|
I’ve run several games here on SA, and I’ve got to say this is the best community I’ve found for it anywhere. My particular preference has always been CYOAs, ever since the days of Microwave, Microbe and RBY way back when. Once the Game Room was created, and more traditional games started being run online, I was delighted to be able to read through other people’s campaigns, to see how their characters were created and developed through gameplay. I just ended my fourth (or so) game in the game room, and a few of my players asked me to do a little write up of my process and thoughts. I’ll get into that now, but more broadly I also want to see if we can use this space to develop games specifically for PBP using these lessons. I’ll jump right into it! LORD OF THE TOWER Lord of the Tower was meant to be a quick game, something to ease my nervousness about running something like that publicly, and frankly I didn’t at the time know of a lot of game systems besides Dungeons and Dragons. I wanted to keep things simple for the players and for me, so the characters were very barebones. Resolution was simple d20, with bonuses for a few specialties chosen by them (as vague as Dancing, Lockpicking, or Interior Decorating), and a more powerful technique called a Talent. Talents could be just about anything they wanted (and this varied tremendously, from the cheesily overpowered to the amusing and clever) and required a d4 roll. Success or failure, it couldn’t be used again for 4 turns. Simple character creation drew a lot of players, and I (foolishly) decided to simply take everyone! After all, I’d never done it before and didn’t know any better, and unlike real life play PBP allows for enormous groups to play at the same time. This worked pretty well - the narrative was designed to allow for huge groups of contestants from various backgrounds to be entering all at once, so there weren’t any clashes between the story and the mechanics in that regard. It also worked in cushioning the expected attrition of players - even when some dropped out, the game could go on. In character creation, players were also asked to write a simple AI out for my use if they ever couldn’t post or flaked out, so I could continue rolling for them even without their presence. The game space was presented as different floors of a crazy magic tower, so there were discrete beginnings and endings to each section. As players hit new floors, recruitment would open again, so people lurking the thread had the opportunity to join in - and play through the floors the other players had gone through, dealing with the changes they’d made to the playing field. This was well received, and ensured even players whose characters had died could simply pop back in. But even death wasn’t the end for players - in the interim while waiting for recruitment to open, the ghosts of those who died could nudge the rolls of survivors for better or worse. The game ended on the 27th floor of the tower and the heroes won and became gods etc etc, but we’re not here for the story. The question is, what did my experience tell us about PBP gameplay.
Player Retention There’s lots of reasons people stop playing: they get bored, they can’t keep up the pace, they start to hate their characters. Lord of the Tower was designed to try to mitigate some of this. By planning from the start to allow AI actions, players who couldn’t be certain they could get things done on time had a safety cushion that would still allow them to participate when they were able. Character death (or retreat) meant that those who were bored with their avatar could swap for something new. Finally, open recruitment meant new blood could always replace those lost. Either way, the game never stopped moving. Modular Narrative By breaking the tower into floors, there’s a sense of achievement for players who managed to survive them. If they died, they’d have to restart, but they’d have a better shot at surviving from their experience. From a GM perspective, this allowed me to write out a bunch of different scenes in advance and sort of slot them in as I felt like it. More importantly, it gave the implication of a final goal to the game. HAVE AN ENDING Very, very many games in the Game Room peter out because there’s no actual goal in mind. Even otherwise successful games drag on because neither the players nor the GM know how long they’re actually going to be playing it. It’s less stressful for everyone to know that there’s a final goal in mind and then to count down towards it, and people seem to really appreciate when they can see their plans come to fruition. This also ties into the Modular Narrative - if they do it properly, the GM can end their game early if they're getting bored or overwhelmed, or add more modules in the middle. Audience Participation Another aspect that only really shows up in PBPs - there’s an audience! In between recruitments, people would roleplay as people outside the tower waiting to get in, and at several points I opened up world events to lurker voting. Keeping them excited and involved meant there were always people willing to hop in and keep the game moving. The ghosts of dead players also sort of fell into this category - they weren’t really playing anymore, but their powers (though limited) were hugely influential to those who were, and in several cases living players tried to curry favour from them. The Fragile Gods of Somewhere was my next big game, and arguably my most popular even now. I took the lessons I learned from the earlier game and expanded upon them, making something that really resonated with people. Long story short, players were would-be Gods who happened upon (or created) a world to play with. I had them pick foundational elements which the world was composed of (Water, Silver, Milk, Glass and Dice rather than the traditional four) and had them roll off to see who would get in. Only five people became Gods, but the others remained in the narrative as Wisps, unable to make actions on the world but able to affect the Gods themselves. Mechanically, the Gods rolled 1d20, and Wisps could vote each round to add or subtract to those rolls. When a Wisp voted, they gained one pip of power, which didn’t affect their votes… but DID improve their chances to get in the next crop of Gods. Because the Gods were Fragile - rolling too low (or having your action voted too far down) wounded them, eventually killing them if they went too far. Each Age (the module in this game’s Modular Narrative) had four rounds, and whether or not the Gods were alive at the end of the Age they died then - but the stronger they were the better the treasure they left behind for their People. It worked pretty well in practice. Player Retention came from making it very, very easy to post and act, requiring little thought to strategy and basically just giving them free reign to do whatever they want. The modular nature of the gameplay also meant the commitment required for each God was very low, only a few weeks, but the effects of their choices would ripple down through the rest of the game. I don’t think we ever had anyone flake over the year the game ran. The game ended after eight Ages, bringing in 32 Gods in total, each of whom, success or fail, had an effect on the world. As the game (and the technology levels of the People within) proceeded, even the Wisps eventually gained the ability to talk to the People and make changes to their culture passively. The game ended and had an epilogue that tied together all the various threads the players had made and concluded things satisfactorily.
