[Hero's Banner] The Madness of Tucaescu

[Calithena]

Paul, Danielle, George and I have started playing this game, with Paul GMing. There will be lots to say, but first I want to get something out of the way.

It was really painful to watch some people in the group do the math. The formula in the book makes it a little easier but breaks down for high passion scores and people don't even really like that much work. So, set the wayback machine to 1977, when RPGs still had tables - Hero's Banner I think would be better off with one, with the general formula confined to a footnote for those who care. Truth to tell even this table is kind of a 'gamer's version' - I think you could probably have fun for a whole game just mapping Passion scores straight on to the "One High" column, with the first three "Spread" rows moved over. (A speculative thought: if you did that, you could demand that the high number was placed in the influence you just re-rolled, signifying your temporarily greater commitment to it. This would make the losing connections mechanics more ruthless, which might - I don't know but it seems worth considering - be a nice tie-in to the current endgame mechanics, which basically 'reward' you for single-mindedly increasing one stat all the way through by ensuring you've got all the connections with that influence at the end.)

Clinton's d20 suggestion would simplify this whole thing considerably but the passion increases become ickier. One option if you wanted to go that way: just one point of passion per two-point score bonus on the reroll, with a 0 on any of 1-3 d10 "breakdown dice" signifying breakdown. This makes movement towards endgame more ruthlessly constant, which has (relatively minor IMO) drawbacks. I saw some other options but they're worse in other respects (multiple die types, much more unforgiving high end on the spread,complicated math on the roll are the immediate choices) so this is probably the best one.

More soon. I'm going to do an in-depth playtest review of this one for Big Purple once we've gotten a little farther in.

Passion	One High	Spread	One Low
1		34 33 33
2		34 34 32
3		35 33 32
4	36 32 32		35 34 31
5	36 33 31		35 35 30
6	37 32 31		36 35 29
7	38 31 31		36 35 29
8	38 32 30		36 36 28
9	39 31 30		37 35 28
10	40 30 30		37 36 27
11	40 31 29		37 37 26
12	41 30 29		38 36 26
13	42 29 29		38 37 25
14	42 30 28		38 38 24
15	43 29 28		39 37 24
16	44 28 28		39 38 23
17	44 29 27		39 39 22
18	45 28 27	42 34 24	40 38 22
19	46 27 27	43 33 24	40 39 21
20	46 28 26	43 34 23	40 40 20
21	47 27 26	44 33 23	41 39 20
22	48 26 26	44 34 22	41 40 19
23	48 27 25	45 33 22	41 41 18
24	49 26 25	45 34 21	42 40 18
25	50 25 25	46 33 21	42 41 17
26	50 26 24	46 34 20	42 42 16
27	51 25 24	47 33 20	43 41 16
28	52 24 24	47 34 19	43 42 15
29	52 25 23	48 33 19	43 43 14
30	53 24 23	48 34 18	44 42 14
31	54 23 23	49 33 18	44 43 13
32	54 24 22	49 34 17	44 44 12
33	55 23 22	50 33 17	45 43 12
34	56 22 22	50 34 16	45 44 11
35	56 23 21	51 33 16	45 45 10
36	57 22 21	51 34 15	46 44 10
37	58 21 21	52 33 15	46 45 09
38	58 22 20	52 34 14	46 46 08
39	59 21 20	53 33 14	47 45 08
40	60 20 20	53 34 13	47 46 07
41	60 21 19	54 33 13	47 47 06
42	61 20 19	54 34 12	48 46 06
43	62 19 19	55 33 12	48 47 05
44	62 20 18	55 34 11	48 48 04
45	63 19 18	56 33 11	49 47 04
46	64 18 18	56 34 10	49 48 03
47	64 19 17	57 33 10	49 49 02
48	65 18 17	57 34 09	50 48 02
49	66 17 17	58 33 09	50 49 01
50	66 18 16	58 34 08	50 50 00
51	67 17 16	59 33 08	51 49 00
52	68 16 16	59 34 07	52 48 00
53	68 17 15	60 33 07	53 47 00
54	69 16 15	60 34 06	54 46 00
55	70 15 15	61 33 06	55 45 00
56	70 16 14	61 34 05	56 44 00
57	71 15 14	62 33 05	57 43 00
58	72 14 14	62 34 04	58 42 00
59	72 15 13	63 33 04	59 41 00
60	73 14 13	63 34 03	60 40 00
61	74 13 13	64 33 03	61 39 00
62	74 14 12	64 34 02	62 38 00
63	75 13 12	65 33 02	63 37 00
64	76 12 12	65 34 01	64 36 00
65	76 13 11	66 33 01	65 35 00
66	77 12 11	66 34 00
67	78 11 11	67 33 00
68	78 12 10	68 32 00
69	79 11 10	69 31 00
70	80 10 10	70 30 00
71	80 11 09	71 29 00
72	81 10 09	72 28 00
73	82 09 09	73 27 00
74	82 10 08	74 26 00
75	83 09 08	75 25 00
76	84 08 08	76 24 00
77	84 09 07	77 23 00
78	85 08 07	78 22 00
79	86 07 07	79 21 00
80	86 08 06	80 20 00
81	87 07 06	81 19 00
82	88 06 06	82 18 00
83	88 07 05	83 17 00
84	89 06 05	84 16 00
85	90 05 05	85 15 00
86	90 06 04	86 14 00
87	91 05 04	87 13 00
88	92 04 04	88 12 00
89	92 05 03	89 11 00
90	93 04 03	90 10 00
91	94 03 03	91 09 00
92	94 04 02	92 08 00
93	95 03 02	93 07 00
94	96 02 02	94 06 00
95	96 03 01	95 05 00
96	97 02 01	96 04 00
97	98 01 01	97 03 00
98	98 02 00
99	99 01 00
100	100 00 00

