Creatures of Destiny Power 19

[Creatures of Destiny]

1)What is your game about? It's about living exciting stories with dramatic characters.

2) What do characters do? Characters fulfil their destinies – whatever they might be.

3) What do players do? Players run a single or multiple characters – generally a Lead, but also Bit Parts (such as townspeople, grunts and such) and possibly also a Cameo (a powerful character that appears only occasionally, like Gandalf)

4) How does your setting reinforce what your game is about? As yet no specific setting. It's a semi-generic system that I would like to make variants of for specific systems.

5) How does the Character Creation of your game reinforce what your game is about? Players create characters from a Destiny Pool, it's possible to start play with an unnassigned pool and develop the character in play.

6) What types of behaviors/styles of play does your game reward or punish? Players are seen to be developing their characters in game, fleshing out backgrounds as they go. Playing different characters is rewarded because all of a player's destiny is in a pool and is not tied to a specific character.

7) How are behaviors and styles of play rewarded or punished in your game? Through gaining destiny, which aids success rolls and also enables characters to develop abilities, avoid death and so on. Losing destiny means that characters must either put up with "bad dice" that hinder success rolls or accept Calamities – narrative effects such as being slung in jail or falling in love with a heartbreaker.

How are the responsibilities of narration and credibility divided in your game?

There is a GM but players have a lot of metagame control – for example they can get rid of "bad dice" (negative destiny) but requesting a Calamity – a negative event that "uses up" the bad dice. They can also spend or stake destiny to influence the game world.

9) What does your game do to command the player's attention, engagement, and participation? Everything in the game has a reason. If characters lose all their gear, it's an effect of negative destiny and so actually helps the players progress as the characters are hindered. Also since Destiny is often "Staked" on rolls there's a gambling element involved.

10) What are the resolution mechanics of your game like? Generally simple roll three dice and add skill/ability vs difficulty, but destiny and passions give "good dice" and "bad dice"

11) How do the resolution mechanics reinforce what your game is about? Skills and abilities are fairly predictable while destiny and passions are not.
I also made the "Combat sytem" an "Action System" so there can be action even in games without violence (for example sports, rescues, chases and last minute pitches in a court case could all be action).

12) Do characters in your game advance? If so, how? There are experience checks to improve skills and abilities, and destiny can be used to influence this further or gain uniue abilities, passions, items and so forth.

13) How does character advancement reinforce what your game is about? Again destiny is the most important force in the game and destiny is tied to narrative. But at the same time it's a fun gamist concept that allows players to keep tally on how well they're doing in game terms.

14) What sort of product or effect do you want your game to produce in or for the players?
The feeling of building up a whole world of adventure

15) What areas of your game receive extra attention and color and why? Destiny and Passions. Destiny is the force that governs the game world and is also the nearest the game has to "levels". Passions create powerful influences on characters and make them more likely to succeed at what they're passionate about, while hindering their opposite.

16) Which part of your game are you most excited about or interested in? Why? Again the Destiny system. It's quite an elegant way of enabling players to influence the story through and yet also apart from their characters.
The Calamity mechanic also means that players will often be asking the GM to throw misfortune their way which I think is fun


17) Where does your game take players that other games can't, don't, or won't? There is the possibility to play multiple characters and have characters with wildly different power levels while still keeping players balanced.

18) What are your publishing goals for your game? Probably an online Wiki open source.

19) Who is your target audience? Older gamers and curious people who would like a storytelling experience that also functions as a game.

[MKAdams]

3) What do players do? Players run a single or multiple characters – generally a Lead, but also Bit Parts (such as townspeople, grunts and such) and possibly also a Cameo (a powerful character that appears only occasionally, like Gandalf)

That sounds very interesting.  Tell me more.

[Creatures of Destiny]

Basically if you take a story like Lord of the Rings (I'm taking that example because of its obvious influence on the first RPGs) then you have characters who vary widely in power - I mean you've got Sam, who's just a hobbit gardener, and Gandalf, who's a near immortal wizard in the same party. Imagine trying to play with a party like that in say D&D . It wouldn't work right? Because either Gandalf would be an uber "DMPC" and that would suck or else some players might feel sidelined by the fact that in many situations their characters are overshadowed.

