New game - Shadows in the Fog - help wanted

[simon]

While Gwen raised a good point, I wouldn't worry too much about it for the following reasons:-

1. While experts on Victorian culture be made rare, that isn't what is called for here. Almost everyone has an idea of what life was like in Victorian times - whether true or stereotypical. More than any other historical period it forms the bulk of our immediate cultural heritage.

2. For SintheF (as I see it) the only important thing to know is that society is class structured and the maintenance of this structure induces a certain level of hypocrisy in social relations. Everything else is icing.

3. Even those who haven't actually read Dickens, Conan Doyle and the other authors you mention will no doubt have a pretty good idea of the themes and issues they deal with, making it much easier than, say, a hard SF rpg to 'learn' the culture. Again this is because Victorian culture constantly irrigates our own.

4. In the final analysis, this is your game and you play with your friends who, being friends, will probably know something about your interests even if they don't share those interests. An example of this being that one of my friends is French and, by default rather than interest, I've picked up a (admittedly crude and basic) understanding of common themes in French film. Friends know each other and knowing each other invariably extends to knowing what they like to know about.

That said, it makes the game less attractive to people like Gwen who couldn't give a fig about Victorian culture (perfectly reasonable stance) and who certainly wouldn't be bothered to study it. As a sort of counterbalance to this you could write a couple of paragraphs or so underscoring just how much somebody who claims to be ignorant of Victorian culture is actually knowledgeable - at least kowledgeable enough to be able to play.

Simon.

[marknau]

I'm also mildly concerned that the low-number cards are strictly less useful than the high-number cards.

The easy way would be to allow more than one card to be used at a time, up to some maximum number of points.  The problem is that you lose a card each time you play two, and saying that you get to draw two if you play them means that people will "dump" low cards haphazardly.  I don't know.  I think you're right, but I'm not sure what to do about it.  If I scale up the cards, then the skills have to scale up or someone can really slam you very hard, but then the effect scales down, so.... and so on.  Anyone have any ideas here?  I'm thinking.

Idea 1: Every time there is a GMC to be assigned, give it to the player who bids the LOWEST card for it. That card gets replenished at the end of the scene.

Idea 2: Learning opportunities. Whenever a player resolving an action plays a card that is 10 or more less than the difficulty, the action is a failure, but represents the character having learned in the process. These are tallied and turned into XP at session end. Hmmm. Or something along those lines.

[Spooky Fanboy]

From my notes, I see that I didn't notice where it was mentioned how scenes are managed. Is it assumed that the reader is familiar with the process of kicking off, wrapping up, and changing scenes? Or did I miss that? Also, I'm not sure if I noticed what the pre-game role of the GM should be. What sort of prep is suggested?

I guess I've just gotten too close to the Narrativist mindset! ;-) I'm surprised that I noticed that, dimly, and didn't bother to comment on it. But yeah, some comment on scene management or timing in the game would probably be a good thing.  

The skill differences seem very small compared to all the difficulty swinging that can happen with the cards. I can easily be convinced that it doesn't seem that way in actual play, but the numbers assigned to the cards are much more varied than the 3-point difference between Terrible and Brilliant. Also, maybe that's OK.

I think that skill differences are primarily to counter the need to make Concessions. I myself wasn't as worried about that, although there might be an argument made for increasing the effectiveness of skills in that regard.

I'd be more comfortable with a system that just turned "best of" votes into character improvements.

I agree strongly that the "Best Of" voting method is the way to go with improvement: that way, the player's mind is taken off card menagement as a metagame concern and focused more on acting and making the game interesting.
Here's my two cents: A Terrible skill can be purchased with one "Best Of" award. From Terrible to Good costs two "Best Of" awards, each. From Good to Brilliant costs three "Best Of" awards. All of these skill increases do have to be justified by what the character did during play, of course. If you go this route, be prepared to increase the efficacy of higher skill levels to justify the cost, by making them count more against Concessions.

I'm also mildly concerned that the low-number cards are strictly less useful than the high-number cards. If there were some tradeoff that could be found, some mechanism where the low numbers were better than the high ones, that would be nice. Maybe in actual play it all tends to even out, but I was left with a worry that a run of bad cards could feel like unwarranted punishment.

