Color-first Endeavor: back in action!

[Moreno R.]

I am looking at John's character sheet and the result table of My Life With Master, checking what would probably happen before the endgame, with the experience of my past games ("how I would have played him")

Looking a John and at the Master, it's a reasonable assumption that most of the Master's orders will be about Villainy and not Violence. So, at the beginning, Self-Loathing will increase, but not weariness.  Doing Villainy to other will become easier action after action (the numbers of dice rolled by John increase steadily, the resisting die stays the same), but with the way I have chosen the numbers on the sheet, the Connection Rolls will stay the same (no matter how much Self-Loathing increase, I can't roll less than 1 die), and it's a roll that I can turn in my favor with the sincerity or desperation die.

From these numbers, looking only at the percentages, it would seems that both Self-Loathing and love will rise steadily, but Self-loathing will rise quicker. This in practice will not be true, because I will play trying to make John's acts require more than one roll (allowing him to refuse to follow up with the second roll, or at least have multiple connection rolls during the act), or to use the Less than Human or the more than human exception to make them fail, and the Horror Revealed rule associated with a low Reason (1) means that Self-Loathing will never rise more than 2 points above Love.

(By the way, I did forgot the Horror Revealed rule in Phase 2: my second scene pushed Self-Loathing to 3 with Love still a 0: not allowed, Self-loathing should have stayed at 2 and the next scene should have been an Horror Revealed)

Playing scene after scene, the situation would probably turn ugly enough to make the Master order Violence. But the first time that John will fail a Violence roll, he will be arrested. (Weariness > Reason). It's rather improbable that John will fail a Violence Roll, but if the GM know the game, he will try to use the sincerity die against me (the Master can't use it, but the victims can)

I would spread love between a lot of connection, to make my character less vulnerable but making THEM more vulnerable (if you have all Love invested in one single connection, the GM could be hesitant to kill that connection, making the player repeat all over again, but if the death of a connection would comport the loss of only 1 point of love, well, he become a target...)

If weariness stay very low (always at 1, probably, or 2), Love needs to go only to 6 or 7 to start the endgame. I would try to have it rise even more before going against the Master, but let's say for simplicity's sake that I can't, the Master give an order that I must absolutely rebel against, so the endgame start with Love at 7, self-loathing at 8, Weariness at 1, Fear at 4 and Reason at 1.
This means that the roll to kill the Master is of 6 dice against 12. Difficult, without having other minion's help or going for the sincerity die. Let's say that I go for this option, and I have 6d4-6 + 1d10 against 12d4-12. Still less than a 50% chance, but it's more even. Let's say that I kill him at the third roll (with a lucky roll or with the help of some other minion), so at the end John has Love at 7, self-loathing at 8, Weariness at 3, and Reason at 1: this mean that I can choose the ending 2 (John dies), 3 (John destroy himself). More important, in this case, John can't run away (ending 1) and can't integrate in the society there (ending 4)

The ending #3 has interesting possibilities in this setting hack: john could become an homeless drunk, or ha could confess and go to prison, or ha could kill himself, or he could even continue to play "Captain Free Market" all his life destroying himself that way. But ending #2 is simpler, so I choose that. John dies killing Ed White.

Talking about the endgame, even after playing it a lot of times, I still have not decided if the very difficult, almost impossible rolls that almost always the minions have to do to kill the master, are a weakness of the game or a strength: what usually happen is that the other players, seeing the rebelling minion losing the fight, run to help him.  This means that everybody can happily join the Master killing (instead of seeing the first one to rebel getting his own vengeance alone), but make having really all the players on the same page about this a necessity: this is a problem of single-session games mostly, when there is not the time to make everybody hate the Master really a lot. I have seen demo games almost ruined by a single player decision to stay away from the fight (saying "ok, let's scrap the rolls, the Master dies" doesn't give the same satisfaction)

Anyway, let's color all that: to do this, I will make the assumption to play with the ideal GM, one that understand exactly what I wanted from this character (if I have to show the rewards of the game, it's better to show the most rewarding version...)

