[1001 Nights] OK, we ate Cheet-Os and drank beer

[Ron Edwards]

About a month and a half ago, the gang gathered to play a game we'd jointly decided upon the previous week, 1001 Nights. Technically we should have waited until Tim A could join us, but he was sick, so we decided to forge ahead. Our group that night included me, Chris, and Tim K.

I don't have the sheets for the other characters, but Chris played Mihrage the aging falconer and Tim played Perviz the court cook. The senses-based character creation was extremely successful and by the time we were done with that part of the process, I could, uh, sense the anticipation we were all feeling about getting into the action. I can't remember what the falconer wanted, but the cook's goal was to prove my character a fraud. Here's my character:

The astrologer Sidi ibn Tayyib, awfully young, wearing a fine mashala

Hearing: I sit quietly
Sight: I don't see people, I see their stars
Smell: My robes are new
Taste: I love cardamon buns
Touch: I don't touch other people

I envy Mihrage the respect others show him; I envy Perviz his access to all those cardamon buns
I want to be granted high rank

Chris was the first GM, and he described the mood at court as relaxed and proud, as the sultan has acquired a magnificent tiger for his menagerie. The three characters have independently arrived at the menagerie, which is mostly outside, during the evening, and we strike up a conversation as we admire the tiger.

"The courageous story of the locust and the mountain" named and GMed by Chris (or rather his character Mihrage), was quite fun, as Sidi played the first title character and Perviz played the second title character. As I did not yet know Perviz's Ambition, I was wondering the whole time why he was so damn determined to provide so much adversity for my poor locust. It turned out to be kind of a heart-wrenching story of how the locust joined a band of religious pilgrims, fought (and killed!) a tiger, and ultimately how both the locust's courage and the mountain's pride needed to be tempered by humility. It was happy, too, as the locust and the pilgrim boy did arrive at the top of the mountain.

I found my list of "I wonder if" for that story:
- Will I return to the locust horde?
- Perhaps the wind will defeat the mountain after all
- Perhaps the pilgrims teach me courage
- I hope the youngest pilgrim lives through the storm
- I hope he finds food!
- I bet the locust can defeat the tiger! (as you can see, I was excited and started using exclamation points)
- I hope the mountain has learned from the locust
- I bet they make it to the top and thank the mountain

(To really see the story,you'd have to have Tim K's list too, but I can't find it)

I ended up with a checked Safety-box and a lot of Freedom-checks. I think the others stayed Safe and chipped away at their Ambitions and a bit of Freedom. We all narrowed our eyes and looked at the dice mechanics again, at this point, and got suspicious about something, as you'll see in a minute.

For the second story, I was GM. I described the mood as a little tense due to the Sultan's beautiful new wife. She's nice, and everyone including the sultan is really Very Happy about the wedding, but there's an underlying realization that things aren't going to be the same around court, and no one knows just how that's going to go. I stated that our characters were all in the kitchens, enjoying snacks and keeping Perviz company, and that a lot of scullions were hanging around too.

"The story of the no-good rogue who became a chef" was named and GMed by me, as it was now clear to everyone that the cook had a bug up his butt about Sidi, and Sidi wanted to lampoon him in revenge. This story was much more comedic, and I think the rogue managed to con his way up to the prince's kitchen mainly by not cooking well, to poison his lover by accident, and to produce a masterpiece of cooking also by accident. Although if I'm not mistaken, he came to a bad end, but maybe that's just wishful thinking in my recollection. To be absolutely clear, the rogue/chef in the story was not actually Perviz; he was a different character in a different setting (Baghdad-style, not Arabian Peninsula), but because Perviz had to play him, it was still funny.

I also enjoyed this story because we got to use all the food descriptions from the beginning of the book in the story, as various dishes played various parts in the rogue pseudo-chef's escapades. As the thread title indicates, we didn't do much of a job in actually bringing any appropriate food to the game in real life. But hey, we did use the food list in the fictional story creation, so OK.

During our second end-story round of dice-rolling, I stuck with my tactic and (after we rolled) observed that Chris did the same thing. Before we rolled, though, we saw that Tim K had put a lot of dice into his Ambition, and both of us destroyed his chances by sacrificing a die apiece to eliminate four Ambition dice of his. The story ended with freedom for the astrologer and a very unhappy cook.

The basic conduct and outcome of ongoing play is superb. It's absolutely wonderful how the dynamics among the characters, the title of the story, and the mood at court became non-stated, and in my case (and the others' I think) not even considered directly once we began and got into the narrations - yet they still factored into the stories 100%. We noted afterwards, for each story, that we had done this without realizing it, and that made it very easy to think of how the story might have filtered out among the court over time, and what effects that might have.

