The current round of threads here has been really inspiring to me. I'm talking specifically about threads like Chris Kubasik's Accessible? To whom?, Jon's What would make a non-roleplayer buy your game?, and Ron's Vanilla and Pervy, among others. I tend to go through creativity ups and downs, and after Donjon, I've taken a little bit of time off. These threads have gotten me back in the game, and the purpose of this thread is (a) to show off my new baby a bit, obviously, but (b) to seek questions and input. Specific questions will be in the text, but in general, feel free to bring up things I haven't thought of, ask questions about things that don't make sense, and give advice wherever you see a potential problem. All input will be seriously listened to, at a minimum.

I've become very interested in the way games are designed recently: whether they are designed through play, or in full before play, for example. I'm hoping this dissection of my own design process will help facilitate discussion on the anatomy of design.

Introduction

I've just started on the last of my first trilogy of games, first referenced here. It's called Riptide, and is basically Harry Potter, John Hughes, New Wave music, and California surfing all thrown in a blender. More interestingly, I've got some very clear design guidelines I'm using this time:

- I originally planned this to be my first functional Simulationist game. However, as I've started the design, I've gotten some Narrativist influences. So, I'm intending to have a hybrid design, a la The Riddle of Steel and, in my opinion, Sorcerer. I'm not a big fan of talking about GNS, but since I am - I feel that this sort of design is most accessible to not only current role-players, but people new to role-playing. (In case you're wondering, since there's a Narrativist undercurrent in the game, what the Premise is, I'll tell you: "Are you who you are or what you do?" Simple. Easy. Exactly what high school was about.)

- I'm intending for this game to be very, very Vanilla. In other words - I want game mechanics to be simple enough that they feel like an extension of the declared action. There should be one roll, and at the most, one simple table involved with each action.

- I want game constructs to relate to real world constructs. For example, many games might include Dexterity and Intelligence attributes. While intelligence can be (kinda) measured by IQ score, what's Dexterity? Is there any way to really measure this? I'm not going to fill up the sheet with stuff like "Maximum bench press," which takes detail too far, but I want everything on the character sheet to look like something you can touch in real life. This does mean I'm going to do the White-Wolf-esque thing about renaming everything in the game. (I'm even renaming the character sheet: it's your 'Permanent Record.') Some people find this annoying: this often comes from people who've played a lot of RPGs, and recognize the similarities in them. I say, "Screw those guys."

- I'm aiming this to be incredibly accessible, even though I've taken Christopher's thoughts to heart in the 'accessibility' thread I linked to above. I want it to be a game that you can show to a friend and it makes sense without a large degree of explanation. ("What are hit points? What the hell does saving throw mean?") The game concepts aren't watered down, but the game mechanics should be something anyone can learn in an hour.

With all that said, here's the current state of mechanics:

Characters

Characters are composed of a few characteristics, all displayed on their Permanent Record. The first are Scores, or what might be called attributes in other games. The Scores are Athletics, Academics, Cool, and Magic - these names aren't set in stone, by the way. They're general descriptions, and I'm not sure whether to go with dry sounding names (like Athletics and Academics), names that resonate with teenagers (Smarts, Cool), or do the Everway thing - since the setting revolves around magic - and go with an Earth, Air, Fire, Water thing. Anyhow, all the scores are assigned a grade from A to F. There's no A-plusses or B-minuses - I tried that and ended up with too much complexity. A sample character might have:

Athletics B
Academics C
Cool A
Magic F

or

Athletics D
Academics A
Cool C
Magic B

One reason I'm a bit stuck on the names is that these four Scores are more open-ended than in many games. Athletics will cover any strenuous physical activity, but Academics might cover everything from passing a test to picking a lock. (Picking a lock takes some smarts.) Cool is, well, your cool - everything from how well you get along with people, to your ability to intimidate others, to your ability to not lose your shit when confronted with something horrific. Magic isn't only magic, but creativity - you'd use this score when painting, for example.

