The Forge Archives

Refreshing Rain uses a board as a representation of the relationships of various characters in-game.

Very simply, a single piece in the board represents one entity.  That entity is antagonistic to any piece it could capture (were it a chess piece) in a single Queen move, while it is friendly - or better - with any piece it could capture by a single Knight move.

This presents me with some weird problems, but has some benefits as well.

First of all, it's quite the problem in geometry to change relationships around.  If one character has several relationships, and so do those that it is related to, it could be necessary to move a great many pieces to resolve one shift in relationships, while retaining the rest static.

On the other hand, it could be desirable to be able to push a piece over a square or two and say, "Okay, now Xi O is friendly with Su Chenzhong, but that makes Wounded Mountain Wang her enemy."

So, I don't really know what to do with this mechanic, which is really my favorite part of RR.  Help?  Please?

P. S.: The website's a little crappy; there isn't anything new there, just some distillations of the other RR thread and a few graphics.  It does have the Sky Board, though, in all its 35square splendor.

I think you're trying to make the Sky Board more complicated than it needs to be.  Complex strategy in the Sky seems to lead to a more Gamist game than you're trying to create.  Why not use a simpler mechanic such as "alliance" with pieces linked in virtical or horizontal lines and "antagonism" with pieces linked in diagonal lines.  That would lead to the kind of single-move-relationship-changes that you're talking about.

A completely seperate issue... The Ma Jiang set you describe is rather different than all the ones I've ever used (both in China and America).  I know there are slightly different boards out there, but yours sounds strikingly different.

Quote from: YOUR SETFour identical sets of:
Nine numbered tiles of the Bamboo suit.
Nine numbered tiles of the Circle suit.
Nine numbered tiles of the Wan suit.

Three Dragons: White, Green, and Red.
Four Directions: North, South, East, West.
Four Flowers: Orchid, Lotus, Chrysanthemum, and Bamboo.
Four Seasons.

MY SET:
Three main suits of 9 tiles (same).
NO Dragons.
4 sets of the FIVE Directions: North, South, East, West, CENTER.
1 set (4 tiles) of each of the following:
-- the character "Fa" (short for "Fa Cai," get rich)
-- a bathtub-looking shape (forget what it's called...)

So, still the same number of tiles, but all the sets I've ever played with trade your dragons for Center, Fa, and the bathtub thing.

If you're ever down in North Carolina, we should play a few games :)

EDIT: The sets I've played with have Seasons & Flowers too... sometimes.  The most basic form of Ma Jiang (when you're not gambling or really keeping score) is often played without those tiles, since they complicate matters (they allow you draw pieces from the opposite end of the cycle but put restrictions on how you can win).

Same tiles, different terminology.  I'm aware of the other terminology, but for organizational reasons chose not to use it.

Basically, it boils down to either using Centre as a fifth direction, or grouping it, Fa, and the bathtub together and calling them Dragons.  This has nothing to do with the pieces themselves; I recall explaining the issue at one point to someone who asked me why these three seemingly random pieces, which are all Dragonless, are called Dragons.

It did occur to me, though, that the Dragons should probably be ranked higher than the Directions, since they are scarcer.  Or, if I were to use your categorization, then maybe they could be eight more 'special' tiles like the Flowers & Seasons; the white could be a non-piece, perhaps, while the green could be a double-piece ("discard this and draw two more tiles").

I like your idea for simplifying the board mechanics, though it does have one weakness: it severely limits the number of direct relationships a piece can have; it cuts them in half.  I don't know how complex the web needs to be, though, and this could be quite sufficient.

It would also put into the spotlight the complex motions I want the planets to have, inspired by the pieces of the larger variants of Shogi.  Hook moving, bouncing off walls, exotic ring and long-knight arrangements; forgive the pun, but the Sky's the limit, and that board is big enough for some very large pieces. (large in chess parlance, meaning mobile)

Incidentally, the Taiji piece isn't really a Planet; it only serves to indicate the trigram status of the game.

I'm sorry.

Maybe people here have seen this game, and this site, since its inception, so they're just like: 'oh yeah ... that again'.

I, for one, had a GEEKGASM looking at this.  

AMAZING use of elements!  I LOVE the idea with the board! (And I'm developing a similar system for use with chess ...)  HOLY CRAP, this looks GREAT!

As for your questions, I agree that while it may seem like limiting alliances to the four cardinal directions and antagonists to the four diagonal directions, this is reinforced by two things:  1) the board doesn't have diagonal lines, meaning there's no symbolic 'connection' between the pieces and 2) eight relationships for one person may not seem like a lot of options (and I know you want options in this) - but if you consider that's eight relationships to keep track of *per piece* ... that's a lot.

Again - WOW.

Okay, now I get the Dragons thing (and why they're White, Red, & Green), but not why they're called "Dragons."  As far as I knew, a "dragon" in Ma Jiang was when you get a run from 1-9 of one of the main suits...

But man, I'm really digging the idea of Ma Jiang-based mechanics.  I might have to try something at some point...

Quote from: Kuma...but if you consider that's eight relationships to keep track of *per piece* ... that's a lot.

