My current design attempt (Lendrhald) has me thinking about what play should look like, largely in terms of what I've played in the past: do I want to include this part, exclude this other part, vice versa?  So, I'm going to attempt to describe some actual play from the game Lendrhald is most based off of.  Unfortunately, I played this game briefly 7 years ago, so my account may be missing crucial details.  We'll see...

ED&D: Edwin's D&D.  Basically hybrids of D&D, AD&D2, and a lot of patch house rules.

Edwin: The GM.  Started GMing at age 12, and has run every game for the last 17 years (circa 2000, when I played) in the same world ("Telvar").  Telvar consists of various published modules that he's plopped down on one map, plus some overarching worldplot stuff that Edwin added but uses only rarely.  Edwin is 28, about 6 years older than most of the players.

At some point in the game, the PCs hired a mage named Donald, played by Edwin.

Joel: Plays Ballinor, the dour fighter.

Alex: Plays Felix, the half-orc tank.

Catherine: Edwin's fiancee, plays Cassandra the altruistic cleric.

Jeremy: Plays Quentin, the flakey druid.

Al: My best friend and Lendrhald co-designer, plays Morgan, the lazy elf who loves trinkets.

Me: Plays Narahn, the 1st level halfling archer.

Aaron: Plays Jason, the 1st level thief.

Joel, Alex, Jeremy, Al and Catherine have all been playing this game for most of a year and have their characters at 5th level.  Aaron and I just showed up for a few sessions.

Session One

Beginning Play

The characters collectively are known as the Restinford Defenders.  (Edwin's player groups tend to get names; frequent references are mad to his previous group, the Stone Souls.)  The Defenders have a house in the usually-boring town of Restinford and have previously saved the city from evil things, so are mildly famous and on generally good terms with town officials.  The mayor has an aide who's in charge of news and communication, I'll call him Tom.  Tom frequently offers to share knowledge with the Defenders of treasure to be had, in exhcnage for a small cut.

At the beginning of the game I played, we started with Edwin asking everyone, "What are your characters up to?"  Morgan was sleeping and Cassandra was praying, neither of which required further discussion.  Joel and Alex didn't seem to care what their characters were doing, and announced that they wanted to see if Tom had any missions he knew of.  Jeremy asked everyone to wait while he thought about what Quentin should be doing; he asked Edwin a lot of questions about druid-related matters, and didn't seem satisfied until he came up with soemthing particularly druidly for him to do.  Catherine seemed to take a mild interest in this, and Edwin had a great time expounding on local druidic traditions and movements.  I kind of liked that part too.  Everyone else chatted about videogames or ate.  Alex tried to speed up Jeremy's process with comments like, "So you talked to the damn tree, you done?"

Once it was established what Quentin was generally up to these days, Ballinor and Felix went to see Tom.  All the players paid attention, as Edwin (via Tom) mentioned 4 missions, one of which was very hazily defined.  Of the other 3, most of the players seemed vaguely familiar with them, especially Joel (who'd been playing with Edwin the longest).  Joel was excited at the thought that the Defenders might be high-level enough to go for the far-away dwarven treasure cave of a place I'll call Anethal.  "We heard that one party got creamed there, but they were scrubs.  Let's do it!"  Al asked what we'd get out of it, and Edwin described rumors that the dwarves who used to live there were masters of rare and precious materials.  No one seemed to mind that Morgan wasn't in the room with Tom; no one seemed to mind that it was unclear if the conversation with Tom was still going on, or whether it had already happened and now Ballinor was telling Morgan about it.  The players all decided that Anethal sounded fun, so then it was time to prepare for the trip.

Everyone went through their equipment and money lists and tried to remember what they intended to sell, trade, and buy.  Catherine was practical but not very thorough, quickly listing a few things and then ready to move on.  Al was also initially decisive, but then became engaged in a conversation with Joel and Alex about utility of extra rope versus adding encumbrance.  Jeremy weighed in whenever he saw the logic differently.  Aaron and I did not give a fuck and got horribly bored.  I think Catherine got bored too.  Edwin was initially joining in the discussion with points baout previous experiences and notes of recent inflation due to harvests or weather, but eventually started making efforts to expedite a conclusion.  "You can always buy more rope later," stuff like that.  I think eventually Al burned out on the discussion too, and we went with Alex's idea to buy tons of rope and make my character tote it because he had no other stuff and no need for stealth.  I had no problem with this, after it was confirmed that my combat #s wouldn't be penalized.

