This is a general rant about freeform traits, prompted by some off-board discussion.  I'm not opposed to them in general, but I think that some designers choose them as a matter of course without thinking about the consequences. 

The core problem is the schizophrenia in many (if not most) freeform trait systems.  The system advice tells you to pick distinctive, individualistic, and unique traits.  However, the actual result of the system is to reward the player for taking traits as broad and generic as she can possibly talk the GM or group into accepting.  So if they can talk the group into accepting "Jack-of-All-Trades" or "Natural Genius" or "Highly Trained Super Agent", then they are rewarded by constantly getting to add in the bonus for those broad traits.  Choosing narrow, distinctive, or idiosyncratic traits like "Repressed love for half-brother Juan" or "I can make a mean stew" rarely benefits the player system-wise. 

So you either have to accept this as a part of your system and modify your advice accordingly, or change the system reward.  The only two solutions I've seen in practice are (1) rating the cost of the trait based on how broad it is, as in Fudge; or (2) a "pay-as-you-go" scheme such as Descriptors in Theatrix.  There you have to pay a Plot Point whenever you make dramatic use of a Descriptor.  So the more often a Descriptor is invoked, the more it costs. 

I agree that this is often a problem. A third solution is to give players substantial ability to frame conflicts in terms of what imaginary actions can be taken to resolve them. Then just as their imagination drove their character choices, it can drive what their characters do to deal with things that happen in play. A fourth solution (DitV) is to make the 'mere' relevant invocation of a trait the mechanically important thing, not it's direct use, so that simply narrating it in gets you the mechanical benefit, no matter what it does (your bard sings in battle means he gets his singing points for killing orcs, even though his sword is what's imaginarily doing the hacking and slashing, say).

I kind of agree. Generalisations are always dangerous but my first gut reaction when a game just goes for the "make up your own traits" is the feeling that the designer chickened out. I feel the same thing about movies when the ending is left deliberatley ambiguous (as opposed to those moives I'm just to dense to understand the ending thank-you-very-much-Donnie-Darko).

If design is about making choices, then surely the designer should provide a set of traits for the (mostly) paying public. You can always add an appendix at the end about how to customise them further.

Bah, what do I know.

Hi John!

John wrote: The only two solutions I've seen in practice are (1) rating the cost of the trait based on how broad it is, as in Fudge; or (2) a "pay-as-you-go" scheme such as Descriptors in Theatrix.  There you have to pay a Plot Point whenever you make dramatic use of a Descriptor.  So the more often a Descriptor is invoked, the more it costs. 

The core problem is the schizophrenia in many (if not most) freeform trait systems.  The system advice tells you to pick distinctive, individualistic, and unique traits.  However, the actual result of the system is to reward the player for taking traits as broad and generic as she can possibly talk the GM or group into accepting.

Ah, but the flip side is games that give a list of traits, and then say "or anything else that the GM approves", or some such. In my book, thats basically freeform traits with a lot of examples, is what that is.

Another way to go is have all traits have the same mechanical effectiveness, with differentiation being part of the flavor. That is, something like you get a +1, or whatever, for every trait you bring to table, and you have to work them into the narration, or something like that. There's overlap between that and issues of scale (as in, how many can you bring to the table, etc.), but I feel that its another viable route.

My solution that is going into Full Light, Full Steam is what I call 'Thematic Batteries' (the name is clunky, yes, but it's period clunky).  Basically, every character has three Thematic Batteries which are freeform descriptors of the character -- Gentleman, Fever Genius, Rake, Competitive, Loyal, etc -- which can be either an advantage or a disadvantage, depending on circumstances.  So the Gentleman could get an advantage when attending a salon, whereas he could be at a disadvantage when trying to masquerade as a pirate.

