This would be my first post on Forge then, which is why I am still a bit unsure about whether this is the right place to post this.

Anyway, my name is Osmo Rantala. I have been doing some game designs of my own, for tabletop rpgs and board games, but they have mostly sucked, or there has already been a game out there that does the same thing, but better. Now I have a game mechanic in mind that I think would work, but that is not what this post is about (I'll post about it on a different time).

After all the babble I think I should just go ahead and ask what I came here to ask today:

I know of Emily Care Boss's (hope I got the name right) games Breaking the Ice and Shooting the Moon, which are, as far as I know, romantic games. Although I don't know more than that about them (which is a pity, I think), I thought I should ask about your experiences when it comes down to "emotional stuff", love and romance being just one axis on that topic, in games. What games have incorporated mechanics related (closely) to emotions, love, friendship, caring and all that and how has it worked out?

I think that this kind of, well, stuff gets overlooked all too often. Or maeby I just hang in the wrong circles. Whatever the case, I thank you in advance for reading this far and for your possible reply.

I can not really give any good answer to you question, but since there is no one else who have responded to this, I will try to give just some feedback.

I have played in a few games where strong emotions like love and friendship have been very important, but it have not been with systems which have directly supported this. I agree that there should be more games which support these themes, and make these kind of emotions important for the game. I do have some ideas for how this could be done, but I do not think they will be very helpful for you out of context, and they are not well developed yet. So before I can give any help I need you to explain something about the game you want to make and how this emotional stuff is important to the game. It is always easier to give feedback when there are some context.

- Anders

I have a section in my game: Planets of Peril" that is entitled: "Love & Romance, Sex & Babies." Since my game is "gamist" I throw a lot of numbers and dice rolling along with some decisions and role playing by the player characters. One other thing that I've done to make it more relevent to the game is the idea of histories; where gains and knowledge can be passed down through generations to a new generation of heros. If a player character never has children, his next character will never benefit from his last character.

So much for beating my own drum.

In your game how important is romance and friendship? i.e. how does it affect the player characters and help them. In most games romance is treated as a sexual encounter and friends as bait for traps. Your game will have to transcend these cliches. Like the other person who replied, I'm not sure of what you're asking for. Could you clarify the question and your end result so we can answer something specific.

Keith

Likewise, I wasn't going to post this because it isn't a particularly good example, but if you're just looking for a starting point...

Exalted 2nd Edition has mechanics for a system of Social Combat.  It's pretty gamist, in that characters make social actions versus each other, in order to get other characters to change their beliefs or feelings.  You can "make" someone fall in love with you with enough effort.  I think it works for Exalted because you can treat NPCs like chess pieces in your schemes.  

Some other games, like BESM, just try to make suggestions for the GMs when running romance-style games.  It's not really written in the game mechanics.

It's only been a day yet.  I'm sure someone who has actually seen Breaking the Ice or Shooting the Moon will reply soon.

-Jason T.

Everybody is at Gen Con at this moment, the forum is almost empty. I think you will have to wait at least until monday for the forum to return to normality.

About your question...  from what I see, it's not a question of "romance mechanics".  In modern rpg design, usually there a conflict about love is played with the exact same mechanics you use in any other conflict. For example, I have played some PTA sessions where romantic relationships were the most important thing happening, but PTA doesn't have "romance mechanics": it does have a mechanic to resolve a conflict based on the character's issue. This can be "I am deeply in love with my best friend's wife" for one character, and "I am a serial killer" in another. The game allow both kind of character and both kinds of premises.

It's not the old lie "with this game you can play what you want" written in most rpgs manuals from the '70. These new games give you the SAME support for playing a romance that they would give to play a fight (in the PTA case, I would say that it give you more support for the romance...), but they are not specifically about "romances"

This was the first answer, about "experiences with playing romantic relationship in games".  But some games have specific mechanics about this stuff because thay are more "specialized" on a specific premise. Breaking the Ice and Shooting the Moon are two of those. But keep in mind that if the games (like PTA) I talked above allow you to play any kind of romantic story, these others are VERY specific.  In Breaking the Ice you play the first three dates, period. It's a much more precise focus on a specific premise, not a generic "romantic mechanic"

I remember now these examples (but I am sure I am forgetting a lot of games)

- "My Life With master" di Paul Czege:  the characters are in a dysfunctional relationship with their Cruel Master. To beat him, they have to beat their own self-loathing and wearyness with love. To get Love, they have to create and maintain an emotional connections with people, who often go to a very sorry end (if the master discover them). The game has a specific "love mechanics" but the tone is always dark and tragic. It's possible to have an happy ending, but it's not easy. And it's never happy for everybody.

