[The Exchange / Justifiers] Great the second time around too
Ron Edwards:
Hey guys,
I think this issue has been tricky to discuss because there are several interconnecting rules to consider.
1. The biggest, most-encompassing issue concerns players' ownership of characters. By ownership I specifically mean saying what the characters do, and it so happens that people can exert influence on how others play their characters by somehow getting it established, at the table, how the characters feel. The long-standing non-textual use of alignment is exactly this - Person 1 says, "My guy does such-and-such," Person 2 says, "No, he's Lawful Good, he can't," Person 3 says, "Yeah that's right," Person 1 says, "Well fuck, then I guess he doesn't." So one of the main responses over time has been to hover over one's character like a little anti-seizure force field, regarding any and every input about that character as effectively as an incursion.
My jargon term for this technique is Force and a lot of other jargon concerns how it's applied at the table, whether as a GM-centric means of shepherding characters through given storyline in spite of their players (Illusionism) or even as a positive thing when its GM-centric use is acknowledged (Participationism). We don't have much jargon for non-GM uses, although my use of "seizure" above seems appropriate for effectively non-consensual use of that kind.
However, I think that not all possible shared or tandem play of a single character is Force. If it's always my job to say what a character does, and it's always your job to (umm) say what his or her effective attacks look like, then those are just our jobs, even if we casually speak of the character as mine rather than ours. If that looks silly at first glance, then I suggest looking again. My take is that this kind of tandem job-splitting is very common, simply not acknowledged. At many tables I've played in, a given person, not necessarily the GM, takes on an informal role as Color Guy for things like successful attacks. And more to the point of this post, I very often see that characters' internal or emotional states are subject to impromptu committee-talk, with gavel power given to the character's owner, and the committee results enter play as if only that one player had produced it. And weirdly the acknowledged techniques of play tend to erase any memory of that process and simply describe that "Princess Varna was played by Suzy" as if no one but Suzy ever said anything about the way Princess Varna thought, felt, spoke, or did anything.
So my first point is simply to smooth out any possible reactions among us to protect our characters from seizure. The personality-feature-as-"injury" in The Exchange can be played as a formal means of specific kinds of tandem play, including feelings (the new feature itself) and actions (narrated during conflicts by one's opponent).
Did we have some tension in play over this? I think we did. More than one person got a little tempted simply to fuck with others' characters because he or she could.
2. Another issue is less about player-to-character and more about context, concerning the setting and general situation for play. Specifically, how important are injuries and/or personality features in raw fictional terms? I can think of a lot of games I've played in which the fictional content of injuries was irrelevant, and only the tactical importance of the point levels mattered. Or (and) games in which you could write anything you wanted in the "personality" section of the character sheet, but you might as well have switched them around our sheets at random for all we cared or even bothered to look.
At first, this may not seem like a big deal for a generic-setting game system like The Exchange. But I think it is. I think vanilla Narrativism does lie at the heart of the author's playtesting and vision (see Frostfolk and GNS aggravation and [Frostfolk] Carrying on - actually these are pretty important threads for a lot of stuff).
I'm making this point because we were not only playing The Exchange, but Justifiers. I aimed it at the political and ethical conundrums of the setting like a guided missile. Or to use my jargon, every detail of the Big Model was in this instance set up to be savagely Narrativist. Also, it's designed to be used in immediate play, suitable for conventions like Forge Midwest or our games at the Dice Dojo.
One of these days I'll try The Exchange in a somewhat more open-ended context, more like what Levi did with the Frostfolk and what's implied by his one-page setting example in the rules. But my suspicion is that even so the game finds its maximum systemic and fun power when situations are at their crux-point for both morals and danger, which again, puts both personality and injury mechanics front and center. I think it's best suited to creating punchy, character-transforrmative novellas, such as The Black Cauldron (the book!) rather than winding-about, whoever, go-wherever, find-whatever "campaigns" (my quotes indicate the jargon use of the term in our hobby, not scare-quoting).
3. Putting #1 and #2 together instantly prompts concerns about broad techniques of play, specifically how personality descriptors on the sheet relate to player-stated character behavior or attitudes during play. There are basically two extremes for this technique-family: full-on thespian, for which the words on the sheet are literally one's assignment and to deviate violates expectations; and full-on suggestion, for which the words on the sheet are at most a jumping-off point for that character's depiction and impose no constraint on announced behaviors at all. We'll ignore for the moment the role of quantitative content, but it follows the same spectrum, such that in Champions a Code vs. Killing imposes constraints on player-character behavior based on its points (with 20 being the full Monty of "won't kill"), but in My Life with Master a Love of 1 doesn't have to be played any differently from a Love of 3.
