[Legends of Alyria] The quiet and unquiet dead
Ron Edwards:
Hi everyone,
Perhaps you do not know about Seth Ben-Ezra's fantasy/SF setting, Alyria. Imagine any standard fantasy map like you'd see in some mass-market novel - continents, shores, seas. Now consider that what you're looking at are the relatively flat tops of absolutely immense plateaus, standing high above the true surface the planet. The spaces in between are filled with semi-solid mist, which is in fact the extremely dense atmosphere of the planet, only thinning out to "air" consistency at this level. The true surface conditions far below would kill a human instantly, and only here, on these plateaus (huge and wide enough to have mountains and other major geographical relief of their own), and only due to the long-almost-forgotten technology of terraforming, can humans live. From that level, at the human-eye viewpoint, the mists now look like seas, and in fact they can be sailed upon. They might not be exactly like water, but close enough in terms of sailing from one shore to another. The people really don't have any idea of this big picture and think of themselves as living on the surface.
The terraformed areas are normal to distorted-normal, to our eyes, but the seas are very freaky and poisonous; you need respirators to venture there unless you're one of the Restored dead, who do not need to breathe. The sea still harbors the dragons, horrific creatures who feed on human agony and suffering, and offer power to those who'll provide it for them. In the sky the recently-arrived Blood Moon is visible, and ancient legends correspond to the ancestors' flight from humanity's original home from these very Outsiders.
The main communities are the Citadel, which is a clanking city ruled by a theocracy, over which hangs the rebel Web; and the Ark, a recently-opened vault that has released a new and strange culture (the Numbered) upon the surface. The two are now at war. A number of other interesting and fascinating details are available to talk about (the Devil's Hour, dragon cultists, Outsiders, Diggers), but that's the basic beginning.
Seth, the clock dice rock! We made them ourselves with a photocopy, scissors, and a Glue Stick.They aren't too bumpy and don't make the dice into spheres. They look great! I remember how much fun the Moon Dice were, and these look just as cool and even a little scary and forbidding by contrast.
Rules questions
1. Is the role of Virtue basically a thematic marker? Does it have a mechanical role in play? Is there a consequence of going “off the chart?”
2. Losing a conflict - I'm a bit wary or confused about this. The rule is that the conflict is set at one, two, or three exchanges to win. If I'm reading correctly, you keep going with further rolls. So, if you go until you win, how do you lose? Tell me if the following is correct.
Say we're doing Tension 1. So it's either/or, that's easy.
But if we're doing Tension 2, do I have to win both rolls in a row? Or can I win with one, then lose one, and then win one, to succeed with two out of three? Which would imply that if I lose two times (0-0 or 0-1-0), the conflict's over?
All of the above applies for Tension 3, just shifting the two out of three into three out of five (if that's the way it works).
3. How is a character killed? Losing a conflict in which that was the stated intention, and the narration confirms it? (I understand that a character may die whenever the player says so; I also understand the Devil’s Hour option; however, there isn’t any statement that sets up the latter rule.)
4. The examples between Sirius and the Dragon on pp. 115-116 don’t go through the exchanges sequentially, right? They are instead all distinct examples for the first exchange?
5. If the conflict is settled by prior spending of Inspiration or Corruption, without a roll, is there still an I/C award afterwards? Does its total still match the Tension level?
6. Assuming that #5 does not happen and we go into the dice, and given that I/C may be spent to re-use Traits … doesn’t that sort of interact weirdly with awarding I/C after the conflict based on which Traits were used? I mean, say I use some “day” Traits, and say I even spend Inspiration to re-use one of them. At the end of the conflict, according to the rules, the Narrator then gives me 1 to 3 Inspiration. It seems as if one can’t help but break even or come out ahead. Is that true?
7. Two-on-one combat – let’s say the two are a team with the same goal vs. the one guy. Is that handled like two separate things, or does the one guy have to split Trait use against/between the other two?
I am also brewing up an extended post about Traits in the game which is tied to the multiple-thread conversation on the topic. I'll put that into its own thread, probably.
Orthogonal vs. oppositional
This issue received a lot of attention a year or two ago. It has to do with whether the dice are dealing with either stopping X (or counter-striking to stop it), or with seeing what combination of X and Y succeeds or fails, respectively.
