[Carry] post-play questions

[Moreno R.]

Hi!

We played Carry yesterday. We were only 4 (3 players + GM) and we misread the rules for the first hour or so, but it was a blast anyway. The GM is thinking about using Carry for his slot in an Italian gaming convention next month.

During play, there were some things that we weren't sure we did right (and some thing we discovered by ourselves that we did wrong at the beginning. For example, in the first 2 action scenes the ranking player gave dices to his own pool, because he agreed to what he decided the Sergeant would order...), and I would like to ask some question about them.

We used the rules changes from the errata, the starting with 9 dices for the GM, and the endgame proposed by Ron Edwards (losing low rolls narrate denouements in order, winning high rolls narrate epilogues). Both changes worked well in our game (the GM went without dices a lot anyway, but it would have been worse starting with 6 dices...)

1) as I said, the GM was always low on dices. This was because almost nobody gave him dices during the squad scenes. This was caused in my opinion by two things: he played a lot of enemy npcs that directly attacked the grunts, forcing  the grunts to be united for a lot of time against the menaces, and we used the giving of dices as a resource to manage, not at all like fan main from PTA. It wasn't uncommon to exchange dices between players, by accord.
How can the GM get dices? I counted these ways:
- dices gifted in the squad scenes
- biggest dice from everybody in squad conflicts when the GM haven't any dice.
- the GM can take dices inflicting fallout on grunts in action scenes
- the GM take dices in burden scenes if he hasn't any
The are other way I didn't see?
In the 3401-g it say that the GM without dices has to get them in a squad scene. It means that if the GM goes in an action scene without dices, he is forced to choose to increase burden dices instead of taking dices for the fallout?

2) in 3206 c. it is said to give your rolled dice to someone who wasn't in conflict. This man you can't give the dice to the GM if you had a conflict with a fodder or another npc?

3) Sometimes, we played conflict in squad scenes with prefixed pushing. What I mean is something like: "I want to kill him. So for the first roll. I use the approach <peaceful>. When he will drop his guard I will push with <violent> shooting him" (in this case, I will push with the violent approach even if I win the first roll).
Is this legal? Or I should try to win the conflict always with the first roll?

4) If I change instead the approach from "violent" to "peaceful" in a conflict with stakes "I will kill him", this mean that if I win I can avoid the losing stakes even if I didn't get the winning stakes (because I used a different approach)? Or I have to use approaches that can give me the named stakes?

5) In 3206 c. you say "you do not need to declare and Approach if you push in this manner" (with the burden die), and after that "If your Burden Die is larger than your die cap for the conflict as per your approach and profile, using it triggers an immediate profile change". Isn't it a contradiction? If the burden die hasn't an approach, how can it be higher that the cap of the approach?

6) it seems that there is another contrasdiction between 3202 c and 3207 a. about conflicts with three or more characters. The first one say to divide the conflict in different conflicts between two people, resolving them in order, the second one say that the higher roll win and everybody else get losing stakes.

7) in an Action scene, a grunt can give his bunden die to the GM or the ranking officer. This is INSTEAD of the one dice he has to give every round, or WITH the one die (giving two dices)? Can he give the burden dice at the end when the pools are already rolled?

Burden Dice re-rolls at the end of an action scene. The new value is added to the old total, or the new value is substituted to the old value rolled by the burden dice?

9) about the errata rule: the winner can give the same kind of fallout to every grunts that used a burden dice, or (as it seems from a reading of the errata) it he shell shock a grunt, has to choose a different fallout for the others, never using the same fallout on two different grunts?

10) if the answer to question 9 is "the second", fallout from action pools counts or not? Can I shell shock a grunt with action pools fallout and another with burden dice fallout?

11) not a question, but something I found amusing: in the characters descriptions, I found characters that were Italians, Irish, Mexicans, Scandinavians, Jewish,  African-americans, Latino, and "Caucasians".  I think that "Caucasians" doesn't mean only "WASP"   :-)

[Moreno R.]

