Tuesday 15 August 2017

Shattered Mirrors: Structure & Procedures (#3)

(Shattered Mirrors is a storygame I’m writing, blogging the process here to entertain and hopefully get some advice/feedback. For the introductory post that lays out the design goals of the project, look here.
To check out the last storygame I produced, head over to gamesfromthewildwood.itch.io/endlesssea. To read the history of its design, check out the 'across the endless sea' tag on this blog).

Alright, so let’s pick design for Shattered Mirrors back up. Things haven’t advanced as much as I originally intended, because I accidentally tripped and designed an entire other game from scratch, but I’m pushing on regardless.

I think it’s time to talk about mechanics.

Firstly, I think this game draws a distinction between what for now I’m going to call (titles pending) ‘vignettes’ and ‘scenes’. The former is framed entirely by one player – it’s pure narration, pure storytelling. The latter involves two or more players, and is framed around a conflict.

This game has a distinct and deliberate structure of three (or maybe five, and lean Shakespearean?) Acts, with different lengths, tone, goals, and mechanics for each.

Act One
The first Act is a series of vignettes. Each of the core fictional playbooks (The Child, The Departed, The Ghost, The Authority) takes it in turn framing a vignette that illuminates and introduces certain elements of the story, and answers certain questions.

This is where we see the despair of the Ghost and how the Child is affected, this is where we see that the Departed is a hole in the life of the family, this is where we meet the Authority and see this tyrannical controlling force that insists it knows best for the child (benevolent, well-meaning).

During these vignettes, each other player is allowed (but not mandated) to request elaboration or doubling-down on a particular element that interests them.

This Act ends with the Authority’s vignette, in which we see the arrival of supernatural badness.


Act Two

The second Act is a series of scenes. It is far and away the longest of the Acts, as it contains the bulk of the story. This is the portion of the game in which the Child’s quest for the return of the Departed is carried out, as well as much of the build-up involving contact with the Authority’s agents and possibly (indirectly, through a dream or in the world) the Authority themself.

The draft procedure for what these scenes will look like goes something like this.

1: The Child decides what the next scene is about. Where are they going? What are they doing? Is this scene about healing the Ghost, or following the Departed’s quest, or [INSERT OTHER CHOICES?] This is where they set the stakes of what is at stake to be won.
2: Based on that choice, the Antagonist playbook passes to either The Departed or The Authority. Whichever didn’t take it, claims The Judge playbook.
3: The Antagonist
onsults the choice that they’ve made on their playbook and thinks about where the story is currently at, and frames the scene.
4: Narration goes back and forth between the Antagonist and the Child. The latter says what they do, the former introduces opposition / monstrosity / difficulty and describes what it does.
5: The Judge and the Guide watch and listen closely. When their roles call for it, they decide how well things work and tell the Child what and how many to choose.
6: Once the question of the scene’s stakes (the next step in the Departed’s quest, an attempt to help the Ghost, an attempt at exerting control by the Authority) has been resolved through play, the Antagonist closes the scene.

(This question, given the genre we’re emulating, isn’t really a question about if the Child wins what they wanted. It’s more a question about what it costs them, and how much they gain).


Act Three
The third Act is made up of one scene and then maybe a few vignettes. It is, essentially, the final confrontation and then the epilogue. The Antagonist is always the Authority, in this scene, and the Departed is always the Judge.

Otherwise, I think it probably plays out normally? The exception is that here it is possible to fail – this is where we get the ambiguous tragic Pan’s Labyrinth ending. Whether that’s just a player choice about tone or a different list for Things Lost, I’m not sure.


With all that structure in mind, all that really remains is to specify and refine the mechanics for resolution. And here, I think, I’m just going to double-down on what worked very well in Across the Endless Sea by doubling the number of players who get to assign choices.

Hence:
  • When the Child and the Antagonist’s forces come into opposition, the Judge decides how it goes (it works completely, it works partly or at cost, it doesn’t work) and how much is won or lost.
  • When the Child calls on the magic of the Otherworld, the Ghost decides how it goes (it works completely, it works partly or at cost, it doesn’t work) and how well it works and how much is cost.

So we end up with one player advocating on behalf of the Child and another arbitrating on no-one’s behalf but in a way and with a set of priorities and mechanics that will necessarily favour the Antagonist (simply because the Child will usually lose something, or pay a price, and thus end up weaker by the time Act Three arrives).



