[The Grey Man Wants You Dead] Initial thoughts

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

So the research for Silence Keeps Me a Victim is going a bit slower than I anticipated as it's taking me longer to get through suggested reading and resource materials than I originally anticipated. Anyway... The Grey Man Wants You Dead, is something I've had in my head for awhile and started to work on a bit before and during Gen Con, and stopped when silence pushed it's way so strongly forward. So while silence is waiting for me to finish my reading, I wanted to move forward...

The Grey Man Wants You Dead, is the second game rising from my abuse, but rather than being about silence and the healing of self and community. The Grey Man... is about the question of evil. Not the classic philosophical question of evil, it doesn't assume or deny a God, but more a look at what is evil.

So the game works like so. It's intended to be a one shot, so there isn't any character creation. All the players start with the same amount of magic and it's the magic that makes them special. I'll likely rename magic to a more thematic name. So physical characteristics, age, race, sex, is all color. They each also know that there is a Grey Man (Men?) who enters into people and causes them to do bad things. Only the players see the Grey Man, and the Grey Man knows they can see him. He wants them dead. The players can fend off the Grey Man and possibly in the end destroy him by using their magic. The catch is magic is only gained by abusing people.

The power of magic is set through the hierarchy of sins. If a player is going to get more magic they have to describe what the first sin is. If all the players agree that it's a sin they describe a scene where they commit that abuse. For instance lying could be determined to be the first sin, the player ( or another player?) would narrate a scene where the player hurts someone by lying. The first sin gives a number of d4's per abuse, so that the player would get a number of d4's. The next sin in the hierarchy would have to be agreed by everyone is worse than the first sin. The player who introduces that sin, narrates a scene like before, but will collect so many d6's. This continues until the hierarchy gets to d12's. d12's are the max die size. Any more egregious sins added to the hierarchy after that point will push all the other sins down a notch, so for instance lying would no longer get you dice.

Present Problems

• I'm not sure how the non gaining dice scenes work. Whether I use aggressive scene framing or let things flow more like a traditional game.
• I'm not sure how these dice are used. My present thought is highest roll gets their intent in conflicts. The highest roll would be the highest single die.
• How do I enforce the intended theme? I don't want the game to be played like many of the games I've seen of The Shab al-Hiri Roach. What I mean to say is I don't want dark comedy, but personal horror.

Anything else you'd like to ask, suggest, discuss is on the table.

[Jason Morningstar]

Hi Clyde,

I really like the idea of dice progressing in size, with the "least" sin falling off the back of the truck to make room for harsher stuff.  That's an elegant way to keep the core set of dice intact (the five size spread from d4 to d12) and also to model hardening of attitudes toward sin.  I also like the fact that it becomes very personal - your d12 has no relation to her d12, but they are equally powerful, even if one is telling lies and the other is murder.

It seems like you'll need a resolution mechanic that does not rely on all conflict participants invoking abuse dice - either active opposition from people trying to do good, or environmental target numbers, or something. 

As far as enforcing theme, I'm struggling with that myself.  My answer (for Grey Ranks) is to mechanically encourage the bits I want while simultaneously providing appropriate situation and rewarding its incorporation. 

[Valamir]

I'm thinking that to make this work you need to have a bunch of stuff the characters want...the big ultimate want is not to be killed/destroyed by the Grey Man, but along the way there are other wants...obtaining a comfortable life style, protecting ones sister from an abusive husband, helping a friend get clean, get a promotion, become a celebrity...whatever.  That way the players have a choice "Give up A to get B, or Give up B to get A".

The core resolution allows the characters to do stuff...the magic dice are power ups that allow them to really succeed when they want.  Saving them up gives them a better chance of defeating the Grey Man, but spending them gives them a better chance of achieving the lesser wants.

So maybe each character has a list of wants...for a one shot maybe you keep it to 3.  Maybe you have some standard wants and mix and match like a Capes Click and Lock, or maybe everyone invents some and they drawn from a hat like Spione Tresspasses or maybe everyone just invents whatever they want...whatever.

