[DitV] BNitH

[cydmab]

Ran my first game using DitV system tonight. It was pretty fun, but reactions were mixxed by the end of it.

Part of the problem was in order to motivate some of the players to try the game, I had to use their favorite setting. The premise of the setting is fundamentally silly:  It's an alternate universe, set in the future during world war four, where Bob Marley lives and formed and a neutral benevolent fascist nation based on drugs, free love, and reggae music. The peace is enforced by the authoritarian "Bong Nazis," who solve problems, enforce mandatory happiness laws (at gunpoint if need be), and serve as symbols of the state. (The term Bong Nazi's is very unfortunate for many reasons - remember the setting was fundamentally designed to be absurd. In the setting they are meant to be very benevolent persons. In a Happiness-is-Mandatory, Computer-is-your-friend, way at least)

So I created Bong Nazis in the Hempfields.

the town generation was: (skip to next post if not interested)

Pride: Hans, father of Billy, is lazy and neglects his duty to the State and his son.

Injustice: Hans' son, Billy, tells his dad that he's found the dead body of a possible foreign agent. Hans' pride causes him to not believe him. Billy goes back tot he body and sees the "body" is now alive and breathing. He goes back and this time persuades his dad to come and see. When he gets there the ex-corpse is gone. Again, the father does not believe Billy, and orders Billy to not tell the Steward, or anyone, as it will cause too much trouble.

Sin: Billy keeps his secret; Hans' gets stressed out and starts to overdo the weed. This causes him to neglect his girlfriend, Elizabeth, and his son. Elizabeth feels bad about being neglected, and starts to refuse to participate in community orgies (a sin in this world)

Demon attacks: Stuff starts to go wrong in the Apartment Complex. The Steward becomes paranoid that he will get a bad report mark, so to compensate he makes parties and orgies mandatory, and 7-days a week, even on the day of personal-rest (Weed-day). When the Steward tries to get the over-drugged Hans to a party, there is an accident, and Hans is hurt. To shut up Hans, the Steward bribes him with even more drugs, putting Hans in a perpetual stupor watching the 24-hour teletubbies channel. Billy finds some technology left behind by the foreign agent, and injects himself with some nanites. The nanites make Billy superhumanly strong and powerful (Read: demons) but make him immune to drugs and weed. Mary, a young woman in the complex, gets sick. The Shephard refuses to send her to the hospital because it would put a bad mark on his record.

False Doctrine: Billy, immune to drugs, starts to beleive that using drugs is bad, while using humanity-destroying cyberware is good.

Corrupt Worship: Billy, now made super confident and attractive by the nanites, starts to have sex with girls around the apartment complex, in order to pass around the nanites. (This is corrupt because sex is supposed to be done communally, in orgies only)

False Preisthood: Billy manages to infect two women, Sally and Mary, with nanites. The nanites cure Mary. Both begin to agree with the doctrine that nanites=good, drugs=bad.

Sorcery: Billy now counts as a sorceror (e.g. has superhuman powers, like super-strength, resistence to bullets, etc.)

Steward wants BN's to give him a clean report, and Elizabeth to join the orgies
Carl (a random apartment dweller) wants the BN's to make parties optional on Hempday
Hans wants to be left alone
Elizabeth wants Hans to be restored to normal
Billy wants to be left alone to spread the cult, or for the BN's to endorse the cult.
Mary and Sally want to spread the nanites to the BN's
Demons are figurative, but I supose they "want" the BN's to endorse the cult and be infected by nanites. A masacre would be cool too though

If the BN's do nothing, eventually enough people get infected that the State notices, and razes the place, killing everyone.

[cydmab]

We started a little late. Character generation went long, but people seemed to really enjoy it. There were four players, and I encourged questions and kibitzing too each other. The 4 inroductory challenges also took a long time, but again people seemed to have fun. (One player specifically said "this is cool") One player, however, expressed tremendous confusion about what the traits and relationships and dice "meant." I told him that traits were signals about how he wanted conflicts to go, and relationships were signals about what kind of conflicts he was interested in. I also told him that d4s meant things that might help with a goal, but could backfire. d8s and d10s meant traits where it was possible to do super-smack-down "critical" successes in conflicts. He felt a little more comfortable after the intrroductory conflicts, but I think he never really got a good feel for them.

