Problems with Poisn'd
Eero Tuovinen:
I find this discussion interesting as well. For what it's worth, I'm big on intertextual contextualization of game texts, which is a fancy way of saying that I think it's important to realize that there are no absolute, nature-directed ways of reading and interpreting game texts. Expectations and prior experience affect our reading. Where this becomes interesting is in how the game writer opts to lean on the support of this shared cultural background in making the game understood. There is no one right or wrong way, I find; while clarity and doing your utmost to explain everything may help the unfamiliar reader to understand you better, it will also make the text dryer, slower and more difficult to read, and might potentially occlude the important stuff with less important things. On the other hand, a game text that relies heavily on shared expectations and, most importantly, the interpretive powers of the reader, will often be a very inspirational, thought-provoking read that allows one to attain crystal clarity simply because the reader has no difficulty understanding the unsaid portions of the whole.
I'm saying all this for one simple reason: when I read game texts, I'm always looking for functional and useful "readings", not some perceived author's intent. This makes me for the most part a very competent reader and interpretator of rules texts. It also tends to make me prefer a text that does no hand-holding, when it comes to my personal aesthetic experience. While I fully recognize and appreciate the textual virtues of a game with lots of fiddly explanation, like The Mountain Witch, for example, I have little patience for it personally and will always favor and get excited by the texts that focus on speaking to me on a real level where the writer is operating, or perhaps where I am operating as a reader.
(There's also another angle to this: a game writer might intentionally wish to leave some matters of procedure unsaid simply because he wishes the game group to use their own, established methods in that part of the game. This is often the case with semi-traditional games that introduce only partially innovative systems.)
So I'm not saying that Ralph is wrong, but I am saying that his own writing style is big on comprehensive, wordy verbalization, while I see Vincent as writing more as an expressive writer. I might even say that Vincent strives for an artistic impression to his rules writing style if this weren't likely to be misunderstood as some kind of wanky aesthetisation of a forthright matter. I can imagine Ralph's mental space in interpreting the rules of the game pretty well, and can see how he would get a completely different interpretation out of it than Vincent might have intended. Those are hazards of context-dependent writing, but they are also risks for the writer to take.
What I mean to say here, shortly: I'm seeing a bit of back-and-forth about who's to blame that Ralph misinterpreted the rules, and I don't think it's anybody's fault particularly. What is important is that the rules achieve the aesthetic transmission Vincent's looking to achieve, and it seems he has a pretty strong vision of how he wants to express the game in this case.
lumpley:
I'd also still like answers to my questions, if any of you feel like it!
-Vincent
Temple:
I dont want to butt into this fascinating discussion, but I felt like chiming in and saying that what I got out of the text and what Vincent describes pretty much line up perfectly, as far as how the game is played is concerned.
The times Ive played Poison'd, I havent been quite able to get the players on the same page as me though, so we have ended up playing it in a board-game-like fashion, just going from subsystem to subsystem with very little roleplaying in between. My players have been very focused on harvesting Xes through rolling dice, and havent payed much mind to telling stories about pirates. But Im working on that.
Ron Edwards:
I only discovered this thread yesterday and it's gone so far awry from anything relevant to our game, that there's not much point in posting.
I think a new thread in Playtesting will be better at some point.
Best, Ron
Emily Care:
Ron's latest post may have been intended to close this thread, but I have a couple simple notes about the text that clarify the initial questions. It seems useful to share them. I am technically violating agreements of the Forge by answering line by line, but it seems the best way to address the points.
Quote from: Valamir on February 26, 2008, 09:38:08 AM
1) The escalation tables need some substantial additional text on how to use them pretty much across the board.
For instance, the ship escalation tables: How do you decide which table you start on? If we want to close to boarding range, and the enemy wants to blast us to smithereens with broadsides...what table?
On the bottom of the page 14 it describes dealing with a fight when both contestants are fighting using different means. It indicates that each escalates up their own chart, and that the consequences on the other party if one wins, are those of the winner's table.This could use some clarification, but it implies that you pick one based on what your character is doing and escalate up it, not across to others.
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2) Do all fights start on level 1 of the escalation table?
Yes. On page 11, in the middle of paragraph 3 of the Dice section says:
All fights begin at the first, and can escalate no farther than the third.
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Related to this is the pretty confusing example where Hannah (I think that's the name) is trying to kill Tom Reed with a belaying pin. Its clear she wants to kill him dead. She makes a brutality vs. soul roll to earn "Xs" for her willingness to murder a helpless person. Even so she has to escalate twice to get to level 3, and even after finally winning at level 3, Tom still isn't dead...she has to make ANOTHER brutality vs. soul roll to actually kill him, which she fails. So despite a full fledged fight which Hanna won with the stated intent of killing the helpless Tom Reed...Tom's still alive in the end. Huh?
Tim Reed is an NPC. If she'd wanted to kill him all that character's player needed to do was to use 3 Xs before (meaning, I presume, "not during") a fight. See page 12, first paragraph of Spending Xs:
You can spend 3 Xs to kill and NPC with no fight, any NPC within your reach.
Here, Tim Reed is an opportunity to establish things about your character, and gain Xs for the coming fight.
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As I read what the rules actually say, choosing the "Lose" option is always a fail safe way to escape unscathed. The rules for damage say only that you when you choose "Lose" you suffer the full effects of the damage of the level of escalation you're at. The damage for level 1 escalation is generally trivial and cosmetic. So if you're not likely to beat your opponent's dice...just choose "lose" on level one and you escape the fight scot free.
