[Illumination] 2nd test - coherency, resolution and handling issues etc. (long)

[Filip Luszczyk]

I playtested Illumination again, this time using new shaping rules and setting, with two players. I wasn't pushing the rules in any particular direction and didn't focus on testing any specific part of the game – more like running a casual game, waiting till some problems are spotted. Generally, a fun game it was, and quite a good playtest, too, as some mechanical issues were identified.

The players were Michal M. (a long-time gaming friend of my, one of my regular players; he has played some “Indie” stuff, but is generally Forge-proof) and Michal K. (who had been a regular member of my gaming group some years ago, then became an irregular attendant – his only experience with non-standard stuff was my TSoY Exalted session few days before, I believe). Both are avid CCG and board game players, and certainly have gamist tendencies. Especially MM – as MK, looking back in time to when he had been playing with us regularly was more of a narrativist, I think. This is important for two reasons – being accustomed to the intricacies of board games, they grasped Illumination's mechanics rather easily, and the way session went partially answers my coherency issues from the previous playtest. During this session, we had pretty coherent gamist play, I believe. MK was obviously “playing for the win” (despite such a goal not being in any way suggested by me or the rules) and enjoying it. E.g. when it came to decisions that could affect his Ideals, he openly wondered what will be more advantageous for him. This tells me the game facilitates gamist mode of play, after all. I'm still curious whether the system could support coherent narrativist play with a proper group, but it seems less likely now.

The game lasted for nearly 5 hours, with a bit more than an hour of prep. This includes me explaining the basic assumptions (that is the whole consensual reality metaphysical gibberish that I should probably rewrite in a more digestible form). Since both players had some previous contact with Mage, and MK is generally digging metaphysical stuff, it went rather smoothly.

Character creation

We created the characters using Illumination's new method: general concept >>> Vision (paradigm) >>> Methods & Substances (shaping constraints) >>> Ideals (what matters to the characters) >>> Stats >>> Aspects (freeform traits & skills, lenses for shaping powers and relationships). The procedure works rather well, I think, starting from key things and successively determining less important stuff.

I established a procedure for determining the starting Vision (as creating own paradigm was one of the problematic parts of the old Mage), guiding the players with questions. Both players had Visions for their characters in mind, though, and the procedure was not really needed, so I'm not sure how it would work for someone completely clueless. It needs some improving anyway, especially questions about character's general attitude towards different Illuminated – it could be better to let it be established entirely in play, on a case by case basis.

Also, both players created very strong Visions – their characters' world views will probably hold against anything they encounter. I intended Visions to evolve from these starting assumptions during play, as the character experiences things that clash with his or her paradigm and needs to readjust his or her theories – we didn't really get this in play, maybe due to me not communicating it well enough. I'm thinking about mechanically enforcing the inclusion of some weaknesses and fallacies in the Vision, and about being more strict with it being adjusted as the characters develop and broaden their shaping powers (E.g. later in play MM went into “handwaving mode” with the whole Vision/development interactions, like it was training for levels or other minutia in D&D; at the same time he stunts like mad in Exalted to get the bonuses and Essence awards. Probably I should have stressed that developing Vision is a prerequisite “payment” for developing shaping powers, like stunt bonuses in Exalted are “paid for” with cool narration).

MK created an archeology professor, a demon conjurer with the Vision that explained all the shaping stuff as the workings of demons and angels (he came to the game with a pretty clear character concept in mind). He wanted to choose “infernal essence” as a Substance, but I vetoed it as  I wanted the players to start with more constraining Substances, so that Revelation mechanics (merging three associated Substances into a more broader one) could be tested. He winded up with the Substances of demons, infernal winds and infernal portals. It's interesting how in the context of Illumination's setting metaphysics his character was working with completely imaginary stuff – it reminds me I need to cover potentially problematic Substances (like abstract concepts and things not present inside the consensual reality) and dealing with them in the rules.

He chose Knowledge, Friendship and Power (in the “influence over other beings” sense) as his Ideals, giving the highest priority to Knowledge and lowest priority to Power. MK was a bit confused about the rules and purpose of Apotheosis (endgame mechanics), that make it possible to revolutionize the world at the cost of removing the character from play after reaching high enough Ideal rating. But few days before, in TsoY, he expressed similar confusion about transcendence, and felt the same about burning out in Fastlane when I described the game to him – so I think it's due to him not being accustomed to endgame mechanics in general rather than the rule itself.

