This is my first post on the Forge.  I've been working on a game for a couple weeks now and I wanted to get some feedback and suggestions on a few specific points.

First, let me give a very high-level view of what my game is and what some of my main goals are.  Then I'll jump into the specific questions I have.

My goals are:

* to create a Story Now game
* that is driven by a back-and-forth between the GM and players, where neither side can control or guide the story completely.
* for the players to have clear Flags as the heart of their character sheets
* to have Goals specific to that scene to drive every scene
* to have the dice spew out complications and twists more than to model simple success or failure
* to model a story structure similar to many movies and some novels
* to be flexible for many settings and genres (though it's not truly universal, since it pushes a certain structure of story)

In the past, my group has played primarily traditional games (D&D, World of Darkness, etc.).  In the last two years, I've been introducing new games (Spirit of the Century, Starblazers and Burning Wheel so far).  Those games have gone over pretty well and have been a lot of fun.

However, I've been vetoed on running some other games I'd really like to run (like Don't Rest Your Head, Polaris, Dust Devils and Dogs in the Vineyard) for various reasons, but usually because my players say they aren't interested in the settings and/or they're uncomfortable with how different the rules are.

A big part of working on this game is to be able to take elements similar to the games I've been vetoed on running but use them to create a story structure that will be more to my players tastes (and so be more likely to actually be played in my group).  A lot of the mechanics I'm using are inspired by other games--I'll try to give credit where it's due.

Alright, that's enough on my group and high-level goals.

The main mechanic I wanted feedback on was how I'm planning on structuring scenes and chapters to drive the story from the beginning, through rising action and to a dramatic end.  The "meta-structure" (the beginning, middle and end of the story) are implemented through the interaction of three systems:

First, each player character has a "Character Scale" that shifts towards the end of the scale.  When the Scale hits the end, the character is forced to have a Crisis Scene that resolves their character arc and removes them from the game (hoepfully in a cool, satisfying way).  This is very much inspired by Dust Devils; however, rather than the character getting weaker (less dice) until they finally hit the end, this Scale will make them more powerful as they slide along it, right up to the end.  In that way, it's more inspired by Polaris of Don't Rest Your Head.  I'll probably make a separate post about some of my questions and issues with the Scale, but for now I just needed to put it in because it interacts heavily with the scene system, which is what I really want to focus on now.  Comments are still welcome, of course.

Second, the scenes alternate between Player Scenes and GM Scenes.  Each Player Scene is framed and begun by one specific player and it rotates, so each player gets the same number of scenes.  Other player characters can be in the scene, but the player controlling the scene is dominant.  Also, there are several types of scenes (like Burning Empire) so its possible to have no player characters in a scene.  Like the Character Scale above, I have more to say on this, but I'll save it for a separate post.

Third, (and this is the part I want to focus on in this post), the game is split up into "Chapters".  Chapters are driven by specific "Goals" and last a minimum of two scenes (one Player Scene and one GM Scene). There is no technical limit, but practically they won't tend to last more than 6 or so scenes at most (I'd guess).  The duration and make-up of the Chapter is an organic process, driven by the introduction and resolution of the Goal, rather than a more "top-down" approach.

A new Chapter begins when one or more players declare a new Goal (so yes, if the players are separated, there can be parallel Chapters simultaneously). I'll talk more later in this post about when and how Goals are chosen. Also, not every character has to be in a Chapter at all times. They can be "between Chapters" temporarily. They won't want to stay there, because they're missing out on system rewards, but it can be a good time for Character Scenes or "downtime".

Chapters always start with a Player scene (this isn't just arbitrary, but will happen naturally based on the system). The first scene can be any kind of scene, but only a Conflict scene can "complete" or "win" a chapter. Other scenes have tactical uses, too (gaining bonuses, "healing", changing Character Keys, showcasing something cool but not directly related to the Chapter Goal, etc.), but Conflict scenes are how Goals are accomplished and the plot is driven forward.  Any character who is involved in the Chapter can start a Conflict Scene to resolve it.

When a player starts a Conflict Scene in a Chapter (whether it's their first Player Scene of the Chapter or not), they try to complete the Goal.  If the Goal can't conceivably be completed in one Conflict scene, then it should broken up into a couple smaller Chapters. The player(s) play out the scene and the dice hit the table.  Based on the results of the roll, they'll "take damage" and advance (i.e., their Character Scale can shift).  I'll talk more about that later.  More importantly for this post, they either succeed or fail at the Chapter Goal.

After each Player Scene (of any type, whether COnflict or not), there's a GM scene. What the GM can do depends on what type of scene the Player scene was and what the outcome was. The exact details are pending, but I'm just focusing on the Chapter structure now so I'll only talk about what happens after a Conflict Player Scene.

After any player Conflict Scene, the GM runs one of two special kinds of GM scene, depending on whether the scene was resolved (the players succeeded or failed and accepted failure) or if the scene was failed but the players want to keep pushing on.

If the Chapter is resolved (either because the players(s) succeeded or failed and gave up the Goal), then the GM runs a scene where the antagonists strike back hard. Not only that, but it has to introduce some new twist or reveal something or show some unexpected consequence of the players actions or in some other way change the story in a way out of the player's control.  For now I'm calling this a "Reveal" scene.

Following that "Reveal", the player(s) must come up with a new Goal. Then the new Chapter begins with the player's next scene.

