New Fastlane Review

[DevP]

...by me. See!

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/10/10989.phtml

[ejh]

OK, this is a stupid question, because I don't have my rulebook handy and maybe it's explained clearly, but --

Dev sez:

"Also, winnings: these had to be spent between overcoming the obstacle itself, replenishing your own stats, saving in the bank, and (I didn't even get around to introducing this, as it wasn't quite necessary) "humbling" other characters, which is spending your winnings on screwing them over."

Wait.  OK, somehow I got the impression that you got to Bank all your winnings, and possibly spend from your Bank to replenish your Facets and all -- and you could *also* *in addition to banking them* use the total number of won chips as a fund with which to overcome obstacles, humble opponents, help opponents, and such.

Double duty -- winnings go back to your bank, *and* they are used on groovy things.

The review suggests the opposite: that only the winnings you don't spend on Humbling and Contests go back into your Bank.

Which is it?  Can someone with a rulebook handy clarify?

[Lxndr]

The full take must be used on humbling, meeting conflicts, etc, but they aren't spent.  Afterwards, winnings (and only winnings, which is a subdivision of the total take) can either be put back in the Bank or spent on character improvement/replenishment.

[ejh]

Thanks man!  However...

"The full take must be used on humbling, meeting conflicts, etc, but they aren't spent. Afterwards, winnings (and only winnings, which is a subdivision of the total take) can either be put back in the Bank or spent on character improvement/replenishment."

Winnings are a subdivision of the total take?  Huh what?

[Eero Tuovinen]

If you bet X and won Y, your
total take is Y. This is what you take away from the table.
winnings are Y-X. This is the excess after your investment.

Or that's how I understood it.

[Lxndr]

Take = all chips retrieved from the table, including the ones you bid that won.

Winnings = all chips WON.


So, you put a chip on lucky 17, which pays 35:1.  It comes up.  Your winnings are 35 chips.  You get 35 + the one chip you bid for a total take of 36.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Ah, but that's different than what I said. Do you mean that the the individual chips lost are actually disregarded when calculating winnings? Example:

I bid one chip on the first third (1:3) and one on black (1:2). Now, if both win:
I take 3+2=5 chips. Of these three are winnings. Clear so far.
But if only the second bid wins?
I take 2 chips. Are my winnings 0 or 1 chips? What you said would mean that it's 1, because the actual second chip I bid was lost on the first third bet and never came back. What I said would mean that it's 0, because I didn't factually come back any richer, so I can't be said to have got any winnings - or rather, my winnings went toward covering my losses.

This is mainly important because if you meant what you said, then the players have to track all their bets separately as far as winnings are concerned. That could be too much work. Don't know, haven't played yet.

[ejh]

I'm getting more confused with each posting.

Lxndr, if you could tell me what is supposed to happen with Eero's example, with a beginning and ending value for the player's Bank -- e.g. "the Bank starts at 10 chips.  I bid one on the first third and one on black, reducing my Bank to 8 chips.  Now the wheel is spinning, and one of my chips is on the first third and one is on black.  It stops spinning...."

That level of detail is necessary for me.  I am not understanding *at all* the difference between Winnings and Total Take as it's been brought up in this thread.

Meanwhile I'm gonna go back to the book and try and figure it out.

[ejh]

OK, reading carefully both this thread and the book this is what I'm getting:


I have a bank of 10.  I bid two chips (bank is now 8), one wins 2:1 and one loses.

The losing one goes to the Croupier's bank.

My "take" is the one bid which won, plus the two new ones I won, for a total of 3.  I use this for overcoming obstacles and Humbling.

The winning one I bid goes back to my bank (now 9)

The remaining 2 that I won are my "winnings" and can EITHER go back into my bank (potentially bringing it up to 11) OR be used for character improvement (facets, factions, and styles).

What confused me was Lxndr's post where he said: "Afterwards, winnings (and only winnings, which is a subdivision of the total take) can either be put back in the Bank or spent on character improvement/replenishment."  -- I took that to mean that the rest of the Take could *not* be put back in the bank, which confused me.  In fact it meant that the rest of the Take *must* be put back into the Bank and could not be used on character improvements.

I think I have found peace. :)

Now one more question, unrelated:

"Humbling a protagonist can reduce facets, styles, or factions on a 1:1 basis, but returns an equal number of chips to the character's bank (bypassing their take)."  p. 31.

Where do those chips come from?  It seems clear now that they come from the Ain Soph, the great void of chips which is infinite and outside of anyone's bank, but I just wanted to make sure.

[Lxndr]

Your bank is 10.

You bid on red (1) and black (1).  Your bank is 8.

Red comes up.  You win red, and lose black.  You get 1 chip from the red bet, plus the chip you put on red.  The black chip goes to the croupier.

Your winnings are 1, your take is 2.

You put the non-winnings in the bank after resolving the conflict.  Bank is 9.  Winnings are 1.

You can put winnings in bank, making it 10, or spend on facets, etc.

edit:  what ed said.

Ed:  effectively, they come out of the facets etc, themselves.  You spend chips, investing them in facets to improvethem, and when they're humbled, the chips come spilling back out.

[DevP]

effectively, they come out of the facets etc, themselves.  You spend chips, investing them in facets to improvethem, and when they're humbled, the chips come spilling back out.

Incidentally, I had a lot of fun of keeping the facets, lives, etc. marked with chips. So, investing a chip into Guile it putting chips from your bank onto your Guile stack, and getting humbled means taking chips off the Guile stack and onto your bank.

[Lance D. Allen]

Incidentally, I had a lot of fun of keeping the facets, lives, etc. marked with chips. So, investing a chip into Guile it putting chips from your bank onto your Guile stack, and getting humbled means taking chips off the Guile stack and onto your bank.

Mm. I like this. Makes for a lot less erasing and rewriting. As the player who won two lucky numbers in one game, I was frequently burning and replacing stats, and I had to get a new piece of paper to track my character about half-way through.

Perhaps a new character sheet could be designed to account for this. At the beginning of play, you place a value of chips on your facets equal to their current value, plus a chip below for each style. Then chip spots for each Life, etc. Toss those around during play, and at the end of the game, just rewrite the values of each trait by how many chips you have in that spot.

[Lxndr]

Today's a day for reviews.  Here's one for Fastlane in German, by amel:

http://amel.rpghost.de/eibon/fastlane.htm

I've got both of you linked on my site now.  Thank you very much!

[DevP]

New character sheet:

http://forgreatjustice.net/FastlaneCharacterSheet.pdf