Adept Press

All,

I'm not sure exactly what Ron has up his sleeve, but he asked me to share. The following is a link to the rules for the game I run, The Journal.

https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=8F9106052E03292C!386&authkey=!AOkAVu_kXenpSHE

I have recently come to understand myself as a simulationist and suspect the game I developed is too. I think of it as the game I thought I was playing in the '80s, but had to write in January 2013. At the risk of being presumptuous and a little selfish, I would appreciate feedback on the following.
1)   What text or explanations might make the guide something more than my personal reference for play as a moderator (GM)? That is all it is at current.
2)   Is it unfair that I do not cite the theory and ideas that inspired the guide? I thought foot or endnotes would be distracting and off-putting, so I left it all out (actually, never bothered to construct is more accurate; man that would take a lot of work at this point). Some people think transparency is dishonest. I think it provides plausible deniability for lawsuits.
3)   I'm always interested in exploits people find in the rules. "This plus that plus the other and BAM, I broke your system," is valuable feedback in my opinion.

Me and my buddy started testing the system in February 2013, although not in live play. It was sort of a deep analysis (graphs and charts, theoretical debate, example builds, talk about what was good enough, etc.) over email. This summer, I said screw it and just started using it. I knew where the levers where in the system and made some adjustments along the way. After three days of roleplaying (sleep was sketchy), it worked. We had a great time. It was just what I hope it would be for us. We even finished the last four hours of the game walking along the peer in Santa Barbara, CA with me flipping a coin for decisions. I think none of the swimsuit-clad women could show their disgust at our sword-wizard-geek talk because of the botox. How's that for simulationism?

Okay. Let me have it *cring*,
Ed

If I may, I'd be interested in your own view on something: you earlier characterized your game as very idiosyncratic, even eccentric in comparison to the common fare. Can you pinpoint and discuss these differences in any greater detail, what makes the game so? Also, what are the games that you think of when making such comparison? My guess is that you've got a big background in 3rd edition D&D, but what else?

(I might have misunderstood your earlier comments on the matter, in which case don't mind me. No straw men intended here.)

I think it could be easy to confuse lack of confidence and fear of flaming as a claim that something is different. I know I am self conscious about sharing the game (it took a pint of Burnpile Smoked Porter after lunch to get me to post), but it could be very underwhelming for broadly experienced gamers. My apologies if I misrepresented the game.

Yes, I am heavily influenced by AD&D as the editions came out, right up until the Pathfinder split from fourth edition. Pathfinder (my beloved Ranger was superseded by the Zen Archer) and 5th edition playtests motivated me to move in an independent direction. The original White Wolf Vampire was also something I liked to play. Star Frontiers was fun too. I started my system more neutral with regard to what some might call genre, but gave up after I realized the folks I would run a game for knew and liked what they thought of as classic AD&D.

From there, I started by asking myself what it was I enjoyed about roleplaying. The answer was an earlier version of the introduction. Everything else fell out along the way, informed by a complexity theory concept that a few basic building blocks could be permutated into novel gaming.

Does that help answer your comment?

The game in August was a single player with a buddy in CA. I offer some of the products that came out of the game for your analysis. I have not used Outlook's sharing function before. If I have made a mistake or someone has suggestions of how to share these more effectively, please let me know.

Moderator notes (incomplete) that I filled in with notes in hard copy on the plane and as the game unfolded: https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=8F9106052E03292C!396&authkey=!AMO1i9jcg3m1emM

Prolog for Nate: https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=8F9106052E03292C!395&authkey=!AOYcB8wRGZywQmg

Journal entries for Nate: https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=8F9106052E03292C!390&authkey=!AG42NGxE9moN2vs

Oh, AD&D - I hope you're reading the recent spate of D&D discussions Ron's been encouraging! (I know, all American roleplayers have played AD&D. My background in the relatively D&D-lackluster inner Finland makes me look at you all like laboratory rats in this regard. I never tire of the anecdotes from the '80-90s...)

For what it's worth, I recognize the creative drive behind your rules system, I think; I've wrestled with similar mechanical issues myself in the past, and probably for similar reasons as well. For me it was 3rd edition D&D over a decade ago, it was the first edition of the game that seriously impinged on my gaming space. I was similarly very enthusiastic about fine-tuning the mechanical solutions to perfectly reflect the way I actually used the rules in play.

