WGP Last Minute Question Thread!!!ONE!

[Andy Kitkowski]

Hey Mike, crew.  Got the playtest version on Sat, have been going over it lightly over the past few days.  I was hoping to run a playtest of it this week, and to do so I need answers to a lot of really quick rules and flow questions:

1) Death, the risk of.  You needn't portray this in comics, which is why I think the rules don't focus on it, but still- the group I want to run it with is big into "mortality", "risk of death", etc.  I figure the comic we come up with will look like some Indie violence job.  Anyway, do you have rules for mortality?

I was thinking that perhaps "Life" could be a relationship.  Any enrichment scene where you are "expressing life", "desire", etc you can choose to give importance to life if you want to, but otherwise it exists solely to "burn".  If you activate Life, that means you are putting yourself in physical risk/danger.  If the GM manages to devestate your life, you're dead.

Though you can come back, perhaps.  Look at "Superman Dies" (and returns as four dudes).

2) Enrichment scenes: +1 Importance for each character in the scene... but each character flips their own card... does that mean that stacking players in the same enrichment scene means that everyone gets more Importance no matter what they set themselves at?

What's to stop the players from including every character in every enrichment scene (aside from the classic "don't be a dick/hey guys, let's try to make a story worth telling here" rule)?

Finally, can you give me a very brief example from one of your demos of two characters sharing and enrichment scene?

3) How do you use the Wild Card Markers on the Thought Balloon page?

4) I remember that in our demo game you would draw cards from across the decks you controlled (one from the top of each, etc).  How did you figure that? What was the impetus behind that?  More wilds for the GM at first?

5) Can the Story Arc ONLY be affected by Yielding a page of conflict to the GM?  It appears so, but I can't think of how the players can/should be yeilding to the GM at the end stages of the Story Arc? Or, well, maybe until the last Arc, but I just wanted to confirm this rule.
5A) Can you think of an instance where the players would not want to advance the story arc?  Perhaps a playtest mini-story or other reason?
5B) What do you mean on page 22, top by "you may choose to play your ranking card to the appropriate space..."  Which is the ranking card?  Can you use one that's in your hand, or do you mean one that's out in a panel somewhere?

6) Pages/Panels.  I'm totally lost (bottom of page 16 to 17).  You have a handy visual guide to explain this a little better? :) Actually, I think I pretty much get it, but yet another visual example would be handy.  Perhaps a sheet with "panels" for the player and GM to set their cards in to keep track of panels?

Also, have you thought about tweaking rules so that (kinda like a comic), a player-GM conflict stretches over X amount of panels before moving to the next character?  Just a thought.

7) Changing Suit: Actually, this is more of a rules query towards the overall design, but have you thought about limiting the Suit Changes to X amount of times?  It seemed that in our playtest session at GenCon every person in the conflict had to come up with 4-6 ideas for conflict shifts becuase the suit was thrown around so much... I can see it happening up to like 2-3 times, but if we really had a drawn out conflict, I can see 6 suit switches (esp if the GM has a lot of cards) happening, and perhaps the players/GM straining to come up with how the conflict changes?  

Or does the nature of the rules (the amount of cards players/GM has, etc) prevent constant suit-flopping in the long run?  Just wondering.

Do you find it hard to come up with valid Suit Shifts when they come up in succession?  Just wondering.

I think I had one or two more questions, but the above is good enough for now.

Oh, I know!  

8) Mooks or lesser characters?  We always see the bad guy surrounded by his stormtrooper similarly-dressed cronies (remember the Redeyes from Mystery Men?).  How do you handle play with those kinds of characters?

9) Sample villains- Got any?

-Andy

[Michael S. Miller]

Hi, Andy.

Thanks for all the questions. I only have time for a few quick answers right now. I'll answer the rest as soon as I can.

1) Death, the risk of.  You needn't portray this in comics, which is why I think the rules don't focus on it, but still- the group I want to run it with is big into "mortality", "risk of death", etc.  I figure the comic we come up with will look like some Indie violence job.  Anyway, do you have rules for mortality?

I was thinking that perhaps "Life" could be a relationship.  Any enrichment scene where you are "expressing life", "desire", etc you can choose to give importance to life if you want to, but otherwise it exists solely to "burn".  If you activate Life, that means you are putting yourself in physical risk/danger.  If the GM manages to devestate your life, you're dead.

Though you can come back, perhaps.  Look at "Superman Dies" (and returns as four dudes).

Having a "Life" Aspect is certainly one way of doing it.

