This references previous discussion on Dulcimer Hall, but not hugely.

Dulcimer Hall will examine several things:

• How you define identity in a world with no certainty
• Who you allow to influence the kind of person you become
• Super-spies, conspiracies and kicking butt.

The previous post was mostly about #2. This post is mostly about #1.

Basically, I have a problem with a fixed and unchanging past: It doesn't fit genre, and it doesn't fit my goals. I'm not talking time-travel here, I'm talking about how you can think you knew what was happening, then learn that you were decieved (either by yourself or others).


Classic example (Alias): You think you're working for a special branch of the CIA. Turns out? Not so much.

Classic example (romantic comedy staple): You see Joe hugging and kissing a girl. That's it. Infidelity! You make up an excuse to dump him first, to save your ego. Turns out? Sister. Whoops!


Now here's the thing: The last thing I want is to have to go through and contemplate every other Fact in the game each time I change something in the past. Oy. What a hassle that would be.

I think that the way to do this is to have traits that connect to other traits. For instance, if you have "Loyalty to CIA: 5"... well, you can't really mess with that, can you? It's atomic. If you have "Loyal to USA: 3", and "SD-6 branch of CIA: 2" then you can later say "As it turns out, SD-6 is a terrorist organization... do you still add those traits together on this roll?"

I'd almost be inclined, in fact, to say that you start with "Loyal: 3" and "SD-6: 2"... then those can get changed and elaborated as time goes on. To what are you loyal? What is SD-6?

So... my question... how uncomfortable is this going to make people? By its very nature, this is going to take some of the things that you thought of (at the time) as "achievements" and turn them retroactively into "screwups." What would it take in order to make this palatable?

That scenario happens with some frequency in Universalis pretty much exactly as you've written it. Somone has "Loyal to SD-6" as a Trait, and someone else can say "SD-6 is really a front for a terrorist organization".

If it had previously been mentioned that SD-6 was a division of the CIA and the game had progressed with that assumption, but no one had actually paid for that with Coin, then it was merely color and turning it into a Terrorist Organization is as simple as spending the requisite Coin and dealing with any potential Challenge.

If it had been established with Coin (i.e. Fact vs. Color) that SD-6 was a division of the CIA then the situation is identicle...turing it into a Terrorist Organization is as simple as spending the requisite Coint and dealing with any potential Challenge. The difference being that the Challenger's Coins are doubled due to the weight of Fact.

But if its a sufficiently cool thing to have happen, no one may Challenge in which case the Fact gets over written just that easily.

I've heard no reports of any players being upset over such soap opera style switches in game. That may in part be due to players being less highly vested in any single personal character / character vision as well as the game giving them the option of rejecting the switch (i.e. Challenge).

In Dulcimer, do you have single traditional PCs that players might be individual vested in (rather than shared like in Capes)? And who do you envision pulling the switch...Game Master Fiat...preprogrammed scenario events...any player by spending resources? These questions will have a lot to do with how palatable such things are.

It'll be single characters. As to who pulls the switch, it's definitely got to be any player (GM or otherwise). I mean, if I can get the system to support switching the past around that way it's way too much fun to limit it to just the GM, right?

However, there is also the discussion from previous threads about how players let themselves in to be influenced by other players. So there is a voluntary measure of how much authority you've offered another player over your character. I could see changing relevant backstory details as being very much a part of that influence.

Oh bother... I just realized the greatest example of this ever. Empire Strikes Back. It's so big, so central, that I didn't even parse it as being such an example. And no, even two decades later, I will not spoiler it. But yeah, Luke lets himself in for that ret-con by caring about Vader's opinion of him.

Okay, that's definite then: These changes of the past will be one of the ways that Player A can apply the fallout earned by their character to the character of Player B (because of the vulnerabilities previously established in play). So it won't be just random: You'll have consciously opened yourself to the possibility of being screwed over by this person (though not necessarily to the particulars).

Oh man...

What if the Facts that people can jimmy with aren't normal Facts at all. What is Players are given the option of deliberately putting... don't know quite what I'd call them... but Facts that they expect people to use in order to screw them over.

They'd act like sacrificial lambs, attracting attention away from other ways that people could spend their fallout against the player. Therefore it would behoove the player to keep them nice and juicy and dramatic, so that they'd serve their purpose of defending other things.

So, like, Sydney Bristow would have a lot of Traits (that could suck up fallout) but she'd also have "I work for a covert branch of the CIA (yeah, sure)" and "My father doesn't know anything about it (yeah, sure)" and "My mother was in a car 'accident' (yeah, sure) and died (yeah, sure)."

