[TSoY] Troublesome first session

[Ricky Donato]

Hello, folks,

I'm pretty new to the Forge, so if I make a faux-pas, please let me know. I'm here to describe my first attempt at running TSoY. It fell flat and I'm trying to understand why.

General Questions
I have a few questions about TSoY that can be answered without reading my Actual Play, so I'll put them first.
1) The book talks about healing yourself (by spending Pool points) or someone else (with First Aid or Counsel). Can you do this during BDTP, or can it only be done after the conflict is resolved?
2) If the adventure lists Key Scenes, are these scenes that the characters are guaranteed to see? In other words, should the Story Guide manipulate things (overtly or covertly) to ensure that the characters see these Scenes?
3) If a character fails an ability check, can he try it again?
4) Should every ability check have consequences for failure, or is it fine to say that the failure consequences are simply "you don't succeed"?

Setup
We're playing Shadow of Yesterday (revised edition). Since this is my first time running the system, I decided to make it simple: I would not use any crunchy bits from the Near setting, although the color would still be there. This means that races like the ratkin would still exist, but they would be mechanically identical to humans, and human cultures would be mechanically identical to each other. I intend to introduce the setting in later sessions, but for now I wanted to keep thing simple.

The players are:
Ricky the Story Guide (that's me). I've been playing RPGs for 20 years, and it has been exclusively D&D (red box, 1st, 2nd, and 3.0/3.5 editions).
Grace, my SO. She's played D&D 3.0/3.5 for 5 years, as well as Star Trek d6. Grace and I have gamed together for 5 years, sometimes with me as DM, sometimes with us both as players, and most recently with her as DM.

That's it. It was just the two of us playing Rat Moon Rising as our introduction to TSoY, which you can find HERE (in its first edition form). Ideally, once we both feel comfortable with the system, we can introduce the setting-specific crunchy bits and get a group together.

Chargen
Grace and I did her Chargen together. She created a courtesan, with a high Instinct pool, Adept in Savoir-Faire, and the Secret of Contacts. I told her that the characters in this region have French-sounding names (such as Philippe, Charles, and Gerard from the adventure). She named her character Danielle. She selected 2 Keys and used them to flesh out her character's courtesan background a bit. She decided Danielle used to work at a professional courtesan house, but was kicked out when the House leader died and a power struggle erupted. As a result, Grace picked the Key of the Outcast (no longer an organized courtesan) and the Key of Vengeance (seeking vengeance against any organized prostitution).

Comments: So far, so good. I think we both grasp the basic ideas here, and Grace even selected 2 Keys that synergize well.

Play
This is where things went south. I suffered many problems identical to those described in HERE. That thread reassures me that at least some of my problems are caused by a lack of familiarity with the system.

Right as Grace finished her character, I thought, "Ok, now what?" This would be the part where we start the adventure. That's when I realized that I didn't know how to start the adventure.

I remembered the advice from the TSoY book and thought, "Ok, to get Danielle into the adventure, it has to turn her Keys somehow. Gerard is described as a rake, so Danielle the courtesan probably knows him." So I briefly described Philippe and Gerard to Grace.

Question: This is where I think I made a big blunder. This description set it up so that Danielle knew Gerard - but it didn't mean she cared about Gerard, and that was what was missing. Is that reasonable?

I asked Grace where Danielle would be on a typical morning. She said in a teahouse, because that was where Danielle would typically try to find work, saying that Danielle is not desperate enough to start working the bars or the streets - yet. So Danielle is in a teahouse and she overhears two minor palace flunkies talking about how no one has heard from Gerard's squad. Danielle sits down with them and starts talking to them, trying to extract information about it. I followed the "Say yes or roll dice" rule here, and she made a roll, which she failed. Then I had Visla the elf walk in, and Grace tried the same with him, and failed again. This left us floundering to determine where to go next.

