This is a splinter thread from [GLASS] Request for Comments on Cost Balances. Blame Walt Freitag. ;-)
[hr]
I have been persuaded to address, in GLASS, difficult issues with long-running GAM/SIM contact (e.g. boffer, paintball) LARPs:
Reward, Character Death, and "Fair Trade."

I am operating from these premises:
1) Long-running boffer LARPs require significant time and money investment on the players' parts.
2) Rewarding player activity with increased character effectiveness equates to inequality, unless all such rewards are equal for all players regardless of activity.
3) It is undesirable for a character never to increase effectiveness.
4) Permanent character death equates to zero character effectiveness and a voiding of all investment.
5) It is dramatically undesirable for a player to never need to worry about their character's survival.

I want to be able to address Situation within GLASS rules (yeah, yeah, y'all won that round). At the most general level, that means GLASS GMs (and I) must:
A) Compensate players for their time and money investments--presumably more than with "mere" entertainment.
B) Make Rewards meaningful--presumably more than as "kickbacks" of game costs in the form of "prizes."
C) Satisfy the "promise" inherent in GLASS of an open-ended scale of power with customizable implementations.
D) Generate dramatic choices within conflict--presumably without voiding all player effort after a significant failure.
E) Make character risks significant--presumably while only being able, ultimately, to cost a player time.

So my question is a difficult one:
How can a GLASS GM satisfy the A through E requirements above, within a long-running LARP?
[hr]
Until recently, I considered open-ended advancement of character effectiveness to be sufficient Rewards. This is the "grand tradition" of table-top RPGs.
Also, I took the usual "allow Death, but also allow Resurrection" route that (attempted to) keep the tension high while not leading to angry players, losing years of character investment.

Now, I recognize those are highly problematic issues, and while GLASS will still allow a GM to run that "typical" boffer LARP formula, I would like that choice to be made by a GM with full knowledge of other "toggles" or "options" they could use in the design of their game's Situations. EX: Some GMs will go for a "one shot, one kill" style of play that treats character death as par for the course; another might leave it totally up to the player as to when permanent character death strikes them down.

My New Goal is to provide a mechanical hook into those choices, for two reasons: one, to make it easier for a GM to categorize games when planning, advertising, and introducing players to them; and two, to ensure that other task resolution mechanics (and their costs) reflect the Situational choices made by the GM.

GLASS once had a single dimension to its costs and playstyle, that reflected typical boffer play; I want it now to have a second dimension of Situation Framing and Player Rewards that, in effect, maps out a Cartesian Plane of playstyles, goals, and player control.

I hope this discussion can help me to think of how to start that. If this is too "broad" or too "theoretical" for the Design forum, I apologize and ask where I should move it to. If this is too close to a "poll'" thread, then please forgive me and allow folks to chime in--I could use any examples, arguments, alternate playstyles, and wacky notions that this groups of minds can generate. :-)

Sincerely and with thanks;
David "Czar Fnord" Artman

Hey David, at the risk of sounding all condescending and such like, I just wanted to say that I'm glad to see you back and posting.  I know you came with a simple question or two and then got punched in the head a couple thousand times, but happy that the end result was refining some of your goals, both the ones that you may wind up changing and especially the ones that you won't change and now better know why.

As for specific help with the question of this thread, check out This thread on Anyway.  Particularly reply #14.

The idea there is to run an extended campaign, but not to assume that every character needs to be an ongoing character for the entire campaign.  Its basically a way of addressing the idea that some situations will resolve, and when they do, some characters may be dead or have no further part to play, and thus no reason to continue on into later sessions.  Instead it provides a system for selecting which characters continue on to the next situation and which can be permanently (or temporarily) retired with the player taking on a new role.

Obviously it doesn't map 1:1 to your Boffer LARP needs, but I thought it might be a good source of inspiration.

Ralph

David, maybe I'm a little bit off topic, but I'll try to give you my two cents... I don't know, might be useful, might be not. This is more about players' death, but I think it might be link to reward.

You seem to assume that GLASS characters have only one life (if this is not the case, then my post is in big trouble !!!). Have you thougth of allowing characters to have more than one life per session ? That's what we used to do in our LARP game, having four lives per character per session. I guess the exact number might be something like an option, depending on the style of LARP you want to play. I'll just tell you how it works for us.

Players have four lives. When they die, they stay out of the game (where they died) for X minutes (I think we used 5). Ressurection would only bring you back to life right away. Your character is permantly dead only when you have no life left. Well, here I guess, there could be a way to buy back lives, or get ressurected if you have no life left... The main advantage is that you are allowed failure, at least some. When a player is a four lives, he tends to take a lot of risks, but I can tell you that at one life, he keeps a low profile. As for reward, it might be related to the number of lives left at the end of each session. We didn't do it, but I guess it's possible.

I hope it could bring some food for thougth...

David wrote: 2) Rewarding player activity with increased character effectiveness equates to inequality, unless all such rewards are equal for all players regardless of activity.

4) Permanent character death equates to zero character effectiveness and a voiding of all investment.

5) It is dramatically undesirable for a player to never need to worry about their character's survival. *snip*
D) Generate dramatic choices within conflict--presumably without voiding all player effort after a significant failure.
E) Make character risks significant--presumably while only being able, ultimately, to cost a player time.

Hi David,

Along the lines of Pells's suggestion, I recall an idea I had for the Crossroads LARP system right up until the final version, when I changed it. I've already told you about the changed version: a character who is defeated (that is, runs out of hit points for any reason, or is hit by a "lethal" spell of some sort) is considered not dead but "down." That player may get up again and continue to act, with full hit points restored as well. by declaring "I commit!" but in that case, if the character is down again before the end of the current combat or scene, the character is irrevocably killed. If the character remains down instead, the character cannot suffer any further harm, and recovers automatically from being down at the end of the scene (The automatic recovery is only from being in the "down" state; hit points must still be healed and so forth.)