On the other hand, if the Conflict scene isn't successful (i.e. doesn't successfully complete the Goal) and the player(s) doesn't want to give up the Goal, then the player(s) is setting themselves up for a world of hurt. In that case, the GM does an "Escalation" scene. I don't have the exact details of Escalation scenes, but they are more "dangerous" and more is at stake. These showcase the situations when the hero is bruised and broken but refuses to give up. Expect the blood (actual or metaphoric) to flow.

After that Escalation scene, the player can still choose to give up the Goal by doing a Character or Color scene showing their "surrender". That is followed by a "Reveal" scene by the GM as if they had given up before the Escalation scene (so the player gets kicked twice, but the GM should often be relatively nice about it).

But if the player still wants to go for it, then that player(s) and the GM continue to go back and forth, both using Escalation scenes. Each round intensifies the danger and pain.

Eventually the player(s) wins, surrenders or is pushed to a Crisis Scene because their Character Scale hits the end. Regardless, they'll suffer much more than an early victory, but have a cool, epic struggle to brag about. Also, there will be some kind of "hero point" system (like artha or Fate Points) and it will favor Ecalation Scenes (because I want players to escalate for things they care about). In fact, if players win every Chapter on the first Conflict scene, they'll probably have a pretty low pool of points.  Plus, getting beat up (having your Scale shift) makes characters more powerful right up until ther Crisis Scene hits.

Regardless, the GM still runs a "Reveal" scene after the Chapter is resolved (successfully or not) and the player(s) still has to pick a new Goal and then start a new Chapter.

And so it goes...

...but not indefinitely. Crisis scenes can knock players out of the game, so that's a way to "lose" or end the campaign. Also, eventually a player or GM (I might limit it to players only) is going to announce the Climax Chapter. This is a chapter that, as part of its Goal, will end the Campaign one way or another. It's the end-game. It has to fit the flow of the narrative and (more importantly) the other players have to agree that it a) makes sense and b) is a cool time to do it. Other than consensus, there aren't hard-and-fast rules on when the Climax Scene can be done. It can be the end of the first session (for a one-shot) or after years of epic campaigning. (I'm undecided how to handle campaigns where the characters are still split at the end, but I can hold off on that discussion for now.)

Assuming everyone is on board, the Climax chapter begins....

It basically works the same as normal Chapters, except for two differences. First, it starts out as Escalation Scenes and ramps up really fast. It's all Conflict scenes and it's brutal. Second, you can't "surrender" (well, more accurately, surrendering the Chapter means surrendering the whole Campaign, so you can't try again later). This is it. You're going to keep going until you either win or you die or you just give up like a loser and go home.

And the GM still gets a last scene afterwards. What the GM does will really depend on the needs of the story and their feel for what would fit best. It can be the breakneck escape as the villain's lair built in a volcano starts to crumble and the volcano is erupting. It can be a last speech by the antagonist before they die or are dragged off to prison. It can be the antagonist having a change of heart and begging for forgiveness. It can be a Color Scene, letting the GM describe the battle field in the bitter-sweet aftermath. Part of that is that the GM can do any type of scene (Conflict, Color, etc.) that they think fits best.

And then the very, very last scene is the Denouement. It's all wrapped up in a satisfying bow and the campaign is over. Frodo sails West and Sam has a family. Luke and Han and Leia get medals in a ceremony. The camera pauses a moment on a lonely grave, showing the poignant epithet. The girl gets the boy and they kiss as we fade to black. Again, whatever.

I don't know who gets to describe the Denouement scene. Maybe it's collaborative. Maybe it's always the players. Maybe it's which ever side lost (or won or has the most "points" left). I'll clarify eventually, but it's not critical yet so consider it pending.

And... cut.  The story's over.

So my questions are:

Are there any problems with this that I'm not seeing?

Will the Chapter structure (particularly the Goal at the heart of the chapter, and the Reveal scene followed by having to pick a new Goal) give enough of a structure to lead to clean beginnings, rising action and a satisfying ending, or does it need something more?

Any thoughts, warnings or advice on handling multiple players, since I want them to be able to be doing separate things at the same time?  (Hell, they can be in the same place at the same time and still be in different chapters because they aren't working towards the same Goals).

I didn't talk about GM scenes much.  I anticipate them being largely a mix of responding to Player Scenes, introducing unexpected twists and dangers and attacking the players and messing up their goals.  Is that sufficient?  Do I need the GM to create separate Goals for the antagonists and so have "Chapters" of their own, or should I keep GM scenes more closely integrated with player scenes?  I lean towards the second, but want advice.

I know it's not as helpful to ask for general feedback and advice, but please feel free to give any other feedback you might have.  I'm particularly interested in any actual play experience with systems that are trying to do something similar and what did or didn't work.  Several games do something similar (Burning Empire has GM and Player scenes; Dust Devils, Polaris and Don't Rest Your Head all have a variant of "Character Scales" that slide towards the end) but I haven't played any of those yet, just read them, so I don't have any play experience to draw on.

And finally, since this is my first post, I'm open to any advice or criticism on how to use this forum to its best advantage.

Thank you all in advance for you comments.

-John Bogart
Amateur Game Designer

I wanted to ask some more questions about some ideas I had for the "meta-structure" of the game I'm designing.

