[Sorcerer] Cascadiapunk: New Wrinkles and Old Habits
Reithan:
Thanks for the great explanation.
Very useful and starts some more gears a turnin'. :D
Joel P. Shempert:
Hey, Ron, thanks! Your description of how you'd run the scene is indeed extremely helpful in clarifying what you're talking about. Yay clarity!
So: There are just a few details I apparently wasn't clear about--RE Pigeon and the Orderly, it was the other way around actually; Pigeon was concentrating on the guard, specifically grappling with him to help V escape his clutches. Pigeon was NOT, in this raft of actions, trying to escape. He succeeded, which helped V escape and roll under the car, then in the next volley V rolled vs the DR to escape, and Pigeon rolled vs the Orderly to escape; V succeeded and Pigeon failed. SO V had to double back (the Dr fled) to bail out Pigeon, which she did through judicious application of Quinones' Hold.
Also, I wanna say that absolutely the car was just a prop for the various contestants ("conflictants"?) to utilize; that's all I meant by obstacle. I wasn't "rolling for the car" or anything.
But that stuff's all detail, which I explain 'cuz I wanna be completely clear about what did happen. The real prize is this:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on September 10, 2008, 04:34:33 AM
If the announcements line up like that, then you simply have outcome A and outcome B again, in a zero-sum one-gets-it situation. If that’s the case, then go back to baseline opposed rolls: [ETC]
Yes! I get it! No matter how many ontestants, if the goals line up neatly along mutually exclusive intents, like this:
0 <------> X
0 <------> X
(or even with criss-crossing but still mutually exclusive intents),
Then it's simple Oppositional and not Orthogonal. Ho-kay, got it.
I figured out what was tripping me up, actually. You might laugh. Y'know that thing you laid out in the Adept press thread linked above on Orthogonal vs Oppositional? You said Oppositional involved "(a) trying to stop him, (b) trying to avoid the effects, or (c) trying to do it first". And I was all hung up on (c) as including stuff like "trying to hit you first." In which case how could combat be Orthogonal, except that it just is, meaning all "combat" is Orthagonal, meaning tussling around to capture/escape would qualify.
So. . .yeah. It finally dawned on me that the reason two dudes hitting each other is Orthogonal is because they can both succeed at hitting the other guy. Simple, no? But that's what was hanging me up. Sheesh.
It makes me interested in exploring the possibilities of using Orthagonal Conflict outside of "Combat" situations; like you've all got non-exclusive goals declared and you roll, with people "aborting to defend" and such with "defend" being whatever means of opposition is appropriate to the action.Wouldn't seem to be hard to implement, but explaining it in light of the "combat" ;abel might be a doozy.
Peace,
-Joel
PS Don't worry 'bout the tone; yes it was a bit abrasive, but I think I've learned to recognize that for what it is by now, though I could probably "read" better if I met you face to face. Podcast footage helps a bit.
Ron Edwards:
Yay hug.
Quote
It makes me interested in exploring the possibilities of using Orthagonal Conflict outside of "Combat" situations; like you've all got non-exclusive goals declared and you roll, with people "aborting to defend" and such with "defend" being whatever means of opposition is appropriate to the action.Wouldn't seem to be hard to implement, but explaining it in light of the "combat" ;abel might be a doozy.
That's one of the running topics in Sex & Sorcery. In Chapter 3 I go into the way the combat mechanics shake out in combat, and then in Chapter 7 I use diagrams (with one error, damn it) to show the same thing for a bunch of influential actions and rituals firing at once.
The really fun thing is that you can use the same technique to run concurrent conflicts in different scenes, which by definition are orthogonal. It's not absolutely necessary because the two (or more) conflicts' results may not affect one another, but it's gold at the table in social/creative, artistic terms. During 2004, I honed a technique I call "flashpoint" which is for us to play all the characters in their different places and activities across all their scenes, and hold off on the dice mechanics until everyone is in a conflict, then run the whole damn thing like a "fight" across three or four scenes at once. The Sorcerer mechanics do this without a lick of sweat, and in fact any system which is clear about its oppositional-orthogonal applications can do it.
Best, Ron
P.S. For clarity: I began experimenting with the flashpoint technique with The Riddle of Steel in 2002-2003; there's a thread waaaaay back in that forum and a couple in Actual Play about it.
Joel P. Shempert:
Cool. Willem owns Sex & Sorcery so I'll be reading it sooner or later (I've got his &Sword and Sorcerer's Soul right now, the first of which I've finished). I'll check out the chart and see if I can spot the error!
