[SPLINTER] One Game, Two Worlds, Two Separate Core Mechanics

[fectin]

You might want to describe the setting from Heroes Die. It's a little obscure, and you're leaning on it pretty heavily.

[Neurosis]

Okay, so, disclaimer: there is a lot of text to this game that's been written for years that I haven't posted yet. Included in that text is a lot of the fluff that describes the setting of this game (including similarities/differences to Heroes Die).

I am actively trying to publish/start selling this game in the next couple of months, so that's a reason I'm definitely going to want the game to lean less and less on Heroes Die, and be less and less derivative of Heroes Die, as it develops. Because, you know, this isn't going to be freeware and I like to think I have some degree of ethics (or at least that this rips off so many different things and blenders them together so thoroughly that Heroes Die isn't even the most noticeable, and probably wouldn't be recognized if I didn't namecheck it). Dark City for instance is just as big of an influence. In any case, the solution to what you're talking about is definitely "lean on Heroes Die a lot less heavily", not "talk about it more". It's just been a useful frame of reference so far for this kind of insider discussion.

Anyway the fact that I am actively trying to start like, publishing and selling this ASAP after putting off doing so for four years is also part of why I've just been snipping random quotes rather than just posting up the whole as-finished-as-it-is-to-date PDF. The other reason is that it really was the crunch that I was lookin' for feedback on, not the fluff.

Anyway this discussion has inspired me so instead of doing the game making I was scheduled to do today, I think I'm going to write up a "Player Advancement" system for Splinter instead, complete with Fame Points and the idea of how you get ratings and subscribers. This will be the first time I've created a new section for Splinter out of whole cloth since like 2010, so thanks, Gaming Den!

Right now I have a really really clunky Avatar Advancement System that basically "works just like Morrowind"--whenever you use a skill, you get a little closer towards upping that skill. Whenever you increase the skills that default to a certain attribute enough times, you increase that attribute. But in practice the book keeping for this has been extremely inconvenient, and there's been the added problem that it really doesn't actually mesh well with the idea of character levels.

So I think I might want to fold Avatar Advancement into the Player Advancement section and just have your Avatar get more badass as you get more famous. I'm not sure it entirely makes sense in the game universe, but it is thematically interesting.

[fectin]

Sorry, transmit error: you may want to summarize Heroes Die for the discussion here, because you're relying it for your explanatory asides here. Splinter is it's own thing, and doesn't need any such explanation.

If you do decide to draw on that source, it makes sense that your Avatar and Player would advance together. Recall that they have training on earth for being an actor, and you learn to pick locks and swordfight by actually learning those skills. The exception is magic, but even that provides ancillary benefits that would carry over to the real world.

[Neurosis]

Okay, cool: I just rewrote the entire experience/character advancement system based on the discussion we've been having here and threw out a ton of old stuff that wasn't working that great. (Disclaimer: This section is a work-in-progress, first draft, etc. etc. Like I just realized that I may have misspelled the word "Ascension" several times, waffled back and forth between Ascension and Ascendance, etcera.)

Overall, I'm super stoked about how it is now.

[Judging__Eagle]

Don't turn the core part of your story into magical tea party; and then the 'feeding' parts of the ratings into crunchy material.

If anything, you want the gaining of ratings to have a fair degree of crunch.

Players should be able to 'spend' their ratings for either "higher standing" (whatever that means in your setting) or for more pwoerful things in Splinter.

So far, I'm seeing elements of Gantz (points collecting being the key part of the 'game' for Players), X-Crawl (televised moder/future dungeon crawling)... as well as literally dozens of other stories, from ancient Rome's gladiatoral competitions to Steven King's Running Man to an obscure Cyperpunk larp system named such; where criminals are used as entertainment in blood sports. Of course, more recent stuff like Hunger Games and Battle Royale.


What you will need to do to really research this content is to find the "sources of your sources". You like "Heroes Die"? Then research the author and find out which stories and influences have influenced them.

[Neurosis]

Don't turn the core part of your story into magical tea party; and then the 'feeding' parts of the ratings into crunchy material.

