My buddy A and I are co-designing a game.  We've each run campaigns with 4 players, both have been mostly quite enjoyable, but the enjoyment has derived from rather disparate sources.

In A's game, 3 of the 4 players were engineers, who have traditionally been rules-exploiters and game-breakers, among other things.  A's game gave them nothing they could break or exploit for unfair advantages according to the rules.  However, A was sure to fill his game with complicated physical situations, and the engineers greatly enjoyed problem-solving in these.  Stuck on the second floor of a three-story wooden structure with giant rats swarming down the chimney and only furniture, fire and swords at their disposal, everyone had a great time achieving an effective solution to the dilemma.  Mostly, it worked because A had a very detailed dscription of the environment (what's the biggest chair made out of? are any parts of it hollow?), a grasp of physics no worse than his players, and had guessed correctly at an appropriate difficulty level.  At the end, players were congratulating each other for good ideas and reveling in the combo of resourcefulness and luck (die rolls were involved in fighting rats and jamming objects into small spaces) that had allowed them to escape alive.

In my game, I have one player (a med student) who wants to be important and change the world, one player (a banker) who likes killing stuff and drugging people, one player (an actor) who likes investigating things and realistically portraying a kid, and one player (a political lackey) who likes strategy.  The banker's been happiest when standing victorious atop a pile of werewolf corpses, the other players' eyes wide at his combat effectiveness.  The med student's been happiest when conferring with NPC superiors who value the results he's produced as an investigator.  The actor's been happiest when crawling down a hole and finding a tunnel coated in corrosive sludge, as well as when interacting with the politician's character, who's somewhat adopted him -- the two of them have cracked up out of game after many in-game conversations portrayed with particular flair.  The politician's most enjoyed the approval and congratulations on his successful plan to hoist the injured guy through the hole in the cave ceiling without setting off the magical alarm.

My point is that, on the subject of social rewards, here's what I've observed:

As a GM, I try to know my players, and put them in situations where they can get involved with either realistic functionalism, hidden secrets, or logistical obstacles, or other stuff, depending on what I think they'd like.  If I do a good job, a fertile ground for social rewards is established.  I have trouble imagining how something I read in a rulebook could make this process easier or more successful.

However, a poster here recently explained to me the concept and function of a rewards system.  "How could this possibly be a mechanical game system?" I thought.  "If one's goal is to reinforce certain social practices which one's gaming group enjoys, don't the reinforcements need to be tailored to the tastes and preferences of those specific players?  And doesn't that, by definition, rule out the mechanics of the game, which are intended for use by various types of players and groups?"

If I sound like I am naysaying years of Forge wisdom here (am I? I have no idea), that is not my intent, I am just trying to get a handle on how a lot of the new concepts I'm running into might be implemented.  (Sydney, I read that entire thread you linked, and did not find an answer to my question.)

Thanks,
-Dave

Your example is actually a really good one. Imagine how much easier your friend's GMing job would've been, and how much more easily other players with other GMs could've replicated the same kind of fun, if they'd been playing a game with pages of easily-referenced tables on the strength of various materials, typical household objects, ready-to-go floorplans, etc., all translated from English/metric units into game-mechanical terms designed to fit precisely with the combat, movement, and gadgeteering systems? Compare this hypothetical game -- "Physics: the Engineering," or maybe just a very detailed GURPS supplement -- to trying to get the same people to play through the same scenario in D&D, or World of Darkness: The GM would have to prep massively and wing things constantly (e.g. your friend A's "a grasp of physics no worse than his players" and his ability to "guess...at an appropriate difficulty level").

Now, that's a question of "system does matter" in general; what does that specifically have to say about reward systems? First of all, a game gives you lots of game-mechanical guidance and options for a specific way of problem-solving is definitely rewarding players who solve problems in that way. Even if character improvement isn't at issue, character survival is a hell of a reward!
Now, tie in a character-improvement system that makes you better at the chosen form of problem-solving for every time you succeed (or even try and fail) to solve a problem in that way, and you have a very powerful feedback loop.
Thus, D&D works beautifully if you enjoy fighting and killing dangerous enemies: There are lots of rules to give you interesting options on how to do it (especially in the d20 version, with all the Feats), and the more you do it the better you get at it. D&D tends to sputter when you try to do intrigue or chivalric romance, because the rules really don't tell you how in an interesting way ("Okay, roll your Charisma! Roll your Charisma again! Again! Again!") and they don't give you much of a mechanical reward for doing it, so the players and GM have to do all the work of making these activities fun with no help from the system.
So you end up relying entirely on the GM and the players having enough personal knowledge to make something up on the spot -- which can be a lot of fun, and thus a hugely powerful reward system, but a purely informal and unwritten one. We RPGers are so used to doing this to make our games work that we take it for granted, but in fact, every time we have to resort to such do-it-yourself to make the game enjoyable, that's evidence that the game designers didn't do their job.

Now, the corrolary of all this is that you can't design a game that will maximize fun for everybody. (Although people with different tastes can find areas of overlap and enjoy the same thing, if only as a change of pace). In fact, trying to include something for everyone is the best way to ensure that nobody really enjoys it -- if you don't go crazy trying to design the damn thing first. But that doesn't simply mean that every single group of gamers has to invent their own solution, because people don't vary that much: Hack & slash D&D is fun for thousands of people, hundreds of people rave about Dogs in the Vineyard, etc. etc.

In the case of your gaming group -- the "change the world" med student, the "kill and dominate" banker, the "find stuff out" actor, and the "strategist" politico -- everyone's pretty much into being competent and effective. (That doesn't mean that they wouldn't enjoy hard-driving moral dilemma games where it's taken for granted that you're powerful and the question is what you do with it, like Dogs; they've probably never been exposed to that kind of game, so there's no way to tell). So a well-designed system for them might include
(a) 3-4 different but equally viable sets of tactical options, each with its own advantages and disadvantages, in both combat (e.g. beserk attack, ambush, playing it safe, dirty tricks) and interpersonal influence & intrigue (e.g. bluff 'em, empathize & win their sympathy, irresistable logic, intimidation). This rewards your kill/dominate and investigator types by making their creative thinking about how to do their favorite activities actually count, in hard game-mechanical terms, instead of being up to "does the GM think your idea would work or not?"
(b) specific mechanics for how individual actions affect large groups and institutions, and how those larger forces then can affect individuals in turn. This is a huge reward for the "change the world" guy and "strategist," since it makes the linkage between "this cunning or noble thing I do here and now" and "the broader impact of my actions on the world" into something concrete and clearly defined, instead of (again) "does the GM think your idea would work or not?"
(c) character improvement based on risking yourself in a serious way, regardless of whether you suceed or fail (rewards for sucess are amply handled by (b) above). Whereas lots of systems effectively reward you for playing it safe and boring, this would encourage players to take risks and try interesting things, because even if they fail, they still get XPs (or whatever) that makes them better prepared to try again next time.

I fear this discussion is getting dangerously general, so before the moderators start getting antsy, I'd encourage you to ponder how this relates to your specific design goals for Lendrhald and pose specific questions in your other thread (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=20113).

David wrote: As a GM, I try to know my players, and put them in situations where they can get involved with either realistic functionalism, hidden secrets, or logistical obstacles, or other stuff, depending on what I think they'd like.  If I do a good job, a fertile ground for social rewards is established.  I have trouble imagining how something I read in a rulebook could make this process easier or more successful.

However, a poster here recently explained to me the concept and function of a rewards system.  "How could this possibly be a mechanical game system?" I thought.  "If one's goal is to reinforce certain social practices which one's gaming group enjoys, don't the reinforcements need to be tailored to the tastes and preferences of those specific players?  And doesn't that, by definition, rule out the mechanics of the game, which are intended for use by various types of players and groups?"

Sydney wrote:
Imagine how much easier your friend's GMing job would've been, and how much more easily other players with other GMs could've replicated the same kind of fun, if they'd been playing a game with pages of easily-referenced tables on the strength of various materials, typical household objects, ready-to-go floorplans, etc., all translated from English/metric units into game-mechanical terms designed to fit precisely with the combat, movement, and gadgeteering systems?

Sydney wrote:
a game [that] gives you lots of game-mechanical guidance and options for a specific way of problem-solving is definitely rewarding players who solve problems in that way.

Sydney wrote:
D&D tends to sputter when you try to do intrigue or chivalric romance, because the rules really don't tell you how in an interesting way ("Okay, roll your Charisma! Roll your Charisma again! Again! Again!")

Sydney wrote:
and they don't give you much of a mechanical reward for doing it, so the players and GM have to do all the work of making these activities fun with no help from the system.

Sydney wrote:
So you end up relying entirely on the GM and the players having enough personal knowledge to make something up on the spot . . . every time we have to resort to such do-it-yourself to make the game enjoyable, that's evidence that the game designers didn't do their job.

Sydney wrote:
I fear this discussion is getting dangerously general, so before the moderators start getting antsy, I'd encourage you to ponder how this relates to your specific design goals for Lendrhald and pose specific questions in your other thread (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=20113).

Callan wrote:
Rules remain unbiased, even when you become biased. I think being biased is not only likely, but key to each player/GM having fun.

Callan wrote:
A game system could cater to what the group enjoys/the foods they have eaten before. But it can also cater to the desire to try new foods. This actually means making a game system which produces kind of unfamiliar results.

David wrote: I'm with you on that.  I wasn't intending to discuss the merits of whether to use an in-game arbitration system, only the merits of whether to use a "reward the player" system beyond reality-governed arbitration.

David wrote:
That said, I don't see how, in most of the situations I mentioned (blocking a chimney, finding a rune, killing a foe, rigging a harness, getting a nod from the emperor), the player rewards (excitement about what the character's accomplished, smiles and praise from other players) benefit much from mechanical supplementation.  ("Cool, I solved the riddle, impressed Bob, and got +1 to my Puzzle skill!"  Which are really the important parts here?)

To the extent that direct-to-player mechanical rewards support doing what makes sense in-game, they seem borderline superfluous, and to the extent that they reward anything that does not make sense in game, they're unacceptable given my realism preference.

David wrote:
It seems to me that a system doesn't need to encourage players to do what they already want to do (it simply can't interfere)...

Callan wrote:
A rule which determines damage from a fall isn't a 'in game arbitration' rule while a 'I give you a point from my pool cause you really contributed to the conflict IMO' isn't a 'reward the player' rule. To me, both reward players and both influence the game world. There's no distinction between them.

David wrote: As a GM, I try to know my players, and put them in situations where they can get involved with either realistic functionalism, hidden secrets, or logistical obstacles, or other stuff, depending on what I think they'd like.  If I do a good job, a fertile ground for social rewards is established.  I have trouble imagining how something I read in a rulebook could make this process easier or more successful.

A reward system can also be used to motivate the player to engage into a desired feeling or mood.

The question is: In a Lendrhald game, what is it that enforces the dark fantasy feeling? From what I can see from the description of your players, it must be you, as the GM, that 'forces' the dark feeling into the game, for the player don't seem to be the kind that naturally goes there (I may be totally wrong here, but I hope you will see my point anyway).

Now think about if you had a mechanic that in a fair way motivated the players to engage in the 'dark fantasy' feeling by rewarding them for enhance the horror and making thing more scary for their characters.

Something have to force the dark feeling into the game. The question is: should it be the GM or should it be the system?

- Anders

It seems to be the case that a lot of responsibilities that I have always figured to be the duty of a good GM are unofficial in the games I have played, but more official (or at least officially encouraged) in some other systems.  To the extent that these duties are assisted by helpful hints in some games, I say "Great!"  I like helpful hints.  Any published form of Lendrhald will certainly have helpful hints on solving physical problems, creating character backstory, and any number of methods to maintain realism.  (In A's game, he made all enemy dice rolls behind the screen, and refused to have even the most trivial "character 1 is here but 2 is not" discussions in front of character 2's player.  I don't know if you'll believe me, but I actually found it more effective than annoying!)

What I'm wondering is, when is it a good idea to turn helpful hints into system mechanics?

Ricky wrote:
You say, "To the extent that direct-to-player mechanical rewards support doing what makes sense in-game, they seem borderline superfluous". They are not superfluous, and here's why: they indicate to everyone playing the game that the objective is to do what makes sense in-game. Without that reward, a new player to the game might misunderstand what the point of the game is. But with that reward, it's really clear: the player is rewarded for ensuring that the game world always makes sense.

