Dulcimer Hall characters are super-spies of some stripe. So as I look at character development (i.e. how the character evolves over time as a result of their choices, successes and failures) I know that examining how they go from Infinity-competent to Infinity-plus-one-competent isn't going to be too much fun.

What would be really cool is to examine how they change in their self-image, and in the ways that self-image collides and combines with the world. I think I see characters in these genres undergoing distinct arcs in these issues: They start off thinking that they know something, then what they know is undercut, then they know nothing, then eventually they create a new understanding. And then, of course, they start that whole process over again.

I think that it's the tension between the elements of their self-image that drives things forward. If Ada believes she's a stone-cold killer, and everyone expects her to be a stone-cold killer, and she wants to be a killer... well, you're not exactly conflicted. If Ada believes she's a stone-cold killer, and Shane expects her to be a killer but Michael expects her to act according to her sense of morality, and she wants to admit her love for Michael... well then, you've got some tension going there.

So anything that develops the characters toward a situation of no-tension is a bad thing. But at the same time, development is likely to occur through resolving tensions. How do you systematically assure that resolving one tension automatically increases another one?

Heya,

One idea might be to create several "personality types" or something akin to that. For example a spy might become one of the following: Sadistic, Suicidal, Arrogant, Passionate, Moralistic, Power Hungry, Obsessed, and so on.

Each of these personality types would have special advantages and bonuses that would make the character A) more proficient, B) trigger "bangs" that would test their knowledge and self image, and C) open up new opportunities for the character in the game such as joining a Secret Inner Circle, Undwerworld Crime Syndicate, Elite Strike Team, Romantic Relationships, A Promotion within the Intellegence Oraganization, and so on.

You would have to possess one of those personality types in order to possess the qualities the "Bosses" of those affliliations I mentioned above are looking for. Otherwise, you're just a face in the crowd. Thus the system is designed to encourage them to gravitate to one (or more maybe?) of those extreem character traits. That oughta give you the exploration you're looking for.

Anyway, don't know if that's what you're looking for, but it might help point you in the right direction. :)

Peace,

-Troy

Well, what sort of development, structurally, are you talking about here?

Would players just decide "Okay, I'm Sadistic now?" Or would it be the outcome of their choices? Or would it be a choice offered to them as the outcome of their choices ("No, I'm not Sadistic! I had good reason for torturing that busload of orphans last week... and the one the week before... they were isolated incidents, I tell you!")?

Heya

TonyLB wrote: Well, what sort of development, structurally, are you talking about here?

Would players just decide "Okay, I'm Sadistic now?" Or would it be the outcome of their choices? Or would it be a choice offered to them as the outcome of their choices ("No, I'm not Sadistic! I had good reason for torturing that busload of orphans last week... and the one the week before... they were isolated incidents, I tell you!")?

Heya,

Just quickly to add on. You could also make the scale a triangle rather than a ruler. You could have three factions and you earn Status with each faction wich moves you in various directions within the triangle. A little more complicated, but still another possibility.

Peace,

-Troy

Okay, two modifications, and then I'm going to start running with this, and see where it leads us together.

First, I don't want the characters to start off as anything mid-level. I'm drawing some influence from Amber's unrepentant egotism here. The PCs are super-spies. They are the elite. People as cool as them create a shadowy subculture in the world. The only people cool enough to contend with them are people in that subculture... people they have a personal relationship with. Anyone with no emotional import to them is fodder, deadly perhaps as the pawns of someone who is important, but in no way important on their own.

So the character development and rewards won't be cooler equipment and better status. They start the game with access to anything they want in that department. But that's fine, because we can give them emotional rewards that increase their relative effectiveness against their real enemies. You don't get a bigger gun, in order to fight generic bad guys. You get the confidence to not be a victim, in order to fight the machinations of your abusive, controlling mother.


Second, I'm not really sold on the idea of having the rules system lay out the cartels. Rather, I think each player should make their characters world-view into an ever-evolving cartel. And then the other players can choose whether to have their character fall in line with the role that world-view would assign them, in order to gain status in that particular cartel.

