the_fantastic_ms_fox (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
the_fantastic_ms_fox) wrote2009-09-18 09:23 pm
the_fantastic_ms_fox) wrote2009-09-18 09:23 pm
Entry tags:
(no subject)
I have been designing a storygame (or "Tabletop roleplaying game") for about the last eight months. It's working name is "Streamlined," but it will be get a new name before release.
I am going to do another round of alpha playtesting, with me facilitating a group of players... when i find them. I'm not sure how to do this in Nelson, and I want to game with people whom I've met.
Assuming that no more major adjustments need be made, I will go to beta testing wherein I write up and distribute instructions to volunteers.
Ultimately, I am looking to distribute the game engine for free, then also have settings, stories and such sold online.
What are this system's strengths?
- It's simple
There are a moderate amount of rules, and very little math. You need paper, pennies (or small rocks, or poker chips) and six-sided dice to play.
- It's flexible
Although it is directed at telling stories in a particular way, it is very flexible in terms of genre, group size, attendance regularity, and campaign length.
- It fixes the "just wing it" problem
(hopefully solved by creating a structure that facilitates storytelling)
When you go outside the core rules of many games, you are instructed to just improvise. Many games don't have a structure for designing stories that most people find interesting. You're expected to know how to do this. Alternatively, when the rules get in the way, you are told to "just ignore them." This is all well and good, but if it happens a lot, then you start to ask why am I using this game at all?
Why not just ditch the rpg? Some people like the dice. And some people like specific games because they think they will help them tell interesting stories.
Instead, the system of Streamlined aims to focus on character, setting, plot and theme, the elements of a story. It pays attention to the teamwork that's necessary to make a story.
- It circumvents the "don't split the party" problem. And the "the GM is talking to herself" problem
(hopefully solved by rotating through minor roles)
Most roleplaying games don't understand that some scenes may occur without all protagonists present. In Streamlined
all participants, or all save the facilitator (who could rotate betwene games, or even between scenes), gets a protagonist. The protogonists are enmeshed in a web of minor characters and setting elements, which can be handled by players whose protagonist is not present in a given scene. This also frees up the facilitator (which can be a rotating position) from trying to play four minor characters at once.
- It avoids the "wandering band of enterpreneurial mercenaries" problem
(hopefully solved by situating characters in relationships)
Most games don't engage with motivations or relationships. As a consequence, characters are either left to somehow work in motivations and relationships despite a complete lack of system support, and/or their motivations and relationships are reduced to "engage in violent conflict in exchange for money." Why?
- RPGs come out of war-games, which made an art out of modelling war in terms of a game
- Sporadic violence is an easy conflict to understand, at least on a superficial level. The people involved are you and the other guy. And the stakes are your lives. Motivated?
- Currency is designed to be a flexible motivator.
Streamlined's "web," as mentioned above, is a series of ties to people and places that define the character's social/economic context. You use ties to build stories. All stories are encouraged to include a relationship which is either undergoing change that you do not want it to undergo, or a relationship which you want to change.
- It questions the "these stats imply silly things" problem
(hopefully solved by taking a critical stance on ability)
Many games include a series of variables to quantify ability. The variables through which ability is quantified create assumptions about what it means to do worthwhile things in the story that you're going to tell. But most games don't engage with this. The sort of story you're "supposed" to tell is perhaps obvious and implicit to the designers, but not to all players or contributors of material. This leads to problems when you spend a lot of time detailing a character for one sort of story, then plunge zer into another where they are not so much dis-abled (which could be interesting), but have no grounds through which to relate to or interact with the challanges they are faced with because those challenges are inconceivable under the abilities implicit in the game system. And then they telly you to improvise - andthen you wonder why you're using the game if you're going to tell stories of which it can't conceive.
For example, D&D has six major variables called "ability scores". Three major variables (Strength, Dexterity and Constitution) measure athletic ability. "Intelligence" stands for intellect. "Wisdom" is a combination of right-brain thinking, spirituality and willpower. And "Charisma" is a combination of charm, social grace and physical appreance. There are also a lot of minor stats that track combat ability. Most games have a similar breakdown in many games.
