[Burning Passion] Traits, Running Wild and Free

[Patrice]

Hello Misha,

Just a few things that came in mind as I was idly reading your thread. When you say system isn't gameplay, you imply some kind of order between the two. The obvious direction would be that the gameplay issues from the system, but as a designer, you consider it the other way round, which is appropriate during the design phase, provided you don't forget that the actual gameplay that will take place later (and mostly upon game tables you won't attend to) will be deduced from the system (encompassing soft notions such as GM's advice and the like okay).

So that sets how important is the system building. I deeply understand your wish to design your game with the minimum "hard parts" such as variables and tables possible. Yet, you must take into account what solution you offer instead and when I read you, I have the feeling that you're vaguely thinking that none is needed because every game you ran didn't need these. Of course they didn't, you were running those games. Alas, I have to say that this question "what or who will replace the hard parts?" must be answered.

Your description of your game actually gives this answer, you wish to give the GM this power. Right. So with cooperative players, you get a GM-driven storytelling game. Is that what you wish? It seems to me that you maybe wish the game to be more Gamist or at least, opened to more competition and I'm not so sure that you can blend raw GM-driven storytelling and competition at the same time. Because a competition needs opponents and if the other players aren't, then the opponent is the GM. And... He has every power in game since he decides everything, so it's biased from the start.

Very simple, not necessary "hard" mechanisms, Trait fatigue, exhaustion, threshold, use limitation or the like would do the job. From what I'm reading you're very reluctant to incude that in your game but the choice you've made gives the GM player an overwhelming and looming position difficult to relate to Gamist play. There's plenty options, really. Rolling (thus increasing the Fortune level), Bidding, Collective Choice (vote or something like that), considering traits as a resource, give every trait its drawback so that a player wouldn't use it so often, etc. The only thing is, I think you have to choose one. Yes, that would lower the GM's position, true. Imho, that's just as good a benefit as balancing the traits. Take him down.

[otspiii]

Patrice,

It's not really that I don't want ANY 'hard parts' in the system, it's that I feel like I already have one or two pretty hard parts installed and I want to keep the rest of the system somewhat lean so as to not overwhelm new players.  I think (and I can't confirm this until playtesting, but I will be watching very closely for it) that the only two places things get at all squiggly and subjective are in judging Invocation strength and in the process of story-composition, both of which have extensive documentation meant to guide the GM through dealing with the topics.  I'm trying to figure out how to give as much guidance to GMs as possible without forming raw mathematical charts.  My problem with raw mathematical charts is that the places they could be used in are places where staring at a table in the book would really drag down gameplay, so the GM is going to have to be making snap judgments.  If there's an objective numerical table dictating what those snap judgments should have been it's just asking for gameplay to degenerate into table-thumping rules-lawyering.  I'm trying to give the GM as much guidance as possible without taking away the mystery that makes the creative process creative rather than analytical.

Does that make sense?  I could give examples and so on of what I'm worried about if it doesn't.  It's a somewhat hard worry to communicate, but I have the feeling anyone who has run a couple games could relate.

I'm not really driving for a Storyteller game.  The GM has full Authority over rules issues, this is true.  The GM also has veto power over story issues, but isn't that true of almost any game?  The GM is instructed to "give the Players as much control of the plot as they want/can stay focused with".  Can the GM declare that the amount that they can "stay focused with" is none and play the game Illusionist-style?  Yeah, I guess, but there's only so much damage control you can write in for dysfunctional GMs before you start arbitrarily limiting everyone else.

I do hear you on the issue of the GM having both unlimited power and being the big force the players compete against.  I think that this is one of the big issues of Gamist play.  I do plan on writing as much as possible about GM methods to set difficulty levels in play, but that's one of the sections I can't really start working on until I've done some playtesting.

There are a few more mechanics in the game that I haven't talked about here, and one is an energy-point pool that Invoking drains.  However, it's currently under heavy enough review that I can't say much more about it than that and have it be meaningful.  There's also an indirect limiter I've installed.  You start with 3 dice in your pool from "random chance", up to 3 more from Invoking to start the competition, and up to 3 every turn from Invoking.  However, every turn you will spend 2 to attack and (on average) 2 to defend.  No more than 8 Facts can really be Invoked in any single Competition before the pool drains to zero.

