[Toon] Aborted Effort...

[migo]

I tried running a game of Toon with my girlfriend yesterday. It was the cartoon olympics intro adventure in the revised book. I figured that the system is easy and the adventure was laid out so no problem. Didn't end up being so. I told her because it's a cartoon she can do anything that works in a cartoon. First thing she says is she pulls a hammer that's spring loaded in her tail and hits Olga Hipopovna over the head with it. Had it hit, I'd have probably gotten a bit further, but her fight skill was 3, and with roll under on 2d6, she obviously missed. I completely froze with what to narrate after that. I wasn't sure what the logical reaction of a bipedal hippopotamus athlete who fancies herself a ballerina would be if she was missed by a giant hammer. Also, in retrospect I'm thinking that in cartoons the first hit never misses, so maybe the hammer missing threw me out of cartoon mode.

I read a review of Donjon a while back that said it actually required more GM preperation than a regular RPG because of the freedom players have. I'm thinking the same freedom exists in Toon, so it's possible that it's something that can't be winged. That feeling is supported by the fact that I followed up with a game of C.O.R.E. that I ran completely off the cuff and it worked well for 3 hours, without me getting stumped (similar to what I used to do with AD&D).

Having not been able to run a game of Toon (or Donjon I guess), that worked, I don't really have a comparison point of why it flat out failed for me.

[Filip Luszczyk]

I don't suppose the reaction of a bipedal hippopotamus would be logical in the first place

What was your initial reaction for the declaration and the result of the roll? Was the problem caused by the lack of a logical idea, or by the lack of any idea at all? Going with the first instinct would probably be the best here.

As for Donjon, the review must have lied. It definitely doesn't require more GM prep, exactly because of the player empowerment.

[migo]

I don't suppose the reaction of a bipedal hippopotamus would be logical in the first place

What was your initial reaction for the declaration and the result of the roll? Was the problem caused by the lack of a logical idea, or by the lack of any idea at all? Going with the first instinct would probably be the best here.

As for Donjon, the review must have lied. It definitely doesn't require more GM prep, exactly because of the player empowerment.

It was the lack of an idea. I think I would have had an idea if it hadn't missed, but I can't say for sure. I'm not sure why though, I don't have any lack of ideas when I'm just freeforming a traditional RPG with no prep.

I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that the review lied. Given my experience with Toon, and that Donjon can do cartoons pretty easily, I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case at all.

[Filip Luszczyk]

So it was the generally abstract and alien situation, combined with a genre breaking result generated by the game and possibly paired with a moment of poor inspiration?

How did the player react to this? Did she have any suggestions fo resolving the problem? Did you try to continue the game past that point, or did it completely stop after this issue came up? Also, what were the general circumstances of the session - why did you choose Toon specifically, how strongly were both of you bought in? Did you or the player had any previous experiences with the game?

As for Donjon, well, the review must have been written by someone who didn't actually play the game, or who held his own strong assumptions about the GMs role, different from those supported by the system. It's not really the case in Donjon. The game is rather light on prep, at least in comparison with such prep-heavy games as D&D 3.0+. However, it certainly requires some improvisation skills, and good handling of unexpected twists.

[Callan S.]

Well, what you got is a premise that you can do what what would work in a cartoon, and then mechanics which say "Well, actually part of the time that's not true - you can't do it. And that's it - all these mechanics add is an absense of doing something, part of the time"

An absense of doing something doesn't really trigger the imagination. If it were 'Fight - without hitting yourself on the head', then you've got something to work on. She could hit herself on the head, stagger off a cliff (there's always a cliff) and into a pool of...so on and so on.

It's probably a hang over of aping D&D design or such like, where a monster would be applying damage to you each round, so missing set up an issue to deal with.

[migo]

So it was the generally abstract and alien situation, combined with a genre breaking result generated by the game and possibly paired with a moment of poor inspiration?

Yeah, something like that.

How did the player react to this? Did she have any suggestions fo resolving the problem? Did you try to continue the game past that point, or did it completely stop after this issue came up? Also, what were the general circumstances of the session - why did you choose Toon specifically, how strongly were both of you bought in? Did you or the player had any previous experiences with the game?