Instead, Streamlined asks the players to decide what exactly constitutes (dis)ability under the story they want to tell. In a story about family relationships and and union organizing in 1930s BC, "social position," "reputation," "education" and "empathy" might be important. But your (in)ability to smash things with sword is probably not going to make an impact. Probably.
Further, abilities are qualified with descriptions instead of just a number. And these descriptions can both enable and disable your character. There are still numerical ratings attached to abilities, but they indicate not its strength, but its reliability as a means of making change, or being made to change.
So if "social position" is a frame through which an abilities is interpreted, then a character could have "Eldest daughter of Irish immigrants" as her ability. This would enable her to boss around her younger sisters or network with relatives in the diaspora, but it would disable her if she came up against anti-immigrant attitudes or trying to avoid family commitments.
- It queers the "good/evil" problem
(hopefully solved by Queering binaries - you read that right)
Most of the stories woven into RPGs still have an implicit stance of us (the good guys) vs them (the bad guys). There are growing exceptions to this. Some have substituted complicated allegieances to rival fictitious organizations for good and evil - where the one the protagonists belong to might be annoying, if not corrupt, but The Other Side is plain horrific. This isn't much of an improvement: it's just "the system vs evil."
Others have implicit xenophobia substituted for good and evil. Within "our world," human conflict plays out, but it is affected by the intrusion of the monstrous other. Almost all the White Wolf modern-day supernatural games cite a character's "humanity" (moral fibre) as a thing which is in conflict with the thing that makes them inhuman, and thus immoral. Further, "Humanity" is associated only with abstaining from things - things like property crime, all forms of violence (including self-defence) and torture. Recent games have added any reliance on the supernatural as a threat.
Call of Cthulu has "sanity," which is basically shorthand for a hegemonic mindset - those who pry into the mysteries of the universe lose it and become un-playable, and often monstrous.
Streamlined is set up to have stories where two themes both define and conflict with each-other. Players take these themes, then generate the ways that their characters interpret them. But over time, it becomes possible to slip the binary, to queer it.
This is a step in the right direction, but it's a step into a void. There aren't a lot of socially critical roleplaying games out there. But there are some.
"Steal Away Jordan" tells stories about slavery in the Southern United States. It talks about commodification of the body - everyone has a "worth" in dollars. Some people are worth more than others. When you make your character, you are assigned a worth, and must pick your options from there. Old people are "worth less" than young people. Women are "worth less" than men. Dark skin is "worth less" than light skin. Owners are "worth more" than the owned. Physical strength is "worth more" than compassion.
It also models how The System really can hurt you - if you cross it, and are caught, you can just plain die, and there's not much you can do about it. I'm told that to challenge the system requires building alliances, and even then theres no guarantee of living, but I don't know the game well.
"Unknown Armies" is about underground cells operating in a world of secret magic. It handles trauma and identity well. Being exposed to stress can sensitize you to it, desensitize you, or both. if you accumulate enough stress without getting help, you either lose mental health, or lose your ability to interact with the world on an emotionally engaged level.
Stress is defined as: violence, helplessness, isolation, the unnatural (it's a game about the occult, and watching "impossible" things happen causes some degree of dislocation) and things that conflict with deeply held beliefs about your self (like being in a body that doesn't mesh with your identity).
Further, characters are directed towards action by core values. Everyone has something they fear more than anything else, something they hate more than anything, and something they are willing to sacrifice for. When these come up, a character will find it easier to act in keeping with them, and stressful to ignore them.
Unknown Armies can be a violent game too, but it handles it well. It has a combat-specific system, but it's more designed to model why you don't want to be in a fight than to represent an action movie. It's prefaced with a long description of the consquences of getting in a fight, followed by a list of alternatives to violence, and ways of de-escalating violence that you can't stop. Fights are unpredictable, unfair, and leave permanent consequences.
