Unsung: Playtest At Last [long]

[xiombarg]

I finally got to playtest Unsung last night.

I was using a scenario written for GURPS Cops from Pyramid Magazine, a scenario called Heat Wave. (You won't be able to read that last link unless you're a Pyramid subscriber.)

Basically, the scenario is that the PCs are rookie beat cops on their first day of work, during a heat wave, and the situations in it were, IMHO, a good playtest of the Lapse and Gift system.

The players were Emily, James, Russ, and Jamie. I've mentioned all of them before except Jamie -- she's new to our group, mostly a D&D player, but she's played other RPGs before, like 7th Sea.

To re-familiarize you with my players, Emily and James participated in the highly successful Wuthering Heights game I ran. James is highly creative but sometimes gets out of control if he doesn't feel he's succeeding often. (He complained this time around during chargen that being good at something meant "sucking" at something else, and I had to remind him that that wasn't the point.) Russ is our token grognard, at least compared to the rest of the group. (While the rest of the group considers his mode of play highly tactical and IMHO Gamist, he's the least tactical player in the other group he's in, which mostly plays D&D.)

So, okay, chargen didn't take much time, which was good. I had given everyone a one-page handout a couple weeks before so everyone could be at least kinda familiar with the system before we started. (If people are interested, I can post the one-pager here.)

James was playing the ultimate "good cop" -- an Irish Catholic, highly moral and idealistic rookie. Emily was playing a "girlie girl" who, despite being very "feminine", graduated at the top of her class. Russ was playing what he termed a "cybercop", a highly technology-oriented character. Jamie arrived late, so she picked from a list of pregenerated characters I had, taking a "mean cop" template I had with a Responsibility of 5. (Ironically, she only Lapsed once -- mostly due to her milquetoast partner, but more on that later.)

I'd like to mention, in passing, that during chargen and during the briefing on the system, there was a lot of joking around and funny commentary. I encouraged this, to get things out of people's system before the game started. As I enouraged this, I might want to mention this in the text; warming up to, and getting ready for play is even more important (IMHO) in a very serious game like Unsung, which risks becoming the Edmund Fitzgerald of RPGs, so serious that you have to laugh to break the tension. I think this contributed to keeping the actual game quite serious. We also joke a bit about what happened after the session ended.

I set the game in a highly fictionalized version of our home city of Salisbury, MD. At the start of the game, I had everyone make some Savvy checks. Those who made it -- all of them -- were told that they were to expect pranks on their first day on the job.

The opening scene of the scenario has the PCs rushed to an "early briefing", with no time to check their equipment. This was because the guns contained blanks and their mace cannisters contained harmless gas, as part of the upcoming prank.

The prank was, during the briefing, the owner of the (fictional) local cop bar, 10-7, dressed as a bum, carrying what seems a toy death-ray gun with blinking LEDs. He shouts about the mind-controlling orbital lasers and points the "gun" around, and the veterans pretend to be scared, to see how the rookies react.

I thought this was a perfect test of the Lapse mechanic. In the scenario as written, aimed at highly-Sim GURPS players, this was a point where the players would indicate what sort of cops they were playing via how much force they apply to the situation. For Unsung, it seemed like a tailor-made situation for a potential Lapse where the conquences of a Lapse, IC, weren't really life-or-death for the PC.

James had his character try to talk the man down, while all the other PCs waited to see if the veterans would stop being "scared".

I had everyone make a Responsibility check, at a large bonus considering how fake the guy's gun looked. Ironically, even with the bonus, two characters blew the check and had Lapses -- Russ's character and Jamie's character.

The way we handled these Lapses set the tone for how we handled such things later on down the line. Basically, in the rules as I wrote them, people vote on what the character does. However, I didn't go over how one decides what the options are, what things someone can vote on. What I ended up doing as GM and designer was lead a sort of brainstorming session were we came up with possible actions, and then voted on them. The player of the original character was encouraged to make suggestions, but couldn't vote. This methodology is sort of implicit in the way I wrote the rules, but it couldn't hurt if I made it more explicit in the final version, perhaps with an example of play -- it was more like consensus-building than actual voting.

Also, now that I'm writing this, I realize that in all the Lapses that happened, in the heat of the moment, I forgot the post-Lapse check to see if Responsibility went down. When someone did something nasty on purpose, I made THOSE checks, but I forgot to check with Lapses. Given that, perhaps I should relegate the check for Responsibility reduction to the end of the session, one check if the player Lapsed at all, perhaps with a penalty based on the number of Lapses. This would cut down on the die rolling and make the downward spiral a bit less out-of-control, while still a very real danger.