I just had several games that I hadn't tried before. I had BTRC's Pantheon and Epiphany. The former required 4-6 players which we didn't have. The latter had a setting I didn't want to spend time reading up on right then and it had a interesting but unfamiliar hand resolution mechanic. Toon was next on the list, followed by C.O.R.E. - not much bought in there.

As for Donjon, well, the review must have been written by someone who didn't actually play the game,

You're definitely wrong about this.

or who held his own strong assumptions about the GMs role, different from those supported by the system.

You'll have to back this claim up.

It's not really the case in Donjon. The game is rather light on prep, at least in comparison with such prep-heavy games as D&D 3.0+. However, it certainly requires some improvisation skills, and good handling of unexpected twists.

It does look that way in theory, but I've come across other things which looked like they had a light prep time in theory and in fact required quite a bit. I wouldn't be surprised that for some people it requires more prep. Most people require some sort of prep for D&D - I can wing it. Prep time wise, what's true for one person (you) isn't necessarily true for someone else.

Well, what you got is a premise that you can do what what would work in a cartoon, and then mechanics which say "Well, actually part of the time that's not true - you can't do it. And that's it - all these mechanics add is an absense of doing something, part of the time"

An absense of doing something doesn't really trigger the imagination. If it were 'Fight - without hitting yourself on the head', then you've got something to work on. She could hit herself on the head, stagger off a cliff (there's always a cliff) and into a pool of...so on and so on.

It's probably a hang over of aping D&D design or such like, where a monster would be applying damage to you each round, so missing set up an issue to deal with.

That makes sense. I'm getting the feeling a toon game would almost work better as a game of narrative one up man ship. Everything the player says is true and happens. It's up to the next person to run with it and twist it with something that wasn't specified. The miss, really did confuse things, and then realising that it would happen 11 out of 12 times made it seem pointless - who on earth wants to get in a fight when they have a less than 10% chance of hitting?

[Callan S.]

That makes sense. I'm getting the feeling a toon game would almost work better as a game of narrative one up man ship. Everything the player says is true and happens. It's up to the next person to run with it and twist it with something that wasn't specified.

Not as much as you'd think. When you get to say whatever, well, you could have done that at home by yourself with no one else around. Yeah, someones else then has to roll with it, but then whatever they say goes, so they could have done that at home by themselves. Mechancially it kinda makes everyone issolated, since they could do what their doing while alone.

Some systems (I want to say conflict resolution, but I'm probably using the term incorrectly) have a pivot system, where usually someone determines one side of the result and someone determines what the other result produces. Once that's specified it kind of produces a hybrid, since each person will end up considering what they'll do if the roll goes against them. Further, considering this often makes them look for and find some value in the other persons idea - even if the roll goes their way, they may borrow from the other persons result, adding it to their own result in some way. Importantly this consideration is done because the person cares about how things pan out, it's not a requirement of the rules. Contrast this against having to do it because you have to pick up from a previous narration or your are breaking the rules.

Anyway, that's a technical discussion of it - how playtest works out is how playtest works out!

[Filip Luszczyk]

As for the buy in thing, what was the player's general reception of the system?

It doesn't sound like you've been particularly hyped about trying this game out (i.e. "Oh, we haven't play Toon yet, let's check it out today" as opposed to "Hey, I'm in a mood for some Toon today!"), so I suppose it could have been one of the factors that affected your poor experience, too.

You're definitely wrong about this.

You'll have to back this claim up.

Sure.

A year ago I've run a pretty fun, if a bit short, pick up session of Donjon that didn't involve any pre-game prep, so my experience tells me it's possible. I'm not too keen on doing pre-game prep in general, so if the game requires me to spend more than half an hour on prep outside the session I'll be disinclined to run it. But in Donjon it turned out to be possible to effectively run the game without prep and still have fun. For most of the session, I've been to busy coming up with immediate responses to player's actions and test results to even have space for using any pre-defined material.

Note the "responses" part. Callan's point about working in isolation is very accurate. Working with each other's input is very important in such open games, I believe.

I wasn't playing the game stricktly by the book the way I've been doing it, however. The system gives pretty concrete GM prep instructions. Namely, as explained in Running Donjon section you need to create the town and have about 5-10 scenes ready. That's about half an hour to an hour of work, maybe a bit more if you're writing up your own monsters.

