[AG&G] Cooking for Leviticus

[colin roald]

Well, we just tried our second session of the game that was called AG&G (currently officially nameless).  First session is here: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=20027.0

A's character John Cooper was at the top of the We Owe list, so he was in.  And since last time one of John Cooper's interests was "find a nice girl to marry", A chose

* The much-contested wedding of the province's great beauty

We cast for three more, and drew

* A warrior-woman, queen of her small wild tribe, hard-pressed by advancing civilization;
* A jaded gladiator, murderer of both enemies and friends; and
* A vengeful and jealous god, displeased by the lapses of his followers, however scrupulously they observe.

Hm.

Okay.  We struggled with several combinations of the above, but eventually settled on:  the wedding is being held as a contest, at the demand of the god.  The great beauty is the daughter of a frontier lord, whose people are encroaching on the lands of the warrior-queen.  And John Cooper and the jaded gladiator are suitors.  The god was named Leviticus, and had many arbitrary rules for his ceremony, centered mainly around a cooking competition.

A let her previous character, John Cooper, go -- she decided she'd rather play the great beauty.  And M took the warrior-queen.

In hindsight, I think at this point we were screwed.  The conflicts don't really work, especially when the only really interesting event we had going on was the competition of the suitors, and the players decide they don't really want to play the suitors.  I could see this looked like a problem, and spent the character-creation time trying to figure out how to re-frame the plot around the characters they wanted to play, but on the spot like that didn't come up with anything good.  I figured, well, okay, we've come this far, maybe we can extract some comedy, but it turned out my players didn't have any great inspiration either.

We started with a small scene to set the stage, describing some characters arriving and introducing themselves, and the Old-West-ish festival atmosphere on the manor grounds, inside the stockade.   Then Thala, the warrior queen, approached, and I asked M what she was doing.  He wanted her to approach slowly,  to investigate what the crazy white men were up to, but since there was no conflict in that I tried to push it along -- okay, you've done that, now what does she do?  I thought about suggesting that he just describe a scene where she has magically found out what was going on, but decided to let it go his way.

She approached the gates, and we had a little scene where she demanded to be taken to the lord of the manor, and the guards tried to tell her savage ass to piss off.  But she talks them into it, and I figure that since these are just guards, that's an automatic success.

We cut back to Griselda, the beauty, who is upstairs primping and reading scripture before the next stage in the marriage competition/ritual.  I'm really struggling for interesting conflict to throw at her, so I introduce a pretty greasy priest character, who leads a preparatory prayer and hymn to Leviticus with some inappropriate touching.   We'd decided earlier that one of the things that Leviticus wanted in proper ritual was good singing, so A had made a point of setting her Singing endeavour to her worst attribute.  Now we wanted to roll a test of singing to see how displeased the god was -- not obvious how to do this by the rules, but A wanted a die roll, so we settled on her singing dice vs the god's Orneriness stat, which I made up on the spot.  She lost badly, crushed on the first roll.  Therefore she was owed some good smiting, but I drew a blank on anything entertaining right there, so I postponed it.

Cut to the cook-off in the back court, in which the designated recipe is Souffle.  ("It should be Lobster Thermidor, but we're too far inland," explains Griselda.)   Three suitors are made up on the spot, plus Arko the jaded gladiator, and John Cooper the gormless farm lad.    John Cooper has a huge vat of water on the boil, but he is not actually anywhere to be seen (last heard from requesting directions to find a shovel).  Arko, meanwhile, doesn't seem to be even trying to make souffle, but instead is tossing stuff into a really half-assed pot of soup.  Griselda takes a dislike to him, so A rolls a conflict to distract him while she slips some bitter herbs in to ruin the soup;  success!   