Now, given our backgrounds and highly suggestive and interactive habits of play, it was a little bit tricky in terms of whether player questions ("I wonder if") actually contribute directly into the SIS, right then and there when stated. This is especially problematic in terms of conflict - can I say, as non-GM, "I wonder if the lion attacks!" and expect that the lion appears right then and there? We ultimately decided not, but since such statements sometimes did introduce novel elements and sometimes didn't, it was a bit hard to shake out exactly how such things are done.

What we found, basically, is that the GM must be quite aggressive with scenes and situations and conflicts or else the players are a bit lost in their contributions, and start seeking and defining conflicts through their statements rather than speculating about outcomes of existing conflicts.

We have two system concerns, one minor and one major.

1. The order of rolling is important, due to the blocking option. Therefore the lawyer among us, Tim K, stated the need for textual instructions that dictate everyone roll at once.

Full disclosure: wondering whether we had missed something, I sent this post to Meg to review first. Given her reply, what follows under #2 is now substantially different. We had figured the Safety-Ambition-Mechanics were broken but now I get them better.)

2. We tended to get 11-12 dice to work with at the end of a story (defined as the GM getting , no problem. The optimal tactic at that point isn't very interesting: put all the dice into Freedom for the first story, and maybe for the second one too; after that, put maybe two or three into Safety and keep racing for Freedom; ignore Ambition entirely.

What Meg told me, though, showed me that we'd missed the role of the GM as curtailer of the story, i.e., perfectly able to end it before he or she gets eight dice. That will keep totals down and the net effect is to make the three-way dice allocation a lot more interesting for each story.

I did have an interesting notion of an idea, though ... a bit like blocking Ambition but even nastier ... it would be neat if I could sacrifice two dice to roll one against someone else's Safety, during the group roll. I wonder if that would work? Maybe limited to one unit at a time, in other words, you can't sacrifice four for two checks, just two for one. H'mm. So basically if your "attack" die rolls even, then it has to be canceled by an even on the other guy's part (in addition to the even result he needs to avoid checking the box). Huh! I kind of like it, and might try it out.

Best, Ron

[Nathan P.]

Hey Ron,

I'm going to put my rabid 1001 Nights fanboy hat on for a sec, in response to one of your points:

Now, given our backgrounds and highly suggestive and interactive habits of play, it was a little bit tricky in terms of whether player questions ("I wonder if") actually contribute directly into the SIS, right then and there when stated. This is especially problematic in terms of conflict - can I say, as non-GM, "I wonder if the lion attacks!" and expect that the lion appears right then and there? We ultimately decided not, but since such statements sometimes did introduce novel elements and sometimes didn't, it was a bit hard to shake out exactly how such things are done.

What we found, basically, is that the GM must be quite aggressive with scenes and situations and conflicts or else the players are a bit lost in their contributions, and start seeking and defining conflicts through their statements rather than speculating about outcomes of existing conflicts.

The most amazing thing about 1001 Nights, to me, is that it's totally workable, enjoyable and fun GM fiat. The expected linkage between having your character say stuff and having that have any meaning on what the GM says....well, there is none. When you say "I wonder if the lion attacks!", the GM can take that as a clue (he's interested in the lion attacking!) for their story, but they are not bound to incorporate anything that anyone wonders. Once I realized this, I started mixing up my "wonders" with both questions about the events in the story, and events in the story itself (like "I wonder if this story will be a thinly-veiled allegory" or, as Ben's character asked at the beginning of every story last time we played, "I wonder if this story will have any redeeming moral value.")

So, while I don't doubt that how you guys treated it totally worked for your group during that session, I just want to point out that I don't think there's necessarily a dichotomy between defining conflicts by statements and speculating about outcomes of existing conflicts. In my play of the game, both of those cases occur, in differing proportions from story to story, depending on how free-handed the GM is being and how much, and what kind of, interest the players take in the story.

[Caesar_X]

We tended to get 11-12 dice to work with at the end of a story (defined as the GM getting , no problem. The optimal tactic at that point isn't very interesting: put all the dice into Freedom for the first story, and maybe for the second one too; after that, put maybe two or three into Safety and keep racing for Freedom; ignore Ambition entirely.

I've found that to be the case as well when I play with "gamers" who are used to looking for the way to win.

What Meg told me, though, showed me that we'd missed the role of the GM as curtailer of the story, i.e., perfectly able to end it before he or she gets eight dice. That will keep totals down and the net effect is to make the three-way dice allocation a lot more interesting for each story.

