[Circle of Hands] Ways to play and not to play

[Ron Edwards]

There are three ways I don't want people to play. I know many, perhaps the majority of players are going to bring one of these to the table. My goal is to articulate them not as a preventative, because that won't work, but as a concept for anyone who reads the book to bring to the table too – and with any luck, be able to say, "Hey, let's not do X or Y or Z" when behaviors at the table go that way. My ideal is for that not to be a GM thing alone, either.

Furthermore, I think back to the clumsy, borderline-insulting summary I wrote in the original Sorcerer text, which didn't succeed at this task too well, and I contrast it to Vincent's conversational tone in Dogs in the Vineyard when he tosses in, "You know how in games you've played before, you do X? Well, here, don't do that, do it this way instead." So I'm still thinking about how to say it, because I'd like it to be a capsule, in a specific place in the text (as with Sorcerer), but more instructive and low-stress, as Vincent did.

Anyway, on to it ...

1. The Call of Cthulhu way. The GM has three phases all set: weird snippets of stuff to toss at you during introductory scenes, a series of OMG reveals, and a big concluding fight predicated on "it all goes south." The players' job is, in order, to deliver setting-faithful characterizations, to look busy so play appears to generate the reveals, and to hurl themselves into the fight.

2. The Shadowrun way. This is mission-drama: the team is assigned a task somewhere in dangerous and tricky ground; missions vary in terms of the precise MacGuffin, the NPCs assigned to join them, the ruthlessness of the task, the problematic allies planted ahead of them, and the degree of danger. The essential feature, though, is again a planned reveal: one or more of betrayal by employers, unpredictable details of the MacGuffin, unexpected sympathetic features of the adversary, unexpected lethal or scary features of the adversary, and similar. The players' job is to favor the team above all else, despite playing up apparently-oppositional character traits and despite apparently-selfish motives. (If the literal employment angle is minimized, this becomes The X-Men – no real difference in practice.)

3. The Dogs in the Vineyard way. Here, the situation is predicated on one thing: the local problem has a single core cause, specifically an NPC's personal crisis. There are rotten things happening, and everyone involved is too close to the situation to see why – and it's going south fast, into the territory of murder, feuds, and social breakdown. The players' job is effectively therapeutic: first toward the NPC whose problems have led to this crisis, but if that's not possible (the person is an asshole, or crazy), then toward the community. An adventure looks very much like a therapy session: the gentle prodding at outer layers of reticence, then tough-love exposure of denial, and then even tougher-love modification of the situation toward the personal and collective good.

Simplistically (and counter-textual), this way is a particularly well-constructed version of #1 in which the circumstances of the final fight are more emergent than taped-down prepped. More consistent with the text, the Dogs' own youth and naivete permit mistakes of judgment and disagreements among them, such that the drama of their personal development – and more abstractly, the frightening long-term consequences of their decisions for this developing culture – come into focus as adventures pass.

Not surprisingly, #3 is closer to Circle of Hands than the others, but it is still not the same in a couple of crucial ways.

First, the knights are not youngsters carefully trained by elders. They are fire-and-rain hardened veterans, finally able to be proactive after a lifetime of imposed choices and trauma. No one, literally no one, tells them what to do or how to do it. (Yes, I am revising all text about being "sent.")

Second, the situations are going to resolve well in the long-term as long as all tripwires are not hit. Therefore "the fate of the town" is less trenchant to the players although it might well be a priority for the characters. Secondarily, this is kind of cool because single-component adventures are by definition less complex for immediate resolution but also more risky for long-term success.

Third, local situations do not arise from specific NPCs' irrational or stressed behaviors. There is no necessary back-tracking, investigative, or necessarily-covert activity. This is a lot more like Trollbabe than Dogs, with the difference between Trollbabe and Circle of Hands being most apparent in that the characters are not free spirits. But the similarity in local  prep is strong: everyone wants something, everyone is a little flexible, but also capable of being alienated, and capable of extreme responses. Separating information from investigation, while having the former still be a matter of play and scene-outcomes, is the key here.

