My guy fucks corpses. It's okay, I mean he's the son of Lucere, one of the three old men of Tremere, and Lucere raised him to be the Antichrist, which he isn't, but when it became obvious that he isn't, Lucere was ... disappointed, and not in an understanding way. My guy considered the ramifications and concluded that since he's not the Antichrist, there must not be one, and since there's no Antichrist, there must be no Christ, and since there's no Christ, there must be no God, so he can fuck corpses if he damn well wannas. Which he does.

"You fuck corpses?" Quintus says. Quintus is Meg's guy. "You sick pervert. That's vile."

I forget why it pisses me off but it does. I punch him in the nose. "I punch you in the nose, like wham!" I say.

Meg pantomimes Quintus putting his hands up over his face. "You hit me! You sick twisted fuck!" she has him say.

"I hit you again," I say. "I knock you down. I'm gonna stomp shit out of you."

"No way," Meg says. "I block you."

Uh oh, I say to myself. Emotional investment + your opponent gets to say how effective you are = Deprotagonization.

"Let's take it to the Certamen Circle, then," I say. (Certamen is what we Ars Magica playin' people call a magical duel.)

"Certamen, huh?" says Meg.

"Certamen, huh?" says Emily.

"How shall we do Certamen?" I say. This is I believe the first Certamen-as-such that we've had since the illfated Pendragon mod of '99. I'm looking for the dice, they're still on the shelf in their jar.

"Let's just play it out, see what happens," Meg says.

"Sounds good to me," Emily says.

"Well, okay," I say. "I guess."

There's a certain amount of murdering a servant to reanimate his corpse (maybe I'll fuck him later), sharp stone darts, quicksand, a ladder of bones, but when you're right you're right and it's turning into a big ol' ugly = Deprotagonization.

To break out of it I employ the kind of Author Stance where your in-game justification is so thin that everyone looks at you and narrows their eyes.

"Well I'm not happy with how that went," I say.

"Hm," Meg says. "Me neither."

"Partly because I'm not sure I intended my confession to be in character," I say.

"Oh," says Meg.

"But I'm okay with that, let's not rewrite it."

"You sure?" says Emily.

"We can," says Meg.

"Nah. What I'm really not happy with is the Certamen. Cause of A) the pressure to come up with cool magicky attacks under pressure."

"Yeah," says Meg. "That was hard. I wanted it to be like that Vincent Price movie?"

"The Raven," I say. Emily hasn't seen it so we tell her about the cool magical duel in it. Meg and I coincidentally both saw it on TV in our impressionable youth.

"But B) since it's hard to come up with cool things, when you do you're invested, but then I, your opponent, get to say how effective you are."

"Oh!" says Meg. "Right! That's right."

"I want to roll dice or something next time."

"How about rolling horse race dice?" Emily says. She means: every contestant rolls a die, number of sides determined by rider skill and horse quality, every leg of every lap. Whoever rolls highest is in the lead and gets a bonus to the next leg, plus we narrate all the shifting positions. Whoever rolls highest in the last leg of the last lap, wins.

"...Right, okay," I say. "That could work."

"Sounds good," Meg says.

So next time, we'll do that.

"Wanna do over?" Meg says.

"No. But what if -- what if what we just played out isn't necessarily what actually happened, but is how the story spreads through the covenant?"

"...Okay, yes!" Meg says.

"I like that a lot," Emily says. "Some servant watching..."

"Yeah," I say.

So who knows what really happened between my guy and Meg's. All we know is that something did, and this is how the covenant comes to understand it.

-Vincent

Hello,

A while ago, Chris Chinn was talking about "the ball," as a metaphor for various narrations or power-issues during play. Coincidentally, I'd been working up some essay material about "the ball" as well, and it was different enough from his that I was forestalled. Either I keep working up these essays and kind of stomp on Chris' contribution, or I re-do the whole thing, which wouldn't work because "the ball" is the perfect metaphor for what I'm saying, and I think that Chris' stuff was a sub-set of my stuff anyway (conceptually speaking).

But now it's time to talk about my ball idea.

Remember four-square? I never played it, but various girls would stand on these painted squares and bounce a red rubber ball around to one another. There was some sort of scoring system, I'm sure.