I'll forgo commenting on the specific mechanical solutions, mainly because it seems to me that you know perfectly well what you're doing in that regard - I can see how these mechanics help reflect and measure arbitrary character visions as they emerge from play. Also - and this might not be the case for you, but it was for me - I've found that ultimately the mechanical solution for this sort of game is something of a secondary concern that doesn't ultimately impact our success in roleplaying. Lots of ink has been spilled on topics like "breaking the system" (which you reference yourself), but nowadays it seems to me a lot like missing the forest for the trees to approach a game like this from that direction. The real issue is how we communicate and coordinate creative goals at the table, and once that chemistry happens successfully, it is ultimately trivial to finangle the rules to do what the entire group wants to; you can even do it while playing. From this viewpoint I tend to see excess concern over balancing mechanical details (a very common topic in 3rd edition D&D circles) as a symptom of authority issues: the group does not have creative communication, and thus they are reduced to bitching at each other about mere mechanical rights, as if the game could be fixed by merely making sure that Bob doesn't get to do surprise attacks too often.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that what I'd really love to read would be your critical take on the black box that is the GM: if you had to reduce the "non-inclusive list" (as you characterize the catch-all list of GMing duties you recognize in the text) into procedural advice, or rules if you will, what would it look like? This is something that I've been attempting to figure out myself for D&D (so-called old school D&D, to be specific) lately, so it's a topic of interest to me.

Also, let's remember that it's not just "how to GM", but also, "what are we doing here, exactly". It often seems to me that, when it comes to games of this sort, the only difference between irrelevant exercises and classics of the form comes from the proposed topic of the game. We often attempt to present "universal solutions" to the rules-mechanical issues in a sort of top-down design approach, but when you come down to it, a game like e.g. Ars Magica doesn't flow from its mechanical solution, but rather from the campaign premise. Thus, the critical question: what do you use these rules for? And saying "Anything!" is not good enough, that dodges the question. Is it mission-based fantasy adventure like most of D&D?

Eero,

First off, thank you so much for actually reading that damn thing. Second, thanks for challenging me with a question I do not know the answer to just now. I am referring to your question about what a GM does and my groping (represented by a catch-all list) for an answer.

As a person new to theoretical discussions of gaming, I can only offer observations. Bottom line up front: there seems to be a causal linkage between a system mechanic and my ability to run a game undistracted by the simulation aspects of the game. Why is it that I felt so much more comfortable using these mechanics as opposed to any other of a number available? It could be The Journal intuitively simulates my understanding of a person interacting with the world well enough for me to just concentrate on the player's experience. I do not understand why, though. I feel like a farmer being asked why crops grow. I don't know, but if do these things (part of which are handed down, part of which are experimentally discovered), the crops grow. It is as silly as having to hold your mouth right to dance effectively.

[On a side note, my analogy is in no way a criticism, even though I said it bluntly. I acknowledge I am among my betters at this site, in terms of roleplaying theory. If you all are entertained in some way by exchanging strokes with a child, I am here. Otherwise, I will keep reading posts. This place is much better than the other research I have found since January. Although, I really liked that Canadian guy with the good looking hair cut at Emergent Play on youtube.]

My gaming style is not mission-based. It used to be when I was in my early teens, but mission-based has since become conflated with railroading in my mind. My primary roleplaying partner and I have gotten into character-motivation-meets-the-world sort of gaming. The GM establishes the latest setting to keep players intrigued with newness of context. The player must provide the kicker, for which the GM then offers opportunities and complications. Such emergent plot had been a real ball-buster for me for years.

The gameplay in August was the first time I felt like I was riding the wave as a GM, instead of paddling for my life until getting smashed by the tower of water over me. I was so into the story with my (one) player I made him tear up in (player named, not my idea) "encounter 36" when John came stumbling into a tavern from out of the gutter and his eyes lit up seeing Nate sitting there. I just intuitively knew what to do with the system, my cognitive load was wholly occupied by story.

Do these observations help you help me?

Ed

Well, I don't know if I'm any help - but perhaps we can be interesting at each other a little bit. My experience is that these Internet discussions about the hobby are ultimately hit and miss, we're all just attempting to find people who happen to be at a point in their own journey where interaction is somehow useful for either or both parties.

(Also, if you don't mind, knock it off with the self-effacing. I mean, I'm first in line to call Ron my personal rpg guru, but that should be strictly tongue-in-cheek. I personally am especially not anybody's superior in anything rpg related, unless we count my totally superior D&D campaign that certainly shows the Truth on that matter to anybody who cares to see.)

That being said, I get what you mean by character-motivation-meets-the-world; I return to this goal myself as well often. This year I've been running a sort of game design workshop here in Helsinki, and there are at least two games under the works here that are trying these sorts of things. It's an exciting goal, and I'll reiterate my observation about having a definite setting, situation, a clear topic for play - what might be called Situation in Forgite rpg theory.