Question: I think I just had an "aha" moment. The information she was looking for was to start the adventure, so I should have just given it to her without a roll. The "Say yes or roll dice" should have been a "yes". Does that make sense?

We kept playing and Danielle traveled to a bar to meet some soldiers. She succeeded and, after an interesting BDTP, she got some more info from a minor officer named Jean about the squad and Gerard; Jean also showed a physical interest in her. She then visited Philip's palace, where she met Philip himself and learned that Philip was most anxious to get the squad back. She then went back to Jean and convinced him that if the two of them found the squad, he would be greatly rewarded. She is hoping that Jean will become her patron afterward.

It was a bit forced, unfortunately, and more importantly all of this took the entire 3 hour session. However, we are now in a position where Danielle has a compelling motivation to try to find the lost soldiers. I'm hopeful that the next session will be more successful.

Thanks in advance to everyone for reading all this and I appreciate any assistance you can give.

[Valamir]

Question: I think I just had an "aha" moment. The information she was looking for was to start the adventure, so I should have just given it to her without a roll. The "Say yes or roll dice" should have been a "yes". Does that make sense?

Yup.

Simple rule of thumb

If Success = Interesting and Failure = boring then Say "Yes" Else, Role Dice

[Glendower]

Play to the keys.  Always keep the keys in mind, and the players will follow the trail of potential experience points.

Key of Vengeance especially allows for all kinds of fun play.  Have the Courtesan house involved somehow, and trying to discourage her from digging further.  That also plays in the key of the Outcast, as they might try to punish her for "nosing around". 

The keys are the player's huge flag of "this is what I want to do!", so you gotta play up to them. And with TSoY, thinking BIG and getting to the core of the character RIGHT NOW is very rewarding. 

[rafial]

1) The book talks about healing yourself (by spending Pool points) or someone else (with First Aid or Counsel). Can you do this during BDTP, or can it only be done after the conflict is resolved?

Hmmm... my take on this would be that being healed by someone else requires then to take some action toward you, and for you to cooperate, so it would seem out of place in the midst of a BDTP, unless that BDTP was being carried out over a very long time scale.  Spending Pool to heal however I think would be no problem.  The character is just "shrugging it off".

2) If the adventure lists Key Scenes, are these scenes that the characters are guaranteed to see? In other words, should the Story Guide manipulate things (overtly or covertly) to ensure that the characters see these Scenes?

I'd call Key Scenes "nice to haves" rather than "must haves".  So if it is natural to slip one into the flow of events, do so, but don't feel that you have failed if you get to the end of the night or the end of the adventure and find that you prepared some Key Scenes that haven't been used.  Perhaps you'll use them next time, or perhaps they were simply irrelevant.

3) If a character fails an ability check, can he try it again?
4) Should every ability check have consequences for failure, or is it fine to say that the failure consequences are simply "you don't succeed"?

I lump these together because they are closely linked.  In general the outcome of an ability check should be definite, which means that you should not play the game of "roll until you succeed" or "roll until you fail".  So no, you shouldn't be trying an ability check over and over again UNLESS THE SITUATION HAS CHANGED SIGNIFICANTLY.  So if the goal is "climb over that wall", and you fail, then you can't climb that wall.  But what if you went and found a ladder?  Or found a different wall, one that is shorter, or less shear?  Well that's a significant change to the situation.

Because the outcome of the ability check is binding, setting the stakes for failure as "you don't succeed" can quickly lead to frustration, as you found.  That's why developing the art (and it is an art) of setting good failure stakes is so essential.  For example, when Danielle tried to pry for info with the palace flunkies, you could have set stakes like this: "if you win, you learn where the squad was going, if you fail, they become suspicious and try to have you hauled in for questioning".  Now, win or lose, Danielle is going to get sucked deeper into the situation.  As a player, you may prefer one or other of the outcomes, but neither outcome is boring.

If the only failure stake you can think of are "no", and "no" is a roadblock to further play, then that's when you ought to be thinking about "saying yes" instead of rolling dice.

