THIRST: What do you do?

[Bankuei]

Without creating the "conspiracy of vampires", have you come up with any ideas as to how multiple vampires meet each other, and why they hang out?  

Or, if you want to make an interesting departure from the norm, make playing normal people an option as well, so now players can play the role of friends, lovers, and family trying to deal with their special friend.
If you want to really nail it to players, you could make the rules for temptation(of feeding) stronger the more you care about a person...

Is there any sort of groups that know about them?  Or whacked out groups who don't really know, but figure the vampires are cultists, cannibals, devil worshippers, etc?

Just some thoughts,
Chris

[Christoffer Lernö]

Yeah yeah go ahead and ignore my ideas! You know nothing I mean nothing anyway! *grumpy* *grumpy* :) :) :)

I think, for the time being ignore VtM. It hasn't really anything to do about vampires. You could put aliens instead of vampires in it and it would work the same.

The only reason [super rant mode on] they made up the conspiracy and cabal thing was because they want to rape the myths. I was confused when I read Vampire, suspecting something when I read Werewolf and totally certain when I got to Changeling. WW is to mythology what Pentex is to nature[/super rant mode off]

It's not that VtM can't give enjoyable play. In fact one of my most enjoyable role playing moments was playing a malkavian girl in an adventure at a Con. For that particular character all the stuff with archetypes and such clicked together and gave me what in my hands was an unbeatably fun character to play.

But that has nothing whatsoever to do with VtM having being a good Vampire rpg or not. In fact I think it has little to do about vampires. It's more politics.

I guess like Matt says, VtM is popular because it doesn't require people to think about what they're actually playing, because they can simply play the vampires as superpowered humans bickering about stuff.

If you actually want to address the interesting things, like "how does it feel to be a vampire" then you will make it less accesible to the mindless drones out there.

The kicker variant Ben Morgan brings up is a good point. Something like that would help a lot. I guess Jake is already on to that though.

Uh...all of these would be Exploration of Situation wouldn't they? If you take these to be Exploration of Character, then all role-playing could probably be palmed off on Exploration of Character, because (Universalis notably excluded) you play a character.

I don't think so. Look here:

Character: highly-internalized, character-experiential play, for instance the Turku approach.
A possible development of the "vampire" premise in terms of Character Exploration might be, What does it feel like to be a vampire?

Situation: well-defined character roles and tasks, up to and including metaplot-driven play.
A possible development of the "vampire" premise in terms of Situation Exploration might be, What does the vampire lord require me to do?

I can't see any exploration of situation in my adventures. If you can, then maybe my examples are simply unclear.

Flashbacks: I can see those used as campaign devices, but are we talking about them grounded into the system here (i.e. you can't run a vanilla adventure solely set in the 17th century because it has to be done as a flashback)? I hope not.

KeWl Powerz and Blood Points: As far as I know the originators of the "blood fuels powers" is VtM, except of course for healing powers. When I bought VtM just after the first ed was released, this was the first thing I ripped out. I personally think blood fueling powers is a very very bad idea. To me it sounds like an arbitrary rule to stop the characters from being too powerful. It's not needed.

On the other hand you could have blood points to work like hitpoints. As long as you had blood points you could heal any wound in a few seconds. But you'd be hungry afterwards... As a bonus that would mirror what happens in most vampire stories.

Their powers on the other hand, are usually based on age, on resting on the sacred earth of one's homeland (cue Bram Stoker's Dracula the movie) and similar stuff. It is also possible to base the powers on a meta-mechanic.

I don't if you remember that there was a Leading Edge adaption of the BS Dracula movie? I have it (got it recently actually). It basically has the vampires getting powers for doing evil stuff and corrupting people. That kinda worked to explain why Dracula and other vampires were willing to take chances and get out of their safe environment. It's similar to what you describe with the Blood points getting people to run around and feed. I suggest however (I know I am a bastard and am trying to tell you how to write your game but I'd really really like to see a good vampire game), you separate blood points and feeding from powers. It's a good idea, and here's why:

You want to up the amount of blood vampires consume. You know ol VtM. It wanted to be harmless so you could lie there in your coffin and being very unsociable for a week before you had to go out and do some bad thing. I don't remember the exact figures, but it was a dramatic change when I put the blood point loss (of a max of 10) to 3 points a day.

Yeah, my players were out feeding their characters every day. Not surprisingly.