Beginning the Mission

There was some business about paying and getting on a boat and traveling through some areas where the 5 long-time players had already been.  I don't remember it well.  I think there wasn't much shared enthusiasm going on, but there was one moment of interest I remember:

The boat captain warned of pirates.  Ballinor bragged that the Defenders could handle pirates, effectively volunteering us to be on our guard.  When figuring out our sleeping quarters, Al asked a lot of questions about where the stairs were, where the light sources were, which ways the door sopened, etc.  Edwin dug out some old folder and found a sheet with the relevant info on it, which he used to answer Al's questions (the actual sheet was not passed aorund).  Everyone except Catherine seemed to have some opinion on who should sleep where and what spells and items should be kept ready.  It was pretty fun, as I contributed a few good suggestions about shielding flames form wind or some such.

Edwin rolled some dice.  "Next day comes."  Edwin rolled some more dice.  "Next day comes."  Edwin rolled some more dice.  "You arrive and dock without incident."  No one minded that we weren't actually attacked by pirates.  Time to get dwarf treasure!

More passing through places, mostly fast-forwarding, but enough die-rolling, brief NPC interactions, and questions going around that an hour or so of real time passed.  General lethargy around the room.  Much snack-fetching and bathroom trips from 5 people while one person inquired about something relevant to his character and no one else's.  Edwin's responses were slow, as he spent a lot of time reading stuff (game-related? not? dunno) on his laptop.  I wanted to go outside and run around so I didn't settle into a total slouching coma.  At some point Joel responded to a look at the map with, "Hey, we're near Baleford, I've always wanted to go there, let's pass through, it's only a 1-day detour."  Evereyone shrugged, so the Defenders went to Baleford.

Edwin woke everyone up with a particularly detailed and colorful account of what we saw upon entering Baleford's main marketplace.  He provided a very distinct atmosphere -- a small corner of bustling oddball trade, where the locals displayed a mix of friendliness and salesmanship.  All of a sudden all the players are asking about how tall the buildings are and Edwin's volunteering smells and throwing one funny NPC after another at us.  My character had no money and no developed foibles; there ws really nothing for me to do.  But I still had a great time having Narahn follow Morgan into a trinket shop.  Everyone else seemed amused too as the insane ex-adventurer who ran the store competed with Morgan in a spastic, A.D.D. battle of "Look at this!"/"Ooh, what's that?!"

Morgan bought some random crap, Ballinor bought a magic arrow, Quentin traded the Mouse of Cats (don't ask) for an alchemical component or something, Felix arm-wrestled some guy, Cassandra made a pact to show up on some later date for a solstice ritual.

Everyone seemed in high spirits and good energy to forge ahead, so we did, fast-forwarding through some more travel with Joel quickly answering Edwin's questions about route and marching order, and no one else bothering to disagree. 

The Mission

We got to the path to the dwarven caves, and then Edwin slowed everything down and gave us more description.  We adjusted the marching order, figured out what we were holding, etc. 

We got to the cave.  Alex and Al and Jeremy instantly started debating the best way to check for traps, though Alex announced that Felix was jsut going to charge in anyway cuz that's what Felix would do.  Joel wanted to stop the discussion, do a cursory check, and move on, but Al and Jeremy reminded him about previous adventures where cave-ins had ruined everything, so Joel reluctantly waited.  Catherine searched her spells for anything useful she could do, tossed out a few ideas.  Edwin had Donald come up with a contingency spell plan in case of a cave-in, announcing very forcefully (via Donald's nasal voice) that they should do their check now.  Morgan and Quentin checked.  They found nothing. 

Then Alex decided Felix could charge in. 

As soon as Edwin announced the next point of interest ("The passage curves left"), Felix and Ballinor stopped their dash, and everyone debated what kind of trail we ought to leave for ourselves in case we wound up in some labyrinth.  The enthusiasm level in the room had waned noticeably.

Edwin consulted his laptop a lot while we navigated into the dungeon.

At some point we got to a room with an empty treasure chest and a skeleton.  Joel surmised that this was from a previous group of players, who'd generally gotten their asses kicked, but managed to make off with some loot.

Much care was taken, and nothing happened.  In retrospect, it seems that all the initial challenges in the first half of the dungeon had been killed by former players.  People varied between finding enthusiasm for the strategic thinking and being bored as nothing happened.  I felt like I was just waiting for something to happen, and then I'd be excited to get back on the strategy.  We came to a door we weren't sure how to open and decide to break for the night.

Everyone made sure their character sheets were accurate up to the moment and gave them to Edwin.

Session Two

After we all reminded each other where we were and what we were doing, and all accounting of gear and spells was complete, Alex asked Edwin a bunch of questions about the door, and then figured out how to open it.  The Defenders proceeded down a corridor and heard faint noises.  After some investigation and spell-casting, a small hole was discovered.  We tied a rope to Jason and lowered him down the hole.  Edwin roled some dice.  "Ouch!  Jason gets hit with a crossbow bolt."  All the players winced.  Aaron stared.  Edwin roled some more dice.  "20 damage.  That brings you down to below negative your Con."

