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Dancing!

2 (28.6%)

Coat rack!

3 (42.9%)

Telephone!

1 (14.3%)

Vaulting!

1 (14.3%)

Total Members Voted: 7

[Samarkand]

Harry, you had a good character sheet the first time around. Are you one of the people interested again in Kurchil's Children?

[Patrick Hunt]

I'm definitely interested in the Kurchil's game. I'm good with whatever you decide race wise I can use the Wolfkin or if that's not available I'm sure I can find a new one to fit.

[The Froggy Ninja]

I too am interested and will likely be more so when I give the rules a more in-depth analysis.

[BlitzDungeoneer]

I too am interested and will likely be more so when I give the rules a more in-depth analysis.

Have you voted? If no, vote now.
If yes, welcome to the club.

[Harry Baldman]

It's at times like these that I remember that I'm still a newb in these forum.

I've been here for two years and I didn't know that. So, y'know.

@Samarkand:

The trouble with suggestion games is:

A, that they don't generate enough personal player investment by virtue of the player having no direct hand in things to make plotting a particularly rewarding exercise. Especially if the suggestion game doesn't have any decent pictures (which are a pretty good way to generate player interest and investment). I don't really know of any non-illustrated suggestion games that have really taken off around here - maybe that urban vigilante game Funk ran, but otherwise, no clue. Someone can correct me if they wish, since I don't frequent FG&RP that much these days, or indeed earlier aside from some ill-fated experimental forays.

B, that the side effect of lesser player investment and dilution of agency is that, well, it's very rare that these suggestions produce anything brilliant in my experience, at least as results of deliberate action. Player plotting requires good, invested players, and the SG format basically removes (through things averaging out, often not favorably) most semblances of player skill from the game if you have a lot of suggesters, which it will have if it gets popular in the basic format, and if you don't, you might as well just get a group of six suggesters and make them actual players (players that suggest things, if you want) instead.

C, that suggestion games move even slower in terms of progression than regular PbP games, and that's saying something. They also have a higher mortality rate than most other games, and are in fact much more difficult to run effectively and successfully than non-SGs, despite ostensibly being simpler games at their core.

D, that a suggestion game needs, above all else, inspired design. One thing I didn't really touch upon yet is that you should pay close attention to the winning and losing conditions of a suggestion game - in the buzzwordy description you gave, one can spot a great deal of things that are punished in the game - not being sufficiently effective at "ruthless action", not being able to put up a virtuous exterior, being victim of a political conspiracy or just plain being behind on trends and tasks, and the "complex political environment" implies a thing that should presumably be difficult to navigate (otherwise it's hardly a complex political environment), hence the difficulty veers toward hard. This is not good, because, even with the best of intentions, a suggestion box does not invite or reward personal competence, and to obtain communal competence you need to have a cohesive group. Probably a good thing to consider would be where the main character or characters start off - at the bottom, which wouldn't work because it ratchets the difficulty upwards, in the middle, which is a gray area, or at the top, which would allow for more of an easing-in, but would take away some of the "vying for power" aspect.

Seriously, never overestimate your abilities with suggestion games, and think very carefully if you want to run one.

But on the note of the setting, sensible choice. My opinions on the Renaissance are by no means universal, it's just that I find it a very overrated period of history, as well as overrepresented despite there not being many works focusing on it that I can presently remember. I think it may be a personal issue, and targeted toward Renaissance Italy more than anything.

Harry, you had a good character sheet the first time around. Are you one of the people interested again in Kurchil's Children?

Yes, actually. Though more in terms of the idea (genre, I guess, the fact that it's an RP-focused RTD, though it's probably better not to advertise that fact as a general rule) of the game, since I don't feel much of an attachment to the setting, or the specific mechanics. It was also a little perplexing how everyone started out vastly geographically separated in it.

[The Froggy Ninja]

I agree with Harry in that having the players start far apart is quite odd. It would be cool to have a race kind of like the Psions in MOO: BaA, weak as he'll but smart and in this case magical.

[Samarkand]

It's at times like these that I remember that I'm still a newb in these forum.

I've been here for two years and I didn't know that. So, y'know.

It's only possible if the owner of the poll checks the box to allow it.

-snip-

This is helping me quite a bit to understand the limitations of suggestion games.