And that was a good thing, at least in my stories. Because they had to keep going out and walking the streets. They couldn't spend 12 hours plotting and hatching schemes. Maybe you had 10 hours of good nightlife. Of that maybe a few hours at least was dedicated to hunting. With that much impact on their daily life, the players couldn't ignore it. Maybe it's not so strange that a lot of adventures came exactly from their having to go out and feed.

It's a great opportunity for many stories. I think that allowing characters to go weeks without feeding is like eliminating the best source of adventures the GM has.

[Le Joueur]

Hey Jake,

Like where you're going...

Okay, next question: I've got a group of 5 right now. As far as I see it, 2-3 players is ideal for this game (and most games with a strong narrativist goal), but I've got 5. Many groups have 5-ish, and I need to take something like that into consideraiton. I've started playing with the "After Dark" model of having them wander from place to place, but I'm also at a loss as how to make that emotional impact very worthwhile in such a large group.

Ideas?

Yeah, a couple.

First, I've always held with the notion that while small groups dwell on things well enough, large groups may have problems.  It's like having a big family; when you only have one or two kids, everybody gets enough parental attention.  Past a certain point the kids either begin relying more on each other or being more independant.  I think that applies here too.

Whether you're talking about 'gamemaster attention' or 'spotlight time,' you're thinking about a limited resource for five players to take part in.  The system can do a coupla things; either it can facilitate 'gamemaster quality time' or it can help the players be 'more independent.'  Mechanics that almost require players to deeply contemplate their character's actions will make it seem like 'more is going on,' especially if ultimately their decisions result in important turns of events.  On the other hand, mechanisms which increase gamemaster effectiveness allow him to have 'a lot going on.'  Either way, them 'more going on' ought to satisfy more larger groups.

Which ultimately comes down to my old saying, "When all else fails, run an action scene."  If either the other players, events, or system keep them busy, in the good way, you can run much larger groups and keep it interesting.

My other suggestion is to avoid a trap that reality-emulation heavy games suffer when doing vampires.  In reality, a little damage can go a long way towards incapacitation in a natural human being.  One of the fun parts of vampires is how they just keep going.  Some systems attempt to shore up a relatively realistic treatment-style that works for humans to work for vampires; you get points to counteract damage or you have rapid healing or whatever.

What you really want is to shift the focus away from incapacitation being the price of battle.  I suggest skipping damage tracking entirely for vampires, they're immortal after all; instead how about impairing their efficacy.  (And I'm not suggesting that all damage does is drain away some efficacy resource.)  Damage means nada, "cool powers" usage is spendy: a long battle and you run out (a lot like some systems and hit points).  This will create the priority to get in and out of battle as quickly as possible without ending the availability of "cool powers" the rest of the time.

Instead of having the opponent take away something, the fight makes the vampire use it up themselves.  Either way, it makes fights something you want to avoid and that's all that the threat of incapacitation does anyway, right?

Just a couple of thoughts.

Fang Langford

[Le Joueur]

Hey Christoffer,

I can't see any exploration of situation in my adventures. If you can, then maybe my examples are simply unclear.

I thought that might be a problem.  Here's the originals:

A classic type of campaign would be:
"If the rules of human life were suddenly ripped from under you, how would you live? How would you live your life?"

"You're a bunch of vampires and you drift from place to place. Every place you can only live for a short time."

"The lone vampire (or the group of vampires) trying to fit into human society by keeping a job, having human friends and so on".

Vampires who are in positions of power.

Look here:

Character: highly-internalized, character-experiential play, for instance the Turku approach.

A possible development of the "vampire" premise in terms of Character Exploration might be, What does it feel like to be a vampire?[/list:u]
Situation: well-defined character roles and tasks, up to and including metaplot-driven play.
A possible development of the "vampire" premise in terms of Situation Exploration might be, What does the vampire lord require me to do?[/list:u]

How about I cut them down a bit more to show the Situations:

"If the rules of human life were suddenly ripped..."

"...you drift from place to place...."

"...fit into human society...".

...positions of power.

Rules are a situation, places are situations, human society is a situation, positions are just situations.  None of your examples say anything about "what does it feel like?"  "How would you live..." "...keeping a job, having human friends..." don't say anything about feelings.  How do I live?  By exploiting the Situation.  "Keeping" and "having?"  Exploit the Situation.  These are the "roles and tasks" of Situation Exploration.

