Information in Prospectuses

[trooper6]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Combat Frequency: (Description of the relative frequency of combat in the game)

That is the one thing I wouldn't put into the perspective...mainly because that is something that is not fully under my control. My players have a lot of control over the relative frequency of combat. I have run games where there were lots of hostile people that I aimed at the PCs and those PCs talked, snuck, or otherwise avoided combat. Then I've had games where PCs picked fights with librarians.

So...I don't feel like can dictate combat frequency...I'd probably talk about it in terms of danger frequency...because that I can control.

[Xplo]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

I used to think this way as well. However, I've since done 4 prospectuses and have gotten some feedback. I've had several players say they didn't bid on a game because they "didn't understand it".

How often do your players ask questions about the proposed campaigns? If they don't, why not?

If I get a fairly detailed prospectus and am asked to vote on the options, I'm likely to feel that if I don't understand one of the options, it's because the game doesn't appeal to me enough to see the possibilities it holds, not because critical information is missing. I'm unlikely to ask questions since, after all, the information is already right there. I feel the point of a prospectus vote is to streamline and simplify what would otherwise be a slow process of rumormongering, water-testing and bull****-calling, and bogging down the voting with lots of back and forth Q&A is counterproductive.

(Though, on second thought, I suppose that depends on how likely I am to be able to figure out what a game is going to be like. Historical, alt-historical or genre games are usually easy to understand. Kitchen sink, experimental high-concept games, and/or very original settings are likely to be harder to figure out, and if I were inclined to ask questions, it might be about those.)

As a data point for Kyle, I'm one of the most reliable gamers I know. It astounds me how flaky the rest of the hobby is. Of course, once we decide on a game and start making characters, then I'm likely to start asking questions...

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by whswhs

If I have a specific role in mind for the characters I will specify that; for example, "characters will be consulting criminals who provide unusual skills to other criminals; they must not object to breaking the law for gain."

Bill Stoddard

I tend to put that in the description portion. Do you you think I should break it out and give it it's own entry?

Originally Posted by Kyle Aaron

I find that players who give no feedback and ask no questions at the prospectus stage aren't that interested and won't be very reliable or interested players during a campaign.

They do ask questions. Just not necessarily the right ones. No one that I game with is a mind reader and I apparently can be fairly obtuse.

[sir_pudding]

Here's the final version of the prospectus I sent out:

I'm planning to run two different games every other week (so one game session weekly if you are playing in both games) starting in late November. If you are interested in playing please respond to this prospectus.
__________________________________________________ ________________________
Campaigns:

The entries are in the following format:

Title: (Campaign Title)
Genre: (Best approximation of campaign genres or sub-genres)
Setting: (Name of well known setting or brief description of original setting)
Fidelity: (Description of the relative realism of the campaign).
Combat Frequency: (Description of the relative frequency of combat in the game)
Power Level: (Description of the relative power level of the game either in the terms of the character creation rules (for example point total) or abstract terms.
Description: (Short paragraph describing the campaign; intended to be a interesting hook).

All of these games will be in GURPS.

You have 12 points to bid on the following six campaigns (whole natural numbers only!); a bid of 0 indicates that you'd rather not game than play in that campaign.

Title: Xiá of the Empire of Heaven
Genre: Wuxia Space Opera
Setting: The Celestial Kingdom; a far-future Confucian interstellar state (TL 12^).
Fidelity: Wuxia (Using many of the optional cinematic rules)
Combat Frequency: At least one combat per game session. Many fights will be unavoidable.
Power Level: 300 points.
Description: For a thousand years the Chan Dynasty has ruled the Celestial Kingdom with the divine aid of the AI Dragons. Now the last Chan Emperor has died without heirs. The Dragons war among themselves and refuse to return the Emperor's ghost to life. Worlds have risen in rebellion led by ambitious warlords and strange inhuman barbarians have returned from beyond known space. No one helps the common people or fights for justice, save a few wandering Xiá (the PCs) armed with chi amplifying Quantum Gravity implants, nanotech assembler wizardry, ancient kung-fu and the Dao. Combat will match the crazy cinematic action of wuxia films.


