Flow Theory And Game Design Questions

Flow theory postulates three conditions that have to be met to achieve a flow state:

1) One must be involved in an activity with a clear set of goals and progress. This adds direction and structure to the task.
2) The task at hand must have clear and immediate feedback. This helps the person negotiate any changing demands and allows them to adjust their performance to maintain the flow state.
3) One must have a good balance between the perceived challenges of the task at hand and their own perceived skills. One must have confidence in one's ability to complete the task at hand.

Jared Sorensen's three questions for design are:

1) What is my game about?
2) How does my game do that?
3) What behaviors does my game reward and punish?

I think Flow Theory really intersects with #3 a lot.  That is the kicker.

There is an interesting essay on Flow HERE.

In it, is an interesting example of using Flow for a really innocuous purpose: picking shoes.

So the loop goes from: challenge >> opportunity to act >> feedback >> new opportunity to act.

Golden Cobra 2016

http://www.goldencobra.org/

5 September to 5 October 2016. 

The goal of the 2016 contest is to generate elegant, expansive, uplifting games. Golden Cobras will be awarded in five categories:

• Best use of somatic elements
• Most culturally responsible design
• Best use of magical realism
• Funniest
• Most Convention Ready

Optional ingredients:

• dinosaurs
• ghosts
• parasites
• stardust

In order to be considered for a Golden Cobra, your game must:

1. Consist of one or both sides of an 8 ½ by 11 inch or A4 sheet of paper. (Minimum point size accepted is 8.)
2. Games should be playable with zero to minimal prep.

Further rules:

1. Be a new, unpublished freeform larp. It is neither a tabletop roleplaying game or a video game.
2. Present your game in a readable, playable format (pdf preferred).
3. Your name can only appear on one entry but teams are welcome.
4. Submit your game by 5 October in .pdf format and in English to submissions@goldencobra.org. Parallel versions in other languages or other formats are encouraged.
5. You retain all rights to your work but grant the judges permission to print out and play the game you submit, and for it to be included in a free anthology after the contest.

Freeform LARP?...:

What we call freeform larp occupies a middle space between tabletop and full-blown live action role playing. They come in all shapes and sizes, all along the spectrum and keep incorporating new things as they come along. As a rule of thumb if there are simple, clever game mechanics but you have to stand up and move around at some point, it's probably freeform larp! 

The Sound Of One Hand Clapping: OR Thoughts On Writing An Adventure Without Writing It

So on of the problems that comes of being a gamer "of a certain age" is that there is so much more of life that demands my time, leaving so much less for being able to play.  This is doubly so as I think of rpgs.  The time and effort that I once had to plan, craft, write, and map careful game adventures simply costs too much compared to the fact that, 1) I'm not getting paid for it (though this is a point for some other discussion), and 2) I may never get a chance to fully use it.  The last time I went all out writing, plotting, drawing out timelines, locations, maps, handouts to include faux news clippings (on newsprint paper), antique book pages, faux email printouts, and matchbooks for exclusive clubs... I only got about 1/3rd of the way through the campaign before it petered out due to player time commitments.  I think that one hurt more than I am consciously aware of, as that was distinctly the last time I gave that much creative effort on a labor of love in a game.

But it was also one of the things that moved me ineluctably down the road toward indie games with more rules light and narrative design principles.  As much as I still think that GURPS and Pathfinder for instance are well designed engines, I really just love Fate (and the host of Fudge-like games of a kind) for it's mechanical simplicity, bounding the mechanics by narrative statements.  This kind of game is to be sure, one for players you trust, but I don't want to play with the other kind anyway.  So the challenge is trying to find a way to get satisfactory story out of minimal prep.

Fate does this by making "Session 0" a critical feature, with issues, and games based on say, Apocalypse World have fronts, but otherwise "play to see what happens".  I suppose that what I am thinking about then, is a way to kind of start with those sorts of things, and add just a little more structure so I can create and thereby provide a little more detail.  So it seems that a good starter question for each session, is to have the players review the issues and their individual character goals, and considering context and continuity of what they did previously, ask the players the following question to start the game:

What are you doing?

