[All Growed Up] Ronnies feedback

[Ron Edwards]

ALL GROWED UP, STEVE HICKEY

Hello,

Steve Hickey's All Growed Up is probably the strongest hate/alienation game regarding the suburbs among the entries. It reminds me of the films To Die For, River's Edge, Stand By Me, Mean Creek, Gummo (maybe), and so on. Graham, I'd be interestd to know which of these you you like and which you don't, and reflecting on that might be a good means for developing inspirational text and examples.

The text is absolutely right in identifying "winning," in the sense of achieving a specific set of conditions, as only one way to win. It seems especially secondary to me compared with your description of the thematic content of play - especially an honest portrayal/outcome rather than a merely extreme one. Coming up with extreme stuff is easy - actually ripping out your guts to help generate a story which, to you, illuminates or even indicts the entire context of this character's life is much, much more demanding and, as I see it, worthwhile.

I do not, however, see this as something which can be voted upon and compared among one another in terms of performance. If it works, then everyone knows it.

One technique which might help as a major feature of play is Weaving - getting the narrations to affect one another as a basic expectation of play. At present, the game seems more like a bunch of solo talking tacked onto a bag-and-dice rolling competition, and I'm not seeing how anything fictional affects anything else fictional, not as the game goes along. Nor am I seeing anything I'd call dialogue, as opposed to sequential monologues. Since both of these two things seem fundamental to establishing and enjoying a Shared Imagined Space, I'm not seeing All Growed Up, as presented, as playable ... do-able, yes, but that's not the same thing.

That's a neat bag mechanic, too. I'm not familiar with the game Tigris & Euphrates, but this reminds me of Scott Knipe's game, Wyrd.

Best,
Ron

[Graham W]

Steve Hickey's All Growed Up is probably the strongest hate/alienation game regarding the suburbs among the entries. It reminds me of the films To Die For, River's Edge, Stand By Me, Mean Creek, Gummo (maybe), and so on. Graham, I'd be interestd to know which of these you you like and which you don't, and reflecting on that might be a good means for developing inspirational text and examples.

Actually, I haven't seen any of them. Ah well.

As regards the tone of this game, I can see two ways it could go: it could go in a heightened out-of-control high-school-bitchiness direction, along the lines of Heathers and Mean Girls.

Or you could see it going into a grimly realistic suburban nastiness direction. That's the direction suggested by the Inspirations section at the end, which suggests watching Elephant and Bowling for Columbine. Personally, I'd prefer the Heathers direction, but perhaps that's just me.

Could I raise a few other points?

I do agree that some colour text would be good. And I'd especially like to see some examples of play. There's a whole "Phase 2" section which involves the players rolling dice. Now, I assume they're meant to be narrating while they're rolling the dice, but it's not stated explicitly, and some examples would help me understand better what's going on.

The rules generally seem very elegant: they're both simple and engaging. It's a pleasure to find an RPG that, after one read through, I both understand and want to play.

On the dice, though. There's a mechanism for contributing dice to other players. But if the criterion for winning is the highest number of dice in the lowest pool, why would I ever want to donate a die to anyone else? How would that help me win? Or did I miss something?

Finally, there's a very minor point which bugs me. It's the idea of play proceeding in descending order of player's age. I'm not quite sure why this bugs me: perhaps it's that I've seen it quite a lot recently - there's a similar mechanism of determining which player goes first in both (if I've got this right) Want and Bacchanal. I'd rather play just proceed to the left. But that's a personal thing.

Apologies if that sounds like a lot of criticism. It's not meant to be. I like the game a lot, especially the rules mechanism.

Graham

[hix]

Thanks for the feedback. I'm stoked by the kind words! Ron, I really appreciate you organizing this.

Due to real life, I only had 4 hours to write and publish All Growed Up. I wanted a one-shot game that didn't necessarily play like a conventional RPG. So it was explicitly competitive – but as you point out, it lacks interaction between players. That interaction is fundamental to the genre and I did feel its absence while designing. It might be worth noting I was inspired by the resolution mechanic first and then fitted the play around it.

At present, the game seems more like a bunch of solo talking tacked onto a bag-and-dice rolling competition, and I'm not seeing how anything fictional affects anything else fictional, not as the game goes along. Nor am I seeing anything I'd call dialogue, as opposed to sequential monologues.

