[Solipsist] Pike Brothers Records

[Hituro]

crossposted from collective endevour and story games

Okay, so five of us, Myself, my wife Victoria, and friends Justin, Gregor and Per, met to play a session of Solipsist. This is my attempt at an Actual Play report, and its my first Actual Play, so be gentle Hopefully Per and Gregor will come in and put me right if I get anything wrong.

I'll try to outline the game in this post, and then comment on difficulties and mechanical insights in the next one.

Pre-game

Victoria, Per and Gregor took the characters from the previous playtest we had (two of which appear in the ashcan rules). Per was playing Marty Stardust, a wannabe rock star with a fear of failure, Gregor took Major Barty Wetherspoon, who yearns after a quiet and perfect middle england and fears grittiness and unkindness (both of these are in the ashcan), while Victoria was playing Tamera, who believes herself to be the chosen reincarnation of Horus, and Pharaoh of the Egyptian gods and fears furries (and her catholic guilt). Justin brought a new character (and seems to have taken away the character sheet) for John Gunn, a black-ops style operative for the mysterious company with enemies amongst his own superiors.

We also assumed, as suggested in Carl C's playtest, that the PC's knew each other before. Finally each player got 5 infestation (we used blue glass chips) and I got 10 shadow tokens (red glass chips). I also had a pad of paper ready to tear up and use as tears.

Opening Scene - Marty's caravan

The session opened in the trailer home of Marty, which Per decided was in the garden of his sick mother's house. When the post arrived it contained a letter from a fan (Cathy marsh) asking Marty to autograph his latest CD (also enclosed). This was strange, because Marty had never released such a CD! Looking over the CD Marty found an address for "Pike Brothers Records" at 218 Brick Lane, but no other contact details.

At this point both the Major and Tamera narrated themselves into the scene (this only had a difficulty of 3, so it wasn't hard). Tamera turned out to be staying next door and was having her mail delivered to Marty, the Major had popped down to make a cup of tea. The Major overshot on his change, so I narrated that he wasn't just round to help, he'd actually offered to take on the job of looking after Marty's sick mother, and had to get back to the house at any moment. Marty meanwhile decided to open Tamera's mail, and since Victoria had got a perfect change to add the mail in the first place she got to narrate the contents, which turned out to be an angry mummified crocodile!

Marty went back to the house and looked up Pike Brothers in the phone book and gave them a call, but got an answering machine and a strange message of a young woman's voice saying "help me!". Being disorganized and confused by technology he left a message anyway. Meanwhile Marty called Cathy's house and was told by her flatmate that she had gone out that morning to the East End (where Brick Lane was), and hadn't come back. Marty and Tamera, in an attempt to get more information from the flatmate, constructed a company, Stardust Productions, out of thin air, with Tamera as co-owner and some Polish callcenter workers in the back of the mobile home. They didn't get more information, but they did get the flatmate's credit card details. (Here Per didn't have the obsessions for the change he wanted but Victoria helped out to get a share of the change).

Finally (this scene took half the game) John Gunn turned up with a writ from Pike Brothers ordering them to cease and desist with their illegal distribution of CDs! When he realised that the people with the CD were his fellow Solipsists they all deduced that something strange was going on over at Pike Brothers. Tamera played the CD, which had weird tracks on it. Track 3 especially had the voice of a young woman saying "I can't get out" over and over again, although when she replayed it she got lift music instead and a voice saying "doors opening, level 5". Marty recognized the voice as being the same as the one on the answer phone, and they deduced that it was the missing Cathy. Together they decided to head to Brick lane.

Scene Two - Brick lane

Brick lane proved to be a run down street of battered cars and shops with grills over the windows. Pike Brother's records was a converted warehouse with shuttered windows and a locked door, looking abandoned. However John Gunn proved to have the key (this was an easy change, especially as Justin had already established that he worked here) and they entered an empty lobby with the answering machine from earlier. There was also a list of employees on the wall, with Mister Pike (5C) at the top. At this point the Shadow intervened and tried to remove Gunn from the company. His name was struck off the list along with a note to the secretary to say he'd resigned and should be kicked out. This un-change had a strength of 8 (I decided to use less than the full shadow strength), but with the Major's aid this was easily resisted.

