Previous discussion of Misery Bubblegum (nee Dulcimer Hall) can be found here.

I've got this lovely, elegant little positioning mechanism, which will let people shift their resources around in all these perfectly evocative ways. The problem is, I'm hung up on the most fundamental of questions "What do players have their characters do in this game?"

And the thing is, I thought I knew it! The players take on characters who are high school students, pursuing the goals that high school students pursue. I know what those are, right? I was in high school, after all.

Turns out... I'm clueless. I remember what it felt like to be in high school, but I do not now know what it was I wanted to achieve at that time. And, truth be told, I don't think I knew then what it was I wanted to achieve. I wanted to become a person who would know what he wanted.

So here's the question: Can the goal of the characters (not merely the players, but actually the characters) be to control and create their own reward structure? Can your goal be to decide what your goal is? And, especially, how much fun is to be had from wanting to want a certain thing, but being unable to actually want it? Would characters pursue the goals that they actually want, or the ones they feel they should want?

Example: Tiffany knows that she should want to be popular, but she actually feels good and strong when she decides to study and blow off parties. Nonetheless, she lets her grades slip (even deliberately failing at tests) and goes to parties with a circle of "friends" that she secretly detests, because that's what everyone (including her) expects her to enjoy.


Two basic questions: (1) Am I the only one who would enjoy playing inside such a structure? and (2) Is it possible, mechanically?

Tony,

You're dead on. I teach high school, and I see students struggling with this fundamental conflict all of the time. They know what they should do, even what gives them a secret good feeling, one they might never admit to anyone else, but they are overpowered by peer pressure or parent pressure, or whatever. Teenage life is largely defined by competing and only dimly understood pressures.

As for your questions, I'd play it. I have a strong interest right now in very active behavior mechanics that don't overshadow player protagonism, which leads to your second question: Make the thing they think they should be doing (false goal?) very attractive in terms of piled on resources if they choose to follow it, and then structure play so that pressure (with attendant consequence) is applied often (as it actually is in high school; to hyperbolize a bit, every passing-time in the hallway is a round of combat...)

For example, in a game I'm working on right now, characters are pulled between two opposing behaviors (e.g, Obsession <------> Memory.) One is negative, in the context of the setting, and the other is positive (the desired goal.) Choosing the "negative" option will always make the conflict at hand more likely to be won. However, it will also begin a process of destruction in the char's personal life that becomes increasingly hard (though possible) to reverse.

In your example, this might translate to Tiffany gaining power for the moment, and even over the long run (within a context), but will ultimately damage her relationships with her family, her 'real" friends, her chances for college, etc. BTW, I like your example a lot, because it nests conflict within conflict, which would help, in a system like I outlined above, to force LOTS of choices, which gives a greater chance of recovering from "bad" choices, yet all of it still based on player choice within the game itself.

I haven't had a chance to play Capes with the rest of the indieMN group, but I've figured out at least that you like player choice... ;)

Yes to incentivizing self-destruction. "Is the Dark Side stronger?" "Quicker, maybe; easier..."

As for a Big Overall Objective (BOO?), how about

"What kind of person do you grow up to be?"

(I'm sort of thinking of Vesperteen here; and of course you mentioned it yourself t'other night).

How to implement this? As I understand your current thinking, characters start off with few or no Traits and then acquire them or are given them in play (by other people Confronting them, or by having Revelations about themselves, right?).

Maybe give each character X number of "slots" for Traits. A starting character has few or no Traits defined, and lots of empty slots: Know thyself? Ha! You've got no idea who you are, you're in frickin' high school.

But: Each Trait defined -- either by yourself or by others -- takes a slot. Permanently. When all the slots are filled, you can't gain new Traits: That's who you are.

(Escape clause: Maybe someone can take an existing Trait and redefine it, or even replace it with something else. It should just be a hell of a lot harder than putting a Trait into an empty slot -- you're changing a formed personality rather than forming a malleable one).

