You will be able to understand everything I write here, but you can look at all this as the extensions to my functions model if you exchange content element to function in the text. Elements of content can be anything from story elements to things like the GM asking a player to roll the dice.

A roleplaying session is made up of people introducing content to the game. Usually that means that the GM introduces many-many prepared content and all players (inclusively the GM) adlib some content while playing.

Let's have a look at this act of content generating. The adventure writing is somewhat complex, so its discussion will be postponed. Now it is time for the adlibbed content.

Cross-posted here.

Functions

Everything the GM sais has a goal, a purpose. Let's call that purpose FUNCTION. For example if the GM tells the players to do a skill check, that's a function. If you want the players to get intrigued by an NPC, that's a function, too.

A game session consists of such functions. When you are GMing, you GM to achieve these functions and if you achieved the purpose of the functions in a session, it is a successful session. You achieve catharsis by the good chosen pattern of successful functions. For example if you want to make the players laugh or cry, that's not a function, because it's very hard to tell one single function wich would achieve that. But a combination of functions could help. So, don't forget: a function alone won't have a big impact on the players - always think about the function as the direct purposes and goals of a story element. For example rolling the dice or uncovering an information.

Of course these functions aren't static. Sometimes (or many times) you have to alter functions on the fly, that's fine. But always be aware how that will affect the game session (the pattern of functions) and how that will affect what you are telling the players.

I playtested my first complete RPG ever, Mighty Ones (pdf). Please take a look at it, try it out and tell me about your experiences. Thanks.

Foreword

I think that the core of every roleplaying is the act of roleplaying itself, wich means that the RPGs are only there to make/do the so-called adventures. Thatswhy I think it is important for us to talk/think about the adventures themselves to understand what is the purpose of an RPG, and after that we should only streamline our RPGs for their purposes.

This is a describing language of adventures wich helps me to think about adventures ad I think it should be thought about adventures. The succession of interactive effects between the players. This version is made for the classical set-up (one almighty GM and more players with one character each).

You don't have to understand anything what I've written before, here you will find no theory at all. You can use this article in its own.

I reached an interesting chapter developing Planet X. It's mechanic is modelling the escalation of a typical sci-fi subgenre. The crewmembers (PCs) are conflicting with the Planet wich becomes stronger and stronger. After some time the planet will become such strong that there is no way to achieve anything, thus the crew has to escape before that happens.

I already wrote some character creation wich defines the crewmembers' strength. Now I'm thinking how much bonus should the equipment give the crewmembers in conflicts. This is interesting, because the achievable strength of the crew defines how lond a game can become.

I tried the "Outline" button and I found an interesting feature, called Weight. By using Outline one can put blog posts into the book hierarchy. And by doing so you can set a "Weight" number for it, and the text sais: book pages are ordered first by their weight, second by their name.

It would be a great improvement if we could set the weight when directly posting in the book hierarchy. Because like this I will rather use my blog to write chapters and outlining into the book hierarchy.

Some other thing I noticed: the book pages cannot be deleted. At least I couldn't find any method for it. It's really annoying, because I really don't know when I start writing a book what hierarchy I will end up. It's really hard to change the hierarchy of chapters after posted in book format.

This post is about the situations of decisionmaking wich the players encounter while playing. I talked about this in my post Flow of Structured Information where I defined the actual play as the two-way flow of structured information. Recently I talked about the Types of Conflicts.

Every decision is linked to a function (dramatical or mechanical) wich is always linked to a carrier. In my former posts I always assumed that functions are written down beforehand in the adventure and carriers are used intentionally by the GM. If we would define the cause of decisonmaking as function and its carrier as carrier, we have to cope with unintentional functions and their virtual carriers.

Let's think about the conflicts I mentioned in my entry "Flow of Structured Information".

First let's accept this: only conflict is interesting. A long description of the mountains can be nice, but can't be really cool, unless there is some counterpoint to it. This is what I initially called conflict, because I was thinking about how the GM should "tell the story", but it is true that this truth can be extended to PCs, etc.

Let's look at what conflicts there can be. There are informations submitted by the GM and by the players, so conflicts can be between

- GM-GM
- same player
- different player
- player-GM

informations.

A thing that can be called "model" is forming in my mind for some time, but I have a very hard tim to implement it or even to phrase it. Let's give it a try to have a snapshot of this thought.

This is the seed of a model of classic RPG (one almighty GM, more players with one PC each).

Flow of Information

As I see it role-playing isn't anything else than communication between the players and the GM. Certainly the interesting link is between GM and player, because, the games are set up to handle this and no player-player communications.

The GM is steering the game by adding informations and listening to the reactions of the players. The fact that every player has one character wich is there to channel the players' decisions makes it somewhat easier for the GM. The PCs structure the information submitted by their players. The information submitted by the players are more structured than the GM's.

I cannot develop Social Skills further without extensive playtesting. There can be made only subtle changes and concrete examples for playtest, but only for playtest and nothing will last.

Yes, you understand it right, playtest it and feed it back for me. Or else until I can scratch together an own testparty, I'm gonna work on other games.