Archive for March, 2010

(I should warn that this is a bit rambly. I’m more exploring a thought today than anything else.)

I’ve been playing indie games for a few years now, and been tinkering with Forge-y designs for around as long. In that time, I’ve played with a bunch of different pacing mechanic ideas (more in GMless games than GMed ones), and have even tried to make my own. My first little indie project, my ashcan for Know Thyself (a psychedelic history-rewriting game), had some experimental pacing mechanics in it that frankly didn’t work at all.

Early designs of Mythender had stronger non-human pacing mechanics, but every version of that I made felt weak, and I felt a bit hamstrung as a GM. I felt like I could better feel the tempo of the game, and kept trying to adjust the mechanic to compensate for how I was reading the situation. But I was in this “man, I gots to have a pacing mechanic!” headspace, for some reason. And I’m glad I did, because it forced me to learn a good lesson:

The GM is a pacing mechanic.

It took around a year or so of fiddling with Mythender to finally throw out most of my adventure-scale pacing mechanics. (There’s still a bit of pacing in the game, but there’s that in all games. Things like hit points in D&D or the aspect/fate chip economy in Fate are pacing mechanics.) But it wasn’t my own failure that convinced me to ditch the idea. It was that I haven’t seen a game that both has a GM and has a strong adventure-scale pacing mechanic. To be specific, I’ll talk about my experiences with two games: 3:16 Carnage Amongst The Stars and Dead of Night.

It’s been some time since I ran Dead of Night, but if memory serves there’s a pacing mechanic called “tension” that is controlled by the dice. The GM is suppose to use that to guide his part in the game. Only, both times I ran this game, I could read the reactions of the players and know when to inject tension…but the dice told me no. I took away from those sessions two things: In general, dice are a poor substitute for a human-based pacing mechanic; specifically to me, I don’t enjoy GMing if the job of pacing is taken away from me. I would rather be a player then.

I ran and played 3:16 a number of times, and I found myself getting bored after the third game in a campaign. The pacing mechanic there is completely transparent and non-random. The GM assigns some of his budget of threat tokens for each encounter, and the players see how many tokens he’s assigning (as those are their targets for the mission) and how many he has overall. Now, the game was fun for the first couple hours, because I can totally get into the Veerhoven celebration, but after that there were no surprises, no ways to inject interesting twists into the game. The players saw everything that was up the GM’s sleeve. I took away from those games that a transparent, inflexible pacing mechanic robs tension from the game. I like tension. And it isn’t even just “oh, there’s only one more enemy here,” it’s on an adventure level, where we can tell when we’re at the last encounter and the like.

Granted, I could be playing these games wrong. I’ll throw that caveat out there. And I know other folks who love those games, especially 3:16, so I’m glad these games exist for those players. So I’m not trying to pour on hate here.

Interestingly enough, I don’t have this problem with the two pacing mechanics in Primetime Adventures, Budget and Scene/Act Structure. This is in large part due to the idiom — this is TV, so Scene/Act Structure being imposed on the game feels right. But the Budget is much like what 3:16 uses — a transparent account. However, the Producer (GM) of PTA isn’t forced to spend his budget in order to do something, only to really turn up the heat on a particular moment. Without spending Budget, the Producer still gets a chance — maybe a slim one — of winning a scene. So, that Budget lets him build up tense moments along with the players, pushing them to use their resources in order to get their desire.

That, and Budget has a mild recycling effect. The Producer sometimes gets some back when the players spend their Fan Mail, but it’s not predictable. That recycling is key to making the mechanic work for me — we know I have, say, 17 Budget to start, but I might get 3 or 5 of it back through the course of play. So, when I get down to 1 or 2 budget, we all know I’m *nearly* out, but we can’t say for certain if I am completely. I like that.

Also, until I throw down how much budget I’m going to use in a given scene, the players don’t know how hard I’m going to push. I might have 7 Budget left in the third act, but they don’t know if I’m going to sprinkle it all around the four scenes we have planned or if I’m going to save most of it for one heavy hit. I should also note that the game isn’t defined entirely by being out of Budget — the session can still end with the GM having some Budget left. It’s a tool rather than a mere constraint.

And that’s where I get back to my initial assertion: the GM is a pacing mechanic. Budget restrains how much I can bring the proverbial hammer, but it doesn’t tell me when to — it leaves knowing that to the human component, the GM. Scene/Act Structure places guidelines on pacing, but it’s not rigid enforcement — it’s advice and understanding.

Today, when I look at pacing mechanic design for GMed games, I’m looking for how a pacing mechanic helps the GM do his job of maintaining pacing. I’m looking at how I can use advice and guidance to inform structure rather than enforce it. I shouldn’t be looking at how to remove such a vital technique from the GM’s arsenal, but how I can help him use that technique in a particular game. And in designing such pacing systems, flexibility is important to look at.