Ricky wrote:
Joe is tired from a long day at the office (and doesn't feel like solving the riddle), and Bob is getting on his nerves for whatever reason (so Joe doesn't feel like impressing Bob). That last support, the mechanical one (+1 to Puzzle), is still there to encourage Joe to play the game. It is certainly possible that this might not be enough, but at least it's there, so it might have some benefit for Joe. Without it, though, Joe has no encouragement to play the game, because the other two rewards are supplied by Joe, not the game system.

Paka wrote:
These Beliefs aren't about what the character cares about...who cares what a fictional dingus cares about? These Beliefs are about what turns the player on.

Paka wrote:
And they get rewarded with Artha for chasing down their Beliefs and acting on them.

Anders wrote:
Something have to force the dark feeling into the game. The question is: should it be the GM or should it be the system?

Judd, thanks for those links.  Those are some of the best helpful hints I've seen.  I think I'll try Chris's NPC - PC sheet idea.

By the way, is there already some Forge term that means "game elements designed to facilitate and improve play without incorporating mechanical rewards/punishments", or should I just keep saying "helpful hints"?

Warning: I use some Forge terminology ahead. But I'm new here, so I'm not entirely clear on things. If anyone sees any errors ahead, please let me know.

David wrote:
By the way, is there already some Forge term that means "game elements designed to facilitate and improve play without incorporating mechanical rewards/punishments", or should I just keep saying "helpful hints"?

David wrote:
A helpful hint might be effective too, but I see your point: the majority of the time, a reward system will be more effective.  It's quick to read, easy to remember, simple to understand, and motivation in itself, all benefits over, say, 40 pages of setting material.  But I think I see trade-offs that outweigh these benefits:

In Lendrhald's case, the entire setting and current resolution mechanics are designed to ensure that failing to do what makes sense in-game will get you killed.  And it's worked so far, in terms of pretty much any issue that could get you killed.

David wrote:
I could institute an official system of Stigma points and Marked For Death points, and give players Rewind points that they could use to remove a certain number of Stigmatized or Death-Marked moments... it would encourage players to read up on my world more... but it would also encourage meta-gamey thinking and be more jarring to the course of play than my current method...

If you're doing it for points (my Caution and Credibility went up!) rather than in-game rewards (you don't wind up lost in the woods, you don't get looked at like a moron by the guy you're pumping for info), then your head's not in the right place...  I don't want to encourage that kind of dissociation from the gameworld, and having points out there to be gained risks doing exactly that.

Does that make sense or do I just sound paranoid?

Let me just raise a little yellow flag for everybody before Ron Edwards does:

1) This discussion is really general, and therefore it's hard to communicate clearly -- it's turning into what "RPG Theory" was before that forum got shut down for running in circles as people talked past each other.

2) David has another thread -- http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=20113.0 -- running concurrently on this same question in the specific context of his game, where people are discussing specific suggestions.

Besides the general principle that it's confusing to have two threads taking different approaches to the same topic at the same time, I think it's a lot easier to communicate the general principles in specific proposed mechanics ("mechanics" including, as Ricky said, pretty much any kind of procedure suggested in the rules, not just stuff involving numbers and dice).

I'd respectfully recommend that we all port this discussion over there and frame it in more specific terms, which I think would be more helpful to David. David, obviously, if you think the double-barrelled approach is helpful, stick with it, but I'd also note that as the guy who initiated this thread, you have full authority to say, "okay, done here now, thanks" whenever you want.

Ricky-

I hate to risk sounding like a dick, but I think you've misunderstood the distinction I was trying to make between one type of system ("helpful hints") and another ("metagame rewards/punishments").

With your barmaid example, you provided a good illustration of the kind of system I do like ("helpful hints"), and do not intend to discuss further in this thread.

Sydney-

I would like to keep this thread active for the moment, as I suspect there may be more useful feedback to come.  Let me do my best to encourage a Forge-approved style of discourse in bold:

People who like metagame rewards/punishments: please argue with the logic I've already put forward as to why (I suspect) they don't belong in Lendrhald.

This thread should strive toward identifying whether any kinds of metagame rewards systems are compatible with my game, and if so, what are the essential features of such systems.

Hopefully I can achieve some clarity on that, close this thread, and better pursue specific system brainstorms in the other thread.

I just read a gigantic article by Ron, and I think I can now say in Forge-speak: my game's primary creative agenda is Simulationist.  It is Purist for System in that the rules attempt to represent reality and High Concept in that it is concerned with a genre (dark fantasy) and theme (Lovecraft + Anthrocentrism = doomed struggle of Man).

Ron's article on Simulationism says that it (or at least Purist for System) hasn't traditionally used metagame rewards systems, prefering systems of in-game Resources.  It seems to me that the functioning of these latter can only differ from reality insofar as my setting differs from reality.  (In Lendrhald, Human culture can't differ too much; the physical world is a more flexible matter.)

I did not find anywhere where Ron (or anyone else) discussed whether it was ever possible or desirable to use metagame rewards systems in a Simulationist game.  (If anyone knows of such a discussion, please direct me to it!)

So, let that be an entry-point into this thread for those who think better in Forge jargon.

I am a little confused about in what thread i should put this, but it is a replay to something from this tread, so here it goes.

My answer would be that this job belongs to the setting.  But perhaps that isn't realistic.  Not every part of the world is dark, so in theory the players could choose to hang around in town and make friends, drink beer, chase women, trade goods, etc.

I am having trouble thinking of how a player rewards system would produce better results.  If the world and the GM fail to arouse players' curiosity, I don't think saying, "Your Curiosity Seeker trait means you'll earn points if you check it out!" is a desirable solution.  All you wind up with is players interested in points pretending to be interested in what's going on in-game.

Hi,

I'm just going to jump on in here, as some of the ideas and mechanisms everyone has touched on have really got me thinking. I'm new to posting to the Forge, but have been absorbing a lot of content from here for about a month.....I'll tell you, a lot of that was just burying myself in the closed forums (GNS model discussion, RPG theory, and Indie game design) and reading through the Articles, and especially the glossary and just recently dipping into the First thoughts, Actual play and Playtesting forums to get a taste of what type of current discussion goes down, and how some of the pieces of the Big Model have changed from the older stuff I'd read in the theory forums.

So as not to skew this thread out into the general, I'll focus on hitting some possible techniques that may accomplish what you have sought, or might help you design those techniques. I think the title of this thread tells me a lot. "A reward system for players, not characters" would mean that your system (by this I mean written rules, and informal social agreements ++i.e. the Lumply Principle++) should allow different mechanical interaction that affects the SIS (shared-imaginary-space), wether the player acts from an "immersed" standpoint, or acts from a player or "meta" standpoint. Lets hits some bullets while we consider what I've grasped of your expectations for the system, and see what we come up with.

• You would like time spent in "meta" or player consciousness kept to a minimum as a way to encourage the Simulationist Agenda, focusing a majority of play on "in-character" or immersive consciousness. I'd like to point out that it seems unlikely that you can eliminate one of these types of consciousness entirely. I don't think the dials go to 0% or a 100%, but have to have a fuzzy level in between, much like a probability assigned to an electron in quantum theory. So how does that inform our choice of mechanics?

• The mechanic should serve to resolve player to player or player to DM conflict about what exists in the SIS, quickly and efficiently, and then mechanically thrust the focus of play back to character to character conflict or character to setting/situation conflict. This should lead the players to want to fall back into the immersed character role, as that should logically provide the most rewarding method of resolving the in-character conflict.

• So far, we don't have an actual mechanic yet, just guidelines for designing one. Next I'd like to pull in some of the technique mentioned in this, and the other "rewards system in Lendrhald" thread to use in an example of creating a mechanic. If you'd prefer that I take fleshing out of specific mechanics to the other thread, just holler.

• Let's call all the content that has already been introduced into play "local" or grounded content. This content, having been introduced by the GM (with or without collaborative input from the Players !!::nods to Donjon::) will have a casual affect on the SIS and the SIS will have a casual effect on the new content, thus fulfilling our Simulationist Agenda. That's the important part, that content that's entering the SIS have coherence with the themes and trends already in play, such as the "dark fantansy" environment, and specifically your themes of Lovecraftian Horror, and Human vs Other. I believe that a mechanic that encourages Player/GM collaboration to decide what new content to enter into the SIS would increase player enjoyment. Also, as stated above, I think that if the amount of time spent in that collaborative phase has been kept to a minimum, and that there's a concrete method to channel that energy immediately back to "in-character" action, then you can concentrate on how the simulationism between local content plays out.

• So how do we allow the Gm and Players to collaberatively frame non-local "possible" content, and then allow that to manifest into local "in-play" content? Taking Threlicus' idea for a Coin (abstract spendable resource) system idea, and applying our above guidelines, we could say that players may spend Coins to introduce new active content into the SIS. Nay, at best, we can say that the Player spends Coins to suggest new content (a new Creepy Horror, or the location of a ruined temple, or the possibility of a meteor strike in the area, which would have nasty-reality bending side effects). You can even imagine a theoretical Play event where 3 players would actually spend coins, and list those 3 things as suggestions. How do we allow the mechanics to then assist the GM/Player collaboration/arbitration to the point that the GM then says, "OK, *this* and *this* and *this* actually happen to your characters, what do they do?"

• I think that your idea of BrainStorm Lists seems ideal to fit in here. Say we have the players use a fortune based resolution system, and roll some dice depending on how many coins they bid on the suggestion. So Player 1, who has suggested "New Horrible Monstrosity Thing" has bid 4 coins, and rolls for for 4 descriptive details from the Horrible Monstrosity Thing BS List. Or The GM may make a decision, and applies one of the rolls to the "Physical Descriptor" BS list, and the other 3 to the "Creepy Powerz" BS list. These lists have setting/theme appropriate options, and better still, mechanical explanations as to how they casually inter act with the SIS once entered into play.

• Now that the Players have spent/bid these coins, what happens to them? I would say that the GM may spend them as a resource to roll or choose new content from any of the BS Lists available. For example, while the characters find themselves venturing out to investigate the creepy ruined temple/fortress in the swamp, the DM could decide that a band of Orcs surround the area, and spend Coins to give them such descriptors as "Hunter/Killer Band", "Forge, Weapon, and Armor Technology" and "Degenerate Rites/Magic", resulting in large, macho orcs with wicked, cruel weapons and armor, painted with the blood of their sacrifices, and doing strange things in the woods in order to placate/control/draw the attention of the "New Horrible Thing" that player 1 initiated. The GM may then decide how their presence has affected the settlements in the area, based on what they'd most likely be doing.

• Now, tying this "content creation" system to the player rewards mechanic, say that each item on the Brainstorm list requires that the player spending Coins describe a specific aspect of that element of the new content, and that when done successfully, and creatively, earns him/her more Coins. Let's take the "New Horrible Thing" example. Say one of the descriptors of it that rolled up on the "Creepy Powers" list states:

Horror has a level of mental domination that it uses to affect targeted human prey. Describe: "Reason for having/using power" Worth: 1 Coin
OR "A situation in which the Horror has used power on an NPC." Worth 2 Coins.

Hi, David,

No worry about sounding like a dick. I've noticed that people on the Forge have the remarkable skill to argue without sounding like dicks. :-) So, per your request, we'll focus on metagame rewards exclusively. I'll get back to that in a minute.

Hi, Joshua,

Welcome to the Forge! That loud cheering sound is me wildly applauding your awesome first post. I am truly in awe. I have one question for you.

This content (snip) will have a casual affect on the SIS and the SIS will have a casual effect on the new content,

Hi there,

This has been a wonderful thread to read so far.

David, I appreciate the attention you've given to my essays. You probably won't be surprised to learn that after I published that essay here, an extensive series of threads was spawned about whether and how Simulationist design (of the kind we're discussing) can benefit from metagame-level rewards.

The general conclusion was that historically it hadn't happened, but theoretically it was possible and, as an idea, intriguing enough to be pursued by someone, some day, who wanted to.

As a side note .... that discussion played a certain role in the design of Universalis, as one of the co-designers, Mike Holmes, was concerned with leaving that route of play open/available for the game, rather than focusing on Narrativist conflict as the only route to enjoyment. Whether that resulted in a slightly more incoherent design, or in a slightly more productive/flexible design, is a question for the individual.