- "It was a mutual decision" by Ron Edwards: (I am not sure it can be classified as a rpg, but who cares?) there are only two characters (all the male players play, together, the female protagonist, and all the female players play the male), that are in the process of breaking up. One of the two can be a were-rat (to give you some idea of the tone of the game, the were-rat thing was added to be a saferty-valve, a little fantasy horror to get away from the real horror of breaking up...)

- "Nicotine Girls" by Paul Czehe, a rpg on hope and desperation, and going outside to smoke. It's freely available on Paul's website (you can find the address in Paul's profile)

- "Bacchanal" by Paul Czege (mmm...  I am noticing a pattern here...), sex and debauchery a Pozzuoli, in the old Roman Empire, when the Gods visit the city. A lot of Sex and Debauchery, but there is someone you have to protect lost in the city... (there is a free downloable version, but you can buy a very nice book version instead)

- "Bliss Stage" di Ben Lehman: I don't have this yet (Ben is selling a few copies of the "ignition" book at Gencon, but it's not the commercial definitive version, that will be out in december), but from what I know it should have mechanics for the relationship between the pilot characters and their loved ones...  to be destroyed during the game.

Other games to cite are "Best Friends" of Gregor Hutton (the players play a group of girlfriends, that secretly hate each other. Even if it doesn't have specific love mechanics I can't see how you can leave love out a session of this game...), and the "trust" mechanics of Games like The Mountain Witch and Cold City.  And the "connections" mechanics of "contenders".  And the supplement "Sex and Sorcery" for Sorcerer would be a useful reading.

And, are you familiar with Jeepform? This is an actual play report, written by me, about a Jeepform based on love and doubts:
DOUBT, a Jeepform Narrative LARP
This specific jeepform scenario has A LOT of rules about love!

The reason I am asking you about "emotional stuff", is that I am looking for meaningful ways of enforcing emstuff in the game, while at the same time trying to avoid love, friendship, trust, lust, hate and all the spectrum of feelings and emotions and related issues turning into just numbers and "meaningless" statistics.

About the game itself: at the moment I have in mind a fantasy setting (but not high fantasy), which propably ends up using conflict resolution instead of task resolution, with rotary GM duties (players take turns handling GM duties).

And Moreno R.: I have heard about jeepform, it's a subform of freeform, right?

Hope this helps any.

I am looking for meaningful ways of enforcing emstuff in the game, while at the same time trying to avoid love, friendship, trust, lust, hate and all the spectrum of feelings and emotions and related issues turning into just numbers and "meaningless" statistics.

Seth wrote:
Ever read the old WoD game wraith?

Sounds like a tricky tightrope.... You want to include these emotional layers in a mechanistic way, but don't want them to lose their impact in a bunch of mechanics. Hmmmmm.

Well, the first hurdle I'd think would be to identify the mechanic areas where you want this kind of emotional weight to have an impact. What areas of your game will these things come into play? Do you have something akin to Willpower checks, or social checks between characters, etc.

With these mapped out, you can get on to how much affect you want loyalty between husband and wife (for example) to matter when it comes to them resisting a seduction check from someone else.

I think it'd be important to make sure your mechanics be A): simple, to help keep the real emotional context meaningful (don't want to pause for 5 minutes to make a dozen rolls and consult a dozen charts), and B): to make sure most of the "emotion rules" are to the character's benefit. I think players will be more likely to play more socialized, normal, emotional characters if they have powerful, positive emotions be a reinforcement. Everyone wants to love and be loved. Now, give the game some numbers to back this up.

Cheers!

I am still not quite sure what you are going for, but here are some ideas I have though about.

The first thing I think are necessary is to represent the emotion on the characters sheet, or rather, what I think should be represented is the relations the character has to other characters. This can be written down in small sentences like:

* "I am secretly in love with character x"
* "I will do anything to keep my friendship to character y"
* "I would die before letting any of my family come to harm"
etc...

Of cause these can be written in different ways. For instance they can be static (which emotion the character have) or dynamic (what the character want to do with an other character), they can be longer to provide more context, or shorter and more abstract. All this really depends on how you want emotions to work in the game.

There is also the question of how they should work in the mechanic. Can they get bonuses to roll which are related to the relation? Maybe they are just there to let the player express his character's feeling, and they really do not have any mechanical effect.

Another thing is how they change throughout the game. What should happen for an emotion to change? Or should this just be completely up to the player (which is the option I probably would recommend).

So in general what I need to know to help you is: In what ways are emotions important in the game; in what situations are they used and to what effect? (I am not talking about exact rules here, more something like how you imagine they are played in the game).

- Anders

Osmo wrote:
The reason I am asking you about "emotional stuff", is that I am looking for meaningful ways of enforcing emstuff in the game, while at the same time trying to avoid love, friendship, trust, lust, hate and all the spectrum of feelings and emotions and related issues turning into just numbers and "meaningless" statistics.

