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[AoshimaMichio]

I have wondered for some time if this alternative game format would work. Basically all forum games around here I have seen so far goes like this:  A GM posts a thread explaining the setting (if he feels doing it) and character sheet he might expect players to fill (varies between games, naturally). Then players copy paste the sheet or start throwing suggestions in case of suggestion game.

What happens if we turn this completely upside down? One player(Originally GM) posts a thread including sheet of his own design, and then multiple GMs (originally players) roll for player's actions and post results. Player picks one result based on his own criteria, be it either "I like this" or "this has most +1". Kinda like reverse suggestion game.

Could this work at all? What problems you see with this? One problem I foresee is the whole thing descending into chaos, but that can easily happen with any other game as well.

[IronyOwl]

So if I'm understanding you correctly:

Dive into the side corridor!

[4] You dive into the side corridor. It is dark but lacking in ravenous worms.

[Pass][Fail][Fail] You dive into the side corridor. Which is about the only thing that goes right, because this particular corridor seems to be a Borer's nest. It says hello with a screeching bellow.

It is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue. In the meantime, you notice a suspicious-looking datapad glowing in the dark.

I like the datapad one the best. Okay, so I'm in the corridor with the datapad. I play it.


The main issue I'd have is that you're taking most of the important hands-on work away from the one you'd assume most capable and dedicated to creating it. Having a lot of mediocre player-made parts is probably not going to be as interesting as having a few GM-made parts, so unless you can get a group that's really into it, both talent and enthusiasm wise, I suspect it'd turn out a lot worse than average.

Speaking of which, selection process. If we're going by GM choice, there could potentially be some interesting stuff in terms of forcing the GM to improvise and work with less, but otherwise it sounds like it'd lean a little towards trying to figure out what the GM intended by describing it.

And if we go by +1s, well... I'm sure parts of that could be interesting, but suggestion games tend to be trainwrecks even with a strong hand at the helm; putting everything in the hands of the masses would probably be a mildly amusing acid trip for a while and then just sort of lose its charm.

[AoshimaMichio]

You did understand it correctly.

The main issue I'd have is that you're taking most of the important hands-on work away from the one you'd assume most capable and dedicated to creating it. Having a lot of mediocre player-made parts is probably not going to be as interesting as having a few GM-made parts, so unless you can get a group that's really into it, both talent and enthusiasm wise, I suspect it'd turn out a lot worse than average.

Good point. Though getting "a group that's really into it" is always a problem. Game might easily become inconsistant (especially with NPCs) when multiple people are running the show, so GM must be sharp when picking which continuity to follow.

For selection process I thought of employing both options, depending which gives best result at the time. That way one has chance to get best of both worlds, though in reality it might not be so easy.

[escaped lurker]

Hmm.. I want to like the idea, as some sort of "creativity meetup" sort of thing, but I'd see one problem with it. In essence, it even is the opposite of IronyOwl's point. What, if you get enough talent for that kind of game?

You surely have seen how... heated suggestion games can become, and that is mostly when someone defends his idea. And, hey, thats not rocket science - it is a bit of a good feeling if your suggestion becomes the most +1'-ed. If you get no traction at all, or even the opposite, well, thats obviously not much of a pleasant feeling then. Now multiply that by a factor of, oh.. 5-10?

What your game would entail, is gm's putting forth "content", which is a good deal more personal than just a plain old suggestion. Now, with this kind of game, no-one should be bummed out not getting "the vote" on the first, third, or eight time, but imagine sending in 10 "works", and none getting the vote. And with some of our old-stars, or against some "starter gm's", this need not to be an exegaration either. We have a few guys on here, that could easily steal over half the votes. Each of them, that is. (You know who I mean - those guys that could easily write a novel - or quite possibly do so already, with bay12 a creative outlet for them.)

So what I see, is the possibility of less experienced people quickly getting disinterested / fed up, or the need to employ "ciclejerk politics", so that everyone gets their turn. Well, maybe I'm just imagining mountains out of molehills though.

[AoshimaMichio]

What you are describing here is inherit problem of suggestion games in general as far as I can see. It may draw many people giving suggestions but eventually only few remains because either their suggestions are what everyone agrees with or because, as you said, their suggestions get ignored.

This could be partially solved using multiple suggestions per turn as long as they are not in conflict with each other. There's also possibility of using multiple suggestions in sequence, but in reality they probably are in conflict. RNG ensures that.

We have a few guys on here, that could easily steal over half the votes. Each of them, that is. (You know who I mean - those guys that could easily write a novel - or quite possibly do so already, with bay12 a creative outlet for them.)

Actually I don't know. I spend good deal of my time on RTD and ER subboards rather than up here.

[ATHATH]

What you are describing here is inherit problem of suggestion games in general as far as I can see. It may draw many people giving suggestions but eventually only few remains because either their suggestions are what everyone agrees with or because, as you said, their suggestions get ignored.

This could be partially solved using multiple suggestions per turn as long as they are not in conflict with each other. There's also possibility of using multiple suggestions in sequence, but in reality they probably are in conflict. RNG ensures that.

We have a few guys on here, that could easily steal over half the votes. Each of them, that is. (You know who I mean - those guys that could easily write a novel - or quite possibly do so already, with bay12 a creative outlet for them.)

Actually I don't know. I spend good deal of my time on RTD and ER subboards rather than up here.

What if it goes like this:
Player A posts a situation and an action.
Player B resolves player A's action, then posts his own action.
Player C resolves player B's action, then posts his own action.
Etc.

Everyone gets to join in!

[AoshimaMichio]

Not the idea I had in my mind, but that could work too.

[ATHATH]

Not the idea I had in my mind, but that could work too.

Oh, also, there's no set order.

