Hello All,

Well, I've completed the first draft of Isolation. It can be found here:

http://www.geocities.com/devil_bunnys/Isolation.htm

I have many more ideas for advanced and optional rules but I consider this to be the 'complete' basic game. Indeed I do not plan on doing any further revisions or alterations until I have myself actually played the game. Feedback is of course heartily welcome and I will be overjoyed if anyone actually takes the time to play it.

For those of you who have not seen my earlier posts about Isolation I post here the introduction from the actual game:

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What if I told you Night of the Living Dead was not about zombies? What if I told you that Cube was not about a maze-like death trap or that The Thing was not about a shape-shifting alien? These three films are really about isolation. They’re about what happens when a small group of people are trapped together under a heavy pressure situation. Whether it’s zombies, death traps, aliens, or something as mundane as bad weather the results are always the same. Eventually the true natures of the characters rise to the surface and come into fierce conflict. More often than not characters in these stories get killed not by the threat that contains them but through their own actions brought about by their inability to see past their differences.

Isolation is an attempt to build a rule system that will facilitate the kinds of behaviors seen in these stories. The rules are different from most RPGs in that they don’t try to model individual actions or real world physics. Instead the rules model interpersonal conflict between the players’ characters. You’re more likely to succeed at something if you’ve got someone who likes you helping out. However, you have to convince them to see past their biases and their own selfish agenda first. Further more just because you convince someone to help you doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve got a better chance at success, that all depends on whether or not you can get along long enough to get the job done.

The result hopefully will be an intense role-playing experience where the character’s personal egos are more of a threat than whatever is keeping the group together. If a player dies because he was shot while another player was trying to wrestle the only gun the group has away from him or more hurt and injury comes from character inaction then actual effort to solve the problem then the game is going spectacularly well. The point is to enjoy watching the characters slowly descend into stress induced madness brought on by their own selfish egos.

One final note, you will need A LOT of six-sided dice to run this game. They will also need to be of different colors. I personally recommend a set of green dice and a set of red dice. I also recommend some kind of white board or bulletin board on which to post the ever-changing character relationship map.

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Enjoy!

Jesse

Hello,

I'll get right to it. 'Isolation' has the potential to be an interesting evening of gameplay. There's not a whole lot of potential to carry out anything resembling an epic story as there's no character improvement and the fundamental principle of 'trapped people' can't really happen over and over again to the same characters.

So insofar as a game that can be played as one session in between other games, it works great. It's different enough to be interesting and character creation is quick enough to support one-night-playability.

However, the core dice system is a total nightmare Jess. A total nightmare. I can't encourage you enough to drop the green die/red die/odd/even mechanic and streamline the holy hell out of the system. You have a game that is supposed to be quick and easy, then you use a system with a die resolution that requires players to roll about 5-10 dice of different colors, then count the odds versus the evens remembering which ones are supposed to be odd and which are supposed to be even and... yikes. I mean...

'Bob therefore must roll four (two from Alice, one from Eve, one from his Profession) green dice and 5 (one from Alice, two from Eve, two from the Stress Level) red dice.  He gets: 4, 3, 1, 6 on his green dice and: 5, 4 3, 6, 1 on his red dice.  Since he rolled a six on one of his green die he gets to roll another green die and gets a 4.  Unfortunately, he also rolled a one on his red dice so he must roll another red die and gets another 1.  This means he must roll yet another red die and this time he gets a 2.  For this first pass of interpretation Bob has zero red odds.  He rolled three red odds but his three green even cancels them all out.'

This is either just too goddamn complicated or you seriously need a good editor to go through this document and straighten things out. For a game whose individual story lifespan is one, maybe two, sessions this system is waaaaaaaaaay to tricky and confusing; what you need is a system that can be handled with far fewer die rolls and number-counting.

