Ah hah, the readership came alive with my posting about Sha'te Valley. The comments have encouraged me to delve deeper into Sha'te, as well as the whole IFGS game writing schtick. For readers who aren't IFGS familiar, bear with me, I'm writing about live action role playing. (A lot more info can be found at www.ifgs.org) Now to lure Ray in...
Keep in mind that all this occurred many years ago, and that my recollections of the writing and sanctioning process are probably suspect. I've also changed my view of the storyline of D'oril over the years, most significantly in the last couple of years as I've been writing, and preparing to write in retirement. I'm sure those who participated, both as players (Del and others), or as game staff (Art, I know you're out there, mostly lurking in the wordpress mirror site) will have different recollections, I hope you'll share them.
I think I ended up with more than 100 pages of game copy, by the time I was done writing. I had another 50 or so pages of notes and ideas that I'd kept to myself as background, plus all the materiel in the many minigames that preceded Sha'te. The original concept of Sha'te was much more grand that ended up being produced, but IFGS reality being what it is, the desperate battles of a few heroes against an army just can't occur. The biggest innovation was the 4 passes concept, where each team would stand alone against detachments of an approaching army. But even there, I had grander ideas that never made it to game copy.
I'd wanted to find a game site where four "passes" would exist that the teams could block. Ideally, they would be far enough apart that it would take a few minute for pc's to move from one to the other, but hours for the approaching NPC army to do the same (The advantage of interior lines, a military tactic). I wanted the teams to know of each others presence, and I'd envisioned them arranging to send messengers back and forth with an HQ set up central to all four passes where the LM's would huddle over a map, considering the scouting reports coming in from the K'tath kel warriors, and shift reinforcements back and forth to meet the varying threats. There are many real-world gaming problems with this idea, though. For one, I'd have needed many more NPC's that I felt I could gather. Secondly, the game site I used didn't really offer a place that would work.
Sha'te had a theme for each day. Day one's theme had to do with desperate last stands. On the strategic scale, never seen but referenced throughout the day by NPC to PC lore, had to do with the massive battle within Sha'te Valley itself, as the Kel of the K'tath stood up against the armies of the empire in an effort to keep the enemy from penetrating through the valley into the south, where open spaces would return the advantage to the empire with their superior numbers (Envision the spartans against the persians at Thermapole. On an operational scale, the players were to demonstrate the same theme with their 4 heroic "8 against many" stands within the 4 valleys while protecting the k'tath rear areas (Think 20th Maine regiment on little round top at Gettysburg protecting the flank of the union army). And on the tactical, the 4 "heroes" made their own "1 against dozens" stands trying to delay the pursuit of the k'tath sen'anth by Phorix's shadow-scouts as she tried to get to the kel command center. WIth this theme repeated three times at different tactical levels, a desperate last stand that, at the end of the day, left the final issue in doubt, I felt I had a storyline and concept that would really resonate with all players.
During game writing, I knew that the massive battle within sha'te itself could only be referenced by lore, and I wanted to have in-character reports delivered to the pc's to add to the flavor, but I just didn't have the NPC's or time to carry through with this. On the operational level, my desire to see a PC command center where the pc's would coordinate the defense of the 4 valleys fell apart because the SC felt that the resulting situation, with messengers flying back and forth from the valleys, would lead to chaos. I'd envisioned a scene where one valley after another would report a major assault massing in front of them, request help, and each of the other valleys would send 1 or 2 of their team members to help. The diminished teams would face a smaller assault while their roving reinforcements were away. It was the SC's view that such cooperation between teams would be impossible, some teams would send virtually their entire fighting complement as reinforcements, while others might ignore the problem entirely. Balancing the fights at the remaining valleys would be impossible, since the SC didn't want to have the NPC coordinator adjust the balance on the fly. In addition, the requirement for NPC's under this scenerio would have been severly high, I think I'd determined that I would have needed more than 50+ fighting NPC's to properly challenge the teams in this manner. Instead, I formed what NPC's I had into several smaller groups that would rotate through the valleys, hitting the teams sequentially. Each team was completely independant of each other.
