[AG&G] The Emerald of India

[Ryan Koppenhaver]

(Hello, everyone!  First post, etc!)

So, a few friends and I had the chance to play Art, Grace & Guts yesterday, and I thought I'd post a summary and a few thoughts, in the hopes that they'll be useful.  If anybody has any feedback or suggestions on our play, it's certainly welcome as well.

Background: The players were Dan, Eric, Mark, Rick, and myself.  Most of our experience has been playing D&D up until recently; various subsets of us have played Nobilis, Dogs in the Vineyard, and Primetime Adventures as well.

I was the only one familiar with the game, so I gave a brief overview of the concepts and we consulted the Oracle.  Our plot elements were:

• A gentlewoman-burglar, stylish and daring
• The captain of a shattered company, himself injured
• A camp-wanton, pretty and pliant, prone to drink
• A ruthless bully of an under-officer with high ambitions

An interesting list.  All of the elements were people (three "characters" and a "threat"), and 3 out of the four were military.  Also, nothing overtly fantasy themed.  We brainstormed for additional characters suggested by the items, and came up with other members of the company, who might be involved with the wanton; and a person to be burgled, neither of which were compelling enough for the players to take them.  Eric took the burglar ("Monica Noiria"); Dan took the captain ("Captain Roberts"); Rick took the bully ("Lieutenant Frederick von Reubenhouse"), and Mark got the wanton ("LeeAnn").  I fleshed out the NPCs as "Sargeant Eli, an old soldier", and "His Grace the Lord Mayor, a wealthy aristocrat/politician."

(Here we have the first hints that we're not all on the same page for the setting.  If I could do it over, I'd have pushed for some consensus on that before we continued, or at least for Mark's character's name to be spelled "Leanne".)

We did stats and endeavors, which went pretty smoothly.  Then we got to interests.  This was a bit more difficult, going something like this:

Me:  Ok, now what are your interests?
Them:  Archaeology!  Ballroom dancing!  Jewelry and nice clothing!
Me: Er, no, I mean what are your goals?

We refined interests for a bit and came up with these (taken verbatim from the character sheets):

Monica: "Finding & acquiring the long hidden Emerald of India, winning the grand ballroom dancing competition of London, developing a fast acting acid from two separate chemicals created by two pharmaceutical companies" (No, I don't get the third one either.)
Roberts: "Making money, showing he's smarter than everyone, war profiteer"
Frederick: "Making Lieutenant, my own ship, access to the flag officers club, to be idolized"
LeeAnn: "Jewelry, nice clothing, making the lieutenant commander" (presumably "making" in a different sense than Frederick)

(So, there's some meat in there, but we have a serious problem-- none of the interests involve any of the other characters!  I'm sorry to say, I let these interests stand, figuring that I could weave them together.  I had a little success with that, but not as much as I was hoping for.)

I looked at what we've got so far, and decide that the best compromise between the settings implied by the characters (plus my own biases, which were toward the "Tanith Lee and Jack Vance" fantasy that inspired C&C) and decided that the best compromise setting was pseudo-Victorian England.  I proposed this, and everyone agreed.  I suggested that we could do an alternate-history England with magical elements if magical stuff comes up in the Oracle later, but it got shot down in favor of straight-up (if probably wildly inaccurate) historical fiction.

So, I narrate the opening scene:  It's Midsummer night in London; the air is warm and clear of fog, but there's a faint but ever-present trace of dirty charcoal smoke smell everywhere.  (and so on.  I think I painted a pretty evocative picture.  Too bad I got too caught up in trying to push the plot along that I didn't do it again for the rest of the game.)  We're at the house of the Lord Mayor, who's holding his annual Midsummer Ball, a major event.  Captain Roberts's company, or at least what's left of it, is quartered there, for bodyguard duty, and for their own recuperation.  The company has just returned from India, where they were "shattered" in a battle with a group of cultists seeking the return of a large emerald that was "stolen" from them, an emerald which now resides in the keeping of the Lord Mayor.

the Lord Mayor comes to Captain Roberts and emphasizes the importance of both maintaining security tonight, and keeping up a good appearance for the upper-class guests.  Roberts acknowledges him, and procedes to order Frederick to patrol the grounds.  Frederick attempts to pass the buck to Eli, but in a conflict between Roberts and Frederick, Roberts wins, ordering Frederick to go together with Eli.  (Frederick gets the first spot on the "we owe" list out of the exchange, though.)

Frederick decides to make Eli suffer, and a few dice rolls later, Eli's been verbally abused and is forced to root in the mud (I forget exactly what for).

So, the ball starts.  Monica arrives, and we establish that she knows the Mayor has the emerald, but not where he's hidden it, and that she's already developed a relationship with him.  She dances with him, and attempts to "hypnotize" him into revealing the location of the emerald.  He resists, so she tries (as a new conflict) to physically wear him down, dance marathon style.  She signals the bandleader, and the music switches to a fast-paced tango.  She wins the conflict, exhausting him in the process (knocking his Guts down from d6 d6 to d4 d4.  Ouch for him.)

