[Robots & Rapiers v2.3] Session I

[Thor Olavsrud]

Due to a logistical error, John took the notes for this last session and is now in Hawaii, so I'm just going to touch on some of our major findings from the session. Hopefully John will come in when he returns to fill out the picture. And maybe Alexander, Drozdal and Mayuran can add details from their perspective.

1. I used the scenario generator for this adventure (we've played through about half of it so far). It seems to work well but will need further testing, of course.

2. It has become clear to us that high Anthropoid Class robots gain Inspiration much faster than low Anthropoid Class robots. I know your goal was to make lower AC robots gain Self Awareness faster, but I don't think it works out. As it stands right now, the majority of Inspiration is gained by random roll: hitting the target number. The simple fact is that high AC robots roll more dice and so have a much greater liklihood of hitting their target number. Furthermore, since high AC robots roll more dice, it is also far more likely that they hit their target number and still have a die that represents successes (or at least prevents the opponent from gaining an overwhelming number of successes). This allows them to take the point of Inspiration for little sacrifice, whereas it is generally a much more difficult choice for low AC robots. To illustrate, the high AC robots (4 and 5, respectively), earned 4 points of inspiration each in our last (relatively short) session, while the lower AC robots (2 and 3, respectively), earned 1 point a piece.

3. The lack of Inspiration and the rather limited ability to gain success with few dice, led the players of the lower AC robots to get rather frustrated. Admittedly, Alexander can be a bit excitable, but he was clearly and vocally not enjoying failure after failure. And that was exacerbated by the realization that the promise of accelerating Self Awareness wasn't exactly correct. We discussed whether allowing lower AC robots to start the game with a higher level of Self Awareness would mitigate the problem, and there was consensus that it would (for what it's worth). I'd like to ask Alexander to step in and discuss this issue in more detail.

4. Tapestry Opposition is very powerful! Perhaps too much so. In our game, the Tapestry has 3 dice and the target number is 5 (this is after a single set of rolls on the Interludes tables, BTW). According to the current rule, I roll the Tapestry's dice for opposition whenever the players' rolls would otherwise be unopposed. In our game on Thursday, our Four Immortals (created in the previous character creation thread), faced off against 6 of the Cardinal's Guards. I stomped on the lower AC robots, and held my own against the higher AC robots with a single AC 3 robot. The reason? I frequently would save my charge and allow the Tapestry to provide opposition instead. I didn't spend successes when I used the Tapestry as opposition (though whether I should have is not explicit in the text currently). Even so, this tactic definitely allowed me to give the characters a very tough time.

5. The current setup for struggling against Role Traits to force Role Checks and thereby gain Inspiration has a tendency to encourage players to disruptive play. Because you are only encouraged to play against something rather than play toward something, the players in my group (at least) tend to do anything they can to go against their programming to gain Inspiration, without making any sort of statement  about what they want the robot to become. My suggestion: You know that you want the players to replace a Role Trait with a Spark Trait when their characters' Self Awareness increases.  Why not require the players to put down a target Spark Trait? Much like a Belief in Burning Wheel or Keys in tSoY, that would give the player something positive and proactive to play toward while struggling against their robots' programming.

[Valamir]

Excellent feedback, thanks.

I'm in the process of putting together the next version with the issues that arose at Forge Midwest, so this is very timely.

Change #1 that I know I'm going to do is bump the Anthropoid class scale from 0-5 to 1-6.  This not only eliminates some of the special rules around having Influence of 0, but also gives everyone an extra die to start, which should help even out some of the starting disparity.  (Type 5 has only 1.66x as many dice as Type 3, vs Type 4 having 2x as many dice as Type 2.

Another change I'm considering is eliminating the need to choose between using a die for Inspiration or as the Result.  It makes sense to have the choice, but its not a particularly fun choice and it further penalizes the lower Influence robots who can least afford it.

I'm also looking at eliminating rolls for unopposed Augmenting Rolls altogether.  The Augment just becomes an automatic 1/2 of your Level.  If opposed by a character it would be handled as a normal roll, with the possibility of scoring even higher with a good roll and poor opposition.  That should help with both the Tapestry Opposition problem (though maybe the scale of the opposition needs reduced as well) and some low Influence whiffing.

