FFR: A Year Later

About a year ago, I designed FFR and ran War for Endor. Since then, a number of months-spanning games have been run by various referees, each providing variations on the format. This is largely a meta post for people who’ve read about or played FFR and want to try running one themselves, summarising my findings on it.

This post is written from my point of view, and it’s likely that other referees and players will have different thoughts on it. I got Mike to add a point of view that isn't mine to this post.

Mike Note: I have included my contributions here as Mike Notes since 7th has been quite thorough.

The following games had been ran thus far:

War for Endor and War of the Archons - PvP games about fantasy civilisations warring against each other, run by me.

Undying Love - a PvE game about demigod vampires running a city in the middle of a world-ending crisis, run by Ranuth (it's unifinished as of yet)

World Bloom War - a PvP game about nations in conflict preparing for the arrival of an apocalyptic force, run by Mike.

Dawnchaser’s Journey - a PvE game about a fleet of living metal ships heading for the origin point of humanity, run by me.

I should preface this by saying – all of those games were ultimately fun and went well. The criticisms here are levelled against practices, not games or their referees.

    1. Token system probably works best

World Bloom War and Dawnchaser’s Journey have used nonstandard systems instead of tokens to handle their scenarios.

Mike Note: I would say World Bloom’s system was a Token system just with two kinds of Tokens. The point, however, stands that the one currency option is probably the simplest and most streamlined.

Dawnchaser’s Journey

I’ve done away entirely with the token system for the duration of the Journey, instead adopting a system where an asset (unit, facility, etc.) can be used as many times as it makes sense before it’s depleted, then being restored next turn.

While in theory this should’ve facilitated more interaction, it killed a steady beat for the game and demanded far more interaction for the same amount of impact, which created issues for people who couldn’t devote as much time.

World Bloom War

Mike’s system relied on Power and Wealth. Theoretically the former was for moving troops and latter for establishing assets, but ultimately they could be used interchangeably a lot of the time. 

Power was gained via accomplishing faction goals, and Wealth via establishing trade routes between your faction and others. I “gamed” the Wealth system relatively early on and thought it was quite fun to use from the “engaged player’s” perspective.

However, the steady growth of both Power and Wealth resulted in players taking like 5+ actions per turn, and massively increasing workload on the referee. This also had the chance to disadvantage players who didn’t have as much time to engage with the game.

Conversely, Undying Love and both of my early games have largely avoided these issues.

Mike Note: Much of the problem with the WBW system was in the rapid increase of Tokens. If the amount of Tokens gained over time can be more managed, many of these difficulties would not be so bad.

Conclusions

• Token-asset system seems to be the simplest, best starting point that enables impact both from busybody players with lots of time on their hands and people who will write 5-6 posts per week. It also minimises referee workload and puts the focus on roleplay and diplomacy.

• For the right group and a referee fine with a larger workload, more tinker-y and complicated systems may enable some very interesting interactions. A multi-referee game should be scheduled to see how more complex systems work in that situation.

Mike Note: The above point shouldn't be overlooked. There is give and take for all of this. I completely agree that more complicated systems lead to referee duty bloat, but they can also make for some interesting interactions. For instance, the necessity of trade forced players to ally in interesting ways and promoted diplomacy. However, you could accomplish this in more narrative ways.

    2. PvE or PvP?

World Bloom War was a primary catalyst to cover this matter, but some of the practices discussed here have been present in my games as well.

Here are some practices that raised “level of PvP” thereby making the game more hostile:

• Some factions had a history of bad relations or “lore reason” to be hostile to each other.
• Factions had goals that would by default require destroying or direct conflict with 1-2 other factions.
• Various subfactions demanded conflict with certain factions, ready to withdraw their support and rob the player of multiple assets if their demands weren’t met.
• Some factions started out in the middle of sabotage actions against each other.
• Information that would stoke conflict was very readily shared by the referee, while one that would quell it was usually difficult to acquire and often never divulged.

While not particularly detrimental on their own, the combination of all those resulted in a game that was very engaging, but also quite hostile and stressful.

Mike Note: It was the intention in the beginning to give the factions ample reason to fight with each other and have a genuinely difficult time creating alliances in order to face the invading threat together. However, the kind of antagonism and suspicion this bred became increasingly onerous over time. It drained some energy from the game rather than injecting vitality as was the original point. 

Dawnchaser’s Journey was on the other end of the spectrum - a primarily PvE game, where direct combat between factions was disallowed for the vast majority of the game and little to no subterfuge between players had been performed.

This and Journey's nonstandard design choices messed with its pacing and made player input dwindle in later weeks.

Conversely, Undying Love which was primarily PvE, with some space for PvP had less of those dwindling issues.