Now the answer to this cannot be a weaksauce answer.  No "chilling in the tavern", or "shopping for equipment upgrades".  This has to be a clear, powerful answer that is an expression of what the character wants enough to fight for, perhaps kill for, and perhaps die for.  In Fate, this is easy to do by examining aspects, and then figuring out how that action can go wrong... what can be worse, or what complications are expected.  This should be detailed, and provide the specific picture for the starting scene of the game.  This is also a good time to get fate points, and in a particularly gritty game, rather than refreshing automatically, give FP based only on this.  But the players ought to do this, perhaps as a flashback, creating the starting scene.

Next, based on what trouble they have chosen to get themselves into, they need to suggest two or three steps, or sub goals, or objectives that they need to take in order to get themselves out of that jam.  These can be a bit broader, leaving tags that the GM can plug into an overall scene planner to shape the game in a fashion that provides more build and story unity without a whole bunch of pre-loaded prep.  The players get what they want in broad strokes, and the GM gets to make stone soup - letting much of the heavy lifting be done by others.

This is very close to what It's Not My Fault does, with just a little bit of customizing.

Conflict Currencies In Game Design

So ultimately what separates a story from a documentary or some other kind of mere information media, is the narrative of a normalcy - conflict - normalcy cycle.  The meat of the story, is the conflict and it's resolution.  No big news there, but it does bring to mind a way to frame a design principle in my mind for story games of all kinds.

Going back to Jared Sorenson's three questions for game designers:

1) What is my game about?
2) How does my game do that?
3) What behaviors does my game reward and punish?

The first question is not about the setting, but rather the theme of the game.  So D&D actually is (at least in most of it's older incarnations) about killing things and taking their stuff.  Star Wars the rpg is not about a galaxy full of aliens and spaceships, but it does begin to tell us something meaningful when it gives us the fairy tale cues "A long time ago" and "a galaxy far, far away", and when we begin to understand it through the sub titles (A New Hope).  Star Wars, is about not giving up living, breathing hope in in the face of an oppressive mechanistically ordered system.  It is about the personal war between choosing Life vs. The Machine.

The second question is identifies the things that the mechanics need to address or ignore in more detail.  D&D (old school) has lots of rules for combat, physically damaging things, surviving physical damage, and advancing with more and better equipment purchased with lots of treasure.  Alternatively, Star Wars is a story centered on moral and spiritual choices, the rpg, to really capture the essence of that story, needs to have strong mechanics for the morality of choices, and mechanics that address temptation and corruption.  Because it is not a piece of military techno-fiction, nor a story about the clever advances of scientists and engineers, any mechanics regarding the finer points of tactical advantages or power to thrust ratios of engines is actually superfluous to the game... Star Trek is the next game over on the shelf.

The third question digs deeper into how you actualize the types of important mechanics.  D&D offers experience points for killing monsters, and for gathering treasure, which put into the player's hands, allow upgrades and bonuses to the character's abilities which make them more effective at fighting and surviving.  Star Wars should have some measure of where the character stands in relation to the light side or dark side of the Force, as well as some kind of way to measure in play changes in status depending on actions taken in the story.

This gets me to my refinement on the second and third questions (is that 2.5?  or 3.5?...).  My question is:

??) What is the Conflict Currency?

Whether the kind of conflicts that are important are sword fights, star ship battles, social brinksmanship, or pitching woo in hopes of enduring love, the meat of any story is about those basic literary questions:

1) What does (character X) want?
2) Why can't they have it now?                              =                  CONFLICT!!!
3) What is at stake if they don't get it?

The Conflict Currency then, is what mechanically represents the things that are important to the kind of conflict in the story the game is telling.  It is safe to say that most rpg's include some king of physical combat.  This is one of the common kinds of conflict then, and needs some kind of conflict currency.  This is often represented by accumulated hit points in some way that are paid as the price for being hit, and weapons with some kind of rating in how many hit points they can cause to be spent.  Another kind of conflict currency is used for the use of magic.  Whether there is a budget of magic points (a.k.a. a "mana" system) or  a budget of slots for pre-packaged spell effects (e.g. a "Vancian" magic system, a la D&D), these get spent and are recovered in some cyclic fashion like hit points, in order to get effects in the game.

