[Nine Worlds] The Anvil of Dike

[Harlequin]

The Libation Bearers

This is the key quote, for me, off of which I'm hanging the campaign.  Nine Worlds, biweekly, four players plus myself as GM.  What follows is a summary of chargen and first session.  Players are myself, James Brown (blankshield), Fox West, Thea Sack, and my wife Star.

We have some unusual constraints.  For one thing, between Star & I and James and his wife, we have a total of seven kids seven-and-under draggin' peoples' schedules down.  Sessions tend to start late (post-bedtime) and run short (kids that young don't sleep in).  We're starting to adapt to this.  One adaptation, particularly observed with Star, is that in addition to the regular sessions, we like to preserve the option to play "catch-(This, by the way, is a phenomenon I'd like to discuss more at length; some games do okay on this arrangement, some thrive, and some die a painful death.  Since I vowed at the altar to tell story for milady 'til death do us part, and this is her favorite style, I feel it obviously warrants study purely on its academic merits alone.)

As collective style and setting go, we established that the game would center on a common journey/quest, and the PCs would be shipmates.  I've played "open secrets" games and I've played "keep secrets" games, and find both versions useful; since this game uses a mix of both, and I'd like to encourage my players to read this thread, I've tucked the spoilers away behind this link so that those of my players who want to be surprised will in fact be surprised when things come out in play.  I gave a short briefing on style and dynamics, and have discussed the game individually with each player to reinforce this, centering on this point:

Nine Worlds reads, to me, like a game which is designed to be gamed.  The reward systems are there for a reason.  So out front, on the table, I want all my players to be aware that not only are they not "pushing the social contract" if they try to use the mechanics to their utmost advantage, but they are in fact playing the way I want to see us all playing this game.<card game<everybody<dictate truths about another PC's backstory<rich<present<less<teeth

[tonyd]

Nice! I love the chorus and the dual-decked Trireme. I'm looking forward to hearing more.

Your style of Nine Worlds play is a lot different from ours. I'm very curious to see how it comes out for you, particularly with the mix of open and closed secrets. Given that Nine Worlds allows players to grab a lot of narrative control when they win narration, are you concerned that people are going to narrate out other players' secrets before the reveal happens?

The style we follow in our group is that when a player has a secret with a particular reveal in mind, the secret is kept open. If something is kept closed, this is considered a wide open invitation for someone else to take the theme and run with it. The same goes with hanging muses like the epic bow. We've gotten some really great play out of this practice, though your mileage may vary.

Also, when you figure out the secret of balancing gaming and having small children, let me know so I can apply it as well!

[Lord_Steelhand]

One of her Muses is of particular note.  "Delay discovery of my identity" [as long as possible].  We discussed this when she was coming up with the character concept, and decided that even though the muse could only be resolved in failure, that was okay...

This can be gotten around by putting a conditional aspect to the Muse.  For example, "Delay discovery of my Identity until I am ready to move against New Sparta."  or "...until the crew will back my play."  That way, a victory is possible without the secret being kept.

Also, a suggestion for the "Mystic Bow" style of Muse.  Maybe restate it to say something like "Gain the Mystic Bow that Artemis promised me" or "Find the mystic bow the Oracle of New Crete told me I was destined to use". 

I like your mention of the HeroQuest idea of "name it before you know what it is".  Maybe a Muse of this school for the above would be "Delay discovery of my identity until I am secure and back at Pointsdown Docks."  That way, you have a second goal that the Muse can pump while maintaining secrecy as well.

Just some ideas....  Sounds like a GREAT game starting up there!

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I wish I could bring more to this thread, but all I've got is unabashed admiration. That sounds great.

Well, maybe a thing or two ...

1. After a fair amount of play has gone by, and if it hasn't been derailed by child-rearing schedules, I'd really appreciate some discussion of how busy parents can still get some great role-playing into their lives. I'm especially curious about how the game itself does or doesn't facilitate success.

When we played Nine Worlds, a given session tended to have only a couple of rather complicated, rather crazy-quilt conflicts - or rather, we brought several conflicts to a head simultaneously, and then resolved them as one big whacked conflict, even if the characters were not in direct contact with one another and their conflicts were not necessarily related. How are conflicts (how they arise, how they are resolved) work out in your group? Small quick ones, or honking use-up-deck ones? One player-character at a time, or all of them at once? Lots of conflicts per session, or few?

2. I love the Chorus. I have a terrible desire to go even farther and make a Nine Worlds player-character who is, in fact, the Chorus. Who says the Chorus never has an agenda? Ha!

Best, Ron

[Harlequin]

Thanks, guys - good comments all.  Ron, our sessions have tended to be basically an even mix of tiddly little conflicts and massive ones (by count), which means leaning heavily by time towards the biggies.  About two per seems to be about right, depending on how much of the session is exposition and consensus stuff vs. how much is conflict.

I'm working on a post to follow this one which will recount sessions two and three.  I'll fork off that to a new thread with the thoughts about roleplaying with babies in tow - it's definitely an interesting and nontrivial issue!   But I wanted to say thanks first, since the session report may take me a couple of days to write up, depending on work.

[Harlequin]

(Or I could just get inspired and write fast.)

too much<from Romulus' brother, who Rue seems to have a crush on, although Romulus doesn't know this.  So there's a certain amount of that sort of thing going on, but not a whole lot, simply because the story at hand has been sufficiently compelling that we've been busy with it.

