[Snow From Korea] Endgame Dissatisfaction

[Shreyas Sampat]

One year ago, his wife said to Ichigo no Kiriyama, "It is hot. Bring me snow from Korea to cool my brow." Ichigo went to Korea and brought back Snow, its princess. In the ensuing months, he became Kiriyama Daimyo, and the winter came, and with it the snow. Now he and his retainers are trapped in the walls of Kyuuden Sougiri, and they can all see something none want - Snow is beautiful, more beautiful than the rain.

This is the question of Snow From Korea - can the samurai stand against the temptations of the princess, who will otherwise bring down the court?

I have been working on a sequel to an Iron Game Chef game I submitted in 2004. Oddly enough, its title was Snow From Korea, but it did not satisfy me as a game. (As a graphic design exercise it was a rush.) This sequel deals with the aftermath; one character succeeded in bringing back some Snow from Korea, but it will not cool anyone's brow.

The rules for the new game can be found here.

In this game, the characters are trapped by the weather in the court of Ichigo, the daimyo. Snow is doing her best to tear the court apart.

I have some endgame conditions (in the post entitled Pt. 2) that I am somewhat unhappy with; while they eliminate characters and constrain the way that they can interact, I'm not really sure where the game actually stops. I'd appreciate some assistance untangling that part.

[dindenver]

Hi!
  Well, I am not sure what the answer is, so, instead I'll give you my impressions and you can tell me if that was what you were aiming for...
  The only way to get the endgame is to focus on one player for several scenes
  So, game play turns into taking looooong turns focusing on one player for several scenes and then after they break or are near breaking, focusing on another player in turn
  If you do not do this, it seems nigh impossible for the end game to occur, because that feels like the only way to get a player to have double the tension of all the other players
  Also, there seems to be no rules for Succession. Would be wild if it escalated further with different players vying for control of the Daimyo's position after he got killed...
  Not to be too harsh, but the endgame feels tacked on. I don't get the feeling that you have figured out what you want the final outcomes to really be. But I could be wrong...

[Danny_K]

The endgame conditions you have don't really address the tensions in the setting, except to ratchet up or redistribute relationships, which leads to more play, not an endgame. 

In your game's situation, there are some very specific constraints, which suggest specific resolutions:
1) everyone's trapped in the castle by the weather --> spring comes and the samurai can disperse
2) everyone has to step lightly around the Daimyo--> the political situation changes, maybe by killing the Daimyo, someone else takes over who can resolve the Snow situation
3) Snow's unbearable presence is messing with everyone's head --> ??? I think it's OK to not have answer to this one, actually.  Maybe the way to deal with Snow is to finish the game, just as you deal with the Master as an inevitable part of finishing a game of MLwM. 

[TonyLB]

Should the relationship with Snow be like other relationships?

My intuition is that that relationship should represent the samurai's ability to resist Snow, rather than how close they have become.  So as good things happen to soothe a samurai's relationship with Princess Snow, he becomes more able to distance himself from her ... whereas, conversely, if he reaches the point of severing the relationship with Snow, he can only do so by giving in to her desires.

Wouldn't that change the tenor of the end-game as well?  I don't have enough of a model of the system in my head to really be sure, but again my intuition is that it would.

By the way, the opening two paragraphs of your original post totally make me want to buy this game.  That's good, good stuff.

[Shreyas Sampat]

Hi guys! Thanks for your thoughts.

Dave, Danny, I see you both mention a succession effect for the daimyo. Are you responding to the presence of the "kill Ichigo" option that's included in the rules, or do you feel like there's an independent reason for this to exist? My first instinct is to leave the succession war outside the realm of the rules; I sort of don't want it to be possible to mechanically rebuild relationship structures that are destroyed, as would occur if it's possible for someone to become daimyo and take position at the centre of a circle of Duty relationships.

Danny, can you tell me more about how you "deal with the Master" in MLwM? I am not really very familiar with that game.

Tony, yes. I think you've hit on something that was really bothering me about the Snow relationship breaks. I'll think some more on that! Thanks for the compliment on the opening. I'm pretty excited about it.

[dindenver]

Hi!
  Re: Succession, I think it would be interesting to launch it when Ichigo dies, but it is not important to me if it ends during the course of this game. Just that there is some way to divide the players against each other to back different candidates. Maybe the shogun cannot rule on who actually is the next Daimyo til after the thawl...
  As to Snow, I feel like if you gain with her, it should automatically gain tension with every other person that favors her. Maybe that's the key, indicate that you support or resist Snow in the beginning. And that this decision should color the actions and reactions and even the mechanics.

