[Perfect] Three Crimes & A Soiree

[Malcolm Craig]

So, we sat down to play Perfect at GEAS, the Edinburgh University games society last Sunday. Hugo, Shevvy and Vicky had all expressed keenness the previous week, so this time we got round to creating characters and getting into some crime cycles.

Two of the players are new to gaming, but they've had some really positive experiences so far and are enjoying the play that they're taking part in. The thing that attracted them to Perfect was the setting and colour, they really dug the idea of this stratified, repressed society of seeming elegance and morality, but with this undercurrent of criminality.

Rather than engage in collaborative crimes, we decided to have three crime cycles, one for each of the characters. From the get go, the players were totally up for contributing to the stories of the other characters and making this a real collaborative effort. This is an interesting contrast (something also highlight by Gregor is his recent Best friends thread), in hat the new players are lacking in preconceptions about what their roles are and what they should be doing: they put stuff in because it is cool and makes for a great story.

Each crime was quite different. One character (played by Hugo) had a passion to create art, but believed in Gailism and thought that Queen Abigail's words had been skewed and misinterpreted. The second character (played by Shevvy) was the daughter of a powerful lord, outwardly a demure and beautiful create, secretly a debauched, capricious nymphomaniac. The final character (played by Vicky) was a chaste lady of high class, who felt repulsed by the touch of her husband, but felt a stirring of passion when another lady's hand brushed her cheek.

In order to make the game more cohesive, we established some connections between the characters. The noble lady's lordly father was head of the ministry in which the art lover worked. The art lover saw the chaste lady crossing his path on a regular basis and painted pictures of the unknown beauty. The chaste lady's husband was a lackey of the powerful lord, and so on. Other, more slight and subtle connections were established both before the crime cycles began and during play.

Without going into detail, each of the crimes went really well. There was great narration and input from all taking part. The players were very satisfied that, having set out what they wanted to do and the goals for their characters, they got to tell those stories and have the entire group embroider them and help create a full experience. Strangely, all of the players were successful in their crimes, but this in itself lead to all sorts of repercussions (the chaste lady now had a clandestine love affair with her female friend, the noble lady successfully hid her debauchery from her father and the art lover found the images he sought and gained advancement in his government position.

We set up a final scene at the noble lords house, where all of the PCs were present. Intolerances were brought in at this stage, just to see how they worked. The art lover saw a painting of bright sunflowers that he had snuck into the lords house and hung on the wall smashed before his eyes as the noble lady exercise her intolerance for yellow flowers. The chaste lady was publicly embarrassed by her husband, who succumbed to a fit of passion and made a public disgrace of himself. The chaste lady was then taken away to be cared for by her lady lover. And the art lover intervened in matter of a nobleman unreasonably abusing his small son for an imagine transgression (his intolerance was an inability to stand cruelty to children).

The final moments of the game consisted of the chaste lady leaving the scene in a carriage, held in the arms of he lover and the noble lady and art lover exchanging harsh words and fiery glances, and a possible affair between them blossomed....

Everyone was happy with this final scene. It spoke of further stories to be told, but also provided a convenient end point for the game.

We did, however, have a few issues with the system, the main one revolving around Freedoms and the number of these which the characters had. All of the players expressed the opinion that with characters of high status, the number of Freedoms taken makes it difficult to recall all of the requirements, repercussions and so forth in play. In out post-game discussion, there was a general feeling that a maximum of 3 freedoms for any character would be a good limit in terms of playability and ease of recall.

From a GM point of view, I've also got a few queries about the Tension Levels and the setting thereof. There were occasions when the player set their tension level fairly low, but I considered the situation quite tense and important, so set my personal tension level higher (sometime much higher). Is this appropriate within the context of the game? Nobody was against this in the game, but it did provide a point where we wondered what was appropriate in terms of tension level setting.

Overall, we had a great game. All of us loved the setting and flavour of Perfect, the scenes that came out of it, the characterisation and conflict.

Cheers
Malcolm

[joepub]

Awesome, Malcolm!
Thanks for posting this Actual Play report.

Aside from those two issues/concerns (Freedoms and Tension Level), how did you like the system?

Also... do you have the character sheets?
I'd really like to see the Aspects and Intolerances of all three, especially Vicky.

From a GM point of view, I've also got a few queries about the Tension Levels and the setting thereof. There were occasions when the player set their tension level fairly low, but I considered the situation quite tense and important, so set my personal tension level higher (sometime much higher). Is this appropriate within the context of the game? Nobody was against this in the game, but it did provide a point where we wondered what was appropriate in terms of tension level setting.

