[Galactic] Western Washington playtest, some difficulty

[Matthew Sullivan-Barrett]

Hello, Matt.  We finally got to our first play session of Galactic after a bit of break following the prep session.  We're using the November update with the GM quest dice sheets and consequence dice mentioned here: http://www.ashcanfront.net/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=62&page=2 .

Since there was a fairly long holiday hiatus following the prep session, a large portion of the session was spent re-introducing all the characters and designing the first quests, only two scenes got played out before folks had to break until next week.  However, we hit some unanticipated turbulence in those two scenes that I wanted to post about, in case we were doing something wrong that could be corrected next week.  Alternately if there are perhaps some wrinkles to iron out in the game that's good too.

As GM I was trying out a couple different quest strategies.  For the first captain's quest, I was expecting to only lightly expend resources in the first and second scene, and bring the hammer down in the third and possibly following scenes of his quest.  When it was the my turn to allocate dice(after the two crew members, before the captain), I added two d6 and one d10 to my free 5d6 starting pool.  This seemed a moderate initial pool, definitely under the die cap but with a d10 for a little bit of punch.  The captain's selected archetype only provided 3d6, though, as he was not using his strongest one.  So what I had thought was a light push at the start was quite stronger than I anticipated.  That's my fault, as I was gauging my resource expenditure based on what I had available in the first scene of the first quest, rather than factoring in what the captain had available at the start of the game.  This mistake was compounded by some really good rolls on my side, vs some really crap rolls on the captain's side.  In the first roll, he was looking at having all five of his dice knocked out right out the gate!  It would have taken a high re-roll of his lowest die combined with a low re-roll of my highest die for his connection to have a significant impact, and that had good odds of knocking out the connection, so he didn't use re-rolls.  He had to spend two edges to save the two crew dice and one archetype die, and then bring in another archetype and take two consequence dice, just to stay in the game.  I didn't have to expend anything.  The bad luck continued in the next round, with the whole crew aspect being knocked out and one of the consequence dice being the only die left in the quest aspect after more really lopsided rolling.  At this point the captain was up against the ropes, and I'd only used 1/11th of my available dice budget for his first quest, and still had all my available Keeps and Rerolls.  The captain accepted total defeat in the crew aspect so he could concede the quest aspect(see assumptions list below).  He took a total of three levels of impairment across the two archetypes, and one of the crew ended up with trauma.  He earned 10 fortune back, but he's seriously in the hole with those three impairments and 2/7 of his edges expended.  Certainly some of the difficulty was caused by some anomalous dice results, but I felt there should have been more he could have done to recover.  This was a bit of a downer way to start the game!

For the second captain, I was planning to push harder and expend more resources early in the quest, to seen how the budget worked out with a different spending strategy.  I had also developed a secondary goal at the table, to push the captain to take a consequence die.  He was really reluctant to do so, not wanting to give any ammunition to the GM, but I hoped he would appreciate the risk/reward if he tried it.  This was a longer conflict, with heavy costs on both sides.  I expended nearly a third of my dice resources, and half of my Keeps/Rerolls, and the captain used five edges and blew out his connection.  Ultimately, he conceded the crew goal and totally lost the quest goal without picking up a consequence die.  He also ended up with two points of impairment and pulled in fortune to bring him up to 12.  It would have been kind of gamey fun if I didn't know I had a load more resources I could tap to bulldoze the captain, if only at the expense of following scenes *for that captain*.  As it is, the GM resources are overspent, but not to the degree the captain's are.  I feel confident that with balanced rolling I could match him for the rest of the quest.

The captains are 0 for 2 here, and I feel I've still got the budget to keep them from getting back up.  I don't really like that feeling, like the players can only succeed if I hold back, and it seems contrary to the idea of budgeted GM opposition.  Also, it seemed there were times the players didn't have obvious options to engage in the mechanics in more than a "hold on for one more roll" manner.  I'm hoping I've made some mistake in applying the rules, so listed below are questions and some assumptions that I've been working under that may be mistaken.

*  The GM gets a dice sheet for each player's quest.  So I have one sheet of 33 dice for player one's first quest, one sheet of 33 dice for player two's first quest, and one sheet of 33 dice for player three's first quest.

*  The captain's can only start out a conflict with a single archetype activated.  This means that unless they expend edges for dice, which seems very expensive, they can only start the first quest's first conflict with a maximum of 5D6 + (number of crew)D8.  Whereas the GM starts off with a minimum of 5d6, plus can add up to five dice from the dice sheet.

