[Black Fire] Playtest Report

[Marhault]

b]Links

The game.
Old threads that are helpful and insightful Black Fire, you can never have too many buckles, Black Fire - developing for playtest
The thread I started with my questions: Lighting a Black Fire

Prep<In a Wicked Age<Characters<Storymapping<The Adventures
The game.
Old threads that are helpful and insightful Black Fire, you can never have too many buckles, Black Fire - developing for playtest
The thread I started with my questions: Lighting a Black Fire

Prep<In a Wicked Age<Characters<Storymapping<The Adventures

[Marhault]

Part II of II

Character End States<<1. Is the storymapping practical?<2.  How well does the currency of the Black Pool work?<3.  Is Playing In really role-playing?<4.  How many people should be involved?<Thoughts, Observations and Suggestions<huge<Stakes & Granularity of Rolls

[Paul Czege]

Hey Jamey,

Yes, in retrospect it seems we didn't interpret the bulleted "Sword actions include" and "Skull actions include" lists as definitional of what we should have been rolling for. Most of Karljeinge's rolls were straight up "end this conflict/scene" attempts colored as spellcraft. (In his first scene he called up the winds to evade a pursuer.) But what's instructive about the bulleted list of Skull actions is that they all drive conflict into the matrix of NPCs (and PCs). I think the game might play very differently if we'd read "Playing In" relative to Skull actions not as "playing into the shared imagined space" but as "putting energy into the unstable situation."

This realization pretty much irrelevantizes a whole page of notes and questions I made during the game that I was going to type up here.

I was going to suggest that it was a bit boring to watch the other players' turns, and that perhaps some structure was needed to make the other players' scenes of interest. In My Life with Master it's having created the antagonist together that does it. For Black Fire I was thinking some mandate of inter-relationships, creative ligatures, or rivalries between character scenes might achieve the same result. But...now I'm thinking this concern is solved if Skull die rolls don't resolve conflicts, but instead, put energy and conflicts into the situation.

And I was going to suggest that it got a bit boring to repeatedly just solve stuff with magic, scene after scene, even though the Gamist in me knew that was the right tactic given my high Skull to Sword ratio. But I'm now starting to view the intricacies of the resolution mechanics differently. Only via Sword actions (ie. Fighting) does it seem possible to truly resolve conflicts. So allocating Skull/Sword sides during chargen isn't about the color (magic, or fighting) that you want for your character. It's about how much you want, as a player, to be creating and heightening intensity, and how much you want to be resolving it.

I will say that I quite enjoyed how naturally you and Thor slipped into Actor stance roleplaying for his first scene. I tend to fall more naturally into Author stance, or Director stance, unless the game or the GM pulls me into Actor stance, and in my experiences lately I've found myself somewhat unsatisfyingly in Author and Director stance for much of a game session. (I think this is because a lot of recent games have mechanics that just casually dump people into Author and/or Director stance.) This has me thinking that maybe Black Fire might more closely tie stance to Skull/Sword action type. Sword actions would have Actor stance requirements.

And though it took time to create them, I can see the usefulness of the storymap elements to a GM trying to draw players into Actor stance. So yeah, the cards alternative is a good one.

Anyway, for Ron's benefit, here are the few questions/comments from my notes that seem to remain relevant (a couple of which duplicate some of your own):

1. The game seems to require a lot of fairness from the GM. He can throw an obstacle against you at any point and keep you from rolling against your Goal.

2. I agree with the observation that there was no reason to be cautious about pulling from Black Pool. It's a Tragedy of the Commons situation. It always makes more sense for the individual to exploit the common resource than to trust to the moderation of the other players.

3. And on a related note, tactically we should have gone straight to rolling for our Goals in the first scene, when we had a 15 die pool to draw from. Chipping away at resolving Complications before rolling for our Goals was not sound tactics. By the time we got through resolving the Complications we were rolling far smaller handfuls of dice relative to your handful of dice than at the beginning.

