[Steampunk Crescendo] Out on a limb
David Berg:
Cool, I think this is sounding more and more like a decent pitch.
Here's a question, pertinent to both your last comments and your proposed blurb:
What's the interaction between "I pursue my character's quest to change this part of the world" and "I work together with my friends to defeat an Antagonist"?
Do I take turns doing one and then the other? Are the two one and the same? Might I wind up doing only one, and not doing the other?
I tend to like pitches that sound unified. Lists of disparate features leave me worried about coherence. But that might just be me.
Separate question: if I spend those 3+ hours, does that mean I've had one satisfying session out of many, or that the game's over?
dindenver:
What's the interaction between "I pursue my character's quest to change this part of the world" and "I work together with my friends to defeat an Antagonist"?
Characters can experience nine basic outcomes:
1) Character achieves their Goal and defeats the Antagonist
2) Character achieves their Goal and does not affect the Antagonist
3) Character achieves their Goal and is defeated by the Antagonist
4) Character does not interact with their Goal and defeats the Antagonist
5) Character does not interact with their Goal and does not affect the Antagonist
6) Character does not interact with their Goal and is defeated by the Antagonist
7) Character indulges their Drawback and defeats the Antagonist
8) Character indulges their Drawback and does not affect the Antagonist
9) Character indulges their Drawback and is defeated by the Antagonist
The significance of this is, the Player decides. There are mechanical benefits to pursuing your Goal and their are mechanical benefits to pursuing your Drawback. But apart from that, each player decides for themselves which is more fun for them and they can pursue it without any constraint or restraint. Like InSpectres, this is a game where you can't railroad the players, even if you try (this isn't a challenge to precocious players, just a design goal I think I met)...
If I spend those 3+ hours, does that mean I've had one satisfying session out of many, or that the game's over?
So, in a single 3 hour session, you can see on average one player achieve their goal and the group will face at least one major antagonist. It took about 30 hours of play to get a group of 6 players enough scenes for each of them to achieve at least one Goal. We could have continued on, but Dresden was just released, so we played that instead. I've had about 30 different people play it. There were about two people who had real issues with the system and maybe 5 or so who were underwhelmed. The rest had fun and I even had people seek me out for additional sessions after their initial session.
For me the goal was to design a game where the GM was encouraged to say "Yes" and then give them tools to deal with the consequences of that. That is part of the reason why the player picks their own goal and they get a goal tracker. With the player determining if heir actions work towards their Goal and with a set number of steps, it becomes a clear guide to players and the GM where the player is on the race to their goal. This is something a lot of games do not do very well. It was a major part of my design goal to give the players and GM a facility to know what was an acceptable Goal and what was an acceptable number of steps to get there, And then I gave the players who would deny themselves their Goal a bonus for wallowing in their Drawback. It is an interesting and fun dynamic.
On top of that the dice mechanic is fun and challenging and the setting is inspiring.
Is that a better picture? I feel like I am doing a horrible job of explaining my game (hence the request for marketing help).
David Berg:
Goals/Antagonists
It sounds like a short but accurate answer about how Goal-seeking and Antagonist-thwarting relate would be:
"The game provides no specific relationship between these activities, but does allow you a fair amount of choice in how they intersect for you."
Correct?
I'd want to know that pretty soon after reading pitch blurbs about both features.
Session/game length
Alas, telling me "1 goal per 3 hrs, 6 goals per 30 hrs" doesn't help me.
Let's say I sit down to play for 4 hours. What are my most likely outcomes?
Antagonist: by "face" do you mean "resolve (e.g. defeat)" or just "encounter"?
Goal: Suppose I am actually pursuing my Goal. Am I most likely to come close, make no progress, get halfway there, or achieve it? If I'm 1 of 4 players does that mean I have a 1 in 4 chance of achieving it?
Is it expected that at the end of those 4 hours I will be in a satisfying place to stop, and will want to start from scratch with a new character the next time I play this game? Or is it expected that I'll be mid-mission or mid-story and will be disappointed if I don't get another 5 sessions to finish what I've set out to do?
