ONE THOUSAND ONE

Consolidation

2007-05-19T17:40:00.000-04:00

Hey, check it out, I managed to consolidate the two One Thousand One blogs into one giant blogstrosity. That means, as of now, this blog is officially dead. It will go gentle into that good night.

Update your feeds and bookmarks and such!

Yes, Secret Wars is still it's own thing, though drafts of my games will be hosted on the new One Thousand One, even if Shreyas hosts his games at SW. I like having all my toys in one place.

Afraid Hack Playtest Report

2007-05-17T14:43:00.000-04:00

Finally played the Afraid hack last night at StoryGames Boston, slasher movie style. It was awesome.

The premise was that we were in a Catholic high school after hours, and it was about to be struck by a massive hurricane-sized storm, which kept us stuck where we were. Later on, we decided that the movie was called Storm Windows, but that emerged from play.

The locations we ended up with were (in order of their creation):

Detention, an outlying concrete bunker.
The Cafeteria, where study hall took place.
The Storm (outdoors).
The Stage, which used to be an old chapel, where they were rehersing a musical version of Masque of the Red Death.
The Steeple, towering above the stage.

The location rules worked really well, I thought, though we didn't end up using the items in various locations as much as I hoped. Overall, there were just too many dice already available for them to be necessary.

Some of the ways characters moved between locations was very cool too, since it often involved things besides walking. Two cars were driven into the cafeteria (during separate scenes). One character fell down the inside of the steeple onto the stage, injuring themselves. One character climbed out of the steeple and slid down the roof into the storm (outside). The same two cars eventually ended up being blown, by the storm, into the steeple. The steeple then collapsed onto the stage. The boiler room exploded. Lots of crazy stuff.

Though we did end up naming one of the PCs as the slasher, we had to give him an NPC accomplice in order to make previously established events make sense. I'm still not sure how to ensure that the slasher could potentially be any of the PCs, or even just ensure that the slasher could concievable be ONE of them.

The characters were pretty classic. I was Maryjane Randolph, student council president. Dev was Sasha Ramirez, girl's rugby player. Eben was Derek Nguyen, stoner. And Richard was J.J. O'Riley, janitor. Richard's character ended up being the slasher, but his partner was Sasha's ex-girlfriend, who he had a creepy relationship with.

All in all, it was pretty clear that lots of things worked really well. It was a fun game to play, not just an interesting playtest, and I'd be excited to play it again, though maybe in a different genre (zombies!) or with a radically different premise (trapped on a boat!).

The parts that didn't work as well, overall, were the things I stole directly from Dogs in the Vineyard by way of Afraid. It's pretty clear that this game is trying to do something different, and the Dogs stuff, while very inspirational in the beginning, is now holding it back more than it's helping it along. The group was really helpful at talking through possible ways to strip it down and make it run smoother, which is awesome.

I think stripping some of the Dogs stuff out is going to be my Secret Wars post of the day, so I'll leave off here, but I wanted to talk about the playtest before I forgot. Yay!

Promise to Myself

2007-05-16T11:45:00.000-04:00

No reading or posting to internet forums (Story Games, Knife Fight) for one week, starting right now, noon on Wed. The intense negativity about everything is starting to get to me.

Instead I will focus my online attentions in three places: here, working on Avatar, and at Secret Wars.

If it goes well, I may make the sabbatical longer or do it more often.

I Have a Dream Today

2007-05-15T18:47:00.000-04:00

My dream is that, one day, people will wake up and find that we've questioned and successfully circumvented all their expectations about roleplaying while they've been busy arguing and posturing on internet forums.

P.S. That "we" includes you.

Counterpoint

2007-05-15T11:33:00.000-04:00

Just for anyone not reading Secret Wars yet, I just posted that Chris Lehrich...

Equus

Yeah. Check the post for an example of how this might work. I think it's damn exciting.

Bleeding Edge Discussion

2007-05-14T09:50:00.000-04:00

Continued from my post yesterday...

Shreyas: i'm not sure how to do this; when so many people are so quiet about their design

Jonathan: yeah; well, it requires reading what people are posting and publishing and analyzing it ourselves; or maybe you could do it thematically; one week would be "pacing mechanics"; another would be "alternative trait representations"

Shreyas: mhm; that could work; so i could be being crazy; but part of me feels like most of the people we know that DEFINITELY ARE designing are doing so silently; like kevin and nathan; and the other people who are actually designing are unknown to us

Jonathan: clearly, we can't talk about that; but having a space invites people to talk about it; or we could invite them to post about it

Shreyas: yeah; that's cool

Keeping Abreast of Design

2007-05-13T22:13:00.000-04:00

In the process of writing my most recent post on The Good Ship Revenge over at Secret Wars, I realized that part of the way I understand any work, including my own, is in the context of other similar works. I suspect this may be partially the effect of my academic background and day job as a researcher, where I often try to discover "the state of the field" in a given discipline by finding out who the top names in a particular subject are and reading overviews of the most recent trends.

I find myself wishing for a design-and-practice-oriented equivalent of Mendel's RPG Theory Review, a place where readers could keep up with some of the more interesting recent developments and discussions in roleplaying design and and practice, whether it's Rebecca Borgstrom throwing down some crazy stuff in her freelance work or Daniel Wood trying some interesting new mechanics in his Game Chef game or a poster on RPGnet talking about some neat thing they're doing in their D&D campaign.

Looking at what other people are doing in their games, especially when it's something new and interesting, expands our understanding of what roleplaying can be. Currently, design and practice are rarely considered to be "RPG theory" as such, though I think that's more or less exactly what they are. New design bits and practices can raise or attempt to answer theoretical questions about roleplaying in a demonstrative way that is significantly different than critical analysis.

Am I volunteering here? Maybe I am. Like I need another blog. What do you think? Is this as much of a need as I suspect it is?

Edit: Wikipedia defines "bleeding edge" as representing either:

Lack of consensus — competing ways of doing some new thing exist and no one really knows for certain which way the market [or community, in this case] is going to go.
Lack of knowledge — organizations are trying to implement a new technology or product that the trade journals [or larger design community] have not even started talking about yet, either for or against.
Industry resistance to change — trade journals and industry leaders have spoken against a new technology or product but some organizations are trying to implement it anyway because they are convinced it is technically superior [this happens in rpg discourses too, I think].

I think that's basically what I'm talking about, keeping track of where the "bleeding edge" of design is and practice is, new things for which there is not yet a consensus or even significant discussion about.

Secret Wars: Pirate vs. Ninja

2007-05-07T21:59:00.000-04:00

So it looks like this summer is going to be my chance to finish all those games that I haven't gotten around to polishing. The emo sex pirates game will be next, thanks to Shreyas' new idea: Secret Wars.

New Avatar Home & Thoughts on Distribution

2007-05-06T13:15:00.000-04:00

Avatar has a new home. Instead of doing the thing I did with the Afraid hack and just editing and expanding the blog post constantly, I've utilized the AMAZING NEW TECHNOLOGY available with Wordpress (to which I am quickly becoming a convert) and posted my working draft on a separate page connected to my new/other blog. I'll post notes about updates here, but the text will reside over there.

I've reworked the text from the beginning up through "Choosing Greater Dharma Paths," hopefully making it clearer how I expect groups to come together and decide on a premise and primary characters. Greater Dharma Paths still need more explanation, but I'm gonna wait until I explain Dharma Paths in general, I think. Comments and suggestions are welcome, either here or on the page where the draft is housed.

In general, I was just talking to Thomas about how I'm not convinced by PDFs as a way to distribute free indie RPGs anymore. I think they are a great way to distribute content that you intend people to print out, but not great for content you want people to read and respond to. People will read a webpage or blog post or forum post even if it's several pages long. Most people will not bother downloading and reading a PDF, unless they are really interested. And I suspect that games which actually get read are more likely to be played or at least to influence people's thinking about games.

So I think I may do the Zak Arntson thing for a while and post all my games primarily as HTML documents (webpages). If the Avatar game and Afraid hacks can see as much play as Shadows has over the years, that would be cool.

Blog Reader Sound Off

2007-05-03T16:29:00.000-04:00

So I was just telling Shreyas that I have no clue who reads this blog. Sometimes it feels like no one does, though I know that's not true. But this isn't a blog on which people consistently post comments (not like Vincent's), so it's hard for me to keep track of readership. I go about my day and then, just yesterday, I noticed someone had name-dropped the design work I've been doing here on Story Games. Crazy. Because I didn't know anyone was paying attention.

I'd like your help in getting to know you. If you have a few seconds, post a response or email me (jaywalt at gmail; subject: "Sound Off"), letting me know:

1) Who you are. Mini bio. What games you play. That kind of thing.
2) What brought you here. Some other blog. My Avatar game. Story Games.
3) What you get out of this. Are you patiently waiting until I get back to the Exalted hack? Are you stealing fun design tidbits? Are you stalking me?

If you're someone I've met in person or bummed around with online for years, you can probably skip #2 and 3, but it'd still be nice to know you're out there. However, if you don't read my posts regularly, don't feel guilty and stop by just to sign my yearbook. I'm trying to get a better sense of who my audience is here and, if you're not really part of it, that's important to know too. Cool?

New Avatar Sheet

2007-05-03T09:29:00.000-04:00

This is the one to use if people are going to do any playtesting. Also, I spent an hour or so yesterday talking with Annie Rush (now an Avatar expert since her hubby Reagan is going to be drawing comics for Nick magazine) about many of the unspoken assumptions in the rules draft I posted earlier. Thanks to her help, I should have a clearer, more accessible version posted sometime this weekend. Yay!

Tui and La

2007-05-03T01:11:00.000-04:00

Shreyas is amazing. As if you didn't know.

Avatar Tweaks Coming

2007-05-02T12:50:00.000-04:00

Shreyas is gonna Photoshop me up a version of Tui & La (the spirit-fish that represent the moon and the ocean) to go in the center of the chakra. His sketch above is already awesome. I can't wait.

Also, I'm gonna tweak the elemental aspects a bit to make traveling around the chakra a bit more interesting, reflecting more directly the decision to move from one element to another. More about this once I have time to work on the new character sheet some more.

Avatar Is Finished But Ugly

2007-04-29T20:39:00.000-04:00

Judd "Mu" Karlman spent the last couple weeks watching all of Avatar: the Last Airbender and asked about my Avatar-based game. So I decided to spend part of today creating a summary of the basic rules, which have been 75% done for over a year, but never really written out.

The character sheet posted above is an ugly version I hacked together from older versions of the sheet. It exists solely for explanatory purposes and will soon be replaced by a pretty one, once I have time to fiddle with InDesign for several more hours.

Love the Show

The Avatar game is an engine for creating fanfic, basically. If you have not watched the show extensively or if you're playing with some folks who aren't fans of the show, it's just not going to work as well. If you want to play this game with non-fans, make them watch a bunch if episodes and make sure that they really dig the show. If not, play with other people.

Imagining a Character

1. Forget About Roleplaying And Think In Terms of Avatar: Remember that Prince Zuko, Princess Azula, and Uncle Iroh are amazing characters. If you want to play someone like that, who is distant from or antagonistic to the other characters, awesome. Even if you don't even up having many scenes with the other primary characters, it should still work just fine.

2. Basic Info: Discuss a basic character concept with the group. Which nation are you from? What kind of place and family? How old are you? Are you female or male?

3. Greater Dharma: What are one or two of the long-term goals of your character? Are you trying to save someone or destroy something or what? Having tangentially related Greater Dharmas among the characters is good, but avoid making them all related. Goals should pull people apart and put people in opposition as well as bringing people together.

Character Traits

1. Four Kinds of Traits: There are four kinds of traits, each one associated with a particular element, based on the four Chinese characters that are associated with the elements in the intro sequence of the series.

2. Virtue (善): Associated with Water, this box contains traits that describe your character's personality, promises they've made, past misdeeds that they are atoning for, and how they view themselves and the world around them.

3. Strength (强): Associated with Earth, this box contains traits that are concerned with more practical things, the skills you have, your education, your weaknesses, your physical and mental abilities or failings, and material objects that you treasure and keep with you at all times (Kitara's necklace, Sokka's boomerang, Aang's kite-stick).

4. Intensity (烈): Associated with Fire, this box contains traits that reflect your prowess with bending, martial arts, the spirit world, healing, or other supernatural or spiritual abilities.

5. Unity (和): Associated with Air, this box contains traits that represent important relationships with other people and beings, including (potentially) the other primary characters, allies (Apa, Suuki), enemies (Firelord Ozai), spirits (Heibai), pets (Momo), organizations (White Lotus), governments (Northern Water Tribe), previous incarntations (Avatar Ryoshi), and anything else.

6. Initial Traits: Before play begins, create a few traits. I suggest three to five. Write them in the appropriate boxes. I'll post some example traits in a revision.

The Avatar Cycle

1. Get a pawn to represent your position in the Avatar Cycle, the chakra (which will eventually look more chakra-like) in the center of your character sheet.

2. Your pawns starts each session on the same element as the nation you are currently in, no matter where you are from or which nation holds your allegiance.

3. On your turn, frame a scene. The scene can include any primary characters, including your own, but doesn't have to include any of them. Assign other players or yourself to play any secondary characters in the scene. You might want to keep some notes on the secondary characters, since they don't have sheets of their own. I'll probably have some guidelines for doing this eventually.

4. Any primary characters in the scene must be in the process of dealing with whatever Dharma Path is attached to the element they are currently on. If they are on an element for which they have ascribed no Path, they create one before the scene begins. Dharma Paths are described in detail below.

5. Play out the scene. Scenes should be unnaturally short by roleplaying terms. Five minutes or less. Imagine it as a single sequence of shots during an episode. During a scene, only one important thing should happen for each primary character in the scene, and sometimes less than that. If there are no primary characters, the scene should be about revealing information of some variety and, once that info is out, the scene ends.

6. Traits are not really invoked in play so much as used to structure the narration. If your character can bend plants or hates fish or has a pet platypus-bear, those can be easily narrated into the scene. If your character doesn't have a platypus-bear, you're less likely to have platypus-bears show up all the time.

7. Primary characters in the scene should choose to deal with their problems in a way that reflects the element they are currently on. Each element is a complex and diverse thing, however, so an element is not so much a limitation on player actions as a perspective through which to view them. Eventually, the players will decide how a character dealt with things, described at #10.

8. At the end of the scene, write down any critical info about secondary characters or any information that was revealed.

9. At the end of each scene, the player of any primary character in the scene should decide whether the scene represents a development along the Dharma Path tied to their current element (as described below, generally the answer is "yes"). If so, they write down a new step along that Path.

10. Also, each primary character in the scene is judged by all the players, who decide whether the character better embodied their current element in it's Yin or Yang aspects. These aspects are as follows:

Water

Earth

Fire

Air

If the group decides a primary character acted more in accord with their current element's Yang aspect, their pawn moves Yangward around the Avatar Cycle. If a character acted in more of a Yin fashion, their pawn moves Yinward. The two halves of the taiji (yin-yang) symbols on the chakra point in the appropriate direction. For those who don't know, Yang is white, Yin is black.

Dharma Paths

1. This is the core of the game.

2. Get a sheet of ruled paper on which to keep track of your Dharma Paths.

3. A Dharma Path comes in two type. One type is What You Want a Trait to Become. For example, if my character has the trait "Beginning Firebender" I might create a Dharma Path called "Become A Firebending Master." The other type of Path involves Creating a New Trait and are much more common when you first start playing the game. When creating a Path for the second type, just name a trait that your character wants to gain, like "I Want to Learn to Love My Siblings." In either case Dharma Paths represent the metaphorical paths my character wants to go down. Dharma Paths are named from the character's perspective, usually, not the player's. You can't have a Path like "I Want to Discover That My Father's a Murderer" unless your character has some reason to suspect the crime. You could have, however, something like "I Want to Figure Out Why My Father Can't Sleep At Night." Be creative.

4. Each Dharma Path is assigned to a particular element when it is created. You can have up to four Dharma Paths at any give time, one for each element on your Avatar Cycle chakra. Assigning a Dharma Path to an element means that the way you progress along that path will generally be in a fashion consistent with the elemental characteristics mentioned in #10 above. Mismatches are fine. If your character decides to use Fire (Aggression/Planning) to "Win the Heart of My Crush," awesome.

5. Steps along the Dharma Path happen when you work on your Path in a scene, which will generally happen every time you have a scene in the element associated with that Path. Occasionally you may have a scene in which you don't get around to addressing your Path. That's cool. But any mention of your Path, however slight it may seem, may be considered a step. When you gain a step, write down a short line about how your Path was addressed in the scene on your sheet of ruled paper, right under the name of the Path. For example, if my character hits her crush with a snowball in my first Fire scene, I could write down "1. Hit Crush With Snowball" under "Win the Heart of My Crush." Next time I have a Fire scene I might write down "2. Spied on Crush Checking Out Another Girl."

6. You decide when your character has completed a Dharma Path. Completion means that they change or gain a trait, based on the experiences (steps) they've had while struggling along the Path. However, the trait they gain or the trait their existing trait turns into... it can't be the trait they asked for. It has to be a somewhat different trait that reflects the unexpected things that happened along their journey. Sometimes a trait is completely different. A character starts out with the Path "Win the Heart of My Crush" and ends up with the trait "Brokenhearted" or, even more different, "Apprentice Shaman." Traits are often in a different box than their Path originally indicated, as a proposed Intensity trait change becomes a new Unity trait.

7. Note that this also means that attempts to change a trait can end up creating new traits instead, leaving the existing trait unchanged. Or attempts to create new traits can end up changing existing traits. That's fine. However, to make sure primary characters don't become bloated with too many traits to easily keep track of, try to limit them to just the blanks on the character sheet. Change or replace less important traits if necessary.

Ending an Episode

I aim for an episode to happen in little more than an hour. Avatar episodes are 23 minutes, so an hour should be plenty. Eventually, I may come up with some additional guidelines for episode and season framing, but this is good for now.

That's It

That's the whole game. No dice. No resources. Nothing with any real mechanical weight. Just pure structured freeform. And, in my experience, it runs amazingly smoothly, though I haven't playtested this incarnation of the rules yet. Hopefully I'll do that at Camp this weekend, if nobody does it before then.

Frustrated

2007-04-26T01:10:00.000-04:00

Yeah, so this week has been frustrating, which is lame because it started out really well.

Creatively I feel kind of stymied and unappreciated, though that's mostly subjective, I think, and not what's actually going on.

The annual Game Chef competition just entered its final phase and there's been some discussion about how it went this year relative to times in the past, with a lot of miscommunication and hurt feelings on the part of both long-time participants and those who starting participating more recently. Everyone feels a large degree of ownership of and investment into this collective tradition, though each person understands it differently based on their own experiences. This makes talking about it difficult.

I've been helping to organize a StoryGames Boston, a weekly group that supports small-press games, but lately I've been less satisfied with what we've been doing. It's not that we haven't been playing fun stuff, but I feel like, in the past few weeks, I'm not growing or learning as a part of play and that's critical for me. Every week I'd like to either:

1. Play a game I haven't played before.
2. Play with several new people I haven't played with before.
3. Play something that I can get invested in for more than a single session, where it's possible that play will go somewhere really interesting.

I don't mind that one of these doesn't happen every week. I don't expect it to. But none of these has happened in the past several weeks and that's what's beginning to get me down. Play has been fun, but unfulfilling. Like a light beer.

I'm going to try to get more sleep, participate less in online conversations (which generally makes me happier), and focus on doing things that I enjoy, whether other people care or not. Hopefully, that'll make me less frustrated by the time the weekend rolls around...

Giger Counter: version 0.3

2007-04-24T22:26:00.000-04:00

Here's some variant rules for the slasher movie game, to run cosmic horror in the style of the Alien movies. Most of the rules are the same, except...

Brainstorming

Before the game begins, brainstorm a really horrid situation for the PCs to be in. Perhaps your spaceship crash-landed on an unknown planet and are making repairs or waiting for someone to pick you up, as in Pitch Black. Perhaps you are an exploratory or military team investigating some mysterious ruins out in the arctic, as in Alien vs. Predator. Something ridiculous like that.

Conditions

1. Each player picks 3 possible Conditions from this list:

Trapped

Alone

Unprepared

Foolish

Bloodied

2. Additionally, every PC gets the following chain of Conditions, which must get taken in order:

1. Compromised

2. Crisis

3. Gotcha

3. Losing a conflict with the aliens means you take a Condition on the second chain, starting with #1 and working down. When Taking The Blow, players can decide which Condition to take (though Conditions on the chain must still be taken in order).

Playing the Alien Menace

Until the aliens start taking people over, the current scene framer is responsible for playing the faceless alien menace. However, the aliens do not have real physical presence, do not have actual "faces," until they have taken over a PC, who then plays them. If your aliens don't take over humans or hatch from human bodies, this just means that the aliens cannot be clearly shown until they have killed one or more PCs.

Scene framers start with 8d10 in "unnamed dice" to represent the alien menace, but they can only roll 2 unnamed dice in any conflict. This matters later on when more and more of their dice are named.

Whenever a PC Takes The Blow in a conflict with the aliens, their player can choose to do one of two things, representing the group's increased understanding of how the aliens operate:

So the aliens' dice go from being mostly unnamed d10s to being named d8s and d6s and even d4s. This represents that, as the humans find out more about the aliens, they know about their potential weaknesses and they aren't so mind-numbingly terrifying anymore. They are specifically and understandably horrible, instead of unspeakably horrible.

Players whose characters have died or become aliens lose all of their existing stats and any of their traits which no longer apply. If their character has become an alien, it's possible that some of them still make sense. However, instead of drawing on their character's traits, they are responsible for rolling dice for any aliens who are in the scene and describing the alien's actions. Alien players should try to follow the general guidance of the scene framer, but I'll figure out exactly how during the playtest.

Destroying the Aliens

After the aliens' dice have all been named, you can render a die inoperable by winning a conflict with the aliens. For example, you might discover that they hate cats or are vulnerable to bells or loud noises. Or you might destroy their egg hatchery or some other important alien resource. When all the aliens' dice have been rendered useless, the alien menace has been destroyed.

