[Lendrhald] Rewards system for dark, realistic fantasy

[David Berg]

In a previous thread, I was asked some interesting questions and given some interesting suggestions that I jumped to address, only realizing later that I'd drifted far from my intended purpose of working on my game's setting.

This thread is intended to continue those parts of the discussion that I wish to separate from my setting work.  Here is a part of a very interesting post which I feel belongs here, and to which I will respond shortly (though feel free to beat me to it!):

This is a chronic, chronic problem of games that try to apply the traditional D&D/GURPS/White Wolf model to anything besides "let's win the fight at the least possible risk to ourselves." If your game-text is all about one thing -- seeking out and confronting inhuman horror, for example -- but your mechanical rewards are all about another thing -- e.g. the more fights you win, the better you fight next time; or, the more you stay at home and train, the better you get  -- then you have a fatal disconnect. The key is to figure out what kind of behavior you want from the players -- the players, the players, the players; forget the characters for a minute, they're not real anyway, they're just instruments of the players' imaginations. Then make your mechanics reward  that kind of behavior and nothing else.

This is a tremendously personal choice, but I can make some suggestions based on what you've already said:
- A "realistic" skill system that makes characters more proficient the more they practice when not adventuring is a game-killer: It encourages everyone to stay home, instead of going out and getting in trouble.
- A "realistic" money system that makes characters pay for everything, and forces players to concentrate on how much they spend and how much they earn, won't work for you: It encourages everyone to focus on money, not adventure and horror.
- A traditional "XP" system that makes characters better fighters the more fights they win, as in D&D, is a mediocre fit for what you want: It encourages getting into trouble, but never more trouble than you can currently handle -- if you have an overwhelming foe, the logical response is to go kill off some wimps first, so you can get strong enough to take on the big guy.
- A "lose to win" system, as in FATE ("Aspects"), Tony Lower-Basch's Capes, or Miller's With Great Power..., where being defeated this time gives you some kind of points that you can use to buy victory next time, and where buying victory tends to expend your points and leave you vulnerable to defeat again, might be a very good fit: It nicely replicates the whole "we lose, we lose again, we lose again, we finally win!" dynamic of many heroic stories. It can even be "realistic" if you justify it in terms of, "dang, you had to run screaming from the monster that time, but next time you'll be prepared for its horrific appearance," or "hey, you lost that fight, but in the process you think you spotted the monster's crucial weakness -- you'll be ready for it next time!" (Viz. every second episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer).
- A "fallout" system, as in Dogs in the Vineyard, where your character can gain new traits and abilities from being defeated or harmed, might be a very good match, too: "Okay, I barely escaped with my life that time, so now I have the trait 'I fear demons' at level 10 -- next time I'm in a fight with a demon, I can harness my fear to fight harder and win!"

[baron samedi]

Hi Carl,

Your Power 19 file is very interesting ! Great propositions from other members too!

My take for question #3:

I suggest that you bring about your Ideologies under a few "families", so that you have you players minimally work together. The player's goals would be to see their faction prosper by completing important political/social objectives.

The best example I could state would be Mage RPG, where you have 3 big factions (Traditions, Technocracy, Nephandi) each comprising a variety of positions.  Thus you could have Pro-Magic, Anti-Magic and "Resurrectionist" factions, with Ideologies within each (eg. Curative Pro-Magic, Opportunist Pro-Magic, etc.). You could even have Faction Points, representing one PC's standing and influence within his faction, and allow players to total their PC's FPs when acting together - forcing group co-operation. These wouldn't be "experience points", but a measure of your world's global change towards the goal they work for. Attaining thresholds (e.g. every 10 Pro-Magic points) could give a similar bonus to motivate and reflect the world's change. I think the online game "[Something] of Camelot" has a similar mechanism, spreading players over 3 warring factions with incentives for intra-faction co-operation.

Suppose for example that your PC group is made up of 5 Pro-Magic PCs, each with his own Ideology. By playing the first part of your campaign, they complete 5 major plot points - gathering 5 Pro-Magic Faction Points together and various Ideology points individually. At mid-time,

"Winning the game" could simply imply winning 100 Faction Points and thus deciding your World's fate, representing the Faction's advance over others and ending up with 1) a Magic world ; 2) a Magicless world ; 3) the world as it was before the Cataclysm.

