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Over in the thread Emotion Mechanics and Losing Control of Your Character, the question, "is it okay for a system to tell you how your character feels and what he/she does as a result" got a lot of "sure, sometimes" and a lot of very intense "hell no, that should be roleplayed out."

Which is great, but now I want to flip this topic around and look not at the negative side of emotion mechanics -- losing control of your character -- but at the positive side: emotion as power.

Pain that makes you angry gives you power -- power to strike back. (Look at the climax of Return of the Jedi, or real-world soldiers going beserk at the death of a comrade). Horrifying sights that make you afraid gives you power -- power to run like hell, or to fight like a cornered rat if you can't run. A kind word that inspires hope gives you power -- power to carry on. (Look at the Sam-Frodo relationship throughout Lord of the Rings).

Most game systems ignore emotions altogether. The Riddle of Steel, with its Spiritual Attributes, and Unknown Armies, with its Obsession/Rage/Fear/Nobility triggers, get at this idea of passion as power-up -- to a degree: They depict permanent features of your character's personality that come into play in specific situations in predictable ways; if one of your buttons is pushed, you always get the bonus for acting accordingly. But even these games don't really get into the highly volatile reactions people actually have to stress. Being hurt, for example, may scare you into running away or anger you into fighting back; having the object of your secret crush actually ask you to dance at the prom may cause you to freeze up or suddenly gain confidence.

And to preempt the inevitable counter-argument, "just roleplay it" doesn't address the issue. If emotional reactions are a source of power at least as important as a character's skills or strength or equipment, they need to have an equal impact in terms of game mechanics. (Even giving bonuses for good roleplaying (a la Sorcerer) doesn't quite achieve this). What I'm talking about, in essence, is making emotional reactions a "power-up": not something which dictates specific behavior, but which makes certain courses of action much easier -- which presents players with the interesting dilemma of surfing the waves of their characters' emotions or swimming against the current.

The question is, obviously, how? What games have people played, read, or designed that address this? And what are the pitfalls of doing this wrong (or, for those who dislike the entire idea, of doing it at all)?

Well, you asked of our own designs...

Yep, I've done that forwards and backwards. The simplest system was probably Planet Linkola, my game of learning Finnish and colonizing space: all character qualities are represented by simple descriptors ("strong", "mechanic", whatever) which determine what a character can or cannot do. When there is doubt as to character success in a task he could conceivably try, emotion statistics are consulted: these are simply numbers from one to ten for different character emotions, a roll under with d10 required to succeed. Each use of an emotion would either rise of lower it's value depending on certain mechanics. If multiple emotions are applicable, roll all and get at least one success. Simple, efficient and more or less simulationism-supporting.

The above was of course the result of trying about a dozen different ways of doing the same, and is by no means the ultimate answer. Another design of mine, the superhero game Power over others applied emotions exactly like other traits: a character could be "Strong 5" as well as "Scared of magic 5" or whatever. The only difference between emotions and actual qualities was that while qualities could hardly be increased (genre expectation), emotions were freely customizable by the player. However, at times a character with strong emotions would be forced to willpower checks, so the player had to be ready to really play according to the emotion if he wanted it to have a really high value.

I've surely made other games with emotion mechanics as well; the IGC contest springs to mind, wherein in my game The Fall of Atlantis and Dawn of Human History I used character emotion as a kind of pacing mechanism: players only gained dice needed in conflicts through demonstrating character motivations (chosen by the player), so they had to pace their conflicts suitably to have a decent chance at success. In another game, the Brotherhood, emotional ties of the characters defined the magic powers they could draw from their connection.

There are of course many published designs with various emotion mechanics. For some reason MLwM hadn't been mentioned in the last thread the last time I checked, although it evokes both emotion-as-limitation and emotion-as-power efficiently. The characters are only defined through their Self-hatred, Weariness and Love, and that's that. Some times the emotions are useful, some times they tie the character to oblications he'd rather avoid.

