[The Eminem RPG] AP and some issues

[Hans Chung-Otterson]

Today I playtested my game "The Kim Sides", which is about Eminem. Here is a link to the PDF.

There's a GM and three players, who play the three personas of Eminem--one body, three people.

They start by each picking one of the three personas:

Marshall Mathers - The regular guy who feels trapped by fame & wants to protect his family. Aim: Make love to Kim.

Eminem - The artist, the businessman, the famous rapper. Aim: Impress Kim.

Slim Shady - The dark side. Violent, silly, drug-addicted. Aim: Make Kim cry.

The Aim is  something they're trying to accomplish during the game. As you can see, it's related to Kim, Eminem's sometime girlfriend/wife/ex. That's because the scenes that will be played out in the game (written as a deck of scene cards) are all related in some way to Eminem and Kim's relationship.

There are two phases to the game: in the first phase, the players all play Eminem, and in the second, they all play Kim.

During scenes in the first phase, one persona at a time has control of Eminem. There's a mechanism in the game (see the linked PDF for details) for the personas to gain control from someone else. This is tied to die rolls, which a persona has to do when they describe something physical or if they are trying to do something other than communicate in a social situation. If you fail a roll, someone else has the opportunity to gain control.

The first scene started with Eminem, in high school, rap battling someone on the steps of the school. He's just broken up with his girlfriend Kim. Another girl, also named Kim, is watching him rap and comes over to him afterward.

They talk for a while (we were warming up, and it took me some moments to get my GM-feet under me, and, I think, for the players to get a sense of how to play) and decide to go back to Eminem's place. His mom is there, and they start to argue. At this point, the Slim Shady player grabs the microphone sitting in the middle of the table.

When you grab the microphone, you gain immediate control over Em without having to wait for someone to fail a roll, and without spending any Drive (points that let you juice rolls and, normally, that you have to spend to gain control of Em).

Slim and the new Kim go into the house, he offers her pills, they take 'em, scene over. As it's written, ending a scene is one of the choices the GM has when a roll is failed. In this case, Slim did fail a roll, but I can't remember what it was for.

In between scenes, instead of doing the normal wagering for control of Em, players can do a Rap Battle, where they improvise a few short lines on what took place in the previous scene. We had three scenes in the Em phase of the game, and in between each one person took up the mic, rapped, and won control. This aspect of the game has promise, but in practice it had the group sitting around, silent for 3 or 4 minutes, while the players tried to think up rhymes. It needs to be easier to do, with something to grab onto. I'm thinking of having a few starting lines for each player on their persona card.

The next scene skipped forward in time, many years: Em & Kim were in their late 20's, and were in court, at a custody battle over their daughter Hailie. Slim again eventually won out, pushed Kim over some chairs, berated her in public, and made her cry. He got his Aim.

The last scene in the Em phase had us back in the teen years, with Kim moving into the trailer that Em and his mom lived in. There was an argument with Em and his mom, placating of Kim, and, eventually, peace made between Kim and Em's Mom.

With these last two scenes, I broke my own rules and did not wait for a failed roll to end the scene. Failed rolls were much fewer and farther between than I expected (I don't think I was enforcing the rules on when to roll strictly enough), and I ended these last two scenes just based on my gut instinct of drama, much like you end a scene in Fiasco.

The Em phase only lasted 3 scenes. Per the text, the Em phase ends when one person runs out of their Drive points (you start with 10, and you get one back in between scenes). However, if we'd have followed that, the Em phase would have ended after only two scenes! A player suggested making two people run out of Drive before the Em phase was over. We went with that, and got one more scene out of it.

Now, this phase of the game is ostensibly competitive. Add up points from completing your Aim and winning Rap Battles. Whoever wins gets to do a final cap on the Em phase, rapping their thoughts on it. Slim Shady won (he was the only one to get his Aim: the Aims as written don't quite work as far as giving everyone an equal chance at getting them).

The next phase is the Kim phase, where the players all play Kim at the same time.

There are no Aims, but each person playing Kim makes up their own Question about the Em/Kim relationship and writes it down. When they have answered their Question, they leave the game. When two Kims have answered their Question, the phase and the game is over.

The Questions we had were:

1.Where would he be without me?
2.Why does he always hurt me like that?
3.Does he actually love Hailie or does he just have it out for me (this one in particular was based on the interaction in the custody battle scene, I think)?

There is no rolling in the Kim phase. Each Kim was supposed to have Drive, and have to spend it to succeed when doing the "describe physical action" or "get something out of a social interaction", just as in the Em phase. However, that quickly proved awkward, I threw it out, and the game worked better for it. As the Kim phase is more centered around answering Kim's internal questions, challenging her to "succeed" at things seemed beside the point. We just free form roleplayed out the interactions between Kim and the various characters.

