The Forge Archives

Hey Scott,

I've been thinking a lot about how I might modify the mechanics for WYRD subsequent to our session on Friday. But before I get into that, maybe I should summarize for The Forge the two key changes we've already made, whether you decide to make these permanent changes to the official rules or not:

1) The GM (Ring Giver) now has control over spending all Tragic stones drawn by the players. Players do not spend any of the Tragic stones they draw to create adversity for themselves. Similarly gone is the rule for a player being able to cede Tragic stones to the Ring Giver. It's no longer necessary, since the Ring Giver controls all Tragic stones drawn. This change was an outgrowth of the communal recognition by our group that we don't like games where the player both creates and resolves his own character's adversity. (Check out these threads for details: http://indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1138">1, http://indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1167">2)

2) The Ring Giver still determines which of a character's Passions is the Driving Passion for a scene, but the player has the option of spending one white stone drawn to switch the Driving Passion to one of his character's other Passions. Perhaps an example: this means the GM might say, "this scene is about your love for women," constraining the player to draw the number of stones associated with that Passion at least one time, but the player can spend a white stone drawn to say, "no, this scene is about my rage," and switch to that Passion for subsequent draws. The more I think on it, the more I think this rule change is just as important as the previous one. Was it you or Tom who came up with this one?

So anyway, let me recap a scene from the game, and tell you what I've been thinking, and that way other people can contribute as well.

Having just returned from a time of raiding, my character Sighvat Jormsson was framed into a scene by Tom, the GM. Walking toward the shore he'd come upon the asian wife of Arngrim, one of the other vikings, a woman the man had captured on a raid. A conversation about Arngrim's whereabouts segued into her commenting disparagingly about the lack of freedom enjoyed by Sighvat (and other vikings) within the viking society, and a subsequent disparaging comment about Sighvat's lack of boldness. So I narrated Sighvat taking her in his arms and kissing her. How's that for bold! Of course, my Driving Passion was my two stone Tragic lover of women, rather than my three stone Heroic bold. I had no problem with that. Tom and I were clearly  on the same wavelength about the issue at hand. So I drew two stones, and they were both Tragic. And that wasn't satisfying to me. So I turned it into an extended runecasting and drew two more. They were both Heroic. I spent one of my Heroic stones to author that she responded to me...she kissed me back...and the second stone break off the kiss and author that it left her wanting more. Tom picked up the two Tragic stones and spent one to attach a Trapping to me that I wanted more and the other to make it permanent! (Permanency, for those who don't remember, doubles the cost of the Trapping.)

And I think that was a great scene.

But the question it brings up for me is, why have a distinction between Trappings and Passions, such that I want more can never be the Driving Passion of a subsequent scene? What's holding this back? Is there any good reason why a Trapping like my father's sword can't be the Driving Passion of a scene? I think the coolest thing about InSpectres is that the confessional scenes attach traits to the other characters. This could be a lot like that...why not?

And now my second proposed modification. I really don't like how crunchy the mechanics get when a player is at the bottom of his purse of stones. If my Driving Passion is an eight, and I only have three four stones in my purse, I have to draw them, remove one to the hoard based on which type (Heroic or Tragic) is most represented among them, draw the remaining three again, mentally keeping note of the number of Heroic and Tragic stones that comprise the effectively seven stones that I've drawn, remove one to the hoard based on which type was most represented among the three drawn the second time, and draw one of the remaining two stones to hit my total of eight. And it gets worse if I didn't get enough Heroic stones with that for my character to accomplish what I want. Then I need to make it an extended runecasting and draw another eight stones. I have to draw the remaining stone, take mental note of what it is, remove it to the barrow (because it's the last one from the bag), put all my remaining stones (including the ones I drew in the first part of the extended runecasting), and draw seven more stones, mentally adding them to the totals of what I drew (Heroic and Tragic) for the first nine. Yuk.

I think there's too much Ptolemaic cycling and epicycling of the bag. My suggestion is that after character creation, all the stones go back into the starting bag, and that the bag remains permanently full. There would be some event that triggers the cost of the character being paid off, representing the dwindling of the WYRD. Perhaps in an extended runecasting if a player draws all the Heroic stones they need to accomplish the task at hand before they draw a single tragic stone, then they draw an additional stone, which is used to pay off part of the original character. And then that stone goes back in the bag. I dunno. Maybe that isn't the greatest mechanic, but I think there has to be a solution to all the crunchy stuff associated with the emptying of the bag.

