Making game

At every turn, we’ve tried to reinforce the style of game we want with the rules and setting. As discussed in posts elsewhere - discouraging multicultural groups, discouraging camp-rolling to settle PvP conflict, etc.

"Win by losing" is an idea that Rupert Redington introduced me to years ago. He might even have invented it. It’s about what winning is, and what losing means. I doubt we’ve discussed it properly in 5 years. As I recall, it says that in LRP you win by having a great story to tell, or by having great experiences. I think that’s pretty widely agreed. Rupert’s contention was that that story may not be about your character winning.

I’ve been thinking this throughout the design of Odyssey. Especially while watching 300 again. And specifically, when I was casting around for a way of giving some good reason for a side to take the arena floor when it was pretty obvious they’d "lose." Why would you do that? The 300 gives a fabulous example of winning by losing - they’re part of one of the greatest stories of all time. And I expect to see players taking part in a "losing" fight to be part of a story of defiance, of sacrifice, of heroism. I wanted to encourage this behaviour in Odyssey, hence when someone (Simon, I think) proposed the renown mechanic I was all over it like a rash. Because players would be more likely to do it if the loss had an element of victory in it. If you take the field outnumbered, knowing you are about to lose, but still there to honour your nation and the gods. You get renown. Which translates into the favour of the gods later.

300 may be an example of "win by losing" where it’s not necessarily any design of the players’ to do so. It’s just the way it turns out. Or it may be a result of protagonists with flaws doing what they do, and "losing" because of it. In LRP, that’d be about designing a character with attributes which mean that character doesn’t always take the option most likely to lead to "victory". Just by playing a foolish character, with less than the player’s natural intelligence, or by something more interesting. I’m sure there are lrpers who would never, ever do that kind of thing, who are always struggling as hard as they can to "win". I’m pretty sure a character designed to have real flaws is more likely to be more interesting to play and to interact with. I’m also pretty sure that when you can rationalise a "loss" as a result of a character’s flaws, because of a conscious design decision, you the player is likely to find "losing" more palatable. I have a feeling that’s less likely to end in the kind of OOC rancour that can make PvP action pretty unpleasant. And there’s more to life than winning anyway...

...and more to LRP too. Or at least, more to LRP than your character winning. There are those that say there’s no winning in LRP - but I tend to disagree. I feel I’ve won a game if, for a chunk of it, my character, and my story, has been the centre of attention. Given there’s a lot of competition for attention, trying to get front-and-centre is hard. Particularly if you’re struggling for scarce attention by "winning" IC with a lot of folk who are _also_ trying to "win" by being the most successful character. Now, if you flip this around and play for attention by being unsuccessful, there’s a lot more space. Recently, I went to a game where I played in a group of pretty dumb criminals. The amount of attention we got by being there to be investigated, tried, punished by all the characters who wanted to play successful law enforcement roles, amongst some lovely other characterisations who picked on us, robbed us, extorted from us, bullied us, defended us... Was pretty significant. I reckon that if you were measuring "winning" by "attention", then we won that first night by streets. Simply by choosing to be flawed, and not maximising our chances of IC success by playing to the hilt of our OOC capabilities.

H.

There is a "motivational" style poster somewhere on the Internet of the 300 characters in phalanx formation, with the caption "TPK: If you do it right, nobody will ever forget." Part of the great fun of LRP is the war stories, and few people tell war stories about exceptionally successful brush salesmen, or cautious people who don’t do much but survive. People do tell stories about the heroic last stands against overwhelming odds, though - and from a metagame point of view, that’s how characters become immortal. They get talked about late at night when the booze is doing the rounds and the stories get bigger, and wilder, and more fun.

Endings are the hardest things to do right; if you are offered a chance to go out in a blaze of glory, seize it with both hands. By doing so you will be providing yourself with an epic end to a character arc - and they do come to an end, or should - and you will be making the overall story richer and better for everyone involved. And I’ll lay you a bet: do it right, and it won’t be the winners who they’ll be talking about round the campfires later that night.

Odyssey also borrows Joss Whedon’s Firefly concept of "Big Damn Heroes" unashamedly. Make your personalities larger than life, and flawed, and big. Look at all of the figures we are holding up as exemplars for character concepts - the Imhoteps, and the Titus Pullos, the Odysseuses and the Jasons. None of them are whiter than white; they are flawed, and make mistakes, and because of those mistakes people die. They sometimes do dumb things that, if they were played by a clever player perhaps they would not have done - but that clever player would then have denied himself a fat wedge of great story.

The Odyssey would have been a very short poem if Odysseus had been played by a clever player. But would it have been better?

I guess what I’m saying here is to a degree the same point H makes above - it can be just as much fun, if not more so, to engage with the story and let it carry you places you might not expect than to treat the entire affair as a zero-sum game of risk and benefit. Make an occasional dumb decision. Fall for the wrong person. Let your anger get the better of you now and then. Leave behind clues to your identity.

A calculating, sensible player will perhaps be able to navigate his way through the entire game taking minimum risks and gaining maximum benefit. But to my eyes, that’s not playing a Big Damn Hero, that’s playing the numbers and playing it safe. And only in taking the largest, most outrageous risks does the most profound and electrifying fun lie.

Your mileage may vary, of course - you may well gain a great deal of pleasure from playing the tactical game and getting it best right and it’s not for me to tell you that’s wrong. My opinion is only one of many on this topic, lord alone knows the four game designers all have completely different views on this. But I hope Odyssey will have more Big Damn Heroes in it of all stripes (with all their flaws and insane decisions and inappropriate romances) than tactical geniuses. And I hope that occasionally, people who are used to getting all the numbers right and winning the game will take a daft risk, just for fun.

Ian A

At the start of Maelstrom some clever person coined the phrase FOIP to encompass all the bits of information that weren’t open knowledge and shouldn’t be splurged across the internet to all and sundry. It was a noble ideal, and needed for Maelstrom - a game fundamentally about discovery and experimentation, where the majority of the system and rules information is hidden from players until they discover it. Unfortunately FOIP grew legs, moved out and raised a family. All kinds of things are now often plastered under the FOIP banner that really shouldn’t.

In the back of some minds I’m sure was to avoid that as much as possible with Odyssey. That isn’t to say there aren’t things out there to be discovered - there’s plenty, but the vast majority work within the rules already available. FOIP will still be relevant, but hopefully the axis is reversed from Maelstrom so that the majority of game information is on the open knowledge side of the boundary.

Vince