Every time I log on I wish someone had told me that no one here uses "Handles"...

Oh well, on to game making.

I'm once again asking for help in developing a dice mechanic.  This is something I'm notoriously bad at.  When I originally created the game "Outatowners", I created a simple dice system pretty much because I thought I had to.  When actors encountered boogums, spooks, or monsters, they would take basic combat rolls (the standard "big-roll-beats-little-roll" system).

The problem I had with this system is that it's ungainly, turning a game that's supposed to emphasize storytelling and suspense into a basic dungeon-crawl.  Also, it doesn't leave much room for inventive storytelling or interesting monsters.

I'm trying to create a very rules-light system.  Coming from a programming background, this is pretty much an exercise in futility without someone holding me down and keeping me from making charts and tables.

The gameplay is designed to be cruelly simple...unfortunately, I cannot make it so.

A GM creates a story surrounding an appropriately spooky location such as an old house, abandoned insane assylum, or civil war battlefield.  The location is haunted by two creatures, a ghost that "anchors" the haunting (murdered child, shut-in who died alone, warden killed and eaten by his inmates, etc.) and the "monsters" created by the ghost (toys posessed with an evil will, faceless figures dressed as nurses, insane jibbering horrors formed by no ordered mind).

The monsters serve as "clues" to the nature of and a possible way of exorcising the ghost (the ghost isn't neccessarily evil...the monsters are primarily embodiments of it's frustration at being misunderstood).  They also obviously serve as...well...monsters for GMs and players who absolutely must kill things.

Other encounters involve "scares".  Everything from a creaky door to shadows murdering each other in an endless, grisly tableau on the walls can be a "scare".  The character is not attacked or in mortal peril, but failing to win an encounter such as this would have certian unpleasant outcomes such as hiding in a corner until someone gets them, or wetting themselves.  "Scares" can also serve as clues.

So the GM gives out clues to his scenario according to the players actions and the players try to figure out the scenario before they are reduced to sobbing heaps of flesh (or just heaps of flesh).

So that's the basic flow of gameplay.  My problem is that I can't create a mechanic to resolve encounters.  But for this, the game is finished and I could go on to bug people about which printer to use and what binding works best for the number of pages I'm working with.

WyldKarde wrote: So the GM gives out clues to his scenario according to the players actions and the players try to figure out the scenario before their characters are reduced to sobbing heaps of flesh (or just heaps of flesh).

Resolution occurs when the spirit/location is exorscised.  The ghost is trying to communicate with the world of the living and the players are trying to figure out the mystery of the location as well as get out alive and sane.  Resolution is up to the GM, but ideally would require a certian task be carried out.

Encounters are clues, or should be.  Monsters that happen to be faceless schoolchildren holding knives might give some insight as to the ghost.  Perhaps he was killed by his classmates...perhaps he was running with a knife and fell down a boarded-up stairwell never to be found.  Resolution in a case like this might be finding the body, apologising to the spirit, or just calling the roll one last time.  It's a "storytelling" RPG (Ron told me why it's not narrative but I've never been known for my grasp of G/N/S) so the GM would determine the best/most dramatic/scariest resolution.

Characters could carry over from story to story, but that would depend on the GM's ability (and willingness) to keep his audience alive.  As a storyteller, I'm not much concerned with continuity of characters between stories.  For me, a great ending would be one where the last surviving player realizes the horrible truth about the haunted Oreo Cookie Factory.

People...double stuff is made from people.

With something that is a story heavy game the lighter the system the better. Look at what you want the system to do. Eg drive the characters mad. Scare the S@#t out of them. I would look at a bravery/sanity mechanic. Fighting monsters doesn't seem like the most important part you can have a simple mechanic for such things. I roll and hit or miss but the tougher the monsters the harder to hurt the scarier they are. Players are generally afraid of character death. so they have to be smart so intelligence or intellect has to be key.

Link the intellect to the bravery so the more cowardly they get the less they notice. Then you can have some sort of epiphany mechanic where things become clear.

