[the Waste] Struggling with player agency

[Charlie Gilb]

Hello,

I've been working on my post-apocalyptic RPG titled 'the Waste' since the beginning of summer, and the rules have gone through many different changes. This last Saturday, I decided to playtest my current conflict resolution system with two friends of mine, to see what they thought. Turns out, it didn't go so well. But first, a brief rules overview.

Essentially, it works like this:

- Stakes are set for each side.

- Each side gathers a pool of dice equal to the sum of their relevant stats and traits. The size of the dice gathered are dependant on the severity of the conflict (d4s would be used for verbal conflicts, whereas d12s might be used to fight with guns and explosives).

- Each side announces a task that work towards their stakes, then roll 1 die. The high roller (Player A) succeeds at his task, and gets his stakes, unless the low roller (Player B) pushes.

- If player B pushes, he takes another die from his pool, announces another task and rolls. If the total of his new dice, plus the dice he has already rolled exceeds Player A's dice total, then Player A must decide to Push.

-If a player pushes, and does not exceed his opponent's score, then he takes Pain equal to the margin he lost by. This Pain is marked on a damage track on his character sheet. He then must decide to Give or Escalate.

-If a player decides to Give, he will not take any Pain for losing a roll. He simply loses his stakes.

-When a player escalates, he announces a new task his character does that makes the situation more dangerous. This could be as simple as punching someone during a verbal argument, or pulling out a gun and trying to shoot a person. When the player does this, the unrolled dice on the table change to a higher dice size, dependant on how sever the escalation is. Escalating also allows players to gather more dice according to whatever new traits come into play. The escalating player will then needs to beat his opponent's current score with his larger sized dice.

The idea behind this system is that players must evaluate what winning a conflict is worth to them, and how much Pain they are willing to take to get what they want. They can Push when they think they have a good chance of beating their opponent's current score, or decide to Escalate if they think their opponent might be willing to Give if the situation gets more dangerous.

Eventually, there will be more to the system, like rules for equipment, and special abilities that allow players to Push for free in certain instances. Also, there will be both positive and negative effects on the damage track for when player's take Pain, but I am not quite that far.

So, onto what happened....


The players, Ben and Eric, each quickly created a PC, and we jumped into a situation. The two of them were out in the waste, and arguing which way they wanted to go. The conflict was verbal in nature so they each gathered a pool of d4s and began rolling them for their verbal exchange, going back and forth and Pushing against each other. Eventually, their argument came to blows, when Ben escalated to d8s and wrestled the Eric into submission. At that point Eric decided to Give. Then, we stopped.

Five minutes into the game, and I could see the disdain on their faces for the conflict resolution system, especially when using it for verbal arguments. They both remarked that it felt 'too mechanical' and that repeatedly pushing and rolling back and forth felt 'meaningless' and 'boring'. We talked about it for a bit and Ben remarked that he didn't think that the system could create a compelling deadly combat sequence.

So, we decided to fast-forward and have his character be attacked by a hungry mutant. This conflict started at a more dangerous level (d10s), with the supermutant leveling a minigun and opening fire on Ben. We went through a quick exchange, eventually escalating to d12s, until Ben defeated the mutant. Again, although there was a decent amount of color and narration during the fight, it still felt flat. Ugh.

From there, we decided to shelve the playtest (after running another test conflict or two), and talk about the problems we saw; the game was not doing what I wanted it to. I wanted the players to have meaningful choices, and the resolution mechanics to create dynamic, back-and-forth exchanges with a decent level amount of calculated risk. As it sits, the players just kind of sat and 'Pushed' til the started to lose by a significant amount on an exchange OR until they ran out of dice.

So, I have a few questions/comments:

-Does this resolution system seem devoid of meaningful player choice? I had put a previous draft of my rules in First Thoughts, and Luke had made this comment. I wasn't sure what to make of it at the time, but I think I am seeing it now.

