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Author 	Topic: About what Scattershot's about (GNS yipyap included)

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*Ron Edwards

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*About what Scattershot's about (GNS yipyap included)

<http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=1265.msg11888#msg11888>*

« * on:* January 21, 2002, 09:58:55 AM »

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hey there,

I'm starting a few separate threads about Fang's game Scattershot. All

of them are based on the content of these threads (at the date of this

post) and some private messaging:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1073 <"<a>">I: Core concept

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1087 <"<a>">II: Whence

go the mechanics

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1080 <"<a>">III:

Difference between players and GM

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1096 <"<a>">IV: Sorting

out the nuts and bolts

And http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1122 <"<a>">V:

Actual mechanics

This thread is about the initial Premise of the game, and you know what?

It has one. A really interesting one. You see, Scattershot is about

Exploring Situation and System in depth, and that means it "begins" or

"looks" like a Simulationist type o'thing. But the actual plan - which I

like to think of Uncle Fang's Lurking Desire - is to provide tools for

"transition" to Narrativist play /insofar as anyone wants to/. The

Narrativist-type Premise arises, therefore, from various passions or

concerns incited by various instances during play. Once that happens,

the mechanics enhance these elements' ability to become major engines of

events during play, as determined by the players.

I use Fang's term Transition here because it makes a lot of sense - a

form of Drift which is facilitated, consistent, and accessible merely

through application of the rules in particular ways, as opposed merely

to tweaking, revising, ignoring, or overriding existing rules (which

Drift generally does).

Now that means that at first glance, Scattershot has plenty of

traditional-gaming trappings that - for some of us - have an alarm-bell

quality. You buy a bunch of skills with points, said skills being rated

according to how easy they are to learn and hence costing more. There

are six attributes starting with "Strength." There is a big chart called

UE that cross-references abilities' values with extent, magnitude,

duration, and all that sort of thing (very like DC Heroes at first glance).

My point is that these alarm bells are false. Fang has written the

material to be accessible specifically to the old-school gamer, in a

deliberate 70s-gaming kind of structure. But that structure is much like

a swaybacked horse with a sleepy expression, which grunts a little when

you pat it on the nose. Little do you suspect what it will do when you

mount up ?

The context for play is intended to be customizable to various degrees

(1) of depth of rules-use and (2) of rules-use per unit time. Cool.

Let's settle at whatever one we want and take a look at "medium"

Scattershot, what most of us want to know about based on my readings and

interactions at the Forge.

Basically, you're looking at a character with six attributes: Strength,

Agility, Hit Points, Reaction, Observation, and Power. (Yes, /I know/ it

looks like 1980! Chill out! Uncle Fang is merely disguising his Lurking

Desire very well.) You buy a bunch of abilities at various ratings with

a starting bank of points. "Abilities" cover all sorts of things, like

skills strictly speaking, magic stuff, etc.

Ya do things with your abilities. You roll 2d10; get under the rating,

you did it; equal it, you barely did it; over it, you fail. The

difference is called the MIB and is taken to the UE. The UE allows you

to modify the difference (called MIB) between your roll and the rating

with the "magnitude" column of the UE for a related characteristic - ie,

you hit a guy with your Punch ability, but the effect (on the table) is

modified because your Strength rating gives a nice multiple. Again, all

very early 80s-Sim, Mayfair-feeling.

[Fang, I know I'm skimming various details, especially the fact that

opposed rolls actually use the difference between attacker's and

defender's MIBs on the UE, and the Residual Modifiers thing. Bear with

me, I'm not trying to present Scattershot with every nuance but to show

the Transition in action, and only presenting stuff that lets this point

be made.]

Ha ha! You're in for it now! Check out the following:

1) The group has set a "Hard limit" for certain MIB's, either successful

or unsuccessful. It might be 1 or 7 or 10 or whatever. If a rolled MIB

(remember, diff between your roll and your rating) exceeds the hard

limit, /the player of the recipient of the effect/ now states why this

single event is a life-changing, significant, later-to-be-acted-upon

element of the character's life. This is a big deal, eh? Think "Kicker."

(Oh, and it's optional if the MIB is under the hard limit; the hard

limit means you /have/ to do it. Uncle Fang cannot help himself and

releases a sinister belly-laugh.)

2) If you're only a couple MIB shy of succeeding, feel free to adust any

UE feature to /make/ your roll successful, ie, "it takes longer" or

anything similar. You can also do the reverse, using excessive

successful MIB to adjust the degree or magnitude of the effect for the

better. This is player-driven and highly customizable. (Did I mention

metagame?)

3) Experience dice are being handed out left and right all the time

during play. You spend these dice by adding them to any roll you feel

like, either before or after the basic 2d10 roll. (Metagame and player

power are not only present in Scattershot; after an initial "closeted"

phase, they are buck naked and dancing ecstatically down the street.)

