The Forge Archives

subtitle: But again with the vampires!

Meguey, Emily Care and I played the World, the Flesh, and the Devil last night.  It was cool.

We'd made characters sometime in the past, the wrong way, and they were okay but it was all situation and no real investment.  (The wrong way: I wrote a Trial and we all annotated it to make our characters.)  So we decided last night to start from scratch.

It was late already, we'd been hanging out and talking gaming for a couple hours, and it was like, what the heck, let's play.  What setting?  The sci-fi spice trade thing we'd made characters for before?  No.  "Wild west," Meguey said.  "I think it'd make a good system for vampires," I said.  I thought we were just tossing out ideas, but next thing I know we're playing wild west vampires.

But it's better than it sounds.

We decided we'd all play old-world vampires, immigrants, in a Victorian and relatively civilized wild west.  The (small k) kicker was that vampires get their power from the earth they were buried in -- Dracula and his boxes of dirt, right -- and that our offspring vampires would thus be much more powerful than we were.  How do the elders of a family preserve and pass on their culture to children who are uncontrollable and enticed by the freedoms and excesses of the new world?

It's pretty hollow when your culture is "we bite people and drink their blood," but our heart was in the right place.  Next time I'm going to be a bit more discriminating when we're shouting out ideas.  After we made our characters we played for a little over an hour, until one in the morning, and pretty much used up the premise I think.

I'll type up and post our Trials and Annotations this afternoon.

Play was sweet.  I was the GM, and I haven't sole-GMed a game since, oh, that gangster thing in 1998.  So I kept falling back into old GM things, like wanting to resolve tasks, not conflicts, and worrying about how I was going to get the PCs involved in the plot.  (Then I remembered: what plot?  I checked carefully and indeed there wasn't one, not that I had to worry about anyway.  So that was cool.)

But I cut scenes like a madman.  "Is this scene going anywhere?" I said.  "No?  Well what's next?"  I caught myself thinking, how am I going to get Em's character to the place of action, and instead I said, "Okay, Em, cut to you watching this from across the river."

The World, Flesh and Devil mechanic worked well.  Occasionally it was perfect, like in the scene where Meguey was trying to beat some sense into (or beat senseless) her arrogant upstart son and she pulled World-minus.  She narrated that her son was close to the earth he'd been buried in, and she was an ocean and a continent away from hers, and shockingly he was faster and stronger than she was, and sent her sprawling.  

Sometimes it was harder to see, like an instant later, when I had her son spit on her (he'd been too open in taking a victim, and her blood was in the spit) and Meguey decided to kill him.  She pulled Devil-plus, and spent several beats trying to figure out what that could mean.  She didn't want to say that her son was the devil and she overcame him, she wanted to overcome some devil in herself, but she couldn't find one.  She eventually decided that it meant that she didn't kill him, but why or what her internal struggle was never really materialized.

It led to a cool thing for me, though.  The scene was going nowhere so I asked what next, and Em suggested a flashback to when I killed my first American child.  I pulled Devil-minus and had a great oh-shit moment: I'd killed him and he hadn't deserved it.

In all: three thumbs up.

Oh, except that we've been gaming together basically weekly for two and a half years, and last night we had our very first Monty Python quote.  Bring out your dead.  I can only blame Paul.

I'll post our characters, with more commentary, this afternoon.

-Vincent

Where was I.

--

Emily Care:
In the late Old West, many immigrants are coming to the U.S. to seek fame, fortune, and escape poverty or persecution at home.  Among these groups are vampires from the Old World who have decided to seek new herds among the untouched flesh of the New World and among those mortals flooding in from Europe.  Smallpox is not the only plague the Europeans bring.  The Old World vampires find ampel hosts, and create progeny, but find their young outpace them quickly.

persecution: In the Old World too many people kne of us and how to kill us.
vampires: My line was ancient and never numerous.
untouched flesh: The people of the New World are alluring and fascinating to me.  It is among them that I prefer to be and feed.
Old World: I watched generations rise and fall like wheat in my native land.  As if I had become unstuck from time while all the rest around me perished.
ample hosts: The Indians I prefer are threatened by the European immigrants.  Again I see them threaten my security.
Progeny: My young is stronger than I was so early.  Something about him escapes me as never any other I created did.