Another way if you want to focus on mortality, (I'll take my cue from the Death of Superman story you mentioned) is to separate those Aspects that represent a character's self and those that don't (Superman's powers are Self-Aspects, but Lois Lane isn't). This should be tied in with the Struggle, perhaps Life vs. Duty. Anyway, if all the self-Aspects are Devastated, the hero is going to die. But, remember that Aspects don't get rewritten until they're redeemed from being Devastated. So the death itself doesn't happen until the final conflict where the Hero redeems his Aspects, only to rewrite them as being dead. As you pointed out, in another story, you can rewrite them as being alive again. Does that make sense?

2) Enrichment scenes: +1 Importance for each character in the scene... but each character flips their own card... does that mean that stacking players in the same enrichment scene means that everyone gets more Importance no matter what they set themselves at?

What's to stop the players from including every character in every enrichment scene (aside from the classic "don't be a dick/hey guys, let's try to make a story worth telling here" rule)?

You are correct in your interpretation of how they're currently written. This was a last minute change due to the last playtest, and I'm not real happy with how it plays out. It will bear more thought.

3) How do you use the Wild Card Markers on the Thought Balloon page?

They're supposed to be cut out and then just set on top of any wild card--if you play a wild as an Ace of Spades, put the "A" and the spade symbol on the card, so everyone remembers what the card is. I have to redesign them--they're too small and move around too easily. What I've been doing is if you use a wild to Cancel, then just switch the wild with the card it cancels, so everyone can see it's new value.

8) Mooks or lesser characters?  We always see the bad guy surrounded by his stormtrooper similarly-dressed cronies (remember the Redeyes from Mystery Men?).  How do you handle play with those kinds of characters?

In every playtest I've run, I've had a GM Aspect called simply "Thugs" It works like any other Aspect. Enrichment scenes showing the Thugs gain them Importance. Increasing their Suffering means some of them get beat up.

I'll get back to the rest of the questions later.

[Michael S. Miller]

Found a few minutes. Add the following onto my advice for Question 1, above:
In a case where the hero's Self-Aspects are all going to be Devastated in order to know whether death is triggered, what "Devastated" means is going to be something like "no longer has any significant effect on the story." IIRC, in the Death of Superman, Doomsday keeps coming and coming and swats the Justice League aside, takes everything Supes can dish out without flinching until there's nothing left but plain old sluggin' it out. In this case, Devastated would be something like: "I've never poured on so much heat vision at one time before. If this doesn't stop him, all is lost!" Then the smoke clears and Doomsday just keeps walking, unfazed. In a case like this, we can still describe the heat vision in remaining scenes, but we *know* nothing will come of it. I'd suggest barring its description from Panels that are escalating the Conflict (playing a higher card) or Cancelling. Only for changing the suit.

more on Question 2:
Two heroes sharing an Enrichment scene is as easy as them both foiling the same jewelry store heist, or one hero meeting the Romance Aspect of another. A great way to get Importance for Convictions is have two heroes argue over things they believe.

4) I remember that in our demo game you would draw cards from across the decks you controlled (one from the top of each, etc).  How did you figure that? What was the impetus behind that?  More wilds for the GM at first?

The GM has to split his hand between as many tricks as there are players. Cards can be bled out very quickly, particularly if multiple pages are using the same suit.

5) Can the Story Arc ONLY be affected by Yielding a page of conflict to the GM?  It appears so, but I can't think of how the players can/should be yeilding to the GM at the end stages of the Story Arc? Or, well, maybe until the last Arc, but I just wanted to confirm this rule.

My thinking is that they will *choose* to yield in order to fill the space on the Story Arc. They'll "take one for the team." But the story effect is cool. The result is the moment when the villian tosses the hero aside and gloats that "Victory is mine!" We have a close-up of the hero thinking "I've come too far. I can't fail now." When he stands up, we know the villian's finished.

5A) Can you think of an instance where the players would not want to advance the story arc?  Perhaps a playtest mini-story or other reason?

I think this like the "What if they don't want to kill the Master?" in MLwM. If they don't advance the Arc, they'll never make any lasting headway against the villians

5B) What do you mean on page 22, top by "you may choose to play your ranking card to the appropriate space..."  Which is the ranking card?  Can you use one that's in your hand, or do you mean one that's out in a panel somewhere?

Your ranking card is the one you last played to a Panel, unless it got Cancelled. If it got Cancelled, then the previous Panel's card is your ranking card. That's a better way to define it.

6) Pages/Panels.  I'm totally lost (bottom of page 16 to 17).  You have a handy visual guide to explain this a little better? :) Actually, I think I pretty much get it, but yet another visual example would be handy.  Perhaps a sheet with "panels" for the player and GM to set their cards in to keep track of panels?

