Left Coast: Here's a gamma draft, which I'm looking to simplify

[Steve Hickey]

The last few months have been about finishing the gamma draft of Left Coast, my game about science fiction authors living in California, surrounded by friends and slackers, demanding their attention, and having their lives slowly invaded by weird alien forces. The game is about struggling to control your life so you can focus on doing the thing you love.

I've re-written since the original Ronnies draft in two particular ways.

First, I've had to think really hard about the rules for framing scenes. Based on Ron's initial feedback, my very first game, and Gregor, Malcolm and Per's playtest I saw how hard it was to put all of the cool setting material that people created into motion. As a result, I've had to get very specific in writing down how to start and play scenes: spelling out my assumptions and the things I do unconsciously, and also articulating the culture of play that I think best fits this game.

Second, I've had to fight my instincts to pile on 'cool' stuff (an instinct which led to the game becoming too meta, and to an overly-complicated system).

Even after doing both of those things, this gamma draft's still too complicated. However, it (probably) won't fall over on contact with a playtest group now, so it's time to put it out there again. My intention over the next six months is to absorb as much feedback as I can get *and* give it lots of actual play, running the authors' stories through to being fully resolved and seeing what that teaches me about what the game does and doesn't need.

You can download the latest draft of Left Coast here (130 page .pdf)

Alternatively, here's an introductory summary of the game (12 page .pdf, including front and back covers)


I've got three purposes for this thread

1. I'm interested in connecting with people who would like to playtest this.

2. I'm really interested in continuing to simplify the game and I'm hoping fresh eyes might point out things that can be removed that I'm too close to.

3. I'd love to check the game's basically sound: it's producing fun play for me and local playtest groups but I know Ron felt the previous draft was heading in a misguided direction, and it's definitely fallen over for at least one other group (basically due to the game's overly complex structure).

So, I've just taken a shot of tequila, and I'm leaving the bottle out for everyone else. If anyone wants to, let's chat.

[Ron Edwards]

This is one of my favorite Ronnies in development. Once the Kickstart is over, it hits the top of my playtest list again.
Best, Ron

[Dan Maruschak]

Hi, Steve. I'm not terribly familiar with the inspirational source material so I may not be in your target audience, but I'm interested in the topic of game complexity so I read through your draft because you said that's an issue you're wrestling with. From reading it, there were two areas in the game's design that seemed to be possible sources of complexity where I don't have a good feel for why you made these design choices, so I would be interested in seeing you talk about them a little bit: Why multiple Authors? And why is some of the information recorded on the quadranted map instead of on character sheets? I wouldn't be surprised if some of that was more apparent in play than from my reading of the text, but in terms of the intrinsic complexity of the game those seemed like they might be contributors.

I also got the impression that some of the ways you're presenting the game may be making it seem more complex than it really is. For example, on page 56, you've got kind of a "priority branch" decision point that you present as 5 chained binary decisions. You could easily convince a computer that those are functionally equivalent, but to most humans five decisions look scarier than one decision. (Also, it is my impression that people have an instinctive negative reaction to flowcharts -- they don't tend to think "ah, this convenient chart will help me understand better!",  they think "Oh my God, this process is so complex he had to include this scary chart that looks crazy and complicated!"). I think you could also do some things with your selection of game terms to make things easier to absorb. For example, you've got an Author (which in normal usage is a kind of creator, but not a Creator) and a Creator (who is, in the fiction, actually an author, but not an Author). A reader basically needs to rely on rote memorization to keep things like that straight. If you changed one or both of them so they weren't so easily confused (e.g. change Creators to "Weird Players" or something) then readers might have more mental bandwidth to deal with the rest of your procedures. It's even better if you can pick terms that have "intuitive" relationships that map to the relationships you want to have as game terms (e.g. there's no obvious plain-english relationship between "Chapter" and "Turn", if you had two terms where one fit inside the other it might be easier for the reader to keep the game concepts straight). I think "forward references" tend to contribute to the perception of complexity, too. For example, you start talking about dice and reset scenes long before you explain how they'r used or what they're about, so for big chunks of the text I've got questions like "what are these dice all about?" and "what's up with these Reset scenes?" clogging up my brain which I'd rather have free to absorb the information you're trying to give me.

