Discussion: Thinking of barriers

[Erica]

I'd like to start a discussion on the thought of barriers and confines for proposals for worlds.

It quickly became an area of much thought following the discussion and demo I was able to attend during GenCon.

The thoughts I have are, when we think of creating worlds, we think on broad terms, but realistically we need to consider how big of an area will we be filling. Assuming you wish to have much detail how long will it take to fill the area you've laid out. How do you account for life outside of the area without allowing players access to it.

In the least sense, I would wish to have a living breathing world where news of events outside the play area does find the players unless they are somewhere completely stranded from outside life and intereference, which for this style of system seems to make the most sense, but at the same time I would wish to have it accessible so that the world dosen't feel cramped, it would also provide skeletal structure for expansion should there come a need and a use for such.

Maybe players found themselves in the play area not sure how they got there (or maybe they do know) but they understand that the world continues outside of the 'box' or 'area' they are in. (Anyone ever seen "The Cube"?, the characters are trapped in a huge cube of smaller cubes, but they know there is something beyond the metal walls of their prison and strive to get out.)

The topic for this thread: How we can keep the world large and the playing zone small and controllable?

What kind of barriers can we place? Physical (ie, land or water mass, walls, lava, etc)? Supernatural?

Thoughts?

[Kallyn]

Good point Erica,
If my proposal is accepted, I would start out with a limiting factor of movement areas. Limited transportation is one way to control character movement and allow them "knowlege" of the larger world IE: the reason Why one is stuck somewhere. It can be as corny as "your boat sunk and you find yourself on the shore" to "you haven't enough coins to buy passage to the next towne". Each of these can work for any designer, given the right circumstances. If the setting is an island (or several islands) getting washed ashore on one can be a viable option.. Leaving there would be the puzzle.

Movement, is opened as developement continues and/or as characters discover or solve the movement puzzle/riddle/question.

If one is stranded in a towne because they haven't the coins to pay for passage, only their feet offer them movement. Then movement becomes an issue of.. how far can they reach without becoming fatigued or running into problems IE: brigands, soldiers.. etc.

Most RPer's choose to stay in one or two main places when they "log" they either accept the reality of the situation (No coins, or i'm trapped) Or they RP the event and choose a tavern, inn or other building to leave from. Some will claim the "gaming system" isn't their home and have other external RP's that will give explanation for their dissappearance.

This is one of the great things about FFRPG. IT can go anywhere! Even into a Mud. Encouraging players to come up with backgrounds, stories and interesting reasons why they are where they are.. only enhances their character story!

The "internal" possibilities we offer in any combination, as designers, will only give players more opportunities to develope reasons to be there.

::bows slightly, grasping the hilt of her sword before moving back into the mist from whence she came::

[Erica]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts =)

Yes, the island had been one of the examples used during the demo (or at least mentioned). I suppose I find myself thinking on a very broad term and trying to find ways to limit the area without choosing something that may be overused (I'm toying with the island iddea for my proposal) but would prefer a fresher more original idea. My thoughts have wandered to mainland settings, perhaps barring movement through political strife (ie baronies at war etc). In this respect one could ensure that expansion was always a possibility, but the drawback would seem to include the inability to offer the creative player options to get past such. From experience, the player will ALWAYS come up with a fabulous idea that the GM is not expecting but due to its creativity would wish to provide.

One technique I've used and use frequently presently is to look at a situation how *I* would go about handling it, then give myself different roles to view them in. By this I mean, would a creative RP style player look at the situation and then the review of a player who is more critical thinking, or more mechanical, and finally the reward seeking player (sometimes called hack-n-slash players).

This is of course not the win-all solution since there will always be views one cannot take up and thoughts and plans one will not think of. It has however proven a good aid when you know your target audience which I have often had the pleasure of having such working knowledge with.

[ChristopherA]

Thank you for opening this discussion, Erica!

For those of you who were unable to schedule a demo at GenCon, I discussed briefly one of the design problems associated with creating online games -- I call it "constraint", or sometime "confinement".

There are two reasons why constraint is important in an online game.

First, except for the smallest Stages, the StoryBuilder is not going to be able to riff off the top of her head new material on the fly as you would in a tabletop or LARP game. Thus constraint in the game designed is required so that at least the world that is defined appears complete, and that growth of the game is manageable.

Second, these are very social games, and constraint helps in the social dynamics as a game begins and as it grows. As a new player you don't want to arrive in a new place and find that is so large and so spread out that it seems empty. Yet also as an experienced player you don't want to be crowded either. Thus the StoryBuilder needs to be design a game that allows for sufficient critical mass of people at the beginning of a game so that people can socialize, yet allow them to spread out once things get too crowded.

