Hello!

I registered at these forums a while ago with the intent of posting here and hopefully getting some feedback on an RPG that's been in the works for about a year now, but has only just been really shaping up.  It's a concept that involves a fantasy world that, instead of revolving around magic or technology, instead revolves around metaphysics, evangelism, thought experiment, ethics, metaphor, and other such philosophical terms.  Classes come from various well-respected schools of thought and religion in our world; Monsters are caricatures of those who become consumed by their concepts.  I'd say more, but it's probably best if I just point you towards the comic that started it all, which, if you read no more, I would highly recommend to you regardless:

http://dresdencodak.com/cartoons/dc_031.htm

Humour is also a prerequisite!

Ever since this, some of the Dresden Codak forum community has been slowly putting together this RPG, which the creator himself of the comic has started to consider publishing.  We just released our Alpha Manual, which includes a little over ten pages of mechanics (which have been somewhat refined) about 20 Classes and 12 Common skillls (which are mostly unrefined, but are constantly being generated) and various other items of interest and humour, as well.

As the spearhead of the project, I'm no RPG expert, so I was hoping to get some good peer and professional advice here, especially since this might one day be used to, you know, make money.  You can check out the very first, somewhat ramshackle Alpha manual here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?2zppmgyevpj

There are other formats available at our forums, which you can also head to if you'd like to drop us a line or have an idea for more content: http://forums.koalawallop.net/viewforum.php?f=10

I'm mostly looking for insight into the mechanics at this point, but all pointers are welcome.  I'm also looking for playtesters to take this home and give it a try in real life, as we've been running most of our tests via mIRC.  Pointers towards good sources of inspiration are also welcome (But yes, for the record, I do know about Planescape!).  Thank you in advance!

Hi options (can we use your real name as we work?),

How do you imagine a session of play ending? Like the comic? Where the game world events aren't really resolved, rather they are the build up for a self referential joke. Or some other way?

Perhaps the best way to determine the quality of the mechanics, is to determine how you want to end things and then test whether they get you there. Or is the priority that the game keeps going on and on, with interesting content as a support to that?

Hello, Callan!  You folks can call me Sean, if you like.

Currently, a single instance of the game is indeed structured to be completed in one or more sessions.  Our last one ran for about eight 2-3 hour sessions (via mIRC, so somewhat slower than usual).  There's some room for wiggling there, but when all the characters complete/can no longer complete their Goals and the DM is done with any story or area he wants to lead them through, that's when it's done. I've tried to extend the scope somewhat from the comic so that you could consider the comic a particularly interesting segment of normal play, but not a whole session.

Usually, I imagine an ideal session either ending with some large fight or plot point, with jokes that are both provided by the DM and content and improvised by the character players.  The humour thus far is contained in how this is all achieved.  I've been getting some pretty good results from the two trial runs I've managed (One finale involved a high-powered Nihilist being forced to submit in honrable combat under mind-control via the Existentialist Gaze, the other a Neoplatonist who underwent Henosis and was eventually destroyed by a proton torpedo crafted from his own mini-dimension using Pseudoscience and Physics .)  The game could go on and on, but my own philosophy is that it's better to chop it up, and that's the point of little measures such as DM Amusement (a damage addition to certain attacks) and the Treatise-earning system through Goals - they make sure that things are somewhat compartmentalized by the DM.  This ensures there is both a light at the end of the tunnel, and some fun to be had along the way by players.

Admittedly, though, I've usually had to BS a little myself as a DM to keep things interesting, particularly in the second example.  This is fine by me, but I do want to make it clear to other DMs that they are going to have to be flexible, too, to make this game work well.  I haven't really been able to think of a good, psychologically reinforcing way to do this yet.

Hi Sean,

How did you make the end interesting? Could a ruleset be constructed to achieve that ending? Also, does the GM determine when a character goal is complete or cannot be completed?

Sorry for the extended delay in replying.  Since I'm just getting warmed up, I'll start with the last question, which is the easiest - yes, the GM does currently know when a character Goal is complete, although the player themselves will implicitly know that, as well, since they created the Goal.  Character Goals are kept secret, though, so other players may not recognize when they have been achieved or are being worked towards.  The GM does have most of the control over when the scenario ends, however, and that is when goals can no longer be completed.