As an example of what I mean, a guy here in Helsinki is working on a game called Caudillo. The topic is sweet, he's all about Cold War era South American political Juntas and the societal dynamics of leadership in Strong Man governments. The game is still seriously under development, basically because it doesn't have a clear structure for how it approach the subject matter (there are plenty of mechanical ideas, they just don't connect logically into consequential first-this-then-this procedures), but it has Situation in spades: we know why we should be interested in playing this game, and it's all about psychological and social realism when a Catholic republican big land owner encounters a socialist agitator elevated by a groundswell of popular support.

From my viewpoint what you have here is sort of like the polar opposite of Caudillo: you're both after meaty fiction, strong observation of the world, smart dialogue within the group over the subject matter. However, where Caudillo is propped up by its topic enough to be playable, it is failed by a shallow grasp on the mechanical tools it requires. Your game text here, on the other hand, reminds me of many similar projects I've seen over the years: a designer jumping off from a long tenure with some powerful mid-weight rules system, intent on improving on the mechanical details. In practice these projects seem to rarely flash powerful interest outside the designer's own head for the simple reason that a generic mechanical framework alone lacks creative impetus: there is no Caudillo in it, despite it being perfectly playable.

(When I say that this sort of thing seems familiar, I mean it. Here (http://www.majatalo.org/zipit/chaos_order.pdf) is something that a friend of mine created years ago, that I think comes up from a very similar creative place in his rpg hobby as your thing here. Maybe it's interesting to compare to see whether I'm just imagining your similar creative positioning.)

I've myself historically approached game design from a direction very similar to what you've got going here. I could put my BRP/WW combo platter from -98 into your table of contents point by point; my mechanical particulars were different (polyhedral dice pools instead of d20), but the concerns I was addressing were the same insofar as the design was all about universal streamlining, generic ability to describe arbitrary player characters in mechanical terms, and twisting maximum mechanical complexity out of a minimum amount of mechanical conceptual space. I don't know if it would be useful for you, but for me the way forward from here was ultimately in putting the mechanical "generic, universal solution" aside to play altogether different games instead. For me, now that I come back to the sort of design I did in '98-03, I find that what I really needed at that point was to delve into playing games like My Life with Master, Dust Devils, The Mountain Witch, and so on; games that did not attempt this "perfect personally idiosyncratic mechanical system" at all.

But of course, all that is so much poppycock if it doesn't seem useful; I'm not trying to prescribe what you must be thinking about game design, and what you should be doing next. Just reflecting on what I see as familiar in your game text, in comparison to my own.

Moving on, I agree 100% about your characterization here:

Quote from: RangerEd on October 05, 2013, 05:51:11 PM
Bottom line up front: there seems to be a causal linkage between a system mechanic and my ability to run a game undistracted by the simulation aspects of the game. Why is it that I felt so much more comfortable using these mechanics as opposed to any other of a number available? It could be The Journal intuitively simulates my understanding of a person interacting with the world well enough for me to just concentrate on the player's experience.

That is a very good insight on the matter, I think, because it matches my own thinking on it :D Specifically, although I couldn't have put it in these terms more than a year or two back, this is a huge part of my own motivation in continuing to develop my own highly idiosyncratic home brew of D&D rules. I don't pretend that it's a different game than D&D (the creative motivations and overall structure of play are exactly like D&D, or some brands of it anyway), but I am regardless intensely invested in perfecting a mechanical model that helps me personally to be a stronger, faster GM. In certain types of roleplaying your performance is simply boosted if you're running mechanical solutions that are intuitive for you, and fine-tuned to address the concerns you find important at a level of abstraction (and ideology of approach) that you find interesting. This is why I use OODA loop initiative in D&D, this is why I've combined all three physical stats into one, this is why I have my own precious snowflake interpretation of level drain... all to reduce the static between my own instincts and how the mechanics work.

So yeah, I'm totally with you on that. The part I struggle with is, what makes mechanical detail relevant to other people aside from yourself? It's possible that rpg design involves several types, modalities of mechanical design, and different games use mechanics for subtly different purposes. This might be why myself and many other people get weird geek-orgasms from observing and utilizing the elegant mechanical systems of say Sorcerer or The Mountain Witch; those are games where universal appreciation of the mechanics and how they interface with the fiction is central to the game as an object of art. Meanwhile there is this other sort of game, which my current D&D, my 2003 D&D, my '98 BRP, Rolemaster and your game here all represent: an implicit responsibility for the GM to construe a campaign, and a set of mechanical tools that can only ever be exactly as useful for the GM as his level of harmonization with the mechanics allows.