Hi!

Is the Hamsterprophet Production Forum abandoned? The last time Nathan posted something here was on Feb. 1, 2007, over two months ago...

I had some other questions, but I waited the answers to the first ones before asking the others. But it's already 15 days and if I wait again I will forget them, so...   (continuing the numbering from the previous post)

12)  Action Scenes, Structure

(3302.b)"the GM frames the scene, explaining the situation. The situation should include enough information for the Ranking Officer to be able to give orders to the other characters. After the GM frames the scene, it is divided in a series of rounds.
(3302.c) Each round, the Ranking Officer gives each grunt an order, as well as giving general orders to the squad as a whole. [...]. The GM then summarize the round, and narrates the consequences of each Grunt's action
(3302.d)  An action scene can take any number of rounds. It is the GM's responsibility to pace the scene though his narration, and to call the scene at an appropriate point"

OK, let's say I am the GM, and the Ranking Officer order Big White to kill a sniper behind a street window. I decided to pace the scene in two rounds, and this is the first.
What can I tell to Big White's player? I can resolve his fight with the sniper using total GM's fiat, narrating what I want (even that he is shot and wounded by the sniper), or these are constraints? What can happen and what can't happen until the dice are rolled?

13) Endgame:

As adviced by Nathan by Email, we tried playing with the rule change proposed by Ron Edwards here:

"i) Keep the target-picking and the rolls, just as in the text.

ii) The low-rolling individual in each pair must narrate the Denouement, and must put his Grunt "worse" than the other Grunt in that narration, in terms of the already-stated conflict going on in it.

iii) The high-rolling individual in each pair gets to narrate the Epilogue for the Grunts and has no constraint on content. "

I have some difficulty understanding the rules BOTH in the game manual and in the rule change.  Why at one point there is talking of "pairs" that aren't defined before?  Until then, all that happen is that every player give his grunt's Burden Die to his chosen target. So it seems that it's possible for two or more grunts to give the dices to the same target, for some grunts to not receive any dice, and for some grunt to give the dice to one target and be the target (receiving the dice) of another.  At the end we have grunts with one or more burden dices or none, each one with a designated "target".  But if, for example, all the grunts target the ranking officer, how can that be called a "pair"? It's the "dice giver - target" pair? So that you can be in many pairs in the target role but only in one as the dice giver? Or for every grunt the only pair is the one with his target, ignoring who target him?

It's not clear even if, at this time, each player define what his grunt is doing to get at the target (declaring intention), or if the dice have to be rolled before even declaring intention.

After the rolling of the dices, "The low-rolling individual in each pair must narrate the Denouement, and must put his Grunt "worse" than the other Grunt in that narration, in terms of the already-stated conflict going on in it." This seems to assume that the intention was declared (but I am not sure, it could be only a stated conflict without committing to an intention yet), and that for every "giver - target" pair the loser narrates the scene until the end for these two characters,  deciding what BOTH do.  But what happen if another player choose one of them as a target, and lose, and has to narrate ANOTHER denouement for one of the previous characters? Or if the "winner" of the previous pair (that has his scene denouement already narrated by the loser) is the loser in another pair and has to narrate his denouement another time?

After the "losers" narrate all the denouement, the players with the highest rolls narrate (in order from the higher roll) the epilogue. But the epilogue of which characters? If they narrate only their character's epilogue, then even the losers should narrate an epilogue for themselves, and "winning" the roll don't mean anything. If they can narrate the epilogue for the "pair", we return to the problems seen above.

Seeing the absence of answers by Nathan until now, I would ask even other people their opinion about these issues. Do you played Carry? Did you had these problems? How do you resolved them? What is your reading of the Endgame Rules?

[Nathan P.]

