[Ganakagok] The ending of a civilization

[Travis Farber]

[Travis Farber]

[Bill_White]

Travis --

This is good stuff! Some good recommendations. A quick-reference sheet for play is high on my list. A few questions for when you get back:

-- You said you had to spend a lot of time looking things up. Was there any specific info that you couldn't find easily, or wasn't where you expected it to be, or that was unclear? What specifically did you have to look up?
-- Did you feel that you had enough resources as GM to provide adversity to the players once the dice hit the table? That is, between the situation card, the characters' Burdens, and the invocable elements on the Ganakagok and Nitu maps, did you have enough stuff to react with?
-- Did the reaction phases "drag out"; that is, did it seem like players were prolonging the reaction phase beyond what was narratively interesting?
-- Did players use their Medicine cards at all? If so, in what way?
-- Do you feel like the expenditure of Stars matches the narrative progress of the game? That is, are you going to run out of story before you run out of Stars, or vice versa? At the rate you're going, it'll take another 8 or so turns to get to the end: enough or too many?

I'm looking forward to the end of the game!

[Travis Farber]

-- You said you had to spend a lot of time looking things up. Was there any specific info that you couldn't find easily, or wasn't where you expected it to be, or that was unclear? What specifically did you have to look up?

One thing was the square root chart, and actually it was whether or not to round up or round down.  When I reread the book this week I found it no problem.  The other times it looks like I was trying to look things up that didn't exist.  The primary one was how to work with two PC's in a single scene for the purposes of the dice mechanics.

-- Did you feel that you had enough resources as GM to provide adversity to the players once the dice hit the table? That is, between the situation card, the characters' Burdens, and the invocable elements on the Ganakagok and Nitu maps, did you have enough stuff to react with?

Having only played two scenes I would say my gut instinct is no.  That being said, the scene in which Adam and Marc were pitted against one another and the only thing they were trying to work together on was remove bad medicine made a huge difference. 

-- Did the reaction phases "drag out"; that is, did it seem like players were prolonging the reaction phase beyond what was narratively interesting?

Again, having not played enough scenes I can't answer definitively but it seems that it is too hard to end the reaction phase.

-- Did players use their Medicine cards at all? If so, in what way?

No. 


-- Do you feel like the expenditure of Stars matches the narrative progress of the game? That is, are you going to run out of story before you run out of Stars, or vice versa? At the rate you're going, it'll take another 8 or so turns to get to the end: enough or too many?

I think the stars will work fine.  I think the story will be formed from where the stars are much more than the story being negatively impacted by the stars. 

Hope this helps!

[Bill_White]

Hey Travis! Welcome back!

I have a comment: It's important to remember that the character whose turn it is is the focus of the turn, so even if another character is more "active" in the strictest sense (e.g., leading the people to safety, getting all up in the focal character's parka, etc.), it is the decisions and actions of the focal character that are "consequential." So when you said, "we couldn't find a conflict" and moved the action forward to the girl disagreeing with her dad, you did it exactly right--it's not about finding the conflict, it's about identifying the crucial, consequential decision the character makes that is the climax of his or her turn. But don't be looking for a conflict--be looking for the decision-point from which spills out consequences.

You seem to have discovered that even when characters are in conflict, contention, or disagreement, there's still a powerful incentive for them to collude to avoid generating Bad Medicine. You can alter their calculations a little by designating the non-focal player as the "adversary" and let them narrate if the GM wins narration; a player who thinks you won't screw them over hard if you win may not be too sure about a contending player who's got something personal at stake. Also, remember that you can draw from their individual Bad Medicine pools during the turn to put dice on the table set at 6, meaning that you have the power to "redistribute" Bad Medicine or transform Bad Medicine into Burdens. Use this power to hammer them; I try to say in the rules that you have fight hard as the GM.

I'm considering limiting the reaction round in some way; perhaps only go around the table once, or up to three times. Otherwise, it's sometimes necessary to do some at-the-table metagaming as the GM, reassuring players without a dog in the fight that's it okay to pass and so forth in order to get to the end. See which way you prefer the next time you play.

Better in terms of adversity is when you've got a player on your side--who thinks the Nitu need to be punished, or that Ganakagok must be destroyed. You can push this in terms of your situation framing. You've got something nifty with the Makut's desire to learn from the Tall Ones and Tillik's desire to unite the people; you can push the situation so that their is rancor among the people over accepting the Tall One's teachings. You've already seen the conflict over Nanaku's love for the Tall One, and her self-destructive impulse (her desire to be punished) needs to be tapped somehow. She should be a Bad Medicine magnet.

Thanks for your feedback; it's really helpful for me in shoring up the rules write-up.

[Travis Farber]

After many weeks of bad scheduling amongst the group we were finally able to wrap up our game of Ganakagok.

-- Did you feel that you had enough resources as GM to provide adversity to the players once the dice hit the table? That is, between the situation card, the characters' Burdens, and the invocable elements on the Ganakagok and Nitu maps, did you have enough stuff to react with?

No.  As the GM I felt that the players were going to "win" most conflicts.  We had one conflict in particular that should have been in my favor mechanically.  Many dice were on the table and the trait was a 2.  One of the players was on my side of this conflict as well.  The scene ended with More good medicine than bad and more gift than burden dice.  Not only that the conflict took forever to resolve really taking away from the flow of the story.

-- Did the reaction phases "drag out"; that is, did it seem like players were prolonging the reaction phase beyond what was narratively interesting?

