No, this isn't a No True Scotsman argument. This is mostly a self-directed rant.
I have this problem where I keep trying to find/invent the 'one true' game engine to play all the games/settings I want to experience or run. Sadly, this is a bad habit that I gotta kick myself off.
I wanted to find that mythical One Game Engine with TURK (True Universal Roll-and-Keep), and I eventually gave up on the project because Roll n Keep can't do everything I wanted. I've tried again and again to cherry-pick my favorite mechanics from various systems and Frankenstein them together into something that does everything I want and nothing I don't. What I left off with at TURK was a complex and incomplete 'framework' that would need interpreting with every setting I wanted to use it in. Not only would you need a 'CORE' book, but a 'WORLD' book to tell you how to apply the Core rules to each setting. It got crunchy, which was one of the things I was trying to avoid.
Oh hubris, your aftertaste is so bitter.
The humbling truth is: Game engines/systems are tailored to produce their desired effects (whelp, at least modern games systems do. There was a time when everything had six stats, XP and levels and you rolled a d20 in combat and usually percentile dice for everything else...)
In no particular order:
RISK, as in the 7th Sea 2nd Edition, and the forthcoming 7th Sea: Khitai game, has a mechanical focus on using Raises generated by dice rolls as your narrative currency. Players and GM's then spend this currency to decide what their focus on the story details will be. I love some of the ideas in this system; it's a streamlined and evolved version of the original Roll and Keep that inspired me to write TURK in the first place.
D&D, especially 5th Edition, is great at high fantasy storytelling with an emphasis on exploration, combat and character power growth from those activities. Yes, out of the box it doesn't support character emotional and relationship growth, but there's nothing stopping a good GM from making pathos an essential driving force of a story. You don't need mechanics to do that.
Mekton and the FUSION engine are great at the grognardy-number-crunching-mecha-design and smashing stories. The Mekton Technical System is still my favorite because it focused on relative design choices, very flexible scaling and adaptability with a focus on anime physics and storytelling. The only thing holding it back is just how crunchy it gets with character design and advancement (nine primary stats and a variable number of derived stats?!?) and actual mecha combat could get really slow as well.
GURPS started as a wonderfully 'universal' system and was heavily focused on character over everything else. It suffered, i think, from trying to point-balance and option everything possible in character creation. Some of the later editions had VOLUMES published about character options. And don't get me started about GURPS Vehicles.
Okay just one gripe and then moving on: do I really, REALLY need to worry about the weight of the fuzzy dice I hang in my tricked out muscle car? Not to mention calculating the square surface area of the radio so I can determine how much damage it can take? (Fire, Fusion and Steel for Traveller TNE had the same problem.)
Burning Wheel is all about character drama in a gritty and hard way. It encourages player buy-in and adding to the game world and supports that mechanically.
FATE is fantastically abstract, generic and diverse in all the settings it's been used in, but that's also it's weakness. It depends on players and GM's having a firm and agile grip on how to use FATE.
2d20, specifically Star Trek Adventures, does a fine job of capturing the feel of principle-driven science-fiction storytelling. the Momentum mechanic makes intra-character cooperation and collaboration easy. The Infinity setting is just bonkers with the crunchy details that STA lacks.
Eclipse Phase, while a percentile system, does a fabulous job of showing how a game engine can reflect the setting; the separation of ego and morph and how they work together is a wonderful metaphoric mirror to the ideas behind a transhuman/posthumanist setting.
Cypher is fascinating for both it's innovation and return to really old-school themes involving bizarre encounters and devices. It DOES do interesting things with putting all rolls on the player's side of the table and making the GM's management of other characters easier and nominally having an open system for any kind of world-building and setting-making. See here for a separate post about other things I've taken away from my reading of the Cypher system.
Blades in the Dark and Scum and Villainy -both Forged In The Dark games- focus on storytelling with imaginative yet open-to-interpretation universes. This system sets up mechanical frameworks that quickly establish qualitative results that imaginative GMs and Players can color however they wish.
I really do need to embrace the wonderful variety of game systems out there.
Hell, I spend enough on collecting new and interesting games, I should bloody well use them!
