Ed Designs A Game: Topos

[ejh]

Well, y'all may remember that I've posted in the past about creating a "Universalis Lite" or something like that.  I finally done gone and did it, and got some poor fools on indie-netgaming to help me test it.

The rules are in considerable flux, but if anyone would like to see what something looks like that lives somewhere in the middle ground between Soap, the Pool, and Universalis, please check it out. :-)  It was inspired largely by the tres kewl ongoing Samurai SOAP game that's going on in indie-netgaming.

It's called "Topos," and it's intended to be useful for people playing a GMless, email-based game.  Minimum of fuss, bother, math, and the like, and designed so that you can easily add a "turn time limit" rule (i.e. "don't post for 3 days, and you lose your turn") so you won't get stuck because somebody stops posting for a while.

We'll see how it actually works in the next few weeks with the playtesting.

I'm going to give the URL in slightly mangled form because I don't want bots to come and spider poor Travis's server, apologies to all but it's the equivalent of spamguarding an email address --

http://www.lostremovethoughts.org/phpwiki/index.php/Topos
http://www.lostremovethoughts.org/phpwiki/index.php/ToposGame

To make this a real URL, remove the word "REMOVE" from the above URL.

Peace...

[Lance D. Allen]

I was wondering if I'd be seeing this here.

From what I saw, it looks like a sound and workable PBM/PBeM/PBW game format... If you really want to call it a game. I've always been really leery of PBM games beyond turn based strategy, because I can't get my mind around how it works. (don't bother. I've had it explained, and it just doesn't make sense to me.) This makes a certain amount of sense, and it looks like it could be quite entertaining. If I didn't have quite so many irons in the fire, I'd probably have jumped on board myself.

I'll probably be following the story from time to time.. Hope it works out as well as it promises to.

[ejh]

Thanks, Lance!

Part of what I'm working from is a PBEM game I ran about three years ago, which was both excellent and terrible.  The system is an attempt to help encourage the excellent and avoid the terrible.

To me the "excellent" parts were:

Certain players contributed immensely and creatively to the game, really unleashing their powers (largely through heavy Director stance).

I was following Chris Kubiasek's "Interactive Toolkit" at the time, and therefore made the game really about the players' characters, not about my own agenda for the campaign.
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The "terrible" parts were:


The game was bogged down badly when one of the high-posting people got into an interaction with someone who wouldn't post for a week or more, essentially freezing the game in time.

I found myself eventually quite burned out trying to juggle all the various plot threads and engineer interesting interactions with each other.  I felt the best parts of the game were player-contributed, not contributed by me.
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Hopefully Topos will help optimize the groovy and minimize the yuck.

[Tony Irwin]

Looks good Ed, I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays. I've got lots of questions for you about it, but its because Im impressed by what you've done not because I want to criticise. It reminds me of some of the problems I tried to solve with Theme-Chaser and some other half-finished attempts I made to get a PBEM out of Universalis.

Topoi
Have you considered the possibility of ensuring that you can't earn Points for visiting Topoi that you created yourself? That might provide extra assurance that the players will be playing together rather than simply side by side in the same game.

For example on every turn I could write a new ego-centric paragraph about my fabulous Avatar (I'll call him "Tony Skywalker") and keep revisiting a Topos I've attatched to him (lets call it "Power of the Force"). That way I'm earning 3 points every turn for writing a paragraph about how kewl and strong in the force my character is. I can use all those points to prevent more adult players stepping over and editing my masturbatory works of fiction.

PBEMs are really prone to this, there might be some mechanical way you can encourage "Tony Skywalker" (or "Legolas the Avenger") players to play with what other people have created instead of just playing with themselves ;-) Forcing them to utilise the Topoi of other players is just one possibility.

Bribes
Have you considered the possibility that the bribe mechanic might not be rewarding cooperative players, so much as uncoperative players who are willing to compromise?

For example if I'm a good natured chap who is looking forward to participating in the game then I'm going to take care not to write anything that is going to step on anyone else's toes, I'll probably never receive a bribe as I'll be avoiding the behaviour that earns it. On the other hand if I'm planning on having Legolas the Avenger shooting everyone from the trees with poisoned arrows then there will be lots of bribes coming my way. It kind of looks like I'm receiving points for being a d*ck that's willing to back down. (Whereas genuinely cooperative players don't receive anything) Perhaps some kind of mechanics modification to ensure that neither party entirely benefits from a bribe. Im guessing maybe this is where you originally had dice rolls? I can see how the risk element could ensure that bribing is a situation that neither party would especially want to get involved in, trying to find a mutually acceptable situation instead.

