A few Forgers already know that I’ve been working on a game called Dreamspire. After putting it off for a number of reasons -- real life issues, day job, freelance work (yay!) -- I’ve finally got back into the groove.

I think part of reason I let my pet project slumber for a few weeks was that I tried to figure out what the game’s really about, particularly in light of many ideas presented and discussed here at the Forge.

For those of you who don’t know (and as a reminder for those who do), Dreamspire is set in a nightmarish dream realm called, not surprisingly, Dreamspire. The place is controlled by two rival royal families, and an arcane guild, the Clockworkers, operate behind the scenes to keep the world ticking . . . literally and figuratively. For some more brief info, and more of the look and feel of the game, check out http://www.dreamspire.info Oh yes, the game’s inspired by chess metaphors -- player characters are one of five archetypes: Rook, Knight, Bishop, Queen, and King. There is, you might guess, much more to it, and I’ll share more in due time.

Now that’s all well and dandy. The game oozes atmosphere, and to me that’s crucial. I feel like sometimes the value of color is diminished or ignored in Forge discussions, but that’s probably just the old genre-freak in me refusing to quit. At any rate, the game is thick with color . . .

At which point I can just hear Ron say, “Yeah, yeah. So what’s the premise?” Jared say, “So what do you do in the game” and Mike Holmes say, among 100 other things, “Neat. Try this . . . “

So, without further ado . . .

Premise
“What is it like to be a pawn in the Great Game?”

The game is an exploration of what it’s like to be trapped in a world controlled by two (well, three w/ the guild, kinda) factions, which are themselves fractious and byzantine.

What do you do in the game?
While it started out as something along the lines of a fantasy game in which anything from dungeon delving to horror to courtly intrigue was possible in that vague, sim-y kind of way, it has now focused much more on the intrigue and politicking. The game is about, well, the princes (as in Machiavelli’s princes) play. So, characters are the pawns of the two royal houses and the guild. Their aim is to act according to the whim of one house or the other all in intriguing duel between families. This means they might: investigate assassinations, perform assassinations, rescue hostages, act as couriers, spy, uncover conspiracies, carry out conspiracies (!) and so on.

Neat. Try this . . .

The mechanics of the game are pretty straight forward. Characters have five Traits -- Wits, Passion, Prowess, Vigor, and Charm -- with number ratings from 0-6. This rating determines how many dice characters roll to resolve conflict. Characters also have a number of Talents. These are skills, supernatural abilities and other knacks a character might possess. Each talent is rated by a die type. So, in a given conflict, players determine their most relevant (or most interesting) Talent and most relevant Trait. Then, they roll the number of dice of type corresponding to the Talent and keep the die result of their choice in attempts to overcome a target number or opposed roll.

For example, Sergei (a Rook character -- Rooks are versatile fellows who excel at finding their way around the confusing Dreamspire citadel) has Wits 3 and a Navigator talent rating of d8. When trying to determine whether he can keep his course while his comrades battle a dream serpent, he might roll Wits x Navigator, which is 3d8. He then keeps any of the 3 dice he wishes to overcome the challenge (obviously, this will most often be the highest die result).

Ok, that’s the basic conflict resolution mechanic. However, superceding all of this is a nifty meta-game mechanic, called Pawns. Pawns are currency, and can be used for a number of things, including improving die rolls, fending off “Checkmate” (basically character death), “powering” supernatural talents, etc. When players “spend” pawns, they’re captured by the GM, who can use them in turn against the players (though once used by the GM, they’re removed from the game).

The tricky bit is that players share a pool of Pawns, and they may draw from the pool any time they want or need. However, each time they draw a pawn, they lose voting power -- more on that in a bit.

The GM may assign pawns to NPCs (and even nasty places and terrors, a.k.a monsters) which he can use against players. Once “spent” by the GM, these pawns enter a pool from which all PCs may draw.