4. Is the setting map a constraint on whether you can roll against a Goal? (In other words, if you're not at the Goal, can you call for a roll against it?)

5. A rules suggestion: spend a Black Point to change seats with another player. Because seating around the table represents a tactical advantage relative to the snarl of Vows and Complications and the size of the Black Pool.

6. The "Stuff that happens to you" section of the text describes the options for when a character's personalized 2d6 are "filled up". Are they "filled up" when each side has at least one sticker? Or when each side has two stickers?

7. The section on "Monster Types" suggests that Beasts "may be commanded using swords" and the bulleted list of Skull actions in the "Resolution" section includes "Commanding animals." So...which is it, Swords or Skulls?

Paul

[Paul Czege]

Hey Ron,

If family priorities require triaging your response, I'm personally most interested in this (quoting myself from above):

"But what's instructive about the bulleted list of Skull actions is that they all drive conflict into the matrix of NPCs (and PCs)....Only via Sword actions (ie. Fighting) does it seem possible to truly resolve conflicts. So allocating Skull/Sword sides during chargen isn't about the color (magic, or fighting) that you want for your character. It's about how much you want, as a player, to be creating and heightening intensity, and how much you want to be resolving it."

Is that accurate to your design intent?

Paul

[Ron Edwards]

Hi guys,

Thanks for playing the game and for posting here. I have to hold off from replying in detail for a little while, but I'll be back.

Best, Ron

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Jamey and Paul,

I'm finally getting a chance to reply!

Again, thank you for playtesting the game. I've playtested it myself, but the circumstances were a little bit rushed and it was quite a while ago.

Regarding the storymapping, I completely agree. The game definitely needs pre-set storymaps and pre-set monsters, so that one simply seizes one of each and slots them together. It really shouldn't be that hard, so the game needs to provide the physical and rather colorful content through items. I'm thinking especially of the silhouette standup tabs from the original Stormbringer boxed set, and of the little tabs from the Hero boardgame. I remember just looking at those images and spinning my imagination into overdrive, years ago.

Regarding skulls vs. swords, the answer is "yes and no." Yes, skull actions tend to add nuance and further interesting conflict into play. But as far as resolving immediate crises is concerned, both skull and sword actions are good for that purpose, in their respective areas. Sword actions tend to leave And sometimes, they are perfectly equivalent. For example, both permit solving a conflict through commanding someone or something. Using that action successfully will keep the battle-scarred bandits (for swords) or the iron-spined wolves (for skulls) from killing one's character. Both also add the interesting future nuance, in that case, of what your character commanded them to do.

(So Jamey, sword actions are for commanding people; skull actions are for commanding critters; Monsters are often people-like or critter-like, in which case commanding them requires the appropriate type of action. The monster description text is incorrect about that.)

If I'm reading right, the group expanded the range of skull actions way past their scope in the rules, and it may be that you did the same with swords too. But even just with skulls, what that means is that the characters didn't experience the desperation, damage, and risk that play should entail. Jamey, you are 100% right about the tragedy of the commons, because that's what I based the Black Pool on ... but I'm using the game theory version, in which there exists a dance between cooperation and exploitation, rather than a one-way drive in either direction. That dance should emerge when the individual conflicts are genuinely dangerous ... and part of that danger comes from the fact that one cannot use skulls to solve everything, or swords to solve everything.

Regarding the "is it role-playing" question, I think that the key lies with the GM, specifically how he or she plays the NPCs and how the conflicts should arise through in-game action, rather than through a quick stakes-y abstract exchange of words. I'd like to develop some standards for this through my own playtesting, and then codify whatever makes it work into usable rules.

Based just on your posts, I think your group was pretty light on ... well, Step On Up itself. I'm not going to say you made a mistake or ruined your chances for fun or anything like that, but the game is intended to reward a desire to do better, whether over other players or over the inherent danger and disaster of the changing setting. As far as I can tell, the players weren't really competing directly or even indirectly, despite characters occasionally being in opposition. Is that true? I gather that Black Points were gained and used, but if the group wasn't using the Sword/Skull actions and matrix correctly, then I think the inter-player antagonism they generate would be missed.

