[The Infected] The Final Nail in the Coffin of Fox River

[joepub]

I played The Infected with two players last night. We agreed upon playing a meandering, gritty western for the backdrop - Fox River, a dying mine town on its last legs. I was unsure if this genre would work with the Infected's set-up, but it turned out pretty nicely.

The infection:
-Started in the mines (origin), and it hit Three Gorges before Fox River
-Vectors: both airborne and transmitted through blood
-The infection caused this awful, dry cough
-The infection caused narcolepsy
-While in a narcoleptic state of sleep, the victim would frequently lash out at people and objects
-As their condition worsened, they spent more time in this sleep-aggression state, and became more coordinated and strong and purposeful within it

So, essentially: narcoleptic cowboys who kept nodding off and going batshit insane in their sleep.
I had a lot of fun doing this wheezing snore-cough-cough-wheeze-snore-snore noise whenever the PCs encountered a zombie.

Now, there were a few balance issues in the game that we played. First of all, we had a 2-player game, which might not have been tested before. Since The Infected has a locked-in amount of GM resources, the more players you have the less likely you are to get hosed, I reckon.

Here are the specific issues with a 2-player game:
-I rolled a lot of 1s, and both of them were monsters by the end (one by the second act). With 22 GM dice over the three reels, there's an average of 2 1's per player I guess. Then you factor in the players rolling their infected dice and it's pretty guaranteed they are fucked by the end of the game.

Now, I think this is a bit unbalanced (they didn't even shoot for their story goals once they both had 2 dice halfway through reel two), but I also suspect it's only an issue with 2 or 3 player games.

-They didn't get close to their motivations/goals. Part of that is that I failed to be constantly nudging them to. Part of that is that Jackson wrote up this complicated goal involving preserving someone's standing in the community and... well, that person became a zombie and it suddenly didn't matter at all.

Motivations didn't get the spotlight you intended because:
-Not knowing their motivations, I accidentally cut them off.
-Having created difficult to access motivations, they weren't able to figure out ways to invoke them that "worked"
-When they were turning monster so fast, it became obvious that they wouldn't get their story goals at all.
-They were pushing for more interpersonal things rather than their own goals, once actually immersed into the situation.

I think Motivations are a good thing, but didn't do much at all in our game. Steve narrated his in a lot (wanting to restore the town to its former glory), but only pushed a bead forward once. While the narration was OFTEN about his goal, the conflict was only RARELY so.



The game ramps up quickly. Reel 1 was just discovering the coughing guys and having them flail about. It ended with Doc Johnson (actually not the doctor, but the undertaker... the doctor left town and he was "the next best thing") getting severely wounded, and then Herbert (the wounder, also the first person to be found in their state) getting tied up in sheets and rope and put away in a jail cell for safe keeping. Reel one was discovering the issue.

Reel 2 was about realizing how bad it had gotten. They found more cases, and more advanced cases, of this sleepwalking, violent behavior pattern. Steve's character, the hotel owner Old Fred Sawbuck saved Sally from this grunting sleepwalker. I rolled a 1 and a 2, and Steve rolled a 6 and a 5 on an Infected die... he won, but because of the "1" he gained another Infected die... bumping him up to three. We narrated him approaching the man with a weapon in his hand, his eyelids dropping, and him fluttering back to consciousness a few seconds later after he'd sliced the zombie man up and killed him.

Reel 3 was flat out violence. Carlotta's husband had infected Carlotta, and both were twitching between acting normal-if-aggressive and going into this sleeplike trance state of thrashing and hurting others. In the beginning I'd narrated that Cook had been missing for 3 days, and then at Reel 2 I'd mentioned that "It is now the fourth day that Cook has been missing". Cook finally showed up, gun in hand, pickaxe in the other hand, snoring and coughing and lurching forward.

It was a fun time. 5 NPCs were created, 4 were used, 3 got Infected, none became monsters. By the very end, both players had 4 Infected dice. Steve moved a single token off his motivation, Jackson moved zero.

I'm not sure that's as balanced an economy as you imagined. I was expecting one of the two to become a monster, and both to get close to zero beads. Neither of them pushed beads hard, and neither confronted their goal either.

[Darcy Burgess]

Hi Joe,

I'm curious -- how did you handle the framing of NPCs and scenes?  One of the questions I have as I go through the document is where does the buck stop on introducing NPCs into a scene.

Here's why it matters: with fewer players, then the NPCs as resource is less limited than with more players.  If it's ok for players other than the current scene framer to introduce NPCs, and then the odds of success go way up.