-I am wondering if part of its flatness was that the players just made PCs to test-drive the mechanics. You need to make a judgment on what something might mean to your character in order to really decide to Push or Escalate, and if you haven't done much to flesh them out, then you don't really have a compelling reason not to just keep pushing until you win, or get bored and give. I am not sure if this is really the problem, or if the system as it sits is just boring as hell.

-Would something as simple as specifying a few different types of actions, like 'Attack', 'Defend', and 'Maneuver', make this a little more exciting? How about just fleshing out the additional rules for Pain effects?

That last question kind of leads to the crux of the issue I am struggling with in my designs: How much player choice does there need to be in order to make it meaningful, and does this meaning arise out of a wealth of options OR clear, important consequences? I understand that these needn't be mutually exclusive, but I am not sure in which direction I need to take my mechanics.

Whew, that's a lot of questions. Thoughts?

[Moreno R.]

-Does this resolution system seem devoid of meaningful player choice? I had put a previous draft of my rules in First Thoughts, and Luke had made this comment. I wasn't sure what to make of it at the time, but I think I am seeing it now.

In a sense. The problem I would have in playing this is that what I would narrate would have no meaning. The effect of the narration depends ONLY on the rolls, not about what you narrate. After a while I would simply stop narrating and would only roll dice.

It's something I talked about in this thread, but Vincent Baker explained much better in his blog (read this post and the following ones).  Narrating something that doesn't matter a bit is boring.

You should do something to make what's narrated MATTER. Look, for example, to Dogs in the Vineyard, as an example of a conflict resolution system where the narration of every single stel "matters": the fallout depends on what was narrated, not the arena. The raise must be something that could not be ignored in that situation, and the dice you roll depends on the narration.

[Lance D. Allen]

Charlie,

I was going to wait and see if further discussion helped me to better understand how your system works, but apparently there wasn't much. I read your rules descriptions, and I read how the players respond to it in play, but there's a piece in the middle that I am completely failing to grasp.

How does this actually look, what actually happens, in play? Moreno makes a good point that narration and the dice are parallel but mostly unrelated causes (excepting only the size of the dice) but I know for a fact that Dogs may be played the same way, and it still works mechanically. The dice game itself still manages to be meaningful though. If you could give me a blow-by-blow account of the two conflicts you mention in your post, or even a fictionalized account of them, as time has passed and I'm sure some of the details have been lost, that would help a lot in giving useful feedback.

[Charlie Gilb]

Hey guys,

I've been traveling this week. I'll come back on Monday and see if I can give a more 'blow by blow' account of how it actually works.

Moreno- I definitely understand what you are saying, and that is the trap that I am trying to get out of.

Thanks for the responses; I'll be back soon.

[Charlie Gilb]

All right, Lance. Here is a fictionalized, though pretty much accurate account of what happened in play:

Eric and Ben escaped a local slaver, and their characters are shackled together. They are unable to free themselves from their bonds, and so are stuck with one another. They arrive at a crossroads, and each want to go a separate direction. Eric wants to go to New New Orleans, while Ben wants to go to Junktown.

A conflict is initiated, with the Stakes being which direction they'll end up going.

The conflict was verbal in nature, so they each place 3d4 in front of them. At this point, 5 was an arbitrarily chosen number; ideally, the amount of dice that each side would have would be dependant on different stats on their character sheet.

Then, they each looked at their traits. Eric has a trait called 'Stubborn: 2', which seems appropriate. He adds 2 more dice to his pool. Ben has a trait called 'Manipulative: 3'. He adds 3 more dice to his pool.

Eric has a total of 5 dice.
Ben has a total of 6 dice.

Now players each announce their opening tasks.

Eric: "My character explains that a caravan is waiting for him in New New Orleans, and that he has to make it there on time."

Ben: "Junktown has a working metal-cutter that can get these things off of us. We should go there."

Eric and Ben each roll a die.

Eric rolls a 4.

Ben rolls a 3.

Ben decides to Push, grabs another die from his pool and says: "New New Orleans is a long ways from here, and I have no reason to go there."