HeroQuest, on the other hand, again handles emotions exactly the same as any other attributes of characters. Pool, Universalis and any other games with freely customizable skill lists generally do this as well. The basic capability exists in half a dozen of my own games without even being especially mentioned. It's like, two of my three IGC games had the option, and I didn't even think about it. Completely instinctual for a certain kind of design.

IMO emotions are at this stage a fully realized concept in game design, and trying to limit them outside in any aspect is really only defensible for design reasons, not because "player/character freedom is paramount" or other such nonsense. Many games have proved over and over how emotions can be considered.

It's simply not useful to consider questions like "Is it OK for somebody else to tell how your character feels?" or "Can emotions be used as stats?" They're just not even questions without defining some context: for roleplaying games in general the answer is obviously yes, because in some games that's the whole point. In almost any single game the answer is either yes or no, depending only on the game in question. In some it's stupid and wrong, in some others necessary.

Interesting that your mention Return of the Jedi...  Over the course of playing Star Wars campaigns for nearly ten years, my group and I have developed a way that we include emotion into game play, without "just roleplaying it."  For the most part, roleplaying a character's emotions is like roleplaying him walking into town.  A character may become angery or sad or withdrawn and the effect of his emotion on his actions is fairly obvious.  

However, when the GM or sometimes the player, realizes that emotion that the character is experiencing is more than that of the "day to day" variety, a mechanic is brought to bear.  In the old WEG d6 system, this was simply a matter of determing which attributes the emotion effected, rolling 1d6 and adding/subtracting that number from any rolls in those attributes for the duration of the emotion.  Fairly simple, fairly boring, but effective enough...  Under the D20 system the same idea applies, except that the penalty/bonus is applied to Vitality.  (of course, there are other effects, like if you're a Jedi, anger can gain you Darkside points, etc., but we have house rules that detail these...)
So, IMO, emotion should be a resource that has both positive and negative effects, when tapped into.  When to tap into it, what the effect should be, and how power the effect is probably a matter of taste and system.

I've got to disagree with you, Eero.  I don't think the question of what it takes to appropriately include emotions in rules has been reduced to obvious tropes.  There's a lot of theoretical ground-work still to be done.

Emotions are much more complicated than skills and abilities.  They are tightly linked with issues of drama that are still only vaguely understood.  

Suppose your character has a Hatred of Aliens: +5.  He obviously gets +5 when he's all hateful of aliens, busting carapaces and the like.

And there are also situations where it is clear that he should get a -5... trying to be polite to an alien he dislikes, for instance.

But the fun (and IMHO important) situations are far trickier than that.  What about when he's forced to work with an Alien for three days uncovering an assassination plot.  And then he has to choose between siding with an important human behind the plot or his erstwhile xeno-partner.

Should he get a -5 to help his partner, a +5 to help the villain?  Or should no penalties apply, because it's no longer the generic situation.  Or (my opinion) should he get a bonus to almost anything he chooses to do, because he's been wrestling with the issue of his prejudice in the face of a worthy individual, and the emotional resolution of that (whichever way it plays out) is powerful?

I think that if all Sydney is asking is "What does it take to use emotions as stats?" then he's exploring very worthwhile territory.  He gives some great examples of things that are hard to represent using traditional game-mechanics:  that whole thing about being asked to the dance at the prom is (IMHO) a gold-mine of possible exploration.  It is neither easier nor harder for your character to accept the date... I think that, statistically, all you could say is that it should be judged on a gaussian curve that is far less weighted toward the center:  extreme reactions seem more likely than middle of the road.

This looks like it should be a very interesting thread.  At some point I should probably chatter about the emotion mechanics in my own nascent game, Capes, but I've already written quite enough just now.

Quote from: ErrathofKoshSo, IMO, emotion should be a resource that has both positive and negative effects, when tapped into.  When to tap into it, what the effect should be, and how power the effect is probably a matter of taste and system.