I don't know if it's a strong balancing factor, but it may be.

Cheers,
Darcy

[joepub]

I did aggressive cuts back and forth between players when they were seperated, but gave them lots of control over what I cut to.

NPCs... I only let people who were in the scene author in new NPCs, and no one ever authored in more than one at a time. Theoretically, someone could author in four in a single conflict? I dunno how I'd call that one.

[Darcy Burgess]

Hi Joe,

That's exactly what I'm talking about.  Eric's done something neat here -- NPCs are a resource and a threat.  They're not just "NPCs" any more.  Therefore, there need to be very firm rules surrounding their introduction and control.  Good old "normal" GMing isn't sufficient.

Cheers,
Darcy

[Eric Provost]

Joe,

Excellent feedback.  I'm glad you guys enjoyed the game.  Many of the issues you've had have been popping up in other playtests too.  Which is awesome.  I have a few questions and comments for ya'.

That thing where players aren't jumping on their Goals?  Yeah.  That's happening a lot.  Consistantly even.  Which has been a huge surprise to me.  I think I have a solution for how that issue, but I think I'm going to wait for one or two more playtests to show before I try to patch it.

At what point did your players reveal their characters' goals?  Was it very early in the game, or at some point later on? 

While the narration was OFTEN about his goal, the conflict was only RARELY so.

This makes me curious.  If he was narrating situations where his character was after his goal, how come he wasn't putting up tokens for that narration?  In early versions of the game there had to be a conflict to get tokens off of your motivation card.  But not in this version.  Check out page 5, the third paragraph under "What's my motivation?"  The first line reads:

If your character is about to do something that gets them a little closer to their goal, take one of the tokens off of your card and put it out in front of you.

Then, if no one opposes those actions in a conflict; poof!   The token is gone.  He should have been right on top of his goal in no time flat if no one was opposing him.

5 NPCs were created, 4 were used, 3 got Infected, none became monsters. By the very end, both players had 4 Infected dice. Steve moved a single token off his motivation, Jackson moved zero.

I'm not sure that's as balanced an economy as you imagined. I was expecting one of the two to become a monster, and both to get close to zero beads. Neither of them pushed beads hard, and neither confronted their goal either.

I think that it happened exactly as I imagined it would.  The missing element, I think, is that I failed to make it clear just how serious it was for a PC to use their infected dice now.  Before this patch, in every previous version of the game, it was cool for a PC to monster-out at the drop of a hat.  The reprocussions were very slim.  Now, every time a player chooses to roll their character's infected dice, they're putting a PC at risk of not completing their goal.

It's almost certainly true that there's still an imbalance in the economy between two PCs and four.  A two player game is going to require the players to consider their use of infected dice much more carefully than the four player game.  I'm not entirely convinced yet that that's a bad thing.  But I'll definately be spending some time rolling it over in my brain.

Besides the bumpy parts you've already mentioned, was there any part of the game that simply wasn't fun at all?

How long did it take you to play the game, start to finish?

[Eric Provost]

Therefore, there need to be very firm rules surrounding their introduction and control.

I intentionally left out any such rules.  I want each group's own social contract to determine if it's cool to author a bunch of NPCs at a time or not.  So far it's worked out very well, and exactly as I'd intended. 

[MikeSands]

The missing element, I think, is that I failed to make it clear just how serious it was for a PC to use their infected dice now.  Before this patch, in every previous version of the game, it was cool for a PC to monster-out at the drop of a hat.  The reprocussions were very slim.  Now, every time a player chooses to roll their character's infected dice, they're putting a PC at risk of not completing their goal

There's another side to this too, Eric. It makes it easy to intimidate someone close to their goal, by opposing them with infected dice every chance you get. Most of the time I guess this isn't an issue, just a way to be a dick, but it could be a problem if players had conflicting goals. I'm not sure if it's necessarily bad, either, as I could see this being a cool tactic if everyone's on the same page ("You're trying to rescue Isabel again? Okay, I go all monstrous to keep her!").

So, that mechanic works if (a) everyone is cooperating to get all their goals or (b) everyone is rocking on conflict between the PCs. However there's a chance of blocking people, and they don't really have another way to get what they want.

[Eric Provost]

Mike,

Yeah.  That's an issue.  But it's the same issue that lots of games have.  If people want to be dicks when playing, they will be dicks.  You can't write that out of a game like this.  I'm just gonna stick to worrying about when the game fails to fully entertain the players who aren't dicks and who aren't playing with dicks.

-Eric

[MikeSands]

Yep.