In Creatures of Destiny players have a destiny pool which they assign to characters. They can either use pre-game to empower their characters or in game to gain story and game adavntages. Mostly characters play a Lead - a main character. Sometimes they play smaller roles, but they can still earn destiny while doing so. They can also put some of their pool into creating a Cameo - I haven't really worked this out mechanically. But the idea is that the player can create a more powerful character who is however limited in availabilty because the player must stake destiny (risk losing destiny) to bring that character into play. Furthermore Cameos suffer greater effects from Calamities.

So maybe in the Fellowship one player would play Sam as a lead and Gandalf as a Cameo, while another plays Frodo as a lead and another Strider and Pippin as leads and so on. The players are "balanced" in importance even if the individual characters are not.

Also one or more leads can be spotlighted - their players take them off on their own while the other players run various Extras alongside the GM's NPC's (or maybe just take over some NPC's as extras). Even the players running Extras earn destiny which they can use to power their Leads and Cameos in other scenes.

Make sense?

[opsneakie]

This sounds really cool. So, let me see if I follow.

I'm playing Frodo, someone else is playing Strider. The character of Strider is way stronger than Frodo; a better fighter, more powerful, etc, but that's not what's important, am I right? The destiny is what's important, and both of those characters have major destinies. Strider has to become king of Gondor, and Frodo has to destroy the Ring. Both are important to the story, so their power levels aren't a big deal, right?

Both players might play little people throughout the course of the game to earn destiny, which works like a sort of currency for influencing the world? Then you accomplish your destinies to 'win'?

Is this right? I like the idea of a destiny game a lot, so I'm interested to see where this is going.

-J0hn

[Creatures of Destiny]

Exactly,

I wanted to have something that players wanted to feel like they're "winning", like XP and treasure in D&D, glory in Pendragon and Karma in Marvel Super Heroes. I figured what players get as a reward can strongly influence the way they play so I wanted something that is not strictly tied to one character. It's tied to the player, how much destiny they invest in characters is up to them.

I guess there are  couple of things I want this to do with this. One is to allow characters to develop backstory and stuff in play, rather than necessarily have all their characters work out beforehand. Maybe characters could start play as basic skeletons but still become quite developed in play. So So this is also the way important powers and items would be accumulated - like when Obi One says to Luke: "This is your father's lightsaber" rather than a magic shop or whatever. Again a player might run Obi One as a Cameo. I'm thinking a bit of the various roles in the Hero's Journey here: mentors, gatekeepers etc...

The other thing is that it helps avoid the "don't split the party" thing. If one character goes off to do their own thing then the other players can still continue play and accumulate destiny. You know that scene in Kill Bill II where she's buried in a coffin? You could play out that whole flashback sequence - the buried player spends destiny to gain the power and play goes into flashback with another player maybe taking the role of the old kung fu master (and earning destiny while doing so).

[Creatures of Destiny]

I'm playing Frodo, someone else is playing Strider. The character of Strider is way stronger than Frodo; a better fighter, more powerful, etc, but that's not what's important, am I right? The destiny is what's important, and both of those characters have major destinies. Strider has to become king of Gondor, and Frodo has to destroy the Ring. Both are important to the story, so their power levels aren't a big deal, right?

Both players might play little people throughout the course of the game to earn destiny, which works like a sort of currency for influencing the world? Then you accomplish your destinies to 'win'?
-J0hn

I just re-read your post and Iike to point out that, yes, that is what I want, but that the destinies are not actually predermined, but are created on the fly during play. To go back to Frodo and Strider (and it's important to note here that for the purpose of this example I'd lik eyou to imagine that no-one playing has read the book or seen the film), the Strider player spent more destiny on beefing up the character, while the Frodo player took on the Ring Bearer option. Since I envisage players creating backstory as they go it may be that when the campaign starts, Strider IS just a ranger named Strider. The fact that he's also Aragorn and rightful heir of Gondor is something that the player creates during play by spending destiny. Maybe in the hypothetical Rings campaign the  GM had the idea of the One Ring needing to be destroyed and so the players might bid to be the ringbearer - thus the Fordo player has less destiny left over to make his character "powerful". But all players are balanced in RELEVANCE to the story and in play.

I also write fiction and I was thinking about Stephen King's "On Writing" where he mentioned that he writes by just putting a character in a situation and then seeing where that leads. Of course he has the advantage that he can make backstory as he goes and develop things further. I thought that would be a great model for a RPG, one where players can just start with an outline - some ranger guy called Strider or whatever - and by the end of the campaign have a fully fleshed out character with background and personality that reflects their role in the story and how the player has run them.

