So, Nine Worlds found it's way to my northern hermitage. I think I'll ask a question about the rules... but first I'll spout some nonesense.

First, let me say that the game is still seeming really abstract to me. Really, really abstract. I have no problem with abstraction on the narrative level (like MLwM, in which there is actually no abstraction at all - it's all about narrative logic), but here the connection between in-game events and the rules is nearing arbitrary. I'm understanding it much better after reading Ron's actual play explanations about how this is supposed to work, but if somebody can hint at additional resources, that's all the better.

From reading, I'm seeing a kind of unspoken but central rules feature here. Take the example on page 47: Alexander is restoring mortality to his sweetheart Hannah. The book reads: "The game master explains that Zeus' agents have placed two extremely powerful stasis locks on her Arete and Hubris, but Alexander may attempt to break those. Alexander's player announces an immediate conflict: his goal in the conflict is to try to restore her mortal form (in other words, break the locks).

What's exactly happening here? Where those locks came from? Why he needs to break them? Why is his goal in the conflict stated as a mechanical one (destroy the locks) when winning conflicts is actually the way to reach in-game goals? Why is it not sufficient to win the conflict?

What I'm seeing here is that there's all kinds of variable ties between in-game events and the mechanics, and the players are assumed to improvise rulings on them. The players decide on the spot that this and this rules feature signifies such and such in-game thing, overriding the narration rules. Almost all examples in the book have the players enter conflict, move some scores around, and narrate in-game results. The problem is that the rules don't address this part in any way (or I haven't noticed it yet). Indeed, the examples are vague on whether the players are narrating events and justifying it with use of tricks, or the other way around! Typically these formalistic games have it the other way around, but here many examples leave the impression that it's actually happening world first, mechanics second: in the example on page 38 the conflict is about avoiding the agents. "This time, however, it won't be so easy for Alexander." There's stasis locks on the power attributes of the agents. I might be a little dense, but why does the example continue into removing those badges? What benefit is there, if winning the conflict is what allows the characters to escape? It seems to me that there's a constant creation of limitations going on, somebody has decided that those badges have to be removed for the escape to be successful, and I can't for the life of me see who makes the decision, and what it's based on. Is it the GM? Or a player? Why?

So, what is the narrative power of trick-taking, and what meaning winning conflicts has?

On a lighter note, I have a simple procedural question. Who can capture tricks and from whom? As I read it, the text doesn't tell when the capturing is done. Apparently it has to happen before the player narrates, but if it happens only on the narration turn, capture can never happen. The player with lesser Fate narrates and spends his tricks, after which the next player gets to narrate, but there's no tricks to capture, because the weaker player already spent his.

But if tricks are captured first, before narrations, isn't there any limitations to the captures? The strongest Fate just takes all tricks on the table? But why is the list on page 36 so queerly phrased in that case? Additionally, the text at this point seems to be dividing the players into allied and hostile parties, but I see no way to define who is what. Nothing stops players from taking tricks from friendly parties.

Actually, now that I'm reading the relevant passages again, the text refers in many places to multiple winners of conflict. If the winner is defined by having the highest Fate score, how can there be many winners? Who are the winners? Apparently only winners can capture tricks, for example, so this is somewhat important.

Might be that all this is explained in the book and I just don't see it.

Eero, I'll explain the capture of Tricks first.

It's a first come, first serve issue. The person with the highest Fate has the first opportunity to capture any Tricks he desires. He can capture Tricks from any of his opponents.

If any Tricks remain, then the person with the next highest can do so, and so on.

Yes, this means that the person with the highest Fate hand can elect to take everything. But, the other victors still likely have Tricks from their own hands, as well as the option to "burn" their Muses and create Tricks at any time.

I'll get to the other issue in the next post.

Matt Snyder wrote:
Yes, this means that the person with the highest Fate hand can elect to take everything. But, the other victors still likely have Tricks from their own hands, as well as the option to "burn" their Muses and create Tricks at any time.

Eero, regarding you other concern about abstraction ...

