Interestingly enough, Mark Causey and I were exploring this very thing not even 10 days ago after our Burning Wheel thing. However, we weren't discussing it so much as The One Rule to Create a New Game Around, but rather a set of modular house rules that could be applied to any system with some elbow grease.

It started because we are playing Burning Wheel.

I wanted to have a guy competent with Picking Locks (we're an all-thief campaign, and I'm th only one with the real bigbad sneaky skills). To be competent, you really have to boost up those stats and play out character generation, otherwise you'd just end up with a Lock Picking of "2", which is enough to try to pick locks... and fail constantly until you've played and played and picked and picked for weeks to build up that skill. I did trick out lifepath-picking, and have a Picking Locks of 6 or something (if I constantly FoRK in Lockwise, etc), which is a rather competent- even Awesome- amount of skill. So awesome: When I pick a lock, because of my choices, I'm gonna be pretty successful at it.

Then, about halfway through the first episode, I realized that, all along I knew this was gonna be a socio-political game, imagine AMBER in the upper eschelon of a Thieves' Guild. What the fuck, by my chargen choices I just showed the GM that I want to have my character all about Picking Locks and shit. And I totally am not interested in it. I want there to be Some Locks, and I want to successfully (or have a high chance anyway) pick them, but I want to do other stuff too. Maybe have one adventure where I'm all over the lockpicking, a few where I'm going all Prince of Persia climbing the spires of the city and fighting stuff, and the rest I'm all being my social self.

So after the game Mark and I were hashing it out, and what we came up with was an idea for a game mod (which we'll probably first apply to a variant of The Shadow of Yesterday or d20 to see how it goes) where you do get character generation and the like, just like normal, but with perhaps fewer points.

At the beginning of the campaign or whatever you would choose if there are any bizarre/specialty/out there skills or abilities that you use. You have to at least choose a few points in them up front at the first character generation, to prevent the whole, "Oh, didn't I mention? I also have PSYCHIC POWERS." next session "AND I was trained in Hokuto Shinken Ultimate Battle Fist." next session "Did I mention that I trained with the Magestrike Ultimus Mage's Guild for 10 years?" etc. So if you have something "special" (magic, psi, etc for that campaign world) you have to take at least a little of it up front (but you can learn it later over the campaign).

Now, to get into d20 terms, what we were thinking of is something like this: Round up all your points that you need to spend on character generation: Say, for example, you had like "30 skill points" and "7 feats" total available at your level. In d20, I would do something like this: You have to spend 1/3 of your total skill points in characer generation as normal. Like a normal D&D character, these don't change. But then, every session, you are allowed to take the rest of the points and distribute them however you see fit. And you can choose any new Feat progressions you want (this week I'm badass with my axe, next week I decide to go all dual-wield, the week after that I load up on all social Feats, etc).

So in this way, you have a "core" of abilities that follow you around (that 1/3-1/2 of your set skill points: This tells us that there's some things about your character that don't change, and shows the GM, at the core, what kind of guy you think your character is overall). But session to session, in many cases there won't be too much wild change but the players are free to make wild changes to the "free skill points/feats/charms/abilities/pools" in any way they want to.

Actually, it would be preferable to, int he last 10 minutes of your Today's Session, draw to a close, and do the reallocate then, telling the GM and other players how you're reallocating. The GM takes the characters home and thinks of what to put in the next scenario.

Something like this could be applied to everything from D&D to Exalted to HeroQuest to TSOY or whatever. I'm not sure about Burning Wheel, though; it would seem to miss the point of the lifepath creation, but for the rest such a system would slide into place with an audiable "click", I think.

Thoughts, Tony? This is very much a Traditional'd-Out version of what you were discusssing, as it's not a total free-for-all of completely rebuilding your character each session, and you also have that "character core" that sticks with the character". And it's more geared for concurrent play, not so much as you're wanting the "This week we play D&D, next week we play another game... and four weeks later we return to D&D" etc

-Andy

Andy: I think it nicely highlights that the same technique can address different questions.

Yes, the stuff you're talking about doesn't deal with the social questions I was thinking about. But you're using "recreate your character on the fly" to encourage specialties that have spotlight times (by letting you play one session of Lockpick Frenzy) rather than discourage them (by saying "Hey, if you ever want that one session then you've got to dedicate a huge pile of resources to something that will only ever be used in that one session").

Now I will admit that I am quite wierded out by the prospect of doing this in Burning Wheel which has ... well ... a not-quick character generation system. Or maybe it's just not quick because I'm not sufficiently practiced in it. How much time are you expecting to be spent making the new characters each week?