I'd also imagine that the GM would use destiny too. Say the players have a total pool of 60 destiny, that's what the GM has to create adversity for them - whether that's foes, hostile environments or just plain bad luck. Of course in play it'd be dynamic with destiny pools incresing and running low.

[opsneakie]

YES!

This is exactly what I was hoping you were going to write. If destiny was predetermined, play would stagnate I think pretty quickly, but while you're making it up, your guy in the Rings campaign can drop a huge pile of destiny tokens (or whatever, but I think tokens would be cool) and say, "Strider's real name is Aragorn, and he is the rightful King of Gondor." Boom. Suddenly the whole game looks different, and I as a PLAYER have introduced a major plot element. Now the story focuses (at least somewhat) on Strider becoming King?

Speaking as a writer as well, this seems very much like a novel brought to life, which is great. When we meet Strider, he IS just a ranger named Strider, but later on we find out these things, and the story gets moved along by a series of these kind of realizations. We as readers don't know anything about the characters at the start, we find everything out bit by bit as they go along.

Wow. Just wow. This game kind of imploded my mind.

When can I get a copy?

-John

[Creatures of Destiny]

Thanks Opsneakle I'm really glad to hear that kind of enthusiasm!A novel brought to life is very much what I want. But I also want the Destiny to make it work as a game and give it an edge.

I want to try and get playtest copies out by the Summer and then hit the drawing board again based on feedback.

As it was I imagined destiny as dice - they can be staked by rolling them (so you increase your chance of success by risking some of your destiny) or spent as tokens. That doesn't mean you actually have to have a handful of dice, just that if you wanted to you could.

I've also been reworkign characater creation from the standpoint that any abilities bought are those that the character has already REVEALED. Basically a 0 average with the player buying as much stuff as they want to at the start and leaving as much open as they want. So buying new powers has more the feel of revealing stuff.

I also started thinking that with the players creating their own good luck the GM could be much more antagonistic - playing the Antagonist destiny pool destiny to beset the players with bad luck, adversity and foes. The antagonist roles could also have the same principal of being Leads (major villains), Extras and Cameos (the super powerful characters that are sort of in the background). So if the original Star Wars movie was a campaign, Darth Vader would be a Cameo (there's no way Luke or Han or any of them could face him directly)  while Obi would be one of the player's Cameos. But by Retrun of the Jedi Darth is a Lead villain  (as in Luke can, and in fact has to face him), while the Emperor would be a Cameo. In a Rings Campaign Sauron would be an antagonist Cameo while the Ring Wraiths would be the Lead villains for the first part (while orcs would be Extras).

Maybe it could even be that to get a break from the GM the players need to play destiny - "I'm playing 5 destiny for an ally" and the GM would throw in 5 destiny worth of help (maybe even having a villain help out for some reason). This is just an idea, I want the Destiny to enrichen the play experience, not strangle it.

Daniel

[wild_card2007]

I like what you're doing here with introduction of new character/story elements during play, by players; passions; and the idea of a destiny.

I'm curious about the economy of destiny points?  How are they earned and lost?  How do you figure out how many points it costs to introduce something, like "Okay, Aragorn is the heir of Gondor", or "Aragorn has great horsemanship skills"?  What if I wanted to spend destiny points to do something twinky like "Aragorn is filthy rich -- he can buy a whole kingdom with his pocket change", or "Aragorn's best friend Tharon is a wizard whose powers dwarf even Gandalf's"?  How does your system deal with that?  And how does the GM earn and use destiny points?

I'm also a little unclear as to how the game keeps the players' interest/attention.  Where is the challenge, the risk, the conflict?  What are the stakes?  Is it mainly about creating a story with your characters?

Thomas

[Grinning Moon]

I think this is a really brilliant notion you're hitting on. This is a game I'd like to play.

...I'd tinker with the title, though. 'Creatures of Destiny' just, well, lacks a realy 'ring' and doesn't feel like it hits on what th game is about.

I'm curious about the economy of destiny points?  How are they earned and lost?  How do you figure out how many points it costs to introduce something, like "Okay, Aragorn is the heir of Gondor", or "Aragorn has great horsemanship skills"?  What if I wanted to spend destiny points to do something twinky like "Aragorn is filthy rich -- he can buy a whole kingdom with his pocket change", or "Aragorn's best friend Tharon is a wizard whose powers dwarf even Gandalf's"?  How does your system deal with that?  And how does the GM earn and use destiny points?

