[Nerdinburgh '08] Spione
jburneko:
Quote from: Valamir on January 23, 2008, 02:22:30 PM
Once I made that connection...that the entirely arbitrary resolution system that I as a player have no ability to manipulate in a meaningful way...puts me as the player in essentially the exact same position as the Principle...I totally fell for it.
Ralph, I think you might be overstating a bit. To be fair what I'm about to say is from reading only and not play experience but it seems to me that "meaningful" is the wrong word. You CAN manipulate the system in a meaningful way, what you can't do is manipulate the system in a favorable way.
The way is see it, if you're the Principle your ideal situation would be to have a double stacked card at the far right end of the run because then you could narrate yourself out of whatever jam all the previous negative narrations at narrated you into -- TA DA! However, there is no way to willfully move your own cards to the right. So you're left with a choice -- leave your cards where they are and hope that everyone else moves their cards to the left of yours OR move your cards to the left in the hopes of protecting whatever you can with an early narration before the hammer falls.
Jesse
Ron Edwards:
I'm workin' on a response! Joe, I really, really appreciate your patience.
The Forge seems to be rife with deep and powerful questions this past week, and I'm still hoofin' it to catch up.
Best, Ron
Moreno R.:
Hi!
I would like to second what Jesse said. It's true that the character (the principal) is powerless over what will happen to him. No amount of skill, knowledge, no trait, no social or political power, nothing that he or she has can influence in any way the drawing of the cards. (During our first game, that I posted about in these three threads on the Spione forum, I saw the drawing of the cards at the start of flashpoints like a tarot reading. You are reading the future of the characters. "something bad will happen to you...", etc.). But the player has a lot of power and inflence over what will happen. In three different ways.
The first: It's the player who decide what really happen. The card can say "narrate something detrimental to your principal", but its up to you to decide what, how, when and to whom. At first, I didn't see how much liberty the player have over this because I was still thinking in terms of "conflict resolution", and if the flashpoint begin with someone shooting my principal, I though that I had to narrate how he got shot and "lose the conflicts". But this is not the case. in Spione you can really narrate what you want, under the initial constraint of rhe cards (for example, in the last session, during a fast-paced chase in the Soviet Embassy with the principal held at gunpoint by a kgb agent, I used a couple of cards to narrate the death of a supporting cast character that was in another town)
The second: the choice of moving a card during the initial "accordion setup" is a meaningful one. Jesse already talked about some of these meanings, but there are others. At the beginning, every card has the right to frame a scene. But you are under the obligation of making that scene advantageous to your principal (if you play one) or detrimental to one (if you don't), and you can't make facts "stick" in a permanent way wih only one card. During that phase, at the beginning, and every time someone move a card, you could have a choice about keeping it that way, of trading that scene with the power to help or hinder the narration of another player (or enforce one of yours). And this free you from the initial obligation to your principal, for that card. You can hose your principal, if you want. If you really don't like him and you don't want to "help him", you can move your card over the card of a non-principal player, wait for him to say something like "the car crashes, you are brought to the hospital with minor injuries", and add "they seemed minor at the beginning, but inside the ambulance I pass out and I die before reaching the emergency room" (this from an initial card arrangement that would have forced you to help your principal with your card!)
If you read my actual play thread, you will see that in the third session (when we really began to grok the game) we made a lot of choices like that. What I like, among other things, was the way it was always a very simple, but meaningful choice. Often, when a player is offered a wide choice with a lot of possibilities during a game, he/she freeze, paralized by uncertainty. Or he/she choose the first one he come up to avoid taking up too much time. Here, the player during this phase has always only a few possible movements to choose from. Often, only one. And you can see it before it's your turn, When we began to understand better the game, the Flashpoints were really FAST, but all the movements really changed the "landscape of destiny" for the characters
So, fast, simple choices during the "mechanical" part of the flashpoint phase. And after that, you have put the limitations (that "foster creativity") in place to help you narrate what you want.
The third (and this is really big, and you have it only if you play a principal): by choosing to disclose, or not, you can decide if the supporting cast can be saved (at least, some of them), of it they all will end the story in prison, or dead.
Joe, when I did read the book, I thought that the game was really easy. A few pages, a few rules, no tables or things to memorize... and then when we tried to play it, at first we made mistakes almost on every single one of these few rules (even on the third session we still didn't use all the rules as written, and I did notice only reading the book again after that). I don't know if Spione would be hard to play at the beginning for someone who never roleplayed before, but sure at the beginning was hard for us. Because our habits got always on the way, and we played it like PTA or some other roleplaying game, not like was written. We had to learn to catch ourselves doing this, and only then we began to see how really was the game. And after that, only playing it we began to notice the effect and the way these rules interacted (it was only the third time that I began to think about the endgame, and noticed how... political it was. "reveal your lie and deception, your secret shame, or your friends and family will be screwed". It was one of these "wow" moment that usually I get from reading fiction, not game instructons... but not many game istruction say "lies ruin people, only the truth can save them"* when you play them) [*sorry for the crass simplification, Ron, I know that the game is more nuanced that that]
Anyway, I don't think it's possible to "get" this game in only one session of play. Even with people less hard-wired on role-playing games. Much of what you can use the rules for is hidden, and you notice it only playing for more than one session (sometimes I think that Ron let his martial arts training spill too much in the way he write games. Or has seen too many times "Karate Kid I", and want to make us learn his game by passing a lot of time putting wax on, wax off... I really LIKE game designers who hold my hand while I learn the rules, instead of saying "you have to earn it", you know?)
