[Cold Soldier] Ronnies feedback
Ron Edwards:
Looking over the thread, I found something that I need to clarify.
When I talk about problematizing the task (i.e., scene, situation, command; all more-or-less the same in this case), I am not speaking about the character. Nor am I speaking about the player. I am speaking solely as if I were the GM, and if I were coming up with the command, in reference to myself. In such a role, my question is whether I (in playing (acting-as, whatever) the Dark Master, issue commands that to myself as a person are problematic. Meaning squicky. Morally questionable or outright wrong. Villainous.
Whether this perception or judgment of mine (in that role) is shared by the player, I don't know and for purposes of my question, I don't care. It does matter regarding play, in that the more of that stuff I throw in, the more stuff is "around" that the player can respond to however they may do so, as opposed to having a bland and dull and whatever-type landscape to play in. But I must stress that I am not talking about trying to push the player's buttons, but strictly about pushing my own.
Anything about that which turns out to be relevant, pro or con, subtle or subtle, concerning the player-character can be left up to emergent effects during play. I am doubly uninterested in talking about that here and really want to stress, even more than the above, that I am not talking about the GM trying to set up the character for stuff that may or is supposed to be especially trenchant to that character.
Bret, what are your thoughts on this issue?
Best, Ron
Bret Gillan:
Ron, I'm mulling it over. I think right now I'm pretty sure the Dark Master is a total bastard. Pushing your own buttons with his tasks is a surefire way to make the task scenes spark. I think the game should work just as well with generic D&D necromancer commanding a skeleton to go fetch the Orb of Eternal Darkness. I'm not sure that would be tedious.
I do think you're onto something important though. In my first playtest, the player chose that the Soldier fought in a horde which dials up the scope of the game. Instead of doing things like kidnapping people or committing murder, the tasks tend to be large mob scenes and battles where the Soldier's actions feature prominently. As a result, I found it hard to make the tasks really engaging. Conquer this place. Kill the military and police force there. Okay, now let's conquer this other place. Kill all the humans. Okay, whatever. I kept waiting for the Soldier to have a memory I could really hook up with and riff off of. It might have happened, but starting from the point of making the scenes really upsetting and squicky could be a key. I'll try it out.
I think you're right that the landscape needs to be engaging. There needs to be details there for the player to base the memories on. Bland landscapes will have the player stuttering or authoring details into the setting, and I think I want the player to have to latch onto details that the GM has provided. As a result, the GM is going to need pretty clear guidelines on how to describe scenes.
Ron Edwards:
Hi Bret,
In the interests of communication, not to argue with you, I agree with you that the genre is not an issue. The classic necromancer after the orb, or a wholly historical shaman-king in ancient Korea, or even the Abrahamic God deciding to get his vengefulness on in the modern day - any would do fine. Your phrased your point about that in a way which struck as disagreeing me with about something, but I don't think I said anything about the degree of fantasy involved.
The horde issue is interesting. I wonder what techniques could be emphasized to make the soldier's circumstances individual enough to matter. I bet they exist.
When I wrote of landscapes, I wasn't speaking of physical circumstances but rather than moral, ethical, behavioral features of the Dark Master's commands. But certainly the physical circumstances matter too. I think every spoken contribution needs to be intensely SIS-based. "He commands you to drag the winner of the Kentucky Beauty Pageant to him!", or even saying it in character, isn't good enough. Where does he say it? What's the location like? Where is the soldier when he says it? What happens in accompaniment to him saying it?
I think the same might go for what the soldier player says, perhaps less panoramically, or perhaps just the same. You're a S/Lay w/Me player, so you know about the "playing tight vs. playing loose" concept for that game. It might apply here - to discover, for development purposes, what degree of that variable works best for Cold Soldier.