Okay.
First of all, you guys are both evaluating the Tension Level of the situation on different criteria.
The player is answering the question "How much does this matter for you? What do you personally have at stake?"
The GM is answering the question "How dangerous is this? How likely is it (s)he will get caught? How much does society despise this act?"

So: It could be that your player didn't feel it was a major turning point for the character, and you felt that it was a serious and grave crime. That's fair enough.

Or... is your player simply lowballing the Tension? If so, remind the player that making the GM more powerful is the only way to reap cool Payouts.

Finally, if the player sets the tension at 2 feel free to set it at 10.
The reason there are two people gauging tension is so that there is a bit more balance.
If you feel it is a tense situation, then push for more points.
And... you can always question how many points your players are putting in.
I often ask questions like, "I thought this was a huge turning point for your character. Why only 4 Tension?"

We did, however, have a few issues with the system, the main one revolving around Freedoms and the number of these which the characters had. All of the players expressed the opinion that with characters of high status, the number of Freedoms taken makes it difficult to recall all of the requirements, repercussions and so forth in play. In out post-game discussion, there was a general feeling that a maximum of 3 freedoms for any character would be a good limit in terms of playability and ease of recall.

Right. Did your players all create High Citizens or Citizens First Class?
At that point, Freedoms do start to get a bit ridiculous, but that is sorta the point.
The more power you have in society, the more you are constantly stepping on eggshells.

Some Freedoms - like Freedom of Assembly - are actually easier when you are of high rank.
Freedom of Assembly allows you to join any social event, so long as no one of higher status is present... But if you are CFC, then that never happens anyways.

The final moments of the game consisted of the chaste lady leaving the scene in a carriage, held in the arms of he lover and the noble lady and art lover exchanging harsh words and fiery glances, and a possible affair between them blossomed....

Everyone was happy with this final scene. It spoke of further stories to be told, but also provided a convenient end point for the game.

Awesome end scene, Malcolm.
Thanks for posting.
If you want to go into more detail about the characters (their Aspects, Intolerances, Certifications, etc) or talk a bit about Crime Cycles (How aggressively did you set Tension? Did you save up points at all? Did you spend points equally on Calm/Discovery, or did you focus more heavily on one of them?) then that'd be awesome, too.

[Malcolm Craig]

Aside from those two issues/concerns (Freedoms and Tension Level), how did you like the system?

Also... do you have the character sheets?
I'd really like to see the Aspects and Intolerances of all three, especially Vicky.

The system seemed to work well in play, although I think it will take a couple more goes to be comfortable witht he setting of tensions and the consequences/fallout of the crime scenes.

Yep, got the characters sheets finally raked out, so ehre are the aspects and intolerances:

Miss Catherine Beaufort (the noble lady)

Aspects
Flamboyant (2)
Believes nothing bad will ever happen to her (3)

Intolerance
"I cannot tolerate yellow flowers"

Mrs Abigail Smith (the chaste lady)

Aspects
Remembers violent father (2)
Completely chaste (2)
Prone to tantrums (1)

Intolerance
"I cannot tolerate my husbands passions"

Mr Tarquin Robertson (the art lover)

Aspects
Guilt over brothers suicide (2)
Truth is beauty and beauty is truth (2)
Believes in Abigail and desires to rejoin the system (1)

Intolerance
"I cannot tolerate the mistreatment of children"

Right. Did your players all create High Citizens or Citizens First Class?
At that point, Freedoms do start to get a bit ridiculous, but that is sorta the point.
The more power you have in society, the more you are constantly stepping on eggshells.

Some Freedoms - like Freedom of Assembly - are actually easier when you are of high rank.
Freedom of Assembly allows you to join any social event, so long as no one of higher status is present... But if you are CFC, then that never happens anyways.

The players all chose citizens of different classes, as they were already beginning to think of the kind of characters they wanted to play and the stories they wanted to tell. Shevvy explicitly wanted a characters of the highest class in order to amplify the debauched nature of her crimes. She also wante to be an opium addict (permitted at the hightest rank) but also partake of alcohol (not really looked upon with favour inhe highest social circles).

The players chose social standing based on the stories they really wanted to tell and the crimes they wanted to commit. However, the issue of freedoms was one not of in-character issues, but of recall of the the freedoms by the players. They all found it quite difficult to recall the nature and strictures of more than three freedoms, hence some of them didn't really enter into play as much as they could have.