Hey Moreno,

Not abandoned, I swear! I've been having a hard time getting decent parcels of time online, but I'll get to your questions this week. I'm really sorry that I haven't replied sooner.

[Nathan P.]

Hey Moreno,

Sorry again for taking so long to get back to you. I really am happy that you guys enjoyed the game!

We used the rules changes from the errata, the starting with 9 dices for the GM, and the endgame proposed by Ron Edwards (losing low rolls narrate denouements in order, winning high rolls narrate epilogues). Both changes worked well in
our game (the GM went without dices a lot anyway, but it would have been worse starting with 6 dices...)

Great, glad to hear it.

1) as I said, the GM was always low on dices. This was because almost nobody gave him dices during the squad scenes. This was caused in my opinion by two things: he played a lot of enemy npcs that directly attacked the grunts, forcing  the grunts to be united for a lot of time against the menaces, and we used the giving of dices as a resource to manage, not at all like fan main from PTA. It wasn't uncommon to exchange dices between players, by accord.

Yeh, it's been pointed out to me that they really don't work like Fan Mail at all, even though thats the inspiration for the dice passing mechanic...Thats fine though. In all honesty, it's not particularly bad for the GM to be low on dice, it just tends to mean that the game tends to be more about how the characters overcome adversity than how they are divided and crushed by it.

How can the GM get dices? I counted these ways:
- dices gifted in the squad scenes
- biggest dice from everybody in squad conflicts when the GM haven't any dice.
- the GM can take dices inflicting fallout on grunts in action scenes
- the GM take dices in burden scenes if he hasn't any
The are other way I didn't see?

Nope, thats all the ways.

In the 3401-g it say that the GM without dices has to get them in a squad scene. It means that if the GM goes in an action scene without dices, he is forced to choose to increase burden dices instead of taking dices for the fallout?

Re-reading the section now, I see the confusion....3401-g is poorly worded in this regard. While Squad scenes are the main place that the GM gets dice, all of the ways he can get dice are as you say above.

2) in 3206 c. it is said to give your rolled dice to someone who wasn't in conflict. This man you can't give the dice to the GM if you had a conflict with a fodder or another npc?

That is correct. I think this rule may go away, though - my observation over my many games is that it's not necessary, and it's actually usually more fun to be able to give your dice to whoever, especially with fewer players at the table. I don't think it would be out of line to play without this rule in force.

3) Sometimes, we played conflict in squad scenes with prefixed pushing. What I mean is something like: "I want to kill him. So for the first roll. I use the approach <peaceful>. When he will drop his guard I will push with <violent> shooting him" (in this case, I will push with the violent approach even if I win the first roll).
Is this legal? Or I should try to win the conflict always with the first roll?

The short answer is that, no, that's not legal. You can only push if you lose the first roll. If you really want to make him drop his guard and then shoot him, you could phrase it as peaceful (emphasizing the "make him drop his guard"), or you could phrase it as violent (emphasizing the "shoot him").

In the example you give above, when you say "I want to kill him" - well, thats your stakes for the scene. If you win the roll, you kill him. If you use the peaceful approach to make him drop his guard, and you win the roll, then, well, you win the roll, so you kill him however (shooting him after his guard is down, or whatever) If you lose the roll, then you can decide to push (into violent, as you say), which adds another layer of complexity to the conflict. If you win on the peaceful approach, you still get to kill him, cuz thats the stakes of the scene, and you can narrate how you shoot him if thats how you want to do it. It's only mechanically significant if you lose the first roll and then push, though.

Does that make sense?

4) If I change instead the approach from "violent" to "peaceful" in a conflict with stakes "I will kill him", this mean that if I win I can avoid the losing stakes even if I didn't get the winning stakes (because I used a different approach)? Or I have to use approaches that can give me the named stakes?

