[Caterpillar] A Space Game of Space Pirates in Space
Ron Edwards:
Hi Josh,
I’ll do something a little out of character for me and get picky with your phrasing as my way to reply. That’s because you are very close and it might be helpful to see your own words “shaved” a little.
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In order for a character's action to have consequence, the action must have some bearing on the character's interests in some way. That may be safety, life goals, or what have you.
My only change: “… some bearing on some character’s interests in some way.” So it could be the acting character or it could be anyone else.
That raises an important point about who is and who isn’t a character, too. Typically this is straightforward, but in many cases, we see “people” in the fiction who are mere furniture, and “things” in the fiction which functionally operate as characters. Let me know if you want me to elaborate on this.
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So if, perhaps, in the quoted text, the pirate eating fish and chips has an allergy to seafood and wants to prove something, that action should be consequential. If his player is merely looking for an excuse to roll dice (to try for a promotion via one more accident, or to get the dice back for the other players, maybe) then his action would not be consequential, and therefore not be deserving of a die roll. Is that pretty close?
Very close – but the second half, “merely looking for an excuse to roll dice,” depends a little too much on mind-reading and psychology. Stay focused on the internal fiction (frankly, “SIS” or shared imagined space is the exact term for a reason; I’ll explain that if you want), in terms of the pirate.
Therefore, yes, if it is in fact already established that the pirate has an allergy, and if eating the seafood is right then and there, without some wearily explained/negotiated explanation of it, socially opposed to someone’s interest , then sure, roll.
But my advice for such a game is, “I’m eatin’ some seafood! And I’m rolling …” “No roll. You eat the seafood. Unless you can explain why that matters to anyone.”
Bluntly, I think your advice in that section is ass. It puts the GM on the spot to entertain the players even if they’re merely fucking around, at best. At worst, the road you are traveling with your advice is only to enter into bogus bullshit negotiations either before the roll (“If I can justify it …”) or after it (“No! He doesn’t have an allergy! You just made that up!”).
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If so, let me follow up with another question. Would this be an idea likely clarified with a task v. intent clarification in the rules? In the same example, the pirate wants to roll to eat his fish and chips, and the RA asks the player to clarify what his intent is. This would inherently answer the question of consequence, wouldn't it? If the player really wants to roll, he'll need to make eating more than just a task.
Task vs. intent is all right, but open to frequent misinterpretation and bogosity. It leads us to conflicts in which the player says, “I’m trying to fix the mainmast, but my intention is to make Dirty Joe long for my sweet buttocks.” (There is a system which does in fact permit this kind of thing nicely: Elfs. Note that it is played for competitive comedy and the two actions are resolved independently; neither is ignored.) People pollute the rules of Primetime Adventures with this kind of nonsense all the time. It also gums up the mechanics of Polaris through the “But only if” mechanic, which borders on being broken.
As long as intent means what the character is clearly dedicated to accomplishing, to ourselves as audience, as opposed to merely being claimed as an internal hidden agenda, then it’s fine.
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I ask because I'm looking for a happy medium through which the players get to assign consequence to their actions simply by picking up the dice. When they go to the dice, they know that this roll will matter. It's a piece of authority that is often left up to the GM (who often lets it go by unnoticed, as his plate is pretty full already), and I'd like to mechanically allow the players choose what is consequential. Is there another game out there that does this (maybe even one I've played, but missed this aspect)?
The only game which nails it to the wall, in my opinion, is one of mine: Trollbabe. And even then, although it is perfectly legal for anyone to holler “Conflict!” and seize the dice, the system cannot proceed from there until the character’s Goal (capitalized; it’s formally defined in Trollbabe) is explicit at least to the people at the table.
I think your happy medium needs to return to the midpoint, rather than going too far toward the seize-the-dice, leave-it-to-the-GM method.
Best, Ron
Josh Porter:
OK, I think I'm a bit closer to what you're saying, Ron.
The clarification of some character's interests is what made it click, I think. Basically, the actions taken by characters are either a) relevant to the characters' interests in the game's fiction (SIS) and require a roll because of their inherent consequence, or b) a piece of color that may be enjoyable, but does not impact the interests of any character. Option b should not require a roll because there are no inherent stakes for any of the characters. How close is that? 8 out of 10?