Thing is, you have to charge your Thematic Battery by voluntarily taking the disadvantage in a die check, after which you can discharge the battery later to gain the advantage.  Since any player can call for a die check at any time, for anything, including for the explicit purpose of charging their battery, this serves as an incentive to express your character's drawbacks in order to express their special attributes.  It's also self-regulated.  You can't take 'Awesome Badass that Wins All the Time!' cause you can't make that a disadvantage in order to charge it in the first place.

For instance: my guy is 'Reckless Flyboy'.  As the game is just getting going, the ship is leaving the dock off to parts unknown, I call for a die check for me taking the ship out of dock.  I take the disadvantage, displaying that I'm reckless.  Later on when we're in a high-speed chase through an asteroid field, I can give myself an advantage cause I've got that reckless flyboy edge.  It mirrors a lot of character development and character expression as seen in movies and television -- screwups at the beginning, applying your idiosyncratic abilities towards the end.

While Director Stance (i.e. player ability to frame in traits) may mitigate this effect, it still commonly true that broader traits are easier to bring to bear than narrower traits.  Maybe there are exceptions, but that has generally been my experience.  Unless every PC uses all his traits all the time (which I have never seen), then it is still true that the system is rewarding having traits that are easier to apply.  

Are there other mechanisms which make narrow traits actually easier to apply than broader traits?  

Emily wrote:

The core problem is the schizophrenia in many (if not most) freeform trait systems.  The system advice tells you to pick distinctive, individualistic, and unique traits.  However, the actual result of the system is to reward the player for taking traits as broad and generic as she can possibly talk the GM or group into accepting.

Could you give some specific examples? How are the traits used for character effectiveness?

Joshua wrote:
For instance: my guy is 'Reckless Flyboy'.  As the game is just getting going, the ship is leaving the dock off to parts unknown, I call for a die check for me taking the ship out of dock.  I take the disadvantage, displaying that I'm reckless.  Later on when we're in a high-speed chase through an asteroid field, I can give myself an advantage cause I've got that reckless flyboy edge.  It mirrors a lot of character development and character expression as seen in movies and television -- screwups at the beginning, applying your idiosyncratic abilities towards the end.

There's always some of that, John, but in Dogs it's pretty darned minor. I mean, fighting a fire, your character can do things like get 2d6 for his excellent eyeglasses because you narrate that they got smudged with smoke. I'd say something similar about augments in extended contests in Heroquest, at least the way I'd run it.

I'd question whether it's rewarding traits that are 'easier to apply' if the goal of applying your traits is to use them to make a thematic statement about your character and the 'difficulty' is just thinking of how they can get narrated in in some way. I mean, I guess you're right that some people are unspeakably lazy, mentally speaking, so they're 'rewarded' in that sense for taking things that are a little easier to narrate in to the kind of conflicts they want, but I don't see how that kills a game that they play.

I'm not denying that the effect you point out exists in these systems, but to my mind it's far less of a problem than in systems where you have to actually 'directly use' the trait in question in imagination to achieve your end.

John wrote: As actual play examples, the GMing section of Over the Edge has some very clear examples of a player dominating play by using very broad traits (I'm thinking of the magical-device-creator PC).  As far as I have seen, that is very common -- even in, say, DitV.  A Dogs player who has more dice will not only tend to win the Stakes he wants, but will also get more spotlighted narration time because he will have more turns of successfully being able to See and Raise.  Applying more traits gets you more dice, so I think that there is a concrete reward for making traits which are easy to apply.  

John wrote: The only two solutions I've seen in practice are (1) rating the cost of the trait based on how broad it is, as in Fudge; or (2) a "pay-as-you-go" scheme such as Descriptors in Theatrix. There you have to pay a Plot Point whenever you make dramatic use of a Descriptor. So the more often a Descriptor is invoked, the more it costs.

greyorm wrote:
There is a third option, John, and it is the one I used in Orx. It's a purely mechanical solution that doesn't rely on the necessary fiat of other freeform trait systems, because I desperately wanted to get away from fiat in play.

It works something like this: it doesn't matter what you call the trait, the only thing important is the value of the trait. Further, the type of trait doesn't even indicate applicability to a situation, so the broadness or narrowness of the trait does not matter. That works because applicability is determined after use, because the scene is also described after use.