[Tim C Koppang]

Wow...

Your chart is one part scary; one part awesome. I'll definitely be posting a reformatted version of it on the HB website. So thanks!

As for something more substantive, I have to start by saying that nothing about Hero's Banner has drawn more comments from people than the math. On one end of the spectrum you have the people who either absorb the formula as if it was instinct, or else don't even need a formula because they enjoy moving numbers around in their head so much. On the other end, you have the people that, I now presume, just want a chart to tell them what they have to work with. I'll be honest with you, charts of 100 items or more tend to scare me. But I can surely see their usefulness. My point is there's really no getting around the math in HB. I tried my best to make it as approachable as possible. You've surely taken things to the next level.

Next on the agenda: your comment about requiring players to place the high number into the influence they just tested. It's actually not something that you even need the chart for. I played around with all sorts of methods for determining how players might be forced to manipulate their influence scores after an increase. Play-testing led me to believe, though, that in this case freedom is best. Sometimes players felt like the passion increase was due to the fact that their characters really did care more about the recently tested influence. Other times, however, these same players wanted the freedom to tank the tested ability because they felt that the scene would disgust their character into taking a completely different path.

I see what you're getting at about rewarding players for one-track characters. But, on the other hand, I don't really view the endgame mechanics as reward mechanics at all. Rather you can read all sorts of things into a particular character ending -- be they straightforward or ironic. Also, I've found that up until the endgame itself players don't really even think about the endgame as much as they do the scene they're currently in. I'm curious to know how things played out in your game, though. Perhaps you had a different experience?

I'll have to review Clinton's d20 suggestion again before commenting further. Needless to say, the math in HB can be a hurdle. I hope it wasn't too much of a hurdle for your group. I'm also eager to know if you got a chance to use your spiffy chart in play. Did it help, or were you still looking for an alternative?

[Tim C Koppang]

Just a quick note for anyone reading this thread: the chart above, while very useful, does not contain all possible arrangements. It does represent those at either extreme and then something in the middle. Most of the time, the middle column is what you'd get if you use the formula in the HB book.

For example, down the middle column, if you raised your character's passion by 17 points, from 1 to 18, using the formula in the book, you could end up with either the [42/34/24] listed on the chart or alternatively [43/32/25]. This is a minor point, I know. And really, if you're using the chart it's a moot point, but I thought I'd mention it for the sake of completeness nonetheless.

[Calithena]

Hi Tim -

So much to talk about.  It's the early going, though, so take everything I say about mechanics with a grain of salt. Except the thing about the math. If you want to simplify the tables I think you could go with the 'one high' table all the way down - it's most forgiving for losing connections and most helpful for gaining them across the board. Then people could just look up three numbers, no-brainer, but the formula could be there for when you really wanted to tweak, get rid of a connection, etc.

I know what you mean about the connections total not being integral to the reward system and that's why I put 'reward' in quotes in the first post. It did sort of bug me that the implacable one-stat charge didn't have a cost.

But here was my experience in play. My guy, his Blood is to found a dynasty, and his Conscience is to marry someone from a distant land for love. He can't have both. My second scene, Paul introduces a beautiful, intelligent cousin Simona, smart about hunting, a clever tomboy, his uncle's daughter birthed illegitimately by the wife of another noble. The perfect wife for Teodor. She's local and she's family, so I don't love her, I can't, she's not The One. But I like her, and she's exactly the sort of wife I'd need to help with my Hero influence too (about which more later).