You could also have a group of GMs and Suggestors, with the first GM to reply to a suggestion (the first suggestion after a turn is the official one) making a turn (and only a turn).

[Empiricist]

-snip-

Thanks for the link! The video was quite useful. And yes, it definitely needs some example cards and combat, which I'll hopefully be able to finish as soon as my finals are over and I iron out a few details.

Have you heard of Card Hunter?

I have now. I'll definitely look into some of their stuff and see if there's any nice mechanics and how they balance their cards.

I just want to say that although your system may not be innovative, it doesn't mean it isn't good. As far as I know, there hasn't been any card-hunter-on-the-forums yet.

Don't feel discouraged.

No it's fine, I usually assume that any ideas I have have also been had and possibly implemented by someone somewhere earlier. Originality isn't something I care too much about in a combat system anyway.

The main reason I went to using a card-based approach was because the combat system was heavily influenced by Dark Souls initially, hence where the simultaneous actions and the weapon-based movesets, originally, it was meant to be cardless and just assign hitbox patterns to all the attacks. Which turned out to be a very bad idea, seeing as there's only so many different patterns of squares you can give to a sword swing and you can't do something like that easily for ranged weapons. Not to mention that assigning priorities, active frames, invincibility frames, hitstun, blockstun, latency and recovery times to attacks was far from ideal. I figured it would have basically just resulted in a party of player characters slowly advancing in lock-step, while spamming heavy attacks in a staggered pattern.

Thanks for the encouragement! 

[IronyOwl]

What you are describing here is inherit problem of suggestion games in general as far as I can see. It may draw many people giving suggestions but eventually only few remains because either their suggestions are what everyone agrees with or because, as you said, their suggestions get ignored.

I'm not sure that's why people lose interest, but even if it is, it'd be magnified to a much greater scale.

What if it goes like this:
Player A posts a situation and an action.
Player B resolves player A's action, then posts his own action.
Player C resolves player B's action, then posts his own action.
Etc.

Everyone gets to join in!

Further problem, which exists with the general idea but is magnified here: Timing. It takes a while to produce a good turn, and nobody wants to start only to get ninja'd. You'd probably need some kind of reserve system.

[ATHATH]

What you are describing here is inherit problem of suggestion games in general as far as I can see. It may draw many people giving suggestions but eventually only few remains because either their suggestions are what everyone agrees with or because, as you said, their suggestions get ignored.

I'm not sure that's why people lose interest, but even if it is, it'd be magnified to a much greater scale.

What if it goes like this:
Player A posts a situation and an action.
Player B resolves player A's action, then posts his own action.
Player C resolves player B's action, then posts his own action.
Etc.

Everyone gets to join in!

Further problem, which exists with the general idea but is magnified here: Timing. It takes a while to produce a good turn, and nobody wants to start only to get ninja'd. You'd probably need some kind of reserve system.

By reserve system, you mean posting "Reserved!" and then editing the turn into that post, right?

[flabort]

Like in the collaborative picture thread, eh?

[escaped lurker]

Actually.. - not sure if I am going anywhere by this, but hey.

You know these "Choose your own Adventure"-type of books? How about making one of those then?
Edit - As will become obvious, I quite dearly loved them as a kid. I think bay12 would be a great place to make one of these together, no?

Each "GM" can write one "turn" per, well, turn. That way, there won't be a "First! Reserved" roadblock, nor would anyone  be able to "monopolize" the story.

Brainstorming for Rules:
-Set a Limit on each "Branch" - like 3. We don't want to fight the dragon in 5 different ways.
-Open-Climax writing? The GM's don't know the success of their action, which is rolled by the thread-gm, and added with a single paragraph
 (That way, we can have failure, and a set of circumstances)
-Right. Circumstances. Finding that steel sword, gives a +2 on the D10 combat roll. Or thereabouts. Just let us hope we can hold on to it long enough, to actually make a dent in the adventure
-Minimum Limit on turns for possible success - just that we won't escape the "situation" within 3 or 4 "turns".
-Maximum Limit on turns - each story-point, branches off into 3 new ones. A hydra-situation indeed. Each turn after the, oh.. 6th?, will take a culuminative -3 roll-result. Or something along these lines - Mainly a sudden death mechanic, as to not explore "too widely" into the adventure.
-Getting-Ahead limit - We don't want anyone rushing to the goal all too quickly. How about you can't write a continuation for single-branch-continuation? That way, to advance, we "have" to write different choices into those turns, that we want to advance.


In essence, safe for the first turn (3 choices), we thereafter (9+ min) have an ever increasing number of "story-telling spots".
By having a "random" system rolled by the "True" GM, it will have an interesting twist for the story-tellers
Everyone can "in", and while it is possible to reserve 1/3 of a specific story-spot, the overal story can be written by anyone intending to do so.

If it does go well, we could even make a "short story book" out of it, with a number of "better explored" good and bad-ended routes for display (and dead-end routes discarded).

(Heck, that would be great fun. The "True GM", could afterwards create the "story" thread, take the two-digit number of turns that made it into the final version, jumble them around safe for the first post, and then take the reader for a good ol' spin with html-hotlinking by the turn-bottoms.)

[IronyOwl]

So I'm working on a thing and need vague artistic advice.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Specifically, how large should I make the tiles? There's not going to be combat on them or anything, so it's mostly just for flavor, but I'd obviously like that flavor to look as good as possible. Ideally there'd be character sprites idling around in there somewhere, but to date I've been unable to draw any that look presentable.

[AoshimaMichio]

I'm not artistic by any measure, but I say it depends on how much you want to display at once. If it is only few adjacent rooms of size in that example then largest sprites are fine. If more, then I would use smallest set.