The Back Room: Live Tabletop Games

Saffron

12:33 PM

@BESW ping ?

[waves distractedly]

You busy?

Mmmm... distracted.

in a puzzling modd heh? :)

mood*

If you wish, we can try to get back to that brainstorming.

BESW

I'm not in much of a brain for it, but you can use this space for your own thoughts and I'll look at them when I can.

(One quick thing: Zach is right--in a game where consecutive time available is the primary limiting factor in getting things done, you need to track it carefully and systematically. It's the players' most precious resource.)

Saffron

12:52 PM

A system to help me track the player's timeline, and a system to help them.

hum

Does that mean I have to set a time length to every single action

That would be impossibke

I could create some template of actions

And take the dices/storytelling quality into account to diminish or augment the time taken

Even though, that would be a poor way of listing things.

I could instead

Let players decide how much time they want to use to accomplish an action

I would just quicly need to apply a modifier to the action according to the time they decided to take

That could work for most actions, but some actions cannot be timed so easily

First

There need to be a good map of the area

Distances needs to be well defined

So that time can be deduced given an itinerary and a way of transport

Then for non transport actions, I guess there's no way other than seeing case per case

I think a good compromise would be to discuss with the player how much time an action would take.

Then

There needs to be a good way to keep track of the time for me and the players

Players

Environmental reminder at key times

Like church bell from a sound .mp3

Some moments might require a more flexible and precise way of displaying time

If clocks exists in universe, I can use a clock that I change everytime time is used. The player can take a look at the clock

BESW

1:07 PM

DFRPG isn't nearly so precise, but it uses degree of success to determine how long it takes to do something--including bargaining the length of time a tasks takes with its degree of difficulty.

The time ladder.

Saffron

So putting a time to an action

Rolling for it

And the success/failure shows the modifier to this action

But that's not so different as to do it on the go then

Hum that's tricky

I guess putting time on things is not quite as important as keeping track of that time

BESW

Perhaps it'd be easier if you reduce the total amount of time available per loop.

Saffron

But even so, it just belittles the range of the problems

If we have 24h

The problem is the 1h range

Or even 30mn

If we have 1h

The problem is the 2mn range

BESW

[squint] Your point is taken, but you should probably look up "belittle."

Saffron

oops I'm not native English speaker

can't edit for some reason

BESW

1:17 PM

There's a time cutoff for edits.

Saffron

I think I have two possibilities

1. Set the action, then set the time taken (bargain, degree of success modifier..)

2. Set the time players are willing to take, then set the result of the action (with other modifiers)

Both are usefull

I'm begining to think that a setting where keeping track of time is hard for characters might be even more interesting

A middle ages setting, where PCs are awaiting for the ominous church bell foreshadowing their inexorable dismise.

Ding... Ding... Ding...

Ding...

It would be even more stressing that they loose this only yet poor landmark from time to time, letting them with only their hope that when they'll hear the bells again, the eleventh Ding won't come... yet

The confusing factor that time tracking can lead to might be an interesting lead to follow...

Hum I think I have come to a state where knowing the system will largely help moving forward

So I shall try to find what suits best, and come back to these considerations later

Saffron

Modern ; Near future ; Cyberpunk ; Space opera ; 19th century ; middle ages ; medfan ; prehistoric ; dark ages ; steampunk

BESW

Worth noting: the idea that a period before clocks were ubiquitous was marked by unawareness of time is... erroneous at best. Clocks didn't introduce time-keeping, they changed its nature. There's a large body of literature--historical, psychological, and others--on the subject.

Saffron

@BESW I know that, but time keeping at that time was nowhere near as precise and accessible as after

BESW

Prior to ubiquitous mechanical time-keeping devices, time-keeping was both internalised and externalised. Precision meant something different.

Saffron

1:32 PM

@BESW the sun is not always visible, and the body is not always relayable

BESW

Time itself was a different kind of entity; clocks don't keep track of time the way we do, and so our ideas of what time IS have changed as we gave over its accounting to machines. It might be interesting to explore that in a campaign where time is such a crucial factor.

Saffron

@BESW I'm not sure asking my player to read documentation to change their idea of time is really what I'm looking for

BESW

Oh, no. That would be asking a lot of them.

Saffron

Which is why keeping the way we perceive time, with means of the past seems more suitable to me

Alternatively

BESW

But choosing to portray time in ancient, alien ways, through systems and methods of recording and advancement which don't mesh with our modern notions of its inevitable metronomic progression... [takes notes]

Saffron

1:36 PM

I could use a setting where time is not linear or even continuousa

That would be fun

Places where time flows faster

What if the thing players try to avoid, is the end of time itself

Oh well maybe I'm thinking too much about this

brb

BESW

I've got a thing about the notion that our ideas about the kind of story we're in influences how we perceive the flow of time.

Saffron

@BESW Can you explain further? I don't quite understand what you mean.

BESW

It's not something that's easy for me to explain, and the books I've read on the subject generally aren't much help; they use highly specialised examples and metaphors. But...

Take a person who goes to a fortune-teller and asks to have their tarot cards read, someone who truly believes that this will tell them something about their future.

They don't believe that the act of picking the cards and laying them down and reading them will create that future which is told to them.

They believe that future exists already, and it reaches back in time, defying the apparent logic of cause and effect, to make the cards in its past turn over in a certain order.

This is storytelling logic, and in novels and TV shows we call it symbolism and foreshadowing.

When Sarah Connor drives off at the end of Terminator and there are storm clouds in the distance, those storm clouds were not caused by weather events any more than the person getting his fortune read believes the cards were determined by his own choices.

