[Black Cadillacs] - Barbed Wired & Bayonets

[Darcy Burgess]

Hi,

Black Cadillacs is a game I've been working on for about a year now.  It's my attempt to make some sense out of war.  By "make sense" I don't mean "why wars happen" or even "why countries go to war".  To me, "making sense" is all about achieving a very personal understanding of war at an individual, human level.  It's an attempt at giving people like me, who have never fought in or been directly touched by a war, a chance to fumble in the dark and hopefully achieve some sort of meaningful experience about war.

The methodology I've chosen for fumbling in the dark is rooted in my relationship with my dad, who was a veteran of World War two.  A few years ago, I suffered a crisis of faith over how real and honest my relationship with him was.  This crisis was brought on by a realization that a completely unquantifiable amount of everything that he had ever said to me was quasi- to completely-delusional.  These delusions were after-effects of a war injury he'd sustained, and there was no way of knowing how long he'd been under their grip.

This led me, quite naturally, to using war stories ("the stories that make it back from the front") as a tool for exploring and (hopefully) touching what war is and what it can mean to people.

The basic structure of a game session looks like this:

• role-play a chunk of war fiction (soldiers, doing soldierly things, and all that that entails)
• tell stories about the fiction you just role-played.  The story is simultaneously a "version of events" as well as your personal commentary/editorial on the fiction itself.

The game is intended to be played over a half-dozen sessions or so, with the distinct purpose of allowing a significant number of stories to be told.  My hope is that some kind of understanding will arise out of the patterns and trends that emerge among the stories.

The game has been playtested twice already.  The first draft was playtested between October '06 and February '07 over the internet (chat rooms).  This playtest cemented some of the system -- it showed me what worked, what really didn't work, and where I needed to "sand off some corners".  For posterity's sake, I'll mention that the fiction centered on three North Korean infantrymen fighting a rear-guard action that led up to the Battle of Chosin Reservoir during the Korean War.  It's also important to note that due to both the inherent problems with the internet-as-play-medium and problems with the game text, we never actually got to "telling stories".

The second playtest was a very short-lived trial of the changes that came out of the first.  This time, the fiction centered on two skirmishers defending against the British during the Saratoga Campaign of the American Revolutionary War.  Although the fiction of this game was exciting and dramatic, the gameplay itself clearly showed that the changes I had made weren't improvements -- within minutes of starting, I knew that the inaugural session would also be the final session.

Since the Saratoga Skirmishers game, I've been plugging away at the text and massaging the system.  Last night, I had the pleasure of sitting down with three friends and kicking off Black Cadillacs' third playtest.

My intention for this thread is to discuss the playtest as it progresses -- from its infancy to its (hopefully) satisfying conclusion.  Along the way, I intend to reflect on where the system shines, where it's bumpy, and where I need help.  I heartily invite all readers to participate, whether you're a current playtester, a former playtester or simply someone who finds Black Cadillacs or my design goals to be interesting or engaging.

This is the game text that we're using.

Within the next day or two, I'll be posting my reflections on our first session.

Cheers,
Darcy

[Darcy Burgess]

Oh.  I just realized that the game text doesn't include an image of the playmat.

Here's a low-resolution image that will make things clearer (hopefully).

Cheers,
Darcy

[Callan S.]

Hi Darcy,

I'm not very good at reading RPG texts for some reason, so I'm going to talk in terms of big picture and you can tell me what the game does at a similar level and how you'd compare your big picture with the one I describe.

I'll refer to the prince of nothing series of books, where certain characters work from the assumption "War is intellect", as in war is actually a discussion. It doesn't appear to have the same principles of discussion from an individual perspective as it destroys the very fabric that holds discussion together at an individual level - ie, living minds and bodies. But take a discussion between two men where one strikes the other to prove his seriousness - perhaps braincells and certainly skin cells will die during that blow, but it's still a discussion (if more violent than we normally witness). The men of each army can be compared to individual cells - which means the idea of war as discussion between the two armies isn't negated.

