Adventures in Improvised System

[Paul Czege]

Hey Vincent,

This is going to be brief, because I'm rushing to an appointment:

So, in Universalis-like terms, imagine that when I introduce an element, as part of its introduction I give it to you to play. ("There's a young snake, it's brave times 2, and Paul, will you play it?") Then whenever I think you're playing it "right," I give you a coin from the bank. Thus you're motivated to do whatever it takes to figure out my vision.

Beautiful.

The advantage being that mechanical rewards are more portable, group to group, than nonmechanical ones, especially than unspoken nonmechanical ones.

Yes, exactly. Games excite me the most when they make manifest and mechanically evangelize sub-articulated aspects of real, gloriously functional, actual play.

Paul

[Ben Lehman]

Hi all--

Great thread.  I, too, have had the "my guy is being violated" frustration.

I don't know if this should be into a seperate thread at this point, but I have a rules idea that would seem to foster this sort of play without, necessarily, becoming the goal of play.  It is very short at this point, without any real heavy-lifting.

The basic idea is that each character, thing, place, etc. in the game is given a number of descriptors by its creator.  Things like Edgy, Violent, Spooky, Dim, Kind, Mysterious, Misunderstood by His Students, etc.  These can really be as long or as short as they need to be.

Any time that other participants (i.e. not the object's creator) in the game helped demonstrate that game object's descriptors, they gain bennies of some sort, possibly at the discretion of the object's author, possibly by some GM figure, possibly by consensus of the group.  Bennies are best distributed Right Then, or at the end of the scene, rather than Later.

A wonderful "positive cycle" might be to have bennies allow players to author new descriptors, and accompanying objects.

yrs--
--Ben