To be sure, virtually every rpg has multiple conflict currencies, as there are multiple kinds of conflicts that are available, or at least multiple strategies for confronting and overcoming the arch conflict.  It gets to be problematic if you are playing a game for which there is not any conflict currency, or for which you have some currency that feels undervalued in that economy.  This can be a way to focus a game of course, but it can also make some kinds of play feel short changed.

Not to bully D&D, but I will use it as a case in point (and it is not by any means the only one, and in fact provided the foundation economies by which many game designs have been built).  D&D has a varied and interesting economy for conflicts that are at their core, about killing creatures that you wish to pillage.  There is the basic attack action with weapons that costs the opponent hit points.  There is also a host of magical and magical-like effects that likewise either improve your likelihood of making a successful attack action, or increases the amount of hit points that are expended for a hit.  There is a multi-stage cycle of die rolls that shape the outcome.  However, if the players should instead want to play a battle of wits and cunning, there is a much more simplified pass/fail mechanic for that kind of conflict, generally resolved with a single die roll.  Should the player want to play out the advancement of a romance that sparks, smolders, and ultimately blazes into a bonfire, there are no mechanics whatsoever.  D&D is really not a game for rom-com conflicts then, which is neither here nor there, as that is not the stories that it is designed to tell.

But it does demonstrate why thinking about conflict currency matters to game design.  So if I am designing a game of grand, sweeping, dynastic conflict, I need to ask myself, what kind of Conflict Currency I need for that game.  Fate is a really great toolbox for this as the same basic mechanical blocks can very easily be re-skinned or re-named to match the themes of the story in question.  Does a dynastic political game need rules for the common procedural elements of adventure games like sword fighting and sneaking?  Not really, or not in the normal sense.  But there does need to be some kind of conflict currency for diplomatic treaty resolution, the wax and wane of public opinion, and the strength or weakness of succession faces and factions.  This phrasing makes it a little sharper when deciding how to answer or refine the answers to Sorenson's questions 2 and 3.

Prestige: The Game of Terrible Compliments

The Crown has called a great feast to determine who will be appointed to rule new land on the marches.  All the best have come to seek the honor.  You, however, are the one that will win this.  This is a feast of pomp, and manners, and fine beverages... an event of great boasts... and compliments for all contenders that will with florid politeness grind them all beneath your heel...

THE GAME

All players will see that their cups are filled with a tasty beverage to enhance loquacity and perspicacity.  The host shall sit in role of The Crown, and the rest of the players as peers.

Next, players will in rounds regale the company with a boast, one each in turn, outlining each of the following in such a fashion as will bring amazement to the heart of The Crown:

- First, a claim against your most noble pedigree.  What is the single greatest fact of your most noble birth that sets you above the peasants, and apart from your less worthy peers?
- Second, the fact of your greatest virtue.  What aspect of your character shows you to be more than worthy in heart and mind from churls and villains?
- Third, a deed of great merit.  What is your single greatest accomplishment, showing you fit not only in word but in action, to hold stewardship of the cantankerous marches for The Crown?

When these meritorious boasts have been laid before The Crown, and for all to see, everyone will then take turns giving a compliment to the peer of choice, extolling the greatness of the claimed boast, for it is just, and right, and proper that the peers hold unity before The Crown for only a churl, or villain, or rabble-rousing insurrectionist would not stand firm in the unity of the state.  HOWEVER, let us not forget, that should The Crown be more impressed with your rivals than you, you will gain nothing!

Thus, you must give a compliment of splendid form, that nonetheless shows the truth of the matter such that, in the end there can be no doubt that whatever boasts your rivals claim, they are in fact weak, shabby, and silly accomplishments indeed... proving the boaster unfit to rule the marches.

After everyone has had a chance to lay a compliment, a moment to savor the fine beverage will be observed before another round is taken to address a compliment to another of your peers.  Should the company wish, as many rounds as it takes to compliment each player can be taken, but should brevity be required, two rounds is sufficient.

After the rounds have been completed, the crown will choose who is most worthy based on their accomplishments.  Glory upon their house and their name!

