Hey folks,

Still trying to bang out the final details of my game Ever-After (formerly called Storypunk, formerly called Quixote & Coyote). In this thread, I'd like some specific help in getting the currency system set in stone. Ever-After uses a currency system to create/manipulate story elements in a manner similar to the way coins work in Universalis. However, the re-distribution system in Ever-After is rather different.

Whereas, in Universalis, character recieve coins from conflicts and by being refreshed at the end of scenes, in Ever-After, there is a specific character/player who gets assigned the Duty of being the Piper. Once all the Drops have been spent that are going to be spent in a specific situation ("Drops" are the currency of Ever-After), the Piper "recycles" the spent Drops by redistributing them to the group, one at a time, around the circle, until the Piper runs out of Drops to redistribute. The first player to get a recycled Drop is often the one that lost a given conflict and/or the one with the least Drops (depending on how the Piper is feeling).

Originally, I was thinking that each player would start with 7 Drops and that they would be used to create story elements, being recycled back so that no one would ever run out. The distribution of the Drops would be the only thing that really changed. The recycling method would ensure that everyone would get a chance to participate, since active players would run out of Drops and less active players would be forced to act in order to keep the Drops moving around. Also, players could spend 3 Drops to support/sustain one of their Themes (defining character traits in Ever-After), causing it to grow/advance/whatever, which would cause the number of Drops to gradually descrease over the course of a story, bringing everything to an eventual halt/conclusion.

However, in recent off-forum conversations with Shreyas, I think we developed another solution that seems to support the kind of play I want more.

I wrote: -- What if Themes were the main source of stones? So instead of starting off with no Theme-stones and having to gain them. Characters start out with an allotment of Themes and some Theme-stones.

-- To allow some leeway within the game, there are a very, very small number of additional stones allocated among the members of the Troupe (one per Player or less).

-- Theme-stones can only be used on things that relate to their Theme, but once they are spent they are redistributed just like normal stones and BECOME, for all intents and purposed, normal stones.

-- So you start out with a very small pool of stones that migrates around the group, but then, as players start bringing their theme elements into the story, the pool grows. This provides the rising action of the story.

-- As it currently stands, the "prime time" for a story is the first 20-30 minutes. After which, for every 2-5 minutes the story continues, it deteriorates, losing one Mask (story element played by a character). This provides a way for things to close down and end, as the story breaks down and story elements disappear, even though the stone pool is increasing.

-- Since the types of stories you could tell would be limited by the Themes your group had, development would happen by (somehow) working to change your Themes (instead of increasing their potency or gaining new ones). You might start out with a bunch of Dark Fairy Tale themes and want to migrate towards telling Space Opera stories, and would have to tell some pretty interesting yarns along the way.

The advancement it still up in the air, and needs more thought, but what do you think of the concept? Does it sound workable?

Here's a link to the second page of the currency thread. Scroll down a little to the post where Ron goes over how he would change TOON and a few other games. Reading your post immediately brought this thread to mind.

Hmm... Neat thread Jack, but I fail to see how it relates to what I'm talking about here, aside from using the word "currency." The currency that Ron et all are talking about in that thread is the currency used in character creation, while the currency in Ever-After and Universalis is used in actual play of the game.

Am I missing something?

Johnathan,

I think that perhaps the Theme drops should be the only one's fueling the story. As each story is being set up by the Muse (that's right isn't it?), the members of the Troupe get to invest a certain number of Theme drops from one of their character's themes. The size of that investment would indicate how powerful the setup should reflect that theme. The piper could collect those theme drops invested and re-distribute those before the story begins, and that becomes the limit of the general drop currency during the specific story.

Any theme drops not invested in the setup could then be used to support a specific theme in the course of the story.

In this way, if you limit the members of the Troupe to between 1 and 3 drops per theme, the amount of general currency will be limited, and it will force the troupe to use their remaining theme currency within the story.

In terms of advancement/change - perhaps at the end of the story, and Themes that are down to 0 drops (either through initial investment or use during play) could said to be spent - and at that point could either be changed or re-invested. Any general drops in a Troupe members possession would have to be either re-invested in a Theme at 0, or used to constitute a new Theme for that Troupe member.

Just a thought.

Cheers,


Jason

Maybe you shouldn't have any free drops to begin with, but at the same time give every player a small pool based on their role in the story--so the Muse has drops specifically for getting things going and so on. That way the characters' roles are reinforced by drops dedicated to that purpose, and only once things get going does play open up.