The Self Awareness pacing is definitely an issue.  The system worked well under the old dice mechanic (where # of dice rolled was not dependent on AC) but isn't delivering under the new system.  I think I'm going to have to come up with a new technique.

How was tracking Charge?  I have an idea for a pretty major revision to how that works, but don't have a feel yet for whether it is currently enough of a hassle to require a major revision.

[Thor Olavsrud]

How was tracking Charge?  I have an idea for a pretty major revision to how that works, but don't have a feel yet for whether it is currently enough of a hassle to require a major revision.

I don't think it's so bad for players, but it's a major pain as the GM, especially when I've got multiple NPCs with varying ACs. Tracking everything is rather cumbersome as the GM. Reducing Augments to a flat bonus will definitely help though!

[Valamir]

Ok, so I've been working on some things to try and thought I'd bounce them off of you foks currently playing.  I'm looking to fix the Inspiration Thing and the Charge Thing (I hate tracking the damn Charge Points) with dealing with whiffing for low body types and achieving some additional streamlining being plusses.

So you have your Influence Based Die Pool (initially based on Body Type which is now 1-6 instead of 0-5).
PLUS if you're a Spark, you get 1 additional die of a different color.  This is the Inspiration Die.
If the Inspiration Die comes up as your "Best Die" you gain a point of Inspiration.

Statistically this should work out to slightly less than 1 roll in N producing a point of Inspiration (where N is the total number of dice rolled) and where "slightly less" is due to the occassions where all the dice simply fail and there is no Best Die.  If my calculations are correct for a Target Number of 6 this should be about 34% of the time with 2 dice (a Type 1 robot), 22% of the time for a Type 3 robot (Like Burgiss, new scale) and about 16% of the time for a Type 6 robot (to start).

This should have the dual effects of making lower body type robot earn inspiration slightly faster, and make all robots earn inspiration slightly faster as they lose dice due to damage / drain / etc -- making for the interesting situation where you gain inspiration faster when you're on the verge of "death", which I think is not only interesting philosophically but makes for an interesting mechanical trade off..."repairing" and "recharging" yourself actually make Inspiration harder to come buy...so do you go in for repairs, or tough it out half damaged for the Inspiration boost...

Here's an extra kicker I'm really liking (on paper).  Currently Spark Personality Traits simply add to your Target Number like all other modifiers.  However, playtest has shown that its pretty easy to get lofty TNs so yet-another-TN-boost is somewhat anticlimactic and mechanically less than idea.  Soooo...lets say Spark Traits add dice...not just regular dice, but colored Inspiration Dice. 

This should have the dual effect of making using the Spark Traits something special (the ONLY way to get additional dice to roll) and address some of the "play to your Spark Personality" rather than just "play against your programmed personality" issue observed above.  The more you pay to your Spark Traits, the more colored dice you roll, the more Inspiration you get.

I'm liking the feel of all of that.  My primary hesitation is will too many dice overwhelm my "Best Die" mechanic.  The math of a "Count Successes" mechanic is pretty flexible around the impact of adding dice.  The math of a "Best Die" mechanic tends to skew pretty heavily to maximum result once the number of dice get fairly high.  I'm hoping that there are enough sources of losing dice (Drain / Damage / Etc) that work to keep the pool to a mathematically central number.


So, that my current best idea for dealing with the mechanical Inspiration rule.
Next up Charge.

[Valamir]

Charge is important to the overall theme of the game.  The need for robots to recharge is what keeps them from just wondering off into the wilderness and setting up their own society.  Its what forces even the most disillusioned Sparks to continue to engage with society as it exists around them.  Robots that refuse to Conform to societal norms (i.e. who piss off the Cardinal) will find it increasingly difficult to get access to the power they need.  That's the Cardinal's main lever to keep the Sparks in line..."play nice and you get your daily allotment of power".  It also means there's a huge black market on alternative power sources and access and control of such sources provides the major hierarchy among the Sparks (those who have it, and those willing to work for those who have it, in order to get it).