Moreover, secondary Ideology points could determine, within each Faction "sucess", which Ideology dominates, e.g. a Magic World tainted by Opportunist Magi or healed by Curative Magi, etc.

Non-magi could have the advantage of never suffering from the negative effects of using magic, and perhaps winning more easily Ideology points (if not Faction points, or vice-versa).

That way you give both your players and characters a setting-oriented goal. This could be Gamist as well as Narrativist, not unlike Paul Czege's My Life With Master for ex. The GM's role could be to oppose them (if you take a Narrativist system) or to challenge them (with a Gamist system). Since I'm not convinced about the existence of Simulationist systems (at least, significatively different from Gamist ones), I'll leave it without an example, with all due respect.

Just my 2 cents.

Erick

[Valamir]

Listen to Sydney, Sydney speaketh much truth.

I'd only tweak one thing.  Instead of a Lose to Win mechanic which does nicely fit most heroic fiction...how about a Win to Lose mechanic...the more you win, the more inevitable your finally losing will be.  That fits in with the whole struggling against an enemy who eventually must destroy you.

Something like every time the characters succeed (by some standard) the GM gets a point.  The GM then uses that point to destroy civilization.  As the players fight and win to save their own little corner of the world they hear stories about another kingdom to the west that's fallen to the Orcs.  A favorite NPC...the Good King they held in awe...the "King Arthur" figure who saved them from the "Saxons"...yeah him...how many points will it take to just kill him off.  When the PCs come back from successfully running to ground and destroying a rampaging beast they return to find their village weaping and mourning the death of the King...the death that they were powerless to stop.  The death that was inevitable.

To me...a mechanic like that (or some alternative with similar effect) just exudes menace...its different from anything out there, and it ties directly into the theme of the game.

Wait a minute...how is giving the GM the power to destroy the world a REWARD system...?

Because reward systems are for PLAYERS...and players playing your game WANT to see their character's triumphs displayed against the backdrop of ultimate futility...otherwise they'd be playing some less menacing.

[Sydney Freedberg]

And Ralph is freakin' scary.

Compare Erick's idea vs. Ralph's and think about how different each of those makes the setting, by the way: "The players get points to make the world better if they win" creates a totally, utterly different tone and moral cause-and-effect from "the GM gets points to make the world worse if the PCs win." One way you get Moorcock's Elric and Stormbringer; the other, Tolkein's Aragorn and Frodo.

Personally, I hate, hate, hate, hate hate hate haaaaaaaaaaaaaate "splats" in the Ars Magica / World of Darkness style, because no matter how hard you try, most people will look at that and go, "okay, if I want to play one of those guys, I should have these powers, these goals, and these attitudes, pretty much like everyone else in the same clan/house/tribe/whatever."
D&D's much-maligned race + alignment + class combination actually gives you a fair bit more versatility, and in fact forces players to make choices instead of just following a template: A Lawful Good hobbit thief is a very, very different character from a Chaotic Evil elven thief/warrior, for example. (Every time I think about D&D from an RPG theory perspective, I'm more impressed with it -- not that it's what I want to play, but it's damn good at what it does). Somewhat similarly, Tony Lower-Basch's Capes does a really interesting thing called "click-and-locks" in which you have one list of superpowers, and another list of personalities, and you get to pick one of each and then customize. (Check out http://www.museoffire.com/Games/Downloads/ClickAndLock.swf).

I personally am intrigued by the idea of a mechanic for "high concepts" : y'know, the Hollywood-pitch style of presenting an idea for a story or character, like "it's Wolverine -- only a 90-year-old woman!" or "a noble paladin -- who must atone for summoning a demon!" or "a humble farmboy -- whose epic destiny is to stay a humble farmboy!" Yes, "high concept" is a term of abuse, but the good ones capture something essential: dynamic situations and characters -- ones that can't possibly stay the same as they are, and which therefore can lead to dramatic stories -- are driven by paradox, some profound tension between two things that must be resolved.

