[The Rustbelt] GM flails, but at least the system rocks

[Marshall Burns]

The latest incarnation of my baby, The Rustbelt, finally got a test run.  It was kind of spur of the moment, so it took a while to get ready as I explained the setting and the system.  The basic gist of the setting is included in this thread, and I'll get to the core mechanic here in a bit.  I'm in love with the core mechanic, by the way.

Courtney had some difficulty with the Rust as a cosmic force of entropy, decay, and chaos, which was a problem I had not foreseen by a mile.  So, commence flailing, right off the bat, as I basically start rambling about different things that are in the Rustbelt.  Finally I get to the "life in the Rustbelt is nasty, brutish, and short, and the people will grab onto anything that they feel gives that short existence some kind of meaning," and, man, she really sank her teeth into that.  She didn't care about the Rusty weirdness anymore; it was just a backdrop to this human drama.  Which, on one level is what it's supposed to be; on another level there's some metaphysics and symbolism that I'm also interested in exploring, but it's a lesser concern.

So, Courtney and Stephen both wanted to play adventurers, so we made up an adventuring company.  Stephen made the tank character, a guy nicknamed "Tok" who wore a hoodie lined with chainmail--which made me think, "Awesome, he's got a grasp on the setting already".  And he gave him some cool Psyche traits; my favorite was "Woe:  I should have died with my brother" (!!!).  (Psyche is a group of flags, basically, although they have some impact mechanically and also are subject to pressure, which often results in new Psyche traits being taken on or old ones being lost).

Courtney drew up this CREEPY doctor-type nicknamed "Kitt," and gave him stuff like a doctor's bag similar to Ichabod's bag in Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow and a miniature crossbow that fired drugged bolts (!!!).  Kitt's Psyche was so messed up.  He had "Faith:  Believes in no one but himself" and also carried around a photograph of himself at all times, and "Limit:  I will not put myself at risk for the sake of others."  He also had "Limit:  Refuses to bathe."  I mean, this guy was seriously messed up.  Which was awesome.

I drew up a character that I've played before in older versions, a grizzled, laconic woodsman-type named Hallin Griff, who was abused as a child by his alcoholic father.

Then I started flailing some more as a I realized, A) I hadn't GMed anything in YEARS, and B) I didn't know how to run an adventuring scenario by the new rules.  I've been writing stories about the Rustbelt about as long as I've been making a game about it, and only two of the stories involve "dungeoncrawling," and they focus on the psychological state of a single protagonist, with the "dungeon" (usually abandoned buildings and ghost towns in the Rustbelt) being just a backdrop.  When the game was all about how much food you have in your pack and counting your bullets and all that stuff, a dungeoncrawl was easy to do.  But when it's about the characters as characters, well, I realized that I didn't know how to do it.  I also realized that I couldn't GM and play a protagonist with the new rules (the old rules were designed to allow this).  So I panicked.

Hallin Griff became an NPC that everyone had access to, and I just started making things up.  They found this abandoned high rise, like an office building, all by itself in the Expanse and decided to check it out.  So I did my best to do some creepy descriptions of stuff, and I screwed up and made them roll on something that didn't matter, and I ran out of ideas.  So when they went into the dark basement, which had huge cobwebs everywhere running from ceiling to floor, I pulled out one of my old stand-bys, the "Exoskeletons" card.  Now, I usually save this for late in an adventure, but I was out of ideas.  The Exoskeletons Card works thusly:  the PCs are in a dark area, describe very vaguely a sound (dry rustling, with intermittent clicks, for example), then say, "Things that make that kind of sound have exoskeletons."  This mades players' imaginations go CRAZY.  Seriously, they scare themselves worse than this than with anything else.

As it turned out, the sound belonged to some kind of giant spider thing, which they didn't see because they ran out of the basement and closed the door.  But later, Griff got captured by another one (they still didn't see it, they just saw Griff being pulled into an upper-story window).  So now they had to rescue Griff.  Which made me stop panicking a bit:  now I had a direction, beyond them opening doors and checking filing cabinets for anything of value.  Plus I got to throw in some corpses here and there, and a room full of what looked suspiciously like dozens of people wrapped up in spider silk and suspended from the ceiling.

