Hi everyone,
I had big plans for my Color-first Endeavor back in 2010, but life interfered exceptionally harshly and I had to call it off. Besides, so many people participated that the scope of my project was unmanageable. Not that I minded seeing so many awesome character ideas and games applications, but the whole thing turned into a mess when I got wrapped up in the preliminary step and never actually started the planned activity. I want to try it again with a better handle on my goals and on the process.
Anyway, check out this picture, which I got from 123rf.com, without paying for it, which is why it's marred by the logo shadow which you should ignore.
(http://adept-press.com/wordpress/wp-content/media/dollarman2.jpg)
Make him up as a character for an RPG of your choice, stating the game's name, with the following limitations and guiding points. Post right here in this thread.
1. A beginning character, using exactly the rules as written. Keep in mind, this would be a character you actually want to play - someone you can respect and advocate for.
2. The game must permit enough user-choice to arrive at the character, rather than fudging a randomized system. You can use a highly-randomized game if it works for the character, just, no fudging please.
3. The game genre and setting material, if applicable, should be faithful to the picture. Please do not stretch this point. And related: do not make a parody character regarding a given game, unless that game is explicitly about doing so.
4. If the game requires setting preparation as well as character creation, include that as well. You can do it yourself for present purposes even if it calls for group discussion.
5. Do the full, full process of making the character, all the way down to buying his tie if that's what it takes in that game to be play-ready.
6. Present absolutely all the steps of character creation in detail.
7. Please do not write fiction or back-story for the character beyond that required in the rules.
8. For purposes of posting, please use one game for one character per person. You can make up more or others, but keep them desk-side for now.
9. Don't use a game that someone else has already used in the thread.
10. Provide a link to an internet-readable scan or facsimile of the character sheet, or email it to me so I can upload and link to it. This is required!
We will stop at five characters. You're free to participate as well without submitting one of these, just keep your notes to yourself to start. There will be opportunities to bring in such "non-official" characters later.
So this time, I promise to keep my intended points much more clear, to open up discussion more, and generally to be more laid back - but also to get to the point right up front. Given that we'll have fewer characters, I think this whole thing will be more readable, more concise, and more fun.
Best, Ron
H'mmm, I had an idea. OK, for this thread only, you can post pictures. But only of the character sheet! That should make the whole thing easier.
Also, the previous post has a typo: the original project was in early 2009. The threads were Color-first character creation project (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forge/index.php?topic=27387.0) and Color-first character, part 2: Getting this far (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forge/index.php?topic=27422.0) if you want, but it is not supposed to be required background reading for what we're doing now. I'm only including it for the documentarians among us.
Best, Ron
Well, I am writing a game that deals exactly with what is depicted here: normal person that are learning to be superheroes.
The game is Dawn of a New Tomorrow and currently you can find a public version of the rule, colored for a vampire setting here (http://www.webinprogress.it/transfer/Dawn1-2.pdf).
The game is about a life that changes after a violent event, bringing you super-human qualities you have to deal with.
Game starts with a "played" character creation.
You go through 3 scenes in which you show the first reactions of the character to the event.
These scenes fix the character backstory, give the GM some solid hooks to build the adversity onto, and uses a simple version of the conflict to define the characters ability.
Characters sheet is divided in two halves, one is named You Control and shows all the abilities and powers that a character knows and uses willingly.
The other half is called Controls You and lists the abilities that the new super-human instinct is pushing to the surface.
A conflict is always made with one ability from each side, summing up the dice-pool. Blue d10 for You Control, red d10 for Controls You.
If there's some "success" in the conflict made with red dice, the other players not involved in the conflict narrate that bit of story, actively bringing the feeling of "loss of control" to the player.
Every character has two starting abilities: Self Control (You Control) and Rage (Controls You), both at score 2.
So, let's start.
[ the event ]
Chris is a broker.
He spends his life between home and job, just like any normal person, struggling to have that 30 minutes with his friends at the pub every night.
On a monday morning, just like any morning, he is going to work. Sadly, it's the very morning in which the terrorist release some untested, unsafe, unknown chemical weapon on the city.
For those that don't change to super-human: the event and the changed are scary.
Event has a local scale: city.
Event is public: there are filmed proof of changed people.
Government is involved: the changed are sought after by the NSA and there's a conspiracy.
Belonging: Chris is of the upper middle-class and he likes it, so as a super-hero, he will defend the upper middle class.
[ Scene 1; saving Pamela. ] (Scene 1 is always about saving an innocent)
During the terrorist attack, Chris spots his colleague Pamela in a car near his; she is victim of a crash and flames are slowing crawling toward her.
Chris wants to save her, and attempting to do so, he discovers he has "super-speed" and that he "feels no fear".
These are his first pair of abilities. He see that he can Control "feels no fear", while his instinct Controls "super-speed".
He wants to get Pamela out of the car before it explodes.
Player rolls enough for saving Pamela, but in the action Chris uses his super-speed in public and the TV camera filming the scene spots him, sending him to the morning news. (one red die -> public is aware of super-powers in use).
Player rolled 3 blu dice and 1 red die for the conflict, so "feels no fear" has a score of 3, and "super-speed" has a score of 1.
Sacrifice for: as he discovered his powers in the attempt of saving a young woman, as a super-hero Chris is ready to sacrifice for young women
[ Scene 2; house fighting. ] (Scene 2 is always about confronting a relative / close friend, one day after the event)
The day after, Chris is at home, with Jenny, his wife.
She saw the news yesterday morning and saw Chris saving Pamela.
This was too much for her to stand, Chris should have gone back home without risking his life for that bitch.
Jenny wants Chris to promise he will quit is job and she is ready to call in for the NSA and get Chirs arrested to enforce this request.
In this scene, Chris discovers he can "Stop bullets" (You Control), if he moves fast enough. He also notices that his new speed helps him making a use of those "karate" lessons he had as a kid (Controls You).
He tries to escape the NSA special squad after he failed to convince Jenny he has no relation with Pam.
Player roll but loses the conflict, so Chris get arrested. Jenny ends up knocked out under a shelf that falls over her (used 2 red die -> an innocent get harmed)
Player rolled 2 blu die and 2 red dice for the conflict, so "Stop Bullets" has a score of 2, and "karate" has a score of 2.
Enrage with: as he has been betrayed by someone he loved, as a super-hero Chris get mad every time he is betrayed
[ Scene 3; killing in the name of. ] (Scene 3 is always about clashing with another super-being, one week after the event)
One week later, still in jail, Chris discovers from a guard there's more than what he has been told, and part of the government is involved in the event: someone is trying to destroy America and force a dictatorship; they are seizing all properties and they want to control every aspect of the new society with some social engineer project and normalize life to pre-defined standards.
He decides he has to stop this, and let everyone know what is happening.
He has to evade then, which is a simple task for someone who can phase through walls. Problem is... there's a super-police man guarding him, someone who is changed as well, but is working for the NSA and the government.
Chris attacks.
He discovers he can toss some kind of "pressure bolts" (You Control) toward a target by executing karate moves faster than sound.
He also notices that, in the end, he "likes bloodshed" (Controls You).
Chris successfully beat the super-guard... but with 3 red die. Which means someone is dying because Chris gets out of control. The super-guard.
Player rolled 1 blue and 3 red, so "pressure bolts" has a score of 1 and "likes bloodshed" has a score of 3.
Fights for: Chris fights for Freedom, for the Possibilities and for the Old American Dream; He is against the New Order and chooses his name and icon as super-hero to represent the old society he wants back. He will be The Dollar.
Will he succeed in his crusade against the New Order, or will he fall under the consequences of his powers?
So, this is the Dollar, at least as interpreted in Dawn of a New Tomorrow.
Davide, help me a little: is the setting for the game in a more-or-less generic American big city (cough, New York), as in most of the comics, or are you thinking in terms of an Italian setting?
Also, please provide an image for the character sheet. Even if it is only a piece of paper with notes at this stage of the game's development, I want to see that piece of paper with its notes.
Best, Ron
The setting is part of the game preparation phase.
I suggest to take inspiration from the players own cities, but they are free to set the game in whichever place on Earth they want.
I could play-test it in both a "standard american big city" setting and an italian one, with a big meteor crushing down the Coliseum in Rome.
The location is the first bit of the preparation the group does at the starting of the first session.
As far as I saw, usually setting the game in Italy means there is something to do with/against the Vatican.
Italy seems to be tied to Vatican, in many player's fantasies. Even those of us who are not living in Rome.
I have a PDF for the Vampire version of the game.
The only difference with the "super-heroe" version can be found in some terms on the sheet, in order to respect the color change.
Vamp Sheet (http://www.webinprogress.it/transfer/scheda2small.pdf)
Character creation is always fun! After looking at the $-man for like five seconds I choose "Over the Edge" (I own the 2nd edition manual, published in the late 90s IIRC).
I took notes following the character creation steps described in the book, then filled up the char sheet and much to my surprise, I found that the official sheet doesn't have any specific field for most of the stuff I had to make up, but it has fields for additional stuff not mentioned in the manual. Anyway, here you can find links to (respectively) the notes and the sheet--
https://www.box.com/s/74f137c183d4ae23b4a5
https://www.box.com/s/d8b7793ec607cc595ba2
The book tells me to start with a general concept for the character, specifically saying to follow "my GM's lead". Funnily, I automatically assumed Ron was the GM and just imagined what "his lead" could be.
So, I look at that big $ symbol for a few seconds and the first thing that comes into my mind is that I don't really know its history and meaning. A quick search on Wikipedia corrects this, and I also learn that exactly the same symbol was used by alchemists for cinnabar, a reddish mineral that vaguely reminds me of some Kant stuff I read ages ago and never really understood. From this moment, the character practically wrote himself.
My character is an alchemist who found a way to transmute copper into gold by using a cinnabar-based potion of his invention. My fictional GM looks at me and goes "isn't that a bit bland?" --I remember he wrote Sorcerer and quickly add "cinnabar, sure, plus freshly spilled human blood". The blood needs to be ritually extracted but it doesn't matter whether the, ermm, donor is willing or not.
So we have this guy, say from Brazil (Brazil sounds good for some reason, maybe because it has a rich mystical heritage but it's a bit oblique to all the alchemic traditions I know of), who knows how to never run out of pure gold. This means that he's probably hunted by some illuminati-like organization who wants to use this process in large scales to [do something, can't decide right now] to global economy.
Good! So now I have to decide Ricardo Azevedo's (30 seconds of googling common Brazilian names resulted in this) four traits. You'll find the full descriptions on the char sheet. The central trait is obviously "alchemist", the side traits are "cool" and "personal manipulator", and the flaw is "enemies". I choose to boost the central trait (but it's still worth only 2 dices because it's a fringe skill), leaving average scores on everything else. I also add a short description and an external sign to every trait.
Then I have to write down hit points (which are the lowest possible amount, 14, since I didn't write any physical trait) and the experience pool (just 1 die for starting characters). No choices to be made here.
The next step is to decide on a motivation for the character to having moved to Al Amarja. I keep it simple and decide that he wanted to go to a safe place where his hunters couldn't follow him. You know, I'm sure he's wrong, but I look forward to playing him relaxed and all-confident at first. Maybe he also wants to do something a bit more proactive, like using his gold-creating power to throw a wrench in the works of the financial illuminati-like organization ruling the world, but I want to get to know him better before committing.
Now I have to choose "some secret, some hidden fact that few others, if any, know about you". I choose an option straight from the book because it sounds good: Ricardo is gay and feels the need to keep this a secret.
Then, I have to choose an "important person" that somehow critically changed his life. Reading the suggestions on the book I spot Attila the Hun and Edgar Allan Poe as examples, so they don't have to be people Ricardo met personally. I finally settle on Carl Jung for his pseudo-alchemic writings. It seems that Ricardo read them more literally than most academics ever imagined to do and somehow got from them his basic alchemy skills. Aargh, now I want to re-read Mysterium Coniunctionis again. But erm, on second though, I don't really.
Finally, the book instructs me to sketch a drawing of my character! How ironic is this? Seems like I'm doing a bit of "color-last" even if I started "color-first". Anyway, I do a quick sketch and my pathetic effort looks absolutely nothing like the starting $-man. Oh well, I add some well-chosen alchemical symbols and that's it. Quoting the book: "This step is important because it carries the creation process beyond the verbal and establishes hyper-neural connections among centers of your brain that are not directly connected (specifically motor control and vision centers)".
I'd happily play Ricardo, I'm quite satisfied of him as a starting OTE character. I'm excited about this color-first thingy because I don't have a clue about where it might lead. But I really hope it won't bring us to something that contains "hyperneural" in its explanation.
Excellent! Davide, it would be really good if you said whether the setting is Italy or generic-U.S. for your character because it matters a lot. Forgive me if you did and I missed it.
Markus: Oh, he is so totally a gay Brazilian! I'm glad I made up my character (to be revealed after the other five are here) before reading that. Everyone else making up characters, ignore it! I know it's not going to be easy.
Editing this in: also, Markus, you didn't fill in the descriptions sections of that sheet. I bet that's hyper-neural too, so you should do it.
Ron, you are asking to create "a character you actually want to play - someone you can respect and advocate for" from a picture of... Captain Dollar?
My first reaction was "impossible, this isn't something I can do", but I already could not participate in the first color-fist contest, and I can't resist a challenge...
(I am writing all this as a part of "Present absolutely all the steps of character creation in detail.", by the way)
So...
Looking at the picture, what I see is "fake" No way that is a "real" superhero. The pose, the expression... is obviously staged. So, that's a model or an actor.
An actor... in a shitty direct-to-video movie about a superhero called "Captain Free Market" or something like that. Why should an actor de-humanize himself so much? de-humanize... mmmm....
MY LIFE WITH MASTER
First, by the rules, I have to create the Master:
ED WHITE: the agent of a lot of down-to-their-luck actors and would-be actors, that he exploit mercilessly for his own gains.
The Environment around him is FEAR: 4, REASON: 1 (well, it's Hollywood...)
Ed White is a BEAST (you should see his table manners) and COLLECTOR (he collects people to use as pawns and dirty secrets to use for blackmail)
The Outsiders are famous actresses and more in general high society women. He want to become so rich and famous to attract them as relationships (not as clients). He has no chance (I said he is a beast, right?)
Then, the Minion pictured in the photo:
JOHN VALENTINO (born Giacomo Vallini, but he legally changed his name), would-be actor that until now got only very small parts, but was recently selected to play "Captain Free Market" for a low-budget direct-to-video superhero movie. He thinks he "owe everything" to Ed.
Self-Loathing: 2
Weariness: 1
Love: 0
More than Human: He can seduce everybody, man or female, but not when he is really attracted by that person.
Less than human: he can't refuse the offer of any substance (from his mother's inedible cake to a shot of heroin) apart when he is his own home (I don't see him as an addict, but as someone with very weak force of will that try to please everybody)
Connections:
1) Jenny, the waiter at a local diner
2) Walt, a technician at the movie studio.
I will send the filled character sheet by e-mail later, Ron, I don't have a scanner.
Quote from: Ron Edwards on July 17, 2012, 12:13:32 PM
Excellent! Davide, it would be really good if you said whether the setting is Italy or generic-U.S. for your character because it matters a lot. Forgive me if you did and I missed it.
Character is generic-U.S. or so I thought about him when I was "creating him".
There's a lot to say about this choice... I mean, even if I wanted to create a super-hero "close to home", it would be generic-U.S. for me, cause all the heroes I read of were american.
My experience about "heroes" is generic-U.S. only.
And an italian super-hero would make me laugh.
Here's Moreno's sheet for John Valentino:
(http://adept-press.com/wordpress/wp-content/media/Scheda-John-Valentino-1.jpg)
Creating this character in--Aberrant!
Phase One: Human
- Name: David Fletcher ("Fletch")
- Concept: A shill, a TV infomercial pitchman.
- Nature: Bravo ("there are winners and losers in life, and you are a winner--gain Willpower whenever you make someone else back down") (I'm thinking more on the bully end of this, Fletch is a big fish in a small pond)
- Allegiance: Corporate (the N! network - he shills products marketed towards wannabe Novas)
- Attributes (see sheet for point allocations!)
-- I prioritize Social as my primary group, Mental as secondary and Physical as tertiary.
-- Select Skills (nothing higher than 3)
- Backgrounds
-- Backing 2 (N! network)
-- Followers 2 (two production assistants, Steve and Darlene)
-- Resources 3 (affluent guy)
-- Initial Willpower 3, Quantum 1, Initiative 5, Movement 7/14/26
- Spend bonus points: 6 to add +3 Willpower, 2 to add +2 Resources (dude is filthy rich), 1 to add +1 Backing, 2 to add +1 Subterfuge skill, 2 to add +1 Style skill, 1 to add "investing" specialty to Biz, 1 to add "snake-oil salesman" specialty to Subterfuge
Phase Two: Nova
- Origin: A rival pitchman at the N! sales channel (N!shop) played a stupid prank on David during a live infomercial for what was supposed to be a special hyperfitness system that would give the user Nova-like stamina and strength. When David was to use the weight training equipment, the foam barbells had been replaced with real ones--as the rival, Joshua Lagos, watched from backstage, David strapped in and, without missing a beat in his patter, bench pressed 1000 lbs.
