Address of Challenge: The care and feeding of

[Callan S.]

Split from: Gamism: Exploration of conflict & Address of conflict
(Important to the context of this thread)

I'm tackling that same question regarding RPG/board games with Power/Evil, and I'm not sure yet what the answer is. There can be mechanisms to promote narration, for example, and consistent stories, but I think it's still an area that very much needs to be explored. The current revision of P/E also includes a mechanism for required narration that's judged by the other players, but the bonus of which cannot be denied, i.e., you try until you find something that the group agrees is cool.

Address of challenge and the gamist ideal of peer evaluation don't easily combine, I think. I've done the same as Christian, trying to use the same sort of peer judgement to get these two things together. Here's one example from a game I wrote for experimental purposes:

Step 2. You are about to face conflict with a terrible orc! Your description of how you go into this can earn you a +2 bonus to the conflict. Getting this bonus is vital if you wish to get through all the orcs and all the way to the end.

Whether you get the bonus is judged by everyone else. Once you have gone into how you intend to beat the orc, each player can say yay or nay (or say nothing, but this counts as saying yay). If you get more yays than nays or an equal number of yays and nays, you get the +2 bonus.

But assuming "Address of Premise mirrors Address of Challenge", then this technique is problematic. The narrativist equivalent would be someone making an address of premise and then the other players judge whether the address is up to the standards of a good story/what is cool. If not, address's are junked until they make the right address. As advised, it's the equivalent of typhoid mary sydrome.

Regardless, many groups could and would use this in a functional way. However I'll assert it's via an interpretation of their own devising. If they were playing my game at a functional level, it would have had nothing to do with the game text itself.

Open question now: I want to have a stab here at how it really can work, rather than just leave this to end users to reinvent for themselves (assuming their social contract has high enough functionality to do so, which many normal groups wouldn't).

My stab is this, tell me what you think: I'll try and work out an answer by looking at narrativism again. Imagine a character who's town has suffered from a bad guy, the suffering even lead to several deaths. The player has come to the point where the bad guy is at his mercy. Now lets say it's pretty clear that the player is going to address the moment by saying his character captures the guy. Now, say another player has the means to and does add the fact that "Your character suddenly finds out the bad guy has tortured several people to death in his basement, one of them is your friend"

Now, for people with more narrrativist experience than I, is that sporting? Because what I'm seeing here is rather than ditching an address of premise until a cool one is found, we are provoking TWO addresses of premise to be made. The player has already made the first one (capture rather than kill the scumbag) and rather than being ditched, everyone accepts that address as valid. But then further facts are added to the case, which requires an entirely new address to be made. I keep thinking of the movie "Seven", where they have the killer at the end and despite the evil he's done, they decide to take him in. And then the killer directs one of the cops to a box. From the cops expression when he opens it, presumably it contains his wifes head. And after agonising over and over, the cop doesn't take the killer in. He shoots him.

I contend that, rather than a rejecting address, accepting the address but then provoking a second one is acceptable and quite healthy play. Indeed, provoking several addresses in a row is acceptable, as long as each is accepted and absorbed for what it is.

Therefore this can apply to address of challenge. Provoking several addresses in a row, by accepting the address yet adding a new, previously unknown fact, is healthy play. And that's how a peer 'judgement' system works. Players listen to the address, then introduce new issues/facts. This requires a new address of challenge to be made, even as the old one was acknowledged. They don't really with hold a reward until the right address is made. Instead they use the reward as leverage to add new facts (if you don't allow us to add new facts, your not allowed to have this reward).

How does that stab sound so far?

[David Bapst]

Interesting. I think your idea has alot of merit; the important bit is to retain aspects of risk and reward throughout the addition of new details to a challenge.

I had something along the same lines in one idea I had... a player had develop a description of how he did something but had to find ways to include words that other players gave him. Your idea is a bit more based in the SIS than random words, which probably makes it alot more useful for creating Address of Challenge.

[xenopulse]

Huh, somehow I missed this when you first posted it.

