Massive Narratives pt 4
Hi Again. I'm working like crazy on Encleverment at the moment so sorry for the late post. Just one attached note before the LARP post. I love MMO but I wouldn't be caught dead making one, why you ask?
MMO's are risky, very risky. They require not only superior engineering and game design but enough money to gather a following. Some are an exception to the rule but in short I wouldn't trust anyone except proven industry veterans to do it. Maybe one day (^_^)
So let's get back to talk about LARPs an area I do have experience in. Again if anyone knows some good resources please shout out.
Didn't I just kill you?
LARPs like MMO are often defined by the word persistent. Now this can mean different things and be implemented to different degrees but it means some basic things. In regards to LARPS the basic terms are.
- The world is remembered, and doesn't reset.
- A world is forward moving (no rewind or save game).
- Choices impact the world permanently.
Playing in a persistent world is great in that it empowers the player, increases immersion and raises the stakes. It comes at a large cost. Death!
Okay there are smaller problems but the big one is player death. Some games offer resurrection, clones or the like. The truth is however player's get frustrated when they can't kill and they get very cocky when they know they can't die.
The first thing you need to is control the danger. Make it risky, expensive or dangerous to kill another player. A basic equation is
cost = (player benefit) + (player penalty)*X
Player benefit being anything positive the player gains from an action.
Player penalty is the negative impact on all other player, which we strongly weight with a value of X.
The greater X is the less likely negative actions are to occur. They should not be out of reach but having X too low leads to anarchy. Think of X as the stability of society co-efficient. The higher it is the more stable society is. Remember cost is not gold, but cost modified by risk.
Common ways to modify risk. Visibility, Accountability and Resistance.
I quite like visibility, in a LARP you control the amount of rooms. Ensure good lines of sight and multi access points to each location. Any "closet-space" becomes a kill-zone. Not only used for killing but many other PvP activities.
The main reason visibility works is accountablity. A natural rule of society is actions which harm others are publicly discouraged. Note this is a gross simplification of a complex issue. For instance they may not necessarily be privately discouraged, and certain conditions like war, grouping ect.. can overthrow this basic rule. In short most societies will react negatively to PvP actions unless the context justifies it.
The more public or vicious the action taken the bigger the response. In Vampire the sanctum is neutral meeting ground with strongly enforced rules. The cyber-punk LARP I ran normally occur at places with security, meaning a player could be arrested or killed by an automatic turret or security officer. The one game I ran in a venue with no security was a massive tap-dance to keep order as it was a less respectable location.
Viva la Resistance! Pardon my terrible French. The most direct prevention and satisfying for a defending player is the option to defend one self. So a basic combat or retaliation system helps greatly. Also remember often players want to just flee. Remember the cost equation works both ways. So fleeing has almost no benefit and no negative impact to another player so it should be cheap.
Investing in a Persistent Reality
Other than destructive actions like murder players also invest into a persistent world. We discussed Kingship and Hierarchies in the earlier post, this is one form of investment. There are many forms, but I'm going to sub-divide into Reputation, Assets and Power.
Reputation is a huge one and is often abstract in games supported by only the players and ignored by the mechanics. This is a great loss. Giving the player the ability to invest in their reputation and use it greatly improves their social investment. It can be spent like currency either by spending it on favours or risking it on a venture (a bet if you will).
Assets are common place in games. The trick is to make them personal. The player wants to buy a car, make it THEIR car, give it character. A safe-house? What if it double as a night club? Guns or swords well just personalize them. Try avoid summarizing their wealth in abstract numbers. It removes the player from the world. Are they fifthly rich, well put some basic economics in play, tie up funds in long term investments or shares.
Power is power. Players can loose their reputation or assets but they always have themselves. Sure they could get crippled or damaged but in general the player's own power is the most reliable thing they have. Try avoiding diminishing it. Not much to write on this area as most games nail this one pretty well. One thing I've seen happen is try to avoid giving players powers they will never get to use.
Well hopefully you can now allow player death, without slaughter and get players to invest into the world.
Please feel free to comment or tweet at me (Twitter: EvilKimau)
Mind Splurge
Hi All, I haven't forgotten about the MMO piece, the next part, "Problem: Didn't I just kill you? (Reality in a Persistent world)" will be up sometime Monday. I had a great time at Games Horizon conference. It was more business than development orientated but I'm interested in that part of the industry so it was enjoyable.
