So, here’s my idea: basically, four or five Chefs get together into groups and read each others games.  We could have discussion over possible rules problems we see, things that the rules don’t make clear, etc.  

  Maybe this group could become a playtesting group later on if schedules clear up.  I’m up for being the founder of a group.  If anyone’s interested, we can get together in this thread or anywhere else, talk about when our first drafts will be finished (mine’s still a week off), and start talking.

In my game there are five players, and six Agendas (victory conditions, basically).  I need to distribute them in a random, private manner: each player should know their own and only their own Agenda, and nobody should know which Agenda went unchosen.  In a face-to-face game, this is an utterly trivial problem: deal out five of six shuffled face-down cards and hide the last card away.

The problem is that I’m trying for the Al Gore award, with the game playable in a group of blogs.  So the tools I have are public, signed posts, signed comments, anonymous comments, and  temporarily screened comments.  And I’m willing to use the honor system in general, but not to the extent of expecting players to  not notice something that is blindingly obvious.  I can come up with procedures that do most of what I need to using those tools, but in all of them either everybody knows the unchosen Agenda or else one person knows and everyone else has it narrowed down to two possibilities.  Is there an obvious solution here that I’m missing somehow?

There has been some discussion in the Game Chef commentary threads about the lack of spontaneous organization in the process. I want to see if I can help make some happen. In any creative endeavor the creator is more invested in his or her own work than anyone else, so it can be difficult to get other people to provide the kind of help that the creator wants or needs. One mechanism to overcome this is reciprocal relationships. I may not care about your game as much as I care about mine, and you may not care about my game as much as you care about yours, but if caring about your game will help my game…

So I propose forming a group with some other Game Chef contestants that will playtest the participants’ games with each other over Skype. Is anyone interested?

I’ll be up front in saying I have no RPG design experience before this process, and not a lot of RPG playing experience. However, I do have a lot of free time, so I should be able to schedule a game over Skype pretty easily.

(Also, I think this is kind of an abuse of “crying wolfman”, but I wanted to get some extra visibility on this post, since not everyone is reading every post that goes into the main aggregator).

Basically, this is a three player game where characters (and possibly players, I haven’t figured that out yet) are competing with each other. The core mechanic is called an “Offer”, which is invoked by a player once she either wants to create and resolve a conflict or create and resolve a cooperation of sorts. This player rolls 2d4, keeping one in the open and hiding the other one. So it looks like this:

4 [2]. A four in the open, a two hidden.

The open die is the value of the possible conflict. The hidden die is the value of the possible alliance. This player says a total number that she ostensibly rolled. In this case, let’s say she lies and says, “Seven.” The player she’s making an offer to then has to guess if she’s lying or telling the truth. If she’s lying, it’s a conflict, if she’s telling the truth, it’s a cooperation. So now the opposing player says, “Sure, you’re telling the truth.” Since he guessed wrong, the player making the offer wins the conflict, and narration happens accordingly (there are some other rules about this, but I’m giving the basics here). If he had guessed right, the player making the offer would have lost the conflict.

Same happens for a cooperation: the “opposing” player guesses if the number offered was right, and gains the upper hand in the cooperation if he guessed right, and loses the upper hand if he guessed wrong.

Okay, so this is why I’m telling you all this, other than some ego that thinks this is a pretty cool mechanic: In response to this, Ben posted,

When I see abstracted fiddly resolutions, I always go “okay, what actually roots this to the imagination?”

That’s what I’m doing right now.

I’ve taken a number of days to think over his question and try to understand what he’s getting at. I think it’s this:

The mechanic pulls you out of the fiction and into the dynamic between players, trying to guess if that girl across from you is lying or not.

So, is it a problem to pull players out of the fiction like this and focus for a moment on the real-world dynamic with another person? If it is a problem, is there a way to rectify it?

12 Zodiac signs, 12 skills. My first idea was to associate each sign to a matching skill and grant the player a re-roll for that skill. For example, if the character was Sagittarius, then he’d gain re-roll on athletics, because he doesn’t want to give up on physical tasks.The other idea I had was to grant synergy bonuses and penalties for the players if they had signs that go well (or not so well) together. This I’m not so sure about. It might be more fitting for the horoscopes, but it’s not that good of a mechanic. It’s not as balanced and can be easily broken.

