Need help getting my game ready for playtesting (and a name)

[Callan S.]

Once a player has three Session successes, he wins the whole game and narrates the final outcome

It's ironic that there's another thread about a gamist game and the author doesn't want to provide win condition for the session.

Are you sure anyone wants the right to say how the story ends?

Or would people enjoy winning the right to steer the story onto some difficult, probably morally difficult circumstances for character(s)? They then get to see how the characters squirm.

If your deciding the ending, you don't get to see characters squirm because it's ended. It loses that payoff.

And in terms of just winning the game - well if you just wanted to win, you don't want to narrate any sort of ending - that would get in the way of basking in everyones esteem (or jelousy, hehe!).

[JoyWriter]

I don't think thats irony, I think that's variety in design specifications!

Interesting point about story ending, it reminds me of the bittersweet feeling at the end of almost any really good but really hard platform game; finishing a normal level is nice, because of the composite of achievement and anticipation, but completing the whole thing ejects you from the experience.

The basking you talk about reminds me of those "final freeroaming" levels in some games, where your objective is pretty much to wander about basking in the glory of your own achievements. One thing I have observed when watching a friend playing one of those levels (in the new batman game actually), is that it takes a pretty strong exertion of empathy to enjoy, as they basically want to run around showing you how awesome they were.

If they were actually going "remember where I beat you here" or just generally sticking the knife in, then I think people would be very likely to prematurely stop the game! There is a paradox there almost; a competitive game needs competition to function, so getting the payoff naturally destroys the basis on which people agreed to play. Drawing out the "victory parade" in the SIS would be pretty hard to keep going.

There is a way in which people can gain satisfaction in narration that I've seen; when you want to settle something about the world you were playing in, sort of like a thematic punch up; "True love conquers all" vs "Love is a luxury of civilization" or something more mundane like making their interpretation of a mystery the "true" one. Personally I would find most satisfaction in settling those kind of things if my victory was based on the specific fictional chain of events, but many people will be happy with "so he was a hunter after all, not a farmer" decided by the force of cards!

[Callan S.]

Joywriter, I don't know why you assume I was saying this basking would happen in the SIS?

Basking happens after you have been 'ejected' from the experience, as you put it. Which isn't a bad thing, because the basking in esteem is your goal in having played (the experience is a nice side salad, the esteem is the steak). Maybe you were playing those platformers with another agenda in mind.

[JoyWriter]

Exactly, swap the salad and the steak! I still enjoy competition, but I'm getting more and more zen about it!

I misread your last sentence by the way (accidentally giving it an opposite meaning!), so that's why it might seem confusing. Via that misinterpretation I suggested a reason why people just into victory might want continued narration, and the pitfalls associated.

What if the person who won had the right to gift their narration away? Then you could enjoy victory, and let someone else wrap up the SIS.

[Ayyavazi]

Thanks for your suggestions and questions guys.

First, for the suit abilities, I don't see how it would work. Lets assume we're playing out Lord of the Rings or Star Wars (just because I am familiar with it to a minor extent). How would it play out in a scene?

As for having a win condition ruining the chance to make characters squirm, that is because the game has nothing to do with the characters or their reactions to situations. The game is about telling a story collaboratively, but with everyone vying for the right to tell as much of it as they can their own way. In a sense, the ability to tell the story at all is the reward, while the individual narrations that occur at levels that don't involve winning are just fictional skin holding together the meat and bones of the mechanics.

Also, being able to gift the narration away makes perfect sense, and I don't see why a player couldn't do that, if what they really cared about was winning. Sort of like playing clue. I never really cared who did it with what where, just that I won by figuring it out.

Cheers,
--Norm

[JoyWriter]

Hmm, ok, I don't have a specific one for LOTR yet, but my thought process goes like this: Find the main moods of the piece of fiction, and then find the elements that contribute to that, and stick them up as a list. That's the hard bit, the deconstruction into "theme carrying" elements.

Then you just start by having each player pick a card from the top of the deck, and the person with the highest card in each suit picks what it refers to from the list. If one suit is not accounted for the person with the lowest card gets to pick it, or if there is more than one the people who haven't got to pick one yet draw again until one is found. That starts you off, and after that the winner can reassign one of the suits for one on the list, or another one if everyone agrees.

Now back to the hard bit, the bit the game designer has to do. Now for this to work you need to pick thematic repeated elements that are not locations and can occur reasonably in scenes after each other, so no "fight to the death" in starwars, though "lightsabre" might be ok. Because star wars repeats elements so much it's easy to go with "I have a bad feeling about this", "this is where the fun begins", or "blockade" but that repetition is a once or twice per film so wouldn't fit, whereas "young and inexperienced", "search your feelings", "convincing with the force" or "the dark side" would. It's a gray area and a continuum obviously, but just imagine if you want a whole film of people searching their feelings. Could get old, but not as old as a film constantly about blockades!

In the same way, LOTR could have "glories past", "elven craftsmenship", "healing", "grandeur of the landscape" or maybe "the lidless eye", it could also have more direct things like "gather your men" and "stand fast" or "sneaking". It can also relate to questions you ask like "the destiny of man", but that's another track of thinking.