Title: The Blight Years
Genre: Post Apocalyptic Horror Western
Setting: The Gold Coast Confederacy; a loose affiliation of city states in a post apocalyptic Northern California devastated by a supernatural plague caused by an invasion of astral aliens. They are able to maintain 19th century technology for the most part (TL5) and have some pre-Blight artifacts (TL6-8).
Fidelity: Normal GURPS (somewhat realistic).
Combat Frequency: A combat every one to two game sessions or so. Some combats will be unavoidable.
Power Level: 200 points.
Description: Generations ago, the world ended. The blight destroyed acres of farmland, the plague killed millions and transformed millions more into monsters. The cities were lost to the infected. Of those few that survived many found that they were gifted with psionic abilities: the touch. In what was once Northern California the roads of the Gold Coast Confederacy (a loose affiliation of small townships and city-states) are defended by the Knights of the Seven Pointed Star who have protected commerce on those ancient highways since the golden age. The PCs are a posse of Stars riding the roads of the Confederacy doing justice; touched they must defend folks who hate and fear them.

Title: Desolation Road
Genre: Dark Pulp Fantasy/ New Weird
Setting: A small skerry of worlds that were once part of the Imperium Ratio. The Imperium was a vast intersteller state colonized by an alternate history Earth where alchemy worked and calculus was the language of God's creation. It was linked by the Grand Concourse; a highway connected by a system of planetary gates. The Imperium fell a thousand years ago and the Concourse is broken or impassible along it's whole length (for various reasons) isolating roughly a dozen worlds. Dominated by the sprawling five world metropolis Nova Bezolrad, once a minor provincial capital, these worlds have balkanized into hundreds of small states and lawless territories. Civilization has been unable to maintain a pre-collapse level of technology and has fallen to a state barely more advanced than the Baroque roots of Imperial science (TL4+1) with isolated pockets of more advanced technology in certain fields. A number of artifacts survive of prefall technology (TL4+6).

The Imperium included a great diversity of races, several of which survive in the Nova Bezolrad skerry. The most numerous are the Ekeck, curious energetic hexapodal mustaloids, with four distinct subspecies. Additionally there are the diminutive construct piloting reptilian warrior Peshang, the giant cyclopean centipedal Bombaxi, the mathematically gifted snail-like Slrrm, the advanced living crystalline constructs called the Perfected, the mystical mutated desert nomads of the Araxi Wastelands, and of course Humans.
Fidelity: Normal GURPS (somewhat realistic).
Combat Frequency: A combat every few game sessions or so. A few combats will be unavoidable.
Power Level: 150 points.
Description: Once, mighty roads linked a thousand worlds ruled by the Mathematician Kings of Old Earth. The empire has long been in ruins but the roads remain. A ragtag band of entertainers wanders these ways performing displays of prowess, magic, and alchemy; each has a background and abilities of an adventuring nature. Beneath the seemingly harmless veneer they serve a mysterious patron with a greater and perhaps sinister purpose.

Title: Hearts of Oak; Souls of Fire
Genre: Hard SF Military Technothriller
Setting: Transhuman Space (SJGame's optimistic transhumanist hard sf (TL10) setting). In the main asteroid belt.
Fidelity: Realistic (using the optional rules for realism as much as possible without slowing game play).
Combat Frequency: Space battles will be infrequent (perhaps no more than five in the entire campaign) but deadly. Boarding operations by Marines will be perhaps twice as frequent. In general combat will be realistic military actions and carefully planned and rehearsed. Virtual reality simulated training will be more frequent, of course, but need not always be gamed out in detail.
Power Level: 200 points in addition to a racial template of any cost.
Description: In the Asteroid Belt the sapients of the Royal Navy of the UK must defend the interests of the European Union far from the the direct authority of their superiors. Charged with protecting the citizens of the EU and interdicting the illegal bioroid trade the crew of the SDV-90 HMS Royal Sovereign must act with professionalism, judgment and decisiveness. This game will be troupe style: the players will each play three characters a Royal Navy astronaut, a Royal Marine commando, and a Royal Navy AKV (Autonomous Kill Vehicle) “pilot” and switch between them as the action demands.

Title: The “B” List
Genre: Comedic Supers
Setting: Coastal City, a metropolis in a four color comic book world (TL8) with thousands of superheroes.
Fidelity: Four Color (with many of the cinematic optional rules in effect).
Combat Frequency: A fight every one to two game sessions. Many fights will be unavoidable.
Power Level: 800 points.
Description: There are those who would be the greatest champions of the world: Justicar, Captain Titan, Lady Jade, and then there's you. You are the other guys. When the Freedom Alliance is busy off battling the demons of Q-Space, someone has to hold down the fort. But you're still a superhero and that's what matters, right?
Note: While The Tick and Mystery Men are inspirational, the primary source for this is The Specials and I'd like to keep that tone: humorous without becoming too much of a caricature.