In our first Grand Theatre, Castle Marrach, we have a castle high on a mountaintop, with the drawbridge up, controlled by the Ice Queen and her court. As new StoryPlayers arrive, they will find the castle large enough to find others and to participate in the play, but not so large that it will seem like empty halls. As a StoryPlayer grow in influence and knowledge, additional areas open up as the Queen allows them more privileges.

Constraint in our other initial games is done in different ways. Easiest is Paranoia, with it's underground world with a mad computer. Red security clearance drones are not allowed to travel through orange corridors. Doors can open and close at the whim of The Computer. The StoryBuilder's of Paranoia have many ways to control the critical mass and growth of the game.

In Og, the action takes place in a valley of dinosaurs, and everyone has access to only primitive tools and primitive communication. In Lovecraft Country the action takes place in the city of Arkham and it's Miskatonic University. Golden Gate: 1849 takes place in the new town of San Francisco, Alvatia takes place on an island.

A background that is very large in scope, such as EarthDawn (a game of multiple universes and worlds) would be difficult to turn into an online game because it is so unconstrained. The whole "flavor" of the game is the interaction between the worlds and realities, making very difficult to implement.

However, if you have a game with huge background and scope, it is still possible to find ways to manage constraint. A space-opera galaxy of a hundred worlds and thousands of cities may not be implementable, however, if you look closer at the essential times and conflicts of your game's history you may be able to find an event that allows you constraint. Or even better, an event that is constrained but also takes advantage of the large background that has been developed.

For instance, in the above space operat, the Galactic Emperor is dead and the imperial troops have gathered all the senators of the known worlds and have put them in a Babylon-5'ish space station. They have said "you can't leave until you have selected a new Emperor." In this game, the setting is small in scope, the StoryPlayers are also constrained by the imperial troops, but the StoryBuilder can allow information from the 100 known worlds to leak in and influence the game in a manageable fashion.

Most of the proposals sent to us have not taking issues of online game constraint in consideration, but we did not expect that they would. Everyone will have an opportunity to revise their proposals over the next few weeks to address this issue, and we will work with you on these boards and through email to help you think through the process.

-- Christopher Allen

[Erica]

Thanks for the prompt reply.

So as not to kill this topic, perhaps we can direct it into looking into pros and cons of different 'constraints' types. The examples of the working stages as listed by Mr. Allen are excellent for helping to define the basic 'rules' if you will, of which we (the hopeful designers) need to fall into. Perhaps we could expand on this and help one another formulate with the assistance of the Skotos team an outline of do's and do not's ?

By this I mean,
DO have external affiliations and informations (ie the space station scenerio)
Do NOT have too large of an area that players will feel alone (the too many places for encounters to occur scenerio)

From experience with a similar game system H&X, and Dragon Realms, when the worlds are too large, players often go many areas (or zones) without encountering other players. I can safely say it was one of the greatest determining factors for myself to leave those particular games. However, on the flip side, I've spent time in MUDS where I've entered social areas such as taverns and been so flooded that even trying to become established was more stressful then being alone.

From what I've seen in the demo and read about on this site, overcrowding of zones shouldn't be an issue. However, we should still keep the amount of places players have to go and interact in as a primary concern in this stage.

Before I fall too much farther off my original topic, would anyone else care to share their thoughts on a Do & Don't constraint list?

[Jeff]

I too have encountered the troubles of both undercrowding and overcrowding in LARP's and MUSH's. Is it possible to adjust the game space? I have seen skilled Gamemasters shrink the available space in a LARP during the game to increase the action. Like everything, this does require a gently touch, but in the right hands, it is very effective.

As for boundries, I accept the arbitrary ones for a while- but not for too long. When playing "Monster Island", a play-by-mail game, I was most interested in exploring the island. WHen I encountered an impassible line of Crystal Hills that bisected the island, I continued until I realized that the designers had no immediate plans to develop what was beyond. I quickly lost interest in the game, because I had survived by staying away from the continuous stream of new immigrants by pushing into the interior. This was suddenly no longer viable, and I could not compete with those who had camped for months of real time in place, collecting resources. So I quit.

Barriers will be accepted if they are temporary, or if they do not directly interfere with my reason for playing the game in the first place. The players will also feel cheated if it is stated or implied that there is some in-game way to pass through a barrier, but in actuality there is not.

Have you considered such options as small, unbounded but finite worlds? A small city that wraps upon itself- I recall a Dr. Who episode that used this.

