[Gen Con] Ganakagok AP

[Iskander]

I ran Ganakagok for Vincent, Ralph, Thor, Tim and Pete. It was fun, but late, but suitably and delightfully mythic. I had to share my new favourite AP:
http://www.ajnewman.net/rpgs/ganakagok/ganakagok-ap.png

[Valamir]

Yeah, in a GenCon full of amazing after hours play, that session has to be the most memorable...and the only con session ever where I felt compelled to write a full page summary of my character's "story" because it was so mythic so I could remember it.  Literally through play we created a mythology for this tribe in which one of the stories to be passed down from generation to generation will be "How Timatook Became the Sun".  Another will be "How Nuriyook Slew the Great Bear Anuk and Took His Place".  Followed by "How Tunayok Cowed Anuk-Nuriyook and Founded a New People".  Followed by "How Patarraq Led the People to a New Land". 

The only character who had a negative outcome was Ivqutul the Trusted Grandfather who wanted nothing more than to live his remaining days in ease and contentment who was instead forced to "Take the Long Walk" and whose spirit was doomed to an eternity of unrest serving as a messenger between the people in their new land and the Ancestors they left behind. 

I'm not a big fan of Tarot, or games that use Tarot mechanics...but for creation of epic myth...they proved to be a fantastic tool in the hands of a really great group of players.  The game had some pretty severe currency issues, but in Alexander's experienced hands those became pretty invisible to us as players and nothing that can't easily be worked out for a future edition.

[Emily Care]

I got to play this game at Dreamation, and had the same experience with the mythic nature of the tale we told. It took a while to kick in for me--I think I'd do a ruthless pruning of cues to start out if it was my game --but it delivers in amazing ways. 

The map-artifact you drew, Ralph was a thing of beauty to behold.  I think there's a lot of territory to be covered in our use of images and spatial references to support narrative play.  Ganakagok is doing good things in novel ways.

best,
Em

[Bill_White]

I love Ralph's map. The "mythopoietic" (myth-producing) dimension of Ganakagok is its biggest appeal to me, and I am pleased that the game consistently produces something that feels authentically--even spookily--numinous.

I understand what Ralph means when he mentions the game's currency issues -- I'm working on them, assiduously, and I've been taking Alexander's feedback very seriously.

Emily, I'm not sure what you mean when you say you'd "do a ruthless pruning of cues to start out if it was [your] game." I think you're talking about the reading of the cards to come up with truth-vision, change-hope, and change-fear, but maybe you mean something broader. Can you elaborate a little bit?

Thanks!

Bill

[Emily Care]

Hi Bill,

When you start the game, there are many pieces of information about the world and characters. When I played last Dreamation, I remember starting off the game wondering where to go, what to do, to find the interesting and engaging lines of plot.  There are connections you can draw with other characters, those were very helpful and formed the framework of the stories that eventually became a beautiful myth.  I've but played the once, but what I took away from it was wanting there to be less established to start out with, to give the game more focus. 

Hope that is of some use.

best,
Emily

[Frank Tarcikowski]

It's good to know that Ganakagok is still being worked on! Go Bill! :-)

- Frank

[Iskander]

So, I ran Ganakagok at Gen Con and a few weeks earlier at Origins, and set it up pretty much the same way each time: with the basics, and some colour that exists primarily so the players don't break my sense of the world. That's because in another game of Ganakagok, another time, a giant wooden whaling ship turned up... and that bothered me a little.

I describe the world as having a kind of Inuit and Eskimo sensibility, I make clear that it's night, it's always been night, and that the characters live in a place of ice, fish, whales, seals, bears, walrus, lichen, and a rock or two... everything is animal product (or lichen). They live by the light of the Stars, and both the Ancestors and the Ancient Ones are significant to them (although how, why, or in what form comes out in play). What makes the characters the player characters is that they have had their Truth Vision - they know that change is coming, and soon. As players, we know that the change that is coming is the first rising of the Sun.

That's about all I usually cover - I don't think I even mentioned the cannibal ghouls (who haven't featured in two games running... dang it). So, I'm not sure that there's really a big issue with starting information (or I'm totally missing Em's point).

I do think there could usefully be some more explicit setup for players to weave their characters' stories together. We were playing with an experienced group, so that wasn't a problem, but it could have been. I think I did say that it's a good idea to buy relationships with each others' connections as part of your Gifts (or Burdens). It may be as easy as making it explicit that it's relatively cheap to buy a relationship with someone else's existing relationship (Gift or Burden).

Just another note about how I try to run Ganakagok one-shots. (I have yet to play a longer term game, alas, and so I'm not sure how the currency issues play out over time.) I try to run a round of scenes for each phase, and wrap up with the endgame. I don't use the built-in pacing mechanic at all (too much bookkeeping). In fact at Gen Con, where we were tired, it was late, and the mythic action moved apace, we switched phases in the middle of the second round of scenes. I was also flipping between my old copy of the first published text, and Michael S Miller's newer copy, so rules mistakes were highly likely.

I should add that Ralph embellished the map with every scene, from a blank sheet of paper that had only the shoreline, the words "ocean" and "village" and a blob to represent the latter. The other players also added features, in the process of character creation, but I think it's fair to say that the lion's share of that artifact was Ralph's.

Ganakagok remains one of the most satisfying games in the canon to play for me, because I really dig the apparently effortless mythopoiesis. I will always be happy to run it in it's past, present and future incarnations, for pretty much anyone who asks.

- Alexander

[Bill_White]

There are connections you can draw with other characters, those were very helpful and formed the framework of the stories that eventually became a beautiful myth.