The legal and PR teams at N!sales have been busy around the clock keeping a Project: Utopia representative away from David while he figures out the extent of his new abilities. So far, he's demonstrated extraordinary strength, and those around him have done a 180 in their opinion of him as a person. As long as the phone lines keep lighting up for what he's selling, his superiors at N!sales have no reason to probe into what--other--abilities he may have gained.
- Nova Points (30 to spend)
-- 1 pt for 5 Background dots - 4 Influence, and 1 more dot of Backing
-- Mega-Strength 1 (3 pts)
-- Mega-Charisma 2 (6 pts)
-- Mega-Manipulation 2 (6 pts) with the Persuader and Trickster Enhancements (2 pts)
-- Quantum Power: 2 dots of Domination (6 pts) bought with the Telepathic extra (4 pts). I'm going to buy this as a Tainted power, so it only costs 6 instead of 10, and I have 2 points of permanent Taint
- Oh hey, I need Quantum 3 to have Dominate, so I spend my last 6 points on 2 Tainted dots of Quantum.
Because I have Taint 4, I need to decide on an Aberration for Fletch. I'm going to go with a classic - Aberrant Eyes. Fletch has no visible pupils, the entire center of his eyes are deep, dark, endless brown. Those who stand close enough sometimes have problems focusing on anything else--
Finally, the picture! That's a publicity photo shot AFTER Fletch Erupted, which N! uses to advertise his pitch show (now, of course, he has his own pitch show). The idea is that he knows so much about money, he makes the smartest buys and gets the best deals for his customers - who are only too willing to click "buy now" when he tells them too--
At this point, I see playing him as a guy who's just realizing that he got everything that he wanted in life. He has the money, he has the fame, and everyone around him does what he wants them to do. By Nova standards, however, he's actually pretty weak - no big combat powers, no survival abilities, and really only one good trick to get him out of trouble. He could be a great soft asset for any of the canonical factions, through, and his visible Taint puts him in play for the less savory ones.
link to bigger sheet (http://www.ndpdesign.com/storage/fletcher_aberrant_character.jpg)
(http://www.ndpdesign.com/storage/fletcher_aberrant_character.jpg)
I made my character in Freemarket. Character sheet forthcoming.
Key ID (char name): Ickarus
Clade (char concept): Street Theater Actor
Generation: Second Gen
Geneline (2): Reeve
Tags: Dashing, Extrovert, Weird
Experiences:
Cultivation (1)
Recycling (1)
Ephemera (2)
Shaping (1)
Interface:
Needlefingers v1.5 (1)
Tags: Cultivation, Sewing Needles, Flexible
Stanislov Keysoft (1)
Tags: Shaping, Method Acting, Truthiness
Technology:
Show Flyer (1)
Tags: Ephemera, Glossy Poster, Shifting Graphics
MRCZ*
Name: Marketasmo!
Goal: Print up and distribute the tech performing artists need to do their work and promote it.
Has: Printing, Social Connections, Advertisement
Needs: Negotiation, Reputation, More People
Memories:
Long Term: The day I first donned the Dollar Bill costume and wowed the audience waiting outside the Pie Shoppe with my exciting performance!
Long Term: In the capsule hotel, crying after 6.3 Jen broke up with my by sending back the Penny Girl uniform I sewed for her.
Short Term: Yesterday when I saw Maimed Dog perform in Adolf Tacoma's club I knew I had to go home and build my own guitar.
Starting Flow: 10
*this is a group process whereby you take your individual characters and make up why they're together. Obviously I did this on my own, imagining an artsy promotional group with a lot of people who are good at using matter printers.
So I realized that I didn't describe any of the character creation steps, I just did them. So let me expand. Sorry for the duplication.
Clade (char concept): Street Theater Actor
This comes first: Who do you want to be on Freemarket station? I looked at the picture and thought of some guy who dresses up like a Superhero and does improv street acting, possibly battling against Supervillain actors. This is completely a normal, doable concept in Freemarket.
Generation: Second Gen
Second-genners are the true natives of Freemarket. There's also First Gen (their parents and the kids of the Originals, those who built the station), Immigrants, and Blanks (humans printed in matter printers and flooded with memories). This guy, especially with my Clade, seemed like a true native. The choice of Second Gen also gave me the following points to spend: Geneline (2), Experience (5), Interface (2), Tech (1).
Geneline (2): Reeve
Tags: Dashing, Extrovert, Weird
The Geneline name is sort of your family name or bloodline or someone who you're trying to be like. Reeve was quick and cheeky, so I went with it. The tags show us which Challenges your Geneline applies to. The pic suggested Dashing and Extrovert, and I threw the Weird in 'cause he's totally an Underwear Pervert.
Experiences:
Cultivation (1)
Recycling (1)
Ephemera (2)
Shaping (1)
Experiences are FM's "skills". There's 14 of 'em, but I focused on these four. Cultivation is making stuff (sewing costumes), Recycling is fixing and merging tech (possibly to make Tech to help the performances. This one will be big in factoring into the MRCZ's purpos), Ephemera (creating art that instills memories in people--street performances), and Shaping (Kinesics--reading body cues and acting out your own to read people and get them to involuntarily act).
Interface:
Needlefingers v1.5 (1)
Tags: Cultivation, Sewing Needles, Flexible
Stanislov Keysoft (1)
Tags: Shaping, Method Acting, Truthiness
Interface is Cybernetics. My guy can sew stuff with just his hands, and has implanted software that helps him read people.
Technology:
Show Flyer (1)
Tags: Ephemera, Glossy Poster, Shifting Graphics
Tech is your stuff. I had one point to spend and made a "smart paper" flyer that he can use for his performances and for his MRCZ's needs.
MRCZ
Name: Marketasmo!
Goal: Print up and distribute the tech performing artists need to do their work and promote it.
Has: Printing, Social Connections, Advertisement
Needs: Negotiation, Reputation, More People
This is group process, but I made it up, thinking there would be characters different than me. What kind of a group would a Supers street performer join? This kind of group.
Memories:
Long Term: The day I first donned the Dollar Bill costume and wowed the audience waiting outside the Pie Shoppe with my exciting performance!
Long Term: In the capsule hotel, crying after 6.3 Jen broke up with my by sending back the Penny Girl uniform I sewed for her.
Short Term: Yesterday when I saw Maimed Dog perform in Adolf Tacoma's club I knew I had to go home and build my own guitar.
Memories are very important in Freemarket. What you do in the game becomes Memories which become Experiences: it's how you advance in the game. It also shows the other Users and Superuser what kind of things are important to you, what you want to see in the game.
Starting Flow: 10
2nd Genners start with 8 Flow, and you get a bump based on which Experiences you choose. Recycling and Cultivation each gave me a 1 Flow bump. Flow is the economy of FM station; you need it to change anything on the station. It shows us how much of a helper you are, and how much people respect you!
Key ID (char name): Ickarus
This comes last. What do people call you on the station? A friend and I were talking about someone naming their child "Icarus" today, and this suggested itself. It seemed like a 2nd Gen name to me, at least (based on examples in the book and my own play).
(http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee1/NotHans/FM-0003.jpg)
Quote from: Ron Edwards on July 17, 2012, 12:13:32 PM
also, Markus, you didn't fill in the descriptions sections of that sheet. I bet that's hyper-neural too, so you should do it.
Done! I couldn't resist putting in a "brazilian dagger", but only the most devoted Monty Python fans will get the reference.
That's five! Here's mine.
The game is Heroic Do-Gooders & Dastardly Deed-Doers, self-published by two guys named Van Dinter in 1995.
I should explain a few things about this game, because it blends some truly excellent things with being totally procedurally insane. As an example of the latter, the roll to hit someone using percentage dice is your Stat divided by (your opponent's Stat times 2). And that's without modifiers, which are often stepwise and shift dramatically in common circumstances like powers use and damage. What's really crazy is that every number and equation and fiddly bit, out of hundreds, appears to have been thoroughly playtested - this game is for people who like this stuff.
But I'll focus on the excellent, which now that I think of it is also insane, or at least, gonzo.
It's superheroes, sure, but in a weird but perfect blend of surreal and gritty, more about people-with-powers than spandex-clad ultra-beings, as "black vs. grey morality" as you can get, in a deliberate step away from plain old four-color but not in the directions the comics took it in the mid-late 80s - just as violent, but more funny and more politically relevant. The whole text and every detail give off an aggressively late 80s vibe, especially the resentment and mockery of Reagan-era idealism, before it was canonized in the early 90s. Best of all, its setting/situation concept is exactly what we used to do with old-school Champions, which the Van Dinters call Earth Now - I'll probably explain that later to save time now. All of this is reinforced with good and definitely quirky art, by the authors as far as I can tell, which communicates among other things that grievous bodily harm is a frequent feature of play.
It's available off and on at Amazon and similar sites for less than $20, and I urge you to get it. The more people who own this game, the more chance I'll have actually to play it someday, because I could never imagine actually GMing it - or rather, as a Champions veteran GM, I unfortunately can.
On to the character creation instructions. They say, steal ideas from action/adventure, give the character a history, include some personality details, and "Under NO circumstances think of your character as a tutu/cape/mask-wearing pansy." I think I'm good with these, because one look at the picture, and I say, oh man! What a perfect Human Dastardly Deed-Doer. Roy is the single hedge-fund mortgage shark speculator in the United States to realize, in 2008, that he was being evil, and now he's making up for it. He gets his personal satisfaction from locating precisely the people who are directly responsible for the most heinous exploitative bullshit regarding mortgages and foreclosures, and killing them. He is happy to explain that his logo symbolizes real labor-based money instead of speculative and promissory pseudo-money. See Naked Capitalism (http://www.nakedcapitalism.com) and Financial Armageddon (http://www.financialarmageddon.com)). Look at that lovely smirk: he is the world's happiest supervillain. "Recover from this, bitch!"
In their example, this is where their character gets his name. I'll call him Milton Roy, also known as the Real Money. (A couple of jokes or details go with these. First, he passionately hates his own first name. Second, he's fed up with people talking about finance and its "instruments" as the real economy and what the rest of us do as the secondary one.)
Characters get 1200 points to start. He'll get 300 more points when we get to Flaws, so I'll figure on 1500.
Primary Abilities/Stats
Smarts 100, Agility 115, Popularity 120, Luck 200 (discounted 15%, 183), Brawn 115, Willpower 110
= 743
In the scale of this game, he's somewhat above average physically, mildly bright, rather charming, with disgusting although not ridiculous luck. (I'll explain the discounted cost for Luck in a minute.)
The Luck is a big deal; it's one of three sub-systems in the game which permit an immense amount of player manipulation of the circumstances and coincidences, the others being Acrobatics and Gizmos. So this is a very metagame-y character for this game.
Secondary Stats
Mortality = 56, Guts = 105, Wile = 130, Perception = 125, Vigor = 113
Offense (ranged) = 9, Defense (ranged) = 6, Fisticuffs Offense & Defense = 22, Fisticuffs Damage = 4, Fisticuffs Damage Reduction = 2
Boy, he is sneaky and charismatic after all. But I'm not liking what I see, physically. His Vitality is between a retiree and a nurse!
Race & Class
OK, everything costs points in this game, but specific things are discounted or incremented by specific amounts per Race and per Class. So for instance, a Mimic Ninja would have a unique profile of cheaper and more expensive Attributes, Skills, and Powers, compared to any other combination.
The exceptions are Humans and HGDs/DDDs, both of which provide a customizable 15% discount to be distributed how you want, in units of 5% if you want to break them up. If you take both, like I did, then you can create a profile of discounts totaling 30% precisely the way you want. Which is clearly what I'm doing here, in making him a Human Dastardly Deed-Doer. I chose the Primary Stat Luck and the Power Mortality Attack to discount by 15% each.
The text tells me that Dastardly Deed-Doers "are -- (1) no-good dirty SOBs who want nothing more than to wreak havoc and ruin the world for the rest of us. (2) megalomaniacs with egos the size of garbage trucks and have no concern for anyone other than themselves. (3) addicted to mayhem and violence. They get off on ill-will and conflict. (4) the bad guys, so they have no qualms with taking an occasional life or two or twenty. They CANNOT have the character flaw Morality. (5) determined to rub out any Heroic Do-Gooders who get in their way."
I can live with that.
Also, HDGs/DDDs are the only class which is permitted to buy new powers after play begins. Anyone else has to buy a power as "latent" if they want to get something new later. But I can buy one at 5th, 10th, et cetera levels.
Flaws
Materialism 225 + Charity 75 = 300, for 1500 total points. This means he can be bribed with stuff but not money, and he gives away most of his money to the needy. This also puts him in a bit of a bind because as long as he spends money on stuff, he won't feel guilty about not giving it away, but if he doesn't do it quick enough, he's out of luck and has to donate it. Ah, the curse of the middle classl! Both of these Flaws are Hidden. As a Dastardly Deed-Doer, he is not permitted to take the Morality Flaw.
Aptitudes (free, derived from Smarts)
Current Events (specialty = mortgages) 50, Economics 25, Law 25.
I don't buy him any Skills; the Aptitudes cover all the stuff I'm interested in. Note the similarity to the original Champions: "skills" actually only cover very significant, nigh-supers abilities; using that old rules-set, Peter Parker would not have to buy "photographer" and Tony Stark would not have to buy "rich tycoon." All that stuff only entered Champions when GURPS came out and the two games started imitating each other through several editions.
Powers
Contact! Initial cost 75, 5 levels at 20 each, total = 175 - this means his hands do damage; also that his Fisticuffs Offense is raised to 32 and his Fisticuffs damage is raised to 9, 5 of which ignore his opponent's damage reduction.
Mortality Attack, Initial cost 150, 150 to apply to Contact!, total = 300 (discounted 15%) = 255 - converts Contact's Willpower damage to Mortality damage (which also does Willpower, so bonus!)
Armor, Semi-Losable Gizmo (5% discount), initial cost 150, 4 levels at 25 each, total = 250 (discounted 5%) = 237
Cheating Fate, Initial cost 30, 2 levels at 30 each, total = 90
= 757; 743 + 757 = 1500
This is a very deadly character. His offensive powers are bought to the maximum for a first level character. His Mortality Attack is defined as radiation, comic book style, so basically, when he punches you in the chest, all your guts will be cooked to a crisp as they're blown out your back. He's not really built to go toe-to-toe with true bruisers, but he has a good chance to avoid such things with his Luck and similar stuff.
Making him took three tries. The first time, I realized halfway through that I'd forgotten about Powers' initial costs and had to start over. The second time, I neglected defenses in favor of the power Ouch! and a little bit of fun movement, which ultimately resulted in a character who could have been one-punched by a geriatric patient. So I junked those powers in favor of slightly beefed-up physical Stats and the Armor, which also netted me a few more points to dump into Luck.
Best, Ron
Hi! Now we can get going. The most relevant wiki pages are Color (http://big-model.info/wiki/Color), Exploration (http://big-model.info/wiki/Exploration), Currency (http://big-model.info/wiki/Currency), Preparation techniques (http://big-model.info/wiki/Techniques#Preparation_techniques) (still sketchy), and Reward (http://big-model.info/wiki/Reward).
Here are our characters!
Chris, a.k.a. The Dollar, in Dawn of a New Tomorrow (playtest), by Davide Losito
Ricardo Azevedo, in Over the Edge, by Markus Montola
John Valentino, a.k.a. Captain Free Market, in My Life with Master (setting hack), by Moreno Roncucci
David "Fletch" Fletcher, in Aberrant, by Nathan Paoletta
Ickarus, in Freemarket, by Hans Chung-Otterson
Milton Roy, a.k.a. The Real Money, in Heroic Do-Gooders & Dastardly Deed-Doers, by me (see last post on first page; more on him soon; I still have to get the sheets into electronic form)
I have three topics to consider, each one to be discussed thoroughly: How Color goes into the system of play, how Color interacts with Reward, and how new Color emerges in the long run. Here's the first.
Topic #1: Dynamic potential, or how Color goes in
So: what would the character do? What might happen to him? At this point, the character is a pure artifact, nothing but a sheet of paper, so I'm talking about pre-play, when you're looking at the sheet -- what hopes and fears go through your mind regarding what play will be like?
I suggest examining three things:
1. The character's specific fictional backstory. "This is Lord Hyrax's son, who has left his home to destroy the goblins who raided the castle last year."
2. Any game-mechanics instability, by which I mean prompts for his or her actions or for being targeted by something else. "His saving throws vs. magic are terrible! He's going to be nice to every magic-user for sure." Or, "He has a bitchin' morningstar mace, so I can't wait until he gets to use it."
3. More general circumstances which apply to all or most characters in play, but which also introduce conflict or a call to action of any kind. "We're all going into the dungeon in the goblin forest."
Consider these hopes and fears in terms of you and the other people playing. Will they get it? Will they care? Are you and this character all alone? What player decisions and what in-game events determine what happens to him? In fact, what is mechanically possible to happen to him? Also, as you see it for this game, who is responsible for bringing these anticipated fun and dangerous situations into play?