Paul

I haven't had a chance to play Wyrd but I did notice the clunkiness of hitting the end of the bag.  I, however, really like the recycling mechanic and wouldn't eliminate it.  However, what would the impact be with the following rule:

Take a stone from the horde to the barrow.  Dump the rest of the stones back into the bag (NOT INCLUDING the stones that are part of the current runecast).  Then finish the runecast with the fresh bag and start a new horde with one of the stones.

This would seem to me to work out just fine (at least as far as my memory of the game will allow) and might include a benefit for high passions and really big empassioned draws near bags end.

Paul,

First, let me say that the idea for spending a heroic stone to switch your driving Passion was Tom's.  We haven't used it to any great effect yet, but it's a damn fine suggestion, and is definitely going into the revision.

I'll speak to your second suggestion first, as I haven't had time to let the first sink in.

My initial reaction was "no way".  Just having a bag full of stones and using it as a straight randomizer, never growing or shrinking, just seemed kind of blah to me.  My original design is so slick, with the purse and its dwindling number of stones, and how it plays as more than just a randomizer, but also as an actual attribute of the character.  Yeah, the "crunchiness" we experienced was a problem, but I figured there must be a way around that that didn't involve re-designing the whole game.

My first thought was just to reduce the costs for Trappings, so that people would be less disposed towards making extended runecastings.  Then I was thinking I could disallow extended runecasting altogether.  But then I realized something, which Jim Henley had also pointed out to me a while back - the dwindling nature of the purse ensures that the beginning portion of a hero's saga will always be "bigger" and more exciting by virtue of the fact that they will have more currency to play with.  If the game is actually played out to the very end, the saga will always end with a whimper, not a bang, because you'll always have fewer stones to narrate.  And I realized that by keeping my current mechanic but eliminating extended runecasting, I was ensuring that kind of anti-climax for every cycle of the purse, and not just the end of the saga.

So where does that leave me?  I'm not sure yet, but your suggestion sounds better and better to me the more I think about it.  Maybe there's a way to reconcile my existing design without going to the extreme you suggest...I'm still thinking on it.

One possibility is to end a cycle earlier than the rules currently suggest.  As it stands now, a cycle ends when you draw the very last stone from your purse, thus relegating it to the barrow.  That means that towards the end of a cycle you're drawing three stones, then two, and finally one, even when you have a Passion of, say, eight.  What if a cycle ends the first time a runecasting causes your purse to be emptied?  Sheesh, this is hard to convey.  What I mean is if a have a driving Passion of four and I have five stones in my bag, the first runecasting I do (which causes me to draw four stones from the purse) leaves me safe (because there's still one stone in my bag).  When I'm done with that runecasting, I put one stone in my hoard, the three remaining back in my purse.  Now I have four stones in my purse, and the next runecasting I do (so long as it's with the Passion rated or 4, or another that's rated higher) will empty the bag, meaning I have to dump one permanently in my barrow.  This doesn't really solve the "crunchiness" problem, but it might lighten the math, since players will have to do fewer runecastings to get what they want, even when they're at the bottom of their purses.  It'll definitely cause players to work through those purses quicker, and it'll place a little bit of a stigma on higher Passions (I've always liked the idea that heroes with higher Passions should "burn out" quicker than others).  Any thoughts Paul?  Valamir?

I'm sorry about this post.  Aside from being rambly and incoherent, there's a lot of game-specific jargon that might make it inaccessible to some.  Anyone else out there who happens to be familiar with the basic mechanic, though, I'd love to hear your suggestions.  WYRD is in a state of flux right now, and I need to get it nailed down before GenCon.

Thanks,
Scott

Edited In:  Valamir, I was cross-posting with you.  It seems like someone - maybe Eloran - had suggested something similar to what you suggest while we were actually playing Friday night.  For some reason I dismissed it then, but it makes fine sense now that I read it.  Hmmm...I wonder what my objection was?

