[Six Bullets] Blood Shot Eyes - Conception playtest

[andrew_kenrick]

The Setup

On Saturday morning at Conception I managed to gather a group of enthusiastic players to playtest the latest rules for Six Bullets for Vengeance, my game about revenge. There were 7 of us, which, although technically the right number (1 hero + 6 villains), had the potential to be a bit too many. As it happened, it worked rather well, and I got a lot of invaluable feedback out of it. Only me and Nimrod had played the game before, so this really was a fresh set of eyes for the game.

We started up with blank paper for our character sheets, a large pad of flip-chart paper that I'd nicked from work for the revelation map and a big pool of d6s. I did worry that I was requiring too many dice, but at least they're the type people are likely to have around.

I explained the concept and we brainstormed ideas for the setting. We settled on a 1960s London gangster setting, akin to Get Carter et al, with a crime family like the Krays as the antagonists. We then came up with vague character concepts and names to fit:

• Nimrod Jones played Shotgun Steve, publican of the Shotgun pub and ringleader of the villains.
• Graham Walmsley played Sgt Bill Davis, a corrupt cop, days away from retirement.
• James played Freddie the Pervert, proprietor of an adult cinema, which it transpired during play we were all members of ("the Cinema Club").
• Peter played Michael Carter, a smartly dressed hitman.
• Scott Dorward played Eddie the Weasel, whose name said it all.
• I played Jimmy the Knees, a low-ranking hardman enforcer.
• And Rich Stokes played Martin, the protagonist. Someone (I think Graham) remarked that Martin was a very middleclass English name, which we all seized upon as an interesting twist.

We had a quick discussion about what order the antagonists were likely to be fought in, but decided later in the game that it would be good if the protagonist picked who he wanted to face next.

We then wrote "Martin" and "the Shotgun" onto the revelation map as jumping off points and started the game.

The playtest was rather indepth and a lot of issues arose from it, so I'll split the play report into 3 parts with a separate post of questions at the end.

[andrew_kenrick]

We began with the epilogue, the final scene of the game. Nimrod framed a scene of destruction in the blazing Shotgun, Shotgun Steve taking cover behind the bar, shouting obscenities at Martin whilst furiously reloading his gun. We then entered our first conflict as Steve leapt from the bar and tried to kill Martin, as this was the only scene of the game where the protagonist could die. Stakes were set and both Steve and Martin defined some attributes for their characters.

Martin won and Rich narrated a blowtorch flying over the bar, igniting spilt spirits and killing Steve. Rich closed with Martin walking over and lighting a cigarette on Steve's smouldering corpse. As he had won the conflict he got a reward (a bonus die to his pool or an attribute for him, his opponent or the scene) and got to add a revelation to the map.

I'm debating whether Nimrod, as the lead antagonist, should have set up the epilogue, or whether that task should have fallen to Rich, as protagonist. This would create something of a symmetry as the protagonist sets up the prologue too, but I suspect it's largely irrelevant.

[andrew_kenrick]

Nimrod then set the scene for the first chapter, which was focused on Martin's conflict with Shotgun Steve, which in turn would lead out into the epilogue we'd already narrated. Previously the first scene/epilogue was the sole scene with the lead villain in the spotlight, as I'd wanted to keep the opening scene and conflict short and bloody, but I think splitting them up like this worked nicely and gave Nimrod some time in the spotlight.

Nominal narrative control now falls to the antagonist whose scene it is, and it is their responsibility to set the scene and assign roles to all the other players so that everyone is involved and engaged. He does this with a pool of "scene dice" (we started with 10, but I'm not sure this was enough with 7 of us – I might make it 2 per player) to hand out to make NPCs, give the scene attributes and generally use as a pool of dice to hand out when cool things get done. Nimrod picked up the dice and passed 2 to each player, barking to them in his best cockney accent as he did so ("You, take this crowbar and whack him when he comes round the corner; you two, get that bloody guitar; and you, go darrn to the cellar and get 'you know what'"). Although I hadn't intended it to be done quite so definitively, it worked really well and Graham followed the same style when he set up the next chapter.

With the scene setup Rich narrated Martin coming into the cellar and whacking my mook as he came looking for 'you know what.' The conflicts kinda spilled out from there as Martin waded his way into the pub and through various mooks, played with enthusiasm and menace by the various players. Martin in turn battered my mook with a cricket bat, shot James' mook with his revolver whilst hitting Scott's in the face with his guitar, accidentally blowtorching Graham's mook, and then Steve shot Pete's mook in the groin for sleeping with his wife (which turned out to be important later, as we added it as a revelation). The key revelation that came out here, when the guitar broke, was that it had a packet addressed to Steve's wife in it

I hadn't intended conflicts to work as they did, intending them to represent the entirety of a fight, rather than a glorified combat round, but it worked well and the pace was good so we rolled with it.

At times we ended up with a 3 or 4 way conflict. Where we could we had each player take a side in a larger 2 way conflict, but there were times when everyone wanted something different. In these cases we daisy chained the sub-conflicts, with the outcome of one impacting on another which worked as a stop gap but wasn't necessarily elegant.