First, before making you read through my mini-essay below, let me start by saying what I'm looking for with the specific ideas and questions in this post.  I want to create a certain type of story structure with the game I'm designing.  The first several paragraphs below are describing what I want.  Then I have a couple specific ideas to try and accomplish that, but a) I'm not sure if the ideas will work the way I want them to and b) I'm very open to suggestions or other ideas.  So I'm looking for feedback and suggestions and criticism.

Also, I use some terms like "reward" and "flag" in ways that I think are consistent with how they're used in Forge theory, but I'm still new enough to a lot of the theory stuff that I may be way off.  I'd be appreciative of comments on how I'm thinking about theory terms, if applicable.

Finally, is this post too long?  Should I have broken each question up into a separate thread?  All the ideas seemed to hang on each other, but it might just be too much to reply to...?

~~~~~

For the game I'm working on, I've been thinking about emulating the story structure of many movies and some novels where the protagonists (read: players) have a fairly clear goal from the beginning and are opposed by an antagonist (read: GM), all while working out and (hopefully) resolving some inner flaw that's been messing up their lives (and likely hurting those around them).  The protagonists pursue that goal, but of course things don't go smoothly.  They are, as a rule, "losing" for the first chunk of the movie before reaching a low point where everything seems lost.  Throughout the story there are reveals and twists that force the protagonists to reevaluate and change their direction and tactics, and it's a similar reveal that shows them their seeming defeat isn't actually defeat after all, propelling them into the final approach and showdown.  Further, there's both an internal and an external track to the story. 

The internal, or moral, element of the story is the "heart" of the story: The protagonist's flaw is central, they usually become increasingly desperate and even immoral as they are losing, and the final conflict is ultimately a contest between competing moral codes or ways of living with any conflicts often being metaphors or externalizations of that moral conflict, and the resolution shows the protagonists in their new lives (whether improved or sunk even further into their flaws).

The external, or action, element of the story is the plot: Stuff happens, the protagonists are pulled into the plot, they're in danger, they have successes and failures, they have a final showdown and they win or lose or die or get the girl or whatever.

~~~

So, anyway, my point is that I want to design my system to support and reward that story structure.

In my first post above, I talked about the system idea I have for setting up "chapters" and scenes (alternating Gm and player scenes, chapters being based around a Goal and a system for resolving the Goals and closing the Chapters, etc.).  See that post for more details.  I don't think the systems perfect, but it's a good starting point for what I want and I'm sure it will get tweaked and revised as I keep designing and get to play testing, etc., and since there have been no replies to that post so far, I'll assume nothing is obviously broken about the idea... :)

But something I'm still working on is the rewards to the players.  Yeah, a satisfying story is nice (and it's what drives me as GM), but it's not what drives my players.

One of the major rewards I'm planning on using is tying "advancement" to "damage" and the moral track.  I touched on this briefly in the first post above.  Each character will have a "scale" that starts at zero and slides upward as they take "damage".  In fact, it is probably the only type of "damage" in the system.  As the scale goes up, the characters get more powerful.  However, when it hits the end, then the character's next scene will be a Crisis Scene that centers on their Need (see below).  Crisis scenes are dangerous and are one of the only situations where the character can "die" (i.e. be removed from the story in whatever way) based on the dice rather than on character choice.  Also, Crisis scenes always change the character profoundly (both on the character sheet and in their story, Need and Want).  It's the "climax" of the character's internal "Heart" line in the story.  Note that it's not my goal to require a Crisis scene for every character in every story.  It's fine if it happens, but the players will have some control over how much they want to focus on the "scale" vs. staying fairly unchanged and stable (like many action heroes who don't really evolve in the story).

As another thought, I'd like to encourage Crisis Scenes to happen at dramatically appropriate times (such as right before the Climax or right after it), but in order to keep the Crisis Scene as a danger to put pressure on the player, I don't want it to be too predictable or too desirable.  So I'm leaning away from trying to tie it more tightly into the overall story flow.  That's not set in stone, though.

~~~

Next, I'm planning on having each player choose both a Need and a Want for their characters at campaign creation (not necessarily character creation--this is tied to the campaign and can shift from story to story for recurring characters). 

The Need is their character's moral or psychological or social flaw.  What is wrong with the character that is keeping them from living right?  Whether the character would see it as a flaw or not isn't important--the players are the ones choosing the themes they think would be fun to play out.  From the system's perspective, having the Need of being too sensitive is just as valid and potentially fun as the Need of being too jaded and cold.  That Need is inextricably tied to their character "scale" (see above) as it slides and will be the heart of their Crisis Scene, if they reach one.  Therefore this Need will come up a lot in play and will most likely change (it's the foundation of the character arc) and the player should pick what they think would be awesome to play out.  So the Need is the core of the Heart Line.  For characters that continue across multiple stories, there will probably be some kind of carry-over of the Need, but I'm not too concerned about that yet and it should be fairly easy to decide that later.

In contrast, the Want is what the character wants to accomplish in that specific campaign.  The character knows what it is, but doesn't necessarily know how to accomplish it yet.  This is the Core of the Action Line.  I don't really have the systems in place yet for the Want.  What I want to do is tie it closely to a "hero points" or other type of reward that can be spent to help rolls or something similar.  I also want to relate it to the Goals that drive Chapters (see the thread linked above).  I see the Want being the campaign-level goal, with the Chapter Goals being smaller goals that are steps towards the larger Want.  (Really, the Want and chapter goals have a lot in common with Beliefs, especially how it ties to gaining artha, the "hero points", in Burning Wheel and BW is definitely my biggest inspiration for Goals and Wants in general.)  The Want can and will evolve throughout play (e.g. if a character wants to become king, they could decide later that they've met the "true king-to-be" and change to helping that other character get the throne instead).