To maintain the importance of the picture at the beginning of the thread, let's say that almost all the Master's missions for John were about making that character more famous and bankable. So, a lot of times the involved villainy would have been about convincing people (sponsors, co-stars, fans and even the public at large) of what the character stand for ("if you are not rich, you don't deserve to be rich", "we need to defend the rich from these hateful envious people who want to tax them", something like that), with some publicity stunt as having John dressed like his super-alter ego beating up "criminals" (some homeless paid to let himself be beat on camera), plus a lot of personal behind-the-scene fuckery with people (up to blackmail, theft or even murder)
Some good Horror Revealed scenes could be about having kids playing "Captain Free Market" bombing a shelter or burning some homeless drunk.

I have some difficulty trying to imagine the last scene. In every game of MLWM I have played, the killing of the Master was almost ritualistic into referencing all the evil he did. John could kill him dressed as Captain Free-Market, or having Ed wear the suit, killing BOTH of his persecutor at the same time. He could shoot him, hit him, drop him from the window, etc. If I had chosen the ending #3, John could confess everything in front of a TV News camera and then shoot himself, I don't know, all these details at this time seems "empty", not carrying all the emotional weight they have in the game, when even minor details become really important to make the ending "perfect".

It's almost funny: the reward system of this game is so tied to the specific color, to the specific fictional events and the way they "exactly" happened... that I have a lot of difficulties imagining them without having really played the character.  Going into specifics:

how do you describe the character (and most likely his past) in vivid, fictional terms?

I don't know if this is enough or if it's too generic, but I think at this point John is angry, both at Ed and at himself, for the things he did for "fame". Important parts of the character at this point would negation of value in money and fame, and identification with Ed as "co-responsible".
Maybe saving some connection is part of this, maybe the destruction of Captain Free Marker credibility is part of this, or not, I don't know.

Stated in exactly those terms, what is the character's arc over a significant amount of time? Does it have a shape at all?

The two important mechanics are the constant rise of Self-loathing caused by John transgression, sometimes interrupted by some horror revealed scene that show the damage he is doing to people he don't even know, and the rise of Love than in his case means realization of what he is and what really matter to him, and the raising desire to "make amend" by "making it right".

Maybe he begin to think of himself as a real super-hero, and see Ed as a criminal (notice as this directly in opposition of the "make Ed wear the costume before killing him" idea)

How do you hope Color factors into playing the character from this point forward, both in terms of what others say and what you say?

I am not sure about having answered this already or not.

What would be unsatisfying or even deal-breaking, by contrast?

Not being able to kill Ed White (or having him die by out-of-game consensus to "end the game"), having the way I want to play his story-arc compromised by a GM (or other players) that really agree with Ed (for example, having every order of the Master having to do with causing harm to the "poor" rich people)

To tell the truth, this character would be compromised by the way it was born. Being the fruit of a forum exarcize is compromising the reward I would get from the game. Thinking about it, the GM could lose all the Superhero-movie trapping and storyline. All of it. I don't really have any specific attachment to them. So, I am saying at this time that the GM who never make John wear the suit would compromise the character, but it's not true: probably the game would be even better. Why? because, thinking about it, and remembering past games, MLWM is a game about characters, not ideas. It's not a game well suited to social commentary (even if a lot of people use it in that way, with games like "my life with Tony Blair"). Even without playing it, the suit has become almost an afterthought, I had almost forgotten to put it into this post, the personal dependence to Ed was much more "grabbing".

Why I am saying this? I don't know if it is a useful comment or only a distraction, but it show that I, myself, could betray part the initial color of the character, in favor of a new take that interest me more, and the game would benefit from it.

(or, to put it another way, there are no specific rules that say "you will get points only if you talks about the dollar sign": the relationship between Master and Minion, GM and player, is fluid and follow the direction the fiction take, without being tied to what was decided at the beginning)

If the character cannot be played forward from this point, how do you hope or expect Color to factor into how you and others remember and refer to the character?

A short summary of what happened in fictional terms. Usually in MLWM, saying the name of the Master is enough (the minions names are seldom referred or said aloud: almost everything say "I", in this post alone I had to change "I" into "John" in almost every occurrence of the name)

The Character Sheet will follow, by email.