As a first note, the P/E rule regarding player affirmation does not go to the validity of the narration presented, but to the depth of it; i.e., your fellow players can't say "That stinks, make something else up," they can only say, "Can you tell me more about that? What about this detail, or how about having a dialogue set in that scene?"

The escalation from one scene to another in address of premise is meant to lead from the easy to the tough decisions. I.e., you could easily decide that you'll just capture and not kill him, but look at this head of your wife, how about NOW?

The comparison in Gamism would be a challenge that's too easy, so the player overcomes it without breaking a sweat. There was no need to really Step On Up.

Now--when we talk about addressing challenge, there needs to be a way to judge the address. It's not like an address of premise where there are two answers to a moral question and both are equally valid; it's an address where some quality about it--innovation, tactical prowess, calculation of mechanics--is going to be judged. It's a "challenge," after all. If any answer was as good as any other, there wouldn't be a way to Step On Up.

So the judgment of the address can either be mechanically or through other players; traditionally the GM.

If we accept every address as equal, therefore, aren't we negating Step On Up?

So, your stab sounds interesting, and I know there've been lists of possible responses to SIS input before that included the "Yes, but" option. My question would be, how does that actually interact with Stepping On Up? Is it going to happen every time, no matter how good or bad your address was? Is there still a judgment that you didn't Step On Up enough, so in that case we'll complicate it for you? Or would it rather be used when the challenge turns out to be too easy?

[Callan S.]

Hi Christian,

The problem revolves around the word 'until'. Which that means other players can use it as a "That stinks, try again" mechanic.

you try until you find something that the group agrees is cool.

If you have to keep trying until they agree it's cool. There's no reason the other players have to ask in a "Can you tell me more". They can just order "Tell me something else".

I doubt your group would do it that way, your groups System handles this wording differently from how it is written (as I would read it as a player, anyway). I want to tease out the way it's handled differently and turn it into hard copy rules. For example, if right now you strongly disagree that it's a 'That stinks" mechanic, why do you disagree? The 'why' of it is what I would need to know as a player.

My own mechanic falls into the same problem. I meant it to reward a good address, but since the +2 modifier is very important, it becomes a way to control what address is made, rather than reward a good address.

This is because an address might not be what you'd expect. Like the cop, upon seeing his wifes head, decides to shoot the other cop!! And teams up with the killer (to possibly redeem the killer?)! But hell, what if that isn't where you plotted out as a GM, or wanted to go with the story as a player? What if, in the heat of the moment, it makes no sense to you and you'd like to dump it? With address of challenge, what if the player goes against your comfort zone in his address? When that happens, it's highly tempting to use this as a "That stinks, try again!" mechanic (bypassing System rules and using it as written).

The old saying is "If it's stupid and it works, it ain't stupid". Here, another player has the guts to propose a solution in front of all his peers that sounds stupid...but if he had the guts to say it, is it really stupid? Would he really decide to say something stupid? He's an intelligent person...perhaps...perhaps I should ruminate on this?

Give other players the mechanical tools to say "That sucks, try again" and they will never have to ask themselves these questions. They'll never have to think "But that sounds dumb...why did he propose that?". They'll never have to absorb something that's outside their comfort zone (they don't have to agree with it, just absorb the idea). Give them a mechanic like this, and when someone proposes the world is round they'll get rid of that foolishness and it'll instead stay flat.

Ooops, a little ranty! Feel free to pick me apart over that, sorry. :(

If we accept every address as equal, therefore, aren't we negating Step On Up?

Treating every address as equal, at a mechanical level, does not negate step on up. Appreciation of step on up is at a meta game, social level. If any address wins the challenge, that doesn't force anyone to think 'jeez, that guys address was the best!'. Here,  'winning' the challenge is really a direct reward for having the guts to propose a solution in front of other thinking, insightful human beings. Ironically, any address being able to 'win' the challenge gets right to the heart of gamism, to the heart of peer evaluation. If you got through automatically, you can't argue "Hey, admire me for getting through". You have to face direct evaluation of what you said, because that's the only thing on display here (no holding up mechanics to prove your gamist worth! Hold up your own mind instead!).

