After playing Donjon Krawl, Dynasty Warriors 3 on the PS2, pulling ideas from the Pool, Sorcerer, and Scattershot, with some influence from Persona...here's a mechanic that was floating around in my head for a day or two.

Fate Dice(10 siders)
Each player starts with an X amount of these. They can be used to:
1) Make any Challenge rolls(you must spend at least 1)
2) Improve a character's Traits, or buy a new character
3) You can spend 1 Fate Die per scene to create a Fact
4) You can use them to Buyout a character(see below)
5) You can give Fate dice to any other player at any time

Narrator
The GM starts as the Narrator, giving them full authorship of narration, ala classic old school rpgs. The Narrator can determine whether anyone succeeds, fails, and how. All players retain control of their characters. If anybody spends a Fate die to make a Fact("Hernando survives the gunfight"), the Narrator must abide by it.(see Complications below for a real simple exception)

Challenge rolls
The only other limitation is if the Narrator is Challenged by any other player(can happen at any time, but you can only challenge once per scene). The Narrator can accept the challenge or aquiese. If the Narrator gives in, the challenger gives the Narrator 1 Fate Die, and is now the Narrator. If the Narrator accepts the challenge, then the Challenger bids any amount of Fate Dice out of their pool, and the Narrator, too must bid an amount. Both the Narrator and the challenger can keep adding more, until they are satisfied. Both sides roll their bids, and the challenge is resolved ala Sorcerer(take highest, eliminate ties).

The winner becomes or remains the Narrator. The dice used in the challenge are exchanged between Narrator and challenger. Frex, if Mr. A bid 3 and Mr. B bid 2, 2 Fate dice would go to Mr. A(for a loss of 1) and 3 would go to Mr. B(for a gain of 1). This is irrelevant of who wins.

Giving up Narratorship
At the end of any scene, another player must become Narrator(exception, if GM is Narrator). At this point, it is open for people to Challenge for Narratorship(only the two highest bidders go). If noone wants to bid, it automatically goes to the GM. Whoever becomes the Narrator gives a Fate die to the person who just gave it up.

Complications
You can choose to have something negative happen to one of your characters that the Narrator hasn't created. It's like creating a bad Fact for free, and the GM(not necessarily the Narrator), must give you a Fate Die.

Characters
Characters are composed of Traits, which are Dice Pools that are replenished at the beginning of the Session. You can add any or all of your Trait Pool to a Challenge roll related to your Trait("Hercules is overwhelmed by the Hydra!" "Nonsense! His Legendary Strength is beyond compare!"). Trait dice DO NOT transfer to the other player in the challenge, they disappear after being used.

You create your own Traits, such as Legendary Strength, Bravery, Cunning Hunter, or what have you. You can spend as many Fate dice as you want to in order to build Traits on a 1 for 1 basis. The Trait Dice keep coming back at the beginning of each session, while Fate dice do not, but Trait dice are only useful within their area of expertise.

You can also improve your character at any time, or should it be warranted, reduce traits(again 1 trait die for a fate die, the trait die cannot have been spent). You can also own multiple characters.

Your character can be injured, captured, disabled, or otherwise temporarily harmed, but not completely killed, or removed from play unless the Narrator makes a Buyout. The Narrator first has to survive any challenges any players might throw their way, and second, has to pay Fate Dice to the player of the character equal to the character's maximum Traits totalled. For example, to turn Hernando into a Zombie, the Narrator has to beat any challenges, and then give 6 fate dice to the player, as Hernando has Fast thinking 3, Good looking 1, and Slick moves 2.

GM Dice Pools
The GM starts with Fate Dice equal to the total Fate Dice of all the players. These Dice are used for characters, challenges, to state facts, etc. The GM does not pay for Complications, instead those are paid from an infinite pool for free.


Yeah, the rules could use some clean up, but what do you guys think?

Chris

I think it looks a lot like Universalis. Care to playtest? If so PM me and we'll talk.

Otherwise the only suggestions I'd have would be to make it more like Universalis; and that wouldn't help us much, now would it? :-)

For the record, Dunjon Krawl seems to Ralph and I like a very Gamist version of Universalis. Not a perfect comparison (and Dunjon Krawl has some other really innovative ideas), but the similarities are obvious.

Mike

Chris,

Much of the context of your post sounds Gamist, not Narrativist. Think in terms of goals and conflicts - you've set up a conflict-of-interest as the main generator of events; ie, the players' general goal is not to be Bought Out, to have characters survive, and strategizing to achieve these things is a big deal.

This is not a criticism. Such a thing is great fun. However, it strikes me as the main goal/context of your post and the mechanics' interactions.

Best,
Ron

You're right on the gamist balance point Ron, I was thinking Narrativist in that I was aiming to give authorship to players...but I was hoping the Gamist mechanics would support the story creation... Oh well :P Most of the GNS goes over my head anyway.

I was looking at the Pool and Scattershot, when I realized that part of the goal was to gain the ability to fully narrate a portion of the story, as much as it was to have "success" within context of the story(even if your goal is to fail). I was also looking at the way Questing Beast allows one to help out other players although your character may not be part of the situation, the Pool and Scattershot lets you share dice, etc.

I really like the idea of a transaction/economy flow to the dice pools. I also like the idea of players being able to challenge each other("Superguy flies to the rescue", "-But can he avoid the high winds?!?") as well as accepting complications for yourself. I'm also super in love with the idea that reward isn't on the character, but the player, and the "owning" a character and deciding when they leave the game permanently.

Chris

Chris --

First, I'm not a game designer. So I'm not really qualified on some level to deal with your proposal. (I'm a guy who loves the play of writing, character and story, and loves tools that let's me share these things with other people.)

