[The Infected] Ice Station Charon

[Steve Segedy]

This was a playtest of The Infected with three players that ran for about 2.5 hours. The players were experienced with narrative-style games, and play regularly together.  This session was based on the "version 2.0" rules (the latest version of Eric's rules, incorporating the four patches to date), which came out yesterday.

For those that might be interested, I started out by writing up this GM cheat sheet, to make sure I understood the rule changes.

Getting Started
We started the session with an overview of the game and it's theme, and a brief discussion of horror movies that fit the "man becomes monster" genre. 

I went over the basic rules of the game, and then we discussed the setting and style for the story.  Someone suggested John Carpenter's The Thing as an inspiration, noting the isolation, small cast of characters, hidden horror, and grim ending as key elements.  We talked about Alien and Ice Station Zebra for additional style ideas, and finally settled on a near future, sci-fi/horror story set in a research station on the remote and icy moon Charon.


The Characters
We determined that the characters were a group dispatched from Earth to investigate communications problems with the "Charon DSCO" (Deep Space Communication Outpost) station.  The PCs were:

• Captain Carrie McIntosh - a young military commander with a chip on her shoulder, and a secret relationship with one of the researchers at the research station.  Her motivation was TRUTH- she wanted to find out what happened to her former lover, and what's really going on at the station.
  


• Dr. Eric Lewells - a non-atmospheric astronomer and researcher who was previously assigned to the station.  On his recent return home to Earth, he was assigned to this team and sent back- another nine months in cryo-sleep.  His motivation was FAITH- he believes in "the Company", and wants to prove to himself that there was no conspiracy or wrong-doing at the station.
  


• Brooke Austin - A secret agent working for MI5, and a space-newbie.  Austin was assigned to the team as a "civilian consultant" to oversee British interests in the station.  In reality, Austin's motivation is Justice- he has reason to believe that Macintosh's lover has gone rogue, and is here to prove it and, if necessary, eliminate him.
  

The Infection
The Infection (as determined in secret by myself) was the result of psychic experimentation gone awry.  A young child with vast psychic potential was the subject of the black ops work at the station.  An accident opened a supernatural portal in the child, letting vicious spirits into this world, which inhabit people and slowly eat their souls away, leaving them cold and dead- perfect vessels for the spirits.

The vector for this "infection" then is fear, stress, and pain, which help erode the will of the victim, making them easier to possess.  The symptoms include an overpowering chill as the body temperature drops, accompanied by a dimming of the intellect, periods of blackout, and eventually a cold, blue cast to the eyes and skin.

Obviously, in coming up with this, I was considering a variety of movies that seemed appropriate- The Thing, Event Horizon, Ghosts of Mars, and even Final Fantasy.  It was also pointed out later that the infected resembled George Martin's "Others" from his A Song of Ice and Fire books.


Gameplay
The game itself played out over about ten long scenes, going through all three reels.  This pace seemed odd (too slow to start, too rushed at the end), but the reel changes were what felt natural to the players, and to the time frame.  Essentially, we changed reels when we'd gone completely around the table setting scenes.

In the first scene the conflict involved landing safely or damaging the ship.  Two players put forward Motivation tokens, eager to get started.  The first roll resulted in no successes on either side, which is a situation not really covered by the rules.  We decided it was a tie, and that meant it went to the GM.  The players realized there was no harm in going Desperate and then Crazed, because they were happy to infect the NPC and they couldn't possibly get infected themselves.

Two of the players continued to push motivation tokens forward over the next few scenes, and to invoke and re-incorporate NPCs.  One player attempted to bring in the ship as an NPC, which I vetoed (it's not a person, and can't get infected).  Another player seemed hesitant about how and when to push for conflicts that reach toward his goal.

After four scenes, we went to Reel Two.  During the first scene of this reel, the spotlight was in my hands.  The PCs encountered a feral group of survivors, and attempted to exert their authority in an effort "take care of whatever's gone wrong at the station".  This was the only conflict I won as GM, calling on the NPC with four dice, and making them Infected dice.  When two of these dice succeeded, and the infected dice should have gone to the spotlight player (me), I  decided to assign the harm to the already infected NPC, making him a monster.