The procedure is as it is, so regardless what one actually does with the game, it's hard to say that the system itself works differently than it does. I didn't need any prep for my session, but by ommiting it I effectively neglected part of the system and if the resulting experience wasn't fun I could blame only myself, not the game. Similarly, over-preparation would be playing the game in a way it obviosuly wasn't meant to.

That's why the review you mention seems unreriable to me, but that's often the case with reviews. Can you provide a link to it, by the way?

Now, in comparison, D&D 3.0/3.5 requires varying amounts of prep, but preparing a decent dungeon, using procedures, guidelines and advice from the book and not supporting oneself with online generators, can easily take up hours. Learning a pre-made module can be just as tiresome and time consuming. In my experience, using pre-made module or well prepared dungeon resulted in having a great time, but under-preparation on the GM's side always resulted in poor fun and/or not using the system to its full effects. I recall that AD&D's prep was a bit time consuming, too, but not as much and in different ways (but I've been playing it for a short time only).

So, if you don't mind, now I'll ask about your own experiences with Donjon. Can you elaborate how exactly they relate to this particular experience with Toon of yours?

Also, maybe you have some specific direction for this thread in mind, i.e. you want to discuss some particular broader issues? Cause, now I'm not sure if my initial impression of it being a thread of a "diagnostic" kind is correct.

[Caldis]

It sounds to me like you just werent in a cartoony mood.  Toons dont always hit, have you ever seen the coyote going after the road runner?   The problem is you werent able to react on the spot in a toony way.  I've run into the same problem myself many times, if you arent right into the genre you dont know how to react.

What I find helps is to get into the right mind frame, know where the game is going.  So if you want the hippo to get hit the hippo is going to get hit all that the missed roll means is that the hippo didnt get hit this time.  What you have to do is come up with something appropriate to keep the game rolling to that point.  The hammer misses, makes a huge crack in the floor but the hippo doesnt notice keeps dancing her ballet, roll again. 

This is of course advice specifically for the type of game you seemed to be looking for with toon.  Illusionism works for that type of Sim game, that's why it became popular. 

 

[migo]

Not as much as you'd think. When you get to say whatever, well, you could have done that at home by yourself with no one else around. Yeah, someones else then has to roll with it, but then whatever they say goes, so they could have done that at home by themselves. Mechancially it kinda makes everyone issolated, since they could do what their doing while alone.

Not at all. You feed off each other's responses that you can't think of yourself. I've done this with my ex-roommates where we try to one-up each other on insults, trying to come with either a rebuttal or an insult that can't be responded to without being awkward. It's nowhere near as fun if you try to insult yourself back and forth. Obviously, not for everyone, but there is a definite benefit to not doing it yourself.

Some systems (I want to say conflict resolution, but I'm probably using the term incorrectly) have a pivot system, where usually someone determines one side of the result and someone determines what the other result produces. Once that's specified it kind of produces a hybrid, since each person will end up considering what they'll do if the roll goes against them. Further, considering this often makes them look for and find some value in the other persons idea - even if the roll goes their way, they may borrow from the other persons result, adding it to their own result in some way. Importantly this consideration is done because the person cares about how things pan out, it's not a requirement of the rules. Contrast this against having to do it because you have to pick up from a previous narration or your are breaking the rules.

It's a cartoon. If someone hits you with a hammer, if you roll dice and say "no you didn't, I dodged it" it's no fun. It's more fun to respond with "after peeling myself off the ground, I stick my thumb in my mouth, blow myself up like a balloon, float up and let the air out shooting back into [whoever hit with the hammer]". Cartoons have a big aspect of whatever happens in one frame doesn't matter much later on, so it's fine if you're just agreeing with it. I can see the value of having to consider both options with a more realistic game, but I don't see why it would be necessary with a cartoon.

Anyway, that's a technical discussion of it - how playtest works out is how playtest works out!

Yeah. It's given me some stuff to think about for the system, but I think reshaping Toon so that like not being able to have a score of 10, 11 or 12 you can't have one of 2, 3 or 4 so you don't have a waste of a skill like Fight 3 would improve things. Having a character who's better at one thing than another is cool. Having a completely incompetent cartoon main character isn't.