[[Frostfolk, ] Carrying on (the issue starts up on the second page, I think)
Orthorgonal and oppositional conflicts (the main one)
[Sorcerer] Cascadiapunk: New Wrinkles and Old Habits (applying the concepts from the Sorcerer thread)
The question is whether and how the Alyria conflict resolution system deals with orthogonal issues. After all, it could do it orthogonally; the mechanics are amenable to it. For instance, if one succeeds and one fails, that's easy; if both fail, that's easy; and if both succeed, then each action succeeds, but the one with the higher (worse) clock face just gets a minor success that's compatible with the other's knockout success, at most.
However, I urge that Alyria resolution always be oppositional at its base, which is consistent both with the text as written, and as far as I can tell, the morality inherent in the way Fortune and narration are married in this game. - that a committed thing is happening and it is either {stopped period} or {stopped + counter-attacked}.
For example: our conflict might be that I try to grab the ball, you try to throw me out the window before I can do it. In Sorcerer, all four outcomes are possible: no ball grabbed, no window-thrown-out; ball grabbed, window-thrown-out-anyway (holding the ball, nyah nyah); no ball grabbed, thrown-out-window (phooey!); ball grabbed, no window-thrown-out (double nyahh!).
But for Alyria, I suggest that the key issue is whether the ball is grabbed, yes or no, and the window-throw issue has been raised solely to be included in the narration as the narrator sees fit when we get to that point. Such an inclusion (the window throw) is a welcome thing because it gives the whole thing visual meat, keeping it in the SIS - but it should not be thought of as "the other guy's goal" or as a crucial dice-resolved issue. In fact, going out the window or not going out the window is now up in the air for the narrator regardless of how the conflict goes. The roll itself remains simply about whether I grab that ball or not. If I get a low (great) success, and you succeed but roll high (poorly), then it's not mechanically different from me succeeding and you failing. It might or might not feed into the narrator's choices about what to say.
Seth, what do you think?
Our game
We started with the general agreement for a Citadel game, specifically the Web, with the McGuffin of a missing Restored implant. Characters appeared, and as we sketched it, certain things began to gel. A couple of early, unspoken notions of mine turned out not to be compatible so I let them go. People got sort of excited about the whole Restoration issue, including the text's idea that one of them might summon the will to remove his or her own controlling-implant, and everything fell out from there.
There's a strange parallel with my earlier game (Playing Alyria), with a Citadel authority/agent venturing into the Web to deal with the mob and a problematic Blessed. All I can do is swear I had nothing to do with it and stayed as far out of the initial stages of situation and storymapping as I could. It's what the others homed in upon like pigeons. In fact, my dream Alyria character is a highly ethical, highly aware, loyal Ark person at the interface of an Ark colony and a wilderness community; a close second is a Digger Paladin. Neither is well-suited to the Citadel, so I've been hosed.
Anyway, this map started as set mainly in the Web, in the territory of a nouveau crime boss. There's also a rogue Keeper who lives in that area, with knowledge of Restoration (kind of a Frankenstein sort, just a little), and he has a dead Blessed's body in storage; he also has an acolyte. Meanwhile, so to speak, there's this newly-independent Restored character who's fled to the Web, and met up with a relative there, and a Keeper security-chief type has sent in an agent to get the implant. (Notice that we have not specified where the implant itself is, or who has it.)
The players chose characters as follows (character gender matches player gender):
- Julie: Mouse the Keeper operative, hunting the stolen implant. Virtue = Prime (interesting choice, especially with some shadowy Traits)
- Tod: Rain the rogue Keeper, living a kind of still-religious outlaw life in the Web with his cobbled-together laboratory. Virtue = None
- Maura: Hopper the local crime boss, trying to keep this emergent Web community and power-structure stable. Virtue = Vespers
I decided to add some tension from a First Family (basically a Web mafia) too, with a fairly typical heavy/hitman type, and Maura and I agreed to hook things together a tad more by making the dead Blessed character into Hopper's sister. I named everyone else: that Blessed character is (or was) White, the acolyte is Lamp (male), the security chief back down in the city proper is Iris (male), the rogue Restored is Belter (male), his daughter is Sharp (female), and the Family enforcer-type is Scythe (male). I'll provide full write-ups for player-characters and NPCs later, after we play and I can use that information to make specific points.
