Preparing for TSOY

[Matt Wilson]

I'm part of a group that's pretty much limited to D&D, like nothing but D&D for all eternity. Except maybe once they played Deadlands.

I gave them all a copy of TSOY for Xmas, as part of a secret plan to poison their minds. Starting tomorrow night we're going to begin a 4-week game of it. I'm totally psyched that they agreed to it.

One player, whom I would peg as "deep-in-the-dream sim" is really digging it. By the label, I mean that on some online star wars game, he's playing a wookie musician and loving it, and loving telling me about every little seriously-not-all-that-interesting detail of his character's life. In D&D play, he tends to get a little paralyzed when it's his turn to do something, and I'm hoping that TSOY's lack of "you made a bad choice" support will free him up a bit.

Another player, whom I would call the "puzzle solver," wants to play something like an elvish batman, going around the city at night and righting wrongs. His own house rules when he GM's D&D involve a lot of extra "things that could go wrong," like penalties when you're wounded, and fumble tables, and all that (you can see why the player above gets a little nervous). Will he engage with this game? I'm wondering how it will go. I'm lousy at puzzles and problems, but maybe I can make a complex relationship map to do the same sort of thing.

All I've told them so far is that it's taking place in a city in Maldor, and they should provide a reason for being there. I'm going to wait and see what the characters are all about before I prep anything (which they think is a little strange).

Aside to Clinton: no, I haven't gotten any character information from that one player yet. When I do you'll be the first to know.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

I think all these players will do well. TSOY is supposed to be non-threatening narrativism. Your "deep-in-the-dream" player will probably rock it, actually - there's a lot of stuff in TSOY that supports being, for example, a potter that has good stuff to do in the game.

I love the elvish Batman idea. Elves' whacked psychology will fit well with a Batman story. I hope this guy doesn't get freaked by the lack of "bad stuff that can happen," but the nice part is (a) if he just really enjoys that, he can totally narrate broken bones and what not and (b) the system is open enough he can cram that stuff in there if he really wants.

Watch out for Bringing Down the Pain! So far, it's caused the most trouble of any mechanic. I'm not coming down on the side of "it doesn't work" so far - I think it works beautifully - but I'm starting to think it's not explained as well as it could be.

[Keith Senkowski]

Matt,

From my own experience the hardest hurdles for bringing folks into a different game type from the traditional DnD mentality has been always been what I call the Tell me what you are doing, don't ask if you can factor and the ever popular No initiative?.  Once the one group I play with got around that stuff they started to enjoy themselves.  Before it they were a little timid.

Keith

[Andy Kitkowski]

Hey Keith:

From my own experience the hardest hurdles for bringing folks into a different game type from the traditional DnD mentality has been always been what I call the Tell me what you are doing, don't ask if you can factor and the ever popular No initiative?.

I'm starting a TSOY game tomorrow.  You think sometime today you could chime in with a quick anecdote or two on how you helped get them over the two Italicised issues above?  

Thanks!
-Andy

[Keith Senkowski]

Andy,

Well first of all get all Zen cause it can be a bitch on your patience.  I would start slow with shit.  With Secrets & Keys shit can get crazy quickly  so I would let them discover them on their own at their own pace.

Instead of saying, " do what thou wilt." in response to the , "Can I do this?" questions say, Do what thou wilt, like X, Y or Z."  It will make the transition easier for them.  In other words give them options to start.  

Also with TSOY I would stay away from Bringing Down the Pain if you can for the first session.  Try and deal with one problem at a time, cause that shit can get confusing for first timers.

Gamers are like kids learning how to swim.  You got to coax them into the water and not splash them too much.  Keep their attention away from the fact that they can't touch the fucking bottom of the pool and pretty soon they are cruising around on their own and all you have to do is make sure everyone does drown each other in the fun.

Keith
I was a Life Guard

[Andy Kitkowski]

Instead of saying, " do what thou wilt." in response to the , "Can I do this?" questions say, Do what thou wilt, like X, Y or Z."  It will make the transition easier for them.  In other words give them options to start.

Rock on, Sunglasses King.  This is exactly what I was looking for.  A quick sentence, a nudge, that will help the players ease into the new way of playing.

Seriously, we should wrap up some of these tips into a small "Robin's Laws" size guidebook. Making "The New Gaming" (ie "Narrative" gaming, decentralized gaming) down to earth and easy to understand for newbies or people looking for something different.  But that's another topic.

Also with TSOY I would stay away from Bringing Down the Pain if you can for the first session.  Try and deal with one problem at a time, cause that shit can get confusing for first timers.

Cool. I might actually go right ahead and ignore this advice at first.  Or ease the players into it like this:
1) Never mention that BDTP exists.
2) When the players get into a sticky, "important feeling" situation for the first time (not just a stealth roll, but a life-and-death stealth roll; Not just a haggling, but a seduction of an evil queen; Combat, etc), and they LOSE the roll... THAT's when I'm probably going to pop BDTP on them.

