Reference The Game Designer's Group

So, point by point . . .

Good you like the pictures. I actually wondered what planet I would use, until I stumbled upon them and totally fell in love with how empty they look. So it was Coruscant.

To the points.

1. Nope, I wanted to see how people reacted to the game itself, before beginning to talk with all participants. Because making a huge comittee, only to fall through with the game idea itself, actually sounded to me like a waste of time. So I thoughgt the best way to sell my idea is write an OP.
2. Yeah, I haven´t entered the link. I would actually ask a few fellows to be open to nerwbie questions and link them into the OP, too. So, not all necessary links are attached. this is def. a draft. Not a final version.
3. I´ll make sure none of these survives into the final version Thanks
4. Nope, I will introduce NPCs. Also few, as I think the players among themselves worked fine in AU Tatooine, they only need a common Antagonist (who I will give them. Two, actually) and some events keeping things going along. That will happen. I try to be more of a classic GM there. A GM light (the americans call it a Diet GM, right?), but a GM still.

Did I mention I love them, too?

 

Well, my humble opinion on it is, it sounds damned fine. You surely know how to do games, LordT.

But actually I love the idea of having approved original characters there, too. We must treat with care that not the super-mega-power-jedai take it all over, but have reasonable characters from old games could be gold! I support that idea.

And I like the open eeling to it. Intenral threats, external threatsand if we do a little more with the whole "canon chars" idea, it might be damned fine roleplaying. It is easy enough ,approachable enough. I think it might be good to advertise it around the board, but yeah . . . sounds like a good next step from [AU Tatooine] . . .

And yeah, pictures look totally awesome empty and beautiful.

 

I am with HS29 *points up* concerning the OCs. I think it should be limited to those you brought up as examples. Pet-characters. Played for very long AND/OR probably in multiple games. Creating characters for this, should be a total NO.

And otherwise, what can I say. Your games are usually good examples of "how to do it" if nothing else. That´s another one from that category. Nice one, actually.

 

So, I actually plan to have a power scale, on which original character should not overstep a certain high. Just ot make sure to keep it balanced. And anyway only well-played long time OCs. And even them with no guarantee of approval, if they strike me to not fit into the game full of newbies and people having fun with themselves . . .

This summer I might leave the internet and known world for some time, so I actually think I would best have a replacment for my position in place when I begin it. That is actually less of a problem than I thought. I am discussing that with some old friends, as I post this.

So, I may do this soon or I may do it never . . .

The Lord of adoptions have been PMed to give their input and I would like to hear what some players think (who rarely come to a GM group, I know) but I would give it a try . . .

 

Sounds a 100% solid to me . . . what did the Adoptions people say? Will it happen?

 

From my end, your premise seems to be at war with the your execution. A game designed for established characters caters to established players, and doesn't seem any more newbie-friendly than any other game. It may even be more unfriendly than the typical game, if your newcomers feel discouraged by the gulf in the amount of established materials. Unless you think they'll rise to the challenge.

Still, there's some part of me that's concerned that telling newcomers to emulate established characters may not be the brightest idea. For some players, the quickest path to a character is the ideal. It may be an idealized version of the player, or perhaps someone the player can look up to or perhaps an idealized love interest. Point is, it can be a very strong example of Wish Fulfillment, which can be very dangerous. While I'm certain that just about all of us have idealized fantasy characters somewhere deep in our histories, and indeed roleplaying itself is about fantasy and wish fulfillment to some degree, the dangerous part is when it dominates the character. Sometimes a player (or an author) can be so invested in the character that the line between them becomes blurred, and any faults or failings are taken personally. If you have a wish fulfillment character couched in a vast layer of history and authorial adoration, they become almost impossible to dislodge. Personally, I consider that sort of thing to stunt the player's growth, which strikes me as rather detrimental for a newcomer.

I'm not saying that this will happen to all of them, or even most of them, but with newcomers it's something to watch out for. This is an extreme case of what happens when an individual becomes so enamored with his or her alter ego that it becomes impossible to separate the parasite sort of radical surgery, something the victim won't exactly thank you for.