I mean, I like the core idea. I liked everything all the way up to 'The System'. The core mechanic is just way to 'permutation heavy'. I don't know about other people, but I know when I look at a number the first thing I notice is whether it's high or low... not odd or even. Odd or even might make sense to you Jesse beacuse you work with numbers on the theoretical level on a daily basis, but to the rest of us it takes a fair bit of concentration to differentiate between odd or even. Not a huge amount mind you, but enough that too much of the night would be spent wrangling dice and not enough just playing the game.

Figuring out how many dice to roll, then trying to figure out which are odd and even just seems like too much work to do when what you're trying to do is facilitate 'storytelling'.

I'd love to hear your theory on why the red die/green die system helps you to do what you're trying to do, but here's what I would do with your system:

1. Toss out the rd/gd thing. Too complicated, too many die rolls, too much to have to keep track of. I'd implement a system a la d20 where you roll one die (probably a d12, 'cause A: why not and B: everyone has one, no one uses it... you could call it the Dochecahedron System® and get tons of money for being such a genius designer) and add a modifier so that conflict resolution could happen quickly and with a minimum amount of staring down at dice trying to figure out what is going on.

2. For Passive players, every 'green link' or 'green die' proposed in the text modifies the roll by +1... likewise a red gives a -1. For Active players, it's the reverse: +1 for a 'red', -1 for a 'green'. Total base modifiers would be figured out during character creation, falling under one Base Active Modifier (for when the character is trying to do something) and a number of Passive Modifiers equal to the number of other characters in the story (one for each character for when said character goes 'Active'). Keep in mind that if this is implemented, the whole rd/gd wouldn't even be there (except in the Relationship Map), making it less confusing.

3. The Active player rolls (using the AM or Active Modifier). That roll is a sort of 'TN' for the other players, who then make their rolls (using the Passive Modifier that relates to the Active character). If they roll over the TN, they work with the Active character. Logically, rolling under the TN means that the character must work against the Active character. That's why when Active, green dice give negative mods and red gives positive... if you're Active, you want to set that TN nice and low so even the people who hate you will roll over it. If you equal or are within 1 of this TN, you can remain neutral.

Okay, let me rewrite Jesse's first example using my proposed system and see if it makes sense. Note: Active Modifiers are bracketed to differentiate them from Passive Modifiers, thus: three red links is either [+3] or -3. Active: [] Passive: .

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Bob is trying to persuade Alice and Eve to help him board up the windows and doors of the house.  Bob has two green links and one red link with Alice and two red links and one green link with Eve. At character creation, he would have already figured out that is Active Modifier is 0 (three red links [+3], three green links [-3]).
Bob therefore must roll. He rolls a 5, adds his AM (0), and gets a total of 5.
Alice and Eve get to roll. Alice's Passive Modifier for Bob, figured out before hand, is +1 (two green links, one red link) while Eve's is -1 (two red, one green).  Alice rolls a 9, which results in a 10 after adding her PM.  Eve rolls 3 for a total of 2.
Finally we compare.  Alice has exceeded Bob's TN; Alice will work with Bob.  Eve has rolled below the TN, so she must work against Bob.

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No disrespect Jess, but that just makes a lot more sense to me. The way I envision it, it works pretty quickly as the players already know what their Active and Passive Modifiers are. Oh, is Harry trying to convince me to do something? I'll look here on my character sheet, see that my PM for Harry is +2, get told by the GM that his propsed action goes against my Goal (-1), do some simple math (uhhhhh... 2 minus 1 is.... wait.... wait.... oh yeah 1), add +1 to a d12 roll and bam. Done. (Think of Passive Modifiers kind of like saving throws in that you have different ones depending on the situation i.e. who's trying to get you to do something).

Task resolution works on the d12 too. The basic formula is essentially unchanged, except the DM just rolls a d12, with a similar basic formula:

Task TN = Difficulty (1-6, as per your prexsisting guidelines) + Stress level.

There's no additional modifier for the number of living characters because frankly that makes absolutely no sense given the following mechanics for task resolution.