Wow, I missed that as well.  I need to go back and check the rules there.

I did have an interesting notion of an idea, though ... a bit like blocking Ambition but even nastier ... it would be neat if I could sacrifice two dice to roll one against someone else's Safety, during the group roll.

Here's another idea.  What if you and another player each had to sacrifice a die to knock someone's Safety die away?  The analogy would be plotting with someone to get the third person in trouble with the Sultan.  It could create some interesting dynamics at the table.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

This post isn't intended to challenge either reply so far, but it was definitely prompted by them, in a kind of free-associative or "hey that makes me think of" way.

I submit that 1001 Nights is at its strongest in a Gamist context for play. I don't think that deserves any second-class status in role-playing.

I've used the word "gamer" as a pejorative, sure - but not because of anything to do with winning. Gamist play is a noble thing, even at its most superficially ignoble, as I tried to demonstrate in my Drowning & Falling thread..

My take is that without a solid competitive, losing/winning context, 1001 Nights offers a fun little one-time diversion without much repeat value. With it (and boy will I pay attention to the role of the GM in curtailing story length and thus dice from now on!) I think the game offers fantastic repeat-play value.

Does the 1001 Nights text actually support this? Oh, it's full of nurturing earth-mommy foody goodness in the first few pages, yes ... but when you learn the rules of play, and look right at what those words say that you do, and right at what those words say when those dice are rolled, you'll see shark-toothed Gamism grinning in your face.

Best, Ron

[lumpley]

I did have an interesting notion of an idea, though ... a bit like blocking Ambition but even nastier ... it would be neat if I could sacrifice two dice to roll one against someone else's Safety, during the group roll.

My gut says one for one, not one for two!

I think then you'd definitely want to have strict turn-taking in assigning those dice, then, or phases, or something.

Cool.

-Vincent

[fjj]

Two points based on my experience with 1001 Nights (2 sessions, a write-up of the first one can be found here: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=23678.msg232591#msg232591)

1. Declaring jewels during a story:

I find it works best to pose questions for very specific details in the near future of the story. However, both declaration of conflicts and introduction of new story elements work fine.

Example of good gems:

• "Is the locust attacked by a lion in the night" (after introduction of locust, but before introduction of lion)
• "Will the locust defeat the lion?" (after introduction of locust, lion, and potential conflict).

Poor phrases are those that cannot be resolved easily in a reasonable short time, or phrases where the resolution is of no interest to the participants.

Examples of poor gems:

• "Will the story have a happy end?" (in the beginning of a story).
• "Is there a main character in this story?"

Long term phrases posed in the beginning of the story can help shape a story arc and give the story a direction early on ("will the locust return home safely?"). But it can also put a mental overload on everyone, when four or five players each have some of these gems.

2. Dividing jewels between Safety, Ambition, Freedom after each story:

It worked fine for me to have everyone divide out their dice individually at the same time, then taking a round where everyone announces the number number of dice, and then let people play dice against each others ambition from any of their three pools.


1001 Nights is very easily explained, has no pre-play preparation, and invites everyone to bring wonderful story elements to the table. Definately high on my list of story-game-for-an-evening choices.


Best regards,
Frederik J. Jensen
PS: Liked the tiger in the palace.

[Tim C Koppang]

For context, I thought I'd provide my character sheet for Perviz.  Unfortunately, I don't have a list of the "I wonder" suggestions that I made during the game; I tended to keep track of them in my head rather than write them down.

Perviz - Middle aged - Cook

Hearing - I overhear all of the palace rumors
Sight - I know what you need by the way you look
Touch - I have a lover's touch
Taste - I adore roasted meats
Smell - I can identify any spice by its scent alone

I wear a ghutra.

I envy Sidi; he has the ear of the court.
I envy Mihrage and the world he has seen.

Ambition: I want to expose Sidi as a fraud.

[Meguey]

Ron, cool.

I also fully endorse fiddling with your play of the game. Try sacrificing a die to gouge someone's Safety dice, sure. Try increasing marks in Freedom or Ambition. Try lots of stuff. Whatever you try, let me know how it goes.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya Meg,

Well, hold on, that business about Safety dice was merely a passing thought, not any sort of real suggestion or dedicated recommendation.

Given my improved understanding about the GM's role toward the number of dice, my inclination is to play again, with Tim A too this time to bring up the number of participants, and to see what happens when the GM of the moment is thinking about keeping the number of dice low.

Best, Ron

[lumpley]

Tim! I hope nobody wrote down what they wonder. When you declare a die and then later forget what you wondered, it goes back into the bowl. This is a good, exploitable rule.

-Vincent