[Legendary Lives] Three games to talk about
Ron Edwards:
Well, I'm starting all over, because I caused trouble in trying to talk about too many aspects of the numbers at once. I'm going to jump to the point I really wanted to make.
OK, let's talk about a flat method in terms of how you "go up." It might be during the course of play, advancing the skill or whatever, or we could be speaking more abstractly, running up the scale mentally, whichever. The units of "going up" are the same as percents, and the important thing is that whether each unit is 1% or 5% or any other %, when you "go up," you go up by that much. In old RuneQuest, when you went up from 20 to 25%, it's adding the same amount of the 1-100% spectrum as when you went up from 50 to 55%. (And even adding a slight random element, like in the old Stormbringer game when you rolled d10 to see how many % you go up, doesn't change this much.)
But now, in a curved method, the units of the readable values "contain" variable amounts of percentage. So if we're talking about 3d6, sum the total, try to roll some number or under; then when you go up from 8 to 9, it's not as much of a jump in your chances as going up from 9 to 10 is. Think of each advancement, point by point, as being different in terms of how much percentages it captured. At low values, you don't get very far which each improvement, but on the "slopes" of the curve, each readable-unit gained is a very great improvement in your character's chances. As veterans of Champions and GURPS well know, the sweet spot begins at 10 or less and proceeds through 13 or less. At 10, each bump up grabs a solid percentage, and at 13, you've "captured" the bulk of the hump in the bell curve. Various different dice combinations yield different "flatness" at the top of the curve, so some include a plateau effect there and some don't. 3d6 and 2d10 seem to be rather good for the top of the bell not being a plateau, so the sweet spot can be enjoyed throughout the upward and downward slopes; the latter method is especially well done in Pocket Universe.
Finally, the point! I'm really really not talking about the basic chance to hit in this thread. I'm talking much more about qualitative aspects of both extreme success and extreme failure. What I'm saying is that Legendary Lives' ART (Action Results Table, on page 152 of the Legendary Lives PDF) actually overcomes the lack of sweet spot that characterizes many flat methods. To understand this table, you should know that the column on the left is the character's score in say, Sword. (It says "Roll" at the top of that column, but that term is actually pointing to the right, at the boldfaced outcomes across the top.) So if you have 7 in Sword, your percentile range for Catastrophic result is 1-8%. But focus especially on the distinction between Passable and Poor, which is the default success/failure division in this game unless some particular target outcome is specified. See how radically it changes at the low and high ends of the spectrum, and how it plateaus in the middle? That's neat! Not only did he impose a different-percent-per-improvement curve onto a flat-method roll, he also chose a different pattern from what you get with (say) 3d6!
What I'm sayin' is that Legendary Lives presents a quite distinct relationship between dice method, extreme result values, and improvement/change in a skill. Not only does it tie into general character improvement, but also to the drop in ability associated with repeated use of the spell skills that I described above. As you drop in the ability through the course of a spell-heavy adventure, your chance for Catastrophe not only increases, it increases dramatically and differently per unit decrease in the skill.
Point for clarity: I am not talking about the or the best technique in terms of comparison among games. I'm talking about how this particular thing is suited well to the other aspects of what I call Exploration or the SIS (character concept, setting features, color, the immediate situation), for this particular game.
Best, Ron
David Berg:
Larry,
Your AP account under "Techniques" is fascinating. Reading it felt like watching someone draw a relationship map. That's a stark contrast to my experiences with relationship maps, wherein they've been drawn pre-play, not during play. I'm thinking mainly of Ganakagok and How We Came to Live Here. In those games, it was fun to collaborate openly on proto-situation building. In your LL game, it seems a very different sort of fun, watching to see how the GM is going to forge maximally juicy situations out of all the characters (aka connect the nodes on the map via relationships).
Ron,
Did you do most of this pre-play (in your head or on paper) or ad-libbed in response to the play you were seeing at the table? The former strikes me as easy ("Okay, I'll make up an NPC, give one character a reason to work with him, and another character a reason to kill him") and the latter strikes me as pretty hard for someone not used to it ("Okay, in this scene, I'll take the breaking of the model from last scene, and impart it new significance by revealing that the model is a sought-after war machine!").
I'm not saying it doesn't sound doable, it just doesn't strike me as markedly easier than a lot of the traditional GM stuff that seems to burn a lot of folks out (tweaking adversity to sustain drama in missions, pressuring characters into cooperation, etc.). Or does the sort of map-weaving from this LL game tend to occur primarily in the first few scenes, and then the GM gets to lay back and let the situations run themselves thereafter?
Anyone who played,
Did the situations and color of the scenes derive heavily from the book's setting material? Was that material felt in anything more than the specifics of the characters? From Ron's initial description of the game, I figured, "Hey, tons of inspirations for play, there!" which he seemed to disagree with me on. But hearing now about sneaking into creepy dudes' houses and tripping over their war machines, I wonder if that was all you guys, and all the situations implied in the book went ignored.
By "implied situations" I'm talking about stuff like where the V:tM book says "Clan Ventrue wants to control the vampires through manipulation and organization, while Clan Tremere believes their magic is vampires' key asset" and the GM goes, "Cool, we'll play a bunch of Tremeres undermining and supplanting Ventrue leadership."
Ps,
-Dave
Willow:
Larry's plot summary is astoundingly accurate, I really have nothing to add.
I recall authoring the war-machine thing myself, though it turns out brownies have some sort of clockwork engineering. Essentially, I wanted my character to get her hands on a WMD.