It gets only slightly complicated here, but not too bad. The Active Player just adds up the Passive Modifiers of everyone participating (as they relate to one another because they're working in a group), adds +1 for every character participating and adds it to a d12 roll.

Players working against the Active Player roll an unmodified d12. If it beats the total rolled by the active player, the difference is subtracted from the Active Player's roll. This is to address the fact that a player in opposition to the Active Player still has a chance to prevent the action from taking place, but since the characters are still all in the same boat, the chance is somewhat slim (though still totally possible, in fact probable at some point in the game).

Neutral players don't roll. They're neutral.

Getting back to the Living Character modifier, it makes no sense in this edition because Participating Players might actually make the task MORE difficult if they have negative PMs (as the total modifier to the task roll includes the all the Cooperating Characters' PMs for one another)... the tradeoff is that if the character is participating they're not rolling against you and you get a +1 for every Cooperating Character (so the basic theory is still there... it's better to get as many people helping you as possible). Also, adding the number of Living Characters would just make the tasks too damn hard given the alterations to the system.

Degrees of Sucess are as follows:

Complete Success: beat GM's roll by 4 or more
Basic Success: beat GM's roll by 2 or more
Partial Success: Tie GM's roll or beat it by 1
Partial Failure: roll under GM's roll by 1
Basic Failure: roll under GM's roll by 2 or more
Complete Failure: roll under GM's roll by 4 or more

I know it sounds funky, but it's really not. Rewriting one of your examples:

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We now know that Alice is working with Bob and that Eve is working against Bob.  So Alice and Bob pool their PMs for the following string: Bob's PM>Alice is +1, Alice's PM>Bob is also +1 for a total of +2; there are two characters participating (another +2) for a total of +4 to Bob's d12 roll. He rolls and gets a 7 for a total of 11. However Eve is actively working against Bob so she rolls a d12 and gets a 12... actually good enough to interfere with Bob, bringing his total down to 10 (12-11=1, so Bob takes a -1 to his roll).
            The GM decides that boarding up ALL the windows and doors is a pretty tough task so assigns it a hard difficulty level.  This means he’s adding a total of +5 to his d12 roll (3 for the difficulty, 2 for the current Stress Level).  The GM rolls and gets a 4 for a total of 9.
            Finally we compare. Bob rolled a 10 against a 9 for a Partial Sucess. It is important to note that had Eve remained neutral it would have been a Basic Success.  But without Alice’s help it would have been a Partial Failure.  So in the long run it was worth it for Bob to try and persuade others for help.

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Again, this makes sense to me. Rolling about twelve different dice and counting up the odds and evens on the greens and reds frankly doesn't, but that could just be me. I feel that this system I'm proposing is kind of like d20 in that it's hella streamlined. I feel I still incorporated the gist of your system, the 'feel' of your system, just without the horrendously complicated theoretical math tasking.

I mean...

Relationship Maps that affect game play: yes.

Assertation of Cooperitive or Uncooperative Players Using Red Links and Green Links from Relation Ship Map: yes.

Task Resolution Including Mechanic Addressing Co-op/Unco-op characters: yes.


So that's my feedback. I really like the concept, can't stand the system. I'd love to hear how your red dice/green dice system facilitates your game's premise in ways my Dodecahedron System® proposal doesn't.

Basically what you have Jesse is 'Survivor: the RPG'. Seriously. You could run a whole campaign as one season of such a show, which might be interesting. It would at least extend the game out beyond one or two sessions...

I hope you're not offended by my comments Jess. Like you, I love tinkering with rules systems and I just saw an opportunity to address a ruleset in such a way that it would conform to what I like to see in games, namely: conceptual simplicity. Now, you might say that d20 is in no way simple, but hang on: the core mechanic is to roll one die and add a number. That's it. That's what I like and that's what I tried to bring to Isolation.

