[Afraid] The Mistress of Erich Zann

[Jonathan Walton]

I ran Afraid Arkham-style for the SGBoston crew this week.

When I first read Afraid, the monster-creation guidelines reminded me of a number of Lovecraft stories, especially Pickman's Model and The Music of Erich Zann, where an artist pursues their craft with increasing fervor and madness until reality seems to fracture around them and they descend into the supernatural.  I wanted to run a game like that.

However, Pickman and Zann are pretty clearly victims in Lovecraft's stories, not monsters themselves.  So I decided I would use Erich Zann's true mistress as the monster, explaining why he was holing himself up in Paris and how he became mute.  I don't want to say more right now, because we're hoping going to play again soon, continuing the story, but I wanted to give Vincent a few insights into our play (a full Actual Play report may come later) and offer some thoughts and suggestions on the rules, at least as they are available to playtesters now.

First, let me talk about GM prep.

It took me upwards of 2 hours to prepare for the game.  That includes thinking of a monster concept, making the monster, making the initial victim and slave, and rolling up 3 other NPCs (not named and not with their dice distributed) so I'd wouldn't have to do that in the middle of play.

Making the monster was awesome fun.  I liked it best when the brainstorming that went along with monster creation actually turned into traits instead of just color and narrative background.  The levels of victimization worked well in this regard.  I really wish the "progression of evil" could be tied into trait/relationship creation, though.  Like:

-- What started the monster down this path?  Give her a trait in that.
-- The practice became baroque and ritualistic.  Another trait for that.
-- Caused human harm.  Give a relationship, either someone she harmed or someone who opposes her harm.
-- Etc.

Making important NPCs takes a long time in Afraid, because they are -- in many ways -- as complex as the PCs.  Actually, no, when play starts, Victims and Slaves are MORE complex than the PCs.  They have all these people who care about them.  They have levels of victimization.  They don't have traits that convey real information (and I think this is a problem, but I'll talk about that in a bit), but that have a bunch of relationships that may not even have dice assigned to them, due to the brainstorming process involved.  I definitely think I spent more time on the first Victim, Lukas Zann (Erich's brother), than the players did on their characters.

All in all, I think creation could be tighter and faster, like I described above.  When you think about background X, you should immediately be able to convert that into trait Y.  If the cool stuff isn't represented in traits, it doesn't have mechanical weight and is less likely to be important in play (or you might just forget about it).  That sucks.

A few questions about Monster/NPC creation:
-- Does the monster get the d4 supernatural bonus to its supernatural traits?  (I went with NO).
-- Should you bother giving NPCs dice in Research as a sphere? (I went with NO again).

While we're talking about NPCs, I REALLY REALLY dislike the new NPC trait rules.  Like, to the point that I'm not going to use them the next time I run the game.  First of all, I can't figure out how I'm supposed to assign them.  What does it mean that this NPC has "Serious -- Fighting 2d6"?  It doesn't mean anything to me.  I just assigned them randomly.  I also found applying traits in play to be really awkward as well.  Is this NPC serious?  Is someone they love involved?  Well, if it's the latter it's probably the former too, etc.  I MUCH MUCH prefer the original method of assigning traits just like PCs -- "Professor of Music 2d6" -- or keeping most of an NPC's dice reserved in a pool to be assigned during play.  Then I know what the traits mean and I know when to use them in play.  Also, when I use them, the players get to learn something about the NPC.  I say, "Okay, Lukas uses, 'Bull-headed 3d8'..." and that has narrative as well as mechanical significance.

So... I guess I'm open to hearing how you expected this to work.  Like, I don't see it right now and maybe if I did it might work better.  But it make me pretty uncomfortable in play and not just in a "it'll take me a while to get used to this" way.

The PCs for this game were terrific.  We had:
-- ex-templar monster hunter
-- socialite and venture capitalist
-- freelance spiritualist
-- devilish violinist in Lukas' band
-- film critic

What we didn't have, which I missed, is that meeting of minds that preceeds the beginning of play in Primetime Adventures.  When we started, it felt like we weren't all on quite the same page and we didn't have a consensus about the direction in which the story was going.  That led to a scattered start.