Bob: Re: Precedent ... if I win Puerto Rico, like totally dominate the game, what advantage carries over to the next game of Puerto Rico? None. Likewise, if I lose big-time, what carries over? Nothing. That's exactly where I stand on precedent, in terms of mechanics, in this model. It doesn't carry over, at all, in mechanical terms.

If I, as a player, choose to always play a build-heavy strategy in PR, and I get really good at it, and keep at it, that's cool. That carries over, but outside the game mechanics. I'm pretty sure precedent would carry over in much the same way. I'd choose not to give Buffy "cowardly," "weak," and "simpering" traits in episode #37 because episodes #1-36 established her as being buff as ten buff men. But I might well not give her any combat skills in episode #37, simply because I don't want to do combat with her in that episode. That doesn't mean she's not combat capable (in some abstract sense) it just means that her combat skills, for better or worse, will have no impact on the story.

Has this addressed your thoughts on precedence?

Pregenerated characters that get modified ... sounds like templates. That might be a way that I go after it. I think that the character creation should be part of a group effort: my choices should effect the character you can make, and vice versa, and it should all be tied in with creating the world.

Yes, the world should be created each session too. Some episodes of Buffy are in a world where the High School is prominent and important. Some episodes of Buffy are in a world where the High School might as well not exist (and that's even before they blow it up). Create the world you're going to play in that evening, then play in it.

What if the precedent simply was some sort of record of previous history? Non-mechanical, but meant to aid playing the role?

Maybe I'm really badly misunderstanding what you're getting at, though. I was under the impression that you were talking about having some of th character carry over between sessions, but allowing/requiring a new build for the character mechanically each session to emphasize what was important to that particular session.

Am I on the right track, or completely off? My example would be a well known comic book character who is now in the hands of a new writer. Precedent isn't completely dropped, but the new writer might have some very different things they want to do with that old character this issue.

komradebob: It is the same character to precisely the extent that the player(s) choose to make it the same character.

If everyone's happy with it there's no beef, right? Even if Prince Van suddenly turns out to be half-angel when ... the fuck? ... there are angels in this game? When'd that happen? Like I said, if everyone's happy, you're good to go.

If people aren't happy then should "But there weren't angels in the game the last time we played!" be relevant to the argument? Or should everyone just have some resources to make a world and characters together, and get to spend them however they want (supporting precedent, defying it, whatever)? I lean toward the latter one, for simplicity's sake. Make sense?

I expect there will be precedent carried forward from one story to another. Indeed, the mere action of saying "Let's play another story about Jessie Joy and her doomed attempts to form a rock band" seems a very powerful way of setting forth what precedent is important (and, conversely, what isn't ... hypothetical-Samantha didn't say "Let's play another story about Jessie Joy and her tangled love life").

I guess my question back to you is what you want the mechanics to do for precedent? Why shouldn't the mechanics be totally agnostic about whether you're playing wholly new characters, the exact same old characters, slightly different/changed old characters or a horrifying travesty of the old characters?

Doug: I don't know. I've got zero experience with The Pool. Stoning for heresy may now commence.

But I've got ideas of which this idea is just one foundation stone. Like, what is character creation is a truly group activity: i.e. that you could not do it alone even if you wanted to ... you needed mechanical input from the other players. What if world creation is tangled up in that as well? What if I can get all of that down to fifteen minutes or so, in which you create (or re-create as the case may be) a world-for-this-game, and characters-for-this-game that inherently mesh with each other and with the world?

Buffy has cheerleader skills this session, which implies (indirectly through the rules) that the High School has to have a lot of resources to influence the plot, which implies that Xander will have his Loser skills buffed up, and as a result Cordelia is active in the world and oh look she seems the kind to be a cheerleader, doesn't she?

Stoning for heresy not required - I was trying to find a simple example to illustrate a point, and it flopped - my bad, not yours.

So, let's stat Hitoshi in the Pool. Minus the backstory, here's how she might look for Session 1, which is focused primarily on romance:

Cute geeky looks +2 (costs 4 dice)
Ace student +0 (no cost)
Knows kung fu +1 (costs 1 die)
Looking for romance +2 (costs 4 dice)

6 dice left over

Now, in standard Pool, the scores would stay the same between sessions, unless they are bought up with 'experience'. What I'm suggesting is that you could just reassign the points for Session 2, which is (say) about trying to find the answer to a strange zombie plague that's affecting the students at Hitoshi's school.

Cute geeky looks +0 (no cost)
Ace student +2 (costs 4 dice)
Knows kung fu +0 (no cost)
Looking for a cure to the plague +2 (costs 4 dice)

7 dice left over

(As the romance subplot has been resolved, I'm crossing it off. If it still had legs, we could keep it at +0)

Does this make more sense?

