Theme and mechanics

[Hunter Logan]

I think all systems (generic or not) have tendencies which make them better for some sorts of play than for others. That tendency is independent of setting, and maybe independent of theme. The way the mechanics work suggest attitudes toward play and may contribute to the tone of the game world. I think generic systems are expressions of the designer's desired tendency. D6 suggests high adventure and lots of action where JAGS suggests lots of detail and high verisimilitude. Any generic game can (must?) be tweaked to a specific setting. In the process, it becomes a customized game that may include the sort of interlocked chargen that Mike was talking about earlier.

For example, I might have a generic system of resolution that lends itself to over-the-top combat action. I would consider using it for mecha or any other high-powered fantasy where I want cinematic outcome with lots of special effects. I wouldn't consider it for a low-powered setting, or for a game devoid of combat. Those latter circumstances don't match the tendencies of my design.

I should add that a single mechanic all by itself may not suggest anything. It's the aggregate of mechanics, the evaluation of those mechanics, and the overall thrust of the rules that supply the tendency.

Edit: Typo

[Mike Holmes]

I should add that a single mechanic all by itself may not suggest anything. It's the aggregate of mechanics, the evaluation of those mechanics, and the overall thrust of the rules that supply the tendency.

Good point. My test may have been unfair (though I could claim that the example was my only mechanic). How about this. Take BRP again, and add my mechanic. That's the totality of the mechanics of the game. Now what do you get?

Mike

[John Kim]

I should add that a single mechanic all by itself may not suggest anything. It's the aggregate of mechanics, the evaluation of those mechanics, and the overall thrust of the rules that supply the tendency.

Good point. My test may have been unfair (though I could claim that the example was my only mechanic). How about this. Take BRP again, and add my mechanic. That's the totality of the mechanics of the game. Now what do you get?

OK, just to make this clear -- it sounds incomplete in that it has no effect on the rest of the mechanics.  i.e. You deal each player their hand of cards, but as currently defined, the result cannot change any stat on their character sheet, or modify any die roll, or control any player behavior.  So it's an independent subsystem whose results have nothing to do with the rest of the game.  

This sounds like bad design, IMO.  If you're going to go through the effort of having a special deck of cards and do the whole round-passing, then it should affect something in the rest of the system.  i.e. The player who reaches 100 should get something.  

Anyhow, there are a few things about how it would fit in an RPG.  It is clearly competitive between the players:  the question is not whether anyone will reach 100, but rather who reaches it first.  It always involves all the players (as you have defined it).  It doesn't involve much skill, but takes significant effort to play through.  

In short, I can try to go through the exercise here -- but I don't think this is a good mechanical design.  Basically, it sounds to me like you are just picking a totally arbitrary mechanic with no consideration to play.  

Again, the parallel to this are good German boardgames like Settlers of Catan or Carcassone.  The designers here do not arbitrarily come up with  inane random pick-a-player-who-wins.  They have thoughtful design to their mechanics.  

So maybe let's keep the hand of cards, but there should be some function for that to the rest of the game.  Also, it would be more interesting if there was more than one dimension to the score.

[Mike Holmes]

Actually, I picked BRP because Sanity is not linked to anything else in BRP. So I thought that if the Sanity mechanics could be appended thusly, so could this mechanic.

The mechanic that I've described is a mix of the Civilization boardgame trading mechanic and the poker game "poop on your neighbor". Well regarded mechanics. Hardly inane. Further it's not all that random. There's a lot of strategy involved. For example, if you see a lot of a certain card going around, you may decide that other's aren't collecting that, and to start yourself. High value cards are very sought, but that also makes them less likely to be traded, meaning that making runs of them is hard. Lower cards are easier to collect, and could add up faster. And the number of players playing are key to different strategies. Very like Gin in a number of ways.

I'm trying to play by the rules, here. I picked these at random, yes, but I picked them because I like the mechanics in question. As I said, if I wanted to make a mechanic that couldn't be related to something, I'm sure I could.

Interestingly, I'm starting to actually see your side of the argument through this experiment. I've been trying myself to come up with something that uses this mechanic, and I've made some headway I think.

Ironic, eh? Anyhow, I agree with your assessments that it has to be linked in some way to play. I was thinking that "rounds" could be played around chunks of role-play in which something about the card played would have to be acted out. Perhaps giving clues (GM monitored, I think). So I was thinking about court intrigue or somesuch. Anyhow, this would combat the "tediousness" of the overall mechanic, I think, in that it's use would develop a lot of role-play.