The second characteristic to make up characters is Perks and Issues - which also might be renamed. These are your standard bonuses and flaws, with one difference: Perks give you bonuses in certain situations (examples: Team Captain, which gives you a bonus to Cool when wearing your letter jacket and talking with other teenagers; Surf Wizard, which lets you use your Cool instead of Athletics when surfing), but Issues allow you to take complications in order to receive Choice Points - the equivalent of drama dice, or whatever you want to call them. (Example: Family Problems, which gives you a Choice Point whenever your family issues interfere with a situation.) Basically, with Issues, you choose to automatically fail in a situation because of your Issue - or the GM can cause you to automatically fail - and you receive meta-game currency to use later. Note with Perks that they always cross Scores. That is - a Perk based on Athletics like Team Captain helps you with Cool. A Perk like 'Intuitive Learner' (based off Academics) might help you with Magic.

The last characteristic to make up characters is your Transcript. This is a record of all the classes you've taken, plus extra-curricular activities, to include unauthorized ones (Saturday Night Drag Racing, for example.) There will be a Course Catalog with a list of classes and their pre-requisites, although I'm including rules for making up new ones (electives) for people who think up something they really want for their character.

These classes are not rated (no 'Elementary Magic: B'). Instead, they give you bonuses in certain situations. To explain, I need to describe the next part of the game, resolution.

Resolution

There's two tables at work in the game. The first correlates your scores to a number:

A -> 3
B -> 5
C -> 7
D -> 9
F -> 10

The number is what you have to roll equal to or over on a d10 to get a success. For all actions, you roll 2d10 and count your successes. The level of your success is found on the second table:

1 success -> Novice
2 successes -> Apprentice
3 successes -> Adept
4 successes -> Wizard

So, how do you get 3 or 4 successes? With classes. Here's some examples:
Fencing Team: get +1 dice when using a sword.
Elementary Aura Reading: get +1 dice when sizing up someone's intentions.

These can obviously stack, and there will be classes with pre-requisites that add up (example: Elementary Animal Care (get +1 dice when dealing with an animal), Animal Health (get +1 dice when caring for a hurt or sick animal), Dragon Care (get +1 dice when dealing with a dragon)).

You can also spend a Choice Point to get an automatic success on an action.

That's pretty much the whole of resolution. For unopposed tasks, the GM sets a success level you need ("Riding that tsunami wave is going to take a Wizard level success.") For unopposed actions, you just compare success levels. I do want some sort of augmentation technique - you might use Magic to improve your chances of surfing. How I'm going to do this is a bit up in the air, and I'd love suggestions. My current idea is to do something Sorcerer-like where successes can be rolled over into another roll as dice.

Magic

Magic is going to be different in Riptide than any other game, I hope. There's three prevailing types of magic in role-playing games:

- The 'technology' type: you have a list of spells that do things and are limited to that, much like D&D and its descendants.
- The 'science' type: you can do anything by mixing certain attributes like Life and Forge (like Mage: the Ascension) or Creo and Ignum (Ars Magica). In addition, there's some pre-made spells. (Carl Craven's Gramarye for Fudge is the best example of this.)
- The 'holistic' type: you can do anything, period. This is the most free-form type.

I have problems with all three types: the technology model is incredibly limiting and leads to the best spells being over-used and the game becoming record-keeping. The science model can become overly complex, although it's my favorite of the three. The holistic type is incredibly open-ended, and can actually start to seem very mundane.

My plans are to limit the uses of magic fairly heavily, but leave actions open-ended within them. I have the basics done, which I'm going to post in my next treatise on all this. They're based heavily on Phillip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' trilogy, though.

Re-iteration

For now, my main issues are naming things, and figuring out a good augmentation technique. I'm going to get into Choice Points soon, which will have several issues of their own.

I think the strengths of this game revolve around its simplicity, combined with a resolution mechanic which is familiar, but a bit different, as skills aren't exactly like most games, and its crunchy bits. By crunchy bits, I mean lists of mechanics, like the Course Catalog. I've found that people like these - even non-roleplayers. By keeping them simple, and flavoring them heavily, I think they'll add a lot to the game.

Please feel free to ask questions, make suggestions, or savage unmercifully now.

Ooh, I get to do it.

Hey Clinton, what do you do in this game?