I also wonder if the way you've broken up your text into descriptive and procedural sections makes the text longer and harder to absorb because it's more difficult to fit it all into my head at once. I know that my experience with Mouse Guard was that even though it's a beautiful book I couldn't absorb the system well from the text because the important stuff was just too spread out and never seemed to gel into something coherent while I was reading (even though I love that game and think it has great mechanics now that I understand the system from playing it). I can't guarantee your game would be easier to absorb if you wrote it differently, but I didn't feel like the current "split" style was resonating with me or helping me learn the game well.

There are other, smaller things I noted as I read the text, but I don't want to bombard you with stuff in a forum post (especially since I tend to come across as "overly negative", but let me know if it would help you for me to go into some of them). Even though I don't think I'm necessarily in your target market I did think there was some cool and interesting stuff in the game (for example, the text/subtext thing seems like an interesting way to address some of the problems I've encountered with "conflict/stakes" games).

[Steve Hickey]

Hi Dan,

Thanks for your comments. (They've come across as useful and measured; not negative at all!)

Due to time constraints, I'll have to split my response into two parts: answering your questions about why I made particular design choices, and then talking about how I've presented the game (which I'm interested in digging into a bit deeper.)

Anyway, for this post you mentioned you didn't have a good feel for my design choices in two areas:

Why multiple Authors?
Hopefully I'm understanding your question (let me know if I'm not)...

Originally every player played an Author, but I kept finding that after one session of play everyone's stories weren't getting pushed forward a satisfying amount.

While playing a two-player game of Left Coast, I discovered I liked the effect of flipping between Authors: it creates nice contrasts between them, their personal lives, and the events of their stories, and it gives people a chance to mull over the implications of things (which is important to me). I took a leaf from Spione's book, and decided to try using two protagonists - which has worked well.

However, I'm not sure what the effect of having just one Author would be. I haven't tried playing a game where that's the case.

Why is some information recorded on the map rather than character sheets?
Actually, I'm hoping that it's possible to play the game without character sheets. I've found that putting all the information about supporting characters onto the map keeps everyone's attention focused on the setting.


Overly complicated game terms
I totally agree with you about the potential confusion between 'Author' and 'Creator'. I've been trying to keep exactly that issue clear in my head while writing and playing the game - and have managed to do it - but all through this rewrite process I've been finding that simpler language is better -- I might actually change it to 'Weird Player': that seems like a straight-forward description. (I also see what you mean about using terms with intuitive relationships, and about forward references.)

A couple of my friends who are technical editors have kindly volunteered to go through the game and I'm looking forward to their comments. If you have any other thoughts that you'd be keen to share, please feel free to post them here! I like what you're saying.

Unfortunately, I probably won't be able to post about your other points for a couple of days - but I'm keen to chat about the flowcharts and about the prescriptive/descriptive presentation of the text.

-- Actually, could I clarify one thing: by 'prescriptive' and 'descriptive', I think you're talking about how I first present the procedures of the game (the numbered lists), and then follow that with advice and commentary about each procedural section. Is that right?

Thanks,
Steve

[Dan Maruschak]

OK, on the multiple Authors thing, I understand where you are coming from now. Trying a game with a single Author might be something worth testing. My reaction to reading the text was to be reminded of some "one player, multiple GMs" games, except with two players. Having only a single Author would eliminate some complexity from the game (e.g. you wouldn't need Turns anymore, you wouldn't have the shared stat of Story Dice), but I can understand that cutting-back-and-forth and compare-and-contrast stuff might have benefits in terms of pacing, mood, tone, etc. that could be worth the "cost". Since I'm just extrapolating from the text I can see pros and cons to both approaches.

Why is some information recorded on the map rather than character sheets?
Actually, I'm hoping that it's possible to play the game without character sheets. I've found that putting all the information about supporting characters onto the map keeps everyone's attention focused on the setting.

But the Secrets will always require at least one element of per-character non-universally-shared info, right? (I guess by "character sheets" I was visualizing something more like a big bunch of index cards in the middle of the table so it didn't feel that different to me along that dimension.) For me, a map tends to signal that the positioning on the map is very important, but here I got the impression that it's really only used for denoting which of the four NPC types an NPC is, so I thought the "unused" x,y positioning info might make the map seem like a source of greater information and complexity than the game actually uses. But that could just be my initial reaction.

