[Kagematsu] GenCon, Thursday night

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

We gathered at the Embassy Suites in the time-honored tradition to playtest the game, including Danielle Lewon (the designer), Anna Kreider, Darcy Burgess, and me. Curiously, a 50-50 male-female group, all of us married, none of us to one another. I can't speak for the others, but for me, this mix permitted strong and honest content, especially the ability to shared and understand it, and to use it to build upon from character to character, without innuendo or tensions among us as people. Or more accurately, without concern that such things might be present and therefore causing self-inhibitory uncertainty. Everything emotionally-adult was in there, despite almost no visually-explicit content or language, with all of us engaged and breathing it in from one another to become fuel for more.

Darcy, Danielle, and Anna, I'm interested in your thoughts about our table dynamic. I don't know whether you agree or disagree, or whether my phrasing seems on or off, so maybe a plurality of voices is what's needed.

Most people reading this probably know already, but Kagematsu (the title) is also a male character's name, a wandering ronin during, well, Kurosawa-movie times. He comes to a village that is facing some kind of looming threat. The character must be played by a woman; this player has some GM-ey responsibilities, but could also be considered to be a player (of a character) with special judgmental tasks. Anyway, everyone else plays a woman of the village who influences him to stay and help the village. Tactics vary widely, and every game will be very different based on how the primary player decides to describe and characterize Kagematsu, and what sort of women the other players choose to play. I especially appreciate that character creation is not consensual; when Kagematsu is defined, the others simply have to deal with it, and the same for everyone else.

In our case, Anna played Kagematsu and decided that he was a young, striking, cleanly, and all-round textbook shiny samurai. This raised the interesting question of why in the world he was a ronin for later in play, and also, apparently, prompted the rest of us to create characters that contrasted with him. For instance, if one of us had made up the innocent village beauty, dressed in her best and presenting impeccable manners, it would have been a different story entirely. Instead, all three women characters were widows with a fair piece of life-experience under their belts, aged at 30 (Danielle's character), 40-ish (mine), and late 50s or early 60s for Darcy's. Even better, they differed greatly in values and approach. Danielle's character was determined and pragmatic, protecting her emotions; mine was sensual, a little lonely, and contemplative; and Darcy's was a brilliant mix of dotty and almost cruelly insightful. A formidable bunch. I sort of felt sorry for the poor guy at the outset, and as it turned out, I wasn't wrong, but not how I might have expected.

In a nutshell, a series of resisted overtures established Kagematsu to be practically pathologically impervious to the mid-level overtures. We started with some successes here and there, with failures being mild or inconsequential as he settled into the routine of his stay at the village. But then as the women became more intrusive, Anna started rolling dice like a beast, particularly against Darcy's character, and the bastard resisted us over and over! He was starting to look untouchable ... which led to my scene at the haunting and enticing pool up in the hills, where (naughty fellow) he'd already stolen a glance at my character bathing.

I'm not describing this correctly, actually. It wasn't jokey and naughty at all. I've got to give Anna and the other players all the credit for the success of this scene. In the lead-up to it, instead of playing Kagematsu as simply virtuous, Anna showed again and again how each encounter struck him centrally, but somehow he managed to deny or override the impulse to provide a smile or to share whatever. The depth of the appeals from Darcy's and Danielle's characters, including how the former drifted into daydreams about her life with her dead husband and projected them onto Kagematsu, was heart-wrenching. So through the victorious rolls and through Anna's portrayal of the man's stress, it became clear that his glossy surface was concealing something truly extreme in his past. (As an aside, all three dead husbands were very present in the story, for me, whether through memories or a grave or the "shape" of an absence.)

I'll let someone else describe the terrible/profound scenes with the oldest woman, which as I saw it attested to the loss and lack of choices for women in this village far more than any heavy-handed exposition could have done. When she failed even to "make a lasting impression" on Kagematsu, that was practically the last straw - I think the pack of us were about ready to strangle him. I was also almost traumatized by the scene in which Danielle's character, hitherto a solid rock regarding her family, betrayed her poor little daughter in a desperate attempt to get even a minor indication of Kagematsu's favor, thus winning half the battle by losing the first half ... except that she didn't win the roll anyway.

