Measuring Success: How good is good enough?

[David C]

(I'm going to break this into two parts, at first, will be just the "Play", the second part will be a reflection on a few problems.)

I've put a lot of work in my game, and I have to admit, I have gotten pretty depressed about it. Despite showing it to most of my friends and 3 different groups I've played with, I've never had a reaction that made me feel my time and effort had paid off.  Even though I was excited by the concepts I introduced, nobody else seemed to care.

Yesterday, I started a new play test with some fresh faces I had met through a friend. The circumstances weren't good, they were awful actually, but I won't go into that.

The first thing you should know, is before we started, I asked all the players to buy into the idea of "Being the patron heroes of a town." I don't think I would have done that without having known about "social contract," but it was definitely the right move. Anyways, the actions they do can help or hinder the town they live in, and in return the town would help them out.

First we did a creative collaboration about the town itself, also they rated certain aspects of the town on a scale of 1-5, with a limited number of points..  Then we moved into character creation. I've made a intuitive character sheet, so anyone who has played a rpg before has a pretty good idea of how to fill it out without my constant guidance. The character creation took about an hour, which I believe was a good time for first time players in the type of game it is. Unfortunately, right after we finished, one of the other group members showed up late.  We set him to making his character, and the other players helped him along, while I started the getting the game moving.

Bear with me, as the players were drawn to the exotic choices.
The players and their characters were:
Loren:  Bojen Koon, a Jakoto Monk    (Jakoto are a bear-ish race. Monk in the East Asian sense)
Eric: Major Havul Darktalon, a Kefla Tactician   (Kefla are kind of a mix between cats and hawks.  Tacticians use battlefield control)
Mark: Tander, a Pendric Rogue.  (Pendric are just humans with a special past. Rogues are primarily speakers, but are also sneaky.)
Adam: Shren, a Pershek Vanguard.  (Pershek are like hedgehogs. Vanguard are defenders of their team.)
Sk: Ezra, a Lorin Arcanist.  (Lorin are basically elemental people.  Arcanist are theoretical mages.)

So, first I did an introduction and explained that we're starting "In the past" where we'll do a short scene, and then fast forward a month.  In the past, they were stuck outside the capital city, since it had been quarantined. They have no work and no money or food, but get offered jobs as caravan guards. At this point I gave them the chance to find out why the city was quarantined, which they learned was because the only heir, the princess, had disappeared.  They then overheard a conversation with their merchant guard, a powerful man, and a woman that was to accompany the caravan as a guard.  They heard a vast sum of money agreed on.  Amazingly, I managed to cast a lot of doubt on her being the princess, when she obviously was. 

Here, we had the first problem. Eric, before we barely even started, declared he was going to roll "Insight" to figure out that Mark was a Pendric (which is a highly guarded secret by all Pendric.)  Eric argued his character had "really good Insight" and he should know.  I managed to diffuse the situation by telling Eric he had "no basis for that" and "there are millions of humans, but only a few thousand Pendric, you can't be suspicious that every human is a Pendric."

The players fast forward, and they're presented with their first opportunity to choose between "talking it out" or "combat." This scene was intended to be more favorable towards combat, but I made sure to emphasis that there are other solutions to the problem, and that their XP rewards are equal no matter which choice they make.  At this point, the caravan is assaulted by bounty hunters, and the bounty hunters only ask for the merchant and the "women" (including the smuggled princess, which I'm still trying to hide that fact), and they'll let them go and even keep the goods as a 'reward.'  Of course, the players fight back, which is what I planned, so I can introduce them to the combat system. If they had decided to talk it out, they could have just taken the caravan for themselves and continue to play, but with negative consequences.

Combat lasts 10 rounds, but the rounds move FAST.  Even though I had forgotten some of the rules (which required a moment to look them up), we manage to zip through an exciting combat with some wickedly over-powered enemies (My mistake, I broke my own rules). To remedy this, I started having the enemies "flee" after only being slightly injured.  The players start getting upset, because they believe this is cutting into their XP rewards.  I then re-emphasize how the XP is awarded for reaching the *milestones* and that it doesn't matter how they reach those milestones. 

During the combat, which is tactical in nature, I can really tell some of the players are getting really excited and everyone is enjoying their characters.  This is really important to me, since we're playing "level 1" and many tactical games start out being really dull before you 'level up.'  The first time somebody inflicts a "Mortal Wound", there is a roar of approval. Everybody starts *suggesting* to me that I need a "Mortal Wound Table," which I kind of silently laugh at, since this just came up in one of my posts here at the Forge.  I start worrying that I'm going to have trouble getting people to buy into the "not combat" parts of play. 

