Traveller and gamism/ narrativism/ simulationism

[Malenfant]

The Serpent Sun setting is on the BW website too. I should take a look at it once I read the books...

Egads, I really thought that nobody here would have even heard of BW! I thought there was no overlap at all with Traveller fans. Now I'm having people PM me about it too!

 

[clementk]

I'll take a look at it at Key20's booth at Origins. Sounds like revised is worth it.

 

[Kirth]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
So I take it you don't really care for narrativism then?

Nope. Just speaking for myself.

My problem with what I see in T5 has more to do with tech-levels than style. I think MWM is doing good by making the system simulationist.

The only narativism you need is the adventure itself. The GM says: "Your handed a ring, now go chuck it in a volcano."
You go out killing monsters, gaining xp, and rolling the dice to simulate how the characters deal with the world their in.
The GM says: "So and so such and such says that the way to the volcano is blocked, you need to go around."
You roll to see if he's lied to you. No? Ok, now go another route, simulating the world and fighting the monsters.
That was the original intent of rpgs and is their backbone.

It is wrong to say that WW LARPers outnumber the people who do the above scenario. WW is number two in sales, but that's among game companies. Plus, they are about the only ones who do that sort of game, if you can call it that. WotC leads because of exactly the above scenario is popular, then add in all the other d20 producers including OLI, add in simulationist GURPS(which does the above with more emphasis on dealing with the world) and those totals dwarf WW and their style of game quite easily.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Kirth:
Plus, they are about the only ones who do that sort of game, if you can call it that.

I take it you've never heard of the SCA then? Because that basically is a bloody huge LARP.

 

[aramis]

MAL,
THE SCA IS NO LARP!!!
(Pet peeve... )
Most of us DO NOT engage in Roleplay at events.
There are no character sheets.
There are few scripts, and those are solely for court.
The few who do engage in Roleplay often get criticised heavily for it... and most don't stay.

The SCA is a game, but I'd not class it as roleplay.

The SCA, far more than any LARP, is an obscessive lifestyle choice.

And amongst the gamers who are in the SCA, it runs the full gamut of GSN types...

Herr Wilhelm von Düsseldorf, LOM, CDW, AOA, OoClaymore-Service.
Mundanely, William Hostman
Digitally, Aramis.

 

[Flynn]

Aramis,

To the outsider, SCA can appear to be a LARP. You have a persona (aka character), you engage in activities of a game-like style in that persona (aka role-playing), and it involved live action instead of dice (aka LARP).

Now, I agree, SCA and other weapon combat societies (such as Amtgard, HFS, Dagohir, and others) are not LARPs in the true sense of LARPing.

I myself have spent some twelve years in Amtgard, and have been retired for four now, so I understand where you are coming from. It is more of a lifestyle and unusual form of martial arts than it is a LARP.

But I can still see where the uneducated (no matter their intelligence and education in other areas of life) might still view it as a LARP.

In Service,
Flynn

 

[Malenfant]

Well, to me a LARP is something where you physically pretend to be someone else and do stuff. I'm very familiar with LARPs, since it was a big part of the uni RPG society.

And one of my friends in the US is/was in the SCA so I got a good impression of what it does, and it sounds like it fits that definition. You do play a character after all. You make costumes (very fancy ones at that), heck some of you even make your own swords from what I've heard. You get together for big 'in-character' meetings too.

So don't take it as an insult

 

[Kirth]

Nope, never heard of SCA.
They'd probably give me the creeps the way WW players do.

 

[Flynn]

SCAdians are generally less freaky than WOD LARPers, and a good number of them brew their own alcohol or know someone who does.

Just as an FYI, Kirth.

Enjoy,
Flynn

 

[RickA]

Haven't finished reading this entire thread yet, but I must ask: why do you folks think the game mechanics set the nature of the game in GSN? Depending on what style adventures and modules the company produced for the game the GSN meter on just about every game out there can be all over the map.

Because D20 has so many modules out now (what with open sourcing DnD) you can go from the most theatre stage like play to the most detailed tactical simulation all within DnD. Why? Not because of the rules, the rules are irrelevent in 90% of all RPG's. It's the adventures that are written for it.

 

[RickA]

Originally posted by flykiller:
the ability to come up with ideas and approaches on one's own is a primary definition of a referee.

I'd agree with this on it's face, taken out of context. But as the discussion is essentially about what style the adventures are that you are playing on Saturday nights I'd disagree in context.

