I'm mulling over the seeds of what might be a new game, but I'm running into some mental blocks with it. Since the game isn't even a full seed, I'm still dealing with it pretty theoretically (which is why I think this thread belongs over here in theory, but feel free to move it over to design).

The premise for the game: the character exist in a pseudo-Europe in the early iron age, where their people have been pushed off traditional farmlands into rough mountainous areas with nothing but the clothes on their backs and their herds.

So I want this game to be about survival, not just of the character, but of the tribal group (I envision extended-family units with 40-60 members of all ages and their herds). To do that, you have to find enough food, etc. and of course the best pasture and safest weather are down on the low-lands where the raiders would happily kill the herds and the people.

The difficulty I'm having is in coming up with mechanics and rewards that don't reduce the game to a Gamist challenge or to a Simulationist number-crunch - running the game as a series of random events and encounters seems like a recipe for failure. It doesn't necessarily need to be Narrativist, but I'd rather have players addressing a Premise like "What am I willing to do to keep my tribe alive?" than asking "Is it statistically safer to risk starving or face the bandits?" For that matter, the mechanics should make fending off starvation as interesting as fighting bandits.

So, are there any ideas about how a game can handle something like survival in an interesting way?

Script! Script! Write up a script of what the participants would be saying to each other!

Also, to make any conflict interesting, remember to keep whiffs out of the picture. "No" should always lead to "No, and" (as in further complication or benefit). With this in mind, you'll have to find ways to make survival not a "survive or die" thing. More a "things get tougher and leaner, or they get better for a bit (before getting tougher and leaner in a different way)".

Like how you put it, do you face the bandits? Or leave for safer ground?

So how are you picturing the participation to work? Traditional, with a GM and players? More round-robin? Are players in charge of a single person? A group?

I've always liked the idea of a PC's actions having a large holistic effect on the people around them. In warfare, a PC wins the battle with the enemy general and the tide turns. With a survival game, this could be easily refleted. The PC finds food, and his tribe (or subsection) finds food.

Also, how do you see the players interacting? Do they play separate tribes? Members of the same tribe? A gestalt hivemind which controls the tribe?

Zak Arntson wrote: Script! Script! Write up a script of what the participants would be saying to each other!

So how are you picturing the participation to work? Traditional, with a GM and players? More round-robin? Are players in charge of a single person? A group?

Also, how do you see the players interacting? Do they play separate tribes? Members of the same tribe? A gestalt hivemind which controls the tribe?

Also, to make any conflict interesting, remember to keep whiffs out of the picture. "No" should always lead to "No, and" (as in further complication or benefit). With this in mind, you'll have to find ways to make survival not a "survive or die" thing. More a "things get tougher and leaner, or they get better for a bit (before getting tougher and leaner in a different way)".

Like how you put it, do you face the bandits? Or leave for safer ground?

I like this idea. The challenge is interesting; how do you make survival the focus of a good game? Allow me to think out loud on some of the concepts...


---> THE TRIBE <---
It will break up into families, and individuals. Not all families are alike, some are stronger and some are weaker. Some have a tradition for special skills. There will be inter-family groups of herders, gatherers, hunters and craftsmen, to complicate the picture.

The various groups and individuals within the tribe will have differing views about what strategy to choose, and a relative status varying with the circumstances. Some will go for confrontation, while others will prefer to search for peaceful pastures (other side of the mountains?). The hunters may love the mountains, while the gatherers like the forest and the herders need to get their herds down on the open pastures...

Relations with family and friends may form alliances, but may also be the spur of conflicts. Relations could translate into challenges like:
- Your mother asserts her authority, and forbids you to spy on the bandits.
- Your girl is proud of you, and expect you to act the heroic leader.
- The wise grandmother of your family is too frail to traverse the mountains. If the tribe choose to do this, you will have to leave her. If you leave her, you will loose the one human dearest to you, while your family and tribe will loose a source of wisdom...
- etc.


---> THE NATURE <---
It will be full of beasts, and these people will have to deal with them as grave challenges, especially in times when resources are sparse (battling it out with hungry wolves and the likes).

To hunt will be a serious challenge, not only to keep from hunger, but to keep from being hurt while doing it. An angry moose can do considerable damage to a hunter who has to go in close to kill it. Damage may render you helpless in a time of crisis, and may change your status (from hunter to gatherer, from gatherer to herder, from herder to baby sitter, from baby sitter to beggar, from beggar to outcast). To make some research on likely damage gotten in such societies, and give GMs an idea of how to use it, may be useful. It is important for each and every individual to stay a useful member of the tribe. A character reduced to a certain level may be "eliminated", and used as a NPC (showing the players the possible downfall).

Weather should be used to complicate challenges. Sun will make the herds restless (grass drying up). Rain will hamper vision, and make the mountains more dangerous to traverse. Wind will sap the strenght out of weaker familymembers. You'll have to imagine beforehand how various weather may influence the tribe, and how to make it a substantial part of the drama (bonuses, challenges, atmosphere).


---> FRIEND AND FOE <---
The bandits are obvious foes in this game, but what make them such a grave challenge? Sheer numbers? Training as warriors? Better equipment? A great and brutal leader? is there any chance of the tribe winning a confrontation? Are there weaknesses to be revealed about the opposition?

Other tribes may be in the same situation, and that may be a problem (pastures in the mountains are sparse, and several tribes has been driven into the mountains). It may also be a source of help. Is there any hope of an alliance? Will an alliance help in any way, or will it only place undue restrictions on the tribe? Will a peaceful agreement on borders be threathened by bad balance: Our tribe got the better deal (huzza for you, our negotiator), so the other tribe feel tricked and threatened (bugger you, our negotiator). There may be peaceful tribes, and aggressive ones, and no sure way to meet them...

