Vincent Baker coined the term "fruitful void" here to describe the part of a game that is central to its theme and play experience but that isn't covered by the rules (e.g., The Mountain Witch is about samurais and honor but there aren't any rules for tracking honor points or using honor mechanically). The idea is wicked cool, and I can see how many designs have created a fruiful void that ends up driving play. Creating a fruitful void for The Committee is something I want to do, but execution is a bit harder that theoretical understanding.
The Committee explains the involvement of the characters in the expedition that they are reporting on by establishing that each character has a secret desire whose achievement requires the additional acclaim and recognition to be gained in going on the expedition and coming back with thrilling tales of their exploits. Of course, while these desires are "secret" to the other characters, all the players know the desires of the other characters so they can frame hazards that touch on them. At the end of the game, each player gets to narrate an epilogue for their character in which this desire is gained or lost, depending on the amount of Acclaim (in-game currency) they have accumulated.
Ok, so the desire helps explain why the character is going on another expedition into danger and its gain or loss ends the character's story, but how to use the desires during play? Currently, the desires of the characters are story elements that the character gets for free (usually creating a story element costs one point of Acclaim). When another player reuses your story element when acting as Opposition for another character or providing reflective narration at the end of their own character's scene, then you get a point of Acclaim and so do they. In addition, you can choose to "cash out" of your story element and receive back the initial point of Acclaim you spent to create it. This keeps the system nice and streamlined, but it doesn't seem to make desires as important as I want them to be. The local playtests I've done used the desires but didn't see them driving play as much as I hoped. Of course, early playtests spend so much time finding rules kinks that focusing on larger goals of play can be difficult. Still, I'm not satisfied with the current treatment of desires.
Another thought I've had was to allow players to call on desires during a scene by making a narrative aside describing how their desire influenced their actions in the scene for good or ill. In exchange, the player gets to roll a die or two to help him successfully overcome the scene's hazard. Joshua BishopRoby's "thematic batteries" in Full Light, Full Steam may end up being inspirational here, since I'd like calling on your character's desire to have both positive and negative effects that you can manipulate to maximize your benefit when it really counts.
So does such an approach enable the desires of the characters to drive play more effectively? Or should I not focus mechanics on the desires at all? Which does the best job of trying to create a fruitful void in the game? Testing of both options will tell the tale.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
What's in the Pipeline (Part 2) & Game Design Contests
Continuing the review of my current game design projects from the last post:
(3) Utopolis: Policing the Retrofuture - The Pitch: It's the future as imagined by those in the 1950s - jetcars, automats, huge stylized skyscrapers, slidewalks connecting the buildings together, robots with vacuum tube heads, etc. It's a paradise of well-ordered prosperity. You're a police detective tasked with solving the crimes and finding the criminals that still emerge in the dark corners of Utopolis society. The catch is you once were one of these criminals, but you've been reeducated to forget your prior life and crime. If you do well in your new job, you'll eventually be released back into general society with a generous pension. But your inner demons and slowly accumulating memories of your life before may drive you over the edge into new crimes or madness before that happens.
The game came about as part of the Reversed Engineer Challenge and can be found here. The game is inspired by the evocative character sheet of Thom Foster found here. I decided to stretch myself a bit and go with a card-based system and a very explicit IIEE progression. I'm pleased with how the design came out and I'm going to continue its development.
(4) Today - My first complete design and a product of the second round of the Ronnies. The Pitch: You're a person a pain, real deep soul-crushing stuff, that has driven you to self-destructive behaviors and kept you from really living. Today is the day that you confront (or are confronted by) the people associated with your pain and try to overcome it for good, putting yourself on a path out of the darkness. You have supportive people in your life that will try to help, but ultimately it's up to you if you sink or swim.
Ron was quite right to critique the game as parlor narration that allowed no room for meaningful decisions by the players. I took that advice to heart and spent a lot of time revising the system. The result was a game that fell into another trap - setting stakes that essentially limited the results and narrated consequences before the dice were even rolled (another pitfall discussed by Ron at Gen Con). So this design would need a total retooling in order to be effective, and I'm not sure I'm in a place to that work right now. So this one is being put on the shelf, ugly and incomplete, for now. Maybe when I've got a couple of my other designs completed I'll have learned enough and recovered the passion to return to Today and really do it justice.
So three of my four current game design projects have come about as a result of game design contests - The Ronnies, Game Chef, and Kevin Allen, Jr.'s Reversed Engineer Challenge. Looking around at other game designers, I see that my experience is not unique, and many of the most successful indie games to date have come about as a result of contest entries. A contest is a great way to get initial exposure for your design and get a couple of people to read it (the judges). Even if they have a less than stellar view of your design on the first read, your later development can find them coming back for a second look and offering you additional feedback and maybe even playtesting. Speaking of playtesting, The Committee has entered the outside playtesting phase, which wil be the subject of my next post.
(3) Utopolis: Policing the Retrofuture - The Pitch: It's the future as imagined by those in the 1950s - jetcars, automats, huge stylized skyscrapers, slidewalks connecting the buildings together, robots with vacuum tube heads, etc. It's a paradise of well-ordered prosperity. You're a police detective tasked with solving the crimes and finding the criminals that still emerge in the dark corners of Utopolis society. The catch is you once were one of these criminals, but you've been reeducated to forget your prior life and crime. If you do well in your new job, you'll eventually be released back into general society with a generous pension. But your inner demons and slowly accumulating memories of your life before may drive you over the edge into new crimes or madness before that happens.
The game came about as part of the Reversed Engineer Challenge and can be found here. The game is inspired by the evocative character sheet of Thom Foster found here. I decided to stretch myself a bit and go with a card-based system and a very explicit IIEE progression. I'm pleased with how the design came out and I'm going to continue its development.
(4) Today - My first complete design and a product of the second round of the Ronnies. The Pitch: You're a person a pain, real deep soul-crushing stuff, that has driven you to self-destructive behaviors and kept you from really living. Today is the day that you confront (or are confronted by) the people associated with your pain and try to overcome it for good, putting yourself on a path out of the darkness. You have supportive people in your life that will try to help, but ultimately it's up to you if you sink or swim.
Ron was quite right to critique the game as parlor narration that allowed no room for meaningful decisions by the players. I took that advice to heart and spent a lot of time revising the system. The result was a game that fell into another trap - setting stakes that essentially limited the results and narrated consequences before the dice were even rolled (another pitfall discussed by Ron at Gen Con). So this design would need a total retooling in order to be effective, and I'm not sure I'm in a place to that work right now. So this one is being put on the shelf, ugly and incomplete, for now. Maybe when I've got a couple of my other designs completed I'll have learned enough and recovered the passion to return to Today and really do it justice.
So three of my four current game design projects have come about as a result of game design contests - The Ronnies, Game Chef, and Kevin Allen, Jr.'s Reversed Engineer Challenge. Looking around at other game designers, I see that my experience is not unique, and many of the most successful indie games to date have come about as a result of contest entries. A contest is a great way to get initial exposure for your design and get a couple of people to read it (the judges). Even if they have a less than stellar view of your design on the first read, your later development can find them coming back for a second look and offering you additional feedback and maybe even playtesting. Speaking of playtesting, The Committee has entered the outside playtesting phase, which wil be the subject of my next post.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)