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Myth: OOC Discussion
Aroused Bull
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Registered User regular
This thread is now for OOC discussions and debate about Myth. OOC notes and clarifications may be added where appropriate in the IC thread behind spoiler tags.
The Game
This is a free-form, in-character world designing project. Basically, each player takes on the role of a god, choosing a particular domain or portfolio with which to work. They then proceed to create and design a playable fantasy setting from the beginning on down.
Play itself is completely free form. Players may work whatever changes they like by making an IC post to that effect, subject to only one rule - don't be a dick. If you feel someone is being a dick (an OOC dick, not just an malevolent god), appeal to me and as referee I will sort things out.
Gameplay proceeds in phases, which essentially just describe what sort of actions will be taking place during that time. Phase 1 is world-building - construction of the cosmos on a basic level. There's no need for specifics - be epic. Phase two begins with the creation of the intelligent races, and from then on the game will focus slowly more and more on details and less and less on the gods, until by phase 5 we can roll up characters and play. See the phase guidelines in the other thread to get a clearer idea.
The original thread is here.
The Game
This is a free-form, in-character world designing project. Basically, each player takes on the role of a god, choosing a particular domain or portfolio with which to work. They then proceed to create and design a playable fantasy setting from the beginning on down.
Play itself is completely free form. Players may work whatever changes they like by making an IC post to that effect, subject to only one rule - don't be a dick. If you feel someone is being a dick (an OOC dick, not just an malevolent god), appeal to me and as referee I will sort things out.
Gameplay proceeds in phases, which essentially just describe what sort of actions will be taking place during that time. Phase 1 is world-building - construction of the cosmos on a basic level. There's no need for specifics - be epic. Phase two begins with the creation of the intelligent races, and from then on the game will focus slowly more and more on details and less and less on the gods, until by phase 5 we can roll up characters and play. See the phase guidelines in the other thread to get a clearer idea.
The original thread is here.
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It seems to me like there are far too many possible actions to just list in one go, I think I, for one, would realise that handing control on this over to the GM is a necessity if the game is to work. You may get cries of inconsistancy or questioning whether a certain action costs too much or too little but I think as a player you just have to accept that in something like this.
A comprimise could be a very vague description of actions, perhaps detailing a number of "levels" that an action could be slotted into. For example:
Level 1: Light Touch. Winter claims the lives of a few extra peasants this year, the frog-monkeys move south into the forest, protecting them from predators, simple fish-life begins to develop in the seas, a volcano begins to threateningly rumble and smoke.
Level 2: Guiding Hand. A forest spreads and animal life thrives, lightning strikes down a tower in a heathen city, nomads stumble a perfect settling spot, snow covers a mountain range, a chosen being begins to spread your faith.
Level 3: Fist of God. A certain species becomes enlightened, sparking civilisation, the south seas become rife with storms, making them uncrossable, a mountain range crumbles.
Level 4: HEAR ME ROAR. Clouds blot out the sun from the sky, oceans flood the land or the dead rise across the entire world.
Obviously this is just a quick example and there could be more or fewer levels as you see fit. The idea is that by describing each level (which has a respective DP cost) with examples you take out a lot of the hard work of writing a huge list of possibilities one by one.
SoogaGames Blog
Plus I find the generic elements to be pretty overdone and snoreworthy.
And I'm not so sure about the way you've outlined the actions. And the whole faith thing. I dunno, it seems like it would fall into the same problems that we had in UM. If anything we need LESS restrictive rules and "winning" mechanics more emphasis on enhancing the creative nature of the first two myth games.
Maybe reduce the spheres down to the categories so people can be a little more creative with their gods. So rather than having Fire, wind, water, earth (GO PLANET!) you could just have "Elemental" and let the player define what that means for them. And then have Spiritual or Arcane and so forth.
Those are my thoughts. I'm always up for more Myth, but I want it to avoid the mistakes of the past rather than repeat them.
Of course you can disregard this if you're trying to make this a competitive game, in which case sorry for getting the wrong end of the stick
But the way I see it, my God might not like God Y but I, the poster, shouldn't stomp all over his ideas because I want my God to win. If we get a decent group of players this could be really fun and we could create a cool world in the process, whilst maintaining a level of In-Character conflict.