As for making the end interesting, that's a tough one.  Both were characterized by some rather abnormal gameplay that, while I (the GM) might have suppressed it earlier in the game, seemed more suited for grand, scenario-ending battles.  In the case of the Neoplatonist, two of the players began (after some unsuccessful attempts at normal combat) to instead tear up the scenery surrounding the enemy and turning it into weaponry (which was where the proton torpedo came from), whilst the other two continued fighting the enemy more conventionally using an attack strategy that seemed to work well, if slowly.

It has occurred to me that this could be achieved without such little infractions of the rules or the social contract if I implemented some kind of ruleset that allowed a player-character to try to gain narrative control one time or so per storyline, at his discretion.  He'd probably have to win a conflict with the GM for it, perhaps involving a carefully defined argument over ethics, metaphysics, or epistemology, with the victor being the one who wins the vote of the non-participants.  The desired change in the story would be laid down before the argument began, and the discussion would be timed to keep it from dragging on more than, say, five or ten minutes.

Hi again Options,

Options wrote: yes, the GM does currently know when a character Goal is complete, although the player themselves will implicitly know that, as well, since they created the Goal.

*snip*The GM does have most of the control over when the scenario ends, however, and that is when goals can no longer be completed.

As for making the end interesting, that's a tough one.  Both were characterized by some rather abnormal gameplay that, while I (the GM) might have suppressed it earlier in the game, seemed more suited for grand, scenario-ending battles.

It has occurred to me that this could be achieved without such little infractions of the rules or the social contract if I implemented some kind of ruleset that allowed a player-character to try to gain narrative control one time or so per storyline, at his discretion.  He'd probably have to win a conflict with the GM for it, perhaps involving a carefully defined argument over ethics, metaphysics, or epistemology, with the victor being the one who wins the vote of the non-participants.  The desired change in the story would be laid down before the argument began, and the discussion would be timed to keep it from dragging on more than, say, five or ten minutes.

Thanks, Callan - I've read it, but unfortunately I've had other things to attend to on my own forum, so I haven't had a chance to respond properly or start thinking immediately about its relevance (It's a lot to process, especially since Ron seems to suggest moving away from that idea of things, which I can at least partially understand off the cuff).  Good news is, we're putting together a Power 19 now, which I hope to post on these forums as well once we've got a first draft.  After that, I'll probably be able to talk more coherently about conflict resolution mechanics in Dungeons and Discourse again.

There seems to be a large opportunity here for the player and GM to have really different ideas of when a goal ends, wouldn't you say?

Options,

Just wanted to chime in here. This seems like a very interesting game. It sort of blends Dork Tower with Frasier - which, to me, sounds like a lot of fun. That said, it is high-brow, which I think will give it great appeal to some, but much less to others.

What are your thoughts on marketing? Do you plan on a web release or print?

David

Thanks for the praise, Dave!  It's good to know there are other people out there who think this idea has potential.  Allow me to just say that there's a lot more than you think out there, if the popularity of the webcomic is anything to go by.  Its ever-growing popularity is one of the reasons we've been going a year so far and haven't lost steam yet.

In response to your question, though:  I do this for free, currently, and I have been since the beginning.  College-plus age RPG enthusiasts who also like philosophy can be a little hard to find, so it's likely we'll always offer a dressed-down version like the one we have for our playtesters for free, and our goals, institutionally, aren't any higher than that. 

However, if we do start offering the book for money, it's liable to get a thorough dressing-up (art and formatting) by the artist of the comic, Aaron Diaz, and to be sold in print through his own website.  (Pointers for good printing companies are welcome.)  That's the goal for most of us who have been sticking with the project.

Despite that and my fancy talk, we're pretty much solely grassroots.  I know you can't undervalue or put too much foresight into this kind of stuff, but from my perspective our main needs are hands, playtesters, and exposure right now, before we start considering profit.

That sounds smart to me. Solid progression toward the demand. And a book with art from the comics - or at least in the same style - would give a nice sense of feel and cohesion.