[Ron Edwards]

John Valentino's final sheet:

[Markus]

After reading the advancement rules again, I didn't have many options. Even if the GM was really generous and tended to award the maximum suggested number of experience dice, the costs are so high that the only practicable option in practice was to get 1-2 new traits at 3 dice each.

I think I'd keep a few dice as experience dice, without spending them to raise anything. Exp dice are great, they're very flexible mechanically and they will allow me to introduce character-relevant stuff on a moment-by-moment basis (remember that you must justify their use by narrating a small episode or detail from the past that somehow is relevant to the situation at hand).

Then I'd surely try to buy a trait describing a relationship, which is neither described nor implied anywhere in the OTE rulebook, but is also not explicitly forbidden. Let's see, I'm quite sure that given half a chance, I'd buy a relationship trait with the bounty hunter (let's call him Jaques) that followed Ricardo on Al Amarja. And since I know that my GM will use this detail to drive the situation home, I'd say that I managed to snatch quite a bit of player empowerment from a system like OTE--

The fact that you can, after all, get functional play from a suboptimal system in specific circumstances is something I'm thinking about since quite a long time: in retrospect, I think that for me, it all started to take shape when Ron explained to me how he'd "use" the Pool's trait mechanics in play. However, I never considered the reciprocal player/GM color buy-in as the crucial hinge of all this. For the moment I'll just say that it sounds convincing!

For the sake of discussion however, it's a pity that nobody of us made a character for a GM-less game. How would the color buy-in/reinforcement dynamics work in (say) Polaris?

*****

[Side note 1: I've prepared the revised sheet but the connection I'm using right now is so pathetic that it can't handle even that tiny upload. In the meanwhile, the bits I changed are just the following: 4 exp dice instead of one, and New trait: "Emphatic link with Jacques (3) - Somehow, Ricardo feels that he can understand this mysterious man. He just sees in his eyes that they're very similar".]

[Side note 2:

(I notice that most of us built characters with major glass jaws. I wonder why? Is there something inherently not very bad-ass about the picture?)

Ron, it's self-evident that my Brazilian+gay subliminal ploy proved stronger than your recommendation of ignoring it. Even you weren't immune: in this respect, the exact choice of words for the, errm, quality you suggest our hero is seen as lacking by most of us, is... telling.]

[Markus]

...OK, it seems it's working now, here's the revised sheet:
https://www.box.com/s/336bb875173399145575

[davide.losito]

how do you describe the character (and most likely his past) in vivid, fictional terms?

Chris probably would try to persuade his comrades heroes to fight for his cause against the New Order.
Some would, but everyone for their own reasons.
I think he would slightly turn into a real terrorist with a mask, cause the idea of the "moral loop" appeals me and looks like some narrative arc I would actually pursue in a game.

So he probably tell his friends how some months ago he killed is former wife who was working with the "enemy" (loosing the relation), and how he progressively lost contact with all the people of his former mundane life.

He is probably a character interested in pushing the system to his Rage half, so to achieve his final goal, so I imagine him with 6 "Controls You" points (which is the value limit for the end-game, in a short game).
More martial / violent skills and some connections in some terrorist / resistance army.

Pam... Pamela would probably be the only connection he kept with the past, but a cold connection just like Alfred is for Batman. No love involved. Or at least, not told.

Stated in exactly those terms, what is the character's arc over a significant amount of time? Does it have a shape at all?

As I said, his "Controls You" side will prevail, bringing him to an existence of revenge, as a vigilantes.
He will have a lot of red dice then, which represent basically a... spiral to Rage.

How do you hope Color factors into playing the character from this point forward, both in terms of what others say and what you say?

Well, at this point Chris is out of the game.
It is a good candidate to become a great Villian for another story. An interesting Villian that attacks the new established system, but with a lot of reasons for the players to discover.
Or he rather become some legend and source of inspiration for a new generation of heroes.

What would be unsatisfying or even deal-breaking, by contrast?

Probably I would be unsatisfied by the fact he remains alone, or rather lonely.
But as far as this exercise goes, I don't see any other end. Even those who love him would fear his anger and his rude manners. And it would be basically some kind of misunderstanding, or lack of communication.

If the character cannot be played forward from this point, how do you hope or expect Color to factor into how you and others remember and refer to the character?

