Tell me a story

Intro

So this morning as I sit at my town's local theatre while my daughter is at art class in what I hope will become a long standing habbit or tradition I am thinking about this blog and how I want to assemble my posts. My initial idea was to provide updates as projects progress however reflectively I believe that continuing in the spirit of which I started and focussing on write ups for projects I have completed over the last few years will be more enjoyable for both myself and anyone reading these.

Within the theme of my other posts I have also decided to share what I am listening to as I write these posts. I imagine this will end up being a biased selection of my musical taste as I am an avid listener of drum and bass however I find that genre is not massively conducive for me personally when attempting to write (if I have my running shoes on though that's a whole different story).

By embedding the music I am listening to my hope is that it adds an additional dimension to my ramblings and provides insight into my current heads pace. 

Below you will find music from the album Torn Out Roots created by Nocmar. 

One page game jam

Today I have decided to write about a recent project being my entry for this years one page game jam organised and curiated by TheHobbyDungeon. They also have a really active blog and I highly suggest checking it out HobbyDungeon. Equally I would suggest taking a look at last year's one page game jam One page game jam.

Game design has always been something that interests me and I have the upmost appreciation for people who can create consistent and compelling rule sets that create a fun environment and which their mechanics can be explored, probed and pushed to their limits. However as I have pushed more into this hobby, bought, read and played different game systems and rules, from board games, wargames and rpgs and thinking about the experiences I have enjoyed in video games I have very much come to the conclusion that the narrative opportunities of games is what always excites me the most. 

The idea of world building and story telling either in a solo or community based setting is one that always tickles my fancy. I think I have always had this inclination. As a child I would love to create maps, write stories and generally immerse myself in the make believe. 

I was aware of the one page game jam from last year and absolutely loved the idea. You can't get much more accessible than a one page rule set. So when hobby dungeon posted that they where running it again I was very keen to submit something that focuses heavily on what I enjoy in a game, namely being the narrative that is developed between a group of people. 

Tell me a story

The title of my game (and I use the term game, very loosely) is Tell me a story. Right of the bat I'm going to state that I don't really regard this as a game in the traditional sense. I feel that what I have created is more a very brisk set of guidelines or a tool. 

When I was thinking about how to truly emphasise the narrative aspect of a game I decided that the best way to do that was to remove as many rules and stats as possible. I wanted story telling to be the primary focus. The unintended effect this has had is that the guidelines or tool is about as agnostic as it can be. It doesn't matter what scale you are playing, it can be rank and flank, skirmish, or full blown galactic war. It can be Sci-Fi, fantasy or even a trip to the shops to get the milk. Technically you don't even need miniatures to play and could embrace the beauty that is theatre of the mind.

Setting the scene 

I have always been a huge fan of session zero. Session zero is essentially a tool used in rpgs for players to come together and talk communally about the world, lore, characters and motivations they are about to explore. Essentially a group of people get together and decide what kind of story they want to tell. I thought providing similar advice within my guidelines was prudent and I hope people will find this aspect at least as enjoyable as the actual act of playing out the story itself. I think there is something very intimate about sitting down with another person and talking about your ideas for what you believe will be a cool and interesting setting. As always with this hobby you can put as much or as little into it as you like, you could develop a grand setting with historical lore, politics and geography or you could bash out a quick idea and get playing. 

So sitting down and creating a setting, character and lore is one aspect to the game but equally important is the process of exploring that setting and seeing what happens. You might have a very strong idea for how you believe the story will play out or maybe you will take a more interpretive approach. 

"Game play" 

For acting out the setting that has been created I wanted to find a loose mechanic that would reward players for their narrative prowess within the story. I also wanted the mechanic to be as anti competitive as possible and so incorporated aspects which rely heavily on the cooperation and goal of the players to tell a cool as fuck story. I decided to opt for a mechanic that is extremely flexible and can be used for any action a player would want to pursue.

Essentially during a players turn they describe what action or actions they want to attempt and importantly what happens if that attempt fails. What a player can or cannot do is completely open ended, it could be as simple as wanting one model or squad to make a move or it could be as complicated as multiple moves, attacks, retreats whatever. Now in a competitive game this wouldn't work, it would be massively open to abuse and not fun. However in a collaborative setting where the players focus is on the narrative I believe this will allow them the freedom to tell the story how they want without worrying about whether they can do something or not. 

However I did want to add an element of chance to this process as well as promoting the coorporative approach to the game. This is to mimic the chaos of life and to challenge the players to be reaactive to what is happening. 

Once the player who's turn it is has narratively detailed what they want to attempt and what happens if they fail the other player will assign a DR to the action or actions as detailed below:

DR7 – Minimal, easy or likely 

action / extremely cinematic 

descriptions of the action 

DR10 – Typical, average difficulty 

or 50/50 chance action / good 

amount of detail 

DR17 – Expansive, game changing or 

unlikely action / poor amount of 

description

Through placing the responsibility of how likely the action is to be successful in the "opposing" players hands I hope to encourage dialogue and further drive the collaboration towards a joint goal. A player might propose something that is hugely ambitious and mechanically would be difficult but details it in such a captivating way that the other player is enraptured with the idea and wants to see it play out and so would thus assign a lower DR. Equally a player may want to do something rather menial and should. Be achievable but it adds nothing to the story or isn't narrated then a higher Dr might be assigned. 

Once the DR has been assigned the player who determined the DR will then roll a D20 to determine which narrative direction the game goes in i.e. was the action successful or not.

This process will continue until a satisfying end to the story which is being explored has been reached.

Out

So in summary I set out to create a rules light narratively driven game and have instead created more an aspect of guidance or even a tool for enabling story telling within a game setting. At the very least this has been an interesting thought project and possibly the beginning of something more.