[Touch of Noir] The seedy underbelly

[Caesar_X]

I finally got a chance to do a full playtest of the draft rules of 'Touch of Noir' tonight and I got some great information!  We broke the rules and debated some good points and had a few laughs.  I did a previous mini-playtest a few months ago which you can read about here:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=21087.0

Chris P., Shannon and I were the players as I decided to act as player and rules-monger to give us three characters.  We started by defining the situation, creating a relationship map and then picking characters from that map to flesh out.  Here's what we ended up with:

Setting: Seedy Mexican border town in the early 60s.
Plot: A smuggler has lost his load of heroin and people are now after him to get it back.

Relationship Map:

1. Juan Guillermo (M); Victim and failed smuggler
2. Janice Brooklyn (F): User
-FRIEND-->Juan
3. Patty Moore (F); Student
-FRIEND-->Janice
4. Tino Guillermo (M): Bartender and brother of Juan
-FAMILY-->Juan
-INTIMATE-->Patty
5. Sal(vador) Rodriquez (M); Competitor of Juan
-WORK-->Juan
6. Carlos Lopez (M); Taxi Driver/Snitch
-FRIEND-->Juan
-WORK-->Sal
-WORK-->Tino
7. Armand Ruiz (M); Pimp
-WORK-->Janice
-INTIMATE-->Carlos

Next we picked characters and fleshed them out:

Player: Chris B.
Name: Janice Brooklyn
Gender: Female
Age: 22
Beliefs:
-What do you NEED?  A way out of this shithole.
-What do you WANT? Another fix.  Always another fix.
-What do you FEAR? Not having a man to protect me.
Abilities:
-FISTS: 2d6
-BRAINS: 3d6
-SPINE: 2d6
-FACE: 5d6
Weakness: Powerless

Player: Chris P.
Name: Carlos Lopez
Gender: Male
Age: 35
Beliefs:
-What do you NEED?  Support his family.
-What do you WANT? An easy way out.
-What do you FEAR? Getting caught by the police or the mob.
Abilities:
-FISTS: 3d6
-BRAINS: 3d6
-SPINE: 3d6
-FACE: 3d6
Weakness: Paranoid

Player: Shannon
Name: Tino Guillermo
Gender: Male
Age: 30
Beliefs:
-What do you NEED?  To move to Cuba, the workers' paradise.
-What do you WANT? Juan's smack.
-What do you FEAR? Going to prison.
Abilities:
-FISTS: 2d6
-BRAINS: 2d6
-SPINE: 2d6
-FACE: 6d6
Weakness: Vulnerable

I decided to start each character with some points already to move things along.  Thus we each had:
Guilt Level: 2
Desperation Points: 3
Plot Points: 3
Fate Level: 0

We played three scenes with a lot of talking and debating between (and during) each one.  Here's how the scenes played out.

Scene 1:
I had Janice decid to try and seduce Patty who was doing her homework.  But Janice was so high from shooting up that she did it at the bar where Tino worked while the latter was there!  This was a conflict of Janice's Face vs. Patty's Spine.  Janice rolled 4 successes more than Chris P. who was playing Patty, and thus got a Major Success (normal success plus introducing a complication).  I narrated Janice smooth-talking Patty into bed and working her over so good that she started to doubt her relationship with Tino.  Janice gained a Fate Point for that success.

Scene 2: Shannon wanted a scene where Tino talked to his brother Juan about what he should do about Patty's two-timing.  First he spent a Plot Point to narrate a great description of clearing off Patty's school books off the bar and accidently finding a love letter than Patty was writing to Janice.  He was incensed and I voted to award him a Plot Point for cool roleplaying.