In terms of the fiction, we're talking about creating situations (not the whole setting, mind you, but specific locales with a specific cast of NPCs) that are dynamically unstable, torn by profound internal tensions -- which, of course, both sides (or all three sides, or all four...) immediately look to the player-characters to resolve: say, "we must rally all resources against the menace of the Orcs and strike first before they grow too strong!" vs. "the peasants are already overtaxed and the barons restless, we must cut back the watch on the borders before it drives us into bankruptcy, riot, and rebellion!" For your game, this means looking at the setting in terms of latent conflicts that will occur and reoccur wherever the characters go.
In terms of character generation, we're talking about creating characters who can't stand still: Wherever they're from, whatever they used to do, whatever they used to believe, it doesn't work for them anymore, and they have to leave, do something else, find a new cause. The classic Wolverine / gunslinger / ronin character works on this principle, the driving paradox in this case being "I'm all alone with no worthy master to serve -- but my whole life is about fighting for a good cause -- so as soon as I run into a decent person who needs help, I will risk everything for them!" For your game, this means thinking about what a normal knight, mercenary, priest, peasant, etc. would be in this world, and then about what kinds of experiences would make normal life impossible for each, jolting them into adventure.
In terms of reward systems, we're talking about contradictory incentives that pull the players both ways. (Forget the characters, for a moment; they're not real, just instruments, etc.). Ron Edwards's Sorcerer is a classic example: Your player-character is by definition a sorcerer, and your only ability that makes you different from anybody else is your ability to summon demons, and the more demons you summon, the more powerful you become -- and the more you risk falling into madness, damnation, and death (through your Humanity score falling to zero). Tony's Capes is a freakin' maelstrom of contradictory incentives (way too complex to discuss here). For your game, this approach means thinking of two (or more) things the characters should care about and devising mechanics such that protecting one means endangering the other, and trying to protect both equally risks destroying both.

[David Berg]

Compare Erick's idea vs. Ralph's

I'll address your point in a bit, but for the moment I have to state that Erick's post does not belong here.  I was hoping he'd find a way to remove it before people saw it.  Ah well.  That post was intended for Carl Brussler's "Constructive criticism on setting material" thread.

[baron samedi]

Apologies, David. Feel free to delete the post.

[David Berg]

Something like every time the characters succeed (by some standard) the GM gets a point.  The GM then uses that point to destroy civilization.  . . . When the PCs come back from successfully running to ground and destroying a rampaging beast they return to find their village weaping and mourning the death of the King...the death that they were powerless to stop.  The death that was inevitable.

In college, I shared a lot of Philosophy classes with a Ralph M.  He had some good ideas, but I think you win.  A Win-to-Lose mechanic is exactly the right direction to be thinking in...

I can immediately see two opposite ways this could be implemented:

1) The GM keeps his own score card, deciding for himself what counts as a player "victory" and tallying points accordingly.  This info is kept secret from the players.  Every so often, the GM "spends" his points to make something bad happen.  The effect of all this is that the players never have an uninterrupted string of positive experiences.  "We met a nice guy who helped us, we killed a monster, we found an ancient book, we killed another monster, we found the trail out of the Forest of Madness... this world isn't so bad after all."  Something should remind the GM to smack that down.

2) The players know what situations give the GM points, and see him accrue them.  This will lead to a nice feeling of dread and hopelessness ("Shit, we met a nice farmer who fed us for free, something terrible will happen soon"), but may also lead to bizarre, meta-gamist choices ("No, don't ask for free food, if he says yes we'll be facing some fallout that much sooner!").

I like the first better.  A reward system is still a reward system even if it's invisible, right?  (Although "GMs, don't let your players read this section of the book!" might be a logistical issue...)

[David Berg]

In terms of the fiction, we're talking about creating situations . . . that are dynamically unstable

In terms of character generation, we're talking about creating characters who can't stand still:

Nice.  Both of these would help encourage a kind of play appropriate to the game's themes.  When I'm working on writing up some helpful hints for GMs and players, I will definitely come back to this.

In terms of reward systems, we're talking about contradictory incentives that pull the players both ways . . . For your game, this approach means thinking of two (or more) things the characters should care about and devising mechanics such that protecting one means endangering the other, and trying to protect both equally risks destroying both.

That's fantastic.  Part of my opposition to rewards systems has been an opposition to dangling meta-game incentives for players, who then wind up motivated by stat scores etc. instead of the in-game concerns that are intended to be Lendrhald's focus.  But if each "reward" entails a cost... so that you're not really improving, just evolving... then the system would serve more to track player choices than to bias them...

