[Mars Colony] The corporations will be our doom
Tim C Koppang:
Kelly got removed! This is the first I've heard of a forced removal in the wild. And what an utterly grim story. I've gotten great satisfaction in comparing your session to Gregor's recent game in which Kelly couldn't roll anything but successes. Yours and Gregor's games are two completely opposite experiences, and both seemed to work. I'm happy that the the game can handle the extremes, but, just to be clear, this was pretty extreme.
I have a few rules clarifications and comments to make, specifically with the way you handled personal and opposition scenes. I'll be putting together a longer post tomorrow, but, for now, I'm off to bed.
Bloomfield:
Quote from: iluxan on November 10, 2010, 08:19:58 PM
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14. Progress (Kelly Perkins). Joe Riddle arranges meeting with Josephina Fayes, who has been driving a bus in Dome 4 for 40 years and was just kicked out of her apartment. Fane attends. Roll 5/6 - progress! Fane agrees to leak the corruption story. Kelly Perkins makes speech condemning corruption and supporting Fayes election to the Council "a real working woman - one of us!" Roll 1/3 - OMG. Fayes is elected to replace disgraced Member Tanya, but Kelly Perkins learns that Fayes is taking money from Monsanto to "listen to their side of the issue" before Council meetings. Token to Deception. 15 Lies against Corruption. There are now 3 markers in Deception, 1 in Contempt, 5 in Admiration.
Kelly, increasingly desperate to make progress, throws caution to the wind and makes a desperate gamble. Throws himself with the everywoman and the underground blogger against the Man. And it pays off - Tanya is off the Council and Josephina is elected. But it's all for naught.
[I have to say, inventing Josephina was fun. Though she didn't end up a huge character, we had a great time creating her together. Also, wit hso many failed rolls, at this point I didn't expect my tenure to end in anything but disaster. But at the same time, I felt strangely compelled to keep using Deceptions to make progress, because I genuinely wanted to make some progressin improving the Colony, and if all I got were failures, I wanted at least something to happen.]
This was an amazing moment, because we got to represent the awesome futility of Perkins's work on Mars. He wants to make a difference, limit corruption but all he manages to do is to swap out one corrupt politician with another, and then deceive the public about fighting corruption. He is playing the corporations' game, and knows it, and can't do anything about it.
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17. Personal (Governor): Kelly Perkins's father appears drunk at Kelly Perkins's apartment and accuses Kelly Perkins of selling out, not keeping his promises, being The Man. Kelly Perkins is at his wit's end, things are even worse then before - there has to be a way through this!?! Father and son get drunk together and dream of finally bringing around the Revolution. What if security chief Lloyd were gone? Kelly Perkins could fill the power vacuum, seize control of the security forces, topple the Council...
[One of my favorite scenes. Completely desperate, with no way to catch up or fix all the things that happened, I started rambling, and Bloomfield played along great. At this point both I, and Kelly, are basically incoherent and raving mad. This is what Mars does to you, people.]
One of my favorite scenes, too. It had gotten really tense by now. Those words are a direct quote from the game: "I am at my wits' end, things are even worse than before - there has to be a way through this!" Iluxan was wringing his hands at the table. Iluxan was great to play with, he really put his heart into it and we both got very intense. I found myself hoping that things would at least improve, which made piling opposition scenes on after a string of failures harder. Also, the issues of labor, corruption, and radiation became so tangled that at times we had to pause and figure out toward what marker Perkins had just made "progress."
Before the game, Iluxan sent me link to a post by Stross about the inconsistency of a libertarian/wild-west agenda and the physically hostile environment of a place like Mars. We both wanted to explore that a bit and it wove like an invisible thread through the game. It didn't come up explicitly, but was behind the strong complicity between the Colony's elected officials (Mayor, Council, and of course Earth Coalition). In the end keeping control over the Colony was more important to the corporations than the Colony's success. We didn't get to this in the end, but to my mind the willingness to let both Perkins fail and conditions deteriorate, along with the announcement of two corporations to pull out of the Colony are gambits in a long term strategy to gain complete control over the colony and to be able to run it fully for profit with now meaningful political oversight at all. Or is Mars Colony indeed the sandbox libertarian thinkers have been longing for but that ultimately will prove their theories wrong?
Tim C Koppang:
Bloomfield & iluxan:
I thought I’d start with a few rules clarifications.
First, and I almost hate to tell you this, but things probably should have been a bit worse than they actually were. When you roll a 1, you do not count that roll towards any Lie Points if you choose to create a Deception (see page 34). Only the good rolls generate points for you. This means that in Scene 4, for example, you should have generated 0 points. In Scene 8, you should have generated only 7 points. All things considered, I don’t think this would have made a difference in your game because failure came up so often. But in a more “average” game, the extra points do make a difference.
If the prospect of generating 0 points annoys you, I suggest using the “Best Intentions” variations detailed on the website. That would mean you ignore any failure (except double 1s) on the first roll of a progress scene. It can soften the blow a bit.