Ben rolls a 4, and adds it to his previous rolls (3). His new total is 7.

Eric decides to Push, grabs another die, and says: "But if we make it there, the caravan should have something that can help us get these off, and at a good price."

Eric rolls a 1, and adds it to his previous rolls (4). His new total is 5. Not enough to beat Ben. He takes 2 points of Pain, as Ben's character is unconvinced by Eric's.

Now Eric must decide to Give or Escalate. He decides to Escalate.

Eric: "I throw a punch at Ben, escalating to d8s".

Eric takes his remaining three unrolled dice, and exchanges them for d8s. He rolls one of them, getting a 7, and adds it to his previous total of 5. Eric's new total is 12.

Ben now must decide to Give or Push at the escalated conflict level. He decides to Push, and so exchanges his remaining four dice for d8s, and must announces how he pushes.

Ben: "I try and block Eric's punch and wrestle him to the dirt". He rolls one of his dice and gets an 8, for a new total of 15.

Eric Pushes. "Umm... I don't let him wrestle me to the dirt, and try to punch him again." Eric rolls a 4; his new total is 16.

Ben Pushes. "I... try and block his punch and try to wrestle him to the dirt again". He rolls a 6; his new total is 21.

Eric now must decide to Push or Give. At this point, he decides to Give, and allow Ben wrestle Eric to the dirt and to get his stakes.

===================

Is that a clear enough example?

As I am looking at it, I see a lot of problems. Like Moreno said, what the players narrate does not really matter. I am also not certain that there is much of an element of meaningful choice in deciding what kind of dice are going to be rolled when escalating. One idea I had to remedy this was to only use three different dice sizes:

d4 - verbal or non-dangerous conflicts
d8 - dangerous conflicts
d12 - deadly conflicts

This would make each escalation fairly meaningful, and greatly increase the consequences for pushing and failing. Still, I am not convinced that this is all that exciting, and won't solve the problem of boring, repetitive fiction.

[Marshall Burns]

I really, really want to help here, but I'm having a very hard time separating your vision of a postapocalypso game from my own (as presented in The Rustbelt). It's difficulty because they're so similar, but I know that there's a difference.

I have a few suggestions (SUGGESTIONS! Remember) of things to try. I don't know if they'll work or not, but try 'em. Try combinations of 'em.

1. The carry-forward amounts? Try adjusting them, based on what the situation currently is just after that outcome. F'rinstance, somebody ends up with somebody else pinned down? Give that first guy a bonus on the next round. That way, what you narrate matters.

2. If you want cool escalation, don't increase the die size; make the consequences of staying in the fight more severe. (This is mostly what DitV actually does. It's also what The Rustbelt does, behind all that crunch you don't like, and what Poison'd exactly does, without any crunch at all.)

3. Be stringent about justifying, through narration and roleplaying, the use of traits. (You may already be doing this; I can't tell.)

4. Disallow repetition outright. Or, impose a penalty for it, as in Sorcerer.

-Marshall

[Lance D. Allen]

Charlie,

That helps a lot.

First, as Marshall sort of points out, the fictional content of the narration is only important at two points in this example: At the beginning, when you decide which dice to roll, and at escalation, when you decide which dice to switch to.

Why do you get to add in Stubborn and Manipulative? Eric was somewhat stubborn. Ben wasn't at all manipulative.

So it's one die back and forth, yeah? Aside from the case where you can't match your opponent's total, I see no reason, mechanically, not to keep rolling until you run out of dice. Like, absolutely none. Obviously Eric got bored of the conflict more than any other reason.

I can definitely see where the problem is exacerbated with combat. Chances are, you're totally willing to hurt and kill an opponent, so there's no reason not to start at d12s as soon as you can justify it in the fiction. Now there's no escalation, so that's one less choice. There's also no good reason to de-escalate. Also, what happens if you give in combat? Escalation in your current system isn't an option, so it looks like you can be forced to give fairly easy in combat.

So, I wonder...

