The Forge Archives

I've been working on a game design for a little while now, and it's reached the point where it's not just 'practice' but is something I intend to publish, probably as a free PDF, in the near future.  (Ideally sometime this winter, but I do have three children 4 and under...)  
Some design goals to keep in mind as you read:
-It's being written and pitched at least in part to appeal to a non-gaming crowd
-A session is intended to be about 2 hours, and includes each person at the table having a turn at protagonist.
-The game is intended to let people explore the taboo of death and dying in the 'safe' environment of a game


Game text excerpts appear in quote boxes.


"back of the book" summary text:

QuoteDeath's Door is a game for 2 to 5 players in which the players around the table take on the roles of people (called protagonists) who, for no explained reason, know they are going to die.  It is intended to be played over the course of three evenings.  It can be played in its entirety at one sitting, although it could run rather long.

The central mechanic (what I'm actively seeking feedback on right now) of the game consists of having the characters trying to acheive goals before they die, 1 goal per player per evening/session.  At the end of the third session, the characters die.

There are two stats involved, called Passion and Peace

QuoteEach score must be at least 1, and they must add up to 5.  As with everything else, they can be anything within that you wish them to start at.  A protagonist with a high Passion might be someone who really wants to live, for whatever reason, while a high Peace score indicates that while the protagonist doesn't want to die, they would have few regrets about the life they did live.

These stats give the starting point for the mechanic.

The protagonist and the GM (called antagonist in the text) take 5 d6 and set them on the table between them.  The protagonist takes dice from that equal to the Passion score, and the antagonist takes the rest (aka the Peace score).  Starting with the protagonist, he states an action and passes one of his dice across the table.  The antagonist can either pass the die back, stating a complication or accept it (in which case he then initates the next round with a new die).  The protagonist can either accept the complication (and then start a new action with another die), or respond with another action and pass the die back.

Each die moves back and forth like that until someone accepts it.  Once three dice have moved, the protagonist gets another option: instead of starting a new action, he can roll the dice in front of him and add them together, with his object being to roll under what the anatagonist gets when he rolls the other set of dice.  If he doesn't like the odds, he can still try actions with the last two dice.  Once all five dice have moved, he has to roll.  If he does roll under, then he acheives the goal and narrates the final scene of the session, otherwise he falls short of the goal and the antagonist narrates the final scene.

Other players at the table get substantial influence over the final roll as well, although no narration.  There are 10 d6 in a pool off to one side, and as a response to any action or complication, another player at the table may add a die to the same pool that just increased.  (I'm still struggling a bit with a clear way to say that)  There's no real criteria in place right now for when to do this, but in general it's meant to be as a kudos for a good action/response or similar social reinforcement.

Example of play:
Protagonist(P) declares he's going to try and acheive "Write a will."  Passion is 3, Peace is 2.  Three dice are set in front of the protagonist, two in front of the antagonist(A), and ten more off to the side for the other players (P2 and P3). (Ideally these will be a different color, but that's just my preference.)

P:[slides a die]Ok... I go get a legal will kit
P3: Smart.  I wouldn't have thought of it. [adds a die to the pool in front of A]
A:[slides P's die back]Hmm... where do you get one of those?
P:[slides it back]I'm pretty sure I can get one from city hall, but if not I phone around.  There's gotta be a bunch of law firms and insurance companies willing to front me one.
A:[accepts the die]Ok fair enough.  Let's say you get it at city hall. [slides a new die across] While it's sitting on the table at your apartment, your girlfriend sees it and asks 'what's with the will kit?'
P2: Ouch! [Adds a die from off to the side to the pool in front of P]
P"Umm... I just figured it's not a bad idea... one of the guys at work had a heart attack last week and it got me to thinking."[Slides A's die back]
A[bounces it back immediately]"Bullshit, Doug.  What's going on."
P[Accepts it.]"Okay.... I'm at The Door.  I knew this morning." [slides a new die across]"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have tried to lie... I didn't want to scare you."
[P2 and P3 both add a die to the pool in front of A. P2 comments]Owning up.. that takes balls, dude.
A:"Well it bloody well didn't work!"[slides P's die back]
....

and so forth.  As of this break there are 4 dice in front of P, 6 in front of A, and one in contention.  2 dice have moved, so after this one is resolved P could call it and roll the dice, but doesn't have to do so until 5 dice have moved.

The intent of this process is to provide a fortune-at-the-end mechanic that is heavily influenced by the narration to that point, especially the quality of the narration (as reflected by the "audience" controlling 2/3's of the possible dice to determine outcome).  I'm hoping, by capping the dice the two narrators can control at 1/3, to minimize gamist "gotta win the die" competition and shift it towards "gotta impress the other players".
I want a mechanic that will give a pass-the-conch type of control over the narration and this back-and-forth challenge format seems to acheive that.

Specific feedback I'm looking for:
1: Does this, in a general sense, look like it will acheive the goals I've set out?
2: (And I realize this is hard to answer without actually playing) Does it seem like the dice mechanic is too upfront - does it feel like the dice movement takes precedence over the actual narration?
3: Is this streamlined enough to run through 4 or 5 times in ~2 hours?
4: (and I realize this is very subjective) Does it "feel" like it provides a good narrative (in a story sense, not a GNS sense) mechanic to go from "I want to do this" to "I have (or haven't) done this"?

General feedback or thoughts on other elements of the game here are of course also welcome.

thanks,

James

(1) Yes

(2) They're playing a game, only part of which is telling a story.  IMO, the dice sliding is very small handling energy, and the ability for non-narrating players to show their support without saying a word will probably make it feel more natural than freeform narration.

