Howdy all.

Sean Stidd (aka "Calithena") and I recently discovered we were both working on games that were trying to approach our original, gut reactions to Dungeons & Dragons, back when we were kids.  Though our actual designs are very different, we've both gotten interested in the similarities and differences between how we're approaching the (essentially) Narr core of our respective games.  After some discussion, we thought it might be an interesting experiment to post a "joint-design" thread, soliciting comments on both games at the same time (hopefully with some fruitful compare/contrast conversations.)

Evolving rules for both games can be found on Sean's forum,  here.  The original discussion of dungeonkind on this forum can be found here.  The core of the rules are basically the same, though it's already been expanded quite a bit past its generative two or so pages (sorry to all of you who liked it's brevity...)  If anyone would
like the raw rules document as it currently stands, just lemme know via pm.

On to the discussion:

Sean's game, Sorcerers & Swordsmen, asks: "How are you a Hero?  What will your Destiny be?" ("Destiny" here meaning, "effect on the world")

dungeonkind asks: "Why are you an Adventurer?  What do you seek in the wide and lonely world?"

Sean's asking a "how" question and I'm asking a "why" question, both buttressed by a "what" question which, as a sub-question (if you will) of the primary query, leads directly into the mechanics of each game.

We're both trying to find, through the reason the characters adventure in the game, a connection to whatever it was we once experienced through Exploration (in the Forge sense) of the D&D game world (or maybe atmosphere, since it wasn't really any coherent "published" world that ever really excited me, anyhow...)  i.e., Exploring D&D Color (which, at least for me, included paging millions of times through the rules and supplements themselves), soaked into a self-created Setting, with a traditional focus of SITUATION/Character which slowly mutated into CHARACTER/Situation, both without much luck, since both combinations were hampered by System.  (Sorry for the jargon overload, but it helps me think...)

For me, the pure Color of D&D, hamstrung as it was by a System that said it accessed that Color, but actually didn't, burrowed into my youthful brain like an imaginal parasite that has never been expunged.  So much so that the brokenness of the System itself has now become desirable Color to me.  So much so that I've added it into the game as a goddam resource for characters.  Whew. 

Anyhow, we've both got Narr-engine games going now; however, dungeonkind is definitely higher octane Narr.  Sean's take, from an email, goes thusly:

Sean wrote:
My goal is really to produce an experience that I actually got with D&D (this is important and a place where I think maybe I differ a little bit from most other people in our situation - now and then me and my friends actually got satisfying play on the mythopoetic
level out of D&D and our subsequent homebrews), although heavily drifted versions. If that's a Sim experience or a Nar experience or an Incoherent experience that's all OK with me, because it was a satisfying experience.

Thanks for firing this one up, Kesher!

So anyway, because our imaginative ideas are so close together, and because our mechanical approaches are so very different, we thought a joint design thread might be (a) highly beneficial to us and (b) interesting from a theoretical point of view. Here's how Kesher laid it out to me in an email:

I've gotta say, as I read more of your game, we're definitely working on the same wavelength; at one point we both actually say "make the character you want to play."  Perhaps early experiences of hopes vs. frustrations with DnD fell along very similar lines for many people...  You've got Destiny, I have THE BEAST THAT GNAWS MY HEART (the driving force behind each Adventurer); you have larger-scale Destines as characters go up in lvl, with goals that must be met to advance without consequences, I have level-based Stages of Satisfaction for the BEAST, which if they are aren't met cause a spiral of negative mechanical consequences.  Anyhow, I don't need to go on; you can just read the game and see for yourself.  Needless to say, I was smiling as I read.

Level 1-3 characters are Exceptional People. They may be relatively young, or older but untested, but characters of this level are people to be reckoned with, or at least watched out for. They have abilities well beyond the ordinary. Many fantasy characters start out their careers at this level.

Level 4-7 characters are Heroes. Characters of this level have virtually always slain a dangerous monster, performed heroically in battle, saved at least one small town or isolated valley from ruin, discovered some arcane secret of import, or generally done something to distinguish them as a person to be reckoned with. They are well known and respected or feared in the areas they have traveled, and somewhat beyond. Beowulf and Cugel the Clever both finish up in this power range.

Level 8-11 characters are Superheroes. A character of this power might have slain a giant, saved an entire city from destruction, served as general over a king’s armies, ruled a small region, or achieved some notable arcane discovery. All the notables of a given fantasy world will likely have heard of characters in this level range, at least if they are on the same continent. Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser are characters who eventually reach this power level, as is Bilbo Baggins.