This, I don't know what to say. Given that the Tarot system is being used as a Fortune mechanic, it's fair to say that sometimes characters will have a run of poor luck. However, the idea you came up with about the lowest card being bid if you want to take over a GMC character is interesting: maybe the lowest-card-bid system you described would also work for a player making a Comment during a scene. Of course, if she were "underbid" during a game, she'd be able to Comment later.

Lastly, the GM is given 6 cards per scene, but told that he shouldn't be too heavy-handed in using them, but that he wants to "get the cards out of the players' hands." Is there a better way to make a mechanism that accomplishes these goals, or is it really necessary to rely on the GM that much to make things work out right? Or is it a non-issue during play, it just happens to work out OK?

Maybe it's just me, but I don't see this as being an issue: the GM is given the duty of concentrating on metagame elements, like the flow of the game and making sure the characters are being properly challenged. As long as it doesn't devolve into GM vs. players, everything should go smoothly.

[clehrich]

Hi guys,

Thanks for continuing to think about this game.  I'm seeing problems I hadn't even imagined, but I'm also learning how to go about managing them and fixing things.

I really like the "best of" as XP thing, i.e. of trading in "best of" votes for skill improvement.  My only concern is that in my experience, there are some players who, though very good players and helpful to the game, will very rarely get these awards.  They're facilitators, second bananas.  One solution, of course, would be to add a Second Banana award, but I don't think that's the way to go.  Another possibility would be to keep the card trade-in system, rebalanced considerably, and up the number of cards you get for a "Best."  This would mean that the more "Bests" you get, the quicker you can get skill improvement.  In addition, we might have an immediate trade-in, where if you get a "Best," you can immediately trade it for improvement instead of cards, at a better exchange rate, but you can't bank it.  I don't know, this may be too baroque.

As to lowest-card use, another possibility is simply to rebalance the relative valuation of cards with respect to actions, skills, and whatnot.  The current problem is that there is too wide a range, so that a two is really just not worth much.  I don't want to set things up to encourage "dumping," which I think would happen to some degree with any mechanic that rewards low card play with more cards.  I don't know; I really need to think about cards and their uses.  

One point I'd make here is that the low cards really aren't strictly speaking less useful, since you can always succeed no matter what the difficulty, even without playing any card.  Suppose the difficulty is around 8.  You could play a high card, but actually Concessions are more interesting from a scene point of view, so you deliberately play a low card and take some Concessions.  Doing this well is far more likely to get you a "best" than is playing a high card, which will lead to "I win, no concessions."  Perhaps emphasizing this as a dramatic possibility would go a very long way.

As to the GM "getting cards out of hands" issue, I think I just overstated that.  My point is that you don't want what hyphz called the "bunker" mentality (Actual Play: Star Wars and Railroading), in which the players hoard their resources "in case" things later on go bad.  What you want is for them to use those resources to create a good session, not hold on to them for future possible gains in actions or skill improvement.  I think having the GM have a lot of cards assists this process, because it gives her a mechanical way to pry cards loose from recalcitrant players.  The danger, which should also be emphasized, is that the GM will start relying on cards instead of challenging situations, and that will lead to more Us-vs-GM than I think is appropriate.  I should note that I'm not actually opposed to such things, but a little goes a long way.

[Spooky Fanboy]

So, how have things progressed so far on this game? Did you iron out any problems with the smaller cards? What did you decide on the advance-ment mechanic? How have you redesigned the concessions mechanic, if indeed you have added to or subtracted from it?

Perspiring minds want to know! %-)

[clehrich]

Spooky,

So, how have things progressed so far on this game?

Not much.  I've been fairly busy, and when I have done much with it, I've been working on Volume 2, writing up the details of the Victorian Poor Law system.  But I have tinkered somewhat, and floated some questions around the Forge.

Did you iron out any problems with the smaller cards?

No.  I need to see a detailed playtest on this one.  It seems to me that low-rank cards are not inherently less valuable than high-rank ones, if you as a player take storytelling as an important objective (which is essential to getting "best" votes).  The reason is that a low card allows you to succeed with a chosen number of concessions, where a high card more or less just wins.  I think this would depend a lot on player GNS priorities and perspectives, but as I say, I need to see some careful playtesting.

