[Shock:] Fiddling with minutiae rules

[Troels]

Hello there

Last night I and a couple of friends played Shock:, and it was pretty cool, in the messed up way it's supposed to be. But discussing afterwards, we agreed on one thing, that we were somewhat aesthetically displeased by the extreme tendency of minutiae to decide conflicts.

Even with three players, where multiple players rolling for minutiae driving the minutiae die towards 4 wasn't an issue, it seemed, well, heavy. Minutiae are supposed to be important, but decisive on one side of the conflict, nearly all the time? We were a little annoyed. And being the kind of people who like to fiddle with things, we talked about tweaking. We came up with two different tweaks:

A) Reduce the weight of minutiae to one, and simply roll (d10s) for precedence.

B) Keeping the minutiae d4, but doubling everything else. D20s and d8s, fulcra of 6-15 or so. Which I just now realise will halve the chance of escalation.

Thoughts? Comments?

Yours, Troels

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

Can you tell me what the Praxes and fulcra were?

[Troels]

Um. Lets see...

Trust/Distrust and Duty/Morals. I don't recall the exact balances of all six *tags, and I don't have the notes, but they ranged all the way from moderate to extreme. It didn't seem to us, discussing afterwards, that the problem was "local", so to speak.

Yours, Troels

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

If you can find the Fulcra, I'd love to discuss this more.  Keep in mind that no one *has* activate that rule. It's an option. If it bugs you, don't do it — it represents the sense of humor of your fellow players.

But I see something strange: with three players, you should only have on Minutia die rolling. Only Audience roll them. With three Minutia dice, things get really Minutia-heavy and I'm considering an easy statistical twist for that situation.

Tell you what: if you're playing again sometime soon, try this hack: any tied Minutia dice go away. They have no value. Let me know how that works.

[Greis]

Hiya,


I just happen to be one of Troels' fellow players, and I have the fulcra here.

Protag:
Martin Holz, entertainmentprogrammer: Trust 3 Distrust, Duty 7 Morals
Alan Babbage, employee for the UploadService: 6 and 6
Theodor van Arno, The Count of New York: 5 and 4

Antag:
The UploadService: Trust 7 Distrust, Duty 4 Morals
The UploadService: 8 and 3
The UploadService: 4 and 3

(Note: We chose on purpose to have the same antag. Each protag had his own version of the antag with it's own features and with it's own agenda.


BTW we only had one minutiae die rolling, we just concluded that with e.g. a five player you'd have three dice and hence a relatively large chance of rolling a least one '4'.

Also we like the use of the minutiae, since it keep the audience active and the added details are fun. It just seemed to influence the outcome too much.

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

Wait, you're complaining about a *hypothetical* problem?

[Greis]

Well, yes and no.


We're complaining about the large influence of the minutiae die. The hypothetical aspect is that with a larger audience the problem becomes more significant.

Often the single minutiae die were decisive in whatever conflict it was involved in.

[Troels]

Wait, you're complaining about a *hypothetical* problem?

Out of about ten scenes total, we didn't have minutiae in ~3 or 4, and in the rest, it failed to be decisive in no more than two cases, IIRC. And that was with only one audience member. So we thought, analysing afterwards, what'll it be like with three or four in the audience? So we started fiddling, as we mean to run Shock at a danish convention next week.

Yours, Troels

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

Ah! OK.

I'm perfectly happy with the likelihood of a single Minutia die. Those 5s and 6s make the Minutia die more powerful, though. If you don't want that, move the fulcra outward. The 3, 7, and 4, statistically speaking, keep the events more in the hands of the players.

Now, it comes down to luck pretty often. Shock: doesn't afford you a lot of control over the course of events of the story. That's because what's important is what you're *saying*, what you're fighting *about*, rather than whether or not you win.

Try it with the tie rule mentioned elsewhere. Let me know how it goes! (That is, all tied Minutia dice are taken off the table.)

[Greis]

Just out of curiosity, doesn't it sort of go against the idea of the fulcrum if you pick your abilities at extreme end of the scale?

I sort of consider the two sides of the fulcra as two viable strategies, one which is favored by my character, and one which isnt', but if I need to pick abilities at the extreme end (like a 3 or 4), then the likelyhood of succeeding at anything with least favored is close to nil.

If this is purpose, then my strategy seems to be wether or not I want to succeed at anything - in the beginning of the game I might want to increase my features through defeat, hence choosing to roll less than 3, and later in the game I might want a happy end, hence choosing to roll above 3 with huge pool of dice.

Well, I know this all speculative, but I hope you could clarify some the intentions and strategies, this I wasn't aware of the importance of chance and luck in Shock. This is my first time with the 1.1-rules, and the permanent presence of the minutiae die was quite a change from the occasional minutiae die under the 1.0 rules.

[TempvsMortis]

I think the "tied dice cancel" rule would work, but I think that is a legitimate point that with enough spectators the chance of even one of them having a 4 increases. Maybe a voting system could work, where only one die is rolled, and then all of (or a majority of) the spectators have to decide what side that die affects. A system could probably be used to break ties. Or, the first conflict is assigned to one spectator, and then ever conflict after that is passed clockwise to the next spectator, this way still only one die is rolled, but everyone still gets to have a hand in affecting outcomes, but because it's turn based no-one steps on each other's toes.

Just suggestions.

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

Greis, the minutia rules are unchanged from 1.0, except that you don't reroll them. Their impact has been reduced. The tying dice rule will further reduce them.

Keep in mind that the biggest influence over events is what the Protag players do. If it plays to the sympathies and senses of humor of the Audience, you're more likely to succeed by far.

TempvsMortis, (What's your real name? I can't keep typing that...) voting is right out. Shock:s rules are all about moving absolute authority (and therefore authorial voice). The whole point of Minutiæ is that the hold the Protagonists have on their world is tenuous. Making it subject to committee is exactly contrary to the fundamental design of the game.

[TempvsMortis]

Call me William then. And I also suggested a turn based method remember? Where authority is absolute, but passed around.

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

There can be, max, three specators. I don't think it really matters. Most of the time there's one or two.

[TempvsMortis]

I've actually been wondering this then: if there's supposed to be max 5 players, then how come the grid has five issue and five shock slots? Shouldn't it be four, because with five players the most you could have is four issues and a shock.