~~~

Finally, another thing I've been trying to emulate is to have the characters "losing" the first part of the story and keeping the pressure up.  The characters should only have the advantage firmly on their side somewhere between the middle of the story through right before the Climax.  This is an area I'm definitely looking for help on.  I don't really have answers yet, so the below paragraphs are just some thoughts I'm playing with in no particular order or cohesion.

The "character scale" helps with part of this, because getting "hurt" earlier on both makes them more powerful while also shining the spotlight on their Need and their consequent character arc.  But I don't think it's enough.

I really like how Burning Wheel emphasizes failure adding complications or twists, rather than necessarily meaning you fail.  I'd like to use something like that, too.  If I'm going to make the characters "lose" a lot in the beginning, then I need to be really careful not to make them feel powerless.  Actually, keeping it rewarding and fun for the player is far more important than this whole goal of emulating losing the first part.  I want it to be fun and tense and I think failing is often more fun in game than winning, so I still think I can pursue this goal.

So maybe they shouldn't be "losing" in the beginning.  I think there needs to be some other angle (maybe as simple as being careful how I define it).  I do want the antagonists to be hitting the characters hard and for the players to feel the pressure rising, however it plays out in the system.

I think on of the biggest opportunities here is that every other scene is a GM scene, so the players have their scenes where they're pursuing a Goal (and succeeding or failing and facing the consequences), but the GM also has scenes.  There might be an opportunity to use GM scenes to help accomplish my goal here.

Also, I as GM have a tendency to be too nice and focused on cooperating with the players.  I want the system to both force me to be "mean" to my players and to help my make the challenges I throw at them challenging and fun.

Another rough thought I have is that I want the mechanics to emphasize the cost or consequences much more than success or failure.  If I add enough guidance and/or systems to reliably lead to Chapters being built with appropriate Goals and to have GM scenes used to their best effect, then succeeding or failing at the Chapter Goal is interesting and drives the plot forward and all, but the real question is how much you suffer before giving up or succeeding.  This is really based on the meta-structure idea on my first post above.  So the question is how to make sure that the system is creating the right kinds of Chapters for the story.  Again, suggestions are very welcome.

~~~

I suppose I should add here that I don't really have the dice mechanics worked out.  I've been intentionally leaving them vague, because I know from past experience that it's an area I tend to get caught up in cool ideas and lose sight of what's really best for the game.  So I'm trying to really figure out what I want the dice to do, and then find the best mechanic, rather than thinking up cool mechanics and trying to fit the game around them.  I can say that I'm leaning towards a simple system similar to Don't Rest Your Head, with variable pools of d6's and with the dice telling not only who "wins" but also what aspect of the scene is "Dominant" and colors the results.  I also want to make narration rights part of the system so that the narrator can shift from scene to scene.  I have more details than that, but I'm trying not to get married to any dice mechanics so I won't say more.

~~~

Thanks in advance for any help (comments, suggestions, criticism, etc.).

I often don't get replies when I post to forums so I suspect that there's an underlying reason (such as tending to write long threads with multiple questions or points).  This is only my second post on this forum, but I still would appreciate any criticism.

-John Bogart

Welcome to the Forge, John. Don't be anxious about not getting replies on your posts or whatnot. A part of it can certainly be about writing very heavy and complex posts, but most really depends on luck. It's easy for something to get ignored simply because many people happen to be busy with other things at the time and miss the thread altogether, for example.

First, an observation from my own play. The primary benefit many games get from drama arc mechanics - which is what you're doing here - is that having the rules handle the arc allows the GM and other players to focus on the momentary choices; they get to play against the constraint of the rules, in other words. Another, related effect is that the dramatic rules constrain player choices and thus may support creativity by forcing players to take the game to unexpected directions.

An important lesson related to drama arc mechanics is, however, that they're not always needed, and they can even be harmful to creating a Story Now game. This is typically the case when the design is concerned with creating a story with the "correct" form. It's also what many think of first when thinking of drama arc mechanics: they exist to enforce a good form for the story. However, in most successful designs this is not actually the case. To take an example, what does My Life with Master, an early example of this thing, actually do with the rules-imposed dramatic constraints? The short answer is that the requirements of the game's focused scope force and direct the players to play through a situation and events that they normally would avoid. The players give up their ability to just release their character from their unhealthy situation to get an opportunity for addressing just that sort of situation. You can't play a slave without having the rules enforce the slavery.

What we learn from My Life with Master is that the dramatic constraints on scene types or whatnot are not there simply to enforce an Aristotelian story structure - they have specific meaning for the sort of play and interactions the game supports. I tend to think of a game that has drama arc mechanics without this sort of direct reason for it simply overstructured: players are quite capable of shaping their own story to follow a structure without having the rules of the game mechanize the process.

