[Perfect] Explosions and betrayals

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

This is my follow-up to [Perfect] Neighbors gone wild!. I'm starting a new thread because it's been a while. Joe asked some questions at the end of that thread that I can address here a little better anyway, later. For now, here are the more general issues of that thread, all of which are now resolved in my mind.

1. Is play repetitive? What provides later conflicts with enough change, whether in character or setting, such that a "tighter" or "screwdown" effect promotes, effectively, some kind of endgame or final climax In jargon terms, what is the relationship among SIS, social contract, and emergent story?

2. What direct incentive exists for players to strive to resist/oppose GM rolls, as crimes proceed? A crime's success does not depend on beating the GM's roll, and I recommend keeping this feature. However, that does throw this question into sharp relief at a specific point during play, as you'll see by my description below.

3. Is increased character effectiveness a problem, especially regarding collaborative crimes?

[What happened

The two characters are Neville (best described as an Opus Dei type nutbar on meth, a hedonist recently conditioned never to think about women) and Mordecai (a kind of Mack the Knife type guy who's built up a criminal underground, but is also living a double life to be his kid's perfect Gaillist dad).

We started with two separate crimes, one on each player's part. Neville smeared KY jelly all over the courthouse steps and handrails, and Mordecai framed the banker he'd subverted into his smuggling scheme. I really amped up the crises in society at this point - for instance, the hair-shirt stunt had screwed up the legal system something awful, so Parliament was in an uproar and the provisional courts were basically making law up as they went along. I also stated that if Mordecai succeeded, the economy would start fracturing as well, as the banker was a pretty important guy.

Not to get into the nitty-gritty details ... as it turned out, Neville was both Interrogated and Conditioned, and I was really angling for pressure on both. The first added some hard-core payback to his alcoholism, and the second was a priest, not an Inspector, who tells him to kill Mordecai. This was about level 12, nothing like his level 20 Conditioning against women. So we figured it meant the possibility would always be on Neville's mind, regardless of what he did about it. James smacked his way through the Interrogation and Conditioning without trouble, and Cadence's economy turned all funky.

With this set of scenes, I set up a whole Church vs. Parliament/money thing. The Church guys wanted Mordecai taken out. The bank now depends on the black market run by Mordecai.

Now, it's important to look at the players' behavior in these crimes. James really embraced the strategy of the system to get maximal numbers just in time to call for a roll, such that he'd be looking at a fixed value of 9 or something like that, when I would have a +2 and thus could not win. Doing this sort of thing meant he ate Fallout, which made the next Crime more fun and less certain, so that's cool. But Brian threw both rolls. He used no Aspects at all and just rolled a die.

Clearly, that called for a bit of discussion. "Brian, why?" Well, it turns out that Brian was effectively done with his character now that he'd put the lawyers in hair-shirts. "I'm angling for his burnout and defeat." So we talked a little bit about how story-ness comes from us and not the crime cycles, because the crimes would succeed even if Brian lost rolls. Instead, since it was clear that Neville's story had hit its high point, we all needed to think about how to finish up. Brian perked up and got into bidding Aspects again.

At one point, Eliza finished her phone call and Brian told me to summarize his character for her - he really enjoyed it when she looked at him, shocked, and said, "You made that up?", several times. She asked other questions too, like "So it's the future?", and James said, "Future-Victorian," and she also said, "It sounds like V for Vendetta!" at which point Brian said, "Yeah!" very enthusiastically. It turns out, too, that she's been telling her friends and family about the neat games we're playing, including describing her Contenders character to them. I suspect Neville is about to enter this circle of conversation as well. (Joe Prince! Don't fret, we are getting back to Contenders. James has already expressed interest in hanging out and participating as commentator.)

The final crime that finished the game was extremely interesting, as we ended up running it. We utilized the SIS differently from any other Cycle we played. The main reason was that Brian really wanted to leave the outcome of the crime left to later narration, as well as whether he would have Neville follow through on his Conditioning and kill Mordecai. So situational descriptions became a lot more important as we went along.

It was to be a collaborative crime on the surface, with Mordecai taking over the economy with what was effectively an alternate currency; but Neville also laid his plans as well to blow up the oil pipeline in the tunnels beneath the city, destroying the power source.

James produced an interesting bit of Ephemera - as soon as Brian started announcing his hidden agenda, he covered his ears and made it clear that he wanted to stay ignorant until the Crime Cycle was under way. I was intrigued to see this brand of limited player-knowledge being brought in by him; he didn't mind knowing eventually, but wanted not to know just a bit longer. We all nodded - therefore this turned out to be a fine, unusual example of consensus.

We also knew that this was the big blowout. I had maximum Opposition points plus a bunch I'd banked from previous conflicts. I also put my money where my mouth was and ramped up the consequences of previous crimes on society, making this one pretty much the make-or-break for Gaillism.

You can see why this worked so well, I think. At this point, the church had subverted Neville against Mordecai; simultaneously, James emphasized that Mordecai was now in cahoots with the Inspectors (his colleagues!) and therefore out to get Neville. During the Calm resolution, James made it clear that Mordecai finks on Neville to them, too. I had a great time turning these into situations ... for the Discovery test, Neville was fleeing down stonework tunnels with his cloak flapping like a bat, trying to set off his bombs, as Inspectors fired their pistols and pursued him; Mordecai's successful Calm Test had now gone sour with Neville's escape, so his colleagues kind of lose their cool and are simply beating his head against an oil pipe as he truthfully protests that he doesn't know anything about any bombs.

