[Ganakagok] New Draft

[Bill_White]

This is I think pretty close to the final draft of Ganakagok.  In this game, you're a man living in a dark and icy world--imagine quasi-Inuit hunters on a gigantic iceberg architectonically sculpted by unknown powers--trying to come to grips with the rising of the Sun after thousands of years of night.

The main changes to the game are in the "metaplot" mechanics.  I've tried to make it so that the GM at least initially retains the "keeper of secrets" role, divesting himself of it as characters gain more and more knowledge of the world and its workings.

The conflict resolution rules are a little different too:  players have to distribute Good and Bad Medicine around among various options at the end of their turn, rather than take all of one kind in one big package.  At the end of the game, the distribution of Good and Bad Medicine has significance for the Final Fate of the world, the village, and the individual characters.

The effect should be all in all to make players' decisions obviously consequential, both in terms of their characters' stories and in terms of the big picture.  Hopefully, there are some interesting tactical tradeoffs to be made during play, e.g., sacrificing narration rights in order to gain more mechanical currency (Gifts) and vice versa.

Let me know what you think!

Thanks,

Bill

[Jason Morningstar]

I'm stoked about this!  But I can't open the .pdf.  Not sure if it is my problem or the .pdf's. 

--Jason

[Eric Provost]

It opened well for me.  I'm guessing it was your issue Jason.

-Eric

[Bill_White]

Okay, whatever the problem was, I think I fixed it.  The link at the top of this thread should be working.  Jason, go ahead and try again.

-- Bill

[Jason Morningstar]

Ok, all better, Bill. 

Looking good!  I can't wait to read it. 

[Andrew Morris]

As always, I'm excited to see progress on Ganakagok. The PDF works just fine for me, and I'm on a Mac, using Preview instead of Acrobat to view it.

[Stefan / 1of3]

I just read about this game for the first time, and read through the file at once. I think this can make a great game. I'll try to convince my friends for a playtest. ;)

As for the file, some more headlines might be useful. It's a bit hard to read so much plain text.

[Bill_White]

I just read about this game for the first time, and read through the file at once. I think this can make a great game. I'll try to convince my friends for a playtest. ;)

As for the file, some more headlines might be useful. It's a bit hard to read so much plain text.

Let me know what happens if you run a playtest!   Thanks for raising the issue of formatting and organization; I'll attend to that in the revisions I'm making now.

-- Bill

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

Hooray! I've really wanted to read this. Thanks for the post!

[Mike Holmes]

I think that if you get back some good playtest feedback, and fix any minor problems that this revision should definitely be on the shelves of the Forge booth next year.

The playtesting is important, however. I'm somwhat worried that there might be "degenerate" strategies that players might come up with.

Mike

[Stefan / 1of3]

Some more examples for the Ancient Ones might be useful, too. I'm not really sure, how to make up the Ancient Mana rule.

[Jason Morningstar]

It's going in my bag as a possibility for Yuki Con, so there may be some playtesting this weekend, depending.

[Bill_White]

Mike's comment about "degenerate strategies" is well-taken; the revision to the rules for how to assign Gifts emerges from exactly that concern.  By requiring players to distribute the rewards they receive among different options, the rules prevent players from rapidly creating uber-Gifts that can be used to dominate subsequent events.  Similarly, distributing the penalties they receive across options mitigates against being able to "sink" those penalties into a scapegoat Burden that seldom or never gets invoked in play.

Since the End-Game is more structured than it was, however, and since its trajectory is visible in the distribution of Good and Bad Medicine on the Game Record, players can to a certain degree predict what will happen if they make particular choices.  On the other hand, they can't account for subsequent choices made by other players (although they must imagine that others will want to maximize the happiness of the village and the survival of Ganakagok).  But players later in the turn-order may be able to take advantage of that by distributing any Medicine they get "just so" so as to produce the outcome they desire.  On the other hand, a player earlier in the line-up can act selfishly, by taking most of their rewards in the form of personal benefit, expecting that later players will use theirs to save the world.  That sort of play might actually be kind of fun.  As a side note, it makes the game-rule that "younger" and more impetuous characters take their turns before "older" and more deliberate ones seem very appropriate. 