Except percentile systems. To hell with them. They're too granular and fiddly and imply arbitrary limitations of capacity and ability. That and I just have terrible luck with them. (Ask me about my RoleMaster experience sometime and buy me a beer, and I'll spin you a yarn about the root of my antagonism towards %-dice based engines.)
Showing posts with label TURK engine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TURK engine. Show all posts
Monday, November 26, 2018
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Game session postmortem #1
So we had our first actual 'play' session for my new campaign. For myself, it felt like a bit of a rocky takeoff but soared after that. Like any book, movie or composition of music, the beginning is the hardest part. To quote one of my favorite novels: "A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct."
And it all started with a McGuffin.
One of the players has this artifact. Something that by his own definition was ‘dangerous and incredibly valuable’ and ‘he was keeping it to protect others.’ The “glowing ball of doom” as the other players started calling it and how the PC came into possession of it became the focus of the entire game session.
I had originally planned the first game session to test a number of the conflict systems I had drafted into the system; how to handle chases, fights, arguments, etc. I had 3x5 note cards with roughed out antagonists, numbers to roll for and against, etc. Since the player with the McGuffin had the most immediate character ‘hook,’ we started rolling against his investigative skills to see what he could learn about the doohickey. Two close-shaves later, he realized that he wasn't going to get anywhere without the help of the other characters, and so roped them into a scheme to acquire the materials and tools necessary to safely explore further. The potential for profit based on being the first group to understand and perhaps harness what the McGuffin represented got the rest of the party involved.
I will hand it to the other players: they immediately took to the open-ended challenge. Asking questions, devising their own understanding of how the world worked and what the steps they could take were. The tick on my end was to answer their questions halfway: I’d give them information, but not answers; what they needed to ask more questions, which in turn helped them to decide what actions to take to pursue those answers.
i.e. Q: There were six people who went with that PC on the mission where he found the McGuffin… where are they and why aren't they involved? A: They aren't involved because… they’re all dead or in comas after ‘the incident.’
One of my fears of being out of practice was that I wouldn't be fast enough on my feet to deal with questions and actions taken by the players. Since this game session was almost entirely narrative in its content, there weren't any opportunities where being unprepared with system mechanics to become a problem.
I did, however, learn a few things about being prepared.
One: NPC names. I’m horrible with names. So far the named NPCs are “Dr. Bob” and “Burke”, the company man (yes, after Paul Riser’s character from Aliens, and yes, pretty much the same character). Names have power: who are you going to remember better? “Dr. Bob” or “Alejandro ‘The Spider’ Wing-Chen”? In a massively multicultural setting like Eclipse Phase, names can be real ethnic mashups. Not to mention monikers for AI’s, uplifts and so on. To that end, I updated my copy of Inspiration Pad, and wrote a little script to generate mixed-ethnicity names on the fly for me. Some I will pre-generate and keep in a list. Need a name? Take one and scratch it off. I hope to also keep the generator script on hand next time so I can make more as needed. Also for that end, I’m working on scripts for generating details about habitats, corporations, ‘factions’ and so on.
Two: Have stock challenges prepared. The 3x5 card concept seemed to work well; there’s room to write the particulars of that challenge (dice to roll, numbers to beat, etc), but also space to track progress against that challenge (if it takes multiple rolls, hits and so on). Things like bypassing a door lock, base ‘goons’ should the PC’s get into a fight, etc.
And speaking of mechanical challenges: I will probably have to take a serious look at my conflict systems for TURK. My original concepts had detailed sub-systems for arguments, duels, firefights, chases and ‘projects’ for anything else. However Players generally aren't conscious about the system and are more focused on the context of those conflicts. Thus, simpler is better.
Ideally there should be one dice mechanic and one or two models for adjudicating conflict. FATE has three models: Challenges (character vs fixed obstacles), Contests between actors (debates, chases, races) and Conflicts between actors (arguments, duels, firefights, wars). Perhaps that could work for TURK?
Something to ponder further (and in future posts).
So to sum up: it was a good session. The next session will start from where we left off, so no problems getting the ball rolling, so to speak. I also have several ‘homework’ items to provide the players (information they sent requests for and I said I would get it to them later since what they wanted to know wasn't immediately crucial). The story is afoot, and we will see where it takes us!
And it all started with a McGuffin.
