[The Exchange / Justifiers] The right game with the right setting
Ron Edwards:
Geez, I hardly know where to start with this thread. I suppose it matters that I'm currently really interested in the range of science fiction in role-playing, and I'm writing up a purely personal set of handouts for a bunch of games I'd like to play. I suppose it'll be a problem that my own thoughts on what is or isn't science fiction are necessarily involved. See The Latest at my website for a little bit more about all that, although that page is still sketchy and not-quite-prime-time too.
The game I’m posting about is The Exchange, by Levi Kornelsen (link below), using the setting and what I consider to be the primary concepts in an older game called Justifiers.
Background: Justifiers was published as a series of small paperbacks in the late 1980s, the first being the core rules. My take on it is 100% in agreement with what I see widespread on-line and in dialogue with other role-players: the setting is widely appreciated and even loved, but the system is horrid. I've played it and again, I agree fully. Here's my first crack at the Justifiers piece, which I gave to the players at the con in very slightly earlier form. Because it's a rough draft, I'm making it available only for discussion here. Please do not distribute it or upload it elsewhere.
What excites me is that I think Levi Kornelsen's game in design, The Exchange, is really well-suited to the setting. His general page is here, but I used the link at the bottom of that page for the 2.0 version. This is important because I think the 2.0 version is much better than the more visually obvious 3.0 he has on his page.
For those who don't know the setting and don't check out my file, then basically, Justifiers is about corporate slavery, a technological ethnic minority, globalization, and colonization. The characters (Betas) are humanoid-animals - not Furries, in my opinion - who on paper might be able to buy off the cost of their own production through service to their parent corporation, through enabling that corporation to exploit new planets. You can find my handouts for all the pre-generated characters here, which also include some important system notes.
For those who don't know The Exchange and don't check out those files, then the one thing you have to know from the start is that the numbered scores do not differ in effectiveness – instead, every ability is worth one die. The numbers indicate the order in which they may be employed in a conflict, and you have to "go up" with every new announced ability.
My plan was to use only the player-characters actively to conduct the mission, in terms of rolls, with the other characters used mainly for Color in those scenes, and to use the NPC mechanics specifically for conflict between them and player-characters. This turned out to be a very, very functional plan.
For the missions or mission overall, I set up "the planet" as a character or foe, with twenty abilities, the maximum allowable for player-characters, so I figured it was a good indicator of fully-developed bad-assery. It's also kind of neat that you only have to prep one thing for the whole mission.
Radium-Animated Goo 1, Spider Furball Biters 1, Abrasive Mist Winds 1, Tangley Swamps 1, Baffling Equipment Readings 1
Goo-Dripping Floaty Orb 2, Confusing Dodger 2, Mob Attracter 2, Rational Pleader 2
Deep Wounder 3, Mind-Altering Insight 3, Isolating Trapper 3
Radium Poisoning 4, Empathic Seeker 4
Radium Conflagration 5
(on reflection, I might consider switching Radium Conflagration and Mind-Altering Insight, but it worked really well as written anyway)
To get what I'm after with this, you also have to understand Injuries in The Exchange, big-time. Injuries are added traits to your opponent, which you can call in during later exchanges with them. Sometimes a conflict can include strung-together exchanges, so this "later" can mean almost immediately or much much later or anything in between. You give them whatever numerical score you want, which is quite fun in application.* And crucially, if you get injuries lined up in a numerical sequence, then they themselves become a pseudo-character which can attack you and - uniquely - knock you out of play.
OK, therefore, defeating an opponent in The Exchange comes in two fashions: either one side has "had enough" at the end of a given exchange, and gives; or that same side has accumulated enough injuries for the injuries to take on the pseudo-character role, which is much more drastic. So! What this means for my prep is that I would simply run conflicts with the above 20-ability character, over and over, and let the players decide when they were ready for the "this is it" conflict that they'd hope would knock it out of play. The planet might lose conflicts, sure, but until it was taken out for real, the mission wouldn't be over. Which is another way of saying they'd be trying to inflict lots of injuries (and define them, and numerically "shape" them) through the earlier conflicts. Note that this also leaves open the possibility for player-characters to accumulate injuries themselves, be knocked out of play, and so on, with the larger possibility that the planet would be able to make them fail the mission.
