[Mortal Coil] Matthew and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Game Session

[Matthew Glover]

After hearing me blather about how cool it sounded for weeks, my wife got me Mortal Coil for my birthday.  We finally got to play it Wednesday.  It did not go well.  What's the opposite of well?  That's how it went.

We hammered out a rough theme document.  We started out with sort of a monster-hunter type idea, something along the lines of Angel mixed with Supernatural, with some Hellblazer thrown in.  We decided we wanted it dark and gritty and sardonic.  We briefly hovered on setting in the Pacific Northwest, but then dropped that in favor of the Southwest, with some influence from Dusk 'Til Dawn and John Carpenter's Vampires.

Then we started talking about setting it in Las Vegas, then about what sort of magic we'd be seeing, and eventually we somehow ended up rewriting our whole idea.  We'd be dealing with Old Magic vs. New Magic fighting for control over places of power.  We'd have Native American shamans and Technomancers, with the Church also working in the background.  We ran through the questions about the supernatural, set the magic level at 12 tokens, then went on to Situation.  This part made my players go "whaaa?"  I read the passage from the book about "theme in a literary context" and they all started looking really uncomfortable.  I pointed out the dichotomies that we had already set up (old vs new magic, urban vs rural, responsibility vs instant gratification, slow and reliable power vs fast and loose and flashy power) and they shrugged and nodded.  Bobby had his character idea by now.  We told him "Hey, wait, hang on.  We're not at that point yet.  You need to wait until we get there."   He was pretty much decided on it, though.

I neglected to realize that we still hadn't set up any sort of actual situation for the characters.  We had a broad outline of the setting, some rough sketching of details, but nothing for anyone to actually do.  This came back to bite me.  Putting the "dichotomy" and "theme" stuff under "Situation" completely threw me off.

Everybody liked the idea of outlining a villain at the beginning.  We just didn't do a very good job of it.  I suggested a technomage big-business industrialist type, a land developer determined to steal all the old traditional power nodes and tap into them with office parks and shopping malls.  That sounded good, so we gave him a name.  We figured that for a one-shot, one villain should be enough.  We didn't do anything else here.  I'm pretty certain that we should've gone further and outlined this guy a lot more.  Right?

We moved on to characters.  There's some discussion and negotiation and stuff, and we settle on this:  Bobby's playing a gas station clerk who happens to be the inheritor of a shamanic tradition from a Native American tribe that pretty much faded away after their last tribal lands were paved over last year.  He's a white guy, though.  His great grandmother was Native American, but he's completely whitebread.  He just happened to be the only dude left.  He's also a comic book fan.
Crap.  I don't have character sheets with me.  I'll try to reconstruct passions from memory.
I believe he had Duty:  With great power comes great responsibility. and Fear:  I can't do this, man!  He may also have had Love: Comic books and Fear: Scorpions.  I'm not sure.

Deirdra's playing a member of that same tribe who probably should have been the shamanic inheritor, since she already has some abilities in that direction.  She's forsaken the tribe's slow and responsible magic in favor of the new school fast and loose techniques, though.  Passions:  Fear: I'm not good enough to do magic the way my ancestors did.  I thought that one was pretty darn good.  Also Hate: Our Villain (aka Roger Collins) for crushing my family and Love: fast access, fast cars, fast power.

Alanna played a defrocked nun and exorcist.  She was ousted from the Church after our Villain started making political power plays in the diocese and subverting it for his own uses.  Passions:  Hate:  Our Villain and Duty: Restore the Church.

I tried to impress upon them that the book says that they really ought to have passions about each other.  I guess I didn't do a good enough job, because nobody really did.  After the fact, Deirdra explained that she didn't understand what I meant by that.