So when the scene actually starts and Tino was with Juan who lived in a (too expensive) house in town, I decided that it made sense to have Janice enter the scene to make sure nothing happened to Patty and paid a Plot Point to waltz in while the two of them were talking.  They were both surprised and when he recognized me, Tino immediately went on the offensive, pulling the note and confronting Janice with the relationship.  Juan tried to convince Tino not to act the fool and tells him to slap Janice.  Janice for her part, sums up the situation and decides to trick Tino by telling him, "Maybe if you paid a little more attention to your girl, she wouldn't be looking around so much."  The conflict was Janice's Brains vs. Tino's Fists.  Janice thought this conflict was important and threw in a Desperation Point to turn on of her d6 into a d8.  Janice won the conflict and narrated her telling Tino that there was enough of Patty to go around.  Of course, Tino took this to mean that maybe there was a threesome in their future?  Janice gained another Fate Point for her success and Tino got a Guilt Point.

Scene 3: Chris P. wanted a scene where Juan was riding in Carlos' taxi.  Carlos tries to smooth talk Juan into revealing the details of his smuggling operation.  I was playing the NPC role of Juan in this scene and decided to ask for a Flashback to describe what happened right before I got in the taxi.  Juan was in a darkened warehouse taking a bad from a guy and saying, "Hey, thanks for holding onto this for me.  You know I'm looking out for you, my man!" before walking out the door and seeing Carlos pull up.

As Carlos is making small talk, Juan (who is riding in the back) makes sure Carlos isn't looking and opens up the bag only to find rolled up newspaper instead of the heroin he was expecting.  "That sonuvabitch!  I'll F----ing kill him!!"  At this point there was some back-and-forth between Chris P. and I about the stakes of the conflict since I had decided to move the main plot forward with the NPC by throwing a monkey wrench in.  We settled on if Carlos won, Juan would spill the beans about the whole operation and Carlos would be able to sell that info to the cops or worse.  If Juan won, Carlos would turn the taxi around and drive it straight through the door of the warehouse!  Carlos won by only one success, and narrated a Partial Success.  He got Juan to calm down and talk about his shady business, but he got no real names to work with.

At this point it was getting late and we had to break, but I had taken plenty of notes and gotten some great feedback.  I think overall the three of us felt like while there were some unanswered questions and broken mechanics, the Film Noir theme was cool and the game was fun.  Here's my play notes:

What Worked:
-The Flashbacks and cool cinematic stuff.  Use more references to Noir in the rules to reinforce this to players.
-The atmosphere was fun.
-The concept of Guilt was fun to play.
-They liked how the mechanics reinforced the downward spiral of the characters.  They especially liked that even success has risks.
-They enjoyed creating the Relationship Map but thought it would be even cooler if the R-Map worked into the mechanics more.  They want to see the actual relationship lines change during gameplay.

What Didn't Work:
-The mechanic for resolving conflicts is broken.  If I have 3d6 and roll all 1's and you have 2d6 and roll all 6's, I will always get at least a Partial Success over you.  This needs to change in some fundamental way.  We talked about the dice mechanics for Sorceror and the Roach and how they are similar but might work better.
-The R-Map is cool, but it seems very formal and perhaps restrictive.  Can you not talk to someone if you aren't linked to them?  What if someone is only a "Friend" relationship, but you saved their life.  Does that make the relationship stronger?
-There was no mechanic in the game to differentiate between weaker (i.e. Friend) relationships vs. stronger (i.e. Intimate) ones.  This needs to work into the mechanics and game structure better.
-In three scenes we didn't get a chance to use Beliefs in any meaningful way.  It would be better if these (and perhaps the Weaknesses as well) mapped directly into the conflict mechanics.
-Using Plot Points was fun, but the name isn't very interesting or indicative of what they actually are.  We thought that "Fan Mail" was a fun term in PTA.