Incentivization Wow, this one was a huge find. People love watching numbers go up. If you give your audience an incentive to participate, you will never lack for people wanting to get in on the action. This isn’t applicable to all games, but if you want to have a large group available this is probably the best and easiest way to retain them. Break Down That Gate is my most recent one, and in many ways is a cross between the LotT and Fragile Gods. Each player controls a soldier in an army with a particular skill, and together they all have to trek across a bunch of land to go break down a crucial gate. Mechanically, everyone rolls a d100 and states how they want to react to a specific situation, with narrative bonuses if they bandwagon on a few specific tactics rather than spread out. Every time they post, they gain a +1 bonus to their roll, but whether or not they post their personal die is rolled in support of the army. This worked really, really well. We had (at the peak) approximately 40 people playing concurrently, and even by the very end of the game we had 20 regulars. Posting means your character grows stronger, which means they have more effect on the narrative, which incentivizes further posting. But since I focused on individual soldiers who rolled highest in their specific tactical group and since a d100 is really, really swingy, almost everyone over the course of the game got their chance to shine. By game’s end, every single character was well fleshed out, with histories and interactions and friendships and rivalries. It was very satisfying for me personally, and made the game world feel more ‘real’.
Have a Discord I was leery about Discord, because I like seeing discussion on the forums, but in practice it made a huge difference in the feel of the game. Instant communication of ideas between players meant that for those reading and lurking the gameplay is seamless, making the whole thing look and feel really polished. Discussions and guesses within the channel can also be incorporated into the narrative - the central mystery in the game was basically the result of me listening to the players chatter and building up around their assumptions, which made them feel clever for figuring it out.  WHAT DOES THAT MEAN FOR US YOU NARCISSISTRight, as much as I could talk forever about my own stuff, I want this to be a more general discussion spot. There are lots of really good systems out there now, far better than D&D is for this. PDQ, FATE, PBTA games, all of them are well suited for PBP or live play… but none of them are made for this format. There’s stuff here that can’t be done elsewhere, and stuff that shouldn’t be done here. I’d be interested in seeing what a system made for this niche looks like, and I’d like to hear your thoughts on it. For instance, it’s very easy to flake out of games online, and yet there are often more people who want to play than get into any given game. Would an ideal PBP then embrace these crowds and incorporate them into the game? Is the continuity of the game world more important in PBPs than any individual player, and if so how could the mechanics support and reinforce this? I’ve given a few examples - what do you think?
|
#
¿
Jan 24, 2019 15:56
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 10, 2024 00:19 |
|
|
WereGoat posted:ART STUFF UnCO3 posted:There are a few games specifically designed for periodic online play, such as A Doomed Pilgrim in the Sundered Land, but I suspect there's a larger pool of games designed mainly for tabletop that work well (possibly even better) in PbP because they tap into some of these features you describe, as well as other aspects that your games don't really use. Your games give everyone almost freeform-like control over exactly one character, but I've also had or seen a fair amount of success with games down the other end of the continuum, like The Quiet Year and Microscope. These turn-based games give players complete, but brief narrative authority on their turn, and have them share characters and settings. Meanwhile, there's always a lot to build on, with large casts of characters and multiple narrative threads happening on any given turn. This helps keep both the story and the game flowing - people can pick and briefly expand on something that interests them and advance the overall story at the same time. This common control seems to increase people's buy-in, though you can definitely get a similar effect without sharing so much (like PbtA games typically do with simultaneous character creation and world-building).
|
|
#
¿
Jan 24, 2019 20:59
|
|