[Grey Ranks] Oakland Playtest

[Jason Morningstar]

Mike Montesa organized a Grey Ranks playtest in California (I'll let the participants out themselves if they want to).  I asked for permission to re-post comments and suggestions I received; here's a start:

"I liked the way the grid worked and found that it was meaningful. I am not sure that pooling dice and taking them back out player-by-player added much, though. I think things would have worked just as well if we had all played with our own dice from the grid position and relationship (and it would have taken less time).

The dice pairing was a problem when you ended up with identical dice after redistribution. It seems like a big source of tension comes from having to choose whether to put your high die into the mission or into your personal vinette. If you have 2d4 or 2d6 or even 2d10, you don't have that choice. Maybe if a player ends up with identical dice before a mission, one die gets bumped up a notch (2d4 become a 1d4 and 1d6; 2d6 becomes 1d6 and 1d8).

Upon further reflection, I now like the fact that the same person was narrating both sides of any given conflict. It is definitely different from how most games go and was therefore interesting to me. I think our group had problems with this because we were trying to play the game differently from the way it was designed, looking for the dice to be more of a challenge resolution mechanism between players.

I think a discussion of game expectations would be worth adding to the discussion of veils at the beginning of the game. In addition to talking about what is over the line in terms of narration, players could talk about the general mood they want in the story and the story pacing, as well as what they are looking to get out of the game. I think part of our group tension came from the fact that some of our players wanted fast tension and hard choices (e.g. Michael), while others wanted a slower buildup and stories focused on smaller things (e.g. me). Neither was wrong, just not compatible.

I did find that not rolling the mission dice until the end of a mission was a problem. It meant that there wasn't much narrative tension in individual mission vignettes. The resolution of the mission vignette was based entirely the narrating player's choice of die, and in the case where that player had equal dice, there wasn't any choice at all.

I'd suggest a mechanic where you roll the mission dice for success and failure in each mission vignette, and base overall mission success on the total number of successful mission vignettes:

4: Total victory
3: Mission victory
2: Pyrrhic victory
1: Mission defeat
0: Mission disaster

[Adjust for the number of players]

Maybe give some extra bonus/penalty at the high/low ends of the scale (like a bump up or down in one character's reputation dice). Mission disaster could also result in a casualty (if, for example, a character was on a deadly corner).

That would put more uncertainty into the mission vignettes but I think would retain the mood you are looking for. Also, it would shift the tone of the game as you move forward from fighting to win to fighting to minimize your losses, which I think would be a nice effect.

I also had problem with the fact that Mission 1 was a shoo-in. Maybe it would work better if die targets were set by Act number (2 in Act I, 5 in Act II and 8 in Act III).

Another thing you need to clarify is *when* a player uses his die in the vignette: beginning, middle or end. We ultimately decided it was the player's choice, but when the die was added to a vignette has a lot of influence on how it felt, tension-wise. A fews words on this would be useful. Personally I prefer the flexibility of choosing.

For the most part, I really liked the game. I think the following things worked particularly well:

1) The grid
2) Assigning reputations to other player (way cool)
3) The Situation Table is simply brilliant. I loved that part.
4) Modifiers for age worked
5) The setting itself was very compelling

There were some possible problems I didn't see in the playtest but got from my reading of the rules.

The death mechanic seems a bit clumsy to me. The problem is that you don't know whether you die until the mission is already over. That makes narrating death hard to do. Maybe if you pushed the final mission narration until *after* grid positions are adjusted, it would be easier to narrate interesting death scenes for a character.

Also, the fact that you can move backwards in your reputations bothers me. To my mind, the reputations define each character's personal story arc, and having them moving backwards feels wrong to me. It might be better if failing a personal scene only means you fail to advance rather than going backwards. Or you only go backwards if you roll under half the mission number.