Note a key looseness which I think is very important: the Blessed story and the Restored story are not connected by strong links. Rain, White, and Hopper are not really necessarily concerned with Iris, Mouse, Belter, and Sharp, and vice versa. One little link does exist: Rain is after all a rogue Keeper with knowledge of Restoration and might have some history that falls under Iris' concerns. But if that comes into play, it's nothing to do with the immediate concerns of the priming event and early play. For immediate purposes, the only thing that connects these two tiny maps is being in the same place. And in this setting, particularly this location, that matters plenty.
I took some time to make up and name everyone else, which required some back-and-forth in places (especially the dead Blessed character, who is now Hopper's sister). I should emphasize that the missing implant / rogue Restored is not the priming event. That was situation (in rules terms, the concept that prompts storymap creation), the priming event is going to be something new and specific for early play.
Another interesting point is that neither the Restored nor the relative is a player-character, which gives me a tricky dial-dynamic to play. The player-characters surround Belter and Sharp, but no one has a specific personal connection to either (Mouse does not count; she and the two others aren't allies or related or known to one another personally). That is interesting. It means whatever is going on between them is up to me, as a source of scene-framing and conflict situations for the others, as opposed to being protagonist-type issues of their own. Since early discussion did fire up a little about how Sharp (then unnamed and undeveloped) would be quite shocked to find a dead relative on the doorstep, that means I'll have a little motor of my own to run.
The rules do permit a player to run two characters, such that Julie, for instance, might play both Mouse and either Belter or Rain. However, I don't think that suits us much as a group. So again, through the vagaries of which characters truly appealed to which players, what would have been a powerful protagonist opportunity is now an equally powerful conflict-pivot, and I have built both characters with that in mind.
As a final point, this group has been looking for powerful long-term, one-game play for a while now,* I also know that we do very well with high-concept, high-issues, violent, surreal fantasy - this is the Thed group for Hero Wars, and the Azk'Arn group for Sorcerer, after all. I am also the lone advocate for Legends of Alyria for long-term play, moving from scenario to scenario to build the setting (which goes back to discussions about the game from its earliest days, in concurrence with Sorcerer & Sword and Universalis-in-development). So ultimately, this story we're doing is one story, but the plan is to follow up, either close by or far away, with any number of continuing characters as seems appropriate, but also working from consequence. Maybe I'll get to see my fave character concepts emerge some day after all.
Best, Ron
* Incidentally, they also want lots of playtesting, fun, fast, check-it-out play with lots of games. I know. Welcome to my life.
GreatWolf:
Hey, Ron.
Given that the holidays are coming up, it will be a couple of days before I can respond to this. But I will!
This makes me really excited, for reasons that I'm sure you can understand.
greyorm:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on November 26, 2008, 05:47:25 PM
Seth, the clock dice rock! We made them ourselves with a photocopy, scissors, and a Glue Stick.They aren't too bumpy and don't make the dice into spheres. They look great! I remember how much fun the Moon Dice were, and these look just as cool and even a little scary and forbidding by contrast.
As the designer of said clock-face dice, I am incredibly pleased to hear this! I've always been concerned they wouldn't have the same visceral impact of the old moon dice.
Ron Edwards:
Hey, I figured out the Virtue rule. It affects the cost of altering Traits. OK, that works - especially in light of being forced to spend all of your Inspiration or Corruption if it (either) hits 5. What a great rule! I think it was genius to disconnect Virtue from the starting cost of Traits or Attributes, as witnessed by the assortment of player-characters in this game.
MOUSE – female, Restoration Security special operative, hunting for lost implant
Virtue = Prime
Force = Compline, Insight = Lauds, Determination = Terce
Traits: Devout = Terce, Inconspicuous = Compline, Relentless = Matins
Inspiration = 1, Corruption = 1
RAIN – male, heretic Keeper, escaped to the Web, expert with Restored
Virtue = None
Force = Compline, Insight = Prime, Determination = Vespers
Traits: Egoistic = Compline, Devout = Terce, Thoughtful = Lauds
Inspiration = 1, Corruption = 1
HOPPER – female, nouveau Web boss, not part of a First Family
Virtue = Vespers
Force = Prime, Insight = Vespers, Determination = Lauds
Traits: Responsible = Lauds, Cunning = None, Violent = Matins
Inspiration = 2
Interesting, huh?
