The above is all background to preface the substance of what I'm about to say. Please don't get caught up in agreeing/disagreeing with it. It's purely a personal account of my RPG development.

The problem is that the first wave of “indie” games was created by frustrated and disgruntled Story Now motivated people who were dissatisfied with the content of their games and built techniques and rules to help generate that content. What then happened is that these games were discovered by people motived by The Right To Dream. However, there's a key distinction between the first group and the second group. The second group was not dissatisfied with the content of their play. They were only dissatisfied with the process of their play. Effectively, they were tired of having to calculate the armor piercing coefficient of their battlemech relative to the thickness factor of the dinosaur's hide when all they wanted to do was have their battlemech tear the dinosaur's head off.

So basically, fueled by the revelation that you don't NEED abilities, skills, to hit rolls, defense rolls and equipment lists in an RPG the second group co-opted the techniques created by the first group and tried to apply them to the Creative Agenda of the second group. Here's the thing to remember: Creative Agenda is independent of System. System matters (not dictates) in facilitating the realization of a Creative Agenda of the group. In some sense the new phrase should be System ONLY Matters (not Only System Matters). Since these people are already adept at achieving The Right To Dream these techniques appeared to “work.” And they probably “worked better” largely because of their low handling time.

So here's my bold claim: all those techniques developed from a Story Now aesthetic are horribly sub-optimal for achieving The Right To Dream. The evidence for that is spread out all over our online culture. The confusion over Stakes from in-fiction conflicts to clashing player desires. Relationship maps from being about sex and blood to more or less social networks of every fictional component in the game. Hell the very need to create this weird term “Story Game” to describe things.

In particular Stakes Setting combined with One-Roll Resolution is very destructive to The Right To Dream. Those two things in combination are most useful when at every point of doubt in the fiction there's a moral pivot point that will be thematically altered either way the dice fall. But when the battlemechs come cresting over the hill to crush the Nazis base camp....

That's it. That's all there is. Setting the Stakes as “do we crush the Nazi base camp?” doesn't make a lot of sense because NOT crushing the Nazi base camp seems kind of lame (I'm assuming there's a general table consensus that this is the climax). And trying to force Stakes like “Do I impress Susan during the battle” seems awkward and forced when the cool part is when my battlemech tears the head off the dinosaur. You need a tool that focuses on those awesome imaginative moments rather than one designed to weight emotional pivot points about a character's thematic issue.

What we need (and I can't believe I'M the one saying this) is those people to re-assert, so to speak, Their Right To Dream. We need a Right To Dream Renaissance on the same scale that Story Now got at The Forge or that's happening in the movement calling itself the Old-School Renaissance. There are places where I can see the budding techniques for this Renaissance housed.

I point to Sons of Liberty. While I think the game is overall competitive I think the idea of “what you say is what happens” is a valuable one to study. I point to Trail of Cthulhu who's beautiful “How you play this game” lays out the imaginative structure of play more clearly than anything I've ever seen. I point to Ron's comments about Dead of Night.

Seriously, if your game really is about making up cool stuff for its own sake then let's brainstorm some techniques and mechanics that make that a fun and easy thing to do. Which is all System has ever been: A process for making what you already are committed to doing, a fun an easy thing to do. Let's have a little critical thinking and honesty about what it is you REALLY want to be doing and see designs that reflect those thoughts. Let's stop dropping stakes, and traits and relationships and conflict resolution into games that they are wholly inappropriate and awkward for just because that's what the “cool kids” are doing.

Jesse,

As someone who is designing in exactly this space, I agree with your basic premise - that broadly simulationist games shouldn't blindly imitate games designed to accomplish something else entirely. I also agree that stakes likely won't work as the basis for resolution in such games for the same reason you suggest.

However, I disagree to the extent that your argument implies that the tools and techniques being used by Story Now games cannot be adapted for effective simulationsit design (e.g., Committee's expedition log). I don't see techniques wedded to a particular Creative Agenda in so tight a fashion.

