[SW playtest] - first conflicts happening.

[Tobias]

Ok, so after the previous actual play post, Sydney made a bold leader type guy, and Andrew made an obedient follower type.

Sydney wanted to affect the Pillar of Obedience, so he's possessed a special agent in WWII and parachuted into German-Held The Netherlands to help Werner von Braun defect.

I want to change the pillar of Ambition, so I've possessed a radio and TV executive during a big meeting to discuss what exactly is going to be televised of the moon landing.

My first conflict ran thus:

I slide the folder towards me slowly, not opening it yet.

"You know", I mumble out loud, "maybe we'd be wise to build on selling the danger of the Russkies, and the need for something to counter them, rather than invest a lot of mass enthusiasm in this. The people don't make these decisions by popular support anyway, and if this bold plan were to fail, it'd be easier to cover something up that they fear, rather than lose all their enthusiasm. Either way, we win."

I look up and stare Crawford in the face. "Ah sorry, just thinking out loud. Let me have a look at the details a bit closer first. Perhaps there are some other good bits in here we can use to make people enthusiastic about this. You know what P.T. Barnum said... People are going to love looking at that stark cold moon anyway... Can you imagine the pristine beauty?"

Ok, my specifics are:

Attempted action: Trying to sway Lt. Crawford towards an appreciation of not going for an increase in popular support of this Ambitious plan (read: making him suggestible to my upcoming suggestion on speech and/or picture being piped in live during the upcoming landing.)

Possible Danger (possible host revolt): It will be noticed in the room that this is against my Host's usual pro-active and optimistic nature - and the Host won't like this negativism either.

Possible Danger (no wound, really): What I want is against Crawford's own private, as-of-yet unstated agenda.

If everyone agrees with this, my roll result is:

5, 6, 2, 4

I have chosen not to activate my mentor power previously. The pillar of Ambition is something I'm not too good with, so I get a -1. I'd reduce the 2 to a 1, and distribute as follows:

Narration: 5 (I get to Narrate and get a Legacy Point)

Attempted Action: 6 (Crawford is positively swayed towards a 'fear' approach on the broadcast day itself, and -1 to the Ambition Pillar)

Possible danger 1: 4 (The room does not notice my 'more-negative-than-normal' approach)

Possible danger 2: 1 (While Crawford is swayed towards the general use and value, this doesn't suit his private agenda. The next conflict will be about Crawford and his Agenda becoming manifest - possibly with him becoming violent, even (since this was in the 'wound' danger category).

Sydney's first conflict ran thus:

Tobias wrote:
   As you touch down between some trees, you are distracted by flashlights ahead. You hear shouted voices in what seems to be German, but you cannot make out exactly what they say. Through the trees, having the benefit of those people lighting themselves up nicely for you, you make out what appear to be SS uniforms. Uh-Oh. Can you get past these guys (and their fellows between you and the professor), and meet up with your contact?
   Possible dangers: Parachute snagging on trees, you being spotted, bad landing is bad for ankle, etc. Likely Goal: Get past the SS.

And I respond:
   Of COURSE he gets spotted. What's the fun if he doesn't? The question is whether he can get unspotted again.
   Oh, and his Passion-related goal here is to decrease Obedience. (Note since I'm only allowed to set personal goals 12 points off from the master list, and Obedience is already at +15, even if I spent all my deviation points on it, I still couldn't get it below zero. But consider this a preemptive strike against anyone else getting Obedience a lot higher. Or am I misinterpreting the "own goal" rules?)
   And I kinda need a name for the ride, don't I? "Captain Jack Carter, US Army" -- that'll do.

And I narrate:
   Low-altitude insertion, my ass. Here I am with barely enough altitude to open my chute and the damned flyboys still can't stay under radar. Well, "the hard is what makes it great," right?
   And damn, but I feel ON FIRE tonight. It's as if the whole world's playing at half speed....

