[TMW] Practical GM advice and GNS analysis

[Eero Tuovinen]

Seems I don't have anything urgent going right now, so I'll tell you about my TMW experiences from this week. I played two sessions with two different groups. Here's the quick lowdown about the groups:

First group: this is a group of old acquaintances (I should say friends, almost, as we've played together for years now.) I got together several years ago for my last (to date) long fantasy campaign, played with heavily modified D&D rules. Lately the guys have been playing traditional D&D with my brother Markku (The Worlds Largest Dungeon, if you can believe it), with occasional other games like Donjon and Tri-Stat superheroes. Pretty traditional, although I've played InSpectres and such with them now and then. It's a continuous, leisurely puzzle for me to figure out what these guys are really looking for in a game.

Second group: a "freshmen game" for our university roleplaying club. I ended up with a group of one freshman-roleplayer, one roleplaying newbie and one who was neither freshman or newbie. The newbie of the group is a nice girl who apparently just decided to find out what rpgs are about, while the two others were attracted by TMW.

I'll tell you something about my experiences GMing The Mountain Witch, below. Then I'll tell you about my insights concerning the first group, above, because I found that quite interesting. In a nutshell, TMW might have finally helped me to realize who's who in the group in GNS terms.

GMing experience: GMing TMW feels somewhat pointless after lots of Dust Devils, because the main GM job is to throw out challenges for the characters... except the only purpose of those challenges is to while away time between character exposition scenes. Certainly a change of perspective. I found that I could just use the exact same stuff in both first sessions without much difference. A rules question: is the GM supposed to know the Dark Fates of characters and construct bangs for them? I interpreted against that, and instead emphasized for the players that the only person who could set up his character's dark past would be himself. I wouldn't even know where to begin if I tried to hook the character, because I wouldn't know the fate.

A little trick: I'll tell you about a little trick I consider now an integral part of playing TMW conflicts. Each character is represented by a die, right? So you give each player a die, his die. Make it the color of his poker chips, too. Then have lots of GM dice in their own color. When lots of ninjas attack the characters or whatever, put those GM dice side by side on the table and start the free-and-clear with the players, figuring out who conflicts with whom and over what. Set dice of opposing characters against each other on the table, set dice on the same side next to each other. If somebody aids somebody else, have the aider put his die on top of the other's die. Feel free to use the dice as miniatures, too: surround a player die with the ninja dice, move them around when characters circle each other, that kind of thing. Makes the rules so simple that anybody understands the importance of choosing who's against who and who aids whom.

A question: If there are two simultaneous conflicts a character cannot participate in both, right? So if there's an avalanche that hits each character separately, and one character aids another, what happens to the aiding character? I had this situation with the first group, and a number of characters opted to aid one instead of defending themselves. I decided on the spot that they were "unresisting" in their own conflict, and thus their die-result would be considered zero for their own part, likely causing a big loss.

The other way to judge the above would be to allow simultaneous participation in several conflicts, so that a character could help both himself and another character. I don't know which would be better.

How the second game went: The players were reticient in revealing their dark fates, but they also assured me that they were just preparing for the right moment in that regard. The newbie was fine with the game, and grogged it the way newbies tend to do. There was some slight betrayal already, and the situation is interesting with two characters being tentatively distrusting and the newbie's character being the best friend for both.

How the first game went: The game went fine on the surface, but I got the feeling that the players weren't really latching onto the purpose of the game. It didn't help that they have a very old-skool "manner" of play, with lots of chatting and slow, frequently pointless play. One of the players was an exception: he's always been a trouble child of the group, with senseless, aesthetically weird stuff. He's always switching characters in D&D, and not generally giving much to the game apart from chaotic whimsies. Not much social insight, either, so he doesn't usually grog it if his notions are flying high over everybody else's head.

For some reason, this time the game and the player clicked in a big way. The other players were doing minimal character role depiction and were pretty much all about hunting the witch's minions. This one player was constantly revealing his dark fate for both practical reasons ("my character knows where to find shelter from the snow-storm") and for the kicks ("my character makes a mysterious sign to the minion, and he acknowledges it"). At the end of the session the others were pretty sure that he's the witch's minion himself. The player told me after the session, to prepare me for the next one, that the character is actually the brother of the witch returning home. Didn't tell me which his fate is, though.

