[melkrin] Playing with primordial clay

[FetusCommander]

Hi there.  I've been lurking around these forums for a long time, and wound up making only one post, partly because until today I didn't have anything really concise to put down.
I'm lacking in a lot of the terminology used on here (or at least, I lack sureness about the proper use for a lot of terms), so for my first "game idea" post, I'll try to get as simple and down-to-it as possible.

I'm working on what might be termed a niche game with mechanics that are a little wonky.  People from my playgroup have offered to playtest it with me, which I haven't done yet, but I'm curious as to what those here think about it since you all have obviously played around with a lot of unique game systems.  Maybe someone's played with something similar to mine, I dunno.

One thing I have looked into in some depth is delineation of GM tasks, and I want that to be a part of any system that I produce.

Anyway, I hope this post format conveys my goals with some clarity.  There's not much about the system, but I've been working at it, so ask away if you have any interest.  Same goes for the setting, as it's one I've been bouncing around for about 5-6 years.


What is it about?

The Assembler, the artist formerly known as YHWH, has experienced a creative crisis.  The One God of the cosmos, Assembler influenced everything that man interacts with.  He devised the universe (and boring shit like Consciousness too), and unfolded the path of scientific knowledge- all with the careful eye for aesthetic continuity characteristic of a devoted fanboi, and the detachment of a Sims player.  But in some near or far future, He erased everything on the earth and decided to persue a new creative direction. 

Assembler, having become obsessed with the fictional elements invented by mankind itself- fantasy literature, science fiction, comic books, Dungeons & Dragons- decided to remake earth "better," inviting creative input from His army of angels. 

The angels, or Cherubics, spent years building God's holy grail of creativity, submitting and resubmitting their plans to the deity.  Communication on both ends was poor, even before Assembler "became incapacitated" under mysterious circumstances, leaving the task in the trembling, butterfingered hands of the Cherubics (the aforementioned angels). 

Our earth has been remade as "melkrin": the sum of man's reinterpreted creative work, abortive Cherubic worldbuilding, and a seeded race of people dealing with the relatively recently-discovered knowledge that the world and culture around them is in some varying degree constructed.

What are the mechanics?

For this system, players build random chance engines out of clay and use them to represent skills in-game.  Other small materials like string, pipe cleaners, or anything else the group can agree collectively on, may be made available to help supplement the clay.  The "engines" players resolve with could be a dice, a spinner, a clay lottery bag; anything that generates random results.  The goal is to "learn" how your opponent's engines behave in order to reliably guess what results they will generate.  This is made difficult by the fact that players are encouraged to weight the probability of the engines.  The metagame becomes part player psychology, and part clay design strategy.  When you predict results successfully, you gain something, regardless of whether you succeed or fail in the resolution. 

Predicting gets you access to "Scenario Cards," which can change things about the scene, make "fiat" decisions regarding situations, or affect gameplay elements like other people's engines.  These cards, which are linked to your skills, are divided up among the three "Roles" explained briefly below, with certain Roles getting access to different types of cards.

Chargen at this time is basically limited to coming up with a concept for your character; all of the engine building comes in-game when provoked into resolution.

What do the Players Do?

People playing the game take on the roles of original characters from this new world of melkrin (which is a defined, but fairly pliable setting of mine), but they also take one of three "Meta-Roles," which have the intended effect of delineating story telling/world creation responsibility. 

One player is The Assembler, the presumed-dead deity who spawns the initial session idea and takes control of NPCs.  The Assembler is responsible for moving the story once gameplay actually starts. 

Communicating in some manner with the Assembler, in a half in-character/half-metagame creative collaboration, are at least two Worldbuilders.  These are the Cherubic minions charged with actually creating and laying out the game world, NPCs, and other assets that the players will interact with.  They do their best to build assets that can be used to unfold a session that corresponds with the themes and goals Assembler communicates.