I think I already answered above.

[Ron Edwards]

Good old Milton has made it to 5th grade! I've earned -- geez, in fact, I've already spent 500 points above my initial character build, in increments of 200, 100 (strangely; I'm not sure why 3rd level is uniquely cheap), and 200. So I'll spend each set without showing you the details, up through 4th Grade. I'll mention that since levels of Cheating Fate get used up in play, it's clear that I'll have to buy more as I go along; and I also finally manage to squeak out an additional action per round. And now, at 5th grade, I have 200 more to spend, and this time I want to buy a brand-new Power since permission to do so at 5th Grade is one of the unique benefits of taking the Class HDG/DDD. I'm very tempted to take Ouch!, which is closely allied to Contact! in that it zaps people who touch or grab you, but the fact is, Forcefield is way more practical. In combination with the Armour, my character will finally have a reasonable defense foundation. Spending all 200 points gets me the initial cost of 150 and two levels.

(I noted a couple of mistakes in the previous sheets: I forgot to list two levels of Cheating Fate, and I also reversed the discounts for Armour and Mortality Attack; the character was point-compliant as designed, but not recorded correctly.)

Here he is, all beefed up.

Well, we can do this effectiveness/resource tweaking forever, but I want to think about another issue which is embedded in this game: humanity, exemplified in the Race variable: Human, Android, Hellspawn, Replicant, Mimic, Changeling. One of the classes one can choose if you're not one of the robots is Mutant, which modifies Race. So, basically, a character may be literally human, robot in two flavors, alien in two flavors (one who mimics humans, one who possesses humans), and demon; the non-robot ones can also be Mutants. This is very far from "you can play anything" - all of the character combos are concerned with what being human is, with the most flexible being the humans themselves, especially when their class is HGD/DDD. There's nothing in the rulebook about any of this, but the content is sound, and I think a lot of the incidental text and artwork aim in this direction.

So I think the Positioning is, or can be, judgmental at this level as well as merely plot-oriented. Let's say we play past the point of 5th  grade, when characters are seriously altered through several steps of change, when their values and priorities have been roasted and probably seriously refined, and the whole setting is probably now its own unique Our-Earth, full of interesting characters all doing things, some of whom have met their fates. How will the Real Money compare to other characters, especially the mimics and androids and so on, in terms of being human? Does that term mean anything, anyway? That's where the arc is for this character, especially because he was built to be a fairly sympathetic villain, to the extent of being a villain protagonist and well-intentioned extremist instead of merely a vicious sociopath. Has he validated his original point of view? Or not? I don't mean to be too idealistic about it, because there's no shape to this arc or any expectation of such an arc inherent to the reward mechanics of any kind in the text, which only concerns itself with characters living or dying. And for damn sure there's not even a peep about it on the sheet itself. All of this is what I see that I'd find most fun when playing the game, and reaching a finalized conclusion about this character, if and when, would spell a solid endpoint for play for me, or a satisfied switch to another character.

Actually, now that I think about it, there is another component of play that factors into long-term Reward as well. Arguably the text is explicit concerning its satirical, semi-surreal, yet grounded commentary on the real world, and I think play would pretty much have to develop our own satirical take on the world at large. Which brings me to the similar issue concerning Al Amarja, and also concerning the setting for Freemarket. (Two parenthetical points. (1) Articulating such content is not necessary for doing it. (2) OK, granted, conceivably a group could play any of these games with absolutely zero appreciation for the politics, culture, and degrees of satire underlying them, but I think they'd be idiots.)

For My Life with Master, the larger moral question is fixed: the Master sucks and now he's dead, we knew that. The real analysis occurs by examining the characters in parallel. I'm not as clear on how this level of Reward and analysis applies to the characters/settings/games with Aberrant or Dawn of a New Tomorrow.

I'm looking forward to seeing Hans' and Nathan's characters too. Hans, you're probably way ahead of me on this, but it strikes me that MRCZ advancement is the more important variable - perhaps your final version could put the MRCZ at a Tier that you personally consider to be "success" from the standpoint of the starting characters.

Best, Ron

[Moreno R.]