Emily,

I was thinking of John's rant as a kind of counterpoint to Mike's Standard Rant #4:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?t=2051

I think 'freeform traits' in John's post just means 'system where anything can be a trait of your character with the same mechanical effect'. And John's point is that in most games you're consistently interacting with some types of imaginary material more than others, so picking traits that effect that stuff (whatever it is) more is going to be a better choice from an effectiveness point of view. It follows from this, as John notes, that there's a kind of built-in-incentive to take traits like "fighter" or "lucky" or "jack-of-all-trades" or whatever that you can narrate in anywhere.

This is an issue that people designing games with open-ended trait selection need to take into account. Another way of dealing with it that should also be mentioned is for the GM to treat everything on the character sheet the way she's encouraged to deal with e.g. Keys in TSoY: if a trait's on the sheet, the GM should treat it as a request for opportunities for conflicts which involve that stuff, and try to provide them more or less equally.

Blah. Damn this editing. That's part of what I took to be John's point, anyway. The other part is that because broad traits are consistently rewarded you pay a price for something that often seems to be a great virtue of open-ended trait systems: the ability to characterize your character in unique, fun, idiosyncratic, stylish, etc. sort of ways.

John wrote:
... Cool!  Amend my statement again now to four solutions...

If anyone cares, I'm comfy with John's assessment of Dogs, with the caveat that it's about "easier to use," not strictly "broader." Sometimes broad traits are easier to bring to bear, sometimes narrow traits are.

If we had a hundred Dogs characters in front of us, it'd be pretty easy - not totally trivial, but we could make a start - pretty easy to put stars next to all the easy-to-use traits. I predict you'd find as many stars next to narrow traits as broad ones.

I'm not especially concerned about it. I don't think it can make-or-break play, in Dogs' case. Better I should worry about scene framing.

-Vincent

John wrote: I haven't seen the Orx solution used before.  Are there other games which do this?  To clarify, does only one trait apply for a given scene?  So you pick a trait to apply, then come up with a scene that uses it?

HMT wrote:
Storyboard presents another. In Storyboard, one rolls versus a target number and counts successes. The number of dice rolled is determined by the number of character traits that apply. The target number is determined by the specificity of the character's most narrowly focused applicable trait.

John wrote:
This is a general rant about freeform traits, prompted by some off-board discussion.  I'm not opposed to them in general, but I think that some designers choose them as a matter of course without thinking about the consequences. 

John wrote: The core problem is the schizophrenia in many (if not most) freeform trait systems.  The system advice tells you to pick distinctive, individualistic, and unique traits.  However, the actual result of the system is to reward the player for taking traits as broad and generic as she can possibly talk the GM or group into accepting.  So if they can talk the group into accepting "Jack-of-All-Trades" or "Natural Genius" or "Highly Trained Super Agent", then they are rewarded by constantly getting to add in the bonus for those broad traits.  Choosing narrow, distinctive, or idiosyncratic traits like "Repressed love for half-brother Juan" or "I can make a mean stew" rarely benefits the player system-wise. 

In GEAR traits are free-form but are all built and designed so as to spell out exactly what they do. That was my solution to this exact issue.

-Marco

3 unrelated comments

1) Joshua's "Thematic Batteries": cool!

2) Broad vs specific traits: In playing lots of Capes, and a bit of Dogs, I've found that the really broad traits can paradoxically be so vague or bland it's hard to narrate them into the conflict, at least if you care about impressing your fellow player with the coolness of your narration. Conversely, the narrow stuff, by being really specific, can stimulate your imagination and make narrating them in easier and more fun.