How about insurmountable barriers that will come down at some future time? I ran a table top game where the players were all members of a village in a deep caldera. After many sessions entirely within the caldera, an earthquake created an outlet.

The barrier need not even be apparent to the players. In a science fiction game I am currently running, the modern day characters don't even consider that they can go beyond the planet earth, but soon they will be confronted with the possibility. They don't feel confined now, but when travel becomes possible, if they can't leave, they will start to feel trapped.

Some sort of impedance is inevitable. I think that the surest way to make it painless is to be aware of the feelings of the players and respond appropriately.

[Erica]

Well said!

I am not quite familiar with this reference "A small city that wraps upon itself- I recall a Dr. Who episode that used this." could you elaborate?

Continuing on that thought line, one of the greatest turn-off's from a MUD I once played was that you could climb to the top of the valley and look over the far side and see villages, a sea port and ships in the harbor, but there was no way to get to them. It was incredibly frustrating, I spent weeks scouring the zone areas looking for the exit, finally a game volunteer felt bad enough to tell me there was no way to get there.

I suppose we should keep in mind that false promises of hope are a very bad thing, they can work in well contained scenerios (Ie LARP or Table top), I often use this in my LARP group. The players have been given hints and clues as to an entire fortress that houses a very powerful group of allies, and another entire structure of ruins and villages that plays home to one of their foes.

Theoretically the places are easily accessible, however realistically we do not have the means to build or show these places for interaction. Instead, to reach them requires a leel of magical skill (one is on an island, one hidden deep in a lost valley) to reach. That particular level of magic would take many years of playing to achieve.

In a way I've bought time for the game to go on, however, I realize that 4 or 5 years from now, those places will be reachable by the players. Currently we are debating using other sites on short contracts for the players to attend events in those locations. So the promise is there, and the possibility is a real one.

[Jeff]

What I meant by "a city that wraps in on itself" is a very small planet or universe. For example, if the entire world consists of 50 square blocks, and each edge of the city is connected to the opposite edge. Or imagine the map on a computer screen, but leaving one edge "wraps around" to the opposite edge. This could create a fantasy world without an "edge of the map". As we know, Terra Incognita is irresistable to a gamer.

Places that are only reachable after an epic struggle or lengthy study are fine, as long as the players can learn that that is the case, and those trying to get there make discernable progress over time. I think that without those two things, it would feel frustrating, as illustrated by your example of the sea port.

[This message has been edited by Jeff (edited 08-15-2000).]

[Erica]

Ah! Now I see =)

Hmm.. many things to ponder now http://www.skotos.net/ubb/smile.gif

My concern with a "wrapping" town or area of that size, is that it is a very limiting dimension, which would leave no room for growth. Of course I may be thinking of this in a cyclindrical manner of thought.

Any other ides for a Do and Don't list?

[Buggy]

Really, in my experience as a LARP designer, any artificial barrier you place in the players' way to keep them where the action is will seem, well, artificial.

Certainly, keeping the players together is important for two reasons: first you want to keep the players where the action is, and secondly without isolation you can quickly have a nightmare situation of trying to keep track of as many locales as you have players, or more.

Add to the fact that a computer cannot come up with new locations on its own (unless Skotos has some amazingly next-generation technology), and it becomes almost imperative that you keep the characters in the pre-defined boundries of your game.

The hands down best method I have found for confinement is not physical however: it's psychological. Give the players/characters a reason to want to stay, or a reason to not want to leave. (Especially avoid player character motivations which would make the character want to leave, such as escaping after committing a crime).

If the characters have a reason to want to stay and deal with what is happening, you won't have to worry about what happens when they leave because they won't want to leave.

On the other hand, if you erect barriers to leaving then the players will see that as a challenge to overcome and will spend energy trying to leave, while you have to devote mental energy keeping them there all the while both of you are spinning your wheels.

So remember, physical barriers aren't the important thing. In Galactic Emperor is Dead, for example, the players are never given any physical barrier to leaving but in all the runs, no character has ever tried to leave the station because leaving would put them in a tremendous political disadvantage.

Give your characters a compelling reason to stay and you'll find you won't have to worry about finding ways to keep them together.

Mike

[Erica]

Thank Mike, I suppose I was heading this thread in a tunnel vision aspect, thanks for reopening it http://www.skotos.net/ubb/smile.gif

You bring about a great and very important point however (I smell a new thread coming) keeping players motivated and interested which boils down to learning to read and understand your audience.

I have been lucky enough to work in several different modes of gaming (LARP, On-line live(active) and static, and table top/traditional). Each group has its own traits. Obviously we need to focus on the online active type here, but unlike person to person games we do not have the advantage of seeing our players as players and not their characters which makes it a touch more difficult to cater to player interest.

