[Dirty Secrets] Club 138

[Christoph Boeckle]

Setup

Gaétan (Investigator), Jérôme, Julien, Xavier and myself tested Seth Ben-Ezra's game friday a fortnight ago. In a word, it was: great!

I actually didn't understand the rules very well before playing. Except perhaps for Dogs (exceptionally pedagogic) and Pool (really short), it's always like that for me.
Gaétan knew the boardgame from which the resolution mechanics are taken and so explained them.

I slightly modified the Demographics for our game, as it was set in Switzerland:
Race: White, Black, Asian, Hispanic, Arab, Slavic, Turk and Italian (they agreed, but perhaps we'll tweak it a bit more next time)
Julien and Gaétan thought it was a brilliant idea to set the game in our city last week. It really eases up descriptions and allows for a lot of private jokes and quick meta-discussions.

Char gen went really well. I heard some comments like "Hum, somebody wants only rich people in this game", "In our town, there are principally white people, so the game should be the same".
Finally, Gaétan ended up with Paris Hilton for the name of his investigator. Ah well...

Crime generation lead to a case of a clubber getting mugged and robbed of his BMW just as he was going to leave. Paris (34) was the lover of the suspect, the young police officer Frédéric Bleu (18, just credible in Switzerland, and of Asian origin) supposedly on duty this evening in the parking lot.
We botched the first special scene, Gaétan had already done most of it while specifying the crime details and the Authority didn't want to change anything.


Sinking in

We started with an investigation sequence, which ended up hardly involving Paris, but rather a few NPCs (one of which would become a Character near the end of the game).
Basic investigation from the police. The all-time classic "one of our agents will drive you back home" was placed, and all were happy. Important information: Bleu was inexplicably absent for half an hour during the robbery and the thief was wearing an uniform (police or private security agency?)

Gaétan then chose to have a Revelation. This is were the game's name sunk in.
He chose Bleu, and I chose to have him reroll the Business relationship tie.
Bleu had a sexual relationship to Hakim Mensour, a rich Arab businessman who was a regular at the club.
Here, Gaétan absolutely stunned us with a superb narration (he studies law, so perhaps he sees those things more often than we do):
Mensour was some kind of godfather to Bleu, and as he grew up to become a man, their relationship got more and more intimate... neither of them was enjoying the relationship, thinking it was dirty, but they met time and again to have sex, with Mensour always dominating Bleu. It just happened.
Heavy stuff.

I followed with a Violence sequence between the two. Mensour wanted Bleu to stop his affair with Hilton, as she was married.
Paris appeared just as they were about to fight each other, tried to separate them, but only got caught up in the melee. Mensour got his thigh pierced by the sharp heel of Paris' boots and he had to be taken to the hospital in an emergency.
I deliberately bluffed in a silly manner, hoping that Gaétan would have to distribute at least 3 violence points. 2 points went to Mensour and one to Bleu.

Gaétan decided he'd need to clear up what Bleu was hiding. Paris offered the young policeman a ride home. Julien was authority. I suggested that both characters heard a news flash on the radio announcing a blocked road because of a car crash. A bit later, Bleu receives a text message on his cell phone telling him that the BMW had been "found". He secretly replied "What about the corpse?"
The scene ended without a system conflict, but Bleu's secrecy angered Paris who dropped him off at his home.

Gaétan proceeded with a Revelation sequence. I don't quite remember how it went, but Xavier tried to ensure either a romantic/sexual or family relationship type.
We wound up with a relationship between Clothilde Guerdat, a 78 year old woman and Mensour. Gaétan decided that they used to have a romantic relationship until Clothilde bore a daughter... Paris!
(This was getting really sad!)

The Investigation phase that followed established that Clothilde was found dead in that car crash (Gaétan filled up the second and last crime card accordingly).

Jérôme then launched a Violence conflict between Bleu and Paris!
As she was bathing, Bleu came in with a gun, menacing. I don't quite remember how the conflict played out, but it ended with Bleu slipping on the wet tiles and splitting his skull, while Paris took a glancing shot and had to be brought to the hospital.

Up to now, the crime grid was still filling up with interesting names, but no crime resolution was triggered.

So, another Investigation scene brought Bleu's superior from the very first scene to the hospital where he tried to kill Paris off. (I was getting tired and am forgetting the other character's name that was with him. It was probably the guy whose BMW had been stolen in the beginning).