Aaron: "Uh... is there... uh...  You guys feel the rope jerk."
Edwin: "And you hear the distinctive *tung* of a crossbow."
Joel: "We pull the rope up!"

Aaron was disappointed, and everyone else consoled him.  Jeremy or Alex might have made a remark that we should have lowered him down with Ballinor's greatshield in front of him, and everyone agreed.  Sorry, Aaron.  Catherine mentioned resurrection options, but everyone agreed that it wasn't worth the price for a first-level character.  So that was that for Jason.  Aaron sat and watched the game for maybe another hour, enjoying himself somewhat but then losing interest and going home.

After spending a lot of time figuring out how to achieve a good position against the underground archers, we decided to use a ton of spells and go for it.  We did, but the archers had run off.  Everyone climbed back out of the hole and "spellshifted", i.e. declared what would be happening during the next 8 hours of in-gameworld time while the mages refilled their spell lists.

With our spell batteries recharged, we pushed deeper into the dungeon, killed some orcs, and eventually got to The Door, this giant round metal thing with all sorts of symbols on it.  The first guy to touch it got blasted by lightning.  Felix survived -- being the highest-hit-point character, he was used to going first.  Ballinor was close in HP, so he tried next, touching a different part of the door.  He got blasted by fire.  The players all conferred, and guessed (after Donald bounced some spells off the door to no avail) that the dial could be turned and the door opened if anyone could survive long enough.  Cassandra healed Felix and Ballinor and gave Felix a Protection From Lightning blessing, Morgan loaned Ballinor the sword he'd taken from some lightning-themed fighter-mage adversary, and they tried again.  The plans kept Felix and Ballinor alive, but they couldn't get the door to budge.

Now we all sat down and had Edwin describe the symbols on the door to us in detail.  Everyone contributed in guessing at what the pattern might be.  We agreed on the simplest solution, spellshifted, cast protection spells, and let Felix try touching the symbols in a certain order.  Third symbol, he got blasted.

We reconvened and tried to think of another pattern, using the first two symbols as a starting point.

This was immense fun for everyone for the first few efforts, but after several failures, I got irritated that we weren't actually roleplaying.  I'd lost all sense of the imaginary space we were working in, and was just focused on our drawings and notes about the door.  Edwin spoke up at some point to remind us how long we'd been spell-shifting and wandering up to this door and getting blasted, and that prompted some fun reactions before we got back to door-solving.

Eventually we took a dinner break, with most of us somewhat frustrated.

After dinner, Alex had a new idea, and rather than describe step by step the same process that we'd repeated many times already, Edwin just said, "You get through 10 of the 12 symbols before getting blasted."  Sighs of relief and congrats went around the room, as we revised the order, switching the last two symbols.  Felix approached the door.  We all held our breaths.

"Okay, the door opens," Edwin said calmly.

The suspense lingered as poking for further traps ensued.  Pushing the door open further, we al saw a small chest in an otherwise empty large room.  "Looks like the dwarves took most of their stuff when they split."  Disappointment?  After checking the box, we opened it.

Edwin: "You find several bars of a shiny metal, very dark gray in color."
Joel: "Holy shit.  Is it adamantite?"
Edwin grins a huge smile and nods.
Alex: "Yes!  How many bars?!"
Edwin: "Five on top."
Me: "Is adamantite good?"
Jeremy: "You never see adamantite.  It's the only metal that can be enchanted up to +5."
Joel: "In Telvar, getting more than a +1 sword is really, really rare.  We can pay a smith and get these into at least one +5!"
Huge smiles all around

Fast-forwarding the trip back to Restinford (I think Edwin rolled a storm that delayed our boat trip, but we just waited a week and got another one).  Deciding on what to do with the 5 bars of adamantite and 5 bars of mythril (bottom layer of the chest). 

Next session: another start in Restinford, another talk with Tom, this time about the haunted castle on the island of the Stork People.  We went for it.  The Grey Philosopher in the castle wound up slaughtering us, and as we ran away toting corpses for resurrection, we had to succeed a few combat rolls to avoid having to leave beloved characters where they could never be recovered.  Yikes.  I was told that a year or so (of real-world time) later, once most of the party was 8th level, the Defenders went back and kicked the Philosopher's ass and it was awesome.

Dave,

What stands out as the most fun from this game?

What parts do you want to impart to the gamers who play the game you are designing?

So, having written all that, let me say what's on my mind.

First, a disclaimer:
My impression is that the Creative Agenda concept is only intended to be applied to full reward cycles; saying "We all enjoyed this one thing that happened," does not, by itself, prove that a Coherent CA is in action.  Alas, my own ability to spot a reward cycle is somewhat fuzzy, so I'm not sure what my options are in terms of correctly applying CA to the above example.  I imagine I'll figure it out as I go; for now, please bear with me.