The original version was a little different: each character would get four "downs" per adventure (or per day, in multi-day events). A character remaining down is not subject to further harm the same way as the final version, but the player may recover from being down at any time, at will. There is no automatic recovery and hence no need to decide when an "official" end of scene occurs, which is an improvement. So in theory a player could use up several downs in the same encounter (though in most cases one wouldn't wish to do so.) The character dies if (and only if) the player is out of downs. Yup, just like American football. Four downs and you're out, and "going for it on fourth down" is risky. I thought the similarity to football terminology would be OK, because being familiar to most Americans, it would make the system easier to learn.

Clearly, these "downs" are very similar to Pells's "lives." And as with "lives," you could make the number of downs each character has into a global design variable for specific adventure, in keeping with your wish to build in easily-exercised and easily-understood GM options. Perhaps four downs might be the default, but some events might set the number as low as one (that is, one down kills you) while others might make the number high or even unlimited (that is, being down means almost nothing since you can get up again at will, though perhaps you could then set another global design variable that establishes a minimum time that a character has to stay down). You could even have different numbers of downs for different characters -- especially if characters with fewer build points get more downs per event. (This does NOT mean downs should cost EXP or should be purchaseable with EXP! Since we're looking for ways to make different EXP-level characters more equitable in play, the last thing you want to do is give the high-level characters more of them so that 'the rich get richer.')

A good question would be, "why did I not use the four downs version in the final version of Crossroads?" I'm glad you asked. It's because I didn't know some things that I've learned since then. I was still designing under certain old-school assumptions that prevented me from using a mechanism that I knew in my gut was better. The problem, as I saw it, was that the "number of downs a character has left" had no plausible in-game meaning. They didn't represent wounds, they didn't represent fatigue, they didn't represent anything that a player could act out in-character during the game.* This made me scared that whenever a player said something like, "I've got to be careful, I only have one more down," that would be -- horror of horrors -- bad role-playing! (Downs that occur entirely within the context of one combat or scene, as used in the final version, don't have that "problem." Being down represents some temporary condition -- stunned by a blow, incapacitated by pain, thrown into the lake, whatever -- that players can act out to their hearts' content. There's no need to find an in-game explanation for a persistent "number of downs" attached to their characters.) I didn't trust players to be able to deal with a metagame mechanical score that didn't directly simulate some definable in-character thing or state. (Even though that's exactly what "experience points" and to a large extent "hit points" are too.) I didn't have the Forge to kick sense into me.

One more question: does it matter whether you call them "lives" or "downs" or something else? I think calling them "lives" makes a difference. Talking of using up a "life" invites a specific in-game interpretation of what's going on: characters are falling down dead and then miraculously returning to life. This is very strange even for fantasy settings (though familiar enough in video games). On the other hand, using up a "down" represents narrowly avoiding death while being put out of action for a while, which is extremely common in adventure stories of all kinds. (How many times has it happened to Harry Potter?) And it's really no easier to explain in-game why characters can come back to life but only a limited number of times, than to explain how they can narrowly avoid death but only a limited number of times. You might consider calling them something else entirely, such as "brushes with fate" (which perhaps use up "fate points") or something like that. I chose "down" because it clearly indicates what players must do when it happens in combat, at the most practical level: the player falls down.

I realize this has only barely begun to address your main issues, but I'll stop here and see how you're finding the feedback so far, especially the thread that Ralph referred to, suggesting approaches for getting the players involved in designing adventures around their characters. That's cutting-edge in tabletop role playing; by contact LARP standards ("Why do you say 'old school'? You mean there's another school?") it's off-the-charts radical.

- Walt

*The closest thing, perhaps, would be that losing downs represents a character's "luck running out." But should characters be able to sense in-character, or talk in-character about, how much luck they have left? Actually, in some heroic traditions, the answer is a definite 'yes' -- but I wasn't thinking in those sorts of literary terms at the time, with regard to contact LARP play.

Of course, in some genres "lives" or "downs" can represent something specific in-game -- such as available cloned bodies in a Paranoia-like setting (though then it might be hard to explain how the replacement clones get inserted into the action in mid-adventure), virtual lives in a holodeck or similar virtual-reality setting, or even some kinds of high-concept fantasy setting where the gods grant everyone four lives a day or something. But it wouldn't work for the mainstream fantasy I was mostly focused on.

Thanks, everyone... the ball is rolling, and I have a thing or two I can add now to help shove it along. But first...

wrote:
...I just wanted to say that I'm glad to see you back and posting. ...happy that the end result was refining some of your goals, both the ones that you may wind up changing and especially the ones that you won't change and now better know why.

wrote:
The idea there is to run an extended campaign, but not to assume that every character needs to be an ongoing character for the entire campaign.  Its basically a way of addressing the idea that some situations will resolve, and when they do, some characters may be dead or have no further part to play, and thus no reason to continue on into later sessions.

wrote:
Instead it provides a system for selecting which characters continue on to the next situation and which can be permanently (or temporarily) retired with the player taking on a new role.

wrote:
You seem to assume that GLASS characters have only one life (if this is not the case, then my post is in big trouble !!!). Have you thought of allowing characters to have more than one life per session ? That's what we used to do in our LARP game, having four lives per character per session. I guess the exact number might be something like an option, depending on the style of LARP you want to play. I'll just tell you how it works for us.
...When a player is a four lives, he tends to take a lot of risks, but I can tell you that at one life, he keeps a low profile.

wrote:
...As for reward, it might be related to the number of lives left at the end of each session. We didn't do it, but I guess it's possible.

