[The Path of Journeys] The game I always carry around with me

[Ron Edwards]

The Path of Journeys made its only appearance, to my knowledge, at the Ashcan Front booth in 2007. It is a small white booklet, rather attractive and neat, with a cover illustration of a man with a blindfold, wearing an Ashcan Front t-shirt, bravely stepping ahead from left to right (or as I see it, into opening the book).

I have played some of the ashcan games I bought at the booth that year, but not all of them, so I can't speak in superlatives. But I can say that The Path of Journeys was certainly the most exciting game I bought at GenCon in 2007, and in play, it is one of the most enjoyable learning experiences for me as a devotee of independent RPG design I've had since James V. West presented The Pool. It's really damned good.

Some of you know that I like to group and connect a lot of games in a diagram to show the history of developing techniques in the context of the Narrativist agenda. To be brief, one detailed set of branches had, by 2007, apparently finished what it had to offer. A number of new games in 2005-2007 filled out and enriched existing steps in that part of the diagram, but not creating new branches (this is no slam on these games! doing X well is a worthy thing). The branch I'm talking about is founded in Prince Valiant, Over the Edge, and Zero, and progresses up through a box containing Hero Wars, The Dying Earth, and Sorcerer, then branches out and develops through various steps including Dust Devils, Trollbabe, Dogs in the Vineyard, and some others. And yet now, I was looking at a plain little book which was its own spunky little branch in that very set. Wow.

The design considerations are reinforced by the prose, too, which I find to be distinctively honest, non-pretentious, and fun. It's capped by a few pages of Ram's comics, which are done in a clear, underground style that I like immensely. I'm not kidding about carrying the book around with me. It's enjoyable simply to open and flip through.
Despite the clarity, though, much of it is not the same as what one might expect from other RPGs, and I think people might encounter the "Sorcerer trap" - thinking you get it when you don't, and are just filling in what you think you know from previous habits. With a game like this, you really gotta know it and use it.

I followed up with some enthusiastic play experiences and emailed a bit back and forth with Ram Hull, the author, and we posted some of that exchange at the Ashcan Front site. However, I can't find the Ashcan Front thread where he and I posted so some of that material shows up here in this post. Here, I would really like to go over my experiences with the game, pose some ashcan-relevant feedback and questions, and encourage others to follow up through play and on-line discussion. I hereby disclose that I want to give Ram everything this site can offer in terms of critique, many people's play and attention, and encouragement to publish it in its next form. Not to have acted on this wish over the past six months is a personal failing of my own, and I hope it's not too late to repair.

The May Court concept

The foundation for playing the game is a community orientation. There has to be a community with dynamic features, in that "something's going on." The characters are defined very specifically about how they are going to relate to the changes the community will undergo.

Player-characters are designated by the terms May King, May Queen, Priest, Courtier, Fool, Magistrate, Advocate, and Sorcerer. I must immediately explain that this is neither Zodiac nor Tarot - the term doesn't concern the fate of the character, the past of the character, the psychology of the character, or the inner life of the character. They are not archetypes! Literally, the terms indicate the thematic content of problems to be faced by the character, and designate the kinds of impact the character will have. Nor are they alignments or ideologies. Each one is mainly defined by a balance (or failure to balance) two principles, and so a May Queen character ("support vs. sacrifice") might well sacrifice too much, sacrifice too little, support too much, or support too little in any combination. The role raises specific questions, that's all.

The following bit is excerpted and slightly changed from an email I sent to Ram, and which he replied to with some confirmation and useful comments that I can't retrieve.

---
1. The group of players, us, examined your basic idea that the player-characters are members of a May Court. What might this mean? To our pleasure, the text permitted a wide range of interpretations.

a) The May Court might exist as a named entity in the imagined game-world, and the characters would indeed call themselves and one another by "the Courtier" and so on.
b) The May Court might not so exist, and therefore the terms and concepts would be applied strictly at the level of the real players, and not in the words and perceptions of the characters.

and, independently,

a) The May Court characters might be considered a team or a squad of some kind (and as a subset, designated as such or thrown together to the same effect), and adventures are missions
b) The May Court characters might not be so considered, and therefore their interactions as a May Court (i.e. their collective role toward the community) would be emergent, even unintentional, rather than directed or planned by the characters. This is especially interesting if they exist across the boundaries of an in-game-world zone of conflict, rather than just on one side.

and, yet again independently,

a) The May Court roles' names may literally describe the corresponding characters in the fiction, such that a Priest, for instance, would indeed be a priest in the story itself.
b) The May Court roles' names may be considered strictly at the player level, such that the May Court Priest role might be held by any sort of character in the story, whether a beggar or a warrior or a priest or a prostitute.

In the games I've played so far, we decided to go with (b), (b), and (b) - the most unstructured possible interpretation, which in my view means that the May Court as creative constraint is actually at its most powerful, operating without any in-game-world crutches to keep it viable. I prefer it this way but will probably try it with some "a's" in there too, to see what difference that makes.

2. We also found the May Court itself very compelling, as a character/story concept. I hope you don't mind a little feedback toward your reflections and definitions; I'm pretty sure you're OK with that as your text stated that the definitions were themselves your way of working out the concepts in your own mind.

Each role actually offers *four* outcomes, doesn't it? The true dichotomy for each, always, is whether the community is actually transformed for the better through the agency of that role. For instance, the Sorcerer may play a positive role toward a community through either creation or destruction; or he may play a negative role, again, through either creation or destruction.

Acts of creation => gain/joy/transformation for the community
Acts of creation => disaster for the community
Acts of destruction => gain/joy/transformation for the community
Acts of destruction => disaster for the community

Therefore it is too simplistic to think of the two aspects of each role as being the "good one" and the "bad one." Your descriptions, for the most part, are consistent with this nuanced view I'm outlining - the most difficult exception is the Fool, in which it seems to me that you haven't quite nailed down the full range.