What did you decide on the advancement mechanic?

Yeah, this is the really painful one.  The problem, as you may recall, is that by trading in cards for skill advancement, you reward players for not using cards in play.  I floated a question about this on the Pool forum, because the Pool has a somewhat analogous mechanic: if you succeed at a roll, you can either take an additional die to your pool or else narrate an MoV (Monologue of Victory), where you get pretty complete narrative control.  The Pool folks seemed to feel that the mechanic there works, because it's not that you either get rewarded or get control, but rather that they are equivalent rewards.  I'm now thinking about how in Shadows in the Fog to balance the reward of relatively slow skill advancement against the reward of present victory or control.

The thing is that Shadows in the Fog essentially has two card-based narration mechanics.  One is Trump play (magic), and is positive, like MoV's in the Pool; the other is concessions, which are negative, that is you get to narrate success (and add interest and complexity) via failure (or rather, imperfect success).

How have you redesigned the concessions mechanic, if indeed you have added to or subtracted from it?

I haven't written it up yet, but my plan is that concessions will be graded 1-3, like damage.  

So if I'm picking a lock and drop a nondescript greasy hanky (suggesting a possible break-in, but hard to follow up), that's a 1; if I drop a fancy hanky (a clever detective might be able to follow it to me, or alternatively anyone can accurately identify my basic social standing), that's a 2; if I drop a monogrammed hanky, that's a 3.

Damage is just a relatively standardized form of concession: 1 = Ouch!, 2 = You're going to need a bandage or a little first aid; 3 = You're going to need professional attention.

I have considered the possibility of rating this all the way up to 4, but a 4 would be so disastrous as to be essentially a failure.

Skill ratings will be double (I think), so Terrible = -2, Acceptable = 0, Good = +2, Brilliant = +4.

Thus if difficulty = 8 (pretty hard, really not something you ought to do if you don't know quite a bit about it), and nobody makes a fuss over the action (no bidding at all, so you get to divide by 2), then if you're Brilliant your total is (8/2)-4 = 0 concessions.  If it's really VERY hard (say, 11), then you're either going to take a couple of concessions ((11/2)-4=2, so maybe a 2 or two 1's), or you'll play almost any card from your hand and have no trouble.  

On the other hand the first problem is quite serious for someone who doesn't know what he's doing (Acceptable): (8/2)-0 = 4 concessions, and the second is really a pain (11/2)-0 = 6 concessions.

Does that help?  And thanks --- nice to know someone's genuinely interested!

[Spooky Fanboy]

The problem, as you may recall, is that by trading in cards for skill advancement, you reward players for not using cards in play.  I floated a question about this on the Pool forum, because the Pool has a somewhat analogous mechanic: if you succeed at a roll, you can either take an additional die to your pool or else narrate an MoV (Monologue of Victory), where you get pretty complete narrative control.  The Pool folks seemed to feel that the mechanic there works, because it's not that you either get rewarded or get control, but rather that they are equivalent rewards.  I'm now thinking about how in Shadows in the Fog to balance the reward of relatively slow skill advancement against the reward of present victory or control.

The thing is that Shadows in the Fog essentially has two card-based narration mechanics.  One is Trump play (magic), and is positive, like MoV's in the Pool; the other is concessions, which are negative, that is you get to narrate success (and add interest and complexity) via failure (or rather, imperfect success).

See, I'd stick with a reward system based on the Best Of rewards, with one Best Of being necessary to gain a skill at Terrible, two to boost Terrible to Acceptable, Acceptable to Good, and three to Boost a Good trait to Brilliant. Of course, the rewards would have to relate in some way to the Skill being raised. That way, the whole issue of cards is rendered a non-issue. Or, have it be one of those things that can be brought up for a vote among the players, same as the Best Of awards. This is similar to how it's done in Castle Falkenstein, btw, just that the group as a whole is voting on it, as opposed to the GM deciding arbitrarily.

If you feel, for completeness' sake, that you should tie the cards into advancement somehow, then let it stand as you first had it. If players aren't using cards, then they're making concessions, which can only make life more interesting for them down the road and make your job as GM easier. Again, I would make an ironclad rule that you can only advance Skills you've used during play, so as to prevent people from hanging back and doing nothing.

My two cents.

