[Scarlet Wake] Introducing Peons Rule

[Sean]

This game looks extremely promising. I have some heavy RL stuff going on right now but it's at least moved up to near the top of my 'want to try out' pile.

Most of it makes pretty good sense on first reading. However, I'm confused about the 'Introducing Peons with Kick' rules.

1) Can these be brand-new peons beyond the 150 points worth at the start? Or does it just allow the Antagonists to activate extra peons of that boss' above and beyond what the player called for? (So if I held up 2 fingers, they could swat me down by paying 4 Kick for 2 extra R2s or something.)

If the latter, I guess the extras are just one-wave peons? Or one-encounter? Or what?

Also, if you boost peons, is that just for a wave or an encounter? Or what?

2) If we assume that you get Fuel and Kick 1-1 in all cases, I note the following. Fuel converts 2:1 into Fire which converts 1:1.3 into bonus points on die rolls. So each point of Fuel is +.65 to die rolls in an encounter. Introducing or upgrading peons, on the other hand, has Kick 1:1 into Peons which converts 1:2.5 into bonus points on die rolls. So each point of kick is +2.5 to die rolls.

Now, I would have thought that this kind of ratio (Kick being roughly four times more effective for points for the Antagonists than Fuel is for the Protagonists) would pretty quickly bury the Protagonist. On the other hand, the Protagonist does do permanent damage, whereas she only takes temporary damage (leading up to another Bind) in most cases. So maybe it balances out in play. I just wanted to call attention to the issue and see whether this had been noted and how it works in play.


But I'd really need some help with #1 before I could play. I don't understand where the extra peons/peon ranks are coming from or how long they last, and I'd need to know that.

[Ben O'Neal]

Hey Sean,

1) Can these be brand-new peons beyond the 150 points worth at the start? Or does it just allow the Antagonists to activate extra peons of that boss' above and beyond what the player called for? (So if I held up 2 fingers, they could swat me down by paying 4 Kick for 2 extra R2s or something.)

It's sorta both. You can do one of two things: boost current Peons to higher Ranks, in which case you are only effecting the Peons that already exist, and they remain the "possessions" of the Protagonist (much like boosting a Bosses traits doesn't allow you to "own" the Boss). Or, you can introduce entirely new Peons, above and beyond what the Protagonist already had. When you create new Peons, just like when you create Sub-Bosses, they "belong" to the Antagonists. This means that for all purposes, you control them entirely. This includes encounters and Waves.

For both cases, the effects last until the Peons are dead.

2) If we assume that you get Fuel and Kick 1-1 in all cases, I note the following. Fuel converts 2:1 into Fire which converts 1:1.3 into bonus points on die rolls. So each point of Fuel is +.65 to die rolls in an encounter. Introducing or upgrading peons, on the other hand, has Kick 1:1 into Peons which converts 1:2.5 into bonus points on die rolls. So each point of kick is +2.5 to die rolls.

Now, I would have thought that this kind of ratio (Kick being roughly four times more effective for points for the Antagonists than Fuel is for the Protagonists) would pretty quickly bury the Protagonist. On the other hand, the Protagonist does do permanent damage, whereas she only takes temporary damage (leading up to another Bind) in most cases. So maybe it balances out in play. I just wanted to call attention to the issue and see whether this had been noted and how it works in play.

I've never thought about it like that before, but the effect is definitely what I intended. Recently in my game we discovered just how powerful Fire is, when you are adding 3d12 to your AP, so we upped the challenge, and seriously kicked the crap out of the Protagonist. We boosted her Boss to maximum traits, then brought in a Sub-Boss, and boosted his traits to maximum, then we deprived the PC of her Weapon. It was mad.

But yeah, Kick is really powerful and is a great way to up the challenge when a Protagonist gets cocky. The best part is, upping the challenge nearly always results in more Kick! I think the whole "permanent vs temporary" thing balances it all out. At least, I find it works well when playing.

Hope that helps!

Thanks,
-Ben

[Sean]

Hi Ben -

I'm really grooving on the idea of your game, but I'm not quite satisfied with what you say here.

OK. First of all, compare your point investement for say 'healing the boss'. That's 2 kick for 1 point of healing, as opposed to 2 fuel for 1.3 points of damage. So there the tradeoff is to the Protagonist's advantage.

Likewise, with 3 kick for increasing a boss's stat, you can figure that the increased stat is 1 point for the boss plus the point of karma - essentially 3 for 2, but this time lasting. So there you're talking .75 but the changes to the boss may last more than one encounter, so it's actually more. (Actually, given this, it hardly seems worth it to heal the boss - you can just buy him up instead.)

Anyway, my point is that the point costs for the different things you can spend points on seem really uneven to me. More on why this matters (or not) in a second.

You wrote that the introduced peons are 'like sub-bosses' and 'controlled by the antagonists', and last until they are dead. Are you serious? So  I can spend 20 kick and just throw four R5 peons at the guy for every wave of every encounter from there on out? Um...

