[Final Hour of a Storied Age] The trait/dice mechanics
Dan Maruschak:
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I think trying to make all options roughly the same but not quite, still means your making sub optimal choices if you look at it from a pure mechanics/hardcore standpoint, it'll just be less of a sub optimal choice.
If you've read the rules and think there's an optimal strategy, please share it. I don't think there is one, but I could be wrong, and would like to have it demonstrated if I am. In some cases one mechanical choice may be preferable to another, but I think the common case will be that having a preference for one option over the other will be an aesthetic one (either because of the constellation of mechanical risk/reward options embodied in it, or because you like the corresponding narration) not dictated by number-crunching optimization (since it's not clear to me that there's a straightforward way to crunch these numbers).
I didn't really get what you were trying to communicate with the rest of your post. "Consensus" is a potentially loaded word in this context. I am not a fan of groupthink dictating events in a game, but there is a difference between what a group expects and what a group accepts. If the only contributions to a game are what everyone expects it's probably lame, flat, groupthink play. That doesn't mean I need to adopt an anything-goes approach and support dumb or genre-inappropriate fiction into play. But this is a pretty abstract point, and I fear that discussing it in such abstract terms will roam far afield from the game in question.
I've read through the first three threads that Ron linked. I thought this was an interesting point from Markus:
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(d) How do you choose which trait to use, among the list of those your PC possess?
- I'm trying to obtain maximum (mechanical) effectiveness
- I'm trying try to reveal something new about my PC
- I'm trying to bring to the table the theme/issue that I hardwired to my PC by choosing this trait
- I'm trying to choose the trait that preserves the most stringent consequentiality/coherence of the fiction
I think that one of my design goals is to limit the tension between mechanical effectiveness and coherence of the fiction, since I don't think there's a lot of benefit in having incentives that push against the coherence of the fiction. In an earlier version of the game dice were assigned to traits at chargen, and it was usually stressful and unpleasant to choose to favor these other things over mechanical effectiveness. As a result, players were almost always relying on their most powerful trait in every chapter but that choice would frequently be tinged with regret. In the current version of the game players assign dice to their traits on a chapter by chapter basis, so they can make some thematic choices (e.g. it's important for me to confront problem X with trait Y) without feeling like they are putting their long-term thematic statement (e.g. it's important for my hero to complete his plot and save his community) in jeopardy. Since chapters evolve during play, though, the choices aren't completely unconstrained.
I should also point out that I'm not using "trait" in the exact same sense as those threads, since my traits aren't add-ons to a separate resolution system, they're the only resolution system. (I don't think it affects the discussion too much, but I wanted to clarify. I call them traits because they are player-authored, and because they work very similarly to the way traits are invoked in DITV).
dindenver:
Dan,
I just finished reading this.
The writing is definitely punched up. It has a much more friendly tone and it is just easier to read.
Here is how I read the new mechanics:
Roll Lots of dice:
Harder to narrate in so many traits
Easier to introduce more characters
More story dice to activate
Exhaustion will be harder to recover from
Increases chance of rolling highest
Increases chance of winning a tie
Increases number of dice that will be lower than the oppositions dice if you lose
Increases chance of rolling a die that is too low to exhaust the oppositions traits
Roll Less dice:
Easier to narrate in traits
Harder to introduce more characters
Less story dice to activate
Exhaustion will be easier to recover from
Less chance of rolling highest
Less chance of winning a tie
Less dice that will be lower than the oppositions dice if you lose
Less chance of rolling a die that is too low to exhaust the oppositions traits
None of these are guarantees though, so it feels pretty balanced. I think because of the increased cost in player effort and resources, I would probably go with less Traits, but that is just because I like to play cautiously.
Dan Maruschak:
I finished reading the last of Ron's linked threads. I think the before/after paradigm that Ron mentioned having evolving views on isn't a great model. I designed my game after listening to and reading a lot of Vincent's clouds and boxes stuff, and my traits are intended to work as prompts for narration by being pattern-matching operators pointed at the narration. The traits themselves are sort of backward-looking in that they only kick in once someone has narrated something that applies, but they aren't as problematic as "yeah, I guess this trait probably applies to the situation we've been describing" traits because the person providing the narration knows before they start speaking that the narration they provide will need to hit one or more of the traits in question -- when the sender knows what kind of patterns the receiver is configured to receive it's easier to send a clear message. So if you and I both know that I have the traits Master Swordsman and Booming Voice, it will be relatively easy for me to give narration that will satisfy one, the other, or both of those, and it will usually be pretty clear in context which traits I'm trying to invoke. If it isn't clear, the receiver isn't put in the confrontational position of saying "you can't use your trait", he's able to employ the more socially harmonious "I don't really get how your narration hits that trait, could you revise the narration to make it clearer for me?". Since the narration is obviously bounded and still tentative (basically, just what you've said "this round", like a single raise or see in Dogs) it's easy to ask for the narration to be edited, whereas it can be much harder to ask for the editing in a more diffuse "whenever it applies" trait since that could potentially impact large swaths of seemingly established fiction.
I think it's also useful that the narration I'm asking players to do isn't solely focused on invoking the trait, but is also targeted at an orthogonal pattern-matcher: either providing adversity to the viewpoint character or responding to that adversity. By needing to serve multiple masters I think it's less likely that players will perform the functional equivalent of just reading off their trait -- you can't just have your character shout to use Booming Voice against me, you have to narrate something that both demonstrates the Booming Voice and is an obvious source of adversity for me, like shouting to drown out what my character is trying to say. This is pretty similar to things like Mouse Guard's "describe how you're using one of your skills to give a helping die", but since the actual narration is more important (since it guides the viewpoint player's response to the adversity and the narration of the results of the exchange) there's less likelihood of people just saying "I'm using X" without actually giving the narration that describes how they're using X.
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