The final role is that of the Player, of which there should be 2-3.  Though Worldbuilders "jump into" their party characters after the initial world creation takes place, those with the Player role are allowed special power (through a predominance of Scenario Cards) that gives them more leverage over the direction of the events in-game.  While Worldbuilders and The Assembler frame the location, interactions, and challenges, Players decide how they "go off", what types of content gets highlighted, and what effects they will have on subsequent sesssions.

Each session, these roles have a chance to switch, based on how the players themselves have prioritized the Role they favor.

What do the Characters Do?

Characters on melkrin exist to comment on the stereotypes, arguments, creative disputes, and dickwavery that surround Fantasy and RPGs in general.  They give their players opportunities to express creatively their feelings about these, and put some of these things in "touchable" form within the framework of the session.  All of this is supposed to be a fun, "not so serious business" affair, in an environment that encourages the whole group to share in the experience of creation.

Everyone plays a character from melkrin, and the setting's mix of modernity and fantasy creatures-who-know-they're-from-books is supposed to give people an easy jump in point to comment in-character about the setting, characters, and experiences that come out during play.  One of the setting's goals is to remove some of the "How do I talk/behave as my character" issues I believe many new players face, since most of the in-world themes are designed to be references to RPGs or sci-fi/fantasy tropes.  Chances are, someone in-world could have a conversation about there being too many subraces of elf, or racial analogs in fantasy- but it might be a human who feels like one of these entities is "stealing his culture."

Characters will fight, tap the supernatural, do dungeons, and interact with NPCs in the "emergent" manner native to a pick up game of Dungeons & Dragons.  The goal here, however, is to maintain a jovial metagame, as opposed to a frustrating one that divides or terminates play due to creative disputes, disputes about how rules apply to characters, and general disputes about the "seriousness" of character development.

I guess what I want is characters who people can feel attached to, whose quality is judged by what they add to the overall group experience.




Big wall I know, so read 'er at your leisure

[Mike Sugarbaker]

How are players encouraged to weight their engines' probabilities?

[FetusCommander]

How are players encouraged to weight their engines' probabilities?

Basically, there's several ways to do this since all of them are built with pliable clay.  You could, for instance, design a clay spinner with an indentation to slow it down when it reaches higher values.  Or design a d6 that's indented on one side (and that side has a 3,4,5,6 straight on it), so that you could easily throw it each time.  The trade off is that doing so may telegraph your intent in resolution, so it could be easier to predict your numerical result.  Prediction is rewarded, so it's really supposed to be a trade off of "immediate success in resolution" vs. "success in prediction / possible longterm success / greater ability to hold creative agenda in scenes."

Not sure if I used the CA term right, but basically, someone who succeeds more at prediction may lose more resolutions (so get hit, not make the jump across the cavern etc), but they'll have some more say in how their failures (and possibly the other person's successes) are played out in the game.

[Mike Sugarbaker]

How are players encouraged to weight their engines' probabilities?

Basically, there's several ways to do this since all of them are built with pliable clay.  You could, for instance, design a clay spinner with an indentation to slow it down when it reaches higher values.  Or design a d6 that's indented on one side (and that side has a 3,4,5,6 straight on it), so that you could easily throw it each time.  The trade off is that doing so may telegraph your intent in resolution,

My question is, the tradeoff from what? You say that players have incentive to be predictable, insofar as making something weighted, but here you're saying that there's some sort of downside to being predicted. Which do you want?

[FetusCommander]

Players have incentive not to be predictable, but to win resolutions.  I should have been more clear.  If you weight your d6 on the 6, you might beat someone who's not weighting theirs, but it's probable they will predict you if they know you'll do that.  In a situation like that, it might be better to either not weight, or to do a more "general" weight that could yield enough to succeed (so maybe a 4 or a 5), but not the obvious choice.

If you're predicted, the person who gets you is given points to buy Scenario Cards, which can give leverage during the game.  Someone may not want to have a very predictable engine, even if it wins resolutions regularly. 