See, I think that my earlier objection about the German Abstract Games was off. Because what I think they do is just make their mechanics and then just tack on a "look"; they aren't interested in being more precise. But you wouldn't stop there with an RPG. You'd tinker with the rules after you'd decided what it looked like.

So, once you've seen what you think the "pure mechanic" might be good for, you'll start to tinker with it. But I'm starting to think that it's not a bad place to start. Why not? I've heard of more bizzare ways to get inspired.

Mike

[contracycle]

I'm trying to play by the rules, here. I picked these at random, yes, but I picked them because I like the mechanics in question. As I said, if I wanted to make a mechanic that couldn't be related to something, I'm sure I could.

Quick question - what is it about this mechanic specifically you like?  Just to ask what sort of things it may be about THIS mechanic that you think are interesting.

Secondly thers a bunch of stuff missing.  Can other players see the cards as they are passed?  Are there discards?

Off the cuff, I'd posit something like Guild Wars or Merchants of Amsterdam or something.  The cards are strapped to commodities in transit through a local or regionally dominant market, hence their ephemeral nature; the act of acquiring a set corresponds to a good solid exchange or seizure of a micro-monopoly on a particular commodity.

[Variant: The deployment is a RUN of cards in numerical order; this represents the merchant/guilds abilities to monopolise a range of trades on multiple levels within a single commodity.  Various groups/players could have point bonuses associated with the suits of the cards.  The Jewellers Guild frex gets bonuses for Diamonds and penalties for Clubs.  Whatever.  The decision point will be, do I take a 3-card run and seize the points, or do I conceal my intent and try to get a 5-card run?  As soon as I deply the 3-card run everyone will know I'm after X]

At the laying of a set on the table and the reaping of the points, the specific commodity represented must be announced and recorded for colour.

[Thierry Michel]

Interestingly, I'm starting to actually see your side of the argument through this experiment. I've been trying myself to come up with something that uses this mechanic, and I've made some headway I think.

I tried to come up with something as well, let's compare notes, then.


I wouldn't use the mechanic for resolving actions but I think that it could be used for character improvement. So, players trade cards and when reaching 100 cash their hand to improve their chars.

So, what kind of resources do the cards represent ? Obviously, it can't be an internal 'practice makes perfect' system, there has to be some tradable resource.
So my take on it: favour of the gods. The setting will comprise a Pantheon with a big god on top (the 10 cards) and a hierarchy down to the 1 cards.

Now, this is of course full of holes: when do the players have access to the rest of the deck (say, when they do something that please the gods, the GM is judge of that) ? Does only the 100 player cash his hand or do they all (presumably improvements have different costs) ? when do they trade, in a mini-game after the session or when they pick cards during the session ?

[Walt Freitag]

Hi Mike,

Your example mechanism is tricky for RPG use because it involves so many simultaneous "moving parts" which is not typical of RPG mechanics. How many RPGs involve simultaneous competition among all the players determining a single winner?

German abstract games have a wider latitude, which allows them to propose concrete interpretations on game tokens. No matter how abstract the game overall, individual tokens on a board are almost always designated as "soldiers" or "bureaucrats" or "ships" or "cities" or "bridges" or "farms" or something equally concrete, and individual cards likewise represent people, commodities, or events. (Note that this is almost directly opposite RPG mechanics, in which the play overall is usually not abstract, being representational of in-game-world events, but the individual elements -- currency points, the numbers rolled on the dice, the dice themselves -- usually are abstractions.)

So I can easily take your suggested mechanism and turn it into:

SOMERVILLE
The Game Of Rents and Roommates

Somerville is a town in transition. It started as a bedroom community for blue-collar workers commuting from nearby Boston. Builders lined the streets with sturdy three-decker apartments, large houses divided into three separately rentable floors. When the local colleges expanded, and the skyrocketing rents in Boston and Cambridge sent students venturing into brave new Zip codes looking for affordable housing, Somerville became a college town. And as some of those students stayed on in town to pursue professional carreers and home businesses, upscale services and yuppie tenants became part of the scene.

As the landlord of a three-decker, your task is to collect a set of tenants capable of paying their rent on time. Each of the three floors of your triple-decker can hold up to four tenants. Tenants, represented by cards, range from Part Time Rock Musicians Expecting Their Big Break Any Day Now to the coveted Obsessively Neat Confirmed Bachelor Tenured Literature Professors.

