The Game A Day Project

I’m starting a new project. It’s partly practice, partly fooling around and, hopefully, partly productive. I’ve created a new blog for the Hamsterprophet Productions Game A Day Project. The goal is to post one game concept, setting idea, mechanic or other purely design-related tidbit every day, as fleshed out as I have time and willpower.

It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a while as a pure exercise. Why now, and why on a blog? Well, I feel that keeping it public will keep me to it. I also think it would be cool to get comments on ideas, whether they reach any kind of fruition or not. And maybe something will inspire someone else out there. That would be cool.

At the end of each month I’ll go through that months posts and compile a best-of, flesh out those concepts a little more (incorporating comments, of course), and re-post a month summary.

How long will it keep up? Who knows! But it’ll be exciting.

Cool!

I’d never heard of it, but apparentely theres something called a Squidoo Lens. And there’s two new ones of interest that have been created: Martin Ralya set up a lens for Game Mastering, and Rob Maudib set up a lens for RPG design & discussion. It’s a step towards keeping track of the full-on Forge Diaspora, which is cool. I know I’m putting them both in my Sage sidebar. Thanks Martin and Rob!

A New Review of Timestream

…can be found here. Many thanks to Andrew at Gamewyrd for the review!

[Imp] Theoro-Actual Play

Here’s a theoretical actual play transcript of The Imp Of The Perverse

Transcript only, no notes about system for this one.
GM; P1 playing Julius, and Minerva’s Imp; P2 playing Minerva and Frederick’s Imp; P3 playing Frederick, and Julius’s Imp.

GM: The door creaks loudly as it swings in on rusty hinges. A waft of stale air puffs out, and you stare into blackness.
P1: I light my lamp. “Come, my friends. The villagers were very clear on the source of their troubles. Let us proceed!”
GM: Your lamp reveals a spiral staircase leading downwards and spiderwebbed walls, all roughly cut out of stone.
P1: I lead the way.
P2: I’m in back, clutching my derringer.
P3: I follow Julius. “Be careful, we don’t know whats down here…”
P2: “…only that it sucks the blood of children. We must destroy it.”
GM: You descend into the earth, the flickering lamp providing your only guidance. As you descend, it grows colder and colder.
P3: Julius’s Imp is going to make Julius drop the lamp.
P1: Nice. My chilled fingers grow numb, and the lamp slips out of them, shattering on the stone below. There’s a brief flare of flame, then it goes out entirely. “Oh no!”
P2: I shriek in fright.
P3: I freeze.
GM: After Minerva’s scream, there’s a brief moment of silence. As you stand there, straining to see in the absolute blackness, you all become aware of the oppressive weight of the mountain hanging over your heads…
P1: I want to trigger an attack on Minerva by her Imp – her perversity is “Buried her sister alive.”
GM: Okay. Whats your intention?
P1: The Imp wants her to be so shaken by guilt that she can’t do anything.
P2: Oh, I was thinking that she could think that she is her sister…
P1: Oh wow. Yeh, I want that.
GM: All right. If the Imp wins, Minerva thinks that she is her sister, being buried alive. Frame it.
P1: Suddenly Minerva feels like the earth is pushing in against her.
P2: “No!” I know that I was in stone, not earth.
P1: But you hear a grinding sound, as if the stone is collapsing.
P2: I fall to the ground, struggling against the stone.
GM: Julius and Frederick hear Minerva shriek again, and then the smack as her body falls to the ground.
P3: “Minerva!” I drop to my knees and feel around, trying to find her. I’m going to add to her side.
P1: You are finding it hard to breath…
P2: I start coughing, but find that I can move more readily. I yell “Minerva, no! I love you!”
GM: You both here her yells, and her continued struggle.
P3: “Minerva, I’m here! It’s Frederick…”
P1: You hear your own voice, cackling with laughter…
P2: But I feel a hand, reaching through the stone to get me!
GM: As Minerva’s voice rises in a maniacal laugh, Frederick finds her writhing on the stairs. As you touch her she stops, as if cut off by a knife.
P3: Minerva! Are you all right?
P2: I’m shaking and sweaty. “Yes, I…yes.”
GM: From the darkness below you you hear a deep, guttural voice. “But not for long. Fools.”
[Equally intense action scene]

I’m starting to get excited about this one…

Never Going Back

Everyone, read Before Stakes: What is your intent?

I don’t have anything to add to that thread that hasn’t been already said, but it throws into clear relief one of the greatest things about recent, indie, conflict-resolution based RPGs. When clear intent and stakes are determined, it excises boring play. When everyone knows what all the players want out of a conflict, not only does it enable you to skip situations where you want the same thing, but your characters are taking different actions, it also allows everyone to know what people find interesting and exciting about the game as a whole, enabling further play to be more focused towards those interesting and exciting things.

