I have some specific questions, which are at the bottom of the Power 19 list. I'd also really appreciate any other feedback that you've got.
And now, without further ado . . . Decade!
***
DECADE
Constraint: 10 1-hour sessions
Ingredients: Ancient (characters age a decade over the course of the game), Emotion (old friends reuniting, plus a major mechanical element – see below), and Glass (the New Year’s Toast)
Players: 4 to 6 Guests, plus a Host
1. What is your game about?
Decade is a role-playing game of reunions. The players take the roles of characters who have known each other for some time, but have recently been separated by life events (such as college students graduating). They have all agreed to spend New Year’s Eve together, and none of them would consider backing out – even as their lives get very, very complicated.
The game lasts for ten sessions, each of which takes place a year after the last. Each session tells the story, in real-time, of what happened at the New Year’s party from 11pm to midnight. The game, therefore, takes place over a decade of time. The characters get to age significantly and make radical changes in their lives – and then see how those changes play out with old, old friends.
2. What do the characters do?
This is a highly social and role-playing oriented game. While there may be some combat (for example, a fist-fight), the majority of the action happens through dialogue. Characters can fall in love, have affairs, divorce, announce pregnancies, get arrested, reveal their dangerous past, or otherwise explore their emotional landscape. Over the course of the ten sessions, the relationships between the characters are likely to get very dramatic – though whether it is happily romantic, comic, melodramatic, or tragic is up to the players themselves.
3. What do the players (including the GM if there is one) do?
The players spend about half their time fully in-character, interacting with other characters by speaking their dialogue, declaring actions, or summarizing conversations. The rest of the time they are examining the cards in their hand (see below), considering whether they want to make a narrative intervention, and considering what their New Year’s Resolutions will be.
The Host (a GM-like figure) has the responsibility for time-keeping, for making sure that scenes don’t go on too long, and for actually hosting the game itself. They also have the advantage of getting the first shot at character creation, as they get to define some key things about the first Guest who arrives.
4. How does your setting (or lack thereof) reinforce what your game is about?
The setting of a reunion emphasizes the social relationships between the characters. Since the characters all have prior intimate relationships (as there is a reason why this particular group decided to make a New Year’s commitment to each other), the game can immediately begin exploring those relationships and how they change over a long period of time.
The actual setting and flavor of the game is up to the group, however. Beyond the fact that these are intimate relationships that will be explored over the course of ten years, the details can go in a variety of directions. Maybe this is a soap-opera style game about some friends’ tenth high-school reunion (and beyond). Maybe it’s a comedy game about the reunion of a bunch of incompetent old crooks. Maybe it’s a horror game in the style of I Know What You Did Last Summer, where the players have all done something wrong together and now must pay. Perhaps it’s a fantasy world, with a group of dungeon adventurers getting together to talk over old times, or a club for retired superheroes. You decide!
Several suggested settings/flavors will be provided with the game, with instructions about how to adapt the card deck (see below) for each.
5. How does the Character Creation of your game reinforce what your game is about?
During the first session, as each Guest arrives they are greeted by the Host and by the Guests who are already there. They cannot contradict anything about the way that they are greeted – whether as a man or a woman, an old friend or a rival. Guests who arrive together are likely to have characters who are related to each other in some way, but beyond that it is up to those who have already arrived. This encourages players to create their characters by thinking about them in terms of their social relationships.
Additionally, character creation goes on throughout the whole game, as a whole year passes between each session (though this might more accurately be character advancement). Every time something factual is established about the character, it goes on their character sheet. The character’s abilities are decided based on whether they contradict something known or reasonable about the character, and then by the narrative resolution system mentioned below. Character creation is a negotiated process between the characters which happens over the course of the full ten years!
6. What types of behaviors/styles of play does your game reward (and punish if necessary)?
This game rewards players who want to interact socially with other characters, and who are willing to initiate narrative events within the game. While the game does not distribute authority as thoroughly as, say, Polaris does, players who actively initiate plot will certainly benefit. Players also have to be interested in watching scenes that other players are in, as not all characters will be on stage all the time. When players are off-stage, they can choose whether to be observers or whether to engage in “small talk” with other characters. The game does encourage players to be in character the whole time, though.