The storm clouds were created by the future events of the next film, and the cards' order was determined by the future events in that person's life.

The kind of story we think we're in determines a lot about how we interact with the world; if I think I'm the main character in a tragedy, I will believe that anything bad which happens to me is simply fated to happen because of the kind of story I'm in. I come to expect people to be mean to me, and bad things to happen. I mistrust my friends and I expect my plans to be ruined.

This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, as my expectation of misery makes me miserable, reinforcing my conviction that I live in a tragedy.

Some people believe time is circular and referential, a story that folds back on itself, so they look to the past as a template for the future; others think it's a story of logic and reason where each action can be derived solely by the last, so they analyse the past to extrapolate what comes next. Still others feel their story is essentially random and the history holds no clue for the future.

Interestingly, many feel time runs backwards, that some great future event is orchestrating history in order to lead to itself.

This is the kind of thing it's important to think about for me, as a conscious storyteller and as a person of religious faith. As a GM, do I know what's to come and I'm orchestrating events to lead to it?

Most traditional RPG adventures work that way; each event exists largely to make way for the next event.

And as a person of faith, I have to reconcile my faith's teachings that God has an irrevocable plan for humanity with its assertion that my independent action can influence that plan's execution.

Saffron

2:01 PM

Now you know what it is to be a poor PC stuck in the minds of manipulative and cruel GMs

So, do you have a preference of setting?

BESW

For this "time loop" conceit, I'd go with something very familiar to the players. Because it's gonna be confusing and complicated enough anyway without having to also deal with an unfamiliar setting.

Saffron

I agree

BESW

If I knew nothing about the players I was designing it for, I'd make it modern and movie-like.

Saffron

Modern ; Near future ; Space opera ; middle ages ; medfan

BESW

I'd pick a well-known film or TV show and use that as the basis for the setting.

Saffron

2:07 PM

Actually more Modern ; Space opera; ; medfan

Are the three setting that people know

the best

Modern has some big restrictions though

Let's see all three

Modern : Easy to understand and "enter in". The time awareness is almost constant thanks to clocks.

BESW

If the clock thing is the main hangup, that's easy enough: have your cataclysm be heralded by something that makes clocks unreliable.

Saffron

Though I'd expect some kind of fantasy would be required. Either alien technology, magic or other. Modern is unfortunately poor for that

I'm afraid modern might not be "epic" enough

Stargate might work

But it's more space opera than modern

What kind of emotions I want my players to feel...

Stress

Urge

Fear?

BESW

You can go with anything from urban fantasy to a James Bond technobabble cataclysm that does whatever you want...

Saffron

Lack of power?

@BESW The challenge is explaining time loops in that setting...

Would it be enjoyable, a game where no matter what you try, it seems like the loop wins the game everytime

The players would have to be steel minded to keep their will going after hitting a bunch of walls

Seeing that another way, the players move forward with small steps, reaching closer and closer their goal, but still seems so far away

hope

That's what I want my players to fell

feel

I can't seem to find an appropriate plot/char set in modern though

Nuclear war/bomb seems a bit cheesy and expected

Natural disaster could work, but i'm not aware of any that would meet the requirements

time loop through computer simulation is way ahead of our time

Watchmen-like plot could be interesting

But i'm not really into superheroes enough to go that way

What about space opera:

Easy to keep players in one place

If we use a machine driven setting

We can easily break the time structure

Time loop can be explained through computer-generated simulations

Or even advanced technology

But there's no Space opera world that are standard enough, and thus nothing is really well known. just barely understood

Medfan has the advantage of me having a world created and GMed.

BESW

2:34 PM

I can't really help here because your objections to the modern setting baffle me.

Saffron

@BESW It's not really objections

I just can't find ideas

I think there's some good setting in modern era, but I can't find any ideas of plot, characters, and explanations that would fit the concept

BESW

Modern cataclysm, modern time travel: new quantum-based energy technology or sub-atomic experiment goes catastrophically wrong.

Saffron

But why would the PCs be involved in this?

If they are too closely related to the problem, since modern is so well known, they reach the end of the puzzle too easily

BESW

Any number of reasons. Why are main characters in movies involved? They snuck in, they were framed, they were hired to be there, they were reporting it.

Saffron

Remember that thegroup of PC is the only one to feel time loop

BESW

2:38 PM

If you want to pull them further away from it, go one step removed: they helped transport a crucial bit of tech, or helped steal it.

Or you can have them intimately involved in the Thing That Went Wrong, and that's why it's so terrifying that they don't know what went wrong.

Saffron

But still, I can't continue with these mockups

BESW

Or you can divorce the cataclysm from the time loop almost entirely, and have the one be a coincidence only tangentially related to the other: the explosion at the nuclear power plant jogged something loose in the physics lab, at its most basic.

Saffron

I want the players to first experience confustion

They don't understand why they died

They don't understand why 2sec later, they are elsewhere, alive and feeling like leaving the same day again

Yet I have to have an explanation that only them can save the day

But to do so, a lot of work needs to be done to only find what is happening

And then experiencing loops to find a solution to it

I think that if the cause of death is completely unclear (and not directly related to what the PC do), they will have a time where they think it's all a dream/imagination

BESW

[shrug] It's late, and I can't tell what value judgement you're placing on your statements.

You say "if I do this, then they'll do/feel that," with no indication of whether that's good or bad or indifferent, so I can't possibly respond to it.

Saffron

The block above is what I would like

BESW

2:47 PM

Goodnight.

Saffron

Good night!

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The Back Room: Live Tabletop Games