Hey Man, well this is Babylon

A common situation:

I’m working on a game design project, and I’m thinking that maybe I want to consider making this one a GM-less game. Sure, it’s primarily a “group of characters working together to achieve a central themed goal” kind of game, but that can be GM-less, right? I start to explore that idea, and I eventually get to musing on the mechanics behind the actual introduction of conflicts and challenges. For a GM-less game, I think I’ll need to make it so that any player can throw in a challenge at any time. I’m thinking each player has both a character in the game/story, as well as an additional role of conflict-instigator for the other characters. I eventually take some of these ideas and bounce them off a fellow game designer, and get a response along the lines of “Okay, but what incentive do the players have to actually throw conflicts at each other? Wouldn’t it be in their best mechanical interests to work together, beat the game, and not challenge each other? What’s your currency, what boon do the instigators get out of this?”

This has happened to me more than once, and each time it happens I don’t have an immediate answer. I think “yeah, she’s right, the instigator needs some mechanical incentive to actually do said instigating.” Then I fret over it and try to come up with a non-character-centric system of conflict-introduction currency… and then I sit back and ask myself: Why?

Looking at the other side of the coin, most GM-run games out there have no such conflict currency. The GM has the right to throw challenges and encounters at the players left and right, and gains no specific mechanical reward for doing so. There is no limited pool of bad guys to use, or set currency of “challenge points” with which the GM must purchase new conflicts. No one is keeping a point tally of who does what, or why, and there is no winner. Obstacles appear when they must, players overcome them, and the GMs get no mechanically-tangible rewards for continuing this process.

And why should they? The (usual) point of the whole setup and gaming experience is for the GM to focus on story and opposition, and the players to focus on reaping the tangible rewards. The GM is rewarded based on their own style, be it by telling a good story, or by mystifying the players, or maybe just by murdering their characters in a sick gauntlet of aggression transfer. None of these reaps the GM any “gamer points” or “conflict enhancements” or “monster totems” or the like. The GM is usually free to throw in what she wants, when she wants, without need for mechanical explanation.¹

Now if the established Big Names of the mainstream GM-run games don’t feature such a reward, why should it be necessary to mechanically entice a player in a GM-less game to actually introduce conflict, when both the Social Contract and the innate Situation of the game already establish cross-table challenges as a core game theme? When players sit down to play a game of D&D, they know what they’re getting into. They are aware that the GM will throw challenges out and the players will try and overcome them, for no other reason than because that is just the way the game is played. If the GM-less game establishes this fact up front, then there really shouldn’t need be a reward mechanic in its play, either.²

So I ask you: do you believe that a GM-less game of mostly-cooperative character-driven storytelling should require such a conflict incentive? Why or Why Not?

Footnotes

¹ I am aware that D&D and some other games have Challenge Ratings and Encounter Levels and the like that serve to limit the power of most in-game adversity, but those fit more as pacing mechanics than conflict incentives.
² I haven’t played all that many GM-less games, but the less-than-a-handful that I have played have all tangibly rewarded players for introducing conflict. I’m not sure which others are out there, and which ones do and do not. Please, educate me!

After a conversation with Jake yesterday at the studio, on the subject of a new design project, I’ve decided to take some time an analyze a bunch of “disaster movies.” My specific focus here is to lay out the core threats and dangers present in each one. I’m looking for basic defined components, the dangers that work together to compose the central threats of each story.

Sunshine

Since it’s fresh on my mind, I’ll go ahead and start with Sunshine. The most obvious here is the Sun. While it of course provides the object of the entire movie’s conflict, it is also an ever-present danger for the crew. On numerous occasions it fries, melts, and explodes things, including parts of the ship and even people. Next would be the second most obvious: the Cold Dead of Space. This danger presents itself quite frequently, and is pretty much unavoidable. The third one might not be so obvious, because the director did such a good job of blending it in seamlessly with everything: the knowledge that these guys are all that’s left, and if they fail, it’s all over. There are no second chances, there is no one else to help you. That knowledge is understood by every crew member, and it is there in every decision they make. Finally there is the “twist.” Yeah, sure, that’s a danger too (grumble grumble).

In summation:

• The Dying (yet still mega-hot) Sun
• The Cold Dead of Space
• This is our only shot
• The “Twist”
• Here’s a possible fifth: “Nowhere to Hide”

Other dangers present themselves, but only as short-term obstacles, and not really “core” dangers and threats. Even the “Twist” is more of a temporary thing, I guess.

What about some others? Read past the cut for my takes on them. I’ll try to keep them as spoiler-light as possible. Read more

I recently became aware of this thread on 7chan, in which someone was requesting a copy of Cannibal Contagion, since they missed the not-so-heavily-advertised Halloween special. If any of you anon folks are reading this, let me know. I’ll gladly extend to you a copy of the PDF for free (as in, no cash cost), in exchange for comments, reviews, and your general honest thoughts (good or bad) after reading it. Comment here and let me know. Thanks!

- NPC

Today and tomorrow, we’re running a special deal at the CelStyle site. The Cannibal Contagion PDF is Free for the Halloween weekend! Head over and download away. Additionally, if you download the PDF, you save 4 bucks off the cost of the print book. Awesome!

This coming weekend, I will be releasing the Cannibal Contagion PDF as a limited-time free download through the new CelStyle website. While there, you should also check out the free Classroom Deathmatch game, which in many ways served as one of my biggest mechanical inspirations for Cannibal Contagion.

I’ll post this actual links this weekend, starting at midnight on Friday.