Players should feel free to call for "wrapping things up" at any point after a couple major battles have been won by the surviving humans, especially if it looks like they've escaped the aliens' clutches. That means the next scene can't have any aliens in it, and is an Epilogue of sorts. However, if the aliens have any remaining dice left, they can still come back in the scene after the Epilogue! Maybe they snuck aboard your escape pod! Maybe they're hiding inside your chest!

After the final Epilogue -- or if the group decides, after a particularly end-worthy Epilogue, that the movie is over -- the game ends. At that point, if the aliens have any dice remaining, they are added to their initial 8d10 pool as unnamed dice for the sequel.

Thoughts on Continuum

2007-04-18T12:58:00.000-04:00

First off, the game fiction in Continuum is the best I've ever seen anywhere, period. Like, it's actually good fiction, not just good game fiction. It reminds me a lot of The Time Traveler's Wife actually and vice-versa, because it deals with many of the same themes with similar poignancy, especially on knowing the future and being unable to prevent it.

Second, I think Continuum has strong potential to support GMless play. Characters in the game basically have 5 "levels." At Span 1, you are a member of a time-travel militia, basically, and learn stuff from your Mentor, reaching Span 2 when your Mentor says you're ready. At Span 2, you join a special forces branch, basically, and learn more specialized stuff from the head of your unit, reaching Span 3 when a branch commander says you're ready. At Span 3, you are the Mentor or unit leader of a group of Span 1s and 2s, and go to Span 4 once all your pupils advance.

So, basically, there could be a way for the "GM" to play a Span 3 character trying to fulfill the requirements for Span 4, while all the other PCs are Span 1s and 2s. Basically, the requirement for reaching Span 4 would become "GM a Continuum game, with your character as the Mentor, until all the PCs are Span 3." That's hot hotness and sorta Bliss Stage- like, in fact.

I was talking about the requirements for advancement with Shreyas last night, and decided that The Shadow of Yet is going to approach Secrets & Keys in a slightly different way than standard TSOY. The distinction between them is going to be less clear, I think, making them more like the Loresheets from Weapons of the Gods. Also, instead of just having Buyoffs, characters will have to fulfill certain conditions before certain traits can be gained. Like in order to get the Key of Conscience, they have to do something that they feel really bad about and try to make ammends. This is, in effect, the Cost of the trait.

Finally, I really like how Continuum spotlights the complexity of destructive acts. This is hitting me particular hard in light of the events at Tech. The society of time travellers in the game are ruthless at containing or killing those who lash out destructively against their society, against those who flaunt acceptible norms of social behavior in a way that harms and potentially kills others. These people must be stopped, no question, because they are a immense risk to themselves and others.

But it also speaks to the possibility of intervention, of the ability of people to work through negative feelings and isolation and to bring people back from the brink. It talks about the fucked up shit that can happen to a person and the depths of suffering it can drive them too. Some people, it says, can be saved from total self-destruction and inflicting massive harm on others. But it also recognizes the pain and difficulty of such things and that sometimes, even though it breaks your heart, a person goes over the edge and you have to bring them in or, worse, bring them down, even though they may be your friend.

All of that, to me, is very powerful. Some of the best Dogs in the Vineyard play also revolves around similar issues: How do you help those who have strayed? How do you convince them to come back to a safer, healthier path? When do they become a lost cause? When do you let go, watch them destroy themselves, and try to prevent their destruction from harming too many others? I don't think those questions are ever easy, but I think it's very important that we continue to explore them, both in fiction (including games) and in real life.

The Shadow of Yet: version 0.1

2007-04-17T20:12:00.000-04:00

This is a hack of Continuum, inspired by the rules of The Shadow of Yesterday. This post is a work in progress and I plan to update it regularly as I go. Right now, it's just an outline. I'm also planning on simplifying and remixing the Continuum source material as I go.

POOLS

BODY instead of Vigor
MIND instead of Reason
QUICK instead of Instinct

ABILITIES
(Innate in italics, Aquarian in [brackets])

BODY: Endure, Athletics, Melee Weapon, Thrown Weapon, Unarmed Combat.

MIND: Resist, Anthropology, Bureaucracy, Computer, Etiquette, Finance, Firearms, History, Investigation, Languages, Law, Locality Knowledge, Medicine, Observation, Projectile Weapon, Science, Security, Survival, Teaching, [Clairvoyance], [Hypnosis], [Photographic Memory], [Telepathy], [Pyrokinesis].

QUICK: React, Art, Dreaming, Drive, Hypnosis, Stealth, Swindle, [Levitation], [Telekinesis].

SECRETS

Spanning

Span 1: 1 year, 1 mile
Span 2: 10 years, 10 miles
Span 3: 100 years, 100 miles
Span 4: 1000 years, 1000 miles
Span 5: 10000 years, 10000 miles

Knowledge

What Time Is It?
Up, Down, Level
Gemini
The Maxims
Your Corner
Slipshank
Instant Skills
Surviving Death

Strategems
(Narcissist tricks in [brackets])

Attacks/Defenses

Gemini Flush
Harbinger
Hit and Run
Patch
Hide
Isolate
[Pocket]
[Reverse Engineer]
[The Fix/Statue of Liberty]
[Surrender]

Information Control

Cobweb
Frune
Iron Man
Measure
Oracle
Rendezvous
Rendezvous la Reve

KEYS

What Side Are You On?

Continuum/Swarm: XP for fixing Frag, lots for getting Narcs
Crasher/Narcissist: XP for making Frag, lots for crashing free

(NOTE: You can have both of these or the wrong one for your side. It's not like they'll be able to know... Or will they?)

Spanner Fraternities

Antiquarians
Dreamers
Engineers
Foxhorn
Midwives
Moneychangers
Physicians
Quicker
Scribes
Thespians

Crasher Philosophies

Artisans
Hitchers
Lotus-Dancers
The Order
Pilgrims of the Kings
Acolytes of the Gods

Personal

Everything else, including all the basic TSOY Keys.

NOTES
- Transcendence means you've become an Inheritor/Exalted
- Guidelines for teaching spanners new information?
- How to increase your spanning Secret?
- Starting abilities relative to home locality
- Are the Maxims a Key for Continuum spanners?
- Stuff in your Yet gets added to a list
- Spanners get XP for completing their Yet
- Crashers get XP for avoiding their Yet
- Loresheets, not Secrets!
- The opposite of a Buyoff, a Cost!

Slasher Hiatus & Rethinking

2007-04-17T19:55:00.000-04:00

So I need to stop working on the slasher movie game until it stops reminding me of what happened at Tech.

In the meantime I have, I think, committed myself to writing new games or hacks of existing games for StoryGames Boston to play, rather than writing with the intent of publication. I'm really happy about this development. Less pressure, more awesome. I mean, the slasher game is totally ready for playtest and just needs some minor polishing to be ready for any group to play. That's productivity that I've never had on any of my projects intended for dead tree versions.

I'm not quite ready to do the Exalted hack now, though that's definitely coming up in the near future. I wanna do a few more smaller things first, escalating until I'm sure I can finish it without running out of steam.

I was talking with Shreyas a bit about doing the Shang Dynasty game as a kind of metaphorical kaiju battle between the royal diviners and the unruly river, sky, ocean, and earth gods of primordial China. But that may be based on the slasher game, so I want to wait and playtest that first.

So... next project? Converting Continuum to Clinton's "Solar System." What's it called? Why, The Shadow of Yet, of course :)

Aliens in the Vineyard... Wait, I Mean YOUR CHEST!

2007-04-16T11:43:00.000-04:00

Alien vs. Predator was on TV last night. Which got me thinking about the structure of the alien horror genre and how it's often very much like a slasher movie. Alien horror often combines slasher movie stuff with zombie stuff, in the sense that aliens often take over people you know and turn them into aliens. The Alien movies do this literally, of course, having the aliens use humans as hosts for incubating their young.

In any case, I was thinking about how to hack my hack of Vincent's hack (the slasher movie game, which I've revised and updated) to emulate the Alien movies. I think you could have a series of conditions that had to be taken in order, like a modified damage track:

- attacked by face hugger
- i have an alien in my chest
- the alien is about to erupt
- death
- i am now an alien

So the PCs would gradually transform into aliens, one after another, and be tasked with killing the other PCs by turning them into aliens as well. Very much zombie movie in that sense, except the surviving PCs would not be fighting faceless hordes or the husks of people they knew, just demonic beasts emerging from the dead bodies of their comrades.

I'm actually really into the idea of GMless survival horror games (slashers, aliens, zombies, natural disasters, kaiju) running on the location-based, modified Afraid engine that I've been messing with. I like the potential to have a series of closely related games where you can swap out the premise and change a few rules -- like in the board game Betrayal at House on the Hill -- and have a different play experience.

I also dig the fact that they would run in a single session, potentially in two hours, just like a movie.

Yo! Game Chef Raps!

2007-04-15T17:52:00.000-04:00

If you've ever said to yourself, "I wish indie game designers would battle rap more," fear no longer. The time in now at hand.

The Game Chef rap battle took place in this thread, and I've posted my recorded verses and invited others to do the same in this thread.

Afraid: Teen Slasher Version 1.7

2007-04-10T21:44:00.000-04:00

So here's how you make Afraid handle Scream and similar takes on the teen slasher genre.

Characters

1. There is no GM.
2. Everyone makes a character like this:

3. Anything sexy (trait, relationship, object) gets an extra d4.
4. Avoid NPCs, but use new Dogs NPC rules if you must:

5. Any NPC dice that are not d6s must be named before they are rolled, for example, before rolling a C-style NPC, you would say: "This 3d4 is for being Overzealous."

Conditions

1. Each player picks 3 possible Conditions for their PC.
2. Additionally, every PC gets Dead and Pursued.
3. The playtest Conditions are as follows:

Dead

Pursued

Alone

Unprepared

Foolish

Bloodied

Lame Duck:

4. PCs start with no Conditions active.
5. A PCs number of Conditions never decreases.
6. On your turn, you can change which Conditions are active.
7. If you Take The Blow, activate an additional Condition.

Conflict Resolution

1. In a conflict, roll all relevant traits.
2. Highest two dice wins stakes, unless...
3. PCs/NPCs can Take The Blow and keep struggling.
4. Roll more traits, next highest two dice wins.
5. This can continue as long as both sides have dice remaining and are still alive.

Scene Framing & Locations

1. Choose how many locations you want in the game.
2. Have index cards equal to the number of locations.
3. Split up 10d4, 14d6, 6d8 among the location cards.
4. On your turn, you will frame a scene.
5. Scene framing starts by picking a location & characters.
6. If you pick a new location, write it on an unlabeled card.
7. When you are out of cards, there are no new locations.
8. You cannot frame a scene that includes your own PC.
9. Framing must include each character's active Conditions.
10. Place pawns on cards to show where the characters are.
11. The slasher has no pawn and can be anywhere.
12. The group decides when any given scene ends.
13. Generally, each scene happens in a single location, but...
14. Characters can switch locations in the middle of a Chasing/Fleeing conflict. Any characters currently in the new location are now in the scene and may join the conflict.
15. Characters can move between locations based on whatever logic the group decides makes sense. If a fair bit of time passes ("Okay, so it's the next morning..."), allow everyone to move their pawns around before play continues. When framing a scene, take into account previous locations, but don't feel bound by them. If you really need characters to be in the attic instead of the basement, talk with your group and then figure out how to make it work.

Acquiring, Moving, and Using Objects

1. The dice on a card are objects in that location.
2. Label the dice as they are identified ("Chainsaw 2d6").
3. The framer can veto unlikely objects (sword in the bathroom).
4. Movable objects can added to a character's sheet.
5. If a character takes an object, erase it from the card.
6. If a character drops an object, mark the location card.
7. Unmovable objects are only usable in their location.
8. Remember the extra d4 for sexy objects.

"It's You!": Identifying the Slasher

Until the slasher is identified, the current scene framer is responsible for playing them. Unidentified slashers have the following traits:

None of the slasher's trait or relationship dice are labeled when play begins. Instead, each time the slasher appears in a conflict, the current scene framer can choose to label one or two of the slasher's trait or relationship dice and then roll them in the conflict. The scene framer can also choose to roll any of the slasher's previously labeled trait or relationship dice, assuming they are appropriate.

Once all the slasher's trait and relationship dice have been labeled, the slasher can be identified. The slasher is almost always one of the PCs, determined by the consensus of the group (or some other method I've yet to determine). If the group decides they want an NPC to be the slasher, the player whose character was the first to die should play the identified slasher.

When a PC/NPC is identified as the slasher, they gain all the unidentified slasher's Traits, Relationships, & Possessions. The slasher's Stat dice are added to theirs. If multiple PCs/NPCs are revealed to be slashers, they divy up the unidentified slasher's Traits, Relationships, Possessions, and Stat dice. Identified slashers can choose whether they want to engage in Social conflicts or not (don't have to).

It is the responsibility of the identified slasher to try to kill every character they encounter, most especially the Protagonist, once they have been identified.

"It's Just You And Me Now!": Identifying the Protagonist

Once all the other PCs are dead, the last living PC becomes the Protagonist. It is the responsibility of the Protagonist to kill the slasher and, subsequently, they roll an additional +4d10 in all conflicts.

Push 2: More Cover Previews

2007-03-16T12:02:00.000-04:00

Bethany Culp is still hard at work on the Push 2 cover.

Four Nations: Ghost Stories

2007-03-12T13:36:00.000-04:00

One of the great storytellers and literary analysts of the dead talks about their narrative tradition.

Everyone must someday come to the Dark City. This means we cannot tell stories of the great heroes of the past, for they are here in person and might take offense. Eternal emnity is nothing to scoff at.

Indeed, we can only tell stories of those who are not here. Speculation about those currently living is common and there is also some fanciful speculation about future generations. However, that type of imagination is dangerous, as it reminds us all too dearly of life.

Instead we must speak of those among the dead who remain behind in the sunlands, those who have chosen not to journey to the Dark City. In our great epics, then, there are two main types of protagonists: ghosts and ghost hunters. The hunters often include members of the monastic order residing at Most Beautiful Cage, the sole outpost of the dead under the sun.

Of course, it is important to note that those seeking refuge at the Cage, while disciplined and highly regarded, are themselves ghosts. And that resonance with their prey, the close relationship between hunter and hunted, forms the basis of many of our stories.

There is also something transgressive about storytelling. The dreamers speak of nightmares. The pattern-walkers tell of those who sought to defy the pattern. The doorkeepers whisper of the places even they cannot reach. And so it is with the dead.

We speak of ghosts and those heroes among us responsible for tracking down them, seperating them from the echos of their past. As is often the case in heroic tales, it is always difficult -- intentionally so, I suspect -- to seperate heroes from villains, ghost from ghost hunter.

When the Grey Lady kisses her parents, children, and husband goodbye, swearing to join them in the Dark City once she has captured the ghost responsible for all their deaths... are we to compare her to the ghost she hunts?

As for our champions who issue forth from Most Beautiful Cage, are they not also tempted by the fruits of life? Do they not occasionally err in their pursuit of the errant? Is this not why we sympathize with them? Why we honor them? If even the most disciplined among us occasionally succumb to the taste of sweet cream or the ecstasy of sexual passion, that speaks to the nobility of our own frailties.

So the overarching theme of all our ghost stories, the question we constantly seek to explore is this: how are we to let go? How do we move on from life's joys and sorrows to an eternity without them? What does that brief candleflicker of bright sensations mean in the face of the long dark?

Four Nations: Building the Dark City

2007-03-11T21:01:00.000-04:00

I'm not totally happy with this, but it gets the basic idea across. And it's not like this is gonna be the final text or anything. But I figure we should maybe try to explain some of this Four Nations stuff.

There was a time, in the early days of the world, when death was a deep slumber. The newly dead fell asleep and their families lay them down in beds freshly dug into the earth.

The dead would dream in that subterranean land, the place below, the under-world. There, they would share pleasant visions or nightmares, all springing from the basket of memories they brought with them from life.

But the dead became unhappy. And so they harnessed their dreams to fight off their nightmares. Together they built a great stairway, leading them up from the world below back into the lands under the sun.

And the living welcomed the dead back into their homes. The dead had no dreams or nightmares anymore, for they left both under the ground. Neither did they sleep. But for a while the dead and the living dwelt in the same place.

It was not to last. There was a great battle. Each of the living that fell became one of the dead.

When the Dream Queen was slain, she rose from the ground as the Queen of the Dead. Surveying the field, she soon realized that, if the war was not halted, there would be no one left alive. She sounded her horn.

And so the dead separated themselves from the living. They drew away, beyond the light of the sun, to a place of shadow. There they build the Dark City to which all must one day travel. And the living stopped burying the dead, because the dead stopped sleeping. But neither could they dwell together.

And that is why the dead must travel, each in turn, to the Dark City. Those who remain behind among the living are ghosts. And trafficking with ghosts only leads to misfortune.

Essex & Lady Walsingham

2007-03-06T20:47:00.000-05:00

My dad sent me a copy of the HBO two-part movie Elizabeth I, starting recent Oscar winner Helen Mirren. It unfortunately doesn't mention Marlowe's killing, but it does feature nearly every other major character connected to that "great reckoning in a little room." Several good things came out of watching that film:

1) I don't have to write setting background for the game now. I can just say, watch Elizabeth I.

2) I know who the main characters of my game are: Lady Frances Walsingham, daughter of the previous spymaster and lady-in-waiting to the Queen, and, her second husband, Robert Devereux, the young Earl of Essex. Only Lady Walsingham is going to be significantly more badass than depicted in the film and Essex is going to be significantly less crazy. Otherwise, yeah, great characters.

So yeah, Josh, you and your girlfriend should totally see this film. It's pretty dern badass and is a fabulous introduction to what's going on during this period.

Push 2 Cover: Evil Owl

2007-03-02T23:24:00.000-05:00

Bethany Culp has tentatively signed on to do the cover for Push 2. The cover will depict a caput bubonis, an formerly good owl who has turned to evil and taken over a human body specifically for the purpose of meddling with the symbolic contents of a memory palace. Yes, like the last cover, this cover's content comes from an experimental short-form game, in this case Eero Tuovinen's Ludus Repotiorum, a roleplaying game based on the ars memoriae.

I'm mostly posting this here so the Push 2 contributors can discuss it, but I thought I'd share with you folks as well. Enjoy!

Epic Structure: Wandering Spotlight

2007-03-02T17:14:00.000-05:00

As part of a book club for work (don't ask), I'm reading Pearl Buck's out-of-print translation of Shui You Zhuan (Outlaws of the Marsh, The Water Margin), which she arbitrarily decided to call All Men Are Brothers. It's a 700-page, illustrated tome of awesomeness. But what I'm concerned with here is the structure of the narrative, which is something that I don't think roleplaying knows how to handle very well.

Unlike the One Thousand Nights and a Night, the Shui You Zhuan has no frame story on both ends. It does, however, begin with a tale very much like "Pandora's Box," in which the arrogant Commander Hong frees an entire horde of evil spirits out into the world. Each of these spirits, as we'll discover later on, represents one of the main outlaws of the epic. The characters are loosed from their cage in order that the might perform their story for us. This is interesting, but not the part I want to dwell on.

Let's talk about the first 2 chapters and the prologue. Like all Chinese epics of this period, each chapter has a title in two parts, each part describing one of the main plot points of that chapter. In Buck's translations these are given as:

PROLOGUE
1. Chang, the Heavenly King, Chief of the Taoists, beseeches the Gods to drive away the evil flux.
2. The Commander Hung, in heedlessness, frees the spirits.

CHAPTER ONE
1. Wang the Chief Instructor goes secretly to Yien An Fu.
2. The Nine Dragoned makes a mighty turmoil at the Village of the Shih Family.

CHAPTER TWO
1. Shih Chin escapes by night from Hua Ying.
2. Captain Lu kills the bully of Kuangsi with his fists.

Simple enough, right? Okay, now watch who the central character of the narrative is as the story progresses.

PROLOGUE
1. Ch'en Tu, a Taoist hermit
2. Emperor Jen Chung
3. Commander Hung
CHAPTER ONE
4. Kao Ch'iu, a peasant who becomes a lord
5. Wang Ching, the head instructor
6. The two guards
7. Wang Ching
8. Shih Chin, a local thug
9. The Robber Chiefs
10. Shih Chin
11. The Robber Chiefs
12. Wang Shih, a servant
13. Shih Chin
CHAPTER TWO
14. Shin Chin
15. Lu Ta, a captain
16. Old Man Chin
17. Lu Ta
18. The people reacting to the butcher's death.
19. Chief Wang and others
20. Lu Ta

What you have is a "rolling cast." The story does not tarry overly long on any particular character, rather, it moves constantly, inventing minor characters and, just as easily, abandoning them as soon as they stop being the focus of the most interesting action. BUT! While it is focused on the two guards, those guards are the most interesting characters in the story, despite the fact that we'll never see them again in the entire epic.

Also, note how there's an overall sense of progress, how the characters slowly roll over and let new characters step to the front. The narrative spotlight is not going back and forth between several major characters (which is what roleplaying usually does). It does hover for a time around Wang Ching, Shi Chin, and Lu Ta, but you know eventually it will move on to other characters. Perhaps earlier characters will make appearances later on, possibly even be the spotlight character for a while, but the narrative is always looking for "new hosts."

Also, look at the wide range of social positions among the characters. We have emperors and sages and we have average thugs. And the narrative flows easily back and forth between them, making no real distinction when it comes to deciding "where the interesting action is." The plight of the local people is just as important as affairs of state or the emperor's personal life.

Anyway, this is something I'm hoping we can try to emulate, possibly in a modified form in the Exalted hack. And more extensively in Four Nations.

Push 1 @ Six Months

2007-03-01T23:18:00.000-05:00

I just ran the numbers on the first six months sales of Push vol 1. A PDF of the spreadsheet I'm using (which hopefully you'll be able to understand) is posted here.