My favorite part was when they actually caught up with the spider, and Kitt hit it with a paralysis-causing drug, and they cut Griff loose from the webbing.  Griff had been poisoned, so Kitt was going to administer an antivenin.  Then my Random Knowledge Index kicked in, and I said, "Well, here's an interesting thing.  See, if you give someone the wrong antivenin, they're worse off then they already were.  Usually kills 'em."

And here's where the system really got to shine.  Here's the basic way it works:  You roll a d10, add the appropriate stat to the task at hand (Tough, Slick, Savvy, Cagey, Thorough, Personable, Grizzled, Uncanny), and compare that to a Challenge value, set by the GM based on the difficulty of the task and how IMPORTANT the GOAL is--basically, highly dramatic conflicts call for high Challenge values; no-drama conflicts call for no resolution at all.  If your roll + stat is higher than the Challenge, then you do the task and get your goal, no problem.  If the Challenge is higher, you get to choose:  do you Give, or do you Push?  If you Give, you forfeit the goal and usually fail the task.  If you Push, you pay the Price (the difference between the Challenge and your total roll) and succeed.  The Price can be paid in terms of Blood, Sweat, Tears, and/or Injury, depending on the nature and circumstances of the conflict.  There are also other ways the Price can be paid off; for instance, when they slammed the door on the spider, Kitt sealed the door shut with an acetylene torch.  His Slick roll wasn't high enough, so I said, "We'll call it even if you run out of fuel in doing this," and Courtney took the deal.

So, here's what happened.  I declared that choosing the right antivenin was a Savvy test against a Challenge of 25.  Courtney said, "But I can't beat 25."  I said, "I know."  She rolled, and of course it wasn't high enough, and I asked, "Do you Push or do you Give?"  And then she got it.

Of course, she Gave.  Kitt only cares about himself, after all; he's not going to go that extra mile and sweat it just to save someone else.  So he administers the wrong antivenin and kills Griff.

So, after Tok took out all his frustration on the paralyzed spider (smashing it to PIECES), they collected Griff's body and got the hell out of there, after blowing the building up with Tok's dynamite.  And that seemed like a perfectly good ending to the Yarn (I'm calling the individual stories Yarns; the idea is to do several short stories about linked characters and locales to form one larger story, in the manner of most William S Burroughs novels, Sin City, and a few other things that I can't think of at the moment).  I'm interested to see what happens to Tok and Kitt's relationship because of this.  There was also a moment when Tok was searching a corpse, and found its wallet, and I declared that the picture on the ID looked like his dead brother.  It wasn't his brother, just looked like him, reminded Tok of him.  So, without saying anything to Kitt, Tok pockets the wallet and also takes the corpse's wedding band off and puts it on his own hand, not revealing this, the only booty they gained on the expedition, at all.  That smells like all kinds of flag and foreshadowing to me.

I'm really looking forward to playing again.  Hopefully next time I won't panic and flail, and I'll actually be in control of the thing, instead of grasping at straws and randomly pinging the characters' flags and throwing horrible situations at them to prompt Grizzled checks (which is basically what I did up until the battle with the spider).

-Marshall

[Marshall Burns]

I was wondering something:  in DFK terms, what would you term that resolution mechanic?  I'm currently thinking that it's a Drama mechanic.  Yes, there's a stat and a roll involved, by they don't determine whether or not you actually succeed; that's up to the player.

I also wanted to clarify regarding setting Challenge:  most of the time, Challenge is between 5 and 20.  Over 20 is reserved for things that are really, really difficult, especially if that difficulty is due to emotional tumult and/or fast-paced, charged, panic-inducing situations.  Oh, and magic is usually over 20 as well.  Also, when I said that "highly dramatic conflicts call for high Challenge values; no-drama conflicts call for no resolution at all," what I meant was this:

Let's say Riggs is trying to get on the other side of a door.  First thing for the GM to consider:  why does he need to get on the other side of that door?  If it's not important ("to get a cup of coffee" or whatever), then there's no Challenge, the door's not even locked or jammed or anything.  If it's somewhat important ("to get closer to the treasure," perhaps) then the GM might make it a Challenge, but not too much of one.  This means making it locked, probably just a simple lock, and making it out of a not-too-sturdy material, like ordinary wood.  This would be in the neighborhood of 10 Challenge.  If it's really important, however ("to get to his kidnapped daughter, who's about to be harmed on the other side of the door" or of that scope), that calls for something really big, usually in excess of 20 Challenge, which means the door has a big frickin' lock on it and is made of metal or something.  No matter how big the Challenge is, he can still break the door down (or pick the lock, or whatever) but it's going to cost him.