7. How are behaviors and styles of play rewarded or punished in your game?
Rewards come through the awarding of “story cards,” cards which provide players with points toward New Year’s Resolutions at the end of every session. Punishments are entirely social in nature, as is probably appropriate for the game style. Do something that other players don’t like and they can all bid cards against you to prevent you from acting!
8. How are the responsibilities of narration and credibility divided in your game?
Every player can take the primary role of narrating what happens. It is the responsibility of other players to challenge them with cards if they don’t like what they’re hearing. This keeps players attentive even in scenes where they’re not actually present. Any statement that goes unchallenged becomes a fact within the game – though players can undermine these “facts” by introducing other facts of their own. For example, if a player says that they are the editor of a newspaper and the statement goes unchallenged, they are now the editor of a newspaper. However, other players can establish that the paper is on the verge of bankruptcy, or that it’s actually a loony militia-fringe newsletter.
Players get the job of narrating by playing one or more cards to initiate a scene. The cards have fourteen different colors, for the fourteen different emotions that Aristotle outlines:
Red – Anger
Mildness
Pink – Love
Black – Hate
Yellow – Fear
Purple – Confidence
Shame
Shamelessness
Benevolence
Compassion/Pity
Orange – Indignation
Green – Envy/Jealousy
Emulation
Contempt
Each card has an action or event on it which fits the emotional category of the card. During their scene, the player must somehow embody the events on the card that they’ve played. Players will be trying to collect both as many different colors of card as possible, and as many of a single color as they can. The more cards a player puts down to initiate a scene, the more cards they get to potentially keep at the end, if their scene goes well – but the more cards they risk losing if their scene doesn’t work out the way they’d hoped.
An initiating Guest must invite at least one other Guest (or the Host) into the scene with them as part of the interaction. Other participating Guests also get a chance to play a card – up to the maximum that the initial Guest bid – and will be trying to act out their own mini-drama. If they succeed, they get to keep the cards that they played. Otherwise, they must discard them. Cards in their hand can be used for bidding against other players, but do not get counted for points at the end of the game. Cards that are kept cannot be used for bidding, but do get counted for points. Cards that are discarded are useful for neither purpose.
Finally, the Host has the responsibility for resolving conflicts if the players cannot agree, and only if the players cannot agree. The Host also has the power to introduce Guests into a scene who are not invited. After all, it’s their party.
9. What does your game do to command the players' attention, engagement, and participation? (i.e. What does the game do to make them care?)
Players care because they can define their characters’ nature and history, and because every scene that they actually participate in is going to have significant drama. That’s what the game is all about! The players spend most of their time exploring their relationships with the other characters and escalating the dramatic tension between them, or else monitoring the scenes that they’re not in to make sure that nothing they are unhappy with gets established.
10. What are the resolution mechanics of your game like?
Players bid cards to prevent other players from completing an action or establishing a fact. The winner gives their cards to the loser. If multiple players have a problem with what one Guest is doing, they can all bid cards. You don’t have to be in the scene to bid cards, either.
Players have to balance giving up cards against having the power to do the things they want to do. Having cards is good – it gives you more opportunities to be center-stage, and cards count as effective XP at the end of every session. On the other hand, if you never get to have your way then you’ll end up with lots of unpleasant things established about you and lots of very public failures.
11. How do the resolution mechanics reinforce what your game is about?
I want the resolution mechanics to be super-simple and, if possible, to be able to be handled without even stepping out of character. I have an image of players silently holding up cards to challenge as the scene pauses for no more than ten seconds, then continues. In an hour-long game, there isn’t much time for complex mechanics if we also want there to be complex drama!
I also wanted the resolution mechanics to focus on social pressures and player interaction, just as the story focuses on character drama.
