[Burning Passion] Traits, Running Wild and Free

[otspiii]

I'm going to start this post off with a warning.  I talk about my game a lot in this post, Burning Passion.  The rules I will be discussing were only applied to it roughly two weeks ago, and as such I haven't had a chance to playtest any of them out yet.  I wasn't going to post anything about them here until I had actually seen them in action a few times and gotten a better idea of how cruel reality destroys my precious idealistic theories, but I just noticed a fair amount of Trait-discussion that currently seems to be running strong in these forums and my system seems to have a somewhat unusual take on them.  There's a whole line of threads, but the most current one (with links to the others) is    
[Legends of Alyria] Traits! Traits!

Also, as I look at this after having written it, this post is GIGANTIC.  I think anyone really interested in the topic will get something out of reading the whole text, but I may just be being narcissistic.  Probably the most interesting section to most designers will be the one answering the question "What's stopping the trait from being used every time you do anything?"  The rest is mostly context for those few paragraphs.

Burning Passion is a game about emulating the shounen manga format of conflict resolution.  It's very descriptive, it's very creative, it's very competitive, and it places a lot more emphasis on awesomeness and story-power than realism.  It's probably about as Gamist as you get in fiction.  Some of the more recognizable (mostly because their animated versions have been played on Cartoon Network) are things like Dragonball, Naruto, Bleach, Fullmetal Alchemist, and One Piece.  Supernatural powers are common, and usually it's all about fighting, but that's by no means necessary.  There are very popular bread-baking, American football, and card-game playing manga out there, all unified by this highly-competitive, insanely-technical, and unashamedly-stylized/unrealistic format of conflict.  I wanted to make a game that captured the spirit of that, but that could be used for multiple kinds of settings or competition-types, from baking to giant-robot piloting.

The way I did it was just to make the core set of rules as simple as possible, and then make sure they could be used for anything.  The conflict resolution style is based off of the DitV Raise/See mechanic, where competitors take turns describing "Attacks" and "Defenses" and presenting dice to back up those descriptions with mechanical weight until one competitor runs out of dice and is overcome.  Every Competition begins with each player rolling 6d6 to simulate luck, and from there a character can Invoke one thing per turn to gain an edge.  There are really only two things they can Invoke, Facts and Special Moves.  "Special Moves" add a one-time bonus to an Attack/Defense, and aren't really relevant to the discussion at hand.  "Facts" are traits, each with an assigned die value that they let you roll upon Invoking, like "Dough-Kneading Genius 3d8".  This is still pretty in-line with DitV, but this is also where I took DitV and did my best to militarize it into a streamlined Gamist engine.

There have been a few stumbling blocks that people have brought up when it comes to using Traits as mechanics in games.  A few of the more frequently brought up ones seem to be: What's an allowable trait?/"Can I take 'Boba Fett's daughter 2d6?", What's the distribution of Credibility?/"I have 'Boba Fett's daughter 2d6', does that mean I can summon him into battle to fight for me?", and What's stopping the trait from being used every time you do anything?/"I use the self defense that my father, Boba Fett, taught me to beat up these thugs.  I get 2d6 now, right?  After that I'm going to reapply my make-up.  I've decided that he taught me how to do that, too, so I get an extra 2d6 on that roll as well."  I think I have answers to each of these issues.  Actually, I know I have answers to all of these issues.  What I think I have are answers to all of these issues that might actually be helpful enough to minimize the amount of dysfunctional play badly-used Traits causes.

What's an allowable trait?
Facts and Special Moves are the only two usable stats in the game, and they really don't interact directly at any point, so Facts pretty much cover everything about a character in Burning Passion.  If you have multiple layers of mechanics, like Attributes, Skills, and Facts, or even just Attributes and Facts there's a lot of room for things to get weird and for players to get optimization-obsessed, so I condensed everything into a single stat.  What this means is that the one stat covers everything.  At its core, a Fact is a measurement of story-weight more than a means to represent "a realistic simulation of the human body, mind, and spirit" or anything like that.  Facts can be Resources/Efficency (they're really the same thing in this setting), and they can also be Positioning.  Facts are how the players control the story, and different ways of wording those Facts allow for different types of control.  I'll get more into this in the next question.  Basically, though, the game rules themselves place no limits on what can be taken as a Fact.  Instead, they grant absolute Authority to do so to the GM.  More on that later, too.