That said, Ron's analysis sounds right on. And that's why a lot of the tack-ons people are coming up with for The Pool/TQB are striking me as... missing the point. Even James is beginning to do it, with variants where the Guide is using points or rolls to "steal" back the monologue. It sounds fun, but it doesn't seem like the same game. Or, rather, it sounds Gamist.

What I like about The Pool as it stands (theoretically, I know, I won't have a game up for a couple more weeks) is that it's a tool for facilitating story telling, not a tennis match. Just as there are rules for play when painting (color theory), performing (improv games), writing (motiffs and premise), so The Pool offers a social frame work for setting up a story. The fact that there are dice makes it look like other games. But in my view they're there to facilitate and organize improvised narrative input... Like the way Jazz is a game of improvised musical input...

Oh.... Like Jazz. Because in Jazz everyone can keep playing at the same time. But everyone *can't* keep talking at the same time because the medium just doesn't work that way. But just as Jazz is a kind of game, so The Pool is a kind of game, facilitating and organizing improvised input.

And just as Jazz requires listening and generosity to make it work, so too does TQB.

You can play musical games about stealing focus and trying to top the other guy... But that's a different event. It's more a muscular competition (often leads to showing off), and is Gamist. It isn't the same animal as a great Jazz riff.

I'm sure somebody out there's got a lead on a game design term for this kind of play... But I don't know what it is.

Anybody?

Christopher

Hey

First, I think Chris' idea is cool. It does sound like Universalis and some other games to some degree, but he offered as much in his presentation. I'm notoriously absent from virtually every GNS post on the forum for a reason: I have nothing to add as yet. Everyone has said it and I can't really expand on it. Chris' idea is very gamist, but with a serious narrativist slant. Exactly what I was going for when I created The Pool

Christopher Kubasik wrote:
That said, Ron's analysis sounds right on. And that's why a lot of the tack-ons people are coming up with for The Pool/TQB are striking me as... missing the point. Even James is beginning to do it, with variants where the Guide is using points or rolls to "steal" back the monologue. It sounds fun, but it doesn't seem like the same game. Or, rather, it sounds Gamist.

What I like about The Pool as it stands (theoretically, I know, I won't have a game up for a couple more weeks) is that it's a tool for facilitating story telling, not a tennis match. Just as there are rules for play when painting (color theory), performing (improv games), writing (motiffs and premise), so The Pool offers a social frame work for setting up a story. The fact that there are dice makes it look like other games. But in my view they're there to facilitate and organize improvised narrative input... Like the way Jazz is a game of improvised musical input...

And for the incredulous among you...

Remember that: in painting, you are responsible for choosing a palette of colors that work together and then using them well together in interesting variations; in Jazz, you must combine and recombine a limited series of notes that produces non-discordant combinations; in Sorcerer everyone is, as James remind me, a player in a band within instruments that offer the chance to riff off key thematic ideas; and in, say TQB, improvising Monologues and descriptions of events that orbit around a limited set of mottifs and a key premise to produce a coherant narrative whole.

Certainly this is all sophisticated play. Anyone can put a lot of color onto a canvass, but the choices will produce either a patchy mess or clarity depending on how well the colors work with each other.

For those with a Narrartivist bent, it's all the same: can a narrative that "hangs together" thematically be created on the fly. That's just like painting, just like jazz, just like improvising a great scene onstage. A limited number of options are combined in unique ways to produce a satisfying whole. Like, I would suggest, a game of chess.

The difference is that what is "satisfying" gets murkier as we move into the arts as a model -- which, having thought about this only a little so far -- is where I think a lot of the RPG community's "Narrativism/Sez You!" tension comes from. For some people a well played game of chess is clearly a well played game of chess. For others, a well improvised scene is, in the same way, a brilliant series of refined choices. But not everybody is going to enjoy/appreciate the work/gamesmanship behind each type of effort and might dismiss/denigrate what they don't enjoy/appreciate.

I agree with both of you that the Pool should stand where it is. The simplicity is where the Pool wins. Period. While I think it is worthwhile to explore the possibilities of success/failure and narrative control, I don't think more rules would help in that area.

As far as my system above, which I've decided to call Fate & Tide(for now anyway), based off a Chinese proverb, and that the dice flow and ebb like the tide, I wasn't trying to do what the Pool does, Scattershot, or anything else. I actually got my first copy of Universalis a couple of days ago and the similarities are incredible, although if you look at my Persona thread, you could see the ideas were similar on that as well.

My game system is very gamist, but I wasn't aiming for a big competition of players for control, as much as a lot of description and narration, and one or two big rolls per scene.

I've had great success with the player-as-narrator in Persona, and wanted to kick it up a notch. If you look at the mechanics, getting a buttload of more Fate Dice doesn't necessarily help since if you spend them, someone else gets them to use potentially against you. I wanted to make a gambling mechanic version of the "talking staff", since the influx of extra dice comes soley from complications, and everything else is simply passing control back and forth between players.

Getting more dice is simply a tool towards gaining a "turn" at influencing the story. You can't really do a whole lot with them outside of that. Certainly you could "power up" a character, but since you have so much control by means of Fate mechanics, it is almost redundant to do so.

Thanks a lot for the input(most of my threads seem to get abandoned up here :P) If anyone wants an updated copy of Fate & Tide, pm me and I'll drop a .pdf your way.

Chris

Chris --

Sorry if I meant to suggest you were on the wrong track. Clearly, only you know if you are or aren't.

I was responding from the point of view of having come over here from the When Heroes Fail thread at your suggestion.

I should have been clearer.

As for the game... Right now I'm sorting through Sorcerer and The Questing Beast -- without anyone to play with yet! I think these two and Hero Wars will be my focus for the time being. (I want me effort to be about finding some players who want to play these games, not just reading more and more rules.)

Good luck with it all.

Christopher