Oh no, its very constructive, thank you.

I've never actually even attempted to design a system before, only ever written for existing ones. I know I can do the flowery, fluffy side, but it was always going to be the mechanic that was the tricky bit. Thankfully, it seems to be evolving through discussion like this and is tightening up.

I've played many of Robin's games over the years and have been fortunate enough to play in his group as well as test many of ideas. He's certainly a master of supportive systems.

The game I suppose, when I first started writing it, was about loss and redemption, rising against the odds to get your heart's desire. That's still there, but it sort of broadened out as I discussed it with Rich, because although I don't mind a bit of cool, goth-like moping I didn't really want it to turn into too depressing a game (which is how I always saw Wraith, cool idea, depressing as all hell).

So I hope it will still tell stories of struggle and redemption, but in a range of styles that will suit the people round the table. That's a tall order, isn't it?

I envisioned the mechanic of using Brass (basically determination, Brass neck) to overcome cruddy roles as representing that struggle, but maybe that's not working quite as well as it should be just yet.

Hope does have an effect; no Hope, no mystical abilities (because your own self belief has tumbled to the point you can't summon the strength to do anything mythic), but you can make a supreme effort and sacrifice some Brass (re: determination) to pick yourself up again. I need to go back and explain that a bit more clearly ;)

Solitude, no, not so much of a game effect, which I agree needs looking at.

That's been very helpful, Graham, thank you again.

--x Lynne x--

;)

JoE

Prince of Darkness Games
Rock N' Role-Play....

Okay, officially confused ;)

I think one reason I'm a bit nervous about the mechanic is that the one thing that's finished me with some great looking/sounding games is the rules section. As a result of that, I've probably aimed a little too light to start with.

--x Lynne x--

Is a lot to do with hope, and how different kinds of scenes effect hope vs pain vs success.

-Matt

Realms Publishing

Ah, yes, I thought it was a game title ;)

--x Lynne x--

I really think the game has a fantastical feel to it.

What we are doing in the game is entirely summed up for me in the first line:

You are a star that has fallen to earth because of your fascination with mortal affairs, seeking to regain your Starlight so that you can return to your place in heavens.

I don't know whether it is worth knowing why you fell, or what particular mortal affair you dabbled in? That's your call Lynne.

For me, in 3:16 I made the initial input minimal. Really, we'll find that out throug a Flashback in play.

But, for Fallen, it might be beneficial to have all that stuff loaded as situation and character to get the story rolling from the get go. I find it tedious in play to have the GM lead me through something we could have hashed out priot to play. On the other hand I also find it rubbish that I will do 6 pages of background on a character for it to never come up and, more importantly, affect play at all.

So, the system doesn't need to be clever or intricate or use beads and playing cards, it just needs to help us play that thing in bold above. Now, maybe it's the GM that's helping that? In which case, how do we help the GM do that? Or maybe it's on the players? What do we have to help them?

But, for me, it comes back to that thing above -- it's an incerdibly focused elevator pitch that most games designers would kill for.

I dabbled, I fell, I'm doing stuff to regain starlight and go back to the Heavens.*

*Unless as a player I decide it's better to stay here on Earth, but that'll emerge from the character's story, right?

Cheers Gregor!

It has to be said that Mr Laws suggested adding the approximately 25 word no nonsense pitch at the beginning so that players knew exactly what it was all about.

I'm in the middle of redrafting and jigging at the moment, looking at errors I can see more easily now I've printed it out for myself (what is it with screens and it going in one eye and out the other?). Some things have already been tagged for an "Alternative Play" appendix and I can see some other things making it in there too.

And yes, in the end there's no compulsion to return to the firmament. Its all about choice.

I quite intentionally didn't look at other people's games while writing the first draft because I have a semi-photographic memory and needed to be sure that I wasn't inadvertantly thieving stuff. But now I would like to see how other people have handled these sort of issues, so all I have to do is wrestle 3:16 out of Rich's sweaty paws and find where he's hidden Best Friends...

--x Lynne x--

A good example to look at is My Life With Master I'll explain.

My Life With Master is a game about being a minion of an evil Master. You have three stats: Weariness, Self-Loathing and Love*.

Now, there's three things you can do in My Life With Master: Violence, Villainy or Making Overtures (to try and get love).

If you're doing Violence, you roll your Self-Loathing, while your opponent rolls your Weariness*. If you win, you succeed, and your Self-Loathing increases by 1. If you lose, your Weariness increases.