I'm liking that idea. Does anyone have a better phrase than "Yeah, sure"? My wordsmithing skills are really failing me today.

TonyLB wrote: What if the Facts that people can jimmy with aren't normal Facts at all.

TonyLB wrote: I'm liking that idea. Does anyone have a better phrase than "Yeah, sure"? My wordsmithing skills are really failing me today.

Oh.... oh....

You're saying that there wouldn't be any other kind of Facts. That the primary purpose of any Fact ever mechanically introduced would always be to be undermined, and that if they were accepted and used "as-is", it would be a secondary condition that occurs because they're uninteresting.

Oh wow. That's hard-core. I think I like it.

So even something as simple as "You will be met at the airport by Klaus, a local agent" is an invitation to "Except he was killed and replaced," or "Actually, Klaus has been turned, "or "And it turns out that 'Klaus' is just a cover adopted by Jonah, the hot romance your character had who disappeared without a trace five years ago... awkward!"

Have I got that right?

Yep, you got it! Now think of the consequences...

First and foremost, if you have a real investment in a Fact about your character, you have to be prepared to fight to keep it that way. I get the feeling that suits your own style very well.

It also seems to contribute nicely to a espionage-movie type paranoid feeling: you just can't trust Facts.

(This would absolutely kick ass for emulating anything ever written by Philip K Dick, by the way.)

So, where do you want to take this next?

Espionage = pretty cool

Espionage + Phil K Dick = I just soiled myself

This is starting to sound like it could support some pretty hardcore mindfucks.

Where do I want to take this next?

Okay... what's needed is a sense of the fallout system (both when/why you earn fallout and when/how you can spend it to screw yourself and/or others). And... oh hell... yeah, I'm totally blocked on that. If people just fire out some general "You could do it this way," that would actually be a great help, both in the contributions and in trying to unjam my mental gears.

OK, just remember that you asked for this!

Let's consider Fallout in the context of the wider conflict system.

I think that an important foundation for all of this is that the characters are actively seeking the truth and that conflicts are therefore about exposition.

So, there are Facts about the world, and Facts about each of the characters. Initially, players launch conflicts so that their characters can "discover" the truth abot the world. Winning a conflict allows a player to "explain" the deeper meaning behind a Fact.

Example: Klaus is waiting for you at the airport. Nothing happens to this Fact until a conflict is launched; the winner of the conflict gets to declare whether Klaus is waiting for you with the plans, or waiting for you with a gun, or didn't actually make it to the airport because he got killed on the plane, etc.

(Suggestion: I'd also allow for the creation of new Facts, and the "linking" of two or more Facts into a single Fact.)

Initially players can only change Facts about the world, not about each other.

We've taked about Traits a lot in other threads, but for now, consider Traits to be a special type of Fact - it describes a character, and is owned by a player (not necessarily the player that owns the character.)

Traits allow you to roll dice in a conflict. However, they also generate Fallout (beause they give away information about who you are.)

(Decision needed: how much Fallout is generated, and whether it's random. For example, do I get Fallout every time I use a Trait, or only if I roll a "1", or something else?)

(Another decision needed: Is Fallout something bad that I keep, or something good that I pay to other people for using my Traits?)

Once Fallout reaches a certain level, other players can initiate a conflict to change a Fact/Trait about your character - this reduces the Fallout total against your character, but threatens your character's identity.

I think that's pretty much it. Beyond the actual die-rolling, some sort of rules for narration are needed, however if changing or making a Fact requires a conflict, this should help to sidestep the narration issues some people have raised with Capes recently (I don't want to turn this into yet another discussion about Capes, but I think it's useful to point out the difference this approach would have in play).

Hrm... so when you succeed in a conflict you are getting someone else's secrets out into the open. And when you get fallout you are closer to having your own secrets out in the open.

So if you play a conflict-winning, fallout-avoidance strategy then you are saying "I want to find out everyone else's secrets, but not have any of mine revealed."

And if you play a conflict-losing, fallout-seeking strategy then you are saying "I want to be known, to have my secrets revealed, and I don't really care too much about other people's secrets."

But having fallout also means that you have less control over what those secrets turn out to be. So the two strategies also correspond with: "I want to control my character" and "I am willing to have my character defined by others."

So you can either say "I want to control my character, but nobody will ever know about them," or "I want my character to be known, and I'm willing to let other players have a hand in defining it in order to do so."