SoogaGames Blog
I can't really think of a good compromise between free-form and people being six years old again and saying "I shot you, you're dead!", "No you didn't", etc., though, so I suppose the only note is to make it clear that rulings on points and belief rewards are final.
Perhaps Myth (in its original iteration) might work better as a collaborative effort -- the players against the GM, as it were. Just spitballing, here.
In a perfect world "rule 1: don't be a dick" was something everyone would take on board and this would work.
SoogaGames Blog
Well, the idea was that we would just need to list a few actions and players could then simply compare what they want to do to the existing actions. So what you've suggested about vaguely described 'levels' is pretty much what was intended.
Suggestion taken on board.
The aim is to recreate the original myth thread, with a minimalist framework of rules to prevent squabbling, drifting and the thread from dying away. Anything which works is good. Players should still be able to decide exactly what they want to do and how they do it.
The best way I could think of to do this was the system of comparison, with everybody comparing their actions to a list of existing actions and of all the actions before theirs to determine how much power they would take. Even if the actions they're making are nothing like those on the list, they can decide whether, say, lowering a sea would take more or less power than setting a forest on fire. That way, things remain consistent and the GM rulings are based on some sort of standard rather than whim. Since actions are added to the list one they've been done, in theory things would become more and more consistent as the game went on.
However, seems like people don't really like this idea. I'll try to think of alternatives.
The victory condition (gain X amount of belief) was something I just tacked on the end because I didn't know if as many people would be interested in a game where nobody wins.
I think it might be interesting if the game was just run through a set number of turns (with everyone promoting & fostering their own vision for the world as much as possible) and then at the end we just saw what we got (and said that it was Good -- to poach a phrase).
Maybe (in deep meta-territory here, by the way) after X number of games everyone could take a completed world and we could... I don't know, make them fight or something.
Or make them the basis for an uber-game of Space Myth.
That could be great fun.
I think a win condition kind of works against the idea of creating something good here. I could be wrong though.
SoogaGames Blog
I think by structuring your idea into a rules-essential 'game', it's become something quite unlike the original Myth thread (the development of the Scale). The Scale was a cooperative narrative with the goal of creating a full-fledged setting from the ground up. Its main benefit was not having restrictions and tight rules, allowing for freedom of group creation and moderation for the sake of story-telling.
This project, from what I can tell by the OP, is a game. Pick a class, pick some actions, and compete with other players for points and minor creative control. That's not a bad thing, but it's not the same thing either, so it can't be called an improvement when it 's geared toward entirely different functions and gameplay.
The Scale failed chiefly because of transitions from one scope of gameplay to another. Several people in the beginning simply claimed spheres, declared a creation, and never participated again when players began making more specific contributions and interactions. Things came to a halt when the narrative attempted to transition from creating natural features to guiding mortal races; Some weren't interested in such a new focus, some simply couldn't relate to the races. One or two wanted to immediately roll up some D&D characters and go dungeon-crawling. :P
But it didn't chiefly fail because there weren't predetermined spheres or quantified actions. At most we needed a stronger referee voice to sort out majority opinion and keep the ball officially rolling.
This completely negates everything that made the original game and the space game so enjoyable.
It becomes a board game and it becomes about winning instead of being a roleplay sandbox game that's about having fun.
Edit: I didn't really read the rest of the thread because honestly, the win-condition basically turned me off entirely. I've been saying it since Scoots took over that turning a narrative into a game is completely defeating the purpose; in SpaceMyth, at least, the rules were a frame from which we all constructed our civs.
Considered Thoughts, re: The Other Games
The problems, as I see them with the other myths, are thus:
The first game, the only two real rules went unignored: A) don't be a dick,
Urban Myth is a game and doesn't have any creation-ist feel to it at all, it's just a very simple game of check your number and roll bigger than the other guy until the game ends.
So, IMHO, to be what they were meant to be, Myth games need to be open-ended, the strength of the narrative needs to be in the hands of the players (but with a reasonable referee), and the rules need to be guidelines moreso than restrictions.