What about relations between tribes? The need to get fresh blood into the tribe may institute some kind of baby-snatching. More children means more work, possibly more enemies, but also a greater growth potential for the tribe. What about the man who meets the woman out in the woods, and the attachment they form, in spite of being from different tribes? How will their relationship complicate things, or help, when the tribes ends in conflict? What will your group of hunters or gatherers do, when you find a very rich resource, and a similar group from another tribe also want to exploit it? How do you resolve the shouting game? What will the players have to do, to initiate negotiations? What will they have to do, to scare the other group off? (no one will like to fight in an environment where any small damage may be a big threath)

---> DRAMA <---
How do you make scenarios for such a game, and how do you make a method which fascilitate an interesting drama. Conflict resolution, GM-techniques, character qualities.

Will you place the characters on top of the "status-track", as hunters (high "dramatic" potential), and leave the other groups for the GM to use as complicating elements?

How do the GM and the other players go about sewing the various elements of the game into a focused drama with it's own special "feel"? What will make the game session something out of the ordinary?



I hope this was helpful in some way. Good luck!

Ludography post: Check out and PLAY the game "Tribes" from Steve Jackson games. It's set in pre-agricultural hunter-gatherer times, but pay special attention to the rules for making rules (can't remember them off the top of my head).

Thomas, some excellent ideas and suggestions in there.

Your views on the internal nature of the tribe pretty well anticipated mine. There should be some rivalries and disputes internally, but with the committment that they're all stuck together. Still, it would be very appropriate if the hunters went out to face bears because they seemed less fearsome than that damned mother in law back home.

As for the bandits, they're better more or less for all those reasons. I haven't decided on a mechanic yet, but I'm stongly considering a racial set of skills based on upbringing. Bandits are raised as warrior, while the tribesmen are farmers and herders. This will give a bandit warrior an edge of a few points over a tribal warrior. Part of the inisistence on early iron age tech is simple: the bandits have it and the tribesmen don't.

However, I don't see the bandits being unreasonable savages. Trade them a couple of goats for a sword. Or sic them on your enemies. Or give them tribute for free passage (though the setting would rest on the assumption that the tribute for going back home is simply more than the tribesmen can pay). And bandits can still be killed depending on force sizes and situations - it's just that battles are costly in manpower.

There are also other tribes. In fact, I'm thinking that the player's people broke up into dozens of tribes when they were pushed into the mountains. These tribes are basically friendly to each other, but when survival is on the line disputes are likely. This would make negotiation important.

As for status, characters would have status both inside and outside the tribe.

I'm split on weather. Obviously, seasons will drive certain general modifiers, but I'm not sure if I'll worry about it on a day to day basis. In fact, I think weather might be the result of rolls, not a modifier (see mechanic ideas in a second).

Scenarios: I'm still rough on this too, but one specific idea is that the GM think of a theme for each year, which gets played out as one scenario per season. For example: one year's theme might be meeting a girl in a forest - the rest of the year, you spend courting and getting her tribe to go alogn with the marriage. (Inter-tribal marriages would be common, I think, if only to keep inbreeding down. But the tribe losing the woman would want recompensation - if she's a ten-goat woman, can you afford her?) Another year's theme might be stopping a particularly ruthless bandit leader who's decided to hunt tribesmen in the mountains because he's bored. Or one tribe has gotten uppity in some way and is causing problems for everyone else.

The challenge in scenarios in a survival game is handling transitions. This has always been challenge for me as a GM, particularly in fantasy-type settings. Here, you're going to be frequently going from a week to week (or even month to month) scale of hunting and farming down to a minute to minute scale for negotiation and combat. Handling that without psychological whiplash will be a key, I think. This is part of why I see scenarios focusing on particular events during a year, so the rest can provide a backdrop that still lets people get into the moment (so to speak). A scene framing structure may help too.

Tribal rituals may also help - if there's a formalized greeting dialogue that players have to learn it might force them into character and active dialogue and out of summary/math mode. Hmmm, that's a good idea, I think.

OK, Mechanics time.

Here's what I realize I don't want. Most game handle this by saying "In winter, you have a 10% chance of finding food and a 30% chance of getting frostbite." (or something that amounts to that). In other words, players always playing the odds - it might work, it might not. It can literally come to a point where the GM says "Well, that was a bad roll. You all die."

I think players need to choose the bad outcomes. Your roll will only tell you the quality of what happened, not the specifics. So if you're going hunting, you make a roll. I'm thinking you'll add a skill (I think I'll do away with attributes) to a die roll and compare it to ao target number. The difference between TN and roll is the quality of your result, which translates directly into things like how much food you get.

So if you need 3 food for the week/month and get 3 or higher as a success, you found enough and everyone's happy.

If the hunter needs 3 food, and succeeds by only 1, he has a choice. He can either come back without enough food and face those consequences. Or he can take a -2 result in order to boost his success up to 3. The -2 result might affect him personally... he could deduct it from the quality of equipment or from his wounds or attributes. (obviously, still rough here). He could also parlay it into some other effect - finding the food, but it's already claimed by another tribe or animal.

If the hunter needs 3 food and gets a -5 result, he's in trouble. To get a +3 out of it, he'd have to make it into a -8. Let's say a -8 would be sufficient to kill him. He could choose that - staggering back into town as he dies of frostbite or injuries. He could choose to bring home the food, but put the -8 into making it diseased - the tribe eats, but gets sick. He could bring it home, having stolen it from another tribe, and the -8 now figures into the future relations of the tribes. Or he could come home without food, putting the -5 into personal injuries (or anything else).

This also gives you a sort of dynamic resource management system (ew... DRM... better find a differe name ). In other words, instead of having pools or stats for food, health, morale, etc... everything is covered by modifiers. Players make rolls to meet the needs of the tribe, and the result of those rolls gets turned into modifiers that the tribes "keeps" as a resource. So plentiful summer hunting doesn't just mean extra food. You can put those successes into health, happiness, tribal relations - whatever. In winter, that gives you options. You can bring back diseased meat if you have a bonus of health already. You can piss off your neighbors if you've established strong ties. Etc. Oh, and the PC's status within the tribe (as well as his immediate family's) will undoubtedly be one of the resources he can modify with success and failure.

