[While We Were Fighting] A Bad Day for the Gherardini Family

[Peter Nordstrand]

I've had a first playtest of While We Were Fighting. (See this thread for first thoughts on character generation.) Over all the playtest went very well. I had a lot of fun, and the games strengths and weaknesses were highlighted in a very constructive way. For various inconsequential reasons, we began kind of late. Therefore  we didn't have as much time as I would have preferred. Three hours of actual play, character generation included, simply isn't enough. This made things a bit hurried.

Who? Me, Björn, Slavko, and Måns. I've roleplayed a little with both Björn and Måns before, but never with Slavko. They were all eager to try out the rules exactly as written. 

Where? At Björn's place.

Character Generation
As discussed in the previous thread, I came up with the rules for character generation during this weekend. There was an earlier version that was quite flawed. All in all, my last minute redesign turned out to be a a good thing, mostly fulfilling my design goals:

* provide stuff for characters to want, need, and believe in.
* provide the players with an opportunity to get invested in their characters.
* give players a good sense of what this game will be about.
* give the GM material with which to provide adversary.
* take no more than fifteen minutes, tops.
* be fun.

One of the things I did was to change the setting from unspecified fantasy to a (still fictional) city state in northern Italy in around 1450. A lot of things fell into place because of this. Having a clear context to help focus our imagination was great, and the players immediately took to it. Also, I used genuine Italian names instead of the ridiculous nonsense I originally planned. I'll definitely develop on the setting some more.

Another thing that I came up with during the weekend was to introduce assets. Simply put, players pick a total of six assets that their characters have access to. Assets are divided into three broad categories; violence, wealth, and tradition. A character's ratings in the three abilities Violence, Tradition, and Wealth then equal the number of assets they have selected in the corrsponding categories. Hence, if you pick three assets from the violence category, your ability rating in Violence is 3. I'll talk more about how we utilized the assets in actual play in my next post.

Now, lets take a look at the characters.

Giuliano Bartolini
Player: Björn

Giuliano was a state attorney. His adversary was Simona Gherardini, who had publicly rejected his love, thus causing him to lose face. A horrible thing indeed. Giuliano's ambition was to destroy the entire Gherardini family.

Abilities:
Violence 2 (assets: a detachment of pikemen, an angry mob)
Tradition 2 (assets: a classical library, patron of science)
Wealth 2 (assets: a merchant vessel, gold florines)
Influence 2 (allies: the warden of the salt mines, the leader of a mercenary band)

Niccolo Bartolini
Player: Måns

Niccolo is the cousin of Guiliano (Björn's character). Nicolo was the head of a special judiciary/policing unit known as the Council of Ten. His adversary was Antonio Gherardini, who had convinced the pope to excommunicate his lover Francesca. Niccolo's ambition was to have the excommunication withdrawn. Niccolo also had a wife, Måns decided. She came to play an important role in the events of the game, but more about that later.

Abilities:
Violence 2 (assets: access to poison, a personal bodyguard)
Tradition 2 (assets: patron of the arts, a fancy title)
Wealth 2 (assets: slaves, letters of credit)
Influence 2 (allies: magistrate Gianluca Buffoni, Universal genius Pietro da Napoli)

Iacopo Manelli
Player: Slavko

Iacopo was a bishop, whose ambition was to become pope. His adversary was Umberto Gherardini who hads lent him money at an exorbitant interest and had the audacity to want the money back.

Abilities:
Violence 2 (assets: a fortified residence, an angry mob)
Tradition 2 (assets: a fancy title)
Wealth 2 (assets: slaves, letters of credit, gold florines)
Influence 2 (allies: the head of the city council, a band of unscrupulous killers)

So there we have the setup. It was quite fun, although it took a little longer than I had hoped; almost forty minutes. It definitely give players a good sense of what the game was to be about. When character generation was over, I drew a relationship map of all the characters, their allies and adversaries. Five minutes of prep, and I was ready to go.

I'll post about actual play in a little while, focusing on conflict resolution. The good, the bad, and a couple of cool ideas for the next playtest.

[Peter Nordstrand]

Iacopo's ability ratings are wrong. His Tradition should be 1 and his Wealth 3, of course.

[Peter Nordstrand]

Conflict Resolution

Conflict resolution was problematic. At any point during the game, players can turn to their families and other communities to get their support. If you have a community on your side, you essentially add their dice pool to your own. However, the more communities you bring into the conflict, the more likely it is to get out of hand completely.

My design goals are as follows: Conflicts that start out small and personal in nature have the potential to escalate into much larger confrontations that may eventually involve the entire city. Any conflict can grow to destroy everything you know. The game asks the question: Is it worth it?