Monica tries to convince the Mayor to go walk outside with her, but Captain Roberts intervenes by asking Monica to dance with him.  Meanwhile, LeeAnn-- oh, yeah, she's there too.  Surely she wasn't invited.  Perhaps she bluffed her way in?  Alas, we may never know, as we didn't think to address that at the time.  Anyway, LeeAnn wants to dance with the mayor, so she butts in as well.  I decide that Captain Roberts and the Mayor are basically on the same side, so we've got three sides.  Monica's got the high roll, followed by the Roberts/Mayor team, with LeeAnn last.  Monica challenges, R/M wins the answer, and they jostle upward with R/M eventually winning.  LeeAnn is left with no-one to challenge, and has to drop out.

Instead, LeeAnn decides to try to dance with that Lieutenant Commander she's had her eye on.  Except that he's not one of the characters we came up with originally.  So the game grinds to a halt for a few minutes as I throw together another NPC, "Donald, the gallant Lieutenant Commander, chivalrous but reserved; interested in courting Monica and maintaining his dignity".  When he's ready, we roll, and LeeAnn loses, getting foisted off on some exceedingly boring aristocrat.

Now Monica and Captain Roberts are dancing, and Frederick is outside, looking to do some mischief.  He sends a mud-covered, befuddled Eli staggering into the ballroom, straight at them.  They end up with their clothes ruined, and have to exit the ball to change.  But in the privacy of the back rooms, Roberts reveals that he's willing to betray the Mayor for the right price.  He and Monica negotiate a shady deal (the exact nature of which is left to future chapters), and he reveals that the emerald is kept behind the portrait of the Queen in the Lord Mayor's study.

Monica slips into the study and grabs the emerald.  The Lord Mayor shows up, but she bluffs him into believing that she simply got lost and wandered in by mistake.  She swallow the emerald when he's not looking, and they return to the ball together.  Monica tries to dance him to death (whoa!), but fails.  "My dear, when you're around, I feel twenty years younger!"

That was the end of the game.   We decided that we liked it well enough that we'll probably play again next week. 

Other notes:

• Our character's interests didn't conflict with other, which parallels a similar problem we had with our last game, Primetime Adventures, wherein we created characters who occupied the same setting, but didn't have any reason to interact.


• A lot of our conflicts were social, "battle of wits/wills" type things, which basically boiled down to
  
  

  
  (dice are rolled)
  Challenger:  "I say ____"
  (answere rerolls and loses)
  Answerer:  "Crap.  Ok, I guess I believe you/agree with you/obey you/whatever"
  

  
  This seems kinda lame, but I'm not sure if we're misusing the system, or not narrating interesting enough things, or what.


• Also, a lot of conflicts involved one person with an "active" goal, and one who's goal was basically to prevent/avoid/ignore the first person's goal.  We'd roll, the second person would become the challenger, and we'd be kinda stuck for a good narration.


• We ended up writing six names on the "we owe" list, out of probably about 10 or so conflicts.  Three of those were crossed off (using the "extra d6 instead of a reroll" rule.)


• At one point, one player rolled an 11 on the initial roll-off, becoming the challenger.  He then crossed his name off the list to add the extra d6.  He rolled a 5, bringing his number to beat up to 16.  Ouch.  His opponent ended up getting creamed.


• "Getting creamed" is what we've been calling rolling half or less as an answerer.


• Dan renamed his stats to "education", "panics", and "balls".  I hadn't thought of doing that, but it's kinda cool.  (Probably not an earth-shattering concept though-- heck, even the D&D player's handbook mentions doing something like that.)


• Rick was actually in the Navy.  The rest of us just made up ranks based what we remember from Star Trek: The Next Generation.


• Eric expressed a dissatisfaction with the fact that he didn't get "more dice" (character advancement); he preferred the immediate feedback in Dogs in the Vineyard.  I mentioned that he would get the opportunity to add a specialization when his character came back next chapter, but he didn't seem very impressed.  (Perhaps because we hadn't used them in the game, and perhaps because he won't actually get to add it to his character sheet until the start of the next session.)

[lumpley]

Hey Ryan.

So, that's pretty tough. But you've pretty much already figured out why. Making sure that the players name each other's characters and your NPCs in their interests will (probably) kick the resolution into gear.