The cool thing about this system, I think, is that success and failure is not caused by bad luck, which means the whiff factor goes out the window; if your character needs to do something to make things come out like you want them, then, by God, he can sure as hell do it.  But the really cool thing is on the other end:  it gives you a reason to fail.  Failure becomes merely the character's failure, never the player's.  How cool is that?

Of course, it warrants further playtest, but, man, I love this system.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Following this with interest, just so you know. I agree that your basic mechanic looks really cool! If I understand you correctly, the Blood, Sweat, Tears and Injury are resource pools. Having a default payment in terms of resources, and an alternative payment in the form of a deal made with the GM is quite cool, as that forces the GM to judge his deal in terms of the degree of failure a character is suffering. You might also want to consider simplifying the setting of the Challenge rating: I for one probably would only use 2-3 different values here, so having an entire scale of options is unnecessary confusion from my viewpoint. (The benefit of fixing the Challenge values to a limited set is also that you can use roll-under or other alternative dicing mechanics, if you want.)

The mechanic is fortune backed up with karma, not that it matters much. The DFK terminology is far from analytically pertinent for most applications.

[Peter Nordstrand]

Yeah, tell us more about how Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Injury works.

[Marshall Burns]

Ok, so, Blood, Sweat, Tears, & Injury.

I'll start with Tears.  Tears covers emotional tumult and trauma, particularly when it's suppressed.  Every time a character's Woe is triggered, the character either has an emotional outburst of some sort or suppresses it, which results in a hit to Tears (differing with the intensity of the Woe); if, say, a character comes across a dead body, or something else that's horrifying, they usually make a Grizzled check to be able to deal with it; if they fail, they have some sort of reaction (screaming, panic, vomiting, etc.); if they have to Push, the Price is in Tears.  Similarly, if a character loses an object of sentimental value or breaks up with their lover or suffers some other sort of emotional duress, they either have an outburst or take a hit to Tears.

Now, when Tears hits 20, the character becomes so depressed/overwrought/distraught as to be totally useless.  This state can, however, be ignored through willpower, which results in a point to Sweat every time you do it.  Also, once Tears is at 20, further hits to it carry over into Sweat as the hormones start wearing on the character's endurance.

Sweat covers fatigue, mental stress, nervousness, bruises, and other such things that compromise endurance.  It's what is most commonly taken on as a Price, whether you're lifting something heavy or working like the devil to pick a lock or feverishly poring through musty old tomes in a library in search of important information.  When Sweat hits 20, the character becomes completely exhausted and useless.  However, this too can be ignored through willpower, for a point of Blood each time you do it.  Also, Sweat over 20 carries over into Blood.

Blood covers blood loss, damage to internal organs, metabolic damage from toxins or disease, and any other damage that is potentially life-threatening.  People don't generally take it as a Price unless it's the best option available (which can sometimes be the case when Sweat is maxed and/or the only other options are Losses and Dangers that the player's not willing to face) or it's really dramatic and cool.  When Blood hits 20, the character goes into shock and becomes useless, and will die shortly if medical attention is not received.  Shock can be ignored once through willpower for an unstoppable act, after which the character immediately dies (this is called the Last Push).  Well, I said it's unstoppable, but it can be blocked by another Push to the death.