That is just my 2 cents tho.

Simpler is good in this type of game especially if I am going to be playing a separate character each time we go on an (adventure) I don't want to spend a crap load of time to create a character that I may never play again.

The more time i can spend with a character as a player the more I will forgive the mechanic. (to a point) I think that a simple idea like Fright (SAN) checks is the way to go.

I'm wondering if maybe intellect is a bad stat to have.

The reason I'm thinking that is this: The players themselves are solving the mystery at the same time that the characters are. As such, it doesn't make much sense to me, personally, to have players test to see how much of the puzzle they piece together, while the player also tries to piece it together.

Some things I think the character might depend on:
awareness
bravery
sanity

empathy/remorse.

I think the empathy one might be key. It's easy enough to kill the faceless nurse phantoms when you learn how, it's a lot harder to cope with them - if you empathize with the ghost who creates them.

I think that this coming to understand, maybe even pity and feel for, the ghost could be a huge part of the game.
If you agree - I'd like to see a "remorse" stat.

The empathy one is new...hadn't considered players becoming emotionally involved (unless fear is an emotion) with the creatures stalking them.  The urge to soothe the pain of a troubled spirit and being unable to strike down it's emmisaries because of the pain it causes the creature is interesting.

It also creates the one player who "understands" the ghost and who becomes valuable to the party as an empath but useless as a fighter.  Also, messages from the spirit won't be as violent (like bleeding walls and screaming teddy bears) because the spirit won't have to try as hard to communicate.

Downside...that character won't go where the spirit won't go, or where the spirit doesn't want them to go.  While the other characters can take their two-by-fours into the abandoned toolshed and grab the rusty sawblade, the character who has bonded with the spirit can't (or can't without passing a fear check) because that's where the spirit died and it's afraid to go there.

So now different areas are dangerous to different players.  The ghost won't protect the empath in the dark hallway because it has no presence there.  This is the free reign of his monsters...or monsters that embody it's own fears.  Instead of drowned people, the empath would have to face the ghostly murderer of the child.

Okay...I'm skipping ahead to gameplay and ignoring mechanic...that is my downfall time and again.

Health - Because things can kill you
Sanity - Because things can drive you nuts
Awareness - Because clues are all around you
Bravery - Because other things are all around you
Empathy - Because there's two sides to every story

Hmm...now these characters are interesting enough to carry on to multiple games.

And...the mechanic is also starting to form.  Health and Sanity are pools, depleted when a player fails a task.  Awareness is the player's ability to get clues out of encounters.  Bravery is a player's resistance to scares.  Empathy is a players...alignment for lack of a better word.  The more a player feels for the ghost, the harder it is for that player to ignore the spirit's wishes.  The player is protected to some degree, but is now as trapped in the location as the spirit.  That player cannot leave without a resolution.

Empathy conveniently solves the "Why don't we just get the hell out of here" dilemma in so many horror movies.

So how should I roll those last three.  The first three are just pools and can be set to a respectable number like 6 or 12.  Playtesting will dictate that though.

a) "Story Heavy" does not equate to "System Lite".  Don't make me come over there.

b) I'd apply Joe's argument against Intelligence to your proposed Awareness and Empathy traits -- you want the players to figure things out; why don't you want the players to notice things and form a connection to the ghost?

c) Stop looking at the character sheet as a description of a character; start looking at is as a listing of resources available to the player.  Health and Sanity are a dwindling resource that lets the player keep participating, keep finding more clues, and keep trying to figure out the ghost.  Those should stay in.  Bravery, maybe (see next point).  The others are short-circuiting your game.  Ditch 'em.

