[Dirty Secrets] Yummy rules questions for Seth and others

[Christoph Boeckle]

Hi!

I just finished a 5-hour short story yesterday evening (we played in two evenings).

We had quite a few Sex/Romance Revelations. At first, we declared the relationships as strictly romantic between the two Characters, but later on, we moved on to two variants:
- At one point, two women were drawn to have such a relationship. The investigator overheard the one woman telling the other to stop seeing a man: they were rivals!
- Near the end, the son was telling his mum to stop seeing that same man. The son and mum were in the Relationship and it was about sex/romance and we didn't think incest would make any sense at that point in the story. Also, although they were members of the same family, this wasn't so much about Family as it was about someone caring for someone else about the type of relationships they had.

Other question: is accidental murder okay as a Crime? Or did you write murder to exclude manslaughter? We had a somewhat accidental murder, for a Crime created before we discovered how it would happen or had happened in the fiction. It made sense, the two guys were in an argument (the son versus the man, in front of the mum), the son was pushed and fell over, split his skull on a marble table. Still it wasn't intentional, but somehow very satisfying. Actually the son and the man were lovers before that. Although, they should all have had the same "punishment" in the end if you ask me!

Final question: is it okay if I start a violence conflict and immediately bid 10 'whatevers'? The investigator will have to call me on that, but he'll have to distribute quite a hefty amount of violence. That's a bit... sad, right?


Oh, and this time, nobody went to the hospital and we hardly even left the block of which the investigator was the janitor. Very nice.

[GreatWolf]

We had quite a few Sex/Romance Revelations. At first, we declared the relationships as strictly romantic between the two Characters, but later on, we moved on to two variants:
- At one point, two women were drawn to have such a relationship. The investigator overheard the one woman telling the other to stop seeing a man: they were rivals!
- Near the end, the son was telling his mum to stop seeing that same man. The son and mum were in the Relationship and it was about sex/romance and we didn't think incest would make any sense at that point in the story. Also, although they were members of the same family, this wasn't so much about Family as it was about someone caring for someone else about the type of relationships they had.

*blink*

I go and look at the rules, and both of these are well within the scope of the rules as written. I never actually define "sexual/romantic", which makes sense, given that I deliberately failed to define a bunch of those terms. So, yeah, these are both kosher, even though they are definitely applications of the rules that I hadn't considered.

I just learned how to play my own game better. Thanks!

Other question: is accidental murder okay as a Crime? Or did you write murder to exclude manslaughter? We had a somewhat accidental murder, for a Crime created before we discovered how it would happen or had happened in the fiction. It made sense, the two guys were in an argument (the son versus the man, in front of the mum), the son was pushed and fell over, split his skull on a marble table. Still it wasn't intentional, but somehow very satisfying. Actually the son and the man were lovers before that. Although, they should all have had the same "punishment" in the end if you ask me!

Yes, that works, as long as there is a sense that the father is still morally responsible for the death. That seems to be the case here, so I'd say that this was okay.

Final question: is it okay if I start a violence conflict and immediately bid 10 'whatevers'? The investigator will have to call me on that, but he'll have to distribute quite a hefty amount of violence. That's a bit... sad, right?

Huh. That's legal, but it does seem a bit odd. Was that a not-fun moment in the game? Or did it work out for your group? I'd like to hear more about this.

Oh, and this time, nobody went to the hospital and we hardly even left the block of which the investigator was the janitor. Very nice.

Ha! Very nice!

[Christoph Boeckle]

Cool!

The thing about the Violence conflict was just an after play discussion where we were crunching through the subtleties of the dice (we had a very nice situation at the last investigation conflict: the investigator opened by betting "fives" of which he actually had none, and his opponent had 3 "fives" and two "aces" so he thought he could go up to 6 "fives", at which point he was called by the investigator! however, statistically speaking, it was quite a smart move on the part of the authority)

I could imagine that the gratuitous Violence bid could be useful for setting up a terrorist attack right in the beginning. The Authority frames a suicide bomber exploding amidst a group of people and then... the investigator just chooses how the dice are distributed. This of course might mean that the suicide bomber doesn't actually die (or anybody else for that matter), which is an interesting move for the investigator.
It might be more sadistic if the scene is framed only with two characters... I might try it out and see what happens (what do we do with the excessive violence? throw it out?) This could be a near-sure trip to the hospital for the Investigator but not a free Investigation scene for the Authority since the violence would be dealt out by the investigator.
I'm not saying it's broken as a mechanic, the possibility had never occurred to me before and I found it strange (although I do like to go silly with my bets just to force some violence into the game).