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Okay, I was thinking last night about a campaign I've wanted to run for a very long time. In essence, it's the same "turf" as the World of Darkness: Mythic creatures in the modern day. However, I wanted to hew closer to the Sonja Blue series, to add what the World of Darkness, especially as it is currently (over) expanded lacks: a sense of wonder and exploration (in the sense of the original English word, not as in the GNS essay).

I wanted a very Simulationist (but Narrativist-driftable) game that focused on extreme personalities, grittiness, and creating the world as you went. I wanted, however, to be a framework for people to hang stuff onto. I also wanted to have shifting narration, and a very "develop in play" style -- the GM and the players would really "create a story together", just like the Impossible Thing, only without the illusion of absolute GM control.

I tried to think what system would suit what I wanted best, and settled on a heavily-modified version of OtherKind.

Let me know what you think. For this thread, I only want comments on the system, both chargen (which is very Simulationist, I think) and the system proper. Does it do what I want?

http://ivanhoeunbound.com/pretender.html

Obviously, flavor-inducing quotes and art will come later -- this is very much a draft. People who remember the RPG Nightlife will have an idea where I'm going here.

QuoteI wanted a very Simulationist (but Narrativist-driftable) game that focused on extreme personalities, grittiness, and creating the world as you went. I wanted, however, to be a framework for people to hang stuff onto. I also wanted to have shifting narration, and a very "develop in play" style

Well, I've taken a look at your system, and it mostly seems to do what you want it to do.

Since you have no limits on stats, you can play extreme personalities; doing so is reward by having more dice to roll. Grittiness is reflected by the ease of getting a 1 or 2 on the Injury die and suffering a major, trait-changing diability. The narration-based system gives a framework for shifting narration and "develop in play."

The only thing I can think of is that you might want to reward extreme personalities by mandating that each Trait have an extreme emotion associated with it as a Speciality.

QuoteThe only thing I can think of is that you might want to reward extreme personalities by mandating that each Trait have an extreme emotion associated with it as a Speciality.

Or find some way to do what TROS or Nobilis does with character flaws: reward the player for them when they are being used entertainingly. Keep a die in reserve when the player gets his or her character into trouble via the character's flaws, and then give it to the player during a tense moment.

Just a thought.

Also, remind the players that their characters are going to stay the same in most cases. They need to make sure they like the characters before committing to play them.

Okay, let's cover this in one big post:

QuoteThe only thing I can think of is that you might want to reward extreme personalities by mandating that each Trait have an extreme emotion associated with it as a Speciality.

Good point, and an easy enough change to make, especially if this is very much a draft. I've changed it.

QuoteOr find some way to do what TROS or Nobilis does with character flaws: reward the player for them when they are being used entertainingly. Keep a die in reserve when the player gets his or her character into trouble via the character's flaws, and then give it to the player during a tense moment.

Well, they already get a Bonus Die for any character flaw taken as a Specialty. I've added some verbiage to emphasize this, but are you saying that there needs to be an opportunity to earn even MORE dice?

QuoteAlso, remind the players that their characters are going to stay the same in most cases. They need to make sure they like the characters before committing to play them.

Good point -- I've added some verbiage to this effect. It's like Amber that way.

http://ivanhoeunbound.com/pretender.html

I'm hoping Vincent will comment on what I've done to his system.

Why the distinction between things that modify your Basic Dice (teamwork, Enemies) and those that grant Bonus Dice (Specialties, situations like being drunk)?  It seems superfluous, unless the point is that the Basic Dice bonuses don't constrict your narration, while Bonus Dice do; in that case, it might help to clarify that.

I love the Otherkind system and I really like what you've done here.  I think the optional categories are great.  Ripple and Discovery especially.  Style I'd be tempted to make a required category.  The game is about style afterall.

I'd be tempted to make it required, and if a 5-6 is assigned to it that the player must describe exactly how cool and stylish the action is.  If they do a good job at this then award a token which can be used instead of sacrificing a normal die to reduce future adversity.   On a 1-2 I'd call for the description of how uncool the character looks and award a black token.  A character with a black token who tries to reduce adversity must use 2 normal dice (1 to discard the black token).

This would seriously tempt players to be willing to sacrifice Saftey or Motion for Style.  Having to assign dice to the categories and figuring out which area you're going to be shafted in is the fun of Otherkind, so I think adding another "hard decision to make" category is a good idea.

I think you need to expand the group rules a little.  Its not clear to me what your motivation for disallowing Billy's use of martial arts in the example is.  Surely when Catherine is involved in a big knock down drag out that she'd rather have martial arts expert Billy at her back rather than joe wimp.  

I'd also explicitly include the option to NOT resolve as a group, but let each live and die on their own.

