Le Mon Mouri clarifications

[Albert of Feh]

I'm planning on running an IRC game of Le Mon Mouri starting tomorrow, but there are a few aspects of the rules I'm not entirely clear on. If someone who's played it a bit (Ron?) could clarify a bit, I'd appreciate it. I would just e-mail Sean, but the last time I did that (to get the game in the first place), it took at least a week for a response.

If some of these don't look like questions, just assume I'm asking for confirmation of my conclusions.

1) Statistically, transferring aspe is risky to do if the aspe aren't balanced. You're much more likely to further drain the lower one (possibly even all the way to maladi) and gain some feb than you are to bring the two back into balance. The action is much more useful to unbalance two balanced aspe in preparation for a more powerful attack.

2) I don't really get combat at all. Which of the following happens:
a)Each combatant picks an aspe and rolls with it against a TN of 2 + their selected aspe. Damage is subtracted in the loser from the winner's chosen aspe.
b)Each combatant picks an aspe and rolls with it against a TN of 2 + their selected aspe. Damage is subtracted in the loser from the attacker's chosen aspe.
c)Each combatant picks an aspe and rolls with it against a TN of 2 + their selected aspe. Damage is subtracted in the loser from the loser's chosen aspe. (The example points to this, but the rules text is unclear)
e)something else?

3)Lowered aspe become very hard to restore, as the opposed aspe has a tendency to defeat attempts.

4)On fully depleted aspe:

Fully depleted Aspé may be regained by sacrificing dice from other Aspé. Two dice may be sacrificed to add one die to a fully depleted pool; the player must fail a standard roll to transfer dice in this manner.

Because the aspe in question is at zero, isn't the failure of a penance/recovery roll a given? Or does it require failure of some other use of the aspe, such as combat?

The more I look at these mechanics, the more impressed I am with the balances and interrelations between the three aspe. They seem considerably more subtle and intreresting than your average set of game stats.

Any other clarifications of points you found originally confusing, or general tips on running this game, would also be appreciated.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

This is going to be very difficult to answer, for two reasons. The first is that it's been quite a while since we played, and the second is that Le Mon Mouri did not mechanically satisfy me or my fellow players when the system really kicked in. So when you ask "how it works," the question splits into procedures vs. dynamics, without the two of them actually holding together (in our experience) as well as I'd hoped when we began play.

1) Statistically, transferring aspe is risky to do if the aspe aren't balanced. You're much more likely to further drain the lower one (possibly even all the way to maladi) and gain some feb than you are to bring the two back into balance. The action is much more useful to unbalance two balanced aspe in preparation for a more powerful attack.

Right. As far as I can tell, you are not supposed to be able to "manage" Aspe in a sustainable fashion. It is far better to regard rolls of this sort to be the character's desperate attempt to hold himself or herself together, whereas the player knows full well that it works only once in a blue moon.

In play, I tried to move around Aspe in a "get ready for upcoming conflict" way, and every time the net impact was pretty dreadful in terms of the net value of the Aspes.

2) I don't really get combat at all.

Sorry man, we had exactly the same problem and hashed it out with Sean over email, but I don't recall the details. It did work, actually, but the book drove us crazy trying to map it out.

I think your (c) is correct but will have to review the text and maybe my notes - neither of which is ready to hand at the moment. Perhaps Julie (jrs) can help, as she was the GM.

3)Lowered aspe become very hard to restore, as the opposed aspe has a tendency to defeat attempts.

Absolutely. We found that the negative (or dramatic, if you will) effects of nearly any roll obviated the roll's desired effect (e.g. restoring Aspe), whether it was successful or unsuccessful.

As written, Le Mon Mouri seems to be a "choose your death spiral" game, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but rather a shock if you were hoping for a little up-and-down spiking rather than a tailspin. Ultimately I was only able to gain satisfaction in play through deciding how my character truly died.

Correspondence with Sean has led me to think (I'm putting it that way in case I'm misrepresenting him) that the game is intended to be a tailspin, and that one should struggle with the fact that one's Aspes are not, ultimately, restorable or balance-able.