I'm talking about expectations, responsibilities, and communication which make play fun. The internet provides us with a useful illustration of the possible problem, in the "What I made / What the DM saw / What I played" device, which sometimes reveals serious communication breakdowns, as well as the related issue of falling back to Hollywood or hobby cliché when play actually starts. Some examples:
This one speaks volumes: http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/14769805/images/1304221321191.jpg
Shadowrun indeed: http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/14769805/images/1304217004714.jpg
This one is worth considering carefully because it's subtler and yet still illustrates a problem: http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/14769805/images/1304218267322.jpg
This one looks like it applies to the whole group: http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/14769805/images/1304220322703.png
Here's the site archive (http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/14769805/) with a million of them, but be warned, some of the contributors clearly didn't understand what they were supposed to be communicating.
I want to address anything and everything you might do - or point to on the sheet - which either leads to or staves off these problems. Regarding your character, what would be deal-breaking for you at this point, in your experience of this game?
Please feel free to bring in any details or questions about the Wiki items I linked to, when they're relevant.
Best, Ron
So you want us to explain how a function like:
color -> character sheet -> fiction
does really "happens" at the table, with our selected game?
Yes, but also how it might not happen.
Best, Ron
Well, Dawn of New Tomorrow has various ways to let players "pour" color onto the fiction.
Three exactly:
1. the three creation scenes, in which the Event is defined in its origins and players can fix their characters roots. The three scenes have a theme, which differs if you switch to the Vampire version of the game. In Vampire setting, you play your scenes with these themes: death, training for the powers of the blood, first hunt.
These scene, in both version of the game, fixes situations that later in the game are used to frame Struggles Within: special flashback scenes in which the character remembers situations where his two halves struggled and he comes out more mature, and with one of the two half stronger.
2. looking at the sheet, you see 4 flags above the abilities: in Vampire game they are -> Pursue (the reason you accepted your unlife for), Belong (that social situation in which you feel at home and can control the Beast), Thirst (that type of person that makes you feel hungry, it's the stereotype of your first victim, in your First Hunt scene), Lust (the genre that incites you sexual appetites, it's tied to your maker genre).
In the Super-hero version, these flags are Fights for (reason you accepted your super-naure for), Belonging (the type of person you think you represent as a hero), Sacrifice For (the type of person you instinctively run to save), Enrage With (the situation that drives you mad).
These flags can be used once each per session, and grant different modifications to the conflict (adds dice of different color, or switch a die color; 2 of them can be called by the player, 2 can be called by the adversity)
3. The use of "Controls You" ability, which is mandatory in every conflict, and which is the type of ability you can use for escalating the conflict (you can add a third or a fourth ability to a conflict, only if it is from the "Controls You" column). This is a player choice to represent the fact that conflict is so important to him, he is agreeing to "lose control". The loss of control is represented in the game by having the other players narrate a piece of the conflict resolution, according the number of red dice that go in the conflict.
Davide, you have not answered my questions. Please answer them as literally and personally as you possibly can.
Also, please disregard the Vampire variant and any other irrelevant aspects of the game. Just answer the questions and apply the aspects of the game which are directly relevant.
Best, Ron
Quote from: Ron Edwards on July 18, 2012, 07:51:02 AM
John Valentino, a.k.a. Captain Free Market, in My Life with Master (setting hack), by Moreno Roncucci
[...]
I have three topics to consider, each one to be discussed thoroughly: How Color goes into the system of play, how Color interacts with Reward, and how new Color emerges in the long run. Here's the first.
Topic #1: Dynamic potential, or how Color goes in
So: what would the character do? What might happen to him? At this point, the character is a pure artifact, nothing but a sheet of paper, so I'm talking about pre-play, when you're looking at the sheet -- what hopes and fears go through your mind regarding what play will be like?
I suggest examining three things:
1. The character's specific fictional backstory. "This is Lord Hyrax's son, who has left his home to destroy the goblins who raided the castle last year."
I think that in My Lie With Master most of the backstory is established before compiling the character sheets: first, there is the group-level Master creation, then you create a character that must "fit" in the setting created, with some motive to be a minion. And I have always seen very simple back-stories for the minion. The usual exception, if present, it's a past history with one of the connection (family ties, for example).
Creating Valentino I did choose to give him connections he meets in his new "life" as a would-be actor, at the set and in a diner, so in practice his past is blank: he is a nobody (in his mind) who went to Hollywood to become somebody, he never talks about his past, it is not really important for me (and for him). There is no "backstory" for him to add at this phase
I consider this sort of "very short backstory" normal in MLWM, or at least is normal in the way I play it.
Quote
2. Any game-mechanics instability, by which I mean prompts for his or her actions or for being targeted by something else. "His saving throws vs. magic are terrible! He's going to be nice to every magic-user for sure." Or, "He has a bitchin' morningstar mace, so I can't wait until he gets to use it."
3. More general circumstances which apply to all or most characters in play, but which also introduce conflict or a call to action of any kind. "We're all going into the dungeon in the goblin forest."
Consider these hopes and fears in terms of you and the other people playing. Will they get it? Will they care? Are you and this character all alone? What player decisions and what in-game events determine what happens to him? In fact, what is mechanically possible to happen to him? Also, as you see it for this game, who is responsible for bringing these anticipated fun and dangerous situations into play?
I choose to not separate the answers to these, as I did for the first question, because there is a common reply.
The process of Master creation already show the GM what the players want, in a lot of ways: the game terms ("Beast", "collector"), the number (Fear and reason), and the vivid description of the Master that happen at the table when everybody add ideas, images, concepts
After that, how did I communicate what I wanted in particular for my character?
The first clue are the More than human and less than human. I decided to give my character a more than human like "
He can seduce everybody, man or female, but not when he is really attracted by that person" because I wanted "missions" that would put him in contact with people to manipulate, but at the same time I wanted to draw a precise and clear separation between these de-humanizing relationships and "true" ones. And make any of these a danger for the Master's plan (if Valentino begin to be really attracted by his target, the Master's plan could fail).
Then the "less than human": "
he can't refuse the offer of any substance (from his mother's inedible cake to a shot of heroin) apart when he is his own home (I don't see him as an addict, but as someone with very weak force of will that try to please everybody)"
In this way, I have painted a very big target over my character, that show how the GM can easily use these MTH and LTH to bring Valentino in all sort of social situations where things can go wrong.
If we were at the table I probably would have talked about these reason, too, during character creation.
The connection, people he meet at works and at the diner, add to the "no past relationship" theme.
What will happen if the GM choose to ignore all this, and begin to give my characters orders like "rob that bank" or "bury that corpse where nobody will find him"? Well, if would probably roll my eyes seeing him "missing all the clues" (after I even talked about it at the table) but I don't think that would ruin the game, I still can choose my connections, call connection scenes, and more than that: for a game where you have to "do what the Master say" every time, the amount of character ownership I have in MLWM is enormous (More than in D&D, in fact). The rolls ONLY tell my if I do the violent or villainy I wanted to do, or if I get love, or self-loathing, etc: exactly how I wanted to get that and what happened is my decision. So if the GM and the other players don't get what I wanted to do with my character, I still have a lot of ways to tell them again and again, or even doing it anyway.
What about my own course of action? From my experience, if you want a minion that will do as few evil deeds as he can, it's better to give him a high weariness score and zero self-loathing (in a recent My Life with Angelica game my character was made like this and he got almost to the endgame doing only damage to things and propriety and not to other people). He often get a good ending too. The cost is that he will fail a lot of times, and he probably will not be the one who will kill the Master.
By the other hand, a big self-loathing score increase your chance to be the one who kill the Master, but almost guarantee a bad ending ("bad" in the sense of death or something bad for the character).
That My Life with Angelica character I cited above was a guy I liked and I was sympathetic with, so I gave him zero self-loathing. Valentino by the other hand I see as someone who at this point is driven by superficial vanity. I would like to play him more for making him really change, because I really don't like him just now. So I gave him 2 self-loathing, because in a sense, what it will happen to him... he had it coming.
Why not 3 self-loathing and zero weariness? I don't know, it just didn't feel "right" for the character to be so extreme.
This what I thought when I gave him these stats. For the most part is use of system, I don't know how much you see "color" in that, apart from the last bit (that is pure color affecting character: in my imagination he could not have self-loathing 3) )
Quote
I want to address anything and everything you might do - or point to on the sheet - which either leads to or staves off these problems. Regarding your character, what would be deal-breaking for you at this point, in your experience of this game?
Well, obviously there a lot of things that would ruin the game for me, at the social level (for example, breaking of boundaries, cheating, or even having at the table a very poor GM with no idea about what is aggressive scene framing, or even scene framing at all), but they obviously are not what you are talking about, so I will not consider them (I wrote this because saying "nothing apart from this or this would ruin my game" without saying this before would seem rather silly)
But even thinking about other ways to break the game... all I get are violation of the rules (the GM that try to railroad a prefabricated "story" for example) or basic trust and boundaries, or complete misunderstanding of the game (a comedian GM who go for laugh).
All I can think are problems that would ruin EVERY game of MLWM, not tied to this one's color.
About what avoid this on the game sheet, I listed some things above: almost everything on the sheet is a flag, the More-than-human and less-than-human for example, if the GM ignore the flags I can still chose to play the character I want with the connection I want, that act toward these connection the way I want. If the GM is able to play MLWM, even in case he miss all my flags, I will get to the same endgame, the only problem it's that I will not show the MTH and LTH along the way (that means: I will not be able to show these facets of my character at the table).
Hooray, my character sheet!
(http://adept-press.com/wordpress/wp-content/media/milton1.jpg)
(http://adept-press.com/wordpress/wp-content/media/milton2.jpg)
(edited to make them smaller)
Here are scans of pages 4-5 and 94-96 (http://adept-press.com/wordpress/wp-content/media/20120719094155.pdf) from the rulebook, so you can see that the text provides explicit instructions for both players and GMs. Effectively, play is very, very player-proactive, so I can basically just do what I want. I can tell you right now that I'd begin investigating and planning for his next hit, confident that the GM would provide constant and useful information, adverse or otherwise, in response.
Much less clear is how my character is supposed to relate to the other player-characters, which the text never mentions. There is no reference whatsoever to anything resembling a superhero team. Given the pages I've included here, I assume the GM plays Sorcerer style, meaning that the characters are in the same vicinity, and you just cross'em and see what happens.
Here's what I'm most worried about: whether anyone will find Milton sympathetic at the outset. I've made a character who's one shade of moral grey away from a wish-fulfillment for myself. I really don't want the GM to respond with a kneejerk "extremism? How awful," and go into a morality tale where my guy gets the comeuppance the GM thinks he deserves. It's especially important because the GM sets the Luck difficulty levels; unless he enjoys my character being Lucky, that whole side of the build will be subverted and my lucky guy will actually be totally unlucky in practice. And if other players respond the same way, then my character becomes the in-fiction butt monkey and I become the real-life one.
So I fear that I will make the guy in the picture, but the GM sees a reprehensible knockoff of the Punisher, and what I end up playing is the old Batman TV version of the Riddler. There seems to be no way to counter this in the rules; it's up to me and my pitch to everyone else, and I must get some verbal confirmation and appreciation that lets me know they see what I see.
Best, Ron
Hi Moreno,
I think you're missing the backstory that is staring at us from your text and which matters most: how John became so dependent upon this Master. The details don't matter, but it is crucial, central, and unmistakable that his backstory includes starring in this Captain Free Market movie and especially the core phrase "He thinks he owes everything to Ed." I'm not asking for any more detail, because
that is currently the heart of the character, just as with Lord Hyrax's son, the heart of the character is that goblins raided the castle last year (external, but just as valid for the game in question). I'm not talking about boring trivia like his mother's maiden name. I'm talking about back-
story, i.e., it
is necessarily relevant. There it is - you have it.
Do you see how that backstory is both inherent in the textual system of the game ("the rules") and also in the Color provided by the picture and as interpreted by you?
QuoteBut even thinking about other ways to break the game... all I get are violation of the rules (the GM that try to railroad a prefabricated "story" for example) or basic trust and boundaries, or complete misunderstanding of the game (a comedian GM who go for laugh).
All I can think are problems that would ruin EVERY game of MLWM, not tied to this one's color.
You're absolutely right, but that doesn't mean that the potential problems don't exist. As a secondary point, I also suggest that they aren't limited to the GM. If the others at the table persist in interpreting your character as the comedy component, or if one or more people prioritize winning (i.e. aiming for a given Epilogue throughout play), then the same problems arise.
Now my main answer: I disagree with you that the Color is not the key to the possible problems. I suggest instead that in practice, for you, playing this character, that these problems
are in fact tied directly to the character's Color, because there is literally no other topic or way for mutual appreciation, reinforcement, and development of characters to occur as a group activity.
To put it another way, if the other people at the table look at the picture and look at your sheet and listen to your words -- and they
still don't appreciate the Color's specific application to the System about to be played, then you can look forward to a terrible experience. I agree that this game is written as well as it can be to counter this possible problem, but people are people, not books, and it can indeed happen.
Best, Ron
Sorry if I wasn't clear enough... but I answered the points.
I try to be more clear...
Quote
1. The character's specific fictional backstory. "This is Lord Hyrax's son, who has left his home to destroy the goblins who raided the castle last year."
The character specific backstory is defined and fixed in the three creation scenes.
Chris was married, we know from scene number 2.
His wife thought he had a relation with Pam, and we know he valued Pam's friendship because he risked his life to save her.
We also know he escaped prison after killing a guard and he is now wanted by the NSA.
This phase is used to create the characters backstory.
Quote
2. Any game-mechanics instability, by which I mean prompts for his or her actions or for being targeted by something else. "His saving throws vs. magic are terrible! He's going to be nice to every magic-user for sure." Or, "He has a bitchin' morningstar mace, so I can't wait until he gets to use it."
The four Flags tell what the character is interested into, or victim of.
Chris will sacrifice for young women; this means that it will be easy to put him in danger or in stressed situation, just by putting a young women into a scene in which Chris is present.
That Flag, "Sacrifices for", is called by the adversity and switch a blue die into a red one, after the conflict is rolled, forcing Chris to lose control.
We know he "Rages for" betrayal. Rages for is a Flag the adversity can call (once a session) in any conflict that "Betrayal" is present. This gives Chris one red die more to roll, improving the chances he will lose control.
Belonging is a Flag that the player can call upon, again once per session, in a conflict in which the social context "upper middle-class" is fit. Belonging calms a hero rage, and convert a red die into a blue one.
"Fights for" is another Flag the player can call, it adds 1 blue die, improving the chances Chris will keep control of his action, in a conflict.
These are mechanics thought to bring the color into play and they build expectations in either the player of Chris, the GM and the other players that start to think about what situations can be brought into the fiction so to use those flags.
Quote
3. More general circumstances which apply to all or most characters in play, but which also introduce conflict or a call to action of any kind. "We're all going into the dungeon in the goblin forest."
Ok, this one I didn't answered; sorry.
It is something that comes out after all the creation scenes are played.
Limiting the answer to Chris, he is interested to unmask the conspiracy and free the people from the New Order, so probably he is going to become a "terrorist", fighting again the new system... just like those terrorist that started it all.
Markus, Nathan, and Hans, what are your thoughts regarding the topic #1 questions?
I'm really trying to get at the role of Color in pre-play expectations and communication, and whether these are or are not system-based in a given game, and in what ways.
Best, Ron
Quote from: Ron Edwards on July 19, 2012, 10:56:29 AM
I think you're missing the backstory that is staring at us from your text and which matters most: how John became so dependent upon this Master. The details don't matter, but it is crucial, central, and unmistakable that his backstory includes starring in this Captain Free Market movie and especially the core phrase "He thinks he owes everything to Ed." I'm not asking for any more detail, because that is currently the heart of the character, just as with Lord Hyrax's son, the heart of the character is that goblins raided the castle last year (external, but just as valid for the game in question). I'm not talking about boring trivia like his mother's maiden name. I'm talking about back-story, i.e., it is necessarily relevant. There it is - you have it.
Oh, yes. I was thinking about MORE backstory to add after writing the character sheets. I didn't count that part because I had already written it in the previous post.
In this case, the necessary backstory is the answer to two questions, the first one is common to every MLWM game, "why this minion is serving that cruel Master?", the second one is instead peculiar to this endeavor: "What the hell he is doing with a dollar sign in his underwear?" and would not be present in a normal MLWM, but both have to be clear and present (not only to myself, but to every other player too) at the start of this game
Quote
Do you see how that backstory is both inherent in the textual system of the game ("the rules") and also in the Color provided by the picture and as interpreted by you?
Yes.
Quote
Now my main answer: I disagree with you that the Color is not the key to the possible problems. I suggest instead that in practice, for you, playing this character, that these problems are in fact tied directly to the character's Color, because there is literally no other topic or way for mutual appreciation, reinforcement, and development of characters to occur as a group activity.
To put it another way, if the other people at the table look at the picture and look at your sheet and listen to your words -- and they still don't appreciate the Color's specific application to the System about to be played, then you can look forward to a terrible experience. I agree that this game is written as well as it can be to counter this possible problem, but people are people, not books, and it can indeed happen.
Yes. I didn't thought that far. I was thinking about how other people's misunderstandings about what I was getting at with my character could do to block me to get what I wanted in the fiction (answer: very little), and I stopped at that, without thinking about the reasons why I wanted to play that character in that way and with these results. Without having the other players understand and appreciate that, it would be pointless (no reward and frustration on top)
And it's not like that never happened to me (both as the frustrated player and as the one who doesn't understand why the player is playing like that and has to ask him about it afterward).
