[FH8] Bronze Age Lizardfolk and the Gods of the Dream World.

[Eric Provost]

I had a very specific idea in mind before we sat down for what the setting and conflicts would be like.  FH8, true to it's design, injected so much collaboration from the other players that the world and it's story was nothing like what I'd expected. 

It was better.

It was amazing.

The big lowdown:

We scheduled ourselves a 6-11pm game time.  Nik and Ullyses were both expected, but for various reasons I expected both of them to be late getting there.  So, Jason and I sat and talked about the system for about an hour while we waited.  I could tell that I needed to cement certain aspects of the game better for myself.  I was having a hell of a time trying to describe them to Jason.

Nik arrived while we were discussing and it just got to the point where Ully was too late to worry about (he never did show last night) so we started.  Now, I didn't prepare anything for the session.  Just character sheets and the playtest copies of the game.  No stories, no NPCs, no conflicts, nada.  At least, nothing that got used.

We started at the beginning.  I made the first four cards on the list for Creating Setting and handed them out.  Actually, I messed up and made the 4th card "A Place Connected to a Thing" instead of "A Place Connected to a People".  It turned out to be a minor issue.  We handed out the cards randomly and Nik got card 1, Lisa card 2, Jason card 3, and I got card 4.  Nik started right off by making me wonder if the Setting rules were broken.  He proposed a world where "Outside the world there is dust and infinity and within the world there is also infinity but is bordered on all sides."  Then he said something about a spiral and and there are other worlds than these, blah, blah, blah.  So, immediately I'm wondering to myself;  Is this a viable world, or do I just think it sucks?  Because if it's not a viable world, then my system needs tightening, to let Nik know what he should have proposed instead.  Before I could process that thought too much, we all ganged up on Nik and told him to stop waxing poetic and tell us what the dang world is like.  We find out that what he meant was the world is made of dreams and is ever changing.

A return to the furrowed brow for the rest of us.

But that's ok, because at that point I knew I had a mechanism set up for me to tell him what I thought of the dreamworld.  At first I proposed just a modification to the dreamworld, where the more people there are around, the more solid the dream becomes.  Jason pointed out that I really didn't change much.  I decided to stretch the use of the rules a bit more and proposed a world where huge chunks of rock floated on fluffly purple clouds where people sailed back and forth between the different rocks over the clouds.  Now it was time to bid.  Jason and I were willing to bid for the Cloud World, but Nik was more willing than us to spend Coins.  He had faith in his world and we weren't skeptical enough to out-bid him.  So, the Dreamworld was instated.  Nik spent 4 coins to keep the Dreamworld, and it had a tangable effect on his ability to controll his story later.

Yeah.  That beginning was really rocky.  Jason had some concerns and I'll look forward to his post to see how those concerns are still sitting with him.

But then, it got really good.

Lisa proposed that there were two kinds of people;  The Divine, the people who lived in the Places Between Worlds who were etherial, and the Lizardfolk, who lived in the Dreamworld and worshiped the Divine as gods on occation. 

We all dug it, no one bid against it, we moved on.

Jason proposed that the Divine had no need of technology or Things, and that the Lizardfolk were bronze-age miners.  Tin from mountains and copper from valleys.

We all dug it, no one bid against it, we moved on.

I proposed that there was a large city on a large mountain, the site of the world's largest tin mine.  Problem is, the tin mine won't stop 'dreaming'.  As many people as there are around the mine, it changes all the time, making it extremely dangerous to work in.

Jason didn't like cities. He proposed that the Lizardfolk should be tribal and that their largest gathering shouldn't be more than a few thousand people.  I dug it and instated it.

No one bid against it, we moved on.

