I was just chatting and a fun thing came to me...
That old game to pass the time, the word association game, can be interesting for a bit, but it has short legs. However, I do like to play it with children because it encourages the practice of intuitive associative thinking that is very much the stuff of metaphoric thinking, and thus poetry.
But when I was chatting, it came to me to lay a challenge not just of a free association between words, but rather, three things that describe a concept.
For example, I was asked, "Quick! Say three Pale things...", and the spontaneous answer was, "A ghost of a chance... the lightness of joy... the convictions of a coward...". Now we may argue just how apropos each is, or how and why they might or might not connect well, but it takes the old game a little farther. Done in a back and forth, with no time taken to break the rhythm and explain, it can become a back and forth that sounds like a weird sort of riddle game between Hobbit and Gollum (or dragon).
I like this.
23 November, 2016
14 November, 2016
Video Games are Boring
...according to THIS writer who has had a career in video game design. She has some interesting thoughts.
The things that stood out to me are these:
Common reasons people don't like video games because:
1) they are not interested in stimulation or conflict
2) because they lack depth (unlike books or films)
3) they don't identify with the characters or the setting
4) they just. Don't. Care. About. Realistic graphics, physics, or action.
What would entice non-gamers is:
1) taste (and preferred aesthetic)
2) depth
3) exploring who a character is in context to other characters and their situation
She talks about the idea of making games that reveal things about life and humanity. This may often be impossible if the behavior that the game rewards and punishes funnels choices toward simple adrenaline fueled action over and over.
The things that stood out to me are these:
Common reasons people don't like video games because:
1) they are not interested in stimulation or conflict
2) because they lack depth (unlike books or films)
3) they don't identify with the characters or the setting
4) they just. Don't. Care. About. Realistic graphics, physics, or action.
What would entice non-gamers is:
1) taste (and preferred aesthetic)
2) depth
3) exploring who a character is in context to other characters and their situation
She talks about the idea of making games that reveal things about life and humanity. This may often be impossible if the behavior that the game rewards and punishes funnels choices toward simple adrenaline fueled action over and over.
Kishotenketsu: Japanese Narrative Structure
So I have read about this narrative form before, in brief, but have not really dug into it. HERE is a really interesting article about the form.
In brief, the Western three act structure essentially has the following form (with many small variations):
Act I Act II Act III
Introduce the characters Protagonist tries to resolve conflict Protagonist confronts problem
Introduce the problem Complications ensue Climax - success or failure
Incite conflict Conflict escalates Resolution of story
Western narratives have for a couple centuries become more and more concerned with the motivation of the protagonist, and also the antagonist. The conflicting motivations between antagonist and protagonist - who is going to ultimately get what they want - is what drives the story.
Kishotenketsu, on the other hand, has a four act structure, and the story is not driven so much by motivation of antagonist and protagonist, but rather from cause and effect. It is not about what the characters want, but rather about what they do. This according to the article, is rooted in the influence of Buddhism, which is all about eschewing desire. The structure is thus:
Ki - introduction to characters and their situation
Sho - development of relationships between characters and events in the setting
Ten - the twist or complication which introduces new characters, events, or relationships to the story
Ketsu - the resolution in which the twist is explained in relation to the development and resolved
That shift in thinking about story - not what the characters want that conflicts, but what they do which leads to a consequence (good or bad). This may very well leave some strong ambiguity to the characters, but by this Japanese paradigm, that is perfectly OK. What is important, is the emphasis on the parable of the story. In this regard, they much more resemble one of Aesop's Fables. Why did the scorpion sting the fox who took it across the river? Because that is what scorpions do. The Ten is particularly interesting, as it takes the same story, but examines it from a different point of view. It may almost be as if a whole new story has begun, with little or no explanation, with a new protagonist or point of view character (there may not be a protagonist in the traditional Western literary sense, since the POV character might not even be moving the story forward so much as reacting to events). It is in the Ketsu that the connections are explained.
HERE is an interesting article talking about using this narrative form to provide structure to stories in games. It has me thinking about aspects in fate that are all explicitly things that the characters do rather than something that tells us about their motivations or wants.