My final comment would be that in addition to assigning an adversity number to a task that perhaps a Progress number is also necessary.  Something that would serve as a guage for how much Motion is required.  The Motion die could simply serve as a -2 to +2 scale.  A Progress number of 2 means that the character can succeed in a single roll if he puts a 6 into Motion.  A Progress number of 5 means...this is going to be long and bloody.

I'd also include ALOT of examples for how to apply Safety, especially non combat examples.  I'd be explicit about the different effects a low Safety die could have.  The computer hacker example demonstrates that there can be a plot impact of "bad stuff" that happens.  Some guidelines for how severe, how immediate, or how chronic such bad stuff should be would be important.  The Injury effects Adversity section is a good start but it needs to be fleshed out alot more with guildelines on how to apply the concept in play.

All in all I enjoyed it a lot...I must admit I see Dwayne's character as being less terminator-like and more like an Edgar Suit :-)

Hey Kirt.

I think that Style, Ripple, and Discovery are cool.  For Style, why don't you have 1-3 be clumsy, 4-6 be slick, and no die be unremarkable?  As it is, putting a 3 or 4 in Style is the same as skipping it.

Come to think of it, why would you ever put a low die in Style, Ripple, or Discovery?  You might want to reward it somehow.  Or what if you were required to put a die in one of them, your choice?

-Vincent

Shreyas, only Normal Dice can reduce Adversity. This is why only Enemies grant them as a bonus -- generally the extra die from facing an Enemy is used to reduce the Adversity of that enemy, making it easier for the young punk vampire to destroy his sire.

Ralph, I was seriously considering making Style a required category, so I have. Not sure about the token thing, I'll have to think about that.

How about instead of a carrot, a stick: If you're particularly clumsy (1-2 on Style), on your next roll increase Adversity by 1 becausae you're out of whack, no longer hitting your stride, no longer in the groove.

In fact, I think a stick fits the "gritty" thing better... I think I'll go add that. *does so*

I expanded the example to explain why Billy's martial arts don't count -- Cindy's "personal combat training" includes martial arts.

I've also added a reminder that you don't have to work as a group.

As for progress, I'd rather not turn that into a system at this time -- I'd rather leave that up to the GM and the players.

More examples on Safety are a good idea. Suggestions are welcome.

Vincent, I didn't make the change you suggested as I made Style a required category. After all, it is a big part of the game. Let me know what you think.

I've also added a bit about why you'd assign a low number to an optional category. The main reason to do this is to make things more interesting, and more realistic. If you think the story would be more interesting or realistic if you found out your character can never become human again, then make that negative Discovery. Want your recent actions to stir up that Enemy organization that wants to kill you? That's a negative Ripple. Players ARE willing to hose themselves to make things interesting.

Also, keep in mind that Adversity, unlike Iron, can be applied to any die -- usually to Safety or Motion, but it could be applied to Discovery if the GM wanted, to throw in a black revelation.

Since I make Style a required category, I made a new optional category: Pull. I'm curious what people think. Any suggestions for additional optional categories are welcome as well.

Thanks to everyone for their feedback!

http://ivanhoeunbound.com/pretender.html

Quote from: xiombarg
How about instead of a carrot, a stick: If you're particularly clumsy (1-2 on Style), on your next roll increase Adversity by 1 becausae you're out of whack, no longer hitting your stride, no longer in the groove.

Why not both? I think there really needs to be a mechanical benefit to each category for good dice, and a mechanical disadvantage to each category for bad dice.  Otherwise the category just becomes a "Charisma stat" (i.e. useless for anything except sloughing off bad rolls to)

I'm not sure the "token" idea is best.  I was trying to think of a way to offer an abstract reward to events whose narrative broadness prevents a more cause and effect type reward be defined in advance.  I also tried to keep similar to a rule you already had.  For the carrot the effect is just the ability to reduce Adversity using a token instead of a Normal Die.  For the stick, I used a similar logic to you as far as being out of whack, but my interpretation was that rather than increasing adversity that it reduced the character's ability to deal with existing adversity...hense the black token that makes reducing adversity more expensive.

QuoteI expanded the example to explain why Billy's martial arts don't count -- Cindy's "personal combat training" includes martial arts.

Sorry, I wasn't clear.  Its not that I didn't understand the rule.  Just that I don't understand why you want this rule.  It seems to me that Me and 5 ninja mercenaries should be superior at mopping up a platoon of Goblins than Me and 5 retired school teachers.  My 5 ninja mercenaries all have ninja specializations but they don't get to use them because I already have something similar.  This means I might as well ditch the ninjas and just bring along a bunch of school teachers because I can hire them cheaper.

In other words I'm suggesting that the rule as written doesn't seem to make much sense given your desire to make the game more of a simulation.

Quote
As for progress, I'd rather not turn that into a system at this time -- I'd rather leave that up to the GM and the players.