The playtest at Forge Midwest was a fine example of many aspects of this post, and indeed gave rise to it for that reason. Among others, it included hitting both tripwires, but especially, none of the NPCs were neurotic, crazy, or unreasonable. The powerful merchant-wife and her peers were rightly concerned about their vulnerability to piracy, and had brought in professional fighters. Granted, the professionals and the local docks/harbor people were not getting along, thus "social tensions," but it wasn't violent, and wouldn't be without a tripwire. The leader-type among the workers wasn't a crazy ideologue. The white wizard out in the boat in the ocean wanted to get his stuff unloaded so he could build his statue there – not something any Circle knight would welcome, and likely to result in a fight, but crucially, the wizard was not fomenting the social tensions nor in any way involved in causing it even accidentally. The only link between his presence (7) and the social tensions (2) was that the unloading wasn't working out well, a matter of proximity. The wizard's assistant, the toughest character in the prep, merely wanted to resolve the hassles and wasn't crazy or weird either – granted, she disliked the knights at first sight on ideological, but that was just as subject to C rolls as anything else.*

My point here: it wasn't a Dogs scenario. There was no core sin of pride or jealousy or anything like that, there was no chain of sinful responses and negative consequences to backtrack. I'm trying to say: there's no investigation phase requiring  special effort – there's merely a reasonable level of social participation and observation on the knights' part, and the information is pretty much there. Most play of the game is intended to be like that. It was interesting to see the players come to grips with this, to varying degrees of understanding and at varying rates, and it was absolutely instructive that I need text, and most of all recommended behaviors to get past the gate for people – which is most people – who will be bringing one of these ways to play to the table.

All thoughts are welcome.

Best, Ron

[Moreno R.]

Hi Ron!

My first, immediate reaction after reading this post was "why he is giving us only these snippets about his Forge Midwest game? It would be useful to have the entire preparation, to contrast with the three wrong ways he describes above".
And this led to remembering one of the biggest problems of the Sorcerer book: the lack of detailed examples of "how you play this" (and the examples that there are, like the sample characters, are not typical or even wrong and misleading)
Comparing that to Trollbabe: when I read threads and explanations about the game, the single most referred example in the entire book is the fight between the trollbabe and the troll on the river bank, with the description of the failed rolls: because it shows "how you play" one of the most basic part of the game, the rerolls. By the other hand, the manual could have been improved by more fully-fleshed and complete preparations for adventures for every point of the "scale" ladder: it's one of the points where there is the bigger number of questions.

The Dogs in the Vineyard manual does this with a twist: there are a lot of examples in the text, but there is the thing you cited in your post, too: "you know how you always do this? Do this different thing instead". It's still a kind of explanation about "how you should play", but the explanation is based on a common understanding of another, different way of playing, prevalent ot the time (and even now).

The effect I have seen is that the manual of DitV is one of the most clear and effective rpg manuals I have ever seen... for me, and other people like me who share a lot of experiences with that "other" way of playing, but it's almost incomprehensible for people who don't (I didn't believe it at first, seeing as I always used that manual as the perfect example of clarity in rpg manuals, but too many people said to me that they found it the least clear manual ever to dismiss their experience)

To get the same effect, you would have to do the same thing with all of the three "wrong" ways you are listing, in separate chapters, and it would be really too much...  you could (and should) do it for some very important bit (the "this is not a Shadowrun mission" for example), but writing a lot of positive example of "how you play this game" would be a lot more effective.

[Ron Edwards]

I'm not getting much constructive out of that post, except "put in lots of examples," which is characteristic of all my books since 2002 or so. Slam Sorcerer all you want, but I'll compare my examples from Sorcerer & Sword to the present favorably against any RPG text you care to name. As you say, there are readers for whom nothing will work, which I can't do anything about. The question I have is how to frame the information I do provide, in examples or otherwise, against these embedded - and in many cases absolutely assumed - frameworks for play that will, without fail, show up at the table.