Mike

Mike,

'What you do' in this game is hopefully pretty interesting. I'm planning on including a campaign structure based around the seasons - fall will be about getting to school, fitting in, making friends and enemies; winter will be about struggling through the hard times of sports, exams, and a growing problem - whatever that might be for the campaign; spring will be about solving the problem, making decisions that will affect the rest of the game, and the school year coming to an end; and summer is the denouement - the last vestiges of the problem being solved, parties on the beach, freedom, and surfing.

But, to be simpler, you survive school, make friends, and solve a problem that the teachers are unaware of/complicit in. Unlike many games that might say "You play magic teenagers," I'm explicitly saying that the characters are heroes, and that a major problem - that can only be solved by them - will come up each year. This problem might be supernatural, or it might be something completely mundane. Either way, it'll be about the characters.

Oh, and you decide who you really are: are you where you come from, or are you the decisions you make?

Just gonna make a quicky comment on the Score names.
What about having names match an appropriate high school clique?
Athletics = Jockiness, Academics = Nerdiness, etc...
Or something along those lines :)

I'm loving the concept Clinton. "School based" settings make things so easy. An ever evolving relationship map based around some very core concepts and basic relationships that are easily grasped. A setting that is very limited in scope (campus, campus town, immediate environs) so that setting details can have that very real specific detail kind of thing (no body uses the second floor girls lavatory because its haunted by Moaning Myrtle), and a certain "trapped" environment so that players cannot easily just duck out of the conflict. I also happen to be on a big Harry Potter kick so I find the concept appealing.

One concrete suggestion to an issue you allude to. I would definitely stick with the characteristics as you have them, but I would add "Smarts" as a seperate attribute from Academics. I've become a fan of using attributes to mimick the differentiations that are important in the specific setting you're working with, and I remember from my school days that one of the biggest differentiators among students were between the bright, clever, witty, "smart" kids, and the book learned "academics". So I'd recommend making that split.

On the other hand in school "athletic" seems to cover everything. At least in my school all the top athletes in the school were on multiple teams so differentiating between "Strength", "Dexterity", and "Endurance" seems unnecessarily fine.

However, a factor not mentioned which did play a big role in school interactions was raw size. Especially at the younger elementary school level there could be a pretty big difference in size based on who got their growth spurts when and this could change from year to year (in 2nd grade I was among the biggest in my class, by 5th grade I was among the smallest). When you factor in kids getting held back or advanced... Size made a huge difference in my experience (one of the prime determinimates with what you call "cool") between who was the bully and who was bullied...a standard form of school interaction. Size also played a reverse roll in the form of obesity.

I don't know if Size should be an attribute, but it probably should have the same kind of status as what you call a Class...+/- a die for rolls when size would be an impact + for big kids picking on little kids, - for overweight kids trying to get a date with the school hottie, + for making the tackle in the big game, - for walking up the creaky stairs without making a noise...etc.

I got a question: why is there a magic system? Reading your initial and follow-up post, I am still unclear as-to why it's there. It seems to be an Accessable? To who? issue. Gamers like magic systems, so an RPG needs a magic system or something like it. I have a feeling that a more mainstream audience won't need any such thing. Or will only need your more freeform magic system.

Just some food for thought

Hmmm... I like the idea that campaigns are by default structured around the school calendar in a Harry Potter-like way. It provides a context (and a sort of familiar episodic feel) that could otherwise be lacking, particularly for those new to roleplaying.

Obviously, magic will be important in the game. What sort of tone or feel are you going for with magic?

Oh... I also think that I really like the die mechanic you use. As I read it, the combination of a Grade and Courses Taken is essentially a skill-based success-counting system in which the difficulty of the skill roll is determined by an attribute... which I tend to prefer a great deal over straight attribute+ability mechanics. I don't know how intuitive the correspondence between the grades and the target numbers are, though.

As far as Magic augmentation goes, won't that depend upon your Magic system? Or were you suggesting that any Score could pottentially be used to augment another? So that Academics - as well as Magic - might be usable to augment your surfing?

If the latter, I'd suggest assigning a level to the augmentation test. That is, If someone wanted to improve their surfing performance by some quick physics approximations to guess how the wave might behave, this might be a Wizard-level Academics feat. Each success at or beyond 4 successes, then, might add another die to the Athletics challenge... there may also be some consequences to failing the Academics test.