At that point we stopped for character creation.  We discussed who should be the PI, and if that was the appropriate time to choose the PI.  As I'd just assumed that everyone would want me to be the PI that's what I proposed and got accepted.  Then there was another important question;  Who could the characters be?  Could they be Lizardfolk?  Could they be Divine?  Could they be either?  After a short discussion about the 'party mentality' and how it wasn't necessary in FH8 we decided that any player should be able to choose any of the People that had already been introduced as a character.  I'll let the other players chime in to tell the specifics of how character creation went for them, what they thought of it, and what's neat about their characters.

As the PI, I sat back, listened to the information on the characters they created, and took notes on their Twinings.  That was all I needed.

I'm going to intentionally put a break right here and come back in a few minutes to talk about how the Preludes went.

-Eric

[Eric Provost]

The Preludes.

We started the first prelude with Lisa's character.  She's a Lizardfolk shaman.  A controller of the dreams.  A powerful one.  I proposed that someone wanted to turn her into a tin-miner to get her out of the way.  I narrated something like "Ok, you're in the settlement of Medina (oh, which is what we called the mine-town I'd proposed during Setting Creation), and you're being brought up on charges in front of the tribal leader of Medina."

Here's where it suddenly got very cool;

We'd agreed that Jason would be the Setting Director for Lisa's Prelude.  So, after my narration of the set-up to the conflict (Lisa's character vs. Tribal Leader), I turned to Jason and asked him:  Hey, Setting Director... Who's the tribal leader of Medina?  Where is the trial being taken place?  Who's there?  And while I could keep my mind on the conflict at hand, I could sit back and listen as Jason described the gnarled old leader, Gharsh, the raised dias he was sitting on, and the crowd gathered to watch the public trial.  Oh, and that Lisa's character was chained and prostrate in front of Gharsh.

Fan-freakin-tastic.

Suddenly I had a bucket-load of fresh information to riff off of while I was narrating my end of the conflict.  And so did Lisa.  She spent a few coins to narrate the crowd cheering for her case (actually she spent coins to draw cards and offered the cheering crowd as the narration to justify the draw) and I focused on Gharsh and his yet un-named Advisor who did most of the talking.  Mid-conflict I narrated that Gharsh ordered the trial moved to the scene of the crime and turned to Jason to describe what the scene looked like.  Not only did he give us that, but he also narrated what the trip there was like.

Gold.

Now, most of the conflict for Lisa's character isn't important right now, but one bit is.  Lisa narrated two things that I had to agree to during the conflict, due to the play of the cards.  The first was that her character never lies.   The second was that there were three buildings in Medina that weren't destroyed... they just never were.  Stay tuned, it adds up to something cool in the end.  Oh, and she got her way.  Her character was NOT condemned to the mines.

We moved onto Jason's character and had Nik as Setting Director.  Jason's character is a Lizardfolk Waterfinder.  Basically a mystical tribal plumber.  I proposed that forces would conspire to make him a fighter.  A holy warrior for his people.  The nifty thing about this scene, from my point of view, were the Sharsh.  See, in character creation Jason created an Advantage out of his hatred for the Sharsh.  And, after I mentioned that the PI isn't inclined to include the Sharsh in the story unless it's also a Twining, the Sharsh became a Twining.  But... Who are the Sharsh?  Neither of us knew.  I'd just assumed that they were a lazy tribe of Lizardfolk raiders who would rather kill for their water than plumb for it.  Wow, was I wrong.  In Nik's hands, the Sharsh are a six-limbed race of cat warriors who live underwater and swim with fish-like tails.  They habitually raid the Lizardfolk settlements in search of eggs and hatchlings for food.

The Conflict system directed us down a bloody battle between Sharsh raiders and the people of the settlement.  It was tight.  It was close.  It was damned exciting!  In the end, Jason's character was bloody and beaten, but he was still a plumber.