Adding to this, you wrote

"we upped the challenge, and seriously kicked the crap out of the Protagonist. We boosted her Boss to maximum traits, then brought in a Sub-Boss, and boosted his traits to maximum, then we deprived the PC of her Weapon. It was mad."

My worry about the rules as written is that with the efficacy of fuel vs. kick the Antagonists can do this more or less at will after the first half-dozen or so scenes. That every time the PC builds up enough fuel to do damage the antagonists can subvert her with even better stuff from the kick. That's why I'm comparing the points so carefully.

So OK. Why is that a problem? Well, because you invest a lot of the game with this hard-core Gamist rhetoric, even though the Dilemmas and some other stuff seem to push in a Narrativist direction.

Dude, if the game is hard-core Gamist, I'm playing to win. Which means based on the numbers I just crunched I'm going to do the following: spend all kick on bonus peons and throw all of them at every other player every time. Furthermore, he can't beat me point for point with fire, so on average I'll rock his world. Why is this a bad strategy? Even if he goes to the bind and survives to up his die types, he still has this massive pile of d4's to overcome. Plus, even if he can overcome it, the game starts to become uncool, if there's just this endless slog going on.

I guess I'd like to see the kick/fuel expenditures more tightly regimented and balanced against one another. If this were a game where players were helping each other tell a revenge story, that wouldn't matter so much, but with winning and losing, it seems to matter a lot more. There can't be a 'win' strategy for the antagonists just to prevent protagonists from 'getting too cocky' in a gamist game.

This game has a ton of stuff in it that really, really kicks ass. If you want it to really be competitive between the players, though, you can't have 'instant win' strategies for either side. The Fuel/Kick resource management challenge is an absolutely awesome idea, but if Kick always dominates through the right tactical choices, then the game becomes an exercise in futility.

If it were me, and if I'm understanding you correctly, I'd remove the bit about raising Peon competence (needless complexity - they're just peons!), and make people pay kick for every encounter (or maybe even every wave, or every 5 waves to balance with some of the other kick tricks) they wanted to keep a sub-boss or peon involved. Otherwise, you just build a big floating pool of 'hose the protagonist' NPCs, and one which is more point-effective AFAICTAFG than almost any other maneuver.

Another possibility is that the Antagonists are there to help the Protagonist tell his revenge story - you talk this way sometimes in the rules-text - in which case fine-tuned kick costs are slightly less important (though I'd still like more rules to regiment use of bonus peons and sub-bosses). In this case a lot of the problem I've described above isn't as big, but that cuts against the whole winning thing. I mean, if I'm trying to help the hero be cool on his turn, I can do that, but then I'm not thinking about winning any more.

Another question, as long as we're chatting: Is it assumed that you fight the bosses in order unless you're summoned forward to fight a shared boss by the actions of another PC?

[Ben O'Neal]

Lot's of good points. Overall, I'm with you about the balance thing. It needs to be nice and balanced to enhance the viability of all the options. To be honest, I really had no solid idea of how to approach the balance issue when I wrote up the rules, so I just designated arbitrary Kick costs to things based purely on my subjective reasoning of incentive and disincentive for use. I was hoping that play-testing would allow me to more accurately decide on the relative costs. In all my playing, and from what I've heard from other people, the Kick costs seem to be working fine, so I just thought "well, if no-one's complaining, it must be all cool". But I agree with you that it needs to be more thoroughly and mathematically balanced.

First of all, compare your point investement for say 'healing the boss'. That's 2 kick for 1 point of healing, as opposed to 2 fuel for 1.3 points of damage. So there the tradeoff is to the Protagonist's advantage.

Yes, I've since re-thought the "healing the Boss" one, and I've decided to make it 1 Kick to remove 2 points of Karma. However, this may change for the sake of balance.

Likewise, with 3 kick for increasing a boss's stat, you can figure that the increased stat is 1 point for the boss plus the point of karma - essentially 3 for 2, but this time lasting. So there you're talking .75 but the changes to the boss may last more than one encounter, so it's actually more. (Actually, given this, it hardly seems worth it to heal the boss - you can just buy him up instead.)

Umm, I'm not a math-head, so could you please let me know how you are calculating all this stuff? I'd be really interested in knowing if there is a way to mathematically value each use of Kick so that I can balance all their costs.

But regarding healing a Boss vs buying him up: why not both? :)

You wrote that the introduced peons are 'like sub-bosses' and 'controlled by the antagonists', and last until they are dead. Are you serious? So I can spend 20 kick and just throw four R5 peons at the guy for every wave of every encounter from there on out? Um...

...until they are dead. But yeah, I get your point. I haven't seen this tactic though, so thanks for bringing it up. Definitely in need of revision.

If it were me, and if I'm understanding you correctly, I'd remove the bit about raising Peon competence (needless complexity - they're just peons!), and make people pay kick for every encounter (or maybe even every wave, or every 5 waves to balance with some of the other kick tricks) they wanted to keep a sub-boss or peon involved. Otherwise, you just build a big floating pool of 'hose the protagonist' NPCs, and one which is more point-effective AFAICTAFG than almost any other maneuver.

