[Rustbelt] Opium, haunted memories, hatred in the dark, and killing your friend

[Marshall Burns]

Hi Ron,

Yep, I do know those by heart.  Also, allow me to add "Skeletal History" and "Methamphetamine Blues" by Mark Lanegan to the mix; check 'em out if you can (they're on the EP Here Comes That Weird Chill).

So, yeah, the text is very weak on that issue.  I've been handling it informally ("So, you're running low by now, right? Okay, so, you're waiting on Blackwood Street for the man, right?").  I know, I know, the thing that I & my group do without thinking is exactly what my text needs to tell others how to do.

But, when it comes to situation-authority and textual advice, I'm not sure where to start on this issue.

The only addiction I've had is to cigarettes (I say "had," but you know how it is), although I've been known to use alcohol to Cope, as it were.  My experience with harder stuff is second-hand, from having friends who were on cocaine, crack, and/or meth (and also acid and dextromethorphan, but those don't seem to be habit-forming).  Meth is also rampant in my town; there are little old ladies here who do it.  As far as opiates, I have to go a further step removed and draw on all the William S. Burroughs that I've read.  Junky is especially good for this, being very downplayed and unromanticized, but being set in the 1940s is possibly a problem (the current landscape of junk could be very different, for all I know).

In play, little details of this stuff come to me unbidden (I don't actively think about it much) and I rush to bring them into play.  A crackhead's house, completely devoid of lightbulbs. Potheads' faucets missing the screens, such that they spray water everywhere when you turn them on.  A loaded junky staring at the end of his shoe for hours while his friends are visiting and trying to engage him in conversation.  Going to place X to score, only to find out that you're gonna to have to go to place Y, which leads to place Z, and so on, for hours, before you actually find any stuff.  A tweaker trying to sell you a fake gold bracelet, which he insists is from Paris ("You know where that is?  It's in France") and therefore valuable.  Buying a packet of cigarettes with nothing but loose change that you found under the couch cushions, then trying to look nonchalant as you count them out to the cashier.  Pulling out the stashed flask of whiskey, only to find that you finished it at some earlier time that you can't remember.

When it comes to giving the readers these tools, I'm at a loss right now; I don't know where to begin.

-Marshall

[Ron Edwards]

I think you just did. That's the start of some absolutely excellent game text right there.

In the interest of (mild) disclosure, I am about to be 44, and I grew up largely in the counterculture of the California coast. Strangely, I was also firmly embedded in military culture and later, in affluent prep-school culture. So drugs were - how does one put it - a part of life, and I saw just about each subcultural angle on every one, from peyote plants on someone's kitchen shelf to high-grade cocaine used with personal spoons. Back then, pot was ... well, like beer.

I might be able, with some effort, to characterize how I incorporate my experience into play. It's not really with speeches or discourses, it's just ... well, environment. The way people talk. The stuff that's around and what they do with it. I guess it makes most sense to think about how not to do it. In modern movies, the drug-using characters are so coded and distinctive and blinking with DRUG-DRUG that it's silly. It's more like ... well, did you ever see The Breakfast Club? When all the cliquey teenagers share a doobie, it's not breaking rules or being daring or anything - it's the one thing to do that's not cliquey, it's a meeting-ground. It's the most normal part of their lives.

I kind of get that same vibe from your post, so I have no fear your text will convey what the reader needs, in terms of pure content, atmosphere, and characterization. The trick will come in incorporating it into player-driven decisions, rather than GM-delivered setting stuff.

How does that turn into scene framing and situational authority for specific characters who use drugs (or more generally, Vices, in the sense that watching TV as a Vice is fully a drug in Rustbelt terms)? The level of Grip is a great mechanical indicator, and maybe it's possible to start with that without being too fiddly. What are your thoughts on that?

Best, Ron

[Marshall Burns]

Hi Ron,

Here's a thing that just came to mind.  Maybe the GM is perfectly justified in framing things such that, at any given moment, a character finds himself in a problematic situation directly due to his drug (f'rinstance) use.  Like the "go to X to score; nope, gotta go to Y; nope, gotta go to Z" thing, for an example.  Basically, a situation that presents the choice to either face obstacles, difficulties, and annoyances, or go into Withdrawal.

Going at it this way, the Grip is a stick, because of the lasting Tears/Sweat damage it produces during Withdrawal.  If you think of the Vice as a character, this stick puts the Vice in a bargaining position with the PC -- go through this crap that I want you to go through, or suffer.  If the Grip is low, then the problems would have to be of similarly small scope; otherwise, the decision is easy:  give it up.  If the Grip is high, then the problems can be bigger.  At 20 Grip, we could be looking at situations where you might have to kill someone.