Anyway, looks great Ed, look forward to seeing more.

Tony

[ejh]

Tony --

RE: Bribes --

That's right -- that is where the die rolls lay originally, and that is a potential problem.

The thing is, though, the points are not really good for anything except story power.  I'm not sure what motivation someone would have for engaging in that kind of conduct to accumulate them.  If you're going to act in that broken a fashion, why are you playing the game?....  It's not like you can cash in your Points later on for valuable prizes.  You can spend them later on to assure that you get your way in later posts, but then other people can engage in the same kind of extortion with you.

RE: reducing the reward for visiting your own Topoi -- couple issues here.  

FIrst off, I've been rethinking the whole "you get extra points for your Avatar's topoi" thing.  I don't know what I was thinking even putting that in there.  Why should it matter?  I think that needs to get toasted.  Same points for everyone for every Topos.

Second off... I'm not sure it's a bad thing letting people solipsistically revisit their own Topoi.  If they're enjoying the story, what's the harm?  If it annoys another player they can Remove or Mutate the Topos.

But you're right that it would encourage group play more -- cooperation -- if it was better to Visit others' Topoi than your own..

I think I'd like to start by removing the "more points for your Avatar's topos" rule and maybe save the "less points for Topoi you created" rule for later.

Mike Holmes has suggested on the Yahoo Group that he really likes a "royalty system" for Topoi -- that you get a reward when someone else Visits your Topos.  This was proposed by one of my players, as a fix for a rule he'd misunderstood because I hadn't written it clearly.  I'm resisting it because I don't want to make people keep track of who created which Topos unless there's a compelling reason to.

But both of those should definitely be considered possibilities -- Royalties, and Less For Visiting Your Own Topos.
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[ejh]

BTW, I'll definitely check out Theme-Chaser.  Hope I don't like it so much I throw away Topos and play it. :)

[ejh]

Tony, I have a simple solution for Bribes -- the winner only pays to the loser the *difference* between their bribes.  Hence, "backing off" does you no good -- you still commit those points.

[Mike Holmes]

Thanks for bringing this over here. This is a much better place to discuss this. Can you port over some of the discussion from the Netgaming thread?

Mike

[ejh]

Uh, all of them?  Sounds like a lot of work.  :)

Here's my last post if you want to riff from there...

Here's an idea:  Edits can happen only on the same turn, at any point  
during that turn.  If you successfully edit a post, anyone who posted  
after that has the option of editing their own post too (and if their  
posts contradict what's going on, they *must* edit them).  Hence,  
editing just means "back up a minute to when this happened, and make it  
happen differently."  No complex contexts between multiple people here.

Editing is resolved by simultaneous secret bid (by whatever means of  
"secrecy" are necessary, but the honor system is assumed -- i.e. if you  
post your bid on a SecretBids page of the Wiki, the other bidder is  
honor bound not to look at that page before he decides his bid), no  
haggling.  The content of the edit must be specified before the bid.

The winning bidder must pay the loser NOT the full amount of the bid,  
but the DIFFERENCE between their bids.  In the case of a tie, the  
status quo is maintained: there is no edit.  This gives the "defender"  
an advantage and means that there will always be at least 1 point paid  
out for a successful edit.

Remaining issue: what happens to Topoi visited or established during a  
Paragraph which has now been Edited?

My previous thought was that they stay the same.  I don't know anymore.

[ejh]

OK, using this as a forum to discuss rules systems isn't that useful, cause the main player hacking on my rules (Lxndr) is not a member of this forum.

Suffice it to say though that the whole "editing" thing is becoming very painful for me.  What if more than one player wants to edit something?  When I edit your paragraph, do I take it over, or do you still own it?   what happens when someone edits an edit?

This is getting painful for me.  :)

Upon reading up on the Lumpley Principle, I'm starting to come to the conclusion that I may be framing things in the wrong fashion.  Talking about editing paragraphs rather than about who gets to decide what happens in the world.