I hope to have more on this later.

Cheers,

Eric

Jesse,

I feel like a lot of Spirit of the Century play (including various FATE-hacks to different settings) aims right at this, and has a decent head start on techniques with its chargen and Aspects. Aspects, especially; you've got "Nazi-dinosaur-decapitating Battlemech" right there on your sheet, and it gives you a bonus to decapitating nazi dinosaurs.

Jesse,

I think Albert is right. Its also worth noting that the ways and whys of how he is right fall right into the reasons you've said you have problems with SoTC in the past. Those things that reinforce your right of dream instead of urging you to address theme? Yea.

Also, many trad games do this better than you might think. I mean, I know we like to talk shit about how much they suck, but in many cases they don't. They just sucked for what we wanted to do with them (which isn't what they were supposed to do), or because they assumed we had skills we didn't (which is a failure of communication and pedagogy, but not inherently a failure of design.) So, you know, going back and re-examining some of those suck ass trad games that don't work but that tens of thousands of people continue to play regularly may be worth some time, regardless of what Filip may feel.

The other thing about those evil trad games is that, as you've noted in the past, often the magic isn't in the game, but in the players. Many "trad" players have highly developed systems (in the lumpley sense, not the mechanics in the book sense) and skill sets that allow them to make games functional and even brilliant. So it might be worth, you know, going and talking to players of Sim games that have worked and trying to understand the systematic underpinnings of what they're already doing, and have been doing successfully for 30 some years in some cases.

Sure, it will be frustrating and difficult, as we've no joint language and have spent the last 8 years pissing on each other... but... I mean, I know that this is Story Games and all the right thinking and intelligent gamers on earth are here and only here, but um... I think we risk reinventing the wheel and falling to our own biases (which, as you point out, we've already done in many areas) if we don't try to talk to folks who are doing it already.

Oh, and while we're at it I'd like to suggest that we also pay attention to the differences in ways we go about doing this as designers making games vs players playing games. Because, you know, they aren't always the same and the sometimes lopsided emphasis we put on one or the other may well cripple us in this area. But that may be asking for too much all at once.

So, major breakthroughs in Sim design in the past 5-10 years (just the ones that I know of):

- HeroQuest (which Forge folks like because it's got some Nar elements)
- Fudge
- Wushu
- Continuum
- Nobilis
- Exalted: The Fair Folk
- Weapons of the Gods (yeah, that's 3 Borgstrom games in a row, for a reason)
- Dread: The First Book of Pandemonium (on the Sim-Gam end of the spectrum)
- Spirit of the Century
- The Blossoms Are Falling (which has a lot of Sim in all that Nar)
- Sons of Liberty
- It's Complicated
- Mist-Robed Gate
- Gumshoe (Esoterrorists / Trail of Cthulhu)
- How We Came to Live Here

Seems like a lot to me, even in the ones that have actually been published.

PTA is killer, because, yeah, nobody really thinks about it. Also, I expect Empire of Dust and FreeMarket to both be huge in this regard as soon as they actually come out. Oh, and, yeah, Annalise and Houses of the Blooded (where's my head?). Plus, like, all of mainstream roleplaying that's not Gam, which is still a lot. Surely some good stuff happening there, if you can find the time to sort through it. Like everything Steve Kenson has ever written. True20 is pretty smart Sim stuff.

Posted By: bunnybunnyIt seems pretty obvious that thousands of mainstream players play their games not becase theyenjoythem but because theydon't care what they play.

As Mark Twain said, and this post demonstrates, it ain't what ya don't know, it's what ya know that ain't so.

Posted By: bunnybunnyIt seems pretty obvious that thousands of mainstream players play their games not becase they enjoy them but because they don't care what they play.

Do you have any concrete, specific examples of this, or are you just assuming that your own experience is universal?