I just realized why the starting color (from the picture) was so extraneous and difficult to imagine for the endgame: I didn't really follow the real game procedures of My Life With Master.

In MLWM, the starting color is about the Master. Only after creating the Master (and with him the setting and color) the players create their characters.

What I did, instead, was to create a minion (looking at the picture) and then imagining him in a situation and a Master compatible with that costume. In this manner the costume was not very tied to the master, it was only a detail of a order given to the Minion.

If I had really followed the game procedures, that picture should be of the Master (with the minions being probably his "Robin", "Alfred" or "Lois"). And this would have tied that Color much more to the killing at the Endgame.

Even if I had to take the character in the picture as The Minion by the rules of the exercise, I should have tied the Master to that costume much more than I did.  Ed White should have been someone symbolized by that dollar sign.  Someone who would use John Valentino as "Captain Free Market" only, and only in that costume. Maybe some bank, or industry, or a political candidate, that would use him as corporate symbol or for propaganda.

All the rest, the names, the numbers, can stay the same, but in this way it become impossible even think about the endgame without putting that Color front and center of the scene.

[Hans Chung-Otterson]

I'm looking forward to seeing Hans' and Nathan's characters too. Hans, you're probably way ahead of me on this, but it strikes me that MRCZ advancement is the more important variable - perhaps your final version could put the MRCZ at a Tier that you personally consider to be "success" from the standpoint of the starting characters.

Mine will be up tomorrow. I had actually envisioned, following Topic #3, that Ickarus might even be in a different MRCZ at this point--though as you suggest, taking his starting MRCZ up to the point of fulfillment, where he would go on his wayward way, is a good option.

[Hans Chung-Otterson]

Sheets forthcoming.

Okay, on to topic 3:

Now for the questions. What is the Color element of the reward system in action at this scale, including both its terms and mechanics? In other words, how do you describe the character (and most likely his past) in vivid, fictional terms?

Ickarus has divided his time pretty well between doing his own performances and making connections with other actors/performers and working for Marketasmo! to distribute the Tech and advertising that these performers need. In fact, being a part of Marketasmo! has been, for Ickarus, a way to network with like-minded artists. At the point I have the sheets now (6 sessions), Marketasmo! has been fairly successful, and Ickarus has gotten what he needed out of it, and will likely leave soon--as will Interrobang, the Creature Creator. Ickarus is Friends with some folks who like to stage Happening-like performances, and they have folded his Dollar Bill character into their rotating cast, all characters designed to comment on one aspect or another of station life.

Interrobang is likewise connected with other like-minded people and will go her separate, creature-creating way.

Urlo and Faux W.G., the other two founders of Marketasmo!, will keep the MRCZ going: the work they do is popular, and it affords them to indulge in their passions on the side. Plus, they're growing.

Stated in exactly those terms, what is the character's arc over a significant amount of time? Does it have a shape at all?

Ickarus' arc looks something like: Passionate but unfocused performer ---> Effectively doing the "waiting tables" day job of many aspiring artists and networking (with Marketasmo!) ---> Hooked up with like-minded individuals, performing and honing his skills.

The shape of the arc is that Ickarus had a passion and used Marketasmo! to help him on his way to where he wanted to be. Another way it could have gone is that his connections with Marketasmo! could have pulled him more strongly and his passion could have been diverted into something else. Now that I think about it, in actual play, this scenario would likely have been a bit messier, with the other people in Marketasmo! being the other users at the table--Ickarus still may have left, but it would have been a bigger deal than I made it out to be here.

How do you hope Color factors into playing the character from this point forward, both in terms of what others say and what you say? What would be unsatisfying or even deal-breaking, by contrast? If the character cannot be played forward from this point, how do you hope or expect Color to factor into how you and others remember and refer to the character?

Either way--continuing to play Ickarus or dropping him--seems equally viable to me at this point. If I kept playing him, I would want all the established Color that we've created to be reincorporated into what Ickarus does and what happens to him, and how other users and characters talk to and about him. I want his Dollar Bill character to matter to how he's viewed as a person, even if in a non-serious way. I want his history with Marketasmo! to be consequential, opening some doors and shutting others, and bringing him into conflict and cooperation with his old friends.