First I want to say three things
- Learning! I always consider myself a student, and know there are more intelligent and experienced people out there I can learn from. Hence why I called the Podcast "Game Programmers in Training". I will always be in training, always willing to change a viewpoint or investigate established theories.
- Experience! A tricky phrase. I've met 16 yr olds who have more life experience than 60 years olds. I will agree age defines an upper limit to experience but most people don't come near their upper limits. Also experience has a way of transcending the scope of the original moment.
- Logic! My one friend often jokingly calls me a robot. I think I can safely call myself a strongly passionate person with many views. While studying Philosophy one concept from Kant truly annoyed me. "Self Evident truths". I feel its lazy thinking and in many ways the core of the opinion culture. Opinions and viewpoints are NOT fact, and should never be treated as such.
So onto the main course. I'm currently reading "The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses" by Jesse Schell. I cannot recommend this book highly enough, I'm on my second read through at present. Now another book which has been on my list of must reads for ages is "A Theory of Fun for Game Design" by Raph Koster.
Now this books has come with MASSIVE recommendations both personal and professional. I've really been looking forward to opening it. Guiltily I have to say I really didn't enjoy it. I use the word guilty because I feel idiotic in my view and when it first settled into my mind I tried to drive it out with a large stick because so many people I respect praise this book. I will say I could not write a book of this calibre, so immediate kudos and respect there.
Now this is a non-fiction reference book. So yes the enjoyment of the writing style is personal. I'm not a fan of the wide format and find myself losing my place often. That's not what bothers me. So like any good robot I did some research and tried to pin it down.
Best review I found so far was on Amazon from a German reader.
The book starts with some solid concepts but there aren't delivered in a concise manner. I love the work grok, brilliant, but I've seen many books, blogs and articles more clearly define the concepts of comprehension, flow and education in less words.
From there the book starts becoming a little too "preachy" and opinionated for my liking. What really stands out is the lack of bibliography references to white papers, academics research. Game design is often in danger from opinion overriding fact, hence why I do like these sources as it allows me to do deeper research and gain an understanding of the author content from a base of knowledge.
Now I HATE throwing around the "-ist" words. I fully agree different cultures, genders, and ages have different methods of play on average. I do feel at times however they book plays the girl gamer card a bit heavily. There is not enough discussion, or foundation placed to support the authors viewpoints.
On opening the book the pictures drew my eye but over the course of the book they grew frustrating.
- At times the pictures helped illustrate a point, very few pages.
- Most are gag driven, or self indulgent.
- By their nature many of the pictures are stero-typed sometimes in a negative manner.
- Speculation: Did the format force more doodles than the book required.
So in closing I'm not saying don't read the book. It's hihgly recommended and I might have just missed the point. Also however don't be afraid to be critical of it. If I were to recommend two books off my shelf it would be
"The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses" by Jesse Schell
"Game Design Workshop by Tracy Fullerton, Christopher Swan and Steven Hoffman
I promise next time we will be back to my ramblings on the LARP lessons.
Massive Narratives pt 3
Hi all, before you ask I don't know how many parts this series will have. I have a rough outline of what I want to work through but nothing solid. Once it's all done I do plan to compile it into a more structured article.
On a side note Game Horizon is tomorrow. Hope to see some of you there, I will shoot a few tweets up as the event progresses. Don't be surprised if nothing is posted on Tuesday or Wednesday.
Problem: Past, present or future
LARP games tend to be held once or twice a month, big Meets are normally annual or bi-annual. The times of different games in a region tend not to sync up. This provides advantages and disadvantages.
Down Time
The advantage is primarily an activity called down-time. This allows the ST running the game to take a breather and construct stories and props for the next session. This reflection time is crucial and often the quality can be measured by the amount of work that happens in down-time. Rushing it at the last minute really shows.
The players also use this time to perform out of session activities. Things like training, issuing orders to their minions, or going on little side quests or missions. The advantage of the training is the player says I spend the next three weeks training such and such skill. Because the event is triggered and they don't have to invest time into it this removes the grind.
Side quests, activities and conflicts play out by email, on forums or face to face with a ST (much like a typical table top role-playing game). This serves two main functions: Danger and Involvement. The danger element is because LARPs involve live action they need to be safe. So drug busts, car chases and combat related activities can't be done "live". Its also very expensive to mock-up these activities "live".
The second function Involvement is important. It allows the ST to give some personal time to the player. Re-enforcing there sense of self importance and giving their character some time to grow and expand.