Telvar Impressions

What Al and I both loved about Telvar is that the environment felt very real, and very much not rigged for our benefit.  This illusion of solidity and independence gave a certain feeling of significance to what we experienced in Telvar.  We really want to bring that same atmosphere to Lendrhald, but without the 17 years of prep and accounting that Edwin put in.

Al and I both feel that once we were immersed in Telvar, the thing we wanted to do was pit our wits against all those non-rigged challenges.  Knowing that we could have just stumbled onto a Level 13 mod that Edwin plopped in 5 years ago really kept us on our toes.

The only times anyone got visibly fed up with anyone else during Telvar play occurred when one player was ready to Step On Up while another player was exercising his Right to Dream.  Jeremy caring about Quentin's wacko beliefs didn't mesh with Joel's desire to problem-solve when they both happened at the same time.

Design Implications

In designing Lendrhald, Al and I agree that we want challenges that require guts, smarts, and strategy from the players at the table.  Al ran a one-shot that was very much about assembling an item and finding a key and hiding from rats, and we felt pretty lucky (and very satisfied) to get out of it alive.

The question is, what gets played beyond "Okay, you're in a dungeon, you see a weird red light, the walls start to shake, GO!"?

We want to make the gameworld feel real and significant, to lend adventures therein that extra resonance.  We plan to achieve part of this by ensuring that challenge difficulty levels aren't tailored to a specific play group (although we need to simultaneously ensure there's some way for the players to tackle challenges when outclassed -- see this thread).  But the other parts, the part comes from getting a house in Restinford and establishing a working relationship and its officials, the part that comes from stumbling upon vast charm in Baleford, the part that comes from Edwin telling us that a storm delayed our boat -- can we still give all that to players who want to Step On Up?

We'd like to, but we're not sure how.  We don't want to duplicate the trip from the boat to Baleford and the other "lags" that Telvar was prone to.

We don't even care if players give a fuck about the world of Lendrhald for its own sake, as long as that world seems, y'know, Important, in a way that transparently ad-libbed, player-based material isn't.  (Empahsis on transparently -- if the players can't tell, then we're not picky about where material actually comes from.)

My current intent is to design a game where the objective is basically to imagine yourself (albeit with different -- though still human -- capabilities) in a thoroughly believable alternate reality, wherein resolution outcomes accord with real-world common sense... and then Step On Up in that context.  Lendrhald is a game for people who would like to go out in the woods with a knife and survive by their wits but they don't quite have the balls (a.k.a. disregard for personal safety) so they'll settle for the next closest thing.

Any thoughts on the best way to achieve that?  I thought I had made some progress on this (again, see this thread), but in so doing I may have muddied the Stakes enough that Gamist play is not as strongly supported as it ought to be.

Dave,

Please note that I don't know so much about the CA's and I can't be much help to you there.  However, if you want to create a Sim Masterpiece, I'll help in any way I can and I say, "Go for it."

We don't even care if players give a fuck about the world of Lendrhald for its own sake, as long as that world seems, y'know, Important, in a way that transparently ad-libbed, player-based material isn't. 

Lendrhald is a game for people who would like to go out in the woods with a knife and survive by their wits but they don't quite have the balls (a.k.a. disregard for personal safety) so they'll settle for the next closest thing.

Paka wrote:

We don't even care if players give a fuck about the world of Lendrhald for its own sake, as long as that world seems, y'know, Important, in a way that transparently ad-libbed, player-based material isn't. 

I'm not sure what that means.  Don't care if the players care but it must seem important?

David wrote: What I care about is that the players get the sense that Lendrhald has been there before they played in it and will be there after they've finished playing in it, that it has its own life and existence in the way that self-consistent, fully-realized fictions do.  And by "get the sense", I don't mean that I literally intend for the GM to trick them into thinking that; I'm just talking about the emotional tenor of the experience.

Telvar was actually very hit-and-miss on immersion. 

What was reliable was the world itself.  Most of that came simply from the fact that other players had played there and lef their mark, and that we knew we were leaving our mark for future players.  Also, the fact that we went to Baleford on a whim, and found this richly detailed place.  Plus, we never came across anything "broken", anything that made no sense, or that we could exploit in a new way to radically cahnge things (so why hadn't someone else done it already?).  So Telvar had continuity, breadth, consistency, and logic.

