The Forge Archives

I've lately been pretty frustrated at getting a game going (see my actual play posts if you're interested), and I'm thinking of going back to D20 for it's ease of finding players, however, to address some of my frustration with it, I've been giving some thought to GMless play. My thought is to come up with some metagame mechanics to allow players to propose challenges and we all play them out.

But one of the recent Capes threads points out a potential problem with my idea. If there players aren't put in conflict with each other, they may not create interesting play.

It's worthwhile to consider what I do enjoy in gaming:

I definitely enjoy miniatures wargame like combats. D20's combat system works pretty well for me (except for issues with magic). I'm not quite sure if my interest here is gamist or simulationist, though overall I feel like I'm into sim.

I also enjoy exploring a world.  Sometimes this is a detailed setting, and sometimes it's something of my own creation. In just writing this though, I'm actually wondering if despite my interest in published detailed settings if I actually prefer something made up, though possibly starting with a published map (with perhaps a small amount of detail). This seems pretty solidly sim.

I also definitely like advancing characters (and again, a sim/gam clash?).

I do like to spend time outside of game sessions in various ways (this feels like it's related to a sim drive - and Ron's comment that reading the rules can be actual play for a sim player resonates quite a bit with me).

Some things that have been frustrating recently:

I'm definitely becoming more aware of players feeling their contributions are not valued.

I've certainly had trouble finding a set of players I really enjoy playing with.

I was very frustrated with the prep I was doing for my Arcana Unearthed/D20 campaign. I'm not sure if I really didn't like creating encounters. I think what it came down to was not feeling like the prep produced a benefit that was worth the cost.

I must admit that I've been really intrigued by the discussions in the Hero Quest forum, though HQ loses on a couple points for me (no wargamey combat, and it's not D20).

Frank

Hi Frank,

I can speak from recent experience... "going back to D20 to find players" is not a good choice, if D20 as it stands on its own, doesn't do it for you.

I had attempted to form a new group, using the Nar bent house rules for D20 that I had used previously to much success.  I went through the effort of explaining in a non-jargon fashion what play was basically about, both in writing and face to face.  The players had concurred that "that was what they were interested in".  

Playtime comes- all but 1 falls into standard D&D play.  The magic "D20" logo blocked out all the previous concepts, ideas, and conversation put forth previously.  It didn't matter what I had said, what they "believed" they wanted, because what they wanted was D20 and my house rules shifted out a key pillar of their understanding of play in a way they couldn't work with.  Mike's rant about sneaking up on mode applies strongly here... even if you attempt to hit the mode from day one.

If you don't want D20, don't do D20.  

Chris

Frank,

I'm wondering how you feel about actual miniature wargames that feature advancement of individual characters and an atmospheric setting. I'm thinking mainly of something like Games Workshop's Necromunda. (The rules are a free download: here  ) In it, you have a roster of characters which you name and try to develop into effective team members. The difficult part of setting up an encounter is laying physical terrain.

I think a contrast of your reaction to that kind of game might clarify what you want from an rpg.  I know you've said that you want competition turned way down. Other than competition, the other points seem to match up pretty well.

John

Chris: good point.

But I'm not sure D20 is all that alien to what I actually want to do. I really didn't dislike the encounter system, the biggest thing that annoyed me was the magic system (which, sure, is a significant part of the combat system).

But actually, there was a far more important thing that bugged me about the D20 game. The problem was players who kept getting frustrated with the participationist element of the game. Twice I had players practically mutiny over adventures I had prepared, and several other times, I saw players raise red flags. In my Cold Iron campaign, I've already had one player specifically and directly raise a flag about feeling deprotagonized, here's one quote from the player:

Quote
If you want Thekuto gone on a more permanent basis, just have it that he's not found.  I'd like for him to still be existing.  Even my other character (what's-her-name) could leave the group and never be seen again.  Those ideas are preferable instead of you just killing off my other characters.

Boy, I don't think a player can say that they are upset about their guy being taken away from them than that.

So one of my thoughts on moving forward is to put plenty of power into the players hands. And my thought is if this is done well, then the whole issue of spell caster domination might go away. But maybe it doesn't. Maybe a player tries to introduce a conflict designed to make his PC shine, and the spell caster still steals the show.

Maybe D20 won't work at all for me, but right now, I'm seeing it as the only reall option for finding players. I just have not had sufficient success finding players for anything else.

I also see your point about sneaking up on mode, but I'm not sure I'm really trying to do that. I'm pretty sure Nar is not what I'm looking for (I've been reading a lot of actual play descriptions of Nar, plus I've read Universalis, and I'm just not seeing something I would enjoy there). On the other hand, perhaps I am trying to sneak up on Sim when D20 players are Gam. But I think all the players I've seen frustrated in my games are Sim players (but I admit I still don't fully comprehend GNS and how to read players GNS preferences), or at least the ones I'm motivated to keep interested (I think I did lose some Gam players early on in the D20 campaign).

John:

Hmm, I'll have to check out those rules later. At home I'm on dialup and don't feel like waiting 2hrs right now (but maybe later I can kick off the download and go do something else).

