[Get Out...] A less lame mechanic

[Graham W]

I'm revising my Ronnies entry, "Get Out Get Away Get Wise Get Back Get Even". The game is about running for your life, taking its cue from movies like "The Fugitive" and "The Thirty Nine Steps".

It goes like this: One player plays the guy who's running. All the other players narrate obstacles in that character's way (guards, thugs, security fences etc). The "running" player must adapt his narration to say how he copes with the obstacles.

Now, in the Ronnies version, the mechanic for this narration was rather loose, based on rewarding the Runner's narration with dice. It wasn't a good system.

I think I've got a better one now and I'd welcome feedback on it.

There's two decks of cards, an "Obstacle" deck which contains cards with obstacles on:

Security Fence, Guard Dogs, SWAT Team, Chasm

And an "Escape" deck, which contains cards with ways to avoid those obstacles:

Climb Over, Run Like Hell, Cut A Wire, Blow It Up

And a round of play goes like this.

The Obstacle players are each dealt three Obstacle cards. The Runner is dealt a hand of Escape cards, containing one less card than the total number of Obstacle cards.

The Runner narrates running through the city. At any time, an Obstacle player can interrupt by playing an Obstacle card. The Runner must then play an Escape card and describe how that card counters the Obstacle.

So, for example, the Escape card Climb Over can be easily used to counter the Obstacle Security Fence. It's more difficult to use Climb Over against the Obstacle Guard Dogs, but it's possible - there could be an overhead gangtry which leads past the dogs.

If the Obstacle players like the explanation of how the Escape card counters the Obstacle, the Runner wins the trick. If they don't, the Runner loses the trick. The Runner keeps all the cards he wins.

Alternatively, to get past an obstacle, the Runner may play any card face down. If he does this, he must come up with a brilliant and creative description of how he gets past the obstacle. If the Obstacle players like it, he wins the trick; if not, he loses.

At the end of the round, there will be one Obstacle card left, and the Runner will have no cards. The Obstacle player reveals the card. The Runner must then give a brilliant description of how he avoids this obstacle. Again, if the Obstacle players like it, he wins the trick; if not, he loses.

I like this mechanic. In fact, I've bought two packs of playing cards and written Obstacles and Escapes on them in black marker. And I'm about to test it out with my friend Helen in the canteen.

Meanwhile, any feedback is welcome. Can you think of any pitfalls? If you've read the previous version of "Get Out...", have I lost anything by adopting this mechanic?

[Eric J. Boyd]

So what happens in the narration if the Runner loses versus an obstacle besides losing the trick? Does it matter whether this was an obstacle he played a card for or whether it's the last obstacle? You mention tricks--so what happens after all tricks are played--is there some set way to wrap things up?

[Graham W]

Smithy,

Good questions. Actually, I'm not sure I've got answers.

In the original version of the game, if the Runner lost against an obstacle, he still got past the obstacle, but he was injured in some way. He was either physically injured or he'd lost an important part of his humanity (e.g. he'd killed someone).

Now, I really liked this. But when I played it with my friend Helen last night, she objected strenuously that this was cheating, and that losing against an obstacle should mean not getting past the obstacle. So we decided that losing against an obstacle meant that the Runner had to find "another way round".

When all the cards are played, we move around the circle, so that the next player becomes the Runner. And, yes, there's an overarching story structure, so that there's a definite way at the end that things get wrapped up.

Graham

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

That's a really good example of the value of playtesting, and also of its pitfalls.

You see, I also liked the "get past the obstacle, but get hurt" idea, on paper. Helen's response is a big alarm bell, though, as I also know that such paper-based responses are often wrong.

Yet (and here we enter the wilderness of mirrors), not all playtest comments and responses are golden. They only matter if they are offered in the spirit of making the game the best it can be, and about issues that strike you as author as central.

Which, if I'm reading correctly and inferring correctly, do apply in this case. Helen seemed to be enjoying herself and wanting the game to be good.

So ... if you need to succeed, fully, to get past the obstacle, then how does the character get hurt? Seems to be the next question.