To paraphrase and maybe interpret what you were saying incorrectly (always a risk) a primary definition of a referee or GM in a RPG is not the ability to create adventure plots and detail them out to define a game style. Many good GM's don't do this much at all. Running professionally written modules at all their game sessions this sort of GM ends up having the games "style" defined by the company producing the modules.

Myself, I'd love to see more variety in the sort of material produced for Traveller. I've gone over that in other threads on this forum as well. Sell me some detailed and fleshed out narrative style modules, some DnD style linear adventures too, and set them in the excellent simulation of a SciFi space opera universe known as the OTU.

 

[flykiller]

a primary definition of a referee or GM in a RPG is not the ability to create adventure plots and detail them out to define a game style.

I would have to say that if the referee isn't doing exactly that then he's not refereeing, he's reading.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by RickA:
Haven't finished reading this entire thread yet, but I must ask: why do you folks think the game mechanics set the nature of the game in GSN?

Systems encourage narrativist play by giving mechanical rewards for it. e.g. If you play a character's beliefs that you have on his character sheet, then you get a Hero Point to use on a re-roll or something. Or if you describe a cool sounding stunt he's doing in combat then you get a bonus dice for it.

Without that, well, you can still play in depth characters, but you don't get any in-game reward for playing them. Which doesn't tend to encourage people to play characters that way much.

 

[RickA]

Originally posted by flykiller:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />a primary definition of a referee or GM in a RPG is not the ability to create adventure plots and detail them out to define a game style.

I would have to say that if the referee isn't doing exactly that then he's not refereeing, he's reading. </font>[/QUOTE]I'd disagree, but respect your opinion.

I know more than one GM (myself included) who over the years has simply lost the time to write adventures and instead depends on professionally written modules for 100% of their weekly game scenarios. There are advantages, mainly that you can expect a professional to be better at this than most amateurs (I don't bother writting novels for myself to read, I buy professionally written ones to read).

There are many more skills that are called upon in my weekly game session that have nothing to do with my ability to sit down with blank paper and write up adventures. Many!

 

[kurtis]

Since we're talking about GNS, another fun design tool for RPGs that has gotten recent discussion in some quarters is Core Story (to use one term for it).

Tired Disclaimer: You can't get into any rpg game theory discussion without a certain amount of head-butting (as this thread can attest), but I'm going to base my post around the recent discussion kicked up by a Mike Mearls essay from this past spring. Mike is well known in d20 circles as a popular designer and is a recent hire at WotC. His essay is therefore mainly from a D&D perspective. He is also sometimes outspoken and opinionated on the internet and other forums. Therefore, if for any reason you hate/dislike/distain his design, writing, or opinions; more power to ya. The essay remains a nice introduction to the core story concept (which he doesn't take any credit for inventing). The upshot was a lot of spawned discussion threads in various boards and blogs (I know you saw this thread on RPG.net, Mal ).

Anyway, the idea as I saw it, was to describe the fundamental gameplay narrative from the player's point of view (as opposed to GNS's character narrative). A good core story will tell a prospective player for your game the answers to the questions of who, what, and why, in regards to character play. Having a defined, focused core story can be a powerful tool to the rpg designer (or Referee/GM). The value of this concept remains a matter of opinion -- when Mike talks about most successful games having some kind of core story, he's speaking from a designer/publisher/sales point of view -- you're mileage may vary.

As an example from the essay comments, here is D&D's core story:

Originally posted on LiveJournal by Ryan Dancey:
A party of adventurers assemble to seek fame and fortune. They leave civilization for a location of extreme danger. They fight monsters and overcome obstacles and acquire new abilities and items of power. Afterwards they return to civilization and sell the phat loot. Next week, they do it all over again.

(Note: This can be reduced to: "The party of adventurers kicks down the door, kills the monster, takes its stuff, and powers up.")

(Note the 2nd: This is the basic forumula of virtually every popular (A)D&D scenario ever written....)

For Star Wars RPG:

Originally posted on LiveJournal by Ryan Dancey:
"A team of heroes goes to a space-based location, infiltrates it, and accomplishes a goal before fleeing to safety."

(Note: This is a central component of Star Wars Episodes I, III, IV, and VI!)

(Note the 2nd: I don't think that there are any published D20 SW adventures that exploit this core story...)

Takes on specific D&D settings and other games:

Originally posted by various:
"The heroes are the oppressed people of Athas who rise against the forces that would enslave them, battle against the minions of the wizard kings, and push back the yoke of tyranny."

