Hello all,

So, I am making a game about competing for the rights to collaboratively create stories. It should be able to handle just about any setting, mood, or plot type (genre, in not so many words).

I am done fiddling with the resolution system thus far. Basically, each player controls a character, which is made up of some advantages and disadvantages (these are free-form and decided as appropriate by group vote). Play begins with the creation of the McGuffin and the characters, each of which must be opposed to at least one other character.

Once this is done, the session's Mcguffin is created by the group and play begins at the Conflict level.

Players announce a Conflict (basically a still smaller McGuffin) in turn order (determined clockwise from a randomly selected starter). From there, play progresses in a series of rounds. Players each draw a card from a deck of playing cards (I am undecided whether it should be kept secret or not). They can purchase additional cards by spending their advantages (which are used up for the duration of the conflict), or force opponents to discard a card at random by spending an opponents disadvantages. Each use is narrated by the player at hand. Once all spending is complete, players compare hands and the high card wins. From lowest hand to highest, players narrate the result of the round, leaving room for their accomplishments to be marred by the next narrator. The winner of course has final narration for the round and is awarded one success. Play continues in this round format until one player has three successes. This player wins the conflict, narrating its outcome, and gets a conflict success. A new conflict is announced and the process starts over. Once a player has three conflict successes, they have won the Session, and narrate the outcome. From here, a new session, conflict, round chain starts. Once a player has three Session successes, he wins the whole game and narrates the final outcome and what happens with the Mcguffin. Additional levels can be added as necessary to accommodate particularly epic stories or to extend play time. Layers can also be removed to reduce play time, such as for one-shot games.

What I need help with is the material I provide to my prospective players to assist them in creating/choosing setting, moods, plot-types, and how to create their McGuffins accordingly. Without this, the players would be left floundering, not having any intellectual cues to riff off of to make interesting stories.

Can anybody help me with this? Also, who finds the concept interesting and would be willing to play-test it? Further, what kind of name could you suggest for a game such as this?

Thanks again everyone.
Cheers,
-Norm

P.S. Is this post designed in such a way as to generate maximum interest, or should I start a new thread with a different title and a different presentation? What hints can you give that will get me maximum exposure?

What's the first thing that you're itching to run with this system?

Hi Norm,

Sorry, this isn't quite what you asked for, but you might find it interesting to read this review I wrote of another game "Radience", which sounds like it's in similar territory to yours.  I was quite critical of that game, and I think reading the review (and maybe the game too) might help you avoid some pitfalls.  The link is here: http://simoncarryer.blogspot.com/2009/08/review-of-radiance-by-mjgraham.html

I think you're on the right track looking to give guidance about how to provoke interesting play.  For games I've designed, I've found that figuring out what situations work well with the rules and which don't is something that only comes after playtesting, rather than before, but you're right to be looking at this issue now.

Thanks for the info Simon. I'll take a look at it as soon as I get a chance.

To be honest Mike, I want to use my quick-start rules to play out possible alternate endings to the Lord of the Rings Saga. The game handles mirroring of movies and other stories very well, allowing players to get answers to questions such as, "What if Boromir had gotten the One Ring from Frodo?" But, it also has the potential to create unique stories of its own, provided I can find the right way to guide people to coming up with what they need. But mostly, I'm itching just to see what the system can do.

Thanks again!
--Norm

It's interesting that you call out the Boromir example in particular - your system sounds like it'll support the kind of intensely antagonistic PC-on-PC action we used to call "face stabbing," and the Boromir moment is among the face-stabbiest in LotR.

I don't think you need lots of help getting ready to playtest; I'd say it's time. I'm interested to hear about the results.

You don't even really need a name at this point. If you just want one for convenience, you could always go with "McGuffin Facestab" :-)

I'm afraid this doesn't interest me, yet, because I prefer people's "right to contribute" be related more heavily to their use of other player's fiction, and either the appropriateness of their content in other people's eyes, or their ingenuity in reapplying and subverting the existing stuff. Basically I want all rules systems I use to underline the shared and persistent nature of imagination in rpgs. I'm not sure I see that in this mechanism yet, although I'd love to see you apply it to the very thing you want to run with it, so I can see how it does cool stuff.