Moreno R.:
Hi Joe!
In my previous post I did forgot to adress something you said.This time I will use quoting to help me avoid this.
Quote from: Joe Murphy (Broin) on January 23, 2008, 04:38:20 AM
Last Saturday evening, five of the Nerdinburgh attendees played Spione. Gregor ran the game, and the players were Jenny, Joe Prince, Gordon and me.
Gregor didn't play? If he was the one who had read the book, I think it would have been better if he played, too. I know that I would not have been able to play the game without reading the entire book (I don't know much about spies , and without reading the historic material on the book I would have not be able even to understand the character sheets. And I still had some problem with them even after reading it...), and having someone at the table who could help us with technical terms and details would have been invaluable.
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JoeP and I picked out the protagonists, Issam (sp?) (who was in movies)
EVERYBODY pick Issam. And then kill him! There is something strange about that character.... ;-)
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The flashpoint _mechanics_ felt hugely random. Juggling cards around took a long time, for no benefit I could see. My attention wandered while cards moved, stacked, moved again. The system was competitive, and I wasn't sure why it needed to be.
I missed this point in my previus answer. I what sense you saw it as "competitive"?
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I scribbled notes of retcons, possible retcons and possible scenes, but didn't get to use many. As David's story played out, I really wanted a scene where he confronted Eric (I was quite attached to the honeypot explanation for some of the events). I felt unsatisfied when we didn't get that.
We really didn't use retcons almost at all. I don't know why, maybe it was an aestetic choice, it did not feel "right". In your game it was a common occurrence, people retconning much of what did happen in the manouvers? Seeing that they must use cards to do this (and you don't have enough cards to do all what you want to do during a flashpoint, ever), I imagine that there were a lot of thing narrated during the manouvers that they didn't agree with.
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I found the briefing sheets difficult to assimilate. The details felt stifling rather than suggestive. As they're quite factual, rather than evocative, I found them difficult to use
Yes, on this I agree. I think that they would be a lot more evocative for someone who has read a lot of spy books, but we had a lot of difficulties in understanding the meaning of much of what it was written on them. Some more explanation and examples would have been useful (said this, after playing Spione now I can see "spooks" and understand what they are saying! Cool!)
Ron Edwards:
Hello!
The main thing is to say "thanks" for playing the game. As Gregor might have mentioned, it's more of a book about something which then includes a game as a smaller piece, rather than a setting for the primary product of a game, so I hope you or others are interested enough to check it out. Ideally, the game is to be played by people who were turned on by the book, in whole or in part, rather than channelled as a game in isolation from one person to others.
Regarding the handouts, I had to make a pretty strong choice early on, about the primary audience. I eventually decided that it would be spy fiction fans, rather than the gaming community, and therefore those handouts are tuned more to the pre-existing vocabulary of that group. For anyone else, yeah, there's going to be a little learning curve, although I think I cover most of it (except for "wires" which I forgot) in the book. I'm glad you found a plus in the effort. It's kind of funny, after being exposed to this stuff for a while through proximity, my wife has picked up a lot. To the extent that, when we watched the first season of 24 a while ago, she snarled "What sort of a counter-intel officer are you?! Need to Know!" at one of the characters.
All the other folks who've jumped in have made excellent points, and covered most of the ground that I might have. And probably better, as each of them sort of fought through some of the pre-conceptions and arrived, as it were, whereas I had deliberately stripped off as much as I could from my own habits before I began. Here's the one thing that hasn't been discussed yet: your key use of the term "protagonist" to describe the principal you played.
And in that little thing, lies all the difference. Because the principals are not protagonists; or better, they have as much chance to become protagonists during play as any other character, Supporting Cast or not. The principals aren't even player-characters. In many ways, the principal players are more like GMs than like players, because those two spies are pivot points for the operations they're involved in as well as for the people they are close to. Also, "players" in the traditional sense of term do not exist in Spione except as (and if) any characters become protagonized through the group dynamics of play. If it's a principal, then that person becomes a "player," and if it's not, then anyone can become a "player" simply by choosing to act with that character, or making suggestions about him or her. Such a character may become a multiply co-owned protagonist. It's even quite possible for no character at all to become a protagonist, and indeed, there are spy novels like that. Admittedly, rather cold and bitter ones, but they do exist.
