The Great Game

I’ve been involved in developing and running avowedly player-led LRP games for well over a decade. The key challenge in a player-led game is to create mechanisms by which the players can influence the setting of the game world. Any LRP game that allows for PvP style interactions provides rules that allow players to influence each other’s characters. But to create a game in which the key events of the campaign are initiated, directed and determined by the players themselves then you must have mechanisms in place that allow the players to change the game world. The more profound, credible and tangible these mechanisms are, the better chance you have of creating an enjoyable player-led game.

In previous games that I have been involved with we have focussed on creating a downtime system. Players would have a range of character abilities available which could influence the course of an event, but the primary way to change the campaign world usually took place between events, in "downtime". So Characters would murder, cheat and steal at events, they would make alliances and so forth, but the armies they agreed to raise, the places they manoeuvred to invade or defend, all took place off stage.

On occasions we experimented with bringing the off-stage world into the live game, either by taking groups of players to another location in the world, or else by bringing the off-stage world to the players. These solutions work, but because of the large amounts of OOC logistics involved they inevitably required heavy NPC involvement, in effect they become NPC initiated storylines rather than PC initiated ones. In the desire to create a "pure" player-led solution they were largely abandoned in favour of an emphasis on a downtime system as a way for the players to change the game world.

Downtime systems bring several benefits to a game, but they come with a number of significant flaws. Notably they are burdensome, in terms of organizer and player time. Their critical failing is that they have an inevitable tendency to drag the focus of the game away from the live events. Profound Decisions already have a large well attended game that has one of the biggest and most detailed downtime systems ever created. With Odyssey we wanted to create something that would stand in clear contrast to that approach. We still wanted to have a campaign that made the actions of players fundamentally important, but we wanted to do it without using a downtime system.

Another inherent flaw in player-led games is that few players wish to initiate violence when the chances of success are not overwhelmingly in their favour. This leads to situations where violence is rare, and when it does happen it tends to be over quickly and leave most of the losing participants dead. There have been some significant mass battles at Maelstrom, but they are relatively uncommon. Most of the events have a strong focus on diplomacy and social interaction interspaced with short and deadly attacks.

It’s fair to assume that those players who enjoy Maelstrom enjoy the balance of violence and social interaction that that game offers, but we were aware that there were a significant number of LRPers who would be interested in a game run by Profound Decisions if it offered higher prospects for violence. Hence we were looking to create a game that could offer that potential for combat and if possible that level and intensity of PvP combat.

For my money a decent PvP fight is one of the most enjoyable experiences in a live roleplaying game. There is no sense in which your opponents have been statted to give you a "fair fight", you’re up against opponents who are every bit as smart and capable as you are. The problem with PvP fights is that many LRPers feel an instinctive dislike for killing other player’s characters. It seems "harsh" or "unfair" and even when it is explicitly written into the social contract of the game some players do not respond well when it happens to them. For our new game I was interested in finding ways to support PvP violence that could produce significant outcomes other than all your opponents were dead.

So for our new game we wanted to create a system that would allow the players to make direct and significant changes to the entire game world there and then at the event, (and in fact only allow them to make these changes at the event). We wanted it to encourage PvP violence but we wanted the game world affecting outcomes to be possible without requiring that all your opponents were dead. It was a pretty tall order and although I’d kicked the ideas around for a while I hadn’t come up with any credible way to make even one of those happen.

Then Simon and I attended the first Odyssey event run by Boogieman games. Both of us were immediately struck by the way their arena battles presented the perfect solution we were looking for for a second game to run alongside Maelstrom. The arena allowed players to change the game world but the changes happened at the event. They required players to engage in battles but they didn’t leave all the losers dead. The idea of setting a game in the classical period, of swords and sandals and so forth was original in itself, but what really excited me was the opportunities presented by the arena. It seemed to solve all the issues we’d been talking over with downtime systems and PvP games. Obviously the approach will have a whole new set of problems that we’ll only discover as we implement it, no game is perfect, but at least they’ll be radically different challenges to those Maelstrom has. Here at least was a way to create a game that would be radically different to Maelstrom whilst still offering the same opportunities to have a very dynamic game with key events under the control of players. I felt Odyssey was a game that could be every bit as good as Maelstrom but also be radically different to Maelstrom, a critical goal if we were to offer a second game that wasn’t just "more of the same".

