[The Rustbelt] Gen Con playtest feedback and questions

[Paul Czege]

Hey Marshall,

On the Thursday evening of Gen Con at The Embassy Suites I ran a playtest of The Rustbelt from your demo scenario, with Lance Allen, Tim Jensen, Kevin Allen Jr, and Alexander Newman as players.

I really liked the relationship snarl in your playtest scenario.

Almost all of our feedback and questions were about the Push mechanics. First, the big one:

1. No one ever Gave in a resolution. We had Deadlock in every single resolution.

I'm not sure why this was the case, if it's a mechanical problem, or something we missed in the text, or the way we used the mechanics. We didn't use the resolution mechanics for stuff that didn't seem like a dramatically interesting conflict. So, when we used the mechanics pretty much everyone thought the outcome was significant enough to be worth Pushing for, and no one would Give, and we'd get a Deadlock. And the characters burned out very quickly on high Price bids.

This is a known problem in Dogs In the Vineyard. Vincent addresses it by telling you to frame smaller conflicts. Not, "will she convert to the faith," but "will she stay with me while I pray". This makes it easier for a player to Give.

I don't know whether the same solution is right for The Rustbelt.

What percentage of conflicts should be Parallel Conflicts or Interference Parallel Conflicts? Because we didn't have any, and so maybe part of the solution is a strong, guiding text that teaches us to have mostly these kinds of conflicts that can't end in Deadlock. I'm thinking possibly some of the things we treated as perpendicular, particularly the combats, maybe should have been parallel. Maybe all of them.

Also, perhaps I wasn't strict enough at enforcing the Push criteria. It just always seemed like the player had met the criteria, almost always that they were acting for the sake of someone they cared about. Perhaps this was an artifact of the tightness of the relationships in the playtest scenario? Or is there a way to be really strict about the criteria?

And some other related questions:

2. Pushes were always "active". That it, it didn't seem possible to Push when you were defending (i.e. "I do not want to be shot") because you had to meet the Push criteria. As the game progressed I was getting a sense the players would soon be adding Faiths in their own luck or safety to allow for Pushes on defending (i.e. "My mom always said the Lord wouldn't let me come to harm until my life's work was done"). I think everyone would have had a Faith like this after a while. I dunno if a vastly higher incidence of Parallel Conflicts would stave this off or not.
3. When you add a Psyche component (like a Faith) to meet the criteria for a Push, you can add it at any value?
4. Is that the only time you can add a Psyche component, when you're trying to justify a Push?
5. As GM, should I have been antagonizing Woe, Faith, Vice, by giving the players options to drink, reasons to doubt, opportunities to be distracted from matters at hand?
6. In a Perpendicular Conflict, the Price of the first Push is the Challenge minus the Performance. What's the Price of the Push back that takes us to Deadlock?
7. In combat, do you get to roll damage before deciding whether to take a Price or Damage Reduction? That is, do you get to see the roll before you decide if you want to reduce it?

But otherwise, we had some pretty great moments. Unless I was supposed to be more aggressive about antagonizing Woe, Faith, and Vice, the game seems to be almost an art form of everyone realizing when they've been triggered. When Jim saw Ringworm shot, Jim's player realized it reminded him of his gang being shot up. "Yeah, that triggers my Woe," he said. And everyone said, "ooh".

Paul

[Lance D. Allen]

Another thing to note, in that session, is that I don't think we had anything resembling a significant conflict with an NPC. Ringworm and Jim had a few conflicts when they were breaking into the store and trashing it, but after that, it was entirely PvP. I'm not sure if that's a bug or a feature, and if it's just due to the scenario, the players or the GenCon playtest venue, but that's something else I noticed. When reading actual play reports, there were all sorts of crazy conflicts between the PCs and NPCs, with the PCs being more or less allied, though such alliances never seemed to be simple or stable. That basically wasn't anything like our session.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

I can speak to this issue from years of wrangling with Sorcerer demos. Basically, and I think this is the same for Rustbelt, a great deal of Sorcerer mechanics and fun can be illustrated with demos that start about 90% through a story, specifically a story in which all the player-characters' interests have clashed, but the actual fun of real play can't be. By "real play," I mean the organic development of intense, not-predictable conflicts through small events and decisions that build into big ones.

What such a demo can do is showcase what play might be like at a climactic moment, if the player-characters have generally turned upon one another. That's fun, and you get to see all these numerical scores all switching 'round and thus feeding into the next step of confrontation in a cyclical way. The loss, however, lies in the mis-perceptions that (a) a typical Sorcerer/Rustbelt story is predicated on Blood Opera, which is to say, player-characters start play pretty much at one another's throats; (b) Bang-Boom-Bang, play is over practically once it's begun; and (c) the system itself is a wind-up toy that buzzes briefly and entertainingly, but without real commitment to an SIS and to unpredictable, slower, and more nuanced character decisions that occur without reference to long-term effects.

As long as I'm holding forth on this, here's something else: Legends of Alyria and Burning Wheel also tend to suffer from this tendency, partly, as I see it, because people develop this misperception often by experiencing the slam-bang-boom demo. These games, Sorcerer, and The Rustbelt have a lot more to offer than that.

Best, Ron

[Marshall Burns]

Hi Paul,

I don't have a lot of time at the moment, but I can give you some quick answers.  I'll be back later to converse in more detail.

