[Haven: COV] Jake's first game in a LONG time

[Jake Norwood]

For those of you that remember me, hi. For the rest of you, Hi.

Last night we ran a self-contained scenario for L. Porter's game Haven: City of Violence; A Roleplaying Game of Modern Violence.

Players:
Earta played Columbo, from the TV show. Or basically that was it.
Marshall played a gun-for-hire (Mercenary, in Haven terms).

Setting:
Although the setting for Haven looks good, I didn't really want to read it because that sort of thing bores me. From the 3 or 4 skimmings I've given it, it's the city that the first Crow Movie took place in. We played in New York instead, since we've all been there.

Plot:
Marshall is hired by email to rescue a kidnapped young woman and kill her kidnapper. They find the guy and kill him after the young woman escapes. Plot twist: the young woman is actually the guy's wife and she arranged for her husband to be killed.

Observations on System:

1. WHIFF!!! In Haven you've got a 25% chance of failing even the most obvious of tasks most of the time. The rest of the time it's 50% or worse! This was actually a fun thing during gun combat, as it forced players to put a lot of lead in the air. The rest of the time it really blew. Very hard to feel like a cool private investigator when you have a 50% success rate at anything and everything you do. After about 15 minutes of play I upgraded all of the characters rather significantly just to push events forward. (to put things in perspective, all of the "template" characters consist of all average or sub-average stats...no special stats or even "above average" stats on any starting characters by Haven's own scale of ability).

2. DAMAGE is pretty cool. It's basically just hit points, but the size of die that is rolled for damage is determined by the location struck, and somewhat modified by the type of weapon after the fact. I like this. It makes head shots really nasty without complicated multiplication rules or anything of the sort. The players reacted well to it also.ll

3. The Haven equivalents of ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES vary from the blah stuff that every modern sim game has to a few that are actually really cool. Here more than anywhere in the system does Mr. Porter's vision for the game come out. If you play Haven and make your own characters, this is the area to keep an eye on.

The downside is that these Ads and Disads are poorly represented in game-mechanics terms, so much of it is left to GM fiat.

4. REWARDS are based around "good roleplaying" and getting stuff accomplished. Pretty standard. It ensures steady progress in beefing up characters, but it didn't inspire anything special in play.


THE PLAYERS had a good time, and I found that playing the rules fast and loose helped here. There's some fun crunchy simmy bits in there for ammo types and car chases, but it didn't seem necessary in our game, so we went with simple (but still used the rules). There are no mechanics to motivate players to do anything with their characters, so either this is just pure "nice to be here" sim or, for the more action and story oriented player, it requires a serious self-starter. In truth, without the Ads and Disads giving me, the GM (or G.O.D. in Haven terms), a good vision of what types of characters this sim is exploring we would have been left high and dry.

Jake

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya Jake!

Check out the Haven: City of Violence thread. What similarities or differences strike you?

Also, did you get the chance to use the Karma-based grappling/unarmed combat rules? Those really interested me.

Best,
Ron

[Callan S.]

I really like how the actual play was noted (Jake, you did one for a car game awhile ago didn't you? That was good too). I'm going to try and copy it in future.

On the game: If lots of bullets in the air was good, was their any way to carry that feel over into skill use? Or would it be hard enough to just be a house rule rather than intuitive option?

[Jake Norwood]

On the game: If lots of bullets in the air was good, was their any way to carry that feel over into skill use? Or would it be hard enough to just be a house rule rather than intuitive option?

Not as written, no. The skill use equivalent would be "you try and try and try, but you just suck, despite being both skilled and a protagonist." As for house rules--I just gave everyone more experience, but some kind of more do-able fix would be nice. Something that wasn't just hand-me-outs. Unfortunately, I've never been very good at house rules.

I'll check out that other thread.

Jake

[Jake Norwood]

Okay, I read that thread.

Specifics aside, I'd say the observations on game play and the text's direction are dead on with my reading/experience. Which is minimal on both accounts.

A big difference between me and Ron, however, is that Ron is really quite stubborn about playing a game as written. I'm more likely to change what I want when I want in order to suit my and my play group's tastes.

