I was directed to this forum by a friend, and I thought that somebody might be interested in something I worked on a while back.

PCSIK

Few people have seen this, and I kind of lost interest after it's release. However, of the little feedback I have had on it, the general concensus is that while the system is as clunky as hell, PCSIK actually works well as a piece on designing and maintaining a story and campaign for a loose story driven game.

I'm not expecting accolades here - but I thought somebody may want to use the ideas in here for something.

(I'm not much of a writer, and my critical failing is that I hardly ever keep notes of anything, let alone write for the sake of writing. hence there is little or no support here to show this in action. However, I have played it a few times, and it works on a fundamental level.)

Welcome to the Forge.

Reminds me a lot of the Action! system. http://www.action-system.com/

I note that you mention here, and in the text that the system is supposed to be such that you can use it to tailor your game. Can you expand on that? Is it just the ability design rules that do this? Does it have advantages over Action!? Fuzion? FUDGE?

What does PCSIK stand for? Could not find it.

Also, when you say "story driven" what do you mean by that?

Mike

PCSIK was in my head for about 6 years, and i finally got around to putting it on paper last year. As such, I think you'll find that it actually started before Action!, FUDGE, and Fuzion even hit the development bench, let alone the store shelves. Even now I give myself a quite chuckle when I find mechanics to which I can say "Yeah, I did that with PCSIK..."

In fact, I was actually talking about this with a friend several years ago when I first considered writing it down, and he suggested the name "Action!" because of the cinematic nature, and I was like "Can't do that - the name is already been used..."

To be honest, I don't know what the advantages are, other than there are no real defined mechanic to tie you down. PCSIK ended up being more like a DIY game system toolkit than anything else, dealing more with game design philosophy than actual rules.

PCSIK doesn't mean anything - it's just the abbreviation of the 5 main characteristics of characters. I'm not very good with names, so I often use this as short hand, and it just sort of stuck.

When I say "story driven", I mean driven by stories!

I've always been interested in human intelligence and development, and one of the main features that have brought this about is through the ability to teach and learn from each other using different methods. The two most common methods are stories and games.

Stories feed off our bery unique capacity for pattern recognition, and our seemingly inate ability to predict the future from them. When you tell a story, be it an anecdote, piece of fiction, news, or fable you are describing a set of conditions and the outcome of those conditions. Everybody who you tell that story is able to remember what happened in those sets of conditions, and be able to guess what will happen next when those conditions apply to them.

Games, on the other hand allow us to experience things in a relatively safe environment. They allow us to use our innate abilties of pattern recognition and hone them, as well as feeding our experiences. Many are quite fun as well!

Roleplaying Games are the very pinnacle of this process, combining these two main tools for developing human intelligence into a single medium. RPGs are essentially games about stories. Except, rather than just telling them, the players are actually creating them, brining in their own experiences to the group.

Because I consider RPGs to be games about stories, PCSIK was developed around quite a few story-based ideas, quite a few of which were imported from the play/movie medium. Also, I've had significant experience with different styles od games, so I've tried to keep it open to different types of game play.

Adventure pacing is usually designed arounds scenes or plot chunks. In a pre-scripted adventure, these are all predetermined to lead the PCs through a given story, reinforced with the ideas behind Objectives. For example, if the idea of a given scene is to infiltrate the castle dungeon to rescue the princess, then these would be the Objectives, and award Story Points. The scene might also have other objectives as well, such as freeing the other prisoners, convincing the mage to change sides, or defeating the jailer. All other actions besides these objectives do not reward the players significantly.

On the other end of the scale, you might not have such prescripted objectives, but instead might simply take a more free-form approach where you award the players for doing anything worth rewarding. You would still be using the scenes as plot chunks, but allowing the players to direct the story being told. This allows a great deal of flixibility because you can then follow up on those objectives in following scenes of your own creation.

I suppose that when I say story-driven I am referring to the fact that it rewards the players for creating and following the story. There are no rewards for stealing, killing enemies, finding loot, or completing quests unless it is part of the story. This is futher emphasised by the fact that players lose Story points at a more-or-less constant rate, and while other awards allow characters to gain Story Points, only Objective Awards do so at a rate which allows them to gain more than they lose.

The major difficulty with the system is that it requires a great deal of preparation before you can actually play. However, when playing freeform, much of this preparation is handed over to the players to deal with as a group rather than the system. In some cases, creating scenes stories and characters is an important part of the game in its own right.

In testing, I find that this system is pretty much a litmus test for the type of gamer involved. Lazy or unimaginative players tend to shy away from this system because of the thinking involved when designing characters and scenes, while those who really "get into" the creative element love it. The rules laywers hate it because there aren't any rules as such, where as those who simply go with the story and are content to let the director tell them what to roll, or actively come up with rules solultions for their actions tend to get more out of it.

You could rearrange the order so it's "PICKS", which is pronounceable and kinda catchy in a "Pick PICKS!" kind of way. ;)

I think the most interesting part is the story points and reward mechanic, with everything about characters coming out of the same pool of points, and rewarding/refreshing those points directly.