What's the distribution of Credibility?
Players have a lot of Credibility in Burning Passion.  Theoretically, they have absolute Credibility over anything undefined in the SIS, and a fair amount of power even over things that are defined.  How does this work?  During play a player can, by default, do anything.  There are three things that can prevent a character from doing something: Limitations, Facts, and StoryPower.
Limitations are things that humans Just Can't Do, like fly or shoot lasers out of their eyes.  If a character attempts to do one of these things the GM can tell them that they can't.  However, There's a sub-section of the whole "Facts" rules where you buy the capacity to overcome these Limitations.  So, by default you can't fly, but if you spend 12XP or whatever on the flight Technique you can.
Facts that stop you from doing things are just like the Facts on your character sheet, but are hidden throughout nature.  You might try to climb a wall, but the GM might tell you that you can't because it's "Too Tall".  What this actually means is that implicit in the wall is a Fact, "Too Tall 1d8".  When blocked by a Fact the character has two choices.  They can either give up or Invoke a Fact of their own.  If they Invoke a Fact of their own one of three things happens, as the GM judges.  If the character's Fact completely overrides the wall's Fact "I Invoke my Wings 2d10 Fact, which is tied to my Flight Technique to fly over it", or if the matter isn't relevant to the story (it would be a Task rather than a Conflict) then the GM just says the character succeeds. Likewise, if the Fact is not helpful in the least the character just fails ('I Invoke my "Loves Inspirational Posters of Cats 'Hanging In There' 4d8" Fact').  If the two Facts are actually related ("Strong Gripping Hands 1d6"), the situation escalates into a Competition.
StoryPower is a nebulous force that the GM can use to keep the game from being disrupted.  It's basically a blank slate of absolute Credibility and Authority given to the GM in the interest of protecting the story.  Attached to this slate, however, is the advice that it be used as absolutely little as is necessary to maintain the mood/coherence of the game.  StoryPower is what keeps one player from outright ignoring other players' contributions to the story, if one player begins dictating the actions of another player against that player's wishes or begins retconning out that other player's effects on the game-world the GM is expected to step in and stop them.  That said, there are cases where a player can even control another player's actions.  "You look at me and feel an overwhelming sense of shame.  You're not going to shoot me.  I'm your best friend. You love me." is a legitimate Attack one player could make on another, even though it to some extent dictates that player's actions.  The GM is only supposed to step in when one player's control begins to interfere with other players' enjoyment of the game, and as such is based more on reading the players' comfort levels with having other players dictate some of their actions than on any objective rule-set.
The more important to the Story a character/event is the more StoryPower is attached to it.  For example, if Boba Fett exists in the story entirely in a supporting role to his daughter, the trait "Boba Fett's Daughter 2d6" would probably be able to summon him more or less at will.  The thing is, he'd only be 2d6 effective whenever a Competition rolled around, so if the character imagines the actual Boba Fett as being more powerful than that they need to either buy up his ranks or expect him to be only somewhat effectual.
If Boba Fett is a big part of the game's plot, however, he'd be a lot less controllable.  If he's meant to be a lurking and dangerous character, whose presence makes a big impact on any scene it is a part of, then "Boba Fett's Daughter 2d6" probably isn't going to be able to summon him.  It's still good for Positioning, though, and it can be used in other ways (I'm getting ahead of myself here, I'll come back to this next question).  There isn't any hard statistical ruling on what determined how much protection StoryPower gives a character from player manipulation; it's entirely up to the GM to decide when it does or doesn't get used.  It's one of the GM's primary tools in controlling the mood of the game, and its responsible use is something that the rulebook will discuss extensively.
Can StoryPower be used to force Railroading and GM Fascism?  Of course it can, but that's something the GM really can do in any game.  However, the rulebook for this game is going to be, like, 20% rules 80% advice/interpretations in an attempt to limit how often this happens.  It's dangerous, but such an absolute statement of GM power is needed in this game, for reasons about to be stated in answering the third question.

What's stopping the trait from being used every time you do anything?
This seems to be the issue that people have the most trouble with related to Traits, but it's something I'm actually less worried about than the above two questions.  I deal with this issue with a Drama resolution technique known as Partial Invocation.  Basically, before a character Invokes a Fact the player controlling the character describes the action associated with the Invocation.  Usually this will be during a Competition to get more dice, but it applies to a lesser extent in normal play when Invoking Facts to override NPC Facts as well.  The GM then judges the strength of the Fact relative to the way it's being used/what it's trying to accomplish.  The GM can just tell the player that their Invocation was a success and give them the full dice, or they can tell the player that the Invocation's strength isn't high enough and that they can only Partially Invoke.  What this means is that the Fact's dice are rolled, but the size of the dice is decreased.  So, "Boba Fett's Daughter 2d6" being used with the description "I go into the self-defense stance my father taught me and wait for one of them to make a move" might give 2d4 instead of 2d6.  If this causes a die size to shrink below d4, then the relationship is too weak and the Fact can not be Invoked.
There are a bunch of factors that are considered when deciding on the strength of an Invocation, but ultimately it comes down to common sense.  I'll list the names of the factors here briefly, though, to give you a rough idea of what they are: Usefullness In Competition, Justification of the Description, Using the Fact's Full Description, Interestingness of Description, Flow of the Narrative, Previous Actions Outside of Competition, Mood/Realism Levels of Scenario, Overall Usefulness of Fact.  None of these are hard statistics, the system for determining how strong an Invocation is entirely Drama-based, and full Credibility is given to the GM.
The last listed factor may be of interest to Trait-based discussions, "Overall Usefulness".  What this means is that how general and useful a Fact is must be considered when deciding on its strength.  A Fact like "Physically Capable 1d8" is going to be useful in all sorts of situations, so its strength should by default be fairly low, probably never being Invoked for more than 1d6 even at the best of times.  A useless Fact like "Crocheting Queen 4d8" should probably be over-strengthened, so it could be Invoked at full strength even for things like sewing a hole in a tent shut, even though no actual Crocheting is being done.  All of this changes if the focus of your Scenario is on competitive weaving, of course.  REALLY useful Facts, like "Great At Everything 5d10" should be weakened so much that they simply can not be Invoked, since even giving 5d4 in all situations is potentially game-breaking.