In the fourth scene of this reel, one of the players successfully resolves his goal - Dr. Lewell affirmed his faith in the company, so we determined that they didn't actually start this infection.  In the same scene, one player decided to push the conflict to desperate and crazed just to try and infect the NPC further, rather than out of any narrative interest.

We started the Third Reel and only played two more regular scenes- in the second scene the remaining two players moved to resolve their goals, which they decided were mutually exclusive. Captain McIntosh wanted to find the truth that her lover was not a rogue agent, while Agent Austin sought to prove he was, and execute him.  The conflict was between the players, and McIntosh won.

With all three goals resolved, we went into the "sunset" scene.  I revealed the last details of the Infection, that it was rampant and that the few survivors they'd met were trying to steal their ship.  One player determined that the ship had actually been sabotaged, so no one was going home; McIntosh committed suicide after destroying her infected lover; and the last PC- Lewell, sent a message home to Earth requesting more rescuers be sent.

My analysis of all this to follow...

[Steve Segedy]

Before I get into the analysis of the game, I should point out that some of the problems with this session arose out of how I chose to GM the game. I forgot or ignored much of the advice in the latter part of the rules, and the game suffered for it:

• The infection was too subtle and not directly opposed to the PCs as much as it should have been.
• I didn't encourage the players to invest in the NPCs and flesh out the characters more deeply.  To be fair, the rules could make this a more explicit part of the process.
• The pacing of the first reel was too slow, and scenes ran too long.  This didn't leave enough room for an exciting finish, and the last reel was hurried.

A summary of statistics from play

• Out of ten scenes, the GM was involved in the conflict only six times. Of those times, the GM only won a single conflict, due to re-rolls.
• Only four out of the six possible NPCs were used.  Of those, one was invoked 5 times, one three times, and one twice.  The first of these NPCs eventually became a monster, while the second became infected.
• The PCs gathered 3, 2, and 1 motivation tokens before trying to resolve.  The first two won their resolution conflict, the last failed.
• Over the course of the game, only one PC gained an Infected die.

Questions

• Can there be multiple conflicts in a given scene?
• How much narrative authority should players or the GM have in one another's scenes?

Observations/Suggestions

Scene Framing

• The game has scene-framing issues- the rules have a distinct lack of direction about how scenes should be run, and seems to assume that the players already know how to do this from other games.  This is a major problem.  Even these players, who are experienced with TSOY and PTA, felt that the scenes in this game were really soft and hard to establish.
• Players need to know more about the infection in order to properly frame scenes and develop the story.  Having the GM prepare the infection secretly really doesn't work.  At the same time, having the possibility of secrets and surprise is great, but it's hard to do both.
• The game needs more structure about how and when to narrate in the infection.  Determining the pacing for revealing it is difficult.

Characters

• Character ownership is an issue;  the characters are so scant that there is nothing much to invest in.  One player felt more attached to an NPC, who was undergoing the change of infection, than his own PC.  Possible off-the-wall solutions include 1) attach NPCs directly to PCs, making them a personal resource that can be threatened; 2) start with multiple characters for each player, and gradually determine who the real protagonist is among them; 3) simply expand the process of making characters (PCs and NPCs) to more explicitly give them gripping details.


• The PCs have nothing which can be put at risk in the game; there are no personal resources to threaten, and risking NPCs is not really a concern, unless they are somehow specifically tied to the PCs.  Put another way, the players want the NPCs to become infected, because that's the fun part.   Without that, and because they can't be killed, the players have no sense of threat for their PCs.


• 
  The players never felt any sense of real desperation- nothing important was ever really at risk.  they only called for Desperate and Crazed re-rolls for mechanical reasons.  The narrative scene-framing is not gritty enough to invoke a real sense of excitement and panic.


• The PCs have no traits or resources, making them feel pretty useless.  "It's like playing TSOY where the only thing your character has is the Secret of Contacts".  Reaching for NPCs on the table felt forced, as it was generally motivated by a need for resources rather than any inherent relationship or story element.


