[Otherknight] Conflict in Conflict, I don´t know what to do

[soundmasterj]

[Adrian F.]

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[soundmasterj]

[soundmasterj]

[Christoph Boeckle]

Hi Jona

Nice pdf! (If you could make a plain version parallel to this one, it'd be easier on my printer and my pdf-viewer who is a bit buggy when it comes to complex layout).

I think you've nailed the problem yourself. There's a negotiation about specific results and then someone has to narrate them, plus other stuff (remaining in scope with the conflict). Doing a conflict about the conflict seems to take out a lot of the mechanic's punch.

From my point of view, yeah, a drunken knight, who just fucked the murderer of his beloved brother and realized it only after, could very well kill the first person to cross his path and masturbate over the corpse as a brutish sign of domination. It so happened that you negotiated that the countess should survive and that an innocent should die in her place, which makes it even more awful!
This makes me think of Dust Devil, where a similar mechanic is implemented. I haven't yet played it, but from what I hear on the Forge, the game works very well (perhaps somebody already pointed this out.)

What you might want to take into account is a concept called Lines & Veils (detailed in Ron Edwards's Sex & Sorcery supplement for Sorcerer). There are some subjects that will just hurt people at the table. Leave those out, draw a line, period. Others are okay if suggested, but let's be light on the explicitness, that's where we pull the veil.

I guess that this knight's macho and gruesome behaviour falls under a discussion of Lines & Veils and that your mechanic is perfectly sound in principle. This is of course if you want protagonists to reveal their ugly sides (and that you are okay to leave this in the hands of the whole group instead of just yourself). I like.

[soundmasterj]

[Christoph Boeckle]

Hi

I won't make a promise I can't hold: I will probably not have the time to test the game in the near future and that's probably a problem seeing how advanced it is. But I can spend some time hashing out a few concepts.

The white .pdf has the same problems as the coloured one: my pdf software won't read it properly (I use Evince on Ubuntu, it's not as powerful as Acrobat Reader). I might print it out in the next few days though.

Regarding the issue of the owner's understanding of his character. With the mechanic you suggest, I'm not sure you can guarantee such a thing. After all, a character exists only insofar as it's actions have been established in play. What one might think of it is not shared, thus it does not exist in the roleplaying experience. Your game sounds like nobody can have absolute certainty on who their character is, although they surely know a bit more than others. Bug or feature?
If it's a feature, then you don't need to worry about other people's understanding of the character, as long as you respect the characters' integrity (this linked discussion happened a while ago, some of it might not be relevant here, but the basic idea might be interesting). This is where your system and past events have a role to play. Also note that there's always a number of ways to justify a given fact in the fiction, I'm not saying that character integrity should mean "we all agree that this is how the character is", but "this character can be like this, and in fact, that's how he is going to be, whether everyone likes it or not".

A thing I have toyed with in an old design was to let other players dictate actions for other people's characters, but not internal motivations nor states of mind (that was always up to the "main player").

Do you want a game as harsh as it seems to be now? I find it interesting, at least as a concept (my interests have indeed recently turned to such concepts lately with Dust Devils by Matt Snyder for example)


By the way, I like the idea of putting dice in different "resources", have you played board-games like Caylus, Agricola or The Game of Throne? I find it reminiscent of mechanics these games feature, while being very well adapted to an RPG.

[soundmasterj]

[Ron Edwards]

Hey,

Otherknight (working title) is a game about caring and killing. What does a knight care for so much, he will kill for it? Well, turns out, mostly women and his own skin, but thats fair I guess.

And

The game should center around conflicts of loyalty; you got one high die and one low, but two Binds are in conflict- your king and your own honor. What do you choose?

Nifty! I'd say that's a pretty powerful starting point. Are you familiar with The Riddle of Steel? How about Pendragon? I ask because those are pretty much the go-to games for innovative mechanics concerning such decisions, and because, as I see it, they also represent disparate Creative Agendas. Your game is structurally extremely different, but I think it's good to know what's gone before.

I really like the Malory feel in your account of play, in which sex, stupid-exciting risk, murder in the past, and fast decisions in the present are all mixed up together. I'd really like to see it in action with multiple players. One of the games that influenced early discussions is called Soap. (It's currently available in, as I see it, somewhat compromised form here; you can read the Forge review of the original game.) Although not always, most of the time, Soap yielded incredibly active, topsy-turvy, yet ultimately logical (or at least continuity-preserving) mayhem. I'm getting the idea that Otherknight might be a worthy heir.

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[soundmasterj]

[Christoph Boeckle]

Just a quick passage, I'll come around again to this thread when I've read that pdf you sent me.

Maps and tiles? YES!

And a thousand times yes to Ron's "describe actions, not internal states"! I was talking about that with a friend yesterday evening and forgot to suggest that to you. I use it very frequently in games where characters are controlled by more than one player at different times and it's quite the good rule to retain a sense of continuity. Acts can often be justified in various ways.

[soundmasterj]

[Valamir]

For the interested, here are some links to those older Otherknight threads.

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=18858.0

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=18858.0


Also, don't worry too much about the stakes setting thing.  Ron's rant is a personal preference masquerading as a design principle...quite forgivable as he does this less than most anyone else I know, but it's really just a peculiar bugaboo of his that he's been on about for a couple years now.

If you find it works in your game to set stakes in "this is what happens if I win" fashion...great go with it.
If you find it doesn't...also great, go with something else.  Its ultimately just a technique no better or worse than "roll for initiative" or "The Lute-Bearer has authority to decide".  Some techniques work great for certain goals in certain games while working horribly for different goals in other games.  Go with what works.

[soundmasterj]

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=18887.0

Concerning the stakes-controversy: Sometimes I wish there were some hard-and-fast rules stating what techniques are bad, which good (CR good, TR bad! Stance X good, Stance Y bad!). On the other hand, that would take the fun out of designing.

[soundmasterj]