[Misery Bubblegum] Where do the dice all go?

[hix]

Hey Tony,

Really enjoyed reading the example of play. Is there any chance you could expand on what 'Meaning' is - how it's derived, what it represents, how it's used?

[TonyLB]

Well, I probably ought to have... frankly... any word other than "meaning" to describe it.  Basically, it's how you change around the traits.  

I think that implies or requires some sense of the overall long-term consequences of your actions:  if you act recklessly, and somebody adds "Threat:  Recklessness" then that's a statement about what's important in the character's personality, and why, yes?  Particularly by comparison with (say) "Role:  Hot-head."

[Allan]

ya, fun Example of Play.  For the rebound, could Trait reduction be part of the Bribery mechanic?  Instead of only Bribing the other player with dice, you choose to Bribe them by reducing one of their Traits.

Mark has the Desire "Jessie's love", but it's been established that she will never love him.  Clarice can offer him the Desire "casual rebound fling" (or better yet "revenge on Jessie"), with the Bribe of reducing his "Jessie's love".

I guess there has to be some incentive to reduce the other character's Traits, since you're not gaining Influence over them.

[hix]

Tony,

I can't help with your questions yet because I'm still working my way through a clear understanding of the rules. (Hope this is still on-topic for this thread).

Everything's fine up until 'What does it mean?' Then the sudden talk about generating a Meaning total coupled with the introduction of offering, modifying or addressing Traits threw me for a loop.

My understanding of the 'What does it mean?' section

You can 'succeed' at a task by rolling over the difficulty level you've set. However, the meaning (consequences? outcome?) of that 'success' is determined by whoever has the highest total under that difficulty level, right?

Example[/u]
So Player A sets a DL of 3 and Player B sets a DL of 5.
Player A is more likely to succeed than Player B (rolling over 3 is easier than rolling over 5).
But Player B is more likely to determine the consequences of the action than Player A (rolling under 5 is easier than rolling under 3).

(OK, be warned: syntax was not my friend in the following paragraph ...)

You can offer a Trait (that means 'adding a new Trait to someone's character sheet, right?') if your Meaning Total is greater than the Target's attribute that's the same as the attribute you used.

GM: You used Insight, and Clarice's Insight is only a 1, so you need a one Meaning to create things on her. ...

You always get the chance to make 2 adjustments to Traits. "The first (primary) meaning is at the full Meaning Total of your action. The second (secondary) meaning is at half the Meaning Total of your action (rounding down)."

GM: ... Your primary Meaning is three, your secondary is one, so you can go crazy, even with that low total.

Right, right! And now the types of Traits you can add depend on what attribute you rolled with. I know it says this in the rules - but I'm just trying to get it straight in my head. If you rolled and generated Meaning by using your Insight, you can create Threats and Desires on other characters. OK.

Have I got all this straight, so far?

Things I don't understand yet

Modifying and Addressing Traits.

Moving Dice around ...

The direction of the arrow you follow will also determine how your dice pools change. Whichever Trait your primary meaning effects, all the dice you can claim back from the roll (after whatever Misery you suffer) will go into the attribute pool that arrow continues on toward. So if you roll your Insight Pool, and choose to offer a Desire for someone else, then your reclaimed dice will end up in your Passion pool. If you had chosen to create a Threat then they would have ended up in your Nerve pool instead.

What are these reclaimed dice you're talking about?

Finally, does getting the highest Meaning Total do three[/b] things? First, define meaning (by changing or addressing people's Traits). Second, you move your dice around. Third, you get the credibility to narrate the consequences of actions ("You manage to climb the wall, but instead of kissing you she wants to chew you out for damaging her decorative vines.")

Unasked for Editing Suggestion

This section introduces a few new concepts. At whatever point you want to do a rewrite, it could be a good idea to spell things out and use lots of examples.

[TonyLB]

Steve, the things you understand, you understand well.

As for reclaiming dice:  Say you've got five dice on Nerve, and roll four of them.  Now they're in the "Rolled" area.  There's actually a "Roll" area right there on the character sheet, for convenience.  Then eventually, when you're done with the roll, they go somewhere else.  But where?

First, if the Victor dumps a point of Misery on you then one of those dice goes to Misery.  It's very hard to get any use out of it while it's there.  So that's bad.  If they dump four points of Misery on you then all four of those dice go to Misery.

After that, if you didn't get... Emotional Content?  Opinions?  Whatever I end up calling the thing currently mislabelled "Meaning", then the remaining dice go back where they came from (in this case Nerve).

If, however, you got... oh, hell, I'm going with Opinions.  If you get control of Opinions then the dice migrate along the line defined by your Primary choice.  So if you chose to create a Role off of your roll then the remaining dice go to Passion.  If you chose to create a Threat then they go to Insight.  Wherever they go, they don't end up in Nerve.

So, now... What are Opinions/Meaning/Whatever?  And are they really "The meaning of the action"?  Bear with me, because this stuff is really fuzzy in my head.  If you have a better way of thinking about it or expressing it, I'm all ears.

But, basically, your character will be defined in large part by what people think of you.  You can reject provisional Traits, but it costs you (you get more Misery, rather than getting dice that could be helping you).  So when you're feeling desperate and miserable you are going to act according to the opinions people have formed of you.

And, critically, those opinions can be very, very unfair.  Let's talk about a school play.  Say Ricky becomes the Director of the school play.  He absolutely knocks himself out making sure that everything goes right.  Lots of rehearsals, schedules, to-do lists, all that.  There are two obvious possibilities as a result:  His actors think he's a cool guy, a together director, and they appreciate him.  Or they think he's an utter twit, a demanding slave-driver, they hate his guts and figure they could do a better play without him.

The more dedicated he is to the success of the play, as a play, the less opportunity Ricky will have to influence those opinions in any way shape or form.  A classic line in this situation is "I don't care what people think, all I care about is that the play is the best it can be."

That's a horrible, ridiculous lie.  Of course he cares what people think.  But he puts his effort into the play, even though it gives him less control over people's opinions, for a few very valid reasons:

[*]If he doesn't try to sway their decisions then he can't be said to have failed.  If they hate him, it's not like he was trying for any other goal.
[*]If they end up hating him, at least he'll have the accomplishment of a really cool play to console him.
[*]The play is (in large part) something he can personally control.  The opinions of others are forever an area where he is at the mercy of... well... others.
[*]He thinks that success in the play will equal success with his peers (probably because he's very, very clueless or optimistic or both)[/list:u]So I think that is what I'm overall getting at with Victory vs. Opinion/Meaning.  That achieving something makes you less likely to be the one who expresses an opinion about the people who were involved.

I'm not really sure, now that I write it this way, that Victory isn't Conflict Resolution.  I could see someone saying (for instance) "I want to make sure that Theresas spotlight soliloquy has every eye in the house glued to her," and I think that would be handled by Victory.

But it's not CR with unlimited Stakes.  If he's saying "I want Theresa to love me for having given her such a great part"... well, there is no room in this rule system to force that sort of outcome.  If you define the Victory, Victory can't deal with the opinions and emotions of others.  If you define the Meaning/Opinion, the best you can do is express how much Ricky wants Theresa's love, or to express Ricky's opinion and hope that she wants his love in return.

Yeah... that's the trick there in a nut-shell.  There's no ability to represent "Theresa Loves Ricky."  Whether Theresa actually loves Ricky or not is a matter upon which the rules system is forever silent.  You can do one of three things:

[*]Desire:  Theresa feels better when Ricky is happy, or when Ricky is near her, or when she's seen with a hot guy (of which Ricky is one), or whatever.
[*]Role:  People treat Theresa as Ricky's girlfriend, and that gives her power at the same time it constrains her.
[*]Threat:  The fact of Ricky makes it hard for her to pursue her goals, even if those goals actually involve getting close to Ricky.[/list:u]Each of those has clear-cut effects, but none of them is "Theresa Loves Ricky."

[Stefan / 1of3]

Hi.

The concept sounds quite interesting.

A few questions/comments:

- How does the GM use dies? Has he got a limited pool, too?

- What's the difference between a Trait and a Role? "Little miss smarty-pants know-it-all" sounds very much like a role.
Could you do without Traits? The rules are very complex already.

- How do Role dice and Threat dice interact? Do they cancel each other one for one?

- Is the distinction between red and blue arrows gone in the second draft? There is nothing about creating stuff for yourself vs. doing stuff on others.

- You somtimes use the word "Trait" for Desires, Roles and Threats. That's a bit confusing.

[hix]

On the issue of players buying down their Traits, maybe if you get the highest Opinion Total, you can elect to take the primary score as Misery on yourself ... and that makes you eligible to buy down a Trait with your secondary score?

I also like your earlier suggestion of spending a Misery dice to create a scene centring around the character's miserable situation.  But I'm not sure what 'a scene centring around the character's miserable situation' would be like, mechanically.

***

1of3, as I understand it - Desires, Threats and Roles are all types of Traits.

[Shawn De Arment]

I downloaded the new rules and I have a few questions:

Question 1
In What if my character has a big sword you say, "You ... never get to define Traits for your character"

But in What does it mean? you describe the 3 flavors of traits.
1. You can establish Desires for your character or others...
2. You can establish Threats against your character or others...
3. You can establish Roles your character plays in the lives of others...

Does establish have a special meaning? And why can you establish Desires and Treats in others, but not Roles?

Question 2
If you don't take a trait that is offered to you, what happens to it and the dice bribe? Can the offering player retrieve those dice?

Question 3
I notice that on the character sheet, you have Traits in addition to Desires, Roles, and Threats. Is this an overflow if you have more than 3 Desires (for instance), or does it serve some other purpose?

[Stefan / 1of3]

Something in the file seems broken. If you read the first draft, Traits are different from Threats, Desires and Promises.

[TonyLB]

1 of 3:  The second draft is different from the first draft.  Traits are no longer a separate thing, as of the second draft.

Shawn:  Question #1:  The "What does it mean?" section is incorrect.  You can only establish Desires, Threats and Roles for other characters.  My bad.

Question #2:  I had it in my head that the player could, at any point, repudiate the Trait and take the Influence die back as Misery.  I don't think it made it into the second draft.  Good catch!

Question #3:  Uh... I didn't edit the character sheet enough.  The Trait section needs a complete makeover.

[Doug Ruff]

After that, if you didn't get... Emotional Content?  Opinions?

I think the word you're looking for might be significance. At least, if I understand what you're trying to achieve, then that's the word for it.

Regards,

Doug

[Allan]

or Reaction?  Result and Reaction.

Opinions confuses me.  I liked Meaning though.

[TonyLB]

Doug:  I really don't think that "Significance" is a better idea than "Meaning".  What they both convey is that the victory itself is insignificant or meaningless, which isn't what I'm trying to get across.  But, honestly, I don't think Victory is really what I'm looking for on the other side, either.

Basically, you have two modes of significance:  there's rising to an external challenge, and then there's the social landscape.

Can these even be handled in the same roll?  Or do they need to be separate things?  I'm inclined to think that they need to be intertwined, because forming opinions about others and validating or refuting their opinions of you is something that you do while you're focussed on other goals.  "Life is what happens while you are making other plans", and all that.

But it gets very funky when your plans are "Make Jenny think I'm cool," rather than "Score a touchdown to win the homecoming game."  Because then you're aiming at the social fabric, so what happens that you're not focussed on?  Do your attempts to influence Jenny cause unexpected opinions from other people (e.g. Marty gives you the well-deserved "Role: Show-off")?  Or, if you're aiming at the social fabric, does your victory imply that only the social change that you're looking for occurs?  That seems... limiting.

[Doug Ruff]

Doug:  I really don't think that "Significance" is a better idea than "Meaning".  What they both convey is that the victory itself is insignificant or meaningless, which isn't what I'm trying to get across.  But, honestly, I don't think Victory is really what I'm looking for on the other side, either.

Hmm, you've got a good point there. I think I'm aiming at "significant in terms of how people are changed by the event." Which is different to "meaning". But looking a this again, the whole thing seems to divide into:

(1) The "Victory" section, which is what people have declared as their goal.

(2) Everything else that results.

Isn't this equivalent to having a Goal on one side, and Consequences on the other (assuming you've gone off calling it Fallout, like it used to be)?

Except that there's two different consequences at work here - the apportionment of Misery, and the actual ability to change people. And the first part is wrapped up in the Victory side of the equation.

So, there's the short term advantage (task success and Misery apportionment) and the long-term consequences (transformative change). And you're fighting for control of both, every single conflict. Is this closer?

[TonyLB]

Yes, that's pretty much what I'm saying.  But the model breaks down when your short-term goal is to affect transformative change.

Which, I suspect, means that the current mixed model is seductive but flawed.  But maybe I'm just missing an important piece.