Then each scene spotlights one character and is basically an opportunity to address one of the wants.  This is the ultimate verdict around that want for the character's entire life...the moment of truth...there are no do-overs. A "succeed and the friend is clean for life, fail and they never will be" sort of thing.  You could do a thing where the want goes unresolved...a "continuation" for future resolution which opens some interesting tactical possibilities but for a one shot...probably not.

So each scene becomes this massive conflict resolution that the character really wants to win because its one of their three greatest wants.  The player really wants to win because each want that is lost makes the Grey Man stronger.  The player can use magic to achieve their wants and thus keep the Grey Man weaker, or they can save their magic to defeat the Grey Man at the end.

Then I'd throw a twist in there like: The Grey Man is strongest (d12s) against the player that achieved the least wants and weaker against Players that achieved more wants.  Then let the other players run the opposition in the conflict scene.  Their goal will be to cause the acting player to lose so that player has failed more than they have and they get to face a weaker Grey Man.  Players can have some sort of currency to run as the opposition...possibly playing off the sin levels...bumping their own sin level to a higher order in order to nail the other player.  Sort of a "how bad are you willing to be to succeed at the expense of others" kind of meta theme...even though it isn't character vs. character it becomes Player vs. Player.

Anything there sound interesting?

[timfire]

This game doesn't really sound like a one-shot to me. It sounds more like a 2-5 session game, like My Life with Master or The Mountain Witch. There are two issues here. One, though this sounds short, it's real easy to turn 3 or 4 scenes into 2 hours or so. 4 players x 4 scenes and you're talking 8-10 hours. This is what happens in tMW.

But here's a more important one. You want the *players* to care, right? Personal horror, right? In my experience with tMW, it's real hard to get that in one session. Sure, a one-shot is fun, but there's a depth you get over 8-10 hours that you don't in 4. If this is what you want, then I would give up the 1-shot thing, and just let it be a "short-form" or whatever you want to call it.

As far as theme goes (or more properly tone), I don't think you have anything to worry about. I mean, this doesn't sound like dark-comedy. The Roach sounds like dark comedy. Stuffy professors squabbling over tenure? Com'on, that's a small step from a BBC sitcom. The shorter more structured design of the Roach also lends itself to comedy, I think. But everyday people who must sin and abuse others to get what they want, in ever increasing degrees? That sounds serious. I don't think you're going to have any trouble communicating that.

One suggestion is that you should have some sort of interaction with NPCs before you start screwing them over. And now that I think about it, some interaction afterwards, to show what your actions have caused. That will make the decisions in play all the more impact-ful.

[timfire]

This game doesn't really sound like a one-shot to me. It sounds more like a 2-5 session game, like My Life with Master or The Mountain Witch. There are two issues here. One, though this sounds short, it's real easy to turn 3 or 4 scenes into 2 hours or so. 4 players x 4 scenes and you're talking 8-10 hours. This is what happens in tMW.

But here's a more important one. You want the *players* to care, right? Personal horror, right? In my experience with tMW, it's real hard to get that in one session. Sure, a one-shot is fun, but there's a depth you get over 8-10 hours that you don't in 4. If this is what you want, then I would give up the 1-shot thing, and just let it be a "short-form" or whatever you want to call it.

As far as theme goes (or more properly tone), I don't think you have anything to worry about. I mean, this doesn't sound like dark-comedy. The Roach sounds like dark comedy. Stuffy professors squabbling over tenure? Com'on, that's a small step from a BBC sitcom. The shorter more structured design of the Roach also lends itself to comedy, I think. But everyday people who must sin and abuse others to get what they want, in ever increasing degrees? That sounds serious. I don't think you're going to have any trouble communicating that.

One suggestion is that you should have some sort of interaction with NPCs before you start screwing them over. And now that I think about it, some interaction afterwards, to show what your actions have caused. That will make the decisions in play all the more impact-ful.

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

Hi folks,

I totally dropped the ball, on my explanation. I also found some missing notes. *grins sheepishly* I have a few details to add.