d)  It sounds like fighting monsters is pretty central to your conception of what game play looks like.  So is overcoming or resisting the scares.  In terms of player resources, these are activities which preserve Health and Sanity.  Whether you model these with simple "Fighting" and "Stalwart" stats or diversify really (really really) depends on what kind of fights and overcoming-of-fear encounters you want to have.  I highly suggest your writing out a hypothetical transcript of a game, and then examine what the players are actually choosing to do (find the rusty hatchet in the garden versus unleash inner demon versus outwit the monster versus versus...).  Whatever the case, the point of these traits should not be to "win" but to mitigate the negative effects of encounters.  Characters in horror movies don't "win" -- they scrape through.  Your traits should let players do that.

e) The eventual "win" is never (okay, rarely) gained by punching the badguy in the face or being too hard core to be scared by his shennanigans.  The "win" is always the character figuring out how to exorcise/banish/free the ghost, which has nothing to do with character competency and everything to do with the players choosing the "right" option.  The hardcore, hugely competent  marines are always the first to go.  Whether or not there is one "right" option or the GM gets to judge whether a proposed solution is cool enough is... pretty irrelevant.  (Although if you take a page from Dogs and say whatever solution the players come up with is the correct one, you may have a killer game.)

f) I'd rather heartily suggest that you need a pacing mechanic -- horror movies and scary stories are all about pacing.

Hi!
  Here's a suggestion that speeks to mechanics and motivating the players to solve the mystery.
  Maybe you just need 3 stats, Bravery for physical actions, Sanity for mental actions and Empathy for emotional actions.
  The mechanic is you have to spend points from a stat to use it and if it is successful, you get the points back. This represents the It's so crazy, it might work. Nope, it was just crazy. etc...
  Sounds like a good idea for a game if you can work it out and keep on the same theme.

Suggestion...

maybe Bravery is a die pool. Like every player has X bravery dice, they can put them into a collective pool.

And, sanity could maybe be done the same way? I don't know if that makes any sense, just a random thought.

Awareness/Empathy are, in essence, about perception. I think they could both be skill-based stats.
Awareness: "You see three faceless butchers coming toward you"
Empathy: "You see three weary, tired men lugging toward you, holding up butcher knives out of resignation more than anyhting"

I'm with Joshua.

In ghost stories (well, the ones of them I like, anyway), you can't "win" by beating down the beasties. (Zombie stories, yeah, all about beating down faster than you're beat; but that's not this). You can't even survive by beating down the beasties, because they just keep coming until you figure out what's causing them: They're just manifestations of the "anchor" haunting, as you've said. And the "anchor" haunting can't be resolved by brute force or even by skill and smarts, because what's tying the ghost to this world is always, always moral: Someone has been wronged so profoundly that the universe itself won't accept it and reality as we know breaks down to allow that someone to try to make things right even though they're already dead. But, of course, the ghost can never right the wrong itself -- it's too weak in the physical world, or it's too trapped in its own traumatized, obsessive, repetitive craziness -- so the heroes have to do it. When the heroes figure out the Wrong, they can confront it, do something to set it right or at least allow closure, and thus un-anchor the ghost, which means all the manifestations stop and reality goes back to normal.

So these stories tend to start with the heroes being threatened by the ghost, and end with the heroes rescuing the ghost from ghost-dom, and rescuing themselves in the process, by Making Things Right (Sixth Sense is a perfect example). Yes, sometimes the ghost itself is the Someone Who Did Wrong, now hanging around doing further evil, but those stories tend to have the ghost's un-anchor be a punishment, casting it into hell explicitly or implicitly so it can finally be punished for its evil life (e.g. The Haunting) -- so once again, the heroes only save themselves by Making Things Right.

You see why people love these stories? You start scared, but in the end, it's profoundly comforting: The universe doesn't just let us die if the moral balance is out of whack, it keeps us around as ghosts until what's wrong can somehow be set right, if only by having someone understand what really happened and acknowledge it.

My take was that this was primarily about gathering clues in order to find a solution, and fighting monsters was just a necessary part of being able to do that.
What I am interested in knowing is, is the intent to have the PLAYER do all the recognition and processing of clues, in which case monster fighting is a just a side issue for the character; or can the gathering of clues be in any way tied to the CHARACTER?

