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[S34N1C]

I actually think the goals thing backfired for me in a way in Prints. The intent was/is for a very sandbox-y game. Long term goals in the form of a list of people that you were supposed to get revenge on, and the idea was that this would provide a reason to the sandbox - get rich through crime/whatever to get closer to the goal. However, so far (though not that far), the player character has moved exclusively towards said goals instead of doing any sandbox-type things.
I don't like telling players what they're supposed to do (this post totally doesn't count!) because that just feels counteractive to forum games, but I personally feel like people are in a way just missing the point and meat of the game.
Lone Galaxy also has a goal, but it's straight-forward and not really the center of any problems there I feel.

message received chief. will do better

[monk12]

Goals are easy, but having them being visibly reachable is the hard part.

Well, there's the MGSV-style gametelling. A support character tells the protagonist, "Okay so there's your goal over there. You can totally go do that thing by doing all the things on that checklist I gave you.

BUT ALSO

Here's a horse, a bag of empty gun clips, a noisemaker, some cardboard boxes and posters, and some freakishly efficient balloons. I'm sure you can figure something out, and remember to keep an eye out for blueprints, materials, and stray goats."

Basically this, but I'll expand on it for my own entertainment.


If your goal is "kill this guy because he killed your father," it's not really a goal, it's a motivation. Goals are the intermediary steps to satisfying that motivation. A helpful way to think about it is for goals to be the obstacles between your character wanting something and actualizing that desire. For example, a character "wants" revenge, but their goals in aid of that are to "find the guy," "have the strength/ability to defeat the guy," and "bypass the guy's defenses." Those are all specific objectives a player can work towards with the understanding that achieving them progresses their overall motivating goal.

That's the "tangible goal" part of the equation, but the "visible paths" bit is trickier and more dependent on the game. For basics though, a player needs to have a good sense of what assets they currently possess, what assets they need to accomplish a goal, and what actions they can take to bridge the gap between the two. Assets include starting inventory and any special abilities of the player, but perhaps most important is information. In our revenge plot example, if the first big goal is "find the guy" then the player needs to be told right off the bat anything they already know about "the guy" and what leads they have to follow up on.

Let's say that the information the player wants is in the sole possession of a guild of international assassins, and since there are no intermediary leads you want the player to follow on this arc the player starts the game knowing this. You probably already have some ideas for how the player could get past this obstacle; they could buy a meeting with this person with significant amounts of money or personal service, or they could try to join the guild and meet the contact on a personal basis. Obviously you could just offer those options explicitly, but you want people to play around in the sandbox, so let's not do that. If you want to maintain a freeform sandbox feel for the player's actions the player also needs to have some working knowledge of the assassins guild.

So, in this example you tell the player that the person who knows the whereabouts of their father's murderer is a high-ranking member of the Assassins Guild. You then tell them that the Assassins Guild is a secret society of international murderers for hire. They aren't in the phonebook or on the darkweb, but instead reach out to persons of power, wealth, and influence to offer their services. They draw their membership from notable members of small-time thieves' guilds, decorated expatriates, famous mercenary companies, and the like. They are particularly famous for a rare kind of poison they use in high-profile hits.

By providing this block of information, you implicitly provide the hooks for your anticipated actions; you can the Guild to call you if you have money (so doing things that get you money and fame would get you closer to this goal) and you can join if you're a famous fighter of some kind. Because you didn't make the options explicit, you leave the option open for the player to surprise you with information they've gotten from elsewhere in the game; perhaps they already know about a corrupt CEO NPC from the lore, and conclude based on the Assassins Guild description that this CEO probably has ties with them, and thus decide that toadying up to him is the best path to take. The key to getting players to think outside the box is to make sure there's neat stuff outside the box for them to play with; if all the toys are inside the box, there's no reason to leave it.