Gamists and TMW: My take is that the other players of my old group are strongly gamist-leaning, and I'm flummoxed why I didn't realize it earlier. One theory is that they're used to those priorities after playing D&D for a year, the other is that our old campaign actually was gamist-interesting. The latter is completely possible, although it's high-texture problem-solving and political gamism, then.

What happens with gamists and TMW? Assume that the players latch onto the "mission" of killing the witch. The game's structure puts pressure against the group coherence in a big way. The answer: drop all the fucking roleplaying that's endangering group coherency, so as to lessen any pressure for non-optimal play. Go into pawn stance and tactical priorities in a big way, and in no case ever, ever reveal anything about your dark fate.

Narrativist TMW: That problem player I mentioned? For me this is a huge breakthrough, but I realized after that game that he's been a friggin' narrativist all this time, just with rather weird aesthetics and relatively undeveloped communication skills. I remember how, when we played my fantasy campaign, I was vacillating between gamist and zilch-player ("What's the deal with this weirdo?"), but now I recognize that all his weird stuff with friendly ogres, misused druid magic and other freak characters was self-generated narrativist situation. Tragically, through those years we apparently weren't clicking with each other most of the time, because the guy really isn't very good in taking cues from other folks. (My hybrid D&D was very much about spinning the GM-provided scenario to your own direction, and most of my stuff wasn't readily spinnable for him.) But put him into authority position over his character like TMW does... pure explosion. Really, really strange.

How is TMW similar with Sorcerer: I suspect that TMW is like Sorcerer in starting slowly and amassing momentum for the first session. It seems similar. I think that both of those games will find their legs in a big way in the second session. We'll see.

Well, those are some things about my TMW games. I'll write more after we get second session under our belt, if anything interesting comes up.

[timfire]

Hi Eero,

It's great to hear that you had a chance to play my game, and two games at that!

GMing experience: GMing TMW feels somewhat pointless after lots of Dust Devils, because the main GM job is to throw out challenges for the characters... except the only purpose of those challenges is to while away time between character exposition scenes. Certainly a change of perspective... A rules question: is the GM supposed to know the Dark Fates of characters and construct bangs for them? I interpreted against that, and instead emphasized for the players that the only person who could set up his character's dark past would be himself. I wouldn't even know where to begin if I tried to hook the character, because I wouldn't know the fate.

I've never actually playered Dust Devils, so I can't compare. I think (hope?) GM'ing the game will become more interesting as the game progresses. As the players reveal more and more of their Fates, and as players begin to develop alliances and grudges between characters, you can start using those things to tempt the players to turn against one another. It becomes less about external adversity and more about finding ways to tempt the players. I would really like to hear how your experience of GM'ing changes (or stays the same) as the game progresses.

And yeah, the GM doesn't normally know which Fates the players have. In the beginning of the game, I usually focus on external adversity. Then I start introducing trust-related bangs. I don't start introducing Fate-related bangs until after players start revealing their Fates... Is that enough explaining, or would you like me to elaborate more?

Your "little trick": I never thought to give players different colored dice, but I definitely use the dice as miniatures to help explain who's attacking/helping who in group conflicts.

A question: If there are two simultaneous conflicts a character cannot participate in both, right? So if there's an avalanche that hits each character separately, and one character aids another, what happens to the aiding character?...The other way to judge the above would be to allow simultaneous participation in several conflicts, so that a character could help both himself and another character. I don't know which would be better.

I usually run that type of conflict that if you help someone else out, you both succeed. That's just me, you can do it however you like. The logic is that it's kinda the same in combat. If you help someone else out, and you kill the enemy, you reap a certain benefit yourself. But if you don't like that logic, that's fine.