3) An additional method for pricing traits, although I've not seen this in an actual game: Choose whatever cost you like for your trait; the higher the cost, the more often it has to come up -- or, as Ben "Polaris" Lehman pointed out when I mentioned this idea to him, what you're paying for is scene-framing power. E.g. I could pay 1 point for "master swordsman" and only get to bring it up in one scene per session, which probably means the fight scene; you could pay 10 points for "master swordsman" and get to bring it up in every scene, which means either (a) your reputation as a swordsman impresses everyone you meet, your trained reflexes help you catch the falling puppy, your blade is so shiny you can shave in it and thus look prettier, etc. etc., or (b) every scene you're in becomes a fight scene.

lumpley wrote:
If anyone cares, I'm comfy with John's assessment of Dogs, with the caveat that it's about "easier to use," not strictly "broader." Sometimes broad traits are easier to bring to bear, sometimes narrow traits are.

1 unit of reward for the first time a trait is used in a session.
1 unit of reward if the trait is never used or only used once in a session.

There, now you have incentive to take "Makes a mean stew". If it never comes up, your rewarded. If it does come up just the once, it's even better.

A further thought:

John wrote:
However, the actual result of the system is to reward the player for taking traits as broad and generic as she can possibly talk the GM or group into accepting.  So if they can talk the group into accepting "Jack-of-All-Trades" or "Natural Genius" or "Highly Trained Super Agent", then they are rewarded by constantly getting to add in the bonus for those broad traits.

chadu wrote:
This struck me after I'd left my computer for the day: If the player managed to convince the group into accepting their super-broad ability, well, they all have agreed that it was okay within their contract for the game.

So that wouldn't be a problem, unless the other players had already selected narrow traits, and for some reason refused to broaden them in the face of broader attributes being accepted, and only then got angry about it later.

John wrote:
To clarify, the problem I suggested is the schizophrenia of the game design.  That is, if a game design actually intends for players to have very broad traits and suggests this in its advice to players, then as you point out, that is fine.  The game intended it, the group has accepted it, and everything is in harmony. 

The problem comes from the mismatch in systems which claim (in text) to encourage distinctive, narrow individual traits -- but where the actual system reward comes from having as broadly-applicable a trait as you can get away with.

Chad wrote:

So that wouldn't be a problem, unless the other players had already selected narrow traits, and for some reason refused to broaden them in the face of broader attributes being accepted, and only then got angry about it later.

Sean wrote:
Chad wrote:

So that wouldn't be a problem, unless the other players had already selected narrow traits, and for some reason refused to broaden them in the face of broader attributes being accepted, and only then got angry about it later.

This does happen though. It particularly happens if the GM (in a traditional game) favors a particular challenge mix (in my experience, often combat). You start out, the GM says: 'freeform traits! total self-definition! make the guy you always wanted to play!' and so we get Zen Origami Master and Girl in Every Port and all that kind of stuff.

But then in play the guy who made the battle-scarred veteran has traits that consistently apply to what's actually going on much more often, and the other players get pissed.

Sean wrote: There are a lot of good solutions in this thread. One point I was trying to make earlier though is that if you're playing a game like this in a sense every freeform trait the player comes up with is a request to the GM: 'make this relevant in play'. So it's maybe good if setting detail or other material provided up front helps to indicate the things that are going to be generally relevant.

Heya,

The problem comes from the mismatch in systems which claim (in text) to encourage distinctive, narrow individual traits -- but where the actual system reward comes from having as broadly-applicable a trait as you can get away with.

chadu wrote:
A further thought:

John wrote:
However, the actual result of the system is to reward the player for taking traits as broad and generic as she can possibly talk the GM or group into accepting.  So if they can talk the group into accepting "Jack-of-All-Trades" or "Natural Genius" or "Highly Trained Super Agent", then they are rewarded by constantly getting to add in the bonus for those broad traits.

(My bolds.)

This struck me after I'd left my computer for the day: If the player managed to convince the group into accepting their super-broad ability, well, they all have agreed that it was okay within their contract for the game.

So that wouldn't be a problem, unless the other players had already selected narrow traits, and for some reason refused to broaden them in the face of broader attributes being accepted, and only then got angry about it later.

