[Lendrhald] Rewards system for dark, realistic fantasy

[David Berg]

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

Good observation.  To date, A.'s been of the "prep feverishly" school, while I've been of the "prep just enough that nothing I make up on the spot is glaringly out of place" school.  His games run smoother, mine run more frequently.

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

I have no problem with lies, as long as everyone in the room is in on them.  Then it's a sort of willful mass-self-deception (goes rather well with a game based on imaginary people and places, I think)... 
"Sure, that Orc would have been already-wounded even if you hadn't taken all that alcohol-poisoning damage... no question." (wink) 
"Uh-huh." (eye roll)

But I agree, actually trying to deceive your buddies is not cool.

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.

That is an excellent suggestion.

A mechanism or guide which defines or aids that process would be the perfect replacement for my "prep just enough that nothing I make up on the spot is glaringly out of place".

As for your examples, my initial impression is that most of them are analogous to stuff I already know about my setting: villagers operate in X way, monsters operate in Y way, an Ancient civilization has left ruins about, the stars grow and shrink and are dangerous when large... 

I will think more on this, though... there may be some key characteristics to the Star Wars "rules" and "seed crystals" (and especially Ninja J's "principles") that make them handy for use.  Having a fuller awareness and understanding of such characteristics would definitely be useful.

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

Neat.  To me, one line stood out:

". . . most RPGs' setting material . . . is the end product of a creative process. What do we roleplayers need? We need the starting point of the creative process instead."

I've given players a setting to explore, and freedom to choose creatively within that setting... but a starting point?  Not really.  This hearkens back to your suggestion earlier in this thread:

Create characters who can't stand still -- whatever they used to do, it doesn't work for them anymore.  What kinds of experiences would make normal life impossible for each likely background?

My first thought is that the job of providing a "starting point" should indeed be entrusted to Character Creation.  I shall brainstorm on answers to the above question soon.  Of course, this may not be sufficient in itself.  There's also the reward system discussion, hopefully to be resumed here upon resolution of more general issues in another thread.  I continue to like your "contradictory incentives" idea.

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

I'm okay with the players being aware that the GM is making stuff up.  What I'm concerned about is letting them influence what he makes up, as this leads to metagame decision-making instead of in-game decision-making.  Your example illustrates this:

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.

Second player's character would only react this way if there was an actual, in-game reason why "free food" = "eaten eyeballs".

Of course, if this player decides to react that way without a rational reason, just based on superstition, then kudos to him for good roleplaying.  His character's creeped out.  The only problem is: he can make a scene actually bad news or not by spending Expediency Points!  And knowing that fact destroys being creeped out.

Your sample interaction is well-written, and I could imagine it taking place, with a great tension between a) likely starving, b) inviting harm on a little girl, c) likely getting mugged by Leprechauns, d) likely getting lost.  That'd be fun.  The only problem is, what happens when you pick one?

GM: You finish eating, and the adorable peasant girl smiles at you.  (Pause.)  Do you head out?
FIRST PLAYER: Let's wait here.
SECOND PLAYER: Yeah, I want to see what happens to her.
THIRD PLAYER: I check the windows.
GM: She looks very confused.  "Do you wish to stay?" she asks.
FIRST PLAYER: "No, we have to be on our way."  How long should we wait around?
SECOND PLAYER: Maybe the inevitable won't happen 'til we're out of sight.
FIRST PLAYER: Shit.  I don't want to leave her.
THIRD PLAYER: Well, think about it, in-game our characters have no reason to think she's in danger...
FIRST PLAYER: We might have a bad feeling after previous experiences...
THIRD PLAYER: *skeptical look*
FIRST PLAYER: Okay, fine.
GM: You exit the little house and return to the trail.  You walk a ways, everything is still.  Then, just as you're rounding a bend, you hear-
SECOND PLAYER: A scream.  *sigh*

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 . . . 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.

"This imaginary universe, insofar as Men can measure it, works solely according to physics -- except as it applies to PCs, in which case it also works according to a perverse system of karma!"  That's the kind of statement I know I don't want to make.  Rendering perverse karma universal is unacceptable for a different reason -- human society would wind up really weird.

If I institute a "moral cause and effect" in an effort to drive home a creepy feel, and the unknown is better than the known at being creepy, then making the "moral cause and effect" known to the players will make it less creepy, defeating the reason for its existence.  More concretely, see my hypothetical play example.

Am I trying too hard to accommodate asshole players who aren't willing to help out the GM by suspending some disbelief?  Sometimes it seems that way... still, I think it's way more fun to actually be creeped out than to pretend...