We had three scenes as Kim before two players answered their Questions and the game was over:

1.After the first divorce, watching Eminem on TV with Kim's friends and daughter Hailie at the premiere of his movie 8 Mile. There's a lot of shitting on Eminem (Hailie left the room), but Kim's friends assert that he does love his daughter, even though she's not sure.
2.Still together, he's just flown out to LA and signed his first record deal. Kim and friends are at a bar in Detroit, when he calls Kim. They have a conversation about bringing her out to LA, and whether or not Eminem feels Detroit is still his home. The "Where would he be without me?" question is answered in this scene. The answer is: Detroit.
3.Kim has moved back in with her parents in her late teens. She's still with Eminem and has not too long ago given birth to their daughter Hailie. Kim's parents argue with her over dinner about whether "Marshall" is good for her, whether he can provide for Hailie and drop his pie-in-the-sky dreams. Kim asserts that he's trying his best, and anyway he's there for her in ways her parents aren't. The "Does he actually love Hailie or does he just have it out for me?" question is answered in this scene: Yes, he actually does love Hailie.

The game then ended.

It went better than I thought it did, and on reflection now I felt that the Kim section of the game was especially strong in comparison.

Problems and thoughts:

1. When to make players roll. I pared it down as best I could, and tried to make it as specific as possible, so players would know when they would have to roll. I'm not convinced this part of the game is still problematic, but I need to see it more in play, and especially, I need to apply it consistently and all the time.

2. The competitive aspect of the game in the Em phase has no bearing on the larger game. It drives the fiction of the Em phase, but it feels cheap, as players simply have to buy in to the concept of going after their Aims, with no real reward. One player suggested keeping the rule that the Em phase ends after one player runs out of Drive, and then simply having another Em phase after the Kim phase, which ends when a second player runs out of Drive. I like this framework, and think that it could be easier to implement the competitive aspect in a meaningful way if the game were structured like this.

3. The players also suggested that it was awkward for Kim to have three different personas, and that only one player should play her at any given time.

4. Violence warning: One of the things about Eminem's music, that I wanted to let the game explore, is that his relationship to women (and Kim in particular) is very problematic--he has songs where he describes murdering her in detail and dropping her in the ocean with the help of their daughter. One of the players brought up Lines & Veils before play (well, a couple minutes after play started). No one said anything, and I jumped in with a half-formed, "Um, no rampant misogyny?" But the game is designed (or is trying to be designed) to let that stuff happen in play and then deal with it in later play--in the Kim phase. I'm not sure how successfully it does that, as the worst thing that happened was Em pushing Kim and berating her, making her break down and cry. Not that that's not bad, but it's no detailed murder. There was much more animosity between Em and his mother in scenes, rather than between Em and Kim. I'm not sure what to make of that.

5. The Mic in the middle of the table, able to be grabbed at any point to gain control of Em, worked very well. I was worried that it might be too disruptive to the flow of play, but a kind of social pressure kept people from trying to grab it until there was a moment when they really wanted it.



Beyond that, I feel that the game was a success in the sense of it being an experimental design on a weird (for roleplaying) subject, and it being in the same zipcode, at least, as what I want it to do. I do want to keep working on it, but the audience seems extremely limited. I don't need it to be really popular, but I want to make a game that more than four people in the whole world will play.

Questions and comments are welcome, thanks!

[Hans Chung-Otterson]

I should also note (though I do in the text) that the game is a deep hack of Everyone is John, if you're familiar with that game. I don't think familiarity with that game necessarily helps, but credit where it's due and all that. I started out doing my own thing, and then discovered that EIJ solved the "three personas" problem in almost the same way I was trying to, but better, so I took that and kept working on the other parts of the game.

[Elizabeth]

This is some good stuff, Hans!

So one of the things I've noticed with awkward, intense, or problematic content is that it's difficult to get players to go there on their own. In any given situation, especially in an initial playtest, the instinct is going to be to dial the game back from anything uncomfortable or too real-- it's a problem I see when people play It's Complicated in a gonzo way. If you really want to explore the totality of what it means to be Eminem, you're going to have to think about ways to mechanize getting into the real darkness of Slim Shady.

Did people grab the mic more or less often than you expected?

What do you think about, instead of starting lines, a bank of rhyming words that fit the color of the Em persona?

[Hans Chung-Otterson]

This is some good stuff, Hans!

So one of the things I've noticed with awkward, intense, or problematic content is that it's difficult to get players to go there on their own. In any given situation, especially in an initial playtest, the instinct is going to be to dial the game back from anything uncomfortable or too real-- it's a problem I see when people play It's Complicated in a gonzo way. If you really want to explore the totality of what it means to be Eminem, you're going to have to think about ways to mechanize getting into the real darkness of Slim Shady.

Yep, for sure. Thanks for that insight. As I think about making the competitive aspect of the first phase matter throughout the whole game, this will be another mechanical issue that will have to be tuned just right.

Did people grab the mic more or less often than you expected?