All in all, my group is filled with really smart folks who pick up things... well, relatively quick: I have a French guy who turned out to be the only guy in our group who could keep all the Conan OGL Armor Peircing Lets-Bog-Down-Combat rules in his skull, and others that are into learning rules, and then a few (myself included) that will only pick up rules when forced to go through the motions a few times.

So I think the above will be how I ease my group into The Pain.  I'll pop up an Actual Play later.  But thanks for the pointer on cues to get them into playing this kind of game, that helps man.

-Andy

[Keith Senkowski]

Andy,

I am the Sunglasses King!  I can do anything!

Cool. I might actually go right ahead and ignore this advice at first. Or ease the players into it like this:
1) Never mention that BDTP exists.
2) When the players get into a sticky, "important feeling" situation for the first time (not just a stealth roll, but a life-and-death stealth roll; Not just a haggling, but a seduction of an evil queen; Combat, etc), and they LOSE the roll... THAT's when I'm probably going to pop BDTP on them.

This is a better idea then if your group is pretty quick on the uptake.  My one group is a pain in the ass about these things.  Two guys are just stuck in the mud with DnD mentality.  It is only when they are not thinking about it do they unconsciouslly move away from that mentality.

One other piece of advice I got is to remember to point out the Gift of Dice.  That mechanic alone really will pull people into it cause it is a very non DnD little bite of heaven (that I wish I thought of first).

Keith

[James_Nostack]

Matt and Andy,

Generally speaking I did not find Shadow of Yesterday difficult to run, though in my case I underestimated the rulebook a little and got slightly confused at a few points.  Transcripts from our game, "A Very Brief Engagement," can be found on the TSOY Wiki under "Examples of Play," complete with IC and OOC stuff.  In this case the OOC may be helpful, particularly when come across as confused or overwhelmed.

Things to keep in mind:

The keys a player selects indicate how he intends to play his character.

Bonus dice add dice to your roll, and

so do penalty dice.  The difference is that in one case you're taking the two highest dice, and in the other the two lowest.

Make sure everybody knows about Gift Dice, and that they can give Gift Dice to anybody including NPC's.  At low levels, unaided characters will fail  many, many rolls.

Some of the Secrets lead to complicated chains.  If you suspect that a particular chain of Secrets will be relevant to your story, take some time to learn how they interact.  (The HTML version doesn't include any flowcharts, which would help.)

When Bringing Down the Pain...

At low levels, unarmed characters will only inflict 1-2 points of harm when they succeed (which will only be half the time).  In order to speed things up, you should interpret anything and everything as a weapon of some kind.

If you've got a zillion characters running around during Pain-Bringing, for God's sake use the Zeitgeist method (described toward the end of that section) or you will lose your mind.  I know from experience!

Tucked away in BDTP is a little rule that says it is the only way for the players to slay major NPC's.  I totally overlooked this, because it's hidden and never mentioned again.  In play, a PC totally assassinated this Captain of the Guards dude that I'd built to be a major combat monster.  This didn't hurt the story any, but as a GM I was surprised there wasn't a rule for this.  Turns out there was, I just didn't see it.
[/list:u]

Good luck and have fun!

[Matt Wilson]

Two players couldn't  make it last night, so I was able to focus on the two who did. We done made some characters, I tell you what.

One of the people who made it was the somewhat hesitant player I mentioned above. He ended up with a pretty cool goblin, who has the affliction and the unrequited love (a minstrel/bard NPC). I knew everything started to click when he said "so I could also take 'key of the vow' and follow this bard around, secretly trying to keep her out of trouble." Hooray.

His addiction is also cool: throwing rocks at the back of people's heads. I can't wait to see how that goes in play.

The other guy initially thought that the game was supposed to have a less serious tone, so his first character concept was a wizard who's gone mad and turns his enemies into chickens, then drowns them in a bucket of water. Now he has an elf with bloodlust, because the Maldor humans gone and done bad things to his elf sister. Elf with bloodlust. Cool. He's like a 25-year D&D purist, so I'm not expecting him to rip through the keys like a madman. Well, who knows?

Right now I'm thinking the adventure will center on a political conflict in a city in Maldor. Classic sibling fight for its control (who rules a city? A baron?), and lots of dissenting groups out in the ruined periphery.

When the other players check in with characters, I'll update. First real 'adventure' session should be next Thurs.

[Matt Wilson]

First game session is tonight, and I'm putting together an adventure that will hopefully suit the characters well enough. I'm borrowing a bit from Clinton's Rat Moon Rising sample adventure, which I give thumbs up as a good how-to.