Or are you exaggerating for effect? Because you went from saying basically "we only know our local gaming groups and therefore don't know whether the vast majority of players are really happy or are just in it for social reasons" to "obviously, the vast majority of players are not happy at all and are just in it for social reasons" within two posts. Either you're just enjoying a little hyperbole and hoping to provoke a response, or you're losing track of whatever point it is you're trying to make.

David, I think there's an inherent difficulty in talking about Simmy stuff on the internets. Other peoples' imaginations are usually just not that interesting. It doesn't have the uh inherent collar-grabbiness of like "Oh man you are making a game about sleeping with your mom on a pile of dead babies! omg!" or whatever egregious moral melodrama is the hook of New Bog-Standard Indie Game X.

Good point, Shreyas. Of course, "Sleeping with mom atop dead babies!" could be a Sim game. Maybe after some of us have nailed down really good systems for traditional uses, we can throw those systems at high-concept projects and generate more interest. I guess "new ways of doing medieval exploration!" might be a tough pitch even if it had "address premise!" slapped all over it.

Jesse, the "story game as generic noun" meme is poisonous, totally. So here's the thing: stop using it and maybe other people will too. That's my approach. Story Games is a website. What we make are "games," period. Some of them have roleplaying elements, some have storytelling elements, some have board game or card game elements, but none of them are somehow defined by "story" (what an amorphous concept that is). Whatever good Clinton was trying to do by calling them "story games" has long since been killed by people using it to mean "games I like" or "games published by a specific group of designers" or "progressive roleplaying games" (with the value judgment inherent in 'progressive').

P.S. The other thing, and this comes from my experience with The Forge, is that you can't control the ways in which folks you don't really know talk about you or what you do. Remember when "Forge games" was a thing and people used to talk about them as a collective entity? Ha! So it doesn't at all surprise me that folks on RPGnet or whatever see "story games" as this distinct category of related things. But we know better, right? At least, we should. And hopefully they will too, over time, as they keep encountering really different games.

Jesse, I get the theory, but I'm not seeing it in practice. The Clapham Massive play in a Sim-style, pretty much. We like being in the world, above advancing the story.

But the games that work best work for Nar, too: Poison'd, Apocalypse World, My Life With Master. So I'm not seeing the division.

Graham

Posted By: bunnybunny

Do you have any concrete, specific examples of this, or are you just assuming that your own experience is universal?

Likewise. You have as much evidence for your claims as I do.

And that's probably because the initial claim I've been answering to is nonsense.

The only thing I claimed was that I am not aware of any specific information you used to reach your conclusion, and that I was confused about how you went from saying that we have no way of knowing whether the vast majority of gamers are happy or are just in it for social reasons directly to concluding that therefore the vast majority of gamers are definitely unhappy and absolutely just in it for social reasons.

In fact, I still make that claim. My specific evidence for this claim is that I have read and re-read posts #11 and posts #16 several times now, and they seem to directly contradict each other. In #11, you say that no one knows. In #16, you say that YOU know. What happened in the 16 hours between those posts that changed your mind?

Posted By: bunnybunnyDid you have anything constructive to add, or are you just trolling?

Nah, just expressing my astonishment.

Just like when I say "Wow, that's cool", that kind of thing.

Posted By: bunnybunnyIt seems pretty obvious that thousands of mainstream players play their games not becase theyenjoythem but because they don't care what they play.

Dude, whatever you're on, share.

Posted By: JesseIt's pretty safe to say that there's a lot wrong socially in wider gamer culture.

Sure.

There's a lot wrong in any echo-chamber culture. And plenty of branches of gamer culture qualify.

So, I'm big on Sim. I've been designing two Sim games that I love the heck out of: Super Action Now! and Hex Rangers (formerly known as Witch Trails).