Of course, I'm not sure how well it would work with all the different roles--the piper for instance--but it might be something to think about.

Piers

Jonathan Walton wrote: Am I missing something?

1. Why should characters use Theme-Drops, which have limited, specific uses, when there are going to be other general Drops migrating around the circle, which have no limitations?

So, if you're well beefed on Plot Points, then spending 5 or more points initially for a Schtick is idiotic - you should buy NO Schticks, take your 8 possessions, and then spend Plot Points as you go for whatever Schtick you feel like at the time.

Thanks for all the comments. The different perspectives are really helpful to hear. Like Jason, I was originally leaning towards doing away with general Drops in favor of all-Theme-Drops, but I also really like Piers idea of Duty-specific Drops (however, similarly, I'm not sure what they would be used for in some cases).

Couple other options to think about:

-- After Drops are recycled, players have to reinvest them in particular Themes, so there are no general Drops. I get 2 Drops back from the resolution of a big conflict, and put them back in "Sibling Rivalry & Betrayal" and "Cold-Hearted Authority." The problem with this is that players are limited to spending Drops on the same Themes over and over, so unless there's a really easy way to change your Themes, I don't think this will work.

-- A better idea: give general Drops a more limited scope whereas Theme Drops give you director/author stance over the entire story. For example, in Ever-After story elements are defined by Masks, which are created by the Masker (another Duty), and are represented by names written on index cards. General Drops are spent whenever you want one of your Masks to do something. The prince talks to the king. The cow jumps over the moon, whatever. If there are conflicts, then you bid general Drops and try to resolve it. However, Theme Drops allow you to change the entire nature of a conflict or insert new story elements into the game, by creating an instance of your Theme. The Muse then constructs the beginning of the story using donated Theme Drops, because only they can create new elements. General Drops can only manipulate what's already there. Theme Drops would also supercede whatever other Drops were being used to affect a scene.

However, while I like option 2, I'm still unsure about an advancement system for it. Perhaps, we could follow Jason's suggestions, and have spent Theme Drops, at the end of the story, be refreshed or alloted to new Themes. However, it makes sense to me that you have to create instances of a Theme in order to strengthen it.

Perhaps, if you create an instance of a Theme just through Mask manipulation, and not through spending Theme Drops, you can cause your Theme to grow to a larger capacity (gaining another Theme Drop). This could also be a way to create new Themes. You come across a Theme occurance during the story and claim it, then, after the story is over, you can allocate an existing Theme Drop to that new Theme.

Thoughts?

I'm not clear on how general Drops (Drops of what? Tears? Blood?) are weaker than Theme Drops, so I'm going to try for an example.

Julnar the mermaid is trying to find a bride for her son, Badr Basim. She finds out that the Sea King's lovely daughter Jauhareh is just coming of age. Someone starts a conflict about whether the Sea King will find Badr worthy.
With general Stones, they could just bid it out and narrate something like, "The Sea King finds it unthinkable to wed his daughter to a landsman" or "Badr handily impresses the Sea King with his excellent manners and radiant presence."

With Theme Stones, one could create a Quest for the Treasure, "Badr, I will only allow you to wed my daughter if you retrieve for me my crown, that the Roc of Alexandria stole from me."
Or a Duel: "Only the man that bests me in combat my have the hand of Jauhareh."
Or a Meddling Princess: "Badr, I will not marry you unless you pass Three Tests..."

Drops are drops of water from the Ocean of Streams of Story. What else? :) I had pondered blood or tears too, but I think Story Water is best.

I think the problem is that, technically, you could use general Drops to do anything that Theme Drops can do. So the character who has the Mask of the Sea King spends drops to have the Sea King declare a Quest or a Duel. Or the character with the Mask of Juahareh spends Drops to meddle and create three tests.

Remember that characters/elements in Ever-After aren't created like they are in Universalis. They're made into Masks and then assigned to a player/character who determines everything about them. There's no trait buying or that kind of stuff. It's all about what characters do, not what they are. Also, this means that the players aren't fighting over what happens in the story. Nobody can say "I think the Sea King should reject Badr Basim as a son-in-law" except for the character with the Mask of the Sea King. Now, if there is a dispute between the Sea King and Badr Basim (or they have that duel) then the two players with those masks could bid Drops to determine the outcome.

