Me gain!

Me gain!

Me gain! Thank you for all the input on my questions so far You are great! As a GM and group new to PbtA there are issues we have to work out still. One worry a player communicated was: “If we all create everything together just form thin air, how can we properly explore a universe together? It doesn`t matter if we go left or right because there is only stuff there we make up!” I feel this may be a valid issue of PbtA games that rely heavily on player input like UW. Has that been a problem in your experience? How do you handle this? Do you actually let the players decide everything together with you or do you prep stuff for your own so they can discover it?

As said we are new to this kind of game, having played mostly DnD and the like in the past where I as the GM did most of the worldbuilding.

22 thoughts on “Me gain!”

  2. Don’t imagine that you’re all together creating a complete Cyclopedia Galactica. You’re contributing bits and pieces that you do know, but leaving (and creating) blank spaces for future development.

    “My guy comes from such and such planet where government is organised by lottery, and as such has a fatalistic attitude towards doing jobs that suck.”

    Ok, cool. That tells me nothing about whether that planet has energy weapons, dinosaurs, telepathic starfish, whatever. Do they recycle everything or are they digging hard into fossil fuels? What’s the typical family group like? Have they got televised blood sports?

    That’s just one planet. There’s lots of space to be filled in later, if and when it becomes relevant. A universe is a big place.

  4. “Exploring” is generally a different creative agenda than PbtA games mesh with. If exploration is the most important part of gaming for this player, this might not be the right system for them. Similarly, if tactical combat with minis was most important, it wouldn’t be the right game.

  5. Players make up what I ask them to make up. Otherwise, everything that’s not on their character sheet belongs to me. PbtA games sometimes get this weird rep of being storyteller circle time, when they’re — generally — most similar in execution to D&D-like traditional gaming. The players run their PCs. The GM runs literally everything else. Often the GM asks for input on matters that are most important to a given character.

  6. I mean, there is no practical, during-gameplay difference between “You are discovering starfish dinosaurs now, because I just thought of starfish dinosaurs” and “I prepped starfish dinosaurs last week after the game, and now you are discovering them because I have copious notes on the mating habits of starfish dinosaurs.” If making stuff up is the obstacle to feeling like something is exploration, I don’t think any system will solve that.

    EDIT: added “practical, during-gameplay” to clarify my point.

  7. Aaron Griffin True enough. He is a very creative player and likes to give creative input in general. Maybe a middle ground would be best where they create the “high level stuff” During play but there is some backdrop details I create based on their ideas.

  8. Marcus Burggraf That is totally how PbtA plays, in most cases. You ask them questions like “Who runs this asteroid?” And maybe they say “this fucking cyborg dude; robot body, human brain, in a jar on its shoulders.” You go “Cool,” and then you just do whatever you want with it — its now your tool in the toolbox, and you go to town with it. They have no idea what you’re going to do with the guy.

  9. Marcus Burggraf as Alfred Rudzki​ said, there’s nothing in the rules that says “players go ahead and create anything”. Specifically, the chapter on prompting covers how to get responses from players. If you prompt with “what is this planet and who lives here?” you can get a very player-created answer. If instead you ask “has the southern continent always had so many bright lights you can see from space?” and followed the yes/no up with more questions, now you have an existing place with a bit of mystery that the players are exploring.

  10. Oh, yeah, Aaron Griffin is spot the hell on right there. If you calibrate your questions towards mysteries you are actually creating explorable content. “When you were last here, what was it like?” They say BLAH, you go “Hmm, well then its weird when you begin to dock and everything is un-BLAH”

  11. Aaron Griffin Alfred Rudzki Thanks, I guess Alfreds first comment explains our problem PbtA games sometimes get this weird rep of being storyteller circle time, when they’re — generally — most similar in execution to D&D-like traditional gaming. We expect it to be much more different then it probably is in reality.