An example of this is that I am an EverQuest player, however the game disinterests me in many fashions, I am a role-player as apposed to a roll-player. I have spent far too much time drinking away my character's hard earned coin on brandy and wine or fishing off the end of docks, etc, whereas those that began the game at the same time as me have rushed and struggled to get to the top of the food chain and have achieved their 50+ level status leaving my favorite character in the dirt at 20.. Now before I go too far off-topic I'll bringit back to the point of what motivates or interests me and what motivates or interests them?

Two seperate styles. I could easily be sated with a plot rich intricatly woven town caught in political strife, whereas others would want nothing to do with politics and simply wish to "be the adventurer seeking fame and fortune".

My question now becomes, do we try to target both groups? Or do we select the one that is most appealing to our writing needs and cater to them?

Going back to my previous illustration, the LARP game that I have has very distinct factions. For the most part I can fulfil the players with politcal reasons to stay in the game barriers, though a great number of them wish nothing to do with that aspect of plot, so I have given them a never-ending plethera of places they can find beasties and mini-scenerios to bide their time in.

Will it get stale? Yes, of course it will, a pre-planned backup for these players exists for when they finally tire of such (personally I'm bored of it, but they are happy so..)

Going all the way back to Mike's point, there are obviously more forms of contraint then just the physical and political.

Another that comes to mind is supernatural. Though the cliche of these tend to be rather "cheesy" if you will.
"No you can't go down the cliff.. there is an invisible wall there." etc.

The safe bet with supernatural contraints are that they don't need 'logical' explainations, however as stated above, they need to be realistic enough that the players do not loose interest or become overwhelmed in the 'cheese factor' of it all. An example I've always loved is the Bermuda Triangle. An area we are unable to completely understand scientifically or spiritually (for those that are into that sort of thing). It is a great mystery that begs to be solved, but offers enough of a chill, many aren't sure they want to solve it.

Any comments on this topic (or any previous)?

[SamW]

Having been a long-time player of commercial text-based games, I've found myself becoming very irritated with artificial boundaries.

The key is to create elements in a confined setting that entice players to stay put until you're ready for them to move on. Combat has typically been the element used in the past (there are monsters in this area, but none over here, so stay here and whack monsters), but UO flirted with the idea of using resources to hold folks in one spot.

To expand on that, there's no reason that various trade / research skills couldn't be expanded into interesting sub-games in their own right to anchor characters to a specific area. By making these skills a major part of the game, and placing the items necessary to practice those skills in a relatively confined area, you convince your players that their characters should stay put.

Obviously, this isn't a cure-all, and requires a lot of planning ahead of time to create interesting practices that require locally-constricted resources. But, once you have these practices in place, you can then use them to expand your campaign world. With the idea of local-area resources already firmly ingrained, frontier discoveries of new resources will result in a rush of experienced players to the area of discovery.

This, of course, works as a method for redistributing population and for keeping people occupied, but doesn't address the need for expansive environs for exploration.

In my book, there's no reason not to create a random-description engine that can generate VAST tracts of wilderness which have reasonably interesting descriptions. Assuming the host system can handle it, worlds consisting of tens of thousands of areas could be generated relatively quickly, with hands-on building taking place in order to create the truly interesting sites for discovery.

Doing this provides a lot of territory for exploration (you could reasonably map an entire world like this, and go back later to drop in sites of interest), through which the population can naturally spread in pursuit of resources, adventure or plain ol' wanderlust.

The state of technology now allows for truly vast playing fields, so the need for artificial boundaries is diminishing rapidly.

Just my $.02

Sam

[Zell]

As has been sort of alluded to above, the big difficulty regarding constraints when you go from reality LARPS to virtual LARPS is that in reality, you don't need to create the terrain. It's there, and frankly, it's boring. People can walk off but why would they? They want to be where things are happening. There may be the urge to focus things even more by putting up restraints, but you don't have the difficulty that a virtual LARP does, where you really want to avoid having to build more reality than is really useful to the plot.

So, yes, the inevitable next consideration is artifically generated terrain. Muds have done this to some degree for a decade or so -- some fairly well -- huge 'wildernesses' with dynamically generated description dotted with hand-crafted areas. This is a fairly good fit to reality, with large bits of fields/jungle/mountains/nature between towns, monuments, etc. This brings virtual LARPS and reality LARPS more into accordance; you -can- walk into the great virtual landscape if you like, but why would you want to?