Frank

Hi Frank,

I think you're juggling several issues at once:

-D20-

You might want to look into some of the newer settings that use alternate or no magic system at all.  These may or may not do what you want, but they are viable options.

-Participationist/GNS issues-

Participationism means that the players are willing and going with what you want- knowingly.  The players want and agree to follow the plot laid out before them. Participationism is not what was going on based on your description.  If that's the kind of game you like to run, you  will need to find players who are cool with that.  And key- for it to be participationism, you need to let them know up front "I write the story, you follow."

-New players-

Unless you intend to run a D20 game close to as its written, expect this to be a rather poor way of getting new people.  As I mentioned above, if you can find a third party product that addresses your issues with D20, by all means use that and advertise it.  Otherwise you can expect to find a major hit-or-miss sort of thing going on with new players you do meet up with.

Chris

Chris,

Definitely agree that there are several things going on here, and your breakdown is good.

D20:

I am definitely looking at some of the other settings. I haven't found one yet that quite meets my needs.

Participationist/GNS:

I actually prefer not to run quite as participationist a game as was occuring with my Arcana Unearthed game. What happened there was that the prep time meant that I felt a need to run a more participationist game because if I spent hours prepping a scenario, and the PCs turned it down, well, there went several hours of my time, plus, we've now got a bunch of players over with nothing to do.

If I go with D20, I will either need to learn to instant-prep better, or I will have to make it clear that the time for players to provide input on what they would like to do is BEFORE I spend the prep time. One thing that would help is to put out feelers for the next scenario before prepping it.

It would also help to have a setting that I can engage with better than the Diamond Throne setting for AU worked for me. With more engagement, both on my part, and on the players part, it might not be so hard to figure out what the players might want to do next.

My thought here also was to take the scenario prep out of my hands and make it a group effort. Not sure if that really works though.

New Players:

True, if I do something too radical, it will be harder to find players. On the other hand, as long as their knowledge of D20 is generally useful, players will at least feel like they don't have to learn a whole new game.

Of course this could all miserably fail. I can only approach it optimistically, because the only other alternative I see is to give up gaming completely.

Frank

John,

Hmm, I looked over the Necromunda stuff. I don't think an actual wargame is really going to do it for me. I prefer the detail level of RPG characters over the detail level of wargame units. Also, I'm not sure how one would crank down the competition level of wargames. I've also got to admit that something about the style of Games Workshop stuff just totally turns me off. I'm mildly interested in Warhammer Fantasy Role Play, but even that still has stuff that turns me off. Also, I no longer have the time or energy to paint miniatures. Now an alternate possibility would the the D&D Miniatures Game, but even that doesn't really work for me.

I guess I like individual character development (and the random charts in Necromunda turned me off).

The problem really isn't so much can I find an RPG I enjoy running, as can I find an RPG I enjoy running that is possible to find players for.

Frank

Hi Frank,

QuoteIf I go with D20, I will either need to learn to instant-prep better, or I will have to make it clear that the time for players to provide input on what they would like to do is BEFORE I spend the prep time. One thing that would help is to put out feelers for the next scenario before prepping it.

Instant prep is not really an option with D20.

Even if you have a bunch of stats available to pull, and you've organized things to be "balanced"(The CR/EL system is a poor measurement to work with), then you also have to deal with the fact that you would need to more or less instantly assess how all the abilities, feats, and magic of a character or monster works together and figure out how to use it effectively on the fly.  And if you have several different types of characters or creatures...

Trust me, I'm speaking from experience on this one :)

D20 is set up in such a way that a significant amount of prep time is pretty much necessary. The best "option" for flexibility is to have several sheets or index cards with many different appropriate and possible monsters and challenges and pull ones that fit... Even then it becomes a bit hard to insta-familiarize yourself with the appropriate tactics...

On the flip side, getting players to input is a functional possibility, but a snag to be aware of is that some players will expect you to "just know" what they want, even if they themselves don't know it.  This isn't a D20 thing, as much as it is an entrenched gamer dysfunction thing, but its part of the territory if you're trolling for players.

Chris

I see your point about familiarizing yourself with the creatures capabilities, but that's actually something I haven't had that much of an issue with. I really didn't spend much prep time on that. I suppose I might not have run creatures perfectly always, but I'm not concerned about using the tactics perfectly. I actually found the CR/EL system to work pretty good, I found most encounters worked just fine (it's just that the resources they tended to run out of was the Magister's spells). I did find singleton creatures often didn't work well (one of Arcana Unearthed's spell templates allows you to add a stun effect to damage spells, 1 round normally, 2 for an electical spell, so the Magister would toss stunning lightning bolts at singleton creatures).

Yea, I read you on players not providing input. But eventually they provide input in the form of complaints. If one at least sets up an explicit way for them to provide input earlier in the process, one can point them back at that opportunity when they complain, and if they don't start providing input and still complain, it's reasonable to show them the door.

