My apologies for this incomplete submission. I enjoyed Kester Pelagius's thoughts on character switching during a game and it really got me thinking. It occured to me that this would be much more acceptable in a game where characters were less central to play.

During my lunch hour I messed around with this, creating a system where story themes are the main focus of play. Messing around with different characters would be necessary in order to explore your theme. Anyway here's the jumble, I ran out of steam when I realised I was getting closer and closer to Universalis (or a game you could use Universalis to build). Hopefully come up with some revisions in my kip tonight and paste them up tomorrow.

Thanks for taking the time to read it - comments are very welcome. I'd be especially keen to know... Does this look like its going somewhere? Has it already been done? What elements seem unique/attractive to you?

ThemeChaser
This is a story-telling game. Players each select a Theme appropriate to the Game-world and are each responsible for that Theme. Through co-operative and competitive play they involve the Resources of the game world in stories that develop their Theme.

What is a Theme?
A Theme could be a complex moral question, a mystery to be solved, an idea to be developed, an intriguing aspect of mythic history or popular culture. The choice is yours, provided that it is suitable to your Game-world and will not upset the other players. Your Theme need not be fully defined and explored before the game begins, you will use the game as a means of developing your Theme. Here are some sample starting Themes

· Can good really ever overcome evil?
· One day Humans will live in cities under the sea.
· Vampires.
· Aliens have somehow infiltrated our government.
· Time travelling race cars.
· One of our dinosaurs has been stolen!
· Who ate all the pies?

Game-world Resources
Before the game begins players should jointly create the world in which the game will exist. The Game-world Resources are the things you will need to tell stories about your theme. People, places, histories, sciences, inventions may all have a part to play in the story you want to tell. If they are to be very important to your Theme (or not normally found within the Game-world) then it is worthwhile to confirm their existence in the game world before you begin. Here are some sample game-worlds.

· Star Wars
· Present day
· War of the Roses
· The Lost World
· Cybertron
· 10 days from now.

Using Resources
Anyone can employ resources to tell their story, whether or not they were the player that created them. If you create a Resource that is interesting to the other players, or is something you hope to use more than once, then you may wish to make a note of that Resource on a sheet of paper.

Changing Resources
Resources can change over the course of the game. People can become wiser, locations can become run down, inventions can become obsolete. Any player can change a Resource in order to better tell a story about their Theme. You may wish to make a note of that Resource and its changes on a sheet of paper.

Investing Resources with your Theme
Some places, people, or events, may become especially involved with your theme, you may wish to “protect” them from being changed too much by other players. You can invest a Resource with your Theme. Simply write the name of your theme underneath the name of the Resource on a sheet of paper. Now whenever anyone tries to use or change that Resource in a story you will be reminded that you have already invested your Theme in that Resource. Whenever someone mentions that resource in their story you may immeadiately take over the telling of the story. This will help you to maintain the integrity of the resources you consider important to your story.

Theme Strength
The more your Theme crops up in the game, the stronger your Theme will become. Your Theme has a strength rating, it begins the game at one. Every time another player uses a resource that has your Theme then your Theme strength will increase by one, provided that you do not use this as an opportunity to take control of the story. So allowing other players to become involved in your Theme will make it stronger and more central to the game. Whereas controlling every minute aspect of your Theme will do nothing to help it grow.

What can I do with Theme Strength?
Theme Strength lets you create Trappings for your Theme. You can create a number of Trappings equal to your Theme Strength

What are Trappings?
Trappings are anything at all that you expect to crop up in a story about your Theme. Eg.
· Vampire Theme: Blood lust, wooden stakes, gothic architecture.
· Who ate all the pies? Theme: Nimble fingers, grumbly belly, pie crumbs.
· Good vs evil Theme: Introspection, moral debate, eternal struggle.


What do I do with Trappings?
You can assign an existing (and appropriate) Trapping to any resource that has your Theme. In this respect Trappings could be considered as traits/attributes/skills. Trappings help you keep control of your story. Other players can normally take control of the story anytime you involve a resource that has been invested with your Theme. You may resist this by rolling dice in a Struggle.