[These dice may also be spent to improve one's character, with a mildly

randomized mechanic.]

To sum up, I dub Scattershot the first Transitional Game Design that I

have seen. It presents a solid/realistic (in the specific-to-setting

sense) Simulationist framework for establishing what's up, what you're

looking at, and who's who - but also provides a tremendous number of

techniques to permit metagame, Author stance, and player-power-sharing

techniques during play, many of which may facilitate a Narrativist

application. The primary technique is Fortune-in-the-Middle, which all

three of the numbered items above not only make possible, but loom up

like ? well, I'm out of metaphors. They loom up big.

My question is how Gamism is or would be a direction of Transition, or

whether that's even a design goal. If not, no big deal. If so, though,

I'm not sure how it (ie mechanics to facilitate it) gets into there.

Insight about that would be appreciated. The thread that looked like it

might discuss that, based on its title, ended up being about something

else, unless I misunderstood it.

I still have plenty of questions, especially about certain mechanics and

especially about how IIEC is handled during/post rolling in a conflict

situation. But those are for other threads, soon to come. This one's the

goals/GNS thing, and I am willing to be corrected by Fang regarding my

impressions, or to see what others have made of them and the game itself.

Best,

Ron

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*[Scattershot] About what it's about (GNS yipyap included)

<http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=1265.msg11922#msg11922>*

« *Reply #1 on:* January 21, 2002, 10:35:39 PM »

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Quote from: Ron Edwards

This thread is about the initial Premise of the game, and you know what?

It has one. A really interesting one. You see, Scattershot is about

Exploring Situation and System in depth, and that means it "begins" or

"looks" like a Simulationist type o'thing. But the actual plan - which I

like to think of Uncle Fang's Lurking Desire - is to provide tools for

"transition" to Narrativist play /insofar as anyone wants to/. The

Narrativist-type Premise arises, therefore, from various passions or

concerns incited by various instances during play. Once that happens,

the mechanics enhance these elements' ability to become major engines of

events during play, as determined by the players.

I use Fang's term Transition here because it makes a lot of sense - a

form of Drift which is facilitated, consistent, and accessible merely

through application of the rules in particular ways, as opposed merely

to tweaking, revising, ignoring, or overriding existing rules (which

Drift generally does).

Now that means that at first glance, Scattershot has plenty of

traditional-gaming trappings that - for some of us - have an alarm-bell

quality.

You know, that was one of the things that scared me the most about

posting it here (if you needed to understand my reticence).

And it's no surprise that you see the premise is of exploring System and

Situation, this is after all just the mechanics.  If I understand your

use of the terms, I have a whole 'nother book of additional rules (the

larger one at that), I call 'em techniques, that deal with attention to

Color, Character, and Setting.  Color and Setting are dependant upon the

genre-reliant materials this Generalist mechanic gets published with (we

are preparing 12 sets so far).  Attention to Character is one of the

major pieces of the techniques section (and I must apologize for the

fact that I am still pulling this information together and don't even

have a rough draft /outline/ yet).

I separate them into techniques and mechanics because of some of the

priorities of Transitionism.  (Many of those 'old school gamers' recoil

in horror from /mechanics/ for Narrativism, but strangely when they are

called 'techniques,' think that they're just quirky advice.)

Quote from: Ron Edwards

My point is that these alarm bells are false. Fang has written the

material to be accessible specifically to the old-school gamer, in a

deliberate 70s-gaming kind of structure. But that structure is much like

a swaybacked horse with a sleepy expression, which grunts a little when

you pat it on the nose. Little do you suspect what it will do when you

mount up....

[Editted for brevity.]

To sum up, I dub Scattershot the first Transitional Game Design that I

have seen. It presents a solid/realistic (in the specific-to-setting

sense) Simulationist framework for establishing what's up, what you're

looking at, and who's who - but also provides a tremendous number of

techniques to permit metagame, Author stance, and player-power-sharing

techniques during play, many of which may facilitate a Narrativist

application. The primary technique is Fortune-in-the-Middle, which all

three of the numbered items above not only make possible, but loom up

like ? well, I'm out of metaphors. They loom up big.

My question is how Gamism is or would be a direction of Transition, or

whether that's even a design goal. If not, no big deal. If so, though,

I'm not sure how it (ie mechanics to facilitate it) gets into there.

Insight about that would be appreciated. The thread that looked like it

might discuss that, based on its title, ended up being about something

else, unless I misunderstood it.

Gamism /is/ one of the Transitional design goals (whether I serve it

well or not, is a good question).  Some ways we do this, I have

described elsewhere.  Raising the 'hard limit' on the MIB turns it into

not much more than a clever way to skip having elaborate 'critical

hit/fumble' tables (in keeping with the 80's disguise of the work).