Let's focus on your own game, though. My take is this: if you do not want to include such a reward system in your game, then nothing is wrong with that, and you'll certainly have historical RPG design on your side to support that approach. I recommend, if you go this way, that you provide extensive and meaningful in-game rewards/consequences for characters; in other words, make sure that outcomes of events (individual tasks, or whole scenarios, or anything in between) are quantitatively powerful in some way.

(In the past, this has been done mainly at the smaller-grain scale of characters - specifically skill improvement. I submit this is relatively trivial and that you'd do better to increase the scale of effect.)

If you do want to include a metagame-reward system after all, but to preserve the aesthetic and procedural features that you have described, then you have moved into terra semi-cognita for RPG design - the theory can help you figure out how, there are a few game designs that offer useful clues, and people here will be interested to help you (not the least of whom is the inimitable Mike Holmes, as this is something of a Grail for him) - but no solid, done, "like this" models exist to emulate.

I would like to link to some of the older discussions I've been referencing for this post, but unfortunately, it's something of a painful hunt at the moment, and my time is short. I encourage you to browse the GNS forum, paying strict attention to dates and keeping in mind that many individuals' viewpoints often changed due to the discussions ... and that some individuals can be identified as preserving conflict for its own sake, as they feared its resolution.

Best, Ron

Hi, Ron, it's great to see you give your opinion on this.

Ron wrote:
Let's focus on your own game, though. My take is this: if you do not want to include such a reward system in your game, then nothing is wrong with that, and you'll certainly have historical RPG design on your side to support that approach. I recommend, if you go this way, that you provide extensive and meaningful in-game rewards/consequences for characters; in other words, make sure that outcomes of events (individual tasks, or whole scenarios, or anything in between) are quantitatively powerful in some way.

(In the past, this has been done mainly at the smaller-grain scale of characters - specifically skill improvement. I submit this is relatively trivial and that you'd do better to increase the scale of effect.)

Hi Ricky,

what is an "extensive and meaningful in-game reward/consequence for characters"

how has it been done in the past ("skill improvement") and why is this trivial?

Ricky wrote:
<snip>

Hi, Joshua,

Welcome to the Forge! That loud cheering sound is me wildly applauding your awesome first post. I am truly in awe. I have one question for you.

This content (snip) will have a casual affect on the SIS and the SIS will have a casual effect on the new content,

Emphasis mine. I think you meant to say "causal" in the bolded parts, ie. the new content and the SIS affect each other in ways that make sense for the game. Is that right?
<snip>

What I'm seeing in this thread is a strong desire for a solid, working reward mechanic, but also to keep it firmly embedded in the SIS (i.e. fictional concerns) rather than direct attention to the among-player interactions.

Wow.  While I was out of town throwing my body at frisbees, people gave some great contributions here.  I think I'm going to take the hint and be slower to respond. 

There are a lot of ideas here where my first thought is, "Nah, that probably wouldn't work," but for the moment I'm going to try to avoid excluding anything outright unless it is categorically impossible.  Dunno if that's efficient, but:
1) as a game-designer, I do have some interest in what kind of game people want to play (if I don't use it for Lendrhald, there are still future possibilities)
2) as a GM, the idea of having players help me with prep work sounds nice

Before I take a few more days to digest and respond to recent posts, a few quick takes:

IN-GAME REWARDS

I agree with Ron that realistic (i.e. slow) skill advancement isn't a very compelling reward system, and that the following is a goal well-suited to my game:

Ron wrote:
I'm suggesting developing something like the in-game-effect features of the skill-improvement techniques I'm talking about, but having it affect fictional stuff that is wider  than the character sheet, rather than a smaller component  of it.

Just to elaborate on one thought from my last post:

George Heintzelman and I were talking about ways to give the GM creative help in set-up tasks, and I realized that doing this before or after play, rather than during, wouldn't raise all the "immersion-breaker" red flags I've been mentioning. 

George had this to say on the subject:

Th wrote:
I have played many games which use this mode, albeit without any formal tools to assist. My experience is that three facts conspire to leave the bulk of the work on the GM:
1) The GM veto is always there, and is used whenever anything player-created conflicts with something previously determined by the GM. So players tend to keep their contributions within fairly strict limits.
2) Players expect the GM to create and control anything antagonistic to the PCs. Since conflict and antagonism are the heart of story (yes, even for a Simulationist. They are emergent rather than planned, but they are there), these are the elements that get the most attention.
3) Most players don't do any work away from the game table, and when they are at the game table, they want action to be happening, not talk about design.

This could be a profitable line to pursue, if you can find ways to avoid these problems. I propose to avoid them entirely by 1) not having a GM veto; 2) expecting everyone to create antagonists for everyone else and 3) doing all the setting work, including the GMs, at the game table, as part of the game.

This could be a profitable line to pursue, if you can find ways to avoid these problems. I propose to avoid them entirely by 1) not having a GM veto; 2) expecting everyone to create antagonists for everyone else and 3) doing all the setting work, including the GMs, at the game table, as part of the game.

Note that the quote was from me, not David Berg. I don't think David has bought into the idea of no GM veto, at least not fully. ;)

Ricky wrote:
One solution is to separate the "setup" part from the "play" part. IOW, when the whole group sits down at the table, the first part of the game is Setup: the group decides what elements (characters, situations, etc.) are going to be encountered in this session. Then once that is complete, the Play part begins: the group plays through the elements that were created in Setup.

George and Ricky's last two posts lead me to try to re-clarify the parameters I'm attempting to worth within:

I've spoken with my co-designer.  He doesn't want players to be able to influence the world beyond the actions of their characters.

We agree that world-invulnerability is a matter of degree.  There is no absolute and perfectly opaque reality, pre-defined down to the last atom, immune to all possible player thoughts of "that was likely put there for my benefit".  Along the scale of degree, however, you can do plenty to discourage such thoughts, and to the extent that I can, I want to.

Two places I wish to arrive at:

1) Plausible deniability for GMs.  Although the GM can never prove that something was there before PCs decided to poke it, he should be able to claim as much without that claim seeming immediately false.  This will produce the impression I'm going for (world is solid and exists in its own right) for all but the most inveterate skeptics.

2) Passive immersion in the simulation, rather than willful or complicit immersion in the simulation.  The goal is not to have the players deeply involved in some reality; the goal is to have them involved in my specific reality.  And my specific reality is not supposed to make players feel some level of control (which having creative input does), but to confront them with obstacles and opportunities that they may pursue or ignore at their own discretion, without any preconceptions of what will happen when they do so.  Just like real life. 

"This must be what the GM wants us to pursue" is an effective way to respond to the setting in most games (whether the players get to create setting material or not), but in Lendrhald the desired thought process would be more, "This looks interesting/profitable."  The GM's job is not to orchestrate a storyline (which the players will then do their best to force their characters into, as they expect that's where the fun will lie), the GM's job is to fill the world with things and see which of them the players are into.

So, what does this rule out, and what does it not rule out?

It doesn't rule out the GM talking to the players before set-up, and using their tastes to design material.

It does rule out the GM responding to player desires in a quick and/or obvious manner.

"Quick" we can get around by the GM creating material prior to one session, and using it at a subsequent session.  Or even, maybe, using something late in a long session.

"Obvious", unfortunately, leaves no room for some of the system ideas we've been discussing.  The GM can't plausibly claim something existed independent of you if you know you helped create it or in some way caused it to be there.

A remaining metagame option I see is something where points are earned, spent, traded, and/or weighed against each other to influence very general quantities, like "good stuff for PCs" and "bad stuff for PCs".  This could work as long as it never gets specific or transparent enough to lead to, "That guy!  That guy is clearly the "helpful NPC" we requested an hour ago."

Ron wrote:
I'm suggesting developing something like the in-game-effect features of the skill-improvement techniques I'm talking about, but having it affect fictional stuff that is wider than the character sheet, rather than a smaller component of it.

Hi there,

Actually, I'm thinking a lot less abstractly than that, in my suggestion, and not necessarily divorced so much from the characters.

David, I have another suggestion, though. This thread is wandering around because people are losing track of your game in question, and it's all getting into "ideas, ideas, my mind floats free" kind of talk.

Let's take it back to the playtest of your actual game. What exact events occurred, in the fiction, that you think would have actual results on prepping the next session? Once you list those, then I can show you what I mean.

Best, Ron

Ron wrote:
Actually, I'm thinking a lot less abstractly than that, in my suggestion, and not necessarily divorced so much from the characters.

Ron wrote:
What exact events occurred, in the fiction, that you think would have actual results on prepping the next session? Once you list those, then I can show you what I mean.

Telarus, wrote:
I'm just going to jump on in here, as some of the ideas and mechanisms everyone has touched on have really got me thinking.

Cool!

Like I said, my "possible mechanic" wasn't supposed to be an immediate solution, but simply serve as an inspiration.

Have fun with the design. Glad I could help you get an idea of how to come up with the proccess. I'd like to see those tables when you finish them.

Namaste,
Telarus, KSC

Hello,

David, I'm not seeing anything in your account beyond tactical considerations of (victory vs. defeat) + (survival vs. death). It's pure Gamist strategizing, on everyone's parts, regarding a mission-based expedition, and that's that. Your musings as GM regarding what the daemon wants, and similar, are establishing further consequences and tactical setups, and not much else.

None of which is a criticism or judgment ... but it does lead to the important point that nothing about this is Simulationist. My earlier advice to you isn't relevant to this kind of play. This thread has gone on for many pages, and I think that's because you led us on a bit of a wild goose chase. The game you're playing is not the one you described earlier, and therefore we can't help you with the real game.

Here's my advice for the game you really seem to be playing:

Your rewards need to be about garnering resources (energy, hit points), protection (armor, harder-to-hit values), weaponry (greater magnitude, wider options), and if desired, meta-resolution advantages (re-rolls, etc).

Since the thread topic is about rewarding the players, and since you seem to be intent on the rewards being in-game or in-character in some way, then I suggest you offer one of the following things:

1. Win conditions. Whoever does the most important stuff well, gets called the winner. This could be killing the most critters, or it could be killing the big bad guy, or whatever.

2. Social privileges for characters. This is a little bit like what I was talking about earlier (and I now comprehend why it was making no sense to you). In this case, whoever does something well during a given session gets to negotiate with the superiors from a position of strength - in effect, dictating to you (the GM) what the superiors decree regarding issues like feeding the expedition.

You can see, I hope, that each of these represents an extreme end of the "in-game"/"meta-game" reward concepts. Each one really rewards the players, period. But the first does so explicitly with no particular relationship to causal stuff in the fiction, and the second does so implicitly, through justifying a particular shift in the status and effectiveness of the player-character in question.

Best, Ron

Ron wrote:
David, I'm not seeing anything in your account beyond tactical considerations of (victory vs. defeat) + (survival vs. death). It's pure Gamist strategizing, on everyone's parts, regarding a mission-based expedition, and that's that. Your musings as GM regarding what the daemon wants, and similar, are establishing further consequences and tactical setups, and not much else.

None of which is a criticism or judgment ... but it does lead to the important point that nothing about this is Simulationist.

Ron wrote:
The game you're playing is not the one you described earlier, and therefore we can't help you with the real game.

Ron wrote:
Here's my advice for the game you really seem to be playing:

Your rewards need to be about garnering resources (energy, hit points), protection (armor, harder-to-hit values), weaponry (greater magnitude, wider options), and if desired, meta-resolution advantages (re-rolls, etc).

Ron wrote:
2. Social privileges for characters. This is a little bit like what I was talking about earlier (and I now comprehend why it was making no sense to you). In this case, whoever does something well during a given session gets to negotiate with the superiors from a position of strength - in effect, dictating to you (the GM) what the superiors decree regarding issues like feeding the expedition.

Party: Darvtok, Caius, Pip, Rijk.

On a journey to the North, the party observed a structure being built by badguys.  They met some locals and learned that this project had been going on for decades, and that it was the site of a formal human seasonal ritual.  Darvtok, a religious elder from a tradition where seasonal rituals are given huge cosmic importance, tries to convince the party that they have to stop the badguys, go to the ritual site, and purify it.

The party returns to the nearest major city, arguing about what to do.  They agree that it would be nice to kill the badguys and reclaim the site, but Caius is not convinced that there is an imminent threat, and does not want to trouble his superiors in the Imperial government for nothing.  Darvtok threatens that if nothing is done, a star will launch a destructive comet, as happend 100 years ago.  The party then goes to consult an astronomer to see if there's any evidence in the sky to back this up.