Like I said, you can Explore your Character with these, it's just far from implicit.  I'm not saying it's unavailable; rather that nothing in these 'goes that direction.'  The suggestions you've made put 'the work' of the game in the hands of the gamemaster, he has to create these situations and theoretically evoke these feelings (if we take them as Exploration of Character); I think that fights at the goal of Exploring Character.  I believe that if it's Character you want to Explore then it's the players who have to 'do the work,' which is why I suggested a number of mechanism throwing the onus on the players.  (The gamemaster supplies the raw materials, but it's really my "how," "can," and "what" that force the players to do the Exploring.)

Don't get me wrong, if you approach play from a "character-experiential" vantage point, you almost always get Exploration of Character, regardless of what the system asks of you.  All I am saying about your examples is that, in the absence of the assumption of "character-experiential play," they get you more into Exploration of Situation instead because they explicitly suggest situations that aren't evocative.

It's really a minor point.

Fang Langford

p. s. This point of confusion is what really lead me to separate Avatar Approach from the pack.

[Jake Norwood]

Wow, I'm getting really good feedback here, and I appreciate it a lot.

Roaming and being normal: Being raised military, I'm kind of a drifter (hense the company name). For me part of the allure of vampires was the fact that they were people who had lost/rejected what was "home" and became drifters and outsiders--if not physcially, at least then emotionally. I think that's what drew me to V:tM originally all those years ago.

Blood Points and Powers: Again, BPs don't create powers, but they fuel them. To me instead of being a way to "limit" what a vampire can do, it's a way of making feeding a choice: "If I don't use my amazing power I will rarely if ever have to take human life" vs. "Look at all the power I have...the price isn't so bad, is it?" When feeding, the number of BPs in a human is based largely on items like Gender, Health, Age, and "Purity." This makes the most desirable targets also the ones with the most "reason to live." Sure, you can hunt old ladies and criminals, but they don't provide so much life to you, and they can't fuel your expensive addiction. I think what I'm saying is that Blood isn't the Addiction--Power is, and Power comes through the taking of Blood. If you want the power then you make an evil choice. That's strong to me.

Flashbacks: In the Playtest we're running right now the game takes place in Victorian England. I'm planning the next game to be modern somewhere, and the next could be the Revolutionary war. For this reason I'm considering having essentially no advancement system. This is a mixed bag for me, though, as part of the power of the Genre isn't being ancient, but discovering that you have great power and that one day, you will be ancient. So vanilla games can exist in any time period.

Relationships (why does the group stick together?): In our current group, we've got a straight line of decendancy. One player--a vampire since ancient Greece, created the next, who in turn created the next, and then the next, and so on, so that every vampire in the group is a parent (except the last) and a child (except the first) of someone else in the group. This is a little more linear than I had in mind, but I think that there should be a literal blood-relationship (vampiric kinship, not neccessarily mortal kinship) between players. So far I like the way it's working, but I will want to play with it more. Personally I can't see any plausible reason for vampires to hang together in a group larger than three without "family ties" or some kind of quest to conquer the world through conspiricy.

Premise: I confess that the premise I had in mind is actually *very* Sorcerer-esque. What will you do (who will you kill) to get what you want. Originally I was just going to use Clinton's URGE mod for Sorcerer for vampires, but then I decided that I wanted something a little more and we started doing our thing (not that I don't still think that Sorcerer would make and awesome vampire game...it would!). This seems to be a recurring thing in all the vampire myths. Veeerrrry Sorcerer-esque indeed.

[Valamir]

Hey Jake, like how you're tieing the expenditure of blood points to powers only if you really call upon them.

My all time favorite take on vampires was the TV show Forever Knight, which kept all of the vampire conspiracy stuff very real, but very personal.  Instead of the huge sweeping cabals, the conspiracies that affected Knight were all immediate Relationship Map type conspiracies.  It also highlighted the importance of relationships with mortals, both those who know your secret and those that don't.

Further the show really highlighted (to the extent possible in serial TV) the quest by Knight to hang on to his humanity, continueing to try to function within human society and living on blood bank blood instead of hunting.  Inevitably he was faced with situations where to save people it became necessary to get all vampire bad ass.  This not only required more blood (and an occassional frenzy inspired hunt to get it) but also set him back on the humanity / beast line.

