Land of Nodd: Appendix
This page contains extras for Land of Nodd. Most are linked PDF files. A little further down, you'll find some "designer's notes", explaining some of my reasoning behind the creation and the mechanics of the game.
Land of Nodd Rules Reference
A two-page summary of all the rules and advice from the main text:
Sample Character Sheet
Here is a sample character sheet, as it might look after a session of play:
You'll notice that the two players used different options for their characters and wrote their information in slightly different formats (the second character is written in first person). That's perfectly fine, so long as everyone in the group has agreed that it won't bother them.
Sample Detailed Character Creation
See a more detailed sample character here.
Example Brainstorming Map
Here is what a "brainstorming map" (from the Atmospheric Setup) might look like, step by step, from start to finish:
The group begins by writing out five seed words, then the first two statements are used to add character/group nodes, inspired by the seed words:
In the next two turns, the players add two more character nodes, until the map looks like this:
The next two turns see players making connections between some of these characters and groups:
The first regular node is added--a location. The players decide that it also consitutes a "connection" between two characters, the ogre and the homunculus:
In Step 6, one more connection establishes a relationship between the two monsters, and the players decide that it also qualifies as a conflict:
Finally, the conditions for the completion of the map are satisfied (the last connection has been highlighted so you can spot it more easily):
There is an error in the text in the top left corner of the map--what it should say is: "The Shadow Demons are missing one more 'connection' and do not yet have an estalished conflict with a character or group. The Order of Wizards is also missing a connection. All three missing conditions may be satisfied by connecting the two and putting them into conflict."
Note that the players making this map:
- Were a little inconsistent in that they made separate nodes for the ogre and the homunculus characters, but allowed the Queen to become a character simply by drawing connections to the seed word "QUEEN". You can do it either way--it doesn't affect the conditions or the eventual utility of the map.
- Marked character/group nodes by putting a line through the circle marking the node, distinguishing them from regular nodes. This is good idea, as it helps the players check whether they have satisfied the conditions of the map more easily.
- Used only one regular node. This is not typical--it is possible to use as many regular nodes as you wish for things like places, items, vehicles, etc.
Although it is possible to create a brainstorming map with no regular nodes, I strongly advise you to make sure that any brainstorming map you create contains at least one regular node describing a location of some sort. It will become a great help to Narrators in later play.
They also created most of the nodes before making connections between them. This is not necessary, either--you can add information in any order you wish so long as by the end all the conditions are fulfilled.
Finally, if you look at each added node and each step carefully, you should be able to understand the logic that led to each connection being made (keep in mind that there are actually four "turns" between Steps 3 and 4). However, some of the connections (and conflicts) are somewhat debatable. For instance, does the fact that the ogre lusts after the Queen constitute a conflict between those two characters?
Such points are unavoidable, and weird or oblique connections or conflicts are bound to appear. That's fine: the players should discuss each suggested connection as they draw them in, and whatever decision they make is perfectly acceptable. As long as there is consensus on a point, it doesn't matter how tenuous a connection has been drawn. The brainstorming map will have served its purpose in giving the players a common ground from which to begin play.
On Narrating the Outcome of a Story Contest
It was my intent that once the cards are on the table, the Narrator and Protagonist play out what exactly happens together, both contributing details to the narration. If anything, the Protagonist should be taking more of a lead in this process ("I leap onto the table, avoiding the Duke's thrust, and manage to skewer both guards before the chandelier falls on my head!"). After all, they both know exactly what is about to happen--the narration is purely a matter of details.
One good way to do this in a more structured way is for the Protagonist to play his cards one at a time, perhaps even handing them to the player who named the Risk they are dealing with. If the first Risk was that the character loses the wager and must surrender his car to the mafia, the Protagonist can slide forward a face card, describing how the wager is won, then play another card to narrate how he receives a black eye in the process, and so on, in whatever order he deems most interesting or appropriate. This has the additional effect of leaving everyone else in suspense until the last possible moment.
Creating Thematic Links
To create games that move further into deep thematic or literary territory, you can use story elements in less literal ways. For instance, in such a game, an "element" could be a visual or stylistic commonality, such as "urban decay", "steam power", "austere homes", or "life is cheap". Visuals or scene types, like "a foray into the underwater world" could also be used. Finally, an element could be a theme, like "grief", "the cost of loyalty", or "the triumph of love over adversity", which must be dealt with in any storyline where it appears.
Needless to say, such use of elements will require much more careful handling and thought from the players.
Designer's Notes
Land of Nodd is written as a sort of "indie rpg" for traditional gamers. It uses techniques common to indie games whilst attempting to preserve a very traditional player and GM dynamic, as you would find in most mainstream roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons. This allows players who like "immersion" and similar techniques to continue using them as much as they like.
One of the key elements is that the game provides a structure and a set of features which help the players create intense and dynamic stories minutes after they decide to sit down and play. All the character details or traits, as well as the mechanics of winning Coins from the other players, exist as tools or incentives to create story. A character's Desire, the story elements in the characters' storylines, and other elements can usually quite easily be combined into fun scenes that suggest further story without anyone having to plan it out beforehand.
The basic mechanic--relatively simple and absolutely universal--also helps to make this work. The story contest allows the players to deal with any sort of uncertainty or conflict they wish, whether it be physical combat, a doctor carrying out research, a woman trying to fix her marriage, or a young man looking to "find himself" on a spiritual quest in the desert. Whatever the players are interested in dealing with can be explored through the mechanic. A priest who is on the verge of losing his faith wants to make good by entering a monastery, repenting, and praying for a whole month? The player sets his Goal ("To cleanse my sins and regain my faith"), the other players name some Risks ("Your daughter is angered by your decision to ignore her and turns to a life of drugs"), and, depending on how the cards fall, the priest may have a very difficult choice to make. In this way, any sort of challenge the players wish to deal with can be explored in the game.
