[Lacuna] Getting a handle on the pace of the game
Christoph Boeckle:
Hi Ron
That's food for thought!
While we did play some scenes out of Blue City, I had the notion that most of the interactions between Mystery Agents and their superiors would happen in Blue City, which of course does not need to be the case at all.
Also, I need to give those NPCs more thoughts, I've drawn out a map of the hierarchy with the mentors on it, as you suggested in Nine Gram Medal and have started to see things. The way I read you I'm probably still missing how exactly I can use the information about the Company to effectively identify the NPC's aims and how they go about reaching them. I've also started reading Le Carré's The Looking Glass War, which will probably give me some extra references for the genre.
I'm still interested in any suggestions and recommendations, but overall this thread has given me enough material to play a new session with meatier stuff still. Thanks!
The Dragon Master:
I ran into some problems when I ran it for my group, and maybe the fix for how I ran it would provide you some assistance.
I took the idea of Blue City as a waking dream very literally, and allowed dream logic to work freely, which I've come to think of as a mistake. An example was when one player wanted to get a note to another. He didn't have a high Access score, and they hadn't yet picked up any communication devices in Blue City, so he decided to rely on the other players high Access score. He wrote a note and tossed it into a trash can, then the other player rolled access to find the note in a nearby trashcan (not the same one). At this point Static was at about 5 or 6. I allowed it because I was allowing dream logic to function, and was trying to encourage them to realize that it did.
Were I to run it again I'd have Blue City function much like the normal world for Static up to 10. I'd have dream logic kick in for Static from 11 to 20. And anything above 20 would be a Black zone, either they've stumbled into one, or they created one, and all the rules of a nightmare would function. That much at least I'd done at the session. The players managed on one of their (3) missions to get to Static of 22 before completing the mission, so when they pushed to eject, I had them roll to do so. (they failed). I kept playing through them going through debriefing (which we'd done after each mission so far), and... been a while, but I remember an access roll coming up, and when they were told to roll (which they'd been informed up front you never do outside of Blue City), they freaked out and ran to find a phone (they were all very near the lethal heartbeat range) to eject.
Sadly I also had the problem that we couldn't get Static high enough to get to the good stuff. At Static 10+ I began introducing things like the Girl, and the Spidermen, and the Rogue Agents. But we just only got there the one time, and didn't introduce enough. I'd also tried to introduce the idea of recurring Personalities (a newspaper vender in this case), but they killed the guy in their first encounter ("you don't know where the target is? Well maybe if I break your legs. /legs broken/ Still not talking? then you don't need that jaw do you? /jaw broken/ Still not telling me anything? Then eat lead. /poor bloke shot 4 times before another PC showed up and stopped him/).
How did you handle the Dream Logic thing with regard to Static?
Christoph Boeckle:
Hi Tony
Thanks for your contribution!
I've used overt Dream-Logic only as manifestations of increasing Static. I did make use of the malleability of Blue City when the players contacted Control. For example, they wanted a photograph of the Hostile Personality, so they could show it around. Control said they'd be sending it right away. Nothing happens, and the two agents go into the canteen of the factory who's boss was, unbeknownst to them, the HP. There, the guy at the counter takes their order, and instead comes back with a manilla envelope, with the requested photograph inside. I had spontaneously decided he was an informer working for Control and had him "conveniently" appear right in the next scene the players wanted to play out (the same character also played the role of giving them some more indications about where the HP worked, bringing together two functions into one character). In a lot of other games, this could be considered more or less cheap winging, but it felt good in the context of this game.
Oh, and when they used the Lacuna Device, the HP transformed into some huge disgusting beetle and as Static went up another die, the HP's office became all elongated. But otherwise, I keep it to a pretty standard "retro-futurist" setting.
Now that I've well progressed in my reading of the spy book I was mentioning in my previous post, I see that genre expectations allow me to introduce much more incompetence, bad luck, selfish, infantile and vain behaviour than I ever though was admissible for such "illustrious" people. In this regard, it is definitely not The Matrix. I mean, if the tone and the context were different, this would be slaps-stick comedy, but it's actually panning out as something very tragic.
Putting the players into situations where their superiors pull dirty tricks on one another at the risk of the agents' security, have blatant delusions of grandeur, etc. the agents will start doing their own things and this will rake up the Static more often than not (going against Company orders!)
In my opinion, torturing an innocent newspaper vendor is worth Static, because the agents are supposed to be as discreet as possible (killing a public figure in a gruesome way is definitely not discreet). Plus, the rather healthy unity my two agents expressed will rapidly dwindle in such a situation, and they'll start having arguments, stacking up the Static way higher.
It hadn't occured to me that the Black Zone could be tied to Static. I was using the notion that the agents get promoted to higher and higher Clearances as per the rules in the book (first by acquiring Commendation points, then by spending them to reduce Static in exchange for Personal Static) and that this in turn decided where they'd be sent on missions. In all evidence, neither of these rules existed as such in the first edition of the game, yet Ron made use of it in an efficient manner nonetheless. I suspect I need to do more reading of genre-related literature (Spione should arrive soon for another approach on the topic).
The question still remains how the balance of Static vs Heartbeat evolves in function of the number of player characters, but I'm confident going into the next session with what I've gathered on this thread discussing with you guys, and I'll probably answer that question by playing anyway.
Ron Edwards:
Group hug!
I think The Looking Glass War is one of the finest novels available of this type. The real horror is that by, oh, thirty years later, senior officers in the SIS and CIA admitted that during the 1950s literally hundreds, possibly well over a thousand agents were set up in this fashion - as badly and with similar results. The only justification they could come up with was, "Well, it felt like we were doing something, and we couldn't 'do nothing.'"
Um - it's clear to you what the Mystery Agents are, right? Meaning, where they came from, and who they were before?
Best, Ron
The Dragon Master:
It is to me. And that was part of what I was trying to get across to the players through the static events. Sadly we never hit enough static for it to come through.
What about you Christopher?
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