Less often than I expected, though I liked how it shook out. As I said, there was a kind of social pressure that kept people from just (trying to) grab it whenever, so it meant that they only grabbed it when their desire to take control (because of something that was happening in the scene, usually related to getting their Aim, I think) overcame the social pressure to not interrupt the other player. I don't know if that social pressure will be enough in the long run to make the Mic part functional. I could also see a slap-happy game where people are trying to grab the mic all the time, and I think that could work as well. However, the "slap-happy" and "social pressure" versions seem like they would be different games. From a design perspective it seems like I should pick one and design the game to better ensure that behavior.

What do you think about, instead of starting lines, a bank of rhyming words that fit the color of the Em persona?

That's a great idea! Like magnetic poetry or something, so while people are thinking, they're not just thinking but interacting, moving little words around and forming ideas around that. Or just a sheet of rhymed words, coupled together: "still white / stage fright" or (bringing the darkness of Slim Shady in--yeesh) "hurt her / murder", things like that.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Hans,

I took some time to look the manuscript over carefully. It's been hard to reply, because every time I tried to address the things you brought up in your post, it felt like a distraction - or even a fascinating but irrelevant quagmire.

I figured out what was bugging me: what I'm seeing, both in your manuscript and in your play report, is a classic GNS trainwreck. The person who's in it to critique and challenge values is all set. The person who's in it to compete has ample ammunition as well as the fun of guessing unknown goals. The person who's in it to celebrate/tweak Eminem needs a thematic and cooperative stability that each of the other two needs to be unstable.

Editing in this important end to that paragraph: And each person needs everyone else at the table to be on board with exactly that same purpose. Making the game compatible with each purpose is a disaster; it needs to be suitable for only one.

In this context, issues such as whether "are we here to protect our group's Kim" or really, anything else framed in terms of the fiction, are intractable. Given the structured nature of the game, I suspect you'll get a lot of apparently harmonious play insofar as people are merely following the provided steps (framing the right kind of scene, e.g.), but vastly less so as soon as personal and judgmental input get going.

Well, you know my line on this sort of thing: I think you as the designer must choose, for real and for good. I think the alternative will be to see either griefer-Gamism interfering with everyone else, or everyone tip-toeing around being so careful not to do that, that nothing else happens.

Best, Ron

[Hans Chung-Otterson]

Wow. And here I've already made a bunch of changes that I think make it a better game on paper, and you go and explode my whole framework.

There's no question what I really want to do with the game, now that you lay it out like that:

critique and challenge values

I want it to be a game where we play with the themes and meaning of Eminem, and are able to have real creative input on that subject.

So now, the question to myself is: how?

[Ron Edwards]

Yeah, I get that a lot.

As for "how," I can offer some principles to consider.

1. Don't have any loss conditions at the player level. Without them, there can be no true win conditions and therefore all strategizing can stay "down there" in Techniques, as fiction-affecting devices.

2. Don't let the success of input (specifically plot and outcome authorities, to use my current jargon) rely on stylistic competence - in other words, all that rhyming and rapping should be an optional technique, not a thespian requirement.

3 (most important). Don't shy away from the possibility that Slim Shady may be right, and that any given session of play might actually support that idea. Somewhat more generally, don't front-load the game with the assumption that Kim is a good person or that the relationship itself is a shared thing to validate or preserve.

3'. Permit the game experience to suck warty donkey balls if the players cannot live up to your highest desired standards for the creative and procedural demands. Don't save them from themselves.

That's what's in my head anyway. Choose or ignore as seems appropriate.

Best, Ron

[Hans Chung-Otterson]

An update, for Ron.

I torpedoed the draft linked here and re-wrote the whole game, based on what I want it to be for my play. You said, Ron, "Don't save them from themselves," and I used that as a guiding principle.

I'm very happy with it now, and am excited to play it soon. I'll come back once I have and talk some more.

Thanks, you and Elizabeth have been a big help.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Hans,

I'm a bit reluctant to see people take my feedback entirely whole and re-write it all from scratch ... too many times, they overreach and start designing a far-off ideal of a "Ron" or a "Forge" game, and I've seen games turn from rather-traditional + good-ideas into unholy messes of reward mechanics.

But every so often, we're lucky enough for my feedback actually to spark or help articulate what the person wanted to do along, but had been distracted from for some reason. I hope that's the case here.

What I'm saying is, don't delete those old files yet, before you're sure that this was truly in line with what you really wanted. It sounds as if it was, which is great ... but just in case.

Best, Ron

[Hans Chung-Otterson]

Hi Hans,

I'm a bit reluctant to see people take my feedback entirely whole and re-write it all from scratch ... too many times, they overreach and start designing a far-off ideal of a "Ron" or a "Forge" game, and I've seen games turn from rather-traditional + good-ideas into unholy messes of reward mechanics.

But every so often, we're lucky enough for my feedback actually to spark or help articulate what the person wanted to do along, but had been distracted from for some reason. I hope that's the case here.

What I'm saying is, don't delete those old files yet, before you're sure that this was truly in line with what you really wanted. It sounds as if it was, which is great ... but just in case.

Best, Ron

Oh, for sure. Your feedback made me realize that the game I wrote wasn't the game I actually wanted. So I started again. I'm not trying to please anyone but myself.