And Moreno R.: I have heard about jeepform, it's a subform of freeform, right?

Moreno wrote:
(cross-posted with Anders. I agree with him about the necessity of some game example of the way you would like to play emotions in your game, because without it, all what I wrote above could be useless because you already know it or because you want a completely different kind of design)

I also think I should mention that I have actually two games going at the moment: the one I mentioned in my last post and a more "tradtitional" (one GM, task resolution mechanism), which is why I was initially so generic in my inquiries.

Hi Osmo, welcome to the forge!

In terms of enforcing, for the people who don't give a crap about emotional stuff, you can't enforce it.

For the people who are excited about emotional issue exploration, they will be looking for ways of bringing in emotional stuff themselves - again it's not about you enforcing it cause their already busy with it.

However, if they have no means of bringing it in, that's where you hit a wall. Since numbers will likely come into how they bring it in, does it all become 'just' numbers?

Well, think about your friends and the number of boyfriends or girlfriends they've had rough split ups with. Look at that number - is it just a number? No, it's a symbol, a symbol of difficult, emotional times. So when another player puts three points in their characters 'rough break ups' score, are you going to just think it's numbers? Are other players just going to think it's numbers - they've seen rough break ups too, haven't they? The name you give to the number, like 'rough break ups' is extremely evocative. Just as much as your friends break ups hasn't turned into 'just a number', nor will this. Though I will say for some people, their friends rough split ups are just a number, and if they don't feel much about them in real life, I think you'd agree any notion of enforcing it in game is foolish.

Also on that note, I'd strongly advise to avoid like hell any stats like 'strength' or 'dex' or 'con'. They completely lack emotional texture and just serve as a distraction.

  However, these assistants are a constant threat to the wizards rule: assistants are usually weak of Gift, but emotions feed that Gift and so if they were to fall in love, have absolute trust in someone, or simply be filled with hate and/or rage, their Gift would be strenghtened, possibly allowing one of them to overthrow the wizard and take on his role. But the wizard is always watching and so his assistants have to be careful in their doings.
  The price to pay for ascension is steep: you will propably wound up losing all you care for and turn into the same kind of hollow thing your master was before you. So, which is more important to you, power or love? Yourself or your fellows?

Well, I have been in some games with really powerful emotions, but generally that doesn't happen too often. As far as romance, from my own personal experience, no matter how liberal or sensitive I am, there's nothing that can make roleplaying romance between me and a fat 40 year old gamer missing teeth not creepy. I know this anecdote isn't helpful, but if part of the question is why does this get overlooked it's probably just because most gamers are male, and when a female plays that is dating someone else it can be difficult to get the two to not have their characters act out their love affair, so most often romance just gets nixed from games as anything but a sort of endgame motivation (trying to protect a loved one).

Justin wrote:
Well, I have been in some games with really powerful emotions, but generally that doesn't happen too often. As far as romance, from my own personal experience, no matter how liberal or sensitive I am, there's nothing that can make roleplaying romance between me and a fat 40 year old gamer missing teeth not creepy. I know this anecdote isn't helpful, but if part of the question is why does this get overlooked it's probably just because most gamers are male, and when a female plays that is dating someone else it can be difficult to get the two to not have their characters act out their love affair, so most often romance just gets nixed from games as anything but a sort of endgame motivation (trying to protect a loved one).

Anders wrote:
So just to be sure I understand you right. The wizard are trying to get rid of the people the character has strong relationship with, to prevent the character from getting too strong. So if the character fall in love he have to keep it a secret, or he may risk that the one he love will be kill by the wizard.

Justin wrote:
Well, I have been in some games with really powerful emotions, but generally that doesn't happen too often. As far as romance, from my own personal experience, no matter how liberal or sensitive I am, there's nothing that can make roleplaying romance between me and a fat 40 year old gamer missing teeth not creepy. I know this anecdote isn't helpful, but if part of the question is why does this get overlooked it's probably just because most gamers are male, and when a female plays that is dating someone else it can be difficult to get the two to not have their characters act out their love affair, so most often romance just gets nixed from games as anything but a sort of endgame motivation (trying to protect a loved one).

And about the rage/hate question, you are right, it does kind of go around the whole point of the game... Then again, I could well imagine hate/rage to be a powerfull source for manipulating magic, but one that could turn against yourself, so when letting hate to prosper and using it to fuel your Gift, you risk losing all.

What do you think?

Moreno wrote:

Justin wrote:
Well, I have been in some games with really powerful emotions, but generally that doesn't happen too often. As far as romance, from my own personal experience, no matter how liberal or sensitive I am, there's nothing that can make roleplaying romance between me and a fat 40 year old gamer missing teeth not creepy. I know this anecdote isn't helpful, but if part of the question is why does this get overlooked it's probably just because most gamers are male, and when a female plays that is dating someone else it can be difficult to get the two to not have their characters act out their love affair, so most often romance just gets nixed from games as anything but a sort of endgame motivation (trying to protect a loved one).