[Bailywolf]

A really good across-the-ages vampire game would be great.  Figure its just you and the other six vampires you've known since 1403... occasionaly you meet new ones.  IN all that time, in such a tight peer group, everyone has the chance to play all the possible rolls in relationships... one century the Enemy, the next the Lover, the next Confidant, the next, Friend, the next Betrayer etc.  With such a small incestuous group of potential friends, imagine all the possible permutations a relationship map might take?  

In such a scheme, it has to be fairly difficult for a vampire to create another vampire.  

In one of my projects- a vamp game called Blood Oaths- it requires a whole coven of vampires to initiate a new member... vamps who go at it alone quickly fall into the stolid, manipulative, arrogant, 'count in the castle' mode... and fairly soon after that get slaughtered by their wilder, more dynamic and younger kin.  A vampire game about revolution and rebirth and the dynamics of a tightly interbound yet highly volitile social group.  


Don't ignore the social... the only consistent presences in the life of a potentialy immortal being are going to be others with a similar life span... and if quite rare, this can mean the same crew of blokes you've known...forever...




Aslo there was a really great thread a goodly while back about a naritivist aproach to Vampires, and it may be well worth searching for to review.

[Christoffer Lernö]

Blood points. Damn I'm gonna fight you on this one Jake. I know you meant it as powering them (actually being the source of new powers would be totally in line with litterature).

I personally think blood fueling powers is a very very bad idea. To me it sounds like an arbitrary rule to stop the characters from being too powerful.

As I keep saying. And it's a WW invention. Are you gonna do WW mythos here Jake? I thought you said "What I'm shooting for is a blend of Bram Stoker, Anne Rice, and Shadow of the Vampire/ Nosferatu". Let me know if you changed your mind.
I personally think that borrowing from WW mythos is a bad thing. If you can find references to it in pre WW books and movies, fine. Or if you thought of it yourself. But this would be such a blatant rip-off.

Or maybe I've just seen too many movies and read too many books. Most people won't notice. Heck, most people these days seem to think that WW vampire mythos is THE mythos from which everything else is just a deviation (which is what ticks me off undescribably).

I know you do it for a reason of your own since the problem you want to focus on is Power vs Humanity. I'm mostly arguing about using this very particular mechanic which only exists within the WW mythos. (As far as I can tell anyway, I try to stay clear of the most trashy of the vampire novels, so there might actually be some although I expect any such book to have been influenced by the rpg in that case)

A different objection is about the whole Power vs Humanity thing in its applicability. I don't see the vampires as actually NEEDING their powers beyond their immortality (But then again I don't know what powers you have). If they are fairly mainstream, I can't see why most vampires should bother with sustaining them regarless of whether the vampire in question is "good" or "evil". Unless of course there is some conflict in which they need their powers.

I mean, look at it:
Either I need my powers to stop people from killing me because they want to stop me from killing people which I do because I need my powers to stop people....

or

I don't need my powers because I don't kill people.

It doesn't seem to become a struggle between good and evil, but rather one of cleverness and of profile ("you want to keep a high or low one?")

I'd say: skip this whole thing! Put them into situations where things can happen. Make them feed every day and deal with that FACT. I always felt any vampire movie where you could go around and be a nice vampire because you robbed blood banks and stuff instead of killing people - or you didn't need that much blood, was cutting away most of what makes the vampire interesting.

I'd like to post a really good non-VtM vampire adventure I played to maybe illustrate how non-VtM play could work. Should I mail it here or in Actual Play?

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Blood Points and k3w1 Powerz

Been thinking on this a bit. All I can offer is how I would do this were I making such a beast. Heck, I may do that at some point if I continue to dwell on this.

Having powers work off of blood points is functional and it's nice to have a mechanical reinforcement for why vampires must drink blood. I can't help but think that it's also artificial. I'm not saying that it would, but one could imagine someone playing munchkin style, killing without discretion just to get the blood points. This is always the danger with mechanics IMO. There is always the possibility of someone playing the letter of the rules instead of the spirit of the game.

I would focus more on the characters themselves, which is the vampires and their victems, as I had said before. I'm trying not to repeat myself. It just seems more interesting to me, I guess.

I don't think I'm illustrating this well, I'll try again.