In terms of play, the game worked best when we were all brainstorming idea for cool things to add to a scene and adding twists and turns to each other's story. There were a lot of great bits that came out of that. All of that came from the strength of the setting and the power of things like the Situation Table and Reputations. As Michael said, I think the game might work well with even less of a die mechanic than it has now.

I apologize for all the specific suggestions on how to change the rules. I am a tinkerer at heart, I learn RPG rules be twiddling with them. Please take all my suggestions with a Gdansk-sized grain of salt. If you don't like them, no worries; just take them an expression of how I felt about the game and where I think it needs to be strengthened."

[Jason Morningstar]

More, this from Mike Montesa:

"One problem people were having was what to do with a mission when you
already know how it was going to play out. So like it you have a d4
and a d8 and you're going to play the d4 for the mission, you know
things are going to go right for everyone.

I didn't have much of a problem with that but another sticking point
was if you do have 2 dice available (not having played either yet),
when do you determine, and announce, which die you're playing, thus
setting the direction for the scene to go. Sometimes we were narrating
along without having played down a die yet, sometimes the die was set
out at the beginning, sometimes we wanted to roll that die (even
theough we weren't supposed to) to see whether the scene went good or
bad. When do you set out your Mission die for the scene and announce
what your intentions are with it? It gets actually rolled later, but
when is it first played out when a player takes his Mission scene.

Now, again, the foreknowledge didn't bother me, but I think Mike and
Chris were having a lot of difficulty with this as they said (and they
have a point) there was no tension. We got to the point where we were
supposed to roll as required by the rules and everyone was like, "Why
bother?" I think in the beginning anyway, this non-influence of the
dice is something that seriously needs to be addressed or it's going
to put a lot of people off the game.

As for the difficulty ramping up, I like it but I agree that if you
can't fail at the beginning it does feel kind of useless to have the
dice in there. I can see however, how as the game progresses you leave
that behind and since we were only playing the beginning we didn't get
into that. More experience with the game is needed.

Also, I'm not quite sure I like the idea of framing another player's
Mission Scene - that really seemed to jam people up, and it did make
for a bit of confusion as to who had had what scenes when. Like
Personal scenes, I think it might be better for a player to frame
their own Mission scenes.

On this point as well, I think the scene framing mechanics blew up
when Michael tried to frame conflict into Paul's scene but Paul
sidestepped it. Paul's move was within the rules but Michael was
unhappy that this conflict was downplayed. Perhaps at that point
Michael had become frustrated (?) with the Mission scene mechanics and
tried to insert some DitV style stakes setting, least that's how it
seemed to me.

Now, despite all this, I found the Personal Scenes to be gold. That
the die directly affected the outcome of that scene was good - get to
conflict point, roll, resolve.

I like the grid and I think it works. If you look closely at the
situation elements tied to the various positions you can see how they
can set up things that match the characters state of mind. But that's
me. If this is not clear to everyone then I think this is something
that needs more consideration."

[Jason Morningstar]

One more, this one from Michael, with some more substantial criticism:

" Here are my first thoughts. I still have not read all of the rules so take that into account, but I wanted to give you my raw impressions, hope they help. We played scene 1 and 3.

Dislikes

1.    Dislike the same player narrating both their success and failure. I think this gives the player way too much influence over a scene.

2.    The dice don't seem to have any real effect in the game. The same player can tell how things happen no matter what is rolled, so some cause and effect is really missing, but I felt there is no real conflict resolution in the game, maybe because too much control for the player to talk his/her way out of a conflict negating the dice's effect.

3.    The gird was completely useless and more a chore than anything else. Specifically... my character gets two dice we put them into a pool and then they get reassigned. Don't like this mechanic, felt it just adds work to the game with no real purpose, and I feel that reassigning the dice negates the dice a character gets from the grid, therefore... grid = waste of time.

4.    Scene 1 seemed like an exercise in hand waving as the dice have no effect at all. Felt cheated by the game in scene one.

