[Chronicles of Babel] slaves in the hanging gardens

[Paul Czege]

Well, the Sunday before Easter our occasional Sunday group was between games, and so I seized the day and ran a playtest of Paul Elliott's Chronicles of Babel. As a designer I've been pretty solidly on the path of round-robin scenes since Nicotine Girls, and the games this group has played (Trollbabe, run by me, Primetime Adventures, run by Danielle, and a playtest of Kagematsu) have also all been on that same path, in execution if not textually. And so I've been keen on re-engaging with an old school dynamic where the expectation is that mostly player characters are in scenes together. Chronicles of Babel looked fun, mechanically unconventional, and also like an opportunity for the team dynamic. Paul wrote the game in 2002, I think.

My thoughts on reading the rules:

I love the wilder aspects of the setting, the manticores and scorpion-men, and particularly the gods walking among men and pursuing rivalries.

The idea that judges would all come from the same house offends my modern political sensibilites. (Not a problem so much as perhaps something to play up in the setting for a culture shock effect, if you're so inclined. If RPG settings aim for culture shock it's typically with brutality or fascism, and so we're pretty innoculated by now. Whereas the judges thing is surprisingly powerful.)

Social rank is mentioned in the "Allegiance to a House" section as if it's a mechanical stat, and nowhere else in the text.

Even after some consideration the conceptual distinction between Clay ("vitality") and Blood ("physical energy") is not as clear as it should be for the GM to make good decisions about which is needed for various task resolutions that come up in play.

Can players invent their own Specializations, or must they choose from the list? The text in the Specialisations paragraph says "choose," as if you're supposed to pick from a list, but the "common specialisations include" blurb makes it seem like the list that follows is just examples.

I love the "Toil" specialisation. I also loved that there was overlap between some of the items on the list, Toil and Strong Back, for instance. Collapse the character disempowering tyranny of the unambiguious skill list! (Ambiguity is a problem for the stats, but not for the skills, I think.)

Do you get an extra stone for a relevant specialty if you're drawing to fight your nature? (Actually, don't answer this one. You don't impair the game by not having a rule for this. And old school games always trusted groups to make these kinds of judgement calls. It's a part of the old school experience that I love. Regardless of the variety of mechanical circumstances you can imagine coming up during play, you only actually need a rule if the game is impaired by not having one.)

Despite the "Contested Tasks" rubric, there are actually no rules for resolving contested tasks. This is probably an omission that actually impairs the game.

There are rules for wounds, but no rules for healing.

Y'know, I think the rules for Auras are clever, and maybe they're true to the source mythology, but I expect they'll be tedious and boring in play. They effectively put the story on hold.

And then we got to work:

As I wrote above, I was interested in the game having an old school team dynamic. So we had a conversation about a character group concept. We settled on all the characters being slaves in the hanging garden. And we came up with a conflict of myth between the gods that could involve the slave characters. We invented a god named Ur-Crom (I think his name actually came from Empire of Satanis), and decided he was the architect of the hanging gardens. There was a drought or something, perhaps brought on by Marduk, who was jealous of the impressiveness of the hanging gardens and how they eclipsed the impressiveness of his city. Ur-Crom's house, the builders of the gardens, was discredited and bankrupted by the cost of many many sacrifices they made trying to resolve the drought. Some members of the house committed suicide. Some scattered or were enslaved. And Marduk assumed control of the gardens and brought them back to their glory.

But three generations later Ur-Crom has returned, re-incorporated by a burning desire to restore his house and re-take his gardens.

The characters:

Lyak is a pretty 16 year old girl slave who sits among the foliage of the gardens wearing a scintillating dress that makes the gardens look great. She's ornamentation. Her Human Nature is Vain. Her Specialisation is Keen Eye.

Amar is the cook. His Human Nature is Generous. His Specialisation is Head Cook.

Kiata is a little girl. She climbs among the foliage of the garden, collecting bugs for Supak the dyer. Her Human Nature is Reckless. Her Specialisation is an impossible intuitive awareness of the structure and layout of the hanging gardens.

