rowyn

Strange Horticulture as an RPG?

2022-04-20T14:47:12Z

After watching Vicorva stream Strange Horticulture, I bought the game and then finished it in a weekend (it’s not a long game).

It’s fun: I liked the little puzzles that were often pretty easy, and that the game had a “hint” option so if I didn’t find the puzzle easy I could just keep asking for hints until it gave me the answer. XD

I still wanted to play after I got an ending, so I played some more to identify all the plants. And then started a new game. But I remember all the answers so it’s not as much fun as the first time.

So now I’m thinking about running it as a play-by-post RPG.

One reason I like the concept of Strange Horticulture as an RPG is that the mechanics (identifying plants and solving puzzles) are nonviolent.

I don't usually like puzzles as a game mechanic because I get frustrated easily. But Strange Horticulture's "hints" option solved that, which is why I want to incorporate that explicitly into the RPG.

The video game has some off-camera violence. I'll let the players decide if they want violence in the RPG or strictly non-violent.

Game premise:

All the PCs play people who have recently started to run a shop of mysterious and mystical plants. None of the plants are properly labeled. You have a book about plants but it’s bad at describing them. (You get to decide how you got the shop/plants/book).

Game play:

General roleplay: interacting with customers and deciding how you want to handle them
Identifying plants: I’ll provide a bunch of plant pictures and some poor descriptions of them and you get to try to figure out what goes with what.
Solving small puzzles/riddles: you’ll get clues and solving them will give you more things. Sometimes the clues will be Extremely Obvious. I do not promise challenging puzzles.

Each PC has a talking animal companion that can give them hints, but There’s a Cost. (Maybe parts of your soul! Or your memories! Or kitty treats! I will let the players as a whole decide this one.)

Likewise, I’ll let the players decide how serious they want the game to be -- do you want Lives To Depend on your correct identification of plants/solving puzzles, or more like “the most dire consequence is that some customer is angry at you because the wrong plant attracted ants and ruined their picnic”?

There will be an overall plot of some kind, but also small stories about helping customers (or failing to help customers by providing the wrong plant, whether on purpose or not) and how they react.

I’m thinking 3-4 players, and players get many of the same puzzles to solve and can collaborate to solve them in various ways. And one of the mysteries is “why did we all start running our shops at the same time in different places?”

In the event of players who join the game but later have to leave for whatever reason: I'd like to have their PC retire and/or mysteriously depart and hand over their shops to a new player or NPC, so that their departure needn't impact the other PCs. n_n

I will not use any of the plot points or specific puzzles from the video game, so there'll be no spoilers for the video game and no advantage to having played it or not.

Would anyone be interested in playing?

Possible players so far:

Ciel
Alex
Anke

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Looking for Players for New Romance PBEM RPG

2020-04-05T00:02:46Z

Update: Game is currently full! Feel free to email if you would like to get on the waitlist should any spots open. n_n

It's been a long time since I ran a play-by-email roleplaying game, and I want to do so again.

Here are the core ideas for the new game:

* The main plot is ROMANCE and RELATIONSHIPS. This will be a game about characters falling in love and forming strong personal bonds with other characters (PCs and NPCs).
* The game will have subplots that revolve around other things -- defeating bad guys, averting disasters, rescuing people from danger, etc. -- but these will be (a) subplots and (b) not serious threats to the safety and well-being of the PCs. Players will never be required to come up with brilliant plans or solve mysteries or unravel puzzles in order to overcome obstacles.
* Nobody has to pick Just One Significant Other: polyamory is fine. Monoamory is fine too if you want to go that route.
* Queer characters of all flavors are encouraged.
* PC vs PC actions are generally discouraged and actively trying to harm other PCs is prohibited.

My PBEM games tend to start strong and then peter out over the course of a few months, so this is something to bear in mind. The purpose is to enjoy the ride, not to get to a particular destination. n_n