What did Edwin do to ensure this?  Well, he kept computer files and/or notes on every place ever played in Telvar.  He put enough thought into economics that the world functioned plausibly.  He knew a lot about medieval culture, and could tell us little details about latrines and the like.  He ran the game for a long frickin' time.  He had a map of every place that we needed to navigate, he knew the price of every item, we never once had to see him fabricate world content.  He paid attention to the date, randomly generated weather accordingly, and made up world events that initially had nothing to do with the players, but might eventually be encountered by them.  (E.g. "Hot & no rain" roll -> drought -> desperation -> invade neighbor.  Hmm, now there's a war going on in the south.)

If some programmer would write me a world simulation based on parameters that I input, that would be sweet.  Failing that, I want to find shortcuts so I can prep only what I have to and yet still have a world with some meat to it.

I also don't want to veer too far from my central question of what gets played.  As long as technique discussions feed back into that, cool.  I'm just reminding myself here not to get sidetracked into anything about immersion (I already have rules aplenty for that) or world content generation (that was the purpose of that previous thread I linked, which proceeded to stall out on Gamist Stakes issues).

Actually, here, I'll post my current rules on What Gets Played:

Challenge Situations:
A Challenge Situation concerns something the players wish to achieve, wherein success is not guaranteed.  If the players wish to befriend the mayor, then ANY opportunity to help or hinder their chances of this becomes part of the Challenge.  For example, a situation where the guards of the city gate are rude to the player characters is a Challenge Situation, because the actions of the player characters may or may not lead to an incident that damages their reputation in the city.

Most character activities that players and GMs concern themselves with are related to Challenges.  Exceptions include purchasing goods at established prices, getting from one point within a city to another along a route that has previously been traveled, spending a second night at an inn, and other types of repetition.  In scenarios where the players have come to form expectations of safety and mundanity, these processes are not played in the gameworld, and it is the GM's job to tell them when they need to switch modes.  "You're just falling asleep when you hear a sound... ready to Dive Into the Gameworld?  Okay, go!"

No Non-Challenge Situations are intended to be played In The Gameworld.

However, that does not mean that the entirety of every Challenge must be played In The Gameworld.  During any part of a Challenge, players may wish to Come Up For Air in order to discuss something as themselves rather than as their characters.  Still, all character actions where a) success is not guaranteed, and b) success or failure impacts the Challenge at hand, must be done In The Gameworld.

Note: "In the Gameworld" basically means "immersed", using the appropriate rules for who can say what.

I put the italics on just now because I think perhaps the "stuff not to be played" should be expanded beyond this.  My original intent was to play through new roads and first nights at inns In the Gameworld, cuz the PCs ought to be investigating their environment for threats, and enriching their experience and sense of the world at the same time.  Now I'm worried that'll result in a lot of unrewarding play.

Paka wrote:
I'd like to hear more about the game you mentioned with the rats and the putting together of an item.  Is that possible?

David, what you're describing is sort of like Edwin functioning as a server, or something.  He's got the whole world in his memory banks, and he'll call it up, and (for the purposes of this game) it's an objectively existing thing.

Yikes.  That kind of frightens me a bit, just thinking about the opportunity costs of creating that.  I'd suggest that anything you do, you need to make the Lonely Fun factor (i.e., "Eh, it's 3 PM on a Saturday -- I'll spend 6 hours creating a piece of the world that maybe no one will ever see') extremely, extremely high.

David wrote:
He put enough thought into economics that the world functioned plausibly. 

Paka wrote:
Could you give me a tangible at-the-table experience where his thoughts into economics led to you enjoying the game more?

David wrote:
If some programmer would write me a world simulation based on parameters that I input, that would be sweet.  Failing that, I want to find shortcuts so I can prep only what I have to and yet still have a world with some meat to it.

Michael,

Seriously?  Excel can do all that?  That idea sounds like it has fantastic potential.  If you could send me any kind of a demo so I can see the basic operations in action, that would be sweet.

I know a bit of web programming, and I've always thought it would be sweet to offer a sort of auto-generated periodic (daily, ideally) world update via an interactive website.  So GMs could log on to the site and get, say, the weather in X region "today". 

Beyond that, if previous days could be logged, it would give the GMs the option to say, "Ah, let's start the campaign two weeks before this skirmish breaks out on April 15," and have all the info available. 

I haven't put too much thought into this, though, as it hasn't seemed feasible (my own programming skills being far from up to the task).

Sure, If you look around there are plenty of Excel based character generation sheets for different systems that can randomly allocate stats and calculate background details for new characters.

It's not much of a stretch to come up with an interactive and iterative sheet that randomly determines an interconnected pattern of weather, crop health, civil unrest, paranormal disturbances, etc.

It all depends how you write the algorithms it uses.

I'd include a couple of conditionally formatted cells that might turn red when a certain aspect becomes dangerous (eg. temperatures or rainfall getting too high, or civil unrest approaching rebellion), these could be used as storyline jump-points. Those cells might then turn black when the shit has hit the fan. The characters can't simply avoid the issue any more, it is all around them.