Good points and suggestions.

Another question, as long as we're chatting: Is it assumed that you fight the bosses in order unless you're summoned forward to fight a shared boss by the actions of another PC?

Yes, that is the assumption, but it's not hardcoded into the rules. If a PC wants to tackle a tougher Boss then that's fine by me. One thing that also isn't hardcoded in the rules, is whether or not the List is chronological. The non-chronology of the List makes it really easy to deal with a PC who is only up to Boss #2, whilst another PC is up to Boss #4 which they both share.


But back to the issue of balance, if you would be willing to work with me on figuring out what the Kick costs should be based on numerical efficacy, I'd very much appreciate it. Based on what you've said so far, I'm thinking "Introduce Peons" needs to cost at least twice as much, but probably more like 3 times as much, and also need some use-limit placed on them. I'm also thinking that "Kill a PC" needs to be a little more expensive, and maybe even "Cause a PC roll to fail". "Heal a Boss" probably needs to be cheaper, "Increase Boss traits" could probably go either way right now, "Deprive a PC of a trait" I have no idea about, same for "Can't Run, Can't Hide". I'm thinking "Introduce a Sub-Boss" could probably stay the same, but it depends how the maths turn out. Though I'm thinking I'll probably make Sub-Bosses more powerful by making them an exact duplicate (trait-wise) of the PC by including Honour and any Fire the PC currently has (but obviously not Fuel, cos they have Karma instead).

So yeah, your help and mathematical prowess on this would be awesome.

Thanks,
-Ben

[Sean]

Hi Ben!

I'm flattered that you'd ask. Let me see what kind of help I can give.

Basically, you get exactly as much Kick as Fuel, right? So the way I see the game working is something like this: Protagonist takes damage to build up Fuel, triggering Bind which raises stats. Meanwhile, Kick builds up at same time, allowing complications to ensue at Antagonists' option, and making potential encounters harder.

So you can control how fast the game moves forward by controlling the effectiveness of Fuel and Kick relative to one another. There are some 'forward moving things' for the protagonist: bosses and peons killed are killed permanently, whereas the protagonist almost always comes back sooner or later. OTOH if Kick is TOO effective then it will start to be a slog. On the other hand if Fuel is too effective then almost everyone will move through their challenges at the same rate, making the competition closer (perhaps) but also more arbitrary (less satisfying IMO).

The only way to know what the really best ratio is through play, but it doesn't hurt to start with mathematical balance and work out from there, I don't think, in a resource management game. That is, you may discover that some 'unbalanced' things work better, but it seems worthwhile to come up with a mathematically sound currency first and work out from there.

-------------

So here's what I think. I start with the observation that 2 Fuel = 1 Fire and 1 Fire = either a new d4 (+2.5 average roll) or a bump of a die to the next die up (+1 average roll). So Fire's average effectiveness is +6.5/5 = +1.3 on a roll. So 1 Fuel for the protagonist is worth .65 points on conflict resolution dice on average.

Fire lasts for 1 encounter, right? So then when you balance things, if you want Kick to be about equal to Fuel in terms of in-game effect, you want to shoot for about the same value.

So for example: if you introduce peons, they get you about 2.5 points per point of peon (because 1 peon rank = 1d4). So if these 'bonus peons' last for an encounter, you figure about 4 points per rank would be balancing. On the other hand, if they just last for a wave - so that it goes like this, the protagonist holds up 3 fingers, and you say, ha ha! you're fighting 5, buddy - then maybe the costs you have are right on the money, 1/1.

If you heal the boss, then actually 2/1 like you had it seems about right for balance. This values the kick at .5. The healing is 'permanent' so that makes it seem more, but on the other hand damage is permanent too, and damage is the result of higher dice.

The other ones are harder to weigh. But basically what I'm doing is looking at what Fuel gets you in terms of points in conflict resolution: it gets you an average of .65 added to all your die rolls for an encounter. So if you want Kick to be about equal you should balance costs accordingly: if it lasts an encounter (or five waves, like some of yours) then it should average in the .5-.75 range too, if it lasts longer probably it should average less, if it lasts for just a wave it can be cheaper. That's how I calculate this stuff, by turning points of resource into points on dice and then seeing what's worth what.

So there's a start. What else do you want calculated? Is the general method there helpful or were there particular questions you had? I'd keep some things general based on rough averages, like the sub-bosses - this would probably mean that sub-bosses would be cost-ineffective early when the PCs were weak and cost-effective later when they were strong. But that seems fine, and you don't want to overcomplicate things.

Edit: Tell you what, I just re-read your post. When I get some time I'll go through your list and try to weight the costs according to what seems to make sense to me, keeping in mind I haven't tried to play yet and that I may be missing some stuff that's obvious to you. Then I'll post what seem like reasonable costs to me and clarifications of what the kick does in terms of temporal duration. Then hopefully that will be useful to you and you can adjust according to your much greater experience!