Thala the warrior-queen wants to talk to the Baron about what's going on, so she's brought in by the guards while he's observing the competition.  This ends up in a conflict to make him respect her, and I tell M, okay, if she sort of casually thumps the guards, she'll get some respect.  At which point I'm wondering -- what dice for a conflict to thump two nameless guards?  Automatic success because they're nameless -- could have gone with that, but that seemed too easy, unsatisfying.  Determine Defending Myself scores for both guards, and roll them together?  Seemed excessively difficult -- Thala was supposed to be tough enough to win something like this pretty automatically.  We decided to roll her Fighting against the Baron's Asserting Myself, and if she won (which she did) describe her thumping the guards to make a point. 

John Cooper finally shows up, covered in dirt, with a squirming sack full of, um, things, which he proceeds to dump in his pot, followed by handfuls of fresh herbs of various descriptions.  You don't want to look at it, but damn, it smells pretty good.  "It's a secret recipe of me mum's," he says.

Vicious, leathery Arko tastes his soup, and gags on the bitter herbs.  Whirling on the suitor beside him -- the spotty younger son of one of the Baron's knights -- he declares, "you, pisswad!  Don't ye dare be sabotagin' me soup!"   And then drives a fist into his guts.  Since Arko is a named character (even if a GM character), I declare that the fight takes about five seconds, not even long enough for the Baron's guards to react, and the kid ends up curled on the ground with two broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder, and a broken nose.  Arko then slides over one and assumes proprietorship over the kid's souffle.  For some reason or other, the Baron doesn't object.

Griselda decides she doesn't like this, but isn't willing to make a scene.  So she does a small prayer to Leviticus to cause a big bug to drop off the tent into Arko's dish.   I figure since Arko is a named character, he should get a chance to defend, so we roll Griselda's Prayer against Arko's Exerting Myself, as he tries to bat the bug away.  He wins big, and I describe how he swats it in mid-air to fling it into his neighbour (the miller)'s souffle.

The souffles are done, and the Baron, the priest, and Griselda taste the souffles, and John Cooper's Dirt Crab Thermidor.  All are pronounced acceptable, if not equal, and we move along.

It was a fun series of scenes, with some clever bits and a few laughs, but it was also a big failure.  The most interesting activity, despite my best intentions, happened between GM characters, and the player's goals advanced hardly at all.  I kept trying to think of ways to focus more directly on their characters, but the logic of the story kept dragging us back to the suitors. 

By this time the evening was getting on and it wasn't clear what the next scene should be.  We talked a bit about whether anyone had a vision for where the story should go, but we were all kind of drawing a blank.  So I fast-forward to the wedding chapel after all the competitions are done, and the priest summons the voice of the god to declare the winner.  And I wanted to get at least some big magic into the story, since it seems like  a fundamental part of AG&G and yet we'd stuck sort of frustratingly to all-small-scale "realistic" stuff.  So a wind swirls in the chapel and the doors slam shut and the sky darkens, and the priest declares in an unnatural, sort of crazy voice that the god was displeased with everyone, and all would be struck down. And only one was worthy to marry the favoured one, and that was His priest, Rakesh.  And everyone in the church was struck silent, staring blankly as the priest took Griselda's hands and started in on the marriage ceremony. 

All except the PCs, that is, so they immediately launched in to a conflict against him.  I think he had d12+d8 for magic, and they had d8+d6 and d10+d6 for Assert Myself to oppose him.   And he won the first round anyway, and got a bonus die.  And then in the second round, managed to roll 11 plus six on the bonus die for a total of 17, and their best roll was a seven, and just like that my villain won the day and married the girl.

Hrm.

So sadly, if anything this session was less satisfying than our first.   The amount of improv required was very demanding, and when we rolled up a scenario that didn't really click for us, the whole thing fell flat.  I think our best chance at fixing it would have been way back at the beginning to look at that combination of elements, collectively declare "I'm not feelin' it", and re-roll.  We knew it looked kind of difficult, but until we tried it we couldn't really tell it wasn't going to work for us.

Right now, I'm thinking that we'll probably move on to try Shadow of Yesterday.  It looks maybe more suited to the small-ball type of stories that we're inclined to tell, and I think maybe our powers of improv are limited enough that we need to be able to work a little more conventionally, with a little more time to think about okay, how do we make this work?

