Suspense in mechanics

[unodiablo]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for mentioning 2PAM in the same sentence as Hero Wars and The Pool. :smile: I hope you like playing it!

One major thing I've changed in Dead Meat 2 is the resolution system. The game used to play fairly standard in this respect; state your intended action, then roll the bucket 'o dice and see if you succeed. Now the mechanics resolve conflicts like this BEFORE any stated action takes place. The Director frames a scene, and stops at the point where conflict would begin. Then the Players roll D666, arrange their dice, distribute Help and Black Flag's, and then base their narration of the scene based on the outcome of the roll. The Players, in effect, 'script' the scene using the game mechanics.

In play, it increases tension greatly; the Players don't know what they need to come up with a narration for until the scene starts, and the dice may decide they descibe zombie eating the Persona's face off rather than some heroic action.

Some other examples:
-Action dice increasing during play in Extreme Vengeance. The rules also state you can't face the main villian until you have enough Action dice as well.
-Survival horror games use a lot of 'bullet' chips or tokens. Tension increases as you run out of ammo.
-Charges and Endurance-type stats in super hero games. "Oh no, I only have enough energy for one last giga-blast!"
-I don't remember how it works clearly, but complications rules in Universalis are made for this.
-Poker Chips in Deadlands. Conbat is always more tense when you run out?
-The little face of your QUAKE guy, and the Health rating. It's a computer game, but when your health gets low, it's time to dodge and look for a medkit!

Sean

[woodelf]

Hmmmm... how many Jenga blocks in a stack? I'm trying to convert from SAN to Jenga. Also, there are three starting Jenga blocks in each layer, IIRC. That means that you can't get down below one third of your SAN and still rebuild your tower to its original height.

So, lets say there are 75 blocks in a Jenga set (25 layers high). That would mean that, over time you could theoretically lose 50 blocks and still make you're tower. So, One Jenga block per 2 SAN lost? Might work. Howsabout if you lose an odd number by the roll, you have to take another out, but can replace it after a second?

OTOH, that means that remaking your tower after even twenty five are lost is going to be difficult. Hmmm... Perhaps one per three? That would mean that total insanity would begin at about 33 (time 3 is 100) Jenga blocks lost. Might be more workable.

Anybody got the accurate figures, or a better rate of exchange?

Mike

ok, there are 3 blocks per level, and 18 levels initially, or 54 blocks. optimally, you can pull 2 from each level, or 36 blocks, which stack up to form 12 more layers.  you can then pull 2 from each of those layers, or 24 more, creating 8 new layers.  from these, you pull 16, creating 5 new layers, with one left over. pull 10 blocks, plus the one, makes not qutie 4 more layers, so you can pull 6 more blocks, and you'll now have 2 complete layers, +2. so you pull 4 more blocks, and now have two complete layers on top. you pull two more and, by the rules of the game, you're done, because you can only pull from the layers under the topmost complete layer, and you no longer have any such layers. if you ignore that rule, you can pull 4 more blocks before you have a stack of all ones, all the way up, or 54 stories high.  and this involves [hmmm...36+24+16+10+6+4+2+4=] a theoretical maximum of 102 block pulls, unless i goofed somewhere.  

now, in practice, we find almost any group can manage ~30 pulls reliably, and we figure ~35 is the functional maximum--that is, with most groups, at around 35 pulls, the tower could go down at any time.  within our own group, which has spent entirely too much time playing with Jenga, precisely to establish the functional limit, we usually manage ~45 pulls before it goes down, and i think our record is 56. the jenga currently sitting in the other room made it through 29 pulls during tonight's session, and was just starting to get iffy. i just made the 53rd pull on that stack, and there are no more legal pulls (and only 4 more theoretical pulls--but i don't think i can make any of them).

part of the question is exactly how you want to rebuild the tower after it goes down.  do you make solid layers until you run short, then single- or double-block layers as needed to the top? or do you put the decreased-block layers at the bottom? or do you build the tower normally, then remove the necessary number of bricks, but not replace them on top? if the sparse layers are on top, the biggest effect is the decrease in number of available blocks to pull; if they are on the bottom, the tower also starts out somewhat less stable. if you put in layers with the middle block missing, you make it impossible to pull either of the remaining two. if you put them in with one of the edge layers missing, or use single-block layers (both edges missing), you've taken fewer of the blocks out of circulation. so how you stack partial layers can have as big of an impact as how many total blocks are missing.