How does this sound?

Another ludography post:

Grab a copy of "King of Dragon Pass" (computer game for Mac or PC); the focus of the game is on providing the "guiding spirit" of a Bronze Age clan (set in Glorantha). It does a superb job of educating and encouraging the player to think in an Orlanthi mindset in order to survive and prosper.

King of Dragon Pass Website


A restrained assessment: I think it's *really good*. :)

I see alot of potential for this idea in a very Nar sort of way. But interesting, it doesn't involve any of the hunting-gathering issues that have been discussed so far. I see great potential to explore the themes of responsibility, community/ family, and tradition vs individual interest.

For me, I'm interested in the social interaction between members if the tribe. I mean, there's more to survival than just finding food. In a community where everyone has to rely on each other, cohesion is a major issue. If the tribe splinters, everyone's well-being might be put at risk.

This brings up tradition. In situations like that, social rules sometimes are enacted not because the individuals agree with them, but because they feel its vital to the cohesion of the group. Breaking tradition means threatening the cohesion of the group, which means threatening the survival of the group.

I, personally, would use the hunting-gathering aspects as background to heighten or influence the social conflicts of the group.

Justin Dagna wrote: (Inter-tribal marriages would be common, I think, if only to keep inbreeding down. But the tribe losing the woman would want recompensation - if she's a ten-goat woman, can you afford her?)

timfire wrote: I see alot of potential for this idea in a very Nar sort of way. But interesting, it doesn't involve any of the hunting-gathering issues that have been discussed so far. I see great potential to explore the themes of responsibility, community/ family, and tradition vs individual interest.

Great thread this is! The reason being partly that I'm involved in a game project with my friends, a kind of "roleplaying tribal-evolution game". It's not one of my professional projects, but it's still the result of a lot of work. In it's current setting it is right in the middle of this topic. We call it CREATIA (yes, I know; bad name).

I'm about to play it today, and need to make some preparations for the session. Let me try to make a scenario for it here, openly, in the hope that it will help me make a great session, and maybe give you some ideas.

Here we go...

---> Hunting with Nestor <---

Summary: this scenario is meant to show some more of the personality of the great father Nestor, both his great enthusiasm and his intense grumpyness. He will fall down and break his leg out in the wild, leaving the characters to get him home, while enduring his nagging. At the same time they will be involved in a quest to find a lost hunter, and have to deal with his madness when they find him.

Starting place: around the fire in the longhouse of Nestor and Aura (great father and mother of the tribe)

Opening: old Nestor is in great mode (made love last night?). He states that he wants to go hunting with his sons (the characters). It's been a great while since he did so last time. Aura tells him to leave it be, but he don't listen (a stubborn old man, he is, and very prone to act contrary to Auras advice). We'll make a great hunt, he says, hunting lynx in the Northvalley! I will bring you back a beautiful lynx fur, my love, like in younger days!

Free information:
- Nestor is an old master of the hunt, but his bones are frail and his eyesight is failing
- Four days trek to Northvalley
- Northvalley is a dry and broken country, bushes, crags, clefts, cold winds
- The valley is a great and challenging hunting ground for deer and roe
- The first son of Nestor; Rune, lives on the way, with his wife Angla and their family group
- Lake Moon lies at the entrance to the valley, with the great settlement of Moonhome

Residents of Moonhome:
- Jabok the hunter (info)
- Mummel the wise (advice, info, quest)
- Runga the beautiful (flirt)
- Moro the curious child (sweet, full of questions)
- Modrebe the aunt (taking care of Dululi’s children, warning about Lok, quest)
- Dululi the abandoned wife (desperate, lonely, quest)
- Lok the abandoned son (intense, hates his father, stonesling, stalking the characters)

Secret info: the lynx is a great hunter, and Northvalley is the lynx-area. Let the characters be stalked by great cats. Anything short of a unique result on hunting will leave them with the feeling that the grerat cats are hunting them...

A normal result on hunting will reveal Lok to be stalking them. They may trap him very easy as sonn as he is discovered. His goal is to find his father, confront him with the agony of Dululi, and kill him.

There lives a man amongst these creatures, totally absorbed by their beauty, to the point that he has forgotten about his wife and children in Moonhome. His name is Nemerav, and he is trying to protect the great cats. He is the husbond of ’Dululi and father of her five children (Lok being the eldest son, 14 years). He is quite mad, feeling to be more of a kin with the cats than with men. His recovery is possible though, and will start with his return to Dululi and their children (his ”cubs”).

Jabok can give info about Nemerav never coming home, but being sighted with on trek with a great lynx several times. Mummel, Modrebe and Dululi may also ask the characters to track down Nemerav and bring him home (each in their special way, of course). Nestor will of course love a ”manhunt”, as being more challenging (Nemerav is the son of Mummel, and great grandchild of Nestor).

Friends:
---> Hunter Lym met the wild Nemerav yesterday, alone, in the great hills east of his camp
---> Ravens circle the corpse of a impressingly great lynx (fur badly spoiled). Nemerav keep close to his dead ”fur-brother” (tracks all over the place).

Foes:
---> The Great Stag is present. He keeps his minions out of the way of the characters, but will frighten or attack them himself, due to the presense of Nestor (it may be the stag that makes Nestor trip and fall). Introduce him several times, and make the effect as shocking as possible, but save the real shock for the most critical situation (when they are finding Nemerav?).
---> Huntress Gwy is in love with Nemerav, and wishes to keep him in the wilderness, so she will try to cast the characters of their track. She will produce fake tracks to the west, and direct the characters towards them, and tell them that Nemerav is both clever and shy. The fake tracks she has laid may be spotted as false with a good result on hunting, and reveal her to be a foe of the quest.