Yeah, I can definitely live with that. Cool stuff!


I'm torn between fallout being "something bad the player controls" and "something good they give to someone else." I think I want a hybrid solution, even though it's more complicated. And I'll tell you why: I want the player who earned the fallout to have some control over the pacing of when it is spent. But I don't want them to have any control over what it is spent for.

So, take a classic high-school wistful-love setup. Miyazawa doesn't yet realize that she is in love with Arima. They have several conflicts in which she tries to figure him out, and fails. It should be M's players choice whether (a) Each of these leave her vulnerable a little bit, and change her in small increments or (b) The pressure builds up until she utterly cracks, tearfully revealing all of her insecurities, handing A's player a stack of twenty Fallout tokens and saying "Do your worst." But it should absolutely be A's player's decision whether that ends up happily or unhappily for M.

So consider this: When you take Fallout you give your dice away to other players. When those players spend them it gives them a huge advantage toward changing your character (for good or for ill). But those players do not decide when they can spend those dice. You decide when your dice may be spent, and how many. The other player chooses whether to spend them, and on what. When they are spent, you get them back (which improves your ability to ferret out the secrets of others.

Sound workable? Or too complicated?

The general concept (a player chooses the timing of bad stuff that happens to them, but not the specifics) is sound, as long as there is a mechanical advantage to having the bad stuff happen.

If you're using a fixed pool of dice, then the bad stuff frees up resources by returning dice to a player's control, so that's fine. If someone tries to turtle their way out of having a crisis, they will run out of dice while the crisis gets bigger. I'd go all or nothing with this; a player can choose when to call for a crisis, but all of the dice must be used. If you want lots of small problems, you have to face them as they happen. Otherwise, they turn into big problems.

(note: by allowing someone to hold a big pile of dice against you, you're trusting them with more control over your story. This is a narrative Trust mechanic.)

But one thing I'm not sure about: how does exchanging dice through Fallout gel with offering Bribes to a character (from previous discussions) to express certain behaviours?

I'd love to see all of this somehow represented using the same currency (coloured dice, one colour for each player) in different ways. I'm sure that Facts about the world could be built with dice, too. The more dice on a Fact, the more important it is to the story.

So, conflicts would involve exchanging dice between Facts (character and world), and rolling these dice. The stakes of the conflicts would be the right to rename the Facts in a way that develops the story and the characters within it.

I think that having an underlying structure like this would go a long way to making the rules accessible/workable. Can you see the game doing that?

Here's my take on Bribes:

Say Joe has five of Sarah's dice. If she wants to take them as Fallout then, yeah, she's got to offer him the chance to spend all five at once. He doesn't have to spend all of them (in fact, he doesn't have to spend any), but she can't say "Okay, I'll let you spend two of them, but no more."

Now Joe offers her a Bribe-trait ("Frigid b... uh... witch", for instance). He places some number (say two) of her dice on that.

If she wants to take Fallout now, Joe can withdraw the bribe (to spend the dice) and she may (again) take the full five. If, however, she takes the bribe then she gets those two dice back. She can now take Fallout without having more than three of her dice levied against her. But she's got a Frigid Witch trait, courtesy of Joe.


Hrm... okay... I think that's workable, but let's talk about where, physically, these dice reside. Toy-quality time.

If Joe is holding the dice then Sarah gets just "Okay, you've got permission to use them." Joe, on the other hand, gets a lot of physical handling time (picking them, rolling them, etc.) Handling time goes well with narration (two great tastes that taste great together) so Joe might be describing things while he rolls those dice.

If Sarah is holding the dice (say on a circle labelled "Joe" on her character sheet) then she gets much more handling time (and, again, maybe more tendency toward narration).

So let me offer a different way of handling this. Each player has a sheet with areas for each major character... and room to write in new names. They put dice on those characters, and then those dice are Fallout.

If Sarah wants to get rid of her Fallout, she starts rolling those dice, and narrating how she's making herself miserable and/or vulnerable. The dice, having been rolled, now have defined, strategically calculable value for the Conflict (or whatever) in question.

Joe now gets a simple choice: Take those dice (some or all) or not. There is no narration attendant on taking the dice. However (because of the different colors) it will be obvious when those dice are used. The narration on using those dice should reflect that it's Fallout that Sarah has opened herself up for.

Example wrote: Sarah has six of her dice on Joe-Fallout. She decides enough is enough, and her character can't keep quiet any longer.