The GM-created rules are probably going to be opaque to players, especially at first.  I should probably stress that it may be a good idea to wait until you see what sorts of characters the players create before settling upon a specific rule; that way, the GM can fine-tune them based on what will highlight the motifs the players have chosen.

The Ancient Ones are the most problematic of the spirit-types; they're there mostly to correspond to one of the suits in the Ganakagok deck.  But they can add quite a bit to the game, if invoked right.  A couple of ideas:

(1)  The spirits are elemental, and so if the Sun is Fire, the Stars Air, and the Ancestors Earth, then the Ancient Ones must be elemental spirits of water.  In that case, they are Ganakagok itself, and so (Final Fate Rule) Ganakagok "survives" if the Ancient Ones have more mana in their pool than the Sun does in its.  A good Mana Rule for the Ancient Ones might be:  add 1 point of mana to the pool for every Storms card that gets played for any reason during the round.

(2)  The Ancient Ones are Cthulhu-like eldritch things that lie dreaming in the deeps.  They thrive on misery and madness.  Mana Rule:  Add 1 to their mana pool for every point of Bad Medicine accrued this turn (i.e., added to the Village or to a character's Bad Medicine totals). 

(3)  Whatever they once were, the Ancient Ones are now gone; their power is dwindling.  They get only the initial mana  from the card drawn from them at the beginning of the game, and this amount can't be increased or replaced.  Mana Rule:  Once Ancient Ones mana is used, it is gone.  This pool can never be replenished.

I should note that the Final Fate rule may need to include who gets to narrate, in addition to whether the narration should be positive or negative.  This is important if players have their characters take different sides on the question of whether the Dawn is a good or a bad thing.  For example:  The player with the most personal Good Medicine   gets to narrate the final fate of Ganakagok happily if the suit of the Morning event card  corresponds with the spirit type that has the biggest pool and tragically otherwise.  If I were a player, I'd wonder what it would take to justify getting a peek at the Morning card before it was revealed.  If I were the GM, I'd let a player who took a spirit-journey or  went on a vision-quest spend Good Medicine to do it, if he or she thought to ask.  Whee! 

Another thing I should mention for those thinking about playtesting the game with the current rules is the effort I've made to distinguish the functioning of the four sorts of Gifts.  "Goods" are physical objects like snowshoes, harpoons, and so forth.  They are limited in their utility to actions that reasonably could make use of that object, but they are more-or-less permanent (although they can be taken away, traded, or stolen).  "Love" includes relationships that a character has, and can be used whenever social pressure, influence, duty, or obligation could justifiably be expected to shape the outcome of an event.  They, too, are more or less permanent, and of somewhat broader utility than Goods.  But they imply a mutual tie, and so can be used "against" the character, either by making demands on the character during a scene or by being invoked during a conflict ("Your loving mother wants you to stay home; I turn this 3 into a 4").  Lore is knowledge of the People's ways, customs, crafts, and history.  It's much more flexible, but it gets used up when it's used.  On the other hand, it produces a "residue" in the form of "facts" that the GM notes and that can be used subsequently by anybody ("Remember that the currents around here will carry me to shore!  You said that last turn!  I'll turn down one of my dice.") Finally, Mana is the most flexible:  it involves invoking the spirits in some way ("The Wind Walker blows and its breath harrows their bones!  That's a point in my favor!")  But it too involves using up a resource --but what's used up is the spirit's mana pool.  The player's mana is simply a per-turn limit.

All of which is to say that I think there are more opportunities for interesting and dramatic play, both at the level of the overarching narrative and thematic choices made by players and at the level of tactical decisions made in play in response to the game-mechanical situation.

I hope somebody plays this game; I am intensely interested to hear how it runs for someone else.

Bill

[Mike Holmes]

All sounds very promising, Bill.

On the other hand, a player earlier in the line-up can act selfishly, by taking most of their rewards in the form of personal benefit, expecting that later players will use theirs to save the world.  That sort of play might actually be kind of fun.

I'm actually sorta counting on this. That is, I think that players can really screw with pace by playing around with stuff like this, and that in the end, the game might be highly pressured by this metagame play. I think it's going to be a strong feature.

But like you say, we'll see how it plays. :-)

Mike