[clehrich]

See, I'd stick with a reward system based on the Best Of rewards, with one Best Of being necessary to gain a skill at Terrible, two to boost Terrible to Acceptable, Acceptable to Good, and three to Boost a Good trait to Brilliant.

I floated this one on some thread or other around here, and I have to say it got a pretty resoundingly negative response.  The general sense was I think that making Best Of votes really important, even necessary, would make competition for them cutthroat and unpleasant, causing serious deterioration in interpersonal relations.  I'm not sure I'd go quite as far as that, but the point is well taken: if you have to get voted best, then you may start doing undesirable things just to get noticed.  For me personally, when I started thinking about it this way, I must say it started to push old "you're not one of the cool kids, you geek" buttons.

One thing I quite like about rewarding Best Of's with extra cards is that it naturally rewards people who are good with cards with more cards.

Your remark about requiring skill use to raise a skill is an important point: there should be some "justification" for the skill rise.  Perhaps it would be sufficient to say that a character must have played a card in an Action Resolution for the skill at some time since the last point when any skill was raised.  That is, each time you raise a skill, you have a sort of "clean slate."  From now on, you must use a skill and a card in an Action Resolution at least once before you can put cards into improving that skill.  It doesn't matter whether you succeed or fail: you just have to have some sort of character encouragement to improve the skill.  Incidentally, this also makes low cards more valuable, because they can act as "gateways" to skill improvement.

On a related note, I do think it might make sense to say that you have to trade a Best Of vote to get an entirely new skill (and you don't get the two cards for it).  This should probably be decided at once; you can't bank a Best Of vote until you think of a cool skill you need.

I skimmed Falkenstein a few years back, but I don't remember anything except the suit system.  How does improvement work there?

[Piers]

A quick thought on what do do with low cards:

One way to cut the range of results a hand gives is to allow the players to use multiple cards on a single test with an upper limit on the total result.  That total can either be equal to the highest possible card or some slightly lower number.  However, if you insist that the cards must be equal or less than that limit you make low cards actually somewhat valuable, as they can be used to get as close as possible to a maximal result.  

Of course, this may mean fiddling with the card refresh mechanism and hand size, but it might work.

And about experience:

I agree that the effect of holding back cards for experience encourages people to restrict their actual play in a given session, but I think the idea of 'cards for experience' has something going for it if you don't think of it as 'not playing' as much as not playing now.

By which I mean, how about tying the experience system to 'long term' rather than 'short term' card play.  Instead of the cards being held back to the end of the game I'd:

i) Have them used during play in some way to mark particular events and settings as important to the character.

ii) Have them thematically decide what's going on with the character based on some sort of tarot reading.

iii) And have this define experience.

That's really fuzzy, but I think the idea of 'setting cards aside' becomes much more interesting if it is instead read as 'playing into the next session' and the signification of the card is read as very important.  

I hope that's helpful rather than random.

[Spooky Fanboy]

I skimmed Falkenstein a few years back, but I don't remember anything except the suit system.  How does improvement work there?

GM arbitration with some general guidelines: if the character has been using that skill repeatedly, it goes a certain amount of sessions per rank before the GM considers raising it. In CF, the GM doesn't even have to tell the player he's raised a character skill, the player has to figure it out on his own!

As for the rest: I agree that it could lead to interpersonal stress, so perhaps it is best avoided. But that leaves us with the cards for Skill increases idea, or some other sort of increase mechanic.

Personally, I still don't see what was so bad about using cards to increase Skills: if they don't use the cards, they make Concessions during play which will come back to haunt them later on. If they do, they burn up all their Karma and don't advance. Kinda like Hero points in Champions.

But that's me.

[clehrich]

One way to cut the range of results a hand gives is to allow the players to use multiple cards on a single test with an upper limit on the total result.  That total can either be equal to the highest possible card or some slightly lower number.  However, if you insist that the cards must be equal or less than that limit you make low cards actually somewhat valuable, as they can be used to get as close as possible to a maximal result.  