Callan wrote:

David wrote: 2) Rewarding player activity with increased character effectiveness equates to inequality, unless all such rewards are equal for all players regardless of activity.

If your looking for a gamist slant, simply use rewards which are one shot (the inequality ends when they use it) and have a limited shelf life which they must be used within or be missed out on (stops hording).

Callan wrote:
...One of your biggest problems will be bringing in stuff that is clearly designed with a game management focus...when the sim dreamers will want you to be bringing in stuff that you truly believe in as a game world element, instead.

Callan wrote:
The riddle of steel has players record the points that they earn during play. These are then spent on the next character.

Callan wrote:
Take a leaf out of dogs in the vineyard, and have character death only if the player allows the risk of it (i.e., leaves it up to the dice). I don't know the exact rules of dogs, but here the rules could give the player a significant all round bonus. So the player will probably do this when the issue really matters to him.

The question of carried-over rewards can be thorny.  There is something worrying about the fact that experienced players have not only there experience but also better equipment, especially if you are a) paying money and b) can be killed.

On the other hand, there is also something unsatisfying about paying money and risking your "life" and having nothing to show for it.  One of the solutions in online games is stuff that is "different, not better" - greater experience or performance allows more personalisation rather than more power; some weapons or other equipment might be better than others to some small degree, but not one that makes a huge difference to outcomes.  The veterans are still immediately identifiable but are not superhuman, and choices are rather more stylistic than economic.

RPG's have tradition ally used personalisation purely for character expression and has not wanted to restrict it to a levelling reqirement.  But in the case of weaponry and the like, I think it works quite well.  Because personalisation-rather-than-powerup makes little difference to the effectiveness of the character, skill in use becomes more prized.  And, inevitably, the easiest weapon to use will become the most despised as exhibiting the least skill and courage. 

I think this is a much more interesting dynamic than hoarding stuff, and also one less dependant on record keeping.  But it does have some downsides, notably the lack of personalisation choices at the start of play.  This can mean that you don't really get to  play the character you want until you have levelled up a bit, and that  can be a real pain.  Anyway, its worth looking at.

Walt wrote:
...runs out of hit points for any reason, or is hit by a "lethal" spell of some sort) is considered not dead but "down." That player may get up again and continue to act, with full hit points restored as well. by declaring "I commit!" but in that case, if the character is down again before the end of the current combat or scene, the character is irrevocably killed. If the character remains down instead, the character cannot suffer any further harm, and recovers automatically from being down at the end of the scene (The automatic recovery is only from being in the "down" state; hit points must still be healed and so forth.)

Walt wrote:
... Clearly, these "downs" are very similar to Pells's "lives." And as with "lives," you could make the number of downs each character has into a global design variable for specific adventure, in keeping with your wish to build in easily-exercised and easily-understood GM options. Perhaps four downs might be the default, but some events might set the number as low as one (that is, one down kills you) while others might make the number high or even unlimited (that is, being down means almost nothing since you can get up again at will, though perhaps you could then set another global design variable that establishes a minimum time that a character has to stay down). You could even have different numbers of downs for different characters -- especially if characters with fewer build points get more downs per event. (This does NOT mean downs should cost EXP or should be purchaseable with EXP! Since we're looking for ways to make different EXP-level characters more equitable in play, the last thing you want to do is give the high-level characters more of them so that 'the rich get richer.')

Walt wrote:
... The problem, as I saw it, was that the "number of downs a character has left" had no plausible in-game meaning. They didn't represent wounds, they didn't represent fatigue, they didn't represent anything that a player could act out in-character during the game.* This made me scared that whenever a player said something like, "I've got to be careful, I only have one more down," that would be -- horror of horrors -- bad role-playing!
...I didn't trust players to be able to deal with a metagame mechanical score that didn't directly simulate some definable in-character thing or state. (Even though that's exactly what "experience points" and to a large extent "hit points" are too.) I didn't have the Forge to kick sense into me.
...One more question: does it matter whether you call them "lives" or "downs" or something else?
...I didn't trust players to be able to deal with a metagame mechanical score that didn't directly simulate some definable in-character thing or state. (Even though that's exactly what "experience points" and to a large extent "hit points" are too.) I didn't have the Forge to kick sense into me.
...The closest thing, perhaps, would be that losing downs represents a character's "luck running out." But should characters be able to sense in-character, or talk in-character about, how much luck they have left? Actually, in some heroic traditions, the answer is a definite 'yes' -- but I wasn't thinking in those sorts of literary terms at the time, with regard to contact LARP play.
Of course, in some genres "lives" or "downs" can represent something specific in-game -- such as available cloned bodies in a Paranoia-like setting (though then it might be hard to explain how the replacement clones get inserted into the action in mid-adventure), virtual lives in a holodeck or similar virtual-reality setting, or even some kinds of high-concept fantasy setting where the gods grant everyone four lives a day or something. But it wouldn't work for the mainstream fantasy I was mostly focused on.

Walt wrote:
("Why do you say 'old school'? You mean there's another school?")

cont wrote:
..."different, not better" - greater experience or performance allows more personalisation rather than more power; some weapons or other equipment might be better than others to some small degree, but not one that makes a huge difference to outcomes.  The veterans are still immediately identifiable but are not superhuman, and choices are rather more stylistic than economic.

cont wrote:
This can mean that you don't really get to  play the character you want until you have levelled up a bit, and that  can be a real pain.

