Two friends were visiting me and we talked roleplaying, so I figured we might as well try a thing that’s been on my mind.
Design goals: To have a game that is easy for everyone to get into, but so that a longer campaign can be set up in the process or created in play by stringing a series of scenarios together.
- Set up a strong vision for a game world. Have people contribute, ask questions, answer them, so on. If there is glitches have someone (the GM, probably) take creative responsibility for the whole deal. Someone, again probably the GM, should write down details like names that would otherwise be forgotten. We had a city somewhere in the future where the rich built their homes above those of the poor. Eventually the poor were living in sewers where rubbish and prisoners were also thrown. This was iterated a number of times, but still it is the poor ones who keep the city living by using all that is thrown to them.
- Set up a goal. GM should have a few ideas ready, but if someone makes a more interesting suggestion, go with it. This should not take too long. We had a sick person in the underworld who needs a medicine that you can’t get but above.
- Players create characters who are motivated by the goal. They should be pretty freely adding detail to the goal. Also, and this is important, name the characters. We had the sick person being some sort of prophet and spiritual leader with unknown motives and the characters were a cybernetic, still approximately human, mercenary called Zack and a wanderer secretly from the city above, called Nils. Both had their own motives for trying to save the leader.
- Players state one question about their character that they would like to know an answer to. We had: What is Nils willing to do and believe to live a thousand years? Can Zack become the master of his own life?
- Players state a question about one other player’s character that would like to learn. We had these being restatements of the original questions though with different emphasis: Does Nils really want to live forever? Does Zack even have a mind of his own (or he a mere follower)?
- Physical descriptions of the characters until everyone has some sort of mental image of them.
- Are the characters in order? Everyone interested in at least their own character and have some sort of image about the other characters?
- Does everyone have something about the game world?
- Brainstorm how the mission could be solved. This is quasi-play in that people should be getting comfortable with their characters and brainstorm about how the goal could achieved. The game world should be getting some flesh around the bones at this stage. GM is free to participate. End this stage when there is at least one viable plan that could work.
- GM should now have a a list of questions about the characters that the players are curious about, a strong vision for the world, and knowledge about what the characters will be doing. GM should think some obstacles to show how fascinating the world is and some situations somewhat related to the questions. Don’t try to push all that in, but do add it to play when natural.
- Right now, you should have a game world, a situation going on and a bunch of characters ready for action with a rudimentary plan. So go at it. Play.
Since half the goal is to prepare for Solar system play and create characters, we added some rulesey bits. When characters tried to do something with risk and interesting consequences, players rolled three fudge dice, summed, added two if the characters was very good at it and 1 if the character was good, else only the roll. Positive result was success. GM was free to give a bonus or penalty dice or two if situation warranted it. I went pretty light with the dice, saying yes much of the time. Players might want to keep track of what their character is good at.
So, you have played and probably answered some questions that were posed – at least the goal should be resolved to one direction or the other. Most of the questions about the characters are probably not answered (unless you had lots of time and very focused and aggressive play, in which case you might want to use a more focused rules set to help with it), and that’s okay.
Talk a bit. Are the unanswered questions still interesting? Did any new questions arise? We had a few new ones.
Now, supposing there still are unanswered questions about the characters and supposing you want to make Solar system characters out of them, here’s what you should do. Select skills as normal, though you have made many of the choices in play. Assign resource pools as you will. Turn questions into keys so that the question itself is the buy-off condition. The ways the key gives experience should be inspired by the question and the play. For example: Is Zack merely a killer? 1 xp – kill someone out of necessity , 3 xp – kill someone when other methods would have been sufficient, buy-off – the question is definitively answered.
I imagine that after each session of play there would be reflection and some of the questions would be noticed to have been already answered and probably new questions posed. It doesn’t really matter if the questions are answered affirmatively or with a negative answer, as long as they are answered.
Why have such a prologue?
Many players, especially those less used to roleplaying, often have trouble starting to play, so the prologue is a situation where characters and the world are fleshed out and play starts slowly. Further, there is a clear purpose and motivation to go for that, which hopefully reduces the barrier of entry.
There is this phenomenon where players create characters, start playing them and notice that the character actually is quite different from what the mechanical bits would say, or maybe the game world is quite different from what they imagined. A prologue mitigates this effect by having the player play the character and only then create the mechanical description in detail.
Additional bonus is the episodic nature of play. You can have a self-contained prologue, then maybe different players, another linked situation that builds on the previous one, and soon you’ll have a vibrant world and a fair number of interesting characters. My gut feeling is that the prologue format becomes restrictive and abrasive if used with established characters and setting, but maybe not. A quick pass through the list might very well be useful even in longer games.
Further refinement
Thus far there’s been one impromptu session, so obviously further playtesting is in order. One particular issue I’d like to focus on is if players should ask genuinely new questions about each others’ characters (which might create too much clutter but also inspire new ways of looking at the characters) or if they should refine the questions the players themselves posed, which would make them sharper and enhance a shared sense of what the characters are about.
Permalink
4 Comments
I have up to this point game mastered three, I think, sessions proper of Dogs (hereafter DitV) plus one character generation session. There is a pool of six players (plus me as the GM) and we handwave why the cast of characters changes between sessions.
If you, dear reader, are not familiar with Dogs, I’d recommend reading about it here or here. Now, some observations:
- DitV is actually well-designed. Both the rules and the setting are. The writing is very conversational, which I occasionally find demanding to interpret, but most of the time the text is clear and entertaining enough.
- Dogs is a game about religion. It is not a game that defends or attacks religion. This I find both rare and refreshing.
- Dogs works well with three or four players. I think I actually prefer three. No testing with two or merely one player. (Plus the GM.)
- The town creation rules work. Following them is recommended.
- The game works best when one is trying to play it honestly – don’t create a tricky character to begin with (that will come with play), don’t create a caricature, but do try to honestly fix the towns and their problems. Playing inquisition is trivial.
- DitV is difficult to game master. One should be able to play generally more than four actually different characters and make them somewhat compelling and sympathetic. This is beyond my skills, but one learns by doing.
- Do call player characters by name. Always. All the time. It helps to establish the characters. Also, non-player characters. Don’t be ashamed of the names you or others come up with – just use them.
Here’s something I’m planning to do. There are six players total. After each session there is a moment for reflection. Here’s my plan: an entire session for reflection, socialisation between the players and free roleplay. Some possibilities within the fiction: A city where everything is okay. Return to Bridal Falls (where everything is okay). Number of players would be up to six. Probably no or very few dice used. Players sitting in a circle or semicircle rather than around a table other obstacle. Maybe even players freely roaming about.
My modest apartment is too small for this, I fear, but maybe sometimes, somewhere.
Permalink
Leave a Comment
Cogito, ergo ludo. 