In the end, I built a game completely around Traits.  It came out kind of weird.  It's hard-line Director's stance, Gamist-enabling, heavily Drama-based, and is completely dependent upon absolute Credibility and Authority in the hands of the GM.  Is it going to need a LOT of Drama-system rules disguised as "Advice" for the GM to play properly?  Absolutely.  Is it going to be fun?  I hope so.  Will it probably change to near unrecognizability post-feedback/playtesting?  Yeah, probably.

What do you think about my solutions to the three listed problems?  I wrote way more than I expected to.  Did I lose my mind half-way through and slide into incoherency?  Was any of what I said relevant to anything any other designer could be interested in?  Am I being innovative with my ideas, or am I just driving myself down the long ugly road towards incoherent game design?

Thanks,
Misha

[whiteknife]

Well, after reading that and understanding most of it I can say:
1) You seem to have addressed the issues you presented well, but without full rules for your game I can't say exactly how perfectly they fit.
2) Didn't seem to lose your mind, no
3) Sure, I think that someone writing or playing a trait based game could use some of those ideas
4) I don't know what road you're headed down, but the ideas seem good.

Hope that helped, I'm not really sure what else to respond to that with, but if you have any other questions I'll do my best to answer them, and I'm sure some of the other people here would like to help out too.

[Callan S.]

Hi Misha,

I don't think you've provided any solutions - the GM will end up providing solutions for himself. It's what I call a stone soup design (and there are alot of them about), which is much like the old story/fable of a hungry man coming to a village and getting food by pretending to make soup...stone soup. But it tastes a little better if everyone from the village puts something in...

I've actually heard stone soup told as a con job and also told as a story about the benefits of sharing, so it's not exactly negative in itself. However the costs involved in a RPG, either in buying it and/or time/concentration in use means the people are being charged to actually add the ingrediants.

I haven't actually proved my statement that the GM will be the only one providing solutions, I've just stated it. It's a little involved to get into any level of proving it and you might not be interested, so I just briefly note it here in case your interested to see if it is the case.

[otspiii]

Callan,

Are you saying that by forcing the GM to make the final decision based entirely on his (or her) own subjective judgment that I'm forcing him to basically write his own system inside of my system to make my system playable?  Even with guidelines and extensive advice?

If so, what would be necessary for me to add to my rules to change them from a vacant hole the GM has to fill to a Drama-based resolution system?  It seems to me like any time you use Drama to resolve something in a game you're forced to shove the specifics of judging resolution on subjective personal judgment.  Or am I missing your point entirely?

As you said, you haven't completely explained your statement, so I can't really respond to it.  If you're willing to spend the time typing it out I would be more than interested to read it and consider its implications to my system.

[SoftNum]

You could also consider a form of Trait fatigue.  So every time you use a given trait in this Chapter (Or whatever time unit), the dice level does down by one.
So, I use 'I'm Awesome 5d10' goes to 'I'm Awesome 5d8' and so on, until finally it's 'I'm Awesome 5d0'.   This provides incentive to save awesome traits until they can provide the maximum impact.   And it also, at least in my Gamist mind, would provide incentive to make traits a bit more specific, that way I can pull them out in different scenarios.

Just another suggestion.

[Callan S.]

If so, what would be necessary for me to add to my rules to change them from a vacant hole the GM has to fill to a Drama-based resolution system?  It seems to me like any time you use Drama to resolve something in a game you're forced to shove the specifics of judging resolution on subjective personal judgment.  Or am I missing your point entirely?

I think your working from the idea that pretty much everyone says drama is great - so if drama always goes to personal judgement, and drama is great, how could going to personal judgement be going wrong?

Who said drama is great? How did they prove that to you, if they attempted to prove it at all?

As you said, you haven't completely explained your statement, so I can't really respond to it.  If you're willing to spend the time typing it out I would be more than interested to read it and consider its implications to my system.

The reason I asked if your interested is because I'll ask you to do the work of proving it to yourself.

If you wanted to test if the game doesn't provide any solutions, what methods and benchmarks would you use to test that, if any?

Remember there are no authorities around - there's no one who is positioned relative to your life that can tell you when you go wrong (and you'll accept it when they tell you, rather than argue with them). If you don't self police, your not policed at all. Do you have any self policing methods in regards to this?


Also as a bit of side humour, drama resolution doesn't seem to work particularly well in telling you drama resolution doesn't work

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Misha,

I'll answer your last questions first (in fact, I'm changing your initial post's order all over the place). You're formalizing Trait-specification techniques which are already known in play and design. However, that's a good thing, because these specifications are obviously in need of formalization! We should all start taking care that people who try to play aren't inadvertently divided into the Traits-friendly ones vs. the, well, Markus (who I think represents a widespread but until now tacit concern).

Here are your specifications:

1. Resource limit
2. Firm embedding in SIS at all levels with clearly assigned Authority
3. Precise procedures for how and when they get invoked/used

None of these are new. But I do think you've articulated and formalized them better than existing texts have done.

Before continuing with the Trait discussion, I'm confused about one thing. You wrote,

... It's hard-line Director's stance, Gamist-enabling, heavily Drama-based, and is completely dependent upon absolute Credibility and Authority in the hands of the GM.  Is it going to need a LOT of Drama-system rules disguised as "Advice" for the GM to play properly?  Absolutely.  Is it going to be fun?  I hope so.  Will it probably change to near unrecognizability post-feedback/playtesting?  Yeah, probably.