Injury covers actual structural damage to bones, muscles, tendons, and ligaments.  It's tracked for individual body parts (right hand, left leg, chest, etc.). If greater than your Tough stat, the difference is a penalty to all rolls for actions requiring the Injured body part, unless you ignore it through willpower, which increases the Injury by 1.  Injury at 10 or higher is considered to be accompanied by notable bleeding (1 Blood per round or scene, depending on how fast-paced the action currently is) until treated with a bandage or tourniquet or whatever (this treatment does not remove the Injury, merely stops the bleeding).  Injury 20 cannot be ignored; there's simply not enough of the body part left to do anything with (if it's a limb, it'll probably need to be amputated, if it hasn't already been severed; if it's your head, neck, or torso, you're mortally wounded, which works just like shock).  Injury over 20 carries over into Blood.

As far as the Challenge rating, I've been doing it in intervals of 5, but there's no reason it couldn't be done with just 2 or 3 values.  Except with magic, but there's a system for determining the Challenge of magic (magic also happens to be disproportionately crunchy; I'm not sure if I'm okay with that, given that magic is rare in the game world).

But you know what's really cool?  How the core mechanic applies to combat.  Now, when you're rolling against a character, your Challenge is the other guy's roll.

Now, there's two ways for combat to happen:  the namby-pamby way and the scary way.

The namby-pamby way:  this is where one person tries to hurt a guy, and the other guy tries to avoid being hurt; in other words, mutually exclusive goals.  So, let's say you're trying to shoot me and I'm trying to dive behind cover.  We'll both be trying to roll higher than each other (we'd both be rolling Slick, by the way).  So, let's say I roll lower.  I either Give and get shot, or I Push to get behind cover.  However, if I Push, you can elect to Push Back; if you do, it goes to a blind bid between us as to who's willing to pay the highest Price.  So, as you can see, this way is costly (because I want to discourage it).

The scary way:  two people try to hurt each other at the same time.  So, let's say you're trying to shoot me (Slick) and I'm trying to charge across the room and hit you with a woodax (Tough).  And let's say I lost the roll again.  So, automatically, you get to shoot me, free of Price.  I now have the option to Give and minimize the hurt, or Push.  Let's say I Push.  This means that, say, you shot me in the leg in hopes of stopping me, but I kept coming anyway, worsening my own wound but still hitting you with the ax.

Combat damage is rolled based on the "Arms Level" of the attack.  The Arms Levels start at unarmed (1-5 damage) and go up to shotguns, big rifles, and machine guns (4-40 damage).  The range of possible damage is called Gamble Damage, because it's random.  But you can add Hard Damage onto it by paying additional Price.  You can also Harden existing Gamble damage through a good, thrilling description of your attack (so, say the GM says your description was good enough to harden 10 damage, and your Gamble is 2-20, you'd still roll 2d10, but if the total comes up lower than 10 it's bumped up to 10 automatically).

Now, as for how the damage is actually allocated, that's up to the player whose character actually got hit.  There's some strictures, like if it's 10 damage you must take at least 5 Injury and at least 1 Blood, but you could take the remaining 4 to Sweat, so long as you take the total 10.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Hey hey hey, when did you come up with this system? Sounds really cool, and I don't remember this from the first Rustbelt posts. I'm not even annoyed by the added complexity of combat, as this is obviously a system for gritty, suffering combat encounters that pile on and on. Something like Die Hard, except with real violence. Sounds good to me, and I like how social conflict is a minor sideline that doesn't really tap into the depths of resources a character can bring to bear in serious things. Seems like a good core for quite a nice game!

[Peter Nordstrand]

I would play your game for Blood, Sweat, Tears, & Injury alone. Looking forward to your next actual play report.

[Knarfy]

Blood covers blood loss, damage to internal organs, metabolic damage from toxins or disease, and any other damage that is potentially life-threatening.  People don't generally take it as a Price unless it's the best option available (which can sometimes be the case when Sweat is maxed and/or the only other options are Losses and Dangers that the player's not willing to face) or it's really dramatic and cool.  When Blood hits 20, the character goes into shock and becomes useless, and will die shortly if medical attention is not received.  Shock can be ignored once through willpower for an unstoppable act, after which the character immediately dies (this is called the Last Push).  Well, I said it's unstoppable, but it can be blocked by another Push to the death.