I felt like what Afraid really needs is a trailer.  Let me explain what I mean. When you watch the trailer for the upcoming horror movie Dead Silence (which looks like it uses Afraid's monster creation rules), you totally know the basic premise of the movie and can anticipate many of the types of things that will happen in the film.  Nowadays, very few people are going to go see a horror movie without seeing the trailer.  It sets the expectations.  And that's what we needed.  We needed me -- the GM -- to write a few paragraphs to read aloud, like:

Amidst a few gnarly trees, a sign reads: "Welcome to Arkham."  Off in the distance, a few lights show a city wracked by a midnight storm, waves crashing against its ancient harbor.  A young man, full of passion, steps onto the conductor's stand amidst an ornate 1920's movie theatre, saying: "Here, my boys, at the great Pandemonium, we will show films with such fiendish accompaniment that the Devil himself will stop by for an evening performance.  DEATH TO CANNED SOUND!"  Cheers go up from the small orchestra.  Then, lightning flashes.  You see the same young man, Lukas Zann, with his face smeared with blood and a wild, animal look in his eyes... etc.

So just something to set the tone of the game.  Whether this should be written and read before or after character creation, who knows.  Maybe it's something the GM could work on while the players are putting the finishing touches on their characters?  In any case, something like that would help dramatically, I think.

I have a lot more to say, but let me mention one more problem that plagued us during play.

The Conditions, as they exist right now and as they were applied in play, weren't fun.  Players definitely anticipated them and expected them to be fun, not necessarily in a way that would be pleasant for their character, but in a way that would be exciting to experience.  Like, someone would say, "Holy shit, in the next scene I'm going to be Lost, Unprepared, and In Trouble!  Awesome!"  And then the scene would come around and, actually, the Conditions weren't really exciting or fun, they just sucked.  They were burdens, but ones that kept the characters from doing stuff that was awesome, instead of ones that provided really interesting antagonism.  So players spent most of their time trying to get their characters out of Conditions, which is kind of a hopeless prospect.  Some of this was definitely me getting used to applying the Conditions in an exciting way, but I think some of it may be in the way the Conditions are explained or even the Conditions themselves.

For example, it seemed like everyone was always Lost.  Like, so many people were Lost that they started to get Lost together, just because there was so much Lost going around.  And Lost sucks for the GM because it throws scene-framing responsibilities completely back on the GM.  In fact, I kinda suspect some characters keep getting Lost because their players weren't sure what kind of scene they wanted next.  So that left me driving the game by myself, which was no fun for me and didn't lead to much player investment or interesting outcomes.

I'm very sympathetic to your scene framing goals, because I'm trying to do similar things in the Avatar game, my Exalted hack, The Good Ship Revenge (the emo pirates game), and other stuff.  But I don't think your Conditions are quite ready to go yet, at least as they are currently explained.  Honestly, I might experiment with a few tweaks to Conditions in our future sessions and let you know if I learn anything neat.

In any case, those are my initial reactions after our first session.  Once we play more, I'll have more comments.

[lumpley]

Totally ditch the NPC rules. They suck.

My current plan for the trailer - the initiation, in Dogs terms - is to have the group play the first victim as she's being victimized by the monster. I haven't worked out any actual procedures for this.

I want the conditions to work, I really badly do, but maybe they don't. Maybe there's a replacement for lost that'll work better. It seems likely to me that there need to be four of them, but who knows. Experiment away.

Thanks, Jonathan! I'm looking forward to hearing more.

[Valvorik]

Eeep, ditch the NPC rules in favour of....?

I haven't played yet but I like the conditions as long as the conflicts to change them aren't herculean.  The GM shouldn't be tapping into his floating dice for this sort of thing.

To conventional roleplayers they say, "your character starts the story in a bit of a hole to dig out of, particularly if you want to be able to function as 'band of brothers' cf classical roleplaying - perhaps not in synch with other characters yet, and the early parts of story include how you 'get into the same frame' ~ you want to be the band of brothers, you've got to work for it".  It's very "story/movie" like, and very apt for a horror game. 

I think the conditions are one of the most explicit "horror/mystery/ghost story" mechanics of the game and it would be a shame to see them go.

As a possible fallout, if players hate them they don't choose them but they're a neat alternative to have on the menu.

They add in "subtext" where all conflict is not "progress to goal" and thus another cycle into games to make them richer in the mix of scenes/stakes etc.