For the former, the player observes the clue, but has to determine if the character survives the encounter. Mechanics don't impact the clues in any way, and essentially only affect the resolution of the game indirectly - does the character live long enough for the player to put everything together?

In the later case, any fight or scary encounter has a potential to reveal clues, but with the "quality" of the clue being decided by the character (through the mechanics). The player still needs to interpret and process the clue, but the better their character performed, the better (potentially) the clues.

Either way is workable, but the dice mechanics will have a different focus and different requirements in each case.

-Al

One more question.

Is the solution for dealing with the ghost set by the GM and fixed-in-stone so to speak, or will it be more vaguely defined with the intent to determine the specifics during play?

As Joshua pointed out:

(Although if you take a page from Dogs and say whatever solution the players come up with is the correct one, you may have a killer game.)

I'll take a slightly different tack and look at it as a system rather than the story. I guess the important things to me are:

1) All attributes must be useful. For instance, if you role-play both the motivation and the smarts from the -player- end, then the -character- doesn't need much in the way of Empathy or Awareness. On the other hand, if you force Awareness rolls to get clues, then the -player- might know something but be unable to express it in -character-. Which is also bad.

2) Attribute/skill use needs to reinforce the genre. A pool of dice that is used up, a cumulative penalty or some other "ticking clock" puts characters under time pressure. Other things can subtly encourage genre conventions without beating people over the head with it. If lots of rolls are good, only allow one roll per group of characters. This "encourages" players to split up (if that's what you want). If there is an opportunity to leave a bad scene and come back later, encourage characters to stay by giving bonuses for "time spent on scene" or penalties for "being shaken enough to flee".

3) Similarly, attributes used and other aspects of character design need to foster development of whatever genre stereotypes you might have (ghost-hunting camerman, troubled psychic, priest, etc.). Certain skills or abilities might be far more useful if specialized in, and this can't be done well unless the player shorts the character somehow, thus forcing a reliance on others to cover for their weak areas.

My 2c.

Greg Porter
BTRC guy

What about making the stat rolls themselves player competitive - not sure if this is where you're going - but the point of the story is NOT that everyone should die or go mad and never find out the Truth. Instead, assume that they will figure it out - whether they exorcise/banish the ghost is variable after that. But, the actual mystery of finding out what is going on should be assumed to occur - BUT - the trick is which of the characters will survive or stay sane, and who will have their heads hacked off by the horseman before the mystery is revealed?

To do this, if you do keep things like awareness rolls, make them competitive - someone is going to find the hatchet, but whoever is the most observant gets x number of tokens or whatever. The players roll against each other - the one with the best roll, wins and finds the object when everyone else is standing around. Add in expendable dice pools and start getting competitive use of resources - keeping your dice pools high will help you later, but it is probably not as good as gambling it against winning an awareness conflict and getting the bonus story tokens.

In this way, the game works into two halves - uncover the mystery, then resolve it. The latter part gets far more intense, and these story tokens somehow come into play to assist the player in beating the forces of opposition are arrayed against the players. So, the most perceptive or empathic character is more likely to pull through at the end and be the person who not only survives but manages to banish the beast. You have a definite end-game - the remaining players uncover the mystery, and now must use all the force they have to break their way into the house and stop the ritual. Besides, how many horror stories do you know where more than one character survives?

But this may not be what you're looking for. Just an idea. This would work best if you had fixed die pools that everyone had (Health, Sanity) and then player-chosen traits (Good eyesight, Intuitive etc.) and then weaved into play as appropriate. Maybe this is more of a gamist focussed idea (can't help it, I'm a gamist), I hope some of it helps.

Justin wrote: the point of the story is NOT that everyone should die or go mad and never find out the Truth. Instead, assume that they will figure it out... the trick is which of the characters will survive or stay sane...if you do keep things like awareness rolls, make them competitive - someone is going to find the hatchet, but whoever is the most observant gets x number of tokens or whatever. The players roll against each other - the one with the best roll, wins and finds the object when everyone else is standing around.....So, the most perceptive or empathic character is more likely to pull through at the end and be the person who not only survives but manages to banish the beast.