I'm not seeing the Drama-based part at all. Are you talking about the heavy verbal and imaginative framing that goes into forming conflicts, which is then consequential for what can and cannot be done and what Traits can be used? That's not Drama, that's basic SIS-work, the "stuff" of role-playing. Particularly the formation, through play, of Color into Situation. Drama as a term applies only to resolution methods, and if I'm not mistaken, for resolution, you're using hard-core Fortune.

OK, on to the Traits.

Your term Partial Invocation looks exactly like my "Before," and as a term, it's a million miles better in terms of clarity! I've been sort of struggling to articulate that "Before" doesn't mean that the Trait is played out 100% in full before the bonus or whatever is applied (in fact I don't think I've ever seen such a thing, not 100% anyway). So far, Meserach said it best at Anyway with his or her "plausible future of penumbra of the current events." And now, it looks as if we have a term already waiting for us! "Partial Invocation" it is!!

I fully agree with you that Partial Invocation typically resolves the fear (or genuine issue, in Markus' case and probably others) that the Trait is constantly and ultimately boringly invoked. However, certain secondary issues become prominent when considering an NPC to be a Trait. You were careful to distinguish between the Traits "I'm Boba Fett's daughter" vs. "Boba Fett, my dad," but even the former can conceivably bring the man himself into play, as you also acknowledged. I keep staving off this issue for later discussion, and I'd like to do that here as well. However, in passing, I'll note: "certain secondary issues become prominent when considering an NPC as a Trait."

Given that term, then a better term for "After" might be considered too.

Two more small points:

Your Fact system makes a lot of sense and has many parallels in a number of other games. Experience shows that the reasoning is easy and fun.

Can StoryPower be used to force Railroading and GM Fascism?  ...

I suggest that if you frame StoryPower as a "first among equals" thing rather than a "den daddy" thing, then it'll be no big deal. The reasoning is that, at the table, you're playing with people who all want StoryPower (by whatever name) to be in operation, otherwise play turns into endless negotiations and confusion. So it's not a matter of whether one person "uses it right," it's a matter of whether the people in the group know it when they see it. If so, then putting final decisions about it into one person's hands is a fine design decision.

Best, Ron

[Callan S.]

From what I see, it's "The GM decides if it automatically works, fails, or whether we go to fortune". That's drama resolution with the GM option to perhaps go to fortune. I think Misha is correct in what she's calling it.

If they Invoke a Fact of their own one of three things happens, as the GM judges.  If the character's Fact completely overrides the wall's Fact "I Invoke my Wings 2d10 Fact, which is tied to my Flight Technique to fly over it", or if the matter isn't relevant to the story (it would be a Task rather than a Conflict) then the GM just says the character succeeds. Likewise, if the Fact is not helpful in the least the character just fails ('I Invoke my "Loves Inspirational Posters of Cats 'Hanging In There' 4d8" Fact').  If the two Facts are actually related ("Strong Gripping Hands 1d6"), the situation escalates into a Competition.

[otspiii]

From some of the responses I got I've decided that my definition of Drama might be different from the norm, to some extent.  Hopefully my responses here will illustrate what I mean when I say "Drama".

I think your working from the idea that pretty much everyone says drama is great - so if drama always goes to personal judgement, and drama is great, how could going to personal judgement be going wrong?

Do people say that a lot?  I decided to use it because I couldn't figure out how to make parts of my system work with Fortune, and trying to think of how to get it to work led me to my current solution.  Calling it "Drama" is something I do when I post here, because that's what I thought you people would refer to it as.  That said, I do think that one of the biggest strengths of role-playing games is that you can use the human brain to make judgments on how to resolve certain aspects of conflicts.  I think it's capable of handling a lot more subtlety and nuance than any table or chart ever could.  Of course, it's a dangerous thing to work with, since there are plenty of other things going on inside of it that can cause interference with your resolutions.  Playing around to see what kind of processes I can run through it relatively safely/what I can do to decrease outside interference is going to be, by far, the most intensive part of play-testing this game that I do.

It's not something I'm doing "just because".  It's something I'm doing because I want to add a competitive feeling to the descriptions people use for their actions.  I'll be getting into this more in detail in my response to Rob.

The reason I asked if your interested is because I'll ask you to do the work of proving it to yourself.

If you wanted to test if the game doesn't provide any solutions, what methods and benchmarks would you use to test that, if any?

Remember there are no authorities around - there's no one who is positioned relative to your life that can tell you when you go wrong (and you'll accept it when they tell you, rather than argue with them). If you don't self police, your not policed at all. Do you have any self policing methods in regards to this?

Okay, I'm going to be honest here and say that I'm still not 100% on all of what you're saying here.  I guess I'll state what I think you're asking me, then attempt to answer it briefly, and then potentially go into it in more depth once I'm sure we're on the same page.  I'm really not very experienced at debating RPG-Theory, so I'm sorry if I'm taking this a little slow.

I said things that I thought were my solutions to commonly expressed dangers regarding Traits.  You said that rather than offering solutions to those dangers I pushed the issue on to the GM.  I asked you if by that you meant that I relied on the personal judgment of the GM as a game mechanic/if there was a way other than that to handle Drama resolution systems.  You asked me why I was relying on Drama at all (I'm worried that I'm putting words in your mouth here, correct me if I read into you too deeply here), and then asked me how I would prove the absence of solutions in my own words.