We did Faculties and Aptitudes.  That was a little hard because my players wanted to know how it all worked, and I couldn't really explain without context plus it was fuzzy to me anyway because I'd never seen it in action before.  We all sort of got mad at each other for a little while.  They were pissed at me for being unable to explain how the numbers interact, and I was pissed at them because we'd agreed that this was just a trial run and why should it matter at this point?  It was sort of dumb, and we realized it and just moved on.  Everybody filled in their Facs and Aps.  Oh, and we had a looooong and winding discussion over whether Deirdra would have to take two different Aptitudes to cover her two different styles of magic.  There was a big discussion over magical theory and stuff that we TOTALLY hadn't established anywhere yet and eventually I said "TRIAL RUN" and told her to just take one Ap for both and we'd see.

We handed out tokens, which everybody liked.  There was some surprise over how many the GM gets.  We moved on to Supporting Characters, of which there were NONE.  No, wait, there's our Villain.  How do I stat him out?  Crap, it's already getting late, so I'll come back to doing that.  Let's just get started playing already.

So the next section should be How To Play?  No, it's Magic.  Okay, so we run through that as quickly as possible.  Next?  Okay, Conflicts.  I skim through that.  Next is Power.  We skim through that too.  Now, finally is the section telling us What To Do.  No, wait.  It's the index.  We're at the end of the book.  Did I miss the part on how to play?  Crap, what do I do now?

This is the part where it really started getting painful.
I spent about fifteen minutes trying to figure out what to do next.  The players talked amongst themselves, wandered off to get snacks, doodled, and knitted.  I knew I needed to start with a scene.  "Do any of you have a scene you want to do?"  Nobody did.  Crap.  Um, let's see.  Maybe I need to look at their Flags?  Should we have done Kickers?  Do I need Bangs?  I'm totally freakin' lost here, and I'm not finding anything particularly helpful in the book.  I'm certain at this point that I've done something wrong.

Eventually I start a scene with Bobby.  I'm sacrificing a magic token.  Spirits can communicate in dreams. Who wants to set the price?  There is much discussion and page fumbling.  When all players have the same number of magic tokens, who gets to set the price?  Eventually there is group consensus that dream info should be cryptic and arcane and infuriating.  Good enough.

So Bobby gets dream instructions from the dead shaman guy who gave him his powers/responsibility.  He's gotta find Deirdra because she can help him thwart the bad guy destroying another bit of tribal land.  Okay, finally rolling.  Everybody is all "HOW ON EARTH WILL YOU FIND HER?" and I'm like, uh, okay, I should lead by example, and I sacrifice another magic token.  Shamans can always find members of their tribe.
Lots of arguing on how it "should" work, and how long it should take, blah blah blah.  Nobody wants to sacrifice a token, because we haven't established who has authority.  I'm on the verge of rolling a die to see who gets to set it, but Bobby sacrifices a power token to get it.  Thanks, Bobby. 

We cut over to Deirdra and Alanna.  Their characters know each other and they're at a groundbreaking ceremony with Our Villain.  He's going to bulldoze a town square that happens to be a power node and happens to contain a zillion year old bristlecone pine.  He's planning to put up a lovely office park.  Our heroes are incensed.

Deirdra wants to overload the PA system.  She spends a magic token to activate her magical aptitude, and then I make her sacrifice a magic token to establish that technomancers can manipulate electronic devices.  I set the price that it will make her also jinx anything electronic she comes near for the next hour or so, Dresden Files style.  Everybody likes this.

I spend a token to establish that a technomancer know what is being done with their style of magic anywhere with the city limits.  Everybody thinks that's too powerful.  I chalk that up to threshold of credibility and we drop it down to a quarter-mile radius.  Alanna and Bobby have the same number of magic tokens, so there's some discussion and eventually the price is set as technomancers "hear" magic like sirens in the distance, but if they're close up on it they'll get sensory overload.  I rather like this because it means that technomancers will be solitary types.  Cool.  Deirdra overloads the PA.  We didn't do a conflict with this, because it didn't occur to me to do so.

Meanwhile Alanna wants to get information from Our Villain's limo driver.  Crap, I have to stat this guy out.  How do I do that?  Argh.  Okay, I give him Novice Facs, a 3 point Driver aptitude, and don't worry about passions.  She's trying to sweet-talk/intimidate him into giving her Our Villain's itinerary for the next few days.  He's trying to get her number.  Those are pretty much our stakes.