And that's what I'm currently looking at. Without a doubt the next step is to actually write a playbook and work out what those will look like, as well as figuring out how these rules will actually be communicated.

That's design work I'll probably try to do on stream? 

No set thoughts on timing yet, but if watching me work on a game and getting to make suggestions is something that interests you, the time and date for that will no doubt be posted up on my Twitter eventually.

Otherwise that about wraps things up for this week's project. Hopefully by next time I'll have some excerpts of a playbook ready to show y'all (or maybe something to celebrate my resurgent love for Monsterhearts 2...)

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If you'd like to support me to keep creating material like this and working on other RPG/game-design projects, check out my Patreon to help me do more cool stuff like this. You can get access to monthly Q&As, early-access playtesting of my story games, or a place on the credits list for any game I make. 

When the Patron really gets up and happening I'm planning to start running playtest sessions of my games with patrons, so go get in on that potential action!).

Tuesday 1 August 2017

Shattered Mirrors: Mechanics (#2)

(Shattered Mirrors is a storygame I’m writing, blogging the process here to entertain and hopefully get some advice/feedback. For the introductory post that lays out the design goals of the project, look here.
To check out the last storygame I produced, head over to gamesfromthewildwood.itch.io/endlesssea. To read the history of its design, check out the 'across the endless sea' tag on this blog).

So, I've got an idea for a game, and some vague ideas about narrative archetypes. What comes next? 

I'm going to do something slightly different with today's post, and just share the personal notes I transcribed yesterday from a bunch of voicemails I left myself while walking to work and while on the bus (otherwise-"dead" time that's excellent for being creative). 

These notes aren't polished, and they aren't mechanics yet, but in them the basic shape of this game is starting to emerge. 

I hope that seeing what things looks like now, and then later seeing what this is solidified into, will be at least entertaining and maybe even interesting or educational. So, without further ado, here's the current state-of-thought regarding how this game will work:

We have four characters who all have clearly-defined domains of things within the story that belong to them (ref. Polaris roles). These also all have within them choices that structure what the story is about – the Absence choses the Quest, the Authority creates their Agents, etc. These characters are:

The Child:
You are a child who has known loss in your family and watched it destroy those you loved, even the survivors. Given time, it may destroy you too. Your family is broken now. Ruined. You want only one thing in all the world: to have your family back as they were: loving, and together, and here. You will do anything to make that happen.
You frame your own actions, and the memories you have of your family. These may be scenes that truly happened, or imagined reunions to give you strength to go on. You also make the initial aesthetic decisions of the game: what kind of real world is this, what kind of Otherworld?
The Departed (a Parent, a Sibling, a Friend):
You are the absence that makes this family broken. You are distant, you are missing, you are long-dead. Whatever the reason, you are gone. It is the wounds of your loss the Child must heal, your return their goal. You are their quest. You too want to reunite, of course, but for whatever reason (choose 1 - including "you are dead") you can’t.
You frame the object for which the Child is searching, the quest that drives them through the Otherworld. You frame the obstacles that they must confront, too. This may be literal, as in Kubo and the Two Strings (The Armour of Three Parts), or it may be more figurative (the quest for Saoirse’s heritage in Song of the Sea).
The Ghost (a Parent, a Sibling, a Caregiver):
You are the emotional anchor of this story, your healing the drive behind the Child’s quest. To have you back, as you were, is the burning desire that drives them through perilous wonder and beautiful danger. You want do right by them, to be better. But you are burdened, and so weary, and without help you can’t.
You frame the beauty of the Otherworld: the magic of love and compassion and childhood wonder that the Child can draw upon, and the friends who will help them along the way. This help may be direct (the transformation of Kubo’s mother into Monkey and her gift of magic, in Kubo and the Two Strings) or from more diverse sources (the magic of the Selkie Song, the Great Seanachai).
The Authority (a Grandparent, a Family Friend):
You are the force of benevolent well-meaning tyranny that stands in the Child’s way, both in the real world and the Otherworld. You want them removed from the Ghost and in your care, for both of their own good of course.
You frame the Servants of Darkness, the creatures of the Otherworld that try to stand in the Child’s way (in Song of the Sea, the owl-familiars of Macha; in Kubo and the Two Strings, the two Star-Aunts). You frame the darkness and hopelessness that creeps into their heart, and seek to keep them from their destination. 