Title: 4th Estate
Genre: Hard SF Mystery
Setting: Transhuman Space (SJGame's optimistic transhumanist hard sf (TL10) setting).
Fidelity: Realistic (using the optional rules for realism as much as possible without slowing game play).
Combat Frequency: Combat will be very infrequent to nonexistent and largely completely avoidable through diplomacy and planning.
Power Level: 200 points.
Description: In the 22nd century, between the average person and information overload stands a vital line of reporters, bloggers, and commentators. With the world changing so fast it takes an extraordinary person to cover it. The PCs are those extraordinary people, working as a freelance news team they work around the clock and across the solar system, making sure that that the info gets to the sphere in a timely manner without some other sapients getting the scoop. If the Singularity happened today could you cover it?
__________________________________________________ ________________________

Availability:
Please tell me what days and times you expect to be reliably available to game and if you have any preferences. Also would you prefer to play in only one or both games if possible?

Location:
I'm willing to run the game in either Ventura or Santa Barbara. Please tell me if you have a preference or are unwilling to drive (or carpool) to either city.

[trooper6]

I gotta be honest. They sorts of things you say under the combat section makes me not want to play in any of the games. It seems really rail-roady to me. Like you've decided there will be lots of combat no matter what the players do. I would feel like I wouldn't have a lot of agency in your games.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by trooper6

I gotta be honest. They sorts of things you say under the combat section makes me not want to play in any of the games. It seems really rail-roady to me. Like you've decided there will be lots of combat no matter what the players do. I would feel like I wouldn't have a lot of agency in your games.

The thing is, I tend to provide specifications like that for some of my campaigns, too. For example, here's what you signed up for when you first played with me:

Whispers: At the end of the 21st century, agents of a small private investigative agency deal with informational crimes, from old-fashioned copyright violation and identity theft to unlicensed cloning, nanosocialist sabotage, and mind piracy. Setting will be technologically advanced, with most of the solar system colonized or explored. Characters may be humans, enhanced humans, uplifted animals, or artificial intelligences in robotic or biological shells. Play will be realistic with limited but deadly combat. Rules system: Transhuman Space ("powered by GURPS").

It seems to me that an upfront statement that combat will be "limited" could just as easily be taken as railroading as one that it will be frequent. And yet you didn't take it that way, and I don't think you found yourself railroaded.

The way those statements work in practice is this. I say that campaign X will have a lot of combat. That means that players who really love combat will give higher scores to X. And if I run X, they'll get into it. And then because I told them that X would be a campaign with lots of combat, they'll build characters with good stats and combat skills and with motivations that encourage combat. And then I'll come up with scenarios that fit those characters, and it will mysteriously turn out that a lot of those have a combat emphasis. The whole thing is a lot more collaborative than you're making it sound.

Any definite intent about a campaign could be read as "railroading." If I say, "This is going to be a campaign about high-powered supers," the players could complain "but I want to run a lower-powered character!" (In fact, Tim ended up not playing in Sovereignty because he couldn't get his character design above 750 points, and I had specified a 1500-point base.) But it's actually one step in a dialogue whose next step is the players saying yes or no to what I propose.

Bill Stoddard

[trooper6]

Originally Posted by whswhs

The thing is, I tend to provide specifications like that for some of my campaigns, too. For example, here's what you signed up for when you first played with me:

Whispers: At the end of the 21st century, agents of a small private investigative agency deal with informational crimes, from old-fashioned copyright violation and identity theft to unlicensed cloning, nanosocialist sabotage, and mind piracy. Setting will be technologically advanced, with most of the solar system colonized or explored. Characters may be humans, enhanced humans, uplifted animals, or artificial intelligences in robotic or biological shells. Play will be realistic with limited but deadly combat. Rules system: Transhuman Space ("powered by GURPS").

It seems to me that an upfront statement that combat will be "limited" could just as easily be taken as railroading as one that it will be frequent. And yet you didn't take it that way, and I don't think you found yourself railroaded.