PCs:
* The PCs are all extra-dimensional aliens
* Players get to make up the species and culture for their own character (or you can make up a species/culture to share with other players, as you prefer.) You can be a dragon or furry or shapeshifter or whatever you like. Looking exactly like a human is discouraged, but elves or Star-Trek-alien looks are fine.
* Do bear in mind this is a romance-oriented game. Making a PC that would be repugnant to you is discouraged.
* There is no need for PCs to be perfect or flawless, but they should be generally well-meaning and sympathetic.
* Each PC gets unique powers. These should be thematic (eg, "all my powers are connected to electricity" or "I control plants in various unnatural ways" or "I am a shapeshifter", etc.) and versatile. Themes should not be overly broad (eg, "I cast magic spells, which can do whatever I think would be useful in a given situation" is too broad.)
** Powers can have combat effects but your powers should be more versatile than just fighting. Fighting will not be played out in detail or with die rolls. This is a romance game; any combat is just going to be to provide drama and backdrop.
** Players will make up their characters together to avoid unwanted overlap in abilities and so that everyone has roughly the same power level.
** Alien species are, in general, much tougher and harder to hurt than humans.
* The PC species/nations are members of the Interdimensional Alliance, a group designed to promote peace, stability, and inter-species cooperation across the interdimensional network
** Historically speaking, "promoting peace, stability and cooperation" has not gone as well as the IA would like. But they are all working VERY HARD ON THIS OKAY
* The PCs are a small group of good friends who have been attending the Interdimensional Alliance University. IAU has secured an internship for them on a world that is a recent addition to the IA: Earth.
** Earth is considered a kind of paradise by most of the IA worlds.
*** It's full of humans, who are regarded as natural experts on bonding, forming strong relationships, cooperating, and maintaining peace.
*** Humans will make friends with anything! Animals, aliens, computers, rocks, whatever, they just want to be friends. SO PURE.
*** There are BILLIONS of humans living on JUST ONE WORLD and they haven't wiped each other out! It's AMAZING.
*** Humans are also super-adorable, just the cutest things
*** And they are SO HUMBLE! They have no idea how great they are! (Typical human: "Literally the most terrifying thing about the aliens is that they think WE are a good example of international harmony.")
*** One theory on humanity's unusually cooperative nature is that they're so fragile they can't risk getting into fights with each other. Or maybe it's that they're too cute to fight each other? SO ADORABLE.
* The IA has been trying to protect Earth from being overwhelmed by (a) interdimensional visitors who are eager to experience HOW COOL humans are and (b) interdimensional invaders who might hurt humanity and/or convince humanity to wall themselves off from the IA. So the PCs all consider themselves very fortunate to secure visas to Earth.
* The PCs are ambassadors, on Earth to show humanity that other dimensions have people who are good and helpful.
* Despite the IA's wish to shield Earth from the worst of other dimensions, Earth does have some aliens already. Several years ago, Earth took in a number of refugees during an interdimensional crisis. ("See how wonderful humans are??? They'd barely even discovered other dimensions and they opened their world to help other sapients!")
* Players are encouraged to provide the GM with their character's goals, the conflicts their characters might have while on Earth, and challenges that would interest the player. This is a game about relationships, so conflicts exist just to give PCs an excuse to meet people and interact with them in a fun framework. Conflicts can be things like "my anti-social younger sibling has followed me to Earth and now I have to keep them from causing trouble" or "I want to defend Earth from evil extra-dimensional enemies" or "I want to work with humans in search-and-rescue" or "My power makes solving mysteries easier so I want to do that".
* PCs should pick a role/job on Earth. You might be attending classes at an American university, or you might be working with a charity, or a first-responders team, or doing engineering, or some other job that your power set makes you well-suited to. Your PC's role is another place to find people with whom to build relationships.
* Although the PCs are all on internships courtesy of an academy, PCs are not required to be young adults. You can be a non-traditional student.
* If players have particular preferences -- "I want to play a catgirl who falls in love with a dragon" -- do let the GM know. This applies to tropes that you like, too ("I want to do 'enemies-to-lovers'" or "I like hurt/comfort" or "can we have them check into a hotel and they have to share a room but there's ONLY ONE BED???"
* In the past, my PBEMs have all been "post whenever you like, as much or as little as you like, try to check in at least once every day or two". I will probably stick to this unless all my players want a different format. If players know that they are likely to have a certain response rate, you may think about baking that into your character concept. "I tend to respond furiously for a few weeks and then fall completely out of the loop for a week, so I will play a hyperactive ferret with bouts of narcolepsy." Or "I am going to respond every other day, consistently, no matter what everyone else is doing, so I will play an Ent-like character who doesn't understand why this hyperactive ferret is in such a rush all the time." Or "I'm afraid I might have to drop out partway through, but I want the option of rejoining if so, so I will start my character out with 'potential for family emergencies that may recall them home for an indefinite period'."

Setting
Alternate Earth, aka the World of Lightness
Differences from the Earth we all know and are stuck on:
- No global pandemic
- No terrible politics
+ Occasional problems with rogue extradimensional aliens
+ In the early 2000s, humans in general gained a very low-grade psychic power of "empathy". Humans are now unusually good at both distinguishing and valuing the feelings of others. This led to decreases into xenophobia and generally made people kinder to one another. No one knows for sure what happened or how or if it could be done again; the prevailing theory is that an avant-garde social-networking experiment turned really WEIRD at some point.
+ In 2012, Earth took in ~150,000 extradimensional refugees, who were escaping from a war that laid waste to seventeen worlds. Most of these refugees are now living in the American midwest, although there are some spread through the rest of the world. These refugees represent many different species and different cultures within those species. They've integrated with human society much better than one would expect.