My proposal to provoke multiple addresses is to have extra rewards offered by other players. It's accepted that the challenge will be won by any address. But if the player accepts new facts added by other players, he gets further rewards from them. But if he's really happy with his address (eg, he's said the world is round and doesn't want to react to any further arguments/facts that get in the way of that), then he can decline further reward and stick with it. The address stands. And as it stands, the other players wont be able to just ignore it and stay in their comfort zone. As said, they don't have to agree with it...but they will have to think outside their comfort zone. Just like narrativism makes ya think and re-evaluate, so will gamism. <rant>It wont just be piddly hack and slash any more. It will have spread its wings, as it should!</rant>

[xenopulse]

The "try until you find something that the group agrees is cool" quote was bad on my part. Take my explanation from the second post. There's no "come up with something else," only "tell me more."

And P/E does feature mechanical equality, so I guess people can narrate their hearts out to win social appreciation at the same time that they play the mechanics to win against the other players. It really is a difficult beast, because it's an openly competitive game. No GM, all v. all, so if I had people judge each other's contribution and reward/penalize mechanically, that wouldn't work (because it would make it less likely that they win against you).

Now, in a non-competitive game, you can have the type of reward you're talking about. Primetime Adventures' fanmail can do this. Universalis actually sounds like a great Gamist tool in that regard, where you earn coins if other people include items you've previously established in their narration.

Also, Eric's FH8 uses the currency system for contested contributions, which has the effect that people only oppose you if they truly have their fun diminished by your address.

So yeah, I agree with you that the best way probably is a fair mechanic with an additional system (reward or bidding) to ensure that Stepping On Up can be appreciated.

[Callan S.]

Christian: I understand what you mean about your own rules now. Still, my own rules quoted above are an example of what I'm talking about. Since they resolve with a D6 and a target number of 4, the +2 modifier is highly significant. For those rules, if the other people don't like your address of challenge, it basically withers and dies.


All: I think we've made some great progress on the idea of addresses of challenge with a fixed reward. Those in which the reward is set before the address is made, rather than the reward being somehow determined by the address.

But what about where the address does determine the reward? It's a sticky wicket, as contra noted in the sister thread:

I assume that this is the problem being referred to as "getting through it for free"... as in perhaps I play chess and have the enemy king assassinated obviating the actual boardgame.  But IMO this is a pretty much inescapable problem.  A game is a subset of all interactions, it cannot be universally comprehensive.  And worse, there is no real need for a totally comprehensive game.  Chess is a (highly abstracted) game about field battles; it is not a game about assassinations.

In the other thread I proposed the reward is pre-set before the address is made. But then I wondered about it, because it feels just great to kill kings like this some times with a really red hot plan of attack. Can that be incorporated into the rules without the game ending in just one address?

I've thought of something like this, tell me what you all think: You go with the principle of multiple addresses, but not made in chronological order (and hey, were not talking sim so that's not a prob). To start off, someone proposes a big bad guy. It could be an evil king or a vile dragon. Then give some color, like where the dragon lives (caves), roughly how big is the cave network, what sort of other nasties are there, is there extreme whether outside, etc, etc, you get the idea.

Then a player makes his address and this should include him defeating the badguy (how the player overcomes the challenge is up to the player. By fighting, assassination, diplomacy or whatever). Normally this would be a game over point.

But, now we introduce the other players who dangle rewards in front of the addressee that he gets if they can add facts that occurred prior to his address. Something like "Yes, but how did your hero get through that maze of caves...it was a huge complex!?". The player then creates a new address of challenge to accommodate that. But again the other players can dangle a reward to perhaps add something like "Yes, you may have been able to do that, but how would you have concentrated on it with the swarms of owlbears that are known to live in such caves?". And so on, the other players offering rewards, so they can probe at his address. They might probe because they see a flaw "But what about X?", or they might like to soup up the whole thing, like adding owl bears to the mix. As noted before, the player can decline a reward and his address stands. But who can resist a challenge, eh?