Regardless, with some discussion, the players decided they didn't want Jamie's character to get TOO brutal that early on in the game, and decided she would pull a gun on the guy and tell him to drop his weapon. They had Russ's character do the same, though in a touch suggested in part by Russ, they had him hold his gun in a very (impractical) video-game like fashion.

The prank was then exposed and the officers given a ribbing about it, and real bullets and mace issued to replace the pranks equipment. The characters were then assigned partners according to how they reacted to the prank and the Sergeant's personal evaluation of the PCs. It broke down like this:

I paired James with Harry "Smiley" Roberts, so named because he never smiles or laughs. A bully and a closet racist, Harry is the sort of guy who believes in shaking down suspects for evidence, and even carries a "drop gun" in case he shoots an unarmed person. I paired James with Harry because OOC his character was the most morally upright of the group, and I wanted to see the conflict, and secondly IC as the Sergeant as the Sergeant wasn't going to pair anyone with Harry who pulled a gun during the prank -- he wants to reign Harry in.

Wow, that pairing worked out well. More on that later.

I paired Richard "Croaky" Slater with Emily's character more or less at random. Croaky is a croaky-voiced (go figure), highly intuitive officer.

I paired Alfred Washington, the precinct's token black cop, with Russ's character because the Alfred was a very "by the book character", and Russ's character didn't strike me as that type (perhaps incorrectly), and I didn't want another blantant conflict like there would have been between Jamie's character and Alfred. That seemed to work OK.

I paired Jamie's character with Thomas "Not-on-my-shift" Johnson, your sterotypical fat, lazy (but nice) cop. This was intended as a more subtle conflict, as Jamie's character, as she was portraying her, was highly energetic and motivated. This only worked so well, as Jamie seemed reluctant to actually try and use Thomas's laxness to get away with anything.

Everyone had a patrol car for each pair and an area of the city to patrol. (I didn't go into much detail here, instead just feeding people encounters.)

We started out with nearly everyone having to deal with drug dealers on I-13 (the "main street" of Salisbury) -- a different scene for everyone, except Emily, who got her chance to do things in later scenes. The use of the Rule of Gifts was heavy during these scenes. The players took enthusiastically to the Rule of Gifts, adding complications to each other's scenes. Some examples:

* James's character watched while his partner roughed up a drag dealer, over protests from James's PC. A Gift upped the stakes when someone suggested that James had seen this boy being taken to church by his mother -- perhaps the kid wasn't all that bad. The ensuing row (with some Lapse checks, that James succeeded at) had Smiley ordering James's character back to the car. Once he was out of sight, a couple of shots rang out. James ran back to find the kid nearly dying, and a gun on the ground; actually, this was Smiley's "drop gun", though James never figured that out. Despite their best efforts (half-hearted on Smiley's part), the kid died before the ambulances arrived, though the kid had time to ask for Last Rites. A very emotional scene, all told. (If this had been the start of a campaign, the issue with the drop gun could have been an interesting seed for later.)

* Jamie added an interesting bit to what Russ had to deal with. While the drug dealers ran, another nearby person was busy viciously slapping his girlfriend. Russ's character did not Lapse and react brutually, though Russ engaged in a telling scene regarding his character's moral code by simply telling them to "take it off the street", which the male eagerly agreed to, and left, girlfriend in tow.

* Jamie insisted on chasing down the drug dealers who ran from her while her partner catnapped in the car. Someone (James, I think) gave a Gift that after she'd searched the kid she caught (no drugs, but a pager), he called her a "fucking cunt", which caused her to slam him against the wall and confiscate his pager. (She passed a Lapse check not to be MORE brutal to the kid, IIRC.)

People were very enthusiastic about adding details via the Rule of Gifts, and the veto rule was used sparingly to stop sillier suggestions, or, in one case, to stop a scene from being more complicated than I wanted. Both GM and player vetoes got used -- Russ used the player veto the most. People even wanted to add details that didn't challenge people morally, but made the scene more interesting -- we sort of developed a house rule on the spot that those Gifts, if not vetoed, went into the scene, but didn't earn a Gift Point. (The kid asking for Last Rites was one of those sorts of Gifts, suggested by Emily.) I think that rule may end up in the text, since in some cases it's reward enough to just to get some power to add to the scene.

Several other incidents followed:

Emily's character got to shine in a couple of scenes where she arrived at a scene where an armed robbery was reported -- a liquor store. Arriving on the scene, they found two senior citizens in a fist fight. Emily makes a Responsibility check and handles the fistfight without brutality or impatience. The owner reported a robbery because, otherwise, the cops take an hour to show up. Emily is very understanding about this and befriends the store owner.