While I understand the reasons for more freedoms at the higher ranks of society, I think there's definitely a point where it makes it much more difficult for the player to use all of the freedoms granted to their character, purely because of the amount of information they are required to retain and recall in an effort to use these character elements effectively. Hence, all of the participants in this particular game would favour a maximum of three freedoms.

want to go into more detail about the characters (their Aspects, Intolerances, Certifications, etc) or talk a bit about Crime Cycles (How aggressively did you set Tension? Did you save up points at all? Did you spend points equally on Calm/Discovery, or did you focus more heavily on one of them?) then that'd be awesome, too.

When setting tension, I found I was generally more agressive than the players (who were aware that the tension determined payout and so forth). In terms of tests, it depended on the nature of the crime and the character in question:

For Tarquin the art lover, I pushed harder and spent more on the clam test, as he was attempting to conduct his crime in the full view of his workplace, surrounded by the beady eyes of his colleagues in the Foriegn Ministry.

For Catherine the noble lady, the discovery test was pushed harder, as it was felt that the calm test was of lesser importance to the story of her character (and due to the nature and pedilictions of Catherine). Her discovery test involved the harsh treatment of her erstwhile lover and ever harsher treatment of certain servants int he household (whom she views as disposable for the purposes of her own debased lifestyle).

For Abigailthe chaste lady, the calm test was certainly pushed harder, as this was the first time she had felt any stirrings of passion or attraction towards another person, hence it was felt that they was much more chance of her losing her cool.

We only played out calm and discovery tests, then moved on to the previously described final scene which brought in the intolerancs of the characters.

Some of the faults with this session were certainly down to me as a GM. My grasp of some of the nuances of the system were not as full as they could have been, which lead to moments of book flicking and discussion amongst the group. That being said, I think I'm better prepared for another game of Perfect in the near future. In addition,your comments above give greater clarity to the setting of tension and so forth, which is very handy.

Cheers
Malcolm

[David Artman]

We only played out calm and discovery tests, then moved on to the previously described final scene which brought in the intolerancs of the characters.

So I take it this means you NEVER won a test as the GM; the players won every Calm and Discovery test?

If so, what about your Banked Opposition Points? Were you actually using all Fear and Inspector Points in the Calm and Discovery, leaving nothing left over if there had been Interrogation and/or Conditioning? And *still* losing?

If so, horrible luck, that. Or, maybe, you were underbidding Tensions.

I have wondered (but lacked sufficient playtesting to determine) if there is a misbalance between the open-ended and cumulative "advantages" a character can buy/define versus the fixed maximum Opposition Points generated by the Player-GM bidding process (20). Maybe the bidding needs to be open-ended as well; requiring some expansion of the Payout, Fallout, Conditioning, etc charts?

Or maybe you could do a "Beyond Perfect" expansion, which deals with things like stupid-high Tension Levels, world-shaking Payouts and Fallouts, and end-game build-up and examples. For instance, it seems that some players reach an "end game" by virtue of all-but taking over society, with their stacks of advantages and Trusts and such. They can attempt--and routinely succeed at--TL 20 crimes every day, all day long.

OK, rambling OFF... but I had to bring this up, as Malcolm's game seems heading the same way (particularly if the player characters are never being Conditioned!).
David

[Malcolm Craig]

So I take it this means you NEVER won a test as the GM; the players won every Calm and Discovery test?

Hi David,

That is entirely true. I admit, I don't think I rolled higher than a three (maybe a four, once) during the entire game (and player re-rolls of my dice often came up as ones or twos, which was alarming!).

Every single test throughout the game was won by the player side, even with some judicious pushing of fear and inspector points.

If so, what about your Banked Opposition Points? Were you actually using all Fear and Inspector Points in the Calm and Discovery, leaving nothing left over if there had been Interrogation and/or Conditioning? And *still* losing?

If so, horrible luck, that. Or, maybe, you were underbidding Tensions.

I did use a fair number of fear and inspector points, pushing the various scenes as detailed in my previous post. The tensions were not, as far as I can see, underbid (perhaps apart from Abigails crime sequence, which was fairly low on the tension side). I think the tension totals worked out as follows:

Catherine: 12
Tarquin: 13
Abigail: 9

I'd say that a lot of it was down to luck and effective use of aspects by the players. I did, at the end, have points reserved for future scenes, but as previously discussed, these never came about.

I have wondered (but lacked sufficient playtesting to determine) if there is a misbalance between the open-ended and cumulative "advantages" a character can buy/define versus the fixed maximum Opposition Points generated by the Player-GM bidding process (20). Maybe the bidding needs to be open-ended as well; requiring some expansion of the Payout, Fallout, Conditioning, etc charts?