It looks like you have a pretty good grip on the range of options surrounding resurrections, commits, going unconscious, and outright death. ("...could have a setting-based explanation or be a mere Technique." -- yes yes yes! Exactly my point.) Let me mention one more detail, and then we can move on. As I've mentioned before, an actual (non-resurrected) character death in an ongoing contact LARP world normally means two things: the loss of the character, and the loss of the experience points that were spent on the character. It is possible for those two things to be separated -- that is, specifically, to allow the player to keep the EPs (by using them to build another character) when a character dies. Or to keep a significant fraction of the EPs.

Losing a character is still significant, to most players, even if the player is allowed to retain the EPs for a new character. Established LARP characters have reputations, they have special items and often in-game wealth, they have relationships with other characters, and don't forget they otten have custom-made costumes and props which may have involved a lot of effort by the player. (In fact, for some players, keeping the EPs might be hardly any consolation at all -- I'm thinking of a relatively inexperienced player, on perhaps his third or fourth game; he's just made his first costume pieces or a nicer-looking weapon; the character hasn't advanced very far but has bumped a key stat and collected an enhancing item or two. If that character dies without the player's consent, will you keep that player?)

I should mention, breifly, the evil twin of losing the character but keeping the EPs: keeping the character and losing the EPs. In other words, "EP drain" or "level drain" effects. I honestly don't see any good in that at all. But who knows what other people might come up with, to make it work?

Clearly, if players get to reuse the EPs from dead characters, then character death cannot work as a balancing factor against character advancement. But that may or may not be important. This thread's whole discussion so far has revolved around the drawbacks and difficulties of using character death as a balancing factor against character advancement.

Advancement, of course, remains the heart of the questions at hand. You've summed it up nicely in some of your dichotomies. Let me repeat it in my own words:

- We can imagine game play where characters are roughly equally effective regardless of EPs. (This includes many different possibilities: there are no EPs at all; or there are EPs but they don't really increase the characters' effectiveness.) In fact, we can imagine that game play being better in quality, for all the players, than the alternative. But it's difficult to imagine a LARP group running, long-term, on that basis.

- We can imagine (and have seen first-hand) EPs used as an effective reward for continued participation. But that results in players with new characters (including, especially, new players) having less fun. Or if it doesn't -- that is, if play is in fact just as much fun for new players -- then we must consider what else besides "more fun" is rewarding about the reward.

It's clear that this isn't simply a "rules problem," it's a social contract problem. And it revolves around the common perception that REWARD = MORE FUN. Break that equality, and the problem goes away. If you can tell me that my new character with lower stats and fewer abilities will be just as much fun to play in a game as the Ten Guys' combat monsters who can break my character in half like a twig without trying hard -- and if you can make me believe it -- then we have no problem. And if it's really true, I'll keep playing, not because I'm earning my way toward promised future fun, but because I'm having fun now and want to keep doing so.

Chew on this: Why is playing a low-level character less fun? Here are a few of the many possible answers:

1. Because you can't sustain combat for very long. Fewer hit points, inferior armor/def skills, fewer uses of limited-use combat abilities (e.g. attack spells) add up to spending a lot of time out of action (unconscious, immobilized, captured).

2. Because things are immune to you. Whether you attack the dragon or run way isn't an interesting decision, because you can't hurt the dragon. Among the things that are immune to you are many of your fellow player-characters.

3. Because you're new and you don't know the rules well enough to use them optimally, or maybe even, well enough to avoid getting yelled at.

4. Because the longstanding players are friends with each other but don't know you from Adam, so they pay less attention to you. (Just like on most Internet bulletin boards.)

Some of these may be fixable in the rules; others cannot be. Consider #2, as it applies to fellow player-characters. Let's assume you're a new player, and the play style allows player versus player hostilities including killing. Because of EXP, longstanding player characters are immune to you. In other words, you can't beat one of them in a fair fight. But here's the thing: You shouldn't be able to beat one of them in a fair fight. Why not? Because it's "unrealistic?" Nuh uh. The real reason is because you might be an asshole. After all, some (relatively few, but inevitably some) new players are assholes. If the other players don't know yet whether or not you're an asshole, why should they hand you the power to go on a psychotic rampage and kill their hard-earned higher-level characters?

Hence, in many organizations, the "first level character" experience functions as a test of the player's ability to play well with others. Especially, it's a test of the player's patience, cooperativeness, and game-thinking. "Prove that you can go through some adventures doing just what you're told, keeping your place, not barging ahead setting off traps or waking up sleeping enemies, casting your support spells on cue -- THEN maybe we'll let you make some actual decisions someday." It's effective, it might even appear necessary -- but it's not much fun. Is the promise of future fun (that is, EXP) an acceptable substitute? Sometimes.

The "game-thinking" aspect of the test is particularly tragic, because it filters out some of the players with the most potential. They're the ones who love and understand the genre (whatever genre it is), but don't have the game experience to think in game terms. You see this most often in MMORP games, but you see it occasionally in LARP too. Enter new player. New player sees sign that says, "This way to rescue princess from ferocious dragon." Player, to self: "Hmm, a dragon! I'm a hero with a sword, I know what to do when a dragon abducts a princess. Charge!!" Dragon: *Breathe fire 523d6." Player: "Hey, I died. What gives?" Other players, to player: "You must be the stupidest fuck who ever lived. What an idiot, charging after a dragon with only first-level fighter skills." Player: "Screw this, I could be at the gym getting in shape and meeting women."

