[S/lay] The Sunken City of Ys

[Eero Tuovinen]

Tommi Horttana, an irrepressible rpg-fiend whom I got to know last year, came back from Berlin for a quick visit. We apparently now officially have a "thing" where we play S/lay w/ Me together when given a chance. I won't complain, it's quite nice to be on the receiving end of somebody else's motivation now and then.

I started playing S/lay with intent last summer, here are the last episodes of this "campaign":
In the Refugium (with Tommi)
The Tulpa (with Peitsa)
The Red Desert of the Mad Lord (with Sami)
Fear of Death Crystallized (with Tommi)

This was our third session with Tommi, and we had an entirely acceptable handle on our late sessions despite the six-month break (in part thanks to our having documented them carefully, as per above), so there was no reason not to continue the adventures of Tommi's doomy-gloomy singer of doom, Kiuru, last seen in "In the Refugium":

I am myself. I am canny, brutal, experienced. I laugh at the gods. I delight in life. My foes meet death swiftly. My Songs are beloved wherever I go, but I fear they sow doom and horror in my wake. My hair is dark and long, my frame lean and sinewy, my voice bright. I dress in strange animal skins, cut in foreign ways.

I wished to disappear in the wilderness, remove myself from human society, so as to avoid having my curse befall anybody else. I traveled far to breathe the clean, free air of the mountains. Encountering the slope-brow Rald and his daughter Rachel, I was forced out of the refuge and back into the world of men.

Because we already had our hero, we went directly to choice of location and mission. Tommi knew immediately what he wanted: we had earlier added "The sunken city of Ys" into the list of locations (on account of it sounding like an interesting place; strictly speaking there's no rule for adding locations), because it had come up in Kiuru's last adventure, so of course Tommi wanted to have Kiuru visit the place. Specifically, we played Kiuru's first visit to Ys, which we knew from his last adventure to have maybe been the cause of the city's sinking in the first place.

When I first left my tribe and eastern homeland, I first traveled west as far as land would carry me. Therein I heard stories of the wondrous silver harp of Ys, known as the Angelic Instrument; this I had to have, and thus to Ys I journeyed.

My response as the "I" player was to imagine the city of Ys with a Monster and a Lover, which I did by reading the Wikipedia article on the topic, writing down the highlights and then choosing my interpretation. This is what I came up with from the multitude of options:

Lover (2): Princess Dahut of the kingdom of Kerne is a passionate woman whose love for the sea was cause for his father, king Gradlon, to restore and expand the ancient city of Ys into his new capital. Since then she has grown into a hedonistic and wanton lady, around whose whim the entire city of Ys revolves. Her many assignations and routine trysts are implicitly approved, for none but the king may have any say against her. She can be manipulative in her dealings with others, but ultimately Dahut is helpless in face of her gilded cage, no matter how much she rages.

Monster (6): Princess Dahut has become self-destructive in her ennui, and she will take others with her if given an opening. She will poison your virtue with vice slowly and with the blameless deceit of the naturally cunning. She is civilized to the utmost, this very fact being her downfall. Those she won't attract to intimate self-destruction singly will fall before a troop of her eager suitors, attacking in a group, jealous of her attentions.

Yes, I did the "the Monster and the Lover are the same" thing. Technically speaking I could myself see an entirely clear divide between the two natures of princess Dahut, though: she is a basically admirable person, twisted by the corrupt meaninglessness of the golden age into a creature of hedonism. A complex thing to play, for sure, but that's where inspiration took me.

Actual play was very well paced this time, and not at all hurried at any point; we played the story at pretty much the same speed we'd have in something like Dust Devils or whatever. There was a cast of characters, including some bit roles (publican, water-seller, druid, kitchen drudge, various suitors of the princess) and full-fledged NPCs (king Gradlon, Vinwaloe the saint). We played from 7pm to 12pm or so I think, so 5 hours, including setup.

