It took a little bit longer for the PDF to distill, but pencils went down on the new draft of It’s Complicated promptly at midnight. I should have the HTML version up this weekend, sometime.
Also, Dave Cleaver made a completely fantastic Java application for reducing the work of updating the game board. He’s the best!
There have been posts on Knife Fight and Story Games about what projects everyone is planning for 2008, and it got my head swimming with all the stuff I want and need to do. So here’s what’s coming, with the soonest projects listed first; actual dates, where applicable.
It’s Complicated: I’m hoping to have the really fleshed-out playtest document done by Friday for the Festival of Flawless Victory; I’m not sure that will happen, but I’m doing my best. This will be pretty close to the publication version, in terms of additional info and fleshed-out chapters and all that good stuff. I want to release it early next year; whether free or for sale or what, I’m not sure. Jonathan’s working on some hotness that may affect how Complicated is delivered– but you should talk to him about it, not me.
Created: The wacky hack of Shooting the Moon, complete with paper dolls, should kick into gear in mid-to-late January, which is awesome, because hopefully that’s when the grunt work on Complicated will be winding down. I have a FANTASTIC artist lined up to do the paper dolls– I am so effing excited, you have no idea, but it’s a SECRET, okay– and he won’t be free until then. It’s going to be a pretty thorough hack, but it still shouldn’t take as long as poking Complicated has taken thus far.
Audeamus: I can’t stop thinking about this game, even when I want to. It’s a much longer-form game than the first two, so it’s going to take longer; and it’s a collaboration with Charlotte, and collaborating always takes extra time anyway. Playtestable by summer? Here’s hoping.
Splendour in the Grass: I just got the idea for this one talking to someone today. I’m not sure if I’ll write it or not– it depends on what the person I was talking to thinks– but I’m really taken with the idea. Assuming I do write it: knowing me, this will be what I work on whenever I need distracting from everything mentioned above.
I just watched Gladiator again, which is one of my favorite movies– if not my VERY favorite movie– of all time. Soooo good. That, mixed into an awesome conversation with Shreyas, and some brainstorming with Charlotte, has my head swimming with Audeamus.
There are three bases of power in this game– Personal, Political, and Populus. Personal power is your own honor and integrity; it is drawing strength from within yourself. Political power is your reach and influence; it is drawing strength from your connections. Populus power is your connection to the masses; it is drawing strength from the mob. When you build towers, you build from one of these three bases; when the dice fall, some of them may fall into a different base of influence– but the more you put into one base, the less you’ll have in the other three.
Talking to Shreyas yesterday, he had a massively clever idea about deconstructing the notion of setting– instead of spending pages going over local flavor of the area and other minutae, why not break setting down into sets? Name and describe small, specific places that the game takes place in, with lots of color and points of interest. Maybe mention how many people a set can comfortably hold. He’s really going to town on this for Mist Robed Gate, and I was thinking of riffing off of it for Audeamus.
There are TYPES of sets– nothing specific. Every location in a game falls into this category, and must incorporate parts of the feeling and hooks. Each type of set has a primary base of power and a secondary base of power; the third type is absent. IE, if you’re on a set which is primarily Personal and secondarily Populus, you can’t be challenged on a Political level.
Each set must incorporate three of the descriptors of its type; these sets do not have to SPECIFICALLY be an Arena, or a Market, or what have you. Example: a scene set in a barracks– with the clank of chains and swords, mistrust, and no clear victories– would be an Arena scene.
So here’s the set types I have so far:
Hmmm. Still need one which is primarily Political and mildly Personal. Maybe the Temple?
I know I’ve been talking up a storm about Audeamus lately, so I just wanted to give a quick update on It’s Complicated. I have been working on it! In fact, I’m a couple thousand words into the new revision. Thing is, I just hit the “How to play” section, and haven’t even hit the new explanatory bits yet. I didn’t realize just how much of this game I’d been internalizing until I sat down to write it.
Over on the Knife Fight, there’s been a ton of talk today about the idea of “playing to win” as it pertains to RPGs, as opposed to game games, like chess or poker or parcheesi. Vincent in particular seems really compelled by this idea, and it sounds like there are a lot of people with different ideas of “winning,” and people who think “winning” is impossible in an RPG anyway.