However, in the new framework, Theme Drops allow characters/players to control the larger structure of the story. Say I'm playing Don Quixote, who is the Piper of his Troupe, and currently has the Masks of Badr Basim, the Sea, a magic ring of power, and a storm. Now, Don Quixote wants the Sea King to give him (as Badr Basim) some great task to accomplish, but there's no real way for him to ensure this, especially if the character with the Mask of the Sea King has other ideas. Still, if Don Quixote wants to spend a Drop from his Theme "Against Impossible Odds," he can declare that the Sea King places a hopeless task before Badr Basim (which he or the Sea King's player would then determine).

Is that clearer?

To sort of come full circle--and I hope this doesn't bring you back to exactly where you started--maybe you don't need to differentiate between Theme Drops and ordinary Drops, but instead have Themes control what you can do with your Drops.

In other words, rather than separating the Drops, the player consults the Themes to work out what they can do with the Drops--it has to be in Theme if you want to introduce new elements (if that isn't your role).

If that works, then the number of Drops used under the rubric of each Theme during the story can be recorded, indicating the strength of particular themes associated with the player. At the end of the story some sort of assessment of the use and change of themes, as well as the accumulation of new themes would be made for each player. This could even be done without any record, because what you remember about the story should indicate what was important about it.

Would this work, or is it goes back the way you came?

Also, another, much more radical idea:

What do you think about the merits of unequal distribution of Drops?

What I mean is this: One way for the roles in the troupe to become hardwired, is for the Drops to redistributed unequally amongst the different players, based upon their roles, and according to the stage the story is at. Thus, the Muse would start out with an excess of Drops in order to initiate the story, but as the story was established, these Drops would be reallocated more and more to other members of the Troupe as they became more important. By the end, the Ender (or whatever they are called now) would end up with almost all the Drops to carry into the After-Once and only there to be handed over to the Muse so they could begin again. And the Piper would control the pace of the story by deciding when to shift reallocation of Drops between characters.

As far as how that might work, I'm thinking of something as simple as having the different players sit in a specific order based upon the point in the tale when they are most important, and simply having every reallocation start from the person whose 'stage' is in the ascendant. The cycle would begin with the Muse work its way through to the ender, with the Piper sitting between the two, and deciding when to switch. This way, whoever is most important always gets a drop when they are reallocated, and is the first to get two when there are more than the number of troup members to hand out.

Taking a momnet to look again at the way you have the roles defined currently, I'm not too sure how well it fits in. Muse and Masker pretty obviously start things out and the Gardener gather things up, but the Intermediary and Grand Comptroller are sort of parallel to the whole system. The dynamic might work though.

Anyways, I think this sort of shifting responsiblity would give an interesting momentum to the stories, and give the Piper a concrete way to 'call the tune'. It'd just be important to balance a preponderance of power with enough opportunity for everyone to contribute.

Hope my wild ideas are useful in some way.

Piers

Piers, your suggestions rock, but would you mind deleting the 4 extra copies of you last post that accidentally showed up? It would make reading this thread a lot easier.

Here's a weird model that just came to me, based on Piers suggestions, some unrelated ideas that were floating around in my own head, and, strangely enough, the new Marvel Universe RPG that's getting released about a month from now:

1. When players recieve Drops, either at the beginning of a story, or by the Piper recycling spent Drops, the players allocate them among their resources, including:

- their Duty
- their various Masks
- their various Themes

2. Drops allocated to a Duty can only be spent on performing that Duty. The Muse is likely to allocate the majority of their starting Drops to Duty, because they have to use them to create a beginning to the story. The Piper has to spend a Duty-Drop to recycle the pool of spent Drops. The Maskers has to spend a Duty-Drop for each Mask s/he creates. The Conductor spends Duty-Drops to communicate OOCly with all the players, coordinating things. The Intermediary doesn't spend Duty-Drops during strories, but has to save some up over the course of the story, in order to use immediately afterwards.

This opens up the possibility that jobs can be performed badly. If the Piper suddenly doesn't have any Drops in Duty, but the pile in the middle of the table is growing and growing, and players are running out of other Drops to spend, the Piper's in a bind. They needs Drops to do their job, but they have to do their job to get refurbished with Drops. Likewise, if other situations creep up (and they always do) when you need Drops in Duty and haven't allocated them, you're going to look bad.

3. Drops placed on Masks are used to make that Mask do something (talk, walk, sleep, fight, fly around, etc). Conflicts between various story elements can be solved by bidding the Drops their various Masks have been allotted. This means that certain Masks can look more powerful and intimidating simply due to the amount of Drops that have been allocated to them.