~

I will run for 1-5 players. More specifics about the game will evolve from interaction with the players -- I want to know what kinds of characters and subplots and suchlike people are interested in within this framework. If you'd like to play, drop a comment / private message / email. My gmail account is ladyrowyn.

Thanks!

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Roleplaying in Different Media

2017-05-21T00:40:20Z

Talking about using Discord for an RPG reminded me of how the media in which I play a game shapes the game. Every medium has its own strength and weaknesses. For example:

Face-to-face: In-person games have great advantages in speed. It's much faster when you can see and hear players clearly. You can use physical props readily: miniatures, dice, and game boards are easy to use in-person. But there are disadvantages to face-to-face: there's no built-in, automatic record of game play. You have to schedule a time and you can only play with the people who show up. During play, the GM either has to prepare for a variety of different player choices, or limit player choice, or be good at improvising. I find game play less immersive in person: it's hard for a GM to play multiple NPCs at once who are presenting different perspectives or arguing with each other. It's also hard for a player to convincingly play characters who are very unlike the player.

Video or voice-based games: I have little experience with these, and what I do is mostly "this is an inferior version of face-to-face." The only advantage I know of over face-to-face is "you don't have to physically get people in the same room". If there are others, they've eluded me.

Online scheduled games: My own experience with this is mostly on MUCKs, but it's played similarly for me on other text-based chat clients. This style approximates face-to-face in that participants all show up at a scheduled time, all play and respond to each other in real time, and stop playing at the end of the session. The advantages of this style: it's easy and natural for the GM to switch between characters, and participants can easily be characters who are nothing like themselves. The GM still needs to prepare/improvise, but usually has a little more time to think between actions, because play is slower. Disadvantages: play is slower (everything has to be typed). There are "virtual tabletop" tools out there; I don't know if these come close to the ease of setup of real props now, because I haven't tried them in years.

Online unscheduled synchronous games: This is the MUCK style of "you show up when you want to roleplay and play with whoever's there". I have never found this to be a very satisfying model of roleplay, because it's hard to tell a story when you don't know who will be involved in it or for how long. Sometimes this encourages burnout -- people who are hyperinvolved and always on and always playing until they flame out after a few months. But I've known other people who made it work. The main advantage over scheduled is in the name: you don't have to schedule play.

Email or forum-based games: These play fairly similarly in my experience. Participants play by posting to the email group or forum. Play is asynchronous: you send a post to the group and you get responses hours or days later. Email is good for games that are driven by conversation or player actions that don't require die rolls. They are terrible for games with a lot of combat or anything else that requires die-rolling. It's good in that you don't have to schedule a time for it, and bad in that it can result in burnout -- people can't look away from the game for fear it will get away from them.

Discord is an interesting medium for a game because a Discord chat group has a persistent history. MUCKs and many chat clients only show you the activity while you are connected to them. Discord will let you scroll back to the start of the chat, if you want.

Discord can be set up to give notifications, or not, so it's easy to see if a chat is active or to ignore it.

For various reasons, my own preferred play is unscheduled and asynchronous. I am generally okay with responding in a time frame of "several hours" and run into issues when it's "a few minutes".

And I am thinking: how do you structure a story so that it best accommodates my style of play? For example, I know that if I want to play a combat-heavy dungeon stomp, I'm best off doing that face-to-face.

But if I want to have a game where:
* Play is unscheduled and unsynchronous
* Participants are involved at varying levels of commitment: some people respond quickly, some respond slowly

What kind of features built into the story will best enable that?

One thing that I discovered while playing with Bard Bloom was that telepathy among the PCs was extremely useful for keeping a game active. All the players could talk to each other without the GM needing to be involved in the conversation, even if the party was presently split up.

Splitting up the party had advantages in forum/email play that it doesn't have in most other forms of play: it allows the GM to interact with each player on that player's priorities, without them getting trampled over by players who respond more quickly. This requires a pretty active GM. In theory, you could get this same effect in Discord by splitting the party between different chat channels. I'm not sure how well it would work in practice.

Mostly, I am thinking about story features like "telepathy": things you can set up so there's an in-character explanation for something that is useful/needed due to out-of-character reasons. What if there's a story explanation for why characters are more or less active at different point in the story, for OOC reasons? One of my friends used to play a game where the characters all had a curse that sometimes one or more of them would turn into a gemstone, and the other characters would have to protect them. The "curse" took effect if the player was absent that week. This isn't a very compelling storytelling hook by itself, but it's the kind of thing I'm thinking about. What if the game took place on an astral plane, and characters act at different speeds depending on arbitrary factors (that amount OOCly to "how available were various participants?") How do you structure this so that players don't feel like they're disadvantaged if they're not around as much?

