[Poison'd] Trying to understand Currency and Reward Systems
hix:
Hi Ron,
Before I check my understanding of the rest of your post, it's probably worth working through the teeth-gritting moment. It may be a misunderstanding, as I'm talking about the jostling that occurs once the endgame mechanics are triggered rather than how players act through the whole game.
When I've run My Life with Master (only as one-shots at conventions), I've found the players throw themselves into the fictional events and do relate to the Master and potential connections as characters they care about. There hasn't been much (if any) gaming of the system during the majority of these one-shots - perhaps a little bit of "Oh crap, I really need to get some more Love or I'm going to be screwed", when people realise how the system works but no laser-like focus of particular scenes or outcomes.
In my experience, this changes a little bit once a minion successfully resists the Master's command. At that point, the more astute players check their character sheets and find out that they've got the possibility of achieving between about one to three of the Eoilogues.
As we alternate between scenes of jeopardy for each minion and scenes where each minion is allowed to call for a scene, I've seen players try to establish connections or commit acts of villainy in order to get the Epilogue they want (whether that be 'Become a source of Fear in their own right', or 'Integrate with the Townpeople' or whatever).
That's what I meant by, "jostling with My Life with Master’s endgame mechanics to get a satisfying outcome for your minion." I think the rules support that approach, when Paul says:
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... all the while the players are sorting out the final trait values that will inform their individual Epilogues, likely working with intent towards having certain desired outcomes available to their characters.
hix:
I guess what I'm talking about it the sense of urgency that's created when you have a time-limit on the actions your character can take. Suddenly every action, every scene really really counts as this session becomes your last chance to get the best (or most appropriate) outcome that you want for your character.
Ron Edwards:
I can live with that. My concern is with groups in which someone makes the mistake of talking all about the epilogues when introducing the game, and people get really hung up on engineering a favored outcome - which is nigh impossible to do early in play anyway - and the functioning dynamics of the rules become meaningless.
By the way, I don't know why I kept calling you "David."
Best, Ron
hix:
Ron, this is excellent stuff. I’ve definitely been thinking about reward systems in terms of mechanics rather than the thing about the game that creates satisfaction and fun for the people who are playing it. Like you describe, I have been thinking about rewards as 'advancement' (eg. leveling up) and as something that’s 'always positive' (eg. characters achieving success in the game's fiction).
So a reward system is the ‘Why’ of “Why we play this game”.
Let’s see if I get what you’re saying about Rewards also being about how the fictional characters we’re playing change (rather than how they fulfill their dreams or increase their power). Some examples of that would be:
a minion who is killed by the townfolk in My Life with Mastera Sorceror who zeros out in Humanity after relentless pursuing her need for revenge.a pirate in Poison’d who ends up hanged by the local constabulary after refusing a bargain with the Devil and instead spitting in his eye.
We may not be happy with these outcomes, we may have hoped for something better for that minion, sorcerer or pirate, but these endings provide tragedy or creative frustration that we as players find individually satisfying at a psychological and creative level, and socially satisfying to the group of players at the table (our ‘Creative Agenda’).
And the changes can be either positive or negative (and still rewarding) because as players, we’re advocating for what our characters think is the best thing to do right now. We’re not meta-gaming to try and get the best outcomes according to our real-world understanding of the rules.
So I think I get this. If the events we’re creating using the game are satisfying the group’s Creative Agenda, then the game is rewarding.
The question you’re raising is whether the sub-systems of a game’s reward mechanics contribute to that largest sense of ‘Reward’, right?
What are the nested reward cycles in Poison’d?
The short-term, in-the-moment reward mechanics for Poison’d seem to involve Fights, Success Rolls and gaining Leisure. They probably also include making Bargains, which players seem to get a lot of pleasure out of making and extracting.
I’d describe this short-term cycle as ‘Gaining the Advantage’.
(As an aside, Ron, do you ever write up some Actual Play of your previous experience playing Poison’d? I can see how the context of Fights in Poison’d – which are provoked by interpersonal conflict, Ambitions and Bargains – are much more incidental than the missions and quests of module-based AD&D play.)
The medium-term, about-a-session’s-worth reward mechanics for Poison'd seem to involve Xs and Bargains being accumulated, and all of the player characters acting and interacting to create opportunities to fulfill Ambition (and acting on those opportunities). As a result, new, temporary status quos are created (that are similar in impact to Brimestone Jack’s death at the start of the game). I think of this as the game taking in a deep breath before plunging in to the next round of betrayals and plots.