  13. No Not at all. We only play “classic” games so far like DnD or Savage Worlds where the whole Worldbuilding was with me the GM. Shared creation is new to us. We dabbled in it with Beyond the Wall, but that was more structured and not free-form like it is here.

  15. Regarding players and discovery. Players “discover” something because they go to Place X or examine Thing Y and find something unexpected. The unexpected, the surprise, is the essence of discovery.

    When you prompt a player to fill in a gap or introduce a new element, it’s the other players that are faced with discovery. And the GM too. Prompting offloads the work of creation to the players at key moments, allowing the GM to experience surprise once in a while. Since the GM is prompting different players each time, the other players will get to discover things whenever it’s not their turn to be the source of discovery.

    The contention that you can’t truly discover something that didn’t exist until you looked is… a bit philosophical.

    If your players are demanding a pre-written story where everything is mapped out, then PbtA-style games are unfortunately not for them. It would be less “play to find out what happens”, and more “experience/play through a pre-written story”. Discovery, in that case, is about “discovering” what the author intended.

  16. Aaron Griffin I did play Microscope once. Many know me as a tiresome pontificator offering opinions on lots of RPGs that I’ve read thoroughly but did not have practical experience in. But in Microscope I did do one game.

    For those unfamiliar: Microscope puts players around a table on an equal footing. They create a setting by each in turn contributing a historical era usually by adding an index-card or electronic equivalent on a time-line. The other players are not allowed to discuss or modify the player’s ideas, but merely to ask questions to clarify the player’s meaning. At the very beginning the group can decide on what features will or will not exist in their genre.

    On the next player’s own turn they might propose a new Era going in a totally different direction, and the other players can’t alter or discuss THAT. Eras are considered “light” or “dark” in general tone (optimistic or pessimistic time). Below each Era a player can add in turn an Event card describing an incident shaping history, again specifying light or dark tone. Events are placed in vertical columns below the appropriate Era.

    Within each Event players can create a Scene and players each play a character (or sometimes abstract motivators like Time [the Time player breaks in with “You are running out of Time because THIS is happening.”] or Fate) and play out a little scene with the aim of answering a historical question. The Scene is only role-played to the point that an answer develops to the question. There are more elaborate rules governing Scenes to facilitate the flow of the role-playing. It’s all quite loose but the process of working out this background, freely jumping back and forth on the timeline to different settings, asking Scene questions (“Who was behind the assassination of King Haakon that plunged the Lunar Empire into civil war?”) makes for a satisfying quasi-RPG experience. The whole framework can be a background setting in which to confidently run another RPG!

    I also bought a game (in the form of .pdfs only) called Evocraft which is mainly a setting generator. You roll dice on generation tables or fill in question blanks as you go along. First you create a world with geographic zones and figure out the climate in each. Then you go through the process with roll-tables, and questions with blanks, to generate flora, fauna, human settlements, history and even several planes of spirit-worlds, in Primitive, Medieval, Renaissance, Modern or Post-Holocaust eras. Notes exist to handle the difficult transitional periods from one kind of era to another, and how to carry over features from an old era into a new one. (Sometimes the spirits so familiar in one era are forgotten and feel ignored in the next, or magic ends up known to only a few while the rest use cellphones for their miracles!) There are not only setting generators, but also a simple set of rules based on dice-pools to set up characters with various skills and role-play them in the Eras you’ve worked out. You consult your skills and assets to assemble a number of six-sided dice (roll up to 36d6 at a time, they say!) and count how many “successes” (rolls of 5 or 6) that you get, to determine the degree of success in an action. It is not perfectly edited yet but is over 400 pages of total material.

    The author knows that space/science fiction was not covered and hopes to develop an Era book for that in the future. I highly recommend this system for groups who want to create collectively and sub-contract the creation work. It would work to detail planets lower in technology than usual. Available on DriveThruRPG.com and described on this site:

    http://www.evocraftrpg.com

    Way back there was an RPG called ARIA that handled the history of civilizations rather than characters. I don’t know any more about it.

