Hello, my name is Manu and I'm addicted to role-playing games :-)
I want to describe a great gaming experience I had and the game it's inspired me to try to write, and ask for your help in designing it. My latest draft is here: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9Pwq-FbdThteUpOOG55SzJmTnM/edit
A few years ago I was a bit tired of prepping for games, and wanted to experiment with more spontaneous, collaborative play. So I suggested a zombie outbreak game. A player suggested "why not on a cruise ship?", so I printed out a deck plan of a cruise ship, brought a copy of Risus, and we played. The only modifications to Risus I made were to discard the inappropriate cliché rule, and use a hero chip mechanic: do something entertaining, get a chip; use chips to reroll, or to modify the story by adding or changing things. We then proceeded to have one of my all-time favorite games. Exactly why and how is something I've thought about and tried to replicate for years, but never quite succeeded.
So what happened that I liked? Well of course it was nice not to have complete responsibility for the story, and players loved contributing events. I still have no idea why, but people seemed to really get into their characters and played them to the hilt: the Captain who was clueless was really clueless, and did clueless things that got him in quite a bit of trouble, which was great; the lounge singer had some awesome scenes where he cowered in terror and managed to inadvertently take some zombies out with a short-circuiting microphone, while the rebellious teenager had some wonderful confrontations with her parents. When the lounge singer's player desperately needed to make a roll his player would often cry out, "Vegas, baby!" (it was the singer's dream to "make it to Vegas"). There was a lot of comic relief; at one point, we were laughing so hard that people from other rooms came in to see what was going on. We told them, "it's spontaneous collaborative zombies!"
Another point really stands out in my mind. During the climactic scene, the heroes were going down; the Captain was trying to keep the ship from blowing up while zombies were coming into the room, kept from reaching him by a valiant last stand by the other characters. Finally there was just the teenage girl left, standing between the zombies and the Captain with her axe. Unfortunately all her clichés were down to one die except for "rebellious teenager", which didn't really help when it came to fighting zombies with an axe. The "head zombie", who had a kind of mental control over the other zombies, staggered forward to grapple with her. So what did her player do? She used a hero chip to state, "the head zombie is my father!" This made "rebellious teenager" appropriate so that she could use all that cliché's dice, and mustering all her teenage angst she cut the zombie down, sending the rest of them into disarray and giving the Captain the time needed to repair the ship. The group absolutely loved it, and so did I.
I liked this experience so much that I've repeatedly tried to write some rules that would help facilitate that kind of play, but through playing them with local groups they never really worked, or had at best some limited success. I recently re-read Ron's "Story Now" post and something clicked: perhaps more focus on premise is one of the missing keys. Anyway I've written a draft of my latest attempt, which can be found here: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9Pwq-FbdThteUpOOG55SzJmTnM/edit. Note this is a draft and I don't have any fancy layout skills. I appreciate any feedback or advice Ron and the rest of y'all can give me!
Best Wishes,
Manu
I know you! You were the guy who prompted me to write about IIEE after "GNS and other matters" was posted! Welcome, it's great to see you here.
There's lots to talk about in your post and also in the game draft. I'd like to see what others make of them first, then I'll hop in.
Best, Ron
Great, and thanks for the welcome! Are you sure that was me or was it another Manu? If it was me, what did I do? Just curious :-)
I remember the surname too, so if it wasn't you, that'd be weird.
From October 18, 2001: The four steps of action (for Ron) (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=774); best understood in the later context of On the time of narration (http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=4717.0), which includes a link to that thread and an important partner thread as well.
But don't let me distract us further from zombie carnage, the topic at hand.
Best, Ron
Hey that is me. Wow, What a memory you have! I am truly impressed. Well, that's kinda cool :)
OK back to zombie carnage :) I don't know if this is helpful, but I was thinking a bit more about what I liked in that game (and in other similar ones), and how to describe it. The way I would describe it is that I like moments of drama where a character has to risk everything; not just their life, but in some way the essence of who they are is on the line too. So that if they fail, it's not just some guy or gal dying, it's actually making a deeper statement about the world. I'm not sure if I can explain it better than that, but it's a start. Maybe this is just stating Premise again in my own words?
