Active Exploits: a space western (or something)

[DevP]

(This is part a request for help from more experienced GMs, part a playtest report. I will update this thread as the sessions develop. I'm indeed a neophyte GM, so YMMV below!)

First thing: character creation was easy. The lack of granularity did take people a few seconds to get used to (understanding that a 0 Fitness was indeed average, and was in fact okay), but as a result, the number-crunchy bits of character creations didn't take long at all. (A few of my players were scared off RPGs by the heavy character creation process of, say, Storyteller, so this was nice; the majority of time was spent on refining character concepts.)

That said, I was a bit generous with skills. They were all Heroic (i.e. 2 expert skills, 3 proficients), but I gave them an extra Novice skill or two to broaden them out. While I was setting up I realized the notion of not giving out specialized skills (Brawling, Swordplay, Gunplay) and instead allowing more generalized traits (Slapstick-Fu, Burlyness) to create skills. I might sort of hedge on this side, ultimately...

So, character creation worked out, and we had the first session. I explained the rules, the fundamental things being (a) tell me when you exert effort, (b) if you spend more than your discipline then you get tired (c) okay, your discipline is high right now so it doesn't matter, but later on it will... The two newbies were confused, but they may have been confused by any rules at all. Experienced Roleplayer was only slightly confused (it was different), but got it, and later said that the diceless mechanic was good for her (she hated it when, for example, a Wizened Master of All Swords Sharp and Pointy crit-failed for no appreciable reason, repeatedly).

However, one of the players (a bit of a System Hacker by nature (not a min-maxer, though)) was distressed by the system; he was kind of turned off from the diceless premise to start with, though. For him, there was the basic fact that there was no reason *not* to spend all your effort all the time (the Discipline limitation on effort was not going to be relevant to our characters unless they took something of a beating).

So, the rules did work, and I stuck largely to the task resolution system, *except* that players had a hard time wanting to tell me what skill level they had (they had to look it up, and ruffling of pages, and loss of rhythm, and...), and saying "I swing my sword with two points of effort" is a lot more awkward to say "I swing my sword!'. Myself, I was happy with the resolution, as it was real fast (I'm a rules light person, and don't like dealing with too much gook; hence my impatience with the looking up and such.)

I'll probably have to just record all of their abilities/skills on my own sheet and look it up myself to keep things going; this is one sense in which the lack of granularity is a boon (I will probably memorize their relevant stats very shortly, anyways; most of them are intuitive, anyway.)

On top of this (it was part of the suggestion), I'll give them different kinds of pooled points (Luck, Experienced, Fatigue, Discipline) which they can spend, which I'll actually count when they're appropriate for the situation.

Anyway, more to come later; there weren't that many task challenges as such this first session, and again, there was lot to like in the system itself - character creation is easy and task resolution quick, I just introduced the "potentials" of effort in seemingly the wrong way for newbies. Also, most of this session was spent in port; now that they're Out There, maybe I'll have more to report on this setting soon.

[Mike Holmes]

So it all sounds good so far. No need for help yet, is there? Any issues in particular you want to discuss?

Mike

[DevP]

I was concerned with what I should be doing in the case of the rules, really. (Was I right to try to change it for them? I assume so.) With some suggestions I got, I tried changing the mechanics a small bit. I want to be sure before I spring changes on my players (and these will be necessarily final).

I tossed out the use of Discipline as a limit on effort expended; it didn't seem to come into play unless the characters were hit enough, and as such it was a way of making weakening characters go down quicker.

My attempt, instead, is to (a) assume full "effort" for all actions, and keep those numbers roughly in my mind and apply them at will, and (b) give players lots of tokens ot spend to tasks. (This part is the mechanic that will either break or work.)

Whereas players had 4 Discipline that they could spend on certain tasks; and whereas players could take 4 Fatigue hits before going down; and whereas exerting yourself past your Discipline would require fatigue of you; I decided to give players a pool of 4 Discipline and 4 Vitality (basically, a lack of fatigue) that they could spend on tasks, but only in some circumstnaces; and of course, if an event drained them of any more Discipline or Vitality than they had, then they would clearly be out for the count.