Sure.  You might want to put it in a sidebar as an option for people who'd like the additional mechanical assitance in working it out.

Quote
I've also added a bit about why you'd assign a low number to an optional category. The main reason to do this is to make things more interesting, and more realistic. If you think the story would be more interesting or realistic if you found out your character can never become human again, then make that negative Discovery. Want your recent actions to stir up that Enemy organization that wants to kill you? That's a negative Ripple. Players ARE willing to hose themselves to make things interesting.

Since I make Style a required category, I made a new optional category: Pull. I'm curious what people think. Any suggestions for additional optional categories are welcome as well.

Love Pull.  Really Kirt these optional categories you're coming up with are excellent.  Really empowering player authorship of the story but providing a mechanical framework to hang it on.

But, I do believe that all would be more powerful with a mechanical sweetener.  I 100% agree that given the rope to do so Players are fully willing to hose themselves for fun, but I think a bit of a mechanical hook will also go a long way towards 1) Encouraging players to actively look for ways to do so and thereby generate more great hooks and 2) serve as a way to draw in more gamey players who may resist such self inflicted wounds without a benefit...just enough to show them how fun it is to do so.

Something along the lines of the token idea (or something else of course) I think would work.  The benefit for putting a high die in an Option is the cool effect you get to add.  The disadvantage is the use of a high die that may mean something else takes a low die.    The disadvantage of a low die in an Option is the additional conflict you set up for your character...The advantage of putting a low die there (as oppposed to just ignoring it) is 1) that the conflict you set up is at least one of your own choosing AND 2) a mechanical perk like a token.  I think including some form of 2) makes the mechanic stronger.

Alternatively, you could lose the rule about not all dice needing to be assigned and require all dice to be assigned to something at all times.  Then you don't need a mechanical advantage to encourage using the die rather than just discarding it.  The advantage of putting a low die in an option is that you have to put it somewhere so at least you get to choose.

One could justify this by some verbiage on the price you pay for the extreme emotions and such that you have.  You can't ever do anything small.  If you are "powered up" on rage, angst, supernatural mojo, or whatever you roll more dice...that makes it more likely to get more high dice to put where you want for maximum benefit.  It also means more dice that you have to assign to SOMETHING, and more likely to get more low dice that you have to assign to something.  The bigger the conflict the greater the sideeffects...the price for being driven by extreme emotion and supernatural urges.

Actually, I kind of like this idea.


One last thought I had on second read.  You will probably need some verbiage to distinguish Motion from Discovery for occassions where my stated goal is some form of Investigation.  In such a situation do I assign high dice to Motion to represent moving closer to my goal of finding out the Secret of Azatbeth, or do I put the high die in Discovery?...or both?

One could justify both, with high motion being a prerequisite for Discovery.  Low rolls that don't give me enough high dice to afford to get Discovery too (without getting hosed on other stuff) might represent making progress (high motion) but not finding the answer so I need to keep looking (perhaps with a Bonus die or reduced Adversity to represent the progress)

What if my goal is to discover the Secret but I put a low die in Motion but a High Die in Discovery, Ripple, and Narration.  Do the rules require that I narrate a beneficial Discovery but it NOT be the discovery I was looking for?  I'd presume so but some added language would clarify.

Ralph, I've added some extra verbiage to the Discovery description to cover your concerns.

As for the token thing, part of the reason I'm resisting is I want to keep things as streamlined as possible. I don't want one more thing for people to keep track of. And I tend to think looking cool is its own reward -- I don't see it as a "Charisma stat" at all.

As for whether the optional categories should be optional, I want to keep the option of just discarding dice for a focused effect. Sometimes you just want to look extra good while skateboarding, and you don't want to have to make up something you Discovered about the world while skateboarding.

As for the "no doubling up rule", remember that this is only for PCs working together. If I have 5 ninjas with me, who are GMCs, then I get Bonus Dice from them granted by the GM, as seems approriate. If I have 5 GMC schoolteachers with me, I get less Bonus Dice out of it.

If a PC is helping me, I'm guaranteed an extra Bonus Die just for having a PC helping me, plus a die for any Specialties that I don't have. Throw more than one PC in there, and that's a lot of dice. Yeah, sure, maybe it's more useful to have the two PCs with me who are trained in martial arts than those who don't, but I'm probably getting Bonus Dice for personality traits and all sorts of things, too. I'm just trying to cut back on the number of dice.

However, I forgot to include Billy's personality Bonus Die for Fire, so I've changed the example to reflect that.

Thanks for the feedback. Does anyone else have an opinion on all this?

Quote from: xiombarg
As for whether the optional categories should be optional, I want to keep the option of just discarding dice for a focused effect. Sometimes you just want to look extra good while skateboarding, and you don't want to have to make up something you Discovered about the world while skateboarding.