So if you want to "fix" number 2 (let alone #3 or #4), you can't do it by changing this or that balance in the rules. You have to deal with it on the social level. Who plays, and why do they play? How are new players recruited? How are they screened (or do active Geek Social Fallacies prohibit any screening)? Who decides whether single-handedly attacking a dragon is a heroic decision to be rewarded or a stupid one to be mocked? What constitutes misbehavior, and how is misbehavior dealt with on the player level? How can scenario designers and GMs encourage low-level players (or any players for that matter) to make meaningful choices, while still being able to do the necessary preparations to play the scenes?

Number 1, on the other hand, is not only potentially fixable in the rule system but some of the features already in your system already contribute toward doing so. For instance, your new Boost cost rule in which the level of the skill represents the value you can boost the stat TO, rather than the number ADDED to the stat. This means that characters with high Boost abilities can get the most bang for the buck by boosting a character with low stats (assuming they have it usable on others). That creates a nice dynamic for cooperation between high-EXP and low-EXP characters. (In most contact LARP rules I've seen, by contrast, the best strategy is to buff whoever's already strongest.) Some thought all around on other ways to use game mechanics to create synergies or even interdependencies between low and high level characters might be productive.

Which takes me full circle back to the death-related rules. The idea of recoveries purchaseable only by initial character points is interesting because as you point out it could be a balancing factor for low level characters. But I have some concerns about it, on two grounds. One is that spending character points or EXP on one-time-only abilities is almost never a good deal (though if anything is an exception to that general rule, it would be "lives"). The other is more important: making such a purchase becomes yet another major decision that a new player must make before he's had a chance to experience the system in action, the game setting in actual play, the gamemasters' styles, or the other player-characters he'll be teaming up with. I've already lamented that character building can be the most complex, interesting, and important decisions that a player ever makes for the game, and they have to be made before play starts. It's even worse for new players because they have to make them blind (or, more usually, heavily coached if not outright browbeaten by more experienced players who know what their party needs). Putting in totally irrevocable decisions -- that is, "new character points only"  options that are lost forever if not used, makes that even worse.

On the other hand, adding one little refinement to this would turn it around completely. Suppose you can, if you wish, start with just a weapon and a whole passel of lives (call them "potential points" instead, perhaps) -- and at any time later you can turn those extra lives (as long as they're unused) back into EPs and buy more abilities. That has a lot going for it! Now it becomes a way to postpone key character decisions until the player better knows the system and/or what he wants.

- Walt

What I'm going to say might seems trivial, but I think we have to keep this in mind. We're talking about LARP, not TT rpg...

The funny thing about LARP is that there are physical limitations that are not present in TT rpg. I'll give an example. In a LARP I organised, I was playing a main character, with twice the HP of a typical PC and doing thrice the damage. But, even as powerful as I was, I believe that against ten newbies (or low level characters) I would have die. I mean, I'm not a professional fencer. In a TT rpg, this would not occur, as I would have had multiple attacks, better die rolls... Same thing for paintball I guess. A player might be doing more damage, have more hit points, but, in the end, if he's not good at shooting, or hiding himself, his advantages are reduced. Maybe a low level character which is a damned good shooter might be stronger in fact than a high level character.

It's like being tall in heroic fantasy LARP. This is a big advantage since you have a better reach with your weapon. No rules can't do anything about that.

Now, about death and downs/lives. Walt mentions it and I think it is very important. As you increase in strength, you should have less of those. In my previous example, it was possible, but hard to kill my character. Given that, we (i.e. the designers) didn't want the PCs to have to kill it four times. Newbies or low level characters should have the opportuny to fail, to try the environnement of the game, but high level PCs should know what they're dealing with.

Another thing about progression. Players, somehow, progress as do their PCs. In my LARP, for spell casters, we used rice for range. It was provided in a bag. When you throw a spell, you take rice in the bag and throw it, all those thouched are affected. I'll always remember those newbies who would have difficulties with this. Given you played a powerful mage who died and you create a new one, I think you still have an advantage over new comers, because you know how it works. Somehow it is the same thing for fencing. You always get those newcomers to your LARP, who have a lot of LARP experience (not in your game, but in LARP in general). They may play low level characters but are so good themselves at fencing that they can overcome high level characters.

The strange thing about LARP is that you, as an individual, have a lot of impact on your character strength.

It's been a while, I realize, but I hope I haven't lost my readers because of that. I needed GLASS to sit and stew a bit, and I am now getting back into the mix of the "2D GLASS" goals above.

Let me note a few things before I proceed:

wrote: The funny thing about LARP is that there are physical limitations that are not present in TT rpg.
...It's like being tall in heroic fantasy LARP. This is a big advantage since you have a better reach with your weapon. No rules can't do anything about that.
...The strange thing about LARP is that you, as an individual, have a lot of impact on your character strength.

Now, about death and downs/lives. ... As you increase in strength, you should have less of those.

In my LARP, for spell casters, we used rice for range.

Walt wrote: Or to keep a significant fraction of the EPs.
...Losing a character is still significant, to most players, even if the player is allowed to retain the EPs for a new character.
...keeping the character and losing the EPs. In other words, "EP drain" or "level drain" effects.
...Clearly, if players get to reuse the EPs from dead characters, then character death cannot work as a balancing factor against character advancement.

I think this all gets covered within The Players Are The Stars v. The Characters Are The Stars:
I. Player Stars - EXP is tagged to the player and may be spent on the current character. Upon Death, create a new character using the total Earned EXP for the player.
II. Character Stars - EXP is tagged to the character and may be spent on the current character. Upon Death, start a new character with only Starting EXP.
III. Lineage Stars - EXP is tagged to the next character. Death means that you start a new character with the previous character's Earned EXP OR with Starting EXP, whichever is higher.
IV. 15 Minute of Fame - EXP earned is tagged to the character, BUT it may ONLY be used to purchase Single Use Abilities (the Single Use limitation's Minus applies).