This is why I'm never afraid of sticking throwaway bits of fluff to everything; the better the picture your players have of the broader world, the better they can see the connections between the background stuff and their own agendas. It's a balancing act to make sure you don't overwhelm them with lore, but the players need stuff to work with. To butcher the metaphor, if you sit the players in the sandbox and give them reason to build a castle and a shovel and bucket, their sandcastles are all going to look very similar, and they're never going to move away from where they started unless they can find a spade or a toy truck or some neat shells just out of reach.

[TheBiggerFish]

I have one suggestion game roughly planned (which I will never run) to make players as voices in the character's head, so I can answer each individually from context of the game. For example:

Murder them all!!

No god damn way, I'm not a murderer! I won't give in to the dark side!

And few turns later:

I told you to kill them. You wouldn't be in this trouble if you did.

LALALALALAA! I'M NOT LISTENING!

Without trying this I can't be certain if it really works, if that's enough to give people the personal connection and desire to keep posting suggestions, but currently I'd like to think so.

TWoOtA uses that these days.  A whole bunch of SGs even.  Darkest Garden springs to mind.

[Chiefwaffles]

stuff

message received chief. will do better

Agh! I'm not trying to tell people reading my SGs what to do! It's a game! Do what you want!

@monk:
The difference between goals and motivations seems pretty technical and it feels like I was more intending to put across your definition of a motivation when I said "goal".
But yeah. That's pretty sound advice that I appreciate. I haven't had much experience with those more cohesive-type SGs - my games usually are done in such a way that the player isn't given a chance to explore a larger connected world. It's not necessarily a flaw, though. I do really like that example, though, and it makes sense. I'll try to incorporate things somewhat similar to that in future/current SGs even though they won't be nearly as well-done as even that small example. Expand on the world via throw-away bits of lore instead of my current style of "say what the player asks about and nothing else" and make things flexible enough that people form connections and make the game better for you.
Thanks.

[NUKE9.13]

Hmm, hmm. I think all this talk of goals is missing a more important point: theme.

Like, you can have an idea for the most amazing forum game, with the best story and the most awesome interactions, but if the theme- the top layer of your delicious forum-game cake- doesn't appeal to people, it probably won't get off the ground.

There are one million forum games where you wake up in a room with amnesia, for example. Boring. Seen it. Even if in your case there is a totally valid justification which the players will discover 50 turns in- doesn't matter, unless your game is really outstanding.
 
The sort of thing that interests me (I can't speak for everyone) are themes that are
1)Somewhat unique. Doesn't have to be- no, shouldn't be- too wild, but not something I've seen a thousand times before.
2)Simple to understand. If you can't explain the theme in a single sentence, I'm already getting bored (so to speak)
3)Full of potential. Not unlimited potential, as complete freedom is restrictive. But I need to be able to visualise things that could happen in the future (this sort of ties back into the goals discussion)

I dunno. Maybe this advice is worthless. Well, whatever. Do with it what you will.

[Chiefwaffles]

What do you mean by "theme" in this context? I'm having a bit of trouble parsing it from a more literary context to that of a FG.

I assume you mean something similar to a more overarching-type "setting", but I really can't be sure.

[IronyOwl]

What do you mean by "theme" in this context? I'm having a bit of trouble parsing it from a more literary context to that of a FG.

I assume you mean something similar to a more overarching-type "setting", but I really can't be sure.

I don't like telling players what they're supposed to do (this post totally doesn't count!) because that just feels counteractive to forum games, but I personally feel like people are in a way just missing the point and meat of the game.

I think he means that and also this thing you're talking about in the second quote. "You wake up in Hyrule, you are Ganondorf but also a magical girl" is the same setting but a different theme than "You wake up in Hyrule, Link is missing and Ganondorf has returned as a magical girl." It's what the game is about, essentially, and by extension why you should care about, be interested in, and partake of it.