I'm not sure what kind of character attributes would be ideal to measure for a system like that... if I invent a bunch of metrics with no relevance to character effectiveness, characters may not really care when these go up or down...

[Sydney Freedberg]

The players know what situations give the GM points, and see him accrue them.  This will lead to a nice feeling of dread and hopelessness ("Shit, we met a nice farmer who fed us for free, something terrible will happen soon"), but may also lead to bizarre, meta-gamist choices ("No, don't ask for free food, if he says yes we'll be facing some fallout that much sooner!").

I'm actually in favor of letting the players know. A reward system isn't a reward system if the players don't know about it, because the whole point of reward systems is to give people incentives to act in a particular way.

Even the "meta" choices aren't so bizarre when you think about the source material: How often are wandering heroes in dark stories really reluctant to let people help them, precisely because they know that horrible things will happen to anyone decent who gets entangled with them? (Not just in horror: Look at Westerns, or the Incredible Hulk, or Wolverine).

More fundamentally, don't be afraid of "meta." It's superficially logical to say, "the players will be totally immersed in the story and make decisions based on that, so if you show them the mechanics they'll be jolted into awareness of how arbitrary it all is." But here's the thing: Your players aren't really there. You can say, "The pit's too big to jump!" or "It's a big, scary monster" or "you feel like you're gonna die" all you like, their imagination may not be up to it. It can actually help make the fiction more concrete if you say, "It's a big pit, you need to roll a 12 on 2d6 to jump over it, good frickin' luck" or "It's a big, scary monster, look how many more dice it has than you [clatter, clatter]" or "you feel like you're gonna die, here, let me cross out all your hit points except this last one."

[Valamir]

I could go on for hours about the Myth of Actor Stance, the Fallacy of Meta Avoidance, and the Dogma of Immersion...but I've done all that before.  I'll be happy to rant further on those topics if you're interested but otherwise I'll spare you the diatribe.

Instead I'll point you to my last post in  This Thread which has my most recent commentary on the topic and move on.


Above you list 2 options:
1) GM accrues points and keeps them secret
2) GM accrues points and lets players know.

I'll throw out another just to stir up some more ideas.

3) Players choose when the GM gets points.  In exchange they get something else.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Ralph's #3 - I like it. Especially because you could use it let players "buy" precisely the kind of misery they want for their characters:

FIRST PLAYER: Okay, that encounter was bad, but if we just stay on the trail, we'll be out of the forest in another two days and...
SECOND PLAYER: Two days? Excuse me, we haven't eaten for a day already.
THIRD PLAYER: Yeah, remember how we had to dump all our remaining food to keep that thing from chasing us?
FIRST PLAYER: Oh. Right.
SECOND PLAYER: So what we can get if we spend Expendiency Points?
GM: How many?
THIRD PLAYER: Five!
FIRST PLAYER: Dude, we are not going to give him that many. Two, max.
GM: Two Expediency buys you... lemme see. [consults rules and notes]... Okay, as you're walking along through the forest, weak from hunger, you see a clearing up ahead, and a little cottage, with a pretty little peasant girl gathering berries. She smiles at you...
SECOND PLAYER: No! Last peasant girl who gave us free food ended up with her father getting possessed by a demon and eating her eyeballs.
THIRD PLAYER: Yeah, we're not dragging any more innocents into this. We keep walkin'.
FIRST PLAYER: "Go back in the house, child," I say as we walk past. "Don't you know never to talk to strangers?"
GM: She shrinks back inside.... Okay, so you keep walking, and as you do, you [points to first player] start remembering this old rhyme your mother used to sing to you -- something about the Little People, and how they would bring milk and bread to those whose singing pleased them -- you think could probably hum it if you...
SECOND PLAYER: Uh, wait, is this anything like the fairy rhyme my last character's mom taught him? The one he used when our ship was about to sink?
GM: Sorta.
THIRD PLAYER: Hell no, then.
GM: Hey, I'm sure your old character is very happy with the Mermaid Queen in her palace beneath the waves.
FIRST PLAYER: To the extent that he, y'know, still can be consider to exist as an individual, sure.
GM: Picky, picky. Okay. You bite your lip and suppress the urge to hum the old fairy rhyme. Now you [points at second player] think you see a herd of deer grazing, just a little bit away. If you just leave the path for a minute, you could probably get into bowshot and bag one for venison...
SECOND PLAYER: And then get lost on the way back and attacked by those wolf-things like last time? Yeah, right, I'm just so eager to "just leave the path for a minute."
THIRD PLAYER: What else?
GM: [consulting a table] Guys, these aren't going to get any better as we go, you realize that?
FIRST PLAYER: Yeah. We know.
SECOND PLAYER: Let's go back to the peasant girl and ask her for some food.
THIRD PLAYER: Right. Figuring out how to save her sounds like more fun than another monster fight or trying to deal with the Fae again.
GM: That'll be two Expediency, please.

