[Reality Cops] Ronnies Feedback, the unauthorized version

[Matt Wilson]

Actually, dangit, Ron totally authorized it, so instead you just have to pretend it's the feedback "they" didn't want you to see.

Anyway, previously today I wrote up a monster post about this game, and then instead of typing a capital W I hit ctrl+w and suddenly and horribly closed the browser. I was very sad.

So here's a slightly shorter and more anxiously hurried version of the comments for Reality Cops:

The game is very cool, both in idea and structure. I do in fact want to play it. It's good at telling me what I'm supposed to do as a player, who I'm supposed to be, and in general what an adventure's worth of play will be like. The dice rolly thing sounds very fun, and I like the idea that whichever trait ended up rolling higher gives you some narration instructions as to what your guy just did. I'd be satisfied with gratuitous fistfuls of dice. This game gives them a purpose.

I don't see any real flaws, just more stuff that needs to be written. As is, I don't know if it'd be a breeze to GM. When do we go into the other realities? How do I assign traits to NPCs? Tons of examples would be excellent.

For some things, I'd personally like specific rules about who has what authority for which things in play, but it would be easy enough to assume certain "traditional" power roles. Oh, and a nitpick: I'd like a teeny bit of customizability for my guy. Like "spend three points however you wish."

This was a 24 hour game? Awesome, dude. I can barely write a sentence in 24 hours.

Also, I think it's cool that I can't remember what the 4 word choices are, and I can't tell from reading this game what they might be.

This game gets an official tail wag* from DED.

*Not usable as legal tender.

[Blankshield]

I'm totally hornswaggled.

And I'm not just sayin' that because hornswaggled is a cool word.  Thanks for the wag.

I also want to play Reality Cops.  I went on a road trip for work today with a co-worker, and couldn't stop yakking about it; we must have been on it for a couple of hours, easy.  Fortunately for me, he's a gamer, so didn't drive the van into a telephone pole.  I'm also totally blown away by the fact that I wrote this in 24 hours... I started writing on the endorphin high from seeing Serenity (for the second time), and except for the pesky sleep and working day, didn't do a damn thing else.  Child welfare is seeking me out even now.

And yeah, this is totally full of holes.  It's about as complete as many games on the market - which is to say, you can play it, but have to make up a lot of stuff on the fly - but not nearly as complete as I want it to be.  There's a ton of stuff that needs to exist, especially in chapters 4 and 5.

Reality Cops is also a bully.  It's totally kicked DYOT and Blood and Bronze out of my brainspace, and is taking over in a big way. 

Ron - You're still an evil bastard. 

James

[Spooky Fanboy]

It reminds me a lot of both  Dan Simmons' The Hollow Man and Paul Di Filippo's Fuzzy Dice, both good books I'd enjoy roleplaying. I'm also getting a strong TORG vibe, as far as the whole "duelling realities" goes. I agree that this game needs to be fleshed out, as it would, when completed, do Continuum one better.

I am curious about Inflicted Pain. What does that do, besides increase your likelihood to shift phased realities around? It seems like it's almost begging to erode Mental Stability as well. I think it should be made clear in game text, BTW, that it's important to state character actions as a goal; that way, figuring out how you succeeded via mechanics makes more sense.

One other question:

Second, and more complex in its effects, was that the Burke Dynamic no longer applied solely to individuals.

What exactly does that mean, in the game? Just curious.

[Blankshield]

It reminds me a lot of both  Dan Simmons' The Hollow Man and Paul Di Filippo's Fuzzy Dice, both good books I'd enjoy roleplaying. I'm also getting a strong TORG vibe, as far as the whole "duelling realities" goes. I agree that this game needs to be fleshed out, as it would, when completed, do Continuum one better.

I dunno about that... I'm a big fan of Continuum.  But thanks for the vote of confidence!  Harlequin also had the TORG parallel jump out at him, which definately means I'm going to have to find a copy and raid for ideas.  I'm only vaguely acquainted with it, from skimming a friends many many years past.  I'll look up those books; I'm a fan of Dan Simmons, so it's a good excuse to get more of his stuff.  Tron, oddly enough, was the only direct outside influence.

I am curious about Inflicted Pain. What does that do, besides increase your likelihood to shift phased realities around? It seems like it's almost begging to erode Mental Stability as well. I think it should be made clear in game text, BTW, that it's important to state character actions as a goal; that way, figuring out how you succeeded via mechanics makes more sense.

One other question:

Second, and more complex in its effects, was that the Burke Dynamic no longer applied solely to individuals.

What exactly does that mean, in the game? Just curious.

These are very related questions, and is one of the things that needs a lot more systemic support.  Inflicted Pain is Pain inflicted on others.  The Burke Dynamic expanding beyond the individual means that pain you do to others improves your effectiveness in phase.