However, the real interesting thing happens when the citizen reports a burglary. The thieves thoroughly rifled through his possessions but only took his hard-disk drive and diskettes. The guy is sweating, nervous, and chain-smoking; he says he's a free-lance journalist writing an article about them. He says they shadow him, but he isn't able to tell the cops much more. They own the police anyway -- he's not sure why he even bothered to call.

At this point, Jamie adds a Gift where there a bomb parts on the guy's countertop! Invoking the Rule of Jared, I decide that this is only morally interesting if Emily's character notices it, so she automatically notices and knows what it is.

To make a long story short, Emily avoids a Lapse when she ends up in a Mexican standoff with the guy, and ends up talking him down after the bomb squad shows up. She's a model cop -- I give her a chance to make a roll to gain Responsiblity, but she doesn't make it (ironically), so her Responsibility doesn't go up.

Meanwhile, the cruiser with Russ's character in it is summoned by the mall (aka "The Center at Salisbury") security. The surly guard has cornered two despondent girls (both under 18). They were stealing lingerie, but the surveillance camera film is grainy and unclear. The guard insists he saw them drop the loot when he challenged them; they haughtily deny everything.

Jamie adds a complication through a Gift by specifying the security guard used to date one of the girls, and one of the girls tells Russ this, throwing doubt on the security guard's account.

The shop manager still wants to press charges, but he suddenly changes his mind when the father of one of the kiddies shows up. He's the owner of nearly all the local car dealerships, kinda a big shot, and he convinces the manager to accept his "apologies and gratitude." The man also implies there is "gratitude" for the cops too, but he stops short of open bribery. Albert, of course, is not interested in a bribe, but I decide this a good time for a Lapse check.

Interestingly, even with a bonus I give (it's easy to resist a man this sleazy), Russ fails the roll and Lapses. After some discussion, the group decides to have him wait until Albert is out of earshot, accept the bribe, and then try to arrest the car dealership owner.

Which he did, even when the owner got spooked and didn't actually offer a bribe. His word against the cop, eh? Russ did not seem pleased with having the control of his character taken away from him, which I sort of expected... Of all the players, Russ is the most touchy about having absolute control over what his character is doing and is capable of, which makes him particularly cautious about character generation, even for games like Feng Shui, let alone something more serious. I smoothed things over by repeating what I said in the rules: What you do in a Lapse is a gift from the other players, an element of the character that even you didn't know about. I dunno how successful I was.

As a quick aside, I was fairly free with giving out bonuses, so that people had a slightly better chance of success, especially considering how "average" people's stats were. I mention giving out bonuses in the text, but considering how important it seemed to be to give people a fighting chance (while still remaining gritty -- all the players agreed that the feel of the game was pretty gritty, which pleased me), I may want to highlight this some more, again with a play example.

Also, I prodded people to use the Rule of Currency, but it rarely seemed to have much of an effect. The bonus (or penalty, in the case of a failed roll, which happened a lot) was so small it hardly made a differance. I am seriously considering changing the "exchange rate" so that one gets a +1 bonus for every two or three successes, rather than every 4. Even a +5 bonus (critical success) doesn't seem to make THAT much difference -- it's only a 25% increase in one's chances.

Regardless, after the mall scene, we switch to James's character and Smiley. They get a call that a Rottweiler is risking death in a locked car parked in the sun, and nobody seemed to know who the owner is.

Now, it is notable that James is very fond of dogs and doesn't like people who mistreat dogs, and some of this bled over into the character. Normally I don't advocate pushing a player's buttons, but this event got assigned to him at random, and James is fairly good about OOC/IC seperation issues most of the time.

Smiley knew how to open a door without smashing a window, but he let James struggle with it anyway, trying to use a "slim jim" for the first time. Not only did he fail, but he was given a Gift where he broke the lock.

At this point, a loud alarm goes off, and the owner shows up, furious. He shouts he was going to come back in time. With a Savvy check, James's character figures out he's the hated landlord of a few slum buildings, and that's likely why somebody called the police in the first place.

To make a long story short, the guy took a swing at James's character, and a fight ensued, which I used to test the combat system. (James and others later commented that the combat system seemed "clunky". I intend to use a stripped-down version in the final edit, with a lot of the current rules as a but it seemed to do the job. James was particularly shocked when the abused dog took the side of its owner, which often happens in situations like that.