Crime resolution

NOW, crime resolution was triggered! Gaétan chose to tackle the murder, if I recall correctly.
And that was the tragic part of play: we were all pretty tired and couldn't help Gaétan make sense of the mess we had come up with. We had several vague ideas, but we really didn't know why anybody would want to kill Clothilde.
(Actually, it's pretty easy to come up with some reasons, especially with all the detail in mind I cut off to reduce the size of this AP.)
One thing we certainly did wrong was that we wanted to wrap up the game with this crime resolution. Technically, we would only have had to resolve either the theft or the murder, play another chapter and then tie up the remaining loose bits (that was how it looked on our crime grid). This last chapter could have been used to make up some information, especially regarding Bleu's superior.

Nevertheless, we had fun. Especially as far as I'm concerned, this game has lots of potential, and I want to play it again now that I've a better grasp of the rules. We just need to make sure we're all awake!


Wrapping up the report

I don't have any rules questions. I just have a few vague notions about how to clarify various parts of the rules, but I'd need to play some more to make sure.
I'm also a bit sceptic about the relevance of the Liar's Dice mechanic, but again, I need more solid experience. It was certainly fun and different from any other rpg I've played.

In the meantime, I quickly read Find a Victim by Ross McDonald and I now have a better grasp of why Race is an important demographic. The fact that we play in the present day might actually tone down the importance of that though. In Switzerland, xenophobic thought is widespread, but it's based on immigrants and refugees. Nobody will get in trouble for marrying a black person (even some of the most hardcore xenophobic politicians have). This does seem to be quite a different from what I've read in the aforementioned novel.


Okay, so this is a big mess of a thread, Seth. Feel free to dig in any direction that will be useful to your development!

[GreatWolf]

Thanks for the playtest!

Let's see.  Things I should discuss.....

You say that there are some rules that you think should be clarified.  What were they?  I'm working on the manuscript right now, and a major part of it will be a tutorial of sorts, teaching the players how to use the game.  So, if there are things that I should clarify, I'd like to know what they are.

Regarding Liar's Dice.  The reason that I settled on this system is actually a thematic connection to the source material.  Often during conflict, characters are competing with each other, trying to out-think or out-bluff each other.  With my system, the players are having to do a similar thing to be successful.  The Violence Dice add another wrinkle, depending on whether or not you are seeking a high Violence outcome.  The public Violence die in the center of the table is especially potent for this.  I find that it's like a small landmine in the middle of the table, and the conflicting players either dance around it or run up to it and jump up and down on it.  Metaphorically, of course.

On editing the Demographics.  I think that I'll briefly discuss this in the Designer's Notes.  Essentially, as written, Dirty Secrets is an American game.  The source material is American, and, honestly, I'm American, so I'm not particularly ashamed of this fact.  It's a design feature.  However, I agree that the Demographics won't necessarily make sense in another country.  So, your editing is exactly the sort of response that I'd want to see.  Hack it until it makes you uncomfortable.  Then you'll know that you're in the right territory.

Regarding Revelations.  I've found that nearly every time we use a Revelation sequence in the game, everything is turned sideways as a result.  I mean that in a good way.  Did you find it to be the same for your group?  From the report, it seems as though both Revelations became critical pieces of information.  Also, according to the rules, all player input must be selected before any randomness.  First, the Investigator makes his one choice of Character or relationship type.  Then the Authority gets to eliminate one Character or relationship type.  Then you randomly generate the rest.  Did you do it this way?  It wasn't completely clear from the notes.

What size Grid were you using?  It would appear to be short story length, but I'm wanting to make sure.

Regarding Crime Resolution.  You're supposed to roll and, if you land on a name, that's your Perpetrator.  Then whoever is resolving the Crime gets to choose which Crime was done by the Perpetrator.  So, I'm curious.  What name did you roll?

Finally, two questions.  What was the best moment in play for you?  What was the worst moment in play?

Thanks for the playtest!

[Christoph Boeckle]

Oh yes, I completely forgot to indicate the grid size: small, with one suspicion square added halfway through the game to speed up. I guess we'd have needed 3 hours to finish the story. Now that we know the rules, it should take less time. Concerning crime resolution, I think it was Marcel Schmid that was designated as Perpetrator of the murder. He was Victim of the car theft. Really, we shouldn't be playing on Friday nights after a week of school... I can now see all sorts of reasons why his car would have been stolen after he murdered Paris' mother!

I see your rationale on using Liar's Dice. I'll be on the lookout for what you describe next time we play.