I beleive there was a major problem with my alternate setting: the citizens were too scared of the BN's (totalitarian state) and the BN's may have been too benevolent (although to some extent this was player choice). In practice, it meant we never escalated conflicts. All conflicts were "just talking" (except for one hacky sack game, which was physcial but non-violent). When the BNs were winning a conflict, I backed down. When I was winning a conflict, the BNs backed down. (and this was rare, because there were 4 BNs).

Part of the problem is that we ran out of time, because of the long introduction (we played 4 1/2 hours in total), and I guess also my town was too large. This prevented the big, pontentially major, conflict with the sorceror (although, its hard to say if the players would have confronted him violently) and the reflection-stage of the game.

The comedic tone wasn't as bad as I feared it would be, although it may have contributed a bit to players being benevolent/soft on the NPCs.

After the game we went out to dinner and discussed the game. We all agreed the game was very much worth trying again in the default setting. However, there were some reservations. One of the players (the one that struggled with what traits "meant") felt strange that, on the one hand, he felt the game was trying to empower the players. On the other hand, he also felt the rules got in the way. He expressed the view, and others agreed, that if one is going to empower the players, one might as well be more freeform about it.

Another player complained that there was maybe a little too much dice rolling. I found this surprising because he was always the most gung-ho about battlemats and combats in games like DnD.

For myself as GM, I really liked the game was easy to setup. I also gained some satisfaction discovering what the players would actually do and being surprised by their choices. Howevever, I also get that sort of feeling with traditional games I run. On the other hand, I felt very... hmmm, what's a good word? Uninvested in the game? I didn't care about the NPCs, setting, or anything really. Part of this is that I personally dislike the BN setting (its a creation of one of the other players). But part of it is that I did not really put any energy in crafting the NPCs and town, making them fully three dimensional. Furthermore, there were no long-term consequences or ripples to the events in game, because every conflict was self-contained in the "town." Of course some of this lack of investment comes from the understanding the game was essentially a one-shot. Still, even in a one-shot, I generally feel more invested in the game. Overall, I'd say it was a low-cost but low-benefit experience as a GM.

We all agreed that we'd like to very much try the game at least once more in the default setting. I beleive there will be more opportunity for mid-level and high-level conflicts, that dropping the comedic color/tone and focussing more on drama will help, and that the default DitV setting is just more fundamentally interesting and rich.

[cydmab]

forgot to sign

-William

[Callan S.]

Hi William, welcome to the forge!

After the game we went out to dinner and discussed the game. We all agreed the game was very much worth trying again in the default setting. However, there were some reservations. One of the players (the one that struggled with what traits "meant") felt strange that, on the one hand, he felt the game was trying to empower the players. On the other hand, he also felt the rules got in the way. He expressed the view, and others agreed, that if one is going to empower the players, one might as well be more freeform about it.

I think they are feeling more empowered, but empowered to do stuff they are not normally interested in. It's like they normally make things out of little pieces of wood and the game gives them a whole tree - wow! But then it doesn't give them chainsaws! Wha? It seems wierd until you realise your working with the same material - wood - but now your tending a garden instead of carpenting. You might like to ask them and yourself "Ok, it restricts still - but what is it that it isnt restricting?"

For myself as GM, I really liked the game was easy to setup. I also gained some satisfaction discovering what the players would actually do and being surprised by their choices. Howevever, I also get that sort of feeling with traditional games I run. On the other hand, I felt very... hmmm, what's a good word? Uninvested in the game? I didn't care about the NPCs, setting, or anything really. Part of this is that I personally dislike the BN setting (its a creation of one of the other players). But part of it is that I did not really put any energy in crafting the NPCs and town, making them fully three dimensional. Furthermore, there were no long-term consequences or ripples to the events in game, because every conflict was self-contained in the "town." Of course some of this lack of investment comes from the understanding the game was essentially a one-shot. Still, even in a one-shot, I generally feel more invested in the game. Overall, I'd say it was a low-cost but low-benefit experience as a GM.