Breakdown on the passion reroll. Time gets late, wine gets drunk, Teodor pushes the glasses and plates off the table with a sweep of his arm, passionate embraces are exchanged. He wears her favor now, and he is a man of honor.

As soon as my Passion hits 26 in the third scene, I put 50 into Blood so I can take her as a second connection.

If that's how the mechanics generally work with the imaginative stuff, than all the stuff about connection tactics sort of goes out the window - I need this character now to play my influences, that's how it is. On the other hand, it can be unclear what you're pursuing in play too, and I don't think the rules are as clear about this as MLwM. At least so far - I'm still working to grok the thing.

You have no explanatory text in the mechanics section for how to apply influences. Paul came up with a brilliant interpretation that may be somewhere else in the rulebook, but it totally worked for us. Have to talk about that more later.

I think the game is (along with Trollbabe) maybe the purest example of narrativist-facilitating design I've seen. Purest doesn't equal best, but it's a virtue nonetheless, and I really like what you've done here. More later.

[Tim C Koppang]

Sean,

The more time I spend looking at your charts, the more I like them. You're right about the convenience of the thing: simply being able to cross-reference a passion score with a set of influence scores is very easy. I have to say, though, that I'm not as enthusiastic about the high table as you are. Really, I'm much more fond of the progression on the spread or low table. Let me tell you why...

Although the high table will get you influences on the extreme sooner (and also allow you gain new connections faster), I like the fact that the spread table, for example, allows characters to waffle longer. And more than anything, I really like the fact that the spread progression results in a zero scoring influence two-thirds of the way through an episode. On the high table you can hang onto one connection in each influence almost until the very end. With the spread or low table, however, you are forced to make a very difficult choice -- giving up an initial connection -- much sooner in the game. To me, giving up connections is much more extreme than higher numbers earlier on.

If that's how the mechanics generally work with the imaginative stuff, than all the stuff about connection tactics sort of goes out the window - I need this character now to play my influences, that's how it is. On the other hand, it can be unclear what you're pursuing in play too, and I don't think the rules are as clear about this as MLwM. At least so far - I'm still working to grok the thing.

Can you clarify the above statement? I'm not sure what you mean by "connection tactics". I do know that the influence mechanics are supposed to help the player represent exactly how his character is feeling at any single given moment during an episode. So if, for example, your character is leaning towards his Blood influence when his passion is 26, then that's the influences that should have the high score. If, on the very next roll, you change mind, then you should be putting your new high score into whatever new influence you feel your character is now favoring. Of course only you the player can honestly say what your character is feeling after a passion increase -- the mechanics aren't going to force you to arrange your influence scores in any particular way.

Next, the endgame connection mechanics aren't really meant to serve as a tactical consideration so much as an aftereffect of the life your character led. And influences are definitely not meant to in any way represent what your character is necessarily going to pursue in the future -- only what he's pursuing at a specific moment in time.

Needless to say, I'm really looking forward to hearing about Paul's interpretation of the influences rules, not to mention all of the gory details of your game. It sounds like you've been having all sorts of intrigue and fantastic political situations. Your feedback and experiences so far have been more than interesting.

[Calithena]

Hi Tim,

Here's how I'm thinking about being a player in Hero's Banner. I make this character with certain influences and goals, certain things he wants out of life. I play that guy to the fullest, going after those things. Then I get these decision points where, maybe it's valuing one of those things over the other, or maybe it's just going for the one that I really want in that scene. In that sense I'm pushing towards all of them, but in the end I'll only be able to choose one.

Then the character comes to an end and a new character gives me the opportunity to change, tweak, or refine the choice space.

What I was talking about above is, if this dynamic winds up driving my choices of how to redistribute influence scores, as it did with driving my Blood up so I could add Simona as a connection, then my various worries about how many connections you have at the end don't really matter.

On the other hand, if I know in advance that one of the three is really the one I want, and I pursue it with the others really as window dressing, I think that's kind of a deficient mode of play. But it is supported by the rules in the sense that you can turn the game into something more like a wish fulfillment fantasy by playing it this way, and you even get to die surrounded by loved ones if you play it that way. So what I was wondering about was, whether it would be better to somehow try to frustrate this mode of play with the connections mechanics.

In other words I guess I'm worried about the game supporting two different kinds of player psychology where one of them IMO delivers a better/more interesting/more true to (what I take to be) the design intention kind of experience than the other. This won't be an issue for me in play because I've already decided to pick things that I really don't know which one I care about most in advance and am using play as a way of deciding. (And it's been great. When I made the character I was really worried that he was all about the Hero influence, and now that's almost slipped to third.) Both Paul and I expressed (as I remember it) a desire before play for the choices to be ones you're really uncertain about. That seems to fit with what you want and what you wrote in the last post.