And mechanics:
   All three transcendent powers are active: Bestow Skillset (athletic), Biofeedback, and Time Dilation. Cost: 3 IP. Benefit: 3 (!) bonus dice.
   Attemped action: Evade the SS, in the process proving the superiority of American individualism and filling them with doubt about their leadership (Obedience goes down).
   Danger 1 (with rebellion): The ride (Carter) panics and bolts in a random direction through the woods, taking him away from his rendezvous with his contact and filling him with self-doubt -- or is it more than his self he's doubting?
   Danger 2 (with wound): The Nazis put a bullet in him before he gets away.

And I roll -- 4 automatic dice + 3 bonus:
   (Strictly speaking, since I'm a work and don't have a die, I use the ending digit from a bunch of phone numbers and ignore anything that's not 1-6):
   1, 2, 6, 1, 4, 5, 2
   -1 to one die for being on neither his main Passion or a secondary (not that he has a secondary): drop a 2 to a 1
   Discard three dice: 1, 1, (2-1 = 1)
   Keep 4: 2, 4, 5, 6
   Allocate:
   Action: 6 -- complete success, Obedience drops by 1, conflict ends
   Danger 1: 5 -- success
   Danger 2: 4 -- sucess
   Narration/Legacy: 2 -- no legacy point, and someone else narrates (who wants it?)

To which I replied the following:

Coolness!

There's an error in your dice-rolling and -boosting, though:

- as you can read on page 6 (and 9) of the .pdf, supapowerz can only give you +1 die, max.
- as you can read on page 6, bestow skillset is something that gives you +1 on any one die - for all conflicts.

So, say, you activate time dilation and athletics (no need to activate biofeedback yet, but if you like biofeedback better thematically, that's fine as well). Costs 2, you get the 1 bonus die for this conflict, and +1 on all other conflicts.

To not slow us down, I suggest you've spent these 2, managed to roll the same numbers with 5 dice (with one die boosted) instead of 7, and can go on with the (cool!) scene.

and later, also this:

Oh, and on the 'own goal' thing.

We, as a group, have decided that obedience should be +15.

As an individual, you could deviate 12 points, like you said, and get your personal goal to be +3.

Which means that you'd be trying to increase it, in that case, I think, but not by much. So you probably'd not start out with increasing it, since others will also do some of the work for you. Of course, if your personal goal is indeed only +3, you could start out decreasing obedience, 'forcing' me and Andrew to work together to get it back up again. Of course, you're not very likely to get cooperation die buying from me, in that case. ;)

I hope this doesn't come across as excessively number-crunchy to any readers - the numbers seem to come fairly easily (to me), rolling and assigning is fun to do, and the story that's coming alive is cool (to me).

(There's more story-writing and scene-setting (for instance, Andrew's sweet framing of my post-ride conflict), but I've omitted it for now - the hassle of having it span multiple e-mail messages).

I'm also going to experiment with the rule that a different player may set one of the dangers, instead of the acting player. Previously, that effect was supposed to be created by the player setting action and dangers in line with whatever had been narrated as the outcome of the previous conflict, but that may be too vague (or I just need to clarify this in writing).

We're fairly care-free with who gets to narrate (whoever feels like it can get it), but some mechanics (and suggestions are welcome) on how to structure this might be good, especially with larger group sizes (although I  think the current mechanics aren't set up for more than 4 players).

As ever, if anyone else would like to try this, I'm available for assistance, just not for IRC play.

[Mike Holmes]

OK, where can one find this game? Never heard of it. Something you guys are working on?

When posting about it, maybe use another abbreviation, because I read it as "Star Wars" and I'll bet others do too (I'll have to think about not abbreviating my Shadow World games SW either). :-)

Mike

[Andrew Morris]

Mike,

Schrodinger's War is the work-in-progress game created as a result of the GroupDesign project initiated by Tobias op den Brouw. Basically, it's an attempt to design an RPG entirely by Forge members online. Search "GroupDesign" and you'll find a bunch of threads. Everyone is welcome to contribute.

[EDIT]

Oh, and you can find Tobias' current rules concept in his sig. That's what we're playtesting right now. My sig has an old thread that points to some of the earlier threads.