I'm harping on the right and wrong ways to use drama arc mechanics mostly because I see that you've put a lot of thought into how your game shapes the structure of the story, but I haven't seen anything about how you're going to make players care about it. When I've played games with story structure but no story content, it has usually felt rather empty and meaningless. There needs to be something to make me care, and mechanics that tell me what sort of scenes I get are not that. What are the players focusing on while playing? Perhaps the answer is in some scenarion-creation rules you haven't discussed yet?

A side-point, by the way: what you call a Scene seems like it'd be more fruitfully labeled a "story node" or something like that. At least they don't sound like scenes in the traditional manner.

Anyway, let me know if I missed your central issues here. Your posts were pretty long and while they were full of useful information about your planned game, I might have missed something that makes my comments unnecessary.

Thanks for your reply, Eero! 

(Also, anyone let me know if I'm quoting too heavily below...)

Eero wrote:
The primary benefit many games get from drama arc mechanics - which is what you're doing here - is that having the rules handle the arc allows the GM and other players to focus on the momentary choices; they get to play against the constraint of the rules, in other words. Another, related effect is that the dramatic rules constrain player choices and thus may support creativity by forcing players to take the game to unexpected directions.

Eero wrote:
An important lesson related to drama arc mechanics is, however, that they're not always needed, and they can even be harmful to creating a Story Now game. This is typically the case when the design is concerned with creating a story with the "correct" form.

It's also what many think of first when thinking of drama arc mechanics: they exist to enforce a good form for the story. However, in most successful designs this is not actually the case.

Eero wrote:
To take an example, what does My Life with Master, an early example of this thing, actually do with the rules-imposed dramatic constraints? The short answer is that the requirements of the game's focused scope force and direct the players to play through a situation and events that they normally would avoid. The players give up their ability to just release their character from their unhealthy situation to get an opportunity for addressing just that sort of situation. You can't play a slave without having the rules enforce the slavery.

Eero wrote:
What we learn from My Life with Master is that the dramatic constraints on scene types or whatnot are not there simply to enforce an Aristotelian story structure - they have specific meaning for the sort of play and interactions the game supports. I tend to think of a game that has drama arc mechanics without this sort of direct reason for it simply overstructured: players are quite capable of shaping their own story to follow a structure without having the rules of the game mechanize the process.

Eero wrote:
I'm harping on the right and wrong ways to use drama arc mechanics mostly because I see that you've put a lot of thought into how your game shapes the structure of the story, but I haven't seen anything about how you're going to make players care about it. When I've played games with story structure but no story content, it has usually felt rather empty and meaningless. There needs to be something to make me care, and mechanics that tell me what sort of scenes I get are not that. What are the players focusing on while playing? Perhaps the answer is in some scenarion-creation rules you haven't discussed yet?

Eero wrote: A side-point, by the way: what you call a Scene seems like it'd be more fruitfully labeled a "story node" or something like that. At least they don't sound like scenes in the traditional manner.

Eero wrote: Anyway, let me know if I missed your central issues here. Your posts were pretty long and while they were full of useful information about your planned game, I might have missed something that makes my comments unnecessary.

So I spent some time last night thinking about what I was trying to accomplish and why I wanted dramatic arc mechanics. 

What I came up with is that I know how my games run and I know my strengths and weaknesses, so I'm trying to emphasize my strengths while compensating for my weaknesses (and since I don't think my group is particularly unusual, I hope that my system will be fun and useful to others as well).

The two things that I really want to get out of the dramatic arc system are Urgency and Makin'em Bleed. 

Urgency: Basically, I want to put the pressure on early and keep it on; it's not what I'm best at (I think I'm okay, but not great).  I also play with a fairly large group (5 players) and "drag" in the game is much more common than I'd like.  Keeping the pacing brisk is important for that reason.  So is balancing "screen time" and influence between the players; half my players are outgoing and active and the other half are more reserved and can get overlooked if I'm not on top of it.