Each character will start with Grey dice (d4's to d10's) for the Grey Man, and some other color dice (d4's to d10's) for their magic. This allows anyone to oppose someone else without using their magic dice but by any player making statements of the Grey Man's goals. The Grey Man's goals don't have to be murderous but could be things like an uncooperative spouse, a locked door, whatever. I don't have all the statistics worked out... I was teaching myself probabilities before Gen Con but stopped. I'm not sure about how many dice, but I do think that it's necessary for the Grey dice pool to start out with more smaller dice and less larger ones, and the magic side to have less dice but a better range. I also figured it would take a roll of 12 to defeat the Grey Man.

The way I saw most conflict Resolution working was like so:

1. A player creates an obstacle for another player, and puts forward their Grey dice, and other players can put forward their Grey dice.
2. The challenged player can then either, accept the Grey Man's goals and convert the dice to their Grey side or they can try to achieve their own goals.
3. If they challenge they can take whatever  magic dice they want and both sides roll.
4. If the person playing the Grey Man's side wins they put all the dice on the Grey side of their sheet, if the challenged player wins they take all the dice and put them on their magic side.

Hi Jason,

Thanks for the complement about the systems elegance. To be fair it was Nathan Paoletta who suggested I not have the Hierarchy of Sins be static so groups could set their own level of uncomfortable-ness. I did come up with the sliding though. I figured that would give people reason to push further and further.

Is the info I just included more along what you meant about having a different way to resolve conflicts other than using their magic?

I haven't been following the boards so I'm unsure what you're doing with Grey Ranks, is the info about how you're reinforcing the tone in the thread that is currently moving up and down?

Hi Ralph,

Yes... a lot of that sounds interesting. I think you make a very valid point that the characters need something else to shoot for, or the game is likely to be one sided and uninteresting. They need things they want to achieve, and things they want to protect. This sounds like I may need character creation...drat... unless maybe I steal from Death's Door and have some of them be the players goals. I haven't read either game you referenced, drawing from a hat is easy enough to picture, but I've never seen click and lock for Capes.

I also really like the idea of giving the players reason to want the other person to fail. Do you think gaining Grey dice is enough of a reinforcement to achieve that goal?

Hi Tim,

It's interesting you see it as a longer game. To me it seems shorter. I'll have to see how it works in playtesting. I'm also not sure that you can't get investment in a single session, but I will yield that it's (much?) easier to do with more time. My mind is not closed, but I want to beat my head on the wall first.

Thanks for the reassurance on the tone, that's one of my major concerns. I like the Roach, it's a fun game, but I don't think I'd like to hear lots of raucous laughter coming from folks playing this game.

Hmm... I believe you are right about needing interaction with NPC's before and after but I'm not sure how I would do that.

[Jason Morningstar]

Hi Clyde,

Yes, your missing notes help a lot! 

Here's a GR thread that might be relevant.  Another thread here.  We may be after different things, but my motivation is balancing playability with honoring the ground truth.

[timfire]

Clyde,

It's mostly a gut feeling that this will turn into a more-than-one-shot. This game sounds like one of those "everyone takes a turn" games like Sorcerer, MLwM, Polaris, Acts of Evil, (sometimes) PTA, Hero's Banner, etc. It sounds like most PCs will be off doing their own thing without a whole lot of sharing scenes. Is this how you envision it? Or do you envision all the PCs being together most of the time?

The thing with this structure is that it takes more time to play. A game like the Roach is able to save time because the PCs are together for the most part. But when everyone takes a turn, you have to account for one scene for every player. In the Acts of Evil playtest I've been apart of, and in a recent game of PTA, we were averaging about 3 short-ish scenes (one round) an hour. That adds up quick.

I also didn't mean to say that you can't get investment in a single session, just that you get more over multiple sessions.

But my point wasn't to say you should make a longer game, rather the opposite---I wanted to encourage you not to worry about the length of the game at all. Just let the game be what it wants to be. If you're right, if this is a short game, it will manifest that in actual play. The opposite will as well.


I'm trying to think through the implications of the grey dice. Right now, the challenger needs a good reason to want to see the other player fail, a reason good enough to lose grey dice over. 'Cause it seems to me that the challenger is going to lose dice, one way or the other.

First, the player can simply give and there goes the dice. The answer to this seems to be to propose some really harsh stakes, such that the player doesn't want to give. But even then, the challenger doesn't get to decide how many dice the player rolls, so it's likely that the challenger will always be a disadvantage. (If the player doesn't want to give, that means they want to win, which means that they will likely spend whatever resources it takes to win.)