Vengeance dice have remained in to help the protagonist out against all the other antagonists, but instead of requiring a death to be narrated when rolled, required some sort of bloody injury or maiming to be included. For some reason this kept being blood trickling into the eyes or someone having their eyes poked out or slashed out or whatever, which is where the game got its name from. I'm toying with including this as a requirement in the game, having the players pick a violence motif that has to be included in the narration whenever a vengeance dice is rolled.

With all the conflicts flying about, we kept forgetting to pick conflict rewards or write new revelations, and we eventually decided that although conflict rewards were good and useful, being forced to add a revelation when you might not have one in mind didn't work so well. However some sort of mechanism to regulate this was needed.

The chapter ended with mooks dead or dying, Martin's eye poked out on a piece of splintered wood, the pub ablaze (after the blowtorch incident) and Steve cowering behind the bar, frantically reloading his shotgun. In a nice twist, as James's mook died, he stumbled back and sent the blowtorch flying through the air ... which was where the epilogue began.

[andrew_kenrick]

Rich decided he wanted Martin to go after Graham's corrupt cop next, so Graham framed a scene in a darkened alley where Martin was waiting for someone. Graham followed Nimrod's lead by ordering his two policemen to get him, handing out some dice to each of them as well assigning 2 to an attribute for the alleyway of "dark alley."

As this chapter began not all the players had roles to play, so James seized on the opportunity and grabbed some unused scene dice and decided to play Dave, who we had added to the revelation map earlier as Martin's friend. We revealed that he was actually one of Martin's bandmates, which tied in nicely to the growing significance of the guitar.

PC Sledge and PC Cutter were played by Nimrod and Scott and went for Martin, who lashed out with his cricket bat at them. Before he could shoot them, Graham narrated that the revolver Martin had used in the previous chapter has been his, and grabbed the dice from Rich's character sheet to use in the conflict against him. We discussed the fairness of this, as it pretty much meant that Rich would lose that attribute, but ultimately decided it was rather cool.

Sgt Davis shot at Martin, but hit something steel in the guitar case. PC Sledge and Cutter went down, but Dave died too as he tried to snitch on Martin. Blood in the eyes remained a theme throughout.

We finished up with Sgt Davis revealing that Martin had been betrayed by the one guy he trusted – Steve, their band manager. We decided as we didn't have time to play more than 2 chapters, to work out what had set Martin on this path of vengeance, and decided between us that the mics had been left on too long at the recording studio where his band practiced, and he'd ended up with an incriminating tape (which was in the steel case in the packet in the guitar, en route to Steve's wife, the police informer) which his bandmates had paid the price for.

As the revelations clicked into place we all got very excited, and it definitely helped having a visible map of them all laid out in front of us. The revelations are the core of the game and I've witnessed them working really well in all of the games I've ran, creating a great sense of satisfaction and enthusiasm as they are pieced together.

Working out how, when and if to regulate and control the flow of revelations is important. Forcing you to narrate a revelation after a conflict is sometimes intrusive, but conversely letting you add them in whenever you like is disruptive. I'm currently thinking about handing out revelation dice as rewards for conflicts, which could then be spent to add a revelation when required, so it regulates the revelations but doesn't restrict them.

[andrew_kenrick]

1. How many dice is too many? Is there such a thing as a game requiring too many dice?

2. Narration rights were fairly vague. The antagonist set the scene and assigned roles, but once the game got going people just stepped in and narrated as appropriate. Do you think this vagueness will be a problem?

3. Vengeance dice and violence motifs – should this be codified into the rules, or will it just happen anyway?

4. Conflicts – should they be more than "I stab him in the eye"? It seemed to work, at least from where I was sitting, to break the larger conflict into these various blow by blow conflicts, but does it have the potential to get clunky?

5. The revelation map worked well and provided a nice focus, but we also found ourselves adding other things to it like the odd note, or attributes created for a scene. Do you think this will prove too much of a distraction?

6. Originally revelations could only be added as a reward for winning a conflict, which sometimes proved frustrating when you didn't have one in mind, or if you thought of one later. Do you think the narration of a revelation needs to be regulated at all?

7. Reward dice/'fan mail' – currently all spare dice from the scene, as well as other dice discarded as the game went on go into the middle of the table where they can be handed out as rewards for cool things. At times we found there weren't enough in the middle and wondered about adding more. Should the amount of dice there be limited in any way?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Andrew!

Congratulations on the great playtest!

I make no claims to being the right guy or to having the right answers, but for what it's worth, here are my thoughts on your questions.

1. How many dice is too many? Is there such a thing as a game requiring too many dice?

I don't really know if there's an answer for that. Some people used to bring up to 20d6 apiece to our old Champions games. How many did you end up using for this particular session?

2. Narration rights were fairly vague. The antagonist set the scene and assigned roles, but once the game got going people just stepped in and narrated as appropriate. Do you think this vagueness will be a problem?

I think it's fine. Some games really need narration to be designated, and others have enough internal structure for the narration to be left ad lib. I think that you should say it's ad lib, though.