Are you asking me how I'd test to make sure my mechanics are actually mechanics and not just empty abysses the GM has to build his own bridge over?  You also said "Do you have any self policing methods in regards to this?"  Are you referring to specific instances in my rules that I'm forcing GM repair-work on, or do you just mean "How am I making sure my rules work for people other than me?"  If it's the former, that's really hard for me to address without knowing where you see the gaps, exactly.  For the latter, that's really hard for me to address except in generalities, since it's such a huge question.  I'm going to play-test, and I'm going to pay attention to what I have to improvise to make the system work/what the game's rough patches were.  I'm also going to try to get other people to play-test for me, and listen to what they had to improvise to make the system work/what they thought the game's rough patches were.  I can get more specific as to how I'll be watching myself in specific areas of the rules, if you have specific areas you'd like me to talk about.

I understand that there's no single person who can look at my game and judge it wholly for mistakes.  I also understand that I have the best chance out of anyone to police my game for undesirable aspects, but I include my self as a "single person".  Every set of eyes that looks upon my system will have a difference view of it, and the best way to limit the number of blind spots you have when editing a game is to look at it from as many angles as possible.  I understand that the responsibility to make my game good is my own.  Asking people to point out errors they see with it here is an attempt to lower the number of blind spots I have regarding the system, not an attempt to pawn the editing off on the internet.  Is this what you meant by the "no authorities around" paragraph?

I'm not seeing the Drama-based part at all. Are you talking about the heavy verbal and imaginative framing that goes into forming conflicts, which is then consequential for what can and cannot be done and what Traits can be used?

I may have become filled with hubris during some parts of my post and over-stated the amount of Drama present in the rules.  My hope is that the Drama-based resolution mechanics will be the most engaging part of the whole conflict system, the part of the game that really feeds the Gamist agenda.  Fortune shows up in the rules significantly more frequently, but it's all fairly simple.  There's only so much strategy you can put into deciding if 2d8 or 3d6 is the better spread of dice for you.

The Drama (if that's what it is and I'm not just confusing jargon) is all about determining the strength of the Invocations.

It's pretty easy to become godlike at combat (or any other single thing) if you really want to in Burning Passion, but Burning Passion isn't about combat.  It's about competition and conflict, and those can take many forms.  A character that specializes in one sort of conflict can and will dominate the aspects of the story related to their specialty, but I don't see a problem with that.  Min/maxing only means they'll be extremely vulnerable in every other kind of conflict, and the damage you take in a knife-fight is only marginally more wounding than that you take in a villain-induced episode of self-doubt.  As long as the players make sure to maintain separate specialties I don't think I'll have to worry too hard about one player rendering all the other players ineffectual.

The way that a character really becomes powerful in Burning Passion is by getting the most out of their Facts in a variety of situations, and that's where the Drama comes in.  How a Fact is written is only part of what determines its strength.  How it's actually used at the time of Invocation is also extremely important, and is more or less the only place the player can wriggle for more strength post-buying the Fact.

I'm going to set up a window into a Competition for you to try to illustrate my point.  To make things relatively simple and familiar I'll make it a combat.

Max is locked in battle with some god-awful acid-covered mutant humanoid monster thing that wants to eat him.  Both sides have Invoked all the directly combat-related Facts they have, and are running out of dice.  Currently Max is looking like he's due to lose, but a good roll on a decent Invocation could easily tip the scales in his favor.  In a fit of desperation he decided to Invoke "Professional Writer 2d8", something that would seem pretty unrelated to a fight.  Following are several examples of descriptions he could give to justify this.  Depending on how good a job he does he could end up with an extra 2d8 (not going to happen), 2d6 (not likely, but not totally impossible), 2d4 (with a little justification), or nothing (if his reason is dumb).

1.  "I've studied some anatomy related to my writing.  I swing my two-by-four at its vital spots."

2.  "'Foul beast!' I bellow at it, "The anatomy I researched for my novel "Under the Knife" has allowed me to identify your weak spot!  The fluid-filled pustule underneath your left armpit is obviously an evolved version of the human lymph node, now a sac in which you retain your foul acids.  If I apply proper force to the sac with this two-by-four it should burst internally, filling your chest cavity with deadly acid.  This fight is mine.'"

3.  "I discard my now-acid eaten two-by-four and pull a pen out of my pocket.  I stab it."

4.  "I discard my now-acid eaten two-by-four and pull a pen out of my pocket.  I know that direct contact between its skin and my fist will inflict serious burns on me, so I'm going to attempt to keep direct contact to a minimum with this stabbing instrument."

5.  "I describe to the mutant how much it's going to hurt when I smack it."

6.  "That's a nasty welt on your left arm, there,' I tell the mutant.  'I can only imagine how those feel, a dull ache spreading through your body most of the time, even the lightest contact fires shooting streams of agonizing knives through your nerves.  The worst part is that you know these are the kind that stay with you for the long haul.  If we keep fighting you'll probably beat me, but not before I land quite a few more clean hits.  You'll be an aching mess for days.  Why don't you just let this meal pass you by and grab yourself something with a bit less fight in it?"

7.  "I wrote about a guy who was pretty good at fighting once.  I'll use what I learned from that to win."

