I seem to have designed a waiting game...
Paul Czege:
Hey all,
One of my two primary RPG design projects is a game for exactly four players. It has four pre-generated characters who are locked in a mutually unresolvable situation. Each of them has a personally unique victory path consisting of some combination of roleplayed actions and conversations on specific topics with specific other characters. The first player who manages to accomplish everything on their victory path ends the story.
But accomplishing your victory path is made challenging by the game mechanics. The core mechanic is a quickie card game (basically a comparison of cards) at the beginning of a scene. Winning the card game, or tieing for the win, gets you a "negation," which enables you to prevent someone else from performing something on their own victory path when they make an attempt in the subsequent roleplayed scene.
Here's the problem I'm seeing consistently in play. With generally only one or maybe two negations in play for a given scene, player roleplaying becomes an un-dramatic waiting game, because it makes sense to let the other players attempt something on their victory path, risking negation, before you do. And then when all the negations have been used you can roleplay something from your victory path free and clear.
I can't figure out how to solve it. I've tried using a timer, with the rule that it ends the scene, to encourage more aggressive play. But it doesn't work. Because it still makes strategic sense to wait until the last minute and hope other players can't squeeze in roleplaying of something from their own victory path after you make an attempt yourself, whether you get negated or not.
What do you think? There has to be a board game that solves this?
Paul
Eero Tuovinen:
Seems like it would be simplest to either make the negations blind to ordering, or give out an alternate currency for going first.
The former might be accomplished like this, for example: when a new thing comes up for resolution during a scene, anybody who's already spent a negation so far in the scene may choose to move their negation to this new thing. This way going first would certainly attract a negation, but it would also be possible that the player in question would choose to move the negation to somebody else later in the scene; going first or second would not be an advantage, as the guy with the negation would choose where to put his negation freely. This would also change the story-telling in that new developments in the scene could provide a new lease of life to previously failed actions, which might or might not be something you want.
That latter approach is exemplified by bidding mechanics: instead of just waiting for others to make their move, have the players bid some resource for initiative. If the case is that people always want to move last in your game, then this would be primarily a bid for not having to go now: have everybody make secret bids and the one with the lowest bid doesn't need to pay, but does need to move. Continue this until everybody's made their moves. Presumably the players will pay according to how likely they find that their actions will be blocked, which means that the system is self-regulating. Those who don't have the resources to bid will just have to go first, taking the biggest risk of being negated.
Warrior Monk:
Does it have to be always a negation? can it bi a sort of complication? It's like adding "Yes, but..." and "No, but..." options on the system instead of "No, you can't"
Frank Tarcikowski:
I guess the obvious "board-game-y" solution would be a set order of players and a limited number of attempts per scene? So there's nothing to gain by passing on your turn. That's probably not the kind of thing you are aiming for?
- Frank
Paul Czege:
Hey man,
Quote from: Warrior Monk on June 17, 2011, 12:31:13 PM
Does it have to be always a negation? can it bi a sort of complication? It's like adding "Yes, but..." and "No, but..." options on the system instead of "No, you can't"
The victory paths have things on them like "kill a named NPC" and "have a conversation with Magdalena about Wayne" (where the back-story of the game suggests why the character would want to have that conversation). So if I were to impose a "Yes, but..." or "No, but...," it would seem like the specific victory condition has still been satisfied. Which would mean every player would satisfy something on their victory path every scene, and the game would end in a very predictable number of scenes, with the player who managed to snag his final victory condition first in the final scene as the winner.
Paul
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