If I dropped him, or this was the end of the game (likely), I would hope we remember and refer to Ickarus' cool superhero performances and how they affected people and the station at large, and the connections he made with other groups through his band T-shirt designs, and how he reconciled with 6.3 Jen. Stuff like that.

The more I make up fictional history the more I can see that exactly none of this would have happened in Freemarket play--it's too neat! Freemarket bends your character into funny shapes and shoots you down unexpected paths. Many more interesting things would have happened than what I detailed here. But that's fine, and probably a little beside the point of this experiment.

[Hans Chung-Otterson]

[ndpaoletta]

Sorry for the delay, I had to go out of town for a couple days!

Re-write the character after a significant reward cycle. This means when you think the character has really paid off for you, as an instrument of play, sufficiently so that you are glad you've played so far and can look at this play-history as a unit of fully-realized fun. "You got what you came for," relative to this group, this game, and this character.

I'll post the sheet below. But I'm thinking that this would be after a full "campaign" of play, which in my personal play history is about 3-6 months of weekly sessions. Maybe two more "stories" as I defined them in my last post, so the overall arc of the character can be seen as having played out in three acts. This would give me 40 more XP to invest in the character. I saved 5 from my last story. So, with the 25 after my second story:

- I finally buy that third dot of Domination I'm gonna buy it Tainted, so it costs 5 XP. Fletch now has Taint 5.
- I'm going to buy a dot of Mega-Stamina, both to help with his survivability, but also give him resistance to baseline diseases and add to his life-span. Costs 6 XP.
- Fletch did a bunch of Investigation during this story, which he didn't actually have. So I buy a dot (for 3) and then another (another 2). Costs 5 XP.
- I have 9 XP left. Again, I'm going to bank it because I want to raise his Mega-Manipulation, and need 10 to do it.
- As per the events of play, I drop his Backing in N! (as he leaves the organization), and give him 2 dots of Backing in the Teragen, instead. His Influence drops as well, and lets the say that his assistants were both actually killed in this story. I remove his Followers background, but he has a dot of Allies (his Teragen PC comrade), now.
- Also, the events of play saw his temporary Taint hit 10, so he has another permanent Taint there - 6 total. Which means he needs another Aberration. Technically, you're supposed to take one Aberration per point of Taint over 3, so I need two more! I take "Unearthly Glow" - Fletch has started to enamate a subtle golden glow which seems to flow out of his eyes and swirls around his body, gaining substance when he uses his powers. I also take a mental Aberration, giving Fletch a God Complex - he's convinced that he's simply superior to those around him.

Now, after the third story, I have 29 to spend.
- 10 XP to add a dot a Mega-Manipulation
- I want to add an offensive power to his arsenal. I look at Mental Blast, but he actually doesn't have a great stat for that (based off of Intelligence). On the facing page is the Poison power, which is intriguing, based off of Stamina, and just fits the creepy, subtle-rather-than-showy vibe Fletch is giving off. It costs 11 XP to take Poison and then add a second dot.
- 5 XP to add another dot of Mega-Stamina
- His last 3 XP to add one dot of capacity to his Quantum Pool
- Events of play add a dot each of the Backing, Contacts and Allies backgrounds.
- He has some more temporary Taint, and I roleplay his God Complex getting more severe

What is the Color element of the reward system in action at this scale, including both its terms and mechanics? In other words, how do you describe the character (and most likely his past) in vivid, fictional terms?  Stated in exactly those terms, what is the character's arc over a significant amount of time? Does it have a shape at all?

Fictionally: after the first story, Fletch gets involved in a serious behind-the-curtain black-ops operation, where both the corporate overlords at N! and agents of Project Proteus (another canonical faction, which is devoted to a Nova sterilization program) are trying to co-opt Fletch's powers and persona to their own ends. Let's say the events of play lead to Fletch turning on N!, as his experiences push him farther away from sympathy with the baselines who hold his pursestrings. Perhaps the second act ends with a physical confrontation where Fletch narrowly escapes death with the aid of his Teragen contacts (lets say they're other PCs). The third act sees Fletch joining the Teragen and severing ties with his baseline life, shedding the marketing associated with him, and leading an operation against Project Proteus as a combined revenge/strike for Nova rights.