Of course, making the landscape really boring is hardly the ideal way to draw people to your game. We -are- planning some very advanced terrain generation stuff at Skotos, though not for the stages coming out this fall. I'm hoping we'll be able to start showing some of it off by spring or summer -- but it'll be that long, because it is a pretty all-encompassing system. The idea is to generate on the fly not just wilderness but villages, peasants' huts, a blacksmith's inventory, a court lady's dress, a crowd of mercenaries.

A number of systems work together to make this happen; some of it is simply unfolding decision trees according to seeded pseudo-random sequences, some of it relies on implicit 'density' fields where, for example, the average number of rabbits per square mile is known (and subjected to various manipulations and simulations) and can result in actual instantiated rabbits that flow in and out of the density field.

Given a sufficient number of interesting building blocks, a text game has a much easier time building this kind of dynamic engine than does a graphical one. When graphics get re-used, you get immediate cookie-cutter looks to your world, but subtly varied text works through implication and imagination, and I do believe we will be able to create an entire believable countryside for our Alvatia game.

[JeffCrook]

The island scenario can be extended beyond the obvious reference to a body of land surrounded by water, the Paranoia setting being the most obvious example. However, there are other, more social ways of handling things. For example, the setting could be a political island. A city under seige, as in Baron Munchausen (sp?), would control access beyond the city walls. An area in which it is simply too dangerous to explore beyond. If you can see dinosaurs crashing through the forest across the river, you might think twice about leaving. Rumors and second-hand storytelling can help reinforce this, like when everyone in town is talking about Joe Ironthighs the town bully was last seen being ripped to shreds by a red-ridged thyraznor ten feet from the city gate, players are less likely to poke their heads over the wall. For heavily-social scenarios, it might be enough to imply that leaving simply isn't done. Or you could take the Hotel California approach. On the side of the supernatural, there is the example of Castle Ravenloft. You can't leave until you find an antidote for the poisonous fog surrounding the realm. Or the Dune ploy, where the environment itself becomes addictive, and if you leave, you suffer. In other words, once you have sipped the water of the fountain of Melth-kalal, all other water is poisonous to you. yet you can't live without water. These are just some ideas. Of course, I am not revealing the one I intend to use.

[Edward1968]

I think that the most useful means of keeping players together is to use social, political, and economic barriers to limit access to different parts of the Theater.

In the SF 1849 game the players who are ethinic Chinese will have little money, not speak the language, and be the victims of racism. This will tend to keep the Chinese players sticking together for their own survival. The same will hold true for prospectors and lawmen who are trying to make a living. The social nature of their jobs will keep them from going to particular spots.

This approach can be even more pronouced in a Paranoia game where the color of a security clearance and mean what you know, where you can travel, and who you can step on in order to advance yourself. These barriers are once again social and able to be enforced by the culture in which they were generated.

In short, social, political and economic barriers are the best was to impose limits on a stage.

Ed Wisniowski
:-S

[Buggy]

I'm afraid I have to disagree with you, Edward. Your method would make me, as a player, unhappy and curious. (This is assuming that you are talking about keeping players from leaving game space, and not about keeping groups of players together, but out of specific areas of game space).

If I, as a player, were told, "you cannot go there becauese you're not good enough," (either due to racism or rank) I would wonder what was there that was so special and I would try to get there either by sneaking off or by becoming "good enough."

If the barrier were put there to keep players from going there at all, then this would quickly become frustrating as it would seem that there was no way to become "good enough" or sneaky enough to get there.

It would seem artificial, but unlike an impassible wall or a force field, it would also send the message to the players, "no matter what you do, you'll never climb high enough in stature to get by."

Now, in one of the games I've submitted, status and rank does play a part in where it is safe for the player to go, but not where he is able to go. That is, a low status character might get hassled by the cops in a high status area, but he could still go there if he really wanted. It just wouldn't be safe.

I still firmly believe that motivation is the best ways to limit a game. Yes, because the virtual world stops where the designer stopped writing, there must be physical barriers as well (and I'm lumping anything that stops physical movement, including supernatural phenomena, a physical barrier), but if the players have no desire to leave and every desire to stay, then the barrier shouldn't even be an issue.

Mike

[ChristopherA]

Also remember that arbitrary barriers are more acceptable in the smaller games. Stages, for instance, can have very abitrary barriers, even ones that are entirely out-of-character like "you just can't go there."

Grand Theatres also can get away with some arbitrary barriers, but they should probably not be OOC barriers. "The guards prevent you from leaving | ATTACK GUARDS | The invulnerable guards drive you off"

The real problem is with the grander in scope games that we call Worlds -- is that by definition the barriers there need to have the appearance of being less arbitrary, and can't be OOC at all. "The guards prevent you from leaving | ATTACK GUARDS | You win, the guards retreat and allowing you to pass into the wilderness beyond."