So again, let me follow up with another question. The mechanics in Caterpillar give importance to every failed roll (accident) by allowing the player to choose a roughly specified consequence from a list (the pirate gets hurt, a mishap befalls him, an ominous NPC arrives), or he can give the option to the RA (GM) who chooses from a similar but slightly different list. From the playtests conducted so far, accidents are perhaps the strongest force of introducing new things into the fiction. The intention is to give a possible negative consequence to every die roll and to give the "failing" player some new authorship, and it turns out to be very fun. The question is: how important does a goal need to be to give it consequence when it succeeds? Let me explain.
Tim is playing a very McGuyver-like pirate, and he has decided to modify his trusty, old hammer to make it "automatic". He wants to go smash a marine's head in with the hammer, and make it extra effective. He rolls Moddery to mod his hammer out. There are (at least) two possible outcomes. A) He succeeds. His pirate's hammer is now automatic and will hurt a marine worse than before. B) He has an accident and something ill befalls his pirate. Is "I want my hammer to be more dangerous" truly consequential, or just cool? Is it worth going to the dice? There is an inherent risk with every roll, but does that undermine the possible success?
I see your point regarding the ass-ness of the example. It sure doesn't help that I chose the stupidest possible thing to roll (on purpose) to try and illustrate it. I didn't foresee the way it implicitly made the RA a dancing monkey for the players. The real point I was trying to make is that the RA should not let a roll mean nothing when it succeeds. I should probably specify something along the lines of "You are not the players' bitch. They have to put some work in, too," to not confuse the point. The players need real, fictional (not an oxymoron) reasons to do things that matter. But if they do have their reasons, the GM should reciprocate by making the results of their actions matter. Am I getting a little closer to the heart of the issue with this?
Thanks for your input, Ron. I'm not as well-versed in Forge-talk as I probably should be, so I appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions and shed some light on some of these concepts.
Ron Edwards:
Hey Josh,
A little more sanding and rubbing … although the work is much finer than it was a couple of posts ago, so I’m calling this successful so far.
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... Basically, the actions taken by characters are either a) relevant to the characters' interests in the game's fiction (SIS) and require a roll because of their inherent consequence, or b) a piece of color that may be enjoyable, but does not impact the interests of any character. Option b should not require a roll because there are no inherent stakes for any of the characters. How close is that? 8 out of 10?
10 out of 10 if we understand that your (b) does indeed enter the fictional material as solidly and thoroughly as anything else might have. Yes, it didn’t impact anyone’s interests. Nonetheless, there is indeed a fence newly built out there on the prairie, or a rock was lifted, or whatever. Or if the stated action was flatly out of the character’s range, then the converse, X (whatever it was) is equally solidly established not to have happened.
In other words, (b) is not nothing. We’re still talking about making things happen in the fiction, either way.
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… From the playtests conducted so far, accidents are perhaps the strongest force of introducing new things into the fiction. The intention is to give a possible negative consequence to every die roll and to give the "failing" player some new authorship, and it turns out to be very fun. The question is: how important does a goal need to be to give it consequence when it succeeds?
At the risk of touting my own stuff even worse than I did in the previous post, do you know Trollbabe? I was directly influenced by both The Pool and Dust Devils in designing its narration rules, but reversed expectations when people realized that they only narrated their characters’ failures. It’s proved itself in practice, but I do enjoy seeing the principles involved appear in dialogue about other games.
Anyway, on to your McGuyver pirate. There are two things to talk about.
1. The point of having Moddery in there at all; same goes for Constructery or any similar Skull. The easiest fix of all is to bag such things entirely, all done. Pick Skulls which are so adverse (Punchery) and/or fucked-up (Buggery) and/or personally risky (Explodery) that they do in fact initiate conflict of the kind we’re talking about, by definition.
2. But if you don’t like that and decide to keep what you’ve got, including Moddery, then all I can say is that your Tim example is functional but adds an annoying, non-immediate delay into the mechanic. Mod up your hammer all you want, and I suggest that no rolling occurs at that time. But when the day comes that you want to crunch someone’s head with it, then roll Moddery and use it for doing the damage. If you’re good at Moddery, and if you get a good roll, then narrate the fuck out of it as you see fit. But screw this whole “roll to beef up later rolls jack the system heh heh” nonsense, right out of the system. Your game works if a roll is a roll is a roll, not if someone can build a tinkertoy construction of strategic rolls into some kind of end-run around the effectiveness parameters.
You can see the fun part if the roll fails, right? Boom! Sucks to be you, stumpy.