Best Wishes,
Manu
That is definitely a case of stating Premise in your own words, with a certain focus on characters, which is the typical way to do it.
It also leads me to recommend to you Zombie Cinema (http://www.arkenstonepublishing.net/zombiecinema), which is probably the best RPG expression to date of the fact that zombie movies aren't about zombies, but about genuine and understandable human conflicts. You've nailed it perfectly, and focused it a bit, with your sentence "when are you no better than a zombie yourself?" Your game is also oriented more toward character identification and is built more experientially, less schematically - when you check out that game, you'll see what I mean.
Now for some points to consider maybe.
Your prior separation of scenes into types, as well as the identification of a Problem for an episode, is a lot like framing in Primetime Adventures, and based on my experiences and observations of that game, I think it opens the door to a lot of pre-play wrangling during (and replacing) play itself. You can say "Let the problem emerge in play" until you're blue in the face, but the moment someone at the table says, "OK, this will be an Action scene," apparently it's very easy for groups suddenly to debate and storyboard and plan and negotiate not only the in-play situation, but the various actions and decisions of the characters too. It's pretty toxic, actually; there are multiple Forge threads about it.
If I'm not mistaken, and given my memory of Risus, the play-experience you described did not include that particular device, either for an Episode or for scenes. Are you including it because you expect people besides yourself to have trouble of some kind that you didn't? And if so, with what?
Best, Ron
Interesting; yes I certainly don't want meta-play wrangling instead of play, and you're right the Risus game did not include different scene types. Oh and thanks for reminding me of Zombie Cinema! I've played it about half a dozen times, with most of the games being very enjoyable.
As to why I chose to differentiate between different scenes, I wanted to do 2 things:
(1) have a mechanism that would encourage a good story structure so that everyone is clear where the story is going. This is to deal with the problem I've experienced where play would sort of go nowhere. By that I mean there would be scenes but some players wouldn't know what to do with them, how to hook them up to what came before and what's going to come next. I have experienced this with zombie cinema and some of my earlier attempts, where players were occasionally just stumped about what to put in a scene. Having the climax list and choices about what type of scene to have wouldn't totally solve this, but I thought it might help to give some direction.
(2) have a mechanism to reward players for focusing on their character's Issue, or just exploring their character - like a refresh scene in Lady Blackbird.
Those were my goals, but I'm certainly not attached to differentiating scenes. Can you recommend other mechanisms, or do you think my goals are off-base somehow?
Best Wishes, Manu
Another question, just to make sure that I'm understanding your point correctly, I was just skimming through Left Coast and noticed that it also had a few different types of scenes. Is the problem you're referring to a function of having different scene types, or the fact that some of them occur in the pre-game stage in ZO?
Best Wishes, Manu
Hi Manu,
Something I usually want to make clear: don't take my views as coming from On High. They're better than mere opinion, I think, but are still filtered through individual experience and sometimes preferences. And most importantly, every so often when we've all agreed Not Ever to Do X, some crazy lizardfucker shows up and makes a great game centered on doing it.
OK, to start from the last first, I don't like designated scenes in Left Coast either. I still owe some major feedback on that one too, aside from a long email I sent last year.
Regarding story structure, I think that a game based so strongly on character issues only needs pressure on those issues, acting more like a pump than a shaped container. For structure, you might consider permitting some metric for such pressure - like Static in Lacuna (Second Attempt), or Tension in Dead of Night, if anything. Your game design is more in that territory than in PTA or Left Coast territory, because the nature of the external adversity is so well-understood by everyone at the table. So I don't think cues for what's going to be "up next" are as useful as in-game situational moments, like the bit with the zombie father.
In a way, I'm advocating embracing some of the risk you're trying to fix. After all, if that player in the Risus game hadn't flashed on that particular creative insight right at the right moment, then your Totally Awesome wouldn't have been, or at least wouldn't have been for that character. Why not simply say, look, this is the kind of expectation I'm talking about, get your mind properly lubricated toward that end, let's go?
