Topic: plot points idea
Started by: Matt Wilson
Started on: 9/24/2002
Board: Indie Game Design
On 9/24/2002 at 3:58pm, Matt Wilson wrote:
plot points idea
I really like how TROS uses spiritual traits to do two things at once: promote character development and simulate it by generating xp.
It got me thinking of an idea for Ghosts: plot points.
With the system, you can generate a number of successes on your rolls. You can use multiple successes to get a kickass result, or save the excess as plot points. You jot down the circumstances and the number of successes you're saving. Example: Chazz is repairing the plasma drive and gets three successes. he only needs 2 for it to be working fine. he saves the extra success as a plot point.
Then later in the story, you can pull out these plot points to give to other players to add to their success total, as long as you can make it apply to the story. Example: Blixa is piloting the ship and trying to evade enemy fire. He rolls and doesn't get enough successes. Chazz spends his plot point and says, "luckily when I was repairing the drive I noticed a stabilizer was loose. Might have given you problems right about now."
Spent plot points translate to XP.
Thoughts? I was also thinking that points could be spent to give players control over NPCs at various times, kind of like with Donjon's "facts." Maybe the bartender just happens to know where we can get a replacement part for the particle beam cannon, etc. The more points you spend, the more helpful the NPC becomes.
On 9/24/2002 at 4:12pm, Jared A. Sorensen wrote:
Re: plot points idea
itsmrwilson wrote:
With the system, you can generate a number of successes on your rolls. You can use multiple successes to get a kickass result, or save the excess as plot points. You jot down the circumstances and the number of successes you're saving. Example: Chazz is repairing the plasma drive and gets three successes. he only needs 2 for it to be working fine. he saves the extra success as a plot point.
That exactly how the system for Ars Mechanica (which only one person has seen) works. Except that I use the metaphor of robots and energy cells, so the extra successes are stored in the robot's "battery" to be used later. When damaged, the robot bleeds off these stored successes.
So yeah, good idea.
- J
On 9/26/2002 at 1:41pm, ADGBoss wrote:
RE: plot points idea
I agree thats quite clever and this is coming from someone (me) not 100% sold on Narrativism. Question: Could the player also turn in the Plot Points for Hints? ie Play er is trying to find two hump back whales so he spends a plot point and the player suddenly sees an advertisment on a Bus about two hum back whales.
SMH
ADGBoss
On 9/26/2002 at 3:58pm, Matt Wilson wrote:
RE: plot points idea
ADGBoss wrote: I agree thats quite clever and this is coming from someone (me) not 100% sold on Narrativism. Question: Could the player also turn in the Plot Points for Hints? ie Play er is trying to find two hump back whales so he spends a plot point and the player suddenly sees an advertisment on a Bus about two hum back whales.
SMH
ADGBoss
I think that how they're used can be up to agreement between players and "that guy." I was thinking of a whole bunch of uses for them. As long as they tie into how they were generated, I think there's infinite uses.
Say you manage to fix the Quantum Drive, with extra successes. You pocket those, and later on you can spend them for...
- finding a dealer in balck market engine upgrades
- getting a discount on parts
- assisting a player who's attempting something related to the engines
- boosting power for a quick getaway
Or who knows what. More points spent means a better outcome. Maybe one point on the dealer means you find one, two means you're old acquaintances, three is you're old pals, etc.
It's pretty similar to Clinton's "facts" idea for Donjon, the differences being when and how you use the facts.
On 9/26/2002 at 5:33pm, Mike Holmes wrote:
RE: plot points idea
Very cool. I had on first read missed the EXP thing. This neatly avoids the problem that I posted about on another thread. Namely the idea of hoarding Plot Points for EXP. Your way, the player is doubly encouraged, first to use the mechanic to create plot points earlier in play, and then to spend them as soon as possible to do cool stuff (and develop the character).
Way to go.
Mike
On 9/27/2002 at 4:16am, M. J. Young wrote:
Play Concerns
itsmrwilson wrote: Say you manage to fix the Quantum Drive, with extra successes. You pocket those, and later on you can spend them for...
- finding a dealer in balck market engine upgrades
- getting a discount on parts
- assisting a player who's attempting something related to the engines
- boosting power for a quick getaway
Or who knows what. More points spent means a better outcome. Maybe one point on the dealer means you find one, two means you're old acquaintances, three is you're old pals, etc.
I like the idea generally, but I think you may have created an accounting nightmare.
Let's suppose you got three extra successes on fixing the Quantum Drive. Before you've used these for anything else, you get an extra success in bargaining for black market launch permits. You get another in a bar fight, and two for finagling a financial deal.
At this point, it isn't that you have seven extra successes, but that you have seven successes unevenly distributed in four "categories". But then, they aren't exactly in "categories" either, because there aren't categories--they are rather connected to the specific event from which you got them. You might next add two more successes for repairing the communications system, and now you've got nine; but again, you've got nine that are in completely unrelated areas. And you can't really simplify it to "engineering successes" "social successes" "combat successes" because part of the beauty of the system is that the successes relate back to the source--you can use fixing the drive for drive related actions or activities, but not really for the communication system, for which your communication system credits are going to be useful.