At the end of a session, any Pawns remaining in the pool are divided among the PCs as rewards -- personal pawns the PCs need not share and which they may use to improve character abilities (or spend normally). However, how these pawns are divided is up to player voting/bidding. The more pawns a player took from the pool during play, the less his vote is worth / the less he can bid.

While some more work needs to be doen, you can see that this metagame mechanic reallyencourages political scheming, conniving and even cooperation both during play and “after.”

Lately, I’ve been describing the game as “Machiavelli meets Mervyn Peake.” Has a nice ring to it. I’ll leave it there for now. Looking forward to comments.

>>I feel like sometimes the value of color is diminished or ignored in Forge discussions, but that’s probably just the old genre-freak in me refusing to quit.


Just as an aside, I agree, mate. As a system un-monkey, I don't really get jazzed about mechanics that much. But color, wooooh baby. Pass me a big ol' plate o' that.

Anyway, I'll let ya'll get back to your discussion.

Matt,

I'm glad you've finally seen the light and turned your attention to something reasonable. A game about Norse mythology and fate just wasn't cutting it. ;)

Seriously, Paul and I were just talking about exactly this sort of game. Of course, we were discussing Amber and Nobilis, and how the machiavellian politicking just didn't do it for us. I shouldn't speak for Paul though, so take everything I say here as my own personal preference, and only as that.

I would beef up the "What do you do?" stuff. As I envision it - and I could be way off on this - the game would probably boil down to the players sitting around engaging in banter (only some of which will actually be witty) and trying to outdo each other in a game of characterization one-upsmanship. Maybe that's not how the game would play out, or maybe it is and that's the way you want it. If so, great. If not, I'd add another question to your list...

What do you want the players to care about in Dreamspire?

The conspiracies their characters perpetuate? Besting each other in courtly intrigue and verbal sparring? A tenuous connection their characters may have to the real, waking world? Something else entirely?

And just so I don't come across wrong, I think Dreamspire is an awesome project. I've admired it since our days in Target Audience, and I've said as much before. I look forward to seeing it in its finished form.

And I love your use of color.

Take care,
Scott

I love the pawns use as a metagame mechanic, mechanics that mirror setting colour always appeal to me. The whole chess motif is lovely (I seem to remember you talking about it on RPG.NET a while ago, actually)

I dislike using multiple types of dice, something about it just jars.


Matt (the other one)

Responding to Moose . . .

hardcoremoose wrote:
I'm glad you've finally seen the light and turned your attention to something reasonable. A game about Norse mythology and fate just wasn't cutting it. ;)

<snip>

What do you want the players to care about in Dreamspire?

Matt wrote:
I dislike using multiple types of dice, something about it just jars.

Matt (the other one)

Obviously, I was refering to my otherworldly quality :)

On to business. One of the biggest complaints I heard about Deadlands, Earthdawn etc was their use of lots dice types. Possibly because people don't always have 4D4 (and besides they don't roll well), or maybe because it somehow seems inelegant or requires new players to fork out for loads of new dice.

Course this is just my experience.

Matt

Hey,

I'm sticking with that business about what the players care about ... big surprise, right? Premise-man, up in the sky or lurking in the alleys, swoop swoop.

"About their characters" doesn't cut it for me. Or rather, it would, if we were talking about something like Unknown Armies, in which character mechanics are colorful enough to be interesting on their own. So your character basically spirals into madness of one sort of another, go! Post-modern Cthulhu.

If you're going that route, then you need personality mechanics all over the place, especially if they go kerflooey on you in a variety of ways (like the madness meters in UA). That'll get you Character Exploration as the priority of play, and the players get to "care about their characters" all they want; all the GM has to do is keep throwing opponents and twists at them.

But something you said sounds a little different ... that bit about "swimming upstream," the Quest, doing something worthwhile. Now wait a minute. How is that "something" determined? By the game or by the player? When - at character creation or during play? How might the crunch between the usual vengeance/awfulness and the rise-above Higher Thing be made unavoidable?