I'm wrapping up the loose ends from a couple other things so that I can set them aside and give Reality Cops my full attention.  Watch this space for more soon.

thanks,

James

[Spooky Fanboy]

Okay, when you get back, could you put up an example of play? I think I know what the game is supposed to look like in action, but I'd be curious to see if I'm right.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

Yup, this is the official feedback thread now. Ha!

Oh this was looking so good, then it hit a brick wall really hard.

So James, when you started the game, you shot me a quick private message that included, among various amusing details, this text:

So I'm on my way home from my second run through on Serenity, riding that endorphin high, and the following scene pops into my head:

Two veteran cops walk past a window, behind which is a pierced and scarred guy getting a suspension, and we're talking big hooks, total Hellraiser imagery here. One of them shakes his head. "Rookie." The other snorts. "He'll learn. So... how's your wife?"

I get home, I write "Reality Cops. pain here=power there" on a sticky note.

Dude. Where is this in the game?

The text is not at all clear on how you get pain, there's only the briefest mention of "the people they love" or anything like that. Nowhere in scenario prep, nowhere in player-character options, nowhere in examples.

Oh, I have some less important questions too. For example, are there only three possible player-characters, mechanically? I'm also a little puzzled about the metaphysics, because the fictional history doesn't work well as explanation, at least not for me. The dice seem totally Fortune in the Beginning, determining how you dealt with something, and my experience with such systems is that they devolve into exhausting, obligatory monologues.

But those are just li'l function questions. It's the big one, in italics, that concerns me. At present, I think the motor's revving but there's nowhere to go, nothing to work with. What do you see players actually saying, describing their characters and their actions and dialogues, during play? I see it very easily and clearly in the message you sent me. But in the game, where's the Pain?

Best,
Ron

[Blankshield]

So James, when you started the game, you shot me a quick private message that included, among various amusing details, this text:

So I'm on my way home from my second run through on Serenity, riding that endorphin high, and the following scene pops into my head:

Two veteran cops walk past a window, behind which is a pierced and scarred guy getting a suspension, and we're talking big hooks, total Hellraiser imagery here. One of them shakes his head. "Rookie." The other snorts. "He'll learn. So... how's your wife?"

I get home, I write "Reality Cops. pain here=power there" on a sticky note.

Dude. Where is this in the game?

The text is not at all clear on how you get pain, there's only the briefest mention of "the people they love" or anything like that. Nowhere in scenario prep, nowhere in player-character options, nowhere in examples.

There's holes in the procedures of play that you can fly a 747, through, and this would be the big one, yup.

Carl (Spooky Fanboy) has been awesome in poking me via e-mail to work on this, although he needn't have worried; this game won't frikkin' leave me alone.  I've been having really really creepy dreams form going to bed thinking about RC.  One of the things that became clear, and I was smacking myself when I realized it, is that I totally missed the pain connection.

You don't get your Burke Dynamic dice unless you're in pain when you transition.  <--- that's where the pain is.  Physical pain, emotional pain, pain inflicted on others.  Those are the three sets of dice that go into your BD pool.

There's a boatload of stuff that will have to surround that to make sure it works, but that's the core right there. 

I've started to work on the next run through of the rules, I'll post a link here for feedback when it exists.  In the meantime, the following from an e-mail I sent to Carl gives a pretty good vision of the game, and the life cycle of a reality cop:

The Burke Dynamic: Here's how I see it working.  The single most effective thing is to phase in outright physical pain - that gets you your D6's, and gets you your rookie cops kicking ass.  However, kinda like drugs, that's a high that doesn't last - you need to keep using more and more pain to get less and less effect.  The real world side of this is you get these bizarrely scarred and tough cops that don't feel a damn thing - they're so inured to pain that they can shrug off a bullet or a baseball bat and keep coming - or even worse, grin and keep coming.  That gets you your d10's in Pain Threshold.
Along side this you get the discovery, somewhere along the way, that emotional pain gets you there too.  It's less of a rush, so D8's instead of D6's, but it also doesn't go away as easy - no diminishing returns.  So you start getting cops that aren't getting the rush from the pain doing deliberate, stupid things to ruin their lives - like divorcing the wife they love, or getting into huge arguments with their family and friends, to try and keep up with the new batch of rookies.
And the final leg of the tripod of pain is that, ever since the second Thompson subversion, pain you do to other people also helps you in phase.  Again, another step removed from the visceral, so D10's, but this one doesn't cost *you* anything.  It's always sitting there as a temptation, and you've got some scarred and wrecked veteran cop looking at some Villain who's kicking his ass because he runs a sweatshop in the third world and works the kids till they drop, and the cop thinks 'next time I argue with my wife, if I lose my temper and hit her - just once, not hard - that will give me the edge I need to put this sick fucker away.'

