[Memory Quest] Ronnies feedback
David Berg:
Hi Ron,
Yeah, I think my vision for #3 is kinda of the optimal scenario for what the current procedures are likely to produce. The more it matters for the agent and GMs to understand each other, the better. Ideas:
1) Perhaps the solution is in fact to have the cycles run quickly. On the first mission, it might be fine to have a simple, "I narrate how I win, I have no idea what the whispers or other narrative options are for," as long as it was pretty quick. (Maybe 25-30 mins including obstacles?) Then the Groundhog's Day moment hits and the second mission has the "figure out how to escape the loop" objective brought to prominence.
The main thing I envision slowing the process down is the GMs flinging lots of obstacles into the fiction in an attempt to forge connections with Reminders. I could discourage this with either some GM advice ("If the agent player isn't latching onto your reminder opportunities, hold off until their first reboot; then they'll care!") or a hard limit on obstacles that grows over subsequent mission attempts.
2) Perhaps the agent player's ability to just narrate success ends at the mission finale. Perhaps the GMs need to have deduced the mission in order to provide that opportunity. So, as the agent player, it's kind of like I'm having this lucid dream up until the part that really matters, where I need confirmation of my expectations to really buy it. If I don't get the climax I was expecting, the carpet's pulled out from under me, the dream/simulation crashes, and we reboot.
Hell, maybe instead of narrating your opportunity, the GMs could actually narrate you completing the mission. Then, if that wasn't it, you'd deliver a line like, "But that wasn't what I was supposed to do!" and that would cue the GMs to reboot. That strikes me as clearer feedback on the priority of communicating, but also a kind of harsh loss of agency. Hmm. Maybe if the agent's instructions included, "Once you're in position, your instincts will take over," or some such...
3) If the GMs are required to talk more about the agent's real status (stuck inside psycho's mind), that ups the odds of a good "What did the Whispers just say?" result. At the same time, fully revealing that status for certain breaks the fun of curious confusion. So what about this: a requirement that the GMs precede and/or follow every obstacle insertion with a reference to the agent's physical circumstance. Heart monitors, EKG readings, glucose drips, family just outside the room, CIA director stopping in, military guards on the psycho, etc.
Since most of this narration wouldn't be overheard by the agent, it'd have to be a fun game between GMs to be functional. Not sure how to do that without really distracting from the main point of play. Rrr. Will ponder more elegant solutions...
Ps,
-David
Gregor Hutton:
Hi David
Sorry for the delay, I did!
I think a lot of the things I had were covered above, but here was what I also had scribbled down on my print out:
Page 1 (Memory Quest: A race for Truth): So, new players only as Agents, right? Can that be fixed? Is it only fun to have an Agent player who is in the dark about the twist?
Page 2 (Agent Instructions): I've drawn a doodle of an Agent in a circle surrounded by Whisperers. And I circled the "four steps are required", with "What 4 steps?" (It's OK, I get the answer on the next page)
Page 3 (Agent Instructions): I seem to have written the numbers 1 to 15 above the boxes and circles to work out how many scenes I'd be having. I've scribbled 0 * S S B W * below this. I think I was musing on what sort of scene order we might see in play. Do you have an idea of how that will pan out?
Page 4 (Whispers Instructions): I've written "Inception/Lacuna/The Prisoner, right?!!"
Page 5 (Whispers Instructions): I've written in big letters in the space below "What if the agents fails..": Need Examples. What are my reminders supposed to be like? And I seemed to have been a bit confused by the "now needing only 3 steps to complete...only healed by half..." I think I was wanting a concrete example: Leo is in his 10th scene and he dies for real here's how his stats change with a shock. (By the way, that "dies for real" is that damage taken on the track or fictional damage too? Like he falls off a cliff?)
Page 6 (Whispers Instructions): I've underlined the text "Collaborate on this in secret before starting play." It seemed too far into the Instructions. Shouldn't we Whisperers be doing this up front? Like one of the first things? And under Victory I've written "Bait & Switch?!?!" under the Victory paragraph. I think that was a knee-jerk reaction to reading it the first time. But I'm still trying to gauge how I might feel when my victory is turned into something else.
Page 7 (Whispers Instructions): What is point of backtracking/sidetracking? (You've covered that in this thread) I wondered why the coin flip is secret. If I were the Agent it would seem bizarre to me anyway if it was flipped in front of me and a Whisperer said "two points of damage". I mean I can see them flipping the coin and I know that it can only be heads or tails. That seemed obfuscatory enough to me, without hiding the result. I wondered if me seeing the result wouldn't matter anyway.
Err, and that's all that I didn't cover above. I don't know if that helps any, David. I hope it does.
Cheers,
Gregor
David Berg:
Thanks, Gregor! I am going through these point by point, and I think a lot of these will help me improve the text. I have some questions, but I'll try to distill them first so I don't hit you with a lengthy barrage.
Gregor Hutton:
No problem, David. I'll help out as best I can and no need to rush.
(I find mindself weeks behind making even simple changes to my Ronnies document -- but charitable things got in the way, so I don't feel bad about it.)
Cheers,
Gregor
David Berg:
New version of the game text is available here.
First playtest thread is here.
Gregor and Ron, I brought both your comments to running the game and they informed my revisions. Thanks!
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