The same concepts could easily be done in PHP and SQL for a website. It would randomly generate the patterns each day at a pre determined time. You could even get a level of global interaction with GMs around the world inserting a couple of variables based on the actions their parties have done. If a hundred parties around the world all have spellcasters who are fond of shooting ice bolts around, there could be a global ice-age on it's way. That Ice Age might be focused on a particular land where there is a higher number of these casters present.

I'll throw together a sample table to show you the kind of thing that I mean.

The more complex uses of PHP and SQL would require quite a bit more setting up (and I'm having enough trouble finding time for my own website at the moment), but a flow through of sequential tables in excel shouldn't take too long. I'll try to get something to you in the next couple of days.

V

The only problem I see with your goals is that you want to recreate Edwin, for Ed's D & D.
I believe that you didn't notice the times when Edwin just made stuff up, on the fly, because of his level of skill.

Failing that, I want to find shortcuts so I can prep only what I have to and yet still have a world with some meat to it.

I agree with Fred there on the Edwin's skill and I'll take it a bit further - was there no improvisation, or was he skilled enough that players could believe there was no improvisation? I'm talking creative denial on the players part...gah, how to describe it? Umm, how about a futurama episode, where Benders girlfriend catches him with other girls and he explains them away as his accountants. Her line "I dearly want to believe you, Bender....so I will!". Okay, bit of a negative example of creative denial, but there you go.

Now, onto something else that sticks out for me...

Now we all sat down and had Edwin describe the symbols on the door to us in detail.  Everyone contributed in guessing at what the pattern might be.  We agreed on the simplest solution, spellshifted, cast protection spells, and let Felix try touching the symbols in a certain order.  Third symbol, he got blasted.

We reconvened and tried to think of another pattern, using the first two symbols as a starting point.

This was immense fun for everyone for the first few efforts, but after several failures, I got irritated that we weren't actually roleplaying.  I'd lost all sense of the imaginary space we were working in, and was just focused on our drawings and notes about the door.  Edwin spoke up at some point to remind us how long we'd been spell-shifting and wandering up to this door and getting blasted, and that prompted some fun reactions before we got back to door-solving.

Callan wrote:
I agree with Fred there on the Edwin's skill and I'll take it a bit further - was there no improvisation, or was he skilled enough that players could believe there was no improvisation?

Callan wrote:
"I dearly want to believe you, Bender....so I will!"

Callan wrote:
This looks like time to step on up to me, but you have immense fun briefly yet then it irritates you.

Callan wrote:
The full step on up is where it's you guys, the players, looking at your own drawings and notes and using your own skills. And that's turned out to be an irritant.

Callan wrote:
Have you ever enjoyed where its purely down to you as a person, nothing to do with your character? I see it as a massive feature. Do you see it as a massive bug in the system?

I'm assuming that we enjoyed it because it was quality Step On Up.  But then when we ran out of ideas and it devolved into just sort of going through permutations, I didn't really feel challenged anymore.

Callan wrote:
Just on this for now - it sounds like going through the permutations would only take a minute or so, given how spell shifting was handled.

Callan wrote:
Looking at "when we ran out of ideas" have you considered that perhaps you only like challenges because they make you think up ideas?

Callan wrote:
Have you considered that perhaps you don't actually like challenges, you just like how they make you think about the game world?

Hi David,

Four hours? I knew I should have asked how long instead of assumed. Can I ask a few more questions?

* Who made it last four hours? What procedures were people using that made 'Try this symbol. No? Okay, spellshift, try the next symbol?' last four hours? What were they doing and saying and rolling? Was there just alot of social chit chat mixed in with any actual procedure?
* Were they trying to really figure out the true answer behind it all rather than get it done?
* Were they playing it out in character voices and still describing all their minute physical actions?
* Was there a vibe there that it's just too crude and dream breaking to go 'This symbol? No, okay, next one...' rapidly?
* At roughly what time did you realise it could be solved by just going through the permutations?

Frankly if it was four hours, I don't think it's non gamist to be entirely fed up with the whole thing. But what stretched it out? Let's say you and others were gunning for gamism at some point. But there was also some devotion to something else, a devotion that dragged it on for four freaking hours. I'd say that devotion strangled the poor little life out of any gamism you might have been shooting for. In fact it strangled it for four damn hours, just to make sure the job was done.

Anyway, I'm kind of jumping ahead again. We'll see what your answers are and what it reveals, if you want to answer :)

I just realized I may have skirted an issue with my last response:

When Al and I began designing Lendrhald, we both agreed that it was very, very important that characters could be killed and missions could be failed, and that the only way to avoid this was player competence -- so when you keep your character alive and beat a mission, it's An Accomplishment.