The lasting Tears/Sweat can really be a problem, when this sort of Waiting For the Man (so to speak) is integrated as a single piece of a larger story, with some other over-arcing Conflict, some reason that the PC would probably need his resources in top-shape.

There's one problem that occurs to me, though.  In the GM Guide chapter, there's a rule about not taking away something important to a PC without giving him a legitimate chance to defend it.  There's some situations where, for the above idea to work, the GM would have to take something away without the chance to defend it.  The PC is addicted to watching TV?  Today, he gets home and the TV's broken.  Now he has to find/steal a new one, or find/earn/steal the money to buy a new one, or face Withdrawal.  That strikes me as fun, despite breaking my "taking away something important" rule.  Maybe that rule isn't as good as I thought it was.

-Marshall

[Ron Edwards]

I think that both principles can operate in tandem, rather than either (1) the GM can fuck up your character's stuff whenever he likes or (2) the GM can only threaten your stuff through conflicts. The key to doing both well is the Grip.

The way I see it, the Grip is not only the actual sensation of need for the Vice, but also anxiety about it. What that means to me in practical terms is that if the Grip is, say, 10 or higher, and if the character has access to the stuff, then anxiety about it can legitimately be imposed by external circumstances. Perhaps the stash looks like it's maybe been tampered with. Perhaps the so-far reliable connection isn't answering his phone, or answers late with weird excuses.

I guess what I'm saying is that by the very nature of the concept of the Vice, it's never wholly reliably present. And if circumstances (i.e. rolls) have made it reasonably accessible for the moment, and if Grip is nice and high, then that means the character is wide open for any little thing to set off anxiety that's conceivably as bad as not actually have access.

And by "wide open for any little thing," I mean GM situational authority, including scene framing.

In the TV example, I'd say that the TV doesn't get broken, but it fritzes out too often, or at least that's how the character perceives it. Maybe a friend tells the character about how some TVs really are demonic possession devices (positing that the character fears demonic possession as part of his Faith). Or maybe a really really spiff TV has arrived on the scene, owned by the character's annoying neighbor, and the fucker only watches it maybe half an hour every couple of days. So he couldn't really need it, could he ....? Not like I do ...

The only thing worse than a junkie who can't fix is a junkie who can, and thereby has the time to hone his obsessions ever finer. (I've always wondered why in the world a person would ever, imaginably, want to speedball, but maybe that's why.)

How does that sound?

Best, Ron

[Marshall Burns]

Hi Ron,

Anxiety, yes, yes, awesome.

And here's another angle that I just thought of.  With the broken TV (although the one that is perceived to be broken is great too), the GM has taken away the TV itself, but access to TV is still available.  So, really, the GM hasn't taken away something without an opportunity to defend it; the PC has to work to get it, but that's effectively the same thing as threatening something through conflict, right?

Take, for instance, when I misplace my cigarettes.  I go to my desk, where I thought I left them, but they're gone.  As I start looking around the desk to see if they fell off, my mind gradually goes from "Hm, they must be around here somewhere" to "Where the fuck ARE they?" and maybe even "Dammit, who took them? Those motherfuckers!" and I start searching that much more fervently*.  Anxiety indeed.  So, in game terms, this could be a Thorough check, searching the house for the damned things, or maybe my roommate took them, so it's a conflict with him.

*This internal process, by which the more time I spend looking for the cigarettes (f'rinstance), the more important they become to me in that moment, possibly leading me to panic and/or rage -- very fascinating.  This needs discussion in the rules, right?

-Marshall

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Marshall,

Regarding your first point, I getcha fine, but in role-playing terms, many people have been scarred by the following sequence:

Me: "My character Ned is a bartender. It's a great bar, everyone goes there. He's curiously knowledgeable about war and weapons for a mild-mannered bartender, and he has a Multi-gat 9000 hidden at knee level behind the bar itself." (multitude of character creation options back all of this up)

GM, during first scene in play: "Your bar is blown up by a bomb. Total smithereens."

So I tend to aim more toward the physical placement of things, alternatives to them, and curious details about them that may prompt action without requiring it, rather than damaging the things or otherwise really interfering with them. That's based on experiences and knowledge of our subculture, rather than an actual argument against your proposal, which is in fact logical. If you want to present it in the text, I suggest putting some effort into showing how it's not the same as blowing up the bar.

You also wrote,

This internal process, by which the more time I spend looking for the cigarettes (f'rinstance), the more important they become to me in that moment, possibly leading me to panic and/or rage -- very fascinating.  This needs discussion in the rules, right?

Nothing special beyond the Psyche dynamics in action, aren't they? This is merely situational framing based on a certain rise in Grip level (for instance, the character smoked to Cope, and thus hit 15 from 14), and the player complying with that by also recognizing that 15 is not 14. As Paul referred to in the other thread, triggering a Psyche component is a mutualistic art. The GM can see the number and prompt, but the player must also see the same number and take action. Neither can tell the other one what to do, nor expect a certain kind of action - it's a duet. What you described isn't what either the GM or player does alone, but the SIS result of their verbal interaction called "play."