Walk on’s:
- Hunters and gathereres in the country (full of respect for Nestor)
- Great cats in the valley (shodowy precense)
- Roe (fleeing)
- Deer (conspiciously distant all the time)
- Hunters and herb-gatherers in the valley (few, not much for conversation)

Hometrek: the hometrek will probable involve a nagging Nestor, a mad Nemerav, and possibly a hateful Lok. These NPCs should be played out to test the fortitude of the characters (and players :-). Nemerav will try to bolt at first oportunity, so if the characters are too slack in guarding him, they should be punished by him escaping (something Nestor will nag about). To catch him again should not be too hard, but it should be a nuisance. Lok will look for a oportunity to kill his father, if not convinced to choose a more wise course by the characters (if so, he will be sorrowful and desperate, observing the madness of his father).

The end:
---> if they bring back Nemerav, the people of Moonhome will be very grateful, and make a celebration with song and dance (and flirting). They will also help bring Nestor home.

---> The homecoming of Nestor, with a broken bone, will of course lead to a confrontation with Aura (in public). Nestor will dread this scene, and talk about it as they draw close to home. The confrontation may be influenced by the presence of furs (maybe hunted by the characters, but presented as Nestor’s catch).

---> All is well, that ends well...

jdagna wrote: I think you're right, though the way I'm envisioning things, the hunter/gatherer backdrop is going to drive the social conflict. (that may have been exactly the way you were seeing it, too).

jdagna wrote: Here's a problem I'm having with social conflict, though. How do you avoid making it look like a bad disaster movie? You know, the ones where all the people cuasing conflict come off as selfish whiners who deserve their ultimately painful demises? Is it sufficient to have PCs represent different groups in the community so that players can do the whining on behalf of the group? (presumably with some mechanics reason to help encourage them to really tangle with each other over it). I certainly want to avoid vague morale ratings like you see in most computer games.

I had a couple of interesting thoughts on the social side of things this weekend.

The first of the things stemmed from church. We're in the process of hiring a new pastor, who spoke for the first time on Sunday and was available to meet on Friday. Everyone is really excited about the fact that he's a big supporter of small group Bible study and music programs - areas the church is currently weak in.

Leaders often work that way - their skills and interests wind up dramatically affecting an organization, often in subtle ways that aren't clear. In game terms, I was thinking that perhaps the leaders of a tribe could have a similar effect, perhaps giving bonuses to tests or something like that based on their leadership. (or perhaps even in a Trollbabe sense, where the person can be called on as a resource, though in absentia, I would think).

This could make for some interesting conflicts with lots of grey. One potential leader is good at hunting and well-liked, but the tribe really needs stronger abilities in leatherworking and might take a fellow who's less-liked. Or, the might just have to accept whatever leader fits the social norms for the position - the eldest or strongest or kin of someone, or whatever. This gives room for role-playing as players decide whether to support the leader (and how) or whether to oppose him (and how).

The second thought came out of how the herds might survive winter. I obviously need to do some research, but if going down out of the mountains isn't a safe option, then perhaps the tribes use a number of protected valleys that stay reasonably warm. In this case, they might even come together for the winter season and thus this season could focus on relationship-building. In winter, you build alliances with other tribes, find a mate, catch up with family who may be in another tribe, and so on.

Perhaps there's one tribe each year permitted to stay behind and farm the valley, and they're decided by some rotation, election or competition (or perhaps one tribe controls the valley and permits the others to stay in winter in exchange for something). This might make winters extremely interesting in a social sense and easier to survie at the same time.

Re: winter strategies:

A more "traditional" setup would likely be cave complexes in the mountains. The catch, of course, is that over the year, monsters populate the tunnels and caverns. The harvest time becomes not just bringing in the foodstuffs, but culling the monsters that have taken residence in the winter homes. So you've got your reflex-standard dungeon crawl (even if it's dealt with via abstract turns of hunters-clearing-caves or such) for those what want it.

This could still mesh fine with the valley, if the valley only supported so many families and everyone else needed to brave the caves.

No idea if that's something you'd really want to do, but it popped into my head immediately.

I was also thinking, as someone else has mentioned, if you want to create a communal focus, I think having the players control multiple characters might work well. If you don't like that, maybe just have the players create the NPC's? I think that would help establish a vested interest in players in the characters/NPC's beyond them just being a 'resource' or whatever.

If you're looking for ideas, I thought it might be cool if the players created an entire family. You could easily have 10-12 person families (2 grandparents, 4 parents/ adults, and 4-6 children). Multiple that by 4-6 players and you got that 40-60 member tribal group you mentioned in the beginning of the thread.

timfire wrote: I was also thinking, as someone else has mentioned, if you want to create a communal focus, I think having the players control multiple characters might work well. If you don't like that, maybe just have the players create the NPC's? I think that would help establish a vested interest in players in the characters/NPC's beyond them just being a 'resource' or whatever..

jdagna wrote: Leaders often work that way - their skills and interests wind up dramatically affecting an organization, often in subtle ways that aren't clear. In game terms, I was thinking that perhaps the leaders of a tribe could have a similar effect, perhaps giving bonuses to tests or something like that based on their leadership. (or perhaps even in a Trollbabe sense, where the person can be called on as a resource, though in absentia, I would think).

Gru wrote: In this case, they might even come together for the winter season and thus this season could focus on relationship-building. In winter, you build alliances with other tribes, find a mate, catch up with family who may be in another tribe, and so on.

timfire wrote: I think having the players control multiple characters might work well. If you don't like that, maybe just have the players create the NPC's?

jdagna wrote: ... it would be really tedious for players to sit around and listen to the GM role-play the PC's relatives bickering.

jdagna wrote: It would also let the camera shift at will - if the hunting party finds something interesting, they play those characters, but if the herdsmen are attacked, the attention can shift there.

jdagna wrote: And it seems to me that a good survival game needs a high mortality rate.

jdagna wrote: The other tribal NPCs are under shared player-GM control (so that either one of them could step in and take control of that character for a scene). This might solve a lot of the problems I just mentioned.