Think of the ball's movement as interaction among the role-players of any kind. Narration, authority over what happens, laughter, support, disagreement, looking up a rule, whatever interaction at all.

Here's my point: the ball itself must have some bounce and spin. This can arise from a Fortune system, resource fluctuation (e.g. Miracle Points in Nobilis), unpredictable elements of "what happens" input, and more; those are the big three. You can get bounce & spin with all sorts of combinations of Drama, Fortune, and Karma.

Why? Because foursquare with a dead ball is no fun. Toss - splat - pick up - toss - splat - pick up ...

Even if you're not trying to beat the other guy. Even if you're setting up a another guy to spike it (shifting to volleyball, sorry). Even if there's nothing going on, socially, that resembles a sport and the goals are way different. In other words, entirely independent of GNS. We're talking about the part of Exploration called System. If System is flaccid, play is no fun.

When you get to state how your character faces adversity and exactly what happens and how it turns out ... um, you had to pick up the sad, flaccid ball and impart every bit of "oomph" to pass it to the next guy. And the "oomph" doesn't work, because its energy is lost when it hits, and he or she has to start all over.

This phenomenon, in combination with the IIEE concept (who says who goes when and how much), is why unconstructed Drama is a problematic system choice.

Best,
Ron

Greetings all,

Thanks for writing that up, Vincent.

Ron, so our ball got deflated when it hit a snag on the drama/conflict of certamen?

Using improvised system, our group engages in a lot of exploration of system. Hitting walls like that one give us the clue that we need to use a different technique. And if the next one we try doesn't work, we modify it or use another, until we are satisfied that the ball is nicely pumped. We don't have a pre-constructed structure for our drama, but instead develop system elements as we find we need them.

Regards,
Emily Care

Ron Edwards wrote: Hello,

Remember four-square? I never played it, but various girls would stand on these painted squares and bounce a red rubber ball around to one another. There was some sort of scoring system, I'm sure.

My thinking is that we as a group dig Ron's 'unpredictable elements of "what happens" input,' it serves us well, and we default to it. This was a case where getting it wasn't straightforward.

I wonder now how we might handle certamen if we switched to structured Drama instead of to Fortune. Just out of, y'know, System design monkey curiosity.

(When we played four-square there were a jillion possible variations, and whoever was at the top got to name the game, like dealer's choice poker.)

-Vincent

Hi there,

Hey Emily! Yeah, I think your group offers an excellent example of discovering ways to keep the ball pumped, without getting bent out of shape by it along the way. I do think the "what the servants said they saw" interpretation represents an acknowledged local failure of the process, though. Unlike many groups, you & Vincent & Meg are capable of retro-pumping it and continuing without rancor or a sense of overall failure.

Ralph, I think I chose foursquare because I didn't know the rules for win-lose. That opens it up, in my mind, for the system-analogy because the "goal" of bouncin' the thing around remains customizable (ie. GNS-open).

I'm highly tempted to enter into a mockery of "Was not, either, a girly-boy!" kind of replying, but then I remember a kid from junior high who was (a) named Leslie and (b) a total bad-ass, and shall concede your point.

Best,
Ron

Four-square was for girls, Ralph. All the boys at my school played a varient called "Long Ball," which was exactly like Four-Sqaure except you played it using two Four-Square courts on opposite sides of the blacktop. So you'd have to launch the ball the length of the basketball court and try to make it land in the opposing team's Square. Beautiful game :)

But to the point, Four-Square is actually a really good metaphor, Ron, including the rules for winning. There's not really an end to the game, you just keep playing until you decide to stop. Kinda like roleplaying. Also, you never lose complete control of the ball, since, if you get ejected from the game, you just get in line to hop right back in. Roleplaying, in effect, is like playing Four-Square with only four players. You keep rotating positions between the squares, but everyone's always playing. Also, the person in the "king" square (#4), gets to start the ball bouncing each turn, but, after that, it's a free for all, with everybody grabbing at it.

How's that for a metaphor?

Hey Vincent,

"No. But what if -- what if what we just played out isn't necessarily what actually happened, but is how the story spreads through the covenant?"