(As I recall, Ram confirmed that this view of the May Court dichotomies was consistent with his intention.)
---

The role of the Advocate

One of the May Court roles, the Advocate deserves a whole essay about the existing options. In one sense, it's pretty easy, just another May Court role for a player-character or perhaps an NPC. It's interesting, but they're all interesting. Here it is, extracted from the text:

The primary conflict for the Advocate is often in the line between being prepared for conflict and inviting it. The iconic Advocate questions and challenges the people around then, encouraging both honesty and sincerity. The misguided Advocate will often be damaging in their challenges, hurting those around them and encouraging duplicity.

The fascinating part is that Advocacy is also a special phase of play, for which there's no equivalent for any other May Court role. The Advocate literally combats the other player-characters using the formal Argument mechanics, demanding justification and clarification of what the other characters thought they were doing and why. It's kind of a gestalt-therapy confrontation. This is carried out periodically between or throughout the sessions of play. So the Advocate is not only a character role, but also a particular activity that serves as a connector, glue, and context for the entirety of play, in steps throughout play.

It's a great idea, a fantastic idea, even at the simplest application of one of the player-characters literally being the Advocate. However, once you grasp the whole range of "penetration" of the advocate into the SIS, the concept becomes wonderfully customizable and consequential, permitting a huge variety of ways in which Advocacy can affect a particular game.

1. The Advocate character might be a player-character who's active just like any other during play, an NPC who's active just like any other during play, or even a shared character who exists only for this purpose. We even hit upon a slightly different version of the NPC option, too, which I'll describe in a minute.

2. The Advocacy session migth be held at the beginning of each session in reference to the previous one (this is the default), as a scene that arises within a session of play, or even as a whole session itself, up to and including the fascinating option of having the events discussed all played as flashback or references during the Advocacy confrontations.

3. Since the Advocate is a character, as opposed to an agent of "pure" reflection, all the risks of his or her personal journey are engaged in the Advocacy session just as for any other such character. The question is always present of whether he or she is succeeding or failing in the role, and succeeding or failing regarding his or her key conflict words (more on that in a bit).

4. And yet more nuances that the examples of play might illustrate.

Play 1: the low-fantasy border drama

So what did we do? As I mentioned before, we decided to go with the (b)(b)(b) option, in which the May Court concepts had no formal presence in the fiction. We worked out a little semi-historical, deliberately not-quite historical setting. We thought in terms of the Roman empire at its limits, and a border with the non-Empire, and the village and occupation-fort there. The imagery was kind-of Roman and kind-of Celtic. But we also stripped things down a little, staying vague so that the literal historical parallel wasn't available to the game, and also adding in rough, dark magic as a feature of the setting.

Unfortunately I don't have full sheets for all the characters. They included Morrag, a woman, the leader of the occupying battalion of Empire soldiers, the May Queen (support, sacrifice); Owain, a man, the young chieftain of one of the most powerful tribes in the area, the Sorcerer (benefits of surge of action, benefits of restraint); and Deirdre, a woman, a bard who has adopted the border town as her home, the Priest (introspection, inaction).

To clarify, and to use Deirdre for that purpose, the introspection/inaction issue lies with the Priest role. The character also includes two key conflict terms created by the player for this character and represent overall success vs. failure (which unfortunately I don't have with me), and the words of fate are to be incorporated into the fiction as time goes by, signalling a minor endgame for the character when they're all involved. In Deirdre's case, those words were Blood, Written, and Sacrifice. Her character's motivations were I want to keep the peace 3, I want to understand the enemy 3, I know history 2. These are a really big deal which I'll try to explain later.

I decided to make up a few NPC May Court members, some in adversarial positions. So a rival clan chief was another Sorcerer, a little-respected prophetess was the Courtier, and a soldier who'd gotten mixed up in a clan marriage was the Fool. Actually, that leads to a question. I inferred that it was OK to cast NPCs as May Court members, but that may have been only a special-case thing for the Advocate. So I'm not really sure that this is allowed. In the game I just (minimall) described, there were actually four in addition to the Advocate, outnumbering the player-characters, which I later decided was a bit too much.

We played through two or three sessions, and all sorts of events occurred, some of them quite bloody. I'm irked that I have so little documentation for this game, because there are a ton of things I can't talk about without the numbers. Well, I'll forge ahead anyway with the main point.

I was open to the idea that any of the players might choose for his or her character to play an Advocate, and to take on the corresponding role during the start-up phase of following sessions. As it happened, no one did, and so we hit upon an interesting device. I would play an Advocate NPC at those times, and the character was personified as a scholar, centuries later, looking through documents and trying to divine what the hell happened during that contentious, vague, and difficult period and specific set of events. The player-character operated more or less as a source of such documents, flashing back to what they were writing or leaving around by accident. It worked great! We instantly became huge fans of those points of play.

(more in a minute)
edited to fix some formatting - RE

[Ron Edwards]

A bit about the system

Resolution uses a reversed dice-pool concept, in which the lowest single value is used, and effect is rated on an increasing scale. In other words, you want your lowest value to be as high as possible, so less dice in your pool is better. This is not a gimmick for some reasons I hope to make clear later in the post. The dice pool is based on three things: Motivations, rated from 0 to 5, Skills, rated from 0 to 5, and an Essential Skill, usually rated at 1 although it varies. For all of these, lower is better, hence a 5 in a skill means it's totally unfamiliar, and 0 means you're a transcendent master at it.

These are not to be confused with Traits, which are rated 1 to 3, and for which higher is better. You take that low die value and add the value of the relevant Trait or Traits.

So! Let's say I'm using the Motivation "I want to protect my sister" rated at 4, my Skill at "Fist-fight" rated at competent (3), and my Essential Skill which in this case is Health, rated at 1. So that's eight d6. (rattle, rattle) 2, 4, 6, 3, 4, 1, 4, 6. Aarrgh! I got a 1! Anyway, let's say I'm also using my Quick as a Cat Trait at 2, so my final success is 1 + 2 = 3, "Talented or trained effort." Looks like I just punched my rival, or at least might do so depending on his success result. If the 3 had been my lowest die value, then I'd have had an "Amazing effort" result.