Struggle
Sometimes you’re not ready to let another player take control and change the story to suit their Theme. A struggle will result. How will this work? Probably exactly the same way that complications work in Universalis. In the absence of any original ideas in this dumb head of mine you get an extra dice for every trapping that backs up where you want the story to go. Damn it! I can’t get that game out of my head!!!

Seriously thanks for reading, I’ll add/revise more tomorrow.

Tony

What is to stop me investing my Theme in every single resource?

Every time you invest your Theme in a Resource your turn ends. Play passes to the person on your left.

When and How do I get a turn?
Play normally goes clockwise round the circle. A player may voluntarily end their own turn at any time. A player's turn is automatically ended when they invest their Theme in a Resource. You cannot Struggle to prevent this. A player's turn can end when they make reference in their story to a Resource in which another player has invested their Theme. However hat player may chose not to end the first players turn, allowing them to continue. If the first player is unwilling to end their turn like this then they may initiate a Struggle.

Darn - Universalis but with different words. I'll try come up with something original for it tonight...

Thanks for reading :-)

I love the idea.

Speaking from a purely self serving perspective, I'd love to have you write it up in Univeralis terms and we could put it up as a big variant on the Add-ons page.

tony188,

Wow. <looks around> My post inspired this? <blinks>

Okay.

<reads some more>

Nifty.

The idea about Themes… you could have a set of pre-generated Themes, maybe on slips of paper, maybe on index cards… place them in a common pile… draw them during play to develop the course of the game…

Game-world Resources… hrm… might sound better as Genre Setting, but then that’s just my moldy few crumbs worth of input.

Using Resources… common pool… drawn (purchased?) and placed into play…

Reinforced Theme structure… suppose that could be altered to “goal orientation” and…

Some sort of pay or play deal…

<end of random burbling>


Those were some interesting ideas.

Actually, I was working on something similar to this as a PBeM game system. (How many Forge posts start out "Hey, I was working on this too..." ?)

In my game, what you call a "theme" I called a "gestalt," and it was what players used to define their identity, instead of having just one character. For instance, over the course of the PBeM, the player whose gestalt was "the eventually triumph of good only after much suffering" would play a whole host of characters who all embodied, in some way, that concept.

The point was to expand the range of your gestalt, by tacking on other concepts that you gained duing play (I'm summerizing, obviously). Eventually, the point was to become a "zietgeist," the overarching tone and spirit of the entire storyline. So, instead of being a story that resonated on all sorts of themes, the story would BE ABOUT "the eventual triumph of good only after much suffering."

In this way, it was almost a cross between your theme idea and the "Incarnate" game that DeadpanBob/Jason has been working on. I was also going to have turns pass among the players, where they claimed various things, but over a series of emails and not going around a circle.

I also would be really interested to see you work this up as a Universalis add-on, and I think it'd help you nail down what you're trying to do. Then, if you want, you could convert it into something unique.

Later.
Jonathan

Hey,

That's a nice system you got there. It seems almost reminiscent of Monopoly to me, though maybe I'm reading too much into the Resources there.

This leads nicely into my one concern: the system could promote a simple grabbing of Resources, which would shift it quickly towards Gamist play. However, I'd like to think that players who bring an appropriately Narrativist approach to the game would avoid this pitfall.

Well this thread still seems to be on the indie game forum! This started out as a "curiosity" during a lunch hour, I better respond to the vote of confidence of being allowed to keep this here.

I was looking over my initial post. I wrote it much in the form of a player manual, and although it allowed me to deal with play issues it doesn't deal with design issues - which I think is one of the reasons I ran out of steam and started nicking Universalis mechanics. "What is this game trying to do?" I would ask myself, I didn't really know the answer so no wonder I found it hard to create mechanics that would suit the answer!

Asking myself a series of design questions about the internal logic of the game has helped me establish some mechanics. Tomorrow I'll reconcile this with the "manual" I wrote in the first post, hopefully giving a clear understanding of play.

As always comments, questions, advice are very welcome.

What is the Goal?
Uninterrupted story telling.

Why tell a story?
To explore a theme of interest to you.

What will prevent story telling?
Interruptions

Why will people interrupt?
To explore their own theme instead of yours.

How do you stop interruptions?
By compromising, incorporating their theme into your story.

