[Cold Soldier] Ronnies feedback
Ron Edwards:
Bret Gillan’s Cold Soldier. Just …wow.
Many years ago, an internationally-renowned martial artist was asked, in an interview, what technique he might possibly not have mastered yet. He paused for a while, then replied that some day, he hoped he might deliver a perfect reverse punch. For those who don’t know, that technique is extremely basic, frequently taught at a person’s first lesson. The martial artist was saying that he had not “mastered” any techniques and in fact was still most concerned with what many people, such as the interviewer, might naively consider to be “mastered” by everyone.
Cold Soldier is the reverse punch we might observe that person to deliver as he trains. The text suffers from numerous vague bits which demand correction or clarification, which if combined with any discernible flaw in technique, would have instantly disqualified it for a Ronny. But there is no such flaw. Thus all I can offer are refinements and suggestions; the thing itself is brutally simple and effective to the point of beauty.
I’ll start with details which I think are profoundly well-chosen and could well be missed. I love the fact that you can only set the game in the past or present, not the future; and that your character absolutely must have been “recently buried.” One of the key factors in RPG design, as I see it, is deciding what items are freely invented, which are chosen from lists, and which are fixed in place. These particular constraints seem to me to be especially fruitful in multiple ways. For instance, memories of a character who was recently killed will most likely concern things that are actually still extant in the setting.
I think I get the system – the player is effectively building a poker hand card by card, scene after scene, by connecting the character to the situations via memories. Cards spent on resolution are secondary to this process, but are still tactically relevant because (i) they will be unavailable to the endgame draw and (ii) failing a resolution drains cards from your hand.
In the final scene, the GM draws five-card stud, notoriously poor for building strong poker hands. The player draws five too, but if he or she has managed to retain any cards in hand, they can be added to these five in order to build the best five-card hand for that climactic confrontation.
So until that point, you have to consider actually striving toward the Dark Master’s task in order not to lose memory-built cards from your hand, and to resist a command, you have to really want to resist the bastard because that costs you a card too.
I built a diagram to help talk about the system. I stress that “in play” must be distinguished carefully from “in hand.” Cards in play are flipped from the deck and laid on the table for comparison, then discarded; they are never taken into your hand. Nor do you ever play cards from your hand into task resolution; they are only ever retained, discarded to resist a task (obviating task resolution), or discarded as a consequence of failing a task.
There seems to be a lot of room and potential power for narrated Color in scene B to become effective content in scenes C, D, and going forward. I’m thinking especially in terms of what the Dark Master is up to and how his plans are or are not working out based on the results of scenes. Or another way to put this is, the GM is going to have a hell of a lot of fun developing the persona, priorities, and responses of the Dark Master turn by turn, each time using an ever-restocked grocery store of nifty details to spin off from that arose in previous scenes.
Here’s a deep consideration: should the GM take care to problematize missions in terms of the player-character? Any thought on the range for that variable? On the one hand is the absolutely necessary and extreme version found in My Life with Master, and on the other, the problematic aspect of a given task would arise primarily from the memories as initiated into play and as described by the player, not the GM at all.
I have some thoughts for system considerations, none of which is necessarily or obviously better than what’s on the page, but might be fun to playtest for comparison.
1. The preparatory decisions might be organized a little. Here’s an example for fun: the player decides who the Dark Master is (powerful sorcerer, genius scientist, vengeful god), and the GM decides what the time period is (past vs. present), and they reveal their choices simultaneously. Then they go into ordinary discussion to round out the details. For the “what are you” part, the player chooses the cause of death, the GM chooses the weapon, and the two decide “how you fight” together, in any order.
2. The final poker hand confrontation could be rated according to Kansas City Lowball poker rules (“deuce to seven”), rather than standard. I think this could deliver a certain thematic satisfaction, especially since it requires both cunning and an underdog mindset. Also, it means that discarding high cards to resist during previous scenes does not absolutely undercut one’s chances at the end.
3. If the soldier’s not destroyed, and if the participants want to play another story using him or her, then do so just as in the rules, but switch the roles of GM and player. Ideally, over the long term, a deep and synergistic commitment to the character might arise based on both people alternately advocating on his or her behalf and providing maximally-provocative adversity, as well as possibly producing emergent effects of the repeat-play memory rules.
There’s only one thing I don’t like, and that’s the cover illustration, which doesn’t seem to me to fit at all. But all that really means is that I am very psyched to see whatever illustrations do eventually get done for the game.
Best, Ron
Bret Gillan:
Thanks, Ron.
