I was thinking about game design after playing one of my favorite party/not quite board games…Jenga. For those of you unfamiliar with it, you take a stack of wooden blocks and pull out blocks from the middle or the bottom, and add it to the top, trying not to topple the stack.

As a game, Jenga is very satisfying to the gamist in me. It contains everything I would want as a gamist to enjoy…It has risk/gamble elements, as taking from risky places makes it harder for the other players, but also harder for yourself should they make it through their turns. It has the terrible suspense of each and every turn being critical in the game. There’s also the satisfaction of completing your turn and making it one more round. The satisfaction increases as the difficulty increases as well.

I was trying to put that into my Persona system with the reroll mechanic.
I was wondering if anyone has attempted to include suspense(of resolution) in their mechanics or knows of systems that have.

Thanks,

Chris

This is the biggest advantage I can think of, from my POV, that Gamist design provides. If you don't care about story or simulation, then you can focus on the struggle. For an RPG we're often talking about death of the character, and the attendant loss of the players RL investment of time, effort, and loss of presige, whatever. From that angle, many games have this suspense element.

"Will they live!"

Mike

Hey,
There's a homebrew game in my Weds nite group that uses the pulling of Jenga blocks out to create suspense / tension in their horror RPG... Despair? Something like that... I haven't played it yet, and the rules aren't yet available, they're keeping them secret for now. Kool idea tho!
Sean

Hello,

In a somewhat less "ohhh shit!" way, the eponymous mechanic in The Pool operates to a similar effect.

Best,
Ron

On 2001-12-27 16:26, unodiablo wrote:
There's a homebrew game in my Weds nite group that uses the pulling of Jenga blocks out to create suspense / tension in their horror RPG...

I was looking at the gambling mechanic in the Pool, although because there is never anything to MAKE you roll, short of immenent death of your character, so the terror of being hosed is a little softened. In theory, you could spend no dice in improving your character, and still take on a heavyweight(the joys of being a hobbit :razz: ).

Actually, the reason it was really sticking in my head wasn't so much just the struggle, but the joy of not knowing what is going to happen and that each moment is important. On the other hand, I didn't want just a single roll to make or break the resolution(save vs. death, ha!), I wanted the dice to "tell" a story in that it could flipflop the odds as you played.

Bankuei

I'd never thought of a mechanic for Jenga-like suspense, but now that the topic has been been brought up, its going to be on my mind because I can see a lot of potential application.

Laurel

From a gamist view point, there's 3 things I really enjoy, that is strategy, continual threat of a shift in power(who's ahead, turnover), and suspense. I simply used Jenga as an example since it contains all three. I'm the same way with cards, board games, or video games.

One of the biggest difficulties I find in design is balancing the strategy of karma with the unpredictability of fortune. I believe that there should be a level of strategic thinking, but it should not be to the point where someone who knows the rules better can find a single winning strategy. I believe that there needs to be at least 3 tactics to any gamist system in order to maintain people's interest(rock-paper-scissors).

I think the strategies should be balanced by a level of fortune, so that there is no "sure thing" in the game. I find between these two things, there is a level of suspense that keeps people excited. These are my biases as far as designing a level of suspense in mechanics alone.

Has anyone taken this kind of consideration into design mechanics?

Chris

A friend of mine has a set of paperback RPG books, dragion something? Anyway, IIRC they use a mechanic by which one of the wizard types rolls against a power rating; the number of rolls is accumulated and effects the probability of failure, with failing being the loss of use of the ability. This is about equivaklent to having to pull a jenga block solo, every time you wanted to do womething. A game might be visualised with a mechanic in which a scene had a "probability" or "fixedness" value or something, which was challenged by multiple actors through a currency trading mechanic or some such, with a steadily increasing probability of catastrophic failure triggering the resolution of the scene. However, the primary mechanic of jenga itself is the passing of risk on to other players; its hard to see the extension of the competitve angle. Perhaps the "removing a brick" indicates, ohh.... an outcome or event in your favour, you are thus using up "lives" or "definition points" or something, with the risk that it might collapse on your go. Framinng that risk in terms of the mechanic delivering some unpleasant result, and why the risk is shared by the players, would I guess be down to the relationship between mechanic and setting.

Hmm. Maybe you could say that to try to use this directly for Cthulhu, the risk is indeed sanity and the sharing of the risk represents the reassurance that things are Really OK that your companions give you. Thus, the virtue of the group risk sharing for the individual is that the risk-burden is passed to someone else if you can succesfully pull a block. This actually works quite nicely in the sense that dramatically, two characters seldom become quivering wrecks simultaneously. The bigger the group, the longer someone else has to worry about it and the longer you are likely to hold out. On the other hand, if its your pull and your tower of sanity comes crashing down, you're eliminated and the tower is rebuilt for the other players (or you accrue some defect, and play on, whatever). If players are being eliminated, you inetrpret this as the weakening of the gestalt confidence and hence the increased frequency with which you end up having to pull - the smaller the group (don't get separated) the higher the individual risk. Much of then interface mechanics with the RPG system that determine when you would pull a block would be structured around determining who is to pull next, given the escalation of risk.