[Doug Ruff]

It's good to see some Actual Play from this project at last, thanks for posting this!

I've got one burning question here, especially as it's giving me hassles for my own draft. It looks as though the Archivist player is framing the conflict and the resolution.

Is this true, and is it working for you? Because I've got a similar set up at the moment with my rules, and I'm getting the feeling that this makes it harder for other players to get involved with the conflicts.

(Jargon note: I believe that this is a Czege Principle thing, the idea that if one player is responsible for providing the adversity and the resolution, this isn't much fun.)

So, I really want to know if this is having an impact on your game - it sounds like you are having fun, but is this because of the mechanics or for other reasons?

[Mike Holmes]

Oh, that game. Cool. Don't know why it didn't register. Shoulda just mentioned it for those who don't read the Indy Design forum.

Hmm. I'm not read up on the design, but, quickly, can you describe how different these rules might be from the general consensus rules? Or, if that's not a sensible request, basically is the current design doing what you intended in terms of how you decided to go with it - as opposed to other of the ideas that people had with the design?

Basically I'm trying to get a handle on how much one needs to have a single person "finish" one of these to make it play effectively.

Mike

[Andrew Morris]

Well, right now individuals are coming up with mechanics. Then we'll test them out and see what works, and what doesn't. From that, we should have a final set of mechanics.

I think it's too early to comment on how the mechanics are working out, but Tobias or Sydney might have something to say.

[Tobias]

Heh. I could've been clearer with my linking and explaining, yes. And I'll use the full name for now.

Time to answer some questions. Doug and Andrew have given theirs (and they're good), I'll give you mine as well.

Doug - your question is a good one, and some of those issues have recently been discussed (again) on Vincent's site in this  thread. The thread above the link also has some interesting statements on acting and the role of audience.

Yes, at some point, an Archivist player might frame both the conflict (attempted action & possible dangers) and earn the right to narrate it's results (according to the priorities that player assigns). It's not fully open-ended: the narration has to abide by the outcomes the other 3 assigned dice give.

If a player doesn't like narrating the outcome, but just wants to narrate his intentions, this is achieved fairly easily by assigning a low priority to the narration outcome (page 8 of the pdf, if you have it). This may be good for players who would find it hard to get involved with conflicts otherwise.

If a player does like to narrate (sometimes it can even be cool to describe the excrutiating failure, and your resolve to rise to the challenge), this will require a high-value assigned die, thus making it more likely that he'll be forced to incorporate a lesser success in his narration.

We're having fun, yes. I personally enjoy games like Universalis and the Otherkind-esque mechanic my SW draft uses. It is not wholly clear to me whether the mechanics are 'not getting in the way' or 'fully supporting and creating play'.  More tests needed, I think. Maybe Sydney and Andrew will  also say a bit more?

Mike - a quick description how these rules are different from general concensus rules - right. Well, afaik, there are no 'general consensus rules'. There are a lot of setting elements and decisions we want player to handle during play ('what do you do' and 'what matters to you'). A number of things we wish to express in mechanics, such as burn, fade, the neccessity to make hard choices, etc.

The rules in the .pdf are my take on it. I've basically tweaked the otherkind mechanic because it would incorporate the concepts, mechanics, and type of play I thought was wanted (by everyone, but favoring my own points somewhat). It's been commented that my design is as much GroupDesign as it is Iron Chef, though.

The points I could not incorporate will be incorporated by others, I hope (in their designs, or as suggestions to or inspiration for my design). There's a danger of our designs being fundamentally incompatible - in that case, hopefully, more than one interesting game will be produced.

The one I put out is, basically, mechanically 'finished' (although there are 1 or 2 blind spots, and I've missed describing one likely engame state). I think there will be flaws yet undiscovered, but for now, fun is being had (which is 'effective play', I guess).

What the 'endgame' of the project will be, I cannot predict. For now, my game is the only one out there, but I'm not going to rush Doug with his own design - sometimes, these things take time.