[Ricky Donato]

Key of Vengeance especially allows for all kinds of fun play.  Have the Courtesan house involved somehow, and trying to discourage her from digging further.  That also plays in the key of the Outcast, as they might try to punish her for "nosing around". 

The keys are the player's huge flag of "this is what I want to do!", so you gotta play up to them. And with TSoY, thinking BIG and getting to the core of the character RIGHT NOW is very rewarding. 

Hmm. That's an excellent point, which shows that I didn't do my homework for the session, namely I didn't think about relating the adventure to the character's Keys ahead of time. Based on what Clinton has said, I think he prefers to "wing it" during a session much more than I do. TSoY seems to support either method of play, but I went in without much prep and I paid for it because my "winging it" skill is poor.

3) If a character fails an ability check, can he try it again?
4) Should every ability check have consequences for failure, or is it fine to say that the failure consequences are simply "you don't succeed"?

I lump these together because they are closely linked. In general the outcome of an ability check should be definite, which means that you should not play the game of "roll until you succeed" or "roll until you fail". So no, you shouldn't be trying an ability check over and over again UNLESS THE SITUATION HAS CHANGED SIGNIFICANTLY. So if the goal is "climb over that wall", and you fail, then you can't climb that wall. But what if you went and found a ladder? Or found a different wall, one that is shorter, or less shear? Well that's a significant change to the situation.

Because the outcome of the ability check is binding, setting the stakes for failure as "you don't succeed" can quickly lead to frustration, as you found. That's why developing the art (and it is an art) of setting good failure stakes is so essential. For example, when Danielle tried to pry for info with the palace flunkies, you could have set stakes like this: "if you win, you learn where the squad was going, if you fail, they become suspicious and try to have you hauled in for questioning". Now, win or lose, Danielle is going to get sucked deeper into the situation. As a player, you may prefer one or other of the outcomes, but neither outcome is boring.

If the only failure stake you can think of are "no", and "no" is a roadblock to further play, then that's when you ought to be thinking about "saying yes" instead of rolling dice.

There is a lot of really good advice here. I'm going to have to ponder it for a while and absorb it.

[sirogit]

If you're dedicated to using the adventure, you should make sure the player is dedicated to getting into the adventure. I would hook the player into the adventure out of game rather than in game.

You should also prepare Key Scenes which are not listed in the Adventure that are more tailored towards her character.

The idea about making sure that any result of the dice leads towards coolness is solid.

The basic formula for avoiding these problems are:

1) Present situations which require responses from the player.
2) Roll with those responses
3) Use the Conflict system, setting stakes so that success or failure, the story is pushed foward rather than stopped.
4) When the player isn't going foward anymore, switch to the next situation.

[Ricky Donato]

I'm having a tough time understanding stakes-setting. Let me go through this step-by-step.

The basic formula for avoiding these problems are:

1) Present situations which require responses from the player.

Requiring responses is a bit different from what I was thinking about. Hmmm...So with my actual play above, I could give the character Danielle the opportunity (which I will call "Situation #1") to strike at her former courtesan house. However, if I put Danielle in a situation ("Situation #2") where she must do something, that's much better. If Situation #2 gives Danielle the opportunity to strike at her former courtesan house, that's gravy; and since this is a Key, the player Grace should be actively looking for those opportunities and making them happen, rather than waiting on me to provide them.

2) Roll with those responses

(I'm assuming you mean "roll with" as in "adapt to", not as in "roll the dice".) So whatever response Grace comes up with to Situation #2, I should accept that and adapt the adventure as necessary to it.

I think this is a good motivation to avoid a lot of prep. If I've done a lot of prepwork regarding King George, and a player tries to kill King George, I would consider disallowing it (overtly or covertly) from succeeding, just so that I'm not saying, "All my precious prepwork...gone!"

3) Use the Conflict system, setting stakes so that success or failure, the story is pushed forward rather than stopped.