I did not, unfortunately, get a chance to play with the unarmed combat system, which is "different" at least and is cleary designed with some cool ideas. The problem is, given the rest of the game and the learning curve associated with that unarmed combat system, I'm not sure if it's worth it.

Jake

[Sydney Freedberg]

On the game: If lots of bullets in the air was good, was their any way to carry that feel over into skill use?/quote]

Not as written, no. The skill use equivalent would be "you try and try and try, but you just suck, despite being both skilled and a protagonist."

A lot of people on the Forge have pointed out, in other contexts, that having an X% chance to succeed (or fail irreparably) means something very different when you get to try one vs. when you get to try again and again -- and that traditional game designs resolve combat with lots and lots of tries, but everything non-combat is "roll once and you're done." Which means that whiffing in combat is (weirdly) less of a show-stopper than whiffing out of combat. I don't know the Haven system, but does that sound like what was happening with your group?

[Callan S.]

Which means that whiffing in combat is (weirdly) less of a show-stopper than whiffing out of combat. I don't know the Haven system, but does that sound like what was happening with your group?

Which means in games like D&D, CHA is even more worthless to make high. As a +1 combat bonus, over time, will average and have its effect. When the bonus from CHA is only used a few times, it just wont average out and on average beat the fortune involved.

Jake: Would something like 'splitting hairs' so to speak, work? Like instead of one investigation check to look over a place, you would work out something like ten clues and roll ten times. Thus the skill gets the work out it needs to perform like combat skills do?

[Jake Norwood]

Sydney-

I think you're dead-on there. The whiffing in combat adds tension and, in some fashion, helps suspend disbelief. The whiffing in non-combat situations just de-protagonizes.

Noon-

The breaking-it-down is a pretty decent idea. It sounds very time-consuming (ever notice that combat, which works very much as described above in most games, slows gameplay down a lot?), but that doesn't mean that it couldn't be a fun approach and still one in keeping with the designer's intentions.

Jake

[ffilz]

The breaking-it-down is a pretty decent idea. It sounds very time-consuming (ever notice that combat, which works very much as described above in most games, slows gameplay down a lot?), but that doesn't mean that it couldn't be a fun approach and still one in keeping with the designer's intentions.

Breaking it down is probably the path to take. Of course you don't want to structure it such that you need to make all the rolls, or even enough rolls that you actually decrease the probability of success.

Over in this thread I am interested in much the same issue. I think this is somewhat of an issue with any game that has a round-by-round combat system and single skill rolls for non-combat actions.

Another question I have is if the single skill roll for non-combat actions makes them seem less important than combat?

Edit: fixed link... (oops)

Frank

[Sydney Freedberg]

Another question I have is if the single skill roll for non-combat actions makes them seem less important than combat?

I think any time you "zoom in" on a particular action by covering it in more detail, you force the players to spend more time on it, which makes it more important -- not necessarily more exciting, though (Haven combat seems not to have this problem, but I remember an utterly tedious die-rolling exercise in GURPS).

I think the key thing to realize is that "more detail" does not mean "more excitment." Excitement comes from greater emotional and intellectual investment, which means that exciting things should involve harder choices and higher risks (either strategically or dramatically). One roll vs. many rolls isn't the key distinction.

And now I'm wandering off into RPG theory, so I'll stop.

[ffilz]

Sydney - definitely a good point, which actually is the underlying bit of my questioning in my RPG Theory thread.

Frank

[Valamir]

One kind of standardized fix to games that generally roll 1dX and have a high whiff factor is to simply convert them into a dice pool.  This winds up being the same effect as Noon's "splitting hairs" notion above.  I've argued before that D20 (and all earlier editions of D&D combat) have always been the equivelent of dice pool systems, just ones where you roll 1 die at a time.

Set a standard...like 5 dice...and roll the normal skill roll using 5 dice simultaneously.  The number of successes then represent progress towards completeing the task, allowing you to accumulate successes over multiple rounds or have them taken away by the efforts of others in the interrim.

[Jake Norwood]

Hey...that's pretty good.

Jake