As I've thought about, most gamers I know are pretty intelligent. This probably has a wider appeal than I was considering.

Hi Sean (sorry I didn't use your name last post, there was a time gap and I forgot),

Options wrote:
Thanks, Callan - I've read it, but unfortunately I've had other things to attend to on my own forum, so I haven't had a chance to respond properly or start thinking immediately about its relevance (It's a lot to process, especially since Ron seems to suggest moving away from that idea of things, which I can at least partially understand off the cuff).  Good news is, we're putting together a Power 19 now, which I hope to post on these forums as well once we've got a first draft.  After that, I'll probably be able to talk more coherently about conflict resolution mechanics in Dungeons and Discourse again.

Options wrote:
(One finale involved a high-powered Nihilist being forced to submit in honrable combat under mind-control via the Existentialist Gaze, the other a Neoplatonist who underwent Henosis and was eventually destroyed by a proton torpedo crafted from his own mini-dimension using Pseudoscience and Physics .)

Callan, no sweat.  And thanks, 88!  Unfortunately, the game is still rather rules-heavy from the player side.  I'm working to remediate that now, though, as it's already become evident that no-one's particularly interested in a really complex strategic game.  That's actually the main problem I've with the conflict system, though, in a nutshell.  But before I remodel that, I need to take a look at the theory of it, which is why I'm here.

Anyways, I've started meditating on what Dungeopns and Discourse means in terms of what Ron was trying to say back there, and this is my answer so far.

Since Dungeons and Discourse is a philosophy game, it almost certainly needs to be all about the what-for rather than the what - a near-total inversion from what Ron described and later put into those terms.  The tough part is, I need to achieve this while sticking to a few principles, mandated by the original concept:

1. There must be humour and good roleplaying, the latter a more complicated function than the former, and thus, my goal.  (Ask any actor.  Comedy is hard!)  This is one place I see my game departing from previous stuff - it's looking to promote a specific sort of roleplay, while still having some possibly serious undertones.

2. It needs to fit the overall philosophical/historical theme as well as possible, while demanding only a small minimum of actual philosophical knowledge from the player.  Not only that, it needs to transcend era in this way: even though a fist-century Platonist would have no chance against any modern philosopher in reality, he needs to be given a fighting chance here.  That's probably where dice will come in, since chance is, after all, the great equalizer.

3. It needs to parody the old strategic content of 1980's games and conventional videogames of the same flavor in some major ways.  As I didn't manage that too well in the first edition, I instead gave it some roots in old gameplay.  This worked, but gave it all the problems Ron has described, including a sort of GM-centrism I am highly opposed to.  My aim is now to humourously emulate real philosophical debate, with the GM as the moderator (rather than the master storyteller, as he was before), while still managing this.

Naturally, I'm leaving out the idea of simplicity and good, uncomplicated design, because that's really a given, anyway.

So naturally the question is, how?  How does one turn a game like this on its ear, and still improve it all around?  And how can that be done while actually improving upon, even moving beyond, what's come before? (See: Donjon, Shadow of Yesterday (to a degree), and DitV, of course.)

Here's a thought I've had so far on the matter:

The player and character, I think, are going to need to be be as closely aligned to each other's beliefs and opinions as possible in Dungeons and Discourse  This seems necessary given this model, because each needs to have an idea what to do in a given situation in order to progress towards their previously determined philosophical goals.  The less dissonance between the two, the more time the player has to invent good jokes and generally roleplay well, thus satisfying Goal Number One.  Not only that, but that player will be able to connect to their character well, thus heightening their own enjoyment as well as others.

Yet, there's a conflict that arises there.  Since we're also trying to accomplish Number Two, there needs to be some definite division between player/character types for sake of theme and variation of color.  How can that be provided for, without messing up the unity of character and player?  How can you slot a person into a keyhole like that, while making the minimum no cuts at all?  My previous approach to this was to merely provide as many possibilities as possible, but I'll be damned if that doesn't make for an unwieldy manual.

