[The Company] Initial Guidance

[Grand_Commander13]

And I return to The Forge once more, a bit older and with a project I feel more strongly about than any of my previous solo projects (I can only hope that this feeling is more like in Kid Rock's "Forever" and less like the "and it feels right this time" in Metallica's "No Leaf Clover").

First, a general overview of this project (so that my questions are answerable) which is currently a few text files in one of the many folders in my RPG design folder:

The characters are Inspectors who work for a a monolithic entity known simply as The Company, which is so large that it polices itself, rather than being policed by the government.  It can just as easily be set in our world or in "a world uncannily like our own" without encountering trouble.  Inspectors root out corruption and misappropriation of corporate funds using their broad base of skills (represented by the core "betting" mechanic) and their vast network of corporate Contacts.

The betting mechanic centers around the Inspector and the Manager (aka the GM) deciding just how much they wish to win the current conflict, be it the picking of a lock, hacking of a director's computer, or the sabotage of a truck.  The Inspector starts with a certain amount of Free tokens (currently twenty) that have no strings.  He also can bid Strain tokens (which act as Free tokens for this current conflict, but force you to spend Failure tokens later) and Failure tokens.  One side raises with a certain amount of ONE type of token, and the other side meets the raise with that many of any one type of token, and can then raise if they wish.  If both sides decline to raise, the conflict ends and Failure tokens are counted, with the loser being the one who put more Failure tokens into the middle.  (Likewise, if a raise of Failure tokens is met with Failure tokens, the conflict ends.)  Currently I have no way of resolving conflicts where both sides bid the same amount of Failure tokens.  Though I wish I could just say "neither side wins," I can't see that working with simple things like "do you manage to open the lock?"  (BUT...  It is a possibility that the Inspector can fail to enter the room but encounter a loose-lipped employee who gives him a small clue, or the Inspector gets in but all the data sheets have been shredded, leaving only an employee's cell phone number on the unused stationary as the only useful information.  I'll consider that for playtesting, and I'll also accept any advice.)

While the player starts with twenty Free tokens, the GM starts with none.  As time elapses, the people being investigated are able to bring more resources to hide their corruption, and they start gaining Free tokens every hour (thus making speed a virtue).  The usage of Contacts takes time which is determined by a similar system of tokens, with each Failure token you use making the task take another half an hour (Contact requests are ranked 1-4 in a freeform way in which the GM determines how difficult a request is.  This represents both the BASE time [30 minutes times the rank], and how many tokens must be used for the request).  Using the Contact Strain tokens don't raise the time for this request, but force you to spend the Contact Failure tokens for later requests.

Most noteable for most, I think, would be the game's lack of character creation.  My initial concept for the game involved Contact departments being set at character creation and Skills giving you extra Free tokens in related conflicts, but I didn't like the direction that took the game and so I scrapped it.  I rather like what this does to the game, so I'm not really trolling for opinions here.

Now, my first alpha playtest went rather well.  I had to scrap anything involving talking from being called a Conflict (Inspector: "You, spill your guts."), but otherwise I was very satisfied with how painful it can be to decide whether you want to win a particular Conflict.  I also adjusted the system for gathering intelligence via your contacts prior to arriving at the facility.  Before it functioned like getting the request done in the first place, but with only Free tokens to spend.  Now I've worked it to a "choose this many things from this list, and you can choose more but you'll start the game clock (which is important because this determines how many Free tokens the GM gets) later than zero" thing.

I was wondering if anyone could offer me advice on how to proceed with my playtesting.  I want to get in at least one more alpha playtest with my business partner first, but then I feel like I'll be ready to go into beta playtesting watching another group have at it with a draft copy of the game book.  I don't know if it's the mechanics or my partner, but he was rather confused by the betting mechanic, and I feel like I'll have to pay very close attention to how it's described in the book.  Also, is there anything in those rules described above that anybody feels I should pay attention to in my playtesting?