The current structure I have (leaving aside Topoi for the moment, because they are not involved in "resolving what happens next" -- they're Lumpley-neutral, so to speak), is this:

* Anyone can decide what happens next; these decisions happen in chunks called "paragraphs"

* Disagreements about what happens take the form of "edits" to "paragraphs" -- this is different from many RPGs in that usually people sit down and try to figure out what happens, not argue about whether what just happened should have happened (ideally at least).  These are resolved by bidding, resulting in a compensatory payoff for the loser.

* There is a special exception for "Avatars," which are the equivalent of PCs.  People have total control over the internal state and actions of their Avatars.  Not everyone has to have an Avatar.

The advantage of the "edits" system is that you don't have to stop all the time and check whether what you want to happen happens.  You assume it happens and let someone contradict it later.

The downside is that writing rules for how to roll back a paragraph is painful.  Painful painful.

In SOAP, as in Universalis, if you want to roll back a proposed Sentence/whatever, you have to challenge it immediately.

That's not easy for an email game!  The whole challenge of doing an email game is dealing with communication latency. :(

Gah.

[Mike Holmes]

Uh, told you so. ;-)

Get Lxndr to sign up here, willya!

One solution would be a more proactive rather than retroactive one. Say that there are no edits at all. Once posted something is permenant. Instead the Points can be used to buy off players to get them to go with your view of how things should go. Essentially you pay them to write things your way before hand.

Thing is that I never really saw edits being all that common. I think that you really need something else to spend Points on. I mean, they serve only one practical function that I can see, which is jumping on Avatars. Other than that, you can only invest them to get more and more. I see the number of Points going up, but not many leaving the game.

Here's something that might alleviate the "post/paragraph" problem. Say that each paragraph costs one to write. You can make as many as you want in a post, as long as you can pay. What do you think?

Mike

[ejh]

Lxndr is allergic to creating accounts on bulletin board systems, apparently. :)

I never imagined edits would happen that often either, but my first playtest game spawned a gigantic horde of Avatars in the first Round, all of them haughty wizards, and immediately people started posting that their Avatars knew/noticed/divined what other Avatars hoped to keep secret. :)

Not the way I would have played, but a perfectly legitimate and likely way for things to play themselves out, I guess.

The way I conceptualized Points was "story clout."  In fact in my first writeup of the game I called it "Clout," not "Points."

You pay them to create a Topos.  Creating a Topos is essentially saying "I would like the story to go in this direction, to be about this."  People are subsequently rewarded for going in that direction.

You get points for visiting Topoi because in doing so you're playin' the game the way people (possibly including yourself) have indicated they want it played.

You use them for edits because you get to have your way (edits work your way) in exchange for playing other people's way (visiting Topoi).

I keep thinking of ideas which if followed up would merely mutate the game into Universalis.  i.e. people pay for Facts, as well as Topoi, and unlike Topoi, Facts are immutable unless Challenged....  Might as well just play Uni at that point!

I think moving from a "you say it and then it happens, but it can be undone" model to a "you say it and then it is somehow determined whether or not it happens" model might be a good one.

Gah.  I think I've just determined that my whole system is broken though.

[ejh]

RE: "each paragraph costs a point"  -- I don't know that that'd work, since a Paragraph could theoretically be of any length.

That might work if each paragraph were conceptualized as a single Fact for purposes of undoing/editing/vetoing it though... i.e. if you break things up, and thereby pay more for it, it's more cumbersome to challenge you.

But again we're moving towards Uni at that point. :)

[ejh]

OK, writing that post and then driving home for an hour with no radio primed me for thinking, and I think I've figured out the direction that Topos needs to move in.

Gonna be a little radical.

I'll post again later.

[Paul Czege]

Gah. I think I've just determined that my whole system is broken though.

Dude...just disincentivize the stuff you don't like. It costs points for challenges, that's good. Make it cost points for naming an Avatar, and give points when a player disassociates himself from an Avatar. Maybe points for contact with Topoi get stored into an Avatar, unusable, until cashed out when the player disassociates from the Avatar. And somehow give more points for contact with the Topoi of other players. Maybe only half the points in an Avatar from contact with your own Topoi cash out, and all the points from contact with other Topoi do. That way an Avatar maintains some value to the other players when it goes up for grabs. Keep edits to the same scene, but allow Insertions of prior stuff into the narrative for a cost. You'll be rewarding players for making use of the Topoi created by others, and for not playing out the "my cool Avatar" competition.

Paul