[S/Lay w/Me] Last stand at the edge of ignorance.

[Joshua Bearden]

Played my first full game a couple of nights ago with Sam Fraser, a new friend and a nascent game designer (Grow Giant Games). Of the gamers I've met in this city I had pegged Sam as "the person most likely to get it" wrt S/Lay.  It turned out I was right, he clearly grokked this game in one sitting better than I had after months of owning the book and reading through it.

I'll describe the game and its story in this thread.  But first I'm going to try posting---since I haven't been able to post or preview any long messages since Tuesday.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi! If it hasn't been the three-link limit that's been screwing up your posting, then email directly to lumpley@gmail.com to see if Vincent can help you out. He's been finding all sorts of buggy little details ever since the server bellyache.

I'm looking forward to hearing about your game, the more so if you run a few back-and-forth adventures. Don't forget about filling out the form at the gallery.

Best, Ron

[Joshua Bearden]

Sam chose the scholar at the citadel.  His scholar was ancient, bearded, and hobbling but fluid, fearsome and immaculately dressed. The Citadel housed a library and museum, the sole repository of human knowledge in a dying world wracked by  desolation and ignorance. It was built on an island at the centre of a great crater-like moat or abyss or something; it was accessible only by a single narrow footpath, with fatal precipices on either side.

Throughout the session we took liberty with each other's authority very frequently and fluidly - probably I did this more than Sam. For example he stated his goal was to protect the knowledge inside the citadel, later this was clarified to "ensure it would never be lost". Yet I interfered a little and told him that despite it appearing as if his goal was to preserve the knowledge in the library, it was just as likely that he strove to keep people out of the citadel because of his fixation on Sophia, a beautiful an ageless woman who seemed to have always resided there, known only to him. He had no problem with me casting aspersions on the sincerity of his stated goal.

In the first Go, the scholar stood guard on the path and watched as yet another group of pilgrims, they came from time to time, gathered at the base of the path. He'd dealt with such before. He considered it part of his duty to prevent the ignorant or unworthy from entering the citadel, lest they corrupt or carry off the knowledge necessary for the eventual rejuvenation of civilization. In his 72 years at his self-assigned post he had yet to judge a single supplicant worthy.

Two figures detached from their group and began making their perilous passage
toward him. One was an old man, bent and blind. The other, young but stained
with the filth of poverty and endless travel, was a woman with peircing
gray eyes. She supported and lead the aged one.  The scholar set himself at the midpoint, and waited. We really
slowed down the action for a while, our alternating goes describing a lot of subtle
posturing: the scholar attempting to discourage their progress with
escalating threats. The pilgrims responding with the dogged insolence of the
truly destitute who have nothing left to lose.

"Take one step further, without my leave, and you'll fall to your death!" 

"If you do not let us in, then we have already fallen. Death is unavoidable."

Stuff like that. Finally, I decide to introduce the lover, maybe and I realize
I need a name for the scholar. Sam obliges.

"Baldric!" cries Sophia, "Come. I am afraid. Hold me now!".  In 72 years
Baldric had never heard her express either fear or the remotest hint of physical affection. But in this moment he feels palpable panic in her voice accompanied by overwhelming burning bodily desire.
...

to be continued.

[Joshua Bearden]

Again, I appropriate licence and tell Sam what he actually feels. He
didn't object, perhaps because I made it clear that though feelings of urgent carnal lust combined with desperately tender protectiveness welled up within him, he retained complete freedom of choice to respond to or ignore those feelings.  Happily he responded on his next go, turning his back on the pilgrims and rushing back to the citadel. At the doorway though, he turns back to look at them once more.  These two actions on his go earn him his first two dice. He's troubled to note the pair have vanished from view? Did they fall? But he cannot spend time in contemplation. I tell him the fraction of a moments delay provokes a vicious blast of hurt and jealous rage from Sophia.