• Motivations were not particularly clear or motivating to players; it was hard for them to figure out when to make a conflict about their goal, or when to attempt to resolve the goal.  It was suggested that requiring motivations to involve other PCs would be better.


• NPCs seem a bit too easy to grab and invoke; perhaps put in limitations on this, or make it more important/dangerous when they are put at risk?  For example, NPCs might be at risk of infection simply by being invoked, not just when the scene is escalated.

GM Role

• The GM role in the game is not very strong;  there is relatively little scene-framing time, and not much power to push the story.


• The GM needs to be able to escalate NPC infections as necessary.  This could be done by Reels, where in Reels Two and Three the GM has x many Harm to hand out, as needed.  This would make it possible to surprise the PCs with "instant monsters", and better emulate fast-paced stories like Dawn of the Dead or 28 Days Later.


• It's not really possible to open the game with a bang, as the GM only has 1 die, against the possibly grouped dice of the PCs, and there are no substantial NPCs to call upon.

Plot Pacing

• Something about the steady advancement of NPCs and GM Infected dice feels wrong;  the progression is too regular, The early game is too slow and confined, the later game too loose.  It felt like the game ended before some of the important mechanics actually kicked in.

Game Text

• The game text needs close editing by someone who is not the author.  No writer can see their own mistakes.  I'm talking about both copy editing and structural editing- some sections could be rearranged or expanded to better reinforce the game.  As an example, incorporating everything in the "Tension and Technique" section into more elaborate character development and scene-framing processes would help the game immensely.


• An idea to consider - perhaps include a section analyzing some real movie plots, breaking them down using the game rules as examples of play.  This would be very useful for communicating pacing, tone, and character development.  For example, take Dawn of the Dead and identify the protagonists and their Motivations; identify the NPCs and show how they are invoked and become infected; explain what the infection is in this context.


• Another idea would be to Include in the rules a sample list of Infections- from genre movies and from actual play- for GMs to use on the fly.  It's difficult to come up with a well-detailed, interested infection under pressure.

[Isbo]

I was McIntosh in this game, and the source of the "I was more interested in an NPC than my character" bit.

Here are a few questions/concerns I had that build a little on Steve's summary:

Is it possible to kill off an invoked NPC?  I felt really safe ramping up Tilowitz because I didn't really care if he got infected or not.  In fact, kind of aimed to have him infected so I could get infected by way of him. It also feels a little odd because it seems one of the real tropes of a zombie movie is having to kill off your friends who turn--I wasn't sure how to make that happen here.

One of my favorite moments of the game was technically breaking the rules--at the very end, there is a confrontation with my character's old flame, Roger Milvain.  He had been invoked earlier by way of a video feed, and was infection free, only to show up at the end, fully monstered.  McIntosh killed him, then killed herself before the infection set in.  That scene was satisfying on several levels, but, again, it wasn't by the book.

That bit of surprise feels very much like the sort of thing I want to happen in a game like this--the infection is surprising, you don't know where it will happen.  But the rules don't really work that way--the mechanics of infection just seem too steady.

I was also gunning to get infected and, while I did, it was kind of anti-climactic.  It was difficult to cross over into monstered (part of that may have just been bad rolling on my part, but still).

The roving spotlight scene was a little odd to me because I wanted to frame scenes that would give Steve more room to throw in what he needed, but in wanting to leave him that opening, felt like I was making the scene less vivid and interesting.  Thinking of him there as a GM made me self-conscious; I didn't want to just leave him sitting around.

Looking back over play, I am really interested to know what happened to the NPC Tillowitz *between* scenes where he wasn't present.  I really wish it would have been easier to abandon the PC's and follow him around a little as he dipped into monstrosity.

I really, really did not feel attached to the PC's and wished it had been easier to 'move around' the infection, have scenes that didn't involve PC's at all, to help set the tone and to give us more to work with in general.

There were times, like when we come across the scientists battoned down, tired, exhausted, that I wished we could have shifted focus to that conflict, not our PC's.

