[Cornerstone] To Mars and Back

[Paganini]

We just wrapped up a three session IRC playtest of Cornerstone in a Wellsian Victorian Sci-fi setting. These were very instructive sessions, as we drifted and tweaked the game slightly differently every session. We went from "as written" to leaning heavily towards The Pool style player narration.

It turns out that it works quite well as I wrote it, needing a couple of tweaks to correct things I left out (I forgot to write a rule for tied dice rolls). But, strangely enough, straight Cornerstone is not really a game that I enjoy *playing.* As I gimmicked it to make it more like games I enjoy, it rapidly fell apart and became incoherent.

This validates something I said about GNS a while back. GNS allow objective game design and game critique. By identifying game goals, it allows designers to design games that are objectively good at reaching those goals, even if the designer himself doesn't share those goals! This is a very odd feeling.

Bottom line: The game really facilitates an old-style linear type story. I kept waiting for the players to use their Facts to do big important game things, but the way that facts are tied to specific conflicts discourages this. So, the GM needs to be ready with some prepared events plot-lines, rather than just creating a volatile setting for the characters to explore.

So, I'm going to keep it the way it was, with just a few minor edits, and hope everyone who thought it looked cool will enjoy playing it. :)

Anybody else who was in the playtest feel free to jump on with comments, additions and so on.

[Trevis Martin]

Hey Nathan,

I followed all your prep at indie netgames and am quite interested in your Cornerstone system.  Could you be a little more specific about how the playtest went and what the effects were per the rules?  When you shifted to pool-style MOV's how did that operate?

As far as not liking the play of it, what is it exactly that seperates the games you like from this game?  Does it enforce a descision type you don't like?

couriously yours,

Trevis

[Bob McNamee]

Nathan one of the ideas bouncing round in my head...
Especially after Chris's comments about making Motivation type traits is to bring back in part of your older game idea to the character creation process.
That is make the Attributes categories defined.
My thought is to define the 3 Attribute categories as (something like)


* Niche
* Inner (Motivations?)
* Outside (Influences?)


Anyway, my thought is to require "Niche Trait category" to be the highest points category. Make the standard rolling category Niche.

I don't know though, this idea (now its on paper) seems to water out one of the cool things about the game, the way the characters are customised to fit themselves.

Another thought is to allow the Karma activation of Traits even within an Attribute category being used. This would certainly protagonize abilities being used within a broader Attribute.
For instance, Dr Rumsfield was Athletic 3? he rolls 3+ (1d6-1d6) when acting athletically in any way. Right now there is no bonus for him engaging in Fisticuffs over Surfing, although he has a trait of Fisticuffs. If you allow Karma activation of Fisticuffs (even though it is inside the Athletic Attribute) he gets a slight edge for acting in Idiom. 4+ (1d6-1d6).

My first thoughts

[Paganini]

Trvis:

Well, at first I was running it as written, where the players define facts / concessions, and then the GM narrates. This meant that the players spent a lot of time just sitting around reading my typing. This is okay for a traditional style RPG where the GM does most of the narrating (which is what Cornerstone was supposed to be), but I was afraid the players would get bored. So, I started having them narrate the outcome after defining facts / concessions. I figured they might as well narrate them, since they were defining them anyway. It was disaster. :)

As for your second question, I prefer games in which the players drive the game as much as the GM does. Examples of this are Shadows and The Pool / TQB. So, all the players seemed to enjoy the game as written, but I didn't enjoy running it much. As I added tweaks to try and get more player involvement, the players seemed to have less and less fun, until the final session was quite unfocused.

Bob:

I like the idea of karma being able to activate any trait. I've gone back and forth on that issue from day one. Maybe when you run a playtest game you could try that and see how it works.

[C. Edwards]

I think Bob may be spot on with the categorization of Attributes.  The customization of characters shouldn't suffer and it will keep them from being one dimensional a la Dr. Rumsfield.  Basically, all the characters except the good doctor had traits corresponding to Bob's categories and the game was better for having them.

The motivation type traits also serve as doses of pre-packaged conflict just waiting to happen.  Viktor's "Never let a slight go unavenged" comes to mind, and Rose's "Won't back down".  The Niche traits are less dynamic and more dependent on a much smaller range of situations for their use.  That is all fine and good for a Niche, but the characters need something else to help propel their actions and therefore cause the "story" to move forward.

-Chris

[Mike Holmes]

Nathan, what was so disasterous about the player narration? And I too would like to know what you found so dissatisfying about running the game. I don't see the disasters you do, but I have misgivings; perhaps they are related somehow.


As it was at the end, the game was a bit like Shadows with the player deciding the two results before hand. This itself is a bit problematic in that it reduces tension. You know what could happen, you're just not sure which of the two options. But since you know they're both dramatically nifty, it's just a random roll to see which way the game branches. This just isn't very....spicy. IMO. At least with The Pool theres the little Gamist element of gambling the Pool.

But it's not totally random, is it? There are the Traits that are activated. And the GM assigns some opposing factor. The problem with the opposing factor is that it seems quite arbitrary. Why is it high in some cases, and low in others? I never really got this? Was this a simulation of the difficulty? Or were you choosing low numbers to reward certain descriptions? See, in The Pool, players are incentivized to make the conflics cool by the potential bonus GM dice. I never felt that in Cornerstone.

Essentially the idea of Cornerstone's system must be that, somehow, the balance of the Traits against the GM's selection of difficulty will tend to somehow pick the best choice of the dramatic options presented in terms of the suuccess/fail conditions presented. That or it's just a Sim system. But I fail to see how it would perform such a selection at all. The mechanics didn't seem to have a point. Are they Sim? They could be, but they don't seem to accurately represent much. Are they Nar? Well, no, they don't promote the idea of addressing Narrativist themes...not Gamist.