So why should the challenger challenge at all, if it will likely lower his personal resources?

One partial solution might be to allow a counter bid. After the challenger proposes a challenger, the player can either roll the dice or offer the challenger a number of dice in return in exchange for success. That makes challenging a little less risky, but the challenger would still need a reason to want to see the player fail, otherwise the challenger will always take the counterbid (and they might start proposing half-hearted conflicts just to get dice from the player). I'm not sure a counter bid is really all that great of a solution.

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

Hi Jason,

Thanks for the links. I'll be interested to see what you do with Grey Ranks.

Hi Tim,

I think we are agreed on the duration part, I'll just see how long it takes.

I hadn't really decided if the game would use that kind of aggressive scene framing, but was leaning on initially having scenes set in more of a traditional way with most of the people together. The idea of what I was thinking for a convention game set up would be to have everyone in a prison, right when the riot starts, and using a timer to push people and help create tension... of course last night I was thinking that if I used aggressive scene framing, I could make a board that would make the number of turns finite and perhaps apply special rules at certain points. I'm really wishy-washy here.

You make a very valid criticism of the conflict resolution. I think I can still have some of the feel if perhaps the person putting up Grey dice initially only risks one die. This reduces the potential loss but still rewards the player being challenged with something if they just give in to the Grey Man, and encourages challengers to make the Grey Man's goals challenging and unwholesome. The main reason I wanted this in is I thought it would put a small check on leader bashing. Leader bashing can still occur but you'll want to be very challenging with the goals.

I think from there maybe I could put something in that would encourage a back and forth escalation of dice.

[timfire]

I wasn't neccessarily saying your idea was broken, just that with the current version, you need to build a strong reason to want the other players to fail. Actually, if you built such a reason into the rules, then accumulating grey wouldn't be about building power to succeed, but rather building resources to bride the other players into accepting failure.

This is how I see such play---someone with alot of dice challenges the player, offering up a ton of dice, more than the player has to counter. This will presuade them to take the offer and accept defeat. If the player choses to fight, however, they will be forced to call upon Sin/Magic to gain resources---something you want, I assume. The net effect is that player either fails or calls upon Sin/Magic, both of which seem desirable by the challenger.

Now what this sets up is a dynamic where someone who just engaged in a conflict will likely have alot of dice, and the challenger will have few. If you make a rule were engaging a conflict ends your turn, what happens is the challenger (who has few dice) is forced into taking a turn, and the old player (who has lots of dice) is in a position to challenge the new player. It becomes self-reinforcing. See the reasoning here?

If grey dice are simply about gaining resources to succeed, what will happen is that players will simply give and collect dice. Then, when something comes up that's really important, they won't use Sin/Magic, they'll use grey dice. If played strategically, a player may be able to get away with never using Sin/Magic.

... at least, that's how I see things playing out. I might wrong. Actual play doesn't always follow your preconceived ideas. It also assumes a few things about what you (the designer) want to happen in play, which may be wrong.

If you're following me and agree, you need some sort of mechanical reason to want to see the other players fail. I like the idea that it has something to do with how end-game works. Ralph's suggestion, that the Grey Man is stronger against those that fail more, might work.

But one more thing---I think this all depends on the idea that using Sin/Magic is BADEVIL. And in order for that, I think the players really need to see the effects of their using Sin/Magic (in a thematic sense). I think this is similar to Paul Czege's goal for Acts of Evil, where humanizing victims makes the PC occultists seem more monsterous.

If players don't feel that Sin/Magic is BADEVIL, then they will be tempted to just sin and sin and sin in order to succeed---Is that you goal? Do you want a downward spiral? Or do you want there to be a tension, between wanting to succeed and not wanting to become evil yourself?

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

If players don't feel that Sin/Magic is BADEVIL, then they will be tempted to just sin and sin and sin in order to succeed---Is that you goal? Do you want a downward spiral? Or do you want there to be a tension, between wanting to succeed and not wanting to become evil yourself?