 

I understood the established chars are meant to be the exception from the rule and different then a canon char, who you just have to add to the list, you can only get him in through approval. But to avoid being overun by OCs, you should probably limit them somehow, LordT. 10%? 25%? Only as a second char after picking a canon one? I am sure you come up with something

But that is a point that needs watching, certainly. even though consider this a war might be a little . . . rough metaphor.

Lightwarden, you seem to be unaware that the concept is already excessivly tested. We had a game that attracted large numbers of newbies that worked on the precise principles LordT intends to use here. As Xany called it correctly: It is an adaption. From [AU Tatooine] we learned that godmodding might become a problem, as well as over-estimating of chars abilities. But it was not a huge problem. Only a handful of cases in several hundred posts . . . most played characters they thought could be funny to add.

But the idea of that made me consider something. If we recruit newbies to this game and use it to show them how to do it: Do we actually want all of them to make it ALL always right? How can we teach them, if they never godmod or autokill? We will depend on them doing things wrong and the GM team pointing out these mistakes gently and polite. It is what training is about, right?

 

Fair point about established chars. I gave it some consideration, already. The "pet-characters" should not be overpowering the original concept of easy to add canon-chars. Neither in numbers nor in power. No idea yet, how I will deal with that . . . but it doesn´t strike me to be a problem that cannot be solved. A numbers or percentage limit might be possible. I also thought about other ways . . . and I still need to approve pet-cahrs. So if the game has too many, I stop approving. I can be quite cold-hearted about such things.

Anyway, that game shall be fun. Training is meant to be a nice side-effect.

 

I'd call "don't godmod or autokill" to be self-evident were it not for the fact that there still are people who screw that up now and then. It's like going outside without your pants- a mistake you are unlikely to repeat more than once, and you don't need to actually do it to figure out why it's not the brightest of ideas. Yes, it's a rookie mistake; you can spot it easily, swat them on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper and consider the case closed. Thus this wasn't much of a problem for Tatooine. Player attitude and style problems can be much harder to detect, diagnose and treat effectively because they're built up over a long period of time. Which is why it's necessary to observe them and try to ensure they get into good habits, especially in a risk environment. Creating your own character for the first time can be riskier than using a character created by someone else because you have more opportunity to create someone you can identify too much with.

 

Or we could have them do what I've done before with self created caracters Make one you despise and spend the rest game hoping the GM will hurry up and get to killing or incapacitating your character horrendously

Yes, I have done this a couple of times just so I wouldn't mind losing the character or whatever happened to them. Which characters and who's games I shall leave to your imaginations

 

Good point about allowing only existing OCs not being very newbie-friendly... I liked the idea because it might even allow us to pick up storylines from dead games - I've always wished we could resolve that Jedi subplot in Dark History, for example - but that would be against the spirit of a newbie game. Fun, but not the point, perhaps.

As long as there are controls on it, though, it should be just fine.

 

I´ll kill each and every of your character just to make sure I don´t let you wait, now Mitth

---

Well, as I said . . . the risk of overrunning the game with OCs is something I am aware of. I´ll use my GMly powers to avoid it, though. As I believe a certain flexibility in that question and good instinct can´t be replaced by a static rule. As much as we all love those.

And OCs for everyone? I think saying OCs work better for nerwbies is ignoring the powerful impact AU Tatooine made on the "recruiting side". It´s the canonCHAR-non-CS idea that is at it´s core. And that made it easy approachable and equal to everybody. No twenty posts. No GM to tell you about it. No need to enter thorugh trials or waiting for approval. Does it come at a price? What in life doesn´t?

It is the experiment I am ready to do. The first CS will simply have to be covered elsewhere. CG, Adoptions or with the GM of choice of the first other game we do. SotS and it´s "character-development" stage of 1 week minimum is actually a better place there for people than a fast-to-join newbie game.

[b]Although I under the game as ALSO a newbie game, but a game in general first and foremost. For everyone. If never a single Newbie shows up A SHAME but okay. Then so be it.[/b] I actually criticized newbie games for being not enough true game for years now. So I will avoid that. Time will tell if I was right or a fool.