There’s a reason why people who love indie games love indie games, and this is a biiiiiig part of it, methinks.

Inside The Simscape: Constructive Denial

In the comments to my last post, Rob said

“the multi-layered aspect of [my game] would seem to make it a “multi-sim” hybrid, as the various tools easily address different Sim focuses, not to mention the possiblity of gamist intentions.”

Cool. I’d like to talk about different Sim focuses, as I think we’re pretty much in agreement that the Sim “range” is pretty wide open. I’d like to go from these bases:

• Sim happens via constructive denial of explorative input in order to create, sustain and extend the Dream, and the Right thereto.
• The five elements of Exploration are: Character, Setting, Color, System and Situation.
• The Dream is based on some kind of source material. It doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

So I think a good place to start is talking about how constructive denial works in terms of each element of exploration, hopefully with examples from play.

Note: I started this next section as an afterthought, then realized it deserved it’s own post. So, we’ll get the elements of exploration next time.

Constructive Denial, General Comments

I’m going to make up a bunch of stuff real quick.

It seems to me that a useful framework is to see the terms Constructive and Denial in a 4-square comparison with their opposites.

………………………..Denial…………………Acceptance
Constructive | Constructive Denial | Constructive Acceptance
Destructive | Destructive Denial | Destructive Acceptance

Some examples. Say these people are playing Adventure!

Constructive Denial:
P1: I’m gonna shoot him in the back of the head, execution-style.
P2: Dude, this is the evil genius. We need to find out his plan.
P3: Whatever, I’d rather waste him.
GM: As if sensing your intention, the doctor yells “Wait! If you kill me, you’ll never find out where I hid the Diamond of the Zulus….and your long-lost sister.”
P1: “What? I don’t have a sister!”
GM: “Yes. You do.”

Constructive Acceptence:
P1: I’m gonna shoot him in the back of the head, execution-style.
GM: Ok. [Graphic description of blood, brains, etc.] As his body flops to the ground, a small tube of paper rolls from his hand. It’s a crude map.
P2: “Maybe this is a map to the location of the Diamond of the Zulus!”

Destructive Denial
P1: I’m gonna shoot him in the back of the head, execution-style.
P2: Dude, this is the evil genius. We need to find out his plan.
P3: Whatever, I’d rather waste him.
GM: Your gun jams as you pull the trigger.

Destructive Acceptence
P1: I’m gonna shoot him in the back of the head, execution-style.
P2: Dude, this is the evil genius. We need to find out his plan.
P3: Whatever, I’d rather waste him.
GM: Ok. [Graphic description of said wasting]

I would say that destructive responses to input are, for the most part, not to be desired for coherent, non-Participationist play. And the key difference between constructive denial and constructive acceptence is that denial is an active response, while acceptence is a passive response. It’s easier to just go with whatever the other party says than to take it, think about how it contributes to the overall enjoyment and intention of the game, and then respond in such a way as to mold that input towards those goals. I’m sure that a lot of observed behavior straddles the line between denial and acceptance (is “yes, and/no, but” a denial or an acceptance, for example?)

Now, the process of Sim is constructive denial, not constructive whatever. This makes intuitive sense to me - measured and continuous denial shapes, conforms and guides input, while continuous acceptence, even if measured, leads to free-wheeling and wildly all-over-the-place input. It’s constructive denial towards a goal - bricoling the Source material with the groups input.

So there’s a couple different ways to go in order to look at play preferences that happen in the Sim sandbox. I think a good starting organizational rubric is to look at how constructive denial (and, for counterpoint, acceptence) works in terms of each of the elements of Exploration, and what kinds of observed behaviors support these interactions.

For now, I welcome comments on the (probably many) problems with my initial formulations about Constructive Denial.

To Sum Up

In case anyone missed it…

My understanding of the basics of CA in the Big Model is as follows:

• Narrativism is about Story Now. It’s defining process is that of addressing Premise.
• Gamism is about Stepping On Up. It’s defining process is that of stepping up to Challenge.
• Simulationism is about The Right To Dream. It’s defining process is that of Constructive Denial.

I’m primarily interested in Sim, and the process of constructive denial, and as such that’s a lot of what I’m going to be talking about. I also have more to say about what role-play as a form is all about.

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My obligatory reaction to the theory & GNS forum closures at the Forge: I’ve never been particularly comfortable posting on either of them (I prefer my own sandbox), and I look forward to how the conversations in Actual Play and Publishing evolve. I also now need to pay more attention to blogs, and need to look into some kind of this crazy feed aggregator technology (anyone know a good plug-in for Firfox? Or is it already in here somewhere?)

I also think this is a really interesting idea, and something I would definitely read, at least. We’ll see if anything develops.

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Thoughts, comments and questions welcome!