But that may or may not be important. This thread's whole discussion so far has revolved around the drawbacks and difficulties of using character death as a balancing factor against character advancement.[/quote

Only so far. ;-) I really am hoping to address more of the Fair Trade and Rewards elements, though it is worthwhile to fully examine the options for Death and Res before we dig into Rewards.

...it revolves around the common perception that REWARD = MORE FUN. Break that equality, and the problem goes away.
[General points about funness as it relates to efficacy.]

I concur--and feel that this is something that might have to be left on the GM's head. No matter what I do with any rule system, if there is ANY way to increase efficacy, then there will be disparity. If players are allowed to percieve disparity as a reduction in options (though it shouldn't be, if a GM sets up sufficient number and complexity of situations) then the new guys will think the old guys have more "fun."

Funnily enough (and I know you've seen this, Walt): the "oldsters" are often somewhat envious of the naive joy and enthusiasm that new players bring to a game. WHile they wander around acting jaded and "too cool for the pool," the new folks are happily RPing with each other, acting out skills and singing and having "duels" and... well, it make an old guy want to pull up a chair on the Inn porch, fill a quart tankard, and just let it all wash over him.

So, yep, social contract. The GMs HAVE to engage new characters as well as old. The GMs HAVE to be aware of what systems they have toggled and what range of efficacy is possible with those toggles. And they HAVE to be aware of what the lethality level of the game is and drop clues/force the "high-end" to the right conflicts--and keep the "low-end" well clear.

Chew on this: Why is playing a low-level character less fun? Here are a few of the many possible answers:
1. Because you can't sustain combat for very long. Fewer hit points, inferior armor/def skills, fewer uses of limited-use combat abilities (e.g. attack spells) add up to spending a lot of time out of action (unconscious, immobilized, captured).
2. Because things are immune to you. Whether you attack the dragon or run way isn't an interesting decision, because you can't hurt the dragon. Among the things that are immune to you are many of your fellow player-characters.

These are issue of efficacy as they pertain to the dramatic import of your actions. I think they are best handled by "compressing" the range of low- to high-end.

3. Because you're new and you don't know the rules well enough to use them optimally, or maybe even, well nough to avoid getting yelled at.
4. Because the longstanding players are friends with each other but don't know you from Adam, so they pay less attention to you. (Just like on most Internet bulletin boards.)

These are issue of involvement. They feel almost toally up to the player and GMs: the player COULD learn the rules; the GMs COULD run "newbie modules" to let them learn all the nuances (such as there are in GLASS). The player COULD try to make friends; the GMs COULD embed the newbie into a faction with an immediate, key hook to get him rolling with the existing faction members. I don't know how I can generate toggles in Rewards, Death, aand Fair Trade to handle that any better than decent GM though and responsable player effort to learn the system (it IS a simple one, after all--it ain't NERO!). ;-)

But here's the thing: You shouldn't be able to beat one of them in a fair fight. Why not? Because it's "unrealistic?" Nuh uh. The real reason is because you might be an asshole. After all, some (relatively few, but inevitably some) new players are assholes. If the other players don't know yet whether or not you're an asshole, why should they hand you the power to go on a psychotic rampage and kill their hard-earned higher-level characters?

Interesting... but it feels a bit like a rationalization after the fact ("That cow can mow the lawn, too!"). I think a FAR better way to do this is to simply state something like "You may not Killing Blow another PC until your third session" or even "the ability to do a Killing Blow must be purchased with Earned EXP." I think that gets closer to the root of what's wanted: proof of maturity, before enabling homocide.

Is the promise of future fun (that is, EXP) an acceptable substitute? Sometimes.

This is the one I need more time with.... Damn you, and your cow tipping....

They're the ones who love and understand the genre (whatever genre it is), but don't have the game experience to think in game terms.

Social contract, though, right? I mean, that guy who bacmae a Dragon S'more didn't even bother to learn the system, didn't grok that there are higher EXP entities int he world, didn't grok that there could be a Harm (Direct?) that does WAY more than his Health. Yes, we want to bring in those folks--those fine, imemrsive newbies--but my goodness, do I have to remind them to breathe?

Seriously, how far down into the pit of presumptions must I fall, to be sure to error trap all missperceptions of the game's methods and metrics?

Rather, I feel the exact opposite is the mosst common problem: folks want to get "into it" but know enough about the system and its lethality and its complexity that they hang back and try to "lay low." It can take the better part of a day just to get them hooked into the game, and possibly a session or two before they are a "fully immersed" player. I hope to solve this with COlor and with many, many examples--but perhaps the best way is with the aforementioned Extra Lives until Earned EXP is spent would do just as well: "Wade in, kid! You've got nothing to lose but some lives!"

...do active Geek Social Fallacies prohibit any screening

OK, you can't go droppin' bombs like that so casually! I ended up forwarding that articel to several of my friends--who have been suffering at least two and sometime all five of those. I think I have managed to avoid them, getting older, but the5re is definite utility in that article!

As for how it goes in GLASS--I think that would make a nice GM Section item... but I doubt there could be anything in the system to control vetting; character portability, if nothing else, would make that tricky. I gotta leave that to the players and GMs. Heck, I gotta leave them SOMETHING to do to prepare their game; otherwise, I should write Host Your Own Murder Mysteries! ;-0

Some thought all around on other ways to use game mechanics to create synergies or even interdependencies between low and high level characters might be productive.