Let me know if I'm mis-reading anything about that, or reading too much into what you've said.

Best, Ron

[Paul Czege]

Hey Ron,

I think you're right that our game was light on Step On Up. Could you tell me a bit about how you envision the game provoking Step On Up? The need to roll a Skull or Sword seems like it would make inter-player antagonism rather flukey. Step On Up is about me, the player, demonstrating I'm better than you, or the challenges of the situation. But the Black Pool gives me all the resources I need until it runs out, and the Skull/Sword requirement seems flukey enough that I can't argue that my successes are really mine, rather than just luck.

Paul

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Paul,

Those are certainly the Currency issues that playtesting is supposed to reveal.

The vision for the projected game, which is not the same as what its alpha-alpha design status can achieve, assumes that characters beef up relatively quickly into competence in their chosen spheres, and quite likely in both. Part of the vision was that people could enjoy "just playing my character" in the colorful and slightly crazy world of Czegara, a fair amount of the time. Victory or failure in the early stages adds lots of Color and provides character history and richness, but doesn't mean much in terms of personal competence above simply grasping the system. That doesn't mean it would be trivial, because failure to grasp the system at all (i.e. not caring about doing well and letting the dice play the game for you) would result in a lot of failure for the character. You can probably find the rule that enforces just how heinous a certain degree of failure might be; there is not corresponding rule in any existing RPG, to my knowledge.

The Black Pool is intended to be an opportunity for the group - it can, as you saw, be a source of cooperative resource, but as such, it's also a source for exploitation by a given player at the right time. Since altering the odds in one's favor requires not merely a weeny bonus die or two, but a whole handful, the idea was for the Pool to sit there as a mighty tempting handful ... sometimes. My design thoughts for the Pool part was to let certain Gamist design dials spin in play itself, so that the game could not be said to be only about screwing your neighbor, or only about "team up to win." I am not sure whether your play experience shows that this idea doesn't work as written, or whether your group merely chose one end of the available spectrum and didn't get to the point where it could tip the other way.

How might competition come into it, once the characters are beefed up a bit and the general story of their adventures is under way? Well, that's where the Goals and Vows come in - again, as a choice of how they play into things, based on that particular group. If people keep their Goals compatible and don't Vow to stop one another, then they'd ultimately end up teaming up against the Ragnarok-like invasion of the gods, for a battle royale. If, on the other hand, people try to grief one another,  or if the Goals end up being a source of genuine  "you what??" conflict based on in-character issues, then that's OK too - characters would try to head off one another's Goals and a certain amount of tension would arise concerning not only who'd succeed in an Ultimate Goal, but would it would be.

So that's where my head was at. I was, and still am, interested to know whether the boardgame elements (which are more of a feel than an actual boardgame) can work together to result in an emergent application of Step On Up and competition.

Best, Ron

[Callan S.]

Hi all,

The players each have a goal? It must be really tempting to just co-operate and go slow and steadily towards that goal. Co-operation is a resource itself, to 'use up' that resource by turning on fellow players, there'd have to be something that seemed worth the gamble of throwing that resource away. Though I'm not fully briefed on what gets in the way of them achieving their goal right now - a few good setbacks towards their goal and a player might just flip out and turn on other players (if it gets them to their goal, that is, not to lash out of course). I'm saying this all in a broad sense, and it's probably way off.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Callan,

It's pretty hard to respond if I have to explain it at the same time - check out Black Fire if you haven't already.

The short answer is that goals are individual, not shared. They are also graded by importance, which follows certain rules, and new goals are announced as play continues. One of the key emergent obstacles to a given goal are contradictory goals announced by someone else, as well as vows, which are dedicated attempts to stop a certain goal from being achieved.

Best, Ron