Both of these are informed and influenced heavily by Narrativistic games that introduced a lot of fancy new shiny stuff that made my brain go BZZZ!. In particular, Dogs in the Vineyard was a big deal, even though I hadn't read it at all at the time I created those two games, and still haven't played it, and was even wrong about a few things it did. SAN! uses freeform traits ranked in dice, like Dogs. HR uses an extended conflict resolution mechanic based on poker, like Dogs. SAN! also has other Forgish features like shared GMing, collaborative scene setting, and one-roll.

My point here is that those techniques can be made to serve the Right to Dream. You just have to be careful about it.

Lemme talk about SAN! for a bit. It's subtitle is "a crazy-ass roleplaying game." And that's what it's about: madcap surreal farce. If you've seen the cartoon Chowder, and the weirder episodes of SpongeBob Squarepants, and the weirder Looney Tunes, and Naked Gun, and Mr. Bean's Holiday, it's kinda like that, except weirder.

This is the structure of the game:
Everyone creates a crazy-ass character. There are no limitations to what this character is or does. You give him a Drive, a Knack (really really specific task that you succeed at 99% of the time), a Shortcoming (something you fail at 99% of the time), and a bunch of traits and powers that are ranked arbitrarily by dice. You have Drive Points, which fuel powers and allow you to ignore Inconveniece (damage, except it's funny), and you replenish them by pursuing your Drive.

Everyone has a pile of TILT! points. You spend these to do stuff like add traits to things, introduce new things to a scene out of the blue, introduce unexpected twists ("I hide under the bed!" "TWIST! There's an alligator under the bed!"), force a player to change his announced action, and so on. Basically, you tilt the game and make sure it stays crazy. You replenish your TILT! by making people laugh. Everytime one of your contributions to the game makes someone laugh, you get a point.

We have a hat, into which we put various suggestions, objects, and events that we might like to see in the game.

We establish how our characters are related.

We frame a scene collaboratively, by each of us adding one element to it in turn (drawing from the hat if we wish), until we feel like it's ready.

We take turns describing what our characters (or any NPCs we wish to grab hold of) do. We pursue our character's Drives, while screwing over each other's characters relentlessly -- through our own characters, through NPCs, and by using TILT!. When two characters act against each other, we describe what they're doing and roll the dice granted by their traits, and compare results. The better result wins, and the loser gets Inconvenienced for his trouble. (Inconvenience requires that you either spend Drive to ignore it, or do something to get rid of it)

When the scene is functionally over, we frame a new one. Lather, rinse, repeat, until our sides ache from laughing and we can't go on any longer.

So, here's what that all is: an instrument for creating and developing a crazy-ass situation. Everything in it is meant for that, and works. F'rinstance, the freeform traits work because I can invoke bad-ass biker bastard Bubba Bad's traits "Bad to the Bone" and "Born to be wild," combine them with his power "Inadvisable motorcycle jump," and use that as my dice pool against my opponent, to try to ramp up the mall's escalator, fly over the troupe of girlscouts, and get the magical sword from the vendor's stand before my opponent does.

I had more to say but I'm running out of time. Perhaps later.

Posted By: JesseSeriously, if your game really is about making up cool stuff for its own sake then let's brainstorm some techniques and mechanics that make that a fun and easy thing to do.

I'd love to talk about the techniques my game Delve uses, which include:
1) characters can "read" a problematic scenario with tarot cards, giving the players vague info on possible solutions
2) players use a dial to indicate their desired pace and level of detail to the GM, moment to moment
3) formal mechanics are all applied by the GM; players' only contact is knowing that a high die roll is "good performance by their character's standards" and a low roll is "poor performance"
4) character and player knowledge is kept as close together as possible
5) content authority is "what would happen"
6) all fictional content impacting resolution is established before resolution
7) a major reward component is positioning within the setting's social structure

Sign in Stranger uses some fascinating techniques:
1) basic situation is given (first humans to explore new planet, must do task for natives, learn useful stuff for humans)
2) specific situation arises from establishing setting
3) setting is established as stimuli only, without any "how"s or "why"s stated
4) stimuli are prompted by secret random draws from piles of nouns, verbs, and adjectives

Obviously, I likes me some setting-heavy Sim. But I also friggin' love Super Action Now!'s TILT! mechanic.

