Things have been held up a bit by the need to work on other projects, but this week I’ve been able to make some more progress.
Today, I’ve been working on discovery. I’m now thinking of Kannagara as a roleplaying game of discovery, creation, and growth, so this is one of the three fundamental pillars of the game. As with the other parts of the game, the mechanics are likely to change from the first playtest draft, but the basic concept is the same. However, I am making changes even within the basic concept.
Because there is no gamemaster, and because all the players can read the whole of any scenario before they start playing, it is essential that the details of the background be determined in play. It must be impossible for the players to have their personae go straight to the answer, and the best way to make that impossible is to have them determine the answer in play.
This will work the same way as before: the personae will gather evidence, and then build theories on the basis of the evidence. Evidence that they do not choose to gather may not even exist. Some evidence could support more than one theory, although it might be better for one theory than for another. Other evidence might be strong evidence against one theory, without really supporting any rivals. The players would know in advance which evidence supports which theory, so they could choose to have their personae gather evidence that supports the theory they would like to be true.
If different players want different theories to be true, then they can discover different evidence. This will naturally simulate the reality that evidence is rarely clear and unambiguous. Evidence that clearly rules out a possible theory will be hard to discover, so that most players won’t want to do that. Each player can then try to support her favoured theory with the evidence. The theory that has the best support is the truth.
Within a scenario, this is relatively easy to do, although there are still a lot of details to work out. However, I would like this to work more generally. I would like to be able to provide theories and evidence in the supplements for Kannagara, so that players can choose evidence and theories from a supplement and put them together to build their own settings, rather than following a scenario. Of course, players can also create their own theories and evidence, but it looks like that will be a lot of work. If theories are modular, and can be put together in different ways, that will make things a lot easier for players. It will make things harder for me, but since I’m hoping to be paid for this, that’s not a bad thing. It means that players should be able to feel that they are getting value for money.
For the new playtest scenario, I am working on having at least two possible theories for personae to discover at an early stage, both to make the basic structure clear, and to give the players real choices. I have not quite got that fully worked out, however. I hope to be able to get the details sorted out next week.
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