Thanks Mike and Joywriter,

First, you are right Mike. The game is ready to playtest, assuming the group either uses an existing story or knows what kind of story they want to play (and/or aren't paralyzed by choice). However, if the group needs some examples of what can be done, or needs help understanding how to create an epic story like LotR from the ground up and then play through it, there is nothing there for them to use. That is what I need help with. That said, I do want to playtest my game. I just don't have a gaming group right now, and I don't have enough reliable internet time to get an online game going.

And the fact that the players are all working against each other (facestabbing) is exactly what the game is supposed to handle. There isn't a GM of any sort (the duties are shared equally), and the entire conflict is supposed to come from the players. The only adversaries the players have is each other.

As for you Joywriter, I can understand your dilemma. The fiction created by the group is important for the development of the story. Certain rules (very slack ones) are in play that keep things flowing along the lines that the group is working with. Still, the point of the game is winning narration rights and using them. Once something has been narrated, it has to be adhered to in the fiction. It can't simply be ignored. But, the fiction takes a back seat to the gaming itself. Think of it a little like chess, risk, or stratego, or magic the gathering. There is an underlying story (to a smaller or greater degree) in each of them. But, the focus is on the gaming. This game isn't going to jar you because of the questions you have to face, and it isn't going to give you a deep and immersive experience. It's designed to be about resource management and winning the right to narrate the story you all want in such a way that it ends the way you (as an individual) want, whether or not the rest of the group likes it.

Thanks for the input though. Maybe you guys will be interested in testing for me at some point.

Any other ideas to help me get the story elements fleshed out so people know how to create one, or any name suggestions?

Thanks again and cheers!
--Norm

For the time being you could steal a story-seed generation system from another game. In a Wicked Age has a great one for your purposes.

The storytelling card game Once Upon A Time, in case you're not familiar with it already, is basically a struggle for story narration. It fails, in my opinion, by trying to serve two masters: competition and telling an interesting story. I recommend caution angling your rules for competition for narrational rights. Make sure you force players to tie back to the fiction -- better, make it impossible to ignore the fiction and keep playing (see Dogs in the Vineyard).

Hi Norm,

I also suggest investigating the various 1990s experiments by authors at Hogshead Publishing, especially The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and Pantheon. My own take on them is that they shared the difficulty of Once Upon a Time that Adam has described (and matches my experience), and that playing them would be a great benefit to your own decision-making about your game in progress. Some of the most ambitious minds in game design at that time were involved in them, and it's a shame not to learn from their work.

Best, Ron

Thanks for the example games guys. I'll take a look into them as soon as I can secure copies and take the time to read them. For now the system is ready for playtesting, but I lack playtesters. I'm sure I'll find some eventually though. If I don't before I read these works, I'll put more questions here. Thanks again,

Cheers,
--Norm

Hello again folks,

I have only been able to acquire a copy of Baron Munchausen, but reading it has brought the issue you folks discussed to light in a different way.

So, how does my system handle it? It doesn't. Perhaps that makes it fail on the same level as Baron Munchausen's and the others, but I think that depends on what you are going for in the game. If I were going for a more traditional RPG (by this site's indie standards) I might want to fix it for certain. But, my goal is to try to make an rpg that is enough like a board game that it can be played in the same manner as one, while still offering a taste of what makes RPG's different from board games in actual play: the fiction. Now, in some games the fiction is made to be important enough that it can't be ignored (ala Dogs in the Vineyard's fallout mechanics). In others, the game assumes the players will care enough about the fiction to not ignore it or disrespect it, and still fit it into the game's mechanics and system. I wonder if this difference of techniques leads to potentially different agenda support, in that tying fiction to mechanics probably helps to support some Narratvist play, and some Simulationist play, while allowing it to take a backseat probably supports more gamist play.

Either way, as written the system assumes that all fiction created matches the feel and the story currently in progress. I will probably implement a loose social contract solution, something along the lines of everyone agreeing that given descriptions are ok or not. If there are enough votes against it, the description doesn't fly. If not, then it does. However, I see this potentially causing people to feel cheated (even though they are still numerically in the same position). Allowing them to buy it off with some resource (so that if they were voted against, they could trade something to overturn it, or vice-versa), might mitigate the problem a little, but it also means things that don't match could still be introduced, possibly ruining the mood or the story itself. As is, because the entire thing takes place mostly in director stance, I don't see mood so much as the problem as the ability to completely derail the story. Anyone have any ideas of how to elegantly solve this with the mechanics system I've put forth so far? Feel free to make new resources or what have you, or new ways of things interacting.