So my turn came around, and Anna provided what we all really needed to see - that Kagematsu emerged from these two encounters boiling with stress, making a beeline for my character's favorite pond. I went for one of the biggest goals, just short of extracting the crucial promise to help - physical seduction. And damn it over and over, I rolled rotten, and then started blazing through every desperation option in the book. The other players, including Anna, cheered me on at every step - you never saw four people want a fictional character to get laid so bad. In doing so, I sequentially destroyed my character's considerable self-esteem - she began with a slightly wicked but essentially honest and sensual desire, but ended by weeping, stripping, knocking him in the pool, even bribing him with her offer of sex. And after a string of additional dice with 1's (not adding much to her total) and 6's (which are discarded), and despite cries of frustration from everybody which bordered on actual physicality ... she still failed. It was a moment of almost existential horror; it reminded me of the final scenes in Unforgiven - her soul was gone, she'd spent it all, and she was left with nothing.

Anna role-played it to the hilt. Kagematsu was just about bonkers with desire and unexplained inhibition as he began the next scene. That's when Darcy's character (lucid for once) finally cracked him with "share a secret." So armed with all the events so far, Anna revealed Kagematsu's utterly screwed-up, utterly vulnerable past. It wasn't perverted or anything, just a tragic but pointed story of a very young man's attraction to his daimyo's wife that destroyed several people's lives and remained unrequited. Basically, this was a guy who shouldn't even be in the same county with even one experienced woman who wants something from him, let alone three such women in close proximity.

The women were not villains. They actually all did their best to reach Kagematsu as a person, not just as an object. However, in our need to save the village and our willingness to put ourselves forward toward him at some risk, we broke him like a dry stick. All that gloss and imperviousness of previous scenes were revealed to be a brittle shell, hiding not passion but pain. It was like watching a sea mammal get drawn up to the side of the boat, and Danielle harpooned him right as he lay there all exposed and hurting, to get the promise to save the village.

Which all leads me to discuss the system, and to say that we really did have a shot at influencing him more in the earlier rolls, so the results were wide open. This is a game in which a certain degree of failed overtures is likely, but what matters is their distribution. It affects not only the rolling-on of events, but also the way that back-story for the samurai and context for the women get generated. In our case, having them hit in a string just after the first couple of scenes resulted in a brilliant and coherent chain of events, both emotionally and logistically, which I strongly doubt that I, at least, could have generated or helped to generate in any other way. I think the probabilities of the dice mechanics, including the desperation rules, are absolutely spot-on exactly where they need to be.

The basic rolls are easy to understand and integrated with scene framing. You pick one of the Affections to seek from Kagematsu; the Kagematsu player frames him into a scene that seems right for that (whether appropriate or wildly inappropriate); you state how your character puts herself into his path in that location. Then the role-playing and dice do their thing: given that specific Affection, you roll either Charm or Innocence and the Kagematsu player rolls the dice listed. There are several numbers involved, but in a nutshell, the more rolls you win, the more chance there is for Kagematsu to defend the village successfully.

The new Desperation rules are fantastic. On a failed roll, you can gain another die to add to your total by performing an action listed next to the Affection. More interestingly, there are two (bribe or threaten) which can be utilized via any Affection, and once any Affection is attempted, it's "dark side" is available as a Desperation move for any later Affection. I'm not sure if I'm describing it well enough, but you use up Affections as you go, successful or not, but the Desperation versions remain as options for additional dice upon failing later Affection rolls. Damn. Still not describing it well. Anyway, it's cool - practically no matter what, the women's Desperation (i.e. their potential to do desperate things) increases as time goes by.

How did our story end? Despite, again, a certain shot at success, Kagematsu failed. The bandits arrived. He positioned himself advantageously and shot arrows at them, classically and perfectly, nailing them one by one ... but they were too many and simply trampled him without striking a blow. They burned the village to the ground.

One of my favorite samurai films is called Onibatsu, which I can't describe but only recommend. I think this story was, shockingly, of that calibre, and I place the credit for that squarely on the game's system and our shared willingness to be present (mindfully speaking) together while using it.

Now for playtesting comments.