The end result was that each team got battered, showed some success and some failure. In my original design, I wanted success to be "all of the passes held, although it was a very near thing, only the timely arrival of PC reinforcements kept the empire from getting it's troops into the k'tath rear area." If one or more teams had allowed a breakthrough, I had to have an in-game reason why it didn't turn the tide of the overall battle, and my idea during initial development was that the K'tath would have reserves in place, allowing them to shore up the hole, but taking away from PC resources on day two. I wasn't able to come up with a viable way to alter the second day of a major game in such a drastic way to the SC's satisfaction then, though I'd like to think, given time and a freer hand from the SC, I could have. As a result, I had to write second day game copy as if a breakthrough had occurred, regardless of PC success on day one. But, because I'd had to go to the 4 independent passes concept, it was a pretty good bet that one of the teams would collapse under the assault, so as far as game copy was concerned, everything went according to plan.
How much more exciting would the game have been if I could have kept to my original design. PC's would talk about how the arrival of Evro and Delanore at the last minute turned the tide against the roman legion, or how their absence at the other front nearly cost everything, but Napadoc pulled a fast one and... And, how would I have changed day two if a breakthrough had occurred. More things to write about.....
Anyway, more to come on this subject,
Clear skies,
Jim
Keep in mind that all this occurred many years ago, and that my recollections of the writing and sanctioning process are probably suspect. I've also changed my view of the storyline of D'oril over the years, most significantly in the last couple of years as I've been writing, and preparing to write in retirement. I'm sure those who participated, both as players (Del and others), or as game staff (Art, I know you're out there, mostly lurking in the wordpress mirror site) will have different recollections, I hope you'll share them.
I think I ended up with more than 100 pages of game copy, by the time I was done writing. I had another 50 or so pages of notes and ideas that I'd kept to myself as background, plus all the materiel in the many minigames that preceded Sha'te. The original concept of Sha'te was much more grand that ended up being produced, but IFGS reality being what it is, the desperate battles of a few heroes against an army just can't occur. The biggest innovation was the 4 passes concept, where each team would stand alone against detachments of an approaching army. But even there, I had grander ideas that never made it to game copy.
I'd wanted to find a game site where four "passes" would exist that the teams could block. Ideally, they would be far enough apart that it would take a few minute for pc's to move from one to the other, but hours for the approaching NPC army to do the same (The advantage of interior lines, a military tactic). I wanted the teams to know of each others presence, and I'd envisioned them arranging to send messengers back and forth with an HQ set up central to all four passes where the LM's would huddle over a map, considering the scouting reports coming in from the K'tath kel warriors, and shift reinforcements back and forth to meet the varying threats. There are many real-world gaming problems with this idea, though. For one, I'd have needed many more NPC's that I felt I could gather. Secondly, the game site I used didn't really offer a place that would work.
Sha'te had a theme for each day. Day one's theme had to do with desperate last stands. On the strategic scale, never seen but referenced throughout the day by NPC to PC lore, had to do with the massive battle within Sha'te Valley itself, as the Kel of the K'tath stood up against the armies of the empire in an effort to keep the enemy from penetrating through the valley into the south, where open spaces would return the advantage to the empire with their superior numbers (Envision the spartans against the persians at Thermapole. On an operational scale, the players were to demonstrate the same theme with their 4 heroic "8 against many" stands within the 4 valleys while protecting the k'tath rear areas (Think 20th Maine regiment on little round top at Gettysburg protecting the flank of the union army). And on the tactical, the 4 "heroes" made their own "1 against dozens" stands trying to delay the pursuit of the k'tath sen'anth by Phorix's shadow-scouts as she tried to get to the kel command center. WIth this theme repeated three times at different tactical levels, a desperate last stand that, at the end of the day, left the final issue in doubt, I felt I had a storyline and concept that would really resonate with all players.
During game writing, I knew that the massive battle within sha'te itself could only be referenced by lore, and I wanted to have in-character reports delivered to the pc's to add to the flavor, but I just didn't have the NPC's or time to carry through with this. On the operational level, my desire to see a PC command center where the pc's would coordinate the defense of the 4 valleys fell apart because the SC felt that the resulting situation, with messengers flying back and forth from the valleys, would lead to chaos. I'd envisioned a scene where one valley after another would report a major assault massing in front of them, request help, and each of the other valleys would send 1 or 2 of their team members to help. The diminished teams would face a smaller assault while their roving reinforcements were away. It was the SC's view that such cooperation between teams would be impossible, some teams would send virtually their entire fighting complement as reinforcements, while others might ignore the problem entirely. Balancing the fights at the remaining valleys would be impossible, since the SC didn't want to have the NPC coordinator adjust the balance on the fly. In addition, the requirement for NPC's under this scenerio would have been severly high, I think I'd determined that I would have needed more than 50+ fighting NPC's to properly challenge the teams in this manner. Instead, I formed what NPC's I had into several smaller groups that would rotate through the valleys, hitting the teams sequentially. Each team was completely independant of each other.