How?
By selecting a trapping associated with the other player’s theme and involving it in the story.

What stops players interrupting constantly?
They can only interrupt at a point appropriate to their theme.

When is appropriate?
When I incorporate a resource that has been invested with their theme.

Why would I do that?
Because creating your own resources would bring your turn to an end, interrupting your story telling.

So I must chose between possible interruption and definite interruption?
Yes

Why would they choose not to interrupt when I give them the opportunity?
Because not interrupting will increase their Theme strength by one, allowing them to create more trappings.

Why would they want to create more trappings?
A greater variety of trappings makes it more likely that an agreeable compromise can be reached upon when they try to interrupt, that you will incorporate a trapping of their Theme into yours. Thus they achieve a measure of uninterrupted story telling - their Theme is being explored both in your turn and in theirs.

How does a turn work?
You create 3 resources which your story will use. Time, Characters, and Place. You then tell your story. But as soon as your story requires new resources to continue, your turn ends. You can introduce a resource from a previous story that has a Theme attatched to it. Doing this means you can continue your story without ending your turn, but of course this act gives the owner of that theme the opportunity to interrupt.

Tony, I'm really impressed, by all of the following:

- your design

- your analysis of your design

- your presentation of your analysis of your design

I'll be linking to that post any time in the future I have to ask of someone, "explain to me how your game mechanics support your design goals."

Perhaps I could adopt your style to summarize what impresses me about the design.

What is the biggest potential problem with a game in which players compete to develop themes?
Getting them involved in each other's stories. In particular, getting them to support each other's stories rather than ignoring them or trying to sabotage them.

How does ThemeChaser address that problem?
By rewarding players for using elements of each other's stories, but only when they use them in such a way that the owner of those elements won't wish to intervene.

- Walt

Some points from Kester, who wrote: Using Resources… common pool… drawn (purchased?) and placed into play…

Reinforced Theme structure… suppose that could be altered to “goal orientation” and…

Some sort of pay or play deal…

Soundwave rang some alarm bells for me when he wrote: This leads nicely into my one concern: the system could promote a simple grabbing of Resources, which would shift it quickly towards Gamist play. However, I'd like to think that players who bring an appropriately Narrativist approach to the game would avoid this pitfall.

Jonathan Walton wrote: In my game, what you call a "theme" I called a "gestalt," and it was what players used to define their identity, instead of having just one character. For instance, over the course of the PBeM, the player whose gestalt was "the eventually triumph of good only after much suffering" would play a whole host of characters who all embodied, in some way, that concept.

The point was to expand the range of your gestalt, by tacking on other concepts that you gained duing play (I'm summerizing, obviously). Eventually, the point was to become a "zietgeist," the overarching tone and spirit of the entire storyline. So, instead of being a story that resonated on all sorts of themes, the story would BE ABOUT "the eventual triumph of good only after much suffering."

Folks, I've posted here my latest version of Theme-Chaser. I've tried very hard to deal with the issues raised by the design questions I asked myself in my earlier post. Many thanks to all who have taken time out of their days to post comments or suggestions, it really helped to focus me on issues that needed addressing.

In its Microsoft Word original form, this document is 3 pages long. Rather than post it again directly I'll create a website with it available for download.

My next intended step is to create a version of text more accessible to players. It requires contextualised examples and thorough exploration of each concept, as well as a (fake) transcript of a game in progress. Also I shall attend to issues raised by any of the kind readers of this thread! Hopefully this will give me a play test version I can use with my friends, if I can just wean them off Universalis for one night ;-)

On that subject, Im still tinkering with a version that works purely as a Universalis add on. Unfortunately I'm on record as dissing arm chair gamers, so I'll post it to the Universalis board once I've actually play-tested it.

Again, I welcome any comment on what I've presented here.

Theme-Chaser
This is a story-telling game. Players each select a Theme appropriate to the game World and are each responsible for that Theme. During turns, called Acts, players employ story elements called Stages to tell stories that develop their own and each other's Themes.