This one's taking place in a beat-up city in Maldor. I guess they're all beat up. The gist of this one is a power struggle for the Barony of the city. The oldest has been killed in battle, so now the youngest is in charge, but the slightly older bastard wants in. To shake things up a bit, I made them both women.

Neither sister will be the clear good guy in this. They're both a little power hungry, but not really evil. Aside from being nobility in Maldor, where every noble seems to be a total dick.

There's still an elven advisor, just like in the Rat adventure, but elfy is romantically involved with the plotting bastard sister. What isn't clear (even to me yet) is whether elf is doing it out of actual loyalty to sister or if he has some ulterior motive.

One player is playing a Goblin, so I'm going to put a Goblin jester (named Fez) in the mix, who just wants to have his comforts and doesn't ask for much. He might get involved if his future looks to be in jeopardy. Otherwise he'll be mean to the PC goblin regarding the affliction.

And I think, because ratkin are cool, that the bastard sister will have ratkin as her band of freedom fighters, having manipulated them into believing that her sister on the throne cares not at all for the problems of sewer folk. Possibly there's some dissent within the ratkin ranks as well.

So loads of entry points and choices available for the characters, I hope. One player gave me as little as "I'm an elf with a bow and I have the key of bloodlust, and I like poisons and magic." So hell if I know what he's going to do, but at least I have "batman and goblin" to work with.

[Matt Wilson]

We played last night, so this thread's title isn't quite right any more.

I'm hoping that it's the case, as with many "big step" games, that everything will click in a couple sessions. The characters feel a bit too "dream" intensive so far, content with just existing in this neat new world and play-acting and doing fun little quirky things. I'm not so great at hammering at characters to get them into motion. I prefer dividing the labor, if you know what I mean.

This here observation might interest Ben and Vincent: the player of the 'batman' elf, the one I consider the most gamisty of the bunch (he likes solving the puzzles, he says), picked up on the game the best. He made up a key to fit his concept, and acted on it. He did all the right things.

One player has this goblin who's afflicted and in love with an NPC. He sort of painted himself into a corner last night by saying that NPC would be indoors sleeping, and his character would be keeping watch. It forced me to go the full distance rather than meet him halfway, and I didn't get to it until late in the session. I had a plotting NPC hire another character to kill the person the goblin loves, and the goblin witnessed the conversation.

Regarding the game system, everyone picked up on the rules pretty quick. The most sim player has a tendency to reach for the dice for every minute little thing, and I have to tell him to chill. Dude, I say, you don't have to make a roll to get up on the roof if you just want to be up there to be up there. That's a toughie to get across.

Starting characters, even with 5 advances, have a decent chance of failure, and it gave me an opportunity to narrate failure in a different light for them, a la the Sorcerer and Sword text. I think that helped a lot, especially when my dice were on fire in a BDTP fight.

For next week, they all have the option of tweaking their characters as much as they want (what? I can't crib from my own rules?), and I said they can even create new keys to match what they actually did for this first game session.

[Andy Kitkowski]

Hey dude-

Starting characters, even with 5 advances, have a decent chance of failure, and it gave me an opportunity to narrate failure in a different light for them, a la the Sorcerer and Sword text.

Cool- I know exactly what you're talking about there... but can you give specific examples of ways you killed the Whiff Factor? I'm interested in seeing as many examples of this as possible.

Thanks, and good luck!
-Andy

[James_Nostack]

For reference, the game I played involved characters with a total of 10 advances, and the whiffage was minimal once you included Pools and Gift Dice.

[Matt Wilson]

Cool- I know exactly what you're talking about there... but can you give specific examples of ways you killed the Whiff Factor? I'm interested in seeing as many examples of this as possible.
-Andy

Okay, so one elf has Savoir faire, and the player says, "Without looking, I want to grab a wine glass off a passing tray all in one smooth motion as I'm walking toward her." He rolls and gets an 8. So obviously his goal is to impress the lady, so sure, he does exactly what he says, he grabs the wine glass, but it startles the server holding the tray, and she ends up spilling the remaining glasses all over the place. Elf looks all cool, but his effort is foiled by a catastrophe happening in his wake.

In another example, the Midnight Mongoose* is chasing after some ratkin, and the player wants him to jump from rooftop to rooftop, in order to speed up the pursuit. Failure. Okay, the jump is fine, but there's a loose tile or something, and it causes him to slip. He would have made it just fine if it weren't for the damn shoddy roof.

* I kid you not.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

In another example, the Midnight Mongoose* is chasing after some ratkin, and the player wants him to jump from rooftop to rooftop, in order to speed up the pursuit. Failure. Okay, the jump is fine, but there's a loose tile or something, and it causes him to slip. He would have made it just fine if it weren't for the damn shoddy roof.

* I kid you not.

Man, that is awesome.

Hey - I notice you mentioned some serious BDTP, where the characters lost. How'd that go? I'm collecting data, as I've had some complaints about the BDTP system.