Ocean: Current draft, revisions and (I hope) feedback

[Jake Richmond]

Hi. Tyler suggested that I start a new topic for this. I think that's a good idea. I brought the first draft of Ocean to Go Play SE PDX 17 last night and had a great game with Tyler, Michael, Jackson, Will and John. The game worked pretty close to how I thought it would, and we were able to make it through to what I thought was a fairly satisfying conclusion with only some minor problems. I feel pretty good about the whole thing. There were some issues, some of which I anticipated and some of which caught me off guard. I got some really fantastic feed back though, and i think I know how I want to proceed with the game.

In the next post I'll include the game text that we played from last night. After that I'll post some of the changed, fixes and improvements that I'm thinking about based on the game we played and the feedback I received.

I would really appreciate any feedback anyone would like to share.

Jake

[Jake Richmond]

Note: This text is pretty rough and purposely vague. It makes a lot of assumptions about play style and narration.

Ocean

Premise:
You wake up cold, in the dark. You are not alone. You can’t remember who you are and you don’t recognize the room you’re in or the people around you. You’re in the ocean, deep underwater in some kind of abandoned research station. Who are you? Why are you here? What are the strange, animal noises coming from the abandoned parts of the station?

Goals:
-Solve at least 2 of the 3 Mysteries
-Escape the Station

Get Started:
-Players do not know who their characters are, where they are from or how they cam to the Station.
-Each player rolls dice to determine age and gender.
-Each character wears hospital pajamas and has an ID card around their neck with their name.
-Each player chooses one character who they need to protect, and one character that they don’t trust.
-Each player gets 9 dice.
-Each Player gets 1 Skill

Play:
-The GM describes locations and sets scenes.
-Players explore until the GM tells them that something they are trying to do is impossible.
-Players can risk dice to overcome the GM.

Risking Dice:
A Risk is any conflict where the characters success is not a forgone conclusion.
-Players need to roll a 5 or better to overcome the GM. They can roll up to 3 dice at a time. If they fail they lose all the dice they rolled. If they succeed they keep all the dice they rolled.
-Players who choose to roll 3 dice always lose 1 of those dice if they succeed.
-Players who roll more then 1 success must give those success dice to the character they need to protect. These are called Bonus Dice
-Risks are never safe. The character you don’t trust will decide what’s at stake if you fail.

Hurt and Dying
-Dice represent how safe and healthy characters are.

9 Dice= Unhurt
6 Dice= hurt, exhausted or terrified
3 Dice= very badly hurt, near the limits of endurance
0 Dice= dead
-If a character dies their dice are split between the remaining characters as determined by the group. If a character is killed by another character, that character chooses how t.o distribute the dice, and can keep up to half for themselves.

Mysteries
There are three mysteries in Ocean. Who are the characters, what is the Station and what are the Monsters? Two of these must be solved before the game can be won.
-It takes 3 Clues to solve a Mystery. Clues can be bought.
-Clues always reveal something about one of the Characters. When a player buys a Clue they must decide if it’s about the character they need to protect or the character they don’t trust. The player gets to narrate what the clue is and what it reveals about that character.
-By buying clues and  narrating their importance the players are giving the GM information on how to proceed with the game. The GM should play to the players clues, building on those leads to create more scenes.

Escape and Winning
In order to win the game at least 1 character must escape the Station and reach safety. This can only be done after 2 Mysteries have been solved.

Bonus Dice
-You can always add a single Bonus Die to a Risk roll. This die disappears even if you succeed.
-Bonus Dice can be spent to buy Clues. Each Clue costs 2 dice. You can ask another player for a Bonus Die to buy a Clue.
-Bonus Dice can be spent to buy Items. Each Item costs 1 die. Tell the GM that you wish to buy an item and then roll on the Item Table. The GM will describe how you find the Item.
-Items don’t last long. After you use an item roll a die. On a 5 or 6 it doesn’t go away.