Approaches are the means by which you gain or lose the stakes of the conflict. That is, what determines whether you get your winning or losing stakes is the dice, regardless of which approaches you used. If you push from violent to peaceful with the stakes "I want to kill him", and you win, you still kill him, cuz those are the stakes! It just means you wait until he turns around to shoot him in the back, instead of shooting him in the face, or whatever. Once you start rolling the dice, you are going to get either your winning or your losing stakes.

So, you can use any Approach you want, as long as you can narrate how your character uses that means to gain his end. Sometimes, you can't make it make sense given the situation, and thats fine.

5) In 3206 c. you say "you do not need to declare and Approach if you push in this manner" (with the burden die), and after that "If your Burden Die is larger than your die cap for the conflict as per your approach and profile, using it triggers an immediate profile change". Isn't it a contradiction? If the burden die hasn't an approach, how can it be higher that the cap of the approach?

Huh, wow. You caught me, I somehow didn't see that contradiction at all!

Umm, I suppose I mean that if it's larger than the last Approach you used before you pushed with your Burden. When Addressing your Burden, you start off with using your Burden Die, which means that you will never trigger a profile change  during a Burden conflict. Which is appropriate.

6) it seems that there is another contrasdiction between 3202 c and 3207 a. about conflicts with three or more characters. The first one say to divide the conflict in different conflicts between two people, resolving them in order, the second one say that the higher roll win and everybody else get losing stakes.

Again, I guess the phrasing isn't as clear as it could be. It's kind of a situational thing, depending on how everyones interests in the scene intersect. Say that Grunt A and Grunt B are being dressed down by the Sergeant. If the Sergeant really wants to get to A, but A really wants to impress B, and B doesn't want to be impressed, then it's two binary conflicts: The Sergeant and A have a conflict about whether the Sergeant gets to A or not, and the A and B have a conflict about whether A impresses B or not. the Sergeant and B don't have a conflict, because they're each fine with B being dressed down.

However, if the Sergeant wants to break both men's spirits, A and B could set different winning stakes against the Sergeants winning stakes of breaking them. A could want to simply not break and get out stronger for it, while B may want to make the Sergeant back down from being such a dick. In this case, A and B could both win against the Sergeant, or A could win and B could lose, or A could lose and B could win, or the Sergeant could win against both. So, in this case, all three roll, and you compare the Sergeants roll to both A and B seperatly.

So, situation. Does that make sense? Do you have problematic example from your game?

7) in an Action scene, a grunt can give his bunden die to the GM or the ranking officer. This is INSTEAD of the one dice he has to give every round, or WITH the one die (giving two dices)? Can he give the burden dice at the end when the pools are already rolled?

It is instead of the one he gets, and it has to happen before the roll.

Burden Dice re-rolls at the end of an action scene. The new value is added to the old total, or the new value is substituted to the old value rolled by the burden dice?

The new value replaces the old value on that Burden Dice.

9) about the errata rule: the winner can give the same kind of fallout to every grunts that used a burden dice, or (as it seems from a reading of the errata) it he shell shock a grunt, has to choose a different fallout for the others, never using the same fallout on two different grunts?

He can give the same kind. I'll look at the errata again, but it should be fine to give the same fallout to anyone who gives a Burden Dice.

10) if the answer to question 9 is "the second", fallout from action pools counts or not? Can I shell shock a grunt with action pools fallout and another with burden dice fallout?

Yup. You can use your "free" one to shell shock a Grunt, and also spend fallout points to (say) Wound him. If you do this, you declare the order this happens in, for raising Burden Dice purposes.

11) not a question, but something I found amusing: in the characters descriptions, I found characters that were Italians, Irish, Mexicans, Scandinavians, Jewish,  African-americans, Latino, and "Caucasians".  I think that "Caucasians" doesn't mean only "WASP"   :-)

Hehe. I guess I could say "white." I thought "Caucasion" was appropriately vaguely bureaucratic. But yeh, it is kinda funny.

[Moreno R.]

Nathan, did you forgot the last two question? The ones about The Endgame?