I ask Vincent a bunch of questions like I was a horde of flying monkeys
lumpley:
I think that the owe list works okay for that - "go up against better dice now, get a bonus die later" isn't a terrible rule - but obviously the owe list does its real thing only in multi-session play.
So now what? I don't think I've answered your whole question, at all, but I'm not sure what to talk about next.
-Vincent
Christopher Kubasik:
Hi Vincent,
Well, I'd love to hear more about the resolution system:
Why three rounds, for example. And, really, anything else you want to say about it from an under-the-hood perspective.
And thanks for all the answers you've given!
CK
Christopher Kubasik:
Hey Vincent!
There are now a ton of threads floating around hamming key points about the game. (And the threads on Poison'd, both here: http://lumpley.com/comment.php?entry=350#10306 and here: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?board=44.0 are also really important!)
Plus, I finally got a chance to read the rules and, lo and behold, a lot of the confusion from the con game vanished. I'm not sure if I would have grasped everything as is without the confusion first, but as it is now, I can look back at the con game and go, "Well, Vincent did write, "Do this..." "Beware of this..." and, "Tend to head in this direction..."
So all in all I think I see how the game works now. At least I have a better grasp of it, a much better grasp, than I did before.
I think a lot of my confusion two weeks ago did stem from the issues you brought up in the Anyway thread: the hypermechanization, as you put it, of a lot Indie rules. As you said, none of that is bad in of itself. It is one way to play, and there are others. This, I think, is one of the reasons for my reactionary taste in RPGs right now. I kind of miss all the, you know, talking we used to do with RPGs. I ran both Pendragon and HeroQuest at the con, and it was quite refreshing to just keep playing until the dice rolling was needed.
I know that when I read the Poison'd rules, I read them much as Ralph did -- more board game, like, the rules will carry play. And when the In a Wicked Age rules were described to me at the con, I heard them similarly. Whether this was a confusion in the text, or the GM's reading of the text, or my confusion upon hearing the GM, I no longer know, nor am especially interested in. I do know that this hypermechanized thing is in the air and, at least in the Los Angeles area, it seems to be becoming the default position. Some folks are grabbing on to really trad designs to avoid it, others of us (me at least) are happily taking all the stuff I've learned that like about playstyle and technique and bringing it to games that have, in my view, more breathing room (like, say, Sorcerer and HeroQuest.)
I see now that I've been wrong -- or unfair, or something -- in some of my judgments about how some games are supposed to work. Now that I've read the rules -- and read a lot on the Internet -- I see what you're going for, and it isn't what I thought it was. Which is why I kept trying to dig at questions, because certain pieces and who you are as a designer weren't jibing with what I thought I was seeing.
I do still, however, have a few questions. Poison'd, ultimately isn't my cup of tea. But In a Wicked Age might be.
Now, I've asked a few times about the dice mechanic, specifically, I've asked twice "Why three rounds?" You might choose not to answer again, but I'm asking again!
Something I finally saw, which I didn't see the night of the con game and which really led to some confusion and a little frustration, is that the system is designed to put the brakes on taking another PC out. You can't, in fact do it in the unit of time that encompasses the three round resolution. I kept banging my head on that during the game. "I want to take this guy out -- why can't I do it?!?" Well, call me dumb. I just couldn't see that that was the point. And this is what I meant in previous posts about trying to understand the design elements under the hood; what it was you were trying to elicit from the Players. Because if I have Best Interests I'm pursuing, and killing another PC is the least effective way to do it, what other options and actions can I take to pursue my best interests. If I do it well, I might play a whole session in pursuit of my Best Interests without ever having a conflict! Right? I could cajole, seduce, lie, weep, tug heartstrings, give gifts, aid others with materials and so on -- and be serving my PC's Best Interests the whole night.
But I still want to know, "Why three rounds?" As far as I can tell, since the model is completely different than the ablative model of most conflicts (we wear each other down till one of us can no longer do anything, and then it ends) you had to come up with some method of actually ending the darned thing. Is that it? You needed to pick a number of rounds to make it finite, and three was the number you picked? I don't know. I'd like to know.
Another question. And I might really be asking, "How do you play?" instead of how the game is supposed to work. Which is fine for me. I'm just looking for something more specific -- from your own experience -- than, "Have fun with it! Do what you like!"
Setting and Situation. I've been giving this matter a lot of thought these days, plowing through Ron's thread on HeroQuest and Glorantha, as well as Ron's work with Sorcerer and Sorcerer & Sword. In my view, how we handle setting and situation does a lot to support the game play. Different games have different levels of detail required to work, but I'm pretty sure that one needs "enough" (a value, still figuring it out) to make sure there's enough context for the PCs and the fiction to rest inside of to be clear and give weight to the characters' choices and actions.