Afterwards, they decide they're going to hunt down all the fleeing ambushers, so they can't report their failure to the guild.  This isn't something I had really planned for, but of course I let them do it.  They capture 2 alive, which was definitely not something I had planned for.  Some quick improvisation and I gave the thugs "kill switches" that a powerful guild leader cast on them, in case they failed their mission.  Often in these cases, players will see the bluff for what it is, but I allowed them a chance to save them letting the healer try and remove the spells (which the system had precedence for.)  He rolls really low and both the bounty hunters die. The players are disappointed, but don't feel cheated.  And I breath a sigh of relief.  Some more quick improvisation and I gave the guy who had "Lore" skill the chance to determine who had cast the spell, based off of the runes that appeared. He succeeded, and I have another plot hook to work with.

They then get to the town of about 200 folk.  They decide they're going to establish themselves as "ruling class," and start going about this.  Also, they start demanding all sorts of things.  I have them chat with the "mayor", and then introduce them to the social resolution system.  First, they appoint a "face man" who states the group's general goal. The face man determines the success of everything, but rolls last. Each player then can "not help" (do nothing), "help", or "help, but modify the goal, or add their own minor goal." When a player tries to help or modify the goal, they describe their actions (If I don't get my own workshop, it won't be my fault if bad stuff starts happening to the town...) and roll an appropriate skill (Intimidate).  If they succeed, their addition (if any) is added, and they give the face man a +1 bonus to the overall goal.

At this point, one of the players creatively came up with a way to use BLACKSMITHING, of all things, to help impress the mayor.  To do this, he rolled "metalworking", instead of the more common "Intimidate" or "Negotiate." What he did, he explained, "was to take his sword, and beat it into a good quality shovel at the bronze smith's shop, to show his peacefulness and valuable skill."  I was impressed and gave him an 'epic point' for kudos.

We then hit our deadline for playing when one of the players "has to" leave, and he leaves.  I award some loot and XP.  I also award some more epic points for cool things that players did, and award everyone a few epic points, beyond that, for good measure.  Everyone else sticks around for awhile, and the reaction is really positive! I can see people are excited, and they're talking about what they want to do with their characters, what they're going to make the townspeople build (there's no tavern they found out). People start asking me all sorts of questions about the game and world. 

I leave feeling maybe my game is finally "good enough."

[JoyWriter]

It's good when it allows you to play an awesome game, it's better when it actively makes it even better! Good enough is barely in my game design vocab, but if your happy with it, I'd say it's good enough.

About making it better, I've been trying to work out how to move beyond the "kill switch" approach for a bit, and it would be awesome if a game could automatically give you "raider background" generators. But more broadly, I'd love to work out how to solve that classic problem, where players seize on the "not-important" bit and make it what they are here for.

The no prep style (no myth? not sure) is just to wing it and make up a new plot out of the events that have unfolded, although that is seriously high maintenance, and needs ideally lots of generative ways to make the players own actions provide the response, or I would just get swamped.

If you do want prep but just want to make it flexible, then it seems good to have generalised motivations or factions that are against the players, and then build the npcs from some elaboration of this, mixed with the character of the local area. Your always going to have to improv (unless your a genius or have predictable friends), but it would be nice to be able to limit this to adding depth rather than rejigging big wadges of your mental image.

I notice you say you broke your own rules, what encouraged you to do that, and do you think the same will happen to other people GMing your game?

[Daniel B]

It sounded like a great experience overall, but a few things in your post made me a little bit nervous. My comments have nothing to do with the design of your game itself, and all about how you might be approaching GMing.

When you told Eric that the probability of this one, particular person being a Pendric is really, really small and that he has no basis for rolling the "insight" check .. it smacks of a tiny bit of controlling his character. As much as we would love to imagine that people are able to separate metagame thoughts from in-character revelations, you MUST expect that there will be spillage. Although Pendric may be few and far between theoretically, given that they have the privilege of being a playable race, they will be far more common in practice (ie from the players' perspectives) and therefore I think it was perfectly valid for Eric to wonder. If that NPC really was a Pendric but you didn't want the players to find out yet, I would claim it's your fault for setting up a situation where they could be able and in your shoes I would have allowed the check.