Callan wrote:
* Who made it last four hours? What procedures were people using that made 'Try this symbol. No? Okay, spellshift, try the next symbol?' last four hours? What were they doing and saying and rolling? Was there just alot of social chit chat mixed in with any actual procedure?

Callan wrote:
* Were they trying to really figure out the true answer behind it all rather than get it done?

Callan wrote:
* Were they playing it out in character voices and still describing all their minute physical actions?

Callan wrote:
* Was there a vibe there that it's just too crude and dream breaking to go 'This symbol? No, okay, next one...' rapidly?

Callan wrote:
* At roughly what time did you realise it could be solved by just going through the permutations?

Gack.

So, after speaking to my co-designer Al for many hours last night, a few things became clear to me:
1) I've been trying to shove Lendrhald play toward more clear and functional Gamism because it's intended to be more challenging for the players than most of what I've been playing
2) Al wants Lendrhald to make up for all the games where if he probes the world too thoroughly, he finds something inane, throws up his hands, and focuses on challenges instead

So now we're at an awkward point, where we still agree about what we like in play, but we're not sure what a realistic reward cycle for anyone else might be.

We like dungeon-crawls, we like having to think strategically, we like distinctive color, we like leaving an impact, and we like learning about medieval life from a world-designer/GM who knows more about it than we do.

Trying to design a game to accomplish all of that strikes both of us as impossible, but we're not sure where that leaves us.

It seems like the best successes of the past have been compromises between players who wanted to Step On Up and a GM who wanted to Dream -- the players only got bored occasionally while being briefed on local color, and the GM never got bored while the players crawled through dungeons, because they wanted to pay very close attention to the dungeon environments.

I'm half trying to convince Al to give up on the local color briefings in hopes of making something more clearly Gamist (which would kind of answer my what gets played? question), and half hoping an equally focused alternate direction presents itself ("we're playing Sim, dungeon-crawls are a favored technique, and look, here's an apt reward cycle").

I appreciate the feedback from everyone on this thread and the "making challenges" one.  Feel free to share any insights or suggestions in light of this latest post.  If nothing occurs to anyone, then we'll call this thread done and I'll start a new one (eventually) once my goals are refocused a bit.

Michael, I'd still love to see that Excel sheet, but no hurry.  I'll be out of town from 11/17-11/24.

David wrote:
Gack.

So, after speaking to my co-designer Al for many hours last night, a few things became clear to me:
1) I've been trying to shove Lendrhald play toward more clear and functional Gamism because it's intended to be more challenging for the players than most of what I've been playing
2) Al wants Lendrhald to make up for all the games where if he probes the world too thoroughly, he finds something inane, throws up his hands, and focuses on challenges instead

Callan wrote:
emphasize the priority on step on up and the responce seems to be 'If I wanted that, I'd go play chess'.

David wrote:
I'd been thinking of the Lendrhald project as High-Exploration Gamist design, and who knows, maybe I'll still do something in that direction.  I still think it'd be pretty damn cool if it could be pulled off... but I don't know whether any of my past roleplaying experience actually speaks to that or whether I've just played a lot of competitive Sim.  :)

David wrote:

Callan wrote:
emphasize the priority on step on up and the responce seems to be 'If I wanted that, I'd go play chess'.

Hell, that's how I feel about most Gamist games I've heard described.  I'd rather go play chess unless the exploration of Color (always), Setting (often) and Character (sometimes) is pretty high.

The idea of building a challenge-oriented game within a heavily-detailed and consistent setting is a very interesting one. I have a question for you, as well as a suggestion.

I'd like to ask you the question first: do you need a heavily-detailed and consistent setting, or will the illusion of one suffice?

The suggestion is: have you heard of Ryan Stoughton's "TRAP" method? I don't know where there is a more up-to-date source, but there is a thread at EN World where he explains the concept. I think a structure like this might be able to provide you with what you're looking for.

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=202750

Best,

Paul

From what I read the link Paul provided has lots of decent suggestions, here's a few more idea I had.

The big problem I see with trying to make an internally consistent world in something like D&D is that their worlds and game systems generally have everything plus the kitchen sink.  Take magic systems for instance, D&D has several.  Divine magic with clerics, druidic magic, wizards, sorcerors, all are slightly different and add more things you have to rationalize, a tricky task if your going for the consistency you want in a game world.  Magic isnt the only place they take this approach and it's not the most damaging one to a campaign setting.  Monsters, classes, cultures, races, they always add tons and tons which makes the world much more complicated and harder to fully realize.

My suggestion is to simplify all this.  Start with a much smaller area or world and build that up into detail.  Eliminate excess complexity and work on making the area real and challenging.

