Aurora: New Book and Forthcoming Species References

[clehrich]

So over http://www.auroragames.com" target="blank">here at Aurora, we've just finished the Ships Book, which is some 400-odd pages of game material on ships -- design, specs, stats, shipboard life, etc.  <End blatant plug>

We're now starting the long job of writing the Species Reference books, and some issues came up among the design crew.  In light of a couple of recent posts, I wonder what you all think.

Here's the relevant part of one of the posts, from Ron:

It's important to remember as well that text is not the act of role-playing, by which I mean that its first priority should be to act as a springboard into play rather than as an absorbing read for one person. A lot of game texts fall into the trap of simply being huge absorbing reads that could not possibly be transferred to others for purposes of play (Feng Shui is probably the most glaring example I can think of). Fvlminata, on the other hand, is an excellent example of a game with an extremely distinctive, locked-on setting that is nonetheless very easy to pick up and get into without much stress.

Here's the relevant part of the other, from me:

By the way, I want to applaud your idea of having the setting information be a readable object by itself. I like reading games, of course, but I really like sitting down and simply reading straight through a setting; the rules I'll deal with when I'm actually going to play the thing, or when I want to think about how the game works. Having a little book that simply says, "Welcome to the setting, get yerself a cup of tea, here we go" is just exactly what I'd like to see a lot more of in RPGs.

Now with Aurora, we're presuming that anyone who's going to buy the Species Reference books is already pretty familiar with the setting.  But there's an insane amount of possible detail out there, and in this very setting-heavy Sim-type game, we have a lot of fun turning out deep, complex material about alien cultures.

The Species Reference books will be fairly long and detailed, and include information ranging from biochemistry to intellectual history, from military hardware to artistic movements.

So here's the question: how should they be laid out for best usage?

1. Since the players and GM already know the basics, and have the main books at hand during play, these books should be readable straight through as background.  Therefore they should be a series of readable but sophisticated articles, each explaining some aspect of the culture from soup to nuts.

OR

2. The volumes should be laid out to minimize search time, using extensive outline and index formats.  This would make them more difficult to read as ordinary texts, but easier to glance through when looking for some particular fact.

OR

3. Somewhere in between, or something entirely different.

If you were "into" the Aurora universe, and were actually thinking you might like to purchase the Jeotsu volume or whatever, how would you want it laid out?  Please bear in mind that we're talking some hundreds of pages per volume, and that there will ultimately be six volumes.

Many thanks for any and all advice, comments, and suggestions.  I'd also be delighted to hear anyone's comments on Aurora in general.

[greyorm]

Somewhere in-between, I think.

I want to be able to easily locate facts, but "dissertations on the tea-drinking habits of the people of ponunga," and anything written from the perspective of an NPC are immediate turn-offs.

(Except for bits of Color text here and there...but it should not be central)

Give me overview information I can use and get funky with immediately.

For example, "Graspons are an honorable warrior-race; they are governed by a sixteen person council of great warriors." are good top-level items. Adding detail and fleshing out all this junk should come later, or in paragraph sized chunks, with the theme-statement as the first sentence of each paragraph.

[Mike Holmes]

I'd suggest Drill-down presentation wherever possible. This requires HTML or somesuch, however, and so will not be possible for something that's going to see print.

BTW, your viewpoint and Ron's are not conflicting. You want the book to be consumable by the reader, and enjoyable to read. Ron wouldn't have it any other way, I'm sure. What he's saying is problematic is that, often, once you've read and consumed the information, what you've absorbed just doesn't ever to come up in terms of making the game go. That is, if we do get the tea ceremony details, unless the game is about social rituals, it's never going to come up in play, and was pointless for the GM to have absorbed.

What you want is information that's pertinent to getting people into some sort of action. So, is the game about interstellar trade? Then the most pertinent data is going to be the economic needs of the species in question. The tea ceremony only needs to be mentioned if it's important to getting in through the doors to trade.

So, what's play in Aurora about? Make info that makes that play possible the most easy to reference.

Mike

[clehrich]

greyorm wrote:

For example, "Graspons are an honorable warrior-race; they are governed by a sixteen person council of great warriors." are good top-level items. Adding detail and fleshing out all this junk should come later, or in paragraph sized chunks, with the theme-statement as the first sentence of each paragraph.