And it has been scheduled. I think there could be some interesting new Abilities to come out of just such thought. In another thread, though. :-)

On the other hand, adding one little refinement to this would turn it around completely. Suppose you can, if you wish, start with just a weapon and a whole passel of lives (call them "potential points" instead, perhaps) -- and at any time later you can turn those extra lives (as long as they're unused) back into EPs and buy more abilities. That has a lot going for it! Now it becomes a way to postpone key character decisions until the player better knows the system and/or what he wants.

I think this will be used. (see Extra Lifes idea above)

More to come....

Hey David,

Hey, thought we'd lost you there for a while! But I don't mind a slow pace of discussion. Indeed, I think it's preferable, especially when you're writing up your game in parallel.

Since you're still chewing on all this, and you seem to be grokking what I'm saying (without always agreeing, which is fine, this is your game), I'm not going to reply point by point. In fact, I'm only going to comment on one issue, which I think is particularly interesting. In a way (though in a slightly different domain, LARP instead of tabletop) this one question gets close to the crux of what the Forge has been all about the past few years.

And you've stated it so succinctly. It's almost poetic. In fact, it makes quite a nice haiku:

immersive newbies --
my goodness, do I have to
remind them to breathe?

My answer is: it depends who they are, and what attracted them to play in your game in the first place. It's important to realize that some characteristics of typical role playing game systems (including contact LARP systems) are actually really strange compared with other more popular types of games and entertainment.

Go to Disneyland and go into any attraction that puts you face to face with a big scary monster. (There are quite a few of them.) I guarantee that you're going to survive every single time. (Unless maybe you manage to pry yourself out from under the safety bar and fling yourself into the machinery.)

Go play in a baseball game. You might lose by a bigger margin than anyone's ever lost by before, but you still get to play all nine innings.

Play in a video game and, sure, you might die five seconds in. But in another five seconds (and maybe a few more tokens in the slot) you can try again.

In a movie or novel, the hero probably doesn't beat the dragon the first try (if the dragon's important). But the early defeat will not only not kill the hero, it will in some small way set him up for future success.

Try a tricky skateboarding move or a difficult rock climb or an unusually difficult crossword puzzle. Failure is likely, but you get to keep trying until you succeed.

Making these comparisons probably seems bizarre. Baseball? Movies? Video games? Crosswords? But these are activities that many people do for entertainment. In none of them is the participant's ability to correctly gauge the degree of the challenge essential to being able to continue in the activity. (Of all the examples, skateboarding is probably the closest, due to the risk of injury from attempting something too extreme for one's ability level.)

Gamers quickly adapt, and over-adapt, to the oddness. That's why you see most of your players, who are experienced with related game systems, doing the cautious laying-low takes-all-day-to-commit-to-any-real-action that you described. But that's not "the opposite problem" at all. It's the exact same damn problem, having different effects on different participants. (The people I'm talking about are badly cutting themselves on razor blades they don't realize are there; the ones you're talking about are tiptoeing around trying to avoid touching anything that might be a razor blade. The problem, either way, is the razor blades. Oh, you're about to point out that you can't get rid of the razor blades when dealing with the razor blades is what your game is all about? Yep, that's a problem all right.)

There's a set of threads called The Infamous Five in which the social nature of the tabletop gamer community is dissected in various ways. One of the main themes going through that discussion is how what's "mainstream" in indoctrinated gamer culture is far from mainstream by normal standards. It's not just that the games themselves are a non-mainstream activity or that the subject matter is non-mainstream (it might have been once, but when Lord of the Rings is in every DVD player, that excuse no longer flies). The way the games work is odd compared to other forms of storytelling and story creation. Some theorists have gone even farther, with speculation about role playing affecting gamers' thought processes -- those ideas ignited firestorms on dozens of discussion boards all over the Internet a few months ago (see the long "Brain Damage" thread in the Adept Press forum if you really want to know any gory details). Be that as it may, cautious play and risk/reward-obsessed play aren't generally good things, but they're what the systems (including GLASS) reward in the long run. So far, in response, what you've been talking about is how to get players to learn those lessons faster (since being cautious and risk/reward-obsessed should be as natural to a gamer as breathing, right?)

I'll repeat what I've said before: why not reward a player for trying and failing against that much-higher-level dragon? You DO reward players for creating potential future complications for themselves during character creation. (That's what character disadvantages are. And remember how radical an idea they seemed, when they first appeared in tabletop games?). Why not reward players for creating (or at least accepting) immediate complications for themselves during play?

Isn't it more fun for everyone involved in the game when a character gets injured or poisoned or enchanted, than when the player (using hard-won skill or hard-earned in-character abilities) avoids the character getting injured or poisoned or enchanted? Sure it is, as long as the injurious effect results in getting involved in further action rather than in having to sit it out. So why should the ability to avoid getting injured etc. be considered a reward for the player?

Of course, if your character being injured does mean you have to sit on the sidelines, then getting injured is not more fun, players will try their best to avoid it happening, and immunity from it does work as a reward of sorts. But it's all so sadly self-defeating, if your main priority of play, the thing you're most trying to achieve, is to not have anything interesting happen to your character.

Many tabletop game designers who participate here at the Forge have come up with ways to reward players for accepting and even creating complications for their characters in tabletop games. (Might be good to start a different thread on techniques for that, if you're interested.)

So in conclusion, do you have to teach new players to breathe? Yes, if the game requires them to breathe through their ears. You (and lots of other people) have been doing that yourself for so long, you don't see anything odd about it.

I look foreward to seeing the next developments.

- Walt

I think I have another dichotomy for us:
Competitive Play
v.
Cooperative Play'
...which may be a codicil of Group-oriented v. Solo-play in the largest sense, but would also speak to notions of Narrativist play and player control of challenges, perhaps.

This is difficult to address, for me; but I am willing to attempt to do so because I wonder if I am acting on 25 years of assumptions.