*  Conceding a conflict can only be done after dice are rolled, but before edges and connections are used to save dice.  So if the quest goal in a conflict is totally blown out on one side, the loosing side has to choose between total defeat, or using edges and connections to try and make it through another roll.  They can't use an edge to save one die and then concede before the next roll starts...  I'm not sure if this is correct, as I don't see it explicitly stated.  However, without this ruling it seems almost all conflicts would end with a single die concede, and I believe the example conflicts show Luke getting knocked out when he still had edges to save dice with.

*  If the captain does not concede, his options before the next round are:
1) spend 1 fortune to bring in another archetype, which dice are not rolled until the next round
2) spend edges to keep dice from being knocked out
3) spend edges to buy individual dice, which are not rolled until the next round
4) get re-rolls using connections
5) pick up consequence dice, which are not rolled until the next round
6) Crew members can burn trauma for dice, which are not rolled until the next round.
Are there any other options?  It seems like keeping dice is a maintaining action, that doesn't really do much to give the captain an edge, just keeps him from getting knocked out.  Buying dice with edges seems really expensive, given that an edge costs 3 fortune to refresh mid-quest.  Re-rolls are awesome and are the only way for the captain to turn victory into defeat *this roll*, but are also a very finite resource.  It seems like there should be some way to burn fortune points directly to impact the conflict.  Is there an option I'm missing?

*  It appears that fortune for dice that get knocked out doesn't get paid out until the conflict is completed.  Is that correct?

*  Consequence dice need to have a consequence attached to them when they are pulled, and each die represents a higher level of consequence.  The first die is the first level of consequence(individual), the second die is the second level of consequence(group).  Does that mean a captain grabbing three dice lists three different levels of consequence, one for each die?  And then, if only one consequence die is knocked out, the third one he grabbed with the highest associated consequence, does that mean only the highest consequence level is triggered?  Or is it that since only one consequence die was knocked out only the lowest level consequence is triggered?

*  When a connection exceeds 10 strain, is that connection gone forever or can it be refreshed later for 5 fortune?

*  Is there a limit to the number of scenes in a quest, if the captains keep loosing?  For some reason I had the idea that if the captains lost three scenes in the quest, they lost the quest itself.  However, I now cannot find anything in the book to support this.

*  I could certainly use some gm advice on budgeting the dice sheets.  As it stands, for conflict one of quest one, the GM has a huge bucket of 27+ dice waiting to be assigned, and even going into the conflict with a strategy there is a lot of room for error.  I get the impression that the GM resources considerably outstrip the captain's resources, and are additionally consequence free and refresh entirely between quests.  I'm OK with using restraint with the GM budget and leaving it untapped to make a better story.  But I'd rather not have to use kid-gloves with the captains, or if there was some guidance in how to keep from steamrolling them.  As it stands now, I think the captains' expended resources will be fairly expensive to refresh, even if they can hold out for the between-quest refresh.  That seems a little grim for the first scene of the first quest!

*  Additional comment from one of the players:  In our first scenes, we rolled almost directly from the cliffhanger of the Quest right into conflict.  This seemed somewhat natural given that the cliffhangers end at a point of conflict, but it seemed to also put all the focus of the scene entirely on the conflict resolution and the stakes of the conflict.  Since the game went from Quest creation/cliffhanger directly to conflict, it made the stakes of the captains' losses seem very severe, particularly since now they are going into scene 2 with a disadvantage in resources.  Also, without any rollplaying to create investment, the crew were not as engaged in the conflict resolution.  Definitely would recommend against going straight to conflict, for us anyway, and setting the stakes for the first conflict lower.


All that said, we're very excited to continue, just a little shaken up after a rough beginning.  I'm very much looking forward to next week's game, but I'm really hoping for some guidance on how to make it work smoother and more fun.

Thank you,
Matthew

[Matt Wilson]

Hey MSB:

You should check out some of the threads over at the ashcan front. Other groups have had profoundly different results.

The above is a lot to digest, so it'll take me a while to respond in detail, but a quick question up front: Did the players ever think about conceding? If you commit dice and they don't like the look of it, they can concede right then and there.

[Matthew Sullivan-Barrett]

Thanks for the reply.  Heh, though I do wonder how you knew I go by MSB sometimes!?