The Child definitely has something that resembles the decision of Our Destiny that Andrew wrote into Girl by Moonlight. They make choices at the start of the game that shapes what the win-state of this story looks like. 
They also start with an ally/companion – not physically powerful, but offering emotional support and guidance. This is Cu from Song of the Sea; this is paper Hanzo in Kubo & the Two Strings.

How does play actually work?

The First Act is very very structured. There are mandatory scenes framed by each character. It opens with the Child, it closes with the Authority and the intrusion of supernatural badness. Pre-defined pre-ordered scenes, prompts on the character sheets for choices what they’re about.

This is where we see the despair of the one left behind and how the Child is affected ,this is where we see that the Absence is a hole in the life of the family, this is where we meet the Authority and see this tyrannical controlling force that insists it knows best for the child (benevolent, well-meaning).

Then we enter the game proper, we’re now in the Otherworld – this means a different structure.

In any given scene the Protagonist always lays parameters (they chose position/effect, to borrow a Blades metaphor). They control what the scene is about – what are the stakes. They don’t get to frame what the scene is.
Whichever character has authority over what the scene’s about frames the scene.

This is a four player game, therefore it must have four distinct mechanical roles that may or may not match up with / be linked to narrative roles. Like Polaris, each player needs something to do.
Here is what they are:
  • The Protagonist – they frame expectations, they make most decisions
  • The Antagonist – they frame the scene, they set actual stakes? Maybe a negotiation process?
  • The Guide – helps the Protagonist through
  • The Judge – representative of the rules & the game structure

Instead of the Judge role and the Antagonist resting in the hands of the same player, they are deliberately separated out.

Lean into Ash’s observation about Across the Endless Sea and choices & lists. All the Judge can do is distribute choices from lists, but that’s the greatest authority of all. As the scene goes back and forth, based on what is common-sense and what seems fair (and maybe a tonal/genre guiding tool in terms of how severe this story should be and how often success should happen / with which costs) they assign consequence/victory for other players to choose from.

Can you resist these consequences, like in Blades? Maybe. Is it a limited resource? Yes.

As in Endless Sea, the lists are distinct between playbooks  They are unique. Probably the Child has a list of Things Won and Things Lost, and then the others have lists of moves they can make / things they can inflict. Choices from these lists are incorporated into fiction as the scene goes on, rather than at the end of the scene (as mostly happens in Endless Sea).

Where there is conflict, the Judge resolves the outcome: usually either “you can have this but it costs you” or “you can’t have this but you gain something”. These choices are assigned, they immediately feed back into the narrative, play rolls on.

I imagine probably that a scene will run for 20-30 minutes. Assuming a 3-hour run time we’ll only really get 4 set-piece scenes but that sounds about right to the genre.

Some kind of mechanical structure that we shift into for the Big Finale Scene where everything is put right (or if this is the tragic version, where things are ambiguous - think the closing of Pan's Labyrinth).



So, there's what I've currently got! 

At this point I'm expecting that the manifestation of this requires 8 playbooks: 4 narrative ones for the Child, Ghost, Departed, & Authority; 3 mechanical ones for the Protagonist, Antagonist, & Judge; and then one mixed narrative-mechanical playbook for the Guide. 

The Child & the Protagonist playbooks always go together, but otherwise the roles of Antagonist, Judge, & Guide circulate between the other players depending on which intention/stakes the Child declares for a given scene. 

It's possible though, looking back over my notes above on narrative roles, that the Guide & the Ghost always go together, and the Guide is explicitly framed as a representation of the relationship-that-was before the Ghost fell into despair. 

At that point we're now just circulating antagonism between the Departed's Quest, by which the Child can get them back, and the Authority's attempt at establishing control.

Hm. I kind of like that better? 

And I think it's more in keeping, actually, with the key texts I'm drawing from. 

Anyway, that's enough for now. Next time I should have an actual write-up of some game procedures, samples of the text from the mechanical playbooks to describe how the game will actually run. If you've got any questions about the notes above (clarifying my meaning is always a helpful exercise) or any thoughts/suggestions on what I'm currently thinking, please leave them below as a comment and be part of this design process.

(Find this post useful/interesting? Enjoy the content I'm putting out on this blog?

If you'd like to support me to keep creating material like this and working on other RPG/game-design projects, check out my Patreon to help me do more cool stuff like this. You can get access to monthly Q&As, early-access playtesting of my story games, or a place on the credits list for any game I make. 

Whenthe Patron really gets up and happening I'm planning to start running playtest sessions of my games with patrons, so go get in on that potential action!).