Also, have you thought about tweaking rules so that (kinda like a comic), a player-GM conflict stretches over X amount of panels before moving to the next character?  Just a thought.

Those are great ideas, Andy! The six Panels per hero, and then to the next might just solve a handling-time problem I'm perceiving. If you want to playtest it that way, please let me know how it goes.

Outta time for now, but be sure to pick up our next spine-tingling issue: Miller-Man versus the Rules Queries. Comin' your way in 30 days! (actually a few hours, but that comic book hype is infectous!)

[Andy Kitkowski]

Rock on, man!  Thanks and keep em' coming.  This alone has moved my platest from "maybe I'll do it" to "absolutely will do it".  I'll have playtest notes for you this weekend.

And although I won't come back and repost "Thanks!" after every clarification you post, just pretend to copy-paste in your head a post of mine that says "Thanks for the Update!" at the end of each of your updates. :)

-Andy

[Michael S. Miller]

Okay, finale installment. Face front!

6) Pages/Panels.  I'm totally lost (bottom of page 16 to 17).  You have a handy visual guide to explain this a little better? :) Actually, I think I pretty much get it, but yet another visual example would be handy.  Perhaps a sheet with "panels" for the player and GM to set their cards in to keep track of panels?

Here's some revised text I'm thinking of using:

During a conflict, I lay cards down on the table in front of me. Each card represents a Panel of conflict. You will play a Panel in opposition. You will put that card on the table head-to-head with mine. I'll play my next Panel next to the original Panel. You'll lay your next Panel head-to-head with this new Panel. All of my Panels, collectively, are called my Page of Conflict. All of your Panels, collectively, are called your Page of Conflict.

To change the suit, you must play two cards of the new suit. The higher-ranked card is discarded immediately. It's the price you pay to change the suit. The lower-ranked card is played as your next Panel.

If you cancel my Panel by playing a card of the exact same rank & suit, you've negated my last Panel. Flip over my Panel that you've cancelled, and steal a card from my hand. If you used a wild card to cancel, it's best to move the card you're cancelling from my Panel to yours, and then place your wild face-down where my card was. That way, everyone knows what rank & suit the wild card has for the rest of the conflict.

When you yield, all the cards in our Pages get discarded*. I steal cards from your hand (see p. 19). You draw new cards equal to the Importance of the Aspect that I increased the Suffering of.

*exception: You, as a player, may play your last Ranking Card to the Story Arc, rather than discard it.

(This new text is in first and second person. Can't you tell I'd just read Dogs in the Vineyard before writing this? It's so much clearer than third person! I'm still in shock. Why didn't I ever notice that before?)

Also, because you demanded it, I whipped up a quick and ugly playmat to hopefully help you keep track of your Panels. http://incarnadine.indie-rpgs.com/playmat1.gif

7) Changing Suit: Actually, this is more of a rules query towards the overall design, but have you thought about limiting the Suit Changes to X amount of times?  It seemed that in our playtest session at GenCon every person in the conflict had to come up with 4-6 ideas for conflict shifts becuase the suit was thrown around so much... I can see it happening up to like 2-3 times, but if we really had a drawn out conflict, I can see 6 suit switches (esp if the GM has a lot of cards) happening, and perhaps the players/GM straining to come up with how the conflict changes?

You're right that this does happen a lot. It's one of the primary ways that low-ranking cards remain valuable. At GenCon, I think we were trying too hard to fundamentally shift the nature of conflict each and every time. I think we should just tone down the requirements. In the rewrite, I'm going to remove the connotation that the change in the conflict must be very significant. I think getting thrown through a wall into another room, or changing one's target should be sufficient. If it helps, think of playing a higher card as saying "Yes, and"; changing the suit as saying "Yes, but"; and Cancelling as saying "No."

Do you find it hard to come up with valid Suit Shifts when they come up in succession?  Just wondering.

I usually don't have trouble, but when there are numerous players and I have to respond to all of them at the same time, I have trouble keeping all their actions straight. I think your idea of doing a few panels with one hero, then switching to the next hero, would take care of that problem nicely.

9) Sample villains- Got any?

My playtest villians are all tied to my playtest heroes. At the GenCon game, one of you mentioned some kind of drug problem, so I knew there was going to be some kind of drugged-up bruiser. One of you mentioned hatred of a corrupt corporation, so I knew there had to be a slick guy in expensive suit and shades that could run up walls and stuff. I just start riffing off the heroes.

With other heroes, I'll go with the classic comic book ArchNemesis Principle: If your hero is powered by the sun, my villian is a force of darkness, or maybe the moon. If you're making the Azure Avenger, then his villianous foe is the Crimson Enchantress, or some such thing.