Likes

1. I did like when a player has two dice like a d4 and a d10... real choices to be made, but too often we had players with two dice of the same size... I think that works against building conflict. I would suggest the each player get a d6 and a d12 then you could have a decrease or increase of one dice size based on game play elements... like player age or whatnot. (note: a d12 would increase to a d10+d4 roll.) The small dice never being larger than a d6 and the larger never being smaller than a d8.

2. Situation Elements - I think these more than anything else really drove our session. I like them. Not fond of how they are selected as I saw no real correlation between where you are on the grid and the elements, but I may have missed it, but I do like them.

3. Radio Lightning - really helped set the mood.

4. Theme- Full marks. Love it.

Game play example:

Act 1 Scene 3

I set a scene where two characters need to do an all night stakeout of a section of town. Our mission was to help bring petrol from the outskirts of town to the home guard. We need to know the Germans movements to secure a safe route. One character had 'Thing you hold dear' as Family. In Act 1 Scene 1 that character had a personal scene with their Grandmother, an important person in this characters life. So I framed the stakeout scene thus... Two character taking turns to watch and sleep as needed, during the night another character shows up to drop of some food and water and tells the character that her grandmother is deathly ill and then gives the character her grandmother's rosary beads. CONFLICT... should she say and complete the mission or rush to her grandmother's bed side?

The player invoked their d12 for 'Thing you hold dear' and then rolled a 2... failed... but narrated that the character stayed on the stakeout but her grandmother survived the night. The failure was that a German tank broke down in the middle of the street making the delivery route unsafe.

This is a perfect example of how the dice had no real effect in the game. I didn't feel that the tank breaking down was a failure, the play group was split, but the player narrating the scene rightly so said... hey it's my scene... I get to descried it... again the goal of the scene was to stay and gather info or leave, but the player was crafty and avoided the conflict I had set-up, granny survived and info was obtained, I believe this is where because the same player got to narrated the outcome no matter the dice roll it negates the use of dice as we played it.

Truth be told I felt we could have played the same game, had just as much fun and would have ran much smoother if we would have dumped the grid and dice pool, had the situation elements printed on cards and we each drew a card to be used in each act and then just narrated a story... Much like 'Once upon a time...'

I'm hoping to play a few more times to see how I can better understand the rules and maybe see the full effect of the mechanics. I did have a good time playing and thanks for the chance to play your game and offer my comments."

[Jason Morningstar]

OK, the last guy weighs in:

"Likes:
- The setting. This is a gripping, compelling, well thought through  play environment. The gritty-ness is almost overbearing, and makes me  really want to develop a character worthy of living through it.
- I really enjoyed character gen. Having people hail from different  discricts, each with a disctinct flavor, gives you the opportunity to  shape the character much easier. I am a fan of character generation  through play, and this is an interesting take on it. I was happy to  see the characters were mainly left of to the players though improv,  rather than stats.
- I like the story hooks you can choose as part of your position on  the grid. I think that helps with missions.

Dislike:
- I still tend to struggle with the GM-less game. I think the tone of  the Roach made that less of a stuggle for me, but the bleakness of  this setting made it very hard to dive in without direction. We ended  up by coaching each other quite a bit. Maybe that would improve with  re-play, but in truth, I don't knwo that I would. I tend to be more  of a method role-player, and diving into a role such as the setting  dictates take a slight emotional toll. This is clearly very much my  own issue, but an issue none the less. By the end of the play test, I  was plum out of ideas, and relied on the group for assistance in  framing scenes. It would be interesting if there was some way to get  the grop moving faster and smoother...I just don't know what that  thing woudl be. Unless it were a coordinator/GM.
- The dice felt superfluous. While we only got through a couple  missions, we got through ones that were almost a gurenteed success. I  know that as the game progresses, it almost flip-flops...but then I  feel like I am on rails. I am weird like that in my role-play. If  there is no reason (IE, guaranteed success), I am more likely to dial  it in, and become rapidly disengaged.
- There was no tension, which was interesting considering the  setting. I am uncertain if this was a combination of the dice  mechanics and the way narrative is handled...but I never felt like we  we _needed_ to put ourselves in any danger. We could narrate  ourselves out of it. That also rapidly will cause me to disengage. "

[Mike Montesa]

As I mentioned, the Personal Scenes were great and I thought the use of the mechanics there worked well. The Mission mechanics were the problem area for us.

