[delete] Ronnies feedback

[Ron Edwards]

delete by Brendan Parigo presents a strong Game Notion; see [delete] Another Ronnies feedback thread.

This is the one in which the character has mud for blood and is fading out of existence, then gets a gun ... It seems neat at first, but as I continued, the overall point became unclear to me. At first, it seems to be "you're too average, make yourself exceptional," and then it gets weird, because all the color/suggestion text clearly indicates that "God's plan" is basically an object of contempt. I'm trying to see where and how "walk the line between God and the Devil" could conceivably enter play, but it seems like the game is over before it's played ... too much seems to be presumed, including the whole "God's fleeing you" part.

Philosophical or religious concerns aside, I think there's a similar problem as found in the previous Ronnies entry Today ([Today] Conceptual realignment): the player-characters are described as average people, but the examples in the text are of undisputed, contemptible losers. I'm not sure that I see them as much different from starting characters in kill puppies for satan. Maybe that's how the game becomes playable, in the same fashion? When I can't bring myself to hose my despicable player-character, because after a while, I pity him?

I'm doubtful that players can build Conflict Pools using debate. It seems like it would become a bullying exercise to me. In other words, a person could rack up a big Pool just by steamrolling others verbally. Also, once someone else has a Conflict Pool, I'd routinely switch my character's goals to accord with his, because my failure would be a foregone conclusion - hence no conflicts, and again, success relies basically on out-talking everyone else.

Brendan, I could be very wrong about this - it depends on actual-play experiences of yours that you're using as a basis for the design. Any thoughts on that? As a minor point, the text about how character surprise has an impact on play isn't working for me at all; this is a long-standing bugaboo in RPG design (subset of perception, really).

Can you explain for me, when or how a player rolls the dice? When do we know when to roll, and when not to?

I really like the gun. I really like the mud. It might be the case that I'm simply not seeing the core mechanic in action, in my mind. Any help?

Best,
Ron

[Brandon Parigo]

hey Ron,

Thanks for the feedback.  Delete was a random five hour thing, that I spit out before life took over.  I never really concentrated on it past the start of the game.  That is why it fell apart as you got into it.  I was going to drop it and forget about it for a few years until [delete] Another Ronnies feedback thread started.  At that point Frank T, and TonyPace, by just commenting on it gave me the drive to rewrite it and make some things a bit more clear. 

In the revision, I took some advice, and cleaned up the rules, as well as the flavor of the game.  I still talk about average people in the text, and then give examples of them being losers.  This needs to be tweaked, but I think the meaning I am trying to get across is that even average people have the possibility of becoming luminous, even if they feel like losers.  I know it doesn't seem like it, even in my revised draft, but I've had a month to think about it.

The rules have been made a bit more clear.  They explain when you do things and how they work better than before.  Not as clear as they need to be, but more so than the draft did.  I think they do away with the thought that you debate to gain Conflict Points.

The dice in the game are rolled when Thelema comes into play.  Standard conflicts do not use dice, instead relying on who can show via the facts about their character that they have the most 'weight' to win the conflict.   Thelema is called into play in two main ways:  When you want someone to acknowledge that you exist, and when you want to do magic. 

I think it is a better game than my submission but still needs a ton of work and a ton of playtest.  Playtest hasn't happened.  I've taken steps to change that.  I think Delete is an interesting concept.  Once playtested it may prove to be worth more time, or not.  We'll see. 

If you want to see all the changes:
http://www.brandonparigo.com/Deleterevised.pdf

Thank you again.  The Ronnies have forced me to do thinking about games, and I have grown, even if I haven't published anything besides the five games on my website.  Not yet anyway. 

Brandon

[Ron Edwards]

I seem to be having name issues this Ronnies round. "Brandon." I knew that, I swear.

As I'm the guy who feels as if he's been buried in Soviet mud with a dragon shooting a gun at him for a month and a half, thinking of these games in combinations has been a big thing for me this time around. What do you think are some points of comparison between delete and Infinity?

Best,
Ron

[Brandon Parigo]

Ron,

I hadn't read Infinity until you asked that question, but I do see a couple points that link the two.   I think Infinity and Delete both have a downward spiral feel.  A kind of lost hope about them.  In Infinity it is expressed in the wasteland of mud, and in Delete it takes the form of the character becoming mud.  They change from that point on, but I think they start with the same bases. 

What I mean by change, is that in Infinity, you seem to always be forced to do what seems wrong.  The rules force you to make things worse.  It is your only option.  I'm glad Kirk put the notes at the end of the document about how the game was suppose to feel like depression or I'd be in a bind to know why it does that.

In Delete it is slightly different.  You are going to fade away into nothingness if you don't fullfill your desires, live life fully, or give the devil his due.  You have choices.  The cards are stacked toward you giving into the Devil (after all Louis Cyphre is a cool guy), but you do have a choice.   

The dice mechanics (roll a bunch of dice, add them together, see who has the highest score) are the same. Not surprising.  Infinity has ratings for the character that range from 1 to 20 and 1 to 10, which fluctuate pretty widely (or so it seemed in reading) during the game.  Roll them all at once and add them up seems to be the easiest method to resolve that.  That or look for the highest die (like Master and Commander, Risk, Sorcerer, etc..).   That is why I went with it for Delete when using Thelema.   I needed a mechanic that would grow as the character grew and remain easy to understand. 

Those are my thoughts on it at the moment.  If you have time could you point out any others you might of had?

Brandon

[Ron Edwards]

Brandon, I'm pretty confused about one thing. When a character convinces others that he really does exist, is that rebelling against God or "re-loading" oneself into God's plan?

