[Want] Ronnies feedback

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I'm writing up the games more or less in order of submission, but it might strike me to do otherwise along the way. For instance, sooner or later I might decide to do a full run of threads for the winners. Feeling my way as I go ...

Want, by Ben Lehman, already has a discussion thread going in [Want] Tuning hatred, which is a good thing. A lot of my comments do overlap with its topic, but maybe this thread can be dedicated to my point that when a game's currency is broken, then the reward system cannot work, and if that cannot work, then there can't be a big-picture of play. At least not for me, how I see and enjoy RPGs working.

Here are the brushed-up versions of my written notes.

1. Neat flip side of Nicotine Girls, in terms of situations and basic conflicts ... but lacking validation of any possible actions. It reads (or as I infer, plays) like an exercise in hatred, which might or might not be fun. I'm thinking maybe the biggest picture of play might be most like kill puppies for satan ... given that you can see your character suffer horribly and mightily and deservedly, would you? But that requires a very big leap-and-stretch on my part to imagine happening. Although it does match well with my experiences playing The Shab-al-Hiri Roach, in which "winning" is actually a cover for thematic impact, a legitimate secondary the point of play.

2. I'm unfortunately confused by the most important mechanics-explanation in the text, which is probably due to a typo:

# of players d4 d6 d6 d8
   Status Dignity Clout
2 Clout Status Dignity
3 ----- Clout Status Dignity
4 ----- Dignity Clout Status
5 ----- Status Dignity Clout
6 Dignity Clout Status
7 Status Dignity Clout

It looks to me as if there's a line corresponding to a single player, even though the "1" isn't there. It makes me wary, because this table is clearly crucial, and yet I wonder whether the combinations are supposed to be shifted down one level? Is the current line for "1 player" supposed to be shifted down to "2," and so on? Or should it be ignored? Or does it apply to "1," just not labeled as such (the easiest interpretation)?

3. The relationship between keeping rolls secret or revealing them, with the nuance of showing some players but not others, escapes me. The rival rolls the current player's Insecurity dice, checks them out, and decides whom to show them to - one, some, or all of the other participants, as far as I can tell. There's a kind of Dogs dynamic, including the "take the blow" option, combined with a bluff/revelation tactic, which I'm not sure is powering enough fictional conflict. Perhaps this is tied into some of the Gamist qualities or context that Ben mentions (or briefly adopts) in his thread.

A related point concerns what "successes" are - the dice showing successful pip values, I think - and how they relate to the "successful attempts," which if I'm not mistaken, would be larger-scale events as determined by accumulated successes. Or I could be mistaken.

Right about this point in writing these notes is when I realized that I couldn't grasp just how to play from the description - and in combination with not yet seeing "why" (point #1), that bumped Want down the list. Ben's thread about the currency reinforces my conclusion, because the link between how & why is the currency, during play. I'm looking forward to that thread developing and leading to the further development of the game.

4. Minor point: I think the player-gender rules are an unnecessary tweak. As the author of Sex & Sorcery, I'm clearly motivated to see this sort of stuff get into game texts, but if the order could be (for instance) reversed with no effect on play, then there's no point to them in the first place.

I heartily support the idea that Want should be published with recipes.

Best,
Ron

[Ben Lehman]

Thanks for the feedback!  It seems like I managed to munge some of the major points of the game (not surprising, as writing a game in 6 hours leaves some gaps).  Huh.  I'll explain what I actually meant the text to say, below. 

PSA: This is bad form for a critique, as I should just go make the changes to the text directly, but whatever.

Want, by Ben Lehman, already has a discussion thread going in [Want] Tuning hatred, which is a good thing. A lot of my comments do overlap with its topic, but maybe this thread can be dedicated to my point that when a game's currency is broken, then the reward system cannot work, and if that cannot work, then there can't be a big-picture of play. At least not for me, how I see and enjoy RPGs working.

Yup.  I understand what you meant now.

Here are the brushed-up versions of my written notes.

