OOC - Rules Discussion

[Viking-Sensei]

We're running into a bit of a problem, and it's one I had sincerely hoped we wouldn't have to address... the issue of being defeated.

Now, since this is a Free-Form RPG, we don't have hit points, stats, rolls, or any of the other rule-inforcing methods that are commonly present in other RPGs. Instead, we try and focus on story and writing skills, and hope that everyone acts responsibly and takes their cues from where the story is heading to decide whether they win or lose an encounter. In a way, it's kind of like Pro Wrestling - how good of a wrestler you are doesn't determine whether or not you walk away with the belt, it's what the writers think will please the fans next. And since there really is no "win" or "lose" here, it's really all about how it's being played and whether a) we're telling a good story and b) everyone is having fun to determine if we, as a collective, are succeding or failing.

The problem is that we've had a few characters who are consistantly... well... unbeatable. Shrugging off spells or physical damage that would normally stop any person (aside from, well, Ian) dead in their tracks, casting spells that are acting in flagrant disregard to the nature of ES canon, defying the laws of man and the laws of physics, and generally not participating in the "group" spirit fo the RPG.

I don't want to single anyone out, because while there have been a couple who've been particularly bad about this, we've all done it to a certain degree - even myself - and it's going to become damaging to the story and drive off people if we don't address it now.

So... we're addressing it. Does anyone have any suggestions?

[Sareth]

One of the biggest dangers in high fantasy and high sci-fi type games is magic/tech. (Clarke was right when he said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.") Unless rules have been clearly put in place to prevent it, these sorts of games leave all kinds of room for people to play school kid "I got you!" "No you didn't!" "Uh huh!" "Nuh uh!" sorts of games. Any time anything happens, there is the chance for one player to effectively nuh-uh it by suddenly having some codpiece of superduper invulnerability, or the spell "Molokai's Foreskin of Admantium", even though it's never been referenced before.

Fortunately, we do have the entire Errant Story to help give us a rough guide, but sine we've only seen some, not all of that world, there is still plenty of room for interpretation. Because of that, we unfortunately may need to look at additional ways to deal with this.

I'm going to list a few options from the top of my head. Many of them are mutually compatible, but may not be things we as a playing group want to have in place. I'm just going to toss them out there for discussion without stating whether I personally think they are a good or a bad idea (for now.) We can discuss the options then decide if we want to implement any. And, of course, I'm not the only (or even best) source of ideas, so other ideas can be tossed out for consideration as well.

1. Official designation of a GM/Mod/Referee.

This one would be the easiest to put into play. Essentially, through either popular acclaim or through appointment of God (okay, Goddess, as I'm thinking Impy would be the appointer) we have one person who is, basically, The Mouth Of God. It would have to be someone who is trusted not to abuse the position by playing favorites or abusing players and who has the backbone to make decisions of what works, and what does not. Additionally, this individual would have to be familiar enough with Errant Story to be able to make decisions of whether or not it fits into the Poe-verse. And this person has to be willing to make the hard call to edit posts and even ban players if it becomes absolutely necessary while having both the patience and sense of judgment that prevents him/her from doing it before all other reasonable avenues have been approached. Of course, in order to do this, that person has to actually have the power to edit/ban. And we pretty much all have to agree that this person is the authority, and if we disagree with that person... this person is the authority.

Now, this does NOT have to be the same person (if any) who is running the story that people are adventuring in. It certainly helps, as the story teller may like something some people don't necessarily agree with, and if the mod and the story teller are two different people that can cause a conflict.

2. Absolute disclosure.

There are no secrets. There are lots of details. Specifically, in character creation/bio. When you create a character you have to list, in detail, every single important thing about a character, including history, possessions, powers... every single thing. If it's not in the bio, you do not have this. That way characters can be vetted ahead of time to ensure no "Nuh uh!" powers that won't fit/are too easily abused slip in. This would ensure no one can "explain" why something that should have happen didn't through something powerful that had never been referred to previously. An additional upside is with such a detailed bio, it's easy for players and story/plot creators to tailor things as the story moves along, because they can know what sorts of things the players have to tackle situations with. One downside is that it can seriously stiffle players, particularly new ones who haven;'t yet got a good feel for either the character or the game, by forcing them to create in full a character that may need tweaking that is unavailable. Plus, if a player wants to play a character with secrets (*ahem*, Jamie and Argus, *ahem*) then this completely makes that impossible.