Incidentally, we played again last week. Willem took his raft of Humanity checks in good sport, exclaiming "Nice1" or 'Well played!" as I detailed the reason for each. The bastard made all but one, dropping Humanity from 5 to 4. Then during play he was approaching the Flying J truckstop (it's so much fun using real locations in the game!) just as the whole front was blown out by grenade blast. He waited a moment, when neither Thorn nor Alice came running out, Robin went "Stupid kid," shook his head, and flew off. Another check! (which he made.)
He's now at Ben Frank's place on the Cascades surrounded by cops demanding that Robin Last come out. Mwuhaha.
Meanwhile Sugarbaker's power was shut off (and his meat spoiling!). . .he ended up at a shady little downtown address the Yard sent him to, to fence a couple of undelivered paychecks (not his own!) that he scammed off of his former employer. Beware the Naif Sorcerer with monster Will!
And Nobody was sent off, crying, by a Powell's manager when he tried to sell off some rare books for Sugarbaker's rent. Turns out we've found his weakness: authority figures. :)
Oh, and Jana was feeling burnt-out and opted not to have any scenes. I wholeheartedly agree about her Humanity Gain roll for Pigeon and I'll open next session with that. Which reminds me, Willem and Jana gave me some shit, kinda joking but maybe kinda not, about Robin getting a boatload of Humanity Checks but Nobody terrorizing scenesters and not getting any. I can see how Nobody quite literally failed to empathize with them, but for my money it's all context. Nobody did not have a relationship with the guys in the alley like Robin had with Moss, Thorn, Jeff, and Alice, nor were the hipsters seeking empathy or relationship of any kind. In fact they were the ones antagonizing him; if they were player characters they'd garner Humanity checks. I do think, though, that I should keep an eye for checks on Nobody's interaction with Sugarbaker.
Peace,
-Joel
Joel P. Shempert:
Something I'd like to delve into further as I prepare for our next session: repairing the damage from my horrible floundering about with "mystery" in Robin's scenes. The repercussions are alive and kicking in the most recent session, where Robin goes to Ben Frank and lays all his problems on him, telling him about the missing body and puzzling that the goons and the other body seem to be unrelated.
So now we're in a fix such that I jerked a player around, and consequently he's set to direct his character away from events related to his Kicker, because I stupidly gave him the impression that they weren't related to it.
There are several ways to proceed, far as I can see. I could:
(A) Let the misunderstanding be, and accept the ultimate "It was them all along! But I already ruled them out!" reveal
(B) Cut the crap and have Robin encounter the missing corpse directly, whether in someone's possession or walking around on its own, and let the error get corrected sooner rather than later
(C) Keep mum and try to redirect through the fiction, by pointing Robin/Willem back on the trail with fresh clues
(D) Just straight-up level with Willem at the metagame level: "Hey, dude, I screwed up, Eva really does have your missing mummy, so feel free to direct Robin back toward her."
All four have good and bad points; (A) is my least favorite, recalling my earliest Over the Edge days. You lose so much time and energy waiting for the disconnect to clear up, and it's unfair to the player that you clumsily threw off track (note that this is completely different from the situation where the misdirection is an intentional device, a feat of skill appreciated by everyone at the table). But if everyone is willing to roll with the fictional input as a valid story direction, it could be the least jarring. Depends on how dumb or uncool such a misunderstanding makes the fictional character out to be.
B) This one ain't bad; it clears things up pretty quickly while avoiding heavy-handed nose-leading. But possibly it's heavyhanded in another way: the over-eager rush to provide the character/player with their object of desire, such that attaining it is flat and meaningless. All in the details, I suppose. . .
(C) was Standard Operating Procedure midway through my OtE days, where I was vaguely aware of having strung everyone along horribly, and tried to make up for it by doing the same thing that caused the problem: jerking the players around, only jerking in a new direction. I don't think I'm going to solve anything this way.
D) could indeed clear everything up, but leaves a bad taste in my mouth as it relates to the actual roleplaying at the table. if I get into the mode of always apologizing/nitpicking/retracting the actual play that we do together, it just undermines the process. Instead of "that fun game we played together", it could become "that game that we played that was great once we selectively edited out the lame parts as we went." Ick.
So I'm thinking the best option is something like (B). Let the water stay under the bridge, and move forward: with the mummy surfacing as soon as is fitting, in whatever manner is most natural at that point. The fact that Eva and her followers are behind the corpse-vanishing shenanigans can emerge naturally as well, and the misdirection can just become a footnote of intrigue.
Any thoughts? Possibilities I'm missing? Am I right in assessing the problem, worrying about nothing, or worse, headed for a disastrous "solution"?
Peace,
-Joel
PS bear in mind that the game's going well overall and I'm pretty confident in most aspects of GMing it. highlighting this problem is just working the kinks out as far as I'm concerned, but it seems like a pretty important kink.
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