My pitiful attempts at World, Flesh and the Devil

[Kenway]

First of all, I apologize profusely in advance to the creator of WFD and anyone who has played it for my mangling of the game:

 I tried out WFD today.  Because of time constraints, I had to cut the number of suggested notes.

 First I tried a superhero adventure with my friend being Spider-Man.
 The trial was something like:  AUNT MAY is DEATHLY ill.  DOCTOR OCTOPUS has the only cure.
 Notes:  AUNT MAY:  She depends on me.
 DEATHLY:  My negligence let my Uncle Ben die.
 DOCTOR OCTOPUS:  One of my many long-time nemeses.
 I don't remember the die.

 The next game my friend and I ran was... Survivor.
 Trial:  16 people are stuck on an ISLAND.  Only 1 PERSON can be the WINNER of the 1 MILLION DOLLAR PRIZE.
 Notes:  ISLAND:  Actually, I'm water-phobic.
 $1 MILLION:  I'm broke.
 1 PERSON:  I don't trust anybody.
 WINNER:  I'm very competitive.
 Die:  WFFFDD
 I only had time to run a couple conflicts:
 -1.  The immunity challenge where you have to carry a bucket on a bunch of narrow ramps:  my friend failed his roll, but was successful on the reroll, using his WINNER note, and rolling a Devil:  "I almost fell, but I pull myself together, overcoming my fear and rising to the challenge to win."
 -2.  A walk alone in the forest resulted in a wild boar attack.  Again, my friend had to reroll, using 1 PERSON, and rolled Flesh:  "I sensed the boar since I was used to being surprised and with great strength, killed it with my spear.

 In a couple days, I'll try some longer, more mature adventures.
 Go easy on me, please!

[Ron Edwards]

Kenway,

Actually I'm pretty impressed. As a long-time member of the Hasn't Played WFD Yet Club, I've racked my brain several times to come up with a suitable setting/etc to play it with. And here you are ... just, you know, playing it sensibly. Especially the Spider-Man stuff - if there's any character better suited to WFD, I dunno who it might be.

I have a question for you, though, based on a discussion I had with a couple of friends (other Forge members) last week. Both of them had an unusual reaction to the WFD rules - they found the WFD die redundant and perhaps even intrusive.

"Imagine a traditional martial arts game, with typical RPG resolution," said one. "Now imagine rolling a d6 with every roll-to-hit to see whether you threw a punch or a kick or whatever. That's what the WFD die seems like to me." They were willing to try it, but didn't, you know, jump at the chance.

What do you think of that point, based on your admittedly stripped-down instances of play? In fact, it seems as though such instances might be the perfect context in which to address the issue.

Best,
Ron

[Kenway]

Thanks for the kind words.
 The way my friend and I played it, the WFD die was seen more or less as a replacement for traditional stats and attributes.  We concluded that the game seemed "fundamentally backwards" to us "traditional" d&d type gamers.  You declare an action, then you roll for success, then you roll for what the heck caused it or which stat you used or held you back for that situation.  That was how our games went.
 To answer your question directly- the WFD die was very cool, if you're willing to let it "be the GM and dictate the rules system."
 Combat was an issue.  We managed to get some usable results.  In our comic book setting, World resulted in stuff like falling buildings and other distractions, Flesh was typical dexterity/strength stuff and Devil was taken as will/emotions.  Is that more or less the correct interpretation?
 Again, combat was a bit odd when you rolled Devil.  "You get too afraid to attack?"  It made some sense in our Survivor wildlife encounters, but we saw how it would be strange with heroic persons, so our games were purposely combat-light.

 An odd issue that came up was that characters were indeed very open to interpretation.  2 different people playing the same character might end up with entirely different results since there are few explicit stats saying you're strong or whatever.  Since we used Spider-Man, we had more to work with.

 We also noted that you could simulate heavily-emotional stuff like Call of Cthulhu (sp?) or Neon Genesis Evangelion (anime) more or less brilliantly.  In more traditional rpgs, you have a separate sanity or whatever stat, but here it was basically perfectly integrated into the player's behaviour without having to draw extra attention to it.

 I hope I made some sense.  The games were pretty fun and I'll report back with more playtesting.

[Ben Morgan]

Re. mangling the game: Paul's the final word on this one, for obvious reasons, but I would venture to ask one question:

Did you have fun?

If so, don't sweat anything else. Everything that's put up here is done so for one reason and one reason only, for people to enjoy themselves. There's no great big Roleplaying Council looking over your shoulders making sure you "get it right".

[Emily Care]

{A friend said } "Imagine a traditional martial arts game, with typical RPG resolution," said one. "Now imagine rolling a d6 with every roll-to-hit to see whether you threw a punch or a kick or whatever. That's what the WFD die seems like to me."

I would suggest rolling for the overall intended action. Instead of rolling for each individual punch and kick, I would have the player state what the character's intended course of action is (ie. "I attempt to capture him without hurting him." vs "I punch him in the gut."), then make the roll and the appropriate party narrates what happens.  