Caius goes to schedule an appointment with the Imperial Governor, but finds the man's schedule is booked.  He tells the secretary that his mission is time-sensitive, but the secretary's best help is to suggest that Caius try to trade appointments with someone.

The party goes to the astronomer's house, where he and his father are drunk, watching the sky.  After Rijk offers him water, secretly laced with stimulants, the astronomer perks up and fetches his star charts.  Caius makes small talk with the astronomer's father and discovers he is a wealthy landholder with a coming appointment with the Imperial governor.  Darvtok convinces the man to give away half of his appointment so the party can talk to the governor about a big, bad star.

The astronomer finds no particularly compelling evidence to support Darvtok's claims of imminent doom, but there are a few convenient facts that Darvtok runs with, managing to convince the party that this evidence is good enough.

On the following day, Caius meets with the governor, asking him for 150 men to attack the north, while the party slips in and "fixes" the ritual site.  The governor says no, instead offering 12 men and a limited supply budget.  The party discusses, and decides to plan a mission based on this.

My reactions:

I was glad to see that Darvtok's player used the world knowledge I'd given him, and that the other players became interested in the stars and history as a result.  I was also glad to see that the players' frustration about scheduling an appointment with the governor was directed at the goverment (via the characters), rather than at me, the GM.  I was also glad that it was a very tough call for the players whether to pursue the mission or not, as opposed to them assuming, "This is what the GM wants to run, so let's play it."  I've tailored the numbers and capabilities of the enemy somewhat for fun value, but at the moment, it seems to me that they've walked into a death trap, and unless they come up with a plan I haven't thought of, they're all going to die.  Hopefully for their sake, they can manage to "purify" the ritual site first.

The only rewards that occurred were informal, mostly in the form of players finding out more about stuff that interested them.  I somewhat facilitated this by putting the astronomer and the appointment-holder in the same room, and by making it fairly quick and painless for the party to locate an astronomer.  To be honest, though, if I'd had a good idea of "how one can find an astronomer in this particular city", which I probably should have, I would have gone with that over convenience.

Given the focus of the thread, can you go into more detail about what the players were doing in the session -- i.e. not just what the characters did, but what the players did. Ideally, I'd like you to revise and expand that session-description above going into these questions (among others that will come to mind, I'm sure):

1) What of the various arguments, discussions, and proposals were done in-character, speaking "through" the fictional characters, and which were done out-of-character, the players speaking to each other and to you directly?
2) What of the various positions advocated by various characters were actually what the player in question wanted, and which were just roleplaying flourishes? (I.e. Player X might really, really want to have a big fight scene, but because he likes playing noble paladins, he has his character argue vehemently for negotiations, in the sincere hope his character will lose the debate).
3) How much of the detail - the astromer, the governor, the appointment-holder, etc. -- already "existed" (in your GM notes, or in your mind) before the session started, and how much of it did you invent on the spot in response to the characters' inquiries -- i.e. as a reward for players showing smarts, roleplaying skills, and knowledge of your world and how it works.
4) How much did your players seem to be enjoying or interested by the hunting for information, weighing of alternatives, intriguing for appointments, etc., and how much of their attitude seemed to be "well, we've got to get this out of the way so our characters have the best chance of succeeding in the mission, which is the fun part"? In other words, did they consider this stuff their "homework" to get a reward later (e.g. exciting combat, mission success), or to be fun-in-itself and thus its own reward?

Before I respond to Sydney's questions, here's a clarification of some things about my game.  I've gotten the impression from what people have posted thus far that we're all pretty much on the same page, but perhaps it's best if I get more specific.  I tried to cover some of this in my last response to Ron, but I didn't do the greatest job of it.

1) Is Lendrhald Simulationist or Gamist?

I began using the term "Simulationist" to describe my game when I read Ron's article on that particular creative agenda.  I thought "these goals sound like my goals!" -- but I didn't compare "what I would expect to happen in a Simulationist game" to "what happens in my game."  Thinking on it now, I still don't have any particular expectation of what Simulationist play ought to look like -- I'd think that would depend entirely on what you were simulating.

What I've been simulating is an environment where, among other things, there are adventures to be had.  I've done my best not to push the PCs into any particular course of action... but thus far it's been pretty much a given that they'll pursue some form of adventure, and I admit I've been facilitating this.  The impetus varies, from money to curiosity to coercion to one PC dragging the others on a personal quest tied to his character concept.  Adventuring (in the broadest sense of the term, not just simple "win or die" treasure-hunting) seems to be a popular path to conflict, drama, and interesting stories/play, so I've seen no reason to re-think this focus.

It seems to me that any attempt to a) have interesting play, which requires some form of conflict, and b) simulate real-world workings will inherently lead to some degree of strategizing.  Players who prefer to rush in without strategizing will be at a natural disadvantage.  To the extent that this dynamic makes a game Gamist, Lendrhald is Gamist.

To the extent that allowing players to get better at tackling strategic obstacles makes a game Gamist, Lendrhald is Gamist.  (Currently, the behavior rewarded in this fashion is simply showing up and playing.)

I don't see how these Gamist elements undermine my goals of immersion (what I've been calling "my Simulationist goals") to any degree beyond what's necessary for enjoyable play.  Anyone who sees this differently, or has an idea for a type of play that seems better-suited to my goals (as expressed in short form here and much longer form elsewhere in this thread), I'd appreciate hearing your perspective.

I hope this is helpful in understanding my game for anyone misled by my previous use of Forge terminology.

2) The current system

Players play, and and are slowly given points to spend, which they generally use to get better at the things they do most in the game.  The scout buys a higher Stealth rating, the warrior buys a higher Sword skill, etc.  This system helps make things fun for the players, but it doesn't help accomplish my goals of in-game immersion and a dark mood.  I would happily replace it with a system that did all three.

3) More system-in-progress

Rules for penalizing activities due to hunger, dehydration, fatigue (strenuous exertion), lack of sleep, and intoxication.

4) What I'm looking to add to the current system pt1 (Immersion help)

Suppose a GM and some players sit down at the game table and agree that they're going for deep immersion in the Lendrhald setting.  If there is some way that a system can facilitate this, I'd like to do that.

Of course, such a system would also have to be as non-intrusive as possible, to avoid breaking immersion itself.

My co-designer and I suspect that non-number-crunching "reminders to think about X" are a good way to facilitate immersion without breaking it.  #3 above is a possible system that would remind players to think about food, water and sleep.  We'd also like players to think about other things that facilitate immersion (list below), but haven't thought of system-based ways to reward this, instead using markers like character sheet layout.

Immersion-helper concerns (character-based):
- food
- encumbrance (based on how you carry it, not just total weight -- "The pick axe won't fit in your backpack")
- what languages you know
- clothing & footwear (& states thereof - wet, ripped, etc.)
- prior mundane occupation (& skills and knowledge therefrom)

Immersion-helper concerns (non-character-based):
- which activities must be played vs. which can be "fast forwarded" through; assumptions/rules for what happens during "fast forward"
- lighting conditions

5) What I'm looking to add to the current system pt2 (Dark Atmosphere help)

Is there some way to use system to reward/encourage players to "get" the feel I want?  How? 

My only idea thus far is a Sanity score which goes down after horrific encounters.  Use of this would have to walk a fine line between being purely descriptive ("I lost a Sanity point, who cares") and being too directly practical ("Damn, now I have a minus 1 to all Will rolls").  Decent solutions are possible (list of Sanity-loss effects for GM to choose from and customize?), but I'm open to ditching this and going in some other direction entirely (or using both if they wind up being compatible).

6) The purpose of this thread

My intent was to use this thread to address #4 and #5 above with metagame rewards, if possible.  In-game rewards are an easier fit for my game in many ways, but I wanted to solicit ideas from folks here who have more experience with and perspective on metagame rewards systems than myself, in the hope of opening my eyes to things I hadn't previously considered.

However, it is beginning to seem that the most useful way to explore rewards systems for my game is to discuss in-game and meta-game options at once.  I encourage people to think meta-game first, but as long as a good exchange continues, I'm comfortable allowing this thread to drift slightly from its initial focus and subject title.

Sydney wrote:
1) What of the various arguments, discussions, and proposals were done in-character, speaking "through" the fictional characters, and which were done out-of-character, the players speaking to each other and to you directly?

Sydney wrote:
2) What of the various positions advocated by various characters were actually what the player in question wanted, and which were just roleplaying flourishes? (I.e. Player X might really, really want to have a big fight scene, but because he likes playing noble paladins, he has his character argue vehemently for negotiations, in the sincere hope his character will lose the debate).

Sydney wrote:
3) How much of the detail - the astromer, the governor, the appointment-holder, etc. -- already "existed" (in your GM notes, or in your mind) before the session started, and how much of it did you invent on the spot in response to the characters' inquiries -- i.e. as a reward for players showing smarts, roleplaying skills, and knowledge of your world and how it works.

Sydney wrote:
4) How much did your players seem to be enjoying or interested by the hunting for information, weighing of alternatives, intriguing for appointments, etc., and how much of their attitude seemed to be "well, we've got to get this out of the way so our characters have the best chance of succeeding in the mission, which is the fun part"? In other words, did they consider this stuff their "homework" to get a reward later (e.g. exciting combat, mission success), or to be fun-in-itself and thus its own reward?

David wrote:
This is somewhat at the heart of the dynamic between me and my current group of players.  My co-designer and I have generally approached Lendrhald as, "People who are looking for what it offers will pick it up, play it, and hopefully get what's advertised.  People who are looking for other things will play other games." 

David wrote:
On the other hand, I think dealing with the secretary was no fun for anyone, the logistical planning was too open-ended and complex for most, and the cumulative delay in getting on with the mission made people feel like the game was slow.  The mission was not the only fun part, but it was definitely the focus.

David wrote:
5) What I'm looking to add to the current system pt2 (Dark Atmosphere help)
Is there some way to use system to reward/encourage players to "get" the feel I want?  How? 

I disagree with your proposed means of encouraging immersion in the character, the food etc.  Largely becuase these apply to all people in all places; what this reinforces is "I'm human" or similar at best, but it does nothing for THIS character in THIS world.  I think whatever prompts and reminders you have on the character sheet (and that is the right place for them) need to be rather more local and specific.  I like things that draw my attention top how others perceive my character, because after all I am dependant on them, via the GM, to provide suitable feedback.  Thus many of these concerns must be more public than private.  Having sufficient food is less interesting than having either peasants food or lords food.

colin wrote:
How are you advertising it, anyway?  What is your pitch for the game that's going to draw the people who are looking for what it offers? 

colin wrote:
So maybe, from a pragmatic level, this is what you want a reward system for.  The parts that maybe aren't that much fun in themselves, but you consider important to creating the kind of play that you're aiming for.

colin wrote:
You've said you considered the secretary's helpful suggestion to be "partially a reward for the players being invested in this course".  As a player, I doubt I would have seen it as such . . .

colin wrote:
Give them a mechanic by which they can "buy" a temporary advantage to help with a desperate situation, in exchange for a lasting scar -- either explicitly a physical deformity or a new psychological twitch.  "Your character can no longer stand to be touched by people," that kind of thing.

colin wrote:
You could either require narration of in-game events to rationally justify both, or you can say: "we're playing dark fantasy, and dark powers are always ready to offer you a supernatural bargain."

contracycle wrote:
I disagree with your proposed means of encouraging immersion in the character, the food etc.  Largely because these apply to all people in all places; what this reinforces is "I'm human" or similar at best, but it does nothing for THIS character in THIS world. 

contracycle wrote:
I think whatever prompts and reminders you have on the character sheet (and that is the right place for them) need to be rather more local and specific.  I like things that draw my attention to how others perceive my character, because after all I am dependant on them, via the GM, to provide suitable feedback.  Thus many of these concerns must be more public than private.  Having sufficient food is less interesting than having either peasants food or lords food.

David wrote: Your analysis of my "rewards" as I described them is spot on.  They weren't part of any system to incentivize player behaviors, they were just a GM helping out players whose play he liked, and doing so in an invisible fashion. My description was in response to a question from Sydney...

Sydney wrote:
"A GM helping out players that he liked" is a "system to incentivize player behaviors,"

Sydney wrote:
If the internal consistency of your world is critically important to you, and you want to encourage people playing your game to really get into the gritty details of that world . . . then you need to structure how your world works in some way, or else no one but you personally is ever going to be able to run the game properly.