Number Three, applied to this, means that there should need to be some GM-provided, decorative clutter - just a touch of "what".  Although, that's more an artistic touch than anything, so it may be that the best answer to that is that the clutter can be completely brushed away if a player so wills it, evoking the concept of a debate gone off-topic, and thus beyond the control of a moderator (the GM).

I look forward to your replies!

Hi Sean,

I'm just going to look at one of your goals to start off with - good roleplay. I'm going to suggest something you can actually measure and physically implement, as opposed to the nebulous idea of 'good'. That thing is uncertainty. With the good roleplay you've experienced, what would you say is behind it? Did you know what the player was going to do ten minutes before he did it, or did it come as a wonderful surprise? Further, would you say sometimes the great thing about the roleplay is not what happened, but that it just come straight out of left field unexpectedly?

Just briefly, uncertainty can be shaped, so only a scope of actions are possible. Shooting a granny and stuffing her in a dumpster can be made outside the scope, helping the granny cross the road whilst pick pocketing her can be made to be one of the possible range of actions inside the scope. Or perhaps more debate themed, argue her out of owning a pet and crossing the road without it - just cause the character hates dogs, really. What a bastard! What a surprise!

That's what I'd suggest looking into - I also think it helps with some of the other goals you listed. Otherwise, personally I don't know what to do about good roleplay - it's too undefinable and murky to me.

Heh I hadn't planned on joining the boards yet, but after starting to read through that system (just the monsters and items so far) I have to say that it looks brilliant.  The fact that I'm a fan of Dresden Codak (I read a ton of webcomics it falls into the Rare Updates, High Quality folder).  Heh after starting to read through that I have to say I'm a bit peevish of putting off my D&D alternative here in a week or two, but hey good designers will lead to good advice or just polite ignoring.  I can't promise to run a test game of this without going over the conflict resolution systems heavily, but I do feel the need to say that it's hilarious.

Thank you as usual, Callan, and thanks for the praise, was_fired!  As per Callan's advice, I'll start with trying to define my concept of "good roleplaying" better, then.

While humour is a major goal, it seems consistent with the philosophical theme that we have characters who are specifically driven toward one world-view or personal belief, and this is mostly what I meant when I first mentioned "good role playing," as I imagine this as a necessary axiom for any given game to be interesting.  Thus, I'd say that one of our first things we want to coax out of the player has to be self-consistency.  A Catholic Theologer should turn the other cheek when slapped, not punch back;  Discordians should be fonts of wacky absurdisms; Positivists should be technophiles, and so on. 

That being said, there is a more complex purpose to this.  We're going with the whole "indomitable avatars of reason" concept mainly because we want to, as in the comic, tear the whole structure down (or at least give it a darn good shaking).  This starts to fulfill the second part of that "good roleplaying" statement, humour. This arises when our expectations are thrown out the window in a more-or-less ethically acceptable way, so that's the second thing we want to coax out of a player.  In terms of character, the Catholic, after being slapped, should turn a cheek but might later sneakily kick the aggressor in the shins.  In terms of situation, the Discordian might find himself trapped in Schrodinger's box until he gives in and makes sense for a change, or the Positivist might find that everything he touches turns to silicon.  And, of course, there's always plain old slapstick, which would permeate your standard combat conflict, because philosophers actually going to fisticuffs is really the bread and butter of this game, anyway!

Finally, all of this is naturally quite meaningless without some direction (although for humour's sake, we might allow for some misdirection).  Thus, every character needs to be inevitably hurtling towards some eventual conclusion, which (as mentioned before) it seems best that it would be best to involve some grand finale involving, well, old-school fireworks in the form of exotic monsters, artifacts, hoards of treasure, and the like.  A final bit of systemic humour, as I've envisioned it, is that most of this should be quite ho-hum to any philosopher.  After all, they don't care about the material, right?  They're only really interested in things that could solidify their postion.

The first difficulty I arrive at after this, though, is how we can ask a player to roleplay in ways that are both compliant and contrary to the nature of their characters and still expect to keep that direction without spoiling or amending the humour.  Not only that, but if we're to really keep to the philosophical theme, it would also be good if we have players going at each other at least once an RP session, which also complicates things.  This is where I see the GM stepping in somehow, but I can't yet determine how to do that without making old mistakes, like giving the GM indomitable control over the whole storyline.

