[Robots & Rapiers Playtest] A Simple Letter

[Thor Olavsrud]

Oh, I should also note that after I succeeded on the Crisis Score Check, I rolled 2d10 as indicated to increase the Crisis Score, getting a total of 9. Crisis increased from 25 to 33.

[Valamir]

First off, we found the "Check Faction Strength" phrase very confusing as we started with the mistaken impression that the die roll was somehow influenced by the Faction Strength score. It didn't take us too long to realize our mistake, but a little rewording could eliminate the confusion.

Confusion is good.  I like to know what I need to work on.

There was also some question as to whether Tapestry and Crisis had to sum to 100 (as Role and Self Awareness sum to 10). I was fairly sure that the answer was no and so we played it that way.

You are correct.  Should I state that explicitly do you think, or is the absence of instructions to keep them tied sufficient?

I was also confused by something in the Spark Scores entry on page 143. It says that Scores above 10 are possible and result in the excess being added to the d10 roll. That seems strange, as it would mean that a higher Spark Score makes it less likely that there is Spark Activity. Am I reading that wrong?

That could definitely be clearer.  The intent here is that a score above 10 will always succeed, its impossible to fail on a d10 rolling under 10+...so success is a given and the roll is just to determine how much the Tapestry declines...which is why the excess is added to the roll.

Here's a record of what we rolled. Note: The Struggle for the Tapestry Log is very useful for this, although I recommend having a spot somewhere on the sheet to record the Starting Tapestry Score and Starting Crisis Score.

I had intented the first Strength column to be used to record initial values (or values from prior logs)...so starting Tapestry Score would be in B14 and Crisis in B15.  Need to be more visible?

1. I rolled a 1 for the King, giving us a Repair Tapestry Result. I was a little confused by the Effect entry. We weren't sure whether the result was based on what we rolled for checking the King's Faction Strength, or if we were supposed to roll again. We decided it was the former, and we read it to essentially mean that if you rolled a 1, you added 2 points to the Tapestry Score, and if you rolled a 2, you added 4 points to the Tapestry Score. Looking at it today, I'm wondering whether we made the right call. In any case, the Tapestry Score went from 75 to 77.

Ahh, yes, I see where the confusion stems from.  I'll clarify that.  The intent is to roll 1d10 on each table and then make a Check as indicated.  Checks (as opposed to Tests) are always 1d10 equal to or less than the relevant score.  So when you rolled a 1 for the King the result is to "Check Strength" meaning you would have rolled 1d10 vs. the King's Faction Strength, increasing the Tapestry by 2x the roll if successful, or nothing if he failed.  An extended example of an Interlude will probably clear all that up.

2. I rolled an 8 for the Cardinal, resulting in Oppose Faction. I rolled again, for a 3. The Cardinal was opposing the Bandits. We had the same confusion for the Effect for the Cardinal, but the way it read made us decide that in this case we did have to roll again, this time trying to roll under the Cardinal's Strength. The Cardinal succeeded, so the Bandit's score dropped from 5 to 4.

Correct.

3. For the Bandits, I rolled an 8, followed by a 9 for the Support Revolution result. As you can guess, we had the same confusion as to the Effect, but went ahead and Increased Revolutionary Zeal by 1. A related question: The Cardinal succeeded in reducing the Bandit's score from 5 to 4 in step 2. I'm assuming that we played step 3 incorrectly and should have rolled 1d10 against the Bandit's Strength to determine whether they managed to increase Revolutionary Zeal. If that's true, should we have rolled against a Strength of 5 or a Strength of 4 here? In other words, did the Cardinal's result take effect immediately, or will it only take effect in the next Interlude? Revolutionary Zeal increased from 5 to 6.

Yes, you should have rolled 1d10 vs. Bandit's Strength.  The tables are rolled in order so it would have been against the Bandit's reduced Strength of 4.

4. I rolled a 1 for the Queen, which would normally result in Damage Tapestry. However, since her starting Strength is 3, we treated the result as Increase Power instead. The Queen's Strength increased from 3 to 4.

Correct.  I added that alternate result after early tests indicated the Queen never became anything more than impotent.

5. I rolled a 7 for La Roche, resulting in Increase Power. La Roche's Strength increased from 3 to 4.

6. The Gray Eminence has not been unleashed, so no roll for him yet.

correct

7. I rolled a 2 on Spark Activity versus their Strength of 5. I thus subtracted 2 from the Tapestry (is that correct?), bringing the Tapestry Score back down to 75. I also added 1 to Spark Strength, giving them a new Score of 6.

Correct as written.  Although I have been tempted to have a successful Spark Activity Check reduce the Tapestry by the Spark Activity level rather than by the number rolled...depending on whether that's needed to tip the equilibrium against the Tapestry (design goal is for the Tapestry to fall and crisis to destroy Auvernais as the most likely default unless the PCs take action to either prop up the Tapestry or tear it down while thwarting Crisis).  Tests so far suggest this change isn't needed and the Tapestry is plenty fragile as it is.

8. I rolled a 5 for Revolutionary Zeal versus a Strength of 5. I thus subtracted 10 points from Tapestry (is that correct?), bringing the Tapestry Score to 65. The roll was odd, so I didn't reduce Spark Activity or increase Revolutionary Zeal.

