[Diary of a Skull Soldier] Dry, bitter, excellent
Ron Edwards:
I put some guys at the Dice Dojo through the ringer this week. First we did a serious, intense session of Acts of Evil, and then when we were all beat and ready to go home, I begged them for one last forty minutes to give Callan's Diary of a Skull Soldier a try. I've said this before, but want to repeat it: of all the entries in the January round of Ronnies, this is the game that I most wanted to play, and also consider the most creatively ambitious. If the Ronnies were merely about what I like most, which they are not,* then this game would have been the sole recipient of the award for that round.
I kept a few things in mind when presenting and playing the game, some of which were harder to stay true to than others.
1. No setting is actually provided. My personal imagery was strongly Baghdad-like, or perhaps a smaller but still urban environment in Iraq, but I tried not to load that into play just because I was GMing or because I was presenting the game to the others. However, here and there, I did imply that the locals were human, and at one point, I described some of them as women in full cover-up clothing. Given that our first diary entry was #2, and a "hand" figures prominently in it, perhaps that's not too terrible.
After play, Phil mentioned that his own personal imagery shifted in and out of a science-fiction setting with the occupation of an alien planet, if I understood him correctly. I love this - it's so Gene Wolfe, and so hard to "make happen" in role-playing. This is a game in which it can and does happen with any "making."
2. I totally left unstated whose diary entry it might be. One of theirs, someone else's, whatever. I was a little surprised just now to see the introductory description of the game at 1km1kt specify that it is indeed an NPC's diary, but as Callan reminded me in the feedback thread, it's not specified in the rules, so I said nothing about it during play.
3. Fiction ain't first! The rules are very clear that actions stated by players should simply be rolled for, not subject to "where I am" or "can I do that" or "you can't do that because" talk. Speaking in this game means you get to roll for it, and that's it. I worked hard at this, confining my GMing to simple descriptions and any necessary facilitating of a given person's chance to talk, without ever creating parameters for what a character could/couldn't or should/shouldn't do. No "you better roll to escape or those shooters will hit you" or anything like that.
I applied this thinking to my elaborations of the diary entry which began each in-play scene. First, I kept all such input pretty short and descriptive of the scene. Second, I didn't specify where any character was. Third, I avoided any in-your-face conflict framing which forced action. As it turned out, action began very quickly based on what characters were stated to be doing, and how the rolls went. Sam's character was spotting for a sniper; he rolled to find a target for the sniper, and succeeded. The sniper shot a guy down from some elevated position, and all I had to do was see what the other people at the table said they'd be doing next.
A few player comments and game-contributions made my antennae twitch as we played, or rather, my attempted jury-rigged antennae based on my understanding of Callan's views on this topic. Sam's first spoken contributions in play at all immediately established a sniper NPC with whom his character worked, and he took that relationship and the NPC's presence very seriously throughout the game. He also spent more time than the other players explaining his character's mind-set out loud - not much, a couple sentences once in a while, but by contrast, it was a lot. At one point, James referred to some attempted action in play as being "possible" due to the outcome of a previous roll, and I didn't want to shut him down or distract from the immediacy of play, so I said "yeah" as non-committally as I could and moved on, with the imaginary Callan on my shoulder beating my head with his fists and screaming "No!!"
On reflection, I did say quite briefly what the squad was up to at the outset of each scene.
4. I didn't reveal the explanation for Marks until play was over. This struck me as a bit tricky. On the one hand, I didn't want to serve as a filter between them and the rules, and on the other, the express purpose of making them/us wonder what the Marks were for seemed to call for not telling them. Callan, can you instruct me about this?
The Marks served an excellent, powerful purpose during play itself. They were interested in the difference between 3/10 vs. 7/10, and they talked about "wow, I'm getting a lot of Marks," or "I'm not," and they put some thought into naming them, definitely. If we speak of game mechanics simply as a facilitator of personal engagement in the SIS, they definitely did that.
Their reaction upon learning the Marks' purpose was a bit neutral, which I suppose is better than complaining. I wasn't sure what they were really thinking so I said that I considered it a little postmodern. They nodded in what appeared to me to be an "I accept that" way. But I'd be interested in any feedback about it from them.
5. I was also a little confused about whether to prompt the opportunity to read the last-of-three diary entry, the one you don't play. To clarify, we arrived at which entry to use by me asking the group to pick a number, first 1-3 (they said 2), then 1 or 3 (they said 3). So for us it was #1. I decided at last to ask whether they'd like to read the entry even though we weren't going to play it, and they said "yes." But I wonder if I'm supposed to let the impetus to do that be entirely generated by them, without any prompting or mention on my part.
As a side point, silently reading the diary entries together, simultaneously, was a curiously intimate act. I think it served as a social framing device.