I feel bad posting an AP that's as negative as this -- it's an awesome little concept, and I really want to thank Vincent for posting the game so we could try it at all.  It was definitely a valuable exercise, and probably if we kept at it we'd get a lot better, but right now making it work seems to be a little beyond us.

[lumpley]

Don't feel bad for posting negative playtesting! I'm not unhappy.

What were the interests of the characters?

-Vincent

[colin roald]

Griselda had:  "Marry the suitor most acceptable to the god;  Serving her god"
Thalla had:  "Disrupt wedding or support commoner as groom"

They seemed a little weak even at the time, but a few rounds of discussion didn't come up with anything obviously better.

[colin roald]

I *am* curious what anyone else might have done with those elements.  It might be educational.

Also, I do think I'm going to keep that oracle around when I'm GMing in the future.  Some combinations it spits up are very cool;  I'm just going to be more ruthless about rejecting ones that don't speak to me.

[lumpley]

I *am* curious what anyone else might have done with those elements.  It might be educational.

Oh man, I can't figure how that combo seems weak to you.

So the PCs are the beauty and the queen? You're psyched.

You go first, so start with this: "the god's interests are for the beauty to marry the prissy, sanctimonious, much older high priest, and for the warrior queen to repent her heathen ways and submit to the high priest as his slave. (Oddly enough, the high priest's interests are just the same.)"

Neither of the players will respond to THAT with the passive and undirected interests they gave you.

From there you might continue with: "the gladiator's interests are to marry the beauty, take her away from her family and home, fuck her until he's sick of her, and abandon her in some foreign place."

Give the warrior queen a son or a brother, whose interests are to convert to the god-faith, marry the beauty, surrender to the lord, and sell out his people.

It's unorthodox that the player ditched out of playing John Cooper, but whatever, you've got him now. His interests are to steal the beauty away in the night, of course, so none of the rest can interfere with him marrying her.

Her father's interests are for her to quickly choose whomever, so he can go back to smashing the tribal queen's people with his army.

However, her brother's interests for her to marry someone who'll give her joy - which clearly none of these jerks will do.

Like I say, man. I wish I'd rolled those elements.

-Vincent

[colin roald]

Oh man, I can't figure how that combo seems weak to you.

FWIW, I didn't say the combo seemed weak -- I said the interests we came up with seemed weak.  But whatever.

So the pressing question from my point of view is, how do I learn to do this better?  I'm going to take it on faith that it's not an innate I-don't-have-the-right-kind-of-brain thing -- the way to learn is to start from the presumption that it's learnable.  Now, is there anything teachable, or do I just have to do it over and over until I get better? 

Maybe more comparisons would help.  How about a little competition?  I'll roll four random elements, and I'll post my own attempt at generating characters and interests, and an idea for framing the first scene where the adventure can start.  Anyone else who wants can do the same, and we'll see how many radically different scenarios we come up with.

Remember, this is supposed to be done at the table while waiting for the pizza to arrive, so no going home to sleep on it.

The Oracle says:

• A roofed bridge on a wide river, with a toll-collector.


• An old raised road, cracked and crumbling.


• A jaded gladiator, murderer of both enemies and friends.


• An imbiber of sorcerous drugs, seeking congress with demons.

I'll do my attempt in the next post.

[colin roald]

• A roofed bridge on a wide river, with a toll-collector.
• An old raised road, cracked and crumbling.
• A jaded gladiator, murderer of both enemies and friends.
• An imbiber of sorcerous drugs, seeking congress with demons.

As always, on first impression this is wonderfully atmospheric.  The roofed bridge and the old road are almost redundant, but we certainly have an emphatic setting.  The Romans were here, and now have gone.  Their heirs still live off the carcass, but the black forest is encroaching. 