The downside of this option is that it doesn't let you experience the perpetual, aimless, agonizing churn of high school: No matter how many slots you give people, they will fill up at some point.

The upside of this option is that it doesn't let you experience the perpetual, aimless, agonizing churn of high school: It forces you to focus on the "coming of age" moments. "Endgame" isn't necessarily graduation from high school: It's when you know who you are.

So this solution is not actually a great way of simulating, say, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (although it might save you from going on and on and on until you run amire in your equivalent of Season 6, "Willow does a drug metaphor"). But it's a pretty good way of simulating Stand By Me or any number of other formative-experience dramas -- or, for that matter, the Amber series (which ends when Corwin figures out his place in the family) or even Red Badge of Courage (which ends when the hero figures out he's not a hero, but he's good enough). [EDIT to add: Holy ****! Aragorn and Boromir. Especially the movie versions (more dynamic and doubt-ridden than the novels). Think about it.]

P.S.: Remember the characters can be woefully ignorant of what they really want even though the players have strong, clear objectives.

P.P.S.: One of the advantage of this approach is that every single Trait added to a character sheet is (a) in game-mechanics terms, taking up a non-renewable resource (slot) and (b) in story terms, defining who that character is forever. So the stakes suddenly become really intense:

"You want to define me as 'Big Loser Nerd'? So that my Epilogue Constraint is 'grows up to work as an accountant/defense correspondent'? Hell with that! I'm fightin' you!"

or

"Gee, if I just had a trait like 'Bully' I could dominate this next conflict -- but darn it, then I'll grow up to be a lousy boss and abusive father."

I don't know... I think that maybe Traits are the reward (in some sense) that you get for pursuing your goals. But the goals aren't Traits. The goals are... what you want.

I have a relatively clear picture in my head of what the distinction is, but have the worst time getting it into words: Let me give an example, as a poor second-best solution.

Examplematic wrote: Yukino wants to be praised. She loves to be praised, adored, the center of attention. Being that she's in a japanese high school, she pursues this goal through studying manically, excelling at sports, and generally performing. So she doesn't get a Trait "Loves to be praised." She gets a Trait "Model Student." But, of course, she doesn't actually enjoy studying. She's doing it for the praise.

Now Arima comes along, and he is just not buying this. He understands her, realizes what she's doing, and is not impressed. He sees the weird, lazy, spiteful, petty side of her... and rather likes it. What's more, he shows her that she can like it too. In fact, he bribes her into liking it... because he gives her the opportunities to find joy in that Goal, if she so desires... and it turns out she does. So now she's got another goal: "Be honest with Arima," and maybe even "Be honest with myself." In pursuing that, she'll get traits like "Crazy sudden shift of topic," and "Childlike lack of decorum."

So now, what does she do? Does she partition her life, trying to maintain the facade of a model student with everyone but Arima? Or does she come clean, being honest about herself with everyone? If she does that, will she ever satisfy her "Loves to be praised" Goal again? Will she, eventually, find a way to be praised for who she really is, rather than the mask? And when schoolwork is no longer something she's doing out of deceit, will she learn that she actually enjoys being good at it (perhaps adding yet another Goal somewhere along the line)? Or will she desperately regret all the effor that she put into being a model student, realizing that it was wasted time because it got her no closer to fulfilling the set of Goals that she has now?

Yay for limited slots.

TonyLB wrote: I think that maybe Traits are the reward (in some sense) that you get for pursuing your goals. But the goals aren't Traits. The goals are... what you want.

I think they definitely need to have a mechanical existence. In fact, I think that pursuing a goal should create some sort of feedback loop regarding pursuing it further. Possibly two feedback loops: One where you become more capable of pursuing that goal, and a second where the more you pursue the goal, the less satisfaction there is to be gained from it.

I'm not so sure on that second one, though. My leaning is more toward saying that other players get to strongly influence how much satisfaction you can derive from pursuing your own goals. After all, a hopeless nerd-geek can feel satisfied with model-painting and Star Trek reruns for a long time... until someone else breaks through his shell and gives him a chance to enjoy something else. Curse those other people, anyway!