First, I think there needs to be guidance on the use of the Mission Die. Also, if the system is kept as is, some players (like Chris in our playtest) will find the lack of tension uninteresting and disengage, due to foreknowledge of success or failure.

Personally, I don't mind that but a lot of people might (will). At any rate, when it's someone's turn to frame up a mission, I feel there has to be a firm point at which the die is committed. Also, I think it might be easier to stick with players framing their own missions; the scene Michael framed up for Paul shows how one person's expectations may not be satisfied by the other's narration.

Mike: OK, my turn. I put in my d4 for the mission and I'm going to narrate a success for us all. Here we go...blah, blah, blah...

Hmm, I think I can see why Chris may have been tuning out.

One thing I noticed happening with mission scenes was people setting up places, people, and situations and bringing things to crisis points where you might call for initiative,a skill roll, or start a combat, something that requires a roll for success or failure.

But if one person sets up a scene like that with lots of triggers for someone else, but the mechanics of the game allow the other person to avoid all that with their narration, there's your diossonance. So I can understand our confusion here.

What I think is needed is to have die-rolls in Mission Scenes (with the Mission die) at conflict points (as in the Personal scenes) then tie the character's personal success or failure to the success or failure of the mission itself. This gives a more immediate effect and puts the tension right there in the scene. If this were the case, in the scene Michael set for Paul for example, Paul's character had failed the roll to stay at his post and ran home to Granny, okay, the mission is going to suffer for it.

In more trad RPGs I've run with military themes, that technique usually works for me - have the actions of the characters effect things on a larger scale; if they hold the line here, it give a plus to the overall effort their side is making in the battle. Paul suggested something similar in his feedback. This puts the tension back into the scene, which is something that may be needed at this point.

[Mike Montesa]

Just looked through one of the other GR threads - three scenes in 2.5 hours? We only got through two in 3.5 hours (granted we spent a lot of time arguing and confused over what to do).

[Jason Morningstar]

Hi Mike, welcome!

About an hour a scene is what I'd like.  I know my most recent playtest positively motored along, and I suspect my familiarity was a big part of that. 

About your playtest group - do you guys play together all the time?  What are your games of choice?  Was everyone jazzed to be trying an unknown game? 

[Mike Montesa]

This was the first time this particular crew had played together, although three of us had played together once before, and we all knew each other (from frequenting the LGS where we played). I'm the newcomer.

Everyone was pretty excited about the game and the playtest; it was only after we got into it did we start hitting speed bumps. I will confess to not knowing a great deal about everyone's preferred games and playstyles, but we all got along pretty well and I like the crew.

[Paul Strack]

About an hour a scene is what I'd like.  I know my most recent playtest positively motored along, and I suspect my familiarity was a big part of that. 

I think an hour per scene is realistic, once people understand the game. A big chunk of our time was spend trying to negotiate rules and story direction. Those times we managed to get "in the groove", things clicked along quickly.

About your playtest group - do you guys play together all the time?  What are your games of choice?  Was everyone jazzed to be trying an unknown game? 

I do think everyone was psyched to play, but none of us game together regularly. Mostly we meet at the FLGS and play there occasionally. I've only played with the other players once each (different games).

I agree with Mike that our prior experiences with indie games influenced our play style. As Mike pointed out, Michael seemed to be playing in a "DitV" style of aiming for fast and hard emotional confrontation. I, on the other hand, am a big fan of "With Great Power", and was generally setting up my scenes as if they were Enrichment Scenes in WGP, aiming to focus on more personal issues and building context for character growth.