Yes, actually. Though more in terms of the idea (genre, I guess, the fact that it's an RP-focused RTD, though it's probably better not to advertise that fact as a general rule) of the game, since I don't feel much of an attachment to the setting, or the specific mechanics. It was also a little perplexing how everyone started out vastly geographically separated in it.

Can you clarify why you don't think it should be advertised as such?

Also, the distance of starting was quite entirely due to the sheets of the players, although I may force them to all start in the same place. or perhaps in pairs, if that would be necessary.

[Patrick Hunt]

I don't think it would matter, the game had no defined story line so everybody had his own goals. Even if you started us together we'd have scattered right away anyway to go after our own goals.

Mine for instance required me to travel to my peoples homeland so wherever I started I'd have immediately left the group because it's unlikely they'd all follow me to my people.

Having each species in a defined area predominantly and having species reduce your interaction outside of your own meant you were at a disadvantage in nearly everything unless you went to your own people or planned to just kill everyone.

[Harry Baldman]

Can you clarify why you don't think it should be advertised as such?

Also, the distance of starting was quite entirely due to the sheets of the players, although I may force them to all start in the same place. or perhaps in pairs, if that would be necessary.

RP focus:

It shouldn't be advertised as such because there's no real need for it, and it's clutter. Roleplay is something that grows naturally in all places that the GM approaches seriously or consistently, and if the game isn't first-come-first-served, that alone is a very overt indication of a focus on RP and hopefully good writing. And if the first post has at least two or three paragraphs devoted to setting description or creating a scene you start off in (heck, if it bothers to set a scene in the first place), well, you don't really need much more indication.

It kind of brings to mind the ill-fated GWG's wizard game Thawed, where he initially threw us all out into a vaguely described area after a highly elaborate sheet creation and selection process (he made a whole scoring system up for it) and went "now roleplay for a bit". There's no real need to notify people that they should really be roleplaying - they'll figure it out from the signups and the set descriptions, since people tend to sync up with the GM's general attitude to things once they get into the game. For instance, Thawed quickly descended into massive, contentious game-ending bickering. And on the contrary, if you have a game where you put people in a well-described situation with stuff to work with, then the RP comes out in, if perhaps lesser quantity than if you told them they had to roleplay as if their life depended on it, then at least more quality.

Distance:

It's never a good idea to start out the players separately if their immediate first task isn't to get together. Don't split the party and all that. It kind of sucks RP-wise when the players are separated, especially when they're all alone, because then they're not really playing in a multiplayer game, and RP between the GM and the player is the most basic form of RP. Most of the fun comes from there being other people around and operating in your vicinity. The more, the merrier. In your game, it didn't really matter (since the world was supposedly semi-randomly generated the whole way through) where exactly the players started, and putting them all in the same place at least gives them the opportunity to work together (for best results, force them to work together). It's never fun when everybody wanders off in their own direction, even if players like to do that in their efforts to make the story radial rather than linear. You may consider combating these self-destructive player wishes railroading, but it's very conducive to RP to put the player not where they imagine their character would want to be (and in your case almost nothing of relevance was known of the world, so whatever the players immediately wanted to do would have been uninformed anyway). RP comes out best when there's restrictions in place - restrict the theater of operations first and foremost, since "you can go anywhere and do anything" is absolutely nothing at all for the players to work off of.

So, for all intents and purposes, screw what the characters want when they're plopped in your new world, especially if they want to go off on their own quests. That's absolutely no fun whatsoever, despite what they might think at the moment. Instead, create a unified quest for them all, and state its beginning hook in the first post, so people can sign up with at least roughly appropriate beginning motivations.

[Patrick Hunt]

I'd suggest scattering the races across the world rather then putting each in a specific place as well. The variety of personalities and options helps to keep things interesting.

[BlitzDungeoneer]

Sooo....
You going ahead with the Children of Kurchil?

[Samarkand]

Sooo....
You going ahead with the Children of Kurchil?

Yup, but I won't post the OOC just yet. I PMed the five previous players, and three have responded so far, all positive. If all five want back in I may just revive the thread. I'm waiting till tonight. Then I just have to decide if I'm sticking with simple mechanics, and keeping it in RTD, or if I should do something more complex and put it in FGRP. I'm leaning towards simple, though I may change how the dice work a tiny bit. First things first, need to give previous players a bit more time.

[Samarkand]

Here it is!