Regarding the earlier example,
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The real point I was trying to make is that the RA should not let a roll mean nothing when it succeeds. I should probably specify something along the lines of "You are not the players' bitch. They have to put some work in, too," to not confuse the point. The players need real, fictional (not an oxymoron) reasons to do things that matter. But if they do have their reasons, the GM should reciprocate by making the results of their actions matter. Am I getting a little closer to the heart of the issue with this?
I think that if you focus on the conflict-of-interest points I’ve raised here, tuned and phrased however you find that they work best for your game, then your real point is 90% made already, and the simple phrase, “don’t let a successful roll mean nothing” will suffice. Or perhaps, “every roll moves things along, no ‘you’re back where you started, try again,’ moments.”
Best, Ron
Josh Porter:
Thanks, man. I think I have a good grasp on how to fit consequence into the game better than I did before. And thanks for reading my game and giving some real feedback. It's much appreciated.
Insofar as color is concerned, yes: it always, always becomes a true and solid part of the fiction. Color can inform later decisions that will require rolls too, which creates more interesting options for the players (the GM included, of course).
The example of the hammer modification in real life turned out to be a color decision as well. Kind of. Tim rolled for it and modded the hammer successfully, but the modification only gave him a fictional (color) benefit at the time, not a mechanical one. Later in the game, the "automatic"-ness of his hammer came full circle and allowed him to do something he otherwise couldn't (an automatic hammer frantically banging around in a Jeffries tube to cause distraction). That was the only real example I could think of from playtesting in which a roll was rolled without an immediate fictional consequence, and as such it stuck out. Your #2 point regarding it was a good thought-provoker, and I think I have a better idea on how to handle it if it comes up again.
As far as Trollbabe is concerned, no I haven't played it. It is on my (medium-length) list of indie games to read at the moment, along with Sorcerer, The Mountain Witch, and a couple of others. I am a huge fan of "failure as a kind of success," so it may have to skip to the top of my list. I have been gorging myself on Vincent's games in recent months (ever since Apocalypse World came out, really), and doing a lot of break-downing on the way he constructs his games. Trollbabe may need a similar breakdown soon, it seems.
David Berg:
Hi Josh,
As I see it, you have an interesting decision regarding how to implement your core mechanic. Where do you fall between (a) giving the players a magic button that they can go to at any time for consequences, and (b) making them roleplay until their fictional actions can be judged to have produced a conflict of interest?
I have two examples from other games that might be interesting to you.
Mendel S. ("wyrmwood" here) has a game in development called Space Cowboys of Independence, where, if I remember right, the core mechanic throws in-fiction causality out the window and acts as a pure story-advancer. Fred's character's attempt to eat fish and chips could mean that bikers arrive on the spaceship. "Bikers arrive" is established by random card draws and a look-up table. I don't think it would be any great leap to add "Josh's character is attacked by his arch-nemesis" to that table, so that the consequence spotlight gets spread around regardless of which player tends to be the first to invoke the mechanic.
My other example is Apocalypse World. Being the fiction-first enthusiast that I am, I simply tried to have my character pursue his interests, and when the MC told me to roll something, I rolled. So, how was it determined when I'd receive mechanics-derived consequences? It was determined by Vincent's design for what sorts of narrative occurrences* get you mechanics-derived consequences, as interpreted by the MC. That is, I have my character do something risky; the MC says, "I think that qualifies as acting under fire"; and Vincent says that when a character acts under fire, here are the possible outcomes, and here's how you use dice, stats, and judgment to arrive at one.
Several of my fellow players, however, chose a very different approach. Realizing that rolling dice got them guaranteed consequences (as well as spotlight time), they would often simply look at the Basic Moves sheet, pick the Move corresponding to their highest stat, and say (e.g.), "I try to manipulate him!" As per the game's instructions and goals, the MC and I would jump in and say, "Okay, how?" And if the player couldn't answer, we denied them the roll. But they could usually answer.
I'm not trying to make a particular point here. As you're deciding what sorts of results you want, and which approaches will best produce them, I just hope these anecdotes might be useful! Caterpillar sounds fun.
Oh, a final note! I can't tell if you have or had any impulse to use mechanics purely to generate color, but if so, I wouldn't rule those out. I think Ron's example of rolling Moddery when you attack is nice, but generating extra color that could manifest in totally unexpected ways is also nice. If I roll Moddery long before the attack, and the roll outcome establishes that my hammer glows blue with awesome energy... and then later, I want to sneak up on a guy in the dark, and I realize I can't, because my fucking hammer's glowing... I love that shit.
Ps,
-David
* in the context of this thread, think "fictional actions that also address conflicts of interest"
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