I mean, other than narrating, which I can do sans rules, what does the game give you to do? You seem to be enamored with Director Stance for players, but you don't give it a framework in which to do anything. We could play freeform with lists of traits and flip a coin at each encounter, and get very similar results.

Sorry, I'm a rules monkey, and games like this and Shadows just don't seem to have enough going on to get my attention during play. It all feels too wishy-washy, and mechanically pointless. When can I present a Complication? Whenever I want, right? What can the preselected results be? Anything, right?

This last is really problematic. What if I state that I kill Bob, or am run off by Bob as my conditions. And then you so a Conflict and state that the conditions are I kill Rob and Dan or am run off. Well, what are the Facts for? Why not just say all the things you want in the conflict resolution descriptions? And people in general do. But then they get facts anyhow, and have to figure out what to do with this extra power, which they didn't ask for in the first place.

I had fun, but the system needs some work, IMO.

Mike

[Bob McNamee]

I've been thinking a bit more about my Attribute change idea (not to derail the recent posts...)

One thing I'm not too keen on is the determination of both results(good,bad) ahead of time, I liked the base idea of a more standard GM idea more than moving it into a more Shadows idea.

My thought is to make a variant of Cornerstone.
I'd prefer more structure to the character idea and its rolling method.
My thought is to set the Attributes as so....
------------------------
"Spotlight" -the primary defining traits of the character-used for representing the protagonist actions of the Character...this must be the highest scoring attribute.
[Used for all Rolls with Character action]

"Themes"- the primary Themes (psychology, philosophy, "tone") that this character is focused and involved in... this trait is used to bring in aspects of that characters theme (could even consider it theme music)
[Used for influencing any Scene regardless of Character presence or action...good / bad result indicates whether the Theme is easing complicating the scene it is rolled in]

"Conflicts"-the innate conflicts this character brings with them, the Kickers etc. in a more general fashion.... this trait is also used to bring in elements to protag the character, by bringing in elements of conflicts to create Spotlight room... like Themes good/ bad results indicate whether these conflicts ease or complicate the scene in which the roll takes place.

Themes and Conflicts could be rolled anytime, but they are mostly meant to be able to influence scenes in which the character is not present, or wants to stay out of the spotlight


Rolling a scene....
I would have all Players with characters participating in a scene roll one of their types of rolls...either "Spotlight" if they intend the character to take protag-type action, or "Themes"-"Conflicts" if they intend to Player influence the scene.

All Spotlight rollers decide an intent?
The Highest Spotlight Roll defines the actual intent or the scene... with the others adding  a slant to things ... by gaining Karma (putting a GM pos or neg spin on things), or adding various pos or neg Facts  for a Player slant to the scene.

Hope this is interesting

[Bob McNamee]

2 examples

Spiderman/Peter Parker
"Spotlight"-6
    Web Slinging
    Swinging about Town
    Spider Sense
    Fighting
    Photography
    Wisecracks    

"Themes"-2
With Great Power comes Great Responsibilty
Guilt

"Conflicts"-2
For every Good thing that happens Two Bad things Happen
My Identity Must remain Secret (or perhaps My Family Suffers because of me)
Karma 5


Wolverine/Logan
"Spotlight"-6
   Adamantine Skeleton
   Retractable Claws
   Regeneration
   Incredible Sense of Smell
   Special Operative
   Abrasive Personality
 
"Themes"-2
   Modern Samurai
   Highly Violent

"Conflicts"-2
   Loner
   Sought as a Pawn in others Plans

Karma 5


A couple quick ideas of what I mean

[Bob McNamee]

By the way...it is possible to a take that scene rolling idea another step and go without a GM in play. I'd do it by having a High Karma bid after rolling to set the scene GM, or, the lowest success roll result GMs the scene if no one bids a Karma.

[Paganini]

Chris, Bob:

The idea of categorizing attributes is cool with me, allthough it seems like it'd be important to carefully define what each category represents.

I like the idea of a motivation trait. Perhapse it could be something like Roles, Resources, Motivations. (Who you are, what you can do, why you do it.)

Bob, I... er... your post is interesting, but I think you've got a completely new game there. :)

Mike:

To clarify a little - I don't think the game as written was *disfunctional.* It wasn't terrible, it just isn't to my taste. You're exactly right with your observations about Shadows. But remember, Shadows is one of my favorite games. I *am* enamored of director stance. It *is* to my taste... that's why Cornerstone became more like it as I tweaked it. :)

The problem with the opposing factor is that it seems quite arbitrary. Why is it high in some cases, and low in others? I never really got this? Was this a simulation of the difficulty? Or were you choosing low numbers to reward certain descriptions? See, in The Pool, players are incentivized to make the conflics cool by the potential bonus GM dice. I never felt that in Cornerstone.

You're absolutely right about this. I've been pondering a little, and I haven't come up with anything. See, the original intention for Cornerstone was that all conflicts be character vs. character, where any game element can be represented as a character. This seemed really hard on the GM though, who would have to come up with a bunch of traits for every entity that needed to be in a conflict. So I set a default number of 4. I went up and down depending on how appropriate a given outcome seemed given the genre considerations.

This last is really problematic. What if I state that I kill Bob, or am run off by Bob as my conditions. And then you so a Conflict and state that the conditions are I kill Rob and Dan or am run off. Well, what are the Facts for? Why not just say all the things you want in the conflict resolution descriptions? And people in general do. But then they get facts anyhow, and have to figure out what to do with this extra power, which they didn't ask for in the first place.

You're right about this too. This is what I was talking about when I said that making it more like the drift was disasterous. Allowing the players to call for rolls at any time made the whole fact currency pointless. Originally, only the GM calls for a roll. If the players want a roll, they have to set up a situation that calls for one via playing their characters.