The design discussion(s) seem to have died down, but that's natural, as it had become time to start forging things with those elements. Perhaps, after some more Actual play, there will be another round of reconsideration. But perhaps Sydney can chime in here as well.

[Tobias]

Oh, and here's Andrew's narration on Sydney's results:

Andrew Narrates:

With the dark, windy night whistling in his ears, Carter spots the SS squad long before he hears it. Bundling up the chute as quickly as possible while still remaining silent, Carter stuffs the bulky silk into a convenient hollow in a tree trunk. It's not a perfect fit, and the light cloth stands out against the rest of the forest, but it's the best that he can do on short notice.

Circling around the SS members, Carter carefully makes his way through the woods, moving slowly. His stealth is for nothing, however, because as he keeps his eyes on the enemy in front of him, he practically walks into a flanker he didn't notice.

The German's eyes widen and his chest rises as he draws in breath for a shout of alarm. In his heightened state, it's a fatal mistake – Carter's hands strike out like vipers and latch around the soldier's throat. A frantic, silent struggle ensues, but Carter wins out after a minute or so.

Sizing up his fallen opponent, Carter realizes a swift change of clothing is in order, and strips down to his skivvies, pulling on the dead man's uniform. As an afterthought, he puts his own uniform on the corpse.

As he is fastening the last buttons on the soldier's new uniform, Carter is blinded by a sudden glare from several flashlights shining in his face. Harsh words in German ring out. Thinking fast, Carter racks his brain for what little he knows of German. "Es ist der Amerikaner," he shouts, pointing to the corpse. For a moment, the flashlight beams swing away.

A moment is all the Archivist-enhanced Carter needs. His M1 is raised in a flash, taking out two of the Nazis and sending the rest diving for cover. Bolting for the safety of the dark woods, Carter zig-zags away as bullets whine past, uncomfortably close. A moment later, he bursts onto a cleared dirt road. A lone German soldier leans up against the side of a jeep, smoking a cigarette. His gun is propped up against the bumper, out of arms reach. Motioning the startled soldier away from the vehicle, Carter jumps in and rockets back down the road in his stolen vehicle, shouting, "God bless America, you goose-stepping bastards!"

And here's my narration on my own results, with the next conflict rolled, this time passing away narration:

(Narration from me. My host name is Evan Jefferson, The archivist is Guy)

Crawford's eyes narrow, and while Evan's early mumblings mix, roilingly, with the smoke of soft hard-tech boys and hard military men, his next words are more like the cutting of a cold wind.

"Given the previous affair you were involved in, I'm sure we don't want any people to get scared and start... say... *remembering* things", he says, his voice as tight as his fists are.

This is striking a cord with Guy. Here he is, fixing the errors of his own attempt at triumphant science, by tackling the potential errors of another experiment. With one major difference - the one he's facing right now will, at least, go right - if he understands this time travel stuff correctly.

Reinforced by that near-certainty, Guy is the one that steps up to the plate. A wave of almost righteous certainty sweeps over Evan. It's thrilling, to Evan - he's been stressed out lately, but he's always know he was on the top of his game. Here he is, playing the game again, and for some reason this Crawford guy is giving him a hard time about the Apollo 1 bussiness - the one where Evan was brought on board himself to fix? Now that's one play Evan is going to shut down, and right NOW.

Evan stands up calmly, not drawing the attention of the room to himself, and tosses a carefully nonchalant smile into the room, signaling "let me cool down this insignificant scuffle so we can get on with things".

He speaks calmly: "That's right, Lieutenant, in fact, that's EXACTLY right. So let's not repeat any of that 'great steps forward' propaganda we used back then, eh?." With more sweeping enthusiasm, his voice filling the room: "A fresh new visual style is what we could use. I imagine the moon will give us some amazing visuals. We could draw in people through their kids - a 'draw your own moon' contest, for instance. Utopian. Then, once we show images, we can always stress the austere beauty of the place."

Meanwhile, Guy is furiously thinking of more methods where the people will be satisfied with their nation's achievement, but less likely to be striving for more, by subtly disappointing them. This Crawford's a distraction from convincing the people in the room though.