Conclusion

• PvP vs PvE is a spectrum that should emerge naturally as a result of the lore and player choices, not be artificially driven by the referee.
• A form of golden ratio on this spectrum fitting for each table should be struck, instead of driving toward either extreme in design.
• The most successful way to handle this had been when factions had goals emerging from their flavour and fiction, sometimes driving to conflict, sometimes to alliance, but not locking a player in.

    3. Information policy

Games heavy in subterfuge and diplomacy thrive or die on information - how much is presented to which players and why are extremely important matters. This was very important throughout all the games thus far so I’ll simply present my conclusions.

This could all be summed up as “be fair”. It’s not as simple as it sounds.

Referee Reliability

A referee is the player’s only reliable window into the world. As such, if they engage in misleading practices, like planting red herrings, throwing in misleading info or discouraging the player from reaching the right conclusion, they almost uniformly make the game less enjoyable. This of course echoes the points from three clue rule blog post.

Furthermore – your players have their own lives and may not have the time to reread chat history or guess what detail they missed. If there is something you want them to know - tell them. If there’s something they seem to be ignoring, remind them. Tell them the likely outcome of their action, especially if it’s not looking too good. The above, however, may be exercised with caution when dealing with subterfuge.

What should be avoided at all cost, however, is bias in revealing information. Don’t force conclusions, only correct them if they’re vastly out of line with what the player should already know. Don’t only reveal information that would push a certain conclusion, but don’t force red herrings either.

Subterfuge

If it comes to subterfuge and laid traps, the balance between liberty of information and fairness becomes more precarious. 

When determining whether to tell the player any info about subterfuge, consider the following:

• Have they taken any counterintelligence actions or set up counterintelligence assets?
• Is their faction naturally resistant to ambushes or subterfuge?
• How effective is their opponent at subterfuge, how bulletproof is the plan they’re putting into place?
• How many tokens or other resources were spent on the attempt?

This should inform you:

• How much information do you want to reveal? Just a hint about something going on, or a full-fledged sitrep?
• How early do you inform them? Do they get to intercept the subterfuge attempt with their units? Do they only learn about it at the turn end? Do they learn about it only if they ask?

Theoretically, a well thought-out and executed subterfuge against a near-defenceless opponent should only be learnt after the end of turn, or perhaps only when the player asks, or not at all.

This will, in a “balanced” game, never be the case, of course, so you should adjust your outcomes as viable.

The prior questions should also be asked when a subterfuge event is investigated. You should not readily reveal via 3-hint rule who performed the subterfuge. Rather - consider the amount of resources used for the investigation, how good are the questions asked and actions taken, and possible flaws in the subterfuge plan.

Mike Note: This came up in WBW a lot and it increased the demand on me as a referee by a lot. It was fun too, but you really need to know your limits as a referee for these things. Especially if you aren't sure of yourself as a writer, and you're worried about giving too much away, I would try to limit the amount of subterfuge that you encourage in your games. 

I had factions that were solely about subterfuge, and it made navigating information distribution really difficult. One top that I would have is: wherever possible only describe the effect of actions. Like if a faction plants a bomb in an enemy factory, don't say to the enemy: “A bomb went off in the factory.” Say instead: “There was an explosion at the factory.” That way there is ambiguity as to whether it was intentional or a random event or caused by NPCs. If the player wants to investigate further, you can let them, but keep the initial disclosure focused on effects rather than causes.

Dice also help. I used dice in WBW and it helped me as a referee to roll to see if someone noticed an event. See what Tokens they've spent on watchmen or counter espionage and how stealthy and careful the spying faction is and declare a roll. That way you don't have to solely rely on your own preference in declaring who has seen what.

    4. Subject Matter

Only one game covered a distinctly different fiction - Dawnchaser's Journey, wherein the subject was more about travel and conquest than defense. It provided the player factions with "zones" with multiple hooks for investigation and multiple things happening in them. The zones changed every two weeks as Dawnchaser and player factions within the fleet continued their journey.

However, because the zones usually had their own contained story and didn't as much directly (to be precise - antagonistically) interact with the player factions, this ended up having far less urgency than a typical FFR game. Furthermore, constant movement and leaving the zones behind made the changes done to them far less meaningful.

Conclusion

While I believe more games should cover nonstandard subject matter, I think that games relying on more static environments rather than constant travel are the safer bet. Newcomers to the genre should rather try more standard subject matter than opening up with experimentation.

More games would have to be ran that would hopefully learn on the shortcomings of Journey before this can become a rule.

Freeform Faction Roleplay Games

I recently finished running another large PBP faction game and I’m largely satisfied with the outcome and how this format has been performing. Now that other people are starting to pick it up, I figured it might be handy to codify it and compile my insights thus far.

Introduction

Freeform Faction Roleplay (FFR) is a really simplistic design and running style. It’s core premise is to “play the world” and make decisions as if you really were in command of a faction, rather than minmaxing numbers.

