Description of the game here. Worth noting that since this post I've shifted from "probably free pdf" to probably print, as I've gotten some very good opportunities for printing at low cost.
Discussion of social contract in Death's Door here. In which crickets chirp, and James learns not to start a discussion topic on a Friday afternoon.

In this thread, I'm posting the sidebar essays that are going into the game text, which are, essentially, the "how to play this game" rules. They center around the main mechanic as posted in that first thread, and reference the same play example (although they're running from a more recent, more complete version). I would appreciate any and all feedback on these essays, but also have some specific things I would like to hear back:
Do these sidebars give a good sense for the expectations of play, and do they adequately cover the issues raised in that first thread?
Do these sidebars leave any gaping holes (given that they are not covering mechanics directly)? Do they go too far in setting expectations, or not far enough?
From your perspective (both/either as a game designer or a player/GM) do sidebars in a game manual work better or worse that inline text for communicating this kind of information?

Sidebar: On Driving Conflict
The first rule of Antagonist Club: There are no easy conflicts.
The second rule of… well, you get the point. No goal in the game should ever be resolved in less than 15 or 20 minutes, and without some degree of agonizing and soul-searching. The example of play is an excellent example of this, and worth checking out. “Write a will” – pretty easy, right? Get a kit, be of sound mind and body, decide who gets the CD collection and you’re done. Well, have you ever had one of those days where, no matter what you try, something always trips you up? The phone rings at *exactly* the same time as the oven timer dings. There’s an accident 10 feet in front of you on the day you *can’t* be late for work. That’s where the antagonist comes in. Drop landmines. Oh sure, disguise the landmine as the girlfriend, but make sure she’s a landmine. If you bring her in, do it because she will make writing the will harder. That’s the first golden rule of the antagonist: make it harder. Don’t introduce anything that will help – the protagonist will do that on their own – your job is to be the bad guy.
That being said, the flip side of the antagonist’s role is to be reasonable. It’s OK for the girlfriend to be completely off her nut as long as you’re keeping your perspective. Never prevent an action, just complicate it. Examples of OK are Action: “I get a will kit at City Hall” Complication: It’s Saturday, they’re closed. The protagonist still has a choice – wait until Monday, or look somewhere else. Another example of OK: “I tell my girlfriend I have The Door.” Complication: “She thinks you’re being an ass, to get sympathy.” Examples of not OK: “I get a will kit at City Hall” Complication: “You find out will kits are illegal in Chicago” or “I tell my girlfriend I have The Door” Complication: “She’s not home. She’s in a coma at the hospital.” The second golden rule of the antagonist: don’t make it impossible.
The third golden rule, because these things come in threes don’tcha know, is life gets in the way. As with the example of play and the
examples above, it’s never the protagonist’s impending doom that causes the problem, it’s the ordinary and the day-to-day. To put it another way, your role as the antagonist is not to play death, your role is to play life.
Crazy, eh?
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Sidebar: The One-liner vs the Soliloquy
Sometimes you can get your point across with a few well-placed words, and sometimes you need a whole lot more to really show what you mean. The example of play contains both of these to some degree, and odds are your game will too. There are advantages and disadvantages to both extremes, and it’s worth knowing when to pull which style out of your toolbox.
Fast play, with actions and complications coming as quick one or two sentence statements, has the strong advantage of keeping the game moving at a good pace. The dice are moving back and forth quickly, everyone is paying attention and engaged so they don’t miss anything, and it gives good opportunities for a lot of back-and-forth. It handles heated arguments and high-tension situations well. The downside to fast play is it’s very easy to get caught up in the bam-bam-bam back and forth, and lose track of what you’re trying to get done. It’s also got a catch where if someone gets caught without a snappy response, it can feel a bit like someone hit the brakes. As a protagonist remember what goal you’re aiming for, and as an antagonist, remember your three golden rules.
The other end of the spectrum is deep play. Deep play is characterized by longer narrations from both protagonist and antagonist, and has the big advantage of letting us really get into the heads of the people involved. Deep play is where we’ll really get to know the protagonists as people. Deep play is well-suited to intimate conversation, soul-searching, and adding new information. The weakness of deep play is that it does move more slowly, which ends up meaning that it takes a bit more effort from whoever is narrating to make sure that the audience stays interested.
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Sidebar: When did I get a Girlfriend?, or “Who gets to say what?”
In the example of play, the antagonist narrates “your girlfriend comes by”. Wait-a-sec, where did she come from? There’s no girlfriend listed on the protagonist sheet…
The answer is actually as simple as it looks: she got added in. The antagonist thought a girlfriend would be a good way of playing out the conflict, so he made one up for you. That’ll happen all the time. Even more, you’ll do it too. In fact, you already did it earlier in the example: “I’m pretty sure I can get one from city hall.” Look at that, you’re an architect. There’s a city hall where there was none before. Not to mention that now we know you’re in a city. You added a whole city - a girlfriend is nothing compared to that.
OK, that’s not quite true. The girlfriend comes with a lot more implied connections that the city does, and it’s the sort of thing you would expect to know about before she shows up in your apartment. (See? I’m doing it too – now you live in an apartment.) Try not to worry too much about the continuity issues, and work with what you’re given instead. Think of yourself as a co-writer for a TV show. When you’re not writing the episode, all kinds of stuff can get added, and it goes the other way too.
So where’s the line? Every group is going to be different, and the only real way to learn where the line is for your group will be to play the game. There are two “lines” that are worth mentioning, though: Stop at the Skin and Dive Right In. Stop at the Skin is shorthand for saying that the antagonist isn’t allowed to say what the protagonist is thinking or feeling: only the protagonist is allowed to dictate those sorts of things. Dive right in is a style of play where either of you can say thoughts and feelings. As an example, if the antagonist gave a complication “You wad the legal will kit up and hurl it against the wall in frustration, overwhelmed by how unfair it all seems”, that would be totally legit in Dive Right In play, but definitely crossing the line for Stop at the Skin.
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Sidebar: the Art of Conversation
As in the play example between Doug and his girlfriend, often the action/complication can form a conversation, or part of a conversation. If a conversation goes past a couple of lines, it can start to feel pretty silly to keep sliding the die back and forth. If it starts to get in the way, just leave the die in the middle, between the two of you. It can sit there as a reminder that it isn’t resolved yet. It should generally be pretty obvious who gets the die when the conversation wraps up – if it’s not clear, the die ends up with the protagonist: a good rule of thumb being that if something isn’t clearly resolved, it’s not helping you get to your goal. It’s also worth noting that in the play example, the protagonist accepts a die in the middle of the conversation and then keeps going with a new die. This is totally OK. Have you ever been in one of those arguments where the other party says something and you just realize “I totally can’t argue that.” That’s the equivalent of taking the die. You’ll notice that right after that, the protagonist completely changes tactics and owns up to what’s going on. This is pretty inline with what would happen in a real conversation when you get smacked with one of those; you try something else.
Or you get frustrated and storm off; that’s OK too.