World World Flesh Flesh Devil Devil

Meguey:
Recently, there has been a rash of unusual deaths out along the new rail spur.  The local marshall is wary of investigating too closely because the spur is financed by the cattle baron who owns that land, and investigating will stop work, which the cattle baron doesn't want.  There's a gaunt looking New York dandy flashing around town lately.

recently: I've been here for 20 years, from Austria originally.  This has been in the last two years.
that land: It's a rocky, hard, hilly patch.  The baron wants (and can pay for) a faster way to reach the rails, which inconveniences me, as I had my own plans for this land.
wary of investigating: I've very carefully had a back hand in getting the marshall in place.  He does not trouble my minions, and he keeps order, if not law.  He's cautious and not ambitious above his place.
dandy: One of my minions (I do not call them children) is feeling threatended by this newcomer, who is tossing around paper notes as if they were gold.
cattle baron: I fastidiously avoid this man.  His self-styled peerage offends my sensibilities, and as he does probably have more ready cash, he could be a threat.

World World World Flesh Devil Devil

Me:
The problem is that vampires made in America, here, buried in American soil, have more power than their Old World makers.  As they -- or if they -- discover this, lawlessness, anarchy, a terrible upset of the natural order.  Such a thing might go undetected here for a time, but not forever, and would certainly make all vulnerable.

Old World makers: I, in turn, was made by a monstrous king in Poland before the crusades, and I have made an army of my own, over centuries.
vampires made in America: My own first, I killed myself, a terrible sin for my kind.
anarchy: Such glorious times I remember, when there was no law but our hungers, and all of Europe ran red.
soil: I have only ten great crates of the earth of Poland, one in the cellar of my hotel, one out in a place I know in the canyons, the rest hidden.
undetected: I've lived here for only a few decades, with now my two children, and I'm made anxious by how quickly the town has grown.

World Flesh Flesh Flesh Devil Devil.

--

So that's them.

We fumbled around a bit, trying to figure out what kinds of things the game designer intended us to write, and finally we decided to just write whatever came to us, and call it good.  So that's what we did.

A surprising thing that we liked quite a bit was that we each wrote a Trial at a different level -- Em about immigration, me about us vs. our kids, Meguey about the town and its circumstances.

We didn't really come up with -- well, I mean, by the end we all had characters we could play, but the Annotations seemed (to me at least) like a process, not an end result.  And in fact nobody ever called on their annotations to reroll, and it doesn't look to me like we could have that successfully.  Now, that's totally fine with me, I didn't mind a bit -- we all had characters, we all went forward, I was able to immediately and aggressively push the oldsters vs. youngsters crisis, but we never looked at our character sheets again.

Talking about it afterward, we thought it might have been useful to identify a Devil on our character sheets.  Like, mine could have been Lawlessness and Anarchy.  So that when I overcame or succumbed to the Devil, I had some existing direction and didn't have to think about it under pressure, holding up the action.

So Paul, anything else I can tell you?  And is this indeed the first ever confirmed case of somebody played the World, the Flesh, and the Devil?

-Vincent

Hey Vincent,

Yes, you are absolutely the first confirmed playtest of The World, the Flesh, and the Devil! And I am very pleased to be scribing your names into the thank section :)

We'd made characters sometime in the past, the wrong way....(The wrong way: I wrote a Trial and we all annotated it to make our characters.) So we decided last night to start from scratch.

....I thought we were just tossing out ideas, but next thing I know we're playing wild west vampires.

I've personally been fairly conflicted about this set-up aspect of the game. Some have suggested that I should create a setting with a fixed list of Trials for players to pick from in creating their characters. The fixed list would serve the dual purpose of being a starting point for the character, and of conveying details of the setting to the player through the process of reading and selection. And I'm working on a setting, but I'm hesitant to do the fixed list of Trials. I really want to deliver setting information to the players in such a way that they're empowered to write their own Trials, but I haven't been able to figure out what kind and how much information is important, or how to deliver it. I like how you guys did it, you negotiated it. You took group ownership of it, so you were collectively able to make sure everyone participating had the information they needed. But with the setting I'm developing I think I need a way of presenting the essentials of it so the player is creating character (Annotations) into situation (Trial) into setting (delivered somehow by the GM, in such a way that it doesn't also deliver the Trial). Thoughts on this from Forgites would be very welcome.

Play was sweet.

And you have no idea how relieved I am that the game hangs together as well as it seems to from your account...and that you had fun.

The World, Flesh and Devil mechanic worked well. Occasionally it was perfect....Sometimes it was harder to see, like an instant later, when...Meguey....pulled Devil-plus, and spent several beats trying to figure out what that could mean.