Finally we got to Nik's character.  He was the only one to play a Divine.  He proposed that his Divine was a map-maker.  Someone who travels the Dreaming and plotted it out so that it would be safe to travel for other Divine.  He's here in Medina to map the mine.  I proposed that someone wanted him to be a Destroyer.  Someone who returns the firm parts of the Dreaming back to the fluid and ever-changing form of Dreaming.  Lisa was Setting director.  The scene played out in a pocket realm that was near all the other worlds but only just touching them.  The PC was on his way from that 'between place to Medina when a messenger intercepted him to give him a message.  That message being that he was to go to Medina and destroy three residences where Dream Criminals were sheltered.  Nik lost.  It was close but he lost.  The character turned in that scene from a mapper to a destroyer. 

Ok, so neat thing #1 about Nik's prelude was the question;  Would Nik have gotten his way about being a mapper instead of a destroyer if he hadn't spent 4 of his 5 coins in Setting Creation?

Neat thing #2 being an implied bit of setting, based upon the cards and narration of Lisa's prelude and the end of Nik's conflict.  I intentionally brought things full circle so that it was Nik's character that destroyed the buildings that Lisa's character was accused of.  BUT!  We've already established that those buildings were never there.  So, we ended up with the implication that, when the Divine destroy something they really destroy it!

Whew.

That's gotta be my personal record for longest post to the Forge.  And I hardly scratched all the cool interaction that went on last night.

I can see so many places where the rules need polishing and detailing, but they worked.  We crammed no less than 2.5 hours of fun into 3 hours of gaming.  Two and a half hours of rock solid "oooooooh!!!!"-flavored gaming.

Lisa, Nik, Jason...
Anything you'd like to add?

-Eric

[Sydney Freedberg]

This is cool with a mighty coolness. Big question: How much of this coolness could you have achieved with Universalis (or some other well-designed collaborative storytelling game)? How much of it was driven specifically by FH8's unique mechanics, e.g. the Hero/Villain ratings, which intrigued me.

[xenopulse]

Yep, very cool.

I think Universalis is a different beast.

But I'm also interested in how the H/V thing played out, if at all.

[Jason Morningstar]

This is cool with a mighty coolness. Big question: How much of this coolness could you have achieved with Universalis (or some other well-designed collaborative storytelling game)? How much of it was driven specifically by FH8's unique mechanics, e.g. the Hero/Villain ratings, which intrigued me.

Hey, Jason here, and big thanks to Eric and Lisa for inviting me onto their red-sun egg pillar last night.  Super fun.

After digesting what happened, this was a question I was going to ask as well.  FH8 gleefully borrows from lots of really good games, but the hero/villain rating stands out as unique and cool.  It is a very simple switch that the player uses to define the nature of a conflict, and it works fine in play.  As I told Eric, I am totally stealing it. 

In play it has a fairly small mechanical effect, though. It can be set four ways, 4/1, 3/2, 2/3, and 1/4, and I wasn't seeing a huge difference in either behavior or outcome based on the decision each player made.  More reactions to the playtest later.

--Jason

[Eric Provost]

How much of this coolness could you have achieved with Universalis...?

Well, like Christian said, Uni is a different beast.  And, problem is;  I don't really know for sure.  I've never played Uni, I've never read Uni.  I've only stolen bits and pieces I've heard about Uni.  But, if I were to guess, I'd say that the coolness level is probably about the same.  We were jazzed at how well the collaborate setting creation worked.

The H/V thing?  Good, but not so strong.  Yet.  That's possibly because the HV traits come up only once per character per conflict.  So, with two characters each in three conflicts we got to hear six declarations of what makes a hero and what makes a villian.  Also, we were able to see Jason's character shift a bit.  He began as a gruff 2/3 (H/V) rating, leaningn towards his own purposes I assume.  At the end of the battle with the Sharsh he had taken 11 Pain and chose to move his H/V rating one point.  He declared that the scene, while not turning the character into a holy warrior, did make him into more of a Hero, as he selflessly defended the hatchlings of his people against the bloodthristy cat people.

So, I'm looking forward to playing with the current version a little more, to see if the rules do bring the H/V thing into a brighter light.