Or maybe you could do a "Beyond Perfect" expansion, which deals with things like stupid-high Tension Levels, world-shaking Payouts and Fallouts, and end-game build-up and examples. For instance, it seems that some players reach an "end game" by virtue of all-but taking over society, with their stacks of advantages and Trusts and such. They can attempt--and routinely succeed at--TL 20 crimes every day, all day long.

OK, rambling OFF... but I had to bring this up, as Malcolm's game seems heading the same way (particularly if the player characters are never being Conditioned!).
David

As it was a short game, the end result wasn't too concerning. And the players did enjoy the stories hey created and how it all finished up. It would have been interesting to see how interrogation and conditions scenes went, but as it was, I doubt we would have had time for much further expansion of the crime cycles anyway. Lack of time and unfamiliarity with the system for all concerned may have played their parts in potential system misunderstandings (I freely admit that our use of payout and the outcome of crimes was shaky at best).

It was very much a learning experience. In future games, my intention is to push the GM side of tension much harder and strive to encourage the players to give greater detail as to why they are setting the tension levels the way they are.

Cheers
Malcolm

[joepub]

Aspects
Flamboyant (2)
Believes nothing bad will ever happen to her (3)

Malcolm, rules clarification: When you buy an Aspect with a Level 2/3/4 gain, it still only costs 1 Build Point. (but, you must set the aspect's fallout at the same level as the Gain).

Here's an example:
1. I spend one build point.
2. I create my evocative aspect description: I killed a man.
3. I pick a Level 3 Gain.
4. I pick a Level 3 Fallout (gain lv 3 = fallout lv 3).

OK, rambling OFF... but I had to bring this up, as Malcolm's game seems heading the same way (particularly if the player characters are never being Conditioned!).
David

David, although player/GM power unbalances can be a significant concern in Perfect, I don't think that had much effect in Malcolm's game.
First of all, they were bidding low tension levels. That means they had fairly miniscule Payouts.
Second, Malcolm was banking up points to drop on later crimes. I often find that the players win the first one or two crimes, but then I totally bring it in later cycles.

So... Malcolm was stacking up points, and they were only stacking up small Payouts. I can see the tides changing in that particular example pretty quick.

Honwever, a point for Malcolm: If you accumulate points in Player A's cycle, you can spend them on Player B or C's cycle.
You do know that, right?

Catherine: 12
Tarquin: 13
Abigail: 9

If you had done another round of Crime Cycles, do you think you would have seen some 13-16 range tensions being set?

[Malcolm Craig]

Malcolm, rules clarification: When you buy an Aspect with a Level 2/3/4 gain, it still only costs 1 Build Point. (but, you must set the aspect's fallout at the same level as the Gain).

Here's an example:
1. I spend one build point.
2. I create my evocative aspect description: I killed a man.
3. I pick a Level 3 Gain.
4. I pick a Level 3 Fallout (gain lv 3 = fallout lv 3).

Right, this actually brings a bit of clarity to the table. I had misinterpreted the rules and believed that the cost of an Aspect = level of the Aspect (the mindset of some used to point-buy systems that do this kind of thing? Perhaps).

This actually puts a different complexion on the game and clears up the strange moments we were getting when there was talk about how few Aspects you could take if you wanted them to be quite powerful.

Honwever, a point for Malcolm: If you accumulate points in Player A's cycle, you can spend them on Player B or C's cycle.
You do know that, right?

As we were playing crime cycles in a concurrnet rather than consecutive fashion, how would you say we should appraoch this? For example, we ran through Calm scenes of each character, then back to the first character again and ran a Discovery scene. So, we had to keep note of the opposition pool for each character. Are there opportunities to switch dice from the pools or can this only happen if crime cycles are running consecutively?

If you had done another round of Crime Cycles, do you think you would have seen some 13-16 range tensions being set?

I think yes, we would have seen some much heftier tension levels coming in to play. There was the opportunity for collaborative crime between Catherine and Tarquin, which would most certainly have had some serious tension involved. And the development of Abigails affair onto a more passionate level would pretty much necessitate a cranking up of the tension. We were all aware of this at the end of the game, particularly as the last scene played out and left iopen opportunities for further play.

Perfect, and in particular this group of characters, if a game that I'll be revisiting in the near future. Some rejigging in light of the greater clarity regarding Aspects will be required, but i think we could see more great play come out of it.