4. Drops placed on Themes, as I have explained before, allow you to control parts of the story outside of simply manipulating Masks. They also allow you to create new elements in the story (which should then probably be assigned Masks by the Masker).

5. Like Nobilis' Rite of the Last Trump, there needs to be a way for players to reallocate Drops when they are in dire need. Maybe the Piper needs to recycle the pool, maybe the protagonist is in danger of losing to some schmoe, maybe it's just the perfect time for one of your Themes to occur.

My first thought was a system of "strikes," where characters basically recieve bad marks for mismanaging their resources. Maybe when the character recieved 3 strikes, they would be ejected from the story and have to wait for everyone else in the After-Once.

WHAT THIS WOULD DO TO THE GAME

Injecting this degree of Gamism and resource-management into the game does a great many things. First, it gives the Intermediary something real to do. If the success of the story really depends on people performing their jobs well, allocating resources properly, communicating and anticipating when they'll be needed, and picking up the slack when someone fails or gets booted out of the story, the social contract is going to be in constant need of work (the way I originally intended it) and the Intermediary can try to sort things out.

However, a great many people who might otherwise be attracted to Ever-After might balk at the seeming competitiveness and the feeling that you can "lose" (in a way) by playing it badly. The game would want to uphold the belief that characters failing at particular roles could be just as exciting and dramatic as them succeeding, but whether that could be properly communicated to players is another matter. It might run the danger of becoming Diplomacy the RPG, with people becoming more cooperative than competative. The drafts I've seen of Ron's Gamism essay seem to warn against accidentally letting Gamism become the focus when you didn't intend that, and this looks exciting but scary because of that.

All in all, I think this system is full of potential, bringing some themes back to Ever-After that I thought had been shunted off to the sidelines, but I'm a bit uneasy. While watching "The Real World" is amusing, it's probably much less fun to be one of those people squabbling in the apartment and having to liev through it. Would players be able to seperate themselves from their characters enough to not make failure personal? Would that destroy my whole attempt to make Ever-After into "Universalis, but with immersion"?

Johnathan,

Rather than ejecting a Troupe member from the story for bad mis-management, allow one of the Duties (probably the Piper) to 'loan' out Drops to Troupe members in need of them - and then provide some counterbalancing by allowing the Muse to add complications to the story for the offending Troupe member one a one per Drop basis.

Alternately, if you are going to allow the players to use Drops at the end of the story to replenish some of their Themes, or start new ones, the borrowing character would need to pay off her debt before being allowed any kind of story awards in this regard.

Just a couple of suggestions, because I beleive that a 3-strikes rule would highlight Gamisim more. That's not a bad thing, but it does change the tone of the game in subtle and far reaching ways. My guess is, that since the game appeals more to those tending to prioritize Narrativist decision-making, Troupes playing the game in that vein may well drift the rules by jettisoning the 3-strikes rules.

Cheers,



Jason

Hmm... Well, see how this works to you.

Any player can give/loan Drops to any other player. However, most of the time, the other players are also going to have their Drops invested in various resources (Duty, Masks, Themes) and can't just let you have them, because invested Drops have to be spent on that resource. Now, if the Piper recycles the pool and there's not enough Drops to go around (or players think that a specific player needs more Drops), they can choose to invest their Drops in another player.

But, it would be quite possible for another player to take a Strike, free up a Drop, and give it to another player. For instance, if your Piper has 2 Strikes and needs another Drop to recycle the pool, maybe someone else should take a Strike to help them out. Otherwise, somebody else is going to have to take over as Piper for the rest of the story.

While I'm definitely sympathetic to preserving the Narrativist feel of Ever-After, I think being booted out of the story, along with the destruction of Masks that happens after the time limit, helps support some of the themes that weren't getting supported in the old model. If the only way to get rid of your Strikes is to bail in the middle of a story, everybody'll have to do that eventually. I really think it would be fun to watch a group scramble to try to cover for a member who's waiting for them in the After-Once.

However, maybe it would be possible to make Strikes part of the social contract. The Intermediary would help the group reach consensus about how many Strikes would be appropriate for a given session. Default could run anywhere from 3-10, depending on the experience of the group, since beginners would take a while to get a handle on this distribution thing. Troupes, if they liked, could even agree to jettison Strikes entirely, but they would, by default, be a part of the rules.

And I'm still wondering about the number of Drops that each character should get in the beginning. Perhaps there could be a Troupe-wide advancement system, where a Troupe starts out with a certain number of Drops (20-30, depending on the number of members) and then gains Drops for accomplishing various things. The Piper would then be in charge of distributing Drops at the beginning of a story, and wouldn't necessarily have to do so equally (though that would be an obvious way to do it).