P.S.: Going in this direction, you probably don't even want the key character attributes -- i.e. Tough vs. Sensitive-- to be fixed before play begins. Each player should get a pool of points to define his/her character, and when the first encounter hits, everyone has to choose how many points to spend on being Tough, how many to spend on being Sensitive, and how many to keep in reserve. Then, at each subsequent encounter, players can spend from their reserve to become more Tough or more Sensitive, or maybe (scrapping the idea of a reserve) transfer points from one to the other, or maybe earn points from how they survived the last encounter to increase one score or the other for the next one (e.g. I got a good Tough roll last time, so I get a +1 bonus to my Tough from now on, but my Sensitive stays the same). The idea here is to preserve flexibility (both in story terms and in game-tactics terms) to become Tougher or more Sensitive or both as the game proceeds, but preserve the idea that choices have lasting consequences so that what your character did at the beginning of the game defines who s/he is and constrains your options for the end of the game.

Sydney wrote: Teamwork is essential in the long term, because the sensitive characters need the tough guys to protect them and the tough guys need the sensitive characters to figure stuff out, but teamwork is risky in the short term, because my odds of surviving this attack are much better if you don't ("I don't have to run faster than the bear - I have to run faster than you.")

To really make this work, I'd suggest that in every "encounter," there's a clue to what's really going on (i.e. the source/ghost), and there's a risk of death -- and it is guaranteed in each encounter that one character will figure out that encounter's clue, and one character will die or at least be injured.

Would it be in-line to reward self-sacrifice?  I'm not well-versed in the genre, but from what few I've seen the Big Tough Guy usually sacrifices himself to get the Sensitive Main Character past the last obstacle. 

Or allow the Big Tough Guy to take a penalty of -x to his survival roll to help the Sensitive Perceptive Chick by giving her a bonus of +x to her survival roll. A little risk and randomness goes a lot further than absolute certainty of death or survival -- you can always get yourself into trouble by thinking, "well, if I just roll a 6, I'll be fine..."

True.

I know I`d feel a lot more comfortable having my character die if I knew that it would gurantee something, though.

The players finding out how the story ends being a forgone conclusion is fine.  After all, the point is to tell a story...hopefully a good one.  The prospect of never knowing why the old graveyard is haunted isn't desireable in any scenario.  The GM wants his story told.  The players want to hear it.

An outcome where you end up with a pile of corpses and no closure has to be avoided.

The mechanic where players have to work together to get the clues/survive is perfect.  Being a narrativist (self-proclaimed...I'm always hearing how what I think narrativism is isn't narrativism) I was working out a "judgement call" system where the GM decides whether the players respose to an encounter is "good enough" and the dice only determined whether the player gets another shot at getting it right with or without getting hurt.

This more refined mechanic allows for players to work together, leads them down a character development track (not bad for a pick-up-and-go party game) and ensures that they get something out of every encounter.  The clue might not be great, but they get one every time.

F. wrote: The clue might not be great, but they get one every time.

F. wrote: I was working out a "judgement call" system where the GM decides whether the players respose to an encounter is "good enough" and the dice only determined whether the player gets another shot at getting it right with or without getting hurt.

F. wrote: The clue might not be great, but they get one every time.

F. wrote:
I was working out a "judgement call" system where the GM decides whether the players respose to an encounter is "good enough" and the dice only determined whether the player gets another shot at getting it right with or without getting hurt.

That's just it, the "judgement call" doesn't mechanically work.  If you've got Stephen King as a GM and he's plotted out multiple endings for this campaign, then you're fine.  Otherwise, the dice giving you good clues for good rolls, mediocre clues for mediocre rolls, and bad clues (and possibly a punctured lung) for bad rolls.

The players get enough to piece the story together, but the cost is either a good roll, or a pound of flesh.  The old system was clunky, giving players second chances if they made the roll, then making them guess what was in the GM's mind.

