[S/Lay w/Me] Play, thoughts, and publication ideas

[Ron Edwards]

One piece of news is the bitchin' black cover for the French translation of S/Lay w/Me, which instantly makes me regret simply re-printing the game recently instead of seeing this first and reversing the colors of the cover.

But that's actually only a little bit of my current notions for upgrading the game a little. My original intention was to honor the middle-1970s gaming scene with a simply, even somewhat crudely stapled booklet, just like all those gaming books I used to see in the hobby stores of the time. Well, I did that to my satisfaction, and perhaps it's time to consider honoring the present-day game in the context of present-day standards.

Text thoughts
I want to preserve the utterly stark text, which was inspired by Ghost/Echo and which I think really does belong in the game. But an additional section which a play-example also seems like a good idea, especially highlighting the 'tuning' process which is part of the rules, and also the opportunity for depth which a pair of players may well develop if it's something they like. I plan to use the recent game played by me and Claudia Cangini. Here are the details of my planned points.

1. I can clarify some features of Goes. First, the first two contributions aren't Goes, they're descriptions. Second, Goes do not end at the Climax; all play after the first two descriptions is composed of Goes. All the Climax does is provide constraints on content for the remaining Goes, and it should consist merely of a quick mechanical specification of the options.

2. At the climax, the easiest and quickest thing to do is for the 'you' player to cross off the options that don't apply from this point on, and for both players to look over that list. I think I'll put a nice PDF sheet on the website with all those options on it, for printing, maybe with a cool illustration.

3. Tuning the Goes is easy, but it must and will happen during that first adventure. It's merely a part of play, it doesn't interfere with the fiction, and once it's done then Goes are smooth forever; the point is that you can't skip it. In our case, we found that Claudia really likes dialogue in play, for instance, so we found that free-talk dialogue role-playing could be treated as a subroutine to her overall Go.

4. To help with the tuning process, play might include passing a turn token back and forth, partly to remind the owner of the Go that he or she is supposed to provide a forward-moving event (or effect), to remind the other player that his or her contributions are subject to tuning, and to end the Go once that happens. (We didn't do this, hence the 'might.')

5. This isn't a dicing-strategy game. When you include the relevant actions (Goal for the 'you' player, Monster for the 'I' player), roll and add a die ... which does not mean, 'strive to add dice as fast as possible.'

6. Taking time for depth and enrichment really, really pays off. Claudia and I spun off of minor-Color cues repeatedly, such that 'battlefield' in the location statement became 'fallen southern general' in the Goal statement, became 'north vs. south armies' and 'free city' in the first description and Goes; then tied into 'outlaw' becoming 'no longer baron,' and more. It even turned into a big class-struggle issue for the story, which I'll describe below.

The story we did
I chose, I am a hunted outlaw, hardened and bitter, but I still hope, and added, 'Battered man, tattered cloak, mounted on running bird; hawklike gaze.' I then chose, At the battlefield a few days afterwards, and added, 'I seek the warrior-mask of the fallen southern general.'

As we played through the opening descriptions and the first Goes, the situation quickly became complex: Lantia was a free city between the northern and southern lands, so far managing to stay neutral in the war between them. The Duke was sick and feeble, so his wife Lena effectively ruled the city, trying to stay one step ahead of the various battles or representatives that sought to annex the city to one side or the other. On a more local-color basis, Claudia's descriptions also established that the running birds were standard mounts for the setting and that dramatically masking one's face was an ordinary part of the armor of the day.

Claudia privately described Lena as wanton, forbidden, open-hearted, and knowledgeable, set at 2 dice, which she told me. Her Monster was the ambassador of the south, named Yalti, well aware of the hero's outlawry and determined to enslave the city: he will kill slowly, with deceit, civilly, and singly, set at 5 dice, which she kept to herself.

My concept for Vashte, my character, evolved quickly into a noble-born who'd rejected his class in favor of a people's uprising,

At first, I racked up dice swiftly by staying focused on the goal (the mask) and even acquiring it through the help of servants and workers who were sympathetic to Vashte; whereas Claudia took a little while to reconcile the Monster's civility and deceit with outright attempts to kill him, or maybe she was just interested in developing the situation a bit more before threatening it and the hero, which is perfectly OK.