With bigger pools, you very often get "1" as a rolled result, so the Traits become a key feature. Apparently you can use more than one Trait at once for +1's, so if I were also Jealous at whatever rating, then my success would have been a 4.

It's important to understand that the system relies on oppositional conflict, not orthogonal. If I'm grabbing the statue and you're jumping out the window, we just roll separately and our results are not compared, except maybe in terms of timing if necessary. (If timing issues are important prior to the rolls, then they're resolved through preliminary rolls of their own.) What I'm saying is that you compare character rolls, in this game, only for one of two things: either to stop someone from doing something, or to do it despite the other guy trying to stop you.

The book is very clear about how rolling interacts with the SIS, letting the dice do some decision-making. There's some unique and coherent text about how the GM really can't pre-set what the right thing to do might be, or what the most appropriate tactic for a situation might be, which would fit in well as rules-explanation for any of twenty games I can think of.

We struggled a bit to figure out what to do with ties when two characters are rolling (when it's just a required SR it's easy, hit it to succeed). It helps that tied rolls are not an issue, but rather tied SR's, so that tends to drop the frequency. However, rather than interpret it as a deadlock in the struggle, we did a kind of reverse Sorcerer in which we ignored the tied dice (though we kept them as the basis for the SRs!) and worked our way up the values until we found a difference, with the lower winning. It's not too difficult, although it took getting used to. I suppose it would also be OK simply to say "Deadlock," narrate it (possibly allowing damage to occur in both directions, if applicable), and roll again.

Injury has immense impact on play through a simple mechanic with many applications. It's possible to be "knocked out" of a given type of conflict (i.e. which Essential Skill is involved) through injury, and that turns out to be more important than the extent of the injury in the first place.

Play 2: the spaceship world

This was a short session we played at Go Play Peoria earlier this year, with Julie, Matt, and briefly one other person (Raquel?). I took a back seat during setting creation, and we came up with the classic colonist spaceship whose inhabitants have, through the generations, forgotten they were on a ship. We figured that botanical science was a really big deal, including "zones" on the ship that had gone nearly completely wild, and the culture that had arisen to deal with that. The ship itself wasn't one big cigar-shaped thing, but a lot of modules with connecting struts and passageways.

I have all the notes from this one, so I can do a better job of explaining how the rules work.

Matt's character: Gallien Argosa, Xeno-warden
Sorcerer (benefits of surge of action, benefits of restraint)
Key conflict: Understanding / Survival (note that these are always in the order of Success / Failure, so this is a very interesting choice)
Words of fate: Fences, Mind control, Thorns, Eggs, Fly (the verb)
Motivations: I might want to change zones, I hate it here but it's home 5; I punish 1
Traits: Disciplined 2, Ambassador 2, Knife Fighter 1
Skills: Xenopath 1, Duellist 2, Diplomat 3
My challenge for him: Does love kill?

Julie's character: (no name on sheet, although I know she had one), Horticulturist, Gardener of the First Rank
Magistrate (brilliance, sustainability)
Key conflict: Innovation / Tradition
Words of fate: Fruit, Graft, Lover
Motivations: I want to cultivate 2, I might want to feed everyone, even those who are unworthy 5, I might want to marry him 3
Traits: Ruthless 3, Hopeful 2
Skills: Tending garden 2, Harvest 2, Efficient movement 3, Edged tools 3
My challenge for her isn't on the sheet and I don't remember it

The third person made a great character too, the Courtier defined as a council member, all about spies, but had to leave after only a couple of scenes.

This time, the Advocate was not only an NPC, but a very aggressive and potentially adversarial one - I wanted to get the advocacy process into actual play for our short-term time purposes, and also wanted to break the potential but not necessary assumption that the Advocate be a neutral figure.

The alien intelligence which had awakened among the vegetation:
Advocate (prepare for conflict / invite conflict)
I want to make peace 3, I fight 1,
Loving 2, Cruel 3
Hide 2, Rend 2, Embrace 3, Infect 3

(in later play, I want someone else to be GM and I want my character to be the Advocate)

The other NPC was the ship's computer, which was now a kind of oracle utilized by the council:
The Fool (joy of change / fear of change)
I go 1, I might want to save the people; they're inefficient but it's my duty 5
Confused 1, Control 3, Smart 1
Security 2, Analysis 0

The events of play eventually led to the characters being deep in the alien "zone," communicating with the intelligence there. It was an extremely significant Advocacy session, during which Matt's character actually chose to be Embraced by the alien. I'm pretty bummed that we didn't have the chance to continue the story.

I will now list all the stuff that goes on in prep and gets used in play. My concern is whether there is too much.

Each player-character, and maybe one or more NPCs, has May Court rolls, which implies the four-way outcomes described above
Each also has Motivations, which shift in value
Each also has Words of Fate couched as success / failure
Each also has three to five words which, as they get applied, denote the character's story arc
The GM is supposed to prepare Zen-like phrases or questions called Challenges, of three types: (a) pretty much pre-set or inherent for the whole scenario, (b) easter eggs, meaning they may or may not be encountered, and (c) character-specific challenges, like the "Does love kill" one above (Challenges permit improvement)
The GM and players also, during play, must stay aware of the chance to get momentary bonus for creating continuity between current and past events in play
Then you have Attunement, which also permits improvement
And finally, there's the Advocacy session which is an entire sub-set of play in general

That is one hell of a lot! The thing is, so far, it's worked pretty well. I mean, after all, it's a lot, but that's all there is given a particular community context and a stable of NPCs. I need to play lots more to see whether any trimming can be done, or even whether it should.

(more in a minute)

[Ron Edwards]

Changes and developments of a given character

I'll start with an obscure point: the game's title is not empty phrasing. The path is what happens to the community. The journeys are what each court member experiences and does, and how he or she changes. Most of the features on the sheet don't change, but their values can, usually dropping lower (i.e. better). The basic idea is that you get a temporary, immediate improvement in a Skill or Motivation when you get three-die or better matching, which has a chance to become a permanent improvement. This is called Attunement. You can also improve Traits, Skills, and Motivations, as well as get new Traits, via a slightly less formal mechanic called Challenges, but more on those later.