This is an aspect of the game I'm glad to see came up in your playtest. My quick response is, "Why didn't she call for a re-roll?" But unless in the heat of play you guys forgot about them, which I don't think is what happened, I kind-of know the answer. Constraint makes for interesting story-making, the way writing sonnets is more interesting as a process than writing un-rhymed free verse. But I was hoping with the design that calling for a re-roll would be also interestingly constraining. If Meguey had called for a re-roll, maybe using wary of investigating, then she'd have been forced to work that into the narration. For a Flesh-plus result, maybe that would mean killing her son, only to watch him open his dying hand to reveal the blood encrusted badge of the marshall. Did the Annotations not seem interestingly constraining? Or not like potential complications for advancing the story in interesting ways?

She didn't want to say that her son was the devil and she overcame him, she wanted to overcome some devil in herself, but she couldn't find one. She eventually decided that it meant that she didn't kill him, but why or what her internal struggle was never really materialized.

And even this I'm not sure is a problem. He is her offspring. Mercy certainly falls into the realm of transcending alienation for me. Later in the game perhaps the GM could even put her to task for it. An NPC could ask, "Why didn't you kill him when you had the chance?" It seems like a fine outcome to me. Do you think otherwise?

...we thought it might have been useful to identify a Devil on our character sheets. Like, mine could have been Lawlessness and Anarchy. So that when I overcame or succumbed to the Devil, I had some existing direction and didn't have to think about it under pressure, holding up the action.

Okay...I'll reveal the secret inspiration behind the Devil. The modern American materialist is the archetype for having succumbed to Devil. Any behavior that treats another human being as an object, or an obstacle, any act in pursuit of selfish objectives at the expense of another person, any inability to recognize what would truly make you happy when you see it, even choosing style at the expense of substance, and fear of what others might think, is having succumbed to the Devil. Altruistic behavior, putting another person's needs and happiness ahead of your own, that's transcending the Devil. Lawlessness at the expense of the happiness and needs of others, and anarchic behaviors that create fear in others are definitely aspects of having succumbed to the Devil, but they're not the entirety of the Devil. I'd hate to see you limit yourself to a subset as part of character creation.

So Paul, anything else I can tell you?

Yes...two things:

1) Meguey and Emily definitely violated the seven sentence total for Trial plus Annotations with their characters by having many multi-sentence Annotations. The count for number of sentences of Trial plus number of Annotations comes out to seven, but I had actually intended for the number of sentences to total up to seven. Was this an oversight, an artifact of the casual way you ended up playing the game, or a conscious decision? If it was conscious, do you think players would be comfortable with only seven sentences of character if the setting was less sketchy? I've got a gut feeling that you went for less sketchy characters with more sentences because the setting was so informal?

Honestly though, your characters are actually all pretty much in the same ballpark of complexity, so I'm really just curious where the line should be drawn. Do you think it's more or less difficult to narrate the results of die rolls for a dramatically well-defined character, as opposed to a sketchier character? And on a related note, do you think it's more satisfying to narrated the results of a die roll for a sketchier or a more substantially-defined character?

2) Did a player ever draw a red minus? How did that go?

Thanks. And it does sound like you guys had fun. I'm really glad.

Paul

I'm all itchy to get into it in depth, but this second I only have time for a couple quick answers.

1. We were playing from memory and I'd misremembered it to seven sentences of Annotation, not seven sentences total.  But your gut feeling sounds right on.  

Either way, the Annotations were the tip of the iceberg of the characters.  They were the process by which we invented characters much fuller than the Annotations themselves, if you see what I mean.

For our little crew, the number of sentences wouldn't matter, I don't think.  It'd serve as a time limit -- develop your character in your head in only as much time as it takes you to write seven sentences, or five, or fifty.

Am I making sense at all?  Maybe I'll be able to be more clear later.

2. Nope.

No kidding, itchy.  You should just see the self-restraint I'm exercising here to get up and go get Meguey from work and make sure the kids have food in them, instead of writing more and more.

Oh, and my pleasure.  Our pleasure.

-Vincent

Kids: fed.
Meguey: working until 8:00.
I have another minute or three.

QuoteI'd hate to see you limit yourself to a subset [of the Devil] as part of character creation.

Me too.  And I'd hesitate to suggest that we write our Annotations specifically to the World, the Flesh, or the Devil -- I think that'd push me to make my WFD die proportional to my Annotations, in precisely the way you say I needn't.  (Damn, somebody should fine me for that sentence.)  But I had a good sense of my character's place in the world, and a good sense of his body etc., but not so good a sense of his morality.  If, after I'd picked out Ws, Fs and Ds, I'd noticed that oh, he's prone to lawlessness and anarchy in the worst Europe ran red kind of way, that would have given me a door.  A secure place from which to expand into all the other ways we treat each other like things and dirt.