Speaking of which, if you feel like players "aren't getting" the game, you might want to reconsider what you've told them about it. Too explicit is usually better than too vague, especially if your issue is that nobody seems to remember Ganondorf is supposed to act like a villain or that Hyrule needs protecting. That, to me, seems like a style mismatch: You thought you said "You're a manly villain magical girl, go destroy Hyrule," but players heard "You're a manly villain magical girl, do whatever lol." Which explains both why not many people are interested, and why the ones that are seem a little distracted.


Talking about Prints and Lone Galaxy specifically:


Prints starts out, in my opinion, unnecessarily vague. You don't even have the year down, but it was obviously kind of important because you shot down Roman Adventures. This kind of "Do anything! Wait, not that! The other thing!" is not great for player participation and involvement, because it starts to feel like that point n click guessing game you're worried about. If you need something to be a specific way, say so; if you need it to be within a certain range or one of a set of options, likewise. "Select Period: Prohibition, 80s Cocaine Wars, 90s Rambo Style" is waaaaay better than "Select year: Not that year! I need the other year! You'll find out why it matters later."

That said, it was still a concise and interesting enough premise to garner a good number of suggestions, most of them pretty nice, in my opinion. Then you started them out in an apartment with a variety of overly specific knickknacks, and... well...

...one-time bump.

So to me, the issue here is that you killed your momentum. Everyone was all set for Roman Adventures and/or Something Else, they got Something Else, and then you took an entire update to mention they have $15 and ask what their profession is. You don't even specify if it's their crime job or day job! It doesn't feel like it's living up to its premise at that point.

And then everybody wants to go to the pub. Even after you explain that they've misunderstood. Which to me doesn't sound like they misunderstood, it feels like they have no idea where they are or what they're doing, and so are trying to get the game moving.

Well, you're at the pub. What now?

If so, I don't think it worked.

So after that point, you kind of get them re-railed, but by then there's only one real thing they can do, and that's blindly follow the lead you've given them. The sandbox is gone, as appears to be player interest.

If you want to get the game revived in its original incarnation, I suggest you follow some of the advice already given and flesh out the world enough that players have a box to play in. If you're going to track money, give it meaning. How much does a hunting rifle cost? Enough C4 to blow open a wall? A plane ticket to Guatamala where their next target is hiding? Without context, it's just a fiddly bit. Similarly, where does it come from? Jobs? What jobs, do you just look around? Do you have a contact? Are there multiple places you can work? Do jobs have success rates based on your skills and the conditions surrounding it? Where are those located? Then we get into how you find your targets to take revenge on them, and so on and so forth.

When in doubt, imagine the game as a control panel or UI. If they can't see a list of available jobs, they're probably not going to take one. If they don't know the Locate Jobs button exists to display the available jobs list for them, they're probably not going to find that one either. At this exact moment they have a giant targeting reticule over one of their Big Important Names, but no idea what buttons they're able to push, either to take the shot now, stock up advantages for later, abandon mission to build up and come back under more advantageous circumstances, or something else entirely.

For that matter, they probably don't know what their odds on any of those are. If they just jump out of the bushes and open fire, what's likely to happen? They hit nothing and then get their face shot off? They take out all four men? They engage a cinematic shootout sequence involving rock-paper-scissors style mind games over their next move? Looking at it myself, I don't really know, so I'm guessing others are similarly unclear. That adds to the uncertainty and thus disinterest or at least quiet.


I was gonna do something similar for Lone Galaxy, but that burned me out and I suspect you've gotten the gist of my likely complaints.

[Chiefwaffles]

Aw, I feel hurt.  But the feedback definitely overweighs that by a ton and I really appreciate it.
The "telling players what they're supposed to do" was primarily referring to something more along the lines of extreme railroading. Not "You are _____ and your destiny is to ___________ because _______", but "GUYS STOP! NO! Don't play my game that way! It's my game and I want it played this way or else!"