The fabled setting of Ys inspired clear fairy-tale overtones, which mixed well with our supposedly-2000BC-Europe. There was an enchanted harp (made all the more fabulous by having metal strings, an impossible feat for the time), a princess with a multitude of suitors, a fabulous city built below sea-level, a king with the key to the destruction of the city, and so on. The city had a Venetian flavour, except even more corrupt, pointless and luxurious.

A lot of time was spent in maneuvering the social particulars of how Kiuru got to know the setting of Ys (barbarian vs. civilization being the theme), and how he got to know the princess, who held a perverse curiousity towards this singer of sad songs. I developed Ys as a society where laugh and false smiles were socially mandatory, despite the pervading bitterness, the chronically melancholy king and the suicidal princess. Kiuru as a Finnic singer was obviously (to us I mean; it's part of the Finnish identity that we're pretty grim) radically, unacceptably melancholy for the city where the only acceptable term for a musician was "jongleur". Perhaps he could teach something of life to the princess and the city?

However, it was not to be: Kiuru was pretty single-mindedly after the Angelic Instrument, all the more so when he heard the citizens praise its tones and how they were strong enough to be heard over the wind and the sea (which was not the case for Kiuru's gut-string kannel). He was interested in princess Dahut, but instrumentally for the most part, especially when he discovered that she most likely held the harp in her tower. He soon lost patience with the difficult princess, tragically non-understanding of her existential grief.

I found princess Dahut a very interesting character to play, both as a Lover and a Monster. For example, I liked how half of the Monster's attacks were ploys and attacks by jealous suitors of the princess, while another half were self-destructive impulses of the princess, as she attempted to convince Kiuru to jump into the sea with her, or took him to "eat the green smoke" in some disreputable cavern, or drank herself and Kiuru to a stupor with a random set of her suitors for company. But then there were also the better moments, when she had a little bit of an opportunity for genuine human contact with Kiuru, as she saw him as a foreigner, and a purposeful one at that. Unfortunately he never dared to reveal his actual motivation to her, that being theft of the harp, and thus he never had a chance to show her what it meant to live a purposeful and passionate life.

Alongside the relationship with the princess Kiuru also developed a relationship with Vimwaloe the Saint, a follower of the "Hidden God" and a massive prude in the stoic tradition. This was pretty strange in a way, as I'd only introduced Vimwaloe as a contrasting foil for the citizens of Ys, and for setting color, but Kiuru then decided that here was the one man in the city who he actually got along with. Vimwaloe became a sort of side-kick to Kiuru in the best pulp tradition, ultimately, as they saved each other by turn from the sinking of the city.

Things in the city ultimately came to a head when Kiuru abandoned princess Dahut, who'd made him a sort of companion; as he expressed it, she simply was not pleasurable company to anybody, probably not even herself. This was quite a strike to her self-esteem, and a direct contributor to what happened after.

Kiuru was constantly clearly superior in the dice through-out the story, ever since the first dice fell '6' vs. '1'. He ended up with four good dice, but I managed to roll a tie in the total; we decided that a tied conflict is a loss for the hero, although I don't think that the text really says either way (and it doesn't matter mechanically, as long as you can make some call).

The Climax: Kiuru was surprised in his tavern singer gig by the suitors of princess Dahut, who were out in the city hunting for him; apparently she could not rest now that her companion and singer of sad songs had abandoned her. While Kiuru hid with his trusted friend Vinwaloe from the man-hunt, unknown to him the princess had stolen the keys to the dam of Ys from her father's purse. With the tide-water at its highest point and a storm approaching from the sea, she opened the gates and oversaw the city being engulfed by water. Kiuru and Vinwaloe fought their way brutally to a boat, which they took to the castle, the last landmark of the city to disappear under water. In the high tower of the princess Kiuru found the Heavenly Instrument he was after. However, their boat broke in the storm while escaping from the city/bay, and the harp was lost in the ocean.

The Climax choices were interesting: Tommi decided to save Vinwaloe (from the implicit sinking of Ys, that was pretty clearly going to happen unless he stopped it) and himself, which meant that the city would sink (wouldn't be much of a Ys story if it didn't end with that, would it) and Kiuru would fail to achieve the instrument of his desire, despite his very credible pulp fantasy heist action in the climax. Saving Vinwaloe, his acerbic boon companion, was a very nice touch, I thought - very pulp.

