System questions: tie breaking, conflicts/scene, budget spending

[Sindyr]

I am breaking out my current round of questions into two topics: system questions, and mod ideas.  This one is some system questions I have:

1) If there are two players and 1 GM, and after all the cards are dealt, the GM has 2 black cards, Player 1 has 1 red card and 1 black card, and Player 2 has 2 black cards, Player 1 obviously gets his "stakes" - but does Player 2?  I know the rule is to deal another card to each player if *no one* has any red cards, but in this case Player 1 has one.

My answer would be:  The rules do not cover this situation, so I would deal another card to the GM and to Player 2 to break their tie - and more if necessary, until a winner is found.  Whatever happens, Player 1 still wins their "stakes".

Is this the best answer?

2) Is a scene built around a conflict?  Can you have a scene with no conflicts, or with two?  Should you?  Or is it that without a conflict, you don't have a scene, and a second conflict really means a second scene??

3) How is the GM supposed to spend their budget?  Let's say a player sets his stakes of "Captain Destructo impresses Lady Madeline as he saves the day".  We already know that the Captain will save the day - that's not in question - but will he get the girl?

How does the GM decide how much budget to spend?  If he doesn't care, or even let's says the GM *wants* the Captain to get the girl - the GM is rooting for the Captain - can the GM decide to spend fewer budget?  Or is he "supposed to" make it hard on the player?  How hard?

Or let's say the player set's the "stakes" of "Captain Destructo figures out who's behind it all along" - if the GM really doesn't want the players knowing yet who is the master villain, can he spend tons of budget - say 10 points - to ensure that they will most likely fail?

Is the GM just going by what *they* want, and spending based on how much (or how little) they want an outcome?

Followup:  The GM gets one set of cards.  If Alice wants something the GM is rooting for but Bill wants something the GM really wants to stop, how much Budget does the GM spend?  If he spends a lot, he can stop Bill, but he also stops Alice.  If he spends none, he can permit Alice's victory, but he also permits Bill's.

Or can the GM, if he so wishes, choose in victory to have the player get their "stakes" anyways?  For example, if he wants Alice to get her stakes but Bill not to get his, can the GM spend 10 Budget, beat both Alice and Bill, but narrate Alice's victory (and Bill's defeat) even though Alice didn't win?  Or is the GM forced to permit all or none, but not some?

4) About how many scene per episode?  3-5?  How long in real time should one expect each scene to last on average?  One of my gamers was saying that he expects a scene to take only 5-10 minutes.

FYI: looks like we are starting this game Wednesday, and going by our track record, unless this doesn't work in practice, we will be playing this game for some time.

Thanks.

[Matt Wilson]

I'll try and answer these one at a time, all organized like...

1) If there are two players and 1 GM, and after all the cards are dealt, the GM has 2 black cards, Player 1 has 1 red card and 1 black card, and Player 2 has 2 black cards, Player 1 obviously gets his "stakes" - but does Player 2?  I know the rule is to deal another card to each player if *no one* has any red cards, but in this case Player 1 has one.

Your idea is exactly what I would do, even though I didn't say so in the text.

2) Is a scene built around a conflict?  Can you have a scene with no conflicts, or with two?  Should you?  Or is it that without a conflict, you don't have a scene, and a second conflict really means a second scene??

My imaginary revision of this game says that scene and conflict are indistinguishable from one another. Some gamers hate this, because they say, what about scenes about character development, where we hang out and talk in character? That's still conflict by my definition. It's just conflict that they don't want to draw cards for. You want to hang out and have your friendship be cool and interesting and automatically succeed in those cases. In the show Burn Notice, these scenes do not exist, I will argue. Something is always at risk.

How does the GM decide how much budget to spend?

Some people play it like you spend as much as you can every conflict until you're out. I look at it in the way that TV isn't always turned up to 11. Some conflict is more suspenseful than other conflict. As the producer, you have awesome power to influence that. If there's a lot at stake in the scene, spend 5. If there's kind of some at stake, spend 3.

Don't spend budget to try and control what happens. When you do that, you never get red cards. The universe is cruel that way.

4) About how many scene per episode?  3-5?  How long in real time should one expect each scene to last on average?  One of my gamers was saying that he expects a scene to take only 5-10 minutes.

