[Court of 9 Chambers] example/flow of play

[talysman]

I've decided to set aside some projects and go back to other projects, such as The Court of 9 Chambers. I'm pretty much set on the mechanics, which haven't changed much since I posted the quickstart PDF (which in turn hasn't changed that much since the original part 1 and part 2 submissions to Iron Game Chef Gamist. I just keep streamlining, is all. the current quick explanation of the mechanics is: "roll a dice pool; every die result that matches one of your Essence numbers (your own Essence or one of your Motifs) counts as one step of success; anyone else can oppose, assist or add color if they also can match a die result."

rather than post a new version of the rules at this point, I wanted to focus on my current ideas about how playing the game should feel and how best to keep all the players engaged at all times. players are rolling d10 dice pools, matching the numbers to their motifs one die at a time, giving each of the other players a chance to match for an oppose, assist, or color (opposing reduces the current player's steps of success by one per matched motif, assisting increases the steps by one, and color does nothing except make the player rolling the dice nervous about what the color player is up to...) play goes around the table in some kind of order (I prefer to leave the order up to the group, although I make suggestions in the rules.) the playspace includes nine sheets of paper, each labled with one of the numerals from 1 to 9, as well as some tokens that the players use to mark the current number of steps they've accumulated on their current goal ... so every player always knows how much damage an artist has taken, how close someone is to reaching the bookshop, or how much work they've put into painting that day.

here is an example of play I have just written up for the latest version of the rules. what I would like to know is what kind of feel do you get from this example? if you were one of the players, would you balk at adding your motifs during someone else's turn? would you make alliances and enemies, or would you prefer to play color almost consistently? would this kind of play excite you, or bore you?

Five players are playing the artists Andre Loup, Bouffe Noel, Carrie Nouvelle, Ray Noir,  and Saul Vidore. The artists are all living in Paris in the late 1950s. They each have several Motifs, which will be labeled in bold when they are brought into each scene, as will all the die roll results. Italics will be used to indicate what the players do, as opposed to what they say.

Andre gets the first scene:

Andre: For this scene, I am in my studio, waking up, trying to remember last night's dream. I want to use my steps of success in a future scene.

Andre rolls 5 7 7 9. He decides to start with the 5 and use the die results in numerical order. He pushes the 5 forward to indicate which number he is currently matching.

Andre: I rub my eyes and think of the troubling imagery from last night's dream, where I was locked in a brass cage ... (pause) anyone else have any 5s?

Saul Vidore has a 5, but he's not sure he wants to antagonize Andre this early in the game. He doesn't want to assist him, either, so he opts for color.

Saul: I'm adding color. Your brass cage in your dream was mounted on the back of a black limo that carried you past crowds of jeering bourgeoisie.

Ray Noir has a 5, too. He and Andre decided early on that their artists would be friends in the game world, so he opts to assist.

Ray: I'm assisting. The hordes of scowling shopkeepers and petty merchants in your dream were hurling cigarette butts at you and chanting "PAINT! PAINT! PAINT!"  That's one more step of success for you, Andre.

Andre moves his success token to the second chamber, to reflect his one step of success so far, plus Andre's one step. Neither Bouffe nor Carrie have any 5s, so Andre pushes the first 7 forward.

Andre: The black limo in my dream winds down the crooked streets until it reaches a marble lion overlooking a plaza. Any other 7s?

Bouffe: I'll play my Essence of 7 as a wildcard for an assist. The lion comes to life and lets out an icy roar.

Saul: "Icy"? How does a roar sound "icy"?

Bouffe: hey, it's surreal. Actual particles of frost come out of its mouth and dash against Andre's skin!

Andre: OK, good one, I can see that happening in a dream!

Andre moves his success token to the third chamber for another step of success.

Carrie: well, I've got a 7 and I think you're getting off too easy, so I'm opposing. When the lion roars, a large pair of doors open as if on signal and a brass elephant rampages out towards your cage!

Andre: Arrrrgh! Knock me back down to two steps, eh? Anyone else?

Saul and Ray do not have any 7s at all. Andre pushes the second 7 forward.

Andre: I don't have another 7 motif, so I can't use the second 7 ...

Carrie: You're in luck, I have another 7. The elephant raises his trunk and spouts a liquid dog from its nose, which barks as it splashes against your face and drenches you completely. Lose another step, Andre.

Andre reluctantly moves his token to the first chamber and pushes the last die, a 9, forward.

Andre: I have no 9s, so I'm stuck with one step, unless anyone else has a 9.

Ray: I have one, and I'll assist. The elephant and the lion begin dancing clumsily, and you hear a gentle drumbeat coming from the bottom of your cage. You look down and spot a furry lizard with a snare drum; he looks up at you and smiles. Take your two steps for this scene, Andre!

final note: I recently picked up Wushu and noticed this contrast between it and my game: in Wushu, players use embellishments to roll more dice for a chance at more successes, while in Co9C, players roll the dice for a chance to add embellishments. both games use the mechanic of accumulating successes (or steps of success, as I prefer to call them) in order to achieve a goal; my inspiration for that part of the game was the way "hit points" are handled in Sorcerer.

any questions or comments?

[Mike Holmes]

in Wushu, players use embellishments to roll more dice for a chance at more successes, while in Co9C, players roll the dice for a chance to add embellishments. both games use the mechanic of accumulating successes (or steps of success, as I prefer to call them) in order to achieve a goal; my inspiration for that part of the game was the way "hit points" are handled in Sorcerer.