The rest of the resolution system is essentially just plagiarizing Vincent Baker's Poison'd. The loser of the first round of a conflict has the option to either give up and suffer the consequences of defeat or to push for another round of conflict. Pushing for another round allows you to re-roll a bunch of dice, but it also increases the stakes, making the consequences of defeat even worse.

Problems

Once a number of families and other influential communities got involved the number of dice got out of hand. We were rolling way over a hundred d6 at the same time in one and the same conflict. That was just plain messy.

The consequences of defeat just weren't clear or exiting enough. A friend of mine who've read the first draft of the rules commented that I need to clarify what's at stake in any given conflict. Actually, characters do stand the chance of reducing their ability ratings, but he is still right. And I do think I have a solution. I introduced assets in character generation, and I think they are great. The natural step is to tie these assets more directly to conflict resolution. If you try to bully an enemy into submission by using your fancy title, you risk being deprived of that very title because of your bullish behavior. You risk to lose whatever you bring to the conflict, be it letters of credit, eunuch slaves, or a detachment of pikemen. That's cool, it makes chargen meaningful, and it helps define what the game is about. In retrospect, it is also quite obvious. What does characters do? The put their assets at risk in order to achieve their goals.

Too much violence?

One of the players, Björn, complained that there was to much violence. His reason for this, he said, was that he would have preferred to do more scheming and plotting in the shadows rather than just play it all out as one big civil war. Here's what happened:

Björn's character Giuliano was trying to miscredit an NPC by spreading nasty rumors about him. I, the GM, then decided that NPC called in his entire family and the Gherardini family that he was allied with. Now a small army of lawyers arrived at the courthouse accusing Guiliano of defamation. Faced with certain defeat, Björn called in his own family, whose big strength happened to be violence. The conflict then escalated several times like this, involving more and more people. What followed was a disastrous massacre with hundreds of dead and many more wounded. Civil war essentially. And a bad day for the defeated Gherardini family.

Now, was there too much violence? I say no. The problem was not the fighting, but that I so forcefully put Björn in a position where he had virtually no meaningful choices left. There he was sitting with a character sheet full of cool assets, an interesting plan that he was all excited about, and I effectively took all that away from him. The only way he was ever going to win that conflict was by using violence. Lose or kill. That was his choice. And suddenly it wasn't quite as fun anymore.

Now, the characters may be in big trouble, but if the players don't get to make meaningful choices in regards to what they percieve as the purpose of play, I have a problem.

Questions? Ask them! Suggestions? Spit it out!

Thanks for listening,

/Peter

[hix]

Hi Peter,

I've got two questions. They don't have much to do with the conflict resolution system itself - they're more about me having trouble visualising what happens after a conflict.

What followed was a disastrous massacre with hundreds of dead and many more wounded. Civil war essentially. And a bad day for the defeated Gherardini family.

1. How does this impact the game? Does it make a difference if tens of people are left dead, or thousands? I guess I'm asking "Can you kill the city as a result of your actions?"

2. What happens next? Once Giuliano's conflict is resolved, does he have other goals that he's trying to pursue? Or would that game be more about dealing with the consequences of that civil war he created? I guess I'm asking "What do the characters do?" in this game.

[Peter Nordstrand]

Hi Steve,

I've been trying to figure out the best way to reply. Since I began this thread, I've reworked conflict resolution, and even tried it out in a second playtest.

Can you kill the city? Yes and no. It is mostly a matter of narration, though. Presently, there is nothing that really measures the fortunes of the city as a whole. Most everything is focused on how the player characters fare. However, the big problem is that it is a winner takes it all situation. So the huge conflict effectlively "killed" all bloodlines, groups and characters on the opposing side. The problem was that the massacre had no mechanical consqeuence for the players at all. The conflict should have changed everything, but it didn't.   

You asked in a pm about how invested the players were in the fictional events of the game. Actually, the huge conflicts took over the game, and ran over all the fun and interesting situations that were building early in the game. Frankly, once the ball got rolling, it turned into a quite boring excercise in dice rolling. It was interesting, and it gave me a lot to think about, but as a game it wasn't fun. The second playtest exhibited different but similar problems, but I'll get back to that, perhaps in a new thread.

Is this what you were asking?

Cheers,

/Peter

[Måns]

Hi Peter
Thanks for the game the other day. I enyoyed it very much.

A thought though. Since there is no point in intrueging against the other characters the combined strenght of character families is far greater than the stregth of the Gheraldini family. Thers a couple of problems attatched to that. First, the Gheraldinis are in for more bad days, secondly theyre no real threat as long as the characters are buddies and lastly, it encourages cooperation. Now, if you want it to be a game of backstabbing those are bad things.