Rules Thoughts
Beyond that, personally, I'd prefer a system where the 'points' were a meta thing, something the players controlled, instead of the deities. I can spend X points to do this to the narrative. This way not everyone has to try to play a huge overarching god to get anything done, and even the little guys can one-over the big guys (because the Big Guys control the plot most of the time - that means that while a little god can't blow up the planet, he can spend lots of his narrative points on ensuring that what he does want to happen... happens.)
Final Thoughts
If I wanted to Black & White, I'd play Black & White, which is all the ruleset given above seems to be trying to do.
SoogaGames Blog
Players don't pick actions from a list, they do whatever the hell they want and then we just tag it with a certain amount of points. That might still be too restrictive, I don't know, but at least it's not pick-and-choose.
This seems like a good idea, but I'm not sure exactly how we'd set it up. Could you give a specific example of the sort of situation you had in mind?
How does this sound to everyone:
That strips away most or all unnecessary rules. The points system stays, and it lets the referee keep things running smoothly without smothering the players or accidentally favouring one over another - it also helps the little guys so that those with the broadest domains don't just take over. What else?
We could hold a discussion in which everybody who signs up to play talks about what exactly they want out of the narrative - whether there should be humans or fishpeople, how they intend to handle the mortals phase, etc. Then we hold the game free-form as before. With some agreement on how things should go down and a general idea of a goal, everything should go much more smoothly. Last time I was afraid to be too forceful in settling disputes for fear of quashing the players, but this time around I could use a stronger hand, knowing that as long as things stay on track to the player-agreed goal I'm not too badly treading on anybody's liberties, so you'd have stronger referee decisions where appropriate as well.
Thoughts re: quote
This is what I would like to see most. I liked the original myth. I disagree almost 100% with the people who think that the only way to fix it is to make it into a boardgame. I don't understand the stance that the problem is that there weren't enough rules. The idea was to make a game - not in the rules-heavy, this-is-how-you-do-it sense, but a game in the sense that it's fun, we're playing - out of something otherwise meta like campaign-setting creation. It worked, mostly, and I think the problem was that we came upon a hurdle that none of us had foreseen and didn't know how to handle.
The life-god-guy basically taking the game hostage ("I'm the god of life, this is how we're going to do the races!") didn't help much, imo, either. We all have to be working together, as much as our characters might clash. I don't want this to turn into a competition, because let's be honest, that's lame and it's not what anyone wants.
Thoughts re: Narrative Points
I don't know, for certain, how this would work, and to be honest, I don't want to bother building a system for it because I still think this would work best as a freeform. Basically, however, I think how it would end up is every deity would have a pool of points. They could spend as many points on any given action as they would like with their part of the narrative, basically 'buying' into reality what they're trying to do.
For example, Salt could 'buy' this: "I take the greatest, roughest scale of the Fish and claim power over the Earth; I declare this Scale to be the world." I could say it's a 1-point claim, and now anyone could overturn it for 1 point. I could say it's a 10-point claim, and then anyone could overturn it at a cost of 10 points.
Whenever points are spent, divide it up by the number of players and give that many points back to each individual player. Might have to come up with a system so that we're not tracking decimals left and right.
Also: The Original Thread
EDIT: ONNNNE MOOOOORE TING! -- Don't leave sign-ups open forever. We don't need people taking domains and then disappearing.
The problem with narrative points is that it doesn't account for the gods' domains. If a sky god comes and meddles with an earth god's rocks, the earth god should be able to stop the sky god from doing that (unless we're going for more Norse-style gods with less discrete domains). That was what the spheres were for, so that players could be confident in their own particular area of interest.
I'm trying to have faith in the fact that people will RP their own characters appropriately. It wasn't a huge problem last time, and if no gods ever try to touch outside of their boundaries at all, it'd probably get pretty boring anyway.
Anyway, good luck in all this and I hope to enjoy the fruits of this debate.
See, I wouldn't really have any problem with this sort of meddling if the Sky God says something along the lines of "I gather my strongest winds and use them to wear down the great mountain range". He shouldn't just be causing earthquakes and whatnot -- that would be crossing the line -- but as INNS said there should be some overlap and conflict.
