[Squamous] - the unspeakable horror of the thing that should not be!

[Darcy Burgess]

Squamous is my take on Lovecraftian exploration.  It's all about ashen shores, unthinkable evils, nefarious cultists, and misshapen appendages.  Its roots are a weird mash-up of the Anti-Pool and Lacuna.

It's also about making chasing clues fun and functional.

Here's the alpha text.

I'm provisionally satisfied with most of the rules.  However, I'm a little leery about how die size (d8s) and minimum numbers of rolls to overcome Threats will interact, especially in the later stages of the game.

I could use a few keen mechanical eyeballs.

Thanks,
Darcy

[Simon C]

Hi Darcy,

This looks really cool! I think the genre is sorely lacking in variety of approaches, so what you're doing is pretty great.  I'd really like to help out. 

I've just glanced over the rules, but I feel like I can't quite get a handle on actual play.  In what situations do people roll the dice? Since the conflict resolution seems to be just set dressing for what's really important (getting clues), I'm not sure what sorts of things people will do in the game.  "Say Yes or Roll the Dice" is pretty cool, but under what circumstances would the GM opt to roll the dice rather than say yes?

It also seems like all dice rolls are essentially equal.  The outcome of the story doesn't seem to be influenced by anything except the dice rolls, which makes the game vulnerable to optimum strategies.  It seems like the best strategy for everyone is to fail at everything as much as possible, gambling no dice, and working against their traits, until they've got a healthy supply of dice (and low stress because they've been rolling very few dice), then gamble all their dice on a single big roll (hopefully with the support of their traits) and get as many clues as possible.  This might lead to boring play. 

Similarly, since the game punishes you individually for gaining stress, and rewards everyone for gaining clues, it kind of disincentivises doing anything.  The optimum strategy in your game is to lose conflicts, or to avoid them entirely.

Another thing I'm not clear on.  The text says threats "must be overcome before the story can continue", and that the players need to succeed on a certain number of rolls to overcome the threat.  Can the players still spend extra successes on whatever they like, barring buying down stress?  I'm not seeing what effect threats have on the game, except to increase the disincentive for doing anything.

The tension between introducing clues and buying narration also seems a bit problematic.  For that matter, why would a player buy narration?

All this is making it sound like I don't like your game.  That's not true! I think it's an exciting way to approach the subject.  I think it's just got some issues is all.  I think what's really lacking is any incentive for winning conflicts - for the fictional events to have an impact on the outcome of the game.

[Darcy Burgess]

Hi Simon,

I'm going to throw two things at you, and then you tell me what you think.

Thing the first:
Quoting the game, "...the mystery will unravel, but at what cost to the foolish humans pursuing it?"

If everyone goes in under that agenda, then it should work, yes?  All of the concerns over 'optimum strategies' vanish, right?  The mystery will be solved!  There's no need to game the system to make it happen.  What we're here to find out is how fucked up are the characters going to be by the end?

Phrased differently, it's the mystery (clues) that are a side-show to the character-based exploration.  They're neat little bennies, and fun sticks with which to poke the story, but they aren't the goal.


Thing the second:
In addition to the concern over a death-spiral (the interaction of rolling d8s with minimum 5 successful rolls versus Threats during the Cosmic phase), I'm not entirely satisfied with the complete lack of interaction between Stress, Clues and Peril.

Try this on for size:

• New rule: no player may ever roll the dice twice in a row.
• There's a new 'lose' condition: the Peril Track hits 40 before the Clue track does.
• When you're in conflict with a Threat, you can choose to 'buy down' Peril (1:1) by taking on more Stress, but only when you roll.
• Any time you take on Stress above X (tba), you get a little narration about what it does to your character.  This is independent from 'seizing narration'.
• Turf the 'minimum # of rolls' against Threats.  Instead, players bid how tough the Threat is (substem TBA - it may even not be a bid at all, it could be GM fiat).  That's how many rolls must be made against the Threat (win or lose).  That number is also a guaranteed minimum number of 'clues' that defeating the threat will generate -- a level 3 Threat generates 3 clues, even if only 2 extras are bought against it.

Thoughts?

[Callan S.]

What we're here to find out is how fucked up are the characters going to be by the end?

Phrased differently, it's the mystery (clues) that are a side-show to the character-based exploration.

They'll end up how one person decided they'd end up, wont they? There's nothing there to interupt someone developing a general idea of how things will end up before the game begins, and making the game end on that.

Take the ouija board from the nar essay

How do Ouija boards work? People sit around a board with letters and numbers on it, all touching a legged planchette that can slide around on the board. They pretend that spectral forces are moving the planchette around to spell messages. What's happening is that, at any given moment, someone is guiding the planchette, and the point is to make sure that the planchette always appears to everyone else to be moving under its own power.

There's no system to stop someone, in advance of the game, deciding where the planchette is going to go and finishing the game after having made it go there.

Difficult question - are the clue rules there to distract players while someone moves the planchette?

[Vulpinoid]

Difficult question - are the clue rules there to distract players while someone moves the planchette?

I've gotta say, that's a crystallising question.

As soon as I read it I thought of dozens of systems it could apply to.

When I started reading the thread, and the linked document there was something about it that made me want to explore the concepts more deeply. I think this queastion may be it.

Thanks Callan...

V

[Darcy Burgess]

Hi Callan,

Tough question indeed.  My "gut" answer is "Gosh, I hope not!"

Here's an attempt at backing up my gut instinct:

• There is stuff in the game to stop it from ending "however one persone wants" -- it's the substance of the fiction already created.  That's a constraint, and a powerful one.
• I wasn't explicit in the game text, but I'm not picturing this as being a Narrativist-facilitating game.  It's pure Sim, end-to-end.  The interesting aspect of HPL's fiction never was the mystery, but rather how following this insane path of exploration led to the protagonist's downfall.  That's fun shit to explore!  Let's do that.
• That's why I refer to the Clues as a sideshow in my reply to Simon.  They're sort of the narrative meat that the GM provides for the players to riff off of.  Then everyone gets to do some fun RPGing, and see what becomes of the Characters

Now, what I'm 100% willing to grant is that the end-of-game Stress-based narration rule is most likely not a great one.  I'm muddling with the idea of apportioning that authority out over the course of the game in smaller packets.  I also alluded to this in my reply to Simon.

Thanks,
Darcy