[Silence Keeps Me A Victim] First Mechanics Playtest of Act One.

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

After the help I got in this thread, I got excited and kept my friend Tim up after Friday night gaming to run a quick playtest of Act One of, "Silence Keeps Me A Victim."  I'd like to stay true to form and link to previous threads to make it easier for me to find them, or for anyone encountering my game for the first time that's interested in looking backwards, before going on.

• What is possible to achieve with game design(Adult with some vulgarities)
• Narration limits and General Feedback
• How to properly use Metaphor

I made a crummy little character sheet. If you can't use open document format, I've got it in PDF also, but I don't know how to make openoffice embed fonts so the pdf looks even more crummy. The character sheets have the procedure down but I left off how the Abuser's dice work. The Abuser has the number of successes to use equal to the number of successes on the black dice rolled by all the players. The characters start with 5 Mask and 1 Shame. The Abuser also wins ties.

There was only Tim and myself. The game needs probrably three players in addition to the Abuser I think. No evidence, that's just my guess. So I decided to play the Abuser and a child, and Tim played a child.

It took me awhile to get across the mechanics to Tim. I need to work better on my explanation. What the purpose behind the black dice seemed to be the biggest hurdle.

The scene I set up is that we were hunting a large solitary animal for food, and what we could make of it's body parts. I arbitrarily designated these to be called Herrumeffs (Her-rum-pihs). Normally these animals wouldn't present a problem to us with our tactics of nets and spears, but it happened to be mating season when the Herrumeffs are social, and ornery. The Herrumeffs charged us as a herd, intending to run us down. This is where we roll dice.

Tim chose not to take any Black dice to add to his roll. For my child I chose to take four Black dice. We each rolled our 2 Red, 2 Blue, and 2 Yellow dice.  Here's how our "hands" looked:

----------------------------	-----------------------	-----------------------	-----------------------	-------------------------
Name of player	|  Red(Win)	|  Blue(Narrate)	|  Yellow(Declare)	|  Black (wild/abuser)
----------------------------	-----------------------	-----------------------	-----------------------	-------------------------
Clyde	2 successes	1 success	1 success	4 successes
Tim	0 successes	0 successes	1 success	0 successes
The Abuser	null	null	null	4 successes
----------------------------	-----------------------	-----------------------	-----------------------	-------------------------

So as you can see my child had Tim's child beat hands down. So the only thing my child had to worry about was the Abuser, as you can see from the table as long as I didn't make a mistake placing my Black successes, I could hold the Abuser to one title. (I could go one success over the Abuser on any title since we both had four to place.) I however had to go first. So it went like this. I placed one Black to Red. The Abuser put one Black to Yellow, stealing Tim's chance at victory. (Abuser wins ties) I then placed on Blue which yielded me both Blue and Red, because I could exceed the Abusers totals on Red or Blue by copying his next two moves so I stopped there.

So the aftermath was my child was the Winner, and the Narrator. The Abuser was the Declarer.

As the winner my child gained one Voice, and one Pride. He also lost one Mask.

Since my child won narration, I narrated that my child pointed in a direction with a hand signal that indicated Tim's child should run that way. While Tim's child ran away my child threw his spear at the Herrumeffs which caused them to pull up short long enough for him to lead them in a different direction and run up a tree, saving them both from the Herrumeffs.

As Narrator my child also had to assign exterior traits. I decided that Tim's child was fast, and my child was quick thinking.

The Abuser was the Declarer. Since I was also the Abuser that meant I had to declare. I declared that Tim's child had been afraid and my child had been frightened. Tim pointed out that those words were synonym's, and I had to hang my head at my lack of creativity. *grins* I kind of wanted to point at how the Abuser can screw you even if you are the Hero. We stopped there as Tim was tired but we ended up talking for another hour about the game and other stuff anyway.

Tim said he wasn't sure the system would work well, as he thought players would grab all the black dice they could which would lead to the Abuser having a ton of dice to use. I countered that he was right it basically sets up a prisoners dilemma where the only way to win was not to try to win. He countered that might cause people to just decide the game was no good and stop playing. I think that's a valid concern and if the system stays like it is I will need to make it clear that it's necessary to illustrate the basic dilemma of the system so it causes the tension I intend rather than frustration.