So, I got some feedback on it from Adoptions and I think we can go on with the discussion if the need is there. But right now we are more . . . spotting problems it might pose. I don´t see any necessity to change the basic idea of it, from the discussion we lead right now. [b]Therfore I´ll shot it into the sky within´ 48 hours, before I go to Paris. [/b] [face_tongue] Sithy said he would comment on it soon, here. But I think his PM is enough of an okay to me.

First "practical results" might actually flavour our discussion with some data and insight. [face_laugh]

[hr]

And I want to point out the quality of posts many newbies do. I think teaching them how to do Tags and avoid what comes natural to them and things like that might be a point. But they are no n00bs, mostly. Most people coming here are pretty awesome authors. Look at SotS and it´s many newcomers. Skiara, Ben, Mec, swbeauty, TDO (not really, but coming from a long hiatus), just to name those I interacted with . . . they do many of the best posts and characters. [b]SotS[/b] and it´s "we take ´em all" recruited them in masses.

And this game above came to existence born from the question how Fin got them all out of hiding. Sure, he is great with new players, never discriminating them, leading them gently into storylines and so on . . . but they could have harldy known that before they joined.

So why SotS? Because it was the first quality game with wide recognition here, that actually INVITED them to come. As it is in the character-part. EVERYBODY is allowed to join. We do that not often enough. Imp_Hammer was right about that! I wanted to say it once. Now I will deny ever having said that [face_tongue]

So, this game is meant to do the same. Allow people to come and play with us. Players who had their time around here. To make them all part of the community. If it odesn´t work, so be it. If it works, I hope we all have loads and loads of fun on Coruscant.

In that spirit. Expect it to roam the RPF soon. Thanks everybody for comment and encouraging and especially [i]critique[/i].

 

This outline looks really good!

The writing supports the calm and welcoming atmosphere provided by those skyline pictures, and from that last explanatory post, I like the idea that having canon characters takes away the need for a character sheet!

A definite benefit there for newbies entering the Adoptions program, as we can cover the process for character sheets in the Academy thread separately, but the new player can just jump straight into the game.

Mildly concerned about the lack of GM direction, but pleased with several other aspects.
As LordT points out, at this stage, we can just look at spotting problems.

Ktala, as the long time RPF Adoptions supremo, would understand better than me, how accessible this could be for new players, but I for one, would be perfectly happy for this to be connected to, and run alongside us in the Welcome forum, or wherever it is going to be sited.

I would certainly join it too.

 

Curiously, I find that newbies are frequently the ones that don't need GM direction - sure, that's sometimes because they're godmoding lunatics, but even the ones that aren't seem to truck along just fine without it.

 

Since it has been 7 days hence a game was put forth, and 4 days since someone has posted. I submit that I would like to present a game to the group for consideration.

 

I say go for it.

 

Hammer is gone, man. You're in the Wild West now. Do what you want. You're free!

 

Hammer may be gone but his memory still lives and I will abide by the rules set down in the creation of this Group even if he is not here to enforce it.

---

Then I present..

[hr]
My name is Major Lee Walker and I'm putting together a special team. We're gonna be dropped into France, dressed as civilians. And once we're in enemy territory we're gonna do everything in our power to disrupt the Nazi war machine. We will strike at Nazi supply depots, at ranking Officers, and anything else we can get at.
We will be under supplied, out numbered and ruthless.
Most of you who volunteer will not survive this mission, and let me tell you a secret.
I can live with that.
The Brass can live with that, Hell even God can live with that.
That's because each and everyone of you have committed crimes against the United States Army, crimes that have earned you life in prison or death at the end of a rope.
I can't change that, but you can.
Every person that volunteers for this mission, follows orders and kills Nazis has a shot at getting a full pardon signed by the President of the United States.
Refuse this offer and you'll be put back in the stocks to rot until you sentence is carried out. Or volunteer and I promise you a stay of execution for as long as you kill Nazis, hell you may even get that pardon in the end.
If you volunteer then there is only three ways to go. Ether you can fowl up in training a be sent back to the stocks for immediate execution of sentence. Or you can fowl up in combat, in which I will personally blow your brains out. Or you can do as your told, in which case you might just get by.