Is this intended to be answered in some way through play itself? You mentioned that your favorite endgame notion concerned the characters finding and eating God. That would be a rebellion, right? Kind of the "you made me, you abandoned me, fuck you" option?

I don't ask any of these questions from a personal religious perspective, but a play/procedural one. In the text, the only concrete examples of Thelema you give concern using magic, which you state must be learned from the Devil. Do you have any notions about how characters using Thelema would not be doing Devil-type stuff? I can think of some, but based on the rest of the text, it seems out-of-keeping with the overall-rebellious, even vengeful tone.

Or a more concrete, or differently-explained version of how characters can "entertain God," as it says in the text, enough via their struggles to be re-uploaded, as it were?

Best,
Ron

[Brandon Parigo]

I think I may be furthering the confusion because I'm speaking from the revised version of Delete which changed a few things, like the concept of Gods Plan.  The Ronnies entry of Delete was sorta slapped together way too fast for its own good.  I think that the game did have a bit of a question mark when it came to your characters and God.  God deleted the character, so whatever plan God had for you is gone, his plan now is to just not ever deal with you again.  So yeah I would say sticking around is going against Gods plan.  Another reason to drop it from the game.  Of course if I would of recognized that ahead of time I could of created an interesting "storming heaven" type of game.

In the revised version of Delete, Gods plan isn't there.  The reason for the delete is up to the GM, based on what the player characters believe, which in turn is set by what the Devil tells them (which is done by the GM).  When I wrote delete I had been doing a bit of thinking on transubstantiation.  The original idea was for the characters to find God, kill him with their strange gun, and then eat him, thus becoming God, or at least assuming a new form.  I dropped it for two main reasons.  One being that I felt it was way to narrow for the game, and limited who would want to play it.  Two, I didn't feel it expressed anything with that theme besides a teenage like understanding of the ideas behind God and Transubstantiation.  Something that I knew could be expressed better if I had more than 24 hours.  The balance I tried to strike was just a confused open ended mess.   That statement about my favorite ending was just my frustrated expression of the original idea behind the game. 

Like the Gods Plan, the rest of the rules were also confused.  Thelema wasn't explained clearly in the text, but you were suppose to use your Thelema whenever you were trying to get someone to pay attention to you, or remember you.  You in addition could use it for magical purposes.  Magic in the rules was only taught by the Devil for any number of reasons that I can not recall now.  Thelema being the sum total of who you are, and your ability to project that into the world, would certainly allow you to learn how to use that in a magical sense from more than just the Devil. 

Entertaining God was always something that irritated me about the game.  That was my cheap way of saying 'entertain the game master', and then maybe one day you'll get to be restored.

Brandon

[Ron Edwards]

Golly. That ... pretty much solves everything that was interfering with my interest in the game.

So, uh, count me in for whatever comes next with the revised version.

Best,
Ron

[TonyPace]

I refrained from commenting before since my thoughts were so disordered, but I looked at the revised draft and I had the distinct feeling that while a seemingly functional game system had been added, something else, something important, had been removed.

I think it's the bit at the beginning about God's Plan, about how God more or less maliciously deleted you because you weren't following the program. Maybe it wasn't explained well enough, maybe it was too constraining on the characters, but I think that whole line as you begin reading the game where you go from 'my character is leaking WHAT??' to 'the Devil?' to 'that god, what a bastard, he is so dead'. That's kind of not there this time around, and it's a shame, I think.

I think you should aim to KEEP all that stuff, and then maybe turn it inside out and shatter all it's assumptions - to lead the reader to some positive assumptions about play, like I had - and then draw them through a pinhole of other possibilities, rather than just letting them loose in a well lit room with a single beautiful object.

By the way, the system does look functional. I couldn't easily break it mentally.

[Brandon Parigo]

I refrained from commenting before since my thoughts were so disordered, but I looked at the revised draft and I had the distinct feeling that while a seemingly functional game system had been added, something else, something important, had been removed.

Your right.  The game seems a bit more hollow than it did before, even if the rules stick together better now.  The exchanges with Ron yesterday made me realize that, and your post further nails down that the game needs that beating heart put back into it.  I think to do that right is going to take a bit of time like most things. 

Did you like the idea that the characters were angry at God or at least taught to be angry at God and were actively searching to destroy/find him?  or did you like that it was open ended and that was only one of the possibilities?  I'm curious because there are a few options rolling around in my head to give the game not only back what is missing, but also to make the game pick up faster and have more of a direction, at least during the first days of the characters struggle. 

An example of one of the changes I'm thinking of making:

Not only does God deleting you make you fade from the minds and lives of everyone around you, but they start to fade from you also.  Character Facts start to fade from the character at a rate of one a day.  Those Facts that the character focuses on do not fade away as fast.  If a character starts with five facts:  The first day he focuses on one of them, but also loses one he didn't focus on.  The second day it is the same.  So by the end of the third day, he has lost two and sustained three.  Those three will start to fade as well if he starts to forget about them.  The only way to truly stop them from declining is to become undeleted or to grow as a person (get more facts).  It is a constant struggle for the character.

This would replace the Desire growth that is in the current version of delete.   I think it might also put character growth to the front of a characters priorities.

Any thoughts?

[Brandon Parigo]

I must be confusing myself now by reading the two different versions of this game.  My example in my last post, says something that is already in the revised version of delete.  I feel silly for not realizing that.   I think stating it again in the last post, did make me realize how overlooked that is, and that it can be built upon to do more than it currently does hiding in the closet as it is.