An Overview
44 print sales: GenCon
62 print sales: Lulu
22 print sales: IPR (and sold at least 28 more since then)
36 pdf sales: Paypal + Email

128 print sales TOTAL
164 TOTAL COPIES SOLD
$1302.09 TOTAL PROFIT (about $7.95 a copy)

Now, looking at these numbers makes me want to run some other, more complicated figures, because I suspect we may not actually be making any money off sales to retailers through IPR. The additional tier of IPR's costs is not the problem; it's the 40% cut to retailers that is basically taking all our profit. If that is true, that's pretty significant and could spell a little trouble in paradise. Right now we're making slightly less than $3 on every copy sold through IPR (as opposed to $8-9 through other kinds of sales), but that includes about 1/3 sales to individual customers who don't get the 40% discount. Without those sales, our profits through IPR are even lower. Damn that extra tier.

In any case, I'll run those numbers this weekend and get back with what I can figure out. Honestly, I'm not entirely sure what our options might be if we really are making zero money (or worse, losing money) through retailer sales. It seems difficult to raise the price of the book only when it comes to retailers. And raising the price across the board at IPR seems less than swell too. Bailing on IPR completely is totally the last resort; hopefully it won't come to that. In any case, let that be a heads up to people. Getting your books to retailers sounds great, but the cost of doing that, even using great folks like IPR and Key20, can still be pretty staggering.

I'll try to put a month-by-month breakdown or graph together too.

Great Reckoning in a Little Room

2007-02-25T23:04:00.000-05:00

When a man's verses cannot be read, nor a man's good wit seconded with the forward child understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room.

Here's the usual suspects of 1593.

The Men in the Room

Ingram Frizer: The one who stabbed Marlowe. A servant and spy for Thomas Walsingham.

Nicholas Skeres: Servant and spy for Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex. Involved in investigating the Babington Plot.

Robert Poley: Servent and spy for Sir Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury. Involved in investigating the Babington Plot.

Masterminds

Thomas Walsingham: Cousin of Elizabeth I's deceased spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham. Marlowe was staying at Thomas Walsingham's house when he was summoned by the Privy Council to be tried for Heresy, mere weeks before his death.

Frances Walsingham: Only daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham. Lady-in-Waiting to the Queen. Widow of Sir Philip Sidney, killed in fighting in the Netherlands. Wife and later the widow of Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex.

Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex: Second husband of Frances Walsingham. Later executed for treason in 1601.

Sir Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury: Elizabeth I's new spymaster after the death of Sir Francis Walsingham. Rival of Sir Walter Raleigh.

Sir Walter Raleigh: Former favorite of the Queen. Fellow atheist and friend of Christopher Marlowe. Imprisoned in the tower after the Queen's death in 1603. Executed in 1618.

Thomas Kyd: Fellow playwright and friend of Marlowe, worked with him as a part of Lord Strange's Men. Produced evidence, under torture, that incriminated Marlowe as a heretic.

Arabella Stuart: Tutored by Marlowe. Potential heir to Queen Elizabeth. Later involved in more than a few plots. Dressed up as a man and attempted to flee. Died in the tower in 1615.

Mary Queen of Scots: Catholic! Potential heir to Queen Elizabeth. Subject of most of the plots of this era, including the Babington Plot for which she was executed in 1587, five years before Marlowe's death.

Slippery Kit

2007-02-22T23:23:00.000-05:00

Another conversation about the game-in-progress. One of these days I'll figure out a good format to repost chats. By the way, I think the female character may end up just being called "The Agent" or "The Agent of the Queen."

Jonathan
- i kinda suspect that i want the second character to have a hand in his death
- or to ultimately be responsible
- but maybe it should end with things unclear as to whether he's actually dead
- so it's not clear who triumphs
- that makes it more interesting
- maybe Marlowe's last letter is "to be read on the event of my demise"
- and anticipates it

Shreyas
that's pretty exciting

Jonathan
- hmm, i'm thinking maybe that the female character's letters are all to various people, trying to arrange Marlowe's death
- and the other player plays all these people who keep being baffled when Marlowe slips out of their hands
- so like "sorry, mistress. we tried to poison him, but the poor sod didn't seem affected in the slightest"
- so like Kazekami Kyoko in that way
- with one person concocting plans that the other challenges
- but eventually, they get him

Shreyas
- dude
- yes
- that's um really weird
- but in a cool way
- i want to play it

Shreyas
- so is the final letter pre-written?

Jonathan
- hmm
- could be
- i wonder if play could continue even after his death
- "to make sure we got him"

Shreyas
- haha

Jonathan
- i just don't want it to become Kill Doctor Lucky

The Untimely Demise of Christopher Marlowe

2007-02-22T20:49:00.000-05:00

So I finally have a premise and a title for the game for Josh's girlfriend (to go with the basic rules which have been done since Sunday). As a bonus, The Untimely Demise of Christopher Marlowe sounds somewhat similar to Kazekami Kyoko Kills Kublai Khan -- they are both flowery and both about a famous man's death -- which reflects their interconnectedness.

The game will concern itself with the events leading up to the mysterious death of "Kit Morley" as he was often known, supposedly in the scuffle over paying the tab. However, since said scuffle involved several known spies of Lord Walsingham and Marlowe was about to go on trial (being -- according to various accounts -- an atheist, a Catholic, a heretic, a counterfeiter, a spy, a conspirator, a lover of attractive young men, a hedonist, and/or William Shakespeare), it seems unlikely his death (or the staging of it) was entirely accidental.

Now I just need to find a female character as devious and interesting as Marlowe. Right now, Arbella Stuart, who Marlowe may have tutored at some point, looks to be a promising candidate. She was potentially next in line for the throne after Elizabeth I, which gives her more than a few reasons to be involved in Walsingham's espionage activities. And just because she was 18 when Marlowe died (at 29) doesn't mean there couldn't have been some romantic or sexual tension going on there.

The other option is, of course, the imprisoned Catholic monarch herself, Mary Queen of Scots. The only problem was that Mary was dead 5 years before Marlowe.

Or I could have the main characters not include Marlowe or anyone else especially famous at all, and instead simply be conspirators involved in the mysterious events surrounding his death. Hmm. Still some thinking to be done, but I'm getting pretty close now.

Oh, one other thing.

Kit Marlowe died -- and I'm not making this up -- from being stabbed in the face. So, basically, it's an indie game waiting to happen :)

Focusing the Game

2007-02-21T18:31:00.000-05:00

Last night, Josh hinted that he might prefer a more focused game than the open-ended system I was writing. So now I'm thinking about making the letter-writing game be about espionage, either the Walsingham conspiracy (Elizabethan spymasters!) or Civil War-era spy networks (which involved numerous notable women). But I guess I'll need a new title, then. Maybe The Greenhow Ring or The Babington Plot.

Bonus: Just got off the phone with my dad and he said that noted playwrite and general rapscallion Christopher Marlowe was reputed to be part of a Catholic conspiracy against Queen Elizabeth (organized by Mary Queen of Scots), hence his mysterious death in a London barfight. Hmm...

For the Right Reasons

2007-02-20T19:41:00.000-05:00

I was thinking today that there are two approaches to gamethought.

1) Thinking and posting about games to gain the attention and respect of others for being gosh-darned smart, interesting, and sexy.

2) Thinking and posting about games because you're actually working on a project -- whether for publication or your local gaming group or for yourself or for someone else -- and gamethought is the byproduct.

I suspect that online forums -- the Forge, Story Games, etc. -- even if they start out with other goals in mind, gradually tend to drift towards the former. Or maybe, those of us (including, of course, me) who are easily seduced by the instant gratification of [1] do that so much that those forums aren't great environments for [2].

Thing is, people's attentions are ephemeral. The "Hey over here! Look at me!" thing might work in the short term, but in order to really gain people's respect and long-term attention, you really have to put up AND shut up. You have to stop tooting your own horn in their faces and just quietly do your thing in the corner. After all, if you and your ideas are as awesome as you think they are, people will be drawn in without you doing a whole lot. And that's real gratification.

Really, this is a marketing lesson. If you're all hype and no substance, people will get bored with the hype pretty fast. But if you have a lot of substance, a tiny bit of hype will blossom into a huge hype machine run by other people, as your admirers tell other people how cool you are.

If you can't tell by now, this is an attempt at self-criticism. Sure, I've been around long enough to have slowly earned the respect and admiration of some pretty cool people. And I'm really grateful for and humbled by their support. But I really only started feeling productive, as a designer, when I left the Forge and started this blog. So now I'm thinking about spending less time on Story Games and more time on my new Wordpress blog.

Instant gratification is hurting my productivity, basically. I need to get away for a while and finish a few things. I'll still need support. But I need to write games for some long-term awesomeness, rather than writing posts for some fickle attention. I need to sit down and write games for myself or for specific people. I need to finish Gridiron Gods for John Harper. I need to finish The Good Ship Revenge for Mike Sugarbaker and Andrew Kenrick. Right now, I need to finish While You're Far Away for Josh Kashinsky and his girlfriend and Mo.

So I guess you folks are stuck with me here (and here) for a while. Hope my explosion of productivity on the blog side of things won't overwhelm you.

Wordpress Retrospective

2007-02-19T11:33:00.000-05:00

So, based on advice from tons of folks, I'm planning to eventually move this blog over to my new Wordpress blog which just went live (at least, officially).

Now, this change isn't going to happen immediately. I still have that series on "Traitless games" to finish here. However, in the meantime, I'm going to try to collect links to all the game design work I've ever done and turn them into a retrospective that's going to kick off the new Wordpress blog. So if you want to hear about We Regret to Inform You the Gamemaster is Dead and other obscure, older projects, subscribe to the new feed and then you won't have to worry about missing stuff when the true switchover happens in a few weeks.

There is a LOT of ground to cover in the design retrospective (I have accumulated dozens of half-finished projects over the years), so I'm going to try to post about one project every day or two, with links to all the old stuff and some commentary on what's important about it and what might happen to it in the future.

Anyway, see you there on the new blog and I'll see you here as well as we wrap up this one.

Humble Mythologies d20

2007-02-18T23:38:00.000-05:00

So back in... I don't know, 2004 or something, Eero Tuovinen and I were discussing this game concept called Humble Mythologies. The idea was to write a game about the real world, in which normal people did normal things, but have game events be driven by a secondary, abstract layer that was superimposed over the top of normal life. I think it was going to be kinda Tarot influenced. So that businessman might be the Knight of Pentacles. And he might try to capture The Star, which would mean reaching some personal or professional goal. I hope you get the sense of what the premise was.

Anyway, Ashi apparently invented the same game with a few of her friends, though using d20 as a base and set during the protests of 1960s America. Very cool.

Games Without Traits: Part 1

2007-02-18T22:03:00.000-05:00

What was going to be a single post is turning into a series. I discovered I have a lot to say.

Ninety-five percent of all published roleplaying texts and, probably, eighty percent of all roleplaying groups presuppose an artificial divide between the rules of the game and the content of play. Not everything that happens in play is considered to have "weight" when it comes to resolution systems, the mechanical core of ninety-nine percent of all published games. Instead characters, events, situations, locations, items, and the like are distilled into lists of descriptors, measurements, resources, and the like. It doesn't matter, mechanically speaking, if a given character has a competitive relationship with her sister if that is not somehow embodied in a Trait of some kind (though, occasionally, Traits are improvised on the spot).

The storytelling movement in roleplaying, to which the indie roleplaying movement is closely connected, tries to make heretofore mechanically inconsequential details more important by turning them into Traits. In Vampire, characters have a Humanity score that measures how well they are able to maintain their composure and morals despite being blood-sucking monsters. Games like Sorcerer, Riddle of Steel, My Life With Master, Dogs in the Vineyard, Breaking the Ice, Polaris, and Shadow of Yesterday to name just a few, are clearly part of this tradition, turning things like "Attraction," "Self-Loathing," "Light," "I Will Rule This Land," and "My Daddy Used To Whup Me Good" into Traits.

Games that turn really interesting and unusual things into traits are sweet. My last post talked about different ways to represent traits in play and many of those representation methods arose, I suspect, from trying to represent things that are sometimes awkward to contain in a description, a single word, a number, or a die roll. Having many different ways to represent Traits and being ever more creative with Traits, picking fascinating and non-obvious things to give mechanical weight to, enables us to explore a nearly infinite range of potential play content.

However, in other ways, thinking of game content in terms of Traits has the potential to limit roleplaying's development. Roleplaying groups develop rich symbolic languages in the course of building communities of practice, and the nuances and depth of these languages is not always reflected in Traits. My own dissatisfaction with the focus on conflict or task resolution in most game design discussions may really be a dissatisfaction with Traits. After all, why do we describe game entities in terms of Traits?

1. To summarize things to make them easier to remember (like taking notes).
2. To enable things to be processed or compared in traditional resolution systems.

I tend to think that [1] can be accomplished in plenty of other ways, without requiring Traits. But [2] is a big deal. Traits are in bed, effectively, with traditional resolution systems, which in turn trace their roots back to wargaming. Now resolution can do a lot. I'm not trying to suggest otherwise. As Shreyas just commented to me, "It allows you to do a lot of neat stuff: compartmentalize things, manipulate them abstractly, etc." But, like Traits, it's not the be-all and end-all of roleplaying and, in the next post, I'll talk about a few alternatives.

Representing Traits

2007-02-17T14:55:00.000-05:00

One of the lessons of Vincent's lego mech game Mechaton (borrowed from the miniatures games tradition) is that visual representations of character traits are awesome. In Mechaton, the lego "attachments" that you have clipped onto your mech tell you what the mech's abilities are. When the mech loses those attachments, by having them blown off, the mech loses those abilities.

Shreyas and I were recently discussing a game concept where you would draw a picture of your character and that would serve as a character sheet. This embroidered belt represents the character's relationship with his mother, who wove it for him. If the relationship starts being in trouble, maybe you'd alter the picture to show it fraying. Or maybe the character would stop wearing the belt or start wearing a special buckle on it, given to him by a rival for his mother's affections. Meg Baker's 1001 Nights hinted at going in this direction, with its focus on dress, but then used it mainly as color.

Going from there, imagine a game of Dogs in the Vineyard for which each player has prepared their own coat, which serves as their character sheet. This patch on my elbow is "Never Back Down 2d6." This frayed edge across the bottom is "Remember What Happened at Three Rivers 3d4." That's a larp trick.

Likewise, imagine a character represented as a poem, described line by line in a series of images, or maybe with each important trait separated by a comma or colon. For example, say the characters find themselves in Hell, which is represented by these lines from Milton:

A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,
As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames
No light; but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all, but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed.

If they are to triumph over the horrors of hell, they must surpass it's various qualities: the furnace, engulfing visible darkness, the sights of woe and regions of sorrow, torture without end, the fiery deluge, etc. This kind of thing would work equally well with prose passages, of course. The literary approach to trait representation is implied by Hero Quest and Weapons of the Gods, but taken in other directions.

Shreyas, in his various Torchbearer drafts, experiments with using props to depict traits that are passed around between the players, representing (in part) shifting things like relationships or leadership or the like. If a lit candle represents my character's trust or love, I hand that candle to another player, and they blow it out, the symbolic meaning of what just happened should be pretty clear, even without saying anything.

Mridangam uses gestures as a way of negotiating resolution, but there's no reason that body language couldn't representing static or, better yet, changing traits. Holding up different numbers of fingers on each hand, sitting or standing in a particular fashion, orienting yourself relative to objects or other players in the room, using mudras or other hand gestures, making certain facial expressions (though those might be a bit trickier to implement).

Likewise, the kinds of diagrams that I've played with in the Avatar game and the Exalted Hack (inspired by Shreyas' work on Ninegun Choir) work similarly, though, in that case, you're positioning board-game-like pieces on a diagram in order to represent the current state of your character or another aspect of the game. All sorts of board game symbology works here: you can move pieces around in a line, you can jump pieces, you can knock pieces over, you can flick pieces with your finger, you can have pieces move in particular patterns, you can have different shapes and colors of pieces, you can do any number of things with the board itself, etc.

Any other major ones I missed?

It's interesting, coming to the end here, to see how many games by Shreyas or myself are related to these kinds of ideas (mostly unfinished games, but whatever). I guess that if you were to try to speak of "play/design schools" among indie game designers, looking for alternative representation methods (alternative symbology, really) is one area of game design that we've tried to develop in recent years. I imagine we're not going to stop any time soon.

(Once I get a chance, I want to write another post about "traitless" games, kind of a pet project of mine, as in Heavenly Kingdoms, Kazekami Kyoko Kills Kublai Khan, Waiting/Tea, and the Game for Josh's Girlfriend.)

Peacock Feathers

2007-02-14T14:09:00.000-05:00

Ashi and I were discussing Kazekami Kyoko Kills Kublai Khan and the new Game for Josh's Girlfriend (which really needs a better title). We talked about how these games were basically, as Ashi put them, "peacock feathers." That is, like poetry written for fair maidens in times past or the witty banter between Shakespearean lovers, one major point of the games (like many two player games, including Emily Care Boss' Breaking the Ice) is to give both players an opportunity to demonstrate that they are articulate, creative, fun, and sexy. It's sort of flirting ritual encapsulated in a game. Even when you're not playing the game with someone you wouldn't mind seducing, some of that intimacy and sexual tension is there, which is part of what makes it exciting.

As Ashi said:

...that doesn't make it a bad structure for a game. It actually could make it an especially good structure for a game, because there's a lot of very familiar flagging and subtextual communication. This could be used especially well as a springboard to less familiar and obvious forms, which involve a greater degree of trust and understanding between participants.Righto. Also, it reminds me very much of email conversations I've had near the beginning of relationships, where both members of a new couple put on exaggerated personae and waxed as eloquently and ridiculously as possible at each other. Along the lines of:

Greetings from the Lord Hitherston Millancipus, I regret to inform you that the timing of tomorrow night's meeting will be inconvenient for His Lordship. Mayhaps the Fair Lady would acquiesce to delay their gathering until the morrow, for tea?Now, Kazekami Kyoko doesn't really succeed fully at embracing this goal, partially due to the way I approached the subject matter. Ashi pointed out that Kublai's wives are not characters so much as scenery. They are the faceless target of Kyoko and Kublai's mutual lust, though Kyoko necessarily triumphs in the end. So what may first seem like a rather feminist premise (Kyoko seduces all of Kublai's wives and kills him while tormenting him with the lurid details) is really a very masculine fantasy of being cuckolded and utterly dominated by a woman. Kyoko is also a very masculine figure, both in her persona and the way in which she treats Kublai's wives (as scenery and tools for her revenge). There's certainly room for this to be adjusted or just improved upon by individual players in the course of play. But there are definitely some issues there. Still the game is explicitly about seduction, which may help to bring down some of the barriers people put up to prevent intimacy from developing.

The issues surrounding the Game for Josh's Girlfriend are rather different. I told Ashi that it was weird to write rules that are just structure for things people should already know how to do, but that I supposed I was targetting the game at people who come from a strict roleplaying background and need to relearn how to just play in a freeform way. Ashi thought that having that structure was okay, saying:

communicative implicatures

Her latter concern there might be accurate. When I write letters to people I care about, especially if I'm persuing a potential relationship with them, I tend to be overly dilligent in responding to every point of every letter they send me. I guess I assumed this was fairly common, but I may be way off the mark here. Perhaps it would be better to allow more freedom in choosing how to respond, to better reflect the multiplicity of letter writing styles out there. If the letter structure is supposed to feel natural, basing it on my own letter writing tendencies may not be the best idea.

In any case, my thoughts on this continue to develop, so comments and suggestions are welcome.

Shreyas Runs the Avatar Game

2007-02-13T20:52:00.000-05:00

Shreyas is running a version of my Avatar: The Last Airbender game on IRC right now.

UPDATE: Oh, just go read the full log he posted here.

Draft: Game for Josh's Girlfriend

2007-02-12T08:55:00.000-05:00

This is what I jotted down for Josh in the 20 minutes before I fell asleep last night. I don't really have a title for it yet, but I'm thinking about While You're Far Away or maybe Islands in the Stream.

This is a game for two players.

The players assume the roles of two characters who have a close relationship with each other. They could be lovers or siblings or a parent/child or old friends or childhood sweethearts or whatever. The nature of the relationship is left up to the players.

The characters are separated for a period of time and are regularly writing letters to each other to maintain contact. This is also open to interpretation by the players. Perhaps they are new lovers separated for 24 hours and are obsessively writing email after email to each other. Perhaps one character's parent is off fighting in the war and may not be home for years (if at all).

In any case, play is structured paragraphically, which is to say: each paragraph in a letter is an attempt to do three things...

1) Respond to a paragraph written by the other player.
2) Introduce new information about your current situation.
3) Elicit a response from the other player by attempting to relate your current situation to their experiences and feelings.

It is my hope that, in taking on this structure, the letters will seem to flow pretty naturally, since these three things are common elements in letter writing and communication generally, and especially when it comes to writing to loved ones who are far away.

For example, a paragraph might read:

I regret to hear that Old Sadie has finally passed on. I swear I thought that dog would outlive all of us. They keep us so busy out here, but I did take a minute to walk off by myself and think of that little puppy I brought home to you seven years ago and I'm not ashamed to admit that it brought a tear to my eye. I'm sorry I won't be there to help you bury her, but you should see if one of the neighbors won't come over to lend a hand and maybe a shoulder to cry on, since I know how much you loved Sadie.So, following our structure guidelines, this breaks down into:

1) Responding to the news that the dog, Sadie, has died.
2) Describing what the character did upon receiving the news.
3) Offering sympathy and suggestions on how to handle things.

Now, generally speaking, each letter is going to be composed of multiple paragraphs. There's no set guidelines for how many paragraphs each letter should have, and you can respond using a larger or smaller number of paragraphs than the letter you received, either by not responding to certain topics, by combining multiple responses into a single paragraph, or by introducing multiple new subjects inspired by a single paragraph or scrap of information sent your way.

For some players, it may be important to remember that anything written in the letters is considered to be true, or at least an honest reporting of events from the letter writer's point of view. Now, there is the possibility that the letter writers may be fabricating events or trying to hide their true feelings about something or making up more pleasant events to cover up embarrassing or disturbing things. For example, a parent off in the war may only report pleasant experiences to their child.

So I'm thinking about coming up with guidelines for those ulterior motives and also a set of alternate types of responses, similar to the alternate responses in Kazekami Kyoko Kills Kublai Khan. Perhaps writers can disagree with or suggest alternate interpretations of the information that is put forward. But anyway, there's the basic core of the game.