[Sydney Freedberg]

Dave, do you, personally, live in a universe that is "100% sensible" and "operates solely according to physics"? Because I sure don't. Ever heard of the "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska -- the hundred-million-dollar product of the extraordinary power of Alaska's Senator Stevens on the Appropriations Committee, connecting a tiny island with almost no population to the mainland? How about the Roman Empire's refusal to work out any kind of succession system, even after repeated civil wars over who'd get to be Emperor? The expenditure of massive resources by societies throughout history on building functionally non-productive structures like temples, up to the point of self-imposed ecological collapse on Easter Island after building so many giant heads out of stone? Physics doesn't explain these things: Psychology and politics do, and they're way more complex and paradoxical... although even physics isn't "100% sensible": Light is a particle and a wave; if you learn the position of an electron, you can't know its velocity; time slows down the faster you go; etc.

Let me reemphasize something crucial:

Your job, as the game designer, is not simply to write rules that replicate physical phenomena in a plausible way. What's more important is the moral cause and effect. The ancient Greeks believed in hubris: It's admirable to strive for success, but the most successful inevitably overstep themselves and bring about their own destruction. Medieval Christians and Muslims believed that those who submitted to the will of God would be blessed with success, and those who were cursed with failure must have earned it by evil deeds or thoughts. 19th century Englishmen believed that the most virtuous would succeed by dint of their superior rationality and self-discipline, and that the lower orders of society were condemned to their state by their own sloth and brutishness. Modern Americans tend to be believe that everyone should be happy and successful, and if you're not, you need to figure out who's to blame (government? liberals? big business?), because it can't possibly be you, and it certainly can't be just some random damage from an unfeeling universe.

Your players absolutely believe in some kind of moral cause-and-effect, even if they don't consciously realize it; you do too; I know I do (even though I realize my ideas are often irrational -- I've had about five years of therapy....). So if your written rules stick purely to physics, then it'll be up to the GM to enforce all the higher-order cause-and-effect. But you can write rules that create a universe like that human beings believe they live in (and, heck, maybe we really do), where actions have moral consequences.

So maybe everybody knows in Lendrhald that "only the good die young," or that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," or that "if anything good happens, it won't last," or "if someone helps you out of the goodness of their heart, you can bet they're too nice to last long." These aren't "superstitition": these are cultural attitudes based on observation of how their world really works.

[David Berg]

I like having moral cause and effect exist within the world (for all the reasons you so eloquently stated), but not as transparent game mechanics.  It's something that's very complex, like psychology.  I think attempting to simplify in this case produces results that will feel contrived to the players.  That was basically the point of my example about leaving the little girl's house.

A world in which everyone thinks "if anything good happens, it won't last" is very different from one in which this theory is actually provable by simple experiment and observation.

In the Middle Ages, a lot of people spent part of the time acting like they were afraid of going to Hell (going to Church, giving the Church as much money as they could) and the rest of the time acting like it was life on earth that mattered ("This is my chair, if you take it I'll kill you!")  If Hell had been provable ("Danny just died, let's see whether he floats upward in a column of white light or is swallowed by a fiery pit!"), society would have turned into something unrecognizable from the context of actual history (everyone paralyzed by fear of doing something Evil, hoping to die before being subjected to any more temptations).

To me, it seems like a tall order to ask players to:
a) separate out-of-game knowledge ("the world definitely works this way") from in-game knowledge ("the world appears to possibly work this way"), and
b) refuse to perform in-game investigations that would expand their in-game knowledge ("let's keep track of good things vs. bad things, to be better prepared for the next bad thing"), and
c) collaborate with the GM's attempt to make things creepy ("uh oh, what's gonna happen?!") instead of getting bored because the creepiness-attempts feel contrived ("we leave the house; when do we hear her scream?")

Actually, now I have an idea: if there's a significant random element to the "if anything good happens, it won't last" mechanism that keeps it from being testable, we may avoid trouble:

- Instead of the GM assigning a "5 points of Bad" event as soon as the players spend 5 points of Expediency, maybe the GM could make 5 rolls on the Metaphysical Fallout table, which is filled with highly variable results. 

- Or, there could be a "5 points of Bad" event lurking out there for the players, but die rolls at regular intervals would determine when it strikes (I'd want these roll results to be secret, though).

Spending Expediency Points would still be correlated with some form of eventual badness, but characters would have plenty of sensible ways to respond to this (rationalization, denial, paranoia) given its hazy nature.  Kind of like Hell in the Middle Ages!  (I hope.  Haven't thought this through yet...)