The Exchange in general and this particular application are rammed right to the latter end of the spectrum. It could say "Infatuated with Betty" on your character Bob's sheet either as an ability that you wrote there, or as an injury, and what Bog does and says regarding Betty are completely up to you. I knew this would be tough given the anthropomorphized animal characters and the fact that the characters were pregenerated, both of which contribute to thespian thinking. I tried to emphasize this point a lot, during character creation, on the sheets themselves, and especially at the beginning of the second session.
It seems to me that once that is understood, the main objection to the personality-injury concept would probably be restricted to the issue of opponents narrating your character's feelings and actions. In other words, it's nothing to do with your own role-playing except if and when you want it to be, but it affords a handle or window for others to reach into the character's play. But if issue #1 is being addressed properly, that shouldn't be a problem either.
4. Once we know #3, then the issue becomes all practical mechanics application: reduction and recovery, time limits, anything similar. It's probably clear to anyone reading the thread that we were hardly experts in these details, me included. But we did know that, in the rules as written, you may eliminate the injury by beating it in a conflict, and you gain features by choosing that option during periodic opportunities for altering the character.
Considering something that can be both advantageous and disadvantageous: if it's an injury, you are literally giving it to others to narrate for you, including actions of your character; if it's a feature in your character's "pyramid," then you are keeping it mainly for your own contributions and narrations
We did not quite see the circumstances that a number of us were imagining, in which an injury and an ability shared the same name, perhaps "Sympathetic to the natives." I would really have liked to see that, perhaps across a number of characters with different things, to see whether the practical mechanics allowed for and facilitated punchy conflict content and outcomes.
As a note for the future, I am going to consider making an existing ability on a character's sheet into an injury when a conflict warrants it. So if someone's playing Rogelio, the black bear engineer character, they already have "Surly" as an ability they can call into action for a conflict. And then, as GM, I inflict an injury upon that character with the name "Surly." It seems to me like a lot of fun, as the player can call it in on his side, and I (or someone else) can call it in on mine, and in each case, role-playing the character is involved. It's not double-dipping, either, nor does one of those uses undercut the either. This strikes me as a very good introductory use of the technique, prior to getting into the placement of novel personality traits upon one another's characters upon beating them in conflicts.
There's another issue at hand too, at the same level as this one: when it is in fact legitimate to call in traits of this sort, period, relative to the fiction at hand. That's a huge and difficult topic, first broached by Markus in Can someone explain the true reason behind "traits" (PtA style) to me?.)
5. If #1-4 are all in place and making sense, then the real or final issue is whether it fucking works. I'm thinking especially in the longer-term of play, not one little conflict or character action, or even a session between advancement-points, but across the longer unit of play called "a story." I'm talking about going up the scale, from the character actions, to the conflicts and their outcomes, and ultimately to the interactions between advancements and injuries - all the way up to the big picture that we can look back upon and say "So, what did we do? Most especially, when and how did what we did, procedurally, feed directly back into what we enjoyed the most and spurred more to enjoy?"
(For the theoretical basis I'm using to organize these five points, see Beating a dead horse?)
In our case, I think it worked all right. In continuing to develop this particular project, which one day I hope to be able to make available as a really good and fun pick-up-and-play download, I need to think about the presentation stage of prep, exactly what the game organizer says and shows to people prior to play, and probably during the first conflicts in play.
I'm also thinking that for the discussion here to proceed well, I think we should avoid discussing more than one thing at once, or at least decide upon what aspects to hold steady while we discuss one or a couple in particular.
Sam, if what I've outlined makes sense and seems useful, can you identify which pieces are the tricky or problematic ones that you're talking about? And Timo, I'm trying to figure out whether your disagreement arises out of a genuine difference or if it's about more than one of the above points getting mashed together.
Best, Ron
SamuelRiv:
I think this was a good way to clarify the issue, but somehow the main point hasn't been pinned down, as I answer #1:
There is obviously a difference in how ownership is handled between the injuries-are-negative and the more nebulous perspective that I saw would naturally result in a small addendum to the rules. However, I do not see that either necessarily results in more player-ownership than the other. When calling an injury, an opponent can manipulate the narration of another's character, which works well. But if the character decides to make an injury into their own trait, the character is instead accepting the narrative suggested by the person who caused the injury in the first place. There is a give-and-take of who "owns" the character when, but the simple question of more or less ownership does not seem the heart of the disagreement.