Thanks again for the input!

Cheers,
--Norm

Ayyavazi wrote:
I wonder if this difference of techniques leads to potentially different agenda support, in that tying fiction to mechanics probably helps to support some Narratvist play, and some Simulationist play, while allowing it to take a backseat probably supports more gamist play.

Hey Joywriter,

Thanks for the input. Here's my thoughts and questions:

You mentioned suits being changed in interpretation, and that confuses me a little. As is, the suit of the cards is irrelevant. All that matters are the values, even in the event of a complete tie. Are you suggesting that I should explore different suits having different abilities, such that the very cards you use to win can be spent by the suit to accomplish something different, so that you could weaken your position for the hand, but set yourself up for some cool narration or something like that? Or did you mean something else entirely?

I really like your idea about the scenes revolving around the last winner. That makes a lot of sense, and actually gives me a pretty cool idea. The winner sets the scene for the next conflict, but not the conflict itself. The only way for the next player to ignore this scene would be to buy off the previous winner with his current resources, offering him story or character tokens in exchange for the right to narrate a different scene. This would still have the caveat that what the winner stated last still has strength. It wasn't all a dream. The best that can be done is a flashback, flashforward (tricky at best for this sort of game), or a parallel scene. From there, the winner of the that scene and the previous now each have a scene that needs to be addressed. They would have to bid for it, and the winner again has the "scene priority". The next player either has to address the original scene or buy off the winner again, giving him increasing control over the game in exchange for control of the scenes. But eventually, someone will have to go the mad scientist's lab to stop him, and if they have given him too many resources, it will be too late...

Now, as for your last paragraph, I am a little confused. You posted:

Actually, looking back over the thread, you already have adjudication in the game: Players must stick with the winners narration as fact. Deciding the extent of that narration's influence, and how much you can go "it was all a dream", is an in-play job! If this doesn't matter, then winning narration is no big deal, but if it does, then you'll need some competition proof mechanisms for it, like secret voting or roll offs or something. Perhaps that very question of extent of narration is a back door to get my preferred stuff in there? :P

Ayyavazi wrote:
You mentioned suits being changed in interpretation, and that confuses me a little. As is, the suit of the cards is irrelevant. All that matters are the values, even in the event of a complete tie. Are you suggesting that I should explore different suits having different abilities, such that the very cards you use to win can be spent by the suit to accomplish something different, so that you could weaken your position for the hand, but set yourself up for some cool narration or something like that? Or did you mean something else entirely?

Ayyavazi wrote:
But eventually, someone will have to go the mad scientist's lab to stop him, and if they have given him too many resources, it will be too late...

Ayyavazi wrote:
I never intended for "it was all a dream" to ever be an option, since that would devalue the right to narrate, which I see as the whole reason anyone would care about winning. And what do you mean by a back door? Are you saying that what is left unsaid is the wiggle room everyone else is given to play with? Though true, I can see that getting out of hand. Kind of like using a wish spell in certain versions of D&D. I don't want players trying so hard to carefully word their narration so no one can mess it up that they cease to have fun or limit the other player's creativity in such a way that they cease to enjoy the game. And lastly, what are some competition proof mechanic examples? Anything you can think of that would work for my system off the top of your head? As is, I might just make it a bidding issue.

Once a player has three Session successes, he wins the whole game and narrates the final outcome

I don't think thats irony, I think that's variety in design specifications!

Interesting point about story ending, it reminds me of the bittersweet feeling at the end of almost any really good but really hard platform game; finishing a normal level is nice, because of the composite of achievement and anticipation, but completing the whole thing ejects you from the experience.

The basking you talk about reminds me of those "final freeroaming" levels in some games, where your objective is pretty much to wander about basking in the glory of your own achievements. One thing I have observed when watching a friend playing one of those levels (in the new batman game actually), is that it takes a pretty strong exertion of empathy to enjoy, as they basically want to run around showing you how awesome they were.

If they were actually going "remember where I beat you here" or just generally sticking the knife in, then I think people would be very likely to prematurely stop the game! There is a paradox there almost; a competitive game needs competition to function, so getting the payoff naturally destroys the basis on which people agreed to play. Drawing out the "victory parade" in the SIS would be pretty hard to keep going.

