I am in the process of designing and writing a Narrativist one-shot Live-Action game set in medieval/early-modern Japan and drawing from the traditions of Medieval and Edo-era literature and Theatre (notably Kabuki and Bunraku). The main thematic question is "What must be sacrificed to live in a world where Honor is everything?" The game will be run on the weekend of the 21st of May, and have between 15 and 20 players.

I am creating the system with the following design goals:
1. Conflict resolution should support a variety of stakes.
2. Conflict resolution should have a very small handling time relative to the amount of game time that the conflict takes. (discrepancy between real time and game time is minimized)
3. Mechanics should support the themes of the game, as well as infuse the game with color from the source literature.
4. Exercising the conflict resolution mechanics should actively contribute to the tension, excitement, and enjoyment of the game, not just be a way of declaring a victor.
5. The system should be easy to understand and quick to pick up.

I would appreciate comments on how well you think that my design accomplishes these goals, suggestions to better achieve them, and general reactions. As this is a draft of the system document, even simple editing suggestions are worthwhile.

Also, I feel like the game needs some more possibilities for increasing a character's Honor. Suggestions for good mechanisms to accomplish this are welcome.

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So, first off, there's Honor. Honor is your public Face, and largely is supposed to represent the repressive and normalizing forces of society. It covers the standard things you would expect something Honor to cover, as well as various social conventions and proprieties... but only on the surface level. Stabbing someone in the back and leaving them in a ditch won't affect your honor unless it comes to public light.

Honor is extremely important. In addition to being a social mark to indicate how different characters should be treated (all characters will wear a visible indicator of their Honor), it gives a measure of social control (see below). Also, it reflects how hard you are to kill. Nobody's going to care if you kill the honorless ronin, but if you just took out the Honorable noble Lord, there's going to be hell to pay, socially and mechanically.

Each character (all pregenerated) will have an Ideal. A character's Ideal is what is important to that him in life, whether it is Love, Peace, Money, Integrity, or something else. Situation will then be set up such that as many characters as possible will have the achievement of their Ideal be in direct contention with maintaining their Honor.


So, here's what a conflict looks like. Conflict can be used in a variety of fashions, from fights to debates or contests of intimidation:

The two opponents (yes, only two) face off. One is designated the aggressor, and the other is designated the defender, as circumstances dictate. The aggressor goes first.

On a player's turn, he can choose either to 'raise' or 'strike'.
-If you 'raise', the conflict escalates and your turn ends. Raising has the effect of increasing your chances to succeed when you do strike and increasing your potential payoff when you win the conflict.
-If you strike, the conflict is resolved and the game moves back to non-conflict mode.

Resolution works as follows: The person who struck has a Radius Of Success equal to the number of raises in the conflict (by either participant). Each player picks and simultaneously reveals a number between 1 and 20. If the difference between them is less than the Radius Of Success, the striker has won. 20 wraps around to 1 to make an unbroken wheel of values. The function of this is to simulate a fortune result without relying on external props like dice or cards

-If the striker wins, he gets a Payoff equal to the difference between the number picks. The Payoff can be spent to accomplish your goals in the conflict. Character abilities may be used to augment your Payoff in certain situations.
-If the striker loses, his honor is reduced and his opponent gets a small Payoff to accomplish some small goal.

Some goals (most notably PC death) will require a certain amount of Payoff to accomplish. Rough guidelines will be given for other stakes, and final decisions require a vote by bystanders (see below)

This conflict takes place in real-game time. That is, as the two players are staring each other down and deciding whether or not to raise, time is passing. When it's your turn, you may speak in-character. Players may act out a fight over the course of the conflict (in slo-mo, and with heavily telegraphed moves) for dramatic effect, as appropriate. In fact, conflict should be as performative as possible.

The role of bystanders: As mentioned, the conflict mechanic is limited to two people. It is socially prohibited to interfere. Any player may interfere, nullifying the conflict, at a significant cost of honor to himself. However, bystanders do have a function in the conflict itself.
1) Provide an audience to the conflicting parties to make their conflict as dramatic and enjoyable to watch as possible.
2) To push conflict along. I mentioned that conflict happens in real time, which means that it's entirely possible to delay resolution, theoretically indefinitely. If enough of the bystanders agree (I'm leaning towards unanimity), they may order a player to either raise or strike immediately, or face censure and a loss of honor.
3) To vote on stakes and their cost. If the player wants to accomplish something that is not accounted for in the cost guidelines, he proposes a cost for it. Honorable bystanders then vote on whether or not that is an appropriate cost for the stake, evaluated relative to known existing costs. The observer with the highest honor rank breaks ties. This decision is to be made at a meta-IC level; that is, the character is not actually making the decision, but the decision should be arrived at more-or-less from the character's perspective. If bystanders vote 'yes', the Payoff is spent and the stake accomplished. If they vote 'no', the Payoff is spent for no effect and the spender is censured, losing some honor. If no bystanders are available for voting... well, the conflict is outside the bounds of the normalizing influence of society. No censure is possible.