The payoff, for me, is finding out which combination of pressures will lead to Fletch breaking away from his baseline life. I pointed him at that break eventually, and it's a mechanically-supported arc for Nova characters (using the Taint stat as an indicator). But it would depend on what circumstances the GM created, the fidelity of the surrounding fiction as created by the other players, and the specific interactions of the other PCs with Fletch in play.

How do you hope Color factors into playing the character from this point forward, both in terms of what others say and what you say? What would be unsatisfying or even deal-breaking, by contrast? If the character cannot be played forward from this point, how do you hope or expect Color to factor into how you and others remember and refer to the character?

So, with his stats at this level, Fletch is getting to a pretty serious power level compared to canonical Nova characters. He's emerging as a leader of other Novas, and has the mechanical power to enforce agendas, rather than reacting to circumstances. He's also at the point where his conflicts pretty much have to be with other Novas, or with world governments/organizations, for them to have any meaning. I'd expect his past persona to come up in-game as a call to his "weakness" or his supposed "corruption" by baseline sympathies, and something that he would seek to distance himself from (or perhaps try to retroactively erase). I would refer to his past as something he's "transcended," and expect that to be a thematic element going forward. Also, his faction has a special "Chrysalis" thing, which is both a fictional process and a mechanical alternate-XP system for character improvement, and I'd definitely angle towards making that a fictionally viable option for Fletch.

(One interesting point about how this version of the Storyteller XP system works: "organic" characters that are built with XP tend to be less effective, in sheer numerical terms, than a character built from scratch with the same amount of Nova points, or whatever. That is, Fletch would be a right terror (equivalent to many of the canonical characters) if I'd built this version of the character sheet with 50 Nova points, rather than 20 NP + 60 XP.)

Big sheet

[Ron Edwards]

Thanks to everyone!

(This paragraph is a review of Creative Agenda.) You don't play a game in order to follow the rules. You follow the rules for some other reason. You don't play a game with other people In order to have fun. You have fun with them because all of you did something you wanted to do, for some other reason. In each case, the "some other reason" is Creative Agenda (exactly as I've written, i.e., the types, singularly) and the fact that you did it successfully is Reward. That concept is easy notwithstanding the fact that it took over a decade for people to read it without calling me a Nazi, traitor, or lunatic.

(This paragraph is what I really wanted to talk about): how you and your hypothetical fellow players were able to stay in tune with one another at the table, how you made the imagined Situation exciting, and how you made System seem like a part of Situation, is Color. Color appears to be a modifying component of Exploration -- but it's not a trivial modification, but instead crucially integrative, and as it turns out, the modifier is substantial enough even to exist prior to the others. I put this exercise together to focus on one specific point about Color: its unifying and integrating property across the other components, especially as applied through time: prep, in-progress, and in retrospect.

I deliberately chose a problematic image. First, it's a superhero, and superhero role-playing is fraught with a whole unique bank of problems distinct from the more acknowledged bank of problems found in fantasy role-playing. Second, the dollar sign is by no means a neutral concern. You can trivialize it, re-define it, invert it, or anything else, including playing it straight -- but any one of these is consequential. I sort of hoped for a little bit more ideological aggression about the symbol across the characters, as I tried to demonstrate with mine, but the effect was there enough to be recognized anyway.

All thoughts, ideas, agreements/disagreements, questions, and applications are welcome. Also, if anyone was following along with a character of their own, please tell us about him!

I have a bunch of specific thoughts about the characters used so far, which I'll contribute as we go along.

Best, Ron

[davide.losito]

I like this thread because too many times I read comments about the fact "this is just Color", or "I don't really care about Color, I care about a System that is functional"... and I found myself thinking... "functional to what?" and that "what" is Color.

Color is the reason you play for, or rather, the reason you chose a game to play and not another.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi everybody,

I lost a bit of momentum for this thread due to a whole flurry of Big Model issues, all of which, as it turns out, could have been nicely reinforced with this thread's topic. Maybe we can reverse-engineer some of them instead.