The "trade off" is designing an engine that can roll "what you need," as opposed to rolling one that steamrolls people with the highest number at all times, and thus can easily be predicted by opponents.  The idea is that you don't always want to roll high, but you want to roll something that will beat the other player's thinking.  A draw in which you roll the same results can be very good, because you may be able to resolve that in your favor with a Scenario Card. 

Conflict with the engines is supposed to be more about conflict between player psychologies- about players measuring the other's intention- than it is about winning.

I'm not sure if the handling time for all that yet, as I still haven't playtested.  That so far is one of my primary concerns.

[Ar Kayon]

I don't know what stage of development you're in, but I would like to see some play examples before I form an opinion.

[FetusCommander]

No actual plays yet, because I haven't playtested yet, but here's one off the top of my head:



John is playing a martial artist.  He uses a 6 outcome spinner made from clay and some toothpicks to represent his Martial Arts skill.

Amanda is playing a gun fighter.  She uses a 6-sided dice made from clay to represent her Gun Fighting skill.

The martial artist has insulted the gun fighter's favorite pistol, cause for mortal combat.



First, some background about the chance engines:


John's spinner has a divot near the 4, which is intended to slow it down so it will hit the 5 or the 6 more often.

Amanda's dice has a side with "non-standard" faces.  Instead of being labeled in the order of '1, 2, 6, 5', it is labeled '3, 4, 5, 6'.  This side of the dice is grooved to fit within her fingers so that she can roll it off with some sureness, scoring higher on average.



Now, onto the in-game fight:

The two are fighting in an open field.  All that has been defined about it by the GM is that it is a field, with grass in it, and the sun is shining.

Amanda goes first. 

On her turn, she attempts to fire a round into John's head.  She rolls her dice behind a screen, and her result is (5).  She does not announce it verbally, as she is waiting to see if John will Predict: though it is currently Amanda's turn, John may make a Prediction.

John knows about Amanda's dice engine, because she has described it verbally to him (this is required to put an engine into play).  Judging by her action alone, John cannot decide whether or not she is prioritizing success.  However, from the metagame, he knows that she has a limited number of rounds for her pistol, and thus cannot take that many "shill" actions. 

He decides to try predicting: "Yeah, I bet that's a 5 or a 6." (He gets a 2 number range because of her engine size: 6 Outcomes). 

He is correct, and so he gains 1 Point to spend on Scenario Cards.

John's must now respond to the action- no resolution of the event itself has taken place yet.

John declares that his Martial Artist, being trained in some mystical art, tries to literally dodge the bullet.  John spins his Martial Arts spinner behind his screen, but his hands are a little nervous, causing his "spin technique" to botch.  The spinner skips over the divot, goes past the 5, past the 6... and lands on the (1).

Oh no!

John almost telegraphs his result to Amanda with a quirk of his brow ("Seriously?  Did I just resolve a 1?!"), but he manages to avoid obvious gestures and distracts her by feigning to have something in his eye.

Amanda, knowing John potentially faces serious consequences, and knowing his spinner trick predicts a draw: "Bet you managed a 5, huh?"

This is incorrect.  So she gains a Red Mark on the Prediction section of her sheet, which must be made up with a successful Prediction before any more earnings can be accumulated.

This situation represents a failure in resolution for John, but remember that 1 Scenario Card point he earned?  He's been doing decently in Prediction, so he has a few more points.  With his most recently gained point, he has just earned enough to to invoke "Fuck Me!"- a tactical Scenario Card that can helps cushion failures, so long as the failure is by 4 or more. 

He plays the card, which allows him to narrate that during his attempt to dodge, he disturbed a trapper's pit, which opens just in time to allow him to avoid the otherwise harmful shot. 

He therefore does not take the consequences of failure.  Although, he is now stuck in a pit like a sitting duck.