Eating Crow: Positive Design and Mustafar

Eating Crow is when I admit a previous blog post was wrong, and why I think it was. This is a continuation a previous post. I recommend reading it. 

The Mustafar Duel is one of the big influences on Crescendo. Two brothers who have been molded by their experiences, who thought they meant the world to each other, only to discover they value their ideals more. This kind of moment should be happening in Crescendo all the time! But, in my years of playing, it has never come up since the metacurrency is dropped. 

Why?

Metacurrency is one of the chief tools of what I call Positive Design: do a thing and get rewarded for doing it! This triggers the Pavlovian response, and players then go for those kinds of actions instinctively. It’s a powerful tool. But this kind of design has a downside: it can short-circuit the soul. People just start chasing the kick. So, for a long time, I removed metacurrency rewards from Crescendo and focused on Negative Design, which allows players more inherent freedom. This sounded like a good idea. And I think Crescendo is a great game as it is in part because I focused on making the game inherently fun, without the dopamine kicks. Gameplay is smooth and easy and surprising. No session of play is like another. As it stands, Crescendo is by far the best long-form “storygame” I have ever seen.

But. There’s not even one Mustafar match, in a game about Heroes possessed by Beliefs. And that’s not how that’s supposed to work. Heroes are uneasy allies normally, or passionate friends/enemies. Crescendo not doing that experience is a critical flaw.

So what gives?

Well, it turns out I messed up. See, certain actions are just inherently unpleasant. Sticking to your Beliefs past the point of opposing another player is one of them. So the dopamine rush incentivizes you past the discomfort. And there are moments that should happen in Crescendo that are very uncomfortable. Like almost killing your brother. 

So, here’s how I changed the game. About a week before editing begins. It’s fine.

Fate Points

This is a metacurrency that can be spent to reduce the Margin during a Defy (which keeps the setting from changing in huge ways) or reduce an incoming Condition’s level, one for one. 

If you beat a Defy by 3, you can spend 3 Fate Points to make the Margin 0, instead.

So if you get a level 6 Lonely Condition (which would kill your Hero), you can spend 5 Fate Points to make it a level 1 Lonely Condition instead.

 You may cancel a Crescendo (a huge plot twist which has enormous consequences) for 8 Fate Points. Hit the Books to see what strange thing happens instead.

End of Chapter 

Go through each Belief. If there are multiple Players, go to a different Player each time. 

- Did you act on the Belief in a way that created trouble for others, particularly the other Players? If so, record a Bullet Point (a sentence in your Journal, which counts as XP for advancement) and take a Fate Point. 

- Did you act against a Belief in a way that created trouble for others, particularly the other Players? If so, record two Bullet Points. One is the action, the other is why you did it. Take two Fate Points. 

-If there are multiple Players, did your actions cause another Hero to receive a Condition? If so, take a number of Fate Points equal to the lowest level of Condition received. Write the Belief you acted upon to harm the other Hero as a Bullet Point.

- If you change a Belief voluntarily, take a number of Fate Points equal to the number of Chapters (sessions of play) you held it for.

Normally I would be reticent to allow Fate Points to be taken for acting on or against all your Beliefs. The dopamine kick would be very strong, and players would start gaming the system for Fate Points instead of actually role playing. 

But Crescendo has an answer for this: the Journal! 

You have to write the action down, forcing the more rational part of the brain to tun on alongside the dopamine lover, which is definitely one of the most human things one can do. It turns from “press button get pellet” to “I did something meaningful and here’s a pellet!” Humans are rationalizing animals. The more often you can get both halves of that existence to turn on at the same time, the better your life.

A further knock-on effect is that the Weaver can really take the gloves off. Role playing is a social activity, and giving out Conditions hits the “feel bad” center in the brain. Players, however, now have a means of lowering the sting, should they choose, using resources they earned. Defies, which can be extremely tumultuous, can be used only when the player actually wants to. Players have more control over the story… provided they mess things up themselves. From victimizing to empowerment!

Positive Design got a bad rap from me in the previous post. Not all actions are inherently pleasant, even if they’re very important to the experience, and therefore Negative Design can’t do much with them. In these cases, Positive Design can smooth over the rough edges, incentivizing actions that Negative Design simply can’t address. It’s a rough lesson to learn, but a vital one.

Design Journal: Conflicts and Pitches

I don't remember the Burning Wheel campaign Suihkulahde terribly fondly. On the one hand, it has some of the best world building I've ever done for The Wanderers' Psalms. On the other hand, the kind of  worldbuilding I did was completely outside the scope of Burning Wheel. Burning Wheel is entirely about the players' Beliefs. That's the GM's job. And when I want to play in that style, Burning Wheel is absolutely the best at it. But Gene Wolfe had added a new element: the world was its own thing. When the characters weren't looking, the world was having its own adventures. Reading a Gene Wolfe book was like walking on top of an iceberg. It was vital you kept your feet and it was cold and those things mattered... but you were still on an iceberg. 90% of the darn thing was unknown to you. Pretending that the unknown parts of the structure (i.e., currents and whatever behemoths swimming around the iceberg) were unimportant was an absurdity.

I could honestly write forever on the philosophical and ideological differences between Crescendo and Burning Wheel. But that would be criticizing the giant whose shoulders I stand on. I am where I am because of Luke Crane, after all.