    In Microscope any player can propose any kind of far-reaching setting element. It could influence things down the timeline for centuries to come. UW is different, it asks players to paint thin brush-strokes of the setting, and during play the GM can turn a player question around and let the player answer it themselves, and whatever the player says becomes fact (I suggest it only makes sense if the player’s character has the correct field of knowledge for the question.) For example, if the player has a merchant character and wants to know if a certain commodity would have a good price on another planet, the GM can let the player answer himself, and the player could create an answer that there is a trade embargo on that planet and conclude that running the commodity to the planet would be illegal smuggling that Federation forces would not take kindly to. The GM still has to invent most of the world, using player ideas only to provide hooks the players are sure to be interested in, since they proposed them themselves. The GM is manufacturing a “setting carpet” and rolls it out only as much as needed in the directions the players suggested.

  18. My current game actually started as agroup created world: roughly using the Diaspora rules for creating habitations in rounds, so basically each player, GM included, got first say on a planet and faction.

    It worked okay until it didn’t. The players surprisingly didn’t bite on their own creations that much. But one of the planets created was a dark planet in far orbit around a dyson sphere that humans discovered when they first entered the sector. That one held their interest, as did they dyson sphere.

    They did their research and entered the sphere, and now we’re playing an exploration based game where I make up almost everything, and they add details when prompted. For example “The air here is breathable except for these motes of blue-ish light. The sensors say it’s some sort of… fungus? spore? the readings are strange. But there’s something else even weirder in the readings. Brain Surgeon guy, what are they saying?” / “Looks like the molecular makeup of these spores are very similar to a drug back on Kuan-Yin called slash. Breathing it in will probably make us high…. but if we could harvest it, we’d be rich!”

  19. Aaron Griffin I read DIASPORA (2009) too. It is a FATE 3rd-edition-based game, with important differences from the current Fate Core edition of the rules. Essentially the game is now free since you can read the System Reference Document on the Diaspora page which has all the rules. Strong features of the game are the structured mini-game rules that you go into when the situations come up: Personal Combat, Platoon-level Combat (Saving Space Cadet Ryan), Starship Combat, and Social Combat (a graphical way where people’s viewpoints are arranged in Fate Zones, and to sway people socially or politically (or even to pursue someone in Love), you have to physically move to their Zone and drag them to yours, so graphically bringing them around to your way of thinking. But others may expend Aspects and make Rolls to Block you or even sway you themselves.

    http://www.vsca.ca/Diaspora/diaspora-srd.html

    The thing in DIASPORA is that players have fun generating a cluster of 6-12 star-systems (Jumps are relatively easier between these planets than beyond these systems, inter-cluster jumps are not detailed). It is similar to TRAVELLER fun in generating systems. The planetary characteristics are simpler than TRAVELLER, consisting of 3 characteristics: Technology, Resources and Environment ratings, and a list of 3 Aspects or quirks you can come up for the system. Civilizations have risen and fallen several times on each planet, so Archeology is an important skill because you may discover a weaponized goodie and how to use it! (Epsilon Indi Jones, anyone?)

    If players each take a couple of planets and define them, the GM can still impose their story setting by designing the major government structure and groups and forces of the cluster, such as Corporations (which will adapt to anywhere to make a buck.) The GM still has to come up with story, only the mechanism is different. Notice that each game gives different sort of tasks to players but no game should put it all on the players’ shoulders.

  20. I am going on and on about other games, but it is good to read other SF RPGs to broaden your mind and to mine them for ideas. If it’s a small publisher I may never have an opportunity to play the games I studied, so I talk about them.

    To be more relevant to the discussion, I offer some game titles and my impression of the elements, if any, they let the players decide upon instead of the GM. You might want to have a look at various titles, but you can take them or leave them:

    TRAVELLER (1977, many editions since): Traditional RPG where the GM creates the whole setting and its elements. Players may end up “creating” unique starship designs (since the characters are paying for a new ship, and the rules say they pay extra to an architect for a new design!). Maybe a character can come up with a weapon design or vehicle design if properly skilled, little things like that.