Revelations were played correctly, even if my transcriptions look a bit sketchy. They were a total blast!
Probably the most painfully amazing moment was when Gaétan had to define the nature of the sexual relationship between Mensour and Bleu. He seemed sorry to narrate such a thing, but couldn't stop and the details made sense. The other relationship was a hoot as well, because we had three relationships whose age differences were large: Mensour (53) and Guerdat (78), Mensour and Bleu (18), Bleu and Hilton (34). It was funny seeing Gaétan calculating the ages of the respective character, then smiling and announcing that Clothilde and Hakim were Paris' parents. And tragic as well, seeing what it implied for Frédéric Bleu.

The worst moment was when the investigator was named Paris Hilton. It was brief and mild. The beginning of the story was a bit slow, because Hilton didn't really "activate", even though she could have. Somehow, she didn't quite act as an investigator throughout a lot of the game, she was rather acting suspiciously (she even ended up on the crime grid twice). I'll check out for ways to include the investigator as much as possible, but keeping the possibility for the investigator to be perpetrator of a crime.


Now, regarding the rules clarification. It looked as if the rules covered everything, but I at least would benefit from some straightforwardness.

• Appeal: is it correct to assume that if the Investigator has one "lackey" to Uphold him, he can get away with anything?
• In Selecting a Sequence, you say that the choice is resolved between the Investigator and the Authority, but that the latter can't assist the former. I had to read it a few times before understanding how that was possible. It's perfectly clear as soon as it comes up in play though.
• It took me ages to understand how to end a chapter (I only saw it on the sequence type table).
• Any player may call for a conflict, but it seems that the Authority takes over after that. Is that correct?
• We already exchanged a few mails on the Authority's options in the Revelation sequence.
• The Crime Grid had some ambiguity: what does moving in a straight line mean? Does it exclude diagonal movements or does it just mean that all the movements (in the case of multiple exchanges) have to be made in the same direction? Is a suspicion space an empty space regarding names to be written down? Does "land" mean to "end a movement"?

Now, of course, some of those points may be just me not understanding the rules without playing, which actually is one of my problems with reading rules (or textbooks in school for that matter). As long as I haven't used them, I rarely understand more than half of their content.

All the best for your work on the manuscript!

[GreatWolf]

Probably the most painfully amazing moment was when Gaétan had to define the nature of the sexual relationship between Mensour and Bleu. He seemed sorry to narrate such a thing, but couldn't stop and the details made sense. The other relationship was a hoot as well, because we had three relationships whose age differences were large: Mensour (53) and Guerdat (78), Mensour and Bleu (18), Bleu and Hilton (34). It was funny seeing Gaétan calculating the ages of the respective character, then smiling and announcing that Clothilde and Hakim were Paris' parents. And tragic as well, seeing what it implied for Frédéric Bleu.

Age can pack a surprisingly powerful thematic punch.  We had a playtest (which I don't believe I wrote up) where the major characters ended up being a grandmother, mother, and daughter, all Chinese, with the grandmother having emigrated to the United States just after the mother was born.  Age calculations and the like played heavily in that game.

The worst moment was when the investigator was named Paris Hilton. It was brief and mild.

I'm massaging the setup rules to allow each player to change one item on one Character.  That way, silliness like this can be overcome, or at least owned by more than one person.

The beginning of the story was a bit slow, because Hilton didn't really "activate", even though she could have. Somehow, she didn't quite act as an investigator throughout a lot of the game, she was rather acting suspiciously (she even ended up on the crime grid twice). I'll check out for ways to include the investigator as much as possible, but keeping the possibility for the investigator to be perpetrator of a crime.

As written, the investigator can't go on the Crime Grid.  I'm including the option as a variant (I have a couple of those), but as written, the investigator cannot be the Perpetrator of any of the Crimes.  FYI and all that.

Thanks for the list of confusing areas.  I'll clarify a couple of items below.

• Appeal: is it correct to assume that if the Investigator has one "lackey" to Uphold him, he can get away with anything?

Well..yes.  Of course, that's actually true of anyone.  All you need is one person to Uphold you on Appeal.  The idea, though, is that an idea can enter play if it sparks the interest of at least one member of the audience.  I didn't want to make it a majority vote, because then the players would be able to run over unusual ideas.  This way, only one other person needs to be intrigued by an idea...but he needs to be willing to take a stand for that idea.  Just thinking "Eh, that's good enough, I guess" isn't enough.

I acknowledge that this is a point where a player could choose to be a jerk.  However, I don't think that there's any ruleset that can prevent players from being jerks.  If the group thinks that someone is being a jerk, then they will have to deal with that on their own.