The lessons I learned from these bad experiences did show up in a sense, even if I didn't recognize it at first: the "Waiter at the diner" connection. Thinking about it, when a game give me the authority to create or co-create some relationship or connection for my characters, I often create characters that I could use for emotional recaps of past action or other "confessions". Any connection scene with that NPC could have my character drunk or desperate saying why he did that or said that in the previous scene, to better explain my PC to the other players.
To sum it up: the game gives me a lot of opportunities and ways to explain and show my characters to the other players. (I should add the sincerity / desperation / intimacy dice to these way: not only they give me more opportunities to act, but they have two other effects: the GM has to listen to me to be able to assign them, and I get feedback about what he is "hearing" from my character from the dice I get, or don't get), and I used them as much as I could: I think that if I am not playing with someone really blind and deaf, they will understand what I (and my character) am doing. The real question (and real risk) is about appreciation: what will be their reaction? Will my creative contributions be appreciated and encouraged, or not?
Quote from: Ron Edwards on July 19, 2012, 05:24:54 PM
Markus, Nathan, and Hans, what are your thoughts regarding the topic #1 questions?
I started to re-read selected parts of the OTE manual to address the topic as objectively as possible. But almost immediately I stumbled on a problem: I realized I could answer the questions in two extremely different ways, i.e. starting from two different mindsets.
The point is, for the answers to be more relevant to the OTE book as written, I'd have to answer as the 15-years younger myself who read it first. The 2012 me however has a completely different set of expectations, and different ways to distribute those expectations among the group.
To put it differently: after almost 10 years of lurking/delurking at the forge and dozens of functional games read and/or played, I'm quite confident I *might* make OTE work with the right group of people. But I'm afraid the book and the system wouldn't be of much help to the younger me eager to play in 1997.
A solution could be to answer as I would honestly use the game today, but checking at each step whether the system is or isn't helping me in any way.
Uh, by the way - I'm not Markus Montola... although I'd like to be an academic specializing in game research lie him. As you can evince from the email in my profile, my real name is Marco. However, for no particular reason, since the dawn of net-time my internet alter-ego is "Markus". That's what I used at the forge, too.
That's funny. I know exactly who you are and who Markus Montola is; I have no idea why I typed that.
Thanks for the answers, everyone! Especially Davide; I know I am being pushy.
But Markus, please feel free to continue with your reflections, speaking from your perspective right now, today. After all, "I" (in your head) am the GM for your Over the Edge game, right? And we would be playing this right now, so let's do it from that perspective. What are your thoughts on fears and hopes for the character, and what the sheet/system can provide?
Best, Ron
OK!
Quote from: Ron Edwards on July 18, 2012, 07:51:02 AM
So: what would the character do? What might happen to him? At this point, the character is a pure artifact, nothing but a sheet of paper, so I'm talking about pre-play, when you're looking at the sheet -- what hopes and fears go through your mind regarding what play will be like?
In this case, I was operating without really thinking about other PCs in this game. Aberrant has a specific callout for making a "team" of characters, but in my experience it's totally possible and acceptable to roll with a more Sorcerer-y approach to individual characters in their individual contexts. With Fletch, I've given him a backstory that could plausibly lead to him being interesting to, or interested in, any of the in-game factions (there's 3 or 4 main ones, plus anything the GM might come up with that they're into). So, if I showed up to a game with Fletch and the GM said that it was going to be mostly about the Teragen faction, for example, I would be open to either playing through that process, or talking out how Fletch got into contact, whatevers more appropriate.
Also, I positioned him in such a way that he could potentially have a lot of enemies, but few friends. This is why his Dominate power is so important - he needs some teeth to be able to be successful in such an environment.
As I mentioned in my post, his power set puts him at the top of the ladder when dealing with Baseline (non-powered) humans, but at the low rung when dealing with other Novas, even other starting-character-level ones. For example, he didn't really buy up any of his stats with Nova points, which is generally pretty de rigour for this game. I see him relying on his Mega-Stats and his one power for almost ANY volatile situation, which means he certainly needs to get into some kind of situation where he has more action-y friends to keep him from bodily harm. I think he'll be angling to generally interact with Baselines over Novas, perhaps to the extant of trying to keep his Nova nature secret (which is a mechanical goal, he could spend Experience points to buy the "Dormancy" background over time).
This character is a schemer, a backroom dealer and a selfish accumulator of wealth and status. I don't think I would have fun in a game that was focused on Nova-vs-Nova action. I would hope the game would be more about the relationship of Baselines and Novas, and the shifting lines of power that change that relationship. This character would thrive in a conspiracy-focused game, with lots of schemes-within-schemes and very loosely delineated areas of control (which is where I think Aberrant is most fun, it may shock you to learn).
So, the fit of the character into the kind of game the GM has planned (not necessarily "scenario", more just theme and approach) is pretty dependent on me communicating with the GM, and secondarily with the other players. I think I'm telegraphing the kind of stuff I want to see surrounding this character pretty strongly, through my selection of Quantum Powers and Backgrounds, but I don't think I would show up to a brand-new game blindly having built this particular character.
I think for dealbreaking, the only thing right off the bat that would make me go "man, fuck this game"* is if the GM introduced an NPC character that was mine, but better (higher Dominate, better Mega-Attributes, etc). Another player character with the same power set could make things kind of meh, depending on the details, but having my "thing" be taken over by an NPC would piss me off - and, is relatively easy to do in Aberrant, as starting characters are wicked low-powered compared to most of the scenario- and canon-created ones. Second on the list would be an NPC antagonist specifically designed to beat my character, though that can be ok if it's treated as an ongoing relationship and not a "ha, you thought you were so cool" from the GM.
*outside of social contract breakdown, of course
So, them's my thoughts!
Hi, I haven't read people's replies to Topic #1 yet, as I wanted to give it fresh eyes. Please correct me if I'm misinterpreting the exercise; I had to read over it a few times to feel like I understood it.
Quote from: Ron Edwards on July 18, 2012, 07:51:02 AM
Topic #1: Dynamic potential, or how Color goes in
So: what would the character do? What might happen to him? At this point, the character is a pure artifact, nothing but a sheet of paper, so I'm talking about pre-play, when you're looking at the sheet -- what hopes and fears go through your mind regarding what play will be like?
Quote from: Ron Edwards on July 18, 2012, 07:51:02 AM1. The character's specific fictional backstory. "This is Lord Hyrax's son, who has left his home to destroy the goblins who raided the castle last year."
Looking at the sheet, I see that my Memories and Clade are the main things tied directly to backstory. So I know he's a "Street Theater Performer", and has Memories about performing as someone named Dollar Bill, has a broken relationship with a woman, likes to sew costumes, and participates in other art scenes, being inspired by musicians to take a crack at their art, too.
What I'm thinking: Will my concept be supported by the group of players (specifically not the GM)? Or will they expect me to go along with them and help out "for the good of the group"? Will other players help me in accomplishing my goals? (to be clear, these sorts of questions are kind of the heart of Freemarket's premise, so they are the first things I'd think about when making a FM character).
I hope I'll get to interact with 6.3 Jen (that broken relationship). Will I win her back? Will she become an enemy?
I want to do some cool performances. Do I know other folks like me? Is this just an entertainment thing or do I have a message? Who will the "Dollar Bill" alter ego become?
So my guy wants to go build a guitar. He's not a musician; am I changing my concept from the get-go? Or undermining it? If I go in that direction, will I still be useful to the group?
I was born, meaning other people probably have my same Geneline. How will that show up? How does my family manifest the "Reeve" Geneline?
Quote from: Ron Edwards on July 18, 2012, 07:51:02 AM2. Any game-mechanics instability, by which I mean prompts for his or her actions or for being targeted by something else. "His saving throws vs. magic are terrible! He's going to be nice to every magic-user for sure." Or, "He has a bitchin' morningstar mace, so I can't wait until he gets to use it."
Hmm, Ickarus has a lot of Experiences, but is relatively low on Tech. That will make me want to find someone in play who can help me out with that. Or I can use my Recycling Experience to do some of that myself.
I don't have the Wetwork or Flood/Bleeding Experience, which means my Memories are pretty vulnerable: Not having those Experiences means I'm not good at fighting back against Wetwork (which takes short-term Memories) or Flood/Bleeding (which takes long-term Memories).
Quote from: Ron Edwards on July 18, 2012, 07:51:02 AM3. More general circumstances which apply to all or most characters in play, but which also introduce conflict or a call to action of any kind. "We're all going into the dungeon in the goblin forest."
Will I have enough Flow to accomplish my goals? If not, will I be able to get it? Being an Ephemerist is not the easiest way to gain Flow. If I can't get enough Flow to do what I want, will the game still be fun to play? How will my decisions change as my Flow does?
Will my MRCZ-mates want to grow our group bigger than I want it, or keep it smaller than I want it? Will I, or anyone, leave the MRCZ to form a new one? What kind of rivalries will we have? Will we become famous, or be happy to be nobodies, doing our life's work? Or something else?
Quote from: Ron Edwards on July 18, 2012, 07:51:02 AMConsider these hopes and fears in terms of you and the other people playing. Will they get it? Will they care? Are you and this character all alone? What player decisions and what in-game events determine what happens to him? In fact, what is mechanically possible to happen to him? Also, as you see it for this game, who is responsible for bringing these anticipated fun and dangerous situations into play?
Things I'm thinking about with regard to what will happen to my character and who will bring it in: How will the Superuser (GM) decide to bring my Memories into the game? That will definitely determine what happens to me. Will 6.3 Jen come back as a memory in someone else's head, or as a rival MRCZ leader, or what?
As far as mechanically possible things go, I have these questions: Will I lose Memories? Will I have to Burn (reducing the effectiveness of Tech/Interface/Experiences/Geneline in the long term for a boost in the short-term) a lot in Challenges to succeed? How will I grow in my Experiences?
Who is responsible for bringing the fun situations into play? Well, the Superuser is responsible for making life problematic, interesting, and unanticipated in response to my proaction. Everything on my sheet tells me the kind of stuff I want to be doing in the game, and that I have the means to go try to do it. The Superuser takes what I'm going for and how and twists the situation so that unexpected trouble, twists, and interesting situations come into play. The seed content for this in the first session is the first few Memories I've written down.
Quote from: Ron Edwards on July 18, 2012, 07:51:02 AMRegarding your character, what would be deal-breaking for you at this point, in your experience of this game?
The only thing that would be deal-breaking would be no support from the other players (Superuser included, but if only the SU supported my concept in play and no one else did, that wouldn't be enough) in pursuing the concept I have for my character. If there were no interest or excitement from them around Ickarus and what I want to do with him, that would break my deal.
Have I answered the questions properly? I'll go back and read everyone else's responses, now.
Everyone has done exactly what I asked, and I appreciate it. In case anyone's missed it, the games are very neatly divided into contrasting explicit instructions about character preparation -you as the player do it entirely on your own (Dawn of a New Tomorrow, Aberrant, HDGs & DDDs, Over the Edge), or you do it as you please but in the context of a group/team concept (Freemarket, My Life with Master).
Before I go into Topic #2, here's my last thought for the moment: go back and look at the image, and think about that dollar sign. It means something to the character, in the fiction, it means something to you, and it will mean something to the other people at the table.
All six of us interpreted it in different ways, which is great to see since I knew it would be problematic in a useful way. Contrast it, for example, with a plain lightning bolt, which is entirely non-problematic to the point of providing no impetus into the character creation; or with a cartoon erect penis, which would be problematic but boring (I mean, as such). A quick comparison:
Chris: the dollar sign is played straight as far as I can tell, a real hero for the 10%. The question for me is whether this is viable at the table at all.
Ricardo: the dollar sign is partly subverted into its historical and occult meaning, although still tied to wealth; absolutely perfect for Al Amarja.
John: the dollar sign is completely inverted as humiliating and nigh-ridiculous, a symbol of how low the Master is willing to make John go; his acceptance of the persona is at the core of his subservience and dehumanization.
David: the dollar sign is secondary, stylistic to the point of being a mere personal affection; hard to tie into the two ways the character seems aimed - team member or target for factions' exploitation - and doing so has a lot to do with the factions-context the other players and the GM bring to the game.
Ickarus: the dollar sign is almost completely elided or there for developing - why would a symbol of currency matter to a Donut audience, whose currency is absolutely abstract, electronic, socially mediated, and subject to no exchange rate? It could go either way, dropped as minor detail of humorous interest only to the audience, or developed into a serious means of questioning the popularity-as-money light-libertarianism of the setting. Interestingly, the game provides precisely the means to discover which way to go, based on what happens to the memories in terms of game mechanics. (I agree that the goal of making a guitar seems almost like a dodge away from any such potential.)
Milton: the dollar sign is partly deconstructed/inverted - he's a Dastardly Deed Doer, i.e., a super-villain, but focused and ideological to the point of sympathetic humor; he's trying to re-brand the dollar politically. The question is whether any of this is functional in the context of a rather deadly and uncompromising system.
If you want to talk about anything else related to the sheet and character preparation, that's cool, but in the interest of not getting bogged down like the original Color-first project did, I'd like to jump right along into Topic #2. We can always go back after all three topics have been dealt with.
Topic #2: Reward system and mechanics, in the colorful thick of it
A reward system is easy and fundamental: the enjoyment to be had out of play, focusing on input-to-output.
A reward mechanic effectively revises character creation ... which is actually stating it backwards, because as I see it, character creation is basically the starting conditions for a reward system to rev, as in revving a motor.
A character sheet is a reward system's way of making another character sheet
Show us some of this in action, mechanically. Imagine that you've played the character enough so some changes get going on the character sheet, but only just enough so that the decisions about the character might be a little different than they were at the start. For example, for a D&D character like Lord Hyrax's son, whom I mentioned above, level him up one time.
In pure mechanics terms, what numbers or descriptive terms change? What numbers must change? How are any of these numbers related to Currency issues of initial character creation?
One special question is: what is contingent about those changes, if anything? On what?
Finally, and also key: any changes in Positioning!! How are the character's circumstances and relationships different? What happens in play to make that happen? Who does it? How formal or mechanized is it, in terms of the character sheet? I realize that this could only truly be answered through play, but go ahead and imagine what it might or could be.
Best, Ron
Quote from: Ron Edwards on July 19, 2012, 09:45:06 PM
Show us some of this in action, mechanically. Imagine that you've played the character enough so some changes get going on the character sheet, but only just enough so that the decisions about the character might be a little different than they were at the start. For example, for a D&D character like Lord Hyrax's son, whom I mentioned above, level him up one time.
My "level him up one time" was to take Ickarus through two imaginary Freemarket sessions.
Quote from: Ron Edwards on July 19, 2012, 09:45:06 PMIn pure mechanics terms, what numbers or descriptive terms change?
At the end of every session, you bump any short-term Memories into any available long-term slots, and erase the rest (During the session you wrote down anything interesting or exciting or grabby that you experienced as short-term memories). At the beginning of the next session, you upgrade one long-term Memory into an Experience. If it makes sense to the relevant Experience, you erase the long-term Memory and add 1 to that Experience's rating.
For the beginning of the imaginary second session, I erased that memory of 6.3 Jen breaking up with me to learn something about social relationships, and gave myself Social Engineering (1).
I took the "two sessions" concept and added in the beginning of the third session, so we see the process happen one more time. I have more new Memories now, but I bumped the one about seeing Maimed Dog perform and wanting to make a guitar up to a long-term Memory, then into a point of Cultivation, so I now have Cultivation (2). It's the Superuser's call on whether a Memory applies to the Experience you want it to increase; in this case I imagine Ron is a nice dude and lets me stretch a little bit to make this a Cultivation Experience (this is how I handled similar situations when I run the game).
I also imagined a Challenge where I got my MRCZ-mate Urlo to don the Penny Girl costume. We hooked up with a filmmaking MRCZ, and their actors pretended to be goons stealing pie and valuable paper money from the Pie Shoppe MRCZ, while we came in, pretended to beat them up, and restored order and the goods to the Pie Shoppe. To do well in this Challenge I had to Burn my Show Flyer Tech, reducing its current rating to (0) from (1).
By the beginning of the third session, I imagine we've seen how the Challenge system works and how Group Challenges are where you get a lot of Flow. We've had some losses, but by and large we've done well and my Flow has increased from 10 to 41. Part of that boost is from a Recycling Challenge where I merged some Tech to create an audio-holographic amplifier for Maimed Dog. I didn't get any Flow rebate from the Challenge, but I did get 10 Flow for giving it away to Maimed Dog.
Quote from: Ron Edwards on July 19, 2012, 09:45:06 PMWhat numbers must change?
The Experience numbers I mentioned above must change. Not those exact Experiences necessarily, but you will increase one Experience every session, no matter what happens in the game. I suppose the rules say may--if your Memories are too precious to you in their current form, you don't have to convert them. I don't imagine that happens often or ever, though.
Nothing else has to change. Wait, scratch that: Flow inevitably will change from playing the game (you can never engage the Challenge system and never risk Flow, but are you really playing Freemarket at that point?), but it's possible for it to go up and down and end up at the same number. Still, it has changed.
I don't have to Burn anything. I can play the game for many sessions and never Burn anything.
Quote from: Ron Edwards on July 19, 2012, 09:45:06 PMHow are any of these numbers related to Currency issues of initial character creation?