Game for Josh's Girlfriend

2007-02-11T23:37:00.000-05:00

Morristown madman Josh Kashinsky wants to play Kazekami Kyoko Kills Kublai Khan with his new girlfriend, but she is understandably a bit shy about all the seduction and implied lesbian sex (though, upon hearing of this, Mo and Brand asked me to put more sex into it...). So I'm going to write a variation on KKKKK in less than a week, using the same core concept but a different situation and setting.

The dirty secret of KKKKK is that it's just James Wallis' The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen, in which player/characters brag about their impressive feats. The only difference is that the game is structured as a dialogue instead of a monologue. The basic structure is:

A: I did X! Aren't I awesome?
B: Verily! But what about Y?
A: I accomplished Y in this fashion! What do you think of that?
B: Impressive! And Z?

The line-by-line breakdown of the game is somewhat impractical for the kind of play that Josh is imagining taking place over email. KKKKK is really intended for chat. So I'm thinking about stealing from that other New Style game, De Profundis, and making it a game about structured letter writing. Perhaps each paragraph could effectively be a separate declaration or response, indicated by the topic sentence, and then the responder would reply in kind. And then you could use the number of paragraphs per email as a kind of dial, turning the level of complexity and time commitment of the game up and down depending on the experience you were going for.

Anyway, those are my initial thoughts. I've got Letters from Iwo Jima on my brain after seeing it recently, but I think war letters are not quite the tone I want. We'll see what pops into my brain this week.

The Power of Player-Generated Content

2007-02-09T15:41:00.000-05:00

Shreyas: all these different anthropological approaches are all dancing around a point that i can't put my finger on, but it might simply be 'there isn't an easy way to talk about the complexity of human culture'

Jonathan: yeah, maybe that's it; i think my point is that player-generated content is better because it can be more complex; content that fits in a book is, by necessity, simpler

Shreyas: mhm

Jonathan: therefore, i'm suspicious of it

Shreyas: that is really excellent and important to say i think; i was just saying a similar thing at jiffycon: i'm wary of packaged creativity because it makes your brain stop

Jonathan: right, and also you accept it without questioning it

Shreyas: all of us react this way even when we know it happens

Jonathan: like racial bonuses

Shreyas: and it's just not fun

Jonathan: because it's part of the game

Shreyas: yes

Doing Religion Better

2007-02-09T12:20:00.000-05:00

There's a terrific thread on Story Games about doing religion better in RPGs. I'm still not sure what Troy is really looking for, but we're covering a lot of really interesting territory nonetheless.

Good Times in Boston

2007-02-08T00:59:00.000-05:00

This week at StoryGames Boston, we had a surprise visit from Luke Crane, Jared Sorensen, and one of their friends, Ben Lehman and his friend Alexis finally dropped by, we had this guy David randomly show up, and all in all things went awesomely well.

Nathan is running perhaps the biggest Mountain Witch game ever, for seven people: me, Eben, Richard, Eric, Ben, Alexis, and David. It went amazingly well, especially considering the number of samurai running around. All of us are really excited for the next session.

Dev ran Mo's Crime and Punishment for the rest of the folks, but I suspect that, especially thanks to Jared and Luke, that they totally broke her game in all sorts of bad ways. I think Luke's cop got thrown out of a second story window.

Anyway, good times. I love my crew.

I hope Pandemonium Books manages to stay around despite their insane financial situation because, honestly, they're the best store in town and would make a great home for the indie scene were quickly growing here.

Exalted Hack: Circles 3

2007-02-07T16:25:00.000-05:00

In the comments, Shreyas said:

"...set up scenes for which the choices other players have made for their character are important..."

Which then led to the following important conversation:

ME: i don't think i understand your comment
SHREYAS: i am not sure that i do too, anymore; i think it might have been like; 'uh what why are you forcing mattering on me'; 'i am the boss of the importance of my decisions'
ME: hmm; i saw it more as "taking somebody else's flags and making them happen"; or sort of dividing up antagonism
SHREYAS: that is another angle on it; a lot of my thinking on games lately has been coloured by SI [Sol Invictus, the Exalted game in which he plays Birds-of-Trinity]; and i think um in that game; it would be v. weird for some entity to enslave my character's mind in order for me to have a subplot about freedom from that; even though we all know that my character is about freedom from bondage and freedom from society and physics; does this make sense
ME: um, yeah; where did mind slavery enter into this conversation?
SHREYAS: okay, uh; freedom = flag; slavery = opposition to freedom
ME: yeah, but that's not creating a scene in which your character can shine; that's creating a scene that'll suck; surely people know the difference? like, if I was creating such a scene, i might have a sorceror attempt to mind-control Birds or something, but the conflict would be about stopping that from happening; not about "ooo, Birds is mind-controlled"
SHREYAS: yeah, sure
ME: anyway, how do you folks handle scene framing?
SHREYAS: sorceror tries to mind-control me... that like sounds like it would hit my flaggish thing; but it's weird; um; we have this thing; where basically; there is an elaborate ongoing plot; the guy that runs the game asks us, hey what are you doing next; and we have scenes about that; also; when we don't need to participate in this plot; sometimes we just frame scenes for each other; like when birds realised that basically all the people in the world she might care about excepf five of them; are dead forever and their souls were eaten; i was like; oh, i need to have a scene with lucent where i tell him i am already dead and we need to have a funeral for all of us
ME: that's cool; does the GM provide all the antagonism? unless you guys go look for trouble?
SHREYAS: i'm not sure in what sense of antagonism you are talking
ME: or do you do things like, "so Birds gets caught doing X?"
SHREYAS:he does handle all the characters that are not us
but we fight amongst ourselves
ME: i'm talking about fighting, mostly
SHREYAS: i think we have done like "hey let's do a scene where we get caught doing x"; except not anymore simply as a consequence of being so good at whatever we do
ME: yeah, so i guess i'm trying to make this work without a GM
SHREYAS: so when we get caught it is a choice and a statement made by the characters
ME: or maybe a PTA style GM in the player playing the center
SHREYAS: rather than like, something out of their hands; mhmmmm
ME: so you don't like the idea of players creating interesting situations for each other? you think people are likely to read each other wrong?
SHREYAS: i don't dislike it; i just think that it falls in face stab land; that's not a value judgement
ME: hmm; i'm not so sure; i do think forcing people to make choices is part of the face-stab thing; but like, "Birds is bad in polite company, let's have her invited to a ball and see what happens"; that doesn't seem face-stabby; it seems more, exploratory or something
SHREYAS: hmm; yeah; maybe i am just drawing the line differently; it's not super important, i'm just trying to feel this out
ME: i think the key might be not having a specific conflict in mind, but a situation ripe for conflict in which the player and character can choose where the conflict is or if there even is one; like: character in an arranged marriage; character goes to visit relatives they barely know; character slumming among the locals; character meets someone they knew in the First Age
SHREYAS: mhm; i'm thinking about, how do you differentiate inflicting conflict from offering conflict; which is what you're up to right
ME: i think so, yeah; i think i want to avoid the "so what do you do now" thing
SHREYAS: and it seems like, that's going to be something you need to talk about in detail
ME: i want to find a balance between players creating situations for themselves and creating situations for the other players
SHREYAS: because like, in the specific case of birds - the way the social contract of that game works, if someone offers a conflict, you are pretty much obliged to engage it
ME: like the difference between a player framing a scene in PTA and the Producer framing a scene; both of those are important, i think
SHREYAS: so it's inflicting no matter what the intent is behind the move
ME: well, you have to accept some aspects of the situation
but if there's no specific conflict aimed your way; you're not obligated to accept it; like, sure, you get invited to the ball; but then you concoct some elaborate scheme to get out of it; that would be okay
SHREYAS: sure; but you observed how in that case; you selected a conflict out of some set of hypothetical conflicts
ME: right, the conflict you chose is "getting out of this obligation"
when the conflict could have been "finding something to wear" or a million other things
SHREYAS: so what the obligation is is 'engage in a conflict'; with varying degrees of decision about what the conflict is depending on the descriptive context
ME: it's more "react to this situation in a way that is expressive (of your character) and entertaining (to everyone else)"; there's not necessarily a conflict there; i mean, those are two of the main points of play, right? expression and entertainment?
SHREYAS: sure

Second Person

2007-02-06T14:05:00.000-05:00

It's a magical world when you can buy a reprint of James Wallis' Baron Munchausen in the Harvard Bookstore. That is to say, thanks to Nathan's reminder, I picked up a copy of Second Person today.

I admit to being slightly disappointed that the book doesn't blow me away, though I haven't gotten a chance to delve thoroughly into it yet. It's neat to see references to the indie roleplaying movement in a print publication put out by MIT Press (and people outside of roleplaying ackowledging that we've been making narrative games longer than just about anyone in the electronic games world) but, overall, the contents do not seem super exciting.

Rebecca Borgstrom's article is sweet. Paul Czege has a short one-pager on developing My Life With Master. There are a few others that look interesting. In addition to Munchausen, it reprints John Tynes Puppetland and Greg Costikyan's Bestial Acts, which are bizarre choices if they're trying to be representative of roleplaying. It's like starting a course on opera with Einstein on the Beach. The layout of the book is also rather awkward in a few places.

All of which is to say, I was struck by how favorably Push compares to Second Person, which I wasn't expecting at all. I was expecting to lament over how my poor indie journal could never compare with the power of MIT Press and the hardcore list of contributors that they had recruited. But, in reality, when I look at the list of people working on Push 2, I think we're pretty strong indeed.

Not that I'm going to get MIT to publish Push 2 or anything. And I don't know if I should be happy that my journal represents some of the best work in this field. That doesn't say a lot for the field in general, maybe. But I don't think it's a stretch to say that, in my opinion, Push 2 is going to be better than Second Person, at least when it comes to talking about roleplaying and what's going on in our field, community, hobby, etc. Maybe Second Person has different goals in mind, which is cool, and maybe I'm talking out of my ass because I haven't had a chance to read through the book yet, but that's my initial impression.

So, uh, yay for us, I guess.

Exalted Hack: Circles 2

2007-02-05T00:21:00.000-05:00

Before I wrote the previous post on Circles, I had a pretty decent chat with Ben Lehman about Polaris' approach to the distribution of NPCs and player responsibilities. I think the hack should be somewhat similar, but I didn't quite nail it yet in the last post. Inter-player antagonism is what's going to make the game really work, so here's what I was thinking about today...

Each orientation is associated with a particular virtue:

Center: Compassion
East: Conviction
South: Valor
West: Temperance
North: Willpower

It is the duty of a player, in framing and taking the lead in the scenes for which they are responsible, to challenge the other characters when it comes to their associated virtue. For example, a Center gives others the opportunity to demonstrate their compassion or heartlessness. And, like in a Dogs in the Vineyard game, doesn't let them get away with an easy answer. "So in situation X you did Y? Well, what about situation Z?"

This is made more interesting because each Exalt will have a Virtue Flaw, a virtue with which they are obsessed and, occasionally, over-zealous to the point of losing it and hitting Limit Break. Each player should DEFINITELY be aware of which characters have Flaws in the virtue for which they are responsible. If I'm playing a Center, I take particular interest in the characters which have Compassion Flaws and make sure to push them especially hard.

Still, I like this, but I'm slightly dubious about the language I'm using to describe it. "Push them especially hard" makes it sound like crazy Yang face-stabbing and that's not quite what I mean. I mean, "set up scenes for which the choices other players have made for their character are important," which is really much more cooperative and collaborative as the description above makes it sound. After all, if a player chose a particular Virtue for their Flaw, they are likely to want to demonstrate that Flaw.

Anyway, this is still developing, but I like where it's heading.

Exalted Hack: Circles

2007-02-03T10:48:00.000-05:00

When the gods created the Exalted, they pulled handfuls of simmering essence from their own bodies. The essence that dripped off each finger became a single Exalt and the five made from the same handful of essence became linked by fate and destiny, united by bonds of love and hate, to achieve greatness and misery as one. They become, in other words, a Circle.

However, during the First Age, the various types of Exalted intermixed, loved and hated outside their Circle, and, though their own agency and the lingering effects of the Wyld, manipulated Fate. Circles were broken and reformed, often with different members, often combining Solars with Lunars or Sidereals. In modern times, when the Dragon-Blooded are ever so numerous and the Abyssals have risen from the Underworld, sometimes one's fate is inextricably mixed with someone stranger still. There have even been rumors of Circles containing Dragon Kings, Fair Folk, Malfean agents, and other abominations, but we will not speak further of such things.

It does seem to hold true that Circles generally follow the patterns set forth by the gods in the dawn of time, based on the five cardinal directions, the five poles of the world, the five maidens, the five dragons, the five castes that govern every type of Exalted: East, South, West, North, and Center. There have indeed been Circles composed entirely of, say, Night Caste Solars. However, in those cases, the Exalts still clearly fall into the Pattern of Five Directions, that is to say, each Exalt takes a role in the group as if they were a Dawn, Eclipse, etc (despite remaining a member of their actual Caste).

When beginning a game, each player chooses to represent a unique orientation in the Circle. You can have two Night Caste Solars (or all Night Caste Solars). But you cannot have two Easts. Now, naturally, each Castes is specifically designed and better suited for a particular orientation. This is their natural orientation, the one intended by the gods before the Exalted took their fate into their own hands.

The characteristics of each orientation are described below, along with a list of Castes naturally oriented to that direction.

East

Eastern Exalted are subtle, fickle, hidden, and changing. More than anyone else, the embody the Yin forces of the world. Within a Circle, they are tasked with challenging the rest to be wary, to remain paranoid about the dangers that may be lurking around them.

*Solar*	*Terrestrial*	*Lunar*	*Abyssal*	*Sidereal*
Night	Water	Changing (Waning)	Day	Endings

South

Southern Exalted are bold, resolute, loud, and boisterous. More than anyone else, they embody the Yang forces of the world. Within a Circle, they are tasked with challenging the rest to be headstrong, daring any feat that might bring them success or honor, to not let fear rule their lives.

*Solar*	*Terrestrial*	*Lunar*	*Abyssal*	*Sidereal*
Dawn	Fire	Full Moon	Dusk	Battles

West

Western Exalted are thoughtful, watchful, inquiring, and patient. They embody righteousness, even if it is sometimes self-righteousness. Within a Circle, they are tasked with challenging the rest to possess a purity of purpose and a relentless desire to see things through to the end, wherever that may lead.

*Solar*	*Terrestrial*	*Lunar*	*Abyssal*	*Sidereal*
Zenith	Wood	Changing (Waxing)	Midnight	Serenity

North

Northern Exalted are sorcerers, shamans, healers, and witches. They are in touch with the mystic arts that others shun, fear, or covet in vain. Within a Circle, they are tasked with challenging the rest to know the ways of power, to not trifle with things they don't understand, but also to seize what is rightfully theirs.

*Solar*	*Terrestrial*	*Lunar*	*Abyssal*	*Sidereal*
Twilight	Air	No Moon	Daybreak	Secrets

Center

Centered Exalted are those who dwell in-between, those who are never at home in a place, those that are always traveling. They are the strands by which the world is bound together. Within a Circle, they are tasked with challenging the rest to be mindful of the connections between things, how they can be used for one's purposes, and how ignorance of them can lead to unforeseen disaster.

*Solar*	*Terrestrial*	*Lunar*	*Abyssal*	*Sidereal*
Eclipse	Earth	Changing (Half)	Moonshadow	Journeys

A Primer for Marr'd

2007-02-02T12:48:00.000-05:00

I was in the mood to write a ridiculous power metal anthem. So I thought, "What should I write the song about?" The answer was, obviously enough, Dictionary of Mu, Judd Karlman's power metal anthem in book form. I've just started, but here's the first verse:

A Primer for Marr'd

A is for Atlantis,
       crystaline treasures, indolent pleasures, a kiss
B is for Battlehymn, O little town,
       the damsel messiah, the serpent unbound
C is for Cydonia, skygazing,
       when the stars darken they're all coming home
and D is for Mu's Dictionary, the sign of the times...

Dead and Dreaming: The Beginning

2007-01-29T13:25:00.000-05:00

The storyteller representing the People of Dreams begins:

"Once there was a royal maiden, a princess of the great city Njaaluwe-in-Dreams. When she was a child, her dreams were playful phantasms, calliopes of sound, color, taste, and feeling. As a beautiful young woman, she was:

(choose one)

A. the Drifting Carnival of New Joys, which swept through the streets of the capitol like a flood in the rainy season, carrying off unsuspecting bystanders in a whirl of awkward adolescent pleasures.

B. the stilt-legged dream-beast Monolith, on whose multi-shouldered back were carried the raven-winged Ever-Restless Marauders, sky pirates of the city's tallest towers.

C. [a sizable, impressive, fanciful thing of the storyteller's choosing].

The princess was pledged to marry one of the most noble Keepers Of The Pattern, thus ensuring a continued relationship between Njaaluwe and the southern reaches. However...

There was also a humble craftsman, a dreamer of:

(choose one)

A. shoes such that your feet would rejoice to wear them.
B. cats, the most luxurious and graceful in the city.
C. candies, each more wonderous than the last.
D. [an artisinal object of the storyteller's choice].

[Describe his wares.]

And so it came to pass that the craftsman and the princess cultivated a secret love and thought never to be seperated, one from another. They conducted the tryst of the age amidst Njaaluwe's wildest revelers, the masquers being much too preoccupied with each other to object, and avoided the displeasure of the city's most powerful dreamers.

But then the princess and the craftsman began to dream of a child, full of laughter and song, one that represented the best and worst of each of them. They did not speak of this hidden dream but each one treasured the concept in their hearts and so the child was concieved, the child that would bring woe them both."

And here play begins in earnest.

Long Live the King

2007-01-25T17:50:00.000-05:00

We played White Wolf's new strategy-larp-in-a-box, Long Live the King, at StoryGames Boston last night. I give it a fairly thorough review here.

Comments!

2007-01-23T18:30:00.000-05:00

Hey, guess what?

Blogger now has comment feeds! Woohoo!

Telling Stories, Not Roleplaying

2007-01-22T15:14:00.000-05:00

When you tell the story of Red Ridinghood to, say, a classroom of young children, you have a fair amount of freedom to improvize the details but are constrained by storytelling traditions. There are a few crucial details:

- The girl protagonist wears a red riding hood
- Red is visiting grandma
- She meets a wolf
- She tells the wolf where grandma lives
- The wolf arrives before Red and eats grandma
- Red arrives
- "Oh what big eyes you have, etc."
- Some resolution

Aside from that, there are many potentially important things that can be determined. Why does Red wear that hood? How did she come by it? Where does grandma live? Didn't anyone tell her not to talk to strange wolves? How does the wolf get the info from Red? How does he get there before she does? Why doesn't Red see through the wolf's disguise? What about that thing with the woodsman and the part about filling the wolf's belly full of rocks? Is that appropriate for young kids? Maybe even some of the important points above can be glossed over or ignored. If the story is already well known, sometimes you can make it more interesting by changing major aspects of it to make it new and exciting.

In any case, one of the opportunities and challenges of my recent approach to design is making games that are more like telling stories than roleplaying. When you tell stories, you already know the major incidents and characters that make up your narrative, even if your audience doesn't. If I'm telling you about some guy that I saw trip over his own shoelaces and fall down a flight of stairs, you probably don't "know the story," but I certainly do. Still, that same story would be told differently by different storytellers and at different moments in time. What if I was the one who fell down the stairs? How would that affect the story? What if it was something that happened 5, 10, 25, 100, or 1000 years ago? How does that affect how the story is told?

I've been trying to bridge the differences between roleplaying and storytelling. I want to enable people to collaboratively tell stories together as if they were already familiar with what's going to happen, at least in a general sense. I think surprise at the unknown, what Vincent talks about as the core of roleplaying, is neat. But I don't think it's central to the kinds of games I'm interested in designing.

[P.S. I do think surprise is an important aspect of storytelling, but it's surprise at the details and how things come together, not at the major plot points. An act of storytelling, like a roleplaying session, is an instantiation of a larger tradition. Like Xu Wei says, "it's new for every moment," even if it's a story you've heard a hundred times.]

My current struggle is in building a scene flowchart to outline one of the Four Nations stories. It's pretty difficult but also really exciting. I can't wait to show it to you.

Four Nations: Dead and Dreaming

2007-01-19T17:28:00.000-05:00

Shreyas let me "think at him" about the mini-game project that erupted out of Red Star White Sun and, unlike the other games described here recently, will actually be finished. Soon. I promise.

me: i'm still uncertain about this mini game i'm hoping to draft out this weekend
Shreyas: yeah
me: even whether i should try to make it about the 4N or just have it be about the Chinese civil war or the Lake Associations I just posted about
Shreyas: tell me about it
me: let me get some thoughts together
Shreyas: sure
me: so i have several problems
Shreyas: mhm
me: the first one is that i don't know how ambitious to be with this mini-game; i think the answer is "not very" but i'm not sure what that means; for example, if you've looked at my Lake Association post, the premise includes the fact that one landscape (map) can look very differently to two different factions
Shreyas: yeah
me: which is something that 4N should be ALL OVER;,but I don't know if I want to approach that yet; since my main task is showing this Key-map structure of narrative; so that's problem #1
Shreyas: i want to say, like, waiting/tea has a good scale, in that it recaps two episodes and you play out a third
me: right, sure
Shreyas: i think if you can get the minigame to play out as about two episodes; then that would work
me: right; i was thinking about the other challanges of 4N too; one of the big ones is having a big cast with a limited number of players; and have a limited number of cast members in any given "story"; if we are going with the "batch of related tales" thing that Thomas proposed; so i was thinking that this mini-game would tell 3 related tales; telling the entire story of one character and bits and pieces of other characters stories
Shreyas: that would be interesting to see
me: which, if we wanted to, could be expanded to tell all of the other characters' stories too, but that would be a later development; and i was thinking that the tales could be told in any order; both in the sense that some parts could be flashbacks, like in the Odyssey; or any epic fiction, really; but also that the events within them did not happen in any fixed moment in time
Shreyas: i'm not like a hundred percent behind the no fixed time thing, but i think it has some cool possibilities; it really opens up a lot of opportunities for cool structure things
me: okay, so actual 4N premise... I think it's called "The Dead and Dreaming" after a line from the Counting Crows; and because those are the two peoples I know the most about
Shreyas: okay
me: the characters include a pair of unrequited lovers and a ghost-hunting dead monk; i think one of the lovers dies in a tragic accident, so they can never be together; but sticks around as a ghost, because he's in denial
Shreyas: and this lover is like clinging on to love
me: and the monk must try to convince him to leave this world and return to the land of the dead
Shreyas: even though the dead are not allowed
me: right
Shreyas: cool
me: so there are neat possibilities here; 1) will the girl committ suicide to be with her love? 2) will the ghost kill her? 3) maybe someone arranged his death, which might not have been an accident?
Shreyas: and what will the monk do with all this
me: right
Shreyas: right
me: i also think those alive are dreamers
Shreyas: sounds cool
me: so their death removes things from the world; maybe important things; and they can't see dreams anymore when they're dead; i also think one of the stories takes place in the past of the dead monk, when he was alive or right after he died, talking about someone he had to leave behind; so that story comments on the other two
Shreyas: that's a sweet detail
me: so we have like 1) Lovers Alive and Happy Together with Hints of Tragedy All Around, 2) One Lover is Dead and WHAT HAPPENS with the Monk, 3) Monk's Past; and you can tell those three in any order you like
Shreyas: nod; and they'll make sense in basically any order and each can comment on the others
me: sure, which is what i think we should strive for
Shreyas: agreed; that effect is the best part of 1001 nights
me: i think i need to fill in the landscape a bit; with the dreams of the lovers; but i think those need to be at least partially player-determined; so we'll see; it would be easy to be like "the male lover's dream is a location"...