My only comment re Conditions in reading rules and collecting errata posted on boards etc. so far, the core mechanic of each condition needs to be more explicit.  The core mechanical aspect of Alone is you have no helping dice, no one on your side of your stakes, even on escalation the other characters cannot come in.  They could even be seeing you but they can't help you.  The core aspect of Lost is "you're not where you want to be" (I don't think it's "you don't know where you are" although it can be that too as framed).

Conditions should be used very broadly as long as the core mechanical aspect is satisfied.  What does player want to do?  Be at the ruin at the witching hour when something is supposed to happen?  They're "lost"?  "You're at a dinner party with family/friends (perhaps ones you have relationships with but not a victim and nobody 'in the know') that is expected to go until an hour past the witching hour".  This is lost because to get to where they want to be they have to a free-stake in this circumstance ("maintain minimum social relations") if they just stay there, leaving means they have to complicate it.  They will forfeit stakes of amity etc. with these people if they just walk out, these are friends but not allies they will start thinking about having you committed if you explain the witching hour issue etc.. (Think Buffyverse)   You have a conflict (likely social talk) to get out of this engagement politely and be able to be drawn into the action as you want.  Lose it and you're not, the circumstance doesn't change.  Sure in one sense you can say "my character just walks out" but you're roleplaying it and playing that your character really feels they can't just walk out, they have to get out in a socially plausible fashion. 

If they're not "Alone" too, another player (who is not Alone) can lend helping dice as their character arrives to help give an explanation as why you have to go, or makes a phone call to house etc.

On that point, I think that any player whose character joins a "Lost" character in a scene has to take on "Lost" for that scene (if the condition isn't changed, they don't gain it going forward, next time something comes up it's still Mr. Social Butterfly who's tied up in social engagements, not them).



I was thinking the GM and players thinking up different ways to frame scenes to meet the core point of conditions could be fun.

[Jonathan Walton]

Thanks for your thoughts, Vincent.

On the plus side, the rules for non-human NPCs kick ridiculous amounts of ass.  Love 'em.  In fact, I wanted to use them in conflicts with one-shot NPCs.  Like, we had a repo-man and a mob that would have worked better that way.  If an NPC is probably not going to be reoccuring, I think I'm going to reach for those rules.

Rob, I'm planning to use the original NPC rules in Dogs in the Vineyard.  I expect they'll work fine until Vincent decides what he wants to do for Afraid.

Hmm... I like the idea of playing out victimization, but I wonder how that's gonna work.  I mean, we know the victimization happens, so what would it mean for the players to win those conflicts?  That they preserve some fragment of the victim's humanity, for now?  That the victimization happens, but the victim gets more choice in determining how the process happens?  Also, the monster normally rolls a shitload of dice, so there would need to be some different guidelines if the players are going to have any chance of winning.

We did normal initiation scenes, actually.  Each player described a previous encounter with the supernatural and something they wanted to achieve.  These were:

-- Scene: reading a eldritch text; Goal: Deny the existence of the supernatural.
-- Scene: running a seance; Goal: Get paid.
-- Scene: fiddle contest with a demon; Goal: Win.
-- Scene: had too much absinthe; Goal: Deny the existence of the supernatural (it's just the drugs).
-- Scene: young protege tries to summon a demon; Goal: Teach him a lesson.

I actually think the ones that worked best were the scenes where the players were fighting to deny the supernatural existed and I was playing the supernatural trying to make itself known.  In fact, those worked so well that I think I'm going to make that the standard initiation scene format until we can come up with something better.

I'll let you know how our experimenting with Conditions goes.  I agree with Rob that maybe having clear mechanical guidelines for what they mean might help.  Like, if each player described a location (like a home set in PTA), being Lost could mean that your character is in another player's location.  That would tie everything together tighter.

[Valvorik]

For the specifics of core mechanics are:

Alone - no helping dice from characters, GM characters, NPC's as tools, no challenges by others on your side of stakes, no relationship dice to help you.  Alone really means "metaphorically, mentally, spiritually alone".

Lost - not where you want to be, and not somewhere useful.  Stakes cannot include anything concerning Victims or the Monster except getting to where you want to be).  Lost really means "out of the picture".