Gunn now had it in for Pike, and was all for going straight to 5C. Tamera meanwhile searched for more information and found a computer that would only show static, a record catalogue that didn't include Marty's CD, and a printed out schedule that showed Mr Pike had a meeting with Cathy at 10:30am. The Major surmised that both Cathy and the CD were threads that needed to be dealt with to undo this shadow incursion, one to be found, the other removed, but they left the CD intact for now.

Scene Three - On the way to 5C

The Solipsists now tried to make their way to 5C. The Major insisted on taking the stairs, which led them to level 2 (a cubicle farm) and level 3, where packing boxes of flat-pack furniture were stacked up. These had labels saying they were being delivered next week, and were from PIKEA (and addressed to Mr Pike). Gunn leapt on this as evidence of Mr Pike's treachery against the company, and rang through to his bosses for authorisation to remove him. (This change had a little bit of a discussion, since it wasn't clear what Justin actually hoped to achieve with it, but it became clear that it was authorisation to use force to get rid of Pike).

The Solipsists continued up the stairs, but ended up on floor 3 again. A third try and the same result. At this point Marty and Tamera insisted that only the lift would work, while the Major and Gunn investigated the fire escape. The others insisted that the Major would, in fact, go in the lift (they persuaded him rather than changing things) but Gunn stuck to the lift. At this point the party split up. Gunn went to the fire escape and, finding it blocked, headed to the street, where he created a car with Mr Pike in it arriving (again an easy change, but one he overshot). Pike turned up but with meanacing wetwork style bodyguards. Gunn refused to tangle with these but used his new authorisation to call in the "Phoenix security". Meanwhile the rest used the lift to get to level 5 (which required another change they all worked on together).

Scene Four - Fith Floor

Marty, Tamera and the Major reached the plush floor 5 to confront Mr Pike, but the Shadows attacked the Major, trapping him in the lift. It plunged down the shaft and all he could get on the emergency phone was the sound of Cathy being tortured and calling for help. This un-change had a strength of 10 (9 points left and a limitation of 1 being triggered) but the Major blew most of his infestation resisting and got out on level 3, where he had a cup of tea. I spent 2 shadow token for this.

Meanwhile Marty and Tamera entered 5C and found Mr Pike, a record exec with a fish head, who told them Marty was fired and Tamera hired in his place! Marty was attacked by snakes in suits (record company lawyers), who mocked the lift music on his album, while Tamera was swamped by her furry suit weraing backing singers. At this point Justin tried to have Gunn and his hit men arrive as well. I did Justin's change first, and spent a couple of shadow tokens to make the change more difficult. With that and his own limitation of unreliable minions the change failed and I narrated that Gunn was stuck downstairs tyring to fill in paperwork.

This left a Shadow strength of 5 for the two un-changes, with level 2 limitations being triggered both times. Tamera resisted perfectly and had her mummy crocodile eat the furries, while Marty overshot and had the lawyers offer him a new lifetime contract instead. I narrated that they took him off to 5B to offer him a contract with a glass of JD. This reduced the shadow to 2 tokens.

Scene Five - Closing Scene

Returning from floor 3 the Major reasoned that the evil record execs. couldn't really want to harm poor Cathy, and that she was probably locked in a cupboard somewhere asking for help on the intercom, and she would really appreciate it if someone were to let her out and give her a cup of tea. (Gregor tried hard here not to use his 'making tea' obsession, because he knew he would overshoot, but the others talked him into it, and he did indeed overshoot by a large margin). I narrated that he did indeed find Cathy, waiting in a comfortable waiting room reading "town and garden" and making tea in a tea urn. It turned out that she had recorded a few odd clips for the record company earlier (like 'help me') but was now just waiting for a tour. What's more her mother lived in the same village as the Major and was the nice woman across the road! The two of them went off to go on the tour with the nice secretary who was missing before. I spent another shadow token for the resolved thread.

This left Tamera dealing with Pike alone, but with the shadow now reduced to 1 token (a total difficulty of 6) she easily dealt with him by summoning Osiris, God of the dead and traditional enemy of fishes (because a fish ate Osiris' private parts after he'd been chopped up by Set) to smite him.