I think some kind of level-setting before the beginning of the game in which the group talks about mood and expectations would help mitigate that to some degree. I would definitely do that if/when we play Gray Ranks again (and I would like to play again).

[Mychal]

sorry to chim in so late... I think our play group got along together fine, and we all had a good time playing the game. I'm up for another session. I agree with Paul in that we each seemed to come at the game from different directions, but not completely, and for a playtest group i think we really put the game thru it's paces. We did have alot of interaction by chiming in with each others framing of scenes and I think that added alot to our group, and the gameplay, but I do agree that a gm might be able to control the game flow much better than what we experienced.

As a FYI, I've only played DitV once and that was a demo at our LGS, and Cats once so this was only my 3 third indy rpg session, that said I really do like for character to have to make hard choices, we are after all playing a game of people in a very dire situation and that's one of the reasons I drove for that kind of tension. For me the setting called for it.

[Jason Morningstar]

One thing that frustrated me from your playtest report was the (valid) complaint about the lack of conflict and meaningful choices, which is entirely an artifact of the first act.  I need to look at this, but one of my goals is to sort of sucker punch players with the carefree joy of the pre-uprising scenes in which success is pretty much assured.  Once act two begins the tenor changes and it gets much, much harder to succeed at anything.  So you guys rocked out with the "carefree joy" part of the game!

I agree that games without a GM benefit from explicit pacing mechanisms.  I find that someone (usually the person most familiar with the game) tends to take on the additional, informal role of facilitator in many cases, helping to keep the game moving.  Personally I think this is fine, and isn't enough added responsibility to be defined as a separate role at the table.  Of course, when *no one* is familiar with the game, this can be problematic, as you discovered!

Thanks again for your feedback, I really appreciate it.  I believe Mike is putting together another session, so if you want to give it another try, let him know!

[Mike Montesa]

One thing that frustrated me from your playtest report was the (valid) complaint about the lack of conflict and meaningful choices, which is entirely an artifact of the first act.  I need to look at this, but one of my goals is to sort of sucker punch players with the carefree joy of the pre-uprising scenes in which success is pretty much assured.  Once act two begins the tenor changes and it gets much, much harder to succeed at anything.  So you guys rocked out with the "carefree joy" part of the game!

I hear you and I agree with your approach (easy to hard), but I think you're going to get a lot of that sort of thing (about the lack of tension in the early game). I don't find it much of a barrier myself because I'm looking forward to the later stages but, yeah, I think you are going to have to address that issue somehow because people are going to get squinty eyed about it. I do agree that when you're going to be automatically acing die-rolls, why bother picking 'em up?

I agree that games without a GM benefit from explicit pacing mechanisms.  I find that someone (usually the person most familiar with the game) tends to take on the additional, informal role of facilitator in many cases, helping to keep the game moving. Personally I think this is fine, and isn't enough added responsibility to be defined as a separate role at the table.  Of course, when *no one* is familiar with the game, this can be problematic, as you discovered!

Should this be explicitly stated then? I dunno, for gamers used to having a GM around I think people find it quite difficult to "break out" of that mode sometimes (I know I do/did). I think GM-less works for this game but everyone playing really needs to be thinking about what that means.

Thanks again for your feedback, I really appreciate it.  I believe Mike is putting together another session, so if you want to give it another try, let him know!

Yes, I am, Thursday after next if I can scrounge the players for it. Grey Ranks is a real diamond in the rough and I want to see it out there lookin' real good!

[Jason Morningstar]

Thanks Mike,

I'm definitely thinking about how to ensure those early conflicts are meaningful and challenging in their own way.  No conclusions yet, but there will be changes.  Although scene one teaches you how to handle the dice, the fact that the outcome is virtually pre-ordained in favor of success is a bit of a buzz kill.  Maybe the solution is to offer players the option of trading failure now for success later, specifically trading bad stuff in act one for good stuff in act three.  Then it becomes a meaningful choice, and honestly, a little sunshine in act three wouldn't be unwelcome. 

I'm looking forward to another report!