Another option I just thought of might be to say that each of the three norns fill your purse one time. Start with 40 stones, play until the purse is empty, and allow two re-fills.

Paul

Quote from: Paul Czege
Another option I just thought of might be to say that each of the three norns fill your purse one time. Start with 40 stones, play until the purse is empty, and allow two re-fills.

Okay, so what's the purse mean? It's your life, right? The stones are the events in that life.

What would be analogous to "re-filling" your purse? A change of life or fufilling some aspect of your life? In Beowulf, our man B kills the bad dudes, becomes a glorious king and generally "wins." Enter second life (new purse). Of course, now he's a very different guy in many ways. He's old and doesn't have much room for change (although it's possible).

So that's how I would handle it. Kinda like re-writing your character in Sorcerer.

The way I remember it there are three key effects from the cycling mechanic.

1) dropping a stone into the horde each Rune Cast gives a kind of karmic balance to the randomizing elements of the stones.  Meaning you can't continue to get lucky and draw hero stones in great numbers indefinitely, because eventually enough hero stones will be removed from the bag that you're left with a bag'o tragedy (and vice versa).

2) dropping a stone into the barrow each cycle puts a well defined limit to the heroes tale.  It will eventually end, and in true norse fashion...you can watch it coming just as the gods know Ragnorak is coming (this is the most brilliant concept in Wyrd IMO).

3) Given the nature of the randomizer, the last stone in the bag will tend to color  the tenor of the next cycle.  Meaning if a white stone is permenately discarded, the next cycle will have a little more tragedy in it.  If the same color stone is discarded multiple times in a row, the cycles will get successively more biased.  This effect will be greatest in the later cycles since each permanently buried stone represents a greater portion of the total stones left.


So.  Any rule that eliminates the chunkiness at the bottom of the bag without altering the above 3 tenets should work fine without changing the "slickness" of the cycling system.

Simply "reshuffling the deck" so to speak when the last "card" is drawn and then continueing to draw from the "reshuffled deck" until the rune casting is complete is the most intuitive and easily recognizeable mechanic I can think of.

It prevents the "Karmic Balance" effect from occuring in the middle of a single rune casting which would be the only time that it would otherwise do so.  And you still put 1 stone into the Barrow at the end of each cycle...however, this won't necessarily be "the very last stone" anymore so you might need a different selection criteria for it.

The only thing it would do is shorten a cycle by one or two rune castings (sometimes).  A Mechanical Example:  4 stones in the bag, need to draw 8:  Draw four horde 1, Draw 3 horde 1, Draw 1 horde 1.  Thus 8 stones have been drawn, but only 3 have gone to the horde meaning there is still a single stone left in the bag...they cycle hasn't ended yet.  With the reshuffling rule it would go:  Draw four, reshuffle all but those four, Draw remaining 4.  The cycle would end on this draw instead of the next.  Not a big deal I wouldn't think.


On the grounds of ending with a whimper rather than a bang...I suggest the following rule.

Final scene:  If a draw requires more stones than are currently in the bag and horde combined (clearly possible when the bag has dwindled greatly) the player has the option (if the scene is suitable) to "go out with a roar".  This will be the final scene.  The end of this scene is the end of the heroes career as a hero (death or retirement).  

Allow the remaining draw to come out of the Barrow.  Even better, allow an extended runecast to continue to draw from the Barrow.

I would envision this working as follows.  I have 5 stones left in my bag for this cycle.  3 of them are already in the Horde.  I want to do an 8 stone cast...here is my choice:

I can continue to use the regular rules and eek out another 5 very brief cycles from my dwindling bag...go out with a whimper so to speak.  This might be desireable if the narrative hasn't yet reached a point where I can "resolve my fate" in a manner that satisfies me and I want to hold on for such an opportunity (or if I actually want to portray an "aging" hero holding on past his prime).

Alternatively I can say:  Nope this is it.  I'm not going on for another 5 short cycles, Its all coming to closure here.  I then dump my entire barrow back into my bag providing me with all of the stones I need to go out with a bang in one massive climactic extended runecast.  But when the scene is done...I'm done.  No more cycles.

As the game stands now everyone starts and ends the game with the same number of black and white stones.  Though you may start with a different number of each color stone in your bag in the end each character meats his fate with the same amount as everyone else.

