[Dulcimer Hall] Changing the Past

[Doug Ruff]

I like the idea of making yourself vulnerable by trying to influence the world, but I don't see (at the moment) how it's making yourself vulnerable particularly to one person.  Am I missing something?

No, that's not (yet) supported. Here's another idea:

Players start with a pile of dice and a "blank slate"; no Facts have been established about them (they don't know each other). In order to influence a "world" Fact, they have to take action; this action reveals something about their character's abilities or motives.

In other words, it creates a Fact about their character. This can be an ability, a motive, whatever. The Fact could be a lie, but it must be plausible (ie it must explain the action taken).

Once that Fact is on the table, it stays there and can be used to influence any other Facts on the table, but it is also vulnerable to influence from other players.

Example: I take three dice from my pool and roll them to help my character (Jason) beat up a security guard. This is to change the Fact "The office is heavily guarded" to "Jason is inside the office". I also have to explain how I managed to do this, so I create a 3 point Fact "trained martial artist" on Jason's sheet and leave the dice sitting on this Trait.

(This also supports a "Suki loves Manos" motive.)

Later on, another player can decide to mess with this Trait, and starts a conflict to change Jason's Trait to "trained in martial arts by the KGB", which could be a step towards, "Jason is a double agent".

Now, I've only got a limited pool of dice, so once I've run out, I cannot create any new Traits for my character. This makes Bribes a very powerful incentive: if you offer me 2 dice from their own pool to make a statement about my character, I'm going to be sorely tempted to take it.

(Which is why I think that those two dice should automatically contribute to any attempt that you make to change my other Facts. It also supports Suki's player offering a "Manos loves Suki too" Bribe.)

What's missing from all of this is the actual conflict mechanic for deciding who wins narrative controll of the Facts, and for alowing dice to move from one Fact to another, or into and out of the pools. But I think that a lot of the stuff you came up with originally (momentum, domination etc) could be adapted - and simplified? - to deal with this.

What's also missing is Fallout again. i can see all sorts of uses for Fallout, but I don't see where Fallout is being created as a natural consequence of conflict. If there is Fallout, I strongly believe it should be in the same currency (dice) as the Facts themselves.

One quick idea: whenever a character Fact is rolled, any 1s are lost from the Fact and given to another player as Fallout to apply to your character. This could be as simple as a Bribe that you can't refuse. You can still choose when the dice get applied, but until they do, you're short from your pool any dice you've lost.

[TonyLB]

Okay, I'm feeling a bit peckish.  I may be in the mood for some sacred cow hamburger.

Do we need Facts... at all?  Or, more specifically, do we need any Facts that don't have immediate emotional meaning to the characters?

I just don't know whether "Trained in Martial Arts" contributes to the game (except as a launch-pad for "Trained by the KGB" and similar shenanigans).  I'm reminded of the many Indie Design threads that start with people saying "So of course I'll have these six stats."  Y'know?

[Larry L.]

Meaty stuff. Sounds like you've got enough of a relationship mechanic here to drive the game.

Let me see if I'm getting this right. So you've got a bunch of characters that are occupationally super talented at keeping and exposing secrets; they've been trained to do this in order to, you know, save the world, protect the nation, whatever. But really, all the spy stuff is just a pretext for throwing into personal conflict a set of individuals who all define themselves in terms of secrets.

I don't think any other spy game has taken this angle, but it sheds a new light on the whole "secret agent / super lover" genre. James Bond is a mack daddy precisely because he can find out your secrets without divulging his own. (Damn, that sounds so obvious now.)

Sound about right?

If you are trained in Martial Arts, that's still relevant, because you were obviously trained in the secret style of Master So-and-So, and thus a suitably informed agent could use that to figure out a bit about your background.

So maybe it's: you can make up badass skills on the fly, and you pay for it by giving away a bit of your cover.

[Sydney Freedberg]

I'd agree that every fact/trait/any other mechanical thing in the game needs to have emotional significance, or it shouldn't be in there at all. Conversely, though, almost anything can have emotional significance.

So instead of "Close Combat: Martial Arts - 13" you have "I know kung fu!" Instead of "History - 3" and "Geology - 4," you have "Don't know much about history...."

EDIT (Darn it, hit "submit" too fast)  to add:

Come to think of it, "Dulcimer Hall" (and gee, doesn't that sound like the name of a, ahem, prep school?) inverts your traditional RPG relationship between what you do and what you feel, between "hard stuff" covered by the rules and "soft stuff" that's just roleplayed & narrated:

In this game, what you feel is what matters and is ruled by mechanics. What you do is just color narration. E.g. if a player says "I do a flying jump kick and take out 20 ninjas, a tear welling in my eye as I think of Shun," the 20 ninjas are a freebie, just something they get to say in narration; but that tear in the eye, that you're rolling dice for.

[TonyLB]

Yeah.  And Sydney (having had a conversation with me yesterday evening) has advanced knowledge of the shameful admission I must now make:

The Confession

I don't think Dulcimer Hall is really, fundamentally, about spies.  I think it's about high school.

The emotional dynamic is that you don't know what anyone else is thinking, and every time you make a theory about how other people behave it gets shot straight to hell, but at the same time their opinion of you is hugely important.  Moreover, you don't know who you really are, but everyone else seems to, and can you really face down their certainty with your doubt?

Or:  "Welcome back to the tenth grade.  What would you have done differently if it hadn't been your precious one and only chance at a life?"

Having read and been provoked by Vincent's Blog describing the challenge and reward of writing a plain-person game, I have decided to split Dulcimer Hallinto a core ruleset ("Misery Bubblegum") which is about high school relationships, and an add-on set of rules/setting/advice to turn that core mechanic into a spy game.