-- Christopher Allen

[Lady]

Barriers....

This can be a hard one. Especially as Christopher has pointed out when dealing with Worlds. My proposal in some eyes might face this very problem, but I think I have an idea of how I will address this and let the Skotos people know it truly is possible. I really want this work, to be sure, and I'm willing to squish my greymatter into nothing to see it become fesible.

Yes, you can have an arbitrary barrier on smaller stages because with ALLMIGHTY GM there to say you can't go there and this is why...its easy.

So, I say its easy for such broad scope projects to take a hint from the smaller stage ones. Let's take Paranoia...the omnipotent computer that controls what's available and what's not down this corridor or that.. How can this be applied on a larger scale?

Let's combine this 'barrier' with another one presented in Logan's Run. You have an entire city within a dome. The reasons can be numerous (Nuclear winter or other holocaustic means necessitated it until things were clear in however many decades). The only way to gain access outside is not through guards, but through passages controlled by a supercomputer locking system that only the top most of government officials have access to from their offices and/or meeting room (and sorry, you the average player do not).

What does this do? 1.) It gives concrete IC reasons why the player does not have access. 2.) It also says that the player will not have access because they are not in the proper position to possess it (Ie. Like in Castle Marrach, the Queen is likely to always be NPC, so in my world would those omnipotent governement officials), and no killing the guards to walk on by, and 3.) Can we say wonderful plot material?

The reason I say wonderful plot material is because as the game grows, the outside will not always be inaccessible. Perhaps the government has always been working on a way to clear up that 'nasty' air and finally, finally, its happened and 'cities' will be open again where previously they were connected by those tunnel systems only the upper city government officials only ever had access to.

Now we have built in expansion. No need to worry about...geez, we've got thousands of people wanting to access this game?! What do we do now?

Time to open up more of the 'World' we've given our players.

Okay, but now we need to contain them to only so much of the world again so they're not jetting off through the continents, now what?

Well, the world is not going to suddenly open up like a oyster. Bits of it will become accessible at a time. Think of it like the many petals of a rose. I opens up one at a time until finally the whole flower is revealed....

...and then perhaps the truly grand fun can begin.

Nikki

[Malichor]

Actually, have no problem with this idea, As it adds plot, the area around the capital city, being the front lines of a war, would provide a learning experience, as to where not to wander http://www.skotos.net/ubb/smile.gif i.e. several warnings the closer they come, then death, as the odds become insurmountable, or just an impasse, ( should they comne to uncrossable mountains )

[Lady]

Exactly Malichor,

The best 'barriers' I think are those that can also provide plot elements for people to have to deal with one way or another. Not necessarily direct, but at least having its presence felt.

[Kayanous]

I read over this discussion, and it caught my interest.

I've been doing White Wolf Roleplaying for quite some time now, and have delved deep into a StoryTeller setting of roleplaying. What I've learned in a StoryTeller based Gamed, as apposed to a GameMaster game.. is that in a ST - You give the players an entire world to manipulate, and follow them around. As apposed to a GM - Which is a small world, and the people are a bit more 'puppeted'

Granted, I am faintly bias in this topic. But anyway, back to the point. Barriers are a difficult thing to work with, but only if they're noticed by the players. So, in my experience - the best way to hold barriers;

Was to make the primary plot too interesting and all incompassing to ever want to leave - but moderating enough where the players don't get bored, or frustrated trying to figure it out. For example - "The Puzzle" style of plot... which is lots and lots of small pieces towards a bigger picture. Where players can see that they're slowly progressing, but still not solving the full plot too easily.

With that in mind... if your plots, concentrated around your 'city' we'll say for ease - is interesting enough.. your players won't want to leave it. But... just in case, perhaps have some assistance and/or some sort of smaller plan developed to take care of the 'wanderer' that every group tends to have at least one of. Even if it's a plot which deceives the players, and leads them right back to the primary plot you want your characters to work on.

[JeffCrook]

Ok, so I've got a stage that takes place in a fortress on an island surrounded by shark-infested waters and hurricane winds. I have a story that has more layers than vidalia onion, a plot that has people leaning toward their computer screens in anticipation, characters more interesting than your best friend who has been working as a cultural diplomat to Hong Kong for the last three years. There is opportunity for great wealth, great power, personal advancement, fun and good times. The place is more secure than Devil's Island, more fun than Fantasy Island. No can escape, and why would they want to?