Aspirin: Keep 1 die next time you lose dice in a Risk
Pistol: Roll an extra die in Risks against Monsters or characters. Gain back 1 die by giving this item to the character you need to protect.
Flashlight: Roll an extra die in Risks involving being in complete darkness.
Keys: Roll an extra die in Risks involving locks.
Bullet Proof Vest: Keep 1 die next time you lose dice in a Risk against Monsters or characters.
Energy Drink: Re-roll your next Risk.
Torn Photo: Chose a character to be your Enemy.
Old Journal: gain a Clue.
Shot Gun: Get 1 automatic success when you roll dice in a Risks against Monsters or characters. Gain back 1 die by giving this item to the character you need to protect.
Cigarettes: Roll 1 extra die on any risk except against Monsters or characters.

Skills
Each character starts with a Skill.

Argue: Roll an extra die in Risks against characters.
Climb: Roll an extra die in Risks that involve climbing.
Computers: Roll an extra die in Risks that involve computers.
Disable: Roll an extra die in Risks to .break or ruin machines, weapons, locks or other objects.
Fight: Roll an extra die in Risks against Monsters or characters.
First Aid: Roll an extra die in Risks that involve administering medical aid.
Hide: Roll an extra die in Risks that involve hiding.
Hold Breath: Roll an extra die in Risks that involve being underwater.
Jump: Roll an extra die in Risks that involve jumping.
Mechanic: Roll an extra die in Risks that involve machines.
Pilot: Roll an extra die in Risks that involve vehicles.
Run: Roll an extra die in Risks that involve getting away.
Strength: Roll an extra die in Risks that involve moving or lifting things.

Bonus Rules:

Enemy: Your Enemy is someone who you need to kill. If you kill your enemy you’ll gain a clue and get to keep all his dice!

Solve all 3 Mysteries! All living characters gain back a ideif all 3 mysteries are solved.

[Jake Richmond]

Here's the changes I'm thinking about:

No GM: John suggested killing the GM role, and I think that's a good call for a few reasons. I was afraid that Ocean would need a leader, but after seeing it played I'm fairly confident that that any leading could be done from a character role instead of a GM role.

Getting rid of the GM puts narration authority directly into the players hands. This is exactly what I always wanted, but because I was in the GM role (and because I do a lousy job of explaining how my games are supposed to work) this didn't become apparent to the players (I think) until about half way through the game.

Getting rid of the GM let's players control the economy. John pointed out that getting rid of the GM and instead allowing the person that would gain bonus dice to frame conflicts and push for risks should keep the bonus dice flowing and the story moving.

The economy is sloooow: I have mixed feelings about this. The availability of bonus dice allows you to buy clues, which allow you to solve mysteries, which allow you to end the game. We actually generated enough bonus dice in the game we played to buy the 12 clues needed to end the game. We even had a few bonus dice left over, and one or two that were used early in the game. So it seems like there were enough bonus dice in a strict sense. On the otehr hand, some of those bonus dice came from Tyler's character Trad being killed. On the other hand (again), killing characters and taking their shit is part of the economy.

But it did seem a little slow. Only one item was purchased (Dan's Flashlight). Items have a variety of uses, but they mostly let you roll extra dice. Which should generate more bonus dice. That wasn't happening.

I think John's suggestion which I discussed above will encourage more risks and more bonus dice. I think another approach (in addition to that, not instead of) is to also have failed risks produce bonus dice. These would go to the person you don't trust. So if you fail a conflict, the person you don't trust would get a single bonus die. Why just one instead of the possible two that can be gained from a success? What I observed is that rolls almost always happened with 3 or 4 dice. Getting 3 or 4 bonus dice off a failed risk seems like way to much to me. Anyway, what this would mean is that regardless success or failure, almost every risk is generating bonus dice.