I was pleased as punch to notice, after the session, that there it was on my character sheet, just waiting for me to see it.  Similarly Em's poverty and persecution and Meguey's wariness.

On the other hand, after the first session might be soon enough.  Dunno.

Quote...Unless in the heat of play you guys forgot about [calling for rerolls], I kind-of know the answer. Constraint makes for interesting story-making...

Yes and yes.  Yes we forgot in the heat, and yes if we hadn't liked the constraint, we'd've remembered for sure.

Using rerolls when you can't come up with something suitable, rather than when the suitable thing is unpleasant, is definitely the way to look at it.  I'll remember that for next time.

Time's up for me.  More to come.

-Vincent

Okay, just a couple more comments I think.

---

Meguey not killing her son was a very fine outcome, it's the process that was disappointing.  We'd had such nice tasty 'aha!' moments most every other time that floundering was a let down.

I've been internalizing doing rerolls when you flounder instead of when you fail or are unhappy, and it seems like an excellent solution.  Next time we'll do that for sure.

The hitch I forsee there is that the process of figuring out a good Annotation to apply, and how to apply it, might be more work than figuring out what to do with the dang Devil-plus in the first place.  The annotations were sort of too meaty, too processing-intensive, to be easily insertable into the (delightfully fast) flow of play.  Your bit about the marshall's badge is excellent, but I'd hate to rely on coming up with it on the fly, potentially in addition to dealing with another off roll.

What if you could take a reroll whenever you wanted, no questions asked, but you'd owe it.  You'd pay it back just as you do now, by drawing on one of your Annotations when you narrate.  That way you'd be using rerolls when you're stuck creatively, and you'd have a little more time to set up and follow through on using your Annotations when your creativity flows.

---

Writing our own Trials was much better than Annotating a Trial I'd prewritten.  Much better.  In fact, I'd suggest not even providing many example Trials.  Lots of examples of widely varied Annotations and how to use them in rerolls, but not much more about the Trials than you've got.  Writing them was very much about owning the game and the setting.

Especially if the setting is coming out of a book.  You need to write your own Trial to make the setting yours.

How to get everybody up to speed on a setting out of a book, though?  I have no clue.  Except that The Questing Beast's Hallows and Accords is genius.  Any way to have the players make similar broad and interesting decisions about your setting?

---

-Vincent

Great thread, Vincent. I'd been wanting to see TWTFATD in play for some time.

Seems to me that western vampires is a great setting for the game. Earthy, violent, and with direct issues relating to, well, The World, The Flesh, and The Devil.

This is one of those games I'd like to see unattached to a setting. I think there's a lot of premise-power in the basic mechanics that could transcend details like setting.

On the other hand, making it a complete game with all the bells and whistles might not necessarily diminish its flavor

Hey Vincent,

A quote from your email that I've been thinking about a lot:

Something you'll have to get a handle on is...the Annotations don't really define the whole character.  They're only pointers, indicators.

It's really easy in the game to not use the Annotations for rerolls....using Annotations at all is kind of gravy, not a necessity.

And I can't help but think the Annotations are potentially more substantive than they were in your playtest. You've indicated that you used cards, rather than dice. What was the proportion of red minuses to pluses you delivered to the player for an average draw? Lately I've been thinking the number of red minuses on the GM's dice needs to be increased. I think the red minuses, handled forcefully by the GM when they occur, are the key thing I'm hoping bring a set of Annotations out as the definition of the character. If a player draws one, it puts him in the position of deciding whether to let the GM narrate the outcome or not. A GM's preparedness to rough up the character a bit when the red minus comes up is important to motivating a player to call on an Annotation for a re-roll, making that Annotation part of the narration of the outcome of the second roll, whether it's the player doing that narration, or on the occasion of that roll also coming up red minus, the GM.

What do you think?

Paul

Hello,

I'd like to chime with Paul on this one. I've noticed that highly consensual, unstructured play with a Simulationist bent tends to "go light" on the characters, with the underlying assumption that bleeding, dazed, and killed characters do not make for enjoyable role-playing. It may be that your group's habits of play tend to keep one another's characters fairly secure - if I'm wrong, by the way, let me know.

Speaking from a more aggressively Narrativist slant, I have found that a great deal of concrete adversity goes far to achieving satisfying protagonist-creation and expression. I am a big fan of treating characters most brutally, with an emphasis on impact, shock, bleeding, and pure pain; I'm working on bringing the same principle into action regarding emotions and loyalties. Of course, in Sorcerer or Hero Wars, the damage systems have "temporary" or "delayed" effects respectively that permit injury not necessarily to be the "game-over" event that it is in, say, RuneQuest. But if you take a horrendous shot in Hero Wars, you know that the outcome of the fight is now "amplified," and it's a big rush during play.