Anyway, I am kind of stuck on what kind of stories lend themselves best to the format, and what kind of system. So I wanted to write this out and see what other people thought. :)

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Choose Your Own Adventure -- interest?

2017-04-06T14:13:59Z

I'd like to run a Choose Your Own Adventure-style game, probably on Twitter, possibly in parallel on Dreamwidth & Mastodon.

The game will be a fantasy romance. Other factors -- player gender, orientation, social status, species, central conflict, etc. -- will be chosen by poll. Whatever is most popular in the set-up polls will determine the game's beginning.

Gameplay will be a handful of tweets per day or so: a couple hundred words, max. There'll be a poll to determine what the protagonist does next. But with the gameplay polls, I will roll % to determine which option wins. This way, players can write-in options and those will have a chance of happening.

I will reserve two (2) GM Fudges Roll options, where I can pick the winner myself because I like a particular write-in option. I'll only do this for write-ins, and only if I think the write-in is good for the protagonist. If/when I do this, I'll announce it.

If there's interest on any given platform, I'll run the game in parallel. Each game will have the same start, but Dreamwidth polls and comments would only direct the Dreamwidth game. Twitter polls and comments could take the game in a different direction on Twitter. The same people can play on multiple platforms, I don't care.

This post is to gauge interest -- if you'd like to play, leave a comment.

* I am going to continue to mirror DW to LJ. People leaving comments on LJ will count as playing in the DW game. I don't think the polls will import to LJ, though, so you'll have to come to DW if you want to vote in a poll.

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RPG Pet Peeves

2017-02-07T13:04:46Z

Everyone ends up with their own pet peeves in tabletop gaming. One of mine, which has annoyed me since I started gaming 38 years ago, is "character creation choices that require the players to bet on how long the game will last."

Most games are short-lived. I haven't made up as many characters for games that never started as I have for ones that have, but the ratio is probably no better than 1:3. Many games that make it to one session do not get more than one. The campaign that goes on for years is the outlier. Moreover, you never know which you're going to get when you're making up a character. Plans for epic story arc campaigns often die after a few sessions. The game where my character gained the most power, from starting level to finish, was advertised by its GM as 'a half-assed playtest that will peter out after a week or two.' Mirari and Game of October were both intended to be short-term games and both ran for 2-4 years and had more than a hundred sessions each. The only sense in which they were "short term" was that they each ended at the completion of the game's full story arc. ("Just Trust Me", which took several months to finish, was as close as I ever got to running an actual short-but-complete game).

My point: I can tell you many things about a game during character creation, but "how long will it last" is SO not one of them. And yet many games have things which are in place nominally for "character balance" but in practice are only "balanced" if your game is lasts for exactly X sessions. In original AD&D, the nonhuman races generally had stat advantages but in most cases had harsh level caps. If your game didn't last past level 5, the elves and half-orcs were clearly better. If your game lasted to level 18, they were at a vicious, hideous handicap. (If your group actually played with level caps. I don't know anyone who did.)

Most of D&D descendants don't take approaches quite this dramatic, but I still know many systems where you can take a short-term handicap to get a long-term advantage. "Your character is a Quick Learner: pay 10 xp now and get +1 xp per session." Or conversely: "You are a Slow Learner but you've studied hard to get this far: you get an extra 10 xp to spend now but will get -1 xp per session". Sometimes the abilities themselves are like this: "the skill is useless at the starting level but it's great once you've built it up." "This skill starts out great but it doesn't improve at all with experience, unlike other skills." Vampire: the Masquerade did this thing where your max power was entirely determined by your generation. If you didn't buy the lowest possible generation at game start, your character could never become powerful -- but if you did, you had few points left to be competent at the outset.

It's like the designers think "well, you can trade being great now for being great later, that's balanced." Except that I don't know if later exists, and if later does exist, I have no idea how much later there will be. It's like being told "plan for your retirement: you have about a 40% chance of dying tomorrow and a 1% chance of living 2000 years, and we're not going to tell you the odds of the possibilities in between, and no, you can't get a job again later if you don't save enough. GOOD LUCK." Systems like these always make me feel like the game hasn't even started yet and I've already lost.

I usually make the bet that the game will last for years, when some system makes me do it. I don't think I've ever been right.All my games that lasted for years weren't in systems that did this.

That may not be coincidence, come to think of it.

Nothing in particular motivated this, just thinking about game systems. So what are your tabletop peeves or preferences?

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