On your roll, you roll a die. If you beat their roll, it's their turn to roll. If you DON'T beat their roll, you have to escalate, or give, right?

What if they can simply take the pain to match, instead of escalating?

So Eric rolls a 1, bringing his total to 5, which is two lower than 7. He can escalate and risk hurting his 'buddy', or he can just take X pain (3+) to bring him to 8+. Now it's Ben's turn to roll.

This doesn't help much with making colorful narration matter, I'm afraid. But then, in Dogs in the Vineyard, there is nothing except the censure of your fellow-players to keep you from narrating "I shoot at him." "I swing my fist at him." "I tell him to drop the gun." In Sorcerer, if the GM doesn't enforce the rule about docking dice for lousy narration, there's likewise nothing stopping you from being equally lazy. Tying the traits you can bring in to the narration will help. Maybe instead of getting 2 dice for being stubborn, you can get 1 die, twice, for narrating your stubbornness, or 1 die, three times for narrating how manipulative you are.

[Charlie Gilb]

Hey Marshall,

I really, really want to help here, but I'm having a very hard time separating your vision of a postapocalypso game from my own (as presented in The Rustbelt). It's difficulty because they're so similar, but I know that there's a difference.

I know we've touched on this in the past a bit. At first blush, I can understand how there are a lot of parallels between our games. I am positive that, given time, they will be two entirely different animals. It may be tough to see that now, but trust that once the rest of this system gets rounded out, the end result won't be too similar.

Is there something I could be doing to explain better what I want my game to do that is different from yours? I value your input, and would be happy to take the time to try and be more clear. We can discuss it here, or send me a PM, if you prefer.

1. The carry-forward amounts? Try adjusting them, based on what the situation currently is just after that outcome. F'rinstance, somebody ends up with somebody else pinned down? Give that first guy a bonus on the next round. That way, what you narrate matters.

I was toying with an idea like this. Like classifying action types into a few different types of maneuvers, similar to what you might see in Mouse Guard. I don't know if I want it to be quite THAT codified (and I don't think that is what you are suggesting here), but having some kind of carry-over bonus in certain situations would at least add another element of choice on top of the current mechanics, which this game needs.

2. If you want cool escalation, don't increase the die size; make the consequences of staying in the fight more severe. (This is mostly what DitV actually does. It's also what The Rustbelt does, behind all that crunch you don't like, and what Poison'd exactly does, without any crunch at all.)

My thoughts at the time were that the increased die size would yield potentially greater consequences. When rolling d4s, the most you Pain you would ever take from a failed Push is 3. For d12s, it would be 11. I am not sure that this is a good or bad way of doing it, but that was the reasoning that informed my decision at the time. I feel like I am totally missing your point here. :/

3. Be stringent about justifying, through narration and roleplaying, the use of traits. (You may already be doing this; I can't tell.)

I was thinking of ways to do this, and I think I might end up modeling the traits to be somewhat similar to Aspects as found in John Wick's Houses of the Blooded, where there are very specific situations listed for Invokes (for benefits), Tags (for penalties), and Compels (to entice the player to take certain detrimental actions). I don't know that I would break them down quite like that, but I do want the use of traits to be a bit more clearly defined.

4. Disallow repetition outright. Or, impose a penalty for it, as in Sorcerer.

I think I might just allow a bonus die, or allow a re-roll of a die due to narration, also similar to what's found in Sorcerer. We'll see; there are a few ways to address the repetition thing, and I will give them a shot.

==================

Lance-

First, as Marshall sort of points out, the fictional content of the narration is only important at two points in this example: At the beginning, when you decide which dice to roll, and at escalation, when you decide which dice to switch to.

I agree. Every action needs to matter.

Why do you get to add in Stubborn and Manipulative? Eric was somewhat stubborn. Ben wasn't at all manipulative.

Ack, that was the fault of my example. I think the downfall here is ill-defined circumstances on when traits can or can't be invoked. I am hoping to come up with some changes to address this.

