[A Dirty World] Brief play, fun with the numbers

i]lot of instances in which characters either get blocked off thoroughly from some avenue of participation in what's going on, or they'll be stuck in mutual-failure outcomes like the one we did.

Now, I agree with the text that this isn't necessarily a bad place to start, in story terms. For one thing, the resulting disorientation and sense of ineffectiveness and increasing crisis is characteristic of many hard-boiled novels, as the characters receive multiple brush-offs or even beatings, and various no-good guys keep getting what they want. For another thing, as Greg explains, the system is built to jack up character scores quite steadily, and I think it makes sense that not only does the quantity of one's dice increase, but how they are distributed across the dichotomous scores is intended to be emergent. In fact, how you initially distribute them actually doesn't seem to matter much except in terms of the character's starting imagery and impressions he or she gives - which may well change.

However, since this model is so different from the basic expectations of many role-players, I think it's important that everybody playing know that they'll encounter a lot of what feels like Brownian motion among the characters as they keep moving and bumping up against one another and bouncing away without significant effects, for some time. I am also a little uncertain about how to GM through this initial phase. I figure one must keep things moving even though investigative efforts will be failing drastically and constantly, and that strikes me as a necessary and perhaps difficult art of continuing to provide Bangs without simply mimicking "by chance" what would have happened if the player-characters had been successful.

Considering all the fun of prep and the neat consequences of shifting numbers about based strictly on what occurs in the scenes, I'm looking forward to playing for real. I'm still a bit unsure about the methods for early play, but this game looks like it dares to let things proceed as they may, to wherever they may, and I think that's cool.

Best, Ron

* While typing this post, I got the uncontrollable urge and did it again: 3x8, 3x3, 2, 4, 7, 9, 2. Which means imposture (fraud), destruction of something valuable, a frame job, young/naive/inexperienced suspect, marital infidelity, and addiction. Ahh, that was fun.
lot[/i] of instances in which characters either get blocked off thoroughly from some avenue of participation in what's going on, or they'll be stuck in mutual-failure outcomes like the one we did.

Now, I agree with the text that this isn't necessarily a bad place to start, in story terms. For one thing, the resulting disorientation and sense of ineffectiveness and increasing crisis is characteristic of many hard-boiled novels, as the characters receive multiple brush-offs or even beatings, and various no-good guys keep getting what they want. For another thing, as Greg explains, the system is built to jack up character scores quite steadily, and I think it makes sense that not only does the quantity of one's dice increase, but how they are distributed across the dichotomous scores is intended to be emergent. In fact, how you initially distribute them actually doesn't seem to matter much except in terms of the character's starting imagery and impressions he or she gives - which may well change.

However, since this model is so different from the basic expectations of many role-players, I think it's important that everybody playing know that they'll encounter a lot of what feels like Brownian motion among the characters as they keep moving and bumping up against one another and bouncing away without significant effects, for some time. I am also a little uncertain about how to GM through this initial phase. I figure one must keep things moving even though investigative efforts will be failing drastically and constantly, and that strikes me as a necessary and perhaps difficult art of continuing to provide Bangs without simply mimicking "by chance" what would have happened if the player-characters had been successful.

Considering all the fun of prep and the neat consequences of shifting numbers about based strictly on what occurs in the scenes, I'm looking forward to playing for real. I'm still a bit unsure about the methods for early play, but this game looks like it dares to let things proceed as they may, to wherever they may, and I think that's cool.

Best, Ron

* While typing this post, I got the uncontrollable urge and did it again: 3x8, 3x3, 2, 4, 7, 9, 2. Which means imposture (fraud), destruction of something valuable, a frame job, young/naive/inexperienced suspect, marital infidelity, and addiction. Ahh, that was fun.