The Forge Archives

Well I ran a game of Otherkind last Monday night in our channel (#indierpgs ) on the magicstar IRC network, and we continued it on Tuesday night.  I must say I've been wanting to play Otherkind since I first skimmed through the rules.

I printed the game off at work a couple weeks ago and read through it, worried about what I could actually DO with it, and ended up not having to worry.  Nathan and Silvered-Glass both came up with very interesting characters, and between the two of them wrote the bones of the scenario they were to be engaged in.

The Otherkind were questing for a numinous harp, the Harp of Taliesin.  The game took place on the cold shores and misty moors of ancient Britain.

Unfortunately, we ran into a couple of sticky points in the rules right off.
Our first problem was with Orcs and CtL: the rules specifically state that killing or witnessing violence of any kind results in a decrease of CtL.  Yet the rules also state that Orcs are great hunters, enjoy meat and are like predators...

I hope you see the same problem we did, how can or why would an Orc be a hunter if the Otherkind don't kill?  For this session, we decided that it was only violent deaths that caused Orcs problems, or hunting for sport or fun, while hunting for survival and killing "respectfully" would not result in loos of CtL.

Another problem which cropped up with the whole killing issue, this one mechanical: a 3 or 4 on the Life die means you have maimed your enemies, and possibly killed some.  However, only a roll of a 1 or 2 results in a loss of CtL.  So what's the deal here?  Either you can kill sometimes and not lose CtL, or you can't kill without losing CtL?

And perhaps Vincent can clarify this for us: Silvered-Glass was playing a troll, and wished to shapechange.  Does this require that the character's CtL die be rolled?

For our game, I ruled that it did, as the text seems to imply; however, there was a discussion as not everyone agreed that the text did imply that.  Further, does it require that the CtL roll actually be used in the resolution?

Finally, the big problem: the issue of non-combat rolls and rolling when there is no one around.

This stumped me for a bit, especially since it cropped up not even five minutes into the game.  I wasn't certain how to resolve Safety and Life rolls when there was no clear "danger," even with the discussion here about the issue.

Nathan's orc arrived on the British shore and attempted to locate the Harp using his natural senses and magical affinity.  Good time to roll, I thought.  However, while the results of a Motion check are easy to decide -- he either senses it, doesn't sense it, or just thinks he senses it -- Safety and Life are a bit more diffcult to explain for such a situation.

I ended up using the rolls to determine if a dangerous situation arose and what the character's reaction to it was, but it didn't feel like a good solution.
Nathan doesn't realize it, but he summed it up as "...hard to decide where to put the dice when you don't know what they're for."  Which is true, but more telling, this solution deprotagonized the players to an unacceptable extent, making the decisions more gamist than narrative or moral -- in other words, it became a numbers game.

However, the rules work great for combat and dangerous situations! (as we all found out)

One thing I did not enjoy was the players consistently assigning their lowest die to Narration.  I really wanted to see the characters "in action" as visualized by their players, but I ended up doing the majority of the narration.  I feel that in such circumstances the game could benefit from the addition of some sort of concrete benefit for choosing to Narrate, otherwise it ends up being used as a "throw-away" choice.

Mechanically, we quickly discovered that one should use their Color Dice whenever possible, and work together at tasks, or end up badly hosed more often than not.

You can roll all your Color Dice at the same time, assuming you are uninjured, but only have to use them to narrate if you chose one of them.  This means there is no reason not to roll all of them whenever you can, other than the slight addition to handling time.  If you can't use a die in the situation, pitch it, but you might as well roll it in case you think of a way to use it.

Surprisingly, even after this discovery no one really tried to use more than one Color Die at a time, and other than CtL, the color dice were not rolled particularly often -- likely why the game became so bloody towards the end.

The players did roll cooperatively a few times, but usually chose not to.  I'm not certain why, as I posted no restrictions to cooperative rolling...felt a little like they were thinking along the lines of "can I cooperate?" instead of "should I cooperate?"...that is, only cooperating when realistically feasible and together, though I wouldn't have card if they attempted to roll cooperatively while seperated, as long as the overall goal was the same (as it usually was).

As to my favorite part: you get to invoke cool magical powers when Radiance comes into play, and there's no spell-list!  Radiance is cool.  That's all there is to it.

Radiance was used twice, that I recall, once by Bob's dwarf to overcome a human with an iron sword, the one who slew his mother.  The Radiance was narrated as a flaming hammer of vengeance and was one of the best scenes of the game.

The second time was when SG's troll was shot out of the air -- having turned into a hawk -- and she used Radiance to counter the effects of Iron on her Safety.  The earth beneath her falling form erupted into sparkling motes of dust, letting her emerge nearly unscathed.

We discussed a mechanic for regaining CtL, but I thought that would take away from the overall game mechanically, which is about making hard choices -- fail and stay in the game, or succeed and slowly creep towards death?  Very nice.

It played out a little differently than I thought it would, but overall I like the system.  The first night was a good session, but the second night felt a little more forced to me, likely because I was attempting to juggle running the game and children who weren't staying in bed.  I don't know if anyone else felt the same, though.

Unfortunately, we did not get a chance to bring the scenario and its characters to a close.  They managed to retrieve the Harp and escape with it, suffering terribly in the process, but time constraints forced us to end it there.  I don't know if we'll pick it up again sometime or not, but we'll see what we're doing next Monday.