While I'm curious about the economy as well, if I understand what's been said already, a situation like this is of no concern. Effectively, destiny points buy you plot devices - and the 'power' of any device can pretty much be however arbitrarily large you want, because the focus is never about that - the focus is on moving the story to it's conclusion. If I spend destiny to make my character, Firmus Piett, captain of the ominous Executor-class Super Star Destroyer (or, more likely, to bring him in as a Cameo), so be it. In terms of moving the plot forward, it will hardly be more effective against, say, Han Solo's unwaveringly loyal ally, Chewbacca the Wookie.

I'm also a little unclear as to how the game keeps the players' interest/attention.  Where is the challenge, the risk, the conflict?  What are the stakes?  Is it mainly about creating a story with your characters?

To talk inn GNS terms, the game sounds like it has a very Narrativist agenda. Risk and conflict, then, are achieved through storytelling rather than, say, task resolution. The stakes are very open-ended - the question would likely be, 'How is this story going to end?' or 'What's going to happen next?'

[danielsan]

Hmm. You know in Toon, they have this rule that you can 'buy' a Widget for your possessions at the beginning of the game, and later, when you need something specific during the adventure, you can pull out the Widget and declare it to be what you need (a map, a compass, an anvil, whatever.)

In Spirit of the Century, they have these Aspects that you can compel or invoke to gain plot points or help with die rolls.

I wonder if your idea could combine these two ideas? Like writing down "widget" or in this case 'Hidden Mystery' or 'Unrevealed Destiny'. Then, when you want to invoke it, you suddenly reveal your hidden mystery or destiny and can use it as you need. But mechanically, players must choose to have a 'stronger' character at the beginning with less 'widgety-aspects,' or a 'weaker' character at the start with more of them.

[Creatures of Destiny]

Danielsan,

That's much how I imagined Destiny being - you spend your pool to either make your character more powerful, or you keep some back to have unrevealed stuff and to use in play for other things (like preventing character death).

Grinningmoon (Don't know your real name)

Thanks for the support.

Yeah I think you're right about the title. Actually the Forge is also a pretty good gauge of that - you know the title didn't bring that many "hits" to the thread so I guess I'll change it. I meant "Creatures" in the sense of "Creation" (The original sense) and Destiny, well that's in there. But "Creatures" in that sense is hardly in common usage.

Yes I think I have a strong narrativist agenda, but at the same time I do want there to be a strong "Bring it on" element that helps act as a motor for things. Players story intereests will reflect how much destiny they invest in stuff and that will in turn affect the plot and the game mechanical elements.

Thomas :

Well I think Grinning Moon answered quite well about the twinky stuff - if you spend loads of Destiny on a super ally, then you have less for other things. As to the economy I imagined that the when players "buy" a plot device, ("Strider is actually ARagorn and heir to the throne of Gondor") they hand over a bunch of destiny to the GM. THe Gm then uses that to throw stuff at them - maybe not immediately but at some point ("Okay, so the current "Steward" of the throne has no intention of giving it up, and Sauron's army is about to attack Gondor").

So you play "Aragron is filthy rich", hand the dstiny over to the GM and well, "Mo' money Mo' problems" as Biggie said.

So that's one way the GM gets destiny (at the start of the game the GM has Dstiny equal to the players total). For players I'm tinkering with some ideas, a bsic one is that PLayers "Stake" destiny on a Motivator, that can be either something the player thinks up "Werral wants to avenge his family's murder") or soemthing the GM offers as a plot hook - when the players take up the hook they stake destiny on it. The more they stake the more the GM can throw at them and the moer they can "win". The thing is this is a step removed from the characters, so a character could sacrifice his life or just get killed and the player wouldn't lose destiny, might even gain it. The player could spend destiny to save that character though.

I was also thinking that buying stuff when it's not immediately useful is cheaper than when it's needed NOW. So if you spend destiny to say "Aragorn's great with horses" it'd have one cost if you say that while walking down the road, and another while saddling up for a chase scene. Kind of a "set up" bonus. Maybe when you buy teh ability that could trigger a "set up" scence, you know, like a bucking stallion where Aragorn can try out against the horse, or a random fight where someone can show off their kung fu or whatever. If I teid this to the concept of details addded to qualities (basically a you might have "HOrsemaster +2/-2 on your empathy and add +2 to Emapthy with horses, while having -2 on other empathy checks) then I could require that players suffer the penalty BEFORE they can play the bonus.