Injury covers actual structural damage to bones, muscles, tendons, and ligaments.  It's tracked for individual body parts (right hand, left leg, chest, etc.). If greater than your Tough stat, the difference is a penalty to all rolls for actions requiring the Injured body part, unless you ignore it through willpower, which increases the Injury by 1.  Injury at 10 or higher is considered to be accompanied by notable bleeding (1 Blood per round or scene, depending on how fast-paced the action currently is) until treated with a bandage or tourniquet or whatever (this treatment does not remove the Injury, merely stops the bleeding).  Injury 20 cannot be ignored; there's simply not enough of the body part left to do anything with (if it's a limb, it'll probably need to be amputated, if it hasn't already been severed; if it's your head, neck, or torso, you're mortally wounded, which works just like shock).  Injury over 20 carries over into Blood.

I wanna start by saying that I think your system is AWESOME, and that if you dont post the rest of it, I am going to be forced to write my own version just so I can play it.

I think the push mechanic is really cool, but Im wondering if blood and injury really need to be separate. Perhaps when a character pays in blood, they can offset some of the price by taking a location specific injury. Kinda like how you let the guy run out of fuel for his torch when he sealed the door, rather than make him pay a price from blood, sweat, or tears.

I dunno, I think this partly stems from the idea that injury kinda disrupts the whole "Blood, Sweat, and Tears" mojo. I think they stand better alone.

Also, Having different injury totals to track for each bodypart seems like it might clog things up a bit. (I rarely find detailed hit location to really be nessesary)

So maby the player could trade points of Blood (or sweat or tears for that matter) on a 1 for 1 basis with a penalty to use of a certain part or something. Perhaps with a better ratio for more important parts, or if the damage is effectively permanant. (like the caracter should get a little more mileage out of losing an eye for good, and having a finger broken, even though they are both equally useless in the immediate sense)

It seems to me that that might accomplish pretty much the same thing, while being more in keeping with the idea that the player chooses where they take it, reducing the amount of book-keeping, and paring down the list of prices, so that you can just say, "You can pay with Blood, Sweat, or Tears. Whats it gonna be... punk?"

[Marshall Burns]

Hey hey hey, when did you come up with this system? Sounds really cool, and I don't remember this from the first Rustbelt posts.

I came up with it shortly after the Psyche system, but never posted about it because I didn't have a play account that used it.  And, yes, real violence is exactly what I'm going for.  It's not stylized violence, with fancy wu-xia / swasbuckling / gun-fu / anime / Xena stunts (as cool as all those things are, they won't Harden your damage by the rules), it's REAL violence, brutal, in-your-face, and even disturbing (a movie that has some very well-executed realistic violence:  Pan's Labyrinth).  Oh, and a cool implication of the way Push & Give works in combat:  a fight ends when one guy decides he's had enough and the other guy decides he's dished out enough.  I don't know about you, but that scares the hell out of me (which is FANTASTIC).

Oh, and regarding willpower, I didn't point this out, but it's not a stat or roll (it used to be).  The character has enough willpower to ignore things or Push whenever the player says they do.

I would play your game for Blood, Sweat, Tears, & Injury alone.

That is awesome and heartening.

I wanna start by saying that I think your system is AWESOME, and that if you dont post the rest of it, I am going to be forced to write my own version just so I can play it.

I am working on a playtest draft, which is nearly finished (it mainly lacks rules for the Rust and rules for what the GM can do).  I'll let you know as soon as it's suitable for human consumption.

I think the push mechanic is really cool, but Im wondering if blood and injury really need to be separate. Perhaps when a character pays in blood, they can offset some of the price by taking a location specific injury. Kinda like how you let the guy run out of fuel for his torch when he sealed the door, rather than make him pay a price from blood, sweat, or tears.

Are you talking about assigning a qualitative injury (rather than quantitative) to bargain out of serious Blood hits?  Because that rocks and I don't know why I didn't think of it already (especially considering that injuries in my game Witch Trails are qualitative...).  And this way, ignoring injury could be a Tough check against a Challenge based on the general intensity and painfulness of the injury, and Pushing could be what leads to exacerbating it.  Jeez, and without abstract numbers, that makes serious injuries like severed limbs and broken necks so much easier to deal with.  Whoa, and imagine a player taking an arterial wound that bleeds for 1 Blood a turn rather than, say, 15 Blood all at once, in the hopes that they can get it sewn up before losing 15--I mean, holy shit!  Yeah, I think that's going in, thanks!