A couple of my friends who are technical editors have kindly volunteered to go through the game and I'm looking forward to their comments. If you have any other thoughts that you'd be keen to share, please feel free to post them here! I like what you're saying.

OK. Other terms that I think could use some scrutiny: Owners (maybe "Mundane Players"?) and Story Scenes ("story" means lots of things in this game! The process of play is creating one, the Author is in a fictional one, the Author writes them... maybe "Writing Scenes" or "Work Scenes"?). The other terminology thing I thought about is more a matter of game design, but I'm of the opinion that "dice" have an intuitive association with uncertainty, so I believe that having Author Dice and Story Dice as factors causes them to loom larger than if they were "stats" or "tracks" (even if in practice those things are only used to tell you how many dice to roll). I may be wrong, but I felt like the forward-reference to "Story Dice" was a bigger distraction than it would have been if it had been something that felt more "static" like a stat or tokens -- until the text told me how the dice would be used it was kind of like I had a handful of metaphorical dice rattling in my brain waiting to be rolled, taking up attention until I found out what was in that potentially chaos-spewing black box. The psychological association between dice and uncertainty might actually be beneficial in play so I wouldn't necessarily suggest scrapping the dice pools in favor of stats-that-give-you-dice, but it might be worth considering in terms of the order of presentation, etc., if it is something you like in the game.

Some other points that struck me as odd was that in some of the Reset scenes, you're using a "declare a fact" and "add an AND statement" structure, which felt to me like they were coming from a different style of game than what I had been reading earlier, since you'd been using a more "conceptual guidepost" kind of mechanics for things like the conflict system. I think it might be worth looking at whether it's possible to harmonize things a little more so the subsystems might feel less foreign from each other (personally, I'm not a big fan of the "add an AND statement" kind of thing, since I don't like feeling the temptation to play word-games with mechanics that are phrased like that). Having such a separate-seeming mini-game for Story Scenes also made me feel a bit skeptical. Maybe it would work in play, but as a reader I didn't come away feeling confident that it would, but kind of worried that it would stall out the momentum of the game to start playing a different story game in the middle of it.

Also (I feel like I'm opening too many parallel topics here, and this is just getting into talk about the game's design in general...), in the conflict system I'm not sure that there's as clean a distinction as you present between "detecting there's a conflict" and "figuring out what the conflict is about". I've been working on the hypothesis for a few years that one of the things that makes the "we should go to the conflict subsystem now!" decisions hard in games that work like that is that figuring out what the conflict is about is an element of realizing there's a conflict (e.g. if one character is yelling at another because they don't like each other it may just be characterization about the current state of their relationship, it's not really a conflict unless it's somehow an attempt to change the situation). The text might also benefit from some deeper discussion about what kinds of things are within the "scope" of a conflict, e.g. can you win a conflict to make a character stop being a deadbeat, or is being a deadbeat something that might be intrinsic to a character? Are there "mind control" conflicts like "I convince you that _____ is a good idea"? (My views on this subject are informed by some of my experiences playing games like DITV, where these kind of issues contributed some rockiness during play, e.g. a player who wanted a conflict about whether the Steward of the town would "stop being weak").

Also, there were a few places where you do things like being able to pay a victory for stuff like "reveal a hint about a secret". Since hinting about secrets or the Weird plan are also part of normal play, I wonder if the existence of "pay for a hint" mechanics might create some weird incentives in the minds of Creators and Owners (e.g. "I need to hold some things back in case they want to use that mechanical option"). I don't know for sure if it would be problematic here, but I've played in a game that had an "advance along the mystery if you win the roll" mechanics that seemed to sometimes throw a monkeywrench into keeping scenes organic.

(I know there's a lot of different topics here, I won't feel bad if you have to pick and choose where to focus your attention).

-- Actually, could I clarify one thing: by 'prescriptive' and 'descriptive', I think you're talking about how I first present the procedures of the game (the numbered lists), and then follow that with advice and commentary about each procedural section. Is that right?