My concern is really that there's a possibility of that mechanic getting in the way even without someone being a dick, possibly without someone even realising they are preventing another character from doing their thing.

I have a feeling that there might be some situations that will occur in, but at the moment that's just a hunch.

[joepub]

Eric,

Oh. I totally misread that rule about removing tokens from your motivation card. Which makes me feel silly, but at the same time is a clear indication that you need to be super clear in your text about when and how you can remove tokens.

Here are my rolls from reel one: 1, 1, 5, 4.
My very first roll of reel two was snake eyes.

A couple 1's rolled early on in the game completely trounced them. This was weird luck (I was rolling 1's over half the time in the first half of the game), and I'm unsure if it translates into balance issue or not.

Jackson's motivation was too complicated and thus he never got anywhere near solving it because he couldn't figure out how to introduce it. Complicated motivations = potential sinkhole

The other thing to mention is that the game ended rather abruptly. In Reel 3 most of the conflicts I dropped 2-3 dice onto the table (and I think that's to be expected near the final climax!), and I was suddenly down to 4 dice remaining in a rather quick time span. We were forced to 'wrap it up', in a way. We suddenly felt very constricted by a limited economy like the GM's die pool. I'm not sure what constructive point I have,  but we were a bit shocked and disappointed to realize how quickly it was mandated to end.

[Rich Stokes]

Therefore, there need to be very firm rules surrounding their introduction and control.

I intentionally left out any such rules.  I want each group's own social contract to determine if it's cool to author a bunch of NPCs at a time or not.  So far it's worked out very well, and exactly as I'd intended. 

This caused us no end of problems when Andrew Kenrick and I tried playing last week.  Saying you don't need rules for it because you want each group to do it the way they are most comfortable with is all well and good, but you need to say that in the text!  A lot of the problems which I had with the book might stem from the fact that you're (perhaps) thinking that all you need to put in the book is the rules which govern play.  The text is not just the rules, its the instructions for playing the game.

So if you feel that something doesn't need explicit rules because people ought to decide how to play it for themselves, you need to say that in the text.  Leaving it all out just left us scratching our heads.

Andrew's probably in a better position than me to write up an AP of the game we played.

[Eric Provost]

Hey guys,

Sorry for the delay.  Been on vacation.

Mike,

Let me know if your hunch proves correct.  I don't think it will.  In fact, I'm so confident that it won't that I'm willing to drink a steaming cup of dirty sock tea if it actually happens to you.

Joe,

Complicated issues.  Hrm.  I think that this may be the first time that issue has come up, so I'm not entirely sure how to address it.  I mean, I'm sure that the solution lies in a nice clear explination about what you'll be doing with your goals and motivations during the game, but I'm not sure how to address that particular issue directly.

The abrupt ending thing.  It's happened to me too.  In fact, I'm kinda surprised no one else has mentioned it yet.  It sucks, but I'm not sure what to do about it yet.  I'll have to stew on that one for a bit.  It definately needs addressing.

Rich,

I agree completely.  The final rules will need many more explinations, examples, and clarifications.  I'm sorry if the ashcan version frustrated you or anyone else. 

-Eric

p.s.  If I missed anything, I'll try to catch up sometime in the next couple of days.  I'm just now getting back in the design-groove after vacation.

[Darcy Burgess]

Hi Eric,

Just a thought, which may solve 2 problems at once:

When a player would normally be required to assign a new infected die to a PC, give them the choice to either do that, or to funnel one die back into the GM's infected pool.

That may mitigate monstering out, and also solve some of the pacing issues in the late game.

Cheers,
Darcy

[Eric Provost]

Darcy,

Thanks man.  I've been considering that idea.  Problem is, I'm afraid that it would make things too easy on the players and their characters.  Since each infected die the GM has means a mere 1 in 6 chance of infecting a PC, when players trade them back to the GM, they would effectively be able to avoid their PC ever becoming a monster.  And I think it's important that the ability to avoid becoming a monster be a little bit tougher than that.

-Eric

[Darcy Burgess]

Hi Eric,

No problem -- that's what I signed on for.

I hear your concern, but I imagine that the in-game reality would be somewhat self-regulating.  Since the infected die can be assigned to someone else's protag, I imagine that you'd still see infected dice getting doled out.

It might also set up "camps" within the protags -- you've already got them (at least informally) with Motivations, since some motivations are instinctively more closely aligned than others.

And, as always, the GM can choose as she wishes, which means that the players can't completely circumvent the whole affair.

Cheers,
Darcy