In writing this, I realized that I still have an adventure-scale pacing mechanic in Mythender. But it’s like PTA’s Budget — the GM can use it as a hammer, but he can only hammer so often. And sometimes that hammer recharges, so the players can’t be completely sure the GM’s out.

- Ryan

The other day, Ogre Whiteside said the following on Twitter:

A setting is not a game. Good or bad setting wank does not make a good or bad game.

To which I stated a simple disagreement. Judd Karlman asked me to unpack that, so here’s a bit more.

I must start by saying that I’m probably assuming something incorrect about Ogre’s 140-character inflectionless tweet. It being Twitter and all, it’s pretty fucking easy to misread someone. With that caveat out of the way…

Setting is key to an RPG.

Mechanics do not alone make an RPG. These style of games, where we tell stories and strive for drama and the like require inspiration to succeed. And that’s what setting is meant to do — inspire. Now, for the purposes of this I don’t care if the setting is material in the book or material the GM makes or stuff the group comes up with collaboratively. Regardless of where it comes from, it is the thing that’ll inspire someone to passion.

Passion is what makes collaborative storytelling work. We riff on each other’s excitement as much as we are impacted by each other’s obvious boredom. That’s a different part of the brain than the one we use when we’re being competitive or analytical — things we are when we’re playing board games, war games, etc. In those things, setting is just a theme to drape over some mechanics, but that’s the core of an RPG.

This is something I see as an axiom of RPG design, so let’s turn our eye to focusing on setting in design. It isn’t simply “that first chapter of an RPG where they tell a history.” No, it’s the thing you sprinkle throughout your game to make it interesting and inspiring. I’m working on Mythender right now, and that’s the thing that I’m spending a lot of time on as I write — putting setting into the very voice I use for the text. My job is not to inject passion into just one part of my book, but in the whole — setting is my tool for that.

(Unknown Armies, particularly 2nd ed., is the high water mark for me in this regard. It is setting rich everywhere. Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies is pretty good in this regard as well, though different in execution.)

That said, setting can be overdone too the point where it crushes passion. Passion is a flame that can be snuffed out by too much wind just as it can starve with not enough oxygen. Too much setting too soon can turn off some players. People can be inspired with an idea after reading two pages, only to find out that twenty pages in their idea can’t happen in that world. And that’s to say nothing of badly written setting fiction, which just takes up page count and reader time with failure. So, I’m not saying setting is without fault or flaw, but bad setting doesn’t invalidate the merits of setting.

I would also say that games like Primetime Adventures or GURPS, games that don’t have a prescribed setting, still require setting to work. In PTA, you come up with your setting as the pitch for your TV series. In GURPS, typically I’ve seen the GM pitch an idea for a game that’s wrapped around setting. Setting inspires, it’s what makes us want to play RPGs. Doubt that, and I’ll ask you why else licensed games tend to sell so well. Looks at how many indie games don’t supply setting per se, but give you a focal point and the tools to go from there. (Fiasco comes to mind here, with its started point of “play a Coen Brothers flick!” and its situation creation engine. In a Wicked Age… does similar.)

Setting, in addition to sparking passion, is also context. It’s what tells us what we’re making collaboratively. Setting is the thing we think about when we’re confronted by something that we don’t think can or should happen. “Dude, he’s throwing fireballs one after another? I thought that couldn’t happen.” That’s setting — possibly mechanically-enforced setting, but it’s setting. And when that context (or shared imagined space) is violated, we get that feeling like nails on a chalkboard. If you’re dealing with low or no context, then this feeling of “uh, I think that’s off” isn’t universal, leading to arguments or merely disinterested play. (Early games of A Penny For My Thoughts had this happen before we started enforcing setting with the Facts & Reassurances document.)

All said, I’m not discounting good mechanics. Mechanics are also key, but they are just a part of the game (along with setting), not the whole. Setting inspires you to play. Mechanics drive the way you play. Crap mechanics will frustrate, squashing the passion the setting provided. But without that passion, mechanics just feel like playing a board game. And it’s rare the RPG that actually still feels entertaining if treated like a passionless board game. So good mechanics support your play, but they don’t create passion in and of themselves.

Now, maybe setting is an interchangeable piece with some games. I won’t argue that. But that very idea of swapping a setting that doesn’t inspire you out for one that does, well, I feel like that proves my point. I did that with Beast Hunters a few years back. I didn’t care for the setting, but I felt like the mechanics could support playing a Final Fantasy VII game. Passion was bestowed by setting. Support was given by mechanics. And we had a good fuckin’ game.

To actually answer Ogre’s bit: If “game” means “an instance of play,” I can’t disagree more. Setting is key to that inspiration. If “game” means “the RPG book I’m reading,” well, bad setting might not make it a bad instance of play, but then it requires more work (which can sap passion). Either way, setting *is* the game every bit as much as mechanics are.