If this type of game is really a "thing" and not just some sort of weird misunderstanding, then I have only one answer: either delve deep into somebody's rules until you start truly believing in them (GURPS or Hero System or WW or d20 or whatever, doesn't matter), or build your own set, completely idiosyncratic to yourself alone. The thing is: if this is how it works, then there is no point to publishing these "personal solution" rules-sets, except for the most erudite academic curiousity.

And, as I already speculated at the beginning: if this type of game design is a thing, then it seems historically that what makes a game like this relevant and interesting is all about the specific campaign you postulate for it. Ars Magica or Over the Edge have their own peculiar rules systems, but they are completely overshadowed by the unique fictional subject matter of each. There are some rare few games that seem to be considered relevant without this sort of initial focus, but frankly GURPS is such an aberration in the rpg field that I'm not sure if it's wise to pattern your design efforts after it.

Ah ha - as I at least considered might be the case. Although I intended to take you at your word regarding Simulationist priorities, I am looking at great big fat - albeit timid virgin - Narrativism.

I'll explain. It's just as I mentioned to Joshua - when through experience, you aren't assured of establishing an SIS, you tend to read my (obsolete) text on Simulationism and say, "That's it! Eureka! I prioritize the Exploration!!" Whereas the issue is not goal (or rather Agenda), but the medium. You're still enmeshed in getting the engine to run, and not able to focus on where you want it to go - although your own text screams it from the most crucial, revealing spots.

From Agenda Clash or can two games peacefully coexist at one table? (http://indie-rpgs.com/adept/index.php?topic=154.0):

QuoteThe classic confusion with the Big Model is mistaking desiring a perfectly reasonable degree of the five components of Exploration to be in action at all times, which is required for role-playing, for The Right to Dream. This is very common because so many groups have suffered with members who were flat-out not role-playing at all, in that they did not care about those five components, and thus functional play of any kind failed to emerge – there was no platform, or medium, of Shared Imagined Space to do anything with. So many people have labored painfully along in the desire for Exploration to a functional degree, that when they find it, it's like the Holy Grail and they can't imagine anything about what to do with it, so they think that this – which I consider nothing more than a mere healthy baseline – must be their Creative Agenda.

Which if this applies to any degree in your case, casts doubt on your claim to being a Right to Dream player. It may well be that you are deeply concerned that play be well-founded on shared, imagined Situations (which includes Characters in a Setting), subjected to System, all dosed liberally with enjoyable Color, and are willing to go with, in this case, a Step On Up play as long as that's there. In which case, there's no Right to Dream seen anywhere in the room, not even hiding in the cupboard, and this is Step On Up play without frills.

Why, in your case, am I being so certain about Narrativism? Because nothing else would include these phrases, especially in their exact positions in your logic, and with the second as the content-clarifier of the former:

QuoteThe third characteristic is continual character adaptability. Some tabletop games and many computer games offer ways to create and advance characters in unique ways. Customizing a character in the face of a challenging environment is part of the fun of roleplaying. Early choices for a character should not create a rutted niche for the character. The system should allow a player to continue to personalize and adjust a character as the game unfolds.

The fourth characteristic is the opportunity to learn through play. The game should not shy away from offering a venue for informative discussion. Topics like anthropology, history, physics, statistics, and
writing composition come to mind as potential areas a roleplaying game might reinforce. Even topics
such as [morality, psychology, and systems theory are not beyond exploration in gaming. Roleplaying, done well, has a lot to offer its players.

Not the GM's story. Not the system making sure that the player falls into line with it. And not genre-emulation or system-testing either - you specifically say that the system has a purpose and when you say what it is, the emergent plot arising from people-in-play jumps right out.

It's timid-virgin in two ways: (i) all this blither-blather trying to introduce and legitimize the whole activity relative to other, irrelevant ones like computer games, and (ii) qualifiers like "even" and similar whenever you bring up the stuff you clearly consider the real point - as if you can't believe anyone else would possibly get it, so you have to include it with these brush-offs and tentative framing devices.

Seriously, go through it as if you hadn't written it. See if you can spot how often you put [dramatic conflict arising as the result of problematic content, producing emergent rather than planned plot] into the "point" position, and how every time you throw around the fogging spray to lessen its impact.

Best, Ron

Before I address Ron's post, I see three points to respond to of Eero's: what I call game shtick, popularity and relevance with players, and mimicking commercial success.

