Hello Forge!

I've been wrestling with an idea for a while, but I've finally got a skeleton that I can almost explain and I was curious about what other designers thought.

My Goals: Create a really open-ended, narrative game. Structure the game so that it naturally rewards active roleplaying and player involvement. Leave the rules open enough that I can plug in rules modules to represent special story points.

Here's the Skeleton:
Everything is narrated (or taken care of with in-character conversations) until strings of narration start conflicting in interesting ways. This starts a Scene.

Within the Scene, each character can narrate using one Trait to help them in a conflict. Traits are rated as one or more dice (from the assortment of d4 to d12.) If there isn't an appropriate Conflict out, the GM puts the Conflict on the table and the player or GM rolls that Trait on one side of the Conflict.

Also on each character's sheet are Passions. If a Passion can be rolled into the narration, that action doesn't count towards their once per scene limit. Each Passion and each Trait can only be used once a scene, however.

There are two other ways to use Traits: defensively and as part of a Last Stand. Whenever a conflict is put on the table, each character that conflict directly affects can narrate using a trait to defend. This does not break the rule of using a Trait once a scene, but doesn't count against the limits on actions.

Last Stands are used at the end of the Scene, right before Conflicts resolve. Each character that would have control of their fate taken away by a Conflict can narrate a trait defensively on that Conflict. Doing this damages the trait used, removing its highest die until story-time is dedicated to repairing the trait.

Random Side Notes:
Traits are how the player thinks their character stands out, so Master Swordsman, Pigheaded, and Blind are all totally legitimate Traits. Even the negative-sounding ones are used in the same way, by twisting them into an advantage through narration.

Passions are goals and really the GM's big flag of what the Player's want to do with the game. Every Scene should bounce of at least one Passion and activating all of them shouldn't be odd. Passions can follow the whole range of human desires from overthrowing the king to finding true love to proving yourself to the elders.

Traits start at a d4. Any time a player (or the GM) wants, they can add a new trait to their character as a d4. These traits are increased logically (d4 to d6 to d8 to d10 to d12). A trait can be increased once for getting through a major scene. A trait can also be increased when you lose an important challenge, representing the lessons learned there.

Once you reach a d12, you get another die by achieving "mastery." Mastery is gained through the story, by proving yourself the greatest at a trait, receiving training from another master, or whatever's appropriate. Whatever test is passed becomes the new name for the trait (for example "Trained under the Grand Master") and an extra die is added at d4. The new die increases normally until it comes time to seek another level of mastery.

Starting characters would typically have six traits (d12, d10, d8, d8, d6, d6) and however many d4 traits their heart desired. They'd also typically start with three passions. Passions can be traded out during play outside of scenes, as long as the player isn't being abusive.

The assumption is that any player that narrates Trait and Passion use in good faith is allowed to use them. At least once a scene, the GM should give out a bonus die (d12) to great narration.

Design Thoughts/Questions:
Last Stand is kind of weird and I'm still up in the air on whether to include them. Situations like death are also a good way to easily tie in even the most irrelevant Passions ("If I die now, I'll never find true love.")

Might want to expand the good narration award to "everyone around the table gets a d12 per scene to hand out."

The game mechanically could be GM free easily enough, but I love GMing dearly and I'm not sure I could write myself out of the game in prima facie.

The current narration/dice mechanic is based on the idea that all narration occurs, then dice are rolled. The dice always count towards the total (even if you roll a one), so you never have to narrate your character sucking unless you want to.

I have a tendency to say "unless people abuse the privilege" a lot in the rules and my thoughts. This is honestly how I feel about it, but I'm curious if anyone else has good/bad experiences with that sort of system.

Hopefully that all made some amount of sense. As I implied at the top, I've been having a lot of trouble forming a good written explanation of the rules.

Anyway, I'm getting close to the point where I feel comfortable dragging my friends in to playtest it, but I've been lurking here for a long time and really appreciate the top-notch input I tend to see here. Barring anything I missed that requires the game be torn down and rebuilt, I should have a playtest copy of the rules fairly soon.

Cheers!
Landon

Landon wrote:

Design Thoughts/Questions:
Last Stand is kind of weird and I'm still up in the air on whether to include them. Situations like death are also a good way to easily tie in even the most irrelevant Passions ("If I die now, I'll never find true love.")

Might want to expand the good narration award to "everyone around the table gets a d12 per scene to hand out."

The game mechanically could be GM free easily enough, but I love GMing dearly and I'm not sure I could write myself out of the game in prima facie.

The current narration/dice mechanic is based on the idea that all narration occurs, then dice are rolled. The dice always count towards the total (even if you roll a one), so you never have to narrate your character sucking unless you want to.

I have a tendency to say "unless people abuse the privilege" a lot in the rules and my thoughts. This is honestly how I feel about it, but I'm curious if anyone else has good/bad experiences with that sort of system.

Hello Frank! Thanks for your input, you've given me some good stuff to think about.

I hadn't considered the resource management aspect of the Last Stand, that definitely adds a lot of depth. I was considering leaving it out for my first playtest, but I'll definitely slide it in there to see how the player's interact with it.

As far as casual gamers, I think its definitely worth reaching out to them. Honestly, a think a more free-form narrativist system could really make that introduction much easier. Not sure how they'd react to handing out dice, though, it might feel a little strange and meta-gamey at first.

Spreading the wealth with dice hand-outs is probably really key. Another option would be to only allow one die to be added to each roll. So one player could get multiple rewards, but it wouldn't end up with only the single best narration each time being rewarded. Having one added die per player would end up forcing a strange situation where each player would get exactly one die each time, unless someone forgot to use their die, which seems a little off to me.

I'll be sure to focus on the narration-first aspect, then. I'm certainly aiming for a narrativist game, not because narrativist is the be-all end-all, but because I find I run narrativist games anyway and the rules might as well support it.

Hopefully I'll have playtest rules up by next weekend for you to have a look at. Actually having a playtest session shortly, so I might be able to report on that as well.

Cheers!
Landon