In brief, the Western three act structure essentially has the following form (with many small variations):
Act I Act II Act III
Introduce the characters Protagonist tries to resolve conflict Protagonist confronts problem
Introduce the problem Complications ensue Climax - success or failure
Incite conflict Conflict escalates Resolution of story
Western narratives have for a couple centuries become more and more concerned with the motivation of the protagonist, and also the antagonist. The conflicting motivations between antagonist and protagonist - who is going to ultimately get what they want - is what drives the story.
Kishotenketsu, on the other hand, has a four act structure, and the story is not driven so much by motivation of antagonist and protagonist, but rather from cause and effect. It is not about what the characters want, but rather about what they do. This according to the article, is rooted in the influence of Buddhism, which is all about eschewing desire. The structure is thus:
Ki - introduction to characters and their situation
Sho - development of relationships between characters and events in the setting
Ten - the twist or complication which introduces new characters, events, or relationships to the story
Ketsu - the resolution in which the twist is explained in relation to the development and resolved
That shift in thinking about story - not what the characters want that conflicts, but what they do which leads to a consequence (good or bad). This may very well leave some strong ambiguity to the characters, but by this Japanese paradigm, that is perfectly OK. What is important, is the emphasis on the parable of the story. In this regard, they much more resemble one of Aesop's Fables. Why did the scorpion sting the fox who took it across the river? Because that is what scorpions do. The Ten is particularly interesting, as it takes the same story, but examines it from a different point of view. It may almost be as if a whole new story has begun, with little or no explanation, with a new protagonist or point of view character (there may not be a protagonist in the traditional Western literary sense, since the POV character might not even be moving the story forward so much as reacting to events). It is in the Ketsu that the connections are explained.
HERE is an interesting article talking about using this narrative form to provide structure to stories in games. It has me thinking about aspects in fate that are all explicitly things that the characters do rather than something that tells us about their motivations or wants.
09 November, 2016
Religion and Magic in Fate
I would agree wholeheartedly that in too many games (and the novels that they inspire) magic feels very mechanical and technological. I would argue that magic in games is most interesting when it is designed not according to a paradigm of physics and engineering, but from religion and symbolism... not the mechanistic but the anthropologic direction (as magical thinking actually did). This is certainly disputable by players of a more engineering bent who prefer a less ambiguous way of including magic in games, but each to their own.
So the designer questions for game magic commonly include
Design Questions
*1) why would I want to be anything but a magic user?*
*2) what can you do with magic?*
*3) what can you NOT do with magic?*
These are useful, but I think more engineering type questions for designing an RPG magic system. I'm going to swipe and modify a different list of questions (credit to Jared Sorenson as due) to take magic away from a mechanistic paradigm, and back into a more mythopoeic paradigm. The narrativist focus from indi games is certainly more at the front than the gamist approach from so many other games with ODD DNA.
Alternate Design Questions
*1) what is magic about?*
*2) how do I reflect that in this game?*
*3) what behavior does magic reward and punish?*
My aesthetic is largely influenced by texts older than a century and a half, or by modern studies of still existing pre-industrial cultures or practices kept discrete from the industrialized world. When I look at texts that describe magic uninformed by modern mechanistic thinking, a few things stand out to me:
Observations
*1) magic is highly related to religion, but is not the same*
*2) with magic, size is (mostly) irrelevant*
*3) the prime driver of magic is not energy but rather meaning*
*4) pursuant to 3, symbolic connections are what shape magic effects; principles of sympathy and contagion explain this*
*5) magic goes against the natural order, as defined by the powers of the world
So I am going to offer a very loose answer to your question of preferred flavors of magic and how it affects characters in the game world with those assumptions in mind.
Why would anyone be anything but a magic user in this game? I answer this by answering the question of what magic is about. I assume a world in which people are not ambivalent about the notion that they are but small things in a much larger and more powerful world with more powerful and willful agents behind that world (gods, spirits, devils, etc.). The forces are constrained by their natures, and are powerful, but not omnipotent, omnipresent, or omniscient. The priests who commit their lives to understanding these forces are most adept at interacting and negotiating with them. A priest invokes the gods through the legitimately proscribed rituals to get an expected result.
