[Witch Trails] Strange Fruit

[Marshall Burns]

Witch Trails:  the Invisible History of the American West is a game about the Hex Rangers, a secret militia formed to drive out angry spirits and other supernatural threats from the American wilds.  It's an invisible history, not an alternate one, in that all the events of U.S. history all still happen--it's just that there's this conflict going on behind the scenes that they don't tell you about in the books.  Basically, as it's been pointed out to me, X-Files in the Old West.  But I kinda prefer to think of it as The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly meets "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."

THE SYSTEM
The conflict resolution system uses playing cards and a betting mechanic similar to poker; I've posted about it some in First Thoughts here but there's been several changes to it.  The framework's based on the classic spaghetti Western shoot-out, with the tense, gradual buildup followed by the quick, nasty, conclusion -- but it can be applied to all sorts of conflicts.  Basically, it works this way:

1.  ANTE:  when you wanna do something that someone else doesn't want you to do, you gotta make an Ante.  You narrate your character's action and move some chips (Resource representing ammo, stamina, provisions, and cash all rolled into one) into the Pot.  The number of Chips depends on the size of the action; sometimes the Ante's just a certain look (1 chip), sometimes it's pulling a gun and putting it in someone's face (10 chips).  If the other guy calls your Ante (matches the bet), it goes to the next phase.

2.  DRAW:  Everybody gets one card.  If any of the characters' traits (Temperament, Possessions, and Specialties) are relevant considering the Ante actions, extra cards are dealt; a beneficial trait give you more cards, a detrimental trait gives your opponent more cards.  You can make your actions such that your opponent's detrimental traits become relevant; i.e., you can use their weakness against them.

3.  ESCALATION:  This is the build-up to the big finish of the conflict.    In the Escalation, players go around in turn betting.  Every Raise is accompanied by an action that escalates the stakes of the situation somehow, and the size of the Raise (1-10) is contingent on the size of the action, much like the Ante.  Every Call (matching a Raise) is standing up to an opponent's Raise, or supporting an ally's Raise.  Every Check (deferring your turn without betting, only when you're even with the bets) is a "wait-and-see" sorta thing.  Every Fold (forfeiting because the stakes are gettin' too high) is a duck-for-cover or get-the-hell-outta-Dodge sorta thing.  If any traits become relevant, more cards are dealt out as above.  When the bets square, the Escalation ends.

4.  SHOWDOWN:  This is where everybody picks ONE card from their hand, lays it face-down, and describes their intent in turn (starting with the initiator of the conflict).  The suit of the card delimits the action you can take by referencing one of the 5 attributes: 

hearts - Vigor - strength, toughness, vitality
spades - Wits - intelligence, quick thinking, perception
diamonds - Touch - dexterity and grace; as in, "He's got the touch"
clubs - Sand - guts, composure, sheer piss 'n vinegar
jokers - Luck - just plain ol' dumb luck.

Cards are revealed simultaneously, and highest card wins.  Aces are higher than Kings, and Jokers are higher than anything.

5.  TROUBLE:  this is where the trouble starts happening.  The person with the winning card makes the call as to whose actions succeed and whose do not.  Furthermore, they decide how the Trouble (negative effects) is gonna be doled out, based on the stakes in the pot.  See, the size of the pot represents how far things have escalated, and now that much Trouble must happen; things have gotten that far, there's no softenin' it up.  Stakes are converted to Trouble like this:

Momentary Trouble lasts for the immediate moment (up through any immediately following resolution, basically); 1 "rank" of Trouble costs 1 point of Stakes.
Transient Trouble lasts until there's a break in the action; 1 Trouble : 3 Stakes
Lasting Trouble lasts until you do something to get rid of it; 1 Trouble : 5 Stakes
Permanent Trouble lasts forever'n ever, amen.  1 Trouble : 10 Stakes
Critical Trouble lasts until you fix it, but poses an immediate threat* to someone's life, sanity, and/or immortal soul.  It's 1 Trouble : 10 Stakes, + 50 Stakes fer humans or less for critters (depending on the size of the critter).

Trouble ranks cap at 5.  Trouble works just like detrimental traits:  gives your opponent cards.  Now, once the winner has allocated the Trouble, the losers still get some say in things.  They can spend Luck points to negate an amount of Trouble ("Luckily the bullet was stopped by my whiskey flask" or whatever), OR they can use their attribute indicated by their card to inflict some independent Trouble on someone (based on the attribute's value; they ran from 1-5 in the playtest).