I know that the "play it in your head" step was a bit artificial. However, I was a little surprise that some of you specifically abandoned the only touchpoint you had - the superhero dollar motif - and focused on the game's reward mechanics in an effective void. For a couple of them, it was like seeing an exercise in "if I were playing a character with no distinguishing features at all, in a game stripped of all context except for scoring points."

What I want to do is see how Reward and reward mechanics can get separated. I'll pick two examples in which I think the account lost track of the starting Color in favor of constructing a more generic, reward-mechanic oriented approach to play. I've listed my more-or-less instant reactions to what I read, and I urge you to correct me if I'm being unfair or didn't understand you well enough. All thoughts are welcome.

Freemarket: As I see it, Reward at the character level in Freemarket is often about the memories - which are pretty much the only genuinely individualizing features they have. So -- why did the relationship memory get privileged as an arc, and the costume not? Did the costume mean anything to the audience, considering that Thin Slicing and Ephemera were available to make it mean something (and that was sort of the MRCZ's point)? Ultimately what could it mean for the MRCZ's vision statement? Why do you see Ickarus as peripheral to the MRCZ, rather than its indispensable front man? And at the community level of Reward in this game, what is the MRCZ's impact on the station's culture, which in this case is specifically and only an impact on values; how stable is the station in terms of such impact, and how stable should it be. All of which starts feeding into what I think of as Premise-level talk: how does power (real power) arise from popularity; what actually is a medium of exchange --

My Life with Master: On a purely personal note, I loathe playing this game with anyone who is thinking about those final values and the potential Epilogue. For me the Reward is in the accumulating, passionate reactions every character has, generating what feels and looks like a purely deterministic plot by the time the Epilogues come around, and their role is only to put a period (perhaps a meaningful one) at the end of it. Some of the things which interest me about those plots include the relative degrees of humanity and monstrosity the Minion achieves through his or her own actions (e.g. the details of following a command, or the way a Connection is dealt with). But I also care a lot about the specifics of a Minion: the look and feel, and what that means. For example, did John play Captain Freemarket to the hilt, without caring about it one way or the other, and only get irritated about something else Ed made him do? Or, conversely, did Ed give him anything he wanted as long as he acted like Captain Freemarket 24 hours a day? How exactly did wearing that precise outfit and promoting that persona interact with the Love mechanic? Without any of this, I find the character utterly non-compelling. He could have been a dog-faced boy, a girl with a withered arm, or a potted plant, merely a placeholder for "Generic Minion character."

Perhaps I can put it this way: imagine these two characters in two different groups/contexts using the same traditional fantasy RPG system, played without deconstruction or satire.



Could they have exactly the same scores for the items on their character sheets? Sure. Are they the same to play (Reward)? And related, would the players and group apply reward mechanics to them identically? I don't think so.

It's taken me years to articulate this properly, and perhaps I've held off because it seems so harsh: Reward without developing the Color is gutless. Those fabulous unapologetic D&D Gamists know that. Even the ones who recapitulate their Renfaire characters, playing a grotesque amalgam of pseudo-Gamism and Illusionism, (pretend this is before) know (pretend this is after) it!

Or how about these? (same thing, before & after) http://rotgrub.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/reading2.jpg?w=640 and http://teamgt.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/raistlin051608_resize-329x500.jpg ...

Have we forgotten?

Best, Ron

[ndpaoletta]

I wonder if there's a trap here, Ron. Developing meaningful Color-as-it-would-develop-in-play as a thought experiment seems predetermined to result in a certain blandness, because it's exactly the unexpected twists and turns of play that builds (dare I say bricoles) that meaning. Trying to elucidate the reward of playing this character outside of the mechanical ones of the game is like asking "so, what happened in the 3rd session" - it hasn't happened, so there's not much to talk about beyond vague generalizations. Like, "the reward for me is seeing my investment in the character pay off" - pay off how? I dunno, it's the details that make it rewarding, or not, in the sense that I think you're aiming for.

A stronger experiment, perhaps, would be to ask for volunteers to create a character based on the image for games they're actually playing, and report back after each session...

(also, I know that I entered this thing because I was interested in it as a process, and not because I was particularly compelled by the character image. I'm imagining that dropping the "dollar" signifier as an important element may stem from that issue)