MM created his standard issue character - an ex-soldier, this time empowered with psionic powers (and Illuminated from early childhood). He obviously made his Vision as flexible as possible, probably being instinctively defensive about his character (he usually is), but he actually limited his development options this way (hence his later handwaving, as he wanted to improve stuff but couldn't really find a justifying reason). He wanted the Substances of human minds and animal minds, and the later was a bit problematic due to the setting metaphysics – but I left it as it was, since it was clear what the Substance covered (and obviously, I couldn't require him to understand setting stuff that I hadn't even written down yet). He chose Safety, Home and Money as his Ideals.

The last two steps of character creation (determining Stats and Aspects) went quite fast and without real problems.

In general, the main issue of character creation, apart from the Vision stuff I've already mentioned, was that the scope of Substances and Methods, as well as their interactions wasn't exactly defined yet, and consequently later it wasn't always clear what can be done with shaping on the basis of my general notes only. But this is something I expected and intended, in fact – before I write down specific rules and guidelines, I want to know what needs to be specified and tightened. Having questions lets me produce answers. For this, the playtest was extremely useful – I can see that the general principles are workable, and I spotted a lot of things to work on.

Reality prep

As the players were creating their characters, I worked out the Reality sheet. First, I established the Trials, trying to tie them to the Ideals of the characters. I came up with the following Trials, from highest to lowest priority:

*A demonic cult tries to take control over the country
*A gang led by MK character's old friend causes unchecked violence in the home city of MM character
*The Organization tries to restore its influence in the area (this one I didn't really manage to highlight during the session, although I missed one really good opportunity)

Having established the Trials, I moved on to buying my own Aspects (representing NPCs and other plot stuff). As I see it now, I should require the Reality Master (GM figure) to spend a part of his starting points before the session, since right now he is allowed to keep unspent points and purchase new Aspects when they are needed (thus there is currently no sense to spend any Aspect points during prep). I bought the cultists, their Babylonian demon-god, the gang and the gang's Illuminated leader at the maximum starting level allowed and the Organization's men in black at lower level (in the end, they didn't appear in play), spending about 3/4 of my pool.

Then I calculated the Wall, a mechanical equivalent of the character Stats, used to generate resources. After the game I noticed there's an issue here. The Wall is equal to the sum of all the players' stats, halved – and it is recalculated every session. Although I'm cool with the resource dynamics and balance as they are, I doubt it makes any sense for the players to increase their Stats, as this automatically raises the Wall at the start of the next session. I need to either add some additional benefit for having higher Stats or get rid of Stats advancement entirely. I'm seriously pondering the second option, as it would simplify many things (e.g. solve some problems with damage recovery timing we encountered).

[Filip Luszczyk]

Resolution

When I started working on Illumination, I had an ambitious goal of creating a functional task resolution for it. It lies in ruins now.

There was no “bid depending on how difficult you want the feat to be” on my side. I was bidding depending on how much I didn't want the players to succeed, and I found myself doing it instinctively. A focus on intentions and opposition, not on the task's difficulty assessment. Oh, well. Obviously my task resolution ideas were wrong, as the game is fun and works well the way we played it.

Secret bidding is fun, and the challenge rules generally work well with two players, just as they did in the previous one-on-one playtest. There's this constant “outguess and outwit the GM” thing going on, and the players liked it. There certainly are some varied strategies possible. MK had his moment of glory when he tried something, knowing perfectly I wouldn't let it pass – then he made a zero bid and spent a Star token to convert the huge difference in totals into resources. Now, that was one of those “but... but... but... how did I let this happen?” moments for me ^^ I totally like these game dynamics.

Still, there are some issues with the bidding rules. First of all, there is some amount of bookkeeping involved – with every challenge, there are 2-5 changes in numbers per side. Most of this is dealt with by handling tokens, but this is connected with another problem.

There was a lot of tokens at the table, roughly 50 or something per player, and this number theoretically could grow forever. Last time in one on one play, we used glass tokens. This time, the players decided to track resources on the dice (their standard method of tracking stuff in CCGs), and we had a big pile of coins in the middle of the table to use for bidding. The coins were small and bothersome to count, and bidding was quite unwieldy, especially with higher bids. There were times when we simply bid a handful of coins, not counting them exactly. I definitely need to work out some good methods to improve the handling. Probably having 20 tokens per player, 10 in one color worth one point each and 10 in different color worth 10 points each to use for bidding would simplify it. Then, the resources itself could be tracked e.g. by sliding a paper clip on the edge of the sheet or the like. Another option would be to lower the numbers, but that would mess with the resource balance that I feel is fine right now, so I don't want that.