Another note on Honor: If you Kill another player, you lose honor equal to your victim's honor. This is no problem if he was an honorless ronin, but makes you a ripe target if your honor has suddenly been vastly depleted and someone wants your blood.

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Other, not-directly-conflict-related mechanics: At two or three points throughout the game, I will call an assembly of the players. Each player will briefly (but dramatically) chronicle the most important thing he has accomplished so far, and how he did so. Then the other players will vote on whether his goal and actions have been Honorable. Those that are voted honorable get an honor boost. Those that are voted dishonorable are censured.

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Each character will also have a variety of limited-use abilities to accomplish certain stakes, relevant to their character and color, allowing them to accomplish certain small stakes automatically.


Thanks for your time,
-Albert

Er, the title should be more like "larp system up for evaluation" or something. oops.

Hello, Albert!

Your system strikes me as unique and entertaining. These are the questions and comments that come to mind:

How do you ensure there are only ever two participants in a challenge?

I can easily think of some situations where it would be difficult to determine an aggressor and a defender. But since these roles seem merely to dictate who goes first, it doesn't seem like a big deal to me.

How will the participants simultaneously choose numbers between 1 and 20 without the benefit of props?

It seems foolish to raise as far as five, so I'm guessing most Payoffs will be four or less.

Are you concerned that players might vote in blocs? That friends will vote for friends?

Good work so far: I find simple, inobtrusive LARP systems like this refreshing.

WhiteRat wrote: Hello, Albert!
How do you ensure there are only ever two participants in a challenge?

How will the participants simultaneously choose numbers between 1 and 20 without the benefit of props?

It seems foolish to raise as far as five, so I'm guessing most Payoffs will be four or less.

Are you concerned that players might vote in blocs? That friends will vote for friends?

I think this looks really promising overall, and it's very inventive. A few comments:

I don't like the asymmetry between the "striker wins" and "striker loses" outcomes. Each player who raises is taking an increasing risk, but at high ROS the reward seems to go mostly to the first player who doesn't raise -- that is, the one who strikes. This might discourage raising above 4. Suppose I raise from 6 to 7. This is a courageous move because the odds are mounting up against me should the opponent strike. But if my opponent does strike, and I beat the odds and win, I get only a "small payoff" (plus whatever value my opponent's loss of honor might be to me). Also, it makes all the eventual strikes one-sided in a sort of AD&D "one swings, one defends" way, where I would visualize many Kabuki battles as simultaneous clashes. (Though I'm no genre expert; I might be wrong about that.)

One way to fix this might be to have an additional outcome available, so that once a player strikes, the opponent can choose between, say, "defend" and "clash." Defend would work as the existing rule (putting the striker's honor at risk should he lose but offering low rewards for the defender), while "clash" might offer higher rewards for whoever prevails and/or higher physical risks for both sides, but no loss of honor. Or something like that; I haven't thought every nuance through for that idea.

The simultaneous calling out of numbers has a potential temptation: it would be quite feasible for a quick-witted player to add or not add "...teen!" to a call of four, six, seven, eight, or nine depending on the opponent's call. Few LARPers I've known would do such a thing, but many would at least think of the possibility of doing it, which might cause suspicion even if no one actually cheats.

If I were doing this LARP I'd look for a way to put a Clix-like number wheel on mock weapons, or something similar using some setting-appropriate prop. For this particular game I'd use folding paper fans with a number on each vane. The players open their fan so as to expose one single vane with the number of their choice, and they reveal them simultaneously.

- Walt

WhiteRat wrote: How will the participants simultaneously choose numbers between 1 and 20 without the benefit of props?

I think I've found a cooler way to do the choice thing. It turns out that you can buy paper folding fans for pretty cheap. On one side of the fan I will write the numbers 1-10 in order along the rim. Each player will have a fan.

When it's time to pick numbers, both participants turn their back, partially fold up the fan such that their pick is the highest number showing, and then whirl back to face each other simultaneously, fans showing.

Instead of a Radius Of Success, the striker will have a Length Of Success, which acts in exactly the same manner, but only extends in the positive direction from his picks. The probabilities should work out to the same.