Really, what that boils down to is the problem of making a humour game that's not just total random insanity.  Despite my efforts, I've yet to find many good examples of games that have tried to overcome this - does anyone know of any?

It's not a game, but Ron did a recent post on the sort of groundwork for a game like that: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=25453.msg245438#msg245438

In part two of that post he quotes this, and describes play derived from it

We all agreed that (a) our PCs were working together as a group, for some cause greater than individual self-interest, (b) our PCs would initially hold quite disparate metaphysical assumptions

Hey Sean, good to see you here - I'm not so much in the webcomic scene, but I have a print of Dungeons and Discourse (the strip) on my office wall. :-)

Two simple things you could do to support funny play:

1) make Goals public knowledge. When only the individual player and the DM know the Goals, only one other person (the DM) can set the individual player up for hysterical shit. If Goals are public, everyone can make each other awesome.

(Another thing to maybe look at is Keys in The Shadow of Yesterday, as constant, passive reinforcers of whatever behavior they're written toward. Goals are already halfway there, but they could be an opportunity for injecting a lot of humor into the rules: "MORAL RELATIVIST - Gain 1 Treatise when you behave in a totally absolutist way and then deny it later," etc.)

2) in a similar vein, replace DM Amusement with something that everyone can get in on. After all, if your shit is only making one other person at the table (the DM) laugh, is the game really firing on all cylinders? The default thing to steal here is Fan Mail from Prime Time Adventures. You could spin it up like so: when a monster does damage to a PC, each point of damage causes a fanmail token to go into the center of the table. Once per encounter, any player may take a fanmail token from the center of the table and give it to another player. These tokens may then be used to add to your rolls.

A less easy thing to do to support the funny: there's a long-fabled "law" of comedy, the law of three - the theory that in lots of jokes and sketches you something twice, and then the third time around you do something different. Basically, it's a minimal way of codifying the establishment and subsequent breakage of patterns. I have long thought that there's a lot of untapped potential here for game mechanics, but I am nowhere near smart enough to tap it.

Finally, something I have longed to see in D&Dis ever since Aaron mentioned the actual design effort to me at Stumptown Comics Fest: when PCs kill a monster or other DM-created threat, any excess damage beyond what takes the threat's HP to 0 is applied to the DM's hit points. When the DM's hit points reach 0, the game enters the Post-Modern Era: play is no longer directed by a DM, but instead by drawing threats at random from a card deck and assigning them to different players to control. (The DM rolls up a new character to participate in play.) Play proceeds in this fashion until someone levels up to DM status...

(Obviously that'd need some tightening up and probably further rules for it to work at all. But you have to admit the idea is kind of perfect...)

Just wanted to make one more post here thanking everyone for their input so far - we're not far from going into Beta now, so things are going to be a little inappropriate for the First Thoughts forum after this, as I'm going to be focusing more on Actual Play.  Still, new thoughts and comments are, as always, welcom, particularly on the new stuff I'll be bringing up here concerning changes for Beta.  And, of course, my apologies for the slow rate of reply. I do read this stuff as soon as it's posted, but I find that brewing up a worthwhile answer takes considerably longer when you do it right.

Mike, you might be happy to know that I have indeed already begun stealing concepts from Shadow of Yesterday :)  That has been essentially the point of Quale as a reward-generating mechanism to this point.  Quale act as looser "Keys" that generate Treatise (XP-like "items" that can be used for both character advancement and currency).  However, we ran into a problem when we tried classifying them like SoY does, because when it comes to philosophy there are just so bloody many possibilities!  As such, I'm now moving toward a more DitV approach concerning Quale that will use them as elements that partly determine level of conflict, although Quale will still retain some Treatise-generating qualities.  The other factor is going to be Amusement, which I'm decentralizing, as I'll explain more below.

I also love that point about public Goals.  I noticed in the last couple playtests that Goals tend to come out anyway (even in the presence of a single publicly shared Goal, which I've called a Social Contract) so I think I'll give it a shot next round.