(3) I suspect that you won't get exchanges lasting longer than five minutes each, which means you can run through it four or five times in half an hour, but the best way to know that is to test.

(4) That depends very strongly on the antagonists skill.


Now the one thing this doesn't seem (to me) to bring up at all is the mental conflict involved.  Would the Antagonist be within their rights to say "You look at the Instant Will Kit, then wad it up and throw it across the room in a rage"?

Quote from: TonyLB(1) Yes

(2) They're playing a game, only part of which is telling a story.  IMO, the dice sliding is very small handling energy, and the ability for non-narrating players to show their support without saying a word will probably make it feel more natural than freeform narration.

(3) I suspect that you won't get exchanges lasting longer than five minutes each, which means you can run through it four or five times in half an hour, but the best way to know that is to test.

Really?  You think Doug's gonna resolve that argument with his girlfriend in under 5? :)  More seriously, I see your concern, and it's something I'm intending to address.  Much of the antagonist's job (and there is/will be text to this end) is going to be framing and turning the dial up with complications so that it can't really be a five minute fix.  Unless it really really is a five minute fix.  An early draft of the rules had "The role of the GM: conflict Conflict CONFLICT!"

Something else that isn't really explicit in the description given here is that whoever is narrating keeps narrating until they send the die over.  It doesn't have to be a one-liner; it just made for a simpler example that way.

QuoteNow the one thing this doesn't seem (to me) to bring up at all is the mental conflict involved.  Would the Antagonist be within their rights to say "You look at the Instant Will Kit, then wad it up and throw it across the room in a rage"?

Probably a personal preference thing.  There's no reason why the antagonist couldn't give that as a complication, although I would find it very hard to respond to.  In general, I'd be inclined to "stop at the skin", but there's no rule in there says you have to, and I'm not planning to add one.

thanks for the feedback.

James

1: Yup.

2: Nope. I actually really like it, because I like tactile things - moving dice around pushes one of my buttons. It also seems like this is a good "hook" for non-gamers.

3: I feel like this depends entirely on the group and the amount of narrative conflict they're into. I also feel like a group of non-gamers who plays this would be very subject to the one-line response kind of thing, especially if those are the examples you give. Are you assuming that at least one of the players has RPG experience? Recommending it?

4: Depends on how much the players grok it, I think.

Here's a rather gamist thought - what if the number of pips on the dice indicate something like how many facts you have to include in your narration? Or maybe a number of sentences? When each person slides it, they can set the number of pips to whatever, in effect challenging the other to step it up. Or maybe only the Antagonist has this power, and the other players could spend a dice to change the number of pips. Or something.

The effect of this would be to give the players direct control over escalating the narrative, and avoiding one-line syndrome. To kludge this onto your example, saying that pips indicate # of sentences:

A:[accepts the die]Ok fair enough. Let's say you get it at city hall. [slides a new die across, 1 pip] While it's sitting on the table at your apartment, your girlfriend sees it and asks 'what's with the will kit?'
P2: Ouch! [Adds a die from off to the side to the pool in front of P]
P"Umm... I just figured it's not a bad idea... one of the guys at work had a heart attack last week and it got me to thinking."[Slides A's die back with 2 pips]
A[bounces it back immediately, still 2 pips]"Bullshit, Doug. What's going on. You've been acting strange all week."
[P3 adds a die to P1's pool to change the 2 to a 4] I wanna hear this!
P[Accepts it.]"Okay.... I'm at The Door. I realized this morning. I guess I've just been building up to it, which is why I've been acting wierd. It's  not like it's something I wake up to every day, you know." [slides a new die across, 3 pips]"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have tried to lie... I didn't want to scare you."
[P2 and P3 both add a die to the pool in front of A. P2 comments]Owning up.. that takes balls, dude.
A:"Well it bloody well didn't work! What do you mean you know you're going to die? Have you been drinking again?"[slides P's die back]

Hrm...doing that raised another question. You say that the protagonist passes a new die whenever they start a new action, but in the example, "Doug" accepts a bounced die and then passes a new one in the middle of the fight with his girlfriend. Does "admitting the truth" count as an action? Are there guidelines for when in a conversation like this you can pass a new die?

Anyhoo, hope this helps.

James, you mistake my intent.  I don't think a five minute resolution is bad.  I think it's good.

Why load the scene down with story-telling fluff if you can get to the core of it ("Girlfriend doesn't believe you're dying, you don't have the heart to force her to face the truth") in a few quick exchanges?

Nathan: thanks for the feedback.

I'm trying not to assume there is any RPG experience in the group, and to that end I'm going to be putting plenty of examples in the book, one-liners and otherwise.
As to the pips idea, it's neat, but I think could get in the way, as it's increasing the attention needed for the actual mechanic instead of the narrative.  (Hmm... was that three sentences or 4? Damn.)  If I did want to scale this into a crunchier mechanic, I think I would give the option of nesting it, for some not-currently-extant cost:  Explode the die you're currently contesting into a whole new 5-die goal.  But that's way beyond the scope of Death's Door, and I don't currently have any other projects in mind that would use this mechanic.

Tony: Because I want the storytelling fluff.  I want the players to get at least a rudimentary attachment to these characters, and if the total exposure time for a character from creation to death is ~15 minutes (three goals, 5 minutes each), that ain't gonna happen.  One of the game's goals is to get people thinking about the taboo of death and dying, and I really think that abstracting out the conflict is going to keep it too intellectual and not visceral enough to get to that goal.  Like Nathan's suggestion, the 5 minute resolution would be good for this mechanic somewhere else, but I don't think it fits Death's Door.

thanks for the thoughts guys, it's definately helping me shape the game and the text.

James