[Sean]

OK. I looked at this a little more. I think in order to evaluate costs I need to know exactly how the Kick works, when it's spent and how long it lasts, which wasn't clear to me from the game-text. The biggest problem is that I don't know what it means to 'introduce' peons or a sub-boss when the Protagonist calls for foes! I'll deal with things point by point below.

1. Introducing Peons. Lets say you introduce or boost peons for 1 wave only. This fits with the protagonist player holding up say 2 fingers and getting smacked with 4 peons in return. Then I think your cost (1 kick for 1 peon rank) is exactly right as is. If they last longer it's too low, but I don't understand what 'last longer' would mean exactly. I mean, the Protagonist keeps calling for foes, right? So what does it mean if there are these extra peons lurking in the background somewhere? I'd encourage to just do this by single wave and keep the costs you have. If you wanted, you could even require that bonus peons be that boss' pre-existing peons, so the game didn't drag out and you didn't have 'loose NPCs'. I kind of like that, actually.

2. Heal Boss. I think 2/1, like you have it, is just right.

3. Increase Boss' Traits. If this lasts for only one encounter, it's essentially like 'improved fire' for the boss: it gets the boss better dice and more karma. If you evaluate 4 points for the +2 Karma and 1.3 for the improved die type, 5/1 seems about right for this. IF it just lasts for the one encounter that the boss is in. Permanently jacking a boss seems wrong to me somehow, but if you wanted these changes to be permanent, I guess 10/1 might be good.

4. Deprive Trait: Assuming that 5 waves is roughly equal to 1 encounter (it's a kind of, 'can you survive five waves and then escape in this encounter' type challenge), and assuming that an 'average' trait is 3, then this deprivation is worth 4.5 points. That's about the same yield (4.55) as 7 points of Fuel, so charge 7 Kick for this one.

5. Can't run, can't hide seems good at 10, presumably with the idea that you've got some more kick to really throw the works at the PC during those five waves. I'd need to play to judge this better. I'm not sure what purpose the 'fail roll' and 'kill PC' expenditures serve, but I guess the costs seem OK assuming you want that to be part of the game.

6. Sub-bosses. When the heck do these guys come in? Do you hold up 3 fingers and then a sub-boss comes out with the peons? Or does he come out by himself? Or what? I don't understand how these guys get into the narrative.

Assuming that's settled, I'd note the following. A sub-boss has 5 stats. If you assume an average of 3, and that 4 of these will be going at a time in any given combat, that's 4d8 or 18 points. So if you introduce a sub-boss for a whole encounter, I might charge 30 kick for that. But if they only came in for a wave (like General what's his name in Kill Bill) it might be a lot less - maybe 8 points.

Still, you want sub-bosses to be lasting characters. I can see a PC calling for a scene where they're trying to outwit a sub-boss, say, in a Style + Luck stealth contest or something like that. Or they might just want to kill him. So I suppose sub-bosses should be noted on the PC's sheet for whom the sub-boss is introduced. Then that same sub-boss can be re-called for when antagonists want to spend the kick, or the PC can put the sub-boss in a scene themselves, in which case it costs no kick at all.

Attaching a sub-boss to a particular boss, so that the sub-boss has to be killed before you kill the boss, creates a permanent obstacle in the PCs path. That should therefore cost extra points, maybe +10.  If you don't pay this then the guy's just sort of a floating nemesis, someone who shows up at uncomfortable moments, whenever antagonists feel like paying the kick.

Anyway, I think when it's totally clear how sub-bosses work in the narrative, when they come in and out and who has rights to bring them in and out, the kick cost should become pretty clear too.

--------

I'd like to see one of your first three examples be an example of combat. Maybe a couple. You have an example of getting out of a bind, a race, and stat improvement. Then, much much later, Jodi gets four dice for combat. Why just four? Which four? It would help to have some clear examples of all this. I understand that you want situational interpretation of stat applicability, and I'm totally down with that - I think it's good. But some sample situations are really, really helpful for dealing with this IMO.

Keep up the good work!

Sean

[Sean]

My calculation on #3 is wrong, but the answer is right. That is, if you assume 2 Karma = 2 Points = 3 fuel (1.95) and +1 on a die = 1 point = 2 fuel (1.3) then you get 5 fuel for the same benefit on the player side. So 5 kick seems right for boosting a boss stat for 1 encounter.

(added post because I exceeded my hour to edit...)

[Ben O'Neal]

Hey Sean,

Thanks heaps for your input, very much appreciated, and you've given me some valuable things to think about. I'll try to address all your points.

1. Introducing Peons. Lets say you introduce or boost peons for 1 wave only. This fits with the protagonist player holding up say 2 fingers and getting smacked with 4 peons in return. Then I think your cost (1 kick for 1 peon rank) is exactly right as is. If they last longer it's too low, but I don't understand what 'last longer' would mean exactly. I mean, the Protagonist keeps calling for foes, right? So what does it mean if there are these extra peons lurking in the background somewhere? I'd encourage to just do this by single wave and keep the costs you have. If you wanted, you could even require that bonus peons be that boss' pre-existing peons, so the game didn't drag out and you didn't have 'loose NPCs'. I kind of like that, actually.