Hello, Dave. Sorry to go blank on you for a week - and I'm not sure even now that I have anything brilliant to say.

What worries me is that a lot of the problems you're describing, and even some of the fixes, sound painfully familiar: the guy who wants to know what "the mission" is and feels lost because the GM won't hand it to him, people getting bored with in-character logistical planning, even your feeling compelled to shortcut the preliminaries by having two important NPCs in the same place so the players don't have to roleplay out their whole "this is why you should help us" speech twice. The fact that "the players enjoyed slipping uppers to drunks" is also a potential warning sign, actually: It seems contrary to the tone you're trying to set, a little bit of absurdist mischief, and when players take surprising glee in that kind of thing, it's often because they're frustrated and feel impotent and unable to affect the course of the game in more heroic ways. Likewise, your complaint that the players just want to kick ass and probably aren't suited for this kind of game may well be true, but it's the standard complaint of every GM who feels s/he's not getting through. To make everything harder for yourself, you're very, very committed to people only speaking in character, which whatever its benefits for immersion carries the cost of slowing everything down as players mentally "translate" what they want to say into in-game terms and struggle to find ways of expressing meta-game concerns (e.g. "I'm bored now") at all.

Plus, for a game in which your stated objective is to make the world feel real, the principal incentive-reward cycle you want to get going is for players to really, really care how your world "really works" so they can be more effective in it, and to make the GM's rewarding them for that "invisible" is self-defeating: You may avoid breaking immersion now, but you're missing a chance to encourage the players to get more invested and have more immersion later.

I'm not a big fan of immersion, so you and I are going to have different aesthetic and therefore design takes on this, but I worry that you're trying mainly to encourage immersion (what I'd prefer to think of, more broadly, as players being excited about and invested in your fictional world) by negative measures to discourage breaking immersion -- principally by not letting people talk out of character and by not revealing certain things about how the game works. Your positive measures to encourage being immersed in the first place  appear to be limited to reminding them of mundane details like bad boots, cold weather, and empty stomachs, which is great so far as it goes but hardly enough to get profound emotional commitment from your players. So, naturally, there's a fair amount of boredom, floundering, and "what do we do next, Dave?" "Well, I can't just tell you, but your characters could do [X, Y, Z]." "Uh, okay, we do X." "Okay, [mildly interesting stuff happens]." "Uh, now what?" "I can't just tell you, but..." Repeat ad infinitum.

You have to earn your players' interest first. They have to be immersed before you have to worry about breaking immersion. Right now, their interest is iffy and their immersion... well, I bet you there isn't immersion for most of them, most of the time. I'm afraid -- I don't know, but I suspect -- that you're in the position of a car designer working feverishly on anti-lock brakes, airbags, and an impact-resistant chassis without ever realizing that your engine has too few horsepower to move the car more than 5 mph. You gotta rev up that motor first.

Now, there are plenty of ways to spike player interest in a horror/adventure game without breaking immersion (although, as I said, I think you're sacrificing a lot of potential high-quality, highly invested immersion in the future for the sake of preserving low-quality, minimally invested immersion now). The time-honored one is to throw hideous freakin' monsters at the player-characters that want to eat their damn eyeballs -- unless, of course, your combat system is slow and clunky, in which case so long immersion again. Another, subtler method is the slow creep of unsettling details as your characters walk deeper and deeper in the woods/caves/ruined castle, leading to the eyeball-eaters in due course. Another, even tricker method is to do all your standard "talk to this official, work out these logistics" discussions, but to have the NPCs suddenly clam up when the players mention certain topics, or insist on certain measures being taken without offering any justification -- "Okay, well, the shortest route is along this road by the ruins of... " "No! Do not say that name!" "Uh, okay, but this road..." "No! We must take the other road!" "Uh, but it's twice as long and goes through enemy territory and is subject to frequent rockslides and..." "We must take that road! Do not speak of the other again!" "Okay, but what's wrong with the shorter road by the ruins?" "Oh, nothing. Really. More tea?"

But to do the logistical discussion step-by-step in character, or to do the whole speech to convince the NPC to help you without any dramatic condensation, is just a goddamn waste of everybody's time. That's not immersion. That's tedium. Talking in character doesn't mean you're immersed if you're thinking about what you ate last night, or whether you'll make it home in time for that cool TV show; talking out of character doesn't mean you're not immersed if fiber of your imagination is vividly intent on the fate of your fictional characters.

Sydney's logic sounds sensible to me, but with one major caveat: it depends on who's playing.  I'm not trying to turn Lendrhald into a game that'll satisfy everyone who likes any kind of dark, realistic fantasy; but rather, one that will best serve those who agree with me and my co-designer about a certain type of experience they'd like to have (see bulleted list below).

An Extreme Style of Play

My co-designer has conceived of Lendrhald not as a game that runs itself, nor as a game that the GM runs "for" the players, but rather as a game where the players decide what they want to experience, and then the game and GM allow them to have that experience in as real a way as possible (short of hallucinogens and time machines).

In a game that works that way, it generally benefits the characters to investigate what they encounter.  Knowing how a bureaucracy or monster works helps you decide on the most effective way to bribe or kill it.

It's not so much a matter of being immersed in "the world Dave made up, as Dave hopes you'd encounter it, focusing on Dave's favorite bits" -- it's more a matter of being immersed in the world your character confronts, what he sees, hears and feels, as a result of the choices he makes.  If the players choose to pursue my meta-plot secrets, that experience should be convincing and vivid; if they choose to just cut down trees and build log cabins, that experience should be convincing and vivid too.

The world includes plenty of "doing something dangerous for money" opportunities, and my co-designer's games have focused on these, pitting his players' wits against various physical obstacles and nasty monsters.  They've all gotten the point that their GM is not going to "rig" anything, so if they want to avoid death, they'd better pay attention and proceed with caution.  The GM has kept absolutely everything that is invisible to the characters equally invisible to the players (separate conversations, dice roll target numbers, etc.).  As there's been no incentive to think out of game, the players haven't much.  As for talking out of game, the players are all pretty much playing themselves, so there's no difference in in-game vs out-of-game discussion as long as it's about in-game concerns.

My co-designer has almost no interest in passing Lendrhald on to other GMs and players, so none of his stylistic choices have been turned into formal rules systems.

Is That A Game?

Perhaps what this style of play boils down to in terms of a "game package" is a handful of adventure modules and a list of "immersion do's and don't's" based on what my co-designer has found to be successful.  All our world design material would become a sort of "reference almanac to assist GM trouble-shooting".

As for my own part, as a player I'm a huge fan of some major parts of this style of play, particularly:

• I like being able to really "lose myself" in an imaginary experience
• I like learning about medieval societies (especially fictional ones, as long as they "work")
• I like problem-solving
• I like the drama of facing situations and monsters without any safety net (GM contrivance), with success or failure often hinging on luck (combat die rolls)
• I like the responsibility of deciding what course to pursue, helping "author" the subject of play rather than simply following the one lead

However, as a GM and designer, I'd like to have my cake and eat it too.  The friends I game with want more guidance, less problem-solving, and aren't that motivated by immersion for its own sake.  Others out there who might like a lot about my setting will currently find little to latch onto and get them stoked about playing.  So, if I can keep the game as effective as it currently is at satisfying some things I like, and at the same time make it more accessible to a wider variety of temperaments, I'd like to.

Perhaps that's simply impossible.  Most suggestions I've received to date involve some amount of "don't worry about visible contrivance, in small enough doses it's a worthy sacrifice to make for the sake of making the game more fun."  Which is clearly true for some players, possibly even most players.  But look at my list above of the qualities that make Lendrhald fun (and different than other games) for me, and see how vital a lack of visible contrivance is to all of them.

I think Sydney's points about grabbing player interest are extremely important, but the solutions that come to my mind are all informal social contract matters:

The players should find common ground on what interests them.  They should tell the GM, "When given options, the party will usually choose to pursue X kind of thing."  The GM should focus his prep work on various types of X.  And, of course, Everyone should decide whether or not Lendrhald is well-suited to what they want to play.  I think this has been the key ingredient missing from my game.

As a game designer, the best I can think to do on this front is to include with my game package "some tips for having a fun multi-player gaming experience", and a "what Lendrhald is/isn't suited for" disclaimer.

I'm still hoping that someone on the Forge will think of some systems that have potential to help me "have my cake and eat it too", and that further descriptions of my game will facilitate this.  However, I'm aware that I've greatly restricted the available options... I'm starting to lean toward creating the "module + suggestions + reference" package I described above, accepting that the audience for this is a niche within a niche within a niche, and then moving on to another project.

Dave, you'd be surprised at how much of what you consider "informal social contract matters" irreproducibly unique to a given group of people can be formalized, systematized, and replicated by other people who've never met the original creators. I'm paraphrasing Vincent Baker here, but the only thing a rulebook can actually do is provide tools to create a better social contract. Conversely, a lot of what is most toxic in badly designed games is not the mechanics at all, but insidious "GM advice" that amounts to "ignore the rules to make the results be what you expect, lie to your players to preserve the illusion of GM omniscience, punish the character of any player who defies your preconceptions, and never, ever allow honest dialogue among player about what they really like or dislike" -- and unfortunately "immersion" is used as a club in all too many of these bully-GM games.

Now, mechanics certainly matter, and even if you do decide to piggyback on an existing system -- an entirely honorable and sensible approach -- you need to make sure it at least doesn't get in the way, and at best facillitates your goals. But most important, you want to try to figure out how to distill the process you, your co-creator, and your various players have used to communicate expectations and desires about the game, guide prep, and aim play at those particular things you find fun.

Excellent examples are the playtest draft of Matt Wilson's Galactic and the playtest draft of Vincent Baker's Afraid, as well as Joshua Bishop-Roby's Full Light, Full Steam and, in a different vein, Michael Miller's With Great Power.... Earlier, less strongly structured examples are Wilson's Prime Time Adventures and Ron Edwards's seminal Sorcerer. And my personal favorite, Tony Lower-Basch's Capes, takes a radically different tack by largely (though not entirely) dispensing with collective prep at all and instead setting up a system of interlocking incentives to guide players to the desired story-structures through a kind of Adams Smith-ian "invisible hand." (Too late for me to hunt links, but all of these are heavily referenced right here on the Forge as well as Googleable).

If you can systematize whatever you're already doing, on the fly, to encourage and integrate your players' creativity into a workable creative consensus, you're golden -- and there are games already out there that prove this "mysterious GM art" can be analyzed and taught.

Sydney wrote:
Dave, you'd be surprised at how much of what you consider "informal social contract matters" irreproducibly unique to a given group of people can be formalized, systematized, and replicated by other people who've never met the original creators.

Sydney wrote:
I'm paraphrasing Vincent Baker here, but the only thing a rulebook can actually do is provide tools to create a better social contract.

Sydney wrote:
Conversely, a lot of what is most toxic in badly designed games is not the mechanics at all, but insidious "GM advice" that amounts to "ignore the rules to make the results be what you expect, lie to your players to preserve the illusion of GM omniscience, punish the character of any player who defies your preconceptions, and never, ever allow honest dialogue among player about what they really like or dislike" -- and unfortunately "immersion" is used as a club in all too many of these bully-GM games.

Sydney wrote:
you want to try to figure out how to distill the process you, your co-creator, and your various players have used to communicate expectations and desires about the game, guide prep, and aim play at those particular things you find fun.
. . .
If you can systematize whatever you're already doing, on the fly, to encourage and integrate your players' creativity into a workable creative consensus, you're golden

Hi David,

I've read the thread so far with great interest--thanks. In your first post you said:

The system needs to do a satisfactory job governing action outcomes within the gameworld, but beyond that, I don't see a need for additional rewards, direct to the players.

David wrote: Can't it also provide tools to create a worse social contract?

This is why, for certain issues, I recently started thinking in terms of suggestions / GM advice ("Fred, please say that in character, I think we'll all stay better immersed in the fiction") as opposed to rewards systems ("Fred, for speaking out of character, a tree falls on your character; everyone, please stay immersed and react in-game as if this were a total fluke occurrence.").

I have been pushing my co-designer to help me think in this direction for a little while now, but each time he describes his process (which has worked somewhat better than mine), important facets seem to flat-out defy being turned into system.

Me: How do the players know that there's no safety net?
Him: They've played with me before and lost characters.

Me: What do you do when the players can't seem to pick a path to pursue?
Him: If there are any pressing concerns (such as money for next meal and night's sleep), I remind them.  Otherwise, they just have to make a decision.