(Note: the diminishment of Coincidence and the rise of Guts in Extreme Vengeance; [when it's available] the impact of Endgame in Violence Future; the numerical flip in Swashbuckler when one's Reputation score "takes over" the skill scores; the choice between incompatible Spiritual Attributes in The Riddle of Steel. Note: Humanity in Sorcerer, once you hit 2 or 1.)

That's what you'll need if you're looking for a more Narrativist approach. That's why, when I read, "Wits, Passion, Prowess, Vigor, and Charm," as well as skills and talents and all that, I go, "Blahdy blah blah." I don't care about that stuff in a highly focused Narrativist game; if they're there, fine, but I only care about how they affect or are affected by the Other Thing - that crunch.

Best,
Ron

Ok, I must admit that Ron's called me on a good point (and a weak answer to Moose). He's right that it's not enough to say "Players care about their characters." Isn't that the case in most, if not all RPGs. Poor answer.

So, while I think I answer Moose's question somewhat after making that silly remark, I'll reiterate. Players care because they (that is, their characters) are in a situation that challenges their humanity, their decency. The world, while fantastic to look at and explore, is really a rotten place of fear, revenge, terror, and immorality. The reason players should care is that they want to know or explore whether they can maintain their dignity, their humanity.

Then, Ron goes on to say, while refering to character attributes & mechanics, "That's what you'll need if you're looking for a more Narrativist approch."

To which I say, "A-ha! Gotcha, you narrativists, you." I didn'te say this was a narrativist game. It isn't. It's a simulationist game. It's emphasis is really Exploration of Situation. Remember, the premise I posted earlier was: "What's it like to be a pawn in the Great Game?" Seems a straightforward Sim. premise to me. Dreamspire does indeed encourage players and the GM to "narrate" scenes, by which I mean being descriptive, taking an authorial stance and coloring the scene. (Warning: My grasp of stances if far weaker than my grasp of GNS and Premise, so if I'm off here, call me on it.)

Now, I'm just teasing Ron, but he raises excellent points. All those Traits and Talents he referes to are pretty typical RPG stuff. But they aren't what characters are about. They're just tools to operate in the world/situation. What's really important in playing a character, in terms of mechanics, is Quest as well as the expenditure of pawns. These mechanics are what your charters is "about."

(An aside: You can probably tell that those crucial mechanics are still "unfinished." That's because I think I recognized their great importance to the meaning of the game, how it's played, and why players give a damn. So, I've little compunction about discussing them even in their current, admittedly vague form precisely because they're so important.)

Now, I think a discussion of whether this game is Narrativist or Simulationist is fair game. I held Dreamspire close to the vest these past few months while I've been participating on the Forge partly because I wasn't sure where it stood. It practically stradles the line between simulationist and narrativist, and it's still young enough to have such an identity crisis.

Ron, what I'm trying to do w/ Dreamspire might be analagous to what you're up to with Trollbabe. Dreamspire has many "traditional" RPG elements, but it herds players toward that narrative side of the spectrum. Is this Drift? Not sure I grok Drift well enough to say, but probably so. Is this bad? God, I hope not!

Doh, I forgot to reply to several of Ron's excellent questions.

Ron Edwards wrote: But something you said sounds a little different ... that bit about "swimming upstream," the Quest, doing something worthwhile. Now wait a minute. How is that "something" determined? By the game or by the player? When - at character creation or during play? How might the crunch between the usual vengeance/awfulness and the rise-above Higher Thing be made unavoidable?

Hey,

Teasing you back: you ain't gotcha me, not by a million miles. I presented you with two options, one for if it's Sim/Char, and one for if it's Narrativism. Your accusation of "Narrativist bias" goes in the blender; hit frappe.

Okay, now for the serious stuff, which is to decide if Dreamspire is "Narr or Sim."

[Note that Trollbabe isn't "transitional," like Scattershot is (and arguably, maybe, The Riddle of Steel as well). It's tits-front Narrativist, just painless.]

Who can answer this? You. Just you. If it's "about" Experiencing Character in Crisis, then review Unknown Armies and go for that. If it's "about" Moral Decisions as Statements, then review some of the Narrativist games I listed above. (And see whether Dav will sling you a copy of the current draft of Violence Future; it's so totally about this stuff.)