Here's how it played out: with his succesful vs.-Conditioning roll, Mordecai gets re-instated as Chief Inspector, but that's when the bombs go off and blow up the tunnels, killing the power-structure of the Inspectors including Mordecai, as well as Neville himself. I finished up by saying, "The court system is destroyed, the economy is destroyed, and the Parliament has been stripped of the guy who runs it. Whatever happens next, Gaillist society has come to an end." Everyone seemed mighty satisfied.

The only thread we really didn't pull very hard was the business about Mordecai's daughter, although James did describe all the lengths Mordecai went to be the perfect Gaillist father to her, when he wasn't out there in the night committing crimes. So it was neat imagery but not so much in terms of actual scenes and resolutions.

My answers

1. Is play repetitive? What provides later conflicts with enough change, whether in character or setting, such that a "tighter" or "screwdown" effect promotes, effectively, some kind of endgame or final climax In jargon terms, what is the relationship among SIS, social contract, and emergent story?

The GM is strongly encouraged to describe and to apply the impact of crimes on society. The rules say this is discussed before committing them, but I am talking about afterwards, as inspiration and context for announcing new crimes. In fact, I suggest being flexible and using the events of the Crime Cycle to inspire the final narration of each crime's effects, rather than nailing them down too rigidly prior to the Cycle's resolution.

As Cycles proceed, the GM should be willing to start fracturing Gaillist society as a direct outcome of the crimes. It's built to come apart. and such events create better context for new crimes. With such consequences firing fully, players start thinking in terms of climaxes and finishing points.

As a related point, the GM should stay alert to NPCs' ability to turn characters against one another, as "stopping the crimes" is futile and the Inspectors should start thinking sneakily instead of being constantly ineffective, ultimately boring barriers. Now, I also want to point to the
with all the possible different contexts for what that might mean to the players

2. What direct incentive exists for players to strive to resist/oppose GM rolls, as crimes proceed? A crime's success does not depend on beating the GM's roll, and I recommend keeping this feature. However, that does throw this question into sharp relief at a specific point during play, as you'll see by my description below.

Everyone (GM, player of a character, everyone else) should be sensitive to when a character has hit his high point, and then offer suggestions. The character could become a force for evil, or a relatively neutral figure in the next situations, or finish up spectacularly in some way, or whatever. What I'm driving at is that everyone can focus on helping the other guy get to his high point, and seeing that it's happened and recognizing that he'll be a different sort of characgter from now on.

3. Is increased character effectiveness a problem, especially regarding collaborative crimes?

The GM should push hard and, from scene to scene, use strategy with the Opposition points. This is a good reason to preserve the original rule that every Crime Cycle should feature both a Calm Test and a Discovery Test - later in the game, the players need to be run out of usable Aspects in order to encounter adversity. A few Cycles into play, the GM really has to work at this! The numbers can be very tricky as well, depending on their available Aspects. In my case, if I started with a low Bid, they'll pick a really strong Aspect and then roll as soon as possible; if I started with a high one, they work hard on picking Aspects that will lose me points (ignore all Fear bid so far, et cetera). The GM must strategize and recognize they'll get away with the the occasional Perfect Crime, which is OK because the GM can then capitalize on the Fallout generated.

And ... answers for Joe

A blurb? Um. I dunno. Feel free to find something in these threads which is near what you're looking for, and I can brush it up a little.

Best, Ron

[joepub]

Cool!
Thanks Ron, for these AP reports.

You've provided some really, really useful stuff here.

At one point, Eliza finished her phone call and Brian told me to summarize his character for her - he really enjoyed it when she looked at him, shocked, and said, "You made that up?", several times. She asked other questions too, like "So it's the future?", and James said, "Future-Victorian," and she also said, "It sounds like V for Vendetta!" at which point Brian said, "Yeah!" very enthusiastically.

That's awesome.
Eliza has only ever played Contenders, right?
What is her reaction to the idea of playing in a fictional setting, instead of a real-world one like in Contenders?

For that matter... Did Brian and James enjoy playing in a fictional setting?
Did they keep referencing London landmarks? How did real world knowledge lend to the way they interpretted the setting?

[David Artman]

The GM is strongly encouraged to describe and to apply the impact of crimes on society. The rules say this is discussed before committing them, but I am talking about afterwards, as inspiration and context for announcing new crimes. In fact, I suggest being flexible and using the events of the Crime Cycle to inspire the final narration of each crime's effects, rather than nailing them down too rigidly prior to the Cycle's resolution.

Having heard this general point again, I wanted to "drag" the following suggested order of a CC into this thread from the old one (so's it isn't forgotten):
1) Frame—Player(s) state a basic crime description/overview.
2) Justify—GM asks questions about motive, Archtypes, etc.
3) Test—Conduct all tests that must or may that occur, in whatever order fits the Framing.
4) Narrate—Winner of the tests describes the actual flow events and immediate impacts on the setting.
5) Accommodate—The GM lays the "ground work" for the next crime; he or she links this crime into the story arc or subsequent non-player (i.e. NPC or setting or institutional) actions/reactions.

If that order of operations is formalized, I think it will drive the FATS and the societal impact elements you feel Perfect needs to hang together.

HTH;
David