[the poodle] you can't take the sky from me

[Matt Wilson]

Today was almost the first full episode of our game set in the Firefly universe. I say almost because we played an hour's worth last week and ended a little early this time around.

You can read about the characters here.

John's writeup of the Poodle is here.

So last Sunday we sat and talked about how the characters related to one another and shared a little insight into their motivations and so on. Then we were suddenly done, and I hadn't expected to actually play a session yet. But we did anyway, and we wung the hell out of it.

Play started smack dab in the middle of the action. Two of the characters were in the middle of a crazy bar fight, while Cyrus Vance was in the middle of a tense discussion about his survey results with the local magistrate/boss.

When multiple characters are involved in a conflict, we've been taking a sort of "share the love" approach to narration. Each participant rolls, and if they succeed they narrate a portion. I fill in for any failed rolls.

What we agree upon, as a group, is that this planet/moon is crap, with no worthwhile resources, and for Cyrus to submit a "this place is crap" survey report would mean that they'd get little or no backing from the Alliance. John has Cyrus do the honorable thing and says he's recommending that the entire operation be shut down and the group relocated to a more hospitable location with better resources.

Shortly after this touching moment, Stephanie makes an idea roll to throw a monkeywrench into that nice wrap-up: Earl, with his nose for prospecting, detects something valuable after all. Ooh, narrativism potential. Does he tell Vance, and will Vance feel obligated to change his report?

So as Earl is gettin' ready to go off and get into some mischief with mining and whatnot (this prompted the phrase "surreptitiously mining") and then John asks for an idea roll. He fails, and it prompts this idea:

The player says "I want to make an idea roll," and if it fails, the player has the opportunity to say "shucks, I was going to narrate XYZ if I'd succeeded." It gives me the opportunity to riff on it if I want.

We stop play for the week at this point, and John lets me know that he was thinking that he gets a comm from an old buddy who warns him that an old enemy of Vance's is being let out of prison. I decide I like the idea, but I get to include it however I want until John or someone else is willing to gamble dice over it.

Today we start play and I narrate this scene where we see someone being unshackled and collecting their equipment, but we never see who it is.

Vance wants everyone to get ready so they can leave, and Earl comes up with a lie about how a manifold is being repaired in town, and they can't leave yet (Earl wants to sneak off and find this valuable something or other that he's picked up the scent of). Liberty decides to sneak off and track a lead on her students at a homestead out of town. Cara, playing Liberty, says she really wants something in particular to happen and gambles away all her pool dice to make it happen. She and Wyatt discover a secret mining operation (someone suggests that it's salt, and that salt is valuable in the future). They get captured. So does Earl, by none other than the town magistrate, who, as it turns out, is in on this whole secret minin' business.

At this point, Vance is alone on the ship, and the mysterious enemy shows up, whom I decide is played by Dana Delaney. I drop a big whopper on John: The woman, whom we decide is named Felicity and goes by the nickname Dingo, claims that she's had a son by Vance, and she wants her share of "the money" to support him.

To be fair, I left the options a little open-ended for John. He could have Vance deny that it's his, or demand proof that there is a child at all. I considered the possibility that she could be conning Vance, but play leaned more toward a reconciliation between the two of them, and John went with the idea that it was true. Who knows what'll happen in later episodes.

The captured trio decide to narrate a slam-bang escape with plenty of shootin' and clobberin'. They steal a whole mess of salt, which Vance gives to Felicity to help her with the child.

So far I'm thinking that this set of rules has a lot in common with Universalis, and we've been playing it with the idea of Uni except you always keep the same characters, and narration control shifts via idea rolls and slowly drifts back to the GM. There's still some ground that isn't clearly identified as either GM or player, and we've done okay with winging it. It's a pretty collaborative group.

For next week's game I'm going to build a malleable relationship map and see how that affects play, or whether it will hold up well after several idea rolls.

[John Harper]

Play so far has been lots of fun. Very similar to Universalis in overall feel, with the "PC" option turned on.

Something to consider: in Universalis, you back up your narrative rights by spending coins. In the Poodle, you gamble your dice. However, in Uni you always get a small amount of coins back at the start of a new scene. Getting into conflicts is not the only way to win coins. I think this may be necessary for the Poodle, too.

For the Pool, James recommends starting everyone with the same number of Pool dice at the start of each session. I'd like to try this and see how it handles. Of course, I thought of this after a session in which I ended up with zero dice. Sheer coincidence, I can assure you. :)

It's funny that it never occured to me that Felicity might be lying to Vance about the child. I guess the idea of an unexpected son was interesting to me and I decided to play it straight. Vance still doesn't really know the truth, one way or the other. I suppose we'll dig deeper (or not) as play continues.

[John Harper]

I'd like to mention the only sticking point I have so far in the play of our little Pool variant. I imagine it's one that can crop up in any shared-narration game.

The problem is, too many Directors. It happens when the players slip out of their Actor hats and start talking about the game, speculating on what "could" happen, what someone "could" say, etc. It turns into a writer's meeting of sorts.

This is not always a bad thing. It often leads to good fuel for further group storytelling. Sometimes, though, it sucks all the life out of the moment for me. I remember a specific example from the last session.

All the PCs are at the ship.  We're about to board and leave a troubled little moon far behind. Scott (playing Wyatt) suddenly has an idea for something cool. It's a conversation between Vance (my character) and Liberty (Cara's). So Scott shares his idea in a fairly specific way, saying stuff like "Vance could say X," and "Liberty would feel this, and say Y." He's right on the money. It's a great idea. The problem is, when he's done with his "what if" account, there's nothing left to play. My only option as Vance's player is to say, "Um... so that happens, I guess." Not very much fun, really.

Have any of you dealt with this kind of thing before? What are my options? Do we need to have more strict rules about who can say what? Will that even help? I don't want to say "You can't talk about my character," because good ideas often come from this kind of speculative Director speak. Ideas?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi John,

I, uh, hate to reveal myself and my group as such bastards, but ...

... well, one person usually says something like "shut up," more or less nicely, and we carry on from there. The person is usually whoever owns the character being featured in the discussion.

We do tend towards extensive movie or comics based asides. We play a scene, or are in the middle of one, and someone says, "Like in Men in Black, they go ..." And they're usually bringing it up as a contrast to what we're doing in our game, not as a fellow example or source, which I think is kind of interesting. So a couple of minutes go by in chatting about that, and then without much transition of any kind, wham, we're playing again.

But that "would" or "could" stuff that you're talking about tends to last just as long as the most-concerned player wants it to, then he or she shuts it down.

Best,
Ron

[John Harper]

Thanks for the response, Ron.

So, I just had a long-ish chat with Scott (Wyatt's player) about my issue. We discussed several possible solutions until I came around to the most simple: Go with the flow. Why did I object to Scott narrating possible dialogue and motivations for my character? They were good. Why didn't I just say, "Yeah! That's what Vance says. That rocks." If I don't like some part of the speculation that happens at the table, I don't have to use it. But maybe there's something to be gained in a game like this by loosening up my grip on my character and letting him play with everyone around the table.

The question of when these speculations turn into narration, and by whom, and how they are conducted in the game system -- well, those wrinkles still remain. But I'm resolved to not be such a tight-ass about it in the future to see if that helps smooth out this rough spot.