We encountered problems with some of the mechanical effects of challenges. For example, depending on final Impact (difference in totals) it's possible to impose a personal or global condition that modifies associated stuff. It lasts one scene normally, or till the end of the session if the player spends a Star. The players have made some use of conditions, but were spending stars only to make sure I won't close the scene in order to get rid of the conditions, cause I could. Obviously, I need to make it easier to impose lasting conditions (or maybe make every condition lasting). Also, after the last playtest I lowered the damage, but now it seems I should make it possible to deal more severe beating. Damage lowers Aspects till the end of the session or until recovered in effect of a challenge. Using Aspects in challenges was supposed to be risky, but it seems damage isn't as big a threat as it should, as they were hardly lowered (no one really needed to use Impact for damage recovery). At the same time, it seems I could raise the maximum level of Aspects, as when used they don't provide as much benefit as they should (and there's not enough place for development, since hitting the maximum in Aspects fast is way too easy – although the players favored improving shaping stuff, I found myself with a lot of Development I didn't really knew how to spend). These things need some reworking.

MM suggested that the game could use some “aid another” rules, as currently challenges are a solo deal. But then, I like how the sides are balanced, and adding rules for support would totally mess the dynamics I'm satisfied with. I intended aiding other players to be possible through eroding the Reality Master's pool by challenging him for the supporting action. Now I'm not sure what to do about it.

MM also commented that the bidding procedure is pretty simple and straightforward. He changed his mind when I shown him the diagrams in my notes. I think both MM and MK have experience with so complicated mechanics that Illumination actually made an impression of not being complex on them – but I seriously doubt someone not accustomed to mechanical complexity would deal with the rules well. Not that I'm creating the game with simplicity lovers in mind.

Also, I didn't make much use of zero bids during this session. Zero bids on the GM's side are a reward mechanic, as they equal saying yes to good ideas and giving the player a lot of Development but at the same time keeping up the tension and allowing for effort and mechanical effect. There was only one situation when player impressed me enough to make a zero bid. Still, for the players zero bids are a purely tactical way of eroding GM's pool (as MK demonstrated), and I'm wondering whether I wasn't actually subconsciously restraining myself from zero-bidding for some tactical reasons. If so, that's bad, as they weren't supposed to work that way on the GM's side. His role in the game isn't overly adversarial, he is supposed to provide opposition and create conflict but also to encourage players to figure out interesting ways of shaping reality and to do cool stuff, by rewarding them.

Ideals, Trials and the story

I wanted action to take place in “an unspecified country similar to the USA”, but MK proposed London. MM was fed up with London after his last visit there, though, so we settled down on “an unspecified British city”. Later we had a scene in which MK's character met with the gang leader over the grave of John Lennon (cause we figured out it probably is in London), but who cares ^^ Also, to simplify things we decided that MM was working for MK as a pilot few times and they know themselves.

The Ideals and Trials certainly pushed the story forward, working as the main flags. The characters got involved in the gang's Trial, as it endangered the streets where MM's character grew up. When MM's character was gathering information among the locals, he scanned the mind of his old junkie friend. Thus he discovered the memories of him taking part in the cult's ritual, and then being forced to commit a murder. While MM was investigating, MK's character talked with his friend from the city council, and proposed to negotiate with the gang leader (this was an opportunity for me to introduce the Organization's Trial, I even bought the official as an Aspect, but in the end, I somehow let it all slip). MK wanted to use shaping to call a demon messenger and invite the gang leader for a meeting, but after pondering the limitations of his Methods (he had no control over demons if they moved too far), he decided to invite his old friend himself, traveling to his hideout through infernal portals. He certainly made some impression delivering an invitation from behind the burning gate. They finally met on the graveyard and we had quite a fun dialog on how people change and stuff – but taking into account the circumstances of invitation, I decided the gangster concluded MK's character died, went to Hell and speaks in the name of some dark power. MK proposed him a trip to Hell, to show him what awaited if he didn't change his violent ways. The Illuminated gangster, who had experiences with “consciousness widening” drugs, actually interpreted it as a drug trip, wasn't really affected and proposed MK's character to join his agenda (“Today - the city, tomorrow - the country, and the day after – the whole world!” ^^). MK decided to leave him alone in Hell – and this lowered both his Power and Frienship Ideals. Nice. While they were away, MM telepathically dominated gangster's sidekicks and forced them to leave the city – effectively, they lowered the level of the gang's Trial. Then, they made some research on the cult, and invaded the castle where cultists gathered, surprising them in the middle of their annual cannibalistic feast. MM lost a level of his Safety Ideal, as he risked going into the castle. They gathered some Development and improved their character's by that time: MK merged his three Substances into infernal essence, raised some Methods and acquired the Substance of human body; MM acquired the Substance of supernatural minds, getting ready to deal with the cult's demons and gaining the third mind Substance he needed for later Revelation. They dealt with the cultists, lowering their Trial and getting back a level of Safety and Power Ideals respectively (MK made quite a smart maneuver when the cult's leader proposed him to join them in exchange for power, reversing things and demanding they left his city). And we wrapped things up.