1. Neat flip side of Nicotine Girls, in terms of situations and basic conflicts ... but lacking validation of any possible actions. It reads (or as I infer, plays) like an exercise in hatred, which might or might not be fun. I'm thinking maybe the biggest picture of play might be most like kill puppies for satan ... given that you can see your character suffer horribly and mightily and deservedly, would you? But that requires a very big leap-and-stretch on my part to imagine happening. Although it does match well with my experiences playing The Shab-al-Hiri Roach, in which "winning" is actually a cover for thematic impact, a legitimate secondary the point of play.

The game isn't really a Kill Puppies for Satan game.  It is really more of a trade-off between Self (in a trivial way) and Loved Ones (in a very important way), with the "winning" conditions heavily slanted towards Self.

2. I'm unfortunately confused by the most important mechanics-explanation in the text, which is probably due to a typo:

# of players d4 d6 d6 d8
   Status Dignity Clout
2 Clout Status Dignity
3 ----- Clout Status Dignity
4 ----- Dignity Clout Status
5 ----- Status Dignity Clout
6 Dignity Clout Status
7 Status Dignity Clout

It looks to me as if there's a line corresponding to a single player, even though the "1" isn't there. It makes me wary, because this table is clearly crucial, and yet I wonder whether the combinations are supposed to be shifted down one level? Is the current line for "1 player" supposed to be shifted down to "2," and so on? Or should it be ignored? Or does it apply to "1," just not labeled as such (the easiest interpretation)?

The idea is that you are supposed to read the number of players in the game, and add all dice in that row and all rows beneath into a shared pool, which players then draft from in turn order.  The reason that the 1 isn't present is because you cannot play Want as a 1 player game.  Or, rather, it would be quite boring.

3. The relationship between keeping rolls secret or revealing them, with the nuance of showing some players but not others, escapes me. The rival rolls the current player's Insecurity dice, checks them out, and decides whom to show them to - one, some, or all of the other participants, as far as I can tell. There's a kind of Dogs dynamic, including the "take the blow" option, combined with a bluff/revelation tactic, which I'm not sure is powering enough fictional conflict. Perhaps this is tied into some of the Gamist qualities or context that Ben mentions (or briefly adopts) in his thread.

Let's see if I can make this clearer.  Here's the process of play for a scene.

1) Explain next step in plan, rough scene framing.
2) Rival rolls dice, keeps them hidden.
3) Play out scene.
4) At any point during the scene, rival may reveal a failed roll.  Either this derails the plan -> gain Frustration and end turn, or the Housewife sacrifices something to turn it into a success and continues the scene.
5) Step 4 repeats up to three times, depending on the number of failed rolls.
6) When the rival is out of failed rolls, she says so, and we wrap up the scene.

The whole nonsense with revealing the hidden rolls to non-active players is just so that the Rival can, if she likes, solicit advice and kibbitzing from neighbor players.  That's all.  In hindsight, I should not have included that text at all.

A related point concerns what "successes" are - the dice showing successful pip values, I think - and how they relate to the "successful attempts," which if I'm not mistaken, would be larger-scale events as determined by accumulated successes. Or I could be mistaken.

Right about this point in writing these notes is when I realized that I couldn't grasp just how to play from the description - and in combination with not yet seeing "why" (point #1), that bumped Want down the list. Ben's thread about the currency reinforces my conclusion, because the link between how & why is the currency, during play. I'm looking forward to that thread developing and leading to the further development of the game.

In short: Success = successful die roll (1-3 showing) or a die roll converted into a success through a sacrifice.  I changed terminology halfway through writing the game, and while I tried to clean it up, I'm not terribly surprised that it was confusing.

4. Minor point: I think the player-gender rules are an unnecessary tweak. As the author of Sex & Sorcery, I'm clearly motivated to see this sort of stuff get into game texts, but if the order could be (for instance) reversed with no effect on play, then there's no point to them in the first place.

My basic idea was to have players closer to the actual characters be given a mechanical advantage.  This seemed like a good idea at the time.

I heartily support the idea that Want should be published with recipes.

I have such plans for this... such plans...

Thanks again.  This clears a lot of things up.  Now that I know that the text is nearly illegible, I will clean it up before I ask anyone to comment on it.

yrs--
--Ben