First, I have heard the "observation about having a definite setting, situation, a clear topic for play" and "generic mechanical framework alone lacks creative impetus...despite it being perfectly playable." I am in a catch-22 on this point. If I invent a shtick or niche theme for the mechanic and associate the mechanic with that shtick, then my game risks falling out of favor when the shtick wears out for my players. I am remembering how many players wandered off on us after a few months of Vampire. Without a niche theme, I lack a hook to attract more players and risk not having any players.

My decision was and is to risk a lack of shtick for the game for the benefit of having a tacitly comfortable mechanic that is flexible enough to meet my gaming needs as a moderator. Frankly, I don't have many opportunities to play as it is—perhaps twice a year. Maybe I will change my tune someday when mass appeal becomes more an issue. Although, any table I have joined is a game mechanic unto itself once house rules (used very loosely to include unspoken observance or lack thereof of rules), social contracts, and other peculiarities are tacked onto the published game. Recall I am a simulationist, so these things distract me at the table as a player. The second point mitigates the risk in my decision to have generic (sort of, because system matters) rules.

Second, the popularity question and "what makes mechanical detail relevant to other people aside from yourself?" are answered along with the risk of more generic rules. I establish and run the game, so the popularity of the game resides within my willingness to moderate a fun game in the eyes of my players. This is not arrogance, just my particular situation where I fly to meet friends once or twice a year to game. I suspect some might consider me woefully naive to stand behind a thematically neutral system. I would argue the proof of the pudding is in the tasting. Thus far, I have sprung The Journal on only one very hesitant friend. He was sold after the first few hours. Pretty small sample set so far, but one I think I can realistically grow. The third point complements this argument.

Third, publishing this selfish endeavor is something I had not considered. Give away maybe, but I think the way I wrote the game is for a target audience of just me so far. That is why I am interested in people's ideas about how to make it easier to take in. The objective for a game write up that is easier to process is for my friends. I'd like to be able to e-mail them a document and have them feel like they knew what they were getting into before I sat down with them at the table. My design goals have less to do with mass marketing appeal and more about being the architect of fun for my players.

As a final thought on your post, I have a large record of house rules, game hacks, false starts on systems, and few systems I tried but didn't work. I empathize with your list. What really interests me is your first question about what a moderator (GM, DM, storyteller) actually does during game play. Any new thoughts this evening?

Ron,

Congratulations! You won the scavenger hunt by finding my biggest area of concern. That damned last paragraph of the introduction. I knew it was weak and I had a point in there I was struggling to get across from the right to left side of my brain.

On style of writing, the Missouri redneck cultural practice of understating the strongest point (that root canal without a shot hurt a bit) coupled with my weekly dose of apologetic and self-effacing (sorry Eero) Economist reading (why do their writers do that?) and I once again bury my lead. Although, to put the introduction into a path-dependent frame, it was an attempt to start from a blank piece of paper with the questions of "why" and "what for" for a new system and walk onto target. Even with its flaws, it was a great compass to guide me through the multitude of decisions during development. It was good enough then, but its purpose as an introduction has changed to serve the reader instead of the writer. I look forward to correct those problems.

As far as the narrativist label, I am very pleased. That is what I hoped I was, but was willing to let the evaluation fall where it may.

Who would have thunk it,
Ed

I'm with you regarding commercial ambitions - that's basically a red herring when we're talking about improving our rpg play, nothing comes of that thinking. I was more musing about the difficulty in me or anybody else relating to your personal d20 heroquest: I can see what drives you to write your own system here, I think, but I perhaps don't have much aid to give there, excepting the suggestion to try to look beyond the rules mechanics. In my own case it proves in hindsight that focusing on mechanics was a bottleneck in the improvement of my own play, and the sorts of mechanical concerns I was fiddling then were pretty similar to what you have here now, which makes me offer this suggestion. For me it was the case that putting my homebrew system away for a while and playing entirely different sorts of densely designed Forgite games helped me progress beyond the point where I felt stuck and dissatisfied.

Regarding the question that I feel is core for a traditional game that proposes to be strongly GM-directed, I think that the answers are very much a mystery at this stage - I won't even try to guess what the specific answer might be in the case of your game here. This is partially because traditional roleplaying has historically relied in implicit transference of GMing skills, which, combined with the idea that the GM is the sole determiner of content and solely responsible for entertainment, means that people fucking don't talk about how and why rules are to implemented. Everything important just sits in the GM's head while we waste our time writing up equipment lists or fiddling with the math of the attack roll.