You, Meg, and Emily seem exceedingly accomplished at creatively preserving character integrity over the very long term despite the contaminations of collaborative roleplay. The perception thing you describe here is very unconventional, and very cool. I suspect this is going to be a hard question to answer, but can I ask if there other specific techniques for preserving character integrity that you've produced from out of the general dynamic of respectful negotiation that you cultivate? Have you found yourselves using any specific technique frequently enough that you have house terminology for it? Or perhaps house terminology you use to raise certain concerns for discussion?

Paul

Hey All,

I just wanted to second Paul's question here. The twist on the scene being what the covenant heard is nothing short of brilliant. If you guys have techniques that you've developed that you can articulate, please give us your pointers.

-Tim

I wrote: I wonder now how we might handle certamen if we switched to structured Drama instead of to Fortune. Just out of, y'know, System design monkey curiosity.

In PM, bluegargantua wrote: How about...give each contestant a few minutes to think about how they would like to advance their character if they win and how they'd move their personal plot forward if they lost. Heck, non-participating people can come up with ideas, why restrict? Once the contestants have a pair of ideas, they compare. Ideally, the resolutions people come up with only serve to spark off a hybrid idea that makes players happy (even if it leaves their characters unhappy).

So once the contestants decide on an outcome, they go back and play it out. Since the outcome has been determined, they can go ahead and narrate the hell out of it. I think it also helps the emotional involvement issue because a.) you know what's going to happen and b.) you have an idea about how you can use the outcome (even a negative one) to your overall story.

Also Paul! What an interesting thing to say!

You wrote: ...preserving character integrity over the very long term despite the contaminations of collaborative roleplay.

Hello,

Hey corpse-fucker, you wrote,

Even if we just think about and reveal our goals for the certamen up front - my goal is to show my guy to be the better wizard, Meg's goal is to make my guy look like a fool - then we can, depending on how compatible they are, either negotiate through to a mutually happy as you say hybrid resolution, or dig into them, break them down and spin them off until we arrive at goals compatible enough to resolve.

Ron, ha! And what it's secretly is IIEE. In that awkward I'm-looking-up-at-the-dice moment between just talking and actually resolving, we managed to hit ->Now We Resolve, but we sadly misgot ->Here's What We Resolve. Not the right kind of I to successfully IEE.

Here's my eyes all lit up from theory-practice connect.

-Vincent

What we're collaborating on is character integrity.

Well...you guys might be. But I don't know how to do that shit. When I create my guy, I have a vision for him. Maybe I envision him as really edgy. But when we roleplay dialogue, that never comes through. The other player characters are never on eggshells around him like they should be. So yeah, that's contamination. My vision is more satisfying than my dude is in play. How do you get the foils you need in your games?

Paul

Hey Guys,

Maybe I envision him as really edgy. But when we roleplay dialogue, that never comes through. The other player characters are never on eggshells around him like they should be. So yeah, that's contamination.

My vision is more satisfying than my dude is in play.

Paul wrote: My vision is more satisfying than my dude is in play.

How do you get the foils you need in your games?

Tim wrote: I would venture to guess that if Vincent played the aforementioned edgy guy; the group would be well aware of it, and would work to keep that vision in the same way Vincent would work to keep their's.

Tim wrote: I think that a lot of the stuff we're both looking for as techniques for during play are actually part of pre-play. Once that foundation is laid, ideas like the neat rewrite spring from everyone being clear about perceived violations of that social contract.

Hey Vincent,

Not quite - yes, the foundation, but not pre-play. We worked practically all of this stuff out in play. Pre-play, all we really did is commit to the process.

...And spend five years or so building a shared vision of the Setting, broadly, including a whole lot of historical Color, plus what kinds of Characters and Situations would be called for. Which, um, maybe helped.

Hello all - the other third chiming in -

Tim wrote: I just wanted to second Paul's question here. The twist on the scene being what the covenant heard is nothing short of brilliant. If you guys have techniques that you've developed that you can articulate, please give us your pointers.

About character integrity: then there are those times when a key part of one's character concept (He's a charmer with the ladies) just plain does not mesh with the setting of play (we're in the middle of nowhere and all the ladies are either involved elsewhere or not interested). Also, there are times in our group when we've directly opposed character concepts because the character was stagnant at the start and needed a direction to grow. This happens a lot with IC younger characters who think they've seen stuff when they're still green. As they grow, we can support the emergent character without damaging the initial concept - too much.