Couple things I don't really like:

The idea of needing blood points to power the vampire's powers or needing to feed at lest ever three months or similar deadlines. Focus on such things seem beside the point to me. The point IMO is the chase as the vampire stalks, seduces and eventually feeds on the one they have chosen. Just as important are all of the elements that relate to this, such as why the vampire has chosen this particular person and watching the interaction between them through play.

I guess part of it in my mind is that the vampire isn't just after the victem's blood but is looking for emotional, spiritual surrender. Maybe I've been reading too many bdsm stories.

I don't like the stuff above about blood points because that adds a level to the proceedings I wouldn't want. What if the vampire is twarted for three months? Then a sense of urgency is placed on the proceedings or else the character may starve to death. I don't think that's in line with the spirit of things. The vampire always manages to come back. Lop its head off and set it on fire and it still returns later to haunt you. It strikes me that this is one of those concepts where character death is better decided by player choice than as the results of system mechanics.

But then, I don't seem to have much in mind for mechanics other than maybe a generic task resolution

The idea of Regret sounds interesting. I'll have to think on that. However, it's now become painfully obvious that I'm working on my own take of the same thing at this point.

Pity you've already taken the title Thirst. That's a good title.

[Bailywolf]

Much is made of vampire thirst being somehow extraordinary... that a vampire's hunger is so much greater than a human's, so much more powerful and driving and insidious.  

Go a week without eating, and tell me how powerful you think entirely human hunger is.

I get cranky if I have to skip lunch and my blood sugar drops.  I get happy when I tuck into an especially excellent bowl of Mongolian noodles.  

The entirely mundane human is almost entirely ruled and defined by his appetites, either in giving into them or in resisting them.

Don't go the blood pool route.  Its tired.  I don't have "Big Mac points" or "almond trout points" that I burn for using MY natural powers of walking about, yakking,  and typing slightly snide answers in message forums.  Though a good case could be made that I actually run on Coffee Points.  I'd like to see a game which treats vampire powers as a new set of natural abilities... with no two vampires having quite the same 'spread' of power potentials.  Vamp 1 can read minds.  Vamp 2 can fly.  Vamp 3 can walk in dreams.  Vamp 4 can eat thoughts instead of blood.  

Using a normal power is about as exhausting (and hunger-inducing) as walking around.  Using a significant power is like running.  Using a major power is like sprinting as hard as you can.  You'll get tired, and then hungrier.  

Take another route.  The 'kewl powerzs' are like a tiger's great strength, claws, and senses- they allow a tiger to do what a tiger does much much better:  kill and eat.

The dangerous difference in human and vampire hunger is not its inherent power or seductive attraction, but that a human frantic for a meal is going to be pretty weak and frail...while a vamp is going to be dangerously strong and fast... imagine after that week of fasting if someone starts waving a plate of hot French fries under your nose?  After two weeks?  Now imagine those hot fresh steamy French fries are your coworkers.

Remember the cartoons with the two characters trapped on the desert island and each starts to hallucinate that the other guy is a big Sunday ham?  Something like that.

-Benjamin

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Dammit! Two people, one before, one after my post have addressed the blood points/powers issue much better than I did. Ignore me, read their posts.

[C. Edwards]

The vampiric condition is a mirror image of the human condition, only dialed up a few notches and dipped in neon.  Therefore I think it very appropriate for the fulfillment of a vampire's hunger to ease the barriers inherent to feeding that hunger the next time around.  Hate begets hate, violence and repeated exposure to violence often result in an indifference and numbeness to it, making it easier to accept or perpetrate on the next go-round.  This applies to our exposure to most things to some degree, from sex to food.

I could jive with the BloodPoints fueling powers if those powers are direct extensions of a vampire's lust and pain.  Highlighting the vampire's position as a walking dichotomy representing the the relationship between desire and guilt should be the primo goal in my opinion.  I think that the mechanical balance between bestiality and humanity is a start, but it doesn't quite knock the ball outta da park.  I think some good ideas on handling dual natures are being presented in the Let's Make a Game thread over in Theory, concerning monastic orders.

Sorry I can't be of more help.  There's an idea out there floating in the void between my eyes, but I just can't quite get a grasp on it.

-Chris

[lumpley]

Two unrelated opinions:

a. Up to the point of collapse, a hungry vampire should be able to beat the crap out of a full one.  Blood points should give you restraint, compassion, coolness, foresight, and conscience.  Being hungry should give you powers.  I'd vote for 'truly nasty' over 'kewl.'

