The Forge Archives

I'm responding here to http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=6145">Chris's Standard Rant: "Innovative", but in a different direction.

Quote from: There, Chris, a.k.a. Bankuei,When we're talking games and folks scream "Revolutionary and New!" most of the time they're rehashing old stuff.

This is probably often correct; however, I think there is a presumption among many long-time gamers that this is always correct, such that as soon as someone states that they have a game that is innovative or revolutionary or which otherwise pushes the envelope, there is an immediate presumption that they're wrong.

I will admit that when Multiverser went to press in 1997 I made several blunders in introducing it to the gaming public. First, not having read any ad copy for games in a decade, I dared to use words stating that this was something completely new--this was on the tail of Synnibar and Senzar, and there was backlash partly due to that. Second, I knew it was different largely because my partner who had brought me into development and my playtesters who had played many games had told me so; I was unfamiliar with the specifics of many games. Mr. Jones could have said how we were different, in great detail, from hundreds of other games, but he had dropped out of the process at this point (designing was what he wanted to do; promoting was not his thing). Thus I couldn't answer a lot of questions. It appeared as if "the designers" didn't know the market; the fact was that it was only the spokesperson who didn't know what was out there--a mistake, certainly, but not one that invalidated the statement.

Thus as soon as the statement came out, it was met with derision and scorn, as well as presumption.

Quote from: Someone who had not seen the game at allIt's a reworking of either Rifts or GURPS, I don't know which yet.

Those were both games from which Multiverser is easily distinguished, if you understand them. I had only a passing familiarity with GURPS, and had to go digging up information about Rifts to know what it was about. It was completely inappropriate for someone (a game reviewer who had not seen it) to state publicly that he was certain it was not innovative without having seen it.

All of this comes to nothing if in fact Multiverser is not innovative. I've got several reviews from different people who say it is, often quite emphatically. But let me look at Chris' list of "the sacred cows of roleplaying"

[*]Character Death/Removal from play[/list:u]
Obviously, we got rid of that in a big way. There are a lot of other games now that provide plot immunity or otherwise manage to keep players active, but Multiverser may be the poster child for "death is not the end" as a game principle. Please die--it makes the game more interesting when you start something new and different.

[*]Everything must be modeled/simulated according to "reality"(gotta have a strength stat, right?)[/list:u]
Well, we've got a strength stat, and we do provide a lot of information about real effects of things. On the other hand, we also encourage multiple approaches to outcomes. If a character falls, the referee can determine the damage by reference to a die roll and a damage category; he can instead use a general effects roll to determine the severity of the injury. The system affords a degree of flexibility to referees, to trade off precision for either speed or story.

[*]Player knowledge and control is limited to player character knowledge and control[/list:u]
We may have turned that on its head somewhat: character knowledge is limited to player knowledge. If the player recognizes the story or world, there is no question of whether his character can act on that knowledge. This isn't quite what Chris means, I think, but it's a step in that direction.

[*]The GM must keep things secret from the players[/list:u]
O.K., probably guilty on this count. We do recommend that the exact chance of success not be stated; we also recommend playing worlds and adventures in which there are things unknown to the players. I don't know that it's entirely as strict as that--the interfacing rules allow characters to become characters in games in which that's not the way it's done, and thus to run under the rules of that game system, but that wasn't quite within our vision at the time we wrote it six years ago.

[*]The GM has the right to cheat, but the players don't[/list:u]
I'm not sure whether anyone is explicitly given the "right to cheat" in the game, although it does tend to be more traditional in this area.

[*]Characters need to take a long time to improve[/list:u]
Actually, characters can improve quickly or slowly or not at all, depending on what the player wants to do. If you want to improve more quickly, you have to get involved in some sort of training program and focus on it--adventuring, or whatever you want to call it, will only improve you slowly most of the time.

[*]Characters need to improve[/list:u]
Again, not necessary. Most players want their characters to improve, and most characters will, but it's not at all a focus of play. Play is much more about using what you know in the situations you face; if you want to learn more or get better, the game provides for that, but there are players who take no interest in that aspect and just do what they already know. This isn't necessarily a bad thing--I've had a guy bring down an oppressive dictatorship from the inside, just by doing what he knew he could do already.

[*]There needs to be a "skill/power" list, defining everything exactly[/list:u]
This one is difficult to answer. Multiverser has long lists of skills, but there are three reasons why they're there.

The first is that the skill system is designed so that players can create any skill they can imagine, and the skill lists have to provide a framework for how much is too much. What would it take for a character to create a spell that would slay a giant in a second? It's certainly possible; but it's not going to be easy. Establishing baselines for what is the "ordinary" level of ability for any skill and a framework for making it more powerful or easier is a prime function of the skill lists.

The second is that bias is central to the game, and part of how it works is by tagging every imaginable skill with a bias rating. Since a character with strong magic skills who enters a low-magic high-tech world is going to lose some but not all of his magical abilities, it's necessary to have those bias numbers assigned to make it possible to know what does and does not work.