If anything, you want the gaining of ratings to have a fair degree of crunch.

Players should be able to 'spend' their ratings for either "higher standing" (whatever that means in your setting) or for more pwoerful things in Splinter.

So far, I'm seeing elements of Gantz (points collecting being the key part of the 'game' for Players), X-Crawl (televised moder/future dungeon crawling)... as well as literally dozens of other stories, from ancient Rome's gladiatoral competitions to Steven King's Running Man to an obscure Cyperpunk larp system named such; where criminals are used as entertainment in blood sports. Of course, more recent stuff like Hunger Games and Battle Royale.


What you will need to do to really research this content is to find the "sources of your sources". You like "Heroes Die"? Then research the author and find out which stories and influences have influenced them.

Actually I've already done some of that one and it's already reflected in the game. (Robert Heinlein and Phillip K. Dick; easy enough.) Heinlein is a fucking nut in a lot of ways, but I love Phillip K. Dick and I'd love to read research him more. As for Heinlein, the core principal of several systems in the game is that "sufficiently advanced magick is indistinguishable from technology" (flip-flop intentional).

Your wild mass guessing at my sources is hit and miss by about exactly 50/50. Bachman's Running Man was a definite inspiration, and so was The Long Walk. I definitely saw Battle Royale before writing Splinter, but it wasn't really an influence; the games are about very different things in spite of surface similarities. Gantz I didn't see until three years after I wrote Splinter and I remember thinking "Wow, this is a lot like Splinter!". I hate it when that happens. I'd like to note that before this thread I had literally never heard of X-Crawl or Hunger Games at all. I'm glad to see some of my influences are shining through, though.

Have you read the crunch about gaining ratings that I just posted yesterday? I'm just curious, I couldn't quite tell from your post if it was a response to having read that or to prior discussions. I'm a little confused because the gaining of Ratings (Subscribers) DOES certainly have a fair degree of crunch to it.

[Judging__Eagle]

I read your magical tea party suggestions.

It's not a system, yet.

Also, I'm not talking about what your actual references are, aside from Heroes Die, I haven't been seen any cited sources or research. I'm talking about which sources you have that you are going to organize your ideas along.

Now that you've got some down, it's good to know what your research is. The future of game design is shape them as if you were going to defend it scholarly, which means you need to cite your sources or carefully frame your arguments.

Some people can do one, but not the other; some can do both. You need to be able to do both to actually make anything that stands on its own.

Seriously, look at Koumei, that's what they can do, they has a perfect command of the stories they want to tell; and they use a system that they can pick only the parts of the system they need to use; I can now field d20 vehicles and not have to ad hoc or magical tea party how they're going to work; or do a pile of math all at once and stop gameplay.

They may get pissed that they keep doing GrimDerp inspired stuff; but that's not a bad thing; from now on they now have the ability to research any setting or system that they want and just use it.

I think you're still at the story stage; but you're not sure how to make the actions of the players in-game/avatar/whatever-mode directly translate to the setting.

Maybe the population also bets on these; maybe gambling their mineral or vitamin pills, for illegal drugs or alcohol; making the underground market much more plausible, and even that is run by the Corporate state, because people do want some way to take risks like that, and it helps to identify and (maybe even brain-staple) troublesome individuals.

If I was going to do this; I'd be using Frank's Warp Cult; since it is set to use high future and stone age primitive stuff; with PC dimorphism ranging from "invisiblue mutant healer" to "giant unyun-carnifex w/ claws and plasma breath" (adding in things like wings or undead attacks isn't impossible); and includes provisions for supernatural combat.

I'd do that; then slap a ratings system; PCs earn pts for the following things:


-Each Point of Creature Damage done [ensures massive damage outputs, even light and non-lethal PvP]
-Each Point of Structural Damage done [encourages destruction and destabilization of the Splinter world]
-Each Crit
-Each Success
-Each Failure
-Each Critical Failure [these are comedy reels; and Players earn ratings when people re-watch the clips youTube style; honestly I'd tack on a super-personal nanobots aspect to this setting, and allow PCs to have horrific things done to them; like coming through an ore grinder and survive]
-Exploring areas new to your character
-Exploring areas new to any character
-Finding new items
-Finding never found before items
-Creating items
-Destroying items
-...