3. Vengeance dice and violence motifs – should this be codified into the rules, or will it just happen anyway?

I like the vengeance dice, but I think the lesson from this playtest is that the specific violence motif should be left undefined. Play itself will develop it from there; I can see that it might be great fun to construct a specific one through synergy and inspiration (as this group did), but also great fun to let ever-more diverse or contrasting descriptions proliferate too. Whatever that particular group ends up doing should be OK.

4. Conflicts – should they be more than "I stab him in the eye"? It seemed to work, at least from where I was sitting, to break the larger conflict into these various blow by blow conflicts, but does it have the potential to get clunky?

I thought your experience showed the opposite trend - the tendency for rolls to include more of a scene, not less. Did I misunderstand that?

Anyway, my thought is to emulate Nine World, which is much more loosey-goosey about it than many other current games, but without being free-form. Here's how it works - the basic conflict (I kill him, I escape, I do this thing which can't be undone, whatever it is) stands, and every time the mechanics are employed, someone gets to say whether the conflict is over or not. In the case of Nine Worlds, most conflicts get narrated by a couple of people based on the card outcomes, The last one gets to say, "OK, that's it for that conflict," or to decide whether it needs another "go."

When I read it for the first time, I thought it was terribly vague and that no one would know what to say, or if they did, that others would disagree. But in practice, it's rock solid.

If you go with the unstructured narration rights that I recommended above, then in order to make use of this technique, you'll have to have a designated Ender who says, "That's it for this conflict." I'm thinking at the moment that the person should either be the player of the current antagonist, or the hero, but I'm not sure which yet, and won't be until I try it out.

5. The revelation map worked well and provided a nice focus, but we also found ourselves adding other things to it like the odd note, or attributes created for a scene. Do you think this will prove too much of a distraction?

Hey, that sounds like a gift from the gods to me. Put it in as a rule! "Feel free to add the odd note or scene attributes right onto the map." Everybody wins.

6. Originally revelations could only be added as a reward for winning a conflict, which sometimes proved frustrating when you didn't have one in mind, or if you thought of one later. Do you think the narration of a revelation needs to be regulated at all?

H'm. Good question. Is it feasible to say that the winner of a conflict has judgment rights for a revelation to add? Meaning that anyone can suggest anything, but that person wields the gavel, so to speak. So that way, if you have a good idea for a revelation at some odd time during play, at least you know you can suggest it during the next opportunity to do so (i.e. when someone wins the conflict) and that it will be listened to.

7. Reward dice/'fan mail' – currently all spare dice from the scene, as well as other dice discarded as the game went on go into the middle of the table where they can be handed out as rewards for cool things. At times we found there weren't enough in the middle and wondered about adding more. Should the amount of dice there be limited in any way?

Isn't that a good thing, that resources for rewards sometimes run out? I mean, there's a reason that one component of the fanmail system in PTA is called the Budget, after all. I think this playtest shows that one must really pick and choose when you want to give out those rewards, which I think is a good thing. Based on your account, I think you hit a sweet spot such that sometimes the rewards are a bit scarcer than one might like, and my suggestion is not to mess with it.

As usual, all of the above is subject to any and all upheaval based on actual play.

Best, Ron

[Graham W]

Thanks Andrew, that was fun.

1. How many dice is too many? Is there such a thing as a game requiring too many dice?

My instinct is to say no. But we used loads, didn't we? Six per player plus about twelve for the protagonist plus about twenty that we put it because we kept replenishing the dice pool in the centre. Oh, plus some to associate with motifs like Dark Alley.

It's something to keep an eye on, although once the fan mail system gets sorted, the problem might go away.

2. Narration rights were fairly vague. The antagonist set the scene and assigned roles, but once the game got going people just stepped in and narrated as appropriate. Do you think this vagueness will be a problem?

That's funny. I don't remember it like that. I remember that the narration went broadly like this:

1. The Protagonist says what he's doing
2. One of the antagonist players (either a mook or the main villain for the scene) narrates a conflict at some point ("I swing the sledgehammer")
3. The conflict's resolved.
4. Whoever wins the conflict narrates how it ends.
5. Go back to step 1.

Now, within this, we kept making suggestions - "Oh! How about the object's a tape?" - and it was a bit more blurred when two mooks were attacking. But I thought it was fairly clear who was allowed to narrate.

3. Vengeance dice and violence motifs – should this be codified into the rules, or will it just happen anyway?

Vengeance dice in the sense of "If you use a vengeance die, there's going to be pain or blood" were good. They were very exciting, actually, especially when three dice were used and you knew someone was going to get badly, badly hurt. I don't think it'd be good to make it more specific than that.

4. Conflicts – should they be more than "I stab him in the eye"? It seemed to work, at least from where I was sitting, to break the larger conflict into these various blow by blow conflicts, but does it have the potential to get clunky?

Could you explain the problem with this? From my point of view, I thought conflicts flowed very naturally: someone attacks, there's a conflict.

5. The revelation map worked well and provided a nice focus, but we also found ourselves adding other things to it like the odd note, or attributes created for a scene. Do you think this will prove too much of a distraction?

I was a bit confused about the revelation map. I wasn't sure whether it was just for revelations ("Steve is going bankrupt!") or for things to clarify later ("There's a guitar and it's significant") or for general things (like the classical guitar soundtrack I added, which I'm not sure was a good idea). I think it's important it includes things to clarify later, but I'm not sure about notes.