When I say "lean" I don't mean "unregulated".  Other than Invocation Strength and Story-Composition, I really am trying to be careful not to let anything be undefined or "unbalanced".  I do appreciate your input, though, and I will be keeping an extra critical eye on the topics you brought up during playtesting.

Thanks,
Misha

[Patrice]

The GM also has veto power over story issues, but isn't that true of almost any game?

This principle, which almost every player seems to take for granted in RPGs is far from being that absolute. Most RPGs feature common rules known to all its players that the GM can't possibly ignore or bypass. I very well know that many players get into that confusion stating that the GM has to define and run the opposition and is the absolute reference of its course at the same time. It always strikes me as a poor and unsatisfactory solution.

There are plenty options to regulate it otherwise without getting into any "hard" logics: You could set a flowing range of opposition corresponding to the character's potential, or you could set easy and understandable tiers of challenge, levels of difficulty, reference numbers, etc. What I fear when I read you is that you have the insight of the possible trouble going without a fixed definition would be and you try to avoid it through... Training the GM into being a good GM. That involves quite a lot. That involves first that the GM would willingly and happily take the pain to go through it and that involves as well that he would share your statements. It's possible, but it's a big job and your GM audience would narrow to these volunteers. A few hints and tips are always welcome, but one day you'll have to hand the game to them. Why not begin with that?

And in order to do this, you have to give them more than a training, you have to give them common references for decision. A scale, words, whatever, but common references are something you can't go without. Your pool system for Invocation goes in this direction anyway (so you maybe worry too much), it's the beginning of "tying the Traits to a resource" or even of "using the Trait as a resource". That pretty much takes you out of the Trait overuse defect. As for the remaining items, why don't you give the Traits a limitation?

Just a few spots, because this "the GM will decide" is not something you should lightly decide upon, it's a massive weight upon a game and it confers it a coloration that I'm not sure, from what I've read else of your project, you want it to take. If you go for it, then okay but know what that will imply.

[otspiii]

This principle, which almost every player seems to take for granted in RPGs is far from being that absolute. Most RPGs feature common rules known to all its players that the GM can't possibly ignore or bypass. I very well know that many players get into that confusion stating that the GM has to define and run the opposition and is the absolute reference of its course at the same time. It always strikes me as a poor and unsatisfactory solution.

There are plenty options to regulate it otherwise without getting into any "hard" logics: You could set a flowing range of opposition corresponding to the character's potential, or you could set easy and understandable tiers of challenge, levels of difficulty, reference numbers, etc. What I fear when I read you is that you have the insight of the possible trouble going without a fixed definition would be and you try to avoid it through... Training the GM into being a good GM. That involves quite a lot. That involves first that the GM would willingly and happily take the pain to go through it and that involves as well that he would share your statements. It's possible, but it's a big job and your GM audience would narrow to these volunteers. A few hints and tips are always welcome, but one day you'll have to hand the game to them. Why not begin with that?

Story veto power is just that, story veto power.  The ability to tell a single player (or multiple players) who attempt an action that would derail the game and lessen everybody's experience what they're doing and negotiate a solution favorable to all parties, but with the ultimate ability to pull rank and end the discussion instantly if the discussion itself ruins the game.  The basic core rules of the game are the same for both the players and the GM, though.

When I say "train the GM" a little of what I mean is general RP advice, but most of what I mean are exactly the sort of things you list at the start of the second paragraph.  I'm not training the GM to be a good GM in general, I'm training the GM to fully understand the implications of specific situations that occur in the process of running Burning Passion.  There's a lot of "for this difficulty level for a party of this experience level use this Competition opponent template", just not "in the second game session 5 of the 8 enemies will be built off of this template, 2 off of this one, and the final boss will use this one".  I think you're assuming a lot more minimalism in my design than I'm actually using.

[Patrice]

Just great then! I mean, if you've set flowing ranges acknowledged by all the players and tools to determine whether a Trait could possibly be taken into account or not plus some regulation system involving tying the Traits to some kind of resource, dice pool, action point, whatever, well, you don't have anything left to worry about, do you? You've solved the overuse issue, the misuse one and the GM status. The only thing now is that everything lays upon what system you've designed for these regulations. That will sure take a lot of tweaking.