-- Did players use their Medicine cards at all? If so, in what way?

Yes.  The medicine cards were mainly used for interpretive purposes.  The most impactful one was one that could have meant contentness which changed to one meaning unity.


-- Do you feel like the expenditure of Stars matches the narrative progress of the game? That is, are you going to run out of story before you run out of Stars, or vice versa? At the rate you're going, it'll take another 8 or so turns to get to the end: enough or too many?

I dropped about 10 stars from the sky because the story was starting to end.  I think that ended up letting our story end with the right amount of punch.  If we had gone the extra ten stars the story would have stagnated a bit. 

I did the drop from 20 stars down to 10.  The scene after spent 5, and the next scene was a very intense scene.  Rob and Adam were really fighting for dominance of the village.  Rob was trying to get all 5 spent on his scene to prevent Adam from getting the last scene and Adam was doing his best to get one last scene.  There ended up being one star left in the sky after the scene.

The one issue that we did have was mechanically things not changing for the big moments in the night sky.  When moving to twilight and dawn the mechanics didn't add to what narratively should be big things happening. 

We came up with a few recommendations though.  The first was that the player(or GM) that spent the dice move it over the steps could lock Good Medicine or Bad Medicine of either Nitu or Ganakagok.  Not letting you change it. 

The other thought we had was limiting the number of passes on the conflict resolution.  This would force players and the GM to bring in their most important traits to have impact on the scenes.  This would also speed up the narrative too.

Thanks again for giving us the opportunity to play.  It was a lot of fun.  Let me know if you want more explanation on the above topics. 

[Bill_White]

Travis --

Thanks a lot for this AP. I agree that there should be more game-mechanical oomph to stage change; as it stands, it's merely a bit of color. A couple of questions:

(1) If you would, react to these options for ending the reaction round. Which ones do you think are workable?

(a) There is only one round; everyone gets one chance to react.

(b) There can be as many as three rounds, but it can end sooner if everyone passes.

(c) After the first round, if you want to react, you have to roll a die; if you roll below the round number (e.g., 2 on the second round) you have to pass.

(d) When the GM reacts, he or she can "call it" and end the reaction round.

(2) Did you use the rule that allowed you to "pull" Bad Medicine from the players or the Nitu and Ganakagok pools and add dice set at '6' to the active player's roll?

[Travis Farber]

(a) There is only one round; everyone gets one chance to react.

I think it would work, but may place too much emphasis on having a single big gift/burden/relationship

(b) There can be as many as three rounds, but it can end sooner if everyone passes.

I think this is my favorite of the suggestions.  Enough to make it interesting but curbs from it dragging.

(c) After the first round, if you want to react, you have to roll a die; if you roll below the round number (e.g., 2 on the second round) you have to pass.

This seems like unnecessary dice roles.  It brings in a little bit of randomness, but I don't know if it adds to the fun.

(d) When the GM reacts, he or she can "call it" and end the reaction round.

Too much power in the GM's hands.  I think most conflicts would end after the first round.

(2) Did you use the rule that allowed you to "pull" Bad Medicine from the players or the Nitu and Ganakagok pools and add dice set at '6' to the active player's roll?

Yes I did.  I probably could have used it more effectively, but the few times I did it made little difference.  Looking back on it, there was a large difference between good and bad medicine for Ganokagok.  I really should have been stealing more medicine from that than I did.

[Bill_White]

Thanks, Travis. A few more questions, and feel free to be blunt: Did the story resolve satisfyingly? Do you think the players were satisfied with the fate of their individual characters? How did you feel about running the game?

[Travis Farber]

The story itself ended a bit weak.  There weren't many unexpected turns.  I would say that 2 of the three players had satisfying ends to their characters.  I think these two players had a pretty good idea to where they wanted to go from the start, whereas the third player was a little more up in the air.  I think the most satisfied player was the one who ended with more bad medicine than good.

I really liked running the game.  There were some frustrating moments though.  The most frustrating being when one of the players was on my side of the conflict.  The other two players were on the other.  Even with the support of one other player I was unable make the dice exciting.  The other two players completely steamrolled us.  I don't mind losing the conflict, but there wasn't even any tension. 

Looking back on it, I will be using Burden dice and Bad medicine much more effectively the next time I run it.  I think that once I learn that aspect of the mechanics better I will be able to direct a more rewarding story for everyone.

[Bill_White]

Thanks, Travis. There's a big challenge in running Ganakagok -- one I find compelling, to be sure, but a challenge nonetheless. It's GM-ing without a net, and so the more the players are pushing their characters to do something, the better the game tends to be. The flip side of that, of course, is that some players can run roughshod over others, pushing things into an un-fun direction.

Oh! One other question occurs to me: I know at least one Ganakagok GM who outright forbids such "anachronistic" intrusions into the fiction as wooden ships and colonists and so forth because it detracts from the mythical character of the story. Do you think that having some of the characters in the game be essentially European explorers was overall a plus or minus to the story? To the game? Or did it not matter?

[Travis Farber]

I don't think it mattered.  Instead of using Cannibal Ghouls we used the Europeans as our outsider "alien" influence.  The next time I run I will try to run it without and I'll see if I get any different results. 

In this story the entire European community was led into caves of the Forgotten Ones by Nanaku.  She then locked them inside the cave to make sure they could not hurt her community.  The fact that they were outsiders, but still people, made it a very twisted and moving scene(especially since she was in love with their leader).