Another minor advantage is being able to create news reports, and the like reporting misinformation and pieces. It's a nice tactic as it re-enforces a sense of the world and builds immersion by credit taking. A player will see a report about a gas explosion blowing up part of the docks and a few dock workers dying, a player will smugly remark that actually it was a fight with the were-wolves and he had to use a rocket propelled grenade.
EVE Online handles downtime really well. The skill training system means your character is doing something while your at work or doing other things. It removes some of the grind and minimizes the advantages of obsessive play time.
Time Slip
The main problem with down time and time differences is an element I like to dub time-slip. The games are happening at different times but may be happening at the same game-time.
ST dance an elaborate dance to stop players hopping in a car and driving to the next city and wreaking havoc, or even just picking up the phone and calling someone in a different region. This problem is also present in MMOs as the player is not always online.
The solution in most LARPs I've played is an in-game limiter. In vampire its decorum and politics factor which keeps mingling down. In a Seven Seas LARP it was a technology limit, pirates don't have cell-phones. These are all workable solutions but they are negative solution removing an element from the game. In a Cyberpunk LARP, with three different roleplaying groups all in the same universe I really ran into the time-slip problem.
The world by its nature is inter-connected. So you can't really give valid in-game reasons for no-contact. So what we did was a notification system. If a player was getting involved in another game they would get a text. If they responded in 15min with general orders or a text to say they would run over then fine. If not we would play them by proxy. The absent player was giving a minor stat boost, to compensate for lack of direct player control.
Most MMOs 'ignore' time slip by having player's vanish. I think this is cheating in a small way. I know some player's feel cheated by things happening when they are offline hence why we offset matters in-game by boosting offline characters stats. There are many opportunities to solidify the game world however by making sure parts of it don't vanish when your offline.
A direct attack on an offline player should be avoided if they safely logged out. What about the player's assets, allies, safe-houses. Having these things vulnerable adds an element of realism to matters. The concept of offline being totally safe is nice for casual players but removes the risk. It's a tricky area of discussion, and is driven largely by taste.
Sorry guy's I cant make the game
Real life happens, and it should always take first priority. There are times when a player can't make a LARP session. This is understandable and needs to be worked around.
If some notice is received then some additional down time actions can be given to the player. Most time big events can be supported by leg-work. If a player can't make a session do a little bit of extra down-time with them and their success or failure can influence the big event. Whether it be supplying, intelligence, counter-intelligence, or even commando activities. They are then involved in the big event even though they missed it.
I've found this tactic to be VERY successful, yes it only works when you get a bit of notice, which is not always the case but most times it's a solution. One thing I despise about MMO's is a friend saying, "sorry I can't I have a raid". Well what if that person could do a legwork mission to help out and get some reward/feedback from the big event.
Not only does this solve the time issue but it makes the event feel more grand and some people enjoy legwork more than the big event.
Next time on Flammable Penguins...
Problem: Didn't I just kill you? (Reality in a Persistent world)
Please feel free to comment or tweet at me (Twitter: EvilKimau)
Massive Narratives pt 2
Problem: Who Shall be King?
Similar to the chosen one problem, but with a few more difficulties is kingship. Hierarchies are natural, humans are not anarchists by nature. Now if your playing with yourself and your robot slaves you can rule or be ruled. Playing with other people it becomes more difficult.
Now remember we are talking MMO happening at multiple locations with different groups of players.
Western Democracy
Oh that age old horrible mutilated system which works on the principle that every vote is equal. So that means your newbie player has as much voting punch as established player base. There are two problems areas OOC Issues (OOC = Out of Character) and acknowledging player achievements.
Now OOC issues are tricky to deal with and some people say you shouldn't deal with them but I've seen them ruin games. The problem is friends, partners, and enemies out of game don't necessarily match with in-game relationships. A new player who doesn't know anyone is sometimes unfairly punished because they don't know the players. I've even seen bribes and threats used.
The other problem is your characters spend effort in game into court politics, lying, doing heroic things ect... They want to be rewarded for those actions. So unless you give them a mechanic to steal or control a vote they get nothing in a pure democratic system. However the vote steal can turn around and bite you. Players often feel cheated if their vote is out of their hands.
These votes then choose the elected body.
Bidding System
Okay so now say all players start with 100 vote points. Then through various game actions they can attain more vote points. For every vote they are given a stipend, so they always have some points. You can even give them the option of selling or trading them in-game.
This solves the problem of control shares but it doesn't solve the problem of OOC interference.
