[Project C.H.A.I.R.] What is Vandal?

[Jake Richmond]

Nick ran another playtest for his game Project CHAIR this weekend. This is the second time Nick, Travis, April and I have played the game together.Gabe joined us this time as well.

A game of Project CHAIR starts with someone suggesting a word, and continues with the players building a world around that word. I suggested Vandal. Here's the series of questions we asked once the word was chosen:

What is Vandal? We decided that V.A.N.D.A.L. is the code name of an organization that polices the timestream and keeps history from being changed by rouge time travelers. From their headquarters in the year 2743 VANDAL agents travel back and forward in time to keep the people of earth safe in the past and the future!

Why is Vandal relevent? VANDAL had learned that super intelligent dinosaurs from a lost civilisation had travelled forward in time to establish an empire in medieval Europe. Only Agents of Vandal can stand against these Chronosaurs!

Where and when does the game take place? Medieval Europe. We never decided on an exact location, but we hinted that we were in France.

Who are the players? Captain Roy Thomas, mission commander and decorated VANDAL agent. Dr. Ryan Chase, scientist and VANDAL agent. Abacus Rex, a human/dinosaur half breed from an alternate timeline. Gordan Fox, a big game hunter from the year 2143, and Gretta Hormace, a local village woman and spiritual leader.

What are the games special rules? We decided that this would be a serious game, as well as an action packed one. No goofy stuff, but plenty of action movie style humor and crazy sci-fi stuff. We also decided that the characters would have access to extraordinary future technology, which included chrono pistols that fired hypothetical bullets, Gordan's pet robotic gorilla, wrist computers, matter transmutters that could turn common materials into stuff like ropes and clothes, and stasis ray guns.

Once we had defined the word and created a world to play in we quickly fleshed out our characters. Each character has a Truth stat and a Belief stat. Truth represents things you character knows they can do, like fire a gun, travel through time and and speak the local language. Belief represents things the characters think they can do, like survive a chronosaur attack, leap off a cliff without getting hurt or build a machine that can control a dinosaurs mind. For every action you take in the game you'll either roll your Truth die or your belief die. You also have Truth and Belief skills that add to your rolls. I took the Truth skill "I can do a medieval accent", which I added to my Truth roll every time I talked to a one of the locals. Gabe took the Belief skill "I think I can handle myself in a fight".  Truth skills can be used all the time by adding the skill to your Truth die roll. Belief skills are like Truth skills that haven't been tested yet. To use one you'll attempt an action rolling your Belief die. If the roll is successful then your Belief becomes a Truth and can be used all the time. If your roll is a failure you lose that Belief and can no longer attempt to use it. Gabe got his character involved in a conflict that escalated into a fight, and tried to use his belief "I think I can handle myself in a fight" he failed the roll, and lost all confidence in his ability to defend himself in a fight! We each spent a few points buying up our Truth and Belief dice (each starts as a D6 but can be bought up to a D8, D10, D12 or D20) and buying Truth and Belief skills.

The last bit we had to do before we started was to decide on the acts. A game of CHAIR takes place over  acts. We decided the first act would start with our team arriving in our time capsule, finding the local town and meeting Gretta who could help us find where the Chronosaurs were hiding. The second act would include us traveling to the Chronosaur lair,  scouting out the situation and having our first confrontation. We decided the second act would end with a plot twist. We'd decide what the twist would be when we got to it. The third act would be the final confrontation with the Chronosaur leader.

Play

Project CHAIR has no GM, and players take turns suggesting scenes and narrating events. This led to several interesting and unexpected scenes, including the inclusion of an extra team member in our time pod who had been injured in transit and was suffering from a chrono-disorder and an abandoned windmill full of zombies. Dividing the session into acts gave us a clear sense of structure and allowed us to improvise scenes while still working toward a goal. Our first act ended up including the events mentioned above and laid the groundwork for more plot that Gabe's character would explore in the second act. We ended the first act by meeting up with April's character Gretta, a local woman who we hoped would lead us to the Chronosaurs. April decided to throw a wrench into our plans by declaring that the Chronosaurs were angels sent by God to help the people of her town. Suddenly the second act became not just about finding and confronting the Chronosaurs but convincing Gretta to help us and keeping her from tipping our enemies off about our plan!

Turning Beliefs into Truths is a big part of the game, and one we all wanted to try out. Sadly I was unable to turn my Beliefs "can kill a dinosaur barehanded" and "can survive a dinosaur attack" into Truths, but Travis had better luck with "I can build a machine that can control a dinosaurs mind", using his belief to save Captain Thomas' life during the final confrontation with General Chrono-Rex.

Project CHAIR uses relevance to track a characters impact on the game. All characters start with 100 Relevance and will lose Relevance by failing Truth or Belief rolls. If your character hits zero then they are no longer relevent and have no impact on the game. We decided that characters that hit zero relevance in this session would have their chrono-triggers activated and would be returned to the year 2743! Thankfully none of us reached zero relevance, but several of us got close!

