[The Roach] Something interesting goin' on with them there stakes...

[iago]

So, it's GenCon, and we're playing the Shab al-whatsit Roach, and I'm roached right from the beginning, and going in hard (5 status) on a particular conflict.  We know from seeing the cards that Matt, sitting to my right, is going to be roached this scene, and I go to set it up.

The gig's this.  My prof goes in to kiss his prof, after confessing that a dead body produced by earlier antics was a "love letter" to his prof.  The idea here being that the kiss will (potentially) give cause to narrate the whole Matt's prof gets roached thing.  That's pretty much taken as given, and isn't really on the table -- it's just an element of framing the scene.

So we set the stakes a bit left of center.  I'm looking for the kiss to get walked in on, with the idea that the status gain if I succeed and win those stakes is from my assistant prof's reputation around campus going a somewhat more "cosmopolitan" route once it's out I was found smooching Matt's full prof -- if I lose, we don't get discovered, and my status loss is really simply indicative that I'm seen as a fuddy-duddy and thus my around-the-campus image steadily worsening as a matter of course. 

Matt decides to go in against me, so he puts his one coin out there.  Now we can see that if I win, my rep soars, but his suffers a little.  So we decide this probably means that whoever discovers us also reports that I seemed to be the one "in charge" in the kiss; plus, perhaps for him, kissing a man would be seen as lessening his stature, rather than improving it.  In the failing case, where I lose a ton of rep due to the downard spiral of my own fuddy-duddy-ness, his stature merely cements itself a bit, raising him in the eyes of the faculty and campus at large.

We roll; I win; we're discovered; yadda yadda.

Now, what's interesting to me here is that because of the Roach's bidding method, the stakes were set and interpreted through the lens of the mechanical consequences of status loss and gain, due to the bids.  I'm emphasizing this because it twinged my "something interesting is going on with them there stakes" radar.

(This touches on some of the same observations I made about stakes over on my LJ: http://drivingblind.livejournal.com/164351.html)

So here's what I'm seeing.  The association of mechanical consequence, rather than a "simple" transferrence and determination of narrative authority, with the stakes and the resolution of how they're won, had a profound effect on how we set the stakes, or at least how we interpreted what they meant.  This gets at an effect I've seen in Dogs in the Vineyard as well, where its progression of the resolution of stakes is achieved by the bidding of dice and the creation of fallout, thus having another kind of effect on the interpretation of the stakes and the resolution as well.

That's pretty fascinating to me, and I think deepens my understanding of the ins and outs of stakes, both as a player in a game that uses them, and as a designer looking to do something more than a "simple narrative authority" spin on stakes.  The mechanical impact that the Roach associates with the resolution of stakes is not complicated, certainly -- it's just a double or nothing type bid -- but even that basic presence in the flow of things has, to me, an unignorable impact.

What do you think?

[Jason Morningstar]

Are you suggesting that having a sort of axis to the interaction (stakes-setting/narration versus currency manipulation) changes the way both are approached or perceived?  Because I totally buy that.  It's something that, had I not been badly sleep-depped at Gen Con, I woud have brought up in the late night stakes round-table. 

[iago]

Are you suggesting that having a sort of axis to the interaction (stakes-setting/narration versus currency manipulation) changes the way both are approached or perceived?  Because I totally buy that.  It's something that, had I not been badly sleep-depped at Gen Con, I woud have brought up in the late night stakes round-table. 

Yep.  Basically, it's a mash-up of two things that's totally tastier than either thing by itself.  I was pretty awed to see it so simply, so clearly displayed in action, as it was something I'd been moving towards realizing through my own play of Dogs (which does it, but more complexly than Roach).

[Jason Morningstar]

I can't claim credit for some kind of synergistic genius, because it's really a happy accident of brutally binary, deterministic design (which supports the game's premise very well).  I'm skeptical that a system as inelegant as The Roach's would work for a more complex or subtle game.  But I'm itchin' to find out!

[Mike Holmes]

Er, my Synthesis design, and every design I've theorized since, has as it's core that all resolution does is to create new mechanical stats that represent the outcome of the contest in question. So, I guess color me convinced that this is the most potent way to go in making sure that the game mechanics reinforce setting stakes and such.

In fact, in my latest soooper-seekrit design (meaning it's still pretty much in my head), there are more elements to stakes than just what we each gain/lose...

Mike