Classic Democracy
Classic Greek democracy is tricky to scale up. Fortunately there is a modern solution called technology. Okay so how is classic democracy different? Well instead of all the different representative systems this polls the group on every decision. This system has two main flaws: Researching the choice and collecting it.
The collection is solved by modern tech. A simple click of a button and everyone has voted. The research element can be solved by the proxy system (the fore-runner to representation). Basically Jon says James is his loose-proxy, so which-ever why James votes Jon votes. There is one extra thing you can do to improve the system, add a confirmation buffer. So when James posts his vote his proxies can view his choice and change their choice for a specific vote if they wish to.
You can even choose a mixture of all the above solutions. Remember most governments have multiple branches of governments with different system of representation.
As a side note I HIGHLY recommend looking at A Game of Thrones. This great board game solves many of these issues and has a nice mixture of mechanics.
Next time on Flammable Penguins...
Problem: Past, present or future? (The Time difference problem)
Please feel free to comment or tweet at me (Twitter: EvilKimau)
Massive Narratives
Okay I've found some topics I want to write a lot about, so I'm going to make a compromise and break them into smaller posts. Once they are all done I'll put together a complete article or podcast. First some news updates.
- Might be some interesting news on the podcast front just trying to get some things sorted out. Watch this space.
- Encleverment Experiment is going well. Hopefully there will be more info publicly out there in the near future.
- I'm attending Game Horizon Conference next week, should be good.
working on a side project which I will publish more info once this series of posts is done.
Massive Narratives
The first item is all about a phenomenon I have arrogantly dubbed, Massive Narratives.
With The Old Republic MMO, EVE Online and many others talking about massive narratives, it got me thinking about ongoing multi-site LARPs. They've at least partially solved many of the problems MMOs are to face.
A LARP is something role-playing geeks have been doing for years. You dress up as a character, arrive at a venue and interact with other characters in a story-space defined by the Story Teller and her team. They can happen be diplomatic styled discussions with cocktails in quiet room. They can be people running around a forest hitting each other with foam weapons. Ultimately they are a group of people participating in a Live Action Roleplaying Experience.
Now let's up the ante one further. Some LARP's are ongoing, i.e. spread over multiple nights or even years. Some ongoing LARP's happen at multiple locations, the biggest to my knowledge being Vampire LARP run by the Camarilla. Putting aside the drama of running a global organisation of bitchy role-players aside there are many other difficulties.
Problem: I am the Chosen One
A LARP involves maybe 12-30 people in one session, with big "meets" going into the hundreds. Globally the numbers expand rapidly. However the precedent set by storytelling, ego-trips, computer games and Hollywood is the chosen few (or one). Players want to be special, however the nature of a LARP means they can't be "chosen". Each player is equally important, the other hundreds of players are not there to serve you.
Solution? Well there isn't one really but there are some good compromises LARPs have found.
Make It Petty & Personal
Human nature can be an ugly thing at times but useful. Petty in-fighting, struggles over small things and little personal battles are great solution. Grace framing Simon for a misdeed brings Simon into disrepute and gains Grace standing. Does the game world in general care, not really, but Grace & Simon will be talking about it non-stop till the next game.
So to solve the chosen one problem many STs set-up situations which result in petty in-squabbles, personal vendettas and the like. Unfortunately computers still need a bit more research before they can handle Desperate Housewives style bickering, but we are getting close. However elements of this already exists in game spaces which don't explicitly support it, by player driven events. The challenge is to promote this behaviour to the point were it can drive the player forward as a primary mode of game-play.
Darius you Villian!
Another Chosen One solution is the personal vendetta and goals. A ST will often at the time of character creation nudge a few things to create a rivially or personal goal.
Now if your Rival is another player you get some great moments but it falls more into the previous category of Desperate Housewives style things. The other problem is if the other player stops playing then it fizzles out. A good mechanic I have used as an ST and seen used is the second degree vendetta. My sire (or family, lord ect...) has a vendetta with another sire. So as a trusted vassal I try resolve the vendetta often directly opposed to players on the other side of the conflict. If a player stops player its a loss but the vendetta can continue. Again the trick is to keep it personal.
Wrapping it Up
The big issue with ongoing LARPs and MMO is a common one. We have a large player base, each player wants to feel important and make game affecting choices, but we want to keep a stable game space which runs for a in-definite period of time.
The chosen one issue is one part of that larger problem. I'll be adressing other elements of the issue with other problem posts
Next time on Flammable Penguins...
Problem: Who Shall be King? (Sorting out authority structures)
Please feel free to comment or tweet at me (Twitter: EvilKimau)