We have three explicit characters:  the Toll-collector, the Gladiator, and the Sorcerer (who had earned his patronage as a source of outre entertainment to silly wealthy old noble ladies, until he crossed the line and was outcast).  What we don't seem to have is any particular suggestion of what their conflict might be -- the three of them sound like they'd make for fantastic company around a bottle of potato vodka, but not so much a story.

At least one of them needs to want to kill one of the others.  Well, okay, we're told the Gladiator is a murderer, so let it be him.   The obvious choice for a target, then, is the outcast Sorcerer -- perhaps he has been sent as a blade-for-hire to ensure that the Sorcerer never speaks to anyone again.

Gladiator: wants to collect bounty on head of the Sorcerer

Okay, that's a starting point, though it still seems to lack some juice.  I don't want the Gladiator's story to just be Find the Sorcerer, Have a Fight.

We're told that the Sorcerer wants congress with demons, so that has to be part of his Interest.  But the demons are not characters -- yet.  Okay, so we need a demon character.   The Demon wants corruption of someone's soul.

How does the Toll-collector fit into this, then?  He can't just be a bystander.  The powerful motivations are blood, love and hate.  I'm not feeling really feeling a blood relationship here -- and we do need a female character.  So let's change that Sorcerer into a Sorceress, and throw the poor Toll-collector unrequitedly in love.

Toll-collector: wants to marry the Sorceress, and keep her safe

I'm grimacing, because that's only a half step from saying the Toll-collector's interests are whatever the Sorceress' are.  Not much of an independent character, is he?  Except of course he's opposed to the Sorceress' congress with demons, or will be when he finds out about it.

The Toll-collector, whatever his sins, is obviously the most innocent character of the bunch, so that must be who the Demon wants.

Demon: persuade the Sorceress to sacrifice her new lover, and then enslave the Sorceress

Ah, yes!  That promises some interesting scenes, and makes the Toll-collector's Interest seem much richer.  What will he do when he find out her intentions?  Can he get her off this path of evil she's on? 

What do we have left?  The Sorceress doesn't really have a conflict yet, and the Gladiator's is a bit boring.  Ah!  The Gladiator is not pursuing her for hire -- he's an ex-lover, in pursuit for revenge since she castrated him to get an ingredient for one of her sorcerous drugs.  And since she's known him intimately, she has a talisman to give herself protection against all damage he can do her.

Gladiator (revised):  get revenge on the demonic bitch who ruined him

Yow.  That might actually be too dark for play, but it is pretty compelling.

Sorceress:  bind the Demon to her servitude, have it kill the Gladiator, and steal the Toll-collector's vitality.

Hm.  Not bad.  Almost every pair of characters has a significant conflict of interest, and most of them seem dynamic.  Maybe we could do better, but I think my time is up.  Looking back at the elements, there's nothing here to really tie to that bridge, but maybe it'll come up in play. 

I'm not sure where to frame the first scene.  For lack of a better idea, the Gladiator riding up the road meets the Toll-collector at the bridge.

Please critique -- that's the point of my suggestion, here.  Do you think this would work out in play?

[lumpley]

I'm doing mine without reading yours.

• A roofed bridge on a wide river, with a toll-collector.
• An old raised road, cracked and crumbling.
• A jaded gladiator, murderer of both enemies and friends.
• An imbiber of sorcerous drugs, seeking congress with demons.

The toll-collector
The gladiator
The would-be sorcerer
The demons

The toll-collector is a monster, cunning and lecherous like something out of Jack Vance. The "toll" he collects is ... unsavory.

He wants to crack open the would-be sorcerer's skull to see if there are jewels inside, and he wants to drink the gladiator's blood and crunch his bones.

The gladiator's volunteered to go take care of the town's monster problem. It's in his interests to kill the toll-collector and bring back his head. It's also in his interests if a certain young woman sees him do it.

A certain young woman? The toll-collector's all ears.

It's in the sorcerer's interests to be free of the black jewel inside his skull, and to discover the hiding place of the toll collector's ... heart? Liver? Name? Soul?