Now, will some of these earn bigger dice than others?  Almost certainly.  Do I know how much any of them will be worth?  Absolutely not.

There are a number of variables that go into deciding the strength of an Invocation.  I'll go over a few of them here, but none of them have firm values.  Part of learning to GM Burning Passion involves identifying how strong each of these variables should be in the story being told.  It's not something people will fully master the first session they run, but I really don't think it'll take long to get pretty comfortable with it.  In the end, most of the variables are just common sense.  Is the fact that there are only pieces of advice and no objective rules on this what Callan means when he says that I'm forcing the GM to write parts of the system for me?

First off, 2 and 6 are WAY more descriptive than the others, although 4 isn't too bland.  Stronger descriptions result in stronger Invocations, although to what extent is the GM's decision.  Making the differences too big can make less creative players feel like second-class citizens, while making it too small will result in less effort put into interesting descriptions.

3 and 4 detail actual physical advantage gained, but rely on inventing information (that you have a pen in your pocket).  Pens are pretty weak, would fighting with a pen be more or less helpful than using invented knowledge in 1,2,7 or negotiation in 5,6?  Would the fact that Max has Invoked the fact "Ninja" and would therefore probably be competent with using small concealable stabbing weapons help?  How about the implied strategic advantage given in 3 versus the explicit one in 4?

The two-by-four is broken and useless in 3 and 4, but in perfect working shape in 1 and 2.  What's up with that?

5 and 6 rely on intimidation.  Would this intimidation have been more useful when Max wasn't so dangerously close to losing the fight?

7 is kind of worthless.  Would it be stronger if a plot point in a previous session was the actual writing of this book?

Would 6 be stronger if the narrative explicitly stated that Max did, in fact, land a strong hit on the mutant's arm?

Is 2 any weaker for being INCREDIBLY scientifically unsound?  This probably depends more on the general mood/realism levels in the Scenario than anything else.

A good section of the rulebook is going to be devoted to making the GM, and to some extent the players, understand all the variables involved in informed Invocation-judging.  I think that this would be a Drama system.  If it's not please correct me and I'll start using the correct terminology.  I understand that by making the rules for judging Invocation strength vague I'm encouraging very different play-styles between groups.  I'm not too worried about it; I'm not Starbucks.  I don't feel like I really gain anything about promising a standardized experience to everyone who plays my game.  I just want to get people to give ridiculous narrations to bizarre conflicts.

I suggest that if you frame StoryPower as a "first among equals" thing rather than a "den daddy" thing, then it'll be no big deal. The reasoning is that, at the table, you're playing with people who all want StoryPower (by whatever name) to be in operation, otherwise play turns into endless negotiations and confusion. So it's not a matter of whether one person "uses it right," it's a matter of whether the people in the group know it when they see it. If so, then putting final decisions about it into one person's hands is a fine design decision.

Yeah, I need to be careful with how I present it.  Framing is one of the big things I'm currently trying to figure out for the book.  Up until now it's been an entirely "my own notes, to be used by myself" deal, but that's going to have to change before I can start showing it to people.  Honestly, writing a bunch of coherent words down in a row so that other people can understand them is my biggest area of self-doubt in game-design.  I feel like I, if nothing else, at least have a plan for how I'll be dealing with everything else.  My plan for clear writing is just "do it."

You could also consider a form of Trait fatigue.  So every time you use a given trait in this Chapter (Or whatever time unit), the dice level does down by one.
So, I use 'I'm Awesome 5d10' goes to 'I'm Awesome 5d8' and so on, until finally it's 'I'm Awesome 5d0'.   This provides incentive to save awesome traits until they can provide the maximum impact.   And it also, at least in my Gamist mind, would provide incentive to make traits a bit more specific, that way I can pull them out in different scenarios.

Just another suggestion.

I thought about this some, and the approach has its merits.  However, I think that having both the above system and trait fatigue would be more complicated and redundant than it would be helpful, and I like the way I'm doing it now more for the way it encourages innovative descriptions.  If my above method is proven totally unusable fatigue is definitely a good idea, though.

Wouldn't it encourage traits to be more broad, though?  If you could have "I'm awesome 5d10" "I'm great 5d10" "I'm badass 5d10" wouldn't it just let you roll 5 dice for anything you could possibly do 16 times a Chapter?  Wouldn't that be more efficient than actual specialization?

From what I see, it's "The GM decides if it automatically works, fails, or whether we go to fortune". That's drama resolution with the GM option to perhaps go to fortune. I think Misha is correct in what she's calling it.

Oh, this is the other way that I use Drama.  I forgot to mention this, actually.  Thanks!  Most of the above factors are applicable to this type of Invocation, as well.  The issue is just "does it work, fail, or fortune?" instead of "how big are my dice?"

A side note, though:  Male.  It's short for Mikhail.  It's cool.  I've known more women with my name than men.

Big thanks to everyone who has commented in this thread so far.  I'm really learning a lot about which parts of the system I really need to pay more attention to.  I think it might be helpful if I posted my current draft of the system here, but the feedback I'm getting is making it so I actually have a lot of editing I need to do before I can really show anyone a "current" version.  Like I said, I'm totally new to all of this, so I really feel like I'm learning a lot.

Did I miss any topics that should be addressed?

[Callan S.]