Makin'em Bleed: I've mentioned it several times now, but I want the characters to bleed.  I want them to take risks and get beat up.  Thinking back, the dramatic failures are usually the scenes that get the most engagement from the players and get talked about the most afterwards.  And I tend to be too "nice".  So I want the system to push and support me to hit the characters hard, but I want to make sure that the players are having fun.  I want them to still take risks, even though they'll likely get beat up, so I want to reward them for taking risks.

~~~

Okay, so how does the dramatic arc system as I have it support either of these?  I'll tell you how I hope it will (and why I came up with the mechanics the way I did).  I'll also try to (briefly!) touch on all the major mechanics, even ones I haven't mentioned yet.  Whether the mechanics succeed and how they can be improved is the question I'm hoping to get feedback on from all of you.

At the start, everyone involved will create the scenario and come up with an overarching challenge.  I didn't say this last time, but an important part of that is defining what happens if the characters fail or do nothing.  Then the players hook their own characters into the story with their Needs and Wants.  Hopefully that gets both the players and the characters engaged and interested.

The GM scenes (which I haven't talked about as much and haven't entirely worked out) are where the GM actively hits the characters and/or pursues their own goals that are counter to the characters.  Originally I had planned on making it sort of a race or contest, like Burning Empires, where each side is trying to "win" first, but I didn't really like the ideas I came up with (and BE does it well already).  So what I decided is to have GM scenes work on the prinicple of escalation.  This system isn't completely worked out yet (the GM scenes that follow player Conflict Scenes--Reveals and Escalations--are part of this, but not necessarily the whole system), but the idea is that the antagonists (read: GM) don't win by completing their goals first, but by pushing the characters over the edge into their Crisis Scenes before they can win or by winning the final Climax scene.  I want the game to end climactically; this way the final scenes  are either Crisis Scenes (where the character arcs are resolved) or Climax Scenes (where the final conflict determines who "wins" the story scenario).  Hopefully this system (when developed) will force and help me as GM to make my characters bleed while making it more fun for my players.

The GM scenes also include rules and mechanics for color scenes, cut-away scenes, etc., because I like doing them anyway and like making them have weight.  Hopefully this will emphasize one of my strengths as a GM and also encourage (and reward) the players to join in in that type of storytelling (without forcing them to).

Hopefully the alternating GM and Player Scenes (rotating through all players in turn) with clear beginnings, goals and endings to scenes, will keep the pacing faster and keep all my players more engaged.  The dice mechanics for conflicts (which I've barely touched on) will definitely be on a conflict-resolution level, not a task-resolution level.

On the flip side, the characters have two "paths" they have to worry about.  The "heart line" is handled with their "Character Scale" (I really need to come up with a name--names are not my strength), which is tied tightly to their Need, contains how they get hurt, their character arc mechanics, the advancement mechanics, as well as hard choices about whether to voluntarily raise the scale (increasing their power but also pushing them closer to Crisis and increasing the odds of the scale increasing involuntarily) or else try to face challenges straight, knowing that the odds are against succeeding without raising the scale.  Also, the scale advances as the "damage" system.  There's more to the system, but the critical point is that the "heart line" mechanics are hard-wired into the conflict and action mechanics.  Hopefully this will keep the pressure up and also get all my players (even my gamist players) involved in the "heart line" stuff because it's so tied into the action system.

The other path, the "action line" is trying to win the scenario.  This is where the Wants come in.  It's also where the Chapter Goals fit in and Conflict Scenes (the heart of the action system) are about advancing.  This is the system laid out in the first post.  In very brief recap, players can keep trying to win until they succeed or they can give up with they fail.  Each retry significantly escalates the danger and potential damage.  Ultimately, the conflict system is about the price of victory and whether you're willing to pay it more than if you'll succeed.  Also, chapter goals that tie into the character's Want (which many or most should) or to certain other aspects of the character sheet are how "hero points" and certain "heart line"-related rewards I haven't worked out completely are gained, so the "action line" is hard-wired into character rewards.

The structure of the "Chapters" and how the story progresses towards the Climax is not any more structured than having the "Character Scale" act as a prod to keep active because poking along slowly increases how often you're hit before reaching the Climax Scene.  The Climax Scene happens organically with no mechanics requiring a certain timing.  Hopefully this will both allow players the freedom to develop the structure organically without being overstructured while also keeping the pressure on.

Players "lose" in one of two ways--hitting and failing a Crisis Scene because their character scale slid all the way to the end or failing the Climax scene (which is the one crisis scene that can't be retried).  Players "win" by succeeding in the Climax Scene.  Hopefully this will make each scene matter because there's strategic as well as narrative weight to each type of scene, but the timer from the "character scale" and the escalating GM scenes mean that players won't have time for every scene they want and so will have to pick carefully.  Hopefully this will also keep the action rising and make the ending satisfying.

Characters takes "damage" and suffer consequences in both their own scenes and GM scenes.  The antagonists don't take "damage" in any mechanical way.  The details are all narration.  Speaking of narration, narration rights are competed for in the dice system.  An antagonist getting away vs. being killed is primarily a matter of who narrates and having to fit it to the dice results. 

The GM "wins" if the "players" "lose"; all of the mechanics are player- and character-centric.  Hopefully this will keep my players active (changing a tendency in my players to wait and react to the GM instead of initiating is another goal I hadn't mentioned before--my players are already shedding that tendency with games like FATE and Burning Wheel, but it's still a journey in progress).

~~~

So... yeah.  Urgency and Makin'em Bleed.  How does it look?  Obviously more tweaking is in order (and there are whole mechanics that aren't developed yet)--plus play testing will rip it all up and put it together stronger--but do you think I'm going to get the behaviors and outcomes I'm aiming for?  What pitfalls are there?  Any suggestions or criticisms to improve things?  Any thoughts or suggestions for the mechanics I've mentioned but haven't developed yet?

Thanks!
John Bogart

Let me ask how systems like Polaris and Don't Rest Your Head and Dust Devils fit into a discussion of dramatic arc mechanics?

I haven't seen My Life with Master, though I've heard it mentioned.  I'll need to track down a copy.  Can you tell me a little more how it works?  If I'm reading you right, then playing a slave character requires you to deal with issues related to slavery.  You can't "gloss over" the slave part.  I'm guessing that the game lets you choose what issues to focus on?  So you chose to be a slave (and if you didn't want to be a slave, you'd simply choose other issues)?  So by choosing an issue, a) you have to deal with it and b) you get to deal with it?

Thanks for the thorough reply, Eevo.  I think you're right that my next step should be to write up a rough playable draft of the rules all together.  I'll get that written up and I'll link to it in a new thread.  It will probably take me some time, based on my schedule the next bit.

I did want to make a couple quick comments in response to your reply, though.