3. Detailed rules set.

This would take a buttload of work, but basically it would create a strong (and likely large) document explaining the complete rules and reasoning behind magic and tech. Thus, any time a "Nuh uh" power is used, it can be held up against the rule set to determine by a set of rules all players can see whether or not that "Nuh uh" works. If it can be justified by the rule set, hey, it's justified. If it's not then the player has to accept that. We do have some of this in place in that we've gotten examples of not only whats, but in some cases whys and hows within the comic. But it would still take a good deal of compiling, plus dealing with all the areas we don't know about, plus having to figure out balance issues.

4. Majority rule.

If one player is making things less than fun for another player or other players, then in an OOC thread this can be stated, with reasons why. The players then can discuss it, and decide as a group what to do about it, ranging from doing nothing all the way up to tossing all players out. Again, there has to be a way to enforce the decisions, and it runs the risk of a majority of players running roughshod over justifiable canon use of powers or players they have an OOC grudge against because of something from a whole different part of the forum.

There are others, but that's what I've got at the moment.

[Drannin]

Options one and four look best to me. Making up comprehensive rules would just drag things down, and I personally don't like the full-disclosure options. It just doesn't suit my writing style.

Maybe less is more here. If there's a serious dispute over how a player is handling a given situation, ask a GM/mod to pop in, look over the situation, and give a quick ruling. If he/she deems it necessary, PM the player and explain that the individual in question is starting to run roughshod and needs to dial it back a bit.

[Graybeard]

Viking and Sareth do an excellent job of laying out the key points here, although I would take exception to the "full disclosure" part of the solution. Characters with Hidden Issues (tm) are fun to have around, precisely because the rest of us don't know about those Issues and therefore are in a constant state of anticipation about what they'll do next. That's a good thing, indeed one of the reasons why we all find Errant Story itself so enjoyable; the story would attract much less of our attention if we really knew what baggage the characters had. As long as it's consistent with the other points I'm about to make, I can't see why a bit of secrecy about the character is unworkable.

My own key points are as follows:

• Have fun, and don't do things that spoil the fun for others. I think the principle here is obvious, but the implementation probably is not. Some discussion of just what "spoils the fun" would be valuable, so that an appropriate (and, hopefully, minimal) set of guidelines can be developed.
• Interact, challenge, but don't attack. I think Impy stated this fairly explicitly when the game got set up, and it bears repeating. It is obviously desirable for the characters to interact, and perfectly OK for characters to throw each other curve balls; that's part of the fun. But when the interactions become a matter of "nyah nyah nyah," something is wrong. A corollary to this is that we should not simply ignore challenges being posed by other players; contemptuously blowing others off is as disrespectful, and out of harmony with key point #1, as setting out to antagonize them. At the very least, throwing each other narrative bones to gnaw on will help keep the interactions from getting too hostile.
• Stay in-universe. One of the things that makes Errant Story such a great read is that it strikes an unusually fine balance between swords, magic, and "technology" as the fundamental underpinnings. In an RPG it's very easy to let that balance get out of whack, particularly here, since we have not thought through the tension among those underpinnings as carefully as Poe has. If a magical, personal or technological idea comes along that's grossly inconsistent with the capabilities demonstrated in the Poe-verse, a player should think twice about exploiting it, and a moderator -- see below -- may be justified in rolling it back if it is employed. Tied to this is
• No super-characters. It's perfectly OK for characters to have skillz that are highly developed, but something that is qualitatively different from, and way beyond, the Poe-verse is undesirable because it throws the whole story out of kilter. Without naming names, I believe this is a problem right now.
• Write well, at least relatively speaking. It is worth taking just a little extra time when posting, to make sure that what's being posted is at least comprehensible. A "contribution" that others can't make sense out of is no contribution at all.
• Moderators should moderate -- in moderation. Intervention by the moderators, who in some regards play the role of referee/GM for this thing, are occasionally necessary, and I believe that Jim did the right thing in pausing the Kiyoka Part 2 thread so that some issues could get worked out. (If you disagree, complain to me, not him; it was my idea.) These interventions should be rare, and they have been; I think it has only occurred twice so far.

I'd like to see a bit more discussion of point #1, because what "spoils the fun" and is therefore to be avoided will vary among the participants. Please don't name names. A high-level, principle-oriented discussion of what's fun and what's not will help produce a better game; attacks on individuals will not.

Okay?

[Viking-Sensei]

I think the single biggest issue we've got is also one of the oldest, not only here but in all storytelling. We all want to have important, interesting, and generally powerful characters. The problem with better-than-average characters is the temptation to make them too good. Without critical flaws, either in personality or in powers (or both), characters become wildly unrealistic.