Gamists and TMW: This is a sorta difficult question to answer. The gamists that I've played with so far are mostly entrenched DnD-type players. So I'm not sure if they are reacting out of "true" gamist tendencies, or if they're acitng out of entrenched DnD habits. That said, most of the time, I have had an extremely hard time tempting them to turn against one another. Whenever I throw a bang out, they're always like, "He's just trying to trick us! We must stick together!" (No, I was trying to tempt you, not trick you, there's a difference.) They tend to stick together and use lots of trust. IME, though they love the color of mistrust, when push comes to shove, they tend to stick together. I haven't had any problem with people revealing their Fates, but when they do, it's always qualified that they aren't really "bad"... It's like, "Yes, I made a pact with the Witch... but I had my reasons and now I will turn my back on him and help you out!" A couple of times I also encountered this phenomonon where the players will stick together until the Witch is killed, but once that happens they turn on each other.

What happens with gamists and TMW? Assume that the players latch onto the "mission" of killing the witch. The game's structure puts pressure against the group coherence in a big way. The answer: drop all the fucking roleplaying that's endangering group coherency, so as to lessen any pressure for non-optimal play.

Yeah, this goes along with my experience.

How is TMW similar with Sorcerer: I suspect that TMW is like Sorcerer in starting slowly and amassing momentum for the first session. It seems similar. I think that both of those games will find their legs in a big way in the second session. We'll see.

Yeah, IME, the game usually starts slow and builds speed as the game progresses. This goes back to the GM'ing thing. When the players start revealing their Fates is when the game really starts moving.

You definately need to write back after you play some more!

[Eero Tuovinen]

Gamists and TMW:

Yep, 100% same experience. Might be just D&D, though. Not that it matters for practice whether the phenomenon is gamism or D&D.

Other than that, I'll write more after we play more. I like the game very much, and fully intend to master it with time. I especially like the conflict resolution system with the free-use successes and "one man, one die" principle.

[JC]

And yeah, the GM doesn't normally know which Fates the players have.

really ?

you just deal the Fate cards face down ?

if so, I completely misunderstood that part of the rule-book

my "must control everything" GMing habit must have selectively blinded me again :)


JC

[timfire]

And yeah, the GM doesn't normally know which Fates the players have.

really ?

you just deal the Fate cards face down ?

if so, I completely misunderstood that part of the rule-book

my "must control everything" GMing habit must have selectively blinded me again :)

Gawd, I had to re-read that section to double check what I wrote, and I guess I did leave it completely un-specified, either way. Now that I think about it, I use to have a paragraph in the draft version where I something along the lines of "though the GM doesn't normally know what cards the players have, the players can discuss the matter with the GM if they have something special they want to happen." I took that paragrpah out because I thought it suggested that the player was suppose to talk with the GM. But I guess I never specified about the cards outside of that deleted paragraph.

To me, I think it's still OK if the GM knows, but I think the GM has to use restraint and NOT start throwing out Fate-related Bangs before the players start revealing their Fate. Fates are definately something that's suppose to be set-up by the player, not the GM.

I guess that's another "clarification" to go up on my website.

[Eero Tuovinen]

We played another session with the second group, and brought the game to end. (The first group's still waiting for a second session due to scheduling difficulties.) There were some... interesting developments, and we used the rules pretty innovatively, I think. Let me tell you some details:

Bringing in players in the second session: You would expect that this would be asking for trouble, but it worked just fine for me. My technique was to have chargen, and then run the character alone up the mountain, with all the other players thinking up shit he'd meet on the way. Of course, being alone, he had a snowball's chance in hell, and was quite happy to join the crew halfway up. Crucial methods for this "climbing collage" were
a) foreshadowing: the players and I thought up features of the mountain that would be used later on, like the extensive underground caves.
b) ties: the players, again, were keen to draw connections to their last session; effectively the new character was meeting stuff they left behind earlier.
Later on in the game the new player didn't have any trouble. I started him with the starting Trust scores, and he was quick to create relationships with the others. I think this feature owed to there already existing a social structure between the other ronin; when a new guy comes into that, the others have motivation and impetus to define their stance towards the newcomer. In summation, I think the important thing is to have relationships going from the first session, not to necessarily have all the characters participating. A living situation has no trouble taking a new character in the middle.