This is really interesting to me in the context of Audeamus, because it’s very much a game which can be won or lost. As I mentioned before, the conflict resolution mechanic is to stack dice towers; there’s going to be a map, with various points where you can start your tower. When the tower falls, where the dice fall on the map determine the type of effect you get, and the number of dice in each section determines the intensity of the effect. If your tower falls before you’re done stacking your dice, the other dice go unused, and this weakens the possible outcome– so even if you succeed, it won’t be quite the success you were hoping for.
One of the things you can do is take dice from other players and replace them– so if you’re trying to sabotage another senator’s agenda, you can exploit their weakness, take one of their d6s, and replace it with a d20. (Or d4, if you’re being a butt.) The less stable their dice are, the more quickly the tower will fall, the less dice they get to use.
But here’s the thing. The other really important part of this concept is the creed– sticking to your personal code of honor. If that’s what’s most important to your character, you can win by never compromising your creed, even if it means losing your agenda in the senate. Or, you can win by getting your agenda in the senate, even if it means sacrificing everything else that’s important to you.
Hm. Looking at that, it sounds like it’s less a win-loss mechanic, and more just points to the idea of hard choices. I don’t know. What’s it look like to you?
me: So we should talk more about Audeamus
Like do we want to die types of dice into types of support, or types of traits
Charlotte: well let’s see, we have how many die types? 20, 12, 8, 6, 4
10
me: Yes
And we have four types of traits– Things You’ve Experienced, Things You Can Do, Things You Know, and Things You Believe
Charlotte: oh i was thinking about being able to start with a division between number of dice and number of bases, btw, that would be different for each ‘class’
me: What do you mean
I’m kind of out of it but it sounds interesting
Charlotte: ok say there’s a total of 5 starting slots for things. the things that can be in it are dice and bases. bases meaning number of towers you’re allowed to start
so one class has 1 base, but starts with 4 dice. another can make up to 4 bases but only has 1 die to start with
so one class starts with power but is fragile, the other one starts slow and has a broader base of options later
because you can’t knock down 4 towers of 1 each
me: That’s an elegant way to balance
I think Gladiators and commoners would probably have the one base, and patricians have the 4 bases
Charlotte: I think so too ![[smile]](http://mail.google.com/mail/images/cleardot.gif){kind=small}
and maybe another class has a 2/3 split
me: Well, like
Charlotte: (maybe 5 is too wide?)
me: To be more specific, non-senate citizens could have the 2/3 split, since they are essentially the “middle class” if I’m remembering my roman history right
We’re going to have to start on the research soon
Charlotte: ooh good
booo research!
me: So maybe the dice you earn through your own actions– by being true to your creed, for example– are the stable ones
Charlotte: ooh
me: And the less stable dice are the ones you earn by playing to other people’s creeds
Charlotte: man it would suck to be most gladiators with a code of honor
me: And if you betray yourself by going against your creed, that’s when someone else can take one of your d6s and replace it with a d12 or something
Charlotte: d4! d4!
me: It depends on the code though
I mean, being a gladiator with the code “Death before Dishonor” would be okay
Charlotte: true!
unless you consider it dishonorable to fight someone whose skill is so far below yours it’s more like murder
me: mmm
So here’s my question
When does the dice-stacking happen
Or do the stacks just hang out the whole time
Charlotte: when you get or lose dice
and they have to stay up for x time
(and you can leave them up the rest of the time, but falling only counts during the countdown)
me: When you get or lose dice, do you have to rebuild from scratch
Charlotte: because otherwise the aforementioned cold could break the game
me: You know, Jonathan had a pretty interesting idea for a randomizer
Charlotte: oh?
me: Instead of rolling dice, it’s how the dice land when the towers fall
Charlotte: hmm!
so like a target map
me: Making the most of the pieces of your shattered self-power
No, still with numbers
Charlotte: with bases, and then falling areas
ooh i see
me: Although falling areas is a really compelling idea too
But then we’d need maps
Charlotte: maps = penis
hahaha
me: This is going to be the most Gamist game about difficult decisions and personal integrity ever
Charlotte: hahaha
YES
So I woke up this morning with a new game in my head. This is irksome, because I really need to rewrite Complicated, and this game in my head is dense and intense and even requires research, but I think it will be awesome, and Char is going to work on it with me, and.. Yeah. I’m really excited. It’s tentatively titled Audeamus, which means “Let us dare.”