I don't have time to present a detailed report of the Forge Midwest game. I'll write more about it in this thread, when I can, especially as it applies to the issues of assumptions and presentations.

[Nyhteg]

The question I have is how to frame the information I do provide, in examples or otherwise, against these embedded - and in many cases absolutely assumed - frameworks for play that will, without fail, show up at the table.

Personally, I would want you to set all notions of subtlety aside entirely.

There will be specific points in the rules text where errors of habit and assumption are most likely to occur. I'd say that is the point where the issues need to be explicitly called out in whatever way makes both the pitfalls and the guidance impossible to miss - bold text, repetition, side bars labelled "PITFALL!" - the form matters less than the clarity and lack of ambiguity.

I would want to see you say "Hey! This is how people go wrong at this point. Don't do that. Do this."
The trick would be in pinpointing the moment a reader' s brain is about to go "Oh, yup yup yup, I get it, it's basically just like a town in DiTV..." and interrupting.

G

[Vernon R]

I've been thinking about this a bit based on the playtest I had with Joshua and Justice, not sure how helpful this will be but here is my 2 cents worth.  I think much of it comes down to showing how you want play to go in the venture creation tools.  I've seen some good advice from you here to people about not adding extra elements and I think I saw something about not keeping secrets which would help.  In our playtest the C vs 12 rolls really came forward as the big tool that pushes the game into unknown territory.  I think explaining that along with your example of creating a venture and showing what happens when the knights hit the situations is probably the best spot to show what you are going for. 

Giving a bit more detail on what the elements mean and how to avoid pitfalls, like turning hidden knowledge into a Cthulhu adventure or how to use wizards as non-insane pure villains.

[Jonas Ferry]

I haven't played Call of Cthulhu or Shadowrun, but I've read a lot about them and know the style of play. If you're going to include a discussion where you refer to other games, you need to summarize how they are supposed to work before you say how Circle of Hands is different, like you do above. Not all readers will be familiar with the three games. In a way it may be better to only describe the type of game and not mention the name, since a lot of Call of Cthulhu and Shadowrun adventure design is present in other games as well, games that may be more familiar to the reader.

I've played Dogs a number of times, and it's definitely the game of the three I made most comparisons with when I read Circle of Hands (also In Nomine, for the angels and demons). For example, I've said this in an early private email conversation on how to handle rape in play:

I hope the game will be more similar to Dogs in the Vineyard, in that the players pass judgement on in-game badness, than Fatal RPG (which I haven't read or played, admittedly), where the point seems to be to enable the players' dark fantasies.

There are also similarities in that the GM creates the "town" separately from the PCs, and that the PCs arrive as outsiders to sort out some trouble in a community where people know each other more than they know the PCs. An obvious difference is that while the Dogs have an explicit authority to pass judgement, the Circle does not. Why would the knights of the king of Rolke have anything to say about what goes on in a small torn in Tamaryon?

As you know, I've done character creation, but haven't played an adventure yet. Still, your first two Dogs points have already been discussed by the group.

No one, literally no one, tells them what to do or how to do it. (Yes, I am revising all text about being "sent.")

One player asked if the Circle knights received all their orders from the king. That is, both if that's how it works in the setting and how the players will know what to do at the start of an adventure. My reply was that, since they're veterans, the PCs probably have information sources reporting directly to them, and have enough experience and authority to go where they're most needed. I guess that some orders can come from the king, but I like the idea of emphasizing how cool the PCs are by removing the strict chain-of-command idea. The Circle is basically constantly "behind enemy lines" putting out fires, and if they hear that demons are spawning in a Tamaryon village they don't need to go back to the king in Rolke and ask for his permission to stop it. I would like it if a direct request from the king was a pretty big deal, as he probably wouldn't get involved if it's just some local problem.

Second, the situations are going to resolve well in the long-term as long as all tripwires are not hit. Therefore "the fate of the town" is less trenchant to the players although it might well be a priority for the characters.