6. Originally revelations could only be added as a reward for winning a conflict, which sometimes proved frustrating when you didn't have one in mind, or if you thought of one later. Do you think the narration of a revelation needs to be regulated at all?

I'm not sure it does. Often, we'd spontaneously decide things which seemed right ("The metal object's a tape!", "The revolver is mine!"), and it would be a shame to regulate that flow of ideas. And it worked the other way: sometimes you'd win a conflict but you couldn't think of an interesting revelation.

7. Reward dice/'fan mail' – currently all spare dice from the scene, as well as other dice discarded as the game went on go into the middle of the table where they can be handed out as rewards for cool things. At times we found there weren't enough in the middle and wondered about adding more. Should the amount of dice there be limited in any way?

I generally found the fan mail system difficult: rewarding narration with dice didn't feel natural, somehow; I had to remind myself I was meant to be doing this and make an effort to give dice. (This was the case in my playtest, too, which followed yours: in mine, the fanmail system was just abandoned).

So I'm not sure. I don't think the amount of dice should be limited, but there's something that needs looking at. I think it's worth considering not using fanmail (even if considering it leads to you concluding "No! You need fanmail to do [specific thing]").

Great game! Thanks.

Graham

[andrew_kenrick]

1. How many dice is too many? Is there such a thing as a game requiring too many dice?

I don't really know if there's an answer for that. Some people used to bring up to 20d6 apiece to our old Champions games. How many did you end up using for this particular session?

As Graham says, about 6 apiece for attributes etc (and the protag had 6 more for v-dice), then 15-20 in the middle of the table for using as fan mail and describing the scene. To be honest, it's not really an issue - you never roll more than 4 or 5 at a time so if dice were short you could cope. It's just I use the dice as physical tokens, actual dice representing actual attributes or whatever. There are no doubt other ways you could handle it, but I quite like big piles of dice!

3. Vengeance dice and violence motifs – should this be codified into the rules, or will it just happen anyway?

I like the vengeance dice, but I think the lesson from this playtest is that the specific violence motif should be left undefined. Play itself will develop it from there; I can see that it might be great fun to construct a specific one through synergy and inspiration (as this group did), but also great fun to let ever-more diverse or contrasting descriptions proliferate too. Whatever that particular group ends up doing should be OK.

Yeh, I think you're right. It was nice that we ended up with a motif, but I doubt it would have been as cool if we'd sat down and picked one up front. Vagueness works well here, at least to start with.

4. Conflicts – should they be more than "I stab him in the eye"? It seemed to work, at least from where I was sitting, to break the larger conflict into these various blow by blow conflicts, but does it have the potential to get clunky?

I thought your experience showed the opposite trend - the tendency for rolls to include more of a scene, not less. Did I misunderstand that?

Well, essentially a conflict would begin, typically involving "i kill the mook" and if the protagonist won then he'd narrate it, but of course if the antagonist won something gruesome would happen but he still wouldn't be dead, so there would be a follow on conflict of "i kill the mook again." Of course, these are really just sub-conflicts of the larger conflict, and I don't actually think it's a problem for them to exist as they do. I quite enjoyed it, after all.

5. The revelation map worked well and provided a nice focus, but we also found ourselves adding other things to it like the odd note, or attributes created for a scene. Do you think this will prove too much of a distraction?

Hey, that sounds like a gift from the gods to me. Put it in as a rule! "Feel free to add the odd note or scene attributes right onto the map." Everybody wins.

It seemed like the natural place to put them, so I think I will.

6. Originally revelations could only be added as a reward for winning a conflict, which sometimes proved frustrating when you didn't have one in mind, or if you thought of one later. Do you think the narration of a revelation needs to be regulated at all?

H'm. Good question. Is it feasible to say that the winner of a conflict has judgment rights for a revelation to add? Meaning that anyone can suggest anything, but that person wields the gavel, so to speak. So that way, if you have a good idea for a revelation at some odd time during play, at least you know you can suggest it during the next opportunity to do so (i.e. when someone wins the conflict) and that it will be listened to.

Possibly so, possibly so. So at the end of a conflict there's the opportunity for a revelation to be added, and it can be suggested by anyone but only chosen by the winner.

How about the idea for revelation tokens/dice that could be spent at another time, as the need arises? Too fiddly?

7. Reward dice/'fan mail' – currently all spare dice from the scene, as well as other dice discarded as the game went on go into the middle of the table where they can be handed out as rewards for cool things. At times we found there weren't enough in the middle and wondered about adding more. Should the amount of dice there be limited in any way?

Isn't that a good thing, that resources for rewards sometimes run out? I mean, there's a reason that one component of the fanmail system in PTA is called the Budget, after all. I think this playtest shows that one must really pick and choose when you want to give out those rewards, which I think is a good thing. Based on your account, I think you hit a sweet spot such that sometimes the rewards are a bit scarcer than one might like, and my suggestion is not to mess with it.

Yes, I think some sort of resource would be good, if only to stop people getting carried away. Equally I think the mechanic is quite useful as a means of replenishing players' dice pools.