Likewise, I was wondering if anyone could assist me with alternate terminology for my "betting" mechanic, since there's nothing being gambled at all.  While it's a very precise "this conflict isn't worth spending more resources" kind of thing, I find the gambling terminology to be very close to the feeling.  Anything better anyone can suggest?

And finally, I do have two concrete rules advice questions.  Part of the first is somewhat of an opinion poll, to be honest, but it's a problem that has been bothering me all the same.  The way Strain tokens currently work, each Strain point you have at the start of a Conflict (goes down by one each hour, and has one added to it for each Strain token you use) forces you to bid a 50/50 mix of Failure tokens and either Strain or Free (or 100% Failure if you so desire) making it hard to decide to just win an important conflict.  Currently the Strain does not affect your resources at all (in fact, it forces you to conserve them) and there is no maximum Strain score.  The problem I see is the possibility of an Inspector or the Manager deciding that they are going to win the current conflict.  They'll be forced to eventually throw in an amount of Failure tokens equal to their Strain score over the course of the conflict, but there is currently nothing stopping them from kicking in Strain tokens beyond that, forcing the other party to give up, expend all of its resources, or rack its Strain score up to immense proportions as well.  Current options on my table involve leaving it as a non-exploit, or patching it up with either a maximum Strain score (beyond which you cannot Strain yourself further) or a maximum expenditure of Strain tokens for each conflict.  Any advice here, or at least a second opinion on the implications of each option, is welcome.

My second rules question is that the betting mechanic currently only works for one person on each side.  Even multiplying the amount of Free tokens the Manager gets by the amount of Inspectors doesn't work because of the Strain scores involved.  My best solution involves letting each Inspector handle a different Department (all Departments would be run by the Manager, but they have their own Free tokens and Strain scores).  I consider this to be rather fair mechanically, and I like how simple it is (rather than, say, dividing the Manager's Strain score by the number of Inspectors for the purpose of calculating how many Failure tokens he must use).  So basically: Each Inspector bets against a different statistical entity than the others.  Anybody else have any other ideas I can consider?

Thanks for reading, thanks for helping.  Oh, and it feels good to be back.  :-)

[slade the sniper]

Greetings,
I an interested in your game mechanic, though I have to admit to finding it a bit, esoteric.

I do not wish to seem either ignorant nor critical, but I will attempt to explain your system back to you, because although I like the idea of a betting mechanic, I am not sure how it will be used successfully in the game.

OK, so the players start with 20 free tokens.  Is there a starting number of Strain and Failure tokens for players, or is it an infinite pool?

One side raises with a certain amount of ONE type of token, and the other side meets the raise with that many of any one type of token, and can then raise if they wish.

Do you have to start with Free tokens or can I use Strain tokens?  Is the bet concealed (betting blind) or open (I bid 15 Free tokens).  What happens to the tokens after they are bet?  Do they go away?

How do you accumulate Failure tokens?

The way Strain tokens currently work, each Strain point you have at the start of a Conflict (goes down by one each hour, and has one added to it for each Strain token you use) forces you to bid a 50/50 mix of Failure tokens and either Strain or Free (or 100% Failure if you so desire) making it hard to decide to just win an important conflict.  Currently the Strain does not affect your resources at all (in fact, it forces you to conserve them) and there is no maximum Strain score.  The problem I see is the possibility of an Inspector or the Manager deciding that they are going to win the current conflict.  They'll be forced to eventually throw in an amount of Failure tokens equal to their Strain score over the course of the conflict, but there is currently nothing stopping them from kicking in Strain tokens beyond that, forcing the other party to give up, expend all of its resources, or rack its Strain score up to immense proportions as well.  Current options on my table involve leaving it as a non-exploit, or patching it up with either a maximum Strain score (beyond which you cannot Strain yourself further) or a maximum expenditure of Strain tokens for each conflict.