Now, clues can be rated depending on how much they give away.  A great roll and you figure something out...the ghost sees himself in a mirror and has to flee.  A good roll and you get the clue and the ghost misses you.  A bad roll and you get a vague clue, the ghost appears as a frightened child in the mirror.  A terrible roll and the mirror stays covered with a sheet, the clue might be that it's the only object in the room that is.

I like the idea where the total clues doesn't exceed the total HP of the characters.  That way, you can "buy" clues either by getting a very good roll and having the GM give it to you, "nickel and dime" your way to the answer with little clues (and little injuries), or have someone do something heroic (or stupid...depends on whether or not this is the result of a very bad roll, or a very dedicated player) and fall down the mine shaft on top of the bodies of the escaped convicts victims.  It cost you a player, but now you know what's down there.

And the empathy/bravery mechanic means that sometimes the situation determines who gets the clue.  The brave character can't be hurt by the ghost of the drowned milkmaid, but they can't talk to them either.  The empath has to talk to the ghost, and has to suffer the consequences of a bad roll by themselves.  Conversely, the blemish-free empath can't take one for the team and go head-to head with a shambling corpse because the brave character is all banged up (not without losing their empathy in the process and changing the clues they'll be getting in the future.

And as always, there are the middle of the road, "Scooby-doo" clues that don't involve communing with the dead (empath), or crawling into an open grave to get a love letter from a cadaver's pocket (brave).  You've got to have these to establish who is the empath and who is brave in the first place...so losing it later on isn't going to stop the story, just how it's told.  The mundane clues might be finding a reply to the aformentioned love letter in a desk...so no having to talk to it's decades old author, or pickpocketing it's mouldering recipient.

The downside...well, a reply to the letter you need isn't the same as reading it or talking to who wrote it.  The safe path means tougher clues...no big win without big risk.

Ah numbers...always we need the numbers.

Well, you've got a six-sided die so clues can go like this.

Nancy walks into the abandoned boiler room.  She hears a child crying and can either leave or stay.  Staying means looking around (+1 brave), calling out to the child (+1 empathy) or at least waiting around until something happens (nothing...you're playing it safe). 

GM's can definately use their judgement on stalling tactics...there's a big difference between standing in the brightest part of the room and waiting and either going into the darkness or trying to get the attention of something in it.

Nancy decides to call out to the child (actually it doesn't matter what she does, if she's still in the room at the end of her turn, this is what happens in this scenario) and a mishapen creature dragging chains behind it attacks her.  Because the value of the empathy clue is four, she has to roll a four or better to get out of this uninjured. 

Nancy rolls a:

1 = She gets beaten within an inch of her life and chased out of the room (-3 to health).  Outside, she hears the crying escalate to screaming before a metal door slams.  Too bad for her she doesn't know which of the many metal doors in the boiler room just slammed.  If she didn't survive the beating, she sound is the last thing she hears.

2 or 3 (-2 or -1 to health) = She gives as good as she gets and chases the creature off.  She sees one of the metal boiler doors slowly open a few moments later.  if she didn't survive the fight, this is the last thing she sees.

4 or 5 = She beats the creature to a pulp and it runs into a boiler door snapping it's...well killing itself.  A childish giggle comes from the inside of the boiler.

6 = The creature is beaten so badly that it runs inside the boiler trying to escape.  Inside, it screams and the boiler shakes violently, being visibly misshapen by something beating the sides of it with tremendous force.  After a few more wet thuds, the door slowly creaks open and a childish giggle can be heard.

Now, in none of those situations does Nancy really want to open the door, but the payoff for being empathetic (she was looking for a hurt child remember and following through is a conversation with a ghost (the child's bones are in the boiler and so is it's ghost if you're an empath).  The brave character would sift through the bones to find a toy, the empath would just talk to the ghost. 