Here's my advice, if you play again:

a) You name one NPC's interests first, so everyone can see what they're about. Choose a powerful NPC and cast her aggressively against at least two of the PCs. "Lord Eli's interests are to sleep with the gentlewoman-burglar and to court-martial the captain." Make the players feel uncomfortable. Seriously; threaten their characters with really miserable outcomes.

b) Be sure everyone understands that the way to get a recurring character is to set up your character's interests so that they cast your character against another character's strengths. GIVE EXAMPLES. Say, "for instance, maybe LeeAnn's interests are to trap the under-officer into marriage, or blackmail Lord Eli, or hell I dunno finish her botched murder attempt on Captain Roberts." Say it out loud when you're introducing the idea of interests, before anybody has the chance to say "I'm interested in archaeology!" or whatever.

c) If anyone's struggling still, it might help to rephrase it as "it'd be in LeeAnn's interests for [this] to happen." Give more examples. "It'd be in LeeAnn's interests for Captain Roberts to recognize the child she's pregnant with."

d) And pretty much just yeah, don't go forward with the game until every character's interests conflict with at least one other named character.

About setting: if you play again, it'll be really interesting to see how you incorporate the more fantastic elements, as they come up. I'd go ahead and try it - don't assume that saying one time at the beginning of the first session that it's a historical game not a fantasy game means that it really is.

And here's a vibe I'm getting. This is a personal observation and it might be totally wrong; all I have to go on is your one post. So try it on, see if it fits, but no commitment, I'm quite willing to be mistaken.

Your players expect you to uncritically validate their creative input. That's probably what they demand of a GM. If you don't meet their demand - if you reject their input, if you insist that their characters' interests meet a certain standard before the game goes on, for instance - you'll have big trouble.

-Vincent

[lumpley]

Oh actually there's one more thing I'd like to talk about.

You know how in Dogs you escalate from talking to acting? Think of this game the same way. If two characters can resolve a conflict of interest by having an honest conversation, they should, let them. (It was a weak conflict anyway, just setup for the real deal; resolve it and move on.) Invoking the resolution rules is how you escalate when an honest conversation won't resolve it.

"Influencing others" on the character sheet should be read as "manipulating others" (and maybe I'll change the name): lying to others, bullying others, seducing others. It's not honest conversation.

As GM, you'll need to learn to recognize when an honest conversation won't resolve it, and jump in. Practice with your NPCs; have them escalate to rolling dice - to action - at the first sign they won't get their way.

-Vincent

[Ryan Koppenhaver]

Vincent,

Thanks for the response and the advice!  I'll definitely do (a) - (d) when we play again.

I agree about the setting: it'll be interesting to see where it goes if we get anything explicitly magical.

I suspect (and hope, obviously) that your vibe about the group is at least a bit off:  The players are expecting that I'll uncritically accept their input (and correctly so, up to now), but don't demand it; I think they'll accept constructive criticism if I give it to them.  One possibility that honestly hadn't occurred to me when I posted the first time is that the others were simply more in the mindset of "create some paper dolls to try out the dice mechanics first, and later, when we're convinced it's worth the effort, we'll turn them into real characters."  I think I'll just straight out ask them if that's the case; if it is, it's my fault for not presenting my goals for the session clearly enough.

Re escalation: Er, what you're saying makes perfect sense to me in the abstract, but then I try to think about how to it might actually work out in the game, and I guess I'm not quite getting it after all.  Could I trouble you for an example?

[lumpley]

You're the GM, I'm the player. My character's Andris, the master of six monstrous homunculi. Your NPC is Battan, a put-upon magisterial clerk.

It's in Andris' interests for the Upmost Magister to see him. It's in Battan's interests to allow only worthies to see the Upmost Magister, and only at his convenience.

I say in Andris' voice, "sir, I am come to see the Upmost Magister. Allow me past."

You say in Battan's, "are you worthy?"

I say, "in fact, I am."

You say, "will you wait until the hour after noon, when the Upmost Magister has dined?"

I say, "sir, I will."

Conflict resolved, no die rolling.

Case 2:

I say in Andris' voice, "sir, I am come to see the Upmost Magister. Allow me past."

You say in Battan's, "are you worthy?"

I say, "in fact, I am not. Nevertheless, let me past."

You say, "I think perhaps I will decline to do so."

I say, "sir, reconsider, for I have command of these six monstrous homunculi, as you see, and furthermore I shall send them to visit your dear mother, aged though she is, if you do not."

You say, "you must not do so, for I am fond of my mother, yet I still cannot let you past." Then you reach for the dice and say, in your own voice, "throw down, Vincent!"

If you win the initiative, you might say "Furthermore, you have just committed an offense of the second degree, and I think perhaps I will summon the Judicant and following him the Axeman" and add in your own voice, "he does so, with a snap and a gesture." Then I'll get the chance to block or dodge or suck it up.

If I win the initiative, I might have Andris make good on his threat, or threaten Battan, or push past - whatever.

Anyway, so when honest conversation reveals that honest conversation isn't going to resolve the conflict, escalate to dice. Make sense?

-Vincent

[Ryan Koppenhaver]

Yes, that helps a lot.  Thanks!

[John Harper]

Vincent, Jack Vance would be very happy with you right now.