There's another rule for having two pots, one of which goes to the high card and one of which goes to the low card, and you can bet into whichever one you want.  But I didn't use it in this playtest, except when ties come up (when there's a tie, the stakes are split evenly between the two pots, then there's another pass through the system, starting at the Draw).

*Critical Trouble is immediately followed by a Risk Resolution, which is used to resolve tasks that are not opposed by characters but pose a risk to someone or something; the risk is measured in chips, and you can "buy off" part or all of it with your own chips.  If there's Risk left, it goes to cards between the acting character(s) and the Dealer (GM), without Escalation; high card wins, un-paid Risk is doled out as Trouble according to the winner's wishes.

THE PLAYTEST
This was the second playtest for this game; the first one used the original rules as seen in the First Thoughts post.  The main problem with them was that there was no clear system for converting Stakes to Trouble, and only I understood the conversion.  Also, Stephen from my group GMed the first playtest, which was astoundingly revealing of the game's flaws so far, but I GMed this one.  Partially because I wanted to try it, and partially because it was kinda short notice, and we play it Sim (of the High Concept variety), which of course requires some degree of scenario planning.

The group playing was my regular group:  myself, Stephen, and Courtney.  Stephen's character, Corwin, was a lawman before he was a Hex Ranger.  He had "Appear harmless" and "Quick-draw" as Specialties.  Stephen also declared a huge list of Possessions (all of which have a good trait and a bad trait, by the way; they don't have to balance, there just has to be somethin' good and somethin' bad about 'em); it was kinda funny.  Courtney's character, Poise, was the heiress of an old family that had been involved in the dark arts since the immigrated to America.  She had a pendant around her neck that contained a spirit.  Spells were laid over the pendant such that the spirit could be forced to emit a shielding light on command.  She also had an albino raccoon as an animal familiar.
(Have I mentioned that all Hex Rangers are trained in the magical arts, whether they were familiar with them beforehand or not?  Well, they are.  And also trainted in shootin', ridin', and survivin' in the wilderness)

Character creation is pretty much laissez-faire, by the way.  You have 10 points to go between the 5 attributes, but when it comes to the traits you can have whatever you want. Oh, but there's a rank limit 1-5 on Temperament and Possessions, 1-3 on Specialties -- because it seems to me that personality traits and the nature of equipment (whether trusty or squirrelly) is more important in the movies than skill.

Corwin and Poise were on a patrol mission in Mississippi; the spirit profile in the area was low because of how much was settled, but you cain't be too careful.  They were on their way to a small town called Poplar when they were attacked by a swamp gator, so I could give 'em a sample conflict to get used to the rules.  There was some confusion, 'cause it's an unusual system, but once they got the hang of it (several conflicts into the scenario) things went pretty smoothly.  The main problem is that it was their instinct to "try" to do things during the Escalation; it took a while before I hit upon the right phrasing (it was "this bit is just the build-up to the big finish") to make it click.

When they get to town, they start casing the place for any signs of supernatural activity.  They discover several pieces of information:  some of the swamp's been drained to make room for an orchard; the orchard's harvest is ready and the mayor's puttin' on a Fruit Fair in two days to celebrate this boost to the town's economy, complete with a pie contest; and Emily Barker done went crazy two days ago and ate her boyfriend.  The upshot of it is, they investigate by questioning the locals and performing a sympathetic ritual with Emily's hair and a piece of her dress in the blood-soaked room where the eating happened, and they have a vision revealing that she ate a peach shortly before going crazy, followed by a vision of people hanging upside-down from the branches of a peach tree, jugulars cut, bleeding on the roots.  The first vision also featured a creepy local named Gil Cutter, who used to be sweet on Emily before she got engaged to Joey Ransom (who she ate), and also used to own the land that was flooded to make room for the orchards, at least until the bank foreclosed on it and those newcomers came and set up their durned orchards.