Because they are players. There has not been a novel written or a movie made that pleased everybody. The better your story, the more people it will attract, and therefore the more people who will become bored and begin testing the limits. Also, the more people who will fixate upon the most trivial details, even to the point of ignoring the rest of the story.

A boundary is an implied challenge, with implied rewards. No matter how clearly you state the goals of a story and no matter how desirable those goals might be, the minute someone detects a physical boundary, the entire focus of the plot shifts. If I have a story about a mother and a daughter trying to come to an understanding about the personal crisis the daughter is experiencing, then that might make an interesting story. But have the daughter try to leave the house in the heat of an argument, only to find the door locked and the key missing, and the entire interpersonal relationship fades to the background compared to the mystery of the locked door. The boundary implies the challenge, and to defeat a challenge is to earn a reward. This is natural. Players are suspicious. Once they find their way to the wall and look out over those shark-infested waters, they are going to think that the waters are infested with sharks for a reason, and the reason is that the game designer is trying to hide something. Let someone try the waters and die in the attempt, and all you do is provoke the players to greater effort and prove to them that there is a really good reason for the sharks. (Logan's Run) There must be a more interesting island beyond the horizon. And they will do whatever it takes to find a way to escape your island fortress.

Now throw this into a fantasy setting, and you have to deal with fly spells and teleport spells and dimenional doors, elementalists walking on water, druids calling forth whales to bear them across the sea, dwarves with the ability to delve into the earth and burrow a way out, thieves who can climb any wall you put in front of them or unlock any door. People will throw themselves against these barriers until they die. It is human nature to seek an escape route, even from heaven.

This is, as I see it, the central problem of a stage set within an undeveloped world. I am not familiar with how other games have dealt with this, and I am wondering what do you do? Quietly take them aside and tell them that the game doesn't extend beyond the boundary, so please stop trying? This ruins the atmosphere of the game, but then again so does a player who monopolizes the game with attempts to find a way out or around the boundaries you have set up to contain the stage.

[Nameless]

I totally agree with Jeffcook's suggestion of keeping the story within the confines of the world forcing the characters to confront the dilemma instead of escaping it.
However when players start snooping around and find out that there are limits, they will try too find a way out. The best way I have found to limit players is to create a world where travel is difficult like one had suggested a babylon 5ish setting.
Travel is possible between stations but one must wait for transport. I apllied this to a fantasy world where reality floats in a void of nothing(ADND's Limbo. Where the githyanki and githzerai reside) where travel is only possible by powerful magical means or the use of special ships (Like the spell jammers). In present times you could create a military martial law setting or quarantine of some sort (Communist countries= no papers no travel). whatever you do the confinement must be integral to the story.
Furthermore again as jeffcook had stated if the confinement is more interesting than the plot the players would just go around trying too find a way out and forget the plot altogether.

[Piers]

The barriers issue is a difficult one, simply because, as many people have pointed out, their mere existence tends to encourage players to try to over come them. The challenge then is to create barriers that are not perceived as barriers unless they are _intended_ to be overcome. Here is an idea.

Areas outside the stage are there but represent a different sort of play: the old table-top/postal game Flashing Blades is an excellent example. It was a 17th century musketeers game that centered around events in Paris--intrigue, duels, parties, courting etc. You could leave the city, but really the only thing you could do in the rest of France was to join the army, go on campaign and hope to return covered in glory. Thus non-Paris time gave you advantages on your return but wasn't played out in the same way, and because it was the only place that counted, everyone returned to Paris sooner or later.

Imagine the effect of a world like Castle Marrach's where the only things you could do in the country would be to send letters back to court--you can leave, but it limits your interaction and sooner or later you will return. The borders are self-policing because they are dull, and yet they are apparent, so nobody just wanders into them and becomes bored because the result is obvious.

It is even possible to have a similar effect with multiple locales by making the area in between them non-game time--think of it as the pause as you move from area to area only immensely elongated. Sounds annoying, but if you allow such travel to take place while the player is off-line it isn't a problem--sure it takes 2 hours to travel from Paris to Rome but you can make the journey while you are cooking dinner, or even use the down-time to write letters back home to court. The effect is that the players will travel between play sessions, but will be forced to deal with the fact that each session must be played in one area.

The down side of course is that the world loses a certain amount of depth, there is a frustration factor, and, of course, it actually encourages players not to play. In someways, the time system is problematic solution, but the abstraction is a useful objective; it is, in may ways, the nature of the form--if you are up front about things, players will not challenge the barrier because it isn't one. It is simply part of the nature of the game.