What I think would be even more exciting is if the system rewards the addressee to include resource management (exploration of challenge) as part of his address. So he might say "Well, I just snuck past the dim witted owlbears, like so!" and rolls the dice. If he fails, it gives the other players more 'ammunition' to probe him with (and I'm inclined to think that the reward the other players can dangle should be small on a fail...smaller potential reward for poor tactical choice). The target numbers involved with such a challenge could also undergo address:
Addressee "Oh, owlbears are stupid so it's a target number of 10"
Other player offers reward if he can add "In these cold steeps, only the wily owlbear survives!"
Addressee "Yeah, I can see that. Okay...put it up one increment to 15"

Or something like that, this is just a very rough draft. Anyway, you can have all this if you give perfect chronological order the flick. You could still have a just a slightly imperfect chrono order if your inclined to narrate it that way (which I am). But otherwise it's not a big loss compared to the gain.

[komradebob]

Christian: I understand what you mean about your own rules now. Still, my own rules quoted above are an example of what I'm talking about. Since they resolve with a D6 and a target number of 4, the +2 modifier is highly significant. For those rules, if the other people don't like your address of challenge, it basically withers and dies.

Ironically, I'm working on something very similar right now ( a revision of Chris Engle's( Matrixgamer) Politics By Other Means toy soldier game) that uses a very similar mechanic to what you've described. It also has very similar issues.

A quick summary:
PBOM also uses a d6, standard 4+ TN. That TN can likewise be modified up or down, based on another player's reaction to your description. A couple of key points that affect this:
PBOM is super gamist. This is a straight up, competitive miniatues game. Despite this, two of the primary tools used to increase your chance of success are beloved keystones of simmy games; adherence to/celebration of source material and causal relations.
The second interesting thing is that the core PBOM rules do not assume a permanent referee/GM. Instead, when a question comes up that requires a variable TN roll, the asking player must choose an opponent to set the target number!
The last interesting element in all of this is that these type of roll situations come up regularly.

So, how does it all work out? Well, the charm of PBOM is that it is an extremely simple miniatures game at its core, but the rules as written expect the players to modify the rules as play progresses. The thing is, from AP experience, that social issues come into play. PBOM could be played in such a way that your opponent constantly shuts down your ideas, giving you a chance to succeed only on a 6 (or no roll at all) whenever you need to make a roll. If they do, however, the game rapidly degenerates into a not very interesting match as both players deny one another any (TN) reward for creativity. Functionally, the game only really works if you give your opponent some slack when they ask for a target number. In other words, the game tends toward being self moderating due to the fact that all players will eventually need to ask their opponent for a target number.

In the examples you've been talking about, you are putting the address of a single player under a microscope. In actual play, all of the players will eventually face a time when they have to address a challenge. There is no way that I can see a player not taking into account the way they've treated and been treated by the other players when this situation arises.

[xenopulse]

Callan,

This is good. It's setting off sparks all over my brain :) Here's my initial brainstorming reaction.

The game is played in Episodes. Each episode features one hero's achievement. As you said, the hero describes what he did. The other players throw challenges against that hero.

Characters start out with, say, 20 dice. If you want, split them between combat, magic and stealth, or whatever; e.g., 5 combat, 12 magic, 3 stealth.

The hero player decides the challenge rating (CR) of the Episode. Challenges in the Episode can be up to one number higher or lower than the CR.

Each Episode has, say, 5 Challenges, or more if the hero player wants to be risky.

One of the other players now presents a Challenge, like the Owlbears. He says it has a CR of 2. That means the hero player needs to roll 2 successes to overcome it successfully. Successes are either 4+ or 3+ on a D6, depending on where we want to set the Wiff Factor.

The hero player narrates how he overcame the Challenge and selects dice accordingly. "I stunned them with a spell and slaughtered them all!" Take 1 die from magic and two from combat, roll them, see if you get at least 2 successes.

This continues until all the Challenges are done.