If it works as a Fate system aspect, it should work here, given the rough rules I've already given, and if you can make the list big enough, then people will pick and mix to make it fit their own group.

[chance.thirteen]

On the topic of combining competition with storytelling, once someone has won rights to narrate, they could also gain a resource to reward others for including and working with their narration for the next part. Victory becomes not just narrating, but also receiving cooperation tokens or what have you.

[Ayyavazi]

Thanks for the examples Joy. I'm still a little fuzzy on how this would all work out. The things you listed are very much like the Aspects that I already use for conflicts, sessions and the Conclusion event, except that each one can only be used once. I also don't understand how it would work in play. Say one of the themes was Search your feelings, and a person wins and sets a suit to that. Does that mean any use of that suit must somehow fit in with Search your feelings? If so, that places a creative constraint on the players, which may or may not be a bad thing, since its the winners placing the constraints. It opens up the idea of a resource that allows this constraint to be ignored, which I like.

As for the design difficulty, I would provide brief examples at most. The Aspects are the hardest part of gameplay, in that when you first start, you have to set aspects for the conclusion (or ultimate goal) as well as the session and the first conflict. This frontloads the beginning of the game, and may be expecting too much foresight out of the players, who having limitless options may be stumped as to what story they want to tell, let alone its themes throughout its entirety. I am currently trying to think of ways to allow aspects to be created as play goes, instead of spent once and created up front. Perhaps that would work well with your suit idea. Since there would only be four active aspects at a time, but limitless potential aspects, the game and story can go in many different directions, with the winner always holding the reigns.

Chance, I like your idea. Some kind of token award for those who comply willingly encourages people to work within the fiction set by the previous winner, rather than simply telling them they have to because it is in the rules. I'll have to think about it.

On another note, are either of you two interested in play-testing this at all?

Thanks again and cheers,
--Norm

[JoyWriter]

I'm saving up my own "let's play a narrative game" points for universalis! I couldn't really introduce the concept without first showing a finished model I think. I might be able to get involved in a later round of testing though.

My hope was that the suit mechanic wouldn't be too much of a restriction because you could keep changing it, and because you could choose which card you played. The idea is just enough restriction to make people creative, as well as to make people stick to a mood. I hope that it would actually be self correcting, as if a group wants to they could use some of the vaguer end of the list. If you wanted to add a currency mechanic to stop this, perhaps you could relate it to the rewards for consistency?

I was thinking about your idea of the central object for the story, and it occurs to me that that constrains the narratives the story tells, but in a good way. For example, the prequel trilogy of star wars can be considered as one that takes "what happens to anakin skywalker" as it's central object, whereas LOTR takes "what happens to the ring" (simplifying horrifically!). The difference with your game is that the answer to that question can actually be in doubt. So you have an over-arcing question that cannot be answered until the end of 3+ conflicts. Presumably that should be considered important, but background to the subgoals of each session. For example, if each conflict is a prequel trilogy star wars film, the first question would be "do they defeat the naboo blockade" etc, with the long term goals forming a background.

Now what if after the first film, people say "stuff anakin, we want to know what happens to jarjar" or perhaps "stuff the ring, who on earth is tom bombadil?". In other words the whole group could decide what is the most interesting unresolved element and change to trying to reveal that.

Depending on how you want to make it, maybe that question shouldn't even be decided at the start? You'd have to test it to be sure but it might be that players can throw up enough mysteries in that first conflict to find something to keep their interests for the rest of them, or it might be that they step on what would of really interested them by throwing away a mystery during narration. In that sense you could consider "the hobbit" the first conflict of the lord of the rings!

That should ease the creative burden on the players a bit. What d'you think?

[Ayyavazi]

So far, I'm with you Joywriter. Like I said, I have been tossing around the idea in my head of making the Conclusion Event be something that is created during play. The way I'm thinking it should work now is that at the beginning of play (the first session) the players only have to pick 4 themes (one for each suit) and assign them. From there, they are free to create more (through the expenditure of Story Tokens) which can then be switched to by the winner. Players could also "buy off" a theme, much like in universalis, so that themes people don't like can be done away with. This would create a growing pool of themes that will hopefully all fit the fiction in progress. From there, once a particular theme sees enough use, players could declare it a session theme or a conclusion theme. Session themes can be used in place of the normal suit's theme for free, since they are key to the session, but only for the session they are part of. And, as play progresses, players can decide as a group to pursue a specific Conclusion event. They are free to change this, and resort to bidding in the event of a disagreement. Or, if they are so inclined, they could split the game into two new games, each set in the same world, but with different goals. In this case, on Conclusion event (and story) would follow the One Ring, while another might see what happens to this Tom Bambadil character.

This is of course more brainstorming than actual mechanic, but it significantly changes my original design. What I would actually like is to write up both and playtest both and see which one really captures what I want. Perhaps each will emerge as its own game with extreme similarities. Perhaps a Basic Game, and an Advanced game, where the Basic Game's market is board gamers, and the Advanced is for hardcore fans or RPG players. But who knows. This is all very good stuff, and I am working on fitting it all together, along with working on a new idea I've had that I'm tentatively calling Shadows of Lineage.

Cheers!
--Norm