Best, Ron
Hi Ron,
No worries about me taking your voice as holy writ, as in most things I'm taking Bruce Lee's attitude of "absorb what's useful, discard what's useless" :-)
One of my concerns about the game was that having the different kinds of scenes automatically takes you out of the game when you have to think, "should this be an info scene or action scene?" instead of just focusing on the story. While this isn't exactly what you identified, it's close enough that you have certainly reinforced it. Definitely something to think about.
I don't know either Dead of Night or Lacuna, so thanks very much for pointing me towards them; I just ordered the pdf of DoN.
Another question: what are your thoughts about defining the Problem in this type of game through the use of a random mechanic, like the cards in zombie cinema or - I forget the name, In A Wicked Age? The one where you have pieces of paper with parts of a prophecy.
Best Wishes,
Manu
I picked up Lacuna 2nd attempt also and have had the time to at least skim through them (they both look like great games!). The Static and Tension mechanics remind me of similar ones in The Shotgun Diaries and Geiger Counter. I once tried something similar where I tied the crisis level to actual real time, every so many minutes (in the real world) the danger level would increase unless players did things to lower it, and if it reached a certain level Bad Things Would Happen. It didn't work very well because players basically ignored the clock and then got annoyed when bad stuff happened :) I'm guessing that the main problem there was tying the danger clock too closely to the real world, so I shouldn't be too scared to try it again without that element. Anyone else have experience or opinions on this?
Another feature I'd like feedback on, from Ron or anyone else, is the Climax List. Do you think this mechanic is useful in this kind of game, or unnecessary, or might it actually get in the way? The first time I used it was in Collaborative Cthulhu Risus (you can get it free here: https://sites.google.com/site/risusverse/file-cabinet/CollaborativeCthulhu.pdf), and the few times (emphasis on few, it was like 2 or 3) I played it I was quite happy with the result. However in a Cthulhu game there are a wide variety of opponents and ways games can end - well, compared to zombie stories, anyway :) Does the fact that everyone knows the zombie genre so well mean that such a Climax mechanic is out of place?
Best Wishes,
Manu
PS I've managed to find some of the Forge posts on PTA (I had to use Google as the Forge wouldn't let me search, couldn't remember my old password), and the discussions on scene framing are providing a lot of good food for thought.
I could be very wrong about this - please disregard as necessary.
1. You had a great experience with play using a zombie motif, in what was apparently a pretty unconstructed game - no pre-set elements, no scene setups, and so on.
2. You are now designing or writing in some way to
ensure that this happens, with what appears to me to be a great deal of front-loaded elements.
Whereas in the Risus zombie game, the various cliches and pre-set elements resulted in the emergence of interpersonal connections, some drama, and stuff like that; in the game I'm reading here, they seem to impose them, in the sense of "now it's time to be dramatic." Instead of seeing creative and like-minded friends produce stuff that you all collectively enjoy, it's as if you are seeking to make less-reliable game participants produce such stuff anyway.
The trouble is, I have no real recommendation. Plenty of games exist with lots of imposed plot structure, which are really fun, so I can't say, "Don't impose 'this is the climax' moments!" or anything else so bipolar regarding any technique. The only thing I can think of that you already stated, in your text, what seems to me to be the heart of your game, here:
QuoteWho are you, when the veneer of civilization is stripped away? When the world's gone to hell, can you survive - and retain your
humanity? When are you no better than a zombie yourself? After a good session of this game, you will have helped create an entertaining story that deals with these or other such questions in a way you find interesting.
Then after that, I struggle to find anything which makes
that jump out in play. In your previous game experience, the combination of a particular cliche and a creative moment on a player's part helped bring it in. What about that Risus game, in terms of setup, made that possible? Because I'm not seeing anything that gets me pumped about it in your text, although that comes with all the provisos about reading vs. play.
Best, Ron
Hi, sorry it took me so long to reply, I've been distracted by those zombies known as state and city taxes. I'm afraid they've infected me, as I certainly feel rather zombie-like at the moment :) I also took the time to review the Big Model a bit more and read some of the discussions on PTA on the Forge.
First, thanks for taking the time to give me all this feedback; I'm learning a lot and I'm grateful.
