Competitive Story Overlay

[JMendes]

Ahey, all,

I'd like to share with you an insight that a friend of mine had, and an insight that I had that builds on top of his.

The problem with (some) competitive designs

There's probably a whole bunch of competitive RPG designs out there, but there's only two that we're in any way familiar with, namely, Rune and Agon. While both of them have their own strengths and weaknesses, I quite enjoyed the few sessions of Rune and the many sessions of Agon I played.

However, they both have the same fundamental structural flaw: the reward you get from winning is directly applicable to making you better at winning. This creates a positivie feedback spiral that, sooner or later, breaks the game.

On the other hand, some sort of mechanism to expand (or at least consistently modify) the scope of the game is necessary. Otherwise, the game is either too short or too stale. In standard, non-competitive game systems, that's what typical reward/pacing mechanisms do, but in competitive play, rewarding the players with the pacing mechanism is just inherently broken.

A basic game concept

This is a game about swashbuckling pirates. Each PC is a high-ranking pirate in the company, up to and including the captain. Each PC also has a life-long ambition, like, say, to exact revenge on the Evil Baron Raymondo and the Marquis de Montalban, to take a cue from Sid Meyer. One important thing about the PCs: there may or may not be some sort of Positioning mechanic, and there definitely will be a Resource mechanic, as decribed below, but as far as Effectiveness goes, they don't change. Ever. Each and every PC has, for ever and ever, the same exact chance to influence which port the pirate fleet will head for next.

The game revolves around two types of scenes: one is encounters in quests and mini-quests, each one of which directly contributes towards advancing one of the PCs' story. The other is individual scenes where each character finds out where he might want or need to go next.

Achieving those quests grants the respective PC Fame Points and unlocks other parts of their stories, in a linear but create-as-you-go fashion. For instance, finding out who it is that you're supposed to exact revenge on leads you on a quest to find out where they are, which then leads you on a quest to get there, which then leads to a final fight against them.

By the rules of the game, the company always stays together. Individual scenes are side conversations that occur at sub-locations, but the rest of the party is in the tavern, right there across the street, or some such. And, because characters can die during the quests, all players have an incentive to try like hell to have those quests go well.

Also, if a given quest is not about your particular character, you gain something from going along and succeeding at it. Namely, for every Fame Point the quest character gets, you get one Story Point. Story Points can be used to influence the results of the individual scenes, and they can be used to influence the level of challenge you will get when it comes time for the company to face your quests.

Level of challenge, I say? Yes. You see, there is also a ship or fleet and respetive crew(s). Achieving those quests grants the group "XPs", which are tracked towards the fleet's "level" and/or used to purchase more ships, more cannons, more specialists, etc, etc, etc, thus making the whole of the group better at facing the challenges in the quest, which in turn, keep getting harder and harder. This is the game's basic scope pacing mehcanism.

So, what do the players do? They play their characters, compete for the right to progress their own story lines, and during quests and mini-quests, contribute to playing the ships and crew to the best of their ability, in order to overcome the challenges. And, when your character's story ends, you "won" the game. Then, you simply start from the beginning with Yet Another Dashing Young Adventurer (YADYA).

By the way, starting over with YADYA is also what happens when your character dies. You "lost" the game. So, you lose all your Fame Points and Story Points, but otherwise, you become a new member of the company, and the scope of the game has suffered exactly nothing.

Shooting the Character Ownership sacred cow

So, everything I wrote up until now is basically my friend's insight, rounded off with some minor contributions and feedback from me. This next part is where I get to tell you about mine, rounded off with some minor contributions and feedback from him as well.

As I've reported elsewhere, I'm currently DMing a D&D 3.5 campaign and a 4E mini-campaign, and I'm playing in another 4E campaign. These campaigns all have one thing in common: each player has his own character, but ultimately, everyone plays as a team. This means characters were created as a team, tactics are discussed as a team, characters are levelled as a team, etc, etc. Even though, in theroy, each player has final say over the choices regarding their character, in practice, there's heavy kibbitzing and discussion of each option.

If you take a step back, one could easily perceive that, rather than each player having strict ownership over his character, the whole group has a fuzzily shared ownership of the whole party. At my tables, it would be a very minor drift to simply institutionalize this and have the whole of the party be formally played by committee.

My flash of insight was that, at my D&D tables, the adventuring party can be treated in exactly the same way as the fleet and crew in the game concept above!

The Competitive Story Overlay

It then hit me that the Fame Points and Story Points from the game concept above can be overlaid on top of pretty much any game that follows a party structure.

Character death can be dealt with by replacing the dead character with another character of the same level, with the same amount of equipment, and so can character "victory".

The only constraint is that, whatever system is used to actually decide where the pary goes, it absolutely cannot, must not, depend on the build of the actual characters.

Players then become responsible for contributing to play the party to the best of its ability, while at the same time competing for the right to direct the party towards their own story line.

So, that's it. Critiques? Suggestions? Random toughts?

Cheers,
J.

[Jasper Flick]

Just a quick one, which I cannot hold back: have you ever played Capes? I think you'll find it a very interesting game.

[JMendes]

Yo,

have you ever played Capes?

I have, many times, and you're right, I do quite like it.

Structurally not the same, though, at various levels, which should be more or less obvious, but which I'm glad to discuss if they're not.

Cheers,
J.