That's why DC invented the magic McGuffin of Kryptonite - otherwise, there'd be NO story with Superman. He'd have beaten and jailed every wrong-do-er in the world twice over, and the Justice League woulc consist of watching Batman and The Green Arrow sit around and compare the size of their limos. The more powerful a character, the bigger a weakness they have to have.

I know we said not to name names, but I'm going to anyway, because I need examples:

With Lucas, while I've given him ++ levels of power, he has little-to-no ability to control them, and not only does he lose grasp on his magical control, but he causes the spells of others to misfire too. That lets me play a far more interesting character than if he was just Badass Normal (not that there's anything wrong with being Badass Normal, mind you, don't shoot me Jon).

Similar is Graybeard's character of Grope - he's a troll, which has certain distinct advantages (strength, speed, general awesomeness), but his race has basically precluded him from direct interaction with a majority of the characters, as well as placing him firmly in the outlaw status.

Jamie and Roger are good examples of characters that could cross the line if not played carefully. Both are excellent at their chosen career of killin' peoples... as human and non-mages, they don't have the advanced powers of the mages (but we've overlooked that by giving them a seemingly endless supply of ammo to compensate). In addition to the normal human frailties, their primary weakeness is that they're both outlaws without a major organization backing them up. If - IF - they'd get captured by, oh, say, the police, they're in some deep crap, especially if their party doesn't come to rescue them.

The moment of truth comes when the player behind the character has to decide if they're going to a) wait in jail until someone comes and gets them like actual reality would dictate, b) try a daring escape, which will either succede or fail (failure would probably, at that point, result in a dramatic death), or c) simply ignore the fact that they were being arrested and say "Oh, I shot all sixteen guards, took all the money out of the vault, had my way with the beautiful girl in the other cell, and then escaped into the night."

a) Is realistic, and honestly sometimes things have to occasionally resemble reality.
b) Is dramatic and interesting, with greater reward and greater potential for loss.
c) Makes you a Mary Sue.

Now, if c) is played for humor (*cough*Kureji*cough*) it can be alright, so long as you don't do it constantly... but if every 10 posts you find yourself doing three impossible things before breakfast, maybe your character isn't balanced enough.

I guess what I'm saying, to quite a fantasticly dark and sick comic I read once, is "Everything can be beaten." The problem is that if you don't let yourself be beaten, especially in those times when it's bloody IMPOSSIBLE not to take a fall, your character is too unrealistic to survive, especially in a more-than-normally-realistic fantasy universe such as this.

[Sareth]

Well said, Viking-sensei. (And if I ever overdo things with Jamie, slap me upside the head. I'll take it well.) That's part of why Jamie tends to get into so many pratfalls. It's a way to help reduce the power of the character by making Jamie prone to inconveniently timed accidents. Instead of shooting six killer bunnies in an eyeblink, shooting another six in the next, then taking two seconds to reload, jamie ends up in an embaracing gropetastic pile. If jamie is busy making clumsy, unlucky errors, it gives other people the chance to be the heroes.

Plus it's funny as hell.

Characters need to be flawed. The more powerful, the more flawed. Perfection is boring. But a character that tends to bring his or her own downfall owing to his or her own failings tends to be fascinating both to play and for other people to interact with or watch.

My 2c.

[LordofNightmares]

Tsubasa has her flaws I just like revealing them as I cut the ruff off her story line.

[Imp-Chan]

So... am I hearing that there's a need for some basic "duh" type rules such as Graybeard listed, and maybe also a need for a moderator/GM to help maintain the play?

^-^'

[Sareth]

A GM/Mod named after trickster devil types?

Awesome...

Quick, someone tell me what sort of bribes Impy takes!

[Viking-Sensei]

I think we're doing ok for now... there've been a few minor snags, but being that we made it this far into the game with only the one need-for-a-ruling call made, I suspect it's all good.

Plus, since GB and I (aka The Admin Council) are two of the main and most verbose of the people playing here, I don't think we (at this point) really need any more modding going on.

How about this... if someone - and I mean anyone - feels that another player is taking unreasonable liberties with the free-form structure or is grossly violating the general and usual standards of conduct, notify Graybeard or I via a PM and we'll see what we can do. And if that person causing trouble should BE Graybeard or I and you don't feel comfortable addressing the issue with us directly, then take your problem to Impy.

That way, there's always someone higher you can potentially go to.