So, for example:

• Shane is a manipulative, scheming bastard. He believes that he is the Hard Man, the one person who will step up to make hard choices for the good of mankind. He believes Ada is a Weakling, because of her simpering morality. He believes Michael is his Acolyte, a worthy successor that he is grooming.
• Michael is a reluctant but effective killer. He believes that he is Angst-Boy, forced against his will to do terrible things, but actually good and fluffy on the inside. He supports Shane's belief that Shane is a Hard Man. He believes Ada is a Damsel, a helpless innocent that he has to protect.
• Ada is recently trained, still dripping with morality. She believes that she is a Good Woman, and tries to act accordingly. She believes Shane is the Devil. She believes that Michael is a Good Man.

So here, people have choices to make about what cartels to ally themselves with. Say Michael supports Shane's decision to execute a bunch of refugees contaminated with a bio-weapon, rather than risk the spread of the infection. Ada stands up to him and manages to smuggle the refugees to safety.

Michael gets points from Shane for supporting Acolyte. He gets no points (and may lose points) from Ada for undermining Good Man. Those points probably go to increase his self-identity as Angst-Boy, but might go to changing his opinion of Ada as a Damsel.

Shane gets points from Michael for supporting Hard Man. He gets points from Ada for supporting Devil. These probably go to support his belief that Michael is his Acolyte, but might also go to changing his opinion of Ada as a Weakling. Or not.

Ada gets no points from Michael for undermining Damsel. She may or may not get points from Shane in relation to Weakling... did she undermine it by acting strongly, or support it by acting morally/stupidly?


Okay... see, I'm not loving that yet. I like the structure, and the way it fosters conflict, but it seems to be rewarding falling into accord with other people's views of your character, where all the fun obviously comes from there being an important tension between being rewarded for (for instance) being a helpless Damsel, and maintaining your own self-image by taking action when required.

Anyway, I hope that gives you more ideas!

If you imagine that players are giving each other both confirming and disconfirming reinforcement of their character's views of each other, then maybe if you tied some aspect of in-game effectiveness to the relative proportion of confirmation and disconformation within each relationship, you'd have a system that motivated players to maintain a tension of some kind.

What I mean is:

Michael's view of Ada becomes Damsel +0/-1 (confirming vs. disconfirming).
Shane's view of Ada becomes Weak +0/-1 similarly.
Ada's view of herself becomes Good +1/+0 (she awards herself the point).

What game-mechanical advantage could Ada be awarded so that in her interactions with Michael and Shane she is more effective because she has more confidence in her self-image?

At what point are other characters required to change their image of you to more closely resemble your self-image--and what reward does this get you?

Maybe the motivation to maintain the tension is that if you conform to others' view of you, the advantage you get when you finally break their expectations is increased effectiveness in that instance; if you've been bucking their expectations from the get-go, you don't get the advantage of surprise but you do have influence over what they do: if you support my view of myself as a Hard Man, you'll act like you're at least a little afraid of me.

Wow, this is hard.

Bill

Mechanically, that part's not hard. Or rather, it was hard the first time, but I know how to do that now.

If you want to give people a reason to balance two types of activities, you reward both activities, with different resources. Those resources should be okay on their own, but exponentially better when used together.

What those resources should be, how frequently they should be awarded, and how they should achieve synergy is... y'know... hard.

I'll point out that I already have two such synergistic resources in the Task/Conflict hybrid system that I was planning to use for resolution. However, I suspect that they may shift a bit too quickly to give a satisfying sense of stateliness to character development.

Bill_White wrote: At what point are other characters required to change their image of you to more closely resemble your self-image--and what reward does this get you?

Perhaps it's getting complicated becasue we've drifted from the original question?

TonyLB wrote: How do you systematically assure that resolving one tension automatically increases another one?

You can, indeed, just tell the players that when they resolve one tension they have to create another. But that's a lot of work for them. If there's one thing I've learned from reading a lot of Sorceror Actual Play posts, it is that players are bad at creating tensions. If you ask them to do it without any mechanical support then you're asking an awful lot of them.

I'd rather have a system where, when one tension resolves, they can just look at their character sheet (and maybe the sheets of others) and immediately have inspirations for new tensions. The pattern that creates these inspirations should emerge naturally from the mechanical process of resolving the previous tension.

So, maybe a formalized network of relationships, where it's clear what movement means and where it will take you.
Too simple would be Rock-Paper-Scissors (I dunno, Moral, Evil, and Indifferent, or something) where if I move from my current position, (a) I have a choice as to what that means and (b) it's clear what my choices are.

The Good-Evil-Indifferent example is terrible, though. The suggestions up-thread are much more evocative.