When the original Odyssey ended, Neil and Smitt very graciously agreed to let us run a successor game. We took the original ideas, broke them down and began to put them back together in the way we wanted them. One of the things that was very clear to us was that to achieve our goals, a game in which all the action takes place at, and only at, the event, a game where PvP combat was common and accepted we would need to engineer a relatively artificial social situation to achieve that. In fact almost all fest events take place in highly artificial social conditions. All those enemies coming together for a weekend, camping in close proximity to each other... No matter the campaign system, it has always been a very contrived reality; the IC reality is distorted in favour of what makes a good game OOC.

For Odyssey, the OOC game that we were trying to create was a fairly simple tactical and strategic wargame in which groups of champions would fight in an arena for control of the world. If we could achieve that OOC, then we’d have what we were looking for, a game that featured regular PvP combat with meaningful outcomes that gave players the ability to change the world during the event. The gods of the classical world are often portrayed, not as benovelent entities, but as cruel tyrants who play games with mortals for their own amusement. This dovetailed neatly with what we wanted to achieve OOC. Rather than try to hide the OOC nature of the social situation we were trying to engineer, the setting gave us the opportunity to place it centre stage and make it obvious what it was.

Simon has now completed the work on the Great Game guide, which should go live around the time this blog does. It explains how challenges in the arena take place, how they are worked out and so forth. The name of that document makes the IC basis of the arena very clear. It’s a game, the champions, their warleaders and their priests are engaging in the Great Game (there is a game for philosophers too, but it’s a linked but different game). IC this game exists because the gods have demanded it, the subtext is something like that scene from Clash of the Titans, with the Greek Gods playing chess with mortals as their chess pieces. You’re travelling to Atlantis to fight in an arena for the amusement of the Gods. OOC, of course that is happening because we think that playing this game as your character will be tremendous fun, but IC the justification is that honour, the might of your nation and the whims of your gods demand it.

The original design concepts for Odyssey were very much about creating a PvP game with plenty of opportunities for combat. I was confident that that would lead to some interesting politics, but creating the politics wasn’t our focus. I rather naively assumed that Maelstrom would be our “political game” and Odyssey would be our “action game”. I was given a very rude awakening on this score, when we did some very simple play tests of the Great Game, involving just half a dozen of the game design team. Of course you never know how players will end up playing a game, but during the play test I was quite literally agog to realize just how political the game should be.

The famous Clausewitz quote about war being the continuation of politics by other means springs readily to mind. My analysis is that every individual involved in the Great Game is going to be important, it’s invaluable to know what moves every warband is going to make in the Great Game. Every scrap of information will be useful. The more people you can influence, the more soft power you can exert, the more effective your hard power will be when you get into the arena. I expect that the most effective warbands will be those whose champions are capable diplomats, politicians and spies as well as masters of the arena.

People can expect to participate in a small number of high adrenalin battles each day, but I expect that Champions will be caught between the need to train and prepare for arena battles and the equally vital need to keep their allies close while trying to identify and isolate their enemies. All with the knowledge that within hours you’re going to be in the arena in a pitched battle with these people.

The Great Game then is our replacement for a downtime system. It’s the primary engine for conflict between players in the system, it provides the mechanisms for the conflicts to be resolved, while the rewards for success provide the motivation. Obviously it’s not the entirety of the game, there are many other aspects to Odyssey, not the least the plot side being worked on by Ian A and his team, but it’s the point around which much of the PvP conflict in the game will resolve. Of course it’s artificial, but the nature of the gods in our setting gives us a perfect way to present the OOC game as a purely IC game.

I’m confident that from the Great Game will flow just as much politics, espionage and double-dealing as the Maelstrom downtime system generates, but in Odyssey you will also have the “urgency of now”. Alliances will be a matter of hours or even minutes as you prepare to enter the arena. Add in the quests and the plot and it’s going to make for a pretty amazing game.

Matt Pennington