The way those statements work in practice is this. I say that campaign X will have a lot of combat. That means that players who really love combat will give higher scores to X. And if I run X, they'll get into it. And then because I told them that X would be a campaign with lots of combat, they'll build characters with good stats and combat skills and with motivations that encourage combat. And then I'll come up with scenarios that fit those characters, and it will mysteriously turn out that a lot of those have a combat emphasis. The whole thing is a lot more collaborative than you're making it sound.

Any definite intent about a campaign could be read as "railroading." If I say, "This is going to be a campaign about high-powered supers," the players could complain "but I want to run a lower-powered character!" (In fact, Tim ended up not playing in Sovereignty because he couldn't get his character design above 750 points, and I had specified a 1500-point base.) But it's actually one step in a dialogue whose next step is the players saying yes or no to what I propose.

Bill Stoddard

For me it wasn't the statement that combat would be frequent, it was that it would be unavoidable. Diarmuid forced some combat, and you didn't stop it. Gianni tried to avoid combat with those goons in Toronto...he might have failed and the combat would have happened...but I would have trusted that was because of bad reaction rolls, bad choices, etc...not because it was unavoidable. As it turned out Gianni got out of that fight...though I wasn't sure he would. I also wasn't sure he wouldn't.

When the party was in Singapore, we very easily could have ended up having a shootout with triad assassins. The party worked really hard to avoid that scenario. Our plan worked and we achieved our goal. If combat were unavoidable, I get the feeling that no matter how ingenious our plan to avoid those assassins, we still would have had to have had a combat with them.

Neville was pushing Gianni to go all combat raid on the triads. Gianni said no. But if Neville had convinced Gianni to go off trying to get all assassin on the triads, I doubt you would have stopped the ensuing badness.

I like combat (or anything) to be a natural extension of what's going on. That the prospectus says the combat is unavoidable makes me ill at ease. Part of this is semantics. When you said combat was limited, I took that as combat opportunities are limited--if we really wanted it, we would probably have to manufacture some of our own...and we certainly could have, the opportunities are there. There were a lot more combat opportunities in Salles d'Armes, but yet, some combats where avoided nonetheless...others...not so much.

I like the limited or frequent combat opportunities. I'm not so hot on unavoidable meta decisions that there will be combat, regardless of what PCs might want to do in any given situation. Even badass brawlers may want to avoid this one combat so they can ambush the badguys in a place more advantageous to them later.

I've been in games where the GM wanted combat even when it broke the simulation...and "unavoidable" pinged that red flag for me.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by trooper6

I gotta be honest. They sorts of things you say under the combat section makes me not want to play in any of the games. It seems really rail-roady to me. Like you've decided there will be lots of combat no matter what the players do. I would feel like I wouldn't have a lot of agency in your games.

I really don't see it as rail-roading. I'm saying that in Xia of the Empire of Heaven, players will be expected to play martial artists who resolve conflicts with violence that are sometimes attacked; that in Hearts of Oak; Souls of Fire players will be expected to take a realistic professional approach to violence; in 4th Estate players will be expected to play non-combatant journalists who avoid violence.

I don't see how it's anymore rail roading than having a campaign premise in the first place.

EDIT:

I've been in games where the GM wanted combat even when it broke the simulation...and "unavoidable" pinged that red flag for me.

By "unavoidable combat" I meant "sometimes the characters' foes will attack them and force the characters to fight or flee." This seems to me to be a normal adventure story convention and not rail roading at all.

[sir_pudding]

I've run into a bit of confusion over this language: "you'd rather not game than play in that campaign", which I believe I stole from Bill. I have players voting "1" on campaigns that I'm fairly certain they'd hate simply because they don't believe they'd ever "rather not game". Perhaps, "would rather play in someone else's game rather than play in that campaign" would be better?

EDIT:
How about, "Bid 0 if you feel that you'd be tempted to drop out of that campaign if something else fun was going on at the same time."?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

I've run into a bit of confusion over this language: "you'd rather not game than play in that campaign", which I believe I stole from Bill. I have players voting "1" on campaigns that I'm fairly certain they'd hate simply because they don't believe they'd ever "rather not game". Perhaps, "would rather play in someone else's game rather than play in that campaign" would be better?

I have one or two players who have quandaries like that. I remember explaining painstakingly to one that since I planned on running two campaigns, if she gave 0 points to one of the choices, she would be 100% safe; that giving 0 points to two campaigns was extremely likely to be safe. She eventually turned in a prospectus with three 0s, so I guess she must have believed me.

Bill Stoddard