[David Berg]

I could go on for hours about the Myth of Actor Stance, the Fallacy of Meta Avoidance, and the Dogma of Immersion...but I've done all that before.  I'll be happy to rant further on those topics if you're interested but otherwise I'll spare you the diatribe.

I'm definitely interested.  However, let me see if I can give you something concrete to respond to:

My co-designer A. and I participated in a game called Telvar.  Telvar is a D&D-ish game that one GM (E.) has been running in the same setting for over 15 years.  In its early stages, I believe it was a random compilation of modules and map-making.  However, E. kept extensive notes on what happened where.  The result was that, when he eventually finished deciding what all was in the world, that setting was complete with the results of the exploits of past gaming groups.  Ever since then, the setting has largely just sat there, ready for new groups to explore it at will.

There's one important way in which it has not "just sat there" -- E. tracks the passage of time meticulously, as well as everything it brings.  I don't know whether it's determined by dice-rolling or just by E.'s idea of what makes sense, but seasons come and go, weather shifts, travel gets easier and harder, commerce ebbs and flows, some nations are stable while others endure power struggles or coups.

This game had a profound effect on A., who felt that the world's concrete existence lent his character's actions a gravity and significance they would have otherwise lacked.  Even more important, though, was the sense that the setting was not being fabricated for player enjoyment, and instead actually existed in its own right.  That's right: although you will never physically enter Telvar, it is real, in a way that a string of towns and roads constructed only to entertain a specific group of players (and challenge them with a "fair" level of difficulty) is not.  In Telvar, if you wander into the Marsh Ruins (a level 8 module, unbeknownst to the players) when you're level 5, you will not succeed in banishing the spectre and finding the treasure.  In fact, you will probably die.  Once the players learned this, it seemed to me that their interest in the setting increased dramatically.

So, for Lendrhald, A. and I have been working from the starting point that the world itself is inviolate.  Once we're done creating it, the setting should "just sit there", for players of all dispositions (...who are willing to play it in the first place, that is) and characters of all power levels.  Therefore, any rewards systems which modify the setting are forbidden.  Character actions may not deform the world.  More to the point, given our design goals: players must not get the impression that character actions deform the world.

This was the reason for the preference I stated re: the Win-to-Lose mechanic:

The GM keeps his own score card, deciding for himself what counts as a player "victory" and tallying points accordingly.  This info is kept secret from the players.  . . . (Although "GMs, don't let your players read this section of the book!" might be a logistical issue...)

Speaking of systems that might or might not deform the world in apparent-to-players ways:

Even the "meta" choices aren't so bizarre when you think about the source material: How often are wandering heroes in dark stories really reluctant to let people help them, precisely because they know that horrible things will happen to anyone decent who gets entangled with them? (Not just in horror: Look at Westerns, or the Incredible Hulk, or Wolverine).

Sounds good, as long as there's a reason for it.  In your 3 examples above, the reasons are clear: violent people frequently have violent enemies, and are occasionally themselves threats to those around them.  Wolverine might gut you by accident (or cuz he lost his temper), or you might take a bullet meant for him (cuz there are always plenty aimed his way).

I can think of a few ways to encourage these dynamics to evolve in-game:
1) come up with items PCs might acquire that are useful, but dangerous to those around them
2) include in most civilized locales a gang or clan that takes offense easily, holds grudges, and seeks revenge
3) give monsters who PCs fight but don't kill the ability to find them again

Again, my first inclination is to stay away from mechanisms that tell the players, "If you do X, the world (via the GM) will change itself in order to do Y."  Like, giving the players Bad News points and having them know that "The shed Molly stumbled into wouldn't have been filled with vipers if I had one fewer Bad News point!  (Or, she wouldn't have chosen to look up, causing her to stumble... wherever the difference lies, somehow she'd still be alive.)"