Its important to me that this be an actual game mechanic with measurable consequences and not just text on a page.  I want the players to feel the same mechanical pressure (and advantages) to Conform (in the form of maintaining PC capability) as the robots do.  Its easy to say "Screw the Cardinal, I'm living life how I want" when its just text on a page.  Its much harder when your heroic robot is down to his last couple of dice and will get his ass kicked by a peasant...suddenly sucking up to the Cardinal seems worth considering.

But I freaking hate the current Charge system.  Deciding when to spend points, and tracking expenditures is annoying...to the point that I'd rather just skip it when I play, and that defeats the whole purpose.

So I was thinking about what makes them annoying.  After all tracking D&D Hitpoints isn't annoying (whatever else one may think of them, they aren't at all cumbersome to track in play).  But there's a key difference.  Spending Charge in R&R is a player decision point.  Spending Hitpoints in D&D is completely mechanical.  The to-hit roll says you lose HPs, the damage roll says how much, period.  There is no player decision point, the mechanics simply say "time to lose hit points now".  The resource management comes entirely at the back end (when, where, and how to heal).  Which is where all of the interesting choices surrounding Charge are as well.

Proposition...consider eliminating the upfront player decision point and streamlining the tracking, while maintaining the viability of back end resource management.

So, lets start by dumping Charge points altogether and tracking Drain directly using the player's dice pool (I think Luke suggested something similar at Forge Midwest) and replacing it with some mechanical die signal that says "time to suffer Drain now"

Lets also distinguish between short and long term Drain.  This will give us additional opportunities to make back end management decisions and also serve as a fail safe for when the dice hose us in their signals.

So then when the dice say "time to suffer Drain" you take a die and put it in a cup (regular dice only, not the colored Inspiration Dice).  When the dice say "time to suffer Drain" again, you take another die and put it in a cup.  This is short term Drain.  At the end of the conflict you get all of those dice back out of the cup and return them to your pool.

Players of Spark robots then have the option at any time to discard out of play, one of the dice from the cup and immediately return all the rest of the dice to their pool.  This is long term Drain.  Non sparks don't have this option (primarily to make it easier for the GM), they don't suffer long term Drain and get their dice back until they run completely out of dice.  Long term drain doesn't ever come back automatically it can only be recovered through the recharge sub-system.

So this sets up what I think is a compelling choice between holding off and making it through the conflict with the dice you have, and getting them all back with no long term Drain, vs. really needing to succeed right now and taking long term Drain to do it.  It also sets up the situation where Conforming robots (or those with a reliable alternative) have a mechanical edge, because they can more easily afford to accept long term Drain, where as non Conforming robots have to be more cautious about it.

So what is the mechanical signal that says "time to lose a die now"?  I'm thinking of recycling the system currently being used for Inspiration.  If your Best Die exactly matches your Target Number you suffer a die of Drain.  This has several interesting effects.  1) you suffer Drain when you get your absolute best result...that makes a kind of simmy sense (work hard, get tired).  2) it avoids the current situation where low body type robots are being doubly penalized by the Charge system as well as the dice pool because lower type robots with fewer dice will trigger the signal less frequently.  3) The fewer dice you have the less you'll suffer Drain; the more dice you'll have the more you'll suffer Drain.  This should have assist in keeping the dice pools to a mathematically preferred mid range in size.


The big questions remaining to answer then are:

1) will this system produce Drain frequently enough so that players periodically have to make the tough decision to take long term Drain or not, but not so frequently as to become obnoxious or drive robots deep into long term Drain too quickly?

2) If I have both Inspiration and Drain tied so closely to the roll, what does this do to my thought to have non opposed Augments be automatic?  If a significant number of the "rolls" in the game, no longer involve actually rolling dice, does that unbalance the above mechanics?

3) There are several other things currently tied to spending Charge points other than making rolls (activating gear and attributes for instance).  I'm considering just going to a "activate 1 gear or 1 attribute automatically for free, each roll" rule, but then limit each item to only being activated once per conflict and possibly allowing a die to be thrown in the cup to activate more than one at a time, or the same one more than once.

Whew,  major info dump there.

Thoughts?

[Ron Edwards]

That's exactly the right concept, Ralph! I don't know about the specifics, but that seems far more fun, far more sensible, and far more clear. It also seems to me that you're finally identifying which features of the system will be constraints, which will be decisions, and which will be consequences.