Stuff like this is already covered, in the Main Books.  The thing is that this is a very sim-oriented game, and having a complex and intricate setting is a big deal for us.  In addition (and please don't take this the wrong way), one of the big design principles for us has been that the big species do not have monocultures of this kind; when you go from planet to planet, and sometimes even from planetary region to region, you will see extreme cultural differences within one species.  So it's not really possible to cover the ground for one species in this sort of quick format.  We've given a brief overview in the main books, and it seems playable, but now we'd like to lay out the Whole Thing.

Mike wrote:

So, what's play in Aurora about? Make info that makes that play possible the most easy to reference.

Exactly the problem.  I don't think we know in advance that any particular game will or will not make use of the tea ceremony and its details, because there isn't really a Premise here.  Nor do we know in advance what species the PCs will be, so if someone takes a character who's into a local culture's tea ceremony, it suddenly becomes an issue.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about, which may clarify the question.  Perhaps the largest religious group among the Uhrmina (somewhere around 10 to 15%) is the Pargin, a separatist group with a long and complex history and theology.  On any given Uhrmina planet, there will almost always be a Pargit Enclave, a kind of self-defined ghetto where the Faithful live.  

Now the details of what these guys believe, why, and how this affects their lives are something that could well come up in any game that spends some time on an Uhrmina planet.  In addition, the fact that the Pargin, in response to past persecutions, have generally got stockpiled armaments within the Enclaves, and are furthermore fairly well in touch with Enclaves in other systems, means that the Pargin could be the basis for an interesting campaign about persecution, militarism, and whatnot --- sort of an allegory of the Middle East.  So we want to provide extensive information on what the Pargin are all about; we've currently got some 40-odd pages of detail, looking to be finished at around 60 pages or so.

If your game doesn't do the Pargin at all, none of this matters.  If the Pargin are important for your game, all of it is relevant.

So one possibility is to write up the Pargin as a careful, concise 60-page essay, suitable for a read by anyone who wants to know.  The brief details (a paragraph or so) are already in the Main Books.  This would facilitate campaign setting construction and PC design (what if you want to play a Pargit?).

The other possibility is to make all of it rapidly searchable, but much more difficult to sit down and read, using outlines and indices and hyperlinks and whatnot.

Does this clarify the question?

[Mike Holmes]

I could speak to the notion of having no Premise. But I will assume that you've already looked at that.

Given your choices, I think that you have to go with the easy read presentation. Hopefully the GM will read through everything and have a lot of retention. Because the method that involves referring is problematic. I can see people creating information on the fly, and then researching, only to find that what they've created contradicts canon. They need to have a deep understanding up front. If it's laid out well enough, then that might happen. Further, someone who's read the book thouroughly will hopefully have a better idea of where to look for information forgotten.

I don't suppose that, at this late date, you'd be willing to look at your assumptions again, would you?

Mike

[ADGBoss]

I think it should be possible to satisfy most people in this, with an organizational model like this:

Each Species has its own Chapter.  

Begin the chapter with a 1 paragraph to 1 page quick "what you need to know" synopsis of the race.  Follow this with the game system information for the race. Then have your intense multi-page discussion on the Race itself.  Possibly from 1 or 2 different perspectives.

That way system info is limited to 1 page (back and front) for each race but its easy to find because it is clearly marked at the beginning of each chapter.

thats just my suggestion

Sean
ADGBoss

[DP]

Rapidly searchable and indexed and all that good stuff is definitely the way to go.

In my case, being a Gamer of Very Little Brain, I will read through all the material one year and then promptly forget much of it when I want to run the game the next year.

Discrete chunks of text that are complete in and of themselves ("Stockpiled weapons in Pargit Enclaves" as a subsection of "Pargin Enclaves" and referenced under "The Pargin and Conflict") will provide a satisfying read, alone or taken together with other sections. A reading pattern like a stone skipped over a pond shouldn't overly disrupt the reader looking for a nice long afternoon with the Uhrmina.

