DOTM: open system design: Sesere
Apr. 14th, 2006 02:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mneme posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
labcatsThis is the current design for the secrets/senses/recognition system for DOTM.
Sesere: Secrets, senses, and recognition
The purpose of this system istwo three four five-fold: First, I want to come up with an easy way to model the large variety of senses in the game -- there are animals with enhanced hearing and smell, detectives, magicians, and people who are, perhaps, a little less observant -- the system must make it more likely that sense-enhanced people will get info than non-sense-enhanced ones. Second, I want to force a variety of secrets and information bits to come out in interesting (limited release) ways. Third, I want to make this release of information unpredictable -- the GMs determine what bits of information are available, but exactly what bits are revealed when should be more a result of the players' choices. Fourth, I want to reward players for interacting with a large number of other player characters -- the game flows if everyone, at least to an extent, interacts with everyone else, and this system attempts to encourage this. Fifth, I am both attempting to duplicate the success of, expand on, and respond to the issues of the system for the 4 hour TS LARP "Intrigue in the Sky", which featured a character-number based recognition system with rolled difficulty numbers allowing infinite rerolls over multiple conversations -- which both worked very well to drive interaction and was frustrating in that people would keep finding reasons to interact until they got a good roll (if they suspected there was anything to notice).
1. Clues: At the beginning of the game, all characters are given envelopes, each of which contains some important secret (or clues to same) or information about this character. It may be a basic description -- "this person smells like paper and ink" -- or it may be something much more detailed -- "this person is the person who murdered your sire!". The GMs are responsible for coming up with all such secrets. On the envelope (which the player is not allowed to open while the game is running) is at least one code indicating who can open it -- this may (but usually won't) a character code (in-progress edit: this should -never- include a character code -- instead, automatic inferences should be event envelope held by the player in question, and the envelope should just contain the percieved facts that for some particular character will trigger the inferences), and will always include a number of perception symbols -- 1-4 of each and any of the perception symbols, in any combination (ex: [nose], [nose][nose][nose][nose], [eye], [nose][eye], [eye][eye][magic][magic]). If the player is presented by a perception card (or combination, see below) that posesses all the requisite symbols in the appropriate number, they must present the Clue for perusal (note: since they must then get the Clue back, either the players have to write stuff down, or there must be duplicates available).
2. Perceptions: All characters have three perception cards. The first one (minimum maintenence perceptions) can be used an unlimited number of times -- after interacting with a person or thing for a sufficient amount of time, the player presents the card, and recieves an applicable cards. The second one (concentrated perception) works exactly as the first one does, but it has higher values on it, and can only be used once per period. The third one (research, concentrated perception, assumed extra free time used), works exactly as the first two do, but has the characters maximum perception values, and can only be used once per day (or other long period). The exact symbols on each card will depend heavily on the character -- a canine PC (ie, an intelligent dog) might have [nose][nose][ear] for her first card, [nose][nose][nose][ear][eye] for her second one, and [nose][nose][nose][nose][ear][ear][eye] for her third card. By contrast, Sherlock Holmes could have [glass][eye][eye][nose][ear] for his first card, [glass][glass][eye][eye][nose][ear] for his second, and [glass][glass][glass][glass][eye][eye][eye][nose][nose][ear][ear] for his third card, allowing him to notice anything a bat, a dog, or a hawk could notice when just flying around (plus special things that only a detective [glass] would notice)...but only occasionally. Currently concieved modes of perception are [eye] (sight), [ear] (good hearing), [nose] (sense of smell), [glass] (things only a trained detective would take note of), and [magic] (only perceptable to people with magic perceptions). In a different game, I could see using [dark eye] (only perceptable to people with good night vision) [greek psi] (psi powers), etc.
3. Options:
Non-human challenges (murder sites, etc) can have envelopes too -- in this case, the available envelopes are in plain sight, or there's a player (or more likely, a GM or AGM) responsible for handling the clue envelopes for that mechanic.
This mechanic may also be useable to resolve tracking/stealth -- someone who is hard to track can use their "don't track me" skill which masks out a certain amount of each sense. If the tracker has senses beyond that level, they succeed.
Also, I could see allowing players to combine their senses where they were willing to compare notes, etc -- in this case, they'd get the highest in each category posessed by the group. Sherlock Holmes working -with- a dog, both at the 1-level, would have [nose][nose][glass][eye][eye][ear] -- the best nose, glass, eye, and ear ratings among the group. But no matter how big the group, if they don't ahve anyone with three [ear]s, they'll never spot a clue requiring that many ears to notice.
Sesere: Secrets, senses, and recognition
The purpose of this system is
1. Clues: At the beginning of the game, all characters are given envelopes, each of which contains some important secret (or clues to same) or information about this character. It may be a basic description -- "this person smells like paper and ink" -- or it may be something much more detailed -- "this person is the person who murdered your sire!". The GMs are responsible for coming up with all such secrets. On the envelope (which the player is not allowed to open while the game is running) is at least one code indicating who can open it -- this may (but usually won't) a character code (in-progress edit: this should -never- include a character code -- instead, automatic inferences should be event envelope held by the player in question, and the envelope should just contain the percieved facts that for some particular character will trigger the inferences), and will always include a number of perception symbols -- 1-4 of each and any of the perception symbols, in any combination (ex: [nose], [nose][nose][nose][nose], [eye], [nose][eye], [eye][eye][magic][magic]). If the player is presented by a perception card (or combination, see below) that posesses all the requisite symbols in the appropriate number, they must present the Clue for perusal (note: since they must then get the Clue back, either the players have to write stuff down, or there must be duplicates available).