Hi Jonathan. I've been wanting to comment on this thread but I'm having a little trouble getting my mind around the concepts in the abstract: Themes and Masks and such. I having trouble linking ideas like "use a drop to support a theme" with actual in play activity. I tried checking out your site, but the link for storypunk seems to be broken.

Could you write up perhaps a play example that demonstrates what a player is actually doing when he invests in a mask. Perhaps I'd be better able to help if I understood it better.

No problem, Ralph. This has all been pretty abstract.

EXAMPLE:

Here's a little mini-Troupe, with members, duties, and themes (and the capacity of the Theme in parens):

Scheherazade
-- Duty: Muse
-- Duty: Conductor
-- Theme: A Story Within a Story (2)
-- Theme: Love That Burns Radiant (1)

Anansi
-- Duty: Piper
-- Duty: Masker
-- Theme: The Clever Man Always Triumphs (1)
-- Theme: Bad For Some is Good for Others (1)

Monkey
-- Duty: Intermediary
-- Duty: Gardener
-- Theme: Luck is Always With the Downtrodden (3)
-- Theme: Laughter Cures Everything (1)

Scheherazade
-- Duty: Muse 6
-- Duty: Conductor 1
-- Theme: A Story Within a Story 0(2)
-- Theme: Love That Burns Radiant 0(1)

Anansi
-- Duty: Piper 1
-- Duty: Masker 5
-- Theme: The Clever Man Always Triumphs 0(1)
-- Theme: Bad For Some is Good for Others 1(1)

Monkey
-- Duty: Intermediary 0
-- Duty: Gardener 0
-- Theme: Luck is Always With the Downtrodden 3(3)
-- Theme: Laughter Cures Everything 1(1)

Monkey, having little use for all 7 Drops at this point (both his Duties don't come into play until much later) invests 2 points in Scheherazade's Muse Duty, giving her a total of 8 Drops there.

Scheherazade
-- Duty: Muse 1
-- Duty: Conductor 1
-- Theme: A Story Within a Story 1(2)
-- Theme: Love That Burns Radiant 0(1)
-- Mask: Angry People of Wu 1
-- Mask: Mysterious Magic 0

Anansi
-- Duty: Piper 0
-- Duty: Masker 1
-- Theme: The Clever Man Always Triumphs 0(1)
-- Theme: Bad For Some is Good for Others 1(1)
-- Mask: The King of Wu 5

Monkey
-- Duty: Intermediary 0
-- Duty: Gardener 0
-- Theme: Luck is Always With the Downtrodden 3(3)
-- Theme: Laughter Cures Everything 1(1)
-- Mask: Zhou Wen, enunch minister 5

Monkey allocates all 5 of his points to Zhou Wen's Mask, anticipating the conversation with the King. Anansi does similarly, placing 5 Drops on the King's Mask, quite forgetting his responsibilities, for now his Piper Duty has no allocated Drops, which may spell trouble later on. Scheherazade puts one Drop into her Theme "A Story Within a Story" and one into the Mask of the Angry People of Wu.

Jonathon,
this looks good. The play example really catchs the flavour I'd imagined for the game, especially the cooperative aspects of things, where everyone is taking responsibility for different aspects of the story. I can't actually see anything I'd want to change from what you have here, but here are a couple of questions, and some thoughts about some of the surrounding mechanics that came to me:

i) Okay, I understand where the Theme ratings (the bracketed numbers beside the actual drops in a Theme) came from (the number of drops invested in them from the previous game), but what are they doing mechanically right now? Do you need them or does just having a theme do everything at the moment?

ii) On that point, one thing I think you might consider moving away from with this game is the idea of individual experience. So of implicit up to now, though you only mention it from time to time is the idea of players spending drops to acquire, maintain and change themes attached to the player. This might interfere with the flow of the game because it encourages players to hold back so they can spend for new themes, etc. The 'troupe-style' aspect of the game is one of the strengths of it in my opinion. Would it work better to have this be one of the jobs of the intermediary--to spend Drops allocated to his/her Duty during the After-Once as part of a collective decision about what themes to carry with them.

iii) On this topic, if players can carry themes with them, I don't see why they shouldn't carry Masks too--these can become favored or recurring characters who turn up in different stories, or who the troup tells a series of stories about before dropping them. The Gardener, together with the Intermediary, would be the one who had control over this. (And the Gardener's Duty Drops should perhaps be used to tear Masks.)

