01:06:30 long & 63.8 MB big

In this episode, Robert Bohl (designer of Misspent Youth) and Joshua A. C. Newman (designer of shock: social science fiction), discuss possible structures for a session of play, talk about how to structure technological and interpersonal relationships, and talk a bit about how mechanics might work. Lots of meaty game design here.

Joshua’s and Rob’s homeworks

- Listener feedback: Paul Beakley, Nathan Wilson, Simon C, Doc Holaday
- The book Starfish by Peter Watts
- Discussion of how many players the game should service
- Initialization, a word to be used a lot in the game
- Drop initialization phase created NPC?
- Primetime Adventures
- Spotlight characters, scene order, and whether scenes are about players or characters
- Are there too many scenes? Can you run out of interesting stuff before you run out of time?
- The roles that PCs play in spotlight characters’ scenes when they’re not spotlight
- The Wire
- Introducing new NPCs and new tech, tying Currents to them
- Talking about the tech web
- Separate relationship maps on each character sheet to reflect different visions of relationships
- What am mechanics?
- Joshua = power, Rob = meaningfulness
- Joshua promises a diagram
- Mind control!
- Personality Anchors, and we argue over it
- Richard K. Morgan’s Takeshi Kovacs novels
- Rob keeps talking about “spotlight scene” when he means “spotlight episode”
- Anchors and immunity
- Vincent Baker’s thread where he’s asking for critique on Apocalypse World
- What to call the co-GMs?
- Homework: write up what a scene might feel like, which we’re probably going to do on the forum
- No listener homework

Rob’s during-the-show notes

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The intro music is “Gotta Whizz” by Boris the Sprinkler, from the album Mega Anal. The outgoing music is I Wish I Was a Boy by Angry Red Planet, provided by Podshow’s Podsafe Music Network.

Read original blog post

Hooray for me not doing anything!

Post edited 4:39 pm – September 17, 2009 by lumpley

edit: Your wish is my crossposting.

What do the characters do?

Rob tells me that Dollhouse is transhumanist fiction. In Dollhouse, some of the characters take on fantasy personalities to fulfill others' sexual- and otherwise fantasies; some broker and control those transactions; and some investigate and pursue the lot.

Notice how beautifully those things imply, but needn't exply, issues and conflicts? All of the questions about identity and humanity arise naturally. So do conflicts of interest, as soon as you start saying things like “fulfill others' fantasies” and “broker and control.”

So I'm a transhumanaut in your game – what do I do?

(Ha ha! Transhumanaut.)

I hope for something as straightforward and loaded as what I just said for Dollhouse. “In Transhumanauts, you play a criminology team who uses forensic memetics to solve – and prevent – murders,” like.

Or, ha ha! This seems cool to me: “in Transhumanauts, the streets are war. Technology has made every billboard into a sniper's nest, every shopfront into a minefield. You play EMTs, trauma surgeons and organ donors of the soul, caring for the victims of ad blitz, drive-by meming, and hype addiction. 'Jesus. This guy took the new McFuckald's ad right in the hypothal. Is Pheng on call for a crash conscience transfusion?'”

Oh damn. Me too, now.

Post edited 4:37 am – September 19, 2009 by doc

hile this was an interesting listen, I really only dredged up two thoughts in response.

1. I thought the one real step forward was the idea that each player either managed their own version of the social network and/or got to monkey with other player's character sheets in that regard.

2. The rest of the discussion seemed to wander a bit for me into tangential areas. For example, a garbage eating animal has broad implications but I honestly don't think of it as transhumanist because it doesn't (directly) relate to artificially evolving/altering/redefining humanity. Some of the other issues you raised as well seemed like beating around the h+ bush.

I'm not criticising. In fact, I think I have decided to stop any kind of second guessing since what you are recording is process. Too much critique is really inappropriate. I think it should only be aimed at things you “declare” as “this is the way it will be.” The rest is speculation and attunement. I figure there is a subtext between you two that you know what you are talking about and how it relates to h+ even when I don't.

And, if this doesn't make any sense, then my defense is that I am two BIG scotches into Friday evening.

I only just finished the 'cast today.

I think the question about “one immutable thing” or “two immutable things” is a really interesting one.  I'm with Joshua in being extremely skeptical.

Here's an implementation I think would be cool: Through play, something changes about the character, and it makes you realise “hey, I'm not playing the same person anymore.  This character is done.”

Here's an implementation I think would suck: In play, you realise something about your character is immutable, so you write it down, and it's taken off the table – it's never going to change.

The second implementation seems to directly contradict what the game is about, in my mind.  The game is about questioning what makes a human being, and the mechanic answers that question directly, mechanistically, and unambiguously.

I'm also with Vincent on wanting some baked-in situation for the game, or at the very least some way of inventing that in play (a bit like you do in Shock).  As soon as you take it to that level, the game becomes hot to me.

I'm also still worried about these “threads in Transhumanism” things.  I don't care about that stuff, and I think play that tries to revolve around those things is going to be all abstract and cerebral and sucky.

Here's the thing: you're seeing this from the inside out. There's no way I'm going to require a player to decide on an abstract political philosophy. That's dumb. We have to figure out the core of those impulses if we're going to use the currents, not just slap a name on.

We already discussed this. What's going on is that you're hearing us talk about what we're talking about. We're a long way from working out presentation.

Joshua,

I see what you mean.  I get that you're not going to be all like “each character must sign up to one of these philosophies”, and I'm happy with that.

I guess I'm more talking about this “what does your character care about” thing.

I think this is tied to a wider concern I have about how caring about stuff is construed in RPGs.  Some games get you to write down on your character sheet something your character cares about, or another character or something.  Sometimes that's cool, but oftentimes you really quickly discover that as a player you don't care about that stuff at all, and then it's one of those “lame duck” attributes hanging off your character sheet, like you were talking about.  It's just drag.

Caring about stuff is a really mercurial thing.  It's hard to predict what you'll care about as a player, and what your character will end up caring about.  I guess what I'm saying is that I'd like there to be scope for this stuff to be discovered in play, rather than nailed down at character creation.

Simon, if I recall correctly, we were discussing the Currents in directions for making NPCs, not protagonists. And remember that character creation in this game isn't a separate phase of play. You're not storing resources for battle. You're building a character as they develop.

Vincent and Rob, for the purposes of recording this thought, which we've discussed privately: I think that, in the interests of making the game simple (to compensate for the challenges of our format), I think we'll probably make a very specific game with a very specific kind of situation. Rob, what do you think about that?

Post edited 7:32 pm – September 21, 2009 by Simon C

Joshua,

Makes sense to me.

So that's cool, but I'll be watching you!  If you don't make the game exactly how I want it, boy will there be trouble!