One new thing up for talk, inspired by Mike and other playtest comments - I'm now planning to switch to a more tag-team-like combat in Beta where Amusement is determined by the spectators, not the involved parties (i.e. the GM, in many conflicts).  The votes of spectators will raise the effective "accuracy" of the combatant their favor falls upon from round to round.  However, if everyone wants to get involved in the conflict at hand, that's still going to remain an option - there'll just be no accuracy bonuses going around.  Spectators, of course, get about the same rewards as anyone else, even if they sit out the whole round.  On top of that, unanimous votes (where all vote) will be able to function as escalators of conflict alongside invocations of Quale, allowing characters to both use stronger powers and change the conflict type from relatively peaceful to more violent.

That last bit is just plain crazy, though!  Not that it's bad, I just have no idea how I could make that work (It's a bit of a mystery how a GM could have hitpoints under the current system, or even the one I'm planning).  Maybe I need to talk to Mr. Diaz again...

Callan, as ever, you've provided a font of wisdom that I've yet to fully comprehend, even a month later!  I'm not actually as sure how pertinent that particular thread is, though, as I've been moving away from Simulationism in Dungeons and Discourse towards a more Gamist/Narrativist approach that I've found suits the theme better, but I am certainly intrigued by the implications of the Right to Dream in Dungeons and Discourse, as I do occasionally get the feeling that it's in the mix there somewhere despite this.  I've yet to find anything that I can point directly to yet, though.

Some unrelated points:

i) the skills seem to be heavily based around combat.

ii) Discordianism and Transhumanism don't really exist other than on the internet, I don't see much point in having them in there.

iii) Suggestion for a power for the Nihilist: That Which Does Not Destroy Me Makes Me Stronger (increases their power if they suffer a major wound eg).

iv) The Utilitarian should have some kind of animal-based power, derived from Peter Singer's conception of animal rights.

v) Marxists should be able to not just interpret the rules, but change them.

vi) There should be a Veil of Ignorance.

Monkeys wrote:
Some unrelated points:

i) the skills seem to be heavily based around combat.

ii) Discordianism and Transhumanism don't really exist other than on the internet, I don't see much point in having them in there.

iii) Suggestion for a power for the Nihilist: That Which Does Not Destroy Me Makes Me Stronger (increases their power if they suffer a major wound eg).

iv) The Utilitarian should have some kind of animal-based power, derived from Peter Singer's conception of animal rights.

v) Marxists should be able to not just interpret the rules, but change them. Also, transform other Marxists into members of other classes (through bitter polemics against them), Imitate Religion etc.

vi) There should be a Veil of Ignorance.

Also also, the ancient Greeks associated each of the Platonic Solids with one of the classical 'elements' - so maybe there should be a power based on Earth that uses a d6, one based on water that uses a d20 etc.

I wonder if maybe voting should play a larger role in resolution?

iv) The Utilitarian should have some kind of animal-based power, derived from Peter Singer's conception of animal rights.

Spectre of Communism: allows a Marxist to take on an intangible form.

Invisible Hand of the Market: allows ? to become invisible.

Redistribution: allows a Marxist to pick the pocket of someone with more wealth than the Marxist has.

Catholic Social Teaching: a weaker form of Redistribution.

The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number: allows a Utilitarian to give a bonus to themselves and all members of their party, but only if the party outnumbers the opposition.

Liberation Theology: A Marxist may cast this on a Catholic. The Catholic can briefly use the powers of a Marxist.

Befriend, and Bestow Moral Significance on, Animals.

A Utilitarian may use this power on any animal that the party has befriended. The animal is immediately statted as a character rather than a monster. It rolls ?. If a Buddhist or Hindu dies, they may attempt to enter the animal's body, by ?.

Undermine Colonialist Discourse:

If a Post-Modernist is in the party, monsters with a reaction of "always attack" actually have a random reaction.

Options wrote:
There are other formats available at our forums, which you can also head to if you'd like to drop us a line or have an idea for more content: http://forums.koalawallop.net/viewforum.php?f=10