So, clearly, the fruit was cursed or possessed in some way, and whoever eats it becomes a horrible, bloodthirsty, inhuman thing like Emily did.  And the Fruit Fair is tomorrow by now.  Now, at this point, they started making plans to figure out how they could destroy the orchard, thinking that the tainted fruit came from the orchard.  In my planning, only one tree was tainted, and it was on Gil Cutter's land; he had made a deal with angry spirits for them to both have their revenge, by entering a sinister peach pie in the contest at the Fair.  I really liked the players' idea, that it was the whole frickin' orchard, but I couldn't figure out how Gil (the only one with the motive) would get away with draining people's blood all over the orchard's trees, especially considering that the victims used for blood were all workers from the orchards.  So I had to keep with my prepped idea.  I felt kind of bad about this, because the players were having a lot of fun (A) investigating and (B) plotting the destruction of the orchard (they had all kinds of freaky magical ideas for how to do it).  So I just said, "Okay, guys, I'm starting to feel bad about this..." and Stephen took the hint and said, "Okay, well, let's wait a minute.  Maybe it's just one tree.  Let's go see Gil first like we planned and then decide what to do."

At Gil's, they get into a conflict right away because they catch him red-handed with a horrible bloodfruit tree on his land just like the one in their vision, and you could see the victims' faces on the peaches, reflecting in the moonlight.  Gil set loose two huge swamp gators fed on the bloodfruit (giving them "The hunger!" for 5, plus their gatory traits) [ante 10] and then ran inside the house [fold] on his next turn.  The PCs killed the gators, barely, and it was a lucky thing too because the stakes were upwards of 80.  Poise went to burn the tree while Corwin tried to catch up with Gil, who had run out the back of the house into the swamp.  As soon as Poise set fire to the tree, however, it started screaming and thrashing around, and reaching for her with its roots.  She lost the conflict, and the tree was constricting her in its roots.  Corwin heard the noise and came to help.  They managed to defeat the tree in a second conflict, then they investigated the house, where they found signs that a peach pie had recently been made.  And the Fruit Fair was tomorrow!

They ended up having to steal all the peach pies, as there were several and they labeled by numbers instead of names.  They also had to kidnap the reverend, who had eaten some of the peach pies, and they weren't sure if he had eaten the tainted one.  So they tied him to a post while they burnt the pies; the tainted one screamed.  And that's when Gil showed up, madder'n a hornet, 'cause they done gone and ruined his revenge, brandishin' a pair of pruning shears and a gun [ante 5].  Poise and Corwin were both "in," of course.  Poise raised with a thrown knife, but Gil just took it [call] and spit out a peach pit; he'd eaten of the strange fruit [raise 10]!  Gil came chargin' at 'em, taking bullets like bee stings.  Corwin won the conflict, and did the classic William Shatner judo flip (enhanced with a blade concealed in the toe of Corwin's boot) and sent Gil into the bonfire, where he burned up with the last of the strange fruit. 

The reverend was okay, so they reclaimed the whip they tied him with and rode off down the road to continue their mission.

The last scene, as suggested by Stephen, was poor Emily Barker, hanged from a tree for the murder she committed, swaying in the breeze... and a drop of blood falling from her nose to the roots of the tree below.

SO, GENERAL THOUGHTS
We all had fun; it was a nice, creepy, actiony, investigatey adventure.  A good 'n horrible Situation, planned but somewhat flexible (f'rinstance, I had no idea whether Gil would actually get away from Corwin at the shack, or how the Fruit Fair would end up; I just responded to what the players did), plus loads of tasty Color.  All the conflicts were violent, which kinda disappoints me as I want to test how well the system works for social conflict (I anticipate it'll work just fine, but you can't be too sure).  Stephen said that he particularly enjoyed the investigative side of it, especially when he started factoring it in with the magical stuff.

The role of the point-values on Vigor, Wits, Touch, and Sand was pretty much ineffectual, but I worry that increasing their value ranges would disempower the winner of a conflict too much.  I'm toying with a couple of other ways to handle 'em:

1.  Rank 'em 10, J, Q, K, or A, determining the highest card that character can play in that suit.
2.  Don't rank 'em at all, don't even make 'em stats, just suits
3.  Don't rank 'em at all, make them categories for traits (and remove Specialties as redundant in this scheme)

I don't know which one I like best.

Stakes to Trouble conversion went pretty well, thank goodness.

I also want to factor relationships into the traits somehow, but I don't know what to call 'em to keep with the color; "relationships" isn't a very Westerny term.

Oh, and I gotta make some acknowledgments:
The whole poker mechanic would have never occurred to me if not for Dogs in the Vineyard, so I gotta say thanks to Vincent.
The point values and durations of Trouble would have never occurred to me if not for James (jag)'s posts in my "Rustbelt: Cruel Cargo" thread, so I gotta say thanks to James.