Agreed with Kuma.  See, I think the players should be able to look at the board and figure out what the key relationships are in a few seconds.  If they have to spend time thinking too much ("How does that piece move again?"  "So, wait, what's going on with Fire & Wood?"), it slows down the game and takes the focus away from the story.

Okay - next related issue.

A lot of wuxia fiction revolves around secret socieites, schools or martial arts, and other types of influence.  I'd like to represent this via the Planets and their scene-framing mechanic.  Thus, more influential characters have better control of the Planets.  But more on that later.  First, a little thing about the scenes themselves.

Suppose that we use Jonathan's elegantly simplified relationship system; Planets trigger scenes when they pass through a relationship line.  If a Planet moves through several lines in a single movement, then the player has two options: weave the relationships into a single scene, or do several scenes.

Wait, what if a conflict in the scene triggers new scenes?

Well, it seems to me that it would contribute to the feel of this game for time to be fluid, a little strange and wild.  I'm all for the idea of simultaneous scenes.  On the other hand, this could wreak havoc with the chain of causality, or hopelessly confuse the players.

So I'm thinking that I'll have a few different mechanisms to protect sensicality.  These techniques should, used properly, make the game make more sense, but also make it deeper and more interesting, so I want to reward them somehow.
First of all, the scene framing mechanic need not cut off the current scene at all - if the player feels that he can bring in the appropriate relationship into the current scene, then he should do that.
Second, it seems perfectly appropriate to me to run particular scenes as flashbacks.  This allows the development of relationships at whatever stage in their history the players feel is appropriate.  Memory is imperfect - it should be perfetly permissible to even repeatedly run the same flashback, from different perspectives.
Third, dreams of all kind are a powerful technique, used well.  It should be possible to run scenes as dreams - night or day - which have no effect on the game itself, but expose a character's inner mind.

If I were to do this, I would want some mechanism to differentiate memory, dream, and reality.  This is my idea for that:
Memory is pretty unchanging; Fortune does not occur there.  Conflicts in Memory are resolved simply by comparing Virtues.  Memory conflicts do not trigger Planet movement.
Dream is a strange, ephemeral world.  In Memory, inner power is everything; Qi expenditure (whatever that does) is twice as powerful.  Again, Dream conflicts cause no Planet movement.

Now, back to Moving the Planets:
I'm thinking that each character will have two Movements, Yin and Yang.  They affect the Qi weather.  These Movements corespond to various Shogi pieces, engineered to make them symmetrical in four directions.  As characters get more influential, via maneuvering or breaking down the influence of others, they can earn more wide-ranging or complex Movements.  With a Movement, a character can move any Planet.

As for the Qi Weather: This is what the Taiji and the eight trigrams on the board indicate.  Each time a Movement is made, a line of the correct type (whole for Yang, broken for Yin) is added to the bottom of the current trigram, and the top line falls off.  The Taiji is moved to indicate the approriate trigram.
So, what does this do?
Each trigram corresponds to a mood.  Whetever scenes happen in this trigram should have that mood.  (I'm also thinking about having each character have a trigram, and some kind of resource pool that fills up when the Qi Weather hits that trigram.)

I'm not sure if that post made a lot of sense; if I stated something poorly, please call me on it.

Quote from: four willows weepingIf a Planet moves through several lines in a single movement, then the player has two options: weave the relationships into a single scene, or do several scenes.

I don't think I need to say how much this rocks.  A planet that plummets through a whole series of relationships would trigger some kind of climactic whirl of scenes, with multiple conflicts among multiple parties in an all-out drag-down emotional rollercoaster.  I can't wait to play :)

QuoteWait, what if a conflict in the scene triggers new scenes?

I was imagining things a bit differently.  I guess I was assuming that things that triggered scenes would also trigger the movement of Planets, so all these mechanics woul be unified together.

Ending a Scene >> Moving Planets >> Beginning a New Scene

So all the Planet-moving would take place at the end of a scene and set up the one(s) to come after it.  Still, you might want to allow Planet movement in the middle of scenes (which could cause the scene to end, shift, or expand into multiple scenes).

Were you imagining a much more fluid system, where anything could happen at any time?

QuoteMemory is imperfect - it should be perfetly permissible to even repeatedly run the same flashback, from different perspectives.

Okay, now you HAVE to read "Wolverine: Netsuke" and see Hero in March.  The former is a mixture of flashback/dreams/present and the latter tells the same story from 3 different perspectives (so I hear).

QuoteEnding a Scene >> Moving Planets >> Beginning a New Scene

This is a great idea... I like it a lot more than my sort of chaotic vision.  I think that the Sky mechanics are starting to fall together... Here's an idea of how it should all work together:

Whenever you win a conflict, you keep the lowest-ranking tile drawn.  There are two ways to spend tiles:

At the end of a scene, players take turns spending tiles to move Planets.  Increasingly complex movements cost increasing amounts of tiles, in some intelligent way.  That's not important.  Bah.  The upshot of this is that the Planet-movement ends when a scene begins.

Secondly, a player can interrupt a currently running scene in order to move Planets, to the end of creating a scene inside it, or adding relationships to it.  This is way more interesting than between-Scene hijinks, so of course it's cheaper or easier or something, but has relevancy restrictions.  Dream sequences and flashbacks are also cheaper, because they don't affect in-game causality, and they're cool.

I'll keep the media in mind.