"The heroes are independent operatives who accept comissions from powerful merchant families to infiltrate exotic locations, accomplish a goal to defeat a rival or evil organization, and flee to safety as the location either blows up, collapses, or falls into a volcanic rift."

"A party of investigators is thrown together by the shared experience of a supernatural or inhuman terror. They pursue clues and question witnesses, travelling the world in an attempt to foil a plot by cultists or other servants of the Mythos before it is complete. Next week, if they aren't all dead or insane, they do it all over again."

"A bunch of middle-aged freelance thugs arrive at a new star system, maybe do some trading, get a job from a patron, get in trouble, resolve trouble, and leave for the next star system. Repeat next week."

Okay, so that last one was someone's humorous attempt at defining Traveller's core story, but that does beg the question. The initial CT release clearly had no core story whatsoever. The proverbial, "okay, I created a character, now what?" flavor of game.

One of the things I observed in the discussion of this idea is that there is a direct relationship between supported game mechanics and the kinds of core stories a game can support. In an ENWorld thread on this topic, Mike states that in the past, the core story of many games evolved organically from the way players adapted the available rules, and that current designers now try to turn that around by creating support specifically for the intended adventure narrative. CT mechanics supported ex-military characters, combat, and interstellar trade. So is it any surprise that two of the first core stories to emerge in CT were Free Traders and Merc Tickets?

For comparison, Mike observes in his essay that "GURPS lacks a core story, but it's designed to allow the end user to replicate the core stories taken from other games" and later opines that "a game that lacks a core story invariably acquires D&D's core story". I'm not entirely convinced of the latter, but we've all heard of (or experienced) Traveller games run as D&D style dungeon crawls.

Obviously, individual GMs can mold their campaigns around any core story they wish, but does that mean designers can safely ignore the idea altogether? I can also see the utility of using this idea at the individual IMTU level. Should the designer/publisher simply assume the GMs will always provide this level of abstraction? It's pretty clear to me that games using the "narrow but deep" design are easier to run and find/keep players. The alternative is to be a niche game or take the GURPS kitchen sink (with strong supplemental settings) approach. In hindsight, CT started without any core story (or "theme"), and later the OTU setting evolved to provide some support for a number of vaguely defined game narratives. Subsequent versions of the game increasingly tightened the core stories and the rules that supported them (until T4 -- all of Aramis's comments on this point are excellent).

I don't think you have to have a highly detailed setting (for those that prefer to roll their own) in order to implement a durable core story. You can make the gameplay about something without having to provide maps or specifics. The rules you provide (or omit) are going to create a core gameplay pattern in any case, so why not plan for that up front? Those that wish can take the game beyond the base narrative (I can run a D&D campaign that turns the D&D Core Story on its ear), and those that don't can easily get a quick grip on the expected nature of the characters and their adventures.

I do not mean this as a dig against past versions of the game. I personally can handle the soft narrative focus found in the various versions of Traveller, but I admit there are advantges to a strong core story I wouldn't mind having. However, I do have to wonder if it's possible to capture the essense of Traveller in a core story abstract and deep enough to be useful, better than "a bunch of middle-aged freelance thugs...", anyway. The tremendous history and resources this game has can also be its worst baggage.

Does T5 have to trod the old path, or would a different design approach benefit more gamers? I'm not convinced the 'throw them in pool' approach would be very successful today.

 

[Malenfant]

Yeah, I did see that thread - I'm sure I commented on this "core story" concept somewhere on CotI too... (maybe even on this thread, I dunno).

 

[RickA]

Wasn't TNE a big "Here is the core story" setting? I mean, it seems pretty solidly put forth as such.

I'm still in the camp of "what the modules do, the players/gm's follow" as far as style of gaming is concerned.

Consider 0one Games "Legend of the Steel General" d20 DnD adventure. This is not a dungeon crawl in the sneering sense, it's an epic war/battle fought out with the PC's right there in it. Like some of the original Dragonlance modules that were released. Story, plot, avoiding a substantial underground monster maze, this is what good DnD modules do nowadays.

Maybe back in the old Gygax "Steading of the Hill Giant Jarl" and "Tomb of Horror" days the state of the art was the dungeon crawl, but no longer.

The core story of a DnD campaign is defined 99% by the nature of the adventures the DM choses to run (and there is a wide variety of them in commercial print). Same can be said for any RPG, including Traveller, wouldn't you say?