Thomas, one big danger with NPCs like the ones you had in your scenario is that they can often overshadow (I'm sure some would say deprotagonize) the players' characters. Done correctly and in certain kinds of groups, it can work out just fine, but in many cases, the players wind up getting tired of the NPC, and all the attention he gets (both in-game attention from other characters and screen time during actual play).

I'm also not convinced that letting people play more than one PC is any more dangerous than restricting them to a single character. Your concern is that the players will see characters as pawns... and my concern is the same. The players I know see NPCs in one of three ways: 1) helpful and thus worth keeping around, 2) neutral and thus hardly worth remembering or 3) unhelpful and thus an obstacle to be gotten rid of. The unhelpful category generally includes allies who have their own agendas... once the ally's agenda overshadows his worth to the players, they happily get rid of him. In a game where the proposed mechanic actually gives them power to do this, it's a deadly combination.

Of course, I think the question of players "respecting" NPCs is unrelated to whether the players control more than one character or not. They're either to going to value NPC relationships or they're not.

Returning to the subject of people playing multiple characters, I do think there needs to be a sharing of control. For example, having a player control his character's wife makes sense most of the time, but the GM should be able step in to create conflicts there (like the wife worries that bear-hunting is too dangerous and asks her husband to tend goats for a while instead). These kinds of conflicts play out best when the player doesn't control both characters. Another reason to give players some control is that requiring the GM to play 40+ NPCs is a bit much if you want to emphasize the relationships, even if the players had a chance to design the characters. (Though it could certainly be done without player control).

As I see it, whats missing in these secanrios in existing RPG design is enough specific focus. Abstract hunting is only fun for gamist reasons becuase usually only a gamist challenge exists: roll dice to get food or not. There's no detail; the challenge is usually not trying to determine whether the pug-marks where made by a male or female leopard.

IMO the failing in RPG to date has been not to make these actual survival activities significant components of play. Most players do not know much about wilderness survivsal, and so if the game is going to be about this topic it needs to be detailed and specific as to what the characters are going to do, how they will do it and why they are doing it.

Issues around leadership and other members of the group are significant, and are indeed a major part of a survival strategy. But they are a means not an end; corporate survival is a strategy, not an imperative. A game concentrating on the politics of these socities without a study of the practical limits to their operations always feels aritificial to me; we end up with intra-tribal conflicts on nominal issues that exist merely to have some "conflict", but this nominalism trivialises that conflict.

jdagna wrote: ... one big danger with NPCs like the ones you had in your scenario is that they can often overshadow (I'm sure some would say deprotagonize) the players' characters.

jdagna wrote: The players I know see NPCs in one of three ways: 1) helpful and thus worth keeping around, 2) neutral and thus hardly worth remembering or 3) unhelpful and thus an obstacle to be gotten rid of. The unhelpful category generally includes allies who have their own agendas... once the ally's agenda overshadows his worth to the players, they happily get rid of him.

contracycle wrote: As I see it, whats missing in these scenarios in existing RPG design is enough specific focus. Abstract hunting is only fun for gamist reasons becuase usually only a gamist challenge exists: roll dice to get food or not. There's no detail; the challenge is usually not trying to determine whether the pug-marks where made by a male or female leopard.

contracycle wrote: ... we end up with intra-tribal conflicts on nominal issues that exist merely to have some "conflict", but this nominalism trivialises that conflict.

Tomas HVM wrote: I find that there is lots of elements in this type of game to make more than gamist challenges. In fact the gamist challenge is far from central in my writings on it. I choose to keep the hunt very abstract. I find that the Wilderness and the hunter has more to do with presenting a field of expertice, empowering the hunter over other types of characters, making him into some kind of negotiatior of danger. In addition it is about atmosphere; creating an emotional content of the game that matches the strong fear for the unknown underlying the "Here be dragons!"-note on old maps.

I make the wilderness a place filled with strong symbols of chaos and beastliness, and as such it may be that my take on this, is so far from your ideas that our two views don't communicate at all.

contracycle wrote:
I think your experience must be with generally bad games, made by gamesmiths unable to wield their hammers the right way.

Hiya,

Justin, I think people are starting to discuss their own survival-games rather than helping with yours. But it's your call - do you want to see lots of diversity for your basis of comparison, or a return to focus on your stated parameters?

Everyone else, whatever Justin says, do that. Thanks.

Best,
Ron

I wrote:
I think your experience must be with generally bad games, made by gamesmiths unable to wield their hammers the right way.

contracycle wrote: I think you should stop patronising people who disagree with you on the assumption they have had some traumatic experience.

Ron Edwards wrote: Justin, I think people are starting to discuss their own survival-games rather than helping with yours. But it's your call - do you want to see lots of diversity for your basis of comparison, or a return to focus on your stated parameters?

Everyone else, whatever Justin says, do that. Thanks.

So, to get this back on track.

The goals here for the tribe; survive, gather or hunt food, mate and propagate, agriculture, animal husbandry, inter and intra-tribal relations, avoid invaders (bandits, Goths, or something…), confront mountain creatures, and adapt to the elements. Possibly could include some crafts and trading in there.

I would suggest in-game play on two levels; a tribal-level and an individual-level. I like the idea of year-long goals and seasonal events. I like the fate mechanic you have come up with that allows the players to sacrifice results to reach a target number and take modifiers and apply them. I think this should be a unifying mechanic across the game regardless at what level you are playing. Giving the players narrative control of results is also a nifty technique. I think the players should have narrative control of results when you are at individual-level and the GM has narrative control of results at the tribal-level. I think the players should always control both the tribe and the individuals (as far as direction).

Tribal creation: The players first decide the nature of the tribe and at least a number of important figures as there are players. These will be the “PCs”. These important figures are created in a collaborative effort. Then the players collaborate on the extended family of all the PCs. Then the group collaborates on the extended tribe, including the current leader, any other important figures, and alliances, enemies, etc. Then the group decides on important aspects of the tribe, events that have colored it, and the current goal of the tribe. The end result is a set of PCs, piles of NPCs, a leader, and a Tribe (as an in game entity). A reward system should be created to reward good collaboration. This gets everyone into a tribal spirit before in-game play begins.