I will happily discuss any of these. Right now I've got a thread rollin' with Trail of Cthulhu's Sanity rules...

You're the one saying that thousands of people play games they aren't happy with, and I'm the one that's supposed to produce evidence for my view? No fucking way. You first. Start with your survey methodology.

99% of all people I've every gamed with play because they don't have anything else of meaning in their lives.

And "Story" and "Game" are separate concepts. If you can't reduce a game to purely formal elements, then you don't have a game - you merely have some kind of mediated interaction operating at a level once-removed from real life.

What people want when they say they want a [ Story II Game ] is a game that they can win through formalistic play, but that allows them to portray their victory in a vicariously pleasing narrative form. (Because without the formal game victory underlying it, any such narrative will always be fundamentally unsatisfying.)

(And by the way, that is exactly the design philosophy behind my entry to Murderland.)

So, where was I. Right, an instrument.

The Right to Dream is a Creative Agenda. "Creative Agenda" is exactly what its name implies; creativity is part of Sim just as much as it is part of Nar and Gam. As with all creative exercises, you need an instrument. To play music, you need guitars or drums or bassoons or whatever. To paint a picture, you need a brush and paint. In gaming, your instrument is the game.

In Sim, the basic point is creating, building, exploring, and/or developing something with your friends. Because doing that is fun. In that way, the Right to Dream is a lot like model trains: you put together a track and watch the train go because (assuming you have knowledge of and appreciation for model trains) it's fun. Sim is very sincere and endearing in this regard; the attitude is very much "Hey, look at this cool thing we made!" and that's why I love it.

So, that's what your instrument needs to do: allow you to create/build/explore/develop that Something.

In designing your Dreaming instrument, you have to identify what that Something is. You have to be very clear about it in your head. What is part of it? What is definitely not part of it? What merely might be part of it, if you want it? The next step is to think, "Well, how do I get there?"

SAN!'s Something is a crazy-ass, farcical situation that starts fairly simple and gets progressively crazier until it can't get no crazier (at which point usually the planet blows up, The End). To give ya some Forgespeak, it's High Concept Sim with emphasis on Situation, with Color being a close second (Setting, Character, and System are certainly also important, but in support roles. We don't really care about your character in SAN! except in how he develops the Situation and Color, and the mechanics exist for no other purpose at all). It gets there through these core rules:

1. Create a wacky character
2. Pursue your character's agenda
3. Screw with the other players

That's it. All the mechanics are there to give you creative opportunities to follow those rules.

The TILT! economy deserves special mention, because it is a constraint. A sort of Dream Enforcement mechanic, if you will. It makes sure that we're all after the same Something. See, the reward in this game isn't when you get a TILT! chip, it's when you laugh with your friends. Earning TILT! is not a reward mechanic, it is a punishment mechanic -- if you aren't funny, you run out of TILT! chips, and the amount of impact you can have on the Dream is severely marginalized, meaning that you can't ruin it. It might seem mean, but having your Dream ruined by someone who wasn't on the same page can really fuck up your day (imagine that you put together a model train set, and then someone accidentally broke it while playing with it). Plus, it's sneaky about it, and thus a lot more comfortable than the GM telling you that you "obviously have no idea how to play your character."

I've been looking at Rafael Chandler's Dread (and, goddammit, trying to get some play going, but scheduling is a stone bitch), and I love the way it Gets There. Based on my readings, I'd identify it as a High Concept Sim, also with emphasis on Situation and Color. Character and Setting are also VERY important, but in support roles: they provide backdrops and generation-engines for Situation and Color. System exists purely to get Color into play and move the Situation gradually to its close; it's not Explored for its own sake.