Back to the carnage:
"Whereas in the Risus zombie game, the various cliches and pre-set elements resulted in the emergence of interpersonal connections, some drama, and stuff like that; in the game I'm reading here, they seem to impose them, in the sense of "now it's time to be dramatic." Instead of seeing creative and like-minded friends produce stuff that you all collectively enjoy, it's as if you are seeking to make less-reliable game participants produce such stuff anyway."
OK that's an interesting observation. If I hear you right, you're saying that rather than encouraging play of a certain type, the rules actually get in the way by trying to make it happen. For example, if an artist becomes fascinated by a certain tree and wants to paint it that's one thing, having two brass-knuckled bruisers standing to either side of him to make sure he paints it is a different experience entirely :) Is it the strict differentiation of scenes that imposes the strait jacket, the pre-game setup, both of them together, or something else?
"The only thing I can think of that you already stated, in your text, what seems to me to be the heart of your game, here:
Quote
"Who are you, when the veneer of civilization is stripped away? When the world's gone to hell, can you survive ... and retain your
humanity? When are you no better than a zombie yourself? After a good session of this game, you will have helped create an entertaining story that deals with these or other such questions in a way you find interesting."
Then after that, I struggle to find anything which makes that jump out in play."
That's a very helpful observation, I think. You've certainly identified what I want to be the heart of the game. The way the scenes are set up could work for a romantic comedy instead. Not that there's anything wrong with that :) But I want the rules to encourage and make it easy to have a certain kind of play. There's nothing like Sorcerer's humanity mechanic, for example.
"In your previous game experience, the combination of a particular cliche and a creative moment on a player's part helped bring it in. What about that Risus game, in terms of setup, made that possible?"
That's a very difficult question, I honestly don't know and have been trying to figure it out for a long time. My best guess is that several factors contributed. First, we talked about it online a bit first, in a light-hearted way (like the "Blood Boat" song my friend made). Next, I wrote a funny prologue for the game in script form that we read at the start of the game (I'd forgotten to mention this in my first post above), which helped to create both a feeling of tension mixed with laughter. With respect to the system, Risus is pretty wacky even with the inappropriate cliche rule taken out (the list of suggested cliches was light-hearted too), and giving the players the ability to change details with chips probably encouraged some creativity. I suppose I could go with this and make a zombie comedy game - Dice of the Dead? :) But I didn't want to be limited to that...
Best Wishes,
Manu
edited to fix display - RE
OK so here's the direction I'm thinking in now: drop the tightly focused story structure. Have rules for Cooperating (rolls that help get supplies) and Helping (other characters with rolls that go poorly), and two features called Dread and (until I get something better) Ice.
Dread will be similar to Lacuna's Static, where things will gradually become more dangerous. Dread can be lowered by characters doing positive, selfless, life-affirming things. Your Ice increases whenever you reroll; Ice helps with Fear checks, but as Ice increases the Icy character no longer Cooperates, then no longer Helps, and finally no longer cares about their fellow humans at all. Until fully Iced, Ice can be lowered by the character having a scene where they deal with (not in the sense of resolve, but in the sense of experience) the issue they're struggling with.
Does anyone have any feedback on these game mechanics?
Best Wishes,
Manu
edited to fix display - RE
Playtest + rinse + repeat!
And if you get the urge, try out the plot-structured version too, the one you presented through the link above. Then you can decide how much of that sort of thing, if any, that you want to keep.
At first glance, I think your new design is more consistent with your stated goal, but glances are glances and play is play.
It strikes me that you should also become familiar with Dead Meat by Sean Wipfli, which was the first in-Forge successful zombie game design and has influenced just about everything since. Let me trawl my hard drives and see if I can find it. It was notable among other things for a really interesting character-replacement mechanic, making fictional deaths fun.
Best, Ron
Thanks Ron! I will definitely try to playtest both versions. I searched for Dead Meat online but couldn't find it (but I did find your review).
Best Wishes,
Manu
Here's Dead Meat, by Sean Wipfli: Original (http://adept-press.com/wordpress/wp-content/media/deadmeat.doc) and refined a bit (http://adept-press.com/wordpress/wp-content/media/Dead-Meat-2text.doc) (Word files).
