GM who works against the players. After each scene is established each character is dealt a poker hand (using I don't know what variation, I'm only loosely familiar with poker as a game). As they narrate how they're character behaves, they're allowed to do things in the poker game. If they show resolve and tackle problems, then they can up the ante and other characters/players have to match. If they give in then they fold and are "out" of the main push and pull of the scene. If they narrate their character using established skills or abilities in an advantages way, then they get to discard X cards and draw X cards, based on their skill, the narration or some combination of the both. The GM gets to draw cards by calling out their weakness and gets to up the ante by placing obstacles and threats in front of the characters. After some predefined thing (an amount of time, a narrative climax, I'm not sure what...) the round ends and everyone shows their hands and the character with the best hand takes the pot and narrates out what that means in terms of achieving their goals for the scene. There'd be a fixed number of chips that the character was trying to accumulate to achieve their session goal.

[Bossy]

Recently we made a western fantasy game with a poker-like mechanics. A character drew as many cards as the skill level allowed, a poker figure must be matched according to the difficulty.
However it didn't work so well for two specific reasons:
1) Drawing one more or one less card makes drastic differences in probabilities for poker. Moreover most of hands with five cards and below are high cards, and most of hands above two pairs is a critical hit. These two factors made it very difficult to jauge the right difficulty level for an action, and it always ended up between King high card and a pair of eights. Not exciting at all.
2) The most problematic feature was rythm. Western is quite a dash setting, fast action, lotsa fun, especially with orcs and elfs and dragons. Otoh, drawing cards is rather slow compared to throwing dice. Even kept to a minimum (draw X cards, do you have a three-of-a-kind?), I soon realized that the system was swamping the pace of the story.

That was my not so good experience with a poker system, I hope it will help you to avoid some pitfalls. In any case, I must encourage you to proceed. The combination of grass roots D&D fantasy with spaghetti western is absolutely funtastic, the immersion is immediate (who doesn't know either one?) and both have amazingly compatible features. If you manage to design a system that works well, I'll be interested in seeing it.

[Callan S.]

Hi Scott, welcome to the forge!

What I DO have is a basic concept / gimmick:  I want the gameplay to mimic playing poker, including betting, bluffing, chips, and various hands.  I want to immerse the players in that great Western cliche from the outset

I'm thinking if you want to immerse them in this western cliche, you'll want to immerse them in other cliches as well. But currently you have no mechanism for withdrawing them from one cliche and immersing them into another.

Right now you seem to be trying to figure out how to use immersion in one cliche to immerse into another cliche (ie, how to use poker to get some other bit of roleplaying done). But I think that'll spoil poker as a cliche - it'll simply become a means of getting to some other cliche, rather than the cliche itself.

Jeez, did I say cliche enough?

Anyway, you've admired the design of Capes - that system is designed to plop/draw characters to various super hero cliches/situations. But the system itself is not a cliche - it's not really anything much to do with the source material. That way it's fine if it's used in a utalitarian, non caring way. I don't think you want poker used that way - it should be a cool western thing.

If you had a list of cliches, eg game of poker, high noon shootout, cattle drive/rustling, you could then develop a system to determine which if these cliches everyone goes into. That system could just be random, or it could be a rock 'em, sock 'em fight to get what you want system like capes has.