#1:  This might be complicated.  It *could* be because of the way that conflicts were framed, the stakes were too high to start with (which could be due to the scenario itself).  I tend to call for rolls on a lot of small things, even some things that many people here might think of as simply "Tasks," not Conflicts.  Of course, in a way, no matter how Tasky they are, they can be inner Conflicts between the character's own instinct for self-preservation and his resolve (assuming that they are things he's doing in order to reach a certain goal).

It *could* be because of a parallel/perpendicular thing.  My design-intent was for Deadlock to dissuade players from perpendicular conflicts.  Such as, "He's attacking me, I'm avoiding the attack."  I wanted to encourage "He's attacking me, I'm attacking him" so that we could have situations where one guy's pinned to the ground, being strangled, while he claws at his assailant's eyes.  If there's any conceivable way for conflicting Goals to both come true, then it's (probably) parallel.  Note that the "He's attacking me, I'm attacking him" is perpendicular in some other games (TSOY, f'rinstance), but not this one.

#2:  All that the Push is concerned with is the motivation, not the action.  If it's a fight, then why is the character fighting?  Does that reason match one of the Push criteria?  Then he can Push to hit, dodge, whatever.

Note that for a Faith-based Push, you must be either acting to uphold the Faith ("The Wicked Must Be Punished, so I'm gonna punish this wicked bastard" f'rinstance) or you have to have Coped using Faith to steady your nerve.  That latter is a preparatory thing.  Or, at least, I can't think of a way for it to be implemented otherwise.

#3:  Sure.  All the initial numbers are arbitrary.

#4:  Nope, you can add them at any time.  (I knew I should have stressed that more in the book)

#5:  Probably?  I'd say it's a good thing to do all the time, but it might depend on what's going on.

#6:  It's solely determined by the bids.

#7:  I roll afterwards, but I'm not sure if it matters.  Your base damage on a roll is going to be either 12, 22, or 23 (depending on what you're using), so it doesn't bother me to have people roll damage afterwards.

[Marshall Burns]

Ok, I'm back.  For a little while.

Another thing came to mind that probably has an impact on question #1.  The mechanics don't deal with stakes (aside from Danger, which comes from outside the characters) or big-C Conflicts in any overt way.  There's a subtle escalation process built in with the weapon rules (bringing out a gun is dangerous for you and the other guy, 'cause if he's willing to get shot once he can almost certainly take the gun away from you, then you're staring down the barrel), but that's about it.  A big-C Conflict ends when one person decides he's had enough, and the other person decides he's hammered it enough.  In a fight, f'rinstance, that means one guy has decided to stay down, and the other has decided to stop kicking him.  So, the dice don't resolve Conflicts, the players do.

And another thing for #2:  the player is the one who Pushes, not necessarily the character.

Both of these are things that I didn't particularly explain in the rules.  This is my inexperience showing, as far as writing down rules in comprehensible form goes.  Hooray for playtesting!

Lance,
PvP has always been a strong possibility in the Rustbelt, even when it didn't happen.  If I have an opportunity as GM to turn the PCs against each other, I jump on it.  But, here's the thing:  they don't have to go for each other's throats, no matter how appealing it might seem at the moment.  Despite how embroiled all the conflicts were in that scenario, the PCs could have ended up working together.  Imagine Ringworm explaining why he needs the money, convincingly enough to get Beat and the Blackbird on his side.  It could happen.

Now, here's a thing.  It's only hinted at in the rules, though:  you want to run roughshod over the antagonism?  Use the cooperation rules.  If characters manage to connect, they end up being very effective.

-Marshall

[Marshall Burns]

As the game progressed I was getting a sense the players would soon be adding Faiths in their own luck or safety to allow for Pushes on defending (i.e. "My mom always said the Lord wouldn't let me come to harm until my life's work was done"). I think everyone would have had a Faith like this after a while.

I've been thinking about it, and, in the long run, I don't think many people would end up with such a Faith, and the ones that did wouldn't bother me.  'Cause, if they use it to Cope so they can Push, that's gonna drive the Zeal up.  At some point the character is going to be really, really believing in his own invincibility.  But he's not invincible, and sooner or later he's gonna have to face that.  That strikes me as potentially some fun gaming.

Also, this?

When Jim saw Ringworm shot, Jim's player realized it reminded him of his gang being shot up. "Yeah, that triggers my Woe," he said. And everyone said, "ooh".

That makes me really, really, really happy.

-Marshall

[Krippler]

This seems to be a good thread to post the rule addition I will try out next time I get a session going:

Pushing using Vice of Faith requires Grip or Zeal to be at least as high as the Price, in other cases it gets bumped to that if the Push occurs (if the Grip/Zeal is higher than required it still increases by 1). I was kind of bothered with how slowly the Psyche changed, especially since characters usually don't last longer than they can hold their temper.

Anyone see any obvious problems with this?

[Marshall Burns]

Hey Wilmer,

I've been thinking about it, and I'd endorse your using that rule in your games.  I won't be using it in mine, though.  I think that your games have more actual violence per unit of time than mine, so characters in yours die off faster.  They still die off when we play, it just takes a little longer, because we've gotten to wear we back down sometimes.  We have a lot of social conflicts, which sometimes escalate into threats of violence, which only sometimes escalate into actual violence, which only sometimes escalates to lethal violence.

This sort of escalation dynamic is really what I wanted out of the damage rules.  But the unremitting, gritty, Mad Max violence is a lot of fun too, so I don't see any reason why you shouldn't do it and modify the Psyche stuff to match that kind of in-your-teeth pacing.

-Marshall