Ryan Dancey on Redefining the Hobby (Updated: time elements in a storytelling game)

[ShadowDenizen]

I love Arkham Horror as a solo game, but as multiplayer, it has *way* too much player downtime and takes too long.

When we play Arkham Horror, we house-ruled that, to keep everyone invovled as much as possible, the player to the left of the current player reads the "Arkham Encounter" cards (if needed), and the player to the right reads the "Other-World" encounters (again, as needed.)

Also, we "assign" tasks; one player is responsible for money, another for health, a third for Sanity, etc.

We also take turns reading the Myhtos cards.

(And typically, the people I play with aren't even Role-Players!!!)

 

[Glyfair]

I found it funny how much this reminded me of the dragon fight on WotC's site, where the dragon breathes after the fighter takes him down below half hp.

Actually, his previous post on his blog (not quoted in the original post because it is mostly off topic) was comparing a WoW "how to fight <some dragon>" with the dragon fight on WotC's site. I'm sure he meant it as a comparison with his suggested method.

 

[ST]

The Dragon's Lair bit is interesting in that it covers hidden information introduced by both GM and player, but, eh...

It's a clunky implementation of something non-mainstream games have included in various ways for years. People haven't done it like this, with the stuff written ahead of time and sealed in an envelope, then voted on later, sure. But the idea, again, isn't anything new.

So I guess if you think those ideas are interesting, it's worth checking out FATE and The Mountain Witch, among others, to see how they've been implemented.

 

[TheCrazyMuffinMan]

Assume a scale from 1 to 10. That gives us a matrix of 1,000 potential points in the GNS spectrum. We don't have to design 1,000 games, but we could probably design 100 games that would be statistically representative of the whole matrix. "Games" in this case meaning "enough game to be played and graded by test groups"; not necessarily a complete game designed to be played over a number of sessions, or even pushed really hard mechanically.

Now, induce a large number of independent game groups to test these games, and rate them. Before they "qualify" to partake in the test, you do another test on those individuals to segment them psychographically.

Now you compare ratings on the games to the psychographic profiles of the players. You're looking for surprises - combinations of G, N & S that trigger high ratings, or low ratings. Finding one or two of the segments like a particular combination will not be rare. Finding a place where all 4 + the Basic Gamers respond strongly will be rare. But once found, you would have the blueprint for a game system that would likely be very competitive in the market.

Likewise, if you find things where everyone expresses dislike, you can learn a lot from that too. Studying the failures may teach you a lot about things to be sure you avoid in development -- and you may find things that are not conventional wisdom; i.e. new knowledge that we haven't had before which can be fed back into the R&D cycle to generate overall improvements, even in existing games.

That's the kind of research I'd do if I had a million dollar pure RPG R&D budget at my disposal.

Ryan

That's a great idea Ryan! I'm totally onto it!

 

[Zoatebix]

I wrote about the Dragon's Lair on my journal, but since people are discussing it over here, I figured I'd share a bit.

I wasn't sold on the voting mechanic (I think the first poster over there mentioned that, too). I'd rather just assume that all of the "secrets" that the player's write about the dragon are true, until proven otherwise, like through a veto mechanic tied to a limited in-game resource, like the "story points" he mentions. I also found it strange that the voting mechanic does not specifically address what happens in the unlikely occurrence that contradictory or conflicting secrets are revealed. Presumably the players would vote for one over the other, but it's entirely possibly that both receive a majority (or unanimous!) vote.

I don't think that his "story points" as they're outlined in the example reward or punish the right things - I would think that having your secret accepted into the game-fiction is its own reward. Since players are already limited in the number of secrets they can submit, making a player pay yet another resource (a story point) when nobody else likes their idea seems overkill.

That said - I really, really like secrets that are slowly revealed over play, and player input structured into the mechanics is always welcome at my table.

 

[Glyfair]

Ryan has updated with a bit about time in a storytelling game. He starts with a discussion about why there is no facing rules in D&D, and then expands upon this in relation to storytelling games.

 

[Zoatebix]

It's an interesting post, but the comments that occur after the post are even better. I love the idea that turns or rounds or what have you last "as long as it takes to get to the next decision point." I had no idea that a lot of wargames had gone down that path - I need to start checking out wargames again!