How are these related to the Currency issues of initial character creation? Pardon some thinking out loud: Well, my Tech (and Interface) is a resource that can be used to gain effectiveness. Flow is a resource, straight up. Experiences are effectiveness. My Memories, which feed into the effectiveness of Experiences (and can be converted into Data in play and Gifted, netting Flow--a resource), are all about positioning: they show who I am, where I've been, and where I'm going.
Can you see from my previous descriptions of how the numbers changed and the above paragraph delineating what things in the game mean in terms of Currency that there's a constant dance between all the elements of Currency in the game? I suppose that's nothing new; that's how a roleplaying game works. It looks like I've thought myself into circles on this question. Help?
Quote from: Ron Edwards on July 19, 2012, 09:45:06 PMOne special question is: what is contingent about those changes, if anything? On what?
Maybe I described this without knowing it in the preceding two confusing paragraphs. What is contingent about the changes in the numbers on my character sheet? What are those changes in numbers contingent on (I want to make sure I'm understanding the question right)? Those changes are contingent on where I took my character in play: We performed in the Pie Shoppe, and to do well I Burned my Tech, reducing its number. I chose Memories to advance to Experiences largely based on which Experiences I wanted to improve. I worked to make some Tech for Maimed Dog because its a part of my MRCZ's purpose, and besides, it nets me Flow, which I can use to do other things I want to do.
The Flow going up and down is contingent upon all of this, the whole session. Engaging in a Challenge means I'll gain or lose Flow; occasionally I'll come out even. Make that audio-holographic amp and giving it away got me Flow; it also might get me a friend in Maimed Dog which'll get me more Flow and some Social Insurance if I ever tank my Flow.
Quote from: Ron Edwards on July 19, 2012, 09:45:06 PMFinally, and also key: any changes in Positioning!! How are the character's circumstances and relationships different? What happens in play to make that happen? Who does it? How formal or mechanized is it, in terms of the character sheet? I realize that this could only truly be answered through play, but go ahead and imagine what it might or could be.
Well, Ickarus has more Flow, which means he can do more and bigger things, if he cares to. He and his MRCZ are well on their way to making it to MRCZ Tier 2 status, which means more people and bigger space. This change is all reliant upon specific Flow numbers: If our Flow goes up, our MRCZ's Flow goes up, and if it gets to a certain number (14, in this case), we can Challenge to make it to Tier 2. My Flow going up is contingent upon me doing well in those Challenges I described earlier, and Gifting that amp. Helping my other MRCZ-mates (as I definitely did in some of their own Challenges) helps them to get Flow as well, which all helps our MRCZ to get Flow.
I also have some Friends now, where I didn't before. You don't start play with any Friends, but usually MRCZ-mates pretty quickly Friend each other. So I have these four on my Friend list: Urlo, Interrobang, Faux W.G., and Hal Jordan. Each of those Friendings gave me 2 Flow, for an 8 Flow bump. I write the Friends down on my character sheet, as well as the change in Flow. I now have some Social Insurance should I make myself not useful or generally unwanted on the station.
Also, after Gifting that amp, Maimed Dog's bass player Friended me, so I wrote down Richmund as a Friend and got another two Flow. I have a real connection there. He's on my Friend channel, we can ping each other any time, and I'm at least a little socially liable for his actions, and he for mine.
I have some Social Engineering and more Cultivating, now. I'm better at doing those things; I have a better chance at winning big in a Challenge--getting exactly what I want and getting a Flow rebate. I'm more effective at growing and making things, and more effective at getting what I want from people in Social situations.
My Show Flyer is Burned out, meaning I can't use it in any Challenges. I might discard it, or try to fix it, or find some other Tech and try to merge it with that. In any case, doing so means I'm less effective at Ephemera Challenges for now, and to fix that I'll have to risk Flow or find someone who will fix it for me, extending my social/obligation network.
So: please let me know if I'm off track in any of this. I feel like I'm wading my way through some deep waters that I'm a little unsure in.
Sorry but it seems I'm the slowest thinker here-- I'll try to catch up with others.
Topic #1: color goes in
To be ultra-synthetic, I'd say that all my expectations for play at this stage are fundamentally tied to the 50-50 mixture of (1) knowing the GM (in the sense of knowing or imagining his own expectations and interests), and (2) the one bit of color I got from the GM before play (i.e. the character portrait). I say this because the OTE system is, hmmm, very transparent (read almost absent) regarding practically everything that might got me excited at this stage, including all the points mentioned by Ron for topic#1.
If I look at the character sheet, I see a few traits that I choose in complete freedom (and you know what I think about free-for-all trait selection), plus a few nonmechanical cues like Ricardo's secret, a tiny bit of backstory, his motivations and physical description. Playing the game as it's written, absolutely everything might or might not be incorporated into actual play depending on the GM's whim. There are several passages in the book that suggest to create PC that have interesting bits and pieces *for the GM to use*, so the main responsibility is on his shoulders. As a player, the game doesn't give me much to influence the process.
Numerically, my character is absolutely identical to every starting OTE character except for a low HP score and a fringe central trait. From a strictly mechanical point of view, the only thing the system is guaranteeing to me is that Ricardo can survive at most a couple of rounds of serious combat, perhaps not even one if firearms are involved. I don't even know what to expect from the fact that my central trait (alchemy), the one I built my character around, has a lower-than-normal value (2 instead of 4 because it's a fringe trait). After all, I don't even know which sorts of numerical targets I'll be rolling against, or even when or how often I'll use the trait.
Then, there's the problem of those 150 pages of the rulebook that contain the canonical setting of the game. My personal hope is that the GM will totally ignore the canon and will work with me and my fellow players using our character sheets as I would use the 4-sided diagram in sorcerer (the "diagram at the back", although my favorite sorcerer sheet has it at the very center of the page). This would probably happen around 50% pre-play and 50% in the first few sessions.
Thematically, the OTE canonical background is in my opinion very bland, because it's a mishmash of everything you can imagine in a big soup. To my eyes, nothing emerges from this soup, on which to have any specific expectations for thematic play. No politics, no irony, no sex, nothing. So I'm still at the starting point.
So yes, I'd say that the all the 'sparkle' for this character is given by that single point of contact between the GM's creative input ($!) and my interpretation of it, both colored by the OTE imagery. An interesting point: our perception of OTE imagery in turn was generated by the extensive description of the canonical setting, whose use in play I loathe so much. Hmmm, food for thought.
Topic #2- reward in action
Mechanically, OTE characters have this thing called "experience pool" (even starting characters have 1 exp die). They're basically one-shot bonus die that you can burn on any roll, provided that you give a small description of how some past event you experienced in the past is helping you with the roll. For example, rolling against a thug attacking me with a knife, I might say "last week I survived a direct SMG hit, a couple of scratches won't stop me". I might also say something a bit more interesting like "my beloved is in danger, I'm just not feeling the pain". However, the exp pool is completely agnostic about how you use it. I feel it will be one of my responsibilities as a player to use the dice in a thematically interesting way.
You can also permanently burn exp dice to buy new traits, to increase their value, to increase HPs etc etc. You know, the sort of stuff you'd expect from a 1997 game.
From the book: "At the end of every game session, the GM *can* (emphasis mine) award bonus dice to the characters who partook in the action, and these dice are added to your experience pool". Apart from the fact that I just love the word "partook", the important bit here is that the GM "can" award exp dice. I checked the few paragraphs of the GM section explaining how to award dice but they're extremely handwavy: "hey GM, award exp dice for this and this, give them few if you want them to progress slowly, give them a lot if you want the opposite", this sort of thing. So again, I can't really be sure about how and when the mechanical parts of the reward system will kick in. But a few session in, if the GM is generous, I might be able to bump up a trait that seemed interesting in play, or added another one based on some events in the fiction, or maybe I'll raise that pathetic HP count if I see that I can't evade danger indefinitely.
I'm not entirely sure I understand the contingency question, but it seems that all of the above is described in the book as purely mechanical, i.e. "when you spend exp, it becomes true". Again, making sense of the advancements, making them *relevant*, will be a key responsibility of players.
Given the above, I foresee that the most exciting changes to the character will be nonmechanical, i.e. circumstances and relationships. Looking at my character sheet as a sorcerer diagram, opportunities abound. There's the secret illuminati-like faction that's looking for me: Ricardo could come into contact with one of their agents and forge an unexpected relationship with him, maybe they could become allies, maybe even lovers. Yes, that'd be fun: the first and only person with which he manages to establish a really sincere and intense romantic relationship is the one who was paid to [kill/kidnap/whatever] him. I'd be curious to see how the GM would play the NPC agent-- This is just an example, of course: the possibilities are practically endless (which is usually a bad thing in my opinion, but anyway).
How formal or mechanized is all of the above, in terms of the character sheet and the reward mechanics? I'd say not at all. I could just amass exp dice without burning them, buying no new traits, or the GM might give me so few that I couldn't do much anyway. When something changes in the immediate circumstances of my character, I have no Sorcerer/Polaris style diagram to revise, no systematized processing of relationship whatsoever, etc etc.
To sum it up, making OTE's reward system interesting would require a constant influx of care, attention and creativity on my part (and that's good), but would also require self-imposed restraints on how exactly to use it (only make thematically significant changes, try to make color relevant, try to use the free-for-all advancement mechanics to "simulate" modern tools like sorcerer's diagram or relationship traits, etc etc). In this respect I think playing would be fun, but somewhat taxing.
***
[Side note - to do OTE some justice, I must say it has its high moments as well, even from today's perspective. For example, I could find no trace of the dreaded (but almost mandatory in the 90s) "rule zero", or prompts to the GM to fudge the dice as he likes. It also contains a very good (for 1997) essay by Robin D. Laws that already foreshadows some of the ideas that were later refined and more clearly expressed in, e.g., Sorcerer (for example in the last chapter from S&Sword). I recommend reading the 2nd edition manual to everyone who hasn't!]
Hi guys,
Despite your uncertainty, you're doing wonderfully. Let's look at the remarkable contrast between the two characters, which should be clear: both absolutely require group and specifically GM buy-in to the Color as interpreted and applied by the player for the Reward actually to work, and each does in fact provide systemic ways for that buy-in to be confirmed -- but one uses unavoidable procedural mechanical effects to do so, and one does not.
At first glance, I think one might say, "Hey, well, Freemarket is going to make the Color work, and OTE is going to let it drop like a hot rock. Good design / bad design, all done." I think that reaction would be superficial and miss the core point. As I see it, the core point is that the Color has to work (meaning serve the buy-in and development we've talked about above), and the question is whether the mechanics make that happen or less deterministically, provide a way for it to happen.
My thinking is that it's the latter. Color is an Exploration feature and hence bigger than any Technique, and System, also an Exploration feature, is - as I now see it - centered around shared-and-loved Reward if Coherence is to be found at all. Whereas the mechanics found in, for example, Freemarket are expressions and means for doing this, rather than guarantees for it.
If the OTE game were to find its own expressions and means for doing it, which aren't in the rulebook but which Markus has ably described - e.g., treating the sheet as a Sorcerer character diagram - then it would be just as functional as the Freemarket game, full stop. Conversely, if the Freemarket game were to become (for instance) utterly wrapped up with Flow-stealing and Flow-defending conflict, then all those mechanics would become trivial and un-Rewarding relative to this character (and boy can I see that happening, unfortunately, if the group appreciation for the character's Color doesn't happen).
Oh yeah - check me on this diagram (http://adept-press.com/wordpress/wp-content/media/Freemarket_character_Flow.pdf). Am I missing anything?
Here are my notions about my character. This game is built on Experience Points, awarded for very specific things which apply to my guy as follows.
1. Delivering bad guys to the authorities is flat out. Fuck the authorities; if they were worth anything, the banksters would be in prison, specifically the bad kind.
2. Doing Willpower damage - no way. He doesn't do any in the absence of Mortality damage.
3. Doing Mortality damage - now we're talking! The exchange rate is worse than for Willpower damage, but that's fine - it just means doing more of it, and I'm OK with that.
4. Using Aptitudes - beautiful! His Aptitudes are specifically built to establish his plans and actions. I'll be using them all the time and raking in the Experience for it.
5. Legwork - whoa, what's this? I get hundreds of Experience points for simply putting effort into my character's proactivity and investigations? Holy Crow! This will earn me exponentially more points than any of the other things.
So what do I do with the points? The good news is that getting to a new Grade doesn't require that many points, although one's exchange rate drops a bit with each Grade. At 200 points, I'm at Grade 2, which if I'm reading #4 right, will be really soon.
In previous posts, I got a little mixed up about Levels, which is a mechanics term applied to Powers and other sheet components, and Grades, which is like character levels in D&D. So this is about making to Grade 2.
Upon doing so, I can spend all and only the points which got me there, banking the excess for getting to the next Grade. So, 200 points to spend - which is a lot! I can't exceed the levels-per-grade constraint listed for each Power or Skill, but I don't think 200 points has much chance to do that anyway. What will I spend them on?
At this stage it will be seriously reactive, as I will have probably learned the hard way what a shotgun can do to my character. One bit of bad news is that Gizmos can't be improved with experience points, so if I want better armor, I basically have to junk the old set. And I can't buy wholly new Powers at this point, not until 5th grade. Without going into major point-scribbling yet (maybe in a few posts), at this and at each grade to come before the fifth, I'll clearly be adjusting effectiveness and defense details against whatever threats seem to have cropped up and remain pending.
But I also think Reward in this game is only partly about character improvement, and in fact, the improvement isn't even the main part, being more about merely being able to continue playing. The main part has got to be about the in-fiction Positioning: relationships of all kinds, new priorities, possibly adjusted Flaws, and even my character's impact on the setting. All of this is more important than in other games because what's emerged, i.e. of this type, is effectively all the GM has to work with; he has no overriding plot or decided-upon climax we're supposed to get to.
What I'm seeing is that the Color buy-in issues, my hopes and fears from the earlier post, are really the make-or-break issue for this character and for enjoyment of this game in general. Everything - system, specific adventure prep details, scenes and their outcomes, interaction among characters, points and damage - becomes subordinated to it, or the reward mechanics will be useless in the absence of Reward.
Best, Ron
Quote from: Ron Edwards on July 20, 2012, 11:47:11 AM
Oh yeah - check me on this diagram (http://adept-press.com/wordpress/wp-content/media/Freemarket_character_Flow.pdf). Am I missing anything?
I think it would be worth adding a note (perhaps inside the Flow box) about starting Flow, and how that's determined. In the early game, the difference between 5 and 10 Flow can be huge, and that's all about character creation choices. If I don't have the Flow to do what I want early on, I go do something else, and as the game snowballs that may end up being a big influence on who the character turns out to be.
Quote
Show us some of this in action, mechanically. Imagine that you've played the character enough so some changes get going on the character sheet, but only just enough so that the decisions about the character might be a little different than they were at the start. For example, for a D&D character like Lord Hyrax's son, whom I mentioned above, level him up one time.
In pure mechanics terms, what numbers or descriptive terms change? What numbers must change? How are any of these numbers related to Currency issues of initial character creation?
One special question is: what is contingent about those changes, if anything? On what?
There is this row on the sheet, that is divided in two, just above the abilities.
It shows how many dots Chirs has in "You Control" and how many in "Controls You".
This is the place in which we see how Chris' Struggle Within scenes are resolved, with a specific mechanic and a specific Flashback that explore the life of our hero from the third creation scene, up to the time the current story starts.
Through this Flashbacks, which Chris actually remember in current time and try to resolve, just like you solve unsolved psychological knots of your youth, Chris let one of his half take a step further.
Once the new dot is acquired, in either one half or the other, Chris can also improve one ability of the appropriate side of 1 dot, up to a maximum equal the total dots in "You Control" or "Controls You".
This line of dots also show how far the character is from "choosing a side", and definitely become a super-hero in control of his powers and his new life and role, or a super-destructor completely overcome by rage.
Each step further is a step more towards understanding or power, but it's a step more toward the end-game.
Quote
Finally, and also key: any changes in Positioning!! How are the character's circumstances and relationships different? What happens in play to make that happen? Who does it? How formal or mechanized is it, in terms of the character sheet? I realize that this could only truly be answered through play, but go ahead and imagine what it might or could be.
Well, NPCs may die.
Part of the GM role in Dawn of a New Tomorrow is pressing the character's relatives and friends in order to make him chose whether to use those new powers (and risk the loss of control) or see those relatives and friends dying or being hurt.
Then, there are the characters the player brought into play with the three creation scenes.
They may come back later in the current story, and they will be used for sure in the Flashback scenes (it is part of the rules).
I din't put any specific mechanic dealing with or managing positioning, because I prefer to let changes emerge from the game.
For example... what will Chris do when he knows his former wife is now part of the Population Front for the New Order?
This is a task for the GM, to put the right bang at the right moment.
Hi everyone,
A quick for note for Davide: when I say mechanics, that can be any formal instruction. So that means your Flashback rules, for example, are Positioning mechanics. "Mechanic" doesn't have to be a number. And as far as I'm concerned, making it a number doesn't mean it wouldn't or couldn't emerge from play anyway.
Well, I need to do my part and upgrade my guy for real with 200 points, so you can look forward to seeing new sheets soon. I also have to 'fess up that I broke the rules in the first place; somehow I missed the paragraph in the description of Contact! which said you can't apply it to naked Fist Offense, but must use a Gizmo. I have no idea why; that strikes me as an annoying rule. If I went back and revised him to be rules-compliant, I guess I would have taken Blast instead, which wouldn't have changed the points spent, so I won't bother much.