Best, Ron
GreatWolf:
Okay, let me knock out the rules questions quickly. Then I'll come back and discuss the other material in more depth.
Honestly, answering some of these questions makes me notice the seams in the rules. Almost like I need to give this game a good revising or something. Hmm....
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1. Is the role of Virtue basically a thematic marker? Does it have a mechanical role in play? Is there a consequence of going “off the chart?”
You've already discovered the mechanical effect (i.e. affecting the cost of Traits). You cannot go "off the chart"; rather, you just get stuck at 5 Inspiration or Corruption, whichever is appropriate.
Quote
2. Losing a conflict - I'm a bit wary or confused about this. The rule is that the conflict is set at one, two, or three exchanges to win. If I'm reading correctly, you keep going with further rolls. So, if you go until you win, how do you lose? Tell me if the following is correct.
Say we're doing Tension 1. So it's either/or, that's easy.
But if we're doing Tension 2, do I have to win both rolls in a row? Or can I win with one, then lose one, and then win one, to succeed with two out of three? Which would imply that if I lose two times (0-0 or 0-1-0), the conflict's over?
All of the above applies for Tension 3, just shifting the two out of three into three out of five (if that's the way it works).
Best two out of three (or three out of five for Tension 3) is correct. Each roll should have intermediate narration associated with it. Don't forget that Sext and Devil's Hour affect the "score" for the winning side of a conflict.
By the way, don't forget that each side does have a goal, so the outcome of conflict is to determine which goal succeeds and which fails. (In other words, I agree that Alyria conflict is oppositional, not orthogonal. I'll discuss this further in my next post.)
Quote
3. How is a character killed? Losing a conflict in which that was the stated intention, and the narration confirms it? (I understand that a character may die whenever the player says so; I also understand the Devil’s Hour option; however, there isn’t any statement that sets up the latter rule.)
Either the stated intention was character death or the final narration allows for character death, even if that wasn't specifically the stated goal. So, let's say you're using the Devil's Hour option, and your goal is to "take the gem from the Keeper Inquisitor". If conflict ends with the Inquisitor's player having rolled Devil's Hour, you could then state that you took the gem from the Inquisitor by killing him and removing it from the corpse.
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4. The examples between Sirius and the Dragon on pp. 115-116 don’t go through the exchanges sequentially, right? They are instead all distinct examples for the first exchange?
Correct. They are all distinct examples. (Also, for those following along at home, Ron has one of the really early rare editions of the game. We revised the layout, so these examples are found on pages 126-127.)
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5. If the conflict is settled by prior spending of Inspiration or Corruption, without a roll, is there still an I/C award afterwards? Does its total still match the Tension level?
This is one of those seams that I mention above.
At this point, let's say "No". The point of this rule is that the conflict outcome is part of the "bleed-off" of Inspiration and Corruption, so it seems a little
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6. Assuming that #5 does not happen and we go into the dice, and given that I/C may be spent to re-use Traits … doesn’t that sort of interact weirdly with awarding I/C after the conflict based on which Traits were used? I mean, say I use some “day” Traits, and say I even spend Inspiration to re-use one of them. At the end of the conflict, according to the rules, the Narrator then gives me 1 to 3 Inspiration. It seems as if one can’t help but break even or come out ahead. Is that true?
Well, the I/C award is a total for both characters, so that becomes an ameliorating factor. Also, it's possible to use "day" Traits and end up being awarded Corruption, based on what you actually did.
But it's possible that you are correct.
Honestly, from where I sit now, I'm not persuaded that the I/C economy is as tight as I'd like it. So, let me know what observations arise during play.
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7. Two-on-one combat – let’s say the two are a team with the same goal vs. the one guy. Is that handled like two separate things, or does the one guy have to split Trait use against/between the other two?
I run two-on-one combat in one of two ways, depending on the context:
1) If one member of the team is a minor character, he is essentially treated as a "tool" of the major character, who is the one "really" conflicting with the target. This is also how I handle conflicts between a PC and a group of minor characters working for a major character. You roll against the major character, not the NPCs.
2) If you have two major characters against a major character, then I run parallel conflicts, making it essentially two one-on-one conflicts that overlap. So, the fictional effects of the one unfolding conflict will affect the other conflict, but there are no mechanical adjustments necessary.
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