A magician however, may make use of the understanding of the nature and power of the gods, but without regard to the morally proscribed invocation of that power. In actual history, very often cultures would separate what they did locally as legitimate because it was locally appropriate to their gods, but what the other folk beyond the mountains did was magic. Even in their own societies, those who practiced something heterodox from normal ritual were considered sorcerers rather than priests. So here is my answer to question 1 from the first two lists above:
_1) Magic is about an individual (i.e. player characters) invoking a desired outcome through a transaction with the greater powers behind the world. As such, it is potentially more powerful than any outcome that a mortal could achieve alone. On the other hand, this is a power that requires a great investment in years of discipline, study, sacrifice, and service to acquire, and as such, precludes the participation in or acquisition of other kinds of knowledge, experience, or ability that other characters might have. Furthermore, there are obligations to the powers that be that other characters do not have to observe_
In Fate mechanical terms, I would say that means that a magician must commit aspects, stunts, and/or skills in order to have access to magic. The level of power determines how much investment of other mechanical elements it costs for access. This is of course mostly the assumption taken already.
My answer to question 2 from the first two lists above is this:
_2) Magic can potentially do anything, from innocuous charms to repel mosquitoes or light campfires, to awesome effects like summoning a plague to devour the crops in a village or raising a tempest against the enemy fleet in the channel. The cost depends on what is sacrificed in the magical transaction. Effects in the interest of the powers are more readily achieved.
Rituals using symbolic connections to the powers are performed in order to accomplish the invocation of the power. The more symbolic connections, and the more strongly symbolic they are, the more powerful the effect._
In Fate mechanical terms, the cost does _not_ have any specific limitation on number of uses per day, or slots, or cost in manna pool or fatigue as the common price for using magic; magic is not powered like a battery. The amount of energy to burn down a castle is of no more import than that to light a candle where the powers behind the world are concerned. What does matter is the _significance_ of the action. Lighting a candle is of little significance to anyone but the user of the candle. Burning down a city is highly significant to thousands. As such, while a magician may very well be able to burn down a city, the magician will bear the burden of finding a way to pay for the loss of property and lives of thousands. The cost may be a year of the magician's life for every life taken... or the blood sacrifice of no less than a king or queen to rain fire down on the city.
How to judge lesser effects? I would offer that rituals are performed to establish the strength or legitimacy of the invocation, and each symbolic connection between the effect, and the subject/object of the effect increases efficacy. Size or value of the components (material, verbal, somatic, focal) is only as significant as they are in the heart and mind of the magician. For example, if an aspect or stunt is dedicated to a magic staff, or the power of the magician's voice, that thing should be more potent (say a +3 when used). Otherwise performing rituals are essentially a challenge series of creating advantages to make significance of the objects used. You want to raise a storm to wreck a ship; your breath blown ritually over a bowl of sea water is two elements. Your breath might be of a basic similarity to wind, while sea water in the bowl is more powerfully symbolic of the sea itself. If you collected the spray of a breaching whale (the Breath of the Leviathan) that is in itself worth a bonus as both wind and the water of the sea, and thus worth more.
Need to work more on writing up the details, but there is the concept.
So the designer questions for game magic commonly include
Design Questions
*1) why would I want to be anything but a magic user?*
*2) what can you do with magic?*
*3) what can you NOT do with magic?*
These are useful, but I think more engineering type questions for designing an RPG magic system. I'm going to swipe and modify a different list of questions (credit to Jared Sorenson as due) to take magic away from a mechanistic paradigm, and back into a more mythopoeic paradigm. The narrativist focus from indi games is certainly more at the front than the gamist approach from so many other games with ODD DNA.