iv)I really like the idea of the troupe having a pool of Drops to play with, and expansion of that pool being the 'advancement' of the group--the ability to tell larger and more complex stories. I'm really not sure how or when to give more Drops. Thematically I think it would be really cool if they got more when a Troupe member shed tears over a story, of either laughter or sadness, but that might well be setting the bar far too high.

v) In conjunction with that though, one way to control Drops in themes, masks etc would be to say that each Troupe has a set number of Drops between them which are used as a pool in play or to allocate Themes etc between the players. Thus adding an extra theme or mask to your abilities would reduce the common pool, giving up a theme would increase it. The intermediary would then, as suggested above, spend drops to change the allocation of Themes.

vi) This might be a better way to handle Strikes--when you screw up you have to burn one of your themes or a favorite mask in order to get out of trouble, converting it into a Drop. This would sting badly enough that players would pay atytention to their duties without having add another system to the game.

Anyway, enough for now. I'll leave you to chew that over while I go do some real work.

Piers

Ok, this helped alot. Let me ask a question before I offer any actual feedback on it.

As I read it every player gets a certain number of Drops as allocated by the Piper. Before play continues the players must allocate these Drops to either the Duty, Theme(s), or Mask(s) that have been assigned to them. When drops are spent to perform a duty, incorporate a theme, or have a mask act they must come from those Drops currently invested. When the drop is spent it is no longer invested (i.e. it doesn't regenerate) it is gone, and may or may not be reallocated after the next Piping.

Ok...if I've got that down right...here's the question.

What is the intention behind the Investment requirement? What is the forseen benefit from allocating the Drops in advance vs keeping all of the Drops in the players possession to be allocated on the fly during play?

Yea, comments! I'm going to respond to these in revese order...

First one from a PM from Jack, because it's very relavent to what's been brought up here:

Jack Spencer Jr wrote: You may wish to give more thought to how drops are handled in the game. Scheherazade is right to give Monkey a look for only giving her two drops when he gave himself and Anansi five. Next time she may not nod agreeably.

Valamir wrote: What is the intention behind the Investment requirement? What is the forseen benefit from allocating the Drops in advance vs keeping all of the Drops in the players possession to be allocated on the fly during play?

Piers Brown wrote: Okay, I understand where the Theme ratings (the bracketed numbers beside the actual drops in a Theme) came from (the number of drops invested in them from the previous game)

Piers Brown wrote: On this topic, if players can carry themes with them, I don't see why they shouldn't carry Masks too.

Piers Brown wrote: I really like the idea of the troupe having a pool of Drops to play with, and expansion of that pool being the 'advancement' of the group--the ability to tell larger and more complex stories.

Jonathan Walton wrote:
To add a strategic element to things. If you take away investment and allow the players to "channel" certain Masks/Themes/Duties by spending Drops, there's no resource-allocation going on. There's no risk of running out of something (unless you end up spending all your Drops). Investment means that players will often be making story choices based not just on what they want to happen, but what kind of Drops they have available.

Piers Brown wrote: On this topic, if players can carry themes with them, I don't see why they shouldn't carry Masks too.

Hmm, damn straight they should. Maybe any Mask that doesn't get destroyed by the Gardener can be carried into the next story? Whether they gets used or not is up to the players (the King of Wu might not be appropriate in a space opera), but it would be cool if there was a kind of "story drift" that happened, where elements from the last story would spill over into the next.

Perhaps any mask that still has an investment in it when the story ends...lives till the next story. But other than an easy source to burn for a drop...what purpose would they serve. As you say, do you really want the King of Wu wondering around your space ship. Maybe on occassion for a bit of comedy...but other than that?

Jonathan Walton wrote:
Having Troupe-wide Themes instead of individual Themes is a neat idea, but it would take a huge amount of time to decide on what your group's Themes were, even with an Intermediary arbitrating. What do people think? Maybe if each player got to pick one Theme, but they could all invest in them and spend invested Theme Drops? I don't know.

Jonathan Walton wrote:

Piers Brown wrote: I really like the idea of the troupe having a pool of Drops to play with, and expansion of that pool being the 'advancement' of the group--the ability to tell larger and more complex stories.

