GvE
From Good v. Evil Encyclopedia
Contents |
Background
Good v. Evil (GvE) is a fantasy role-playing game that began its preliminary games in September 2004 and began full role-playing in December 2004.
From December 2004 to March 2007, the game was divided into two teams, a "Good Team" and an "Evil Team". The Good Team was defined as the one that bases its actions on what is best for the largest number of people. The Evil Team was defined as the one that bases its actions on self-interest. The two teams explored a fantasy world called the Thistledown, choosing their own tasks and adventures, getting themselves into trouble and (hopefully) getting themselves back out of it again. The two teams were in competition over the course of the game, though they only rarely came into direct conflict. Instead, the two teams pursued their own agendas, though those agendas clashed from time to time. They even assisted each other occasionally.
In March 2007, this format was abandoned. In the view of the GM, the two teams were becoming overly competitive. Disagreements that begin in-character began to spread out-of-character, and vice-versa. The competition between the two teams became personal. As a result, the GM elected to put the game on hiatus to allow tempers to cool down, and relaunched the game in August 2007 with a more standard role-playing format.
Philosophy and Role-Playing
Everyone has done some role-playing as a child, every time they've played cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, or when playing with dolls. A role-playing game is a structure both for having fun and for story-telling. Each player creates a character following the GvE rules. Each character has a biography and a background defining who the character is and where he or she comes from. Each character also has equipment, money, skills, abilities, and attributes that help define whether the character will be successful at a given action. Just as on Earth, some people can hit a curve ball and some can't, some characters on the Thistledown will be good at some things, and other characters will be good at others. A number of players, playing their characters, form a team. The GM's role is to define what the characters see, what is happening in the world, and how the world responds to their actions.
Over the course of GvE, the players make decisions, and role-play their characters through the consequences of those decisions, whether those actions are for good or ill.
As an example, assume for a moment a region bordered on one side by a mountain range is threatened by a large monster of some type. The monster is known to spend most of its time in its lair, but emerges from time to time to hunt and ravage the surrounding region. The monster is intelligent, and leaves its lair guarded, and often returns with treasures of its own. Assume further that both teams come to the realization that they require one of this monster's treasures.
The team might very well seek to "kill two birds with one stone" by entrapping the creature in its lair, killing or driving off its guards, destroying it, and ending the threat to the surrounding region. In the process, they claim both the required item and the good wishes of the local townspeople. Alternately, they might rally a militia of the townspeople in order to attack the monster's lair in force, rallying the local citizenry to their cause.
However, the team might very well concoct a plan to strike at the creature's lair while the creature was away, so that they only had the guards to contend with. They might enhance the plan by luring the creature out of its lair for a long period of time, using the townspeople or something that they possessed as bait. They might even enter the monster's lair with the intent of negotiating for the item, in exchange for some service, or knowledge of the location of some valuable item within the monster's domain.
As a result, the story will change based on the choices the team makes. The GM will decide how their actions are responded to on the Thistledown, and their Reputations will spread...
Mechanics
GvE is actually two games, the Tournament Game and Open World Games.
The Tournament Game is a once-weekly IRC-based role-playing game, with a character sheet component and a dice component, refereed by a GM (Jester) who is not a simmer (except for NPCs). Players are persistent from week to week, retaining the same characters, items, skills, and backgrounds. Each team's once-weekly IRC time has been set by majority vote of the team themselves, from a selection of times that the GM could attend. A log system and e-mail mailing list are also a vital component of the sim, and logs, though not required, are encouraged and rewarded when written.
The Tournament Game team selects leaders, and decides themselves, from week to week, where they wish to go and what they wish to do. Often, their decisions result in multiple-week story arcs where they must first extricate themselves from their current situation before moving on to a new one. Their decisions also have long-term ramifications which in some cases might be entirely unforeseen. Perhaps the team, by causing the destruction of many of the local townsfolk with their ruse in the example above, earn the ire of the local nobility which offers a reward for their capture or demise.
