[Ashes] Modeling Fight-or-Flight

[Jason Morningstar]

So I'm working on this project that requires characters to constantly either run for their lives or fight tooth and nail.  Here's what I'm thinking:

I'm imagining this as a three player game, with a rotating GM and three characters.  Each player is Fight for one charcter, Flight for another, and GM for a third.  Each character is played by two players.  One represents the fight relex and the other represents the flight reflex. 

Both Fight and Flight have cards, numbered between one and six.  One represents an extreme flight reaction and six represents an extreme fight reaction. 

In every conflict, both Fight and Flight put forward a card without consulting each other, based on what cards they have available and how they perceive the threat.  The two numbers are cross-referenced to arrive at both who will control the character durng the conflict, but also the relative bonus or penalty and nature of the effort.

Numbers that match are beneficial – the controlling player may pull resources from his partner's side of the character.  Each point of numeric difference is a point of  adversity the GM can apply.  Here's how it breaks down:

1/1:  Bold, Flight controls
1/2:  Desperate, Flight controls
1/3:  Conflicted, Flight controls
1/4:  Terrified, Flight controls
1/5:  Panicked, Flight controls
1/6:  Paralyzed, GM allocates control
2/2:  Determined, Flight control with shared resources
2/3:  Hasty, Flight controls
2/4:  Rattled, Flight controls
2/5:  Confused, GM allocates control
2/6:  Panicked, Fight controls
3/3:  Cautious, Flight controls with shared resources
3/4:  Indecisive, GM allocates control
3/5:  Rattled, Fight controls
3/6:  Terrified, Fight controls
4/4:  Cautious, Fight controls with shared resources
4/5:  Hasty, Fight controls
4/6:  Conflicted, Fight controls
5/5:  Determined, Fight controls with shared resources
5/6:  Desparate, Fight controls
6/6:  Bold, Fight controls with shared resources

This  resolves very simply in a small table.

Example:  The character stumbles into a gang of cannibals.  Fight, recognizing that the character is over-matched, puts forward the lowest (and, to him, most expensive) card he has – a three.  Flight would like to put forward a one, but knows that Fight has few low cards.  She puts forward a two.  This corresponds to Hasty Flight, and she is in charge of the character for the duration of the conflict.  Since the difference between cards was one, the GM has a single point of adversity to use against the character.

* * *

So some questions:

Characters earn XP, which they use to buy new cards.  For Flight, cards cost the face value.  For Fight, this order is reversed, so a 5 card costs two and a 2 card costs 5.  No cards?  Draw randomly and add one adversity.  Will this scale or is the disparity too great?  Maybe unanswerable at this stage.

Is the outcome of the card choices either too random or too pre-ordained? 

Any other obvious problems you can spot?

Thanks!

[hix]

Hi Jason,

Adversity is the difference between the scores on the Fight and Flight cards, right? How is adversity used by the GM when resolving a conflict?

How many cards does each player start with?
Do players get to select the new card they purchase, or is that random?
Is there more than one card with a particular number on it? For instance, does the deck have two Flight cards with the number '3' on them?

[hix]

Oh, I see that the answer to this:

Do players get to select the new card they purchase, or is that random?

... is this:

For Flight, cards cost the face value.  For Fight, this order is reversed, so a 5 card costs two and a 2 card costs 5.

[Jason Morningstar]

Hey Steve,

Thanks for the questions.

I don't know what "adversity" is, exactly, quite yet.  Consider it an undefined but measurable variable at this point, so more is bad. 

I'm imagining that there are an unlimited number of cards.  You could buy 20 "1" cards if you wanted.  Hopefully you can see why that would be a bad idea, though - for starters, it'd mean that your character would *never* fight.  That makes it easy for the adversity-producer to set up a situation where you really, really want to fight, and then you are sad you spent all your points on "1" cards. 

Maybe they won't even be cards, you could keep track with pencil and paper easily enough.  Whatever makes the most sense in terms of handling time, ultimately.

[Jason Morningstar]

Sorry, I didn't answer fully.  I'm imagining that a starting character has one of each card, one through six, 21 points worth.  Maybe you always have six cards, but my initial thought is that the number is entirely variable.  There'd be some terrible penalty for having a conflict but no card to contribute. 

[Darcy Burgess]

Hi Jason,

I'm having a hard time seeing the value of (admittedly simple) custom cards over six-sided dice.  Roll a mitful of dice, and let players draft from those -- then they remain 'face-up' (or perhaps hidden behind a screen) Dogs-style.  Random "card draws" are easy to handle, too!

I think that a lot of what I'm seeing is encapsulated really well by Railroad Dice.

On a purely non-technical front, are you thinking settingless (a-la Sorcerer), or are you driving towards a specific setting?