How to keep entertained as the GM: If you scroll up the thread, you'll notice that I've some slight cognitive trouble getting into the boots of a remarkably traditional GM who just thinks up all seven kinds of opposition for the players, but has no dramatic pacing in his hands. I understood before the last session what it was about: in TMW the GM isn't supposed to control the pacing of the story at all, unlike Dust Devils (to coin an example of something I've been playing). So it's no wonder if I feel out of place. The game's supposed to keep the character/world distinction from trad games, but shift the thematic reins firmly to the players. So my role as the GM is pretty much to just pass time and enjoy what happens.

So, how to do that? All through the second session I pretty much just enjoyed carefree associations of witchery, Japan, wilderness and the stuff in the book. Giant spiders? Sure, but let's also have a blood-drinking forest while we're at it. And poisonous gasses, bottomless pits, vampire bats, skeletons coming to life and whatever, if you really want to go underground, that is. White monkeys hiding in snowbanks and giant cannons on the walls if you don't. Whatever I thought up, whenever the players looked at me expecting me to take the plot forward, I gave them by the shovel.

Seemed to work fine. Two issues: pacing the act and not killing characters. The former is still the purview of the GM, and something I found pretty annoying in the book: the suggested acts were IMO all whacky, so I had to change them, and even then there's no dramatic rules for making sure you end the act at the right moment. So what I did was to just name the act when it started, and told the players that whenever they got to wherever, the act would end. That way they would have some idea of how drifty to be with the Trust, and we could generate a communal expectation of whether I should throw in another challenge before the end. That kind of social expectation I can roll with or defy in surprise as a GM. My acts ended up being:
1) The tavern: the act ends in the morning, when the journey up the mountain begins. A short act, mainly to teach rules and give an easy opportunity for letters or other social stuff.
2) The snowstorm: the act ends after they find shelter from the storm.
3) The castle: the act ends when the get into the castle.
4) Inside the castle: the act ends when they finally face the witch.
5) The witch.
I'm pretty happy with the above structure (you'll notice that my main change is to add a prologue in the tavern). In practice the players ended up killing the witch in the fourth act, but that was fine with me. I'll tell about that below.

How about not killing the characters? I expected that to be a problem, but in practice the characters are pretty robust. As long as I keep the free-and-clear of conflict resolution and give the players enough rope (not too much, so's the situation still has teeth), they manage to negotiate the conflicts in an order that doesn't kill them. (A hint: free-and-crear in TMW is a central phase for player narration, when they justify certain set-ups of simultaneous or non-simultaneous conflict, with aid or no aid, with this or that character in or out of the conflict.) I also have the option of not going for damage, as necessary. In practice this meant that I could just mess with huge die pools, all on the table waiting for a roll, and the players could cope somehow.

Setting up scenes: A hint for how to handle the game in terms of scenes: I found it advisable to do a kind of scene-conflict set-up, like this:
1) Describe the scene and opposition: use dice to represent the characters and the opposition. Lay out all opposition at the beginning. Go hog-wild with the dice, they can cope.
2) Let the players tackle it: if they can justify it in narration, let them choose which opponents and in which order they confront. Don't let them just say it, however, but make it a negotiation. Some opponents won't fight side by side, some are in different parts of the area, some will always be together, that kind of thing.
3) Move onto the next scene when the characters have eliminated or by-passed the opposition. Some opponents can be bypassed without rolling (with a double success against something else, for instance), some with a single roll (a wall to be climbed, for instance), while some have to be outright whittled down and killed.
My main point is this: I found little reason to keep opposition "secret" or to think some up turn-by-turn, with the players bypassing the previous thing and coming up to the next one. It's much more interesting when everybody knows that after they pass the Hall of Champions and the living dead therein, they'll come to the Gate and the Nio, which will be the last challenge of the scene.

Representing opposition: Here's some things I did during the game:

The giant: it lives in a cave, it has palms the size of the table we played on. A magical cat lured half of the group to it's cave, but they evaded it.
1 die for it's left hand.
1 die for it's right hand.
1 die for it's big teeth.