As I was hoping, encouraging the players to game the system to the hilt is paying off by giving them control and pushing them to invent connections, insert Muses, and take charge via narrations.  They're still shy of actually doing the big-scope narrations themselves, mind you, preferring to outline what they want and then have me narrate it.  I think that's a combination of the hints of old-school GM-player relationship that still emerge from our gestalt, and an appreciation of my narrative style, on top of a reticence which I trust will fade as they get more used to the amount of control they've got.  This phenomenon, by the way, makes it feel like Nine Worlds may be a good recommendation for groups transitioning from more traditional styles and player-GM relationships towards the indie scene.  It handles a gradual increase in player authority and comfort level well.

The one downside I'm finding is that the reward mechanics' positive feedback loops do seem to have the same kinds of effects positive feedback usually does in nature - that is, bad ones.  James has been having poor card luck fairly often, and this (combined with a couple of muses which don't enter play as readily as others) has resulted in him winning very few of his conflicts thus far.  Looking at the character sheets, his (Muse + Valour + Pride) total is actually the second-highest in the group, which makes sense given that he's the only one to have not missed a session.  Rue's, however, with one missed session but a couple of one-on-one sessions under her belt, has skyrocketed - her (Muse + Valour + Pride) total is 33 to Romulus' 17.  This is what it's felt like in play, too... Star is consistently winning even over major NPCs, while the others are somewhat improved over starting PCs but not nearly as far.  In part this is because Star is more aggressive about bringing in Muses, and in part it's because even if she calls merely the same number of them, her Muses are (after just a couple sessions of positive feedback loops) on average twice as large as anyone else's.  This, combined with James' poor card draws, have left him ever so slightly tetchy (though some good draws during the poker game helped, I think), and I think I'm going to see if I can get Star's buy-in to some way of reducing the disparity somewhat.  I think she'll probably be amenable; I did discuss the risk of this problem with her when we started out.  The shipboard/odyssey format - enforcing proximity to one another - undoubtedly contributes to this, since they're continually comparing themselves against the same yardsticks and opponents.  I may focus more on things within the ship, to reduce this effect as well.

But that's a minor issue.  The "Muses + Valour (incl. valorous attribs) + Pride (incl Talismans)" total is a good metric, and one which I'll keep an eye on.  How hard it is to justify bringing in a muse will probably be inversely proportional, very roughly, to this measure.  That by itself may suffice.

[Matt Snyder]

(Scratches head.) How the hell did I miss this originally?!?

Fantastic stuff. I'm still chewing on it. Thanks for sharing this!

[Blankshield]

Heya,

Tony, the way we seem to be handling the closed secrets thing is working out where, frex, if I win a conflict where I (or my character) would get information, I would say "and I learn... what?" and hand narration to the 'owner' of the secret.

For open secrets, we're just running with those as we go, as with regular narration.  As another example, Romulus has implied that he's the Romulus of legend, and when (on the losing side of a conflict, having presented fake ID to the Aegis) forced, produced ID that named him as a citizen of Mars, and son of Ares.  But the actual truth of that is still up for grabs, having never been tagged in a conflict.


Regarding the card luck and such, a good part of it is just getting used to a new system, and adjusting to how it works.  The feedback loop issue is definately a factor, though.  As an example, in the second session, the conflict I lost trying to get the alto off of Sol.  I'd brought in a couple of muses, and didn't have bad cards; I just didn't have good[/url] cards.  She out-reached me simply through draw strength, because her muses were pumped from beating Noah already on this.  And if someone had gone for a third try, they'd be even further behind the curve.

However, if I'd been paying more attention, or known a little more about how to make the system work with me instead of against me, I could have had a lot of options.  Enter Romulus into conflict with Noah; scene framing this to a public squabble on the deck of the Argos II could have given me easy tags to draw in all of my muses, pretty much.  Berate him for not trying hard enough, and not caring about his new ship or mission, and then, armed with those points, go after the Alto with much better odds.

The only system note that's still niggling at me is that points, at least so far, tend to be an all-or-nothing proposition.  In cases like the conflict with Cymopoleia, where she was opposing everyone, setting up sub-conflicts with each other or NPC's may gain us some narration, but mostly just adds fuel to the fire, and increases the risk of doing some serious damage.  In situations where the opponent is bigger than any of the PC's, you're kind of hosed, because you don't have time to set up pre-conflicts or sub-conflicts - odds are the big dog will win, and grab all the points.

James

[Harlequin]

Quote

[Harlequin]

color=darkred]Session Five

With the Wine of Aletheia (Truth) in their blood, and Gaelcus gone out the door, the PCs and the remaining crew sat down to pepper each other with questions.  It's been a few weeks so I can't recall all of them, but the significant highlights (and pull quotes) include:

(Encareos) "Rue, honey... what are<with their boat and without them<full of the bones of ships, enough raw material for twenty fleets, and takes his hand.  As the Ceuthonymus sails away, they watch Romulus and Aigisthea waft down to the isle behind them, wondering what will happen now.

bothdo a better job than she could ever have thought she'd do of building a ship to his specs.  This is cool and we totally run with it; Dardanes and an additional 'hazard' NPC who hadn't come into play much are in on it too, but basically it's Romulus and Aigisthea, fighting over creative control of a ship which is gonna get made in either case.

Romulus wins, racks up the points, pours them into an existing Muse, achieves it in his narration.  He's gotten the better of his brother for sure... because he's a captain

[Harlequin]

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