But at the individual level - who feels qualified to resolve the situation they are left in at the end? There's perhaps a terrible buck passing, but out of a sense of not being worthy. Those who are wounded but see others die don't see themselves are really having had the worst of it enough to know what conclusion to make. Those who see action without physical harm but others disfigured and wounded don't see themselves as having had the worst of it enough to know what conclusion to make. And so on, right down to the children of soldiers.

I wonder, even before war creation is laid out in the instructions, whether a big question should be proposed - whether the character decides at the end of the war, he is worthy of resolving in his mind all that has happened. On a side note, actually that's why I have trouble reading alot of RPG's - I need a big question like this to give any context to the rest of the games setting and mechanics.

Hope this post wasn't too blue sky theory - if it was, oops, it was a big long, sorry!

[Darcy Burgess]

Hi Callan,

I'm sorry about my lag in replying.  I've been working on the (very late) AP report, and simultaneously figuring out how best to answer your question.

I'm not trying to blow you off, but I'm having a really hard time giving you an answer.  I think that I understand your question, but I'm not 100% sure.

Here's what I suggest: for the purposes of your specific inquiry, please try this:

• Ignore the link to the rules.  In fact, pretend that you never read them -- that file is pure rules, with no explanation or introduction!
• Re-read the first portion of my opening post, right up until the end of the bullet list.
• Check out this ancient thread (it's short, I promise!)
• Pop back in here and tell me what "big question" you think my game asks; we can talk some more then.

Again, I'm not trying to dodge your question, but I think that this might be a better way to attack it than me fumbling around.

Thanks,
Darcy

[Darcy Burgess]

Hi again,

To everyone other than me & Callan: please don't try to answer his question for him in this thread.  If I change my mind about that, I'll let you all know.

Cheers,
Darcy

[Darcy Burgess]

Session One

Housekeeping & Conventions
The bulk of the AP reports will be just that -- reports.  However, I'll be peppering the posts with questions as well as reflections.  Rather than appending them to the post, I'll be placing them in-line where the context is the strongest.  To help set them apart, Questions will be posted in this colour, and Reflections will be posted in this colour.  I hope that it doesn't need to be mentioned, but just to be safe I'll spell it out: although I'm posting specific questions and reflections, any topic is open for discussion.


Social Set-Up
It's worth noting that I was pretty choosy about who I invited to participate in this playtest.  I knew damn well that I wanted to go into some pretty dark places this time out, and since this test was going to see a significant number of sessions, I couldn't bring myself to go "there" with just anyone.  This isn't to say that the folks that I regularly game with are jerks or inconsiderate -- in fact, the opposite is true.  However, I know that I have a real problem with cutting people off mid-sentence and other listening-related foibles.  I figured that if I surrounded myself with some really good active listeners, I'd hopefully fall in-line.  Of course, only time will tell, but the early signs are that I made a good choice.

In the end, there were four players (including me).  The other three were GW (we've been gaming together for 7+ years, and we're the sort of friends who call each other up to get help with crappy household stuff -- moving, fixing roofs, that sort of thing.  We don't do this often, but we're both comfortable with asking); LO (a new gaming buddy, but we've had some excellent gaming together including rocking out at the Indie Table at CanGames this year); and SC (I've known SC for about a year and a half, and find that tempermentally, we're excellent foils for each other).  In addition to my relationships with everyone at the table, I knew that they've all played together before -- both with and without me -- and that they seem to get along nicely and are willing to "let it hang out" with each other.

In short, we had four people who were predisposed to doing the sorts of stuff that BC requires -- going to those dark places, and then coming back to talk about it.

The final important note is that due to geography as well as GW's dining room table currently being taken over by a brand new computer, we had to settle on a public space to game in.  We're meeting at a lounge at a local university.  It's not particularly high-traffic, and we were able to secure a booth, so we had a semblance of privacy.  However, I know that I was aware of the potential for eavesdropping at several points in the game.  I don't think that it coloured my play choices, but I could be wrong.

I'd be interested in knowing if the venue impacted anyone else's game experience in an unusual or noteworthy way.


Run-through
We exchanged some pleasantries -- I was late getting to the game, so I don't know what everyone else talked about while waiting for me, but they were mid-chat when I barrelled into the room.