Alternate Design Questions
*1) what is magic about?*
*2) how do I reflect that in this game?*
*3) what behavior does magic reward and punish?*
My aesthetic is largely influenced by texts older than a century and a half, or by modern studies of still existing pre-industrial cultures or practices kept discrete from the industrialized world. When I look at texts that describe magic uninformed by modern mechanistic thinking, a few things stand out to me:
Observations
*1) magic is highly related to religion, but is not the same*
*2) with magic, size is (mostly) irrelevant*
*3) the prime driver of magic is not energy but rather meaning*
*4) pursuant to 3, symbolic connections are what shape magic effects; principles of sympathy and contagion explain this*
*5) magic goes against the natural order, as defined by the powers of the world
So I am going to offer a very loose answer to your question of preferred flavors of magic and how it affects characters in the game world with those assumptions in mind.
Why would anyone be anything but a magic user in this game? I answer this by answering the question of what magic is about. I assume a world in which people are not ambivalent about the notion that they are but small things in a much larger and more powerful world with more powerful and willful agents behind that world (gods, spirits, devils, etc.). The forces are constrained by their natures, and are powerful, but not omnipotent, omnipresent, or omniscient. The priests who commit their lives to understanding these forces are most adept at interacting and negotiating with them. A priest invokes the gods through the legitimately proscribed rituals to get an expected result.
A magician however, may make use of the understanding of the nature and power of the gods, but without regard to the morally proscribed invocation of that power. In actual history, very often cultures would separate what they did locally as legitimate because it was locally appropriate to their gods, but what the other folk beyond the mountains did was magic. Even in their own societies, those who practiced something heterodox from normal ritual were considered sorcerers rather than priests. So here is my answer to question 1 from the first two lists above:
_1) Magic is about an individual (i.e. player characters) invoking a desired outcome through a transaction with the greater powers behind the world. As such, it is potentially more powerful than any outcome that a mortal could achieve alone. On the other hand, this is a power that requires a great investment in years of discipline, study, sacrifice, and service to acquire, and as such, precludes the participation in or acquisition of other kinds of knowledge, experience, or ability that other characters might have. Furthermore, there are obligations to the powers that be that other characters do not have to observe_
In Fate mechanical terms, I would say that means that a magician must commit aspects, stunts, and/or skills in order to have access to magic. The level of power determines how much investment of other mechanical elements it costs for access. This is of course mostly the assumption taken already.
My answer to question 2 from the first two lists above is this:
_2) Magic can potentially do anything, from innocuous charms to repel mosquitoes or light campfires, to awesome effects like summoning a plague to devour the crops in a village or raising a tempest against the enemy fleet in the channel. The cost depends on what is sacrificed in the magical transaction. Effects in the interest of the powers are more readily achieved.
Rituals using symbolic connections to the powers are performed in order to accomplish the invocation of the power. The more symbolic connections, and the more strongly symbolic they are, the more powerful the effect._
In Fate mechanical terms, the cost does _not_ have any specific limitation on number of uses per day, or slots, or cost in manna pool or fatigue as the common price for using magic; magic is not powered like a battery. The amount of energy to burn down a castle is of no more import than that to light a candle where the powers behind the world are concerned. What does matter is the _significance_ of the action. Lighting a candle is of little significance to anyone but the user of the candle. Burning down a city is highly significant to thousands. As such, while a magician may very well be able to burn down a city, the magician will bear the burden of finding a way to pay for the loss of property and lives of thousands. The cost may be a year of the magician's life for every life taken... or the blood sacrifice of no less than a king or queen to rain fire down on the city.
How to judge lesser effects? I would offer that rituals are performed to establish the strength or legitimacy of the invocation, and each symbolic connection between the effect, and the subject/object of the effect increases efficacy. Size or value of the components (material, verbal, somatic, focal) is only as significant as they are in the heart and mind of the magician. For example, if an aspect or stunt is dedicated to a magic staff, or the power of the magician's voice, that thing should be more potent (say a +3 when used). Otherwise performing rituals are essentially a challenge series of creating advantages to make significance of the objects used. You want to raise a storm to wreck a ship; your breath blown ritually over a bowl of sea water is two elements. Your breath might be of a basic similarity to wind, while sea water in the bowl is more powerfully symbolic of the sea itself. If you collected the spray of a breaching whale (the Breath of the Leviathan) that is in itself worth a bonus as both wind and the water of the sea, and thus worth more.