Cheers,
Darcy

[Jason Morningstar]

Hi Darcy,

Dice would definitely work.  In fact it'd be interesting to use them in a non-randomizer capacity, simply as indicators of intent.  Originally I was using ace through six in a deck of playing cards, but that precludes (or sharply limits) buying cards and tuning your hand.  Whatever the solution, I really want it to have a minimum of handling time and ideally no paperwork.  Nothing's set in stone, so I appreciate your thoughts. 

This is all in the service of a game based on extremely gritty post-apocalyptic misery.  Think Cormac McCarthy's The Road. 

[David Artman]

Jason, let me see if I'm following the handling aspects, to see if the issue I think I am seeing is real.

For the sake of example, I arbitrarily presume that one is Flight for one's own character. Perhaps it's better, though, if one is GM for one's own character? Anyway:

Abe: Flight for A, Fight for B, GM for C
Ben: Flight for B, Fight for C, GM for A
Cal: Flight for C, Fight for A, GM for B

Now, we "make characters." It seems that, if I am Abe, I have to have cards for two different "aspects," per the above chart: my Flight and someone else's Fight. Do I spend Experience on either, at any time? Or do I earn Exp that is somehow "tagged" to Flight or Fight, based on how a given conflict plays out?

I guess what I'm getting at is there could be a problem with just keeping things sorted out. Hmmm... but maybe two decks of cards simplifies that: red-backed for Fight, blue-backed for Flight. Use red and blue poker chips for Exp tracking; the cheap plastic ones usually have red, blue, and white, so maybe you could also find a use for the white (GM Exp? "Untagged" Exp which may be spent on Flight or Fight?).

SO... handling aside (as it might be simpler than it seems just reading here): do you want the apparently inherent tension between players over character development via Exp? If Abe spends Exp on his own Flight but on Ben's Fight, how can Ben shape his character to be "more fighty?" Seems he never can, unless through a form of blackmail (i.e. force Abe to spend Exp on Fight, by threatening to be an aggressive GM when Abe's ass is on the line).

Finally, what is a character, beyond these Flight/Fight cards? Is there anything intrinsic to a character, beyond this allocation of narrative control to various players? Can my character "stats" make, say, Flight or Fight cards cheaper or more expensive? Will characters have Traits or similar elements to ping in a conflict or to trump the ruling of the cards?

All in all, it's an interesting mechanic, if the handling is clear; but it's hard to make much of it in isolation from the rest of the rule checks and balances.

David

[Jason Morningstar]

Hi David, let me see if I can straighten this out a little!

Nobody "owns" any character.  Everybody shares two characters.  In the back of my head I'm thinking that the three characters never actually come into contact, but criss-cross the same landscape and interact with the same people.  (shrug, don't know for sure how that works)

Abe can spend XP that A earns on Flight, and XP that B earns on Fight, at any time.  XP he spends is XP that is gone for that character, so if he's pumping XP into A's Flight, Cal might get mad about it, because maybe he'd like to spend some on A's Fight.  Too bad! 

Abe accumulates adversity (whatever that turns out to be) that he can spend to make C miserable when his GM turn comes 'round.

[David Artman]

OK, Jason, a bit clearer, now. Some follow-ups:

Nobody "owns" any character.  Everybody shares two characters.

FWIW, you can make this for more than three players, with a round-robin setup. Thus, "everybody shares two characters" would still be true... just not the same two characters:

player	Flight	Fight	GM
A	A	B	C
B	B	C	D
C	C	D	E
D	D	E	A
E	E	A	B

In the back of my head I'm thinking that the three characters never actually come into contact, but criss-cross the same landscape and interact with the same people.  (shrug, don't know for sure how that works)

Got any Color in mind, yet? This "related but not together" thing might suit a god game or perhaps a race/quest game. I recall you're doing something in the survivalist vein, though--how do you see that working with this not-in-contact notion? (It seems that the "genre staples" of survivalist fiction are counter to this notion: usually, the protagonists are teaming up to survive while also trying to avoid killing each other over ulterior agendas or out of madness.)

Abe can spend XP that A earns on Flight, and XP that B earns on Fight, at any time.  XP he spends is XP that is gone for that character, so if he's pumping XP into A's Flight, Cal might get mad about it, because maybe he'd like to spend some on A's Fight.  Too bad! 
Abe accumulates adversity (whatever that turns out to be) that he can spend to make C miserable when his GM turn comes 'round.

So there's some kind of meat-level negotiation between players for these Exp spending, rather than some kind of genre-driven/-appropriate guide to development. It's almost like the *players* gain Exp not the characters.

