Moving

Just in case anyone finds this blog and wonders what I'm up to: I've moved my game discussion over to LiveJournal. Please give my journal a visit (http://www.livejournal.com/users/jayloomis/.
I made this move because I was not happy with the amount of interactivity available here (which is to say, very little). I hope that, in the new format, those few who find their way to my humble blog will be able to better converse with me about things.
See you around!

[Plotlines] Currency Schmurrency

I don't yet have a name for my plotline-driven game that I started talking about yesterday--so I'll continue to call it Plotlines until a better name rises to the surface.

So you need currency for these things:

• Investing in your own plotlines (though maybe this just happens when you need it to--more on this later)
• Investing in situations. So this means you are saying that not only will there be a situation in the future but that it matters to you as a player enough that you want control over it. So if we were playing Star Wars (original trilogy, thanks very much) and I was playing Luke, pretty early on I would write on a 3x5 card (confront Vader) and then I'd start investing in that situation like nobody's business. Then, when I actually get to the duel at the end of episode 5, I have extra resources to help out during that scene.
• Giving to other players when they do something cool
• Getting from the GM as a reward for playing along on his plotlines

And maybe more stuff as well.

So I'm not sure that all of these things are the same currency (though I tend to think that it is). And I have no resolution mechanic, so I can't start figuring out how it all works quite yet.

Much to think on.

Plotlines

So my first real adventure using the modified True20 rules (I call it True18 because I use the 3d6 instead of 1d20 variant found in Unearthed Arcana) was a bust. The players have assured me that they enjoyed themselves despite the failure of the session but it was bad. What was bad, you ask? Well I almost inadvertently killed them. But what's worse is that they were almost killed by an encounter that didn't mean anything.

This got me to thinking, as I often do, about the need for a system that explicitly states (and supports mechanically) how important a given encounter is to the players of the characters involved.

My stumbling block is two-fold:

1. I want a game where the GM has the ability to create a general plot into which the character plots fit, and where players are rewarded for playing along and linking their stories with those of the other players and those created by the GM.
2. I want to support campaigns of unspecified length. That is, I don't want to copy the Primetime Adventures way of things where a season is a set length and you plot out screen presence ahead of time--I want to keep things more flexible than that

Long story short, I'm inspired to create a realatively simple, plotline driven fantasy RPG. It's in the early planning stages at the moment but here's where I'm going with it:

Players (including the GM) can create and track plotlines. A plotline is a track on a play sheet that has space for marking progress and some place for writing description. Each plotline roughly follows the Freytag model (exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, denouement). I have added a "seed" stage at the beginning.

So you can start a plotline for your character whenever you want by putting a check in the seed area of a new line. The seed can be very vague ("something about betrayal"), something quite specific ("Travel to the great city to find my father"), or anything in between. By specifying a seed, you are letting the GM and other players know that you have this idea you want to play with and you are potentially opening that idea up to them. You can then add checks to the plotline (starting in the exposition area) whenever you have a conflict that relates to the plot. You need at least one check in one area before you can put one in the next (i.e. you need one conflict in exposition before you can start rising action and so forth) but other than that you are essentially free to have as many or few checks as you like.

Each check on a plotline represents the potential difficulty and risk that the plotline represents. So the more you build up a story arc, the more dangerous it is for your character.

The GM also has plotlines that apply to the overarching story. The GM and players are rewarded for linking plotlines together, though I'm not totally sure how yet.

There is some currency that gets passed around. Players can get it from the GM by buying into his plotlines, that much I know. It can be used to strengthen the odds in a conflict, among other things.

That's all I have the energy to write about tonight. Next time I'll talk about investing in scenes.

Fantasy Wargaming

I was at Half Price Books tonight after dinner and I picked up a little casebound digest-sized book called Fantasy Wargaming published in 1981. At first glance (all it took for me to buy it) it looked like a reference book for roleplayers. It has lots of information about medieval Europe and a chapter about GMing. What I didn't realize until I got home is that it is a complete (according to the authors) RPG.

It's a real gem. A reaction to D&D (the author says that D&D is "in many ways...unsatisfactory") with great emphasis on in-game causality and historical authenticity. Yes, historical authenticity. Here's a quote from the Explanation of characteristics section:

Players wishing to play a female character must unfortunately take the penalties of a patriarchal society. Make the following adjustments to diced characteristics: physique and endurance -3, charisma -2, social class -3, bravery -2, greed/selfishness/lust -3. They will be excluded from combat, from all parts of the Church save the nunnery, and expected in most cases to adopt a domestic position as wife, housekeeper and servant. These factors are invariable.

Doesn't that sound like a blast?

Seriously, anybody out there complaining about how lame D20 is, take a look at some of the older games like this one. It'll blow your mind.

I'm going to have fun reading through this beast!

What is a setting?

The Forge's Provisional Glossary says of Setting:

Elements described about a fictitious game world including period, locations, cultures, historical events, and characters, usually at a large scale relative to the presence of the player-characters. A Component of Exploration.

I am not going to dispute that at all. In the context of Exploration, that definition is absolutely correct.
However, for today (and future discussion about the topic) I mean setting in the sense of guidance for play within a particular setting.
The way I see it, a setting has the following purposes:

• Provide boundaries for character creation (what races, roles, etc. are appropriate? What abilities are available, encouraged, or forbidden?)
• Provide in-game social context (e.g. the Empire is bad, the rebellion is good, the force is mysterious and powerful)
• Assist in guiding expectations (e.g. no giant robots will show up in Middle Earth)
• Provide a shared point of reference for players

Obviously there is some overlap. Am I missing anything? Is there some other important function of pre-exploratory setting?
Anyway, I'll take a close look at each of these purposes in upcoming posts.