Almost every risk. It was pointed out to me a few times that  we basically had three kinds of risk results: failure, success and what i was calling super success but what I think is better referred to as success with consequence. I was told that failure was satisfying because it results in characters losing dice and getting hurt. Success with consequence also results in character harm and lost dice, but it generates bonus dice for otehr players and let's the character who made the risk get what they want. Plain success feels hollow since it neither generates or takes away dice. It just creates a success. I cans ee how that could be a little boring compared to the other two options. An obvious solution is that a single success could produce a bonus die for that character. I have mixed feelings about this. It solves this particular problem, but it also gives players a way to give their own characters bonus dice. I like it better when players have to rely on other characters for their dice.

It also means that, with the changes mentioned above, there are an awful lot of bonus dice floating around. At least one for each risk taken. More bonus dice means less failure, which means easier access to clues and less bodily harm and death for characters. That doesn't seem right. I want players to be able to win the game. I want them to be able to find items and clues. but I also want them to struggle. Not everyone should make it out intact. Characters should get hurt or die. Players should be tempted to hurt or kill each others characters to get what they want.

When a character dies: Someone asked halfway through the session who they would give their dice to if the character they needed to protect died. That hadn't occurred to me at all. It ended up not being an issue, but the answer I quickly came up with was that the dead character would redistribute the dice as they saw fit.

Another thing that became obvious fast was that when a character died from natural causes (losing all their dice) they wouldn't have any dice to divide up among the other players as stated in the current text. The change I want to make here is that instead bonus dice and items are divided up. Easy.

Starting the game: Someone (Jackson I think) mentioned that they would have liked to spend some time playing out the "you wake up cold, in the dark" sequence and learn more about the otehr characters. That would have been nice. There's nothing in the text that mechanically facilitates this exactly, but I think it is important and I kind of glossed over it in my effort to get started. I think that the brief character creation process provides a stage for this kind of role play. I'm hesitant to expand this mechanically, but I think I would like to write guidelines and suggestions for this in the next version of the text.

Players who choose to roll 3 dice always lose 1 of those dice if they succeed. That's a rule I forgot about! The idea here was to make rolling 3 dice more risky. This seems pointless now, and doubly so since multiple successes cause you to lose dice anyway.

Anyway, those are the changes I'm thinking about right now. It seems like tehre were more, but I'm blanking.

jake

[nick smith]

suggestions:

keep the roll 3 dice and always loose one rule.

bonus dice should come from a group pool of 9 dice and anytime a players rolls more than one success they would take dice from the group pool (these dice could only be achieved through you protector getting 2+ successes correct?) and when they are used they are put back into the group pool.




all in all it seems pretty solid, i'm looking forward to playing it soon!

[Tyler Tisnley]

So here are a few random thoughts on ocean

Start
It would be neat to have players describe each other as they wake up. like "i wake up and see an older woman in her fifties" perhaps players actually generate the profile for another player. i liked the player generation btw

possibly the age roll = the first digit in a two digit number (roll a one your in 10-19 roll a three your 30-39)

Narration
I saw two real forces driving narration, those were exploration and clues. I liked this. Exploration told us what was there and the clues told us why it was there.

Dice
Possibly have bonus dice in a pool shared by all players. This would free bonus from players that don't want to take the initiative with narration.

Also the players won by the skin of their teeth (a good thing) however I think this would be much harder with fewer players, possibly solve this by splitting an initial pool of 45 dice at the start of the game between all players.

Items
I think taking a risk should be able to generate items.

[Jake Richmond]

It would be neat to have players describe each other as they wake up. like "i wake up and see an older woman in her fifties" perhaps players actually generate the profile for another player.

I like this. Nick and I have something similar to this in Yeld, but I think it would work here as well.

Possibly have bonus dice in a pool shared by all players. This would free bonus from players that don't want to take the initiative with narration.

That's totally a possibility,and i could see how that would work. But one of the things I want to do is foster possible competition and betrayal between the players. I feel like splitting up the bonus dice can do that. Maybe I can think of a way to do both.