I've got perhaps 2-3 games that are structured in this sort of manner that I can confidently say I understand. Dread, say - it's sort of this type of game, it's basically disinteresting without an interesting GM with functional attitudes running it. (And of course the reason I understand that game is that Epidiah Ravachol is maybe one of only two people ever who's written a trad game with exhaustive and functional methodological treatment.)

But, furthermore, here (http://indie-rpgs.com/adept/index.php?topic=63.msg579#msg579)'s something I wrote a while back about my current old school D&D game development. It's one sort of answer to this question; clearly not the answer that applies to your game, but at least it's a reasonably clear theoretical statement about how rules come into being, what they are for and when and how we utilize them at my D&D table. As a bonus point, I think it's a pretty interesting game to play - not much good if you figure out how your game works, and it proves to be dull, after all :D

As for GNS, I can't discern the system here as being very strongly supportive of any particular agenda mode, at least not in comparison to games that are really strongly focused in this regard. This of course means nothing about your own creative agenda when you play, it just means the same thing that I said at first: we have a lot of game mechanics here, but perhaps not a whole lot of transcribed, clearly thought out statement about the why and how of it. Any agenda may be serviced by a chargen system and a manner of calculating combat results, after all; it's how you use these standard tools that matters.

Eero,

I really enjoyed that post you linked me to. I too want the rules to be canon or constitutional, but I also want them to be out of the way. Other systems' mechanics often distract me from story as a player, in a seeing through the fourth wall kind of way, and put me against the wall as a GM. I just wanted something effortless and I have it.

The word moderator instead of GM was a careful choice as well. Looking through organizational and business theory, this was a leadership role I could imagine enabling the kind of play I wanted. Facilitator was too weak a role. Anything with the word master in it was too strong.

After tonight's discussions, I realize The Journal (v7) is a crib-sheet of mechanics for me as a moderator. I need to describe it for players as what it is the game ought to be if executed well at the table. That problem statement strikes me as overwhelming right now. Can a guy get a kingfisher flashing across the pool? We'll see.

Ed

I just found RPG Design Patterns by John Kirk. I am breaking the links above and going back to drafting in concert with reading John's work.

I spent the better part of the day revising based upon everyone's feedback and constructing some diagrams using John Kirk's book. The hope the train I ran on the virgin narrativism of the introduction did the trick. I also included story highlights from the playtest in call out boxes to demonstrate play. Do you think this version captured the intent of the feedback? What else needs relooking?

Link to The Journal v8: http://sdrv.ms/1fTNMmW

Thanks,
Ed

I think it's pretty clear, I can follow your train of thought here. What do you think yourself, is the core truth of your own way of roleplaying captured here? Is it the grail?

That aside, how come you only get to play a couple times a year? Do you live in an area hostile to the hobby? I'm curious because play environment is such a core part of the game development process; I would expect that it's a bottleneck for the development of the Journal if you can't hammer it into shape with regular play.

Eero,

The Journal is definitely not the grail. It is hopelessly derivative, actually. It is a personal taste, I think. How much basil does one put into curry? I like to chew the leaves in every bite. I have concocted a homebrew for my friends. I may be like that guy that finds a brand of shoes he likes and never buys anything else. Yeah, I will try a sandal for the beach or wingtips for a nice evening out, but there's still those old comfy shoes waiting at home.

The twice a year thing is mostly driven by my desire to warp my kids into their own chosen form of subversive, thoughtful happiness. I do not want my kids to fall for the same authority-by-position, pedagogical crap I did growing up. Another competition for time comes from career. I have found an organization dumb enough to pay me to do what I love. Stupid suckers. Although, I have to move across the country in 12 to 36 month intervals for at least seven more years. Mix in the willingness to walk out on a local game with simulation inconsistencies or social dysfunction (after a couple of months of trial and attempt to offer gentle help, of course), and Ed has to fly to California or Missouri or Arizona or wherever to role-play for a few days on a long weekend.

I agree I'm handicapped on timeline to playtest and refine. Instead of weekly iterations for avid indie game developers, mine will be as much as 25-times longer. That is why sites like this are great. This group of folks is accelerating my timeline by providing meaningful and experienced feedback. I also employ every bit of theory I can find to test and evaluate the game. The reason I am optimistic is I know I'm walking a well-trodden path, and strangely, those who have come before me are willing to help.

Ed

Over the last two days, I have had several email exchanges with my buddy who helped me playtest a previous version of The Journal. His comments and concerns for the latest version relate to things such as a +1 here or there, and d6's versus fixed values of 3 to 5. He doesn't answer my questions outside of explicit mechanics. Not that there is anything wrong with considering explicit mechanics, but the juxtaposition of this forum and such an email exchange is, well, confounding. It feels similar to the first time I returned to my small home town after traveling abroad. Perhaps D&D culture is more like small town life than religious orthodoxy: "Narrati-what-ism? You ain't from around here, are yeh?"