Cheers
Malcolm

[joepub]

As we were playing crime cycles in a concurrnet rather than consecutive fashion, how would you say we should appraoch this? For example, we ran through Calm scenes of each character, then back to the first character again and ran a Discovery scene. So, we had to keep note of the opposition pool for each character. Are there opportunities to switch dice from the pools or can this only happen if crime cycles are running consecutively?

Hm.
If you are running concurrent scenes instead of consecutive ones, then it makes it harder to move opposition points from one character's scenes into the next.
I've never played concurrent scenes personally, but I would suggest the following:

OPTION A: INDIVIDUAL POOLS FOR EACH CHARACTER
-Keep Point Pools seperate between characters.
-Once the group has collectively finished their 1st round of scenes, feel free to transfer points from one player's pool to another player's pool, before starting the 2nd round of scenes.
-If two players have a collaborative crime, combine their pools. When the CC is over, divide the remaining points between their pools as you see fit.

OPTION B: COMMUNITY POOLS
-Although each character is being tested at the same time, they are still being opposed by community pools.
-This means that if the tensions are set at 10, 11, and 17, there are 38 points to spend on all three of their crime cycles, which happen simultaneously, and alter back and forth between tests.

Option A is a lot more bookkeeping.
Option B is a little less fair than other solutions, because Player B might set a tension at 11 and have some of the other players points allocated to him/her.

Ron Edwards also ran concurrent crime cycles in his game:

I framed the scenes myself using a lot of consensus and suggestions, which bent the rules about trading-off scene framing a little (which the text calls "narration" for some reason), but not much considering that I think they'd have floundered a bit, and that I called for so much consensus before officially starting a scene. Admittedly, this wasn't a clear decision, because I merely forgot the rule.

I did do something else which isn't in the book. It breaks no rules, and without it, I don't think play would have worked well at all. I ran two Crime Cycles simutaneously, one for each character, alternating attention back and forth between each one, and rolling a die apiece for each character at the same time.

Don't get me wrong. These were not collaborative crimes and each was handled exactly the same, mechanically, as if I'd run each one from stem to stern in sequence. Doing it this way simply meant the camera was rolling on each one at the same time. It's much, much easier than it sounds, and I recommend it in general for practically any game, when dealing with utterly-disconnected scenes.

Crime Cycle #1: Neville nipped a drink in an alley; Mordecai shirked work due to a hangover and showed up late. They both failed their Calm Tests and got Interrogated, and they both got Discovered and Conditioned. Mordecai resisted Conditioning; that was the only success. They both seized upon Payout and glared at me. On the other hand, they were both pretty pumped that the characters had succeeded at the crimes, based on simple agreement. They'd chosen a lot of Tension points, so as it turned out, Brian was empowered to throw off the Conditioning immediately.

Crime Cycle #2: Nevillle climbed up a big tower and dumped the Eye of London into the Thames (Brian was pretty pissed off at being Conditioned!) (note as well that I didn't make a big deal about using London landmarks; whatever); Mordecai poisoned the caviar at his factory, killing (as Brian said) thirty-seven people. It was sort of interesting that at first Brian and I kind of blinked at him, what, you're poisoning people?, and then when he smiled and said, through the caviar, we nodded. This time, I think Neville got away scot-free, and Mordecai got Interrogated but not Discovered.

Crime Cycle #3 (collaborative): Now, we used the collaborative rules. It was easy to point out that Neville needed a new source of booze, and that he also might have tracked down Mordecai via the poisoning incident, as a peer of the people who'd been hit by it. So! This crime is best described as "bootlegging absinthe together." And the bastards got away with it!! Both players had the system down pretty well at this point, and I found that what looked like a clear GM advantage in Opposition Points initially, in the first Cycle, didn't stand up so well once they could hammer my rolls with multiple Aspects. I even used 7 Opposition Points I'd banked, to no avail.

(Granted, I think they got to double-dip on Aspects once or twice because I was too tired to monitor it. We'll be more careful about that next time; this time, we were simply getting the Cycles down.)

He doesn't state explicitly though whether he was running individual Fear/Inspector Points Pools for each character, or a single set of pools for all players.

I think either is completely cool.

Perfect, and in particular this group of characters, if a game that I'll be revisiting in the near future. Some rejigging in light of the greater clarity regarding Aspects will be required, but i think we could see more great play come out of it

Awesome, Malcolm.
I'm really glad you guys got something out of the game, and I look forward to hearing about more encounters with Catherine, Abigial and Tarquin.