The third is to open the possibilities. No skill description says, "this is how it's done". They all say that there are many ways you can do things which fall in this category, and sometimes they suggest a few.

So we're guilty of having extensive and detailed skill information, but neither of the kind nor for the reason about which Chris complains.

[*]Only the GM can set up and pace scenes[/list:u]
I'm not even entirely certain what this means. I've often had players push the clock forward; sometimes I go with them, and sometimes I hold them back because I think there's something not yet finished. On the other hand, I'm often pushing the clock forward and having them hold it back, because there's still something they want to do. Sometimes the direction the story takes is guided by referee prompting, and sometimes by player choice. We design worlds for both approaches--those in which there's a particular idea of what's going to happen and how the referee should bring it to fruition, and those in which we've merely created a place where things can happen and let the players loose in them. Pacing always has seemed to me to arise out of the give-and-take of play--unless I'm misunderstanding the objection entirely?

Now, maybe Chris wouldn't call Multiverser innovative; maybe he thinks our statements that we had done something unlike anything that had been done before was not merely exaggerated hype but, well, "crap". On the other hand, it does appear to have challenged most of the points he said needed to be challenged, more or less.

My objection is that many experienced gamers are jaded. They think they've seen it all, so when you tell them you've done something new they refuse to believe it. Mercifully that's not usually the attitude here at The Forge (or before at Gaming Outpost), but I do think that a rant like Chris' runs dangerously close to pushing that idea. I don't like it. It's good to ask someone whether they've seen this or that game; it's good to ask if they think they're doing something kind of like someone else, or even how it's different. Please don't assume that they have done the same old thing even if they don't know the games you name. I had people who had played hundreds of games tell me Multiverser was unique before I ever went to press. Maybe they missed the one game out there that was genuinely like it; but it was rather insulting to have people who had never seen the game tell me it wasn't anything new.

End rant.

--M. J. Young

Hi MJ,

Thanks for providing the moderating view on that.  As I did preface my rant with"take with a grain of salt" by no means am I saying that ALL games are "false innovators".  In fact, as much as I'd like to advocate designers to really consider what it is that they're actually designing, I'd like other folks to actually look at, and consider a game before judging.  

Your concerns about dismissal are the same sorts of remarks I've heard about The Riddle of Steel, Sorcerer, Donjon, and Universalis to name a few, and of course, all from people who never bothered to look into it.

Funny enough, I believe the phenomenon of "same system, different stats" tends to make people believe that all systems ARE the same, and just dismiss them out of hand.  

Chris

Thanks for your kind words, Chris; I don't think my response was all that moderate, which is why I called it ranting in the first place.

You're right, of course--the proliferation of games that are the same creates the--what's the word I want? Ennui?--anyway, the skepticism about anything that claims to be new.

I'm guilty in a different direction. I've read a fair number of games that people were excited about that amounted to nothing different that I could see, and I don't have time to read all the games that might be new and different, so I just tell people I don't have the time to really look at their games. I got a letter from a stranger the other day asking me to look at a particular MUD he was thinking of playing and giving him my thoughts on it. I glanced at the home page and wrote back to him to say I really knew very little about MUDs (being someone who only plays real role playing games) and didn't have time to really examine it in detail.

It's unfortunate that there are so many same-thing games out there; it's also unfortunate that there are so many gamers who are so jaded that they don't believe there's anything new possible. I'm already playing Alyria, and my kids are excited about it. There are a lot of games I'd like to try, but I also like playing games again, if you know what I mean. There are only so many hours available for game play in a year, and only so many games you can play in that time; and every hour you spend learning another one is an hour in which you're not playing.

That does not excuse the blanket dismissal of every game you've never seen as unimportant or unoriginal, even if the vast majority of them are.

And I suppose that's one reason we have game reviews: so people who have seen a lot of games can tell us if there's really anything different or innovative about the new ones that appear. I suppose that I have to be happy with that--as long as the reviewers, at least, will read the games before they comment on them.

And as long as the gamers will check the reviews before writing off a game as another same-thing effort.

--M. J. Young

I'm not sure whether this is thread drift or not; it seems somewhat related to my original post, but is a response to something said in the parent thread--which was closed yesterday, a day I missed and so could not reply http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=6145">there.

Quote from: In that thread, Fabien NinolesI would like a game where the actions of characters can directly influence the society/culture under it, and vice-versa. Currently, the only game I know that have try this approach is Torg, in a very artificial way, and multiverser, in a, helas, too much superficial way (the characters are influenced by the universe visit, but can barely influence the universe itself).

I'm pleased you mentioned Multiverser in this connection; but I think you may have underrated it in this regard.