Best, Ron
Bret Gillan:
Ron, I didn't really mean to say genre isn't an issue. Or rather, that wasn't something I felt I was disagreeing with you about. The D&D necromancer wanting some Orb of whatever was more an example of a Dark Master's task that has no moral impact on anyone playing the game. It won't make me uncomfortable, it's not morally objectionable, it's one of those nebulous "evil" things that you find in fantasy and children's cartoons. I'm just thinking about what you said regarding the GM using the Necromancer's tasks to push their buttons, and I agree with you that it would make for an interesting game. I'm weighing whether that's something I would want to discuss in the text or prompt a GM to do, rather then just let them run wild with whatever they can come up with for the Dark Master to do. So I'm not disagreeing, just musing.
Dark Master tasks are definitely something I need to focus on when it comes to playtesting. Guidelines will be required to direct GMs towards interesting ones and steer them away from bland or repetitive ones. I found that hooking the Player in by having them focus the Task helps a lot (GM sets the Task, Player says what they do to accomplish it). That alone goes a long way towards making the Soldier's individual actions matter. But still, the landscapes you're talking about with regards to Dark Master tasks need to be considered. Maybe giving the GM something like a checklist of motivations and ethics to explore in play with the Dark Master would prevent the Task burnout I started to get.
When I've run the game so far I get really elaborate with the details. As a newly-awakened corpse with no memory of who they are, I spend a lot of time describing details of the world - the way the sound of honking car horns sounds like it's being heard underwater, the flowers on a tombstone being in grayscale, the child with the balloon who sees you and is gesturing at you but his father ignores him and drags him along. That sort of thing.
Ron Edwards:
Hi Bret,
I decided to go over the current scene with Cold Soldier in detail today. Due to some very bad luck, I was not able to get together with any of my usual gaming pals for playing it, which is driving me nuts ... but it also allowed for a little reflection on all the dialogue so far.
Basically, I haven't been communicating well with you. I don't know why, but our on-line exchanges seem to miss one another's points consistently. Which is crazy because I love this game and want to be as helpful as possible without stepping on your toes as the author.
So, I copied the game's text over to a word-processing file and gave it a font and type size I liked, found a zombie picture on the internet that I liked enough to put on the front, printed the little rules diagram I'd made, printed both Forge threads and marked them up with a highlighter, and stuck it all in a special folder. Then I went over it all again and decided that I could post constructively after all, or at least, could change gears in how I was posting in hopes of providing better input. Part of that, too, is making sure the input is feedback and not covert over-aggressive collaboration.
OK, so here's what I've got for thinking about playing.
1. The GM provides a lot of physical scene framing information and details of imagery and actions in order to maintain a solid imagined foundation for play. All else being equal, the Dark Master provides commands which seem villainous to his own player, i.e., the GM. The player states exactly what his character does about it; in other words, the GM does not instruct precise courses of action, but pretty much just the desired outcomes. He might include commands or circumstances in the scene framing and details which evoke aspects of memories made in play as well.
(Bret, looking over the threads, I'm pretty sure this is consistent with what you said, and I find it perfectly suitable for me. I don't know why we kept posting as if we were disagreeing.)
2. Possible rules changes or tweaks, some playtested, some not.
- starting concepts for play are generated by separate people's choices, rather than open discussion
- upon using the Weapon, replace your current card rather than providing an extra (Bret)
- when the Weapon is used, the GM gains a card to be utilized at the end similar to the player's hand (William)
- GM wins all ties (this one seems immediately adoptable without much fanfare)
- one's hand size provides a minimum value (# + 1) for usable card values in conflicts
- if you hit the Joker and don't have 10 cards left to draw, what then? re-shuffle?
- switch player and GM if a soldier is destroyed and a new one comes into play
3. Minor thoughts upon reviewing all that:
- perhaps "hand" isn't the right term. I always think of a hand as a set of cards from which you play into situations in an ongoing way, a "live" resource. Whereas this is more like a cache, or collection of cards, to be used once much later in play.
- it seems wrong to me to throw all those changes into a playtest at once. I'm thinking of staying with the Ronnies text + only the following changes: (i) ties go to the GM and (ii) using the Weapon gives the GM a card. I'll hold off on endgame tweaks entirely too.
Bret, what do you think? Would a playtest with this particular combination of play-and-rules details be helpful to you?
Best, Ron
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page