Hmmm. When I envision Introducing Peons, I see that scene in Kill Bill after Beatrix Kiddo kills GoGo, and you hear all the motorbikes approaching and the rest of the Crazy 88 show up. That sort of thing. So it is literally creating new ACs (NPCs). For this reason, they would last until they die (it wouldn't make much sense to have them just dissapear). Also, being that they are under the complete control of the Antagonists, meaning that the Protagonist can't decide how many get sent at them each Wave, they aren't necessarily just "lurking in the background". Soooo, more expensive then? Say 4 Kick per Peon/per rank instead of 1? So 4 Kick would give 1d4 to the Antagonists, and 2 Fuel will give 1d4 of Fire to the PC, but more Kick adds more d4s, whereas more Fuel only increases the die type. So 40 Kick gives 10d4 (average roll 25), and 40 Fuel gives 4d12 (average roll 26). Is this right?

I'm unsure what you mean by "bonus Peons being Boss's pre-existing Peons". Could you clarify what you mean? Do you mean like them coming back from the dead? Or do you mean something like "they always were Peons for that Boss, but the PC didn't know about it until now"? Either way, these two options are equally viable within the current rules of the game.

2. Heal Boss. I think 2/1, like you have it, is just right.

Ok. Cool.

3. Increase Boss' Traits. If this lasts for only one encounter, it's essentially like 'improved fire' for the boss: it gets the boss better dice and more karma. If you evaluate 4 points for the +2 Karma and 1.3 for the improved die type, 5/1 seems about right for this. IF it just lasts for the one encounter that the boss is in. Permanently jacking a boss seems wrong to me somehow, but if you wanted these changes to be permanent, I guess 10/1 might be good.

Currently, it lasts forever (well, until they die). But I actually like the idea that it only lasts for one encounter for two reasons: one, it gives incentive to use "Can't Run, Can't Hide", and two, it somehow feels more right given the genre. So leave the cost as it is and change it so it lasts only for the current encounter? Cool.

4. Deprive Trait: Assuming that 5 waves is roughly equal to 1 encounter (it's a kind of, 'can you survive five waves and then escape in this encounter' type challenge), and assuming that an 'average' trait is 3, then this deprivation is worth 4.5 points. That's about the same yield (4.55) as 7 points of Fuel, so charge 7 Kick for this one.

7 Kick. Gotcha. Done and done. (I still have no idea what you are doing with the numbers, but it's impressive so I'll trust ya ;)

5. Can't run, can't hide seems good at 10, presumably with the idea that you've got some more kick to really throw the works at the PC during those five waves. I'd need to play to judge this better. I'm not sure what purpose the 'fail roll' and 'kill PC' expenditures serve, but I guess the costs seem OK assuming you want that to be part of the game.

"Cause a PC roll to fail" has two real purposes. One: it can make someone fail to increase any of their traits (which is nasty, therefore good), and two, it can be used to lead into "Kill a PC", which can only be used when a PC has failed to escape from a Bind. I think the purpose of killing a PC is pretty obvious: it completely takes that PC out of the game (but the player can, of course, still play as an Antagonist, and also gets 40 Kick to dump on any other PC (revenge!)).

However, do you think that maybe "Can't Run, Can't Hide" should be cheaper, like about 5 Kick? I ask because it doesn't really do anything except make sure that the PC sticks around to get the smack laid down on them. Without this use of Kick, a Protagonist can end an encounter any time they choose simply by not calling on any more Waves and narrating their cowardly escape (pussies). Or do you think that 10 Kick seems about right for this, given that it must be spent in combination with other Kick use?

6. Sub-bosses. When the heck do these guys come in? Do you hold up 3 fingers and then a sub-boss comes out with the peons? Or does he come out by himself? Or what? I don't understand how these guys get into the narrative.

Sub-Bosses come in whenever the Antagonists want them to. Their entrance is narrated by the Antagonists, along with who the Sub-Boss is and why they are gonna kill the PC. So how they come in is pretty damn flexible. We've had them pop out of the shadows, hovering around Bosses, appearing from behind corners, coming back from the dead, etc. As with all uses of Kick, the Protagonist has no say in when or how a Sub-Boss enters, and whilst they can make suggestions, the Antagonists have the final say on when a Sub-Boss triggers an encounter or a Wave with a PC. I'm going to have to make all of this a whole lot clearer in the final rulebook.

Assuming that's settled, I'd note the following. A sub-boss has 5 stats. If you assume an average of 3, and that 4 of these will be going at a time in any given combat, that's 4d8 or 18 points. So if you introduce a sub-boss for a whole encounter, I might charge 30 kick for that. But if they only came in for a wave (like General what's his name in Kill Bill) it might be a lot less - maybe 8 points.

