[Court of 9 Chambers] Flashback Rolls/Conflict Resolution

[talysman]

hi, all. I have run into a potential problem with the Court of 9 Chambers game mechanics; when I described a new feature which I considered innovative and exciting to someone, his response was rather negative. as a consequence, I thought I'd run it by everyone here for some alternate opinions.

first, a very brief run-down of the current core mechanics for Co9C and some other games I am developing. I am calling this core mechanic the Match-Step system for now; individual games will have elaborations and restrictions on these core mechanics to refine them to a specific setting or variety of play.

[*] character development: players assign motifs/tropes/cliches to numbers on a character sheet.
[*] playing scenes: players take turns describing scenes and any conflict, challenge, or goal they are trying to accomplish in a scene. players can make one or more dice-pool rolls to accomplish their goals in the scene.
[*] matching motifs: when a roll is made, the player rolling the dice and the player's opponent, if any, tries to match the numbers rolled to the numbers on their character sheets. if they have a matching motif/trope/cliche on the sheet that is appropriate, they can describe how that motif appears in the current scene.
[*] accumulating steps: if the player matched more motifs than the opponent, the difference in matches counts as completed steps; if the opponent matched more motifs, the difference counts as completed steps for the opponent. ten completed steps means the goal has been accomplished.
[/list:u]

as you can see, the goal of this system is to work descriptive elements into scenes rather than just deciding who the winner is.

the new idea I have been toying with for the Court of 9 Chambers and for an as-yet-unnamed "roguelike tabletop rpg" is called a flashback roll. a player can make a roll to describe something that happened earlier, before the current scene, but still relevant to the current scene. for example, an artist attempting to deal with thugs sent by a rival might describe "fortunately, earlier that day, I had packed my trusty revolver" and attempt a flashback roll. the roll otherwise works like a regular roll; the roll can be opposed, with the opponent's matches entering into the current scene.

when I described this briefly to someone, his response was "That sounds SHADY and UNETHICAL". given the nature of who I was asking, he may just have been joking, but the question is legitimate: does this seem wrong, or perhaps pointless? or does it seem like it would promote more description in play (my actual goal)? has anyone tried something similar? several indie games use cumulative dice-pool rolls (including Sorcerer and Donjon; it seems to me that when the actions of a roll actually occurred is not really important except in terms of the desired feel of play. since I want the Court of 9 Chambers to feel like prose-poems or artists' memoirs, with reminescence of things long past, I feel flashbacks would be an exciting addition.

it's going to be even more important for Trash Talk, the talk show game I'm designing using the same core mechanics. the play session is assumed to be the talk show on which the players air their grievances; some events -- food fights, brawls, surprise guests -- occurs in the present, but most of the actions occur before play, with the players remembering "that time you dissed leona for flirtin' with some dude, and all along you was sleepin' with her sister!" most of the play is thus flashback which provoke results (or fist-fights) in the present.

any thoughts on this?

[clehrich]

for example, an artist attempting to deal with thugs sent by a rival might describe "fortunately, earlier that day, I had packed my trusty revolver" and attempt a flashback roll. the roll otherwise works like a regular roll; the roll can be opposed, with the opponent's matches entering into the current scene.

Shady and unethical?  Actually, I quite liked the Theatrix version of this, where in essence you could just say this sort of thing and if you could make it seem plausible, that was it.  My point is that not only do I not think this is shady, I don't even think you necessarily need to have a die mechanic for it.  In your game, it sounds like dice are appropriate, but that just makes it less shady, IMHO.  If you say it, and you roll it, why can't you do it?  I say go for it --- sounds cool to me.

[Tony Irwin]

the new idea I have been toying with for the Court of 9 Chambers and for an as-yet-unnamed "roguelike tabletop rpg" is called a flashback roll. a player can make a roll to describe something that happened earlier, before the current scene, but still relevant to the current scene. for example, an artist attempting to deal with thugs sent by a rival might describe "fortunately, earlier that day, I had packed my trusty revolver" and attempt a flashback roll. the roll otherwise works like a regular roll; the roll can be opposed, with the opponent's matches entering into the current scene.

when I described this briefly to someone, his response was "That sounds SHADY and UNETHICAL". given the nature of who I was asking, he may just have been joking, but the question is legitimate: does this seem wrong, or perhaps pointless? or does it seem like it would promote more description in play (my actual goal)? has anyone tried something similar? several indie games use cumulative dice-pool rolls (including Sorcerer and Donjon;

Trollbabe, Paladin, and The Dying Earth RPG, use a system of rerolls to generate the story of a conflict. Like you could narrate "I'll stand up to the dastards, bullies like this are always cowards at heart", then you roll your dice and fail. You then activate an attribute/spend a point or something to reroll some or all of your dice. You justify this reroll through narration: "They may be thugs of the basest sort, but fortunately, earlier that day, I had packed my trusty revolver". You can keep on rerolling until you get the result you want or the points/attributes you're using run out, at every step it introduces a new twist for you to narrate in the story of the conflict.

Rather than rerolling a dice-pool to generate story, Universalis generates the story as the dice pool is built. So your opponent might say "I'll send thugs round to break your easels, I get one dice". You reply "Fortunately I remembered to pack a revolver earlier that day, I'll get one dice for my pool". It goes back and forth until both players have activated all their options and are ready to roll the dice pools they've built up.

it seems to me that when the actions of a roll actually occurred is not really important except in terms of the desired feel of play. since I want the Court of 9 Chambers to feel like prose-poems or artists' memoirs, with reminescence of things long past, I feel flashbacks would be an exciting addition.