Additional Questions We Asked and Debates We Had:

R-Map:
-Can you introduce other NPC during play?
-What if someone decided to play a character on the periphery of the R-Map.  Will it be as fun for them?
-Do you need to stat out the NPCs?  We talked about how DitV and 'Hong Kong Action Cinema' deals with NPC stats.
-Chris P. made a funny comparison to Google Page Rank in defining character stats based on how far they are from the Victim and how many total relationships they have.  This is what I get from playing with geeks:)

CharGen:
-There was confusion between the terms "Needs" and "Wants" and what they both meant.  Chris P. and Shannon wondered if they were supposed to be Long term and short term goals?  I intended "Needs" to be about a burning desire and "Wants" to be something more surface-oriented.  Perhaps they need to be renamed or maybe I should just eliminate "Wants" from the mix.  Someone suggested "Desire" instead of "Need".
-Needs and Wants can make sense, but what if the one of them is a vice?  Or something that you want to hide?  There was a lot of debate while generating the Beliefs.
-Tino might Want to protect Patty in some way.  But to be a good Want, shouldn't it link to the plot or the victim in some way?
-The words largely define the meaning for the Beliefs.
-If I have 12d6 to spread between my four abilities with a minimum of 2d6 for each, that means that there are only 4d6 tp play with and thus not really that many different possibilities for ability scores.

Conflicts:
-If you totally dominate someone, what do you do with all of those extra successes?
-So when you fail you only get one Guilt Point regardless of how much you failed?  I said that I had been considering a DitV 'Fallout' type of system to deal with consequences after a conflict roll.  And this problem is moving me closer to that.
-What happens when you increase your relationship with someone or create a new relationship?  Is there any effect on gameplay?
-If you have less dice to roll than the other person, using Desperation Points to increase the dice type still isn't going to keep you from failing.  Perhaps DP could be used to add more dice to your pool up to the number that the other person is using?  This would be using D.P. to put you on an equal footing which we all thought was cool.
-Do you get a Fate Point for winning a conflict against a NPC?  It seems easy to win conflicts with NPCs and thus rack up Fate Points.
-How do you lure someone based on their Weakness?

Other:
-I thought it was weird that Shannon had to use a Plot Point to call for his Flashback involving the love letter, but when I thought he had roleplayed well the only thing to award him was another Plot Point.  They got the concern but Chris P. didn't seem to think it would cause a lot of cyclical problems.

I'd love to hear any thoughts on the problems we ran into and the questions we asked.  I hope to work this feedback into another draft of the rules soon to do more playtesting!  You can read a close approximation of the rules we used here:

http://troupeberkeley.infogami.com/Noir

Thanks,
Chris
Caesar_X@yahoo.com

[Chris Peterson]

I really liked the Flashbacks (such as flashing back to the drug deal when Carlos is talking to Juan in the taxi about said drug deal).

We spent a lot of time figuring out our Beliefs (Need, Want, and Fear) and Weakness, but they never had a mechanical game effect. The Beliefs could have some die bonus "carrot" if a PC involves a Need/Want/Fear or a die penalty "stick" if an NPC takes advantage of a Need/Want/Fear. The PC can "push" his Need/Want/Fear or an NPC can "pull" it.

I liked the colorful abilities, but we had some confusion about when to apply which ability. Some clearer definitions or examples would be helpful.

The ability dice mechanics are headed in the right direction, but they need a little lovin'.

Overall, I think we launched a good game tonight! I would definitely be interested in playing more with these characters.

chris p.

[Chris Peterson]

I was reflecting on the relationship map we created when we played Touch of Noir. After the game, Shannon said he wished the map was more mechanically involved during the game. And I mentioned that it might be interesting to prevent
characters from sharing a scene if they don't have a direct connection. Otherwise, what do the relationship lines on the map actually mean if anyone can share a scene with anyone else?

I had an idea that allow every character to interact but still use the relationship map in a genre-appropriate way:

* Characters that do not share a direct relationship may share a scene, BUT the characters don't know each other. Those characters may interact anonymously and cause trouble for other characters (using player knowledge
of other characters), but they don't KNOW they are doing so. That sounds like good noir to me!

* A player can spend a plot point to create a new relationship so that characters with an "anonymous" relationship can upgrade to a "first name basis".


chris p.