The Forge Archives

We had our second game last Sunday - here's the conflicts from it.
Here is the previous post
Scenes and Characters

Scene 1 - Hospital - people are stricken by a new virus, which seems to be a permanent flu.
Characters played: Superflu, Jeff Stark, Dragonfly, Alice Olsen, Sammuel Marx
Goal(1) : A character dies - Jeff Stark is saved
Goal(2) : Carry on work as normal - Despite his illness, Jeff Stark continues to work
Goal(3) : Flu remains mysterious - The flue goes into unexpected, and simultaneous remission
Event(3) : Patient explains how he got sick - A patient tells dragonfly that his sickness was caused by a poisonous handshake
Goal(4) : Feverish patient tries to break quarantine - Jeff Stark tries to leave (to get some law books), but Dragonfly beats him down - while he argues with Dragonfly, a homeless guys escapes

Scene 2 - Outside the mansion where Jack Schnell took Dr. Seng
Characters played - Jack Schnell, The Yellow Wraith, Black Dakkar, Dragonfly, Butterfly, X-94, Zor-dan, The Dark Disciple

Event(2) Burning Mansion - Jack Schnell triggers a self destruct sequence when his base is invaded by heroes and villians.
Goal(2) Villians find Dr. Seng - The heroes get to him first
Goal(3) The nature of Dr. Seng's relationship to the superflu will remain mysterious - Seng's explanation is drowned out in the chaos.
Goal(5) Dragonfly tries to kill the Yellow Wraith and Black Dakkar - The Yellow Wraith defeats Dragonfly's murderous rage
Event(5) Dr. Seng is (rescued was vetoed) taken from the premises - Zor-dan flies off with Dr. Seng
Goal(6) Butterfly tries to kill Jack Schnell - Jack Schnell slinks away while the heroes fight among themselves

Scene 3 - The heroes new base (Still under construction)
Characters played - Kid Power, X-94, Point Blank, Alice Olsen/Night Witch, Bobby Tripe, Hero Base, Jack Doyle, Butterfly

Event(2) Bobby Tripe scolds the heroes - Point Blank ignores Bobby Tripe
Goal(2) Kid Power gets his own room - He ignores Point Blanks feeble attempt to get him to share (This was totally a goal for dumping debt on - Point Blank just jumped in to grab the story tokens)
Event(3) New info about the flu comes in - The Crime computer reveals a link to the university
Event(3) Pizza shows up - Kid Power buys the Pizza w/ a big tip
Goal(3) Butterfly wants his freedom - He takes off for the life of the lone Vigilante
Goal(3) X-94 dates Night Witch - He is rebuffed after a long conflict
Goal(4) Alice Olsen dates Jack Doyle - X-94 manages to stop this hookup

Here are the new characters

Hero Base : Free event - The call comes in
Skills
Train 3
Lull 1
Protect 4
Recover 2
Styles
Secret Passage 1
Crime Computer 4
Security Interlock 3
Danger Room 2

Jack Doyle
Exemplar of Love for Night Witch
Pizza Guy - Ingenue
Skills
Deliver Pizza - 1
Drive Fast - 2
Arrive on Time - 4
Knowledge of lifestyles - 3
Styles
Half-baked - 1
Miss the subtext - 3
Smile lights up the room - 4
Disheveled - 2
Attitudes
Kind - 3
Trusting - 2
Curious - 1
Confused - 4

Night Witch/Alice Olsen RN
Magician-Spunky Kid
Justice 1
Truth 1
Love 3
Hope 3
Duty 1
Powers
Binds Forces/things - 1
Wards and Shields - 2
Summon Forces/Things - 4
Know hidden nature of the world - 3
Styles
Dramatic Incantation - 4
Exceed Expectations - 2
Point out the obvious - 1
Runes and Sigils - 3
Attitudes
Optimistic - 4
Childish - 1
Reckless - 3
Decisive - 2

Sammuel Marx
Scientist/Guild Ridden
Skills
Research 2
Science 3
Analyze 4
Experiment 1
Styles
Propose Theory 4
'That can't be right' 1
Doubt yourself 2
Examine Sample 3
Attitudes
Doubtful - 2
Remorseful - 3
Impatient - 4
Distant - 1

Superflu
Free Goal: A character dies
Incurable - 5
Mild - 1
Interruption - 2
Cull the weak - 3
Contaminate - 4
Unpredictable - 1
Ominous - 2
Greedy - 3

The Yellow Wraith
Obsession 1
Pride 1
Power 1
Despair 4
Fear 2
Speedster-Ex Victim
Powers
Super-speed 2
Accelerated Reflexes 1
Rapid Recovery 5
Do many things at once 4
Faster than the laws of physics 3
Styles
Trail of Disruptions 1
Snap without warning 2
Fast enough to try another plan 3
Attitudes
Quiet 1
Melancholy 2
Untrusting 3
Angry 4

Black Dakkar
Obsession 1
Pride 3
Power 3
Despair 1
Fear 1
Powers
Ball Lightning 5
Repel 4
Attract 3
Lightning Blast 2
Control Electronics 1
Styles
Move Like Lightning 4
Trust your Minions 1
Control many effects 2
Don't trust your Minions 3
Attitudes
Demanding 2
Stern 1
Proud 3

Dragonfly
Martial Artist/Curmudgeon
Justice 2
Truth 2
Love 2
Hope 1
Duty 2
Powers
Acrobatic 2
Drive Kick 4
Death Star 5
Sight See 1
Ninja Stealth 3
Styles
Improvised Weaponry 2
Brutal Realism 3
Brains over Brawn 1
Attitudes
Honest 4
Aggressive 3
Demanding 2
Sarcastic 1

Butterfly
Shootist/Simple Soul
Justice 2
Truth 2
Love 2
Hope 1
Duty 2
Powers
Shoot 1
Rapid Fire 5
Ricochet shot 4
Pinpoint Accuracy 2
Extreme Range Shot 3
Styles
Chain Reaction 4
Simple Solutions 1
Cut to the chase 2
Do other things while shooting 3
Attitudes
Happy 2
Angry 1
Loving 3[/url]

It was interesting getting back to the game.  By this time, all but one of us had the rules in hand.  There were two things that were particularly notable to me about the player-player interactions.

I just didn't get it.  I started this session with no story tokens and watched others do cool stuff as well as play the system to harvest more story tokens.  I was a little disturbed about my perception that the rich get richer and the poor get pissed on.  Finally, I think it was Steve who said it in just the right way for my little brain to soak it in.  When I was out trying to win important scenes, I was doing that instead of engineering story point opportunities.  Yeah, and then it was no big deal.  It's funny that I was being dense about it because I adopted a pretty deep understanding of how to game Universalis (without being obnoxious) right away.  I think of this game as being very much like Uni.

The other thing is that we had a drop-in player.  I never was able to commit his name to memory, but he was at the game store where we met to play some CCG and had no one to play with.  Apparently we looked fun because he joined us.  Now, this is the primary reason that I really like gaming in public, but this time it didn't work out.  He shared nothing of the same vibe that the rest of us were working on.  Worse, I think he never caught on -- or maybe only at the end when the most contested conflict of the game turned out to be whether the robot could get the hot young nurse out on a date.  Most of his actions in the game were using one of two deeply violent kewl powerz and he thought it was neat to rough kids up and try to murder his fellow heroes.  Serious disconnect.  I think we've decided to have drop-in newbies watch for a while before they play, but I'm not sure it addresses the two parts of this situation.  He may be back expecting to play again -- he asked if we'd be back next Sunday.  I think this particular person would have watched through a scene and still decided to play, because he simply didn't perceive the disconnect.  I'm curious if others have faced this and how?  Ideally, we would have fired him halfway through, but that takes some serious balls and tact to do well.

The game continues to be fun.  Once I get click-n-locks made up, I'll be playing this with my wife and son.  It'll be interesting to see how they take to it.

We also had a lot of work figuring out who gets what rewards during resolution.  I think it's not nearly clear enough in the book, but we've worked it out in the MOF forum.  

I'm not sure if we'll play again.  Probably, but probably not right away.  Several of the people in the group are particularly interested in flitting from system to system since we have a group interested in indie games and it's easier with us than with the D20 crowd.  TSoY, HQ, BW, S&S are things that we've been talking about as next runs.

Quote from: Christopher WeeksThe game continues to be fun.  Once I get click-n-locks made up, I'll be playing this with my wife and son.  It'll be interesting to see how they take to it.

Well, I just posted a announcement in the MoF forum that should make the whole "make up click and locks" thing a mite easier for you.

I'm starting to think that the whole revelation about "Oh, I can either win the scene or win story tokens" is one of those ones that people have to come to in their own terms.  I'm glad to hear that it clicked for you.  It's a bit of a tricky question, but do you think that if Steve had said "just the right thing" to you before you'd had the experience of being frustrated it still would have clicked your perceptions over?

You just gotta love a PKer in Capes though, don't'cha?  Do you think that he's got enough of an in-character agenda that you could farm him for Story Tokens if you figured out the right conflicts to create for him?  I mean, yeah, you're going to be playing something else... but I'm interested in the hypothetical.  Was he causing trouble because he didn't know how to play nice, or was his goal to disrupt the proceedings?

Honestly I think I should have clued in on the either or before now, all on my lonesome.  But yeah, probably if it had been explicitly stated, I wouldn't have needed an epiphany moment to get it.

I think we could farm him for Story Tokens.  I do not think he was being a dick.

I think we invited him to play with the understanding that he'd quit when his Magic buddies showed up. They never did...

I think the problem was that he just seriously couldn't grok certain concepts about the game. The whole director-stance thing just went over his head. He seemed to be trying to identify with his character, more interested in his character personally succeeding than in trying to advance a cool story. Despite explaining the Comics Code thing several times, he seemed to be very slow to catch on when we told him "Your attempt to KILL the villain cannot succeed." He got defensive and just kept trying. Eventually every player had to jump on the villain's side just to end the scene. This of course, gleaned him an amazing number of Story Points. He had just enough understanding of the Story Points thing that he was planning to burn ALL of them to build an army of super-heros, when we curtly pointed out that the store was closing in thirty minutes and we'd like to finish our scene.

The real clincher was when Chris asked, "Have you ever read a comic book before?" to which he replied no. *sinking feeling*

It's not like he was a douchebag or anything, out to sabotage our game. I just think he was coming from the world of Magic and still thinking in terms of amassing resources to whomp on your opponent. And I mean, Capes IS actually about that, in a way, but it's so abstracted I found it hard to explain the strategy of the game to such a naif.

While this pretty much mangled the lovely gameflow we had going last time, on the bright side we did strain certain aspects of the system to a point that I think everything makes sense now.

It worries me a bit that our initial success might have a lot to do with everyone being versed in a lot of Forge concepts and terminology. I hope that more clueful non-Forgites will still be able to catch on.

Said epiphany occured to me when I got the rulebook in my grubby little hands. Superb work explaining the strategy in the text, Tony.

I did milk him for story tokens at the end (when he was trying to disconnect his heroes from the group).  But longer term - it's interesting.  He was racking up a lot of debt, because he liked to use his cool powers (Death Star and Drive Kick), so he would've been interested in dumping debt on conflicts.  However the kinds of goals he was generally pursuing were generally in violation of the comics code - which means you can't get story tokens off of those conflicts.  I think the gloating mechanism doesn't work in a group with an agenda disconnect like we had (it might be interesting to play a bit with no SIS, just running the numbers, and trying to amass story tokens and inspirations and see what happens).  For what it's worth, towards the end he was really losing interest - I didn't get the impression that he would play again, unless we specifically invited him.

I'd like to float the possibility that he may have understood the rules system perfectly, and been exploiting it to his advantage.  Some of what I'm reading here makes me lean toward this.

Particularly, he didn't let himself be dissuaded by your statements that he couldn't win the Gloatable conflict.  Instead, he did precisely the right thing, and stuck with it to earn Story Tokens, even knowing he couldn't win it.

So, basically, I don't think that claims that his actions stemmed from a failed understanding of the rules hold up.  Proof's in the pudding, and all that.

If we assume that you were all competent players of the game, does that make this experience less troubling to you, or more?

Well, the other side of the coin is that his characters ended the day with 6 debt in a strength 2 drive.  Plus - he didn't seem to be interested in playing violent vigilantes who were pursued by the hero group, and that's where his characters were moving towards fast.  

The play style that seems disruptive to me is this:
Create new hero
Put down gloatable goals, stake on them, and gloat them for all they're worth, piling up massive debt in the process.
When hero becomes unusable due to massive debt, create another heros.
If necessary, create extra heroes with your story tokens to keep control of the conflicts.

Now, I'm not sure that we couldn't have ganged up on him and stopped him from doing things like that.  (Now that I think of it, I'm pretty sure we could have dealt with that by everyone playing villians).  I think our big concern was the disruption of the storyline, which is really more of a social contract issue.

Interesting!   Thanks for the clarification!

Disposable adversaries crop up in games I play all the time, and don't seem to have the same negative effect on player enjoyment.  But then, we also have no sense that there is a story-line that could be disrupted.

Is there a sense in your group that you know where the story is generally going?  Or is there a different way that "disrupting the story-line" differs from "player contribution to the story-line"?

I don't think that any of us know where the story is going.  But we know what comics look and feel like and we know that by selecting a 50's Comic Code, we were shaping certain kinds of supers stories (even if transplanted for modern play).  Frankly, you couldn't sell books about the characters that he was playing.  They were as one dimensional as you could imagine, boring as a result, and utterly devoid of protagonistic features.  And to make it worse, they wouldn't have made good villains or anti-heroes.

I see that you don't have to play with such concerns, but I think there are better board games if that's how I'm spending my time.  I play role-playing and story-telling games because I want something different.  As was mentioned earlier, he was playing like it was a card game where everyone is his enemy, there is some definite win-state, and he didn't know (or care) anything about comics.

Except he wasn't using a very good strategy. I was really hoping that being a CCG guy he might be sharp about strategy, but I don't think he understood the whole "winning<=narrative rights" thing. Or the whole idiom of comic books, for that matter...

I can only speculate what his expectations for this game were. Creating a storyline that would be fun and interesting for all participants didn't seem to be one of them.

There's a difference between using a functional strategy for a goal different from your own, and not understanding strategy.

He didn't jump up to portray the ideals of the comic book genre.  And he didn't go crazy grabbing narration rights.  But by your own admission, he collected Story Tokens like nobody's business, yes?

You made a post in another thread which showed me how to phrase the concerns we had with the new player.  He was playing entirely in pawn stance.

His strategic decisions were good, from a player point of view, although I think he was making mistakes there too.  He seemed to identify a lot with his characters, but he left them in pretty bad condition, with several drives massively overdrawn.

What really concerned me, and I think the other people in our play group, is that he was playing almost entirely in pawn stance.  He wasn't tremendously interested in narration, he only tried to win conflicts, and he didn't really provide a reasonable level of description for the abilities he was using to roll in a conflict either.

Gotcha.  So he was acting in accordance with the rule system, but not bringing his own creative agenda (comic-book-appropriate or otherwise) to the table.

Cool!  I can make sense of that with everything else.  Let's me sleep easy at night.