As far as the play-experience itself went, it was dry and bitter (as the rules say) indeed, but rich, rich, rich! This must be what those single-malt scotch fanatics are always talking about. The mood and interaction around the table were definitely a distinct phenomenon. There was no table-talk at all, no mention of anything outside of play or commentary upon one another's play, but also, all eyes and attention were always fully focused upon one another, every moment, every syllable. It was in some ways a distinctly quiet game in terms of people's literal voices. Afterwards, everyone said that their interior imagery was exceptionally vivid, and I know mine was as well.
The rounds and rolls
First one: 3 sets of rolls, for a total of 9; I was thinking of the "approximately ten rolls" instruction
Second one: 2 sets of rolls, for a total of 6; I was thinking of the "finds a not-much-happens" instruction
James' character - James got a Mark on nearly every roll; I can't remember whether he succeeded twice or once
7/10 "In war everyone loses, some just lose more."
7/10 "Everything's falling apart, especially us."
3/10 "I hear death's laughter echoing in every sound."
7/10 "Any moment could be the last"
Phil's character - Phil rolled four failures out of five rolls if I remember correctly and got one Mark per diary entry
7/10 "War is barbarous but I'm not a barbarian"
7/10 "I said stay down!"
7/10 "A rifle butt to the head never hurt no one"
Sam's character - Sam rolled three successes and Mark-less for the first entry, then two failures with Marks for the second
7/10 "Get them back!" (veiled women are resisting and ensuing commotion threatens safety of cover)
7/10 "For us, war is just scenery."
Thinking back, I really enjoyed the light but constant touch of the rules upon play, and the interesting mix of minimal content sharing with maximum communication per unit of verbal contact. More generally, I think this game succeeds stunningly at the goals of all that talk about ultra-short-form, simple-handout, sit-down-and-play design that's cropped up over the past year. I sure would like to see it with finalized prose, soldier-centric illustration (to avoid setting interpretation taint) and a nice layout, made available in perhaps two or three pages.
If anyone's interested in RPGs genuinely about war and war stories, I recommend checking out these threads:
[Long Patrol] Ronnies feedback
[Krasnoarmeets] Ronnies feedback (plus embedded links)
[carry] Gun-butts, dope, non-mutual masturbation, and massacres and [carry] Helicopters and Accuser role-switching
[Grey Ranks] Another playtest and [Grey Ranks] Third and final session
[Black Cadillacs] - the final push
[3:16] Home is for the hating (plus embedded links)
Best, Ron
* You get a Ronny for meeting the requirements of (i) using the terms centrally, (ii) designing an RPG, and (iii) providing strong enough alpha rules to playtest without confusion. These are all qualified by "as I see it," certainly, but not by "and I like it." This game missed the award by a whisker only on the basis of (iii); I was able to play it with some confidence after all but only given Callan's clarifications in the feedback thread.
edited to add a link
Phil K.:
Ron,
Good write up. I wasn't the one with the alien invasion imagery, I believe that was James. Given our very political discussion during our break in Acts of Evil, my mindset was fairly firmly set in our world. Specifically, it was more of a Kosovo feel: cold, grey urban devastation, maybe a little wet; not what I'd expect to see in Baghdad. The second diary entry was much more of a southeast Asia feel: hot, damp, muddy filth along the edges of a river.
My imagery was always very vivid. The thoughts of where characters were came out very clearly in my head.
The thing that impressed me the most (and maybe this is a reflection of my recent rereading of "Starship Troopers") was my internal processes of soldierly thought. Through the course of play, I found myself wondering why someone would follow orders; whether my character intelligent enough to question the morality of his orders; what his disposition was; and other questions. It was through this process that I found myself portraying the character as a little more rough and physical than I normally would. Our descriptions include me saying, "I'm running for cover with the intent of smacking someone in the face if they get in my way." knowing full well that my character was surrounded by children. When that action failed, it was narrated that I didn't make it to cover because the children were keeping me busy and off-balance, despite the fact that I had smacked one of them. In later vignettes, I was the aggressor toward non-combatants and the only one to get "hands-on" with the locals when we had to herd them out of the way.
That's not the way I normally play a character. It seemed fitting and certainly came out of the scene framing, though.
David Berg:
Ron's AP is way cool, but I could not make heads or tails of Callan's document and how it relates to the experience described. I'll scour the feedback thread in hopes of figuring out how to play this.
David Berg:
Okay, here's a concrete question:
From what perspective are the Marks authored?
- player who just rolled, directly, with no intermediary (Dave)
- character of player who just rolled (Dave's character)
- unknown author of diary, with perspective inferred from the diary entry itself (some Skull Soldier other than the player characters)
Is anyone else at the table allowed or encouraged to give input?
Second question: are Marks shared once they've been written down?
Ron Edwards:
Hi Dave,
I tried to break down your three options for the perspective question, but gave up. It's all three. They're obviously authored by a real person, and that person is playing a character, and the Mark is by definition an intersection between the character and the diary entry. I think most of them from our game are stated in-character, if that helps.
In our game, Marks were written privately, with no outside input, but shared verbally later. One or two might have been said out loud during play, but my impression is that we only read them out loud afterwards.
Best, Ron
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