The rent you can collect depends on the number of same-type tenants living together on the same floor. (Compatible tenants spend less time arguing and making excuses.) A single tenant is worth the tenant's face value (0 to 120 in increments of 10) in monthly rent. A pair of matched tenants is worth four times the face value of the tenants in the pair (counted once, not twice) so a pair of Ambiguously Gendered Neo-Goth Graphic Designers (50's) would be worth 50 * 4 = $200. A group of three matched tenants is worth nine times their shared face value, and a group of four matched tenants is worth sixteen times their shared face value -- so, for instance, four Second Year Law Students Who Are Never Home (100's) would be worth a whopping $1600.

Each round of play, you decide which one of your current tenants gets fed up with (or kicked out of) their current living arrangements and leaves. This tenant moves into another triple-decker; pass him or her to the player on your left. (...etc...) [I'd also add a draw from the deck option; special event cards playable on other players, such as "messy break-up" that forces part of a mixed-gender group to move out; and rules encouraging public display of some tenants, perhaps to meet an escalating minimum rent figure, something like betting and raising in poker but on a more ongoing basis.]

... But it's not so easy to turn it into an RPG mechanism. [rant](Even harder to turn it into a mechanic, because a mechanic is a person.)[/rant]

I could see using the card matches (perhaps with the same three-way division as in the triple-decker game) as components that establish basic character stats, in a milieu where player-character identity is in flux for some reason. Perhaps something like my 1986 LARP The Great Psionic Feud, in which player-characters are composed of separate random fragments of personality in the aftermath of a psi-war that escalated to the equivalent of nuclear, and players must build more fully-integrated and capable characters by swapping fragments during play.

Is this enough of a start to support the proposition of mechanics-first design? I have no doubt that the German game designers tinker with their game mechanics plenty, both before and after the theme and color of a game has started taking shape.

- Walt

[Thierry Michel]

...the proposition of mechanics-first design?

The Systemist Manifesto ? The Mechanist Manifesto ?

[Walt Freitag]

The Systemist Manifesto ? The Mechanist Manifesto ?

Hell no, I ain't falling into that trap.

Jumping directly from a proposition (the suggestion of an idea, subject to proof, disproof, debate, inquiry, or investigation) to a manifesto (the declared intention to maintain and defend the idea against all alternatives), skipping the inconvenient parts (proof, inquiry, etc.) in between, is the cause of much evil in the world. :-)

- Walt

[Mike Holmes]

Quick question - what is it about this mechanic specifically you like?  Just to ask what sort of things it may be about THIS mechanic that you think are interesting.

I like the exasperated looks people get on their faces when they get a card that they just passed off to the player to their left. It's exciting when a plan works, and frustrating when it doesn't.

Secondly thers a bunch of stuff missing.  Can other players see the cards as they are passed?  Are there discards?

I felt that if I solved to many variables that there would be no way to make the game fit anything without heavily rearranging it (in which case, what's the point). So, feel free to modify these as you see fit.

Off the cuff, I'd posit something like Guild Wars or Merchants of Amsterdam or something.  The cards are strapped to commodities in transit through a local or regionally dominant market, hence their ephemeral nature; the act of acquiring a set corresponds to a good solid exchange or seizure of a micro-monopoly on a particular commodity.

The reason I used the poop on your neighbor mechanic in combination to the Civ boardgame mechanic was so that it didn't present itself too easily. That is, I didn't want the exercise to prove that a mechanic that was designed to work for something in particular was recognizable simply as what it was designed for.

IOW, we can't do trading, because that's where I got it from. Well, I suppose given that I've mixed it up, we could, but I'd prefer to try for something else. The reason I chose poop on your neighbor specifically was because it didn't seem to be like trading at all. Still seems like that to me. Though I suppose one could see it as the random market. But still, it's an odd world where you have to accept deliver blindly, and only from one other merchant who happens to be a player.

Mike

[contracycle]

Well, the image I had in mind was of sorta merchants viewing the early stock exchange; so the passing from player to player was not a personal in-game interaction but representative of the trades the previous player didn't take up or stayed away from. (bubbles, cons, spoiled, whatever)

Anyway, it was just in the name of experimentation.  I liked Walts idea too.  But he is right to say that conventional game modes are usually not portable to RPG - for the life of me I can't imagine an RPG implementation of Draughts.  As games, as exchanges between players, ye - but how to articulate them in RPG terms is a bugbear.

That said, though, it occurred to me that Black Fire incorporates a two-stage game in a manner something vaguely like an idea I proposed for Mesopotamia - that there is a game to determine what play is about, and "another" game to determine how it is resolved.

