[Black Cadillacs] - Cards of Fate

[Darcy Burgess]

Hi,

Something that's crept into my mind during my last batch of Black Caddies playtests is a disatisfaction with the way a certain segment of the mechanics requires a small but significant amount of retroactive continuity (retconning) to be performed.  This isn't a deal-breaker, by any means, but I'd really like to fix it if I can.  Simultaneously, I know that there are a couple of other things that need attention.  If I can find a solution for the retconning issue, I'm hoping that it will illuminate some other avenues.  Maybe these avenues will lead to solutions for other problems.

If you want to look at the full game text, here it is.

However, I'll summarize the important bits right here.

During play, you accumulate a hand of six cards.  At the end of the evening's play, these cards get used for two things.  The first is a 3-trick card game that produces the conclusion to the evening's session.  The remainder of your hand (now down to 3 cards) is compared to the GM's remainder, and it answers three specific questions: Who Lives?, Who Distinguishes Himself?, Who gets to Go Home?

So, what this means is after you've wrapped the fiction for the evening (for instance, Fire Team Bravo went down in a hail of gunfire, and Fire Team Charlie was cut off, and watched the whole thing happen), you may suddenly have to shoehorn in some additional stuff.  (for instance, oh! Big Randy took a dirt nap...how'd that go down?)

This isn't horrid.  Some times, it's actually quite inspiring, as it draws the players' attention to elements of the fiction that they hadn't paid attention to.  However, it feels clunky and inelegant, and I think more would be gained by moving the answers to those three questions earlier in the process.

Ideally, I'd like a solution that foreshadows & telegraphs (without locking down) a likely answer to the "big three questions" during the body of play.  As scene-to-scene play progresses, I want the players to have that gnawing feeling in their gut that so-and-so isn't going to get out of this alive, or that buddy over there is about to really rise to the occasion.  I have my suspicions that the answer will include some amount of open-handed play (either playing cards to the table in advance, or public knowledge of who holds what cards).

I just can't see the forest for the trees right now, and would appreciate some suggestions.

Thanks,
D

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Darcy,

The key lies in establishing degrees of uncertainty during play itself about what could or might happen, which everyone knows could be resolved later by the cards. That way the disconnect between "I lived through that one" and "hey wait, I died in that one" can be eliminated. I know that this disconnect doesn't exist in the game's mechanics, because the former isn't actually established through play, but it exists in the mind.

In our early playtest, I could see and experience for myself the habit of thought that said, "unless my guy loses all his hit points in the scene, he lives through it." That habit persists even though there are no hit points or mechanisms, as I recall, that kill player-characters during scenes. So overcoming the habit has to be explicit.

So that's what I mean by degrees of uncertainty: some aspect of finishing scenes which puts characters at risk in quantitative, unresolved terms. Here's a clunky idea only as food for thought: after a scene, each player puts out a card (from his hand, drawn from the deck, I dunno). At the end of play, when using those three cards, this previous card acts as "defense" during the scene in question. So if the card which would say "he dies after all" is not able to defeat this defense card, then the character lives after all.

Therefore choosing (or randomly drawing, whatever) a given defense card establishes the level of risk incurred by that character for that particular scene. Someone with a string of low-rank scores for all the scenes is more at risk than someone else; someone with low risk in all but one scene puts a strong dramatic focus on that scene from its resolution in play all the way to the end; and so on.

Interestingly, the defense cards might stay out of play once established, thus (productively, in my opinion), interfering with card-counting.

Best, Ron

[Ned]

Hi, Ron. Little unclear. Are you proposing final resolution of every scene at the end of play?

[Ron Edwards]

I'm not sure I can answer directly, because I don't know what you mean by "final resolution." I'll answer another way.

I'm saying, keep the scene resolution exactly as it currently stands. Don't change a thing.

The game already includes the fact that some scenes will have more information stuffed into them at the wrapping of the fiction. That's what Darcy's talking about with this:

So, what this means is after you've wrapped the fiction for the evening (for instance, Fire Team Bravo went down in a hail of gunfire, and Fire Team Charlie was cut off, and watched the whole thing happen), you may suddenly have to shoehorn in some additional stuff.  (for instance, oh! Big Randy took a dirt nap...how'd that go down?)

My suggestion doesn't change anything from what Darcy's describing. If, by "saving final resolution until the end," you mean establishing retroactively whether a character was killed in that scene or not, well, the game already has that. I'm not adding it, I'm suggesting a mechanism to make it more interesting and to provide inspiration for which scene is used.

Best, Ron

[Darcy Burgess]

Hi Ron,

I've got to interject, because I was unclear about something in my opening post.  Rather than try to correct specific instances where my summary is unclear, I'll restate it.

This is what prep looks like now:
The game is a multi-session affair.  Protagonists are carried forward from session to session (assuming that they aren't killed or sent home, etc).  Before the first session, the group collaborates to pick a large-scale situation (just like we did in our Korea game).  That large-scale situation is true for all of the sessions.  Before scene-to-scene play begins, the Protags are created by the group and the Foe (GM) is chosen.

Once you're into session-to-session play, here's the skeleton of play:

• The group collaborates to craft six situation elements for the evening's play.
• Everyone receives a hand of cards.
• A timer is set to determine the real-world endpoint of the game. (You set it to go off 30 minutes before you want the evening's play to end, to provide some time for wrapping up.)
• Scene-to-scene play begins.  Foe frames scenes, everyone collaborates to move the scene forward, Players propose conflict, Conflict resolution occurs.
• Within a conflict, everyone has an opportunity to improve their hand of cards.
• Players collaborate to wrap the scene.
• Next scene begins (repeat as necessary).
• The timer goes off, the game "shifts gears".
• The 3-trick card game is played out.  During the card game, everyone works together to wrap up anything that hadn't yet been dealt with.  The default assumption is that the narrative has been moving forwards in time, with each scene already being concluded.  Usually, the card game deals with "what happens next, now that the timer's gone off?"
• The remaining 3 cards are read, and we find out the answers to the 3 questions.  That's when the retconning begins -- shoe-horning those facts back into everything that's already been established.

I hope that sheds some light on where Ned is coming from.

I'm really looking forward to where this conversation goes.  It's already got me thinking in new directions.

Thanks,
D

[Darcy Burgess]

Hi Ron,

Ok.  With a (hopefully?) better summary of the process of play on the table, I'd like to ask you a question about your suggestion.

I get the idea of "establishing degrees of uncertainty during play itself about what could or might happen, which everyone knows could be resolved later by the cards" within a scene.  That makes sense.  We're talking about devices like "fade to black as the enemy bears down on you" or "six bodies drop under the hail of gunfire, and you're driven back behind cover".

Where I can't wrap my head around this technique is how it applies to scene-to-scene play.  If we're purposely leaving all the protags' fates unclear in each scene, all that work gets completely undone as soon as they appear in the next scene.

The only way out of that quagmire (that I can see) is to have all scene 'floating' in time, with no relation to each other.

I'd appreciate it if you riffed a bit more on your idea.

Thanks,
D