4)On fully depleted aspe:

Fully depleted Aspé may be regained by sacrificing dice from other Aspé. Two dice may be sacrificed to add one die to a fully depleted pool; the player must fail a standard roll to transfer dice in this manner.

Because the aspe in question is at zero, isn't the failure of a penance/recovery roll a given? Or does it require failure of some other use of the aspe, such as combat?

I believe one rolls the contributing Aspe in order to give its dice (2:1) to the depleted one.

The more I look at these mechanics, the more impressed I am with the balances and interrelations between the three aspe. They seem considerably more subtle and intreresting than your average set of game stats.

That was exactly our impression going into play, and we were really enthusiastic about the game. After our first session, I drew up a kind of triangle diagram with arrows to show which Aspe were rolled against which, for what, and what consequences of failure were. That diagram showed us that the "tailspin" effect is unavoidable - there is literally no way to keep one's character's Aspes high; they will rocket down, and the only real choices involve which ones you will least endanger through play.

Now, that may be a neat choice, and (again as I paraphrase) Sean endorses this as the whole point of play, but at least a couple of us found it aggravating. Perhaps a stronger understanding of that tailspin, and committing to it beforehand, would have made the whole thing more fun. Speaking for myself, I really had to shift gears during our third or fourth session and start thinking in more Schism-terms ("how will I die") in order to grip onto a Premise I cared about.

Best,
Ron

[jrs]

Hi Albert of Feh,

I'm still enamored of Le Mon Mouri even though we got frustrated with the mechanics of the game.  I love the idea of memories as fuel for the character to burn.  It has been awhile since we've played so I'm looking at old Forge topics and some email to see if I can answer your questions.

1.  Transferring Aspe regardless of balance or imbalance is always risky.  As Ron already mentioned, it seems to be best used in desperation.  I'll also point out that Malady was the hardest quality to track consistently over multiple play sessions.  

2.  Combat; I think (e).  First, the players are using the same Aspe for there target numbers.  So if character A attacks with Gros Mal Ange, character B must defend with Gros Mal Ange and it's character B's GMA +2 that is used as the target number for both players.  I hope I'm remembering that correctly.  Here is an example that I described in an earlier post:  

Sebastienne is attacking Lyonette in a Ti-Bon-Ange conflict; the former has TBA 4 and the latter has TBA 6. This means that both characters roll TBA with a target number of 8 (the target's TBA + 2). Whoever gets the least successes will take the differences in successes as damage to TBA.

If, say, Sebastienne loses by one success, her TBA drops to 3. Then Lyonette retaliates with a similar attack, with her TBA of 6 against Sebastienne's new value of 3. This time, the target number for both characters is 5, as 3 + 2 = 5.

This interpretation works very well, as far as we can tell. Note that if you are attacking someone whose targeted Aspe is 0, the target number for both rolls is 2 by our interpretation. (To complete this picture, as stated in the rules, they roll dice equal to another Aspe but must discard the two highest values and lose twice the normal dice.)

[Taken from http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=5430">Le Mon Mouri Questions.]

Sean Demory confirmed that this is an accurate description of combat.

3.  Yep.

4.  Recovering fully-depleted Aspe.  I was dissatisfied with how this works, and I could never quite grasp the purpose of a "standard roll" in order to permit the sacrifice of dice from one Aspe to another.  Eventually, it goes beyond a death-spiral to self-consumption.  

I'll dig up my notes this evening and see if I can add anything else.

Julie

[Albert of Feh]

Ron, Julie,

Thanks for your quick replies.

As written, Le Mon Mouri seems to be a "choose your death spiral" game, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but rather a shock if you were hoping for a little up-and-down spiking rather than a tailspin. Ultimately I was only able to gain satisfaction in play through deciding how my character truly died.

I can definitely see this. I realized, as I was thinking about the dice interactions, that none of them seems to work to make the player's life easier. Practically everything happening is going to harm you in some way...

...And I think this may be why I find the game so intriguing. Ever since last spring, when I needed to prematurely end no fewer than four characters in less than a month, I've had perhaps an undue fascination with Thematic Statement via character death. But those are stories for other threads and other forums.