[Deathbird Black] Ronnies feedback
Ron Edwards:
Hey Baxil,
I'll do my best to hurry back to all this, because I am brimming with responses, but the weekend was pretty tough for completing Ronnies stuff and I feel bad for the authors whose games I haven't posted about yet. I'll be back after I work off some of the karmic burden.
Best, Ron
Baxil:
Understood and agreed. Thanks for checking in.
Ron Edwards:
Hi Baxil,
Your TOON house rule has some parallels in games found around the Forge. One is Sorcerer, in which a bonus die is gained for ... well, anything positive concerning the timing or content of the player's delivery. When played correctly, i.e., without premeditation and therefore the GM's job is to spot it when it happens, it works really well. This rule became the basis for Fanmail, a popular technique in the game Primetime Adventures, in which any player (not the GM) can award any other player's input wth a bonus card on an unspecified basis of "I like that."
The core of such techniques, yours included, appears to what I mentioned about Sorcerer and exactly what William said and you agreed with - the second this turns into whoring for bonuses without inspiration or engagement, it tanks. In looking over the texts and play practices with rules like this, I think the distinction that jumps out at me is between, say, "Make the GM laugh" vs. "When the GM laughs." I think the former sucks donkey dick, and I do not think your idea to tell the GM to make them work for it is a good one. I think it's better to say, you know, it's pretty likely everyone will be rolling two dice, most of the time, and this is a great and fun reflection of how genuinely funny we're being, full stop. I don't really think this particular piece of Deathbird Black should be competitive, or maybe a little if it goes that way, but not played strictly competitively.
Your point about the adversarial (I think it's not quite that in this case but OK), but not rewarded role of the GM parallels the role in the two games I mentioned. Humanity changes for NPCs do not have the same consequences as for PCs in Sorcerer; the GM does not get fanmail in PTA. Rotating the GM strikes me as a good idea of allowing everyone's personal standards to be applied at one point or another, and also to take away some of the heat and difficulty of fulfilling that role throughout the game.
I don't think anyone here has posted to say, "Don't do this," but rather to say, "When we did something like it, it didn't work," merely as data and an opportunity to examine when it does and doesn't work.
I think I've answered the question about why I hate such rules in many cases, and also why my final call was to see how it goes before laying that judgment on the design.
I'm similarly willing to see how the voting goes when I try the game. Here, it's a tough sell for me. I happen to think Baron Munchausen (the game) is poorly designed, which I wrote about most recently in [Dreamation 2008] Troublesome Munchausen. But Deathbird Black is a different game, and I'm interested to see whether your boundaries, and positive experiences with Munchausen, translate into your system design in a way which people like me will find enjoyable after all.
For the record, my hatred for voting rules in most RPGs is simple: it becomes a social shuttlecock to negate the position of the player who's clearly gained more ground than everyone else in the other mechanics of the game. Here I'm talking about winning-type games, but the point also applies to those games in which everyone votes for MVP that session to see who gets the bonus experience point. and not a game mechanic at all. An important exception is One Can Have Her, a Ronny winner from 2005, where the difference is that you're voting regarding a character, not a player, and characters meeting grim fates is part of the fun.
You wrote,
Quote
And I keep coming back to the "the game is for people who get it" line ... is it really? That's an honest question and I'd like some feedback. One of the great strengths of a comedy game should be its accessibility - no commitment, easy rules, sit down and laugh, you don't have to be an expert gamer to contribute. On the other hand, I'm clueless here - has its existence as an indie RPG already preselected its target market? Is there anything about it that will keep novices away?
I think you've perceived the wrong dichotomy in my point. I am emphatically not talking about expert gamers vs. those new to gaming. I am talking about people who get the humor of Deathbird Black upon very little exposure to the color and rules of the game, vs. people who don't ... and that distinction is entirely independent of experience with role-playing games.
Perhaps that clarification helps. Let's think about any comedy game, especially a non-RPG, especially one with a good fun design, famous for being easily picked up and played. You probably have a list of these in your head, so pick one. One of my favorites are the card games Guillotine and the original version of Give Me the Brain, but we can just as well be talking about certtain mainstream board games. For any of these, I submit that my point still holds. The virtue of these games is not that anyone can immediately get it and be turned on to play, but that (i) the humor is honestly funny enough to appeal to a lot of people, and (ii) if you do get it, it pays off very well both in presentation and also in the first substantial encounter with the rules.
So my statement about people who get it, for Deathbird Black, is in just those terms. Let me know if that seems more sensible to you.
Final thought: if you do stay with the publishing vision for the game, would you consider designing and selling a custom stuffed bird mascot for play? I'd buy it.
Best, Ron
Baxil:
Just a quIck note; I had been delaying replying to this until I was able to get my gaming group together for a first playtest. Then game night got snowed out, two weeks in a row. I finally convinced the GM of my other campaign to sacrifice a week, and we played tonight with me + 5.
A lot of the issues from this thread ended up coming up in practice as well - but I'll move that discussion to Actual Play, tomorrow after work. (By far the most major, glaring issue was prep time for new characters; after some initial discussion, we played without Complications, and STILL generating Goals felt like half our play time. Drastic action there is called for. The issue that Complications were designed to address - a character getting stuck trying to work a Flaw in - did occur several times, so I don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water.)
I'll reply to the specific points raised here after some sleep. I will also work on revision 3 now that I have some practical feedback on Rules As Written.
Baxil:
Just to let everyone know: Playtest post now up in Actual Play. (Yay! My next goal is version Alpha-3 to incorporate those revisions.)
Ron, I've addressed most of the current discussion there re: humor and voting. Thanks for the clarification on "the people who get it" - that is sensible and I have little to reply.
Like you, I'm a little shocked at how difficult it is to find a good crow stuffed animal - I ended up getting a cardinal, on the grounds that red and black is a perfectly demonic color scheme.
What gives me cold feet about Official Deathbird Blackbirds™ is that ordering and stocking stuffed animals sounds like it's going to require lots of time, money, and salesmanship beyond simply getting the game into publication. I don't think stuffed animals can POD the way an RPG book can, and I'm not in a position to jump into small-business retail. (My wife is a caterer, and all our spare cash is going toward her startup.) Any suggestions?
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