Tying in with #2 and #3: My problem in the start of any game is finding the flesh of my character, and definitely I had this problem in our sessions until I got the "infatuation" injury (originally I wasn't going to go near such an obvious subplot). Then I saw the injury as so essential to my character development that I didn't want to fight it, or be encouraged by the mechanics to fight it, which is the root of why I think this addendum to the rules feels so natural and needed. Timo - as I recall, you were the first to find your character into doing his own thing outside of the expectations of the mission or traits. It would seem (please correct me as I'm blindly extrapolating) that in finding your character, any injuries would feel somewhat alien and should be overcome.
So maybe that's it - there are definitely instances for me where a character has particular inspiration and gets a personality soon after starting, and thus environmental encroachments are instinctively resisted. But most characters that I create take many sessions to get to that point, and so this suggestion of mine feels like a faster encouragement to naturally evolve a personality.
#4 etc: It is necessary for me to have my character sheet contain information relevant to my character's personality, and so where there is a game mechanic, the personality should conversely be reflected on the sheet. This is why the trait list in The Exchange was both encouraging and lacking, another reason why I felt off-kilter in playing this obsession with Joanna without having anything official to reflect it, in spite of having a bunch of stuff about how "coldly logical" and "scientific" I am. Maybe that's just my own quirk.
Ron - calling in an opponent's ability against them then brings up the very simple counterargument to me: make both injuries and traits of the same name, using the regular system. Except that then is no narrative or mechanical encouragement to take on a potentially-less-versatile injury as a trait, or less-versatile trait and an injury, though it does make for very interesting conflicts. I hope that statement represents why I feel a rule addendum, to make this double-traiting an appealing option, is necessary.
Motipha:
Ah, right, I should have specified. My disagreement is solely with the adjustment Sam is suggesting. I thing it adds nothing to the game save for an easy out. Your other analysis I pretty much agree with.
Most specifically the point you made of personal issues and injuries being front and center of the game rings very true to me. The system is very simple very straightforward, and easy to use. But it is the Injuries that really makes it pop. It's interesting in that it removes the Onus of "true to the character" from the player: it becomes the domain of those who oppose the character in a given situation to expose how their weaknesses and injuries affect them. It's a neat thing because it means the character ownership is very explicitly a group thing: To know and understand a character you need to listen to everyone's input on that character.
I definitely agree with your point 4. the system is very robust, with a lot of interesting nuance in how traits and injuries interact. I'm still a bit leery about how tight the control is on the pyramid: it's very restrictive and I think for longer play it might be burdensome. My concern is much more about "how easily can I switch out traits that no longer apply?" than I am with anything else. Which is interesting, because I do believe that it's a better at the shorter, punchy story telling, but the pyramid is very resistant to change, which means you're going to see very little change in favour of the character. Perhaps this is the same thing that Sam is talking about when he talks about less-versatile traits being less appealing?
I'm not sure what I just said makes sense, I'll go in to it a little more if people want.. Regardless, it just means more emphasis on the Injuries, and dealing with them.
Returning to Sam's point, and the Infatuation situation: in that Sam took the infatuation injury as being a defining characteristic of Lyle what the system is modeling is not the existence of the infatuation, but the effect of that infatuation on Lyle. Infatuation as an injury means it's something that works against Lyle. Infatuation without a trait means it's neither for or against Lyle, it's just a thing about him. Infatuation as a trait means it's something that helps him.
And I agree that a mechanical and stated representation of the things that are meaningful about the character is important. I don't see how the system fails to do so. If it is something that hinders the character, then leave it as an injury. If it is something that helps the character (a source of strength, a hard-learned lesson, whatever) then take it as a trait. If it is both, then have both. If it neither helps nor hinders, is it really important?
Ok, so, the experience rules from the game are as follows:
Quote from: The Exchange
At the end of each of these sections, each player may choose to make as many of the following changes to their character as they like - but they may only make each change from this list once, and must follow the rules given for each:
1. Increase the rating on any trait by one:...2. Add a single, new trait, with a rating of one:...3. Alter the name of a trait:...4. Reduce any trait by one:...5. Remove any trait:...
If I understand you Sam, you are suggesting an additional choice: "Change any one Injury in to a trait with a rating of one." Either you are saying "Do this instead of option 2" or it is just another option on the list, in addition to those that exist. Is this an accurate model of what you are suggesting?