Goals optional
You've pointed out that wallowing in your Drawback is a viable alternative to pursuing your Goal (that should go somewhere in the pitch!). I assumed that playing up the Drawback was a means to an end, which I guess would have to be thwarting your Antagonist (or is there another end I'm missing?). But your outcomes #8 and #9 make me unsure. If they're both just failed attempts at #7, then cool, I understand the risk that things might not work out.
But if wallowing in your Drawback and not affecting your Antagonist is, like, something a player might want to do, then I'm not getting any sense of a unified appeal for this game. If I can play it to wallow and fail and ignore Antagonists and indulge in dystopian superscience, and my buddy can power up and be awesome and achieve goals and defeat Antagonists and change the world with magic, what's tying us together at the table?
Is some of the stuff you're describing as player-driven actually group-driven? So my buddy and I would not be playing so oppositely at the same table?
Or are we simply expected to enjoy inhabiting the same world and engaging with the same mechanics?
dindenver:
"The game provides no specific relationship between these activities, but does allow you a fair amount of choice in how they intersect for you."
Correct?
Well, this is what I mean by player-driven Goals. If a player cares about it, the mechanics enables them to do this in a way that is transparent to them, the other players and the GM. If they don't care, the mechanics don't force them along a track.
Let's say I sit down to play for 4 hours. What are my most likely outcomes?
I have run a ton of Convention games. all of them with 4-hour time slots. consistently, the players get to a good end point. about 50% of the time one player is even able to accomplish their Goal. There is time enough for character relationships to build, exploration to happen, one or two small conflicts and one final showdown. I have played long term campaigns and they work well and allow other players to take advantage of the Goal system at their own pace.
Antagonist: by "face" do you mean "resolve (e.g. defeat)" or just "encounter"? I mean a full blown conflict with a satisfying result.
Goal: Suppose I am actually pursuing my Goal. Am I most likely to come close, make no progress, get halfway there, or achieve it? If I'm 1 of 4 players does that mean I have a 1 in 4 chance of achieving it?
OK, technically every player in the group could achieve their Goal in about 5-6 scenes (easily accomplished in 2-3 hours). But that would depend on every player pushing for their Goal equally hard. Basically, the way it works is, when you perform an Action, you have to declare an Action Type (sort of like Moves in Apocalypse World I think). One of the Action Types available is "Inspired Act" and it lets you advance your Goal marker one slot (in a conflict you take a penalty to your current action equal to your current Goal level). Do this 4 times and your Goal is complete. At which point Goal is set to 0 and your character selects a new Goal and Drawback.
Is it expected that at the end of those 4 hours I will be in a satisfying place to stop, and will want to start from scratch with a new character the next time I play this game? Or is it expected that I'll be mid-mission or mid-story and will be disappointed if I don't get another 5 sessions to finish what I've set out to do?
Wow, are those my only choices? lol
So, after 4 hours, you can easily continue with the same character. A decent story arc should be completely resolved, but there should be plenty for the party to do if they chose to. But if the game were to end then, it would not leave that unsatisfied feeling behind.
You've pointed out that wallowing in your Drawback is a viable alternative to pursuing your Goal (that should go somewhere in the pitch!).
OK, when you create your character (Remember, you don't do this until after the GM has announced who the first Antagonist is and what the rumor is that they are doing), you select a Goal and a Drawback. The Guidelines for something like this, "Pick a Goal that you can actually accomplish (world peace is right out), but that would require multiple steps to accomplish (crossing the street or defeating a vampire are out as well since these can be done in one step). Then select a Drawback, it should be something desirable and beneficial to your character that the pursuit of which would hinder you Goal. A great Actual Play example was a character that wanted to build a new hospital in the Bronx, his drawback was he was too charitable. Meaning if he indulged his charitable side, he wouldn't have enough money to build a hospital and if he saved money to build a hospital, he couldn't spend it on charities. Mechanically, the difference between them are that whenever one increases, the other decreases. Either can be used for a bonus during an Action with the correct Action type, but Goal Resets it all to 0 when you hit +4, while Drawback bottoms out at +3, never resetting except through player efforts. So, the advantage of wallowing in your Drawback is you have this Bonus you can call on any time and all you have to do is do something you already wanted to do (but thwarts your Goal).