Seriously, everything that the Avatars can do should be racking up points.

The idea is that viewers seriously love to watch a person talk about gardening for a few hours, or cooking; if it's something they're interested in. The viewers live vicariously through the lives of the Avatars of the Players; which is why they end up loving them and showering them in so much affection. The average Player gets their pick of the crop when it comes to Viewers. While among other Players, one is rated and ranked based on possibly thousands of factors; from Passivity to Pattern of Costuming; and Avatars are seriously dress-up dolls Gaia-online style or even Doll-Divine style.

I've also thinking a lot about character and game avatar design for the last.....6-8 months. I'm trying to stick to 12 colours (the crayola 8, plus 2 tones (beige and dark brown) and the grey and white chroma elements); but silver, gold and copper keep creeping in from the edges. ):

Those colours have been shaping most of the magic system. Colour coded mages isn't a bad thing.

[Neurosis]

I'd do that; then slap a ratings system; PCs earn pts for the following things:


-Each Point of Creature Damage done [ensures massive damage outputs, even light and non-lethal PvP]
-Each Point of Structural Damage done [encourages destruction and destabilization of the Splinter world]
-Each Crit
-Each Success
-Each Failure
-Each Critical Failure [these are comedy reels; and Players earn ratings when people re-watch the clips youTube style; honestly I'd tack on a super-personal nanobots aspect to this setting, and allow PCs to have horrific things done to them; like coming through an ore grinder and survive]
-Exploring areas new to your character
-Exploring areas new to any character
-Finding new items
-Finding never found before items
-Creating items
-Destroying items

I feel like some of those things might create an excessive amount of book-keeping, like tracking ratings points for each individual point of damage done. That's something I want to stay away from.

Ideas like "finding, creating, and destroying items" I'm pretty much just gonna go ahead and just put those in my "things that give you subscriber points" tables so...thanks. Those are things I really really want to reinforce/reward, since there's SO much STUFF to discover in the Splinter. Same with exploring new areas.

[Judging__Eagle]

It could also be as simple as 1 point per thing they do; and X points for each 'big' thing they do.

The question is this though; what is the focus of the game system?

Start there, start small.

[Neurosis]

To try and answer your question (which is, and don't take this the wrong way because I don't mean it pejoratively, a very Forge-like question, and the kind of thing I'd expect to hear there; from this place I was expecting to hear more about how and where my RNG was borked/races were imbalanced, NUMBERS, etcetera) I would say that it's a split focus. I want the game to focus on the following two things, which aren't innately related, but aren't mutually exclusive either.

Focus Of Game System:

1) Create a piece of violent entertainment that is an introspective and critical (while non-judgmental) meditation on violent entertainment, while still being violent entertainment. (Something like Violence if its design goals had been to produce something actually quite playable, as opposed to just saying fuck that and making a political statement.) The feeling evoked should be one of danger, excitement, and moral conflict; the PCs are by default required to do awful things and to support an almost immeasurably corrupt system in order to survive/advance.

2) Create a deep, challenging, immense and diverse dungeon-crawl/exploration experience that feels fresh, different, and unsettling/bizarre. The feeling evoked involved should be one of discovery.

***

Unfortunately, right now the question for me really isn't "what is the focus of the game system?". Right now the question is "how can I finish enough content to have a playable and fun game to demo at the con appearances I have arranged for the next few months".

Time constraints don't allow me to go back and reexamine first principals right now; I've got sample dungeons and sample PCs to map and stat up, and I've got plenty of shitty/incomplete rules to fix/finish, I've got layout, typography, art and publishing concerns to work on, and probably a ton of other things I've forgotten. Besides, you know, all the other creative projects I'm involved and just generally speaking life.

This thread has gotten me a lot closer to having an actual game to print/demo, which is awesome. The subscriber point system might not be perfect, but it's a really big improvement on what I had, in terms of comprehensibility and playability if nothing else. I will aim closer to perfection and thematic resonance on the next draft, but right now I've gotta be a touch pragmatic, and I've got monsters to stat and a gear chapter to completely reorganize because right now the layout is fucking terrible.