So I think that the negative feedback cycle is simply that if you've immensely well equipped to do something (Corwin and Vengeance, for instance) then other players cease to find it interesting to bribe you into pursuing that goal, and start to find it more interesting to bribe you toward other things. You can still seek bloody-minded vengeance, and control your own fate by doing that, but the victories are going to be increasingly hollow.

(as it actually is in high school; to hyperbolize a bit, every passing-time in the hallway is a round of combat...)

Random thought:

If you did Misery Bubblegum: The Lord of the Rings, is the Ring of Power best conceived of as a character whose player just sits there offering other players dice bribes to develop nasty traits on their characters? (Smeagol/Gollum: "Murderer"). And, for that matter, somehow encouraging people to pursue Goals to the point of self-destruction, such that the Ringwraiths are examples of Tony's "the negative feedback cycle" of becoming better and better at pursuing a given goal (power) at the price that "the victories are going to be increasingly hollow"?

Yes, I think that's just about what I'm aiming for. The idea that (like the Nazgul) a character can become very, very powerful, but simultaneously be completely unable to achieve something that brings them happiness, resonates with me.

I'm not sure whether other players would be able to bribe you to take traits ("Murderer"), goals ("My Precioussss....") or both. Probably both.

I can see real fun in offering people new goals: "Yep, you've pretty much figured out how to avoid all the jocks and not having people talk to you. You've got this 'Avoid pain' goal pretty well addressed. Now I'd like to bribe you to also take on the 'Get Becky to notice me' goal. Doesn't suit your existing Traits? Well, that's a pity, isn't it?"

And I can see real fun in offering people new traits: "So, you really, really want the ring, huh? Well I'm a generous, civic-minded sort. I'll help you out! Here's a bribe on the trait 'Murderer', which I think should be very helpful. Ohhh... you wanted to talk? Well, I don't feel like bribing you on a 'Sweet talker' trait, but hey, maybe you can manage to get the ring without my help. Not likely, but don't let me stop you from trying."

I just ran across this in the library while looking for something else, and I thought it was relevant to this discussion, at least broadly:

In her book Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers, Alicia Quart wrote: I was thirteen when I first understood what a teen film was. Knowledge arrived in the form of The Breakfast Club....The nerd...recognizes that his day of inclusion and quasi-Method acting will end as soon as detention does. Near tears...the nerd announces that they will all "become their parents": "It's unavoidable....When you grow up, your heart dies," answers the Goth (Ally Sheedy), glittery-eyed and black-clad, excited by her own bleakness.

At thirteen, I suspected that my heart would die also, sooner rather than later. It's embarassing to admit now, but the film spoke to me. Sure it's overacted and broad...But it also has the ring of a diary entry, of what life is really like when our parents and teachers leave the room. Raging against high school cliques and hierarchies, it puts forth an appealingly sappy proposition: that all strata of kids should unite against two common enemies, their parents and a future of soulless-ness.

Yeah, actually, I think it is an overly romantic notion... because it strikes me as very much an outsider's viewpoint. It's easy to look back (as an adult) and say that what they're trying to do is not to entirely become adults. But I certainly don't recall many people who didn't want to grow up in high school.

The fear wasn't that they'd become adults, it's that they'd become the kind of adults that they (as teenagers) detested. I don't think there's all that interesting a game to be told about trying to resist change ("Turtle, the RPG"), but I think there's tremendous potential to the idea that you have to seek out the right changes, or else the wrong changes will sneak up on you by accident... especially when you have no idea what the right or wrong changes are.

TonyLB wrote: Turns out... I'm clueless. I remember what it felt like to be in high school, but I do not now know what it was I wanted to achieve at that time. And, truth be told, I don't think I knew then what it was I wanted to achieve. I wanted to become a person who would know what he wanted.