    FIRE, FUSION AND STEEL (a supplement for Traveller The New Era or “3rd edition”) and the Maker rules systems in the ponderous and shambling Traveller 5th-edition explicitly talk about designing new equipment.

    DIASPORA (2009, based on the old FATE 3rd-Edition rules concepts): Players mainly generate star-systems collectively, and nail 3 Aspects on each system which are wide-open and therefore can imply governing systems, corporations, weird environmental issues and anything, really. The GM incorporates these ideas but it’s still mainly their own show. The players choose Aspects for their characters and these may also say something about the setting by implication.

    http://www.vsca.ca/Diaspora/diaspora-srd.html

    MICROSCOPE: All players are on an even footing, no GM as such but people take turns organizing the Scenes. A framework of Era and Event cards will litter the table. No player can influence or modify another player’s ideas but only help clarify them so they can be fixed and defined clearly. You can potentially use it to create a science fiction “future history” and use that as a framework for another SF RPG.

    ARIA (??): Role-playing of not single characters but kingdoms or entire family lineages. Players in that way define the fantasy fiction history. I don’t know much more about it.

    THE SPRAWL: This is a “cyberpunk” Powered by the Apocalypse game, but not space SF. I mention it because their main focus is to have players define the Corporations of the game at the start and how they affect the setting. As Corporations are the most important and oppressive element of the game, you could use that kind of process for planets with a high degree of corporate control, the urban side of UW and the intrigues that can result there, etc.

    FATE CORE: Fate Core has World Books and 3rd-party books for a variety of settings including SF. It has a number of changes compared to Diaspora, mainly simplifications (in the back-pages the 2-page Veteran’s Guide explains major changes from FATE 3rd-edition to Fate Core). The rules suggest that players can decide what genre to play and generate appropriate characters, but the GM would have a lot of work to cover for the genre the players want. The GM may prefer to fix a genre and then create for it like in old-school RPGs. There are many 50-page World Books that outline a setting, with a short adventure, but I find these settings tend to be on the unusual/gonzo side. I tend to prefer the bigger, longer 3rd-party world books (some incorporate the basic Fate Core rules for beginners, but some don’t and refer back to the Fate Core books by Evil Hat Inc.)

    If the setting is decided, then major features of the setting genre should be fixed. Players can work with the GM to decide the Issues of a campaign. 2 are suggested as a good number: a current Issue and one that is developing, and these generate plot. Mainly players can imply things about the setting with the free pick of their Aspects. Sometimes their choice of Stunts will imply there is a magic discipline, mental field of knowledge, or martial arts tradition with combat-moves in the setting!

    ICAR: A British RPG available for free download which I mention because their far-future setting is really bizarre. Most of the galaxy has been taken over by evil Droids. No major player creation occurs as far as I can tell. http://www.icar.co.uk/

    Other SF RPG titles coming soon:

    —STELLAR ADVENTURES (SF adaptation of the simple British Fighting Fantasy paragraph-books of the 80s which were later elaborated into a fantasy RPG Advanced Fighting Fantasy. Mainly authored by Steve Jackson, the British Steve Jackson.)

    —FRONTIER SPACE (DWD Studios): a skill-based percentile system called “d00lite” similar to some of their previous releases. Skill structure and rules were inspired by the old STAR FRONTIERS RPG (and all related material for that is still available in a free fan digital edition from starfrontiersman.com – Star Frontiersman .)

  21. Alfred Rudzki let’s remember though that UW is a game where the base rules literally contain an example where a pc opens a crate, asks “what’s in it?” and is told by the gm “I have no idea, you tell me.”

    UW as written very heavily pushes this approach well beyond what a typical pbta game does.

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