Tim also pointed out that if I made Mask and Voice opposites, and Pride and Shame opposites, I could make a grid like so:

Voice
+--------------------------	+
P	S
r	h
i	a
d	m
e	e
+--------------------------	+
Mask

He then went on to suggest I could have a board with round indents and different colored marbles to designate everyones space on the board. This just gave me an idea that might be cool by adding rules to marble placement that might effect what color someone might want to go for. For instance maybe you can't occupy the same space on the board as someone else. How's that for Gamey? I should have never looked at Inuma. It's giving me all kinds of ideas that might kill me to try and implement.

My mind is slowing down, so I need to finish and go to bed.

What I would like to get from this thread is:

• Analysis of the dice system
• General feedback
• Questions that point me to anything I did not explain well

[TJ]

Could you give us a brief overview of the Acts, with their purpose and scope?

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

Hi Tim,

I can tell you about Act One, but not so much about Act Two. It's not a secret or anything I just don't know what Act Two is going to be. So Act One has several purposes. It is basically a playable character creation. It is meant to be a bit deprotagonizing. The players have no control over scene framing, no control over what's a challenge, and they get mechanically weaker as they win. Furthermore the game makes it so that they can't define all the elements of their character which likely will violate the "my guy" nature of character creation. If they do define elements of their character they are then forced to define elements of other player's characters. They have no ability to call BS, and can only talk when narrating or declaring. My hope is this creates a lot of tension for the players.

Another part of Act One as you mentioned last night is it serves as an introduction into the fiction of the fairy tale like setting for those who are unfamiliar with the game, since the framing is more presentation than challenge since there may not necessarily be buy in on the players part for the challenge that is presented by the Abuser.

Act Two then will be about the characters being reborn as a protagonist, and struggling to take control of their world, after the absense of the abusive but also protective force of the Abuser. They will also need to come to terms with each other or get into a bunch of conflict with each other. I think Act Three will be about the final confrontation with the Abuser.

[Simon C]

Yay! I'm glad you've got to this stage! Good luck, and I'll post more substantively later.

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

Hi Simon,

Thanks for the support. I look forward to seeing what you have to say later.

Hi folks,

I ran another test last night with my friend Brett. It was a tradeoff. I helped him with the first playtest of his really cool german-ish type game of placing rhombi which has a matching component plus an area control component, and he playtested Act one with me. Anyway....

I again created the scene with the Herrumeffs (Her-rum-pihs), but I think their name actually morphed to Herrumphalumps (Her-rum-fa-lumps). I think I like that better as it sounds more Suess-ie. I think I will keep this opening scene consistent for a bit just to see what different people build with a set up I don't consider very strong. I again was dual purposing as child and the Abuser. I also need to make my self a chart to keep track of who rolls how much of what, and the results. I can see my memory is not going to be suffienct for maybe more than one pass. I took 3 Black dice and Brett took two.

I can't correctly recall the results of each step but it ended with Brett winning Narration and the abuser winning winning and declaration. So the children all gained one shame, because the Abuser won.

Brett narrated that the Herrumphalumps couldn't see very well and they get worked up in their mating season and that one of them latched itself to my childs leg and dry humped it as I ran around trying to get it off. I almost thought he wanted to go a little farther into darkness with that narration, and I need to remember to ask him if my sense was correct. If so I need to ask him what held him back.

I told Brett that I didn't like the way the single words worked for assigning traits, so he should use a sentence for the exterior traits. He then assigned me the trait, "Knows how to punch a Herrumphalump in the nose," and he narrated some more that I ran around until I punched the Herrumphalump in the nose, and that their noses are really sensitive. He had trouble assigning himself a trait because he hadn't narrated his child doing anything in the scene. I asked him what happened to his child and he decided that there was a bunch of poo from all the horny Herrumpalumps and that their poo was hard to remove. So he gave himself the trait I have a stink foot.

The Abuser won Declaration. I declared that my child was horrified by the Herrumphalumps attention. I don't think I declared anything about Brett's child's emotions. I then assigned my child the Interior trait, "Afraid of Herrumphalumps," and assigned Brett's child the trait of, "Obsessed with looking where he's walking."