Level 12-15 characters are Warrior-Queens and Sorcerer-Kings, characters whose potent ambition and grand destiny lead them to decide the fates of large nations or great religions. Their names are known throughout the world, often for centuries after they die. Dragonslayers and wizards for whom spells are named are common at this power level. Arthur and Conan fit comfortably at this level range.

Level 16-19 are Epic Heroes, beings who transcend normal mortal limitations to rule empires and hold the destinies of whole peoples and ages in their hands. Demon lords and demigods are suitable foes for heroes of this level, and they raise and lower empires, world-spanning religions, and magical civilizations with their actions. Their names are remembered as long as men draw breath, and even supernatural powers pay such persons heed. Kull, and Elric at the time of “The Dreaming City”, are examples of Epic Heroes.

Level 20 characters are Demigods, individuals who become forces of the world in their own right, like Hercules or Kane. Classic wizards like Gandalf or Merlin are level 20 characters as well, ‘immortal powers’ who guide other heroes to their destiny. Heroes whose actions directly save or destroy whole worlds, like Elric in Stormbringer (who does both), also qualify as level 20 characters. These characters can conquer nearly any foe, rule nearly any kingdom, and master nearly any magic, and probably already have.

Kesher wrote: THE BEAST THAT GNAWS MY HEART
I seek the Black Ring of Ithiquil in order to damn my husband's killers to the 9th level of Hell.

CLAWS OF THE BEAST
Person: Ghost of my dead husband
Emoton: Love
Fear: Betrayal

FIRST HUNGER (levels 1-3)
I must raise money for a ship and crew to sail to the Isle of Dread; there I will find inscriptions on certain ancient monuments that will tell me how to find the Tomb of Ithiquil.

SECOND HUNGER (levels 4-6)
I must have the inscriptions deciphered and find my way to the Tomb; there I will recover the Black Ring.

THIRD HUNGER (levels 7-9)
I must gain power over the Ring; then I can force the devil whose talisman it is to do my bidding.

FOURTH AND FINAL HUNGER (levels 10 on up)
I must track down each of my husband's five killers one by one and send them screaming to the lowest level of Hell.

The character either achieves their goal (and retires: The blacksmith/Lord of the Keep/whatever, who used to be an Adventurer) or is destroyed trying (choosing to die or retire:  The bitter, often maimed, former Adventurer.)  They must sate each HUNGER by the end of the level-grouping or begin to suffer system-based consequences (extra Threat levied against just them, in a contextually relevant conflict category(ies), which will push them towards death or maiming fairly quickly.  The extra Threat can be removed by sating the previous hunger.

Each BEAST is stated with the above formula: "I seek _______ in order to _______ ."
Each HUNGER, similarly, "I must _______ (sometimes a second clause separated by a ;) ."

OK, Aaron, here's a question for you:

How are you intending to deal with group play? Like, if you've got 3 characters with different Beasts, how do you weave all that together in play?

One way is to do parallel adventure construction - again, check Sorcerer & Sword for ideas.

Something that might work is to constrain the steps by way of their setting/location. Like if your sample above was one of three characters in a game, the constraint would be that that stage all happens on the Isle of Dread.

A vague literary antecedent for this would be Moorcock's The Vanishing Tower, or possibly the quest for the Holy Grail, where it all leads to the same castle in the end.

It's actually not a super-common literary set-up though, and could even seem slightly hokey - but it's very D&D.

But whatever you think of that, what are your plans for working out multi-player games?

First, Levi, thanks for the kind words!  If you wanted to expand on what you like so much about it, that'd be awesome too!  :)

Second, Sean, well, that's a good question, and one I haven't completely answered.

Sean wrote:
Something that might work is to constrain the steps by way of their setting/location. Like if your sample above was one of three characters in a game, the constraint would be that that stage all happens on the Isle of Dread.

Kesher wrote: First, Levi, thanks for the kind words!  If you wanted to expand on what you like so much about it, that'd be awesome too!  :)

You'll have to decide what's right for you, Aaron, but here's my take: let's think concretely about what the players do. They make these characters with a Beast: that seems individual. So then you've got the paladin who wants to slay the god she serves, the revenge killer in your core example, and the barbarian buccaneer who wants to rule the seven seas. What the fuck are these people going to do together?

My design essentially says: character (a) is going to be a minor character in character (b)'s saga sometimes, and vice versa other times, and eventually as characters die or work out their destiny everyone gets a turn. That's a solution with some drawbacks, but I've reconciled myself to those.