I agree that Nine Worlds involves much abstraction. But, I strongly disagree that it's an arbitrary matter.

You've hit upon a major stumbling block that others have, which is "Why can't I do what I want when I win the conflict?"

I have addressed this in at least one other reply: [9W] Problems with certain actions. I recommend reading that thread as well.

Let's first take a step back and talk about why and what this game is about and what it does.

This game is about changing the universe. It's about power and authority, and who gets to make things the way they are.

So, when you enter a conflict, you really have two levels of power.

Let's call the first level of power "Narrative" power. If you win a conflict, you can really change a lot of what's happening in the game. You can introduce elements. You can change scenes. You can make up anything you want to describe. It's simply saying something, and POOF! it's true. You get to Narrate. The game system is built so that other players acknowledge that what you say enters the shared imaginary space of the game. It's the mechanism for you having authority over other players at that moment. You're the narrator. Neat!

But, there's a second layer of power. Let's call that layer "Metaphysical" power. This is where the game really forces you to consider how you want to spend your resources and decide how you want to change things. You can't Narrate something IF there is some kind of Metaphysical investment involved. Here are some specific examples:

Example 1: You can't just win a narration and say "I kill Kronos." Why? Because Kronos is invested with Metaphysical strength, in this case a very remarkable Power attribute, plus a strong lock on that Power attribute. He's very hard to destroy. You can't just dismiss him.

Example 2: Your GM cannot just win the narration and say "I take away your Talisman for good. No more Aethership for you!" Why? Because you have invested it with metaphysical power. You spent some Pride points and created a Talisman, complete with Power and Urge attributes. The GM can't just say "It's gone." He MUST expend Tricks and destroy that Metaphysical currency FIRST.

Frankly, without this "Metaphysical" level of power, that's when *I* would call the game arbitrary! This level makes darn sure that complication happens, but not in the way that other games you may have played do. Nine Worlds takes a different approach.

Eero, I think you're viewing Metaphysical power almost exclusively as a limitation (Example 1), and not seeing it as an opportunity (Example 2), which it is. You seem troubled by the inablity to just wash away locks (for one example, anyway) ... because they don't fit what you want to say in narration. You seem to just want to have it be the case that winning narration is all the authority you need to do anything you like.

But you're not talking about when YOU create locks (or other Metaphysically-powered entities). Consider -- would you want me, the GM, to just wash away your locks without a struggle because *I* want to say something, right now? You wouldn't. You'd rather invest some of your power and authority in those locks and resist things, because by golly, that's how you want the shared imaginary space to be! If anyone's going to take away YOUR authority, they're going to have to put up a fight!!!

See? Locks, Tricks, Power, and all the attributes in the game are AUTHORITY. If you want to change something that's invested with someone else's authority (usually, the game master), then by golly you're going ot have to fight for it. It's going to cost you Tricks. And to narrate what you REALLY want to say, it's going to take some time and effort. Conversely, when you DON'T want something changed, then that's going to cost you, too. You're going to have to invest in that something so other people can't just take it away.

Nine Worlds is not a game where conflict resolution just happens over one round or scene. Events that matter (i.e. events invested with Metaphysical power) could take a great deal of interaction, phases and play to alter.

The challenge to players is handling and ably combining the two levels of power. How can you mesh your "Narrative" power with your "Metaphysical" power? Get creative. You'll find connections all over the place. This process is, for me, one of the great joys of the game. I'll try to give you some examples using your questions from the book.

1) You asked about Hannah's stasis locks, which are keeping both her Hubris and her Arete at 0. This means she's deader than dead.

What ARE the stasis locks? I don't specify, but we can easily imagine them as, say, shadowy demons that flit around her shade all the time, weighing down her soul in the darkest reaches of Hades. Or, they could literally be chains that have her tied up. Or, she's in a bottle of lead. See? All that stuff is color. Wonderful, beautiful color. And, the game is forcing you to paint the picture, to fill in the gap of just what those locks are. That's intentional. It's my attempt to force players to get imaginative and create some cool color and ideas.