The "middle of the road-er" has to now search the room, perhaps opening up more chances to be a hero or a sweetie.  If they got a good roll, they know where to look but all they get are the obvious bones.  Not having been brave, they won't sift through them and not having been sensitive the ghost won't show.  They can perhaps at that point choose to call out for the child (empath reward, no bonus) or sift through the bones (brave reward, no bonus) and if they make it through a "scare", they get the clue.

The scare is the door suddenly slamming shut.  The difficulty is different depending on the path chosen.  If they're brave, they're in the boiler when it slams shut because they're sifting through bones.  If they're empathetic, they're calling into it from the outside.  The outcome is the same...a failure means no bonus...you were scared shitless...if not for good, at least for now.  Modest failure success means you're shaken and get a partial clue (you see the kid but he doesn't talk to you, you find the toy but it's broken).  Modest success means you get the clue and Sucess means you get the clue and a temporary bonus (brave or empathetic for the next encounter...it'll stick if they're brave or empathetic again).

So the basic mechanic is clues for good rolls and good roleplay, bad clues and perhaps a little extra trouble for bad rolls or bad roleplay.

And again, bad roleplay doesn't have to mean caution...it just did in that scenario.  If you clearly don't want to encounter what's in the room, then leave and find another encounter.  There may be scenes where excessive empathy or bravery is bad roleplay.  This is another GM judgement call.

Come on, all these dessicated parodies of life need is a hug!

I hate to backtrack, but this is a fascinating game.  As I was thinking about the tough/brave and empathy idea and finding clues, something I've considered is that the type of roll determines the type of clue you find.  For instance, when you use tough to find a clue, it's not to help solve a mystery but to give you a clue on how to get out alive.  An empathy roll may give you clues about the motives of the ghost.  A brave roll helps you find something that gives you the drive to confront the ghost.  These ideas aren't particularly thought-out, but an idea to help fine-tune the sorts of things that go on.

Going with the player resource, one way you can perhaps increase tough, brave, and/or empathy is when you successfully use them to find clues.  I'm not sure exactly how the resources can be used, but that's just an example of something to help gain resources.

If the clues are pre-determined by the GM, what is the difference between a good and a bad clue? GM judgement again. What would happen if the clue was just a clue, and the roll is to determine IF you get it, and more importantly, what the consequences are if you do? In this way, looking for clues, by itself, is risky business. I'm guessing you want the players getting more and more nervous as the game progresses and the stakes become higher. Just keep on handing out the clues, but the more that come out, the greater and greater the risk.

The mystery itself is, as you said, assumed to be solved eventually, mind games with the GM and perception rolls just slows it down and, purportedly, add tension. But tension comes from the risk of actually losing something or getting into deep trouble. So if you roll bad for the clue, you may get it, but as you ponder over the elaborate Victorian handwriting, the axe is coming down behind you. Rating clues is a tricky business, even for the GM that designed it - a weak clue when most of the story is known is more useful than a big clue at the beginning. I dunno, I guess I'm having trouble with trying to figure out how you can rate this stuff and make it mechanically work. It still comes down to guessing games with the GM.

And if you have a mediocre GM, the story will go bust pretty fast as he clues get constantly mis-rated, giving away too much or too little, or starting red herring chases as the players come to the wrong conclusion. Only railroading would bring them back on track, and that is the last thing you want.

Sorry, I love this idea, I just am not sure how much GM Judgement can work overall. If GM Judgement is the way it works, then defining what that means is absolutely critical. The examples work well, don't get me wrong, but they are just examples of play. The choice of options on the behalf of the GM regarding Nancy's potential rolls - is this determined BEFORE rolling (a la Conflict Resolution), or after the roll (TR). If the latter, you have problems in interpretation, if the former, you can give away some of the mystery just by setting the stakes. It's tricky.

Agreed that figuring out good vs. bad clues is darned hard for the GM -- but worse, it's ultimately self-defeating, because the GM spent time and energy coming out with those cool clues so s/he could show them off to the players.