The cat: the cat was a constant annoyment for one character (played by the new roleplayer), popping up and meowing, alarming guards and trying to bribe the character.
1 die for the cat.
At one point, the character managed to wound the cat and cut it's tail off. Then she ate the tail when the situation was dire, hoping the gain the cat's magical power (it had said at some point that it's magic was in it's tail). From that point on, the character always could roll the "cat-magic" die with his own die, like a monster on her side. Except whenever she used the magic in conflict, she'd turn a little bit more into a neko-mimi :D

The forest of the dead: in the forest, there were three dangers:
Ghouls, attacking at night; possibly more:
4 dice for 4 attacking ghouls
The trees, wanting to sup on blood, ruled by a big tree:
1 die for how big the big tree was
1 die for how long it's spiked branches were
1 die for how old it was
8 dice for some other trees in the scene
The spiders, which would never attack anything attacked by the trees:
4 dice for spiders
Later on, more spiders in their lair:
1 die for the queen's huge egg-sack
1 die for the queen's huge stinger
1 die for the queen's great size
a couple of more dice for the queen for something or other
4 dice for more spiders, guarding the queen

The Gate: it was guarded by the Nio. At this point the characters were really tired and scared, so what one did was considered really noble: he used blood magic to turn the statues and open the gates, sacrificing his left hand in the process.
1 die for the big gate
1 die for the one king
1 die for the other king

My point: as can be seen, I'm making free use of Under the Bed -like trait logic; a monster can have several dice if it has several threatening qualities. Most are one-die, but some have more. On the one hand this breaks the aesthetics of the game somewhat. On the other, the players sure were good with side-lining a part of the monster and only fighting those qualities that could actually be relevant. ("I attack the left hand, you go for the right", that kind of thing.)

Also, one other thing we did was that it's possible for NPCs and monsters to switch sides for a conflict or permanently. Key in the characters getting out of the bloodlusting forest was one character negotiating with the trees, lying to them and sacrificing blood. When she got a couple trees to her side, she sicked them onto the spiders. Another major example was the neko-mimi magic: the character (player?) absolutely hated the side-effects, going as far as to cut her ears rather than have them take on several mid-step forms towards cat-ears. But still the cat-die went with her everywhere. The logic here was that the potency of the cat (that had one die to begin with) was transferred into the character, so mechanically it worked exactly like the cat itself was on the character's side. Meanwhile the cat itself lost it's ability to speak, and was taken as a pet by another character (with which the cat-ronin had a revenge grudge, but that's another thing).

Efficient use of the rules: By the second session, the players were routinely and viciously using the rules of the game to their advantage. The high point of the session was when a player, when the ronin first met the witch, initiated a conflict against him, claimed immediate ai-uchi and chose double-success, killing both himself and the witch. So that's that. Except instead of killing the witch he swapped the soul of an ancient Chinese magician in there, fulfilling a promise he made in exhange for help in the past. This went flying past the other characters of course, so they continued hunting for the witch...

The role of NPCs: I would kinda like some rules that ensure efficient creation of NPCs in this kind of game. Now it was largely up to the moment's inspiration and the players. Actually, I had exactly three important NPCs in the game all told, and one of those was the witch. The other two were:
Lord Ebert Ravenstone: the witch's gai-jin ally with very, very haughty attitude towards Nippon, and huge amounts of guns and artillery. Met first in the first chapter, conquered and freed. He came back in the castle and went on to become rather memorable. The guy seemed to always have another flintlock hidden within his kimono. The high point was when lord Ravenstone was compelled into a duel with another character, and he just shot his opponent with a pistol during the charge. "Stupid kinks." was his comment. The neko-mimi character mentioned above killed him in revenge.
Matsuo Shiro: the nephew of one of the characters, a retired general-cum-shintoist-munk. Shiro wanted to be samurai, which is why he scaled the mountain. Tragically his uncle didn't understand his reasons ("You stay put, silly pup, I'll bring you the reward if you really want money."), so they both went in there without the uncle's knowledge. Much hilarity was had when the slightly clumsy and very inexperienced Shiro bumbled around in the castle, finally getting his ass whupped by a ronin who decided that the witch shouldn't be killed just yet. He was also killed in the end as revenge against his uncle.
But that's it, if you don't count yuki-onna or the chinese magician. A very, very minimal cast, I should think. The game could use some method for introducing more people. Actually, I've decided that the next time I play, the rule will be thus: whatever starsigns are not used by the players will become intricate NPCs, each with the nature of his starsign. (When you've already printed out 12 character sheets, you might as well get some use out of them.) I think I'll make them in cooperation with the players, too.