In a Wicked Age provides lots of situation and spots of setting from the Oracles. As Character creation continues, more details of setting and situation get added. The rules state that when the Best Interests are defined, it's time to start playing.
I'm just curious: Do you sketch out maps at all while doing these early creation phases? Are any other details of the world generated while fleshing out the Oracle details and characters? By that I mean, "If my PC is a merchant, let's have a big market in a walled city where he arrives every month." Honestly, that seems to heavy handed and like a lot of extra fat. But it seems like if there's noting defined but the elements sketched out from the Oracles and the Characters, there's not enough detail of a world for the PCs to exist inside of. I know that the rules say to build timeline and maps between game sessions. I'm curious what else might be done before the first scene of play.
Now, I might just be being a scaredy-cat. But I think that one of the problems we had the night of the con game was a lack of world around the PCs. We were just these characters in conflict that changed CGI green screen backgrounds from scene-to-scene. I didn't feel like we were in a specific place; we lacked an interconnected world of locations, culture, and points of view that the PCs lived in and made choices about.
My guess is that part of the game is to go slowly and accrete details as we go, scene by scene. Now, from my own experience (not just with that night of IaWA), this tends to produce the lack of anchored game play I described above, with Players almost rushing all crazy into creating details and adding stuff until there is no coherence to the setting and it's all just motion. But IaWA might produce different results. Or I might have missed an "intter-textual" reading that clarifies this point. Or you might do something with play that you didn't want to impose on others. Or the sort of play I'm trying to avoid is exactly the result the game should provide.
So, setting and situation -- not just for the PCs, but for the "world" around them. Any thoughts on that?
Thanks!
CK
Christopher Kubasik:
I forgot to say I loved the art.
You did that art? It's fucking awesome!
CK
DainXB:
Quote from: Christopher Kubasik on March 01, 2008, 08:18:31 AM
Something I finally saw, which I didn't see the night of the con game and which really led to some confusion and a little frustration, is that the system is designed to put the brakes on taking another PC out. You can't, in fact do it in the unit of time that encompasses the three round resolution.
Now, I might just be being a scaredy-cat. But I think that one of the problems we had the night of the con game was a lack of world around the PCs. We were just these characters in conflict that changed CGI green screen backgrounds from scene-to-scene. I didn't feel like we were in a specific place; we lacked an interconnected world of locations, culture, and points of view that the PCs lived in and made choices about.
My guess is that part of the game is to go slowly and accrete details as we go, scene by scene.
Christopher, I don't want to intrude in a thread that's become basically a dialogue between you and Vincent (and a very interesting one to read, too), but I think maybe I can shed a little light on a couple of your points, quoted above.
As far as I can tell from reading the rules, it's impossible to kill a character (PC or NPC) without the controlling player's agreement during a conflict. The controller can always say "You exhaust or injure me. Pick." However, once a character has been knocked down repeatedly, and has two forms at zero dice, they are out of the chapter, and can take no actions. Meaning that, barring outside interference from some other character, you can unilaterally kill them. The victim no longer meets the 'can and would try to interfere' clause of the rules, so, however much his controller wants to, his character can't act. No conflict ensues, just the narration of a coup de grace. So far as I can see, that's the only way a character can die without the agreement of the controlling player. (Unless, of course, Vincent tells me I'm wrong. :) )
Your second point, about the lack of a world around the PCs, is dealt with, I think, by the 'say one concrete detail' clause on pg. 10. You're right, details about the world accrete slowly, one concrete thing at a time. Your merchant mentions that he is on his way to the bazaar in Tarshish. That's a concrete detail, and suddenly the world contains the city of Tarshish, which has a bazaar. Someone else may mention the yellow clay walls around Tarshish, and now we know it's a walled city, and so on. (This presumes that everybody builds on the details everyone else gives, more or less cooperatively, of course. I don't think that there's any rules mechanism for denying someone else's detail narration. It's just down to the social contract of your group.)
For example, playing a warlord, I might say 'I burned Tarshish to the ground, and slaughtered it's people!" as an incidental boast. Or, playing a well-traveled character I might say "Tarshish? Never heard of such a place. It must be an insignificant little hole!" Neither of these negate the existence of the detail you added, they just modify it. I presume that we wrangle out in narration and counter-narration whether the boastful warlord or the skeptical traveler are telling the objective truth, or just voicing their opinions. Maybe it turns out that the warlord is fresh from battle, and your merchant, appalled by this news, now has reason to go into conflict with him. Maybe the sacking of Tarshish was years ago, and your merchant knows that the city he's heading for has been rebuilt by the survivors -- "I trade in Tarshish every month! It's a prosperous city -- and you know, they've built a wall now..."
In later chapters, maybe the Mayor of Tarshish winds up being a character, with the particular strengths 'city walls' and 'prosperous bazaar' grown from the details of caravanserai banter earlier in the story. To me, that's the way the world is built around the characters.
--
DainXB
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