Quite simply, compiling a string of data like '(4,1,2,5,6,3,3,6) four green even against (1,3,4,5,3,2,6,3,1) six red odd and (6,3,4,5,1,1) two green evens against (5,3,2,4,1,3) four red odds' is just too much for most people (at least me) to be able to compile into one cohesive concept that can be easily translated into roleplay. I think you, Jesse, have a natural capacity for compiling long strings of number theory into concepts, which is maybe why you haven't yet taken a step back to look at just how intense the math involved is, so let me tell you: it's intense. Too intense for a game built to tell stories in my opinion.

I mean, I could be alone. Everyone else could have read your game and had no problem following sentences like 'The result is that Bob and Alice have five green evens since Eve’s two red odds cancels out two of Bob and Alice’s original seven green evens'. Honestly, when I'm reading that sentence in my HEAD I start mispronouncing things and have to go back and take it slower. To me, it's an indication the system is too... I dunno. Dense? Theoretical as opposed to practical? Yeah. It's too theoretical and not practical enough maybe. I dunno.

Ultimately it's your game of course and you'll do what you want. I suspect you'll stick with the rd/gd system 'cause you thought it up and as such you probably like it that way. Personally, I wouldn't play Isolation as it's written. I like the concept of the game but I just wouldn't have any fun rolling all those dice, doing all that wacky number juggling (I mean, it's hard enough adding up dice once you figure out WHAT a number is, but adding after figuring out WHAT KIND of number?>:p).

One thing to consider: system matters right? What are you saying about the kind of game you'd like to see when the system is so heavy on dice rolling?

I know you put a lot of effort so far into designing this game Jess, but to the best of my knowledge the biggest part of game design is testing it with other people, getting their feedback and making changes. I hope you take my feedback for what it is: constructive. I respect the work you've put in and I can appreciate the effort involved in putting a game together from scratch; I hope you understand I've taken the past four hours out of my life not to tear your game down but to help make it more fun and playable without compromising the fundamental objectives of the system.

I'd love to hear feedback from people.

one,
Trizzl

Seems like there's a complex solution to a very simple problem: the resolution mechanic. I'm not sure why Jesse is going with a Fortune mechanic...as a Karma mechanic is staring him, me and every other darn person square in the face.

The mechanic is already built into the game: it's a democratic political system put into action.

Green connectors add points
Red connectors subtract points
Stress adds red connectors

If the "conflict number" is positive, then the players can work together.
The this number is negative, then they cannot.

If it's 0, then flip a coin...or agrue about the situation until one person relents enough to tip the scales in your favor.

I love the idea of Isolation...the style of play demands that the system work equally well in a LARP or tabletop environment (if there's any difference between the two in this kind of game, were OOC discussion is entirely absent). It strikes me as very simulationist, but in a good way. It's kind of a microcosmic-scale human drama with a definite beginning middle and end, which takes care of the "neverending story" problem that simmy games tend to have (you keep playing until yer character dies or you do).

Oh yeah: I remember bringing this up to Jesse in a chatroom -- you could have everyone carry a handful of red and green cards with them. When a decision must be made, the "active" player tries to collect more green cards than red cards. Targeted players of course would hand over a red or green card as appropriate. Essentially, the active player handles the task resolution for their task.

Hello,

I agree with both TrizzlWizzl and Jared regarding the cumbersome resolution in Isolation. The game definitely needs something more quick & easy that reinforces the dramatic tension of all these interpersonal conflicts, rather than slows it down.

My other concern is that all the pre-game connections create a sense of "foregone conclusion" to me, in that play is pretty much going to flow along the facilitated lines and hence be, well, predictable. One of the central features of the kind of stories we're talking about is that some relationships or attitudes that are very strongly established, early on, turn out to crumble under stress, in favor of new ones. The newly-married couple would seem to be a strong initial bond, but 2/3 of the way through the movie, the woman has taken up with the biker guy and the husband has turned out to be (a) an asshole and (b) eaten by zombies. Or the skinhead-racist guy and the black guy start the story by bitching at one another and even coming to blows, but they turn out to sacrifice themselves, fighting as a team, to buy time for the little kid to get away.