Wrap

We defeated the Chronosaurs but hadn't solved the mystery of the Zombie Plague. We decide that we'll continue the game another time, picking a different word and using it to elaborate on the world we've already built. Before we stopped for the night we assigned each other experience points that can be used to buy new Belief skills (you can't buy Truth skills after character creation) or to increase the size of our Truth or Belief dice.

Playtest Changes

We noticed a few things that might need to be changed. Normally every point you have in a Truth skill gives you +1 to your Truth roll. Nick told us that for every 5 points we have in a Truth skill we get a second Truth dice to roll. After some talk we decided that gaining the extra die at 3 or 4 points might be better.

We also noticed that combat was kind of hectic. Nick pointed out that one of the things we could have done before hand when establishing special rules for the game is to establish how we take turns in combat or other complex situation. I think for our next game we'll try to either roll to see who goes first or just agree on an order of actions. Interestingly, in the first game we played a month or so back this wasn't a problem at all.

We also really weren't sure how many experience points to hand out at the end of the game. At the end we agreed that we would each take a single point, but having some kind of established system would help. Or maybe this is something that should also be mentioned in the section for creating special rules for your game?




Jake

[Filip Luszczyk]

Sounds fun.

What is the importance of the word itself? It doesn't seem to me like the choice of word really influenced setting choices in any way. How did the string of associations look like?

Do these special rules have mechanical meaning, or are they rather for defining how things work in the fiction and setting the tone? If the former, how are the specific mechanics decided among the group (and how much individual players had to say about it in the playtest)?

What happens with the player whose character hits zero relevance? It sounds like for such player, fun ends at this point.

What is the function of experience points in the game? How important do you expect them to be in the long run? My guess is that having the rules for rewards and development clearly defined in the system is a good solution, but this might not be the case in this game.

[Jake Richmond]

What is the importance of the word itself? It doesn't seem to me like the choice of word really influenced setting choices in any way. How did the string of associations look like?

I don't think the word itself is important. it's just the starting point. You choose a word and then you decide what the word means. Since the word can mean exactly what the word can mean, or it can mean something else. In the first game we played the word was "ficus". That could have been a plant, and we could has done a game about raising plants, smuggling plants, fighting over plants, plants coming to life and attacking Detroit or anything else. What we decided was that ficus was the name of a new nasal spray being launched by an Austrailian company into the crowded New York pharmacudical market in the mid 80's.

So the word itself is unimportant. It's the exercise of turning a random word into a full world that's a lot of fun.

Do these special rules have mechanical meaning, or are they rather for defining how things work in the fiction and setting the tone? If the former, how are the specific mechanics decided among the group (and how much individual players had to say about it in the playtest)?

They can have mechanical meaning. The way Nick described it to us is that you can decide on extra rules as a group that arn't a part of the game. He has a few examples of special rules that you might want to include, such as tie breaking and determining initatiative. I believe he plans to have a much larger list of suggestions. the idea is that if you think your game needs rules for tie breaking or flying helicopters orcasting magic thenyou'll create those as part of the world building process. He plans to include guidelines and examples for this, but so far they arn't in the text.

When I said "what are the games special rules" I knid of lumped two things into one sentence. Our game didn't actually have any special rules. In hindsight, we should have elected to create some kind of inititive system for combat because everyone kept trying to go at the same time. The other question that I should hve included in my first post was "what are the limitations of your world". This was something we were much more interested in. Our world had access to time travel, crazy future technology and talking dinosaurs, but we were very clear that thi was to be a serious game with no superhuman level stunts. In other games the "what are the limitations of your world" question mght lead us to deterimine that space travel is possible, that humas can read minds or that everyone has super powers. Or we might determine that the limitations of our made up world are the same as the real one.

What happens with the player whose character hits zero relevance? It sounds like for such player, fun ends at this point.

I'm not sure. In our case the characters Chrono Trigger went off and they were sent back to the future and were effectivly out of the game. We all agreed to this so I didin't see a problem. I think you have to determine what happens to players who become irrelevent. Do they disapear, or do they still exsist but can no longer roll dice? I'm not sure of the answer here.

What is the function of experience points in the game? How important do you expect them to be in the long run? My guess is that having the rules for rewards and development clearly defined in the system is a good solution, but this might not be the case in this game.

You use experience points to increase the size of your Truth or Belief dice. You also use experience points to buy new Belief skills. The way the game is set up I think you definetly want to be buying new belief skills all the time, and uyou want to be increasing the size of both your dice. We weren't sure how many experience points to hand out, so we decided that we would just take one each. Nick wanted us to hand out points based on things the characters did in the game, but he said he didn't quite have a ssytem figured out for that. He did want us to hand out and spend points between each act, but we forgot.

[Filip Luszczyk]

So the word itself is unimportant. It's the exercise of turning a random word into a full world that's a lot of fun.

I wonder. Probably I fail to recognize the "turning" part in the AP, as the word itself seems disconnected from the creative process to me (i.e. it seems to me that just about any word could result in exactly the same setting). I suppose I'd have to try this technique out, as we've been toying with building content by loose association, but not with something similar to this.

