Eternal Struggle
I have been struggling with this concept ever since I was eight. Narrative vs Ludology. By Narrative I mean story-telling and Ludology I mean pure game play.
Introduction
You see when I was around six my brother took me through my first roleplaying games and shortly afterwards I tried to run my own game of Dungeons & Dragons box-set. My epic story never left the village and bells were rung, chickens chased and silliness ensued. I played endless choose your own adventure books but non of those tales stick in my mind like other stories I read.
You see from a very young age I always had two ambitions, to perform and play. I've always wanted to make games since typing in code into C64 out of magazines. I've always been a story teller, directing my first public play when I was eight (it never went ahead but we rehearsed filthy rhymes, "She whipped her pistol from her knickers."). I started programming for the first time (for real, not copying) when I was eight in C.
So this struggle between playing and telling has always been present. Now I should say meta-narrative or player narrative is fully compatible. The conflict comes in delivering a story with that game. So back to the key point role-playing.
It's been my passion always as it seems to combine both my loves and be social. South African role-playing at cons is much more story based than the conventions I have seen in the UK.
Role-playing Solution
Now excluding the dungeon crawl and roll-playing, those are without real depth. There are two major forms in South Africa. Campaigns and Convention Modules. Unlike US & UK cons the South African modules have pretty strict conventions. Between 4-7 players, almost always 6. All rules and required elements must be included in the module. The player characters are pre-written. The GM only see's the module an hour before the game. The module is run simultaneously in one slot.
The campaign however is much looser but much more complex. Over the years I've learned the secret to a good campaign is to play with the players. Don't write over-arching plots instead make everything character base and weave it around the players actions.
This means you can deal with themes and even setup scenarios but you must ultimately cater to the players and adapt.
Now in a module you have a story and script which you need to stick to. A bit of variation is required. The great modules are spoken about for years, like good films. Also because of the simultaneous play throughs story, plot twist and grand tales have more impact. Some flexibility and deviation but ultimately you tell the story. This is mainly achieved by having pre-written characters which have motivations written. The main ingredient is good players and a gm.
So a South African module seems to be closest to my solution.
Digital Divide
Okay we have two main problems in the digital world. Most game players are uncooperative bastards and we don't have the social backbone to remove their awfulness. Put a few people in a room to discuss a thing and they will be civilised. Put those people in a chat room with pure anonymity and they are awful.
The next problem is a good GM has a very useful toolbox.
- Advanced decision making with social context
- Content generation on the fly
- Multiple detailed player input channels
- Library of social knowledge, experience, dictionaries and research
Okay the first item means we need an AI or system which emulates it which is still years out of our reach. Though not more than twenty.
Content generation, we have some good work in this area but the main problem is method. When using the written and spoken word a sentence can make a vast landscape and a thing does not exists till mentioned. This is used more times than you would think. Unfortunately on an AV display all things must be defined before it can be display. We cannot materialise a door into a wall if the player has already seen that wall.
A digital player only inputs conscious input through a controller. Conscious input is meaningless when measured against the VAST amounts of information you can read in their unconscious signals. The best moments come from exploiting this input. In a digital world we would need a microphone and camera to watch the player (Natal I'm looking at you) but also read and interpret extremely advanced tiny motions. The main advantage here is if we get more advanced we can measure heart-rate, biometrics and brain signals. So for the moment we are behind the curve but in the future??
Finally the library of knowledge. Well that problem is easily solved. We could plug all games into a vaster database than any human could learn in a lifetime. The trick is to get a computer to comprehend the vast amount of data. See the first point.
Conclusion
I do plan to write more on this based more firmly in what is achievable today. For the moment however you see where my eyes are looking and what my motivations are.
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)
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)