[Black Fire] Playtest Report

[Marhault]

Part I of II

Four of us gathered to play Black Fire last Sunday.  I GMed, the players were Paul Czege, Danielle and Thor.  The game was so-so, but many of the problems were caused by prep or GMing errors on my part, rather than the rules themselves.  Still, I think it was a productive playtest.  We'll see.

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

I ordered some blank dice online.  The stickers were another matter.  After hunting around all over, I wound up just printing some myself onto Avery label stock and cutting them out ourselves.  It worked fine.  Let me tell you, outside the gaming community, little stickers with skulls and swords on them are not a normal item to be looking for, I got a lot of strange looks while I sought them.

A random fantasy map with the labels erased gave us our world.  I traced the body of the dead god across the terrain, chalk outline style, and Czegara was ready.  I also generated a few goal items as examples for the players use.  I should've had more of the fantasy-colored setting stuff detailed before play.

For the storymaps, I put together some seeds that I could toss out at the players.  They felt a little bit In a Wicked Age -y, but gave us a reasonable place to start.  I also put together a list of suitable Monster names, but decided to storymap two of them outright so we wouldn't have to worry about it at the table.  I chose to do this myself over Ron's suggestion that the players do them for the sake of expedience.

Characters

As I said, there were four of us, so that meant three PCs.  Surprisingly, everyone elected slightly lopsided dice, 4 Skulls and 2 Swords, although the dispersals were different.  Everybody declared a starting goal.  Here are the starting characters:

Thor's character, Walentir:  A former aristocrat with iron grey hair hanging in ragged (tattered) curls.  He wears an iron crown and daggers strapped to his forearms.  Die 1: 1 sword, 1 skull.  Die 2: 1 sword, 3 skulls.  Starting Goal:  To lift the curse upon the Scar.

Paul's character Karljeinge:  A former magical student, expelled from magical college.  Wearing tattered robes and long strapped leather gloves.  Die 1:  3 skulls, 1 sword.  Die 2:  1 skull, 1 sword.  Starting Goal:  To activate the Crimson Henge.

Danielle's character:  Ejaloh the Strander:  A runaway soldier with a crutch/cane/staff.  His hair hangs in tattered dreadlocks, and he carries a strapped rucksack.  Die 1:  2 skulls, 1 sword.  Die 2:  2 skulls, 1 sword.  I believe that's correct for the dice, but don't have a written record of it.  Starting Goal:  To escape the Molihir.

Storymapping

Okay, so we're faced with three goals to start, so we storymapped them all.  I elected to assign two complications to each storymap, in the interest of fairness.

Walentir's goal:  To lift the curse upon the Scar.  I threw one of my story seeds out and we started riffing.  "A priest of the dead god, lying to his flock."  The dead god gets named during this process, Gem, whose priest in this particular town has been preaching a false prophecy, that he's not really dead and will arise again.  The populace is fooled , but there is a magic woman who knows that it is all lies.  However, mysterious voices are whispering the truth in certain ears, as well as about a holy relic that can aid Walentir.  The complications were the false prophecy and the holy relic.  Note:  The Scar was a crater marked on the map that became central to our placement of the god's body.

Karljeinge's goal:  To activate the Crimson Henge.  None of my storymap seeds seemed right for this goal, so we decided to wing it.  The Crimson Henge was placed on the map, on the Northern shore of a large inland sea.  We decided that Karljeinge had been expelled for stealing a set of scrolls from the library while pursuing this task.  The scrolls were incomplete, and he was in search of the lost 17th scroll which detailed the ritual he needed to perform in order to activate the Henge.  Complications were the ritual on the 17th scroll and the hunter that his college had set on his tail.

Ejaloh's goal:  To escape the Molihir.  The Molihir, we decided, are three assassins with some sort of psychic shared mind.  Again, none of my seeds felt right so we started at square one.  Ejaloh was fleeing from them because he was living evidence that they had betrayed their employer, who was Ejaloh's commanding officer.  Complications were living evidence of treachery and the Molihir's mental bond.

I grabbed the Worgs of Gunar Wood from my pre-made stack.  Their complications were the woods themselves and an ancient pact that had bound the worgs to a now nearly extinct people for protection.  I'm not going to go into the rest of that here, because it wasn't really explored in play.

The Adventures

Shortly after Walentir arrived in town, he was put on his guard against the priests of Gem through a chance encounter with the magic woman.  Seeking the truth, he disrupted a religious ceremony, causing a vision of the god's murder to be projected above the shocked congregation, who called for the priest's blood.  Walentir, using swords to command them, quelled the crowd, and the priest was taken into custody.