What I want to focus on is Motivations. These are scored very, very precisely according to content, which must follow a particular grammatical progression. For example, in the book, it goes:
5: I might want to protect my sister; I may not like her, but she's family
4: I might want to protect my sister (this is the unacquired/starting value of a Motivation, from which you spend points to make it go up or down - i.e., it doesn't actually start here)
3: I want to protect my sister
2: I want to protect
1: I protect
0: Protect

Understanding this progression is pretty much the heart of the game. The most important shifts are 4 to 3, which removes ambiguity; and 2 to 1, which removes desire. However, also note the 3 to 2, which is key - you cannot change "I want to protect my sister" to "I protect my sister." The object must be removed before the subjective/nuanced desire is.

In play, when deciding to shift a Motivation (particularly due to an unplanned Attunement), one often experiences a sense of possibly-unwelcome or disturbing character transformation that goes along with a much-desired increase in effectiveness. In our first game, Julie's character was using "I want to fight," and she rolled three matched values - so shifting to "I fight" suddenly made her character go all cold and passionless, uninterested in why to fight, for the rest of the conflict. Considering that she'd entered the conflict mainly out of compassion, it was really dramatic.

My concern about Motivations: shifts should be permitted in either direction. Everyone I've played with agrees strongly on this point, and I'll set up my argument for it with a key larger point about uber-abstracted characters.

When a character's scores are maxed to the max, then he or she actually drops in effectiveness rather than rises, by becoming more abstracted and iconic - basically, he or she is now more like a figure on a tapestry than a person, subject to no uncertainty, no doubt, and no choice. Take Julie's character from the spaceship world game:

Magistrate (brilliance vs. sustainability), horticulturist, Gardener of the First Rank
innovation / tradition, fruit, lover, graft
I want to cultivate 3, I might want to feed everyone, even those who are undeserving 5, I want to marry him 3
Ruthless 3, Hopeful 2
Tending garden 2, Harvest 2, Efficient movement 3, Edged tools 3, Assert self 4

OK, max her out through Attunements and Challenges. The character is now Motivated at the absolute action-verbs Cultivate, Feed, and Marry; her Traits are legendary Ruthless and legendary Hopeful; she has transcendent mastery of all the skills; and she's transcendent as well at Health, Confidence, and Argument. Note that all the Motivation verbs are no longer personal or transitive - the character simply acts in this fashion without regard to whom, for whom, timing, or any other consideration, not even herself. She no longer wants to do these things, nor wants to do them for anything, not even ego. It doesn't matter what is cultivated, or what for.

With these scores all at zero, the character rolls no dice! If one Trait is involved, SR = 3; if both, then 4. Given the two listed, it's a constant result of "exceptional effort" at the maximum and uncritical expression of ruthlessness and hope at the same time. In other words, the character's impact is now fixed at a never-miss, middling-high level, forever, with the only exception being that if she acts in any way off-Trait, it drops sharply.

This is actually explained by Ram's concepts in his comics text: the character is now demonic, bereft of will. In game terms, this creates a fascinating calculus in which the character's arc (literally, in the sense of an exponential curve in which the exponent is between 0 and 1) rises along a vertical limit, across which he or she is no longer a character and hence the curve (and the character as a protagonist) no longer exists.  As the author of Sorcerer, I can only gaze at this in awe - it's far more integrated with resolution and action than Humanity in my game.

So that's my reason for saying Motivations, upon Attunement, should be permitted to shift upwards in values as well as downward, at the option of the player. Yes, this means gaining more dice and losing some effectiveness, but it also allows the character to remain on his or her journey as a human being, which is to say, doubtful and ridden with the nuances of choice. It means the character can travel along the edge of the mathematical limit without being forced over, and it seems to me to be a powerful and important option.

Strong system questions

Is it correct that characters do not acquire new Motivations in play? I hope it is. The other players and I agreed that we like the idea that one starts on a journey already motivationally primed, so to speak, and we want to see where this journey goes, not start a new one.

How is it that "Attunement can be used to lower Motivations in the same manner" (as skills) as stated on page 79? Say I'm using "I want to protect my sister" at 4, a Bowmanship skill at 3, plus my Essential skill (Health) of 1, for a total of 8 dice. I roll, and irrespective of my success or failure, it so happens that I get three 4's. What does this mean in terms of Attuning a skill vs. a motivation? Do I get to lower both (provisionally)? Do I have to choose one of them?

Do I understand Traits correctly, that you can use more than one at once, which means higher SR? Also, do I understand correctly that you can get new Traits in play, via Challenges?

How about acting with different or improvised motivations? It seems that if the character takes action in a way which does not match any listed Motivation, then the default is four dice: "I might want to X." Can such a Motivation exist ephemerally, for purposes of this roll only? (It seems wrong not to, in that the character shouldn't get a free low-dice roll for acting off-Motive.)

Do I understand correctly that new skills are not gained during play? What if you do something really weird but barely justifiable with a listed skill, and get a three-die match? Could that be a method for acquiring a new skill, as opposed to improving the listed one? Or am I wrong, and you can act with a totally unfamiliar skill rate at 5? If so, then a three-dice match is quite likely - does that mean a chance to start that new skill at 4?

Can you get the benefits of Attunement during the Advocacy session? (This seems like a key way to improve Argument in particular.)

A recommendation: on page 61, remove the sentences in the second paragraph about combining skill ranks for using multiple relevant skills at once. Doing that makes no sense - it makes the chance for success worse, not better. The next paragraph, which treats helping skills as +1 to SR, makes a lot more sense and renders the preceding text unnecessary anyway.

So finally, that's it for now!