Yeah, it is a big post.  In hindsight, I wish I had broken it into more than one post for readability.  I have read some of the threads at the Front, and had noted the dramatically different results.  In fact, that makes me hopeful that our difficulties Saturday are an anomaly or a case of mis-applied rules.  But I've not been able to figure out the hows.

To answer your quick question, I don't think any of us realized conceding was an option prior to rolling.  That is good to know, though.  I like that option as a strategic choice for the captains to eat up GM's dice.  I fear we may have been to restrictive on when conceding was permitted, as mentioned above.  Presented with an overwhelming GM die allocation, is there anything for a captain to do besides concede?

This talk of conceding brings up a question about Consequence dice.  It is stated that if the conflict is conceded by the captain, the consequences become a step worse, and if the captain looses all his dice in the conflict the consequences become two steps worse.  We took this to apply to just the Quest Aspect of the conflict, not the Crew Aspect.  Is that correct, or is it related to which Aspect the consequence die was in?

Thanks again,
MSB

[Matt Wilson]

Consequences only have to do with the quest.

[Matthew Sullivan-Barrett]

Hello.  I'm pleased to report that last Saturday's game went much smoother, with none of the un-fun from the first session.  In fact we had a blast!  I believe there were two primary changes that made a huge difference in the outcome.

The first thing was to do more roleplaying before and during conflict resolution.  Playing out the scene before hitting the conflict resolution was, obviously, huge.  We did that for the third captain's first scene(and for following scenes, of course).  It should be obvious in hindsight, but the cliffhangers ending at a point conflict seems to push things to the conflict resolution early, which didn't work for us.  I really like the cliffhanger for the quest, though.  We just needed more scene between cliffhanger and conflict resolution.  Also, doing more roleplaying between rolls in the conflict resolution made the conflict much more rewarding also.  Again, obvious in hindsight, and described in the rules, but something that was missed the first time through.

The second change was in the GM's initial dice allocation for each conflict.  Since these scenes are early in the game, the captains have a very limited number of options for bringing dice to the conflict for the first roll.  And we've observed that having more dice on one side in a conflict aspect has a very large effect on the outcome.  When I was allocating more dice initially than the captains were, it was a substantial uphill battle for them to catch up.  Yes, they could concede initially as a strategic choice, but that seems kind of blah, so I wanted to avoid putting them in situations where they would be tempted to bail out before the conflict even started.  Ramping down the initial dice push from the GM made a very significant difference.  Then once things were rolling, both sides have more resources to bring to the conflict.  Way more fun.

I still have some discomfort at the sheets full of available dice I've got to throw at the captains, with no feedback into the system from expending those resources.  There is nothing systematically to prevent the GM from steamrolling the captains, other than that would be lame and un-fun.  And obviously I don't want to do that intentionally, but I worry about it happening through accident or carelessness.  I think more feedback from the system would be good.  I have perhaps been spoiled by PTA and Agon, where it would be much more difficult to steamroll the players without noticing.  I know that over expenditure would eventually drain the pool, but it is a pretty deep pool and its limit only matters when you hit it.  I don't think I'm doing a great job expressing this.  Maybe I'll come to a more clear explanation later.

I hope the above has not come across too harsh.  I'm very excited about Galactic and want it to be as awesome as possible!  Certainly I'm very glad the game has turned fun for our group, since the first game was pretty rough.  We'll definitely be playing more, and if you like I'll post reports here.  Is there anything I could be doing or posting that would be useful for you?

Thanks,
MSB

[Matt Wilson]

Glad to hear it's going well. I think with regard to the dice available, besides the actual in-game cap, you ought to think of it as you would with any game where you as GM have resources. There's nothing to stop you from steamrolling the characters in a bunch of the games played here. You could have the whole town gang up on one person in a game of Dust Devils. You could conjure up a bunch of angry demons and beat the crap out of a sorcerer.

There's enough there for you to be able to push when you want to, but you do have to exercise your own judgment. Find the sweet spot that makes them agonize about how hard they're willing to push back.

[Matthew Sullivan-Barrett]

Indeed, good advice.

I think part of the problem is that I was expecting the budget to have more of a balancing role, which it seemed the previous Hazard system would do.  The new dice sheets are much more simple, which is good, but also much more prone to abuse.  I'd suggest having some more GM guidance and recomendations to go along with that.