Because the dog attacked an officer, Smiley shot and killed it. Though the owner was cuffed and in the car by the time this came to light, James's character lost control (he might have even opted to Lapse, I don't remember) and attacked Smiley, but Smiley punched him in the solar plexus, knocking him out. (I sort of improvised rules for non-lethal combat, which isn't in the rules at all -- I need to do something about that.)

So James's character bided his time, and slammed Smiley's head into the police cruiser, neatly knocking him out (he failed his Meat check). At this point, James opted to voluntarily fail the Responsibility roll to retain Responsibility from that (non-Lapse but brutal) action. He then used his newly large Instinct (with a boost from the Rule of Currency, via Savvy) to intimidate the slumlord into claiming he did it! "You're already getting arrested for assalting a police officer. If you want to exit this car with all your fingers, then that gentleman is the officer you assaulted."

During this combat, James made heavy use of the Rule of Sacrifice, particularly at the end when he slammed Smiley into the car. At first, I forgot to enforce the rule where you describe your moral slippage when using the Rule of Sacrifice, but when I mentioned it to James, he came up with a wonderful justification of it all, fitting with his Instinct Descriptor of "Self-Justified".

The next scene is where I allowed Emily a check to INCREASE her responsibility. Her character and Croaky got a call from the dispatcher saying a kid was reporting "dad is killing mom."

When the officers arrived, the crying kid who opened the door, where they find the father is in shock, repeating "I killed her." The kitchen is a bloody mess, the weapon used is a frying pan, and the victim lies with her head in a pool of blood.

Emily did the smart thing and checked to see if the woman was still alive --- which she was, so the officers were able to stablize her until the ambulance arrived. She remained calm (avoiding a Lapse, as it would have been easy to go off on the dad), and followed procedure -- considering how well she was doing, I gave her a chance at Responsibility increase, though (as I mentioned) she didn't make the roll.

Later on, Emily suggested that when you're very heroic, that you automatically get a Responsibility increase, which I'm going to adopt as an optional rule.

Quick digression: She suggested the above in conjuction with the fact that she really didn't like the fact that Gift points were used to help with Responsibility checks. Emily really, really didn't like the idea that the metagame mechanic to prevent the downward spiral didn't have much to do with succeeding against the downward spiral -- it "didn't make sense" to her, narratively. (Metagame mechanics where you do something cool and get a "story point" that you can use to succeed at a roll with later did make sense to her, as you're rewarded for "forwarding the story". Personally, I think the problem was the specificity -- I don't think she liked how specialized things were in terms of the Premise. Digression within a digression: James suggested allowing someone to spend TWO Gift points to succeed at a non-Responsibility roll, a change that I may adopt.) Personally, I like connecting setting someone up for the downward spiral with preventing it, and so did Jamie -- James and Russ seemed neutral on the issue. She wanted Gift points to be exclusively XP and for the auto-success on increases of Responsibility to be the check against the downward spiral. Any opinions on this? I may be presenting Emily's argument badly, as I'm not sure I fully understood why the mechanic offended her so. It is notable, in her defense, that no one spent a Gift point, tho that might have changed in a more long-term game.

After that, there were some additional scenes -- petty bribery in a resturaunt (I really shouldn't have paired Jamie with the fat guy, she got real bored, I think, tho that caused her to give a lot of Gifts) and a potential serial killer, but they didn't have as much impact on the story -- and the moral development of the characters -- as the scenes I've already been over. (I think people were getting tired, as the Gift-giving started to peter out.)

All in all, a very good playtest. I still need to test the Mission system and the experience system (probably as part of a mini-campaign), but overall, I learned a lot about what was important and what wasn't in the rules through actual play. As I suspected, the Lapse system and the Gift system interacted well to produce some memorable scenes, jointly contructed by the group, yet still fitting in with an overall GM-moderated story (which is more or less where I was aiming things).

[xiombarg]

Wow, I stunned everyone into silence. Neat!

Anyhoo, I have the one-page system summary I gave my players before I ran the game up online: http://xiombrag.tripod.com/unsungone.rtf

It's in MS Word's "Rich Text Format", which it should be easy to find readers for -- or can be stripped down to a text file.

[Valamir]

Sorry Xi, I actually intended to respond to this and it just got away from me.  I did read the whole thing begin to end and was very happy to see  an actual playtest of the system.

One thing I wanted to ask was in regards to Lapses and Responsibility and how they actually played (as opposed to how they were written).

Did you find that they primarily provided spring boards for deeper exploration of the character?  Or did they act primarily as behavioral controls (like failing an insanity check).  

In actual play did players percieve a failed lapse as an opportunity to dig into their character's psyches or did the mechanic provoke more of an "oh great, I just lost control of my character again" response?