-Marshall

[jag]

As you know, i love the setting.  It keeps the gritty feeling of the westerns, with a nice and subtle amount of the paranormal.  I'm glad to see it playtested so well!

You also know i'm not as big a fan of the 'highest card' mechanic.  I'm finally able to articulate why not; it's a theoretical objection, so i'm interested as to whether playtesting puts my fears to rest or suggests they may be valid.

The problem is one of maxing out.  It's not unlikely that you can draw an Ace or other high card with one card, and if you can draw multiple it gets more likely quickly.  Ie, the probability of drawing a King or Ace in N cards is 1-(6/7)^N, which evolves like this:

Code Select Expand


N  |  P
========
1  | .14
2  | .27
3  | .37
4  | .46
5  | .54


So this means that with the initial draw, a trait, and some bluffing, you have over a 50% chance of having a really really high card.  (and a 31% chance of having the highest, an Ace!)  I have a feeling that a lot of conflicts would involve two or more people sitting on aces really fast, and bluffing is only interesting if people think the other guy might have a higher card than them.

In poker, bluffing is awesome because you basically never have the best hand.  It's always possible, however unlikely, that someone else has a royal flush (more likely a full house which will still beat the flush that is making you so confident).  But once several people have the best hand possible, the bidding is going to be weird.

Did any of this pop up at all in your playtest?

Also, wrt your alternatives for using stats:
1. The first seems problematic, since with maxing out not being able to draw higher than a J will seriously hamper your ability to win.  It may be since anyone can contest with any stat, this isn't as bad as i fear.
2. I personally am not a fan of the second, although it might work fine. I like my characters to have nice descriptive
traits/abilities (ie, i get a lot out of viewing my character as full of grit and vinegar, and having that have mechanical effects).
3. I have to admit i'm not sure how your third option would work mechanically.  I play a King of Hearts, is my victory still described in terms of Vigor?  How would that interact with a Trait which might or might not completely overlap with that?  To the extent that i'm confused, i'm not a big fan of it.  I love that while you might have an Ace of Hearts but instead choose to play a Queen of Diamonds, just because your Touch is so good.

In trying to mull over the mechanic and get suggestions, the one that i keep coming back to (and i think i might have told you before) is this:

1. You draw one card to start, get cards from traits and raising as normal.  You can never have more than 5 cards in your hand.  Perhaps additional raises let you discard and draw?
2. In addition to those options, you can invoke a stat (with appropriate description that shows off your sand, etc).  Doing this allows you to discard up to the stat's value in cards that aren't of the suit of the stat, and draw new ones. 
3. Winning condition is highest card, beaten by a pair, beaten by a three-of-a-kind, beaten by a straight of three (need to check the probabilities there), beaten by... basically, take poker hands, with possible variants like three-long straights.  This way, more cards also unlocks better hands, and other people might well have a better hand than your ace, so bluffing is nerve-wracking again.
4. Maybe restrict what sort of hand you can lay down with the stat you invoked, if any?

I'm not really happy with my suggested mechanic (can you invoke multiple stats?  Why not just come up with some description for each of your stats?  Somehow i think invoking a stat should choose a direction you go, so that it gives information as to what sort of hand you can lay down), but it might be a direction to start thinking and permuting.

james

[Marshall Burns]

Y'know, we did have a problem in some of the larger conflicts, where everyone had a lot of cards, that it turned into an "ace and joker" contest.  This made attribute schema #1 appeal to me, and we tested it last night.  There weren't very many conflicts this time, so it was hard to tell how well it works.

Stephen came up with an interesting idea:  play a 5-card poker hand, best hand wins, and the high card in it indicates whether the action is based on Vigor, Wits, Touch, or Sand.  If you combine this with attribute schema #1, you still have the ability to "rate" your character, and that rating still has an impact on things, but having a J doesn't cripple you.  However, the precise way we did stats last night was to just set one to Jack, one to Queen, one to King, one to Ace (with Luck being a flat 5 for everyone); if you do that with poker hands, you will never be able to play a pair of Aces.  But if the default value for the stats is a 10, with default Luck at, say, 10, and you take points from Luck during chargen to bump the others up a card, you could have two Aces, or three Kings.

The structure of the system is great so far, producing cinematic conflict sequences every time, but the numerics of it are still gonna take some wranglin'.

-Marshall