Anyone else want to pipe in about the sessions?  Feel free to post!  Love to hear some more feedback!

I'm not sure if I see the same problem you do regarding rolling in a "non combat" type of situation...at least not in your example.

The ork is using his hunting abilities to attempt to locate the harp.

He puts a low die in saftey...and steps into a hunters trap.
He puts a low die in life...and is seen by an old lady who dies of a heart attack on the spot...or spooks a horse who throws his rider...

I don't see how these are any more deprotagonizing than making rolling on a random traps or random events table.  The player is in complete control...put a low die into life...and somebody dies...period, by whatever confluence of strange events are necessary to make it happen.

In fact, I'd explain it on a metaphysical level.  The characters have a tremendous connection to life just by being who they are.  Is it any surprise that a careless thought, or a negligent action should have ripple effects.  A careless "damn these humans" curse, causes a cow to kick, striking dead the maid milking her.  The blame is as much the characters as if he'd run her through with a spear.  Its not a coincidence...its caused by the careless application of fey power...a player who voluntarily puts that low die into "life" so he can put a high die into "movement" is basically taking just such a careless approach.

For me its akin to an ill thought fervently uttered prayer of the sort "I'll do anything just let X happen" followed by a particularly Faustian response.  The players choice of dice in this case clearly is saying that he values life less than he values finding the harp.  Thats a moral choice...and one that for him being fey will have consequences.

To be even more metaphysically explicit one could say that the supernatural powers that came together to allow him to find the harp (high movement die) had to come from some where.  In this case, they came from the life force of a nearby human (low life die), which manifests itself as the premature death of a person by presumeably "natural" causes.  Literally the character sacrificed a human to power his hunting success.

Now that may well be getting a little to explicit in the cause and effect direction...but that's the kind of mind set I'm seeing when making that choice.  

IMO Life should always be rolled regardless of what the character is doing.  If it essentially makes the roll "roll 4 dice and keep the lowest 3" (because the highest is always used to keep some human from dieing) hey...its hard to be otherkind...its even harder to keep sacrificing that die to keep someone alive who'd just as soon see you dead...that seems to me to be exactly the kind of choices Otherkind is about, and why I REALLY want to see the addition of Unseelie into the game...which for Otherkind I'd define as those fey who stop caring about the well being of these humans and willingly embrace an "eye for an eye" approach.

I won't use up the space here, but one could assemble a similiar arguement for Saftey.

<slaps himself>  Doh.
That works.

However, what I meant by deprotagonizing the players was that without concrete consequences known beforehand, such as you described, there was no coice in the matter.  Had I thought of such a scenario (ie: the metaphysical and non-physical causing harm due to fey power) then it would not deprotagonize the characters, as the player knows what they are doing when placing a low die into the Life category.

Since we didn't have that, however, it was more a, "Ok, Life 2...what happens?  Who appears that I kill?" sort of thing.  It made it so the players weren't reacting to situations, merely expecting them to occur.
This might tie into the problem I had with everyone assigning their low dice to Narration.

Hi there,

In our Otherkind game, we chatted about this issue, specifically, what do you do with the Life die in a not-immediately harm-oriented conflict. Well, the answer came quickly and easily for our group: we're doing a "fairy tale," pretty much, right? In fairy tales, Cause is a big deal. Everything has Consequences. The apple is set on the windowsill, the thief steals the apple, he pitches the core onto the cobblestones, the horse's hooves slip on the core, and the lord's daughter is killed in the crash. And even more importantly, whoever set the apple on the windowsill Is Responsible. The context of death, in terms of responsibility, is inexorable and ruthless as death itself.

So if Life gets assigned the 2, no one has to "show up" right then to be killed. The little girl might wander through the magic-deadened space where you performed the ritual, and upon returning home, she sickens and eventually, weeks later, dies. You were responsible. You get the check-box, during play, when you assign that die value, just as if your character was in a fight and stuck a sword through someone.

Best,
Ron

I really like this solution.  It makes the Life die important all the time, and it ties neatly into the otherworldly foresight often found in the fae of myth and folklore.

Best,

Blake

Just a "me, too!" post. I like this idea for non-combat "rolls"; with perhaps the addition that in this situation, the Life roll causes long-term complications. So that this example:

QuoteThe little girl might wander through the magic-deadened space where you performed the ritual, and upon returning home, she sickens and eventually, weeks later, dies.

could have been a complication narrated by the GM or players (as determined by Narration die) for future play to resolve. So players could see the stain on their spirits, and work to cure the problem.

As a Player in the game I can say that I didn't feel myself de-protagonized... my character didn't always get to do what he and I had  in mind.  I felt rather empowered by the somewhat gamist need to decide "Ok, what decision is really important to me".

The first night I was assigning a lot of low rolls to Nar (and boy did
I have a lot of low rolls!)... and I've looked over my playing ...moticing I missed a occassions where I could have rolled Color.

Connect to Life was a bit different, as a dwarf my Connection didn't fit the situation... or maybe my imagination was lacking...

But since wer weere facing Iron i did blow through my Radiance in the two sessions, although we would get some back for saving the Harp...

Bob McNamee

A lot of these mistakes came from it being a first test run for us..
Bob Mcnamee