Other thoughts: successes earn XP, failures don't. You need to save dice for the final roll against the Episode boss. If you win, you gain either double XP or a special item. So we have risk and currency management along the lines of using more dice for gaining the XP during the Episode or save them to slay the dragon at the end for the special price. XP can raise your dice pools, thereby allowing you to take on higher CR Episodes (along with better items to be won, etc.).

[Callan S.]

Hi Christian,

Nifty. I see the exploration of challenge there, with the currency management. But what do you propose to provoke another address from the player, beyond his first "I stunned them with a spell and slaughtered them all!" address. Like if another player wants to add that owlbears don't get stunned easily?

About wiff, what would a failed dice roll do, apart from no XP?


Hi Robert,

If they do, however, the game rapidly degenerates into a not very interesting match as both players deny one another any (TN) reward for creativity.

I'm just wondering about the other end, where it becomes not very interesting as the players give each other easy TN because of what is essentially a MAD situation (Mutually Assured Destruction). However, this leaves them with no means of provoking additional addresses of challenge, unless they want to risk the fragile MAD status collapsing by giving tougher target numbers.

[Callan S.]

Further thoughts: I'm still really attracted to the idea of an address that's so good, people can not say no to it. However, this requires the chance someone can say no (in a less than stimulating way), leading to all sorts of howls of outrage. What a love hate relationship!

I was thinking of this: The possible reward for the address is fixed, there being a list of them you can aim for as a player (stuff like a set bonus to hit, healing, that sort of thing). That stops skip to the end of content "I kill the king" types of address, when the novelty of the content involves there only being one king (ie, making more kings degrades the content). Okay, enough self justifying.

Now, you make your address, but you don't actually say (unless you want to) the resource your aiming for. Then some other player (perhaps a GM) decides a couple of possible rewards the address might garner (from the rewards on the list mentioned above).

Then the player says what reward they think they should get. Put all the rewards on a list and use a randomiser to determine which of the three rewards the player gets for his address.

The tricky bit. Of the two rewards the GM determines, if the players prefered reward matches the first reward described by the GM, the player gets it straight away! No randomising! Remember the player doesn't have to declare what reward he wants, when he makes his address. With a clever enough address you might be able to pull a "Don't throw me in the briar patch" move with your narration, where the GM tries to give you a reward you don't want, but really it was the one you were aiming for all along!

PS: If this was older than a month I'd start a new thread, but at two weeks it'd just seem disjointed.

[komradebob]

The tricky bit. Of the two rewards the GM determines, if the players prefered reward matches the first reward described by the GM, the player gets it straight away! No randomising!

I like it! I suggested a bit more involved version in this thread, but your version is vastly streamlined and works as the game progresses, rather than being an end-of-session reward. Good stuff!

[Callan S.]

Thanks Robert! I think it get's rid of some politics in game and lets you concentrate on playing hard. By politics I means such annoying conundrums as "I want to put this monster here/push him further. But it'll likely kill his character, and then he might be put off from playing because it just seems like GM fiat. Isn't him playing more important than challenge? " and similar shit. Some GM's I've seen don't worry about politics like this and do fine...until one day they step way over the line, because they didn't worry about it.


I recently bought Tunnels and Trolls and I'm seeing the same issue coming up. I was going to use that idea, but then thought the resource list involved would make it less like playing the game as presented. So I was thinking perhaps to adapt it to T&T's saving rolls. The player would make their address, and the GM would propose two saving throw difficulties, the second one is only one step higher or lower than the first. I think here the GM would say the first difficulty and only then can the player declare that that's the one he wanted and gets automatically. If the GM is allowed to go on to say the second, that opportunity would be lost.

This adds perhaps a bit more trickyness, as the player ought to second guess the GM's intent after he states the first difficulty. Will the second one be higher or lower? As a player, if you can get the difficulty you want right now (the GM stated your prefered difficulty first), what do you do if you think the second might be lower?

I get the feeling that many groups do stuff like this without rules support by unspoken agreement, rather than running around in circles with political questions like I normally do. Sadly though, many of those groups do it so fluidly that they aren't aware of it and never write down the rules for another group to enjoy.