Correct.  The dastardly Revolutionaries and their efforts to despoil Auvernais.

9. I rolled a 2 for the Preservationists versus a Strength of 5. I thus added 2 to the Tapestry (is that correct?), bringing the Tapestry Score to 67. The number was even and successful, so I reduced Spark Activity by 1 to a total of 5, and increased Preservationists by 1 to a total of 6.

Correct as written, although I've been tempted to make the change noted in #7 above if the Tapestry proves too fragile and falls too quickly.

10. We did not meet the qualifications for Crisis Increase.

11. We did not meet the qualifications for a Coup Possibility.

12. We did not meet the qualifications for a Bandit Invasion.

13. We did not meet the qualifications for La Roche Invasion.

These steps are both my favorite parts and (11-13) the parts I'm most worried about being unneccessarily fiddly.  Its probably too early to tell since you didn't qualify for any, but I want the invasions to be neat things with the rolls here (likely over several Interludes) indicating whose winning and then normal play occuring against the back drop of an actual revolution or foriegn invasion.

14. Checking for the Tapestry score. Do I use the original score or the revised score (i.e., 75 or 67)? I assumed it should be against 67. I rolled a 28 and so there was no effect.

correct

15. I rolled a 4 for the Crisis Score check versus 25, indicating a Crisis. I then rolled a 6 on the Crisis Event Table, bringing on Chronic Shortages.

Ahhh...Wealth Level reductions already.  Plunge those player robots into poverty.  See how Devon likes not being able to afford to maintain his +3 Sonic Rapier...heh...I'm very fond of the interaction between Crisis and the Wealth Tables...assuming the math continues to work out.


For the most part that seemed to go as envisioned.  So now you as GM have a successful action by the Cardinal against the Bandits, a successful action by the Queen to expand her network of informants and perhaps some form of demonstration or anarchist event by the revolutionaries resulting in a sharp drop in the Tapestry, and an increase in Preservationist recruitment.  You also have Chronic Shortages which is a particularly nasty crisis, especially as it sticks around until dealt with.

Tieing a few of these together, one could easily see the increase in Preservationist sentiment as a back lash against the large Revolutionary roll.  Particularly if whatever the Revolutionary roll was was the trigger that led to the supply shortage (perhaps some warehouses were raided, or a fire in the artisan district burned out several of the cottage factories that keep Auvernais supplied).  The Bandits could be in particularly bad shape.  Not only did they just suffer a setback from the Cardinal but (narratively) a shortage in Auvernais is doubly painful for the Bandits who rely on Auvernais surpluses being smuggled out to them.

Given that the PCs are just starting out, they won't have the Self Awareness to be key players in this mess yet, but you can probably find some way of incorporating all this...especially if one of the players asks for a Scenario to end the crisis.  That's exactly the sort of story meat I was hoping the system would generate.  Was it worth the effort of all of those rolls to get to that point?

[Thor Olavsrud]

Given that the PCs are just starting out, they won't have the Self Awareness to be key players in this mess yet, but you can probably find some way of incorporating all this...especially if one of the players asks for a Scenario to end the crisis.  That's exactly the sort of story meat I was hoping the system would generate.  Was it worth the effort of all of those rolls to get to that point?

Yes, it absolutely developed some cool story potential. The players were already talking about the Request Scenario Action with the intention of dealing with the Shortages with some excitement, so I think that's definitely working.

However, I could see some of their eyes glazing over while I was doing the rolling, so I think it's probably better to recommend this stuff as GM-prep work rather than something to do together at the table. As prep work it's not too onerous. It might be neat to have some connection between the results and the Scenario Generation tables, but that's certainly more of a "wouldn't it be cool if" rather than "this is really necessary" type thing.

As for whether it is better for the players to know about this stuff, I don't have a good, informed opinion yet. My instincts are that it wouldn't hurt to let them see the results -- it would certainly aid them in deciding to use the Request Scenario action -- but I could see arguments the other way as well.

Do any of the rest of you want to chime in on this one?

As for your answers: great! Glad to get that stuff straightened out. I don't think we encountered anything that can't be fixed with some cleaned up writing. I'm hoping the next session will finish up the scenario and we'll get to use the PC's Interlude actions to dig into some more of this stuff.

[Thor Olavsrud]

The rest of Session 2:

We opened with Burgiss rushing up to the rest of the Band of Four to tell them that they had a mission "For love and adventure!" and told them to come with him.

We went immediately into the race to the Kissing Bridge. The Hazards Table in the scenario was a big hit.

It feels like the system of Action Roll, Opposition Roll, Augmentation Roll, etc., breaks down a little bit when I don't have an agent with which to make Opposition Rolls. It wasn't bad, per se, but without opposition to galvanize them, I had to nudge a bit to get the players to use Augmentation rolls for themselves and each other. Also, there's no real reason to conserve Charges if there's no opposition. This wasn't horrible, just wanted to bring it up.