We quickly secured our booth, swapped out a table that was sticky with...something, and settled in for a not-quite-quick-enough overview of my goals for the game as well as the rules.  LO hadn't played in either previous playtest while GW & SC had been involved with both.  The run-through was informative for both camps, as I had made some pretty drastic changes to the rules.  Similarly, I'm finding myself better able to articulate the goal of the game.  As an historical curiosity, check out my original call for playtesters thread as compared to the opening post of this thread.  Although the old thread is evocative, it completely sidesteps the issue of goals -- it hints at them, but it doesn't spell them out.  I'm still not satisfied with my current articulation, but it is sufficient for the current step of the process.


War Creation
Somewhere around the first phase of actual play (which essentially boils down to choosing a large-scale situation), I fielded a question to the group, "So, other than doing this as a favour to me, why are you here tonight?"  I'm not going to name names, but one of the players did mention that there were some outstanding personal issues with a relative that drew him/her to the game.

I can't explain how pleased and apprehensive I was in that moment.  If everything goes as planned, I now had another personally-invested player (other than me) who'll see the whole reward-cycle of the game.  This is exciting, and of course, it's also nerve-wracking.

Choosing a War
The creation of the war itself started quite slowly.  As the first step, it's not surprising that it's prone to blank canvas syndrome.  However, I made it super-clear to the group that I was interested in two things (the first as the designer, the second as a player).  First, I wanted to do something trickier with the game -- steer away from situations where the Troopers would be ad hoc or skirmish type units.  Instead of trying to sidestep the whole military experience and hide in the comfortable arena of "adventuring, but we wear uniforms", I wanted to be fully interred in military life.  Second, I recently saw Peter Weir's Gallipoli, and it showed me that trench warfare could be immensely moving & human while simultaneously being trench warfare.

Since no one else had particularly strong inclinations, we settled on the Great War as the top level of the War Creation.  Somewhere in here, GW commented that the rules don't require playing in an historical war, and he's absolutely right.  I'm not sure that I'm ready to pick up a laser gun and jet of with Flash Gordon, but I like the idea that it could be right for somebody.

Choosing a Side and a Front
Side and Front are supposed to be separate steps (Side, then Front), but once we picked a war, things started flowing pretty quickly; we got ahead of ourselves.  Since the structure is only there to get people thinking, I'm ok with it getting twisted a bit -- so long as everyone gets to the end.  We bandied about a lot of ideas, including when in the war, what front (we toyed with the Russian front in and around the fall of the Tsar), and other variables.  The conversation was pretty wide-ranging.  However, what did emerge was an overarching desire for a misery-laden situation.

Here's an interesting observation: GW is a history wonk -- a walking, talking, socially-conscious wikipedia of more history than I'll ever know exists.  Through this whole discussion, GW is peppering us with various little factoids, and then this one comes out: late in the war, the German forces were so poorly provisioned that some of their offensives ground to a halt as their troops stopped to raid British stores.  That pretty much clinched it for everyone -- our eyes widened and we'd found our side and front.  Our Troopers would be starved-out Germans on the western front during the late years of the war.

Choosing a Unit
We didn't have a lot of talking to do here -- I think I speak for everyone when I say that we all assumed that the Troopers would be infantrymen.  However, the one discussion that we did have grew out of the same starvation factoid as our Side and Front.  We reasoned that the elite units (storm troopers, for instance) would likely be better provisioned than the regular grunts.  Choosing to shoulder a heavier thematic load, we went the poorly-provisioned route.

The War Creation list is the only element of the game rules that's never been revised -- what's written down is effectively virgin text.  Three playtests in, and it's still delivering.  The group concensus that's achieved has payed off in both North Korea and Saratoga.  This time out, it was no different.  Of course, I'll be interested to see if it holds up over a longer game, but I see no reason to question its usefulness.  However, something that I'm very aware of is that I tend to play 'traffic cop' a lot during this phase of play -- I keep everyone involved in the discussion.

Short of actually imposing a structure on war creation (ie: your turn, then mine, etc.), I don't see a whole lot that can be done to reinforce this.  Obviously, a carefully worded admonishment in the game text is in order, but I can't see anything else to do beyond this.  Can anyone else?