So I went into the game thinking in terms of two basic dynamics: the mission itself, in however many conflicts the players wanted to go into before really trying to "take it down," and leaving open whatever conflict-goals or tactics they settled on to do that; and (2) the interactions of crew members, and what the players feel in the moment about what they want to do with that. Sort of like Bliss Stage, actually, although including rolls in the "interludes" when needed.
The people who joined me were Jamal, Faith, Ralph, and Jeremiah (a Justifiers fan, very enthused about actually seeing it played with a usable system). Jamal chose Shelly, the arguably sanely-self-centered Coyote Beta Pilot; Faith chose Joanna, the gorgeous but embittered Gamma Fox (note, not a Beta) who had basically been shanghaied into Justifying; Ralph chose Gavin, the steady and assimilationist Bighorn Sheep Beta Captain; and Jeremiah chose Darcy, the competent Tiger Beta Security Officer who harbored private doubts about Justifying. That left me, as NPCs, the two disgruntled engineers, the coldly ambitious second-in-command, the gung-ho scout, and the other shanghaied crew member, the former tutor turned doctor. As I saw it, any of the characters could be chosen as player-characters for good session potential, but the really hot ones were Darcy, Joanna, Edgar Allen, and possibly Rogelio, so having two of them as PCs was peachy.
Oh! One other rules-thing: both corporate rank (similar to military rank) and Buyback are hugely important in the Justifiers setting. I had the cunning idea that these would be starting injuries in Exchange terms. The rank idea was that if you outranked someone (in setting terms, not in Exchange numerical terms), you can call in their rank as a die on your side; I enjoyed the idea that your own rank never benefited you directly and couldn’t be called in as an ability in the ordinary way. Buyback would be similar, and could play a role in determining what policies are exerted toward the character for an upcoming mission, as well as act as the basis for trying to get free of the corporation – effectively you’d have to “kill” your Buyback. Both of these are discussed in some detail in the essay or handout or “piece” or whatever it is we call what I wrote.
Whew! This post is getting long, so I think I'll save the account of the mission itself for a later post. We ran a number of conflicts with the planet, beginning with beaming into nearby space and getting into the atmosphere and landing, then a lot of scouting and some targeted missions like getting specimens of various things. Those were all punctuated by the social/interlude situations, most of which included diced conflicts, all of which brought out the different characters' takes on their Justifying.
To summarize, they did subdue the planet, but at a moral cost which they, or at least some of them, did not feel until it was too late. The fuzzy-spider creatures turned out to be trying to strike a deal with them. Edgar Allen, one of my NPCs, even fought against the rest of the team in the final conflict, and they killed him. And as it turned out, the planet did gain one advantage – the final conflict established an insurgency “injury” which would persist, setting up the nascent colony on the planet for strife.
As far as “interlude” play went, the conflicts that arose were fun and illuminating all the way through. Faith really got into her Gamma character’s situation, but there were some great bits with Lyle, the harshly-intellectual Beta pangolin, and Gavin’s confrontation with the disgruntled engineers, and stuff like that. The social and psychological injuries which accumulated from those scenes all played well into later scenes too.
Now, for a moment there, and well into play, I was beginning to think that I was playing with a bunch of evil-minded colonial fuckers dedicated to the corporate ideology. No one was responding much to the problematic content, or it didn’t seem like it for a while. Ralph played Gavin firmly in the written constraints as utterly committed to the mission, and more surprisingly to me, Jeremiah had Darcy put aside his doubts and also play the mission quite straight. But I was pleasantly wrong. During the final conflict, I could see what I can only describe as a “ripple” of reaction across the table. Phrases like “Now I feel bad!” were delivered in an enthusiastic way, and someone made a darkly-portentous statement about how their character wouldn’t be so gung ho next time. I didn’t realize how deeply these were felt until we ended play and talked about it for a while. (This was one of those finish-play, then rave-about-it sessions.)
I had successfully gone with my plan to have one “advancement” step take place halfway during the session, and I really should have followed up with doing another one at the end, before concluding play. I didn’t though, mainly because I forgot or wasn’t quite keyed into the timing. But in the discussion afterwards, at least a couple of people were really enthusiastic about how they’d “advance” very differently from the way they’d done it during the mission. So my note to self is to do it this way again, but fully as planned.