Maybe have them interact like the 5 Chinese elements. Earth, Wood, Metal, Plant, Water or whatever. (In case I'm pulling this from an obscure game instead of oriental philosophy: laid out like a pentagram, with [or without] arrows demonstrating the flow of movement).

Is this what you mean, Tony? Players have clear, logical places to move to, and clear implications as to what that means. Each position mayl have a set of associated tensions/ benefits, or these may be exactly that you accord more or less with others' perceptions.

=====

Each character sees themself as occupying a certain slot. Each other character sees that character as occupying a certain slot. Are both perspectives limited to using the Personality Pentagram to regulate their changing views?

Perhaps, to get all crazy with things, each position offers finite choices when dealing with any conflict. ("Ok, I'm a Weakling. In any conflict , I must use one of these tactics: Appeal to higher power, Flee/ avoid conflict, Superficially fail, Get saved by the cavalry in the nick of time, or Grovel.) Success or failure must be expressed in one of these terms.

Or, most cleanly, each position offers a pair of fixed bonuses, one for task-res and one for conflict-res. I may make the tactical decision to move around to change the way these layers interact. I am slowed by knowing that I'll lose the aligned-with-others'-perceptions benefits. Or maybe I want to move around like a monkey, but I only change position when the majority of opinions place me in a new slot.


I dunno, that's all I've got.

-Matt

Interesting. This also has the potential to let Player A pigeonhole Character B not because of the way that Player B plays them, but because Character A needs a certain archetype in their world-view to get bonusses themselves.

For instance: Shane believes he is the only one who will step up to make hard decisions. He needs somebody to cast into the role of a moral weakling who will let the world go to hell in a handbasket rather than get their hands dirty. So he casts Ada into that role in his world-view, whether it really fits her or not.

TonyLB wrote: For instance: Shane believes he is the only one who will step up to make hard decisions. He needs somebody to cast into the role of a moral weakling who will let the world go to hell in a handbasket rather than get their hands dirty. So he casts Ada into that role in his world-view, whether it really fits her or not.

TonyLB wrote: I'd rather have a system where, when one tension resolves, they can just look at their character sheet (and maybe the sheets of others) and immediately have inspirations for new tensions. The pattern that creates these inspirations should emerge naturally from the mechanical process of resolving the previous tension.

Doug Ruff wrote: Of course, there has to be the option to refuse the bonus, which is an out-and-out bribe.

Doug Ruff wrote: I get to call on your dice from this trait. Or I can use your dice to support my own agenda against other people.

TonyLB wrote:

Doug Ruff wrote: Of course, there has to be the option to refuse the bonus, which is an out-and-out bribe.

Why?

Ohh... yeah, I see. If the reward is strictly linked to certain behaviors (i.e. "You've got this trait now, and it will be used against you any time you try to violate it") then that would be bad, yeah. Then you've got other players compromising your ability to use the character as a tool to contribute to the game. Worse, you're pointedly creating SIOA rules with a high benefit for rules-lawyering them.

I was thinking more about this alternative:

• Player A may write down (at any time) a Perception about Character B.• Player A has some finite, renewing resource.• Player A may, at any time, give Player B some of that resource.• This reflects Player A's conviction that Character B has acted in accord with the Perception.• Player B is welcome (indeed, encouraged!) to disagree with that assessment. But they can't give back the resource, and tactically wouldn't want to anyway.

I think that this leaves Player B with complete freedom to contribute what they want to the game. But it (a) allows Player A to explicitly show a certain (probably very biased and unfair, by design) interpretation of Player B's contribution and (b) allows Player A to alter the reward structure within which Player B decides what to contribute.

In this case, Player B is still not permitted to refuse the bribe. Does this strike you as being deprotagonising?

I think we're looking at the "bribe" in slightly different ways.

To me, the resource you are talking about is the bribe.

So B can refuse the bribe (which I'm imagining as extra dice) but they can't slide it back across the table. The dice sit there, waiting for B to get into enough trouble so that they have to roll them.

A doesn't get to use the dice until B has rolled them at least once. He can add more dice to a trait to sweeten the deal, but if B holds out, those dice are wasted for both players (unless they are "resolved" off of that trait somehow, by bringing the trait into conflict with another trait.)

So, keeping the dice in front of the player isn't deprotagonising, but forcing them to use them is.