Hmm. Or how about a predation model for vampire, say; the tower represents the capacity of the kine of a given area to support kindred; every vampire in the city must pull in order to stay fed over X period, from the most secure to the least; pull order is therefore etsablished by what sort of arrangements you have or by contested ability roll, or whatever. Whoever gets the tower on their heads doesn't feed and dies or suffers some injury, and presumably (becuase individuals appear only once in the pull order, all those later in the order too.

Incidentally, there is some of this sort of thing in the L5R Iaijutsu mechnaicm, in which two contestents bid up each others and their own probability of failure in order to sort of outbid each other - to force the conflict into a range of probabilities more favourable to you than to them.

[ This Message was edited by: contracycle on 2001-12-29 15:37 ]

Very interesting. For the Vampire example, I'd think that one big risk of "pulling" would be discovery, or at least some violation of the Masquerade, etc.

Might make for a good magic system limiter. As characters in the same area of the game world cast spells it "destabilizes" reality. After a certain point the character making the bad "pull" is hit by magic backlash. At which point the balance is restored, and mages can start casting without danger again.

Mike

*wanders away to get a Jenga set and write "religious faith", "hope", "love", "rationality" etc on the various blocks, for the next game of Cthulhu...*

That is a quite brilliant idea. Sanity checks become a test to see how many bricks you remove. A player writes personality descriptors on each brick (one Jenga set per player, I guess...). When you lose Sanity, you have to remove a number of bricks, the number depends on how bad the Sanity loss was. When the tower falls, you suffer a breakdown of some kind...and when you rebuild the tower, you have to remove a number of bricks (but the tower has to be kept as tall as possible, so your stability *decreaes* over time)...and you have to play the character according to the descriptors visible on the blocks.

Woo. My mind has been blown.

"As tall as possible" would mean one block per level. I don't think that you actually mean that the first time someone went temporarily insane, they'd have to rebuild their tower at one block per level.

...build back to the original height - the same number of "stories" - using (x) fewer bricks. Fewer by how many? Is (x) a constant or a variable?...

Epoch - I mean the tower would have be as close to the original as possible, so the upper stories of the new tower would have fewer than the normal number of blocks when rebuilt.

Gotcha.

Hmmmm... how many Jenga blocks in a stack? I'm trying to convert from SAN to Jenga. Also, there are three starting Jenga blocks in each layer, IIRC. That means that you can't get down below one third of your SAN and still rebuild your tower to its original height.

So, lets say there are 75 blocks in a Jenga set (25 layers high). That would mean that, over time you could theoretically lose 50 blocks and still make you're tower. So, One Jenga block per 2 SAN lost? Might work. Howsabout if you lose an odd number by the roll, you have to take another out, but can replace it after a second?

OTOH, that means that remaking your tower after even twenty five are lost is going to be difficult. Hmmm... Perhaps one per three? That would mean that total insanity would begin at about 33 (time 3 is 100) Jenga blocks lost. Might be more workable.

Anybody got the accurate figures, or a better rate of exchange?

Mike

Since my question kinda disappeared.... I'll run with what's going on...

For those of you considering using Multiple Jenga stacks for players, perhaps a twist in the rules might involve taking out blocks from stacks, and people who roll real bad getting extra(3 people lost blocks, one unfortunate person got those 3 stacked on top of his shaky tower....) to represent the weak link...

You also might consider making some players take multiple turns if you're using a single stack for the whole group... :smile:

Of course, does it become more important that a particular character survives sane more than others? Can players be willing to take a mental spill so that someone else can hold out longer?

Chris

Sorry, Bankuei, this is another tangent.

You asked whether or not people would be willing to "take it for the team," losing SAN so that a more valuable member of the group didn't have to.

I'm reminded of my experience with the Buffy boardgame. Very brief summary for those who haven't played before:

There were (in this case) three "Good" players, on a team. Madeline controlled Buffy, Damian controlled Xander and Willow, and I controlled Oz. Victory conditions were that we had to kill the evil leader before he could kill Buffy.

We won. Oz was killed in like the last three turns. I was quite pleased (none of us good-team players had played before, while the evil player had some experience). Madeline and Damian looked concerned and said that they were sorry Oz had died. I looked at them strangely. We had won, hadn't we? Who cared if my piece had died -- especially so late in the game that I didn't have a significant amount of time out of play?

