[Nine Worlds] Slow and careful rules and examples

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

This is the first of three basic topics which, I think, illuminate Nine Worlds play in general as well as highlight a serious structural and procedural problem with the current game.

See [Nine Worlds] Pop-Greek sci-fantasy, plus murder and sex, Reading 9W, and [Nine Worlds] More on conflicts.

ONE
We need to discuss play in which no Tricks appear, or if you can't imagine that, then consider all participants to be farming all Tricks into their Muses. My point is that in discussing such play, we can illuminate all basic aspects of conflict resolution, narration, and (later, after basic clarification) character development. And without illuminating it in this way, we're going to be awfully, painfully stuck.

Why? Because manipulation of Urges and Virtues, including Locking and Unlocking, is secondary to play and may be considered an add-on or modifier of some aspects of tactics. That's all. The corollary point is that most of the text's examples are (in a word) obsessed with this secondary aspect of play and convey the incorrect message that it's a central feature of play.

Example from our last-but-one session: Chione, a player-character, has been swallowed by a Titan named Phoebe. Phoebe is currently conversing with the character's great-plus grandpa (over a nice Italian seafood dinner, no less), and it's important to know that the grandpa is Chrysaor, Medusa's son by Poseidon, and hence nephew to the other two Gorgons.

The player declares a conflict to escape, announcing Hubris. The player wins the conflict with a high Fate score. I narrate the conversation between Chrysaor and Phoebe, tossing in some interesting information, etc. The player has drawn really well on Clubs, or Cosmos. When she wins, she narrates that she has induced a vision in the chef, back in the kitchen. The chef is a minor descendant of Perseus, who killed Medusa, and the player states that he is overcome with Perseus-ness, procures himself a fine pot-lid with a mirror-shiny surface and a big butcher knife, then comes out and (mistaking Phoebe for the proper target rather Chrysaor) nigh-beheads Phoebe. The player also narrates that Chrysaor realizes Phoebe is a Titan (he didn't previously know that). She declares the conflict over and rolls the couple of Tricks she gained into increasing her Muses.

Point 1: the character, Chione, is now freed from Phoebe's body. That was the conflict, and the player won. It is the primary constraint on all narrations.

Point 2: Phoebe is not killed because her scores were not damaged. She is not "really" beheaded, and all that blood spraying around, and so on, is just Color. She is, indeed, in the game-world, "hurt," but the narrations must all treat "she is really OK" as a meaningful constraint.

See? Not a single Trick was utilized to alter any scores. There was no need to lock, unlock, or otherwise manipulate any scores. The goal was to be free, Chione won, hence she is free. The relevant Urge was utilized properly (focusing on the "pattern making" aspect of Cosmos). Phoebe getting sliced up along the way is mere Color, and has neither an in-game nor a mechanical effect.

My point in this post is to clarify that all conflict resolution in this game is handled through basic card play, Fate values, and narrations. Trick taking is not the key issue, and most especially, neither is score manipulation. Now! Certain extreme desired outcomes, most notably killing a character or achieving something massive, do indeed require certain score value events, and therefore issues of Tricks and so forth. But that will have to await later posts. As far as conflicts are concerned (not the same as desired specific outcomes, e.g. "death of so-and-so"), my point stands.

Matt, this is a serious issue. The game text does provide this in the form of the rules themselves, but since most of the examples are (bluntly) obsessed with score manipulations, Trick-taking, and locks and so forth, it gets obscured. I really think a number of examples should concern themselves with the straightforward issue of Fates, narration, and conflict resolutions.

My next post will stay with this topic, but will focus on certain problems with ordering and Trick-taking that we've recently uncovered. However, I'd like to get some confirmation about this current point, and especially to see whether it helps Eero.

Best,
Ron

[Matt Snyder]

Ah! Wonderful, Ron. I was hoping you'd chime in with something like this, because despite my best efforts to Eero and Julie, I felt I didn't explain it to their satisfaction (well, jury's still out on Julie ... )

This completely jives with my intent of the game and its conflict resolution. For some, it may seem contradictory with my presentation of the game, my Achilles' Heel, it seems. Ahem.

Your Points 1 & 2 are exactly correct and in accordance with the rules as I intended (and, I believe in this case, as I wrote them). The goal (Chione's escape) has been fulfilled, in a bloody gush of Color (and some hilarity, I think).

So, yes, absolutely, Chione is free. And, people could shrug, ands say "Well, that was easy, why bother with the rules then?" Because, you'll note, she banked Tricks into her Muses. That's reward. The possibility of that reward is precisely why the system is working in this example.