And besides, I want to tell the story of how I came up with my solution, which is now in Crescendo.

The Tarot Map

I started by considering system-neutral house rules. I decided to lay out the Major Arcana of the Tarot in a randomized order. The players were always in the middle of this map, with that Arcana being "the current problem". The cards in the ring closes to the center, four in all, were situations that benefited from "the current problem". If things got hot enough "the current problem" would be cycled out to the edge, and one in the immediate ring would move in closer.

I hated this. It was too cumbersome. I didn't like having to come up with twenty some odd conflicts, only about five of them really mattering. And, frankly, I could barely keep track of more than three. So, obviously, this was not the answer.  I wanted to be able to walk, play, and then walk back out. I wanted a game, not another job on top of my job on top of my wife and kids.

Maybe, at some point, a few years after the fact, I'll revisit this idea. But it sure isn't now.

The Chronicle and the Drunk Rule

I decided to only have three Conflicts going on. It was the most I could keep track of at the table. I decided I would focus on "just" these three things, and  then journal between sessions about what was going on in the background. Simpler, for sure, and I like working on some stuff between sessions and all that.

It was during this time Kyle and I came up with the Drunk/Tired Rule: if you cannot play a game while drunk or tired and feel better for it afterwards, it is a bad game. Games are supposed to rejuvenating. Not just distracting, rejuvenating! This proved to be a turning point in my design, and what would eventually lead to Crescendo itself.

And this chronicling nonsense wasn't it.

Maybe if I was single, or without children, I'd have time to really write it all down between sessions. Focus, you know? But by this point I didn't want to do that. If I wanted to write fiction I'd write fiction! And I didn't want to do that, I wanted to play a game that had a story that came out of it! It was too much work for what I wanted to do.

Hitting the Books

At this point I figured that writing something down was the way to go. I needed a mechanic that would help generate unexpected results, results that could indicate that 90% the players weren't interacting with while they were on the iceberg. That's when I remembered the process of searching random passages in Virgil. For thos that don't know, if you want an answer to something, it was said that you could find your answers by opening a book of Virgil's, closing your eyes, and putting your finger down. Whatever your finger lands upon is the answer.

So why not do this with a book while playing? And make a journal, where you can control what goes into it, and thus make it a genuine mechanic?

So everyone opens their journals to where they know there's writing, closes their eyes, puts their finger down, and then reads whatever their finger landed upon. The GM then free associates all these prompts into whatever information they require.

The OSR does this with tables all the time, why not do it with journals or books? Not only does this make players write things down, but it provides an avenue of gameplay that is qualitative, which is what TTRPGs are all about! And this allows an incredible kind of player agency, one which subtle, but powerful: the ability to tweak the GM's subconscious. You get to program your GM! How is this not

Testing has not been completely free of problems. It was necessary to codify the rules for Hitting the Books a bit. But the tone, the feel, is exactly what I was going for. There's an odd coherency that increases as time goes on. The story has a rhythm and tone that are unexpected, but not overly so. And frankly, writing the story out is fun!

Conflicts and Pitch

Hitting the Books, however, was not the end of it. Hitting the Books is a mechanic, a means, not the goal itself. Fortunately, KISS is king. There's three Conflicts, which are future tense statements:

Mother is learning how to exist.

The wolves will invade Serpent.

The Guild will change how the city Serpent exists.

Notice that what these statements mean is up for debate. It's flexible. Open. 

But when do the Conflicts shift? That's what Pitch is for. Pitch is a counter attached to each Conflict. Pitch increases whenever it's addressed in a scene, (by 1-3) and all Conflict Pitches increase by 1 at the end of every session.

Whenever a scene ends, the Conflict that the GM used is rolled against with a D20. If the GM rolls equal to or lower than the Pitch, an Opportunity comes up to end the Conflict. Whether they do or not, given the Opportunity, is up to the table. After the Opportunity is addressed, the GM either modifies the Conflict or writes a new one, and resets its Pitch to zero.

Conflicts and Pitch, combined with Hitting the Books, eliminates prep while creating a mysterious narrative. You write your three Conflicts. The Pitch tells you the chances of that Conflict blowing up at any time, and it constantly builds. You just engage the players where they're at, and overarching setting stuff gets injected randomly via Hitting the Books, forcing everyone to make meaning for themselves.

People like doing this.

It's good for them.

And isn't that kinda the point?

 Crescendo is a truly amazing experience. I can't wait to share it with y'all.

Design Journal: Crescendo's Beliefs

There is no mechanic I love more than Beliefs. Pioneered by Luke Crane's Burning Wheel, Beliefs are a subjective statement made entirely by the players. They're used to determine scenarios in the game, making the story tailor-made to what the players want it to be about. The sheer utility of this mechanic can't be understated. Players get to write what they want. The GM gets a statement they get to interpret. Inherently creative, Beliefs give back far more than what are put into them.

There is no mechanic that is even close to a Belief. 

Period.

This is a blog post about how I almost gave up on Beliefs for my game, Crescendo.

Two (Necessary?) Asides

As a quick aside, there's a saying in the art world: don't make portraits of those you love. I love the works of Gene Wolfe. I am trying to capture the feeling I get when I read his books. This is objectively not a good idea at any point. It's a harder project for my emotional attachment. Things that should be obvious can't be. More time is spent is because I can't have an objective view of this design.