Your design by contrast (and I really definitely recommend Sorcerer & Sword to get lots of good ideas for GMing techniques here - let your friend keep the copy and buy another one - Ron deserves the custom) seems to demand, with the stages, that everyone is going after their own thing.

That's why it seemed to me that your only viable option for content was the setting. You sit down to play: everyone's got the beast and you're playing out a new stage, right? (Your game elegantly solves the high level/low level problem if I understand it correctly: no reason a first stager can't join up with a third stager, is there, mechanically speaking?) So what do you do next?

It seemed to me that the thing to do next is to get the players to agree that all these stages would play out in the same place: the Isle of Dread, the Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl, the Free City of Haven, wherever. This gets hammered out by the players, maybe taking some cues from Universalis on how to negotiate what the place is like, in advance.

So then we at least know that all these stages are going to get worked out in the same place, which makes bangs and crosses and weaves and just in general connected NPCs and issues across the adventures much easier to prep.

The one drawback I see to the idea here is that you can't really do that at the beginning of a session and expect the GM to do much to prep the collaborative location you've put together. So you'd either have to do it at the end of the previous session - which might be exhausting and/or difficult - or else via email/whatever between sessions, which doesn't work for a lot of groups.

But anyway, the basic idea of using the stage locales as a unifying tool for bringing together characters with disparate Beasts seems like it has some promise to me. The question is just how exactly to work it into play. My solution was effectively to have the GM design the stages (goals in S&S) with player input of various kinds, but given what you're going for in terms of play experience I think that won't work for you.

(responses to offline discussion)

The question I was addressing above, as I see it, relates to managing the experience of play.

You've got a small group of characters with a series of Hungers. And then the question is, is each adventure going to address all the Hungers, or are you going to break things out to focus on one Hunger per adventure?

My thought was that the more challenging and potentially more rewarding answer is to get everyone's Hunger in there for each adventure. (This is not what I do in S&S, but I think if you can swing it it's a better way to go, and I think your mechanics have a shot at helping you do it.)

But this is tough. If you have adventure input = 3 different characters with 3 different hungers, and you don't want to constrain character types or creation especially, there's a challenge in unifying all that imaginary material. One way to do it, a way you'll probably have to take and for which Sorcerer & Sword will be invaluable, is to run criss-crossing adventures.

My modest suggestion was just that when you sit down with a group to play it all happens in the same imaginary location: a creative constraint on situation. So if they're all at an item stage then they're off to a tomb that has all the items together, maybe, or if one needs an item and one needs to cast a terrible spell and one needs to secure a favor from a prickly ex-lover all those things are together somehow at the Tower of Indomitable Circumstance. I don't know if this works or not but it might make GM prep more manageable and I do know that in general creative constraints like this are very useful.

I do think rather than just including CLAWS (like my including connections rule) you should try to have everyone's Hunger on the table every time, if you can swing it. I think you'll get a more powerful play experience that way. (Anyone who's played Otherkind or has a sense for dungeonkind want to chime in on this? It's a pretty central question for the design IMO.)

Kesher wrote:

How do characters go up a level in S&S again?  Is it entirely goal-related?

I loved that idea of Levi's of breaking the HUNGER down into level-by-level goals, with the completion of each one determining your raise in level.

Sean wrote:
My thought was that the more challenging and potentially more rewarding answer is to get everyone's Hunger in there for each adventure. (This is not what I do in S&S, but I think if you can swing it it's a better way to go, and I think your mechanics have a shot at helping you do it.)

Sean wrote:
My modest suggestion was just that when you sit down with a group to play it all happens in the same imaginary location: a creative constraint on situation. So if they're all at an item stage then they're off to a tomb that has all the items together, maybe, or if one needs an item and one needs to cast a terrible spell and one needs to secure a favor from a prickly ex-lover all those things are together somehow at the Tower of Indomitable Circumstance. I don't know if this works or not but it might make GM prep more manageable and I do know that in general creative constraints like this are very useful.

Sean wrote:
It is a nice idea, but if I were you I'd keep the Hungers as the 'levels' and stick with a relatively small number of them (3-6 say, with 4 as you have it already seeming just right to this armchair quarterback). I've wanted to do this with my six scales several times (having level and scale both in S&S is aesthetically unsatisfying) but then I have to completely redesign the combat system, etc. which is why I haven't. So that Morgan's career is, effectively, four adventures, spread out over 4-10 game sessions say. I really think that's the sweet spot you're looking for with your design. But this is something you need to decide for yourself, how long those character arcs are going to take to play out. I would try to go for a shorter number on this, though, because that's where an engine like yours can kick the ass of an engine like mine, let alone the games that inspired us long ago.