I know I skipped around alot, so if I missed anything vital, or if I gave short shrift to something important, please ask again. I hope the game goes well.

[Andy Kitkowski]

Excellent.  Thanks!

1) If you have a sec tomorrow sometime (preferably before 3:30PST/7:30EST, but no sweat if you don't), I was wondering if you could give me a brief, VERY brief example (like 2 line summary is ok) of:

"Finally, can you give me a very brief example from one of your demos of two characters sharing and enrichment scene? "

2) Rock on with the Panel thing.  That helps a lot!

3) Thanks on the idea of riffing a villain off of the players.  Even with that in mind, i wondered if you had a sample villain in a file somewhere.  If not, that's cool. I just was wondering what kinds of Relationships you had attributed to them (other than "thugs").

Thanks!

-Andy

[Kat Miller]

HI Andy,

Michele and I were playtesters for the preveiw addition.  Michele played the Amazon and I played the Cat  a vigilante heroine.  I think one of our shared enrichment scenes went like this.  I was trying to break into this Crime lawyer's apartment uping my stealth.

I want to break into the apartment and find a file proving curruption.

I flip and lose which gains me points but means I don't get in

Mike ruled that just As I got to the balconie the Lawyer came home.  

Michele wanted to share the enrichment scene improving a resource/relationship aspect and suggested that the Lawyer was accompanied by the Amazons male secritary.

Michele wanted her secretary to find out if the Client the Lawyer worked for was funding the Amazon Exibition at the Art Gallery.

She flipped and succeded, which meant the lawyer offering her secretary a drink and them having a lengthy discussion about politics and art while my character was stuck on the porch unable to get in or down without attracting too much attention.


So the way it worked out is that I started the enrichment scene and had my flip first and then as Mike was deciding how things were going to work Michele suggested how one of her aspects could be involved.

I can work where one player sets the scene and another asks if they can share it, describing how an aspect of theres is involved.

It can work where the player wants to enrich an aspect but is stumped for idea and asks the group, then the players can design a scene for the aspect and since their building it togethercan suggest how an aspect of their own might be thrown in.  (the sketching phase I think)


-kat

[Michael S. Miller]

1) If you have a sec tomorrow sometime (preferably before 3:30PST/7:30EST, but no sweat if you don't), I was wondering if you could give me a brief, VERY brief example (like 2 line summary is ok) of:

"Finally, can you give me a very brief example from one of your demos of two characters sharing and enrichment scene? "

I think Kat's covered that--Thanks, Kat and Welcome to the Forge! (I'll see you after work, sweetie.)

Don't forget that the GM Aspects can also share scenes with hero Aspects. It can be very menacing to have the Romance Aspect land an interview with the supervillian.

3) Thanks on the idea of riffing a villain off of the players.  Even with that in mind, i wondered if you had a sample villain in a file somewhere.  If not, that's cool. I just was wondering what kinds of Relationships you had attributed to them (other than "thugs").

Well, I've generally played with individual villians having a Power and a Conviction. But I've tried to make one villian per hero, also. Other GM-Aspects I've included are extremely important Locales, as well as "the Dingus, the MacGuffin, the Plot Device, the Stuff-That-Dreams-Are-Made-Of, the Ultimate Nullifier (in the classic FF/Silver Surfer tale), the Tritium-powered Fusion Machine (in Spiderman 2)" if you know what I mean. I've tried to keep all my GM Aspects confined to a single sheet (10 or fewer Aspects total) both for ease of reference and to remind me that the story is about the heroes. If you find that lots of Aspects works for you, though, please let me know. I look forward to your Actual Play post.

[Valamir]

You're right that this does happen a lot. It's one of the primary ways that low-ranking cards remain valuable. At GenCon, I think we were trying too hard to fundamentally shift the nature of conflict each and every time. I think we should just tone down the requirements. In the rewrite, I'm going to remove the connotation that the change in the conflict must be very significant. I think getting thrown through a wall into another room, or changing one's target should be sufficient. If it helps, think of playing a higher card as saying "Yes, and"; changing the suit as saying "Yes, but"; and Cancelling as saying "No."

I think that's a great idea.  Instead of having the conflict be about bashing each other's brains in, and then changing the conflict be to switch to trying to talk it over (or something similiarly drastic) allow the change of suit to represent tactical advantages.

In the bash conflict I change the suit describing how I just ripped out a light pole and am swinging it at you.  You change the suit and describe how your eye beam blasters just melted the lamp pole.  I change the suit and describing hurling a car at you.  You play to the same suit...so you don't change the conflict.  So you narrate dodgeing out of the way of the car or catching it to throw back or what have you.

