A Roleplaying Experiment

[indiekid]

A Roleplaying Experiment
By rbuxton

I have always been frustrated by traditional portrayals of magic. Why, exactly, should waving a stick and shouting a few words in Latin produce a defined, predictable effect? If there’s some power flowing through the world, and I’m able to use it, why can’t I produce any effect I like? This seemed like a good basis for my first roleplaying game.

The design brief was simple: a game in which players were limited, not by the rules, but by their own imaginations. A player might, logically, attempt to play like this:

“I see the game. I call down a storm of fire to kill all the baddies. I win the game.”

This, clearly, was going to be a problem. But how could I prevent it and preserve the player’s creativity?

Adinkra symbols representing objects & concepts; real world "glyphs"?

Fast forward several months to me sitting on a bus in a town called Puerto Octay. “Puerto Octay”: I liked the sound of that. To me it seemed like the phrase “The Power of Eight” in some archaic language. Eight whats? How about eight magical Glyphs, which are combined by wizards to produce spells. I had found the missing ingredient for my game.

Each glyph would represent a Law of Physics, based on those of our own universe (I talk more about my love of rules here), and by breaking those Laws, spells could be cast. The eighth glyph was easily identified: the existence of glyphs and spells is a Law in itself. For the other seven glyphs, I would need to boil down the Laws of our own universe into seven principles, and give each a name. Here’s what I came up with:

Epi – Heat (also cold, energy…)

Konot – Light (also darkness, transparency…)

Mazarule – Solidity (also vapour, mass…)

Listay – Attraction (also repulsion, vibration…)

Akri – Motion (also stillness, time…)

Salifray – Growth (also decay, life…)

Kos – Dominance (also subservience, hierarchy…)

Enta – The Master Glyph. This governs the formation of spells and is the only glyph not based on the Laws of our universe.

Using the right combination of glyphs, it should be possible for a player to cast any spell they can think of. Creating a zombie, for example, would require a combination of Salifray (growth) and Kos (dominance). Gameplay would be puzzle-based: as well as coming up with creative solutions to problems, players would have to identify and thwart spells used against them.

When creating a character (or “Wielder”), players would have a basic understanding of two glyphs of their choice. Further proficiency in those glyphs could be gained through study and adventure. Later on, players could diversify or specialise in just one glyph, and both options would need to be viable. Proficiency in Enta (the Master Glyph) would improve as the player’s skill increased, and so act as a “levelling” system. This, combined with the game’s rules and the game master’s judgment, would determine the size and complexity of spells which could be attempted. Clearly this needed to be quantified, but I was too terrified to make the attempt.

I turned, instead, to the setting for my world. It would need to be simple, and leave lots of room for game masters to add their own content. I settled on a world of concentric circles, with a Metropolis in the middle and ever more mysterious lands and oceans surrounding it. Fantastical creatures could be accommodated if desired: they’d simply have some connection to one of the glyphs.

Could hackers wield power in our own world?

My world’s history was more problematic. I was tempted to give each glyph a long, detailed history but, again, I felt simplicity was key. I decided that glyph magic would be a recent discovery, causing a revolution in my world comparable to that of the internet in ours. I used this analogy to create a society in which the old establishment is threatened by cells of self-taught, criminal upstarts, and this in turn gave rise to the three backgrounds players could choose for their wielder:

> Academic – holding formal training in glyph magic (in our world, those with IT qualifications).

> Freelancer – self-taught, seeking new knowledge wherever they can find it (hackers).

> Smith/tradesman – uses the new magic to enhance their business (IT department in an existing industry).

And so to the moment of truth: the first playtest! Armed with a handful of shaky rules I took my willing victim, John, on a money-making adventure in the Metropolis. He cast a spell on a street juggler’s baton, causing it to fall, and, in the confusion, stole a hat full of coins. He then managed to frame another man (whom he subdued by sticking his boots to the floor) for the crime, and convinced the Kos (dominance) wielding police officers that he was licensed to Wield.

We both enjoyed the adventure and John identified where the game needed to improve. The big problem is a lack of a resolution mechanism: at present when a spell is cast, I, as the game master, simply decide the outcome. This needs to change, but the only system I’m familiar with is the one used in Dungeons and Dragons: a die is rolled and has to exceed a certain value for the spell to succeed. Perhaps the quantity and size (number of faces) of the dice could vary depending on the number of glyphs the spell contains?

To close, let’s look again at my player who wanted to win the game with a storm of fire. They are clearly not playing in the "spirit" of the game, and will not enjoy themselves. A spirit is not an easy thing to define, but if players are on board with it they are less likely to try to break the game. Perhaps my rules don't have to be perfect after all.

Thank you for reading about my young project. Can you think of any resolution mechanisms in existing roleplaying games, including your own, which might be applicable? I need ideas to help me out here. On the other hand, if you’ve seen something in this article you would like to use in your own project or roleplaying game, please do so. This is all highly experimental, and the results may be quite interesting.

