I broke this off from Zak's Survey, as I don't want to inject my own query into his thread.

Here are some highlights to get us started:

I wrote: Something that I find interesting is that the first places I ran across them (Marvel Super Heroes and DC Heroes), they were the same currency used for improvement. So in order to use them to exert control (in these cases limited to just fixing a missed roll) you had to give up experience.

I assume this started as some sort of "balancing" effort. The trade-off for exerting choice in resolution was that your character didn't get better as quickly. Probably well-meaning, but it doesn't exactly encourage players to exert control on the story, does it?

Montag (about Inspiration in Adventure!) wrote: However, all the examples in the book suggest that players might only want to use this to ensure or heighten the survival/success of their character. You pay one point of Inspiration less if you include some complication, but the idea that player might want use Inspiration to shape plot, e.g. by adding dramatic tension is not really considered. So, while the rules let you do more than save your characters bacon, the text IMHO clearly suggests that there is no other purpose for Inspiration.

It's funy you raise this issue, because it's been on my mind recently with some mechanics I'm working on for Principium Novum. I just introduced a resource which can be spent to give narrative control, more or less. Now, my intention behind the mechanic really had nothing to with limiting or controlling narrative control. Rather it had to do with introducing a reward mechanism! Maybe this is unusual, and backwards from how things typically go, but I needed to limit something (narrative power) so that getting it would be a reward for other behavior. Only later did it dawn on me that of course I was limiting narrative control. If I didn't need the reward, I wouldn't need points or costs for it at all.

As I said, this may be unusual, but maybe you're asking the wrong question in supposing that designers have typically focused on the limitation without considering its consequences: they may have been focused on the consequences without considering the limitation. Just a thought.

Jasper wrote: It's funy you raise this issue, because it's been on my mind recently with some mechanics I'm working on for Principium Novum. I just introduced a resource which can be spent to give narrative control, more or less. Now, my intention behind the mechanic really had nothing to with limiting or controlling narrative control. Rather it had to do with introducing a reward mechanism! Maybe this is unusual, and backwards from how things typically go, but I needed to limit something (narrative power) so that getting it would be a reward for other behavior. Only later did it dawn on me that of course I was limiting narrative control. If I didn't need the reward, I wouldn't need points or costs for it at all.

Most mainstream designs of the past have persisted in the idea that there has to be some trade off in using this kind of "hero point" mechanic.

However, I can give examples of games that do not.

In James Bond you earned hero points just for rolling a critical - and the points weren't used for anything else.

Theatrix uses plot points for both advancement and directorial powers for players - however, even if you spend a point on directorial power, you still get to use it for advancement.

More recently, the actual die rolling mechanic of Trollbabe awards the player directorial power when they fail, without any relationship to advancement.

On the other hand, in The Pool, if you want to gain a die (advancement point) you have to surrender directorial input.

So this mechanic has been played with quite a bit - it just hasn't made it into the top marketed rpgs until recently.

Sure, I'm aware that there are plenty of mechanics that have player control built in without a trade-off with something else.

What I want to get opinions about is this: are there compelling reasons why a trade-off system is good? Or is the trend just a hold-over from times past?

Well, it seems to me that player control of the plot and the improvement of the characters does not have to be tied together. Of course not.

On the other hand, if you're designing a game where the players get control of the plot as a rewards and the improvement of the character is part of the reward system, then you're left with either having two reward systems, or having to sacrifice character improvement for plot control (or vice-versa).

I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. My gamers, as an example, were not used to taking part in creating the plot. In our group, shaping the plot is the responsibility of the GM. However, when I introduced a house rule into the game allowing the players to use the 'experience points' of the system for minor versions of plot point control, they greatly enjoyed it. When I suggested the idea that we might modify the rules further, so as to allow them to come out with plot points without XP spending I was met with sour looks. My players (and even myself as a player) have come to expect a certain feel of balance in our games. Any form of control in the game must be met with some payment. To the players of my group, having access to plot points without some form of payment would feel like cheating.

In addition, I've never quite gelled with the idea of the -character- being rewarded at all. When my D&D character finds himself a nifty Axe of Rapid Whacks I never imagine him as feeling 'rewarded'. When I jot down my nightly XP haul for the same character I don't imagine him feeling rewarded then either. Heck, I don't even imagine him feeling any smarter, stronger, or anything else that may be tied to the points I scored. Nope, I always feel that it's me, the player, who's recieved the reward. It's my XP, it's my axe. Therefore, I don't feel that my character is loosing anything if I use my rewards for anything other than character advancement. In other words, if my GM hands me a Green M&M as a reward, then tells me that I can spend the Green M&M on either advancing my character or to take hold of the reigns of the plot for a few. My character has nothing to loose by my metagame decision. He will either become more powerful (which he, as a character, may not even notice anyway), or he may suddenly find himself in a plot written by a different gamer.

So, I suppose, as I ponder this issue, my question to you, Coxcomb, is this:

Does the idea of the character giving up advancement in order for the player to have narrative control get under your skin? If so, then why? And what do you propose as an alternative?

-Eric

Technocrat13 wrote:
So, I suppose, as I ponder this issue, my question to you, Coxcomb, is this:

Does the idea of the character giving up advancement in order for the player to have narrative control get under your skin? If so, then why? And what do you propose as an alternative?

Hi Jay,

Traditionally the assumption has been that the only "in" for player input is through their character. Therefore, character effectiveness has been the expected way of rewarding the players. Second, you've had a massive fear of players taking power and abusing it. Tie these two together, and I've found most of the XP/plot point systems to be the result.