And that's all she wrote.  That guy might not realize it, but he just stopped being a good cop.

And the really twisted part of Inflicted Pain is that it never goes away, never caps, and it's always an option.

So the Pain Threshold is a diminishing return.  It ALWAYS goes up.  A good cop suddenly realizes that he's gotta cut back, and only phase when it really matters - 'cause it keeps taking more and giving less.  So he swears off, cuts back, and lets the younger guys take it.  But then next week comes along and there's the sick bastard who wants to reinvent Hitler's Germany, and Good Cop's last name is Goldman - so he goes in again.  And the cycle starts anew.

Where I'm going to need feedback is on making Inflicted Pain immediate enough that it's not just a detached "well duh!" power boost.  I think that requiring that you write down what the Inflicted Pain is, and to who is a start, but not enough.  However, I also think useful feedback on that will need to wait on a more complete draft.

thanks,

James

[Spooky Fanboy]

Carl (Spooky Fanboy) has been awesome in poking me via e-mail to work on this, although he needn't have worried; this game won't frikkin' leave me alone.

Er...everyone reading this please note that I've cut way back on fanboy gooberiness, and try to only post constructive threads and emails to those whose games have hooked me in some way. While I used to scare/annoy the crap out of people on these fora, I try only to give feedback high in substance nowadays. Anyway...

Blankshield/James: I had a thought previous to this that naming those in your Connections stat, as well as detailing who/what/why Inflicted Pain comes from, would also be a good start. It just seems to me that what's going to make the characters stand out, aside from names and background, is who they're still connected to, and who they've hurt.

Brain burst: If the character burns a Connection, he can drop that into his Inflicted Pain pool as a d8. If the burn is irreconcilable, and no matter how hard the character tries, he cannot repair it, it becomes a d6. It also becomes something that will haunt the character throughout the duration of the game from that point on. This allows the those the character has hurt to have tangible weight in the story. It also helps the GM pull an appropriate NPC off the sheet and into the story. Just an idea.

[Spooky Fanboy]

Big braingasm: If I'm correct, the Burke Dynamic can be read as a Reality Cop's potential, not necessarily as the full resources a Reality Cop has at his disposal, right? Stubbing a toe shouldn't fully charge a Reality Cop, but a wrenched knee or appendicitis will. Extrapolating from that, different sources of pain might fill up the meter differently, and one infliction of pain can only go so far.

Based on that, I propose that we force characters to roleplay how they "pain up" for a mission, with some sort of randomizer to determine how their action(s) fill up their Physical and Mental Pain meters. (This may, at player option, be a good way to acquire Inflicted Pain in the process.) If an action overflows their Pain Meter, then they get the leftover total removed (as in Pain Threshold) or added (as in Mental Stability) at the end of the current game.

I recommend this as it varies character change according to player's choice (stay safe and underpowered vs. full pain potential and the ugly aftermath), and also more clearly helps define the player's choices (and gives a clearer picture of his character). 

[Spooky Fanboy]

Forgot to add: (sorry!) A good fictional source for this game is Ursula K. Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven. Cast in your game's terms: An otherwise unexceptional youngish man has the power to subvert reality without being in pain, and generally without going through all of the normal intervening steps. The problem is, he can't control it; it only happens after particularly vivid dreams he has, and he's not a lucid dreamer. He doesn't want to change reality, but there is an unscrupulous psychiatrist trying to manipulate his gift. Gee, wonder what would happen to him when the Reality Cops get ahold of him? (The dreamer, that is. The psychiatrist will undoubtably end up in prison or dead.)

[Blankshield]

Those are some good thoughts, Carl, thanks.  I like the idea of the BD pool being a potential, but I'm quite leery of quantifying pain, even with loose randomizers - specifics of how much pain "X" is will vary from person to person quite a lot, in my experience.  And that's without touching emotional trauma or inflicted pain, which will be all over the map. 

As well, I want to strongly avoid - and I realize this makes for a grim game - having a 'safe' choice at all.

But the requirement for scenes to get your BD dice, that I like.  That's where the scene that kicked this whole thing off fits in, which clicks.

I'm working on that example of play and a more play-able draft of the ruleset as we speak, and should have something out later this week.

Ron, quick usage question: should I keep development focused in this thread, or split off as and when necessary?

James

[Ron Edwards]

Hi James,

Start new threads as you see fit. I suspect the new draft will represent a pretty major shift in presentation and content, so if it makes most sense to you to let this thread go, then let's do that.

Best,
Ron