12. Do characters in your game advance? If so, how?
Yes and no. Characters get a chance to make New Year’s Resolutions at the end of every session. These are things that they are going to try to accomplish over the year of game-time that happens before the next session. Players receive points for the cards that they have successfully used in the story during the course of the session. Points are calculated by taking the number of different emotions used (number of different colored cards) and multiplying by the value of the most-used emotion (largest amount of a single color). This encourages emotional diversity among the character actions, but also allows each player to go for a particular emotion that is “their thing.”
I may allow players to keep their successful cards from session to session, which will escalate the amount that they can improve between sessions over the course of the ten years. This seems to make sense to me.
In any case, players spend their points on New Year’s Resolutions, things their characters will try to achieve over the next year. The number of points someone puts into a resolution is the number of cards that must be discarded in order to invalidate it. If you want to become president, and you put all your points into that, other people will have to discard a lot of cards if they don’t want the Secret Service at the next party . . . .
Players can make general statements such as, “I’d like to get married” and establish the details at the following game. And, of course, players can always choose to fail at their Resolution, which gives them back half the number of points they spent on it.
Order of Resolutions seems to matter here quite a bit, as the first people to make their Resolutions may be at something of a disadvantage (since everyone has lots of cards to discard). Probably each player gets to make a Resolution in turn, starting with the player with the most points and going down from there.
13. How does the character advancement (or lack thereof) reinforce what your game is about?
See above – the point calculation system encourages emotional acting in a variety of different emotions. The New Year’s Resolution mechanic also helps deal with the full-year-of-downtime problem between sessions. Let players just decide what they want to try to achieve!!
14. What sort of product or effect do you want your game to produce in or for the players?
I want to create a game about relationship drama – not just romantic relationships, but the wide variety of emotions we feel for people who are close to us and who we care about. I’m particularly interested in exploring the way that these relationships change us, constrict us, or liberate us as we change ourselves in the course of a long period of time.
15. What areas of your game receive extra attention and color? Why?
The New Year’s feel is definitely getting attention and color. The Host signals the session end by pouring everyone a glass of champagne (or sparkling cider, for the non-drinkers), for example. I want the game to feel like a party, the kind where it’s full of “your people” and the emotional stakes are high.
16. Which part of your game are you most excited about or interested in? Why?
I’m really excited about designing the cards, since those will define the kinds of events that happen in the story. I also am totally enchanted with the flavor of having the game take place at New Year’s, which I think provides a lot of interesting mechanics and flavor. Finally, I want to do a lot with the large scale of time that passes in the game. It’s a really, really high ratio of in-game time to out-of-game time and that’s something original I want to explore.
17. Where does your game take the players that other games can’t, don’t, or won’t?
I’m not sure I can answer this question, as I don’t know too much about the other games that exist in this space. I want the game to actually focus on emotions, relationships and drama; I want it to be highly narrative but to give a lot of support to players in structuring their narratives and scenes, because not every player is going to be able to just start up a neat dramatic scene with no help. I don’t know too many other games that do both, so maybe that’s my answer.
18. What are your publishing goals for your game?
I’d like to win Iron Game Chef! After that, I’d like to publish as a PDF or through the Forge, if the game is a good one, or put it in my drawer of projects-on-hold if it isn’t immediately workable.
19. Who is your target audience?
Role-players with a dramatic streak, role-players who are short on time, role-players who like to explore interpersonal and emotional issues. Also I think that Decade will be quite accessible to new role-players as it has distinct party-game elements and could be explained by analogy to murder mystery dinner parties and the like.
Concerns:
* The game only goes one hour. How do I make sure that scenes don’t run too long?
* How do I stop every bid from escalating into an “I go all in!” situation?
* Do players show their cards at the beginning or the end of the scene?
* Who decides if players actually fulfilled the words on their cards?
* Do I want words on the cards or do I just want combinatorial combinations of emotions?
If you made it this far, you are a hero! Thanks for getting through all this!