Count me in as a big Aye for that post.

Best, Ron

[Dirk Ackermann]

Hi Valamir,

I did not have problems with Charge until this thread. But if you say so then it have to be right, or how much bookkeeping is going on in R&R?

I don't know about the idea of getting Drain when you're hitting the best. Most of the time if somebody is doing something really good, they do it with ease! They are just prepared to death!

So my advice is to get drained everytime you are augmenting with resistance! Augmenting per se is easy but in stress and under fire? This would be the hard work you are mentioning. But because of the relative often times you will augment, it may be a little harsh.

I am with you on case with the lower body type ones. They get really the bad things in this game. It could be fun to play one for the challenge, but... I am really concerned with this problem. So I have to play until I will know it better. Why do you like to change the bodytypes from 0-5 to 1-6?

I like both of your ideas with the mechanical inspiration. They are more intuitive.

But I coul not understand the whole if I get some mess, my opponent gets the bonus. I am asking: how does it feel while playing? Because as I read this and the whole rules that results of it I got  a little nervous. So how does it play? (If I am hijacking, please let me know...!)

MfG

Dirk

[Iskander]

Ack. This is hard, because it's kind of whiny. But, I ended up really not having fun in the last session, and in a way that has been an extension of my dissatisfaction for several sessions. Here's what the last session felt like:

- I failed all the time.
- I ended up losing almost all my dice.
- Yet again, I was in a mechanical death spiral.
- I had negligible control over the action, and never would have any choices to make.
- I earned one lousy point inspiration. One. So it's going to be MONTHS before I get out of this hell.
- The higher-AC robots earned 4 points of inspiration, so not only were they more effective all through the session, they progressed, while I didn't.
- Since the dice won't do it, I have to be a dick to force the GM to give me inspiration.
- I had no meaningful choices to make. I stopped giving a shit about the story, because I was furniture.
- This has been going on for weeks, and I want to stop playing now.

So, my (very biased, excitable, and frustrated) take is that, while it's a start, the minor tweak to the inspiration statistics for low AC bots isn't going to cut it. It's not enough. You have to give players a goal to play to when rebelling against the tapestry, or disruptive dickishness is going to be the default. You have to have a concrete reward for the players of low AC robots, right from session one, or like me, they'll be done with R&R by session three (if they get that far).

Charge has only come into play in the round-by-round combat, and it's not been a problem, nor much of a feature - except that it's yet another way in which low AC robots have less opportunity to act than high AC robots. The changes you suggest sound interesting, but to date I've had no sense of the significance of Charge as you describe it.

Sorry this isn't more constructive - but I think there's a real problem: as the rules stand, I would never willingly play a low AC robot again, and would recommend everyone avoid doing so, and I suspect that's contrary to what you want from the game.

[Valamir]

Heh, yeah...this one is a bit whiny...it is a playtest afterall...but I forgive you 'cuz its good stuff ;-)

Under current rules, you're rolling 2 dice as Burgiss, Alfredo is rolling 4 dice.

With the above suggested changes, Burgiss would be rolling 4 dice, same as Alfred is now (and Devon IIRC).  What is your sense of the effectiveness of those characters currently (and whoever is playing them)?  Is that a suitable minimum standard to target?

Also the Spark Personality Trait would allow you to add additional Inspiration dice to not only increase your odds of success, but also increase your rate of Inspiration.  Is that sort of enhanced probability enough of a carrot to "play to"? 


Dirk - not hijacking, no.  But I'm having trouble following your last sentence (beginning with the "But...") maybe you could start a new thread and go into more detail what you're asking?

[Thor Olavsrud]

This should have the dual effect of making using the Spark Traits something special (the ONLY way to get additional dice to roll) and address some of the "play to your Spark Personality" rather than just "play against your programmed personality" issue observed above.  The more you pay to your Spark Traits, the more colored dice you roll, the more Inspiration you get.

That's probably a change for the better. I don't think it's a solution for the playing to your Spark Personality problem that I was identifying.

First, when you start play you don't have any Spark Personality traits.

More importantly, the problem lies in the fact that there is currently no guide to help you break your programming in a constructive way rather than a destructive way. If you are gaming it, your goal is to break your programming. It doesn't say anything about trying to become something else.