Sure.  You'll need a few playtests to see if it works.  I suspect that without something to generate conflict mechanically that you're going to get an awful lot of wandering around not really doing anything, but that might not be the case.

What makes the Otherkind system work is that you nearly always have some good dice to put where you feel is really important and some crappy dice that you have to figure out what aspect you're willing to sacrifice because they have to go somewhere.  I'm afraid that if you roll too many dice and get to ditch the ones that you don't like, that what you'll wind up with is a regular stream of players assigning 4-6s to everything and dodging the bad stuff entirely.  This concern motivated my all dice must be played idea.  Playtesting will tell.

But I do kind of like the justification.  I mean if sometimes you really just want to look cool riding a skateboard that sounds like a massive Rule of Jared event to me.  If there is some event interesting enough about riding a skateboard to be worth rolling for than by RoJ it must be interesting in both success and failure.  The must-allocate-all-dice idea makes sure that failure is equally interesting.  It also plays on the idea that extreme emotions and supernatural abilities (those things a character would be drawing on to ensure maximum skateboarding success) will by definition get the character into trouble by giving them more high dice with which to succeed, but also more negative dice to stir up trouble.

Just my own musings however.  I think you are probably ready to start playtesting and see for sure what works best, and of course, go with what feels right to you.

Yeah, playtesting is the next step. I might have time to try it out in a month or so, when our Sunday game opens up, or I might foist it on people during a Wednesday game.

As usual, don't let this stop any of y'all from trying it out for yourselves. ;-D

As for your assertions that high Style should have a reward, I had a few ideas I wanted to run by you and everyone:

1. Stealing from the V:TM CCG (Jyhad, aka Vampire: The Eternal Struggle), when you assign a 5 or 6 to Style, you get the Edge, represented by some item you can pass around the table. Only one person at a time can have the Edge, which can be turned in to the GM to reduce Adversity by 1 (or 2, or something). Still a token, kinda, but less tokens to keep track of.

2. Why does effectiveness have to be the reward? What about narration? When you put a 5 or 6 in Style, on your next roll, add 1 to the die assigned to Narration, making it more likely you narrate.

3. Use the Edge, as above, but when you turn it in you get to circumvent the Narration die and become the narrator, regardless of who rolled and/or what was the Narration die was.

As for concerns about characters being over-effective, well, Pretenders are supposed to be very effective. About the only time Sonja Blue seemed to fail anything was in relationships (low Water, really, with Specialties in short-term stuff like "looking good"), or when facing a LOT of supernatural opposition (elder vampires, and then only some of the time)... or when she was stuggling with herself ("the Other"), which is something an interested player would roleplay.

I might be setting the guidelines for Adversity too low, but that's another thing playtest will bear out.

QuoteI suspect that without something to generate conflict mechanically that you're going to get an awful lot of wandering around not really doing anything, but that might not be the case.

Well, at Mike's suggestion I've made sure there needs to be a Situation from the outset, and a lot of Simulationist games get by without a mechanical way to generate conflict.

Thanks for the comments, Ralph, you've given me a lot to think about.

Quote from: xiombarg
As for your assertions that high Style should have a reward, I had a few ideas I wanted to run by you and everyone:

I think all three of those ideas are potentially great.  As I mentioned, the token thing was just a brainstorm thought up on the fly as an example, you can almost certainly come up with something better.  In fact I think when you start playtesting you should make a point to try all of those and see how they work...Maybe something like "if you use a 5 you get the edge and the GM chooses the benefit.  If you use a 6 you get the edge and you choose the benefit" (another stray thought).

Quotea lot of Simulationist games get by without a mechanical way to generate conflict.

I think there is a decided difference in the way conflict gets created in a traditional top down causal simulationist design and a more open archetecture, player empowered design like you have here.  I wouldn't say that mechanical conflict is *necessary* but I think it helps to focus what could otherwise be alot of meandering.

I don't know that I came up with the perfect solution for Universalis but the rule involving control (where one player's attempt to affect a component another player controls automatically leads to a complication) was an attempt at providing a mechanical structure to serve as a sort of navigation point in the midst of a very free form rules set.

Quote from: xiombargYeah, playtesting is the next step. I might have time to try it out in a month or so, when our Sunday game opens up, or I might foist it on people during a Wednesday game.

So you'll be by Indie Netgaming soon then? So you can try it out well before that?   :-)

Love to have you by.

Mike

Quote from: Mike HolmesSo you'll be by Indie Netgaming soon then? So you can try it out well before that?   :-)

Actually, I'm still subscribed to the list, and you're likely to see me there at some point -- though the plan was to try and playtest Unsung there, first.

And to swing this somewhat more on-topic, several of my players saw the current draft of Pretender from a link on my Livejournal and are, without prompting, enthusiastic to play, which is the first time I've seen 'em like that. (Of course, half of them are White Wolf vets, so...)