Best,
Ron

[rbingham2000]

If the hero runs out of options (fails every attempt at getting past the Final Obstacle in a scene), I think a very in-genre thing to happen would be to have the bad guys capture the hero, which leads to a sequence similar to the opening GET OUT scene, as the hero tries to escape the nasty fate that the bad guys have in store for him.

Maybe the bad guys put the hero into a "Bind" similar to the ones in Scarlet Wake, a really nasty situation which our hero has to escape in order to get the hell out of there and continue with the game.

[Graham W]

You see, I also liked the "get past the obstacle, but get hurt" idea, on paper. Helen's response is a big alarm bell, though, as I also know that such paper-based responses are often wrong.

Well, yes. The problem is that it seemed a very intuitive response: "But I failed against the obstacle! So how come I got past it?". It's a criticism of how the game rules lead to bad storytelling, I think.

I've got a couple of options:

1. I could say that failing against the obstacle means that you don't get past it. You stay in the same location and you have to keep trying until you find another way round.

2. I could go a bit deeper and say that you still get past the obstacle, but you lose part of your humanity in doing so. You still get past the guard, but you end up killing him. Helen might object to this, but then, she'd actually be losing something tangible, so she might not.

3. rbingham2000's idea is very good and completely in genre. I like it a lot.

Incidentally, rbingham2000, what's your real name? Just so I don't have to refer to you as rbingham2000.

Graham

[rbingham2000]

Great to see you liked my idea. "Binds" get used a lot in action flicks, not just for revenge stories like Kill Bill.

And by the way, name's Robert Bingham. Nice to meet you.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Could the Runner be allowed to make a (Hobbesian) choice about how to react to a failure, e.g.
- be captured
- spend more resources at a higher rate of exchange to try again (e.g. my first Escape card fails, I decide to try again, I discard another Escape card -- that's 2 spent already -- and then play yet another -- up to 3 now -- which may or may not succeed)
- accept a physical, psychological, or moral injury

[Graham W]

Could the Runner be allowed to make a (Hobbesian) choice about how to react to a failure, e.g.
- be captured
- spend more resources at a higher rate of exchange to try again (e.g. my first Escape card fails, I decide to try again, I discard another Escape card -- that's 2 spent already -- and then play yet another -- up to 3 now -- which may or may not succeed)
- accept a physical, psychological, or moral injury

Yes. I think the choice element is important, actually. You don't want everyone around the table saying "Oh, Christ, another capture scene".

I think the "resource" you have to spend will be Humanity. You can choose to abandon one of your moral codes to get past the obstacle: you kill, you torture, you scare children.

A quick word about the card mechanic and how it worked in Actual Play. (It seems like overkill to start a separate thread in AP). The cards had one very good point and one very bad point.

The very bad point was that it totally changed the dynamic of the game. Rather than an interrogation, it became the following:

Graham: "You see a Thug"

[Graham plays "Thug" card. Helen looks at her hand for a card she can play. Pause. She finds "Blow Him Up".]

Helen: "All right.  I Blow Him Up."


which is unbelievably wrong. It needs to be so much quicker and so much more spontaneous.

So it turns out that the less lame mechanic is much more lame.

The very good point was the cards. Because the cards are portable, I just took them to the pub later and played the game with my friend Rachel.

So I think that's one major design goal: to create a game that can be played in the pub. Dice are hard to take to the pub (too easy to lose). Cards are perfect.

What I might do is keep the basic structure of the Ronnies entry, but make the Antagonists give cards as a reward instead of dice. At the start of each turn, a pack of playing cards is split between the Antagonists. To reward the Runner for good narration, they deal him a card. To punish him for boring narration, they take a card back.

At the end of the turn, the Runner turns over all the cards he's dealt. The Final Obstacle has a poker hand written on it (Two Pairs, Full House). If the Runner has that hand, he surmounts the obstacle; if he doesn't, he doesn't.

(Clearly, that idea is stolen from Dust Devils. But it works nicely for this.)

Or something like that. But, in any case, I think cards is the way to go rather than dice. There's some nice pubs where I live and I'd much rather be playing there than in my living room.

Graham


Graham