Ah. I think I'm recommending much the same thing, except with a "first taste is free" alteration which cuts down on the book-keeping, and makes for (I think) a subtler interaction.

Option #1: Player B gets an "Obnoxious Weasel" trait. He gets one Cool Token any time he acts like an Obnoxious Weasel. Until he deliberately chooses to act like an Obnoxious Weasel, he gets nothing. When he wants something, he has to clearly and irrefutably act like an Obnoxious Weasel.

Option #2: Player A says (of some action of character B) "Wow! You were totally an Obnoxious Weasel. Here, have a Cool Token!" Player B gets the token whether he was deliberately acting like an Obnoxious Weasel or not. If he wants more tokens then he knows that acting like an Obnoxious Weasel (to Player A's satisfaction) is the way to get them. But that's still (a) his choice, and (b) a subjective judgment to be made by Player A.


I'm offering Option #2 for consideration. Does Option #1 match what you're offering for consideration?

Yes, it does, except that the player doesn't get a token for later use, they get the bonus there-and-then. And the player has declare that they are an Obnoxious Weasel, which means that they have given some power to the player who named the Trait in the first place.

The reason for wanting this is that it prevents a player from picking the traits they want to focus on, to the exclusion of all the others. It leads to more pressure, where the player needs an extra 3 dice now and don't have any reserves to rely on.

Option #2 is interesting, but you're going to have to address player reticence - some people are much better than others at dishing out rewards. This is just an offhand theory, but I think that subjective judgements like this work better when there is a GM - unless there is a mechanical reward for giving Cool Tokens, people are likely to forget to do this or get into arguments ("why didn't you give me a Cool Token?")

I also think that Option #1 works better when you move outside of "personality" traits. What if the trait wasn't Obnoxious Weasel, but something like Trained by Ninja?

Because, if you want to offer a bribe to someone, you've got to make it look like a good deal. What would you rather have on your character sheet, Obnoxious Weasel or Trained by Ninja?

(Actually, I know you'd be happy to use either, but bear with me.)

So, you've got a player in a tight spot, maybe they're trapped in a building with the guards searching for them... then you offer them a 2- or 3- point bribe like "Secret Member of Ninja Sect". Which if they choose to take, they can use again and again in the future. Odds are, they'll bite, which gives you an advantage over them.

So, I'm considering your Option #2, but I want you to buy into Option #1 more heavily. (This is beginning to sound like the game itself!) Go on, I'll give you 3 dice if you take it....

This might be my skewed perception talking, but I feel as if you can derive this effect with a less baroque system.

For instance, you can have the simple rule that "You can only gain benefits from others' perceptions of you while they remain misperceptions. As soon as someone has real insight into your behaviour, you no longer benefit from their opinion of you."

So, each time that you do something really Reckless and get a token or it, that token is worth less and less; by the end, you're not being Reckless in a manipulative and false fashion, but rather because it's actually a part of you (cemented mechanically as a trait that you can use constantly, but others are able to take advantage of).

The intention here is that you pick the misperceptions that you want to act in accord with, but if you go too far, then they become true and you take an effectiveness hit, so you have to switch tacks.

Doug: I'm pretty thoroughly bought into Option #1 already. I do like it, and I like the immediacy that it gives to the question of "do I compromise my comfort zone for this character's self-image, in order to achieve my goals?" It's got a lot of the feel of DitV escalation, that way, and I like that.

The question I'm pondering over right now (without really forming any conclusions yet) is "Who has the authority to judge whether an SIS action is sufficient to constitute a use of a Trait?"

Suppose Player B has a "Trained by Ninja" trait (either on his own sheet as a bribe, in Option #1, or on Player A's sheet as an expectation in Option #2). Player B narrates hacking into a computer system. Player B feels (for whatever reason) that this falls under his Ninja Training. Player A does not.

In my understanding, Option #1 says that Player B gets the bonus (whatever it is). He has authority to judge whether the SIS element "computer hacking" applies to the game-mechanic element "Ninja Training". Option #2 says that Player B does not get the bonus (whatever it is). Player A has authority to judge.

I hope it's obvious why I don't want any option where the rules fail to make clear whose authority is paramount.


Shreyas: I'm not really seeing how that's less baroque. Aren't you going to need rules to define whether something is a misperception, whether it's a real insight, and to assign credibility to judge those things? That sounds (to me) like a bigger can of worms than what we're tackling here.