One of the players has this artifact. Something that by his own definition was ‘dangerous and incredibly valuable’ and ‘he was keeping it to protect others.’ The “glowing ball of doom” as the other players started calling it and how the PC came into possession of it became the focus of the entire game session.
I had originally planned the first game session to test a number of the conflict systems I had drafted into the system; how to handle chases, fights, arguments, etc. I had 3x5 note cards with roughed out antagonists, numbers to roll for and against, etc. Since the player with the McGuffin had the most immediate character ‘hook,’ we started rolling against his investigative skills to see what he could learn about the doohickey. Two close-shaves later, he realized that he wasn't going to get anywhere without the help of the other characters, and so roped them into a scheme to acquire the materials and tools necessary to safely explore further. The potential for profit based on being the first group to understand and perhaps harness what the McGuffin represented got the rest of the party involved.
I will hand it to the other players: they immediately took to the open-ended challenge. Asking questions, devising their own understanding of how the world worked and what the steps they could take were. The tick on my end was to answer their questions halfway: I’d give them information, but not answers; what they needed to ask more questions, which in turn helped them to decide what actions to take to pursue those answers.
i.e. Q: There were six people who went with that PC on the mission where he found the McGuffin… where are they and why aren't they involved? A: They aren't involved because… they’re all dead or in comas after ‘the incident.’
One of my fears of being out of practice was that I wouldn't be fast enough on my feet to deal with questions and actions taken by the players. Since this game session was almost entirely narrative in its content, there weren't any opportunities where being unprepared with system mechanics to become a problem.
I did, however, learn a few things about being prepared.
One: NPC names. I’m horrible with names. So far the named NPCs are “Dr. Bob” and “Burke”, the company man (yes, after Paul Riser’s character from Aliens, and yes, pretty much the same character). Names have power: who are you going to remember better? “Dr. Bob” or “Alejandro ‘The Spider’ Wing-Chen”? In a massively multicultural setting like Eclipse Phase, names can be real ethnic mashups. Not to mention monikers for AI’s, uplifts and so on. To that end, I updated my copy of Inspiration Pad, and wrote a little script to generate mixed-ethnicity names on the fly for me. Some I will pre-generate and keep in a list. Need a name? Take one and scratch it off. I hope to also keep the generator script on hand next time so I can make more as needed. Also for that end, I’m working on scripts for generating details about habitats, corporations, ‘factions’ and so on.
Two: Have stock challenges prepared. The 3x5 card concept seemed to work well; there’s room to write the particulars of that challenge (dice to roll, numbers to beat, etc), but also space to track progress against that challenge (if it takes multiple rolls, hits and so on). Things like bypassing a door lock, base ‘goons’ should the PC’s get into a fight, etc.
And speaking of mechanical challenges: I will probably have to take a serious look at my conflict systems for TURK. My original concepts had detailed sub-systems for arguments, duels, firefights, chases and ‘projects’ for anything else. However Players generally aren't conscious about the system and are more focused on the context of those conflicts. Thus, simpler is better.
Ideally there should be one dice mechanic and one or two models for adjudicating conflict. FATE has three models: Challenges (character vs fixed obstacles), Contests between actors (debates, chases, races) and Conflicts between actors (arguments, duels, firefights, wars). Perhaps that could work for TURK?
Something to ponder further (and in future posts).
So to sum up: it was a good session. The next session will start from where we left off, so no problems getting the ball rolling, so to speak. I also have several ‘homework’ items to provide the players (information they sent requests for and I said I would get it to them later since what they wanted to know wasn't immediately crucial). The story is afoot, and we will see where it takes us!
Friday, August 9, 2013
My new game
I've been quiet here a while now, but not inactive. In fact, I've started my first campaign in years. And not only is it the first time I'll be behind the GM's screen in a long time, it's also the first time running with this particular group of players, the first time with this particular setting AND the first time using a game engine still in development!
No pressure :)
The setting for the campaign is Eclipse Phase. I gotta hand it to the guys at Posthuman Studios; they've done a great job at tackling a complex concept and deliver a ton of game books and online content that is educational and inspiring. Their products are of awesome quality, but they also happily share their setting with their playerbase, having released their game under a Creative Commons license, giving permission to player groups to add to, adapt and otherwise make their own Eclipse Phase games they way they want to (so long as it's not for profit). That very... infological freedom makes the game I have started possible.