And while you are envisioning these being spent fairly quickly, you're not accounting for player variation here. This is a currency. Cautious players are going to bank it, and so save it for use in real emergencies--they may end up with several pages of such credits, each related to different activities, over the course of a campaign.
Counters? You can force them to spend these by creating emergency situations, but that's going to feel like railroading; no one likes the feeling that the referee engineered a situation to strip him of his currency. You can bump points, declaring that only one (or only two, or three) previous events worth of credits can be held at any time (that is, if you haven't spent the engine credits by the time you get the two for the financial deal, you either have to forego those from the deal or lose one of the other three categories with its credits), which may save a lot of problems and encourage spending them, but it's going to aggravate some players who would like to have the cushion of having a few points and will feel they've been robbed when they lose them (particularly if a moment later they could have spent them on something, but the sequence of events was wrong). You can create an artificial limit, like no points carried to the next game session or the next adventure or whatever, but that will always feel artificial. You can lose the direct relationship and toss the credits into general categories, allowing them to spill over into other areas in unrelated ways, but that, as mentioned, really does take a lot of the charm from the mechanic.
The most workable solution may be to accept that you're going to have this bookkeeping problem, and live with it.
--M. J. Young
On 9/27/2002 at 2:43pm, Matt Wilson wrote:
Re: Play Concerns
M. J. Young wrote:
I like the idea generally, but I think you may have created an accounting nightmare.
And while you are envisioning these being spent fairly quickly, you're not accounting for player variation here. This is a currency. Cautious players are going to bank it, and so save it for use in real emergencies--
Good call. I was thinking about that too. I think I will require players to spend these points in the course of an evening/game session. And maybe if all the plot point "slots" are taken up, you have to spend before you can get new ones.
It'll take some playtesting to balance out, but the system I'm working on for it has a pretty steep success curve. Getting one success isn't too hard, but two is unlikely and three+ is pretty rare.
On 9/27/2002 at 3:16pm, Jared A. Sorensen wrote:
RE: Re: Play Concerns
itsmrwilson wrote:M. J. Young wrote:
I like the idea generally, but I think you may have created an accounting nightmare.
And while you are envisioning these being spent fairly quickly, you're not accounting for player variation here. This is a currency. Cautious players are going to bank it, and so save it for use in real emergencies--
Good call. I was thinking about that too. I think I will require players to spend these points in the course of an evening/game session. And maybe if all the plot point "slots" are taken up, you have to spend before you can get new ones.
Why is it an accounting nightmare? It's pretty darn easy.
1. Don't limit the use of these points to specific situations. If a player gets two successes sweet-talking a dame at a nightclub, let the player spend the points during a gunfight at a restaurant that night or to repair a broken-down truck.
2. Let the player store the points as extra dice. That way, no pencil-paper bookkeeping -- just keep a bunch of different-colored dice handy and have the player toss 'em back into the communal pile when they're spent.
3. You can use 'em as an XP system (if yer into that). Before I got rid of the XP system in octaNe, players would get XP every time they spent a Plot Point. In effect, the in-game effectiveness (when used) would translate to an overall improvement in character effectiveness. I got rid of this when I realized that the Plot Points are already the experience system (albeit an expendable resource rather than a permanent increase in ability).
4. The easier it is to acquire Plot Points, the more readily players will spend them. Also, you might wanna do what I did in octaNe: when the player spends a Plot Point she must declare some event or circumstance that helps her character out -- like, spending a Plot Point during a gunfight and declaring that the sun is in her opponent's eyes (or whatever). The thing is, regardless of whether or not the roll succeeds or fails, the event is now a fact. So Plot Points serve a dual role: enhance character effectiveness and establish limited narrative control.
On 9/27/2002 at 3:29pm, Matt Wilson wrote:
RE: Re: Play Concerns
Jared A. Sorensen wrote:
Why is it an accounting nightmare? It's pretty darn easy.
1. Don't limit the use of these points to specific situations. If a player gets two successes sweet-talking a dame at a nightclub, let the player spend the points during a gunfight at a restaurant that night or to repair a broken-down truck.
Nah, I like it better to have them relate to the situation that generated them. Otherwise they're just generic "fate points."
2. Let the player store the points as extra dice. That way, no pencil-paper bookkeeping -- just keep a bunch of different-colored dice handy and have the player toss 'em back into the communal pile when they're spent.
The character sheet will have space to write down the situation and check off number of points. Easy enough.
3. You can use 'em as an XP system (if yer into that).
It is an XP system. I thought I mentioned that above.
4. Also, you might wanna do what I did in octaNe: when the player spends a Plot Point she must declare some event or circumstance that helps her character out --
Nah, I like it better to have them relate to the situation that generated them. Otherwise they're just generic "fate points."
2. Let the player store the points as extra dice. That way, no pencil-paper bookkeeping -- just keep a bunch of different-colored dice handy and have the player toss 'em back into the communal pile when they're spent.
The character sheet will have space to write down the situation and check off number of points. Easy enough.