[Clockwork]

RPGs! Man this is my jam.


Given it's the last thing I read, I'll address one problem you have first: magic resolution!


There are two systems which come to mind which could potentially work, the first is from Fantasy Flight (the one with the weird dice) whereby a dicepool is made to do actions, such as spellcasting.


The die have different jobs or simulate different circumstances. One of the die types is a success or failure die. Different coloured die have differing sides but the premise is the same - roll more successes than failures and you succeed.


For example the DM thinks this is a difficult spell to cast and gets you to roll 4 die, 2 blue and 2 red. The blue die have 4 success and 2 failures on and the red have 3 and 3.


Other die can be added to an action depending on the situation - for instance, while casting this spell an archer is taking shots at you, the DM will then add another type of die to the pool - the disadvantage (black) die. This die is blank on 3 sides and skull on 3, if you roll a skull then something bad happens regardless of the result. If you roll a failure AND a skull then that amounts to a D&D critical fail. The white advantage die is the opposite, created from a beneficial situation (3 blank 3 + symbols, if + is rolled something good happens even if you roll a failure)


To continue the example - your dicepool is now 5 die 2 blue, 2 red and a black and the chances of something backfiring are pretty high. Note that this system means that it's never (really, really rarely) a case of nothing happening in a turn at all.


This system can be adapted hugely and is great for improvisational play. For your game in particular I can see using d8 instead of d6 to be an idea. You could have each of the eight mana runes on a side and roll the die a number of times equal to your level at the beginning of a round and that's the mana you get to use for that round.




The other system which could work is kind of similar it's called FATE (built from FUDGE, if you know that one) whereby nobody has attributes like str, dex or whatever they just have aspects like: Alien Outsider if that's your character. It's kind of like a trait system from isometric RPGs.


To do an action you roll against a GM assigned difficulty (like FF above), for example the GM says, this is easy - difficulty 1 and you roll +/- dice and score above 1, you win and can do what you asked to do.


The aspect system comes into play both narratively and mechanically. In narrative, it's what you just are (and can change over time, not relevant now) and mechanically, you can add +2 to rolls if what you're trying to do plays into your aspect.


For example - A piece of strange extra-terran tech has been found at a crash site and you want to identify it GM says difficulty 3 and you roll a total of 1, you can then say - wait a second my man I am an Alien Outsider, of course I know how to identify interplanetary whadjamacallits, GM says: yeah that's fair okay here's what it is.


In another encounter you shoot at some hobos because they're a little ornery and you're not taking any chances GM rolls a 2 for the Hobos to defend and you roll a 1 to attack and you say - wait a second GM, I'm an Alien Outsider, so I'm great at shooting! Your GM then says, uh no not really. If you were alien soldier or were using alien weaponry maybe at a push but just being on a foreign planet, no, sorry. So no +2 for you.




I figure the first is better if you want more of a Avatar the Last Airbender feel imo and the second is more for group-based-discussion RP'ing.




Also did you get Wielder from Black Isles fantastic RPG Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader? Love that game


There's already a system created for pretty much every type of game you could ever want to play. (Including gross armadillo like FATAL, don't even google it.)






When you said about creating a world and it's history I immediately thought again back to one of my favourite internet people Matt Colville with particular reference to worldbuilding, types of players and the like. If you're into creating RPGs it's my humble opinion that you can't go wrong watching all of his videos for guidance. He is first and foremost a game designer, second a writer and third a stellar orator and improvisational artist.

[Jubal]

I should really watch more of Colville's stuff.

Interestingly, the actual etymology of Puerto Octay apparently actually comes from a settler whose surname was "Ochs" who was one of the first people to have a warehouse at the new little port there, hence "the port where Ochs is" -> Puerto Octay

I'm interested by your decision to use a hyper-simplified metropolis-and-rings world on grounds of simplicity; I feel like in some ways that sort of thing can create a false simplicity, as once you get into much depth, for an RPG more so than most types of game, players are likely to want to know things about how the world works, and the further your world basis from reality the more tricky it can be to resolve those in a satisfying way for players.

[indiekid]

Clockwork – those are two really interesting suggestions, thanks. Certainly 8 sided dice are attractive thematically. I want the game to involve a lot of discussion but I’m keen to have a process of levelling up, so a lot of it will need to be quantified. Also I’ll have to think about how much of the pressure is on the GM. I think working with GMs is an underrated part of game design. I’ve not heard of Lionheart but I’ll look into it – “wielder” just came form how I pictured wizards actually utilising the glyphs by crafting them in the air. Cheers for the link to Matt Colville.

Jubal – I’m not yet sure if the concentric rings thing should be physical or metaphorical. By that I mean a map of one ring would have “exits” to its outer neighbour in its wilder areas, and to its inner in its more civilised. The maps of each “ring” would not need to correspond to each other, or account for each others existence, more like a set of parallel universes than a Discworld of rings.