The way I see it, the Trait only comes into play when Player B actually picks up the dice and rolls them.

That's the joy of it. Player B could be hacking computer subsystems, walking on ricepaper and karate-chopping guards all this time, and as long as he's using his own dice for it, that's fine. How he earned any of this is a mystery.

It's only when he uses the dice invested by player A in the "Trained by Ninja" Trait that it actually cements.

Which is why, if player A is clever, he'll observe what player B likes his character to do, and offer him Bribes that reflect this. It's another version of creating interesting conflicts for other players to gain more Story Tokens.

(For those of you who aren't TonyLB and haven't bought his excellent game, that's a Capes reference. Promotional Message ends.)

Okay, so you're proposing that Player B has authority to decide what SIS elements accompany the rules-mechanic of using "Trained by Ninja". A cogent, clear demarcation of authority.

Pro: Player B has the ability to predict more outcomes surrounding his character. If he needs those dice, he knows that they're there for him. This means that he, personally, is more empowered in regards to his own character.

Con: Player A loses any direct ability to predict or control the outcome of his placing the bribe. It is bread cast upon the waters, purely in hope that it will have some effect on Player B's SIS behavior. Player B could put on a neon bikini, perform a Fred Astaire dance number, and take the dice, saying that he learned it from Ninjas. Strange ninjas, but that's for him to say, after all. This means that Player A is less empowered in regards to other characters.


Now the disempowerment is irrelevant if Player A only wants to use this as a tool to get resources by accurately judging what Player B wants to do. In that instance he doesn't care about the narrative power, he cares about whatever resources he gets by having another player take his bribe.

But I would like the tool to also be usable to allow players to influence each other through reward schemes. If Player A puts forth "Trained to kill" then he's trying to nudge Player B in a particular direction. I think that would be really cool. And that's why the issue of disempowering Player A with regard to Player B's choices worries me.

Good point - that's not what I intended, but that's because I wasn't clear.

B still has to use "Trained by Ninja" in a manner which is "appropriate" for the trait.

What I wanted to emphasise was, if player B narrates sneaking up on someone, that doesn't in itself require him to accept the Trait from player A. That only happens when he chooses to accept the dice as well.

A far as judging what counts as an "appropriate" use of the trait, that's always going to be a subjective judgement. And I guess that your point is that you want this to be handled by the system, so that you don't have competing subjective judgements.

I think I have the answer for this. Remember that if player B accepts the dice from player A, he is allowing player A to exert control over his character later. Therefore, although player B chooses whether or not he wants the extra dice from the Trait, player A gets to say whether or not using the dice in that way is OK.

So, I've offered your character a 3-point Bribe in the form of a "Trained by Ninja-3" Trait. You haven't used it yet. At some point, your character tries to break into a secure computer network, and you want the extra bonus. So, you ask me whether you can use the trait for this. I say that, no, I saw your training as being more traditional and I don't want you to be a cyber-ninja. You don't get the dice, but this means that I don't (yet) have any control over your character.

Later, you want to sneak up on an unsuspecting guard and knock him out. Again, you want the 3-dice bonus, so you ask me if you can activate the trait. I agree (how could I not?) and from now on, you can use that 3-point trait whenever I think it's appropriate for you to be able to use "Trained by Ninja" as a Trait. I also get 3 dice to use against you if I end up in a confict against you, and you will not get those 3 dice to use against me. 'Cos that's why I gave them to you in the first place.

Now, this does mean that from now on, you have to rely on me not being an asshole and vetoing legitimate uses of the "Trained by Ninja" Trait. But the final choice is mine, even if you don't agree with it. Because those 3-dice represent a limited form of GM-Power that I have over your character.

(And if I'm not reasonable, this works against me in the long run, as other people won't want to accept my Bribes.)

Now, if you want things to get really interesting, perhaps those 3 dice could be used as GM-power in other ways...

PS, in the example above, you could have tried to sneak up on the guard without asking for the dice. If so, then I get no GM-Power and you might be a Ninja, but I don't know for sure. See how it works?

So are you envisioning that accepting the bribe would imply that character B undeniably is a ninja, or merely that there is evidence to suggest that he might be a ninja?

I'd lean toward the latter. Given the espionage motif, I could think of some really fun ambiguities if Player A could add a Trait like "Double Agent" to Character B, and Player B could have fun riding the ragged edge of "enough evidence to convince character A, but not enough to convince anyone else". Or where, in a murder mystery, every Player has a different suspect (as represented by "Murderer" perceptions which get more or less reinforced by player actions).