How is this for an idea.  Each character starts the game with 25 black stones and 25 white stones (or more).  Each time you perform a runecasting a stone is placed in your horde.  When your horde reaches 10 stones place one of the most prevenlent into your barrow.  At the begining of the saga you choose a set number of stones and when that many stones have gone to your barrow your character meets his fate.

This would add a little more variety to each character's fate as they could possibly end the game with more black stones in their barrow than white ones.  Sometimes people's lives just suck (is this too simmy?).

As long as the number of starting stones is at least twice the chosen barrow limit you shouldn't have any problems running out of stones.  Plus you still have the dwindling effect.

,Matt

How bout this. Keep the barrow as a second bag. If you go over at the end of a bag, draw the necessary stones from the barrow. After the casting, return the stones from the barrow to the barrow bag along with an equal number from the hoard. Player picks which. As always the last stone drawn goes to the barrow, so even when the bag is emptied by exact draw, one stone goes to the Barrow. Perhaps a character can limit the number of stones drawn to the number in the purse if they want to play conservatively at the moment. Gives the player some options.

As another idea, allow players to add from the Barrow at any time up to the number in the Hoard. For each stone picked from the Barrow, another must be placed in it from the Hoard. This allows a character to burn out his character whenever he feels like it. And it means that lines can be added ore than one at a time, and at random intervals, and more often when a big event occurs. Again, gives the player more control over the course of things, but at a price.

Call this option "Forcing Fate" or something.

Just some ideas.

I really like the idea of some special event occuring at the end of the bag for the character (not just the addition of a line), like Jared mentioned.

Mike

Okay, so here's some more WYRD stuff.

We had our third session tonight, and in general, things went much smoother.

We adopted two further rules, both of which are represented in posts above.  I'll summarize:

The first is the rule I suggested, which deals with when a cycle is complete.  As it states in the existing text, you continue to draw stones, removing one at a time to your horde, until your horde holds all of the stones, and then you move one to the barrow and put the rest back in your purse.  The rule we adopted tonight works like this: if any draw forces you to use all of the stones currently in your purse, that ends the cycle right there - take a stone from that last draw, put it in your barrow, and return the horde to your purse.  This might not seem significant at first glance, but it does a whole lot of things in the game.  First and foremost, it makes high Passions a liability - the higher your Passion, the fewer draws your going to get before you have to relinquish a stone to the barrow.  A footnote to this phenomenon is that it now gives the RG some new options - where before his main recourse when spending a player's Tragic stones was to lower a Passion, it's now perfectly reasonable for him to raise a Passion.  This is cool as hell, as it improves the character's effectiveness while shortening their lifespan.  There are other ramifications as well, but these are the most obvious.

The second addendum was suggested by Valamir, and provides a way for players to make extended runecastings without having to number crunch the stones they have in their purse, pot, horde, and barrow.  As Val describes above, the method involves drawing stones into your pot as normal.  If you run out of stones in your purse (which would trigger the end of a cycle using my new rule above), you keep the stones in your pot, return your existing horde to your purse, and then continue your runecasting.  When done, put one stone in your barrow for each time you emptied the purse, and one stone in the horde for each other draw you had to make.  This seems pretty simple, even obvious, but it wasn't to me before it was suggested - you should have saw the way we were doing it before.  Ughh.

Another rule that has proven to be very cool is Tom's "spend one Heroic stone to swtich your driving Passion".  We used that to nice effect tonight, and it was both a valuable tool for managing character effectiveness and an excellent way to characterize one's Hero.

Additionally, the "let the RG narrate all Tragic stones" rule has worked out very well for us, and will probably become official, with the old standby of "let the player narrate his own Tragedy" becoming an optional rule.  

I'm considering dropping the cost of Trappings, probably cutting it in half.  To be honest, my group didn't respond so well to this, but there are two things guiding my decision: a) Trappings are fun, and I'd like to encourage people to create and use them, b) with the adoption of Valamir's rule for managing stones, players will have fewer total stones available to them for any given runecasting, even an extended one, and that would hinder the creation of late-game Trappings.  The group and I discussed some options, and I'm still considering this, so if anyone wants to weigh in on it, feel free.