Justin, why do you assume that this apply to every gaming group? I play with three women at the table, and I know a lot of women who like to play RPGs..  And in this thread are already listed a lot of games that adress emotional content, and they have found a market.

Creating game with a target of all-male groups because "only males will play it anyway" quickly creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And, in any case,how this is of any help in answering Osmo's questions? (He isn't even talking only about romantic love in his game, but about friendship and other relationship too)

Osmo wrote:

Anders wrote:
So just to be sure I understand you right. The wizard are trying to get rid of the people the character has strong relationship with, to prevent the character from getting too strong. So if the character fall in love he have to keep it a secret, or he may risk that the one he love will be kill by the wizard.

Something like that. And about the rage/hate question, you are right, it does kind of go around the whole point of the game... Then again, I could well imagine hate/rage to be a powerfull source for manipulating magic, but one that could turn against yourself, so when letting hate to prosper and using it to fuel your Gift, you risk losing all.

What do you think?

Justin wrote:
Well, I have been in some games with really powerful emotions, but generally that doesn't happen too often. As far as romance, from my own personal experience, no matter how liberal or sensitive I am, there's nothing that can make roleplaying romance between me and a fat 40 year old gamer missing teeth not creepy. I know this anecdote isn't helpful, but if part of the question is why does this get overlooked it's probably just because most gamers are male, and when a female plays that is dating someone else it can be difficult to get the two to not have their characters act out their love affair, so most often romance just gets nixed from games as anything but a sort of endgame motivation (trying to protect a loved one).

I understand what you mean, Emily Care Boss had some great panels about romance in rpgs and this was one of the topics (avoiding the word problem intentionally) discussed, but in creating my games I go for people who aren't afraid of incorporating more complex, possibly harder issues into their games. I guess my point is that anyone who doesn't want to play out romances or what not between their and their fellow gamer's characters are free not to play my games.

And just as an afterpoint, I have never, not once, seen a fat, forty year old gamer missing his/her teeth. (I have seen and played with fat and forty year olds, but that combination tends to be somewhat rare among players here in Finland)

...I hope my silly, pointless anecdote didn't muddy the waters. I couldn't help but crack a joke.


I'm sure no one took it to heart, I know I didn't, although I must agree with you on the difficulty of finding players who are willing or eager to play the "harder" issues (that is, harder than slaying orcs and the occasional dragon), but there are those, too, one just has to do some work to find them at times.

And thanks Anders, some good questions you presented to me.

Justin, the things you bring up lightly are also worth thinking about, so thanks.

Osmo, what do you envision as the play group for your game? There are games out there that can deal with heavy emotions (MLWM being prime among them) and one's that can't, just as there are gaming groups of each kind. Are you looking for this to be a game you can crack open and play with strangers at a Con, open game night with the guys at the shop, a long-term group that's got solid trust and communication, or what?

From looking over what you've written, my first thought is that it's even more interesting if you turn it on it's head. What if I'm the wizard with the strong clear Gift for weaving magic, but I need my assistants (channels? foci?) in order to keep my world intact. I *need* these people. How do I keep them? How do I keep their emotional currents running strong for me? I can brow-beat them and live off their anger and resentment, I can abuse them and live off their fear and hate, I can manipulate them and keep them unsteady and live off their anxiety, I can be ingratiating and live off their condescension, I can be honest and kind and live off their devotion. What takes the most work? What gives me the strongest currents of emotion? What will I risk to keep that emotion flowing? How far will I go out of my own emotional well-being in the quest for magic? How far will I let it warp me?

A few practical suggestions.

First, trying to tackle the whole range of human emotion ... that's daunting, especially for a first crack at designing to emotion.  It will probably be easier if you pick one fairly specific pattern of human relationships, and concentrate on that.  Breaking the Ice, for instance, plays just two people on their first three dates, trying to figure out whether they're attracted and compatible.  It's a fairly ritualized way that people interact (though always rife with details that make one relationship world different from another) and that formula makes it easier to design.

Second, one way to get a lot of nuance into the way that players get rewards is to have them awarded by other players.  For instance, Primetime Adventures rewards people for being entertaining.  This would be hard (i.e. impossible) to do if the game system had to enumerate the ways in which players are objectively entertaining.  But, instead, PTA just says "When one of the other players is entertained by something you did, they can award you Fan Mail."  There are tricks to making that balance out, but it's a powerful technique.  If the actions players taken when they are (for instance) romantically attracted to your character are consistent then you can attach a reward to that, for the player they're attracted to.  Then you have a game which rewards people for being alluring ... again, something that would be hard to quantify objectively.