Is some of the stuff you're describing as player-driven actually group-driven? Or are we simply expected to enjoy inhabiting the same world and engaging with the same mechanics?
OK, so before characters are made, players discuss different elements of the established Setting and figure out what they are in the mood for as a group. Then the GM is selected and they introduce the first Antagonist (as well as a good idea of what plots/schemes the Antagonist is up to).
Then the Players make characters that are opposed to that Antagonist.
Then the GM adjusts the Antagonist (or adds additional Antagonists to the mix) to suit the final characters.
Then players take turns settings scenes.
No player can set a second scene until the GM gets a chance to set their first one.
The GM can't set a scene until all of the players have had a turn setting a scene (this gives the players a chance to research magic or inventions or otherwise use their resources to prepare for trouble).
This keeps going until the session ends. Typically, the GM uses their NPCs to set the stage for conflict during the player scenes and then sets up a big conflict on their scene (if it is an appropriate time). GMs can add more Antagonists at any time without the need to announce what they are up to or who they are even. Once the GM is selected, everything after that is initiated by a single player (although other players can join in if they think they can help/do something interesting).
So, during the brainstorming phase, players get a chance to let everyone know what they are looking forward to being able to do. During the GM/Antagonist phase the players get to know what direction the GM is taking so that the players can make a cohesive group if they want. Once that first Antagonist is under their collective belts, then the comradery/trust is built between the characters and the players and the direction of the game is established and new Antagonists can be a pleasant surprise.
Does that make sense? I am really not sure where I am losing you (that's why my posts are getting longer and longer, lol), sorry.
David Berg:
Hey, if we defeat the Antagonist in session 1, will there be a new one in session 2?
Quote from: dindenver on January 31, 2012, 12:23:00 AM
Quote
"The game provides no specific relationship between these activities, but does allow you a fair amount of choice in how they intersect for you."
Correct?
Well, this is what I mean by player-driven Goals. If a player cares about it, the mechanics enables them to do this in a way that is transparent to them, the other players and the GM. If they don't care, the mechanics don't force them along a track.
By "these activities" I meant Goal-seeking and Antagonist-thwarting. I get that the Goals are player-driven, I'm just wondering if the player's choice is "Goal or Antagonist"... as opposed to, say, "Goal and Antagonist". So, am I correct that, for that specific issue, there is "a fair amount of choice"?
I'm not saying "total freedom" because the GM and the rest of the group may do things to the Antagonist that impacts the relationship between the Antagonist and a given Goal.
As for the overall description of the game, it's starting to sound more like Antagonist-thwarting tends to operate on the per-session unit as an immediate objective which is satisfying to complete in 3-4 hours, while Goal-pursuing tends to be less urgent and tends to operate on the multi-session level with no one upset if they don't complete a Goal in a given session. That seems to fit with your play experiences, right?
I'm thinking that if I got together to play this game with my friends, and we scheduled 2 or more sessions, I might invest more heavily in my Goal, and view session 1's Antagonist showdown as a big event, but not the climax of my story. I'd be thinking about changing the world via getting my Goal, and fighting this Antagonist is something I may or may not need to do along the way.
On the other hand, if my friends and I scheduled this strictly as a 1-shot game, I would approach it differently. I might go really hard after my Goal at the expense of all else in hopes that I had time to reach it before we had to stop play. But more likely, I'd treat Goal-pursuit as a side issue and Antagonist-thwarting as the main event, which would culminate in the climax of the game, wherein my friends and I succeed or fail at defeating our foe.
Other attitudes are of course possible, but these seem obvious and thus fairly likely. Are they consistent with your play experiences?
If I have this right, then the pitch must be changed! Something like "Focus on defeating a mutual Antagonist in a single session, pursue world-changing Goals across multiple sessions, or pick a spot in between!"
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