[Final Hour of a Storied Age] Adding a "relief valve" to my dice mechanic
Ron Edwards:
Enough.
Dan, I do not have time or energy to deal with sarcasm here. If you think someone is not posting in good faith, then click on the button to report it to me and I'll take your perspective very seriously. If you insist on retaliating in this way, then I am forced not to take you seriously.
Callan, please pay attention to when someone does not want your input. And let others post before you, once in a while.
Best, Ron
mark2v:
Hello,
I admittedly only skimmed your WIP document, due to time constraints. I do however plan to really dig into it when I can, as it looks very interesting (you had me at the plot flow chart.)
Concerning your question here I read the following.
“To determine which character to focus on, each player with an
unfinished plot phase rolls a set of viewpoint dice based on their
individual plot track (supporting characters who have finished their
subplot do not roll for viewpoint). Whoever rolls the die with the
highest number showing becomes the viewpoint player”
Without giving the game a proper read this implies to me that some players who have resolved their subplots will not roll in a given test. This would in effect make the chance that any one player would never have focused pretty slim (as you stated.)
I personally would not add a thing. I am not for adding things for situations that “might” come up, but that’s just my view.
I was wonder at my initial reading, if adding a flat bonus to a characters roll, equal to the number of chapters that have gone by wherein they have not been the focus, would be a simple solution? In this way every one would get a turn at some point.
I will say that at a glance it does not look like the kind of game that would naturally appeal to players who have an overwhelming need to be the focus. Dedicated players would probably not mind playing supporting cast for a bit longer if the dice dictated it.
Again very interesting, I look forward to giving the game more of a fair read.
-Mark.
Dan Maruschak:
Mark,
I actually considered a mechanic like that for a while, but I ultimately decided not to go that way. It seemed to me that an accumulating bonus would make the game feel a lot like round-robin, which I wanted to move away from. I also thought it would make the dice seem less relevant to what was happening in the viewpoint/adversity determination part of the game, which would be a problem since it's a reasonably complex subsystem (I don't want anyone thinking "why are we bothering with these dice?") and because there's another subsystem in the game which rewards you with more dice for the viewpoint roll, and reducing the importance of the dice would weaken the incentives of that feedback mechanism. Plus, I wanted to avoid the overhead of keeping track of the number of rounds since you've won (which would also potentially focus people on the issue, perhaps cueing them to get worked up over that rather than going with the flow and enjoying their friends' roleplaying and the evolving story).
I agree with your assessment that people who always need to be the center of attention would have a problem with this game (on the other hand it's not always fun to play with people like that, so...). I'm more concerned that some gamers have been trained by other games (such as those with a "don't split the party" philosophy baked into them) to think that their character needs to be involved in every scene for the roleplaying to be fun. Most other games that split up the focus time do so with mechanisms that are easier to rationalize: if it's GM judgment for when to cut and who to cut to, the nervous player can rely on his friend to bring the focus back to him if he's feeling left out. If it's round-robin, the nervous player can rely on progress around the table to get a chance at focus. Since my game puts a non-trivial mechanic in charge of this, it presents a bigger hurdle to people who are having their expectations challenged. I think the mechanic works reasonably well once you decide to trust the mechanics and get invested in the story that's developing at the table, but new players will often not start out trusting the game, and if people need the story to build some momentum before they can get invested in it they may not have that hook at the beginning either. My thinking with the "relief valve" analogy is that it makes it easier to trust a system if it has a conspicuous "safety" mechanism, which will hopefully get some more people over that initial hump and let them engage with and have fun with the game.
Thanks for taking a look at the game. I hope you find more interesting stuff when you get a chance to go deeper with it.
mark2v:
In that case I would absolutely leave it as is with the safety valve as an option. I agree, once the players learn to trust the game they will play with out it.
No use messing with a mechanic that plays so heavily into the overall View point and focus parts of the game.
Some times in the end, it is worth letting the players adjust to what is going on rather than vice versa.
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