[Mask of the Emperor] Is my game suffering from Story Later?

[Abkajud]

I'm worried a bit about my game design - as it stands right now, the whole concept of Audience, honor, and one's public reputation tie in together at the end of the session, a bit like how awarding experience works in most World of Darkness games. I use a voting system, one that takes each scene of play, points out the important parties involved, and then I lead the group in conjecturing what kind of rumors (good or bad) each such party will start spreading about the characters.
The "lag" aspect of this, in which a character's honorable actions bear fruit later on, but disgrace catches up to you immediately, seems a bit wonky to me. It's all a bit abstract at the moment, as my playtesters haven't complained, but I'm wondering if anyone else has encountered design like this, a system that might be suffering from a bit of Story Later?
Granted, the players' choices always have consequences, and many of these are dealt with in Drama resolution right away, in the same scene; it's just the actual changes to a PC's Honor and Infamy stats that don't take effect right away. Part of the reason for that is I don't want to give a whole mess of points, as that would lend itself to a single-die mechanic with bonuses and penalties, rather than a dice-pool system. It doesn't have to, come to think of it - something a little more multifaceted than a d6 could still function in a pool and benefit from pluses and minuses.
As things stand, though, I really like having the "classic" six-sider, and I'm concerned that it's hard to "track" behavior that gets considered in the Honor Vote, if I'm trying to track it in the same scene. I feel like the length of the session gives me time to build a picture of the PC's behavior overall throughout that session, but I dunno.

What are your thoughts, gang?

- Abby

[Paul Czege]

Hey Abby (Zac?),

Your most recent blog post suggests the rules snippet you post is "the last bit of the rulebook for Mask of the Emperor". Do you possibly have everything together in one document? I'm not sure I can answer your question without first looking at the whole thing, from stem to stern.

Paul

[Abkajud]

Hey, Paul, good idea!

The rulebook is obviously in a state of transition, but yeah, I'll send it your way. I may be editing those posts in the next few days, but most of it'll remain pretty much the same, aside from a few tweaks that've occurred to me since I wrote it.
Thanks for the interest!

Also, there might be some things in there about, um, "how to play" that go unsaid; I plan on eventually putting some Forge-ese textbooky stuff in there about Conflict Resolution, setting stakes through play, stuff like that, and the Dice Rolling 101 section is the precursor to something in that direction.

- Abby

[Amadeo]

I think that your system works well for versimilitude, honor should take more time than dishonor to get and all actions take time to be filtered through the grapevine. If you are worried about dishonor becoming an easier route to power than honor is, then make dishonour weaker than honor. Perhaps when you use a point of honor you gain more extra dice in your pool than when you use dishonour.

The original Star Wars d20 system uses a similar mechanic to that in regards to the Force. The light side is harder to attain but gives a stronger bonus whereas the dark side is easier to attain but gives a smaller bonus and when abused can even give negatives in other situations.

If you want to track honor in the same scene just make some notes, put an Honor and Dishonour set of boxes on the character sheet and when a character does something that for him is honourable or dishonourable have them check a box off. Then at the end of the session whichever boxes has the most is which way the character slides on the Honor-Dishounor axis. This also serves as a tension mechanic as honourable characters will watch what they do more carefully as their dishounor boxes start filling out.

Is that the sort of advice you were looking for? If not, is there another way you could phrase your concerns?

[Abkajud]

Infamy (Dishonor) is weaker in the same way that getting "stars" in Grand Theft Auto makes your life more challenging. Beyond that, they're equally "powerful" in terms of explicit mechanical power.

[Callan S.]

Hi Zac,

I'm still reading through what you sent me. But it strikes me that at a sort of imagined world level, honour doesn't sort of *poof* happen latter. Whoever witnessed the events had their hearts stirred in some way, and this would affect how they live their lives. And they would speak to others, which would stir the hearts of some of them. And perhaps a bit of chinese whispers effect on the tale as its passed on, which would stir the hearts of latter listeners in perhaps unexpected ways.

This is the raw imaginative stuff, as I see it. What rules you might use to focus on what in particular you want from that, if anything, I don't know. But this is the raw stuff as I see it - the story of honour happens now and onward, not latter on.

[Abkajud]

Hotness!
Thanks a mil, Callan! I feel like I've mostly gotten over this concern since I posted this, but you put it so beautifully that I guess I'm doing something right ^_^
I'm going to Google this "Chinese whispers" effect, too.
Awesome! Go Forge!

- Abby