My intuition is that the breakdown will fall out as follows:

[*]Fallout, Bribe and emotionally-charged-Trait mechanics are fundamental:  Misery Bubblegum
[*]Fact/Ability mechanics are spy-centric:  Spy-Bubblegum expansion[/list:u]And yes, I'm saying that the super-spy genre is run by the emotional rules of high school.  It's not the only genre, either... not by a long shot.

[TonyLB]

Finally, the example, has Manos' player using Fallout dice to make changes to his own character. I'm not automatically against this, but it does leave open the possibility that players may drift into two modes of play:

- use other players' Fallout to advance my own character (Egotist)
- use other players' Fallout to mess with their heads (Meddler)
- use other players' Fallout to give them what they want (Angel)

So this settled into my head as I've been thinking about Fallout, how to represent it and how it is used and shifts.

I'd like the three tactics (above) to have tangible consequences... such that players can either do them "just because they want to" or "for mechanical advantage"... or, more often, both simultaneously.

Here's a rough draft of that:

[*]Each player has (say) 12 dice.
[*]Each character sheet has three areas that dice can sit:  Passion, Doubt and Trouble.
[*]There are three types of conflicts that players can contest over:  Questions (discovering the truth / controlling Facts), Confrontations (challenging someone / controlling someone else's Traits) and Revelations (understanding yourself / controlling your own Traits).
[*]Note that what is a Confrontation for player A will (sometimes) be a Revelation for player B.
[*]On a Question you can spend dice from Doubt or you can offer another player dice from Passion.
[*]On a Confrontation you can spend dice from Passion or you can offer another player dice from Trouble.
[*]On a Revelation you can spend dice from Trouble or you can offer another player dice from Doubt.
[*]If you lose a Question you get your dice back in Doubt.
[*]If you win a Question you get your dice back in Passion.
[*]If you lose a Confrontation you get your dice back in Passion.
[*]If you win a Confrontation you get your dice back in Trouble.
[*]If you lose a Revelation you get your dice back in Trouble.
[*]If you win a Revelation you get your dice back in Doubt.[/list:u]Yes, it all but requires visual aids:  Draw an equilateral triangle, with one point straight up.  Top point is "Passion", bottom left "Trouble", bottom right "Doubt."  The left side is "Confrontation", the right side is "Question", the bottom side is "Revelation."  You can spend dice from the point at the clockwise end of the side.  You can offer dice from the point at the counterclockwise end.  If you win you get dice back at the counterclockwise end.  If you lose you get dice back at the clockwise end.

So, yes, similar to Capes:  If you lose you get the resources to win.  If you win you get the resources to lose.  Only you can also shift your resources full circle by winning two different kinds of contests in a row.  But oh how vulnerable you can become halfway through that cycle.

And, to link back to Doug's original point:

[*]Egotists need Trouble dice, or need to be involved in the Passions of others.
[*]Meddlers need Passion dice or need to be involved in the Doubts of others.
[*]Angels need Doubt dice or need to be involved in the Trouble of others.[/list:u]And, to be honest, that all looks just about right to me.  Thoughts?

[TonyLB]

Here is the visual aid.

[Doug Ruff]

So, I go away for a couple of days and look what happens! maybe I should go away more often.

Tony, I totally get the "high school" vibe, and I've been reading Vincent's Blog and 20"x20" room too.

But I think you're selling yourself short if you confine this to being just about high school. It's about insecurity and self-image and opinions and gossip. It's easy to look at that and think "yeah, teenagers". It's also easy to go "w00t! Spies!" like we've been doing.

Right now, I'm looking at this and thinking that I could use it for running a game about Bob the Accountant and his colleagues and family.

But I think the truth is, even "bad-ass" people have these frailties too, it's just that these are glossed over by many gamers because addressing it in play may require players to think about their own issues.

So, yeah, I'm totally for moving back from spies, but do we have to move straight back into another niche? Is it possible to view this as a generic game for "ordinary" dramas first, and then showcase it with high school/spies/twentysomething/office drama/Dallas/romantic fantasy examples?

[Doug Ruff]

I'm reminded of the many Indie Design threads that start with people saying "So of course I'll have these six stats."  Y'know?

Very minor, yet very picky, point. Although they may not work mechanically in the same way, Passion, Trouble and Doubt look a bit like stats to me.

The thing about Facts is that they are freeform (as opposed to three or six mandatory categories) and that they are malleable. Also, if a player chooses a set of starting Facts about their character that indicates low emotional involvement, they're making a statement, which is either:

- I (as a player) don't want to address emotional issues in this game. In which case, they're playing the wrong game.
- My character doesn't want to address emotional issues in this game, but I (as a player) want you (the other players) to bring it on!

Whereas a player that chooses Facts for their character which fit a specific emptional theme, that's a clear message that they want to explore that theme in play. And "Secretly in love with my best friend's lover - 3" helps to send that message a lot more efficiently than "Passion - 3"

So, to reverse the question: I think we need Facts, but why do we need Passion, Doubt and Trouble?

[TonyLB]

Doug:  Oh yeah, there has to be the opportunity to do spies.  I certainly don't want to remove that!  It should be allowed (and even mechanically supported) without being required.  The human emotions and interactions can stand on their own.  They're even cooler (IMO) with gadgets and mission briefings.

I've added some blue-sky speculation to the visual aid, covering exactly how I think that will work out.

On "so of course I'll have these six stats," I don't actually have any problem with stats (even with six of them).  I have a problem with "of course."  I'm going to think about where I stand on stats vs. freeform, and how to balance them, and probably start another thread in order to discuss the issue.