Actually, I meant that what you frequently do is describe the thing, then tell me how to do the thing, and then do the commentary afterward. The commentary afterward stuff seemed reasonable (although frequently telling me that I should maybe just forget the procedure and make up my own often left me feeling like the text was undercutting itself and making it hard for me to get invested). What I'm talking about is like on pages 25 and 26: at the top of 25 you describe what a group does when playing, and then on 26 in steps 8 and 9 you tell me to actually do it. When I got to the black-bar sections I often felt confused at first until I would remind myself that they weren't building on what I just read but that I needed to mentally rewind a bit and think of them as alternative views on the the thing I had just read.

[Steve Hickey]

Thanks for expanding on your thoughts, Dan. As you said: you've raised a lot of topics - unfortunately I'm quite busy at work this week, and right now I only have time to address a couple of your points.

The first thing I wanted to focus on was the prescriptive/descriptive confusion you've described and the 'make up your own procedures' effects. I can see what you're saying. Since describing my intent seemed to work pretty well last time, I'd like to try it again here.

One thing I've been trying to do for each section in the rules is to summarise what I'm about to say, then describe it procedurally, and (if necessary) summarise/illustrate it with a flowchart. But now that you've pointed it out, I can see the confusion that initial summary followed by numbered procedures can cause

(A side-note: this is overly detailed, but it just occurred to me that - because it's a sub-section in a larger process - the best way to address the confusion on pages 25-26 is probably to:
* drop the summary after the heading
* put the numbered sections first
* follow up with the chart and the definition of 'relationships'. ()

In general, though, I'm going to have to look at the whole document with that eye and see what's confusing for the reader.

As for the text undercutting itself, it sounds like I'm not achieving the effect that I want, yet. I think Time and Temp, in the section on 'Training Wheels and Safety Nets' says it pretty well (and I paraphrase):

"You know how when you first start a job, you're eager to follow all the instructions and procedures to the letter. But eventually you starting finding your own shortcuts and ways of getting the job done.

"You should treat the rules in this book in the same fashion. They're your training wheels: keep them on in the beginning, until you find your balance. Then, if you find some rules that aren't helping, drop and change them as you please.

"But you should also consider the rules to be safety nets. If, as you're playing the game, things start to drag, come back to the rules and see if that helps."

I was particularly inspired by a post of Jonathan Walton's (Explicit procedures and the permission to decide) which describes how to write rules so that you point out which parts are mandatory and which parts the group can judge for themselves.

But after re-reading that post, I can see that I'm not really doing what he suggests - I think he's talking more about identifying the sections inside your game where you don't need strict procedures, just clearly articulated principles for making decisions. What I've been doing is describing the strict procedures and then saying 'When your group feels comfortable with this part of the game, you can modify it in ways that feel right for you."

I'll leave my response there for the moment. I'll have to chat with you about the other points you've raised about simplifying the text (like the game's multiple definitions of 'Story' - you're absolutely right!) next week - after these work deadlines and running Games on Demand at Kapcon are over with.

[dreamofpeace]

This looks like a really interesting game!  The rules are a bit intimidating to me, though.  Would there be some way to make a smaller, "basic" version, maybe by taking out the "writing the story" part?  That also might help with some of the confusion some folks (including me) are having keeping the different terms straight.  Or is it all too tightly wound together to do that?

[Steve Hickey]

It's interesting that you say that, dreamsofpeace. I'm, right now, working on a less-than-30-page long version for a Philip K Dick related Kickstarter that I've been invited to contribute to.

I've been applying a lot of suggestions from this thread (including the 'Weird player' one, which really works). I'm considering dropping the write a story bit for this 30 page thing (which, essentially, takes one Author through one chapter) but I haven't decided whether to do it yet or not - so it's very timely that you've suggested it!

I'll post a link to a rough draft of this quickstart version once I've got it into shape.

[dreamofpeace]

Cool, I look forward to checking out the new version!

Best Wishes, Manu

[Steve Hickey]

Just finished the 30 page version of Left Coast. I wanted to make something that was leaner and faster to get up and running. It's been fun and suprisingly easy to cut stuff out of the game in order to hit that page-count and that goal.

The .pdf is here: Radio Free Left Coast - Alpha draft (9 February 2013)

The rewrite was inspired by Jackson Tegu's Silver and White, and the way he broke the rules into sections to be read aloud by the players. I've done one playtest already, which resulted in me doing a major rethink of my assumptions about character and setting creation. I'll be doing one more and hopefully having another local group do a playtest without me.