I agree with Paul that a certain brutality toward the characters, of whatever sort, might go a long way toward bringing re-rolls into play more often.

Best,
Ron

Ron,

Right, right, and right.

Especially with vampires, I mean, beat the bejesus out of them and they still get better.  Next time, that's where we'll be.

I'm good at making things go terribly terribly wrong, situationally, emotionally, interpersonally, but not so good at inflicting bodily harm.  I think you've got the cause on the nose.

Paul,

I proportioned the cards like the dice.  I selected six cards, including red ones on 4-2+ and 5-1+, and they drew from them old-maid style.  It was just luck that no red cards came up.

I think having more red is a great idea, at least one per die wouldn't be awful.  Not just minuses, either.

I have more to say, about the relationship between plus/minus and success/failure, but it'll have to wait.

-Vincent

So it looks to me like there are two ways the game might go.

1.  The way I was going.  You reroll when you flounder, even for a second.  GM narrations are quite uncommon (I'm no Mike Holmes, but it looks like 3 of 36 possible pluses and minuses are red) and the GM isn't under any pressure to make her narrations bad bad bad.  This way doesn't hook the Annotations strongly into play, because rerolls are gravy.  If you don't change the game at all, I think it'll go this way.

2. This way we're talking about now.  You reroll because GM narrations are common and bad bad bad.  This way hooks the Annotations more strongly into play, but it means that you won't reroll if you're narrating, even if you're floundering, for fear of worse.

I think way 2 is the better game.

Here are the dice I'd try, if it were just me:
+ + + + + -
+ + + + - -
+ + + - - -
+ + - - - -
+ - - - - -

In other words, the GM gets one of each on each die, unless it's the only one.

My favorite part of the game is that the dice do not care one bit whether you're victorious.  What they care about is whether you overcome or succumb to the world, flesh, or devil.

We had an example of exactly what I love in our game.  Meg wanted to knock down and beat up her wayward son.  She pulled world-minus and narrated that she failed, she couldn't overcome his world-strength, he threw her down.  I had him spit on her, and she said, that's it, I kill him.

She pulled devil-plus, and narrated that she failed.  She wanted to kill him, she tried to kill him, but a plus roll and she didn't.  Instead she held him down and made him submit.

That's why I think you need more red pluses, not just more red minuses.  If I'd been narrating Meg's sudden attack of conscience, I (might) could have made it into a real failure.  See what I mean?

-Vincent

Vincent,

I think way 2 is the better game.

You're making a strong case. I've been thinking about it all morning, and you nearly have me convinced. Although I would like to see someone argue in favor of way 1, which features less intrusiveness by the GM in narrating the plus outcomes, if anyone is of that position.

Let me ask you this though, why only a single red symbol on each of the dice at the two extremes? Why not a distribution like this:

+ + + + + –
+ + + + – –
+ + + – – –
+ + – – – –
+ – – – – –

Paul

Here's an argument for #1. If you do go this way, then real failures become even more rare. Right now, a bastard GM who gave out the die with the two red sides every time, would still only narrate one time in three. If Vincent's idea were used, then that goes dowm to one in nine, and then only if the GM is such a complete bastard that he uses that same die again regardless of how the annotation changes the situation.

The proposed dice changes go a long way to ameliorating his effect, but still leave the result on the GM's hand no more than one time in nine for option 2.

The floundring idea is cool, as it means that the annotations get used to refer back to the basis of the character when the immediate situation suggests nothing more obvious. I think that's cool. Annotations shouldn't be there to save you from the GM's whims. And the GM should have the option to go light on the character. Even if that's not always the best thing to do, it may be in some cases.

Mike

Paul, I like your dice even better.

Other than that, and given the goodness of Mike's argument, I just don't know.

What I want to do is play it again.  One hour of actual play is not that much to go on.

-Vincent

Paul!

Right now, you only use your Annotations in your narration if you've rerolled.

What if the GM simply always uses one of your Annotations, rerolled or not?  If you've rerolled, you've chosen one and the GM uses that one; if you haven't, the GM chooses whichever she likes?

More use of Annotations.  Doesn't require the GM to be a right bastard.

What if, if you don't reroll, the GM can ask you to include an Annotation in your narration if she feels like it?  What if, on a minus result, the GM chooses an Annotation for you?

Lots of things you can do with Annotations other than reroll.

-Vincent