A bit about setting

I used to really enjoy my roleplaying. Back in the late eighties and early nineties, when games were a bit different. For a while I thought that it was the systems that I missed. Then I tried playing in the Hero System again and it kind of hurt. No, it wasn't the systems I missed--it was the settings.

When I was a free-wheeling RPG geek in high school I never (and I mean *never*) used an established setting. If I used a module (and this was extra-rare) I adapted it to fit my own setting. So when I (or someone in my group) wanted to run a new game, a campaign write-up was created. This was usually a document ranging from 1 to 10 pages in length that described the set-up for the game in terms of uber-plot and provided house rule and character limitation information (I was playing GURPS and Hero, so you needed to know how many points and what was and wasn't allowed).

After I left home and went to the Air Force, my gaming changed a bit. It was the early nineties and RPGs were morphing into thick tomes of fiction with some rules thrown in. I started to look at all of the detailed setting information published by the game designers with excitement. I mean, here was a wealth of detail and I didn't have to do any work for it. Joy!

After a while, I got into published setting material. But I found that, when I started a game, nobody else had read the books. So I had to start explaining the setting to people (I thought). I got to the point where I thought everyone needed a firm grounding in the campaign setting before we played. In practice, as I'm sure you can imagine, this blew for me. People want to play the game, not read books. I got frustrated.

Now I'm back to where I started, and more. I want to play with loosely defined setting. During play, the group as a whole can focus the lens on anything that is interesting to them. Whole aspects of the setting can be completely ignored and, since nobody has done a lot of work or research, nobody is pissed at its absence.

The problem with detailed published settings is that players invest in them. They buy books, they read the books, they play the tie-in card games. Then they form expectations. Those expectations are rarely even close to the same as the expectations that another player in the group formed about the exact same stuff. No matter how you slice it, someone isn't happy.

I want to talk about how to make a good setting. But what do you folks reading want to focus on? Do you have strong opinions about what a setting should or should not be? Have others gone through a similar arc of loose through detailed back to loose settings? Has anyone gotten really into a detailed setting and had luck making it work with your group?

Ahoy Mateys!

A while back I talked a little about my designs in progress. Apart from needing to get off my ass and get Gallant out the door imperfect as it is, I've been really dragging my feet about my as-yet-unnamed pirate game. When I started work on it I wanted it to be silly movie pirates--kind of a Yellowbeard the RPG. Then I thought it would be really cool to have it be serious--all about desperation on the high seas. Then I thought action/adventure but not too silly. Lots of round and round.

Well, today's big announcement is my commitment to publish not one, not two, but eight pirate games in a single volume. I'll call it Pieces of Eight, and it will contain games satisfying all of my previous pirate game itches and more.

Here's something cooler. Challenge me! I only have ideas in my head for maybe four of the eight. Let me know in this thread what you'd like to see me cover. What do pirates mean to you? I'd like to cover different styles of play and satisfy different creative agendas in the book, so throw me whatever crazy design curveballs you can come up with.

Poll Time! Your best games

It's been a while since I posted because I've been busy working on and playtesting Gallant. I'll be posting some specifics here soon. In the meantime, here's a little question to chew on:

Think back to your most enjoyable gaming. Really think about what made it enjoyable for you. Was it the system? The GM? The other players? The setting? The plot?

Now check your work. Think about your least enjoyable gaming. What made it bad for you? Was the thing you identified as good from the previous question missing from the bad sessions?

Essentially, think about what your "secret ingredient" for good gaming is.

Then discuss.

I'll start.

My secret ingredient is engagement. Not the same thing as immersion, if we could agree on a definition for that one (which we probably can't). By engagement I mean that all the players are engaged in what's going on in the shared imaginary space. There isn't a lot of table talk (at least not talk unrelated to the game). People are all paying attention, making suggestions, and obviously interested in the proceedings.
It may sound simple, but it takes a special mix of good GMing, good playing, and a system that is either engaging by itself or at least does not bog play down with handling time.

The Games In Between

I have been a largely passive observer of the indie-RPG revolution for several reasons. One reason is the reactionary nature of much of the movement. That is, lots of people get into RPG theory and indie-games because they are unhappy with their current gaming experiences. They use theory (not always consciously) to lash out at the games that have let them down. Now, before you get all pissy with me, I'm not here to insult anyone. I have often been a reactionary myself, complaining about systems that don't work very well for me (e.g. D20). Anyway, one of the results of the dynamics that go into RPG theory and the resulting indie-games is a kind of extremism. Either your game is cutting edge and new , or it's the same old shit repackaged. Not everyone gets to this point, mind you, but I have heard it a lot.

I've played a number of the cutting-edge indie games with varying levels of success. I'd like to play more, but those that I have played lead me to believe that both traditional and radical designs have their place. So my concern is this: if all the designers that are paying attention to theory and giving serious thought to role-playing are hell-bent on making a game that fixes everything and exists on the very cutting edge, then who will help to bridge the gap? Where will the games be that are mindful of theory but build upon the firm foundations of RPGs as we know them today?

All of this is just to say that while a game needs to be different to set itself apart from the rest, it needn't be as different as you might think. Look at Burning Wheel and Dogs in the Vineyard. Both are games that are highly respected by indie-folks with some cross-over into more traditional gamers. Both present some new ideas while keeping much of the foundation of traditional role-playing intact. Dogs is perhaps a little hard for players to grasp at first, but it has a GM who sets up the situation and players the NPCs, it has players who each control one character apiece, it has enough elements of traditional RPGs to be palatable and accessible to old gamers (who, like old dogs aren't so good at new tricks).

Find the games in between. Use them to get your friends thinking about new ways of role-playing that will be more fun for everyone. Dispel some of the myths of role-playing.