As an additional aside, there's a large elephant in the room: Burning Wheel. Anyone who reads more than a few posts of this blog is going to discover that Burning Wheel is my favorite game. Beliefs are my favorite mechanic in gaming. A lot of my thoughts on designing Crescendo are, inevitably, going to be about taking Beliefs and adapting it to my vision. Which means that Burning Wheel is going to come up a lot.  Crescendo isn't a hack of Burning Wheel, but it would be stupid to pretend that Crescendo doesn't owe a lot to it. A great deal of time has been spent repurposing Beliefs from the ground up, (usually) to the confusion and (sometimes) delight of my playtesters.

What is Crescendo?

Crescendo's central conceit isn’t a simple one: as character changes so should setting and vice versa. The game is principally based on the works of Gene Wolfe, which are intensely subjective, mythological, and cosmic. If you're going to do a Gene Wolfe game you have to have an intense subjectivity and soaring scale, which form each other. This is Crescnedo's by-line, its mission statement, is:

Belief Has Consequences

Okay, that's nice, but what does it feel like to play Crescendo? That's all very pie in the sky, but what am I going for?

Excellent question! Crescendo feels like this:

One movement causes a series of ripples in a pattern that nobody understands... until they pull back and see the full implications. Players each create a Hero whose Beliefs create consequences and the Lore Weaver (LW) creates a Setting for the Heroes' consequences to play out upon. These consequences are unknown even to the LW beforehand. Nobody knows where the ship is going. All you can do is ask "Well, what do you believe? And should that change?"

Heroes have Beliefs, Traits, and Scruples. Beliefs are what drive the Hero, Traits are how the Hero acts, and Scruples are hidden doubts/obligations that mess them up. The Setting has NPCs with simpler Beliefs, Locales and Histories that chronicle recent events, and Conflicts which rage across the Setting. 

The Journal

All participants have a journal, where they log their history and events of the session. The journals are used in a mechanic called Hitting the Books: everyone opens to a random line in their journals, closes their eyes, puts their finger down, and reads aloud their selection. The LW interprets these randomly picked prompts into whatever piece of information that's needed, primarily plot twists. And then everyone writes their interpretation of whatever the LW just said into their journals.

I cannot understate how much Hitting the Books impacts play. No one is driving. The Lore Weaver isn't called a Game Master because he's not in control of where things are going. He's given prompts and says "Well, this seems like a good idea right now". Nobody is driving. If there is a single way that Crescendo has genuinely changed the face of roleplaying games, Hitting the Books is it. 

There's various triggers throughout the game to record more lines in your journal. Once you record enough lines you can advance, gaining/ improving a skill or a relationship with an NPC.

The only thing even comparable are FFG's narrative dice, except Hitting the Books is cheaper and more creative. The dice are only marginally faster. Hitting the Books is also qualitative: success and failure aren't really a part of it, but bring in completely unexpected elements from past recordings. The more you play, the more eerily coherent the experience becomes, as past events factor into the present, creating more lines to choose from in the future. Hitting the Books sets up play loops that can last for tens of sessions before closing with a snap... creating a new loop.

Or, as one of the playtesters commented: "Reintegration is one hell of a drug".

Beliefs

The first thing I tried to do was to provide incentives for interacting with Beliefs, Burning Wheel style. And that would be reasonable for me to try! I'm a Burning Wheel vet! People will do what they're rewarded for. Right? Well, hold up. Burning Wheel's by-line and mission statement is

Fight For What You Believe

So, if you cause trouble for what you believe, you will be rewarded. This change at the core has been the hardest thing for me to navigate. Crescendo, if it's to stand on its own two legs, has to be its own thing from the ground up. Beliefs in Crescendo have to be fundamentally different from what they are in Burning Wheel.

Two and a half years have been spent trying a lot of different things with Beliefs, to the point where I was advised by some to just torch the Beliefs, outright!

Well, I did that, Robby, and that game's called Brick!, which I'll release as well. Probably first. We'll see. 

The problem, of course, is that Crescendo is about Belief and Setting in the style of Gene Wolfe. And I am going to see that through.  NPC Beliefs are based off the players'. 

But is that really enough? Heck no.

Belief is Perception

But that wasn't enough for me. It didn't feel Wolfe enough. And I really was about to just pitch them. Robby could be right. It hurt my pride, but I had to admit he might be right. Humility's good! It's fine! Fine...

Ironically enough Herbert came to my rescue.

In Children of Dune Herbert writes that information comes in two parts: Trivia and Message. Trivia was the base information that was in the world. The Message was what the recipient interpretated the Trivia into.

The lightning flash that lit up the interior darkness can't be understated.

What Herbert stated, Wolfe does. Most of his works feature this translation of Trivia into Message, using their preconceptions. Anyone who has read even a page of Wolfe knows this to be true. But Wolfe doesn't stop there. Wolfe doesn't just transmit Trivia to Message. Wolfe Shades. When the Message is assembled, the assembler discovers additional Trivia that doesn't fit what they believe.  It sticks there, an unknown that can't be quantified. Sometimes that Shade is an aspect of the Problem they hadn't anticipated.

And sometimes it's the Lord God Himself, wanting to have a word.

