Before I ask you for advice, allow me to introduce myself, since I am new to The Forge. I have been playing role-playing games off and on for thirty years. I have a personal and academic interest in the history of games, game theory, and game design. I found The Forge because I am actively working on developing a didactic role-playing game, the purpose of which is to have fun while learning about the history of Greek philosophy, especially Greek natural philosophy. I have spent the last several days learning from the Articles section of The Forge, which answered many questions that I may have otherwise been inclined to ask about in a post. But I have not had an opportunity to research the archives of posts, which I gather is a trove of valuable information, and so I apologize in advance if there has already been an extensive discussion of the topic.

Now for my question. Can you refer me to information about mechanics of "composition games", i.e. games in which players compete at composing stories, speeches, poems or music? (Ideally I would like books and published games, but articles and internet discussions, including those on the Forge, will also be very useful). As I said, I am designing a role-playing game in which the players role-play various ancient Greek natural philosophers (such as Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Democritus, Aristotle. Epicurus, etc.), and the players compete to give the best answers (consistent with the philosopher's historical beliefs) to ancient philosophical questions such as: Are there many worlds, or only one? What is the moon made of? What are fundamental elements of matter? Will the world end? Is there extra-terrestrial intelligence? Etc. Below I give a longer overview of the game and mention some further theoretical considerations in a postscript if you are interested in hearing more.

The game needs a mechanism, such as polling the players themselves, for deciding which answer is the best for game purposes. The players will go through several rounds of speeches (as at a Greek symposium or drinking party), and accumulate points for each time they give the best brief speech on one of the several topics of the night. So far I have been modeling the rules of James Wallis' brilliant The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen: a game of telling tales and playing roles (London, 1998). I have developed a version of the game using a modified version of Wallis' rules which I plan to begin playtesting on my group in two weeks (stay tuned), but I want to get a better idea of the range of options out there. Because this is a role-playing game and the players cannot be anonymous, a Balderdash-style arrangement does not seem feasible. But there have undoubtedly been other mechanics along the lines of TEAOBM that may work even better for what I am trying to do.

So let me know if you know of any useful discussion of "composition games" mechanics. A more extensive overview of the game I am working on follows my signature. Thank you for reading

sincerely,

Monte

SYMPOSIUM OF GREEK PHILOSOPHERS is a pencil-and-paper role-playing game. In game-design terms, many role-playing games are composition games in which the players work together, with or without a moderator, to compose a simulation, usually of distant places or times. Fantasy and science-fiction are popular genres for role-playing games; for example, players might act out roles of medieval adventurers searching out a dragon, or space explorers visiting alien planets; this is often done by giving speeches or stating intentions in propria persona. The present game could be considered an exercise in the composition of philosophy-fiction (phi-fi?), except that the goal here is not story telling (as in fiction), but rather imagining and articulating the reasons and insights that ancient philosophers had in advancing their bold and seemingly bizarre theses (such as that “everything is water”, or “there is no change” or “there are a plurality of actual worlds”).
    The object of SYMPOSIUM is to have fun while learning about the history of Greek philosophy. Players simulate real Greek philosophers such as Thales and Democritus giving explanations to basic philosophical questions (especially in the area of natural philosophy), relying only on the concepts available to Greek philosophers of a given era. Examples of questions include: What is the nature of time? Are there many worlds, or only one? What is the nature of the rainbow? What are the heavenly bodies made of? How far is the moon from the sun? Why do the seasons change? What is the origin of life on earth? Why are mules sterile? How will the world end?
    The game consists of three “era” modules, corresponding to three periods of Greek philosophy that concerned themselves extensively with natural philosophy: (I) Presocratic, (II) Academic, and (III) Hellenistic. Each turn of play consists of five rounds of speeches in a single era, in which each philosopher tries to refute or improve on (i.e., substantially build on, or replace) a predecessor’s answer to some philosophical question (generally in the area of natural philosophy). The questions are arranged into five topics: (1) principles; (2) cosmology; (3) meteorology; (4) biology; and (5) anthropology and politics.
    A complete campaign consists of playing all three modules in chronological order, but it is always possible to play only one or two of modules, even out of chronological order. Likewise, a complete module consists of playing all of the topics in the order just described, but it is possible to play only one or two of the topics, and in any order.
    Players collect tokens for giving convincing or persuasive answers to the questions; the tokens may be spent to vote for other philosophers that gave the best explanations. The player with the most tokens at the end of the game is considered the best philosopher.
    The emphasis should always be on providing a better explanation or a convincing refutation, never on providing the “right” or “true” answer from a contemporary or modern standpoint. In epistemological terms, the game involves a coherence criterion of truth instead of employing a correspondence theory. In role-playing game-theoretic terms the game is "simulationist" with little or no “gamist” aspects; it is not "narrativist" because the conceit of the game is nonfiction, instead of fiction. That is, the rules have been designed to reduce gamesmanship and concentrate the player’s attention on the interpretation, criticism, and evaluation of ancient philosophical ideas. Of course, players must try to trip each other up and expose shortcomings of philosophical positions, but this should be evaluated in terms of the value of the expression of the ideas and not other strategic considerations such as which player you would rather have end up with the most tokens because of the likelihood of their voting for you.

A detailed description of the mechanism I plan to playtest follows, but I withhold that here for fear that I have already inflicted too much information on you already. I will post more if anyone is interested. Thanks again.

