[Serpentine Thunder] Ronnies feedback

[Ron Edwards]

Serpentine Thunder by John Laviolette is the starting draft for a Great Non-RPG. I see it as a boxed set of specialty cards, like the game Titan from Avalon Hill, if anyone remembers that.

Reading the game brought an interesting response on my part - at some points, I said things like "everyone should be a dragon," and at others, things like "only one person should be a dragon." Therefore I don't really have a specific recommendation about organizing the players relative to characters. The only thing I'm sure of is that the current GM/players construction is probably not functional, and that you should decide whether this game is or isn't about competition among the dragons, and among the players (see my red dials in the Gamism essay).

For Ronnies purposes, I think the "gun" is weak - it doesn't work too well in relation to the choices among dragon players to be naughty or nice, so to speak. Open conflicts among town & dragon seem better suited to play, and as I implied above, I can't really tell what sort of inter-dragon interactions are important.

The plethora of NPCs is bewildering, laborious, and it also ties into my main criticism: Disputation as a central mechanic. This might be called the "Universalis Wrong Turn" concept, which is to say, getting fascinated with "No it's not" as a power struggle, over what is or isn't actually there, instead of driving toward resolution of fictional conflict.

To put it another way, I cannot imagine, ever, disputing whether the proposed blacksmith NPC has six sons or two sons. If for some reason another player disputed me about it, it's a game-breaker - I'd cease wanting to play.

The resolution of disputation also worries me. Dice = number of disputed facts, then count matched/odds, then vote? I can't see anything going on here except bullying others; as a general thing, I've never seen voting work in any RPG or RPG-ish mechanic.

The ordering of events is nifty, but I'm not seeing why 0's go first in the example when the rules say 1's go first. Also, as a general thing, avoid examples that involve perception of any kind. I'd rather know what happens in a fight or argument, because resolving perception (they notice, they don't notice) is a pacing feature for the next conflict, not a real conflict of its own.

All the special rolls make sense, and the randomizing role of the dice will work very well here if the goal is wholly Gamist, which I recommend.

Great title!

Best,
Ron

[talysman]

thanks, Ron. I popped in a few days ago, noticed that Serpentine Thunder was one of the "Good Non-RPG" Ronnies, and I've been anxiously awaiting this detailed explanation, because I needed to figure out what went wrong... because my dark secret is: I hate hate hate most kinds of non-rpg games. when I think back on all the board games, card games and dice games I played as a kid, it seems I may have enjoyed the time spent with my friends, but not the game itself. this is why I stopped playing chess, checkers, Monopoly, poker, blackjack and other games. I even had myself reminded of this recently, playing Scrabble for the first time; I won once or twice, enjoyed the time with my family, but didn't much care for Scrabble. the times I actually liked something about a game itself as opposed to merely being with people was when the effects of play created something in a fictional setting -- in other words, when it had vaguely RPG-like features. I sort of liked the board game "Talisman", though not much, imagined I would like the Knights of the Dinnertable-inspired card game Hack, although I was a little let down, and sort of liked Munchkin.

so this puts me in a difficult position: Serpentine Thunder might make a great non-RPG card game, but I would never want to playtest it, because I wouldn't enjoy it. this doesn't mean I won't consider mechanical inspiration from the specialty cards idea, but it does mean that I'd better fix the game if it really isn't much of an RPG, because otherwise I'm going to find out in playtest that I just don't like it and let the game die.

so, what's making it not an RPG? I suspect part of it may be bad writing on my part, emphasing things like the Dispute Rolls too much in the text and choosing some bad examples. I actually introduced the Dispute Rolls concept because I thought my last Ronnie entry, Final Breath, had a borderline non-RPG problem because there didn't seem to be enough interplay with the fiction, so instead of fictional elements being purchased with a fixed resource, I wanted a way for more fictional elements to emerge into the game no matter what the players' current limitations might be. still, I think I can see some things that need fixing, here:

• Dispute Rolls need to be described differently, to de-emphasize them, instead of making them seem the central point of play. the name probably needs to be changed, too. I'm thinking of calling them Detail Rolls and using them before detailing a new fictional element in the game.
• instead of allowing players to spend the dice successes to block a detail being added ("disputed fact" in the current text,) players can only spend them to add facts/details or make those facts stronger; this should make Dispute Rolls (Detail Rolls) less of a bullying session.
• if players roll dice first on Detail Rolls instead of after listing facts that are in dispute, then the dice need to be determined differently -- either a fixed number or a number based on the number of players, perhaps. I'm thinking adding fictional elements to the town should be based on the current Slain number.
• change the text to limit when these new Detail Rolls occur, and make it clear that they occur essentially "outside a scene" and thus aren't linked to Conflict Rolls except through using the created details as resources for conflicts.
• either eliminate the collaborative town building scenes entirely by letting the GM set most of the details, or use specialty cards with true collaborative play so that the players control the town together.
• if the GM is dropped entirely, every player makes one dragon and one named human character. the human character is opposed (knowingly or unknowingly, openly or subtly) to one of the other dragons. this keeps the PCs and their adversity distinct.

the big issue, here, seems to be the GM/no GM issue, because if I go "no GM", I will probably need the card deck idea and have to develop the game in a whole different way, whereas if I stick to the GM, it's mostly a cleanup of the rules that will make the game look more like existing RPGs.

on some of the other points:

sequence of events: the 0 goes first/1 goes first thing is just an error. the example is correct in this case and represents a change in the rules I forgot to alter in the other place. it's basically just a typo in the same way I screwed up the word "cannon" and referred to it as "canon" throughout the text. I plan on using the same basic die roll techniques in most of my games, and some of them use 0 in a special way, so I got a little confused when trying to decide whether to count it or not for this game.

the plethora of NPCs: I figure this might not be a problem if I restrict the number of named NPCs to the number of players, with the rest being faceless masses, at least to start. if players decide a new NPC is necessary and worth the extra hassle, they can go for it, but I'll keep the number of NPCs necessary for play low, in my revision.

interdragon relations: I really do want all the players to play dragons, and I want dragons to have the option of who they side with. are they going to save dragonkind by changing the town peacefully, deceitfully, or violently? and if another dragon has an opposed idea,   how far will the two be willing to go to get their own way? this, to me, was the excitement behind the idea of humans armed with guns threatening dragons, so I really don't want to drop this. plus, there's the whole question of NPC dragons, which aren't mentioned in the existing rules but were something I was considering on adding, since there's supposed to be a whole dragon society of which the PC dragons are a part.

thanks again, Ron, and I'll think more about this, and take any further suggestions anyone has to add under consideration.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Dude, I totally want to be a giant fiery dragon now.

I don't particularly want to be part of a big complicated draconic society with lots of dragon NPCs -- that smacks of the Vampire syndrome, "you get to be a totally cool superhuman....except even cooler superhumans make all the rules for you."

And why don't I (as a dragon) get to fly? Screw "leap"!

[talysman]

Dude, I totally want to be a giant fiery dragon now.

I don't particularly want to be part of a big complicated draconic society with lots of dragon NPCs -- that smacks of the Vampire syndrome, "you get to be a totally cool superhuman....except even cooler superhumans make all the rules for you."

And why don't I (as a dragon) get to fly? Screw "leap"!

although I say dragons don't fly, they leap, that's mostly color to make my dragons feel a little different than standard RPG dragons. for all practical purposes, a dragon with Wings and Leap flies, although awkwardly. so fly to your heart's content!

as for the Vampire syndrome, you raise a good point, in a way: I need to make it clear that, although there are other dragons in the world besides the PCs and an ancient draconic tradition, the PCs *are* the coolest superhumans in the world. in fact, you will note that, as the setting currently stands, it's just dragons and humans. no ghosts, no goblins, nothing. I don't even have wizards and witches in this game. I'm thinking about loosening this a very tiny bit, adding fairies and demons (which are both essentially just very weak dragons, mechanically.) and maybe, maybe allowing human "wizards" who have one of the three supernatural talents (Shadow, Glamour, Shapeshift.) but this has to be done in such a way that they don't steal the spotlight from the dragons.

the way I see it, all the various supernatural creatures of legend are "explained" as being tricks by dragons.