The Mystery Meat thing

[Ron Edwards]

Hey there,

Last Tuesday, our own Doc Midnite ran a session of what is apparently called "Mystery Meat," that is, a session of play in which the players are unaware of the system being employed.

If anyone knows more about this as a phenomenon, speak up. I'm given to understand that it has been around for a while.

If I'm not mistaken (corrections welcome), the idea is that the players are not going to be "distracted from role-playing" by the usual numbers, charts, etc. They will be able to "really role-play" instead.

Now, from my perspective, this is an odd goal, as I do not think that "system" distracts from role-playing unless the system in question is out of line with the people's goals. (Thus Jim's Amberway game is wonderfully all set, because his mainly Drama-based methods are suited to the shared goals. Similarly, so is my highly Fortune-based Hero Wars game. In either case, the "system" is not "distracting," but to transpose either system to the other person's game WOULD be distracting.)

So how did it go? Unsurprisingly, I didn't care for the Mystery part at all. It served, in my opinion, to force the players to do a lot of "orienting" in the first half of play, and while that was going on, we had no real input and had to be moved from point A to point B by the GM a lot. That applies both to physical location and actions of the characters, as well as to decisions and attitudes of the characters - we really had no choice but to take what was given, and there wasn't much room to contribute or "get things going" at any speeds or direction except that of the GM.

None of which is to speak against Terry's actual GMing or the events of play. Those were excellent.

But in my opinion the really great role-playing - and there was a lot of it! - didn't kick in until the "orientation" phase was over. It was fun, in a gimmicky way, to go through that phase, but the power and fun of play AFTER that leads me to say, "Well, hell, why not start at the point when it gets good, instead of fiddling about with the gimmick for an hour first?"

Anyone else try this? Did you like it? Why or why not?

Best,
Ron

P.S. The game itself turned out to be All Flesh Must Be Eaten, and we turned out to be zombies, who didn't know it. Hence the players' "disorientation" in Mystery Meat dovetailed nicely with the characters' regarding their own identities and conditions. For its purposes, the overall session was a triumph of design.

[Galfraxas]

Mystery Meat + All Flesh Must Be Eaten

That goes together well.
Just a thought.


Galfraxas (Tim Boser)

[Mike Holmes]

I've done it, and seen it done (though I did not refer to it as mystery meat). My Cell Gamma scenario works this way effectively. The extent of success with it seems to be related very strongly to the Premise. A Premise that hits with a bang and has lots of events scheduled to keep it alive works quite well in this context.

Consider, it's not much different from no-rules games, really. Which work fine for people who are so motivated.

Mike

[ This Message was edited by: Mike Holmes on 2001-10-18 16:01 ]

[joshua neff]

I actually did something like that when I ran Immortal in college. Since the basic resolution mechanics was pretty simple, I used that & didn't tell the players what we were playing. They played themselves, I gave them the starting number of character points for attributes (ignoring skills & everything else) & had them assign the points as they thought they'd have them. (In Immortal, each attribute has a color. I didn't tell them this. Instead, I just told them the name of the attitributes & when I wanted them to roll, I'd hand them the appropriate-color die & have them roll. They didn't notice that I was handing them certain colors.) It was a few sessions before they were told they were Immortals, and since I was the only person who had even heard of the game, the setting stuff I introduced didn't tip them off at all. When one of the players was asked by another gamer "What game are you guys playing?", he answered "I don't know. It seems like typical Josh weird stuff."

But in general, I don't really like to do that, & I can't imagine I'd do it now.

[Mike Holmes]

Good point Josh. One of the hardest things in that sort of game is getting people to play. They ask what's it about? And you don't really want to let them know. What's it called? Uh, don't really have a name for it.

This makes people leery. But there is definitely some fun to be had if they do go for it. Sometimes I use a generic system and just don't let on what the setting or premise is about. It's fun to let it be discovered. But, be warned, wait longer than one session while trying to build up background or a sense of normalcy or something, and you risk the players loosing interest. Hit them with something really big before the end of the first session.

Mike

[Epoch]

I've seen it done, but mostly just because the GM doesn't want to spend a lot of time teaching players the system, and just wants to jump into the action.  Generally mixed results.

It is not the same as, but reminds me of, my all-time favorite GURPS advantage: total amnesia.  For those of you unfamiliar with the game, it's generally a rather complex point-based system, where you buy attributes, skills, advantages, and other things with points, and get points for having disadvantages.

If, however, you play a total amnesiac, you choose one thing -- the 25 point disadvantage "Total Amnesia."  Then you describe what your character looks like in a mirror to the GM, and he goes off and creates a character sheet for you.  Which he doesn't give you.  You work out what you're good at and what you're bad at via trial and error.

[Marco]

I once ran a supers game where the players (Champions) made their normal guys and then described their powers in general. I kept their powers secret from them (both in mechanics and power level).

While not the entire Mystery Meat deal, there was certainly some interesting exploration with some Unbreakable type scenes where the characters (newly blessed with powers) tried out various things--like learning to fly in their back yards, pick up cars, etc.

Keeping the mechanics secret (I came up with creative ways to realize their powers) was something of a hassel (and eventually they knew enough of their parameters that they could more or less figure it out). It was a good gimmick, though, and I like gimicks.

I think Mike Holmes made the best point about the use of generic systems in keeping the players on their toes about what the premise and setting it is.

-Marco

[Mike Holmes]

On 2001-10-19 15:39, Marco wrote:
I think Mike Holmes made the best point about the use of generic systems in keeping the players on their toes about what the premise and setting it is.