Hi Chris,

Welcome to the Forge.

I'm about to suggest you do some reading. A lot of discussions here at the Forge use ideas and terminology we've developed over the years.

These are all found at http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/ -

http://indie-rpgs.com/_articles/glossary.html
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/15/ "Simulationism: the right to Dream"
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/23/ "Applied Theory"

You may also want to read at least the first few pages of these two:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/21/ "Gamism"
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/25/ "Narrativism"

--------------------------------------

I think you'll find that what's described in "Simulationism: the Right to Dream" is familiar to you.


I think these articles will give you a perspective on your work - you may get some insight and also be better prepared to understand comments Forgers make about your work.

Da' Vane wrote: PCSIK was in my head for about 6 years, and i finally got around to putting it on paper last year. As such, I think you'll find that it actually started before Action!, FUDGE, and Fuzion even hit the development bench, let alone the store shelves. Even now I give myself a quite chuckle when I find mechanics to which I can say "Yeah, I did that with PCSIK..."

To be honest, I don't know what the advantages are, other than there are no real defined mechanic to tie you down.

Because I consider RPGs to be games about stories, PCSIK was developed around quite a few story-based ideas, quite a few of which were imported from the play/movie medium.

Also, I've had significant experience with different styles od games, so I've tried to keep it open to different types of game play.

The scene might also have other objectives as well, such as freeing the other prisoners, convincing the mage to change sides, or defeating the jailer. All other actions besides these objectives do not reward the players significantly.

On the other end of the scale, you might not have such prescripted objectives, but instead might simply take a more free-form approach where you award the players for doing anything worth rewarding. You would still be using the scenes as plot chunks, but allowing the players to direct the story being told.

This allows a great deal of flixibility because you can then follow up on those objectives in following scenes of your own creation.

I suppose that when I say story-driven I am referring to the fact that it rewards the players for creating and following the story.

The major difficulty with the system is that it requires a great deal of preparation before you can actually play. However, when playing freeform, much of this preparation is handed over to the players to deal with as a group rather than the system.

In some cases, creating scenes stories and characters is an important part of the game in its own right.

In testing, I find that this system is pretty much a litmus test for the type of gamer involved. Lazy or unimaginative players tend to shy away from this system because of the thinking involved when designing characters and scenes, while those who really "get into" the creative element love it.

Thanks for the warm welcome, peeps. I'll get reading ASAP.

Well, FUDGE came to be in 1992, and Stephan had probably been working on it conceptually for quite a while (while working on GURPS). Action! is only a few years old, but is a descendant of Fuzion, which was published in 1997. Maybe more importantly, Fuzion is a lite version of Hero System combined with R. Talsorian's house rules, and first published as Hero System in 1989 (in turn descended from Champions 1980).

All of these systems use the phrase "gaming toolkit" (it's actually on the cover of Hero System). The concept is hardly a new one. Heck, GURPS is from even earlier, and claims some toolkitishness. I'm sure that I'm missing others that might fit, too. These are just what struck me from the start.

Not sure what you mean here. There's a resolution mechanic, right? There are chargen mechanics, no? I get the feeling that when you say "no real defined" you mean something that I'm not getting. Can you elaborate?

The ideas of scene framing and story points? Is that what you're refering to here?

Using dramatic conventions was probably first encoded strongly in the game Theatrix, 1993. Story Engine in 1999 comes up with the concept of "scene resolution." You might find these interesting reads.

Generic points that can be given out for whatever the GM likes, as opposed to EXP for killing and such, I think started with Champions again in 1980 (though I'm probably missing something earlier).

What other RPGs do you have experience with?

How so? That is, how is it open to different styles of play? Simply by the rules being sparse, and the GM being able to reward whatever he wants? Or is there some other means to shift styles that I'm missing?

So what is the player input? If the player is expected, and incentivized to only do what's in the script, what does the player contribute to the process?

Have you read any of the essays available in the link at the top of the page? We have a lot of jargon that we use around here, and one of the terms is "Participationsism," for which you can find a definition in the glossary. Does this describe the style of play that you're trying to get to? Or is it somehow different?

On the other end of the scale, you might not have such prescripted objectives, but instead might simply take a more free-form approach where you award the players for doing anything worth rewarding. You would still be using the scenes as plot chunks, but allowing the players to direct the story being told.

This sounds vaguely like narrativism, but could be Open Simulationism, too.

Interesting. Do the players know in a scene in which you've defined objectives what they are up front?

Well, it rewards them for hitting their marks, or for whatever the GM wants to reward them for, right? Basically it's up to the GM to provide the right sort of objectives that will result in a story. Correct?

When you say "freeform" you mean without preparation, correct? That term is usually used to mean a couple of other different things than "preparationless" so I want to be sure of what you mean.

In some cases, creating scenes stories and characters is an important part of the game in its own right.

For the players, or for the GM, or for both?

Careful there. Instead of lazy or unimaginative, how about saying players who expect the system to support them in these endeavors? I mean, if one wanted to criticize your system in return, they could say that it's merely making more work for players by not having more rules to make the creative act easier. It's a matter of perspective. If a player likes the support that D&D, for instance, provides, that doesn't make them lazy or unimaginative, it's just a preference.

