[Kin] Pain and Intimacy

[Kirk Mitchell]

Right, so this is Kin, and its about sex, and love, being in a family and pathological narcissism. Also people's souls getting ripped out and shit, but thats sort of secondary.

So essentially, it is a drama based resolution system where I don't really care so much about what happens, as opposed to the emotional content and repercussions of said actions. So, in keeping with the dark spirit of the game, I've got players accumulating Pain and Intimacy for everything that their characters do. Basically, they say what they do, and they roll a bunch of dice. Odds equal Pain, evens equal Intimacy. They stick these in the middle of the table. Relationships, Scars etc alter the values of Pain and Intimacy. The other player can choose to accept the Pain/Intimacy, or do some other stuff with it that isn't really all that relevant here. Ultimately, the Pain/Intimacy goes to somebody and thats all that matters. This represents how the actions taken draw the characters together, or drive them apart, and the emotions that are associated. At the end of each scene, everybody counts up all the Pain and Intimacy they've got. Now, here's the tricky bit: I don't know what to do with all this Pain and Intimacy everybody is holding in their hands. I ge tthe feeling that it has to do something, but I don't know what.

A couple of ideas that I've been nutting out that I'm not sure how to make work:

A) The Pain and Intimacy sits about until the character becomes Heartbroken, and we have some sort of Heartbreak formula that sorts of all the repercussions of that (a sort of A+B+C makes This thing). Heartbreak is essentially when a character is pushed as far as they can go, and they break, and bad things happen. People get hurt, people die, people leave, nasty words are exchanged and people's lives are left in ruins. The trick with this is how to make the values of Pain and Intimacy matter, and since we are dealing with a potentially unlimited amount that it makes it hard to value it properly.

B) Pain and Intimacy are spent to effectively "buy" things that happen. Like, "have sex" and "get in a fight" and "lose a friend". Again, the trick is with the value. The buying would have to be enforced, not an optional thing.

I can't really think of anything else. Having the Pain and Intimacy sitting about for no reason and just being like points you have to earn doesn't really fly well with me, or with my vision of the game. So yeah.

If I haven't given enough information, then I'd be happy to supply more. The game right now is just mostly comprised of scribbles in my notebook so I can't exactly post a link to anything that anybody would understand other than myself. I'm working on a proper document (meaning: readable), but I need to get some of these issues sorted out first.

So, thoughts?

Thanks!
- Kirk

[TonyLB]

Is there anything that the players are likely to want to do with their characters on their own (i.e. not in reference to other players and their characters)?  Or is the familial relationship the entire arena of the game?

[Bill Masek]

Kirk,

You have an interesting premise.  I like the idea of using Pain and Intimacy as your game currencies.  I see several ways in which you could spend it.

1:  Narrative Control:  By spending X intimacy or X pain, you can frame or somehow change the events that occur in a scene.  The currency used to make these narrative changes and the amount would determine the kinds of narrative effects.

2:  Win/Endgame Condition:  Think Love from My Life With Master.  This currency helps you to reach some sort of resolution and possibly determines how your character ends up in the end.  In a gamiest game this would be winning.  In yours it can be practically anything.

3:  Change in Effectiveness:  Purchased effects which increase or decrease the amount of one of the currencies you receive in a given situation.

4:  Color:  You can add a cool detail which may or may not have any actual use by spending a certain amount of intimacy and/or pain currency.

5:  Retroactive history:  By spending currency you can establish that something happened, even if it was not mentioned previously or occurred before the game began.  The kind of event would correlate to the kind of currency spent.

6:  Create/control group characters:  You can spend one or both of the currencies to create an NPC and control him or her for one scene.  Any one may then spend a certain amount of one or both of the currencies to take control of one of the NPCs.

7:  You don't spend it at all, other people can use your intimacy and/or pain to control you.

These are all valid ways to use your currency.  I could see you game working great with any one of the above, although two or more could be combined for interesting effects.  Which one you choose will depend on the type of game you are trying to build.