My goal is to finish this playtesting and feedback phase by 1 March 2013 (while also moving flats).

If you're interested in checking in out and giving feedback, here's what I'm particularly interested in knowing:

Setting and character creation
• During setting and character creation were there any moments when people didn't feel involved?
• How long did it take to create all the supporting characters? Did it feel like too long?

Potentially confusing rules
• Were there any problems with the instructions to the Weird player?
• In the first scene of the game, the rules tell you to skip the first two steps of starting a scene. Did starting with an exception to the procedure cause any confusion?
• Is it clear how to initiate a conflict?
• Is it clear how to end a scene?
• Is the transition between the processes for starting 'the first scene' and starting 'subsequent scenes' smooth? Is it clear how to choose which supporting characters the subsequent scenes will focus on?
• Were there any points where it was unclear who was responsible for reading out the rules or where you didn't know what to do next?

Pacing and play dynamics
• In terms of the amount of story you told, how satisfying did the five scenes feel?
• Did you have 'enough' characters to give you interesting options for playing scenes?

And I meant to say before: Ron, thanks for your interest and support in this!

[Steve Hickey]

This is the beta draft of the Left Coast quickstart I'm writing: Radio Free Left Coast (beta draft)

I've found writing a version of the game that's 25 percent of the size of the original incredibly useful. It really forced me to consider what was essential to the game and what was bogging it down. I've had four external playtest groups run it - and I think the reduced page count and simplified mechanics make it easier to read, understand and pitch to groups.

On the minus side, I'm not sure this simplified version of the game captures what I originally saw it being 'about' (writers struggling to find the time to do what they love).

In simplifying the game, I used the 'Ship It' journal by Seth Godin
sethgodin.typepad.com/files/theshipitjournal.pdf

I found the following questions from the journal particularly helpful:
- What 10 things can I add [to the game] that would subtly or radically improve it?
- What 10 things can I subtract [from the game] that would subtly or radically improve it?
- What would the best [game designer] in the world do in this situation?

A few of the 10 things I added were:
1.   Clear rules for ending a scene (who's responsible and how to do it) (done!)
2.   Reading the rules aloud, person by person, ala Silver and White? (done)
3.   The Weird sheet (a good start)

A few of the things I subtracted were:
1.   Reset scenes
2.   Multiple authors and 'turns' (as Dan advised)
3.   Money conflicts
4.   Scenes where we see the story the Author writes.
5.   Character creation.

Here's what I decided the best game designer who ever lived would do with this project.
- make writing it a top priority and finish it early
- decide on the 'feel' I'm going for and communicate that clearly to everyone who needs to know
- don't over-promise. Be very aware of what is practically deliverable.
- playtest it absolutely thoroughly and blind test it, until it's rock solid.
- deliver it in such a way that it reflects myself and my creative instincts.

This beta draft feels like a stepping stone: it incorporates lots of changes and it's for anyone who wants to playtest it in the next few weeks. I have a ton of other suggested changes that I'm going to get on with now.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Steve,

This post may seem a bit stream-of-consciousness and disjointed. No, I'm not high. I figure it's best for you to pick which ones you'd like me to explain better or seem like a good springboard for further discussion.

I like the absence of the "the Author is a character in someone else's story" component. I hate that feature in the post-Ronnies versions of the game.

I like there being just one Author. That strikes me as the most functional solution to the over-crowded situation in the Ronnies version.

I like a lot of the structural features such as deciding when and how to end the story.

The text appears to me to written for gamers who have absolutely no clue what to do, to the point of being blithering idiots who never heard of California, Philip K. Dick, or science fiction, ever, and who have frozen up entirely in attempting to play games by Joshua Newman or Paul Czege. As such, I think it's entirely mis-written for the target audience of people who do know and love all sorts of things about those things, and who do not suffer from the baggage of either railroaded Story Before play or overly-hyped indie/Forge play.

For example, quite a lot of the time, you have a player choosing an item from a list. As an isolated mechanic, that's a fine thing. As a feature of nearly every instance of creative input throughout play, it's a straitjacket. I suggest thinking hard about which of those instances demand a list and which should be opened up to pure creativity given a short phrase of guidance.

Best, Ron

[Steve Hickey]

Thanks, Ron: I appreciate you taking the time to assess the game, comparing it to the previous drafts, and identifying the areas you're particularly enjoying.