Damn straight. Troupe-wide quantification was another thing I wanted to be a part of this game, and it looks like it's sneakng it. Great! Troupe-wide advancement is a tricky subject though. Shreyas' Law is that "experience changes you," instead of making you quantifiably better, but this is a case where numerical advancement might actually work. It makes sense that an older Troupe would tell more complex stories and have more Masks stuffed in their trunk.

Anybody got a suggestion on how this might work?

Jonathan Walton wrote:
On V & VI: the Common Pool

Really like this stuff. So the Troupe has a common pool of Drops that they use to tell stories. Say it starts at 5-7 per member and there's some unknown advancement system that we haven't determined yet.

For each point of capacity a Theme has, players have to permanently invest a Drop in it, lowering the total number of Drops. Likewise, Masks also require a permanent investature. However, at any time, players can "burn" a Theme or Mask (more Magic terms, I love it!) to retrieve the Drop that has been invested in it. This fixes the Strikes problem. If you really need another Drop, burn something.

In order to keep the story going, the Gardener has to spend Drops that don't go back into the pool for recycling. They get removed from the game until the story is over. So, the Gardener is slowly removing the currency from the story. However, the story can continue as normal if the Gardener burns Themes or Masks or the other players give the Gardener things to burn.

Having a larger pool for your Troupe means that you could either tell longer stories or more elaborate stories. Not both. Stories that required a great many Masks or Themes would be very short, because you'd be burning things very quickly. But simple stories could drag on for a long time.

Valamir wrote: Ok, got it. So that means that the perk of being the Piper is that you are essentially immune to resource allocation issues... What prevents the piper from keeping the lion's share of drops for himself?

Is Monkey ONLY involved in determining the type of the next story but does nothing during the story? If so, are drops assigned to the duty spent during the in between time. Are drops and piping involved at all during the in between time?

What about Muse. After dumping a ton of drops on Muse to start things off, is there ever a need for the Muse to invest in duty again during that story?

The gardner has a responsibility to tear up a mask every X time limit...does this require he invest in his duty to do it? If so, what happens if he does not so invest...do masks never get destroyed and the story go on forever?

If you're going to introduce some competitive elements to the game I think you'll need some more explicit checks and balances.

As you say, do you really want the King of Wu wondering around your space ship. Maybe on occassion for a bit of comedy...but other than that?

Piers Brown wrote: Who are Scherazade and Monkey, Quixote and Coyote but Masks. (Burning this Mask is probably a bad idea unless you have a replacement.)

Johnathan,

This looks like it's developing along nicely. So I hesitate to throw a monkey wrench into the system you've designed so far.

Having said that, you did invite me to post my comments, so here goes.

First, I would say that you should carefully consider how the Troupe as a whole, or individuals within the Troupe should be able to advance. I would tie it to in game results/actions in some basic mechanical way. I can't think of one that fits your scheme yet - but if I come up with an idea, I'll let you know.

I would say that the number of permanent Drops that the Troupe has to work with are all invested into Themes permanent ratings. If you're giving everyone 7 drops to play with at the start of play, each character would get to invest those drops permanently into Themes.

This investment is considered the bank from which all in-game drops will come. At the start of play, when the Muse is beginning to build the story, each character marks off a number of Drops from one or more Theme, and this pool becomes the initial investment.

The Muse collects this investment, and must spend all of it to create the situation of the story. As these Drops are spent, they flow into the story through the function of the Masker. The Masker is required to invest all the drops into Masks for the story. Each player who invested at least one theme Drop should get at least one mask. In fact, for each Theme that a player draws from, they should get a mask.

Now, all the invested Drops are invested in the Masks. On each players turn, they get to do a most one each from the following:

1) Perform a duty
2) Dramatically shift play by invoking a Theme that they own
3) interact with the story via one of their Masks.

At most then, each player will get to take three actions on their turn, one each from the above list.

Any duties that are performed cost one Drop, which must be Faded from a Mask. This Drop goes into the 'pool', to be recycled by the Piper at their whim, by the rules you set out in your most recent post.

Any Themes that are invoked similarly cost one Drop which must be Faded from a Mask. Again, this Faded Drop goes into the Pool.

Any interactions with the story via a mask cost a Drop, which is Passed to a mask controled by the Player to the left of the Acting Mask's player. The Acting Mask's Player gets to choose which Mask.

When the Gardner Tears a Mask, the Drops are Faded into the Pool.

