Players and character concepts.
There should be two distinct and traditional roles in my game: player and referee. The referee makes up the story and controls NPCs. The players each control one or more characters in the story. So far, so standard.
Given the fact that a PBEM game allows (and hopefully encourages) players to Get a Bit Literary with their posts, I think that the players should have more creative freedom when it comes to the story. Or perhaps I should say that they'll need and probably take some plot liberties, so why fight against it?
I'm thinking that the currency I mentioned in my previous post might be used to drive plot flexibility. I'm thinking that the referee should take some of the currency from a player when they introduce things into the story. This allows more plot freedom to a player who plays their character(s) well (since they earn more currency for doing that). This throws up a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation though. The player may alter the plot by playing their character 'well'. I'd need to carefully define what sort of embellishments constitute plot changes (which cost currency) and which others are just adding colour (and award currency). Not sure about this...
(The referee will always know how much currency each player has.)
Some thoughts on task resolution:
The main driving force in what a character can accomplish should be their Character Concept. I haven't thought exactly what details should be included or abilities rated in the Character Concept yet. It would contain a list of specialisms perhaps: things that make the character stand out. Perhaps the Character Concept would turn out to be the part that differed wildy depending on the setting. I can imagine that a Dying Earth game would contain a list of styles. It would record the styles of persuasion, rebuff and attack, for example, that a character used.
When I talked about not using dice in a previous post I might have been lying. The players are deemed to be inherently untrustworthy when it comes to die rolls, whereas the referee can be trusted. This seems like a reasonable assertion to me: if the referee wanted to be unfair then fudging a few die-rolls would be just one of many ways to do it.
My idea is this: the player chooses something to represent them in each email sent, and the referee matches the selection against a randomly generated 'something' to determine task resolution. This would be used in cases where the outcome should have some randomness thrown in. The type of something that the player chooses would be based on the setting. For a Glorantha setting it might be a rune, in Dying Earth a picture of a character from the Dying Earth RPG source books?
An image of the something would be added to the end of each player email. That should add a healthy dose of colour (no pun intended) to the proceedings.
I'll try to add some example to my next posting.
Given the fact that a PBEM game allows (and hopefully encourages) players to Get a Bit Literary with their posts, I think that the players should have more creative freedom when it comes to the story. Or perhaps I should say that they'll need and probably take some plot liberties, so why fight against it?
I'm thinking that the currency I mentioned in my previous post might be used to drive plot flexibility. I'm thinking that the referee should take some of the currency from a player when they introduce things into the story. This allows more plot freedom to a player who plays their character(s) well (since they earn more currency for doing that). This throws up a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation though. The player may alter the plot by playing their character 'well'. I'd need to carefully define what sort of embellishments constitute plot changes (which cost currency) and which others are just adding colour (and award currency). Not sure about this...
(The referee will always know how much currency each player has.)
Some thoughts on task resolution:
The main driving force in what a character can accomplish should be their Character Concept. I haven't thought exactly what details should be included or abilities rated in the Character Concept yet. It would contain a list of specialisms perhaps: things that make the character stand out. Perhaps the Character Concept would turn out to be the part that differed wildy depending on the setting. I can imagine that a Dying Earth game would contain a list of styles. It would record the styles of persuasion, rebuff and attack, for example, that a character used.
When I talked about not using dice in a previous post I might have been lying. The players are deemed to be inherently untrustworthy when it comes to die rolls, whereas the referee can be trusted. This seems like a reasonable assertion to me: if the referee wanted to be unfair then fudging a few die-rolls would be just one of many ways to do it.
My idea is this: the player chooses something to represent them in each email sent, and the referee matches the selection against a randomly generated 'something' to determine task resolution. This would be used in cases where the outcome should have some randomness thrown in. The type of something that the player chooses would be based on the setting. For a Glorantha setting it might be a rune, in Dying Earth a picture of a character from the Dying Earth RPG source books?
An image of the something would be added to the end of each player email. That should add a healthy dose of colour (no pun intended) to the proceedings.
I'll try to add some example to my next posting.
posted by Ben M at 4:24 AM
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