Then there is this other approach. “We have this inspiration, let see what is the best way to present it as a game”, or sometimes “With this genre, and with this inspiration, let see what is the best approach for this game”.

I come to see the “inspiration” as the Meta Plot. In “plain speech”, the Meta Plot is the Plot of the Plot for the game. It’s like the horror of the Warp for Warhammer 40K, the Melkor-Eru conflict in Lord of the Rings, or something as down to earth as World War II. Sometimes, a technique to skin your game and to come up with game mechanics is to use a Meta Plot as an inspiration.

Not all Games without Meta Plot are Badly Designed

Before going on, I have to emphasis one thing – games without a Meta Plot as inspiration driving their design are not automatically badly designed. For instance, Super Mario Brothers lack a Meta Plot in a grand sense of thing, nor is there one for Tetris, or I suspect for Final Fantasy I (the Final Fantasy games franchise is an interesting case study of “We have these cool mechanics; the plot and story is a seperate deal!”

The point is that a Meta Plot can be the inspiration for game mechanics and game design. Its influence can trinke all the way up to User Interface Design, quest designs, music, gameplay elements and even marketing/packaging. Could it? Let’s see.

Meta Plot and the Pen and Paper Continuum

Let begin with the pen and paper RPG world first. I have been gearing up to run Nobilis, in which each player represents an “avatar” of a concept on Earth, be it horses, communication, reading, katanas or even just blankets. The game is thick with Meta Plot – and the Plot is basically that Destroyers from Beyond Creation have come to erase out all Creation, and that includes the foundational concepts such as nature, animals, war and everything else. This Meta Plot supports the diceless game mechanics. Characters are assured of their success in any task unless opposed. This is a different take from most pen and paper RPGs which require you to make a roll to see if you succeed or fail at a challenging task.

The Meta Plot may inspire the game mechanic or the other way round, but I personally think that one thing is for sure – the Meta Plot and the game mechanics (and other design elements) must be in harmony. A big complaint of Exalted is that you never feel like the supernatural heroes which all the “fluff” (or backstory Meta Plot) makes you out to be. Or that Call of Cthlhu D20 is not as grim as its Basic Roleplaying incarnation because D20 (a generic “RPG engine” spined off from D&D 3.5) tend to gears toward heroic role-playing and characters created with the system starts out as better combatants.

Spirit of the Century, emulating pulp fiction, use the Fate 3.0 rules to allow players to create larger-than-life characters for their first adventure. We are talking stuff like Nobel prize winning scientist, ace pilot who has flew countless sorties or even a trained and skilled deadly martial artist who can floor a dozen. In fact, there is a complaint that characters in Spirit of the Century are virtually invincible, but hey, it fits the tone of the pulp fiction.

Don’t Rest your Head seems to follow “Meta Plot influences Game Design” pattern. You play as an insomniac who has been “Awakend”, granting you special abilities. However, you are also sucked into the City Awaken, a dimenison removed from normal world and is something out from a nightmare. There are rules for being exhausted – when you get more and more exhausted, you perform better and kick more ass, but there’s also a chance that you can get even more exhausted. That sounds like a good deal, except that when you are exhausted beyond a limit, you sleep and become a normal human being again, and you attract the attention of monsters who can’t wait to feast upon your helpeless body.

If we instead try to shoehorn this idea into, say D20 and GURPs, it will still work, but the mechanics presented in Don’t Rest your Head has the elements of exhaustion built right into its mechanics – you roll a number of D6 equal to your Exhaustion each time, with a 5 or 6 counting as a success. But if the higher dice roll is an Exhaustion dice, you gain 1 more point of Exhaustion (basically, there are other type of dice rolled at the same time, such as Discipline and Madness). Using another system to emulate this would be contrived.

Right, I think this article is kind of getting lengthy, and there is still a real life Flu I have to fight off. So I will just end with a “To be Continued…” here. Next up, I will pen (type?) down my thoughts on the Meta Plot and its drwbacks and how it fits into computer and board games.