You see, instead of the core EP rules as written I am using a game engine I have been working on for the last couple of years in my copious spare time. Taking the core concepts from Roll and Keep, I've been calling my variant TURK: True Universal Roll and Keep engine.
I got the idea to make a TURK:EP game while I was thinking about how EP separates EGO and MORPH that about how Roll and Keep dice mechanics might be a good fit to emulate the EGO determining the dice you throw, but your Morph being the cap on how many you get to keep.
Currently TURK exists as a thoroughly deconstructed set of concepts and principles for handling action, characters and so on. This Eclipse Phase game will be one of the first manifestations of TURK concepts into an actual game. As thought-experiments I've been keeping ideas on applying TURK to many other settings/campaigns/ideas. Some of them may make the light of day here on this blog... *Note to self: if TURK works well, contact Alderac Entertainment*
So far a couple of lessons already learned:
1) You may know your game engine, or at least the intent of your draft rules, but having player feedback is invaluable. Just like any proofreading catches gaffs, inconsistencies, logical gaps and plain typos and misspellings; having someone read and ask questions about your game mechanics is great feedback on where your writing is weak, examples may be needed and so on. It also helps that one of your players is a professional writer and editor *grins*
2) Be prepared with an initial story to tell. Especially with a brand new setting the GM really has a lot to do with setting the themes, mood, tone and feel to feed the player's imaginations and in turn inspire them. My intent is to run a game that strongly follows the player-characters concepts and desired, but first they need a taste of what the world is like. This one I am struggling with at the moment, but the once-a-month schedule is working in my favor: plenty of time to get inspired, write and plot.
3) Everyone having DropBox and Google Drive accounts is a great way to share core setting and game rule information. I was able to share with my players both original setting information as well as my draft (and revised) documents on the rules we're going to play by. It also serves as an online backup for things like character sheets, campaign notes and the like.
More posts to come on this game!
No pressure :)
The setting for the campaign is Eclipse Phase. I gotta hand it to the guys at Posthuman Studios; they've done a great job at tackling a complex concept and deliver a ton of game books and online content that is educational and inspiring. Their products are of awesome quality, but they also happily share their setting with their playerbase, having released their game under a Creative Commons license, giving permission to player groups to add to, adapt and otherwise make their own Eclipse Phase games they way they want to (so long as it's not for profit). That very... infological freedom makes the game I have started possible.
You see, instead of the core EP rules as written I am using a game engine I have been working on for the last couple of years in my copious spare time. Taking the core concepts from Roll and Keep, I've been calling my variant TURK: True Universal Roll and Keep engine.
I got the idea to make a TURK:EP game while I was thinking about how EP separates EGO and MORPH that about how Roll and Keep dice mechanics might be a good fit to emulate the EGO determining the dice you throw, but your Morph being the cap on how many you get to keep.
Currently TURK exists as a thoroughly deconstructed set of concepts and principles for handling action, characters and so on. This Eclipse Phase game will be one of the first manifestations of TURK concepts into an actual game. As thought-experiments I've been keeping ideas on applying TURK to many other settings/campaigns/ideas. Some of them may make the light of day here on this blog... *Note to self: if TURK works well, contact Alderac Entertainment*
So far a couple of lessons already learned:
1) You may know your game engine, or at least the intent of your draft rules, but having player feedback is invaluable. Just like any proofreading catches gaffs, inconsistencies, logical gaps and plain typos and misspellings; having someone read and ask questions about your game mechanics is great feedback on where your writing is weak, examples may be needed and so on. It also helps that one of your players is a professional writer and editor *grins*
2) Be prepared with an initial story to tell. Especially with a brand new setting the GM really has a lot to do with setting the themes, mood, tone and feel to feed the player's imaginations and in turn inspire them. My intent is to run a game that strongly follows the player-characters concepts and desired, but first they need a taste of what the world is like. This one I am struggling with at the moment, but the once-a-month schedule is working in my favor: plenty of time to get inspired, write and plot.
3) Everyone having DropBox and Google Drive accounts is a great way to share core setting and game rule information. I was able to share with my players both original setting information as well as my draft (and revised) documents on the rules we're going to play by. It also serves as an online backup for things like character sheets, campaign notes and the like.
More posts to come on this game!
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