Unprepared (this has been discussed on boards as follows) - don't have access to belongings or somehow not performing well (sleepy, drunk, tired) - all traits and improvised items dice convert to d4's.

In Trouble - a bit tougher to figure out - it should be more than just "dropped into a conflict that has violent or murderous stakes", how about that (in a conflict with stakes that it really hurts to Give) + "whatever having gotten the drop on you, the DM gets to spend two dice out of his floating pool and replace them immediately, if GM's pool is empty the GM gets 1d6".  With a fuller poo, easily two free d10's for the GM, that he could respend right away.  Oh Crap indeed says Charlotte.

[Meej]

For example, it seemed like everyone was always Lost.  Like, so many people were Lost that they started to get Lost together, just because there was so much Lost going around.  And Lost sucks for the GM because it throws scene-framing responsibilities completely back on the GM.  In fact, I kinda suspect some characters keep getting Lost because their players weren't sure what kind of scene they wanted next.  So that left me driving the game by myself, which was no fun for me and didn't lead to much player investment or interesting outcomes.

That was a fair bit of post to skim in order to discern "plot stuff" that I'd rather let you reveal than spoiler myself on. :-)  It worked, though - I just skimmed to where you started talking about the play rather than the background setup.

Speaking only for myself... I started out Unprepared, but I picked up Lost and In Trouble as consequences in that big bar scene.  Partly that was my usual "I don't have a feel for these mechanics yet, so I'll push 'em to see how they work" stance, but the major reason was that I hadn't yet found a plot hook to be investigating, in character, so I figured being Lost, In Trouble, and Unprepared all at once was good grounds for you to be able to both drop some hooks at me, plus end up with the character having an agenda and a reason to go looking for something in future scenes.  Which I think worked - the cemetery bit was weird enough that he wanted out, it just took me a minute to sort out how to go about it.  And gave him reasons to say "OK, what was that?"

It wasn't that I wasn't sure what kind of scene I wanted next; it was that I didn't know where to frame it to let you turn some creepy loose on me.  Now, I figured that was likely to be getting turned about or jumped or something on the way home, but you came up with something that worked fairly well, too.

As far as my own thoughts on play go, I think things would've been smoother if the few of us that sort-of-knew the base Dogs system had gotten a chance to review the basic mechanics for how group conflict works, but that's less an issue of the system than it was of our partial memory of it.  Most of the other stuff was just folks needing to be a little clearer on stakes, and on the intended tone/point of the scene.  The two bar scenes were good, engaging scenes for folks to learn the mechanics, but they felt disconnected from the bigger story (and maybe they were, or maybe you'll find a way to tie them in).

Definitely a good start, though; I'm interested to keep going with it, though I'll miss next week.

- D.J.

[Jonathan Walton]

A few things just came up in a conversation with Eric.  Let me post part of it:

Eric: Additionally, though, the other conditions are problematic as initial conditions: Unprepared kinda sucks to start with, since you just spent, like, half an hour making up this stuff and now you won't get to use it. Alone seems problematic since we're supposed to be playing together - even if it really just means you can't get help, since Alone sure sounds like you're going to be playing alone.

me: sure. i can understand the conditions coming into play later in the game, like if you're lost amidst some catacombs or something, but they seem weird right at the start. like, maybe they should be imposed by the monster through conflicts, and not be the side effects of Fallout.

Eric: Yeah. Maybe... what if the game had set acts, like Mountain Witch, and, at the beginning of each act, you rolled for a new condition off the remaining ones? Being imposed by monsters also seems very genre-appropriate; I mean, one of the evil pit fiend's abilities really should be "you're not prepared for me when I attack." Thinking about horror movies, "catching people when they're alone" is pretty classic.

me: Yeah. I think the monster should be trying to impose conditions on characters. But starting out with them is weird, because you haven't fought the monster yet. And you shouldn't get them as fallout from non-monster conflict unless you really want to. Like saying, "Alright folks, let's split up."

Eric: Yeah, that seems reasonable. It could be as easy as: at the start of any scene with a monster, the GM rolls for a condition that applies to everyone in that scene. Maybe more powerful monsters - or the real monster, rather than a minion - get to impose more conditions. That could be the initial conflict... Maybe the first conflict in any real scene is a conflict between the players in that scene and the scene itself, the stakes being which conditions are imposed.

me: Yeah, the other thing I was just thinking about: all the conditions, imposed individually, imply that you're by yourself: Alone, clearly. In Trouble implies other people aren't. Lost implies other people aren't. Unprepared is the only one that seems to work in a group scene. Maybe In Trouble, if one character is getting picked off.