Ron Edwards:
Hi Dave,
I have to clarify my position on our dialogue. To me, the Legendary Lives character creation process does indeed seem chock-full of scenario prep material, stuff that I as GM would be practically obliged to incorporate into my preparation, or even use as the primary components. However, nothing in the pretty clear and extensive text about scenario prep and play in the book is consistent with that. Is that making more sense? I'm not talking about what I can do with such material; that's not hard. I'm talking about looking at (i) highly personal, quirky, probably neurotic, NPC-heavy character-centric conflicts, saying, "Whoo yes!", and then running into (ii) absolutely assumed/non-negotiable group/party team membership, linear adventure preparation, and instructions for how to utilize roll outcomes to ensure the story goes smoothly. Running into as in, a brick wall.
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Did you do most of this pre-play (in your head or on paper) or ad-libbed in response to the play you were seeing at the table? The former strikes me as easy ("Okay, I'll make up an NPC, give one character a reason to work with him, and another character a reason to kill him") and the latter strikes me as pretty hard for someone not used to it ("Okay, in this scene, I'll take the breaking of the model from last scene, and impart it new significance by revealing that the model is a sought-after war machine!").
The distinction between the two isn't quite that sharp in this case, but essentially the answer is the former. Let's start simply with putting the characters onto the map. None of the characters had anything to do with the primary setting-based conflicts concerning the Seelie Court, so the Elfin Kingdom wasn't too important to consider. I wanted to stay pretty close to the Nomad lands, due to the Serpentine/Nomad conflict, and it so happens that Brownie Country is right next to that area. And there's a town in Brownie Country called Baye, "where the Circus Circuit meets" according to the book, and the final step in Ra'ed's lifeline was working for a circus. So it instantly fell into place, as if this town had been invented for the purpose of observing the shenanigans of these particular characters. That was all pre-play.
One of the features of character creation, and the only one I see which links that specific character to what is about to be presented by the GM, is a stated goal. I asked the players to provide very concrete, immediate goals, something their character was determined to do right now. Ra'ed's was to kill his undead girlfriend, Gootch's was to reunite with his lover, and Ctine's was to build a war-machine, as Willow described. The first two simply tightened up existing NPCs and issues from character creation, and the last introduced a new component into play. I already had the NPCs I needed. Easiest: Ra'ed's girlfriend (and former guy-friend), right there to be used in the back-story and in the goal. Slightly more needed: Brownies like being slaves, but not if they're mistreated, so Hootchie Koo had a ready-made problem for Gootch to consider, requiring only that I identify her owner. And the most needed (not much): there needs to be a Brownie war-machine for Ctine to find, and a Serpentine NPC to boss her around.
Some things did get teased or snapped into place during the course of play. I deliberately kept Ra'ed's former friend, the guy, on the shelf, not deciding to bring him in (as opposed to deciding not to). I made up the war-machine model in Asp's house right when Gootch sneaked in, but this wasn't about planning to have it broken or stolen or understood or anything like that - it was about what might be found in Asp's house, period. That's how I do it, stuffing a new scene or circumstance with things which reflect the various relationships and activities going on. What happens to them and what that might mean for future events is left to play without planning.
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I'm not saying it doesn't sound doable, it just doesn't strike me as markedly easier than a lot of the traditional GM stuff that seems to burn a lot of folks out (tweaking adversity to sustain drama in missions, pressuring characters into cooperation, etc.). Or does the sort of map-weaving from this LL game tend to occur primarily in the first few scenes, and then the GM gets to lay back and let the situations run themselves thereafter?
You've answered your own question. This kind of GMing is stunningly easy by comparison, although your "lay back and let the situations run themselves" is missing the key components of scene framing and of playing NPCs as characters rather than covert plot-movers.
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Did the situations and color of the scenes derive heavily from the book's setting material? Was that material felt in anything more than the specifics of the characters?
Heavily from the book! The location on the map, the town we were in, the various racial-cultural details of everyone, NPCs included. Like "Serpentine Alley," the street in the Brownie town where the Serpentines lived, and Asp's hob sidekick. I can't think of a single thing in our game that wasn't directly linked to setting material and/or the specific outcomes of character creation process. For example, Willow's war-machine was perfect, not only because of the Brownie clockwork-engineering, but because her secret Serpentine society was criminal, nationalist, and thievish, and that tied into how Ctine and Ra'ed both had a cultural stake in the Nomad town that she planned to destroy with it.
Modestly speaking, I think our group really seized upon and celebrated the game's canonical content.
Best, Ron
P.S. Paul, I owe you a reply. I'm working on it.
Larry L.:
Dave,
I don't believe any of the players had even seen the book before we played. Therefore, all of the setting material was filtered through Ron for awesome. He had already taken the trouble to figure out, for instance, that the elves were really interesting, or that the insect men were actually kind of boring. He really nudged towards spellcasting types, because the magic system was interesting and worth checking out -- I believe "bad-ass" was the actual word he used.
The character generation was essentially random, and therefore didn't require any prior knowledge of the setting, with the tables pointing everyone the the necessary entries in the book, which were sufficiently evocative we could start cracking jokes about the obvious stereotypes they were invoking. One or several of the five life events generated for each character suggested an interesting way to incorporate into the budding story. (But not all the events! Some were, of course, overlooked for not seeming relevant. We didn't go to lengths to force these details into the game, of course. The process by which some creative avenues are ignored and are soon forgotten might be an interesting thing to observe in and of itself.)
I can't speak for Ron, but I did observe that he didn't break out, like, a secret GM playbook or a relationship map or anything.
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