Foe Selection
This is the first major change to the game rules.  Although the game does have a GM (called the 'Foe'), until the War is created, no one is the Foe.  I'm pretty tickled over this change -- it keeps more people involved and completely equal during the opening brainstorm.  I also like the fact that when someone steps up to be the 'bad guy', you're volunteering based on a known quantity -- here's this situation that everyone's built together, and everyone's been talking about what they like and why they like it.  This is solid gold ammo for the purposes of knowing whether or not being the Foe is a good fit.

This time around, GW (eyes glinting evilly, I believe) volunteered to be the Foe.  I also mentioned that Foe duty wasn't necessarily fixed for the duration of the game -- there was the possibility that roles would shift between sessions.


Trooper Creation
GW got to sit back and consider his meaty situation while the rest of us dove into character generation.  One of my goals is to dodge a certain amount of "my guy" syndrome.  I figured that character generation was as good a place to start as any.  Although each Trooper player has stewardship over a given Trooper, that stewardship does not equate to ownership.  To reinforce this, I borrowed a page from Nathan Paoletta's carry, specifically his shared method of burden generation.  Essentially, characters are generated in small chunks, passed to the next player (who fills in the next chunk), etc. until everything that needs doing is done.

Although my intent was to chip away at the assumption of ownership, I discovered a nice side effect of this technique; I found it much easier to generate a character that felt fresh by getting formalized help from my fellow players.  This may seem obvious in hindsight, but it was a nice moment of discovery nonetheless.


Mission Creation
This went well, and we crafted a neat small-scale situation.  The game text calls it a "Mission".  Essentially, it's the session-specific parameters that can't be diverged from.  In fact, calling it situation is questionable -- some elements are arguably not situation elements.  What we ended up with were:

• For some reason, Morale was on the upswing in our trench.  GW suggested that we might be fresh transfers from the (victorious) Russian front.
• If this mission were a film, it would be shot in a jerky, hand-held documentary style.
• It's springtime.
• The weather is warm and sunny.
• There are bad omens. (What they are isn't specified).
• We are the victims of poor quality intelligence.

I found it interesting that we didn't set "mission type" as a parameter.

Certain parameters seemed to "grab" everyone more than others.  Specifically, morale, season and weather showed up during play more than the other three.  I have a question about this (because I've observed similar phenomena in both Korea and Saratoga), but I want to hold off asking it until I see if a pattern emerges.

continued...

[Darcy Burgess]

Session One, continued

Scene One: Over the top
GW opened the mission with some historical knowledge for the players.  It's the spring of 1918 and the Troopers are all part of Operation Michael which revisits the geography of the Battle of the Somme.  He then explains that Michael marked the German high command's last big push of the war -- an attempt at staging a breakthrough of the trench deadlock, and victory.  He zooms in a bit and tells us that (of course) our Troopers don't know the big picture details.  What they do know is that this morning, when the whistle blows, we're going over the top and out into dead man's land.  He then specifically tells us that the whistle hasn't blown yet, and hands the scene over to the group.

The Rising Action (free play) of the scene was fun.  I know that SC has had trouble with this phase of play before (Hey, SC, were the Rising Action procedures helpful this time?).  On an individual level, I attempted to get out of my Trooper's boots with my Rising Action turns -- I narrated stuff like "somewhere down the trench, someone's whistling a little tune".  I really enjoyed this aspect of play.  It was a nice way to 'get into' the scene, but the enjoyment was balanced against the bloodshed to come.

Unfortunately, I'm pretty crummy at remembering fine details.  Did any of you remember specific Rising Action turns from this scene that you liked?

So, we've got this leisurely thing going during rising action -- it's more or less pure scene-setting, with a healthy dose of colour indulgence.  Someone (me?) then throws a real zinger into the mix.  One of the guys in our trench breaks ranks and goes over the top prematurely.  Uh oh.  Oh, we ended up calling the guy "Fritz".

I don't remember if we went straight to the conflict proposal, or whether there was a little more rising action.  What did come out was that the conflict for the scene would be seeing if we could get Fritz back into the trench in a state worthy of combat duty.