Needless to say, the GLASS v0.9 "goals" are fast eroding. I wanted "GURPS LARP" with super-fast handling and low noise. In a nutshell, that was it--all the other faffing about was was just par for the course: yeah, we gotta be safe; no, we don't want to freak the Hosts (or police or any other mundanes with firearms); yeah, we want to maximally leverage the live action aspects rather than let every task or conflict be adjudicated by mechanics (I hate "epiphenomenal acting" in gaming: role playing that doesn't actually lead to resolution because the system is totally in charge of all conflicts).

Now, I am wanting to expand the project... and, frankly, at first it was only to gain traction here at The Forge. I wonder if there would be one bit of continuing discussion of my "GURPS LARP" if I had said, long ago, "Nope, back off; GLASS is Gamist and competitive and all-about-acting (when it's not all-about-doing) and keep it on that level." I was reluctant to go "2D" and yet, now that I have, I won't go back... but I might also have to deal with the potential of not being able to handle the project. No, check that. I might not be able to handle the 2D scope of GLASS and still keep character portability (and THAT might cost me all of my motivation).

Without character portability, I don't think there's a good reason for a universal LARP system at all. A highly "genre-bound" system will better reflect just about any creative agenda: it will better refine what is being Gamed down to the minimum necessary mechanics for the challenges, it will better Simulate the attractive elements of the setting, and it will better keep focus on the story and themes of the Narrative groups.

Let me backtrack a second--going back almost three years, actually. I rolled the notion of GLASS out on The Forge with, believe it or not, a wholly different "metagoal": I wanted a system which could be toggle from non-contact to contact LARPs and still have character portability. Yep, madness. It took me no more than a week of outlining to realize I was starting with "universal" and ending up with "two speed" and basically resolved to release two complete systems with the same core terminology and attributes and ability structure, but entirely different expansions of those structures, different interrelations, and (of course) different resolution systems. An entertaining discussion ensued on "Randomizer Gimmicks" and, eventually, the folks on that thread and I came up with a unique resolution system for non-contact LARPs. And then I turned to contact, and left all that great work on a back burner. I felt that I should finish the rule system for the style which I actually play before I built a complement to reach out to other styles (which I have given up, in my area, because they are--bluntly--pussies: non-contact LARP is ideally suited to public play, and yet all the local groups hide out on college campuses--but that is Another Story).

This is all a long-winded way of providing some backstory to explain how, I think, I am unsuited to address gaming which is protagonist-oriented or which provides strong Author or Director Stances to the players. Unless I misunderstand The Big Model completely, that is the hook for "accepting and even creating complications for their characters" outside of character creation.

Going back to the fool v. the dragon example, the player would need some way to be "not killed" when the victim of an otherwise typical action (Harm Direct 5), while other players--not fools, they--play (and die) by the system results. Isn't this, really, just going "two speed" again? Put differently--and NOT to just torpedo a difficult line of questioning--how could I hope to develop a system that is portable which grants such powerful (in the Gamist and Simulationist sense) Stances to neonates and, yet, strips those back for the experienced? Or do I have to find a system that offers such Stances to all levels of experience and, thereby, eliminates all suitability to Gamist play? For how could there be "competition" or "challenges" if one can Director Stance any failure into a "learning experience" or a "narrowly averted disaster" or a failure outcome converted into a different challenge (getting "injured, poisoned, or enchanted")? No one would ever "die" in such play, unless it was due to boredom with their character or due to a VERY strong sense of a story arc and theme being served (i.e. extremely generous play, given all the "losses" that will be incurred with loss of character, as covered above).

Worse still, most (if not all) of such challenge conversions would shift a greater burden on the GMs to facilitate resolution, yes? If I Director Stance my Dead character to be merely enchanted, then I (a) have to curtail my own behavior to suit the "rules" of the enchantment (easy enough) but (b) a GM has to define how that curtailment works in a consistent manner for all players and situations and (c) a GM has to provide situation or setting elements to resolve/remove the enchantment. Right? Or maybe not: *I* set myself as "enchanted" and so *I* get to say "Yep, I am enchanted to be in love with the dragon and will protect it with--err, my life... sort of... that is, until I go Dead again and can shift the challenge elsewhere." And I could even declare "I will be released by a kiss from a maiden prettier than the dragon" (keeps it wide open).

In this sense, challenge conversion is NOT just a Technique, but is another form of Death (or Unconscious) toggle. Or maybe a core element, even (to simplify portability). If the "Dead" state actually lets the player state what the result is, so long as it's debilitating, and state the means of release, then I have to define "debilitating" and cost balance "releases". That opens up game-specific resources or Abilities or... what?

Hmmm... Perhaps the solution is simpler than that. Maybe I have an idea here:
What if "Dead" really just equalled, say, -50 EXP? Now, before you say "Ack! EXP Drain! No!" follow me. That -50 EXP could be "paid off" in the following manners:
1) Return character to consciousness, with full normal Health, and 50 EXP worth of Disadvantages.
2) Return character to consciousness, with full normal Health, and 50 EXP fewer Abilities or Attributes ("EXP drain" as it is usually meant).
3) Kill the character, but make a new character with 50 free Starting EXP. (Sort of like, "I ain't making the same dumb mistakes MY daddy made!")

[By the way: Disadvantages can be "bought off" with Earned EXP. I think I forgot to document this rule in v0.9; whoops!]

That gives a player all the Director Stance I can imagine and still retain any Gamist or competitive elements. Live forever, if you want... as a battered weakling or a gibbering mess of functional issues. Go out in a blaze of glory... and have a bit of that glory reflected in your next character.

What do you think?