[Robots & Rapiers Playtest] A Simple Letter

[Valamir]

The concept of Bonus/Difficulty seemed intuitive enough. I felt that it was more mechanically beneficial to assign Difficulty rather than a Bonus if more than one character was ganging up on the character assigned the Difficulty, since they could all then benefit.

Yes exactly, and the reverse if the character is outnumbered because with a bonus the robot can benefit against all opponents.  One on one it should be 6 of one half dozen the other.

As long as people are primarily describing their actions in terms of what seems coolest and then choosing bonus vs. difficulty based on what seems most appropriate to the description I don't think a little strategizing is a problem.  Only if people were passing up clearly appropriate decriptions in order to force one or the other purely for mechanical advantage would I be bothered.  If you had a fairly even distribution and didn't notice any gimmickry going on then it sounds good so far.

Oh, one other thing I should note. We had a great record of our conflicts (program, specialty, hardware, intent/special effect, etc.) because Alexander unwittingly volunteered to record that stuff for us.

While we did it for the sake of giving you data from the playtest, I think recording that information is a useful habit to encourage in players of this game. Because of the way Action Rolls, Opposition Rolls and Augmentation Rolls work, if often takes a bit of time between the declaration of an action and the time when the dice actually hit the table -- especially if more than three characters are involved in a particular contest. Keeping notes helps everyone remember what they had declared and what they were rolling.

You might consider some sort of sheet to aid the process, like a scripting sheet or the Synopsis Sheet in With Great Power.

That's an idea I hadn't considered...the wheels are turning now...some recent play of the new Marvel Heroes boardgame has some potential there.  In the boardgame you have figures which move around a map of Manhattan, but the map isn't really a map...its really just a way of tracking character status with a colorful background that's nicer than a spreadsheet.

I wonder if a conflict "map" couldn't be developed where figures are moved around indicating who is acting, who is interrupting, who is augmenting who is opposing...that could be interesting. 

But the others agreed to take a section each and really learn it, so Alexander should guide us through Favor, John should guide us through Wealth, and Dro will know everything there is to know about Interludes.

That's a great idea.  Alexander mentioned a "what you need to know to play" section.  I'm thinking a section covering the conceptual basics with page references combined with advice for a play group to split up sections of the more "advanced" rules like this seems like a fantastic "how to get started" strategy to put right in the book.

Feel free to IM or email me as you review your sections with any questions or comments prior to your game Thursday.

I'll look forward to your present Dro.

[drozdal]

I'll look forward to your present Dro.

I think this might make you smile (at least once). It was done for my blogpost over at the polter.pl one of the biggest rpg sites in Poland.

Enjoy.

[GreatWolf]

That's awesome, Drozdal!

[Valamir]

Very cool, Dro.

You'll have to translate your post for me.  The online translator didn't do a very good job.

[drozdal]

You'll have to translate your post for me. 

No way it's huge! That Post was just breakdown of the rules and a note on the setting plus some things that i've found cool and refreshing about the game.

The online translator didn't do a very good job.

Polish isn't called the secret language for nothing after all.

And one more thing - one person (after that blogpost) asked me about possibility of the playtest with his own gropup. What's your take on that? Too early?

[Valamir]

Heh, well I'm vaguely familiar with the rules already...but fell free to share the cool and refreshing parts.

As soon as I get this next revision finished incorporating all of the first round of feedback I've gotten, I'm going to throw it open to a broader audience, so have the guy get in touch with me here or by email and I'll hook him up.

Ralph

[drozdal]

Heh, well I'm vaguely familiar with the rules already...but fell free to share the cool and refreshing parts.

What i really liked:
- I really dug the whole "GM is making your character and assigning you the role" deal. I'm well aware of the possibility of player created robits, but looking at it from my perspective, I'd rather play a robot that i haven't made in the first place. This allowm me to think ahead and start figuring out the changes i want to make to the exisitng programs and robot itself while we play.
- Role Checks and the GM ability to mess with the players by using the rules! I love them!

That's about it, we really played for about two hours and haven't got the chance to experiece the full potential of the system yet. We'll see what happens this thursday.

[Thor Olavsrud]

Hey Ralph,

Near the top of page 119, in the Available Currency section, you say, "use the standard wrap-around rule." It's the first mention of such a rule in the text. What is it?

[Valamir]

Huh...I wonder if the Wealth rules are the last place in the text where that still happens...

