X-Games

[Blake Hutchins]

I've put a group together to run a series of short-run games where we experiment with some of the narrativist-focused systems out there.  We're starting with The Pool, followed by Everway, Story Engine, and Sorcerer.  Time and group interest permitting, I'd like to get into others, such as Dying Earth and The World, the Flesh, and the Devil.  The intent is to try out these systems in actual play, run them through their paces, see how they work in practice, and apply the various ideas on stance and premise and other items that have been debated here on The Forge.

I'd like to report on what we're doing in a week by week format here, proceeding from setup and character generation on through the actual game sessions.  Several Forge regulars have expressed interest in the idea.

My question here is:  how much detail would people be interested in?  I can post profiles on the players and their preferences here at the outset, as well as setup information and starting assumptions.  Is this a level of detail that would be helpful and interesting for Forge readers?

Best,

Blake

[hardcoremoose]

It sounds like the approach you're taking towards your X-games group is similar to what Paul attempted (and achieved) when he put our group together.  From a practical standpoint, any information you can provide about your players, their preferences, and the characters they'll be playing in each game (as they become available) will be real helpful as a reference point.  

And while I enjoy reading actual accounts of individual game sessions, I always look for a developing theme in these posts - something relevant to our discussions, or that illustrates a point in a way we have not yet seen.  Paul is excellent at this sort of stuff, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing how X-games turns out.

For now, I'm interested in comparing and contrasting your character creation sessions to ours'. :smile:

Take care,
Scott

[ This Message was edited by: hardcoremoose on 2001-10-20 01:03 ]

[Ron Edwards]

Hey Blake,

If you don't mind some input, I'd suggest one thing. Remember that having a good time is paramount, and enjoying making stories. One trap we seem to see a lot with "let's do Narrativism," is that people start to criticize one another (GM to player, player to GM, player to player) about "if you cared about the story, you'd play differently" in some way.

This always worries me, because the whole point of Narrativist play is to get AWAY from railroading and into a mode where everyone's input actually works. (To reference an important parallel, a lot of Gamist play has no trouble like this - if a given action/event works to someone's advantage, then it works, and no one has a problem with it. I think narrativist play ought to take a lesson from that.)

Anyway, I don't mean to lecture you or to tell you guys what to do. It's a concern of mine that's been growing for a couple of months now.

Best,
Ron

[Blake Hutchins]

Guys,

Thanks for the input.  I appreciate your advice, and will try to keep things pertinent to discussions here.

Ron, I've run my games in a narrativistic style for years, so this feels like a natural transition to systems that embrace my approach from the beginning.  My players are all very familiar with my preferences and style, having all come out of our recent Mage chron.  They wouldn't be here if they had a problem with it.  Further, we all know it's an experiment, and we're OK with assessing how the game went, but we'll keep the critique focused on the system rather than the people.

Best,

Blake

[Blake Hutchins]

PRE-GAME NOTES

SYSTEM:  I selected the Pool to start with because it had the shortest set of rules, the least complicated character generation, and a very powerful yet simple narrativist mechanic.  Since this is our first overtly Narrativist game, I wanted to keep it as simple as possible.

PLAYERS:  I have four players.  Two are my age (late 30's), and two are mid-20's.

Dennis has only played DnD and Mage, with almost all his lengthy gaming experience in the former.  He's a thoughtful player who likes to take an intellectual, what I'll call a removed Actor stance with his characters, almost always describing his actions in the third person and discussing his choices based on his character's personality, culture, situational awareness, and knowledge.  He is not concerned about winning or skill testing.  Were I to categorize him, I'd probably say he's a Simulationist with Narrativist leanings.

Jeff has played DnD, Vampire, and Mage.  He's a longtime Squad Leader player, and has an encyclopedic knowledge of DnD rules and tactics.  He ran the d20 game I was briefly involved with, and he reports a prep time for each session of eight to twelve hours.  In Mage, he had no problem adapting to my style of play, and deeply immersed himself in his character during game sessions.  He's somewhat familiar with the basic GNS model and describes himself as an Explorative player.  He's very focused on facilitating good group dynamics, both in and out of character.  He is also skeptical about whether Narrativist play works to facilitate story, though he himself claims to be very story focused.

Marion is the sole woman in this group, and she is -- hoo-boy -- very immersive and adopts a deep, deep Actor Stance during play.  From the time the game starts, she's wholly in character.  She has, however, blunted her character's response so as not to separate the group during key scenes.  Her Mage character write-up was a multimedia package with 10 pages of first person backstory.  She actively pursues roles that she sees as non-traditional for women and for herself personally.  She is an artist and likes to illustrate her characters and scenes from games.