I wanted to design something (that I’m still iterating on) that would fulfil the following goals:

• Focus on roleplay, diplomacy and warfare, while avoiding complex mathematics, rolls that don’t do anything, and other ways of wasting time.
• Make gameplay and fiction as tightly connected as possible; make rules as simple and as possible.
• Provide a way for people from all around the world to engage in one game across different timezones.
• Get a steady beat, so it doesn’t peter out like most PBP games
• Communicate a setting in a concise, functional manner.
• Provide a sort of arena for various stories, represented by different factions, to play out, interact, and wage war.
• Provide a framework that would encompass both large scale faction play as well as personal conflicts.

Originally this format was inspired by the Matrix  games as well as the Dark World Domains game John Gaptooth ran a while ago for me and a number of others.

Core Rules & Precepts

Here are some basic precepts and rules for how I run and how it differs from some other forms of play one can find out there.

Actions defined by tokens - factions are given a number of tokens each turn (usually 1-3), which can be spent on actions. These represent resources, army involvement, supplies, production and all the complex things you’d need to handle in a strategy game. Abbreviating all these matters in this way can help focus on making genuine decisions and roleplay, rather than seeking out the most mathematically efficient strategy, and eases the pain of running on the side of the referee.

Tokens are affected by the fiction - for example when a faction is largely hit by an event, or starts largely losing in a theatre of war, they might suffer a reduction in tokens; likewise looting, making profitable trades and appeasing your gods may increase tokens.

For example, a large faction, like the Empire of Babylon, would start off with 3 Tokens. This enables them to do as many as 3 actions every turn, or 2/1 action, using more tokens, and thus being more effective. Most of the time I haven’t seen players take more than 3 actions.

Actions are resolved by taking these measures into account:

• How many tokens were spent
• What kind of resources/units were engaged in the action
• How likely the positive outcome is, considering all the variables the referee has access to.

POV Characters - players get a single character, usually the faction leader, that is their Point-of-View character. They receive the reports, represent the faction in diplomacy, and issue orders. This makes the player not just a floating cloud casting orders into aether, but rather a living being that can talk to people, fight, and if things go wrong - die.

Players can obviously use other characters loyal to them (like emissaries, generals, etc.) wherever the POV character can’t be, but the purpose of this principle is to give a more personal take on faction management.

Events and Conflicts - factions face a number of conflicts: tensions between various subfactions they’re comprised of, issues with vital NPCs, and events that require decisive action. Some of those might be caused by other players, or used to their advantage.

Resolving events and conflicts helps the player define their faction better, earning allies or enemies in the process.Very often said events are resolved by means of in-character roleplay - largely conversations - or broad decisions about who to support or what to do about something.

Major NPCs - NPCs represent factions, subfactions and independent actors. The purpose of having an NPC leader or representative is to give a more personal feel to interacting with a faction, a unit or an army. Likewise, individual NPCs may have their own views, morals, personality and the like, which the player must manage in order to gain their support.

Kriegsspiel-style Battles - in order to minimize the amount of necessary posts, battles are resolved thus:

• Involved players decide on their orders; allied factions can discuss those amongst themselves.
• Orders are given. They can be as detailed or as simple as the player wants them to be.
• The referee might ask some clarifications, like “Does this unit fight until broken, or will they retreat when they start losing?” etc.
• Orders are resolved by the referee up until something unexpected happens, a good middle point occurs, or the battle ends.
• If the battle hasn’t ended, the players can adjust their orders or submit new ones, after which those are also resolved.

Units - Freeform Faction Roleplay differs from Kriegsspiel in how it handles units:

• You do not command individual units, like squadrons, battalions, etc. for most of the game (you can split them up during a battle though).
• Units are generally not described by numbers, but by their fictional features, and tags.

There are a couple of types of tags:

• Number - group, army, horde (can be granularized more by adding more tiers)
• Weaponry - melee, ranged, versatile
• Mounted or not (also can be used for flying mounts)
• Special tags, which denote the unit’s special abilities
• Damage can also be applied as tags - cursed, wounded, exhausted, broken, etc.

Here’s an example of a unit:
Wraiths, brought back from the afterlife into eternal service of Death, they have light bodies of dark smoke, and can only interact with the world through their silvery gloves; they use silvery longswords for combat.

• group (a number tag), melee (attack type), inhumanly fast, unbeatable in single combat by any human, blade can hurt spirits

So, rather than say “I move 3 Wraiths, 2 units of guards, and 5 units of Lancers to engage in Endor” you would say, “I use 2 tokens to engage Endor’s troops, using the Wraiths, Guards and Lancers.”
That way, when Endor player says “I use 1 token to defend using Guards and Golems”, the rough measure of power involved is measured by tokens.