A tribe could be an entity in the game with resources listed numerically that function as game characteristics. The individual tribal members are playable entities as well. The players could collaborate on the tribe’s goals and overall actions. Then as conflicts happen, the players can elect to resolve the conflict tribally or as a group of selected PCs. Rewards are in resources which are awarded to the tribe or the individual for each respective level of play. Individuals should be able to donate or impact tribal resources. To ease the transition between levels of play you have actual in-game techniques required to shift play. The default play would be at the tribal level. You set up events from this level and it acts as a sort of brain storming group collaboration play. When any player decides to pursue a scene as an individual, he narrates the beginning of the scene that must include the current location, situation, and the name of the individual picked. He simply starts narrating at the individual level and this is the queue to go that level of play. I guess you could also have the GM initiate a scene by handing a character to a player and then narrating a scene and having them play it (or do both). After the situation is set, the remaining players select an individual and set the scene for what their character is doing in support of the initiating player’s character. The GM then provides setting and catalysts to further the scene until it reaches some conclusion (the conclusion part could get difficult, not sure how to adjudicate that).

If, during tribal-level play some social conflict is called for, then players can draw sides and resolve the conflict and the GM plays outside forces, etc. The players are always playing the tribe or individuals in the tribe and the GM is always playing outside forces, factors, catalysts, etc. At tribal level play, bad results (negative modifiers) are applied by the group and if they want to play out the situation, then they can (even making a reward for individual-level play by allowing those results to modify and potentially improve the tribal-level play results). Rewards can focus on drama, collaboration, and interaction. If a group consistently cheeses all conflicts to benefit the tribe and individuals despite poor fate results, then dire consequences should be leveraged by the GM to balance out all the free “rewards”.

I really like the resolution mechanic idea. I think this could inspire creative narration. I think you should tie the modifiers/results into the currency and reward system of the game. Perhaps even allowing individuals or tribes to sacrifice permanent ratings as a resource. I like the idea of earned rewards being applied as ratings. I think all the characteristics should function like this. It could be fun to have an exchange rate for certain resources. Gathered and hunted resources convert to a percentage of food that is less than what was gathered/hunted (waste, etc.) and for tribes with the skills can also convert to skins, bones for weapons, etc. The better skilled and diverse your tribe the better net resources received.

The game really needs to focus around these resources to give it the feel of survival. Perhaps a rating that reflects required resources consumed in say a week. These can be totaled up for the whole tribe for tribal level play. Less resources means starvations, or health issues, or death.

At what point do you want to start a new thread in game design and start hitting specifics? :-D Like characteristics, currency, rewards, etc. Is that even needed? Can we do that here?

contracycle, I agree with you on the need for detail and emphasis on the survival itself in a survival game. In this case, I really think that a well-done survival bit will drive the interpersonal conflicts between tribes and people.

One of the reasons I feel this way is a simple comparison. Imagine playing a detective in a murder mystery, but the GM reduced the murder mystery to an abstract issue that empowered the detectives over other people, which is basically what you're saying, Tomas. The problem here is that you're ulatimately left with something that isn't really a mystery or a detective story - it just uses those elements as backdrop. As much as the mystery genre depends on internal and personal conflicts, you can't abstract the mystery itself and still have a mystery.

There's been lots of discussion on the Forge about how to redo mysteries so that players can have input (such as letting them invent clues) and GM's can introduce events as-needed to keep a story going instead of letting players flounder around (as is often the strategy). It seems like there should be analogous ways to make a survival emphasize those kinds of issues over random encounters and lots of book-keeping rolls, as is the tradition.

Anyway, some other specific responses:

Tomas, when I say most players, I don't just mean most of the people I play with. For one, people who see NPCs as tactical game objects are generally not compatible with the way I play in other areas. For another, I see the behavior even when I'm not GMing and stories from many other GMs confirms that it happens when I'm not even in the room.

Now, these kinds of people may be incompatible with this type of game altogether. While I'm fine acknowledging that some games won't fit peoples' styles, I'm always leery of games that basically blame the players for not using it right. A game should fulfill a function and it should fulfill that function regardless of who uses it. The playing group's interests and aptitudes should only influence whether they enjoyed that function. That's my philosophy on game design anyway. In this case, the system should encourage the right attitude toward NPCs instead of just hoping that players do what we want them to.

contracycle wrote:

As I see it, whats missing in these secanrios in existing RPG design is enough specific focus. Abstract hunting is only fun for gamist reasons becuase usually only a gamist challenge exists: roll dice to get food or not. There's no detail; the challenge is usually not trying to determine whether the pug-marks where made by a male or female leopard.

IMO the failing in RPG to date has been not to make these actual survival activities significant components of play. Most players do not know much about wilderness survivsal, and so if the game is going to be about this topic it needs to be detailed and specific as to what the characters are going to do, how they will do it and why they are doing it.

I definitely agree with you here, but one of my difficulties is deciding what exactly the players should be doing. For example, in determining whether a leopard is male or female, you either have to teach the players themselves something about tracks and then show them pictures of tracks, or it comes down to a roll.

I think what you're talking about is only important if you're playing from a simultionist perspective.

I think you can easily imagine gamist or narrativist wilderness survival games.

Vaxalon wrote: I think what you're talking about is only important if you're playing from a simultionist perspective. I think you can easily imagine gamist or narrativist wilderness survival games.

trechriron wrote: The goals here for the tribe; survive, gather or hunt food, mate and propagate, agriculture, animal husbandry, inter and intra-tribal relations, avoid invaders (bandits, Goths, or something…), confront mountain creatures, and adapt to the elements. Possibly could include some crafts and trading in there.

I would suggest in-game play on two levels; a tribal-level and an individual-level. I like the idea of year-long goals and seasonal events. I like the fate mechanic you have come up with that allows the players to sacrifice results to reach a target number and take modifiers and apply them. I think this should be a unifying mechanic across the game regardless at what level you are playing. Giving the players narrative control of results is also a nifty technique. I think the players should have narrative control of results when you are at individual-level and the GM has narrative control of results at the tribal-level. I think the players should always control both the tribe and the individuals (as far as direction).