You feed because you're worse if you don't.  (I think I've heard that somewhere before.)

b. What would you do for power? is a stupid Premise for a vampire game.  I'd drink people's blood.  Duh.  

Jake, you seem to be angling toward Whose blood would you drink for power? which is better, but still.  How about: What would you drink people's blood for?

Edit: Edited so I sound somewhat less the sarcastic, strident nutjob.

-Vincent

[Jake Norwood]

Okay, so you guys are anti-blood points. The arguments:

1) Blood Points originated within the WW mythos; in non-rpg terms, the idea is that blood fuels a vampire's powers comes from WW.

Um...I haven't played WW in, oh, 9 or 10 years. I'm not taking from WW here, but trying to implement a mechanic that is (1) fun and playable, (2) easy for players to grasp (3) pushes forward my premise and the issue quoted above.

Likewise, the argument is a little like saying "D&D uses dice and I don't like D&D, so no dice." Some people actually are in a camp like this, but that isn't most of us.

Lastly, I think that this does follow the Anne Rice tradition to some degree (remember that V:tM was almost ripped off of Anne Rice verbatim in places). When Lestat is "killed" the first time he lies in the swamp powerless until he feeds some, then he gains enough power to start moving up the food chain until he's in good enough shape to get humans again. So while I don't think the concept backing something like Blood Points goes back to Dracula, it is attested in more modern literature.

2) Blood banks and stuff are cheating.

Couldn't agree more. You've got to take it from someone. As to "is blood needed for survival?" Yeah, sure, but not much and not often. I'm fine with that, because the game is about people either (1) trying to live in a vampire's world without crossing that line, or (2) about people that are addicted to power and cross the line to feed that addiction.

Blood points as I'm using them do this. I'm willing to drop them IF I see a viable reason other than "its too much like WW."

3) Blood Points will lead to munchkin behavior.
And munchkin behavior is what? Killing everyone to get what you want. This is a *great* thing to make a story out of when you put the rest of the mechanics (Passion and Regret as I mentioned earlier, amongst other things). It's not really any more munchkin-like than Sorcerer, where you can summon as many demons as you like, but can you handle all that power. With THIRST it'a an issue of those Vices and Virtues (the Pendragon-like stuff); those are what will really drive the game.

4) Blood points take away the emotional impact of the hunt and the fun stuff that could go with it.

This is the best argument so far, and the only one that's starting to sway me. While originally I'm not so sure that this is what I was going for, its certainly a *fascinating* part of the genre, and should be handled well. The problem as I see it (partially at least) is the fear of making it a stalking game and not a game that is about all the great emotional stuff AND all the cool powers. Vampires do cool stuff, and the Simulationist in me wants to do cool stuff vicariously through my character. I also think that the stalk may be a little over melodramatic as you're seeing it (melodramatic compared to my vision, that is). I think you can just kill and eat and treat them (humans) like cattle. Fine. I think that vampires are lonely and that's where the stalking comes from. Dracula did what he did (stalk Mina) out of love and a search for a companion, not for food. He used others for that.

Finally, I don't see blood as food a la "Big Mac Points," although if I did those arguments would be quite valid. Blood is Power. How badly do you want that power?

Jake

[Jake Norwood]

b. What would you do for power? is a stupid Premise for a vampire game.  I'd drink people's blood.  Duh.  

Jake, you seem to be angling toward Whose blood would you drink for power? which is better, but still.  How about: What would you drink people's blood for?

Edit: Edited so I sound somewhat less the sarcastic, strident nutjob.

-Vincent

Vincent-

While it took me a moment to get around the tone of your comment, I think you may have it my problem right on the head.

I think that the Premise "how far will you go for your power" is viable, but a better question yet is "what is the power for?" That's where my original question "what do you do in a vampire game?" comes from. So you've got spiffy/nasty/cool powers. Great. So what? What are you going to do with it. If we see where the vampire fits into the picture than we can see what he wants power for, and thus why he would choose (or not choose) to go to certain limits in seeking that power. Without that meaningful purpose the game would just sit like stagnant water, I think.

I think that this really has me thinking now. After all, the bulk of our disagreements about BPs and all else are just details compared to our final goal. As long as I'm lost as to what that final goal is, the details are arbitrary.

Jake