~szilard

Answering lots of questions:

'Smarts' and 'Academics': Ralph, I've actually been thinking along the same lines. I'll probably just go with Smarts, and have 'Good at School' or whatever be a Perk for Smarts.

Size: This is encompassed in a Perk (or Issue) with Athletics. You could end up with 'Huge' or 'Slight' as Perks or Issues. As usual, Perks will cross Scores - so Huge (an Athletics Perk) would let you use Athletics instead of Cool to intimidate people.

The magic system: Jack - I may have mislead you about the magic system - there won't be a separate system as such. There will, however, be a extensive section about what magic can do, which will probably piss off most gamers (which is fine by me.) Magic, for example, won't be able to summon beasts or cause fireballs - it's a much more subtle thing than that. I expect the most common use of it to be telekinesis or spying.

(More exposition: so, I'm reading Phillip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' trilogy, which rocks my socks. In this, everyone has a daemon - a physical manifestation of their anima. I like this, so magic will fall very much in this vein, although it'll be invisible to mundanes who can't control their anima. You might be able to extend your anima behind a door to spy or unlock the door from the inside. There won't be a 'pick lock' spell, though. The 'magic system,' as it were, will be only explanations of what you can do, and how hard some examples would be.)

More exposition: so, I'm reading Phillip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' trilogy, which rocks my socks

Cool stuff so far.

I messed a bit with the mechanics to see if there's an easy way to use the grade-point numbers (A would be 4, B would be 3, etc.) with the letters, but that might be too exclusive to US schools. But that's just me tinkering. It's pretty straightforward as is.

The classes as bonus dice thing rocks. I especially think so because I'm doing something similar. Have you made any restrictions on how many classes can stack?

Is there anything in the game mechanic that ties into the narrativist premise (like TROS's SAs), or is it more of something that the players are responsible for putting in the story?

And BTW anything influenced by Philip Pullman has a good start.

Hmmm. Smarts...

You do realize that somebody's re-releasing TFOS (Teenagers From Outer Space). Which covers much the same thematic ground.

I know 'cause I played with the guy who's doing it at the RPG.net game day in Chicago.

That said, I know you can do it better, Clinton.

But that game had stats like: Bod, Cool, Smarts, etc.

Mike

More replies:

Narrativism, SA's and such: There's not really going to be a Narrativist 'motor' in this game outside of Choice Points - which will work in that fashion a bit.

Teenagers from Outer Space: Never seen or played it. Still - I'm really glad this is being re-released. It'll be a good bar to measure myself against, and good for generating buzz.

Hi, Clinton

About the stats, I suggest you keep the high school motif going with it and use the class names as the stats. What I mean is, model the character sheet on the report card. This way, you can ditch the assumed feature of the basic stats (STR INT DEX etc.) and you don't have to fiddle with the real world stats, which I had toyed with myself and abbandoned because it is more work than it's worth, let me tell you. This would make school the important feature and color in the game, and you have an easy way to customize your character. A character will have to take the necessary courses (math, science, english, etc) but can take electives (computer, art, etc.), which give the character the special abilities everyone seems to like. The neat thing about this is that being in school, they are still *learning* these skills, which explains why they sometimes fail, as most RPG characters tend to do without any real logic to it. Also, like how report cards can have teachers comments attached to the grade, you can add this as well like the descriptors to the stats in Sorcerer which explains why their grade in the given subject is what it is as well as noting in particular expertise or failing in a given subject. Add to this extra-ciricular activities (band, student counsel) and there should be more than enough information to run a character, albeit with a little leeway and common sense management. I would rather see something like this than stats like "smarts" "bod" which are just The Same Old Thing (TM) painted a different color.

Just my opinion on the subject.

I also still have misgivings about the magic system, but it seems to be a major part of your idea, so I'll leave that alone.

I agree with the thought that the "Stats" might be best associated with usual High School cliques:
Jock
Brain
In
Pet
Wiz(-kid)

Jock is physical ability -- how well you did in PE, how likely you are to be on one of the Varsity teams, and so on. Everyone knows who the Jocks are, even the ones who aren't in the In crowd.