We spend a LOT of time working on understanding the conflict resolution system.  The examples don't really help us get how grainy it's supposed to be.  Eventually we decide to just power through it.  We fumble around and find stuff for screens, she sets up her actions, I set up mine, and we resolve.  We don't bother using Passions or Power tokens for this, because we're still trying to just understand at all.  Oh, right, here's a question I had.  Can you use a Faculty + an Aptitude that you don't actually have, treating it as a zero?  I did that, because my driver didn't have Sweet Talker, but I sure wanted to use it to get those digits.

Anyway, she wins both sides of the conflict.  I'm flipping all over the place in the book, but I'm not seeing much on who gets to narrate what when, so we ended up doing very little narration about what exactly happened in that scene.  It was very unsatisfying, but she got the info she wanted.

Okay, next up Bobby does his ritual to find Deirdra.  The price he set on this was that it takes an hour and it locates a single member and shows the shaman where he needs to go to find her.  Pretty cool.

So he goes to find her, does, and they talk.  He convinces her of who he is and stuff, and that he needs her help.  He tells her that she's been to the spot he needs to find/protect, but she says she doesn't remember.  He tries to draw a picture, but sucks at drawing.  I feel like we should have been doing conflicts all over this, but have no idea how it would've worked. 

He wants to give her a vision and I'm like, wow, can shamans do that?  He takes the hint and sacrifices a magic token to establish that they can.  We figure that there needs to be a conflict involved.  Book fumbling, and I decide that the price is that it requires a half-hour ritual and triggers a conflict.  If he wins, he shows the vision he wants.  If he loses, he shows a vision related to his strongest Passion.  I was kinda proud of that.

She's not resisting, and I know I read something about that and magical transformation and something, so I fumble until I find it.  Aha!  If she's not resisting, he just has to beat her Faculty rating of whatever Faculty he's using, which was Will.  No problem, he wins.  I ask them to narrate it.  She says that while he's doing his ritual, she's reading her email on her Blackberry.  Bobby says that when he completes it, the image on her screen shifts and morphs into a picture of scrub desert, then she watches as it shows her a scene of herself as a little girl and her uncle, the old shaman, visiting a burial ground sacred to the tribe.  Awesome.  I recommend a Power token and everybody else is like "Wha?"  and we go back over the rules for awarding power tokens.  First token award, and we've been at this for like four hours.  Gah.

Deirdra says she doesn't think that he should be able to use shamanic magic to affect her Blackberry.  That should be technomagic.  I sacrifice a magic token to establish that mind-effecting magic is subjectively interpreted by the victim/recipient, and so her techo-inclined mind just saw it in a way that worked for her.  Everybody likes that, so there's no price set.  Is that kosher?  What do you do for stuff like that, that everybody likes with no price needed?

It's late, so we cut it there.  Bobby and Alanna assure me that they had a great time, but I still feel like it was one of the worst games I've ever been involved in.  I felt totally adrift.  We talk about what we did wrong and we come to the conclusion that we really should have:

(A) established a much stronger situation for the characters.  We got to the point where we were supposed to start playing and I still had no clue what these guys would DO. 
(B) tied the characters together better.  That bit of advice in the book about passions relating to other PCs is no joke, man.
(C) started with something a little less ambitious.  Next time, we agreed, we're going to do some simple monster hunting, a la Supernatural.  Bobby has only seen one episode of the show, but I'm going to hook him up.
After some further reading I also think we should have build stronger Passions.  Strong enough so that when I say "Hey, does anybody have an idea for a scene?" everybody should be able to go "I have crap that I've gotta do.  I need this scene right here."

So puhleeeze tell me, what else do I need to do to make this game hum?  I know it's great stuff.  I've read all the APs I can get my hands on, I listened to the Sons of Kryos demo from Gencon.  I still feel like I'm lost.  More than anything, I wish I could listen to a full first session involving construction of the theme document as well as some AP involving some complicated conflicts.