Gunn finally arrived to clear up at this point, only to be confronted by the other Pike brother and his bodyguards emerging from the lift. This Mr Pike trash-talked Gunn's messy handling of the situation and threatened to take the company off him, but Gunn simply shot him, reasoning that as the only Mr Pike left around his authorisation from the company applied to him. Mr Pike's bodyguards took the hint and left.

This left only one thread over, the CD, which was now the foundation of Marty's new record contract. Gregor argued that it had to go, though Marty was somewhat reluctant, as was Tamera, since she co-owned Stardust Productions, which was now merging with Pike Brother's Records. However Justin pointed out that it had already been established that the CD was a fake earlier, and with the obsessions and infestation of all four players helping to overcome Marty's obsessions they wrote the CD off as a bad chinese import fake, complete with details of the wikipedia entries and snopes pages on the legendary 'Chinese Album'. With that the final shadow token was gone and the shadow was defeated.

Whew ... what a lot of text I'll talk about conclusions in the next post.

[Hituro]

So what did I learn from our game? The first was that Solipsist is a very confusing and ever shifting game, but that this isn't a bad thing. The second is that there are certainly still some wrinkles in the mechanics, which *is* a bad thing, but can be fixed

(1) Tears

The biggest problem was the gaining of tears ... no one got any! In Carl C's game he said players did gain them, because they wanted loads of infestation, but there were never enough to feel like any sort of danger to them. In this game players were much more cautious and aimed for perfect changes. There were very very few failures or overshoots and there were no tears at all!

Per put it rightly, the threat of running off into your own world is supposed to be everpresent, and it wasn't.

Solutions to this were bandied about and we seem to have settled on these

<ol>
<li>You gain a Tear every time you overshoot ... this will give more Tears and also be much easier to track
<li>You gain a Tear if you satisfy an obsession through a change, even if you didn't overshoot to do it
</ol>

This rule would have given (I think) Tamera no Tears, Gunn 1 (or 2, depending on how much power he'd gained), Marty 2 and the Major 3, which would have been much more like it.

(2) Fighting Shadow

Generally the shadow rules worked fine, but there were not enough tokens. I'd picked 10 for 3 players, so I should have upped it for 4. However they need additions, because some of the things we did in play (like having a higher shadow strength for Mr Pike) are not in the rules. The best addition will be tying certain tokens to threads, and removing the tokens only when the threads are dealt with. The more threads the more non-confrontational ways there are of removing the shadow.

Spending shadow tokens to raise difficulty was very inefficient, and spending 2 to stymie Gunn really weakened the un-changes on Marty and Tamera too much. Maybe 2 points for each token?

Getting 4 infestation for perfectly resisting an un-change was a BAD IDEA! It made even the hardest un-change cheap to resist. I think removing a tear or un-tick would be a much better reward.

(3) Making changes

It was generally easy for players to make changes, they had no fear of doing so, and of course wild things came as easy as simple ones. I think Carl's suggestion of the +1 or +2 difficulty for the 'special effects' definitely gets written in to the sidebar. Oddly the less consequential changes (story wise) had wilder effects. Almost no change failed, and most were perfect, probably because infestation was not being run out (see above). I think changes to handling tears would reign this in a touch.

(4) Character design

Justin had a lot of trouble with his character, probably because he made his character in isolation. His biggest problem was that narrow focussed obsessions (like 'gaining power within the order') were a lot weaker in play than broad, but similar, ones (like 'gaining power') which made it harder to do things. He felt that there should be more guildelines on writing obsessions, as there now are on limitations.

(5) Solipsist interaction

In general it seemed pretty easy for Solipsists to aid each other, but much harder to oppose them, because you had to find a limitation that applied, and it often wouldn't. Justin, for example, wanted to get rid of the zombie crocodile, because it didn't fit his world view, but had no tools to do it.

Our suggestion was a modification of the "yes, and ..." technique. To remove an element you don't like make a change that introduces a new scene in which that element is missing, rather than attacking it directly. This is more of a technique than a mechanic, and should be there as advice maybe.

More generally other Solipsist's limitations seldom held changes back even when they were present, which is not quite how it is supposed to work, especially because they could always choose to help instead and then ignore a limitation. It might be reasonable to add a +1 difficulty for other solipists being around, on top of limitiations? Of course that makes co-operation hard, which is also less than ideal!