I'll reiterate for safety sake: these are hard to start, and you have to be sure to reveal the Premise fairly early or risk loosing player interest. This has happened to me a couple of times. (Bad GM, Mike, Bad GM)

Anyhow, I've also done the same sort of thing with Champions, Marco, going so far as to have the players make non-powered characters, and them have them survive the Radiation Incident type event, only to emerge unscathed with new powers (either randomly generated, or pre-prepared by me, or chosen by the player then). This is neat because you don't get the problem that you often do with players creating Champions characters where they are just a list of powers with no background. It's an interesting way to force them to make deeper characters to start.

Mike

[Marco]

Hey Mike,

I've run lots of games along those lines and never had a problem--but it might be the groups I've played with.

I've also done the Mystery Powers thing where the players start without powers and survive the accident (it's very cool if you do it in a system where the players aren't *expecting* powers!)

We've also done games where the characters wound up unexpectedly being turned into vampires ... or in the midst of an Illuminati conspiracy. I've played in games where I've turned out to be a ghost, been abducted by aliens, or otherwise had unexpected things happen.

Hell, I'd go so far as to say that those are some of my favorites. In my experince player interest is usually held by:

a) faith in the GM and
b) enjoying playing the character they've made

It helps if a lot of the game caters to their specific characters too--if the "abducted by aliens" plot line doesn't intersect with their character goals in some way I could see them losing interest. What happend where you lost a group due to disinterest? What'd that 'look like?'

-Marco

[ This Message was edited by: Marco on 2001-10-19 16:10 ]

[Doc Midnight]

Now just for clarification I can explain what it was I did.

The goal was to not let the players know what they'd be playing ahead of time and to keep them in the dark even during the beginning of play.

I redesigned the AFMBE character sheet to look more like what we wrote up in the session of Munchkins we played a few months ago. It had 6 attributes which were just basic descriptions. There were 6 different versions of the character sheet so that the players couldn't really tell what the attributes were by seeing Str, Dex, Con etc.

Then I had them just determine how many points would go into each attribute (less than AFMBE would normally allow I think)

They gave me an occupation and I figured that into why they lived in this luxury exclusive burbclave in Illinois.

I gave the players an envelope each which they could not open.

The beginning was rough. We had maybe 9 players and there was no way developed by me in which the players knew they had relationships with each other. In hindsight, this could have helped a lot. If I gave them a relationship map, then all I'd have had to do was wait for my opening.

Also I am not a fan of having players roll for every bleeding thing they do. This was that one game where every roll for perception failed miserably.

Note to self: If it helps to have a character notice something, then just have him notice it.

Now I was effectivly giving the players the sense that something was amiss when:

No one in the complex was around
Everything had a heavy layer of dust
The complex had it's own medical center
Armed rent a cop gaurds
All of the apartments had their doors opened

As the game continued I had players begin opening their envelopes. The envelopes had a single picture or word in it like "chair". The player with the chair envelope freaked out when he found a long narrow passage way in a sub basement.

At some point carnage was slowly creeping in. A doctor was shot by a sniper, Another character was shot in the leg by the same sniper.

Players were noticing how little they were bleeding and at some point they were given another envelope that listed crimes. (I copied these from the FBI website)

Then they realized that they were all criminals of some sort and that this place was a prison and that they were in fact infected with the zombie disease.

The sniper was one of the Guards. The prisona had been evacuated and now the zombie PCs were isolated. At this point it was all standard zombie fun.

Doc Midnight

[Mike Holmes]

Messing with the players' perceptions of the world can be fun. I've seem lots of scenarios like this. There was even a game a while back (I forget the name) in which the characters were insane, and the GM interpereted actual world events to the player through a filter of the characters illness. I have no idea if the game worked or not, but the idea was intriguing.

Also fun on a smaller scale. In an OtE game I ran, one of the characters got in a barfght and got knocked out. His friends dragged him to a car in a semi-conscious state. I continued the story in the alley and had the whole party attacked, some killed, and at the end, a character burst into flame for no reason. I then turned to the player with the unconscious character and said, "You come around; Dave's character is in the front seat trying to talk to you." Which is what was happening when he slipped back into unconsciousness and dreamed the above events. It took a while to even convince the other players that it had been a dream, as they hadn't fallen unconcious.

I'm still not sure if it was a good way to play it or not. But it was interesting.

Mike

[joshua neff]

OtE is great for stuff like that. Lon "Uncle Dark" ran an OtE game when we were in college. One of the guys playing was an old gaming buddy of ours who was really nice, but had a tendency to have his characters do really odd things in the game (in Lon's superhero game, this guy played 2 consecutive characters who would actively ignore the other PCs & the weird stuff happening in favor of doing really mundane things, like scrounging for food in an alley). He played a character who was on the run from the Mafia & the Israeli Secret Service, & proceeded to draw attention to himself in public in such a way that anyone looking for him could've found him in seconds. Then he stumbled onto what seemed to be a secret society, & investigated them by basically walking up to them & saying "Hey, you're a secret society, aren't you?" & then walked around Al Amarja basically telling people "I just found this secret society!" One session, Lon started by telling him "You wake up, & it's two weeks later. You don't remember anything about the past two weeks." He discovered he was living in an apartment he didn't know he had, had a roommate who knew him, & a job he didn't remember applying for. The game eventually disintegrated, but Lon later told me what was going on: the secret society, pissed off at his lack of discretion, had killed him & replaced him with an android duplicate, which was what his PC had become.
Pretty evil character-messing on the GMs part, but it was funny as hell.

[Doc Midnight]

Josh,

That sounds like a fine idea for a one shot game. A sort of "what was my former life and why am I now an Android" deal.

I like it.

Now if I can find a way to do it.

DM