The end result was that each team got battered, showed some success and some failure. In my original design, I wanted success to be "all of the passes held, although it was a very near thing, only the timely arrival of PC reinforcements kept the empire from getting it's troops into the k'tath rear area." If one or more teams had allowed a breakthrough, I had to have an in-game reason why it didn't turn the tide of the overall battle, and my idea during initial development was that the K'tath would have reserves in place, allowing them to shore up the hole, but taking away from PC resources on day two. I wasn't able to come up with a viable way to alter the second day of a major game in such a drastic way to the SC's satisfaction then, though I'd like to think, given time and a freer hand from the SC, I could have. As a result, I had to write second day game copy as if a breakthrough had occurred, regardless of PC success on day one. But, because I'd had to go to the 4 independent passes concept, it was a pretty good bet that one of the teams would collapse under the assault, so as far as game copy was concerned, everything went according to plan.
How much more exciting would the game have been if I could have kept to my original design. PC's would talk about how the arrival of Evro and Delanore at the last minute turned the tide against the roman legion, or how their absence at the other front nearly cost everything, but Napadoc pulled a fast one and... And, how would I have changed day two if a breakthrough had occurred. More things to write about.....
Anyway, more to come on this subject,
Clear skies,
Jim
7 comments:
I find that it can still be a struggle with the SC to preserve the intent and concept of an encounter, particularly if there's not an easy way to predict the teams' possible reactions to it.
I've found setups like Valedium--where the NPCs are just as much part of the decision & random-action process as the PCs--end up being much more organic and unpredictable. The "larger story" results of the game are much more like real life (or a novel, for that matter), because they're determined by the actions of an often chaotic group rather than a writer.
Heh. Predicting (gm chosen) team reactions during the D'oril minigames was a whole lot easier than trying to do it for the (lm chosen) teams of Sha'te. I remember one mini in particular where I walked the encounter site pre game, and told the NPC's "Okay, you'll show yourself to the team here, run this way... Evro will pursue through this copse of trees, so set up the ambush here." Pegged Evro's reactions almost to the step.
However, I found the best encounters in the mini's were where I told the NPC's "here's what the storyline says you want to accomplish." and made sure the NPC had full background on who they were, motivations, and etc. Combined with the gm's I worked with, we were often able to drag out reactions and emotions from PC's and NPC's both that far exceeded expectations.
There were times when the SC, working with me, was able to see my intent and, in the mini's, gave me the latitude to flex the encounters to fit the needs. Because of the size of Sha'te, that flexibility wasn't available. In order to do that, and keep to the storyline needed to run day two, I'd have needed to clone myself once for each of the 4 teams, or overwhelm my staff. Come to think of it, I was already overwhelmed thru much of the game, as was the staff. My motto after the game became "those of you who have remained calm obviously don't understand the situation..."
TTFN,
Jim
Greetings,
I know which team you are talking about not liking the game. As the NPC coordinator/sprinter between encounters I had the opportunity to watch them several times. They made no effort to get 'into' the game. They were there to strictly hack and slash mindlessly,for them there was no story or plot.
I know it sound harsh, but were I you, I would put their comments in the 'spam' file! :)
But then it is known that I am opinionated!
Wulluff
Heya, Art.
I do recall that most of the negative comments came from one team, I seem to recall that they were the one that had the least connections to the minigames. I don't disregard their experiences, because in a sense, it was my failure to properly immerse them, but I don't really worry about it either. It basically just reinforced my ideas about the doril world remaining mostly closed most of the time. Of course, with my time consumed by real life, it's remained closed ever since, anyway.
Maybe when I retire...
TTFN,
Jim
Автору нужно памятник постаить за такое!:)
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