That should read "could be a resource..."  There are obviously, other ways of doing it.  (or leaving it out)

Quote from: TonyLB
This looks like it should be a very interesting thread.  At some point I should probably chatter about the emotion mechanics in my own nascent game, Capes, but I've already written quite enough just now.

Your game is another very good example of how emotions can be done, and I agree that just the question of "how could they be done?", is a very interesting, complex subject in itself.  I have wrestled with the "emotional" issue in a few game designs, and am very interested in other ideas may be out there...

Quote from: Eero Tuovinen
HeroQuest, on the other hand, again handles emotions exactly the same as any other attributes of characters.

Yes, but... (and TonyLB has put this better than I can, so):

Quote from: TonyLB
Emotions are much more complicated than skills and abilities....extreme reactions seem more likely than middle of the road...

Yes, yes, yes. I've been struggling with this in My Eventual Game (drafting process slowed somewhat by my Tiny Screaming Baby (tm)), and the obvious, streamlined solution is to treat passions and emotions the same as any other stat. I even came up with a vaguely Ars Magica-inspired system of "ambivalent" traits which could count as bonuses or penalties depending on whether you played with the emotion or against it (as in TonyLB's "I hate aliens +/-5" example). But for emotional reactions (as opposed to abiding passions, a la TROS Spiritual Attributes & UA Obsessions), the instability and unpredictability of the reaction requires special treatment. Exactly what, I'm not sure.

My current stab at this requires (in essence) rolling once to resolve the physical side of a given conflict and then again to to resolve psychological reactions, with the margin of success or failure turning into a temporary trait. (E.g. I fail my fight-or-flight check by 3, so I'm Scared +/-3, so now I have a -3 bonus to standing and fighting but a +3 to running or hiding; I make my fight-or-flight check by 2, so I'm Angry +/-2, now I have a +2 to fight back but a -2 to running).

If I make being Angry a bonus to getting even angrier, and being Scared a penalty to avoid getting scareder (not a real word, I know), this can create positive feedback loops that end up with the drive to extreme reactions that TonyLB described (nice idea, that; thanks, Tony).

But rolling twice for everything -- doubling the mechanical effort of resolving each event -- seems, well, inelegant. Conversely, freeform interpretation of results as either emotional or physical effects, as in Heroquest, seems too vague, at least given that I'm trying to focus on emotion rather than merely include it. So I'm wracking my baby-addled brains for a solution.

Quote from: Eero TuovinenPlanet Linkola, my game of learning Finnish and colonizing space

Totally off-topic, I think this is the coolest high concept since "Penguin Pirates" (see my sig).

Quote from: ErrathofKoshInteresting that you mention Return of the Jedi... [details of nifty barebones mechanic snipped]

I just wanted to comment further on this, because the final scene between Luke, Vader, and the Emperor -- and for that matter the scene between Inigo Montoya and Count Rugen ("the six-fingered man") in Princess Bride -- are known to almost everyone in the hobby and encapsulate exactly why "just roleplay it" won't work. In both cases, the hero (Luke and Inigo Montoya) is not just having an emotional reaction (anger), the emotion is actually making him more powerful . And this happens in action movies and adventure stories and, especially, Japanese animation all the time: Hero and villain fight, villain whomps hero, hero musters some deep emotional response (the love interest cries out "You can't give up!" or the villain sneers "This is exactly how I killed your father" or whatever), hero picks himself up off the floor and whomps villain. Sam keeping Frodo going past the point of utter exhaustion in LOTR is a similar dynamic.

To reproduce this in a game (and I know I'm sounding very Simulationist here, but I think this is GNS-neutral), you can't "just roleplay it," because a character is not just making different choices (which are arguably the province of the player, not of the mechanics), he/she is actually more effective -- which the mechanics have to reflect somehow.

Rant off. Must sleep. Baby woke before 6am this morning and may well do it again tomorrow...

Resource mechanics (hero points, miracle points, whatever) are a way of letting the players decision to take something seriously translate into game mechanics.