Actually, during combat, it's highly likely that all traits will be used. But a Sub-Boss is permanent (until death), so I think 30 Kick should do it.

Still, you want sub-bosses to be lasting characters. I can see a PC calling for a scene where they're trying to outwit a sub-boss, say, in a Style + Luck stealth contest or something like that. Or they might just want to kill him. So I suppose sub-bosses should be noted on the PC's sheet for whom the sub-boss is introduced. Then that same sub-boss can be re-called for when antagonists want to spend the kick, or the PC can put the sub-boss in a scene themselves, in which case it costs no kick at all.

I really like this idea of allowing a Protagonist to bring in a Sub-Boss for free, simply for the coolness they would add to a story. Or, how about this: when a Protagonist brings in a Sub-Boss, they can subtract 5 or 10 points from their Kick, giving them incentive to increase their own challenges by giving a powerful enemy to the Antagonists? How does that sound? If I were to allow Protagonists to reduce their Kick by introducing Sub-Bosses, I'd probably decrease the cost of Sub-Bosses back down to 20 (as it currently is).

Attaching a sub-boss to a particular boss, so that the sub-boss has to be killed before you kill the boss, creates a permanent obstacle in the PCs path. That should therefore cost extra points, maybe +10. If you don't pay this then the guy's just sort of a floating nemesis, someone who shows up at uncomfortable moments, whenever antagonists feel like paying the kick.

Yeah, I like the "floating nemesis" concept better, and this is how the rules currently work.

I'd like to see one of your first three examples be an example of combat. Maybe a couple. You have an example of getting out of a bind, a race, and stat improvement. Then, much much later, Jodi gets four dice for combat. Why just four? Which four? It would help to have some clear examples of all this. I understand that you want situational interpretation of stat applicability, and I'm totally down with that - I think it's good. But some sample situations are really, really helpful for dealing with this IMO.

More examples will be in the final version, at least one per chapter, but more likely one short example for every major rule introduced. Regarding your questions about the Jodi example, she gets 4 dice because she is only a beginning character in her first turn, so she only has points in Style, Weapon, Luck, and Grudge, and those are the four she is using. I should have made that clear in the example (*slaps forehead*).

Thanks for your comments and help so far, and I'm really glad you dig the game!

-Ben

[Sean]

Woof. This is a great discussion. I'll try to come back to some of your individual points later.

As far as the math goes: my reasoning is just that what happens in Scarlet Wake is relatively free-form narration by the player who's turn it is, punctuated by contests which that player calls for.

Contests are determined simply by 'high roll', so a point's a point on either side. But then there are these metagame resources, Fuel and Kick, which match each other 1:1 in terms of accumulation rate.

So. It makes sense to me that the resources match each other. Since Fuel is crystal-clear in definition I start with that and then consider different applications of Kick to match. (Using Kick is the major game decision the antagonists make AFAICT, the only way they can effect tactics, outcomes, etc.  The only other thing I see offhand is the ability to narrate binds. Essentially, the model is that the player tells their own story with the other players' help, but in order to tell their story the player has to accumulate fuel and raise stats through binds, which in turn give the player's antagonists the ability to interfere in their story in ways which make it harder. Is that right?).

'Smart play' would then consist in tempting your foes to burn Kick early, on binds and battles with peons - "we can put her down for a Bind if we just call in a couple extra peons here, dude!" - so that you have more fuel than the other guys have Kick by the time you take on your Boss. Repeat process to victory!

Just a couple of other comments:

1) I too had the thought of dropping "Can't run, can't hide" to 5. After all, the Protagonist can fight back by holding up 1 finger at a time for 5 straight waves. So you're going to need to dump a lot more kick after that first five into extra peons and sub-bosses to really hose the PC on this one.

2) "Sub-bosses come in whenever the antagonists want them to." I still think this needs clarification. You seem to be saying that you pay kick for the sub-boss and then have him 'in hand' to just dump on the PC during any wave that suits. I'd say that's really unbalanced. I think you should have to pay the kick to bring them in whenever you bring them in. You can make the sub-boss a recurring character anyway, or have more than one, whatever. But in terms of game mechanics, they're essentially free dice equal to the character's. So if those dice jump into a wave I guess it should be paid for every time.

3) Let's say you pay the kick to introduce extra peons for a whole encounter (or the whole rest of it), ditto with sub-bosses. So in that case Kick works just like Fire here except that maybe you can bring it in in the middle (not just before the first wave).

In that case, yeah, 4 points per Peon Rank is right by my calculations, because you're getting an average return of 2.5 per peon rank vs. .65 per Fuel. So 4 Kick = 2.6 and that's about right.

For sub-bosses you can consider it to be an extra 5d8 = 22.5 points. Whoa! That's about 35 Kick for a fair exchange on a sub-boss.