I realize how weird this is, and perhaps doubly so for people who have enjoyed PTA, Polaris, Burning Empires, My Life with Master, and many others, like you and I have. Most of those games were written from an experience of having been de-protagonized through habits and systems of play in the past, so insta-protagonist game design has been a logical step over the past seven or eight years, among us. I played a very big part in that subcultural shift, actually, and so did Paul Czege, 1999-2002. With Spione, I'm doing something different - I'm aware that people are able to protagonize characters, so I set up the components that are necessary for it (basically, pregnant "situation") and said, when and if it happens during play, you're 100% free to do it ... and then I let go of any other structure for determining who and how.
I mean, let's say one is interested in playing Narrativist / Story Now. It's very nearly a given: you have to have at least one protagonist. I asked myself, why lock it down before the rest of the process as to who it is, though, and who gets to play him or her? That's an assumption of role-playing history. It works. But that doesn't mean it's the only way to go, and quite arguably, it's inconsistent with the grim and gut-exposing genre I'm working with, which is neither quite fiction nor non-fiction, and in which the author, frankly, is often conflicted about the rightness of disclosing things and/or having things work out a particular way. So I opened it up for Spione, knowing that people can protagonize characters, and saying, that's part of the process of play when and if you want it to be, not something you nail down right before play, which is - actually - not necessarily justified, creatively speaking.
I saw exactly what you're talking about, or what's implied by your description, during playtesting - people with role-playing backgrounds had to get over their notion that this character we made up before play is automatically going to be the protagonist of the story. The good news is that, like so many other assumptions we've exploded here at the Forge, it seems insurmountable until you do it, and then you say, "Huh! Why was I so stuck on that?" afterwards.
I'd like to clarify something about all these assumptions I'm talking about. They are functional and powerful things, in currently-existing games. I wouldn't want to play PTA unless I knew every player-character was regarded as a protagonist from the outset. I'm not talking about what Chris Chinn, Matt Wilson, and I call "gamer baggage." Nor I am referencing the evil-awful Brain Damage concept that I talked about two years ago. When I talk about assumptions and habits, in this case, I'm talking about good things which happen not to be suitable assumptions and habits for Spione, and that's all.
A few other little fiddly points ...
1. Ralph's point is very strong, especially in combination with Jesse's point, but the little bit I'll modify is this: the phrase "you are," in reference to a character. Welllll ... not only. Anyone, whether they play a principal or not, also has player-type (or GM-type, whichever) authority over other characters on his or her turn, in a way which resembles Universalis. You can even direct the actions of a principal you don't play on your turn, subject to veto, which I have noticed typically is not exercised. So I'm not disagreeing with Ralph or Jesse at all, but calling attention to a feature of the game which assigns responsibility for a principal's actions to the person who owns him or her, but doesn't restrict that person's actions to that principal, nor proscribes others' contributions to the principal's actions.
2. Scene creation and development follows the same logic as the protagonist idea. It's pretty much the exact opposite of Trollbabe or PTA - instead of saying, "This is a scene, with such-and-such a purpose," we instead have various components of location, persons, dialogue, actions, and color sort of adding up, and either we find ourselves in a capital-S scene, or we have a nice bit of relaxed characterization or imagery. I've noticed that new groups, especially with PTA-experienced folks, tend to drive toward conflicts and Flashpoints with an almost frantic reaction ... it makes perfect sense that they want to Bang things, but it's kind of funny that the primary criticism Matt received with PTA was "Gah! What about 'just playing' and letting the scenes develop into important or not important on their own?" So that's what Spione does, and now it's the opposite criticism, "Gah! How do we know whether the scene's important or what it's about?" That contrast leads me to think that both criticisms are about expectations, not about the intrinsic quality or function of what the game offers.
3. A bit of advice: it's perfectly OK for someone to say, "Hey everyone, I got it! I know exactly what [a character] will do," or something equally blurted-out and based on something specific the person wants in the story. If so, then it's perfectly OK for each person with a turn still remaining prior to this person to use the Color option, if they are all actually interested in responding to the stated desire. And if one person along the way has something of his or her own, and if that doesn't fly for the person who spoke, well, Flashpoints are there for that purpose too, because nothing said during Maneuvers has to be true. Flashpoints therefore can be either more like bidding in Universalis, or more like conflict resolution in (say) Dogs, or any combination of the two.
So, there are some of my thoughts on your post and experience. I really want to say, this isn't about "you are gamerz and did it wrongg!!" What I'm saying is that it really is something ... new ... and as such, yes, there's going to be a bit of a learning curve, predicated on play rather than explanations. (Moreno, there really isn't any other way. The Spione rules text is full of hand-holding. It is just something so "off" that doing it is required.) Even for people who've mastered the learning curve for many existing games that were developed at the Forge or inspired or affected by it, because the design is going someplace else. I can only hope that the material is interesting enough to prompt some willingness to try it, and so in the case of your group, I am really, really happy that was the case.
Best, Ron
P.S. Ah, Issam. Poor bastard!
edited to fix grammar
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