That said, kudos for allowing the cleric an honest attempt to save the thugs committing suicide. Players do wacky, unexpected things and so I believe it is critically important to adapt to the players, instead of expecting any particular behaviour from them. When I DM games, I will try to set up what I think is an optimal solution to a problem, but also prepare for the .. oh .. less than optimal solutions that players come up with :-D  Some of the time, they don't hit the optimum but they get close enough, and that's superb. They advance in the game by their own means. More often, they get into really hideously bad trouble, or they come up with genius solutions that never even occurred to me. These are by far the most fun gaming sessions in my experience.


Dan Blain

[David C]

When you told Eric that the probability of this one, particular person being a Pendric is really, really small and that he has no basis for rolling the "insight" check .. it smacks of a tiny bit of controlling his character. As much as we would love to imagine that people are able to separate metagame thoughts from in-character revelations, you MUST expect that there will be spillage. Although Pendric may be few and far between theoretically, given that they have the privilege of being a playable race, they will be far more common in practice (ie from the players' perspectives) and therefore I think it was perfectly valid for Eric to wonder. If that NPC really was a Pendric but you didn't want the players to find out yet, I would claim it's your fault for setting up a situation where they could be able and in your shoes I would have allowed the check.

I might be more inclined to agree with you, but this literally happened almost immediately after I set the opening scene.  Also, my question is, "Am I controlling Eric's character, or am I protecting Mark's character?"  A lot of the appeal to playing a Pendric is that they have this secret, and beyond that, some people would kill them if they found out. 

About making it better, I've been trying to work out how to move beyond the "kill switch" approach for a bit, and it would be awesome if a game could automatically give you "raider background" generators. But more broadly, I'd love to work out how to solve that classic problem, where players seize on the "not-important" bit and make it what they are here fo

I think the problem here, is sometimes unrealistic expectations.  The players had this expectation that they bandits were part of some larger, evil-organization conspiracy, or something. The reality was that they just got offered some money by some people who they know nothing about.  I guess in hindsight, I could have given them the "meeting spot" where they would exchange for payment, but I didn't think of that.  I wanted to avoid that "interrogating prisoners" scene, when I didn't have anything interesting for the prisoners to say.  If I came up with something random, my past experience tells me it would just contribute to a schizophrenic story where the players were divided on what they wanted to do.

The no prep style (no myth? not sure) is just to wing it and make up a new plot out of the events that have unfolded, although that is seriously high maintenance, and needs ideally lots of generative ways to make the players own actions provide the response, or I would just get swamped.

I've done no prep, and really it has a neat quality to it and a bad quality to it.  The neat quality is that the players really can drive the game and a lot of unexpected stuff happens.  The bad quality is, the unpreparedness shows through, especially if you aren't feeling creative.  For tactical combat, it stinks. 

I notice you say you broke your own rules, what encouraged you to do that, and do you think the same will happen to other people GMing your game?

There's supposed to be two types of antagonists in my system, which exist to some distinction in every game, big bad leader-dudes and fodder. I made all the fodder using the big bad leader-dude, "rules."  At this level, there wasn't too much of a noticeable "threat" difference.  What was noticeable was that they were hard to hit and had a lot more HP than they should have had.  I think I did this because I plain forgot about the two separate generation rules.  (And when I say they're separate, I mean like, if you're making fodder you do steps 1, 2 and 3.  If you make a boss, you go on and do steps 4 and 5.) 

[JoyWriter]

Have you thought about shortcutting? Straight no-prep "They don't tell you anything interesting"! To an extent it reminds me of Shadow of Yesterday's simple actions; you don't care that much so you want to just say move on. If the players start pressing, then you could get either to some cool perspective where they start to look more and more paranoid for pinning this conspiracy on these random guys, getting the "unrealistic expectations" out there in game form, or you could have the players ask what kind of stuff they are looking for when they interrogate them. That is my standard rule for lowering GM prep; always accompany every knowledge check with a requirement to say what kind of thing they are looking for or might expect. This gives you fuel! What is more it constantly clues you into what the players perception of the world is, and allows you to tune stuff and make the world more them-ish, providing you don't skip all that and just tease them instead, which can be a temptation with really funny guesses.

Of course, all of this may just be due to people spotting the discrepancy you didn't, and assuming these guys must be big bads! In which case, it may be that your system already has a way to deal with this problem, it just that the signalling worked backwards this time.

[Erudite]

I'm having a hard time seeing where the game mechanics influenced how  the story played out. Does the system dictate to some degree how the story unfolds or how the characters have to act/react? I think we need a little more information on the game mechanics.