Hmm.  I'll have to deal out a bunch of hands and see how this works out.  It certainly adds a tremendous element of strategy to numerical card-play, because suddenly you actually need to get rid of high cards.  This might, of course, lead to lots of bidding, since you can play anything during bidding.  I would like to keep the possibility of playing a bit over the difficulty, since (although I haven't made this explicit -- oops!) I was thinking that succeeding with a few negative concessions would move toward critical-type successes.  But if you couldn't have more than 3 over difficulty (including skill bonus), just as you can't have a single concession worth more than 3, that keeps the range fairly narrow.  This same approach also prioritizes the use of high cards for skill improvement, since they become potentially less effective in play.  Really, the best cards in play would be mid-range.  Veeery interressting.  Thanks!

i) Have them [cards] used during play in some way to mark particular events and settings as important to the character.
ii) Have them thematically decide what's going on with the character based on some sort of tarot reading.
iii) And have this define experience.

If I understand you correctly, you're suggesting that one could essentially lay down cards during Action Resolution, not to affect the result, but as storage for skill improvement.  Somehow, Trumps would then get factored in before the skill could actually improve; perhaps skill improvement requires some sort of Interpretation?

Let's think this out a minute.  Suppose you lay off cards on skills instead of applying them to skill successes.  On the one hand, you could be required to do this instead of countering concessions, which would essentially limit laying off to failures or relatively easy successes (which makes some sense); alternatively, you could lay off at the same time as you counter, so you lose two cards at once, for different purposes.

Now when you have laid off enough cards for a skill improvement (over time, of course), you wait for or manufacture a situation in which this skill might improve, i.e. where you can use it in a high-stakes or high-drama way.  Then you Trump, and Interpret the card such that one of the effects is a relevant skill boost --- like playing The Lovers for a Seduction when you want to improve your Seduction skill.  Whatever happens in the subsequent magical sequence, your skill improves.

The cumulative effects would be (1) careful strategizing about best uses of cards, including planning ahead about skills so as not to have too many cards laid away simultaneously (and thus out of your hand); (2) emphasis on the relationship between skills used and improvement; (3) in-game explanation for a skill improvement as a dramatic (in whatever sense) effect, which makes sense with the extreme granularity of the skill system; (4) increased continuity between the card system in play and the experience/improvement system.

There's got to be a catch, right?  :)

That's really fuzzy, but I think the idea of 'setting cards aside' becomes much more interesting if it is instead read as 'playing into the next session' and the signification of the card is read as very important.  
I hope that's helpful rather than random.

Are you kidding?  Brilliant!

Now I just have to start thinking concretely about how the details would work out.  And I'm really going to need to run the numbers, as well as get together a preliminary playtest.

[Spooky Fanboy]

Yeah, or you could do that, instead. ;-)

[clehrich]

I'm going to mull this over for a bit, then I'll post a revised rules set; when I do, you guys will be the first to hear.  I'll shoot for a week, but I do have a big article deadline looming.  If anyone wants to do any number-crunching, or has other brilliant ideas, I'd be delighted --- you guys have massively improved these game mechanics.  I guess that's why I posted to the Forge, right?

I'm just hoping I can write it up so it doesn't sound too baroque.  After all, if it ain't baroque, I won't have to fix it.

<remainder of post cancelled while author is beaten senseless>

[Spooky Fanboy]

I'm just hoping I can write it up so it doesn't sound too baroque.  After all, if it ain't baroque, I won't have to fix it.

<remainder of post cancelled while author is beaten senseless>

You're damn lucky they got to you before I did; I usually reward puns like that with hot lead pellets o' disipline. %-9

If it was me, I'd have the player choose between buying off Concessions and/or buying successes, *or* putting cards away for experience. Kinda how the hard knocks make you want to improve more. Cards should be coming in slowly enough (and the action fast and furious enough) that having enough cards to do both should be rare.

Of course, I could be wrong. A playtest will certainly clear things up.

[clehrich]

If it was me, I'd have the player choose between buying off Concessions and/or buying successes, *or* putting cards away for experience. Kinda how the hard knocks make you want to improve more. Cards should be coming in slowly enough (and the action fast and furious enough) that having enough cards to do both should be rare.

Hang on, I don't understand.  Do you mean that when you lay off cards for later improvement, that means you can't play cards to decrease concessions?  If so, I think I agree, but as you say, I need to see a playtest.  But I prefer the nastiness of "learning hard lessons" or "chalking it up to experience," as it were.