Imaginary Pagan Religions

I have a problem with conventional fantasy games which take only a superficial effort to resemble the society they are meant to resemble.  Gary Gygax at least began with war games which grew out of historian's interest in imaginatively speculating on how things might have been different had battles in history ended differently.  It gets worse though when the people who play rpgs stop looking at history and just take whatever they see in a game book as good as history, and then others follow taking what they wrote till there is the current Pathfinder anything and kitchen sink approach to fantasy gaming.  You find Vikings sailing along side 17th century pirate ships as if there is no influence between them.

The particular gripe I have (being the topic of this post) is that Gary was interested in many things and offered a whole bunch of ideas, and many who had less interest in history than Gygax took it up, including issues of fantasy religion.  SO originally D&D introduced clerics as a character modeled on western medieval fighting clergy and martial orders like the Templars and Hospitalars.  They were clearly modeled on the Roman Catholic Church with the spells and prohibitions that one would expect of such cinematic versions of those fighting priests.  But with the advent of Deities and Demigods, bunches of pagan pantheons come into play, only the gods of those religions are merely treated the same as saints in the Catholic scheme, while the worldview does not cross over.  Furthermore, there is no game mechanic for encouraging anything theologic for the cleric's motives, so religion is pretty squishy in D&D and most fantasy games of that kind.

I contend that the problem, is that Christianity is a huge anomaly in it's view of God, sin, origins, teleology, and ethics compared to anything that came before.  Buddhism is the only thing that comes close, and it is problematic for other reasons.  If you are going to make a fantasy religion for a game, it should have something that it answers about spiritual life, not merely what temporal powers it can give you to smite others.  It should answer one or more of the following questions:

Where did we come from?
Why are we here?
What has gone wrong and why?
What do we do to live with that?
What happens to us after we die?

Not all real world religions handle all of these, but they should only believably exist when they answer some.  They should also, in general, provide some useful benefit to society in general, including moral, ethical, and social grounding and unity.  Anything that does not serve long term social value is unlikely to survive.  Cthulhu mythos cults may crop up here and there, but such nihilistic stuff does not build, but destroys.

This all in mind, here is an idea that comes to me for a pagan religion that is both very alien in flavor from the Roman Catholic model, but does both offer a social benefit, as well as answering some of the spiritual questions.  There is even a schismatic, heretical sub-cult.

Here is a sample of a realistic pagan religion, rooted in actual real world sects.  They are very different in worldview from the modern west, but they are heavily modeled on real religion nonetheless.

Beliefs and Practices

A soul in fear, anger, hatred, greed, and obsession ("The Five Follies" at death will not find rest and will become a devil spirit.

To insure peace at death, one must learn to become free of The Five Follies.

This is done through a process of increasing asceticism, and confrontation with and embrace of taboo practices.

 - They begin by living in cemataries, with initiates assuming the duties of grave diggers, and pall bearers, and those who accept and handle offerings for the dead
 - Novices assist with mortuary duties - cleaning the corpses, preparing food offerings for the sect, excarnation (defleshing) of cadavers, and preparing ritual meals for the priests
 - Priests perform ceremonies of pacification, inscribe the prayers on cadavers before defleshing, inscribe and bind the bones for burial, and burn what parts remain in order to collect the ash which they bless for ritual use
 - High Priests spend most of their time in meditation, but do perform the rituals of pacification for the whole of the cemataries, and occasionally venture out to perform the binding of unquiet ghosts which they keep in spirit jars which they prepare and keep in the center of the communities

Initiates to the order are distinguished by their brown robes and shawls, their shaved heads, and the ceremonial shovels which they keep.  This is the last time they will ever cut their hair.

Novices take gray robes, and begin to learn the inscriptions which they practice scribing with ink made of grave ash, lime, and resin onto their fellow novice's skin.

Priests receive their white robe - the last article of clothing they will ever wear.  It will never be repaired or replaced.  They begin to confront taboos more aggressively.  They begin to practice ritual cannibalism, sleep a night with corpses before final processing, and begin to live more and more removed from daily affairs.  They craft the skull bowls from which the order eats, drinks, and receives alms.  They may be called out to do healings when other medicine fails, acting as "sin eaters" who take the wounds ritually upon themselves.