And some questions:
1. If I activate an equipment penalty or the players activate an equipment bonus, is the penalty/bonus good for only a single roll, or is there a Let It Ride-like effect where it lasts for the length of a conflict? In this case, for instance, John (as Charles) has a Poor Steed (-1). If I give John an Inspiration Point to activate the penalty during his first Riding test, does he have to deal with the -1 penalty for the rest of the race to the Kissing Bridge, or only the one roll?

2. Does an equipment penalty give  Difficulty (i.e.,  would John's Poor Steed have given me 1 die to roll), or does it cancel one of John's successes on his roll?

3. Does an equipment bonus give bonus dice, or is it added to the number of successes?

4. If I wind up with dice when I wouldn't otherwise roll (for instance, in the race, one of the characters attempts something in which they don't have a Specialty), what do I use as my Target Number? In this case, I don't have a Hardware Score to roll against.

5. Is there a set time when players can spend their earned Inspiration to increase Self Awareness? Or can they do it at any time after they have enough Inspiration to buy the next level?

[Valamir]

It feels like the system of Action Roll, Opposition Roll, Augmentation Roll, etc., breaks down a little bit when I don't have an agent with which to make Opposition Rolls. It wasn't bad, per se, but without opposition to galvanize them, I had to nudge a bit to get the players to use Augmentation rolls for themselves and each other. Also, there's no real reason to conserve Charges if there's no opposition. This wasn't horrible, just wanted to bring it up.

That was exactly confirmed in my own playtest this past weekend.

Here's what we came up with, see what you think.

1) When there is no agent to make Opposition Rolls, players are always opposed by "The Tapestry"...pretty much using the same logic as Demonic Influence in Dogs.  The number of dice to roll as the Opposition increases as the level of Spark Activity / Revolutionary Activity increases, and the Target Number increases as the Crisis Level increases.  So one of the steps in the Interlude then becomes setting the level of default opposition for the coming session.  Idea being the more Auvernais goes to hell in a handbasket the tougher the going gets.  My current thought is that NPC robots don't face this Tapestry opposition because a) having the GM roll off against the GM is boring, and b) making the NPC villains a little scarier isn't a bad thing and making the NPC mooks weaker isn't necessary...but I could be persuaded otherwise.

2) The Charge Limit definitely becomes less of an issue in quick "one roll" type conflicts.  It basically indicates at that point the maximum number of Augments and Activations a robot can do at once with little reason to set any aside for "defense".  I'm not sure that in and of itself is a bad thing at all.

However, it did make me aware of one potential mechanical break down.  In a situation with no opposition, it is theoretically possible (i.e. permitted by the mechanics as currently written) for a player to make a free unaugmented Action Roll, use the successes to buy a bonus.  Then take another Initiative (since there are no other robots to go), take another free Action Roll to buy a bonus, etc. as a way of effectively getting an unlimited number of Augments without paying any Charge.  Not sure yet whether to file this one under "rule 0" (i.e. the don't be a dick rule) or try to fix it.  The easiest fix would just be to make Action Rolls cost 1 Charge same as Augmenting Rolls...

And some questions:
1. If I activate an equipment penalty or the players activate an equipment bonus, is the penalty/bonus good for only a single roll, or is there a Let It Ride-like effect where it lasts for the length of a conflict? In this case, for instance, John (as Charles) has a Poor Steed (-1). If I give John an Inspiration Point to activate the penalty during his first Riding test, does he have to deal with the -1 penalty for the rest of the race to the Kissing Bridge, or only the one roll?

As written currently, just 1 roll.  Rationale:  robots are swashbuckling heroes whose abilities shouldn't be dwarfed (negatively or positively) by their gear.  I'm willing to entertain contrary opinions on that if anyone has any.

2. Does an equipment penalty give  Difficulty (i.e.,  would John's Poor Steed have given me 1 die to roll), or does it cancel one of John's successes on his roll?

In the version you're running 1 die of Difficulty gets added as an additional die to the opposition.  If there is no opposition the Difficulty is rolled on its own with a TN of 5.

3. Does an equipment bonus give bonus dice, or is it added to the number of successes?

Dice.  In Beta 1.0 all bonuses add dice to the benefitting robot, all Difficulty adds dice to the benefitting opponent.

4. If I wind up with dice when I wouldn't otherwise roll (for instance, in the race, one of the characters attempts something in which they don't have a Specialty), what do I use as my Target Number? In this case, I don't have a Hardware Score to roll against.

5.  The default TN for Difficulty that isn't being added to another robot's roll is always 5.

5. Is there a set time when players can spend their earned Inspiration to increase Self Awareness? Or can they do it at any time after they have enough Inspiration to buy the next level?

Currently any time.  I've given some thought to restricting it to Interludes, but the Transformation process should be quick enough in practice to be done on the fly without too much distraction.


So, I've been compiling various feed back and ideas received up to this point and should have Version 2.3 ready by this weekend (God willin' and the crick don't rise).  Nothing fundamentally has changed in the way the game is played...i.e. all of the mental thought processes are the same...but there've been a number of mechanical streamlining changes that superficially have changed a lot.

[Thor Olavsrud]

So, I've been compiling various feed back and ideas received up to this point and should have Version 2.3 ready by this weekend (God willin' and the crick don't rise).  Nothing fundamentally has changed in the way the game is played...i.e. all of the mental thought processes are the same...but there've been a number of mechanical streamlining changes that superficially have changed a lot.