Unlike these games, Streamlined is not designed for a specific setting. So it's a challenge to try to build different ideas of organizing people into the way stories are told, rather than the content of those stories.
If you have any ideas about other ways that RPGs could be improved, or any ideas at all, let me know.
I am going to do another round of alpha playtesting, with me facilitating a group of players... when i find them. I'm not sure how to do this in Nelson, and I want to game with people whom I've met.
Assuming that no more major adjustments need be made, I will go to beta testing wherein I write up and distribute instructions to volunteers.
Ultimately, I am looking to distribute the game engine for free, then also have settings, stories and such sold online.
What are this system's strengths?
- It's simple
There are a moderate amount of rules, and very little math. You need paper, pennies (or small rocks, or poker chips) and six-sided dice to play.
- It's flexible
Although it is directed at telling stories in a particular way, it is very flexible in terms of genre, group size, attendance regularity, and campaign length.
- It fixes the "just wing it" problem
(hopefully solved by creating a structure that facilitates storytelling)
When you go outside the core rules of many games, you are instructed to just improvise. Many games don't have a structure for designing stories that most people find interesting. You're expected to know how to do this. Alternatively, when the rules get in the way, you are told to "just ignore them." This is all well and good, but if it happens a lot, then you start to ask why am I using this game at all?
Why not just ditch the rpg? Some people like the dice. And some people like specific games because they think they will help them tell interesting stories.
Instead, the system of Streamlined aims to focus on character, setting, plot and theme, the elements of a story. It pays attention to the teamwork that's necessary to make a story.
- It circumvents the "don't split the party" problem. And the "the GM is talking to herself" problem
(hopefully solved by rotating through minor roles)
Most roleplaying games don't understand that some scenes may occur without all protagonists present. In Streamlined
all participants, or all save the facilitator (who could rotate betwene games, or even between scenes), gets a protagonist. The protogonists are enmeshed in a web of minor characters and setting elements, which can be handled by players whose protagonist is not present in a given scene. This also frees up the facilitator (which can be a rotating position) from trying to play four minor characters at once.
- It avoids the "wandering band of enterpreneurial mercenaries" problem
(hopefully solved by situating characters in relationships)
Most games don't engage with motivations or relationships. As a consequence, characters are either left to somehow work in motivations and relationships despite a complete lack of system support, and/or their motivations and relationships are reduced to "engage in violent conflict in exchange for money." Why?
- RPGs come out of war-games, which made an art out of modelling war in terms of a game
- Sporadic violence is an easy conflict to understand, at least on a superficial level. The people involved are you and the other guy. And the stakes are your lives. Motivated?
- Currency is designed to be a flexible motivator.
Streamlined's "web," as mentioned above, is a series of ties to people and places that define the character's social/economic context. You use ties to build stories. All stories are encouraged to include a relationship which is either undergoing change that you do not want it to undergo, or a relationship which you want to change.
- It questions the "these stats imply silly things" problem
(hopefully solved by taking a critical stance on ability)
Many games include a series of variables to quantify ability. The variables through which ability is quantified create assumptions about what it means to do worthwhile things in the story that you're going to tell. But most games don't engage with this. The sort of story you're "supposed" to tell is perhaps obvious and implicit to the designers, but not to all players or contributors of material. This leads to problems when you spend a lot of time detailing a character for one sort of story, then plunge zer into another where they are not so much dis-abled (which could be interesting), but have no grounds through which to relate to or interact with the challanges they are faced with because those challenges are inconceivable under the abilities implicit in the game system. And then they telly you to improvise - andthen you wonder why you're using the game if you're going to tell stories of which it can't conceive.
For example, D&D has six major variables called "ability scores". Three major variables (Strength, Dexterity and Constitution) measure athletic ability. "Intelligence" stands for intellect. "Wisdom" is a combination of right-brain thinking, spirituality and willpower. And "Charisma" is a combination of charm, social grace and physical appreance. There are also a lot of minor stats that track combat ability. Most games have a similar breakdown in many games.