Attempted action: Outtalk Crawford, shut him up with an appeal to authority, and bulldoze on (verbally) with an appeal to the room.

Possible danger 1 (Host revolt): The host will start questioning his new-found bravery and run out of steam, leaving someone else in the room in the verbal driving seat.

Possible danger 2 (Wound): Crawford will deck him.

Die rolls as previous, result: 5 3 3 5 (I've got an Excel sheet set up for this).

Gotta subtract 1 from a roll: 5 2 3 5.

Assigning:

Narration: 2 (someone else may narrate)
Action: 5 (crawford's outtalked, the room's on Evan's side, Ambition -1, makes -2 total now) Danger 1: 5 (the host feels fine with his confidence, and keeps going) Danger 2: 3 (Crawford decks Evan! Ouch!)

[Mike Holmes]

Mike - a quick description how these rules are different from general concensus rules - right.

This about says it all.

Basically, I've been involved in this sort of thing before, and it always strikes me the same - without a leader with a single consistent vision of how the thing should work in the end, it's nigh impossible to reach a consensus on how rules should work.

What it sounds like the threads produced was a "design specification" if anything, and little to no actual design at all. In the one other game that I worked on substantially, it only advanced past this stage to the extent that I or one of the other designers tried to drive things towards a particular goal. In which case, it became not too dissimilar from putting your design goals out on Indie Design, and asking for help there.

Well, I'll be interested in seeing where this one goes.

Mike

[Tobias]

The groupdesign threads hammered out useful bits of setting and some mechanics and concepts that were thought interesting. They could be considered part of any design to be realised, or design specifications, at that point.

I think the particular medium, with it's associated time-lags and slowness compared to f2f interaction, was a contributor to people picking up the pieces and moulding a complete game to their vision. (This is theoretical - as of now, I'm the only one). No concensus on individual rules & design bits could be reached, because there wasn't enough social dynamic driving the group towards unity. It's easier to progress flying solo if communication channels are smaller.

It might indeed become a case of me driving towards my goal, and Doug towards his, and Sydney, Andrew, or other upcoming writings, driving towards theirs.

Of course, it's also a matter of effort, give and take. I'm much more inclined, at this stage, to honor requests from Sydney, Andrew, and Doug (and some others), because they've alway been driving forces. Or new people that pop up, show they've digested the things we've written, and put in the time on their own (which is hard, of course, since the first Groupdesign post is now a relic of the past).

And I'm just as interested as you in where it goes. I just hope the differing design all get some good actual play.

[Andrew Morris]

without a leader with a single consistent vision of how the thing should work in the end, it's nigh impossible to reach a consensus on how rules should work.

Ahh, that's one of the first potential problems we identified in the earliest discussion. That's why we elected a leader (initially Tobias, but he transferred the responsibility to Sydney) to provide a "this is the way it will be" ruling whenever consensus couldn't be reached by the group.

As to working out what we've got so far (setting and feel of the game), there were many ideas and competing concepts. We discussed, explained, and argued. In the end, we either agreed to common elements, or voted on them to achieve a decision. Neither Tobias nor Sydney was particularly forceful in using/abusing their power, though Sydney certainly may have to do just that if we have many opposing (and mutually exclusive) mechanics.

[Doug Ruff]

I think the real test of this will be when we have more than one system to compare, which is why I'm feeling the pressure right now. Which is good, it's going to give me some focus.

Because part of the plan, when we decided to split away for a while, is that we'd line everything up together at some point and see if it was possible to reintegrate the separate designs into a single game.

I'm not sure that this will be possible, but it's going to be fun to find out.

By the way, is anyone else doing their own thing right now, or are y'all waiting on me?

[Andrew Morris]

GroupDesign waits on no man, Doug!

Seriously, take your time and come up with something you feel comfortable putting your name on. I'm putting something together, myself, but I can't see it being ready (given my current available free time) until late April, at best.

[Edit: Oh, and of course, if anyone else wants to jump in on the fun, feel free to read through the old threads and come up with your own mechanics.]