After consulting again with the magic woman and interrogating the priest, Walentir discovered that there was a boy, an acolyte of Gem, who had been told some of the truth by the Impilli, angel-like servants of Gem.  He tracked the child down, and discovered that in order to complete his goal and cleanse the Scar, the child would have to die.

Soon, at the centre of the crater, we discover that the boy was, in fact, an immortal child, within whom a certain holy relic (a dagger) had been placed.  Walentir retrieved the dagger, and slew the boy, using his holy blood to power a ritual activating the giant black henge that stood at the centre of the Scar.  When the smoke and lights had settled, he stood at the center of a great meadow.

Some distance North of those events, Karljeinge was fleeing the Hunter on a riverboat.  Calling wind-spirits with a successful skull roll, escaped from his pursuer.  Making port, he immediately sought the ancient library in hopes of finding the lost 17th scroll.  He succeeded, and translated it, discovering the need for the blood of a black goat to complete the activating ritual.

However, translating the scroll had allowed his pursuer to catch up.  Pausing to slay the hunter delayed Karljeinge, who was attempting to meet a spirit who was bound to the Henge, and who would have guided him there.  Nevertheless, he made his way, and soon was dragging his sacrifice into place.  Bashing the goat's skull in with a rock (a primitive method for a primitive ritual!) and enacting the gruesome sorcerous ritual, the Crimson Henge was activated and the Silver Sea turned to red.

The Molihir were hard on Ejaloh's heels.  He was fleeing Southward, toward's the river, but detoured through the forest in order to give them the slip.  That forest turned out to be Gunar Wood.  He faced down the Worgs over the corpse of one of their victims, and successfully commanded them to attack the Molihir!

Free for the moment from Monster and pursuer both, he fled further into the woods.  Some time later, he stumbled upon a clearing in the woods.  Standing stones lined the clearing, marking the entrance of seventeen paths, and bearing ancient inscriptions.  When translated, the inscriptions were revealed to be an ancient pact between the Worgs and a group of natives who had sheltered in the Wood.

However, the Molihir had caught up!  They had slain the Worgs Ejaloh had sent against them, but had lost one of their number, which had severed their mental connection.  They were pissed, and they were out for blood.  Ejaloh deflected a thrown blade from one assassin into the other, whose blood spattered upon one of the standing stones.  Ejaloh activated the Henge with the blood of her enemies, and escaped Gunar Wood.

Looking back on this, it is so obvious that I had the players rolling for all the wrong things.  The skulls and swords are not simply 'might' and 'magic', but have very specific, well defined uses.  Skulls especially were misused in this game, because the players were all skull heavy.

This problem arose, I feel, through my inexperience with certain techniques that I was trying to put into practice with this game.  Black Fire wasn't designed with those techniques in mind, because they hadn't yet gained prominence within the community at the time it was written.  I would've done better coming at this from a more traditional standpoint.

[Marhault]

Part II of II

Character End States

We did a second Playing Up stage at the end of the day, we skipped storymapping the new goals since we weren't going to play the next Playing In phase.  Thor declared a second Minor goal, to destroy the Worgs of Gunar Wood, Danielle declared a Major goal that Ejaloh was going to destroy the Parasitic Spirit (which had taken residence in Ejaloh's body).  Paul didn't declare any new goals, but did note that he was going to Vow to prevent Walentir from slaying the Worgs.  Since we didn't start playing in, this doesn't reflect the Black Point he would have gained from doing so.

Thor ended with the same dice as he began, 1 sword, 1 skull & 1 sword 3 skulls, and NO Black Points, having exhausted them all in rolling directly for his goal.  Paul ended with 3 skulls, 1 sword & 3 swords, 1 skull on his dice, and 1 Black Point.  Danielle ended with 3 skulls, 1 sword & 2 skulls, 2 swords, and 1 Black Point.

I found it fascinating that all of the players took different angles in assigning their stickers.  And not one of them did what I expected or would have done myself.  Neat.

Ron's Playtesting Concerns

Ron ends the game text with a number of questions.  We discussed them after the game, and I want to address them here before I get into my own points about game play.  For the folks playing along at home, I've shortened the questions, refer to the game linked above for the long version with Ron's comments.

1. Is the storymapping practical?
Sadly, no.  We had a fair number of problems with the storymaps.  Firstly, it took us the better part of an hour to do three storymaps.  I'm sure this is partly due to inexperience, and that it would speed up with practice.  But Ron, if you envision this as working for 6-8 players, storymapping for goals would have to be lightning fast to keep play moving.  The "little cards with pre-made maps" you describe might be one way to do this, and we all thought that was a nifty idea.