Suddenly, I knew how it had to go. Two and a half years, going on three, and suddenly it clicked: Beliefs were a Player tool for helping create Problems with the LW. The LW could present Trivia, pieces of information that might imply a context, but that's it. The Players then use their Beliefs to turn the Trivia into Messages. And then the LW adds a Shade to each Message. The Player then gets to write this modified Message down as a Bullet Point in their Journal. The Players must make at least one Message, and may make up to three, one for each of their Beliefs.

Putting it Together

All that's well and good, but what does it look like?

Hey everyone, meet Sir Mal, one of the example characters in Crescendo! He's the bastard street rat of a noble, found and restored to his place as a knight. Here's what you need to know about Sir Mal to understand what I'm writing:

Sir Mal

Beliefs

Beliefs are what Sir Mal uses to help construct Problems and are so used by the LW  to further complicate Sir Mal's life. Beliefs are what Sir Mal is willing to burn the whole world down for.

 

1. My father knighted me as he lay injured on the battlefield. I didn’t need his recognition to known honor and bravery are their own reward.

2. Once I came into manhood, I realized that no woman, even the queen, could resist me long. If she lifts her skirts, she’s fair game.

3. One day a knight, Sir Alain, came into the slums where I picked pockets, and told me that he was my father. To this day I’ve never met a kinder man.

 

Scruple

A Scruple is a hidden reservation or taboo a character has which holds them back. They're used to add Shades to Problems and to trip up Heroes during play.

You cannot trust the other nobles to do the right thing.

Traits

Traits are aspects of a Hero that either make you more powerful for acting on them or which make you weaker for ignoring them.

Charming, Nihilistic, Impulsive

Climbing a Tower to Get Royally Laid

Sir Mal has decided to deflower Princess Genevieve, for a multitude of reasons. He's climbed the tower where she lives and finally gotten in through the open window.

Paul the LW tells Alex, Sir Mal's player, that the Trivia for the current Problem are the soft candlelight in Princess Genevieve's room, Princess Genevieve just pulling a shift over her head, offering the briefest glimpse of perfection etched in flesh, and the open window Sir Mal just crawled through.

Alex's first Message is that Princess Genevieve has seen him before, as she was there for his formal knighting, from his first Belief! She's a bit shocked to find that he's climbed into her window, but she's not scared. Paul adds that Princess Genevieve isn't just not scared, she's calm, her pulse doesn't look like it's budged even a little bit. Alex writes "Princess Genevieve isn't even shocked to see me. This will be a fun night!" as a Bullet Point in his journal.

Alex's second Message is that his charming smile has never not made a woman weak in the knees, and that's definitely what's happening right now. Paul adds that Princess Genevieve lightly brushes a pendant of Elpida, The Most Holy Flame (wait did it glow slightly? Gotta be a trick of the light), but she doesn't break eye contact with Sir Mal. But yes, she looks very happy to see him. Alex writes "Princess Genevieve has one of those purity necklaces. But I can tell from just a glance she's mine."

Alex's third Message is that he leaves the window open, and in fact he doesn't really get off the windowsill, causing Princess Genevieve to relax even further. Paul adds that there's the sound of King Julian ranting and raving just outside Princess Genevieve's door... which she locks, factoring in Sir Mal's Scruple. Alex writes "King Julian really has lost his mind, and Princess Genevieve seems to think it's more sane to be locked in with me than out there with him. Excellent."

Remember...

All those Bullet Points can now come up again. There's always going to be fallout from constructing this Problem, regardless of how it's resolved. It might be next session, it might be forty sessions from now, but these Bullet Points always have a chance on forming the current situation.

Here's the Rope

Someone is going to point out that, even if Crescendo is just for one to three Players, things can get overcomplicated quickly! If three Players do this once per Belief  that's nine Bullet Points that everyone has to record. Not only could that take forever but that would be a very thorny, if not outright unwieldable, Problem.

And you're right.

So what?

If Players want to go overboard, whose fault is that? The designer? Or the player? I can't stop people from doing stupid stuff. I've found that people stop when they want to stop. If you approach the game in the way intended it's not a problem. Pretending that I can make someone approach the game in a healthy way is.. well.. laughable.  It would take so much work to construct a Problem in an unhealthy manner that I don't particularly feel that I need to safeguard it much. Journaling takes a bit of work. If you're playing the game, it's because you want to. So you'll automatically know when to stop.

In Conclusion

It's been a journey, but I finally got the Beliefs done! You use Beliefs to construct Problems with the Lore Weaver. The LW uses them to further challenge the Players by putting them in ethical trolley problems. And when the Players change their Beliefs, it sends ripples across The Setting, causing truly unexpected changes to the story. There's this amazing interplay between the subjective nature of the Beliefs and the incredibly bonkers changes in the world and the plot. You say what you are willing to burn the world down for and the world just convulses in response, mashing the incredibly person and epic together.

If any of this sounds amazing to you, come and join us the Die Young Games Discord Server! Crescendo is in its last stages of editing. There's sessions of it running. The people are great. So come on over!

The Truth Found in Death

 

Awhile back I was talking with the inestimable Mike Low, who linked me to one of his articles on violence in gaming. I'd been thinking on some of the stuff that he brought up in the article, and randomly decided to try and change the name of my Conflict mechanic in Crescendo to Struggle. I wanted to see if Mike was right; would removing words usually associated with violence in our day and age lead to people using the mechanic for non-violent purposes?

