[Nerdinburgh '08] Spione
JC:
Quote from: Reithan on January 25, 2008, 12:11:06 PM
Where can I find more information on this game? It sounds like a really good source of material, inspiration, or just a good play in general (provided the mentioned problems get resolved...or turn out to not be problems.)
the game's official web-site is here: http://spione.adept-press.com
be sure to check out the videos
I found them very useful
Ron Edwards:
Admitting the possible danger of bias, my perception is that none of the people posting in the thread are arguing with one another or dealing with any problems of understanding the rules. The thing is, there's little shared language to talk about the rules, and the simple system has enough emergent facets to lead to many "ifs" when trying to describe something, especially in the abstract. What's being worked out here, and unfortunately, possibly to the detriment of public curiosity about the game, is how people are most satisfied with talking about it.
Based on discussions at the Spione site, as well as in person with Ralph and others, I'm confident that the rules text itself yields no problems of procedure - what it says, you do, and there isn't anything you do that is left out. Um, that's probably getting into self-promotion, so I'll stop.
Best, Ron
mindwanders:
Hi Folks,
I was one of the other Spion players at Nerdinburgh (the "Gordon" mentioned). I dropped in just after the initial actual play post was made and I haven't had a chance to get back to the post until now. Hopefully, this will allow us to get this thread back on the track of our actual play experience.
I'll start off with my imediate reaction to the game after we finished playing, then expand from there.
I must admit. I didn't enjoy the session of Spione. I came away from the game feeling that we had spent several hours creating a pair of stories that were not memorable, collaborative or interesting. I felt that I had very little actual input into the stories, and what input I had was often changed or twisted in a direction I did not want it to go.
I'm not a spy fiction affictionado, hell I don't even like james bond. I've watched a fair bit of 24, but mostly because my wife is a big fan. So when the principle sheets organisation sheets came out they were all a bit on the overwhelming side. The sheets got passed around the table for everyone to have a quick look and then we got going.
I honestly can't remember any of my narration during the manuvours. Although I do remember us jumping to flashback for a large part of Issams narration and me spending several manouvers trying to narrate in what I felt was a better ending for his wife.
I also struggled to find a protagonist that I could invest in. The first one I tried was Issams wife, but she was written out at the first flashpoint. So I tried to keep her as a protagonist when we went to flashback (not very satisfying because no-one else was interested). The next was Eric, but by this point we were running short of interesting characters, so lots of people latched on to him.
In the first flashpoint I had no cards, in the second, one card and on the last two flashpoints I had two cards, but I was only able to double on one of them. My double was used to add in the fact that eric was being taken away by his russian handlers. Mostly because I was so bored with the existing story I thought I'd try and tell my own one off to the side. Unfortunately, everyone thought this was a great aspect for the story and jumped all over it, eventually resulting in Eric setting up David so he could insert himself into the KGB and act as a double agent.
I raised the question several times as to whether we should go to flashpoint yet. But this was more so that I could get a feel of where the flashpoints were meant to go from the groups perspective than actually
After the session there were two main things that I sugested would have improved play.
I thought the group was too large to handle the round the table narration style of the manouvers well. We had 5 people playing, and the stories changed a lot between each of your manouvers, so it was very hard to keep things on track with your own priorities. I think a slightly smaller group might have made things a bit less random as far as the stories trying to pull in multiple directions.
We also didn't do much back and forth or discussion about what was happening in each manouver. The players rarely discussed what ideas were cool or what they were working towards with each manouver. Normally they just narrated thier little piece and moved on. I think this may have been an important thing we missed out on with a group of this size.
Since the game I've had a couple of other thoughts I'd like to share.
The whole idea of the non-principle players working to move the principles further into the "cold" was not really discussed at any great length. I think if that had been stressed a bit more, it might have helped us all keep pulling the sories in the same direction.
I had a real problem working out who the cast of each of the stories was. If we had had copies of the principle sheets and the opperation details of our own to refer to as well as the communal copies in the middle. I think I would have been able to use the information to springboard my ideas a lot more easily.
The flashpoint mechanic is an interesting one, but one that I didn't feel was that intrinsicly tied to the setting. I was interested to learn that it was a mechanic that Ron had used before elsewhere and then incorporated into Spione. I really like the idea of it and the way that it functions during the flashpoint.
I get the feeling that the real system for the game is based on a currency of ideas about interesting things we could do with the story. The flashpoints and manouvers system set those ideas in stone, but like it was stated, you can't do that on your own. But, unless there is that back and forth of selling ideas to the other players and incorporating thier ideas you run the risk of ending up with the jumbled mess we did.
We only had one person at the table who had read the book. So I think a lot of Ron's careful hand holding didn't get passed on to the players. Is there a cheat sheet or a play style brief for this game to get players into thinking the way you want to play, Ron?
Ron Edwards:
Hi Gordon,
I appreciate your post and think feedback of this kind is wonderful as a designer - it's a door to understanding the game, a sharing of a willingness to try my game, an even more important willingness to say "can our minds meet" about it. At the individual level, you and me, it's what I want.