Sarah: "Suki turns you Manos with tears in her eyes." <Rolls a 1> "'The thing is...' she says softly," <Rolls a 5> "'the thing is... I love you!" <Rolls a 4> "I've loved you ever since you gave me that umbrella." <Rolls a 2> "And you love me too... I can feel it!" <Rolls a 4> "Don't... don't you?'" <Rolls a 1>

Response #1:

Joe: <Picks up every single die.> "'I don't.' he says." <Plays the two 4s against "Fact: Love."> "'How could anyone love a tomboy like you?'" <Plays the five against "Fact: Suki attractive."> "'I gave you the umbrella because you looked so pathetic... like a stray dog.'" <Plays the 2 against "Fact: Suki strong."> "'I guess I'm just too kind-hearted.'" <Plays the two 1s (via sarcasm and irony) in favor of "Fact: Manos cold-hearted bastard.">

Response #2:

Joe: <Pushes the dice back to Sarah.> Manos turns and walks away without a word.

Now, that is different. I'm all the way with you about Facts=Conflicts and also with the explicit assignment of dice to other people. I'm slightly less sure about the actual method though.

Firstly (and more importantly) this is because the example appears to establish a "Fact: Suki loves Manos" except it isn't accounted for in play. This should be an old argument for you by now, but what is the difference between narrating outside the mechanics and narrating inside the mechanics?

Secondly, if triggering Fallout requires personal exposition, doesn't this make any Angsty Loner Cypher Guy startegies invalid?

Finally, the example, has Manos' player using Fallout dice to make changes to his own character. I'm not automatically against this, but it does leave open the possibility that players may drift into two modes of play:

- use other players' Fallout to advance my own character (Egotist)
- use other players' Fallout to mess with their heads (Meddler)
- use other players' Fallout to give them what they want (Angel)

(Actually, I like this....)

If you can drop the exposition (misery/vulnerability) bit, I think it's more solid - but does this undermine what youwant to get out of this?

One additional thought: every Fact is a constant Conflict. Whoever has the highest total on a Fact controls the meaning of the Fact. In order to change a Fact, you have to move enough dice over to get a higher total.

This means that players have to move dice from their "character" Facts to influence Facts in the world or other character's Facts. Which leaves them more open to having the meaning of their own Facts challenged. Which means you don't need Fallout - the players actions automatically contribute to their own downfall.

I think that Angsty-Loner-Cypher guy would have to very consciously avoid actions that accrue Fallout. Or he would have to draw people into trying to Bribe him (and thus spend the Fallout on accepting the Bribes, rather than let it be applied any other way).

That's a hard row to hoe, but I think it's possible.

I like the idea of making yourself vulnerable by trying to influence the world, but I don't see (at the moment) how it's making yourself vulnerable particularly to one person. Am I missing something?


Now, the big one... "Suki Loves Manos." How does the narration that a player describes for other (mechanical) purposes differ from the narration that the player describes for the pure purpose (again, mechanical) of creating the Fact in the game?

Uh... I dunno.

But this is where I love the idea you have (above) about spreading your own dice out into the world in order to change it. Because then the act of making herself vulnerable is that creates that Fact. And the dice sit there on her admission of love until something is done with them.

Which would be so cool for the high-school drama angle on things. "I gave him my phone numebr... why doesn't he CALL?"

TonyLB wrote: I like the idea of making yourself vulnerable by trying to influence the world, but I don't see (at the moment) how it's making yourself vulnerable particularly to one person. Am I missing something?

Okay, I'm feeling a bit peckish. I may be in the mood for some sacred cow hamburger.

Do we need Facts... at all? Or, more specifically, do we need any Facts that don't have immediate emotional meaning to the characters?

I just don't know whether "Trained in Martial Arts" contributes to the game (except as a launch-pad for "Trained by the KGB" and similar shenanigans). I'm reminded of the many Indie Design threads that start with people saying "So of course I'll have these six stats." Y'know?

Meaty stuff. Sounds like you've got enough of a relationship mechanic here to drive the game.

Let me see if I'm getting this right. So you've got a bunch of characters that are occupationally super talented at keeping and exposing secrets; they've been trained to do this in order to, you know, save the world, protect the nation, whatever. But really, all the spy stuff is just a pretext for throwing into personal conflict a set of individuals who all define themselves in terms of secrets.

I don't think any other spy game has taken this angle, but it sheds a new light on the whole "secret agent / super lover" genre. James Bond is a mack daddy precisely because he can find out your secrets without divulging his own. (Damn, that sounds so obvious now.)