This may sound silly, but I'm not clear on what it means to "push the story forward". I think that means that for either outcome (success or failure) all of the following should be true:
1) The character's interaction with the situation meaningfully changes.
2) The character will continue to interact with the situation.
3) It makes the players say, "Ooh, that's cool!" regardless of whether the character succeeds or fails.

4) When the player isn't going forward anymore, switch to the next situation.

I confess that I don't understand this point at all. Could you explain a bit further?

[Glendower]

Let's take the Keys for a moment and push them a step further.  I view the keys as a huge signal to where the player wants the story to go.  The player is saying "These ideas are neat, and I want to have events happen that involve these keys as much as possible."

So if the story is tied to the Keys, then you will benefit from situations where the keys come into play.  The player will then be engaged and be motivated to drive forward the story. 

Driving forward simply means they will be able to further their mission of vengeance, and resolve their Outcastiness.  That is their story.  I compare the Keys to the Issues in Primetime Adventures, things that the character cannot ignore, that they must use to drive their character towards the story they want.

Stakes setting is just a way of knowing what's going to happen if things fail.  The player knows in advance what will happen if they screw up the roll, which adds a bit of tension to the moment.  If you look at TSOY, conflicts start with Intention.  The player says "I want my character to do this".  The GM says "If you fail, the character will cause that". 

All that's happening is the consequences are crystal clear to the player.  If they mess up, this is the consequence.  If they know the consequence in advance, they may try something else.  If they go for it, they accept the possible consequence and most of all, are cool with it happening.

You aren't, you know, revealing it with a wave of your wand.  "Failed the roll eh?  Well, guess what, you are captured and enslaved!" How fun is that?  Arbitrary GM fiat garbage, that's what that is. 

If you do this instead "If you fail this roll, you will be captured and enslaved."  The player gets to think about it.  He or she gets to go... hmm... is it worth it?  And if they think so, they go "ok, let's do it".  Or they back the hell out.

If they fail, then it wasn't GM fiat.  It was their decision that enslavement was a possible accepted path for the story to take.

That is my take on stakes setting.  In my opinion, it's a great tool.

[Judd]

Jon, that is how I too did stakes setting but I think I was doing TSoY a disservice.

What if it is a victory with 3 over the opposed roll?  What if it is a victory of just 1 over the opposed roll?

Is it the same victory?

Ricky,

For a good example of where stakes setting could have helped, let's look at your first conflict that you mentioned.

So Danielle is in a teahouse and she overhears two minor palace flunkies talking about how no one has heard from Gerard's squad. Danielle sits down with them and starts talking to them, trying to extract information about it. I followed the "Say yes or roll dice" rule here, and she made a roll, which she failed. Then I had Visla the elf walk in, and Grace tried the same with him, and failed again. This left us floundering to determine where to go next.

What if when she failed, not only did she not get the information but had gotten the attention of the person who disappeared Gerard's Squad and in the next scene, they came after her for being nosy and asking too many questions?

What if when she failed she earned the elf's ire and gained an enemy?

Ya see, a failure need not be just about a fizzle and nothing.  A failure can lead to as much adventure as a success.

Hope that helps.

[donbaloo]

Jon, that is how I too did stakes setting but I think I was doing TSoY a disservice.

What if it is a victory with 3 over the opposed roll?  What if it is a victory of just 1 over the opposed roll?

Is it the same victory?

Hey Judd, could you expand on this?  I understand that TSoY provides for a spectrum of results from Failure to Transcendance...just wondering how you utilize that in stakes setting for this particular game.  Have you since changed the way you set stakes for TSoY, or at least considered how you'd go about it differently next time?  I suppose setting the failure half of the stakes  would be the same since there is no spectrum of failure for the game but what about the success half?  Would you leave that more open ended maybe and interpret it after the dice results?  Just curious...