In the previous playtest, Ideals and Trials didn't change much – before this game I increased the Development awards for raising and lowering them, and it seems it really pays now, especially when it comes to those of highest priority (MM gained a lot for thanks to his Safety changes). It seems so, but in fact we didn't use them mechanically as often as we could – I need more playtesting to determine this.

Miscellaneous stuff

The scene framing felt kind of clunky. Maybe because I don't really want “scenes” to really be story scenes, and that's why I'm calling them Events – but I'm still in the story scene mindset at the same time. The session is supposed to be composed from Events, with gaining resources, Star (fanmail) awards, mechanical development and Ideals/Trials changes usually occurring up to once per Event. Event occurs when there's a new situation in which bidding challenges are happening, and is closed when the Reality Master decides so (or when one of the players is out of resources and calls for a closure). Between the Events, there might be some non-mechanical Free Flow, a time for dialogs and other completely non-mechanical stuff. After the game, I wasn't very satisfied of how the “scene framing” worked, and I'm afraid it may be screaming for being used tactically by the Reality Master, which I don't want. I probably need to rework the structure, but I'm not sure how to make timing independent of someone's interests (especially that I want to retain all the “once per Event” and “at the end of Event” procedures intact).

Development is fun, as every challenge earns both sides some Development points, gaining Stars/fanmail is connected with an additional development award, both raising and lowering Ideals/Trials grants big amounts of Development (one change in highest priority Ideal/Trial is worth advancing two traits), and it's possible to get a whole lot of Development for attaining a Revelation. Development points flow constantly, and can be spent any time with a proper justification. There is the whole joy of accumulation, and it's possible to gain more and more and more by maneuvering smartly in the rules (MK was more active than MM for the first half of the game, gained a Revelation and some Ideals changes, and suddenly he had few hundred points while MM was still around 20; then, MM started chasing him). There is a sense of constant, well, development. On the backside, it also involves constant bookkeeping (well, kind of like in TsoY). Also, I think I should put some more strict limits on what can be improved when and how often – e.g. I feel it's too easy to hit the maximum with Aspects, and MK improved a lot of Methods in no time, effectively expanding the scope of his shaping powers immensely, too fast (maybe allowing only one or two Method improvements per session would be a good idea).

Stars/fanmail were not used as extensively as I'd like them to be (and we hardly ever awarded any, cause despite the session being fun there weren't too many “wow, awesome!” moments). Their main use was drawing resources in challenges, and I'm starting to think the other uses might not be attractive enough. I suspect regaining Ideal/Trial uses is possibly too attractive, but no one used them often enough to need it in the game. But for example an option of establishing a fact wasn't used at all – maybe because I wasn't strict enough with requiring it a few times. It may be that some of such options are not really needed in the game, though – further playtesting will tell.

Shaping rules are fun, despite not being precise enough yet. I'm very fond of the Revelation rules, that is merging three associated Substances into a broader one, for a big Development points award. It makes it worthwhile not to reach for extremely broad Substances like the Reality or something right away. Although it's possible for the player to take any Substance he wants unless the choice is vetoed, there really is a reason to play out the enlightenment step by step, starting on the lower end. It kind of reminds me of TsoYs Key buyoffs. Also, the players commented it's awesome.

And I don't get the feeling I had in my previous attempts to write a Mage heartbreaker – the powers do not feel like it was only color, we had some “figuring out how to do X” going on. Also, Peril (the Paradox equivalent) works fine. In Mage, especially in its standard Polish interpretation, Paradox was “a  Hammer of Divine Punishment for the Storyteller to Keep the Players in Line”. In Illumination, Peril is simply a double-edged sword, and generating it is risky, yet worthwile (MK did quite a stunt keeping a lot of Peril till the end of the game and then spending it all in one challenge).

So, a fruitful playtest. It assured me that the game is fun to play, and at the same time exposed a lot of things that still need tinkering. The players reacted positively. MK commented that he's perfectly cool with how the game works right now. Unfortunately I didn't got a chance to talk with him more and dig some complaints, as he was in a hurry and had to leave. I talked with MM a bit, though, and we analyzed some things that could be improved but didn't came up in play. What to say – I need more playtesting (too bad we probably won't be able to continue this game, as some of us leave the city soon).