Notice that players are always given limited resources for control, while
GMs usually are given free reign for input(Universalis and Rune being notable exceptions).

Chris

coxcomb wrote:
What I want to get opinions about is this: are there compelling reasons why a trade-off system is good? Or is the trend just a hold-over from times past?

Technocrat13 wrote: When my D&D character finds himself a nifty Axe of Rapid Whacks I never imagine him as feeling 'rewarded'.

No, Jay, I kept the authorial power and the effectiveness resources/rewards completely separate -- I didn't quite see what you were getting at there.

I think balance has indeed probably been the main reason for such a split historically, or at least it has resulted in it. Those players who don't, for whatever reason, want more efficacy through their character can get it some other way. I don't think this is a bad thing. As often as the idea of "balance" is overstressed, it usually is referring to characters -- I think balance between player, in terms of efficacy (that is, having some impact on the game) is quite good.

I guess I'm also suggesting that it's hard to really draw a line between narrative control and efficacy, or to split character and player, especially when you start considering games with uneven player/character ratios and so on. But I guess you were asking specifically about more familiar forms, where such a distinction can be made?

Can't really think of any further reasons to have such a trade-off, other than simplicity as Technocrat points out.

Technocrat13 wrote: Does the idea of the character giving up advancement in order for the player to have narrative control get under your skin? If so, then why? And what do you propose as an alternative?

Jasper wrote: No, Jay, I kept the authorial power and the effectiveness resources/rewards completely separate -- I didn't quite see what you were getting at there.

To mangle Marx "There is a spectre haunting narrative authority rules: the spectre of gamism."

I think the trade off mechanisms have arisen through fear of gamists "breaking" the game through narrative authority... which is a pretty unfounded fear in actual play amongst a funcitonal group. But I can see many GM's having conniptions over handing over narrative authority in any way beyond the actions of characters.

Another reason is the idea that more powerful characters (developed through experience) impose narrative control diagetically, through their actions in the SiS, so the choice is one-off non-diagetic narrative control now, or long-term diagetic narrative control later.

But in order for this to work as a character balancing mechanism, you have to assume that more powerful characters really do exert more narrative control, and still implicit is the assumption that narrative control will be used primarily for character advantage.

I think the problem with hero points = character advancement and plot influence is the sheer difficulty of producing mechanics that balance the two options. A single reroll in a fight is worth how many points of combat skill?

I think it's just much cleaner from a design perspective not to get into that kind of exchange rate conundrum.

John Kim wrote: ... By having these both come from the same pool, you can have (1) the player who constantly takes narrative control but never advances, and (2) the player who doesn't take narrative control and whose character becomes a powerhouse compared to the others ...

No problem, Jay, just didn't want to muddle the thread.

Ian: definitely true. I'd just add that it gets even tougher to pull off this balancing act when you start talking about really broad narrative power, like introduction of plot elements. In my game Graal (hey, I get to trot out another design example!) there are Narrative Points that give just this kind of power. Now sine they're points, there needs to be some kind of metric for their use -- just how much can you narrate with one point? But how do you measure a narration? I of course got into some trouble with balancing (you might say 'calibrating') this metric with the other points in the game, in an attempt to say "narrating one 'pretty good thing' is as good as two points of character improvement." But that was really wishy-washy.


Oh, while I'm mentioning Graal, it occurs to me that something else the game does is relevant here. While I do have the narrative points that can be spent to give power or give increased character efficacy, a greater distinction is made between different kinds of characters from the get-go. Specifically, the main character is by nature focused on efficacy, improving his abilities at a rapid natural pace. All of the other characters are less effective, especially by the end of the game. The situation with players is reversed, so that the players of the secondary characters have far more narrative control than whoever controls the main guy. This kind of system still maintains the player-efficacy-balance issue, but (by itself) avoids points of any kind.

Jasper wrote: In my game Graal (hey, I get to trot out another design example!) there are Narrative Points that give just this kind of power.

I very much like the idea of rotating the distinction. This sort of relates back to a suggestion that Mike Holmes made back a while ago about reward mechanisms, which was to use spotlight time as a reward. But instead of directly doling out spotlight time (with points or more informally), we could give out temporary increased efficacy, which would lead to increased spotlight time. At the same time give everyone else narrative control. Could work for a lot of games I think.

Is it oversimplifying things to point out that most systems of character advancement produce permanent benefits that the player enjoys over and over again, whereas most systems of narrative control produce one-time benefits?

Would the issues be different if the player were buying into an increased amount of narrative control forever afterwards?

This thread is about the division of rewards between narrative power and advancement.

Howzabout narrative control as advancement?



My character has "Shoot Big Gun: 7".
If I fail with my skill, I can spend 7 points (or 8, or whatever) to rewrite the plot around my skill and make my failure as a success. This will also take my skill up by a point.
This is the only form of advancement.



One application of this would just allow skill successes. A more Director-sharing game could allow all sorts of things.

Does this do away with the balancing issues, or is this insufficient for what people are looking for?

-Matt

Garbanzo wrote: My character has "Shoot Big Gun: 7".
If I fail with my skill, I can spend 7 points (or 8, or whatever) to rewrite the plot around my skill and make my failure as a success. This will also take my skill up by a point.
This is the only form of advancement.

One application of this would just allow skill successes. A more Director-sharing game could allow all sorts of things.

Does this do away with the balancing issues, or is this insufficient for what people are looking for?

Alan wrote:
Erik,

Aren't rewards actually for the player?