This was one of the most enjoyable games I've played in a long time, for tons of reasons. First, as plain old gaming experiences go, it was smooth and internally-paced, totally unproblematic in terms of mechanics and more importantly, knowing what to do next based on what just happened. Second, everyone at the table really made the characters their own, just as I tried to emphasize in the handouts. We had no idea which way various characters would jump, and given that, Edgar Allen's moral refusal was very much like plain old role-playing based on events at the table, one of many at the table, rather than a GM-imposed plot device. Third, the overall color and setting issues hummed - I think we were all 100% into the look and feel of things, informing all the decisions and expressed by us in and out of character. Even the humorous table-talk, about Gavin's funky helmet which accomodated his horns, or the potentially-disruptive acknowledgment of the "crazy coyote" stereotype, worked positively into this overall grasp of what we were talking about and what was happening.
Further play isn’t possible in this case, which is too bad. Among other things, I would really like to follow one of the Justifers supplements leads in making the beasts/creatures/beings they encountered into Betas, fellow team members or rather, newly-created and enlisted slaves such as the player-characters themselves.
Best, Ron
* See also Frostfolk and GNS aggravation and [Frostfolk, ] Carrying on for discussions of The Exchange here at the Forge, especially the part in the second thread where Levi explains the injuries mechanics to me.
Levi Kornelsen:
I'll likely stop by later and dig in a little more on details, but I just wanted to hit this one thing first.
Quote from: Ron Edwards on April 22, 2010, 06:50:29 AM
What excites me is that I think Levi Kornelsen's game in design, The Exchange, is really well-suited to the setting. His general page is here, but I used the link at the bottom of that page for the 2.0 version. This is important because I think the 2.0 version is much better than the more visually obvious 3.0 he has on his page.
The 2.0 rules, I think, have some great strengths. For myself, I like the later version more (or I wouldn't have written it), but this is your play here; I can see the reason for the preference, especially if you're looking for a tight focus.
If you have any intent of moving onwards with what you've done? Do, please, feel free to take the rules and run, including direct use of text, etc. It's likely that you already know you can, but I want to make sure - they're yours, everyones, go for it.
Also, if you (or other readers) would like to see a smoother presentation of the 3.0 stuff at some point, even if it's just to look over some amusing hostile conditions... Well, I've been meaning to do this for a bit, so why wait? Here's The Cog Wars, Zero Edition, up on Amagi, which is what the 3.0 stuff became. I'm pretty sure it won't hit your own buttons, but there may well be bits worth retrofitting if you have the notion to play with 2.0 further.
pseudoidiot:
Hey, Ron, I'm glad you finally got a chance to get this posted up. I'll chew on it for a bit and add some thoughts of my own.
For now I just want to say I had a blast playing it and I appreciate everyone letting me sit in at the last minute.
Also, quick note: Jahmal was the Justifiers fan. It was completely new to me.
-Jeremiah
Levi Kornelsen:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on April 22, 2010, 06:50:29 AM
Oh! One other rules-thing: both corporate rank (similar to military rank) and Buyback are hugely important in the Justifiers setting. I had the cunning idea that these would be starting injuries in Exchange terms. The rank idea was that if you outranked someone (in setting terms, not in Exchange numerical terms), you can call in their rank as a die on your side; I enjoyed the idea that your own rank never benefited you directly and couldn’t be called in as an ability in the ordinary way. Buyback would be similar, and could play a role in determining what policies are exerted toward the character for an upcoming mission, as well as act as the basis for trying to get free of the corporation – effectively you’d have to “kill” your Buyback. Both of these are discussed in some detail in the essay or handout or “piece” or whatever it is we call what I wrote.
This is excellent; the rank thing is almost dead perfect.
For Buyback, a small idea hits me. I don't know if this will sit well (I think I have some idea what you're going for, but haven't nailed it), but let's see if it sticks to anything.
Imagine that, when describing character creation for such characters, you note that they must put a little ticky-mark next to a set number of traits - and suggest "I was developed traits" for these. So, if a character has Hyperactive reflexes(*), the little mark would indicate that this trait was part of the thing that they need to buyback - extra expense went into engineering that character, to give them that trait, and they owe extra as a result.
Dealing with buyback could then be tied to that trait in play very, very smoothly - we know that the neuro-lab has it's teeth in you, because you've got those newly-developed reflexes, right?
hix:
I am fascinated to read more of this Actual Play, Ron. The rules for The Exchange are a good read, and after finishing them I hope you'll talk a little more about how Injuries work in play.
In particular, I'm interested in hearing more about when Injuries get significant enough to initiate conflicts of their own (and how those conflicts feel in play - are they dramatically interesting? Repetitive?)
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