2. Perceptions: All characters have three perception cards. The first one (minimum maintenence perceptions) can be used an unlimited number of times -- after interacting with a person or thing for a sufficient amount of time, the player presents the card, and recieves an applicable cards. The second one (concentrated perception) works exactly as the first one does, but it has higher values on it, and can only be used once per period. The third one (research, concentrated perception, assumed extra free time used), works exactly as the first two do, but has the characters maximum perception values, and can only be used once per day (or other long period). The exact symbols on each card will depend heavily on the character -- a canine PC (ie, an intelligent dog) might have [nose][nose][ear] for her first card, [nose][nose][nose][ear][eye] for her second one, and [nose][nose][nose][nose][ear][ear][eye] for her third card. By contrast, Sherlock Holmes could have [glass][eye][eye][nose][ear] for his first card, [glass][glass][eye][eye][nose][ear] for his second, and [glass][glass][glass][glass][eye][eye][eye][nose][nose][ear][ear] for his third card, allowing him to notice anything a bat, a dog, or a hawk could notice when just flying around (plus special things that only a detective [glass] would notice)...but only occasionally. Currently concieved modes of perception are [eye] (sight), [ear] (good hearing), [nose] (sense of smell), [glass] (things only a trained detective would take note of), and [magic] (only perceptable to people with magic perceptions). In a different game, I could see using [dark eye] (only perceptable to people with good night vision) [greek psi] (psi powers), etc.
3. Options:
Non-human challenges (murder sites, etc) can have envelopes too -- in this case, the available envelopes are in plain sight, or there's a player (or more likely, a GM or AGM) responsible for handling the clue envelopes for that mechanic.
This mechanic may also be useable to resolve tracking/stealth -- someone who is hard to track can use their "don't track me" skill which masks out a certain amount of each sense. If the tracker has senses beyond that level, they succeed.
Also, I could see allowing players to combine their senses where they were willing to compare notes, etc -- in this case, they'd get the highest in each category posessed by the group. Sherlock Holmes working -with- a dog, both at the 1-level, would have [nose][nose][glass][eye][eye][ear] -- the best nose, glass, eye, and ear ratings among the group. But no matter how big the group, if they don't ahve anyone with three [ear]s, they'll never spot a clue requiring that many ears to notice.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-15 06:36 pm (UTC)Of course, this raises big red "I've got a secret flags", but is that so bad?
no subject
Date: 2006-04-17 07:27 pm (UTC)What makes a bit more sense is having the passive senses on the badges -- so once you've conversed with someone for a while, they just give you whatever revelations you qualify for. If you want more, you have to dig deeper.
OTOH, I'm not sure how to handle the "I tried to use my deep senses on you and you didn't have anything deep, so I lose it" problem. Possibly, the answer is "deal" -- part of the point of having the systems is to allow interesting strategic choices for the stronger sense cards.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-11 03:01 pm (UTC)This allows for a lot of fine distinction of secret information about a character which is revealed by passive observation. That's really neat. I'm wondering if it's something you'll actually use effectively.
Your system creates uncertainty about whether certain characters will learn certain information about certain other characters, without using a random element. This I like, strongly. And there are plenty of ways you can make something more likely to be discovered.
I've played in other systems with an "always-on" low value and a set of "once-per-session" higher values before, applied completely over the game's mechanics. I generally liked it, although felt it had a little trouble as a combat mechanic (results for repeated engagements could become deterministic, especially at the end of the game). I think for this limited use it would work quite nicely.
I do worry a bit about it getting cumbersome having to carry a lot of envelopes around and shuffle through them looking for which ones somebody gets to see. How big are these envelopes going to be? How time consuming will it be to find the ones you're turning over, turn them over, open, read, note, return to envelopes, and return to player?
Your system also has the feature that you always know if somebody has noticed something about you, and what sort of thing it was, even if you don't know what it was. I don't know how much of an issue this will be, but nobody's perfect at separating, and many LARPers are pretty poor at it.
I think I've mentioned playing in games which use letter codes on name badges to release secret information, giving some characters the translations of some of the codes so when they interact with somebody they learn things, and the person who has the detectable feature doesn't know what's being learned. I'm not going to suggest scrapping your system and using that instead, but a synergy between the two occurred to me. That is, some (or all, so you don't know you've discovered something relevant to somebody) of the envelopes could contain, in addition to descriptions, a code or symbol. This lets you communicate that an inference has been triggered (open event envelope as you mention) without having to beat other people who read this description over the head with the fact that it's a clue. Heck, you could even have an envelope with [eye] on the outside and some completely innocuous text on the inside like an obvious physical description, and a code to indicate to the person who's going to recognize a certain character on sight that this is the character. Although I'd rather do that with a badge code or something, since it's immediately obvious.