Obviously in-fiction matters like “Golems are made out of sheer metal and wraiths have only sharp blades against them” can be crucial to resolution. Naturally, when designing and “balancing” a setting for this kind of game, such matters should be taken into account as well.

What Freeform Faction Roleplay is not?

Let’s do a little bit of negative philosophy here, by highlighting the differences I see between what I do and what folks at other communities do.

Matrix - these games quite often play out as collaborative storytelling mediated by the referee. They require the players to be something like coauthors of the presented setting, and for them to have near-perfect knowledge to the point of affecting enemy actions (with counterarguments for example) that their units have no idea about.
FFR, on the other hand, is meant to emphasize immersion, roleplay and exploration. The players don’t know the whole setting, they can discover new things or have events happen in fog of war that they'll learn of later.

Kriegsspiel - Kriegsspiel is a wargame at most tables. It might have elements of roleplay or diplomacy, but those are usually pushed aside in favour of focus on combat and unit movements.
FFR has elements of Kriegsspiel pertaining to warfare, but its core selling point is that it’s a roleplay game and not chiefly a wargame.

Dice-Based - FFR strives to push randomness over to player input, and grant players agency by limiting mechanical factors and systems that take it away.

Conclusion

FFR is, as stated prior, freeform, and generally none of the rules are set in stone so long as the idea of generally rules-light game is upheld. Feel free to make your own spin on these principles and join us over at the Discord.

Names and selling them for a profit

Introduction

Here's a little bit of a world-building/philosophy piece for Starspun Tale. You can find another post in this series here.

We think of names as a set of sounds, or a string of letters that identifies us, by which we are called. This is usually good enough, but becomes murky when fairy magic comes into play. Names the Fey sell or buy are more than that.

A Name is a any combination of those:

– It is what you are called. The basic identifier, a set of sounds, perhaps a string of letters.

– It is your relationships, your social roles. Maybe you’re a parent, a friend, a lover, or a hated foe.

– It is your reputation, the stories they tell about you. Maybe they call you the Dragonslayer, the Hermit of the Mountain, or the Exile.

Selling Names

When you sell a name, you sell all the things tied to it. Let’s see an example.

Let’s take Joe the Potter. He’s an artisan, a proud owner of a workshop founded by his great grandfather. He has a bunch of labourers as well as a student learning his craft.

Joe dreams of something more, so he goes to the woods to bargain with the Fey. He sells his name for a sliver of their power. Now he doesn’t need any tools to shape clay – it takes any shape he desires and hardens without the need for a kiln.

He returns home to find no one recognizes him. No one knows his name, and when he tries to insist he’s Joe, his workers threaten to call the guards on him. His friends and family no longer recognize him. He’s thrown out of his home, maybe people even think he’s some kind of changeling and sic the guards on him. Meanwhile the real Joe is considered to have been lost in the woods.

Now, he could have sold only a particular title. If he sold the title of “potter,” he would no longer have his work licence or his place in a labour guild. However, he'd still keep his friends and relationships as well as his pottery skill.

You can sell a name you don’t want. Maybe you’re a thief or murderer? Selling your name would allow you to rid yourself of the stigma and start anew, but the Fey certainly won’t accept such a bargain for free.

Remember that selling or buying names is only possible with magic. Using a different identity to introduce yourself to people allows you to create new names, but it won’t work on those who already know you.

Essences

To define the distinction between true and common names, one should first ascertain what essence is, since that is what a true name describes.

An essence is not physical matter, but rather something like an ethereal blueprint. Everything physical or influencing the world in any way (objects, bodies, sounds, even thoughts) stems from essences.

Nature is a common essence, like a common set of rules for making particular blueprints. For example, all humans share over 99% of DNA, most humans have a working heart, a working brain and the like, but everyone is different in some way (eye colour, height and more) i.e. each blueprint is unique even if they fit into the same categories. The concept of True Names refers more to specific essences and not generalised natures here.

Messing with an essence can change your nature. A human becomes a fey, or a vampire, nature and wildlife can become corrupted, mad alchemists can produce chimaeras out of joined essences, etc.

True Names

Words, phrases or thoughts that describe essences perfectly and are something of a key to them. They allow sorcerers, warlocks and the like to affect spirits, people or the rest of the world with their magic.

More importantly, as you change and progress, you can earn new true names – they’re something like titles, but they leave a permanent mark on your nature, on what you are. For example, rather than just being called a Dragonslayer, you partake in the essence of dragonslaying. By your very nature, by how you act, speak, and think, you become a threat to dragons.

True Names can also be traded, to a limited degree. For example, a human being can hold the name of a wyrm. That wouldn’t necessarily turn them into a dragon, but they would certainly have access to its magic, perhaps its strength, or even its authority.

Thanks to Michael from Sheepandsorcery for prereading this.