Best, Ron

[Marshall Burns]

Hi Ron,

Yeah, I guess I can hear you about that sort of scarring.  It's one of those things I'm not directly familiar with (due to my gaming experience being almost entirely with home-made games), but I can understand it.  My only problem with the subtler alternative is that I'm not particularly good at being subtle

I'm working on two pieces of text, one to help players in roleplaying to Psyche using the scores as a rubric (with roughish milestones, especially at 5s, 10s, and 20s), and one to help the GM introduce the hassles and problems inherent in Vice (I'm really liking the phrase Waiting For The Man to refer to it, much like Business As Usual and Give 'Em Hell, Kid).  I'll post 'em once they're fit for human consumption.

Nothing special beyond the Psyche dynamics in action, aren't they?

Oh, right.  Duh.  Don't mind me.

On a side note, looking over all the ground we've covered in this thread so far, and the changes and additions that it's made me realize need to be made to the text, I'm starting to wonder what I'm gonna do with these 40-odd ashcans I've still got.  But, as far as things to worry about go, it's not such a horrible thing.

-Marshall

[Marshall Burns]

Here's what I've got so far:

ROLEPLAYING TO YOUR PSYCHE

The Psyche components, including their scores, should guide your roleplaying.  The decisions are in your hands totally, but the intensity of those decisions and the way the character enacts them should correspond to the scores.  While you are allowed to break a Faith with Zeal 20 just as much as one with Zeal 5, you should roleplay breaking the higher one as something hard for the character to do, or perhaps with such decisiveness that it's scary, or in some other manner with appropriate intensity.
   One point at a time, as the scores increase, you should escalate the intensity a notch.     There's some milestones here, and some other concerns that are more subtle, so let's look at them in some detail.

Hunger
At Frustration scores 5 and below, Hunger is just a niggling thing in the back of your mind.  It gradually becomes harder to ignore, and by the time you hit 10 Frustration, it has become totally clear that you are missing something vital, even if you don't know what it is.  At 20 and higher, we're talking about a huge, yawning void inside you that simply cannot be ignored – the desire to fill it consumes you.  Which isn't to say that you must pursue your Hunger, just that refraining from pursuing it is that much harder.

Vice
Under 5 Grip, the Vice is something that you aren't really used to yet; you're probably clumsy and awkward about it.  Between 5 and 10 is where you become increasingly comfortable with it, even casual.  As it gets above 10, it starts transforming from an activity into a lifestyle; you start ritualizing it, and/or you start indulging in bigger doses (figuratively speaking, in the case of non-drug Vice) with more pronounced and intense effect.  At 20 and higher, the Vice is threatening to be your entire life, the end at which all your means are directed, rollin' just to keep on rollin'.
   As the Grip increases, not only does your sensation of need for the Vice increase, but so does your anxiety about fixing, and about having enough to fix tomorrow, and about having the ritualized environs of your Vice in proper order.
   Those environs deserve some special consideration.  With any addiction, people will endure certain inconveniences and annoyances for the sake of the addiction.  Some examples:  crack users tend to not have enough lightbulbs in the house, as they use them to improvise glass-pipes; pot heads take the screens out of faucets to replace those in their pipes, and the faucets spray water in uncontrolled blasts without them; junkies' spoons are burned on the bottom because they use them to "cook up" (dissolving the drug into water heated by a flame held under the spoon, so that it can be drawn into the needle).  There's also the way in which people actively arrange their surroundings to focus on the Vice; for instance, meth users who make their own construct what amounts to a chemistry lab in their home.
   Now, while those examples all deal with drug-based Vice, the same principles apply to social and behavioral Vice.  Someone who is addicted to watching television will arrange things around that activity.  He probably doesn't take meals in the dining room, instead eating on the couch from a tray table, while the dining room table is neglected and/or relegated to shelf-space, covered in various objects.  Perhaps he has programming guides strewn about the living room.  After all, you gotta know when your shows are coming on, right?
   Consider factors like this when roleplaying your character.  Think about the way Vice influences his surroundings, his mannerisms, the way he talks.  Think about the way he justifies and rationalizes all of this.

Faith
Faith runs parallel to Vice in most regards.  The milestones are essentially the same:  the period of awkwardness; the increasing casualness and comfort; the transition from belief and axiom into lifestyle, complete with attendant ritualization; the shift from being a part of your life to being the focus of your life.  As Zeal increases, Faith-based issues should also be seen in increasingly black-and-white terms by your character; at 20 Zeal, there is no gray at all.  Again, you can still choose the "black" option, but that choice is going to have that much more gravity.
   Faith also creates its own environment.  The more Zealous you become, the more this should be reflected in the way you talk, the people you associate with and how you treat them, and the objects you keep with you and in your home.  Consider the decent, church-going lady with all her crucifixes on the walls and religious books on the coffee table, or the monk with his hair-shirt, studying scriptures by dim light in a cramped, unadorned cell -- and he chooses this.