 

[flykiller]

an excellent discussion, worthy of more consideration later.

I'm not convinced the 'throw them in pool' approach would be very successful today.

is there any other way?

in d&d travel, population, history, and knowledge are limited. it's not too hard for a referee to set boundaries to his story and to his work, and to keep the players within it. how do things work? hey, it's magic, just roll the dice.

traveller is a whole 'nuther ball of wax. eleven thousand worlds, each with a thousand years of history at least. several human empires, thousands of years old, all playing a role. major alien empires, each as large and old as the human ones, each with its own point of view, culture, and history. a technological level that spans cavemen to anti-matter power plants. massive data banks, accessible at a touch. ships, cities, cultures, nobility, religions, and planets by the boatload, all of it interactive. the players are free to set down anywhere in this vast undefined stage - and the referee has to deal with it. and he can't say, "hey, it's magic", it all has to be at least plausible because traveller is supposed to be a 'realistic' game.

I spent three years getting ready for my games. when they started, I realized I wasn't ready at all. every game I play, every session I run, requires me to make rulings and decisions that affect the rest of the game. I have to make up half of it as I go along. I have to lock up my players in situations that take weeks to resolve, just so I have time to think and plan for the next step. it's nuts.

traveller's hard. I think that's why so few people actually play. but when you finally get a handle on it - the scope is awesome. and it's mine. my deckplans, my rules, my worlds, my characters, my adventures. my story. thanks mwm, but I'm the one who made it work. wouldn't have it any other way.

I don't know. maybe you can make a huge series of modules for traveller that limit the scope, keep the action contained, hold the referee's hand as they walk him through the long pre-planned adventure (good luck dealing with the players though). get people hooked on it like they're hooked on harry potter, standing around waiting, putting their games on hold - "when's the next module in the series coming out!" to me that's kind of like putting a lawnmower engine in a sports car, but hey, what do I know. maybe that's the business way to go.

"ok, the players can jump to these seven worlds, I'll spend six hours preparing for all seven. hah, I'm ready for my group tonight." "hey, we changed our mind, we're going to jump in the opposite direction to whatsitsname." (toss notebook behind me, get out dice) "ok, when you get there you find ... " (roll roll roll).

 

[kurtis]

Yes, I think TNE clearly came pretty close to the modern idea of core story. Aramis pretty well nailed down the narrrative strength of the various versions.

I also agree that adventures (modules, etc.) figure into this idea significantly, but I see chicken v. egg here too. Shadowrun, for example, contains vehicle combat rules, but no actual chase rules, per se. The published adventures for SR contain many vehicle combat opportunities, but very few actual vehicle chase encounters. By borrowing some of its core story from D&D, it takes on a very site-based adventure pattern. I think as urban as SR is, however, chase rules (ala Spycraft or similar) would have greatly improved it's blend of genre game narrative. The result is, chases aren't much part of SR -- at least from the designer/publisher POV.

A core story is mainly a tool for the designer/publisher. It not only tells them how to structure the initial adventure support, it tells them what kind of game action mechanics they need to intially implement in the rules.

Regarding the "traveller's hard" notion; I am totally on board. The few Traveller games being run entirely by 'the book' are probably GT/T20. Even the some of the bluest CT diehards have some house rules. Having studied the various editions of a game and its player community for three decades gives you a huge palette of thought and material, and with a lot of hard work you can make miracles happen. That's totally cool! It is not, however, a market for selling a new RPG.

So one of the questions about T5 is, what is it for? A number of folks on this board wanted to see some flavor of 'CT+', which I think is a really interesting idea for legacy players, but not a great market product. It's now clear that this isn't what Marc has in mind anyway. The best game that T5 can be, is one completely approachable and attractive to new players, which also allows legacy players to adopt for their homebrews if they choose to do so. I don't think there is any requirement for T5 to be a compelling choice for legacy players. Just a requirement for some level of compatibility. (See threads like "What was wrong with CT?" for the futility of uniting legacy players.)

 

[Malenfant]

"ok, the players can jump to these seven worlds, I'll spend six hours preparing for all seven. hah, I'm ready for my group tonight." "hey, we changed our mind, we're going to jump in the opposite direction to whatsitsname." (toss notebook behind me, get out dice) "ok, when you get there you find ... " (roll roll roll).

I have no idea how you prepare for this, but could you not come up with a generalised scenario and just place it wherever the PCs end up going? They're not going to all seven (or eight ) places at once after all.