I do think there could usefully be some more explicit setup for players to weave their characters' stories together. We were playing with an experienced group, so that wasn't a problem, but it could have been. I think I did say that it's a good idea to buy relationships with each others' connections as part of your Gifts (or Burdens). It may be as easy as making it explicit that it's relatively cheap to buy a relationship with someone else's existing relationship (Gift or Burden).

Is it fair to say that this creation of connections among characters is the second-most critical part of character generation, following of course the reading of the cards to create the character? Should that be an explicit rule: no isolates in the village social network? That is, should very character be "reachable" by each other character, even if the connection is mediated by a chain of third parties, so long as a connection exists? Or should it be the GM's job to spend his or her "fiat points" to connect unconnected characters, by introducing mediating characters?

I think Emily is talking about specifying Gifts and Burdens (of which Loves and Hates are merely one example). It's a lot to come up with all at once. I think it's worth it to let people leave some Gifts and Burdens "unspecified" at that start of the game, since that lets you get to play faster. This may have to be left as a dial for individual groups to set where they like. The danger is that leaving too much unspecified (particularly Loves and Hates) makes things too generic, inchoate, or nebulous at the start, and nobody knows what to do; the contrasting danger of overspecification is that you spend time thinking of things that don't matter in play. Some kind of happy medium is called for.

[lumpley]

I have some opinions about the design of the resolution rules, including the GM budget part. I think that you could get the same beautiful game but from, say, 75% the effort in play. However, this might fully and entirely spring from my playing it with too many players. I've decided to play again with fewer players before I commit myself to my opinions, even in my head.

I've been telling everyone the story of our people, that game's one of the stops on the tour of my GenCon. I tell that my character, the cranky, conservative grandfather, became the star Mercury at the end, and everyone's like, "cool!" And then I explain what it meant, that he didn't become a star like the ancestors are supposed to, but instead wanders forever and sometimes goes backward in the sky, and then they go "ooh... cool."

Bill! Fantastic game! How do I get a copy of it?

-Vincent

[Valamir]

One of the problems with initial set up is that the Good Stuff and the Bad Stuff are totally randomly driven by points that come from the card value.  Due to the random nature I wound up with 5 points of the one, which was too few to do what I would have liked, and 16 points of the other which was way to many to even begin to think of how to spend them intelligently.

Plus there was so much cool stuff to spend them on it was a little overwhelming.  Unlike, say, a game like D&D or GURPS where balancing out your character's cool stuff and not being able to get everything you want due to point limitation is part of the fun.  In a game like this it was rather unnecessarily restrictive.

I would do something like this:

1) Every player adds one feature to the Map...a location that is important to the village or themselves personally, either helpful or Taboo as desired
2) Every player adds 1-3 NPC villagers (depending on number of players) to the relationship map, all of whom are connected to themselves in some fashion.
3) Every player adds 3 connections between themselves and either other PCs (at least one) or other PCs NPCs
4) Every player gets 1 piece of personal gear / possession (spear, snow shoes, loyal dog, whatever)
5) Every player gets 1 Scar or other burden
6) Every player starts with either 3 Good and 1 Bad Medicine, or 1 Bad and 3 Good Medicine depending on whether the Hope or Fear card had the higher value

Maybe as an advance rule for players really wanting more customization you could convert all the above into points and let them spend them as desired, but for getting up and running quickly purposes I would stick to something like the above.  In the text I would have 1 short paragraph for each item written in the voice of the GM to new players giving them just enough information to act on. 

I think that would streamline the opening session and get a good solid relationship and physical map started without alot of casting about for ways to spend superflous points or having to choose between a nice spear and a wife.

[Bill_White]

I would do something like this:

1) Every player adds one feature to the Map...a location that is important to the village or themselves personally, either helpful or Taboo as desired
2) Every player adds 1-3 NPC villagers (depending on number of players) to the relationship map, all of whom are connected to themselves in some fashion.
3) Every player adds 3 connections between themselves and either other PCs (at least one) or other PCs NPCs
4) Every player gets 1 piece of personal gear / possession (spear, snow shoes, loyal dog, whatever)
5) Every player gets 1 Scar or other burden
6) Every player starts with either 3 Good and 1 Bad Medicine, or 1 Bad and 3 Good Medicine depending on whether the Hope or Fear card had the higher value

I like this. It's nicely concrete and easy to implement. And it reinforces the reining-in of the GM's economy of adversity that's already been alluded to. Thanks. The thing I did at Dexcon in July was give each player 10 Gifts and 10 Burdens and allow them to leave some undefined at the beginning of play. That solves the randomness problem and to a lesser extent addresses the creativity demand overload, but it may be worth it to give (especially new) players more structure within which to exercise their creativity.

The other thing I did at Dexcon was restrict my use of "fiat points" to the points indicated by the situation card, which required me to go more heavily to characters' Burdens to get points to influence the dice. With 10 Burdens per character, I had more than a fighting chance. I suspect 1 Burden per character will be too few. So that's the thing about the economy of adversity that I need to think about: for the GM, how much is enough?

Bill! Fantastic game! How do I get a copy of it?

Thanks! PM or e-mail me with a mailing address, and I'll send you one of the copies I have lying around.

[Michael S. Miller]

So that's the thing about the economy of adversity that I need to think about: for the GM, how much is enough?

My horribly UN-fun suggestion is to play out a few games by yourself with ONLY the dice. Give each imaginary player a different goal, as far as whether they want a happy ending for themselves, the tribe, or the island. Then spend a few evenings rolling the dice with no imaginary content. To fix the economy, you need to strip away everything but the economy. It's no fun, but it works. And Ganagagok is so great a game, it really deserves the fine polishing!

[Bill_White]

Michael -- Thanks for confirming the suspicion that had begun to creep up on me.

To fix the economy, you need to strip away everything but the economy.

That sums it up perfectly.