Thanks Ron!

[andrew_kenrick]

Thanks Andrew, that was fun.

Thanks Graham - I was really nervous about running it and glad people had fun.

1. How many dice is too many? Is there such a thing as a game requiring too many dice?

My instinct is to say no. But we used loads, didn't we? Six per player plus about twelve for the protagonist plus about twenty that we put it because we kept replenishing the dice pool in the centre. Oh, plus some to associate with motifs like Dark Alley.

Yeh, we did use a fair few! I don't think it's really a problem, but worth considering. Should the dice used for setting the chapter out and the dice used for fan mail be one and the same?

2. Narration rights were fairly vague. The antagonist set the scene and assigned roles, but once the game got going people just stepped in and narrated as appropriate. Do you think this vagueness will be a problem?

That's funny. I don't remember it like that. I remember that the narration went broadly like this:

1. The Protagonist says what he's doing
2. One of the antagonist players (either a mook or the main villain for the scene) narrates a conflict at some point ("I swing the sledgehammer")
3. The conflict's resolved.
4. Whoever wins the conflict narrates how it ends.
5. Go back to step 1.

Now, within this, we kept making suggestions - "Oh! How about the object's a tape?" - and it was a bit more blurred when two mooks were attacking. But I thought it was fairly clear who was allowed to narrate.

Except the conflict wasn't always resolved by that point, especially if the antagonist won! I remember some of the hero vs mook fights went on for quite a few conflicts. But, at least in my opinion, this never seemed to be a problem.

3. Vengeance dice and violence motifs – should this be codified into the rules, or will it just happen anyway?

Vengeance dice in the sense of "If you use a vengeance die, there's going to be pain or blood" were good. They were very exciting, actually, especially when three dice were used and you knew someone was going to get badly, badly hurt. I don't think it'd be good to make it more specific than that.

Agreed. Making people decide too much upfront is a bad idea, imho.

4. Conflicts – should they be more than "I stab him in the eye"? It seemed to work, at least from where I was sitting, to break the larger conflict into these various blow by blow conflicts, but does it have the potential to get clunky?

Could you explain the problem with this? From my point of view, I thought conflicts flowed very naturally: someone attacks, there's a conflict.

I think I covered this above, but I'm not sure there was a problem. I think this is a case, as with your playtest, of the problem with a game going well! Maybe I'm trying to find problems where there aren't any.

I was a bit confused about the revelation map. I wasn't sure whether it was just for revelations ("Steve is going bankrupt!") or for things to clarify later ("There's a guitar and it's significant") or for general things (like the classical guitar soundtrack I added, which I'm not sure was a good idea). I think it's important it includes things to clarify later, but I'm not sure about notes.

I went into the game intending it to just be for revelations, but as the game went on it seemed natural to put other things on it. Did it become clearer as the game went on? Did you think it was a problem for the rev-map to have all these things on it? Does what a revelation is exactly need to be defined?

6. Originally revelations could only be added as a reward for winning a conflict, which sometimes proved frustrating when you didn't have one in mind, or if you thought of one later. Do you think the narration of a revelation needs to be regulated at all?

I'm not sure it does. Often, we'd spontaneously decide things which seemed right ("The metal object's a tape!", "The revolver is mine!"), and it would be a shame to regulate that flow of ideas. And it worked the other way: sometimes you'd win a conflict but you couldn't think of an interesting revelation.

I'm a little worried about just letting people narrate a revelation at any time, as then you have the question about who decides if it's valid or not? At least with a conflict, you can have that decision fall to the winner.

7. Reward dice/'fan mail' – currently all spare dice from the scene, as well as other dice discarded as the game went on go into the middle of the table where they can be handed out as rewards for cool things. At times we found there weren't enough in the middle and wondered about adding more. Should the amount of dice there be limited in any way?

I generally found the fan mail system difficult: rewarding narration with dice didn't feel natural, somehow; I had to remind myself I was meant to be doing this and make an effort to give dice. (This was the case in my playtest, too, which followed yours: in mine, the fanmail system was just abandoned).

Do you think it needed a reward system at all? This was the first time it's had one at all, and I thought it worked quite well, but was fairly ad hoc and haphazard. There was certainly confusion at times as to what to do with the dice that were thrown about.

[Geoff Hall]

Okay, seeing as you appear to be ignoring me on the CE forum I'll repost my responses here :p

1. How many dice is too many? Is there such a thing as a game requiring too many dice?

1. I don't think so; just look at the popularity of Exalted, a game that often requires individual characters to roll dice pools of 30+ d10's.

2. Narration rights were fairly vague. The antagonist set the scene and assigned roles, but once the game got going people just stepped in and narrated as appropriate. Do you think this vagueness will be a problem?

2. I think that it will depend on the group. You were blessed with a cool group of people for your playtest who have a good chunk of experience playing indie games and rolling with the whole player narration angle. Of course I would have to imagine that the same would be true for most people who would be likely to pick up Six Bullets in the first place so there's some mitigation right there. Still, it might be worth trying out a more structured format for determining narration rights in your next playtest, see how it flows. If it doesn't work you can always switch back to 'whoever seems best placed to narrate does so.'

