21 and Down (initial ramblings)

[RandomCitizenx]

[Callan S.]

Hi, welcome to the forge!

How do you imagine an individual session ending in your game? Would it pretty much be decided by people or a person at the table, or by mechanical means? And how do you imagine a session - is it a build up of various elements towards a climax for that 'episode' so to speak? Or is it just a series of little elements/notable moments, sort of strung together without much adhesive between them?

[RandomCitizenx]

I meant to address that in the initial post, but somehow forgot to put it down. 21 and Down is a game meant to encourage group storytelling. To facilitate this each character only begins with one personal plot point at the start of a session. The Fate Dealer has the framework of what he wants to do, with each major scene in the story being tagged as a plot point moment. If the players go along with the Fate Dealers plot they earn a personal plot point for each plot point moment they complete. This makes it so that playing group cohesion will lead to a more rapid progression without completely stripping the chance for someone to stray from the group story.

[Callan S.]

Thanks for your answer! I think I get what you mean...what do you mean by progression?

Also, what do plot points do?

[RandomCitizenx]

progression = character progression. Plot points let the player have some control over the difficulty of the scenerio and are tied into character advancement. They are a combination of action points (or whatever they might be called in other games) and experience. Your character becomes more powerful as they amass chapters and acts, but they can only do so by spending their plot points. The Fate Dealer can use the plot points as future story hooks. i.e. Steven the agile thief is involved with a difficult conflict with a security group. He decides to spend a plot point to give himself an advantage. The Fate Dealer narrates that the secuirty detail's guns jam giving Steven just enough of an opening to make a run for it and take a swing at the group's leader in the process. In the future the Fate Dealer decides to reuse the security group as a recurring foil with their leader becoming a named NPC who is now a nemesis for Steven all because Steven had made the choice to use a plot point and make that scene important.

[Callan S.]

Your character becomes more powerful as they amass chapters and acts, but they can only do so by spending their plot points.

I'm not sure I understand that - do you get more 'power' but it's locked up, and is only unlocked by spending plot points?

Also, do you really want to go with 'characters become more powerful'? I mean, it usually ends up in a bit of statistical BS, where the player becomes +1 more attack, but then surprise, all the monsters are +1 more defence, making everything static but with alot of math to get to the staticness.

Something to consider might be that players collect more capacities for their character to get into trouble. Imagine Frodo not getting more powerful in his travels, but collecting more and more ways on his character sheet that he can get into trouble, that the player can activate.

Also it seems a pretty slim chance someone will stray from the group story - indeed it seems to make no currency sense at all to do so? They'd have to stop playing the game in a way that made sense in terms of the rules, to break from the group story.

[RandomCitizenx]

power was a poor word choice but I am having trouble thinking up an acceptable substitue. Personal Plot Points are the potential for character growth. They do not become actual character growth until the point is spent to mark a scene as being important to the character's personal story. Once enough plot points are invested in the story, the character has completed a chapter in their personal story which has an actual mechanical benefit. This could be the improvement of an existing ability, some sort of new assett, or a new ability entirely. The new abilities and assets are meant to give more variety. The improvements to abilities will also give minor upgrades intended to make the power more versatile.

I know that the system is set up to avoid character's breaking away from the group story, because that is what I want to discourage through game design. The game is about telling a group story, which doesn't work when you have one player decide that they want the story to be just about their character. With the economy of plot points, everyone is rewarded for making a cohesive story together.

[Callan S.]

Well, okay, this reminds me of Dave Andersons thing with D&D, where you would get XP for gold found, but only once you've spent that gold on what your character cares about, to the exact amount of gold he spent on it.

Except with yours they can only spend plot points on scenes the GM has set up, if those scenes happen to be important to them...and it's mostly in the vein of a gun jamming, which is kind of once or twice removed from the very thing that's important to the character.

Now either I'm not getting the direction your going, which is entirely possible, or I do get it and what I think is that this kind of waters down the 'I care about this shit!' factor that would happen with a spent plot point. Some stuff to chew over, anyway

[RandomCitizenx]

Well Plot Points can be spent whenever the player wants. They only get more plot points by finishing a plot point moment. If a player wants to run off and do something that was not part of the original group story he won't get the extra plot points to spend for that session. I don't really invision this being more than two or three plot points at most for an average game session. The Fate Dealer is of course encouraged to try and work these plot points into the group story by the next session.

Plot Points can be gun jamming, activating an existing asset like an ally, or start a story thread that will lead to a new a new asset. If you want it to be more difficult it could be used to hinder the character instead.

Plot points are like making a time line of important events in the character's story. It isn't what they necessarily care about, but it is in event that stands out when talking about what happened in that character's life.

[Callan S.]

Hmm, actually that's different from what I expected! But I will say I think you described it really well here

Plot points are like making a time line of important events in the character's story. It isn't what they necessarily care about, but it is in event that stands out when talking about what happened in that character's life.

So as something productive from me I'd strongly suggest having this text in the book, right at or near the front. It's very informative about your game and how to approach it

[RandomCitizenx]

I will keep that in mind. I think some of my descriptions aren't as clear as they could be since I have been kicking around some of these concepts for so long (such as the personal plot point) that I forget to give the most basic details.