The mechanics did what they were supposed to do early in the game -- give the troopers a nearly insurmountable challenge to overcome.  The conflict resolved very quickly (one Go for each trooper), and ended with a loss for the Troopers.  There was a neat mixture of declarations -- from the overt (SC levelling his rifle at Fritz to get him to duck or seek cover) to the expected (me screaming at the nearest NCO to do something) to the truly introspective (LO narrated paying attention to the rotten laces on Fritz's boots).

In fact, LO stumbled on one of the deeper mechanics of the game (which I hadn't even mentioned in the run-through of the rules) -- the original Go declaration included the Trooper's flashback to a trade with Fritz, which involved Fritz's boot laces.  It was so neat to see a player desire (flashback as declaration) supported by the mechanics, even when the player didn't know it was a part of the game.  Yay!.

Unfortunately for us, we were all mechanically weak (all rolling one die), so LO's memory didn't put enough "oomph" in our camp to scrape even a single victory in the first Moment.  Three wins for the Foe, and that's all she wrote.

During Falling Action, we wrapped the scene with Fritz panicking, plugging a shot at one of us, diving for cover and being arrested by MPs.

I enjoy the back-and-forth tension between the Foe's total authority during scene framing versus the Troopers' total authority during Falling Action.  In this case, we didn't leverage our authority in terms of constraining GW's upcoming frame, but I think that our Falling Action felt really good -- I know it hit a good note for me.


Scene Two: Can we get a break?
Scene two was interesting.  GW elected to basically carry on right where we left off -- it's now minutes later, and we're in the second wave of an attack on the British line.  This isn't a criticism of GW's choice of scene frame -- in fact, it's totally in keeping with the rules.  However, I am interested in knowing whether or not GW knew that a complete change of scene was OK too -- you didn't do it this way because you thought you had to, right?

We generally saw more traditional "PC Actions" as declarations during this scene, as the conflict centered around whether or not our chain of command would finally come through for us.  We're all bottled up at a break in the wire.  Of course, the system did what it was supposed to do, which is smack us down early on, and the Foe quickly marched to victory (although at least one roll was pretty close) in a mere three Gos.

The falling action of the scene entailed the squad standing around, dumbfounded and stunned from the friendly (artillery) fire that was meant to clear the wire, but was ineffective at doing anything but confusing us.

It's worth noting that the Troopers began strategizing on how to fiddle the Strain stacks during this scene -- we weren't effective, but we started trying to leverage more dice timed just so, as well as working at setting each other up for better odds.


Scene Three: This one's for the boys!
GW followed his previous scene frame habits, although I don't remember the specific details.  Essentially, we picked up seconds after the previous scene.  When conflict proposal time came 'round, I went out on a limb and (motivated by a pretty real sense of frustration and pathos for the Troopers) said that I wanted to see some good come out of the game tonight.  The Troopers' goal was that to a man, everyone in the platoon who was left standing would make it back to their trench.

This scene was awesome for me.  The individual Gos are a blur, but what matters is that as players (admittedly, there was a lot of coaching coming from me in terms of strategy), we were really working the system to our advantage, and we managed to pull out a win.  Which was so cool.  I actually let out a little "whoop!" when we were the ones who got what we wanted (for a change!).

We didn't actually get to do the Falling Action for this scene -- we were just about to do it when the timer went off, signaling the arrival of the endgame.  According to the rules, when the timer goes off, all play (including casual conversation) stops, and you proceed to the Endgame.

In my mind's eye, the Endgame is supposed to be this surprising thing -- you never quite know when it's going to hit you.  It didn't feel like that to me, but I'm interested in others' views, as well as also letting it ride and seeing what it is like.  Maybe it will never be shocking, but maybe it will be something else worthwhile.


Endgame
Due to the small number of scenes, which resulted in a small hand sizes, the endgame card game was quite short; it lasted a mere three tricks.  Unsurprisingly, as the Foe gets her cards for free (as opposed to the Troopers, who must buy theirs), GW's hand was much stronger than ours.  The net result was that LO narrated one portion of the closing fiction, and GW narrated two.  Alas, my memory fails me here, and I can't remember much.  However, I do remember that either GW or LO tied in some interesting threads from the scenes -- including following up on some jealousy on the part of the officers in our platoon.  I don't think that they liked the Troopers' take charge attitude very much.