However, at a promotional and website level, I'm battling a sickness of the heart in trying to reply. It'd be different if this were at the actual-play forum at the Spione site, which isn't an RPG-culture bulletin board. Here, however, I see fans of the game arguing with one another over phrasing (theirs, not the rules), which gives the message that the game is confusing and creates contention. I see the basic statement that it was No Fun, which is all anyone needs to say, "Oh," and be done with it forever. I see evidence of a play session that however well-intentioned, did not begin with a combination of ideas or intentions to play that matched the game's content. The thread has become my worst nightmare: the precise points where Spione departs from role-playing culture becoming its description among the culture. Through no one's fault, really. The hell of it is that not one person posting to this thread has done anything wrong or said anything that wouldn't be a source of fun discussion at the home site.
I see no way out at that level. I fear the damage is done and that Spione is now a target for detractors and a write-off for anyone who'd be interested. I also fear forlornly saying to less and less people over time, "But some people really liked it when they played too ..." Does it matter that successful and provocative actual play is described at other sites? I don't know.
So my attention has to stay focused on talking with you, the person, which carries none of that malaise. I wish I could help more, though. It's hard to do anything other than pointing to the book. Moreno, I think you did it an injustice. It really does say what to do. It cannot say what a given group will do with it or what the experience will be like, because the starting point of the reader cannot be controlled, nor would I want it to be.
What that means is, I'm struggling with how to illustrate here what the book says that clearly did not get communicated for this particular group. It's frustrating to imagine responses that say, "Oh, well, see, Ron doesn't explain things in his books and has to talk about them on-line," which is a standard riff, when all I'm going to do here is repeat stuff that's in there. So Gordon, please let me know whether any of the following makes any sense.
1. There is no purpose whatever to the Maneuvers phase except to put the two principal characters into the Cold. Playing Spione without this being explicit is like playing poker and forgetting to mention to the group that you will be betting with real money.
2. The game is intended to be relevant at a personal/political level, which is hard to explain since it's not about being preachy (the default hearing of the word "political" today). It's a matter of bringing in elements with resonance, or also of finding something at least interesting or revelatory in the background information. Moreno, you have an intense personal history regarding fascism, the CIA, and Italian politics. Did you share that with the group? Did any such issues arise in the story? If not, then I'm not sure what to say or do.
3. The "Spy vs. Guy" genre is almost totally alien to gaming culture, although not necessarily to individuals within it. The very word "spies," in the context of RPGs to date, means action, skill, coolness, training, disguise, and ultimately, unthinking patriotism. It can be campy and rapid-fire, like Bond, or all grim and moody, like 24 - they are the same, i.e., they are Thrillers. Spy vs. Guy is not Thriller. None of what "spies" means in Thrillers applies at all. It may interest people to know that Richard Helms, arguably the most politically significant CIA chief in history because he was subtle, despised The Spy Who Came in from the Cold with every fiber of his being. He rightly diagnosed it as a threat to the secret culture of intelligence and to the U.S. version of the Cold War itself, which he considered holy. To turn it around to my way of thinking, as I consider Helms to have been basically a reptile in human form, the Thriller borders on literary evil. I don't ultimately despise every example of it, and can find many of them fun, but as a whole the genre is pure propaganda in the negative sense, with concrete and terrible effects in reality, as manifested again and again, e.g. From Russia With Love (John F. Kennedy's favorite book) and most recently 24 (each season of which is eagerly perused by guards and interrogators in Guantánamo for ideas).
Unless the group is at least interested in the Spy vs. Guy concept, which goes well beyond the notion of "a guy in trouble! can he trust his masters?" into the realm of nearly-surreal political horror, then again, I guess I don't know what to say. Points #1-3 are so tightly intertwined that they are really a single concept.
4. The piecemeal, small-unit, unpredictable construction of scenes, actions, and conflicts is not a new way to do things, but a formalized version of what really happens without being acknowledged in many groups. All I can do is to ask you to accept, provisionally, that it can work, and to considering shifting to expectations of play that differ from "where this scene is going" and "what I want to see happen." I tried to articulate that a little bit in my earlier post, on the first page, using PTA as the explicit contrast, so I'm interested in your responses to that. I'd like to hold off on discussions of group size and other procedural features until we talk about it.
Thanks again for posting, and again, for playing.
Best, Ron
P.S. Oh yeah! There is a diagram of play available on the site, using little pictures and circles and arrows. I don't know whether you used it, nor do I think it's a perfect blueprint for play that will perfectly educate anyone about everything. So check it out and see what you think.
mindwanders:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on January 26, 2008, 08:16:26 AM
Hi Gordon,
I appreciate your post and think feedback of this kind is wonderful as a designer - it's a door to understanding the game, a sharing of a willingness to try my game, an even more important willingness to say "can our minds meet" about it. At the individual level, you and me, it's what I want.
Thanks Ron. I tried to put in as much info and observations as I could in order to try and help people understand what was going on at the table.