Paul interpreted influences as which ones you 'embody' through your proposed action or decision. I found this word very useful.

I want to give more gory details but I've got a lot on my plate right now. They're coming!

Here's the Koppang/Nixon/Stidd d20 version of the rules:

1) You start with Passion 1 and 7/7/6 distributed among your three influences.

2) When you're resolving a conflict, roll under the relevant score. On success, GM narrates success. On failure, you can have the GM narrate failure, or opt for a reroll.

3) When you opt for a reroll, you can increase your passion by 3. If you do this, roll 3d20. If any of them come up 1 or 20, the player narrates a Breakdown. Alternately, by including a Connection, you may roll 1 or 2 d20 instead, increasing passion by 1 or 2 and rolling 1 or 2 d20's as above.

4) If there's no Breakdown, reroll, adding +2 to the relevant influence for each point of Passion you took on. Player narrates success or failure according to result.

5) If your passion went up, redistribute influence scores according to this table:

Passion
1	7 7 6
2	8 6 6
3	8 7 5
4	9 6 5	8 8 4
5	10 5 5	9 7 4
6	10 6 4	9 8 3
7	11 5 4	10 7 3	9 9 2
8	12 4 4	11 6 3	10 5 5
9	12 5 3	11 7 2	10 6 4
10	13 4 3	12 6 2	11 8 1	10 10 0
11	14 3 3	13 5 2	12 7 1	11 9 0
12	14 4 2	13 6 1	12 8 0
13	15 3 2	14 5 1	13 7 0
14	16 2 2	15 4 1	14 6 0
15	16 3 1	15 5 0
16	17 2 1	16 4 0
17	18 1 1	17 3 0
18	18 2 0
19	19 1 0
20	20 0 0

You could get rid of the third column on 10 and 11 without losing anything essential.

This reminds me of a question that came up during play, actually. Does a breakdown on, say, the first Passion roll negate subsequent passion rolls? So you can gain less passion on a breakdown? "Everything stops" can be interpreted this way. If so, the above table doesn't duplicate that restrictive factor.

[Calithena]

Rolls should be "the number or below" rather than under.

I re-read the text at the beginning of the game and it's very clear about the intended mode of play, much more clear than some of the later sections. So that's good: maybe that's all you really need to address the issue.

I do feel like though if we're invested in our fictional character we also get invested in whether he dies alone (maybe we want that) or loved or somewhere in between. And you do have input into that...I guess just put all this in the 'food for thought' column.

[Nev the Deranged]

It looks like you might have come across it already, but I'll put my 2c worth in. The game text does say that the most important part of creating a character is making sure all three goals are things you really want. The 2-as-window-dressing mode is not going to give you nearly as powerful a game. Coming up with three goals that are all meaningful is also the hardest part of the game, for my money. Harder by far than figuring out the math, heh.

That said, as you seem to have also noticed, the goals you favor at first may not carry you through the whole story, and one of the ones you didn't think was that important may end up grabbing your attention as things progress.

Like I said, you've probably already got all that figured out. I'm waiting to hear more about this game, so keep the great posts coming ^_^

D.

[Tim C Koppang]

Sean,

It sounds like you have it. The way you originally describe playing Hero's Banner is correct. Frankly, while the idea of wish fulfillment makes some sense to me, unless you start the game with the assumption that each of your character's influences is equally important to him, you're not going to have a powerful HB experience. Playing each influence to the hilt is key to a rewarding game.

If two influences are nothing more than formalities, then there isn't ever going to be any real conflict. Instead, all you'll have is a pre-planned character and a forgone conclusion. You have to allow any given character to develop as you play. But in short, based on everything you've described, it sounds as if that's exactly what you're doing. Right on!

I suppose I could have built in some mechanics to ensure that players are somehow forced to wrestle with their three influences even if they already have a pre-conceived notion of how they want their character to end up. But I kind of think that mechanics along those lines would end up punishing the players who are on board with the game's concept from the beginning. Plus, any sort of "forced" conflict mechanics would probably always seem somewhat hollow or fake.

I'd rather players all start with the same understanding about what exactly influences are supposed to represent, and then have the freedom to explore their individual characters as they see fit. Your experience with your character's Hero influence is a perfect example of what HB is supposed to do -- and I wouldn't want it any other way. Paul's interpretation is also a great way to think about influences once actual play begins, and really mirrors what you've already described.