Don't ask us for help on this one - you anticipated Jared, me, and Mike perfectly. Now come clean.

Best,
Ron

Ron, true you did present me with two options, but, if I read those rightly, one option was Simulation Exploration of Character, a la Unknown Armies. The other was Narrativist exploration of Morality and Statements? Something to that effect, anyway.

I guess the reason I "flinched" is that Dreamspire, as I see it, is neither, yet very close to both options. As I said earlier, it's Exploration of Situation in a Simulationist game. So, it's much more in line with the "about Moral Decisions and Statements" line, but it remains a simulationist game. Whereas you refered to several Narrativist games for examples of that style, I'm trying to accomplish something similar in a Simulationist way. I'm not sure what games out there do this. Any examples, anyone? If there are few, or even none, then I can't help feel like I'm heading in the right direction. I belive there's good cause to expand the "borders" of GNS, giving people practical, playable games to play in all of the categories. Now, I summon Mike Holmes, Champion of Simulationism! To arms, man, lend me your voice! ;)

By the way, when I said Trollbabe was analogous, I meant in it's "sneaky" approach, not in it's Transitional (or lack thereof!) approach. Dreamspire is similar in that it might appear to have trappings of other games -- say, WW games. It has splats, I guess, so the similarity's there. But, I hope it does something different. Sneaky in that it draws gamers I know and play with, and gamers I see comment on various d-groups, into a game that challenges their notion of what a "normal" RPG is supposed to do, and helps them have a good time in that challenge.

Hey Matt,

I think your next step is to become a student of Scattershot and The Riddle of Steel, both of which are doing exactly what you describe, in different ways.

Best,
Ron

Hi Matt,

Dreamspire sounds exciting to me, though I agree with the comments regarding Premise. How about extending your Chess analogy into Premise Country? When I play Chess, the core components are Manipulation (bluff or feint), Anticipation (What's he gonna do next? What can I do NOW to prepare for that possibility?), and Sacrifice (my Pawn for your Bishop). Seems to me you can extract a meaningful Premise from working with those aspects of the game.

Possible Premise Angles:
- Free will v. Society
- What are you willing to sacrifice for freedom?
- What constitutes true sacrifice?
- Deceit v. Truth
- What does it take to be safe in this world?
- Who are you willing to sacrifice to achieve your goals?
- Is winning everything?

These are just a few initial ideas. Some are better than others, and if you incorporate knightly/quest elements, you might get to an interesting fusion.

Best,

Blake

players should care about swimming upstream against strong, dark currents to achieve something decent in a place filled with dark corners and hidden daggers.
How the conflict between the awfulness of the place/situation and the character's Quest can be accentuated is the Best Question of the Day.

Jürgen Mayer wrote:
So, if I got this right, it's all about making the right moral decisions, i.e. "being good" in a dark world where most others don't care about others?

Here's an idea: All PCs have a "Check" rating ... <snip>

Does that make any sense?

Matt,

Here's what I think would be cool.

As I remember from our old Target Audience discussions (and correct me if I'm wrong, I obviously don't have access to that information any longer), player characters are normal people jerked from the real world and plopped into the Dreamspire as part of this cosmic game*. Your website even hints that there might be a way to escape it.

I think some kind of mechanic that characterizes their connection to the real world, to their former lives, would be cool. The Whispering Vault has its Keys of Humanity, Le Mon Mouri has Memories, and Wraith has Fetters. I think Dreamspire is a spiritual cousin to some of these games, and while treading the same old ground is lame, the idea is still sound. This would give the characters (and the players) something to care about other than what is going on immediately in the setting.

Now, if the Dreamspire itself has an agenda, it's probably to draw the PCs into its game, to use them to replace its missing pieces. It wants to sever the characters' links to the "real world", and it does this by offering up Pawns. Basically, if the players decide to "play the game" and use Pawns, they'll be jeopardizing these other things, their real-world selves.