What is a Theme?
A Theme could be a complex moral question, a mystery to be solved, an idea to be developed, an intriguing aspect of mythic history or popular culture. The choice is yours, provided that it is suitable to your World and will not upset the other players. Your Theme need not be fully defined and explored before the game begins, you will use the game as a means of developing your Theme. Here are some sample starting Themes

· Can good really ever overcome evil?
· One day Humans will live in cities under the sea.
· Vampires.
· Aliens have somehow infiltrated our government.
· Time travelling racecars.
· One of our dinosaurs has been stolen!
· Who ate all the pies?

What are Stages?
Every story needs a Stage on which it can be told. Stages are the bare bones that you will use to build a Story during your Act. Three types of Stages are available, Time, Location, and Character. At the beginning of each turn, or Act, you will have the opportunity to build one of each type of Stage. There is no limit on the kind of Stages you can build, other than your own imagination and the confines of your World. However you can only build one of each type of Stage. To begin with, your Story can only be in one Time, in one Place, and involve one Character or group of Characters.

What is a World?
A World is the setting in which all the players' stories will be told. Before the game begins players should jointly create the World in which stories will happen. This will decide the nature of the Stages on which you will tell your story. If particular Times, Locations, or Characters are to be very important to your Theme (or not normally found within the World) then it is worthwhile to confirm their existence in the World before you begin. Here are some sample Worlds. Think about the Stages that each one might use.

· Star Wars
· Present day
· War of the Roses
· The Lost World
· Cybertron
· 10 days from now on the ocean floor.

Building Stages
At the beginning of your Act you can build whatever Stages you want with which to tell your story. You should describe these Stages in terms of Time, Character and Location. Its important that you label them this way as it helps other players to take note of them in case they wish to use them in their turn. Anyone can build any Stage to tell their story, whether or not they were the player that created them, unless that Stage has been Painted with another player's Theme (more on this below). If you create a Stage that is interesting to the other players, or is something you hope to use more than once, then all players should make a note of that Stage on a sheet of paper.

Your Act
During your Act you are said to be the Acting Player. As Acting Player your first duty is to build the Time, Character, and Location Stages that you will need to tell your story. You can keep telling your story for as long as you wish, provided that you don’t require a new Stage to keep it going. As soon as you come to the point where you feel you would need to introduce a new Stage, your Act comes to an end and the next player may begin theirs. The way out of this is to introduce a Stage that has been Painted with someone else’s Theme. Doing this does not automatically end your Act, instead the person who Painted that Theme gets the choice of whether to take over your Act in order to tell their own story, or let you continue telling yours.

Painting Stages with your Theme
Some of the Stages you have built may become especially involved with your Theme, and so you may wish to reserve them for stories that use your Theme. You can Paint a Stage with your Theme. Simply write the name of your theme underneath the name of the Stage on a sheet of paper. Now whenever anyone tries to introduce that Stage during an act, you will be reminded that it has already been Painted with your Theme. You then have the option to immediately take over the Act from that point.

Theme Strength
The more your Theme crops up in the game, the stronger your Theme will become. Your Theme has a strength rating, it begins the game at one. Every time another player introduces a Stage that has been Painted with your Theme then your Theme strength will increase by one, provided that you do not use this as an opportunity to take control of their Act. So allowing other players to become involved in your Theme will make it stronger and more central to the game. Whereas controlling every minute aspect of your Theme will do nothing to help it grow.

Trappings
Theme Strength lets you create Trappings for your Theme. You can create a number of Trappings equal to your Theme Strength. Trappings are anything at all that you might expect to crop up in a story about your Theme. Eg.

· Vampire Theme: Blood lust, wooden stakes, gothic architecture.
· Who ate all the pies? Theme: Nimble fingers, grumbly belly, pie crumbs.
· Good vs evil Theme: Introspection, moral debate, eternal struggle.

Trappings could be considered as traits/skills/events/equipment/effects/tone/symbols/motifs anything that wouldn’t quite exist as a Stage in its own right, or something that you’d like to see cropping up again and again throughout everybody’s Acts. When another player introduces a Stage that has been Painted with your Theme (in order to try and extend their own Act) you have the choice of taking over their Act or letting them continue. If you let them continue then two things happen; your own Theme Strength increases by one, and that player is obliged to incorporate one of your Trappings into their Act before it ends or they try and introduce and more Stages.