The game, as it was, didn't seem give me enough reason to really invest in the PC's, but it didn't give me the freedom to invest in anything else.  For this to really cross over into lots of fun instead of sporadic fun for me, it either has to give me more tools for investing in my character (scene-framing tools could be just such a thing) or more tools for letting me wander around the story more freely.

[Darcy Burgess]

Hi Steve,

I've got some thoughts on your playtest.  Please keep in mind that all of my Infected experience is rooted in what I call the "pre-Czege" patch (hey, there's a principle, so why not a patch?).

• It sounds like scene framing was the single biggest obstacale to your enjoyment of the game.  I'm suspicious that the roving scene framing authority is to blame here.  During our two games, I kept the spotlight (not the token!) mobile, including everyone equally.  However, that scene-frame-as-GM-authority thing works well, especially in survival horror stuff.
  
  
• Just an observation: in terms of tone and pacing, your crafted infection seems much more in keeping with something like Solaris than Event Horizon.  This isn't a criticism of your infection choice.  However, it may help explain why things didn't go too well.
  
  
• A follow-up question based on the last point: If I'm right about the tone issue, would being able to customize the descriptors for rerolls (ex: from "Desperate" and "Crazed" to "Lovelorn" and "Heartbroken") help at all?  (Yeah, yeah, Eric, I'm still beating the drum on this one.)
  
  
• Finally, another observation.  I'm hesitant to even mention this one, simply because it's based on the fact that a lot of your comparison examples cite TSOY.  It sounds like there was a (mild?) case of "But that's not how we do it in TSOY" running around the table, rather than a soul-sucking infection.

Cheers,
Darcy

[Steve Segedy]

Hey Darcy,

I'm not sure that scene-framing was our biggest obstacle, but it is certainly the biggest obstacle in the game itself.  That is, the rules don't currently give any indication of how scenes should be framed, so the players are left entirely to their own devices to sort it out.  If we didn't already have a pretty good understanding of how to do it, we would have truly been floundering.  I think that's why the "this is how it works in Shadows of Yesterday" stuff comes up- we're reaching for other rules to fill in the gaps.  I think that points at a glaring weakness in the game- it relies too heavily on good, experienced players to bring out the fun.

Regarding pacing, you're absolutely right- there was a mismatch in my ideas about the infection and what we were actually trying to do with the story.  As a group, we were looking for something action-y like The Thing, and what I gave them was suspenseful and slow like Solaris.  That's a problem that was mostly my fault- but again, the game needs to fool-proof that as much as possible.

I'm not sure about the descriptors for rerolls.  Although I think I can see (from your AP writeups) why you'd like to be able to change the names, I think our group was perfectly happy with Eric's defaults- we wanted our characters to be desperate and crazed.  The problem was that the players hadn't established very satisfying relationships with the NPCs, and didn't have much investment in their own characters.  Mechanically, there was no reason for them not to escalate, because they wanted everyone to get infected, just to make things crazy go nuts.

In any case, thanks for your thoughts!  I think the games' got a lot of potential, and it's great to see folks kicking it around on the forums.

[Eric Provost]

Hiya Steve & Ian,

Thanks for the great playtest report.  That's good stuff.  Lemmie hit your questions first, then just a few comments and reflections.

Can there be multiple conflicts in a given scene?

Yes

How much narrative authority should players or the GM have in one another's scenes?

I'm not 100% sure I know what you're asking here.  Can a player say that there's a skyscraper in the middle of town?  Yeah.  Can the GM say that someone's PC is wearing a green polo shirt with "I am evil" embroidered in it?  Yeah.  Does narrative authority change with who's turn it is to frame a scene?  A little bit.

Is that what you're asking?

It's a small thing, but I do want to point out that PCs and NPCs can be killed.  Once a character is a monster they can be killed via a conflict.  I even encourage it.  Granted, that bit kinda got pushed back onto a seperate page in the v2 edition.  But there it is on page 11.

I think that when you missed out on those techniques on page 13, that's what created the issues about PC & NPC investment.  It's true: the system encourages the players to use the NPCs like meat.  Rotten disposable meat.  But you're right.  Those bits need to be front & center, not tossed in the back.  I'll work on that.