GW expressed a great deal of consternation over the purpose, function and procedure of Stories.  I clearly haven't found the right words to describe what a Story is (as opposed to the fiction of the game).  Regardless, the rules say that the Endgame lasts 30 real-time minutes, so we'd budgeted that much.  The rules discussions surrounding Stories ate up so much of that time, that neither GW or LO crafted any Stories.  Interestingly enough, this may have led to a very positive development.  We elected to assign the Stories as "homework" -- GW and LO would bring the Stories to the next session.

The third element of the endgame is the mechanical effects on the Troopers -- who dies, who distinguishes himself, who gets to go home?  Although the Troopers' purchased hand cards weren't terribly impressive, all three of us had managed to keep good enough cards from the mission generation game that none of the Troopers took a dirt nap.  However, none of them got to go home, either.

LO and I both had Troopers who distinguished themselves, which reminds me that we forgot to work this fact back into the endgame fiction.  I'll be interested in seeing how much of a balancing factor that Mettle (gained by distinguishing oneself) becomes in the long term.


Closing Thoughts
I'm concerned that too much may be going on during the endgame -- there's a lot of data to process, a certain amount of retconning required (the retroactive shoe-horning of the narrative facts derived from the death/home/distinguish analysis), and on top of that, you're playing a card game.  It may end up being one of those elements that shines once the players get it.  It may just be too much processing for what it does.  Wait and see.

I'm very happy with the Conflict portion of play.  Moments and Gos work well.  The currency of Strains is smooth, and I'm particularly thrilled at how the narrative impact of a given strain is its mechanical weight.  Previous iterations of the rules included specific rules that made Hubris different from Horror, which was different from Valour; all three Strains are treated equally now.  However, their impact on the fiction is telling.

I noticed that the winner of a given Go rarely (if ever?) chose to narrate.


Cheers,
Darcy

[Callan S.]

Hi Darcy,

Pop back in here and tell me what "big question" you think my game asks; we can talk some more then.

Nothing...I think your still looking for what big question you should be asking. Or perhaps the game could be described as having a big question which is "What is the even bigger question I should be asking?".

Assuming that's somewhat true, it has issues with players coming up with very different, largely incompatable questions - but because their question arrose from play, they stop asking what the bigger question is (as they have answered that) and want to continue play with their question (ie, since it arrose from play they think that it is the point of the game).

Have I been too blunt in my responce? I wanted clarity when it came to this important subject, so I'm kind of short and to the point. But I find clarity really important, especially in important situations like this.

If it's okay - does it seem to fit to some small degree?

[Darcy Burgess]

Hi Callan,

Too blunt?  Maybe for some, but we're good here.

I've been mulling stuff over, and here's what I've got for you; your assessment ("...I think you're [sic] still looking for what big question you should be asking...") does not fit.

And the reason it doesn't fit is tied very intimately with why I've been having a hard time answering your initial query.  However, trying to answer you has forced me to articulate something important, so thanks!

Black Cadillacs doesn't ask a question.  It states something: War is fucked up.  It fucks with the people who fight it, and then it fucks with the people at home.  Let's talk about the last part.

Is that useful to you?  Again, I'm finding this discussion fruitful, so thank-you.

Cheers,
Darcy

[Callan S.]

Some people would have said it doesn't fit, then started waffling on about what they say they want, but not saying much except about game world colour, token smattering of this or that feeling, and talking about all the lose ends to follow up (but never getting into why you'd follow any) all while making several points but never saying which is the most important. But you didn't - you actually cut to what you wanted. I can't figure out the words, but I wanted to note that to be encouraging about it

Stating something is good. And that statement isn't to be screwed around with for something like mechanics.

But the final element 'Let's talk about the last part.'. At a mechanical level, as I understand the mechanics, you can't talk by making statements to someone, you have to ask questions of each other. Otherwise it's someone speaking and the other listening - that's not really talking about the subject. It's really a mechanical issue - to get talk going, there must be atleast one question.