I mean, going by your logic, then you are lazy and uncreative by the criteria of what's sometimes called "freeform" RPG players who use no rules at all. I mean, if you don't need the system for some sort of support in play, then why use any system at all? Basically there is no point along the spectrum from complete freeform to a game like Rolemaster that's a "bad" level of rules. It's all just preference.

So what your game does, if it does what you say, is merely select strongly for a player with certain preferences. That has advantages and disadvantages.

Reading the glossary, I think the best way to describe PCSIK is that it assumes all players are taking the "Director's Stance" with their characters, both inside and outside of the actual stories being told.

Lots to respond here, and I don't have time for it all. I'll hit one point, however:

I can understand the "why use rules at all" argument, although it kind of falls apart as soon as you mention cowboys and indians or cops and robbers.

Mike Holmes wrote: Lots to respond here, and I don't have time for it all. I'll hit one point, however:

I can understand the "why use rules at all" argument, although it kind of falls apart as soon as you mention cowboys and indians or cops and robbers.

I must not have made myself clear here. People do play with the only system being "be nice, and try to make your narration fit everyone else's" and it works just fine. I can give you hundreds of examples if you'd like to see some. You absolutely do not need to have any mechanics to play an RPG. It's just a preference.

Mike

Da' Vane wrote:
I'm not expecting accolades here - but I thought somebody may want to use the ideas in here for something.

(I'm not much of a writer, ...)

Anyway, Chris, I think you and Mike had gotten an adversarial tone in your exchange. Your initial post said you were offering PCSIK as a source of ideas for other writers. The good news I have is: you've got some clever ideas - the bad news is: they're ideas we've seen before and which have been used in many indie games. This doesn't lessen your achievement of coming up with them however.

Now, with that out in the open, what is your objective for PCSIK? Would you like more insight into the effect your various mechanics choices have on the kind of play produced? (We call them switches and dials.)

For example, you leave the choice of pre-scripting or no pre-scripting to the group. This does indeed make a huge difference to the style of play produced, as will who does the scripting and who gets to insert new ideas. (This also suggests the question: do you assume the existance of a GM as a separate kind of player, or do the players distribute that role differently.)

I see that your resolution system is based on tasks - activities the character's do - have you considered the possibility of resolution that resolves conflict instead of tasks? You might want to search "conflict resolution" in the forums.

Likewise, you might want to search for "reward systems." PCSIK rewards are for "gains" and "losses" and group-definable "objectives." You could elaborate on how a group can refine its style of play by refining what they reward and what the rewards do for the player. If a group decides to reward killing monsters and getting treasure, and uses the reward points to make their character's more powerful, you'll get a different kind of play from a system that rewards exploring character and inventing details - or from a system that rewards making ethically-loaded choices. Here too, who sets the standards and who gives the rewards?

Conflict resolution definitely does not mean "whoever rolls the highest succeeds". In task resolution, you resolve whether a particular task succeeds. In conflict resolution, you resolve whether a particular goal succeds. e.g., someone says "I want to impress that girl by lifting a big rock over my head." Task resolution answers whether they can lift the rock; it doesn't say anything about the girl's reaction. Conflict resolution answers whether or not the girl is impressed; it doesn't say anything about whether the rock gets lifted. You can check out http://random.average-bear.com/TheoryTopics/ConflictResolution for some links.

Oh. I'm not sure I get the difference between Task Resolution and Conflict Resolution, other than it appears as if Task Resolution breaks down the intended aim into component steps.

I'm not sure I get your example Selene, but surely Task Resolution would require two checks for that example - one for lifting the rock, and a second for showboating enough to impress the girl. It might be possible to do it in one task by combining these two components into one roll - in PCSIK this would be best represented by increasing the difficulty of the lifting check to see whether you can lift that rock with style.

That said, Task Resolution seem best to represent the ability for each character to reflect their strengths and weaknesses. Those who are stealthy can sneak past the guards, while those who have the gift of the gab can bluff their way past. Scary heroes might simply intimidate them, and rich ones might use bribary.

However, the Objective system seems to reward the players based on Conflict Resolution. Getting past the guards might reward the players, regardless of how they do it. Although this can be specified - for example getting past the guards without alerting them. In free form play, you would also be doling out objective rewards based on the conflicts resolved rather than the steps taken.

In essence, the game rewards you for where you go, while the system concentrates on how you get there.

Da' Vane wrote: Sorry - nothing was meant to be adversarial in my tone.

Except when of course, they are lazy and uncreative regardless of system, setting, or anything else.

To be honest, this is the first time PCSIK has had any constructive comments, as the few others were not appropriate. It's one thing to compare PCSIK to something like the Window system, but completely another to suggest we play instead during a purposely selected playtest before it has even started. Likewise, when asked what you'd do about something or another in PCSIK, the ideal answer is probably not "go and play D&D." Especially when asked why, the person in question simply shrugs and says "Because."