When I read your initial post, an approach occurred to me: framing some of the information through one or a series of species "Premises" or central lenses that inform play. ("How much change can my culture embrace without compromising its religious foundations?") This can hopefully provide the obverse and reverse of the coin of Race X: what it's like to play as a member of that race, and what it's like to encounter them.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

I'll reiterate a point from the text you quoted, which is to look at Fvlminata closely, as a text. I'm still astonished at how well, cleanly, and usably Jason and Michael presented the setting material.

Best,
Ron

[clehrich]

Mike Holmes wrote:

I don't suppose that, at this late date, you'd be willing to look at your assumptions again, would you?

I very much doubt that Stephen Mulholland, the principal author and architect of the system, wants to rethink his assumptions.  But as one of the secondary authors, I'm interested to know what you're referring to.  What problem do you see here?

[Mike Holmes]

First off, I think we may be using Premise differently, or have different notions of what each other means. So I'll stay away from that term.

However, what Aurora looks like, at least on first glance, is a big setting in which the characters "can do anything". That is, there isn't any specific sort of thing that the game has defined for them to do particularly. Unlike, say, Call of Cthulhu, where we know exactly what the PCs will be up to, investigating the occult. Or as opposed to supers role-playing where everybody understands that things are going to revolve around being a hero and pounding bad guys. Or your standard fantasy game (D&D) where we will be going where the monsters are so we can kill them.

All these sorts of games have in their designs an answer to the question "what do the characters do?". When the answer to that question is "anything" you get a couple of problems. It's not that a GM and/or players can't figure out what they might want to do in such a setting. It's just that, not knowing what the players are going to be doing, the game can't do anything to support that sort of play.

Actually, the game does say one thing about what characters should be doing, looking at the free quick-start rules. It says that they will be getting into combat, and that combat is a focus of the game. Which is interesting given that the text also says that the combat "isn't slanted towards the PCs". Which means that, not only will they be getting into combat, but they'll be getting killed a lot too. Which means that most sim GMs will be doing a lot of fudging to keep characters alive.

OK, I'm using a sort of ironic tone, here. But the point is that the system will inform the GM and players what sort of activities should take place. For some reason all RPGs assume that Combat will play an essential part, somehow. I personally think that this is an assumption that should be looked at carefully (See Mike's Standard Rant #3, Combat Systems).

I've played, oh, about a bezillion hours of Traveller. Why, oh god why, would they bother putting in rules for a gun that does 16d6 damage when the average character can only take 21 points of damage before croaking? Traveller always had this strong schitzophrenic streak in that it wanted to be Star Wars with all it's heroic fighting, but yet wanted to be "realistic" at the same time. Which are horribly incompatible ideals.

Aurora is going right down the same road. Combat so realistically lethal that only a madman would participate. And no other area of the game with as many rules. This is what Ron's taling about. The data in the game should be such that the GM looking at it, and the players reading it (or having it described by the GM), should give them an idea of what to do. Such that they don't end up being some Star Wars stereotype, and getting fried by the "realistic" rules.  

Sorry, ranting again. And not to beat up on the game. It looks like it has some really cool stuff. But, while I wouldn't call it a Sci-Fi Heartbreaker, quite, it does seem to me to suffer from not having looked at what has happened to other games like it that have come out since Traveller. Even a game like Fading Suns, rife with problems though it may be, gives me a clearer idea of what the game is going to be about (read the section on Morality Plays). What makes Steve's game better than, say, Scatterzone? Or Ravenstar? Or, god forbid, BattleLords of the 23rd Century? The "realism" level? What, you're FTL is more "realistic" than anyone elses? Besides which, even if you can prove it true, that still tells me nothing about how the game is going to be fun (is realistic obviously more fun)?

The one redeeming quality, AFAICT, in this department, is the whole Hammer Effect thingie. At least the PCs are somebody important, and will have the pressures of that put on them.

Now, I don't have aaccess to the whole text. Perhaps there is a lot of direction in there. But if so, then that answers your question about how to present the material (it should support that direction). If not, then I suggest that you follow Ron's advice, and make the setting text all about getting across the idea of what to do in play. Because if nothing does, experience shows that such games are hard to play in a continuous, and coherent manner. My longest Traveller game was all about running the scenarios in a episodic fashion. For all it mattered, I could, and did use GURPS (before GURPS Traveller). The system made no difference, play quality was soley predicated on how well written the scenario was. Which means that I could have just as easily been playing a series of one-shots from and game. IOW, the Traveller rules do nothing for, in fact they detract from, the quality of play in not having a useful focus to the direction that they provide.