Also, let me put in here a shameless and blatant plug for the use of gestures, pysical habits, and voice pattern shifts to increase not only character indentity and immersion, but increased edge, charm, sex appeal, etc., etc.

~Meguey

Another aspect of the way we play, as I see it, is that we are sensitive to and prioritize player experience over in-game continuity. Meg discribed is at things "not sitting right" (hi Meg!). Disruption of character integrity can be an unpleasant experience for the player, and instead of saying "suck it up", we'd rather modify the in-game material until it does sit right.

So, we are interested in preserving continuity in ways that support player experience. Since our system is flexible and includes re-interpretation of events, it never feels like "cheating". The lumpley principle schtick that what happens in the game is only ever what folks agree is what happened, is up front and overtly applied. As Vincent said, the final E can have a lot of discussion before it gets set in stone. And even then, it could be revisited.

Good discussion, all!

--Em

Hey Vincent,

First off, I agree that Universalis is brilliant. But I must say I'm unconvinced that its workings can be correlated to any great extent with the dynamics of what you, Meg, and Emily do during play. A game of Universalis is essentially a mechanically regulated conversation. Your gameplay is a conversation as well, but qualitatively quite dissimilar to a Universalis conversation, I think.

Consider the common dynamic of a group of guys talking. They interrupt each other. They challenge and contradict. They redirect. They talk over each other. The mechanics of Universalis regulate that kind of conversation. It's a male conversation. It's about challenges, and elaborations, and the only kind of support recognized by the system is unqualified agreement.

Your gameplay isn't that. Your gameplay is not an unregulated version of Universalis. If Meg's character enters a room, you take up an NPC and do your best to support what she's trying to do in her scene. Universalis isn't about attentiveness and respectfully facilitating each other. Sure that stuff can happen, but it does so entirely off the radar of the system. Notably absent from Universalis are mechanics for being sympathetic to the efforts of another player even if you disagree with what they're trying to achieve. You either support them in their effort, or you don't. There's no way to give the game equivalent of a plate of homebaked cookies to someone who failed at something you warned them not to do. And there's no "thank you" mechanism for support received during a challenge other than supporting someone later when they're being challenged. But I bet you guys play around with stuff like this in your games all the time. Am I wrong?

Anyway, in case it's not obvious, I'm seriously interested in what a non-systemless non-male "Universalis" might be like.

Paul

Paul Czege wrote: Anyway, in case it's not obvious, I'm seriously interested in what a non-systemless non-male "Universalis" might be like.

I haven't had much time for the Forge as of late, but this thread rocks my lame ass and I've got two copper pieces burning a hole in my pocket.

In regards to group devotion to character integrity, do you gals/guy talk about the whys of in-game events (in or out of game)? Character X did blah because he feels blah because so-and-so did blah when blah happened. That kind of stuff.

In my experience, character motivations aren't necessarily something that becomes apparent through play, particularly with relationship-centric motivations (love, loyalty, family, etc). To the outside observer a character can seem sorta random because their motivations change with their feelings. I fucked the corpse because cold flesh makes me hot is nice and clear. I fucked the corpse because it reminds me of my mother is a little less clear if you don't explain it.

Discussing the inner world of the characters I think helps solidify the construct of the character in the minds of all the players. The more solid the image becomes the more invested a player is in something. Other players are much more likely to uphold the integrity of what they are invested in. Once the players are invested in your character being edgy they will support that, because it would violate their vision not to.

Also, knowing the why's allows you to predict what someone else's character would do, and hence make decisions that take that into account; further allowing you to preserve integrity.

Anyway, just curious. My suspicion is this is something you do, and I suspect it helps. But...I'm not there, ya know.

Up in Men are from Universalis, Paul wrote: Let me throw something out for consideration: conversation among women is often characterized by participants working to elicit details from a speaker. "He said what? You're kidding!" What's the reward? A little bit of ownership of those details, installed credibility when you relate the story later? The dynamics of social significance are different.

lumpley wrote: Somebody has their character do something, odds are that somebody else will tip their head to one side and say "you do? how come? what's that like? where's that come from?"

How to build that into a formal mechanical system...? Very, very interesting.

Hi Tom.

Hm. We ask those kinds of questions across all our various and permuted player / GM type roles. Not just about the characters' internal lives, but about the whole landscape.