-Marshall

[Knarfy]

I am working on a playtest draft, which is nearly finished (it mainly lacks rules for the Rust and rules for what the GM can do).  I'll let you know as soon as it's suitable for human consumption.

This fills me with Hooray.

Are you talking about assigning a qualitative injury (rather than quantitative) to bargain out of serious Blood hits?  Because that rocks and I don't know why I didn't think of it already (especially considering that injuries in my game Witch Trails are qualitative...).  And this way, ignoring injury could be a Tough check against a Challenge based on the general intensity and painfulness of the injury, and Pushing could be what leads to exacerbating it.  Jeez, and without abstract numbers, that makes serious injuries like severed limbs and broken necks so much easier to deal with.  Whoa, and imagine a player taking an arterial wound that bleeds for 1 Blood a turn rather than, say, 15 Blood all at once, in the hopes that they can get it sewn up before losing 15--I mean, holy shit!  Yeah, I think that's going in, thanks!

-Marshall

Well Im glad to be of help

Also, though the game is called "The RustBelt", I vote that the system itself should be called "Blood, Sweat, and Tears".

Cause that system has SOOO much potential to be used for SO many things XD

[Ron Edwards]

I second that one, Marshall. I really like injury being a subfeature of Blood outcomes, without a full category of its own.

Best, Ron

[David Berg]

Marshall,
How is the GM instructed to determine how many Gamble damage get Hardened based on description?

[Marshall Burns]

David,
The GM is instructed to Harden damage according to three criteria:

1.  The description does not obstruct the progression of the scene; that's good enough to get about 1/4 of your damage Hardened.  If it actually helps the progression of the scene, that should warrant additional Hardening, up to about 1/2.

2.  The description is thrilling, compelling, and/or clever.  The GM is instructed to gauge this especially by how the other players react to the description.  This is good for 1/4 of the damage.  If it's one of those moments where everyone's jaws drop and they're speechless for several seconds, then consider bumping it up to 1/2 (you know you want to).  By "clever" I mean "using the circumstances of the scene in ways that are insightful and/or unexpected, but not violating #3 below."

3.  The description fits the Rustbelt "style."  This means no fancy, stylized stunts, as I mentioned earlier.  No choreographed dance-violence.  In the Rustbelt, people don't square off and swing their swords in gloriously cinematic arcs; they get into each other's face, wrestle each other to the ground, kick, bite, claw, gouge, scrap, struggle, writhe, and choke.  I don't want stylized violence in this game, because I think it all too easily distracts us from what violence really is:  a person being hurt by another person.  I don't want that impact diminished.*
So, yeah, if you follow this guideline, that gets you 1/4 or 1/2, depending on how closely you follow it.

If a description really flies in the face of any one of these, the GM doesn't say "You can't do that," but is encouraged to dock some Hard damage granted by the other two.

Oh, and you can't get over 100% of your damage Hardened.  But since following all 3 guidelines to an excellent degree adds up to 150%, that means that players can afford, every now and then, to break one in a minor way.

*I want the fights in this game to be something that people want to avert their eyes from.  I want to kick the classical Melee Combat concept in the nuts.  I want people to have their characters fight in the game only if they really fucking mean it.  (I'm not sure where all this bile is coming from, but I'm apparently angry about something, and it's coming out through the design of this combat system.)

[David Berg]

Sounds good to me!  I hope that close to 100% of all damage being Hardened won't break anything.  As a player, that's the standard I'd hold myself to.

[Knarfy]

I totally feel what your getting at. From what Ive seen, the Rustbelt is a dark, brutal place, and you want combat to reflect that.

Its not supposed to be about fancy choreography, its about hard, brutal violence, and your "stunt" system (for lack of a better word) reflects that.

Just like how in Exalted the stunt system is made to encourage over-the-top cinematic action moves, your system is set out to encourage vicious brutal beatings.

I dont think your really angry about anything (though I suppose you might be) I think that bile is just the brutality of the setting coming through.