I think players could seek to break their characters' programming in a much more constructive way if they have a goal to aim toward. "I want my character to become this way, so I'm going to try to go against my programming to act that way."

The Drain ideas sound very interesting.

[Valamir]

More importantly, the problem lies in the fact that there is currently no guide to help you break your programming in a constructive way rather than a destructive way. If you are gaming it, your goal is to break your programming. It doesn't say anything about trying to become something else.

Could you go into more detail on this?  I'm seeing this as already being stressed pretty hard in the game.  In fact, I drone on at some length on the whole "trying to become something else" thing.

In a regular RPG players don't need any particular motivation to create a character they find interesting to play.  In R&R you create your character as you go...by breaking down the old one and transforming it into a new one.  Does there really need to be any additional motivation for players to create a character they find interesting to play than what is usual for creating characters?


Currently the GM hands out Inspiration any time they use a Role Check to keep a robot in line, including when the player is having their robot be disruptive just to get Role Checks.  I'm somewhat reluctant to change that...because any change allowing the GM to pass "you're being disruptive, therefor you don't get Inspiration" judgement goes right back into GM fiat by illusionism territory.

Right now there are two controls against disruptive behavior (beyond just "dude, that totally isn't very fun") 

1) The "Let it ride" nature of Role Checks where the GM doesn't have to award Inspiration for successive violations of the same broad category.  In other words one "I make a Role Check to force you to act like a gentleman at this party" (assuming the character is, in fact, programmed to act like a gentleman) covers all of the silly little "I break a dish", "I spill my drink", "I make loud farty noises" that a player might do to just rack up continuous Inspiration.

2) The fact that the GM doesn't always HAVE to make a Role Check just because he could.  In other words, if a player tries to intentionally spill his drink on the Duke just to grab Inspiration...let him.  Then let him suffer the consequences of the Duke being really cheesed off.  In game punishment for a character who is acting wacky is entirely appropriate.  After all, the King has locked the Queen away for being "mad".  These consequences have a mechanical component as well in the Conformity mechanic.  Drop their Conformity far enough and they'll have alot of trouble getting what they need.


So I'm hoping that playing to character winds up being something of an emergent property...much the way that dickish Interruptions and Challenges in Uni tend to just not occur once players get broken in on the system.  After all players in other RPGs don't need explicit mechanical reinforcement to play their character they way they want to play their character.


As far as providing a Spark Trait at the beginning, the current 3 candidates are as follows:
1) Players could define and acquire the Spark Trait they want for the next "level" in advance so they always have one to be working for.
2) All starting characters could simply start at Self Awareness 1 instead of 0 so they would have their first Spark Trait right at the beginning.
3) They'll get their first Self Awareness almost immediately (probably midway through the first session) so having a half or even a full session without a Spark Trait seems not that big of a deal...and appropriate for a 0 Self Awareness character to be flailing a bit.

[Thor Olavsrud]

In a regular RPG players don't need any particular motivation to create a character they find interesting to play.  In R&R you create your character as you go...by breaking down the old one and transforming it into a new one.  Does there really need to be any additional motivation for players to create a character they find interesting to play than what is usual for creating characters?

Currently the GM hands out Inspiration any time they use a Role Check to keep a robot in line, including when the player is having their robot be disruptive just to get Role Checks.  I'm somewhat reluctant to change that...because any change allowing the GM to pass "you're being disruptive, therefor you don't get Inspiration" judgement goes right back into GM fiat by illusionism territory.

In my experience, there is a tendency to seek to break programming by simply doing anything that is out of role, regardless of whether it makes sense in terms of what the player wants the robot to become. There is no incentive to break role in a directed way. In play, you don't really get the sense of the character becoming someone else, just that they are acting out against what they are.

Right now there are two controls against disruptive behavior (beyond just "dude, that totally isn't very fun") 

1) The "Let it ride" nature of Role Checks where the GM doesn't have to award Inspiration for successive violations of the same broad category.  In other words one "I make a Role Check to force you to act like a gentleman at this party" (assuming the character is, in fact, programmed to act like a gentleman) covers all of the silly little "I break a dish", "I spill my drink", "I make loud farty noises" that a player might do to just rack up continuous Inspiration.

