[Silence Keeps Me A Victim] First successful playtest, or I need math help.

[nitramwi]

First, some explanation of my thoughts.

First, I think success should be on a 5 or 6 on a D6.
Critical failures on a 1 in a dice pool with no success.
Only increase Grey by 1 on failure to roll success, by 2 on critical failures.

This would encourage people to use Masks early on, and build up Grey.
Make using or relying on Masks more painful as the game moves on; your character is trying to break from fantasy, after all!

Limit how many dice a player can use in a scene.  Like 1 from the adult section, 1 from the child section.
Encourage other players to stay and watch by giving them "BS" power over what another player uses.
Encourage "some" player interaction between characters in either the "real" world or "imaginary"; how is your job!

Overall, I was rather impressed!

[Anders Larsen]

I was thinking about the core concepts of your game, and, while I think they are really really cool, I think there are some problem of how you approach them from the mechanical side.

In the type of focused mechanic you are making for this game, it is usually best if the mechanic gives the players a choice of how to solve the problem in the game. But from what I can see the concept and the mechanic do not give any real choice. You can either regain your voice or you can not regain your voice - there is no question here in what direction you want to go.

What I am looking for, is there to be a choice for how you go about regaining your voice. For example there could be a choice between regaining your voice by solving your problem or regaining your voice by abusing other people. Of course the one solution will be morally good and the other morally bad - but there will be a choice the player have to make.

Of course, this may not be right for your game; you may not want the players to be able to make a morally bad choices. In this case I think you should take a somewhat different approach to the game. You should see the game more as a journey where there are no absolute winning or losing condition. Through this journey the character then have to face different obstacles that represent different aspect of the fear he want to overcome. But with this approach I think that the system have to be radically different.

I do not know how much sense this make, but I will be happy to elaborate on this if needed.

 - Anders

[Ben Lehman]

Argh!

I wrote a huge reply and it got trashed.  :-(

I'll try to reconstruct later today.  For right now, I really need to get a handle on Grey, because you're right, it needs a better way to go up.  What does grey mean in the metaphor?  Is it just the temptation to never speak up and stay silent forever?

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

Hi Anders,

I think players can use the game as a vehicle to tell a tragic story where they stay isolated and embrace their fantasy world instead. I'm not sure whether I want this or not, but as the game is now it is an option. I have no end game state for that option of playing for tragedy, which could be a problem. I do agree with you that right now the direction the game pushes the story is very narrowly focused. However I've played games with this narrow focus like Paul Czege's Acts of Evil, and I've had quite a bit of fun playtesting that game.

Hi Ben,

To be honest I haven't given the Grey a lot of conscious thought. The Grey was a way for me to tie the mechanics into the image of the children being drained of their vitality, since they are having their color drained by their masks, and they are in danger of fading away. I see the Grey as feeding off their creativity and trapping them in their dreary Adult life.

Is that a cogent enough reply, do you need more? I can turn it around in my head some more.

Hi Len,

I'm giving consideration to your idea, we may experiment with it this week end.

Hi Ralph,
*grins* It's true. Grammar is not my strong suit.

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

I was thinking about how the game is set up and what's bugging me tonight on my walk to the supermarket. The game as it is basically says "You're going to have a positive story." This takes away some of the power of the idea. I think the idea of the adult side and child side is solid, and the idea of setting two scenes is solid. Requiring that choosing the child's side for resolution is where the game starts to slip. The player should be able to seek healing, or fight against healing, so their stories aren't completely set. For my next playtest I'm going to start the child in a position of power in their fantasy world, and the adult in the position of weakness. If the player decides to try to heal, it would be like Jacob's ladder, burning away the cover so we can see the actual wounded child and heal them.

The way I see this working is not much different. We have the adult set a scene trying for a connection, etc. Then we set a scene where the child's position of power is somehow threatened. The player chooses the scene they want to try to succeed at, and automatically fails at the other scene. The rest is flitting in my head right now, but it's not verbal yet.

Am I making any sense?

[nitramwi]

Clyde, that makes a LOT of sense.  Now we need to have a scale, between adult / child, kind of like
oWoD Vampire:TM  Humanity scale.  Where it is at the start, and what happens if it reaches either end
of the scale, even what that means, is your little chore to come up with, LOL!  Will we play test again
soon?