Other interesting shit: After the characters got out of the forest of dead, they finally espied the castle. Now they had to make a choice of routes: a character had found a secret underground passage into the castle with a critical success when chasing "that f***ing cat" (as it was known). So, which route would they take?
The overland route:
3 white monkeys hidden in the snowbanks
1 for the walls being high
1 for the walls being slick
1 for there being no gate
1 Ebert lord of Ravenstone on the walls with a big cannon
The underground route:
1 for vampire bats
1 for poison gas
1 for bottomless pits
1 for darkness
1 for the maze-like corridors
4 skeletal warriors
1 for the underground gate
2 for the Nio
The players got to see the overland route arranged against them first. Then they went to see the other one, and I arranged all of the above against them (I might have been a little overboard at this point...). Interestingly enough, they chose the underground route (never underestimate a cool NPC on the walls of your castle!). Even more interestingly, one of the characters decided he didn't want to die, and opted for the overland route, alone. The others looked at it when he rode (he had a horse as his ability!) in, whupped the monkeys (they were greedy, but he had no gold), and asked for them to let him in the castle. Well, he asked courteously, so why not? The thing is, after seeing him get in with almost no resistance, the others went underground anyway. Never underestimate the call of adventure, I guess.

Later on, when the one character did his ultimate ai-uchi, there were only two left: one of the ronin had just ridden into the castle, so we were down to three, of which one killed himself against the witch, apparently to no effect. The two decided to get some rest before braving the castle proper. The neko-mimi ronin slept peacefully, while her mortal enemy just decided to ride back down the mountain and out of the story. Well, I handled him exactly like he was dead at that point, as far as the mechanics for trust were concerned. The thing was, we didn't know at that point that this was the guy who had killed the neko-mimi's family. She must have been fuming after awakening and seeing her quarry gone. She told us after the game that she wasn't interested in the reward to begin with, she was just there to look for the spot and kill the old fucker... which is pretty funny, considering that for the rest of the game, through the castle, through the duel with lord Ebert, the very same player supported her with trust all the way to killing the witch (or who she thought was the witch, anyway). And her reward for that was to kill Shiro in cold blood and send him the head!

The ronin who went into the castle, he was feted well and good by the witch's proxy, instated by the chinese magician before leaving for China in his new body. Ensorcelled to think he was the witch, this proxy met with the ronin and promised to cure him of the curse set upon him ("Well, I can't rightly remember that I've laid such a curse, but of course it must be so if you say it."). This development climaxed pretty nicely when yuki-onna debutized the ronin to find out where her husband had disappeared. The final scene of the game proper had the neko-mimi, bolstered by her cat magic and the teenaged samurai hero Shiro set against the mysterious ronin suffering of leprosy. The latter wanted to save the witch-proxy, even knowing that he's fake, because he still hoped to find a cure to his disease. The situation was delivered decisively for the neko-mimi, because the other two players decided to bid all their Trust against the other ronin in betrayal. The epilogues had the neko-mimi samurai getting the witch's head and the reward, while the diseased one ended his days looting through the abandoned castle for a non-existent cure to his sickness. So that's that.

Player reaction: Everybody seemed pleased with the game, and interested in hearing each other's characters' epilogues that revealed what the heck was going on (everyone was gloriously confused during the events, because everybody had their own secrets that were only revealed partly). One of the players (the shinto monk whose nephew got killed) especially though that it was the best roleplaying adventure he had played ever, so I guess it went pretty well. We'll be playing some other indie games next week with the same group.

Long-range relationship to the game: I expect that by playing several times, I'll develop a standard tool-box of scenes and challenges, being that it doesn't necessarily matter much what you put against the players. I think this is what's up with the book's scenario material: those random monsters and stuff seem to be drawn directly from the author's own experiences running the game. I would have liked more non-creature challenge ideas, as well as human NPCs. Then again, I got lots of mileage out of yuki-onna and all that, of course.