Lake Associations

2007-01-19T16:21:00.000-05:00

History is cooler than fiction because there's no way people could make this shit up. This is a mini-game waiting to happen:

"Massive flooding of the Yellow River in 1851 caused two lakes on the Jiangsu-Shandong border to overflow, submerging all the surrounding land on the western shores of the two lakes. The inhabitants of the area (Pei and Tongshan counties in northwest Jiangsu) fled en masse to escape the calamity.

"Four years later the Yellow River again burst its dikes, this time inflicting its greatest damage a few miles north of the previous flood. Inhabitants of the southern Shandong area were hardest hit, and disaster victims rushed down across the border by the hundreds of thousands to seek refuge in neighboring Jiangsu. There they found the abandoned lands that had been inundated in 1851, but which by now had partially dried into fertile silted terrain. The newcomers from Shandong erected shacks and industriously set about cultivated the unoccupied lands. Their hard work paid off and soon the immigrants were enjoying bountiful harvests. This prosperity was reflected in the organization of twelve defense leagues, called lake associations [hutuan], to protect their newfound wealth. With official approval, the settlers constructed forts and stockpiled weapons to safeguard their livelihood against outside intrusion. The immigrants successfully fought off waves of rebel incursions and remained happily settled in their new homes for nearly a decade.

"At this point, however, former inhabitants of the region who had fled the 1851 floods began to reappear on the scene. Seeing that their now fertile lands had been claimed by others, the returned natives filed indignant complaints with the local authorities. When no official help was forthcoming, fighting erupted between the original occupants and the immigrant lake associations. The conflict escalated in late 1865 with an incursion of Nian rebels from Anhui, who found supporters among unruly elements in the hutuan. The area was on the verge of revolt, and order was restored only when government troops marched in to arrest and execute more than one thousand lake association members. Two hutuan found guilty of having harbored rebels were disbanded and their lands confiscated by the government and redistributed to the original owners."

-- Elizabeth J. Perry, "Predators and Protectors: Strategies of Peasant Survival" in Challanging the Mandate of Heaven: Social Protest and State Power in China (2002)

The Future Arrives Without You

2007-01-18T22:12:00.000-05:00

In the last year or so, Ron Edwards (co-founder of The Forge and all-around indie game publishing icon) has begun, on occasion, getting up on a soapbox and reminding all us whipper-snappers that he did a lot of this stuff first. Indie roleplaying has become a multi-limbed octopus spreading uncontrolled far beyond the influence of Ron and his games. Many people continue to play and praise Sorcerer and Trollbabe, but I think it's fair to say that Ron no longer represents the "cutting edge" of indie game design, whether you define that as the area of design where all the excitement currently rages or the area exploring new new ways of doing new new things. His most recent game, It Was A Mutual Decision, is pretty neat (as long as you like were-rats), but not especially groundbreaking in the way some of his previous games were. There's a good chance that Ron, with his steel-trap mind, will one day rock the boat again, but I suspect that it's more likely to be in terms of the social or commercial make-up of roleplaying, rather than when it comes to play or design. He could prove me wrong, though.

In any case, Ron is constantly on my mind these days when I see threads like this one or that one. The future I imagined for roleplaying is arriving. And, in many ways, it is arriving without me having done that much to help it along. I've written a few short games, true, and shared my thoughts with people (though I never really felt like that many people were interested), but my desire to drop a bomb on roleplaying, to produce a stunning game that changed the way people thought about the medium, never materialized in reality. Some of that is simply the naivety of youth that I need to give up, wanting to change the world and all that. And some of it is an adolescent desire for attention and to be valued and respected. And some of it is frustration that I have not written a minor opus. My Sorcerer, my My Life, my Witch, Dogs, Roach, or Carry has not been written yet.

But I'm beginning to come to grips with the idea that the future always arrives without you. No one can make the future happen. It just happens. You are a participant in it, not its agent. And I do feel like a participant or even more than that, a flag-bearer. I'm not leading the change necessarily, but I try to embody the cause. Push is a way to chronicle the transformation of this hobby as it diversifies and combines with related media. My short games mark out areas of design and play as they are uncovered. And, eventually, more extensively developed games (though not necessarily longer ones) may stake out a claim within these exciting new lands that we've uncovered.

As a matter of fact, this is a better way to go about this that building a city on a hill, a light amid the darkness. The games that I have found to be truly visionary -- Continuum, Nobilis, Mridangam, Lexicon -- sometimes seem less accessible to folks without a more familiar context around them. Now, with all of us pushing out together, after having built a shared vocabulary by playing and working on a similar set of games, we will advance towards the future together, as a community. And you can't beat that with a stick.

Four Nations: Teleconference Summary

2007-01-14T16:15:00.000-05:00

Selene was traveling this week, but we started up the bimonthly Four Nations teleconferences again, to get this project back on track after several months of nothing happening. It was probably the most productive conversation we've ever had too, even with just Thomas and Shreyas. I think the months off gave us a chance to think independently about the project and which aspects we really care about.

Four general themes emerged:

1) We want Four Nations to have tricked out player interface. Shreyas compared it to what the Wii has done in video game interfaces. The actual things players do in game and the manner in which they do them should be intentionally constructed to efficiently accomplish the things we want to have happen in play.

2) We want to use props or other elements to create a visual representation of what has occurred, is occurring, and will occur in play. I compared it to Shadows Over Camelot, where the board is constantly adjusted to represent the developing situation. Passersby should be able to watch or glance at the game in progress and get a good sense of what has happened, what is happening, and what might happen soon.

3) We are committed to structuring play as a series of stories that can be told in an order chosen by the players, based on four booklets that map out how each player approaches the game. There is the possibility that maps or other components may be added as we build the interface described previously.

4) We are interested in exploring ways that the narrative and setting components of play can be given a pre-determined structure without forcing players down specific paths or to embrace content that doesn't excite them. One way is to give players a limited number of interesting choices at any given moment and have choices lead, in turn, to other interesting choices (instead of more open ended lists of options, like the loresheets in Weapons of the Gods).

We also spent some time worrying about components and whether this is going to be an real commercial project or limited series game (like untitled) or a hand-crafted game that we make a few copies of to play with our friends. But we decided that didn't really need to be determined right now, though we need to keep those different options in mind.

We also talked about the need to develop "proof of concept" for each of the components that we're interested in using in this project. We talked about the idea of writing a series of micro-games on the way to creating Four Nations, to develop pieces of the eventual puzzle and try ideas out before we settled on them.

As such, we each chose a project for the next couple weeks:

1) Thomas is going to work on a sketchy mock-up of one or more of the booklets that each player will use.

2) Shreyas is going to play with maps as one possible component of the interface and see what some different ways of using them might entail.

3) I'm going to try to develop a working example of the "narrative seed web" I was pondering for Red Star White Sun, either by finishing that micro-game or doing a similar one based on the Four Nations concept.

Woohoo!

GenCon is On

2007-01-08T18:39:00.000-05:00

Ron dropped the hammer. I couldn't be more excited. I was suggesting that we go all diaspora on GenCon and now it looks like we have to. Rock on!

No plans as of yet but lots of options. Possibilities:

1. Let the Forge/IPR booth sell Push and any other games. Don't get a seperate booth. Run my games, both as events and at "Games on Demand."

2. As an add-on to the first, allow Push contributors to sell copies of Push at their booths for a cut of the profits.

3. Organize a booth or some other crazy conglomerate with which to pimp our wares.

4. Some wacky, non-traditional plan that defies common sense but sounds like a lot of fun.

Push 2 Getting on Track

2007-01-03T22:19:00.000-05:00

The Push forums are starting to come alive with the planning of volume 2. If you've read some or all of the first volume, I'd love to get some feedback in this thread so we know how to keep getting better. And feel free to check out the rest of the forum too, to see what we're planning for the next time around.

Setting Contest 3: Logo & History

2006-12-26T10:51:00.000-05:00

I was thinking this morning that this kind of setting presentation provides a great opportunity to teach real history. We can have the Red Army conscripts join the Jiangxi Soviet under Mao and resist the military campaigns against them organized by Chiang Kaishek and the National Revolutionary Army. And basically run through the years immediately preceding the Long March, the Japanese invasion, and the Second United Front. That's pretty cool. Players could walk away with what amounts to a Wikipedia understanding of the First Chinese Civil War.

Setting Contest 3: Red Star, White Sun

2006-12-24T18:54:00.000-05:00

me: yo, can i dork out some ideas at you?
Shreyas: yeah sure
me: so I'm thinking about bailing on Gridiron Gods for now and writing the Chinese Civil War game for the setting contest
Shreyas: uh huh
me: because it'll be short and sweet and it'll continue the chain of Short Games About China that I've done for contests. because, like Heavenly Kingdoms, 5K, and Waiting/Tea it has pregenerated chars, strongly constrained input methods, pre-established situation, plays in 2 hours, and is basically an effort to build a vocabulary for casual roleplaying games
Shreyas: i like short games about china, in general
me: okay, so here's the premise. i think the game's called "Red Star, White Sun" and the plot goes like this: there are four people from the same village, two men and two women. they have preestablished relationships
Shreyas: mhm
me: maybe they're married or siblings or lovers or relatives of some kind. and the Nationalists come through and draft the two men to fight on their side. and then, months later, the Communists roll through and draft the women into their Female Soldiers Detachment. and, eventually, both sides learn of this and are sorta trying to rescue each other, despite being on opposite sides. and the game ends with some sort of dramatic showdown where several of the characters probably die in trainwreck heartbreak fashion. and the ending moment is the announcement of the Second United Front, which means the Nationalists and Communists are going to work together to fight the Japanese
Shreyas: cool, i like it.
me: so it kinda renders any violence that preempts that sorta ironic and meaningless. so let me tell you how this is gonna work, because that's the cool part
Shreyas: kay
me: so imagine a bizarre cross between Exalted charm trees and Waiting/Tea's action trees and the somewhat tree-like loresheets from WotG. each player has a list of what are basically scene concepts. and these concepts are arranged in trees. and the trees interconnect with each other and are conditional with related scenes and the like. but there are clearly branches of the trees that share similar themes or plot certain paths. like, maybe there's a branch where one of the women is pregnant and there's all sorts of complications related to that. or maybe one character becomes a spy for the opposite side or the Japanese and that leads to all sorts of things
Shreyas: mhm, so it's got all these alternative paths plotted out
me: but then what if she's a PREGNANT SPY! then there are all sorts of possibilities in the middle that interconnect them
Shreyas: with complications and so on
me: right, but you don't have to head down any particular path. you can sort of work partway down one branch and fork off to the side. or you could do a little bit of several branches
Shreyas: mhm
me: so there are a limited number of options, but near infinite combinations, especially when you're playing with all four characters. and so the scenes are sorta like Keys. you do one and that opens up future possibilities. but it also puts limitations on things or maybe gives you abilities or takes abilities away. so there could be like a Sniper branch that you progress down to increase your skills as a sniper. but it requires bad things to happen along the way. or just things that are not necessarily good. they're sorta like fixed keychains in that way.
Shreyas: that sounds pretty fun
me: but they form a web that you can travel as you please. yeah, and it sounds really close to the way we might want to present 4N. or at least one possibility. a web of predetermined choices. or at least steal the structure but allow more madlib stuff where the players can have creative input. "Write down your greatest desire here." and then, several scenes later... "To advance to this stage, sacrifice your greatest desire."
Shreyas: oh yes, variables. i love variables
me: anyway, that's the plan. and the hardest part sounds like actually writing the web
Shreyas: yes
me: i guess I should just start with something simple and complicate it.
Shreyas: yeah, if you design it so it's modular
me: like how they write Choose Your Own Adventure books or Lone Wolf
Shreyas: then you can just attach new bits to it as they come to you
me: which is something else this is very reminiscent of. so here's my next problem. what system do I use for this? :)
Shreyas: haha

Vesperteen: The Path to Power

2006-12-09T09:52:00.000-05:00

Proving my ability to simultaneously work on N+1 design ideas...

I had a subway revelation about Vesperteen, based on the chakra progression in the Avatar season finale (which I suspect was directly inspired by similar things in Alan Moore's Promethea, which in turn draws on Kabbalah and Western mystic/occult traditions).

Instead of having the Squick Chart, which defines the "Lines and Veils" (WARNING: Ron Language) of the campaign before play begins (which is weird, since players are gonna becoming more comfortable exploring squicky things with each other as play goes on) and which also sets limits negatively ("I don't want to deal with squicky subject X")...

Each play group creates a (for lack of a better term) Path To Power for each of the seven deadly sins. The path is composed of a series of mystical chakras that have to be opened by performing sinful acts in order to move up the rankings in the mystical-social order of teenagers. Not all the steps along the path are determined before play begins, just the ones that get the characters up to their starting sin levels (determined during the initial Truth or Dare game) and maybe a few future chakras to give them sins to wrestle with and explore ("Will you betray your best friend for more power and status?"). The higher level chakras require monstrous acts that risk destroying a person's life and sending them to join the true monsters of society.

So yeah, Vesperteen is turning out to be a bizarre Sorcerer/Roach/Little Fears crossbreed, but that's pretty hot.

Setting Contest 2: Three Hands

2006-12-05T15:58:00.000-05:00

I was thinking recently about a "3-hand" breakdown, but one in which you'd only end up rolling two of your 3 dice pools.

So you'd have Line, Run, and Pass across the bottom of each team's sheet. And players would divide all the dice on their team (either their Offensive or Defensive positions) into those three categories. And both players could watch each other and adjust, just like atheletes adjusting on the line before the ball is snapped.

Then, once those dice were placed, both players would reveal which play they'd called (by flipping over a card?). These would work sorta like weapons, adding dice to particular pools or moving existing dice around. So like, a passing play would add dice to Pass or some Play Action might take dice from Pass and put them in Run.

Then you roll for the Line. I'm not exactly sure what this does yet. Maybe it prevents your players from taking a pounding. Maybe it sets the limits on potential yardage that can be gained in this play. Maybe a really bad roll gets you sacked (if you're the Offense) or adds additional yardage to your opponent's gains (if you're the Defense).

Finally, the player on Offense chooses whether to Pass or Run and rolls those dice vs. the Pass or Run of the opposing player. Usually, the play you choose predetermines whether you're going to roll Pass or Run, but you can probably spend some resource points to go against that, assuming that the dice are stacked against you. Or try to call a penalty against the other team.

Before you roll any of your pools (Line or Pass/Run), you can choose to narrate in one of your Unquantifiable traits and add that die to your pool. If you lose the roll, however, that trait is impaired.

I think you should be able to learn or invent new plays as your team grows in experience and skill. Perhaps the game only comes with a dozen or so basic plays and, after that, teams have to invent their own, according to established guidelines. So if you want to mimick real plays and write rules for a Double Reverse, that's cool. But if you want to write Glorious Prismatic Spectral Pass Deflection, that's cool too.

Setting Contest 2: Strat-O-Matic

2006-12-04T22:26:00.000-05:00

So Jruu pointed me at Strat-O-Matic sports sim games, which are basically wargames for sports junkies. Really, really interesting. The one that's closest to Gridiron Gods is their college football game, which is still a bit too complex and non-narrative for what I'm trying to do.

Here's one of the cards that shows the different plays you can choose from in the most basic version of the rules:

Setting Contest 2: Team Sheet 0.5

2006-12-01T14:52:00.000-05:00

Setting Contest 2: Planet Football

2006-11-29T22:29:00.000-05:00

So I finally have a real setting, brainstormed on the subway.

In the beginning, there were no pigs to skin. No, humanity's ancestors had to risk their lives wrestling megafauna to the ground.

In stone coliseums dedicated to evil pagan gods, homo sapiens eventually overcame the Neanderthals by perfecting the halfback option.

Even around the last glacial maximum, when play was indefinitely suspended for several thousand years, it was clear that gridiron football was what distinguished mankind from the beasts and insects.

The existence of football proves that there is an intelligent creator.

Gridiron remains the true test of any people's right to be fruitful and multiply.

Welcome to Planet Football, a planet much like our own, but a planet on which -- from time immemorial -- women and men have measured their worth by their ability to convert on a Third And Long. There are no wars, no crimes, no murders, no religious conflicts, and no blood feuds that are not enacted on some 100-yard stretch of Astroturf.

On Planet Football, gridiron is not the only thing there is, just the only thing that matters.

Setting Contest 2: Positions

2006-11-29T13:24:00.000-05:00

Here's a draft of the positions list. I'm not sure I'm happy with it because it may be too detailed for the kind of play I'm imagining. Does the difference between a Guard and a Tackle (OG/OT) really matter here? Maybe. Maybe not.

Offensive Line (OL)
- Center (C)
- Offensive Guards (OG)
- Offensive Tackles (OT)
- Tight End (TE)*

Offensive Backs (OB)
- Quarterback (QB)*
- Halfbacks (HB)*
- Fullback (FB)*
- Wide Receivers (WR)*

Defensive Line (DL)
- Defensive Tackles (DT)
- Nose Tackle (NT)
- Defensive Ends (DE)

Defensive Backs (DB)
- Linebackers (LB)
- Safeties (SS/FS)
- Cornerbacks (CB)

Special Teams (ST)
- Placekicker (PK)
- Punter (P)
- Kick/Punt Returner (KR/PR)
- Gunner (G)

* Eligible Receivers

I'd like to have some sort of system where you could have a player play out of position, but they'd be one die size down. For example, one of your D6 Wide Receivers or Running Backs could really be your back-up D8 Quarterback. But, when you want to run a trick play, you get your WR/RB to pass down the field to your QB or another receiver. If you want to save money for better players, you could also have your D8 Placekicker operate as a D6 Punter as well or use a Wide Receiver as a Punt Returner.

I don't think individual players positions are going to be marked on the field. That would be WAY complicated, even if it was just one marker for all the Running Backs and another marker for Receivers. Instead, you describe the things you want to have happen and the players just materialize there or were there all along. You wanna throw a long bomb down into the endzone? Well, guess what, your Wide Receivers are there. Now we roll QB + WR against the distance and the defense's Safeties and/or Cornerbacks to see if he can catch the pass. Maybe the defense also wants to bring in one of his linesmen and try to say that the ball was tipped at the line of scrimmage or say that a Linebacker rushed the QB while he was getting the pass off.

In this way, you don't really call plays beforehand so much as invent them on the spot. It's much more like watching football on TV or in a movie than actually playing football, and that's definitely the feel I want.

Another option would be to just have general stats like Run Protection, Pass Protection, Passing, Running, Catching, etc. But I kind of like treating these like actual positions and players.

Setting Contest 2: Gridiron Gods

2006-11-28T18:50:00.000-05:00

The mask game may still need to brew for a while. In the meantime, I may be adapting Agon (John Harper's game of tragic Greek heroes) to handle American football. I kinda want to call the game Pigskin Requiem but I think Gridiron Gods wins by a field goal.

Today, I've been reading some Wikipedia articles about fantasy football to see how the proles do it. Fascinating. I can't wait to get started.

Initial ideas:
- Each player represents an entire football team.
- You can run this GMless and take turns playing each other.
- You "buy" players to fill certain positions.
- Each position is a Skill, like Offensive Line 1d8.
- You have a limited budget with which to buy quality players.
- Positions get tired or impaired just like Skills.
- You can call a timeout or substitute players to Refresh positions.
- During timeouts and halftime, players give rousing speeches.
- A session is a football game, but includes flashbacks.
- Each player has some flags that they can throw to call penalties.
- You can spend Glory or Fate for more flags or other effects.
- Glory can get a play "reviewed" or a flag picked up.
- You can call on Fate, but it results in injuries and retirements.
- You win Glory more or less as normal, on individual plays.
- There's a 10-section Range Grid with a marker for the ball.
- You get 4 Downs to get a touchdown or fieldgoal.
- This simulates the key plays of the drive.
- You roll dice for each down based on the play you're running.
- Success determines which side rolls for Movement.
- Offensive success advances the ball marker down the field.
- Defensive success results in no advance or a sack.
- I'm unsure how to deal with turnovers right now, since you can get them at the spot of the play, far down the field, or in the backfield, and sometimes you get a Movement roll right after a turnover (so you can advance down the field or return it for a touchdown even).

Bonus: I want you to be able to throw a long pass down the field, get beat by the defense, and then toss one of your flags down on the table for "pass interference." That would be hot.

