[Misery Bubblegum]

[TonyLB]

Alright!  Finally a playtest of Misery Bubblegum that didn't explode on contact, strafing everyone nearby with hot, jagged, rules-system shrapnel.  Eric and I got together for a night of games.  Played both sides of Memoir '44 against each other (lesson?  Omaha Beach is not a happy place to be the Allies) and then in much the same vein played a session of Misery Bubblegum. Go Small Social Footprint!

PHASE 1:  The Issues

Informed by my thoughts and discussions about How world creation facilitates story I've set up the following rules for creating the setting, characters and situation:

Each player has five index cards apiece.  Two of those index cards are used to propose Seeds:  a small, evocative piece of setting which acts as a pole-star for future descriptions.  This may be done at any time.  The remaining three cards are used to propose Issues.  Anyone may propose an Issue: either an internal tension for some character, a relationship between two characters, or an external tension or threat. 

Once someone proposes an Issue, someone else may propose a counter-balance:  another Issue (which may not be of the same type) which highlights or manifests the first Issue in another arena.  The proposer of the original Issue either accepts that counter-balance or doesn't.  When someone proposes a counter-balance that suits the person who originally proposed the Issue then both Issues are added (by writing the Issue on an index card and making one 'X' under it).

If nobody proposes a counter-balance that suits the person who proposed the first Issue then the first Issue is rejected.

The Seeds were huge fun for my genre-lover's soul.  When Eric said he wanted a story set on the shooting site of a teen romance TV show (so yes, the teen-angst characters would, in turn, be telling a story about teen-angst characters) I tossed out "Seed:  Something that seems real turns out to be just a facade," as a tool to get across the pervasive air of Hollywood fakery in true Singing in the Rain fashion.  This would be the right moment to credit Sydney with the original idea for Seeds, which I totally just lifted.  The idea rocks.

The Issues were a lot harder, and slowed down the game creation more than I'm pleased with.  We got good results, but ... hard and slow.  Eric proposed "Relationship:  Co-star Bonnie doesn't believe Kyle belongs in the show," which was filled with juiciness, but it took me a minute or so to come back with "External:  Kyle's past seeks him out."  Then the next one was even slower ... I put out "External:  Murder on the set" and Eric mulled for about two minutes before coming back with "Internal:  Kyle thinks his father may know more about the murder than he's saying" (which, really, I'd personally have rephrased as "Kyle doesn't trust his father" to make it more general).  And then the third one was a pain.  I tried to just make something light and airy, that we could resolve quickly, with "Internal:  Bonnie wants to do her own stunts," but even with both of us taking it lightly, it was a longish time before Eric came up with "External:  Huge deadline pressure"

I genuinely don't know what made those so hard, but I want to fix it.  I have some thoughts, but I'm going to hold off until people have given opinions.

PHASE 2:  The Bidding

Each players starts with a pile of 36d6.  Each pile must be all of one single distinctive color (hereafter "their color").  People use these dice as markers, bidding them to start with control of a certain Issue.  They do this by putting one of their dice on the issue.  Someone else may then put two of their dice on the Issue, representing a higher bid.  Nobody takes their dice back at this point.

When nobody wants to bid any more dice, the person who has the highest bid wins starting control of that Issue.  They give their dice to the person with the second highest bid, if any.  All losing bidders take the dice they bid back and put them in a bowl.  Those dice are inactive.  The dice they did not bid (as well as those they got from second-place bids) are on the table, and are active.

This was great fun.  Very tactile, very quick.  It really, really didn't matter whether we won what we bid on, but it's a terrific way of signalling interest and of getting some initial imbalance of dice going.  I include it not for advice (it's about the only part of my system that I currently think "Yeah!  That's perfect!") but simply for completeness.

It was interesting:  After the bidding settled, I ended up with all of the tensions that were external (the Murder, Kyle's Past, Huge Deadline pressure) as well as the one that flopped (Bonnie wants to do her own stunts).  Eric ended up with the two emotional issues for Kyle (Bonnie doesn't think he belongs and He mistrusts his father).  That's an interesting pattern, and I'm going to be watching to see whether it recurs in future playtests.

PHASE 3:  Telling the Game

So now you have a whole pile of other people's dice, and a pile of index cards.  You also have a bowl full of your dice, and off to one side are cards with all the Seeds.

So you roleplay.  Yadda, yadda, etc.  If you think someone does something particularly cool you can toss a die from your inactive pool to them.  Of course, they'll be able to use that against you in future, but what the hey?

You try to do something, and someone doesn't want to let you get away with it.  Conflict!  Name the stakes about what's going to happen (not what it will mean, just what will extenally happen) if you win.  You may also stake one of your Issues as well, so long as you are working toward it.

You may now roll dice.  You may roll one die of your own or of the GMs by narrating the inclusion of one of the Seeds.  You may also roll up to the current number of X's on the Issue you staked:  For external tensions you may roll GM dice.  For internal tensions you may roll dice of the color of the character who has the tension.  For relationship issues you may roll the die color of either side of the relationship.

