[Discernment] An experimental game of experimentation

[Michael S. Miller]

I've just finished Discernment: An experimental role-playing game of experimentation. It is available for free as an approx. 1 MB PDF at incarnadine.indie-rpgs.com/Discernment.pdf The game text is about 5 pages, but I'm pretty sure it's complete. It's one of those minimalist games highly influenced by Hogshead's New Style line, the works of Paul Czege, and the posts of Jonathan Walton. In a few days, I'll be posting announcements around the 'net, but I was hoping that a few of you folks would kick the tires for me to see if you see any weak points. My particular questions are:

* Do the rules as written give you an adequate picture of how play is supposed to proceed?
* Are there any gaping holes? Things that should be there, but that I can't see because they're most likely still in my head?
* I don't have a lot of time available to surf the 'net. How should I publicize the release of a free PDF game for maximum exposure with minimal time investment? (I think there was a Publishing thread on this, but I can't find it)

Thanks for taking the time to read and comment. Now that this is out of my head and finished I can start on discerning the true nature of superheroes....

[Jonathan Walton]

Some quick initial comments:

• ROCK!

• Some elements of this share a lot in common with my game-in-project, Ever-After, but it's also completely different.  Let me digest it a bit more and I'll talk more about this and how you solved some problems that I'm still dealing with.

• the Lead Scholar position is great.  Clearly not a GM, but in a similar vein.  One of the best instances I've seen of a GM-like role being clearly defined in such a way to limit "GM-drift" which always seems to happen, with players falling back into familiar patterns of play.

• I would have no real idea how to play the Subject.  Maybe that's supposed to be part of the mystery, but the Subject doesn't have any built in motivation.  Is the Subject's goal to keep his Soul Quality secret?  Then why would he ever use his nickle or dime?  Is success within the Scenario's supposed to be seem more important than keeping your secret?  I don't think it would turn out that way, in play.  I think it's likely that the Subject would see "protecting the secret" as their goal and that would make exhibiting their Soul Quality and deciding when to use nickles and dime very difficult.  This I view as the biggest design problem, as things look now.

• Honestly, I don't see why conflict resolution is so important to your game.  After all, from an outside standpoint, what happens in the Scenario's doesn't really matter.  They're simply tools for discovering/revealing the Subject's Soul Quality.  So why can't someone just make a judgement call about whether someone succeeds or fails?  The conflict resolution system just seems to be a back-up plan in case the Soul Quality isn't eventually made evident by the Subject's behavior.  The Subject really has no reason to exhibit their Soul Quality because, even if they don't, the game provides other ways for the Scholar's to learn about it (nickles and dimes).  In my mind, the Soul Quality should HAVE to be discovered by way of the Subject's behavior.  That seems to be pretty important to the premise of the game.

Just my initial thoughts.  I really, really like it, though.  I'll post more when it has time to sink in.

[Little_Rat]

I was interested in this because I'm taking intro psych so I took a look. Seems interesting... but I would really like to see an example of play... I'm still hazy on how this would be run...
But kewl anyway.

[Michael S. Miller]

Jonathan, thanks for your time and insightful questions. They've crystallized a good deal about the game that I didn't realize myself until this evening. You see, while I was writing it up, I too realized that the Subject has no game mechanic-y incentive to "win" the conflict resolution. In an extreme case, he could very easily define his version of "success" as what he doesn't want to happen and then intentionally lose the bid. I toyed around with a few ideas to address this, including linking the refresh rate of coins to prevailing in conflicts, but none of them felt right. So I left it as it was.

Now I know why. It's the same reason a Gamist GM doesn't throw a dragon at a 1st level party; the same reason a Sim GM doesn't allow his super-intelligent criminal mastermind exploit every last flaw in the PCs' actions and wipe them out in their beds; the same reason a Nar GM doesn't craft a beautiful and moving story with his finely-rendered NPCs as main characters. RPGs traditionally entrust the GM with the responsibility of facilitating the fun of everyone at the table. I recall some game text coming right out and saying--in the GM's section, IIRC--"if everyone's not having fun, you're not playing right!"

In Discernment, that responsibility lies with the Subject. That's why he's elected, not chosen at random. The Subject must allow himself to be perceived if the game is to function. It may seem that the Scholars have all the power, after all, they are the ones warping reality and testing Hypotheses; but what do they really have the the Subject doesn't grant them? The Scholars must trust that the Subject is being honest--in his bids, in his portrayal of his Soul Quality, in his judging of Hypotheses--much like an anthropologist must rely on the honesty of his informants. For the game to work, the Subject must willing share his Soul Quality with his fellows, asking nothing in return. Isn't that one of the noblest qualities of the human soul?


Okay, maybe I've just dislocated my shoulder in patting myself on the back, but I hope the point is clear. I don't think that this point should be spelled out within the game text itself--any more than Sorcerer should plainly state "a demon is a dysfunctional relationship"--but I'll likely add a sentence or two addressing how to play the Subject.