A piece-pack consists of four suits – the suit above is the arm suit. A suit comes with coins (the bottom row of circular objects), a pawn (the rectangular shape to the right) and a die. (The diagram above is supposed to be double-sided – that is, printed and fold into half)

These generic pieces allow one to come up with rules revolving around them without having to design their own pieces or pay a high price for customised game components. Do check out some of the 138 games based on Piece Pack and perhaps you would get inspired too!

Play-Time: 30mins to 1 hour
Number of Players: 2 to 4
Special Equipment Needed: No? Just what you can find easily

What you’ll need

• 4 pawns of different colours, one for each player
• A chessboard, or a piece of paper with 9 squares by 9 squares
• A handful of coins in 5 denominations, all varying sizes (and preferably all from the same person!)
  • 5 large coins (or $1 in Singapore)
  • 10 medium coins (50c in Singapore)
  • 12 small coins (20c in Singapore)
  • 15 puny coins (10c in Singapore)
• 2 to 4 willing players
• A cloth bag, or box, where you can put all the coins and not see them

Setup

1. Each player places his pawn at the starting position as indicated below
   
2. Put all the coins into a cloth bag and shake well
3. Take out 5 coins from the bag and places it on the table
4. Choose a starting player with the favourite method of your choice. The owner of the coins should go first if violent arguments broke out.

Objective

To get the other side of the board. The “other side” is respective to the starting player’s position. So, for example, player one is trying to get to player two’s starting row; player 3 is trying to get to player 4′s starting column and so on. To win, you don’t want to land on the exact starting position – just anywhere on the last row/column.

How to Play

1. Players have two actions per turn. He may choose to use one, both or none.
2. A player can take a coin from the table and place it on the board. See “Placing Coins” below. He must then draw one coin at random and place it back on the table. The table must always has 5 coins. This is one action.
3. A player can move a coin on the board to any squares. See the rules for “Placing Coins” again. This counts as an action
4. A player can move his pawn one direction in the forward, left, right or backward direction as long as there is a coin at the destination. It is possible, if you are on a stack of coins, to make multiple movements. You can only move onto a stack of coins if you are on the a stack of the same height or one level lower (see “Moving Pawns” below).
5. Once a player has taken two of those actions, the next player in the clockwise direction will take his turn
6. The game ends when a player’s pawn reaches his winning row/column.

Placing Coins

Coins can be stack on a same square like a pryamid. And of course the top of a pryamid cannot be larger than its base! To stack coins, the following rules apply:

• You cannot place a coin of a larger denomation on top of a smaller one
• You cannot “insert” a coin between a stack of coins. You have to place on the top

You can also move coins around as an action. Likewise, you can always move a coin to an empty square. If you wish to move the coin to a stack, the above rules for stacking applies. You can only move the top coin of a stack. Same principle as building a stack above.

Moving your Pawn

You can only move your pawn to squares where there are coins. You cannot move diagionally unless you are on a stack of 2 coins or move. Also, you can only climb up one level per action. If you on a square with 1 coin, and going to square which has 2 coins, you may do so. However, you cannot go to a square with three coins.

Going down is easier than going up! So when you on a stack of coins, you may keep on moving as long as your destination is one or more level lower. You can even more diagionally! For example, you start on the stack with is 4 coins high. Then you move to one which is 2 coins high, then finally to 1 coin high (the minimal level possible). That 3 squares for one action!

You can also jump from a 4 coins stack to a 1 coin stack – that’s your loss.

EFAQ (Expected Frequently Asked Questions)

1. May I move a coin under an opponent’s pawn?
   No.
2. May I add a coin under my own pawn, or even an opponent?
   Yes, if the coin satisfy the stacking condition
3. What happens if the game has no possible moves?
   The player whose pawn has a Manhattan distance closest to winning wins. In case of ties for that condition, then it is the pawn on the highest stack of coin.

That’s all folks! Please post comments and feedback!