Setting Contest: Developments

2006-11-26T20:06:00.000-05:00

So one of the issues with designing Folkways is it's really a meta-setting and not a setting, at least as it is now. There's this outer story of tricksters working to gain release, but the content of the stories they tell is not specified, and that both 1) is really cool and 2) blows. I don't want the game to just be a string of PTA one-shots tied together by a strange meta-fiction. There needs to be a stronger sense that these stories are related somehow, either thematically or by genre or the like. It needs to be an anthology of similar, interconnected tales -- like the One Thousand Nights and a Night -- not a literary journal.

I also need to emphasize the sense that the characters don't stop being themselves when they put on masks to tell a story. If Coyote has transformed himself into a dark, brooding forest, the dark brooding forest should still act recognizably like Coyote. That's where a great deal of the fun comes in.

Additionally, Folkways is really about the development of a working relationship and a family. It's unmistakably an allegory for the act of roleplaying and borrows a ton from Nobilis' Chancels (which come almost directly from Ars Magica). Your character doesn't necessarily like the other members of his/her troupe, but these are the people they have to work with in order to get the job done. Like family, you don't choose them, but you're stuck with them anyway.

So I'm thinking about being more explicit with elements of the meta-setting, creating specific leadership roles and responsibilities for each character in a troupe and maybe even starting with pre-generated characters. Maybe the game isn't about the process that all tricksters go through. Maybe it's about a specific group of characters who have a very unique situation imposed on them. Far too often, I suspect, we worry about creating an "adventuring class" for characters to come from when maybe it's okay that this party of characters is totally unique in doing things the way they do.

If the characters start out with specific identities (which can, of course, evolve over time as their masks and totem do), then it seems like I can set a sort of genre for the maskers stories to be in, or at least a place to start from. I'm not sure I want to go ahead and define all the masks in advance (because that seems like it robs the players of a chance for creative expression), but maybe I'll define a few major burdens that each character needs to work off, as examples. And then the types of masks that characters have goes pretty far to set boundaries for the types of stories that can be told.

Maybe I need to focus more on the folkways themselves and what they include. It could be that action scifi stories just aren't a part of the folkways. Perhaps the folkways only contain stories that are really iconic and primordial, only things that would be considered folktales or folklore. But I also want the stories to have a unique flavor. I'm not sure what that flavor is yet, but I hope to stumble on it soon. Maybe if I create the starting characters and their masks, I'll get a better sense of what that is. Maybe it's the folklore equivalent of "mythic fantasy."

I'm also wondering if character identity and totems should be singular, since that seems to deemphasize one of the major points of the game: that identity is a complex, plural thing, that you are different people for different purposes or audiences. Perhaps characters start out with multiple totems. Perhaps you begin play as Loki-Archne-Anansi, the multi-faced trickster spider.

I also need to figure out what XP does in a game where the only permanent statistics are your Pools.

Push 2 Proposal Guidelines

2006-11-25T22:51:00.000-05:00

So Push vol 2 is about to get underway. Here's the scoop.

ARTICLES

If you want to write an article for Push, I'd like you to send me a written proposal or discuss your plans with me over the phone or in chat. It doesn't have to be fully thought-out or outlined, but I need a clear sense of your topic and how you plan to approach it.

I am willing to consider a partially finished or completed essay as a possible contribution or something that might be turned into one, but such articles will still need to be revised (sometimes heavily) and brought up to date during the writing process.

General article types include:

• How We Play (Macro) - This type of article describes a large community or (multi)national style of roleplaying: Nordic larp, Jeepform, Japanese roleplay, online freeform, fanfic, MMORGs, cosplay, etc.

• How We Play (Micro) - This type of article describes lessons learned and techniques developed by individual groups during play or designers during the design/play process. These could range all over the place, covering just about anything.

• How We Play (Meta) - This type of article describes recent or historical developments in design and play, analyzing trends, assigning meaning, projecting into the future. Discussions need to be backed up by strong sources and examples, not just empty theorizing.

• How We Play (Transcript) - This is not an article at all, but an actual transcript (edited for clarity) of real, honest-to-God actual play. Online play transcripts are the easiest, but recording and transcribing tabletop works too. Finding a way to document larp play would be terrific, but difficult. Same with MMORGs and other things.

GAMES

Push is also willing to consider a limited number of short-form game proposals. Unlike article proposals, I'll need to see a near-playable version of the game before I can be sure that Push is interested, but running the concept by me is not a bad idea either, just to make sure you're in the right ballpark. That may seem like a tease but, even if we don't accept your game, you still have a neat game on your hands, so that's not much of a loss, in my opinion. The other contributors and I will help you revise, playtest, and polish the game for publication, but the bulk of the work will still fall on you. This is mainly what I'm after:

• Dream Games - These are games that might exist in an alternate universe or in dreams, if roleplaying was invented by Native American ballplayers in 1300, if rpgs were played by dolphins, if roleplaying was invented by the blind or deaf. Ideally, they should still be playable by human beings today and be relatively short, less than 50 pages.

COMMENTARY

The people who will write marginal commentary are usually specifically invited to do so. Kenneth Hite, Judd Karlman, and Claire Bickell have tentatively agreed to provide commentary for Push 2 and there will certainly be a half dozen more commentators before this is over. If you're interested in being a commentator, feel free to let me know, but I'm really looking for a specific mix of individuals here, so don't feel bad if you're not quite what I need right now.

PROCESS

The following schedule can be changed if necessary, but this gives us aggressive deadlines to get us all moving.

- Article proposals due by Jan 1
- Initial Discussions and Drafts happen here
- Complete Drafts Due by Mar 1
- Final Drafts Due by April 1
- Edits/Comments by May 1
- Final Proof by Jun 1
- Print/PDF out by GenCon

PARTICIPATION

Contributors and/or commentators will be expected to participate in group brainstorming, discussions, and peer editing, which will take place on the Push message board (to be set up soon). How much you choose to participate is up to you, since I realize that different people have varying amounts of free time they can spend on this. But if you flake out on us, we may flake out on you. Fair enough?

You also have to be willing to work with your fellow contributors and especially me (the lead editor) during the editing process and make revisions to your work in a timely manner. Articles that are not keeping up with deadlines (which are ever-changing, so I will give you fair warning) may be dropped from Volume 2.

PSEUDO-COMPENSATION

Commentators get a lifetime subscription to Push. Woohoo!

Contributors get an even cut of the profits from print and PDF sales, delivered on a regular schedule (either quarterly or biannually), but completely subject to my whims. Let me be very clear that this is not actually payment for rights, because I'm intentionally avoiding legal contracts. It works like this:

• You own all rights to your work and can do whatever you like with it.

• You are donating limited print and electronic rights to reproduce your work in Push as long as the journal is around.

• I have no responsibility to pay you for anything. However...

• I do plan to send checks out to folks, as large as I can make them while still covering costs and making sure I get paid myself.

• All financial records will be completely transparent, posted on a regular basis, and available at any time by request. This includes copies sold, how much money I'm paying myself, and anything else you might want to know.

• If you decide, at some point, that you're unhappy with the situation and no longer want your material to appear in Push, I will honor that request out of the goodness of my heart, but have no legal responsibility to do so or to compensate you for anything.

If this gets too complicated, I may have to go to real contracts and all that jazz, but I'd really rather not. This is a hobby project. I'm not doing it for the money and neither should you. However, I am selling copies of it and don't particularly want to keep all the profits for myself, since that doesn't seem fair.

CONTACT

You can email proposals or questions to me: jaywalt at gmail.

The Push website is http://plays-well.com/push

The Push blog is there as well, which is probably the best source for regular updates. Subscribe to the feed.

Once you're on board in some capacity, I'll create an email list of the contributors to keep you updated.

I think that's all for now. Let's get crackin'!

Push on RPGnet

2006-11-25T12:01:00.000-05:00

Push Vol 1 got a nice mention in two recent RPGnet threads: a potential buyer asking for additional info and Phil Reed talking about how great Lulu is. Yay for us!

Now I really need to start working on Volume 2.

Something That Isn't Pull

2006-11-21T17:33:00.000-05:00

Until fairly recently I assumed that what Mo meant by Pull was actually something else. This something was Making Other Players Awesome (which Mo suspects might be my primary play socket).

To me, one of the primary questions about roleplaying in practice is, to use a volleyball metaphor, are you setting the ball or are you spiking it? Are you Doing Awesome Stuff or are you Setting Up Other Players To Be Awesome?

Obviously this changes from moment to moment, but I suspect that people who are good at the latter are rarer and often less recognizable, like a basketball player who has 4 points and 14 assists. Those are the kind of people you want in the GM's chair or, better yet, as a Producer in Primetime Adventures. But they are an absolute joy to play with in any capacity because they make everyone else more awesome. And that's the kind of player I want to be.

Now I think I need to go re-learn what Push and Pull are.

Push Now on IPR

2006-11-21T11:08:00.001-05:00

Thanks, Brennan. You rock!

Communities of Design

2006-11-21T01:15:00.000-05:00

A thread on StoryGames inspired some reflections:

So we've talked a bit about how individual play groups are communities of practice that develop their own norms over time. Certain the same holds true for communities that resolve around things like design and publishing as well as play. The Forge is a great example, as is StoryGames itself. We don't play with those people, but we are influenced by them in our design work and in our overall thinking about roleplaying.

The thing is, these communities aren't really built to support game design. The people who frequent them (the Forge, StoryGames, RPGnet) aren't really interested in real, bloody hands, words on the page, playtest-ready design work. They're mostly coming there to talk about games, to talk about designs they may be working on or planning to work on, and, above all, to socialize with fellow roleplaying enthusiasts. That's all well and good, but if you were hoping to build a community that was really about game design, it would have to operate pretty differently from the places where game designers already socialize.

In my experience, places that are used mostly for socialization are really bad at helping people finish projects and supporting them every step of the way. The exceptions are cases like Game Chef or similar design contests. THAT, I think, is one model of what a game design community could be like: people post actual work that they've done on a game and get response on actual design work, not hypothetical stuff. The energy level is high and engaged. Everybody is working alongside one another. There are concrete deadlines -- often broken -- but they provide structure to the process. People regularly review each other's work and rate progress, recognizing accomplishments and talking through the next few steps.

Hmm...

Cover Draft Coming Along

2006-11-20T22:23:00.000-05:00

I've done about 6-7 cover drafts of the Exalted Hack and I think I'm starting to get close. Jennifer's color scheme is so broad and complex that it's hard to create a background that's gels 100%, but I'll get there eventually. Of course, it doesn't help that I'm partially red-green colorblind...

Here's the most recent version, with the new title: O How Glorious Thy Resplendent Transmigration You Children of the Undying Sun, or UNCONQUERED.

Setting Contest: Masks

2006-11-19T18:06:00.000-05:00

The sages teach that a being, at its core, is nothing but the three Pools: Vigor, Instinct, and Reason. Everything else is ephemeral, the stuff of Samsara, the stuff of the folkways.

Whether this is true or not, one thing is certain: substance and identity are created through masks. Masks create a fiction that gives order to the inherant meaninglessness of the unformed world.

A mask is a false identity formed around a Key. A fancier or more complex mask may contain more than one Key or have a few Abilities and Secrets associated with it, which become available to the wearer.

Most fictional characters are not significant enough to have developed a unique mask of their own. Instead, they are the result of an assortment of different masks which create a unique combination of features or at least an interesting one.

Over time, a group of masks, if worn regularly in the same combinations, can fuse together to form a more complex mask. Likewise, masks can also be broken up into less complex, subsidiary masks, but any shard that does not contain a core Key is not true mask, cannot be worn, and will soon dissolve into nothingness.

Aside from combining with other masks to create a shared identity, a mask can also subsume or obscure the mask beneath it. Most of the time, a masker will remove one or more masks to reveal yet more masks underneath. Some characters are covered in so many masks that they themselves might not even remember who they are underneath it all.

As a trickster, a shinchanger, or a storyteller, each member of an indebted masker troupe begins play with a countless number of masks. The masks a trickster wears on his or her body are like an enormous suit of armor, heavy, cumbersome, and obscuring any identifiable features. Additional masks must be carried on one's back in a huge Santa Claus sack. These countless masks are the debt the trickster owes to the folkways, the weight that holds them in the cycle, unable to find release.

In order to repay their debt to the folkways and escape the endless wheel, a trickster must let go of all their masks and leave them behind. Once they have done this, they Transcend to another realm. You let go of a mask by fulfilling certain conditions required by the Key at the mask's core. These conditions are called the Buyoff. Masks that are bought off are not simply removed and placed in your sack (as usual), they are reabsorbed into the folkways and can never be used again.

To better facilitate communication amongst themselves, each tricker carries one or more totemic masks which represent their preferred identities, often ones they have worn countless times over the centuries. For example, the masker we know as Scheherazade may take on many other identities in many other stories, but she always returns to being Scheherazade, her totem mask, because it holds special meaning for her. When conversing with her fellow maskers, Scheherazade is the mask she wears.

Of course, when the time comes to leave the cycle behind, a trickster's totemic masks are often the final and most difficult masks to release into the folkways.

In order to fulfill a mask's Buyoff condition, one has to enter the folkways and make use of the mask in a story. This is the purgatory that the tricksters are confined to: they must work together to tell stories with the masks that they have, fulfilling the Buyoff conditions so that one mask after another can be released into the folkways, gradually earning their freedom.

Setting Contest: Initial Notes

2006-11-18T16:29:00.000-05:00

Yes, I think I'm finally ready to write this game. And Clinton's Solar System is astonishingly appropriate. Andy K better watch out.

Possible Title

Folkways

Premise

Tricksters, skinchangers, and storytellers owe a debt to the folkways for their gifts and must repay it with devoted service in a purgatorial afterlife until they work through all their masks.

At this point, that probably doesn't mean much to anyone other than myself, and maybe the 3 people who's payed attention to the various versions of Quixote & Coyote, Storypunk, Facedance, Beneath This Facade, etc. (all based on the same basic concept) over the last several years. I'll get into the details more later.

The protagonists should be literary characters or historical figures romanticized in literature such they they are more myth than truth. Examples follow:

Storytellers

Scheherazade
Marco Polo
Gulliver
Aesop
Jesus
Falstaff
Don Quixote
Victor Frankenstein
Zhuang Zi

Tricksters & Skinchangers

Loki
Sun Wukong
Raven
Coyote
Anansi
Iblis
Dionysus
Feste
Hop-Frog

Note to Self

I need more female examples.

Hack Attack!

2006-11-16T00:12:00.000-05:00

I have Harvey-nominated coloring on the cover of my free, fan-created netbook. That is SO COOL! Jennifer Rodgers is clearly the bomb-diggity.

Intimacies, Anima, Combos, Stunting, NPCs

2006-11-15T09:40:00.000-05:00

There's no need for a cap on the number of dice per scene (as suggested before) if we use Anima, where your Anima goes up every time you use a Charm and caps at 5. And we can do the Agon thing and require interim scenes to lower Anima, probably scenes wih your Intimacies. But I was also thinking "Where do these Loom images come from?" So maybe Intimacies aren't your social connections, but more your Color associations. Like, your character could be associated with Butterflies, the Senseless Killing, and People In Mourning, and you generate potential scene titles for the Loom from those associations or, better yet, from the Intimacies of your fellow players.

But maybe Intimacies can be both things you care about and associations. So, like, you could refresh Anima by dancing through a field of butterflies or by, like, killing some random dude in cold blood. And then refresh scenes would have to be framed on your turn and be solo scenes that you described, monologues, basically. But they would still be scenes in the sense that you choose a title for it and retitle it at the end.

I was also thinking about conflicts. I think we can do shot framing, just the way Thomas hated (rolling dice, ordering them by number, and then using each die to describe a "shot"), but a lot shorter. Like, you roll Essence + Charms, but you can only use 1 Charm per scene unless you combo. You can also use as many Abilities as you like as long as they are relevant, so you're usually rolling 5-6 dice for 5-6 shots for a simple conflict.

You can also use multiple Charms and get more dice by comboing. But I'm not sure what's required to combo. Maybe just more Anima and your protagonist has to sit out the next scene (though you, the player, can still participate in some other fashion) or something like that. But I think combos should be a creative merger of two or more Charms and not just involve using them one after another or at the same time. Maybe combo effects have to be different each time, like stunts, no repeats. So it takes extra creativity to use them.

Also I wonder if you can stunt for Fanmail, which you can spend for extra dice in the next conflict. Like you describe a really cool shot during a conflict and people give you stunt dice from a general pool. And maybe, once spent, they feed into the dice budget of opposing characters just like it does in PTA, but I don't know how blatantly I want to steal that economy, even though I'm sure Matt will forgive me.

I also think each character sheet should have a little space on the bottom for recording NPC traits for the NPCs that have Charms, for Exalts and Spirits and Demons. And basically you improvise their traits in play and write them down, in case they show up again later. That also assigns a default player to play certain reoccuring NPCs (the one who writes their traits down), but players can alternate in cases where there's a conflict of interest (where a player would have to play two characters who are in conflict).

Scene Framing In The Hack

2006-11-14T18:58:00.000-05:00

The hack tells the story of a Solar Circle of 5 characters, one of each Caste. If you have something besides this, that's okay. But it means your story is partially about completing your circle. Like, "We had two Twilights so obviously one had to die" or "We're searching for a Zenith" or "Our extra Eclipse was a Dawn back in the First Age."

And the Undying Bell Chakram, then, is the order of scene framers. It's determines the rotating GM for each scene. You could start off with Dawn and to to Night and then back to Dawn, the daily cycle. But there are clearly ways to make it work if you have something besides one of each Caste. You have two Nights or no Dawn or whatever. But the group has to build a cycle for itself if the default one is inapplicable. And I think Eclipses are naturally unnatural. Like, you have to specifically choose how to handle them, where they fall in the cycle. And if you have a mixed Celestials game, it gets even weirder. You're intentionally perverting the cycle.

I also think the stuff on the Sea/Loom are really the titles of scenes. The Glowing Gate In The Forest and Falling Snow are great titles. So I think the rotating GM is also the titler of the scene. Like maybe you pick an existing title to be the title of the scene and then, when the scene is over, you make up a new title to give it, writing it down below the original, or maybe a different player gives it the new title. Like "I'm framing a scene called Falling Snow and this stuff happens! ...okay, this scene is really called A Duel Amidst Snowflakes!"

So say that happens, and I want to frame a scene to connect to Snow/Duel (which are both on the same scrap). I have to start out calling the scene Falling Snow or A Duel Amidst Snowflakes and frame things likewise. Maybe you could combine titles on the same scrap to frame scenes, such as A Duel Amidst Falling Snow. And then, once the scene is over, someone adds yet another title to the set. So I guess the way you connect things together is by using one existing title (or remix of associated titles) to frame a scene, and another existing title (or remix of associated titles) to name it. And then you stick those scraps together.

Lessons from JiffyCon Playtest

2006-11-13T22:41:00.000-05:00

1. Currently, the hack creates badass narration, but is less good at letting people play through it. It became Exalted-meets-Once-Upon-a-Time, which was hot, but definitely more "story game" than "rpg" in that sense.

2. The character sheet is not a powerful enough tool to do all the things I need it to do. The hack clearly needs new and exciting tools.

3. As Shreyas pointed out, most of the tools I'm developing for the hack (the open/close structure, re-naming things, shot framing, cycle-based pacing, the 'sea of images') are techniques that could be applied to all sorts of games. I'm sure most of my regular blog readers who don't care about Exalted have probably bailed by now, but that means they've missed some pretty neat stuff. I guess I'll have to have a "What I Learned from the Hack" post eventually.

4. The hack is definitely one of those games that requires a whole session to make characters. Creation + Exaltation could easily take 4+ hours by itself. This isn't a bad thing, but it makes it pretty different from a lot of indie games (except, of course, Burning Wheel).

5. Shot framing needs to come back (sorry, Thomas). The original form -- ordering the shots before the scene is run -- won't work as is, though. I need some variation on the Arthouse Wuxia system that lets you escalate, but maybe not more than once or twice. Maybe you can escalate, but have to wait until the next scene to do so? So you have a cliffhanger while you cut to another location?

6. Rolling for 'fallout' may not be necessary if consequences are a built-in component of narration. We simply decided that every use of Charms had to have a bad side, which seemed to work okay, but was a little too arbitrary me.

7. The 'sea of images' is OHMYGOD HAWT, but needs some concrete guidelines to function properly. And a stapler. I wonder if I can find a stapler that looks sorta like a Pattern Spider. Or maybe you could use special stickers that would hold the world together. Stickers sound pretty cool actually. Or you could use scraps of cloth that you actually stiched together. But you'd have to be able to write on the cloth. Here's the basic premise:

8. The 'sea' still needs a way for images to be inspired by previous sessions, especially loose ends that haven't been tied up, since it was originally supposed to be a system for generating subplots. But there needs to be new, new things as well. It may take some playtesting to come up with a good mix and the right number of images.

9. I love, LOVE super-fast, super-short scenes. They rock my world. They are sex in a pan. I'm kinda wondering if this structure can work for game sessions too. Like maybe you run a game session in an hour or two. And then, if you like, you run another one. It's like ADD roleplaying. But it makes you run on crazy creativity without suffering from burnout. We were all feeling drained after a couple hours of real play and I doubt we could go much further. I think I really had something when I wrote Waiting/Tea to play in a half-hour. Yay for more super-short games.

More thoughts later. And probably a playtest report.

I Am a Hack

2006-11-10T01:31:00.000-05:00

Specifically, I just realized that the Exalted Hack is doing a lot of the same things that I described Shreyas doing with The Golden Chain. It's just that, instead of consuming external evils and trying to safely digest them, the protagonists of the Exalted Hack are trying to digest the ugly evils of their past lives, the crimes they committed during the First Age.

This is interesting because it's not a metaphor for dealing with ugliness in the world but for dealing with ugliness within yourself, coming to terms with things in your past. But it's also exploratory, because you start out with Jason Bourne amnesia and don't know that much about who you once were.

It's gonna be a difficult thing to model properly, especially in the 24 hours I have before shipping out for JiffyCon, but I'm going to do my best to pull all these threads together.