Anyway, spending the points needs to be all about the Stats, for sure. Especially looking at the example character, who even taking into account that he's an utter Mary Sue built on the one broken Race (Replicant), is so far beyond my guy in combat effectiveness that it's not even funny.
(I notice that most of us built characters with major glass jaws. I wonder why? Is there something inherently not very bad-ass about the picture?)
So, with 200 points, I spend them to bulk up Vigor and number of actions, i.e., on Brawn, Agility, and Willpwer. I can even them out to 180 each. I suspect that's what everyone does at this point unless they built toward those ends at the outset. The only other thing I'd consider, thus reducing those values, would be if his Armour had proven to be worthless. Let's pretend that Luck, Cheating Fate, and that level of Armour had served him well enough, though.
You'll notice I'm not talking much about what I presume might have happened in play. That's because what happened in play has mechanically exactly zero to do with how I do this; I can spend how I want as long as I don't violate levels-per-grade or race/class constraints. This is not at all the same as in Freemarket, My Life with Master, or Dawn of a New Tomorrow, all of which see numbers changing on the sheet as a direct feature of outcomes in play. Nathan, how does it work in Aberrant? I mean, aside from choosing to buy up defense against X because you got hit hard with X - does improving the character have anything to do with what happened in play, mechanically?
Everyone, please post the revised version of your sheet. Also, Hans, you should really be including the MRCZ sheet all the way through this.
One last thought: the OTE setting and about the HGD/DDD setting have a lot in common, even with the deliberately over-the-top and fictional location of the former. My point is that in each case, we never see it all; we see only the profile/subset that the characters encounter, and as long as the GM isn't trying to do travelogue play - which in HGD/DDD is explicitly not the point, and which Markus has effectively stated isn't his GM's priority - then we can consider the Situation's effective sub-Setting rather than the textual everything-in-there Setting. So when I talk about impact on the setting, that degree or level is what I'm talking about.
I'm looking forward to seeing the other characters developed a bit for this step!
Best, Ron
I just realized that maybe I haven't been clear that I want you do make the changes and show us the revised sheet. Whatever you have to assume or make up about in-play events or what the GM does, do it.
Best, Ron
Quote from: Ron Edwards on July 19, 2012, 09:45:06 PM
David: the dollar sign is secondary, stylistic to the point of being a mere personal affection; hard to tie into the two ways the character seems aimed - team member or target for factions' exploitation - and doing so has a lot to do with the factions-context the other players and the GM bring to the game.
One interesting point here - the "stylistic to the point of being a mere personal affection" is almost a meta-level commentary on the nature of the Aberrant world. It is (at least when I run/play it) hyper-branded and hyper-stylized, with the constant feeling that NOTHING means what it's supposed to mean. Kind of a glimpse of the game's future/our present in some ways. But I digress.
Quote
In pure mechanics terms, what numbers or descriptive terms change? What numbers must change? How are any of these numbers related to Currency issues of initial character creation?
So, like all (IIRC) White Wolf games of the period, you get a variable amount of experience points per unit of time, and save them up until you can afford to spend them on improving various stats at various usurous exchange rates. The actual text says you get XP "at the end of the story," which is ill-defined as "maybe lasting more than one session". In practice, I always assigned (and received) XP at the end of each session of play, with the "story" being an arc taking 5-10 sessions to play out. There's 7 categories, each worth 1 point if you "fulfill" it, and you're not expected to fulfill all 7 every story. 1 is automatic.
I'll assign Fitch 20 XP, which seems reasonable for playing out one meaty "story" with 3-5 points awarded at the end of each session.
Let's say our first story concerned Fitch being courted by two Factions, the Teragen (post-humanist Nova supremacists) and the Aberrants (quasi-anarchic group devoted to "outing" the real story of what governments and corporations are doing to control the Nova populace). He managed to navigate these entreaties by cutting a deal with the N! network to move him to a position of greater decision-making power, and used that power to play off the two factions against each other. In so doing, lets say he uncovered internal N! memos revealing that they want to keep him bad, but detailing a "final option" if he ends up going rogue.
In general, you're only supposed to spend XP on things that could reasonably be expected to follow from the events of the game (though Quantum Powers are a gray area, cuz they could conceivably come from random quantum fluctuations or whatever, internal to the character).
Let's say that Fitch barely survived some physical confrontations, so I want to invest in some kind of protective power. Other than that, I'm just sharpening up his social skills. Force Field is the most effective general-purpose protective power. It's a level 2 Quantum power, so it costs 6 XP for the first dot, and then raising it from 1 to 2 costs 5 more (current level x5). I also want to raise his Domination by 1, which costs 10 (current level x 5). That's 21 - poops, not enough XP. Thats ok, I'll spend 4 to give him another dot of Rapport (current x2), which he was rolling a lot in that game. So I've spend 15 of my 20. I'm going to save that last 5, so hopefully I'll have enough to raise Domination after the next story.
QuoteOne special question is: what is contingent about those changes, if anything? On what?
Ok! So, there are a couple contingent things on the sheet. One is Backgrounds - there's an XP cost to raise backgrounds, but that's contingent on "actual roleplay...strictly through the course of the story". Basically, you can develop or raise Backgrounds in play, and then spend XP to make them stick. But then the text says "if you stumble across [gear/friends/resources] in the course of play, you don't need to spend XP on that. I've always taken an extremely liberal view of this bit, and had Backgrounds fluctuate based exclusively on the circumstances of play. So, if I were running this game, I would say that Fletch gained a dot of Contacts to his interactions with the factions, and gained a dot of Backing for N! for the deal he cut. He has full Backing with N!, which is a HUGE fictional positioning...position.
The other is Taint. You can gain new temporary Taint by botching a roll to "max out" a power, by failing a roll the recover Quantum points quickly, or having an Aberration and/or Mental Disorder that imposes tempt Taint. 10 temp Taint ticks over to 1 Permanent Taint. Also, you can buy Tainted dots with XP, like you did when you made your character. Again, in my games, I impose Taint much more strictly - first, by not bothering with temporary Taint, and by imposing it when the character does inhuman things. In this game, I'll assume we're going by the book, for the sake of illustration of why I do this. It's almost impossible for Fletch to have botched enough rolls to gain 10 temporary Taint in 3-5 sessions. Maybe he's sitting at 7 temporary Taint. Let's say he botched two maxed-out rolls (that's two points), he tried to recover quantum quickly and botched (2 more points), and I've been roleplaying him with increasing paranoia, triggering the ST to give me 1 point per session for 3 sessions.
QuoteFinally, and also key: any changes in Positioning!! How are the character's circumstances and relationships different? What happens in play to make that happen? Who does it? How formal or mechanized is it, in terms of the character sheet? I realize that this could only truly be answered through play, but go ahead and imagine what it might or could be.
I think I describe this above. The increased Background dots reflect the events of play, how he knows more people and has more backing in his corporation. The slowly increasing temporary Taint is showing that he's getting slowly more inhuman, drawing away from Baselines. Maybe he has a tighter bond with his production assistants, as they've been running interference for him the whole time. And his Contact, I'll describe as a young Teragen Nova called Charon, who seems to be able to seperate his dismissal of "mere baselines" from his appreciation for what the infrastructure they've built could do for the movement for Nova rights. Of course, Fletch has made more and more powerful enemies behind-the-scenes at N!.
(http://www.ndpdesign.com/storage/fletcher_aberrant_character_2.jpg)
My Life with Master works fast! The numbers change almost every scene (sometimes even two numbers in the same scene), you don't play a lot of scenes before the Master die. So, to describe John after the first gaming session would have meant showing a character sheet radically changed. Showing the character sheet after the first few changes would have meant showing the characters after very few scenes.
After reading the first replies, I decided for the second option. I imagined the character after 3 scenes: one with Ed White where he gets ordered to do something he don't want to do, and he try to resist. He fail, and in the following scene he commits villainy. In the third scene he talks about it to Jenny, and it's a connection scene.
In the first one, the change is only in the fiction, the failed roll don't change any value on the sheet. But in positioning terms, this scene is what start the game for John: for the first time he try to contradict what Ed White tell him to do. He obviously fail (a character with zero self-loathing and reasons to use the sinceryty die at the start would have a chance, but John roll a single die vs six dice)and agree to do the evil deed.
And this mean that he is forced to try at least one roll for that villainy in the next scenes
I am not sure you agree with me that this is a change in positioning: at this time is only a potential future rebellion + a promised try at villainy. But I plan to show better the doubts in John mind caused by this scene.
Most of all, this scene show that John has some redeeming feature that make it worth playing him.
This scene depends a lot on what the GM decide about the order and the way he tell it, too: in this scene he in practice says what could begin to remove the blindfold from John about Ed. Too little, and John has really no reason to refuse, and the scene is deflated, too much and the situation become a parody. In practice I have seen that with all the material given to him at the beginning, usually the GM has no problem in coming up with something at least adequate.
I am not going into what the villainy scene would be because it would depend too much on the table, the player, all the rest of the set-up, etc: coming up with that alone doesn't seems "real" MLWM play to me. And it's not important at this time. Probably it would comport other changes in positioning, and changes in the relationship with a lot of png.
If this was a real game, I probably would have tried to use one of my favorite techniques in MLWM: having a connection scene right inside the villainy scene, with a stranger 8betrer if I can roll for it before trying the villainy). But I would need more details for this, and in any case I am going to have a connection scene after this one, so it's a scene with only the villainy roll. Assuming I make it, the effect on the numbers on the sheet is to raise by one the Self-loathing score, from 2 to 3.
After that, In the third scene, I talk with Jenny at the diner, and go for a connection scene. I want this to end well, and my chances are not very high (1 die against 3 dice) so I would probably go very aggressively for the sincerity die. With the added benefit to cementing in the SIS the doubts John is starting to have about himself. 1d8+1d4-1 vs 3d4-3, chances are good I take 1 point of love without getting more self-loathing, and without making a mess at the diner.
At this time John begin to feel more self-loathing for himself, is beginning to think that Ed is not so much of a great guy after all, and has begin to open himself up to Jenny. All of this is reflected in the changes in his sheet (that I will send you by email like the last one)
Moreno's new character sheet:
(http://adept-press.com/wordpress/wp-content/media/Scheda-John-Valentino-after-3-scenes.jpg)
Quote from: Ron Edwards on July 21, 2012, 02:20:35 PM
Everyone, please post the revised version of your sheet. Also, Hans, you should really be including the MRCZ sheet all the way through this.
Ah, OK. I'll get these up by Monday evening.
Here's Milton at 2nd Grade:
http://adept-press.com/wordpress/wp-content/media/milton1.pdf and http://adept-press.com/wordpress/wp-content/media/milton2.pdf
Grrr, I told the guys to make images and they made PDFs. Oh well.
Best, Ron
I think that everyone has posted for Topic #2 now, and although we're still waiting for a few updated sheets, that's OK. Please do post them, and meanwhile, let's move on to ...
Topic #3: Color again, after some time and in retrospect
Re-write the character after a significant reward cycle. This means when you think the character has really paid off for you, as an instrument of play, sufficiently so that you are glad you've played so far and can look at this play-history as a unit of fully-realized fun. "You got what you came for," relative to this group, this game, and this character. In practice, some of these features probably apply at this point:
1. All the possible components of the game have had a chance to show their potential across the characters in play.
2. The character's essential components (Resources, Effectiveness, Positioning) are so altered and re-organized that play effectively must be considered a new game. For Lord Hyrax's son, we'd check him out at perhaps 10th level. For a fixed-ending game like My Life with Master, close the game, all the way through to the character's Epilogue.
It's clearly not possible to make up all the events and details of play that would lead to exactly how the character would turn out, so I'm not asking you to. If necessary, simply make up the sheet for the character at this stage without necessarily justifying every step. However, for games with incremental steps, please do the steps. For instance, for my character in this exercise, I will spend the points in the proper Grade increments as required by the rules; I won't just add them up and spend them freely.
Now for the questions. What is the Color element of the reward system in action at this scale, including both its terms and mechanics? In other words, how do you describe the character (and most likely his past) in vivid, fictional terms?
Stated in exactly those terms, what is the character's arc over a significant amount of time? Does it have a shape at all?
How do you hope Color factors into playing the character from this point forward, both in terms of what others say and what you say? What would be unsatisfying or even deal-breaking, by contrast? If the character cannot be played forward from this point, how do you hope or expect Color to factor into how you and others remember and refer to the character?
Best, Ron
Here we go, Ickarus' Freemarket character sheet after a couple sessions, as well as the MRCZ sheet after a couple sessions. I made up the Key ID's, Genelines, and Experiences of the other 3 MRCZ members, but left off their Interface and Long Term Memories; for the purposes of this experiment that seemed like a lot of work for little to no gain. Let me know if you think it's important, though.
(http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee1/NotHans/FM0002.jpg)
(http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee1/NotHans/FM0004.jpg)
I am looking at John's character sheet and the result table of My Life With Master, checking what would probably happen before the endgame, with the experience of my past games ("how I would have played him")
Looking a John and at the Master, it's a reasonable assumption that most of the Master's orders will be about Villainy and not Violence. So, at the beginning, Self-Loathing will increase, but not weariness. Doing Villainy to other will become easier action after action (the numbers of dice rolled by John increase steadily, the resisting die stays the same), but with the way I have chosen the numbers on the sheet, the Connection Rolls will stay the same (no matter how much Self-Loathing increase, I can't roll less than 1 die), and it's a roll that I can turn in my favor with the sincerity or desperation die.
From these numbers, looking only at the percentages, it would seems that both Self-Loathing and love will rise steadily, but Self-loathing will rise quicker. This in practice will not be true, because I will play trying to make John's acts require more than one roll (allowing him to refuse to follow up with the second roll, or at least have multiple connection rolls during the act), or to use the Less than Human or the more than human exception to make them fail, and the Horror Revealed rule associated with a low Reason (1) means that Self-Loathing will never rise more than 2 points above Love.
(By the way, I did forgot the Horror Revealed rule in Phase 2: my second scene pushed Self-Loathing to 3 with Love still a 0: not allowed, Self-loathing should have stayed at 2 and the next scene should have been an Horror Revealed)
Playing scene after scene, the situation would probably turn ugly enough to make the Master order Violence. But the first time that John will fail a Violence roll, he will be arrested. (Weariness > Reason). It's rather improbable that John will fail a Violence Roll, but if the GM know the game, he will try to use the sincerity die against me (the Master can't use it, but the victims can)
I would spread love between a lot of connection, to make my character less vulnerable but making THEM more vulnerable (if you have all Love invested in one single connection, the GM could be hesitant to kill that connection, making the player repeat all over again, but if the death of a connection would comport the loss of only 1 point of love, well, he become a target...)
If weariness stay very low (always at 1, probably, or 2), Love needs to go only to 6 or 7 to start the endgame. I would try to have it rise even more before going against the Master, but let's say for simplicity's sake that I can't, the Master give an order that I must absolutely rebel against, so the endgame start with Love at 7, self-loathing at 8, Weariness at 1, Fear at 4 and Reason at 1.
This means that the roll to kill the Master is of 6 dice against 12. Difficult, without having other minion's help or going for the sincerity die. Let's say that I go for this option, and I have 6d4-6 + 1d10 against 12d4-12. Still less than a 50% chance, but it's more even. Let's say that I kill him at the third roll (with a lucky roll or with the help of some other minion), so at the end John has Love at 7, self-loathing at 8, Weariness at 3, and Reason at 1: this mean that I can choose the ending 2 (John dies), 3 (John destroy himself). More important, in this case, John can't run away (ending 1) and can't integrate in the society there (ending 4)
The ending #3 has interesting possibilities in this setting hack: john could become an homeless drunk, or ha could confess and go to prison, or ha could kill himself, or he could even continue to play "Captain Free Market" all his life destroying himself that way. But ending #2 is simpler, so I choose that. John dies killing Ed White.
Talking about the endgame, even after playing it a lot of times, I still have not decided if the very difficult, almost impossible rolls that almost always the minions have to do to kill the master, are a weakness of the game or a strength: what usually happen is that the other players, seeing the rebelling minion losing the fight, run to help him. This means that everybody can happily join the Master killing (instead of seeing the first one to rebel getting his own vengeance alone), but make having really all the players on the same page about this a necessity: this is a problem of single-session games mostly, when there is not the time to make everybody hate the Master really a lot. I have seen demo games almost ruined by a single player decision to stay away from the fight (saying "ok, let's scrap the rolls, the Master dies" doesn't give the same satisfaction)
Anyway, let's color all that: to do this, I will make the assumption to play with the ideal GM, one that understand exactly what I wanted from this character (if I have to show the rewards of the game, it's better to show the most rewarding version...)
To maintain the importance of the picture at the beginning of the thread, let's say that almost all the Master's missions for John were about making that character more famous and bankable. So, a lot of times the involved villainy would have been about convincing people (sponsors, co-stars, fans and even the public at large) of what the character stand for ("if you are not rich, you don't deserve to be rich", "we need to defend the rich from these hateful envious people who want to tax them", something like that), with some publicity stunt as having John dressed like his super-alter ego beating up "criminals" (some homeless paid to let himself be beat on camera), plus a lot of personal behind-the-scene fuckery with people (up to blackmail, theft or even murder)
Some good Horror Revealed scenes could be about having kids playing "Captain Free Market" bombing a shelter or burning some homeless drunk.