Jason,
Yeah, the 4-options thing does seem limited.  But I don't want to change the numbers any...  Perhaps if there were some form of narration that was supposed to accompany the use of the traits... Hmmm... But that'll be for another version.

-Eric

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

I'm seeing everything I'd hoped to see about the Hero/Villain rules, which as with everyone else I think are the real standout features of the system.

I mean, six declarations of this kind during a single session ... that's pretty good, right? I support your desire to make these rules shine even more, but hey, give yourself credit. Compare your experience to play in which such issues never even appear or are considered, or are taken as given-per-character with no nuances or choices of consequence.

Best,
Ron

[Eric Provost]

*L*

Too true Ron.  Thanks for the perspective there.  I hadn't really considered that.

I think the rules, as-is, may shine later on when a player starts showing some contrasts in their opinions of heros and villains and how it relates to their character.  I'm imagining the session down the road where one player asks another "Hey, didn't you say that killing baby Sharsh was Villainous last week?  So how has it become Heroic this week?"

But yeah.. still more shining.  Maybe just a little.  Maybe a lot.

-Eric

[Paideuma]

Salutations -

This is my first post, and I'm not sure how constructive it's going to be, but here goes nothing.  :\  I'm kinda verbose; it's a chronic disability.

Praises upon praises for the game Eric created.  It was a complete and total blast!

I've been gaming for 7 years (Alternity, D&D [d20 - 3.5], d20 Star Wars, Gurps, Dogs, and a couple "home grown" systems made by Eric and others), though I'm new to the "narrativist" gaming style (some brief experience with Dogs [back in college...]).  I found the concept interesting and with merit, but I found that for me, a setting I personally found intriguing was required in order for me to enjoy the gaming experience.

This game is all about the characters.  The fact that the setting is something we all create is like telling the artist painting your portrait what colors you want them to use.  The artist is going to paint your portrait either way, and you'll still be the subject matter.  The rest is all color.  It seemed a counterintuitive phenomenon that a game where the setting is as fluid as this is should focus on the characters, but due to the H/V system, it's the point.  We shout and laugh, and create and dazzle each other with our sparkling pallet of setting, but, in the end, the infinite possibilities cancel out the importance of there being infinite possibilities.  So we've got a purple cloud world or dream world or medieval world... that's fine.  Are your characters going to be heroes or villains in it?

In Sci-Fi novels, they use fantastical sciences to create a universe, but the good sci-fi is not about that universe, it's about moral dilemma.  Raising the bar to infinity simply allows the setting to remove any obstacle that might stand in the way of forcing the character into a moral dilemma.  Sort of like the phrase, "Character is what you are when no one is watching."  Or, "If you could have any super power, what would it be?"  Sure, we say we'd like to fly or something simple, but would we really?  If the limit of our scope and power wasn't checked would each of us move toward a form of hero or villain?  Would we try to rule the world?  Why?  Moving the setting from being "the point" or even "one of the points" of the story to "the color" of the story forces the characters to move in their purest forms.

We as players sat around and let our brains wander and dance on the possibilities of setting.  It was our first time here, and we created a fun and exciting world.  I'll bet, however, that with time, we describe less and less stuff for color and start using this fluid form to put each other in more and more difficult situations.  The choice of color is only important if it enhances the form its coloring.  So I can summon an army of zombie babies who destroy a town.  I can say that one of the zombie babies was a child of yours who died in a tragic accident.  I can summon anything I need to bring the story right back to you.  "What path will you choose?"  I'll squeeze you with infinity just to see how you form.  I can bake you in a kiln just to see what color your varnish turns out to be or does it crack off?  I'm no longer limited in my abilities to test you, so I will.  The question is how will you respond?

Again, fantastic game, amazing experience, delightful fun.  I'm interested to see if it turns out like I predict.

(I hope this post didn't violate any rules.  :\)

-Nik

[xenopulse]

Welcome to the Forge, Nik.