Watch an episode of TV with only this in mind, and you'll immediately get yourself an awesome benchmark. I think most scenes take 5-10 minutes of air time, and this will vary in game time depending on how much kibbitzing there is. I prefer them quick. As producer, I would try and discourage players from packing everything into a scene. There will always be more scenes.

Hope that helps!

[Sindyr]

Thanks, that does help, for the most part - the only thing I still don't get is the way the GM is supposed to spend his budget.  You say:

Some people play it like you spend as much as you can every conflict until you're out. I look at it in the way that TV isn't always turned up to 11. Some conflict is more suspenseful than other conflict. As the producer, you have awesome power to influence that. If there's a lot at stake in the scene, spend 5. If there's kind of some at stake, spend 3.

To my understanding, this sounds like nothing more than saying, when the players don't invest, you (the GM) don't either.  When the players do invest a lot, you invest to the same extent.

So is that the job of the GM in deciding how much budget to spend - spend enough to make what the players want at risk, and what they are less willing to spend resources on, you should too?

Btw, on this topic, is the sequence followed more rigidly in this game?  As in:
1) The GM spends the budget he wants to on the conflict in this scene
2) Then the players do

If the GM places 3 budget and the players spend 10 including fan mail, can the GM up the ante according to the rules, and increase his expenditure?  No, right?

For that matter, assuming you go around the table and player 1 uses 1 Fan Mail, player 2 uses 2 Fan Mail, and player 3 uses 3 Fan Mail, can player 1 call out that he wants to up his "bid" before the cards have flipped, or has his option passed?

Thanks.

Oh, one more thing:  You didn't say I don't think if the GM can choose to grant a losing player their victory if he so wishes upon his own success.  Does success as a GM in a conflict mean you get to choose, or does it mean that the player absolutely does not get their "stakes" even if you the GM want them too?

[Matt Wilson]

You didn't say I don't think if the GM can choose to grant a losing player their victory if he so wishes upon his own success.

The cards decide whether there's a victory, not the producer.

As for buying in with stuff, the producer spends budget first, and then the players choose traits, etc. I don't think that it's too big a deal if you want a free and clear in there; since you have a cap of 6 cards, it's not like you can pull some kind of gotcha on the players.

[Sindyr]

Ah, missed the part about a 5-budget limit per scene for the producer - thanks for the reminder.

[Sindyr]

I am still lost as far as how to decide how much budget to spend, and to be honest, it is starting to upset me.  It shouldn't be difficult to have clear and understandable guidelines for the GM.

In a classical RPG, I would be using guidelines around the difficulty of the action - in Torg, for example, you set an 8 for an average difficulty task attempt.

So, if there are 3 players, SP of 1,2 and 3, my budget would be 15.  If I planed for 5 scenes/conflicts, I would probably just do something like 1/2/3/4/5 but that's just to have ever increasing odds.

Or should I be attempting to guess how important the specific conflict is for my players, and acting adversarially?  Should I be thinking to myself, "well, I think Alice really wants her stakes, and so does Billy this scene, so I should spend a LOT of budget to really throw it into risk"?

What is the thinking by which I arrive at the number 0-5 of budget I should spend on this scene?  What is my goal as GM - what kind of number do I want?

Or should I roll a d6-1 each scene and play that many cards?   What is it that I am tyring to accomplish with my specific choice of spent budget?

[Ben Lehman]

Here's how I handle it:

If it's the first conflict of the game, I spend at least 4. Gotta get fanmail happening.

Other than that I'm like "how much do I want this thing to happen, as opposed to the other thing, on a scale of 0-5?" Then I spend that much. So if I really want to have my thing happen, I spend 4-5. If I really don't care one way or the other, I spend 0-2.

yrs--
--Ben

[Eero Tuovinen]

The way I do budget spends is somewhat similar to Ben's: in the first conflict you spend some just to get a fan mail pool going, then after that you vary it. My method for choosing how much to spend depends squarely on how important I personally consider the conflict to be in the overall drama. If it's minor, I spend 2, if it's crucial to the future direction of the storyline, I spend 5. If it's frivolous, I spend 1 or nothing. If I'm running low on budget, drop those numbers a little to preserve some.

This isn't that difficult, and you should perceive budget-spending as a creative freedom for you as the Producer. The rules don't tell you how to do it exactly because you're supposed to be a creative participant in the game as well; just like the rules don't tell where the players should spend their resources and where not, they don't tell you where the Producer should. Listen to your aesthetics on this one.