You can actually have places in this blank space as well. With a generator like the one Skotos is proposing you can build them as needed, but not until needed. Lets face it, no one person can conduct a house to house search of a country or even a city. If the game provides alternate methods of locating places--spies, rumors, detectives, whatever--and simply makes the place non-accessible otherwise you can have any number of locations which only come into existence when needed.

Here is an example: Ser Brevis and lady Melissa have retreated to a countryside inn in order to conduct a liaison away from prying eyes at court. No-one can actually find them by searching, because the country is far too big. So, for all intensive purposes they cannot be reached unless:

a)They are followed, or some other game-system dependent mechanism allows their location to be discovered.

b)Someone discovers their location from another character.

c)By pure coincidence--a very low random chance--a traveler runs into them.

Except in the last case the only way to reach them and the small Stage they occupy is to use a command like "Travel to <x>". If x is unknown, they simply can't be reached.

As someone said earlier, too much unpopulated space is as bad as too little space. If it is indicated to the players that a certain portion of space is unimportant then it becomes an invisible barrier. Moreover, if you simply don't allow them to search it, they won't bother spending the time. And, of course, players _can_ make an abstract place important by frequenting it, if they wish--they can turn a country mansion into a place where players congregate and thus somewhere important in the world.

In many ways all this is the corollary of the laws of objects that Shannon was talking about in his column--just as items are important simply because they exist, places must be important simply because they are there. Imagine the effect of building a road between two cities in a world, with post-houses all along the way. The characters would scour each post-house simply because it was there, assuming existence meant importance. Compare to post-houses that the players knew only became real when they decided to make them real--they know they are unimportant unless they make them so, so they don't pay any attention to them unless they intend to use them themselves, as the site for an ambush, say. If the post-house is important to a plot, on the other hand, it can be flagged as such--it generates a description out of the ordinary either as something everyone notices or something that only a few see--it is burnt down (by bandits), or has a strangely familiar seeming man behind the bar...

It is simply a matter, outside the intensive environment of the primary Stage, of conveying to the players that they won't find anything unless they either know what they are looking for or it is flagged in some way as interesting. It is simply a matter of getting them to behave as if they were in the real world--automatically ignoring a hundred passing cars until they notice one with a foot sticking out the boot...

[jwalton]

Jumping on to this bandwagon, and with respect to everything else that's been said, I'd like to point a finger at something that's been kinda passed-over in this discussion: real life.

Okay, in the real world, most people don't move from place to place all the time. Most people are content with the fact that there IS a Timbuktu or a Tibet or even a Wyoming out there somewhere. They don't feel the sudden urge to GO there and validate its existence. Most people are perfectly content to remain within a certain limited area for most of their lives.

Players, of course, are very different from real people, and, as has been mentioned over and over, will seek to do things simply because they CAN or, even worse, because they THINK THEY SHOULD BE ABLE TO. The challange, as I see it, is to get players to stop thinking like "players" long enough for them to think like "characters," like REAL people.

In doing this, if you set up your game like every other "pick-up-everything-and-explore-everywhere" adventure game that they've ever played, I think you may be just making things more difficult for them.

Here's some suggestions:

1) Be honest and up front with them. Tell them "This game is currently about things happening _________. For right now, these are the boundaries of where things are. If everything goes well, these boundaries will expand . . . etc." Most players are not simply there to frustrate the GM and will be more than understanding of the limitations of what you are able to program. If they object, you could always suggest that they write it themselves and send you the XML http://www.skotos.net/ubb/smile.gif

2) Try to get the players to come up with self-imposed barriers that aren't some mandated "Wrath-of-the-Admin" rules that are seemingly there just to make their lives miserable. Make sure that every character has reasons to be where he is and specific things that need to be accomplished there. If players start to deviate, it's a clear sign that the are not satisified with the direction the game is going (or it may be that the game ISN'T going for them) and that gives you a clear time to step in and see what's wrong. This works much better with a small group, obviously, where you can take the time to care for individual players.

3) Make the Stage literally that: a stage. Like any play or movie, there is a limited place where the major action of the story takes place. In this, the camera (as it were) is only filming things within a certain area. Outside of that range, the world doesn't really exist. Forget artificial barriers and all; don't think about keeping players from going certain places, define where they can go and make the rest nothing, literally nothing. Just big expanses of blankness. Another variation on this would be to have some sort of movie set or actual theater built around the confines of your game. If the players want, they can wander around backstage or on the set and talk out-of-character.

Just some more out-there possibilities. Personally, I think the best way to handle barriers is almost always specific to the setting. There's only so much that generalization can do, after all.

Later