Best, Ron

[jrs]

I really enjoyed playing The Path of Journeys, and was sorry to see that the ashcan was not available at GenCon 2008. I found my character write-up from one of the playtests Ron mentioned above, so here are some numbers for Lt. Morag

The May Queen (support vs. sacrifice)
Lt. Morag, soldier of the empire
homesick/foreigner
brutality/empathy

Fate: Home Blood Uniform

I want to fight (2)
I might want to honor the dead of this country (5)
--this became, I might want to honor the dead (4)
I want to return home (3)

Traits
Dutiful 1
Renowned warrior 2
Hot headed 2

Skills
Swordwork 1
Engineer 2
Brawling 1
Make friends 2
(I think all of these skills changed during play, I am not sure about the original values.)

Personal Challenge: Some of those you kill are made immortal
1st Scenario Challenge: What good can come from this strife?

One of her major conflicts involved one of her reporting officers (Pheric) who married into a local clan. I don't remember much of the details of play since this was almost a year ago. I do agree with what Ron wrote above about motivations. They have a powerful affect on game play, and it would be interesting to see how they would work if they can scale back (or maybe I do not relish the thought of playing a character ruled by Fight, Honor, Return).

Julie

[Ron Edwards]

I recall Lt. Morag's story becoming quite grim - at one point, you boiled it all the way down to "I fight," although I don't know whether that became permanent. I really liked the Advocate sessions, in which the historian was reading her letters sent home.

Ram, thinking about that game led me to wonder more about your thoughts on setting, or settings. I know you once wrote that this was sort of your fantasy heartbreaker (which it isn't, but never mind that at the moment), which implies a fairly standard D&D-fantasy setting. As written, the system is intended to be applied to any suitable setting, i.e., anything with understandable communities, and it actually works really well toward that end.

Were you thinking of staying with that customizable approach? Or did you have any sort of setting in mind, if only as an example?

Best, Ron

[Doplegager]

Hey everyone- this is Ram, author of the Path of Journeys.  I'm plugging away at a response for Ron's questions, but I want to get it all down so I have a chance to mull it over- not only to fully digest the questions, but to fully digest my answers.  I have a good idea of how I would've answered most of the questions when I originally wrote the system, but it's been over a year... so I'm running across some interesting issues that change some of my views... which isn't exciting to watch from the outside, but is fascinating from behind the scenes

It's really exciting to hear about the gameplay so far.  It sounds like Ron has stretched the system farther than I had originally considered- but it also sounds like it's stepping up to the challenge.  In reading Ron's post, and some of his earlier e-mails, there have been at least a couple times where I've sat back and gone "huh!  I can totally see how that's a logical extension of what I wrote- and I remember playing with something similar in my intentions- but this takes it to a completely new level!  wow!"

[Doplegager]

Heh.  In other correspondences, one of the things I've come to say is that I hope to develop the system enough to live up the praise.  There are a lot of issues that've been brought up that I find fascinating that I hope to delve into deeply, especially in regards to the Advocate, the customizability of the system's setting (psuedo-Roman border in one game, space colony in another... that's cool!), and the implications of human/archetype interactions.  There's some juicy stuff in there.

I originally had a setting in mind, but I like the idea of focusing on the philosophical issues, an approach that suits the customizable method.  I'll probably develop some settings, but more as a way to provide samples of how the questions can be applied, as opposed to settings for the sake of the settings themselves.

Strong system questions:
1) Is it correct that characters do not acquire new Motivations in play?
2) How is it that "Attunement can be used to lower Motivations in the same manner"?
3) Can traits be used more than one at a time for higher SRs?  Can new traits be gained during play?
4) Can players use improvised Motivations?
5) Is it correct that characters do not acquire new skills during play?  What if a roll triggers improvement on an unfamiliar skill?
6) Can character improvement be triggered during the Advocacy session?

Some of these can be answered by one of my design goals for the system.  I'd roughly divide gameplay into two phases: preparation and actual play.  In most of the games I've played, the preparation stage helps get everyone on the same page, and is where player choices begin to mold the game ("ah, Jim put all his ranks into Diplomacy... I guess we're going to be having some non-combat encounters..."). 

I like to think of the preparation phase as the subconscious of the game; by developing themes and issues, it directly influences the actual play.  That doesn't mean that it always translates literally; I've lost track of the number of games I've played where the themes established during preparation evolved during actual play, sometimes to the point that some parts remaining from the preparation phase become vestigial.  By having character improvement be organic, my original intention was for the system to 'correct itself' to adapt to actual play.

Taken at face value, my original intention assumes that characters are able to use improvised skills and motivations; in effect, any possible skill or motivation is assumed to default to either rank 4 or 5.  If a roll triggers improvement, it would be the system's way of saying "you didn't tell me this was important, but, since you're using it, it must be."  From this view, new skills and motivations can be introduced during game play.  Or, rather, the skills and motivations were always there, they just didn't seem important enough to write down.

One thing that does, though, is potentially rob the preparation phase of some of it's power- initial choices may be muted, creative dissonance between players might be introduced, and the glue of an otherwise tightly wrapped narrative might be loosened.



Something that may be a glaring flaw is that if the main way to improve a skill or motivation is by having three dice with the same result, it encourages off-motive behavior: If an artist has the motivation "Create 2: I want to Create", the skill "Painting 2", and the essential skill "Confidence 1" (five dice in die pool) they stand a decent chance of doing well, but a poor chance of improving.  If the same character used the "Create 2: I want to Create" motivation with the skill "Sculpture 4", with "Confidence 1", (seven dice in die pool) they start having a higher chance of improving .  If they've recently taken a lashing in their art classes and the Confidence essential skill has been knocked down to 4, and try to use the skill "Sculpture 4" with "Create 2: I want to Create", then they'll probably do terrible on the action- that's ten dice in the die pool.

In the original intention, when improvement was triggered via Attunement, the player could choose to improve either the skill or the motivation.  So, in the above example with the distraught art student... if three of the dice had the same result, the player could choose to improve the character's motivation to "Create 1: I Create".

It's conceivable to use a similar strategy to improve a skill by matching it with an off-character motive.  Net effect is that the character has been acting out of character the entire session, whittling their motivation and skill down to rank 1.  At the end of the day, the character gets back to it's core: the art student sits down with "Create 1: I Create", "Painting 1", and "Confidence 1".