Anyway the rule is/was that if you had a Target Number above 8 on your d10 you treated it as 8 and then wrapped around the excess back to 1, so that the wrapped around target numbers essentially counted as a double success.

For instance if your Target Number was a 10, without this rule every die would be a guarenteed success (10 or less on a d10).  With the rule 9s and 10s count as 0 success (i.e. failures) while 1s and 2s count as 2 Successes each. 

That way the expected number of successes is still 10 (2+2+1+1+1+1+1+ 1+ 0 + 0 = 10) but there's still some variance in the result possible.

[Thor Olavsrud]

Great. That rule would definitely give the players a chance when it comes to Role Tests (though they're out of luck with Self Awareness Tests until they can advance Self Awareness to 1).

It also makes the decision regarding 1s that much more difficult if the difficulty is 9 or 10.

I like it. We'll play with it tonight.

[Valamir]

Did Thursday's game happen?

[Thor Olavsrud]

Sure did. And a total 'duh' moment for me as I realized the wrap-around rule doesn't really work with Role tests and Self-Awareness tests, since you're only rolling 1 die and margin of success doesn't matter.

Anyway, we had a bit of a truncated session since John had to leave early. We took about an hour at the top to go through the Interlude mechanics and make all the GM rolls for the various factions. Then we had about 45 minutes left to pick up where we left off at Madam Beauvais' party and the race to the Kissing Bridge.

I'll come back and report in detail as soon as I have a few spare minutes. The rest of you should feel free to ask any questions that came up.

[Mayuran]

Hey Ralph-

The only comment I have (other than that we are having actual FUN with this playtest) is that Devon (my character for the playtest) doesn't have any specializations listed for his core programs and knowledge programs...

Also, more Frenchie sounding names would be awesome! You should name all the minor characters after New Wave film stars.

Now, as for the mechanics, we went through the whole Interlude bit - and I guess the challenge is figuring out how to color all the changes happening behind the scenes in play. Also, do we do this interlude stuff between sessions, after a session, or before? Thor figured that the GM should just make all the rolls between sessions (though the players don't get to see it, it was pretty boring to watch him roll for 20 minutes and have nothing to do).

However, I really love the interludes - especially being able to buy an adventure to deal with a crisis.

[Valamir]

Heh, if the playtest is actually fun to play, than that's a pretty good sign. 

I did just notice Devon's missing stats in my own play this weekend.  I'll get those added.  In the meantime, should be fairly easy to populate the core programs from the Role Table and the Knowledge Programs by choice from the table in the character creation section.

For the interludes, what I'm hoping the Struggle for the Tapestry will do is give the GM some grist to turn into "headlines" and "rumors" and such.  So when the King Result indicates action against the bandits and the King wins and the Bandits strength declines, the GM can come up with some tavern gossip like "Hey did you hear that the infamous highwayman Francois le Renard was captured last night?".  Or when the Spark Activity number creeps up very high then the GM should incorporate more obvious signs of people not acting the way they're supposed to into the background narrations of what's going on.  That sort of thing.

Good feedback on the rolls being boring.  I haven't decided whether those should be something the players should 1) witness, 2) participate in, 3) get a report on next session, 4) not be aware of at all save in how the GM narrates the outcomes into the in game story.

As you look at the interlude possibilities for the robots, keep an eye out for ways to better organize and convey the player's options, and choices that are superfluous and could be combined more simply with other choices.  Right now the list of Activities is pretty much in "kitchen sink" stage and will need some substantial textural improving before it goes final.

I've been working pretty hard on putting a new version of the text together incorporating some of the changes to the system I've been developing.  I'll try to get that to you in the next couple of days, although you'll surely want to finish up the current scenario using the rules you've been playing with.

[Thor Olavsrud]

Hi Ralph,

As I mentioned earlier in this thread, Drozdal, Alexander and John each agreed to study one of the sections (Interludes, Favors/Contacts, and Wealth, respectively) and come back to teach the rest of us. So we started the session with a quick discussion of how each system worked. We also decided to follow up by going through the Struggle for the Tapestry process in order to see how it worked.

We decided to use the Short Story Arc for the Starting Auvernais Scores, setting the Tapestry at 75 and the Crisis at 25. We also chose to use the Standard Starting Faction Strengths and Standard Starting Spark Scores.