Me: How do you guess what they'll want to do and prep accordingly?
Him: I've played with these guys for years, I know they like dungeon-crawls with physics problems.

Me: What if they choose to pursue something you hadn't anticipated?
Him: In any city that I'm running in, I have a good enough common-sense feel for how things work that I can wing it if I have to.  I usually have some rough maps and some names of important NPCs.
Me: How did you develop this "common-sense feel"?
Him: Through the research I did into actual history in the process of creating the game.
Me: Can you help me develop such a feel by explaining stuff to me?
Him: That'd take me forever.  Spend a week in a library.
Me: Uh...  So, anyway, if the PCs leave The Interesting Store in town and declare, "We're going next door!" you don't already know what's there?  You can just come up with something appropriate on the spot?
Him: Occasionally.  Usually, though, if I expect them to go to a store, then I'd probably define what's on either side of it and across the street from it beforehand.  And, beyond that, I'd think about what general types of places it would make sense for there to be in that area.

charles wrote:
Do you actually think there's anything lacking in your game? Anything you're looking to do better?

Sydney wrote:
Generally, small, consistent, immediate incentives work a lot better than large, occasional, deferred incentives; and rewards work better than punishments

Sydney wrote:
consider a reward mechanic where every time a player says something really cool in character, the GM -- or any other player -- can slip that player an "applause" token. Nobody has to say anything -- it's like musicians in an orchestra wiggling their feet to applaud each others' solos when their hands are full of instruments -- just slide the token over and everyone knows, "hey, that guy did something cool." Make the flipside of the rule be "you can't get an applause token for something you say out of character, even if the whole table cracks up laughing."

Sydney wrote:
Once you've formalized these values, the tokens don't actually have to have any impact on the game mechanics. Sure, it'd be nice if you could trade them in for a re-roll or something, but because they're already a direct expression of social approval among the real people playing, it's not actually necessary for them to have any impact on the characters at all.

Sydney wrote:
Maybe at the end of a session, you see who has the biggest pile of applause tokens and name that player MVP for the night. Maybe you just point at the guy with the biggest pile and say, "Dude, you're cool.

Sydney wrote:
All die rolls in the open -- not as a matter of "GM advice," but as a matter of hard-wired rules: if you hide rolls, you're breaking the rules.

Sydney wrote:
Then make the death and injury system blatantly brutal, with no safety nets, rerolls, or fudge factors.

Sydney wrote:
Then make it very clear in the character-creation section that (a) your guy can die any time, so better pump up {whatever scores are relevant}

Sydney wrote:
(b) your guy may still die any time, so why don't you make up a backup character right now, and here are the rules for rapidly bringing your new guy into play.

Sydney wrote:
Make fatigue, hunger, exposure to the elements, etc. all into serious hardwired factors in the rules

Sydney wrote:
something like "okay, you guys are still talking? Well, I warned you: Now it's been another hour in the open, everyone take two points of frostbite damage -- yes, John, your heavy coat +1 soaks up one point of that, you only take one damage. Okay, now what do you guys want to do?"

Make it clear in the rules that if players just dither, the GM should not "pause time" indefinitely for them.

Sydney wrote:
Make a "pitch" discussion, as in Prime Time Adventures, a required stage of setting up a new game. Instead of a GM saying, "hey, let's play, I have this great idea but I'm not going to tell you," explicitly require every player to request something s/he wants to see in the upcoming game

Sydney wrote:
maybe even give them points to allocate among their interests, points which turn into the GM's "budget" to "buy" world elements from a menu.

Sydney wrote:
Do all this before the first character is even named, entirely outside the part of the game that is played immersed.

Sydney wrote:
Look at Vincent Baker's Dogs in the Vineyard (of which Afraid is a derivative, more advanced in some ways but not complete). He has a page listing the typical things you'd expect to find in a small town in his setting, another page on the typical things you'd expect to find in a large town, and a quick way to randomize up stats for whole batches of nameless NPCs . . . cultural values and expectations of the setting . . . an "adventure" generator . . . a set of building blocks -- designed very carefully to fit together -- from which GMs can assemble appropriate bits of setting in quick pre-game prep and in-game on the fly . . . "build whatever you want, all these pieces go together and suggest certain themes on which you can play infinite variations."

The central issue with Vincent Baker's "Town Creation" rules is that they're not just roll-on tables to give you disconnected elements: They're an interlocking that generates dynamically unstable situations -- situations that cannot stay still, that have to resolve somehow, and into which the player-characters -- who are dynamically unstable themselves, right? -- are thrown, because all PCs in the setting are defined as being part of a certain order of vigilante gunslinger-exorcists.

Now, I know you want a game where  "they choose to just cut down trees and build log cabins [and] that experience should be convincing and vivid too" -- but why? I mean, would you want to play that game? I'd be bored.

So you want character creation that creates characters who are driven to get entangled in horrific situations -- either it's their job, as in Baker's Dogs, or they've had some traumatic personal experience they want to get to the bottom of, as in Stolze & Tynes's Unknown Armies (cited earlier) or, I understand, Conspiracy of Shadows, or they live in a place that keeps on gettin' frickin' attacked, or ideally some combination of all three.

Then you want situation creation: in other words, you want a system for designing adventures that is every bit as tight, formalized, and step-by-step as traditional character generation. That's an area where most traditional RPGs, frankly, fall flat: "Oh, here's 10 pages of fiction and 30 pages of bizarre place names, NPCs, and backstory, you pick something, you're the freakin' GM."

And you want your dynamically unstable characters to snap tightly into the dynamically unstable situation. If your characters all have backstories like "the cruel nobles of my native province stole my father's land, ravished my sister, and drove me into exile," you give them demon-possessed nobles who oppression will destroy the realm if they are not stopped, not two peasant farmwives cursing each others' cattle. If your characters all have backstories like "I came from a small, isolated village where the ever-present menace of the dark forest slowly drove my mother mad, causing her to poison my father and sisters," then you don't give them the nobles, you give them the hex-casting farmwives, whose escalating feud will drag the whole village down into madness, crop failure, and cannibalism if they're not stopped.

Sure, your player-characters presumably wander through various villages where there's nothing wrong, and feudal domains where the lords are just and kind. Fast-forward through that. Real-life cops and doctors go weeks at a time without seeing a dead body, but TV shows about cops and doctors -- very realistic shows included -- focus on the days when somebody does risk death.

On a separate note, you'd be surprised how powerfully explicit guidance about what behaviors are good or bad can affect players, even if there's no game-mechanical bonus (e.g. "applause tokens" you can't trade in for anything). Every functional individual enjoys a wide range of different things and learns to do only a few of them at any given time in a particular activity: The same person can go to his kid's music rehearsal and clap politely, then go to the football game the next day and hoot and holler, then go to the Rocky Horror Picture Show and yell jokes and throw things at the screen, then go to a regular movie and angrily hush anyone who even asks him what's going on. There's a set of social expectations in each case -- and those aren't even written. If you write down, "these are the behaviors that are appropriate and desirable for this game," sure, some people will not play it, and that's good, because they wouldn't like it; other people will like it and will be well served by the guidance on the appropriate subset of their wide range of behaviors to display.

Sydney wrote:
The central issue with Vincent Baker's "Town Creation" rules is that they're not just roll-on tables to give you disconnected elements: They're an interlocking that generates dynamically unstable situations

Sydney wrote:
you want a system for designing adventures that is every bit as tight, formalized, and step-by-step as traditional character generation.

Sydney wrote:
Now, I know you want a game where  "they choose to just cut down trees and build log cabins [and] that experience should be convincing and vivid too" -- but why? I mean, would you want to play that game? I'd be bored.

Sydney wrote:
So you want character creation that creates characters who are driven to get entangled in horrific situations -- either it's their job, as in Baker's Dogs, or they've had some traumatic personal experience . . . or they live in a place that keeps on gettin' frickin' attacked

Sydney wrote:
And you want your dynamically unstable characters to snap tightly into the dynamically unstable situation.

Sydney wrote:
Sure, your player-characters presumably wander through various villages where there's nothing wrong, and feudal domains where the lords are just and kind. Fast-forward through that. Real-life cops and doctors go weeks at a time without seeing a dead body, but TV shows about cops and doctors -- very realistic shows included -- focus on the days when somebody does risk death.

Sydney wrote:
If you write down, "these are the behaviors that are appropriate and desirable for this game," sure, some people will not play it, and that's good, because they wouldn't like it; other people will like it and will be well served by the guidance on the appropriate subset of their wide range of behaviors to display.

I'm not as disposed to worry about "visible contrivance," but even so, I think the examples you raise are workable. Of course the PC's evil, powerful father is going to send goons after him!

Likewise, I think "the players are all members of the town guard or other important local figures" is totally workable as a long-term campaign: Your model there isn't Star Trek or The Incredible Hullk, where the protagonists wander around from adventure to adventure, but Deep Space Nine, Babylon Five, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where the protagonists stay put in a locale that holds some resource that all sorts of bad guys keep on trying to take over. You lose breadth of coverage across your setting, but you gain tremendous depth as the same NPCs and locales show up over and over -- allowing the players to build tremendous emotional attachment to the things you keep putting under threat.

As for hiding die rolls and so on - eh. I had a GM I very much admired who did that, in D&D; I've also found it profoundly powerful in other games to see the actual numbers line up, so you can see the cold reality of how screwed you are in a way that's hard to imagine from pure description ("It has a Toughness of 5?!" in your hypothetical example.) I'm generally in favor of putting the system in full view of the players -- but that puts a big burden on the designer to keep it simple, streamlined, and elegant. "Roll initiative, roll to hit, roll hit location, roll damage, deduct armor/toughness, determine shock etc." just does not cut it, in my opinion: You can pack almost as much detail into a lot fewer steps if you're disciplined about what's important to simulate for your purposes and what's just habits picked up from other games.

Likewise, I think giving players 100 points of Energy that you take away a few at a time is a lot of number crunching for relatively little gut-wrenching impact. The very first RPG I ever designed was utter unplayable crap, but one thing I particularly liked was that the number of dice you rolled depended on how well-rested and well-fed you were: In peak condition you got three dice, but one sleepless night or day without food took you down to two, and utter exhaustion dropped you to one. If you want your world to be scary, you can't whittle away at your players 1% at a time: They've got to realize even one screw-up is gonna HURT.

Hi David,

In my view, rewarding your players isn't about having to do things that blatantly disregard the internal consistency of your game-world. It's about deciding why players would want to play Lendlhald as opposed to some other RPG or something else entirely, and then providing concrete mechanics that gratify that.

From my reading of your examples, you consider techniques like deep immersion and in-character-only to be pivotal to your player's enjoyment of Lendhald, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence that this is what actually jazzes your players the most. As Ron pointed out, in fact the opposite could well be true. (He's had a lot of experience at this, and he's good at it. You don't need to agree with him, but my advice is that if he makes a comment like that, it's worth your while to take a rigorous second look, and possibly a third and a fourth.)

To me, the fact that your players need to be frequently reminded (admonished?) to stay in-character suggests that this also may not be an essential fun-bringing element to them (although it obviously is to you).

I'm not telling you what you should or shouldn't include in Lendlhald. That's your right, and your alone.
What I'm saying is that good design (of any kind) requires that every element in it powerfully serves the whole. Every assumption must be questioned. Everything you include has to be justifed, not to me or the list moderators or anyone else, but to yourself.

"What's my aim with this design element? How well does it succeed? How does that aim further my overall design goal? What's the cost of including this element? (there's always a cost). Does this cost outweigh the benefit?"

Mark Twain said "It is the duty of every writer to search tirelessly for the most brilliant passages in everything they write, and then delete them." He's talking about the seduction of keeping things in your work solely because they please you as a writer, even though they detract from the power of your work as a whole. My own experience has shown me that the more deeply I cherish an assumption or game mechanic, the more rigorously I need to challenge it. Then, whether I keep it or discard it, my design is stronger for it.

Conspiracy Of Shadows (for example) is a game that's all about horror and atmosphere. It uses player rewards, overt metagame mechanisms, is very big on player contributions to plot and setting, and (so far as I know) has no particular emphasis on in-character-at-all-times. Despite this, there are players (& reveiwers) who think its a blast to play and accomplishes its aims admirably.

So it's certainly not the case that these things aren't suited to horror or that they must destroy suspense.