3. Vengeance dice and violence motifs – should this be codified into the rules, or will it just happen anyway?

3. I think that it's cool and will help tie the scenes and overall theme of the game together so, yes, put a violence motif into the rules and have it required when spending vengence dice.  Note that the motif doesn't necessarily need to be defined immediately, maybe see what happens with the epilogue and take it from that?

4. Conflicts – should they be more than "I stab him in the eye"? It seemed to work, at least from where I was sitting, to break the larger conflict into these various blow by blow conflicts, but does it have the potential to get clunky?

4. Difficult to say from my perspective as I've not seen the game in action. Essentially Six Bullets boils down to the protagonist taking bloody vengence against the various antagonists, correct? As such it's, at heart, a series of cool, stylish, violent scenes resulting in the death of an antagonist, yes? In that case I don't think that it's inappropriate to have smaller, more detailed conflicts to graphically play out the blows of the fights. Of course it has the potential to get clunky, any system, even an almost purely narrativist one, that gets down to the individual combat actions rather than just rolling for the outcome of the combat as a whole does. That doesn't make it a bad thing. If it flows well and seems appropriate like that in playtestesting then stick with it.

5. The revelation map worked well and provided a nice focus, but we also found ourselves adding other things to it like the odd note, or attributes created for a scene. Do you think this will prove too much of a distraction?

5. It could although, having never seen it in action, I don't really feel qualified to comment! Still, using the map for things other than the revelations could certainly serve to dilute its presence and focus somewhat. Maybe require notes to be made in standard roleplaying format? I.e. on a bit of paper in front of the relevant player? Of course if groups want to use it to make notes and find it convenient they will and, again, that's not a bad thing.  I wouldn't put a rule about it myself, let groups do what they think works best for them.

6. Originally revelations could only be added as a reward for winning a conflict, which sometimes proved frustrating when you didn't have one in mind, or if you thought of one later. Do you think the narration of a revelation needs to be regulated at all?

6. Yes, from what you've said there should be some kind of trigger to generate revelations, otherwise the map will likely get bloated and confusing very quickly (that or end up bare, like the revelatory equivalent of a tumbleweed rolling past.) I personally thought that your suggestion of the relevant trigger letting a revelation die (or other counter, if it's not going to actually be rolled then there's no real reason that it has to be a die) be handed out to be cashed in whenever seems appropriate made perfect sense. Test it out, if it flies then go that way.

7. Reward dice/'fan mail' – currently all spare dice from the scene, as well as other dice discarded as the game went on go into the middle of the table where they can be handed out as rewards for cool things. At times we found there weren't enough in the middle and wondered about adding more. Should the amount of dice there be limited in any way?

7. I think that some kind of limit is necessary. For instance the power points in Mortal Coil was limited to (iirc) 2 per player/GM in a pot in the middle. Mostly they were handed out for exceptionally funny jokes or cool additions to scenes (it was late, we were drinking and tired, it all seemed to go well) but the number worked out about right. I think there was 1 left in the pot come the end of the session. What you need to do is find the right balance between limiting it so that bonus dice aren't handed out all of the time (it will dilute the 'that was so awesome' factor of giving them out) and not having enough to cover the awesome that the players are generating. That's a matter of testing more than anything and a realisation that there will never be a perfect balance that works for every group. Some groups just fire off wicked cool shit almost constantly and others far less so. Having played Mortal Coil with a good chunk of your Six Bullets playtesters I can confidently say that your playtest group was the former, which may have been why it seemed a potential problem!

[Graham W]

Yeh, we did use a fair few! I don't think it's really a problem, but worth considering. Should the dice used for setting the chapter out and the dice used for fan mail be one and the same?

So, if I'm setting out a scene, I dole out some of the fan mail dice? That's not bad. Sure.

Except the conflict wasn't always resolved by that point, especially if the antagonist won! I remember some of the hero vs mook fights went on for quite a few conflicts.

Oh, I see: the immediate conflict was resolved ("Does the crowbar hit his kneecaps?"), but the wider conflict ("Does the mook get taken down?") could sometimes be left open. That's true. I thought that worked well and I'm rather glad we didn't go into stake-setting: "My goal is break your kneecaps!". The Vengeance dice gave a nice intuitive guide as to how serious the results were for the loser.

I went into the game intending it to just be for revelations, but as the game went on it seemed natural to put other things on it. Did it become clearer as the game went on? Did you think it was a problem for the rev-map to have all these things on it? Does what a revelation is exactly need to be defined?

I'd prefer it clarified one way or the other: either a focussed Revelation Map, where we write plot facts we've established; or a more general Map, where we can write anything that we think helps (e.g. the soundtrack thing). I quite like that it should be focussed, actually, but I haven't thought it through in detail.

I'm a little worried about just letting people narrate a revelation at any time, as then you have the question about who decides if it's valid or not? At least with a conflict, you can have that decision fall to the winner.

Yes, I can see that. I guess I was imagining that there'd always have to be group consensus to add something: I ask "How about there was a packet in the guitar" and everyone goes "Sure".