Great! We should hopefully finish up A Simple Letter tonight, so it'll be a good time to switch to updated rules.

Incidentally, we used the token system (from a few posts up in this thread) for Initiative, so we didn't run into the Initiative problem that you saw. Everyone got their turn and used Charges to Augment themselves and their companions.

Incidentally, the Hazard Table with proximity (characters within 1 success from each other are considered to be together) made for a really cool moment. After the first series of rolls, Mayuran and Dro were in the lead with 6 successes, John had 5, and Alexander was at the rear with 4. I rolled for Hazards for Mayuran (as he had the first initiative) and got the thugs. Mayuran and Dro and John were able to engage them, but Alexander was too far behind to join in. The session ended before we could finish, but that moment was really neat.

[Iskander]

Hey, Ralph - a few thoughts while they're fresh in my head from the conclusion of "A Simple Letter".

Perhaps most importantly, I really enjoy myself playing R&R. I like many of the details of the mechanics and how they fit with the setting, I like the color we create, and I like the way I can see my character developing (or trying to). The combination of swashbuckling musketeeriness with character-driven becoming is great.

I think you should start crystallizing some of the language you use to describe mechanics. I'm finding myself confused between test rolls, checks, target numbers, difficulties, skill numbers and so on. Because they're such common terms, they seem synonymous, when they are (I think) actually describing different mechanics. Using slightly unusual terms can help here, and then being crystal clear and obsessively consistent will be useful.

Likewise, I think you should rename the action / augment / combat stuff to give it a fencing flavour: Opposing rolls could be "Parrying rolls", an action roll that follows (by initiative) as a counter-strike could be a "Riposte roll", and so on. Just a thought that struck me as I was documenting play.

We ended up cheating, and it was weird - we forgot that Opposed Rolls made to defend against an Action Roll had "to stop, avoid, or interfere with another robot's Roll" - it meant that our action sequence was all offense, and no real defense. Mechanically it worked fine, but in color it was a bit odd for me. Looking back at the text, it's all there; we just forgot. Oops.

I was playing with Insipiration a bit more this session; I'm playing Burgiss, and last time I earned enough (4) to spark. Awesome. We had some questions about the process, which I'll leave for Thor to decipher from my scrawls. I am a little concerned that the cost of sparks is too high for the default: at the current rate of earning/expenditure, it's going to take me something like three or four months of weekly play to get the 50 inspiration it will cost to have a 50% chance of doing what I want to do if Thor (as Tapestry) has other plans. That's less fun than I thought it was going to be.

I basically hate being unable to earn inspiration on a roll when I've also spent it. This rule seems arbitrary, and it makes me want to hoard inspiration for sparking, rather than spend it as fun currency on my Spark Traits and so on. I didn't like the direction it drove my play very much, and I would prefer to moderate the progression to S-A10 with the dial you propose. It also breaks your math on p.58 of the draft we have, under "The Self-Awareness Increase Rate Dial". In the same section, I would advise against calling any mathematical adjustment or process "simple" you either come across as arrogant, or make your audience feel dumb for not getting it.

Burgiss died tonight: Thor gave me a mortal wound. Given that I was having a bad night for Inspiration, that really hurt - I spent both my hard-earned points, and whiffed horribly (and would have whiffed with either a self-awareness check or spending the dice as bonus dice to my roll). I was miffed. (The color was cool - I'd just used an ornamented rose pylon of the kissing bridge to knock one of the Cardinal's Guard off the bridge to his faux death in the water below - so I wasn't bummed thematically). However, it left me feeling hollow. I think you need to spruce up the Mortal Wound section so the GM's obligated not to be a dick, and to bring your character back as soon as narratively possible. It would be nice, also, to earn Inspiration (when you wake up) as compensation, if you will, for sitting out the end of the fight in which you gave your life to save everyone else. Scoring a mortal wound really isn't that hard, too... so it's especially scary for someone like Burgiss to be taken out of play.

The relationship between charge, initiative and the narrative constraints of the Diminishing Returns rule became clearer to me tonight, and I like them a lot. Make more of the hard-and-fastness of the Diminishing Returns, though - it's golden. I was a little concerned that with lots of chained Augmentation Rolls all over the place, the action could get a bit stodgy.

Can players apply Diminishing Returns to the GM?

What happens to the GM's ones? It began to feel odd that Thor wasn't able to make an equivalent choice / calculation as the players.

OK, I'm beat. I had fun tonight, and I'm looking forward to next week, when Thor's taking the scenario creation rules for a spin and we're continuing with the Band of Four. Huzzah! I think I'm beginning to grok viable ways to play the combat system's mechanics to the hilt, so I'm going to take a shot at exploiting the unholy crap out of it.

[Valamir]

Hey, Ralph - a few thoughts while they're fresh in my head from the conclusion of "A Simple Letter".

Perhaps most importantly, I really enjoy myself playing R&R. I like many of the details of the mechanics and how they fit with the setting, I like the color we create, and I like the way I can see my character developing (or trying to). The combination of swashbuckling musketeeriness with character-driven becoming is great.

Awesomeness.  Then its pretty much all tweaking and tightening and dialing in from here...

