Shared Setting design

[Matt Gwinn]

As some of you may know, I have a cat game that has been sitting on the back burner for some time now.  Well, now the Wick has left the biz along with his cat game I guess it's about time I moved along with mine.

Since coming to the forge I have begun requiring players to create NPCs of their own when I run.  I required everyone in my D&D game to name 3 people that their character knows by name during character creation and it has added greatly to the game.  I've also included it in teh rules for Kayfabe and plan to make it a staple in every game I run/create.

What I want to do with cats is have each campaign setting centered around a specific neighborhood.  Each player must create one location in that neighborhood that is well known or important to their cat.  the place can be a back alley, a room in a house or even a hollowed out tree.

My thinking with all of this is that allowing players to participate in the creation process draws them further into the game experience.

Are there any existing games that already use this method?

,Matt G.

P.S.
After reading this it may belong in RPG theory, so feel free to move it Ron if you agree.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Matt,

Seems like it fits in with Indie Design to me.

I think that Alyria has shown that "group relationship map" creation prior to play is a fantastic device. Your method is somewhat in the same sphere, at a slightly more character-centric scale, and I think it sounds very functional. It reminds me of Champions, in that when I sat down with everyone's sheet and made a list of DNPCs and Contacts and Hunters and so on, I ended up with a hell of a cast list that obviously had to become integrated, if not even central, to whatever I'd had in mind as a GM so far.

Best,
Ron

[Matt Gwinn]

If anyone cares to take a look at the current rules for cats here you go

http://www.angelfire.com/games3/errantknight/cats/

I plan on reworking some stuff but the game is playable as far as I can tell.

,Matt g.

[Kenway]

Matt, my work-in-progress game The Salem Broomstickriders attempted something like the shared design (archived thread in Indie Game Design).  When game sessions started, the players would create a rough relationship map and rough map of the town.  As the players played the game (when they walked around town), new locations were created/elaborated and new links in the relationship map were made.
 Suggestion:  Rather than having the players make up the locations and NPCs before the game starts, you might want to make it an in-game thing.  For example, have a new cat (PC or NPC) join the gang.  Role-play a mock tour of the locale and the other cats (PCs) can take turns showing off their turf and business associates ("Hungry, new guy?  Let's go down to Luigi's and let's see what my good friend Scratches has for us.").

[contracycle]

I got into the habit of asking players to contribute a detail of their environment - typically the genre-mandated runners bar.  Worked like a bomb.

[Bailywolf]

I was looking forward to Wick's Cat... so I'll throw my support wholy behind your efforts here.  


The idea of populating the game world through character creation is excelent.  Over the Edge uses a low-key aproach to this- with its Importiant Person & Secret character elements.  But you seem to be looking for something more structured.

Perhaps a point-buy system?  Hypotheticaly, say you get 6 Ties when you creat your character.  Each Tie can be an Object, a Person, or a Place.  You weight your Ties by spending your points on them.  In actions relation to your tie, you take a bonus (or penalty) based on the strength of the Tie.  You must define the Tie, its nature, your attachment to it, and its history.

Alternatly, players can spend their points to define the ties for OTHER player's characters.  This can turn into a hose-your-buddy session if the group dynamic sucks ("oh yeah, well you habe a 3 point Tie to this one stinking toilet in the basement of the house we all live in!"  Oh yeah, you have a 4 point Tie to the mailman's leg!") Or it can be fairly sublime, as players get to flesh out not just their own characters and their backgrounds, butt he setting and the other players in the group.

[Ron Edwards]

Hey Matt,

One clarification: you're really talking about shared creation of Situation, rather than Setting, right?

If I'm reading this right, everyone's working off the same general setting, and then contributing persons and a few places ... effectively defining the immediate situations of the characters. Or, at most, you're getting shared "rounding out" of the Setting and moving straight into Situation.

Do I have it right?

Best,
Ron

[Matt Gwinn]

Perhaps a point-buy system? Hypotheticaly, say you get 6 Ties when you creat your character. Each Tie can be an Object, a Person, or a Place. You weight your Ties by spending your points on them. In actions relation to your tie, you take a bonus (or penalty) based on the strength of the Tie. You must define the Tie, its nature, your attachment to it, and its history.