If you have time, I'd love to discuss this a bit more:

The text appears to me to written for gamers who have absolutely no clue what to do, to the point of being blithering idiots who never heard of California, Philip K. Dick, or science fiction, ever, and who have frozen up entirely in attempting to play games by Joshua Newman or Paul Czege. As such, I think it's entirely mis-written for the target audience of people who do know and love all sorts of things about those things, and who do not suffer from the baggage of either railroaded Story Before play or overly-hyped indie/Forge play.

If I'm reading you correctly, you're not just talking about the rules over-using the technique of 'choosing items from a list'. It seems like you're seeing other stuff in there that's doing a lot of hand-holding for the players ...

... and I can kind of see what you're saying. The development process for this game seems to have been one of going from a very tightly structured system to loosening it up a fair bit but not entirely. I'd love to dig into what it looks like from your point of view - perhaps I'm too close to it to see it clearly.


Does the Gamma draft reduce the use of lists?

I've just published the gamma draft. It's available here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3362532/Radio%20Free%20Left%20Coast%20-%20Gamma%20draft%20%2819%20April%202013%29.pdf

In my rewrite, I particularly kept this comment in mind:

I suggest thinking hard about which of those instances demand a list and which should be opened up to pure creativity given a short phrase of guidance.

With this gamma draft of Radio Free Left Coast, I've started moving in this direction. Here's a list of the instances I think you're talking about, Ron, and what I've done with them. Maybe this will give us a starting point for discussion?

** The sample Author (Sally P. Richards): still exists.

** I've removed the lists of 'Most significant character in the Author's life' and 'First Weird character in the Author's life'. I've stripped back the process for creating characters so that it gives players questions to answer and (if they need it) a list of prompts - and these prompts come with principles for creating names, jobs, problems.

** The sample 'subjects an Author's story could be about' (its genre; an aspect of society; plot; title) are still there. I think giving some strong guidance here is going to be useful to stop people from freezing up at the idea of "Now I have to create a whole story?"

** I've replaced the Author's secret with a list of themes and some specific examples of secrets (if a player's still stuck).

** Weird player's first description of the scene and the Author player's description of the Author's morning routine are both now optional.

** The process for deciding what a conflict's about has a lot of specific guidance in it. It's not 'lists', so much; it's trying to articulate exactly what a group does when they're figuring out what a conflict's about.

** There are still tons of lists for the process for determining the outcome of a conflict.

** There are still lists in the 'If we want to end the story' and 'If we decide to continue the story' sections.


***

And just an aside, your comment has made me look at Moves in Apocalypse World in a whole new light: as principles by which the MC or players can make creative decisions that are appropriate to the game.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Steve,

The issue of lists vs. open vs. fixed concepts is very useful, but it's totally different from the hand-holding thing. I figure you probably get that, but just in case and for anyone who wants it laid out in detail - in other words, a list isn't a form of hand-holding. It's a perfectly valid technique, and I think one of the primary features of any given game is how it integrates exactly what is mandated but left wide open, mandated and chosen from a list, and flatly mandated as such.

S/Lay w/Me offers a pretty good example because it's so simple, no nested features. Prep goes like this.

"You"
Fixed: the opening statement.
List: hero concepts.
Wide open: ten-word description (allows for significant abilities/effects).
List: destination.
Wide open: Goal.

"I"
Wide open: details of destination.
Fixed: Monster's malevolence + Lover's willingness.
List: Attributes of Monster + Attributes of Lover.
List: Number of dice - 4, 5, or 6.

So my big concern about the lists is what isn't listed (i.e. left wide open) and what is fixed. What you've written about the revision sounds like you've put some thought into it.

For the hand-holding, I'm getting the idea this is going to take a little work, with citations and circles & arrows, that kind of thing. I'll work on it over the weekend.

You almost tempted me into a big sidetrack about Apocalypse World, but I am resisting. So, "Yes, I see it that way too," and here I am staying on topic.

Best, Ron

[Ron Edwards]

Found it! What I want to say to you is mostly in [PTA] Players wanting their PCs to fail?, all of it, but especially the question Paul asks me on July 17 and my reply to him. I'll abstract them here in hopes that you'll still read the entire thread.