All in all I enjoyed the narrative qualities of our story quite a bit again; this is a very Story Now game, the payoff is specifically that we get to do some pretty cool storytelling together. I especially liked the pulp fantasy tone this time, this entire story was like a combination of Lord Dunsany and Fritz Leiber. I almost didn't stay in my socks when Vinwaloe urged Kiuru to seize a boat by force in the interest of survival from the "sinners of Ys", and then he did it all cold-blooded and pragmatic, just like that.

It was interesting how princess Dahut fell "flat" on Tommi; he was quite explicit about how she did not have any lovable qualities at all. This wasn't in a bad way, I think, as the story didn't really care whether they got along - in fact, Kiuru was the sort of cynically manipulative asshole who shouldn't even find any real human contact if you ask me, so all was well in that regard. I hope that he and Vinwaloe-the-prude are happy together :D I think that the big difference in our viewpoints had something to do with the fact that where I saw a person utterly out of control of her own life, and therefore in need of sympathy, Tommi saw a person in a dominant social position that she misused pointlessly.

[Ron Edwards]

This is great! I second the notion that sometimes a Lover that totally fails to connect is a good thing - you learn so much about the protagonist that way.

Best, Ron

[Tommi Horttana]

Thanks for the report, Eero.

I suppose we do have a "thing". It's nice for once to play with someone who seems to share the priority I put on roleplaying. :) Who doesn't need to lot of convincing or schedule-shuffling in order to just play something. And it's convenient to play S/ay because of the same lack of scheduling issues that's always there with more people.

Anyway, this session was indeed pretty successful, again. The story that emerged could, with some heavy editing, make a decent pulp short story. Though we seemed to disagree a lot (as always, I guess) what kind of short story we were doing. I was going for a dark adventure about a rather selfish main character who may or may not be the cause of a disastrous event because of his curse that he didn't take seriously. Eero, however, didn't seem to be playing in the same land of fairy tale at all, but rather in a very real place, inhabited by people who didn't play with fantasy tropes at all but rather had problems taken straight from real life. More specifically, depressed, suicidal people not in the melodramatic "let's die together because our love is doomed and the world is bleak" way but in the "world sucks, so do you, and I couldn't care less" way. Which I never really grasped, so I was pretty confused about the whole princess situation. I kept wondering if this was the lover at all or if she was the monster, or if she was neither at all, as she didn't really behave like either. She wasn't really doing much at all to make Kiuru love her, but she wasn't really actively doing anything to hurt him or block his goal either. She didn't fit any of the traditional pricess molds I tried to fit on her: She wasn't the really picky and prudish princess with suitors from all the lands and then some - apparently she was just spending evening after evening in wine-driven strumpetry with a familiar bunch of suitors. She wasn't the bored princess in the gilded cage looking for something different - she seemed to be just as bored with the charming, non-conforming stranger as she was with her suitors. She wasn't the only one who cared in the city of the shallow - she seemed to care less than anyone. She wasn't even a proper monster - she was just passively sitting in Kiuru's way, mostly interested in hurting herself and possibly her surroundings.

I had intended the Silver Harp of the Archangels to be the token object of greed that Kiuru was seeking, possibly getting to care for the princess and the city while tradically causing its destruction, but there seemed to be very little to care about. So the play ended up circling somewhat more than I liked around his various attempts to get the harp. The only person who didn't really make much of a connection with Kiuru but at least was willing to talk to him for more than ten minutes without trying to screw him over one way or another was the doomsaying foreigner. So he made a decent side-kick and someone to save from the sinking city. In the end, the harp quest got a fairly satisfactory ending as Kiuru ended up getting it for a moment as he noticed the tower where it was kept behind lock and key had become conveniently accessible by boat.

This time, I think, the length of the session was good, and we had time to tell a story with a proper beginning, middle, and end, instead of the beginning and a middle-turned-an-end we've had previously. That was because we didn't roll dice quite as readily as before on either side, and paused around the three die mark to have our dysfunctional exchanges with the princess.