Ron, the examples are, as you say, obsessed with examples of Tricks. My reason was to show how the resource engine works, not to over-emphasize the nature of conflict resolution in the game. Chalk that up to not explaining what I take for granted, I think.

[Ron Edwards]

I promise that I am completely done with smacking the 9W text. I also want to re-emphasize that it is absolutely stunning when it comes to presenting neat, complex, colorful setting, and in pumping the concrete Premise (subject to PC-specific customizing) of the game.

My next points are going to be pretty serious, so I want to make sure Eero and anyone else is on-board with the above starting point first.

Best,
Ron

[Matt Snyder]

Ron, make no apologies, nor be concerned about too much criticism of the text. Several people have made valid critiques of the text, and it remains a obstacle, not a tool for too many people. I want this kind of inquiry and criticism to revise the text and make it far more approachable for people. To date, too few people are checking out this game. Your inquiries are only helping that, and certainly not making me "feel bad" or anything of the kind. I'm thankful for it!

Hopefully, Eero (and anyone else) will chime in so we can get to the other issues. I'm eager.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Yeah, Ron lays it out all clear. I already came to this particular interpretation after that thread with Matt, but it's true that he didn't perhaps understand my original question.

The reason I postulated in-game creation of improvised rules was that the examples really read like that. The players do all this score manipulation, but nowhere is it explained why the players want to do it. Instead, the explanation tells us what in-game effect the manipulation has: "This time breaking these locks causes the badges to be removed, which allows the heroes to escape." or "This time lowering these scores demoralizes the guards, which allows the heroes to progress." and so on, with all the tricks being used for score manipulation of frankly secondary people.

By the by, this issue all ties up with my throw-away line about more world statistics. As I see it, the urge manipulations are only interesting for players when the urges to be manipulated belong to setting-important people or talismans. If you'd offer more of "official" statistics, you could formulate for individual play groups who is important and who is not, and make sure that play creates a web of these urge interactions between important NPCs and PCs, instead of the GM throwing in all these unimportant statists you want to just bypass.

Imagine: instead of those two agents with badges, what if the GM routinely had the players confronted by the Aegis organization (which is a defined talisman of Zeus)? Or the planet, which is indeed defined with scores in the rules? (Of course the agents would represent the talisman, so no need to change the narration.) Then I could see urge manipulation going on; any of the worlds is important for the PCs, and putting locks, breaking locks and changing scores would indeed be something to consider. Not to speak of NPC Muses, which would trigger new complications in the plot quite easily.

This could even have rules: the GM has to spend a trick to "create" an Archon or talisman , for example (starting PC-level by assumption), with the understanding that a thing created this way has existed in-game from before. This would force a kind of constraint, so that the GM can't give metaphysical importance to just anything he cares to. If he wants to have no-name antagonists, then they have to be backed by the metaphysical importance of a Primarch, Archon, talisman or something else that really is important in the Nine Worlds. Consequently, the backer can then be affected with the tricks.

Actually, I know just the thing for this style of play: publish a mini-supplement with a page per thing of metaphysical importance, detailing the statistics and a short description of the thing. Have the pages be character sheets the GM can use to keep track of the score changes for that thing. Order them so that even if there's thirty or fourty of them, the GM can find the correct ones easily. You could detail the Primarchs, an inclusive list of all the titans, some Archons (with some scheme cover enough without going into campaign-specific detail) and important talismans (the worlds, the big organizations, important magical items, mortal heroes, whatever). The end result would be a kind of list that could supply the metaphysical importance for any situation, so that every conflict would have something important out there backing it. The GM would need to create new pages (for which you could supply empty pages) only for campaign specific creations (and if you put in some resource cost he has to pay to do so, you make sure that he's not creating things frivolously when some already existing thing can be utilized). The name of the supplement is of course Nine Worlds Campaign Planner ;) Think how cool it'd be if all those urge manipulations were persistent, that whatever the conflict, the GM would be forced to step up some interesting and important NPC whose scores are on the line.

The above approach would work, I feel, if the group wants strong contact with the setting. You said it yourself, Matt: the rules are about metaphysical importance, so it's pretty suspect that the GM creates importance however he wishes. I would find it fascinating, for instance. Much more so than if the GM just invented scores for things as we went by (especially if the things with scores were just some friggin' agents or throw-away buildings I wouldn't visit ever again). The sense of achievement is much greater if the GM isn't just ad-libbing the scores for the Free Spartan League, for example. I can see how certain types of groups would find it restrictive, too, but those are probably just happy with the current rules.