You could lower this a little if the idea was that the sub-boss came in INSTEAD of the peons. So the guy holds up 3 fingers and instead of say 9 dice worth of peons you send in a sub-boss instead. But actually 9d4=5d8 in terms of averages, so there the sub-boss would be free. (This threatens to get complicated if you open it up too much. You want a rule of thumb here. I'm already assuming R3's.)

4. I like the idea of reducing kick to hose yourself. Maybe either side can substitute sub-bosses for peons at appropriate cost; the player has to declare it early (by giving, I don't know, an OK sign along with the number of fingers, or something), but the antagonists can bring it in with kick. Again, though, this is kind of complex/optional rule kind of stuff.

5. The fight with the crazy 88 - this is one of the greatest film fights ever. Note, though, that it breaks down into a lot of waves, and though some of those waves involve a dozen peons at once, others just involve 1 or 2. Even though the room's full of people - Sim begone! The Bride can hold the other 8 at bay with her steely glance while she fights two or three - that's just a free product of narration, so your system's hot for that. But note that when General what's his name comes in everyone else fades out - the sub-boss at work and the peons fade out for some crazy stuff.

But why wouldn't you consider the Crazy 88 O-Ren's normal crew? I mean, they could be bonus peons, but they wouldn't have to be.

What I had in mind is that when you brought extra peons in for an encounter it would just be invoking the boss' pre-existing peons. But that's not what you have in mind.

In this case, it needs to be clear whether the bonus peons last beyond the dimensions of that encounter. I think now that you think they do, but if so, they need to cost more points, and again it has to be distinguished whether they are free-floating peons (like the free-floating sub-boss) or whether they are tied down to the boss they're invoked under.

OK, no more time for this today. Good luck with it! I hope I'm making sense here.

[Sean]

Oh yeah, one more thing.

Have you played Great Ork Gods? I'd really recommend you give it a shot. The metagame currency of Goblins and Spite is structurally similar in some respects to what I think you're doing with Fuel and Kick, though the implementation, color, how you get them, etc. is very different. But GOG is tight as hell and uses a metagame resource allocation mechanic with some similarity to Scarlet Wake's so it might be worthwhile for you to play it as a point of comparison, if you haven't already.

Best,

Sean

[Ben O'Neal]

Hey Sean,

Sorry about the delay, I've actually tried to reply twice now, and both times my computer crashed right before I finished. My resulting annoyance detered me from trying again immediately.

Re: GOG, I haven't played it, but I've read up on it alot and have a copy of the play-test rules. I'd like to play it (and a swag of other games), but my gaming group is fairly small, and have been involved in a long-running D&D 3e campaign for years now, which isn't showing any signs of ending soon (I dropped out after a few sessions when I realised that my action choices had no impact on what happened, and taking the higher ground to fire my 4(!) magic missiles at the enemy was akin to standing next to them and spitting on them, for all the advantage it gave me... anyway, I digress). So I content myself with reading about systems and their rules and imagining how they work.

'Smart play' would then consist in tempting your foes to burn Kick early, on binds and battles with peons - "we can put her down for a Bind if we just call in a couple extra peons here, dude!" - so that you have more fuel than the other guys have Kick by the time you take on your Boss. Repeat process to victory!

Yep, and this is pretty much how it turns out. PC takes on baddies, baddies use Kick to trigger Bind and simultaneously leave the PC with heaps of Fuel, PC escapes Bind, burns Fire, kicks ass.

1) I too had the thought of dropping "Can't run, can't hide" to 5. After all, the Protagonist can fight back by holding up 1 finger at a time for 5 straight waves. So you're going to need to dump a lot more kick after that first five into extra peons and sub-bosses to really hose the PC on this one.

Coolness.

2) "Sub-bosses come in whenever the antagonists want them to." I still think this needs clarification. You seem to be saying that you pay kick for the sub-boss and then have him 'in hand' to just dump on the PC during any wave that suits. I'd say that's really unbalanced. I think you should have to pay the kick to bring them in whenever you bring them in. You can make the sub-boss a recurring character anyway, or have more than one, whatever. But in terms of game mechanics, they're essentially free dice equal to the character's. So if those dice jump into a wave I guess it should be paid for every time.

Ok, I'll try to clarify: When you pay the Kick, that's when the Sub-Boss comes in, right at that moment. You can't pay for a Sub-Boss in scene 1 and bring it into the game in scene 3.

Also, I'm not sure what you mean about "it should be paid for every time". That doesn't seem to make sense to me. What if you run out of Kick, or you just don't pay? Does the Sub-Boss just sorta fade away? I think paying for the Sub-Boss once should allow the Sub-Boss to remain until it is killed, to avoid the cheap tactic of ending an encounter just to remove the Sub-Boss.

3) Let's say you pay the kick to introduce extra peons for a whole encounter (or the whole rest of it), ditto with sub-bosses. So in that case Kick works just like Fire here except that maybe you can bring it in in the middle (not just before the first wave).

In that case, yeah, 4 points per Peon Rank is right by my calculations, because you're getting an average return of 2.5 per peon rank vs. .65 per Fuel. So 4 Kick = 2.6 and that's about right.