In terms of suprised by their choices and what they'd actually do, I'm really interested in your next actual play account and whether you switch over to this being the primary pay off for playing.


Bong nazi's, heh heh!

[cydmab]

You might like to ask them and yourself "Ok, it restricts still - but what is it that it isnt restricting?"

Hmm, interesting way of phrasing it... since our instincts were to do away with the remaining restrictions on players.

What did they seem free to do?

1. Total control of the norms of the game. I told them that I would not judge what was appropriate use of abilities, or how broad the traits were set. They had to make those calls themselves, or with consultation of other players. (although, in some sense not completely freeform, because I would tell them examples of how it was done in the book when they repeatedly asked "You can use whatever trait standards you want... but an example from the book would be...")

2. Significant control over character change, because the xp rules allowed wide variety of options with obvious "min-max" pontential. Meaning, the players had influence over whether their character grew stronger quickly, slowly, not at all, or even got weaker. (although, still not freeform)

3. Ontop of 2, significant control on  power of characters (take narrow, hard to apply traits, or broad easy to apply ones) (also, I have run games with 2 and 3 already - GURPS games where I allowed players to make characters within wide [ like 75-250 point characters] ranges, chosen by the players, with players free to modify characters anyway they wanted at any time)

4. Limited in-game hammer of judgement for "bad" behavior (although last campaign I ran, using traditional system, also had PCs in authority with significant leeway)

5. No out of game hammer of judgement for "bad" behavior, like alignment systems. (We haven't used such systems for 10+ years though)

6. No predefined plot that the GM expects them to do (I try to do this anyway... to one degree or another at least... in our trad games as well however)

So... in a way... the history of our group has already gone "freeform" for most or all these points, except number 1. And for that, the players seemed to struggle a bit, because there was a fair amount of explicit bargaining (among the players, I sat out of it) at the start of the game about what would count as "fair" trait use. (this may have been a mistake on my part. Maybe I should of hand-waved this freedom on the first session and brought it up at the next. Instead I explicitly told the players that they could set the norms for scope and use of traits) Still, its an interesting freedom to think about. Since when I think "more or less freeform, but with a GM with some special authority" one of the authorities such a residual GM keeps is the authority to declare particular player narrative statements "lame" or "inappropriate." In this sense, DitV was even more player-empowering than our near-freeform games. And it was this sense that was causing the most bewilderment and gnashing of player teeth.

And I got to admit, a bit of relief for me as a GM. Being "reasonable narrative police" can be a bit draining.

Is my list incomplete? Is there something else DitV is trying to empower?

[Callan S.]

4. Limited in-game hammer of judgement for "bad" behavior (although last campaign I ran, using traditional system, also had PCs in authority with significant leeway)

5. No out of game hammer of judgement for "bad" behavior, like alignment systems. (We haven't used such systems for 10+ years though)

*snip*
Is my list incomplete? Is there something else DitV is trying to empower?

I didn't know what you meant by bad behaviour for a second, until you brought up alignments.

Lets say alignment rules ensure that a sinner, once established as a sinner continues sinning and a saint, once established as a saint, continues do gooding.

Say you get used to that over the years. What happens when a game enables a player to play a sinner who at a certain crucial point, becomes a saint? Or even a saint turning to sinning? If your used to alignment systems, it might look like there is no hammer for 'bad behaviour', which I'm guessing (tell me how far off I am) the badness is directly related to breaking from something that had previously been established.

I'll suggest it this way - rather than there being no rules for breaking pre established moral codes - there is no pre establishment to begin with. A murderer can save a child, a saint can drown a child witness. Only a moral void, no pre establishment. To use a phrase from the prince of nothing book series, there is only a darkness that comes before (any action). That's the excitement of play - you have no idea what will come from that darkness, no idea at all - even the player often doesn't know himself. Until the moment comes.

