[Musketeers!] Towards a third draft

[hanschristianandersen]

In http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=11299"> last week's episode, Tony asked a very relevant question:  

In other words are they duelling the Cardinals men because that's what musketeers do? Or are they duelling their romantic rivals and the evil rogue student of their old fencing teacher because those are the people who they're connected to?

I then confused the matter with a far-too-vigorous parry that "This is *not* supposed to be Narrativist, this is supposed to be about straight-up derring-do."

Matt countered with "I definitely got the feel of 'What means more, your reputation or your friends?' vibe from the intro [to the playtest draft]. I reckon it could drift pretty easily...", and Tony riposted with the following gem:  "If the Passions and Patrons are only meant to be an incitement to derring-do, do you really need to have any numerical representation for them?"

Okay, let me get my thoughts in order here.

I still stilll maintain that Musketeers! is not meant to particularly support narrativist play.  I still maintain that derring-do color is the focus of the game.

At the same time, I *do* want to have duels with romantic rivals and evil rogue students of old honored fencing teachers.  I do want to have Passions and Patrons play a role in the game, and I do want there to be mechanical differentiation and tension between them.  I want these elements in here not because my goal is to tell stories with a meaningful premise about reputation vs. friends.  Rather, I want these elements for the sake of form.  I want these elements because these are the things that musketeers do.  I want these things because derring-do is more exciting when set against a melodramatic backdrop.

In short, I want Pastiche.

Now, it's my opinion that the line between pastiche and narrativism is very prone to drift.  Matt, your observation was spot-on.  Looking at the third-draft mechanics, (more on that in just a sec) they seem more gamist than anything else; that is, you can make clear distinctions about which Passion or Patron to support in a conflict on the basis of what effect that choice will have on your Reputation and Love scores.  Want to get mechanical reward/effectiveness?  Choose your fights on that basis, and generate lots of Badass Musketeer Color in the process.


Alternatively, to drift Narrativist, all you'd need to do is make your choices about who to support on the basis of which would make for the best possible story.  If your idea of story doesn't match the mechanics' idea of reward, then you might take a hit in mechanical effectiveness as a result.  But that's the very essence of Drift, isn't it?

Tony, the draft I playtested was essentially what you suggested.  Passions and Patrons had almost no direct mechanical influence, and acted as pure color.  It was great fun, but it wasn't sustainable.  The D/D/D and P/C/R rules were fun enough to sustain two hours of play, but I couldn't imagine that there's enough there to sustain a third hour without a better structural framework.

With that in mind, it's on to the third-draft edits...

[hanschristianandersen]

These are the rules changes that I have in mind for the third draft.  I have a vested interest in banging these out as fast as I possibly can, because some folks expressed interest in playtesting next week if I can get them a revised draft by Thursday.  So, taking into account the great feedback from Jeffrey, Matt, Tony, and Ralph, here goes nothing...

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Passions, Patrons, Reputation, Love, & Dice Mechanics

Passion & Patron Creation:  Everyone invents two passions and two patrons.  Then, each player selects a third passion and third patron from among those invented by the other players.  If possible, your 3rd passion and 3rd patron must not have been created by the same player.

Reputation & Love:  Reputation and Love no longer add to your die rolls.  Instead, Love determines how many Panache Points you get at the start of each chapter.  (Previously, the number of Panache Points was fixed at 3.)  Meanwhile, Reputation gives you a number of Reputation Re-Rolls, which can be used to force a re-roll after the dice are cast.

The intent here is to introduce a meaningful distinction between Reputation and Love.  I like the effect - Reputation lets you negate "whiff factor", but Love lets you soar higher (by leveraging your best stat.)  Because PP's and RR's are now complementary, it also introduces an incentive to keep *both* your Reputation and Love as high as possible.

Dashing, Daring, Duelling, Dice:  Dashing, Daring, and Duelling are no longer measured in terms of a +1/+3/+5 bonus to a d6 roll.  Instead, they're measured in terms of d4, d6, and d8, which is the die that you'll roll when that attribute is in use.  Thus, what used to be 1d6+5 vs. 1d6+1 (which only gives the underdog a 1/36 chance of winning) now becomes 1d8 vs. 1d4.  (Note that if
you're rolling a d4, Reputation Re-rolls can only do so much for you; you're still rolling a d4.)

Scene Outlining

Each player names a P or P they want to do a job for.  GM then gets to pick a P or P from someone else's character sheet, and frame a scene that pits the player's chosen P against the GM's chosen P.  (The "spend a point to do the framing yourself" option is gone.  The intent with that was that you could frame the scene into one where your best attribute was readily appropriate, but in practice it's easy enough to justify any attribute in any situation.)