Yeah. Prints is possibly the worst starting FG I've done. The pick-a-year thing was a mistake, I agree. I was indecisive about the era and decided "You know what? What if the players decided?" and looking back at it, I shouldn't have done it. I also thought "modern times" was an obvious limitation but that is an assumption I really should have known better than to make.
The "overly specific knickknacks" thing is definitely a reoccurring problem in my games. It seems to be a catch-22: If I'm too vague about what the protagonist starts out with, people end up ignoring their vague possessions or are forced to just ask questions until they stumble upon what they have.
e.g. "You have some crime stuff!" "Do we have a pistol?" "You do have a pistol!" "Do we have a suit?" "No." "Do we have anything cool?" "Ask and I'll tell you!"

But if I go specific like I did in Prints, it ends up being somewhat shoehorned and leads to what I consider to be one of my biggest major flaws in making SGs - I'm really bad comprehensive lists. If I were to say, make a list of systems on your ship in a sci-fi game, I would without fail forget something. Sometimes I can recon it in ("..wait, I don't see a power generator?" "What? No. You're mistaken. We definitely always had a power generator") but other times I'm just stuck with the bed I made. If it were a perfect world, I wish I could go with the vague approach and have it just work, but in my experience it just doesn't.


And for the update-just-to-say-they-have-$15:
I feel like this is largely a symptom of the main problem - misunderstood intent - in Prints. It was intended as a "crime sandbox". So theoretically I start the players at their apartment and they decide "We should get money -> Let's use our money to buy stuff to get ready for crime!" Story wasn't supposed to be the focus - the players were supposed to (I know, I know) make their own story.
But instead I accidently present it as somewhat more of a crime drama, and your observed problem appears - the protagonist is dropped into an apartment without any compelling narrative hooks or background with nothing to do.

The misunderstood part was because I intended the final line of the apartment update to be more of a "What are you going to do now?", and I wasn't asking for their profession. Which feels like it killed the little remaining steam the game had at that point.

And the rest of your post seems to be "give them options". Which I more or less agree with. But with the sandbox thing - I was always intending for the players to be able to do whatever whenever. At no point am I forcing them to follow the lead. At the risk of "spoiling" a small amount of behind-the-scenes stuff for prints, I was intending to end the current confrontation decisively by outright showing the players that yup, those guys are way too powerful for you to consider confronting right now. Then the plan was/is to give people hints about possible ways to get back into the mythical sandbox. I'd say "Huh. You don't have that much money but look! All these opportunities to get money! Or men! Or whatever you want!"

And we return back to another flaw of mine with SGs - I can't effectively present options or choices. I'd like to think it's related with my apparent inability to provide comprehensive lists, but I'm not a phycologist. For whatever reason I can't subtly present the player with a list of choices or outcomes.
I mean, wouldn't they know what they're able to do? Run away, sneak, engage, talk, etc. I don't see (while I'm sure I'm wrong) what more I can do without blatantly listing the options in an update. And while that is a valid style used in SGs, it's not a method I want to employ. The odds being too vague, sure. I could had included a sentence or two saying "Oh jeez these guys could sure blow your head of if you so much as raised a finger at them"/something along those lines.

I think Prints is suffering from the problem of being an abomination of different themes/gameplay styles due to assumptions I made in the OP and the choose-a-year thing. At this point I'm considering restarting it (which probably wouldn't work because steam is already gone) or simply putting it on permanent hiatus. I'll probably try to get it back on track before I make that decision though.
Lone Galaxy is mostly just a problem due to being a bit too railroad-y. In it, I can't seem to effectively create scenarios where the players are in control and I can't properly give players apparent decisions and choices without being obvious. This one I'm simply considering permanent hiatus as well, because while the plot is interesting-enough relative to the rest of my narratives, it feels like it could be too far gone to rescue.

I'm almost definitely going to cool off on these types of narratives for future games. Thanks again for the criticism - it really helps.