As for the buy in thing, what was the player's general reception of the system?

It doesn't sound like you've been particularly hyped about trying this game out (i.e. "Oh, we haven't play Toon yet, let's check it out today" as opposed to "Hey, I'm in a mood for some Toon today!"), so I suppose it could have been one of the factors that affected your poor experience, too.

Hyped no, excited yes. But yeah, not being hugely eager to try a system out specifically does sound like it would cause some problems if things don't go smoothly.

Sure.

A year ago I've run a pretty fun, if a bit short, pick up session of Donjon that didn't involve any pre-game prep, so my experience tells me it's possible. I'm not too keen on doing pre-game prep in general, so if the game requires me to spend more than half an hour on prep outside the session I'll be disinclined to run it. But in Donjon it turned out to be possible to effectively run the game without prep and still have fun. For most of the session, I've been to busy coming up with immediate responses to player's actions and test results to even have space for using any pre-defined material.

I've done this with D&D. I did it with a game of C.O.R.E. running a system without prep doesn't mean anyone can do it. Different people react to things differently. Just because someone found that it actually needed more prep doesn't mean they have a weird interpretation of how things are supposed to go, which is what your initial claim was. Saying you've run Donjon without problems is one thing. But then again people have run Toon without problems. Experiences differ.

Note the "responses" part. Callan's point about working in isolation is very accurate. Working with each other's input is very important in such open games, I believe.

I wasn't playing the game stricktly by the book the way I've been doing it, however. The system gives pretty concrete GM prep instructions. Namely, as explained in Running Donjon section you need to create the town and have about 5-10 scenes ready. That's about half an hour to an hour of work, maybe a bit more if you're writing up your own monsters.

The procedure is as it is, so regardless what one actually does with the game, it's hard to say that the system itself works differently than it does. I didn't need any prep for my session, but by ommiting it I effectively neglected part of the system and if the resulting experience wasn't fun I could blame only myself, not the game. Similarly, over-preparation would be playing the game in a way it obviosuly wasn't meant to.

That's why the review you mention seems unreriable to me, but that's often the case with reviews. Can you provide a link to it, by the way?

I can't remember where I read it, other than it wasn't on RPG.net, but I do remember it had a well backed up argument of why it might need more preperation. The argument also syncs with the experience I've had teaching.

And I realise I'm running late for a physio appointment... I'll post this now and finish the rest later.

[Callan S.]

Not as much as you'd think. When you get to say whatever, well, you could have done that at home by yourself with no one else around. Yeah, someones else then has to roll with it, but then whatever they say goes, so they could have done that at home by themselves. Mechancially it kinda makes everyone issolated, since they could do what their doing while alone.

Not at all. You feed off each other's responses that you can't think of yourself. I've done this with my ex-roommates where we try to one-up each other on insults, trying to come with either a rebuttal or an insult that can't be responded to without being awkward. It's nowhere near as fun if you try to insult yourself back and forth. Obviously, not for everyone, but there is a definite benefit to not doing it yourself.

That one upmanship actually has pretty clear win conditions involved. Because it has clear win/lose conditions, trying not to lose drives that one upmanship. Your toon game doesn't have those same conditions - when you went blank about what the hippo would do, it wasn't losing. But in your insult game, if you had gone blank, your roommate would have laughed good naturedly at you cause he had won, and you'd know he'd won too. The technique of one upmanship doesn't continue to operate the same when seperated from a win/lose condition.

Anyway, speaking of that I probably sound like I'm being yet another internet know it all, so I'll leave you with these ideas.

[migo]

That's a good point about the Win-Lose conditions. I'll see how it goes.

So, if you don't mind, now I'll ask about your own experiences with Donjon. Can you elaborate how exactly they relate to this particular experience with Toon of yours?

I saw both Donjon and Toon as designed for little GM work because the players have so much input and control. I brought up the Donjon review because contrary to what people expect, it turned out to be more work for him. Contrary to what I expected with Toon, I couldn't get away without prep. It's ironic that systems that would appear to lend themselves well to no GM prep time turn out the other way for some people, and particularly me when I can run games that normally require prep off my cuff.