So this would be a reward system in which the existence of the system is transparent ("The GM's rolling on the Fallout table!"), but the moment-to-moment workings of it are not  ("What'd he roll?  Damn he has a good poker face...").  The incentives on player behavior would be less, but the tone of the game would still be conveyed.

[Sydney Freedberg]

I see what you're getting at, but I just don't spend much time worrying about "in-character" vs. "out-of-character" knowledge anymore: the players are both the authors and the audience of the story, and I've always found people pretty capable of distinguishing those two roles where they need to be distinguished. I've heard it argued that the best way to ensure a character doesn't discover a secret is to tell the player that there's a secret and that their character shouldn't know it yet: Players are marvellously inventive at torturing their own alter egos.

Likewise, I don't worry much about surprising the players: it's fun, but it's the cherry on top, not the ice cream. Anyway, how many horror stories really rely on surprising the audience? Yeah, sure, the monster may go "boo!" at an unexpected moment, but everyone in the audience knows something bad's gonna happen, even while the characters blunder along obviously. In fact, that's the real source of tension most of the time: "No! Don't go in there!"

So, as far as your three concerns:

To me, it seems like a tall order to ask players to:
a) separate out-of-game knowledge ("the world definitely works this way") from in-game knowledge ("the world appears to possibly work this way"), and
b) refuse to perform in-game investigations that would expand their in-game knowledge ("let's keep track of good things vs. bad things, to be better prepared for the next bad thing"), and
c) collaborate with the GM's attempt to make things creepy ("uh oh, what's gonna happen?!") instead of getting bored because the creepiness-attempts feel contrived ("we leave the house; when do we hear her scream?")

(a) Most players I've dealt with are very good at this. Just in the last session of my The Shadow of Yesterday campaign, one of them gleefully figured out a plausible reason to rush, headlong, alone, and unprepared, into the most dangerous area of the map -- and of course the other PCs all immediately set off to help -- without asking 20 armed and armored NPC knights to come along!
(b) Why shouldn't they keep track of this stuff? They're the authors of the story, right? You wouldn't ask a TV writing crew to do a script without ever knowing how many minutes of screen time they had left before the credits had to roll; you shouldn't ask your players to come up with cool stuff without knowing the kind of universe their characters are in.
(c) I, as a player, would be much more tense if I knew the girl was going to scream than if I wasn't sure whether she was in danger, or maybe a monster would try to eat me instead. And it would allow me to focus my creative energy on developing a relationship between my character and the girl's character so we really cared when she started screaming.

[David Berg]

Sydney-

I'm enjoying this discussion, and have plenty more to say on the topics you addressed.  I think we're getting too general for this thread, though.  I'll PM you with some thoughts, and maybe we can port some version of this into an Actual Play thread.

-Dave

[David Berg]

I think it's best if this thread return to some of the specific brainstorms-in-progress, re:
- processes and elements for generating new content ("rules", "seed crystals", "principles" etc. and what makes them work), including story events the GM can use to encourage (or force) encounters with the creepy bits in the setting
- character creation elements that encourage encounters with the creepy bits in the setting
- not-testable-in-game mechanics for conveying themes (very complex? heavily randomized?)
- other ways to use system to convey the feel I'm going for, given the constraints I'm currently imposing (cannot make it sensible or advantageous for characters to think or act in ways that are too bizarre for players to empathize with)

Lendrhald's primary creative agenda is Simulationist, for anyone that helps.

[Threlicus]

I popped in here from a different thread. I was talking about trying to get player contributions in setting development, and I'd still like to argue for it.

To give a little perspective, I also have some strong Simulationist tendencies. I was 'alpha Storyguide' of an Ars Magica saga that ran for a long period, and as I saw it, my role there basically had two pieces: rules maven, and world consistency tyrant. Under my enlightened rule <ahem>, we had 7 years with 6 or 7 different GMs running stories at different times, with only a couple hiccups that had to be retconned out. So I very much sympathize with the concern that, if one lets players add freely to the setting, it will wreak havoc with a carefully constructed world consistency. (N.B., I suspect many here won't share that concern. That idea is noted, but for purposes of this post, at least, I'm going to treat it as valid.)

Turning to Lendrhald, my impression is one that much of the inviting bits of creepiness about the setting is that, frankly, the PCs are in the middle of a largely unknown world, and that there will be chunks of that world that may never get understood by the characters, or quite likely the players. I'm not going to go into detail again (see my post in the other thread), but I strongly believe that if you try to decide these facts and hide them from the players, you're doomed to failure. So I think you would be well-served by mechanics that let players/GMs add truly unknown mysteries to the world -- mysteries that, at time of creation, really are not understood by anyone. And yet at the same time we want the game to reflect a Simulationist's core value of world consistency.