For the second scene I set up that in the center of our village a child had been born. We saw the Abuser heading to the hut the child was in obviously to steal it's voice, and that our children felt we needed to stop it from happening.

We did another pass and again I don't remember the outcome. Brett asked me about why taking Black dice was in the open. I told him about wanting to create a dilemma about how many dice to take to create tension. As you don't have much chance to win anything without black dice, but the more you take the stronger the Abuser is. He suggested that taking 5 and secretly determining how many to roll would create more tension. He's right. He took 5 and I took 3 and when the dice hit the table I remember saying, "You took five!" I don't think we resolved this pass as we got into a discussion about how the system works, ideas for improvement, etc.

So I again encountered the difficulty of explaining the mechanics and perhaps have a better idea of part of the problem. Brett said the two difficulties he had was that the refering to one title as winning was confusing as winning is what you are trying to do with all the colors. The other is that I was explaining the colors and not tying them to how the system works. Two suggestions he had was to call the Red winning dice outcome dice, or resolution dice. Anyone have alternate ideas? He also suggested more clearly defining the procedure portion into stages, and suggested calling them;

• Set up - for the scene framing, and choosing of black dice.
• Outcome - For the portion of what I've been calling winning.
• Narration - For the narration portion.
• Declaration - For the Declaration portion.
• Closure - Is a term I'm adding for the portion where the winner can give voice to other children.

Random thoughts and things I learned:

• In the setting of the second scene I put motivation into the player characters. This is very similiar to declaration, and I need to consider carefully if this should be allowed as it lets me define elements of the characters.
• My memory is useless and I need to have a sheet to keep track of each pass.
• I've taken to calling each scene a "pass."
• I'm thinking instead of calling the Red winning dice... winning, or outcome, I should call them tone dice as they help set the tone for the scene.
• I need to examine exterior traits and interior traits more closely, and define how to create them a bit better.

[Simon C]

Wow! It seems like you've got a lot of information out of your playtests, which is really great.  I think it's cool that you've just run through a single scene each time, with the same setup.  It lets you really home in on what works and what doesn't. 

I think your description here demonstrated to me the power of the "declarer" in the game.  The Abuser in this role was able to turn a scene which could have been light comedy - the heruphalump humping the kid's leg - into something dark and disturbing.  Something innocent being turned broken and wrong - exactly what you're trying to achieve. 

You seem to be debating with yourself how the black dice are assigned - if they're chosen openly, or secretly.  If it helps, when I initially thought of the idea, the idea was that the Abuser would choose how many dice to give each player, and the players could choose to refuse a certain amount, based on their stats (Pride?).  So, the Abuser can play favorites, give dice to the child who is going to do the worst things, and so on.  I think this gives a stronger feeling of "taint" to the dice, that they're forced on you.  Also, having the option of refusing this tainted fruit, but choosing not to feels like a stronger thematic statement than deciding how many to take.  Of course, go with what works for you.

It seems like there's a lot of scope at the moment for the narrator to mitigate the victory of the "winner", almost to the extent that winning is a bit weak.  Consider the last scene.  If the children had won the "declarer" role, the scene could have playerd out like this: Abuser wins, child narrates: "The Herumphalump humps my leg a bit." The declarer says "ewww, gross! Your child thinks it's funny and gross, he's amused by it." While the children haven't "won" in the sense that they failed to catch any Herrumphalumps, they've not really lost anything either.  I guess the Abuser giving the children Shame reinforces that winning is important though.  This might be a strength of your game, actually... ...think about it going the other way:

The abuser wins narration and declaration, a child "wins".  It could go something like this: "The charging Herrumphalump doesn't see your spear, butted against the base of a tree.  It runs itself right up the shaft, impaling itself, tearing its belly open on the blade. The child is born down by the weight of the thing, and is buried in a steaming heap of blood, organs, and screaming, kicking herrumphalump.  Your child is horrified and traumatised, and is now sickened by blood." While technically a "win" for the child, it's a pretty horrific scene.