I think that this is key (and we may have been over it). Is there incentive to embellish? That is, if embellishment drives this part of play, what drives embellishment. It's been my observation that many players don't like to expend energy on creativity. Is this game just not for these players, or will something else drive the need for embellishments?

Has the new version changed something here (sorry, haven't read it yet)?

Mike

[hix]

Co9C is one of my most anticipated games here at the Forge, so great to see another post.

From my reading of the first PDF, possessing the book / entering the final chamber seemed to be a 'Me vs. Everyone Else' kind of situation. What are the advantages to assisting another player?

Steve.

[talysman]

Is there incentive to embellish? That is, if embellishment drives this part of play, what drives embellishment. It's been my observation that many players don't like to expend energy on creativity. Is this game just not for these players, or will something else drive the need for embellishments?

Mike: I'll take this as a warning and consider ways that players can be encouraged to embellish descriptions, since I really want play to look like this. however, allow me to present my current thinking, then tell me whether you think it will work the way I imagine or whether you still think there needs to be some incentive...

although I describe Co9C as sort of an inverse of Wushu in that rolling the dice comes before the embellishment, I have not, to my knowledge, used the word "embellish" in the actual rules so far; if I *have*, it will be removed from the final draft. I agree that many players shy away from being creative, especially when asked to be creative under stress, but I have also noted that when there is *no* demand, many players will slip in a bit of creativity. the only barrier, I feel, is that most people don't like to be creative in a vacuum; they want a "seed to grow from".

before I made Co9C, I dabbled with the idea of using "numerology" (or, more accurately, mnemonic systems used to memorize numbers and dates) to create elements of play. from time to time, I have tried rolling percentile dice to randomly generate names for characters or to generate simple nouns to improvise events. the problem was that I had no real rule for how to go about this and certainly had nothing concrete to suggest to other GMs or players who wanted to use a similar technique.

so when you suggested Numerology as one of the ingredients for the Iron Chef Gamist competition, I immediately thought of using numerology as a basis for improvisation. I realized, of course, that all my previous attempts had been failures, so I was taking a risk that this idea would again fail and I would lose precious design time... but this time, something clicked, and I realized that my previous approach had been wrong because there were too many ways to interpret the die roll before; what I really needed was a way to limit the interpretation to a very small list of concepts which would be different for each player.

... and then I hit upon the dual ideas of table building during chargen/play and using number matching to generate victories/successes, and everything fell into place. I had my improv aide.

what this little digression into the design history of Co9C is about is: my goal for the game is to make it *easier* to create unusual descriptions during play. there are going to be some players who won't want to be very creative, but they won't have to be; there are some pretty obvious description patterns they can follow, like adding fantastic motifs into a real world scene as an image on a poster, or spotting a mundane motif along the sidewalk during a walk. what will probably happen, though, is that a batch of first-time Co9C players will start out with the basic patterns, then after warming up, someone will add just a tad more than the minimum necessary, maybe using a fantastic motif as a metaphor for an NPC ("the waiter descends on my table like a frothing pitbull") or as part of a description ("I notice a woman with fiery lips sitting alone at a table in the corner".) and once that happens, other players will say "cool!" and someone else will embellish just a bit more, without ever being told "you must embellish!"

I do see some potential problems I can fix. some players will develop a mental block on even the basic description patterns, so I should include a throrough list of these as an example. another problem is that they will still need to be creative when coming up with the motifs in the first place. I plan on fixing this two ways:

[list=1]
[*] for chargen, players will be asked to write a simple character description, focusing on things like "favorite place to hang out", "unusual facial feature", and "favorite item of clothing". initial motifs will come from this description.
[*] for additional motifs, I'm thinking of creating a "motif generation table" for an appendix. no one would be required to use it, but it would be there as a back-up, to take off some creative pressure.
[/list:o]

I think this will provide a very strong safety net for timid players: avoid putting pressure on them in the game text, give them a bunch of tools to generate the basic creative content, and cut them loose. some players still won't like it, but I'm expecting others to "Step On Up" without prompting after getting used to the system.

From my reading of the first PDF, possessing the book / entering the final chamber seemed to be a 'Me vs. Everyone Else' kind of situation. What are the advantages to assisting another player?

Steve: well, the quest for the book and entering the final chamber are more like mini-games intended to teach the rules. in theory, everyone can enter the final chamber (or at least every artist can.) there's just an added bit of paranoia about "what if someone gets there first and locks me out?" the feel for the setting is inspired by some of the crazier, more intense actions of various historical artists and mystics. technically, there's no in-setting reason why any of this has to be real; these artists may all be delusional. when Saul Vidore sees a crumpled cigarette butt on the sidewalk and assumes it's because Ray Noire is out there some where, wishing him harm, and then spots a poster of a pink ballerina and wonders if it's significant, it's sort of recreating a certain mindset that some people in the real world have actually experienced.

in the mini-games, there probably won't be that much assisting going on; it will mainly be opposing and color, depending on whether you are willing to create a grudge. the main advantage of assisting a player would be if that player is being opposed by a third player that you have a grudge against -- you're really opposing an oppose, in other words.

if you have team play or players vs. GM, of course, assists are more reasonable. the main advantage of an assist in those cases is: you get to add description when it's not your turn. in conjuction with what I said to Mike above, I'm not expecting a group of first-time players to use many assists or color opportunities at first, maybe not even an oppose for the first couple turns. as they get their feet wet, they will start wanting to jump into other people's scenes. that's what oppose, assist, and color are for. everyone gets to play at any time.