James:

I have no street cred in terms of real, actual, published game - just a design languishing in the hell of unrepentent playtesting.

Be that as it may, I think sidebaring this stuff de-emphasizes it's importance to the game.

It's a hard balance to strike, becasue you're targeting the game to a non-gamer audience, and the neophytes tend to grok this kind of play more quickly than us old hands.

But, but, I can't help but think putting "Who Gets To Say What?" into a sidebar is a clear context based sign that this thing is optional.

I think it'd work better to keep things like these in the main line of the text, and relegate the examples, definitions, administrivia and minutae in the sidebars.

My $0.02 worth.

Thanks.

Thanks Jason,

My intent on pulling these out is to emphasize them, not de-emphasize them. There are specific "Go read this essay now" calls in the main line of the rules.

thanks for the feedback!

James

James:

No problem - but I wouldn't stake much on my opinion alone. If you've got other decently smart folks around you that you haven't bored to tears with endless drafts of your game (I ran out of those during the second year of my design process) - try giving them a sample chapter written with this stuff in the sidebars, without any prompting from you.

At the end, ask "What do you think was the most important stuff in this chapter?" If they all agree that the stuff pulled into the sidebars was 'most important', then you've done your job.

Hope that helps.

Good Luck.

I agree with Jason.

I'm generally for judicious use of sidebars, but, well, only for sidebar material. That is, a sidebar is something you can skip, and read later - it literally means that in legal jargon. The way sidebars are presented, I often skip them when reading through - I may never get back to them.

If something is critical, it should be in the main stream of information.

Mike

Cool, thanks muchly for the feedback, guys. My dilemma is that, to a certain extent these are "how to play the game" and damn, you better read 'em while at the same time being "sidebar" material in the traditional sense, in that you in no way have to read them to play the game. They aren't "the rules", they are teensy little essays about how I intend the game to be played.

So I'm a bit torn. I'm still some distance away from final layout, so there's nothing really fixed yet; I've got time to play with different ideas on this, so again, thanks for the feedback.

That aside, I would still really appreciate some feedback on my other questions in this thread:

I wrote: Do these sidebars give a good sense for the expectations of play, and do they adequately cover the issues raised in that first thread?
Do these sidebars leave any gaping holes (given that they are not covering mechanics directly)? Do they go too far in setting expectations, or not far enough?

James wrote: Do these sidebars give a good sense for the expectations of play, and do they adequately cover the issues raised in that first thread?
Do these sidebars leave any gaping holes (given that they are not covering mechanics directly)? Do they go too far in setting expectations, or not far enough?