I actually thought afterwards I just totally assumed your gender and had probably stuffed up!

Okay, I'm glad I didn't try to prove anything much because your own testing method seems squarely set on using playtest as your trial method. That's a strong, provocative testing area, so that seems good from my evaluation.

Really you've chosen playtest as your method (good on you ). But I will say I find any system where you can entirely decide if something passes or if it fails, or if you roll, as being identical to a blank sheet of paper. I'd actually suggest a minimum trait strength rather than the entire capacity to veto, because while bobba fett could be used over and over at the minimum, it shows the player they could probably pick something more effective. At the same time it challenges your imagination as GM, because they can still invoke it over and over and instead of being able to push away anything that's a bit outside your imaginative comfort zone. There aught to be some small amount of friction - friction is how you feel something, both physically and mentally! I'm thinking of the invocation of 'Dave' in this tentacle city playtest. In that, if someone doesn't like Dave just suddenly appearing - tough (to put it more politely than Willow did...just teasing, Willow!)! And I think the same should damn well go for Bobba Fett - if he's used over and over again, tough! There shouldn't be advice - if you can write advice, you can write mechanics that force variation (can't use the trait again until you've used two others would give it a more varied turnover, for a start, and is entirely simple mechanics rather than rules advice). The ability to absolutely say a trait fails or suceeds removes all friction - the person judging it feels no push.

I'll also say that working within the fiction someone else has established is both fun and useful. But if you don't have a choice about it, it's not fun, you've just got a gun held to your head loaded with veto rounds. Roleplayers too eagerly embrace people working within the fiction, while scorning someone just using the system as they wish (multiple Bobba Fetts). BOTH must be valid and pleasantly accepted outcomes or its not working together in the fiction, it's just gun to the head time. That's my understanding of human psychology, anyway. Though I'll say you'll obviously enjoy the working in the fiction more. It's like asking a woman out - you aught to enjoy it if it's just dinner together and that's all (no sex!). But gamers are fixated on working in the fiction, or so I say in a moment of passion! If you can't enjoy raw system use with no fiction interaction/if you can't enjoy just having dinner together, then that system sucks. But if you can enjoy that, often you will go on to quite intimate...err, detailed fiction interaction!

Excuse me slipping in the dating analogy.

[otspiii]

Callan,

I'm going to go out on a limb here and give my own interpretation of "System Matters".

System isn't game-play.  System guides game-play, it points out what direction for game-play to go in, and if the system and the group's goals are similar there might be little to no drift separating the two, but they aren't the same.  I genuinely do not see the difference between a table of results and a piece of GM-advice except in that one requires a little more drift than the other.  My goal isn't to tell the GM exactly how to run every aspect of his game, it's to tell the GM how to decide how to run every aspect of his game.  I understand that in doing this I ask for a bit more out of the GM than other systems do, but that's why I'm making efforts to streamline all of the Fate-based resolution systems so much.

Minimum trait strength. . .this actually gives me a really interesting idea for an alternate Invocation-system to use if this one proves unplayable.  I could make char-gen almost into a madlib, where a handful of  Traits are picked to describe different parts of the character's life.  Every conflict every one of these Traits would be Invoked, but the size of the dice they grant would be determined by the nature of the conflict.  Hobby: Flower Arranging would probably only give a d4 in a fist-fight, while Personality:Stubborn might grant a d6, Concept: Biker a d8, and Skill: Brawling a d10.  I'd have to completely overhaul huge sections of the system to fit this in, but it certainly seems like it could be interesting.

The reason I'm not going to do it that way is focus, though.  In Gamist play there are always the areas of the game in which all the competitive maneuvering is focused.  In D&D 4th Ed it's in character build, grid positioning, and power timing.  In Pokemon it's balancing high stats with a well-rounded selection of elements.  In Burning Passion I want it to be primarily focused on Description.  I'd say Color, but by making it the focus it really isn't Color any more, is it?  Mechanics like absolute patterns to how you can Invoke traits put the focus on building Trait-machines, putting the focus more on turning those absolute patterns to your advantage.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it goes directly against the design principles I'm using for this system.  For me, when all the focus is on the character's build it leads to systems that are more fun to make characters for than to play.  Some of the focus will be on character creation, of course, but I want to put as much of it as possible into the Ephemera of visceral description.  I feel like my current system better serves that goal.

I see the friction in the game being the players striving to impress the GM into strengthening their Invocations.  I agree that by giving the GM complete veto power I remove some of the friction he experiences, but I think that he has, in the end, the ultimate push to worry about: Is he making the game enjoyable for everybody involved?  While the players' focuses are directed towards description, I feel like that should be the focus I give to the GM.  By complicating the areas in which the GM has authority I bring the focus from reading the players' enjoyment levels and adjusting accordingly to rules-scholaring.  I think that by doing that I really would begin to increase the risk of GM-abuse.

Hrmm, I'd have thought that this system would promote player control over the fiction more than the vast majority of other systems.  I give the players huge amounts of directorial authority, I just follow up by giving the GM veto-power.  The GM's job isn't to tell a story that he comes up with with internal logic and rules completely his own that the players had just better shut up and deal with.  The GM's job is to make sure the players are enjoying themselves.  Having a strong internal mood-based logic to the fiction is a tool with which he engages the players, nothing more and nothing less.  The fiction should ideally be a representation of what the players want.  I feel like if anyone has a gun to their head it's the GM; if he does a poor job of running the game the players can just drop out.  He has the ultimate veto power within the system, but the players really have the ultimate veto within the social contract.