The Tournament Game has an overall story arc, and long term plot lines that will affect the team indirectly, if at all. The important consideration will be how the two teams choose to react to events taking place around them. Since they choose their path, they can choose risky, high-reward paths, or safer, lower-reward paths, as they choose.
By contrast, the Open World Games are irregular, happening when the GM or another player has the time to run them. They can be a single IRC session, multiple IRC sessions, or can take place entirely in the GvE forums, in a play-by-post format. Characters available for Open World Games are persistent, but the GM of any particular Open World Game will decide for him- or herself which characters are appropriate for any given game, usually by setting a number of characters that can participate and how many points those characters are worth. The Open World Games can take place in the same time-frame as the Tournament Game or can take place in whatever time period the GM desires.
Finally, in addition to the regular players, any number of additional players will be registered as "Neutrals". Neutrals will be allowed to play key NPCs that come into contact with either Tournament or Open World Games, either in combat, or in less adversarial situations. Neutrals may come and go as they please, play the NPCs assigned to them by the GM, disappear for months and reappear whenever they like, without restriction.
Attending games, either the Tournament or Open World Games, or as a Neutral, will earn the player points. For active players, points may be redeemed for higher skills and attributes. For Neutrals, points are banked until one or more slots open on in the Tournament Game. At that time, the Neutral with the most points will be offered the open slot of his or her choice, until the Tournament Game slots are again filled.
Dice
During the course of the game, skill checks may be required. Each character will have skills and attributes ranging from 1 (very poor) to 25 (excellent) or higher. In general, when a skill check is required, the player will roll that check through a specialized IRC channel bot designed for that purpose. The bot will roll three 6-sided dice, giving a result between 3 and 18 before penalties or bonuses are applied. If, after penalties and bonuses, the roll is below the character's appropriate skill or attribute, the check succeeds. Otherwise, it fails.
There are some 300 skills in which the characters can become proficient, some quite basic, some quite advanced. Each skill is assigned a difficulty factor (DF). Higher DF skills require more points to learn, and more points to advance to higher levels in. As players attend games and gain points, they may for the most part choose where their points are applied. As more points are applied to each skill, that skill level will rise, making it more likely that the character will succeed in future checks against that skill.
GvE has rules that dictate how skills are used. The rules are based on a number of role-playing systems, notably Chivalry and Sorcery, Dungeons and Dragons, and GURPS. However, GvE uses none of those systems full-time; the rules are a combination of elements from all three systems.
Long Term
Over the long term, the GvE characters should become quite skilled individuals. Over the course of the game, it is entirely possible that GvE characters will wish to build strongholds, gain followers and retainers, assault competing strongholds, and perhaps even gather and lead their own armies. The game mechanics will account and allow for this, and in fact part of the long term game story arc will encourage characters to rise to this level of power and authority.
In addition, there are a number of guilds and secret societies on the Thistledown, devoted to a number of pursuits. Skilled characters are likely to be invited to join these guilds, and may seek to gain rank within them, or even to lead them. Characters might also wish to form their own guilds.
Finally, the game is expected to run seven years. Toward the end of that time, the game's long term story arc will come to a head, with the (hopefully, by this time) powerful characters directly influencing the course of the Thistledown's history...
Interested?
If you're interested in playing GvE, there are nine basic steps to get started:
- Send a note to the GM, Jester, using the GvE Join Form, saying that you'd like to join;
- Log into the GvE IRC server. There are instructions available here to do this;
- Sign up for the GvE Information Portal;
- Read through the Good v. Evil Rules, particularly the Combat Rules;
- Create a character, first by rolling his or her Birth Aspects;
- Work with your team, either the Evil Team or the Good Team, to develop your character's role on the team;
- You receive 150 points to build your character with, but can receive up to 25 more for writing a bio;
- Develop your character's skills, advantages, disadvantages, and attributes;
- Load your character into the GvE Character Database;
- ...and that's it! You're ready to play! See you on the Thistledown!