The other stuff, the character control, the story control - its all just supportive of that really. It looks like its sending you toward rock out freeform but failing at it, but really its all centered around this moral void and its exploration.

I'm probably not talking about it right though and an old forge hand will be along with a smooth and accurate reply soon.

[cydmab]

Then I'd make a few comments:

1. The light-hearted nature of the bong nazi setting I think completely compromised exploring the moral void, or at least sapped it of any drama. Choices were constantly made, but everything was just too benevolent.

Here's a fun example: when the players found Hans in his room, completely stoned out staring at the teletubbies show listening to Reggae, they Judged the Situation as Perfectly Acceptable. They also judged the Steward playing a hand in overdrugging Hans as acceptable behavior for a steward as well. Which we all thought was hillarious. So the judgements were unexpected, but it was comedic and light hearted, at most ironic (we're supposed to be helping people, but we sincerely declare someone permanently stoned out of their mind 24-7 was an OK state), and not dramatic at all.

2. Exploring the moral void, reacting to it in unexpected ways, is something we have done already, for the last 15 years or so, with traditional and semi-freeform styles. As far as whether this game was better at it, in terms of this session - no way, total disaster. But of course that might have been because some were still getting used to the rules, and the bad setting choice. So we'll have to wait for the next game for me to make a fair comparison between our regular play and DitV.

3. As far as using DitV for comedy, the session did pretty well, better than our GURPS comedy games, but I think we'd be better off with Toon or freeform. However, we rarely do comedy games, and I personally have nearly zero interest in them.

[Callan S.]

1. I'm not sure I really agree - certainly the the scene and BN choices doesn't blow my mind, but it does raise some interesting questions. I'm not that familiar with DITV, but some sort of conflict where the guy over doses on drugs would seem a way of exploring what they've just said is fine and peachy.

2. I'll be blunt - I'm skeptical. You've mentioned bad behaviour in terms of alignment and in your last campaign players had significant leeway'. Its sounds like they can do alot, but if they go to far you can step in and change what their character does. Even if you never really exercise this power, it undercuts the exploration of the moral void - the point of such play is to bring to the surface the characters intentions. A GM having the ability to block that in the interest of a better story implies a better story comes first. So moral exploration falls to the wayside and probably dies in the ass. That's as I understand it.

What I've observed in actual play accounts here at the forge, is where gamers who come to something like capes for the first time (a nar facilitating game) almost always do a straight up joke fest of a game. My hypothesis - its a social escape route. They are afraid that if they portray their character the way they dearly want to, the GM will block them. And then it will be player facing off against GM - ugly stuff. But hey, if your just joking around and your character just, ha ha, puts the granny in the dumpster, if the GM blocks you, hey, you were just joking so no face off. Just a joke, never mind.

The joking is a phase - it's probing to see if they really have the authority to explore the void fully. It'll pass once they realise their rights to explore it are assured. Might take a little while, but it'll happen, is my estimate. The whole bong nazi game world seems to be such a joke - bring in horrible issues like nazi fascism - err, but its all drug related - so they can blow it all off as a joke when they get serious about something, but they also get blocked on it.

However, that's if they want to explore it - someone who doesn't will never get into it cause its just something they don't want to do. I'm wondering if the guy you mentioned is like that.

Do you think I'm way off for being skeptical?

[cydmab]

1. But no-one there really cared, because it was in large part just a joke to us. The same scene would have been much more meaningul if we had come to the table with the attitude that we would be exploring moral issues. Instead we had this fuzzy attitude, split between "This is all a joke" and "we have to help people - what is the right way to do that?" because, in part, of the setting.

As far as your alternative explanation, that people treated the game as a joke because they were uncomfortable with having authority (and not because the setting choice), this session was way, way waaaaay less dramatic/tied to moral questions/etc. than both our ordinary traditional and freeform games. Players are more than happy to explore those issues in the ordinary campaigns. I can say with a fair amount of confidence it was the setting's fault. (Either that, or the system, but I really don't think we gave the system a fair test with the setting)

You've mentioned bad behaviour in terms of alignment and in your last campaign players had significant leeway'.