1. We ran into problems with some rules that were under deliberate playtest at the time, concerning ties. It's actually two issues: (1) the numerical one, which is to say, who wins on a tie; and (2) the current rule that a woman can shift a tie to her favor by betraying one of her favorite people/places/things (she has two). I think these can be dealt with separately. First, eliminate numerical ties by saying the woman's roll has to beat Kagematsu's. Second, do keep the favorites and the possibility of betraying them, but use that rule for some other thing in play. I suggest an automatic victory! And let Pity/Love fall where it may on that basis.

2. I'm not too sure about the turn order that we arrived at during play. It does seem right that everyone should get a chance per round, but also that keeping a strict order by lowest-Hope tends to keep everyone abreast for no particular reason. In other words, it's a way, but no more, and it may impose over-rigidity. The most wide-open technique would be to say "everyone gets one 'go' during a round, distributed as decided in the moment at the time," but I also concede that our method did not cause any problems and established a certain reliability in that we knew "where we stood" in the sequences of play. I don't know if that would be too rigid with more players, which would necessarily entail more waiting, which I find less enjoyable in an entirely-ordered context. I'm not sure about this yet but it bears thinking about.

The next two are pretty speculative, not derived from any observed issue during play.

3. On a related point, the scene construction rules might allow opening up so that two or more women are involved. By involved, I only mean present in the scene, with no change to the mechanics. Regarding rolls, the same order-of-go can be maintained, but with however many of the women in the scene and hence with more chances of interactions. Let me be clear, if I can ... if it's Darcy's "go," and if both our characters are in the scene, all the Affection and dice rules are his. But I can say what my character is doing and role-playing can involve all of us. If my "go" is next, and after I name my Affection to be attempted, the Kagematsu player may decide to maintain the scene as currently constructed as the "new" frame. Or something like that.

4. To take that to the furthest extreme, one might even posit interlude scenes that permit two women to interact without Kagematsu around, probably with no rolling or mechanics-based conflicts. I would very much like to have seen what my and Danielle's characters might have had to say to one another, for instance. If those get included, I suggest keeping this to a minimum, specifically that everyone gets to initiate one of these only once during the whole game. So you might be in more than one, but you can't start more than one.

Best, Ron

[Ron Edwards]

Oh yeah! I also had some thoughts on the Threat and how it Looms.

1. The current rules task the Kagematsu player with defining the Threat. I struggled with this a little. Certainly the women have had the Threat imposed upon them externally, but in the context of the scenario, they are more familiar with it than the ronin. If the experience of making/receiving it is to be linked with the SIS in any way, then it fits better for me if the women players make it up, "in Kagematsu's face" as it were.

However, considering that the Threat is a kind of third corner of a triangle in the scenario and affects the women and Kagematsu almost equally, then perhaps it should be made up consensually.

Or, to go out on a limb, it might simply be rolled up from a table. I see these two options as the most functional extremes, either one being preferable to a murky middle.

2. As for how the Threat Looms during play, analogous to The Horror Revealed in My Life with Master, I suggest that we didn't get much mileage out of it in our game, and that was with a lot of rolling going on. Either three 6's were never rolled, or it was not really cognitively accessible - I certainly paid no attention to it in our attenuated disaster-in-the-pond scene, for instance.

The Kagematsu player actually has a hell of a lot of handling time on her plate. She rolls, eliminates the 6's, adds up, subtracts the Love for this particular woman, and compares it to the other player's value, and that value may well change through several iterations. I know that doing this twenty or thirty times would drive any secondary/layered thing to check clean out of my head. It's also annoying to check constantly for something that barely ever happens.

I'm inclined to think that the Looming Threat might do better as a corollary to a Betrayal of a favored thing. So when such a betrayal occurs, a Looming Threat follows. This puts some nice mechanical teeth into choosing the benefit of Betrayal, as the Threat goes up by 1.

Best, Ron

[Eero Tuovinen]

Fascinating. The game seems to be shaping up just as well as I imagined it would.

[Darcy Burgess]

Hi,

I've got some very visceral, gut-level reactions to our game that I'm still processing.  I'll be back with those as soon as possible.

However, Ron raises some great points regarding a few playtesting issues for which I have some strong opinions and suggestions.