I'd still like to see how "stats" of characters relate, if there are any. Seems to me that, if a character is nothing but accumulated Flight and Fight cards, the players really end up playing themselves, in the game fiction. What guidance to role-playing is "embedded" into a character, versus the situations (which seem to have the lion's share of the lime light)? For example, my stats in D&D give me some general guidelines for how successful I'll be at a variety of tasks; in WoD games, my Merits and Flaws provide direct instruction as to my role-playing requirements or restrictions. In this game, however, it seems that the only such guidance is "I'm slightly more likely to Fly than Fight, at the moment, due to the cards I have and my memory of what others have bought with Exp."

Can you tell us more about the full range of "moving parts" in the system? Again, the basic mechanic above seems cool, but it's hard to offer much feedback on it in isolation.

HTH;
David

[Jason Morningstar]

Thanks for putting so much thought into this, David!  I appreciate it.

I was really hoping to just thrash out this component of the overall system, but my general ideas are here.  This draft doesn't include the fight/flight stuff I'm mulling over here.

It's all in the very early stages, so I don't have solid answers for anything yet.  It's optimized for a 3-player GMless game because that's my Monday game group - three guys total.  Also, I think there's an unfilled niche for three-player games. 

I like the idea of collaboratively creating this rich landscape that is, itself, a character in the game, and players interact with each other through it as a proxy.  So maybe two guys leave notes for each other in a safe cache, but never meet up.  Evidence of a fight scars the landscape. It's lonely, desolate, miserable.  Maybe meeting up is a bad idea for some reason. 

[David Artman]

Ah.... now I get you, Jason. That link to the rules draft is sort of important.
;^)

So this cards mechanic--and I, for one, think that cards are best, given the way they are used--is really just to determine initial control of the character, after which element and stress dice takeover resolution. It is, in a way, the "initiative" of the system, with the dice rolling the "resolution" method.

OK, it's perfect, then. Sure, you might tweak the XP cost around in order to make for more interesting player decisions, so that there's no obvious min-max between gaining cards for control versus dice for effectiveness--this is particularly significant WRT the way a used trait is shifted to the other reflex (flight or fight). But as a means of bidding for the right to be the negotiator of trait applicability (while the GM is the counter-negotiator of stress) and the roller of dice, it seems fine to me.

---

My only concern at this point is that there might not be enough mechanical limits on GM credibility. OK, fine, if every NPC is fully written up per the rules for a PC... but when is that truly practical? I can imagine a GM having a LOT more influence over a conflict by merely being able to pile up traits (for the NPCs) to all-but-insure a high number of successes. Perhaps I did not read quite closely enough--or you have yet to incorporate such checks and balances--but what's to prevent someone on their GM turn from just over-dogging, no matter what reflex wins the card bid?

---

Again, a cool looking game from a Deep Thinker. And from what I can tell at this point (v1.2), it could be made into a generic system fairly easily (much like Dogs can be ported to a variety of settings), so long as the genre staples accentuate this sort of full-on, go-go-go tone of play (I can't see, say, a politics and intrigue port working all that well, without a LOT of squinting or very loose connotations of Fight and Flight). But I am sure you're going to inject more situation into it (a la towns) which will, in turn, color it into a tighter, purpose-built game. I encourage you to make another thread to address that, if you like: I am an inch from thread-jacking, here, as I get wild ideas for why the characters are "related but not together"--which I believe I recognize that you need, due to the one-on-one nature of every conflict (i.e. one reflex of one character versus the GM, for any given stake).

"Please, sir... I want some more..."
David

[Jason Morningstar]

or you have yet to incorporate such checks and balances--but what's to prevent someone on their GM turn from just over-dogging, no matter what reflex wins the card bid?

Once again, David, thanks very much for your thoughtful feedback and comments.  I recognize the need for some sort of mechanism to keep things in check, and right now I've just flagged that as "adversity" - it will be measurable, but I haven't thought much about it yet.  I need to think about this some more, refine a few things, and then I'll report back in a new thread!  Thanks again.

[hix]

Hi Jason,

Something about this has been bugging me. It seems like this card system would work best as either:

-  a Prisoner's Dilemma scenario (where one player could get a benefit out of screwing the other), or
- a situation where the two players can't communicate with each other at all about their choices.

I'm interested in what your thoughts are about players trying to min-max the system to get an optimal outcome. I guess that includes table-talk & how cards are thrown down on the table. Do you think this sort of stuff would be an issue?

Also, I like the setting.

[Jason Morningstar]

Hey Steve,

A couple of points - first, I'm imagining that the threat is revealed and both players must immediately slap down a card. 

I think you'd put forward a card without the benefit of consultation, guided by your role as fight or flight.  For example, does making a stand seem reasonable, even if as flight you are prone to running (and running is easier and less expensive)?  Then play a high card. 

Second, I definitely think this system could be gamed.  I'm not really trying to make it proof against people who want to abuse it. 

Does that make sense?