Standard "highest die" sequencing is used to compare rolled pools.  Of course, with a pool of more than a few dice, the odds that you have at least one six are pretty high.  Hence the "sequencing".  If two people both have a six then they compare their next highest die, and so on.  Often it's going to boil down to "Who's got the most sixes."

Currently the system only works for two-sided conflicts. 

When all the clattering dies down, look at the dice, grouped by how they sit in front of each player.  One player will have the highest die/dice.  Doesn't matter (right now) what color those dice are.  That player is the Winner. 

Note whether the Winner rolled dice equal to or greater than the number of X's on the highest value Issue at stake.  If so then it's a Major Win, and you'll need to have a Judge.  Look at the dice, grouped by what color they are.  One color will have the highest die/dice.  Doesn't matter (right now) who the dice sit in front of.  Someone belongs to that color.  That player is the Judge.  Often the Winner will also be the Judge, but not always.

Give the Winner's dice to the loser.  Toss the Loser's dice into the inactive bowl.

If you had a Major Win then the Judge also decides what reward the Winner gets.  Mark another X on each Issue that was Staked.  Either they resolve both Issues as a pair, getting an Ability equal to the lowest number of X's on either Issue, or they defer both Issues (keeping them in play) and get dice equal to the lowest number of X's.  For external tensions they get GM dice, otherwise they get dice of their own color.

Mark an additional "X" on each of the Issues at stake, and hand them to the Winner.

This worked reasonably well, but the economy wasn't winding down as fast as I wanted ... I'm not sure, honestly, that it was winding down at all.  So there were problems.  We had fun, and it was a cool game, but there were problems.

We had Tracy (a tomboy from Kyle's past) show up at the gate, wanting to be let in.  She wasn't on the list.  Despite Kyle's insistence that, y'know, she's a guest of him the guards were going to turn her away.  Bonnie came over to gloat about Kyle and his little friend.  "Past seeks him out" as an external tension matched up nicely against "Bonnie doesn't think Kyle belongs."  Eric won the first stakes, purely on random chance (since we were each putting one die in for a Seed and one die in for an Issue), and so he went from 2 Issues in hand to my 4 to a more balanced 3 to 3.

The Bad:  We worried about this exchange.  The baseline of getting only one die for free, and getting the rest from Stakes made for a very tippy boat.  What if Eric had lost his Issue?  5 to 1 looks pretty serious.  What if someone lost their last stake?  Would they ever get another?  Even if they got a ton-ton-ton of dice, how could they spend them?  So, mid-stream rules modification:  We wrote up two "Abilities" for each player, which were like personal Seeds.  Eric had "Nice Guy" and "Tries Hard."  I had "Dysfunctional Relationships" and "Hollywood craziness."  Each of these could be used once to roll three extra dice of any color.  Once used they were tapped.  You could untap them by tossing three dice of your color into the inactive bowl.  So, basically, this is "Spend three dice in order to roll three other dice," only it's done with a bank account and some narrative color.

The Good:  Having done that huge rules discussion, I then had to come back and (as a good non-hippy GM who controls what happens!) narrate the conclusion of that conflict.  I definitely had my stomach lurch for a moment.  Where were we?  Uh ... the security gate to the set?  Yeah.  And ... what was happening?

Glanced at the table.  The external tension was "Past seeks Kyle out."  Tracy's at the gate with her motorcycle and he ripped jeans.  Riiiiight.  I remember.  Internal tension is "Bonnie doesn't think Kyle belongs here."  Bonnie's here making trouble and asserting her dominance.  Riiiiight.  I remember.  And now I know that, because of those two tensions, Tracy's going to get in the gate.

Absolute simplicity:  The guard was about to turn Tracy away.  He looks at Bonnie as she storms off.  He looks at Tracy, sitting there rough and sincere.  He looks at Kyle, a genuine nice guy.  The security guard quirks a little smile, shrugs and waves Tracy through.  "Just don't get me in trouble, 'kay?" he asks.  That's a little slice of Kyle belonging, right there, because of Tracy.

I will tell you, I was amazed at how easy that was, and how completely assured I felt that such a resolution would satisfy Eric.  As long as I hit the points that were relevant, in the way the outcome required, how could I go wrong?  It makes me (me!) eager to take up GMing again.  I mean ... if it's going to be easy and fun, wow!


But here's the problem I need some help with:  There was no particular intensity to our choices to put out dice.  We always had enough, of whatever kind we wanted.  Yes, by the end of our one hour session I was beginning to feel some crunch in terms of having lost a lot of dice, but there were also a ton of dice in the inactive bowl.  If I'd been playing for keeps I'd have been handing those out as fanmail to Eric, so that they'd eventually come back to me.

What I want is for the system to be Coded for rising action, climax, falling action.  I've got one resource which is constantly increasing (the Issues) and one resource which should be constantly decreasing (the dice), but which is not.