It might sound like I'm telling you not to use deep immersion or in-character-only techniques. I'm not. I'm saying that you don't need to use them, so if you do, you should do it as an informed design choice backed up by analysis and observation, not because they're an unexamined assumption about how thing have to be.

Good luck with Lendlhald,

charles

Charles-

How do my "deep immersion" and "no metagaming" emphases make Lendrhald more fun to play?  Well, for some players (including my current group), they don't.  But for the players the game is designed for (including myself and my co-creator), they're a big part of the basic appeal.  Really, they're kind of the point.

The immersion emphasis is not present just to make a horror/suspense/potent atmosphere game more fun, it's present because I think it is fun to be able to thoroughly lose myself in an utterly believable imaginary world.  All I need beyond that is for the world to be populated with people, places, things and events that I find interesting.  My version of "interesting" includes creepy monsters, complicated politics, familiar-but-unfamiliar lifestyles, and magical features of the environment (plus certain dark and horrific themes); thus, I have made it so.

If you'd like to discuss why I feel immersion is a good thing in itself, feel free to PM me.

-David

David wrote:
But for the players the game is designed for (including myself and my co-creator), they're a big part of the basic appeal.  Really, they're kind of the point.

David wrote: I think it is fun to be able to thoroughly lose myself in an utterly believable imaginary world.

A recent discussion with Charles leads me to believe it might help for me to clarify the following priorities:

Lendrhald is designed for players with the following disposition:

What kind of style and experience do I want?
Deeply immersed.

What kind of environment would be fun to be deeply immersed in?
A combination of medieval human culture and Lovecraftian horror.

What kind of things would be fun to do in this style and setting?
Getting involved with the dynamic human powers in the culture, crawling into the woods and down dark holes to seek out horror.  But if at a given time I feel like doing something else entirely, I want the freedom to choose.

As for system design, I think the priorities are sort of in that order:
1) System that facilitates immersion is good. 
2) System that facilitates horror (and involvement with human culture) is also good, as long as it doesn't break immersion.
3) System that makes it more fun to run dungeon-crawl missions (and to do politicking) is also good, as long as it doesn't break immersion, ruin horror, or make human society boring or lame.

In his last post, Ron suggested I focus on the strategic element.  I interpret his position as, more or less, "The strategy mission is what the players are doing, therefore that's what's important, and that's what you should design around and provide system for.  Your immersive horror game does not exist." 

That position, in my eyes, makes an inappropriate assumption of what Lendrhald players are at the table for.  The characters' sole objective may be to complete the mission, but the players' objectives might well be 1) to stay immersed, 2) to interact in interesting ways with the fictional environment, 3) to complete the mission -- in that order.  I know that, as a player, I take a lot less satisfaction in completing an in-game objective if I render that accomplishment "just a game" instead of really experiencing it intensely via deeply immersed play.  I'd rather achieve a vivid and striking failure than a numbers/metagaming-based success. 

(Re: the playtest Ron was responding to, those players' first priority is completing the mission.  I've torn them away from D&D, which they liked, and tried to get them to enjoy gaming the way I do (so our social contract is flimsier than any game's should be).  They are not my target audience for Lendrhald design.  Next playtest, I'll find some like-minded strangers instead of bullying my buddies.)

If immersion, horror, and dungeon-crawls all pull against each other and require incompatible system tools for optimization, and at the end of the day I wind up with a game that is very good for immersing yourself but not particularly enabling of strategy missions, then I'll certainly take that over the reverse.  I'm still hoping, though, that I can have my cake and eat it too.

Applying my hierarchy to Sydney's discussion of the various creative agendas:

1) First and foremost, Lendrhald is not Simulationist, Narrativist, or Gamist.  It is Immersionist.
2) Within being Immersionist, it has some Simulationist leanings.
3) Within being Immersionist and Simulationist, it has opportunities for Narrativist activities or Gamist activities.

For what it's worth, my co-designer has succeeded in running a game in which:
1) most of the players very much enjoyed interacting with a certain city, its people, and how it worked, and being a part of that culture (Sim)
2) many of the players enjoyed using the environment to test out thoughts and values (Nar)
3) all of the players enjoyed crawling into holes and killing shit for money (Gam)

In our view, the one common factor that contributed to all of these was the presence of a consistent world and the facilitation of immersion within it (Imm).

So, if this sounds like an incoherent design, then maybe it is indeed poorly suited for publication, but it's not unplayable.

If anyone with more design experience than myself sees that I'm attempting to do something impossible, or thinking about it in a counter-productive way, please feel free to tell me so (and why) before I spend a hundred more hours pursuing a confounding design.

Sydney wrote:
I'd recommend that it's time for you to step back from the specifics of Lendrhald now, immerse yourself (pun unintended) in the general theory, and come back to your game from a new angle when you're ready.

I'll offer one comment on the nature of Immersion and your desire for it.  I have no intention of turning this into a debate on immersion and offer this only in the vein of "food for thought"

There are certain elements that you enjoy when you play immersively -- emotional, psychological, whatever label we want to call them.  These elements, these responses, these feelings you get when you play are a big source (perhaps the main source) of your enjoyment in playing...at least on certain occassions when you're in an "immersive mood".

The thought I want to leave you with is that its possible to get the same elements, the same responses, the same feelings from sources OTHER than whats traditionally acknowledged as "immersive" play.  Immersive play may be the technique you use most often to reach that state of enjoyment but I'd like you to consider that you can reach the same state of enjoyment using non traditionally immersive techniques as well.

I'm specifically here NOT talking about a DIFFERENT kind of enjoyment...as in "yeah there are many ways to enjoy play and I might enjoy those other ways too form time to time, but here I'm specifically interested in enjoying immersive play".  Rather I'm talking about play that gives you essentially the same enjoyment...virtually indistinguishable...from the rush you get in immersive play...even though it might use other techniques instead of, or in addition to what you currently think of as immersion to get you there.

At first those other techniques might take you out of your familiarity zone and so disrupt your enjoyment, but I suggest that it is the lack of familiarity that causes the disruption...not the lack of immersion that did so.  Often times when we seek an immersive experience and some new mechanic (like "too much dice rolling") disrupts our play we build the chain of consequences thusly: "too much dice rolling broke my immersion and because I enjoy immersion it made play less enjoyable, therefor I don't like games with lots of dice rolls".  I believe the ACTUAL chain of consequences is: "I'm not used to that much dice rolling, and the lack of familiarity broke my immersion, and because I enjoy immersion made play less enjoyable, but over time I can get comfortable with games with lots of dice rolls and it won't bother me any more".  I firmly and vigorously believe that in most every conversation where Immersion comes up people spend lots of time making statements like the first one...when the truth is almost always closer to the second one.

The key there is that its possible to become familiar enough with these other techniques that they DON'T break your immersion and thus you can get the exact same fully immersed experience EVEN WHEN using techniques that typically are not associated with immersion (or actually are thought of as being anti-immersive).

As an example consider two groups of immersion dedicated players.  One group meets in a darkened and quiet basement room where the mood and ambiance make sliding into immersion easy for them.  The other group happens to meet in an apartment located above a commuter train line where the whole apartment shakes and rattles every 20 minutes with the passing of a train.  A member of group one goes to play with group two and concludes "all that train noise breaks immersion and keeps me from enjoying the game".  On the other hand, the members of group two, who have long become familiar with the train, experience no problem immersing whatesoever.  Clearly its not the noise that's breaking immersion, but just the relative lack of adaption to it.

My point is that ALL game mechanics are identical to this.  You can take the single most abstract, high player contact, meta gamey mechanic immaginable...and its just like that train.  With enough practice and familiarity, you can use that "immersion breaking" mechanic all day everyday without ever having the enjoyment you get from the immersion suffer.  INITIALLY when you aren't familiar with it...it will seem horrible.  But I feel very strongly that there is no such thing as a immersion breaking mechanic.  Only mechanics that have not traditionally been used by immersive players in conjunction with immersive play and are thus immersion breaking, not due to any intrinsic quality, but merely due to lack of familiarity.

The reason I bring this up at all in this thread is just to caution you to not automatically discard a mechanic possibility (and Sydney's offered several) solely because it sounds like an immersion breaking mechanic...because quite often you'd be very surprised at the type of mechanics you can become comfortable with and still enjoy being immersed.

Setting aside Ralph's train for a moment (and I get his point, I just think it's a bit of a tangent here):

David wrote: 1) First and foremost, Lendrhald is not Simulationist, Narrativist, or Gamist.  It is Immersionist.

Wait, I lied, one last post: look at Ron Edwards's painstaking discussion of these very same issues with Levi Kornelson over in this thread, happening right now. (But don't post in it! It's just them).

Sydney wrote:

David wrote: 1) First and foremost, Lendrhald is not Simulationist, Narrativist, or Gamist.  It is Immersionist.

David, that's why you've got to go read those essays . . . the combined intellectual energy of the Forge community, despite much debate over alternatives, has repeatedly returned to the "Big Model" as the only design tool that actually works

Sydney wrote:
"Immersion" operates at a different level of the model altogether than the three "creative agendas": It's what Ron calls a "technique," a particular method of interacting around the table

Sydney wrote:
above all else, because you like to "thoroughly lose [your]self in an utterly believable imaginary world." That's the ends; immersion is just the means to that end, albeit one you find very effective and enjoyable.

Ralph, are you talking about the difference between:
1) techniques I'm used to using to facilitate immersion vs techniques I'm not used to, but could facilitate immersion (or at least not hurt it) if I gave them a chance
or
2) getting the elements/feelings/responses I desire from immersion vs getting the elements/feelings/responses I desire from something other than immersion
or both?

I think it's #1, but I want to be sure.

Valamir wrote:
I feel very strongly that there is no such thing as a immersion breaking mechanic.

Valamir wrote:
The key there is that its possible to become familiar enough with these other techniques that they DON'T break your immersion and thus you can get the exact same fully immersed experience EVEN WHEN using techniques that typically are not associated with immersion (or actually are thought of as being anti-immersive).

Valamir wrote:
The reason I bring this up at all in this thread is just to caution you to not automatically discard a mechanic possibility (and Sydney's offered several) solely because it sounds like an immersion breaking mechanic...because quite often you'd be very surprised at the type of mechanics you can become comfortable with and still enjoy being immersed.

David wrote:

I think it's #1, but I want to be sure.

There may not be any such thing as a mechanic that breaks immersion in every conceivable context.  But within a specific context, I can think of tons of mechanics that break immersion (beyond any ability I ever expect to have to will it otherwise).  Say you're playing in a world where wizards are poor and gold is scarce and every wizard has identical abilities.  This is the world, this is how it works, this has defined your immersed experience of what it's like to be there.  Your character, a typical wizard, decides to try cloning a gold coin.  The rulebook says it takes two seconds and works perfectly, with the clone indistinguishable from the original.  Boom, immersion broken.  (Or maybe the break waits a little bit until you start telling other wizards the path to easy wealth and they give all sorts of hideously stupid reasons why they've never done it before.)

I assume the motivation to bother doing this is because these techniques give you something else that you want (I'm not inclined to play over train tracks rather than in a darkened and quiet basement room just because it's possible).  Let's say they help you provide cool monsters.  So, what's the difference between saying, "Learn to remain immersed, and enjoy the easily-made monster" and saying, "Learn to make up cool monsters, and enjoy the easily-maintained immersion"?  Do you think the former is a better design strategy than the latter, despite the high priority I've placed on immersion?

I appreciate the word of caution.  Actually, I'm very much with you in spirit, in terms of wanting to be open to new possibilities.  Let me also say that I haven't been discarding certain system ideas just because they've sounded vaguely immersion-unfriendly, but because they've resembled actual mechanics I've found to be immersion-breakers for me in the past.

Valamir wrote:
I think there's a bit of terminology difference here.  I wouldn't consider your example to be a mechanic per se.  Rather its just a setting inconsistancy...

Valamir wrote:
The sort of "mechanics don't inherently break immersion" thing I was referring to was the actual physical actions that the players do...

Valamir wrote:
I'm not sure I follow your example
. . .
there are many other ways of reaching out and getting the player engaged directly...

Valamir wrote:
The mechanics you've found immersion breakers in the past, was that as the result of a couple of play sessions...like the player from the basement who found the rumbling train to be an immersion breaker?

David wrote:
So, do I use Alpha or not?