TonyLB wrote: Yeah, actually, I think it is an overly romantic notion... because it strikes me as very much an outsider's viewpoint. It's easy to look back (as an adult) and say that what they're trying to do is not to entirely become adults. But I certainly don't recall many people who didn't want to grow up in high school.

Doug: That's really cool. It changes offering a Trait from just a Bribe to a Bribe plus a Threat! It's "Accept my input to your character and profit... or don't, and I'll make you miserable about this issue forever." Extortion and bribery all rolled into one.

And oh my God is it high school in many ways. When Bob asks Mary if she loves him, the way that he loves her, and she says "No," he gets to roll dice in any situation where Mary loving him would have helped. Which is the equivalent of him gaining a "Mary is a frigid bitch" Trait (or "lesbian" or "prissy little momma's girl", or whatever his choice of denial is).

In fact, wouldn't it be cleaner for him to just gain such a relationship Trait? Then it could sit there, taking up space in his Traits (and thereby distracting him from fulfilling his own potential) the way it should... and he could build it up into a massive resentment, perhaps generalizing it to all women, or he could burn it down and get over it. In short, it would be manipulable in all the same ways as other Traits.

Beautifully evil.

The dynamic ends up something like this:

"Here, you hold this grenade by the body, and I'll hold it by the pin! What do you mean you want to go that way? I want to go this way!"

BOOM

Over and over and over again.

And... y'know... there's no reason to assume that the trait will always be used against the person who generated it through refusing the bribe.

If Shane offers Ada the bribe "Moral Flexibility," and she refuses it, then he can use that against her in any situation where Moral Flexibility would have been really helpful. But he could also (I assume) use it for her in situations where being rigidly honorable is helpful to them both. So there's a game-mechanic representation of the grudging acceptance that someone really is different than what you wanted them to be, and maybe that's for the best.

TonyLB wrote: Two basic questions: (1) Am I the only one who would enjoy playing inside such a structure? and (2) Is it possible, mechanically?

Okay... so how is the teen drama you'd like to play not about trying to become a person who knows what he wants? In this case, you seem (to my admittedly biased eye) to be talking about a character who wants to be happy as a rebel.

Are we talking about different types of adversity here? To my mind the question an adversary-player would ask in this situation is not "How do I stop him from rebelling?", it's "How do I help him to rebel, in fact make him the ultimate rebel, and then stop him from finding any easy contentment in that?"

Mechanics clarification time.

Tony, in a conflict, you can roll as many dice as you have in your appropriate pool for that type of conflict, and Traits allow you to re-roll your dice or your opponent's, correct?

So what, mechanically, can a Goal do that's different, and which has room for a "diminishing returns" or "hollow victory" effect?

One (fairly idle) thought that occurs to me is that a Goal sets conditions under which you permanently earn more dice, representing character growth, with an exponentially increasing cost per die so that pools don't get hopelessly large. I'm thinking somewhat along the lines of "keys" from Clinton's The Shadow of Yesterday, except they'd be like

Key of the Slacker: Gain 1 die when you blow off something hugely important for no good reason
Key of the Heather: Gain 1 die when you make someone utterly miserable

TonyLB wrote: In this case, you seem (to my admittedly biased eye) to be talking about a character who wants to be happy as a rebel.

Sydney: Correct, the current formulation is "Roll up to the number of dice in your current appropriate pool, then Traits allow rerolls." I'm thinking that a Trait of N should allow you to reroll dice whose total value is no more than N. So if you rolled 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and had a Trait of 5, you could reroll the 1+2, 1+3, 2+3, 1+4 or the 5 alone. If you rolled 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 5 then you could reroll all five 1s.

All Traits should come from other players (though they may have been increased or decreased by you). To use a Trait you Offer (as per the visual aid) a die to that player, which they can then (or later) use in conflicts, or which they can use to Bribe you with new Traits.