In regards to the "bang, not a whimper" suggestion above, I have to say that something similar had been suggested by Eloran as early as last May.  The suggestion then was that if a Hero came to a natural climax during the story and there was no place left for him to go but down, instead of playing out those remaining cycles, why not call it a career, take the remaining stones in the purse, and write those last few lines of prose as a sort of epilogue to the Hero's saga?  I always liked this idea - it seemed very natural to me.  It's not exactly what Valamir suggests - I don't really want to let players dabble in their barrows, for thematic reasons - but it has the same feel, and I like that.  

I think it was Jared that suggested that each cycle end on some kind of bang.  WYRD doesn't have any rules to promote that kind of internal pacing, beyond the normal rise and fall of the stones, but with the addition of the rule I describe above, cycles will tend to end with more stones than fewer.  Our sessions have been quite good in this regard, with cycles ending on appropriately dramatic notes.

The game still has some bugs.  Finding new and creative ways to spend stones is soemtimes problematic, especially for the RG who has to narrate a lot of Tragedy during the course of a game session.  Some of the rule changes we've made have eased this burden, and Tom has engineered some ingenious Trappings on-the-fly that are never hinted at in the rules.  It's still rough road to travel, though.  

That's about all I can remember for now.  Maybe Paul or Tom or Matt will shore this post up with the things I've forgotten or neglected.

Thanks for all the help folks,
Scott

Hey Scott,

Finding new and creative ways to spend stones is sometimes problematic, especially for the RG who has to narrate a lot of Tragedy during the course of a game session.

This, I think, is your major outstanding issue. It's the main thing Tom and I talked about on the way home. And it wasn't a problem with the social scenes in prior sessions. Only with combat. What I narrowed in on during that conversation was that impermanence of the consequences of combat was failing to deliver a protagonizing level of adversity to the characters. And I was mentally attributing the problem to the forefront presence of the game mechanics having an influence on the Ring Giver's narration of the Tragic stones. My argument was that just because any injury could be bought off in the future with Heroic stones, even those made permanent through the Ring Giver spending double, was no reason for the Ring Giver to pull his punches and describe the injuries in oblique terms. For the Ring Giver to describe an axe blow breaking a character's arm, rather than severing it, or to pay for "permanent" deafness, but narrate a dagger to the ear as a clout, rather than a bloody vicious puncture, out of the knowledge that it'll otherwise be difficult for the player who might be inclined to buy off those injuries to explain how they healed, is to turn injuries into hindrances and annoyances. It makes you feel like you're fighting Royce Gracie.

My solution was to encourage the Ring Giver not to pull his punches. "Cut the fucking  arm off! Drive the dagger into the ear and describe the blood when you buy that permanent deafness!" And force the player to bring some creativity to the table when trying to buy off those injuries. "I want to use my Leadership to have the clan witch come to me and guide me through a dream quest where I put water from Odin's well into my ear."

Of course, this brings up the issue of costs. How many Tragic stones does it cost the Ring Giver to cut off my arm? How many to deafen me? My initial thought is that there's some tolerance in the system, because it's somewhat self-balancing. If the Ring Giver spends one Tragic, doubled for permanence, to cut off my arm, then it only costs me two Heroic to get it back. If he spends three Tragic, doubled for permanence, then it costs me six Heroic, and I do an extended runecasting with my Ambition to steal a burnished gold arm from the Dwarf craftsman who made it. It seems a group would work out their own scale of costs through play.

And all that is good, but I've thought further since that conversation, and I'm thinking that additionally the Ring Giver should be able to buy "injuries" of variable cost onto a character as a specialized Trapping. An "injury" would be a Trapping that the player must deal with subsequent to the end of the scene. Essentially, the player has to "pull to live" from the Purse, and to keep pulling until he can pay it off. With the pull, the Tragic stones cancel the Heroic stones. Only excess Heroic stones can go toward buying off the injury. If the draw is more Tragic than Heroic, the excess of Tragic is spent by the Ring Giver as a consequence of the injury, deafness for instance, and the player pulls again. An injury brings the character closer to the end of his WYRD. Optionally, if the balance of the stones is in favor of Tragic, the player can ask the Ring Giver to spend some on a long term consequence so the Heroic can be used to buy off the injury. And then the player describes packing his bleeding ear with moss, or cauterizing the stump of his severed arm.

