[Rustbelt] A maiden in distress - on fire

[Marshall Burns]

Short answer: No. Mechanics cannot make up for investment.

Yeah, I was afraid of that.  And, short of that, I can't think of ways to improve the Psyche mechanics.

And, yes, this game Definitely delivers on the Mad-Max gritty ass-kicking.  Which is always cool, but... Well, I guess I could resign myself to the game being "about" that sometimes.  It's just that I'm hungry for the soul-sucking.

Also:  I get Lines and Veils, but I have only a vague grasp of "I Will Not Abandon You" and "No One Gets Hurt."  Is there a thread or blog post or something that goes into detail on those? I've been looking for one but no luck so far.

[Lance D. Allen]

After a little searching, I found this: http://www.fairgame-rpgs.com/comment.php?entry=32

It appears to be the original post about I Will Not Abandon You. I don't know if you've read this, but it appears to me to be a pretty good discussion of the concepts of IWNAY and NGH play, as well as talking about another, similar, type of play To the Pain.

Especially pertinent, I think, is the portion at the bottom of the original post, talking about the design considerations of IWNAY play.

Something that might also be of interest, one of Meg Baker's first RPG Theory essays: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=16661.0
She discusses ritual and gaming, which is an utterly fascinating concept to me, especially in how she discusses creating a separate, "safe" place in which play occurs.

[Marshall Burns]

Ooh, this is good stuff.  It puts me in mind of something that happened when I was writing stories about the Rustbelt:  during the process of writing the particular stories that are now my favorites, I scared myself.  I don't mean that the stories were particularly scary, but that they hit some personal buttons and that I had to realize *I* just thought of that shit, and that scared me.  Reading them might not even push someone else's buttons, and reading them doesn't push MY buttons; WRITING them did.  But I pressed on, and now they're my favorites.

(That piece about Rosenstone in the "Character Dynamics" chapter of the latest draft is excerpted from those stories, and it's one of the bits that scared me when I wrote it.)

[Krippler]

(I also plan to make the premise more immediate and real by illustrating the rules entirely with photographs.  I am surrounded in real life by stuff that looks like it came out of the Rustbelt.)

Some characters just doesn't get pickpocketed, that is their flavor.

Here's a question:  did the players find it "weird" to use Author and Director Stances?  I deliberately designed the mechanics to encourage them, Author especially, while discouraging Actor Stance (I don't mind it here-and-there, but people who stay in Actor Stance all the time scare me); from what I can gather from your accounts, it works.  Are they comfortable with it?

Yes they seem to be. Some of them weren't during our TMW and certainly weren't earlier when I tried having them play large political figures each with secret agendas and relationships to each other planning the civil war in which the player characters were pawns. They haven't used Director Stance yet if it is what I think it is (setting a scene) since I tend to get too excited when they take innitiative and set the scene for them (Benistos speech on the walkway).

This guy takes awesome photgraphies, I use them as inspiration to places or just to fill my head with cool settings I can imagine later on. I bet you can use some if you ask him.
http://sleepycity.net/photos.php?PHPSESSID=9803a2968356a3bf03be28c6209187ce

I came up with another thing I can't do in Rustbelt: mechanic guided/exploited fighting styles. In Eon I had a guy who was a good brawler but a sucky archer, he used kicks high initial innitiative to gain innitiative and then shot him point blank with his shortbow, when he was so close he could even go for a headshot without much difficulty and the risk for counter attack was low unless the other guy had a shortsword or fast weapon. I find those things cool, when you use the games internal logic to create something. I don't miss it terribly though.

[Marshall Burns]

Wilmer,
You mentioned a guy using the Push to make a bullet hit him in the arm for less damage; if he edited the path of the bullet, then it was Director Stance.  Basically, any time you control aspects of the situation separate from your character, you're in Director Stance.

I'm glad they're comfortable with the mechanics and they're implications.  That is just too cool.

I came up with another thing I can't do in Rustbelt: mechanic guided/exploited fighting styles.

That sort of thing is deliberately omitted
Sure, it's fun to use the logicalities of the system to full advantage, but the actual fictional content that sort of thing creates is just inappropriate for the Rustbelt's general aestethic.  Which is probably why you don't particularly miss it.