My original idea was that there was just a single pool of dice, made up of 5 dice for each player. Whenever the pool. Players had to decide as a group what risks were worth taking,a nd whenever the group lost 5 dice they would have to decide who died.

Also the players won by the skin of their teeth (a good thing) however I think this would be much harder with fewer players, possibly solve this by splitting an initial pool of 45 dice at the start of the game between all players.

It was a close thing, but I don't think it was too close. While Trad was dead and June was down to a single die, everyone else had at least three left. Plus a few bonus dice. I think we had a bit of a buffer going and could have lasted longer. But it was close. People were getting low. And I think you are right that it would be more difficult with less people. We mostly got our clues by people buying them together. Less players would have meant less bonus dice.

[Skull]

I would say that it would be after the character's have meet each other and have been fully described to each other that the player's would pick who is they trust and who they do not trust.

[jackson tegu]

hey jake & everyone,

quick recommendations: instead of having two questions answered, have a total of six clues needed,
so three on one, two on a second and one on a third; whatever. i could foresee player strife happening if one
player was trying to "win" and a second player picked a clue from a non-essential question-
that would've killed us, in the game we played.

...you know, i don't understand what you want this game to do.
i feel like we had a lot of fun because we're all clever and brilliant and this game gave us an excuse to interact
and riff off each other, and i'll never turn down an opportunity to play with johnzo or jake; plus it was great playing
with will and tyler and michael.
but i don't think it was the game doing that, i think it was the players flying without a net.
i mean, michael and i were playing totally different games. he was killing monsters and i was exploring the social
network of the protagonists. one's not better than the other, but when he's supposed to be the person i don't trust and
our characters don't interact, i don't know what to do with that.

i mean, it's sort of funny, because this certainly was a game; there were rules and everything. we weren't free forming.
and i had a lot of fun. mostly it seems like the rules were a timer, to give us cues about how far along in the narrative we
should be right now. and also the "risk" thing, like, helps navigate different player's visions of what should be happening
in the world, right? like, i say "i open the door" and the gm says "you can't" and i say "...yes i can, i Risk!", right?
so we should open that up from the GM to all other players, so that i could say that i don't think there should be soldiers
outside the containment unit, you can Risk to have them be there?

yeah, i'm just confused as to what you're going for so i don't know how to help,
but i want to.

-jkacson

[Jake Richmond]

I would say that it would be after the character's have meet each other and have been fully described to each other that the player's would pick who is they trust and who they do not trust.

That is how it works. I guess the rules don't present that as the procedure, but that's pretty much what I had in mind.

hey jake & everyone,

...you know, i don't understand what you want this game to do.

i mean, it's sort of funny, because this certainly was a game; there were rules and everything. we weren't free forming.
and i had a lot of fun. mostly it seems like the rules were a timer, to give us cues about how far along in the narrative we
should be right now. and also the "risk" thing, like, helps navigate different player's visions of what should be happening
in the world, right?

yeah, i'm just confused as to what you're going for so i don't know how to help,
but i want to.

-jkacson

]

That's pretty much it. I mean, what I wanted out of the game happened. It did what I wanted it to do. I know that's partially (maybe even mostly) because I told you guys that this is what the game is about and this is how it's going to unfold. More and more that's what I'm finding I want out of games.

What I want out of this game is to explore a certain scenario. The Ocean scenario is fascinating to me for reasons taht I probably can't adequately explain. It's something I want to explore over and over again, and the best way for me to do that is with a game. This is maybe a backwards approach to design, but what I want here is to explore this scenario, so I've put togetehr a system that will allow me to do that. It's what appealed to me so much about Battle Royale and what eventually led to Classroom Deathmatch. Take 5 random people and put them in a difficult situation. Add stress, amnesia and monsters and see what happens. That's what it is. See what happens. The idea is to create an interesting experience. that's what I want.