[Ricky Donato]

Hi, Matthew,

Having never read Mortal Coil, I'm not going to be much help, but a couple of things stuck out at me.

1) Had anyone in the group read the rules before you started playing?
2) Now that you've had a chance to reflect on the game, how much of it do you think was caused by rules unfamiliarity?

[Matthew Glover]

Hi Ricky!

1)  I read through it twice in full and flipped through it a bunch to read particular bits.  Each of the players had flipped through it a little but hadn't read it.  I'd also read bunches of AP and posts from the Galileo Games forum, as well as listening to Jeff & Judd's demo with Brennan.  I thought I had a good handle on it, but once we got started I realized that my understanding of the actual procedures of play was woefully inadequate.

2)  A significant amount of difficulty was caused by rules unfamiliarity, no doubt.  There was a great deal of seek time while I tried to find something in the book telling me exactly how to do what I needed to be doing, and I felt like I was missing something significant and important.  I kept looking for something like PTA's outline of responsibilities for the Producer/Spotlight/Supporting Cast/etc, or DitV's structure of the game chapter or how to GM chapter.  I think there are little notes on this sort of thing spread out through the book, but I just couldn't get a handle on it.

[GB Steve]

It doesn't sound to me that your game was too complicated. Everyone seemed to chip with things and you came to some agreement on what would be cool. Getting a setting that works for everyone is important.

The next important thing is to get a good first scene and get some conflict resolution in quite soon so the players can understand how it works. And you can't really prep Mortal Coil but you can take some time out to think about it.

In my game, Twisted 50s, I got the players to decide how all their PCs might know each other. They decided that they were all locked up at the police station together. In my School of Magic game, I just took one of the PC's passions and had a scene directly related to that. I don't think you necessarily need to get everyone in on the first scene, all this is probably preferable.

[Judd]

Was the main villain statted out?

What were his passions and such?

[Matthew Glover]

Judd,

He totally was NOT statted out during the preparation phase:

Everybody liked the idea of outlining a villain at the beginning.  We just didn't do a very good job of it.  I suggested a technomage big-business industrialist type, a land developer determined to steal all the old traditional power nodes and tap into them with office parks and shopping malls.  That sounded good, so we gave him a name.  We figured that for a one-shot, one villain should be enough.  We didn't do anything else here.  I'm pretty certain that we should've gone further and outlined this guy a lot more.  Right?

Later on, while the players were talking amongst themselves in-character, I re-read how to go about statting him out, decided on some Facs and Aps, and a couple of Passions, but didn't discuss it with them.

I'm betting that we should have ALL been involved in making up the entirety of this character before we moved on to PCs.  Is that right?

[Matthew Glover]

Oh, right:

Roger Collins  - Ancient  Technomancer
Faculties:    Force 3   Grace 3   Will 3   Wits   4
Aptitudes:
Technomancer 4
Businessman 2
Liar 3
Public Speaker 2
Wrestler 2

Passions:
Love 3:  I can't get enough power.
Hate 2:  Dirty savages.

[Judd]

I'm betting that we should have ALL been involved in making up the entirety of this character before we moved on to PCs.  Is that right?

Not only he should have been statted out but anyone who was mentioned in their passions.

I think looking at that guy's passions, you've got your adventure right there.  When the players have a stalled moment, this guy should be on their tail, attacking what is important to the players.

Thanks for sharing this game's Actual Play.  It is really appreciated.

[Matthew Glover]

We didn't have any other characters mentioned in anybody else's background or passions at all, unless you count the dead shaman.  Who did sort of show up, at least in a dream.

My issue was that the way we discussed it (or failed to clarify, I suppose) was that it seemed like our PCs were beneath the radar.  Like this villain was a SOOPER BIG BAD who would've never even heard of these people.  I suppose that's a telling issue right there.  How should we have done it?

[Judd]

We didn't have any other characters mentioned in anybody else's background or passions at all, unless you count the dead shaman.  Who did sort of show up, at least in a dream.