Narmak-esh is the concierge of the gardens. He is a eunuch. He grew up in the kitchens with Amar. His Human Nature is Ambitious. His Specialisation is Memory.

And then I started framing scenes:

The first scene was Supak doing henna on a nude Lyak to get her ready for a celebration of Marduk in the gardens. An NPC named Oly, a young, male, messenger slave who speaks many languages was there, as was Kiata. I was thinking that Fighting One's Nature was my best tool for getting things moving. So I aimed at Lyak's Vain nature. I played Oly in a brash mood and had him ask Lyak when she was going to marry him. Lyak's player didn't want to agree to a marriage, so she had to pull from the bag. She got one of each, and so we roleplayed her rebuffing Oly, and him storming out.

For the second scene I framed Oly bumping into Narmak-esh. And I again aimed for the Human Nature by appealing to Narmak's Ambition. Oly told the eunuch of a dream he had. "Ur-Crom came to me in a dream. He said, 'My enemy's enemy is my friend.' And we're the enemies of Marduk's house, who keep us slaves. We can help Ur-Crom back to power and be his house, and you can run the gardens!" Narmak-esh also resisted Oly.

In the third scene, I put Oly in the kitchens, ranting to Amar about his frustration with Narmak-esh. "I don't know how you're friends with Narmak! He's impossible. He doesn't listen to reason." I decided that Amar was prettifying a live white bull (curling its hair or gilding its horns or something) for sacrifice to Marduk during the celebration. "You take care of that bull," Oly said. "It's going to buy our freedom." Amar inquired about that statement, and Oly responded, "You wouldn't understand." I ruled that if Amar wanted an explanation he'd have to pull from the bag. He did, and got a Water, so Oly explained that Ur-Crom showed him the location of a flower, called the Ord, that if fed to the bull would put Marduk into a coma when the beast was sacrificed to him. Amar's player played him skeptical, but also said he'd speak with Narmak-esh about the plan.

The fourth scene was Amar and Narmak-esh talking. Amar told Narmak about Oly's dream. Narmak's character's Specialisation was Memory. Narmak's player pulled from the bag for knowledge about the Ord, and got a Water. I told the player that Narmak knew the Ord grows on the floor of the sea, and that no one could possibly dive down far enough to get it.

(Those of you paying attention have realized by this point that I've utterly failed in my goal of player characters having scenes together as a team. I'm not sure why. The group of slaves concept didn't hold everything together. The first scene did have both Lyak and Kiata, but everything after that basically went round robin. And Oly didn't serve as the catalyzing agent I thought he would. I'm not sure why.)

The fifth scene begins with Kiata having a dream of skimming over the canals, seeing a giant fish, and watching Oly swallowed by the fish. Kiata wakes from the dream. The player pulls from the bag to "find Oly," and fails. I rule that Kiata can find anyone but Oly. The player chooses Amar, and finds Amar making a pit in the gardens to roast the bull. "I think Oly might be in trouble. I had a dream." The player pulls from the bag in an effort to discover that the other character isn't telling everything he knows. This is when we realized the game doesn't have rules for contested tasks! Result: Kiata tells Amar the dream of the fish.

In the sixth scene, Amar finds Lyak in the garden practicing her dance for the upcoming celebration, and asks if Oly has been acting strange, or if she's had any strange dreams. Lyak's player pulls from the bag, and it's a Water. Yes, she has had a strange dream. It was the same as Kiata's dream.

My notes on the final scene of the session are sketchy. The avatar of Ur-Crom comes to Narmak-esh in the garden, impresses his godly powers upon the eunuch in true old testament fashion, by burning a tree, and tells him of the plan to overthrow Marduk. There was a conflict with another NPC in this scene, Bryma the head porter, but I can't remember the details.

Closing thoughts:

We're going to play again, hopefully next week Sunday, and wrap up the story. Despite my failure to create a team dynamic, the game was fun. I like some of the things we did with the resolution mechanics: pulling from the bag not just to resolve a task, but to decide if a character had a dream or not, and a player pulling for knowledge. For us, the bag didn't work so much like a task resolution tool. It was less about "Can I rebuff him?" and more of an oracle we consulted with questions like "Do I rebuff him?" or "Did I have a strange dream, too?" I liked it. It seems to me there's some interesting mechanical territory to explore around the use of the bag.