I want to lift a post I made over on Ron's drawing topic. The discussion ought to be here instead of me creating rude tangents for Ron's posts.

"By exposing me to The Quiet Year and Chronicles of the Skin, you have broadened my idea of what roleplaying can be. Although the exposure is limited to reading their websites and watching the posted links, I can easily envision a situation where I bring one of these games to the table for a game with my friends or a meetup group and having them reject the game in short order. That makes me sad.

"Thinking more carefully about what may cause such divergence in the willingness to accept a game, I return to another rephrasing of my question (allowing ignorant people to ask a question can be annoying, because they often cannot ask the right question, sorry). What part of your theory might explain players of a game being unable to visualize an imaginary person (a character with motivation) well enough to interact with a setting (create story by triggering events) without a requisite number of specified mechanics?

"My friends, having been exposed almost exclusively to D&D-like games, must have D&D-like character stats and mechanics or they struggle to role-play. What actions might I consider to help broaden their horizons such that I could buy these games and expect them not to occupy a brown box in my basement? I do not accept that there is nothing I could do, but showing up with the game probably won't work without a specific approach to help them have fun."

Ed

And another pertinent post, unfortunately also a hijacking. I didn't realize I was such a rude forum member until now. Jees.

The Post was in response to Mike's questions about calvinball games and my friends' style of roleplaying with regards to rule following and behind the screen behavior.

"The rules for the game were available to anyone who wanted to try and understand them. That did not happen much. I did eventually read them because I wanted to offer the DM a break. He ran a weekly game (give or take) for nearly six years. He was using them, but had many, many on the spot rules he would bring into play. Some of which caused contention because I disagreed with the simulation mechanic or the ruling broke some critical part of the character I was playing. Right or wrong, though, he was consistent as an atomic clock.

"On the curtains drawn behavior of some DMs, if forced to choose as a player, I would lean towards an outcome of a fun game over the obligation to follow the rules. Although, there are two are two sides of a dialectic reasoning argument going on here from my perspective. Dialectic reasoning has its flaws, but I like it for bounding a linear space between to opposite extremes. The thesis I think most gamers tacitly assume speaks to rule-based gaming, but strict adherence to rules can diminish fun at the table. Any of us could formulate examples of rule-following-gone-bad from our own experiences. The antithesis is something like continuously applied rule 0 or calvinball, which can be equally disruptive for a fun game. Your posts above demonstrate that idea. The synthesis is likely somewhere in the middle. Judgment of which to lean towards on the line then becomes the challenge.

"I would like my players to believe I am a strict rule follower. That desire is what puts me up against the wall as a DM for 3.5, especially at stepped increments around 7th, 13th, then 20th character level games. Holding that many interrelated sets of character stats all at once taxes the hell out of me. I end up leaving players alone and ignored in some ways on the other side of the screen as I manage the NPCs, tracking tactical implications of 5-foot steps, and adjudicating situational modifiers. I have no idea if the players are having fun or if a story is even going on. I am mentally running (anaerobically) to keep up with the pace of the action. Mistakes get made that come up later in post-game conversations over tacos; important ones that would have dramatically altered the outcome for the player characters. All I can say is sorry, but wasn't it fun?

"5th edition seemed like the road to Abilene from the playtest materials. Wiki-development was creating a game design by committee. OSRIC relieved many of the pressure factors that 3.5 and Pathfinder built up, but was too confining for the level of personal detail my friends and I wanted in our snowflakes. I was truly frustrated. I wanted both sides of the dialectic: rules I could follow and have enough horsepower left to guide story creation. The Journal is the game I put together so I could do both. The reason I bring up the game, my dissatisfaction with D&D editions, and the behind the curtain behavior is as context for what I am about to admit. On the first playtest, I fudged dice rolls on my side of the screen to keep the action rising when I identified a local climax to the emerging story. I was the wizard of oz, hoping no one paid attention to the man behind the curtain. My dilemma is that I think the friend that helped me with the playtest would be disappointed if he knew I fudged the dice rolls. I think he needs to feel as though everything boiled out of the mechanics. My rationalization for that hypocrisy is that sometimes, I don't want probability to interfere with events, even if those events should technically adhere to the rules for contested actions.

"Could I be hiding a CA divide between my friend and I with my little secret?"