You can say, "The pit's too big to jump!" or "It's a big, scary monster" or "you feel like you're gonna die" all you like, their imagination may not be up to it. It can actually help make the fiction more concrete if you say, "It's a big pit, you need to roll a 12 on 2d6 to jump over it, good frickin' luck" or "It's a big, scary monster, look how many more dice it has than you [clatter, clatter]" or "you feel like you're gonna die, here, let me cross out all your hit points except this last one."

Mechanisms that merely represent what's going on in-game, without changing it, are not problematic for me.  If "you're down to 1 hit point" stirs a player's imagination better than my description of his experience, then that is what it is and I have no complaints.

Interesting marginal case here:
In the game he ran, A. refused to tell players the difficulty numbers for their rolls.  Why?  The situation in which the player says, "My character thinks it's unlikely that he can jump the pit, but he's brave and foolhardy!" and then says, "12 on 2d6?  Never mind," is a sure immersion-buster.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Oh, I'm right there with you and your friend: I love building settings, I've got a history degree and am a professional journalist so I am full of fun fiddly facts and sociological patterns to play with, I love the historical appendices in the back of Tolkein's Lord of the Rings and get irritable when the Silmarilion fails to explain what the economic basis of the Second Age elven kingdoms is (who's growing the food for all these frickin' heroes, anyway?).

But[/i].

You do not have fifteen years of play to build up this setting, like your friend E. with his "Telvas" world. Even if you did, you probably couldn't convey all the coolness in concentrated form to someone reading your game-book. So, as a practical matter, you and anyone else running a game in Lendrhald is going to have to do what E. probably did quite often for the first, oh, ten years of running Telvas: Make stuff up -- either on the spot, or staying one step ahead of the players by going home after each session and feverishly prepping the next one.

The traditional solution to this problem is to never, ever, ever admit to the players that the setting is being fabricated for their enjoyment. But this means your entire social interaction is based on lying -- either the players lying to themselves (when they darn well know that you just made something up) or the GM lying to the players ("Oh, no, that was in my notes all along, really") -- which is corrosive to real, open communication, which is a big deal, seeing that all the game really is, is you and your friends sitting around talking to each other about cool stuff.

There's at least one other way, however: a way to keep the setting "real," in the sense you're using of "driven by its own internal logic rather than by whim," even as you are inventing it on the spot. I think good GMs have always done this, although without necessarily being conscious of it. The trick is to shift your attention from getting the setting itself defined in every detail -- since, as a practical matter, you can't -- and instead focus on the process by which new setting is generated. In other words, we're talking about algorithms for creating consistent fiction. Then the players may well realize, "Oh, yeah, the GM just made that up right now," but they'll also think, "but of course, there would be a Dark Temple / legionary outpost / crazed hermit right here, that makes perfect sense!"

An example of how you'd set up these algorithms, and some factors to seed the system, for Star Wars:

There was a great (if long and sometimes rambling) discussion of what is the bare minimum you need to create a usable setting on the fly over at Vincent Baker's blog, Anyway. My bottom-line lesson I took away is that what you need is (a) a few "rules" to generate new setting elements on the fly and (b) a couple of "seed crystals," specific and vivid images which suggest a whole bunch of possibilities.

For example, Star Wars:

Seed Crystals:
a) A really huge wedge-shaped spaceship is chasing a tiny little one! Zap, zap!
b) An old monk-dude and a dude in a mask with a black cape are fighting with laser swords!

Rules:
a) The Evil Galactic Empire relies on overwhelming brute force, not individual skill or courage.
b) The heroic Rebel Alliance makes up for limited resources with skill and courage.
c) A Jedi Order once used "The Force" for cool psychic powers, but using the Force out of anger led some to Evil.
d) There is a Galaxy-spanning civilization with interstellar travel, planet-busting weapons, and sentient robots -- but all of it basically feels like something out of the year 1945.

If everybody at the table agrees on these elements, you should be able to generate specifics as needed pretty fast. E.g. in Star Wars, "does the ship have a teleporter? Well, no, that doesn't feel very 1945 -- but launching lots of fighters does!" or "If the Galactic Empire are mostly such thugs, who'd be a properly scary villain? Ooh, a fallen Jedi!"