This is just the designer-Eero spouting, by the by. Could be that the game has some specific technique thought out for GMing and introducing NPCs, but I've missed it. You will no doubt teach me.

But now I'm quite clear on the issue of what the tricks are supposed to be used for. Ron nailed it unequivocally.

And let me emphasize that I'm waiting to play the game. It seems extremely interesting, especially in the light of Ron's explanation of concentric reward systems. This is all just my effort to understand how to play it in practice, not some misinformed attack against your game. In case that was suspected, that is.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Excellent. Now we can move on to the next issue, Trick taking. Just to be absolutely clear, I'm still not going anywhere with Urge or Virtue manipulation. In the interest of reinforcing the real reward system, and to stay focused on Trick taking, let's still say that if anyone takes Tricks, they get rolled into Muses.

Whew. Fortunately the concurrent threads have clarified a few other things too. Now we all know that everyone does not narrate; only the winners of conflicts narrate, in ascending order of their Fate score. (Since most people used their "loser" narrations only to set up atmosphere or "he's trying to strangle you" setups for loss anyway, no big deal - but it'll be a lot less confusing.) Also, that "winner" always refers to an in-game conflict. That'll be no problem for us; we're Dust Devils and Hero Wars veterans and have no problem whatsoever understanding a conflict and who wins it, and what that means.

But that doesn't mean we're out of the woods yet. Brace yourself, Matt, because this is the one place where we might be looking at a break or hiccup in play. But maybe you've pre-empted it with a couple of comments on the other threads; I'm not sure. Here goes.

Imagine all these basic situations:

a) one protagonist vs. multiple opponents. What happens when (i) the protagonist has the lowest Fate score, (ii), the protagonist has the highest Fate score, and (iii) the protagonist has an intermediary Fate score?

b) several protagonists vs. multiple opponents. Same questions.

c) one opponent vs. multiple antagonists. Same questions.

Given that we know who narrates and in what order, in all three. Now, do I have this right? Before anyone narrates, the winner claims as many of the Tricks as are available that he or she wants. Then the winner with the next highest Fate score does the same, if any are left over. And so on until all the Tricks are gone.

Only then does narration start, going from lowest-Fate winner to highest-Fate winner.

Is that right? This was going to be a lot more critical and convoluted, but those concurrent threads cleared up a lot.

Side point: "Trick" is a terrible term. The act it refers to in Nine Worlds has no corollary in card games, and the term Trick in card games refers to a well-known act which does not resemble the Nine Worlds act in any way. This would seem minor (oh, just use it for this in Nine Worlds) except that it has disrupted play on many occasions, especially for our player who is most committed to card games. He very, very reasonably suggests that the term in Nine Worlds should be changed to "points," because that's what they are - points which may be spent in a wide variety of ways.

Best,
Ron

[jrs]

Given that we know who narrates and in what order, in all three. Now, do I have this right? Before anyone narrates, the winner claims as many of the Tricks as are available that he or she wants. Then the winner with the next highest Fate score does the same, if any are left over. And so on until all the Tricks are gone.

Gack. It was my assumption that in cases of multiple winners, the winner with the highest fate score claims tricks from opponents first, then the other winners can claim any remaining tricks again based on fate score from next highest to lowest.  So, capturing tricks goes from high fate score to low, while narration is the reverse.  Which is why I claim that all tricks in play must be claimed before any narration takes place.

Am I just repeating what you're saying, or am I saying something different?

Julie

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Julie,

You're saying what I'm saying. I mistakenly used the term "winner" which I'm coming to realize is a terrible term to use in any context whatsoever in discussing and playing Nine Worlds.

Let me restate: Before anyone narrates, the person with the highest Fate score claims as many of the Tricks as are available that he or she wants. Then the person with the next highest Fate score does the same, if any are left over. And so on until all the Tricks are gone.

(bold indicates correction)

And let me also clarify that all the "persons" above are playing characters who had higher Fate scores than characters they were opposing. The people playing characters with the lower Fate scores are not "persons" for purposes of this particular set of narrations.

Matt, we got it, right?

Best,
Ron

[Matt Snyder]

Yep. Right on. Hopefully it's clear for everyone now.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Moving on to the next issue! This one requires reviewing the concentric reward system that I outlined in a previous thread. It operates at three levels.