[Danny_K]

Dave, Danny, I see you both mention a succession effect for the daimyo. Are you responding to the presence of the "kill Ichigo" option that's included in the rules, or do you feel like there's an independent reason for this to exist? My first instinct is to leave the succession war outside the realm of the rules; I sort of don't want it to be possible to mechanically rebuild relationship structures that are destroyed, as would occur if it's possible for someone to become daimyo and take position at the centre of a circle of Duty relationships.

No, I didn't say anything about succession.  Let me try again: part of what I like about your game is the situation that you set up in the first two paragraphs -- the samurai are in a constricted environment, held there by bad weather and duty, a situation made untenable by the presence of Snow.  It's a nice tight box they're caught in.  You could make a movie out of it. 
So killing Ichigo seems to take a lot of tension out of the situation.  That's why my first thought was that either killing Ichigo should be impossible, or should be one of the events that triggers the endgame. 

About MLwM:  I'll probably mangle this explanation, but all the PC's are Minions of a single Master, and have relationships to the Master and to their love objects represented by numbers.  When the numbers reach a certain level, it triggers the endgame, which has slightly different mechanics and invariably ends up with the Master dead, and the PC's coming to one of a certain number of narrowly defined fates -- death, finding a new life, finding a new Master to serve, or becoming a Master in their own right, if I recall correctly.  The character's fate is determined by the numbers on the character sheet at endgame. 

[Shreyas Sampat]

So, Dave, what I'm getting from you is, "I don't see what's driving conflict here." Something for me to think about.

And Danny, you're saying that a natural point for the endgame (where "endgame" evidently means "the point where the game changes and gears up to come to some finite ending") to trigger is when the conditions putting pressure on the court begin to release. Hm. Or else maybe you are suggesting that the endgame happens when the characters begin to break out?

My urge is to do just the opposite, and have the oppressive atmosphere close in tighter and tighter.

But as it stands, it seems like (Thomas Robertson pointed this out) I know when the characters are going to lose, but they have no ability to win and dispose of Snow. I sort of have mixed feelings about that.

[TonyLB]

But only the characters want to dispose of Snow.  Why on earth would the players ever want such a thing?  Snow rocks!  Snow should totally be seen delicately picking her steps through the spreading blood of all the samurai at the end of every single instance of actual play.

[dindenver]

Hi!
  Right, I mean, for a freeform game, this is great. But, if the players don't instinctively grasp what you are going after, the play might fall apart.
  I see some characters want to win Snow away from the Daimyo, some wanting to defend the Daimyo's honor, some wanting to defend Snow's honor, etc. But there is no real way to set that stance. And it gives the player who plays Snow a lot less to work with in order to manipulate the other samurai...
  I mean, if you have a window into a person's motivations, then you have tools to work with to manipulate them, no?
  I know that this is stuff that will come out in the Narrative, but it might make the first rounds of play VERY awkward. I mean, all of these characters are supposed to know each other as well as a family member. But in play, we won't know each character til after a few rounds of play, no?
  So, I feel like if the payers have a little bit more to work with, it might smooth out the beginning play. Of course, the disadvantage is that it might restrain play moving forward, hard to say...

[Thunder_God]

You don't really know someone until you're stuck with him with no ability to go away!
Besides, all movies and books are about times where interesting things happen and people are transformed.

[Shreyas Sampat]

Hurg. Hold on.

I forgot to talk about "the game in my head."

In this game, the samurai are trapped by the weather. Snow is the origin of all conflict and tension, and the daimyo and the wives and the others are both the support that keeps the samurai from crumbling, and the first casualties in the war. There is a constant visual awareness of nature. (This last bit isn't particularly important to the question that follows.)

Does this change any of your questions/suggestions?

I feel like over-defining the samurai (and, at the moment, that means "defining them at all") runs the risk of making this a story about "several fascinating samurai and a troublesome girl", rather than "the horrible struggle between a beautiful witch and the men that don't want to love her."

[Thunder_God]

Doesn't change anything IMO.

Except tie-in Wife's Tension/death/self-killing(?) to the Endgame of a Samurai. Each Samurai that reaches Endgame pushes the game towards becoming an explosion, and reaching the final Endgame confrontation.

Also, I'm getting The Mountain Witch vibes.

[dindenver]

Hi!
  Ah, but don't think of them as making the Samurai more interesting, think of details about the Samurai as more tools for Snow to manipulate them with...
  And I really didn't get that the wives were supposed to be the first to go. But I see how that could happen. Are they supposed to be the first to fall because snow is jealous of them or because the Samura see them as obstacles to gaining Snow's favor or because the Wives see through Snow's little game or?

[Shreyas Sampat]

This is good stuff to think about. Thanks again, guys.

Tony, you say that your mental model of the system is somewhat incomplete. What can I do with the text to improve your modelling?