Actually, it did.

One of my playtesters called it out, specifically, when she noticed the change from Conflict to Struggle: "Wait, this isn't just for fighting?"

Mike, you were right. Not that I should be shocked. But yes, you're right.

Now, as a martial artist, fan of MMA, and US vet, I don't think violence is inherently a bad thing, nor is killing. If you have to do these things when you really need to there shouldn't be a stigma around it whatsoever. There's a very good reason why pre-modern societies tended towards militarism and blood: to say you're a state means you're willing to kill to keep what you and yours have. But games shouldn't necessarily be about violence, its costs, and things related to it. Violence should not be the default option. Period.

The Truth Found in Death is about violence. It's about the necessity of violence and courage in the face of certain death. It’s about how yes, violence can be beautiful, because people are beautiful and therefore can commit violence beautifully. But it’s also about the cost of violence. How you have to harden yourself to take it and dish it. Your body and soul will pay costs you never thought you’d have to, but here comes the piper a knocking! And ultimately how that violence may bereave others of their loved ones, changing them permanently. That change doesn’t stay put; it radiates out. 

The Truth Found in Death will use a modified PBTA engine. The game uses a single d20 to resolve all Moves. There are no stats in the game. Instead there are Exploits, feats of derring-do in the form of a sentence.You may use these Exploits to reroll your d20 rolls as often as you like… at the expense of possibly changing the plot in large ways. As you gain and spend XP you will be able to use your Exploits more often without affecting the story as much.

The Black Swans I pioneered in Crescendo return here, as does journaling! Journals will be used to not just record specific actions and use then to make more Black Swans, but also to record the actions of NPCs affected by the players’ actions. Lore will also be recorded in the journal, primarily as campfire stories and snatches of songs the party members sing to each other. Training sessions, where party members test each other, will also have elements of that time recorded.

And then there’s the core of the game: the fighting. The Truth Found in Death does not feature a dedicated combat system. That may sound odd, but without a mechanical start/stop this allows combat to ebb and flow organically, which help keep the immersion of the players. All creatures the players face have two principle elements to them: Locks and Approaches. Locks are a defensive aspect that has to be figured around: a kobold is a Jumpy Little Bastard. These Locks are absolute mechanical defenses: if someone swings at a kobold they’re going to miss, because he’s a Jumpy Little Bastard and moves out of the way! But if his back is to the wall, where can he go? He’s stuck, isn’t he? Or, y’know, maybe you just get him at the top of a cliff… the fall will do the trick, won’t it? Creatures also have Approaches, which tell you how they’re going to try and hit you. If you mess up your attacks or aren’t paying attention then you’ll get hit, flat. HP is low, and while HP recovers quickly the Conditions you get when you lose HP don’t, further hampering you in the fiction.

Thera is a lot to do on The Truth Found in Death yet; the game text is very much so in its beginning stages. I’m truly blessed to have friends who are willing to test my initial ideas, so that I can see where I want to go. 

I find game design to be a form of meditation. It helps me to process my life and figure out where to go next. The Truth Found in Death arises from musings on the incontrovertible fact that the most beautiful moments in my life are in no small way indebted to the ugliest.  Without those dark moments I’d not have the light I have today. Goodness does not come free. 

The payment, invariably, is in blood.

No, you won’t get the same answer to that problem. 

Nor should you.

SPACE OPERA EPISODE VIII: Designing For My Table

 

I had a system I thought worked. SPACE OPERA EPISODE VIII was originally meant to be Rooted in Trophy, with strong on-the-fly scenario creation. Play was supposed to be character-focused, fast, and unpredictable, with the seat-of-your-pants being attached to a rocket. It was meant for the times when someone couldn't show up to a session of one of my longer-running games. People could still play, have a great time, and move on, all in between an hour to two and a half hours.

I just scrapped most of the mechanics and started over.

Don't get wrong, I loved the mechanics! They produced interesting results. Trophy's got some seriously awesome mechanics behind it and I can't wait to finally play me some Trophy Gold with the hardcover I ordered. Trophy Dark is just boatloads of fun. Once I get some more development of this game and Crescendo done, further down the line, I think I'll do some Trophy Dark scenarios. I love just how evocative the whole line of Trophy is.

But the problem is that I want a one shot that can do a game in an hour and a half to two hours, maybe two and a half hours. I don't get a whole lot of time to game, doing it after the kids are put down for the night. Which is late. I also don't want it to jump into another session, as usually when a player misses they only miss the one session. So that makes it a pain to include him or just... wait until the next time he misses? I guess? I know this isn't necessarily a problem for everyone, or even really anyone but me, but... I kinda have to be able to test the game I designed! I also wonder if other older players don't run into this problem as well. How many games are designed for more time-intensive singular sessions of play, and are thus inaccessible to folks with small kids? Not sure, but I'm in the situation so I can't help but design for it. 

The other problem is that I am a bit of a rolling junkie. I really like Trophy's rolling mechanics, as stated before, and found that I was constantly calling for rolls. My testers went with it because they're good people, but I could tell they just wanted to let the game breathe for a minute. So I decided to make it a mostly-diceless game. where you build up experience chits to eventually get to the decisive roll, the moment of truth, in each act. This strips the mechanical overload to a fraction of what it currently was, with still some back and forth, as players have to negotiate around getting chits for the end of the act versus how that affects the narrative in the meantime.