Besides this, players are started off with 4 points of Luck, and 6 points of experience. These both essentially replenished between rounds. The difference now is likely that those 6 points of experience must have some kind of identity: Rage Power, Reflexes, Inspiration, extra Discipline, etc. (I color coded some tokens.) I will likely give them 4 points of luck, and maybe a bit less; I will also be a real hardass about only applying their spent tokens if it makes sense for the task. End result: 6 points of experience that don't fit everywhere, 4 points of luck as before, and discipline and vitality they can spend and/or lose at their own peril.

I'm curious if this is overly dangerous as changes go on a rules level, but also if as a GM I'm changing too much.

[Mike Holmes]

I don't think that there's any moral or ethical imperative as far as changing rules goes. If you think it's going to help, then it's a good idea.

As to whether or not it'll work right, well, that's another question. Why does this have to be final? Why can't you just playtest it, and change back if the rules don't work right?

Mike

[DevP]

As to whether or not it'll work right, well, that's another question. Why does this have to be final? Why can't you just playtest it, and change back if the rules don't work right?

On one hand, merely changing how many tokens they play with in between sessions isn't a big deal; true.

However, I already had to change the metaplot right before our first session (not too much!) but it irked people; and especially with newbies, I think they don't want to learn drastically new mechanics.

From my point of view it seems like my changes are minor ones, but I guess i'm just different.

[Mike Holmes]

How do the Discipline and Vitality refresh? Healing up?

I think what you have will work OK, but I'd really want to playtest it first, personally. But I understand if you have resistant players that this might be difficult. Still, play out some scenes "against" yourself, to see what happens in play.

Mike

[DevP]

Discipline / Vitality refresh by healing up, pretty much. (The rest only refreshed between sessions.)

[DevP]

The second session went great!

The actual task resolution rules came into play lightly throughout. Many routine actions happened without incident (I tried to push the players into just narrating/doing their actions rather than constantly seeking my approval), and when there were occaisionally difficult tasks I could do a quick calculation (the system is diceless but rule-full, or at least rule-enabled) without breaking the flow. Task resolution is easy; it's greatly, greatly aided by having a GM "cheat sheet" of the players' attibutes and skills, and indeed scale of skills/abilities makes this a very tractable thing.

In hard contested actions (supersamurai spending points versus supercowboy spending points) I took a few seconds to try to figure a balanced/fair and cinematic resolution and/or narrated outcome, but I think that's acceptable. One of my players (in fact, one who didn't take part in that combat) actually complimented my handling of the combat here as much better. All I really did was compare the rivals' abilities, and adjust for tactical advantages; it worked rather quick, and was pretty efficient. (Of course, I try to make fighting in my game nasty, brutish and undesirable, so I adjust the odds accordingly.)

One change that really helped things along was: tokens. I gave people colored tokens to represent their 4 points of luck and discpline, and beyond this gave them colored tokens to represent different aspects of their "experience" that they could apply. Tokenization really made things a bit simpler for the people. Also, the variety of choices, plus the reassurance that they would get them back next session, helped encourage the players to put their points to good use. Great example:

"I use my discipline to ignore the pain and pull the knife out of my hand (1 blue). I'm pretty pissed off, so I quickdraw my blade left-handed and go at him (1 yellow, 1 red)." I counted all those coins he used, as I liked the way he used them, so gave him +3 to his task, and took of -4 for drawing lefthanded; of course, his opponent was prone on the floor, so that was the end of that. (I probably should have given this enemy a few coins to play with himself.)

So, to sum up: I used tokens to make spending "luck" and such easier; I kept track of the skills myself; but the mechanics were fine so far. The only flaw could be if I invite my roommate to play; he's a nice enough guy, but he's certainly a personality who would take issue with the diceless results. Many mechanics involve some level of GM fiat in regards to the difficulty of a task, and because there's no random "Natural 20"-esqe chance of success to hedge things by, the AE rules may be prone to people whining (or conversely, GM abuse). Still, I'm very happy with these.

[Mike Holmes]

Cool, sounds like it worked out well, after all.

As for your room-mate, ask him. If he doesn't like the idea, then he doesn't have to play. If he wants to try it then great. As long as he's making an informed decision, what's the problem?

Mike