Dust Devils: Red Mars

[DevP]

This is the game we played at VeriCon, and it was quite electric! We had 6 players; there was self-selection for interest (the game was a sci-fi western; 5 of the 6 had watched/loved Firefly, while the other one had watched far more Westerns than the rest of us). We played a fun little story out in three hours, somewhat by me pushing things along as fast as possible (seemingly necessary in the convention one-short context).

Minor Issues I Had:
1. I didn't track everyone's Devils, and therefore I couldn't remember to let people describe them. So, this is really really bad, but I didn't get a chance to bring any of them into play. I felt quite a bit silly (as a GM, I need to make those kind of notes in the top of my sheet). My inability to do what everyone wanted dovetailed with the ad hoc nature of the group and time pressure. Nonetheless, people loved the idea of the mechanic, got into the game besides, and acted in accordance to their Devils spontaneously (and I awarded Stakes besides).

2. Narration ("fastest tongue in the west"). As we did it, I let folks describe the thing they're about to attempt, just as the action in the conflict begins, then deal the cards, then let the high-card resolve. Perhaps as a result, it was unclear precisely how much to narrate, at first. Eventually I egged them on for more and more details, and I think it was easily understood, but it might have helped if we had a sample conflict that I fiated myself to narrate, to let them know the kind of thing I was more looking for (i.e. a description of the whole conflit to its end).

3. I suck at poker. This is a problem. It seemed like when I dealt myself cards - even 7 - it did nothing against players drawing up between 5-8 cards, and then redrawing around 3 usually. Am I misjudging how many cards they get, or am I simply being stingy about paying out Stakes for me drawing up better cards? (Or do I need to get better at poker?)

4. When asked what Stakes "did", it was asked if "the person with the most won". Well, no - they had uses (but were not used in-game) and were given to subjectively to be an objective scoring, but I'll call that suggestion "interesting" for now.

5. Play was a bit light-hearted as (a) my forgetfulness about Devils, and (b) they won a lot, given #3 above. This wasn't bad at all. It encourages me that DD can work great for long-term campaign play, as the story starts out with a realtively light "pilot", and takes on darker exploration of the Devils.

6. I let them enter the scene as a pre-established gang of sorts ("You're all bikers and you're all riding together, but you don't have to like each other. Define yourselves.") This proscription perhaps helped keep things light (you can assume there's a vague baseline camraderie among the "cast", at least fo rnow), and also helped us skipped the stage of getting to know each other and work within the time constraints.

So otherwise: the players absolutely loved the overall vibe, and definitely loved the Dust Devils resolution system (enough that I think more than a few are going to check out the Chimera site later), and all the hooks they had just got them deeper into their characters. It's really a shame that this was a 1-shot, as I could just taste all the good stuff waiting to happen "next time". Great game here.

For edification, I used a rather barebones world-definition with No Myth thrown in (so many references to the "War of '69"!!!); here's what worked:
* Earth was screwed up, and Mars was terraformed.
* The cities are taken up by Military-Industrial-Complex folks, and they suck.
* Independent-minded folks of every political/apolitical stripe are on the frontier.

That much prompt, with just a little bit of colorful description, ended up working just perfectly.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

Nifty! I am a huge Dust Devils fan and consider it to be criminally under-played, so I like these posts a lot.

I have one little point about your #3: Dust Devils does very nicely when some character conflict-of-interest is involved. In my experience, this leads to unexpected alliances and conflicts, rather than the ones you'd expect given the overall goals - very much a "strange bedfellows" or "temporary allies who never turn their backs on one another" kind of game.

That means when a whole bunch of people are active in a given conflict, even if the GM "loses," that doesn't mean the players as a group "win." Perhaps I'm over-reading some of your phrasing, but I get the impression that they were all acting in accordance with similar goals in such conflicts. If that's so, then yes - if five people are drawing, and only one is the GM, and if the other four are all participating in trying to do X, then X is very likely to get done.

When conflict-of-interest is at work, though, and especially if it's highly tentative and prone to reversals during play (i.e. Billy decides Old Bob isn't such a bad guy after all, after they strike gold together, but Old Bob picks that very moment to get greedy), then Dust Devils resolution is much more nuanced - not about whether "GM" or "players" get their way (out of two).

Best,
Ron

[DevP]

I have one little point about your #3: Dust Devils does very nicely when some character conflict-of-interest is involved. In my experience, this leads to unexpected alliances and conflicts, rather than the ones you'd expect given the overall goals - very much a "strange bedfellows" or "temporary allies who never turn their backs on one another" kind of game.

That means when a whole bunch of people are active in a given conflict, even if the GM "loses," that doesn't mean the players as a group "win." Perhaps I'm over-reading some of your phrasing, but I get the impression that they were all acting in accordance with similar goals in such conflicts. If that's so, then yes - if five people are drawing, and only one is the GM, and if the other four are all participating in trying to do X, then X is very likely to get done.

As I understand it, the GM's hand winning or losing relative to each player helps suggests whether each player achieved her own goal; the Narrator for the conflict then stitches all these together. I did do it this way, but as you say, if you have a majority of hands trying for the same goal, that goal will get done.

I think my plan for getting more diverse conflict goals is:
- describe the conflict more broadly (e.g. I started the conflict with Joe Rifleguy firing, rather than starting it with some really nasty bartering. I should have kept it more open-ended if possible.)
- make it more clear that the Narrator gets to describe everyone else's person from beginning to end (therefore, each character has an incentive to describe her generalized goals in a more open-ended fashion so they have more control over what ultimately happens).
- encourage more intercharacter hooks in the character creation, and remember to bring these to bear as much as a possible

I do look forward to playing this again, with my newfound wisdom. <g>

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

The Devils will help too! Which is to say, different characters' Devils are what players latch onto in order to form the specific goals of each character, in a conflict. Especially a very complex one with lots of stuff flyin' this way and that.

So yeah, Devils = different goals = lots of potential outcomes rather than two.

I look forward to posts about your next game very eagerly.

Best,
Ron