As Ben described, the Xs make this less straightforward than it seemed to you.
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Something's missing. Near as I can tell there are no "stakes" in Poisn'd, so there's nothing the winner gets from winning the fight. In fact, the rules seem pretty clear (due to the total absence of any suggestion otherwise) that the only thing the winner gets from winning a fight is to inflict the level of damage determined by the escalation level on the loser. There doesn't appear to be any "dammit, no, I'm not stopping until he's fucking dead" option for the winner.
Let's see, Vincent mentioned Deadly Wounds. How they are dealt with is discussed on page 16. They are possible consequences at level 3 escalation in Knife to Knife, Sword to Sword, and Gun to Gun. Third level escalation in Canon to Canon, Broadside to Broadside and Company to Company all include crew killed. I don't know if that includes PCs.
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3) Do you actually accomplish things with successful success rolls beyond just colorful justifications for gathering Xs? If so, are the other player characters just furniture for you to do with as you please?
I think this has already been addressed, but I just wanted to point to page 11, paragraph 2 of Profiles:
For fights between players' pirates, whichever side has the higher Profile, that player gets additional Xs for the fight...", and so on. It is described at various points how to deal with PvP fights. Three out of four of the types of conflicts involved in Success Rolls all deal with the character in question doing something to endure or evade things that impact them. The last, (Brutality vs Soul), requires that the other party be helpless or unaware--which as was pointed out, if another player's character is targeted for this, they do get to say whether they fight back, and if they do it becomes a fight instead.
It seems like a simple assumption not present in the game is that players can narrate more than their character's actions. They can frame scenes though. Last paragraph of page 10, Flashbacks:
If you're a canny player, recall, you'll see a fight coming and you'll look for success rolls to make, to build up some."
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Could we have had a dozen rolls about sodomizing this guy, stealing that gold, sabotaging this gun, etc. etc. and when the new cook fails his attempt to poison the soup the GM brings the fight by announcing "The Kraken attacks", even though none of the success rolls had been related to the Kraken? What if the Kraken came out of the blue, completely not established in play yet, can the GM do that? Do all of those X's from all of that other stuff apply? The rules don't say they don't...however the rules also refer to them as "advantages" and "gaining the advantage" and "canny players sensing a fight on the horizon"...which could be interpreted as saying that only Xs that could be considered advantages in the fight that was actually called can be used. But no where in the rules does it require noting what purpose the Xs were used for so that implies that the Xs are just an abstract currency that aren't tied to whatever action earned them.
Yes.
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Regardless, this alone is enough to derail play. There could easily be an entire page of text just making sure all of the above is clearly laid out.
The assumption here, as I see it, is that the players are telling a story together, not running around trying to get advantages willy nilly. The constraints are the constraints of the narrative. Or rather, the rules for gaining Xs constrain what the players can narrate in order to get them. The information you are given (the character's background/sins suffered or given, the bargains made, the vows and goals) give you things to spring off of to think of ways to gain Xs that make sense within the narrative you are making. The fact that the GM can bring the fight as soon as someone fails an Advantage roll creates a limit on how much people can delay.
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f) Is there only ever one X total (per player) that is always used in the next fight, or are there different buckets for different fights. In our game, Ron's attempt at sodomizing Pretty Jim came in the midst of preparations against the Resolute.
All Xs go away at the end of a fight, regardless of how they've been gotten. The way to keep Xs is either to 1) not get involved in the fight, or 2) to withhold them by not helping the Captain in a group fight.
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g) Also related to Xs, can players combine their Xs to buy bigger nastiness against their enemies? The rules don't say either way (or if they do, I couldn't find it because the discussion on Xs is scattered in a bunch of different places).
During the fight you can spend Xs to do evil shit to the other side. After, you can use them to reduce harm to you.
For group fights, see Page 11-12, Fighting on a side:
..it'll happen sometimes that the players' pirates fight under the captain's orders...Captain's player take dice for Brinkmanship into your hand.."
And so on. The Captain give dice to the players whose characters are helping, they get bonus dice, and they have the option to take part or not, and if they don't the Captain doesn't get those dice. They choose at the start and can't add in later. I don't think that is explicit.
It seems that having help is a special power of the Captain. Has its costs.
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h) Does the Urgency cruel fortune have any impact on any of the above answers? In other words, when the Urgency hits and the Resolute show up, does it just become a card sitting on the table waiting for the GM to bring the fight using it? Can the players continue to make indefinite success rolls as long as they win, with the GM unable to bring the fight with the Resolute until a roll is failed?
You don't need to wait until a fight comes on or an Advantage roll is lost to bring it in. Page 21, Urgency:
Whenever you like, at a lull in the action or a moment of tension, roll a die..." And then the rules are given for how it will come into play.
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At that point we observed that the way the card actually works is as a limiter on the GM's ability to bring in new cards...
This assumes that this is the only way to bring in a new Cruel Fortune. Each of them has a condition in which they can be brought into play at the start of their description. When that occurs in the narrative, the mechanics can be invoked.
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Related to this...is the Cruel Fortune that Urgency is tied to secret, open, or either?
This isn't in the rules that I can see, but since what having a Cruel Fortune on deck via Urgency is to worry the players with it, the only way it can have that effect is for them to know about it. :)
best,
Emily
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