I think you should start crystallizing some of the language you use to describe mechanics. I'm finding myself confused between test rolls, checks, target numbers, difficulties, skill numbers and so on. Because they're such common terms, they seem synonymous, when they are (I think) actually describing different mechanics. Using slightly unusual terms can help here, and then being crystal clear and obsessively consistent will be useful.

I'm fairly certain the language in the text is pretty near obsessively consistent.  But there've been a lot of drafts so there may be some legacy issues creeping in.  I'll keep and eye out as the text gets finalized and maybe include a glossary box at various stages.

Likewise, I think you should rename the action / augment / combat stuff to give it a fencing flavour: Opposing rolls could be "Parrying rolls", an action roll that follows (by initiative) as a counter-strike could be a "Riposte roll", and so on. Just a thought that struck me as I was documenting play.

It might harm clarity to change the rules over, but I think I can definitely provide that flavor in the examples:  "Burgiss parries the Cardinal's man and siezing the initiative to launch a riposte augmented by his great strength to launch a might lunge"...or something with all the pertinent mechanics.

We ended up cheating, and it was weird - we forgot that Opposed Rolls made to defend against an Action Roll had "to stop, avoid, or interfere with another robot's Roll" - it meant that our action sequence was all offense, and no real defense. Mechanically it worked fine, but in color it was a bit odd for me. Looking back at the text, it's all there; we just forgot. Oops.

If I follow:  You declare an attack against me, I declare an attack against you, we roll in opposition and the high roller wins?  or something else?

If that's the case, that's not cheating.  If my method of "stopping" or "interfering" with your attack on me is to attack faster and kill you first, that's a valid opposition roll.  He who wins lands the blow.  It definitely gives a certain flavor to your combat style and for best results narratively should probably be mixed in with others.

I was playing with Insipiration a bit more this session; I'm playing Burgiss, and last time I earned enough (4) to spark. Awesome. We had some questions about the process, which I'll leave for Thor to decipher from my scrawls. I am a little concerned that the cost of sparks is too high for the default: at the current rate of earning/expenditure, it's going to take me something like three or four months of weekly play to get the 50 inspiration it will cost to have a 50% chance of doing what I want to do if Thor (as Tapestry) has other plans. That's less fun than I thought it was going to be.

That rate of income is definitely a "needs testing" point.  I've reduced the cost in the next version, but I've also completely changed the mechanical payment calculation so I don't know if the net effect will be faster or slower.  From my playtest last weekend (1 data point) it seems faster.

Also there is a player influenced dial in that when the GM forces a Role Check to keep you "in-line" you get Inspiration.  So if you need just a couple more points...you can sort of earn them youself.  Of course my design goal is to keep the mechanical income high enough that the player isn't "challenging their programming" sooooo much just to get Inspiration that it becomes annoying rather than fun.

I basically hate being unable to earn inspiration on a roll when I've also spent it. This rule seems arbitrary, and it makes me want to hoard inspiration for sparking, rather than spend it as fun currency on my Spark Traits and so on. I didn't like the direction it drove my play very much, and I would prefer to moderate the progression to S-A10 with the dial you propose. It also breaks your math on p.58 of the draft we have, under "The Self-Awareness Increase Rate Dial". In the same section, I would advise against calling any mathematical adjustment or process "simple" you either come across as arrogant, or make your audience feel dumb for not getting it.

The intent there was two fold: 1) to make the player make a choice "is it more important to succeed" or "more important to be inspired" 2) to "simulate" (I use the term loosely) the robot being distracted in the midst of a duel by some stray thought about the meaning of life and the mating rituals of butterflys and the loss of effectiveness thereby.

That said...I found it too fiddly and too annoying. 

The new system works as follows:
Still have a die pool and target number, but this time instead of counting successes on individual dice you take your single best die -- defined as highest die without going over target number and your "successes" is just the number on that die.

If the number on that best die matches the target number exactly, you gain 1 Inspiration per such matching die.  With no trade off choice...you just get it period.

Burgiss died tonight: Thor gave me a mortal wound. Given that I was having a bad night for Inspiration, that really hurt - I spent both my hard-earned points, and whiffed horribly (and would have whiffed with either a self-awareness check or spending the dice as bonus dice to my roll). I was miffed. (The color was cool - I'd just used an ornamented rose pylon of the kissing bridge to knock one of the Cardinal's Guard off the bridge to his faux death in the water below - so I wasn't bummed thematically). However, it left me feeling hollow. I think you need to spruce up the Mortal Wound section so the GM's obligated not to be a dick, and to bring your character back as soon as narratively possible. It would be nice, also, to earn Inspiration (when you wake up) as compensation, if you will, for sitting out the end of the fight in which you gave your life to save everyone else. Scoring a mortal wound really isn't that hard, too... so it's especially scary for someone like Burgiss to be taken out of play.

Tell me more about this.  How the mechanics of "being put down" are handled in the new version has been completely changed, but if you can remember the specific mechanical point where the system let you down (from excited about cool color, to being miffed) that would help.

The relationship between charge, initiative and the narrative constraints of the Diminishing Returns rule became clearer to me tonight, and I like them a lot. Make more of the hard-and-fastness of the Diminishing Returns, though - it's golden. I was a little concerned that with lots of chained Augmentation Rolls all over the place, the action could get a bit stodgy.