Choices
When you introduce a Stage that has been Painted with another Player’s Theme, they are the one who gets to decide whether you or they get to continue with your Act. If they decide to continue the Act then they may use the Stages that were present, plus the Stage you introduced, to do so. If they let you continue the Act then you are obliged to incorporate one of their Trappings into your Act. Which Trapping to use is entirely up to you, but remember you must use it before introducing any more Stages. You will most likely want to choose a Trapping that is suitable to the Stages you already have in this Act (including the one the other player has let you use). In fact when deciding to introduce a Stage that has been Painted with another Player’s Theme, it is important that you first check what Trappings it has and how willing you are to incorporate any of them into your story.

Instructions for play
1. Players sit in a circle, each player should have a pencil and sheet of paper ready.
2. Players jointly create a World in which to play.
3. Each player determines their own Theme. Players should make note of each other’s Themes.
4. Players jointly decide who will start the first Act.

Acts
1. The Acting Player must first build three Stages on which to tell this part of their story. You may build Stages that have already appeared in the game, however you may not build a Stage that has been Painted with another player’s Theme. You may build Stages that have already been Painted with your own Theme.
2. The three Stages should be labelled as Time, Location, and Character and each player should make note of what the three Stages were for this Act.
3. The Acting Player starts to tell their story, using the three Stages.
4. When the Acting Player feels it is impossible to continue their story without introducing other Stages, they must either end their turn or introduce a Stage that has been Painted with the Theme of another player.
5. The other player decides whether or not to take over the Act. If they do then they may not build Stages, only use the ones already present (including the one that has been Painted with their own Theme).
6. If the Acting Player is allowed retain control of the Act then they may continue their story, and the other player’s Theme Strength rises by one. The Acting Player is obliged to incorporate one of the other players Trappings into the story before the Act ends or anymore Stages are introduced. The Acting Player may choose which Trapping to use.
7. The Acting Player may voluntarily end their own Act at any time, rather than rely on Stages that have been Painted with the Themes of other players. The player on the Acting Player’s left now becomes the Acting Player. Their first duty is to build the three Stages on which they will tell their story, stages used by the previous Acting Player do not automatically hold over into this current Act.

Painting a Stage with your Theme
1. As an alternative to telling a Story, the Acting Player may wish to Paint a Stage with their Theme. They build only one Stage (either a new one, or one built previously by another player) and announce that it has been Painted with their Theme. You cannot Paint a Stage that another player has already Painted. All players should take note of which Stages have been Painted and by whom.
2. The Player to the left of the Acting Player now becomes the new Acting Player.

I just have to say that Theme-Chaser rocks on toast!

Before this draft, I wasn't quite sure how you were going to get all the mechanics to work out, but now I'm beginning to see what you were getting at, and I'm very impressed.

A couple comments:

1) After the game is going for a while, and there are a sufficient number of Painted stages created, there's no direct mechanic for making sure the Acting Player role is shared among the players. I see potential for a less forceful player to just sit off to the side, watching as the other players incorperate his Trappings into the story, but not contributing much directly. This isn't something you necessarily have to address, but something to think about.

2) There's also the risk that the Acting Player could just keep narrating forever, never seeing the need to incorperate any other elements into the story. Think about all the minimalist theater out there. You don't really need much to tell a story, and games that want to play within a fairly restrained context might run into a few problems.

3) Shouldn't there be some requirements for Painting a Stage with your Theme? For instance, could you paint an ongoing battle with the Theme of Peace? Does painting a Stage with your Theme change it to more strongly reflect your Theme or is it basically just a way of grabbing control of things? I guess now that I see how the control mechanics work, I'm more interested in seeing how the Themes fit into the rest of the game.

Overall, though, I think you've done a great job of handling all the issues you were trying to tackle. Definitely given me some new ideas to consider for my "gestalt-based" PBeM RPG.

Later.
Jonathan

Jonathan Walton wrote: 2) There's also the risk that the Acting Player could just keep narrating forever, never seeing the need to incorperate any other elements into the story. Think about all the minimalist theater out there. You don't really need much to tell a story, and games that want to play within a fairly restrained context might run into a few problems.

Jonathan Walton wrote: I just have to say that Theme-Chaser rocks on toast!