Why does Alex need to break the locks? Because if he doesn't, she remains deader than dead. (And, after all, his Muse is to free her from Hades.) She's dead. Her abilites are at 0. The game suggests that when you reach that point as a player character, your character is no more. So, maybe that's part of your confusion. Here, were having a bit of fun with a non-player character. The idea is that if Alex can remove the locks, then Hannah's Arete and Hubris will "bounce back" and she won't be dead anymore! That is, if he can get the locks off (say, by dismissing the demons), he can take Hannah back with him to anywhere but Hell!

I hope by now I've answered this question of yours:

Almost all examples in the book have the players enter conflict, move some scores around, and narrate in-game results. The problem is that the rules don't address this part in any way (or I haven't noticed it yet). Indeed, the examples are vague on whether the players are narrating events and justifying it with use of tricks, or the other way around!

So many questions! Slow down!

Yep, I've clearly missed something. Who are the "other winners"? Your answer implies that their tricks cannot be taken, but I still don't understand who they are. My addled reading says that winning is subjective: if you have more Fate than somebody else, one could say that you're a winner compared to him, because you get the last word in narration (compared to him). But apart from that it seems I missed it in the book when winners were determined. Is it just an evaluation of whether the stated goal is reached? But in that case the winners wouldn't be known before the narrations were done...

Why isn't there more statistics for in-setting stuff here? This seems like the kind of game where stuff like individual Titans' stats would actually be directed towards actual play instead of padding the book

Why the conflicts limit the player to only one urge per conflict? I was thinking when reading that all the more interesting effects require applying several urges.

The scale of the single hand is apparently pretty small, compared to some other conflict-based systems.

In summation, I like the text. I'll definitely try to play this at some point. Until then I'll be assuming that the simpler Dust Devils wins out on the great scales of gaming, though...

Matt Snyder wrote:
You've hit upon a major stumbling block that others have, which is "Why can't I do what I want when I win the conflict?"

Example 1: You can't just win a narration and say "I kill Kronos." Why? Because Kronos is invested with Metaphysical strength, in this case a very remarkable Power attribute, plus a strong lock on that Power attribute. He's very hard to destroy. You can't just dismiss him.

Frankly, without this "Metaphysical" level of power, that's when *I* would call the game arbitrary! This level makes darn sure that complication happens, but not in the way that other games you may have played do. Nine Worlds takes a different approach.

Eero, I think you're viewing Metaphysical power almost exclusively as a limitation (Example 1), and not seeing it as an opportunity (Example 2), which it is. You seem troubled by the inablity to just wash away locks (for one example, anyway) ... because they don't fit what you want to say in narration. You seem to just want to have it be the case that winning narration is all the authority you need to do anything you like.

The challenge to players is handling and ably combining the two levels of power. How can you mesh your "Narrative" power with your "Metaphysical" power? Get creative. You'll find connections all over the place. This process is, for me, one of the great joys of the game. I'll try to give you some examples using your questions from the book.

1) You asked about Hannah's stasis locks, which are keeping both her Hubris and her Arete at 0. This means she's deader than dead.

Why does Alex need to break the locks? Because if he doesn't, she remains deader than dead. She's dead. Her abilites are at 0. The game suggests that when you reach that point as a player character, your character is no more. So, maybe that's part of your confusion. Here, were having a bit of fun with a non-player character. The idea is that if Alex can remove the locks, then Hannah's Arete and Hubris will "bounce back" and she won't be dead anymore! That is, if he can get the locks off (say, by dismissing the demons), he can take Hannah back with him to anywhere but Hell!

Also, Eero, have you downloaded and read the Players Kit? It should be helpful as a precedural outline for conflict, with good reminders of how things get done during phases.

Matt Snyder wrote:

The scale of the single hand is apparently pretty small, compared to some other conflict-based systems.

Not at all sure what you're saying here. What do you mean by scale? And what other systems are you thinking of?