[3:16] These players are crazy

[Jasper Flick]

What I got from reading the book was the following:
Advancement through ranks leads to the objective of staying away from Earth at all costs.
"Advancement" through weaknesses leads to "Hatred for home".
These two are at odds, when "Hatred for home" manifests as a desire to go back to Earth with ill intents. While you might interpret it as "I never want to think about that place again!", the game suggests the "I'm gonna go blow that place up! NOW!" mentality.

So I guess the endgame starts when "Hatred for home" is touched. Then it becomes a question whether Earth goes down, or the Brigadier activates The Device. (If the Brigadier is a PC with "Hatred for home", then I guess you can get both.) Everything before that is a game of learning to hate home.

But all that would take many sessions, and I personally haven't played a single one yet. So it's purely speculation from me.

[Gregor Hutton]

The game has a distinct number of Levels for any given *player*. You can only ever go up to Level 18 (10/8 or 9/) and you can only ever have 5* Strengths and 5 Flashbacks. Players may go through the Levels with one character or more, depending on how the dice go and player choice too. Having more than one chartacter potentially allows you to have more than 5 Strengths over the Campaign (if you allow your character to die Strength-less). So, as a player you are only going to get X resources, though some may get them "early" by advancing more rapidly, while others might get those Resources "later" (which may not be a bad thing tactically).

The final Weakness available is "Hatred For Home". It could mean anything, that's up to the player that uses it, when they use it. It's also only true for a character when they use it -- which means losing on their terms because of their Hatred for Home.

As far as a strictly mechanical end-game goes there is none. This is not "first one to Level 10 wins" territory, or "everyone gets 5 circuits of the board" then we're done.

Even having no more Levels or Flashbacks left to gain doesn't end the game. It ends when it ends.

However, the "Hatred For Home" kicks the game into a new phase of play. It means someone is very close to maxing out on their Resources and how do the characters now feel about the war? And about home?

In the early part of the game PCs are relatively successful and the enemies are relatively week. Here people build charcaters in play, get to be heroes and get tied up in more complicated situations. By later on the GM may be using multiple Special Abilities and bringing all the shit from earlier play home to roost.

Does that make sense?

[Callan S.]

In terms of assigning resources ad hoc, it doesn't make any more sense to me than before. I can think of a model of 'Hell, weve been playing all this time and the moral issues are (genuinely) building up to a climax - I'm just gunna start doing things as it seems to fit now and assign resources that way'. But that doesn't make it make any more sense to me, I'm just noting it as a traditional approach.

There's never a point where the imaginative or moral level is so big or strong that it makes sense to ignore the rules. Sure I may give up on them or give way at a given point in play, but that's me caving in and I know that - it not that it makes sense to do that, it's just me caving in. Just noting that - it may not be relevant.

So in terms of the nuke, either there's some rule for the bypassing of other rules (and is somewhat reminicent of the golden rule) or it doesn't make sense to me. For myself, if I set out to follow the rules, it doesn't make sense to latter on stop following the rules. It could happen, but it's just a failure on my part to meet my own goals.

You know, for other people I can imagine them thinking "Oh no, it was just the right time for X to happen, so of course it made sense to give them that (subtext: ignore the rules on giving X)". But that's exactly what I was refering to with the gym weights from before - what happens when imaginatively it makes absolute 'sense' for someone to get X...and they don't?

I think that's what's shocked and amazed people since they first roleplayed - all the books and movies tell them heroes win the day and that's what makes sense and...then the PC just dies, on a die roll. Their imagination has to stretch outside of the old bullshit hero always wins the day comfort zone. They can't keep imagining in the old ways.

That's part of why it doesn't make sense to me to break from the rules.

Or maybe that's a rambly point as well.

[contracycle]

If I may.

Lucius player created the tactical nuker out of thin air.  Later, Lucius was credited for 800 kills due to this weapon.  Neither of these events came about as a result of the system rules governing kill counts and threat tokens etc.  It may or may not be considered to be merely different colour applied to the systematic special ability "orbital bombardment".  If it is not directly and rule-legally equivalent to this special ability, then the non-systematic act which created the tacnuke subsequently had the systematic consequence of giving Lucius top kills and therefore promotion; to whit, in effect Lucius' player promoted himself by co-opting GM authority when given the opportunity, and that authority over-rode all the other rules.  Does that or does that not undermine the point of the system?