One thing that I'm concerned about is the declarer assigning traits at the end of a conflict.  What are the mechanical effects of these traits? It seems like there's potential for your character to get burdened down with a lot of "baggage", which might be pretty complicated.  It's going to be hard to make those traits relevant to the rest of the game, every time.  If a child gets assigned a trait, you want that trait to affect the game in a significant way, later in play.  With lots of different traits popping up, I can imagine it getting very hard to make that true, especially if you feel you've been saddled with an inappropriate or silly trait.  I imagine my motivation to include my "stink foot" in future scenes would be pretty low, especially if the tone of the game moved away from lighthearted fun to more somber themes.  So, how do these traits affect the game? For example, if my child has "horrified by blood", but later the declared says my child is "exultant" over the bloody death of an enemy, is this allowed? How does your game deal with this potential contradiction?

Another thing I'm curious about is the tone of play.  Your game is about some pretty serious issues.  Did this come through in the tone of play? I understand that this was just a quick playtest of the mechanics, but do you feel that the themes of your game affected the way people played? Did the mechanics reinforce this tone?

I think since stating reading the Forge, yours is the first game I've seen go from hazy "First Thoughts" into more solid playtesting.  It's kind of like watching a child grow up.  I really want to see this game succeed, and I'm immensely proud of any small influence I may have had over its eventual form.  Good luck, and I look forward to hearing more.

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

Hi Simon C,

I normally try to stay away from cutting up posts but you bring up several things I want to address, so here we go....

You seem to be debating with yourself how the black dice are assigned - if they're chosen openly, or secretly.  If it helps, when I initially thought of the idea, the idea was that the Abuser would choose how many dice to give each player, and the players could choose to refuse a certain amount, based on their stats (Pride?).  So, the Abuser can play favorites, give dice to the child who is going to do the worst things, and so on.  I think this gives a stronger feeling of "taint" to the dice, that they're forced on you.  Also, having the option of refusing this tainted fruit, but choosing not to feels like a stronger thematic statement than deciding how many to take.  Of course, go with what works for you.

This is probably bad communication on my part. I actually feel pretty good about the way it is now. I also feel pretty strongly that choosing secretly is the best way to go.  I think you're right that giving dice could create something where the Abuser can play favorites and such. I feel like right now I have so many things ratcheting down on the players I'm leary of adding more. I also like the idea that the Abuser is powered off the kids competition. I believe this way will also be faster. I'm wanting to get 5 to 7 scenes done in 45 minutes. This is a pretty brisk pace. So I think I lose some power by not spending time lording over the players with giving them dice, but I pick up on speed. This leaves two to three hours for the other parts of the game.

On the other hand, giving dice scales better. The tests went well so far because we only had two children. If both players take 5 black dice to add to their 6 dice this gives them 11 dice. This gives the Abuser 10 dice. The Players only would have 5 wild dice while all the abusers dice are wild. This means he has a hard time beating the children over all but a much easier chance to beat them in a single category. This is exactly how I want the game to work. On average I want the players to get two titles and the children one. Now if there are 5 children and each takes 5 dice, the players still only have 11 while the abuser has 25 which is a rout. So I have to figure out how to scale. I'm thinking right now that I will add to the children's free dice, but haven't had a chance to work through the repercussions of that choice.

I can't address the rest of your post at the moment. I'll finish up some time tomorrow. Thanks again for the feedback.

[Simon C]

I think the way you're doing the black dice makes a lot of sense, now that I think about it.  Getting the right balance is always going to be tricky, but my feeling is that if all the children choose five dice, this should be a very bad thing for them.  I think the perfect balance is one where if everyone takes five dice, it goes badly for the children, but they can get away with one or two taking the maximum.  This way, the secret choosing really gets teeth.  You want to take the dice, but if the other kid takes them as well, then you're both screwed.  It's a prisoner dillemma, which is a cool situation for creating difficult choices.

[Yakk]

I posted this in the wrong thread:

The Black dice are problematic.  For example, if nobody takes the Abuser dice, the Abuser doesn't get to do anything.

Some ideas:
1> The Abuser can give you up to the sum of your Shame and Pride in dice.  You can sacrafice up to your Mask in your own dice to refuse them.

So Alice the Abuser gives Bob 4 dice.  Bob has 2 Mask, so can burn two blue dice to refuse two of the Black dice.

Bob now rolls 2 Black, 2 Red and 2 Yellow dice.