[hr]
[link=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q1bCRUNBnU&feature=related]
The Dirty Dozen: You Win Some, You Shoot Some. [/link]
[image=http://blog.mondotees.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/dirtydozen-1024x778.jpg]
[hr]

Welcome. In The Dirty Dozen you will play a Military Convict given a chance at a full pardon by participating in an almost certainly suicidal mission. Your survival is uncertain, and your freedom is determined by your success.
The game will start as you are parachuted into occupied France, once there you'll have your choice of beginning missions to accomplish. Each mission completed will open another mission in that tier and so on and so forth, a failed mission (and indeed you may fail a mission) will result in a path being closed. To many closed paths may render a mission tier a dead end. A player that can complete a mission tier will move one step closer to being Pardoned, after that all you have to do is survive.


Rules:
[color=red][b]1. PM all character sheets to Republic_Anvil for approval. Do Not post your sheet in the thread without approval from me, because your character WILL be ignored until you send me a sheet for approval. If you can't PM because you have less the twenty posts then visit this thread.[/b][/color]
2. GMs word is LAW. If you disagree with a decision I make, please PM me. If you have complaints PM me.
3. No Godmoding, No Auto-Hitting
4. Have fun!

[b]Character Sheet[/b]

Name:
Age:
Rank:
Appearance:
Personality:
Equipment:
Main Weapon:
Secondary Weapon:
Crime Committed:
Sentence:
Background:

 

Speaking of Hammer...

As you guys have already noticed, Impster's departure leaves the GDG with no thread facilitator and Queue Handler Person. LordTroepfchen is a longtime contributer and game designer around these parts, and has very kindly volunteered for the job. Let's give it up for him!

And now back to Anvil's game.

 

Thank you Xany.

So, yes I´ll watch over the GDG in memory of Imperial_Hammer. And my first watch shall begin with the Dirty Dozen . . .

---

It is a war-game and we had not terribly many of those. It is also a historical game and I think we can count those on two fingers. It is a Squad based game and that is something these boards have seen a few of.

Well, Saintheart once did an observation of Infantry Games, which was very good nad might give some insight into this. It actually is housed in the locked old Guild. So I cannot quote it. [link=http://boards.theforce.net/role_playing_resource/b10757/23609947/p131]But the link is here[/link].

To your game specifically. It is a solid idea, build on a legendary movie. It promises action, adventure and it has it´s unique points. The WWII setting I cannot remember having been used before. It also might feed all those Call of Duty junkies out there, as well as those who like to do war-games. You even can recruit some nasty Germans to play Nazis [face_tongue]

The intro text is great, the music awesome. I did not really get the system by which you work, though. I limit my options for future missions by not committing missions earlier? So to say you rewrite next mission according to my failure or success earlier? Do I get that one right?

And I miss essential data, like the number of players. The ranks possible. Command structure within´the Group. Will there be one? Will NPCs command the unit? I tihnk for a military game the players should know how this will be handled. As inter-group relations will be all they got.

The [color=red][b]BIG RED BOLT TEXT [/b][/color]about PMing you the CS. I think we have not SUCH great problems with people not doing that. It happens, yeah. But an [i]OOC should be kept to the minimum[/i] should be fine.

And in the CS you finally got a RANK to add. You should make clear somewhere what ranks can be added, who can play what rank and such things. Because otherwise you end up with 11 Col., 9 Lt. and one Sgt. and no ordinary soldiers at all . . . as people usually tend to give themselves higher rank than logical for their characters age.

The game itself is very good. Thrown out over Normandy is enough story for me. It tells me what kind of scenario I have to expect. And loads of movies do the rest, actually. The question if this is Operations only or if there actually will be usual battles to participate in, could be interesting.

And one thing I miss, I really miss is . . . the year. What year is this? It makes a great difference in a WWII game if we are 1942 or 1944, you know?

Otherwise I think this game has the potential to be a Squad game that works, as the criminal background makes chars interesting and individual enough. Concerning all other things, I can only point towards Sainthearts article linked above.

 

Since I think that the intro above this was good I will only repost what needs work.