In play, this is problematic because it doesn't provide very much guidance as to when to call for a role check, when to let the player have his action, and when to say, "no, you can't do that, here's what you actually do." It becomes very fiat-y very quickly, and has the additional danger that the GM has the ability to narrate what your character does instead. It's dangerous ground and you need to be very careful in apportioning rights and giving guidance.

As a GM, the problem is that I have no Flags that let me know what the player is interested in seeing his character become. With a flag like the potential Spark Trait I spoke about in a post above, the other players and I would have the ability to judge whether the role is being broken in a constructive way or not.

2) The fact that the GM doesn't always HAVE to make a Role Check just because he could.  In other words, if a player tries to intentionally spill his drink on the Duke just to grab Inspiration...let him.  Then let him suffer the consequences of the Duke being really cheesed off.  In game punishment for a character who is acting wacky is entirely appropriate.  After all, the King has locked the Queen away for being "mad".  These consequences have a mechanical component as well in the Conformity mechanic.  Drop their Conformity far enough and they'll have alot of trouble getting what they need.

As I noted above, without a tool to help the group judge what is worthy of a role check and what isn't, the authority that you're talking about is very difficult to exercise in an equitable manner.

So I'm hoping that playing to character winds up being something of an emergent property...much the way that dickish Interruptions and Challenges in Uni tend to just not occur once players get broken in on the system.  After all players in other RPGs don't need explicit mechanical reinforcement to play their character they way they want to play their character.

I dunno Ralph. It hasn't been my experience yet. Further, I think we've shown in other games that Flags work very well. Beliefs, Spiritual Attributes, Keys, they all provide explicit mechanical reinforcement to play a character the way you want to play a character.

Right now, you don't provide any guidance as to what you should do in play. You do, however, mechanically reinforce playing against all things swashbuckling.

It is easy to be creative with boundaries and limitations in place. It is very difficult to be creative without boundaries and limitations.

As far as providing a Spark Trait at the beginning, the current 3 candidates are as follows:
1) Players could define and acquire the Spark Trait they want for the next "level" in advance so they always have one to be working for.
2) All starting characters could simply start at Self Awareness 1 instead of 0 so they would have their first Spark Trait right at the beginning.
3) They'll get their first Self Awareness almost immediately (probably midway through the first session) so having a half or even a full session without a Spark Trait seems not that big of a deal...and appropriate for a 0 Self Awareness character to be flailing a bit.

1. Is what I've been suggesting all along. This is the flag that tells you what to play toward.

2. I think this is a good idea. I've noticed a bit of cognitive dissonance on the part of the players at the idea that they're supposed to be Sparks but have Self Awareness 0.

3. That hasn't been my experience with the rules as they stand. Currently they get one Inspiration for acting out during the game and forcing a role check, and then they get whatever the dice give them. But that's not taking into account any of the changes you've discussed with the Inspiration/Drain system.

[Mayuran]

As far as providing a Spark Trait at the beginning, the current 3 candidates are as follows:
1) Players could define and acquire the Spark Trait they want for the next "level" in advance so they always have one to be working for.
2) All starting characters could simply start at Self Awareness 1 instead of 0 so they would have their first Spark Trait right at the beginning.
3) They'll get their first Self Awareness almost immediately (probably midway through the first session) so having a half or even a full session without a Spark Trait seems not that big of a deal...and appropriate for a 0 Self Awareness character to be flailing a bit.

Hi Ralph. I concur with much of what Thor has said! Of these three suggestions, one and two are viable and I believe that two is necessary for this game to really be inspiring in the first session.

None of us sparked in our sessions. I believe I have the dice to do it with my Type 5 swashbuckler-fop (4 inspiration points). However, I don't think I experienced anything in play to prompt the spark. As a Type 5 robot, I actually felt encouraged to conform to the tapestry and play towards its interests. If I had sparked before play, most likely that struggle would have been more pronounced and interesting.

[Matt Wilson]

Man, I love reading playtest threads. I get a lot from seeing other games go through the process. I'm glad these are public, and I'm going to ask the Galactic playtesters to post their results publicly too.