Cool idea, Albert! Wish I'd thought of that! :-)

- W

That's a great idea! Might not ship well though, those things are cantankarous.

Just quickly, the odds with either the range 20 system, or the range 10 system that only wraps high do have the same odds, and they're very simple to calculate. With the 10 range you basically have a 10% chance per level to win. That is:

1 = 10%
2 = 20%
3 = 30%

etc.

But this means that the first player has to raise to 1 (so that it wins against a zero difference). He cannot strike. The second player can strike with 1 or raise to 2.

Basically, what happens is that the person who is the non-agressor will have the 10%, 30%, 50% options. The agressor will have the choice to strike with 20%, 40%. I doubt that raises will get above this point, because the non-agressor must figure that 6 would certainly get called - it's a 60% to succeed, and up to 6 reward for the agressor, and worse, if it wasn't taken, then he'd be passing to a 70% chance to get up to 7. You can't let your opponent have that. So the non-agressor will take at 50%, I believe. They have even odds and good payoff chances.

But the uneven payoffs are key here. I think you should keep them. Because what that does is to allow the player to take a risk at, say 30% or 40%. Basically beating the opponent to the punch. With even returns, I think that you'd see people not wanting to be the agressor, because they'd have to take at 40% to get an even payout, or allow the opponent to take it at %50.

This isn't a lot of interaction. I think, again, that you'll see mostly one or two strategies. If you can get the fans to go to 20 somehow (label both sides?) then you get a bit more brinksmanship, I think. In that case, you might want to allow players to up the stakes more than one at a time. If one jumps right to 6, do you go to 7, or to 8?

Mike

I'm been mulling this over a bit, looking for the optimal strategy.

The system makes it perfectly clear what your odds are at any given time. Before a certain sweet spot, a striker has worse than 50% odds; after that sweet spot, a striker has better than 50% odds.

So if my strategy is simply never to strike until my odds are 50% or better -- and to strike immediately if they do reach 50% -- won't I win, on average, 50% or more of all my conflicts?

I'd be tempted to stick religiously to such a strategy. Even if I don't get much Payoff, I'm still winning an optimal number of conflicts. Winning conflicts seems more valuable than Payoff.

Yes, but that ignores the strategy of the other player who has precisely the same goal. Yes, of course you are incentivized to let the number get as high as it can. What stops you from letting it get that high is the fact that the opponent may take it before you do. It's an auction mechanic, you have to outguess how high your opponent is willing to go.

In this case, it's an easy guess, however, because certain options are just either very bad ones. For example, nobody is going to jump on striking on zero, one, or two. Because they have such a poor rate of return, and you are pretty much garunteed that your opponent will go higher. And there's no reason to pass on 50%, because you know that your opponent will take any higher amount.

Given that the pass/fail is equally distributed by who wins the auction, the payoff is extremely important. It puts a bias in the player's strategy that wouldn't be there otherwise. Without it, there's only two strategies, I think for each player, agressor and non-agressor, that are optimal. Maybe even only one. With the payoff bias, you have to guess (or know) how much the player desires a certain level of payoff to determine your own strategy.

If you don't believe me, then try playing with somebody a bunch of times, and see what happens. After the learning period (like where you learn to play all the strategies of Tic-Tac-Toe), you'll see very few strategies emerge as dominant. I garuntee it.


This does bring up a potential problem that I just thought of. Let's say that one player wants to kill another, but the other is only trying to avoid being killed. Well, then, why not just strike as early as possible, fail, but leave the opponent without the payoff needed to succeed?

Or is this intentional? Do characters always have the option to "retreat" by becoming dishonored? If so, that makes sense.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: Or is this intentional? Do characters always have the option to "retreat" by becoming dishonored? If so, that makes sense.

Two things. What, if anything, stops a player from just hitting the same "retreating" player with the same contest over and over?

1) Actually, if this is theoretically allowed, then perhaps players will not retreat knowing that they'll only get hit again right away. Perhaps the only way to get somebody to stop picking on you is to try to win against them. Are there any limits to contests?

2) If they can't hit the player again over and over, then the player can retreat, even when they are the subject of a sub-plot. Basically nobody will die (or otherwise lose big) unless there are equal goals on each side to make them participate.

I had a thought - perhaps it is cowardly for someone of high rank to kill someone of low rank? As a convention for play, say that when you kill somebody you go to the lower of your Honor minus theirs or, their honor. So if you kill a mook, you become a mook. So instead you have to send your own mooks to off them. Yes, this does mean that killing somebody reduces you to half or less honor - this could be ameliorated by some special abilities, perhaps.