I don't really have a bigger goal then that. I just think interesting role playing and storytelling can come out of these parts. I think that if another group took the same parts (with, perhaps, a better explanation of my intent) they would produce something taht was as interesting and worthwhile as what we produced. or that's my hope. My goal. I guess that's it.

jake

[Tyler Tisnley]

...you know, I don't understand what you want this game to do.
i feel like we had a lot of fun because we're all clever and brilliant and this game gave us an excuse to interact
and riff off each other, and I'll never turn down an opportunity to play with johnzo or jake; plus it was great playing
with will and tyler and Michael.
but I don't think it was the game doing that, i think it was the players flying without a net.
i mean, michael and i were playing totally different games. he was killing monsters and i was exploring the social
network of the protagonists. one's not better than the other, but when he's supposed to be the person i don't trust and
our characters don't interact, i don't know what to do with that.

This was my reaction the first time I played a "story game", I felt they were a frame work for interesting people to have an interesting time together and not have the rules get in the way.

That being the case the few rules there are, are very important.
I liked the risk system, I liked how the narration was divided.

The weakness I saw was the protect/distrust dynamic. I liked narrating the failure for one player but distrusting one kind of stood in the way. To me it felt like one player served as the hurdle for another. Perhaps some kind of mechanic like your character can not escape until the character your hurdle is playing has died.

[Jake Richmond]

The weakness I saw was the protect/distrust dynamic. I liked narrating the failure for one player but distrusting one kind of stood in the way. To me it felt like one player served as the hurdle for another. Perhaps some kind of mechanic like your character can not escape until the character your hurdle is playing has died.

My idea here was that the protection/trust roles would provide an instant relationship and fuel for clues and by extension story building and role playing. Mechanically the protect/trust roles determine who gets the bonus dice, who gets to determine what's at stake for a Risk. That's about it.  The protect/trust names are just hooks for what I was saying above : story building and role playing. I suppose I could change the name to "person to your right and person across the table from you". But i like building a little antagonism into my games. At the same time, the protect/trust relationships don't automatically equate to love/hate or even like/dislike. Maybe you need to protect me because I know something taht you don't. Maybe you don't trust me, but that doesn't mean you want to see me dead.

When you say that one players served as a hurdle to another, do you mean that that was a good thing or a bad thing? Did it keep us from having the kind of experience you wanted, or did it help? My hope is that it helped, but if it didn't then I'd like to know why.

[Jake Richmond]

I've been thinking that each character could have a certain mystery that they want to solve. When you start the game you roll to see which mystery you'll want to solve. Which of the three matters to you. This will be a secret. All three mysteries need to be solved, but you can only spend dice on clues to solve the one that's personally important to you. Once that mystery I solved you can contribute to solving the other mysteries. Maybe you even get a little bonus when your mystery is solved. An item draw, an extra bonus die or a refreshed main die maybe.

[Tyler Tisnley]

The weakness I saw was the protect/distrust dynamic. I liked narrating the failure for one player but distrusting one kind of stood in the way. To me it felt like one player served as the hurdle for another. Perhaps some kind of mechanic like your character can not escape until the character your hurdle is playing has died.

When you say that one players served as a hurdle to another, do you mean that that was a good thing or a bad thing? Did it keep us from having the kind of experience you wanted, or did it help? My hope is that it helped, but if it didn't then I'd like to know why.

the hurdle is a good and interesting role and was something I enjoyed. it gave the game a little bit of a one on one roll playing experience inside of a larger game. it felt like each player had someone that was their hurdle and someone that was their helper. i think you just need some better labels for these players, these are just things that get worked out in development.


i'm just a little curious as to what you imagine ocean as a product? just a book? or a pack of cards as well? (you can actually get POD cards these days)

[RelaxingNap]

hi folks, will here and i was one of the players on saturday. i had an awesome time.