Do I reduce the size of the starting dice pools (from 36 to, say, 18)?  I think that would help, but I think that there should also be some dice-sink ... a place where dice get pulled out of the game permanently.  That way, eventually, if you choose to keep deferring the resolution of an Issue (hoping for a bigger outcome at the end) then you pass the point of no return where it gets so big and your dice get so feeble that you can't successfully address it any more, at all.  That's what leaves you with unresolved issues and a nicely human story.

So where should the dice go?  What should pull them out of the system?

[Hans]

I don't propose to understand all of your concerns here, Tony, since I don't have your playtest rules.

However, it seems like one fairly simple mechanism to ensure the resource dissappears would be to tax the transfer of that resource.  This is sort of what happens in PTA, where Fan Mail cards that come up red become budget for the Producer, while black ones are just a dead end, a token leaves the game.

Several points it seems like you could tax the dice would be:

* The transfer of dice from the highest to 2nd highest bidder; maybe not all the dice get transfered, only some.
* The handing of inactive dice to someone for doing something cool; maybe it takes two to give one.
* In conflict resolution; taking a note from Galactic, maybe dice that come up 1 go away, or similar.  Or only Winner 1's go away (if you want to have a constant balancing force that means winning more now means losing more later) or Loser's 1's go away (if you want things to accelerate).  Perhaps only the person with the most Issues staked loses dice (those adding a counter-balance to the concern you had about ending up with Issue imbalance).
* As part of winning conflict resolution; perhaps there is a mechanism where by trashing dice, you can add 6's to your conflict roll (i.e. Oh crap, you beat me, I'll ditch one of my dice permanently to turn another into a 6).

[Andrew Cooper]

I genuinely don't know what made those so hard, but I want to fix it.  I have some thoughts, but I'm going to hold off until people have given opinions.

Might it simply have been the fact that you only had two players?  I mean that's 1 person proposing a Seed and then that leaves essentially 1 person to come up with a Counter-Balance.  It might be a lot less difficult with 2 or 3 people brainstorming about Counter-Balances. 

[TonyLB]

Hans:  You have the playtest rules.  The stuff in the quotes is the full extent of the current rules :-)

I like all of your possible sinks.  The Galactic one, in particular, is quite elegant and had completely escaped my notice.

One more occurs to me, reading these, and that is that we added in-playtest a rule about Abilities ... you use them, they tap, you have to spend dice equal to their value in order to untap them.  Those dice could, conceivably, get pulled straight out of the system.

Andrew:  Huh.  That's very possible.  I could playtest it, as is, with three and see what happens.

I've also been thinking that maybe it would be easier if there were a bunch of "template" cards.  Things like "Relationship:  'I don't trust you' ", "External:  A contest only one person can win," "Internal:  Do I belong?"  Then people could grab a template card and explain how it is specifically involved in this situation (Pull the "I don't trust you" card and say "Corwin and Benedict are obviously wary of each other, given the situation.")

And see, now I'm torn as a theorist/experimenter ... do I have the resources (in terms of the time of my friends) to test both?  I guess I'll have folks for four hours, which should be at least two sessions.  We could do both, and see how they worked out.  Hrmmmm.

[Hans]

I've also been thinking that maybe it would be easier if there were a bunch of "template" cards.  Things like "Relationship:  'I don't trust you' ", "External:  A contest only one person can win," "Internal:  Do I belong?"  Then people could grab a template card and explain how it is specifically involved in this situation (Pull the "I don't trust you" card and say "Corwin and Benedict are obviously wary of each other, given the situation.")

One of the coolest things about Capes, one of the things that REALLY grabs people when they first start playing it, is the click and lock concept.  What you are describing above sounds like it could be a roughly analogous system, with some thought. 

[Eric Sedlacek]

Tony,

I'm less concerned about the startup phase than you are.  I suspect that it will tend to be fun and cool, especially with more players.  Hell, it was pretty damn fun and cool with two. 

I don't think you should get too bogged down with the stopwatch aspects of this game.  I know you are looking for a short game, but I think that the final product is going to fill the bill.  As with any game, it will only be as fast as the people playing it.

I'm curious to see how session time will be affected by group size.  It might get actually longer with a larger group.

- Eric

[TonyLB]

Eric:  Yeah ... there are two things that correlate (but are not identical) and I'm pointing my language at the wrong one.  I'm not hugely worried about taking too much time.  If we're sitting there, and ideas are flowing, and it's all fun and funky then it can take as long as it takes.  I'd like it to settle in under two hours, but that doesn't strike me as a goal that I'll need to shave seconds in order to achieve.

I am taking a close look at any place in the system where I felt my brain start to sweat and freeze up.  If we're sitting there, and ideas aren't flowing, and I'm thinking to myself "Think!  Come on!  Think!  Think HARDER!" then that's really not the tone I'm aiming for.  Now my feeling like that was almost certainly more a result of the fact that I was doing a playtest, and they wind my guts up in a knot, than anything else.  I should probably stop worrying about it.

I still like the idea of the template cards though.