I found myself playing Vashte as practically ruined by his own idealism, almost nothing left of his goodness except for the bit of hope, but also as a genuine beacon for others to rally around. Therefore despite Lena's unspoken but obvious availability, he swore himself to the defense of the city (in exchange for the mask, despite already having it) and tried to stay away from her charms. I implied that he'd become so hardened by his outlaw years that he didn't trust himself to be decent to anyone at a personal level.

The story racked up as Yalti blasted Vashte and Lena with aging magic and organized his various quislings throughout the city, even as the northern army attacked Lantia. So we had a pretty tense set of action/war scenes, with some details like the forbidden sect Yalti belonged to, the Vasstili, and a grim but also funny scene where Vashte very reluctantly invoked the church's power based on the sacred magic of the nobility (I mentioned that he'd made a career of burning these same churches in the south). On the other hand, we also had the utterly dark bit where he defeated Yalti by letting him (now a horrific spectre-type monster for real) see his, Vashte's hidden urges ... things like sowing destruction across all the lands, using the mask to rule as overlord, crushing the people under his heel, and raping Lena ... and saying 'don't try to kill me with fear and hate, you have nothing compared to what I already know.'

The city was ultimately saved not through battles and sorties, though, but because the citizenry went out among the northern army in apparent surrender, and enough individuals found their way to the various leaders' tents and beds that the army's command structure was wiped out in a single night.

Anyway, although my dice outclassed Claudia's from the beginning (her first roll was a 1) and the total won the Match, I still only managed to squeak out two good things to buy above getting the Goal. So I got the mask for nothing, and chose to save Lena and the city, letting Yalti live and bearing the injuries he'd inflicted on me. The latter included the aging, certainly, but also the mental scars of being forced to face himself during the magical battle.

I really liked the last scenes, in which Vashte insisted he be escorted away from Lantia at spearpoint to keep him from coming back (and implicitly getting with Lena), and when she cried out at how much he'd sacrificed, answered, 'Not for us.'

The addition to Vashte's description read, I am the liberator of Lantia and hero of the oppressed, bearer of their mask. I'm marked by evil, cursed to an early death and by the urges in my own heart.

As you can see, one of the strongest features of our game was providing a lot of interesting information about the setting far beyond the immediate location, so that the adventure acted very much like those I designed toward in Sorcerer & Sword: follow the character, but invent the setting in leaps and bounds with each new story.

Design and production thoughts
My ideas for the physical text begin with size. Although the play-example text will still be written in a minimalist style, if not quite so stark as the rules text, I suspect adding it will just about double the page count. So no more staples, on to perfect binding. Plus, I want to do an art overhaul, keeping about half of the current images and adding some more; among other things, achieving perfect parity between pussy and cock-and-balls, as originally intended. The layout-look will be altered into a more modern form, with an eye toward retro Heavy Metal instead of American basement-gaming, and you can bet the cover will be glossy black just like the French one.

Since this is a major undertaking (anything with art and new layout is), I don't think you should hold your breath waiting. My immediate next step is simply to get a PDF of the current text available for sale, and to make the additional text available for free at the game's webpage, and I'll call that a win, thank you very much.

But as long as I'm dreaming ... my ultimate deluxe ideal for this game is to produce a limited series as an art book, like a Boris Vallejo, Chris Achilleos, or (especially!) Stephen Fabian coffee-table item. One day, perhaps.

Anyway, I hope my points about play itself are interesting, and that maybe people who'd played wouldn't mind posting about it some time. Sales for the game are quite good, actually, so I'm happy that interest remains high. But dialogue about it seems too sparse. The best threads about the game at various sites are now pretty old, and some recent ones appear to be notably stupid ('I heard from someone who heard about this game that it's just pass-the-stick, and Ron Edwards is creepy'), so it would be nice to see solid fiction-heavy play accounts around again.

Best, Ron
edited to fix display - RE

[Motipha]

Hah.  I happened to play this last night, and since we do a podcast I figured I would just post some detail/the audio AP.  In posting, I find this message of you asking for people to post.  Amusing.

[shlo]

Hello,

I just bought the french version of S/lay w/ Me and the black cover is, indeed, gorgeous. It immediately reminded me the three black booklets illustrated by Frank Brunner[1][2] in Chaosium's first or second edition of Stormbringer. And the old Conan the Barbarian comics as well, of course. The cover perfectly fits the "retro" style you wanted, the illustrations inside have a different style though, less texture, lines with constant width... They look quite modern in comparison.

I'll try the game after this year's Game Chef and I shall post a report here!

michael.