Matt has been a DnD GM for years via play-by-mail.  He co-GM'd the Mage chron and seems to be quite flexible and open to distributed Directorial power and story-focused mechanics.  I've not played with him as a player, so I don't know much about his preferred style, but he seems quite open to pursuing story as a primary game goal.  He's an artist and comic collector, for what it's worth.

SETTING:  I wanted a simple setting that would embody some degree of conflict while offering players a variety of hooks for character concepts.  I stuck with high fantasy since all the players are most familiar with a DnD style environment and opted for a city-based milieu reminescent of Warhammer, Leiber's Lankhmar, and the old collaborative city of Sanctuary from Thieves' World.  We've discussed (but not settled) whether we want to use the same setting for each of the games we run, so I wanted something robust enough to support multiple stories.  Finally, I chose concept for magic based on the five colors from Magic: The Gathering.  I've added the basic setting description below, just one page of text intended to evoke feelings and images without offering a hard and fast metaplot.  It's not meant to be terribly original, but I think it promises to be fun.  After this description, I added a couple of pages suggesting possible character and group concepts and explaining the flavor and idea behind the magic system.  Won't tax your patience with those notes.  I'd like to underline that I definitely require the players to construct a strong group concept that establishes how they know each other and what their general collective motivation will be in terms of the story.  There's a lot of difference between a mercenary company and a band of refugees.

OK, here's the setting:

IRONGATE
A Roleplaying Setting by Blake Hutchins

THE STORY
The Bright Empire is no more.  Karakalas is fallen.  The Gate of Doves tumbles in scorched shards across the white stones of the Street of Kings.  In the Temple of Light, vultures and armored half-trolls devour the bodies of paladins.  The tall, elegant courtiers and clear-eyed citizens of that greatest of cities now toil in the lightless factories of the Shadow-eaten... and their dead rise to refresh the ranks of the Shadow's armies.

Without the Empire to check it, the Shadow falls unchecked across the entire Westlands, bringing premature winter and a creeping terror with it.  Refugees stream out of thorp and town and village, desperate to escape the rising darkness.  They flee east seeking a haven, and so they come to the queen of the Starless Sea: Irongate.

Irongate.  City of Relics.  City of the Red Towers.  City of Blood.  Irongate.  A city of high walls and deep magics, guarded by ancient ghosts and potent magics and fearsome iron gates.  Irongate, with its forges and smokes and thieveries, its greedy merchants and scheming aristocrats.  Irongate, where the Carbuncle Lord rules with an iron fist and the demon-masked Myrmidons patrol the streets with clawed gauntlet and charmed prowess.  Irongate, allied neither to Shadow nor to Light, now the sole power remaining to oppose the spread of evil.  Irongate, where agents of the Shadow walk openly within the walls even as the Carbuncle Lord turns a blind eye to survivors of the Legion of Light trickling into the city, rags covering their formerly bright vestments, their eyes filled with grief and determination.  The war is over, but a new flame may yet rise from the ashes.  If so, the pyre will be Irongate.

The city straddles a pass through the Dwarfspine Mountains.  Behind it, the road runs to the east in and out of the pass, then descends across a fertile coastal plain to the Starless Sea.  In front of it lies the mist-shrouded Plain of Cairns, where spirits and illusions twist the way for any army foolish enough to enter.  The Plain is bordered to the north by a spur of the Dwarfspines, to the south by the Glimmerleaf Forest.  The Shadow has fallen over Glimmerleaf, such that even though the Oak Queen and her woodfolk and rangers still defend it fiercely, refugees call it Nightwold and steer away from its dark trees.

With the Order of Light having perished, the greatest champions are now said to be the valiant Rangers of Glimmerleaf and the demonic Myrmidons of Irongate.  The former are ill-suited to armies, though their craft and deadly skills with silver glaive and blackthorn bow have kept Glimmerleaf from falling wholly under the Shadow's sway.  The Myrmidons keep their mysterious oath to the Forgotten Kingdom, of which Irongate was the capital many centuries ago.  For generations, these masked guardians have served the Carbuncle Lord as the regent of the long-extinguished dynasty.

The Carbuncle Lord is known to be powerful in both Blue and Red magicks, an unusual combination of subtlety and raw force.  Still, the exiled General of the Light petitions him for aid from a fever-riddled sickbed.  The Ambassador of the Shadow offers its own sibilant terms; this creature consists of nothing but four ebon-sided boxes that speak via a face pushing its a mask out from the side of a box.  Four silent thralls with stitched lips carry the ambassador to and from its appointments.