Tribal creation:
... snip ...
A tribe could be an entity in the game with resources listed numerically that function as game characteristics. The individual tribal members are playable entities as well. The players could collaborate on the tribe’s goals and overall actions. Then as conflicts happen, the players can elect to resolve the conflict tribally or as a group of selected PCs. Rewards are in resources which are awarded to the tribe or the individual for each respective level of play. Individuals should be able to donate or impact tribal resources.

To ease the transition between levels of play you have actual in-game techniques required to shift play. The default play would be at the tribal level. You set up events from this level and it acts as a sort of brain storming group collaboration play. When any player decides to pursue a scene as an individual, he narrates the beginning of the scene that must include the current location, situation, and the name of the individual picked. He simply starts narrating at the individual level and this is the queue to go that level of play. I guess you could also have the GM initiate a scene by handing a character to a player and then narrating a scene and having them play it (or do both). After the situation is set, the remaining players select an individual and set the scene for what their character is doing in support of the initiating player’s character. The GM then provides setting and catalysts to further the scene until it reaches some conclusion (the conclusion part could get difficult, not sure how to adjudicate that).

I really like the resolution mechanic idea. I think this could inspire creative narration. I think you should tie the modifiers/results into the currency and reward system of the game. Perhaps even allowing individuals or tribes to sacrifice permanent ratings as a resource. I like the idea of earned rewards being applied as ratings. I think all the characteristics should function like this. It could be fun to have an exchange rate for certain resources. Gathered and hunted resources convert to a percentage of food that is less than what was gathered/hunted (waste, etc.) and for tribes with the skills can also convert to skins, bones for weapons, etc. The better skilled and diverse your tribe the better net resources received.

The game really needs to focus around these resources to give it the feel of survival. Perhaps a rating that reflects required resources consumed in say a week. These can be totaled up for the whole tribe for tribal level play. Less resources means starvations, or health issues, or death.

At what point do you want to start a new thread in game design and start hitting specifics? :-D Like characteristics, currency, rewards, etc. Is that even needed? Can we do that here?

jdagna wrote: But... just to make sure we're talking about the same thing, when you say narrative control, do you mean just describing the outcome, or the number-shuffling or both?

I think it needs to be specified that the GM counts as a player for tribe/PC design purposes.

Also, in addition to having tribal resources, I think tribes ought to have their own skills…

… but I tend to see the GM being more active in creating scenes … If he did nothing but play extratribal elements, whole games might go by with almost no input from the GM. It isn't bad in game terms, but he's going to be one bored GM.

I think I'm one step ahead here... as far as I'm concerned, the dice mechanic IS the resource system. A +3 on hunting translates directly into +3 food (so the waste is factored in... though the process of drying or preserving food would reduce the food value).

I was turning this over in my mind, particularly as The New Ice Age (in Multiverser: The Second Book of Worlds) is a survival scenario, but designed to focus on individual survival. I think there are some aspects in its design that would be relevant, even at this point in the thread.

In the survival aspects of play, there are two factors that have to be presented. One is a clear notion of what must be done to survive. In our case, that meant recognizing the basic needs for water, food, fire, shelter, and warm feet. Some way of determining how much is enough, and how much is gained by success, must be in place.

The other factor is an identification of resources along with the inherent problems in acquiring each. What does it take to kill a mammoth, and if you succeed what do you gain from the effort? Where is water usually found, what kinds of food are available in what quanitities, what materials are available for building and for burning?

The player aspect of the scenario then involves finding creative strategies to convert available resources into basic needs fulfillment. The complication for the referee at that point is sorting out good strategies from bad ones. The resolution system certainly helps in this regard; but the referee has to be able to recognize that "I'm going to dig down to the rocks and scrape lichens into a pot" is not much more useful in solving the need for food than "I'll eat snow".

Part of how we addressed that was to give some information regarding survival strategies that have proved successful for those who live in comparable conditions (e.g., Eskimoes have strategies related to ocean hunting). Recognizing the advantages and complications of these strategies in the text gives referees a handle on assessing similar approaches proposed by the players.

You have the additional complication that the characters are presumed to have knowledge of which the players might be unaware. Whether you want a player's guide section that pointed them to the essential information such a character would know or want to establish that on successful roles the referee will describe the success in a way that conveys this ("Since your character knows X, you manage to do Y") is a question of how much prep time you expect players to do.

Just some thoughts; I hope they're useful.

--M. J. Young

I just noticed this thread and have read it in one big chunk so may not have taken everything in. However, the set up and some of the suggestions are very similar to a pbem game that I ran last year for a while. The game was set in Glorantha, with the hunter tribe being Balazarings (neolithic hunters), the players taking the role of clan elders and my initial vision for the game being a distinctly gamist approach where resources and different strategies were used to avoid starvation and death.

In theory I was planning to model the whole thing on King Of Dragon Pass except with the players coming up with the advice from the clan ring, and discussing in character what to do. I admit that the whole gamist side of things quickly deteriorated into some excellent story-making by the players, encouraged by me. If you are interested in some of the details of that game it was run over a Yahoogroup ("Votankiland") so if you're interested pop over.

Keith Nellist

I've just read this too, and I love the idea - Justin, I'd really like to work on this with you, if you're interested.

Trentin: I think having the tribe as a 'character' is an excellent mechanic and one that should be incorporated.

Anyway, some thoughts:

1) The focus of this game is 'survival'. Therefore the PCs have to play an essential part in ensuring the tribe survives. The hunter/explorer role appears to be key here.

2) Have the players create the tribe as a 'character' with its own skills, eg fishing, leatherworking, farming.

3) Each of these skills is linked to one or more NPCs, eg the tribes 'master tanner'. If this character dies, the tribe goes down in skill rating.