Eero wrote:
I haven't really played Don't Rest Your Head, but my understanding of the rules is that there is no drama arc mechanic per se. [snip]  The structure of the drama in the game depends almost entirely on the normal "freeform" give and take between the GM and the players [snip]

Eero wrote:
MLwM is one of my favourite games, it comes highly recommended to anybody interested in this sort of game design.  [snip]

Eero wrote:
The rules of [MLwM] limit the types of scenes you are allowed to frame and the types of resolutions you are allowed to have. [snip]

Eero wrote:
Anyway, other things. Scenario creation, for one: have you read Legends of Alyria?

Eero wrote:
Also, scenes: the reason I suggested questioning your choice of terms was that it seemed from your text that you'd be having a lot of run-on scenes in the game, without a cut and a new frame in between.[...]

Eero wrote:
Now, why have drama arc mechanics, again? I like the goals you list, they remind me a lot of With Great Power, another game with powerful drama arc mechanics. It's perhaps the most intricate implementation of that sort of thing that I know, too.

Eero wrote:
[...]both pacing and character pressure (to use more familiar names for the factors you identify) are also things that are very successfully dealt with by less elaborate rules than drama arcs, which is why I can't quite shake a suspicion that trying to kill them with explicit scene type limits, scene budgets and all that Burning Wheel stuff is a bit like killing flys with bombs.

Eero wrote:
Let's look at a couple of games and how they deal with these issues:

• The Mountain Witch [...] has an interesting drama arc system in that while the arc is completely explicit, it is also entirely nonmechanical.

Eero wrote:

• The aforementioned Zombie Cinema [snip]

Eero wrote:
It seems from my own overview here that in most games [a drama arc mechanic's] point is to coordinate players towards a certain scheme of play with a commonly acknowledged game plan that is perhaps also enforced with some rules that either draw play towards a direction (like Dust Devils, which doesn't strictly enforce the game to end with the Devil encounter, just encourages it) or force a certain direction (like My Life with Master, in which there is no choice but to follow the drama arc).

Eero wrote:
But the overall most important reason for having a drama arc seems to be a desire to make the structure of the story-to-be-played explicit for the whole group of players. It makes a big difference when you have an instructive model you can point to and say out loud what to expect.

Eero wrote:
[...]I don't know if I'm tired or if you're writing in an unstructured manner, but I find comprehending the whole picture more difficult than I usually do when reading these Forge postings about new game projects. [snip]

jb.teller4 wrote:

Eero wrote:
I haven't really played Don't Rest Your Head, but my understanding of the rules is that there is no drama arc mechanic per se. [snip]  The structure of the drama in the game depends almost entirely on the normal "freeform" give and take between the GM and the players [snip]

I was thinking about the Exhaustion spiral when I asked about a drama arc mechanic in DRYH.  When I read the rules, that's what jumped out at me as being the pivotal driver of how the game would flow.  Like the degrading attributes in Dust Devils, though it can go up very fast, but there are also ways to lower it.  Like I said, I haven't played DRYH yet, but my guess is that it would have a similar impact as in Dust Devils.

Eero wrote:
Now, why have drama arc mechanics, again? I like the goals you list, they remind me a lot of With Great Power, another game with powerful drama arc mechanics. It's perhaps the most intricate implementation of that sort of thing that I know, too.

I'm planning on checking this game out, too (along with Zombie Cinema and Mountain Witch from below).

Eero wrote:
The Mountain Witch [...] has an interesting drama arc system in that while the arc is completely explicit, it is also entirely nonmechanical.

I'm very curious how this works.  Does it effectively work as guidance so the Gm and players can talk about expectations clearly, or is there more to it than that?

Yes, yes, yes.  But adding to that, I really want the character and player rewards in the system to back it up.  I don't just want to say "you should do this because it says so on page XX"--I want to say "you want to do this because then you'll get X reward that you want."  For example, in my current BW campaign, the advancement system in the game has had a huge impact on how it's played.  Because you need tough tests (that you'll likely fail) to advance, my players are seeking out situations that in the past they would have wisely avoided like the plague.  And tying the artha system to Beliefs, Traits and Instincts has driven them to come up with their own agendas and look for ways to complicate their character's lives.

Yeah, it probably is because I'm writing unstructured.  I haven't really tried to write it all up yet.  I had a specific sub-system in mind when I made the first post.  I didn't try to give a cohesive overview because the forum rules say not to post the whole system and I don't have it written up elsewhere that I can link.  But I will write it up and that should help.

Here are my intuitions about this game, it'll be a little while before I have a more concrete response:

Needs/Wants seems to focus on a sort of internal/external approach to character development, here's how it looks to me:

In a needs ending, you get characters who leave for personal reasons, the world changes them in that they make peace with it, die, or else move from a state of action to inaction. In this ending, the old soldier forgives himself for his role in tyrants oppression and retires from the world.
In a wants ending, you get characters who achieve some change in the world instead, making it suit them a little more, in this ending, the old soldier defeats the tyrant and releases his local villages from his grip.

Now here's the problem I see; wangling the plot structure so it makes sense for both of these resolutions seems like it could be tricky; if the old soldier is driven by his guilt, how is loosing his fight with the tyrants guards going to push him towards self-forgiveness? As I see it, making defeat relate to the fulfilling of needs seems a surreal structure, but that is no bad thing, as Polaris is definitely surreal. I seem to remember that some forge type game had a death mechanic that behaved somewhat like this (shadow of yesterday?), but it didn't specify at the beginning how that resolution would occur. Another interesting angle on the mechanic is if you make needs resolution a limit on the gambling, so you tie the events more into your story with the risk that you will resolve your characters features before you're finished with him.

