[They Became Flesh] Ronnies feedback
Elizabeth:
Jesse, moving points back and forth between spheres is fine. But I feel like once you sacrifice a power, it goes away completely. So like in the example, I don't think that Samael could love the boy's mother again. When it's gone, it's gone. As to your extrapolation about endgame, that's basically what I assume: that the GMs would be able to pick out the spheres the character is most drawn to protecting and start going after the others, so the conflict becomes between keeping all of the small things that make you who you are in the face of one large thing that will change you forever, or sacrificing all of the small parts of your identity to keep one larger ideal.
Ron, you're right. I bet the game needs four people to work and five people to sing.
whduryea, I'm glad you find the game so appealing. I stole the dual GM thing from How We Came To Live Here, and it seems to work. I'm glad you like the take on the fantastical; it was important to me that miracles and wonders be systematically and mechanically equivalent to things like love and moral codes, since they're all equally magic (IMO) and intertwined with each other.
Ron Edwards:
Hi Elizabeth,
I need to see the revised version, because I can no longer make heads or tails of these three terms: spheres, points, powers.
One key missing thing, in fact the first thing in my notes but which I didn't list in my post, is what happens to a point when you make a power. Think of points as tokens on the sphere. Let's say it's the beginning of the game, and we play for a while, and I invent a power for my character associated with, say, Fraternity.
I write the name of the power over to the side somewhere, draw a circle around it, and connect it to Fraternity with a line. Now I drop the value of Fraternity by one. What do I do with the token, i.e., the point? As far as I can tell, it should simply be eliminated. There's no need to move it over to the new power. That power doesn't need points; it either exists, available for use, or is sacrificed (gone).
I don't see anything about moving points anywhere. They're either static on the spheres or eliminated by making powers.
To continue, say I want to make a new power based on Fraternity but there are no points left on that sphere. Fine, I cross off some power that I happen to have drawn connected to some other sphere, say Compassion, and make this new power.
... here the language gets confusing, because the text talks about moving the point from that crossed-off Compassion power to the empty sphere, presumably to be spent from there to make the new power. This led me to think that you must have moved the point originally from the Fraternity sphere to the power, where it sits there doing ... nothing. It makes way more sense to me to get rid of a point entirely as soon as a power is created, and then have the empty-sphere power-creation process simply be about crossing off powers and making new ones, with no points involved.
That's why all this "sacrifice" talk is going haywire in the original draft and I cannot make heads or tails of what to do. It is likely that the process is crystal clear in your mind and you're steadily working through the re-write to explain it ... but long experience with others' game design processes has shown me that there's also the chance that it's not clear in your mind either but only pretends to be, and needs a full conceptual reboot. I can't tell from here which is the case.
I got nervous about the latter possibility because now, in your post, you're talking about moving points back and forth between spheres, which corresponds to exactly nothing in the text I'm reading. What in the world?
It may be time to stop posting and to go back to the draft by yourself for a while. Fielding questions based on a first draft, while you are holding a half-corrected draft, can be disastrous to the design process.
Best, Ron
P.S. To make all of this clearer to those who are interested, none of this has anything to do with effectiveness. One does not use a sphere "naked," you only do stuff (or rather, important stuff) by using powers. And power use is always 1 to 3 d6, regardless of the point value of the sphere in question.
Elizabeth:
So, as promised I've done a new version of the text. I spent most of my time concentrating on two different things: streamlining the text and terminology to be crystal-freaking-clear, and adding more stuff to flesh out the setting and work on establishing the SiS. Ron, I owe you particularly for that bit, as I stole shamelessly from one of my favorite parts of S/lay w/me.
It should be up on 1KM1KT soon, but until then:
http://twoscooterspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/flesh.pdf
Shreyas also made me a character sheet, but I was busy while he was working on it and I didn't realize he made it in such a way that using it as I describe in the text is impossible. To use this, you have to count and make sure that no more ten power circles are in play at any given time, and I guess just cross out the ones you've sacrificed. Making your own sheet would be pretty easy.
http://twoscooterspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/tbf-sheet.pdf
I'd be really psyched to get feedback on this version; I feel like, at this point, it's pretty solid and playtestable. And maybe even fun. Oh! As to the illustrations, they're still basically what they were, but I'm talking to a couple of illustrators about maybe doing some proper images for the game. This is the fastest I've ever had a game come together in my brain!
Elizabeth:
Just a small bump, in the hopes that any of the confused parties can give me feedback on this round of revisions.
Also, aesthetically, I'm considering dropping the grunge in favor of a more traditionally sleek/illuminated font and ornaments. What do you think? Is the grunge adding anything?
Ron Edwards:
Hi Elizabeth,
I'm glad you bumped it, because I was uncertain about harshing on you regarding my concerns. I still am totally baffled about the points I raised above about spheres, points, and powers, and that's my biggest concern about the game. I'm reluctant to applaud or even discuss any effort toward production and presentation decisions at this point, because the thing's not playable until that issue gets resolved.
Now, it could be that I'm not seeing or understanding relevant revisions in the new text, so lay it out for me here if you think the rules are solid.
Best, Ron
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