"Soraya, dude, you killed a dragon?" I might have my guy Acanthus say. "What's up with that?"

"I haven't figured out all the details," Emily might say, "but I know that [Soraya's abusive master] Severin made me do all the dangerous work, like I was the one who played the riddle game with it to distract it while he bound it, and he made me cut its head off, he didn't help."

Maybe she makes a facial expression to show how much it sucked. "That musta sucked," I might say.

"Yeah. Y'know, every time I think about him, Severin is more a prick."

So there's me asking questions to draw information out of Emily, and it's all good information, and it'll all eventually come back into the game, but it's not just Soraya's motivations or experiences, it's whatever. A stew of character-level, player-level, and level-crossing stuff. (Who is the "I" in Em's last sentence, Em or Soraya? Probably both.)

Paul wrote: conversation among women is often characterized by participants working to elicit details from a speaker. "He said what? You're kidding!" What's the reward? A little bit of ownership of those details, installed credibility when you relate the story later?

Very interesting Vincent. I think the real key to what your saying is that you are looking beyond the mechanical payoff towards a social payoff (i.e. not letting anyone down, holding up your end of the experience, making it fun for everyone). The question that arises is: is it possible to develop a mechanic that rewards this sort of play without shifting the focus to gaining the mechanical benifit? Or instead will the inclusion of the mechanic make it harder to play with that social rewards focus?

Thomas

Hi Thomas.

I think that the goal of the girly-Universalis thought experiment is to figure out in-game rewards that match the social rewards. It won't matter whether you're shooting for the social rewards or the mechanical ones, because you'll play the same way either way.

The advantage being that mechanical rewards are more portable, group to group, than nonmechanical ones, especially than unspoken nonmechanical ones.

Right Paul?

-Vincent

I guess i realize that. Maybe i'm just being pessimistic, i just don't know if it can be done. It's something that we want to design because spurring that sort of play will hopefully be a tool to teach people that such social rewards are available and fun. I've been slowly feeling my way to this point without direction just by playing. But it's taken me months to get to a point where i understand how much fun playing for social rewards can be.

So don't let me rain on anyone's parade here. I'm all for designing a system that rewards mechanically what is also rewarded socially.

Thomas

Hey there, Tom, Vincent, and all,

lumpley wrote: We ask those kinds of questions across all our various and permuted player / GM type roles. Not just about the characters' internal lives, but about the whole landscape....

Every single thing that Emily tells me about Severin and Soraya is crucial to the way their conflict plays out. I want every scrap of detail. The reward, it seems to me, isn't that then I own those details, but that then I won't let Emily down. Playing Severin to Emily's satisfaction is my part of the bargain...

I have no idea if Meg or Emily see it this way at all.

Hey Vincent,

This is going to be brief, because I'm rushing to an appointment:

So, in Universalis-like terms, imagine that when I introduce an element, as part of its introduction I give it to you to play. ("There's a young snake, it's brave times 2, and Paul, will you play it?") Then whenever I think you're playing it "right," I give you a coin from the bank. Thus you're motivated to do whatever it takes to figure out my vision.

Beautiful.

The advantage being that mechanical rewards are more portable, group to group, than nonmechanical ones, especially than unspoken nonmechanical ones.

Yes, exactly. Games excite me the most when they make manifest and mechanically evangelize sub-articulated aspects of real, gloriously functional, actual play.

Paul

Hi all--

Great thread. I, too, have had the "my guy is being violated" frustration.

I don't know if this should be into a seperate thread at this point, but I have a rules idea that would seem to foster this sort of play without, necessarily, becoming the goal of play. It is very short at this point, without any real heavy-lifting.

The basic idea is that each character, thing, place, etc. in the game is given a number of descriptors by its creator. Things like Edgy, Violent, Spooky, Dim, Kind, Mysterious, Misunderstood by His Students, etc. These can really be as long or as short as they need to be.

Any time that other participants (i.e. not the object's creator) in the game helped demonstrate that game object's descriptors, they gain bennies of some sort, possibly at the discretion of the object's author, possibly by some GM figure, possibly by consensus of the group. Bennies are best distributed Right Then, or at the end of the scene, rather than Later.

A wonderful "positive cycle" might be to have bennies allow players to author new descriptors, and accompanying objects.

yrs--
--Ben