Social Oneupmanship

[masqueradeball]

Here's a one page game that's very rough for handling social maneuvering up amongst the upper classes in a Victorian society. Any thoughts on how to make it better?

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?r42kq2vhbqt

Specifically, do the mechanics functional at all and do they facilitate the goals of play (competitive storytelling about social jockeying with an emphasis on the dual-nature of Victorian England)? What would I need to do to make both the game and the document more useful?

[David C]

Hmm, from my gamest mindset, it really bothers me when games have flat initial costs, but escalating costs thereafter.  Like, lets say that you put 1 point in everything, after that, you'd have 6 points worth of values.  If I instead put those 6 points in one stat, I get 36 points worth of values.  Now, you worry less about that because of what type of game you're running, but if I ever played your game, that would bother me, even though I was trying to focus on the story and character development.  One of my friends runs a very open ended WoD game every once and awhile, and even though everybody is just having fun playing fast and loose, I have a lot of trouble moving past that issue.

Also, I don't know how many of these games work, but it seems like losing half your stat or doubling your vice, when they are so hard to raise/lower, would make for major disappointments and conservative play.

I can't say for sure, but that's all the feedback I can give you.

[masqueradeball]

The numbers are bad, or at best, passing... at this point I've just "felt them out." I'd like them to be tighter for sure. The "36" points worth of value thing is supposed to be mitigated by the fact that, at the end of the day, its the lowest Asset that matters... I'm not sure if it will actually balance that out more. How, do you think, can I fix this without heaping on the complexity in terms of scaling costs, etc...

The halving and doubling was put in to discourage the players from putting their best Assets on the line more often than they have to... once again, this might be too clumsy. I'm still working on this... so I'll get a newer version up.

[David C]

Hmm, I just had an idea.

What if, on the character sheet, you made 36 boxes in a line, for each stat.  At each point (1, 4, 9, 16, 24, 36) there's a major marker labeled "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6."  Then, you just have a set number of points at character creation.  Also, if you lose stats, you only lose half your points, not your stats.  So, a 6 would drop to 4 at 18 points, instead of dropping to a 3 at 9 points...

I can see what you're getting at, I think.  So it's kind of like a gamble/risk management thing when you choose which stat is at risk.  If you want to join a scene, but think you'll lose, pick your stat at 1 or 2.  If you think winning is a sure thing, pick your stat at a 6?   If this is the case, I would explicitly say so in your rules. Never count on people playing the game you meant them to play, if you don't tell them *exactly* what that is.

I hope this helps or at least gets you thinking.

[MikeF]

Hi,

I really like this idea. In terms of setting and theme (vices vs virtues or assets) it reminds me a little of Wuthering Heights (http://philippe.tromeur.free.fr/whrpg.htm), and a little of the Libertines game discussed in this thread: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=26531.0. I'm currently playing around with some similar ideas where characters are pulled in different directions by their better and their worse nature, and how they can use either to achieve their goals - but it's harder to do if they use their virtues, and using their vices can potentially lead to ever greater calamities.

My main concern reading the rules is that I don't see any particular motive for a player choosing to reduce a Vice. If 'winning' is based solely on their lowest Asset why would players ever bother to tackle their Vices - wouldn't everyone spend all their time just trying to improve their Assets? Apologies if I've missed something in the rules - I confess I got a little blurry-eyed reading about the dice mechanics, so maybe there's a mechanical advantage in fulfilling Vices that I haven't picked up on.

Michael.

[Callan S.]

It reminds me of capes resource tussle that just goes on indefinately. But I think there conflicts were over things that characters specifically cared about, as written by the player. Here the characters kind of tied into generic cares - how is my sloth different to yours?

I don't think there's much point to the mechanical resource tussle unless it actually gets at something that is important to someone at the table, mechanically. Not just in terms of narrative - there's not much point to opperating a mechanical system unless it mechanically gets at what someone else cares about. Those are my guesses, anyway.

[masqueradeball]

Really... thinking about this, I imagine the way you'd play would be like something of a cross between Masterpiece Theater and Whose Line is It Anyway... The GM's jobs is basically to go about yelling "Smashing x3..." or "What rot... x1." So, because the whole, GM assigns a factor thing seems so loose, I'd hate for characters to invest too much into whats going on. It would more about getting into the spirit of getting as many points and performing as well as you could, with the points and such simply giving all the Victorian flavored improve a bit of structure. Even though not my original intention, that really seems to be "the best" sort of play in terms of what these rules would support... any thoughts.

[Callan S.]

I'm not sure what you mean? Are you trying to find play that best fits the rules, or design rules which fit the sort of play you decided on? I really don't get the former if that's the case - you wrote rules?

[masqueradeball]

I wrote them as a sort of thought experiment. How can I make a game about playing characters in a Victorian setting, with all the rules on a single page. It was later that I thought about what the rules really meant.

[MikeF]

I'm still curious if the rules, as written, really do offer a mechanical advantage for feeding/reducing vices? I can see ways of doing that - perhaps something as simple as the ranking after everyone has had a scene beng lowest asset minus highest vice. But at the moment I can only see advantages for the players in improving their assets - never in dabbling with their dark sides, which I think would make the game skewed.

[Callan S.]

I wrote them as a sort of thought experiment. How can I make a game about playing characters in a Victorian setting, with all the rules on a single page. It was later that I thought about what the rules really meant.

Wow, that's really quite different from what I know. Trying to get my head around it it seems like ouja board designing - the planchette indicates the rules to write up - then after it's done, you look at what it all spells out...

I usually feel out of sync with just about all RPG designers - does everyone design like this and I haven't known? I've never thought to ask about the process involved as a general thread.

[masqueradeball]

Most of the time, to be honest, yes, I think a lot of the do... I think most of my game designs begin with a mechanic and then I look for the implications of the mechanic. Once I think I understand it I try to build it into a setting/game that thrives off of what the mechanic supports. This isn't always the case, however. I start all over the design process. This was really just a "what the fuck" piece of design that seemed kind of promising so I put it up here.