I am now curious as to: What'll happen in the long run? The setting creation, twinings, currency exchange rules, and H/V rules all interact in a way that, after several sessions, will either continue to inspire and interweave, or get people bogged down. And I think only prolonged playtesting will bring that out.

[Jason Morningstar]

Here's some off-the-cuff thoughts on the playtest, some of which I've already shared with Eric.

Handling time was high.  This is probably something that will resolve itself with familiarity, but it is worth noting.  We did three single-player conflicts in what, 2.5 hours? 

The setting director/principal instigator split works very well.  I really enjoyed both creating setting (it kept me involved in a conflict that my character was not participating in) and reacting to Nik's creation.  How well this would work if all the characters were involved, rather than one at a time?  Would the setting color suffer if the setting director had to split her time between playing her character and describing cool stuff?  Or vice versa?  In fact, how *does* multiple participant conflict, helping, etc work?  We didn't try.

In a game itching to quantify everything, the PI still has wide metagame latitude - just a note.  If you are going for an "among equals" vibe by controlling PI currency acquisition, it did not feel that way to me. 

What's up with the "Fantasy" in FH8?  The system could roll with pretty much anything.  Why limit it?  I know the answer, but I have to call Eric out on this one!

Nik's crazy initial setting idea ground the process to a halt for a long time.  It pushed the boundaries but nothing broke.  I think we were all taken by surprise, though, expecting, "It's like 13th century England, but with carnivorous kangaroos" or something.  I am concerned that the bidding mechanic will just piss people off when their ideas are dismissed - I prefer the gentler collaborative approach of, say, PTA. 

The conflict resolution system took a while to get my mind around, and even then I felt unsteady with the math.  Time and experience would fix this, but I think you've got to get people up and running fast.

I was playing hard, and chose to ignore fallout during my scene, taking what I got.  Turns out what I got supported my experience, and in fact was preferable, as far as I'm concerned, to the "lesser" fallout options.  Why not go for broke?  Flipping a H/V point will always be appropriate. 

Thanks again,

Jason

[Jason Morningstar]

I am now curious as to: What'll happen in the long run? The setting creation, twinings, currency exchange rules, and H/V rules all interact in a way that, after several sessions, will either continue to inspire and interweave, or get people bogged down. And I think only prolonged playtesting will bring that out.

Something that occurred to me - the PI is trying to introduce twinings into play and interrelate the twinings of various characters.  This seems like the sort of thing that could lead to an end-game condition, where the PI could tie all the twinings into a large story knot and declare the tale finished. It wouldn't really work as written, but I bet if this were a design goal, it could be tweaked so that it would work.

[Paideuma]

The setting director/principal instigator split works very well.  I really enjoyed both creating setting (it kept me involved in a conflict that my character was not participating in) and reacting to Nik's creation.  How well this would work if all the characters were involved, rather than one at a time?

As I recall, multiple characters were involved.  When you were the Setting Director, I had a great idea, so I gave it to you.  When Lisa was Setting Director and I was the player, I had some fun ideas so I gave them to her.  I think having a structured system of hierarchal control is important.  It asks a lot from a group to say "just work well together - and be creative!"  Where's the level of accountability?  Having a single Setting Director didn't stop the groupthink, but it allowed one person to present those ideas - giving him or her temporary control.  In less structured situations it's not a group decision its the decision of the person with the most dominant personality.

The risk I see is what if a setting director creates something no one likes?  I'm not talking about creating something boring - the punishment for that is they don't get coins awarded to them at the end of the scene.  I'm talking about creating a system or race or setting that isn't as fun.  Like when I created the Shash, what if I'd said that the Shash were particular type of flower and that this flower very pretty but had no ceremonial, medicinal, spiritual, supernatural, or otherwise interesting aspects.  Suddenly, Jason's character hates this useless pretty flower.  Yeah, you could spice it up by saying that his wife left him for a gardener of this flower or something, but it's definitely not as interesting as what I actually came up with.  I was setting director so what I say not only set the scene but had some pretty lasting effects, akin to the far-reaching affects of the initial setting creation.  But in the case of initial setting creation, there is a very structured system by which ideas are made into "official" setting.