[Solifuge]

Yeah. Prints is possibly the worst starting FG I've done. The pick-a-year thing was a mistake, I agree. I was indecisive about the era and decided "You know what? What if the players decided?" and looking back at it, I shouldn't have done it. I also thought "modern times" was an obvious limitation but that is an assumption I really should have known better than to make.
The "overly specific knickknacks" thing is definitely a reoccurring problem in my games. It seems to be a catch-22: If I'm too vague about what the protagonist starts out with, people end up ignoring their vague possessions or are forced to just ask questions until they stumble upon what they have.
e.g. "You have some crime stuff!" "Do we have a pistol?" "You do have a pistol!" "Do we have a suit?" "No." "Do we have anything cool?" "Ask and I'll tell you!"

I recently tried an entirely suggestion-based Inventory Generation thing in Ashwood Cross; I only gave them the clothes on their backs and a single item to start, and they suggested the rest. I think it worked pretty well! I took some liberties interpreting and combining the most popular suggestions and all that, but I think we ended up with a pretty interesting character, and a good kit of gear. I had to come up with mechanical functions for the inventory, but so far, so good.

In general, I'm experimenting with an Audience-Responsive design for the game. I mean, I have a solid idea about the setting and events that lead to this, and where it's going Big Picture, but I'm building near future challenges around the equipment they chose, and invented a few plot hooks on the fly based around their choices. I think it works well, in a Collaborative Storytelling situation like an Illustrated Suggestion Game. And in a way, it's easier on me as a creator; they help me flesh out some of the details, and get a bit of authorship and creative-control over the situation in return. Win-win!

[Chiefwaffles]

For my next game I'm considering doing a more liberal version of the vague-thing I mentioned before and kind of what Solifuge mentioned. I give a general scope of what the players are expect to have, like "You're a marine fighting in a big battle!" and the players essentially "summon" stuff as they go, with the implication that the stuff "summoned" was always there.

So a player would say "Use our stun grenade!" and I would respond "You use one of your two stun grenades ...", a player would say "Use our marksman rifle to shoot that guy!" and I would respond fine. If a player says "Use our super-expensive-prototype-sci-fi smart missile launcher to shoot down that helicopter!" I would respond "You use your ordinary bazooka to shoot down the helicopter."
So the tricky parts would be providing a good-enough description of your character and your rough inventory to allow players to make assumptions within the intended scope, and being able to interpret out-of-scope suggestions without providing too many straight-out "No"s and allowing the protagonist to get too OP in terms of inventory and abilities.

Your exact method seems like it definitely works, but also non-thematic with my type of game. I tend to prefer a bit more established setting and characters while still allowing player improvisation along the way (Prints is a really bad example of this). It's not exactly unique, but I like it. But what I'm saying is that I personally don't like doing clear "character creation" sections in my own games, kind of. Perhaps in the near-ish future I could make a game using similar character creation, since I haven't ever gone "all-out" and allow that much player improvisation in my games, and it seems like it could be fun to do.

Buut yeah. Player inventory is definitely still the biggest roadblock for my currently planned game. I'm considering the approach I outlined in this post, but I may also just ask people outright what they have. Sort of like a more overt version of Ashwood Cross, I guess?

[Solifuge]

The way we handled inventory creation in Ashwood Cross was pretty simple; when the players opened their bag, I asked them what they'd find inside it, and picked my favorites. They can't pull out more from the bag now that it's open, though that mechanic might make a return for rewards later on. Also note; we did this after we created their character, and after they'd seen that they were in the entrance to a dark cave, but before any of the upcoming challenges were known. I didn't want them cheesing every challenge with an easy solution to every problem... I want them to have to be clever sometimes!

Also, I hear what you mean about preferring to have a character in-mind before you start the game. In my case, there were some definite traits about who the player is, which are mostly unknown to the players as of right now. However, the players got to suggest some skills and faults, and I stitched that together into a character profile with stats and all that, which also works with the character I already had worked out. I thought it was a good way to compromise what I'm going for, without taking away the audience's Creative Control!