Second, you guys played it a bit fast and loose with the Personal Scenes. For the most part, this is just a classification issue. No big deal. But for example, your very first scene after the vignette was really an Opposition Scene. Same goes for everything except maybe Scene 10 and Scene 17 (what a great scene by the way). Remember that Personal Scenes do not directly involve colony politics or any opposition for Kelly (see page 21). They are really a chance to see Kelly in a non-professional setting, interacting with people just as people. Again, from reading your account, you didn’t do anything wrong. You just called a few Opposition Scenes Personal Scenes. On the other hand, maybe a better handle on this distinction would have helped you to frame more natural Opposition Scenes?
Otherwise, it looks like you have all the rules down.
I also wanted to respond briefly to the following:
Quote from: iluxan
At first I was apprehensive about the length of the rules ahead of time, but it turned out to be really natural once we got into it. (Minor nitpic, but perhaps some typography improvements on the rules can be made - make the "required rules" stuff stand out more, and break out all the more descriptive things visually into optional boxes.)
I love this critique. Believe it or not, Mars Colony is on the short side when it comes to many roleplaying games! Brevity was one of my goals for the book because I believe that a short, clear, and procedural presentation will help bring new players into the game better than lots of detailed explanation. The fact that you found the rules too long nonetheless is oddly pleasing. Still, I’m confused. Can you give me an example of what you’d consider a “required rule” versus what you’ve called, “the more descriptive things.” I could guess, but I’d rather have your input.
Thanks to you both for posting this. I still have some more thoughts specifically responding to some of your comments. Lots to get through.
iluxan:
I know this is a story game, so the story is the main thing. So all the text in the rulebook that deals with the setting and story is just as important, if not more important, than the so-called "rules".
However, you there are always times when you need to find a specific rule quickly right before/during a game. (Even though I read the rules cover-to-cover ahead of time, obviously.) I also realize after re-reading more just now that you were going for a conversational flow rather than a power-point presentation with bullets for each rule.
I only have two places where I noticed some of the actual rules were a bit hard to find, and could benefit from a bit of separation from the rest of the text.
* Stage 3 - Would help to separate descriptions from the rule. If nothing else I'd highlight the words "chooses one character from each of the four major Organizations". (I almost got that wrong, I thought ALL characters had to have a party at the beginning, which would've been really overwhelming.)
* Part E (Failure) - "If there are ever five tokens in Contempt". This is the other place I actually had to hunt down a rule during play that was harder than it should be. (All it needs is to highlight the word "five" or otherwise highlight that sentence from the rest.)
One more thing I found (slightly) confusing:
* The word "Guide" for political parties. I guess you suggest that to mean "name of similar political party". For us we chose actual names for the parties ("Free Mars", "Mars Party", etc). So the "Guide" could be better called "description" or "characteristics" or something. Again, minor choice-of-word thing. (And I'd personally add a "Name" field and encourage players to get creative with them. Clever silly party names are always easier to remember than "Yellow" and "Green". The colors should stay too, though.)
Finally the Deception rule that we got wrong - that you only add the sum of the rolls before the 1 role. As far as I can see that particular rule is only in the "Example" in the Deception section. (Well, it does say "if he hadn’t rolled a 1", but I guess I didn't interpret it quite right. Maybe better "if he stopped before rolling a 1"?)
All of these are very minor quibbles. But you did ask. :)
It was a fun game! Now I'm looking for something simple and inspiring (and non-fantasy) to try with my mostly-non-gamer friends - http://story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=13332
And looking wistfully at S/Lay w/Me as a tripping and alluring thing I could maybe one day play with my wife, though I think I've got a long way to go.
iluxan:
Quote from: Tim C Koppang on November 11, 2010, 03:10:10 PM
Second, you guys played it a bit fast and loose with the Personal Scenes. For the most part, this is just a classification issue. No big deal. But for example, your very first scene after the vignette was really an Opposition Scene. Same goes for everything except maybe Scene 10 and Scene 17 (what a great scene by the way). Remember that Personal Scenes do not directly involve colony politics or any opposition for Kelly (see page 21). They are really a chance to see Kelly in a non-professional setting, interacting with people just as people. Again, from reading your account, you didn’t do anything wrong. You just called a few Opposition Scenes Personal Scenes. On the other hand, maybe a better handle on this distinction would have helped you to frame more natural Opposition Scenes?
I see what you're saying. Several things could've contributed.
* We're two obviously workaholic guys who are kind of obsessive and geeky. So dealing with the problems and trying to solve them comes much easier (to me at least) than getting in touch with more personal feelings and finding ways to express them.
* This was my first time roleplaying, so I focused on the problems at hand and how to solve them.
* Finally, I think there were in-character reasons for this. When I first arrived I was not eager to go seeking out my estranged father with whom I have a tumultuous past and from whom I have been estranged for many years. And after the shit started hitting the fan, I really didn't feel right galavanting around the far-flung mining outposts to work on my Oedipal complex while things were breaking down one after another.
Finally, I think maybe we (at least I) assumed that an "Opposition" scene is where something is about to or going wrong. Some of the scenes (dinners and meetings) did not directly cause any problems, but were either establishing character relations or were building up towards Progress scenes. But now that you took the time to explain, I'm starting to see how some of them fall more under Opposition and some may fall under Progress. (In retrospect some of our scenes could be combined into one scene that takes place in multiple locations).
When I play again I definitely plan to set aside time for real personal scenes, and flesh out the relationship with the Sympathy, and possibly other non-political characters.
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