I think you've picked a good staring point with Baron Munchausen, it's a great game for the development of stories and speeches in the way you've described, it doesn't let character traits get in the way of a good piece of exposition, and there aren't a lot of games that do this. If you want to have a look at something else that might provide some inspiration, consider Paul Tevis's A Penny for My Thoughts...be open with my suggestion, don't think about this game specifically in the light of it's presentation, but think about the mechanisms and how they might help players in your game develop their ideas, monologues and drama.

The game as it is presented describes psych patients revealing one another's memories...you "win" the game by accepting the memories described by the other players and accepting it for it's truth...so you could easily invert the concept, have players revealing a secret of the universe or a dramatic narrative, rather than a set of memories. If a player has a question or is unsure how to progress with their tale, they could offer tokens to the others for a choice on how to proceed. I won't write any more because it probably wont make a lot of sense until you've read the rules. 

(Note that the version I've linked to above is one of the later drafts...the full version is for sale in a few places).

I've also been working on a competitive storytelling game over the past year or so, but it's been stuck in a creative limbo while my interests have focused on  a couple of other projects.

As someone with a philosophical inclination, I find your game concept radically interesting.  I could imagine that a session would essentially be mental masturbation for 3 hours at a time.  However, it appears you have quite a few hurdles to tackle in order to really immerse others into the setting.  To clarify, these philosophers of yore you've mentioned were mindfreaks.  As smart as I think I am, these guys were twice as much, and had infinitely less resources at their disposal.  They were masters of both mathematics and logic (and anti-logic; sophistry), and used these principles extensively in their discourses - Xeno nearly convinced me that motion is impossible.  Thus, I'm wondering if the players will require such literacy in order to get in the game.  What tools will you give the players that will allow them to convincingly play ancient philosophers?

I bought baron munchausen and I remember reading it and every time it seemed it was going to list rules, it'd go off on some anecdote, presumably to emulate the source - but in the end it didn't seem to have any rules at all? It had rules? Has someone extracted them onto one page, sans anecdotes?

except that the goal here is not story telling (as in fiction), but rather imagining and articulating the reasons and insights that ancient philosophers had in advancing their bold and seemingly bizarre theses (such as that “everything is water”, or “there is no change” or “there are a plurality of actual worlds”).

Vulpinoid: Thanks for the suggestion-- that is just the kind of thing I am looking for. I will report back after I learn more. Looks like a very interesting game in its own right, which I may very well introduce to my group.

Ar: Thanks for your comments. Outside of students, you are just the kind of person I am looking to reach. The great thing about Greek philosophy, especially early Greek philosophy, is that it presupposes no background, no technical terminology, and no scientific knowledge. That is because these people are the background, they came up with the terms, and they invented the idea of scientific knowledge. Because the point of the game will be to try to articulate reasons they may have held their positions-- even though we now know them to be false-- one need not have any kind of exact knowledge. The game, like early Greek philosophy itself, is entirely about speculation, armchair speculation, as it is now derisively called. That being said, I have not come up with a way to include Zeno because, as you say, he has very specific, difficult and technical arguments for his conclusion that motion is impossible (perhaps the first technical arguments in the strict sense). The way I see game play progressing is as follows:

The first topic drawn is "What is the primary element of matter?"

Thales: I say that it is water, for three reasons. First, the ancient poets made Ocean and Tethys the parents of creation, and the gods themselves takes oaths by water, which they call Styx. Second, the origin of all life is in water and liquid media, notice that all seeds are wet and all plants are nourished by water-- the same goes for animals. Third, water can be transformed by hot and cold into all the phases of matter: solid (ice), liquid (water itself), and gas (vapor). 

Heraclitus: Rubbish. What Thales has said about the gods is irrelevant to a discussion of natural philosophy. As for life: it is death for souls to become wet. Water drowns life. It is only when creatures emerge from the water that they can speak and think. As for the phases of matter, you have not accounted for fire. Fire is the primary element of matter, for the following reasons....

...Later, the second topic drawn is: what is the cause of earthquakes?...

Thales: The cause of earthquakes is due to the fact that the earth rests and floats on water, like a boat. Earthquakes are the rocking of the boat. There are many channels of water running into and out of the earth. When the water rushes through, as after a great storm, there is an earthquake.

Heraclitus: How then, I ask, can there be earthquakes in the desert? I grant that water causes some earthquakes. But just as many are caused by dryness. When some earth becomes too dry, it flakes and breaks off. The shifting we experience as an earthquake. The real cause of both the dryness and the wetness is the element of fire, for the following reasons...

Now much of this information can be had from the "character sheet" (which at present is a two-page collection of known sayings and descriptions of positions for each of these philosophers, based on information from the ancient doxographers). The players adapt the scant information from the character sheet to the question at hand, depending on the dialectic that has been developing so far.

So there are issues better and worse suited for this kind of thing. Perhaps some of the more technical arguments of a Zeno will not work (but then again they might), but I think that anyone is capable of learning the basic ideas and role-playing them. In fact, I think role-playing will turn out to be the best way to learn them. I expect my students to master this information. I'll expect the same of my players, although I will probably be much more friendly to them!

Callan: TEAOBM does have a mechanism for resolving who wins the game. In due course I will post how I adapt this mechanism to the present game. But you are quite right about what I am looking for, and there needs to be an advantage to building on previous ideas. After all, this is exactly what the early Greek philosophers did (except when they were refuting and abusing one another). I allow that one may "improve" on the previous speaker either by: (1) refuting him; (2) replacing his explanation with a mutually exclusive explanation; or (3) substantially developing or transforming his explanation in a way that others judge it to be superior.

Thanks everyone for the interest and the comments

sincerely,

Monte