My issue was that the way we discussed it (or failed to clarify, I suppose) was that it seemed like our PCs were beneath the radar.  Like this villain was a SOOPER BIG BAD who would've never even heard of these people.  I suppose that's a telling issue right there.  How should we have done it?

Matthew,

I'm really uncomfortable telling you how you should have done it as if I've never run a dud game.  Hind-sight's 20/20.

The really important question is, how would you do it?  What you do differently?  what will you do differently next time and what have you taken away from this game?

[Matthew Glover]

The really important question is, how would you do it?

Poorly.  :D

No, okay, kidding aside, I get what you mean.

I think there were two problems at work here:
1)  We failed to thoroughly front-load the situation during preparation, so when we tried to get started playing, it fizzled.  This was particularly frustrating given that we were
2) Unfamiliar with the system and even more frustrated because when we were stuck and went to the book to try to get direction in what I should be doing, we just couldn't find any leverage.

Oh, I just remembered something else.  This is really more of a commentary on my own personal thought process than anything else.  So I introduce this fact that Technomancers can sense magic usage within the city limits, and the rest of the players are all "That seems kinda overpowered."   Now, the "threshold of credibility" section of the rules says that Mortal Coil is cooperative at heart and that group consensus is required for adding stuff to the SIS.  I think I've been in a Capes mindset too much lately, because they looked at me with puppy dog eyes and said "overpowered" and I thought "YEAH, AWESOME.  Now they have to come up with a price to balance out that power."   But that's not how this works.  I have to negotiate with them to get my fact down to something acceptable to the group, and then they get to put a limiter price on top of that.  It feels really...hippie-ish.  This may just be because I'm not familiar enough with the system, though.  I may bring this up over in the Galileo Games forum in a separate thread.

[Judd]

Oh, I just remembered something else.  This is really more of a commentary on my own personal thought process than anything else.  So I introduce this fact that Technomancers can sense magic usage within the city limits, and the rest of the players are all "That seems kinda overpowered."   Now, the "threshold of credibility" section of the rules says that Mortal Coil is cooperative at heart and that group consensus is required for adding stuff to the SIS.  I think I've been in a Capes mindset too much lately, because they looked at me with puppy dog eyes and said "overpowered" and I thought "YEAH, AWESOME.  Now they have to come up with a price to balance out that power."   But that's not how this works.  I have to negotiate with them to get my fact down to something acceptable to the group, and then they get to put a limiter price on top of that.  It feels really...hippie-ish.  This may just be because I'm not familiar enough with the system, though.  I may bring this up over in the Galileo Games forum in a separate thread.

As long as what you said goes along with what the group wrote down in the theme document, power and balance have nothing...NOTHING to do with it.  The balance is that the players get to give the power's price.

Group concensus is about the theme document and going along with the style and vibe you all agreed to, not about power. 

Question: Did they spend any Magic Tokens?  What kind of magical rules did they come up with and what kind of prices were decided on?

[Tim Alexander]

Hey Matthew,

I haven't played Mortal Coil, so there isn't a whole lot I can help with specifically, but I sure feel for you. I think everyone's been in this sort of situation at one time or another. I do have one piece of relevent content though regarding this:

So the next section should be How To Play?  No, it's Magic.  Okay, so we run through that as quickly as possible.  Next?  Okay, Conflicts.  I skim through that.  Next is Power.  We skim through that too.  Now, finally is the section telling us What To Do.  No, wait.  It's the index.  We're at the end of the book.  Did I miss the part on how to play?  Crap, what do I do now?

This is the part where it really started getting painful.
I spent about fifteen minutes trying to figure out what to do next.  The players talked amongst themselves, wandered off to get snacks, doodled, and knitted.  I knew I needed to start with a scene.  "Do any of you have a scene you want to do?"  Nobody did.  Crap.  Um, let's see.  Maybe I need to look at their Flags?  Should we have done Kickers?  Do I need Bangs?  I'm totally freakin' lost here, and I'm not finding anything particularly helpful in the book.  I'm certain at this point that I've done something wrong.

and this:

2)  A significant amount of difficulty was caused by rules unfamiliarity, no doubt.  There was a great deal of seek time while I tried to find something in the book telling me exactly how to do what I needed to be doing, and I felt like I was missing something significant and important.  I kept looking for something like PTA's outline of responsibilities for the Producer/Spotlight/Supporting Cast/etc, or DitV's structure of the game chapter or how to GM chapter.  I think there are little notes on this sort of thing spread out through the book, but I just couldn't get a handle on it.