I was think something a little less structured, but I can see advantages of a point-buy system here.  It might encourage players that are not as creative or used to new ideas like this.

I don't quite like the idea of defining other players ties.  Not becaaause I think it's a bad idea, but because it assumes that a group will remain the same.  THat's on thing I never like about Werewolf and the use of totems and similar parts of mage where there is a shared attribute.  Just a personal preference.

Suggestion: Rather than having the players make up the locations and NPCs before the game starts, you might want to make it an in-game thing. For example, have a new cat (PC or NPC) join the gang. Role-play a mock tour of the locale and the other cats (PCs) can take turns showing off their turf and business associates ("Hungry, new guy? Let's go down to Luigi's and let's see what my good friend Scratches has for us.").

How about doing both?  I think it's a good idea to help keep players interested.

One clarification: you're really talking about shared creation of Situation, rather than Setting, right?

Setting, situation, 110, 120, whatever works...
I'm aiming at giving the GM things to work with that he knows the players are interested in.  It's not like a kicker or anything like that so I'm not sure if you can consider it situation.

A player might say that his cat knows a rat that lives in a drain pipe down the road.  It doesn't mean the GM needs to use that rat right away.  But somewhere down the line that rat might have information for the players and I feel it's better to have a player created NPC help them than one I created that means nothing to them.

,Matt G.

[Bailywolf]

To borrow some thematics from Valimar and Mike's Universalis and ,Chris( Bankuei)'s Persona-  perhaps allowing players to "Bid" for control of a scene, person, object etc during before or after play.  Perhaps using the same currency as your advancement system (what ever you decide to go with there).  

One character declares that he wants Mr Johnson, an NPC introduced by the GM, to be 'his' npc.  He spends a point of (oh, say) his Karma, and can now describe Mr. Johnson's background, history, personality etc.  In some ways, Johnson is now linked to the character (adding a link on the relationship map as well as fleshing out the setting through play).  

If the player desires, he can then spend further points of Karma to 'take control' of Mr Johnson for a scene, narating the npc's actions as if he were another character.  

It could work like this:

There are three cats living in an abandoned house in a poor area of town (which is undergoing gentrification as homes are bought and refurbished).  One day, a male human enters the house led by a loud   Insincere female who seems to be showing him the place.  She tried to scare the cats away, but the male human stops her, says (according to the escaped housecat in the group) "No, they are OK.  I'll take the place."

I'm playing Minx the Feral cat...one eye, battle scars, dubious smell... and I decide I have a great idea for th direction of this game.  I spend a point of my karma, and "buy" Mr. Johnson, noting him on my sheet.  I now describe his background...but narate it into the story:

"Over the next three days, as the man begins moving in, we realize he is no ordinary human- he looks at us knowingly, and sometimes we catch him listening to us speak in out language of purrs and hisses...and he seems to understand!  He has few belongings, but moves sveral huge trunks to the attic, keeping the door ever closed.  For weeks we hear strange sounds coming from the attic, weird light plays out around the staircase door.  But at the end of the month, when the moon is high, we find the door open, and go up to mark this new space with out scents.  The man is there, kneeling in a circle chalked onto the slatboard floor, wierd human-symbols painted on his palms.  In a dish before him is laid a feast- fish, liver, wounded mouse.  We cautiously aproach, and when we taste the food, the man speaks to use- in our own language!  He says: "Friends, I'm glad to have found you.  I need your help..."


So basicly, I've optioned narritive control over a character and fleshed out not just the character, but laid a major kciker in the path of the whole group- Mr. Johnson is some kind of human sorcerer, he needs the help of the cat PC's, the campaign will now contain elements of cross-species occult conflict etc.  


How does this sit?

[Matt Gwinn]

That's definetly an interesting idea.  What concerns me is the players ability to completely destroy the GM's plans for the game.  I think the way to handle it would be to only allow players that much freedom with NPCs that they introduce themselves.  In the case of existing NPCs, perhaps they can add small things like a personality trait or an item, but not things that recreate the NPC.  

Another possibility is to categorize the NPCs into eitehr alterable or unalterable characters.  When playing in a game it is often apparent when a GM pulls an NPC out of his ass to fill a less than integral role.   Do you suppose there is a way to categorize such a character without coming out and saying "ok, you can/can't change this guy."?