This is the only major flaw in the game. But overall, the game was very focused and knew what it wanted to accomplish. I really like the setting (do the state have a name?), and the fight for power theme. WWWF is a game I want to play again.

/Måns

[Peter Nordstrand]

Hi Måns,

Thanks for your input. And for playtesting with me. In the following, please remember that while I am purposefully very critical of my own game, I did have a good time hanging out with you guys. And I would love to do it again soon.

Since there is no point in intrueging against the other characters the combined strenght of character families is far greater than the stregth of the Gheraldini family. Thers a couple of problems attatched to that. First, the Gheraldinis are in for more bad days, secondly theyre no real threat as long as the characters are buddies and lastly, it encourages cooperation. Now, if you want it to be a game of backstabbing those are bad things.

Actually, backstabbing between player characters isn't a priority for me. I'm not against it, I just don't really care as long as the players get to make interesting choices. However, in both playtests the game sort of degenerated into a long-winded struggle to fuck over the Gherardinis. Now, this could have been fine if the resolution system provided some strategical or tactical challenges, but it didn't. (And I never wanted it to.)

Let's take a look at what happened to your character, as I remember it:

I started the game off by introducing a bang: Niccolo's wife was cheating on him ... with his personal enemy Antonio Gherardini! And your response was shocking. Niccolo went straight up to his wife's bedroom and stabbed her to death. Oh my god what a tremendous start! We've only played for about ten minutes and already established Niccolo as this ruthless bastard consumed by hatred for Antonio Gherardini. (Note that it's not the violence and brutality that's so great, but the straightforward adressing of premise.)

Now this should have made things really easy for me as a GM. If your character is all about ruthlessly pursuing his goals, all I need to do to facilitate an interesting story is to challenge his beliefs, his hatred of Antonio, and his twisted sense of honor. What about this: Niccolo's father announces a lucrative business deal with Antonio. Then it turns out that Antonio has been speaking well about your character, nominating him for the influential and celebrated position as city council. Now what do you do? And at the same time Niccolo's wife's mysterious disappearance is making certain people ask questions. Suddenly, investigators are breathing down his neck. Will you have Niccolo treat them with the same brutality as you awarded his wife?[/quote]

Sadly, none of this happened, because we had to deal with a resolution system gone haywire. Ironically, I did want things to potentially get out of hand, wreaking havoc on the city. But in the current version there is no room for premise-adressing goodness. So that's what I am currently trying to rectify.

Does this make sense to you?

Cheers,

/Peter

[hix]

Looks like you're dealing with my concerns, Peter. I'm looking forward to the next playtest report.

[Måns]

Hi Peter,

did have a good time hanging out with you guys. And I would love to do it again soon.

That could probably be arranged.

Actually, backstabbing between player characters isn't a priority for me. I'm not against it, I just don't really care as long as the players get to make interesting choices. However, in both playtests the game sort of degenerated into a long-winded struggle to fuck over the Gherardinis. Now, this could have been fine if the resolution system provided some strategical or tactical challenges, but it didn't. (And I never wanted it to.)
...

What about this: Niccolo's father announces a lucrative business deal with Antonio. Then it turns out that Antonio has been speaking well about your character, nominating him for the influential and celebrated position as city council. Now what do you do? And at the same time Niccolo's wife's mysterious disappearance is making certain people ask questions. Suddenly, investigators are breathing down his neck. Will you have Niccolo treat them with the same brutality as you awarded his wife?

I would have loved to play that part! Thats a great story, and I understand what you mean. And I clearly misunderstood the backstabbing part, at least as a part of the system. 

Sadly, none of this happened, because we had to deal with a resolution system gone haywire. Ironically, I did want things to potentially get out of hand, wreaking havoc on the city. But in the current version there is no room for premise-adressing goodness. So that's what I am currently trying to rectify.

Does this make sense to you?

I think so. Do you mean that thers two conflict (roughly) going on at all times. The personal goal and the family feud. They are of course connected but not in the game system?

/Måns

[Peter Nordstrand]

Do you mean that thers two conflict (roughly) going on at all times. The personal goal and the family feud. They are of course connected but not in the game system?

I'm saying that the conflict resolution, as we played it, took away our ability as players to make meaningful choices. And meaningful choice is at the very core of all good games. I've written about meaningful choice in games on my blog (in Swedish). Here's the link.

Anyway, I've made some important changes, and I can't wait to try them out. I'll let you know when.