Flammable Penguins Blog The internet home of Claire Blackshaw

Massive Narratives pt 5

News and Bits

Hi All, really working hard at the moment to get that last little bit of polish onto Encleverment. As anyone who talks to me can tell I really do love this little game and want to use every last bit of time I have left to squeeze those little bits and pieces in and shine them up.

In other news I'm going to be back on stage in front of an audience for the first time in five years. Admittedly it's doing improv comedy and not one of my plays but hey it's a big step.

I've also been following an online design course being run over at Game Design Concepts. It's shaping up nicely so far and that's what my next post will be covering. This will be the last Massive Narrative post for a while. My brain needs a break from it. So onto the main event.

Problem: Why Hello there

"I'm the ultimate (fighter / magic user / space ship pilot) in the known universe." Nothing wrong with that statement correct (chosen one problem aside). These skills are embedded in game mechanics and pure numbers. What if a (description of unattractive person removed due to lengthy use of adjectives and possibility of causing offence) stood up and claimed to be the greatest seducer of them all. Red light's flashing in your head? Add a klaxon and you get the casting problem of LARPS.

Right off the bat I will say this. Perfect player's don't need a system, but the truth is there is no such thing as a perfect player. The worse the player and the more meta-game focused the worse your nightmares become and the more complex things get. Sad but true, especially with fuzzy system's such as social interaction.

LARPs are mostly social in nature and not very abstract, so character's with immense social skills can be hard to impossible for socially inept or inappropriately cast player. This however is more than a little unfair, as the combat / power monkey in the corner rolls a dice or draws a card to show their AWESOME MIGHT!!!

It's a tricky problem to solve. I once ran a LARP with a mobster background. The writer had given one character a "power card" which read, "You Trust Me". There was another which was "I've seduced you". I saw the Trust card used once, and the other card never got use except as a laugh after the game. Now player's are accepting of wild fantasy but the act of socialising is so deeply ingrained that over-coming it tricky.

Most LARPs solve this problem with casting. On a side note the appearance issue can be solved by virtual avatars for digital versions. The real problem is converting the simulation of social interaction into the game of social interaction. You see games let us do things we would never be able to do in real life whether it be sword fighting, flying or using magic. Games best quality in terms of entertainment is removing that pesky barrier to entry called training.

I will say now I have never seen what I consider to be a workable solution in a LARP.

Power Cards

Cards which are either many use or one off which have a social command on them like, "You Trust Me". Player's often fail to adapt and this leads to de-railing and meta-gaming with bad players.

Favour Tokens

Each player is given tokens, which they can give as a sign of goodwill, trust, or bargaining chip with a player. The player holding said token can call in a favour or action, depending on the number of tokens. The player MUST perform these acts. Once the act is perform the player may elect to reclaim the tokens. This works quite well when combined with a few other mechanics as the social currency gave players a feel for social bonds.

Player's felt better with the token than the cards. They felt more in control, even though some mechanics "stole" tokens. Best friends tended to have a lot of each other's tokens, the court Casanova collected quite a few (quickly spent normally). I also attribute some of their success to players like shines and bags that go clink.

Social Combat

Two player's are socialising and they enter a conflict situation of some sort so they enter combat (supervised by a ST). It can take various forms but it normally has a winner / loser system. This goes TERRIBLY unless the justification is super-natural. Player's just don't like to be told, "you trust him", but they are perfectly okay with. "he has taken control of your mind with his laser, you trust him".

This speaks to the basic problem of experience. Watch a film which has a lot of topic X with a group of experts on topic X. A common reaction is to tear it apart and get annoyed. To be honest I find REAL experts just laugh it off (much like great social players can go with it). We as humans tend not to have experience with elder god possessed cult leader's firing alien bullets across the room, but we all know how to socialise. So most of us need tricking to believe artificial mechanics.

Pre-Briefing

You give all the player's a briefing verbally or on paper about how their character feels about all the other characters. This work's well for a one-off with a new character but is a bit more shaky with persistent games. In a one off a writer creates a platform for the player to build on. Once a player has control they build their own version.

Most player's aren't character experts so while they might understand their character inside and out on a deep level, they might not be able to communicate it clearly. An open dialogue after and before game can allow the ST to influence the character's opinions without removing control from the player. This is VERY time consuming however, and a very fuzzy solution.

Investing in Social Equations

Okay so side tracking from the LARP situation let's move back to the table top roots. Here we have a bit more room for manoeuvring. Let's look at two extremes.

Player: "I barter with the shopkeep"

[Rolls Dice]

GM: "He seems is impressed and gives you a 40% discount."

Ginny: "Al, the mayor want's these bugbears dead. Must be doing horrors to your custom."

Alfred: "Aye, my children need every crumb."

Ginny: "Al, The sword is good workmanship. How about I kill these beasts, then pay you."

Alfred: "If I gave every bit of forest manure, that was once a hero, credit I would be a starving man."

Ginny: "Okay okay, how about I buy the sword, you re-wrap the handle and throw in a few of those throwing knives."

Alfred: "Those knives are a key item."

Ginny: "Nonense! Throw offs, and apprentice fodder. Four knives comped."

Alfed: "Fine fine, you begger me. You tell friends Al gives good deal. Deal."

Ginny: "Deal"

Which did you enjoy reading more? Kinda obvious right. Well I've found most player's can do a happy medium. The GM keeping the social numbers in her head and perhaps doing a few discrete dice rolls. You hit tricky waters when you have a bad GM or a Dan. We are going to ignore a bad GM situation as they are part of the game.

A Dan is harder. They don't want to or are unable to interact in a meaningful way. Usually because they are shy or have trouble identifying with their character.

One "solution" I've seen many people use is to go either hack-slash or chi-wag and exclude the players which don't match the form.

We could let them give you the dry one-liner but then expand it and give it character. Throw in a loose detail or two. This builds a knowledge base for the player to identify with and helps the other players keep in game. So how do we make this into a useful mechanic.

Well we can put a translator in the way. This is a GM solution (or digital with advanced AI) and won't help larps. The player input's intentions then the input is modified by an intelligent evaluation based on the numbers. It's takes a skilled GM but it's one of the best solutions.

Now if only we could compress all the social knowledge and computation a talented experienced GM has into a AI. Feel up to the challenge anyone?

Please feel free to comment or tweet at me (Twitter: EvilKimau)

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)