Excellent to hear.  I was trying to strike a balance between giving the GM an overwhelming tool that essentially turns the whole deal into fiat with a bunch of superfluous illusionary rolls vs. not giving the GM any tools to rein in the action.  From the sounds of it the Diminishing Returns standard accomplished that...

Can players apply Diminishing Returns to the GM?

Yes, I think there's an offhand line in there that indicates the standard applies to the GM as well, but I don't think I really highlighted it.

What happens to the GM's ones? It began to feel odd that Thor wasn't able to make an equivalent choice / calculation as the players.

Currently that's weak.  If the robot making the roll was a Spark, they'd get Inspiration same as the PCs.  If the robot isn't then nothing.  Problem is most Spark villains aren't going to be around long enough for that accumulated Inspiration to matter...they'll either be defeated or spend the bulk of their time off stage.

I'm open for ideas on that.  One thought I had was that the "1s" for the GM would earn some GM benies that could be used to activate player robot negative gear, or throw some additional "situational difficulty" (instead of just allowing the GM to invent that freely)...that sort of thing.  But that's just a half baked idea at this point.

OK, I'm beat. I had fun tonight, and I'm looking forward to next week, when Thor's taking the scenario creation rules for a spin and we're continuing with the Band of Four. Huzzah! I think I'm beginning to grok viable ways to play the combat system's mechanics to the hilt, so I'm going to take a shot at exploiting the unholy crap out of it.

Excellent, I got a sense from reading your reports that this was the "play conservatively while learning the system" sessions and that the "pound the crap out of it" sessions are yet to come.  Eager to see those...

[Iskander]

Quickly again, and probably imprecise - sorry! Also, whiny - double sorry

You declare attack against me (with augments), I declare opposed roll to be "shoot Ralph in the face and kill him" (with augments). I guess that's interrupting! So, not cheating. I would have preferred more back-and-forth color, I guess. My narrative choice - ignore it!

Role-checks: I only managed to get one this time, and on reflection, it bugs me a little: the situation was the third roll of the chase scene: Only Mayuran as Devon stood a chance of making it to the bridge, so we're constructing a seriers of augments from everyone else. I didn't like Dro/Alfredo or John/Charles' colour at all: it seemed very un-romantic un-swashbucklerish and basically thuggish. So I declined to augment those rolls, holding my charge for a potential later augment. Thor disagreed, and Burgiss was forced to take part in brutalising the local populace so we can deliver the letter. I guess this boils down to a difference in our perspectives of what constitutes Tapestry-supporting behaviour.  Throughout the session, I was hovering around one or two inspiration, needing to spend it frequently, earning none from dice (pure whiffery), and the 8 points I need for the next spark seem a long, long way off.

Mortal wound: Thor gave me a mortal wound (totally fair - not a problem). I read the rules, and the text lead me to believe that not only was I out of the fight and its consequences, but my character's return to play at all was in the hands of the GM - he could (by accident or by dickdom) put Burgiss in extended convalescence for six months, which would be a big downer for me. Thor (who is definitely not a dick) said that his reading of the setting material implied that Robots are no longer being repurposed at all, ever, and just wake up the next day as if nothing had happened... providing impetus for spark. That makes perfect sense to me, but is not what I read from the Mortal Wound section of the text, which made me feel like I was in a much worse situation than I really am. Even though Burgiss will be back on his feet the next day, he was completely out of the action for the conclusion of the scenario, which was a bummer, and that - combined with the does not compute factor of being alive again next day, makes me wonder if the GM should be required to grant Inspiration when choosing a Mortal Wound. After all, there are plenty of other ways he could damage a character, without completely eliminating them narratively from the task at hand.

Resolution change: I like the way the system works, and I like the choice between taking inspiration and getting more successes - for me, it successfully reinforces the tension between the Tapestry and Self Awareness. It's cool, and I'm confess I'm not looking forward to the alternative (but who knows?) Further - I would prefer to see the moment of inspiration as reinforcing alternate paths in my positronic brain, rather than closing off the possibility of gaining more inspiration thereby. I still hate not being able to spend and earn - it sticks in my craw.

I like the GM accumulating bennies for his ones - but I'm not so keen on him using them to activate our shitez0r equipment... it already seems pretty easy. That's probably because Rusty the Trusty Robohorse is a little close to the glue phase of his life. I should look at trying to fix those things up for Burgiss.

Quick note from earlier comments: yes, I think you should make it explicit that Crisis and Tapestry need not sum to 100. My inclination was to extrapolate that identity from sum(Role + Self Awareness) == 10.

[Valamir]

You declare attack against me (with augments), I declare opposed roll to be "shoot Ralph in the face and kill him" (with augments). I guess that's interrupting! So, not cheating. I would have preferred more back-and-forth color, I guess. My narrative choice - ignore it!

Yeah, mechanically anytime someone other than the current Initiative robot makes a roll that's an "interruption".

So to expand the above: I declare an attack against you...augment #1 feeds into augment #2...feeds into my attack action...then say Dro wants to jump in and help me (that's an interruption while he makes his rolls...up to 3 since I'm making 3...so both my augment #2 and Dro's augment now feed into my attack.