The biggest problem, of course, was the scenario generation. I'd built a system to make up a scenario with players on the fly, and it's a lot of fun! It made for some hilariously wonderful conversations. The problem? It took too long. The point wasn't to make a cool scenario, but to finish the scenario in a short amount of time. Fortunately the solution was simple: the GM just comes up with the scenario beforehand. Character creation is short enough to where players can just roll at the top of the session, but obviously making characters beforehand is polite.

There's a lot to be said for the older version of SPACE OPERA EPISODE VIII. But you have kill your darlings if they don't work. And this didn't work. I want something fast and decisive. And the earlier draft just wasn't doing it. Further playtesting is necessary, but I think I'm on the right track.

Design Journal: Crescendo and Gene Wolfe

There is no author with half the influence upon Crescendo as Gene Wolfe; Crescendo is meant to emulate the deeply psychological and spiritual fantasy shown in The Solar Cycle and the Latro Trilogy. But Wolfe's works are almost impossibly large, not to mention byzantine in structure. So what do I mean when I say Crescendo is heavily influenced by Wolfe? I mean a few things. Protagonists make their way through worlds that are always moving, regardless of their actions. Wolfe's stories are as much about the protagonists learning to be a part of the world, with adventure being just one aspect of their lives. Stories are not centered on defeating the Big Bad(s), but end when the protagonist has reached a point of development that makes an ending statement. Wolfe's stories are almost ruthlessly character oriented. Crescendo grabs all these points and is attempting to make a cohesive RPG from them.

Sorry, no complex interweaving of enigmas, not yet! If anyone has ideas for that let me know! But I've never personally felt a draw to the puzzle-unravelling that a lot of people seem to have with Wolfe. What Wolfe is saying, behind those puzzles that I can't figure out, is a lot more interesting to me than the puzzles themselves. That's not a knock upon those who like doing that, but if you're looking for a game that is an enigma in a box, I'd suggest Bleak Spirit. Maybe some of that tech may wind its way into Crescendo. But it's not my focus, not at the moment.

Most RPGs I've played and read are not deliberately psychological. Play centers around the actions of the characters, with the psychological impact of those actions left up to the player. Crescendo will be a deeply psychological game. Players draft Tenets, which are what their character is willing to fight for. These Tenets have what are called Resilience Points, which measures how much failure the Tenet can take before the player has to make a decision about that Tenet. Characters also have Limits, which are traits that the player can use to recharge the RP of Tenets; act on the Limit and heal your Tenets! There's a lot more than that involved, but those are the basics: act upon Tenet, lose RP, and use Limits to recharge. At each stage of development I've checked in with licensed psychologists of varying backgrounds to ensure that the mechanics are psychologically accurate and healthy, with more input to be sought in the future.. I have always found gaming to be a cathartic and helpful experience, and wish Crescendo to be deliberately so. 

The Catholicism of Wolfe is indispensable in understanding his work. But Wolfe was no ordinary Catholic; he was well-experienced in the healing power of God, not to mention his historical, theological, and philosophical background. Thanks to my own experiences (some of which I have put on this blog), combined with my private studies of the Philokalia, Leanne Payne, Thomas Carlyle, The Book of the Elders, Antirhetikous, Meditations on the Tarot, The Emerald Tablet, The Golden Legend... I really hope I'm up to the task. Cause I assure you that's a drop in the bucket in comparison to what Wolfe had read. Wolfe's emphasis on the healing of a personality by encountering Others, especially those of the supernatural order, will be a primary theme throughout the mechanics of Crescendo. To be whole one must encounter the whole of creation. Locales provide feedback loops that create encounter that would be random in any other game, but here are deeply significant to the development of your character.

The setting the players have crafted will always be in motion; the actions the players take will be mirrored in the setting, producing a living and breathing world that will have an uncanny familiarity to them. On the GM's side this means Movements, which are the big three things happening in the setting at the moment. The GM and players will keep journals of some of their actions, so that they can be imitated by the NPCs in the setting, as well as informing further actions in the narrative. Your decisions matter, they reflect into the world over the course of the game.

One of the things that's struck me as I've read Homer and other ancient writers was their emphasis on games and festivals, not to mention philosophical discourse. Characters exist in a larger world and not only do they enjoy it but they talk about it! Wolfe takes this trope and runs with it. And so will Crescendo. There's festivals, executions, strategy games, and other contests. Characters get bored and will have conversations that build the world, as well as the themes of the story. This means that when conflicts do occur, whether by word or steel, they are quite unusual and intense. Crescendo will not just be about the big plot. The game will reward any action you decide to take equally, so it can take almost any tone you like in any given session. But because of the focus upon the player's Tenets and the GM's Movements you'll find that the experience is cohesive. Wolfe writes to see the journey of a character. The narrative meanders along, with elements from the background jumping in to develop the protagonist... only to fade into the background when its end is complete. Crescendo is entirely based upon the interactions of the players. There's no grand scheme at the forefront of the action. What the players put on their character sheets is only a beginning, the fuel you put the fire of your time to. Each session ends in a twist, wrenching the narrative into unexpected territory, forcing the story to stay on the characters.