[Ricky Donato]

Jon, that is how I too did stakes setting but I think I was doing TSoY a disservice.

What if it is a victory with 3 over the opposed roll?  What if it is a victory of just 1 over the opposed roll?

Is it the same victory?

Hi, Judd,

Based on the TSoY rules, I think it is the same victory. Here are some quotes (emphasis added):

Intention
    The player announces the intended action for the character. No movement or action has happened yet, though. The intention and its consequences may be discussed among the Story Guide and players and changed. Stakes must be stated for the check: what stands to be lost and gained?

First, the player states the character's intention and the Story Guide sets the stakes. This should be easy: "Pieter is going to try to climb that boulder" is a good example. The Story Guide could reply "If you succeed, Pieter's over the rock," but that's pretty implicit. Usually, the results of success are easily taken from what the player said. The results of failure are determined by the Story Guide and players. In this case, failure could mean Pieter's not over the rock or it could mean something worse. The Story Guide has free reign here to say, "That's a giant boulder. If you fail, Pieter falls and will break a bone." What's important is that these stakes are stated up front.

Ricky,

For a good example of where stakes setting could have helped, let's look at your first conflict that you mentioned.

So Danielle is in a teahouse and she overhears two minor palace flunkies talking about how no one has heard from Gerard's squad. Danielle sits down with them and starts talking to them, trying to extract information about it. I followed the "Say yes or roll dice" rule here, and she made a roll, which she failed. Then I had Visla the elf walk in, and Grace tried the same with him, and failed again. This left us floundering to determine where to go next.

What if when she failed, not only did she not get the information but had gotten the attention of the person who disappeared Gerard's Squad and in the next scene, they came after her for being nosy and asking too many questions?

What if when she failed she earned the elf's ire and gained an enemy?

Ya see, a failure need not be just about a fizzle and nothing.  A failure can lead to as much adventure as a success.

Hope that helps.

That definitely helps. Thanks very much.

[Judd]

Hey Judd, could you expand on this?  I understand that TSoY provides for a spectrum of results from Failure to Transcendance...just wondering how you utilize that in stakes setting for this particular game.  Have you since changed the way you set stakes for TSoY, or at least considered how you'd go about it differently next time?  I suppose setting the failure half of the stakes  would be the same since there is no spectrum of failure for the game but what about the success half?  Would you leave that more open ended maybe and interpret it after the dice results?  Just curious...

I am really not blowing your question off but...ask me again in a week or so.

I'm marinating on some stakes stuff in my noggin.

If you want to know where my head's at, check out the rules for Duel of Wits when someone shreds away someone else's Body of Argument.

[Glendower]

Jon, that is how I too did stakes setting but I think I was doing TSoY a disservice.

What if it is a victory with 3 over the opposed roll?  What if it is a victory of just 1 over the opposed roll?

Is it the same victory?

What I'd do here is place the whole narration of success into the player's hands.  They can play up their Amazing success at whatever it is they're trying to do.  That way they get their money's worth.  I'd toss in a few suggestions, and so would others at the table.  Make it a group effort to get that high roll it's money's worth.  Or that marginal success it's lack of money's worth.

And I'd narrate the failure, and ensure that it was an interesting and engaging failure.  And I'd get the player's input, should he accept the outcome and not Bring Down the Pain (as per rules).  I'd take suggestions from the rest of the players.  I'd say yes a lot (players can come up with great ways of punishing themselves or each other)

Essentially the same as I run Primetime Adventures.  Many heads are better than one, and the player knows better how to engage his/her own senses better than I could.  It avoids having me expose my secret telepathy. *Grin*

[donbaloo]

I see what you're getting at Judd.  Its gonna feel a bit different I think with TSoY since failure is failure and the spectrum only appears in the success side of it.  I guess you'd have to pick a success level and say, at that point you get total success.  Less than that level and the success has to offer up shades of concession as regards their intent.  Take your time, I'm interested in hearing what you come up with...