4) Have special 'leader skills' such as diplomacy, (military) leadership, organisation (more efficient use of resources). The leader may die or be replaced by a new leader, changing the skill focus.

5) The tribe also has attributes such as population, fertility etc. (this needs more work.)

6) have each 'adventure' (or series of adventures) constitute a year in the life of a tribe. Depending on how well the PCs do, the tribe is struggling, breaking even, or has a surplus of resources.

7) If the tribe is struggling (as in 1), every member of the tribe must play a vital part (gathering food, defending the tribe, making babies) so if there is a 'famine' there will be tough choices - let the players decide which attributes or skills will take a hit through NPC death.

8) Conversely, if there is a surplus of food, this gives the tribe more time to develop - perhaps even 'levelling up' and gaining a wider range of skills (art, technlogy) - I'm thinking of Sid Meier's 'Civilization' here.

9) There are other tribes to trade/fight/socialise with. If the players are short of a resource (for example, because their 'master tanner' just died) they will need to trade (or steal) this resource from another tribe.

Just some initial ideas, anyway. This may appear a bit mechanics heavy, but I think there are a lot of elements here that can fuel a good story. Maybe the tribe is dying out and becomes absorbed by another more successful tribe; one of the PCs may wish to become the leader of the tribe; The PCs need to seek out a vital new resource (eg metal) which the tribe needs to 'advance'.

Is this the sort of thing you are looking for? If so, let me know - and if not, do you mind if I work on my own version?

Regards,

Doug

Sorry, posting twice, but I don't want to lose this idea:

If you accept the idea of tribe as 'character', it needs to be more than a bunch of stats. It needs its own personality.

One way of bringing this into the mechanics would be to have a set of Codes or Taboos which help to define the tribe's ethics or philosophy.

An example, with Hook:

'Children are sacred, anyone who allows a child to come to harm must be punished. Anyone who commits an act of violence against a child must not be allowed to live.'

The character is alone on the outskirts of the tribe, except for a small child nearby climbing a tree. The child sees you and waves, but loses his balance and falls to the ground. He does not get up.

The codes would evolve over time, in in response to in-game dilemmas.

Heck, a tribe could have it's own Spiritual Attributes, too.

I'm still fired up about this project...

Doug

I was in Keith Nellist's game (see above). Tetsuki's list of thoughts on tribe as character are actually very similar to what we had. However, we had leaders from within a clan, each of whom had a band composed of hearths. The leaders had some of those skills mentioned, relating to hunting, gathering, rituals, magic bits and bobs, contacts, doghandling, talking to the spirits, fighting, leadership and so on. The bands would often be split up due to thin-lying resources and would get into scrapes, almost starve, need to rescue another band, get attacked by the neighbouring clan, sing to the bees and all sorts.

So, each band did indeed have a character, personified by the leader (the PC), but might well be pretty unhappy with the leadership at the moment.

So, that way of doing it does work, and is fun. I recommend it.

Sam.

That certainly sounds workable and fun, Mandacaru.

However, my personal preference would still be to have the whole tribe as a 'character sheet' in addition to the individual player characters.

This is mainly because I want the players to care a great deal about the tribe and I think that having them build the tribe, just like a standard character (except that it is a group activity) is a great way to do that.

Also, it allows the GM to reward player actions by advancing the tribe's abilities, even if the PC suffers in some way (for example, an heroic sacrifice.)

(Of course, it's not the only way, and I don't mean for a minute that the campaign you were in was any less good for not doing this! I just think it's a neat design mechanic.)

Doug

I, too, like the idea of the "tribe" as an important component in a game that's oriented toward "survival," since worrying about the tribe makes for nice complications in the game in a way that purely individual survival can't.

On that note, let me mention Ganakagok, my Iron Game Chef honorable mention. Featuring quasi-Inuit hunters on a gigantic iceberg beneath a midnight sky who must face the coming of dawn and the possible destruction of their entire way of life, it employs some of the ideas you've talked about here, including a more-or-less explicit "village character" sheet (actually just a social network and a list of resources) that must be managed in addition to dealing with the actions and interactions of individual characters.

Here's the URL:

http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/w/j/wjw11/Ganakagok.pdf

I'm hoping to expand and revise these rules once I get some playtest feedback. But hopefully they are of some interest in their current form.

Bill

Bill,

Thanks for the link, just read through the game, like it a lot.

I particularly like the 'coming of the dawn' theme, and the hunting mechanics (which are simple to execute but with several choices of what to hunt for.)

The Risk mechanics are pretty neat too, especially for a survival game.

For this project, I'd like to see more latitude as to where the tribe lives - for example, mountains/plains/jungle/arctic etc - each climate has its own challenges to overcome. Exceptionally, the tribe could migrate to a new environment (which is one of the options touched on in Ganakagok.)

But I'm conscious that this is still Justin's baby. Justin, how was the Con? And are you still looking for input?

Doug
(Formerly Tetsuki - now using real name!)

Hi,

I've written a game that sort of angles toward this, a game called TOTEM. It is a fantasy game that I wrote especially to use in school, where childrens have few modern day distractions and can focus on survival, problem-solving and on good old wilderness tales.

http://www.geocities.com/zozergames/totem1.html

I think it was Ian Young who said that 'survival itself does not make a viable game' and I included large amounts of spirit magic into the game. I have players selecting clans within the tribe, taking on aspects of those clans and sticking up for them. The usual XP/Gold reward from scenarios is replaced with 'free time' and since every Ice Age hunter can craft most objects, free time means time to work on building things (a new cloak, a bow, an axehead, etc).

Just thought I'd throw it in at this point. Its not the game being sought after, but it might have some useful aspects ...

Hi Mithras,

Thanks for the link, I've skimmed the document and will read it more carefully later.

The 'free time' mechanic is excellent - combined with the inevitable restriction on player resources (it's a struggle, right?) having a few days to craft items is a significant reward in itself.

Will get back to you once I've read it more carefully.

Regards,

Doug