3. You can use 'em as an XP system (if yer into that).
It is an XP system. I thought I mentioned that above.
4. Also, you might wanna do what I did in octaNe: when the player spends a Plot Point she must declare some event or circumstance that helps her character out --
I though
Nah, I like it better to have them relate to the situation that generated them. Otherwise they're just generic "fate points."
2. Let the player store the points as extra dice. That way, no pencil-paper bookkeeping -- just keep a bunch of different-colored dice handy and have the player toss 'em back into the communal pile when they're spent.
The character sheet will have space to write down the situation and check off number of points. Easy enough.
3. You can use 'em as an XP system (if yer into that).
It is an XP system. I thought I mentioned that above.
4. Also, you might wanna do what I did in octaNe: when the player spends a Plot Point she must declare some event or circumstance that helps her character out --
Nah, I like it better to have them relate to the situation that generated them. Otherwise they're just generic "fate points."
2. Let the player store the points as extra dice. That way, no pencil-paper bookkeeping -- just keep a bunch of different-colored dice handy and have the player toss 'em back into the communal pile when they're spent.
The character sheet will have space to write down the situation and check off number of points. Easy enough.
3. You can use 'em as an XP system (if yer into that).
It is an XP system. I thought I mentioned that above.
4. Also, you might wanna do what I did in octaNe: when the player spends a Plot Point she must declare some event or circumstance that helps her character out --
I thought that was in the example I used in the very first post. In any case, yes, that's the plan. But you can't use them for yourself. They have to be spent on other characters.
On 9/27/2002 at 5:26pm, Jeffrey Miller wrote:
RE: Re: Play Concerns
itsmrwilson wrote:M. J. Young wrote:
I like the idea generally, but I think you may have created an accounting nightmare.
And while you are envisioning these being spent fairly quickly, you're not accounting for player variation here. This is a currency. Cautious players are going to bank it, and so save it for use in real emergencies--
Good call. I was thinking about that too. I think I will require players to spend these points in the course of an evening/game session. And maybe if all the plot point "slots" are taken up, you have to spend before you can get new ones.
Yup, that's where I thought you were headed in the original idea. I don't know about the slots - just make it for the session.. or better yet, here's a chance for a genre knob. On a TV show, very little from one week to another remains in effect. Unless you're cutting the gaming session in a cliffhanger, "To Be Continued..." style ending, only allow characters to carry over 1 set of successes from week to week. They can change which one they've got stored, but once abandoned those successes are lost. Now, if you want a less "episodey" style of play, you can tweak how many (if any) success carry over.
Rather than currency, think of these points as checks. By themselves, they're fairly worthless - you have to make an effort to get up off yer butt and get to the bank before it closes in order to cash it. Since they're tied to XP, players CAN'T bank them, waiting for the perfect moment - use 'em or lose 'em. Players are encouraged and rewarded in this system for creating great retroactive plot coherency.
My favorite example that you've given me, Matt, is in Empire Strikes Back, when R2-D2 accesses Cloud City's central computer to close open a door so that Leia, Chewie, Lando, and C-3PO can escape. While whistling and spinning, he also discovers that the hyperdrive has been worked on, something C-3PO says "Nevermind that, open the door you trash can!" (or something like that.) Its only important in a later scene when the hyperdrive isn't working, the Imperials closing in, Lando and Leia FAR too busy trying to discover the source of the problem too pay attention to R2, who calmly glides over and tweaks one little circuit..
-eogan-
On 9/29/2002 at 3:00am, M. J. Young wrote:
RE: plot points idea
Personally I've always hated session-based definitions. The session is too artificial in my mind; I'm always ending sessions at odd points to be continued next time, and the length of a session depends on too many outside factors--can be an hour or eighteen hours, so it's rather meaningless as an in-game device.
But I think it would be a reasonable limit to say you can only save the extra successes from three events; if you get an extra success in a fourth event, either you lose it or you dump one of the others.
--M. J. Young
On 9/29/2002 at 5:12am, Jeffrey Miller wrote:
RE: plot points idea
M. J. Young wrote: Personally I've always hated session-based definitions. The session is too artificial in my mind; I'm always ending sessions at odd points to be continued next time, and the length of a session depends on too many outside factors--can be an hour or eighteen hours, so it's rather meaningless as an in-game device.
If your circumstances don't allow you to dictate the flow of the game with that level of skill, then why not make it scene/act/episode based? I never used the word session - indeed, I was thinking episodicaly rather than sessionaly. It matters what happened early on Hoth - but what happened on Hoth doesn't mean squat on Cloud City.
(sorry for the relentless star wars analogies. Most everyone has seen them (as well as the Indiana Jones films) so they make handy story references, rather than my dredging up obscure Irish mythology..)
M. J. Young wrote:
But I think it would be a reasonable limit to say you can only save the extra successes from three events; if you get an extra success in a fourth event, either you lose it or you dump one of the others.
That might work, and that's a solid, constructive idea. Playtesting should be the place to iron something like this out, I imagine. The goal being to encourage players with a mechanic to participate in the (n)arrative, it remains to be seen how well different players react to and participate with this mechanic.
-j-