I can see two arguments in favor of Alpha:
1) you can learn how to immerse (to whatever degree you're aiming for) despite metagaming, but you can't learn how to engage (to whatever degree you're aiming for) without Alpha or something like it
2) player engagement is more important than immersion

I definitely don't buy the first.  As for the second, I'm not sure, but I would guess this determination is specific to the game in question.  If, for my game, I decide that facilitating player immersion is more of a priority than facilitating player engagement, doesn't it make sense to kick Alpha to the curb?

Wow, well said.  That really makes me think about the spectrum covering the extent to which a game can be involved in player enjoyment. 

On the one end, I see a sort of "emergent fun", in which the players supplement whatever the game gives them with various tools/techniques of their own, and these latter do most of the real work.  I've run a few games with no official systems whatsoever, and the guy I ran them for loved it. 

On the other end, I see a sort of "micromanaged fun", in which the game plays a persistent role in ensuring that players find their enjoyment actively enabled and assisted.  I've never played a successful version of this type of game (usually I've been better at coming up with tools and techniques to enhance my enjoyment than the game designer has), and perhaps once I've played more "Forge games" I will shift some of the priorities and emphases I've held to date.

Of course, this may or may not effect Lendrhald, which is explicitly an attempt to do a good job of enabling a style of play that I already know I like.

I will definitely re-read this post and think more on it.  For now, a few more questions:

Valamir wrote:
So, if we are in agreement that "player engagement" as I've described above is the ultimate measure of successful vs. non successful play then it follows that any set of game techniques can be evaluated by how reliably they produce such a level of engagement.

Valamir wrote:
it stands to reason that the more techniques you've mastered as a player, the better able you are to find the right combination of techniques for any particular moment of play.
. . .
If your players encountered mechanic alpha in a game would they know how to use it . . . ?

Valamir wrote:
So the question then becomes is it honestly the IMMERSIVE experience you desire?  Or is it that particular subset of techniques that you're wedded to?

Valamir wrote:
I actually rather abhor that subset of traditional "immersive supporting" techniques I mention above...which I think are actually an anchor and active obstacle to generating reliable player engagement.

David wrote:
On the one end, I see a sort of "emergent fun", in which the players supplement whatever the game gives them with various tools/techniques of their own, and these latter do most of the real work.  I've run a few games with no official systems whatsoever, and the guy I ran them for loved it. 

On the other end, I see a sort of "micromanaged fun", in which the game plays a persistent role in ensuring that players find their enjoyment actively enabled and assisted.  I've never played a successful version of this type of game (usually I've been better at coming up with tools and techniques to enhance my enjoyment than the game designer has), and perhaps once I've played more "Forge games" I will shift some of the priorities and emphases I've held to date.

Lendrhald is for players who (like me) find themselves most engaged when they can have a certain combination of:
- faith that the gameworld will always make sense and appear to exist in its own right
- control over the actions and choices of their characters
- various in-gameworld options of what to do, such that on any given day, or in any given mood, there's a very high chance that one will look appealing
- a vague sense that the gameworld and in-game experience have some non-random aesthetic

- the absolute minimum distractions from immersed experience

I'm sorry if I sound like I'm repeating myself, but in this context I just wanted to emphasize that, for me, immersion is close to equal to engagement.  If I can succeed in being thoroughly immersed in a world like Lendrhald, the chance that I'll be engaged in play is very high.

I don't have much sense of what's traditional or non-traditional in immersion-focused games, as most of the immersion-focused games I've played have been built by me or a friend.  Would you mind telling me exactly which techniques you abhor?  (And also maybe how they're obstacles to player engagement?)

Valamir wrote:
the rules that are there are far more interested in articulating a standard process for dealing with the "stuff"...the true system of the game...and less interested in defining many of the things that traditional rules concern themselves with.  So its not so much "micromanaged fun" as it is a question of clearly laying out 1) who can say what and when, and 2) where the various spheres of responsibility lie. 

Valamir wrote:
When I say "where the various spheres of responsibility lie" I mean articulating the crucial activities that often go unarticulated and dividing responsibility up for those activities in any variety of ways designed to best meet the goals of a particular game

Valamir wrote:
The catch is...what is there to ensure that you're all engaged about the same thing at the same time? 

That's where the whole "band analogy" comes in that you'll see frequently bandied about here.  You can't have three musicians totally engrossed in their own play and totally not interested in the play of their band mates and have it be successful. 

Valamir wrote:
I, however, argue that 1) NOT paying attention and being excited about what you (as a fellow player) are doing and are excited about means you don't have player engagement happening

Valamir wrote:
and 2) that BEING excited about what you are doing and are excited about does NOT have to break immersion.

Valamir wrote:
Well, its not quite as simple as having a laundry list of "bad" techniques

Valamir wrote:
1) successful play requires player engagement

Valamir wrote:
2) player engagement requires players to be truly interested in, excited about, and focused on what the other human beings at the table are doing

Valamir wrote:
as well as what you yourself are doing.

Valamir wrote:
3) this then, by definition, requires a certain level of meta game awareness, communication, and understanding.  I can't tell what you as a person are feeling/enjoying if I'm completely focused in seeing only your character and only through the eyes of my character.  I can't communicate to you what I'm feeling/enjoying if I'm totally focused within my own character.

Valamir wrote:
4) I do not then have the luxury of sinking so deep into my character and focusing so intently on what my character sees and knows that I lose sight of you as a person at the table (or lose sight of me as a person at the table, for that matter).

Valamir wrote:
Ok, given those, it can be seen that a balance must be struck between sufficient "in character" techniques that allow us to experience the thrill of "being there", and sufficient "out of character" techniques that allow us to keep one eye on the real humans at the table...techniques I've called periodically "coming up for air".

Valamir wrote:
Techniques that insist on "all immersion all the time" can significantly impede or even completely block intra person communication, causing the missing of cues, and body language, and leading to the breakdown of player engagement.

Valamir wrote:
So my "crusade" if you will, is to point out that there can exist a balance where we can have it both ways.  That the meta doesn't automatically negate the immersion.  In fact, its been my experience that a well structured degree of meta can actually ENHANCE the immersion...by providing simple and reliable ways of moving the story from interesting immersion situation to interesting immersion situation and avoiding the flow breaking floundering that often accompanies waiting for something to happen.

Ideas for dividing up game responsibilities:

I'd certainly like it if the players kept track of everything pertinent to their characters -- what they've learned in-game, things their characters "would know" that the GM's already told them, what they're carrying, who's carrying what, how much money most essentials tend to cost -- and left the GM out of that entirely.  My attempts to make this happen haven't been very successful thus far, and maybe an "official" system, plus some convenient tools (columns on character sheets?) would help.

Players should also be 100% responsible for determining what their characters do.  No telling the GM "here's what I want to accomplish" and the GM saying, "here's what your character does to accomplish that."  (On the other hand, telling the GM "here's what I want to accomplish, would my character know anything about how best to do that beyond what I know?" and the GM saying, "Darvtok probably has a sense that..." is totally cool.)

The responsibility for putting stuff in the world that the players will enjoy interacting with has already been discussed in this thread.  I'm all for having the players involved in this to the extent that it doesn't hinder their ability to immerse themselves in the gameworld too much.  The frontrunning idea right now is for players to tell the GM the kinds of things they'd like to encounter, and the GM to make those happen a session or two later, in such a fashion that it (a) doesn't feel like a response to a request, and (b) could plausibly have happened independent of the players.  I have no system to formalize this yet.

As the determiner of "what's in the world and how it works", the GM should probably also be in charge of determining how the game rules that arbitrate in-game outcomes apply to a given situation.  The GM says, "Based on the slope and texture of the cliff, this is both a Climb skill check and a Strength attribute check," and the GM says, "Here's how thoroughly the "relatively good" result of your rolls allows you to succeed at what you attempted."

In terms of achieving consensus on physical space and positioning, my first thought is:
1) GM describes dimensions and contents of a given space
2) players describe where they want their characters to be, and how fast they wish to move
3) GM charts the whole thing on graph paper, adjusts the characters' positions each round, and after each change of position clarifies the character's situation (3 feet from X, 20 feet from Y, etc.) -- description is preferable to showing the graph paper

Hey David, I think we're definitely on the same page here.  I don't have anything really substantial to say further, and I'm heading to GenCon soon.

On your question of how much is shared Creative Agenda and how much is enabled by system, I'll say that alot CAN BE enabled by system and what isn't winds up getting left to the vagaries of social contract.  I think you'll have to experience a few Forge Games in action to see the potential of system in that direction.  Even if those games go farther afield than you're currently planning to, you'll see more of what I'm trying to say than what I could possibly explain in words.

And yes, absolutely, a few instances of people doing their own thing is in no way a game breaker.  Paying 100% attention, 100% of the time, to 100% of what's going on I doubt is even humanly possibly and probably isn't really desireable if it was.  Sounds like you have a handle on what I was getting at there.  And yes to your "as much as possible" comments as well.

I mention "interference" here only because the following remains a cause of concern:
(a) attempt to get player 1 interested in the play of player 2 -> (b) relatively hindering immersion for player 1 -> (c) player 1 losing some degree of interest in his own play

I love that phrase.  To me, it evokes a burst of totally immersed play coming to a tidy stopping point, and then everyone at the table relaxing their expressions, sipping their drinks, and going, "Niiiiice."

David wrote:
Ideas for dividing up game responsibilities:
I'd certainly like it if the players kept track of everything pertinent to their characters -- what they've learned in-game, things their characters "would know" that the GM's already told them, what they're carrying, who's carrying what, how much money most essentials tend to cost -- and left the GM out of that entirely.  My attempts to make this happen haven't been very successful thus far, and maybe an "official" system, plus some convenient tools (columns on character sheets?) would help.

Players should also be 100% responsible for determining what their characters do.  No telling the GM "here's what I want to accomplish" and the GM saying, "here's what your character does to accomplish that."  (On the other hand, telling the GM "here's what I want to accomplish, would my character know anything about how best to do that beyond what I know?" and the GM saying, "Darvtok probably has a sense that..." is totally cool.)

As the determiner of "what's in the world and how it works", the GM should probably also be in charge of determining how the game rules that arbitrate in-game outcomes apply to a given situation.  The GM says, "Based on the slope and texture of the cliff, this is both a Climb skill check and a Strength attribute check," and the GM says, "Here's how thoroughly the "relatively good" result of your rolls allows you to succeed at what you attempted."

In terms of achieving consensus on physical space and positioning, my first thought is:
1) GM describes dimensions and contents of a given space
2) players describe where they want their characters to be, and how fast they wish to move
3) GM charts the whole thing on graph paper, adjusts the characters' positions each round, and after each change of position clarifies the character's situation (3 feet from X, 20 feet from Y, etc.) -- description is preferable to showing the graph paper

Ralph-

It seems like we've reached a logical stopping point for this particular dialogue.  Thanks for being patient with all my questions and only-sorta-relevant thought experiments.  Beyond whatever might have been accomplished, I enjoyed the exchange.  Some quick takes on the contents of your last post:

Valamir wrote:
alot CAN BE enabled by system and what isn't winds up getting left to the vagaries of social contract.  I think you'll have to experience a few Forge Games in action to see the potential of system in that direction.

Valamir wrote:
Do a search on IIEE and you'll find lots of discussion on this issue.  "players are responsible for what their characters do" is just the start.

Valamir wrote:
do a search on Flags . . . for some mechanics that attempt to accomplish that.

Valamir wrote:
You also might want to check out the Terrain mechanics in Riddle of Steel.

Valamir wrote:
you might have a game that has hard and fast scene definitions.  Within the scenes its immersive time . . . Between scenes however, the "come up for air" part hits and Metagame mechanics do get used.

Valamir wrote:
Sometimes its as simple as articulating the areas of responsibility clearly so everyone is on the same page as to expectations. 

Valamir wrote:
the designer can try to find ways to make the shopping and inventory less boring.
. . .
One way would be to make inventory a question of a successful roll rather than a list of items. 
. . .
Another method was . . . [y]ou have a "kit" based on social status which essentially lists what kind of gear your character would have on him as a matter of course.  All you had to record was "Kit #5"

Valamir wrote:
how much do the players know before they roll?  Are they told the modifiers and then can decide to roll or not?  Do they committ to the attempt only on the basis of the GM's description and aren't told the specifics of the roll until after?  Is the roll out in the open or in secret?  All that stuff gives a very different flavor to the game, yet you'll find few traditional texts that specify one way or another.