So I feel that re-approaching the relationship between player and mechanism (above rant noted) may be the key.  CAN we re-phrase the assumptions of perspective such that a game of merchants is feasible?  If we assume that direct interpersonal violence is one of the things that abtsracted out of site and out of mind, can we locate the mechanisms in some other field of competition such that it is still recoignisably RPG?

[Mike Holmes]

Gareth, you and Walt have some good points about what "kind" of mechanics make sense for an RPG. I retract my example. It's hard to come up with an alternative, however, that's:

A. Suitable for an RPG, and
B. Not from an actual RPG.

OTOH, if we're just saying that we want to steal our favorite mechanics from extant games, and then try to find a premise that the result supports, then cool. That should be do-able, though I think that you'll tend to see the original games in what you produce. Not necessarily, but that'd be the trend, I'd think.

Mike

[Thierry Michel]

Another example, then, for a generic resolution mechanism:

Contests are auctioned, every participant (that includes GM) makes a secret bid, highest bidder wins the outcome but pays the price to loser(s).

Your mission (should you accept it): find an appropriate setting.

Is it RPG-y enough ?

[contracycle]

Interesting one.  Had a post mortem mechanism thought that arose from looking at it.

The essential contradiction here is that if we posit a scenario as simple as a skirmish, the GM wins by bidding high, then pays these tokens/whatever to the players.  So the players increase effectiveness (capacity to bid) by LOSING contests.  Arguably, by throwing some of them deliberately.

So... that presents a scenario in which the GM bids wads of tokens, the player is simply out bid.  This presents a problem as I see no reason that character death should not be a losing condition in a conflict bid.  What good is a pile of tokens to a dead character?  Aha - they can spend them from the spirit world to aid their companions.

You could have a fairly freaky scenario here in which, sorta like John Constantine's travelling circus of personal ghosts, the game is structured around this idea.  You start out with a handful of characters, and over the course of a discrete 'story/adventure/mission' the overt expectation is that these characters will be winnowed until there is only one.  (ooh oooh - a highlander mechanism?)  As each character dies off - either by graceful concession or by GM malice - they are rewritten as disembodied spirits and the player continues play AS the disembodied spirit.  Their stock of tokens - now fixed - can only be spent to assist the remaining characters in the initial group.  Wrap this all up in messianic prophecy and we have a structure a lot like a classic heroes quest.  The central premise, then, would be "many are called, but few are chosen".  Which of the characters is the Chosen One will be determined in play.

Variant: it occurs to me that this mechanism could also be bent to produce the "if you strike me down I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine" thing, becuase of the way losing gains effectiveness.  Kenobi's ghostly intervention is very much how I see the tokens being spent from beyond the grave.

Interesting one, could be developed much further I think.

[Lxndr]

Hm.  The way I read that, though, the players are bidding separately, not as a group (as contracycle seems to be suggesting/assuming in his write-up).  In other words, Player A, Player B, and GM are all bidding their own SEPARATE tokens for narrative control.

This, to me, lends itself to cooperative intra-party conflict.  Player A wants to see X happen.  The GM thinks Y might be cool.  Player B, on the other hand, has an idea for Z (which might be like X, might be like Y, might be like neither one).  Any of these, or none of them, might result in character death.  See my discussion on "hit points" below.

Thierry left it pretty open as to who gets paid the price.  I'd suggest this particular - the person who bids second-highest gets paid.  Everyone else is left in the dust.  This encourages people to really put their money where their mouth is - you can't just bid 1 when everyone else is bidding 12 or 13, and then profit for "losing."  You have to take a chance.  

I would also be tempted to add a rule of some sort for collecting these tokens outside of contests.  In addition, they act as "hit points."  If someone wins a contest against you, they can declare you lose as many "hit points" as their bid (or less) through appropriate narration.  This includes the GM.  I like this because it gives an additional reason to bid high if you're the target; someone else might choose to hurt you, and you need a buffer.  You can't be killed until you reach zero tokens, and you can't be killed in the same contest that gave you zero tokens (thus giving your character a chance to collect tokens).

But maybe I'm tweaking rules too much for the purposes of the discussion.

I'm imagining a high-intrigue social setting, one in which the players are encouraged to visit complications upon each other's characters.  Using tokens as hit points, above, could represent social slights and political setbacks as well as physical damage (in fact, likely more the first).  The maneuvering and dealing would happen on both the game and metagame levels...