Again, apollogies, but I've had this love/hate relationship with Traveller for a long time. I'd like to see some game improve on it, and put a spark again into the cool setting.

Mike

[clehrich]

Mike,

No need to apologize; I'm grateful for a considered, intelligent opinion.

I'll give you the more or less official position on these interrelated questions; I should say at the outset that while I find setting design fun for Aurora, I'm not enough of a Sim-type to enjoy the whole experience to the full.  Anyway...

If the free materials are giving the impression that combat is important -- and I would like to know where exactly you found that (I don't not believe you, but I think this needs to be fixed) -- then we're giving a wrong impression.  Combat in Aurora is pretty lethal, unless non-lethal weaponry is used (which is most of the time); furthermore, it's usually illegal, and the cops are much better armed than the PCs.  So in point of fact actual combat is pretty rare, because as you say, you'd have to be nuts to get involved.  On top of everything else, there is a distinction made between military and paramilitary weaponry and hardware, such that basically someone with powerful (and probably illegal) weaponry up against a professionally-armed and -trained military dude will die very, very fast.  Kind of like trying to have a knife-fight with a Sherman tank.

So if we give the impression that combat matters much in ordinary gaming, we're giving the wrong impression, and that should be fixed.

Now as to the Premise issue, I do think this is something where Aurora is a universe, not a question or set of questions.  There are a number of really interesting questions to deal with, but they're not all that foregrounded.  This does indeed create the "welcome to our world, do with it as you like" impression, which I agree is not entirely supportive of quick entry into the game.

As to what Stephen's game does better, I think that lies directly in the setting.  He's a biochemist, and like many scientists seems to think that if the science is "real science," that solves everything, but I've been working on correcting this impression.  The reality, from my point of view, is that if you are interested in really complex cultural interactions, Aurora supports this exceptionally well.  The alien species here are not cultures, but species; like the human species, they are extremely varied, and it's just not possible to pigeonhole them as "like this."  There aren't any "warrior races" here, and while in a sense the A'wahch could be said to fit that description, they also neatly fit the description "hot water bottles with a weird attitude."  Species do not break down into mono-cultures, but into vastly complex and interwoven separate cultures.  At the same time, the physiology of these species does interact with their culture-formations, such that (for example) you don't get certain stock human tropes among the A'wahch because they don't have sex and don't have love-bonds.

For my own interests, as a freaky combination of historian, religion scholar, anthropologist, and linguist, I vastly enjoy cranking out enormous and challenging detail about alien cultures.  What does philosophy look like if your physiology dictates that you see individual subjectivity as so superior to mutual reflection that you have a severe problem with the Other?  To put that in English, if you are a colonial organism which can't get too close to other individuals without what amounts to brain damage (I'm thinking Milrolk here, for Aurora afficionados), you aren't going to valorize "really understanding the other guy" much; this is radically contrary to most human philosophy, which tends (for example, in the West) to valorize speech (talking face-to-face and presumably understanding the other guy) over writing (having to interpret everything indirectly because you don't have a conversation partner).  Again, I spend lots of time on the Uhrmina Pargin, because it simultaneously sounds like the Catholic Church at its very height, the Hasidic ghetto-culture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and is also extremely welcoming to science and rationalism.  So for me, it's a fun way to experiment with inhuman possibilities of old human problems.

As a game, I think Aurora requires a good deal of input from the players (including GM), because there really isn't a lot of pre-set structure to the session or campaign direction.  While this is a big problem for some folks, I think there are others who may think the universe is cool and like the fact that they can do whatever the hell the want with it.

Does this make things any clearer, or just make it worse?

[Mike Holmes]

I'll give you the more or less official position on these interrelated questions; I should say at the outset that while I find setting design fun for Aurora, I'm not enough of a Sim-type to enjoy the whole experience to the full.  Anyway...

Ironically, I love creating heavy Sim settings. The problem that I've discovered is that while making them is cool, having the details get ignored in play is kinda depressing. The point being that most Setting elements do not create action. For a setting to be good at spuring play, certain sorts of elements have to be emphasized, and other details relegated to the background.