[Callan S.]

Gareth, assuming I'm understanding you right, I'd phrase your question as 'Assuming your goal (or one of your goals) is to follow the rules as they are, isn't assigning the nuke ad hoc undermining yourself/undermining your own goals?'

I prefer to aim at either any internal conflict of interests the other person has, or identify a signficant difference in goal between us in the early stages. From experience people try and ascribe their prior reflexive responces as a concious choice/a system. It gets well into 'blind brain' territory, where system they actually have control of and system (physics) that happens whether they think they have control or not, get interminably intermingled.

[Ron Edwards]

I want a thread-check from Marshall. It looks to me as if your thread has been hijacked. If you see it differently, and are reasonably happy with the current issues being discussed, then correct me. If you agree, then let me know.

Everyone else, please wait for Marshall's reply.

Best, Ron

[Marshall Burns]

Hi everyone,
I've lost track of this thread, because I've been sick and been away from the internet for a while. It'll take me a bit to catch up, so I'm not really sure if it's been hijacked or not.

One thing I do want to clarify: Lucius had access to orbital bombardment, and the nuke functioned exactly like it. Because it was available. I was careful to keep effectiveness within available parameters so that I didn't short-circuit the Currency interactions that lead to the Cool Thing I've hinted at but still can't put my finger on. Even in the case of the turret, several of the characters could have had a weapon that effective by now but didn't because they chose to improve other weapons, but even then it felt okay (i.e. like it wouldn't fuck the Currency) if I let it be a one-time use thing.

I haven't thrown out or ignored rules anywhere. I bent one, in the turret case, but otherwise I've stuck with the rules. Where the rules don't go, I have made rulings to translate the fluffy, non-ruley stuff into concrete, actionable terms that feed into the system. The flexibility of the mechanics that are present made this quite easy. This was primarily done, as I've said, through a process of exchanging Positioning for Effectiveness and/or Resource; it's one of a family of Techniques that is taken for granted in OD&D (don't ask me about other ones) and Poison'd (Vincent said so), and, as I read it, 3:16. It's taken for granted because, so far, nobody's figured out how to write about it (Poison'd has a nice leap forward on it, though); that's the state of the art, unfortunately, and I don't lay any blame or flaw on any of the above games or their authors.

I think that Callan and I had a misunderstanding on the issue of ignoring rules and making ad-hoc decisions, versus taking the "fluffy stuff" (for lack of a better term) and making it feed into the system through existing channels. Much of the dicussion between us has been nonsense as a result. That's given this thread a bit of an ugly look, but, from what I've been able to absorb so far, I wouldn't say hijacked.

-Marshall

[Callan S.]

Yah, I said sorry to Marshall over PM. Basically stuff like 'exchanging positioning for Effectiveness and/or Resource' confused me into thinking he meant something else, repeatedly, and it's actually still confusing me. Even while 'making it feed into the system through existing channels' is quite clear to me and it seems to be what Marshall meant (having a copy of 3:16 helped clear things up too, I think, thanks again, Gregor)

I'm gunna be dreadful and just say something about part of what's confusing me there - there is no exchange of positioning for effectiveness. The player with the orbital bombardment could have declined to use it (using it to represent the nuke), even though this whole detonated nuke has has been entered into the fiction. He would not be dishonouring some exchange to decline it. The whole thing I call an imagination coupler is the point where currency exchanges end and someone may give you game currency of some sort, not because it's an exchange, but simply because they feel moved by the fiction to do so. To me now, that's what the AP appears to contain - the player was moved by the atomic detonation and felt mechanics aught to be spent over it. Even though he didn't have to. The very fact he doesn't have to, but did, proves that the fiction itself is in motion (inside of him) and it's not simply an exchange of this for that. That also means the rules connected/coupled up with imagination.

That and I thought you were making up alot of new rules cause of fiction, but weren't. But that's enough dreadfulness from me. Though I'd like to go on about GM's who aught to be moved to granting a high ground bonus, but people apply force to them instead of allowing the fiction in the GM decide. A kind of prima donnaism.