Harlekin-Maus: Noche de Los Vampiros

[Paganini]

Pag had a lot of ideas as well. I also had some thoughts, but they escape me for them moment. More use of relationships.

Oh I remember, if you could use your relationship with a player who turned into vampire that would be cool (and vice versa). Did anyone take a complete log?

I have; we log all the Indie-netgaming sessions. I was hesitating to post my major rework ideas until some discussion of the game as it stands has taken place. :)

[Paganini]

Essentially, if players take turns losing dice, then nobody ever has to lose a box. Especially if you have enough players. Given that we had three players, that meant that no one of the three could loose all ten required to end the hour.

Minor quibble Mike, my understanding was the the hour ends when the GM accumulates 10 dice from any source, not when a player loses all 10 of his.

In any case, Zak, the big problem to me is that the game doesn't give you a picture of how its supposed to be played. This is a common problem, but a crippling one. Stopping the game to ask "What are we supposed to do now? What happenes next?" is a Bad Thing (TM). So, even if there are absolutely no holes, and all problems are simply due to mis-reading, the game needs serious presentation work.

[Mike Holmes]

Essentially, if players take turns losing dice, then nobody ever has to lose a box. Especially if you have enough players. Given that we had three players, that meant that no one of the three could loose all ten required to end the hour.

Minor quibble Mike, my understanding was the the hour ends when the GM accumulates 10 dice from any source, not when a player loses all 10 of his.

I was being unclear. My point was that amongst three players you have thirty dice to start. The hour ends when the GM collects ten of them. Thus, as long as the dice are spread out, even just two dice to players other than one who has lost a lot, the hour ends and nobody loses a box. In fact, the players could theoretically lose eight dice each (24 in this case), and still nobody loses a box. Worse, there are fifteen boxes (twelve that can be checked and still have all players survive). Even if one player does donate ten dice, and loses a box every hour, as long as it rotates the players will all still survive. My point is that only by playing really, really recklessly (rolling all dice on every roll, when other players are playing more conservatively), do you stand even a chance of dying. And this is with only three players.

With more players the odds go down even further. In fact, at five or more players, it becomes statistically unlikely that anyone will ever lose a box. Just roll all your dice all the time, and, as long as everybody else is, too, you'll be just fine. First roll of fifty dice will loose on average more than ten dice (8 just to matches with the GMs die, and then player self matches). You'll roll a couple of dice that don't match your own or the GMs. If you're really afraid, only roll 8 and the hour will end anyhow.

A more dangerous level would be for the hour to end when the GM accumulates dice equal to 4 or 5 times the number of players. This would require more balance on the part of the players to maintain. Any more than this is problematic as well, as players will then be incentivized too much to play conservatively.

Still, as it stands the tactic I see is simple. You spend as much as you like to start. Then, as soon as the GM has accumulated as many dice as the players have, you go to betting only low numbers of dice.

Example: Three players. First scene of the first hour, we all roll a lot of dice. We end up losing 3 for one player, 2 for another, and one for the third. The GM now has seven dice. He needs only three more for the hour to end. At this point, players just start rolling three dice. Even if they lose them all, the hour ends, and they don't lose a box. More likely, someone will just lose one or two, and then each player can roll all but two dice. Even for the worst player who's lost six, he can still get away with rolling two dice safely. And I can violate this safety rule four times a game at the very least (as I have five boxes to give).

Not to mention any dice from relationships, which just make everything I've mentioned in this post worse. As relationship dice can actually increase your pool, or make the hour end earlier painlessly.

A note on relationships: it doesn't say how "appropriateness" is determined in the rules. Can I just mention the other characters that my charater has relationships with, and claim my two dice? Or does the GM have to approve? Or some other limit?

Mike

[Bob McNamee]

This situation is where my idea of dropping the dice box amount based on the dice left in your conflict roll would come in handy...you could switch to 3 dice, but if you doubled  or I matched two or more you are losing a dice box value...

The problem doesn't really go away though...the solution is to alway roll near your maximum and at maximum on the last roll. The odds of matching enough of your dice to drop you should be low (I haven't checked this)

[Zak Arntson]

Thank you all for you awesome comments & critiques. And by awesome I mean it: Inspiring awe at your critical eyes and sound suggestions. It is obvious that Vampiros isn't ready for play yet (something that wasn't obvious when I tentatively made it semi-public).

Fixing it will be a goal of mine, but for now I'm sticking the thing up in my semi-finished games section, http://www.harlekin-maus.com/works.html">In the Works.

Here are my thoughts, now:

- The mechanic definitely needs to scale with the number of Players.
- How to play needs to be very thoroughly explained (it all makes sense, in my mind! :)
- I need to decide on whether the main drive is competition or telling a cool Vampire story.

I will hopefully get back to Vampiros in the near future.

[Paganini]

Sounds good Zak! I, for one, look forward to seeing how it turns out. To me, the heart of the game seems to be "gradual reduction of character effectiveness coupled with inverse increase of enemy power as the characters try to survive mexican vampires!" If you can get the mechanics fixed, I think it'd be a blast. :)