The action continues in the library, where as it happens Sophia maintains an opulent boudoir. As he reaches the threshold to her private domain she grasps his arm with shocking strength and begins pulling him toward her bed.  He makes no effor to resist but is stopped abruptly when another woman, with equal strength seizes his other arm and cries, "Stop, do not go to her. She'll kill you and destroy this place forever." It's the young pilgrim. The old man is nowhere in sight. Both women then dig their fingers so
deeply into his arms, each draw blood.  I declare the monster has finally moved and roll my first die.  (by this point I'm about 4 dice behind).

Sophia protests that the other has entered here for the same purpose.

Baldric wrenches free and attempts to respond judicially to competing allegations in vein of  "she will destroy/has been destroying this place all along, look the pages are blank! With each back and forth I declare the monster has moved again but each time it's plausible that either one is it.  Confused he wrenches free and makes an Istari-esque manifestation, ordering silence, and commanding the old man to make himself visible. 

The old man obliges by appearing in a hulking bestial form, blind eyes now flaming with infernal fire. He snatches a book of occult power from the library and rushes away. After a brief chase and a low key magical duel I finally reach the monster's quota of goes and trigger the climax.

Baldric is indisputably victorious and has two victories to choose from. I fail to read that acheiveing the goal is 'free' so he rescues the book fulfilling his restated goal to 'prevent any book from being removed'. Then I advise that he hears fear of imminent death in a scream coming from Sophia's boudoir. He returns to find only one woman, with aspects of both, at deaths door.  He uses two more victories to first preserve the lovers life, but then restates his goal a final time and binds her spirit to the library permanently so that neither can ever be harmed.  Essentially he saves her by imprisoning her in the library and obligates her to preserve its contents (in case she had any inclinations to start erasing books again).

Having perhaps overspent his hand on pursuing his goal, the old man aspect of the monster slips up behind Baldric an pierces his heart. He bleeds out on the floor of the library knowing at least the citadel and the lover are secure (minus her freedom) for eternity.

In a brief post mortem Sam and I discussed whether, by achieving his goal for free Baldric should have been able to dispatch the monster instead of dying.  We decided that we liked what had happened better, essentially he upped his goal at the end to make it permanent which probably required an appropriate sacrifice.

I'm not sure we made a great story but it was by far the most fun I've ever had with narrativism. No other RPG has delivered that type of pleasure so effortlessly.  It was more comparable to experiences of  emotional and improvisational 'flow' I experienced in some very intense theatre classes, including  theatre games with Augusto Boal's troupe in 1996 or when studying drama in education under Norah Morgan around the same time. (I'm name dropping intentionally to inspire inquiry; perhaps I'll start thread in Your Stuff and tell the story of my personal history of role-playing without playing RPGs. That would be fun and nostalgic for me and conceivably even interesting for someone else to read about. Maybe.)

My conclusion about this game however is that S/Lay is just what it looks like:  An elegant and beautiful piece of performance art in the RPG medium. The text is so effective it, (or perhaps Ron himself), becomes a present and active third player in the game.   

I previously started a session with my wife who is generally averse to RPGs, our game  seemed to have had potential but fizzled early in the Match.  Now I think I might understand what was wrong with my approach and think we should go back and try again. In that game I was treating the goes as improv exercises where one had pursue their goals through dialog.  This was awkward enough for me, for my partner who generally fears role play, it was probably excruciating.  To compound the error, I also felt each Go needed to be much more inconclusive, meaning I didn't feel I could let the Monster win a single battle. Now I realize there are only really 3 things that cannot happen until the climax. Anything short of that is probably fair game.

[Ron Edwards]

Ha! "Baldric," awesome! By Crom's great bronzed balls! (See the two pages here featuring the Rand Holmes character of that name - and yes, those two pages profoundly influenced S/Lay w/Me).

First, thanks for playing, and many thanks for the very kind comments. I think the game is badly underrated.

Rules comment: if you would, please review the interaction of achieving the Goal, recovering from harm (or not), and killing the Monster (or not). Briefly, since Baldric got his Goal by winning the Match, and with four Good Dice, he could buy two other things from the list. If one of them was not killing the Monster, then he does live, but is badly harmed. He can only die if he fails to get his Goal and does not buy recovery. So ... uh, bluntly, you did not have the option to kill Baldric at all. I-feel-like-it hero death is not part of the rules.