Thanks! Much love. Lately I'm thinking making relationships part of the core mechanic...
OK, so I feel the need to test my understanding of some basic concepts, so I wrote the following simple game, which I will post here and then ask questions about in my next message.
Zombies Simplex 1, by Manu Saxena. Inspired by Shlopoto's Pirates! And Sean Wipfli's Dead Meat.
Setting & situation: trying to survive after the zombie apocalypse.
(1) Find a GM somewhere and get some players. Chargen: divide 6 points between Fight, Run, and Think, 1 minimum in each. Pick a name and description.
(2) The GM chooses a Problem for the players, usually involving needing something. If you need inspiration, roll on the following table:
1=food or water; 2=medicine, a specific type; 3=weapons or ammo; 4=fuel or transport; 5=a person; 6=shelter, or information
(3) The players describe what their characters do to try to solve the Problem. The GM then puts obstacles in their path. If you need inspiration, roll: 1-2 = lots of zombies; 3-4 = other humans; 5-6 = environmental (a dangerous area like a burning building, a killer storm, a deteriorating bridge, wild beasts).
(4) When trying to overcome an obstacle, the player rolls a # of dice = the most applicable trait and takes the highest value. The GM rolls a # of dice = the current obstacle's Threat Level. The highest die wins (on ties, go to the next highest die and so on; if it's still a tie all the way through, the player wins). The GM narrates the result of a player win, the player narrates their loss, in accordance with the following rules:
If the player wins using Fight (or Think, if appropriate), the obstacle's threat level goes down by 1; at a TL of zero, the obstacle is overcome. Once the obstacle is overcome, each player gets 1d6 Stuff.
If the player wins using Run when Fight was an option and used by another player, the obstacle' s TL does not go down, but the player will get an additional 1-3 Stuff (cumulative with each Run success), if the obstacle is eventually overcome. This does not apply when the only way to overcome the obstacle is for everyone to Run.
If the player loses, they take a wound. If they lose and roll a 1 while fighting zombies, they got bitten and are now infected.
When taking a wound, make a Shock roll by rolling Think >= current wounds, or Pass Out or Freak Out (the player gets no more rolls to overcome the obstacle and cannot Run until you make this roll). If rolling a 1 on a Shock roll, the character dies (also if total wounds >=7). If failing a Shock roll while infected, they become a zombie; everyone seeing this new zombie must make an immediate Shock roll.
If failing any roll, one can take a Supply point (if any remain) to reroll one die or add one die to the roll.
In a character vs. character conflict, the same rules apply except the winner narrates the results, which can include taking the loser's Stuff if they've been beaten unconscious or are freaking out.
Supply Pool: starts = 2 X the number of players, and never goes above this. This one pool is shared by all the players.
Overall Threat Level: starts at 4, and increases by 1 every half hour of real time. This will be the TL of whatever obstacle the players next encounter.
Stuff: use Stuff to improve a stat, by spending 3 X the current value; or get some useful gear by defining some of it as:
Supply Pool: 2 Stuff replenishes 1 Supply Pool point.
First Aid: 2 stuff = 1 unit, which heals 1 wound.
Weapon: 2 Stuff = 1 blunt weapon (crowbar, hammer), which adds +1 die to Fight rolls; 3 Stuff = 1 medium weapon (baseball bat, shovel), which adds +2 dice, or 4 Stuff = 1 big honking weapon, handheld (chainsaw, katana), which adds +3 dice, or 5 Stuff = 1 small ranged weapon, adds +3 but you can use your Think stat to fight; 6 Stuff = 1 large ranged weapon (shotgun, rifle, etc.), adds +4 dice (also to Think stat while fighting).
Ammo: 2 Stuff = 1 ammo clip.
Losing a roll with any weapon and rolling a 1 means it's lost or destroyed; with a ranged weapon any 1 rolled, even on a winning roll, means it's out of ammo.
edited to fix display - RE
OK so here are my questions. The reward system in ZS1 as I understand it focuses on character effectiveness, so the reward for the player is the enjoyment of overcoming obstacles and improving their character so that they can be still more effective at overcoming obstacles and eventually solving the Problem. So if I understand things correctly this is a standard Gamist reward system. This is fun in its way, no bad thing, but not what I'm trying to do.
