Mom's Basement Podcast is three adult RPG lovers talking about game design from one participant's mother's basement. The 'cast offers an irreverent, goofy and openly unprofessional style mixed with honest critique of small press and work-in-progress games.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Episode 54: The Trouble with Rose & Audience Mechanics
In this episode, we talk about Todd Zircher's The Trouble with Rose, and then we try (and fail) to fill the last half hour with a discussion of audience mechanics in RPGs.
Wow. Todd Zircher here, author of The Trouble with Rose. Lots of really good stuff there for me to digest. I can see adding some new rules and clearing up some areas of the text. I'm working on a new version as a direct result of listening to this discussion and the actual play recording.
You did bring up one design weakness that I'd love to get detailed feedback/ideas on; scoring and how it interupts the flow of the game. In it's current state, it is a necessary evil to reward players to play out their negative traits, work for their secret agenda, and to help determine who 'wins'. To some poeple, the points are what makes it a game. Any suggestions on mechanics that could replace it?
One of the things that I do encourage (and you can even see it in several of the play sets) are optional or house rules. Just to throw it out there, would a scoreless option with a shared epilogue be desireable? As in something similar to the aftermath phase in Fiasco? -- TAZ
In regards to making an optional scoreless system, I would suggest you do it in the way Clue did it at the end of the movie. In it, the butler made four different attempts to explain who caused the murders and whatever version he explained was correct. This helped the expense because it was similar to those soap dramas where they ask cliff hanger questions to entice the audience. Since your game is model after Shakespeare, it would be choice to use a drama or theater style mechanic that frankly is not being used in the games I've played.
The other players would vote on which ending they preferred to play out as the last player got to explain the ending of the game. But yeah, enough rambling from me, we can talk further on a forum or something since they'll probably be a lot of back and forth in order to help you.
Wow. Todd Zircher here, author of The Trouble with Rose. Lots of really good stuff there for me to digest. I can see adding some new rules and clearing up some areas of the text. I'm working on a new version as a direct result of listening to this discussion and the actual play recording.
ReplyDeleteYou did bring up one design weakness that I'd love to get detailed feedback/ideas on; scoring and how it interupts the flow of the game. In it's current state, it is a necessary evil to reward players to play out their negative traits, work for their secret agenda, and to help determine who 'wins'. To some poeple, the points are what makes it a game. Any suggestions on mechanics that could replace it?
One of the things that I do encourage (and you can even see it in several of the play sets) are optional or house rules. Just to throw it out there, would a scoreless option with a shared epilogue be desireable? As in something similar to the aftermath phase in Fiasco?
--
TAZ
In regards to making an optional scoreless system, I would suggest you do it in the way Clue did it at the end of the movie. In it, the butler made four different attempts to explain who caused the murders and whatever version he explained was correct. This helped the expense because it was similar to those soap dramas where they ask cliff hanger questions to entice the audience. Since your game is model after Shakespeare, it would be choice to use a drama or theater style mechanic that frankly is not being used in the games I've played.
ReplyDeleteThe other players would vote on which ending they preferred to play out as the last player got to explain the ending of the game. But yeah, enough rambling from me, we can talk further on a forum or something since they'll probably be a lot of back and forth in order to help you.