I agree completely! It doesn't really matter whether the character finds a gun, is handed a gun, uses magic to conjure a gun, turns his body into a gun, or simply pulls a gun that he had packed earlier that day. Your system will help generate story about your character using a gun, and what's important is that this story should fit the tone of the game. Narrating it as a kind of artists memoir, "fortunately, earlier that day, I had packed my trusty revolver", sounds perfect!

I look forward to seeing what you do with your game,

Tony

[Michael S. Miller]

Shady and Unethical? Not in the least. We're creating story here, and if a writer can go back and add an earlier scene, why can't we?

Reading over your rules summary, though, I'm not sure that you need special rules for Flashbacks as opposed to standard resolution. In your write-up of how "matching motifs" is actually done, be sure to put in a paragraph of how flashbacks are a legitimate option.

The game sounds cool. Lookin' forward to it.

[ethan_greer]

I don't share the shady/unethical viewpoint, but I can see where it might be coming from - The GM has plans, and the player does something in a flashback that negates those plans.  "That's not fair!" the GM fumes.  But whatever.

I like the flashback idea.  It has other applications - I could see a comedy time travel scenario ala the Bill & Ted movies.  Heh.

[Shreyas Sampat]

I'm of the mind that your friend was ribbing you.  Flashbacks sound like a really appropriate thing to add to Co9C.  (Do you have a parallel dream mechanic going as well?)

[DP]

Shady and unethical can be the result if that's the intention of the player. The "flashback" mechanic is neutral in and of itself, and I think it's a good idea.

Having oppositional flashbacks might not be such a good idea: "Well, then, it's a good thing I snuck into your studio yesterday and unloaded your revolver." But this, and the alternate flashback danger of a player "remembering" something that would give him great power, really only comes into play with highly-competitive [Gamist?] players, who really wouldn't be playing Court of 9 Chambers to begin with; hearing, "It's about artists," would send them running screaming back to RIFTS.

As for the die roll: I can see both sides, making it like the Provisions roll in Donjon, or just a narrative thing. My opinion: make it a Karma mechanic, in which you're trading off against another resource. Say, you remember you packed your revolver, but now where has that damned tube of ecru paint gone?

In this respect, the present would be buying off the past, which I think is in keeping with the artistly theme. [And different from the more typical situation I and many others are in, being deeply in debt as a result of having borrowed/gambled against the future to make the present better.]

It furthermore works like coincidental magic, which is what I read into part of Tony Irwin's post. But I'll stop here before I get into crazy A.O. Spare territory.

[talysman]

thanks, everyone. I'm still looking at the game deeply, concentrating on two things: unforseen problems that may arise, and poor communication of concepts. I'm a big fan of rules systems that are explained clearly and concisely, but I can see from some of the questions and commments here that I need to work out a better way of phrasing.

the example about the gun is perhaps a bad example, but I deliberately chose it because I think that's what flashed through the commentor's head when he said flashback rolls sound shady and unethical. in a sense, flashback rolls -- at least in Co9C -- are unnecessary to "bring a gun into play", because the gun comes into play when your gun trope matches a die roll, no matter who was making the roll. it's just a matter of narrating it into the results of the roll.

also, one restriction on the flashback roll is that you can't interrupt an action with a flashback. after thinking about it, I realize that this restriction makes the "I remembered to pack my gun" example impossible, at least as written, although it could certainly be narrated as the result of another roll ... I think this is what clehrich suspected when he wrote:

My point is that not only do I not think this is shady, I don't even think you necessarily need to have a die mechanic for it.

... so you can't interrupt someone's roll with a flashback, and you can't even interrupt a sequence of rolls in a scene. in fact, I should probably not call them "flashback rolls" at all, but rather "flashback scenes". here's how I envision them actually being used to improve the game: some of you may recall the concept of models and icons in the original gamist version of Co9C: in order to "build successes" (steps) for an "acquire motif" roll, an artist can acquire a model or an icon first to use for bonus rolls. these are two seperate scenese:

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[*]the artist looks for an icon and rolls the dice
[*]the artist studies the icon to add a new motif,
  carrying over previous matches to the new die roll
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I think it's more in keeping with the feel of the setting to allow the "icon" to be part of reminescence. thus, Pierre LaFiche sips his coffee in a street cafe on the Boulevarde des Couchons and remember back to his school days, when he was strolling that same boulevarde with his camarades and was stopped in his tracks by a sudden distant glimpse of a magnificent red-haired woman in a green silk dress across the street, heading around a corner; darting across the way (and nearly getting himself killed in the process, he turns the same corner... but she is long gone, a fleeting vision. in a park nearby, he hears the faint strains of "a pretty girl is like a melody..."

I think this explains it a little better. I definitely need to make it clear that this is not a reroll, like in Trollbabe; I like the elegance of Trollbabe, but I decided not to use any reroll mechanics in Co9C or perhaps in any of the Match-Step games. technically, they aren't needed, since the "step" mechanic turns the question "do you succeed in your task?" into "how long does it take to accomplish your goal?"