It's exactly that turnabout that makes these stories powerful (at their raw, B-budget level) and I'm not sure whether the character creation and play-process that I'm perceiving in Isolation makes it possible, as opposed merely to "playing out" the ties that have already been carefully constructed and classified.

All of the above includes the qualifier that, of course, I haven't played it yet, and there's always the chance that I've either misread the text or misapplied what I did read.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote:
It's exactly that turnabout that makes these stories powerful (at their raw, B-budget level) and I'm not sure whether the character creation and play-process that I'm perceiving in Isolation makes it possible, as opposed merely to "playing out" the ties that have already been carefully constructed and classified.

TrizzlWizzl wrote:
It would be cool, though, if there was some sort of mechanic that facilitated these changes in relationship in a slightly more objective manner (i.e. when a group of people work together and roll a 'complete success' they all get a green link between them... or something).

Yeah, exactly. Likewise a 'complete failure' would add a red link between the participants, as a total whiff usually frazzles people in the source material ("In case you aren't up on current events, we just got our asses kicked pal!" type of thing, which lead to the "Why don't you put her in charge" comment... see what I'm saying?)

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the feedback so far. I agree that the mechanics are somewhat daunting on paper and since I haven't played it it's entirely possible that they are TOO daunting. But it's important to remember that it's a scene resolution system, which perhaps isn't clear in the text. If six zombie bust through the windows you only roll once with lots of interpretive narration to cover the ENTIRE fight. So the mechanic may be complex BUT you will only be going through all that once per attempt to address the external Threat. But in general I'm really only intent on keeping one feature of the resolution system: The one roll two interpretation with the first intrepetation yeilding level of cooperation and the second interpretation yeilding degree of success. Streamlining from there is of course under consideration.

Jared seems to really want to turn this game into a LARP and personally I think that would be cool. But for now I'm interested only in the tabletop version.

On the foregone conclusion element I think this really is the games weakest point of design. Which is why personally, I consider it to be more of a Simulationist than a Narrativist design. The original motivation for creating the system was my 'bitterness' at how every attempt I've ever had at trying to run this style of scenario everyone works together in perfect harmony and the scenario is over after a few moments of well reasoned unified effort. So, I took up my pencil and a sat down and thought, 'By god, if people won't play off of personal conflict I'll create a system that MAKES them play off of personal conflict.' I think I've done that. Done that so well the game in it's current state may actually be no fun at all to play because of it's foregone conclusion.

However, I would like to draw your attention to the few things I did put in to try and rectify this.

1) There's the standard 'roleplaying' bonus awarded to the Active Player for simply putting in a good show about trying to convince the others.

2) Some links can count more than once if the players choose to play off of them at the possible risk of having the other players negative links count more. In some of the 'advanced' rules I want to encourage using the map more 'fluidly' for example I can imagine a situation in which A is the Active Player but B rolls for Cooporation status based on B's links with C rather than A because of circumstances.

3) Some of you mentioned having a mechanic where success actually effects the map. I'm not sure how thuroughly you read the game but this is already in there. If the conflict results in a Complete or Basic Success green links are forged between the Active Player and Cooporating and Neutral Passive Players and on a Complete or Basic Failure red links are forged between the Active Player and the Neutral and Hostile Players.

4) Links can be forged and errased between sessions as well. I know Trzzl kind of views this game as a 'one-shot' but I don't. I don't think this game is a 'multi-scenario' game but I do see it being a 'multi-session' single scenario game. Thus relationships can change between sessions.

Thanks again for the feedback. More, is of course, welcome.

Jesse

jburneko wrote:
4) Links can be forged and errased between sessions as well. I know Trzzl kind of views this game as a 'one-shot' but I don't. I don't think this game is a 'multi-scenario' game but I do see it being a 'multi-session' single scenario game. Thus relationships can change between sessions.