Bob could have instead taken all 4 Black dice, and rolled 4 Black, 2 Blue, 2 Red and 2 Yellow dice.

Neat: This rolls the die count and refusal into your stats.  The Abuser's ability to give out dice grow as the players gain pride, and the player's ability to refuse dice collapses as they lose Mask.  I'm still somewhat worried that a group of people who always refuse Abuser dice may be too effective.

2> The Abuser bids a number of dice, and the Players roll as many black dice as they choose.

The Abuser gets 1 free success for every player who picks the number of dice the Abuser predicts.

Ie, Alice is the Abuser.  Alice says "I am betting they will take 0 dice".  Bob rolls 0 black dice, Charlie rolls 2 black dice, and Daisy rolls 4 black dice.

Alice gets 1 free success, because her bid of 0 matched Bob's black dice, plus as many successes as other people roll on black dice.

Neat: This prevents people from choosing "we all cooperate", because that just gives the Abuser free fuel.  Sadly, the players can just alternate between low black die amounts...

3> Same idea with the bid, but the Abuser gets 1 die for every die different than the number the Abuser bids, minus the player's Mask.

Alice, the Abuser, bids 5.  Bob(1 mask) chooses 3 Black dice, Charlie(3 mask) chooses 1 Black die, and Daisy(5 mask) chooses 0 Black dice.

Alice gets 1 Black die from both Bob and Charlie, but Daisy's mask means she get's none from Daisy.

Neat: as your mask wears away, the Abuser gets more and more dice from bidding correctly.

...

Basically, these change the pretty simple and stable prisoner's dilemma game into a tactical game between Abuser and Children.

#1 and #3 are interesting.  A mix might be fun: The abuser hands people dice.

4> The abuser gives each player up to their Pride in dice.  They can sacrafice up to their own Mask in dice to return dice to the Abuser.

The Abuser also bets "Keep" or "Return".  This bet is the same for every player.

If the Abuser bets the player will keep dice, every die kept gives the Abuser an extra black die to roll.
If the Abuser bets the player will return dice, every die returned gives the Abuser an extra black die to roll.

The Abuser's success pool is the sum of all black dice rolled, including dice kept by the players.

...

Concern: will the abuser come to dominate the endgame as player's pride and shame climbs?

Can the abuser prevent players from ever ending phase 1?

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

It seems like there's a lot of scope at the moment for the narrator to mitigate the victory of the "winner", almost to the extent that winning is a bit weak.  Consider the last scene.  If the children had won the "declarer" role, the scene could have playerd out like this: Abuser wins, child narrates: "The Herumphalump humps my leg a bit." The declarer says "ewww, gross! Your child thinks it's funny and gross, he's amused by it." While the children haven't "won" in the sense that they failed to catch any Herrumphalumps, they've not really lost anything either.  I guess the Abuser giving the children Shame reinforces that winning is important though.  This might be a strength of your game, actually... ...think about it going the other way:

The abuser wins narration and declaration, a child "wins".  It could go something like this: "The charging Herrumphalump doesn't see your spear, butted against the base of a tree.  It runs itself right up the shaft, impaling itself, tearing its belly open on the blade. The child is born down by the weight of the thing, and is buried in a steaming heap of blood, organs, and screaming, kicking herrumphalump.  Your child is horrified and traumatised, and is now sickened by blood." While technically a "win" for the child, it's a pretty horrific scene.

I agree that winning seems like it's not as desired right now. I want to have better testing data before trying to strengthen it. What I've seen so far is the player will try to make the best move and is not trying for a specific title. Maybe this will end up being boring, I'm not sure. One factor I don't think I've mentioned though is the Abuser is in control of credibility in Act One, so he can call BS on a narration or declaration. I'm not being strict with BS at this point as I want to see what people do with what's there, and how mechanics work, before trying to force my vision on to it.