It is, in short, a way to have "just roleplay it" that also allows for those type of scenes.  Which is not to say that there aren't other, possibly better, ways... just to point out what's already out there.

Quote from: Sydney FreedbergAnd to preempt the inevitable counter-argument, "just roleplay it" doesn't address the issue. If emotional reactions are a source of power at least as important as a character's skills or strength or equipment, they need to have an equal impact in terms of game mechanics. (Even giving bonuses for good roleplaying (a la Sorcerer) doesn't quite achieve this). What I'm talking about, in essence, is making emotional reactions a "power-up": not something which dictates specific behavior, but which makes certain courses of action much easier -- which presents players with the interesting dilemma of surfing the waves of their characters' emotions or swimming against the current.

The question is, obviously, how? What games have people played, read, or designed that address this? And what are the pitfalls of doing this wrong (or, for those who dislike the entire idea, of doing it at all)?  

As far as I know, the earliest incarnation of this was Pendragon, first edition (1985).  At an appropriate time, the character may roll on one of his passion traits, such as "Hate (Tristram)".  If it succeeds, the character becomes inspired and gets +5 to one skill for "the duration of the appropriate time".  There are also consequences for failure and special results for fumble/critical.  Ars Magica (1987) has a note that personality traits may be added to certain rolls at the GM's option.  This was a largely unused option, but this was later expanded into Passions in the third edition (1992), which gave reliable benefits to rolls.  If you have a passion at 3, then you may spend a confidence point and to +3 to all rolls during a scene where your passion is involved.  That is similar to Theatrix, where you can spend a plot point on your Personality Traits, which allows you to buy a success on an appropriate action.  

Tony has already addressed this, but I would repeat that player-controlled options like Willpower points in Storyteller also address this.  i.e. I spend Willpower points on actions which my character really cares about.  One advantage of this is that the player is not restricted to emotions that are described in short-phrase traits (i.e. "Drive to defend the weak and innocent").  It also leaves judgement of whether the emotion applies up to the player, rather than putting it in the hands of the GM or a committee.

Tony, Sydney: again, I have to disagree. The examples of differences between emotions and other things all assume a fundamentally simulationist approach to game design. Emotions are only different if you want them to be.

I of course agree in that there sure is yet much to explore in emotion mechanics, but then, that's so with wound simulation, too. They are just memes of imagination one and all, and can be twisted and turned in different ways to produce the effect the game designer wants. You all write about emotions like they were some discernable entity that works like this or this, but it simply ain't so. Emotion is a bonus to roll for one game, a sacrosanct area of roleplaying for another, source of bonus dice for a third, a statistic for a fourth... for some games it's nothing at all, for those games do not concern themselves with emotions.

Quote from: Sydney
To reproduce this in a game (and I know I'm sounding very Simulationist here, but I think this is GNS-neutral), you can't "just roleplay it," because a character is not just making different choices (which are arguably the province of the player, not of the mechanics), he/she is actually more effective -- which the mechanics have to reflect somehow.

You are indeed sounding simulationist. You constantly refer to literary sources that have a certain effect, and argue that game mechanics should reflect the same effect. Sure, why not, and it is indeed common in literature. That's however no indication for general game design at all - it's relevant only if you want to do that exact kind of game.

Strictly speaking the mechanic of drawing strength from emotion of course isn't of any specific agenda. Your motivation for including it seems to be, though - if the reason for using emotion mechanics is because they're part of certain fiction, that's sim if something is.

Anyway, I remember another game that uses a little different emotion mechanic: the Finnish roleplaying game Myrskyn aika has a mechanic wherein the player decides whether his character is flustered by emotion. If this is so, he gets a hefty +3 to his die roll, but the d6 explodes negatively. Thus it's a tradeoff between safety and efficiency, but not too central, so effectively the player does the decision from simulationist point of view.

Quote from: Eero TuovinenThe examples of differences between emotions and other things all assume a fundamentally simulationist approach to game design. ..... Strictly speaking the mechanic of drawing strength from emotion of course isn't of any specific agenda. Your motivation for including it seems to be, though - if the reason for using emotion mechanics is because they're part of certain fiction, that's sim.