Best,
        Bill

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

Hi Kirk,

I just want to butt in real quick... Bill's number # 7 is really exciting to me. I would say I like the idea even better if you do spend it for control. Here's what I'm seeing, everyone has their own color tokens some with P's (Pain!) and some with I's (Intimacy). If someone wants to cause changes for your character, or get your character to do something you don't want to, they can spend any of your I's they have, or any of their I's you have in some kind of challenge system. They are disadvantaged in this by any of your P's they have, and any of their P's you have. This means the strength of the relationship is based on what both players have. That to me sounds really cool. The relationship is changed after the forced change which seems neat also.

I think it would also be interesting if players had to agree to accept intimacy but not pain, but I may just be sick that way.

Could another player having I's or P's other than your character create some kind of problem? Say Mom has a good deal of I's with dad, and then takes some I's from Junior, could that create P's for Junior and Dad? That could be a messed up world.

That's sort of stream of consciousness, let me know if I need to expand on what I'm trying to communicate if it doesn't make sense.

[joepub]

Hey Kirk...

I'm really intrigued by this game concept.


First of all:
I don't think pain and intimacy should be used to determine endgame.
Or... at least, I don't think that should be their main reason for existance.

How endgame comes about in My Life With Master, which Bill mentioned, works really well because it has a specific outcome:
A minion gets up the courage to defy Master. Master dies, and the minions do X as a result.

The thing is... I don't think Kin would benefit from having such a cut and dried endgame.

First of all, there are a million ways I could imagine this game going:
divorce, the death of the husband, family splitting apart, daughter eloping with a boy you don't trust, drug abuse, etc.

But I don't think that any of those need to be considered endgames in this:
divorce: they could remarry with different people which sets of the same circle of violence, just more seperated.
death: What's that movie, where the lover's ghost comes back to haunt her? I dunno. That concept, though.
family splitting apart: same circle of violence, just more seperated. or struggle to re-integrate.
eloping: family tracks them down. daughter comes back poor and heartbroken.
drug abuse: rehab (which is itself a chain of pain an intimacy, in ways, I'm sure.)

My point is this: I don't think Kin should have an endgame. I think it should be a series of escalations and recessions. Crescendos and descendos (sp?).

The ideas I like most are:

1:  Narrative Control:  By spending X intimacy or X pain, you can frame or somehow change the events that occur in a scene.  The currency used to make these narrative changes and the amount would determine the kinds of narrative effects.

B) Pain and Intimacy are spent to effectively "buy" things that happen. Like, "have sex" and "get in a fight" and "lose a friend". Again, the trick is with the value. The buying would have to be enforced, not an optional thing.

3:  Change in Effectiveness:  Purchased effects which increase or decrease the amount of one of the currencies you receive in a given situation.

5:  Retroactive history:  By spending currency you can establish that something happened, even if it was not mentioned previously or occurred before the game began.  The kind of event would correlate to the kind of currency spent.

7:  You don't spend it at all, other people can use your intimacy and/or pain to control you.

[Kirk Mitchell]

Wow. This is great! I'm glad everybody likes the idea. Clearly I'm on to a good thing.

Oh! Tony, I'm sorry. I should have said -

WHAT PLAYER CHARACTERS DO:

Well, aside from the family arena, there are a number of characters that will take a major part in the story. But aside from that, the game pretty much assumes that the family unit and these supporting characterss are the entirety of the world. There are no other characters that take part in the story. So pretty much, player characters interact with the family, and their secondary Relationships, and they destroy each other's lives.

A couple of things:

Joe, you are right on the money. Kin has no predetermined endgame, only a process by which the story ends because all stories have to end eventually. There are just too many possibilities for the way this could go, although I'm betting that most stories would end up either like The Royal Tenenbaums, or at the other end of the scale, like Hamlet. However, I am considering having Pain/Intimacy influence the epilogue, certainly.

Also, Clyde and Bill, I had initially considered using Pain and Intimacy in this way, but rejected the idea because although it perfectly suited the flavour and style of the game, I felt it would breed a reluctance to damage your own characters, instead relying on other players. I want players to set their characters up to create the most conflict, practically begging other players to hit them. However, considering the general response to this suggestion, I'm definitely reconsidering.