For this to work, the links to the real world have to mean something mechanically. Maybe they could replace attributes or traits, and as players use Pawns they risk reducing their own effectiveness, thus increasing their dependence on Pawns. Or maybe the links work as self-defined Madness Meters, or Sanity, or Humanity, and if they're all eliminated, your character becomes an unplayable NPC - rendered a pawn in the Dreamspire's perpetual chess match.

If this were the case, I'd do two things with the metagame mechanics for Pawns. First, I'd give the players access to an unlimited amount of them, since they're only hurting themselves. Secondly, I wouldn't have them go over to the GM, since they're already a major problem for the PCs' livelihood, and he doesn't really need them anyway.

Okay, so the above is really derivative, I know. Maybe there's a kernel of something in there though.

Take care,
Scott

* This is a bit of tangent, but if players are normal people jerked from the real world, what time and place do they come from? Maybe we discussed this in the past, but I don't recall (just like I didn't remember about the Quests - sorry). I'd say they come from any time and place...but that's just me.

Scott, your memory is better than you give yourself credit for. The denizens of Dreamspire are indeed inhabitants of the "real world" snatched away from reality and trapped in a shared nightmare. As I've focused on certain elements recently, I've managed to neglect others like this "trapped from reality."

But, good thing you brought it up . . . because I was about to after a private message from Blake Hutchins. While musing on what the Premise might be, he suggested this: "What will you do to escape being a Pawn?"

Bingo. Sick when folks do a better job of saying what you're thinking. Thanks, Blake.

Now, if that's the case, then I need to do a couple things. First, I have to make people care about their former, real-world self. When I first created Dreamspire, it didn't really matter what, when or where you came from, just that you'd committed some transgression and were trapped in one freaky Purgatory as a result. This made people really get into the cool setting, "advance" characters, and let me not worry about the real world as I designed.

However, obviously it matters a great deal where, when and what characters came from. That's because they have to care about getting back there. So, I need to tie Quest to that ambition. That is, Quest should have everything to do with building some kind of synchonicity between Dreamspire and the real world; it should be some kind of goal which might earn the right to escape the terrible realm once and for all. This also would go a long way toward gelling that crucial conflict that Ron stressed above.

Second, and very much related to that, I need to constuct a mechanic that lets players and GMs manage that synchronistic link between the two world, as you've suggested.

See, I knew this discussion would go something like this. Matt posts. Matt gets overwhelmed by how much of a fool he's been. Matt thinks "Eureka!" Matt goes back to the drawing board. Rinse. Repeat.

So it goes. I guess my only consolations are that I knew this would happen and that the game will be much better as a result.

Okay, wow. I've been following this thread, and despite my determination that the really neat looking website would not draw me in, I've been subtly salivating.. And now, this last hook that Moose brings up has got me, and you've just reeled me in.

If I've not made myself clear, allow me to be bold: I want to play this game.

Ahem. Sorry, I said that wrong..

I want to play this game. NOW.

I'm getting this weird-freaky cinematic sequence going through my head, characters dressed in stylized outfits symbolically reminiscent of chess pieces in this dark chamber, which doesn't seem fully real, engaged in some conflict which is somehow as much social and moral as it is physical. They've been together a long time, and they've grown to love each other the way a family would (and perhaps more, in certain instances). But something is standing in the way of final redemption... And the knight sacrifices himself, crying out "Go, now! While you still can!"
And then you switch to another scene, some time later... The rest of the party is gone, free... But the knight is now some high, dark lord, having lost his soul to Dreamspire... and become powerful, scheming, vicious... And somehow resentful. Someday he wants them back, and somehow, he will get them back, and make them pay for letting him make the sacrifice, and stay here alone.

::shudders::

I want to play this game NOW.








::whimpers:: please?

Sorry I'm late, can't figure out how I missed this.

First thing I have to say, Matt is, Neat, try this. No, wait.