Do you think it needed a reward system at all? This was the first time it's had one at all, and I thought it worked quite well, but was fairly ad hoc and haphazard.

You know, I'm not sure it does. But if you like it, of course, then stick with it. But it's something to keep an eye on.

Graham

[Rich Stokes]

Andrew,

The first thing I have to say is that I really, really enjoyed that playtest.  I'd deliberately avoided learning too much about the game and it's system before coming down to conception to make the playtest more interesting.

Before I look at your questions too deeply, I'll list some thoughts about the game:

The system seemed to work, but I couldn't help feeling that things were a bit "wooly" here and there.  For example, everyone got an extra d6 every time I won a conflict.  These dice were be kept in a pool along with the 6 I started with and could either be spent 1:1 on any roll or used to add traits to my character.  Dice "used" just to add to a roll are lost, but dice converted into traits stick around while that trait sticks around.  I started off by creating the trait "Revolver" for 2 dice for example.  The problem is that I can't see why I would want to just spend dice and lose them.  Why not just create a new trait with them?  Either way I lose the die from my pool, but by creating a new trait I might get to use that die again later.

I think the whole "adding a revelation to the map" thing works superbly, but with the caveat that there was this big pause whenever it came up.  What happened was there was this really intense, bloody violence with a wicked-cool fast paced narrative.  Then dice are rolled, which takes next to no time and the outcome is also narrated as really fast paced.  Then there was this choice: Take an extra die or add an extra attribute to yourself or someone else, then add something to the revelation map.  So often during the playtest, there was this pause in the narrative where people thought about what to add to the revelation map if they didn't have anything in mind.

I was thinking about how to overcome this and still remain pretty flexible.  The best solution I could come up with looked something like:

The winner of the conflict gets an extra die from somewhere.
They can immediately spend it to either:

a) Create a new attribute for a character (their own or someone else's as long as that new attribute makes sense in context of the conflict and it's narrative)*.  When creating an attribute in this way, players can spend other dice from their pool as well.**

b) Add a revelation to the map or create an attribute on the map ***.

This way, I think there's a reasonable limit to the revelations (as in, you can only create one if you win a conflict) but nobody ever feels like they have to create something when they don't have any ideas to hand.

I think the "Blood in your eyes" motif came about pretty organically.  I'd hate to try and force that, but at the same time, I think that the idea of a motif worked very well.  I think that a mention of a motif is a good idea, but trying to force it is going to lead to a lot of pauses as people try to think of ways that work and after a while it'll get kinda tedious (I mean, how many times can someone get shot/stabbed in the eye before it becomes boring?)

Dishing out the dice at the start of the scene worked very well indeed, but there needs to be a bit more guidance for how many dice there are and how they get distributed.  Even if it's a case of "here are 2 dice per player, distribute them as you see fit, but make sure everyone gets at least 1".  Also, what exactly do these mooks get?  Do they just get 2 dice or whatever to use in all the conflicts they are involved in, (so one might look like "DI Cutter: 2d") or do they have specific traits? (DI Cutter: Police Brutality - 1d, Bolt Croppers - 1d)

So, I want to see:

1) A good reason to spend dice directly from my pool.  This might be as simple as saying you can only create attributes at certain points.

2) A more structured way of resolving the rewards for winning a conflict

3) Tightening up on the way the "extras" were created and worked

[Rich Stokes]

As for your specific questions:

1) There's no such thing as too many dice.  You're using d6s and only really expecting there to be about 15 per player abs max.  No problem.

2) The vague narration worked very well, but I have a feeling that you'll find it wasn't all that vague really.  I rather think that there were rules to what we were doing, I just don't really know what they were.  I think this is something that needs close attention in the next playtest.  There was the "Start with a conflict, winner narrates the outcome", but then who sets up the next conflict?  We started off by going around the table, but then it was just someone's idea and I think it went from there.  It certyainly felt a lot more structured to me.

3) I say let the violence motifs just crop up organically.

4) I think the bite sized conflicts worked rather well, but I can see the need for certain scenes not to just be "Kill the boss and his mooks as graphically as possible".  I had a great time with the 2 scenes we played, but I can see that getting boring if all the scenes followed the same format.  I don't think they would have, but there might need to be some guidance or mechanic for that.

5) Adding all kinds of funky stuff really worked for me.  I like that.

6) I suggested earlier that you can maybe spend dice when you come up with a revelation.

7) I didn't really dwell much on the reward mechanic.  I was busy killing people with massive vengeance!

[andrew_kenrick]

Ok, lots of things to reply to, so one at a time:

Geoff: yeh, I'm not sure dice is really a problem. As I said to Ron, I think any problems arise from me using them as counters and tokens, which can easily be rectified. Having said that, of all the die types, d6s are the least likely to be in short supply.

I agree with you about the short bloody vignettes and conflicts - yes, that is what the game is all about, although it's not all of what it's about. I definitely see the potential for more talky scenes, and although that never really came into this playtest, it has done in previous ones. Some games will end up very fast paced and bloody, others less so.

I think I'm leaning towards loose guidelines for narration and conflicts, with slightly firmer guidelines for revelations. And a limit for the reward dice sounds sensible too, ensuring that they are actually valuable.