How does this work in practice? Well, the example that got me thinking was from Vincent Baker's website, www.lumpley.com, specifically http://www.lumpley.com/comment.php?entry=73:

Last summer sometime Ninja J and I spent a whole afternoon walking all the heck over Northampton. Among many other things, we talked about a beloved old game he'd GMed; particularly, we talked about how rich and alive its setting was, how detailed. His players ate it up, he said, they'd go on and on about how compelling, complete, fully realized the setting was.

Then he told me how he'd done it. He'd taken three principles - I wish I could remember them in particular, J please step in here, but they were like "nobody thinks that they themselves are evil," "the Grand Galactic Empire is procedurally conservative," and "nobody really enjoys their job" - three principles something like those, and whenever any of his players asked him about anything in the setting, he'd simply apply those principles to create the answer.

"I duck into a broom closet." "Okay. There are a bunch of reg-77f portbrushes in there, but someone hasn't bothered to replace them yet, they're all slimy and they smell." All the details you'd need to bring the setting home, give it weight and momentum, and yet J didn't precreate the contents of a single broom closet.

Now, looping back to my last post, and that "Expediency Point" example: Yes, those hypothetical players are entirely aware that their GM just made up this stuff on the spot -- that the little girl, or the faerie rhyme, or the herd of deer did not exist in the game world until they became potentially useful for the story. At the same time, the players also entirely aware that all of these things are being generated according to certain rules and a consistent logic: they're not going to end up being abducted by small aliens, they're not going to run into a happy little village where everyone is really happy and there are no dark secrets, etc. The setting feels real not because there's some written reference for every detail, but because every detail elicits a reaction of "Of course, there's one of those there!"

The bottomline reason I like players getting to know what the mechanics are, and getting to see the numbers (or lists, or Tarot cards, or whatever you're using), is that your game's rules aren't merely the physics of your imaginary world: they represent the moral cause and effect as well. If the rules say, for example, "every good deed done by the player-characters immediately generates d6 points of Evil for the GM to use to make things worse," or "every NPC the player-characters like should be put in deadly peril as soon as possible," that makes a tremendously powerful statement about how this imaginary universe works -- and it's a statement the players should see so they can begin to feel the reality, not just of the details, but of the logic underlying those details.

[Valamir]

Hey David, I'm going to offer a couple of points on the subject of preexisting world.  They may be of use to you, or they may be examples of irreconcileable philosophical differences.  But I'll start by saying, I know exactly what you're saying.  A few years back, the words coming out of your mouth, came out of mine.  I have a library of hundreds of history books which I've used over the years largely as RPG references.  I once spent 8 hours in a library doing research so I could accurately portray what an authentic celtic village looked like.  "This world is preexisting on its own and you're just traveling through it" was my own holy grail.

Then I got over it.

Partially this was because I no longer have the time to dedicate to that level of game prep (the rise in popularity of eurogames demonstrates that thats pretty common these days).  More importantly it was because I realized I didn't need it to enjoy the game.  So here's the 2 points I want to make on the topic.

1) Imagine a man once took a family road trip across country.  It was the greatest family vacation of his life, and he still remembers it fondly.  On the way they stopped every 100 miles and he and his dad took a wiz by the side of the road.  But it would be a mistake for him to think that the only way he could ever enjoy a vacation again in his life is if he wizzes by the side of the road.  Further, despite that likely being one of the more memorable aspects of the trip that always gets brought up and laughed about...it would be a mistake to conclude that those episodes were what made the trip fun.

You may want to consider the possibility that your memories of Telvas are the same way.  It may have been the greatest campaign of your life and you still remember it fondly, but it would be a mistake to think that that's the only sort of campaign you could ever enjoy.  All of that meticulous planning and tracking may be the most memorable aspect of the campaign and the thing that evokes the most comments and admiration; but it would be a mistake to conclude that that specifically was the primary reason you found the campaign fun.

Point being that there's more than one way to skin a cat...don't assume you need your current game to skin it the same way...or even that it needs to be a cat.


2) The key to a good campaign setting is one that engages the players.  If the players are engaged, its good.  if not, not so much.  Building a deep preexisting detailed setting that is not deformed by the characters (an interesting turn of phrase, that) is one tool that can lead to engaged players.  To the extent it does, good.  But it is neither guarenteed to do so, nor is it the only way to do so.  I would argue that its not even the most reliable way of doing so.

