Hello, my name is Luke and I am working on a role-playing game. While I am still pulling it all together, I had a question about the experiences others have had with one particular aspect of potential design.

Has anyone, in a game with a traditional Referee and Players structure, encountered a form of game preparation where each of the players were required to submit Bangs to the Referee, and the game was navigated amongst those Bangs? It seems to me like such a structure would be promising, because all players would be effectively telling the rest of the group what they wanted out of that session, and the Referee would have access to more creativity than just his own in preparing the game. I know that Burning Wheel's world burning is similar, because everyone is pitching in ideas, but I am talking about a more session to session basis.

In my game, I have both Drives (goals or motivations for the characters) and Torments (traumas they must cope with), and I was considering that each player would have to submit one of those things to the Referee before the game to be sought or pursued during the session. This would mean each character would have a premade list of bangs to work from as well.

Thanks in advance for your consideration!

Hello Luke and welcome to the Forge

There is one nuance I recommend to take into account. Around here, we have what we tend to call the "Czege principle", which says that adversity isn't fun if it's provided by the player having to face it. So outright Bang preparation has the risk of falling into this category of "no fun". Indeed, a Bang is a meaningful situation which forces the character to take a decision. This is actually hard to prepare if you don't know exactly what is in the game in the first place.
However, from what you're saying, I wonder if what you really want are Flags (you may want to check the links Chris Chinn provides in that topic for some examples, and also this one, especially Bankuei (Chris's alias) reply). A Flag is basically any "topic" or "theme" you somehow highlight (perhaps by putting it on your character sheet) as something the others (even other players) may/should interact with. For example, if I have "unknown parents" as a trait or something, the GM could decide to include the returning parents at some point in the campaign, and that would provide material for at least one very powerful Bang, which the GM has to decide when and how to frame exactly, leaving lots of areas of surprise for the player.
The advantage of this technique is that it circumvents the problem identified by the "Czege principle". The player doesn't actually provide the adversity or the though decisions, but he tells the GM (whose job it is to provide these things in traditional play at least) what are the precise topics he wants to be challenged on. Drives and Torments sound just like they could be very nice Flags!

The specific details of what form the Flags should take will vary from game to game, depending on what you really want to achieve and what other System elements you have. If you want to dig in deeper, do tell us about your game in some more detail: who are the characters, what do they do and where? What are the players' and GM's roles? What is "the fun" in your game?

I think Flags are what I am getting at. I understand the problem with the bangs, but your explanation of flags is a more accurate to what I am suggesting - a way for players to signal what part of their characters they want to be challenged.

My game is a modern post-apocalyptic one (think Book of Eli or the Road) where the biblical apocalypse has taken place, and the forces of Satan/Hell/The Adversary have overtaken the world. The followers of God (Muslims, Jews and Christians alike) are living in a desperate world where they have to fight for survival, and use their Faith to battle the enemies both literally and figuratively. Games range from rescuing and helping the weak, helping their fellows survive, foraging for food and weapons to protect their homes, politics and wrangling amongst the Faithful, or taking the fight to the forces of evil. The drama or complication is how the characters continue to fight on despite the depressing and awful situation, and what motivates them to remain faithful and dutiful even in the time they are living.

As I said above, the trauma of surviving the "end of the world" has left characters with certain flaws (called Torments) that impact what they do, and goals (called Drives) that drive them to continue fighting. My concept was to have each player "bid" or offer one of his Torments or Drives during each session, telling the Referee what he is interested in dealing with (much like the Flags you discussed). Thus, if one character wanted to pursue his Torment "Left my brother behind to be devoured by demons" and another had the Drive "destroy the lair of the demon and his worshipers" then perhaps the Referee could craft the bangs that place the two in the same game. The demon one character is seeking to destroy is the same who killed the other's brother, forcing him to confront it and recall it constantly.

since I don't understand the terminology involved, let me throw this out

the Star Trek card game has players with their own ships and crews competing against one another.  They have abilities based on their ship, crew, and equipment.  Each player can put out missions to accomplish for points - missions have requirements for completion.  So players put out missions they can do and hopefully others cannot.  Players can also put complications on missions - additional requirements that they probably meet. 

Example:
Player 1 puts out a mission: cure the plague on Talos 4, requires a doctor.  Player 1 has a doctor so they can complete this mission
Player 2 puts a complication on the mission: political conflict, requires a diplomat.  So now completing the mission requires a doctor and a diplomat.

So together the players build the available missions and requirements.  The combinations may be things they can accomplish or not.

I'm doing something like this in FUBAR. In the basic version of the game, each player writes up a place, an objective, a secretive organisation and a pair of characters (which will be randomly distributed through the group, one of which possibly being played as a character, while the other becomes an enemy).

The whole idea of the game is to produce a game where the players shape the destiny of the setting as much as possible and the game is ad-libbed from there.

It might not be what you're after, but have a look. It might give you some ideas, and it's free.

V

I would like to go a bit deeper into the czege principle for a while.

As I see it, fun in RPGs comes (among other things) from the need to make decissions. If you have a drive in your game like 'I have to liberate the daughter of the priest because the father is actually possessed by a demon', that case the choice is already made. You could have some tactic fun while organizing a plan to liberate her, but that's all.

I think this is the biggest problem of providing your own adversity: usually, at the same time, you provide the adversity and the decission about how to figure it out (that should be matter of the game session). So, at the beginning of the game every decission is made, and all that remains are tactics. That is exactly how old school games work: decissions are not the matter.

So, I would say that having a goal for the session is not fun at all. What is fun is deciding during the game. If your character have a drive like 'I hate demons' and the life of the daughter is linked to the life of the father... well, you need to decide between killing the father (and that case the daughter dies) or liberating the daughter, but leaving the demon alive. Choices.

But its just not true that knowing what the adversity is in advance necessarily takes the fun out of something. Non-RPG example: nearly every movie made in Holywood. If your familiar with the formulas they use and have seen enough movies, there shouldn't be a lot of surprises about whats going to happen to who, we know what the story is within the first 10 minutes and can pretty much figure out how its going to end, but the movie is still enjoyable because we like to see how A gets to be B.
Your right about old school games and the basic lack of choices, but we could set down right now and say: "You'll play a hero, and there will be this evil wizard, like Aragorn and Sarumon, and you'll beat the wizard" and I for one would have fun just seeing how that comes about. I don't think everyone would, some people need uncertainty and a lot more people need (at least) the illusion of uncertainty to buy into a fiction (in games, movies or whatever), but its not bad design to have the game have the players completely write their own plots... its a matter of taste, not a universal truth. 

Don't agree.

Of course, Hollywood is a good example of how a story can be fun no matter you know what is going to happen. But I think that 'Czege principle' doesn't say 'there is no fun', but 'there is no fun here'.

I just watched 'The expendables'. Plot is fully predictable. But I enjoyed the movie, and I wasn't wondering 'what is going to happen?' 'what he's going to decide?' any moment. Because the stuff is not there. Same way I have enjoyed D&D sessions. I knew what was going to happen: enter the dungeon, kill the bad guys. The funny part is doing it.

But if your game deals with people pursuing goals, facing fears and making decissions, I think that principle is a good starting point.

Thanks for the input all. I am chewing on your suggestions as we speak.