[Descent] – Why do we do that?

[Kaare_Berg]

Thanks to Mike Sand's enthusiasm I just had to speed up the development of this here apprentice game of mine. We had play test number two yesterday and it went surprisingly well.

Typing the damn thing up made me change a lot, and kick out some other baggage. Having spent the weekend (and a lot of my S.O. goodwill) doing this, I called my crew and we settled down to play.
For those of you that didn't check in last time here is the game in brief:

1.What is the game about?
It is about a bunch of marines trying to complete their mission objectives and survive the horrors of a silent outpost in space. It is a game about earning the right to go home.
2.What do the Players do?
The Marine Players (MPs) play their gung ho marines, fighting aliens and earning story token by deliberately putting the squad and their characters in danger. They also set the difficulty of the mission by placing the mission objectives on the map . The GM gets to throw hordes of aliens at the PCs and keep track of the Kill Tally so that he can escalate the situation by beefing up the aliens or creating Oh No moments.
3. What so the Character's do?
The characters try to carry out their mission objectives and stay alive in a situation that just keep getting worse and they get to shoot big guns, a lot, sometimes one-handed.

This is Descent.

Welcome to duty.

The crew was Christer, Espen and Ole M. Long time friends.

Chargen

We started with chargen and despite being hampered by the lack of a proper character sheet it went just as I hoped. (You can off course use blank sheets of paper, but last time showed me that for game play to move as fast as I want it to there is a distinct need of character sheets to facilitate the use of information fast enough).
The player marines were:
Christer – Slip Monkey – support gunner – "Semper Fi" Code of Conduct
Espen – Strayshot – medic – "Leave No Man Behind" Code of Conduct
Ole M. – Pyro – engineer – "Semper Fi" Code of Conduct
Rules info:
The nicknames are there to enforce a tradition picked up from watching and reading too many films and books about the US Marine Corps.
The Classes are there to facilitate rapid chargen – the difference between them is the access to different MOS skills.
Code of Conduct is a tool by which the Players may gain story tokens in exchange for making life hard for their characters or the squad.

Play:

The Betruger System
Terraforming Colony
Ownership: Weyland/Yutani Corporation (low on inspiration at that moment)
Population: 1600
Atmosphere: Class one, breathable
Conditions: Terraforming storms.

Mission Briefing

The marines arrived for the briefing.
I laid down the colony schematic (Descent uses a simplified map to regulate play) and listed the mission objectives (MO).
1. Deactivate the AA system. (placed by Christer)
2. Retrieve R&D data. (Placed by Esepen)
3. Locate the colonists. (Placed by Ole M.)
The players placed the objectives on the schematic and got Story Tokens based on the distance between the Landing Zone and the MO. They also had to justify why the MO was at that location, it took a some explaining that this was up to the one player, and not a negotiated issue.
Rules info: Distance is translated into Challenges to be overcome, each challenge risks alien contact.
We then negotiated the stakes. Here I had a major Aha Moment. The text as it stands says that the MO stakes should be something bad that happens unless the players succeed (the stick approach). From the negotiation I learned that it was much better that the MO stakes are rewards (Carrot). Having the players help set them makes them care.
From there the marines deployed.

Deployment:

The marines deployed moved on towards the dark Hab Block A. Quietly the Pyro brought out his welding torch to cut through the door, negligent of the fact that the motion tracker couldn't penetrate the airlock.
Initially the conflict was whether Pyro could open the Air Lock without alerting the aliens.
Rules info: Aliens are either lurking or hunting.
Ole M. chose to invoke the option to Up the Stakes, both increasing the obstacle of the conflict as well as increasing the stakes. He got a story token and the stakes become, if I fail not only are the aliens active they are right there on the other side. Hearing this Christer said Slip Monkey was too busy talking crap to Strayshot to pay attention and he would not be able to use his gun in the first exchange of combat. He got a story token too.
Throughout the game Ole M really used this option to mess his characters life up, at some point it nearly killed Pyro. Thanks to Judd (aka Paka) for making me even more conscious of stakes setting and their power.

They moved into the hab section (Ole M made the roll) and I had three aliens waiting. Slip Monkey on point and a furious (and desperate) fire fight/brawl later I had my first kill tally beads.
Rules info: Kill tally is a count of how many aliens the marines kill. For each given number they pass a point of no return and the situation escalates either through an Oh No momen (setting change) or through the aliens developing new traits.
However the game flow felt artificial. First rolling to see whether any aliens showed up. Then if and how close they appeared in play grated against all my old Narrator habits (I used narrate monster arrival based on drama and now I left that control to the rules and the dice).
It felt like random encounters. But then I refined this process (fiddled the rules a bit) and remembered that it is tied into the reward mechanic (story tokens) it suddenly felt natural, and then it worked like a charm.
Rules info: Each time a player gets a story token by creating a challenge the narrator rolls the infestation rating.

Pyro chucked a grenade through the broken window into the Med Lab reception before the recon team stormed the room under Slip Monkeys covering fire. The room was empty, but the motion tracker flared alive. Incoming . . .

In this situation, Ole M called on his code and threw a hand grenade into a room he knew to be empty. He got a story token, I rolled Infestation. Then Christer gave covering fire, another story token and I rolled even more infestation. From facing two aliens, eight were now barrelling in on them. This was what made me accept leaving alien activation to the dice. Funny that, as a game designer I know exactly why I wanted this, yet as the Narrator this was initially a problem. As the game progressed I became even more convinced that this works. It just needs a little fiddling with the exact numbers.

We played through the mission objective, the players set one of their own afterwards, and then we had to call it a night. The story being driven by the players making life harder for their marines scene by scene.

Where as careful play will create one or two Points of No Return pr MO, my players, particularly Christer and Ole M thrived on messing up the situation and by the outcome of the first MO they where up to 6 PNRs.
Rules info: Point of no returns comes from four sources.
The Kill Tally filling up.
Attempting to complete an objective.
Attempting to complete an off target objective.
Entering the Hive for the first time.
As we ended the game and had our summary chat Espen asked why is it that we got such a high number of PNRs? I told him the mechanic and he asked now why do we do that?
Espen's challenge was to complete the mission, Christer did it because he found it fun, while Ole M did it to get the Story Tokens, so when they did "stupid" things they were complicating his agenda.
We discussed this, and suddenly I had a reward system I hadn't thought of.

But it is worth a thought, why do players embrace the power to complicate the lives of their characters with a fervour that makes a lemming seem the pinnacle of self preservation?

And more importantly how do I further refine this for use in my design work?

Peace

[GnS]

Being part of the playtesting crew, I thought I'd share a point of view.

Why I do what I do, and why I find it fun to complicate my life, and the life of my fellow players:
1) As a player I get to decide, and describe what happens, and why.
2) As a player I get to create situations that complicate the game, thereby increasing the excitement level.
3) The priceless expression on Strayshots (Espen) face when he very stealthily approaches his mission objective due to a well laid plan, eagerly helped along by UCC (unnecessary cyclic coverfire). 

The system worked surprisingly well, but one could always ad more aliens in the encounters. One successfull MO, and no friendly bodycount..

Christer