Instead, Streamlined asks the players to decide what exactly constitutes (dis)ability under the story they want to tell. In a story about family relationships and and union organizing in 1930s BC, "social position," "reputation," "education" and "empathy" might be important. But your (in)ability to smash things with sword is probably not going to make an impact. Probably.
Further, abilities are qualified with descriptions instead of just a number. And these descriptions can both enable and disable your character. There are still numerical ratings attached to abilities, but they indicate not its strength, but its reliability as a means of making change, or being made to change.
So if "social position" is a frame through which an abilities is interpreted, then a character could have "Eldest daughter of Irish immigrants" as her ability. This would enable her to boss around her younger sisters or network with relatives in the diaspora, but it would disable her if she came up against anti-immigrant attitudes or trying to avoid family commitments.
- It queers the "good/evil" problem
(hopefully solved by Queering binaries - you read that right)
Most of the stories woven into RPGs still have an implicit stance of us (the good guys) vs them (the bad guys). There are growing exceptions to this. Some have substituted complicated allegieances to rival fictitious organizations for good and evil - where the one the protagonists belong to might be annoying, if not corrupt, but The Other Side is plain horrific. This isn't much of an improvement: it's just "the system vs evil."
Others have implicit xenophobia substituted for good and evil. Within "our world," human conflict plays out, but it is affected by the intrusion of the monstrous other. Almost all the White Wolf modern-day supernatural games cite a character's "humanity" (moral fibre) as a thing which is in conflict with the thing that makes them inhuman, and thus immoral. Further, "Humanity" is associated only with abstaining from things - things like property crime, all forms of violence (including self-defence) and torture. Recent games have added any reliance on the supernatural as a threat.
Call of Cthulu has "sanity," which is basically shorthand for a hegemonic mindset - those who pry into the mysteries of the universe lose it and become un-playable, and often monstrous.
Streamlined is set up to have stories where two themes both define and conflict with each-other. Players take these themes, then generate the ways that their characters interpret them. But over time, it becomes possible to slip the binary, to queer it.
This is a step in the right direction, but it's a step into a void. There aren't a lot of socially critical roleplaying games out there. But there are some.
"Steal Away Jordan" tells stories about slavery in the Southern United States. It talks about commodification of the body - everyone has a "worth" in dollars. Some people are worth more than others. When you make your character, you are assigned a worth, and must pick your options from there. Old people are "worth less" than young people. Women are "worth less" than men. Dark skin is "worth less" than light skin. Owners are "worth more" than the owned. Physical strength is "worth more" than compassion.
It also models how The System really can hurt you - if you cross it, and are caught, you can just plain die, and there's not much you can do about it. I'm told that to challenge the system requires building alliances, and even then theres no guarantee of living, but I don't know the game well.
"Unknown Armies" is about underground cells operating in a world of secret magic. It handles trauma and identity well. Being exposed to stress can sensitize you to it, desensitize you, or both. if you accumulate enough stress without getting help, you either lose mental health, or lose your ability to interact with the world on an emotionally engaged level.
Stress is defined as: violence, helplessness, isolation, the unnatural (it's a game about the occult, and watching "impossible" things happen causes some degree of dislocation) and things that conflict with deeply held beliefs about your self (like being in a body that doesn't mesh with your identity).
Further, characters are directed towards action by core values. Everyone has something they fear more than anything else, something they hate more than anything, and something they are willing to sacrifice for. When these come up, a character will find it easier to act in keeping with them, and stressful to ignore them.
Unknown Armies can be a violent game too, but it handles it well. It has a combat-specific system, but it's more designed to model why you don't want to be in a fight than to represent an action movie. It's prefaced with a long description of the consquences of getting in a fight, followed by a list of alternatives to violence, and ways of de-escalating violence that you can't stop. Fights are unpredictable, unfair, and leave permanent consequences.
Unlike these games, Streamlined is not designed for a specific setting. So it's a challenge to try to build different ideas of organizing people into the way stories are told, rather than the content of those stories.
If you have any ideas about other ways that RPGs could be improved, or any ideas at all, let me know.