Same way with dialog conflicts.  I change to the suit to remind you of how you failed the last time you tried this.  You change the suit to taunt me about how my obsession cost my marriage, etc.

[Ron Edwards]

Works for me too.

It's kind of a Trollbabe thing - the conflict never changes until it's resolved; you're trying to get somewhere or defeat this guy or whatever. But shifting how you do it is part of the narration, and in With Great Power, that's neatly wrapped up in the card mechanics.

Conflict: defeat the Green Goblin, right here and right now (not get away, not save the hostage, not anything but defeat him!)

Doin' it by fisticuffs. Result: bad draw, no cards to match or exceed, must yield, gonna suck ...

Except I have a couple of paired cards I can use to shift. Cool!

"Oh yeah? What do you think Harry will think of his dad being a murderer?" (there's my shift)

"Gaahh!" says GM, role-playing poor bonkers Norman, now dealing with the new cards on the table and looking at his hand. (play continues, with whatever he puts down or doesn' t put down, Suffers or doesn't Suffer, etc)

It's still about defeating the Goblin, though.

Does that work, Michael? That example comes from an enthusiastic phone conversation between me and Paul Czege about WGP.

Best,
Ron

[Valamir]

That's how it works now isn't it.

I think the point of Michael's comment above is to allow the change of suit without requiring a change of conflict that drastic (from fisticuffs to psychological ploys).  That would still be acceptable, but you could also describe changes of a lesser scale...Fisticuffs failed, maybe gumming up the flying skateboard with a well placed web cast would work...change of suit...still a comic book melee brawl through.

[Michael S. Miller]

That's how it works now isn't it.

I think the point of Michael's comment above is to allow the change of suit without requiring a change of conflict that drastic (from fisticuffs to psychological ploys).  That would still be acceptable, but you could also describe changes of a lesser scale...Fisticuffs failed, maybe gumming up the flying skateboard with a well placed web cast would work...change of suit...still a comic book melee brawl through.

Ralph's right in that I think it will work better if less-drastic changes of conflict are allowed.

Ron, you're example is beautiful and exactly what I had in mind when I wrote the guidelines on changing suits. However, what I saw in a lot of the GenCon demos is so many suit changes going on that requiring a major change of style (e.g., Stealth to Talking to Clobberin' back to Talking) for each one makes the gameplay a little schizo. Often, there was a suit change every Panel, and folks started floundering for what to do next. My thought was that lowering the bar (in other words: a change can represent a shift in tactics, it need not represent a shift in overall strategy) would help alleviate this issue. Your example with the Goblin would still work and be legit. It would just fall at the "this is an exceptionally cool and extreme Shift" end of the spectrum, rather than the "you must think of something this cool and extreme in order to change suits" end of the spectrum.

Of course, typing it out like that makes me think I should rewrite the requirement to function as a dial customizable by each group.

[Ron Edwards]

I see that, but I guess I really do want to see some kind of identifiable change.

OK, punching's not working, so I kick'im! Seems a little bogus to me.

But punching to cunning use of web-stickiness? Not bad. I guess where my lines would be ...

a) punching not working - switch to web-ball smack to the face. Not good enough in my book; just using webbing as another punch.

b) punching not working - switch to web-trick that pulls dumpster down on him from behind. That's about the minimally-sufficient tactic-switch in my book.

c) punching not working - switch to grapple, specifically to fall through scaffolding, possibly through floor into Daily Bugle office, completely changing physical space and who else is present in the situation. This is a nice solid switch, but wholly contained within the context of "still physically fightin'."

d) punching not working - switch to psychology. Extreme switch.

The trouble with (d) is that it carries the danger of changing the nature of the conflict (e.g. from "defeat in this fight" vs. "instill remorse" or something like that). I think some attention to not changing the nature of the conflict is a good thing, along with attention to (a) as well, having some minimal threshold for what constitutes a legitimate switch.

Definitely one of those customizable features of a comic-based game! In a highly fu-oriented comic, the differences among a punch, kick, or sweep might be significant enough for a switch. In a highly powers-oriented one, I'd be more inclined to lump all fisticuffs (kicks, even grapples, etc) into one non-switchy category.

Best,
Ron

[Andy Kitkowski]

Thanks for everyone's notes, last night's demo session went fine, just had a few issues and hangups, half which were my own, half which could be addressed in the full version of the game.  I'll later be opening two threads, a VERY brief Actual Play thread and a thread here on more questions/issues/areas of clarifications/discoveries and problems.

Thanks!
-Andy

[Michael S. Miller]

Hi, Andy.

Glad to hear that the session went well. Thanks for running the game. I anxiously await reading your AP posts and problems.