In my experience a much more reliable means of getting players to engage with the setting is to give them an ownership interest in it.  We are most likely to be interested in things that we help create, and we are most likely to create things that we find interesting.  Consider how popular writing fan fic or doing mods for computer games is.  In fact, PC game companies today design games especially to be mod-able by the players because 1) they know that players who have a sense of ownership in the game will keep the game alive for years with very little additional expense, and 2) legions of creative players can invent more, better, and cooler stuff than any designers could on their own.

Similarly, in an RPG, players who have a sense of ownership in a campaign will tend to be much more engaged for a longer period of time, and generally the combined creative powers of the other players at the table will create more, better, and cooler stuff than any GM (or setting book author) could on their own.


You may decide you're not interested in pursuing such an approach for your current project.  But I highly recommend you don't rule it out just based on preexisting assumptions or a limited past experience (no matter how profound).  Experiment around playing some games that operate on a different paradigm and see what you think.

Ralph

[David Berg]

Ralph-

I hear ya on the Holy Grail realism tip.  To be honest, I'm actually a story-first guy at heart... plus, I'm brainstorming a near-future fascist political satire game whose agenda will likely be pure Gamism. 

A lot of the motivation to do Lendrhald the way A. and I are doing it derives from having played with a lot of rules lawyers, physics nerds, and guys who are in many ways a pain to run for; and empathizing with them.  Every time a player tried to do something smart that didn't work, or something nonsensical that did work, we thought, "but, but that's stupid!"  Thus was born the Holy Grail ideal of a game in which that need never be said.

I've never played a game that succeeded in that, and most of the ones I've heard of that try sound lower on the flavor spectrum than A. and I like our fantasy.  So, we've concluded that having a 100% sensible game with a distinct feel to it is a worthy endeavor, regardless of how difficult being 100% sensible makes the design process.

2) The key to a good campaign setting is one that engages the players.  If the players are engaged, its good.  if not, not so much.  Building a deep preexisting detailed setting that is not deformed by the characters (an interesting turn of phrase, that) is one tool that can lead to engaged players.  To the extent it does, good.  But it is neither guarenteed to do so, nor is it the only way to do so.  I would argue that its not even the most reliable way of doing so.

I'd guess that it depends largely on the players.  "Here's a game that makes sense" has, all by itself, won over A.'s engineer buddies (although A.'s particular GMing style may also have a lot to do with that). 

But if I was playing, what would engage me would be the atmosphere (of course, I have a feel for the atmosphere already).  Finding optimal ways to convey that feel to new players and GMs is the underlying goal of all these threads I've started.

In my experience a much more reliable means of getting players to engage with the setting is to give them an ownership interest in it.

That's certainly been a huge part of my interest in many games I've played in.  However, as a story-minded player, what I've felt a need to own (or, y'know, co-own) was not any part of the setting, but some part of the arc of the campaign. 

A Rifts example:
I as a player like the thought of stealing powerful Coalition weapons. ->
When faced with a need to break into a Coalition base, my character suggests we steal weapons while there. ->
What would otherwise have been a story about rescuing an NPC becomes a story about rescuing an NPC and stealing weapons.  All the clever lies we tell and crazy encounters we have are partly my fault, giving me partial ownership of our group story of what we've done and will continue to do. ->
I care about where this story goes and whether our many efforts eventually bear fruit.

At the moment, Lendrhald is intended to encourage this type of ownership, through allowing the characters to choose their own path.  They should peruse the setting, find what interests them, and go poke it.  The setting itself should ensure that, whatever their choice, there will be something cool there (more on how to do that in my reply to Sydney).

generally the combined creative powers of the other players at the table will create more, better, and cooler stuff than any GM (or setting book author) could on their own.

More, better, and cooler stories/campaigns -- I agree.  More, better, and cooler setting material?  Hmm.  Maybe.  I'm having trouble reconciling any way to even allow that with my "100% sensible" goals, but it seems possible that they're not mutually exclusive...

Experiment around playing some games that operate on a different paradigm and see what you think.

I suspect what I think will be, "I have plenty of cool new ideas I'm dying to use -- but they don't fit with Lendrhald."  But you're right, I should definitely go find out...