Sound about right?

If you are trained in Martial Arts, that's still relevant, because you were obviously trained in the secret style of Master So-and-So, and thus a suitably informed agent could use that to figure out a bit about your background.

So maybe it's: you can make up badass skills on the fly, and you pay for it by giving away a bit of your cover.

I'd agree that every fact/trait/any other mechanical thing in the game needs to have emotional significance, or it shouldn't be in there at all. Conversely, though, almost anything can have emotional significance.

So instead of "Close Combat: Martial Arts - 13" you have "I know kung fu!" Instead of "History - 3" and "Geology - 4," you have "Don't know much about history...."

EDIT (Darn it, hit "submit" too fast) to add:

Come to think of it, "Dulcimer Hall" (and gee, doesn't that sound like the name of a, ahem, prep school?) inverts your traditional RPG relationship between what you do and what you feel, between "hard stuff" covered by the rules and "soft stuff" that's just roleplayed & narrated:

In this game, what you feel is what matters and is ruled by mechanics. What you do is just color narration. E.g. if a player says "I do a flying jump kick and take out 20 ninjas, a tear welling in my eye as I think of Shun," the 20 ninjas are a freebie, just something they get to say in narration; but that tear in the eye, that you're rolling dice for.

Yeah. And Sydney (having had a conversation with me yesterday evening) has advanced knowledge of the shameful admission I must now make:

The Confession

I don't think Dulcimer Hall is really, fundamentally, about spies. I think it's about high school.

The emotional dynamic is that you don't know what anyone else is thinking, and every time you make a theory about how other people behave it gets shot straight to hell, but at the same time their opinion of you is hugely important. Moreover, you don't know who you really are, but everyone else seems to, and can you really face down their certainty with your doubt?

Or: "Welcome back to the tenth grade. What would you have done differently if it hadn't been your precious one and only chance at a life?"

Having read and been provoked by Vincent's Blog describing the challenge and reward of writing a plain-person game, I have decided to split Dulcimer Hallinto a core ruleset ("Misery Bubblegum") which is about high school relationships, and an add-on set of rules/setting/advice to turn that core mechanic into a spy game.

My intuition is that the breakdown will fall out as follows:

• Fallout, Bribe and emotionally-charged-Trait mechanics are fundamental: Misery Bubblegum
• Fact/Ability mechanics are spy-centric: Spy-Bubblegum expansion

And yes, I'm saying that the super-spy genre is run by the emotional rules of high school. It's not the only genre, either... not by a long shot.

Doug Ruff wrote: Finally, the example, has Manos' player using Fallout dice to make changes to his own character. I'm not automatically against this, but it does leave open the possibility that players may drift into two modes of play:

- use other players' Fallout to advance my own character (Egotist)
- use other players' Fallout to mess with their heads (Meddler)
- use other players' Fallout to give them what they want (Angel)

Here is the visual aid.

So, I go away for a couple of days and look what happens! maybe I should go away more often.

Tony, I totally get the "high school" vibe, and I've been reading Vincent's Blog and 20"x20" room too.

But I think you're selling yourself short if you confine this to being just about high school. It's about insecurity and self-image and opinions and gossip. It's easy to look at that and think "yeah, teenagers". It's also easy to go "w00t! Spies!" like we've been doing.

Right now, I'm looking at this and thinking that I could use it for running a game about Bob the Accountant and his colleagues and family.

But I think the truth is, even "bad-ass" people have these frailties too, it's just that these are glossed over by many gamers because addressing it in play may require players to think about their own issues.

So, yeah, I'm totally for moving back from spies, but do we have to move straight back into another niche? Is it possible to view this as a generic game for "ordinary" dramas first, and then showcase it with high school/spies/twentysomething/office drama/Dallas/romantic fantasy examples?

TonyLB wrote: I'm reminded of the many Indie Design threads that start with people saying "So of course I'll have these six stats." Y'know?

Doug: Oh yeah, there has to be the opportunity to do spies. I certainly don't want to remove that! It should be allowed (and even mechanically supported) without being required. The human emotions and interactions can stand on their own. They're even cooler (IMO) with gadgets and mission briefings.

I've added some blue-sky speculation to the visual aid, covering exactly how I think that will work out.

On "so of course I'll have these six stats," I don't actually have any problem with stats (even with six of them). I have a problem with "of course." I'm going to think about where I stand on stats vs. freeform, and how to balance them, and probably start another thread in order to discuss the issue.