I have mixed feelings about this.  On one hand, it encourages players to have their characters act out of character.  On the other hand, for it to be effective, the player has to match the 'off-character' behavior with an 'in-character' skill or motivation, simulating growth as a result of personal exploration; it reflects the idea that improvement comes from trying things from different angles, as opposed to trying the same thing repeatedly.  The painter learns more about their motivation to create by trying other mediums, and learns more about the technical skills of painting by using them for different purposes.

(On a purely mechanical level, I find it amusing that the fastest way to 'break' the system is to have the character perform poorly... but I'm not sure if this compensates for how easy it would be to break the system)

So, to summarize:
1) Is it correct that characters do not acquire new Motivations in play?
According to my original intentions, no.  But I can see the value in keeping the pre-game preparation potent, so I'm contemplating this further.

2) How is it that "Attunement can be used to lower Motivations in the same manner"?
When improvement is triggered via Attunement, choose either the skill or the motivation to be improved.

3) Can traits be used more than one at a time for higher SRs?  Can new traits be gained during play?
Yes, traits can be used more than one at a time.  I never set an upper limit, though, assuming that the narrative would limit how many traits were applicable- this may or may not need revision.  Yes, new traits can be gained during play as a result of answering challenges.

4) Can players use improvised Motivations?
According to my original intentions, yes.

5) Is it correct that characters do not acquire new skills during play?  What if a roll triggers improvement on an unfamiliar skill?
According to my original intentions, no; characters were able to acquire new skills.  The same comment for acquiring new motivations applies here.

6) Can character improvement be triggered during the Advocacy session?
According to my original intentions, yes.  Interestingly, characters who aren't designed to do well in social situations can theoretically use Advocate sessions to improve their motivations; they'd be liable to lose the arguments, but would learn more about themselves in the process.  A silver-tongued character, on the other hand, would win the arguments, but has a much lower chance of learning from it.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Ram,

I fully agree with you about prep and play. Clearly the role of creative constraints is central. My own take, based on my play sessions, and obviously subject both to your vision and your experiences of play, is to suggest that new Motivations are not permitted for a given story, but new Skills would be. Perhaps new Motivations might be brought in after a given set of Words of Fate had been resolved.

1. Do I understand correctly that Motivations cannot start at 4? (If so, I'm glad, as that level is the most open regarding a specific action - almost a non-motivation or a momentary motivation)

2. Essential Skills are a crucial part of the game. Not only do they contribute to dice pools, but they also represent vulnerability to damage of all kinds. Improving them to 0 is a game-changing, major event - it literally makes the character superhuman. I saw this happen a couple of times during play, when raw Argument and Confidence skills were involved, and it might easily happen as well for a seriously damaged character. In both cases, it felt premature to me. In Path of Journeys, one of the great virtues of the system is that when the dice speak, they are worth listening to, and this is the only exception I've encountered. I wonder whether the improvement rules should apply to these Skills. And if not, then I puzzle over when improvement to 0 would be possible. By "wonder" and "puzzle," I'm not weaseling - I really do find it difficult.

The text is a little vague about it, too, possibly reflecting the difficulty of the issue. It says, basically, "yes, it can happen, but it's a big deal," and then there's no following text to deal with this tension. 

3. The Essential Skill one uses to roll with is the same one that takes damage in that conflict, right? Or maybe not? It's tricky because Arguments are often actually two independent opposed conflicts happening simultaneously, in which each person uses Argument to attack Confidence. Or do I even have that right?

It's a little confusing, because when my character is fighting an NPC who's defined as an Obstacle, say SR 4, and I'm rolling, I just roll my character's pool. If I fail (in a case like this, a hot fight), then my character takes damage. Clearly in this case I'm using Health for my pool, and it's Health which stands to be harmed. But maybe all of that is just a special case of the most simple mechanical application of the system. In conflicts with fully-developed other characters, especially the Advocate, does one name the Essential Skill of the opponent to be targeted?

4. Related to #3: How influenceable is player-character and/or NPC behavior, using dice outcomes? How much, and how long, not in terms of in-game time so much as real-world time? I'm mainly interested in situations using fully-developed characters, such that Argument and Confidence were involved. It's possible that this can be answered by paying attention to what's said and what's rolled in the steps of the argument, which would be a novel and powerful method for this difficult issue.

5. Related to #4: What might be the best rubric, or series of issues to consider, regarding building NPCs? They can be Obstacles or May Court members ... or something in between? Could it be possible and useful to build some NPCs as non-court members and basically just Obstacles, but with Essential Skills for purposes of taking damage and "staying in" a conflict? In other words, if the guy is still standing based on an Essential Skill check, you have to keep trying?

6. Much more generally, how does play proceed? How do scenes start, how do we now what is in them, how are Words of Fate brought in? Actually, that might sound vague. It's related to some complex discussions we had last year, and a jargon term, "murk." I'll make it concrete with a player-character I just made up for fun, positing sort of a dark sword-and-sorcery setting, maybe a bit of King Lear going on in a fierce and primal chieftain situation. Imagine a stone palace with torches in braziers.

I'm putting in a couple of annotations so others can follow along.

Nourim, Ninth Circle adept
May Court: Courtier (inspiration/apathy)
Key conflict: betrayal / damnation
Words of Fate: shadows, whispers, skulls, flesh

Traits: Advisor to the king 1, Master of demons 3, Brilliant 1
(Traits are better at higher values)

Motivations: I want to know the truth 3, I avenge 1
Skills: Assassination 1, Forbidden lore 2, Intrigue 3
(Skills and Motivations are better at lower values)

Essential Skills: Health 1, Confidence 1, Argument 1

Needs challenges: whole adventure, personal, easter eggs
Switch to GM hat: adventure = what makes a king?, personal = when is a lie the father to the truth?

Some points about the character: I chose Courtier because I was interested in how a sorcerous character integrates into a community, rather than being the usual social time-bomb. I wanted this character to be a person who interacts, more than a resource.