This makes some strata amongst which a player can operate most effectively. That is you can best dominate those who have about half of your Honor (they're the ones you're most likely to kill).

If this doesn't quite work out for Kabuki, I'm thinking that a TSOY Ammenite LARP would be perfect for it.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: What, if anything, stops a player from just hitting the same "retreating" player with the same contest over and over?

Walt Freitag wrote: In my indoor games, I usually want to avoid having players physically chasing each other around, so there's usually an after-combat escape rule that says the opponents cannot re-initiate the engagement for a certain amount of time (e.g. five minutes) and cannot chase or follow each other during that time (allowing either party to escape, if that player wants to, without turning into a footrace). Though the original intent of such rules was safety, hence requiring no in-game-world explanation to justify them, I've found that players often interpret them, on a different metagame level, as a formal "end of scene" process. A rare example of scene framing in larp.

Well, I'm back and recovered from a weekend in the mountains, and now it's time to dig in again...

I think I'm leaning towards the end of the conflict acting as the end of scene (or at least end of that issue in the scene). I want the mechanic to also potentially function for social and mental conflicts, and I could see things getting bogged down if one player just keeps on hammering over and over until he gets enough Payoff to accomplish what he wants.

On the other hand, Leaving out the auto-escape clause does a lot more for the brinkmanship at the lower end of conflict. Even if you only need a minimal Payoff to conclusively exit the danger situation, that still pushes you to hold out until you have an acceptable chance of winning a strike (or pushing your opponent to strike while he still has an acceptable chance of failure).

Let's see. What happens if we try this:
The Winner of a conflict (Striker if he won, defender if the striker did not) may spend a small amount of his Payoff (probably just a single point) to officially End the conflict for the scene, whether by escaping, sending the opponent away, or simply imposing the fact as social reality.

The Loser of a conflict, regardless of how much anyone has accomplished their goals, may spend some honor at the end of a conflict 'round' to do the same, but must do it in such a way that puts him on the disadvantage (i.e. physically retreating or making social concessions).

If you're a character that relies heavily on honor as your currency (namely, the characters that start with higher honor scores and are more strongly placed within the social structure) and you want out of a conflict, you'll have to accept a strogner honor penalty to escape if you're not winning, and if you're running out of honor, you may not even have enough to do so, requiring that you still play to win, if at lower stakes.

Ooh. How about you only lose honor if you do retreat? If you stay, allowing your opponent to, potentially, hammer on you again, you don't lose any honor. Or maybe just less? Put another way, the cost to stay is less than the cost to escape?

Cool.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: Ooh. How about you only lose honor if you do retreat? If you stay, allowing your opponent to, potentially, hammer on you again, you don't lose any honor.

So are you going to publih this somewhere? I really like where it's going.

Mike

Well, the primary purpose of this is to act as the core mechanic for the game I'm running this weekend. At the very least, the game as a whole will probably end up online to give interested players an opportunity to look at the whole document.

I can't say I've given much thought beyond that, but the idea of beefing it up a bit and perhaps producing some sort of independent one-shot-package or perhaps even a more complete game has some appeal.

...But first I need to get everything ready for Saturday. I've been very happy with the work I've put into the core mechanics, but I still need to have setting and fifteen players' worth of situation set up and ready to go by Saturday evening.

-Albert

I have completed version 2 of the system and setting document. These two documents are still missing some details, notably some description of Kabuki Color and the less mechanical components of a character. But here it is:

setting
mechanics

Cool. Those sites were mostly what I was looking for. Thanks,

Mike

I'm late commenting here, but your fans mechanic is brilliant. I had an idea to make conflict faster and still flavourful - though I don't think there is much wrong with your system.

Fans with numbers on (1 to 20)

Each person chooses a number using the fan.

The higher number wins, but only if it is within 5 of the lower number. The higher number chosen is the degree of success that whoever wins enjoys.

The more you risk, the more the contest can go against you, but the more you stand to gain if you have been slightly more aggressive than your opponent.

An extension of this is to adjust the amount by which a player can exceed his opponents bid by according to his skill - a master duelist can be as much as 9 above his opponent in a duel, whereas an untrained child might only have a margin of 2.

That gets a similar idea for bidding risk, but unfortunately lacks the main pacing characteristics I was aiming for when I created the system.

The actual game happened a couple of weeks ago. Overall, it was a success. Once my finals are done, I may discuss the revisions of the basic system and ponder where to take it from there.

But now I have to get back to writing about nuclear weapons.