Ed, it just occurred to me that you might find it enjoyable to read the Solar System (http://solarwiki.janus-design.it/it/node/4). It's available for free at that link, and it's highly relevant to the issues of D&D and narrativism in certain ways; in some ways it is one possible end-point of the sort of development you're doing with Journal.

Eero,

The link does not work for me. Says invalid address. I played around with variations on the address to no avail. I did find the game and will get a pdf copy soon. The description indicates a lot of similarities to my efforts, in purpose and intent.

Looking forward to it,
Ed

Well, my mathematically inclined buddy found the weak link in the mechanics and proved to me multiple success will not work with the way I have them in version 8. They are okay in a sense, but will not support our established method of play, which was the intent of The Journal all along. I am strangely ecstatic. This presents an opportunity for me to drastically simplify the written rules to be that much closer to The Pool on the sliding scale of cogs in the machine. I can also bring the narrativism to the forefront a bit more by eliminating rules, assuming explanation space indicates a style of play (it seems to be true that narrative-centered games have fewer resolution mechanics). The kicker is it will be his idea.

I know have plans for the weekend.

All,

The Journal v9 can be found at the following link: https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=8F9106052E03292C!400&authkey=!APp6mxGSi0s245A

The game is the exploration of an identity in the face of a disquieting and unforgiving world of magic and violence. For my best attempt at truth in advertising, it is a D&D hack that employs a hodgepodge of rule mechanics to support a specific style of play that my friends and I enjoy. We are narrativists and purists for system, such that we have simulationist-by-habit tendencies. Experiences related to the Steve Jackson Murphy's Rules comics informs our purist for system concern for interactions of rules.

I feel like it is good enough to simply play it and stop reworking it. Thanks for everyone's help and patience here.

Ed

I'm also interested in the answer to Eero's question. Will your game address playing so infrequently? Or should you, instead, maybe find a way to play more? :)

Mike,

Funny you mention it. Yesterday I had a conversation with a friend of mine from work. We were talking about a game he plays with his kids, where they each draw a card with a picture on it (beach balls, slides, socks, and other kid things) and add to an ongoing, collaborative story involving the pictures. I told him about The Journal and asked if he would want to try it sometime. He was interested. The collaborative, emergent story concept mixed with genre-independence (I offered historical fiction or zombie apocalypse as options) seemed to be the crucial selling point. Distancing RPGs from D&D was very important, though. He knew of and had no interest in being a D&D misfit. We agreed that being invited to role play with a D&D group can sometimes be as creepy as being invited to a swinger's party.
 
The interaction makes me consider attenuating the D&D-specific color from the game a bit more. It might be as simple as changing the order of presentation for some thing, like placing firearms description before hand-to-hand weapons descriptions. I asked him to give the guide a read through and mark where he was lost or confused. I think he will find those D&D-experience-dependent passages and call them out, where I may be blind to them.

Recruiting,
Ed

Mike,

After rethinking it, I dodged your actual question to tell a personal story. As of now, priorities keep my gaming periodicity limited. The Journal employs journaling to overcome the poor or false memory skills we all have. Through the journaling rule mechanic, a story can stand the six-month break. Although to be fair, the first play test came to a fairly satisfying ending after about 38 hours of play during a three day trip to visit me long-time roleplaying partner. The evidence is in the text boxes of example play I pulled from my buddy's journal I had him send me. He provided an epilog, but I countered with greater story potential, essentially doubling down by dangling an opportunity for the character to impress his newly-reunited-with father. We'll see if me buddy wants to continue the next time he has to solo.

As for now, I am preparing for a group game for the holidays here in the U.S. Several old friends converge near my hometown about that time. I continue to refine and expand the explanations of the game offered in the game guide. I've added some helpful figures and additional topic sentences I left implied in earlier version. Overcoming the virgin-narrativism (as Ron called it) takes a lot of effort and I continue to iterate.

In totality, this game design project is an finely-tuned, uber-personalized solution to meet my gaming needs, which includes lack of regular gameplay.

Ed

It's funny you should mention the problem of memory. Even playing my weekly games as I do, I regularly forget the names of important NPCs, or even that I left the characters in the midst of a cliffhanger. And my players do too. Fortunately a lot of my play is by IRC, and the program keeps chat logs. It's not 100% reliable (sometimes my client doesn't save for some reason). But between myself and several players somebody will either remember or have the log on hand.

Interesting how that parallels your needs.

Well, well, well,

I finally found the input I was looking for at the Forge. Troy's Standard Rant #3, The Power 19. What a great opportunity to test The Journal. I wish I could search that forum with an engine instead of poking through manually. Eh, persistence pays off.

Ed