[Morzas]

Oh. If you'd like us to analyze your game's crunch, it'd be easier if you pulled it out from the fluff. If you could summarize your game's core mechanics in one post (probably an impossible task) it'd make it a lot easier to get at. Right now, you have a lot of core rules strewn about inside fluff paragraphs, which makes it difficult to get at how the system works.

How about you make an example character step-by-step, explaining the process of each step of chargen while you do it? A play example could help too, even a bad one like you see in 3.5's DMG. It's okay if it's rough or idealized; all we need is a little peek at what's going on in your head.

[Neurosis]

Okay, I'll try and post up a post of that sort in the next week or so.

[Neurosis]

And I never did! Sorry! Too busy, guys,

This game is actually through art and layout and on its way to the printers. I did everything I could to work in as much of the feedback here as possible into the final draft of the rules, but in the end the timescale was just too tight for me to do more Q&A and brainstorming here.

I'll be launching the game at I-Con (a decent-sized convention local to me), running demo games all day Saturday and having a small initial run of books for sale. Small because I want to make sure the printers have not FUCKED UP CATASTROPHICALLY before investing in a more sizable print run.

[Jilocasin]

Interesting cover art, who's the artist? Also is it color or B&W art inside?

[Neurosis]

B&W Art inside; we'd have to charge a ridiculously stupid amount for the book if it had full color interior art because the printing would cost a LOT more even though the art wouldn't.

Cover Artist is Christian N. St. Pierre.

[JonSetanta]

Good luck with your promoting Scwarzkopf. If this were a novel or even series of short stories, I'd shove my nose in it.

Meanwhile half-assed shit like Mistborn gets publicity. Your setting descriptions alone are better than that.

[Neurosis]

* Someone says something nice to someone else on the Den.
* World IMPLODES.

/snrk

Thank you Sigma. : )

[Neurosis]

I have been designing games for a really long time, pretty much non-stop since 2000 or 2001. My primary (yet meager) income for the past three years came from a pay-to-play LARP I ran. Splinter's not my first game, honestly not my best, not my most recent, and not my last. It does have the distinction of being the first one getting the professional art, layout, and publication treatment, since it was the most recent project I had that was the closest to completion when I decided to actually monetize as a game design company and go for it. The fact that I have some financial backing/an actual budget for that has just as much to do with blind serendipity (God knows I'm unlucky enough in other ways) as it does with the actual quality of the work. I don't tend to talk a lot about MAH ACOMPLUSHMENTS around The Den, I sense the backlash would be severe if I did; lesson hard-learned from other online communities.

I've got two free games floating around the internet too, sans the professional presentation. Neither one has received any real interest or feedback, although one of them won a Ronny Award (and $50 whole dollars, wooohooo).

[Neurosis]

So ten or so people bought (or kinda bought) the book at the con. Not exactly bringin' in the money yet, but this is a marathon, not a sprint. Weird to think that for all I know five or ten people out there have my book and are playing my game without me there to observe. I hope they'll send me e-mails about all the shit that's broken!

(For those of you who have the lucre to support a fellow denner, we're in the process of getting it up on places like DriveThru, Indie Press Revolution, and maybe the un-store.)

[Neurosis]

If you're both curious and generous, you can find my game for sale here while we wait on IPR, un-store, and DriveThru.



Be gentle (ha ha ha).

[Axebird]

I'm going to be running a Splinter game pretty soon. While the Splinter-side rules check out and make sense, I'm baffled by the core mechanic for Earth-side stuff, at least for Attribute checks. It's stated that a human average Attribute is 3, but:

To make an Attribute Check, roll 2d6. If the result is equal to or less than the Attribute being Checked, the character has succeeded. Obviously, the higher an Attribute is, the easier it is to succeed a Check of that Attribute

What? The average person only has like an 8% chance to succeed on an average check invoking an attribute. Is this a horrible typo, or am I missing something huge?