I agree with Sydney that the reward structure should involve letting the characters earn more permanent dice. I also think that requiring them to earn an amount of success proportional to the number of dice they currently have on hand is a good way to do it. I like one strategy that implies: Give away many of your dice into the keeping of other players (who will use them either to Bribe you (for character development) or roll them to aid or oppose you), and then increase your own pool at a lower cost because your "dice on hand" is so much lower.

I don't particulary want a game that has an inevitable end-game. I respect (for instance) My Life with Master, but this isn't built like that. Therefore, when I think "We should reward people by giving them more permanent dice" I immediately also wonder "What will they spend dice on permanently, and why is that worth more than the dice themselves?" Otherwise the ecology of dice runs amok, people end up with massive pools and can't earn any further (because their dice-on-hand is so high).

I'm not really sure, yet, what your own dice would be spent for. Perhaps to establish and maintain facts about the world, which give you unquestioned authority (while you control them) in some limited area of the SIS?

TonyLB wrote: requiring them to earn an amount of success proportional to the number of dice they currently have on hand is a good way to do it.

I'm not really sure, yet, what your own dice would be spent for.

I repeat: I don't want a game that is focussed on end-game. This isn't about your twentieth reunion any more than Sorceror is about your soul writhing in the brimstone lakes of hell. It's about the choices you make in the present, knowing the consequences.

And I don't know about forcing the goals to become impossible to pursue long term. Saying "You get points if you do something that obviously can't make you happy in the end" is answering a question, rather than asking it. The question, to my mind is "Here's a goal that you can pursue and achieve. Does it make you happy?" And then, following DitV, the follow up is "It makes you happy? Okay, how about now? How about in this situation?"

That's a subtle change in emphasis, but I think it's an important one. It disqualifies the Slacker key immediately, for instance. The goal for a Slacker (my intuition, anyway) is "Foil other people's ambitions for me."

In fact, I think all of the Goals look better (to me, personally) if they are phrased as something that has to be judged and rewarded by another player in reference to the relationship between two characters. Maybe that's the right way to structure the rewards, mechanically? That they're offered as part of the stakes of a conflict by some other player?

Slacker: "I'm confronting Joey about his skate-boarding... I think if he took it seriously he could really be a competitor. I'm Bribing you on the Trait "Serious about Skateboarding," which you'll get if you lose. If you successfully blow me off you get a reward for foiling my ambitions for you, but I'll get the anti-Trait that you're not serious about skateboarding."

Heather: "I'm confronting Heather about the way she treated Becky. I want to tell her off once and for all. If I win then I get to increase my fledgling "Independent" trait. If you successfully stifle me and force me back into subservience you can wipe out my trait, and you get a reward because everybody else's needs are important only when they do not conflict with your whims."

Black Beret: "I'm confronting Violet about whether she's good enough to have the lead in the school play, or whether she's just getting it because she's a blatant manipulator. If you win the argument you get a reward for having your genius recognized."

Grind: "Larry's going to work through the night to finish up the science project. He wants Wade to help him, rather than go to the party. If you lose you can up your 'total geek' Trait, and you get a reward for working harder than anyone."

I think that this would mean that you can (long-term) be happy with a Goal only if the other players at the table find it entertaining and valid for you to be happy with that goal. Which probably creates the slow fade of satisfaction in nine out of ten cases, simply because people cease to find the same goal interesting in its tenth and twentieth iterations.

Aha. Yes to all that, I think.

Okay, so how does pursuing your Goal make you more a person who is capable of pursuing that Goal?

One way of doing it would be to say that the winner of the conflict (and only the winner of the conflict) can spend points from the dice they spent (i.e. the amount they won with) to increase any Trait that they used.

Then you get a real work-out on your "Cold-hearted Bitch" skill while pursuing the "Other people think about my needs first" Goal... which would mean that you'll use "Bitch" more often in other situations.

So the person who originally gave you the Bitch Trait would be well advised to also give you opportunities to pursue the "My Needs First" Goal, as an investment in making the trait they assigned you return lots of your dice (to them) in order to let them manipulate you further. Yes?