Atonement

2006-11-06T21:38:00.000-05:00

We (Shreyas, Ashvin, and I) have been brainstorming about how to make the Exalted Hack more about its core principles, which I feel is like a standard indie game concern. If we want to make the game tightly focused, so it does a few things really well, how do we make the mechanics focus on those concerns? In this case, we have some amazingly cool answers. We're not there yet, but getting closer all the time.

- every scene is a Memory, either of the present age or the First
- these are collected into chains that show progress on these paths
- completed chains advance various traits
- showing either your development or an awakening to your past
- present age development is controlled by individual players
- First Age awakening is controlled by the other players

- the Great Curse tied the Solars' power to their horrible deeds
- you don't learn Charms, you remember them from the First Age
- a Solar's Charms embody the crimes they committed long ago
- Charms are inherantly VERY BAD, EVIL things
- Charms can be refined to be less evil and, eventually, neutral
- unrefined Solars cannot help but create evil everywhere they go
- evil created by refined Solars is of their own doing, not inescapable

- Solars are pressured to use Charms by a semi-"Say Yes Or Roll"
- free narration, but if they don't like it, they can use Charms
- each Charm has a number of dice associated: "Bloody Wake" 2
- Charm use is a declaration, supported by the dice rolled
- for example: "My Ship Will Endure This Tempest" 3, 7
- declarations have a strength equal to the highest number rolled
- declarations stand unless a higher number is rolled in opposition
- at the end of a scene, all dice rolled create negative consequences
- refined Charms create consequences that are not necessarily negative

- before a scene begins, players declare appropriate traits
- each involved trait adds a die to a communal pool
- this represents the potential inherant in the scene
- all dice used in the scene are drawn from this pool
- when there are no more dice, no more Charms can be used
- the dice don't have to be used at all, but they are there

Chronicle Creation goes like this:
1) Brainstorm the unthinkable glories of the First Age.
2) Ask why they are no longer.
3) Describe the flaws of the 4 Virtues that led to the Fall.
4) Extrapolate specific crimes.
5) Assign these crimes to each other, up to a certain number.
6) From your crimes, distill your Charms.

- every scene is a chance at atonement for a particular Virtue Flaw
- a step in the right direction can be made
- but also steps backwards or wasted opportunities

- Solar crimes are of hubris and pride
- Lunar crimes are of failure, debts of honor
- Terrestrial crimes are the betrayals of their ancestors
- Sideral crimes are?
- Abyssal crimes are of subserviance or something similar
- Robot crimes are?
- Fair Folk crimes are BEING ALIEN CTHULOID MONSTERS
- Demons don't have crimes, they ARE warcrimes

Shinto-Style Heroic Narratives

2006-11-05T21:22:00.000-05:00

I just watched a playtest of Shreyas' hot new hotness The Golden Chain, which is probably the most focused thing he's every written.

As with any of Shreyas' games, I proceeded to tell him what the project was really about, under all the fun, flowery Shreyas prose and mechanical cuteness. It's basically a mythopoetic version of Zelda or Shadow of the Colossus. Evil has come into the world and corrupted the land around it. The heroes have to rid the land of this sickness by destroying the "boss" monsters that are the sources of the taint. It's that whole Miyazaki/Shinto "monsters as disease/pollution" thing.

Which brought me to the next step which is:

- heroes internalize external problems
- they consume monsters and try to digest their poison
- and when they can't, the heroes die, but have weakened the monster
- or the monster dies, but hurts the hero in the process
- heroes can sometimes recover from the hurt
- but sometimes it becomes a lingering or mortal wound

This was not really a common feature in Zelda until the most recent game, Twilight Princess, which comes out in a week. In it, Link is cursed by the darkness and transforms into a wolf at certain times. But you can see it in a lot of Miyazaki stuff, like how the hero in Princess Mononoke has a magically diseased hand.

Basically, monsters in these narratives are there primarily to exact a cost from the hero, be it temporary or permanent. They are also the true agents of change They raise fundamental questions about the hero and the hero must address these questions in order to survive, in order to clense themselves of the monster's corrupting sickness, the sickness they have absorbed into themselves in order to rid it from the land.

This Weekend!

2006-11-05T20:49:00.000-05:00

This coming weekend is JiffyCon, a small indie games get-together organized by the Western Mass Crew (Bakers, Emily Care Boss, Joshua Newman, etc). I'm supposed to run the Exalted Hack there, which is a great opportunity for me to cut the crap, pick out the pieces that already work, and create a fun experience for some awesome people. Thankfully, through conversations with Shreyas and especially Ashvin, I've figured out what the game's really about (at least the Solar portion). Here's the pitch:

Long ago, your kind ruled as god-monarchs over this land, but your vast hubris and wicked deeds brought about your downfall. Eons later, your souls have come round the Great Wheel and been reborn. Vexed with fragmented memories, do you embrace the monster that you were, run away from the past, or seek to finally set things right? Welcome to the Age of Sorrows.

I'll try to post a working draft of the playtest version before I leave.

Patron Saints

2006-11-03T18:38:00.000-05:00

- Coyote
- Quixote
- Capote

World-Encompassing Spider Pattern

2006-10-30T10:35:00.000-05:00

Um, yeah. I've decided to create a giant chakra for all of Creation, representing the entire Loom of Fate woven by the Pattern Spiders. It is called, of course, "World-Encompassing Spider Pattern."

The idea is for it to both serve as an emotional and thematic map of what's going on in your Exalted game and also be a map of Exalted's cosmology. Right now I have sketchy versions of the mortal world, Yu-Shan, and the Underworld maped to the Terrestrial Castes, Solar Castes, and Abyssal Castes respectively. I'd like to include Malfeas, Autochthon, and the Wyld as well, probably once I get Castemarks or other symbols for the Demons/Infernals (based on their Circles?), Alchemicals (metal), and Fair Folk (Graces).

I'm still unsure about the Lunar and Sideral Castemarks and how to incorperate them.

The problem with the Lunars is the Castes and Marks don't match the actual lunar phases very well. There are 8 major lunar phases:

- New Moon (No Moon)
- Waxing Crescent
- 1st Quarter (a Waxing Half Moon, basically)
- Waxing Gibbous
- Full Moon
- Waning Gibbous
- 3rd Quarter (a Waning Half Moon, basically)
- Waning Crescent
- then back to New Moon

Basically, Waxing and Waning Moons aren't specific shapes, but indications of whether the moon is in the process of becoming Full (Waxing) or New (Waning). Having Gibbous or Crescent Castes would have made a LOT more sense. But instead I'm trying to figure out how to symbolize the three historic Castes (Waxing, Waning, Half; which'll be shown "in shadow") and the Changing Moons that replaced them.

Sidereals I haven't really begun to think about yet. I think I might use their section to show the Loom of Fate or the constellations or the gods themselves.

Ideally, I'd also like the "negotiator" Castes (Eclipse, Moonshadow, No Moon, etc.) to all come together at one specific point on the chakra, where you can can step onto another splat's pathways. But I'm not sure how to do that yet.

Suggestions and drooling are most welcome.

Even More Anathema

2006-10-25T10:24:00.000-04:00

So the Exalted hack is developing slowly but awesomely. A draft of the first few pages is up here. The neat thing about working slowly on a project is that I stumble across neat things along the way that get incorperated into it.

In this case, there have been a couple of cool RPGnet threads about how Nobilis and Primetime Adventures operate. In the latter one, I stumbled into Ashvin, who is awesome and wrote a neat Exalted hack of her own. She is now consulting on this project.

Here's some recent conversing:

-----

Sweet. I gave it an initial read-through just now, and I'll read it more critically a bit later when I have time.

On first read-through, the one thing that sticks out is the First Age Concept and Name. I think this feeling comes from trying to read the progression of Names as a character's life story. It's not odd that the First Age is relevant, but it sortof makes an appearance at Essence 3 and then runs away.

On the other hand, I love the bit where the other players come up with your crime.

Instinctually, I'm inclined to suggest something where a character's First Age Names occupy a separate list, and they are discovered backwards in play. So you start with your greatest Name--and your greatest crime--and as your present self becomes more powerful, you remember what it was like in the First Age, when you were merely almost-great, then almost-almost-great, and when you are standing at the edge of godhood, you remember what it was like to be simply a person, destined for great and terrible things.

There's a symmetry there that I like. But it might be too much extra work and baggage, and I'm not sure if it's where you want to go with the game.

Anyway! Sweet stuff so far. I shall respond more after I've had a chance to read it and digest it a bit more.

~ Ashi

-----

You're 100% right on the First Age stuff. It was meant to be connected to your Memories which in turn are connected to your ability to use First Age artifacts. The way you describe it, working backwards from your biggest crime, is pretty hot too.

So this morning, in the shower, I was thinking about how PTA gets everyone on the same page about "what's going on" and how that really enables players to cut loose and make shit up. So here's some sketchy ideas:

CHRONICLE CREATION

1. Choose a Premise. What is the epic that you are telling tales from? Is it the story of a rag-tag group of reluctant heroes rescuing the Scarlet Empress?

2. Choose a few major Themes that reflect what you want the story to be about. For example: Evil Can Be Seductively Appealing, Every Bad Choice Will Come Back to Haunt You, What Does It Mean to Be a True Leader? These form the narrative boundaries of the Chronicle. Whenever you're not sure what direction to head in next, consult one of your Themes.

3. Name Your Chronicle: "Splendid Record of the Red River Bandits."

STORY CREATION

The Chinese epic tradition comes from oral storytellers who eventually collected their tales in written volumes after passing them down orally for generations. Oral storytelling traditions continue to exist today. Within each epic tradition there are many smaller stories that make it up. For example, the epic of The Water Margin contains stories like "Wu Song Fights the Tiger" and "Swordplay Under the Moon."

When collected in written volumes, stories were often titled in two parts, which describe two of the major things that happen in each story. For example, in Journey to the West the stories have titles like: "The Four Seas and Thousand Mountains Tremble; In Hell, the Tenth Category is Struck from the Register."

So here's my thoughts about session planning. The players brainstorm a whole slew of evocative and somewhat mysterious titles:

- Fire on the Mountains
- the Venerable Sleeper Awakes
- Death Waits in the Golden City
- the Flower of Love Bursts Forth

Then they combine them into pairs and arrange them in a general order. This provides an outline of the first few sessions. Between sessions, they can rearrange the order or adjust the titles or create new ones.

Once we get to Motivations... Short-term Motivations have to do with resolving the present story. They generally only last a single story before developing into something else. Long-term Motivations are things that will only come to fruition in later stories.

Thoughts?
Jonathan

-----

One thing that's been bothering me about name-making, which might be just me and my obsession with names, is that it's ferociously hard to come up with them, and maybe, somewhere here in the hazy country between past lives and past atrocities, there is some support that makes that easier?

> CHRONICLE CREATION

You will have predicted this: I think this isn't so great in its current form! BUT, let's suppose that you link this into the characters, so that they have matching or contrasting crimes:
- did the oedipus thing with your demon mother
- haunted by the ghost of a companion you killed
- etc.
That could make it a lot cooler to me, and plus, it gives you a palette of templates for fresh crimes, once you have come to terms with the one you're currently dealing with.

> 3. Name Your Chronicle

Names come in series; this isn't the only time you should name the chronicle.

> STORY CREATION

YES TO ALL

Shreyas

-----

Well the names were supposed to be strongly connected to their associated concepts, right? So if you Exalted and managed to live three days in the belly of the beast, you might get a kenning like "Indigestable Jewel," which would be hot. Is that not good enough for ya?

I was also thinking about a way of aestheticizing concepts. Currently, in their "Greedy Son of a Virtuous Merchant Prince" form, they're kind of boring. And I was thinking about the way you handled traits in the original Torchbearer draft, Shreyas, as two parts, and was thinking that might work, since concepts are supposed to contain internal contradictions. It also resembles what I was thinking for Story titles. So a concept might be like:

"How He Revels in Conducting Business; The Son Counts Every Gleaming Coin"

I was wondering about tieing Themes to characters, but tieing them to past crimes is even better. Then the game really is about atonement, which is hot. However, themes are supposed to be part of what ties players and characters together, so making them individual kinda goes against that. Is there a way that themes can be collective expressions?

> Names come in series

Maybe you rename the Chronicle whenever a character increases in Essence? Or whenever all the core characters increase in Essence?

Should players re-name stories after they've been told? That seems to fit with the [OPEN] [/CLOSE] style of traits and names. Maybe each player renames the story to reflect their own personal perception of it? So, by consulting all the players descriptions, you end up with a fairly complete record of what happened in that tale?

Jonathan

-----

Sorry, I didn't clarify - I get blank-page syndrome at character generation. Indigestible Jewel is great, but where does the belly of the whale story come from? I think the crime, and too, the big list of atrocities to jump off from, does a lot to lift this weight, but (having not tried it), I'm not sure yet whether it's enough.

> "How He Revels in Conducting Business;..."

That's good. I particularly like the deliberate parallelism between concepts and story titles. It's also cool how it's expressive-but-ambiguous, which (I think) should be mandatory.

> Is there a way that themes can be collective expressions?

Yeah, I didn't mean them to be individual; you can draw your first crime from seductive evil and your second one from lingering consequences, so that, taken as a mass, the stories are tied together. I'm not sure how you can make it more synchronic.

It's kind of amusing to me that the game's turning out to be about atonement; it's really attractive and also totally unlike my past Exalted experience.

> Maybe you rename it whenever a character increases in Essence? Or
> whenever all the core characters increase in Essence?

Yeah, something like that...I don't know about a specific implementation, but those are good starting points definitely.

> Should players re-name stories after they've been told?

Yeah, I think that could work. Sweet.

I really like the idea of starting out with a messy pile of story names that make seeds for play, maybe this fits somehow into the open/close structure? I see maybe like, when you name a story at the end, you also make another title-bit for a story opening, that reincorporates the story closing.

So like maybe you just played Hansel and Gretel in Exalted style, and you decide to call your closing "Witch and Fire Have an Unpleasant Meeting," maybe you throw "The Vengeful Enchantress of Meat Mountain" on the title pile...

Shreyas

-----

As you say, relating your first concepts and names to your first age crimes helps here, but perhaps not enough.

Maybe a motivation / intimacy (slash other stuff maybe) or list of some variety might be helpful here? I'm not sure what the status of those system elements are.

(Bias: I like 'em, broadly.)

The past crimes of a given character are decided by the whole group, right? That seems likely to produce a pleasingly connected effect, if only subconsciously.

It might also be helpful to ponder how crimes are revealed and closed in play. Limit breaks seem natural, but I think they're probably too frequent. Gaining Essence is perfect, but gaining Essence seems to be the effect of finding atonement (of course, system causality could pretty happily be the inverse of in-game causality).

In either case, if the crimes are driven in some way to resemble in-game events, then the coherence of theme in in-game events will prompt more coherence of theme in the selection of crimes. (Which will, in turn... yes, yes.)

> Maybe you rename it whenever a character increases in Essence?

Possibly after every core character has closed one story? Which relates to this next bit...

> messy pile of story names

Where I second the awesomeness of story pairs, and the pile-o'-epic-titles idea, and wonder: who gets to name the closing and / or name the next story?

I kinda like the notion of each player picking a suitable closing title for the tale; each story is not simply one story, but five stories (er... n stories) within one story.

But who picks up the name for the next one?

Possibly: the group.

Possibly: whoever is the last character to complete a full traversal of the Chakram (though this is subject to how quickly we'd expect that to occur).

I have a certain fondness for the latter, because it suggests the notion that these are Solar stories, and as such, emulate the path of the sun in their narrative shape. It also heightens the perception of Limit Break as a perversion of this structure -- not just metaphysically, but narratively.

~ Ashi

-----

me: ha, you just created a system for subplots
Shreyas: yay; i'm so smart
me: i like it, but i think people should add ideas to the pile whenever; like, if stuff comes to them during play, jot a quick note down, add it to the pile of potential stories
Shreyas: yeah, they definitely should
me: it really emphasizes that these are just excerpts from a larger set of possible stories, which also makes me think you can resolve subplots between games, or maybe as consequences of a fight; so like, you could pick up "Vengeful Enchantress" and have her alerted to your presence by something that happened during a conflict, which serves to retie old plots back into the present
Shreyas: mmm, that is very cool
me: maybe that's how the stories get renamed; their plots change over the course of play
Shreyas: oh, very efficient
me: i'm not sure if it quite works; it'll be interesting to see how all these things interact, and if there's just too much stuff to keep track of; my plan is for players to never be at a loss for what to do
Shreyas: heh
me: because there are a billion things that tell you where to go next, and they all kick ass
Shreyas: i think there will be a lot of good things, yeah

-----

Plus some Anathema-relavent portions of an AIM chat with Ashi, which I don't have a record of. But it was very cool too.

Famous Among the Barns

2006-09-18T15:08:00.000-04:00

If you haven't noticed, the Exalted hack has gotten much longer and more complete now. Not all the way done yet, but we playtested it last night and now I have some new ideas for finishing it up. (At least until we play it a lot more, which will inevitably lead to more tweaks). I'm gonna keep editing and expanding the original thread, but I'll also post new messages occasionally to let people know what's going on.

There's a massive thread on RPGnet about the hack (which I didn't start, since I never really go there). I've posted some new ideas and updates there, including the playtest scene we ran last night. It's pretty crazy how positive the response has been so far, considering how out-there some of this design stuff is.

Yay!

Anathema

2006-09-13T11:02:00.000-04:00

Last Updated Sept 17 2006.

The purpose of this project is to make use of the rich varieties of information in the Exalted core rulebook, to play by a completely different set of rules. These rules will largely be based on a "structured freeform" design aesthetic. This is a work in progress and comments and suggestions are welcome.

Thanks to Shreyas Sampat, Thomas Robertson, Selene Tan, Daniel Solis, Tobias Bindslet, Dev Purkayastha, Neel Krishnaswami, "Matt," and Lauren Deans for help so far. And probably some other people too. Brand Robins really wanted to help but couldn't.

I'm gonna walk through character traits to explain how to create a character and how to use your character in play. Shreyas and Neel have both created sample characters, with some dubious correlation to the actual rules listed here.

Name

Aside from being what people call you, your Name also indicates the general power level of your character (what is normally called your capital-E Essence). It demonstrates this by the number of capitalized words in your Name. Mortal have 1 (Aeryn, Lukka), mortal heroes have 2 (Aeryn of Taelsin, Lord Lukka), and the Exalted have 3 and up (Aeryn the Blade of Forever, Lukka Mask-of-Seven-Winters). When you create a character, it's important to record their previous names too, since they have not always been the August Lady Vespertine, especially to those who know them personally.

People can have many names, so the being who calls herself Deadly Arc of Ten-Thousand Angry Shadows may be a charlatan without an ounce of power to her name. But she might not be.

You need not determine your Name at the start of character creation. In fact, it may be easier to decide this last or at least tweak your final choice once you have a better sense of who your character is. Character creation can often be an exploratory process, so do what works best for you.

Concept

This is who your character is and who the world knows them to be. A good plan is to write down a basic Concept before beginning character creation and then, once you've finished, change your Concept to reflect who the character actually ended up becoming. For example, you might start out with something like Spoiled Princess of a Formerly Illustrious House. But during the process of creating her, you might take a bunch of abilities related to sailing and fighting, which doesn't quite fit your original Concept. So in the end, you might choose to shift your Concept to Blacksheep Princess Slumming as a Privateer.

Your Concept also must change each time you gain a level of Name (Essence, in the original rules). This reflects that you are no longer the person that you once were and that the world has made note of this.

Caste

This version of the rules only includes guidelines for playing members of the five Castes of Solar Exalted: Dawn, Zenith, Twilight, Night, and Eclipse. Your Caste is notable for helping define your original array of traits. It also determines the initial stylings of your Anima banner, as usual.

Motivations

These are exactly as normally described, the main purposes that drive your characer. Unlike the advice given in the core rulebook, Motivations don't have to be especially mythic. They also include what, in other games, might be called 'relationship traits': you love someone, you hate someone, or you're in a hierarchical relationship with them of some variety. In any case, Motivations are what gets you out of bed in the morning, whether it's Killing the Elemental Dragons, Obeying My Mother, or Seducing Prince Hakka.

You should start with at least one Motivation but no more than two. Starting Motivations should place your character directly and unavoidably in the path of one or more of the other characters, for good or ill. Other Motivations can be spontaneously created during play.

In general, Motivations serve to frame the overall campaign (long-term Motivations) as well as particular sessions (short-term Motivations). Motivations develop over the course of play, either single sessions, multiple sessions, or the entire campaign. They inevitably transform into new Motivations, but at different rates based on whether characters are able to make real progress on them or not.

At the end of a scene in which a character has attempted to address one of their Motivations, their player should record a summery of what they were able to accomplish. If they were completely frustrated in their attempt, that's important too and deserves to be written down. These are called Accomplishments.

It is obviously easier to work on Obeying Mom than Killing the Elemental Dragons. However, depending on the circumstances, the former might end up causing more pain and anguish (and, ultimately, growth) than the later. This game does not pass judgement on your Motivations. However, it does recommend that you try to maintain a variety of Motivations, from daily responsibilities to impossible moon dreams. This fits better with the rules and may even, we dare to suggest, lead to a more complex and fascinating character. But it may not.

If a character ever completes, abandons, or wants to alter their Motivation, another Motivation needs to be created to replace the previous one. This need not happen immediately, since it might take a few scenes for the character to figure out what to do next.

Once a Motivation has been replaced, its associated Accomplishments are converted into Experience -- 1 XP for each. Note that this XP is not gained until the Motivation has been replaced, even if it has been completed or is no longer valid.

Virtues & Limit

Each character interprets the four core Virtues (Compassion, Conviction, Temperence, and Valor; but not Deference) in an individual way. This demonstrates their morals and general personality. For example, Compassion might be interpreted as Never Abandon Those in Need or as Treat My Enemies With Honor.

Virtues serve to frame individual scenes. Each space on your character's Undying Bell Chakram is connected to a specific Caste (and their related Excellencies) and their chief Virtue. A piece representing your character is placed on your Caste's space when play begins. You frame scenes around either (1) the Virtue you are currently on or (2) a Virtue that you are moving to. Acting on your current Virtue allows you to stay on that space. Acting on the next Virtue (following the arrows) moves you to it.