Perhaps the role of Setting Director could over ridden by a popular vote, if everyone felt strongly enough?  I admit a situation in which a gamer in our current group would make an uninteresting creation would virtually never happen, but the possibility should be examined.

In fact, how *does* multiple participant conflict, helping, etc work?  We didn't try.

I'm interested to see how this works as well.

I am concerned that the bidding mechanic will just piss people off when their ideas are dismissed - I prefer the gentler collaborative approach of, say, PTA.

Maybe its personal preference, my Mormon upbringing, my love of quantitative situations, or my inherent correctness ( :P ) but I prefer a more structured creation system.  People could get just as pissed off without bidding only there would be no way to resolve it.  I, by bidding, was saying "this is important to me, and I'm willing to put myself at a disadvantage in the future to get my way right now."  Perhaps our group dynamic is different (we've got two self-important Westerners, two arrogant Yankees, and Jason who I don't know well enough yet to assign to a modifier) but I could easily see a more loose "collaborative" approach resulting in argument and overall dissatisfaction.  I wish to also note that again, there was collaboration, but by having one person "in charge" of each "item" it allowed for a filter or point-of-contact, e.g. I made my poetic and useless world description then through talking about it with Eric and Lisa and Jason solidified a few points of it (the solid dream parts where there are lots of people, etc).  That was collaboration without bidding.  The bidding came when Eric proposed a radically different idea that didn't build on mine in any way.  Then it was a bid war between Eric's world and my modified (by the collaboration) world.

The conflict resolution system took a while to get my mind around, and even then I felt unsteady with the math.  Time and experience would fix this, but I think you've got to get people up and running fast.

I've run some stats on my computer from the book and it's a remarkably robust system for 1 on 1 conflict.  I don't have time to go through all the possibilities of multiplayer statistics, though.  We'll just have to game it and see.

As far as getting people up and running fast, I agree.  I do think this game normally would do that though.  We began the game with creating a universe.  Admittedly, I through a curveball which caused some choking, but I created a very extreme situation purposefully.  I'd recommend people beginning the game with something a bit simpler which would allow people to become used to the game before dealing with the wild psychological affects of staying in a malleable world.  In that situation, the game would get people going quickly.  You'll have to pause later when conflict begins, but that won't happen for a little while.  First you create the universe, then the characters, then you resolve conflict.  I'd say the game (potentially) does start with enough of a bang that players are emotionally involved enough to put up with learning a new conflict resolution system when needed.  They've got a character they made from scratch in a universe they drew from nothing.  They're already wrapped up in it!  (At least I was.)

Post numba dos!

-Nik

[Jason Morningstar]

As I recall, multiple characters were involved.  When you were the Setting Director, I had a great idea, so I gave it to you.  When Lisa was Setting Director and I was the player, I had some fun ideas so I gave them to her.

Right.  I'm talking about multiple player characters involved in a conflict.  When the three of us are fighting for our lives against flesh-eating marsupials, and I've also got to be setting director.  If there's too much to think about all at once, something has to give.  Maybe it isn't an issue - play will tell. 

--Jason

[Paideuma]

As I recall, multiple characters were involved.  When you were the Setting Director, I had a great idea, so I gave it to you.  When Lisa was Setting Director and I was the player, I had some fun ideas so I gave them to her.

Right.  I'm talking about multiple player characters involved in a conflict.  When the three of us are fighting for our lives against flesh-eating marsupials, and I've also got to be setting director.  If there's too much to think about all at once, something has to give.  Maybe it isn't an issue - play will tell.

I agree with that.

-Nik