If you're doing Villainy, it's the same, except you don't get weariness if you fail.

If you're Making Overtures to someone, you roll your Love, while your opponent rolls your Self-Loathing*. If you win, you get the Love you want. If you lose, your Weariness increases.

Then, at the end, your Love, Self-Loathing and Weariness determine what sort of ending you get. For example, if your Self-Loathing is high, you get killed; but if your Love is high, you're integrated into society.

So, do you see what I mean? The stats feed back into the game. And there are some interesting effects: like, if you have lots of Self-Loathing, you'll be good at Violence, which means you get even more Self-Loathing.

Is this a possibility for your game? For example, perhaps Hope could help you in conflicts where you're trying to persuade someone. Or Solitude could help you where you want to hurt other people.

Perhaps those ideas specifically aren't great, but that sort of thing. My worry with Fallen, at the moment, is that neither Hope nor Solitude really do much, whereas I'd really like to see them at the core of the game.

By the way, I do suggesting buying My Life With Master, if you can. It's ten dollars, so about six pounds, and I think it'd be a good design for you to look at.

I hope that's of some use.

Graham

* It's actually more complicated than that, but this will do for now.

Yes, I have "My Life With Master". Its been a while since I read it, though, so I will go back and look.

I have been bandying around having three dice (one for each) and the outcome determining how well the role goes for the character. I've not really had any time to develop it (exam marking), so I'll be working on that this weekend.

--x Lynne x--

After reading the feedback, I had a go at the central mechanic. I talked this over with Rich to get it clear in my own mind and had intended to be rather radical and ditch the original one altogether and go for a three dice (2 good, 1 bad) system, no points in sight. In the end, Rich talked me round to a hybrid system.

Original system: roll two dice, look at the table to see how you’ve done, spend Brass to lift failures to successes. Non-Focus Characters (NFCs) can spend Brass to alter rolls and in contested rolls you would spend points to tussle over the result. Hope was spent only to activate Special Talents and Solitude really didn’t do much.

Hybrid system: You still have Hope, Brass and Solitude points. The table has gone; if a dice roll is needed you roll a Hope (+ve) die and a Solitude (-ve) die. The idea is to represent the positive effect of your Hope being challenged by your fear of failure. If the difference between the two dice is one, it’s a minor success/fail. Pretty much anything else is just a success/fail. But if you roll a 6 on your Hope die and a 1 on your Solitude die, that’s a critical success (fireworks etc.); a 1 on your Hope and a 6 on your Solitude is your fear getting the better of you and you’re really cocking it up big time, getting a point of Solitude in the process. For the moment, we decided to go with rerolling any ties, but that might get changed.

So what does Brass do now if we’ve ditched the bidding bit? It buys you an extra die to roll (only one, mind). If you really want your roll to succeed, spend a point of Brass to get an extra positive die (representing your determination to succeed; you have to declare you’re spending it before you roll the other two dice though, no adding it later ‘cos you’ve failed), and you add the Brass and Hope dice rolls together. Critical fails now demand a 1H, 1B and 6S roll. Critical success is a 6 on either positive dice and a 1 on the Solitude dice.

Contested rolls work as a straight versus thing (both roll their dice and see who wins/fails; ties roll again). If you want to assist, spend your Brass to add another die (?Ending up with 3 positive dice; this needs work).

Brass points: Goons/grunts have zero Brass (so you can wade through them with little trouble); a normal NFC would have 7 Brass, a fairly determined one would have 14 and a Boss-level NFC would have 21 (so they could at least be a bit of a challenge).

Other points that came up during play are in the playtest report I'll post later in bits, but they are:

Awakenings - the GM (if there is one) and the other players are there to ask questions as the focus character describes what happened, to flesh out the background and give everyone a sense of what is important to the player’s view of their game. That concept was in my head, but not on the paper and that’s exactly why games need to be run by other people.

Solitude points: Solitude hasn’t done much up to this point, so I suggested that the more you have, the more oddly people treat you as your mopiness starts to bleed into your everyday behaviour. When you Awaken, people watch you a bit more than they would have, but don't really avoid you as in the original version.

Tied basic rolls: rerolling these might get tedious; Rich rolled four in a row at one point, later in the game I rolled three myself. Maybe it needs to err on the side of the player – a tie becomes a minor success. It needs thinking about.

--x Lynne x--