Regarding the turn-order (one "go" per turn, lowest Hope goes next), I found this to interact beautifully, as played, with the menu of potential conflicts and Desperations that make up the bulk of the character sheet.  Knowing how far off my turn was allowed me the freedom to integrate what was happening in the SIS (say, while Danielle was taking a whack at the shiny Ronin) with a loose "plan" I was developing for my turn.  More on that plan in a minute.  I guess what I'm saying is that for my particular play style, the positives of that specific rule far outweighed any negatives.  That little bit of pressure of knowing when you've got to go is just right.

The "plan".  This is, for me, the highlight of the game.  So, when it's my turn, I look down at the menu.  I gaze up and down at the potential conflicts, and more often than not, I'm confounded as to which one to choose.  Maybe what's just gone on in the SIS helps me choose, maybe not.  I'm not saying that the individual items are boring; the issue is that they're all really interesting.  This makes the choice damned hard.

Here's the genius part.  You shift your gaze 2 inches to the right, and the solution presents itself.  Can't decide between "a roll in the hay" and "a shared secret"?  Well, let your desperations make your mind up for you.  If "question Kagematsu's honor" is over there, well, that makes the choice easy.  Elsewhere, I've called Kagematsu a "stealth crunch" game.  This is what I'm talking about.

Finally, the handling time for the Kagematsu player.  Here's a proposal that may solve it.  Put a little chart on the Kagematsu sheet.  Something Like:

Love   Drop
0-2     sixes
3-4     ones & sixes
5-6     twos & sixes
7+      threes & sixes

Essentially, as your love for a given townswoman escalates, you drop more and more valuable dice from your roll.  Cuts down on a lot of math.

Cheers,
Darcy

[Ron Edwards]

Darcy, pretty please, post about playing your character. She was one of the most ambitious character concepts that I can imagine, both in general and in the context of this particular game.

Best, Ron

[Anna Kreider]

First off, let me say that Kagematsu is one of the things that I am excited about for next year. It was a little rough around the edges in regards to some of the rules, but holy crap was it a lot of fun. I decided to see how straight I could play Kagematsu, and how long it would take the women of the village to break him of his by-the-book ways. What emerged was an amazing story about a samurai with an almost superhuman discipline, someone who fell from grace through no real fault of his own and still managed to hold on to his dignity.

As I mentioned to Ron, I thought it was very interesting that we were playing sexualized characters in some pretty mature scenes. Especially between Kagematsu and Tsuya, Ron's character who was something of a temptress, there was a lot of sexual tension. But the game totally handled that without making it feel creepy. That's something I didn't expect, since just the thought of playing Bacchanal is enough to make me and my repressed upbringing sprint for cover.

I'm still very sad that Tsuya and Kagematsu didn't get to have a romance. I've never seen the dice reject a particular story outcome that strongly before.

More thoughts about being the Kagematsu player a bit later when I'm not so scattered.

[Ron Edwards]

"... managed to hold onto his dignity," that is, until he met us.

I liked my character a great deal. I saw her as a woman who had recovered from the death of her husband, although she missed him, and was straightforwardly no longer shy or conflicted about any aspect of herself or her body. That didn't mean she was oversexed or forward, but once she decided to sway the ronin (which is obligatory in that she was a player-character), she did so with some confidence. In some ways, it wasn't her overtures that were sexy, but the circumstances determining which Desperation rolls were made and how Kagematsu reacted.

Anna, I don't know if you read these threads:
[Bacchanal] GenCon demos and more
[Bacchanal] Three guys and a lot of wine
[Bacchanal] What, more?

My point of view in playing games like Kagematsu, especially with characters like Tsuya, was refined in the play-experiences I describe there, so I'd be very interested to see your take on my points there and how they did or didn't apply to your experience of Kagematsu.

Best, Ron

[Anna Kreider]

It's been a busy weekend. Okay, final thoughts.

Regarding being the Kagematsu player: I felt like I fumbled with the rolling part of the game. I had trouble finding how many dice I was supposed to be rolling, and the love/pity mechanic for modifying Kagematsu's rolls was really fiddly. I think Kagematsu either needs his own copy of the nifty table, or it would be great to actually codify that the rest of the players tell Kagematsu "here's how many dice you roll".