TrizzlWizzl wrote:

jburneko wrote: Once the players are out of the 'isolation' scenerio, it's not like they're going to hop right in to another 'isolation' situation. The campaign would seem to be basically over at that point.

Aw, c'mon! Hollywood can rehash any type of movie, including the Isolation movie. Just lookat Sigourney Weaver in the Alien movies. I bet there are other characters that cross-over too. The Evil Dead?

BTW - the idea behind this game is great! I believe that isolation is the secret to a great horror game! It's a multiplier to the horror. I never considered using the character personality clash as a game element, though.

And I do not like the dice mechanics. Too many. Too much math.

Theres been a lot of mention of the die mechanics, so I'll chime in with a couple of comments.

1) The basic idea of the d12 suggestion is sound, but the random die effect really overwhelms the linkages. If Bob rolls low on his active roll than even people who hate him will help. If Bob rolls high even his best friends won't. This is far too random for the type of situation.

2) Jared's Karmic idea I think is very sound, but I'd add an additional idea. Call it Plot Immunity. He with the lowest Plot Immunity is next in line to buy it (get voted off the island, whatever).

I'd have successful implentation of a plan (like boarding up the windows) be the equivelent of the Immunity Idol. You're immune to being offed as long as the last successfully implemented plan was yours. This will serve to drive the "come up with ideas to pursue" aspect of the game, in order to get that Immunity.

Successfully implementing the plan is exactly like Jared described except you can temporarily "buy off" Red Links by Transferring Plot Immunity points to the other party. This enables you to get the "Immunity Idol" but spends some of your points. This bribe has to obviously be depicted with acted out part of the story from intimidation to seduction.

What this means is that people with strong Green links will find that they are coorperating with the acting player automatically, helping him to get Immunity but not getting any point bribes for it. Red link people are being bought off and so their Plot Immunity points are increasing. What this means is three fold. 1) Nice guys get eaten first. 2) People have a motivation to change their status (break some green links on purpose by running off with the biker guy) 3) people are motivated to "protect" their green link members and thus protect their ability to succeed.

There probably needs to be some advantage to having Green Links too and some way to maneuver your enemies into loseing points so they get munched and are no longer working against you...but thats the direction I would go with it.

Valamir wrote:
1) The basic idea of the d12 suggestion is sound, but the random die effect really overwhelms the linkages. If Bob rolls low on his active roll than even people who hate him will help. If Bob rolls high even his best friends won't. This is far too random for the type of situation.

I like Ralph's last idea there.

I would also point out under the heading "foregone conclusion" that the current system of changing relationships doubly reinforces that effect. It's what I refer to the steamroller effect in lots of games. Like in Warlords, for example. You take over castles, and that makes you stronger. Success breeds success. This is why you only need to take the majority of the castles in Warlords. After that, it's an absolutely foregone conclusion.

In Isolation, if green links breed more green links and the same with red, then those that like each other will just get tighter, and those that don't will break apart fast. This is a realistic outcome, in some senses, but not very dramatic. The breaking apart part is cool; that's what you are going for with Isolation, and what the players are playing against. But the road to co-operation should be more difficult. Somehow you have to balance the fact that the players will be trying to co-operate with some other effect that sabotages them. Perhaps if you were to go more gamist and the GM were to actively thwart the players (having a pool of stress dice to pull from)? Or at least make it a duty of the GM (using high stress a lot). OTOH, I can see lots of places where you could insert other rules to cause this.

Likewise, you might want to have some effect that can help players to come back from the brink in extremely bad situations. Otherwise many games will just be a short trip straight to hell. That's no fun. Whatever you have should cause a back-and-forth effect, IMO. So that there are up-turns and down-turns in the group's cohesiveness instead of a constant incline or decline. Perhaps a pool that accumulates with either too much co-operation or failure to co-operate that can help turn the tide at some point.

Just some rambling ideas.

Mike

jburneko wrote:
Jared seems to really want to turn this game into a LARP and personally I think that would be cool. But for now I'm interested only in the tabletop version.