Brain is how smart you are -- the Brains are relied on by others to come up with answers no one else has.

In is how popular you are with the kids around you -- everyone knows who is In and who is Out, and there's very little room for error.

Pet is how popular you are with the teachers and other adults -- being one of the Pets means that you can get away with breaking more rules, your grades are generally better, and you have a better allowance than most.

Wiz is your magical ability. The Wizkids do things that should be impossible, and hardly break a sweat.

Does this look even slightly reasonable, or have I taken a hard right turn somewhere?

Mark D. Eddy wrote: I agree with the thought that the "Stats" might be best associated with usual High School cliques:
Jock
Brain
In
Pet
Wiz(-kid)

Even more, more replies:

"Stat" names: I've had the 'jock, brain' discussion before (see the thread I referenced in my first post.) This is going to piss some people off in a serious way, but here's my opinion: those sort of appelations are used by people that have issues with high school. This isn't limited to gamers - I know normal 40-year-old mothers who will flip their shit if high school is brought up - but is pretty prevalent. Riptide isn't for those people: it's a love letter to two of the best times in my life - high school and attending the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA (which is a wizard's college of its own.)

Jared's clique idea: man, rock the hell on. That's a great idea.

Clinton R. Nixon wrote: it's a love letter to two of the best times in my life

Jared's clique idea: man, rock the hell on. That's a great idea.

Scholastics? Yeah, synonym for Academics, but everyone in High School (in the US) knows the SATs...

Style for Cool?

Gift or Talent for Magic?

thoth wrote: Scholastics? Yeah, synonym for Academics, but everyone in High School (in the US) knows the SATs...

Style for Cool?

Gift or Talent for Magic?

Hmmm...

Thinking about names for the Scores (Athletics, Academics, Cool, Magic).

Did you want these to be closer to things you might find on a report card?

Some of them are easy - Athletics could be called "Physical Education" - but "Cool" isn't likely to be found on a report card unless it is a cumbersome (and less evocative) comment like "Gets along with other students." I'd suggest just sticking to simple, non-gimmicky names.

As far as the Academics/Smarts distinction, the two names denote different (though overlapping) traits. I'm not sure which one you are going for here. I'd advise going with Smarts (though I dislike the word - it is slang that I've almost never actually heard used in conversation) and having a Bookworm perk which gives you a bonus for things you've studied.

~szilard

Clinton R. Nixon wrote:
Jared's clique idea: man, rock the hell on. That's a great idea.

I think you are right, most magic systems seem stuck on being either too anal or too unstructered to actually be useful (and often contentious in intrepretation - 'but John you let Yoko turn back time last week').

How about turning the thing on its head? Instead of defining what magic can do, what about saying what it can't - a list of taboos. These could be metaphysical (can't cast spells in churches) or ethical (can't use magic to harm another) but the players could, in the course of development, challenge and overcome these taboos. That might fit nicely with the coming of age themes.

The taboos could somehow be related, maybe a nested set or something? Using the Pullman idea I can see how the basic taboo for daemons could start with "can't affect the material world" and progress to "can't effect humans" then "can't harm humans" and through to "can't kill humans".

As players overcome the taboos they get more power, but are left without an external moral compass and have to take responsibility for consequences of their actions. I think these could be fun, not sure if it would work.

Scott

Hi Clinton,

When Mike asked, "What do you do in this game," an immediate answer popped into my mind: "You grow up."

High-school stories end up, in my opinion, being maturation-stories. Since the process includes many missteps, many different things to make choices about, and different possible solutions for different people, the "series," so to speak, can go on for a long time. But it seems to me that eventually, once it's clear where a character is going (what sort of grownup they're becoming), the basic story is over. It then either has to be a new type of story altogether (Buffy and Angel young-adult romance, e.g.), shift to another protagonist who hasn't matured yet, or end.

If I'm reading your game design correctly, then the middle option seems like a good one - can you see any process for phasing successful (meaning "fun") characters out as their personal rites of passage conclude? Does that seem consistent with the rest of the game?

Best,
Ron