[Perfect] Vengeance is a dish best served with a rock.

[Kirk Mitchell]

I've been thinking about how you might ramp up crimes over time, and it occurred to me that one of the mechanics in my game-in-progress would do the job perfectly, if you want to steal it.

It goes something like this (abstracted to the basic concept, as opposed to being grounded in specific mechanics simply because the game hasn't reached a playable stage yet): There is a dial called the Damage Dial. Here you might want to call it the Crime Dial or something. It has a number of settings that change as the dial increases throughout the game. Each of these settings alter the restrictions on how high stakes can go. I've got the mechanic set up so that every time a character dies or a player decides that the game has reached a crisis point, they turn up the dial and all of a sudden all the stakes jump up. I imagine you could use a similar mechanic: each character has their own individual Crime Dial, and every time they successfully achieve a crime (whether they get away with it or not is a different point, methinks), their Crime Dial goes up and more Crime possibilities become open to them. Perhaps a progression something like this -

Minor infranction - something relatively insignificant: picking a rose, buying something small, disturbing a pond etc.
Minor Theft
Major Theft
etc.

The Crime dial could even branch out, and players could chose which way they progress. You could start out picking a rose, and instead of going up the Theft Crime path, you could give it to a prospective lover and go up that path instead. Whereas you could start out disturbing a pond and progress up towards destruction of property. This could allow for greater mechanical expression of who the character is, and link directly to their intolerance. A person with an Intolerance for the Bank could progress towards theft and destruction of property, while a person with all sorts of pent up violence would progress towards more aggressive crimes.

So yeah, some thoughts. I'm noticing that the game is definitely growing on me though. If you get the next playtest document done within the next 12 weeks ('cause that's when I'm moving), you should definitely sign me up for the playtest.

- Kirk

[joepub]

Hey Kirk...

I was really considering the ramping up, until the playtest tonight.
One of the players kicks off his first turn with the scene:
Edward torches a Historian's building, starts fleeing the scene...
bumps into Hugh (one of the other characters, who had stolen a book from the very same building in the previous scene).
Then when an Inspector rounds the corner, and asks "gentlemen, can I see your papers?" Edward stabs him.

I was like... "Woah."
But the thing was, the player had a real vision:
Kick the game off with something shocking, then use that as a basis for narrating him drawing back from society.

It was... cool, to say the least.
Even as he narrated effects of test, you could see that he had re-directed the tone from "shocking attack" to "draw back"... all within the same scene.

And then I realized... "Damn, without this flexibility and openness... he woulda felt stifled, and this scene wouldn't have happened."

So... in the face of that success and affirmation, I'm leaning away from adding in unnecessary structure.

[Kirk Mitchell]

Fantastic! Its always great to learn that things work just fine the way they are. Just goes to show how valuable playtest can be.

*high five*

- Kirk