Paul wrote,

We've really been chewing on the "stakes" issue for over two years? And still it's at the stage where those who've experienced the issue are yet groping about for language to describe it! (My own recent effort is here* at the Narrattiva forums.) Clearly it's an entrenched wrinkle of human (gamer?) psychology, as you seem to be suggesting.

I think where I was trying to go, in part, with my letter to Italian roleplayers was positive advice. Not only "don't drive for conflict, don't 'workshop' the scenes (in my parlance), don't negotiate conflict outcomes before you roll," but also advice on what you should do, "give yourself time to experience the scene," etc.

You use phrases above like "conflicts of interest" to stipulate what must be in play before the PtA resolution system is consulted, and I think you're exactly accurate with them. But I'm interested to know whether you think it's possible to put players into a constructive and fun frame of play behaviors more with good advice than with admonishments and stipulated requirements? And if so, what advice you'd give to achieve that?

I replied,

That's the very issue that's informing my rewrite of Trollbabe. I think the original text wasn't half-bad in that regard, and now, with the huge wealth of actual play and questions over the last five-plus years, I'm writing, or trying to write, much as you describe.

One point seems to be: do not provide a checklist of what is supposed to emerge from play. Instead of playing, people will simply go down the checklist. So with PTA, it's true, specific scenes are designated as Conflict Scenes from the outset. I see that as an agreement for everyone to be mindful, as we play, of the possibility of in-fiction, among-character conflicts of interest coming to be expressed by the characters in word or deed.

That leads to another point, concerning the phrase, "driving toward conflict," which, as I understand and have used it, is a good thing - but somehow gets translated into "negotiate about conflict entirely outside the context of the SIS." See, it's hard to go back and forth about this phrasing. In Trollbabe, one should use game-speak to one's fellow players, by saying "Conflict!" But the very next two requirements are the trollbabe's Goal and the Action Type for the conflict, which are necessarily couched only in fictional terms ... which is then clinched in the purely visual, purely fiction-creating "fair and clear" phase. So one only hops up out of the SIS for that formal one-word statement.

But what about before that? We're playing, and there the trollbabe is, helping a farmer heave a wagon out of the mud or something. Let's say a troll is underneath in the mud, holding the wagon down. Let's say the farmer's brother, who hates him, shows up drunk with their father's sword. Let's say the farmer decides he's sweet on the trollbabe. Let's say the magic curse lays its icy breath upon her. Let's say nothing happens.

Which? How? Who says? Why? These are very fundamental questions about the medium and activity itself, and the first thing I'm sure about for Trollbabe is not to pre-arrange them, not to pose them as a checklist, and not even to dictate them. A lot of the text I'm working up is how the adventure's Stakes (the original use of the term, which applies to a feature of GM situation-prep and not to conflicts) are the best guidepost to answer them for this game. I think identifying such guideposts and then discussing how dynamic decisions in play "spark" from them, is the way to go. RPGs are not toys. You don't wind them up and watch them go. You have to do something while playing, I think. That something, the author/audience blend that I claim is found elsewhere only in music, is what mechanics make possible - not what the mechanics do.

This makes the design-in-progress of Stranger Things very interesting, because it does treat some of these things like a storyboard. The question is what it leaves open such that the contraints would be fruitful.

It also makes me look at Spione and feel good. For example, Moreno and some friends played it a while back and realized they had to get out of this "stakes stuff" entirely and simply do what the rules said to do ... and wow, not only did the characters do things, but where they did them, and how it looked, was all going full blast, and they found themselves generating fictional conflicts left and right without having to dredge them up through some kind of story-conference chit-chat. This seems to be a consistent experience for people in our community who try their hand with it.

It's a bit dated. Trollbabe has been in its new text form for a while now, Stranger Things was not completed, and the group I referenced regarding Spione has had some pretty amazing experiences with the game since then.

Anyway, I hope you can see that I think all your instructions about what to do when going into a scene and how to set up a conflict are flawed at a basic level. I haven't read the very latest version yet, and I haven't pulled out any text of yours to address directly yet, so you can treat this post as a work in progress. I think you'll like the old thread and its embedded links, though.

Best, Ron

* Unfortunately, Paul's link to Gente Che Gioca has not been updated since that forum's redesign, but I hope someone can find the text in its new home. Moreno, any chance?