Paul

Paul,

Good stuff this.

I completely agree with you regarding the narration of Tragic stones.   I understand that the rules, as written, somewhat castrate the RG's ability to narrate really cool Tragedy, but that absolutely was not my intent when I wrote the game.  What I want to happen is for the players and the RG to recognize the stones for what they are - complete and total directorial power within the game - and to use them in the most creative and dramatic ways possible.  We've been kind of pulling our punches, feeling out the system, not wanting to step on each other's toes, and it's been going both ways (note my unwillingness to specify an exact relationship between my Hero and the witch woman Tom introduced into my scene, even though it was clear that I had something specific in mind).

So yeah, what you describe is what I want the game to be about.  And the mechanic you suggest has got me thinking.  I'll continue to mull it over, and I'd be happy to hear other folk's take on this issue.

Take care,
Scott

Quote from: Paul Czege
It makes you feel like you're fighting Royce Gracie.

Wow, that's a reference Dennis Miller could be proud of.

Quote
My solution was to encourage the Ring Giver not to pull his punches. "Cut the fucking  arm off!

I must mention the similarity of this to a moment while playing Primeval. In that game a player narrated how his Hyperborean Berzerker cut off his own arm before a battle since he was only facing mortals, and, therefore, had to do something to make the combat  challenging.

Sometimes a missing arm is a boon - the player won that round as I remember.

Mike

Okay, I've been thinking about this all day.

It occurs to me that we've been playing the game a little schizophrenically.  No surprise - the text we've been drawing from is written that way.

What I mean is this.  Sometimes when narrating our stones, we focus on the mechanical side of things ("I increase my rage by 2", or "I want Urd's Favor for this scene"), and then concoct a narrative to fit.  At other times, usually when we get tired of repetitiously giving ourselves bonuses to Passions, we'll just describe a cool effect (getting stabbed in the ear, or having one's arm broken).  Sometimes we come up with a mechanical way of enforcing that, but more often than not we just leave it hanging.  I mean, poor Halfdane had a knife shoved in his ear, but aside from its descriptive power, being deaf provides no hindrance, no adversity, and no mechanical drawback at all.  And that's the way I wrote that disadvantage in the rulebook.

Obviously, there are a dozen good ways to make a disadvantage work to provide real adversity.  Paul provides one in his suggestion above.  Or you could simply assess penalties to Passions under certain cirumstances.  Or...well, you get the picture.  My point is that the rules don't really tell you how to do this, or encourage the RG to make it up on his own.  That's something I need to fix.

So in the revision, expect to see an emphasis on drama first, mechanics second, with explicit permission given to the players and RG to engineer those mechanics on the fly.  If this works, the RG shouldn't feel restricted when wanting to describe a Hero having his arm severed - he'll just make it happen and then figure the rules out - and a player won't just "buy off" that severed arm, but will come up with a proper narrative way of doing so before ever drawing stones.

This may seem kind of obvious and vague, but I feel like it strikes at an important concept - when playing a game, do we think mechanics or narrative first?

Take care,
Scott

That's a primary principal behind Universalis, Scott, and its worked very well for us.  I expect it will work well for Wyrd too, because the concepts between the two games are so similiar.

There's even some interesting parallels.  Your struggle with the decisions to reduce the cost of Trappings mirrors our own discussions about the appropriate costs of Traits for Components and such.

Whats encourageing is that we've been battering at ours about as long as you've been on Wyrd, but we seem to be making largely the same decisions...maybe we're all on to something :-)

Ralph,

I can't argue with genius.  Your suggestion for handling stones once you approached the bottom of your bag was right on target - simple, sensible, and in keeping with the feel of WYRD.  This has been a very productive thread - I feel as though the game has finally stepped up to meet my original vision, and I couldn't be happier.  Obviously there are bugs to be worked out, but I'm confident now that someone else, armed with this discussion, could play the game with minimal difficulty.

Now all I have to do is get this stuff into print.

I'll take the comparison to Universalis.  Mike and I discussed this a bit back at GenCon '01, and I'm looking forward to doing so again with the both of you this year.

Take care,
Scott