Irongate.  Enter the last days of an Age.

Next post:  Character generation.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.  This open hood thing is new to me, and I see it as a two-way street.  If I'm not addressing a point you're interested in, please drop a question my way.

Best,

Blake



[ This Message was edited by: Blake Hutchins on 2001-10-21 14:26 ]

[James V. West]

Blake:

As a creator, I want all the dirty details you can generate in your discussions of the games you play. I'll reiterate what Moose said though about keeping it in focus. I think we're all more interested in hearing about the problems you encountered in play as much as we're interested in hearing how well it went (actually, more so).

If there are things you'd like to share about your experience with The Pool that you don't want to subject the rest of The Forge to, email me. I would love to see the characters.

Just have fun. That's the most important thing. Already I'm stoked and eager to hear more. The setting idea looks solid and sounds cool to me.

Thanks.

James V. West
http://www.geocities.com/randomordercreations/thepool.html
randomordercreations@earthlink.net

[Blake Hutchins]

Thanks, James.  I'd be happy to give you any information you want.  In fact, if there's anything in particular you'd like examined in terms of the system, fire me a line and I'll work it in.

Our first priority is to have fun.  That will be our first and central assessment: was The Pool fun?  From an analytical standpoint, I plan to focus on the players' choices and behaviors and how the system facilitated or interfered with them.  We're meeting this afternoon to go through character gen, and I think it should be an interesting session.

And what I said for James goes for anyone else.  This isn't a vanity project on my part.  If there's anything I can do to make this X-Games thing more interesting or pertinent to Forge readers, please do offer your suggestions.  We're out to have fun, yeah, but we're flexible in how we go about it.

I will ask this right now, James, since a player sent me an e-mail on it: how does The Pool handle a player v. player roll?  Not that this group is fratricidal in the least, but the question did come up as to how the rules would handle such a conflict.

Best,

Blake

[Mike Holmes]

I think that this is a very cool experiment that you are running. I think that, to the extent that it is possible, I'd try to use the same setting. Makes that less of a variable. Too bad you don't have a separate group for each system as well.  :smile:

And the standard fantasy thing is great too. Well, known format, which means that it won't get in the way of the experiment either. And the classic Good vs. Evil (and shades of Urban neutrality) Premise is easy to latch on to as well. All-in-all I think that you have created a very good test environment.

Might I suggest that you try to organize the game into "Chapters" of play such that there will be small climaxes regularly. Then, after these climaxes, you can switch systems while staying in the same setting. Would that make sense?

Mike

[Blake Hutchins]

Thanks, Mike.  I appreciate the kind words.  Nice to get feedback that I'm on the right track.

And yeah, the chapter idea is great.  I'd planned to finish a complete story with each system, so organizing by chapters makes a ton of sense, especially since the group decided they wanted to convert characters between systems.

Due in part to some awkward social circumstances within my gaming circle (not within this group, however), I may run a second smaller group with different players, but that'll wait until my schedule clears up.

We're waiting on some character details to clear up, but I should be able to post character profiles in a day or two.  Very interesting patterns have emerged, and the reaction of the players to the chargen system has also been enlightening.

Best,

Blake

[Mike Holmes]

On 2001-10-22 14:33, Blake Hutchins wrote:
We're waiting on some character details to clear up, but I should be able to post character profiles in a day or two.  Very interesting patterns have emerged, and the reaction of the players to the chargen system has also been enlightening.

"Enlightening?"

Tease!

Post! Post! Post!

[Blake Hutchins]

Awright, awright...! :smile:  Warning: long post follows.

I've had two character generation meetings.  Nothing's completely final yet, and I'm still waiting for finished stories, traits, and descriptions.  Here's the status thus far.  We're due to begin play this Sunday.

CHARACTER GENERATION Part 1:  Concepts
In the first meeting about setting with Matt and Marion, Marion immediately seized on the concept of a Glimmerleaf ranger cursed with lycanthropy.  She's now fleshing it out as a sort of bete noire concept while detailing in her own mind how she envisions the werewolf aspect manifesting.  Right now she does see it as an infection transmittable via wolf form bites.  Should prove interesting for group dynamics.

Matt mulled it over and came up with a former servant of the Shadow who was betrayed and came over to work for the Light.  Not so much working for the Light, actually, as working with the enemy of his enemy.  After talking to Jeff, Matt decided he liked the idea of a former black magician's apprentice turned artificier.  He has a clockwork arm to replace the flesh arm his master's minions tore off during the betrayal.  Matt sees him as primarily self-interested, motivated by spite and a desire for revenge against his master.  Looks like one of his traits will be "Shadow-tainted."