Need to work more on writing up the details, but there is the concept.
Yes, No, Black, or Blue (a game)
A little word game invented by my friend, the Finn...
This is a conversation game. The idea is that you and your friend or friends gather for dinner, or while on a walk, and as you do so, you try to trick the other person or persons into saying one of the forbidden words, while avoiding their subterfuges. Or their overt schemes.
The rules are simple.
You must answer questions you are asked.
You cannot win without asking questions of your own.
You can't say "Yes", "No", "Black", or "Blue".
You can't say variations of "Yes" or "No", nor use gestures or nods for these.
You can say synonyms of "Black" or "Blue".
You can't say "Forbidden Words".
People who are out are allowed to still talk, but not ask questions.
When someone speaks an unmentionable word, you laugh at them, and point... and then move on to the next. Be the last one standing.
This is a conversation game. The idea is that you and your friend or friends gather for dinner, or while on a walk, and as you do so, you try to trick the other person or persons into saying one of the forbidden words, while avoiding their subterfuges. Or their overt schemes.
The rules are simple.
You must answer questions you are asked.
You cannot win without asking questions of your own.
You can't say "Yes", "No", "Black", or "Blue".
You can't say variations of "Yes" or "No", nor use gestures or nods for these.
You can say synonyms of "Black" or "Blue".
You can't say "Forbidden Words".
People who are out are allowed to still talk, but not ask questions.
When someone speaks an unmentionable word, you laugh at them, and point... and then move on to the next. Be the last one standing.
02 November, 2016
Different Ways to use Dice Mechanics to Support Story
HERE is an interesting article about Jason Morningstar's evolution of dice mechanics in support of different games.
1) conflict resolution
2) uncertainty resolution
3) scene resolution (positive or negative)
4) provoke new events
5) track scenes/limit time
6) reinforce game's themes (by die type) with mechanical benefit
7) incorporate character elements (by die type) with mechanical benefit
8) limit choices
9) guide story ends
10) track change in character
11) make change in character
1) conflict resolution
2) uncertainty resolution
3) scene resolution (positive or negative)
4) provoke new events
5) track scenes/limit time
6) reinforce game's themes (by die type) with mechanical benefit
7) incorporate character elements (by die type) with mechanical benefit
8) limit choices
9) guide story ends
10) track change in character
11) make change in character
D&D Behind Bars (or Do All Rogues Play Rogues?)
HERE is an interesting article about inmates in maximum security prison who play D&D. It seems that it has a good record of getting people who have made anti-social choices in life to practice cooperation, empathy, and self sacrifice in ways that they did not before prison. I thought this little bit was curious:
Which kind of escapism the inmates at Sterling gravitate to is perhaps best illustrated by the moral alignment they choose for their characters. In D&D, a character's moral compass is known as their 'alignment' and is determined by two axes: good/evil and lawful/chaotic. On one extreme are the lawful good characters, defined by their sense of compassion and affinity for the rules. On the other, chaotic evil—callous rule-breakers driven by self-interest. Despite their often erratic real life behavior, Klug noted that his players gravitate towards lawful good characters. Sometimes, this role involves self-sacrifice—a trait not usually associated with prison life. Yet these inmates are game to try. After all, everyone likes to think of him or herself as a good person, and the best way to get there could be through a little practice and a daily dose of game therapy.
Good on them.
Which kind of escapism the inmates at Sterling gravitate to is perhaps best illustrated by the moral alignment they choose for their characters. In D&D, a character's moral compass is known as their 'alignment' and is determined by two axes: good/evil and lawful/chaotic. On one extreme are the lawful good characters, defined by their sense of compassion and affinity for the rules. On the other, chaotic evil—callous rule-breakers driven by self-interest. Despite their often erratic real life behavior, Klug noted that his players gravitate towards lawful good characters. Sometimes, this role involves self-sacrifice—a trait not usually associated with prison life. Yet these inmates are game to try. After all, everyone likes to think of him or herself as a good person, and the best way to get there could be through a little practice and a daily dose of game therapy.
Good on them.
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