I see no reason, mechanically, not to keep rolling until you run out of dice. Like, absolutely none. Obviously Eric got bored of the conflict more than any other reason.

That is exactly correct. The one instance I can think of where it would be advantageous would be, when you are losing by a large enough margin where your chances of Pushing and failing is high, and you don't want to take the Pain from it. And yeah, Eric did get bored and just decide to quit. THAT is a problem.

I can definitely see where the problem is exacerbated with combat. Chances are, you're totally willing to hurt and kill an opponent, so there's no reason not to start at d12s as soon as you can justify it in the fiction. Now there's no escalation, so that's one less choice. There's also no good reason to de-escalate. Also, what happens if you give in combat? Escalation in your current system isn't an option, so it looks like you can be forced to give fairly easy in combat.

Yeah, once you get far enough up in escalation, your choices are reduced. When you give in combat, your opponent gets whatever their stakes were. This might be HUGELY problematic, if the stakes involved the death of your character. If that's the case, the player is robbed of even more choice. Yuck.

What if they can simply take the pain to match, instead of escalating?

That is an interesting option. It also might even the playing field a bit in cases where players have vastly different sized dice pools, because the person with less dice could elect to take Pain, and not waste one of their rolls.

Maybe instead of getting 2 dice for being stubborn, you can get 1 die, twice, for narrating your stubbornness, or 1 die, three times for narrating how manipulative you are.

I like this, and I think it ties into my response to Marshall's 3rd point above. I'll give it some thought.

===============

Thanks for the responses, both of you! I normally try to avoid doing the point-by-point responses listed above; it creates a huge wall of text. Let me know if altering the format of my response would be more conducive to productive discussion.

[Marshall Burns]

Charlie,
I'd love to discuss the differences. Here is okay with me, if it's okay with you.
See, I'm having trouble coming up with something to say that's more useful (and less jerky) than "Go play The Rustbelt and see how it works; then let's talk." If I can figure out what exactly it is you're looking for, I can be more helpful

My thoughts at the time were that the increased die size would yield potentially greater consequences. When rolling d4s, the most you Pain you would ever take from a failed Push is 3. For d12s, it would be 11. I am not sure that this is a good or bad way of doing it, but that was the reasoning that informed my decision at the time. I feel like I am totally missing your point here. :/

Here's a thing, though: Pain doesn't really do much, as far as the fiction goes. You want consequences that mean something concrete happens in the fiction, either right now or immediately after the conflict. I highly, highly recommend that you check out Poison'd. It's like this: say you're in a swordfight. It starts at escalation level 1, dig? If you lose at level 1, you either suffer consequences (first blood), or escalate. At level 2, the consequences are a deadly wound. At level 3, the consequences are being killed outright. Head chopped off or something. The rules for brawls, guns, and ship-to-ship battles all come with their own sets of consequences, too.
If you have concrete consequences, then you have something concrete for the player to judge. "Geez, is this really worth getting my head chopped off?" is only one possibility. And the consequences need not be for losing; you could make them mandatory, for staying in the fight for X amount of time.

And, of course, there are any number of methods for modulating and varying consequences. Rolling charts are one, although probably not what you're after. The Rustbelt uses the GM to do it freely.

By the way, the Poison'd rules for what constitutes an act of escalation are really cool, too. Like, say, in a brawl, escalation can mean pulling a knife, going for the throat, backing the guy into a corner, or something of that sort. If you stick with changes in die size, such an escalation paradigm might make combat more interesting.

Another thing -- with this system you've got – well, let's look at this strategically. The strategy here isn't to outroll your opponent (and, therefore, bigger dice aren't really the point – although they might support it, I won't rule that out). The strategy here is to make him want to Give. That's why you need consequence mechanics, beyond something abstract like Pain.

-Marshall

[Lance D. Allen]

What DOES Pain do? I realized while reading Marshall's post that I have no idea, so I went back up to read the earlier posts, and found that you've not spelled it out. Having an idea of what it does would help a lot.