I mentioned "Bad behavior" as a  _hypothetical_ answer to your question about what freedom I thought DitV was trying to generate by its almost-but-not-quite freeform player empowerment. I did not bring up bad behavior because I thought it was an issue in our group - quite the contrary, I immediately rejected the explanation. We junked anything vaguely resembling an alignment system 15 YEARS ago because, in part, we already recognized this problem. As far as in-game constraints (strong police force, low PC authority in game world) just not an issue. Current game police is powerless and thouroughly corrupt, and now we are in a wilderness with no authorities; last campaign the PCs WERE the police, and basically untouchable (Gunslingers with a licence to kill). This is an absolute non-issue for our group, and I feel we solved it quite easily by junking alignment and a social contract of GMs being light on use of authorities in game.

Or if you don't buy that, it's a total non-issue when compared to problems like too-strong GM control of agenda (my point number 6) or GM having to police "fair play" (my point number 1). Solving the GM (or an aggressive player) having too much scene time and agenda control is a HUGE issue for us, and freeing the GM from policing fair play was a new and intriguing possibility we'd never considered before. On these scores the session did very well, even with the stupid setting.

[cydmab]

One other thing that occurred to me. I should of probally changed the escalation levels to something like:

just talkin' d4- hacky sack game d6- hard drug use d8- bureaucracy d10

Raise, BN: "I'm afraid I'm going to have to write you up for insubornation, citizen (escalate to bureaucracy)
Block, citizen: "Oh yeah! My uncle works in the department of records."
Raise, citizen: "You'll get your ass fired if you mess with me!"

These probally would of been more appropriate, and make everyone (both citizens and BNs) more comfortable with escalating.

[Ben Lehman]

See, I think that the thing here is that you haven't adapted the hierarchy of sin to the setting well enough.  A sin in Dogs should make us, the players at the table, tremble.  "Not participating in the mandatory orgies" just doesn't strike me as too deep a sin.

Let's try this on for size, based on my contact with communal living situations in northern california (about as close to this setting as you're going to find.)

0) Everyone's cool.  The ideal community is one where everyone is totally cool with everything, just living in the moment and letting the experiences of life happen to them.

1) Anxiety.  But someone gets anxious about something.  They don't have a problem with what's actually going on, mind you, but they're worried about what it means for the future, where it might lead, or that it might indicate other stuff.  They're no longer living in the now, being cool, they're thinking about the future, which is inherently not as cool.

2) Restraint.  Anxiety leads to restraint.  Either the person who feels anxious tries to restrain others from doing the thing he feels anxious about, or they are exerciseing self-restraint because of their worries about the future.  The restrained person is now further out of "be-here-now" and further disconnected from the community experience.

3) Selfishness.  Restraint leads to selfishness.  Either the restrained people escalate their restraint into looking out purely for themselves, or other people begin to imitate the restrained people but take it a step further into actively harming others for their own perceived benefit (either a profit or for safety.)

Selfishness causes bad energy.  Bad energy can manifest in any number of ways -- people get testy with each other, chores don't get done, milk goes sour, people have bad acid trips.

4) Mistrust.  In response to selfishness and bad energy, people lose trust in each other.  They start acting purely in terms of their own perceived interest, and they can't trust other people to do anything for them, or even to be true to their word.

5) Hierarchy.  Mistrust leads to hierarchy.  A hierarchy is a group of three individuals who have banded together for mutual assistance and protection.  Unlike healthy members of a commune, they aren't bound togther by love, but by suspicion and mistrust for each other.  Members of a hierarchy are subordinant to one leader who is making the plans for them.  SInce people can't trust the group, they trust one strong leader.

6) Hate and Murder.  A hierarchy will ineveitably start lying, cheating, stealing, and killing to further the ends of its ends.  If there are multiple hierarchies within the commune, they will fight with each other, with the honest members the first casualties.