The main thing I want to get away from is spending about 2 hours of prep time per hour of game time. If I can find some effective ways to reduce prep time (and a big part would be using monsters as is instead of ending up advancing most monsters), then I'll be less unhappy if the players decide not to take up the scenario I presented. If I can spend 5-10 minutes to put together encounters on the spot, that would help a lot (of course one thing to do is find ways to work the prepared encounters into whatever the players decide to do - though being careful to not just railroad them).

Frank

Hmm, been thinking about this a bit...

I think really thinking this through, I'm realizing that GMless play isn't really the solution for me. I think what I'm looking for is a more reasonable amount of prep time combined with better communication with the players about what they want to do (so either more buy in to participationist play, being able to change course to satisfy the players better, or even just good enough communication that I can get ideas from the players and prep for those).

Still not sure what I have to change about my gaming to get there, though I think I have been there in the past.

Frank

yeah, sounds to me like you just want to run through some simulation combats rather than "role-play", by "role-play" i mean creating an interactive story making the player's characters and their goals the focus of the game.  if that is the case, d20 is great for you because in my humble opinion it is an inert mass of numbers, calculations, beaurocracy, and grey lifeless matter.

the player wanting you to spare his character even if he can't play him is a red flag to me.  that guy is more interested in telling a story and watching the "soul" of his character develop, not just improve his Base Attack Bonus.  i had a similar experience with Vampire.  in just 4 sessions i became very attached to my vamp; what he was doing in the game story-wise and interacting with the other characters and npc's was very fulfilling.  i told the GM that i would rather  not play him anymore than have my character killed him without very good reason.  

if i were you, i'd tell my players what game i wanted and not beat around the bush that it's going to be number crunching, comparing the odds of success between opponents, and quick combat encounters.  if you want that game, fine.  but if i was one of your players and wanted a completely different game, i'd tell you (hopefully) and leave your game (definitely).  

why don't you ask the players what kind of game they want and have liked in the past to get a sense of where they are coming from.  if you see divergent paths, then i think the issue must be addressed.

as for myself, i can sympathize with narrativist players, and GM's, and couldn't understand the "alien" approaches to gaming before reading the essays here at the forge.  before reading those, i just thought i was different in some way (or arrogantly thought that i had it right and others had it wrong), now i know there are different forms of role-playing.  that's also why i wrote my own game system - heavy on player participation interacting with the story and not so much on percentage chance of hitting or finally getting whirlwind attack.  my game is Empire of Satanis and can be found here:  http://www.lulu.com/content/113758  for those interested.
good luck with your game.  just be up-front with what you want, as well as, get others to be just as honest and forthcoming.

thanks, Darrick

Ahh, but if I just wanted to run combats with nothing more "role playing" about it, shouldn't I be satisfied with wargames? But I'm not. I've been running a LEGO pirate miniatures game at Origins and GenCon the past couple years (and several years more at some LEGO conventions). The way I run it, there are some roleplaying elements, not a full blown RPG, but not "just a wargame" either.

To be honest, in a lot of ways, the player who I quoted is raising some of the same complaints I have raised when I've been a player. But I really can't figure out what he really wants out of a game. Perhaps he's a Nar player (which is the most alien CA to me).

Frank

I'm jumping in here because two things have caught my eye.

The second is Darrick's suggestion that a player who wants you to lose his character instead of killing him must be narrativist. I'm doubtful on that point. My guess (but this is little more than an educated guess) is that he may be participationist gamist--he wants to feel like he's won without having to risk anything. Killing his character would mean he lost, and that would violate his perception of the social contract, because in participationist gamism the referee is supposed to ensure that the players win, and that any risk they feel was illusory.

The first, though, is that I don't think you're looking for participationism yourself. The way you describe prep and the reaction of your players makes me think you're more comfortable with trailblazing.

In participationism, it is entirely encumbent upon the referee to make sure everyone hits his marks and gets where he's supposed to be; the referee has written a story, and is telling it.

In trailblazing, the referee has written a story, but he's not telling it. He's laying out the clues and the players are committing themselves to following the bread crumbs until they've uncovered the whole story. Thus the referee has to do enough prep that the players can see where they're supposed to go without any heavy-handed intervention along the way, but the players have to be committed to the idea that they're going to play that story.

The best example of this is the typical linear adventure module, in which the referee presents the material in the module and the players have agreed that they're going to do what the module expects them to do, whether it's go to the dungeon or rescue the princess or whatever. In many groups, whatever the referee prepares is treated much the same way. That's trailblazing--the players make the story happen the way the referee wrote it. Participationism is the players letting the referee make the story happen the way he wrote it. That's very different.

I might be wrong on both counts, but at least by clarifying these points perhaps you'll see what you're after a bit more clearly.

--M. J. Young

Good call Mike. I hadn't noticed the Trailblazing term before. That probably is closer to what I do, though I'm willing and interested in exploring off the trail.

I think you may be right about the player. I really have seen no attempts by this player to address premise and it seems unlikely that he's Sim.

Frank

hey guys, i thought participationism was allowing the players to create or advance the story as much as the GM...?  that was my definition of a participationist game; having everyone involved in the game participate.

as for the participationist gamist, could be, i'd have to know more details.

D