Jeff came to the table with a fallen paladin, a former paragon whose faith faltered during the last great battle with the Shadow, thereby causing the death of his family, loved ones, and companions in arms.  This guy is tormented by guilt but uses a smattering of black magic curses and dark charms, his former divine gifts having been stripped from him.  This is a classic "turned to the Dark Side but seeking redemption" concept, and I really like it.  Tried but true archetype.

Dennis has taken a Lovecraftian angle, creating a former red and blue magician of Irongate who scried too deeply into the heart of the Shadow and went mad as a result.  The idea with this one is that he suffers terrifying visions and spontaneous eruptions of wild magics.  He has enough residual strength of will to hold the madness at bay most of the time, and he is convinced some deep recess of his mind holds the key to the Shadow's destruction.  I've left it to the players to negotiate how Dennis can run this guy without being a walking, raving Roman Candle.

CHARACTER GENERATION Part 2: Patterns & Premise
I came up with the Premise after hearing Marion's werewolf ranger idea, and I'm intrigued to see how it'll apply in play.  It directly influenced Jeff and Matt in their thinking, though Matt's spin looks more like a partial inverse: "Is the death of an enemy more important than the safety of the community?"

What intrigues me is that they've all focused on the cursed character motif largely keying off Marion's initial brainstorm.  I think this shared character premise works really well with the game premise, since the removal of their various curses runs a good chance of conflicting with community safety.  Some characters embody that conflict more than others.  Jeff's fallen paladin, for instance.  At the same time, Marion's ranger may well find herself an exile from her loved ones until she finds a way to rid herself of the lycanthropy.  Lots of good roleplaying opportunities there.

CHARACTER GENERATION Part 3: The Pool and Narrative Liberty
The reactions of the players, as I mentioned above, have been enlightening.  Marion asked me if the werewolf concept was possible, and I said, "Sure" without missing a beat.  Likewise for the other concepts.  Most character generation focused on developing the idea and the story rather than sifting through rules, and that was refreshing.  Matt found the experience exhilarating, since it felt as though there were no pre-set limits restricting concepts and cool stuff like clockwork arms and familiars.  Jeff thought his character would be possible under all other systems, but it would take a lot more work to make it happen, as well as express buy-in from the Narrator.  Dennis didn't comment on the system since he hadn't read any of it when he told me about his concept.  He absorbed it quickly, though, since his character is the first one e-mailed to me.  The fact that his insane mage is possible without any system hiccups told me a lot about the freedom offered by this sort of game.  So far the response to The Pool has been uniformly positive, and we all look forward to seeing how it works in play.

One comment that arose quickly concerned the 50 word limit.  Marion found this number overly restricting, and so we agreed to raise the limit to 100 words.  Jeff didn't see the need for 50 words at first, but as he found ways to flesh out his story, he admitted having at least a 50 word ceiling was a good idea.  The way I see it, none of the four are writers, so parsing things down to a crisp 50 words ultimately poses more of an editing than a creative challenge.  Hence Marion's initial frustration.

CHARACTER GENERATION Part 4: The Pool and Narrative Responsibility
One thing I've emphasized with this group is the need for them to build a strong group context before we start play.  Since this is a short-run game, I don't want to spend a lot of time having them meet each other and possibly get into the "are you my ally or my enemy" riff.  In Mage, this inter-character, in-character conflict frequently paralyzed the group.  I leave it to the players to decide how they know each other and why they're a group.  I don't insist everything be sweetness and light between them, but I do want basic cohesion at the outset.  That's their responsibility in this game, not mine.  To that end, I'm also asking them to craft a group kicker, that is, a crisis situation they must immediately deal with when we begin play.  I may twist causes and actions behind the kicker a bit once I get my input, but I want them to create at least the surface impression of what's going on.  They're still working on that part.

They have picked "mercenary band" as their context, reasoning their shared hatred of the Shadow provides a strong hook.  Mercenary band because they need coin to finance their desire for revenge.  They've decided they're being paid by a mysterious figure in Irongate, and that this individual sends them into the Cairn Lands to harry the Shadow and carry out other missions.  They explicitly suggested this patron may be tied to some kind of political game about which they're oblivious.  They also believe much of their time is spent outside the city, so I'm very curious to see what their kicker will be.  They get to pick the mission and others down the line, as far as I'm concerned.  I like the fact that they've kept the door open for politics and "macro-level" involvement in the setting.