I agree with Ron. You have to decide what you want, and make the decision for the right reason. If you go Sim becuause you are retreating from Narrativism, well, this just givea my old narrativist nemesis Paul grist for he mill, and I'll not have that. If you decide you want a Sim system, then it should be because you want to produce the sort of stuff of which such a system is capable.

That said, I say go Sim with it.

I like Lance's imagery, but I got stuck on a similar one of my own as soon as I read this. There is an episode of "The Prisoner" in which the people of the village are dressed up like chess pieces, and being made to play a game of chess. Innocuous, on the surface (they don't fight or anything, peices taken are just pulled off he board), but given the context of the village itself, it's sinister. At one point a player refuses to move appropriately, and he's removed forcibly and taken to the hospital for reprogramming.

The point of the episode is an interesting one. In chess you know who your oponents are because they are marked. In RL, this is not true, but you can figure out who the black pieces are by watching their behavior. It's classic game theory, really.

Anyhow, I can totally see where you are coming from. While episodes of "The Prisoner" did have plots, what always got me going about it was that it was always a "series of interesting events" going ever on (well, for several episodes). Highly existentialist, and highly condusive to the Sim mentality, IMO. I've even designed a game that works on the isolation like you find in "The Prisoner" (If you haven't seen the show, you must).

Anyhow, youhave these same elements. People brought in from outside where they can't escape. Factions inside. And the urge to produce a "series of interesting events" (as opposed to the Nar story). Neat.

OK, on to specifics. First, you are emulating some sort of dreamworld, are you not? Hence the name? And surrealist immagery? So, why would you bother with simulating RW physics. While I like realism in realistic games, such would be odd here, IMO. You can kill two birds by eliminating much of the physical stuff and focusing on the Pawn stuff, namely that it'll be simpler, and more focused. Sim != realism.

Not to say that you can't have pseudo-physical battles. Certainly you can. But I'd make the outcome of these based on determination, or correlation to your quest, or somehting like that. That makes the character's quest central as well, instead of being just another tacked on background mechanic. Relationship mechanics would be appropriate in such a dream state, as well, I'd imagine. In fact to keep the player's engaged with the character's "RW" existence (that outside of the isolation tank), you must do as Scott suggested.

But what's really missing is faction emrboilment. I was just looking at Max's (AKA Balbinus) new game about politicks, and thinking about how the mechnics work from a Sim angle. They are designed for Gamism, but they at least engage the player on the surface in the subject matter. This could be dome in a more Sim fashion for your game.

First thing that comes to mind is the relationship stuff again. What are factions if not people relating due to some common goal? So there should be some of that. But it could go deeper. Much deeper. You used one of my favorite words, byzantine.

I would suggest reflexive and recursive mechanics of some sort that caused the creation of plots and counter-plots, etc, etc, ad infinitum. There is no bottom to the conspiracy well in this dreamland. It's like Al Amarja, but even worse, it's veneer of reality stripped off and laid bare. Elements portrayed as chess pieces so that everyone knows it's a game, but the oly game in town.

Yes, real potential. I can see some really avant guard mechanics empowering the participants to create the ever more complex machinations in an almost... viral... manner. As Frank Herbert's characters were won't to ponder, Wheels within wheels. That's the way to go. Players will never have time for physical stats, they'll be way too busy trying to figure out what's going on, and how they can capitalize.

That last part's important. They must be able to succeed, no matter how complicated things get, or nobody will want to play. There has to be a point to things in this weird place.

Lastly, endgame. Just for the name, and just for the way it fits the setting, you have to have a way for people to escape. Is it their Quest, do they get out when the quest is achieved? Do they ultimately find the true nature of the game, that it has no end? Do they die from the sorrow caused by the seeming insanity of it all? Can they rise to the top of the conspiracies, to dominate the game? Can they create checkmate? Or are they the king that gets irrevocably trapped? How many pawns and other pieces must be sacrificed to get where they need to go? Will it be a dream or a nightmare in the end, a living hell of a stalemate?

How can they get back to their "Real World"? And how does the experience leae them once they have?

Mike