High priests have little contact outside the sect, and largely live in meditation, naked, covered in grave ash.  They seek to destroy any fear and break every taboo to free their souls for the passage into death.  The final barrier is denial of even food and water, sustaining themselves only on the flesh and blood of their own bodies in a ritual fashion.  They prepare a final meal of their own flesh for those Priests that they choose to replace them.  Their bodies are not defleshed or cremated, but are buried in ash pits to mummify.  The new High Priests will eventually exhume the mummies, and place them in the Halls of Memory - catacombs below cemataries where the living priests may from time to time consult the dead through the mummies.

Schismatic Sect

A heretical branch practices more proactive rituals.  They may actively go out at ritual high holy days to find those they have been observing as exemplary of individuals bound to the Five Follies, and ritualistically murder them.  They perform ritual cannibalism, and then bind the ghosts into spirit jars in order to proactively prevent them from doing mischief in the future.  They may also actively seek out haunted communities to perform exorcisms (spirit binding) for money, and possibly use captive spirits from previous victims to create haunted places.  They also offer curses for money, and proactively seek to practice unspeakable rites, breaking taboos to speed their own ways to release from the Five Follies.

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Some other seeds of ideas:

A goddess of fertility, motherhood, and a tutelary household deity (surely a primary goddess for that society) calls all new brides to receive blessings by serving for a day as temple prostitutes (inspiration: Ishtar/Astarte)

A grain and harvest god of fertility and the fields, who also serves as a tutelary god protecting territory in a defensive war capacity calls for a spring sacrifice to consecrate the fields before planting by raising a chosen young man on a stake over the field who will serve as the vessel for the god to protect the field from ravage by beast or man; a bride is offered after harvest in thanks to the god for abundance (inspiration: several pagan religions, though not like any particular one)

-----------

Now these are not particularly savory notions to those who enjoy the ripples of Roman Catholic virtues, but they are more realistic in that they offer a perceived service to the continuation of the society, and imply some ideas about the relationships between god and man, god and land.  Perhaps I will write more on this.

Hardcore History

THIS is a really cool podcast.

I have been listening to the World War I series, and he is both a thorough and engaging host.  The material is both dense, and each show tops 3 HOURS, so I have only begun part II after listening and re-listening to part I three times over the past couple weeks.

I have done a lot of reading and studying about WWII in the last couple years, so I am looking forward to getting a better grasp of the details of WWI.  WWII is a gigantic subject, and I first got really hooked on it watching Band of Brothers, and listening to the audio book of The War multiple times driving between Augusta and Montgomery.  I have had arguments about the generation that fought and came out of that era, and whether they really deserve the appellation "The Greatest Generation" or not... I am still persuaded they do.  I think that while that generation may not have been led by as concentrated a pool of talent, genius, and moral thought as the Revolutionary War generation, WW II was still perhaps THE most devastating war in the history of the world.  The generation that fought it was still composed of people who were grouchy, selfish, isolationist, racist, and whatever else you want to call them, that crucible was unlike any other in scope and heat.  The rough ore that went in came out refined in a remarkable way.

Perhaps I will change my mind after studying WW I.  Perhaps not.

I am also reading (very slowly, I confess) A Distant Mirror, being the accounting of the calamity of Europe in the 14th century.  This was a horrible, horrible quagmire of civilization through the serial wars, insurrections, plagues, and schisms religious and secular that colored that period in red.  Even this period, I think was not as pivotal in history as WW II.  But again, fascinating read.

Anyway, good stuff history.  Like a gluttonous feast for the imagination!

Infuriating Perfectionism...

Infuriating as it is, as much as I am aware of it, it is still perhaps my biggest creative hurdle...

Perfectionism is paralysis.  I go through ever longer lengths of not writing, even though this blog project was started as an attempt to have a creative play-space.  But what happens, is I find myself ever more wanting to wait till I know exactly what I want to say, and am satisfied with it.

And so I don't write anything.

It makes one want to scream... or weep... or sigh and forget...

Perfection is in production.  That is something I know, but still have such a hard time trusting in.  I know not why.

But at least here is something and not nothing for at least today.

What Value Fantasy?...

Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it. In using escape in this way the critics have chosen the wrong word, and, what is more, they are confusing, not always by sincere error, the Escape of the Prisoner with the Flight of the Deserter.

--J.R.R. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories

Pollyanna And The Goblins (revised)

Once upon a time, there was a pleasant young girl named Pollyanna.  She found herself in an orphanage one Christmas, and she was the last one to get a gift out of the charity barrel.  Though she was hoping for a beautiful doll like the one she'd seen in the shop window, all she actually found was a pair of crutches.  She was at first sad, because what did she need crutches for?  But then she remembered what her wonderful Dad had taught her long ago... always find something good about every situation you are in.  Then she cheered up, because the crutches reminded her how glad she was that she didn't need them.

And then the goblins came to burn down the orphanage...

                                    * * * * * * * * *

This is a game in which players take turns as goblins putting Pollyanna into a jamb... until Pollyanna gets out.  But being a sweet and positive child, she does not fight goblins with bloody violence... she fights back with optimism!

SETUP

Each player will have as many tokens as there are players.  A stack of index cards will be shared by all.

The most disgruntled player will be the goblin chief the first round, and the player to their left will begin as Pollyanna.

Each player will take one turn playing Pollyanna while the other players play the goblins that turn.  After each time that a player acts as Pollyanna, the role of Pollyanna passes to that player's left.  After everyone has had one turn each as Pollyanna, the game will conclude.  There is a little more to the structure, but this is the basic structure of the game.

The players, beginning with the first round Pollyanna, will                                                               ("Hope" at http://redreevgeorge.deviantart.com/)
frame the story, determining the stakes, the locations that                
Pollyanna must traverse to deal with the goblins, and the first
hazard the goblins inflict upon Pollyanna and the orphanage.

FRAMING THE STORY

Pollyanna will begin by describing the scene, answering each of these questions briefly but colorfully:

1) What time is it?  The time of year, and the hour included.
2) Where in the orphanage is Pollyanna?  Write this on an index card with the time.
3) What is Pollyanna doing?

THE STAKES

Next, the player who begins as the chief goblin will begin listing the stakes - those things which Pollyanna must defend, or recover.  The goblins will each list one stake, each of which Pollyanna may make a single modification to if she likes.  The goblins will answer the following questions when naming the stakes:

1) What is at stake?  This can be another orphan, a birthday cake, or any other concrete thing.
2) Where is that located in the orphanage?  Write the location on an index card, with the stake noted beneath.  The things at stake should be things that Pollyanna will really care about enough to go after.
3) How do you get there from where Pollyanna is?  This path should include no more than three elements.  For example, "down the hall, up the stairs to the attic, and in the wardrobe on the left". Briefly note this on the card, and place the card adjacent to Pollyanna's card in relation more or less to her location.

GOBLIN TROUBLE

The chief goblin will now describe the way in which goblin mischief begins.  He can name one particular fact that will cause Pollyanna trouble, and will put a token on a location working from the point farthest from her.  The troublesome fact can be anything that the devious goblin chooses relating to the location, or something that the Goblin has chosen to bring to the mayhem.  For example, suppose the Goblin places a token on a location noted to be "The Kitchen".  He may with his token declare that he is putting a dead coyote in the stove.  The fact introduced by the token is the dead coyote, and it is in a kitchen so of course there is a stove which requires no token to declare.

AND WORSE GOBLIN TROUBLE

The next goblin to act continues in kind to declare mischief with a token, either making the previous trouble worse, or moving inward to a new location, placing a token on that card, and declaring a new fact.  For example, the second goblin may place a second token in The Kitchen, declaring "...with your birthday cake..." which is a fact that aggravates the first fact.  Alternatively, he may choose to place a token on the next card called, let's say, "The Dining Room", and declare that he has lit all the candles in the room.

After placing a token, the goblin notes the fact briefly on the card (e.g. "dead coyote").

Troubles should can be pretty much anything the goblin chooses from the merely annoying such as defacing the founder's portrait, to the dangerously malicious like knocking over the lit candles onto the table cloth.  Narrative and creative freedom are encouraged.  The only stipulation, is that whatever trouble the goblins create, they cannot harm either Pollyanna, or any of the stakes in an immediate, direct, or permanent fashion.  Anything else goes.