You're way ahead of me, my Finnish friend: I'm still down at the tactical level of figuring out alternative mechanics, not at the strategic level of what creative agenda they serve. But....

(deep breath)
(GNS mode ON)

Actually, as I work on this issue for My Eventual Game, I find myself pulled towards what I think is a Narrativist Premise of "Emotions are power -- will you be swept away by them, repress them, or harness them?" (Okay, that could be a Gamist Challenge too, I guess.)

But in any case, I'd argue that if a game wants to focus on X -- whether X = humanity, emotion, 3-act narrative structure, or whatever -- then it needs to have enough mechanics for X to give the players something to play with. This by definition requires simulating X to some degree. But this is simulation in service of some higher purpose, not necessarily simulation for simulation's sake, i.e. Simulationism. After all, My Life With Master and Sorcerer both put a great deal of energy into mechanics simulating disfunctional relationships (master-minion and minion-connection or master-demon); that doesn't make them Simulationist, does it? (This is why I don't usually think in terms of the Threefold, actually: I tend to think of games as falling on a Cartesian plane, where Simulation vs. Abstraction is on the y-axis and Gamist vs. Narravist is on the x-axis).

But if anyone is desperate to debate this subject, let's all troop over to "GNS Theory" and start a separate thread, because otherwise it'll eat this thread alive.

(GNS mode OFF)

We now return you to your regularly scheduled discussion.

The Ars Magica, Pendragon, and Theatrix examples of applying passions, possibly through the expenditure of some kind of plot points, are good ones -- BUT because they generally do the same thing in a reliable way, often under direct player control, they still don't address the volatility of emotional reactions (e.g. the drive to the extremes that TonyLB talks about). They don't hand the player a ticking time bomb of emotional energy and say, "Now what?"

So let me refocus my question more precisely: How might a game portray the nature of emotions not only as a power-up, but as an inherently unpredictable and even dangerous one?

The goal here would be to make a character's emotional reactions as complex, unpredictable, and exciting as, say, combat (in a well-designed system, obviously, not a hit-point-plinking "I hit you, you hit me, repeat" system), or demon-human interactions in Sorcerer. The hope is for players to have as much fun with the emotion mechanics as they would with combat mechanics in a more traditional game.

Sydney, in the game Hero Quest, characters have "personality traits" that are handled precisely like any other ability. That is, any ability can be used "positiely" when appropriate, or "negatively" when appropriate. So, if my character has "Bouts of Rage" or something, then when he's angry, he can use that to augment, say, attacking somebody. When he's trying to calmly argue with somebody, this becomes a penalty.

As to what's "appropriate" essenetially if anyone feels that it's appropriate, then it's appropriate. Because "feeling" is what drama is all about. That is, the problem solves itself in play as people activate these things when they feel that it's dramatic. Which automatically makes it so. In actual play this works brilliantly every single time.

Seems simple, and solved to me.

Mike

The system of Dying Earth is the obvious answer, as social situations in it are handled largely the same as combat. Character emotions are only partially controlled by the player, and the system is certainly just as interesting as combat.

Another one is Myrskyn aika, which I already mentioned. The idea is that using emotion increases unpredictability. Simple simulation. You'd get the same effect in many systems (say, roll-under, higher is better) by making the size of the die used dependant on character emotion: while the results will be higher, there is some higher possibility of failure due to emotions. In some situations it's even better to be cold and non-emotional.

Or how about this: players can at any time declare an emotion their character is laboring under. When this is the case, the character gains an appropriate emotion bonus in the conflict at hand, but the GM narrates character action. This gives the player a choice: to harness the power of emotion, but risk unexpected results when the emotion is unleashed. For another kind of game the GM could even base his narration on some kind of sincerity roll that would tell him when to screw the character over and when not. Or it could be made a matter of trust, so that the player would have to consider in each case the hidden motivations of the GM.