If the free materials are giving the impression that combat is important -- and I would like to know where exactly you found that (I don't not believe you, but I think this needs to be fixed) -- then we're giving a wrong impression.... So if we give the impression that combat matters much in ordinary gaming, we're giving the wrong impression, and that should be fixed.

Did you read the standard rant I linked to above? If you did, you apparently did not take the correct pill, and are still stuck in the Matrix.

Having a combat system, t a set of rules that is more complicated than the rest of the rules for the sole purpose of detailing combat, predisposes play to combat.

What is the purpose of the combat system in Aurora if not to be used? How does that not inform players that the game is about getting into fights? Sure it says combat is deadly and players should think about it before fighting. But it does not say that players should never use the rules. That would be silly.

Combat can be handled just fine like any other resolution. What is it about Aurora that makes combat so special that it needs all those extra rules to enumerate it? Other than tradition?

Now as to the Premise issue, I do think this is something where Aurora is a universe, not a question or set of questions.

This is whay I wanted to stay away from Premise as a term. Premises are not necessarily questions. Narrativist Premises are, but, since this is a Sim game, we don't need to follow that rule. Thus, I see the premise of Aurora as something like, "Seeing what it's like to exist in the Aurora Universe as people who are immune to the Hammer Effect." The question is whether that's enough to capture people's imaginations. The presentation of the Setting will be critical to this (as the system says little).

As to what Stephen's game does better, I think that lies directly in the setting.  He's a biochemist, and like many scientists seems to think that if the science is "real science," that solves everything, but I've been working on correcting this impression.  The reality, from my point of view, is that if you are interested in really complex cultural interactions, Aurora supports this exceptionally well.

So, two of the designers have differences of opinions on what the draw of the game is. Can you see how others might have trouble discerning the draw?

The alien species here are not cultures, but species; like the human species, they are extremely varied, and it's just not possible to pigeonhole them as "like this."  There aren't any "warrior races" here, and while in a sense the A'wahch could be said to fit that description, they also neatly fit the description "hot water bottles with a weird attitude."  Species do not break down into mono-cultures, but into vastly complex and interwoven separate cultures.  At the same time, the physiology of these species does interact with their culture-formations, such that (for example) you don't get certain stock human tropes among the A'wahch because they don't have sex and don't have love-bonds.

Very cool. I almost wrote a standard rant on this subject a while back because I've said just this a zillion times (maybe I should now). I usually use fantasy to speak to it, because that's where the phenomenon started. Elves are racially and culturally Elven, but Humans are racially Human, and culturally...whatever. Only humans have diversity.

That said, your game will not be the first to do this successfully. Quite a few of the setting heavy sim worlds have been designed understanding this principle (Glorantha, for example, allows for cultural variation from village to village of Trolls, much less region to region). So, OK, one pitfall avoided.

The idea of exporing cultural interactions seems like a potentially powerful premise. Is the setting presented, or is the system designed, such that the cool interactions that you mention are prominently displayed somehow? If the game is, as you contend, about these interactions, then these are the things you need to highlight in the presentation of the setting. If the other designer does not agree, that may be problematic.

For my own interests, ...So for me, it's a fun way to experiment with inhuman possibilities of old human problems.

OK, that's another cool potential premise (which could be melded with the one above, potentially). How do you make the system, or the setting if the system is unavailable for change, propel players towards such exploration? That's your guideline, if this is your goal.

As a game, I think Aurora requires a good deal of input from the players (including GM), because there really isn't a lot of pre-set structure to the session or campaign direction.  While this is a big problem for some folks, I think there are others who may think the universe is cool and like the fact that they can do whatever the hell the want with it.

This is a designer's goal, not a consumer's goal. That is, I'm sure you and the other designer have all sorts of ideas for what to do in the universe? But if I'm buying a game, I'd like for it to have stuff that not only makes it obvious what we should be doing, but propells play in that direction with as many tools as possible. Otherwise it's just more work for me. If I play Traveller: the New Era, at least everyone knows it's all about rebuilding.

I've never seen anyone say, hey, this setting is cool, but presented with a certain slant which makes the cool stuff unusable. What's the downside to presenting things in a non-neutral way? If I don't want to go with the direction that the game is giving me, it's no harder to ignore it and do what I want than it would be to do what I want with setting material that gives no direction.