Graham: I agree about setting stakes for the conflict. To be honest, it worked well from my pov, so I just need to find a way to channel that back into the game! I think specifying fairly broad stakes ("I shoot the mook" "I hit him with the crowbar") works well, but stating that there is the possibility that the outcome of this conflict will not be final, that it can and should be taken further.

Yes, I agree that the rev-map needs tightening up as to what it is used for exactly. Whilst I don't want it to turn into a general space for notes, and want it to remain focused on the revelations, I think using it for notes and attributes is handy, so I'm in two minds.

As for narrating a revelation, I think we got lucky about narrating them - they always fitted the plot nicely. I've certainly encountered some problems with previous playtests where the players disagreed, and we ended up dicing off for it, which didn't really satisfy anyone. I like to think that the new rules avoid that situation, but I'll keep an eye on it. For now I'd like a mechanic to stay.

The reward system is one of the newest additions, so it's definitely on probation until it proves itself!

[andrew_kenrick]

The system seemed to work, but I couldn't help feeling that things were a bit "wooly" here and there.  For example, everyone got an extra d6 every time I won a conflict.  These dice were be kept in a pool along with the 6 I started with and could either be spent 1:1 on any roll or used to add traits to my character.  Dice "used" just to add to a roll are lost, but dice converted into traits stick around while that trait sticks around.  I started off by creating the trait "Revolver" for 2 dice for example.  The problem is that I can't see why I would want to just spend dice and lose them.  Why not just create a new trait with them?  Either way I lose the die from my pool, but by creating a new trait I might get to use that die again later.

Yes, things were a little wooly in places! Much of the game was written down, but things like vengeance dice got thrown in as we started the game - I had taken them out of the current rules, but had a change of heart at the last minute. I'm glad I threw them back in!

I added the "spare dice" that could be thrown in and discarded because in previous playtests most players ended up with 2 or 3 dice worth of traits and the rest never got used, so it's a way to make them all useful! I thought it might help swing things in favour of a player who really wanted to win a conflict too, without resorting to throwing every trait they had into a conflict. It's a valid question though, and not one I really have an answer too. What do you think?

I think the whole "adding a revelation to the map" thing works superbly, but with the caveat that there was this big pause whenever it came up.  What happened was there was this really intense, bloody violence with a wicked-cool fast paced narrative.  Then dice are rolled, which takes next to no time and the outcome is also narrated as really fast paced.  Then there was this choice: Take an extra die or add an extra attribute to yourself or someone else, then add something to the revelation map.  So often during the playtest, there was this pause in the narrative where people thought about what to add to the revelation map if they didn't have anything in mind.

Actually I think more often than a pause, we just found ourselves skipping over it to keep up with the pace. And if we're regularly skipping a step of the mechanics then I think there's something "up" with those mechanics.

I was thinking about how to overcome this and still remain pretty flexible.  The best solution I could come up with looked something like:

The winner of the conflict gets an extra die from somewhere.
They can immediately spend it to either:

a) Create a new attribute for a character (their own or someone else's as long as that new attribute makes sense in context of the conflict and it's narrative)*.  When creating an attribute in this way, players can spend other dice from their pool as well.**

b) Add a revelation to the map or create an attribute on the map ***.

This way, I think there's a reasonable limit to the revelations (as in, you can only create one if you win a conflict) but nobody ever feels like they have to create something when they don't have any ideas to hand.

Did you mean to refer to something with the asterisks? I think this idea has potential. Perhaps you could just grab a different colour die whenever you win a conflict, and at a suitable point or pause in the narration you can spend them to make an attribute or narrate a narration? Perhaps this could be how reward dice get used?

I think the "Blood in your eyes" motif came about pretty organically.  I'd hate to try and force that, but at the same time, I think that the idea of a motif worked very well.  I think that a mention of a motif is a good idea, but trying to force it is going to lead to a lot of pauses as people try to think of ways that work and after a while it'll get kinda tedious (I mean, how many times can someone get shot/stabbed in the eye before it becomes boring?)

Yeh, I think I'm decided on this one - connect vdice to motifs explicitly when talking about vdice, but don't force them or define them upfront. Have them emerge organically as and when appropriate.

Dishing out the dice at the start of the scene worked very well indeed, but there needs to be a bit more guidance for how many dice there are and how they get distributed.  Even if it's a case of "here are 2 dice per player, distribute them as you see fit, but make sure everyone gets at least 1".  Also, what exactly do these mooks get?  Do they just get 2 dice or whatever to use in all the conflicts they are involved in, (so one might look like "DI Cutter: 2d") or do they have specific traits? (DI Cutter: Police Brutality - 1d, Bolt Croppers - 1d)

Again, the idea transmuted in play. I think both are valid - both DI Cutter 2d or Police Brutality 2d work for me. What I had intended is for them to work like a player's regular dice, so that they'd have to spend them on making traits for the mook, but I think that's a little unnecessary considering how long a mook generally survives.

I also wondered whether these scene dice should just be added to a player's regular pool, and then he makes his mooks out of that, but I think that encourages people to just hoard dice for when it's their go.