I have some difficulty trying to imagine the last scene. In every game of MLWM I have played, the killing of the Master was almost ritualistic into referencing all the evil he did. John could kill him dressed as Captain Free-Market, or having Ed wear the suit, killing BOTH of his persecutor at the same time. He could shoot him, hit him, drop him from the window, etc. If I had chosen the ending #3, John could confess everything in front of a TV News camera and then shoot himself, I don't know, all these details at this time seems "empty", not carrying all the emotional weight they have in the game, when even minor details become really important to make the ending "perfect".
It's almost funny: the reward system of this game is so tied to the specific color, to the specific fictional events and the way they "exactly" happened... that I have a lot of difficulties imagining them without having really played the character. Going into specifics:
Quotehow do you describe the character (and most likely his past) in vivid, fictional terms?
I don't know if this is enough or if it's too generic, but I think at this point John is angry, both at Ed and at himself, for the things he did for "fame". Important parts of the character at this point would negation of value in money and fame, and identification with Ed as "co-responsible".
Maybe saving some connection is part of this, maybe the destruction of Captain Free Marker credibility is part of this, or not, I don't know.
QuoteStated in exactly those terms, what is the character's arc over a significant amount of time? Does it have a shape at all?
The two important mechanics are the constant rise of Self-loathing caused by John transgression, sometimes interrupted by some horror revealed scene that show the damage he is doing to people he don't even know, and the rise of Love than in his case means realization of what he is and what really matter to him, and the raising desire to "make amend" by "making it right".
Maybe he begin to think of himself as a real super-hero, and see Ed as a criminal (notice as this directly in opposition of the "make Ed wear the costume before killing him" idea)
QuoteHow do you hope Color factors into playing the character from this point forward, both in terms of what others say and what you say?
I am not sure about having answered this already or not.
QuoteWhat would be unsatisfying or even deal-breaking, by contrast?
Not being able to kill Ed White (or having him die by out-of-game consensus to "end the game"), having the way I want to play his story-arc compromised by a GM (or other players) that really agree with Ed (for example, having every order of the Master having to do with causing harm to the "poor" rich people)
To tell the truth, this character would be compromised by the way it was born. Being the fruit of a forum exarcize is compromising the reward I would get from the game. Thinking about it, the GM could lose all the Superhero-movie trapping and storyline. All of it. I don't really have any specific attachment to them. So, I am saying at this time that the GM who never make John wear the suit would compromise the character, but it's not true: probably the game would be even better. Why? because, thinking about it, and remembering past games, MLWM is a game about characters, not ideas. It's not a game well suited to social commentary (even if a lot of people use it in that way, with games like "my life with Tony Blair"). Even without playing it, the suit has become almost an afterthought, I had almost forgotten to put it into this post, the personal dependence to Ed was much more "grabbing".
Why I am saying this? I don't know if it is a useful comment or only a distraction, but it show that I, myself, could betray part the initial color of the character, in favor of a new take that interest me more, and the game would benefit from it.
(or, to put it another way, there are no specific rules that say "you will get points only if you talks about the dollar sign": the relationship between Master and Minion, GM and player, is fluid and follow the direction the fiction take, without being tied to what was decided at the beginning)
Quote
If the character cannot be played forward from this point, how do you hope or expect Color to factor into how you and others remember and refer to the character?
A short summary of what happened in fictional terms. Usually in MLWM, saying the name of the Master is enough (the minions names are seldom referred or said aloud: almost everything say "I", in this post alone I had to change "I" into "John" in almost every occurrence of the name)
The Character Sheet will follow, by email.
John Valentino's final sheet:
(http://adept-press.com/wordpress/wp-content/media/Scheda-John-Valentino-after-endgame.jpg)
After reading the advancement rules again, I didn't have many options. Even if the GM was really generous and tended to award the maximum suggested number of experience dice, the costs are so high that the only practicable option in practice was to get 1-2 new traits at 3 dice each.
I think I'd keep a few dice as experience dice, without spending them to raise anything. Exp dice are great, they're very flexible mechanically and they will allow me to introduce character-relevant stuff on a moment-by-moment basis (remember that you must justify their use by narrating a small episode or detail from the past that somehow is relevant to the situation at hand).
Then I'd surely try to buy a trait describing a relationship, which is neither described nor implied anywhere in the OTE rulebook, but is also not explicitly forbidden. Let's see, I'm quite sure that given half a chance, I'd buy a relationship trait with the bounty hunter (let's call him Jaques) that followed Ricardo on Al Amarja. And since I know that my GM will use this detail to drive the situation home, I'd say that I managed to snatch quite a bit of player empowerment from a system like OTE--
The fact that you
can, after all, get functional play from a suboptimal system in specific circumstances is something I'm thinking about since quite a long time: in retrospect, I think that for me, it all started to take shape when Ron explained to me how he'd "use" the Pool's trait mechanics in play. However, I never considered the reciprocal player/GM color buy-in as the crucial hinge of all this. For the moment I'll just say that it sounds convincing!
For the sake of discussion however, it's a pity that nobody of us made a character for a GM-less game. How would the color buy-in/reinforcement dynamics work in (say) Polaris?
*****
[Side note 1: I've prepared the revised sheet but the connection I'm using right now is so pathetic that it can't handle even that tiny upload. In the meanwhile, the bits I changed are just the following:
4 exp dice instead of one, and
New trait: "Emphatic link with Jacques (3) - Somehow, Ricardo feels that he can understand this mysterious man. He just sees in his eyes that they're very similar".]
[Side note 2:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on July 21, 2012, 02:20:35 PM
(I notice that most of us built characters with major glass jaws. I wonder why? Is there something inherently not very bad-ass about the picture?)
Ron, it's self-evident that my Brazilian+gay subliminal ploy proved stronger than your recommendation of ignoring it. Even you weren't immune: in this respect, the exact choice of words for the, errm, quality you suggest our hero is seen as lacking by most of us, is... telling.]
...OK, it seems it's working now, here's the revised sheet:
https://www.box.com/s/336bb875173399145575
Quote
how do you describe the character (and most likely his past) in vivid, fictional terms?
Chris probably would try to persuade his comrades heroes to fight for his cause against the New Order.
Some would, but everyone for their own reasons.
I think he would slightly turn into a real terrorist with a mask, cause the idea of the "moral loop" appeals me and looks like some narrative arc I would actually pursue in a game.
So he probably tell his friends how some months ago he killed is former wife who was working with the "enemy" (loosing the relation), and how he progressively lost contact with all the people of his former mundane life.
He is probably a character interested in pushing the system to his Rage half, so to achieve his final goal, so I imagine him with 6 "Controls You" points (which is the value limit for the end-game, in a short game).
More martial / violent skills and some connections in some terrorist / resistance army.
Pam... Pamela would probably be the only connection he kept with the past, but a cold connection just like Alfred is for Batman. No love involved. Or at least, not told.
Quote
Stated in exactly those terms, what is the character's arc over a significant amount of time? Does it have a shape at all?
As I said, his "Controls You" side will prevail, bringing him to an existence of revenge, as a vigilantes.
He will have a lot of red dice then, which represent basically a... spiral to Rage.
Quote
How do you hope Color factors into playing the character from this point forward, both in terms of what others say and what you say?
Well, at this point Chris is out of the game.
It is a good candidate to become a great Villian for another story. An interesting Villian that attacks the new established system, but with a lot of reasons for the players to discover.
Or he rather become some legend and source of inspiration for a new generation of heroes.
Quote
What would be unsatisfying or even deal-breaking, by contrast?
Probably I would be unsatisfied by the fact he remains alone, or rather lonely.
But as far as this exercise goes, I don't see any other end. Even those who love him would fear his anger and his rude manners. And it would be basically some kind of misunderstanding, or lack of communication.
Quote
If the character cannot be played forward from this point, how do you hope or expect Color to factor into how you and others remember and refer to the character?
I think I already answered above.
Good old Milton has made it to 5th grade! I've earned -- geez, in fact, I've already spent 500 points above my initial character build, in increments of 200, 100 (strangely; I'm not sure why 3rd level is uniquely cheap), and 200. So I'll spend each set without showing you the details, up through 4th Grade. I'll mention that since levels of Cheating Fate get used up in play, it's clear that I'll have to buy more as I go along; and I also finally manage to squeak out an additional action per round. And now, at 5th grade, I have 200 more to spend, and this time I want to buy a brand-new Power since permission to do so at 5th Grade is one of the unique benefits of taking the Class HDG/DDD. I'm very tempted to take Ouch!, which is closely allied to Contact! in that it zaps people who touch or grab you, but the fact is, Forcefield is way more practical. In combination with the Armour, my character will finally have a reasonable defense foundation. Spending all 200 points gets me the initial cost of 150 and two levels.
(I noted a couple of mistakes in the previous sheets: I forgot to list two levels of Cheating Fate, and I also reversed the discounts for Armour and Mortality Attack; the character was point-compliant as designed, but not recorded correctly.)
Here he is (http://adept-press.com/wordpress/wp-content/media/milton3.pdf), all beefed up.
Well, we can do this effectiveness/resource tweaking forever, but I want to think about another issue which is embedded in this game: humanity, exemplified in the Race variable: Human, Android, Hellspawn, Replicant, Mimic, Changeling. One of the classes one can choose if you're not one of the robots is Mutant, which modifies Race. So, basically, a character may be literally human, robot in two flavors, alien in two flavors (one who mimics humans, one who possesses humans), and demon; the non-robot ones can also be Mutants. This is very far from "you can play anything" - all of the character combos are concerned with what being human is, with the most flexible being the humans themselves, especially when their class is HGD/DDD. There's nothing in the rulebook about any of this, but the content is sound, and I think a lot of the incidental text and artwork aim in this direction.
So I think the Positioning is, or can be, judgmental at this level as well as merely plot-oriented. Let's say we play past the point of 5th grade, when characters are seriously altered through several steps of change, when their values and priorities have been roasted and probably seriously refined, and the whole setting is probably now its own unique Our-Earth, full of interesting characters all doing things, some of whom have met their fates. How will the Real Money compare to other characters, especially the mimics and androids and so on, in terms of being human? Does that term mean anything, anyway? That's where the arc is for this character, especially because he was built to be a fairly sympathetic villain, to the extent of being a villain protagonist and well-intentioned extremist instead of merely a vicious sociopath. Has he validated his original point of view? Or not? I don't mean to be too idealistic about it, because there's no shape to this arc or any expectation of such an arc inherent to the reward mechanics of any kind in the text, which only concerns itself with characters living or dying. And for damn sure there's not even a peep about it on the sheet itself. All of this is what I see that I'd find most fun when playing the game, and reaching a finalized conclusion about this character, if and when, would spell a solid endpoint for play for me, or a satisfied switch to another character.
Actually, now that I think about it, there is another component of play that factors into long-term Reward as well. Arguably the text is explicit concerning its satirical, semi-surreal, yet grounded commentary on the real world, and I think play would pretty much have to develop our own satirical take on the world at large. Which brings me to the similar issue concerning Al Amarja, and also concerning the setting for Freemarket. (Two parenthetical points. (1) Articulating such content is not necessary for doing it. (2) OK, granted, conceivably a group could play any of these games with absolutely zero appreciation for the politics, culture, and degrees of satire underlying them, but I think they'd be idiots.)
For My Life with Master, the larger moral question is fixed: the Master sucks and now he's dead, we knew that. The real analysis occurs by examining the characters in parallel. I'm not as clear on how this level of Reward and analysis applies to the characters/settings/games with Aberrant or Dawn of a New Tomorrow.
I'm looking forward to seeing Hans' and Nathan's characters too. Hans, you're probably way ahead of me on this, but it strikes me that MRCZ advancement is the more important variable - perhaps your final version could put the MRCZ at a Tier that you personally consider to be "success" from the standpoint of the starting characters.
Best, Ron
I just realized why the starting color (from the picture) was so extraneous and difficult to imagine for the endgame: I didn't really follow the real game procedures of My Life With Master.
In MLWM, the starting color is about the Master. Only after creating the Master (and with him the setting and color) the players create their characters.
What I did, instead, was to create a minion (looking at the picture) and then imagining him in a situation and a Master compatible with that costume. In this manner the costume was not very tied to the master, it was only a detail of a order given to the Minion.
If I had really followed the game procedures, that picture should be of the Master (with the minions being probably his "Robin", "Alfred" or "Lois"). And this would have tied that Color much more to the killing at the Endgame.
Even if I had to take the character in the picture as The Minion by the rules of the exercise, I should have tied the Master to that costume much more than I did. Ed White should have been someone symbolized by that dollar sign. Someone who would use John Valentino as "Captain Free Market" only, and only in that costume. Maybe some bank, or industry, or a political candidate, that would use him as corporate symbol or for propaganda.
All the rest, the names, the numbers, can stay the same, but in this way it become impossible even think about the endgame without putting that Color front and center of the scene.
Quote from: Ron Edwards on July 25, 2012, 12:18:53 PM
I'm looking forward to seeing Hans' and Nathan's characters too. Hans, you're probably way ahead of me on this, but it strikes me that MRCZ advancement is the more important variable - perhaps your final version could put the MRCZ at a Tier that you personally consider to be "success" from the standpoint of the starting characters.
Mine will be up tomorrow. I had actually envisioned, following Topic #3, that Ickarus might even be in a different MRCZ at this point--though as you suggest, taking his starting MRCZ up to the point of fulfillment, where he would go on his wayward way, is a good option.
Sheets forthcoming.
Okay, on to topic 3:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on July 23, 2012, 02:07:20 PMNow for the questions. What is the Color element of the reward system in action at this scale, including both its terms and mechanics? In other words, how do you describe the character (and most likely his past) in vivid, fictional terms?
Ickarus has divided his time pretty well between doing his own performances and making connections with other actors/performers and working for Marketasmo! to distribute the Tech and advertising that these performers need. In fact, being a part of Marketasmo! has been, for Ickarus, a way to network with like-minded artists. At the point I have the sheets now (6 sessions), Marketasmo! has been fairly successful, and Ickarus has gotten what he needed out of it, and will likely leave soon--as will Interrobang, the Creature Creator. Ickarus is Friends with some folks who like to stage Happening-like performances, and they have folded his Dollar Bill character into their rotating cast, all characters designed to comment on one aspect or another of station life.
Interrobang is likewise connected with other like-minded people and will go her separate, creature-creating way.
Urlo and Faux W.G., the other two founders of Marketasmo!, will keep the MRCZ going: the work they do is popular, and it affords them to indulge in their passions on the side. Plus, they're growing.
Quote from: Ron Edwards on July 23, 2012, 02:07:20 PMStated in exactly those terms, what is the character's arc over a significant amount of time? Does it have a shape at all?
Ickarus' arc looks something like: Passionate but unfocused performer ---> Effectively doing the "waiting tables" day job of many aspiring artists and networking (with Marketasmo!) ---> Hooked up with like-minded individuals, performing and honing his skills.
The shape of the arc is that Ickarus had a passion and used Marketasmo! to help him on his way to where he wanted to be. Another way it could have gone is that his connections with Marketasmo! could have pulled him more strongly and his passion could have been diverted into something else. Now that I think about it, in actual play, this scenario would likely have been a bit messier, with the other people in Marketasmo! being the other users at the table--Ickarus still may have left, but it would have been a bigger deal than I made it out to be here.
Quote from: Ron Edwards on July 23, 2012, 02:07:20 PMHow do you hope Color factors into playing the character from this point forward, both in terms of what others say and what you say? What would be unsatisfying or even deal-breaking, by contrast? If the character cannot be played forward from this point, how do you hope or expect Color to factor into how you and others remember and refer to the character?
Either way--continuing to play Ickarus or dropping him--seems equally viable to me at this point. If I kept playing him, I would want all the established Color that we've created to be reincorporated into what Ickarus does and what happens to him, and how other users and characters talk to and about him. I want his Dollar Bill character to matter to how he's viewed as a person, even if in a non-serious way. I want his history with Marketasmo! to be consequential, opening some doors and shutting others, and bringing him into conflict and cooperation with his old friends.
If I dropped him, or this was the end of the game (likely), I would hope we remember and refer to Ickarus' cool superhero performances and how they affected people and the station at large, and the connections he made with other groups through his band T-shirt designs, and how he reconciled with 6.3 Jen. Stuff like that.
The more I make up fictional history the more I can see that exactly none of this would have happened in Freemarket play--it's too neat! Freemarket bends your character into funny shapes and shoots you down unexpected paths. Many more interesting things would have happened than what I detailed here. But that's fine, and probably a little beside the point of this experiment.
(http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee1/NotHans/FMIck.jpg)
(http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee1/NotHans/FMtasmo.jpg)
Sorry for the delay, I had to go out of town for a couple days!
Quote from: Ron Edwards on July 23, 2012, 02:07:20 PM
Re-write the character after a significant reward cycle. This means when you think the character has really paid off for you, as an instrument of play, sufficiently so that you are glad you've played so far and can look at this play-history as a unit of fully-realized fun. "You got what you came for," relative to this group, this game, and this character.