How does that look?

yrs--
--Ben

[cydmab]

Looks good; if I were to ever run a game like this again I'd probally try a similar system, but I honestly don't think it would have mattered for that session. Partly because I felt fine with there being enough NPCs with goals and relationships and such. But mainly because, again, no-one came to the table with a serious lets-do-drama feeling. At best it was a half drama/half comedic feel, at worst all comedy. This includes myself, because I was trying to match the humor mix to whatever the players wanted.

To put it slightly more broadly, I think, at least in my experience and for my group, at least 50% and maybe as much as 90% of the way to powerful drama is... if everyone at the table is focused on and wants powerful drama. If people just don't care, or worse, actively sabotage drama because they are looking for humor or something else, it's just not going to work. And if everyone IS looking for drama, you can get remarkable performance even out of "inappropriate" systems. System still matters, but attitude matters too. Attitude might even be more important.

So the next time I run DitV, it'll be with default setting, and I'll tell everyone to think about and focus on issues/story/character/etc.; It's what we usually do, but this session we had a guest player and old freind who REALLY wanted to do this silly setting.

[cydmab]

Oh, and in case I haven't fully communicated how silly the world was... the characters were:

1. An ex-tobacco exec who's mission in life is to get people to stop smoking tobacco... and smoke weed instead.

2. A hobbit. Yes, a hobbit... from like a shire. The Shire is apparently located somewhere in Rastafaria. And there were goblins there, because his initiation conflict was to smuggle a bag of weed past goblins to the shire. His signiture item was a "Very big, very high quality bag of weed as large as he is 2d8).

3. A famous rap star (I forget which one. MC hammer or something).

4. A mad scientist/trivia master.

[Ricky Donato]

What I've observed in actual play accounts here at the forge, is where gamers who come to something like capes for the first time (a nar facilitating game) almost always do a straight up joke fest of a game. My hypothesis - its a social escape route. They are afraid that if they portray their character the way they dearly want to, the GM will block them. And then it will be player facing off against GM - ugly stuff. But hey, if your just joking around and your character just, ha ha, puts the granny in the dumpster, if the GM blocks you, hey, you were just joking so no face off. Just a joke, never mind.

The joking is a phase - it's probing to see if they really have the authority to explore the void fully. It'll pass once they realise their rights to explore it are assured. Might take a little while, but it'll happen, is my estimate. The whole bong nazi game world seems to be such a joke - bring in horrible issues like nazi fascism - err, but its all drug related - so they can blow it all off as a joke when they get serious about something, but they also get blocked on it.

Callan, I wanted to add that I totally agree with you here, but in my experience it goes beyond Narr-facilitating games. It happens whenever players who are used to have tight constraints on their ability to affect the game suddenly have those constraints removed. They start doing weird and goofy stuff for a while just to see if they can; they want to understand where the new boundaries are, now that the old ones are gone.

I've also observed this exact behavior in non-gaming circumstances, such as sexuality and relationships, so I think it's a basic principle of human nature: remove the boundaries, and people will explore to find where the new boundaries are.

[David Artman]

Callan, I wanted to add that I totally agree with you here, but in my experience it goes beyond Narr-facilitating games. It happens whenever players who are used to have tight constraints on their ability to affect the game suddenly have those constraints removed. They start doing weird and goofy stuff for a while just to see if they can; they want to understand where the new boundaries are, now that the old ones are gone.

This concept is repeated almost word for word in Universalis, but it suggests that it's the judgment of each other's creativity which fosters the "comic phase" that most games (and other  human activities) begin with. Universalis allows you to assert just about ANYTHING... and that's scary, when you don't know and trust the other players well, and you know that they not only are going to judge your contributions (unconsciously, subconsciously, or consciously) but they can even challenge them in the mechanics of the game.

So add "exposure" to "boundaries" to get closer to the real cause, I believe. It's easier to risk comic creativity because, if its deemed sucky, you just laugh it off: "Hey, my idea was just a lark; so what?" But it takes trust and courage to hang oneself over the ragged edge of new boundaries and, perhaps, expose a part of one's nature which one would have normally downplayed or obfuscated in another arena.
David