Would be nice to have clarification on what happens when the combined dice are a draw, though - it was fine with me to agree to defeat this time, but it may not always be so.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Tommi! It's great to see you here again.

The story that emerges is always a synthesis, isn't it? I enjoy that aspect of play a lot.

I also enjoy seeing pairs of players discover the slow-down potential of play, so that the structure is no longer merely a race between dice.

The rule for the dice outcome is that the "you" player must exceed the total of the "I" player - therefore a tie is a loss for the "you" player.

Best, Ron

[Eero Tuovinen]

The rule for the dice outcome is that the "you" player must exceed the total of the "I" player - therefore a tie is a loss for the "you" player.

That's how I figured it from the (pretty non-committal) word choice in the text. A tricky type of rule, something like that, as unlike most rules it can't be deduced from the overall structure of the game. Reminds me of the mathematical axiom of choice: the existence of an arbitrary rule enables us to make a choice between otherwise equally valid alternatives.

[Ron Edwards]

Oh, you two are so damned argumentative. The text is explicit.

I was trying to be polite about it, but this whole "tie" concept has been aggravating me for years. There are two sides with designated titles. One of the sides, which is designated unequivocally always to be that particular one, is explicitly told it must exceed the other's score to succeed. There is no ambiguity or possible interpretation involved in this concept.

Under these circumstances the concept of "tie" does not exist and cannot be a source of confusion.

Best, Ron

[Eero Tuovinen]

OK, I took the time to read through the entire rules text with utmost care (as opposed to quick referencing of the sort you'd normally do with games you already just about know). I wanted to see if there really is a clear rule in there as Ron says. Here's what I found:

Each die's rolled value is added to the column's increasing sum. At the end of the match, if your sum exceeds mine, you win.

We have seen the totals and the Goal is now nearly resolved: you have apparently either achieved it or failed to do so.

The latter sentence is something I find easily - and indeed found it last night, as I've found it previously - because it's at the beginning of the section on the Climax, where one would logically look when the Climax happens and the rules concerning it are needed. It's enough to remind you that the sum total of the dice provisionally determines the fate of the Goal, but it unfortunately isn't quite enough to know what to do with a tie. At the time I decided that ties go to "I" because that word choice didn't seem entirely natural if it had been otherwise.

That first sentence is indeed in the rules text on page 14, I just didn't remember that it exists, and as it is just about in the middle of the section on the Match, in a subsection titled "My Go ends", it proved somewhat difficult to fish out when the issue came up for us. At the time I was pretty sure that the rules probably have something else about the dice totals in it (where else would I originally have got the notion that you sum dice at all), but as I couldn't find it with a quick leaf-through, we settled on a fiat solution (that happened to accord with the actual rule).

Hopefully this explains why you get people asking about ties despite the game explicitly disallowing them: it's not that we fabulate the concept where it does not exist, but rather that fallible human cognition parses knowledge in a way different from a rulebook: it is likely for us humans to remember that the bigger total wins, while it is easy for us to forget the boundary condition (whether a tie rule or a definition of supremacy, doesn't make a difference). This is seen all the time with boardgames, boundary condition procedures are one of the most common things you reference the rules for once initial competency has been reached. Combine this tendency to forget the boundary condition with the difficulty of finding the condition in the rules text, and I am not surprised if you get occasional questions about what to do with tied dice: it's easy to read that bit once, play the game several times, and then stumble upon the boundary situation long after you've forgotten the rule or where it could be found in the text. Foibles of humanity.

[Ron Edwards]

I re-organized the text to address that issue when I revised it for the kickstart. Since that project was unsuccessful, I have relegated the physical and textual re-design of the game to the future.

Eero, I don't mind the foible. I do mind being lectured about the clarity of my (explicit, unambiguous) rules, as you did in your previous post, with a hip intellectual reference tossed in for authority.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Sorry if that came off as a lecture, I was just seeking to explain why I missed the rule and why you might get more than the expected amount of questions about ties.