Playing Trollbabe at the GTS

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

So we played Trollbabe during one late evening at the GAMA Trade Show: me as GM, and Eugene Zee, Mark Mazella, and Jake Norwood as players. I'd been wanting to do this for a while; the game is mucho difficult to describe without playing it, and Jake was making skeptical noises about how a bunch of chicks with horns and axes/whatever could be anything special. Jake can always get a game out of me by acting all, "So what?" about it.

I ripped off the circumstances of Fritz Leiber's story "The Snow Women" for the scenario. Suffice to say that it includes a young man and his mother who dislike one another greatly, and I tossed in a bunch of trolls too. Thanks mainly to Jake, the trolls attacked the human community toward the end. However - and this is a key point - since the Stakes were set at the personal level (the fate of the young man, Hoskuld), the outcome of the attack was entirely in my hands, as it wouldn't be if the Stakes were set at the community level.

It took a little bit, I think, for people to realize that there was no need for the trollbabes to "team up," nor for there to be any agenda except for their own personal values, likes, and dislikes. Once that got going, it was great fun.

It was a little hard to explain that an opponent's Goal during a conflict is actually not much of a concern in terms of its ultimate effect on the safety of the trollbabe. It's always up to the player to decide how badly the character might end up in the conflict, based on how far they want to push the risk-factor of the re-roll mechanic. So say, Helga (the trollbabe) is faced with Rothgar, a bleeding asshole of a warrior who's attacked her with the goal of killing her outright. The player says, Helga's goal is to toss him through the window, ending the fight. OK, say the player fails the roll - and then decides, all right, screw it, I'll just take the failed goal and end up discommoded, conflict over. So Helga does not succeed in her goal (that's dictated by the dice and by the player's choice to end it now), yet Rothgar cannot succeed in killing her, and Helga takes no injuries beyond being inconvenienced, by the player's choice to end it now.

In other words, the trollbabe's goal will always either succeed or fail, case closed, but the extent of the NPC's goal which succeeds or fails is very labile and dependent on the player's choices regarding risk.

I made couple of mistakes as a GM based on fatigue at the time.

1. I totally forgot the impact of Series outcomes on relationships - that relationships used for re-rolls will always end up one level worse off than the trollbabe in the outcome of the conflict. This would have incapacitated or killed a few more NPCs during our game.

2. In terms of plot, I should have had Hoskuld learn about Jake's character killing his mom, and then turn on Jake's character. It would have been a nice personal climax, it would have brought the trollbabe characters into an ethics-crisis to resolve internally, and it would have brought the Stakes more sharply into view.

On the plus side, they really seemed to like the Pacing rules, which I was kind of iffy about when I wrote them, but now like a lot. It's one of the best co-author mechanics I think I've come up with since demon Binding in Sorcerer.

The usual massive player-identification with their characters occurred almost instantly. This is one of the things I like most about Trollbabe - about halfway through character creation, the player gets this funny "mine" look in his or her eyes, and from the first roll of the game, the player is never at a loss regarding what "she" (the character) will do or is about, even when it involves the character changing her mind. About halfway through the session, I looked around at the three players, and each one was emphatically speaking, gesturing, and even breathing in such a way as to indicate just what the character was feeling and doing at the moment. Utter identification with very female characters, from three very butch guys.

I also liked the way, in the game, that successful conflict rolls seem so easy as first ... and then, when the players start to over-reach the Scale of the adventure (which, as I said, was at the lowest, "personal" level in this scenario), the negative Modifiers kick in and failures start looming large and vicious. The take-home is that a player should always consider the Scale when deciding on what the trollbabe's goals are in a given conflict. "You can't save the world" is the message, I guess, bearing in mind that over time, the players are free to increase the Scale of play.

That insight led me to consider rewriting the Modifiers text and rules in the game, to emphasize that they aren't there just to let the GM hose the players at whim, but rather to enforce the limits and parameters of the current Scale. That makes a lot more sense than the way I'm explaining it now.

Another need effect of the existing Modifiers rules, which I'm keeping as is but perhaps needs a better explanation, is what happens when scores are brought to 0 by Modifiers. Clearly the trollbabe is going to want to bring in another Action Type to have any chance of succeeding, but the existenc of the 0 Action Type means that even if she's successful, she's going to have to make a concession to her opponent. This worked especially well for Eugene's character, who was always hammered to Fighting 0 when confronting another trollbabe - and hence could never overawe the other characters Socially, as she kept trying to do, because they simply physically "out-did" her automatically by adding the Fighting Action Type to the conflict.

I'm also contemplating a fairly radical rules-change idea: make Social based on the worst of the two rolls (Fighting or Magic), rather than the best. Hence Tha's Social would be 1-3, not 3-10, and Retta's would be 6-10, not 1-6. The best possible Social would therefore be 50% and the rules would now slightly favor mid-Number trollbabes rather than extreme-number ones.

Best,
Ron

[Jake Norwood]

It was fun and Ron did pull me out of the "so what" zone. I'm a sucker for innovative mechanics and Trollbabe's got 'em, which I hadn't really seen just reading the rules. I agree that the Social degradation issues you talked about would have heightened things a little, as well as the battle with Hoskuld that never happened (but should have).

Jake

[Ron Edwards]

Hey,

Score another for the point that Trollbabe isn't a one-shot game. By that point in the run, I was practically unconscious. If it had been a real game, I would have closed the run at the theater scene, and begun the second session with the trolls showing up. That would have provided time and attention for various physical dustups, leading up to any number of personal confrontations against the backdrop of troll-human fighting and burning rooftops.

By the way, Jake, I interpreted your instructions to the troll to arrange an "accident" for Cherchak as "breaking up" the relationship, as per the rules for doing so. So his death wasn't GM fiat, but rather system in action.

Best,
Ron

[Jake Norwood]

The relationship mechanics are certainly very interesting. Overall Trollbabe is a very solid game, and I had a good time with it. It's also pretty easy to see how it would be a long-running sort of game, needing several sessions at least (in order to wander through all of the different relationship levels). The prospect of a having a relationship with a whole army is pretty cool indeed. Real "epic" potential, I'd suppose.

Jake

[Eugene Zee]

Hi all,

One thing that needs to be said is that you cannot, repeat CANNOT, judge this game by listening to someone tell you how it works.  In fact, I suspect you won't totally understand it even by reading the rules, although I have not seen them in their entirety yet.  This game has some pretty radical mechanics and concepts which worked really well.  I found that very impressive and remember being greatly intrigued by Trollbabe.  Basically you have to play this game to really see how great it is.

I still think we should be able to use Babe-ocity to describe ourselves.  :)

[Bankuei]

Hi Ron,

Sounds like great fun, some thoughts you might want to consider before instituting any rules changes:

Trollbabe seems to focus on the idea of relationships, more than in simply the reroll sense.  The point of relationships is really what puts players in that identification mode.  In traditional media the protagonists serve as the big "oooh!" hook that causes the audience to identify with them.  In this case, the audience(players) create the protagonists emotions, rather than reflect them.  So the next big emotional hook is the npc's who serve as emotional hooks for the players.

Bringing this into your ideas about social rolls, I had assumed that you made the social roll the "most powerful" option to encourage social actions over the standard hack/spell choices of fantasy.  I found the idea that social being the best of the three to be a subtle but strong focus on the relationship aspect.

Second, if you do decide to make it the "worst of" option, it will reduce the amount of dual and triple stat rolls.  Social + Fighting becomes a less attractive option, than it would have with social skill being at the best.

Anyway, it sounds like great fun, and I'm looking forward to hearing some longer term play examples.

Chris