[While We Were Fighting] Scene Framing the Renaissance

[Peter Nordstrand]

So we played While We Were Fighting at OmniCon, and it went really well. (See footnote for a description of WWWF.) I learned a lot from this session, but I'll concentrate on one thing that turned out surprisingly well, and it is my system for handling scenes and scene framing. Please ignore my earlier version involving cards. The current iteration is quite different, and I'm quite proud of the mechanic. It utilizes six sided dice, termed story dice. I'll quote the playtest rules.

Quote

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medici) and Borgia(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borgia), and you get the picture.

[Peter Nordstrand]

Oh, and if you are interested in checking out the playtest rules in their entirety, please PM me. I hunger for your input. :-)

[Marshall Burns]

Peter,

I really dig the Story Dice, especially as they apply to the onset of crises.

I'd also like to playtest this at some point, if I can get my group interested.

-Marshall

[Anders]

Yeah, the story dice are solid. When I played with Peter they had a huge and positive effect on game play. One of the benefits of them was that the GM (in this case Peter) had a clear area of contribution when Crises came in to play. I believe that Peter is right in wanting to restrict scene framing powers a bit, and that the GM retaining NPC control is imperative, as he says. I'm pretty sure this can be done without losing the impact that Crises has.

Peter, have you given any more thought to my critique of "paying" Leverage to enter a scene? I came to think of one instance of play where I did just that, and it resulted in (what I considered) a successful scene. However, had I not spent that Leverage, what I did might have been considered stomping over the interests of the other player. Here Leverage-spending said to everyone "he can do this" and I did. Without it I would have to (and I would have) communicate my intent in entering the scene more clearly I think. Any thoughts on this? I'm thinking of the scene with the brothers Frescobaldi and their sister.

[Peter Nordstrand]

Marshall,

Story dice and crises work together, not only mechanically, but thematically as well, by helping us figure out where the next scene takes place, and who is in it. But you've figured that out already. The system even helps us decide what the scene will be about in general terms. The way to do this is to refer to the player characters' Ambitions (their personal goals, that are established in character generation). When you frame a scene, just pick a player character, find out what his or her Ambition is, and create a scene that spotlights the Ambition in some way.

For example, Giovanni Frescobaldi's Ambition is to be buried in the cathedral. The player creating the scene says "I want a scene in the cathedral, where Giovanni has a meeting with the archbishop about getting a burial spot. Problem is, there is someone else at that meeting as well, who wants the same thing."

This wasn't fully clear to me at the time of this playtest, but all the tools are already there, and I'm quite confident it will work out fine. In a way, Ambitions are to While We Were Fighting what Issues are to Prime Time Adventures.

There will be a new playtest draft of the rules within a week or so. Anybody wanting to playtest after is more than welcome to do so.

[Peter Nordstrand]