1. During conflict resolution gain Tricks through winning conflicts, and put those Tricks into your Muses as points. The basic benefit of this process is to enjoy the benefits of increased hand size due to high Muses and then be more able win lots of conflicts which are relevant to the Muses.

2. Along the way, you record the instances of success and identify them as Hubris or Arete; when you resolve Muses, convert the recorded instances of success into Pride or Valor. The basic benefit of this act is not concrete at this stage - although one hidden benefit will be mentioned later.

3. Spend Valor and/or Pride to increase your characters scores and gain Talismans, respectively. The basic benefit is still more character effectiveness both in basic hand size and also in general applications, as well as (in the case of Talismans) getting an automatic ally in conflicts who might win on his own hook too.

Here's what I want to concentrate on at this point: the optional "backpeddle" options at all three levels: removing points from the reward system and instead using them for short-term gain.

Backpeddle level 1: instead of banking Tricks into Muses, use Tricks for score manipulation. The loss is that these Tricks are now gone forever and your Muses are not improved.

Now, there are lots of good reasons to do this, but it's very tactical and relies on having lots of Muses going, so that you can have better chances of getting lots of cards in a suit that you want, or that would be most useful at the moment. In other words, in many cases, choosing this option is not tactically sound, and even when it is, you have to bite the bullet and realize that you're not entering the main reward system-process, with those Tricks.

Backpeddle level 2: Instead of utilizing Muse points specifically for increased hand size (which does not reduce them), instead burn existing Muse points to gain extra Tricks during conflict resolution. The loss, obviously, is that your Muses are reduced, which is actually a big blow to the concentric reward system-process, and so you'd really want a specific benefit from those Tricks if you do it.

(Oh yeah! I have a question about this, procedurally, Matt - when do you do this? when narrating? or before, when Tricks are being assigned? In other words, can you spring the "extra Tricks" into play after everyone's already garnered their Tricks from the hands on the table? Answer quick, Matt, we're playing tomorrow and Tod will kill me if I don't have all this down pat.)

The interesting thing about this is that it's the only way to transfer existing Muse points into other Muses that you care about more, at the moment. Not a bad idea sometimes. Also, important side note: if you are resolving a Muse with your current narration, it is absolutely moronic not to burn that Muse's points for Tricks, to be distributed all 'round your other Muses, most likely. (This is also why resolving someone else's Muse for them, through your narration, is actually a pretty nasty act in-game; players have discovered this and now maneuver to hose NPCs they don't like with it.)

Backpeddle level 3: Instead of spending Valor and Pride for increasing attributes or gaining Talismans, respectively, burn Valor and/or Pride for Trump during conflict resolution (before the hands are shown). The benefit is a vastly increased chance of winning a conflict (although it faces much frustration if someone else happens to be good in the Trump suit too); the loss is that you lose out on long-term score improvement and Talisman creation, both of which required a huge investment in time and effort during previous play.

The really great thing about these backpeddles is that the short-term benefits of each one is well-suited to the price of what's being lost, or subtracted, from the default concentric reward system. In other words, for example, burning Valor or Pride is really really painful (more so than merely utilizing a Trick for something besides building a Muse), but the benefit of Trump is way higher than the other backpeddles.

Anyway, that's the story: imagine the "real," or default reward system, which is primarily oriented toward posing character problem situations/goals (think Kicker), resolving them, and ultimately making the character numerically more powerful. Now imagine specific "steps" in that system which can subtract points from it, for significant short-term gain, and the more important the "step' which is getting subtracted from, the more useful (albeit short-term) the specific benefit is.

I promised not to crank on the text any more, but I am forced to mention that the basic explanation of resolution veers straight into discussing Trumping, and that the score-manipulation rules are presented very much as if they're the default behavior of winning narrations.

Let's chat about all this a little bit - in our game, for instance, all three sorts of backpeddling are considered as painful desperation moves by the players. They don't like burning Valor, for instance, and tend to nurture a special hate for NPCs who show up with Force in action.

Also, my experience so far reinforces my ongoing claim that NPCs should be introduced with a fixed set of scores, then played absolutely "straight" from that point on, using the system themselves. So sure, Phoebe was pretty nasty with a couple points of Force when she entered play, but once they got spent, the only way she'd get'em back would be to have Muses, play according to the Muses, rack up victories if she could, and then resolve the Muses - just like a player-character.

That way the Currency of the game cuts across all characters, all the time, and becomes a kind of fabric with strategic, tactical, and thematic weight for the entirety of the game for this particular group. I'm really, really enjoying this feature of play right now, despite the sometimes aggravating aspects of record-keeping for our panoply of NPCs.