That being said, I love having the secret rolls. Watching you all go 'wow, I rolled like shit. If I succeeded, either Kagematsu rolled like shit too, or maybe he loves me!' was really cool. I mentioned it before, but I'd love to see some kind of folding Japanese-style screen. That would be pretty amazing.

Ron: I'm not sure what exactly you wanted me to respond to out of all that. So I'll just clarify that I am indeed a prude when it comes to sex in games - not because I think it shouldn't happen. I just had a rather repressed upbringing, so talking about sex in any context weirds me out. I consider it an awesome feature of Kagematsu that sexy things happened and it didn't break immersion for me. That's very cool.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Anna,

That's excellent, many thanks. I hope we've been able to indicate to Danielle how much power this game can generate, and the breadth of emotions that can be involved.

Best, Ron

[Nev the Deranged]

So, Danielle also ran a game of Kagematsu for myself and another guy. We had a great time, mostly exclaiming every time we threw desperation and rolled more 1s or 6s... over, and over, and over. When the dice hate you in this game, they REALLY hate you.

So, despite our best attempts, Kagematsu revealed himself a coward and left our village to be eaten by hungry spirits. The bastard.

The character sheets in the back are not good for photocopying due to the layout, and the old ones someone (Eero?) put together are nice, but I think the rules have changed slightly since then, so I took the liberty of throwing together some new ones. The first attempt isn't perfect, but it is functional. I have them in PDF, in case someone wants them, just email me. Or perhaps some of the folks who host my other sheets for download could put these up as well?

I may eventually make nicer looking ones, but for now these are better than the ones in the book, which have a spine in the middle of them. It is, after all, just an ashcan =P

D.

[Darcy Burgess]

Hello!

Phew...one bout of 4-yo scarlet fever, one bout of spousal strep throat...welcome back from GenCon!

So... a bit about playing my character (whose name I forget!)  I'd ask that folk poke and prod me a bit regarding specific in-SIS stuff, as I'm pretty terrible at remembering those things.  In other words, if you want to "look under the hood" of a specific moment that you remembered, you may have to remind me about it a bit.

Initially, the concept was "older lady who everyone respects (reason for respect unspoken)".  As Ron, Anna and Danielle can attest to, this concept quickly evolved into "whacky old crone who everyone respects (why the hell do they respect her so much?)".

In the moment, I chose an older character for two conscious reasons; playing someone advanced in years struck me as interesting (and potentially humourous), especially in the context of the game's conflict menu; I didn't feel comfortable playing a character that could drive in the direction of "sex kitten", and age seemed a good way to short-circuit this issue.

As scenes unfolded, the idea of having her lose her grip on reality set in.  I believe () that the opening barrage in this regard was the "introduction" scene where she drags a young boy before the magistrate, accusing him of burning down her home.

Here's something critical: the loopyness was my facile way of "sneaking up" on the real conflict, which was to get a formal introduction out of Kagematsu.  I knew that if I could rope the Ronin into my character's complaint against the boy, I'd probably get a rebuff (by means of introduction) from the magistrate.  This is an example of how powerfully the conflict menu interacts with the in-game situation to provoke strategic thinking in players.  I was strategizing about fictional content.  Stealth Crunch!

Once the loopyness was established, it wasn't much of a reach to start using it to plumb other depths.  Bringing her dead husband (and their apparently abusive relationship) into play via mistaken identity was yet another way for me to angle at getting into conflicts Kagematsu that didn't feel distasteful.  In stead, they ended up being creepy -- poor lady!

All of this is to say that I had no plan, and all of those choices were drawn out of me by both the conflict menu and the evolving situation (especially my desire to contrast her to Ron and Danielle's characters).

Another note about what was going on in my head: I wasn't really focused on the mystery of Kagematsu's fall.  I know that Ron was all over this from the word go (more or less), but it didn't grip me.  I haven't evaluated the totality of why yet (it certainly wasn't Anna's play -- I enjoyed interacting with her a great deal).

I said "...totality of why..." for a reason.  On my 15 hour drive home from Indy, I had a moment or two (!) to reflect on our game.  I've come to realize that our game drew some pretty powerful demons out of me.  My character and her husband were in facts homunculi for my mom and dad, and their stormy relationship.  Interestingly enough, I swapped the roles of "dominant" and "supplicant" for our game.