You then (being the target) oppose me (so that's an interruption while you make your rolls)...you also can make up to 3 total rolls since I'm making 3.  So your augment #1 feeds into your augment #2 feeds into your opposing roll against my action.  But say when you declare your augment #2 Thor decides to have an NPC oppose you.  That NPC now interrupts you and can make 2 rolls (since you're making 2 so-far).  Assuming you win, you continue on with your opposition to my attack.

My thought is that the level of "back and forth color" should be completely tailored to how ever many augments and interruptions and such the group does.


Also, there will be 1 key change in the new version to the way "I'm trying to put you down" rolls are made vs. "I'm trying to gain an advantage against you" rolls.  The "I'm trying to put you down" rolls have to overcome your Influence to have any effect.

SOOO....if you try to oppose my attack with an attack of your own, your opposition will first negate my attack and THEN have to overcome my Influence in order to put me down.  If it fails to put me down there is no other effect.  However, if your opposition is not a "put me down" type roll, then that extra step of overcoming my Influence doesn't happen...and so any extra successes you get go towards buying bonuses and such.

I'm not sure I explained that very well but the point being that since "put you down" rolls are harder to do than "advantage" rolls, there should be an incentive to spend some time building up an advantage before going for the kill.  Since its tied to Influence, low level non Sparks should still be fairly easy to "put down" while higher level types take a bit more effort.  In fact, I'm hoping that "putting down" the higher Sparks take so much effort that its not worth trying to do...instead of going for a Tapestry approved Mortal Wound of the sort that put Burgiss down, you'll instead say "screw it, lets just actually damage this guy and make him non-operational"...which will be easier at that point than the "Mortal Wound".

Again, I'm not sure I'm explaining that well...hard to do without going into all the version changes...but the whole Damage / Injury routine was pretty fugly and one of the first things I tried to fix for the revision.  Since you ran smack into the fugly part I'll look forward to what you think of the revision once I get it out to you.

Role-checks: I only managed to get one this time, and on reflection, it bugs me a little: the situation was the third roll of the chase scene: Only Mayuran as Devon stood a chance of making it to the bridge, so we're constructing a seriers of augments from everyone else. I didn't like Dro/Alfredo or John/Charles' colour at all: it seemed very un-romantic un-swashbucklerish and basically thuggish. So I declined to augment those rolls, holding my charge for a potential later augment. Thor disagreed, and Burgiss was forced to take part in brutalising the local populace so we can deliver the letter. I guess this boils down to a difference in our perspectives of what constitutes Tapestry-supporting behaviour.  Throughout the session, I was hovering around one or two inspiration, needing to spend it frequently, earning none from dice (pure whiffery), and the 8 points I need for the next spark seem a long, long way off.

Not sure I follow entirely.  Sounds like Dro and John narrated some actions that you felt were out of genre and Thor used a Role Check to force you to follow suit, and because Thor's ruling on what was a "Tapestry" behavior differed from yours you were a bit turned off by it?

If I've got that right I have a key question for you:

I WANT you to be bugged like that.  I want those points where you disagree with the GM but mechanically are compelled to just put up with it to be just enough off-putting to do three things...1) help you the player sympathize with the plight of the character by a direct parallel to what the robot character has to put up with and likely feels about it, and 2) motivate you to raise your Self Awareness so the GM can't do this to you as easily, and 3) motivate you to spend Inspiration to make Self Awareness checks to say "no, not going to do that, thank you very much".  Just enough to accomplish that but not so much as to make you less inclined to play.

Given those goals...did the scene accomplish that?  or do you see a likely hood in crossing the line into "un-fun" as a result.

Caveat:  Also note that my design goal is to have starting characters get through the first few levels of Self Awareness quickly enough that they start to leave the above farther behind within the first 3-4 sessions...which will require some tweaks in advancement rate to get right.

Mortal wound: Thor gave me a mortal wound (totally fair - not a problem). I read the rules, and the text lead me to believe that not only was I out of the fight and its consequences, but my character's return to play at all was in the hands of the GM - he could (by accident or by dickdom) put Burgiss in extended convalescence for six months, which would be a big downer for me. Thor (who is definitely not a dick) said that his reading of the setting material implied that Robots are no longer being repurposed at all, ever, and just wake up the next day as if nothing had happened... providing impetus for spark. That makes perfect sense to me, but is not what I read from the Mortal Wound section of the text, which made me feel like I was in a much worse situation than I really am. Even though Burgiss will be back on his feet the next day, he was completely out of the action for the conclusion of the scenario, which was a bummer, and that - combined with the does not compute factor of being alive again next day, makes me wonder if the GM should be required to grant Inspiration when choosing a Mortal Wound. After all, there are plenty of other ways he could damage a character, without completely eliminating them narratively from the task at hand.

File this one under "fugly" as noted above and when you've had a chance to play the revision let me know if its any better at this.

Further - I would prefer to see the moment of inspiration as reinforcing alternate paths in my positronic brain, rather than closing off the possibility of gaining more inspiration thereby. I still hate not being able to spend and earn - it sticks in my craw.