,Matt G.

[Bailywolf]

Well, using the above idea...


A GM can simply decide to buyout a character's control over an NPC if he needs it to work some GM mojo.  Like the Fed, he has Right of Immanent Domain over all Non-player elements of the game.  He can buy back a character from a player if he needs to, or if he denies that player the Bid on the NPC, he must pay that player one point of Karma from his infinite pool.

Figure karma (whatever the currency for purchase of this kind of control is called) is is fairly short supply most of the time.

The GM introduces a strange woman who the PC's observe silently watching the house from a distance.  Even more intresting, the Mr Johnson doesn't seem to notice her!  I want to grab control of her, so I tell the GM I want to option her.  He simply tells me "no", but has to pay me 1 Karma.  If he had said, OK, then I would have had to spend my Karma for her.  

This will keep players from bidding on every damn thing they see to try and milk the GM for more karma...and provides a fair sort of pay-back when a player's good ideas arn't used.  It also provides a sort of dramatic foreshadow...oh, clearly this is importiant...hmm....and a great way of inflicitng very convincing red herrings...he paid me a Karma point to keep control of that woman...she MUST be importiant.  Ha!

[Matt Gwinn]

That's a great idea!
I'll give it some thought and see if I can work something like that into the game.  I haven't fully decided how narrativist I want the game to be, and that will have a lot to do with how I use different tools.

Right now, the game is pretty simulationist, but I'd like to broaded my horizons a bit and see if I can make a narrativist game that doesn't completetlly offend my simulationist nature.

,Matt G.

[Bailywolf]

I don't see any inhernet violation of sumulationism.  When a cat needs to leap from a treebranch to a rooftop, you make a roll based on the cat's strength-to-size ratio Jump ability (figured, say, from a matrix reflecting the bellcurve which favors strong medium sized cats for leaping; smaller and they don't have the reach, larger and they are too fat to haul their asses across distance).  

But when a player wants to intruduce a strange talking Raven who roosts in the barn's rafters... he spends his Karma, and lays out the raven.  If the Raven attacks the cat for some reason (after perhaps, the GM has bought off the player's option), then the combat is rolled according to your normal simulationist mechanics.  

My own gut on a game like yours is that it should not be overburdoned with complex rules- as simple a modeling system as possible.

[Buddha Nature]

The GM introduces a strange woman who the PC's observe silently watching the house from a distance.  Even more intresting, the Mr Johnson doesn't seem to notice her!  I want to grab control of her, so I tell the GM I want to option her.  He simply tells me "no", but has to pay me 1 Karma.  If he had said, OK, then I would have had to spend my Karma for her.  

This will keep players from bidding on every damn thing they see to try and milk the GM for more karma...

How so?  Couldn't a pain-in-the-ass player just keep asking for control over any and all NPC's--making slight changes to ones he "accidentally" got and making off with karma points with the ones he didn't get?

It might be that you should leave the 1 karma payoff to GM discretion instead of "hard coding it" into the system.  Just saying "it is suggested that the GM give 1 karma poin for negations, but not to the point of players "playing the system.""

-Shane

[Bailywolf]

Every time a player grabs for control, he has to pay for it.  If you have (to pull a number out of may ass) 3 Karma, then you can only option control by spending one of those points.  Run out, and you can't do jack.  Also, Karma would be the same currency you use to advance your character- basicly you trade in experience points for control over the setting.  

Further, the first point only lets you describe the character/object's 'status' who they are, what they are up to etc.  If they want to grab control over that character for a scene and dictate action, this requires the expenditure of an extra point of Karma.  

You will never have more than a couple of these points on hand- less if you use them to imporve your character, more if you horde them.

A player could be a dick with his three points...but will soon run out of juice...and making a system dick-proff is a true impossibility.  They even write hacks for video games, and they are all full of exploits.

I think the return on trying to milk this will be pretty low- a character will earn Karma from normal sources- the typical XP per session thing- much faster than from GM buyoff.

But then, I've given this system...oh, about 10 minutes of careful consideration...


It does demand a flexibility and adaptability from the GM- he has to be able to roll with his player's authorial descriptions on the fly...and sometimes you have to just say "hell with my plans" and go with what the situation presents.