Hmmm, that's tricky.

When player A places the bribe in front of player B, he's indicating that player B might be a Double Agent.

Even if player B doen't accept the bribe, it stays in front of him and hangs there like an accusation.

If B accepts the bribe, then or later, he's given player A some dirt on him. I'd say that, at that point, either player B is a Double Agent, or he appears to be Double Agent (maybe he's been framed?)

Where this gets tricky is that, once the trait is activated, it can be used again. So in order to keep getting the advantage from Double Agent or Murderer, player B has to keep acting like one... actually that's not a design problem, that's fun.

Remember that, if there is a mechanism for resolving traits, the Double Agent trait can disappear off the sheet later. So it's best not to assume that traits are 100% accurate.

Ah, yes... a second, more permanent stage of character development! Here's a thought about how that could work:

The bribes hang about in one form when they're the perception of Character A about Character B. And both players profit from playing around with those perceptions.

But then, when a perception has been sufficiently reinforced, it becomes strategic for one side or the other (or both) to put forth a Conflict, the Stakes of which are something like "Let's set this to rest." The perception then becomes something else (not quite sure what, yet): Winner gets to define what it is, and profit from it as the game goes on, loser gets some large one-time lump-sum payout. Everybody wins, because they maintained and increased the tension of the game.

Players can choose between (and mix) equally viable strategies which give them different opportunities:

• Rapidly build up perceptions and misperceptions, resolve them to mine the resources, then start again from scratch (as in "Alias")
• Build up perceptions, then keep them at a fever-pitch of tension (never quite proved, always incredibly likely) indefinitely (as in "Moonlighting")
• Build up contradictory perceptions, support each of them in turn, but never let any of them resolve, keeping a balance of confusion that means constant profit no matter how the character acts (as in "Witch Hunter Robin")

Still have to figure out what perceptions/bribes would turn into when they are resolved, and why it would be a valid choice but not the valid choice. But this is starting to get juicy!

Doug mentioned distributing little bits of GM-power among the players, and this got me thinking: Tony's been talking about characters as super-competent super-spies, which put me in mind of a coteries of James Bond types. But what if the characters are more like a Mission: Impossible team?

[This comes back to character development in a bit, so bear with me.]

Imagine there are 3 players. Each player starts with 3 dice in front of him. There's a larger pool of dice in the middle of the table, but it's finite in size--let's say 3 + 2 + 1 = 6 dice.

So a game could start with one player acting as the Undersecretary for Exposition:

Player A: "We've got a really bad one here..." [proceeds to lay out in bare bones from tough situation that requires the team, e.g., "Nuclear terrorists have infiltrated a secure location and are planning to blackmail the government of a friendly power into freeing their leader."]

Player B: "Uh...I pass."

Player C [temporarily taking on the role of the Director of the Agency in order to propose his character, who will become the Jim Phelps-like "operator" for this mission]: "Mr. Secretary, I've got just the man for the job. He's a Hard Man Who Can Make Tough Calls [self-reported trait], Knows the Area Like the Back of His Hand, and Has Superb Planning Skills. I'm talking about Link--Shane Link."

Player A [pushing a die from the center in front of Player C]: "Link? But isn't he a Sociopath With A Callous Disregard for Human Life [projected trait]?"

Player C: "Mr. Secretary, he's the only one who can do it."

Some byplay now occurs in which the players agree upon a sequence of "mission objectives," i.e., goals, that must be achieved in order for the mission to succeed. As "operator," Player C takes the lead here--he's taking up the GM-function of "adventure planning," but very much in an in-character way.

Each mission objective starts out as "impossible," but we know that the team will achieve them--the only question is what they will have to do, and what they'll be willing to take in the way of "comebacks" in order to achieve them.

Now Players A and B get to propose characters to fill out the mission team: "She's a Freshly Trained Agent with Excellent Language Skills and a Black Belt in Karate"; "He's a Crack Shot who is a Master of Disguises and a Nuclear Scientist."

Player C, as Operator, now assigns characters to Mission Objectives. Each player gets to scene-frame and describe the character's actions, moving toward a point where task resolution is called for. Can we reverse the TN ordering so that harder tasks have higher TNs? This lets you say, "On a scale of 1 to 7, where 1 is trivially easy and 7 is absolutely impossible (and 4 is too close to call), how hard is this task?" This seems more intuitive than the opposite directionality.