Hey Tim,

These are great questions. They point to some of the things I want to examine like; what is Evil, why do some people embrace it, and why do others do Evil but feel bad about it? So I want people to be strongly tempted towards sin, in such a way that not sinning will likely cost them their life. I believe this is a good way to give consideration to the idea because being strongly pushed towards Evil muddies the waters about what Evil is, and it's there I want the tension, on the question. Is that making sense, I'm not sure thats the best wording?

[TroyLovesRPG]

Hello Clyde and posters,

Spilled salt came to mind and then you throw it over your left shoulder to ward away demons. What if...

If you have at least three players and play moves in a counter-clockwise direction.
You have a character and you pit the grey man against the player on your right (demon on my left).
The player has one of two actions to perform when it is his turn:
  be a grey man against the character on his right
  sin against the character on his left

Being a grey man means you only use grey dice to challenge the character. You roll the grey dice and the character rolls only magic dice. If the grey man wins then he gets the die with the highest number rolled. If the character wins then he gets one of the grey man's MAGIC die of the smallest type.

If you sin against the character on your left then you must use at least one magic die and one grey die. The defender can only use magic dice. If the sinner wins then he gets the magic die with the highest number rolled and a grey die of the largest type. If the defender wins then he gets a magic die with the highest number rolled and GIVES a grey die of the smallest type to the sinner.

This exchange of dice makes you want to win with the grey man against the character on your right and lose to the sinner on your right. However, having more grey dice give you more power. Eventually, players learn they have to move the dice in both directions.

You lose when you have exhausted all your magic dice. You win when you discard all your grey dice.

I think a blind bidding process would work well. Players put their dice on a sheet with a line drawn through it. Players bid dice by moving them to the side of the line toward the opponent. Once they bid then the dice are revealed and rolled.

I'm not sure how the role-playing aspect will work.

Troy

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

Hi Troy,

I really want to stay away from the aggressive scene framing you're describing. Not because I think it's a bad way to play, I enjoy some games that follow that set up. There's something I'm looking to get from this game and my past experience with the type of set up you describe is that it tends to pull me out of an immersive state more often than I would like. My motivation for designing the game is an attempt to try to understand why people abuse other people and I believe immersion will help me to examine that place.

I really like the idea that you might win when you get rid of your Grey dice, thats an awesome way to push people towards opposing other people. I also like the idea of a blind bid across a line, but I'll need to think about as it seems like if you have more dice you just push all your dice across.

[TroyLovesRPG]

Hello Clyde,

I look at dice and see nothing horrifying about them. They are regular solids with numbers. Focusing on mechanics early in the design process puts the theme of your game at the bottom of the list.

There's something I'm looking to get from this game and my past experience with the type of set up you describe is that it tends to pull me out of an immersive state more often than I would like. My motivation for designing the game is an attempt to try to understand why people abuse other people and I believe immersion will help me to examine that place.

I really like the idea that you might win when you get rid of your Grey dice, thats an awesome way to push people towards opposing other people. I also like the idea of a blind bid across a line, but I'll need to think about as it seems like if you have more dice you just push all your dice across.

You could achieve an immersive state by describing the actions and effects of abuse. The word abuse means many things in real-life and there is another area of abuse in the gaming world. If you want to focus on child-abuse, battered-wife syndrome, bullying and oppression then use those terms. Otherwise, this game may come off as a lesson in power-garming, which can be viewed as another form of abuse.

The reason why people abuse others is documented in volumes of psychological works. I don't think you're going to get answers from this game. Simply, you are not asking the right questions or providing the right environment to show it. Plus, you are intentionally inviting people to think of ways to abuse each other. I can understand creating the grey man as a powerful antagonist that represents evil and forces people to abuse. However, that is just a game mechanic.

This is your second attempt at trying to create a game based on true abuse of people. Characters are one thing and it should be left in their realm. Having the players think about abuse is a topic of serious conversation. There's your answer. Stay away from gaming and talk to people about abuse in a real way. Once you have your research, then you can evaluate the appropriateness of a game. If you have all the research then let us know what it is.

Troy

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

Hi Troy,

I disagree. I think roleplaying can be an interesting way to have a serious conversation. However, where you are presently going into discussion is not something I care to discuss as I don't find it helpful.