Once there's been a scene written for each player, then each player says which scene they're attending, and (crucial change) which side they're representing.


The Stakes and Finishing Moves

The GM must now come up with two opposing Finishing Moves for each scene, each representing a flipside to the Stakes.  So, if the stakes is "Will the Duke's agents deliver the letter safely?", the two Finishing Moves might be "Successfully get the letter into the Butler's hands" and "Letter in hand, vanish down an alley into the Parisian crowds."  As before, Finishing Moves can't be attempted until the required number of Successes have been earned.

Required number of successes has been dropped from 5+(current rating of relevant P) to just 5; hopefully that will keep scenes short and sweet.


The new All For One And One For All rule:  You can spend Panache Points and Reputation Re-rolls on behalf of any Musketeer


The Opposition

The opposition is now statted up as d6/d6/d4 and 3 PP's, which is basically what it was before.  Note that if a given scene has both sides represented by Musketeers, then no Opposition characters are introduced.  Since R & L don't add to die rolls anymore, that should make the opposition more mechanically dangerous, while still giving the Musketeers an edge.


In all, the shorter scene length, plus the very real chance that multiple Musketeers will end up in the same scene, plus the new AfO&OfA rule, should combine to decrease the amount of waiting around.  I'm not yet going to enshrine TRoS-style scene interleaving in the rules, preferring instead to see how these play out.



Rewards

No-one attends a scene:  Nothing happens

Musketeers attend, but only on behalf of one side:  If the Musketeers win the scene, +1 to
rating of winning P.  Regardless, all musketeers (present or not) gets -1 to losing P.

Musketeers attend on behalf of both sides:  Winning Musketeers get +1 to rating of winning P, and all musketeers (present or not) EXCEPT those on the losing side get -1 to rating of losing P.  Musketeers on losing side get no lasting penalty.  (Rationale - there's no shame in losing to a fellow Musketeer.)


(A concern - does this make it too much of a zero-sum game?)

(One possibility is to replace a "+1" or "-1" with "a check to see if the rating in question changes"; if you won, then the rating increases if you roll above it; if you lost, the rating increases if you roll below it.  This keeps advancement steady early on, and losses unlikely.  As your ratings increase, )


The post-chapter MVP award is now one bonus PP and one bonus RR, instead of just one bonus PP.


One last rule I'm pondering - the "Blatant Theft Of Jake's S.A. Mechanic" Rule

At the start of each scene, you get a bonus to P.P. OR R.R. appropriate and equal to your rating with the side you're representing in that scene.  (ex.:  at the start of a scene in which you're representing a Patron (rating 3), you gain 3 extra RR's.)

Give the shortened (5 success) length of scenes, this might result in too many points being thrown around per scene.  Still, I'm inclined include this rule in the next playtest to "see what happens".

[Zebigone]

I have a few questions.

First, about outlines, there are as many scenes as there are players, right ? And I suppose that a player HAS to participate to "its" scene ?

Now, concerning the nice PCR rule and the previous (2n draft) One for All rule... how was it possible to have 3 PP spent on such an action, since there is one for Countering, and another one for Riposting, which makes 2 PPs... There is something I didn't get.

However, I'm not sure it matters anymore.

Oh, and a last remark. It is Louis XIII and not Louie XIII. And what the year 1655 is supposed to represent ?

Olivier

[hanschristianandersen]

Hi Oliver,

Thanks for the comments!  As you can see from the second draft, the game has a ways to go.

In the second draft, a player could call for a scene, but didn't have to.  Even if he did call for a scene, he did not have to attend his own scene, though not attending a scene is identical to attending and failing.  In the third draft, each player *must* call for a scene, but if no-one attends a given scene, it's not considered a failure.

The idea behind the old "All For One And One For All" rule is that if any combination of players were to chip a total of 3 PP's on a given musketeer's behalf, the whole P/C/R mechanic would be overridden in favor of immediate success for the acting musketeer.  I admit, I came up with this rule because it was "cute".  In play, it was useless; three PP's is very expensive, and it also meant robbing play of three entertaining opportunities to C or R.

"Louie" is a typo, owing to having recently watched a completely unrelated comedy anime titled "Rune Soldier Louie".

1655 is a typo; it should have been 1625, which is the year that D'Artagnan made his way to Paris in the hopes of joining the Musketeers.  The second draft includes a vague mention of a "1655[sic] Variant"; I was thinking of providing a timeline of events and possibly special rules that mimic the course of events in Dumas' original text, with an endgame scenario that involves attempting to foil a plot on the King.  Combined with the Munchausen Variant (winner of each chapter's MVP award buys a round of drinks), this could get real entertaining real fast.