[Dirty Virgins] Ronnies feedback

[Ron Edwards]

Dirty Virgins by Steve Hickey is a stupendous Game Notion which lit up the eyes among my group members at first mention. We weren't alone; see also [Dirty Virgins] Starting honor and shame and [Dirty Virgins] Fixing the voting mechanism.

All right, here's my call. You have here a perfect and wonderful idea for a custom card game, along the lines of Give Me the Brain or Uno. Chew on that a minute. Remove all concepts of "playing my character," because bluntly, all the characters are all the same. No SIS. Just a card game with awesome illustrations.

Got it? All right, now I will suggest a solution to to all the issues raised in the above threads - remove the voting. It does NOT work.

I can hear you now, Steve. You are saying: Agh, ack, gasp! Remove the voting? But, but, Survivor! I wanted voting! I wanted Survivor!

Nope, nope. Survivor works because it relies on two levels of voting, the short-term repeated ones by the participants, and then the overall one by the audience. Without the two levels, it doesn't fly at all. With your "points as votes" method, all you're seeing is that people will use their points to vote for themselves to win. Period. What's the point of voting in favor of any other players?

So. Change it. Let the cards do it. Let points of "dishonor" accumulate as the cards say. Let players try to turn around badness they accumulate onto others, obviously by laying cards on them. Think card game, not votes. You're almost there! You almost have it! Dude, this could be the knockout card game of GenCon 2006 if you breathe deep and see what you have instead of what you intended to have.

Finally, don't change the name! What are you thinking?

Best,
Ron

[hix]

Agh, ack! But, but! ...

... Nah, your idea makes a lot of sense. Just a couple of days before you posted, I'd considered a limited use of cards. But making it a full on card-game? Dropping the voting? No way had those even occured to me.  Thinking about Dirty Virgins that way has really broken the game open for me, given me a flood of ideas.

I did resist (and am still resisting) it a little bit. I mean, I'll probably playtest the rules as I refined them in those threads above, just to see the flaws & features of what I had. But after considering your feedback and Sydney's and then re-reading Ralph's Shooting the Sacred Cow post, I've become less "But I wanted Survivor!" and done more brainstorming on how to make the gameplay as fun as I can.

Thanks for your feedback. I've been stoked by everyone's positive response to the concept. I can already see the illustrations for the 'public urination' and 'lewd poetry' Shame! cards. And about the name: I've gotten appeals from 3 different people now, so OK - it stays as Dirty Virgins. Cool.

... Oh yeah, and is the Forge an appropriate place to develop this type of game?

[Ron Edwards]

I've been a little lax about RPG/non-RPG development lately. Rather than crack down now, I'll say, keep working on Dirty Virgins here, and I'll keep an eye on the forums to see if a problem develops.

Best,
Ron

[Sydney Freedberg]

I'd not thought about it, but, yeah, card game is an absolutely viable way to go. (Or even boardgame, with a little medieval village mapped out with lovingly detailed piles of pigshit, drunken peasants in the inn, etc. ad nauseum). And you can still maintain the satire that way -- just get some really stuffy-looking illustrations of the Town Fathers (not "elders"! Fathers!) looking shocked or censorious or pompous, or ideally all three at once, for the appropriate cards.

But I'd still be tempted to try to make it a "real RPG" -- something along the lines of Mountain Witch with the "samurai Reservoir Dogs" element translated to "raunchy chick flick." (Though I'm trying to think of a genuinely feminist comedy about female characters and failing at the moment -- someone with a wider non-geek cultural vocabulary, please help us out).

Big important point: These two directions are exactly opposite to one another: Anything that moves the game towards working well for one alternative will move it towards being (even more) horribly broken for the other. Which means You Must Make A Choice.

(Which means in turn that the Ronnies are, in themselves, Narrativist? With supporting Gamist techniques? Wait Ron don't hit me please not the face...).