------

To clarify for system purposes, let's say he's sending a demon to kill someone who did something wrong and threatens the king
1 (avenge), 2 (forbidden lore), 1 (health; dealing with demons is dangerous); using trait Master of demons 3

4d6 = 6, 3, 3, 3
Hot damn! 3 (roll outcome) + 1 (trait) + 3 (trait) = 7, a legendary effort
even if the SR had been set pretty high, say at 6 (to obviate automatic success), then I'd still get it
much more interesting if it were up against someone else's roll, though

By contrast, let's say he's ferreting out some kind of personal issue regarding the young queen
3 (I want to know the truth), 3 (intrigue), 1 (argument), using trait Brilliant 1

7d6 = 6, 6, 5, 3, 2, 1, 1
Phooey. 1 (roll outcome) + 1 (trait) = 2, merely a competent effort
if the SR had been set at anything but the most basic, that would fail; or if the other guy really screwed up

All this is well and good for pure numbers and abstract outcomes ("legendary!"), but it's still a mystery as to how and when I as a player will get to make these rolls in the first place. Do I announce them as such? If so, how does that dovetail with the announcements of the GM, whether scene framing or NPC actions? I am 100% confident that you do this without any trouble, but the classic situation for a designer of this particular kind of game (me, Luke, Jake, Clinton, et cetera) is that we have a hard time conceiving of someone not knowing how, and thus do not explain it.

Also, how about narrating outcomes? For instance, given the character, I'd be irked if the second roll failed and someone narrated it such that Nourim stuttered and giggled and looked stupid. Seems to me that whatever Trait is being used, it should be honored in the narration as a constraint. IE, that particular aspect of the effort failed due to external conditions, not intrinsic failure or unexplained sudden incompetence. (This idea only applies to Traits, not Skills or Motivations, both of which seem to me entirely likely to go badly awry.)

Best, Ron

[Doplegager]

1.) The way I figure it, a score of 4 is interpreted by the system as '"this motivation or skill hasn't been considered consequential so far", while anything written on the character sheet is interpreted by the system as "the player wants this to be consequential".  By this logic, writing down things down with rank 4 is, generally a bit of a contradiction- the only times I can think of where it would make sense would be if the fact that the motivation or skill was inconsequential was important, or if a score of 5 had been improved.

2.) Hmm.  On the flipside, though, with the way the system is currently written, Essential Skills are also the only character attribute where the ranks increase (via being damaged), making a score of 0 a transcendent experience, but most likely fleeting (unless matched with equally transcendent skills and motivations).

One of the major rule changes that I've thrown around was to have the lowest score possible be 1 and include a note about scores reaching 0 as a kind of optional rule.  In the same version of the rules, I was also experimenting with having the SR be equal to the sum of the three lowest dice- so, a roll of 1, 5, 5, 6 is less devastating.  On the upside, the characters would be more rooted in the world.  On the downside, some of the power of the dice is taken away: they'd speak more often, but be less poignant.  I'm kinda juggling how to handle the 0 rank.

3.) I don't think I really explored those possibilities very much in the original rules.  Another interesting situation is this: there are two people fighting.   Person A is trying to beat the crap out of person B.  Person B is trying to convince person A that they shouldn't be fighting.  The conflict is going on in two levels; Health and Argument.  Likewise, they're actively using two different skills (say, Fighting and Empathy respectively).  My inclination would be to handle it as Person A rolls (Motivation)+Fighting+Health, while Person B rolls (Motivation)+Empathy+Argument.  Whoever wins the roll deals damage to the opponent in whatever essential skill the winner brought to the table (person A wins, person B gets a nosebleed; person B wins, person A starts having doubts).

Since characters need to make a check whenever damaged to see if they remain in the fight, whoever lost the roll would make a check based on the damaged essential skill.  As it's currently written in the book it'd read more as "if person B deals enough damage to person B's Argument, then person B is unable to make checks using Argument as an essential skill; i.e. person B would still be able to punch.  Which doesn't work well in this situation... easiest fix is that the person who failed the injury test loses the conflict (person A has been talked out of fighting or person B has been too bloodied to do anything).  I need to mull this over a bit.

4.) Hmm.  My initial assumption was that once the argument check succeeded, the effect on behavior was more or less indefinite; if a player wins an argument that an NPC will do something, the NPC will fulfill their side within reason.  The more I think about it, though, the more I realize that that assumes a very honest world.  One way around this would be to say that if the NPC stays in the conflict until they fail an injury test, they're required to live up to their side of the argument (which might be doing something, or might be conceding a point, etc).  If they drop out of the argument willingly, they can feign agreement for the rest of the scene.  In essence, a conflict is like haggling over the terms of a contract.  Staying in the conflict until you or your opponent are forced out is like signing the finished contract, whereas if you leave early you know the gist of how the other person wants you to behave, but you haven't signed on the dotted line.

Of course, this brings up questions about how to handle a situation where one character is willing to concede without taking the conflict to the bitter end, while the other is dead set on getting their way without concession.  Hmm.

5.) In my mind, the biggest distinction between whether to treat an NPC or as a developed NPC is how actively the NPC manipulates the events of the game.  I should probably develop that a bit more than just intuitive feel :-p.  I'm a little more partial to more fully built NPCs for conflicts...

6.) Hmm.  The assumption that informed my design goals was that, by default, a GM figure would present the party with a conflict, and that the players would then announce courses of actions.  So, in the example provided, the (highly abbreviated) conflicts might've been something along the lines of:
a) the target is threatening the king.  What do you do?  Other responses might've been to talk to the target (a confidence or argument conflict), or to actively defend the king (maybe Health, maybe argument, depending on how), or to ignore the situation, etc.  Any approach that garnered a 7 would've been considered highly appropriate by the system.
b) something is amiss with the queen.  What do you do?  A result of 2 would be the world's way of saying that trying to ferret out the information using intrigue is a suboptimal approach.  Next are two immediate possibilities; 1) the situation escalates/complicates or 2) the player can try a different route... in this case, it might be that the dice are trying to tell Nourim that the new complication is taking precedence over discovering the answer immediately, or it might be that the dice are trying to tell Nourim to try a different route (say... using Forbidden Lore... or maybe fracturing Assassination out to get Intimidation at rank 2 or 3 depending on what kind of assassin he is).