Nonetheless, the Zodiac will help the players get into their characters better. I want the players to have that “My big brother is a Taurus, so I know how to play my character” feeling. I’ll make a description for each of the signs for the players. I might need some help with that too, because I’m not that familiar with them.

I’ve used this website for inspiration: http://www.psychicguild.com/horoscopes_explained.php
And causticbuddhist linked this site for more information: http://horoscopes.aol.com/astrology/career-tips-aries-taurus-gemini-leo (thanks!)

Here are the signs and their associated skill re-rolls. If something particular doesn’t seem fitting, please point it out.

Aries
You are courageous and impulsive. Your habit of taking risks gives you a re-roll in Combat-skill.

Taurus
You are determined and stubborn. Your ability to not give up until you succeed gives you a re-roll in Larceny-skill.

Gemini
You are curious and witty. Your habit of taking nothing for granted gives you a re-roll in Science-skill.

Cancer
You are perceptive and creative. Your interest in mysteries gives you a re-roll in Paranormal-skill

Leo
You are devoted and proud. Your radiant personality gives you a re-roll in Coercion-skill.

Virgo
You are compassionate and sensitive. Your social awareness gives you a re-roll in Empathy-skill.

Libra
You are charming and passionate Your sense of cause and effect gives you a re-roll in Socialize-skill.

Scorpio
You are secretive and resilient. Your desire to triumph no matter what gives you a re-roll in Deception-skill.

Sagittarius
You are adventurous and optimistic. Your enthusiasm gives you a re-roll in Athletics-skill.

Capricorn
You are conscientious and ambitious. Your determination gives you a re-roll in Technology-skill.

Aquarius
You are intelligent and practical. Your resourcefulness gives you a re-roll in Academics-skill.

Pisces
You are intuitive and imaginative. Your quick wits gives you a re-roll in Stealth-skill.

EDIT: Swapped some skills around and wrote up a little info on each Zodiac sign. Also listed a few links that served as inspiration and background material.

Here’s how it works (or, uh, tries to work, whichever). There is a set number of Spheres, each representing an area of study the Scholars take interest in. They’re functionally identical, but giving them names works as a pretty good memory tool – for instance we had Holy Book, History, and Human Soul as our Spheres. All Spheres have a specific value at the beggining of the game – a Scholar’s goal is to be the first to master one of them fully, which in game terms means decreasing a Sphere’s value to zero. You do so via the use of points you get every turn (still pondering on whether to use a static refresh rate or a roll of the dice. But whichever I choose, the basic mechanic is still same-ish.)

The trick is, when you spend points on a Sphere, you knock it down a notch for everyone involved. So if, say, you spent 4 points on the Holy Book while it’s at 7,  with your opponent having 3 points left, you hand the victory to your rival. So you can’t play straight. You have to manouver and make it so that another scholar ends up giving you a situation which you could exploit. There are features that allow to make this easier – you can forfeit action for a turn and thus gain extra points, which is pretty straightforward. You can also spend your points indirectly – instead of spending them on a particular Sphere, you spend them to Shadow another player (which, mind, is more expensive than just spending them straight). Skullduggery, divination, that sort of thing. Shadow points get applied on whatever Sphere the target Scholar uses at the end of the target Scholar’s turn.

Say, you were Shadowing Sam with 4 points. Sam has 5 points of her own, and spends them all on Human Soul, which was at 9. Her 5 points knock Human Soul down to 4, but it is your points that get it down to zero, making you the winner! Pretty straightforward and plenty neat, but that’s just my opinion.

Now, I bet you had to re-read at least some of those paragraphs to make sense of them, so you have a sense of the first issue – too damned much bookkeeping – and this is without the True Name mechanic and all the names and guesses that everyone would have to remember. No idea of how to fix that, aside from providing visual tools and crossing my fingers and hoping that the players will stick around long enough to take the mechanics to heart. What can I do here to decrease the bookkeeping or make it managable? Maybe (I wish!) there’s even a way to make it a fun piece of gameplay somehow?