So, how does it Get There?
Let's start with Color. First off, nobody who even flips through the rulebook is going to have any doubt about what kind of Color is appropriate. Beyond that, the marvelous constraint (Dream Enforcement) of the character generation. Ohmygod it's so damned elegant and focused and fuckin' SHARP. Follow those rules, and you can't fail to make a Color-generating machine. I know that with the character I've created for our upcoming game, I won't have to work at all; all I gotta do is listen to him and try to keep up.

As far as Situation, the demons rock on toast. They're practically ready-made situations all by themselves. Place them like a transparency over Setting, socket in the PCs, and BAM. It goes like this:
1. Demon does some stuff; explore ramifications
2. Disciples find out and start looking for it; explore ramifications
3. People in the setting are doing stuff that intersects 1 and 2; explore ramifications
4. Gradually bring ramifications to a head as the demon nears its goal, and as the Disciples gradually close in on and face down the demon; stir the mixture up and see if it explodes.

100% sim, Tulpa.

Munchausen? 100% sim? Are you sure you don't just mean 100% color? The only rule in the game is "more story now" the way I read it.

Edit: come to think of it, I guess the "active" player is pursuing a narrative CA in the teeth of "facts" kicked out by a simmy mechanic (the bare assertion by the other players of "facts" about the world described by the current storyteller). But it's a kind of backwards sim because wild inaccuracy by normal standards, stuff at right angles to the established fiction, is the usual play.

Yes. That's why the names of the Agenda's were changed and I wish people would get into the habit of using them as they are much more descriptive of the actual behaviors involved.

Step On Up.
Story Now.
The Right To Dream.

An included idea being that Dream Artifact being produced still has to meet the aesthetic standards of the group. ONE such standard might be "realistic within the parameters of the world." Another standard much just be, "the one that made us laugh the most."

Jesse

P.S. I had a point when I started this thread. Then I got turned around and confused and now I've completely lost where I was going. If I remember I'll try to get this thread back on track.

Making up cool stuff for its own sake isn't enough, right? There needs to be consistency. Players ought to be able to judge not just how neat their thing is but, in some sense, how accurate or realistic it is too. Munchausen is Calvinball. A challenge is seen as fun and cool precisely insofar as it upsets expectation. Add to that that the thing you make is a story rather than a world with any shot of existing outside that story... I think that you have a narrativist game with some mirror-world sim ideas in it. I get that there are many ways to be sim, but I don't see this as one of them.

But I don't see how Munchausen is Story Now. It is never about addressing a theme. It is entirely about telling stories in a world of 17th century decadence. Addressing a moral quandary and how it relates to the human condition, challenging your beliefs, that doesn't belong in the game and you would be adding that yourself. In addition to a challenge being seen as fun and cool for upsetting expectation it should also fit within the context of the aesthetic setting your group has established.

If you're playing Baron Munchausen, and someone says "I wager the french diplomat pulls out a cell phone and warns napoleon about you." The wager would not be seen as fun and cool even though it is unexpected, it would be seen as a damaging interruption to the game. In this way it is not calvinball. These are aesthetic standards that Jesse mentions.

Judd,

Of course, man! I wouldn't want your filthy hippie advice anyway. You did all you could, which was to introduce me to the Evil Hat guys who are (sometimes) more into the design niche I'm working on. Seriously, I'm grateful you didn't pretend you were interested or an expert or anything; in the end I would have just wound up confused.

I just mentioned our exchange because I get the sense that on S-G and the Forge, your tastes are more the norm than mine, which might explain why there's less Sim design discussion flying around.

Posted By: TulpaAs I thought. I can't even imagine playing it in a way that addresses a theme, and the game slightly undermines competition since you ultimately vote for the best story.

I don't see how that undermines competition, though. There are competitive sports that have the results decided by vote, rather than by absolute standards -- e.g., ice skating and gymnastics -- and they are still highly competitive.