Little Rat, thanks also for taking the time to look this over. I consciously avoided a sample of play to keep from prejudicing folks from using any particular genre/setting kind of thing. I might write one up separately and post it on the website, though. Thanks for the suggestion.

[Paul Czege]

Hey Michael,

I like it. And I agree, Dark City is a fantastic film. Assorted thoughts, in no particular order:

[*]Discernment's advantage over The Valedictorian's Death, it seems to me, is that it doesn't require player prep work. You'd really have to find a group of players who love yearbooks, if you were going to play The Valedictorian's Death. Not so with Discernment.

[*]Discernment's disadvantage is that there's no shared experience informing what players might do. And since there's no constraint, I imagine gameplay will be pretty much all over the map, anything goes, with a lot of characterizing, and lots of drama, but not a lot of actual story production. Especially since the game ends not with a story goal, but when a certain number of turns have passed.

[*]I love your implementation of ritual words.

[*]You could get some "game" into it by implementing a scheme of costs the Subject must pay for straying around the wheel of Soul Qualities with his actions.

[*]Is there any rationale to the arrangement of the Soul Qualities on the wheel? For most of them, I'm having a hard time seeing how the outer adjacent qualities can be considered "approximations."

[*]I think you should reconsider the contextlessness of the game. I think there are too many undefineds in it. The situation is undefined until the Lead Scholar specifies it. The Supporting Roles are undefined until the Lead Scholar specifies them. The role of the Subject is undefined until the Lead Scholar specifies it. Perhaps the players could choose a context for the Subject as a group. "The Subject is an actor." And then play would revolve around subjecting the actor to dramatic contexts designed to suss out his Soul Quality. "The Subject is an abductee." Maybe you could have a pick list of roles for the Subject. I dunno. Maybe you could just invent your own variant of Dark City. Aliens testing humanity via dreams and nightmares, gathering intelligence about human capacity as a precursor to invasion? I was initially resistant when Ron suggested I have a default setting for My Life with Master, because I think the conflict described by the mechanics is timeless. But in retrospect, I'm very glad I went down that path. It informed my layout, my art direction, my writing style. And honestly, gamers adapt mechanics more often than they play faithful to them. I guess I just don't think you should be concerned about amputating the game's potential or something by getting specific...because right now it's pretty floaty. I think giving Discernment a situational context would be entirely to the advantage of the game, and without disadvantage.[/list:u]Paul

[Michael S. Miller]

Hi, Paul. Thanks for taking a look at the game. FWIW, I'm looking into tracking down an appropriate yearbook for The Valedictorian's Death. A number of my friends are murder mystery enthusiasts and VD gets closer to a murder mystery RPG than anything I've seen. Consider it a talking point for the game.

since there's no constraint, I imagine gameplay will be pretty much all over the map, anything goes, with a lot of characterizing, and lots of drama, but not a lot of actual story production. Especially since the game ends not with a story goal, but when a certain number of turns have passed.

That doesn't bother me so much, since the goal of the game is not to produce a unified story, but more to produce a state of mind within the participants. I'm not sure where that would fall in GNS, but it's what I want.

Is there any rationale to the arrangement of the Soul Qualities on the wheel? For most of them, I'm having a hard time seeing how the outer adjacent qualities can be considered "approximations."

You're right, I think this is the weakest spot in the game. Truth be told, I designed about 90% of the game back in February, within a week of first getting the idea. But then I didn't know which Soul Qualities to use, which caused me to put the game waaay back on the burner. It sat there until ten days ago when I decided to throw caution to the wind and actually write it up. So I grabbed the seven deadly sins and the seven noble virtues, renamed a few, and threw them on the wheel. I think they'll work well enough to make good conflict, but maybe I'll reconsider their placement.

As for a specified setting, my first reaction is to shudder, 'cause I generally hate written settings. But using MLwM or even Trollbabe for an example, you may be right about the setting giving everything else some ground to stand on ... even if the setting is painted with more Color than details.

[Jonathan Walton]

I agree with both of you about Soul Quality arrangement.

On the setting issue, I think you could get away with just giving a bit more context for the Lead Scholars to work within.  For instance, I think, in a real psychological study, Scholars aren't likely to play the Subject in fantasy worlds or the like.  They'd describe situations based on everyday life and then make them more and more extreme to see how the Subject reacted to increasingly tense situations.  Having those kind of guidelines doesn't really give you a setting, but a genre for the Scenarios to fall under.

[xiombarg]

In Discernment, that responsibility lies with the Subject. That's why he's elected, not chosen at random. The Subject must allow himself to be perceived if the game is to function

You might want to make this explicit in the text, for clarity.

I also agree that the arrangement of the wheel is... odd.