They'll get you eventually...

Differing play styles

Regarding Pulp vs. Anti-Pulp, and death spiral vs. mental stability, you may want to try supporting different play styles through the rules themselves. When I designed the 2004 (Mongoose) edition of PARANOIA, I got good results by supporting three different styles, called Classic, Straight, and Zap. This proved useful, too, for reclaiming mindshare among players who thought PARANOIA was only playable in one style.

-- Allen Varney

Re: Differing play styles

Good advice. I was certainly hoping with advanced gaming technology that we can have playtested settings (hopefully just numberic) for various options within the game which affect. Esoterrorists has this; a lot of it happens during character creation in the skills set which is available and the number of points to distribute. The settings I can think of are:

1. The way that insanity works, and recovery from mental damage.
2. The relative power and skill set for PCs (powerful PCs - more pulpy)
3. How magic functions.
4. How strong the mythos creatures are.
5. How much health PCs can have, and recovery time from injury.
6. What behvaiour in play is rewarded with experience.

"Every game I run ends up being CoC in the end."

If I didn't say that, I should have.

Seriously. For a while, every damn game I ran ended up with some horrible Mythos creature or other coming in at the end. Even Deadlands and Megatraveller...

The first game after Call of Cthulhu is always the hardest.

That comic was at the front of the packet I handed out to my group after we finished Masks and were about to start Zeppelin Age.

"# A number make reference to system in language developed at the Forge. Others beg that we don't do create something informed by the Forge."

I wish I could understand what that implies, but even after trying to read up on it from some other helpful folks I still don't understand what a totalizing model is in a RPG.

Can you quantify what a game that isn't informed by the Forge would be like?

"# We have the Pulp vs Anti-Pulp lobby "

But ALL of the Cthulhu stories were published in pulps! Although I suspect Pulp means something else here, and I'd sure like to know what that definition of "Pulp" is. Pulp = Comic Book style? Pulp = Weird Science and over the top action?

For what it is worth, I agree with Varney: give them three styles and let them pick.

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I wish I could understand what that implies, but even after trying to read up on it from some other helpful folks I still don't understand what a totalizing model is in a RPG.
>>

Forget the theory and look at the games. Much of it is stuff people were doing anyway but didn't really have a name for. Playing MLWM, Universalis, Mortal Coil does give a really good feel for a different style of game. Examples from the data include "conflict resolution instead of task resolution" (which appears to mean only roll dice when it's important to the game), "don't like illusionist play" (which appears to mean that the GM secretly railroads the players or is forced to take decisions independently of the system), "narrative game" (which basically means that the players have some say in non-character elements of the story).

On the opposite side we get "don't do any of that indie game narrative shit." Sometimes it's fun just to play your character, and let the GM worry about everything else.

Pulp seems to mean Indiana Jones - certainly Indiana Jones is mentioned lots of times in this context. It means PCs with decent life expectancy who are relatively powerful, blowing up mythos creatures with an RPG so that only a smoking pair of hooves remain and the Mummy. The humour level would have to be reduced. I have a horrible habit of asking the GM "Is it squamous?" or "You said the moon is out, is it gibbous?" or "Do any of the books look a bit eldritch?"

The Forge: Good tools obscured by a slightly snobbish community

I wish I could understand what that implies, but even after trying to read up on it from some other helpful folks I still don't understand what a totalizing model is in a RPG.

The Forge has a lot of baggage. The explicit focus on "indie" games naturally tends toward a bit of snobbery. So a lot of people associate The Forge with being a snob and being disconnected from mainstream gaming. (My favorite was a game design blog I regrettably cannot find now that began with a post that effectively said, "You must have played these 5 Forge games or you are forbidden from posting here as you simply aren't good enough.") The Forge also has a strong Narrativist tendency, which creates the perception that all Forge inspired games are similar, that if you don't like narrativist games there is nothing there for you. Add in a deeply insular culture with a fairly daunting language barrier-to-entry ("Go read these six articles and these five massive threads of discussion and you'll understand what we're talking about") and you've got a lot of reasons for people to be suspicious of the Forge is doing.

However, there is really good stuff going on at the Forge. If you do want games with a more "telling good stroies" bent ("narrativist" in Forge terminology), the games that came out of the Forge are some of the strongest games in the area. They're also developing a bunch of useful tools for discussing and analyzing games, like GNS. Maybe Ron Edwards's Gamist/Narrativist/Simulationist split isn't the One True Taxonomy of games and play styles that some Forge members regrettably seem to think it is, but it's still a useful lens for looking at styles of play and considering what you want to focus on. It provides a useful vocabulary for discussions. Viewed as an imperfect but still useful tool it's quite useful. I would suggest most game developers would benefit from being familiar with the GNS division, just like I think they'd benefit from being familiar with Richard Bartle's division of MUD players or Robin Law's seven types of role-players.

My suggestions for anyone interested in the Forge: Summaries on other sites (like, say, Wikipedia) are a good starting point, but be aware that they may have errors. Take the source material in short bites, it tends to be long, dense, and heavily cross linked. Accept that parts of it sound like gibberish to you at first; if you try to learn it all at once you'll drown in too much information too quickly. Taking the material in small bites will also minimize the amount of time you spend screaming at your screen that the author could be so detached from reality.

While the Forge does tend toward particular types of games, it's not exclusively that way. And you can certainly use the tools developed at the Forge with somehow tainting your game with the negative aspects of the Forge.

Is there any way to look at the survey results without filling in the survey a second time?

I could tell you, but I'd have to...

Here you are:
http://www.my3q.com/view/viewSummary.phtml?questid=127192

> "Every game I run ends up being CoC in the end."
> That is a GM I would like to play with.

You have played with him. His name is Steve. :)


> Lots of Germans play CoC.
True. Why not come along to the Tentacles convention next year?
The "Kult of Keepers" guys are also there in force.

If I can, I will.

"Lots of Germans play CoC."

CoC is huge in Germany. Its German publisher, Pegasus Spiele, has released new books in a quantity and quality that puts Chaosium to shame, and also has one of the best RPG zines out there dedicated exclusively to CoC. In recent years, CoC has even supplanted the World of Darkness as the most popular horror RPG, and most German RPG stores have at least entire shelf dedicated to the line.

They are even producing campaigns as boxed sets. When was the last time an American publisher has done that?

I'm in touch with the Pegasus guys. We'd certainly like to release a German-language version if we get the chance.