---

Welcome. In The Dirty Dozen you will play a Military Convict given a chance at a full pardon by participating in an almost certainly suicidal mission. Your survival is uncertain, and your freedom is determined by your success.
The game will begin on January 6th, 1944 as you are parachuted into occupied France. From there your Commanding Officer (that's me) will give you a choice of three mission tiers. A mission tier consists of ten missions, four bottom level missions, three lower level missions, two mid-level missions and a single top mission. If you attempt a mission and accomplish it you unlock the missions connected to it on the next level up. If you fail the mission all missions paths connected to it will be closed. Not all the missions have to be accomplish only as many as it takes to get to the final mission. The players who survive until all three final missions are complete receives their pardons.
([image=http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/2069/missionblocks.jpg]
an example of the mission tiers)

Rules:
1. PM all character sheets to Republic_Anvil for approval. Do Not post your sheet in the thread without approval from me, because your character WILL be ignored until you send me a sheet for approval. If you can't PM because you have less the twenty posts then visit this thread.
2. GMs word is LAW. If you disagree with a decision I make, please PM me. If you have complaints PM me.
3. No Godmoding, No Auto-Hitting
4. Have fun!

Character Sheet
Character Rules:
12 players max.
All players are to be enlisted ranks only.

Name:
Age:
Rank:
Appearance:
Personality:
Equipment:
Main Weapon:
Secondary Weapon:
Crime Committed:
Sentence:
Background:
[hr]

Also I am wondering if I shouldn't put in a combat system like Hammer did for his Disney game, I would like comments on whither its a good idea and/or if it could work with this game.

 

Gotta disagree with LordT here. Bolds and bright colors attract attention, which is warranted because yes, this is the single-most often violated rule in every game. Not to mention it provides a handy explanation to curtail potential "I doesn't haz 20 posts yet can Iz still joinz lololol" posts which are also occurring with a disturbing frequency. Ergo, I say keep the bold and the red.

 

I really don't see why people insist on having others PM character sheets to the GM. I can understand if there are secrets or if it's first-come, first serve, but I've always found it more helpful to have people able to draw inspiration from one another's sheets and form pre-existing character relationships, or round out roles if there's a group. Then you get to critique or offer suggestions to one another and I think it makes for a better game. Then you can wait and see what kind of characters are submitted, then select from there instead of possibly missing a great player because you filled up and got an incompetent one who serves as dead weight for a time while others were on the wait-list.

Though if you feel that your game is tainted by such chatter, there's no reason why you can't use the Character Thread or something for recruitment.

 

Okay, I have a little more time at my hands. So my usual round of good, bad & ugly.

The Dirty Dozen.

The Good: It´s a great movie to make a game of. It is a good situation to begin playing in. Criminals. So, what could you do? Run away, do your job? I like it. What it will need is a way to give players their room to shine, because war is about heroism or realism. And this does not sound like the realism road. But I think a suicide-squad commando unit is going to give lots of opportunity of that.

A few more pics could be good, but I like the one you got. And as LordT mentions it, choose the year lightly. It is WW II. And from desperation to the great push against the Nazis . . . you can do it all.

And SH´s paper is indeed worthy of recommendation. To galvanize it. Choose your missions carefully and make sure you get a lot of thrill into the game.

Hard to say anymore than that I see a lot of potential. It is one of those games totally decided by how you play it and not the way you post the OP.

The Bad: It is untested territory. I have no idea how available and interested people are. WWII has never been done here before. And even as you don´t got the Call of Duty road, you might think "selling" it a bit more as an actioner. Otherwise . . . you obviosuly face some problems that need to be solved by fine GMing. No women. No personal relations. It is a strictly military game, as I see it. You could obviously change that by doing "lazaret-weeks" in between missions. With a little spystory attached, perhaps? Just an idea. Somehow you need to compensate for the lack of personal stories, I mean.

Another road could be the strong inter-group relations. And I think it would serve the story well, if you make good storyuse of the chain of command. Allow players to lead the team, allow other players to usurp these players. Let it play out. Following orders would not be fun, anyway.

The Ugly: I agree on the red one. Make it bold, but not red. It might be a prob of people posting that stuff, but anyway . . . after page one that´s over and you still got a totally unrelated part of your OP that has no context with the game itself in big fat red bolt! It simply does not look pretty.

So, give it a try. Anvil. I am busy but a good WWII game, I would surely try to make some time for!