• Any player may call for a conflict, but it seems that the Authority takes over after that. Is that correct?

Right.  The best way to understand this is that any player can say, "It's time to roll dice!"  By giving everyone the authority to call for conflict, it allows the audience to provide feedback to the Investigator and Authority.  Either this can mean "I want to know what happens next!" or "You're going too slowly; get on with it!"  In part, this comes from a specific memory of playing Legends of Alyria{/i], where the tension had risen to such a high degree that one of the players who wasn't in the scene yelled "Roll the dice!" in an excited "What happens now?!?!" sort of way. 

• The Crime Grid had some ambiguity: what does moving in a straight line mean? Does it exclude diagonal movements or does it just mean that all the movements (in the case of multiple exchanges) have to be made in the same direction? Is a suspicion space an empty space regarding names to be written down? Does "land" mean to "end a movement"?

No diagonals.  All movement must be made in the same direction.  A suspicion space is considered to be an empty space where a name can be placed.  "Land" does mean "end a movement".

Those are all good clarifications, by the way.

Now, of course, some of those points may be just me not understanding the rules without playing, which actually is one of my problems with reading rules (or textbooks in school for that matter). As long as I haven't used them, I rarely understand more than half of their content.

That's fine, actually.  I want to make the game as clear as possible, so your feedback is quite helpful.

All the best for your work on the manuscript!

Thanks!  I'm off to work on it now.

[Christoph Boeckle]

Good call on the Appeal rationale, I like it. I wasn't meaning this as a way for jerks to get their way, but just for someone who had a very personal take on the story. But as you say, speaking informally can get us quite far.

I had the intuition that something was wrong with the investigator landing on the Crime Grid, but couldn't find it in the rules. Using it as a rules variant is a nice idea though!

The demographics really are a powerful part of the game. At first I was thinking: "Race? What's this game? Oh, Seth means ethnicity! Okay (30 minutes later) err... and this dude here is really a pain in the back (I hope nobody notices that he's Arab and thinks I'm a racist jerk for putting him in that situation, it's the rules, really)..."
And then I read Find a victim and truly understood that its all about race and not ethnicity.
And age works wonders too.
Whereas legal status didn't have too much impact, even though it could have helped to resolve the Clothilde Guerdat's murder as she was an ex-convict. By the way, what's the difference between a police officer and a federal agent? In Switzerland we have a similar politico-administrative set-up of the country (mini-states with quite a bit of autonomy form the country), but the federal government has no police of their own. They do have secret agents and spies though (yeah!), so I put that in it's stead. I'm worrying though whether I'm missing some deep grown rivalry between state-level police and federal agents (which seems to crop up all the time in American films).

[Valamir]

There are often as many as 4 layers of police authority in America, although few places have all 4.  You can have municipal or "local" police which can range from big metropolitan police departments (like the NYPD) to small town cops with not much to do.  You can have county police, which is only really common where the county is full of towns that are too small to support their own force so they "share" police at the county level.  Most (every?) state has some flavor of state police which are generally (at least in the states I'm familiar with) considered a cut above the locals.

Now the problem is that with mobile criminals (on about the dawn of the American highway system) it became relatively easy for criminals to simply move to a different area leaving local authorities delayed in wrangling over jurisdiction issues.  Plus, there were numerous examples of criminals having close enough ties with local authorities that they could "get away with it".  Enter the Federal Police.  Their jurisdiction crosses state and local lines and since they are rotated into and off cases its harder to get a "close personal relationship" to take advantage of.

Of course everybody knows that FEDERAL police are WAYYY more competent than mere locals and totally incorruptable...locals are hicks, beat walkers, slovenly, and take bribes right and left...at least that how the feds see it...hense the rivalry / animosity portrayed in the movies.

[GreatWolf]

I had the intuition that something was wrong with the investigator landing on the Crime Grid, but couldn't find it in the rules. Using it as a rules variant is a nice idea though!

Although, last night, I went back and discovered that I hadn't actually written down that you can't put the investigator on the Grid.  Duh!  It's there now.  (Or at least, a note reminding me to put it in.)

The demographics really are a powerful part of the game. At first I was thinking: "Race? What's this game? Oh, Seth means ethnicity! Okay (30 minutes later) err... and this dude here is really a pain in the back (I hope nobody notices that he's Arab and thinks I'm a racist jerk for putting him in that situation, it's the rules, really)..."
And then I read Find a victim and truly understood that its all about race and not ethnicity.
And age works wonders too.