More broadly, the system would seem to encourage characters to find the events becoming more and more personal as the stakes raise (possibly via partial player authorial control: "That's my daughter!"), as they shift from thrill seeking questers to coming into contact with their own core problems.

Now obviously if you have choice there is always this one, what if players surrender all the time? The ability to surrender seems an under-appreciated feature of rpg design. How does the GM who has been going "hardcore opposition" on the players deal with their characters giving in and surrendering to the tyrants rule? Equally, what happens if they choose not to include their characters personal traits? And I think this should be an option; if damage goes streight onto the same resource they use to gain success, then it all gets a bit of a calculated gamble that might be quite dissimilar to kind of thinking you probably want.

So what is death in such a world? If the alternatives are victory over adversity, and facing your demons, it seems quite appropriate for players to choose for their characters to have meaningless deaths. Providing the player can buy their way out at any time if they choose to, they should be able to let their characters go, as conflicted and contradictory as they were in life. As a way of adding poinience (sp) to the event you could do a sort of family and friends approach. Playing out a little scene about what they have left behind. Now this may seem overkill, but hey, if your going to go dramatic with apotheosis and nirvana, you might as well include loss as well.

As I understand this games intent, it seems designed with mechanisms in it to end it, and with a finality that can expanded on but not revoked (the next quest, the hidden need, the response to sacrifice rather than the reset button). You could consider tuning this device to different lengths (if it works), depending on how paced or fraught you want the campaign to be.

JoyWriter, you raised some good points.  I don't have a lot of time right now, but I wanted to reply briefly.

In response to your points about the relationship of the plot and the resolving of personal issues, let me clarify how I was thinking about Needs and Wants and how they fit into the game a little.

As part of the scenario-creation process, the idea is that the player has to tie both their character's Need and Want into the story and that they should be also closely tied to each other in the sense that pursuing the Want against the antagonist should tend to force the Need to be addressed.

But I'm reconsidering how the "scale" should tie into the Need.  I like the Need and character arc stuff to come up when it's interesting and tying it to the damage mechanics may be too rigid and lead to a surreal game.  I like surreal, personally, but half my players specifically don't.

Hmm.  When I first started working on this system, the character scale wasn't as tied to the Need.  It was tied to "Desperation" or "Hardness" (in fact "Hardness" was my first working name for the scale).  The idea was that as the story progressed and the character pressure intensified, the characters would tend to become more and more hard and even immoral.  They could raise their Hardness (choosing to start crossing the lines) and it could be raised for them (as they reacted to paing by hardening their resolve or desperation).  So it was actually generally in the opposite direction of resolving their Need.  I originally conceived of the Crisis Scene being more of a turning point (often between the half-way point and the Climax scene, though I didn't plan on rigidly timing it), rather than resolving the character one way or the other.  The Need, like the Want, would have other mechanics and would be something the player had to pursue and work on.  The two mechanics would interrelate, but there would often be tough choices where you kind of had to choose one over the other.  I had the rough idea that "Hardness" made you more competent and better in every scene except the Climax, where the conflict would tie to the Need rather than straight power. 

I switched gears towards tying Need into the character scale pretty early on, so I never got to developing the mechanics to do that.  But I'm starting to think that separating Need and the character scale (and making them play off each other) might not only lead to more interesting play, but also remove some of the situations that JoyWriter brought up. 

Hmm.  Thanks again, JoyWriter.  You and Eero have really helped me think about my system differently.

~~~

And on an unrelated note, is "story-mapping" a common term or specific to Legends of Alyria?  I like the term, but I'm not sure if it's open to use.

-John Bogart

The history of story-mapping is interesting. The technique is in common use, but people commonly call it "relationship mapping" in the mistaken belief that it's the same thing that is represented in the influential Sorcerer supplement Sorcerer's Soul. I for one would use "story mapping" as an explicit term if that were, in fact, what I was doing or advocating in a game, just to be clear about it. Alyria is much more influential than it is given credit for, mostly because it's perhaps not very known outside of a smallish circle of designers who've introduced its ideas to the larger public.

I'd say that people use the word "relationship mapping" first because it is the most appropriate for the concept "mapping the consistent relationships between elements of the shared imaginary space", and then drop the term out of deference to Ron. I wonder whether the Sorcerer's Soul system should be renamed "personal relationship mapping" to allow wider and inoffensive use of that lovely elegant term with all it's systemic philosophical background. But hey, we can still call it dynamic mapping, to allow for tracking events that people might not consider "story worthy", merely persistent. I also like that because of it's relationship to the systems dynamics method. But leaving dictionary making aside:
Eero do you think it is still worth getting a copy of Alyria? Or have enough of it's ideas permeated into the stratosphere by now that I would have heard most of it? I've been trying to work out what should be in my "perfect GM library", and that sounds like something I might be interested in.

Alyria is made to work around the storymapping process, which is not true of many games. The actual verbiage devoted to it is not very much, though. Regardless, I recommend going to the original sources in almost anything rather than relying on random internet forums to fill you in.

The game is available for free in a slightly annoying blog format, though, so you should check it out yourself. No reason to rely on hear-say.