There is a way in which people can gain satisfaction in narration that I've seen; when you want to settle something about the world you were playing in, sort of like a thematic punch up; "True love conquers all" vs "Love is a luxury of civilization" or something more mundane like making their interpretation of a mystery the "true" one. Personally I would find most satisfaction in settling those kind of things if my victory was based on the specific fictional chain of events, but many people will be happy with "so he was a hunter after all, not a farmer" decided by the force of cards!

Joywriter, I don't know why you assume I was saying this basking would happen in the SIS?

Basking happens after you have been 'ejected' from the experience, as you put it. Which isn't a bad thing, because the basking in esteem is your goal in having played (the experience is a nice side salad, the esteem is the steak). Maybe you were playing those platformers with another agenda in mind.

Exactly, swap the salad and the steak! I still enjoy competition, but I'm getting more and more zen about it!

I misread your last sentence by the way (accidentally giving it an opposite meaning!), so that's why it might seem confusing. Via that misinterpretation I suggested a reason why people just into victory might want continued narration, and the pitfalls associated.

What if the person who won had the right to gift their narration away? Then you could enjoy victory, and let someone else wrap up the SIS.

Thanks for your suggestions and questions guys.

First, for the suit abilities, I don't see how it would work. Lets assume we're playing out Lord of the Rings or Star Wars (just because I am familiar with it to a minor extent). How would it play out in a scene?

As for having a win condition ruining the chance to make characters squirm, that is because the game has nothing to do with the characters or their reactions to situations. The game is about telling a story collaboratively, but with everyone vying for the right to tell as much of it as they can their own way. In a sense, the ability to tell the story at all is the reward, while the individual narrations that occur at levels that don't involve winning are just fictional skin holding together the meat and bones of the mechanics.

Also, being able to gift the narration away makes perfect sense, and I don't see why a player couldn't do that, if what they really cared about was winning. Sort of like playing clue. I never really cared who did it with what where, just that I won by figuring it out.

Cheers,
--Norm

Hmm, ok, I don't have a specific one for LOTR yet, but my thought process goes like this: Find the main moods of the piece of fiction, and then find the elements that contribute to that, and stick them up as a list. That's the hard bit, the deconstruction into "theme carrying" elements.

Then you just start by having each player pick a card from the top of the deck, and the person with the highest card in each suit picks what it refers to from the list. If one suit is not accounted for the person with the lowest card gets to pick it, or if there is more than one the people who haven't got to pick one yet draw again until one is found. That starts you off, and after that the winner can reassign one of the suits for one on the list, or another one if everyone agrees.

Now back to the hard bit, the bit the game designer has to do. Now for this to work you need to pick thematic repeated elements that are not locations and can occur reasonably in scenes after each other, so no "fight to the death" in starwars, though "lightsabre" might be ok. Because star wars repeats elements so much it's easy to go with "I have a bad feeling about this", "this is where the fun begins", or "blockade" but that repetition is a once or twice per film so wouldn't fit, whereas "young and inexperienced", "search your feelings", "convincing with the force" or "the dark side" would. It's a gray area and a continuum obviously, but just imagine if you want a whole film of people searching their feelings. Could get old, but not as old as a film constantly about blockades!

In the same way, LOTR could have "glories past", "elven craftsmenship", "healing", "grandeur of the landscape" or maybe "the lidless eye", it could also have more direct things like "gather your men" and "stand fast" or "sneaking". It can also relate to questions you ask like "the destiny of man", but that's another track of thinking.

If it works as a Fate system aspect, it should work here, given the rough rules I've already given, and if you can make the list big enough, then people will pick and mix to make it fit their own group.

On the topic of combining competition with storytelling, once someone has won rights to narrate, they could also gain a resource to reward others for including and working with their narration for the next part. Victory becomes not just narrating, but also receiving cooperation tokens or what have you.

Thanks for the examples Joy. I'm still a little fuzzy on how this would all work out. The things you listed are very much like the Aspects that I already use for conflicts, sessions and the Conclusion event, except that each one can only be used once. I also don't understand how it would work in play. Say one of the themes was Search your feelings, and a person wins and sets a suit to that. Does that mean any use of that suit must somehow fit in with Search your feelings? If so, that places a creative constraint on the players, which may or may not be a bad thing, since its the winners placing the constraints. It opens up the idea of a resource that allows this constraint to be ignored, which I like.