Each player starts off with three dice for the entire mission. You say you're trying to accomplish a task and set its TN. When you roll to try to achieve a task, you either succeed or fail. If you succeed, you add the TN (not your roll!) to "your side" for control of the narration of the resolution of the mission objective. Notice that this means that each objective will require at least two task rolls to gain control of. If you fail, you can either (a) try again until you run out of dice, or (b) accept comebacks (like civilian deaths, blown covers, or enemy counteraction) to increase one of your rolls (probably the highest).

But here's where other players can help you. By pointing to one of your existing traits, or making up a new one, they can push a die from the pool in the center to in front of you. You can use it or not, as you choose, but if you use it, you're indicating that there's evidence that the trait applies (i.e., you include it in the narration).

In any case, the trait is "reinforced" and eventually players can decide to make an objective "critical" in the sense that it resolves the trait in favor of one of them or the other: the loser gets to narrate, the winner gets control of the bonus die--or something like that.

So, to sum up: there's a finite pool of bonus dice that depends on the number of players. As the campaign progresses, resolving traits gives control of bonus dice to different players.

Something like that?

Bill

Bill: that's interesting, especially as it allows players to use "NPC" type characters to name Traits upon each other's PCs.

However, it also opens up another front to the discussion, so I'm going to let Tony pick up the details and run with them.

Tony: yes, there has to be a third stage. I see this as following a pattern of Suggestion-Suspicion-Revelation.

Suggestion: I bribe your player with the Suggestion that they have certain Traits (mechanically, the bribe is the dice attached to the Trait, but there's something else going on too, over whether the proposed Trait is "grabby" for that character's player.)

Suspicion: If you accept the bribe, my suspicions are confirmed but not proven. This gives me an edge over your character, and your character an edge over everyone else.

Revelation: tension builds to the point where the Suspicion has to be confirmed or proven wrong. This should be in conflict with another Trait on the character (with the aim of reducing the total number of Traits in play.) If the suspicion is confirmed, it moves to the "permanent"* Traits for that character, at the expense of another Trait. If it is proven wrong, it is removed from play. Either way, the character losing Traits gets a payoff of some kind.

So: taking the long view, the perceptions/bribes turn into a new Trait... or they don't. I think this can be done in a way that preserves balance between these two options - but I think this needs to be put into an actual mechanical framework soon.

* I'm saying "permanent" because, once a Trait becomes cemented in this way, it can only be removed as a result of sacrificing it to cement a Suspected Trait during a Revelation conflict. I hope that makes sense to you.

Bill: First, I have to say, that whole "But... isn't he a psychopath?" "He's the best man for the job" exchange made me fall out of my seat laughing at how simultaneously funny and right it is. That's now one of my litmus tests for the system: It has to support that exchange.

On the rules: You seem (to my mind) to be suggesting a Task Resolution mechanic where problems have (essentially) hit-points that need to be depleted. Would this empower players to contest Conflicts against each other directly?


Doug: I like your general outline. I'm still thinking about your earlier statement that a character either is a Double Agent, or appears to be one. What I think it's leading me toward is this rather odd concept: There should be nothing, anywhere in the character development mechanic, that refers to what is true. It should all refer to what various characters perceive, and how strongly they believe it.

Let's take a brief sample scenario (abstracted straight to the character-development level): Shane adds an "Ada: Double Agent" Perception. He boosts it to high levels. Eventually, he and Ada enter a conflict with the revelation of that as true or false as the Stakes. Ada wins. Shane's suspicions are disproven, and mechanically the perception is gone.

Possibility #1: Ada is not a double-agent. Shane was seeing patterns where none exist. Now she's confronted him on it and refuted his paranoia.

Possibility #2: Ada is a double-agent. Shane was finding quite legitimate evidence. She has managed to pull the wool over his eyes, because she's just that good.

I think both of these possibilities are equally good. I also think both would play out exactly the same way in terms of what Shane perceives and believes. And, because of that, I don't think there's any purpose to tracking whether Ada is or is not a double-agent. The truth is just narrative color. The suspicions are what the game's about.


Do you think Traits would work as "the things everybody knows"? Without any reference to whether they're actually true or not, of course. So that if Ada gets a "Double Agent" Trait, all it means is that she's on the Agency hit-list, shoot-on-sight, and so on.