Suggestions welcome!

(6) Story design

The players messed with my plot something rotten! This was not unexpected, but it was interesting to see that it was as true as I was expecting. Especially bad was Justin adding himself to the Pike Brothers company, which involved him with the shadows, and then trying to make the shadow attack all about his world view instead. At times I felt I was fighting with him for the plot, which was probably bad on my part.

I think Justin was playing the "it's all about me" to the hilt, and making the story about his concerns in a way the other players weren't. I am not sure if that was a good thing or not, but mechanically there was no consequence for it. I'd like it to be that a player who grabs the story and makes it all about his vision gets closer to achieving that vision and more in danger of vanishing, but that didn't happen. Changing the rules on tears would have helped that, but not enough, since Gunn ended up with less than the Major, who didn't make the story about him (although there was lots of tea and human kindness).

Again suggestions welcome!

[Gregor Hutton]

There is some feedback popping up to this on other fora, but I wanted to ask some things here. How does GMing this game compare to your regular games? You talk of fighting for the plot with Justin a little, was there anything different there than from, say, your regular GURPS game?

I felt that we all knew, as players, that the Shadows were there from the start. You had the tokens in the bowl, right?

And we could see the you (as GM) trying to get us to go to Brick Lane as part of a scene-by-scene plot. Reflecting back on it, do you feel that just up front saying there are these things that I've changed that you know about at first would have signalled that more open and clearly? You could throw us in there with some facts and let us run from there?

I feel that I wouldn't have batted an eyelid if you had done that. And it perhaps would have lessened the need to try and round us up in the usual GMing way. I think the slightly problematic issues to your approach was that Victoria just wanted to create her cult and stay in the caravan (and recreate Egypt), and Justin had a very personal world view that didn't sit on top of your GM world view (he seemed to believe he was almost working for the Shadows too?). Would that be accurate?

[Hituro]

Yes I think that was certainly accurate, and I believe that if there were failings they were quite probably mine. I wrote a semi-traditional plot, one that had scenes and a progression of action, because I wanted to see if that worked, and I may have erred in making the hook something less than obvious. I agree that it might have done no harm at all to have started by saying

"Marty, you get this CD in the post, that's not right, you don't have a CD, this reeks of the shadow"

I think the first scene was so confused because we'd just handed this game system where you could do anything to the players and Per and Victoria especially were grabbing all the pretty toys and playing with them. They were saying "Gosh I can do anything!" and doing it, whereas you were more focussed on the shadows and hunting them down. We had the same problem last time, but this time it was much less problematic since we just went with it and let the fun happen rather than getting derailed by it.

Justin, I think, was playing the Solipsist aspect to the full (hopefully he'll come on and say), and reasoning that any story he was in had to be all about him. Therefore whatever was happening had to feature him as the protagonist. That might have been less of a problem if everyone else was doing the same thing, because then the shadows would have found an equilibrium space between all those stories. With just one player doing that and all the others working more on the mystery it was harder to manage.

And yes, as you say, I had tokens in a bowl, it was obvious there was shadow from the start, but Per wanted to just appropriate the record, and justin wanted to appropriate the record company, which made it hard to focus on the shadow story, for me.

[Hituro]

Anyone else?

Or do you need to know more about the game?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Hituro,

Actually, I'm a bit confused about one thing - is Solipsist a published game, or is this in playtest? Not only will that affect which forum this thread belongs in, but more importantly, it affects the questions I'll ask.

Best, Ron

[Hituro]

Ooops ... did I mess up?

It is still in playtest, although this game was more like a full session than a normal playtest. i.e. we played through a whole scenario rather than just trying out specific mechanics. I assumed that belonged in Actual Play, did I get that wrong?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Hituro,

It's extremely literal; see the sticky notes at the beginning of each forum. If your game is not yet published, and if you or anyone else is playing it, then accounts of play (or anything else related to design) go into Playtesting. I'll move the thread now.

Please don't apologize or make a big deal out of anything. Moving a thread is not a problem for a relatively new contributor.

Best, Ron

[Hituro]

Thanks!