With respect to Legends of Alyria storymapping, I see a couple of a reasons why it works in Alyria but not in Black Fire.  The first major issue you run into is the Czege Principle.  In LoA, the storymap creates a skeleton for play, but the adversity comes from the other players, in Black Fire most of the adversity comes straight off the storymap.  In Black Fire players navigate the storymap like a Sorcerer style r-map, which makes it more difficult to run than Alryia, because everything is new and you have to improvise.  This is very different from the apportioning of an Alyrian storymap. 

2.  How well does the currency of the Black Pool work?

My answers to this are hampered by our misuse of the skull and sword actions.  I really wish that I had written down what each roll was for and what the result was.  The Black Pool ended with six dice left.  It wasn't until the last two rounds of rolls that the outcomes were much in doubt, and with the exception of the cleansing of the Scar (which took 3 Black Points) nobody spent any Black Points to reroll personal dice.

As for the Pool itself, well, you've heard of the "tragedy of the commons", right?  Well anyone who wants to see an example should try this game.  Put simply, the potential downside of slightly increasing the chance/amount of losing dice from the shared pool is clearly less important than the consequences of failing at a roll in-game.  This remains true even when the roll is for a generic situation with no direct impact on the goal.  It was especially true when considering that other players were likely to behave in the same manner - if this was true of a four person playtest, it will only be more so with more people.

I think the Black Pool would be more effective as a currency if the players were explicitly working together, rather than competing.

3.  Is Playing In really role-playing?

It can be.  In our game, Walentir's story was easily the most like traditional role-playing, and Karljeinge's the least.  This was partially due to player tendencies, but also, I felt as if I didn't have any strong NPCs from which to hang my own role-playing, so it fell somewhat flat.

I (and others in the group, I believe) felt that the game could swing in an almost boardgamey direction.  The storymap cards from above, and strong author-provided setting content would aid this greatly.

4.  How many people should be involved?

I don't think it matters, really, as far as gameplay is concerned.  Certain adjustments might need to be made - for example, a smaller group has fewer black points flying around per goal cycle, so more vows or monster hunts may need happen in order to keep up with the increasing difficulty numbers - but the game will function just as well for large and small groups.

The only exception being, of course, that screen time for each participant will be smaller for larger groups.  Indeed, this may be a crucial issue, since players have no direct impact on one another's stories under normal circumstances, and may become bored if the cycle around the table isn't fast enough.

Thoughts, Observations and Suggestions

I think we stepped on Paul's story's toes with the activation of the other Henges.  It was what his goal was all about and it was lame to have it as just a special effect in the other two stories when he had to work so hard for it. 

The verbs for declaring goals are hugely important.  I didn't realize this during prep, but I do now.  They make player characters active within the setting in a very specific way.  Our first round of Goals all had Verbs that I would disallow if I play again.  "Escape" in particular led to a weak storymap.  (I want to emphasize that this was my fault, not the players' who chose the verbs.  I didn't realize the verbs importance until the mistake had been made.)

Likewise, Skull and Sword actions are key.  After I pointed this out during our post-game discussion we joked that I should've had a business card sized GM screen with the actions lists on it.  I let - and really, even encouraged - the players frame their way through most scenes with Skulls.  I should've been a hardass about it.  For instance, I think most of the magic we had in the game should've been disallowed.

How are Beasts commanded?  Their description in the Monsters lists sword actions to command them, but the list of skull actions includes "Commanding animals, including certain Monsters" which would seem to be referring to Beasts.

Stakes & Granularity of Rolls

Okay, this one gets its own section because I feel it's the biggest problem we had with the game.  Play, for the most part, never quite zoomed in to where we were role-playing in the normal sense.  I don't think we ever used the word "stakes" during the game, but it was there.  We wound up doing a lot of "set stakes, roll the dice, set stakes, roll the dice" sort of play.  Nothing about the game's mechanics drew us down into the SIS, single roll conflict resolution lends itself to this problem, I think.

What I would love to see, is something that draws description from the players.  Since we had a lot of rolls where the player guaranteed a victory, even if they rolled no swords or skulls, it might serve if their draws from the pool were limited by description.  I'm thinking something like Sorcerer's bonus dice.  Players could pull a maximum of say... four dice from the Black Pool, unless they earn the right to more through description.  This might also be a hook to hang the infamous "one more thing" on.

There's something else related to this issue that I can't quite seem to articulate, but I want to get this posted.  Maybe I can tease it out later.

[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