 Making Experience Dice rare turns them into another resource for the

savvy Gamist to sheperd facing the larger challenge presented.

I do have a favor to ask.  I am not sure how you define Gamism in the

time since you came to understand and like the mode.  Can you give me

some idea what you would look for in a Gamist game; that I can better

respond to with how the mechanics of Scattershot (might) meet those needs.

Quote from: Ron Edwards

I still have plenty of questions, especially about certain mechanics and

especially about how IIEC is handled during/post rolling in a conflict

situation.

I /would/ like a chance to toss in a response prior to getting these

other threads started.

In the sequence of resolution, Scattershot somewhat collapses the Intent

and Initiation into a single point.  When a player indicates their

action for resolution, the action is considered begun.  The reason I say

they are combined is because of how some actions indicated by a player

are result of a somewhat predetermined script of actions (the following

actions material).  The easiest example would be the riposte, it follows

a parry thus the parry contains the Intent for the riposte.  As I (in

possibly the best attempt ever) described a few minutes ago in another

thread, the 'Effects phase' (I know it doesn't precisely work like that,

but you get my drift) occurs when the dice roll and the chosen actions

of the interacting parties are combined.  The reason I bring this up

here is because it talks some about one way that Scattershot approaches

Gamism.  Our more Gamist playtesters occasionally turn this

'calculation' phase into a bidding war using the FitM mechanics

Scattershot has.

As for directly connecting to IIEC, I think a lot of that varies

depending on whether you are using Scattershot in General, Specific, or

Mechanical play.  In General play almost everything functions as

Conclusion (That is the term, isn't it?).  In Specific play, it can

range all the way from Intent when the Speaker is depending heavily on

the resolution mechanic to generate /most/ of the detail, to Effect when

the mechanics are invoked by someone other than the Speaker, calling the

narrative direction into question (such as introducing complications).

 As above, Mechanical play functions on some curious fusion of Intent

and Initiation.  Does that clear anything up?

Fang Langford

	Logged

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fang Langford is formerly the creator of the Scattershot Role-Playing

Game System.  This project has been permanently suspended.  If you have

any questions regarding the implementation of it or anything else, he

can be reached at ripjack@mad.scientist.com

<mailto:ripjack@mad.scientist.com>

*Ron Edwards

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*About what Scattershot's about (GNS yipyap included)

<http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=1265.msg11941#msg11941>*

« *Reply #2 on:* January 22, 2002, 07:40:14 AM »

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi Fang!

Lots of topics to deal with here ?

I definitely hear you about the Color, Situation, Character, and Setting

material coming later. The key to me is that at first glance, the setup

seems highly focused on Exploration of /something/, and given the other

material you mentioned, Exploration of /everything/. No criticism! As I

said, I appreciate the "reassurance" quality this has on the old-school.

GAMISM AND SCATTERSHOT

My take on Gamism seems to raise some hackles, and I'd request that we

deal with it here as it stands: Fang is asking me what I think; this is

not a good venue to tell me I'm wrong (that would be the GNS forum).

<Gamism babble ensues>

At this time, I look at Gamism as simply the enjoyment of competition in

an extremely broad sense. People can have different roles in that

competition, up to and including a referee-role (he does not compete

with the players, but his presence means the competition can happen in a

certain way).

A lot of suffering seems to occur when people consider a published

scenario - how can you "compete" with it? That always puzzles me. Of

course you can, it seems, insofar as the game designers do exist as

humans, and it's fun to pit oneself (or one's team) against someone

who's posed a problem for you. Or even if one imagined some weird

scenario that was not written by humans, it's fun to see whether you can

do better than anyone else who's trying it.

If anyone wants to call all this competitive stuff "struggle" or

"testing yourself" or whatnot, they may go right ahead. I think it's a

matter of sugar-coating, rather than useful rhetoric, but I'm willing to

give a little. Gareth's points about that in the GNS forum are extremely

well-taken; we don't /exactly/ agree, but I think his points must be

taken into account.

I also have perceived a certain weird assumption that a Gamist would

automatically "hate to lose," or would necessarily be obsessed with

"balance," which doesn't match my observations of the /foundations/ of

that mode of play, much as it might apply for some individuals.

<Gamism babble is over>

OK. So how does this apply to Scattershot? You have mentioned the

strategic use of experience-point spending or the role of the hard

limit, but to me, these seem more to me like techniques of play

(resource management e.g.) that apply nicely to the goal of Narrativism

as much as to Gamism, perhaps more so. Let's take a look at a

Scattershot player who has glommed onto these techniques and likes them

a lot. Basically, if he gets a "do better than Bob hair up his butt

(even if Bob is abstract)," rather than a "story hair up his butt," then

he's transitioned to Gamism.