I’d describe this medium-term cycle as ‘Creating a new Situation’. By ‘Situation’, I’m talking about how ‘Characters with differing interests and motivations’ interact with ‘the wider Setting of Poison’d’.
Are there other short-term and medium-term reward cycles that I’m not seeing yet?
A question for Vincent (or anyone else who’s played Poison’d to the end)
So, if one thing I’m really interested in is what the end of long-term play looks like. Vincent, is there any chance you could describe what the end of a game of Poison’d looks like after everyone’s gone through a whole bunch of these short-term and medium-term reward cycles? What’s the payoff that the group gets for playing Poison’d for that long? How have the characters changed?
Ron Edwards:
Hi Steve,
I try to respond point by point as rarely as possible, but in this case I will. The reason is that the vast majority of what you wrote is right on target, and I'm sort of shaving at or refining a couple of your choices of phrasing. So instead of invalidating your whole point by hacking at bits of it (the usual point-by-point tactic), I'm doing the opposite, I hope.
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Let’s see if I get what you’re saying about Rewards also being about how the fictional characters we’re playing change (rather than how they fulfill their dreams or increase their power). Some examples of that would be:
* a minion who is killed by the townfolk in My Life with Master
* a Sorceror who zeros out in Humanity after relentless pursuing her need for revenge.
* a pirate in Poison’d who ends up hanged by the local constabulary after refusing a bargain with the Devil and instead spitting in his eye.
We may not be happy with these outcomes, we may have hoped for something better for that minion, sorcerer or pirate, but these endings provide tragedy or creative frustration that we as players find individually satisfying at a psychological and creative level, and socially satisfying to the group of players at the table (our ‘Creative Agenda’).
I want to refine your final sentence. My claim is that we are happy for these outcomes. Ecstatically happy, satisfied, post-climax happy. Cathartic. That's because the people playing are not their characters, and never were. They're authors, and audience, and in both roles, are very happy. When you say "hoped for," you're talking about for the character, and that is a transient, experiential feature of enjoying a story which does not, itself, constitute one's priority for "doing" story (there is no verb for being author and audience at the saming time, but that's what I'm talking about). The character doesn't exist. We do.
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The question you’re raising is whether the sub-systems of a game’s reward mechanics contribute to that largest sense of ‘Reward’, right?
Easy answer: yes.
Jargon answer: the only way that Creative Agenda can be satisfied by the procedures of play is if the reward mechanics feed directly into that particular Creative Agenda. The reward mechanics, like all role-playing mechanics, are contributed to and carried out through multi-person actions, and therefore satisfying Creative Agenda must be a group activity.* The reward mechanics are directly or indirectly tied to specific other procedures in play, whether textual or not, quantified or not, or acknowledged or not. Whatever those procedures are (i.e., other Techniques), how they hook into the other components of Exploration is crucial - and I'll even privilege Color as the primary venue through which all of this must be ultimately experienced, for the CA to hit its hardest all the way back up into the Social Contract level.
Snap jargon answer: "system does matter." This is exactly what I wanted to discuss back in 1999, and why (although without the jargon and from a more limited view) and was surprised and horrified to discover that the easiest part, CA, was an instant stumbling block.
Your summary of Gaining the Advantage and Creating a new Situation are exactly what I was driving at in my post. I really don't know Poison'd well enough to comment much further. I do think that God and the Devil ought to be given some special attention. Vincent has cleverly employed all the fucking, both as language and as in-game actions, to open doors in the players' minds to get somewhere else, and that's the somewhere else as far as I can tell. I also think Bargains are deeply, deeply crucial to play.
I never posted about the Poison'd game because we failed even to get through a single conflict in the first descriptive moment in the first scene. It was an utter brick wall, with many hurt feelings and a lot of shouting about what the game was for and what Vincent meant, and put a lot of stress on friendships. I figured it was a pure example of no one understanding a thing, least of all me, and that the best thing to do was get some distance to try to understand it better. I also had about a million things going on and didn't get around to it - at any given time, I'm about ten actual play posts behind, now included.
Best, Ron
* Yes, even for solo play, which is too much to go into right now and I don't expect one-ninth of the argumentative gits out there to be able to grasp it anyway, and it's a tangent in this discussion, so enough.
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