Don't wimp out playing the Monster. It can win. It will kill you, unless you stop it.

I greatly look forward to seeing what you do with the "you" role, Josh, and I hope both you and Sam will consider (i) continuing to play (with Baldric, who lived) and (ii) submitting hero sheets/contracts at the Gallery.

Best, Ron

[Joshua Bearden]

So ... uh, bluntly, you did not have the option to kill Baldric at all. I-feel-like-it hero death is not part of the rules.

Duly noted. Baldric Lives!!  (After saying that you're present at the table I'm not about to ignore an unequivocal ruling from the rules author.) That makes much more sense to me, since he had such a decisive victory it seemed odd that I should be able to kill him.

I greatly look forward to seeing what you do with the "you" role, Josh, and I hope both you and Sam will consider (i) continuing to play (with Baldric, who lived) and (ii) submitting hero sheets/contracts at the Gallery.

I look forward to the same.

[Ron Edwards]

I was looking over the story in some detail, and found myself confused because you hadn't discussed the Monster prior to describing the plot. It seemed to turn out that it was the old man/thing, but you were getting monster dice when two women were arguing over books too. It's almost impossible to tell what happened because "Sophia" seems to come out of nowhere - is she or isn't she the pilgrim woman; how is it that she has a boudoir in the library? I'm missing some key knowledge.

The above is merely curiosity about the fiction the two of you created, but I also wanted to mention some more mechanics-concepts, in the assumption that you're willingly engaged in the learning curve. The concept is that the Monster is not by the rules necessarily preventing the hero from achieving his or her Goal. Its sole requirement is to try to kill the character. Here are the subordinate points under that.

1. Clearly if the hero is dead or just-as-bad, then he or she doesn't get the Goal. I get that. But I'm saying the Monster doesn't have to be defined as anti-the-Goal, or seeking to kill the hero in order to prevent the Goal from being achieved. All the Monster is literally required to be or do is to kill the hero. If this seems to make most sense and be most fun that it does indeed seek to protect, destroy, or acquire the Goal itself, then sure, but again, that is not required.

2. I use "kill" a bit loosely such that "lobotomize" or "trap in a statue forever" count. But it needs to be pretty bad no matter what.

3. So, to put this into mechanics terms, it is to say, the "I" player only rolls dice when the Monster acts toward that particular end. If the Monster is blocking or subverting the hero's Goal-attempts, but without potentially lethal consequences, that's not good enough for dice.

I'm not wholly clear on how these points were or weren't met in your game because, as I said, I am not really sure who the Monster was in the first place, or in fact, what the Lover was doing. But as points, I hope they contribute to playability, and I'd really like to know about the next rounds of play.

Best, Ron

[Joshua Bearden]

Thanks for the further analysis and guidance.  I'll admit during the play through I wasn't one hundred percent clear on the way to achieve monster dice.  Only in the aftermath of the first round did I take proper notice of the distinction between 'frustrate the heroes goal' and 'kill the hero'.  Some of the dice I used in the match were doubtlessly illegitimate.

One thing I will clarify about the story because I felt like it worked in the story and game, though I'm unsure about how it fulfilled the mechanics.  Essentially, I interpreted the freedom to make the lover and the monster the same person as permission to maintain ambiguity about who the lover and monster were for a number of goes prior to the match. I tried to distribute uncertainty about the two roles between three characters until the monster was forced to 'come out'.

The lover was originally introduced as Sophia, a woman who had always lived in the Citadel.  The pilgrims were, at first, just pilgrims.  I then decided that the pilgrim woman might be an opponent of the Lover.  For a moment I opened up the possibility that the pilgrim woman and Sophia were both potentially the lover and or monster and it would depend.  This is why I gave myself a monster die when the two were tearing Baldric in different directions. Finally I decided that the pilgrim woman was actually 'the other half' of Sophia, a powerful spirit who had been sundered by the old man who was really the monster.  I felt I could keep the first monster die because clearly the violence done to Baldric by the split-lover was a consequence of the Monster.