As for the design difficulty, I would provide brief examples at most. The Aspects are the hardest part of gameplay, in that when you first start, you have to set aspects for the conclusion (or ultimate goal) as well as the session and the first conflict. This frontloads the beginning of the game, and may be expecting too much foresight out of the players, who having limitless options may be stumped as to what story they want to tell, let alone its themes throughout its entirety. I am currently trying to think of ways to allow aspects to be created as play goes, instead of spent once and created up front. Perhaps that would work well with your suit idea. Since there would only be four active aspects at a time, but limitless potential aspects, the game and story can go in many different directions, with the winner always holding the reigns.

Chance, I like your idea. Some kind of token award for those who comply willingly encourages people to work within the fiction set by the previous winner, rather than simply telling them they have to because it is in the rules. I'll have to think about it.

On another note, are either of you two interested in play-testing this at all?

Thanks again and cheers,
--Norm

I'm saving up my own "let's play a narrative game" points for universalis! I couldn't really introduce the concept without first showing a finished model I think. I might be able to get involved in a later round of testing though.

My hope was that the suit mechanic wouldn't be too much of a restriction because you could keep changing it, and because you could choose which card you played. The idea is just enough restriction to make people creative, as well as to make people stick to a mood. I hope that it would actually be self correcting, as if a group wants to they could use some of the vaguer end of the list. If you wanted to add a currency mechanic to stop this, perhaps you could relate it to the rewards for consistency?

I was thinking about your idea of the central object for the story, and it occurs to me that that constrains the narratives the story tells, but in a good way. For example, the prequel trilogy of star wars can be considered as one that takes "what happens to anakin skywalker" as it's central object, whereas LOTR takes "what happens to the ring" (simplifying horrifically!). The difference with your game is that the answer to that question can actually be in doubt. So you have an over-arcing question that cannot be answered until the end of 3+ conflicts. Presumably that should be considered important, but background to the subgoals of each session. For example, if each conflict is a prequel trilogy star wars film, the first question would be "do they defeat the naboo blockade" etc, with the long term goals forming a background.

Now what if after the first film, people say "stuff anakin, we want to know what happens to jarjar" or perhaps "stuff the ring, who on earth is tom bombadil?". In other words the whole group could decide what is the most interesting unresolved element and change to trying to reveal that.

Depending on how you want to make it, maybe that question shouldn't even be decided at the start? You'd have to test it to be sure but it might be that players can throw up enough mysteries in that first conflict to find something to keep their interests for the rest of them, or it might be that they step on what would of really interested them by throwing away a mystery during narration. In that sense you could consider "the hobbit" the first conflict of the lord of the rings!

That should ease the creative burden on the players a bit. What d'you think?

So far, I'm with you Joywriter. Like I said, I have been tossing around the idea in my head of making the Conclusion Event be something that is created during play. The way I'm thinking it should work now is that at the beginning of play (the first session) the players only have to pick 4 themes (one for each suit) and assign them. From there, they are free to create more (through the expenditure of Story Tokens) which can then be switched to by the winner. Players could also "buy off" a theme, much like in universalis, so that themes people don't like can be done away with. This would create a growing pool of themes that will hopefully all fit the fiction in progress. From there, once a particular theme sees enough use, players could declare it a session theme or a conclusion theme. Session themes can be used in place of the normal suit's theme for free, since they are key to the session, but only for the session they are part of. And, as play progresses, players can decide as a group to pursue a specific Conclusion event. They are free to change this, and resort to bidding in the event of a disagreement. Or, if they are so inclined, they could split the game into two new games, each set in the same world, but with different goals. In this case, on Conclusion event (and story) would follow the One Ring, while another might see what happens to this Tom Bambadil character.

This is of course more brainstorming than actual mechanic, but it significantly changes my original design. What I would actually like is to write up both and playtest both and see which one really captures what I want. Perhaps each will emerge as its own game with extreme similarities. Perhaps a Basic Game, and an Advanced game, where the Basic Game's market is board gamers, and the Advanced is for hardcore fans or RPG players. But who knows. This is all very good stuff, and I am working on fitting it all together, along with working on a new idea I've had that I'm tentatively calling Shadows of Lineage.

Cheers!
--Norm