So here are my thoughts:

We've got players racking up Pain and Intimacy. At the end of each scene, there are a bunch of things that can be done:

A) Other players use your Pain and Intimacy to frame your next scene, buying situations and suchlike. The nastier and more dangerous the situation, the more Pain it costs. The more intimate and caring the situation, the more Intimacy it costs. A mixture leads to sexy violence or violent sex.

B) You can use Pain/Intimacy to increase or decrease other player characters' Love (which is essentially Trust from The Mountain Witch).

C) When you are Heartbroken, the rest of your Pain/Intimacy comes into play with a formula that allows you to set up what bad things happen, and how. All of your Pain/Intimacy is expended, and your Heart goes down by one or two (roll dice, odds: heart goes down by one, evens: heart goes down by two).

D) Epilogue: When the story finally ends, Pain/Intimacy dictates how your character's story ends.

See how its starting to come together? If other players frame you in more extreme circumstances, then your character goes through more shit and pain and heartbreak and misery, but you don't get hit as hard when you are Heartbroken, and your endgame will probably not be so bad. But it could easily go the other way. All the Pain and Intimacy could go pent up, and when you fall, you'll fall hard.

Its a bit of an aside, but this is something that I really like about the game. How it can replicate Hamlet and MacBeth style blood opera, with lots of blatantly horrible things happening, but it could also be so subtle that a single glance, a few stray words can send characters careening off into darkness and oblivion. Eye contact and a smile can have the same level of Pain/Intimacy as a sex-scene or punching someone in the face.

Thoughts?

Thanks,
- Kirk

[Bill Masek]

Kirk,

Consider this possibility.  Let us say that there are rounds in your game.  A round is one roll for everyone.  Let us also say that Pain is a bad thing.  What if every player counts the total amount of pain they receive (not just their totals) each round.  At the end of the round, who ever has the most pain shares the suffering, and every player who did not receive the most pain receives an amount of pain equal to the person who received the most that round.  So...

Dad gets 6 pain
Mom gets 4 pain
Sister gets 2 pain
Brother gets 0 pain.

Becomes...

Dad ends up with 6 pain
Mom ends up with 10 pain
Sister ends up with 8 pain
Brother ends up with 6 pain

Just something to think about.

Best,
        Bill

[joepub]

Dad gets 6 pain
Mom gets 4 pain
Sister gets 2 pain
Brother gets 0 pain.

Becomes...

Dad ends up with 6 pain
Mom ends up with 10 pain
Sister ends up with 8 pain
Brother ends up with 6 pain

Cool!

This got me thinking...

What about this as an alternative...

Dad gets 6 pain
Mom gets 4 pain
Sister gets 2 pain
Brother gets 0 pain.

Pain is something you inflict upon yourself.
It is done in a blind process, so no one knows who is going to end up with the most pain.
Maybe Mom thought that 4 point bid was the top one.

You take on pain in order to buy narrative control, pretty much.

But the thing is... the player who takes on the most pain gets an "outburst"
And basically gets their narrative control, AND gets to re-distribute the Pain they controlled amongst the other players.

So it becomes, for example:
Dad 0
Mom 6
Sister 4
Brother 2

[Kirk Mitchell]

This is an interesting idea. I'll definitely consider it. The concept of pain being a self-inflicted thing is fantastic, and I love it. However, the issue with this is it makes my Sacrifice rule completely useless, and I really like it. Essentially the way it goes is that if you really, really want narrative control, then you go into debt for a certain amount of Pain/Intimacy. Later on in the game, a character called the Pariah (every family member has one attatched to them. Imagine your worst, most abusive and inescapable relationship. Then add Tom Ripley meets Hannibal Lecter) comes to collect, with interest. And then really bad things happen.