I think I can resolve the scene-framing issues without too much hassle.  After looking at these recent playtest reports, I see that the rotating-scene frame device only addressed a symptom, and not a real issue.  That's easy to fix.  I'll get right on that.

[Steve Segedy]

I think the narrative authority thing is mostly a matter of clarification- actually writing down who does what in any given scene.  In my first playtest ("the Flood"), where the players were less experienced with shared narration, they got a bit over-excited.  The moment was something like this:

Player One: "Alright, I've got a scene.  The characters are in the woods, lost in the dark, and trying not to get too freaked out by the weird sounds they keep hearing.  The air around them is still, and..."
Player Two: ".. and then a fucking werewolf comes running out of the woods, and tears off the NPCs head!  Boo-yah! I pull out my guns!"
Player One and GM:  "...."

Well, that's a slight exaggeration, but you get the idea.  It was clear to everybody that the narration was in conflict with, rather than supporting, the established scene, but there were no clear guidelines to draw on as to what to do about it.

Regarding PC and NPC death, I was aware of the rule about the "Murder Death Kill" rule, but the problem was that nobody ever really got even close to being a monster- especially not the PCs.  That may be a problem with our pacing again- our scenes tended to run long and we only had one conflict in each, resulting in only about 10 dice roll-offs in this playtest. 

[Eric Provost]

Hrm.  That's interesting.  Because I can see how the second player's narration both contrasted with and yet perfectely complimented the first player's scene.  It seems reasonable to assume that the first player wanted creepy tension and the second player wanted bloody action. 

You're right.  There are no clear guidelines about how to deal with this issue.  I suppose something like DitV's "dials" would work here.  Or perhaps some other way to facilitate that bit of communication between the players.

Out of curiosity, was either players' narration outside the bounds of the type of film that everyone had agreed upon at the beginning of the game?

[Steve Segedy]

The issue was really about authority- a player (or the GM) is trying to set a scene, communicate a set of elements and challenges to which everybody else can react.  It's their moment in the director's chair, so to speak.  And then, instead of reacting to the established scene, another player is changing the variables and usurping the scene.  I'd be a little surprised if folks haven't seen this come up before in other narrative games- it's largely a social contract thing, about who gets to define what parts of the story at any given time.   It can be a real buzz-kill for the player whose cool scene just got steam-rollered.

In any case, I'm just suggesting that this is just one possible problem arising out of the absence of rules about how scenes should be framed and conducted.  Even if you want to tell players to do whatever they want, you should give them a baseline of how you play the game, so they have a starting expectation of how it could work.

[Eric Provost]

I get what you're saying there, Steve.  I was just offering a differing perspective on the situation. 

I'm still curious if either of the players' narration, in that particular case, crossed any pre-set borders concerning the style of film decided on by the group.  I have an idea that I may be able to address the issue of authority via this particular mechanism, and how that particular session's film style may or may not have had an influence on the situation may be of assistance to me.  I'm aware that you probably are looking for a different type of solution, but I'm still interested in the data anyway.

[Steve Segedy]

Right, sorry.  To answer your question, I don't think either player ever went beyond the bounds of the film type we established- basically we were all going for a 70's-era creepfest.  One player was pushing a little harder toward revealing the infection and seeing some monsters, while the other was taking his time with the investigation and meeting the townsfolk. 

[Darcy Burgess]

Hi Eric,

I'd just like to say that I'm excitied about the idea of "film style" getting more attention during prep.

Cheers,
Darcy

[Eric Provost]

Me too, Darcy.  I'm thinking that this may also help me get to something I've been looking for (but not quite finding) with the reel changes.  I'm imagining not just setting the tone for the entire film, but opening up the possibilty of changing that tone from one reel to the next.  Player 1 wants creepy investigation and player 2 wants bloodfest?  Well, then have the first reel's guidelines cater to P1 and the second or third reel's guidelines cater to P2.

Which may just be excellent.  Now I just have to figure out how to present such a rule.