At my current understanding of the rules, though, which hair gets up his

butt is pretty much a matter of individual taste, and perhaps elements

of the Color, Situation, Setting, and so forth of the instance of play.

It seems to me that the hair is most likely the "story" one because of

the hard limit, especially - being required to make that event important

to the character's future decisions seems more of a moral-Premise

judgment-call than it does a strategic decision regarding advantage or

individual performance (in the sense of acing a test or winning a race).

IIEC AND SCATTERSHOT

(Intent, Initiation, Execution, Completion)

I think you've laid out the issue pretty clearly for me now, across the

range of General, Specific, and Mechanical play. I do think it might be

interesting to see how the differences of IIEC application might

/change/ over time, if the group were minded to do so. Thus, if they

begin with a strong commitment to Mechanical play, is there any

provision for shifting later, without (much of) a hitch-and-clutch? If

so, then Scattershot is really achieving something.

Best,

Ron

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*About what Scattershot's about (GNS yipyap included)

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« *Reply #3 on:* January 22, 2002, 10:06:31 PM »

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Quote from: Ron Edwards

GAMISM AND SCATTERSHOT

Quote from: Selected text on Gamism that Ron

My take on Gamism seems to raise some hackles, and I'd request that we

deal with it here as it stands: Fang is asking me what I think;

I look at Gamism as simply the enjoyment of competition in an extremely

broad sense.

If anyone wants to call all this competitive stuff "struggle" or

"testing yourself" or whatnot, they may go right ahead.

OK. So how does this apply to Scattershot? You have mentioned the

strategic use of experience-point spending or the role of the hard

limit, but to me, these seem more to me like techniques of play

(resource management e.g.)

In my studies of the medium, I have identified one major component

necessary for Gamism from a designer's perspective: structure.  I hear

the ghost of its relevance whenever the 'yardstick' discussion comes up.

 I also hear it when the discussion turns 'win/lose.'  No matter what I

think of those topics, the both speak of structure and consistency.

The converse would be playing Gamist in a situation where nothing can be

counted on, everything is in some state of flux.  I haven't experienced

a happy Gamist who does not have some consistency or structure in what

they are playing /with/.  As a designer, one kind of structure I can

provide is mechanical.  I really appreciate what I learned by adapting

Scattershot to contain a collectible card game; all those long

discussions of game theory helped me make Scattershot's core mechanic as

strong a structure as I could have hoped to make it.

The other kind of structure I see commonly used has to do with a

Gamist's exploration of Setting.  As surely as there is mechanical

"competition" in the gladitorial arena, so too is there in the courtly

life of king's favor.  One of the techniques I have already discussed

here on the Forge has to do with simplifying the moderation of a

background that has enough structure and consistency (as well as

verisimilitude, but that's for another type of players altogether); I

call it *Dynamic Status Quo

<http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=458&highlight=dynamic+status+quo>*.

I see things like "resource management" being of value to Gamists

especially when in concert with some kind of structure.  Under that

premise, the meticulous nature of Scattershot's mechanics should fall

clearly in that camp at least /mechanically/.

Quote from: Ron Edwards

but to me, these seem more to me like techniques of play (resource

management e.g.) that apply nicely to the goal of Narrativism as much as

to Gamism, perhaps more so. Let's take a look at a Scattershot player

who has glommed onto these techniques and likes them a lot. Basically,

if he gets a "do better than Bob hair up his butt (even if Bob is

abstract)," rather than a "story hair up his butt," then he's

transitioned to Gamism.

At my current understanding of the rules, though, which hair gets up his

butt is pretty much a matter of individual taste, and perhaps elements

of the Color, Situation, Setting, and so forth of the instance of play.

It seems to me that the hair is most likely the "story" one because of

the hard limit, especially - being required to make that event important

to the character's future decisions seems more of a moral-Premise

judgment-call than it does a strategic decision regarding advantage or

individual performance (in the sense of acing a test or winning a race).

I might argue that you /do/ still have some bias towards Narrativism.

 In playtest, /how/ the Critical Juncture mechanic gets specifically

used is almost a direct indicator of whether a player is Gamist,

Narrativist, or Simulationist.  As you see it (and as I tend to express

it, did I mention my continuing problems communicating?), a Narrativist

will use the opportunity presented by exceeding the Critical Juncture to

advance their thematic statement of a games premise (am I using those

terms correctly?).

A Gamist on the hand will take those opportunities to adopt additional

liabilities (when it goes against them) or strategic advantages (when it

goes for them).  One thing I neglected to include was that the *MIB*

created when the Critical Juncture is exceeded, can be used (in a rare