So how about: I keep my roughly fifty-fifty conflict resolution system (which I like because it takes the importance out of the actual conflict result and puts it into the emotional impact), and use the blind bidding as the Sacrifice rule. If you don't like how things are going and really want your character to go nuts, then you go into debt for higher than the Pain rolled, and higher than any other competing bids. It is a far more streamlined way of going about assigning Debt than I had originally imagined.

I like it.

- Kirk

[TonyLB]

Dad gets 6 pain
Mom gets 4 pain
Sister gets 2 pain
Brother gets 0 pain.

Becomes...

Dad ends up with 6 pain
Mom ends up with 10 pain
Sister ends up with 8 pain
Brother ends up with 6 pain

Yay Dollar Auction!  This scheme implies that the moment you take even one point of pain in a round, you can cut your losses by getting the most pain ... for instance, if Mom had gotten 3 more points of pain then she'd have ended up with 7 rather than being hammered with 10.  Of course, then, Dad would have had 13, so he'd be better off taking two more points and getting 8 (which would leave Mom with a phenomenal 15) and so on and so on.  The people who suffer most from that escalation are the ones not involved in it (specifically Brother and Sister) who have no chance of getting off easy, and just get to watch their upcoming suffering get worse and worse.

[Bill Masek]

Tony gets the idea.

When I wrote this I was assuming that when both pain and intimacy were generated two things happened:

1:  The player who rolled got both currencies added to their score.
2:  That player must divide the same amount of both currencies between other characters.

I was also assuming that there were a limited number of dice.  So while the pain you create does hurt you, it hurts someone else as well.  The pain share at the end just makes the game much more intricate, with minimal extra complexity.

Best,
        Bill

[Kirk Mitchell]

Ah, I get it now. Cool! Its in!

*mind boggles at the possibilities in play*

Righto, I'm going to do my best to get a readable document sorted out for you guys sometime over the next few days. I'll post it in my blog (the link in my signature) as soon as its done. If anybody has any more suggestions, is interested in playtesting or has any questions in general, give me a shout!

- Kirk

[Kirk Mitchell]

An interesting observation:

Everybody immediately jumped all over Pain, suggesting some great comments, but I find it notable how Intimacy has been ignored. It was a deliberate design decision on my part to make Pain/Intimacy a fifty/fifty chance with every action and every conflict, because pleasure and pain are so closely related, especially in the troubled (and potentially abusive) relationships I am attempting to describe. Despite all the horrible things I intend on having players do, I actually view Kin as primarily generating love stories. Tragic love, perhaps, but there is always the chance that it will turn out well, stronger and better for all the pain and suffering undergone. I'm a hopeless romantic and a real sucker for love stories. But I also adore tragedy, so this is my attempt to merge my two loves. I really wouldn't want the romance to get swamped by the tragedy and narcissism.

So in future discussions, and for the remainder of this one, please try and take this into account.

Try and picture this: Solaris meets The Royal Tenenbaums meets When A Man Loves A Woman meets The Talented Mr Ripley, and you'll have a pretty good idea of what I'm aiming for.

- Kirk

[Bill Masek]

Kirk

A good observation worthy of a good response.

I do not believe that intimacy has been ignored.  The point of your game is that the two are linked.  By changing the rules for pain you change its relationship with intimacy which changes intimacy.  By using the dollar auction method for pain you make it much vaster in scope and far less personal.  This makes the intimacy rare and precious.  Where pain is a roaring beast which everyone creates but no one ever truly controls, intimacy is personal and safe.  If you give intimacy to someone, only they will get it.  If you do not give intimacy to someone then they will not receive it.  This beautiful, twisted relationship is the key to your game and I believe that we are exploring it admirably.

True, pain has been brought up in name a lot more, but that does not reduce the impact on intimacy.

Best,
         Bill

[Kirk Mitchell]

A fantastic point. And I agree completely. Thank you! You have given me a greater understanding of my game, and that is fantastic.

I was concerned that what I was noticing was a symptom of gamer culture's aversion to exploring physical and emotional intimacy, but this is clearly not the case.

Great! Now I just have to get back to work writing the damn thing...

- Kirk