I dance a happy dance, because this shows me that it's working.

Here's the secret that makes Demographics work.  On the one hand, they are all just words.  There's no mechanical weight given to any of them, like dice modifiers or anything.  However, the game requires that you put each Character into a category.  Now, it's impossible to look at this Character without a certain (say) race or social class being associated with that Character.  As such, the players will begin to apply their opinions and judgments about that race or social class to that Character.  Now, here's the important bit.  Nothing in the game says that those opinions are true.  But, by its nature, those things will tend to be forced to the surface.  The filing of Character cards is supposed to reinforce this, too, in addition to organizing the play space a bit.

Oddly enough, it's simply giving room to the power of words.  I first saw this used effectively in Spione, and it's probably the biggest design lesson that I've learned from working on this game.

Whereas legal status didn't have too much impact, even though it could have helped to resolve the Clothilde Guerdat's murder as she was an ex-convict. By the way, what's the difference between a police officer and a federal agent? In Switzerland we have a similar politico-administrative set-up of the country (mini-states with quite a bit of autonomy form the country), but the federal government has no police of their own. They do have secret agents and spies though (yeah!), so I put that in it's stead. I'm worrying though whether I'm missing some deep grown rivalry between state-level police and federal agents (which seems to crop up all the time in American films).

First, I'll point at what Ralph said and say, "Yeah, that."  It's definitely one of those things that Americans will get, almost instinctively, while others will go, "Huh?"  I recall some discussions on the Unknown Armies mailing list that boiled down to "translating" the fundamental American nature of that game.  I'm guessing that Dirty Secrets will be similar.

So, part of the reason for dividing them up in the game is to allow for that conflict between local/state and federal police that Ralph describes.  The other reason is just the general reaction of the public to the Feds vs. the cops.  By definition, the cops are local or regional.  They are from "around here".  Federal agents aren't.  That's not really fair, you understand.  I don't know if there's an FBI office in Peoria, for example, but if there is, it's probably staffed by people who live in the Peoria area.  However, their allegiance (if you will) isn't to the Peoria area; it's to the central government.  So it's a different vibe.  As such, I thought that the game should allow for that vibe.

Okay, time for a detour.  I'm not totally sure that I'm going to be able to express this well, but I'll give it a try.

I've discovered that one major aspect of Dirty Secrets is the players' developing of a connection to their immediate locale.  In the initial post, you said:

Julien and Gaétan thought it was a brilliant idea to set the game in our city last week. It really eases up descriptions and allows for a lot of private jokes and quick meta-discussions.

That's exactly what I mean.  The game provides an opportunity to interact with your real-world surroundings through the game.  This can be a celebration of your locale, or it can be a critique.  Regardless, at least for me, the game has brought me closer to where I live.  I find myself looking around more, especially at the hidden nooks and crannies of Peoria, because now, I'm curious to know what is over there.  Now, maybe that's just me, but it's something that I'll be looking for in AP reports, as they come out.

All that to say....

In light of this, federal agents feel like they come from outside the locale.  They are not part of the community, nor are they beholden to it.  That's what sets them apart.  This is purely emotional and, as I noted above, not even totally accurate.  But that's why federal agents are a separate category in the game.

(Did that make sense?)

Anyways, one last point.  I've discovered that, over the course of a given game, certain Demographics tend to become the focus of a game, while others slide to the side.  It's an emergent factor and can't really be predicted, but it is a significant effect that I've noticed when playing.

Again, thanks for the playtest.  It's good to hear that the game works for other folks as well as for me.

[Christoph Boeckle]

Thanks for the info on the federal police, Ralph and Seth, that makes perfect sense. We definitely don't have this in Switzerland (too small, and our cantons ("states") are much too obsessed with their autonomy, although they will collaborate for police matters). Sometimes policemen from other cantons are called in as experts or as reinforcement, and that might launch some very nice rivalries. I'll have to think about that.

As a tip, I'd perhaps recommend Investigating on demographics of Characters when the Investigator doesn't have a better idea. Sometimes we were a bit clueless, and just being reminded that we actually don't know what the things on the Character cards really mean probably would have given us focus.

What you say about the demographics makes perfect sense. I would never have thought of it, but really, when something goes wrong, among the first things we want to know are: age, sex, nationality/race, criminal record. No need to have funky mechanics, the game just needs to present the juicy material to our minds who will immediately process the information (rationally or not). Then the players can grab the mechanics to confront their hypotheses to the "actual" events. Together with the familiarity of the setting...
This is a very enlightening insight!