[Dulcimer Hall] Fallout Scene Mechanics

[TonyLB]

So close... so very, very close.

Sydney sent me a brilliant email a little while ago (yay Sydney!) in which he pointed out that you could (for some purposes) modify the Dogs in the Vineyard Fallout system so that Player A could apply their Fallout to Player B.  In other words, some people can make you miserable... you are vulnerable to them.

Which was what I'd been missing and striving for in Dulcimer Hall.

I've rewound some of my thinking way back, and kept a lot of the good things (particularly from Doug) that I've been railing against because I didn't have all the pieces to make them work.  So:

[*]Each character has a limited number of Traits.  Some of these Traits are owned by the character themself, some by other characters.
[*]Any character with the right resources (gained by... urggh... beating Character A?  Being beaten by them?  Either?  Probably either...) can offer Character A a bribe of their own dice, attached to a potential Trait.  If Character A takes the bribe then that potential Trait becomes actual:  If they accept dice for "Double Agent" then there is now some reason for people to suspect they are a double agent.
[*]Somehow... SOMEHOW... Characters get Fallout, probably both positive and negative.  They do not immediately apply it.
[*]Fallout can be applied either to your own character or to a character who has Traits owned by you.
[*]The actual application of Fallout... the choices made in doing it, and how they are informed by and inform the SIS... is the core of the game.  When your ally is under pressure, will they sell you out rather than suffer themselves?  When someone gets positive fallout, will they use it to boost your traits, or their own?
[*]Therefore the Fallout will be applied during scenes.  I haven't figured out how yet, because of this one tiny but fundamental problem that is utterly stumping me....[/list:u]So, the tiny but fundamental problem:  I feel like I need Negative Traits to make the system even vaguely sensible.

Specifically, suppose that Ada has "Double Agent" and "Loyal Agent", both as Traits on her sheet.  Michael loves her.  He has some negative Fallout to distribute.  He should only be able to reduce "Loyal Agent", right?  He shouldn't be able to reduce "Double Agent", because that actually helps her.

Now Shane... Shane detests Ada.  If he gets negative Fallout then he shouldn't be able to reduce "Loyal Agent", he should only be able to reduce "Double Agent."

Hrm... I'm writing this out and it seems much less intractable than it did in my head.  If Shane owns Double Agent, and Michael owns Loyal Agent then both of their options are perfectly obvious.

Right... and as Doug says, Shane should be able to roll "Double Agent" dice in any conflicts involving the two of them, whereas Michael should be able to roll "Loyal Agent" dice in any conflicts between the two of them.  In Conflicts involving neither of them, Ada gets control over all those dice.

Is that all it takes to make traits Negative or Positive?  Putting them into the context of the ever-changing landscape of relationships between the characters?  Wow, that would be cool... but I'm very skeptical.

[Doug Ruff]

Tony,

I'm not sure that this is actually about 'positive traits' and 'negative traits', as much as it is about positive and negative consequences.

The Bribe mechanism is about a (relatively) fair exchange: I get dice, you get control over when I canuse those dice. It's a trade.

From your post above, I'm getting the impression that Fallout for this game is going to be more about winning and losing: it is posible to inflict Fallout on someone.

So, here's a suggestion for implementing Fallout, positive and negative. Fallout is a loss or gain in capability, or a loss or gain in control.

If I take 'bad' Fallout, then one of the following may happen:

- I lose one of my Traits This could be a Trait controlled by me, or a Trait controlled by another player. Either way, I'm less capable.
- I must choose one of my Traits which is controlled by me, and pass control of that Trait to another player. I'm just as capable as before (except with respect to the person who now controls my Trait), but I'm less in control of my own destiny.
-I choose a Trait I control that another player owns, and cede control of that trait to them. My plans are falling apart.

If I take 'good' Fallout, then one of the following may happen:

- I gain a new Trait, under my own control. I'm more capable, and more my own person.
- I choose one of my Traits which is controlled by another player, and take control over it. I'm taking back control.
- I choose another person's trait, and take control of it. I'm successfully manipulating other people.

This may be a bit sudden for your liking, in which case, Fallout is applied to one of these oucomes, but a certain amount must accumulate (3 points per die?) before anything actually changes. Or something else must happen to 'convert' the Fallout into a change in control (or effectiveness).

This is all a bit rough, and it may not fit your other plans, but I think that Fallout as change in control is likely to be a necessity. Because I have a strong feeling that control is at the heart of this game.

Doug

[TonyLB]

Okay, I was thinking of something subtly different.

My first rough think was:  Neither Bad nor Good Fallout may modify Traits not owned by me, even if they're on my character's sheet.

So if I've got "Double Agent:  5 (owner:  Shane)" on my sheet, I cannot reduce it with Bad Fallout.  I cannot increase it with Good Fallout.  The only person who can modify it is Shane.  I am dependent upon him to either reduce or increase it.


My more refined thinking was this:  Reducing or increasing Traits is some sort of in-game action that (a) must be meaningfully played out and (b) may be contested on all sides.

