[My Girlfriend is a Slut] Ronnies feedback

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

At first, I was delighted to think that Frank Tarcikowski's My Girlfriend's a Slut / My Boyfriend's a Dick had paralleled my long-standing desire to see two different rules-sets played simultaneously and interactively, as a function either of type-of-character or type-of-player. Especially with gender involved - it'd be a wonderful extension of a lot of points I made in Sex & Sorcery.

Oh wait, then I realized that's not what it is. I was thinking that Slut and Dick were being played simultaneously, one person using one set of rules, and the other person using the other. That would have been very cool. However, they are different games, played entirely separately with the boyfriend and girlfriend being complete within and unique to each one, with the main difference being the Color. It seems to me as well that Boyfriend exists mainly as an apology and not-very-interesting reversal, mainly in Color, just to "equalize" having been such a vile person as to write Slut.

Well, I can be vile without feeling the need to compensate, so I'm going to ignore Boyfriend altogether and treat Slut as a single RPG for discussion. The primary questions are (a) whether the game works mechanically, and (b) whether insight is available via the rage and satire. My conclusion is that the game is not yet what it could be, but with full revision, it definitely has somewhere to go. I have a terrible desire to see I Think My Girlfriend Hates Me, I Love to Hate to Love, She's ..., Best Friends, and My Girlfriend is a Slut side by side on the shelf ...

The main issues

I'm generally not clear on whether the point is winning or not, if I'm playing the girlfriend. If so, then I definitely would use bullying and interruptive tactics to keep the other player from raising, all the time. That doesn't sound like fun. If it's not winning, then what?

Related to that point, when you say, "The girlfriend is not a demon" ... um, I'm thinking she very much is. Do you want her humanized? If so, then how? If not, then what point is there to playing the girlfriend unless you just try to win, as above?

I rather like the dice mechanic. My big issue concerns arriving at a meaningful limit on raises during a conflict. You have the maximum cap of one raise per type, but after that, it seems boring and annoying just to have each player pull out every single type for every single conflict. The real limit within that, clearly, resides in your advice to try to stay consistent and interesting - which in Forge jargon means, respect the SIS. And that brings us back to winning ... is the point of the fiction to facilitate a contest, or is the contest/conflict entirely fictional?

The moment of truth seems like the least likely to be fun if it relies on a dice roll. There are all sorts of alternatives to choose from, but I'd like to know your thinking about it first.

Best,
Ron

[Frank T]

Hey Ron,

First thing first: Thanks for the feedback. 33 games is a shitload of work. Here's a few thoughts on the game I've been keeping for this moment:

As I started designing, I was asking myself the question: Would anybody want to play this game? More than once? Because for one thing, the game seemed pretty limited in terms of player input. It's cheapass, no mistaking. Plus, the main issue was: Why would you want to play the girlfriend? (I'll be following you in only talking about Slut. I think Dick has its own interesting issues, but sure I can relate better to Slut myself. No big surprise I've been in a relationship like that for six years.)

That being said, well, the game is all about the boyfriend. The girlfriend is just there because she needs to be there. That's a huge problem. I could have made it a hardcore strategy game about winning or losing, I guess, but my initial vision was to tell a more human, emotional story. No dark satire, but a story about real people. That's why I tried to lay out the girlfriend as a human being whose motives can be understood, if not appreciated. I guess I was hoping that this would be interesting enough to play her.

The contradiction is, as you noticed, that there are no big choices in the game. So, rules-driven exploration of human abuse and desperation? Hm.

Concerning the raises: One person raises at a time. As long as they raise, they are GM (so to say). I probably didn't make that clear enough. So you raise, ain't nothing the other can do about it until you hand over again. What I tried to do was create raises with drawbacks. So the effects of some raises might win you the conflict, but you'd have to pay a price which would effect the following conflicts and the end game. Do you really tell her you love her, an mean it? She'll let you have the car stereo then, but it'll harden the chains that bind you.

Overall, I feel the game will require more choices to become interesting, but more choices will break the mechanic as it now works. Moreover, I am still concerned that the game concept doesn't really hold all that much attractiveness. I mean, reading the title, most people were probably assuming a very dark humorous game about two mean people turning their respective lives into living hell. Which sounds more fun, overall, then the concept I went with.

So, I'm thinking about radically changing the game into just that. Of course, almost nothing would remain. Also, I haven't yet read the other entries in our little class of our own. We shall see what comes of it. I got work to do on BARBAREN! first, anyhow. But it was fun participating in the Ronnies, and I'm also a little proud to be a part of this.

- Frank