Woe
Woe is harder to graduate.  The primary function of the Depth value is to indicate how intense and involved your coping mechanisms have to be when the Woe is triggered.  But, also, as Depth increases, so do your feelings of guilt, at being at fault for what happened.  At low Depths, your perception of the Woe and its inciting event will include mitigations, places where you acknowledge factors beyond your control and responsibility.  On the other hand, by Depth 20, you've taken responsibility for the entire thing onto your shoulders, even if it was the work of another person – if you gain Woe from failing to save your brother from murder, by the time you hit 20 Depth, you no longer consider the murderer's agency in this at all; it is all your fault, as far as you can see, and seeing it otherwise would require considerable prompting or effort.

[Marshall Burns]

Hey everyone,

What do you think of "The Rust Age" as a title?  Y'know, like the Iron Age, the Industrial Age, the Rust Age...

I think it gets the idea across nicely, without being something that can be misconstrued as something else (like Rustbelt).  Do you see any problems with it?  Any important things that it fails to communicate?

-Marshall

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Marshall,

Sorry about the delay in replying. I think that I'm not alone in having difficulty with title-my-game topics. As far as I know, nobody really knows what a good title is, nor how it can be identified or justified. Ultimately, it must rest with your sense of rightness and inspiration.

Carping about a title that doesn't work is another story (obviously; I've done enough of it in this thread). If a distinct objection appears over and over, which it has in this case, then yeah, it's time to re-think. But I really can't act as a judge or confirming party regarding a positive choice, and I betcha a lot of others feel the same way. Even if some don't, and if twenty suggestions suddenly appear here in this thread, it's really up to you.

Ultimately, it does come down to the game itself. I know I've seen a lot of games validate what seemed like a mediocre title simply by being good, and I've seen a lot of good titles fail to save a crap game. The best I can say is that your title should not impede understanding of why and how your game is good.

Best, Ron

[Dirk Ackermann]

Hi Marshall,

I liked what I read here.

So, after downloading and the reading, I had the impression that Vice could mean everything you are addicted to.

I know You won't like that interpretation much, because the Rustbelt is that way. But I thought it could fit with any substance - not just the materialistic ones, the more psychological - like an abusive relationship or so -  the better!

MfG
Dirk

[Ron Edwards]

That's a good point, Dirk. The first character I made up was based on the picture of the gun-wielding mother on the cover, and the Vice that sprang to mind was "Obsessive cleaning and neatening."

Marshall, would that be a legitimate Vice?

Best, Ron

[Marshall Burns]

Hi Dirk,
Actually, that's exactly what Vice is supposed to be.  In the scenario I scraped up for Paul Czege to run at GenCon, one character's Vice was buying expensive things, another's was listening to a certain person sing, and another's was cutting himself with a razorblade.

This is an issue that's not particularly obvious from reading the rules, but it's a little more clear in the ashcan version.  I'm still working out the whole issue of properly writing a text.

Also, I'm glad you like the look of the game! 

Ron,
Oh, hell yes, that's a legitimate Vice.  I don't suppose you were moved to do a whole write-up for her?  'Cause if so, I'd be interested to see it.

-Marshall

[Dirk Ackermann]

Hell yeah!

I like this game even better!

MfG
Dirk

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Marshall,

I tried to find my notes, but they eluded me. I'll try to reconstruct. I think I named her "Daphne."

Tough 4 Savvy 4 Grizzled 6 Slick 6 Thorough 7 Personable 3 Cagey 7 Uncanny 7

Hunger to Raise My Kid Right 15
Vice of Obsessive Neatening and Cleaning 5
Faith that Everything Will Be Back to Normal 10
Woe for how They Killed My Husband and Burned Our Home 15

I should really emphasize that this is an interpetation of the illustration, focusing on the idea that she isn't much removed from the homemaker she was, or not yet anyway. I know that for some reason this interpretation was strongly prompted by her shoes. I thought of the Grizzled and Cagey being very recently influenced, and also for her to be crazy-lucky. I also wanted the kid to be a positive feature, not (for instance) having raising or disciplining him be the Vice. I set the scores for Hunger and Woe really high because I thought of her in action from the moment of starting play; that might be softened depending on the Business as Usual for a given start of play. I also wanted the Vice to start mild, just a bit fidgety.

My point is that there are clearly a hundred different characters this illustration could inspire, and I'd like to preserve that potential rather than generate any sort of single rules-set that the picture might represent.

Best, Ron