[Brick & Mortar: Last of the Independents]
Dan Maruschak:
I'm not sure what kind of answer you're looking for in the "what's the point" question. I think this is a single-session game. The Owner officially has a win condition ("if everybody survives, you win") and The Survivor officially has a losing condition ("if you die, you lose"). The others are a bit ambiguous, somewhat intentionally. The Hipster and The Regular have opportunities to "save themselves" and can pursue those opportunities if they want to, but aren't compelled to. I imagine that the game will tend to come to a conclusion in one of three ways: everybody dies, everybody comes together and decides that staying in the store is untenable and puts together an elaborate plan to escape to permanent safety, or The Hipster and The Regular run off or die and whoever's left among The Owner and The Survivor hunker down in the store for the long haul and you close on a somewhat ambiguous ending. While you have either The Hipster or The Regular around, the mechanics tell them to inject more problems into the fiction whenever things slow down so there can't be any resolution of the situation until those characters get resolution.
There's a lot of talk about safety and running off because that's something that characters in a survival horror situation care about. I'm not sure how to characterize that as "primary" or "secondary". It's a tool that's in there for the players to say things about their characters and/or the situation if the players want to use it. I feel like I'm missing the point of your questions.
stefoid:
There is a board game called Dune (well theres heaps of games like it, but its the iconic one) where you play factions, each of which have different winning conditions and each of which have some power unique to their faction.
Your game seems like that. Maybe as a roleplaying game, you dont need winning conditions, simply overriding goals that the archetype player should pursue. Obviously everybody individually wants to live and escape, take that as a given, so most goals should be about something other than that.
The aim is that fun, interesting and dramatic things happen, right? So your goals and powers should should be set up to encourage that, especially in ways that force the players to choose. Like, often in these situations, there is the constant tension between helping yourself and contributing to the common good. If you make one characters powers only help their own goals, and not the common good, then they always have the choice of whether to invoke them to get closer to their own goal, or not invoke them and help stave off the inevitable for a bit longer. Another thing that often happens is a struggle for leadership. Base some goals and powers around that.
So the hipster could have the goal - avoid risk. Every situation they avoid risk, they get a point. But if the hipster always avoids risk, the situation could become terminal through failing to help. If everyone dies, nobody wins.
The survivor could have the goal: Take charge. every time someone follows their order, they get a point. so they are going to be bossing people around a lot. Something the hipster really doesnt like if it involves risk. So there is automatic tension there.
These are only examples - the important thing is they create tension for the characters themselves - will I or wont I? and also between characters because their (and I just realized this is sounding like IAWA) their best interests are at odds.
Dan Maruschak:
Quote from: stefoid on April 19, 2011, 05:36:34 PM
There is a board game called Dune (well theres heaps of games like it, but its the iconic one) where you play factions, each of which have different winning conditions and each of which have some power unique to their faction.
Your game seems like that. Maybe as a roleplaying game, you dont need winning conditions, simply overriding goals that the archetype player should pursue. Obviously everybody individually wants to live and escape, take that as a given, so most goals should be about something other than that.
Maybe I'm being too subtle: I am telling The Owner that he needs to take care of everybody, and making it nearly impossible for him to give them what they need, unless he sends them away with no guarantee that they'll return. I am giving The Survivor tools that can save everybody if they cooperate, and telling him that he needs to watch his own ass. It is beneficial for the group if The Hipster hangs around being a snarky, complaining asshole, but it is unclear to The Hipster what he gets out of the relationship. I am telling The Regular that the store is his home, but giving him mechanics that will make him seem to everyone else like a panicky idiot who's not contributing anything. I think these asymmetries inject a lot of dramatic potential into the situation, and the mechanics will keep transforming the situation until it gets resolved. In play, the players will make interesting (organic) choices in their characterization. (I haven't playtested so I can't guarantee that it all works, and The Regular is probably the weakest in this regard). Giving other explicit "goals" for the players or overtly mechanizing these types of decisions seems like it would be bad for this design. The game puts into question whether a character survives or not because that's the tension that drives situations in the survival horror genre. Does that make the game "about" survival? It depends on what you mean by "about", I guess.
Ron Edwards:
Hi Dan,
Envisioning several people including myself playing, I try to see what happens in the fiction and what happens among us that looks like a lot of fun. The trouble is, when I do this, I'm not finding it.
1. I don't see much strategic challenge, if any, so I can't see the game as playing to win or to avoid losing. The winning and losing conditions look like words on paper to me, but not like something I can genuinely work towards or against, respectively, as a player. I suppose if I were the Owner I could talk a lot about "we all have to stick together," but it's not like that's actually true.
2. I'm not seeing why I'd shoot for any kind of resolution for either the Hipster and or the Regular beyond exiting from the story, and I'm seeing that the Owner and the Survivor may well desire them to do so as quickly as possible. (Or failing that, killing them, dismembering them, and throwing the pieces to the attacking thingies, but maybe I'm getting too much into my cranky store-owning persona.) It doesn't seem very compelling to me to play a character whose best tactic is to cease to be played.
So my hope is that when you look at the game as it's played in your head, you can tell me what you see there which looks like a lot of fun.
Best, Ron
Dan Maruschak:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on April 20, 2011, 10:50:16 AM
I don't see much strategic challenge, if any, so I can't see the game as playing to win or to avoid losing. The winning and losing conditions look like words on paper to me, but not like something I can genuinely work towards or against, respectively, as a player.
There isn't a strategic challenge. Yes, they are "words on paper", like setting material or tone-establishing fiction. They are there to inform the player's roleplaying of the character. I think many rules in many games serve similar functions.
When you say "best tactic", in whose judgment and by whose criteria? The game isn't meant to be played by a gestalt or a committee. What looks like the "best tactic" to The Owner may not look like the "best tactic" to The Hipster. The Hipster's goals are ambiguous and potentially unknowable, especially to The Owner. The game isn't telling you that you have to be a cranky, customer-hating store owner -- it's letting you make that choice if that's the one you want to make when you roleplay that character (although it is telling you that wanting to kill all of your customers isn't the way to win as a struggling retailer -- It sounds to me like you're saying that having curmudgeonly integrity is more important than winning, which is a perfectly valid statement for you to make but isn't necessarily the statement someone else would make).
Quote
So my hope is that when you look at the game as it's played in your head, you can tell me what you see there which looks like a lot of fun.
I don't think I can deconstruct it in the way you want things to be deconstructed -- it's not the way my mind works. I think these parts interact to create a dynamic system that some people will have fun experiencing as they move through fictional situations until they get to a resolution. I can't really point to "the fun part", or tell you why you don't see what I see.
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