Second… If you’ve grokked the basic mechanic, you’ve understood that the game isn’t about being effective. It’s about manouvering in ways that make other players screw up, and then exploiting those mistakes to your benefit. For this game to be playable, you have to want to win, and other players have to want to win as well. That’s worrying. It’s not bad – that’s an intentional goal of the game I wanted to make from day one. But, I’ve only now understood the full implications of that…

All that bookkeeping means strategic mistakes are easy to make (hell, I made one in the single ‘playtest’ that we did, and I know this baby in and out!). Even if I make the bookkeeping managable, players will still make mistakes. While I want a game that punishes gross errors, I don’t want a game where you have to count every damned point you have or else risk losing everything in a single turn. The game should be robust enough to swallow up the occassional hiccup – it should have a negative effect on the one who screwed up, but not in a way that would end the game immediatelly.

And then there’s other stuff. You know how chess has that thing where you win five turns before making the actual moves? This mechanic does that, too. Is it *fun* when it does that? I can’t really say! It’s kinda intended, but then again, I’d rather if someone was able to throw a curveball in a tough situation and mess it all up, which the mechanic doesn’t quite do, yet. There’s also stuff that I haven’t seen to happen in the game, but I’m afraid is possible – a player who is in no position to win, but is in a position to decide who of the remaining players will win…

And then there’s the stuff I don’t even have any idea about! Who knows how much stuff there is there that I don’t know anything about? I sure don’t!

That somewhat exagerated mockery of my feeling of impotence aside, I do feel like I have some problems. Basically – I’ve a mechanic, but I’ve little idea of what the deep strategic choices one can make within it are. Now, I’ve untapped resources that I can use to fix issues that do crop up (say, curveballin’ up the whole game via integration of the True Name mechanic), but I don’t yet know what the issues are or could be (which is to be expected), or where I should start to look for them to pop up (which is frustrating, and shouldn’t be the case at all).

Help me.

The idea is to have courtly intrigue – people scheming, plotting and even killing for the throne, essentially. I’m assuming at the moment that all the players in the game, however lowly their initial position, will be competing to secure the throne for themselves.

A proper royal court has a diverse cast of people with different powers and positions. It’s this interface of differing abilities and weaknesses which is going to give this game much of the necessary diplomatic juice – for negotiation to occur, people have to possess something unique that the other party wants.

It’s also a great initial buy-in to the game – giving someone a somewhat defined character they can reach for, saying “I want to be THAT”. Vincent’s currently in playtest /Apocalypse World/ is my model here – he has these little playbooks, each of which contains all the rules for playing that type of character. And each character has a set of unique special abilities.

A court needs a king/queen/emperor/emir/whatever, of course. Not just to act as a target, either – I think the ruler could make a suitable PC, so long as they’re constrained by rules too.

A good role for this game will be:

* placed at a definite point in a palace hierarchy
* be based, if only loosely, on genuine types of court officers in history
* have unique powers, privileges or access that other roles will want
* have unique weaknesses, associated with their position

Certain roles suggest themselves:

* Treasurer – power over funds, can bribe other characters?
* Consort and/or Concubine – as the ruler’s chosen, has access to the ruler that no-one else can match
* Captain of the Guard – obvious violent power at their disposal
* Archbishop/other religious leader – word trusted above all others
* (my favourite) Head of household staff/majordomo/butler – starts in a lowly position, sure, but has the ear of all the servants, is easily forgotten about and has access to all the food and drink…

But what other kinds of roles might be juicy? I open up this Crying Wolfman comments thread for possible suggestions. What kinds of palace-court roles would appeal to you to play?

My next post will go into some early examples of roles and powers they might have, combining the insights from the previous two posts.

I was wondering what kind of a game I want to write. I have some ideas, but none of them quite fit the contest. Modern day shamans, timetravel and virtual reality/cyberspace hackers.

I’ll start with listing the ideas that taste good to me:

Intrigue
- scheming/plotting vs fascinating/interesting, I could go either way

Star
- constellations, zodiac, star as a symbol, astronomy

Three Player Award
- three players and one GM or three player game with no GM
- competitive or non-competitive play, not quite sure

Year 2001 Award
- modern age, new millennium, end of the world, beginning of a new age, terrorism

So, if I put these together I have:

Intriquing constellations, a game of modern astronomy for three players

Great.

I might fuse this and the shamans together for something epic. Not sure if it’s a epic win or epic fail though. Let’s hope for the best.