Slay With Me: 1st Game

[Willow]

So, Tim and I sat down tonight to play a game of Slay With Me.

Let me preface this by saying I don't think I'm the target audience for this game.  I wasn't even alive during the time period addressed by Ron's Naked Went the Gamer Essay.  I'm female, and quite frankly, I find the naked pictures a little juvenile.  The game is also far too light for my tastes.  But hey, it's one on one, so why not?

Tim played the warrior, a young man with grey hair and martial prowess, going into the dark tunnels beneath the black plateau in search of the mystic artifact of his people.  Tim and I both rather liked the mini oracles for characters and places.

The Lover was an animate carving of an ancient princess of his people; giving guidance and communicating in runes.  The Monster was a bestial, smelly, loud furry thing- somewhat like a minotaur, though I never actually used the word minotaur.

So I picked up dice for threatening and attacking the warrior, which the monster was happy to do on repeated occasion, though I was careful not to do on every go- there were several based on conversation between the warrior and the lover, or of descriptions of the tunnels.  Also, the fact that the monster would be injured and spend time regenerating often gave Tim a reprieve of several goes before I invoked the Monster again.

Tim only picked up two dice- one for finding the central chamber, one for taking a sword out of the coffin, and one for heading towards the safety of his tribe.  He was unsure of his authority to give himself dice, and I was unsure of what length he needed to go to to earn them.  Once I hit my five dice he had three, and we discussed it a bit- he felt he deserved 1 for his interactions with the lover, and he was probably right, but it wouldn't have made a difference in the endgame.

The rules on endgame say the goes should be especially leisurely, but once Tim saw he only had enough dice to accomplish one thing, he choose to kill the monster, and said he let it collapse the tunnels, killing it, him, and the lover.  Not really much room for narration after that.

Tim had some more extensive questions regarding the system and gaining dice and goes, I'll let him post them.

[TJ]

I think page 22 partially addresses my issue with the session seeming a little too tight.  I also think some of the 'Where?' questions on page 6 may be too restrictive for my tastes, such as the Twisted Caverns which we both imagined as an isolated, static environment with no characters besides the hero, monster and lover present.

Does the hero get a die for narrating how he was distracted from working towards his goal?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Willow and Tim,

I apologize for taking so long to reply.

I hope that you go back and forth with several adventures. Most of what you're describing is resolved through applying the same rules with more experience, especially shifting from one-critter-one-lover-one-place encounters into more nuanced, character-rich scenarios.

I can clarify a couple of your questions and what I see as possible readings issues.

1. Tim, you don't get dice when your adventurer is distracted from working on a Goal. Unlike Lover dice, those dice are one-way, you have to get some distance covered toward whatever-it-is. The "Making Goes good" section provides advice about how to do that.

2. It seems to me that interpreting the location descriptions as static and empty can only be ascribed to one's decision when using the description, rather than to its textual content. Nothing prevents the tunnels beneath the Black Plateau from being filled with people, for instance. That said, a one-critter-otherwise-empty-place encounter can be fun too. The first adventure I ever playtested was like that.

3. When the "you" player chooses the final options based on the outcome and dice-structure of the Match, those statements are not themselves adding to the fiction yet. So let's say I choose "kill the Monster" as one of the things I buy with Good Dice. The Monster doesn't die right then and there. Picking it then means that either you or I will incorporate the Monster's death in one of the Goes to come. I am not sure, but I inferred from Willow's description that Tim basically ended the whole adventure with direct narrations of each choice as he picked them. Correct me if I'm wrong about that. However, if so, then I need to clarify that (i) picking those options is not itself in-fiction narration (so that player doesn't, for instance, say how the Monster dies at that time); (ii) Goes individually include one major forward-moving event; so (iii) post-Match play must by definition include at least one Go by each player.

4. That was a very interesting concept for the Lover. I'm interested in the content of the conversations that she and the adventurer had, and also in whether there was any explicit way for him to embrace her (i.e. have sex) and/or to stay with her.

Best, Ron

[Paul Czege]

So let's say I choose "kill the Monster" as one of the things I buy with Good Dice. The Monster doesn't die right then and there. Picking it then means that either you or I will incorporate the Monster's death in one of the Goes to come.