[xiombarg]

Did you find that they primarily provided spring boards for deeper exploration of the character?  Or did they act primarily as behavioral controls (like failing an insanity check).  

In actual play did players percieve a failed lapse as an opportunity to dig into their character's psyches or did the mechanic provoke more of an "oh great, I just lost control of my character again" response?

Excellent question.

A little of both, actually, which is what I expected. As I mentioned, Russ seemed to have the "oh great, I just lost control of my character again" response, but seemed somewhat mollified after I explained it as showing an aspect of his character that even he wasn't aware of.

James, on the other hand, grasped it with both hands, and once his character lost control with regard to Smiley, he was willing to run with the downward spiral and character developement it entailed.

Jamie seemed to fall somewhere in the middle, viewing it as a logical consequence of her character's "bad cop" low impulse control. It highlighted the character's already-existing flaws, and gave them a certain flavor.

Emily's character didn't Lapse, so it's tough to say where she was on it. Though she was instrumental in the discussion about other character's Lapses, and gave several Gifts.

I think that, even for Russ, it wasn't like an Insanity check because everyone discussed what was appropriate, and the responses were character-specific. That is, you got more feedback and interactivity than the standard Call of Cthulhu insanity table provides. Russ had described his character as a sort of counter-hacker, so while he personally wasn't happy with the actions assigned to his character, the other players had a long discussion about why his character would act that way; they felt he would resent the big-wig yuppie rich guy, and want to nail him to the wall -- most computer types don't like "suits". In a way, they saw Lapses (IMHO) in a way I sort of intended: A way of nudging a character in a direction the whole group saw as the most fun, that the original player may have missed.

Also, I think that if we'd been running a campaign, that Russ's final Lapse would have set the character up for more development. "Why did I rock the boat like that? What was I thinking?"

I think it's really a GNS issue. More Narrativist players, like the sort of people who would like Univeralis, I think would get the most out of Lapses in terms of character development, and willingness to work with a group consensus.

Does that make sense?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Kirt,

I, like Ralph, shamefully did not manage to respond initially (but you can see my constraint up there in the GNS forum ...).

I plan to play Unsung with canine-human soldiers in a future war setting. When that happens (weeks from now, don't twitch yet), expect a review. It'll be interesting to contrast the game with my recent experiences with Godlike.

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

Hi Kirt,

I, like Ralph, shamefully did not manage to respond initially (but you can see my constraint up there in the GNS forum ...).

I plan to play Unsung with canine-human soldiers in a future war setting. When that happens (weeks from now, don't twitch yet), expect a review. It'll be interesting to contrast the game with my recent experiences with Godlike.

Best,
Ron

Is that the Rise Again setting, Ron? Or just very similar? It would seem to be a shame to play Unsung and having canine soldiers, and not use the original setting material.

Mike

[xiombarg]

Is that the Rise Again setting, Ron? Or just very similar? It would seem to be a shame to play Unsung and having canine soldiers, and not use the original setting material.

I tend to agree, though I'm not gonna tell Ron how to play, except insomuch as I do for everyone in the actual rules. ;-D

I'll note, for anyone following this thread, that while the link Mike provides is to the latest version of the setting in question, the rules have evolved since then, so be sure to use the latest ruleset.

Which reminds me, sometime soon I gotta add the rules changes that playtesting has suggested to me...

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Kirt and Mike,

I was planning to be influenced by the Rise Again setting (which I always liked in its basic ideas) but not to use it lock-stock-and-barrel.

More Godlike, Fvlminata, and Arrowflight first, though. Then Unsung plus a bunch of other li'l free guys.

Best,
Ron

[ADGBoss]

Highly Fictionalized Salisbury? Maybe thats what the Mayor was investigating the Chief of Police for. :)

I was thinking that maybe there might be a little more discussion or maybe a checklist for each character before the game, so that a Player has some idea what might happen if he or she Lapses, so its not a suprise.  Of course mileage may vary with different characters.

I was intrigued when Kirt mentioned Unsung to me during chargen of his Sorcerer character (an awesome character idea btw who will see the light of day.)  I am even more so now.

Sean
ADGBoss

[xiombarg]

I was thinking that maybe there might be a little more discussion or maybe a checklist for each character before the game, so that a Player has some idea what might happen if he or she Lapses, so its not a suprise.  Of course mileage may vary with different characters.

Well, as I say in the game, it's kinda supposed to be a surprise. As for the discussion, this is why the player is allowed input into the Lapse, but doesn't vote -- the idea here is to let go of "my guy", and think of the character as belonging to the game as a whole.