I'll post the sheet below. But I'm thinking that this would be after a full "campaign" of play, which in my personal play history is about 3-6 months of weekly sessions. Maybe two more "stories" as I defined them in my last post, so the overall arc of the character can be seen as having played out in three acts. This would give me 40 more XP to invest in the character. I saved 5 from my last story. So, with the 25 after my second story:
- I
finally buy that third dot of Domination I'm gonna buy it Tainted, so it costs 5 XP. Fletch now has Taint 5.
- I'm going to buy a dot of Mega-Stamina, both to help with his survivability, but also give him resistance to baseline diseases and add to his life-span. Costs 6 XP.
- Fletch did a bunch of Investigation during this story, which he didn't actually have. So I buy a dot (for 3) and then another (another 2). Costs 5 XP.
- I have 9 XP left. Again, I'm going to bank it because I want to raise his Mega-Manipulation, and need 10 to do it.
- As per the events of play, I drop his Backing in N! (as he leaves the organization), and give him 2 dots of Backing in the Teragen, instead. His Influence drops as well, and lets the say that his assistants were both actually killed in this story. I remove his Followers background, but he has a dot of Allies (his Teragen PC comrade), now.
- Also, the events of play saw his temporary Taint hit 10, so he has another permanent Taint there - 6 total. Which means he needs another Aberration. Technically, you're supposed to take one Aberration per point of Taint over 3, so I need two more! I take "Unearthly Glow" - Fletch has started to enamate a subtle golden glow which seems to flow out of his eyes and swirls around his body, gaining substance when he uses his powers. I also take a mental Aberration, giving Fletch a God Complex - he's convinced that he's simply superior to those around him.
Now, after the third story, I have 29 to spend.
- 10 XP to add a dot a Mega-Manipulation
- I want to add an offensive power to his arsenal. I look at Mental Blast, but he actually doesn't have a great stat for that (based off of Intelligence). On the facing page is the Poison power, which is intriguing, based off of Stamina, and just fits the creepy, subtle-rather-than-showy vibe Fletch is giving off. It costs 11 XP to take Poison and then add a second dot.
- 5 XP to add another dot of Mega-Stamina
- His last 3 XP to add one dot of capacity to his Quantum Pool
- Events of play add a dot each of the Backing, Contacts and Allies backgrounds.
- He has some more temporary Taint, and I roleplay his God Complex getting more severe
QuoteWhat is the Color element of the reward system in action at this scale, including both its terms and mechanics? In other words, how do you describe the character (and most likely his past) in vivid, fictional terms? Stated in exactly those terms, what is the character's arc over a significant amount of time? Does it have a shape at all?
Fictionally: after the first story, Fletch gets involved in a serious behind-the-curtain black-ops operation, where both the corporate overlords at N! and agents of Project Proteus (another canonical faction, which is devoted to a Nova sterilization program) are trying to co-opt Fletch's powers and persona to their own ends. Let's say the events of play lead to Fletch turning on N!, as his experiences push him farther away from sympathy with the baselines who hold his pursestrings. Perhaps the second act ends with a physical confrontation where Fletch narrowly escapes death with the aid of his Teragen contacts (lets say they're other PCs). The third act sees Fletch joining the Teragen and severing ties with his baseline life, shedding the marketing associated with him, and leading an operation against Project Proteus as a combined revenge/strike for Nova rights.
The payoff, for me, is finding out which combination of pressures will lead to Fletch breaking away from his baseline life. I pointed him at that break eventually, and it's a mechanically-supported arc for Nova characters (using the Taint stat as an indicator). But it would depend on what circumstances the GM created, the fidelity of the surrounding fiction as created by the other players, and the specific interactions of the other PCs with Fletch in play.
QuoteHow do you hope Color factors into playing the character from this point forward, both in terms of what others say and what you say? What would be unsatisfying or even deal-breaking, by contrast? If the character cannot be played forward from this point, how do you hope or expect Color to factor into how you and others remember and refer to the character?
So, with his stats at this level, Fletch is getting to a pretty serious power level compared to canonical Nova characters. He's emerging as a leader of other Novas, and has the mechanical power to enforce agendas, rather than reacting to circumstances. He's also at the point where his conflicts pretty much have to be with other Novas, or with world governments/organizations, for them to have any meaning. I'd expect his past persona to come up in-game as a call to his "weakness" or his supposed "corruption" by baseline sympathies, and something that he would seek to distance himself from (or perhaps try to retroactively erase). I would refer to his past as something he's "transcended," and expect that to be a thematic element going forward. Also, his faction has a special "Chrysalis" thing, which is both a fictional process and a mechanical alternate-XP system for character improvement, and I'd definitely angle towards making that a fictionally viable option for Fletch.
(One interesting point about how this version of the Storyteller XP system works: "organic" characters that are built with XP tend to be less effective, in sheer numerical terms, than a character built from scratch with the same amount of Nova points, or whatever. That is, Fletch would be a right terror (equivalent to many of the canonical characters) if I'd built this version of the character sheet with 50 Nova points, rather than 20 NP + 60 XP.)
Big sheet (http://www.ndpdesign.com/storage/fletcher_aberrant_character_3.jpg)
(http://www.ndpdesign.com/storage/fletcher_aberrant_character_3.jpg)
Thanks to everyone!
(This paragraph is a review of Creative Agenda.) You don't play a game in order to follow the rules. You follow the rules for some other reason. You don't play a game with other people In order to have fun. You have fun with them because all of you did something you wanted to do, for some other reason. In each case, the "some other reason" is Creative Agenda (exactly as I've written, i.e., the types, singularly) and the fact that you did it successfully is Reward. That concept is easy notwithstanding the fact that it took over a decade for people to read it without calling me a Nazi, traitor, or lunatic.
(This paragraph is what I really wanted to talk about): how you and your hypothetical fellow players were able to stay in tune with one another at the table, how you made the imagined Situation exciting, and how you made System seem like a part of Situation, is Color. Color appears to be a modifying component of Exploration -- but it's not a trivial modification, but instead crucially integrative, and as it turns out, the modifier is substantial enough even to exist prior to the others. I put this exercise together to focus on one specific point about Color: its unifying and integrating property across the other components, especially as applied through time: prep, in-progress, and in retrospect.
I deliberately chose a problematic image. First, it's a superhero, and superhero role-playing is fraught with a whole unique bank of problems distinct from the more acknowledged bank of problems found in fantasy role-playing. Second, the dollar sign is by no means a neutral concern. You can trivialize it, re-define it, invert it, or anything else, including playing it straight -- but any one of these is consequential. I sort of hoped for a little bit more ideological aggression about the symbol across the characters, as I tried to demonstrate with mine, but the effect was there enough to be recognized anyway.
All thoughts, ideas, agreements/disagreements, questions, and applications are welcome. Also, if anyone was following along with a character of their own, please tell us about him!
I have a bunch of specific thoughts about the characters used so far, which I'll contribute as we go along.
Best, Ron
I like this thread because too many times I read comments about the fact "this is just Color", or "I don't really care about Color, I care about a System that is functional"... and I found myself thinking... "functional to what?" and that "what" is Color.
Color is the reason you play for, or rather, the reason you chose a game to play and not another.
Hi everybody,
I lost a bit of momentum for this thread due to a whole flurry of Big Model issues, all of which, as it turns out, could have been nicely reinforced with this thread's topic. Maybe we can reverse-engineer some of them instead.
I know that the "play it in your head" step was a bit artificial. However, I was a little surprise that some of you specifically abandoned the only touchpoint you had - the superhero dollar motif - and focused on the game's reward mechanics in an effective void. For a couple of them, it was like seeing an exercise in "if I were playing a character with no distinguishing features at all, in a game stripped of all context except for scoring points."
What I want to do is see how Reward and reward mechanics can get separated. I'll pick two examples in which I think the account lost track of the starting Color in favor of constructing a more generic, reward-mechanic oriented approach to play. I've listed my more-or-less instant reactions to what I read, and I urge you to correct me if I'm being unfair or didn't understand you well enough. All thoughts are welcome.
Freemarket: As I see it, Reward at the character level in Freemarket is often about the memories - which are pretty much the only genuinely individualizing features they have. So -- why did the relationship memory get privileged as an arc, and the costume not? Did the costume mean anything to the audience, considering that Thin Slicing and Ephemera were available to make it mean something (and that was sort of the MRCZ's point)? Ultimately what could it mean for the MRCZ's vision statement? Why do you see Ickarus as peripheral to the MRCZ, rather than its indispensable front man? And at the community level of Reward in this game, what is the MRCZ's impact on the station's culture, which in this case is specifically and only an impact on values; how stable is the station in terms of such impact, and how stable should it be. All of which starts feeding into what I think of as Premise-level talk: how does power (real power) arise from popularity; what actually is a medium of exchange --
My Life with Master: On a purely personal note, I loathe playing this game with anyone who is thinking about those final values and the potential Epilogue. For me the Reward is in the accumulating, passionate reactions every character has, generating what feels and looks like a purely deterministic plot by the time the Epilogues come around, and their role is only to put a period (perhaps a meaningful one) at the end of it. Some of the things which interest me about those plots include the relative degrees of humanity and monstrosity the Minion achieves through his or her own actions (e.g. the details of following a command, or the way a Connection is dealt with). But I also care a lot about the specifics of a Minion: the look and feel, and what that means. For example, did John play Captain Freemarket to the hilt, without caring about it one way or the other, and only get irritated about something else Ed made him do? Or, conversely, did Ed give him anything he wanted as long as he acted like Captain Freemarket 24 hours a day? How exactly did wearing that precise outfit and promoting that persona interact with the Love mechanic? Without any of this, I find the character utterly non-compelling. He could have been a dog-faced boy, a girl with a withered arm, or a potted plant, merely a placeholder for "Generic Minion character."
Perhaps I can put it this way: imagine these two characters in two different groups/contexts using the same traditional fantasy RPG system, played without deconstruction or satire.
(http://adept-press.com/wordpress/wp-content/media/woman_warrior13.jpg) (http://adept-press.com/wordpress/wp-content/media/noriko.sword-cc.jpg)
Could they have exactly the same scores for the items on their character sheets? Sure. Are they the same to play (Reward)? And related, would the players and group apply reward mechanics to them identically? I don't think so.
It's taken me years to articulate this properly, and perhaps I've held off because it seems so harsh: Reward without developing the Color is gutless. Those fabulous unapologetic D&D Gamists know that (http://ihititwithmyaxe.tumblr.com/post/12379861210/how-to-kill-the-tarrasque-at-10th-level). Even the ones who recapitulate their Renfaire characters, playing a grotesque amalgam of pseudo-Gamism and Illusionism, (pretend this is before) know (http://www.draconika.com/images/shifter-cleric.jpg) (pretend this is after) it (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/365_Character_Concepts.jpg)!
Or how about these? (same thing, before & after) http://rotgrub.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/reading2.jpg?w=640 and http://teamgt.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/raistlin051608_resize-329x500.jpg ...
Have we forgotten?
Best, Ron
I wonder if there's a trap here, Ron. Developing meaningful Color-as-it-would-develop-in-play as a thought experiment seems predetermined to result in a certain blandness, because it's exactly the unexpected twists and turns of play that builds (dare I say bricoles) that meaning. Trying to elucidate the reward of playing this character outside of the mechanical ones of the game is like asking "so, what happened in the 3rd session" - it hasn't happened, so there's not much to talk about beyond vague generalizations. Like, "the reward for me is seeing my investment in the character pay off" - pay off how? I dunno, it's the details that make it rewarding, or not, in the sense that I think you're aiming for.
A stronger experiment, perhaps, would be to ask for volunteers to create a character based on the image for games they're actually playing, and report back after each session...
(also, I know that I entered this thing because I was interested in it as a process, and not because I was particularly compelled by the character image. I'm imagining that dropping the "dollar" signifier as an important element may stem from that issue)
Hi Nathan,
Maybe. I certainly want to steer clear from any claim that someone should actually have been able to simulate or conduct play for the characters. Running it with real play actually wouldn't have addressed what I wanted either, though, because I'm most interested in an internal processing of Color, and its relationship to stuff on the sheet.
I wish there had been some way to articulate the whole thing to focus on expectations or ways for Reward to occur. Also, it is instructive to see the difference between systems like Heroic Do-Etcetera (the one I used) which are strictly about getting more points to spend, and those like Freemarket in which numerical changes and listed items come straight from events in play.
I'm trying to keep it from being a trap by focusing on the two characters who seem to have most -- well, been most arbitrarily de-Colored, at least given my biases about the games.
I also think there's a lot of gold in the thread, with plenty to talk about, and I hope to see more thoughts about it (e.g. Davide's). I figured it was a matter of honesty to get my crabbier points made up front.
Best, Ron
Well, you know, I am "special"... I am the one who start thinking stories of the pawn on the chess-board who doesn't want to go to war 'cause he has kids at home, or the bishop who is secretly in love with the queen and will defend her to death... and I make moves on the chess-board according to the stories.
And I lose the match, but guys... I have so much fun with that.
I think the main difference is (1) approaching a (rp)game with the idea of creating an emerging fictional series of events, that will be supported by a given system - as opposed to (2) approaching a game with the idea of having a set of rules that will generate a given output.
I strongly prefer the type of approach #1, in which I can develop - or at least try to... - all the aspects and feelings I get by the fictional facts themselves, as they start become more and more complex under my eyes.
So, for Chris, I imagined him, in the situation proposed, with the fiction developing, trying to look at him as you look at your memories of a decade past, tiding together those consequences who led you to the point you are now.
Consequences of a real life, or a good simulation of it.
I thought Chris had a strong behavior and cumbersome to some point, idealistic to the limit of overcoming the boundary that separates justice from "justicialism".
So the choice of leading him to the "Rage"/"Controls You" side of the game was a must, as this fictional events put in a single flow would have led to that, playing Dawn of a New Tomorrow.
In this development, the game either gives you mechanics that let you chose were to go, but also mechanics that gives you consequences you were not expecting, and then asks you to deal with them.
Dealing with them has no particular "rules", but it's what the game spins around.
Have you decided to use your super-power of Nuclear Blast to block the invasion of the giant ants? That's fine. You just Nuclear-blasted L.A. Wanna call home to see how mommy is? ... oh sorry... there's no more home... you killed your family, hero.
Quote from: Ron Edwards on August 08, 2012, 02:18:41 PM
I know that the "play it in your head" step was a bit artificial. However, I was a little surprise that some of you specifically abandoned the only touchpoint you had - the superhero dollar motif - and focused on the game's reward mechanics in an effective void. For a couple of them, it was like seeing an exercise in "if I were playing a character with no distinguishing features at all, in a game stripped of all context except for scoring points."
What I want to do is see how Reward and reward mechanics can get separated. I'll pick two examples in which I think the account lost track of the starting Color in favor of constructing a more generic, reward-mechanic oriented approach to play. I've listed my more-or-less instant reactions to what I read, and I urge you to correct me if I'm being unfair or didn't understand you well enough. All thoughts are welcome.
Freemarket: As I see it, Reward at the character level in Freemarket is often about the memories - which are pretty much the only genuinely individualizing features they have. So -- why did the relationship memory get privileged as an arc, and the costume not? Did the costume mean anything to the audience, considering that Thin Slicing and Ephemera were available to make it mean something (and that was sort of the MRCZ's point)? Ultimately what could it mean for the MRCZ's vision statement? Why do you see Ickarus as peripheral to the MRCZ, rather than its indispensable front man? And at the community level of Reward in this game, what is the MRCZ's impact on the station's culture, which in this case is specifically and only an impact on values; how stable is the station in terms of such impact, and how stable should it be. All of which starts feeding into what I think of as Premise-level talk: how does power (real power) arise from popularity; what actually is a medium of exchange --
Hey Ron,
I think you're reading me fine.
I'll say that I think the relationship stuff got privileged over the costume stuff because this exercise was heavily colored (ha) by my recent experiences running FM. The Users in my longest-running game had some real human stuff going on, but seemed to shy away from those relationships in play (to the point of inflicting abuse as a way to show they were done with the relationship); I think I was just excited about seeing what that looks like in FM, and so I took that and ran with it rather than the dollar sign motif. I also tried to honestly depict FM play as I've seen it, and in most cases the characters are so mutable that original character concepts are not what comes to the fore in play; something else happens and the characters are different. Perhaps I wasn't honestly buying into the experiment.
Why was Ickarus peripheral rather than the frontman? Again, I think I was valuing trying to replicate an "authentic" FM experience rather than just follow the experiment. Being a part of a MRCZ often feels like you are being pulled in two directions (your own & your MRCZ's), and I felt that Ickarus would have gotten away too easy if he'd just been the head of the MRCZ and taken it in whatever direction he wanted.
I think the MRCZ's impact on station culture is negligible beyond a few other groups. They're a fixture of a certain subculture, and that's probably it.
Did I answer all your questions?
I wouldn't be surprised if you give people a character they are not interested in, ask them to play it, and after a session or two almost all the details you focused on have dropped out of the picture!
I'm sure there are thousands of disappointed GMs out there who thought that pregened characters would be the saving grace of authenticity, only to find the other players' divergent interests resurfacing.
That sounds like the sort of thing that a reward cycle acting responsively to players' thoughts about colour would produce!
I wonder if something like "change one element of this character then stat them up", would have done a better job at retaining the rest of the colour, as people could take out the bits they find uninteresting and keep the rest.