[Sindyr]

Here's how I handle it:

If it's the first conflict of the game, I spend at least 4. Gotta get fanmail happening.

Other than that I'm like "how much do I want this thing to happen, as opposed to the other thing, on a scale of 0-5?" Then I spend that much. So if I really want to have my thing happen, I spend 4-5. If I really don't care one way or the other, I spend 0-2.

yrs--
--Ben

As I understand it, spending more budget helps you win conflicts.  Winning conflicts does not necessarily mean you get to "have your thing happen", it means that you get to stop another player(s) from having their thing happen.  And if the thing you are rooting for is for the player to get their thing to happen, then you would be better served apparently by spending the minimum cards.

Put another way, to the best of my knowledge, the GM does not get to define, fight for, or "get" his stakes.

I guess I may be over complicating it.  Maybe it just boils down to a simple matter:

The players announce their stakes.  I decide if I want them to succeed.  If I want them to succeed, or I don't care, I spend 0 budget.  If I do care about preventing their success, then I spend 1-5 budget in proportion to how much I don't want them to succeed.

The only downside to this approach is:

1) If I actually want the players to succeed, and spend 0 budget each scene, then there will be little more than the players getting what they want - not necessarily a bad thing.
2) If I decide I want the players to fail - that I want them to lose their stakes of "Captain Destructo looks cool as he saves the day" or "Kid Blaze saves the day and still gets to his date on time" - doesn't that frame me as a bit of a dick?  Does this game pretty much set the GM up to be the adversary of the players, to have the GM going after the player's misfortune?

[Welkerfan]

A few hard and fast suggestions to follow:

1) The first conflict of the episode--spend four or five.  That way, there is fanmail to give out.  Make sure that the opening conflict is dramatic enough and important enough to warrant that much budget.

2) If either succeeding or failing at the conflict is dramatically uninteresting, spend budget to make sure that doesn't happen (if losing would be lame at this point--because you've already had this issue come up several times and it's time for it to be resolved--spend 0 budget) (if winning would be lame at this point--because this is the first time the issue has been raised and it needs more time to develop--spend all 5 budget).

3 ) Spend an amount similar to how excited the player seems to test the stakes.  If she only seems interested in winning or losing, don't desperately try to make the opposite happen without explaining why you want it to go that way.

[newsalor]

IMO the book has pretty clear guidelines for how much budget to spend: "spend budget on conflicts you think it would be interesting if the protagonists failed, or when you'd really like a shot at narrating the outcome."

If you aren't sure how interesting you think something is or if you want a shot at narrating or not, you could lift something from them upcoming HeroQuest 2 by Robin D. Laws. In that game he describes a pass/fail cycle that you can use to keep things interesting. In a nutshell it goes like this: if the players succeed, make the next conflict harder, but if they fail, make it easier. Actually there is a lot more there, but you can use just that bit.

Another option would be to use dramatic arcs. For instance, in a greek tragedy, at first you rule, but in the end you end up fucking it all up. That would translate into an easy first half and a budget heavy second half of a show. You could also have a rising difficulty that would drop for the last third of an episode.

I would like to note another thing. You talked about the "GM" spending 10 budget not wanting to reveal who is behind all that is evil or something. I'd like to remind you that you don't know the final truth of that one. Say that a player who is playing a protagonist character has the highest card. He can decide who the real baddie is, because he has narration. He has to respect the other players characters and the actual narration should be a pretty free with everyone offering suggestions and players spouting dialog, but still, he holds the final narration rights.

There is no GM in this game. It really helped me to organize great sessions of this game when I kept reminding myself of this fact.

[BlackSheep]

1) If there are two players and 1 GM, and after all the cards are dealt, the GM has 2 black cards, Player 1 has 1 red card and 1 black card, and Player 2 has 2 black cards, Player 1 obviously gets his "stakes" - but does Player 2?  I know the rule is to deal another card to each player if *no one* has any red cards, but in this case Player 1 has one.

Your idea is exactly what I would do, even though I didn't say so in the text.

As a small side note, what I do in the case of ties is to flip a single card off the top of the deck.  Red means the players win, black means the producer wins.  I just find it quicker and cleaner.