SamuelRiv:
Okay Timo, I think we understand each other now. Let me start from the end of your post backwards: I am talking about adding an option, instead of adding a new trait at level 1, to incorporate an injury at level 1, this being slightly encouraged by removing the injury (which I think is fairly easy to do anyway). This encourages the adoption of what would be perhaps less-versatile traits - perhaps it could even be the backstory origin (after a name-change) of your famous "porn connoisseur" trait, which seems pretty useless otherwise. In other words, I just think it's a bit of encouragement to not "game" the system via adding broad, colorless new traits on level-up.
The RaW don't totally fail in this regard, as I've acknowledged before. I guess I'd want to see how other players work the system to see if people would really end up, consciously or unconsciously, blanching their character for the sake of competitive advantage.
As far as the pyramid goes, I think it's a nice idea for balanced, not-so-competitive character concepts, but certainly slow, which I think would be improved if we did maybe two level-ups per session or more. I'd like to see more encouragement to remove traits, too, since getting a level-5 trait kinda requires you not do that. But then again we haven't worked through the full character-creation process yet.
So basically, more level-ups are needed for a faster-paced story, but I think, from what I said in the previous paragraph, that perhaps more tweaks to the pyramid than just my suggestion would be a good idea.
Motipha:
ok, so we have some agreement on what this alteration would be. Your concern seems to be "no one would take this, because a trait that is of the same name as an injury is too narrow to be a good min/max choice." Correct me if I'm wrong in that understanding but if that is the case, I disagree due to the following points:
I personally believe that colour is influenced by mechanics, but is not forced by it. "Infatuated with Joanna" is less broadly useful than just "infatuated," sure, but the when it comes out in play it's going to have to make sense to the situation. Making the use of the trait fit the fiction is where the colour really is: just having it on your sheet doesn't do anything for the story or the SIS. Maybe you could broaden it out in to something more universally useful, but I still don't see a problem with that. So it's broader, who cares? I really don't see why we need to encourage people to have narrower traits if they don't want to. And those who deliberately choose more narrowed traits are making statements about the game: This narrow thing is an important part of my character, I'm going to be doing things involving it. These new traits are only narrow if the injury sustained is narrow. One of the injuries on my character Barnabas was "paranoid." By using your tweak, I could have switched this over to a broadly useful trait at value one as well as removed the injury. What am I sacrificing? Nothing, as paranoid is something that could easily be used in a lot of situations. In this way, your alteration has done nothing to encourage me to take a more limited trait, it has just made it easier for me to lose an Injury.Here's the body of the third experience option with more detail: Quote from: the Exchange
Alter the name of a trait: If your character has changed the focus of one of their traits (the way it's used) you can change the name of that trait slightly to reflect that. This isn't a rule to allow drastic change; if your swordsman becomes a monk, you'll want to lower and raise traits to reflect that, but if your infantryman becomes a sergeant, that's a good time to change the trait name.
My interpretation of that rule allows for the drift of a specific trait to a less specific one. Lyle started out being harmed by his infatuation. Over time, he uses it to help him overcome the immediate obstacles of his situation. Later in life as the immediacy fades it's no longer his obsession with Joanna, but his obsessive nature that becomes the defining thing about him. Depending on the ongoing play, I would expect a trait like that to continue to drift and drift, to metamorphose until it does become a generally interesting (and mechanically powerful) thing. Point being: What starts as a narrow trait isn't neccessarily going to stay so narrow.My final disagreement is purely aesthetic and comes from the kind of person I am: I don't like exceptions. I think systems are better when similar things act in similar ways. As such, having most of the improvements be "you can always choose this once" and then having two that say "you can choose this once only if you haven't chosen this other one" bothers me. The approach of this option as an "instead of" puts a hitch in the simple lines of the game, and it really is elegant in it's simplicity.
So yes, while we may have a better understanding of our positions, I still hold the position that such a tweak does more harm than good to the system.
This point aside, I feel that I should make the statement: Porting this setting over to this system was an excellent idea, and I very much look forward to seeing Ron's final product. There are some interesting thematic elements that come out because of choices he's made: In making planets antagonists in themselves, he's reinforcing the "characters against monumental opponents" feeling that really compels. It also put an interesting spin on our relationship with the statted NPC's: with everything and everyone else expressions of the planet, the fact that all the Justifiers were fully statted characters meant they were somehow more real to us in a way that seemed very apropos for the setting. The entire time we played it definitely felt like we were individuals facing overwhelming conglomerates and collectives. I'd encourage creating the corporations in much the same way.
I do think that we really needed to explore the mechanics of creating an assistant: I think it would have addressed JP's concern about the chieftain quite a bit, as well as helped us populate the world in a more meaningful way. Honestly, I suspect there is very little about the system that should be changed: mostly it'll just be making the universe fit right.
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