Under this system, I would get more into this sort of thing:

I have "Double-Agent: 5 (owner:  Shane)" on my sheet.  Shane has three points of Negative Fallout and two points of Positive.  I want him to apply the negative to reducing "Double-Agent," because I'm sick of him constantly being able to beat me silly with my renegade status.

I raise Double as an issue in a scene with Shane.  This is a Conflict that either of us can Give at any time.  I'm on the Negative side of the Trait, he's on the Positive side.  If I win (he Gives) then he can only spend Negative Fallout on it.  If he wins (I give) then he can only spend Positive Fallout on it.  Would they be required to spend some?  I don't know yet.

But anyway, if neither of us is ready to immediately Give then maybe we have a Conflict over what Shane's fallout means, and whether recent events make him more or less inclined to view Ada as a double-agent.

Now Shane has five dice, right away, from Double Agent to spend in this Conflict.  But I have been off in the wide world, using my massive five dice of Double Agent against other people, in order to boost up other Traits (like "Honorable woman", "Dangerous agent" and "Persecuted Rogue")  Those are either mine or owned by other people not in this conflict.  So I get them to contest against his control of me.  I've bootstrapped his power over me into other power that he has no part of.

Nonetheless, there is very real danger that I will rack up Negative Fallout of my own during the course of the conflict.  That would mean that, long-term, I have to pay a price for getting my way about the Double Agent Trait.

I think that this would be roughly like saying "Shane controls how Fallout is applied to Double Agent, not Ada"... but with fun and important exceptions.  What do you think?

[Doug Ruff]

This could work. I especially like the idea of pulling in traits owned from other players. Both sides can do this, right? So Shane can pull in any other traits he  controls from other people's sheets?

[TonyLB]

Yes and no.  You can pull roll a trait from someone else's sheet if that other person is in the scene.  But then, of course, you lose control over the traits on your sheet that they control.  So who you want in a scene can get pretty tactical.

So let's say the characters are like this:

Ada:
Needs protection (Michael): 3
Decent person (Michael): 2
Double Agent (Shane): 5
Moral Coward (Shane): 2
Killer Ninja: 3

Michael:
Cold-hearted killer: 4
Worthy successor (Shane): 3
Ada's supporter (Ada): 3
Virtuous Man (Ada): 4

Shane:
Moral Pragmatist:  5
Paranoid (Ada): 2
Fiendishly clever (Michael): 3

Then the balance of power is as follows:

Alone
Ada:  15
Micahel: 14
Shane: 10

Ada/Shane scene:
Ada: 10  (8 + 2)
Shane: 15 (8 + 7)

Ada/Michael scene:
Ada:  17 (10 + 7)
Michael: 12 (7 + 5)

Everybody scene:
Ada: 12 (3 + 7 + 2)
Shane: 15 (5 + 7 + 3)
Michael: 12 (4 + 5 + 3)

So there's the static balance of power.  But Ada can use her 15 dice alone (or, better, 17 dice with Michael) toward building up her resources for a confrontation with Shane.  Shane, on the other hand, has a much harder time building up resources on his own.  If he wants to keep Ada under his thumb, he needs constant scenes with her present in order to maintain the balance of power needed to do it.

The real question is whether he wants everyone scenes:  He still has a minor advantage one on one, and he has a huge advantage if he's confident Michael will back him.  But how much can you really trust Michael, after all?

This is getting... wierd.  Good, I think, but definitely wierd.

[Doug Ruff]

Makes sense to me. But man, that's a lot of dice... I like dice, so this isn't a problem for me personally. Just wondering whether the physical currency (the dice) might get in the way of the metaphysical currrency (the relationships).

Another question:

Yes and no.  You can pull roll a trait from someone else's sheet if that other person is in the scene.

Does the other person have to be physically present, to be in the scene? Given the 'secret agent' flavour I'm getting from your descriptions to date, maybe it would be cool to have the influence of "absent friends" felt.

[TonyLB]

Two good questions.  I'm not committed to a dice-pool mechanic (and, frankly, I think seventeen dice hitting the table is a bit too much, too).  I was using it as an example, but I probably need to get something better.

As for physically present vs. "present in spirit/through pawns" conflicts... I don't really know how you would draw the line, or whether you would want to.  I haven't quite figured out the way that lone scenes will feed resources back into conflicted scenes, so I don't see yet whether Shane (for instance) would have motivation to send Ada out on a mission, in order to push her to (herself) use the attributes he controls on her sheet.

I think it is possible to structure the system so that he does have that motivation in some circumstances, but eventually they run out of things they can fruitfully do either alone on their own or by sending other people off alone.  They should be in orbit around each other... they can pursue strategies that separate them, but eventually they always get to a point where they have to be drawn back together in order to progress further.

My leaning is to say that individual scenes should (statistically) create enough Fallout (both positive and negative) that the player wants to get back together with other characters in order to spend it.