Pollyanna may act as well at this time, if she chooses.  If at any point while the goblins are making mischief, Pollyanna decides that she does not like the fact laid down by a goblin, she can give one of her own tokens to the offending goblin, and modify the troublesome fact with a "...yes, but..." statement.  She cannot nullify the fact entirely, but she can add a condition to it.  For example, if the goblin in the Dining Room knocked over all the lit candles onto the tablecloth, Pollyanna might put a token in and say "...yes, but the table cloth is still wet from spilling all the sun tea on it at lunch".  The wax will surely ruin the table cloth, but it won't be catching fire.

GOBLINS AND STAKES

Goblins may choose to make mischief in a way that potentially threatens the stake, as long as they recall that they may not harm the stakes in an immediate, direct, or permanent fashion.  If for instance, Pollyanna's birthday cake is in the oven, the dead coyote cannot be used to smash the cake directly, nor may they eat it (though licking the frosting with their nasty tongues is just fine), and the rotting coyote carcass inside with it will not immediately ruin the cake, but Pollyanna must certainly act fast or it soon will spoil the cake.

POLLYANNA'S TURN

After each goblin has had a chance to make mischief, Pollyanna gets her turn.  With an indomitable optimism, Pollyanna now has the opportunity to observe and declare ways that any mischief the goblins make is actually helpful to her, and harmful to them.

She gets to make one optimistic declaration for every goblin in play on her turn.  This declaration directly addresses any particular trouble of her choice.  She may declare one optimistic fact for each goblin for free (that is, she does not have to give a token to that goblin).  The new fact is noted on the card below the previous one.  For example, she will begin by saying something like, "well even though the goblins put the dead coyote in the oven with my birthday cake, at least my cake was on the top rack".  This is helpful to her, though not particularly harmful to the goblin cause.

However, just like the goblins, Pollyanna can add facts to facts that she has already declared.  Unlike her initial declarations though, she must give a token to the goblin who made the mischief before she can add a second declaration to the first.  For example, if she noted that her birthday cake was on the top rack, and then decided to add "...and I'm really lucky that the smell of warm chocolate cake is irresistible".  Then she gives the goblin who put the dead coyote in the oven a token.

When Pollyanna makes a declaration that is both helpful to her, and bad for the goblins, she may take that trouble token.  If Pollyanna had declared "...the luckiest part is that now, the goblins are fighting among themselves over who gets to eat the cake..." she will have made a declaration helpful to her ("top rack" because it keeps her cake safe), and harmful to the goblins ("fighting among themselves over cake").  She gets to take the trouble token for her own use, and then mark a line through cake on the card, which now makes it safe from further mischief.

AFTER EVERYONE HAS HAD A TURN

All tokens not in play on cards are now passed to the left, and the player to Pollyanna's left becomes the new Pollyanna.  Play proceeds from the last point as described.

GETTING RID OF THE GOBLINS

On the last round, when the last player to play Pollyanna takes her turn, any tokens in hand can be used to add facts that may conclusively defeat goblins, by spending one token at a time per fact.  The facts must all build on already established facts to be valid.  For example, Pollyanna has previously declared that the goblins are fighting over the cake in the kitchen, so she might now spend a token to declare "...and I sure am glad that all that fighting made the littlest goblin decide to go home!" which effectively removes the goblin from play.

The only way the goblin may counter this at this point, is if he still has a token in hand, and decides to use it to make a "...yes, but..." declaration.  For example, the littlest goblin player may have decided to go home, but spending that token could declare "...yes, I've decided this fighting makes me want to go home, but only after the chief goblin goes first...", or "yes, I've decided to go home in a huff, but not until I've gobbled the cake...".

WINNING

Pollyanna wins under the following conditions:

1) All of her stakes have been lined out of play
2) None of the goblins have any tokens left, and none are in play on cards (all are in Pollyanna's hand)

The goblins win under the following conditions:

1) Pollyanna fails to preserve any of her stakes before all tokens are in play
2) Pollyanna has no tokens in hand, and she has failed to protect all of her stakes