Next, as to the d20 method for scoring, I have to say that I think I gave Clinton a hard time the last time he suggested the method. Perhaps I was too hasty (Clinton, are you reading this?). Needless to say, my personal preference still leans towards the full 100 point method. I like the percentile feel, the relative crunchiness, the fact that you only need one type of dice to play, and the overall math of the original system. Also, Sean, it still seems like you'd still prefer a chart even with the modifications?

Overall, if anyone wants to give the d20 method a try, I'd love to hear your feedback. At the very least it sounds like a less math-intensive alternative for those of you out there opposed to the idea of using a chart.

Finally, to answer your questions, under the standard breakdown rules, when you roll a breakdown you do not roll any remaining passion checks for the series. The intention here is to slow down the character's overall passion increase. The breakdown is supposed to represent a sort of "release valve" for pent up passion. Thus, the character has a breakdown but doesn't actually gain any additional passion.

Now, the more I run demos of HB, the less I've been using the above rule. Under the time-crunch of a demo, I usually make players roll all passion checks whether or not they roll a breakdown (of course they can still only have one breakdown per series of passion checks). While any given character will certainly expire quicker, I do enjoy the consistency of what I'll call the "demo rule" for breakdowns. I'm not sure if the original rule is really necessary or even makes sense in terms of the game fiction. After all, why wouldn't a character's passion go up in the midst of a breakdown?

[Tim C Koppang]

Coming up with three goals that are all meaningful is also the hardest part of the game, for my money. Harder by far than figuring out the math, heh.

Dave,

You got that right! Hero's Banner typically takes a bit more investment up front when compared to other games in the same vein. Still, the type of investment required is really all about setting up a character's potential; not his path or, god forbid, his destination. On the plus side, although coming up with solid influences is difficult especially for new players, once completed, everyone at the table -- including most of all the GM -- has a real wealth of material from which to create bangs, set scenes, and challenge fellow players.

[Calithena]

Finally, to answer your questions, under the standard breakdown rules, when you roll a breakdown you do not roll any remaining passion checks for the series. The intention here is to slow down the character's overall passion increase. The breakdown is supposed to represent a sort of "release valve" for pent up passion. Thus, the character has a breakdown but doesn't actually gain any additional passion.

Cool, we got it right. You'd figure Paul and I could manage that but for some reason I wasn't 100% sure we had gotten it right.

If you wanted to reflect this with the d20 mechancis above, I'd say have 1s and 20s count for breakdown, and each 1 reduce the Passion gain by 1.

It's a comment on a gamer's education, or maybe just on my own perversity, that I try to break every system - even with a Narrativist-facilitating game I look for play modes story types the rules can support that aren't the intended one. I really think this was a false worry now and I'm glad I talked to you about it because I was going to spotlight it in my review and now I doubt I'll even mention it.

Needless to say, my personal preference still leans towards the full 100 point method. I like the percentile feel, the relative crunchiness, the fact that you only need one type of dice to play, and the overall math of the original system. Also, Sean, it still seems like you'd still prefer a chart even with the modifications?

I like the feel of the d100 myself. I do think that in terms of easy grokking the d20 method is quicker, though. And yes, I prefer the chart for d100 and d20, though I think putting the math in a footnote as the official rule is fine too (you can use the chart as a road into the math if you want something to be a little higher or a little lower for some reason. For me, I used to be able to invert a 4x4 matrix of differential equations in my head back when I was a physics major, and before all the sauce, but most people aren't like that, and I also think that math worries when you're out of scene are very disruptive to the kind of reflective relationship to your character's struggle that I think this game is supposed to engender for the non-mathematically inclined.

I'm really jonesing for the next session. I need to find my true love to give everything the full, tangible weight it needs to make my choices as agonizing as possible.

I don't know where everyone else is on this thread, but I'll tell you what, two of Danielle's influences are really cool. Her Conscience goal is to murder her husband in revenge for something he did to her family; her Blood is to be a loyal wife and bear him lots of children, because she really loves him. Yikes.

[Calithena]

Next session is Thursday.

This is just a quick note to let thread readers know that my review is up at Big Purple now, if you're interested: http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12838.phtml .

[Nev the Deranged]

Really great and depthful review. Now I want to play again... heh.

[Tim C Koppang]

Sean,

Thank you for the review: the praise and the criticism. Your comments are honest and insightful -- and most humbling.

I also look forward to hearing more about your character, and the other characters in your group. Now I really need to post those charts to my website!

[Calithena]

Hi Tim,

Thank you for writing such a cool game. I can hardly wait until Thursday when we play again. Hopefully I or someone will get you some more AP stuff soon!