Just within the past year, I've seen players bring down two oppressive governments using completely different strategies--one by a guerilla campaign against the entrenched leadership, the other by subversively initiating a coup--and I'm currently running a game where it's happening again, in yet another way (involving intimidation of government officials, in large part). The first two were local experiences, certainly, limited to maybe a thousand miles square; the current one is an assault on the central government of an interstellar empire. I would think that this would be a lasting influence, particularly as in the two completed cases the player characters stayed beyond that to attempt to build a new government and social order, each in his own fashion. One of them focused on building a new democratic government. The other focused on infrastructure and technology, and in the time he was there succeeded in advancing the technology of the world significantly.

I've several times seen game worlds in which the player characters are involved in saving kingdoms, such as Prisoner of Zenda and The Dancing Princess. These are perhaps minor events--kingdoms come and kingdoms go, and in those stories a kingdom is a rather small and perhaps transient entity--but they're still matters of impact on a significant bit of the world. Similarly, I've seen them become the decisive factor that turns the tide in war or conflict, whether as spies (the If Looks Could Kill scenario comes to mind as one I've run myself) or fighters or in some other capacity.

I don't know whether you've seen the Sherwood Forest adventure in The First Book of Worlds, but it includes a section regarding what happens if the player character kills Prince John, and suggests bringing the verser back in a twentieth century future in which Magna Carta was never signed.

There are often worlds in which player characters save the world. There's one in development in which if the character succeeds in saving the world, he's brought back hundreds of years later to find a statue of himself in a museum, and an entire legend that has grown around him (as well as a new adventure waiting).

There are also the disaster stories. I could come up with several occasions in which careless or foolish player character actions destroyed nations, even worlds.

There are many worlds in which the players are very likely to have a significant impact on the history, culture, technology, or beliefs of the existing society; there are many worlds in which this is not so likely. Eric Ashley's World a Week column at Gaming Outpost is interesting in this regard, because his character doesn't always change the world, but sometimes he does.

It also depends very much on the player. The world Orc Rising is about a world in which fantasy is fading into something pre-modern, as elves become farmers, humans ranchers, dwarfs miners, and magic vanishes from the world. In the midst of this, these "free peoples", who are genuinely good people, are clear-cutting the jungles for their purposes, and enslaving the orcs, who range in the jungles in hunter-gatherer society. The free peoples see their actions as civilizing the primitive orcs and giving them the benefits of modern life. Because the orcs are nomadic within the jungle, no one thinks of it as being their land--it's unsettled land. The challenge for the verser is to respond to this world, to prevent it from exploding into war perhaps. Your mission, should you choose to accept--the player character is free to do whatever he wants. The first playtester in this world looked at the place and decided there wasn't anything he could do. He bought an orc slave, and told the guy that as far as he was concerned the orc should consider himself free, but it would probably be better for them to stick together and maintain the illusion of master/slave so that it wouldn't be trouble. If the player isn't interested in changing the world, the world probably isn't going to change much, unless it's by accident. On the other hand, the world has proven that it has the potential for great social upheaval, in which the player can disrupt everything and bring about something new and different, and in a word unexpected.

Please don't sell us short in this regard. I see worlds changed, for better or worse, all the time by player characters, in more ways than you can easily name.

--M. J. Young

This is all hadled very well mechanically by the game Hero Wars. In fact, changing societies is exactly the point of play in that game.

Mike

Quote from: Mike HolmesThis is all hadled very well mechanically by the game Hero Wars. In fact, changing societies is exactly the point of play in that game.

Mike

Huh?  How so?  Am I missing something?  Hero Wars is great and I love the confrontation rules but I fail to see any mechanic for society, except in purely narrative way or GM fiat.  That's not bad, just not what I am looking for.  Or may be I miss something in the rules?

Thanks,
Fabien

Society is reflected in the characters themselves, and their relationships to it (everyone has a Culture Ability, so I'm speaking mechanically here). That is, either the character mirrors his culture, or he represents it's changing nature if he falls away from it.

You can see this in the tagline. "The old world is over..." followed by one of many ways that people think it's changing.

It's more subtle and "vanilla" than other games, but that's what I like about it.

Mike

Hi Fabien,

The societal aspect of Hero Wars is also present when people realize how important and powerful both Relationships and Followers abilities can be. They are awesome augmenters, especially if you use the "no time" option during Extended Contests.

And don't forget to examine the Carryover effects of Heroquests, which after all are the central and climactic scenes of play. Carryover is usually directed toward a community of some kind, whether it's a fixed township, a nation, or a roving Hero Band.

Combining all of these numerically is extremely significant in this game system - if your Hero Band is supported by many mutualistic relationships among characters, by a set of followers for each character, and by some Carryover from the last Heroquest ... you're talking about very significant bonuses to rolls that may pop up a whole Mastery level, as well as tremendous amounts of additional Action Points.

None of the above is possible unless the characters are associated with or even form the core of a community, and unless that community has taken on magical and political significance in the context of the Gloranthan Hero Wars.

Best,
Ron

P.S. God damn it, now you got me all fired up about playing Lunars again.

Oh, yeah, I'd forgotten all about the whole Community support angle in even getting to the godplane or spiritworld or wherever your going to Quest.

Again, it's not as direct as, say, Aria, but it's there.

Mike