And this brings us to what I think Wolfe and Crescendo are about: the person, with all their flaws and virtues, in the context of their world, with all its flaws and virtues. Person and world crash into each other, evolving into something different and new. After processing what they've changed into they run into each other again. And again. And again. And at some point you know they're going to be fine, somehow. So you leave them be.

Everything I've read of Wolfe's has made me a better person, in no small part because he's part of the original story, the primal narrative of the ancients: man looks at the cosmos; the cosmos stares back. They size each other up, trying to understand each other.

And then someone blinks.

Design Journal: Shadow's Tower

CAVEAT: These are the half-mad rantings of a designer who has not tested these ideas.

I've never played Dread. For those of you who don't know what that means, Dread is a roleplaying game where you play with a Jenga tower. Each time you do something you pull a block from the tower. When the tower falls the person who knocked it over dies. It's a gimmick that either lands or it doesn't. I've always meant to try it.

We'll get back to the tower in a minute. First we need to talk about what inspired Shadow in the first place. 

The very initial designs for Crescendo were Dark Souls level of punishing. It was flat out oppressive. And, while that design proved to be fun, it didn't feel like a fantasy game should. I'd designed a horror game. And one I liked. 

So I started taking my harsher ideas and saving them in a separate document that I named Shadow. By shadow I mean the Jungian definition: everything you're not. And that's what this game was, at least at the beginning: everything Crescendo was not. For that piece of humor alone I wanted to make the game. 

Crescendo's implied setting is very loosely based upon 9th century Britain. So of course I wanted Shadow to be in 19th century Britain, or an analog thereby. I can think of no spiritually worse time to be alive than the 19th century, with its triumphant neutering and enslavement of Western Christianity, along with the large-scale abandonment of its Eastern counterpart. Western Europe had so effectively ruined Christianity that one would be spiritually safer engaging in theistic Satanism. At least Satanists know they offend God.

Anyone who doubts me should try reading The Proud Tower by Barbara Tuchman. Actually, regardless of who you are, you should try reading that book. My copy is currently gathering dust because of how relentlessly bleak it is. It is Hell on earth. But it is also showing an unvarnished truth about modernity and liberalism in general. And that horror that book communicates? That feeling of an oppressive system beyond our control? It seems unique to our age. Sure, Nature's a fickle bitch but nobody takes Nature shitting in our lives as personal. You can't say that about the age we live in.

And that's horrific. 

Horror is reaction against this virus of self-defined reality that we know as modernity, against the feeling of artificiality. I feel it, know it all the way down. But y'know what intuitions are worth without sources?

Absolutely nothing.

I needed to read Poe and Lovecraft first. I had my suspicions about what the two had written, but besides a negligible exposure when I was in highschool I didn't know much. Instead of reading Poe I got to read Maya Angelou and freaking Great Gatsby. This is what's known as a bad trade, folks. I found Angelou insufferable and Gatsby is not a highschool book in any capacity. Maybe Angelou isn't either.

What I've found in Poe and Lovecraft is far more valuable: all lies are punished. What is hidden is revealed, usually in blood, tears, and screams. And those lies don't have to be personal; you can (and do) pay for others' lies just as often, if not more often, than your own. No sins are private. Each beat in Poe and Lovecraft the characters strip away another lie, getting closer to the truth. It may be a stupid thing to do, but the essence of their protagonists (by and large) are uncompromising truth-seekers. Most people find Lovecraft's protagonists stupid. But all the stories I've read indicate they're fed up with artificiality. Even if it kills them. Before reading The Proud Tower I'd not have understood why.

But my God I do now.

And I probably would have preferred insanity to the horror show that was their world. I mean, the remnants of that world persist on in the very worst aspects of our society today. 

All of this suggests a story about people poking and prodding, knowing they'll probably be destroyed, but they have to know. Must. The world is so bad , so artificial, that any reality, no matter how awful, would be better than what they currently have. But they don't how deep the lies run, do they? They think they can handle it.

At what point does this start sounding a Jenga tower to you? Pulling at the tower because you want to see how much you can pull away, because you don't know how integral it is to you? Once the image entered my mind it wouldn't leave.

I threw out everything I'd come up with and started over.

Here's what I got so far: every player drafts up what are called Isms: beliefs about the world the characters have that the player wants proven false. A stereotypical Judeo-Christian worldview is not just assumed, but is insisted upon

"God loves me"

"The dead stay dead."

"Sex is everything."

These Isms aren't individual to characters; they're what the group wants to subvert and destroy. This can get hairy, being horror: the Isms require a unanimous vote.  Whenever something touching these Isms comes up any action you take requires you pull a plank from the tower. If you succeed you have to say why you did. Whatever you say, it's a lie. 

"I succeeded in getting away because God has a plan for me."

"I avoided... Whatever that was,, because it was just my mind playing tricks on me."

At this point I'm toying with the idea of the GM writing down all the lies. You just keep pulling blocks until the tower falls. If that takes multiple sessions so be it. But once the tower falls? The GM brings out that list he's been making of all your lies.

You rebuild the tower.

And then the GM begins to bring your lies back to haunt you. He presents situations that mock your lies, that call out the pettiness of it all. And with each new situation a block must be pulled. No more skating by, it all counts now! 

When the tower falls that character is dead,  or insane, or ruined. That player joins in now, becoming a co-GM. And each player who falls after that gets in on it.

When you're out of lies or characters the game is over.