And if anyone can pinpoint exactly what put us solidly off the path of a team dynamic, please let me know.

Paul

[Valamir]

And if anyone can pinpoint exactly what put us solidly off the path of a team dynamic, please let me know.

Well...if you want a team dynamic...you kinda need to frame some early scenes with everybody in them...no?

I think your scene framing habit from the other games you mentioned kicked in and over rode your attempt.  Want an old school team vibe:  First scene every one is together and something happens that effects all of them in the same way.

As a for ex in this case:  First scene have all the slaves called before the slave manager who informs them that the master has fallen upon hard times and needs to sell many of his slaves.  "You four have been sold to the mines at Urkesh".  From there it could turn into a quest to restore the masters fortunes so they won't be sold, or a rebellion, or an escape, or whatever...but they're all in the same boat and they all started together. 


.

[Paul Czege]

Hey Ralph,

That's the traditional way, but is it the only way? The game lets the players flag the GM with their character's Nature, and the Fighting One's Nature rules seem ideal for poking meaningful antagonism at the character. But if I want a team dynamic I have to force a broadly encompassing external adversity? Does any game succeed at producing a team dynamic from the player characters, if that make sense, rather than from an imposed mission structure or an encompassing external adversity?

Paul

[Mithras]

Hi Paul,

Congratulations on a solid game!! To set the record straight .... I never quite finished Chronicles of Babel, I had intended to rewrite it, add maps, a nice sample of houses to choose from ... but I got side-tracked, and I've been sidetracked ever since!

My play style, and the way that game was intended to be played, certainly is different from the scene framing game you ran. I did envisage a mixed bag of characters of approximately similar social standing ostensibly going out into the neewly formed world, carrying rivalries with them, and confronting mythical and environmental challenges in a very old school way. Perhaps in a similar vein to childrens books, or the original Star Trek, the games involved meeting new and fascinating creatutes/gods/demi-gods and trying to solve their problems - in order to move on and find the herb/locate the source of the Euphrates/find an entrance to the Underworld etc.

Certainly a quest - style game.

[Noclue]

Hi, I haven't really introduced myself yet. But as an ex-old-school player who's just learning about the new school, I was struck by the thought that the AP description did not include the most important old-school GM question: "What do you do?"  I don't recall framing scenes. I recall describing the room and then saying "Ok, what do you do?"

Actually, that's one of the things that I object to when people talk about GM'ed games forcing the PCs to be reactive. More often than not, I found that the GM had to react to player driven initiatives and reshape his world to conform to the player's choices, like going off the map or killing the king, killing each other, loosing the demigorgon on the unsuspecting populace, etc.

Anyway, I digress, but I think that "What do you do now?" might have added a bit of old-schooliness. That and having the players meet at a tavern (just kidding).

James

[Paul Czege]

Hey James,

That's interesting. Essentially, I could have absolved myself of responsibility for orchestrating the team dynamic, and by using "What do you do?" in conjunction with limited player knowledge about the setting and situation, I could expect some "Well, I go talk to <other player character>" to result in a player created team dynamic?

I wonder if that would work with a group of experienced narrativists who aren't uncomfortable with inventing setting and situation.

Paul

[Noclue]

Well, in a word yes. I think players, if given enough rope, have a tendency to get together in a horde and hoist a GM's careful design up by its on petard (yes, I recognized the mixed metaphor as I wrote it). With experienced narrativists I can't imagine the mayhem that might ensue. I'm not sure that's the team dynamic you were looking for, but it is a team dynamic.

[Noclue]

Paul

Please excuse the double post, but I had another thought on rereading the OP that I think is related. I am not familiar with the system you are playing with here, but I was struck by the high proportion of sentences where you were being active and the PCs were reacting. In general, you are framing scenes, putting characters in situations, deciding what aspects of a PC to emphasize. The PCs do act within the scenes that are framed, but I am curious if they ever took over the narrative and drove play, and whether this is a function of system or social dynamics.