The Earth God, it goes without saying would probably resent this intrusion and (if a peace of some sort wasn't negotiated) could cause volcanoes to belch noxious fumes and ash into the air to make it poisonous -- which would tick off any potential lizard-gods concerned about their cold-blooded creations, etc etc etc.
It sounds good to me.
When I said it needed more rules, I was meaning a very abstract and general sort of outline. A guideline for players to follow that provided means to solve conflict and provide the game direction. That's what it really needs.
So you start off with "Creation Phase" here the players are gods and create the world itself. All the lands and the low creatures are created here.
Next you have the "Life Phase" or whatever where players create the races of the world.
Then you could have a phase where some players play the great leaders or heroes of the races and the rest continue to be gods.
Something like that. You'd need to clearly define the phases and how long they last. This was something that was thrown around in the first game, that we should shift to a new age, and everyone was pretty enthusiastic about it, but it never happened.
If we can just form a solid set of Phases to work in I believe thats all the regulation we need.
And while that's a good idea, I don't want it to be like SM where the players can't do major things to the narrative. Something I'd wanted to do in SpaceMyth that I never ever could have was destroy an entire system - because it's what the combine would do! But the rules wouldn't support it, it'd be overpowered, whatever.
That is why I am wary of a system. Taking control out of the hands of the players can't be a good thing.
"Okay, what's the first rule?" "No massing."
If "Don't Be A Dick" can fly on Battle.net of all places, it's nothing us Arcadians can't handle.
The idea of distinct phases is probably the easiest way of keeping the game moving and ensuring everyone knows what's what. I think Spi's suggestions seem good: an age of creation in which the world is shaped and populated with plants and animals; an age of man in which the intelligent races are created and the players, as guiding gods, determine the growth and interaction of mortal domains on a grand scale; an age of myth in which some players can take on the role of great leaders and heroes alongside the gods and their avatars; and finally an age of history in which the gods play only an indirect role and the players control various historically significant mortal figures.
Using those phases, the narrative would get gradually less vague as time went on. Each round could end when everyone is satisfied that they've done all they want, with an official proclamation from GM to clear up any confusion. We or I should write up some guidelines specifying the focus of each phase and what sort of things the players will be expected to be doing, so we don't get people creating mortal heroes in phase 1 or going dungeon crawling in phase 2.
The goal of the original thread was to end up with a playable world, and I think that goal should be carried over here. As such, I'm for the races being human and humanoid - not elves and dwarves and hobbits, as such, but humanoid enough to relate to. I think actual humans in there somewhere would be a big plus, and if the other races end up being quite alien then I think humans alongside are absolutely essential. Obviously, though, if everybody else wants to create alien creatures, go ahead and create alien creatures - just so long as it's agreed on before the game begins.
SoogaGames Blog
Or (my preference) both?
My vote goes for Humans (definitely absolutely include standard, run-of-the-mill humans) and maybe other 'standard' fantasy races - at least humanoid-not-alien races.
I have no love for multi-armed fish people as anything but monster races (which can be interesting!)
I wouldn't cry myself to sleep if the only race was human.
If this absolute freedom doesn't go over, then we could always just say: take any standard fantasy race and make it your own, or combine two or whatever.
I want a steampunk-style of multilegged duders!
Phase 1 -> Collaborative deity world-building -- what we've been talking about here.
Phase 2 -> Competitive Sentient Creature creating (a scrabble for dominance in the style of Space Myth -- but using the planetary geography/physics/ruleset hammered out in phase 1).
Phase 3 -> Avatar play using the dominant races/political reality/economic system hammered out in phase 2.
I think that could be a great final refinement -- for some point in the future.
Wait.
I talked myself out of it, that sounds fun. I say let's welcome a wide variety of life. You know we'll end up with humans in there anyway.
SoogaGames Blog
What about the lower animals? Dragons and weird creatures are almost inevitable, but what about bears and wolves? Will there be real-world creatures, or at least things similar to them?
Saga: Last time we ended up with three varieties of six-legged fishy creatures.