Now where I get confused is with what a good Narrative reward system should do. Narrative fun has nothing directly to do with character effectiveness at overcoming obstacles, the fun is in exploring them more deeply as characters, including seeing how they change or how they respond to extreme or difficult choices. So does all such a reward system need to do is provide a mechanism to encourage such action? For example in Sorcerer, is a Bang a reward in itself?
Suppose in ZS1 the characters also had an Issue they struggle with, and we change the Supply replenishment method to something like: 'every time player characters have a conflict where at least one of them struggles with their Issue, the Supply Pool replenishes by 1-3'. This is different from a Bang for several reasons, one of which is it tries to encourage Story Now by rewarding the group with some resources when it happens. I wonder if it's like Fanmail in PTA in that respect. But is this a fundamental mistake, because I'm using a Gamist-type reward for Narrative play?
Best Wishes,
Manu
edited to fix display - RE
Oh, when I mentioned rolling a 1 in the game above, I was talking about on any of the dice the player rolled (not the highest one).
:-)
Rules addendum, just for the heck of it:
When your character dies, you get to carry over any stat increases for your next character.
Do something "horror movie stupid", get 1d6 Stuff; if you die, this carries over to your new character.
Betray someone and get 1d6 Stuff; if you're betrayed by another player, get 1d6 Stuff, if you're betrayed and die, get 2d6 Stuff.
:)
Hi Manu,
I apologize for letting this sit for a couple of months - a lot of things got out of hand ...
Anyway, if you're still interested, I suggest that you should revise your thinking about Narrativist rewards. What you wrote above toward that end is itself compatible with (and probably insufficient for) any of the three Creative Agendas.
The core concept of Narrativist play is a genuine conundrum - what romantics might call "the human condition," or any situation in which actions taken are dicey both in terms of whether they'll succeed or and whether anyone (in the story or in the audience, especially the latter) thinks its good or bad to do.
So the whole thing about your game in the February 9 post is - bluntly - there's not much Narrativist there. It's still about dodging zombies and hitting them back. What's interesting about Dead Meat is that character survival is no longer a core concern, and what matters - in play, as it turns out - is what particular profile of currently-allied individuals can hold true to their shared survival, instead of threatening it from within. If indeed such a profile can be found at all. This is a pretty cool question! And one doesn't even have to address it cerebrally or abstractly, merely play and it's likely to be "found" collectively by the group. Dead Meat does this primarily through its character-replacement mechanic, especially since (in the version I played) every character you play has the same numbers, so in-play strategizing at that level is of no interest. Zombie Cinema cements this factor down hard in a different way, through its utter disregard for the success or failure of "I hit the zombie" mechanics, such that character safety becomes a function of small-group decision-making.
I really do think your best bet is to playtest both your original version and the modified one you described in the February 5 post.
Best, Ron
Hi Ron,
No worries, thanks for your reply. Just to be clear, the Feb. 9th game wasn't supposed to be narrativist, I was trying to understand the differences in what about a reward system facilitates gamist vs. Narrativist play.
Quote from: Ron Edwards on April 09, 2013, 12:02:18 PM
What's interesting about Dead Meat is that character survival is no longer a core concern, and what matters - in play, as it turns out - is what particular profile of currently-allied individuals can hold true to their shared survival, instead of threatening it from within. If indeed such a profile can be found at all. This is a pretty cool question! And one doesn't even have to address it cerebrally or abstractly, merely play and it's likely to be "found" collectively by the group.
This is very helpful, and helps clarify why this kind of game design is so hard: how to come up with a set of rules that helps the kind of play you want naturally emerge, in an enjoyable way, without forcing anything (which I feel my first attempt was doing). A formidable challenge.
Quote
I really do think your best bet is to playtest both your original version and the modified one you described in the February 5 post.
I agree. Thanks for your help! Now to have some friends for dinner :-)
Best Wishes, Manu