I also spent a long time trying to figure what drew many gamers, including myself, to complex rulesets. How simple is too simple? How complicated is too complicated? I came to the conclusion that there were three factors that made players choose complex mechanics over simple ones:
- A complex ruleset can offer the players more options, making the game more interesting to play. A ruleset that is too simple, on the other hand, does not offer many choices to the player. If your only option in combat is "roll to hit", the process isn't sufficiently interactive and may quickly become dull and repetitive.
- A more complex ruleset provides more detail, filling in bits of the narration for you. A tactical combat system with complex charts tells you not only that you hit but also where you hit, how hard, and whether the blood spray reached the far wall. This takes some of the burden off the GM and contributes extra detail to narration. (Of course, the problem is that even the best of such systems generate really unlikely results often enough to turn any serious game into a farce from time to time...)
- The satisfaction that comes with mastering an esoteric field of knowledge for the sake of its own challenge; perhaps also the satisfaction of knowing the rules better than one's friends, thus gaining some form of social authority over them.
The last factor is one I am quite simply not interested in. Quite bluntly, I have better things to do. The other two are interesting, however. If I am right, players are drawn to complex rulesets because they:
- Provide lots of player choice.
- Provide lots of detail for narration.
So, with Land of Nodd I set out to see whether I could fulfill both those criteria with a simple mechanic. I hope I have succeeded:
In Land of Nodd, each contest sees the Protagonist deciding how to allocate his resources, and then making the often awkward and tense choice of how to handle the results. Does he let his comrade die in the arms of the Secret Police in order to reach safety? Indeed, the player has more choices in a single instance of Land of Nodd resolution than most games, I think, and the system ensures that those choices are almost always meaningful and exciting. The Protagonist can decide to face the music, leaping bravely from the fire into the frying pan, or he can choose to expend his resources to get more or less what he wants, but at the cost of landing in more serious trouble later...
As for the second factor--detailed narration--the game provides quite a lot of input for narration as well. The story contest, through the naming of Risks, lends all sorts of detail to any sort of conflict. Whereas in a typical RPG, a blow from a club could strike, miss, or miss so badly that the character loses his grip on the club, in Land of Nodd the character making the blow could accidentally kill the friend they were trying to subdue, attract the attention of the local militia, disgust their superiors--or their lover--with their behavior, send their opponent over a cliff, trigger a dangerous alien piece of machinery, or anything else the players find interesting.
The best part is that, unlike in some of those systems with millions of dice charts, you'll never get a "wrong" or illogical result from the rules.
Why Land of Nodd?
Why did I write this game? Over my years playing roleplaying games, I often found myself frustrated. While I had many great experiences and fun games, the fun just wasn't that consistently achievable. Some sessions were exciting and intense; others devolved into boring, pointless dialogue or number-crunching.
As a player, I found that most GMs made decisions that put me off or kept me from enjoying the game. The good ones did so only rarely, but when they did it was still enough of a stumbling block that it was hard to ignore. As a result, I found myself trying to GM games as often as possible, so that I could run them "the way I thought they should be run". Unfortunately, that meant I rarely got to enjoy myself as a player--I rarely got to develop an interesting character and spend time kicking around in their shoes, which is a large part of what drew me to RPGs in the first place.
As a GM I was also often unfulfilled. First of all, it was simply a tremendous amount of work--and more often than not, the work I had put in would be totally ignored by the players. I found that whenever I relaxed and let the players drive the game, things would quickly draw to a standstill, and the game was only fun so long as I supplied a flow of fresh ideas. Sometimes the work paid off, and much fun was had by all; at other times I found it tiring and unrewarding.
More importantly, as a GM I usually knew more or less how things would turn out. At the very least, I always knew who the murderer was, who was hiding behind the bell jar, and who was sleeping with who. I didn't get to discover the imaginary world in the way I love doing as a player or as the reader of a good novel. That feeling of discovery and uncertainty was also a large part of why I was drawn to roleplaying games--and, more often than not, GMing meant discarding it altogether.
So, I was kind of stuck. I loved the tension of playing a character and making tough choices with limited means, discovering a mysterious world, or unraveling a mystery, but I also wanted to contribute to the game as a creative person with lots of ideas and imagination. With most RPGs, I could at most do one or the other; never both at once. Either I played a character and had to leave my own creative ideas at the door, with no guarantee I would even enjoy the game, or I was the GM and worked hard for the game I wanted but ended up feeling tired and underappreciated, and had to sacrifice the thrill of facing the unknown with only two rounds remaining in my shotgun.
Land of Nodd is my attempt to find a middle ground--not only a game where I can enjoy the challenges of being another person in another world and feel that thrill of "turning the page", but also a game where I get to contribute interesting setting details, NPCs, and plot twists on a regular basis, without being expected to do so constantly.
What About Those Other Games?
In many of the new games I was checking out (such as the storytelling games I've been working on, various so-called "hippy games", or indie RPGs), I could--and had to--do both of the above simultaneously, which detracted a bit from both types of fun. Land of Nodd is in experiment in that it includes both activities for each player but never allows you to participate in both of them at the same time, effectively separating character portrayal from creative input.
I also loved the way those games allow the fiction to draw from the imagination of every player at the table, as opposed to just one mind working for the benefit of all the others. For that reason, Land of Nodd is designed so that it does not depend on a single player having "a good night" or coming up with great idea after great idea. True, some of the stories that emerge as the creations of one player can be exciting and twisted, but when every player contributes, the resulting fiction takes off like a rocket engine almost every time.
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