Going against one of your Virtues gains you a point of Limit, but it also enables you to move backwards around the Chakram, from sunset to sunrise. Going against your Flawed Virtue gains you 3 points of Limit. Every Solar -- except Eclipses -- gains a point of Limit from demonstrating Deference, which is unnatural for Solars. When you hit 10 Limit, you experience Limit Break, a crisis of Virtue, and descend into the darkness of your Flaw.

It is the GM's job to frame scenes in which characters can demonstrate: 1) their Virtues, 2) their Motivations, or 3) their struggles in choosing between Virtues and Motivations. The GM should vary between these three different types of scenes and choose different characters to focus on each time. In a scene in which the GM is not directly addressing one of your Virtues or Motivations, see if you can address it anyway, making the scene multifaceted and more interesting, but not hogging the spotlight at another character's expense. This earns you experience, gets your character closer to their goals, and is also considered BEING A GOOD PLAYER.

Flaw

Sing, muse, of the rage of Achilles. You can pick a Flaw from the book if you like, but ignore the mechanics and keep mainly the descriptive concept. Or make one up. As usual, it's tied to a particular Virtue (usually not the Virtue held sacred by your Caste, but it could be). Solars cannot have their Flaw be tied to Deference, which isn't a proper Virtue, just something they're all bad at. Eclipses are merely slightly less bad.

When you reach Limit Break, your Flaw takes over for at least the remainder of the current scene. You cannot continue around the Undying Bell Chakram to a new Virtue or demonstrate your current Virtue until you demonstrate your Flaw to the satisfaction of the other players (including the GM). Treat every new scene as a scene in which your Flaw (instead of a Virtue) dominates until this is resolved.

In order to crawl your way out of your Flaw-induced binge of sin, you must reinterpret one of your Virtues in a radically different way in order to restructure your values and carry on. Once you have satisfactorily demonstrated your Flaw, pick one of the Virtues that has been causing you to gain the Limit (by breaking it) and reinterpret it. For example, your Compassion might change from Never Abandon Those In Need might become Sometimes People Really Want to Be Left Alone.

Excellencies

These take the place of Charms, basically describing the cool things you can do. Some of them are bound to be combat-related, but none specifically have to be. In this version of the game, you can fight swords with rhetoric or dancing pretty easily. Excellencies start out with a rating that can increase over time as you develop your abilities. Like your Name, this rating is measured by the number of capitalized words in the title. For example, you might start off with (1) Sail, which later develops into (2) Unerring Navigation, (3) Expediant Migratory Pattern, (4) Sky-Spanning Solar Harness, and (5) How Perfect the Celestial Chart Memory.

You might notice that, as they develop, they also become more specific and imbued with a unique type of color, as you develop your own style and way of handling things. They also do not develop linearly, like (1) Melee, (2) Stabbing Things, (3) Stabbing Things Better, (4) Stabbing Things More Better, etc. Each new level centers on a different aspect of the level before it, becoming more powerful but also shifting focus. This serves to broaden the overall range of your abilities while narrowing specific instances of them, if that makes any sense.

When creating a character, you start with your five Caste Abilities and Favored Abilities (Solars get 5) as level one Excellencies. If you are starting play as a mortal hero and going to run the Exaltation, you get 3 points to spend on developing your starting Excellences, though none can be above level 2. If you are starting as a Solar Exalt, you get 8 points (3 + 5 more) and none can be above level 3. Feel free to draw inspiration from the Charms listed in the main rulebook (you may have to shorten or lengthen their names), but you can easily make up your own.

Excellences can be used during any scene, but they are most often invoked in conflicts, a special type of scene.

TEMPORARY CONFLICT RULES

1. Call somebody out and have your challenge accepted.

2. Declare relevant Excellencies being used, giving a short explanation for each. (Example: "I'm using Unerring Navigation to try to lead my enemy's ship into some hidden shoals.") You can only use one Excellency from a given related set. (Example: You can't use Sail and Unerring Navigation together.)

3. Roll dice (d10s, of course) equal to Name (Essence) + Total levels of Excellencies being used. Count 7+'s as Impact (not Successes), but DON'T TOUCH YOUR DICE AFTER THE ROLL. Note that Impact does not indicate degree of Success or Failure, but rather the degree to which your actions make a difference to others and the world. The failure of some people can matter more than a great victory by others.

4. The dice rolled are used to frame the narration of the conflict. This can work in two ways:

A. If you are rolling dice of two different colors (which makes this easier), put your dice in order, starting with the person who rolled the LEAST Successes. So that player would place all their 1's in a line, followed by the 1's of opposing player, then the 2's and so on. This line represents the "shots" (think movies) that make up the conflict. Each player narrates for their dice.

B. You can achieve the same thing taking turns narrating. Each player just seperates their own dice into 1's, 2's.... 10's. And then you narrate 'tennis' or 'pin-pong' style, starting with the player with the LEAST successes. They narrate their 1's and then the other player narrates theirs, etc.

5. After the narration is over, you determine the overall consequences using the Impact rolled by each player and the character's Anima levels, described below.

Anima

The rest of these are story- or character-sized pacing/structuring mechanics. Anima structures individual conflicts. Players define a range of Anima effects for their character (originally based on their Caste, but these can change over time). When a character uses Excellencies above level one, their Anima advances a level. Once the character reaches their last Anima level, they have exhausted themselves (run out of Essence, in the original rules) and cannot invoke more. Characters gain new Anima levels (and the effects that go with them) as they grow in power, which is a new thing. This means more powerful characters can use a lot more Excellencies before feeling the burn.

After a conflict, the Anima levels of the participants also determine the scope of the consequences. No Anima indicates a minor consequence, while Anima 5 means the situation of the entire region was likely changed as a result.

Wonders

Memories

These are your recollections of your past lives. They start out cloudy and become much more focused and specific as play develops. So a mysterious guilt from past disobediance might turn into a complex story of betrayal involving specific historical people. Memories develop as players pursue them.

Memories are important for understanding and learning how to use Wonders, the lost relics of the First Age. Wonders only allow their secrets to be unlocked by those that understand their history or who were inimately connected to them in a past life.

Undying Bell Chakram

2006-09-13T01:54:00.000-04:00

Somehow I got started rewriting Exalted as a super-progressive story game, sorta like the stuff Jared Sorensen did in The Requiem Chronicler's Guide. It's gonna be sorta like the Avatar game, but a hell of a lot crunchier. The core cycle for Solars looks like this (based on Castes and Virtues):

I promise I'll get this one into a playable form. Soon.

The Game That Was Vesperteen

2006-09-11T13:42:00.000-04:00

So Push 1 is out. The rumblings about Push 2 and Four Nations have started. Which leaves me with the Vesperteen, my pseudo-sequel to Jason Blair's childhood horror game, Little Fears.

In a thread that Jason Morningstar started recently, I said that game design is a river you can't step into twice, because your tastes and mood and sense of design is constantly changing. And that's partially why Shreyas has had so much trouble finishing Torchbearer, because he started it while his design senses were just beginning to blossom and they've growth like kudzu since then. And the same could be said for me and Vesperteen, which was originally going to be my "Forge game."

Shreyas decided that he's going to make two new, different games, neither of which are probably going to be called "Torchbearer," to plug the font in his psyche that Torchbearer was supposed to cap. I wish him the best in that, but I'd really like to finish a game about the core concept of Vesperteen, which was that power and social standing among teenagers is derived from sinful deeds and that the exchange of sin for power is a dangerous, addictive one that can turn kids into monsters. It's about the fear of growing up to become an adult that you don't actually like or respect.

Interestingly, the current not-so-good prep school witch movie, The Covenant, is about this same theme. It's possible that seeing it awakened my desire to do this right.

But it's clear that Vesperteen is going to have to bend to reflect design skills and interests that have grown and changed since I last worked on the project, especially my recent revelations about creating game content that evolves and develops as you play with it. It'll also probably need a new name, eventually. Because renaming a thing has the potential to reenergize a project. It's not something old, but something new and exciting. Right now, Young Monsters or When We Were Monsters are winning.

Recent thoughts:

- Can the Squick Chart evolve over time, as the players get more comfortable exploring sensitive issues with each other? Maybe the initial Squick Chart is created by the initial Truth or Dare stage that performs the bulk of character creation, based on what characters will do or admit to having done.

- Perhaps you only define as many Squick levels as characters have actually performed in play. This makes the exploratory nature of discovering sin much more obvious, since you wouldn't really know what you were getting into before you encountered it. However, I would worry about the potential for such play to be dangerous, since that's what having a fully defined Squick Chart was originally supposed to mitigate.

- I think the GM is going to be responsible for playing two characters: the town (all the adults) and the school (all the other kids). Just like PCs, these two entities have past sins that they have performed, the exploration and uncovering of which may make up a significant portion of play. Maybe you want to figure out why weird stuff happens around the site of some mysterious accident. Dealing with the sins of your fathers (and mothers and peers) and all that jazz. And just like PCs, entities that are part of the town and school always stand the risk of turning into monsters (one of the benefits of treating them like PCs).

- I'd like the details of NPCs lives and past monstrous deeds to be emergant in play, becoming more complex and interesting as players choose to explore them. And I'd like this to be supported mechanically. But I'd also like to keep the paperwork to a minimum, having learned from games like Continuum (which is awesome, but requires too much record keeping). I'm still pondering how to do this.

Terra Nova is Da Blog!

2006-09-10T13:32:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the title. I was watching Busta Rhymes videos this morning ("Flipmode is Da Squad!").

Terra Nova is a terrific blog about MMORGs. I read it all the time and you probably should to.

This week, aside from posting about the World of Warcraft themed Coke ad campaign that features Chinese girl band S.H.E. and European futbol star Ronaldo (which has to be seen to be believed), Terra Nova summerizes a discussion by Blizzard and Bioware employees about why certain MMORGs have been more successful (both commercially and in generating lots of fun play).

Their list:
1. Pretty and Playtested
2. Supports Solo Play
3. Strongly Differentiated Characters
4. Functional Reward & Pacing Systems
5. Low Requirements for Entry
6. Bite-Sized Accomplishments, No Time Comittment
7. Combat Is Still The Only Thing You Can Build A Game Around
8. Everybody Gets Fantasy As A Genre
9. Fun Comes from Game-y Games, Not Just Hanging Out In Character

All of these also apply to roleplaying. Personally, I'm hoping we find more options besides combat soon (we already have pretty sophisiticated ways of handling non-violent conflict), but there's a lot to be learned here.

SG Boston FC

2006-09-08T16:34:00.000-04:00

(posted on behalf of my Boston crew)

StoryGames Boston is coming to Pandemonium!

Where: Sofas of Mortal Peril
When: Every Wednesday night at 7pm
Logo: Is Awesome!

Every Wednesday evening, come to Pandemonium Books and meet others interested in roleplaying games and storygames. Find new gamers, talk about the hobby, and then join us for a pickup game - or bring your own. And if you're new to "storygames", then we'll gladly show you what its all about.

Story, people, dice and the comfiest couches ever. What else do you need?

Some of the games we hope to play soon...

* Baron von Munchausen: Portray an adventurous noble, telling fantastical (but entirely true!) tall tales in the style of "Baron Munchausen".

* Agon: Odysseus. Atalanta. Perseus. You are Greek heroes of legend hoping to best each other with feats of cunning and might, winning great glory for your name. But your dark fate waits just around the corner. What songs will they sing of you?

* Once Upon a Time: The popular story-telling card game about fairy tales. Use your cards to tell your own story, and be the first one to play their Happy Ever After card!

* InSpectres: Things go bump in the night. It's a good thing the InSpectres are in town! Play out the trials and tribulations of your local franchise of supernatural exterminators.

* 1001 Nights: A game of enticing stories. The Sultan's courtiers are held captive in his court. Only through the stories they share can they find freedom and achieve what they want.

Chinese Storytelling Arts 2

2006-09-04T23:19:00.000-04:00

More quotes:

In the storytellers' own terms, the requirements of the performance are summed up... mouth, hand, body, step, spirit (kou shou shen bu shen).

There is a limited range of movement called 'half open door' (xiao kai men) that characterizes the acting style of Yangzhou storytelling. This is not only in contrast to the practice of Suzhou storytelling (Suzhou pinghua) -- 'wide open door' (da kai men) allowing larger gustures and moving around on the stage, away from the table -- but also to some other narrative traditions where acting is further restricted to small finger movements.

The other so-called props are items of everyday usage: handkerchief, fan, and teacup. The storyteller, just like the audience, will drink tea, fan himself on hot days, and wipe his face with his handkerchief. The handkerchief and fan are, however, used every now and then in a secondary function, namely to represent various objects of the story. The folded fan is used to symbolize weapons such as a knife, a sword, a gun, etc, or other untensils such as a whip, a paste-roller, chopsticks, etc., while the unfolded fan may symbolize a wall or screen. The handkerchief may represent a letter, an official document, a book, a tray, etc. ...Just as the storyteller himself impersonates many different characters during a performance, he also uses these two props to symbolize many different things, but only seldom to represent what they are -- the fan as a fan.

The plot development is seen as a series of 'crises' (guanzi) or points of suspense. The storyteller must handle the sequence of 'crises' in such a way that the audience is kept in a fluctuating mood of suspense and relaxation. At times the story flows in a slow and relaxed moon of so called 'cold crises' (leng guanzi), then suddenly moves swiftly into a 'story of crises' (guanzi shu) or 'hot story' (re shu). While some storytellers strive to tell continuously in the 'hot' mood, others prefer a balance between hot and cold.

A second way of creating suspense is to give some hints at an early stage of what is going to happen later, called 'airing the crisis' (liang guanzi) or 'giving a clue' (angen). ...there is often a crisis that is not brought to a solution, called to 'bargain the crisis' (mai guanzi). The 'bargaining' is intended to bring the listeners back the following day to hear the outcome.

...they distinguish different kinds of 'talking' (bai). Every tale is a combination of dialogue, called 'public talking' (guanbai), and non-dialogue, i.e. all other forms of narration, called 'private talking' (sibai). The latter category includes narration of events, descriptions of persons and scenery, storyteller's comments, and -- perhaps somewhat astonishingly -- inner monologues of the characters in the tale.

Chinese Storytelling Arts

2006-09-04T15:09:00.000-04:00

Quotes from my new favorite book, Chinese Storytellers: Life and Art in the Yangzhou Tradition by Vibeke Bordahl & Jette Ross...

From the beginning of the nineteeth century we have detailed accounts of the various 'schools' or lineages of storytellers in the [Yangzhou] area. The storytellers of Water Margin and Three Kingdoms belonged to large schools with many branches, ultimately going back to four honorable masters...

...generally storytelling was divided into four schools (si jia): 'stories of love and marvel' (yinzi'er), 'stories of crime and adventure' (shuo gong'an & shuo tieqi'er), 'stories from the Buddhist classics' (shuo jing), and 'stories from history' (jiang shishu).

Among the northern storytelling styles, Tianjing storytelling (tianjin pingshu) is performed in a lively milieu in teahouses and storytellers' houses in the centre of town. A most interesting characteristic is the spontaneous dialogue between the performer and his audience that takes place, not only during breaks, but also during the storytelling proper.

During the last half century, since the birth of modern China, the creation of new works of quyi [narrative arts], including storytelling -- as a political weapon -- was given official attention and government support. Quyi, reflecting movements and campaigns all through the 1950s-1980s, such as the Anti-Japanese War and the reconstruction of the country, are sometimes individually authored (and may be performed by the author). Sometimes such works are recreations of popular modern stories, known throughout the country [probably thanks to revolutionary opera or other media]. This type of 'new storytelling works' (xin shu) are mostly short, not longer than a single session of storytelling [compared to the traditional 40-day serials], and often even shorter, so that several different performances are stringed together to make up an afternoon's entertainment.

I'm only a third of the way through this book, but already I feel that this tradition is a rich, deep well that younger storytelling traditions (such as roleplaying) might easily drink from. Lots of good stuff here.

Avatar/4N Initial Playtest Thread

2006-08-30T00:08:00.000-04:00

Shreyas and I both came to GenCon with pretty character sheets but only vague ideas about how they supported the kind of play that we had in mind. This didn't bother us. We're both interested in designing game products that are actually the tools used, in real time, to create play, instead of having books and sheets simply be records of play information. So the tools came first, in this case, and then we decided to try and figure out what sort of play they led us too. (Kevin Allen Jr. was walking around at the time and asked what we were up to; that in turn led to the infamous and ongoing Reverse/Engineer design contest, but that's beside the point...).

The sheets we used for Avatar (what would become the Four Nations project) are posted here (PDF).

Hopefully Shreyas and Thomas will pitch in and help me retell how the session went. I still have all the character info and records from it, so I'm going to go ahead and post what I have:

THOMAS
Name: Toph
Nation: Earth Kingdom
Age: 12
Gender: Female
Major Personality Traits: Bored, Bitchy
Relationships: Hates Parents
Martial/Bending: "See" with Earthbending, Crush People With Very Small Rocks (added during play)
Major Possession: The Stick
Major Dharma: Escape Parents, Become Earthbending Master
-----
Earth Path: Learn "Crush People with Rocks"
     - This Guy's an Idiot
     - My Way Works (Sorta)
     - Knocked Myself Out With a Rock
     - Crush People With Very Small Rocks (END)
Fire Path: Change "Hates Parents" to "Likes Parents"
     - I'm Not a Kid
     - My Dad Got Me Into This
Air Path: Pretend to Be Nice
     - I Can Hold My Tongue
     - Wait 'Til They're Not Looking
Water Path: Make a Friend

SHREYAS
Name: Kusa
Nation: Water (North)
Age: 16
Gender: Male
Home: Northern Water Capitol
Major Personality Traits: Competative for No Reason
Relationships: Jealous of Katara
Martial/Bending: Waterbending Accidents
Major Possessions: Kayak
Major Dharma: Make Pakku Look Dumb
-----
Water Path: Find New Teacher
     - I'm Outta Here
     - Caught in a Storm
     - Kayakwrecked
     - Try Again
Earth Path: Become a Pirate
     - Bosun Overboard!
     - Don't Waste Grog
Air Path: Make a Friend
     - Scrubbing with Kai
Fire Path: Take Charge of Life
     - I'm the Lookout Now

Thomas decided he wanted to play Toph, a major character from the show who hasn't gotten a lot of attention yet. She's a young blind girl who can "see" Daredevil-style by using her Earthbending powers to sense vibrations. She is known to have a bad relationship with her controlling and overprotective parents.

Shreyas decided to play a semi-new character. In one episode, Katara (a female Waterbender and one of the show's protagonists) beats the crap out of a bunch of young male Waterbending students, to show that girls can be just as good as boys... or even better. Shreyas named one of these guys Kusa and decided that he was pissed off at Pakku, the Waterbending instructor.

I should probably explain that "Major Dharma" are supposed to be long term goals.

Also, let me explain the basic idea of "Dharma Paths." Characters can have up to 4 different active Dharma Paths at each time, one for each element. And they basically record your progress as a character and enable you to change old traits or add new traits by completing a kind of "journey" as a character. You go through a series of events and they lead you to a new trait. But this trait CANNOT BE THE TRAIT YOU WANTED when you began the journey. It has to be at least a variation, but it's often something completely different. You may think you know where the journey's going to lead when you start, but life always surprises you.

Okay, so the characters didn't start off with all those steps filled out on their Paths. They didn't even start out with all those Paths. I think Thomas started with just his Earth and Fire paths determined, while Shreyas started with just Water (correct me if I'm wrong, guys).

One of the fabulous things was that Toph wanted to change "Hates Parents" to "Likes Parents," but because of the way Paths work, we knew she'd never actually be able to do it, which is so fitting for her character. Thomas chose that goal for her KNOWING THAT SHE WOULD FAIL, which was just delicious. We all were on the edge of our seats waiting to see what her misdirected attempt at learning to love her parents would lead her to.

Okay, there's me setting the stage. One of you guys wanna explain the Avatar Cycle dail and our thoughts about it? They kinda evolved over the course of play.

Non-Commercial Roleplaying

2006-08-29T17:35:00.000-04:00

Over at Story Games, I started to get a bit subversive.

Oops :)

Push Sales Report: July 24 - Aug 24

2006-08-27T19:37:00.000-04:00

Our first month was pretty good.

23 PDFs
63 Print (44 of those at GenCon)
86 Total Copies Sold

$762.13 Total Profit
$95.27 For Each Contributor, including Clio
$0.00 For Each Commentator (maybe next time, folks!)
$285.80 For Me (triple duty: Contributing, Editing, Layout)

If you wanna look at my spreadsheet, I've posted it here.

I think I'd like to pay Contributors bi-annually, if that's cool with you folks. So you'll get a check at the end of January (for the first 6 months) and then another check around GenCon 2007 (for the second 6 months). If people have concerns about that or need their money sooner for some reason, please let me know. I have no problem getting you your money earlier; I'm just trying to avoid more paperwork and hassle.

Another idea to float to Contributors:

I'm not going to try to force this in any way; it's just an idea right now. What do you think about the possibility of releasing the PDF for free and/or selling back issues at cost once Push vol 2 comes out? I'm just thinking about the trouble of keeping track of multiple lists of contributors who have submitted things to multiple volumes and it just gives me nightmares that there will be confusion about who deserves what money. So I was wondering about the idea that any given volume of Push has a year to make money for its contributors and then it just becomes something we distribute freely (though we still own all the rights to it!).

There are some real issues with that idea, of course. I'd have to talk to Clio about it, since Lulu would still be making money off selling copies even if we weren't and that seems a little... odd, I guess, though not if you think of them as any other printer.

And I don't know if people would wait and buy issues of Push because they wanted to get it free/cheap. Or if our loyal readers would feel cheated by the price break for latecomers.

And I don't know what that would mean for IPR distribution if, for example, Push dropped to $7 from $17 after a year. Or maybe we cease distribution of vol 1 once vol 2 comes out, like other magazines?

Maybe that would end up being just as much of a hassle as keeping Push 1 the same and just sending out annual checks to contributors to previous volumes. That, I might be able to manage.

In any case, those are my Push-related thoughts of late, as I begin pulling people together for vol 2.