Agreed! I was wondering why it didn't feel like an RPG. That's a good explanation (especially "I'm not seeing how anything fictional affects anything else fictional"). Addressing the issues in this 'Weaving' paragraph will be the next step in developing the game.

Graham, I thought your criticism was well-balanced & most of it will be easy to implement, after taking care of the issues Ron raised.

There's a mechanism for contributing dice to other players. But if the criterion for winning is the highest number of dice in the lowest pool, why would I ever want to donate a die to anyone else? How would that help me win? Or did I miss something?

I haven't playtested the game yet but my intention was to create a chaotic situation where the values of the dice pools could flip easily. In the heat of designing, I thought it led to a situation where you could easily handicap another player.

For example, given that players declare their preferred pool at the start of the game, you can sabotage their efforts by donating dice to that pool – meaning it'll never be lowest. That's just one option; I think there's more possibilities in there.

I'll have to really dig back into the rules to see whether it accomplishes that 'chaotic flip' goal or provides an incentive to handicap others.

Thanks for the comment about its readability. That was actually what I worked hardest on in the time I had available.

... oh, and what's a bag mechanic?

[Ron Edwards]

Um, "uses a bag." That's all.

Best,
Ron

[hix]

Ron made another comment I've been thinking about:

The text is absolutely right in identifying "winning," in the sense of achieving a specific set of conditions, as only one way to win. It seems especially secondary to me compared with your description of the thematic content of play - especially an honest portrayal/outcome rather than a merely extreme one. Coming up with extreme stuff is easy - actually ripping out your guts to help generate a story which, to you, illuminates or even indicts the entire context of this character's life is much, much more demanding and, as I see it, worthwhile.

I do not, however, see this as something which can be voted upon and compared among one another in terms of performance. If it works, then everyone knows it.

This idea, of contributing honest material about your own life & voting on a winner, was a real late addition to the game. I basically felt that the play that the rules would produce lacked emotional power ... like it lacked a good answer to the "Why would I play this?" question. So:

1.   My solution was directly inspired by Ron's 'Zero to the Bone'.

2.   It created the same issue that's been pointed out with Once Upon a Time, that the 2 possible victory conditions aren't related to one another – one's mechanical (in Once Upon a Time, that's playing the last card; here it's having the winning dice pool), the other's based on emotional satisfaction (OuaT asks if you told a satisfying story; in AGU it's about a gripping portrayal of a character you would have hated to have been).

I haven't had a chance to look back at or revise All Growed Up yet – but figuring out whether these things are incompatible seems to be a big issue. Along with:
"Do I need a victory condition?"
"Am I trying to reward long-term play?"

The more I think about it, the more I feel there are 3 ideas mashed up in there: a dice mechanic, a competitive one-shot & a heartfelt recreation of being a teenager

[GreatWolf]

That's a neat bag mechanic, too. I'm not familiar with the game Tigris & Euphrates, but this reminds me of Scott Knipe's game, Wyrd.

Just an informational note.  (I'm a Tigris & Euphrates fan.)  In T&E, each player has four different victory point categories, and at the end of the game, you use the category with your lowest score to determine your final score.  (e.g.  15/13/7/4 is a final score of 4.)  This design feature discourages specialization, as you must earn points in all categories to win.  It's a really great game blah blah blah but that's not really relevant here.

As I'm skimming the rules for All Growed Up, I'm not seeing how this actually is of benefit to the design.  (I'm open to being corrected, mind you.)  It would seem that, since your fate is ruled by your lowest score, a player would simply attempt to angle for his desired outcome by assigning dice to the other categories.  The game seems to be built around the idea that whichever of these three activities you didn't get out of your system during your teen years is what you're stuck with for your adult life.  "Winning", in this context, doesn't seem to amount to much.  Or is that to try to encourage players to spread around their dice, aiming to come in low in the desired category but "pressing their luck" to get a high winning score?

[hix]

Hi Seth,

What you're saying sounds right. In T&E, players are competing over multiple arenas – so there's an incentive to amass power in each pool but to amass it evenly.

To me that suggests you could also use the pools in All Growed Up for 'something else'. For instance, the pools could simultaneously be Traits that help characters do things, as well as a Scoring mechanism.