So, let us attempt to reward the behavior that we want to see in players. We want to see them adding strange things to the world, things which are creepy and unexplained; yet we want these things tied into existing facts. We want the things that are added to usually play into the characters' story. I think this is not at all impossible. Far from a final system, but let me attempt to do so:

Create some form of metagame currency, let me call it Coins. Whenever a player wants to add something to the world, there is a base price to do so: 5 Coins. That's a lot, so players shouldn't just add things very often; usually they will try to take advantage of the discount. For every previously established aspect of the world that this addition ties into, there is a reduction in cost by 1 Coin; this discount can be taken back by tying the mystery to other things after it is established. So let me take my example of an underground bunker in the desert, created as a convenience to escape flying abominations. That costs 5 Coins, and the player can't afford it; so he adds that the door is marked with a glyph that the players saw in the ruined city on the other side of the continent (1), and that inside the bunker they find the reeking bodies of 4 Orcs (2). The player pays 3 Coins, and a sheet is drawn up for the mystery of the bunker. If the players never come back to it, the 3 Coins are lost and the mystery endures. But, instead, 2 sessions later the GM has the players find a rotting map with the location of the bunker clearly marked. Now the GM takes a Coin and is entitled to spend it ... on something I haven't figured out yet -- I don't want to use it in the Buffy style of 'make life hell points' because of the Simulationism, though maybe something similar can be worked out. I also have to think about how players acquire Coins (aside from linking to existing things); maybe they get paid whenever the GM uses something paid-off that they created. Hmm.

Now I see a lot of flaws in this, so as I say, not a final system (I made it up in the last 20 minutes), but maybe it can point a way towards how you might try to tie together metagame systems with a Simulationist philosophy.

[contracycle]

It would be valuable to me too to see if Davids question can be answered, rather than if he can be persuaded to a different style of play.

[David Berg]

much of the inviting bits of creepiness about the setting is that, frankly, the PCs are in the middle of a largely unknown world

Definitely, and I heartily encourage further thought on how to best accomplish this in a way that is meaningful to the players.  (We started on this in the setting thread but didn't get too far.)

Rather than responding to the rest of George's post piecemeal, let me reiterate some of my positions that he and others may have missed:
- I am definitely open to some form of allowing GMs to generate new setting content.
- I want to exercise pretty rigorous standards of consistency with world plot, physics, logic and culture for any new setting generated.
- Metagame incentives that naturally tend to influence how the characters think and act give me the willies.

Now I see a lot of flaws in this, so as I say, not a final system (I made it up in the last 20 minutes), but maybe it can point a way towards how you might try to tie together metagame systems with a Simulationist philosophy.

It really is a cool idea, but rather than upholding my Simulationist goals (e.g. "the world makes sense"), your example seems to uphold Narrativist goals (e.g. "the world elements have good story potential").  Coming up with something because it's convenient or cool and then trying to shoehorn it into interrelatedness with developed world elements is the easiest way to break a consistent world.  ("Uh, so, wait, if the only food that Orcs can eat for more than a week grows only in humid climates, why did they have a dwelling in a desert spot nine days travel away from the nearest jungle?")

If you want to concoct another example, great, but first try to really understand where I'm coming from (read the entirety of this thread and this other thread) and address the specific concerns I've voiced.  I apologize for handing out a reading list, but I think the subject is sufficiently complicated to warrant it.  Providing quick summaries has just left me answering the same questions over and over again.

[Threlicus]

- I am definitely open to some form of allowing GMs to generate new setting content.
- I want to exercise pretty rigorous standards of consistency with world plot, physics, logic and culture for any new setting generated.
- Metagame incentives that naturally tend to influence how the characters think and act give me the willies.

Yup, I can (and did) understand all those things. My goal right now is to try to convince you that not all metagame systems need necessarily influence how characters think and act. Most of the ones you will find here at the Forge were enacted with Narrativist or Gamist sensibilities, so you will have some work to do to try to construct such a system; but I think it should be possible, except maybe for the most diehard of immersionist players. Furthermore, I'd like to argue that such a system is likely to, in actual practice, lead to *more* creepy unknown rather than less.

It really is a cool idea, but rather than upholding my Simulationist goals (e.g. "the world makes sense"), your example seems to uphold Narrativist goals (e.g. "the world elements have good story potential").  Coming up with something because it's convenient or cool and then trying to shoehorn it into interrelatedness with developed world elements is the easiest way to break a consistent world.  ("Uh, so, wait, if the only food that Orcs can eat for more than a week grows only in humid climates, why did they have a dwelling in a desert spot nine days travel away from the nearest jungle?")