OK, that's it for now.  I'll post final characters when I get 'em.  Do folks want to see Traits and backstories, or just names and brief summaries?

Blake





[ This Message was edited by: Blake Hutchins on 2001-10-24 14:14 ]

[Mike Holmes]

On 2001-10-23 14:41, Blake Hutchins wrote:
I'll post final characters when I get 'em.  Do folks want to see Traits and backstories, or just names and brief summaries?

I'm curious about the stats chosen, personally. I'm sure what ever you post will be cool; the above certainly is.

What was the "enlightenment"? That your players like freedom in generating their characters? Pretty obvious. Am I missing something?

Mike

[Blake Hutchins]

Hmmm.  No, sorry. I'm being sloppy in my explanations.  Good catch, Mike.

What I found enlightening wasn't that the players had freedom in character generation, but how easily they were able to play off each other's concepts without requiring any prodding from me.  In other games I've participated in, it's been challenging to get players to bring thematic cohesion to the table.  Ron's providing a great under the hood example over in the Sorcerer forum, and -- partly due to the greater complexity inherent in Sorcerer's premise and character development -- he has taken a stronger lead role in nudging the players toward characters with connections and the kind of individual backgrounds that will gel for a good story.

Certainly this is partly a function of the group and the personalities involved, but my insight (and maybe it's so damn obvious to everyone else that it's just common sense) was that the characters were also much more free to experiment with group stories and play off each other's ideas to create a group with an interesting -- even compelling -- context.  In fact, it was so easy that it happened almost automatically, without negotiation.

In Forge terms, it seems the players adopted a cooperative Author stance from the beginning.  I think writing the backstory helped, and my nudge was to have them choose a group context and kicker.  I suspect the streamlined open-endedness of The Pool makes it easier for players to focus on the story instead of the stats, skills, and doodads most other games use.  Speculating more broadly, this encouragement of Author Stance at the point of character creation feels like a baseline feature of narrativist systems.

Does that clear things up, Mike?

Best,

Blake

[James V. West]

Sayeth Blake:
"One comment that arose quickly concerned the 50 word limit. Marion found this number overly restricting, and so we agreed to raise the limit to 100 words. Jeff didn't see the need for 50 words at first, but as he found ways to flesh out his story, he admitted having at least a 50 word ceiling was a good idea. The way I see it, none of the four are writers, so parsing things down to a crisp 50 words ultimately poses more of an editing than a creative challenge. Hence Marion's initial frustration."

I designed the game to be played in an ongoing fashion in which characters emerge as time goes on. Keeping a starting character at 50 words is harder for some folks. One of my players started with 150, got down to 100, and it was like drilling cavities to get him down to 50 words. I try to stress the fact that you can have 20 pages of material about a character idea, but you only get to start with 50 that will be pertinent to the game (i.e., involved in Traits). You can introduce the other 1000 words as play continues.

However, since you're playing a short-run game, I think its your call if you want to expand to 100 starting words.

The character ideas sound great! I'd love it if you could post the actual characters or email them to me.

James V. West

[hardcoremoose]

I like what you're saying, particularly about the story building that goes on in character creation.  It's interesting how that works, and our group has had a tremendous amount of fun with it.

We had some hiccups with the 50 world limit, but abided by it strictly.  Our characters were lean, and it forced us to concentrate on the things that were really important to us.  Besides being a balancing mechanic (to prevent players from creating characters with too many 0 level Traits), it serves one other purpose: It prevents you from overwriting your character before the game starts, allowing you to explore those really cool ideas during the game.  But hey, there's more than one way to play The Pool...

On a side note, we had a built in hook for our group as well (we were mercenaries too, but part of a very large company).  I assumed early on that Paul had done this to keep us together, but it turns out otherwise.  In fact, we've shared almost no scenes between characters, only occasionally crossing paths while working up individual takes on the game's Premise.  In the last session, no PC shared a scene with any other PC, and yet it may (nay, was )our best session.  My point here is this: with shared premises, players need not have shared goals; and with authorial and directorial power, it's much easier to break the "party mentality" that so often permeates rpgs.  That's not to say that the PCs in your group should or should not be a cohesive group, but don't force it if it doesn't seem natural.

Not that you would.

(and on a further side note, the fact that our group spends so much time in audience mode may have a little to do with why we roll so seldom in our games.  See my thread in the ROC forum for that discussion).

Anyway, I hope some of this helps.  I look forward to more from the X-games group.

- Scott