As for the system=dinner, fiction=sex analogy. . .the system and fiction are really almost the same thing in this game.  It's not that the system isn't fun without the fiction, it's that it's missing vital organs and bleeds out when you separate the two.  Does this make me a slut?

I'm really enjoying this discussion.  Everything I'm saying here I was aware of on some level before, but it really helps me consider it and understand it when I have to bring it out and explain it to someone else.

Thanks,
Misha

[Mikael]

Hey Misha, interesting setup.

One thing I would watch out in your playtest is what I could call the "target number fatigue":

Since the Partial Invocation thing calls for the GM to be constantly(?) judging the numerical value of player contributions, I am sure that I, personally, would get real tired real fast with trying to be reliably consistent and fair in these judgments. "Applies/does not apply" is an order of magnitude easier assessment to make.

[otspiii]

One thing I would watch out in your playtest is what I could call the "target number fatigue":

Since the Partial Invocation thing calls for the GM to be constantly(?) judging the numerical value of player contributions, I am sure that I, personally, would get real tired real fast with trying to be reliably consistent and fair in these judgments. "Applies/does not apply" is an order of magnitude easier assessment to make.

Yeah, this is one of the things I'm a little worried about.  I'm building this system to match my own GM-style, but I can be kind of cruel to myself.  My hope is that, as many variable as there theoretically are, the actual decision just comes down to common sense and a gut feeling.  Talking about all the different things that can affect the strength of an Invocation is really just to make sure the GM doesn't have blind spots in judging his Players' Invocations styles.  I imagine the first session or two run will be difficult, but I'm hoping that it becomes intuitive to the point of not thinking about it relatively quickly.

I really need to find other play-testers for this system.  I'm a weird GM in some ways, and I need to make sure the system is going to be usable for anyone but me.  If I do actually come out in print with the system I'm probably going to be selling most of my copies to pimply 15 year olds wearing Naruto headbands at anime conventions who have never even played D&D before, so I really do need to focus on ease of adoption.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Misha,

I don't know if you're interested in pursuing this, but you're mangling the terminology. Your resolution system is hard-core Fortune. Everything you're calling "Drama" is merely the necessary connection between the Fortune mechanic and whatever else is happening in play at the moment (and with whom). All resolution mechanics need such grounding; it's not a big deal except that game texts have historically screwed the pooch, thus making it a big deal.

One part of your solution is the same as I did with Sorcerer: it works, it doesn't work, or roll. Again, this isn't anything to do with anything but Fortune. To clarify:

- If we were talking about Drama, then the rule would be, it works, it doesn't work, or someone says whether it does. 

- If we were talking about Karma, then the rule would be, it works, it doesn't work, or check the relevant number.

Neither of those is actually redundant! Or rather, good mechanics design for either are based on making them not redundant. If the Drama is unconstructed, then the third part of the rule is redundant, and that is consistently suck-ass no fun. Good Drama mechanics use things like Resources and turn-order to provide construction. You might say, hey, Karma should be the same, it could be redundant too, and you'd be right. My point here is that the third option must be mechanically significant, which is also to say, there's no such thing as "Drama," but instead, specific Drama mechanics.

But here's the savage part: unconstructed Fortune is suck-ass no fun too. It's based on the very same idea but comes from the other direction, as I hope to show by repeating the parallel rule:

- If we were talking about Fortune, then the rule would be, it works, it doesn't work, or use the dice/cards/whatever.

Here, there's little danger of forgetting the mechanics/construction of the third part. But look at what happens when you forget about the first two rules: you roll for everything, and don't know why you don't when you don't, or what it means when you do and fail, and people start flailing around with meaningless perception rolls and weird little tasks. I'll never forget the account posted long ago about the modern-day vampires trying to work a copy machine, which occupied the group for hours.

Whew.

All of that is to say, the distinctions between the three resolution methods (and they are not exclusive, incidentally; mechanics often mix and match them) all support your basic design decision. Which is, if you're going to use dice, then bloody fucking well know when and when not to use them, and place your decisions about that into the rules in terms of real Authority.

That's good design and good game-writing.

I won't bother you more with terminology if you say not to. I do think you're missing out, though.

Best, Ron

[otspiii]

Hrmm, okay, I see what you mean.  I think I understand the terminology a little better now, and you are correct.

No worries, though.  Like I said, I designed the system to focus on what I wanted to focus on, not with the goal of using "Drama" as a mechanic.

My stance on terminology in general is that I'm very interested in it because how it's constructed can give you a lot of insight into the priorities of those who built it, and it can keep everyone who understands it on the same page during discussion.  I am, however, very mercenary in my use of it.  Concepts are concepts, and I'll use whatever words I need to to communicate those concepts.  Advanced terminology is very useful for communicating with people who understand it, but can be alienating for laymen.  So, you're absolutely not bothering me when you clarify things for me, Ron.  Thank you very much.

Trying to figure out what to say and what to leave unstated in the rules is what I'm working on a lot now.  It's tricky, because a lot of the unstated is unstated because gamers take it for granted, myself included.  For me, that's what The Forge does best.  Identify what people take for granted in RPGs that they probably shouldn't.