Doug: Yes, that makes a lot of sense. Try this on for size: Those dice that you're "paying" for the abilities? They should be paid to some specific other player (perhaps the GM). That player will get to use those dice to have emotional influence over your character during the game, for good or ill.

Joe: Wouldn't sessions #1-3 sort of be bumpy? Remember ... in this schema session #2 (much less session #4) may well never happen. It's working under a sort of Fun Now manifesto, so I worry about doing a game that only becomes fun if the threads are all pulled together at some later date.

Hey, Tony.

This is actually one of the central pieces to Sons of Liberty, my way-backburnered game for Q4 07. You play historical figures -- George Washington, Ben Franklin, Paul Revere, etc. "Character Generation" is a matter of picking from a list of "favored circumstances" and applying them as triggers for abilities. So my Ben Franklin has five cards in his hand when he's in Congress and your Paul Revere has five cards in his hand when he's on horseback. Each session of the game is self-contained, a battle in the much greater war. Next time you get together to play, maybe you play the same figures again, but you still do character generation, so this time my Ben Franklin has five cards in his hand when he's tinkering, and you're playing George Washington this time, and he's got five cards in his hand when he's at Valley Forge. And you play another battle in the war -- maybe it's a later battle, maybe it's a prior battle. In the end, it barely matters at all. The important thing is that this battle, Valley Forge will be all important and Ben Franklin will be tinkering -- and the GM doesn't even have to thread that into the prep, since the players are going to be pushing in that direction since it gets them more cards.

I'm hoping to hit the same target you are, Tony -- set up and play in fifteen minutes; roleplay for a few hours; put the game away and know that it's available for infinite and casual replay any time you want to. The other bit that you haven't mentioned is that you don't even need the same set of players for each session. So in game one you have Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin, and by game two Frodo and Sam have wandered off, but Merry and Pippin can pick up the game with Gimli and Legolas. Continuity is strictly optional. Even if you want to play it "traditionally" with a storyline and whatever, if somebody's missing and you want to play a session, hell, do a flashback, do a flashforward, do some battle that has one fewer figure in it. It still plays just fine, and shouldn't disrupt your precious story. Again, the important thing is that the session is fun to play right then and there. Stitching things together into a larger narrative is beyond the scope of the game. Do it in your leisure time. ;)

In regards to the questions about precedence and the 'core character' and stuff, guys, you really don't need it. Character resources on the sheet are the substance of the character. The essence of the character is going to stay the same in casual play; if you really got a bee in your bonnet, maybe you push really hard to redefine the essence, but hey -- the game allows you to redefine the essence of a character if you want to? Rock on!

Thomas: very few boardgames end precisely after a certain period of time: even if there are tight restrictions on length of game (for example, only 5 turns), the speed of the players will vary. So, I think that as long as a session takes say, 45 minutes on average, that ensure that 90% of games will fit into an hour, and the remaining 10% are either good enough that the players will want to continue, or the game's going badly and it's a good time to stop.

So, a diminishing economy may fit the bill nicely enough.

Tony: We've talked about Misery Bubblegum before, so I've got no problem trying that on for size. So how about this one: those dice you give to the other players doesn't just give them influence over your character; it's a resource that lets them throw all sorts of unpleasant shit at you. When they run out of dice to throw at you, game's over. There's your diminishing resource. But what about pacing?

I'm finding it very amusing that you're thinking of this now, when IMHO [i]Capes[/i] is just about perfect for this. Indeed, I was thinking the other day about the fact that most supers in Capes seem to have no abilities that would tie into their secret identity... but then realized that the most Capes-like way of handling a secret identity would be to create it as another character! You could then use a Conflict to "change identity" to your super-self.

Indeed, the click-and-lock system makes it easy to create a new version of your character -- if you want your character to be psycho for a session, just create "psycho-X" as a new character, with a different set of Attitudes and Styles (and maybe even Powers).

It strikes me as well that Sorcerer does this to some extent, with the "when you resolve your Kicker, you can rewrite your character" rule. But Sorcerer doesn't seem to me to be as suited to a "quick" game as Capes.

Okay, sneak peek: The character traits you choose are going to be on index cards (of course!) and some of them are going to be issues that you can potentially address over the course of playing the game. When you address them, depending upon how you address them, they turn into new aspects of your character. So that's where you get to customize.

But odds are, you're going to end the game without the resources to clear all of your cards. You're going to end with cards that you've tried to address, and failed. And then the game's just going to end. They don't carry over, they don't do anything, they just weigh on your conscience.

You've played Puerto Rico, right Eric? You know when you end the game without being able to ship that one last massive pile of corn? That's going to happen in this game.

Tony,

This is developing in really interesting ways. You might also want to have a look at Vincent's Art, Grace and Guts, over on his website. It is attempting to fulfill about 95% of your original design criteria.