I want to talk about how Proteus was killed in the last session, but before doing so, let's get some confirmation about the stuff in this post.

Best,
Ron

[Matt Snyder]

(Oh yeah! I have a question about this, procedurally, Matt - when do you do this? when narrating? or before, when Tricks are being assigned? In other words, can you spring the "extra Tricks" into play after everyone's already garnered their Tricks from the hands on the table? Answer quick, Matt, we're playing tomorrow and Tod will kill me if I don't have all this down pat.)

Quick answer: Yes, it's intended as "extra Tricks" after everyone's done all their capturing and what not.

That is, I would not allow a player to capture another player's Tricks that are derived from that defeated character's Muse. (The defeated character may, of course, be a victor against others, which is why he'd burn his Muse for Tricks).

Hope Tod doesn't kill ya'.

[Matt Snyder]

Whoa! Ron, you're making a serious error in applying the rules for earning Valor and Pride.

It's regarding marked victories. The game says you earn your current Muse rating in Pride OR Valor.

You don't earn the number of marked victories. The ONLY thing the marked victories do is determine whether you earn Pride or Valor.

So, for example, you have a character with a Muse current rating of 7.

For THAT Muse, the player has marked down: 6 Arete Victories and 14 Hubris Victories.

Boom! All of a sudden, he finds the Muse is now resolved. So, he checks things out. Ok, clearly he has more Hubris Victories. So, he's going to earn Pride.

He then checks the current rating ... it's 7. So, he has earned 7 Pride (not 14 pride because of the victories.

[Matt Snyder]

Ron, this also means there's no need to keep track of victories for NPCs. You can simply give the NPC a number of Force equal to that NPC's Muse at the time the Muse is resolved. Less book keeping!

[Ron Edwards]

Well, we screwed the pooch on all that, then.

Curses.

Anyway, how about the backpeddling concept? Not a great name for it, perhaps, but "sacrificing" seems like a good one - very Greek myth, anyway.

I want to get to discussing score manipulation a little more, so let's get some consensus on the backpeddling. Eero, does that make more sense?

Best,
Ron

[Eero Tuovinen]

Yeah, I'm with you here. I saw the reward system when reading the book, mostly because of your Actual Play explanation about it. But you're exactly right that all levels are represented as largely coincidental compared to the corresponding backpeddles.

I can well imagine that after realizing the role of the reward system the backpeddles would indeed feel as last resort options for the players. Heck, that's what made me start this discussion, as I didn't understand why the example characters were constantly doing the backpeddles instead of storing and scoring those tricks.

As for converting muses into Valor/Pride, I understood that part from reading the book. I can see how counting the marks would work, too, but then we get that somewhat counterintuitive tactic of emptying a muse just before scoring it.

Also, my experience so far reinforces my ongoing claim that NPCs should be introduced with a fixed set of scores, then played absolutely "straight" from that point on, using the system themselves. So sure, Phoebe was pretty nasty with a couple points of Force when she entered play, but once they got spent, the only way she'd get'em back would be to have Muses, play according to the Muses, rack up victories if she could, and then resolve the Muses - just like a player-character.

This is exactly what I've been theorizing about the game. After fiddling with the Fastlane somewhat I'm even thinking that the GM should be limited in introducing new NPCs somehow, so that he'd have to pay tricks or some other resource for gaining metaphysical importance under his control. As the rules stand, the GM is assumed largely to be outside the currency system altogether, which doesn't sound so fun. Like a government that makes money as it needs it, the GM will easily cause an inflation in the metaphysical currency market by doing whatever he sees suitable for the story.

I want to talk about how Proteus was killed in the last session, but before doing so, let's get some confirmation about the stuff in this post.

Please do. It's notable that Proteus is one of those characters in whose case I can see the players wanting to do score manipulation - he's an important, recurring character whose resources are written in stone (or the rulebook, as the case may be), so killing him has genuine impact on the Nine Worlds, and the GM has less chance of just replacing him from his endless supply of NPCs.

So, to recap the points so far:
- Utilizing the reward system is the standard action in conflict, not the exception. Score manipulation is only necessary if you want those scores to change.
- The pair-ups in conflict are declared first, and anybody is a winner if he wins at least one of his declared opponents. Tricks are stolen before narrations.
- The backpeddles are utilized for temporary effects concerning score manipulation and winning conflicts. They're likely a last resort for most players.