First off, we found the "Check Faction Strength" phrase very confusing as we started with the mistaken impression that the die roll was somehow influenced by the Faction Strength score. It didn't take us too long to realize our mistake, but a little rewording could eliminate the confusion.

There was also some question as to whether Tapestry and Crisis had to sum to 100 (as Role and Self Awareness sum to 10). I was fairly sure that the answer was no and so we played it that way.

I was also confused by something in the Spark Scores entry on page 143. It says that Scores above 10 are possible and result in the excess being added to the d10 roll. That seems strange, as it would mean that a higher Spark Score makes it less likely that there is Spark Activity. Am I reading that wrong?

Here's a record of what we rolled. Note: The Struggle for the Tapestry Log is very useful for this, although I recommend having a spot somewhere on the sheet to record the Starting Tapestry Score and Starting Crisis Score.

1. I rolled a 1 for the King, giving us a Repair Tapestry Result. I was a little confused by the Effect entry. We weren't sure whether the result was based on what we rolled for checking the King's Faction Strength, or if we were supposed to roll again. We decided it was the former, and we read it to essentially mean that if you rolled a 1, you added 2 points to the Tapestry Score, and if you rolled a 2, you added 4 points to the Tapestry Score. Looking at it today, I'm wondering whether we made the right call. In any case, the Tapestry Score went from 75 to 77.

2. I rolled an 8 for the Cardinal, resulting in Oppose Faction. I rolled again, for a 3. The Cardinal was opposing the Bandits. We had the same confusion for the Effect for the Cardinal, but the way it read made us decide that in this case we did have to roll again, this time trying to roll under the Cardinal's Strength. The Cardinal succeeded, so the Bandit's score dropped from 5 to 4.

3. For the Bandits, I rolled an 8, followed by a 9 for the Support Revolution result. As you can guess, we had the same confusion as to the Effect, but went ahead and Increased Revolutionary Zeal by 1. A related question: The Cardinal succeeded in reducing the Bandit's score from 5 to 4 in step 2. I'm assuming that we played step 3 incorrectly and should have rolled 1d10 against the Bandit's Strength to determine whether they managed to increase Revolutionary Zeal. If that's true, should we have rolled against a Strength of 5 or a Strength of 4 here? In other words, did the Cardinal's result take effect immediately, or will it only take effect in the next Interlude? Revolutionary Zeal increased from 5 to 6.

4. I rolled a 1 for the Queen, which would normally result in Damage Tapestry. However, since her starting Strength is 3, we treated the result as Increase Power instead. The Queen's Strength increased from 3 to 4.

5. I rolled a 7 for La Roche, resulting in Increase Power. La Roche's Strength increased from 3 to 4.

6. The Gray Eminence has not been unleashed, so no roll for him yet.

7. I rolled a 2 on Spark Activity versus their Strength of 5. I thus subtracted 2 from the Tapestry (is that correct?), bringing the Tapestry Score back down to 75. I also added 1 to Spark Strength, giving them a new Score of 6.

8. I rolled a 5 for Revolutionary Zeal versus a Strength of 5. I thus subtracted 10 points from Tapestry (is that correct?), bringing the Tapestry Score to 65. The roll was odd, so I didn't reduce Spark Activity or increase Revolutionary Zeal.

9. I rolled a 2 for the Preservationists versus a Strength of 5. I thus added 2 to the Tapestry (is that correct?), bringing the Tapestry Score to 67. The number was even and successful, so I reduced Spark Activity by 1 to a total of 5, and increased Preservationists by 1 to a total of 6.

Final Tally:
King 9
Cardinal 8
Bandits 4
Queen 4
La Roche 4
Gray Eminence N/A
Sparks 5
Revolutionary Zeal 5
Preservationists 6

10. We did not meet the qualifications for Crisis Increase.

11. We did not meet the qualifications for a Coup Possibility.

12. We did not meet the qualifications for a Bandit Invasion.

13. We did not meet the qualifications for La Roche Invasion.

14. Checking for the Tapestry score. Do I use the original score or the revised score (i.e., 75 or 67)? I assumed it should be against 67. I rolled a 28 and so there was no effect.

15. I rolled a 4 for the Crisis Score check versus 25, indicating a Crisis. I then rolled a 6 on the Crisis Event Table, bringing on Chronic Shortages.

This was the first part of our session. We then proceeded to play out the race to the Kissing Bridge. But I'll stop here for now so we can go over this stuff. I'll probably get the rest of the session up tomorrow.