I think that might work quite well. I can imagine, for instance, a conflict where Shane is rolling Ada's Double Agent trait against Michael's "Ada: Good Woman" Perception. That's... that's powerful stuff, that is.


Mechanics in a separate thread. I feel firmly that there are still questions of how characters should develop long-term in this system. But you're quite right, Doug, that we need to get some of this established into a Resolution system, or else we have no foundation for thikning about the possibilities.

Yes, to all of this.

Even after a Trait moves from a Suspicion to something more "permanent" and more public, it can be lost later, so it can never become an irrevocable truth. I was aiming towards that in my previous posts, but missed nailing it.

But you've got it anyway, and that's what counts. See you in the new thread.

I guess then, the question in my mind is What does taking a suspicion to a public statement do to the dynamic of (a) character power and (b) player authority?

On Perceptions, we both seem firmly in the camp that the perceptive character's player has authority, rather than the player of the character perceived. So if Shane has "Ada: Double-Agent?" as a Perception, that's Shane's player's call when it comes up. But the dynamic of character power probably runs the opposite way: Ada gains more from Shane's suspicions than Shane does while they're unsubstantiated.

That combination of character power, granted by the authority of another player, is a tool that Shane's player can use to guide Ada's player.

I'm inclined to think that the dynamic should flip-flop when the Perception turns into a Trait. It should be Ada's player's turn to guide Shane's player in his reactions. Which would seem to imply that Ada's player should have the authority to decide when the Trait applies, but that Shane's player (or maybe just any player that embroils themselves in the "Double-Agent" plot-line) should benefit more than Ada does from the Trait.


I have this further issue, which I'm not sure whether to bring up yet... but what the heck. I think that letting a Perception become a Trait should be something of an act of trust for the character the Trait is on. I can see a lot of these working out as the character admitting something, directly or indirectly. And that should have a scary feeling of "I am putting power over me into someone elses hands". Does that sound like a worthy goal to you guys?

Firstly, I need to be clear that if I'm talking about a mechanical advantage here, that doesn't (yet) mean an advantage in the Hybrid mechanics; there's still some joining of the dots to do.

TonyLB wrote: On Perceptions, we both seem firmly in the camp that the perceptive character's player has authority, rather than the player of the character perceived. So if Shane has "Ada: Double-Agent?" as a Perception, that's Shane's player's call when it comes up. But the dynamic of character power probably runs the opposite way: Ada gains more from Shane's suspicions than Shane does while they're unsubstantiated.

TonyLB wrote: I'm inclined to think that the dynamic should flip-flop when the Perception turns into a Trait. It should be Ada's player's turn to guide Shane's player in his reactions. Which would seem to imply that Ada's player should have the authority to decide when the Trait applies, but that Shane's player (or maybe just any player that embroils themselves in the "Double-Agent" plot-line) should benefit more than Ada does from the Trait.

TonyLB wrote: I have this further issue, which I'm not sure whether to bring up yet... but what the heck. I think that letting a Perception become a Trait should be something of an act of trust for the character the Trait is on. I can see a lot of these working out as the character admitting something, directly or indirectly. And that should have a scary feeling of "I am putting power over me into someone elses hands". Does that sound like a worthy goal to you guys?

Well, yeah, that is the disconnect. I don't want the moment of trust to be when you support someone's perception of you. I want that to be something that can happen completely without the perceived character (or their player) intending it, or even knowing it's happening.

Classic (literally) example: Emma: Emma promotes her friend Miss Smith to the Reverend Elton. Game-terms: Emma adds perception "Elton: Enamored of Smith". Elton does everything he can to be with Emma and Smith. Points to Elton, off the perception. Emma paints a portrait of Smith. Elton personally carries it to London to be framed. Points to Elton, off the perception. Elton then proposes marriage to Emma... WHAT? Ah... Elton had no idea what he was getting the points for. He thought Emma had a correct perception "Elton: Enamored of Emma". He further had a perception "Emma: Enamored of Elton," which all of her actions were playing to. Boom, perceptions destroyed. Heart-breaking, really.

Short answer: damned if I know.

Longer answer: I need some time to think about this. I wouldn't normally post a message just to say this, but we've been back-and-forth over this quite frequently over the last few days. It's been a lot of fun, but I need to come up for some air!

I promise to come back and chip in again later, but it may be a while.