[Starry Messenger] Choose your own Difficulty

[Thor]

I was excited that the fencing worked in our first playtest, but not nearly as excited about the fact that the players were picking their own difficulty levels.

At the games lowest level, players call for a scene and when a skill check is called for the players pick the skill that will be the reference. That skill is associated with one of the four humors. that humor will loose a point and, based on the outcome of the skill check, another will go up (there is a wheel with the humors if you succeed the point goes clockwise, fail counter-clockwise).

The GM describes the situation and the player decides in each situation what the difficulty is. They have an internal idea of what their character can and can't do. They were very thoughtful and usually a little harder than I would be. If I think otherwise I can ask them why they think that but I didn't change anyones decision. I don't think it is Immersive but touches on those feelings.

The GM will have to do a good job of describing the scene to elicit excitement from the players and get them to buy into the difficulty. But that will beat railroading any time. I think it will also have a good effect flag wise. If the players find things dull they will grade them low to get things over with.

I am looking for suggestions on what this would do to your current method of scenario design. How would it effect you? would anything you normally do change?

[chronoplasm]

I'm not sure what I would do, but I think I'd be more likely to just go easy all the time unless I had some special incentive to strive for higher difficulty. Some sort of 'no pain, no gain' type thing. Otherwise, it looks to me like I'd just end up coasting along with plenty of gain without pain.
The humors thing seems cool though.

[Thor]

How long would that be fun?

I think that there are two ways to go with players who believe that everything would be easy for their character. The first is to call them on it and ask them to explain why it would be easy for their character, and the second is to ask how much change they have in their pocket. They can have as many easy rolls as they have pennies in their pocket, Medium for nickels, Hard for dimes and re-rolls for every quarter. I certainly think that there needs to be a bullshit rule in place but I didn't see any call to use it.

[Paul Czege]

Thor,

I think you've hit on something that makes a lot of psychosocial sense. A player in a gamist context isn't (and can't consider himself) socially enlarged by his play accomplishments unless he earned them. And because challenges are resolved publicly, players are incentivized to make the challenges difficult. If they were resolved without other players having an awareness of the exchange and difficulty, I think you'd see different behavior.

Paul

[Thor]

I think there will be times when a player will show off and take harder challenges than necessary to heighten their own image at the table. There might be times where someone might take a lighter challenge after a bad turn.  But I don't think either will prevail.

[Paul Czege]

That would be awesome. And you have the weight of experience in your corner. I'm just speculating.

Paul

[Thor]

Only a nights worth. But this has been an addition to gaming that I have been thinking about for a couple years.

[Callan S.]

Hi Thor,

I wasn't there, but I'd say this play involves players kind of being their own 'level designers' if you know what I mean, as well as the person who plays the level. Like way back when I made duke nukem 3d first person shooter levels for myself, I could have made them as an absolute walk through...how boring is that though?

Here in your game players are making their own difficulty level. They are crafting the level just before they play it.

All I'm saying is if you sell or want to effectively give this game to others, I think you'd need to write that participants first craft their own difficulty, then they play that difficulty. I'm thinking with Chronoplasm, he's thinking only of playing. I had a post on this years ago about design phase and run/play phase.

Anyway, it seems perfectly viable - except with people who only think of playing and nothing else. Not that that matters terribly, except some of them could cotton onto the concept if it's described well. If not they miss out only because it wasn't described well/at all. And that seems a shame.

Also I'm thinking your not shooting for gamism? Rather than Paul's social enlargement of the player, I think your shooting for enlargement of the character, through the character facing adversity (well actually it's not just you shooting for this, but every single one of your participants/players). Am I way off?

[Thor]

I have become pretty agnostic about theory. I am searching for a way to play with as little friction as I can. I think that this form of play is a little slippery and can drift pretty well.

I imagine that there will need to be a lot more advice for both the players and the GMs than there will be rules. I am trying to think of how to express the desire for different play styles too each other when players don't always know what they want.

[Callan S.]

Well, what they want maybe to simply try how someone else, typically the author of the game, intended the game to be played. Then they judge whether they like how it's meant to be played.

In such a case, it's not that they don't know what they want, but your blocking them from getting what they want specifically by standing there and asking what they want!! Rather than just playing a game in the way it's author intended. It's like inviting someone to a chinese resteraunt, then when they get there to try out the resteraunt they thought you were advocating, you ask if they want italian or something else.

That's what I think and in light of it, I'd suggest the advice should tell them not to try the game as in testing what the author of the game wanted, but instead try the game in terms of what they want to do with it, if anything. It's more like game components/game tools than a game.

[Vulpinoid]

If you've got players who don't understand that a bit more conflict makes a more dramatic story then you might want to be as subtle as a sledgehammer...

A bit more of a carrot and stick approach.

Make the potential rewards proportional to the difficulty chosen.

If a player doesn't want their character rewarded much, they can choose a low difficulty and expect either a moderate level of success or a minimal experience gain for their action.

If a player wants a big payoff, then they should up the ante. A higher difficulty might directly correspond to a more spectacular result in the story or a more substantial experience payoff.

Its a common phenomenon in a few game systems, often worked into other game mechanisms (the L5R raise mechanism comes to mind).

V

[chronoplasm]

I played a game of Trivial Pursuit with my family on Christmas Eve.
Everybody kept asking the easiest questions and I was just breezing through it. I ended up asking them to bump me up to the harder questions.
I think I get where you're coming from now.

[Thor]

This is doubly true if the players are looking for acceptance from each other.

I like the idea of rewards commensurate too difficulty, but then the player for whom this idea isn't hard will dominate the game making it harder for others.

[dindenver]

Thor,
  Well, can I suggest you do something to make the low risk Difficulty numbers fun. Peer pressure can go the other way too, where taking the easy path is more "acceptable" behavior for a particular group. Also, I am pretty risk averse, I will always take a lower difficulty if something important is on the line... And I don't care about the results if something important is not on the line. So, I could easily see myself always taking low numbers. And a reward/penalty wouldn't work, because if I am generally protecting what I like, then I will take a smaller reward or even a penalty to succeed at it.
  Just my two cents. I have been meaning to design a game where the Players pick their own difficulty, but the mechanic hasn't fit any of the designs I am working on yet...
  Good luck man!

[dindenver]

Thor,
  I had a suggestion for a possible mechanic related to this:
  The simple version would be to have the difficulty determine who gets to narrate the outcome. Inspectres does this, sort of.
  What I might do in your situation would be instead of the difficulty number representing how difficult the task is, it would represent how many details the player can decide about the success.
  For instance:
DC 5 - Determine if it was a success or failure
DC10 - Determine success, determine who was involved in the success
DC 15 - Determine Success, Participants, circumstances (was it luck, skill, determination, etc.)
DC 20 - determine Success, Participants, circumstances, witnesses
  Something like that where the player is fighting for control over the narrative, not over adversity, but that is just me...

  Either way, good luck with your design.