Slightly longer arcs of time and action seem more suited to being resolved(or should I say determined if it's fortune forward?)  by the mechanic.  This would be true especially when dealing with the Devil as an outcome, since motivations are played out over time and then reach a moment of resolution. (That sentence is not quite right)

The die roll reflects the important moment in time that is the culmination of the rest of the action. Looking at it in terms of narrative, the die roll indicates what each  micro-climax will be.

Well, it's a thought anyway.

--Emily Care

And excellent games, Kenway!  No shame there. Sounds like you had great ideas. :)

[Paul Czege]

Kenway!

I apologize profusely in advance to the creator of WFD and anyone who has played it for my mangling of the game

You're apologizing?!? Are you insane. You played my game! I actually get a moment of head-rush when someone tells me this kind of stuff.

From Ron:

...they found the WFD die redundant and perhaps even intrusive...."Imagine a traditional martial arts game, with typical RPG resolution," said one. "Now imagine rolling a d6 with every roll-to-hit to see whether you threw a punch or a kick or whatever. That's what the WFD die seems like to me..."

Okay...I'll reveal the secret inspiration behind the WFD die. One of the things that was really enjoyable for me when I ran Everway a year ago was interpreting the cards when we used the Fortune deck. Not only was it surreal how appropriate the cards would be to the situation at hand, but it was an awful lot of fun for me as the GM to deal with the input into conflict resolution of uncertain creative stuff, and create an interpretation of the outcome. That, more than anything else, was the driver behind me inventing the WFD die. I wanted the game to deliver a (hopefully) surreally appropriate input of uncertain creative stuff to the player for interpretation.

From Kenway:

You declare an action, then you roll for success, then you roll for what the heck caused it or which stat you used or held you back for that situation. That was how our games went.

And that's exactly how I envisioned it.

I will say something about "roll for success" though. I think it's actually a combination of the WFD die and the +/- die that informs the interpretation of success. Consider a player whose stated intent is for his character to kill his rampantly psychotic son with a remote control explosive before the cops catch up with the boy for all the prostitute murders. If the player rolls World+, perhaps he describes coolly executing his son with a device that functions perfectly. He could easily describe almost the same thing for Devil+, ending maybe with a line of dialogue, "And fuck your mother too." But Flesh+ might not be a success of the stated intent. Perhaps it's a memory of taking the boy for ice cream when he was five, and a decision not to go through with the execution.

Maybe this is a good opportunity to clarify my thoughts on "intent." They've shifted a little since I wrote the game text, and certainly weren't well-described to begin with. The WFD die is best understood as a custom distribution of World, Flesh, and Devil as factors in the character's story, separate from character intent. This leaves "intent" to be very specific to the objectives of the character, in a given conflict situation. It is not the player's intent for the story, but the character's intent within the story. And the input from the WFD die, in conjunction with the player making choices about re-rolls, essentially manages fluctuations in the environmental, physiological, and emotional forces that impact the character. The player of the character above whose intent was to kill his son, rolls Flesh+ and narrates a transcendence of the heart. The character, and his intentions, change as a result. Your comments about the "openness" of the character are right on target.

the WFD die was very cool....We managed to get some usable results....World resulted in stuff like falling buildings and other distractions, Flesh was typical dexterity/strength stuff and Devil was taken as will/emotions. Is that more or less the correct interpretation?

I struggle with how much of my own interpretation to reveal. I think it's important for players to interpret World, Flesh, and Devil as part of play. The drama of the game is embedded in that process of interpretation. So I've been careful. I think it's important for players to have some baseline consensus, but I certainly don't want rules-lawyering over the meanings. So with some hesitation...

The game describes World as, "the environment...circumstance, causality, and the power of objects." On World+, I'm justified in narrating how I kill a man cleanly with a ballpoint pen, or a roll of toilet paper. On World-, I might fail to kill an unarmed invalid with an AK-47. On World+, a taxicab is just where I need it when my intent is to evade pursuers. On World-, the elevator doors just don't close in time.

The game describes Flesh as, "strength, brainpower, sensuality, and health." As I wrote on http://indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=927">this thread, it's also energy and love, the complexity and scale of human emotion, the power of the human body, and the pain of stress and injury and acid-reflux. This more complete interpretation probably informs the Flesh+, change of heart example above.

I think Devil is the hardest one for people to grasp, and I seem to have made it harder for a few people who've emailed me by clarifying certain emotions as part of Flesh. The game describes Devil as, "alienation, materialism, objectification, and fear." On http://indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1465">this thread, I attempted to clarify Devil. Here's the relevant text, slightly edited:

The modern American materialist is the archetype for having succumbed to Devil. Any behavior that treats another human being as an object, or an obstacle, any act in pursuit of selfish objectives at the expense of another person, any inability to recognize what would truly make you happy when you see it, even choosing style at the expense of substance, and fear of what others might think, is having succumbed to the Devil. Altruistic behavior, putting another person's needs and happiness ahead of your own, that's transcending the Devil. Lawlessness at the expense of the happiness and needs of others, and anarchic behaviors that create fear in others are aspects of having succumbed to the Devil, but not the whole of the Devil.

Was all this stuff helpful? Any thoughts? I very much look forward to hearing about any future playtesting you might do.

Paul