Eric: Good point, having everyone pick their own conditions willy-nilly does tend to isolate people.

So yeah, one thing about the Conditions that we might want to think about: do they really work in a group scene?  Can two characters be in the same scene and have one of them be Lost & Unprepared and the other one be In Trouble?  If one character is Lost and they're in a scene with characters who aren't Lost, do they stop being Lost automatically?

Also, if we're switching scenes because of escalation (something we often forgot to do in our initial game), what happens when you switch to a player that's also in that scene?  Do you continue the existing scene or start a new one?

[Jonathan Walton]

We ran a second session of Afraid this week and it went much, much better.  We still haven't settled on rules for the Conditions that we're 100% happy with, but we're getting closer.  We ended up making up concrete rules for each condition:

- Unprepared: Can't use possessions
- Alone: Can't use relationships, nobody can join conflicts
- Lost: At an unsettling location chosen from a brainstormed list (Graveyard, Ocean, Catacombs)
- In Trouble: When the scene begins, you are in a conflict that begins at Fighting

We're also weighing the idea that you can't get rid of Conditions easily, but perhaps you can change which ones you have and (more unsure about this) swap them between characters.  This makes the overall number of Conditions keep going up until characters die.  But Reflection fallout can remove Conditions, so saving victims or having PCs die relieves the downward spiral somewhat.  In any case, it's just a thought at this point.

If we go with this, we're thinking maybe only Long-Term Fallout can impose a Condition.  And maybe if you take Fallout in a Killing conflict, you automatically take a Condition.  But again, not sure on that.

The monster was much more proactive this time and play rocked.  Still, nobody's died yet, which is a little unexpected, but whatever.

People are really excited about the game, though, so most of it is definitely working.  One key that we found was setting really good stakes, especially ones that brought the characters closer to the Monster and her victims, like:

-- I want to know about the weird shit that's going down
-- I want to understand what's happening to the victim
-- The Monster wants you to come visit her, Alone

I'll post more thoughts in a bit, once I get to the weekend.

[Valvorik]

Sounds great, on the concrete rules for conditions/circumstances, and the hunch that GM needs to be proactive with Monster etc.

Unprepared - Another twist on "don't have belongings" is that "they're just not working for you" - you have them but they're screwing up on you and for this conflict they're all not better than d4 crappy improvised tools and like improvised tools only usable for intended purpose never incidentally.  I'm trying to think of "twists" as I think every condition should have a good variety of ways of popping up.  Lost and In Trouble do automatically.

I have been thinking that the "everything d4" version of unprepared is "too nasty", but how about a "all stats and traits drop 1 dice size, d4's stay d4's to reflect the "weak, drugged, drunk, ill" etc. variant.   Belongings and Relationships stay at the same strength.  The best hope you've got when you're drugged is your big shotgun or good friend...

Lost - that's better than my "not somewhere useful", I've realized all scenes should be/can be "potentially useful", I would add that it's a "new location" thus implicitly is not one the player was scripting themselves to be at.  Once you find yourselves at unexpectedly at the old abandoned cemetery, and win a stakes, thereafter you can script yourself there.  If you got away without winning, it would be a stake to find it again.

Changing circumstances - blends with something I've been thinking off, if you lose the conflict that had removing the circumstance as object, perhaps it does change - to keep things interesting (and build the tension that sooner or later "in trouble" is the next one)?

The idea of generating a list of locations also makes me think that just having cards with various locations on them could be cool, putting them up on a board, along with cards with names of known Victims, and blank ones for the unknown ~ the idea is a play aid that also mimics the "police room or investigative journalist's wall of bits of information on which they're trying to figure it all out  -- we know there are more victims out there dammit, if only we could put names to them, now we know they're all in their 20's...".  Could also facilitate a 'relationship map' style of approach.

[lumpley]

Cool, Jonathan. I'm especially glad that it was more fun this time.

Keep us posted, and I'll look forward to talking to you about it in person sometime soon.

-Vincent