One thing that I'm concerned about is the declarer assigning traits at the end of a conflict.  What are the mechanical effects of these traits? It seems like there's potential for your character to get burdened down with a lot of "baggage", which might be pretty complicated.  It's going to be hard to make those traits relevant to the rest of the game, every time.  If a child gets assigned a trait, you want that trait to affect the game in a significant way, later in play.  With lots of different traits popping up, I can imagine it getting very hard to make that true, especially if you feel you've been saddled with an inappropriate or silly trait.  I imagine my motivation to include my "stink foot" in future scenes would be pretty low, especially if the tone of the game moved away from lighthearted fun to more somber themes.  So, how do these traits affect the game? For example, if my child has "horrified by blood", but later the declared says my child is "exultant" over the bloody death of an enemy, is this allowed? How does your game deal with this potential contradiction?

That's a very good series of questions I hadn't really thought about. The way I've seen the traits working is like Dog's in the Vineyard. If you aren't familiar with the game it's worth checking out as it is an excellent game. The way it would work is the player would receive dice for working their traits into the fiction in Act Two and Act Three, this means they gain a mechanical advantage to working in their stink-foot or horrified by blood. I'm thinking I may introduce something that allows the player to "overcome" a trait they feel is a disadvantage and make a scene where they somehow change that trait to something positive, by confronting it somehow, and winning of course.

Another thing I'm curious about is the tone of play.  Your game is about some pretty serious issues.  Did this come through in the tone of play? I understand that this was just a quick playtest of the mechanics, but do you feel that the themes of your game affected the way people played? Did the mechanics reinforce this tone?

So the Tone as I see it is Dark and Hope. The game is dark but through challenging and dealing with that darkness the player moves from a victim, to a protagonist, to eventually challenging their tormentor, and if successful reforming themselves and their community. The mechanics do not back these tones at all at this point, and that's obviously a big problem. I have no ideas but I'm just glad to get the game to a point where I can start poking and prodding it.

I think since stating reading the Forge, yours is the first game I've seen go from hazy "First Thoughts" into more solid playtesting.  It's kind of like watching a child grow up.  I really want to see this game succeed, and I'm immensely proud of any small influence I may have had over its eventual form.  Good luck, and I look forward to hearing more.

Thanks. Having someone that's looking for holes and flaws, and throwing out ideas is very useful.

I think the way you're doing the black dice makes a lot of sense, now that I think about it.  Getting the right balance is always going to be tricky, but my feeling is that if all the children choose five dice, this should be a very bad thing for them.  I think the perfect balance is one where if everyone takes five dice, it goes badly for the children, but they can get away with one or two taking the maximum.  This way, the secret choosing really gets teeth.  You want to take the dice, but if the other kid takes them as well, then you're both screwed.  It's a prisoner dillemma, which is a cool situation for creating difficult choices.

I understand what you are saying here. My worry is that with everything else that's going on at some point people will move from, "We're putting up with all this to see how this weird game works," to "this sucks." I guess that's what playtesting is for so I'll consider leaving it this way before going forward.

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

Hi Yakk,

I'm pretty much committed to staying with the Prisoners Dilemma right now. I appreciate all the effort you made, and if I decide I need to move away from the Prisoners Dilemma I'll likely kick start my thinking with your post. I really like option number one. You make some other really good points that I want to address.

You're right in identifying two of the major problems in the procedure of each pass.  The Abuser has no dice if the children just decide to let everything be determined randomly, and the Abuser if given dice can keep act one going forever since by design he can pretty much choose a title. This is actually self correcting, not by design, but by accident. The children can deny the abuser dice, and thereby move to act two. So my choice is to either leave it as is, or to add something to the winning condition so the children get voice even when they lose, but then they have no reason to win, or change the dice mechanics. I'm not sure how to fix it at the moment, but I'm going to go forward with it some more.

[Simon C]

Actually I think that your game has a good structure with regards to moving from Act One to Act Two.  Sure, the players can never give the Abuser any Dice, and thus move pretty quickly through to the next Act.  That's good.  It's good to have the players control the pace of the story.  On the other hand, the players want to stick around in Act One to pick up the traits that they get from the "fallout" of a pass.  By being unable to talk to each other, they can't say "ok, lets go on to the next Act, no one take dice form now on." They have to trust each other to finish up grabbing traits when they're ready.  Also, by taking a few dice (but not too many) you get to decide what sort of traits get handed out, and who gets them.

Of course, the key to making  this work is to give traits clear mechanical benefits in Act Two, which you're not really up to yet.  At this stage though, you might want to give it at least a little thought.