Sam reacted perfectly to this by suspecting the old man and commanding him to appear. This lead to a series of direct confrontations between Baldric and the Monster. Some of which were proper attempts by the monster to kill Baldric, others were more focused on the goal of subverting the library.  During this battle, and off screen, Sophia was able to resolve matters with her other half.

I'm not wholly clear on how these points were or weren't met in your game because, as I said, I am not really sure who the Monster was in the first place, or in fact, what the Lover was doing. But as points, I hope they contribute to playability, and I'd really like to know about the next rounds of play.

Sam and I are planning future rounds even now.  I'm really looking forward to my first play through as 'You'.

[Ron Edwards]

Learning curve up and over!

Essentially, I interpreted the freedom to make the lover and the monster the same person as permission to maintain ambiguity about who the lover and monster were for a number of goes prior to the match.

That's totally legitimate and is an intended possible use of the rules. Sometimes it's pretty straightforward, like the swamp-witch spider-woman LoverMonster I played in an early playtesting round - the hero successfully "purged" her of her monstrosity and she became fully human; he left with her, as it turned out.

The concept can certainly be taken into the realm of productive ambiguity. Tim Koppang did that with his Monster/Lover for my defiant apprentice hero, using crystal-mirror magic and creating a distorted sextet of demon and Crystal Queen apparitions. You can read a bit about that adventure in the site links; it's also summarized in one of the forms at the gallery.

You took it to another level, though, which although not forbidden seems to me to be born of confusion rather than design: hitching the other woman both to the Lover and the Monster. You made it work, fictionally speaking, which is cool - but it also means that the mechanics and dice became murky. Furthermore, the game isn't designed for the "I" player to be improvising the fundamental relationships on the fly like this - you should really know who the Monster is and who the Lover is (including blends and ambiguities, if any), before play begins. That way you can pull off neat shit like this without flailing a little or without the tension of "can I make this make sense."

S/Lay w/Me isn't really improv. It does feature plenty of plot points which emerge based on what just happened, and it's OK to create more stuff into play - in fact, that happens all the time, especially regarding the Goal. But your account borders a bit on constant re-tooling of "what's going on" at a more fundamental level, and coupled with this odd trend on your part of narrating the "you" player's feelings, even borders on trying to maintain control. (I'm shooting for about 45% accuracy in this assessment; if this much fits, then grant me that and I utterly grant you the 55% awesome.) Whereas I suggest nailing down Monster/Lover stuff hard in your mind before play begins, and you'll find that all that energy and attention can be devoted to the legitimately-creative stuff during play, with no more flailing or retrofitting.

Best, Ron

[Joshua Bearden]

This, this right here...

...But your account borders a bit on constant re-tooling of "what's going on" at a more fundamental level, and coupled with this odd trend on your part of narrating the "you" player's feelings, even borders on trying to maintain control. (I'm shooting for about 45% accuracy in this assessment; if this much fits, then grant me that and I utterly grant you the 55% awesome.)

...is what I come to your forums for Ron!  You are remarkably adept at piercing the fog of autobiographical one-sided role-playing accounts to identify unacknowledged bias, confusion, or dysfunction.  You could as easily style yourself a role-playing coach or counsellor; perhaps you already do.

In other words I willingly accede your 45% assessment and raise it too.  I have a continuing tendency to treat role-play as improv by default. This is unfortunate because I don't particularly love improv for its own sake. I also have a hard time trusting other players to contribute wholeheartedly and frequently seize control rather than accept and adapt.

Whereas I suggest nailing down Monster/Lover stuff hard in your mind before play begins, and you'll find that all that energy and attention can be devoted to the legitimately-creative stuff during play, with no more flailing or retrofitting.

It's odd, in both prior attempts I did not even consider taking a minute to make these decisions in advance.  But next time I play 'I',  I will.