Characters may also have flaws. You pointed out in my "Qualities" thread how in games like Gurps players always go for flaws that won't come up, but here the idea is different - characters earn the player destiny when they confront their flaws. So the guy with a terror of rats find himself up against the Rat Lord and in confronting the object of his fears. This is a common concept in films, especially Hollywood movies (Truman's terrified of water but has to sail across the sea to freedom). So these are like character archs.

With Cameos or powerful character's they basically cost much less destiny than a Lead of the same value but they have limited availability. Also I think Cameos can't earn destiny as easily as other players, and actually require the player to risk destiny whenever they're used - so brining in Gandalf or Tharon makes it harder to win dstiny. Still against a GM Cameo (Darth Vader, the Balrog, meeting Sauron) then a Cameo becomes invaluable and can earn destiny. Also Cameos have their own motivators.

Extras too have motivators - so an innkeeper might want to get one over his rival over the road, or get in touch with his estranged daughter or whatever. Players can take up these sub-plots or ignore them if they want to concentrate on the leads' story. But players earn destiny by completing these subplots (which would still be part of the main story, you know the band is in an inn and one player runs the innkeeper in his antics).

Basicaly players have absolute control over the lead and more limited control over the extras and cameos they run.

[wild_card2007]

I think I understand a little more -- thanks.  But I'm still not getting the "economy" of destiny points.  You say "if you spend loads of Destiny on a super ally, then you have less for other things".  First, how do you earn destiny points?  I think you're giving me some of the answer, with players staking destiny on a motivator.  (Which, given your example, sounds to me like a goal or objective.)  You also mentioned using destiny to influence dice rolls, but I'm not clear on the actual mechanics of that.

My second question is, how is the value (or price) of an ally, or ability, or plot device determined?  If I can spend one point for both "Aragorn likes tea in the morning", and "Aragorn is filthy rich", why would I want to spend more?  Or what would force me to spend more?  Put another way, what do I get out of spending 20 points instead of 2 points? 

Thomas

[Creatures of Destiny]

Okay, well bear in mind this is very much an early work in progress and I'm not even near the playtesting phase yet (I hope to start playtesting come the summer given other work commitments).

Anyway this is how I imagine it so far:

Players start with say 20 Destiny each to create characters. One Destiny point will buy 3 points of qualities for a lead, or 10 points for a Cameo (so cameos have much higher qualities)• Other abilities and factors all cost destiny - magic, resources (wealth), social standing, passions and magic items. They can buy stuff either during character creatin or later as they reveal stuff (i want players to be able to give their base qualites and an idea (a knight, a F1 driver, a heart-surgeon) or whatever and give them a neam and then start play with there leads (so they can start play with just the "bare bones" of their characters.

Players can use their destiny pool in various ways. By "staking" destiny on a roll, they get a"good die". Since te basic mechainc is that they rol 2D10 and add Qualities, a good die means that they roll an extra D10 and choose the best two rolls (so they could stake 3 destiny, roll 5D10 and choose the best two). If the roll fails though, they lose the destiny unless the character accepts a Calamity - like a fumble or a complication. So if they stake 3 dstiny and fail then they either lose 3 destiny or take a 3 destiny Calamity.They can also staek Destiny vs one of the GMS extras or cameos to give them bad dice - so if the player stakes 2 destiny on the stormtroopers missing then the stormtroopers roll 4D10 and use the WORST two dice for their roll (this is why the stormtroopers never seem able to hit the side of a barn).

Players can spend 5 Destiny for a dieux ex macchina to save a character from death. They can also use 1 destiny to reduce a wound (there are no hit points, characters are either unwounded, wounded, critically wounded, mortally wounded or dead). So Destiny also fulfil the roll of hit points and healing - without desetiny characters are subject to a pretty gritty (though not overly crunchy) system. With it they have a kind of charactter shield.

Players can spend more destiny than they have and go into negative destiny, at which point they have to roll one bad die on every roll they make for each point they're over. THey can trade in bad dice for Adversity -the GM might have tehm arrested, fall in love with a heartbreaker or other such thing. They could also simply earn destiny (especially by playing extras, since extras are not subject to the bad dice).

Players have to stake destiny on every action their Cameos make.

The cost of destiny for plot points is still something I need to work on. I'd like to keep it pretty open, maybe just have loose categoraries (Resources, Fate, Background and so forth) and ratings (minor, major and revelationary) with different costs (something like 5, 10 and 15.

They earn destiny by completing story goals, whether those of their leads, the current scenario or those of extras they may play in the course of a session.

That's how it's shaping up so far. Of course I still have a long way to go on this!

Daniel