At least, that's what I got in my notes so far. Kinda needs playtesting. But that to me is a horror game.

Design Journal: Crescendo's Stones

CAVEAT: this is a journal entry. Concepts talked about here may or may not make it in this form to the final version.

Crescendo's a game about character development in a mythological world, where Mortals and Immortals push their agendas. Crescendo defines characters in three principal ways: their Tenets, Limits and the setting's Movements. Interacting with these elements produces a metacurrency called Stones, which you can use to make sure your agendas succeed. It's meant to be played over a long period time: thirty sessions, forty, 

Tenets are the things about your character that you find to be worth fighting about. Tenets are what your character deliberately goes and gets in trouble for.  When you write Tenets you are telling the GM and the other players what you want the game to be about. Tenets are in the format of a sentence, usually short.

"My father can be saved."

"My sister is the last hope."

"Violence as a last resort."

The bar for these Tenets is if your GM can challenge them. If he doesn't like them then work with him to make it something he wants to challenge and that you want challenged. In general you can expect to only make dice rolls related to your Tenets; the rest are handwaved (or denied if you're asking for absurdities). The point is to get to a situation that matters for your character and then hammer that situation as hard as you can, bringing out the dice to see what could happen when it matters to you most.

Limits are what your character is, no matter how hard he tries. Limits come back and haunt you at inconvenient times, reasserting themselves when you wished they hadn't. Unlike Tenets, which can be changed whenever the players and GM find appropriate, Limits change much more slowly, usually after an arc of play. They're usually one or two words.

"Impetuous"

"Noble"

"Jaded"

You start with two Limits. You can't have more than four Limits at a time. Pick Limits you'll have fun bringing up into the narrative.

Movements are not the player's mechanics, but they are really important to character growth. Movements are what the GM has going on in the world, his top three priorities. These are statements of grand, sweeping narrative, currents of the world the players find themselves caught up in. 

"Kalir's barbarians are destroying the town. 19"

"Vena is corrupting the mayor. 15"

"Saboteurs will destroy the Jarini Dam. 10"

Movements are happening no matter what you do. They will move forward unless you stop them. Assuming, of course, that you want to! There's a number at the end of every Movement. At the end of every session the GM  rolls a d20. If he rolls equal to or above that number he lowers that it by 1+margin of success of that roll. Players can modify these rolls by their actions in-game. Once that number drops to 0 the Movement is accomplished. If a Movement goes above 20 then the GM must write a new Movement.

Schemes start at 20 (subtle background stuff), 15 (something just beginning), or 10 (urgent, well on its way to being completed). Each Stone the players earn increase or decreases a relevant Movement's counter by one, player's choice; the player's earning of Stones changes the world around them.

Characters in Crescendo won't have formalized goals. This may sound backwards at first; isn't the game about players pushing their characters' agendas and thus evolving into heroes? You are correct! It would make sense on paper to have a Goal for each character. I've played games similar to Crescendo where there are formalized goals and it works... well enough. But I don't think it works great. The essential part of a game like this is to subvert information and twist the characters against themselves. And that means that Goals can get in the way of meaningful character and story evolution; it takes time to rewrite Goals and there is a very strong Pavlovian element going on with them, which can straitjacket the narrative. Pavlovian elements aren't bad, but they have their place in a game about character growth. So I think it better to put vectors (Tenets, Limits, and Movements) on the table and have the players put the pieces together however they want.

Which finally brings us to Stones, this game's metacurrency. You push your agenda and get rewarded! Pavlov rings the bell! 

There is only one prerequisite for getting Stones, of which there are three kinds: did using this Tenet, Limit, or interacting with this Movement meaningfully change the story y'all are telling? If so, you get a point! 

Did you betray another one of your Tenets or Limits or a Scheme to get that Stone? Great! Get two Stones instead! Crescendo is about complex characters, which means you should get something special for making characters who are conflicted but utterly sincere in their inner conflict.

There are three kinds of Stones,  each for a different element: Favor (Tenets), Dynamis (Limits), and Persona (Movements). Favor is help from the Immortals, who enforce Fate Herself. Favor is when circumstances change in an odd way, usually with an omen from the Immortal who helped you; the Challenge Dice is lowered a step (d10 to d8, for example). Dynamis is your inner world forcing itself upon the outer world; reroll your Stat Dice. Persona is when your connection to the world makes you stronger; increase your Stat Dice by a step.

The last bit of the Stones Cycle is that all spent Stones become XP. XP, as you can probably guess, is used to improve your character. But suppose you're not spending a lot of Stones? Crescendo has an OSR approach to rolls: if you must roll it's a challenge a gauntlet thrown. Sometimes that's not going to be an issue. Stones are good but you may not use them. Perhaps you won't roll a single dice in a session! And y'know what? That's fine. I don't see that being a problem, given how Stones are situated in mechanical spots you want control over, but it is possible. So any Stones you don't use can be converted to XP. You can't transfer them back, however! That change is permanent. So there will be no bloat. I hope.

Crescendo is meant to produce a flexible framework for all the players to get invested in. The reward system doesn't guide what you do, but  rewards what you're already doing: telling a story about your character and their development. As you play out the story what that looks like will change, right along with the characters. When you get to the end, thirty, forty, or however many sessions later, you'll find the characters and story to be different, but familiar. They've been through a lot. And you've had a hand in their change every step of the way.