I love the "Nancy in the boiler room example" -- but why would you ever want it to end without her seeing the child's ghost? That's the payoff! How many ghost stories have you ever watched where the heroes don't ever find out what caused the haunting? For that matter, how many action movies have you seen where the hero "runs out of hit points" and falls dead without ever getting to go face-to-face with the Big Bad? How many mysteries have the detective fail to notice the crucial clue and wander off without ever figuring out who done it?

The question should not be "do I find out the next awful, terrible, creepy, disturbing thing?" Of course you find out. The question is, "how beat up or freaked out do I have to get first?" And then, when you finally have all the clues and know The Awful Truth, the question then becomes, "now what do I do about it? Is it more important to set things right or to save myself?"

I'd really, really urge you to check out Vincent Baker's Dogs in the Vineyard, in which almost every session involves a crime and a mystery, and the GM advice is "tell the players everything that's wrong! Then let 'em tie themselves in knots figuring out how to make it right."

I'm going to check out Dogs in the Vineyard now.  I've never been a Mystery writer so that will definately help.

I'll also look at the makeup of the horror story, and of the mystery.  I can grab the ear of an author in a heartbeat so I should get a lot of insight as to the mechanics of building a good mystery (ultimately my job) and of building a good horror story (ultimately the GM's job).

The mechanics of the mystery never change...there's always a body...the detective can never have done it...and there's other stuff...someone wrote this down and in the course of writing a murder/mystery play I had to burn these things into my skull.

Now...to find that formula and structure a game around it so that the mystery is solved every time...whether by guessing, or by turningpages/rolling dice to the end.

Horror is more subjectinv, but not as hard as it sounds.  An old theatre coach of mine pointed out the similarities between horror and comedy.  The example:

Imagine an old lady is walking down the street and she slips on the ice, her packages go everywhere, groceries bouncing down the street, her legs go up and out in a comical fashion and her mouth forms a perfect "O" of surprise.

Now...imagine her not moving after hitting the ground.

Comedy and horror in the same swallow...sweet at first, but it kinda hurts going down...like candy with glass in it.

That's just my horror though.  I can assemble a few more of my ilk and get other interpretations.

Okay...so far an encounter is...

Problem

Choice

Roll

Reward/Punishment

Payoff

Does the choice affect the reward/punishment, the payoff, or both?

F. wrote:
Okay...so far an encounter is...

Problem

Choice

Roll

Reward/Punishment

Payoff

I was wondering if a sort of tension gamble might be good. Like the GM declares a clue is in the basement. You then go through steps, asking each time if the player wants to go on a bit further. At the start of each step you roll a low percentage of being hit by something nasty. The thing is, the more steps you go through, the bigger the clue is...but at the same time the bigger the nasty.

But for it to work, you'd have to accept players chickening out. But I think a story that ends "We were too scared to finnish the story" is a story well finished.

I'd rather the players finish the story.  Whether they all survive to the end is incidental.  Perhaps at the end, all they're left with is clues and they have to guess at what "really happened in that house", but that's the kind of "around the campfire" feel I'm shooting for.

I'm working through a rough draft for Outatowners.  I guess the only way to test the rules is to playtest the game itself.  Seasoned GMs will quickly find out where the water rushes in.

Is that the sort of thing that goes into a playtest forum, or do just the results of the playtest and subsequent discussions go there?

Playtests usually go in Actual Play, for reference.

I'd actually be interested to see what happens when an unseasoned GM runs the game.

Cool, I'm sure I'll get a few unseasoned ones.  It's the element of story writing that will seperate the d4's from the d20's.  All good RPG's require the GM to do a little beforehand planning, but to write a full story with the morking mechanics of a traditional mystery might be daunting for a beginner.  I can only hope that my interweaving the game mechanic with the tried and true mechanic of a whodunit will make the game easier to play.

I'm thinking the sample ruleset should have a small town with three locations described in detail and several others with "shadowy pasts" that the GM can embelish upon.

F. wrote: All good RPG's require the GM to do a little beforehand planning, but to write a full story with the morking mechanics of a traditional mystery might be daunting for a beginner.