This was a question from another player during character creation. I described it in almost that way, even though I missed the part about all, or "every" as the playtest document says, tripwires being hit. I said that if at least one tripwire is hit the adventure might fail. Still, there was one player, not the same as above on orders from the king, who didn't really accept the idea. We roleplayers are so used to the idea that you need to find the more or less obvious clues, find the bad guy and beat him, that it's hard to accept that this may just happen by default unless the PCs messes up. It removes the whole point of playing, if you come to the game looking for that. I think some players will feel cheated if they spend a session going nowhere on their clue searching, just to get an epilogue saying "After talking to some more people, you find out that the demons are being summoned by the chief's son. What do you do to him? Oh, you kill him? Problem solved, no need to play out that fight!"

Perhaps the epilogue idea is not at all how you're supposed to handle stopping a threat or finding some information at the end of an adventure to ensure the success of the mission, so that needs to be clear in the text. Perhaps you don't find the information that presents an opportunity for Rolke because you didn't talk to the blacksmith, but as long as no tripwires are hit at least things didn't get worse, which is kind of a success. Or perhaps not talking to the blacksmith would indicate an error by the GM either in prep or in running the adventure.

The question I have is how to frame the information I do provide, in examples or otherwise, against these embedded - and in many cases absolutely assumed - frameworks for play that will, without fail, show up at the table.

A comment on your examples in general, and not on this specific issue, is that you provide the reasoning behind your choices in the examples. The examples are usually more conversational than the rest of the text, which I think is good. Looking at the character creation chapter you say on attributes and traits:

Given an even spread of values like this, nothing immediately suggests itself for shoring up or optimizing. Out of sheer enjoyment of the Trait descriptions, I choose...

If you'd only listed the chosen traits and how they affect the attributes, it would just be teaching the reader that 4+2=6. So I get a lot of value from seeing the reasoning behind the choices in the examples. It's also a nice way of introducing setting material, like the name of a Tamaryon village, instead of having a separate geography section.

[Ron Edwards]

I see that I'm going to need more playtesting reports on finishing adventures. In practice, they do often finish with fights, but that's different from saying that the point of play is finally to arrive at a fight. And I think all of us, me included, are struggling a bit with how exactly the last few minutes of a session are supposed to look. I'm pretty far along in my thinking about that, but not in talking about it.

Can I have some feedback about the very-very ends of adventures from people? How did you play them and how did they go?

[Rafu]

In reply to the top post...

Ron, I think you can and should strive to encapsulate "correct" CoH play in as clear and concise a snippet of text as you give when describing other games. Crucially, I believe examples of "wrong" are only useful when compared with examples of "right" or precise instructions about how to do it right in the exact same format.

Since you're quoting DitV as a virtuous example, and I generally find Vincent's texts one order of magnitude more usable than your texts, I'll point out that nowhere in DitV there is a capsule description of how you do it right compared with examples of how you might do it wrong, though. Rather, all of the text strives to be a down to earth, step by step illustration of how to do it right (something I believe later books by Vincent are more successful at, sure, but the trend was already there) and only at a few critical turns in the procedure it points out: "This is probably different from what you've been doing before, don't do it the other way!"

I'm getting the vibe that the "correct" mode of play (or, should I say, relationship between prep and play?) is quite similar to how I play The Drifter's Escape, Fables of Camelot (have you tried this? with Eero, maybe) and, yeah, Trollbabe (which I've played only a little bit, though)...
Although, interestingly, I never found this mode of play and DitV to be that different. What you point out in #3 concerning a fundamental sin looks to me like a feature of scenario prep, not an essential difference in how the players wrestle with the scenario, while the Dog character's implied naiveté and inexperience is more of a feature of how long-term play shapes out, or a way to color interactions with NPCs, while the core assumption of this kind of play is that the player characters are basically extraneous to the prepped situation (which Trollbabe has in spades) but still somehow get involved with it (and here I see more of a spectrum, with Trollbabe providing no design rationale for this sort of involvement but plain adventurousness and DitV introducing oath-bound duty).
As for the relationship between #1 and #3, that's debatable. I'd rather hold the "Trollbabe family" of game as being one thing, with "#3 DitV" being a specific case which is maybe prone to being misread as an instance of #1 (requiring a different CA), but the internal coherence of this "family" as one of the existing families of Story Now games being overall stronger.