Quote from: Ron Edwards on January 26, 2008, 08:16:26 AM
I see no way out at that level. I fear the damage is done and that Spione is now a target for detractors and a write-off for anyone who'd be interested. I also fear forlornly saying to less and less people over time, "But some people really liked it when they played too ..." Does it matter that successful and provocative actual play is described at other sites? I don't know.
I would just like to point out that I could see the fun in Spione. It's not the sort of fun I would normally seek out, but I could see where it would come from in the game. I'm just trying to work out where we went wrong in bringing that fun to the table. Part of the problem I'm sure was a lack of dedication to the premise on my part, and also my dislike for previous games that don't directly asign me a protagonist (I've owned Universalis for a long time and never played it because of that very reason).
Quote from: Ron Edwards on January 26, 2008, 08:16:26 AM
What that means is, I'm struggling with how to illustrate here what the book says that clearly did not get communicated for this particular group. It's frustrating to imagine responses that say, "Oh, well, see, Ron doesn't explain things in his books and has to talk about them on-line," which is a standard riff, when all I'm going to do here is repeat stuff that's in there. So Gordon, please let me know whether any of the following makes any sense.
1. There is no purpose whatever to the Maneuvers phase except to put the two principal characters into the Cold. Playing Spione without this being explicit is like playing poker and forgetting to mention to the group that you will be betting with real money.
Then this is one of the main places I went wrong. I'm not sure if this was explained before the start of the session or not or if it just slipped past me and I never noticed it. Certainly Gregor (the one person who had read the book) seemed to be puruing that within the manouvers. But I really don't think the rest of the players were.
Quote from: Ron Edwards on January 26, 2008, 08:16:26 AM
2. The game is intended to be relevant at a personal/political level, which is hard to explain since it's not about being preachy (the default hearing of the word "political" today). It's a matter of bringing in elements with resonance, or also of finding something at least interesting or revelatory in the background information. Moreno, you have an intense personal history regarding fascism, the CIA, and Italian politics. Did you share that with the group? Did any such issues arise in the story? If not, then I'm not sure what to say or do.
This wasn't something we managed to achieve. I can see where this comes from with the dirty secret and the disclosure. But I'm not sure where else this was meant to come from in play. Is this meant to be something the players are bringing to the table or is it meant to come from the setup or rules in some way?
Quote from: Ron Edwards on January 26, 2008, 08:16:26 AM
3. The "Spy vs. Guy" genre is almost totally alien to gaming culture, although not necessarily to individuals within it. The very word "spies," in the context of RPGs to date, means action, skill, coolness, training, disguise, and ultimately, unthinking patriotism. It can be campy and rapid-fire, like Bond, or all grim and moody, like 24 - they are the same, i.e., they are Thrillers. Spy vs. Guy is not Thriller. None of what "spies" means in Thrillers applies at all. It may interest people to know that Richard Helms, arguably the most politically significant CIA chief in history because he was subtle, despised The Spy Who Came in from the Cold with every fiber of his being. He rightly diagnosed it as a threat to the secret culture of intelligence and to the U.S. version of the Cold War itself, which he considered holy. To turn it around to my way of thinking, as I consider Helms to have been basically a reptile in human form, the Thriller borders on literary evil. I don't ultimately despise every example of it, and can find many of them fun, but as a whole the genre is pure propaganda in the negative sense, with concrete and terrible effects in reality, as manifested again and again, e.g. From Russia With Love (John F. Kennedy's favorite book) and most recently 24 (each season of which is eagerly perused by guards and interrogators in Guantánamo for ideas).
Unless the group is at least interested in the Spy vs. Guy concept, which goes well beyond the notion of "a guy in trouble! can he trust his masters?" into the realm of nearly-surreal political horror, then again, I guess I don't know what to say. Points #1-3 are so tightly intertwined that they are really a single concept.
Can you give me some examples of the sort of influences that would be more appropriate?
It looks like I'm struggling with a frame of reference for the game. If any of the other players at the table are reading this, is this something that strikes more of a cord with you as far as being interested in the concept? Was this maybe a major feature holding us back?
Quote from: Ron Edwards on January 26, 2008, 08:16:26 AM
4. The piecemeal, small-unit, unpredictable construction of scenes, actions, and conflicts is not a new way to do things, but a formalized version of what really happens without being acknowledged in many groups. All I can do is to ask you to accept, provisionally, that it can work, and to considering shifting to expectations of play that differ from "where this scene is going" and "what I want to see happen." I tried to articulate that a little bit in my earlier post, on the first page, using PTA as the explicit contrast, so I'm interested in your responses to that. I'd like to hold off on discussions of group size and other procedural features until we talk about it.
Thanks again for posting, and again, for playing.
Best, Ron
P.S. Oh yeah! There is a diagram of play available on the site, using little pictures and circles and arrows. I don't know whether you used it, nor do I think it's a perfect blueprint for play that will perfectly educate anyone about everything. So check it out and see what you think.
I need to run just now. I'll go back and read your previous post and diagram give my thoughts on this tomorrow.
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