For sub-bosses you can consider it to be an extra 5d8 = 22.5 points. Whoa! That's about 35 Kick for a fair exchange on a sub-boss.

You could lower this a little if the idea was that the sub-boss came in INSTEAD of the peons. So the guy holds up 3 fingers and instead of say 9 dice worth of peons you send in a sub-boss instead. But actually 9d4=5d8 in terms of averages, so there the sub-boss would be free. (This threatens to get complicated if you open it up too much. You want a rule of thumb here. I'm already assuming R3's.)

Cool. 4 Kick per Peon per rank sounds good then. 35 Kick sound good for the Sub-Bosses too. Balance!

But I'd prefer to allow for Peons AND a Sub-Boss. Remember, only the Antagonist owns the Sub-Bosses, so if a PC calls for 9 Peons, they could be fighting 9 Peons AND a Sub-Boss, because only the Antagonists can decide if and when a Sub-Boss joins in on a Wave. Thus, more ass-kicking power and tactical, because if you know there's a Sub-Boss on the field, you have to be more wary about how many enemies you take on.

4. I like the idea of reducing kick to hose yourself. Maybe either side can substitute sub-bosses for peons at appropriate cost; the player has to declare it early (by giving, I don't know, an OK sign along with the number of fingers, or something), but the antagonists can bring it in with kick. Again, though, this is kind of complex/optional rule kind of stuff.

Cool. So Protagonists can put a Sub-Boss into play to gain back, say, 20 Kick? This could be helpful if they are afraid of having their PC killed because of massive Kick. I'm not sure if I'd want the whole "Peons converting into Sub-Bosses" thing, mainly because it doesn't make much sense in-game, but also because it's a bit too complicated I think.

But a thought just occured to me, currently, a PC can end an encounter by simply "walking away", but that's really quite vague and doesn't have a definite mechanical aspect like practically everything else does. So what if, when a PC wants to end an encounter where some opponents are still alive, they have to gain 5 Kick (which could then be used in a future encounter to prevent them from ending it)? I think this makes a definite statement about the end of an encounter, and gives incentive to actually slog through it and not chicken out. What do you reckon?

5. The fight with the crazy 88 - this is one of the greatest film fights ever. Note, though, that it breaks down into a lot of waves, and though some of those waves involve a dozen peons at once, others just involve 1 or 2. Even though the room's full of people - Sim begone! The Bride can hold the other 8 at bay with her steely glance while she fights two or three - that's just a free product of narration, so your system's hot for that. But note that when General what's his name comes in everyone else fades out - the sub-boss at work and the peons fade out for some crazy stuff.

I agree: Best Fight Ever. Also, you just basically described exactly my observations when creating the rules for encounters in SW. But for the record, and this is entirely subjective, I consider the General whoever to be an R5 Peons amidst a group of R1 Peons. All the Protagonist has to do to simulate that fight is hold up 1 finger, and then the Antagonists can throw an R5 at them. On the other hand, GoGo is definitely a Sub-Boss.

But why wouldn't you consider the Crazy 88 O-Ren's normal crew? I mean, they could be bonus peons, but they wouldn't have to be.

Yes. They Crazy 88 could be one of two things: a whole bunch of Peons that the Protagonist put down for her Boss; Or, they could be a smaller group that the Protagonist put down for her Boss, plus a whole lot more that the Antagonists brought in with Kick. There's absolutely nothing to prevent or favour either of these two situations (in fact, if you were to use the rules to simulate the whole movie of Kill Bill, it would more likely be the first one).

What I had in mind is that when you brought extra peons in for an encounter it would just be invoking the boss' pre-existing peons. But that's not what you have in mind.

I think we're talking past each other here, perhaps. When you say "a boss' pre-existing peons", I'm thinking in terms of the in-game narrative world, where anything goes, so sure, they could be justified any way you want. I'm not sure, but I think maybe you are meaning something like "if a Boss has 15 peons written on The List, and the PC calls for 5 in a Wave, then you can send 8 at her, where the extra 3 are simply taken from the existing 15". Is that correct? If so, I think that allowing this would sorta negate the control the PC has over how many Peons come at them each Wave. If you had to pay Kick to do this, then I don't see why you would choose to send a larger portion of the existing Peons at her, instead of sending extra Peons, when the second option increases the overall difficulty as well as the immediate Wave difficulty, but the first option only increases the current Wave. But maybe you are meaning something else and I don't know what.

In this case, it needs to be clear whether the bonus peons last beyond the dimensions of that encounter. I think now that you think they do, but if so, they need to cost more points, and again it has to be distinguished whether they are free-floating peons (like the free-floating sub-boss) or whether they are tied down to the boss they're invoked under.

Well, I'm thinking that extra Peons can last only for the encounter that they are invoked into, but Sub-Bosses last till death. I think this would work especially well if a PC had to gain Kick to leave an unfinished encounter.

Are we getting somewhere or what! :)

Thanks,
-Ben