Anyhow, to address your actual question, I think that some people (me-lookalikes) would be happy to take it for the team, and other people (Damian and Madeline lookalikes) are more focussed on their relationship with their personal characters, and would be less likely to sacrifice their characters for a strategic advantage.

Bankuei originally wrote:
[Jenga] has the terrible suspense of each and every turn being critical in the game. There’s also the satisfaction of completing your turn and making it one more round. The satisfaction increases as the difficulty increases as well.

I was trying to put that into my Persona system with the reroll mechanic. I was wondering if anyone has attempted to include suspense(of resolution) in their mechanics or knows of systems that have.

Actually, the tension level is pretty high even if no one else is around to watch you take your turn...It's sort of like Operation or Perfection in the way Jenga raises your blood pressure and tension levels. In terms of die rolls, everyone remembers getting tensed up when it came to those critical "instant death" saving throws for D&D, even if it wasn't your character.

I wasn't necessarily thinking of making initiative, hit, parry, location, damage, etc. the method of creating suspense, it somewhat just drags out combat that way, more like the tension that you get knowing something major is on the line.

The Pool does a great job because you are effectively gambling Story points/Experience points when you choose to gamble dice away, and its the sole means of you gaining extra dice in your pool. Likewise HeroWars makes each resolution into a gambling of Action points, with the odds modified by your ability level in a given contest.

A lot of the narrativist games do a great job of simplifying rules so that you can have a few(or just one) roll for resolution, but you can often lose the joy of that critical, "This is it" roll at the climax of a event. Because oftentimes the roll narrates the entire conflict, you roll first and then narrate the event, while most other types of games go intent, roll, outcome.

I want to keep the authoritorial freedom and rules simplicity, but I also want to have the mechanics support and emulate and escalation of tension. I was curious if anyone else has seen this idea of escalation of tension, raising the stakes as a scene goes on, built into mechanics, or has considered puttting it there.

Chris

Bankuei wrote:

I wasn't necessarily thinking of making initiative, hit, parry, location, damage, etc. the method of creating suspense, it somewhat just drags out combat that way, more like the tension that you get knowing something major is on the line.

[Snip.]

A lot of the Narrativist games do a great job of simplifying rules so that you can have a few (or just one) roll for resolution, but you can often lose the joy of that critical, "This is it" roll at the climax of a event. Because oftentimes the roll narrates the entire conflict, you roll first and then narrate the event, while most other types of games go intent, roll, [and] outcome.

I want to keep the [authorial] freedom and rules simplicity, but I also want to have the mechanics support and emulate and escalation of tension. I was curious if anyone else has seen this idea of escalation of tension, raising the stakes as a scene goes on, built into mechanics, or has considered putting it there.

Hey,

Though I understand some game systems use a ‘conflict resolution system’ rather than a ‘task resolution system’ to achieve this effect, as far as I know Scattershot is the only one that has both and subsequently talks about using whichever is the most appropriate to the tension level.

Story Engine defaults to a scene level resolution system, in which individual contributions from player characters participating in the scene are pooled, but has "quick take" mechanics that enable players to have their characters engage opponents individually, which draws any dice the opponent would be contributing to scene resolution away into a featured one-on-one. When that's resolved, the quick take mechanics then determine what dice go back into affecting the scene resolution. So it provides both the GM and the players with the ability to tweak the tension level by choosing when and where to focus attention on individual conflicts.

Paul

Plus, with Story Engine, there's always the option of resorting to the simplified Story Bones mechanics, which can be used for specific tasks, rather than scene resolution.

Hero Wars is similar, too, with extended vs. regular conflicts.

Mike

I've seen both, which have impressed me and given a lot of ideas as far as how task resolution should be flexible enough to encompass the players' needs. I think I should clarify my question a little more...

I'm asking specifically, mechanics wise only, what in general have people seen built into systems for the building of tension, and what has worked well. For example, Hero Wars has its ever critical Action Points for extended actions, D&D has hit points, the Pool has the pool of dice, the 2 Page Action Movie Game has its "build-up" special move list, etc.

In most of these cases it becomes more critical to succeed as a set of resources(points, dice, etc) deplete, just as it becomes harder but more satisfying to succeed in Jenga as the blocks continue to be pulled out.

While there are plenty of ways to narrate a great paced story, with wonderful tension building and release along the way, that's not specific to mechanics, which is the avenue I'm currently exploring.

Hopefully that makes my line of inquiry a little more clear :smile:

Chris

Mike Holmes wrote:

Hero Wars is similar, too, with extended vs. regular conflicts.

Well, Hero Wars uses an extended resolution system, which involves each contestant with a pool of action points, which you bid to gamble on your next roll. You could narrate each roll as a single attack, maneuver, or feint to increase your advantage. As far as a particular manuever being more likely to succeed than another, it really doesn't get into that level of simulation.