1) After the game is going for a while, and there are a sufficient number of Painted stages created, there's no direct mechanic for making sure the Acting Player role is shared among the players. I see potential for a less forceful player to just sit off to the side, watching as the other players incorperate his Trappings into the story, but not contributing much directly. This isn't something you necessarily have to address, but something to think about.

2) There's also the risk that the Acting Player could just keep narrating forever, never seeing the need to incorperate any other elements into the story. Think about all the minimalist theater out there. You don't really need much to tell a story, and games that want to play within a fairly restrained context might run into a few problems.

3) Shouldn't there be some requirements for Painting a Stage with your Theme? For instance, could you paint an ongoing battle with the Theme of Peace? Does painting a Stage with your Theme change it to more strongly reflect your Theme or is it basically just a way of grabbing control of things? I guess now that I see how the control mechanics work, I'm more interested in seeing how the Themes fit into the rest of the game.

walt wrote: Tony, I'm really impressed, by all of the following:

- your design

- your analysis of your design

- your presentation of your analysis of your design

I'll be linking to that post any time in the future I have to ask of someone, "explain to me how your game mechanics support your design goals."

Walt wrote: What is the biggest potential problem with a game in which players compete to develop themes? Getting them involved in each other's stories. In particular, getting them to support each other's stories rather than ignoring them or trying to sabotage them.

How does ThemeChaser address that problem?
By rewarding players for using elements of each other's stories, but only when they use them in such a way that the owner of those elements won't wish to intervene.

This looks great, I have been puzzling about the very fixed idea of charcter in rpgs for a while. Oddly enough, inspiration comes from playstation games - the Final Fantasy series that, in their limited gamist approach, allow you to change characters around (from a fixed set) depending on the circumstances. Occasionally one character will be required in the group (eg a journey to Jimbob's home town to discover just why it is he cannot stand the sound of museli crunching) but otherwise a floating cast.

Seems to be a good idea for rpgs, where the 'everyone gets together for an adventure each week' model is very limiting, especially for modern games.

I tried a bit of this in my Liber Tenebrae game, there is a core cast of 14 with character development written into the saga. The players can choose any each session, but might be pointed in the direction of relevant ones. Good for players who only play occasionally too. It is dependant on the setting, based around one market, a small geographical space.

So I think theme playing looks like an exciting idea. Perhaps it could be used in a more traditional format, to allow shifting characters, each player's set of characters representing the theme.

Would need the right system though. I tried this many, many years ago with a psychic time travel game which I ran under gurps 2nd ed. Had too much trouble with the players who wanted to play the sexually disfunctional dwarf with a hare lip and a gammy leg who hated the idea that they couldn't max their points in a normal way. Ahh, nostalgia

Scott

Just had another thought. I heard about a West End Game based on the Tales of the CryptKeeper tv series (which itself was quite a sad, wilted thing) but the game was supposed to be interesting.

If what I heard was right, you played a character archetype (the brooding stranger, the struggling mother, the skanky blonde) who was fitted into what was relevant for each story - be it contemporary, historical, whatever. The archetype returned story after story even if the person died or lived happily ever after.

I can foresee all kinds of problems already, but also an interesting idea. Has anyone seen this game, or is it just a myth? Is it any good or does it even have some good ideas to salvage?

Scott

Hi Scott,

The Tales of the Crypt game operates precisely as you've described it, and it's a member of a kind of "family" of role-playing games which use this technique, which I call (based on a friend's coining) the "one-step-removed" character concept.

Other games which operate this way, or similarly anyway, include Morpheus, Extreme Vengeance, Hong Kong Action Theater, and (I think this one was first) It Came from the Late Late Late Show.

My final post in last December's Displacement thread laid out the options regarding this gaming technique.

Best,
Ron

In preparation for playtesting it I made a change:

To prevent a grab fest, you can only paint a number of Stages equal to your theme strength. This takes place immeadiately whenever your theme increases. So when someone uses your painted stage, you immeadiately get to paint another one. To kick it off you get to paint one stage before the game starts, at the same time you create your trapping.

This worked well in practice - helped to ensure that the focus was on telling stories, rather than managing the elements used to tell them.

You can read about my first game of this here!