I'm not sure how pulling items out of Hammerspace would work in a game; on the one hand, that's going to let players summon convenient items at will to solve their problems, after they know what the problem is... which could keep things moving along swiftly. It could also feel a bit random and silly, which is great if that's your goal! It might trivialize some of your challenges too, though. For example, if you present them with a locked door, which they have to solve a puzzle to open; if they just summon some Heavy Explosives, there goes that puzzle, right?

Also, I'd caution you to lay out some kind of rules for Item Summoning, which the players understand before they suggest any items. Maybe a random chance roll, or maybe a limit to the size or number of items they can pull out in a given Scene, or whatever. I'd caution you against just picking whether they will or won't have an item on a case by case basis; if a player puts some time coming up with a creative or useful item suggestion, but it gets rejected by the GM for reasons they don't understand, that might feel frustrating or railroady to your players!

[Chiefwaffles]

Huh. That's an interesting concept for a game. You're a [wizard] whose special ability is to summon things, but they have a limited lifetime and you have a limited amount of power.

But the way I was talking about wasn't something that would last particularly long. It'd present itself as essentially a slightly extended character creation period instead of a permanent game mechanic. People would be "summoning" items (which is just an abstracted inventory - "summoning" something is basically saying "take out the hammer that we totally brought with us", not "summon up a hammer!") just for the first few updates while the game itself is starting.

So instead of having a set of updates for the sole purpose of getting the players' inputs via direct questions, the first updates would be part of the intro/whatever and players would do the "summoning" just for that bit. Like if the game was about a spy infiltrating a snowy complex, the intro would be them (jet)skiing down the hills past pursuers then entering the complex, and the players could summon items there, but once they get in, it's a regular game mechanics-wise.

Railroading would be handled by properly setting expectations and interpreting actions - like the example before, if a person suggests something way too extreme, it could theoretically be toned down without appearing to flat-out deny an action. You don't hack a super door-opening computer, but you do just so happen to have some lockpicks! That kind of stuff.

The summoning thing isn't an idea my heart is set on - it's just something I thought could potentially work for future games, and maybe it will? I may never use it or use it next time I come up with a new game.

[RoseHeart]

@Solifuge

I am looking for interesting forum game worlds to invade with Forum Runner, and Ashwood Cross looks like a fine target.

Brief: Forum Runner is a contest between two players take on 2 week or less challenges within other games, best of 5 wins. Here's the thread, my PM box is open.

[Tiruin]

The way we handled inventory creation in Ashwood Cross was pretty simple; when the players opened their bag, I asked them what they'd find inside it, and picked my favorites. They can't pull out more from the bag now that it's open, though that mechanic might make a return for rewards later on. Also note; we did this after we created their character, and after they'd seen that they were in the entrance to a dark cave, but before any of the upcoming challenges were known. I didn't want them cheesing every challenge with an easy solution to every problem... I want them to have to be clever sometimes![...]

Hee~ Knew it was something like this given one of my posts there! :3 (Also this kind of thing where you give freedom to players at more times than the rails, ends up with mutual hilarity, so that kind of thing where player/GM/character freedom all mix is a good spot)

And now you have a duffel bag in a duffel bag. Double durability lining! \o/

Also PTW this thread.
I'm...trying to find ways on how to remake and improve my RtD >_<

[Solifuge]

@Solifuge

I am looking for interesting forum game worlds to invade with Forum Runner, and Ashwood Cross looks like a fine target.

Brief: Forum Runner is a contest between two players take on 2 week or less challenges within other games, best of 5 wins. Here's the thread, my PM box is open.

So, it's a sort of cross-Forum-Game challenge? Sounds interesting. PMing. Hope you find other interested folks too; what a neat idea!

And now you have a duffel bag in a duffel bag. Double durability lining! \o/

Also PTW this thread.
I'm...trying to find ways on how to remake and improve my RtD >_<

That dang Duffle Bag in a Duffle Bag bit. It was so dumb, but too good to pass up.

Did you have any questions about your RtD? Is this a Shattered Dreams reboot/continuation?