[Charlie Gilb]

All right, let me see if I can succintly detail what Pain did exactly, and how it is recorded on the character sheet.

During this iteration of design, every character had a damage track, with 11 boxes all listed in a row on their sheet. The 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, and 11th had special markings on them, denoting different levels of injury, so it shook out something like this:

1-3: Stress/Exhaustion
4-5: Bruised
6-7: Injured
8-9: Traumatized
10-11: Near Death

When someone takes an amount of Pain, they mark whatever box equal to the amount of Pain they took (if I took 6 Pain, I check box # 6). If the box is all ready checked, then they will mark the next highest box.

I didn't really have the terminology codified at the time. My motivation for the numbers at each injury level was the margin it would be possible to lose by for each die size. For example, on a d4, the most you can lose by is 3. That means that in verbal arguments, you can not take Pain that results in physical harm. If we said pulling a knife would escalate to d8, the most you could lose by is 7, resulting in Injury.

Now, there are exceptions to this. As the system gets fleshed out more, some characters might have special traits or abilities that allows them to inflict additional Pain in certain circumstances. One character might have a trait called "Serpent's Tongue" that allows him to inflict an extra 2 Pain during verbal conflicts, whenever his opponent pushes and fails. Another character character might have an exceptional knife that does an extra 3 Pain during violent conflicts, whenever his opponent pushes and fails. I have not gotten this far yet, so the above examples are completely off the cuff. My idea was that the increased die size, and the potential for an opponent to have traits that could deal extra Pain, would cause someone to think carefully before escalating a conflict.

The mechanical effect of Pain would mostly result in penalties to future die rolls, to varying degrees, depending on the severity of the injury. A Bruise might result in a -1 to die rolls in your next conflict, whereas a traumatic wound might result in -3 to your die rolls until it's healed. When you are Near Death, I would probably work something out where you would have to pay some of the dice pool that you would generate in a conflict to keep going; I'm not sure.

============================

So that's what I had. The math might not work out properly, and it could take quite a long time for characters to get grievously injured. Those are two issues that would be solved in playtesting.

I see two more issues with it, the first of which you guys are bringing up:

1. There aren't a lot of fictional consequences for taking Pain. Sure, you take a wound, and then start out along the death spiral, opening you up to further injury, but I want more than that. My original design from quite awhile back converted some of the Pain off the damage track into narrative consequences that the GM was allowed to introduce. For example, instead of 6 Pain resulting in a level 6 Injury, it might result in a level 4 Injury and a minor narrative complication. This idea still gets me a little jazzed.

2. I don't want taking Pain to be just another death spiral injury mechanic. I want positive consequences for taking Pain as well. For example, maybe damage boxes 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 have a mark on them, where after you take the Injury that corresponds with the box, you collect a certain amount of tokens (the more severe the injury, the more tokens you get). At a later time, these tokens can be spent on special abilities, bonus dice, or player-introduced narrative elements. This means that if your character takes a beating now, he can kick ass later.


Does that help, or do you need more information?

(Marshall, I am going to take some time today to read over the Rustbelt a bit, and then I will directly address what I feel makes this game different, and where our design goals vary. I am going to take my time and try and be as direct and clear as possible.)

Again, thank you both for your responses; this discussion has been very thought-provoking for me. It's becoming quite apparent that I have a loooooong way to go before this thing is in workable form.

[Lance D. Allen]

First some stuff to be sure I understand:

If I take 3 pain, I put a mark in the 3 space.

If I take another 3 pain, I put a mark in the 4 space.

If I subsequently take 2 pain, I put a mark in the 2 space.

If I then take 6 pain, I put a mark in the 6 space.

So after all that, I should look like this:

[ _ ]
[ x ]
[ x ]
[ x ]
[ _ ]
[ x ]
[ _ ]

Yes?

If penalties are per level, would that be 2 stress/exhausted penalties, a bruised penalty, and an injured penalty?

[Charlie Gilb]

Lance,

Yes, that is correct.