Wow. I will play this game. I'm fascinated by High School social interactions, and this sounds like a really fun, interesting and accurate mechanic for teen psychology.

I don't want to divert from your discussion of what are solid-sounding, innovative, system-defining mechanics. But I wanted to share with you the psychological growth mechanics that work well in my own High School soap opera game. Maybe something will spark off for you.

First of all, Sweet Dreams sounds very different than Misery Bubblegum. It's designed explicitly to simulate "Buffy", "Nightmare on Elm Street", "Ninja High School", stuff like that. So while social interaction was important, most of the system is devoted to combat and supernatural actions (much more traditional than what you're doing here).

Characters have a Caste (Athlete, Goth, Princess, etc), and choose one Psychological Subplot appropriate to their Caste (Bully, Morbid, Snob, etc). They also have one weak Passion (Romantic trait) for a PC or NPC assigned by the Guide.

Characters have a Confidence Trait, which takes damage just like hit points. Attacking someone's Confidence can give them new Subplots (Affraid of X, in Love with X, etc). If your Confidence is low, you are easy to manipulate, bully, or seduce.

Characters regain Confidence by behaving according to their Caste, and receiving the approval of their peers. But, all the Castes promote some kind of self-destructive or cruel behaviour. Characters who go along with the system will be the most Confident, while those who fight it lose Confidence and become depressed (unless they develop a support group of real friends which can help them regain Confidence outside the Caste).

Characters' Subplots are there to get them in trouble. When a character gets in trouble by roleplaying a Subplot (like Snob, or In Love), they earn experience. That's the only source of experience, so characters grow by making mistakes and getting in trouble. They spend that experience on increasing abilities (superpowers, etc), which help them get out of trouble, stay alive, and accomplish plot goals.

Through social combat, characters can give each other Subplots, but each character can only have 10 Subplots, +1 more per year of High School. (max 13 in Senior year). When a Subplot is resolved through roleplaying, the character gets double xp for it, and the Subplot is gone. The character now has another slot for gaining new Subplots.

Characters are torn between conforming to the unhealthy Caste paradigm (which increases their Confidence), and getting in trouble according to their individual Subplots (which earns them xp, and increases their abilities). Characters become more screwed up and individual as the story goes on. The Subplots get resolved when the players are bored with them, and the ones everyone likes never get resolved.

Hope there was an idea in there for you. If not, sorry to interrupt. Capes looks great, and I'll definitely be following Misery Bubblegum.

In terms of goals...(edit: this probably doesn't contribute to current development too much)

Looking back at school, the social structure is much like a prison. Lots of relationships you should just get away from, but you can not do that.

The next step in the teen mind is in thinking that you supposed to be part of these relationships because 'this is the world'. Of course it is not, it's just a fragment of the world (that you can leave). But you don't know that yet.

The next step is not to discover yourself, so much as to try and break yourself to fit in. Because without a choice to leave, you don't have a choice to be yourself.

I wonder if an 'anti premise' style game would make a good sim game of that. Have something like spiritual attributes chosen by the player, but although they give big bonuses, make the rewards for doing things other than them, even bigger. And then further into the game, make reducing those SA's profitable, in that they would otherwise reduce even bigger profits you can get from doing those other things.

Basically, rather than the proud nar games where you show your inner self to all, a simulationist game of watching your PC's inner spirit die.

Callan, your post meshes sufficiently with my own recent thoughts on the subject that I'm taking it to a new thread so that it can get more detailed examination.

Just a thought:

What about rebirth?

What if the kid grows up with all of his goals (some of them realized, some of them not) goes to college, gets married has kids of his(or her) own.

The kid goes off to high school and repeats the cycle again, like some kind of endless high school wheel of life.

Another Thought:

Getting a job.
Students can get jobs and buy clothing that would boost whatever goals they are in (or buy drugs, alcohol).

Does this detract from the game at all?