It is a historical non-fantasy game about ancient Rome– this big, grand, bloody, decadent thing teetering on collapse and senators vying for what little power they can grab before it all comes apart. There will be senators and gladiators and Christians and lions and citizens and rebels and prisoners. The theme is basically about discovering just how much of yourself and your principles you are willing to sacrifice in order to get what you want.
The main mechanic we’ve got is dice-stacking. No, not what you’re thinking. You earn dice in various ways– all different types, from d4 to d20. You collect them, and you stack them. You can sabotage other players by stealing their dice, or replacing more stable dice with less stable ones. When dice fall, Something Happens.
Character creation works something kind of like this. The first thing you decide is What You Are. You are a senator, or a gladiator, or a citizen, or a rebel, or a Christian, or who knows. What You Are determines what categories you can choose your attributes from.
(This part is, I believe, kind of a riff from the way Jonathan handles charms in his Exalted hack. Thanks Jonathan!)
There are four types of attributes: What You’ve Experienced, What You Can Do, What You Know, and What You Believe. This isn’t fleshed out, but just an example:
I am a senator. I’ve helped send men to their deaths just to make a point. I can bend the ear of Caesar’s most trusted advisor. I have studied astronomy, and I believe in death before dishonor.
Eventually, the examples will be more flowery and compelling, but you get the idea. What You Believe ties into your creed– something like “Virtue is the only nobility” or “Let them hate, so long as they fear” or “The world is not enough”– which is the cornerstone of your tower and the foundation your character has built itself upon. If you act in a way which is contrary to your creed, you can lose dice or be otherwise affected; by betraying yourself, you give other characters the opportunity to hit you where it hurts, because you have shown weakness of character.
I’ve been fortunate enough this week to get a lot of good feedback from David Artman and Ron Edwards at The Forge, as well as some great conversations with friends and playtesters in #indierpgs. After reflection, I’ve decided that I’m not going to revise the current document so much as write an entirely new one. New sections will include:
That’s a lot of stuff, and if any of it turns out to be unnecessary, I can cut it. But as of right now, those’re basically things that people who have played the game have requested, and so they seem important.
Someone– I forget who– told me this game was going to have more explanation of how the rules work than of the rules themselves. I’m okay with that. Actually, a big part of the influence for this system was when I was working on the token mechanic for Addict– I had a bunch of little systems going, and Jonathan told me that I should think about having a single elegant system that did everything. Little did he know..
I’m going to test out this neat page-break thing, because it is a doozy. I’m also going to attempt to mix the OOC chatter into the IC flow (we use separate chat channels for the two), with cunning use of bold for IC. I’ve deleted a lot of the tangential chatter, but left in an amusing practical jokes. Playtesters: can’t live with ‘em, can’t shoot them in the head, or else how would you find out where your game breaks?
I finished my game for the True Meaning of Friendship design challenge. It’s over in the “Pages” section– look for “Retrospective.” There’s also a PDF link there, if you’re into that kind of thing.
I think I’m okay with the design; it gave me a lot to think about for the Bridge of Birds game that Shreyas and I are working on, and maybe some ideas on how to approach the narration in It’s Complicated.
Speaking of Complicated, I’ve been getting a ridiculous amount of really good, important critique and feedback and playtesting lately. The next version’s probably going to involve nothing less than a total overhaul, with expanded sections on framing scenes which deal with multiple relationships, and scene framing in general. One thing I didn’t realize (and this probably just speaks to the quality of playtesters I’ve had, yay) is that this game really begs for a certain level of skill when it comes to framing, and I’d like to lower the entry level a little.
I’ve also been musing on Jason’s “Little boat theory” of design and how it relates to this game, especially in regards to last night’s playtest. I think I’ve got a lot to say, but it has to gel first, and I’ve also got to finish cleaning up for company.
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