Does this make things any clearer, or just make it worse?

Yes.

Mike

[clehrich]

Mike,

Many thanks.  Youve given me a lot to mull over, and I will now mull.  :)

I almost posted a quick response about system guidance and so forth, but it occurs to me that what really dealing with your concerns will involve is me sitting back and thinking about the game from a new angle (for me).  That is, I need to think about what it would be like if I were to run the game, and why I haven't seriously thought about doing so thus far (whereas Stephen has thought about it a lot, and run it).  I think there may be a Heartbreaker element here that needs to be dealt with.  So, off to my mulling station....

[Walt Freitag]

Hi Chris,

I don't want to cut short the discussion of Mike's issues, but I want to go back to the original question of information organization. Hopefully you can multi-task (or multi-mull?) :-)

There are a number of really interesting questions to deal with, but they're not all that foregrounded. This does indeed create the "welcome to our world, do with it as you like" impression, which I agree is not entirely supportive of quick entry into the game.

Okay, let's take that at face value. How might the information organization of your new reference texts help support the "do as you like" process? You offered an interesting example:

In addition, the fact that the Pargin, in response to past persecutions, have generally got stockpiled armaments within the Enclaves, and are furthermore fairly well in touch with Enclaves in other systems, means that the Pargin could be the basis for an interesting campaign about persecution, militarism, and whatnot.

Okay, here's the question: Do I have to already be reading the details of the Pargin culture to find this out?

The conventional answer would be yes. Game setting materials are usually, in this respect, a lot like old-fashioned documentation for computer application software. If I'm looking at the arrow formatting dialog box and I'm curious about what a pull-down called "arrowhead shape" does, I can easily find out because the instructions are organized by menu, submenu, dialog page, and so forth, enumerating what each interface element can do. But if I'm looking at a blank page and wondering how to add a curly-headed arrow to the document, I'm out of luck. I have to search through all the instructions until I happen to find the part about how to call up and use the arrow formatting dialog box. The instructions are organized around "what can I do with feature X" instead of around "which features do I use to accomplish Y." Why? Because they're easier to write that way.

Is the analogy clear? What a setting like this needs, and almost invariably lacks, is the part that tells you, if you're looking for a basis for an interesting campaign about militarism and persecution, go look up the material on Pargin Enclaves.

Of course, there might also be twenty other setting elements that could also be used as a basis for such a campaign. That's okay. Just list all twenty-one.

That, all together, would be one of maybe fifty or so entries for things that an interesting campaign could be about, each with its appropriate references to features of the setting.

But that's only the beginning. Once a campaign about something is decided on or underway, there are plenty of secondary questions and needs that could also be addressed by appropriate setting references. For example, you say that combat is generally ill-advised for player-characters. But suppose I want to run a combat-heavy campaign, or perhaps just one combat-heavy session or even a single encounter, that is not likely to get the player-characters killed or arrested. Can you list maybe a few dozen possibilities, with references to the necessary setting information applicable to each? What if the player-characters find themselves low on resources and wanting to do a little trading. Can you point me to all the bits and pieces of the setting relevant to trading, including not only the prevailing situation (this planet sells this, buys that, requires traders to jump through such-and-such hoops) but also the setting elements that could lead to shaking things up (a long-feared isolationist policy shift here, an epidemic of a cargo-borne fungus there)? No doubt a tall order! Which is exactly why I don't want to do it myself. Especially on the fly, during game time, when a player says, "Hey, I know how we can pay for that sensor upgrade, this ship of ours does have a cargo bay, right?"

To be frank, I find the standard type of encyclopedic setting material useful, in or out of game time, only if it's easier to get from the text exactly what I need, right now, than it is to just make something up myself. Which is to say, practically never.

What would convince me otherwise is a text that is actually designed to be what GMs need it to be: not a world, not a description of a world, but a tool for exploring a world.

- Walt

[Mike Holmes]

You're welcome. I hope it does some good.

But shit, don't say that you hadn't thought about play! Gives ammo to the Paul Czege's to say, "See! Nobody actually plays Heavy Setting Sim! They just think about it!" Please, please, please, playtest the sucker. If you need people, come by indie-netgaming and we can try to round folks up.

Mike