Another assumption that didn't make it explicitly into the game was that all players are encouraged to contribute to narration, especially whichever player just rolled, but that the moderation of those contributions fell onto the GM.  The emphasis I give to the dice as decision makers robs some of the GM power as plot-maker, so the role is more to a) make sure the dice and the players are all collaborating, b) to fill in gaps/provide momentum when things are slowing, and c) help make sure things are woven together effectively.  Ideally, the GM instigates and then interprets, or something to that effect.

Hmm.  Hmm.  Hafta run off again, but I'll be around.  Thanks for the thought provoking questions!

[Ron Edwards]

1.) The way I figure it, a score of 4 is interpreted by the system as '"this motivation or skill hasn't been considered consequential so far", while anything written on the character sheet is interpreted by the system as "the player wants this to be consequential".  By this logic, writing down things down with rank 4 is, generally a bit of a contradiction- the only times I can think of where it would make sense would be if the fact that the motivation or skill was inconsequential was important, or if a score of 5 had been improved.

I completely agree and it works very well in play. Here's an interesting application we ran into, and I'd like your take on it. Morag wanted to do something that was not conceivably linked to any of her written motivations. As I figured, that meant that she used a "floating" 4-dice motivation for her roll. I think I mentioned this in an earlier post - in this circumstance, some kind of dice are necessary to fill in the Motivation bit of the pool, and the 4-value seems ideally suited by its definition.

If you want to consider or try out my group's notion of permitting Motivations to be downgraded as an "improvement" as well as upgraded, then scores of 4 might appear as a shift from 3 as well as from 5.

Regarding essential skills,

2.) ... One of the major rule changes that I've thrown around was to have the lowest score possible be 1 and include a note about scores reaching 0 as a kind of optional rule. 

That's the part that makes the most sense to me, and it doesn't seem like so major a change.

Regarding the other rules change you mention, I'm very happy with the ease and fun of the current rules, so changing the math of calculating SR is less attractive. I like the devastating quality of 1, 5, 5, 6. It really focuses attention on the importance of the number of dice across many rolls. Your notion of the dice as a radical determinant of creative direction is very well realized in the game, and I think removing that would be to put safety and familiarity vastly above merit.

3.) ... My inclination would be to handle it as Person A rolls (Motivation)+Fighting+Health, while Person B rolls (Motivation)+Empathy+Argument.  Whoever wins the roll deals damage to the opponent in whatever essential skill the winner brought to the table (person A wins, person B gets a nosebleed; person B wins, person A starts having doubts).

That works pretty well. The person you're combatting with is drawn into "your sphere" of the conflict based on what you're using.

Regarding your concern about the "switching up" issue when someone loses, I think it makes the most sense to say that you can't do that. For this conflict (i.e. what the character is trying to achieve with his or her current tactic), you're stuck with what you brought to it. The point is that being unable to make checks in, say, Argument, isn't just running out of gas in one tank - you fucking LOST, and you're just as damaged/devastated by that as you would be by a sword wound. You're out of that fight; you don't get what you want (again "you" meaning the character).

4.) Hmm.  My initial assumption was that once the argument check succeeded, the effect on behavior was more or less indefinite; if a player wins an argument that an NPC will do something, the NPC will fulfill their side within reason.  The more I think about it, though, the more I realize that that assumes a very honest world.  One way around this would be ...
Of course, this brings up questions about how to handle a situation where one character is willing to concede without taking the conflict to the bitter end, while the other is dead set on getting their way without concession.  Hmm.

That's a lot of hmmm, which is a good thing in a Playtesting discussion. As I see it, there are two ways to go, really, and both are fun.

1. The Dying Earth - when your character gets told or out-argued, well, he or she does it. They might not do it forever, but they'll do it now, and for the immediate future. Accepting this as a feature of play is a big part of enjoying that game. (This technique is consistent with the idea that your character really lost the argument/debate conflict, to the extent that he or she is doing what the winner wants no matter what his or her better judgment or any desires might say.)

2. Sorcerer - when your character gets told or out-argued, you still have the choice of whether your character does it. However, whatever you do that's not what you're being told to do is penalized by the extent of the opponent's victory. (This idea is consistent with the thematic crux of the game, which is that you, the player, are always morally responsible in authorial terms for what your character does.)

Also, both of these techniques are consistent with the "dice as decision makers" concept, in different ways.

5.) In my mind, the biggest distinction between whether to treat an NPC or as a developed NPC is how actively the NPC manipulates the events of the game.  I should probably develop that a bit more than just intuitive feel :-p.  I'm a little more partial to more fully built NPCs for conflicts...

I agree with that, because often an NPC is more interesting or less interesting than you plan. I suggest that prepped NPCs be an Obstacle number + Essential skills, and furniture-style NPCs be just Obstacles ... and that makes it easier to promote or demote them between sessions as needed.

Regarding Nourim and your response, here's what I see you saying: in play, it always and all comes down to saying/asking, what do you do? I have finally, painfully learned that this baseline assumption (for me) is not actually widely understood. I think if you use this as a mental signpost throughout any discussion of how to prep and how to play The Path of Journeys, you'll help your text a lot.

Another assumption that didn't make it explicitly into the game was that all players are encouraged to contribute to narration, especially whichever player just rolled, but that the moderation of those contributions fell onto the GM.  The emphasis I give to the dice as decision makers robs some of the GM power as plot-maker, so the role is more to a) make sure the dice and the players are all collaborating, b) to fill in gaps/provide momentum when things are slowing, and c) help make sure things are woven together effectively.  Ideally, the GM instigates and then interprets, or something to that effect.

I like that quite a bit.

Well, that's all. I'm all fired up about playing again.

Best, Ron