This weekend at PAX (I have another full post on that forthcoming), I came up with a random new game idea while in the bathroom looking at the crazy pictures I had snapped that day¹. I’m giving it the working title of Cosplay Costume Combat/Gaiden. The premise: walk around the convention and take pictures of cosplayers² and any other weird freaky shit you see. Meet up later with others who have done the same. Randomly pick photos from your camera, and then make those characters fight. Throughout the course of the weekend I mentioned it to several groups of other gamers and cosplayers alike, and all of them found it to be an interesting premise (the Rollerderby girls were especially animated in their ideas), so I figured I’d draft up an initial post for some preliminary design musings.

First and foremost, I want the game to avoid design pretensions and established indie considerations that are common with the current gamut of small-press RPGs. This should be a game for brand new players, a game I can actually get cosplayers to play on the spot just by walking up to two of them at a con. Simple to understand game terminology, with a focus on Kicking As and Dressing Awesome. Kinda the “Barbie Takes Mushrooms and Goes Shopping” of action-oriented RPGs.

I’m picturing two modes of play: Combat! and Gaiden! The first mode is quick and easy to demo, and played in one of two ways. You can either follow the format from the initial idea, and make up stats for random cosplayers you’ve photographed during the con, or you can approach two or more actual cosplayers while they walk around and convince them to play Real-Time. The latter format would also allow them to get more sweet pictures taken of them from bystanders, so it’s a win-win situation for cosplayers and game promotion alike.

The second game mode, Gaiden!, takes it much further. Again, two formats of play: digital and live. The digital format also involves scanning your cameras for cool photos, and then turning them into an epic quest to save the people of the convention from certain doom. Look over the photos, pick some heroes, some villains, and some points of contention, and then go with it, using the Combat! mode mechanics to resolve things. The other Gaiden! format stick with live-action cosplayers, leading the actual players across the convention on a LARP style of play to save everyone from certain doom. Quite certain to get lots of photographs, too.

Mechanics musings to come in the near future.

—–

¹ Yes. In the bathroom. Indeed.
¹ I didn’t take these, but here’s a good mix of some of the awesome PAX cosplay this year.

Check this video out. I understand it was made using Garry’s Mod, which I know little about except that it is some kind of Source engine mod to Half-Life and other Valve games.

This past Gamestorm, Jake Richmond and I won second place in a design contest. The contest was a “Junk Drawer Design War” – the organizer brought six identical bins filled with identical parts, most of which were salvaged from other board games. Each team of contestants had an hour (or two? i don’t remember) to create a game based on some or all of the included parts. Teams could trade with other teams for more parts.

Our game was called Laser Mummies.

The following rules are those we came up with on the fly during the design contest. So, without Further ado… Read more

After some awesome demo sessions yesterday at Free RPG Day, I’ve updated the Quad rules a wee bit:

• Removed “Substance” mechanic. Health and such have been incorporated into the core Tiks mechanic.
• Improved the Degrees of Success mechanics. Now based on matching dice instead of subtracting lows.
• Updated examples to illustrate new changes

The new rules can be downloaded here.

Thanks to everyone who played in my games yesterday. I’m glad “Mecha-Taliban” and “Operation Hot Goblin” were such fun sessions!

(I totally meant to post this Friday, but when saving it I forgot to set the auto-post time-thinger and only realized it today. Might as well add a few more notes to it, then.)

I was going to mention this last week but got side-tracked: the Alliterated Games Forums are down for an indefinite period of time. No one was using them, and they were just collecting spammers and bots. If I bring them back up in the future, it will likely be as part of…

The new website I’m putting together! The current AG website isn’t all that easy to update without me breaking things, so I’m setting up a content management suite to handle the basics. My first order of business is to get the basic game pages set up and an official newsfeed. After that, having a forum again would be nice, but it isn’t a major priority. I also want to set up a cart application, so folks can buy things directly from my website, without me having to handle fulfillment through Paypal.

Alpha Protocol continues to rock my knickers. I am only halfway through the game, and I’m already itching for a second play-through. My current style is the suave, stealthy master of the silent kill. My second play will be all BigGuns McDoucheBaggins, the no-questions-asked bullet-loving commando. I am looking forward to see more of the drastic changes in story and play I’ve already sipped with the handful of checkpoint replays I’ve experimented with in the game so far.

One thing about it that I really dig – and wish other games would pick up ASAP – is the Social Mission. A lot of Alpha Protocol’s game play involves hands-on espionage, sneaking into secret complexes and doing all that cool stealth-action spy stuff that makes movies like The Bourne Identity awesome. But almost as many game missions are purely social: you arrive on scene, meet a guy, try and make a deal of some sort, and hopefully walk away with a new ally or piece of information. The clothes you wear in these missions frequently makes a difference, so you should remember to switch out of that tactical armor before heading off to have dinner with the syndicate honcho, otherwise you might piss her off with your incredible social faux pas. I love this, and aside from Mass Effect 2 – which only has a small handful of missions like these – I’ve not seen it implemented in other mission-based games.

This coming weekend will be Free RPG Day! Every year I get excited about this one, as my favorite local game store Guardian Games always has a big shindig to celebrate. This year I’ll be running the new teaser adventure Final Sanction for the upcoming Deathwatch RPG from Fantasy Flight Games – the newest RPG in the Warhammer 40K product line. I’m not well-versed in the W40K universe, but this one looks nice – it’s the equivalent to me of the Starcraft storyline: Space Marines in massive suits of power armor fighting wave upon wave of infectious buglike monster hordes.

I leave you with a video for a song that’s been stuck in my head all morning: