[FH8] Playtest PDF online

[Eric Provost]

Lars,

I'm really flattered that you'd like to playtest FH8 for me.  I think that would be fantastic.

The switching PI thing is so simple that it's crazy-complex.  An Episode is like a stand-alone story.  Once the Episode is done and this particular piece of story wrapped up then there's nothing really standing in the way of bringing in new characters and putting the previous PCs off to the side.  The shelved PCs aren't in the current Episode because they're just not part of this particular story.  They're not perminantly discarded, they're just 'off stage' for an extended period.  So, in a situation like that there's no reason why the PI from the previous Episode can't be a player in this one with a PC of their own.  And, come to think of it, there's no reason why a PI can't bring in their old PC, from when they were a player, and use that old PC as an NPC. 

Does that set off warning bells for you?  The ol' "GM brings in their favorite NPC or ex-PC to run the party with."-type bells?  Well, let me assure you, it's impossible for that particular bit of dysfunction to occurr with FH8.  The first element of FH8 that prevents this problem are the Episode prep and Good Stuff rules.  Or at least these will be the rules that prevent this problem once they're fleshed out proplerly.  No where in those rules does it say that the PI is supposed to create conflict then solve the conflict with an NPC.  What it does say is that the PI should use the NPCs to create conflict that the CPs and PCs are going to have to resolve.  The second bit is the GM NPC and currency rules.  No matter how kewl your PC was in the previous episode their numbers are reset to NPC-levels when they're used as an NPC. 

You want to bring in your UberKewl SuperSwashbuckler from the previous campaign?  That's dandy.  But you'll probably have to invest all sorts of Coins to make them as Uber as you remember them and then they're still going to be in the scenes just to cause trouble for the PCs, not to solve it for them.

So, in conclusion, the PI is encouraged to have favorite characters, just like everyone else.  And the system should prevent them from abusing that favoritism.

Plus you wrote this at the end of the pdf

The CPs become connected to their PCs and the PI becomes connected to his favorite NPCs.

which conveys to me that position of PI isn't switched, or at least not very often.

Heh.  I'm gonna make a big assumption about you from that statement, Lars.  And I hope you're not offended by it.  You've only played games where an emotional connection to a character happens after a long time playing.  Am I right?

Because I have this theory...and my theory says that..

(Part I:)
Emotional attachment between a player and a character becomes stronger as the player knows and understands the character.  In an RPG situation the players know and understand characters as the characters (under the direction of their players) answer questions.  Those questions can be as deep as "What is the character willing to die for?" or as shallow as "What is the character's favorite color?".  The deeper the question the more we feel we understand the character after we hear the answer.
(Part II:)
Therefore, if a game would like to inject lots of emotional investment into the player/character relationship then it should inspire lots and lots of questions.  The greater the number of questions and the greater the variation on scale of depth in those questions the greater the emotional investment between the character and the players who ask, answer, and hear the questions.

So, my reply to your concern is this;
I didn't intend to imply that the PI would rarely change when I said that I assumed that he'd be attached to his NPCs.  What I did assume was that a few hours playing FH8 would create an attachement to a few characters and that the PI should be able to express that attachment just as the other players are allowed to express their attachement to their characters.

And I expect the PI to become attached to their NPCs in a relatively short amount of time because using the NPCs to ask questions and present conflict of and to the PCs means that the PI has to answer questions about the NPCs too.  All of the same scale and scope that the players have to answer about their characters.  So, based on my theory, I see the PI getting very attached to some NPCs.  Which I see as a wonderful feature to the game.

The Auspice Names
Like I'd told Ron, I totally dropped the ball on that one.  This is the only part of FH8 where I didn't give careful consideration before I included it.  And it shows.  A lot.  It's served as my lesson on careful and intentional game design.  When I chose the Sun/Moon/Stars bit I was looking for words that conveyed the differences between the Auspices.  Words that wouldn't be bogged down in previous gamer-speak and wouldn't be overly-specific.

However, playtest has demonstrated that the words I chose just aren't doing what I need them to do.  They provide confusion in character generation.  Every player had to jot down notes on what those auspices were supposed to be.  So, I need to do some more digging at Thesaurus.com and find the words that mean what I mean when I describe those Auspices.  But first, I think I need some more playtesting so I can get a really firm grip on what the Auspices really mean to me.

And finally...

Yeah, the Auspice of the Sun is about causing ANY kind of pain.  Emotional or physical.  Make someone cry or make someone bleed, it just has to be hurt.

-Eric

[BigElvis]

I did not really give the whole NPCs with fixed scores a thought. You are right(of course).  It is not such a big deal.

I will have to say that you are completely wrong about me only developing emotional ties with characters over long periods of time.

I totally agree with you that it is a matter of the character being fleshed out. This can be done by answering questions like yours(disagree with me if you will, but won't more questions be answered over time and so with time the bond thickens), but for me personally I become more attached to a character if he is more attached to people (or things) in the setting .

But I would say that time is an important factor. Whether this time is spent during character creation, during play or thinking about some dilemma or emotion the character faced/ might face in tonights session on the way to/ from a game.

Other things are also factors, for me playing it like I mean it(as Tony calls it in his thread in actual play) is very important. Especially if the whole group is doing it, it will of course get me very involved in the characters.

I have another more FH8 specific question:
Why preludes? What is it that you want to achieve with preludes that can not be achieved during normal play?
>>edit<<
ok in the rules you say this:

In the Prelude we are going to discover what career path your character is on when we meet him in the story

But couldn't that just as well happen in character creation?

Looking at your actual play preludes I can see a couple of things happening that I think can be a problem with preludes:

a. Some major action and drama is played out in just one scene, that is limited, by the rules, to having only one PC in it.

b. A lot of plot emerges. Plot that the PCs might find very interesting. The problem being that the CPs might not become involved in the episode because the plot from the preludes is just that much more exciting. I can especially see this happening when the PC loses the conflicts in the prelude and takes the other path. What would be more natural than for the CP to put all her energy into getting back onto her own path and possibly getting revenge.

c. The CP was really looking forward to playing a specific character. Then the PI puts forward "the other path" and the CP thinks that's actually a lot cooler and wants to "loose the prelude". This would be especially a real shame if it happened to inexperienced CPs.

[Eric Provost]

Sure, time is still a factor in emotional investment, no matter how you look at it.  All my theory says is how I think I can pack more emotional investment into less time.

Why preludes? What is it that you want to achieve with preludes that can not be achieved during normal play?

Well, the preludes are intended to serve a couple different purposes.  First and most directly they are training wheels for the players.  They force a 1on1 conflict between the PI and each of the CPs making sure that everyone has at least one relatively simple conflict to resovle before the narration of the story creates an opening for the more complex multi-player conflicts.

Secondly, preludes are spotlights for the characters.  Everyone is required to hear a little bit of each character's individual story before the stories start getting blended together.

Finally... I just like preludes.  I picked up the technique when we were playing some Nar-drifty Mage and always liked how it seemed to underline the idea that each PC was an important individual in the story.  I picked up the idea of structured preludes from DitV and it's Initiations. 

Also, while we're on the subject, I'm still working on what the 'subject' of the preludes should be.  I hit upon the idea of the subject being the career of the PC only a few days before we were scheduled to playtest and I'm not 100% sure that it's the best possible choice for FH8.  I mean, it works, it was really interesting in the playtest we ran last week...  But I think I can do better.  The secret to improving the Preludes might be in finding another Something to achieve (game design-wise).

-Eric

[Eric Provost]

In reply to your edit, Lars.

But couldn't that just as well happen in character creation?

It certainly could.  But then it wouldn't be shared with the rest of the players would it?  In our playtest session we discovered that Nik's character would be a Destroyer of Dreams during our game.  When we played it out we discovered why he was a Destroyer of Dreams.  Had it just been an entry on a character sheet we wouldn't have had the privilige to witness the why and how of it.

But then, that applies to anything that exists on the character sheet and not demonstrated during play in any game.  It just so happens that I think it's nifty to illustrate why each character is who they are at the beginning of the game.

a. Some major action and drama is played out in just one scene, that is limited, by the rules, to having only one PC in it.

That's very true.  But my experience shows it as a feature instead of a flaw.

b. A lot of plot emerges. Plot that the PCs might find very interesting. The problem being that the CPs might not become involved in the episode because the plot from the preludes is just that much more exciting. I can especially see this happening when the PC loses the conflicts in the prelude and takes the other path. What would be more natural than for the CP to put all her energy into getting back onto her own path and possibly getting revenge.

I honestly don't see the problem that you see.  The Twinings/Coins/PI relationship in the system provokes the PI to create the conflicts that the CPs have asked for by way of their Twinings.  This relationship means that the PI is almost certainly going to draw the Forces of Change in your Prelude from your Twinings.  If he wants any chance of really having an effect on your character he'll do it that way and earn some coins.  Once the PI draws one of your Twinings into your prelude then revenge is yours if you want it.  After all, so long as that Twining remains on your sheet then the PI is sill tempted to bring that Force of Change into a future conflict.  And how is revenge in an episode any less exciting than the betrayal that occurred in the prelude?

Remember:  The PI doesn't write a plot for the Episodes.  He writes conflicts and problems.  As the CPs use their PCs to resolve those conflicts the plot emerges as a result.  Therefore the PI and the CPs can never disagree on what the plot should be, only on what the next conflict should be.  And that's resolved in the Scene Framing rules and the Settling Everything Else rule.

c. The CP was really looking forward to playing a specific character. Then the PI puts forward "the other path" and the CP thinks that's actually a lot cooler and wants to "loose the prelude". This would be especially a real shame if it happened to inexperienced CPs.

Ya can't "loose the prelude".  That would be an infraction of the rules. Consider this;
CP:  "My character is a Fireman!"
PI:   "Forces conspire to make your character an Astronaut."
CP:  "Astronaut is cooler!  My character wants to be an Astronaut!"
PI:  "Ok, you play the Astronaut side and I'll play the Fireman side.  Let's see how he begins the story."

Then, at the beginning of the Episode the CP might suggest a scene where he seeks bloody, bloody revenge on the Mission Controller that the PI used to oust the PC from the space program.  Then the PI might say something like;  "Cool!  Hey, who's gonna be the SD?  Hey SD, where's this bloody revenge gonna take place?"

Everything you've mentioned you see as a flaw I see as a feature.

-Eric

[Eric Provost]

Based on the feedback of this thread and the actual play thread combined with the feedback of my play group, I've done a bit of updating to the pdf file.  Things like Creating Setting, Auspices, and Currency have been tweaked.  Especially Auspices.  They're under the heading of Temptations now.  I haven't changed what I wanted those categories to be, only the handles I've attached to them to remind the players what they're supposed to be.

I also did some tweaking to the Consequences.  I tried to show a greater amount of change to the character for each stage of Consequence.  I also got over the idea that changes to Twinings should be reserved for the higher levels.

I suspect that there may be something inherently broken with the conflict resolution system.  On each individual play a player often has to choose between earning more Pain or loose ground on winning the stakes.  But I've been tying the Consequences to the idea that more Pain = More Change = Interesting no matter what.  Therefore earning Pain isn't really a bad thing to the player.  Therefore why not earn tons of Pain AND go for winning the conflict.  The hard choices I was looking for in the system seem to have been drastically softened.

-Eric

[BigElvis]

Remember:  The PI doesn't write a plot for the Episodes.  He writes conflicts and problems.  As the CPs use their PCs to resolve those conflicts the plot emerges as a result.  Therefore the PI and the CPs can never disagree on what the plot should be, only on what the next conflict should be.  And that's resolved in the Scene Framing rules and the Settling Everything Else rule

Connections
Before you're done writing the prep work for the
episode you need to make sure that every PC is
somehow connected to the Subject. If you can't
connect them directly to the Subject then you should
use their Twinings to connect them to one of the forces
of change for the Subject. There's only one Subject for
every episode and every player should have some
reason for caring how it turns out.

I think that roleplaying is most interesting if you have many PCs working together or against each other, preferably in the same scene. Your paragraph on connections seemed to me to be supportive of this.
The plot from the preludes will certainly be very interesting, I just think that it might take time from the scenes that are connected to the Subject. That doesn't really have to be a problem, I just personally think it isn't optimal.

Temptations
I like that you changed it from Auspices to Temptations. You would have to explain to "caesar" to me though. And i don't really see the connection between the titles of the temptations "Atlas" is the name of a mythological character, but the two other are latin words.

[Eric Provost]

Don't sweat the titles of the Temptations.  They're being dumped & simplified.

-Eric