Cheers,
D

[Danielle Lewon]

Hi!

Thanks to Ron for starting this post, it was a great game and I appreciate your play at the time and your detailed wrap up here. And you're right the dice rules work very well and the desperation are a great addition to the game. They are one of the reasons why I wanted to get this game out there.

I have played Kagematsu quite a few times lately and through the past versions and there has never been a game that had as many failed rolls as that one on Thursday. Weird. I was concerned that there were not going to be enough opportunities to use the desperation dice and it is one of my ashcan follow up questions . However, in both the Thursday game and the Saturday game that Dave mentioned, multiple desperation were used for one affection roll. It was unexpected and amazing. Thinking about the pond scene that Ron described, it played like a drama movie from the 50s or 60s, a woman throwing every emotion into a scene. It was great. At one point, Ron wanted to use another desperation but among the few left he couldn't see how to use it in the scene. Someone else did and it went from bribing the poor guy to grabbing a rock and threatening him, if I remember that right.

The ties rule is new and I came up with it when I was writing the game so it had never been tested and in all the past games I had played, a tie had never happened. It was used once in the Thursday game and the Saturday game with some success, I think it worked well but perhaps needs more definition. Maybe it can be allowed if there is acquired hope to save what you had earned, but not used on a first roll. Something like that. That's why it's an ashcan I guess. And I don't want it to be called a "betrayal", that sounds too harsh, I think "disregard" is a better word.

When I think about game rules, I consider why they would work for the character. For example, I like the Lowest Hope Roles First rule because if a woman is trying to engage with Kagematsu and she hasn't done a lot but sees other women gaining the hope around here, she is going to got a bit desperate and seek him out next.
It may not be smooth but I don't think it's broken.

I really like the idea of more than one woman in a scene. I might have been tried in the really early version but not a rule. I'll think about how that can be implemented and recorded.

Right now I'm ok with the threat as it stands but only because of the Looming Shadow.  We talked about it on Thursday and I agree that is needs to be implemented differently. Ron suggested instead using the first rolled 6 and then 2 sixes for the next, and 3 sixes.  LS should be a way to describe the threat in play, giving it form. I tried it on Saturday, the first double 6's and then when Dave rolled 3 sixes in desperation rolls. The Threat there, a ghost, materialized by knocking down ancestor masks in the shrine where the scene was taking place. I'll throw that change into the errata and see how it goes.

Darcy, thanks for playing and the table for love point = dice removed is an interesting idea. I'll run it by those more math savvy than me and roll a few dice to see how it works out. We don't want to make it too easy or too difficult. And you're character stretched the idea behind getting a samurai to love you more than any other game and character yet.

I am indeed a prude when it comes to sex in games

Anna, Umm. Really? Really...cause I was in your Poison'd game the next night and not only was sex NOT a problem but there was buggery of a corpse, a cabin boy and you were pretty darn aggressive about fuckin' Vincent's character. -_^
Besides that you were a great Kagematsu and handeled the game well. I'm taking your observation about having a list of the affections on the character sheet which will be posted on the google group as soon as I can. The screen is also a good idea and I need to talk to my printer about that.

Dave, thanks again for playing on Saturday. It was the only game that I know of where no one got the promise. Weird, 'cause it was a pretty good game besides. I'm sorry about the character sheet, it was too long to put on the page the right way so Paul came up with the vertical orientation. Then the printing goof spread the interior margin and it looks worse. I did post the intended sheet on the google group but I would love to post your version. Sent it to me or post it to the group.

[Darcy Burgess]

Hi Danielle,

Just a quick note -- that "love/drop" chart was meant purely as an example to illustrate the idea.  I gave the Love column exactly zero thought in terms of math; it was filled in purely on instinct.

I think that your idea talking it over with some math wizards is a good one.

Cheers,
D

[Anna Kreider]

Danielle,

*cough* I consider that game an exception to the rule. And I still maintain that Vincent's game made me do it.

Anyway, I think the difference is the seriousness of the two games. I can handle games that treat sex in a joking manner, but games where sex is serious and meaningful usually give me the heebie jeebies.