[The Rustbelt] Kid gloves are the sux
Marshall Burns:
Hi Ron,
Thanks for posting the AP!
If it makes you feel any better, I've been guilty of all that stuff too. (Even, on one occasion, the guns thing, despite Unreliable Guns being a major deal for me Color-wise.) And, yeah, prep is a big, big part of it.
But another part of it is that, when pushing as hard as a Rustbelt GM needs to push, I have a tendency to start feeling bad about it. Which is something I totally shouldn't be worried about, like, at all, as long as I'm playing with, y'know, adults. 'Cause what happens is, there comes a time when the player's character is really and truly up against a wall, in a way that really matters to the player. When the desperation isn't just a genre thing anymore; it's visceral, and it's scary.
You can see it in their faces. The player realizes what he's up against, and his face just droops in despair. You can see him thinking, "There's nothing I can do!" He goes quiet, and seems to be about to disengage from the game. I (as GM) start thinking, "Holy crap, I took it too far."
But then, just as I'm feeling bad and about to take it back and try to smooth things over, the player snaps out of it and does something decisive. It's COOL AS HELL. It's like I said in the book: the harder you make it on the players, the cooler the shit that they come up with. 'Cause, as with Sorcerer and Dust Devils, there's NEVER a time when there's "nothing you can do." The system makes sure of it. Once the players figure that out -- well, man.
I still get that feeling like I'm being a jerk or whatever, but I just try to keep the above in mind and go with it. And then something cool happens and I realize that I was being silly to feel like that.
But, yeah, on the plus side? Those PCs are awesome. I love those Psyche traits. I would love to get handed a set like that. So many of them are close to parallel, but with enough of an oblique that begs for slowly-building PC vs. PC conflict.
Steffen,
Ron's summary of the rules is good. Except for this bit:
Quote
Then there are three "damage" pools, Blood, Sweat, and Tears. If you lose relevant conflicts (achieve lower totals than opponents in rolling and adding attributes), then you lose the difference in the relevant pool.
In trying to summarize concisely, that came out misleading. You can lose the difference if and when you Push, not directly from losing the conflict. However, Blood and Sweat can be directly damaged by violence, and Tears can be directly damaged by stress to the various components of the Psyche. Other than that, you only lose them when you Push.
Phil,
I'm glad you like the mechanics! Yep, your impression of them is correct, including how they're set up to be used.
If it makes you feel any better, the Setting of this game can be customized very easily, about as easily as Sorcerer. The important bits are that a.) the setting is a place where hardship and desperation (in some form) are the norm, and b.) there is an active, omnipresent, impersonal force encouraging people towards depravity. There's even three examples in the book that you might take a look at: a Guy Ritchie street-crimey thing, a weird-fantasy sort of thing, and a Firefly ripoff, each of which take a different approach to the corrupting force (mundane, metaphysical, and metaphorical, respectively). So, yeah, Western would be easy to do.
(At some point I hope to release PDFs of more-detailed versions of these things as "Adapter Kits" for the Blood, Sweat, & Tears Engine, as well as one inspired by My Chemical Romance's Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge.)
-Marshall
stefoid:
I have to say Rons post was perfectly timed for me, because I read it, then I went away and had an initial playtest of my own game, which didnt go that well, and then I recollected this thread and realized the importance of character-prep for the style of play that I wanted. And the bit about kid gloves has given me insight into resource cycle balance before I have had a chance to get to that problem in play, and possibly circumvent it.
stefoid:
Fucking nailed it!
Had a really great playtest of Ingenero (see sig) tonight, and I specifically went in thinking that so far the players hadnt lost one challenge phase yet, or even been pushed at all, so when one challenge turns out to be a bar fight early on, I pulled out this big mean sumabitch and gave him a bunch of knock down, drag out plays and went toe to toe with a PC with intent to maim and humiliate (the character's intent, not mine, mine was to challenge the players resources to the limit and see what hapened)
What happened was: whilst previously the players didnt even have much of an idea about how the conflict res rules worked -- apparently you just rolled dice and what you wanted, happened.... This time the player was scanning his sheet for plays, applying various tactics, risking resources, sweating on the outcome of the dice rolls and laughing and groaning. bar stools flew, tables were destroyed, and the PC finally emerged bloodied, somewhat chagrined, yet victorious. Said player has burned resources restoring bruising and pride to his character and after another similarly challenging situation will no doubt get motivated to appreciate the parts of the game that result in gaining more resources, which have also to date been pretty much irrelevant.
kid gloves = the sux indeed
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