Not parsing.  What specifically are you refering to with "not being able to spend and earn"?

I like the GM accumulating bennies for his ones - but I'm not so keen on him using them to activate our shitez0r equipment... it already seems pretty easy. That's probably because Rusty the Trusty Robohorse is a little close to the glue phase of his life. I should look at trying to fix those things up for Burgiss.

In the current version of the rules that you have, buried deep in the Favor section where Disfavor is explained, is a rather obscure rule that I'm thinking of making more central.  This rule allows the GM to make Disfavor checks with all of the robots' enemies and use the result of those checks to screw with the robots.  That would be on page 131 of your current version (assuming it pagenated the same). 

I'm currently thinking that these accumulated "bennies" would feed into the same GM resource.


Very cool feedback...and not whiny at all, thanks.

BTW:  I think you're the first Brit I've seen type that word without throwing a superfluous "g" in it :-)

[Iskander]

...the whole Damage / Injury routine was pretty fugly and one of the first things I tried to fix for the revision.  Since you ran smack into the fugly part I'll look forward to what you think of the revision once I get it out to you.

Sounds good.

Given those goals...did the scene accomplish that?  or do you see a likely hood in crossing the line into "un-fun" as a result.

I'm a bit distant from the moment... but I think it just heated my desire to gain Self-Awareness. I certainly didn't want to stop playing!

Caveat:  Also note that my design goal is to have starting characters get through the first few levels of Self Awareness quickly enough that they start to leave the above farther behind within the first 3-4 sessions...which will require some tweaks in advancement rate to get right.

Sounds good!

Further - I would prefer to see the moment of inspiration as reinforcing alternate paths in my positronic brain, rather than closing off the possibility of gaining more inspiration thereby. I still hate not being able to spend and earn - it sticks in my craw.

Not parsing.  What specifically are you refering to with "not being able to spend and earn"?

In the version we were playing from, when a player spends inspiration on a roll, none of the 1s that come up are eligible to be turned into Inspiration. I hate this. I can see no justification for the restriction, and it was a major contributor to the downer I got from Burgiss' death: I had spent pretty much every Inspiration I had, and although I had come up with a bunch of 1s, I only got them on rolls where I'd spent Inspiration... so no bennies for me. Sucks to be Burgiss! I can't tell you how much I dislike this restriction.

In the current version of the rules that you have, buried deep in the Favor section where Disfavor is explained, is a rather obscure rule that I'm thinking of making more central.  This rule allows the GM to make Disfavor checks with all of the robots' enemies and use the result of those checks to screw with the robots.  That would be on page 131 of your current version (assuming it pagenated the same).

I'm currently thinking that these accumulated "bennies" would feed into the same GM resource.

I like Disfavor a lot... I would be concerned that the additional bennies would give the GM too much strength, but I'm sure that can be evaluated in playtest.

BTW:  I think you're the first Brit I've seen type that word without throwing a superfluous "g" in it :-)

Oh, that's a whole different word, most often used by Aussies to refer to Brits... as in "whingeing Poms". Ironic, given the nasality of the antipodean dialect. (Kidding, children!)

[Valamir]

In the version we were playing from, when a player spends inspiration on a roll, none of the 1s that come up are eligible to be turned into Inspiration. I hate this. I can see no justification for the restriction, and it was a major contributor to the downer I got from Burgiss' death: I had spent pretty much every Inspiration I had, and although I had come up with a bunch of 1s, I only got them on rolls where I'd spent Inspiration... so no bennies for me. Sucks to be Burgiss! I can't tell you how much I dislike this restriction.

Ahhh, yes.  That rule was crap.  It made it in during a "must not let the players have too much too soon" moment of weakness and survived by me justifying it as a "meaningful trade off choice" for the player.  Its already gone.

That said, what's also already gone is the cobbled together mishmash of things you can spend Inspiration on.  What I've done for the next version is pruned back Inspiration all the way to only being used for Self Awareness Checks or "leveling up" Self Awareness, with the idea of then adding back in things that actually work in a controlled and tied together fashion. 

I like Disfavor a lot... I would be concerned that the additional bennies would give the GM too much strength, but I'm sure that can be evaluated in playtest.

I have alot of ideas swirling around that concept right now, but none of them have gelled into a hard and fast crystal clear way to write rules about it.  In no particular order:

1) GM records the result of the Disfavor Rolls made during an Interlude and uses that as a pool to purchase effects from during play justified as the machinations of enemies behind the scenes
2) GM records the result of the Disfavor Rolls and treats them exactly like Favor Rolls, only instead of a player making a Favor Roll to help the GM would use the Disfavor Favor to hurt.  This has a nice rules symmetry to it, but I have trouble seeing it as something the GM wouldn't already be doing anyway without needing to track anything.
3) Go completely meta and have the result of the Disfavor Rolls symbolize "how hard life is when you have alot of enemies" and limit the GM to adding in special circumstance situational penalties by making him purchase those penalties from a Disfavor Pool.
4) Some other simpler cooler thing I haven't thought of yet.

There's something there I want to use...but it keeps slipping away from me so far.

[Thor Olavsrud]

I've started a new thread for the playtest now that we're using a revised version of the rules.