Part of the Advancement Scheme would involve 'Burning' drops into Themes and Masks to make them Permanent for that Character. Burning a Drop removes that Drop from play. These Themes and Masks would be a 1 Drop Theme or Mask permanently added to the Character, sort of. Alternately, the Player could Burn a drop to increase the maximum capacity of a Theme or Permanent Mask they already control. For added fun, you can Burn Themes or Masks for other Player's characters. They must explicitly agree with your choice. When doing so, instead of the Drop being remomved from play, it Fades into the Pool.

Any Theme or Permanent Mask not used during the course of a Story (even for Themes not used to invest in the Story) - and by used we mean a Drop is either Faded, Passed (Mask Play) or Burned from within the context of that Theme or Permanent Mask, loses one level of potency. If a Theme or Permanent Mask drops to '0', it is removed from that character.

The payback on the initial Investment comes at the end of the Story. Any Drops in the Pool at the end of the Story are piped by the Piper (a free Pipe that MUST be done - no choice here except where to start). These Drops go evenly to each player to reinvest in a Theme or Permanent Mask that already exists on their characters. They can't invest in these ratings above their max, which is determined at character creation and raised by 'Burning' a Drop into an Existing Theme or Permanent Mask.

During play, anytime more than one Mask is in play during a given instance (i.e. when the King and the Advisor are interacting), a net gain of Drops is acheived along the following Formula: for each Mask beyond the first involved in and investing in an instance of play/interaction causes a free Drop to Fade into the Pool. So the King's Player Passed a Drop to the Player on their left, the Advisor's Player passed a Drop to the Player on their left, and a single Drop Faded in out of nowhere into the Pool.

Those would be along the lines of the changes I would make at this time. I'd have to give it a lot more thought on how to make this really sing, but thems my ideas for what they are worth.

Cheers,

Jason.

Oww! Oww! Terminology burn!
Sorry. Why do Drops 'burn' and 'fade'? What hapened to flowing, evaporating, freezing?

On to meatier topics.

I definitely prefer the round-the-circle method of Piping to the fiat method. It takes a lot of the drippingly delicious abusable power that the Piper had and turns it into useful responsible power.

What is the natures of the After-Once and the activity that occurs there? If we're to take Piers' idea that the character personae are just Masks they carry around, is there really an After-Once apart from the stories? Maybe the After-Once is an outlook rather than an environment; the Troupe switches back and forth from story attitude to troupe attitude, and somehow the Troupe's abilities change depending on if they see themselves as the Mask or the Wearer-of-the-Mask.
Of course, this would cause problems with some of your mechanics regarding being 'kicked into the After-Once': they'd become something like 'kicked out of the Mask', which is a lot less interesting unless you get kicked right into something else. I imagine that this is a lot more like the Storypunk incarnation of the game than it is Ever-After.

Suppose that Identity and Duty are inextricably linked - any Identity Mask has a Duty welded into it, and can use that Duty's powers. A Troupe could have a small collection of these, and pass around the Masks as they felt the need to switch Duties - and they'd be switching roles in a different way at the same time.

Regarding bob's comments:

Every time you make a rule that says 'you must', you lose an opportunity for the game to do other things. If Scheherehade has to start the story every time, all by herself, all the stories are going to be that much more her stories than if she was able to let other people help her out. If the Masker has to make a Mask for every fact that Scheherezade sets, then there'll inevitably be Masks that no one wears.

Shreyas Sampat wrote: Oww! Oww! Terminology burn!
Sorry. Why do Drops 'burn' and 'fade'? What hapened to flowing, evaporating, freezing?

To clarify my comment about "must" rules:

I would counter your suggestion that, for example, the Muse's Duty be performed to exhaustion before anything else occurs, with one that requires the Duty to be performed in that place in time, but leaves the magnitude of the performance to the Muse's discretion, as Jonathan's original model holds it. I might also add the requirement that this particular Duty function can only be performed exactly then; once the Muse ends her turn, nothing new can be Mused into the story. Similarly, the Masker has a single chance to create a Mask for any particular element (maybe immediately after that element's first mention).

As I understand the point of the game, the Troupe are trying to find the balance of Duty work and Mask time that tells the stories that they want to tell. So the rules are intended to make this seeking-of-balance the point of play, rather than set a single functional balance and make the Troupe work with it.

Shreyas Sampat wrote: Oww! Oww! Terminology burn!

What is the natures of the After-Once and the activity that occurs there?

Shreyas Sampat wrote: As I understand the point of the game, the Troupe are trying to find the balance of Duty work and Mask time that tells the stories that they want to tell. So the rules are intended to make this seeking-of-balance the point of play, rather than set a single functional balance and make the Troupe work with it.