This is a good issue, which for an Inspector is almost self regulating.  They can win almost anything, once.  This is good in that it can accurately model Karma, Fate or some other form of Luck that is commonly found in epic games.  The issue arises when the Manager (the GM) is placed in an adversarial position from the player.  That is fine, if the Manager only represents a singular person.  If the Manager portrays more than one adversary/person, the Manager will be able to always crush the players, because they will simply use a different NPC for each conflict they want to win

I don't know if it's the mechanics or my partner, but he was rather confused by the betting mechanic, and I feel like I'll have to pay very close attention to how it's described in the book.  Also, is there anything in those rules described above that anybody feels I should pay attention to in my playtesting?

I think that the betting mechanic is really novel, and has great potential for speedy resolution of situations (although it is too broad to be used to model "skills", which is good because your game lacks a character creation) and would be of great interest to me personally as a way to simulate structural/organizational conflicts (yakuza vs mafia, Ford vs GM). 

Again, I like the idea, but I think that the understanding of your mechanic would be vastly improved by some sort of graphic description or an example of play.

I am sorry that I could not be more help.  I would be interested in looking at your game, unfinished as it is.

-STS

[Grand_Commander13]

Thanks for the reply.

My friend also had the same problem, not knowing whether Strain/Failure Tokens were limited...  *makes sure to explain this very clearly in the actual book*  Anyway, the way it really works is that Free Tokens are limited to the initial twenty, and the Strain/Failure Tokens are materialized out of thin air, since both of them have negative consequences.

When bidding, you can use any type of token (but all tokens need to be of the same type).  You make the selection every time you put a group of tokens out, so you're never forced to do one particular kind.  The mechanic requires the other party to be able to see what you're putting in, because they are forced to match it (or if a raise is being met, they need to verify that you did indeed meet it).  And finally, tokens do indeed vanish when the Conflict is resolved, but the Strain score is updated with however many Strain Tokens you spent.

Failure Tokens are something you choose to put in (or are forced to by a Stain score).

On the whole "Strain Tokens until the other side lets me win" thing, I'm figuring I'll most likely leave it be.  After a lot of consideration, I've figured that this is basically like a pothole on the road in between D&D 3.5 and The Forge: yeah, it's there, but is anybody going to want to use the road anyway?  (Yes, I know not everyone here hates D&D, but it's a stereotype to help illustrate my point.)  If one person does it, the other person can just keep on doing it too.  In that case, whoever has the higher Strain score is in a hole they can't dig themselves out of, so it's really not a productive way of going at it.

And as for the GM switching NPCs, the Strain score/accumulating Free Tokens (which they gain each hour and can hold over from hour to hour) are for him, not NPCs (that is to say, the Strain score is the same for all NPCs, and can even be added to when no NPCs are around, like if the Inspector tries to pick a lock and the Manager uses Strain Tokens to try to make him fail).  The whole system abstracts a lot, so the Manager's (or, if there are multiple Inspectors, that Division's) Strain score and Free Tokens represent the whole department's ability to keep the Inspector's nose out of its business.

And in other news, I've come up with Investment as a new name for the process currently known as "betting."  Sound good?

[Ron Edwards]

It's nice to see you back, too!

This may seem weird, coming from the advocate of "system, system!" but it's not really ... I'm not seeing the connection of your system to your setting via Color.

You wrote,

The characters are Inspectors who work for a a monolithic entity known simply as The Company, which is so large that it polices itself, rather than being policed by the government.  It can just as easily be set in our world or in "a world uncannily like our own" without encountering trouble.  Inspectors root out corruption and misappropriation of corporate funds using their broad base of skills (represented by the core "betting" mechanic) and their vast network of corporate Contacts.

What does any of this have to do with investment and strains and so on? I could see all those mechanics making perfect sense if it had to do with the companies, but what's up to match the mechanics, their look & motifs, with the inspector characters?

Best, Ron

[Josh Roby]

GC13 -- so is your game about going around auditing divisions of the Company, or something else?  I mean, Jason's got a game brewing about immigrant copy machine repairmen, so you can make a game about just about anything.  Before I respond, I'm just trying to nail down why I, as a player, care about the outcome of any of these conflicts.