[John W]

I'll share a clip of an email from a friend of mine (with his permission) regarding the original post in this thread.  N.B.: "a guy like me" means a guy with not a lot of RPGing experience outside of D&D (yet).

I really want to play his game the way he wants me to play it, but his writing makes things completely inaccessible to a guy like me.

a) Stop making references to games that I may or may have not played.  Tell me what it is you want us to do with descriptions and examples in game (CoH), and not Cthulu, Sorcerer, Shadowrun, or Dogs in the Vineyard.  It makes it very difficult for someone not in the know to play the game.

b) Stop telling me what NOT to do.  It makes me want to rock back and forth in the corner in a fetal position.  It should read as "here's how you play my game - this is what you do in these given situations."  The "avoid this" stuff could be summarized in a small, simple list at the end of a given chapter or section - it should not be the heart of the instructions.

To his second point, I once took a creative writing course, and the textbook was like that: full of discussion of why this or that approach to writing was amateurish or ineffective.  After reading it, I was paralyzed: highly conscious of why all my ideas sucked, and with no idea how to move forward.  I couldn't write anything.  Perhaps the author didn't want to "tell me how to write," for fear of crushing my unique voice and turning me into someone who wrote just like he did.  Anyway, I think some general positive guidance plus a few good examples is the best way to inspire people towards the right way to play... then followed by a few counter examples.  On the other hand, the comparisons to DitV etc. are very helpful to guys like me. :)

-J

[Ron Edwards]

Can I have some feedback about the very-very ends of adventures from people? How did you play them and how did they go? John, you included a bit in the other thread, and thanks. More from everyone please.

[Moreno R.]

Can I have some feedback about the very-very ends of adventures from people? How did you play them and how did they go?

The endings:

2nd playtest, the one where I played the wizard-knight: the duel at the funeral was the high point of the adventure, and when the characters returned to talk to the new baron and found the white wizard and the girl, I think nobody really wanted to follow up on that. The descriptions of actions showed this unraveling a little, with a lot of actions declared in haste and then recalled with conversations like "ah, I had not realized he was doing this... no, in this case I don't do that, I do this instead" "wait, before he does that, I was doing this"... it was late (the fight took a long time, even if it lasted only 3 clashes), we wanted to go to the end and that was like one of these long-winded epilogues in a tv movie where you skip forward with the remote... and then you rewind because you missed something and now you can't understand what is happening. We quickly dropped the in-character talk and agreed to an ending where simply everyone did went back home without other fights.

1st playtest, the one with the Wyrm, and me as the GM: it's was very much the same, after the fight with the wyrm the adventure was practically finished (and in this case it was, the monster was the only component), so I think there was less hurry because what was left (enact judgment on the two prisoners) was much more clearly a short epilogue and not another bigger component.

Both times there was the sense that play would lead to fight. It would have been a let down if it didn't, so both time nobody ever suggested or acted toward a different ending (negotiating with the brother in the second adventure, for example). And that, after the fight, the adventure was essentially finished. The first time the epilogue was played quickly and with less and less in-character talk and descriptions, becoming (not from the start, but gradually) a between-players agreement.

The second time, the "danger" of having another big part of the adventure after the fight, did push us to play the ending even more quickly to avoid it. But the late hour was a big component, I don't know if we would have played it differently with more time.

Talking about the kind of behavior from the characters during the entire session, it was clearly, totally, a "mission", the PC were there clearly "with a job to do", not sightseeing or wandering. But with total "carte blanche" about "how to solve this problem" (the wyrm in the first adventure, the raids from the Famberge barony in the second). In the second adventure my character could have easily ally himself with the violent brother against the oldest, for example, but this don't change the nature of the "mission": I don't know if it's the kind of play that Ron want, but both times we played like that without having to even talk about it.