Perhaps it can be treated as a mystery -- after all, there's lots of unknown in this world (that's part of the point, right?), so there may well be a good reason, simply one still unknown. But I do see your argument -- as I said, the system is flawed. So change the system a little bit. Give discounts only for each already established setting element which would tend to support this being here, instead. Add surcharges for any that tend to argue against it. That changes the dynamic a little bit. You might need some control of the rate of things being added (because 'too many weird things' breaks things too) -- say, the more things that get added in a session, the more expensive they get --  plus some way to balance out 'lucky advantageous events' with 'unlucky disadvantageous events'. As it's stated, too, this one would tend to create fewer true mysteries, too, since new elements will tend to be well-connected; figuring out how to get the right tension between consistency and mystery is probably the heart of the problem here. But I don't think that these are insurmountable issues, though I'm not going to be able to work them out on a message board.

I think you hear "players can add to the world" and immediately think "Oh my God, what if the player doesn't Get It?" Well, true, if all the players (including the GM) aren't on at least approximately the same page, you're going to have problems no matter what the game is. (A player playing Dogs in the Vineyard out to 'win all my conflicts' who cares not at all about the judgements he is passing will screw that up that game for the whole table.) But, a player cognizant of the setting's tone and having read the (now rather less detailed) setting information is perfectly capable of adding good, consistent stuff to the setting -- always granting that it is not necessarily the *same* good stuff that the GM, or you the game author, might have added. Add a system which rewards and encourages the kinds of contributions lining up with your Simulationist ideals, because it will be a way for you and the players at the game table to help a player who doesn't Get It to Get It, and you've got a lot of potential (and a game I would definitely be interested in playing, either as a player OR a GM.)

Now, maybe you will eventually conclude that you don't want this kind of thing in your game. What I am seeing, though, is that there are a lot of people here thinking along these lines, and you are dismissing the idea almost out of hand. That's why I have responded to you.

In any case, I think I'm done. If you still are convinced you don't want these kinds of metagame mechanics in your game, I will bow out and let you continue, and maybe go write my own game inspired by the thoughts Lendrhald has provoked in me.

[David Berg]

My goal right now is to try to convince you that not all metagame systems need necessarily influence how characters think and act.

I don't think that these are insurmountable issues, though I'm not going to be able to work them out on a message board.

I am open to being convinced (that's the point of this thread), but convincing me will require trouble-shooting on a message board.  The concerns I've voice are neither simple nor confined in their scope.  Any suggestion that doesn't address implications and fallout down to fine details of implementation leaves me pretty much where I'm at now.

. . . you will have some work to do to try to construct such a system; but I think it should be possible, except maybe for the most diehard of immersionist players.

Add a system which rewards and encourages the kinds of contributions lining up with your Simulationist ideals, because it will be a way for you and the players at the game table to help a player who doesn't Get It to Get It, and you've got a lot of potential (and a game I would definitely be interested in playing, either as a player OR a GM.)

Suggestions noted.  At the moment, I don't think it would be possible to implement them without compromising my goals.  Why do I think that?  Reading the threads should answer that, but I'll state it (in simplified form) again: Some players will prefer a setting that feels like it exists in its own right to one that transparently responds to their desires.  Lendrhald is a game designed partly to satisfy such players.

I think you hear "players can add to the world" and immediately think "Oh my God, what if the player doesn't Get It?" . . . a player cognizant of the setting's tone . . . is perfectly capable of adding good, consistent stuff to the setting -- always granting that it is not necessarily the *same* good stuff that the GM, or you the game author, might have added.

Speculating unfavorably on my motives is not appreciated.  The effort to provide a substantial and non-contrived world is the source of my concern, not some hoarding of creative control.

Furthermore, I'd like to argue that such a system is likely to, in actual practice, lead to *more* creepy unknown rather than less.

More volume?  Sure.  I think I've already illustrated why I think "creepiness" will suffer, though.

What I am seeing, though, is that there are a lot of people here thinking along these lines, and you are dismissing the idea almost out of hand. That's why I have responded to you.

"See reasoning I've already stated" isn't "dismissing the idea almost out of hand", it's being disinclined to take the time to repeat myself for people who didn't bother to process my specific arguments, understand how they relate to this issue, and respond to address that.

maybe go write my own game inspired by the thoughts Lendrhald has provoked in me.

Go for it.  I'm sure you can interface a player-created-setting mechanism with some version of creepy realism... I'm just guessing that it'll be very different than Lendrhald's version.

-Dave