Hopefully that answers what you were looking for, Judd. And apologies to Ogre if I totally misunderstood (and thus misrepresented) what he meant by his tweet.

- Ryan

P.S. Ken Hite has some smart things to say on his blog about setting’s role in design, and will have some more smart things to say once I get the next Master Plan out.

Clearly, “Thoughts on…” is starting to be a thing I do. Best to keep it up.

I was talking with Elizabeth Shoemaker recently, a quick chat about Blowback (which I mentioned previously that I’ll be editing). We were talking about hit points and why her game doesn’t have them, and the implications of what she does with character consequence and death and the like. Our talk turned, as it often will with me, to advice text.

See, I have this passion…

(No, that’s not strongly enough said. But those who know me well and those who are creative can fill in the proper–or improper?–expletives.)

…for advice text. Paul Tevis & I have talked about that at length, particularly on Master Plan episode 50 where we talk about our working together on A Penny For My Thoughts. In any case, Elizabeth said to me:[1]

Most of my GM advice boils down to “Don’t be a dick.”

There was a bit more to that, and a conversation, but to spare you, dear reader, from having to read a conversation you cannot take part in, the high points where thus:

Assume most people don’t want to be dicks. Thus, telling them “don’t be a dick” is as beneficial as reminding them to breathe.

Assume those who do want to be dicks don’t care about being chided. Thus, telling them “don’t be a dick” will fall on deaf ears. (If I may mix the text and vocal metaphors.)

For our assumed dickishless population, they only have two ways of knowing if going to cross a line and “be a dick”: though experience having crossed it before, or through forewarning. It’s cause-and-effect; wanting to avoid an effect means knowing, whether first-hand or by being told, the causes.

If your game gives them tools they are unfamiliar with[2] then without guidance they may not know where that line is until after they cross it. So, focus not on chiding the reader for being a potential dick, but on articulating an understanding of how your tools are used, how to cross and to keep from crossing various lines of dickishness.

In fact, consider striking “don’t be a dick” from your authorial vocabulary (unless you’re Wil Fucking Wheaton, of course). It doesn’t help, not in this arena. Just tell people how your tools might be used and might be abused, things to watch out for, a sense of “X action with my funky mechanic tends to make Y happen,” and you’ll go a long way to helping people avoid being unintentional dicks. Relying on “don’t be a dick” to explain yourself is a crutch, not an aide.

Finally, consider that that phrase is in fact poison. It’s a value judgement. Not everyone plays the same. What you consider dickish me and my play group may not. By helping us understand your game and where one can push, you’ll help those who play like you and those who play differently. But “don’t be a dick” can also make your reader turn against you, as for some that is attacking language. And, believe it or not, the reader has the last word in any conversation between you and your book. So if your language attacks, you lose. Every time. So share an understanding of your tools, not a judgment on play.

Anyway, those were my thoughts on the subject from earlier today, a bit expanded since this is a blog post and not IM.

- Ryan

[1] Repeated with permission.

[2] Hint to most indie designers: you probably are, since that’s one thing we pride ourselves on

I’ve been working on the character creation text for Mythender lately, as my editor (the redoubtable Amanda Valentine, managing editor on The Dresden Files RPG) has given me the gift every writer needs: a deadline. So, I find myself going back through my old revisions and notes on the character creation, and have new opinions on the subject on how a text can best serve it.

Consider this post a “Dear self, here’s a reminder how to not fuck up.” Perhaps it will also be of use to some of y’all.

A good character creation text should consider a number of things (in no special order):

1. Inspire the players with thoughts of characters
2. Instruct players on how to make a character
3. Be usable as a reference while in the middle of the process
4. Help the GM/facilitator with his role in character creation

So, that said, and this is freakin’ key: I don’t have to get all of these right in the first draft. That’s been one source of paralysis lately, though now that I’ve realized that I’ve been able to move on.

Let’s specifically talk about the first bit, though, the “inspire” point. That is freakin’ key, more so the more specific your setting or your system is…like, say, a game where you’re a walking, talking force of nature that is still trying to remain human. If you don’t frontload with some ways of inspiring character, people may either have a hard time locking on to an idea or end up being inspired by something external to the game, thus making a character concept that doesn’t really work with your conceit. (A few dozen playtests of Mythender end up strongly corroborating this idea for me.)

Text I had last year said:

Question 1: What is your Heroic Concept?

Heroic Concepts take the form of:

[Adjective] [Noun]…[Prepositional Phrase]

These quickly generate ideas that, with the other four questions, kick-start ideas for the character. Examples:

• Determined Baroness…with a dying people
• Battle-scarred Knight…in need of a cause
• Scorned Scion…with a need to prove himself
• Wrathful Sea Captain…under pressure from his love

Pro tip: “Prepositional Phrase” is a good time to introduce a twist to the character concept, like “Villainous Prince…with a broken heart.” Alternatively, if you have a killer concept that doesn’t fit in that format, go with your concept and forget the format.