CU

Another kick at the very same can -- which really amounts to balance.  I implemented this in an early draft of Orbital, which hasn't gone beyond that stage, due to other difficulties.  However, evening the playing field between "better" and "worse" freeform traits it did do.

1) all rolls are opposed

2) Wherever the "buck stops" decides if a given matchup of traits includes one that's more applicable (read: focused, less munchkin-ey, or whatever your issue with freeform trait balance is) to the given conflict/task.  That trait gets a mechanical bonus.  (In Orbital's case, it was extra dice in the die pool.  I could just as easily be die modifiers or whatever.)

Done.

I imagine that this solution would work really well in both Narr- and Gamist-facilitating designs.  I could see some problems with it in a Sim-facilitating game, though.

Maybe it's just me, but I see a different axis of interaction with free-form systems, in regards "balance". I mean, if it's free-form, and I say, "Stronger than a chicken" and some other player says, "Stronger than a moose" -- there's nothing in the system stopping me from being stronger than a moose, or panda, or Hercules, or whatever. I think the operating assumption is that if I chose "stronger than chicken", I must've wanted to play a stronger-than-chicken-character, for whatever reason.

In other words, if the sky's the limit, why should this kind of balance matter?

On the other hand (arguing with myself), I think advising a GM to watch spot-light time between characters whose trait vary in applicability is sound advice, but it's just the standard GM advice to "share the spotlight" -- I guess I don't see it deserving any special mention just for free-form traits.

jaw6 wrote:
Maybe it's just me, but I see a different axis of interaction with free-form systems, in regards "balance". I mean, if it's free-form, and I say, "Stronger than a chicken" and some other player says, "Stronger than a moose" -- there's nothing in the system stopping me from being stronger than a moose, or panda, or Hercules, or whatever. I think the operating assumption is that if I chose "stronger than chicken", I must've wanted to play a stronger-than-chicken-character, for whatever reason.

I also really like the Thematic Battery idea. I think that it could be easily applied to many systems by requiring that the trait be "negatively charged" via free narration in a suitable context, and then discharged through normal use in a specific system.

That said, I am not sure whether the battery idea really addresses the question of broad vs. narrow traits - it will probably be easier to charge a broad trait than a narrow one, especially if boring, repetitive use of traits is somewhat discouraged, like it often is.

I thought that it might also be interesting to have one example of more quantified traits explicitly spelled out as an example in this thread. In Everway, Powers are rated with the following system:

Is the power Versatile? Can it be used in various, imaginative ways? If yes, cost: +1 points.
Is the power Major? Can it be expected to have a significant impact on the story? If yes, cost +1 points.
Is the power Frequent? Will it be used often? If yes, cost +1. Note that all combat-relevant powers are automatically considered Frequent.

The cost of each power is determined through negotiation and can range from 0 to 3 or more, as each of the categories above can be seen to apply multiple times - "twice Major" and so on.

I think that this system is a good blend of freeform and structured, but not automatically perfect. It still takes some negotiation and constant vigilance to ensure an "equal opportunity" game.

Cheers,
+ Mikael

Everspinner wrote: That said, I am not sure whether the battery idea really addresses the question of broad vs. narrow traits - it will probably be easier to charge a broad trait than a narrow one, especially if boring, repetitive use of traits is somewhat discouraged, like it often is.

Joshua wrote:

Everspinner wrote: That said, I am not sure whether the battery idea really addresses the question of broad vs. narrow traits - it will probably be easier to charge a broad trait than a narrow one, especially if boring, repetitive use of traits is somewhat discouraged, like it often is.

<snip>

If player input is totally constrained to what the character is capable of (therefore barring 'I'm in a barfight'), then yes, the broad/narrow thing is a problem.  The players sit around and wait for the GM to throw them a bone.  You have to invert the dynamics a bit and allow players to help tell the story rather than just participate in it, at which point the broad/narrow distinction becomes meaningless -- the players can contextualize anything.