[Grand_Commander13]

Well Ron, I wish I had a more sophisticated answer to "how do the mechanics work with the setting at all?" than simply saying that the two grew up in my head together.  Initially there were dice involved and it was honest betting of resources, but I didn't like the direction that took the concept.

Of course, I guess maybe saying I don't see any connection at all is a lie.  I think the mechanics work for the setting because you, as a player, need to make hard decisions about just how important any one thing is to what you're doing.  Likewise, your contacts can get things done too, if you're willing to wait.  The problem with waiting is that the people you're auditing (as Joshua puts it) can flex more of their resources into keeping you in the dark.  The mechanics make a player want to maximize efficiency rather than brute forcing their way into winning every conflict, which is exactly how I want Inspectors to be forced to operate to do their job.

And for Joshua: It's a given that a player wants their character to "succeed" (be it making a good story, crawling the bejeezus out of that dungeon, or in the case of this game: root out the corruption) in whatever game they are playing.  While a traditional D&D adventure would be a dungeon crawl, the adventures in this game would be sort of like a detective story (I guess something similar to what Will Smith's character was doing in I, Robot while he was trying to figure out what the heck was going on).

[Josh Roby]

the adventures in this game would be sort of like a detective story (I guess something similar to what Will Smith's character was doing in I, Robot while he was trying to figure out what the heck was going on).

Okay, so do robots leap out of trucks onto your car and bash in your window?  Or is this more like, say, Pelican Brief?

[dindenver]

Hi!
  I like where you are going with this. I've worked in some big corporations and see how you sometimes have to play chicken with people to get anything accomplished.
  I think "Bidding" or "Pushing Buttons" might be a better name for this mechanic. The tokens can be called buttons...
  I think one thing that is not clear is, do the Strain tokens represent strain on the relatonship between the character and the contact, or strain on the PC's mind? I think if you take a step back and decide that (and describe it clearly in the text), the rest of your concerns about what you want the tokens to do is decided.
  Your bidding mechanic sounds like it could be very fun. I think what you have to work out and then communicate clearly is: What is the adantage/disadvantage of bidding Free tokens, what is the advantage/disadvantage of bidding Strain tokens and what is the advantage/disadvantage of bidding Fail tokens? I think right now, it is not real clear in the text, but that may not be a mechanical defect, it just may mean a little more time needs to be spent writing/editing those rules.
  Also, I think you are overlooking the distinct possibility that the players may want to exploit the corruption to their own advantage... Maybe there should be some sort of light side/ark side mechanic? Like if the char helps the secretary get away with skimming petty cash, she can help him catch the CFO plundering the pension? And when he gets there, maybe he turns a blind eye in exchange for a cut?   I feel like you haven't explored that possibility and without an overriding motivation (like religion in ditv), it would be a real possibility...
  Well, keep at it, sounds like you have a good business plan.

[Grand_Commander13]

You know, I had never thought of actually mechanically engaging the possibility of the players being less than spotless; I had always seen them more as a bunch of un-corruptable enforcers of corporate ethics.  Still...  I'll play around with that.

And what I posted before was just a summary of my mechanics.  Here's the draft of what I've written for the tokens specifically.

Free Tokens: Each Inspector begins an investigation with twenty Free Tokens.  As their name implies, they may be invested in conflicts without any strings attached.
Strain Tokens: An Inspector investing Strain Tokens represents his stretching himself to his limits, causing immediate success but weakening himself for future conflicts.  Using Strain Tokens adds to your Strain Score for future conflicts, which forces you to use Failure Tokens when you invest Free and Strain Tokens.
Failure Tokens: These represent an Inspector slipping up, not having enough energy, or simply encountering an obstacle too difficult to surmount.  Whichever side ends the investment period with more Failure Tokens loses the conflict.

Hopefully that will convey everything much more clearly.  Note that the Strain Score has its own blurb later on.

And just for Josh: If the GM wanted robots, I guess he could put them in.  I mean, it's a big company, after all.  Still, not the feel I'd be shooting for, honestly.  I know nothing about Pelican Brief, so...