When I'm dealing with a new game I've started making it a habit to build myself a sort of procedures of play document. I've recognized, like you it seems, that those additions in other games makes for a really useful reference during play when things get crazy. It also has the added benefit of organizing my own understanding of the game. I'll find sometimes while working one up that I don't know what to do when 'blah' happens, and it makes me go either find the rule or rethink how the game works. For really complex books I tend to flag important stuff with post-it things. If I was less of a fetishist about books I'd crib notes in the margins.

Good luck,

-Tim

[Brennan Taylor]

Hey, Matthew,

Looks like Paka and Tim have given you some really good advice. I won't claim I haven't run into this problem in the past in my own games: I definitely have (and not just in Mortal Coil). Basically, it seems like you got the situation set up, but neither you nor the players were quite sure how to get their characters involved in it. I think your comment on the "Big Bad" is insightful. The scale of the villain felt daunting to the players, and so they didn't engage him. (This is all speculation based on what you wrote above, so feel free to contradict if I get something wrong).

Here's a technique I would suggest in this case: Make a henchman of the villain who is trying to damage something directly related to the player's passions. This is a smaller scale guy, but working for the person they hate. He will seem like a smaller bite to chew.

Here is another point, and this is a general rule for Mortal Coil play across the board: go after those passions! Take a look at what the players wrote on their sheets, and set scenes that directly affect their passions.

Dierdre has a hate of Collins, but a love of cars, power, and action. What if someone offered her a job involving her love (running drugs or drag racing maybe), and then it turns out she's working for Collins? Alanna wants to restore the church. Well, the diocese just sent one of Collins henchmen to be the priest at her local parish! What can she do? The appointment is completely legitimate, but she know who's behind it, and he's already trying to turn the parishioners against her. Bobby fears his responsibility. Give him some responsibility! Some members of his tribe are threatened by Collins' developers. What will he do? Will the tribe members accept help from some white guy?

I mention this in the play section under "The GM's Role." Set those scenes to go after the passions! The players will have little choice but to get involved, and then you'll find the way forward start to write itself.

[Matthew Glover]

As long as what you said goes along with what the group wrote down in the theme document, power and balance have nothing...NOTHING to do with it.  The balance is that the players get to give the power's price.

Group concensus is about the theme document and going along with the style and vibe you all agreed to, not about power.

Right, that's pretty much how I saw it before we started play.  You sacrifice a magic token, you get to write a rule.  As long as it doesn't violate the theme document or prior rules, you have free reign.  The other players (or GM, whatever) have to accept it and set a price that they feel is balanced.

On page 11 under Threshold of Credibility, though, "introducing a new fact to the theme" is explicitly stated as something that requires group consensus, though.  I assumed that covered sacrificing magic tokens to introduce magical facts once play has started (and power tokens for nonmagical facts too).  Does it not?  I know that may be up to interpretation for each group.  Which is kind of amusing, when you think about it.  Does introducing a fact require group consensus?  The answer is up to group consensus.  I'd like to hear how Brennan does it, though. 

Question: Did they spend any Magic Tokens?  What kind of magical rules did they come up with and what kind of prices were decided on?

They did, but I don't have my notebook with me to transcribe them.  I think I covered every single one we introduced in my original post, though I may have been somewhat vague.  There weren't many.  I think I introduced three or four, Bobby did two or so, and Deirdra did one.  I believe they were reluctant to sacrifice magic tokens.  Very few power tokens were handed out (2 total, I think) and even though it was intended as a one-shot I believe magic tokens were viewed as a difficult-to-replace resource, something to be hoarded.