- You could design it in a similar manner to a computer RTS game, where your city/culture grows and expands based on actions it takes, allow players more influence on the direction via political actions in the city which gives players a challenge to get involved in. 
- Have nearby threats that grow in power much like their own city, but that can be beaten back by player incursions into dungeons.  i.e  a nearby Orc tribe
- Maybe an economic system as well, like food production which you keep track of and is influenced by different factors like the threats
- A cultural advancement system based on research, there could be player quests related to this

Some basic ideas here but it could be a really cool game if you can figure out systems to control these aspects and ways for the players to interact with them.
 

David wrote:
We like dungeon-crawls, we like having to think strategically, we like distinctive color, we like leaving an impact, and we like learning about medieval life from a world-designer/GM who knows more about it than we do.

contracycle wrote:
I think a similar approach needs to be adopted for a historical or totally fictitious settings to become the real subjects of action and intention.  You don't play a grunt in an RTS, you play some sort of decision-maker, and without that shift the setting can only be backdrop.  But the dungeon crawl is completely opposed to that goal, its a different game altogether about small unit tactics.

It is an extremely valid point that jumping into missions that have you crawling into dark holes deep in the woods is not an activity well-suited to exploring the social and cultural features of a setting.

On the other hand, dark holes deep in the woods give the GM a limited environment, and thus a managable amount of prep.  The more predictable the PCs' choices are, the more the GM has a hope of quality-checking the area for consistency etc.

Small unit tactics are the technique that my friends and I have the most practice with, in terms of, "Okay, whats going to be fun to do in this fantasy world?" 

Allowing the PCs to basically Step On Up and change the world is also a great way to get them paying attention to it.  However, that's exactly the wrong kind of attention -- "I'm making the gameworld my bitch" is very different than "I'm paying very close attention to the gameworld so it doesn't kill me".  Lendrhald is not just any old detailed world, it's a detailed world which is more likely to kill you than roll over for you.  The intent here is to provoke a feeling of being ignorant and powerless within the world, just a regular peasant like everyone else, and then going out and Encountering Stuff from that fragile perspective.  PCs have no supernatural abilities, they are just trying to get by doing dangerous tasks because they are out of other options.  Through play, they can hope to become more empowered, to the point where they can hack up two Orcs singlehandedly or uncover some information that may be of some value to the humans in a particular conflict with Evil.

That is the game as currently conceived, and although I admit that some element may eventually need to be sacrificed to achieve optimal playability, I'm not sold on one yet.

Our M.O. on world creation thus far (in a game-designer way, not during play) has been about what Caldis suggested -- only as complex as realism demands, and with an eye toward generating challenges.  The problem is that we'd like to have recognizably familiar human medieval culture, so certain complexities are unavoidable and the challenges can't be so pervasive that they markedly distort society.

Sticking all play in a particularly challenge-filled bubble is an interesting option.  "This game takes place in and around the city of Narse" would make tracking economics and power shifts much more feasible.  Letting the PCs attain some influence over, say, one local politician is certainly more compatible with the game's aesthetic than giving the influence over the Emperor.

Paul, to answer your question, an illusion of consistency is fine, but that illusion has to be impregnable -- if players ever find an inconsistency, that is bad.

"Make only problems, threats, resources and rewards" sounds like solid advice.  Unfortunately, the flow chart doesn't appear when I click on the "show" link...

Callan, not sure if I follow you on "exploration as a feature".  Are you saying that Gamists will just use color, setting, etc. as one more thing to strategize over?  So, e.g., color will only be explored if doing so helps you win?

I am going to be away for a week, so don't interpret lack of response as disinterest.

I am not sure whether this thread is done or not.  It sounds as if the newer arrivals might have ideas that could be productively fleshed out; if so, go for it.  My previous post was not meant to be dismissive, I'm just short on time right now.

Any more links re: TRAP would be appreciated as well.

Thanks,
-David

Hi everyone,

I think it's time for people to start new threads based on specific sub-topics that have arisen in this one.

For those who are relatively new to the Forge, we've done this a lot over the last seven years, and I've taken to calling it "spawning." It always works better than generating one of those 10-page humpbacked threads which includes multiple topics and several pairs of one-on-one conversations, and which wears everyone out.

Here's how it works. (1) Everyone stops posting to this thread. (2) Begin a new thread which links back to this one, with its own topic, and your own experiences of play which illustrate your experience or perspective on that topic. You can summarize the posts in this thread which prompted it, if you want.

The net result is a family of threads which can be referenced as a whole and which becomes a powerful archive for later discussions.

So, that's what we'll do. To be absolutely clear, please keep discussing the topic (or rather, a specific topic that's arisen from it), but not in this thread. No more posting to this thread. Make new ones.

Best, Ron