The statement is sacrosanct, obviously. But at the same time you do want to talk about it. If you agree with the idea (needing to ask questions to talk about this), perhaps there's a subject related to the statement, that you could gather questions from?

[Darcy Burgess]

Hi Callan,

Here's the idea:

We play out the in-theatre stuff (traditional RPGing, more or less) to gain a mutual context for the players.  In doing so, we also invest in the fiction.  Those are both important elements that lay a foundation for the conversation to come.

Then we begin the conversation about how war messes with people, with a special eye to the membrane that separates the in-theatre from the out-of-theatre.  We conduct this conversation exclusively through the medium of Stories.  Stories are versions of the fiction we've just experienced -- they may be nearly identical, they may be dramatically different.  However, what's important is that they're based in the fiction, and that they're targeted at characters important to the Troopers.

There are no explicit questions in this conversation.  However, each Story can be seen as a commentary or judgement on what has gone on in the fiction.  Each Story can be assumed to end in a challenge along the lines of "So, what do you think about that?" or, "I don't care if you disagree, that's the way I see it".

Essentially, the intent of "talking about it" is that the conversation is inferred.  It's rooted in the subtext of play.

Cheers,
Darcy

[Callan S.]

I'm offering the following as a perspective - it does conflict with some of what your saying, but not for the sake of making a point, just for the sake of showing how my perspective is different. And, err, that might be useful.

Reading through your actual play account, I don't really see a conversation. I see alot of diverse elements brought together, much like an actual war would force a bunch of diverse elements together. It's kind of like a series of eye witness accounts from a trial - if you took the written form of all those accounts and spread them out before you, it would describe an event, but it would not be a conversation.

And then in scene three, I'd describe it as you deciding to push for some closure to these accounts. Given that the endgame didn't pan out, I think scene three was the end game.

When conflict proposal time came 'round, I went out on a limb and (motivated by a pretty real sense of frustration and pathos for the Troopers) said that I wanted to see some good come out of the game tonight.  The Troopers' goal was that to a man, everyone in the platoon who was left standing would make it back to their trench.

This scene was awesome for me.  The individual Gos are a blur, but what matters is that as players (admittedly, there was a lot of coaching coming from me in terms of strategy), we were really working the system to our advantage, and we managed to pull out a win.  Which was so cool.  I actually let out a little "whoop!" when we were the ones who got what we wanted (for a change!).

Emphasis on deciding to push for some type of closure - it wasn't a certainty. Perhaps part of the reason for playing is to see if it could happen this time.

Side note: Also, having to mechanically fight for it rather than just passively decide it, makes it alot different than just sitting there and deciding it's closed. Fighting for it is spirited and lively, which is what is needed to continue on with life, while passive acceptance isn't any real blueprint for living onward. Just noting this because the traditional idea of closure might seem a crap one, but this is mechanically different.

Outside perspective, might be useful, but I kind of think the next step is up to you now

[Darcy Burgess]

Hi Callan,

I just want to make something clear.

The "conversation" that I was referring to in my previous post doesn't happen during the Scene-to-Scene play of the game.  It happens as a result of the Scene-to-Scene stuff.

It happens (in my mind's eye) in the interplay of the Stories that players craft during the Endgame phase, and it can only happen over time -- you might not see a conversation evolving until two or three games are played out.

As I mentioned in the AP report for session one, we didn't get to craft Stories that evening - it was assigned as 'homework' for next game (due to time issues).

So, assuming that my idea that this conversation can occur is correct, it hasn't even started yet for Barbed Wire & Bayonets -- GW & LO have just taken that first inhale before firing their opening shots.

Cheers,
Darcy

PS -- none of this is meant to refute anything you've said, I just want to make sure that we're talking about the same stuff.

[Darcy Burgess]

Hi,

Just a quick housekeeping note: I'm lifting the restriction that I laid down in this post.  Thanks for respecting it.

Cheers,
Darcy

[Callan S.]

Yeah, it'd be good to get a rounded set of evaluations here, so I hope a few other voices can post about this game with it's important subject! What do you think, forge?