FWIW, Danielle and I also didn't realize the things purchased as accomplishments were inputs to post-Match Goes. We interpreted the purchasing to be Intent, Initiation, and Execution, and we sort of mutually embellished the accomplishments with details to work them into the SIS. And then then we had pretty lame post-Match Goes. But were weren't playtesting with your final text, so maybe it was phrased a bit differently than the current text.

Still, the current text says "Your Goes demonstrate these decisions, and mine provide reactions and resulting events." Which doesn't seem the same to me as saying that either of us can incorporate the Monster's death in one of the post-Match goes. It seems to be saying the adventurer player incorporates the accomplishments into his Goes and the other player provides reactions and results.

Paul

[Eero Tuovinen]

I've interpreted it similarly, Paul. That is, the adventurer player makes his choices and reveals them in his Goes, with the M/L player providing reactions and consequences to those choices. The Goes go on basically as long as it takes for the adventurer player to reveal all of his choices.

[Paul Czege]

Let's say I'm the player of the adventurer, I'm playing the game with Ron, and I've purchased the death of the Monster as an accomplishment. Is it meaningful for the text to establish that both of the following should occur:

Example 1

Paul: "Okay, the damn thing is blind, right? So I'm inside his reach in a flash and sink the magic Bowie knife into its throat. Foul green blood is gushing everywhere. I'm soaked. It's thrashing and knocking into the temple columns and destabilizing the whole structure. But I get out and it's buried in rubble. Dead."

Ron: "Cool. Yeah, you're out. On your knees, I think, in the courtyard. And covered in gross mix of blood and dust. But Princess LadyPrincess rushes over to you anyway."

Example 2

Paul: "Okay, the damn thing is blind, right? So I'm inside his reach in a flash and sink the magic Bowie knife into its throat. Foul green blood is gushing everywhere. I'm soaked. But I evade his blind thrashing."

Ron: "Yeah, that finishes him. He pitches backward through the stained glass and trailing a twisted arc of blood, down onto the rocks below."

So, death of the Monster established by me, the purchaser (Example 1) and death of the Monster established by the other player (Example 2), as a reaction.

Because if gameplay should feature both of these, I'm not sure the current text ensures it; my thinking is that without a more direct enjoinder by the text, a given pair of players is likely to consistently gravitate to one or the other, based on their personal consensual understanding of what's meant by "provide reactions and resulting events".

Paul

[Ron Edwards]

Paul, I'll get to your points in a bit.

Tim, I realized your question about being distracted from the Goal needs to be answered more completely.

If the Go includes only being distracted from the get-go, such that the adventurer doesn't even try or notice going toward the Goal, then there's no dice. That's how I interpreted your question at first.

"Ooh! A monkey!" with no mention of the Goal or direction toward it = no dice.

But then I realized that you might be asking about the final disposition of the character at or by the end of a Go which did in fact include seeking the Goal in the first place.

"I go down to the market to follow the guy [and we know that this guy is relevant to the Goal], but look! Ooh! A monkey!" = a die.

Again, more for Paul later today. Paul and Eero, please wait for my reply.

Best, Ron

[Ron Edwards]

Paul and Eero,

The text as written is the way to go. After the Match, the "you" player is providing the majority of content regarding the disposition of the chosen options, just as you say. However, that entails some things to understand.

1. A Go is defined by one substantive forward-moving event. Therefore it's unlikely that post-Match play will consist of a single Go.

2. Much of what we're discussing here is subject to tuning based on how tight or loose the two people are playing. So Paul, your dialogue examples seem very 'tight' to me, which doesn't make them wrong, but also doesn't map to how Tim Koppang and I play. What I'm saying is that your basic point is right, that the "you" player is attending to the Match outcome in his or her Goes, but that I can't point to your specific text as the way to talk-and-play, because it has too many features that are associated with its particular degree of tightness.

3. I've found, enjoyably, that post-Match play can contine for a few Goes past the point when all the Match outcomes content have been included. Various other features of the story which have been developed sometimes need resolution as well. Although once the Match outcomes are settled, it's time to finish, sometimes finishing needs a little attention. (What I'm saying here isn't counter to the rules text, but I wanted to make sure I was not giving the tacit, incorrect message that play finishes like a flipped-off light switch when the last Match outcome is attended to.)

Best, Ron