Also, maybe you have some specific direction for this thread in mind, i.e. you want to discuss some particular broader issues? Cause, now I'm not sure if my initial impression of it being a thread of a "diagnostic" kind is correct.

I didn't have anything in particular in mind. I was really surprised at how badly it flopped for me. Some of the discussion helped, although the Donjon thing went a bit off topic.

I'm still not sure how well I can reconcile normal conflict resolution with a cartoon game.

The other thing that I find bizarre is when Toon was discussed on RPG.net people were saying it was a 1d6 system, 1-3 you succeed as you intended 4-6 something different happens. And that was it. Sounded cool having it that simple and open ended, so I was also surprised to find out that it had a pretty standard roll under 2d6 system.

[Lord_Steelhand]

I saw both Donjon and Toon as designed for little GM work because the players have so much input and control. I brought up the Donjon review because contrary to what people expect, it turned out to be more work for him. Contrary to what I expected with Toon, I couldn't get away without prep.

Can you explain what sort of prep would have, in your opinion, solved the issue?

Would you suggest that a Toon Gm should have a list of gags to deal with failed hammer blows?  This sort of thing, given the numerous possibilities, will just drive a GM mad.  What I think you should do is decide how the hammer blow didn't do its intended damage.  For cartoons, this presents a plethora of ways, since the answer need not be logical (and indeed, humor may be served by having an illogical reason for the failure).

For example, she slams the NPC with the hammer, but fails.  Either of you could decide what that means, suing the Toon genre as a guide.  For example, she may think it is funny that she delivers a massive blow to the foe, but the hammer suddenly cracks and hatters into a million shards.  The two of you agree this is a funny way to explain the result and the next part of thenarration is dealt with.

It would be VERY hard to prepare for such an interpretation beyond just "limbering up" your mind to think outside of the logical box when such a call is required.

[migo]

I saw both Donjon and Toon as designed for little GM work because the players have so much input and control. I brought up the Donjon review because contrary to what people expect, it turned out to be more work for him. Contrary to what I expected with Toon, I couldn't get away without prep.

Can you explain what sort of prep would have, in your opinion, solved the issue?

I think spending some time watching Saturday morning cartoons and immersing myself in the genre would have helped a lot. I used to watch them quite a bit, but haven't done so in several years, so there were good memories but they were kind of vague. I think having a good understanding of the characters, having a bunch of pre-made gags for all the characters in the adventure (instead of the single one for Judge Mole, which was really cool), and a bit of a flow chart, or general adventure layout. Maybe also a description of what is in the stadium, not a map, but all I knew about was the race track, the field and the boxing ring. A bunch of other locations, just written in a list would have probably helped. Generally I find the more information I have about something, the easier it is to make something up that makes sense.

Would you suggest that a Toon Gm should have a list of gags to deal with failed hammer blows?  This sort of thing, given the numerous possibilities, will just drive a GM mad.  What I think you should do is decide how the hammer blow didn't do its intended damage.  For cartoons, this presents a plethora of ways, since the answer need not be logical (and indeed, humor may be served by having an illogical reason for the failure).

Yeah. The issue was I only ever recall people getting squished by hammers, anvils, pianos, etc. I actually still can't remember a miss happening in a cartoon. I guess that killed my suspension of disbelief.

For example, she slams the NPC with the hammer, but fails.  Either of you could decide what that means, suing the Toon genre as a guide.  For example, she may think it is funny that she delivers a massive blow to the foe, but the hammer suddenly cracks and hatters into a million shards.  The two of you agree this is a funny way to explain the result and the next part of thenarration is dealt with.

That's a good idea. I'd probably have to think of a number of permutations to have a base to work from. This would be a sort of one time preperation that wouldn't be necessary for later games. I think I worked this way with off the cuff AD&D. I started out just working with adventure modules, and after running through enough of them it was pretty easy to piece together aspects from books and adventures and anything I thought of.

It would be VERY hard to prepare for such an interpretation beyond just "limbering up" your mind to think outside of the logical box when such a call is required.

I agree, but limbering up the mind is some preparation. I was trying to play it completely cold.