Interesting, says the player of the toll-collector. It's my little finger, I hid my conscience in it and cut it off back when I was human.

It's in the demons' interests for the would-be sorcerer to keep his skull intact, and for the monster to kill the gladiator.

It's in the certain young woman's interests for the gladiator to kill the monster and to marry him, y'know, really soon.

I open the scene with the gladiator coming cautiously toward the bridge along the road from the direction of town, the young woman well behind him, and the would-be sorcerer coming cautiously toward the bridge along the road from the other direction.

-Vincent

[colin roald]

I open the scene with the gladiator coming cautiously toward the bridge along the road from the direction of town, the young woman well behind him, and the would-be sorcerer coming cautiously toward the bridge along the road from the other direction.

I'm trying to envision how this plays out as anything but a fight scene.  The gladiator and toll-collector's only interest in each other seems to be to kill each other.

Okay, so the sorcerer has to arrive first, and begin a discussion of some cleverly unpleasant way to exchange the black jewel, and perhaps have a conversational conflict to give away the hiding place of the finger.  The gladiator holds off on his attack until he has talked with the sorcerer.  That might work.

[colin roald]

The toll-collector is a monster, cunning and lecherous like something out of Jack Vance. The "toll" he collects is ... unsavory.

I do like that your most evil character is my most innocent.

[lumpley]

Leading with a fight scene's fine. Preferable, in many ways, depending on your situation. Nobody can die in the first conflict who doesn't want to.

-Vincent

[lumpley]

Please critique -- that's the point of my suggestion, here.  Do you think this would work out in play?

It's not bad! I wish everyone had two distinct interests instead of one and a half.

Why don't you frame to the conflict instead of to some kind of not-much-conflict? Open with the gladiator watching from the shadows, knives ready, while the sorceress and the toll-man argue in bed.

I also think you're doing too much back-and-forth, like you're looking for a backstory to justify the interests, when you should lead with hardcore interests and let the backstory sort itself out. In play, that'd mean you tried to get everyone to buy into some circumstances before anybody declared any interests. Right?

Buy into = safe = boring.

I propose a new exercise. I'll roll 4, choose the PCs, tell you who the NPCs are. You don't discuss anything with me, just tell me which NPC you lead with and what are her two interests. Cool?

* A village executioner, practicing his trade on a caught burglar.
* An altar to devils of the waste, stinking with gore.
* A bandit captain, in hiding, with her trusted bodyguard.
* An ancient stone way marker, indicating an overgrown road.

The player characters are the caught burglar and the bandit captain. The NPCs are the village executioner, the devils of the waste, and the bandit captain's bodyguard.

Name me your lead NPC and two strong interests!

[Chris Peterson]

The village executioner's interests are hunting down the escaped bandit captain and thus avoiding the wrath of devils of the waste who want blood (the bandit captain's, but the village executioner's will do).

[colin roald]

The player characters are the caught burglar and the bandit captain. The NPCs are the village executioner, the devils of the waste, and the bandit captain's bodyguard.

Name me your lead NPC and two strong interests!

Okay, I'll lead with:  The devils' interests are to raise their secret worshipper, the bodyguard, to control of the bandits, and to secure the torture and sacrifice of the burglar's lover.

I'm taking the rule to be:  the lead NPC's interests should constitute a direct attack on at least two PC's characters.  On review, my interests aren't quite *direct* attacks.  Are they close enough?  Would it be stronger to, say, want to torture and sacrifice the burglar himself?  I'm thinking no. 

[Valamir]

The Village Executioner:  Interests:  Sacrifice the Burglar on the altar, Rescue his village from the deprevations of the Bandit Captain

Devils of the waste:  Interests:  Devour the souls of the Burglar and Bandits, Enslave the village into cult worshippers

Bandit Captain's Bodyguard:  Interests:  Keep the captain from finding out that he had betrayed the burglar to the executioner to collect a bounty.  Rape and plunder the village which had cast him out as a child.