Story Engine actually has a simple enough engine that you COULD use it for a initiative, hit, parry, damage, etc type resolution, but that's like using a PC Powerbook to hammer in nails...

I found Story Engine does a good job of raising tension, particularly when you have a bad situation to start with, since using the quick takes, you can then use smaller actions to improve your odds with the scene resolution, so each roll becomes important. And, since each quick take only gives you extra dice for the scene resolution, you aren't guaranteed success in the end. It makes for a very dramatic resolution.

Chris

Fang,

Hero Wars has whole paragraphs set off by a little symbol (one of those thingies that they clap together to start a scene in a movie; mental block on the name) that indicate that they are about how to drive drama and suspense, etc. One describes how the extended resolution system should be emplyed in order to manipulate the tension level. Small bids mean low tension and rising action, large bids relate to critical moments in the conflict, etc. Mr. Laws has it all laid out very well right there.

The simple tests are what you find in most other games. Roll versus the appropriate stat plus bonuses trying to get under the Target number generated. It does not spend a lot of time focusing on lots of combat detail, though it does give methods for generating it should you want to. In this way it is not a scene mechanic "reaching down". Both methods exist in parallel.

In this way a Hero Wars GM could Transition (to use your term) from Simulation to Narrativism by using more extended conflicts (the reverse is even more true). Not that I think Laws even considered any of this in design, and not that your system couldn't do it better. Just that it seems to fit the bill.

Mike

I don't think Story Engine does that kind of fight scene breakdown (into individual swings, misses, hits, etc) very well--you could use it that way, although the way the game is structured, you won't really get bonuses for specific tactics the way you would in, say, D&D or the old Runequest. Which is probably why I like it, because that kind of ultra-specific combat bores the absolute crap out of me. I'm much, much happier with abstracted combat that you can make specific through player narration, like you do in Story Engine. And I'm not a big fan of mechanics that are different for fighting (breaking every movement down into separate rolls) than anything else (for example, picking a lock is generally resolved through one roll for the whole action).

Side note: while watching Lord of the Rings, I kept seeing things in Story Engine & Hero Wars terms, as extended contests of conflict resolution & scene resolution, rather than task resolution.

[ This Message was edited by: joshua neff on 2002-01-04 11:16 ]

On 2002-01-04 11:14, joshua neff wrote:

Side note: while watching Lord of the Rings, I kept seeing things in Story Engine & Hero Wars terms, as extended contests of conflict resolution & scene resolution, rather than task resolution.

[ This Message was edited by: joshua neff on 2002-01-04 11:16 ]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for mentioning 2PAM in the same sentence as Hero Wars and The Pool. :smile: I hope you like playing it!

One major thing I've changed in Dead Meat 2 is the resolution system. The game used to play fairly standard in this respect; state your intended action, then roll the bucket 'o dice and see if you succeed. Now the mechanics resolve conflicts like this BEFORE any stated action takes place. The Director frames a scene, and stops at the point where conflict would begin. Then the Players roll D666, arrange their dice, distribute Help and Black Flag's, and then base their narration of the scene based on the outcome of the roll. The Players, in effect, 'script' the scene using the game mechanics.

In play, it increases tension greatly; the Players don't know what they need to come up with a narration for until the scene starts, and the dice may decide they descibe zombie eating the Persona's face off rather than some heroic action.

Some other examples:
-Action dice increasing during play in Extreme Vengeance. The rules also state you can't face the main villian until you have enough Action dice as well.
-Survival horror games use a lot of 'bullet' chips or tokens. Tension increases as you run out of ammo.
-Charges and Endurance-type stats in super hero games. "Oh no, I only have enough energy for one last giga-blast!"
-I don't remember how it works clearly, but complications rules in Universalis are made for this.
-Poker Chips in Deadlands. Conbat is always more tense when you run out?
-The little face of your QUAKE guy, and the Health rating. It's a computer game, but when your health gets low, it's time to dodge and look for a medkit!

Sean

Mike Holmes wrote: Hmmmm... how many Jenga blocks in a stack? I'm trying to convert from SAN to Jenga. Also, there are three starting Jenga blocks in each layer, IIRC. That means that you can't get down below one third of your SAN and still rebuild your tower to its original height.

So, lets say there are 75 blocks in a Jenga set (25 layers high). That would mean that, over time you could theoretically lose 50 blocks and still make you're tower. So, One Jenga block per 2 SAN lost? Might work. Howsabout if you lose an odd number by the roll, you have to take another out, but can replace it after a second?

OTOH, that means that remaking your tower after even twenty five are lost is going to be difficult. Hmmm... Perhaps one per three? That would mean that total insanity would begin at about 33 (time 3 is 100) Jenga blocks lost. Might be more workable.

Anybody got the accurate figures, or a better rate of exchange?

Mike