However, I suggest that you analyze the process of setting creation with the group, and consider carefully what you've been doing and if the word itself was needed at all in the end. Cause, it might have been, but as I read the reports, I have this impression that the real starting point was something else.

Also, did you have a prolonged play the previous time, or did it burn out soon after the first session?

I wonder whether the creation process could be more important here than later exploration of the content. If so, the game would probably benefit from spreading the creation over multiple sessions (e.g. new setting facts and details added collaboratively with every meeting) or the opposite way, tailoring the system for short term play (e.g. half of the session is setting creation, the other half is an intense, closed adventure in the setting, and done, the next time new setting is created and new adventure follows).

I'm not sure. In our case the characters Chrono Trigger went off and they were sent back to the future and were effectivly out of the game. We all agreed to this so I didin't see a problem. I think you have to determine what happens to players who become irrelevent. Do they disapear, or do they still exsist but can no longer roll dice? I'm not sure of the answer here.

Basically, I don't find what happens with the character all that important. However, I think the issue of what happens with the player who loses the character is worth serious consideration here, as it strongly influences the nature of play (e.g. it determines the player's approach to the character's survival, and this can affect various play priorities). Part of these are rules for losing the character (e.g. check out this), and part of this are rules that regulate player's impact on the game once he loses the character.

You use experience points to increase the size of your Truth or Belief dice. You also use experience points to buy new Belief skills.

Hmm, I'll reformulate the question. What is the importance of advancement in this game, exactly? Once you figure out what is the underlying reason for players to want their stuff increased, it should be easier to determine an appropriate way of making the increase possible.

[Jake Richmond]

I wonder. Probably I fail to recognize the "turning" part in the AP, as the word itself seems disconnected from the creative process to me (i.e. it seems to me that just about any word could result in exactly the same setting). I suppose I'd have to try this technique out, as we've been toying with building content by loose association, but not with something similar to this.

building content by loose association. that's exactly what it is. The word itself doesn't really matter. Pick ficus, paint brush, bulldozer or fishstick; the players will create the game they want to create regardless of the word. All the word does is provide a fun starting point.

And it is fun. Start by selecting a word. Doesn't matter what it is. Say one at random, or turn to a random page in a book and use the first one you see. Once the word is chosen the group asks a series of questions. What is the word? Why is it important? Where and when does the game take place? Who are the characters? You don't need the  word for any of this, but basing the process of a single random word and developing the world on the spot is a lot of fun because it forces the players to be creative right off the bat.

Also, did you have a prolonged play the previous time, or did it burn out soon after the first session?

We designed our first game (Ficus) to last a single session. There was no expectation that it would continue after that. With Vandal we decided we wanted to try a multi session game. We plan to play the next part as soon as posible.

I wonder whether the creation process could be more important here than later exploration of the content. If so, the game would probably benefit from spreading the creation over multiple sessions (e.g. new setting facts and details added collaboratively with every meeting) or the opposite way, tailoring the system for short term play (e.g. half of the session is setting creation, the other half is an intense, closed adventure in the setting, and done, the next time new setting is created and new adventure follows).

If you are playing a multi session game then each time you sit down to play you choose a new word. Next time we play we'll continue the Vandal adventure by choosing a new word and deciding what it means, why it is important and who our characters are in relationship to it.Because we're time travelers it will be fun to also answer the where/when question. We already built a world based on the word we chose in the first game. Next time we'll expand on that world with a new word.

Basically, I don't find what happens with the character all that important. However, I think the issue of what happens with the player who loses the character is worth serious consideration here, as it strongly influences the nature of play (e.g. it determines the player's approach to the character's survival, and this can affect various play priorities). Part of these are rules for losing the character (e.g. check out this), and part of this are rules that regulate player's impact on the game once he loses the character.

I don't know the answer to this.I know how I would approach it, but this is Nicks game, so...

I suspect that the results of complete loss of relevence and how it effects characters and players input into the game will become one of the things that the players will be able to define at the beginning of the game, with the text itself offering several options. But I don't know. This is something I want to ask Nick about before we play again.

Hmm, I'll reformulate the question. What is the importance of advancement in this game, exactly? Once you figure out what is the underlying reason for players to want their stuff increased, it should be easier to determine an appropriate way of making the increase possible.

I'm not sure how to answer this question not just because it's not my game but also because the game itself by it's nature is kind of slippery.During the first game we played advancement didn't seem important at all. During this last game we were all excited at the prospect of using our experience to become more proficient at killing chronosaurs. Two very different sessions. I hesitate to say that the purpose of advancement is just to kill stuff better, but in the case of our last game it certainly was. I also don't want to say that the purpose of advancement in the game is only for your character to get better at whatever it is she or he does. That may be the case, but it may be that Nick has more in mind then that.

I'll let Nick know that we'rer talking about this here.


Jake

[nick smith]

wow, OK well number one thanks for the actual play Jake, and number two thank you so much for you questions and feed back Filip this is exactly what I'm looking for to help further develop PC... i would love to respond in detail but I'm afraid i can't til later but don't worry I'll answer all your questions once my internet is back up at my house(some technical difficulties). thanks for you patience.