I think i am in an unsual position because not only was saturday my first goplay gathering, it's the first time i have played rpg's since like 1987, and the first time i have ever played a story game with collaborative narration mechanics.

so i really can't make heads or tails out of what was working or wasn't working in the game rules dynamics, and my observations might reflect being new to story games in general.

the most dramatic and compelling moments seemed to be when players introduced big narrative content, not just details like "I grab a bed railing to use as a weapon," but "the tentacle coming out of my chest has an eyestalk on the end of it... and it's you're eye."

those were the moments when i felt myself thinking, Holy smokes, I am in a freaking Phillip K. Dick novel. In a good way.

The other thing i noticed was that sometimes i would feel put on the spot like, Uh oh now i have to come up with a clue or some narrative description of failure, and my mind would go blank. I think a few times i just opened my mouth and something half meaningful came out, a couple of times people scratched their heads and i had to revise it. But it seems to me that that maybe in those moments the rest of the players could have a formal kind of place to contribute their suggestions? it wasn't clear to me if I was waiting for other players to come up with stuff on their own, or if i had some burning image of what should happen next if i should offer it as a suggestion. there were times i wanted to say, Uh, well, what do you guys think would be a good clue... and come up with something based on suggestions.

I think this reflects my getting used to roleplaying where you have a say in the narrative itself. being in your character and also spontaneously developing plot twists and narrative development is a lot to get used to.

So again not sure whether this is my unfamiliarity with the story game format and just getting back into the swing of roleplaying, or whether some game mechanic might build in more opportunities for players to help each other out with narrative. or maybe that is the mechanic, that there is an individual nature to coming up with the narrative, and getting suggestions and contributing to someone when it's their turn to create a clue or do a risk or something isn't part of the way the game works.

i guess i kind of dived in, starting with a game that is under development. it was really great. and now it is really cool for the game i just played to have a thread with the designer discussing changes to the game...

-- will

[Jake Richmond]

The other thing i noticed was that sometimes i would feel put on the spot like, Uh oh now i have to come up with a clue or some narrative description of failure, and my mind would go blank. I think a few times i just opened my mouth and something half meaningful came out, a couple of times people scratched their heads and i had to revise it. But it seems to me that that maybe in those moments the rest of the players could have a formal kind of place to contribute their suggestions? it wasn't clear to me if I was waiting for other players to come up with stuff on their own, or if i had some burning image of what should happen next if i should offer it as a suggestion. there were times i wanted to say, Uh, well, what do you guys think would be a good clue... and come up with something based on suggestions.

I know that I didn't do a good job explaining this, and I know the rules text I posted above doesn't say this, but that's exactly how I would play the game. It's my turn to narrate and I have no good ideas? I turn to you and ask you what you think. I think that's the way a game like this has to work. In fact, I think a game like this fails if you aren't looking around the table for other peoples ideas. Because it's collaborative fiction that we're creating I need to include your ideas with my ideas. I need to take your idea and put my own spin on it. I need you to say "Wow, that's cool. But what if this happened instead".

I think the narrative authority the player has here is the authority to take all these ideas and decide what to use. We saw that a lot in our game. Some one would get to narrate a risk or clue, and two or three otehr people would jump in with suggestions. I think that's good.

It's apparent to me that a lot of what is missing from the game is context. The text doesn't explain how I think the game should be played. I didn't do a good job of explaining that to you guys when we played either.

I think this reflects my getting used to roleplaying where you have a say in the narrative itself. being in your character and also spontaneously developing plot twists and narrative development is a lot to get used to.

One of the things I'm trying to do with this game is encourage a style of play that I really enjoy. I think this takes a little practice. I think this is the kind of play that, if your used to more traditional games, is going to be a little hard to manage and maybe a little overwhelming. Practice is needed.

I could have probably done something before the game to ease you guys into it though. Some kind of warm up exercise or play outline taht indicated what kind of role playing and storytelling we'd be doing.