[IaWA] Breaking Bad Habits
lumpley:
John: Say that an action sequence goes so that my character's clinging to a ledge, your character's stomping her hands, and our group's style is all about the split-second small-scale actions. Like, my character grabbing onto your character's ankle would be a style-appropriate answer, or my character gritting her teeth and digging her fingers in, enduring the stomping - really split-second stuff. It'd be very difficult under those conditions for me to insist credibly that my character grabs the ring from yours, no matter how well I roll.
Most of the time my character won't be hanging off a ledge, of course, and there'll be some way I can have her snag the ring, even within our split-second style, so it's not really an exception to the rule. Just a nuance, a nitpick.
-Vincent
jenskot:
Cool! Then I did misunderstand before. Makes perfect sense to me now. Thanks for taking the time to clarify.
Rock,
John
Mike Holmes:
The style issue is something that probably deserves it's own thread (I'm dubious in some ways). But I don't think that it's relevant to our problem. Our problem, in fact, was that we adhered to the group's style guidelines well, but that the system made us feel uncomfortable in doing so. I'm tempted to use the term foolish. How I feel when I'm forced to do something tactically unsound due to stylistic considerations that do not have (or at least do not seem to have) any mechanical incentive.
John, have I captured how you felt correctly? I don't want to mischaracterize how you felt. But you expressed this idea at the time, and I concurred with your assessment. If I understood it correctly.
Mike
jenskot:
Mike,
You definitely captured how I and others felt at different times.
At the time I felt like I didn't have the power to get what I want using my mechanical advantages (particular strengths for example) or what made my character special and cool, nor did I feel I ever had the authority over color to give myself any leverage in negotiations. Which was frustrating. Details here: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=26081.msg250343#msg250343
But now that Vincent has clarified how he intends the rules to work, every game I've played of IAWA was wrong (which literally means there are around 40 people playing the game incorrectly in different ways who all learned the rules on their own that I personally know). We were right that the mechanics do not resolve intents (although you have the ability to pressure your opponent to get your intent). But we were wrong regarding who gets to say what in the fiction, how often we can alter the fiction, authority over the color added to the fiction, and the leverage that color would give us in negotiations. Which makes a huge difference!
I love describing tactically unsound actions. But to do so, I need to feel the color is important and reinforced in some manner with authority. Which it is IAWA. It's done in a way that is unique. But it's there.
I would really like to play again now that we have these clarifications and come back with Actual Play to see how things change.
At first I was fixated on figuring out what the text was or was not telling me. Especially since almost everyone seemed to be playing differently. But I've put that aside for now and would rather know how Vincent intends the game to be played. Play the hell out of it that way. And then come back with any revelations.
Originally this thread made me upset. I don't think all the problems are due to bad habits. At least not from my play. Especially since I dislike many of the fashions described as bad habits and try to avoid them when I can. And I've played with people who never played an RPG before who had many of the same problems we had in play. That all being said, that doesn't mean there aren't people who are having problems because of bad habits. In my case, for whatever reason, we've just been playing wrong in some pretty fundamental huge ways! That being said, although this thread originally upset me, I am now very thankful for it as I feel like I understand now what went wrong and can try to correct it. Thanks Vincent! And thanks Mike for articulating all these issues for further discussion.
Rock,
John
Jonathan Walton:
Like John, reading this thread and the other IAWA threads just made me angrier and angrier, like I wanted to yell at someone. I was beginning to expect that maybe, despite the things I really like about it, that I actually hated IAWA as a game, because the dice mechanics didn't actually do anything that I found remotely interesting, but the text had somehow fooled me into thinking they did, causing me weeks of stress and confusion after two failed attempts to play the game and Vincent's apparent suggestion that that failure was the fault of my play group because of previously accumulated "bad habits."
Then I got to John's post where he laid out, in very simple terms, who has narrative authority in action sequences. That put everything in terms I could understand, whereas all this talk of rings and whether or not anything got resolved was making me more and more confused and frustrated. If that's all this has been about, I feel like I'd be willing to try the game again, but I suspect that there are other unresolved issues here.
Some of the suggestions that Vincent makes seem like training wheels to try to help groups move from a play style that they're used to (from playing a bunch of other indie games, mostly) to the play style his home group uses when playing IAWA. The GM picking which forms to use is the most prominent example, I think. However, thinking about some of the people I would like to play IAWA with, I doubt that the training wheels will ever be able to come off, in many cases. That is, unless there is some reason that players cannot pick their best dice to roll every single time (and the We Owe List isn't a big enough incentive), some players will always roll their best dice.
So... in summary, I'm starting to suspect that playing IAWA with some play groups is actually not just a matter of not getting the rules right. I'm beginning to suspect that, for many of the play groups I might want to play IAWA with, playing the game without a sizable number of training wheels is always going to be an unmitigated disaster, because they're never going to play like Vincent's group because they aren't really interested in doing so. And I find that really disappointing because I'm only discovering this now, after two botched attempts to play the game with groups that were never going to like it in the first place.
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