The image at the front of the PDF was a last minute, "what-the-hell" sort of thing. I thought to myself, "I bet there's some public domain woodcuttings of skeletons attacking people" and this was the only thing I could find. The sort of cover I envision would be a little more horror with maybe a dash of metal. Some lower-jawless skeleton with bladebone arms or something.
You do get the system, and your understanding and restating the system is making me realize a couple of flaws or missed rules in it.
- If you reach the Joker and don't have enough cards left in the stack for both of the players to draw 5, do you just reshuffle the discarded cards? Does this destroy any of the strategy?
- As it stands, the player will always go into the climax with a better chance of winning than the GM. Should the GM draw a 7-stud hand to make the player have to work for it?
These are things that need playtesting to check out. I'd also like to try out your suggestions, especially changing ownership of the soldier and the Dark Master.
As for how problematic the GM should make the tasks, my gut is telling me that at first there's no way for the Dark Master to make them problematic. The Soldier has no identity. However, as elements are added it will become easier and easier and the GM should freely tap into those as inspiration but only twist the screws a couple scenes per session. Have memories of your son who was a toddler when you died? Have the Dark Master want, for whatever reasons you can think of, a small boy who's a toddler. Approach the elements indirectly and give the player opportunities to build off of them.
Alternately, anything can be fair game. However, a player can say, "Wait, no hold up" and veto that item being at risk in this scene. What happens then is that item put on a list of items that need to be contested in a climax. That runs the risk of making things a little too game-y, but also means you don't have to worry about a major component of the soldier's story getting destroyed in scene 2.
I'm hoping to playtest sometime this weekend so maybe I can check some of these things out. Thanks so much for the kind words and the Ronnie and the uncanny ability to see my intentions completely in a pretty sparse rules text.
jburneko:
I read this and I agree it's pretty amazing.
I spotted the severe advantage the player has over the GM in the endgame as well. Have you considered have the GM acquire cards over the course of the game as well? The simplest would be the GM picks up any cards that are used to resist the Dark Master. But I'm not sure that works thematically.
Jesse
whduryea:
I'll admit that so far I've only read through the rules of Cold Soldier once, and quickly. That said, I'd really like to playtest it.Rudy (Fetus Commander) and I sometimes find ourselves missing the third and fourth members of our gaming group, so the next time that happens maybe we'll give it a try.
I like the thematically appropriateness of your choice of War as part of the game's central mechanic. Not only does it make good symbolic sense, but it should also be fast and simple enough to keep the game moving and prevent the flow of play from from being bogged down by mechanical messiness.
Quote from: Bret Gillan on January 07, 2011, 10:26:23 AM
- If you reach the Joker and don't have enough cards left in the stack for both of the players to draw 5, do you just reshuffle the discarded cards? Does this destroy any of the strategy?
What if this actually triggered an entirely different end sequence? Maybe a "draw" between the master and the soldier where both a forced to compromise and neither leaves feeling completely empowered or vindicated? I'm not sure if this would prove too anti-climatic in actual play, but it might help add a bit of ambiguity to the game.
Quote from: Bret Gillan on January 07, 2011, 10:26:23 AM
- As it stands, the player will always go into the climax with a better chance of winning than the GM. Should the GM draw a 7-stud hand to make the player have to work for it?
I noticed this too, but is it wrong for the soldier is have an advantage over the master? After all, this game is primarily about the soldier, right? Is it wrong to give the soldier a better chance of finding satisfaction? If this were simply a competitive game for two players, I would admit that it'd be a significant problem if one had an advantage, but I don't think it's an issue here, given the focus of the game.
Ron Edwards:
Hi everyone,
Regarding the final two hands, I agree with William, but I'd also like to hold off on predicting a consistent player advantage until we've all playtested it a few times. The player loses cards out of his or her hand when the soldier tries to obey a task and fails, and when the soldier resist. In other words, unless you try to obey a task and succeed, you're losing a card from your hand. My impression is that instead of accumulating a solid bank of extra cards to consider along with the final five-card draw, the player will be sucking wind a lot of the time. I'm also thinking in terms of commands that the soldier, especially over time, may well prefer to resist.
Bret, I want to stress that last point in relation to your claim that the soldier has no identity. I suggest that it's there as soon as the first memory arises, insofar as the rule permitting the soldier to resist is accessible from that point on.
It's true that the Dark Master will never have an advantage and is stuck at five card stud. But what really happens with the soldier, let's play and find out before proposing possibly-unnecessary solutions.
Best, Ron
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