The flaw: wasn’t inspirational enough. Yes, it helped form an idea into something usable at the table, but did shit for coming up with that idea. So, I’ve thrown out this rubric for a new scheme. Character creation starts by picking two things: an Archetype and an Identity. Each thing is a general idea with some focusing questions, and only from there do we get into further character stuff. Here’s a (rather unedited) taste:

Archetypes

Mythenders have many different ways of achieving theirs goals, but each prefers a particular way of dealing with Mythic Norden. We call these Archetypes. Here are the six most seen in Mythenders:

Warrior

These Mythenders go by many names: swordsman, knight, master of arms, duelist, barbarian, even the common “warrior.” No matter the name, these men and women share certain traits—they all share a willingness (though not always the desire) to battle. They all prize skill over mere steel. Of all Mythender, it is the warrior that truly understands that they are the weapon, no what is in their hands.

• Why did you become a warrior?
• What skill do you value the most?

Crusader

Some crusaders champion a god. Others a king, a love, an ideal. But as much as crusaders struggle against one another, they have one thing in common: they do not wield sword or axe. They wield belief. Their passions are as sharp as any blade, strike as true as any arrow. No Mythender is more willing to accept his fate of falling than the crusader. If death or the loss of his soul is the price to pay for his ideal, so be it.

• What happened to turn you into a crusader?
• What do you believe in so strongly?

[Four more Archetypes are listed]

Identities

Fate takes mortals from all walks of life and turns them into Mythenders. There is no single background, single Identity, that they share. Still, some are more common than others.

Child

Of those chosen by fate, one could argue that the children who become Mythenders are the most tragic. With their innocence sundered, they make for fierce fighters—untempered by age or wisdom. But it takes more than a simple tragedy to turn a boy or girl into such a being. Seeing…no, enduring…the true cruelty of man, of armies, of nature, of Mythic Norden, that is how a child Mythender is made.

• What cruelties have you endured?
• What fuels your limitless rage?

Lost

Everyone loses something they care dearly about. Some lose much, much more than others. Some are unable to move on. And a very few are shown by fate how they can get back what they’ve lost. Those who’ve lost and become Mythenders have lost something so dear, so personal. They’ve lost in a way that’s broken them, that has them killing gods and risking their very souls to recover. The reason they do this to themselves goes beyond lost, though. They have grief and they have guilt, two forces as powerful as Norden itself.

• What did you lose?
• Why didn’t you prevent this loss?
• How has losing this changed you?

[Four more Identities are listed]

The bit of testing with this has told me that this is how I should be doing character creation, at least for this game: a number of choices that constrain (to focus characters to what a Mythender is, as it’s not just any fantasy hero), to inspire (as reading one of these count help spark a character idea), and to guide (with the questions that each section has to further character creation, Evil Hat-style). Of course, this is just one piece–albeit an important piece–of character creation, but it’s the one that’s taken me two years to finally understand.

Anyway, that’s it for now. We’ll see if I’m onto something or if I’m totally off my ass.

- Ryan

Footnote: In a bit of parallel thought, some people talk about character concept vs. creation on a Story-Games post.

This week has been a wealth of announcements by others about stuff involving me. So, in lieu of a real blog post with, you know, content ‘n shit, I’ll just link to the awesome folks that have accepted your humble author as a cohort.

Hey, did you know there’s a Leverage RPG in the works?

There totally is! From Margaret Weis Productions, the intro Leverage RPG product, entitled The Quickstart Job, is a taste of what’s to come. I suppose I could just link directly to the MWP page, but I’ll also point you to my esteemed colleague from Maryland, one Mr. Rob Donoghue, and his blog post on the subject. With quite the comment thread!

(I should note that a little birdie told me about the deal where if you pre-order Leverage, you get The Quickstart Job for free.)

Doing any more work with indie peeps?

I totally am! The ever-talented Elizabeth Shoemaker just this morning blogged about bringing me on board as the editor for her upcoming game, Blowback. I am totally stoked to be on this project and working with such awesomeness.

(As some of you are aware, I have been known to say that Elizabeth is one of the voices in the indie community that you should always pay attention to. She is smart, sharp, articulate, and just plain nice.)

Any announcements I can be even vaguer about?

Oh, man alive I totally can! Duane O’Brien. David A. Hill Jr. Will Robot. Ryan Macklin. Codename: Lunar Kitsch Missile. How’s that for totally vague, baby!

(I don’t really have a need for a parenthetical here. Whee!)

Now, I can’t really talk much (or, really, any) about these yet, except that they exist and I’m involved. But, watch them (or here, or my Twitter account) for updates as they come (or as I mouth off).

- Ryan