That's an unformed idea at this point – but I'm sure the rules could create a structure where players need to gain power in order to accomplish things in the game (as well as interact with/frustrate/help each other) and also distribute that power gain evenly in order to win the end-game.

"Winning", in this context, doesn't seem to amount to much. 

Could you expand on that? ... And it might be my flu-addled brain but I didn't quite get the connection between this and this ...

Or is that to try to encourage players to spread around their dice, aiming to come in low in the desired category but "pressing their luck" to get a high winning score?

[GreatWolf]

No, that was my being unclear.  That was also my cross-posting with you.

Here's what I meant.  Let's say that I want my character to have the Suburbia end game.  Why would I ever assign a die to "Suburbia", then?  I just dump my dice into Rebellion and Self-Hatred.  Sure, I have a crappy teenage life, but in the end, I get my happy existence.  (Well, what the player considers to be a happy existence.)  If I get the outcome that I want, then haven't I "won"?  I'm thinking about My Life with Master at this point, where players tend to set themselves up for the endgame result that they want.  Of course, in MLwM, it's possible, through dice screwage and the interference of the Master, to fall short of the endgame possibility that I want.  So there is opposition built into the game.

Now, maybe I'm dense (I've been known for that), but I'm not seeing the opposition built into the game.  What do I as a player have to overcome to get the endgame result that I want?

The comment about "pressing your luck" was my attempt to see one possible means of mechanically-produced opposition.  Let me give an example.  Let's say that I'm at 4 Rebellion, 4 Self-Hatred, and 2 Suburbia.  The dice totals are Rebellion 8, Self-Hatred 14, and Suburbia 6.  It's the last turn of the game, and I have a die to assign.  I could give it away, or I could assign it to Suburbia and hope that I don't roll a 3 or 4.  This would bring me to 4/4/3, which means that 3 is my final score.  However, if I roll a 3 or 4, I'm now at 4/4/4, which throws us into tie-breaker area, which is determined by lowest die total.  Let's say that the Suburbia dice total is now 13.  Suddenly, my Rebellion becomes my end-game.  If only I'd been satisfied with a 2 in Suburbia....

But, why would I take this risk at all?  According to your manuscript, it would be because I'm trying to "win" the game.  But what happens if I "win" the game (by having the highest low score), but I don't get the endgame result that I wanted?  Did I win or not?

That's where I'm getting confused.

[hix]

Hey Seth,

At the start of the game players openly declare the fate they want. That means they can easily sabotage each other's effort to keep their favourite pool low in dice. The opposition you're talking about comes from other players being able to assign dice to your Pools.

Mechanically, there are 2 ways to assign dice - first, whenever you draw a die, you can choose to allocate to any one of another player's Pools. If the player you've assigned the die to then rolls within that Pool's range (3 or 4 on a d6, in the case of Suburbia) they will double the number of dice going into that pool

Secondly, if you get a good roll with the Odd Die, you can take a die from one of your Pools and put it in another player's.

So I think that's the opposition you're looking for in the rules. It probably manifests at the table as a random & unstable situation prone to back-stabbing. What might be missing is the significance of those actions to the players.

Also, given that scoring is initially calculated on the smallest Pool with the highest number of dice, players will probably be wanting to constantly chip in a die or 2 to their lowest pool, to keep up with the arms race that I think will emerge in play.

I'm not seeing the opposition built into the game.  What do I as a player have to overcome to get the endgame result that I want?

Have I addressed that concern?

... what happens if I "win" the game (by having the highest low score), but I don't get the endgame result that I wanted?  Did I win or not?

Hmm, ... not having playtested this, I'm not sure. It's a bloody good point thought, because that situation's extremely likely to come up in play. See, mechanically you've won. Emotionally, you're probably not satisfied with it because it's not the Fate you wanted to get. Like I say: I'm not sure what it means, or whether it require a rethinking of what 'winning' means in this game (as Ron hinted at back in the first post).

[GreatWolf]

Steve,

Yes, the mechanics all make sense now.  I think that the pivotal question is "What is winning?" in this game.  Otherwise, I think that you will have a disconnect between mechanical victory and emotional satisfaction.