Shawn de Arment and I tested the extremely, extremely broken alpha Misery Bubblegum system last weekend. I wanted to get the rules fixed up before risking anyone looking at them closely, so I've held off on writing up the Actual Play. Which was hard, because it was fascinating.

Shawn decided to play Ralph, a jock. I played Jacob, a nerd.

The Misery system (which takes away from your ability to act) was critically, critically broken. I lose ten of my twelve dice almost instantly. Shawn fared badly, but not that badly, with five dice left to his name.

The only way (in that system) to get rid of Misery is to spend it against high traits. The only way to get traits is to have someone else assign them to you, and then to work them up by using them.

I offered Ralph (Shawn's character, remember) "Brutal" and "Wants to dominate others." I know, I know, what was I thinking? He took these Traits and started using them to brutalize and dominate Jacob. He worked off his Misery, while keeping me pushed down. There was, really, nothing else he was equipped to do, and I had run out of resources to change him in any meaningful way.

Shawn, in turn, offered Jacob "Nerd", "Clumsy" and a whole host of other traits that helped Ralph to look very good by comparison. I needed them to survive, that's how much I was dangling by a thread, system-wise. I snarfed them up. "You're happy to laugh at me as I trip over my own shoe-laces? Well, as long as you're happy Ralph, that's all that matters!" And I had to roleplay every moment of this, to actually rack my brain for ways to use these traits, in order to build them up high enough that they could hope to soak up some of my Misery.

I hope that Shawn will weigh in on this. It was an extremely unsettling and cool experience for me. I was playing a character that was nothing like anything I would have chosen. He was pathetic, snivelling, weak... and every time I tried to give him a backbone I came within a hair's breadth of losing what little chance I had of ever having him improve. Very high school.

Ralph, on the other hand, was totally in control of the situation, except (of course) that he couldn't really do anything except continue to abuse Jacob. It was totally unstrategic for him to do anything other than continue to use Jacob to soak up his own Misery. I can't imagine that felt very comfortable from Shawn's point of view. Which, again, is pretty cool. Shawn, any comments?

Did you prep anything? Bangs? An R-map?

How did 'story' emerge during the game? Was it collaborative GMing? Did you guys just improv and suggest Threats against each other? Or did the action emerge purely through stating actions, succeeding or failing and then applying Misery?

What about NPCs? Did their actions have a significant influence on you and Shawn?

We were without a GM... had we had more than just the two of us I would have jumped into the GM seat and run things a bit more aggressively, but with two it wouldn't have given us any chance to work the conflict mechanics at all, and I needed to see the system in action more than I needed to run a coherent game.

Story emerged entirely from what we gave each other and our desperate attempts to make something of it. "What do the characters do?" is definitely going to be a point in need of future development in the game. We introduced one NPC threat (Becky!) but without anyone having the resources to thoroughly define her she remained very, very ambiguous.

I distinctly remember, though, that Becky asked Jacob to a dance (as an attempt to take Jacob away from Ralph, so that the jock she wanted to hurt would have nobody to do his homework for him). I managed, miraculously, to get some decent rolls using "Trekkie" (which Shawn had so generously gifted me) and actually impressed Becky. It's the James Kirk voice, I'm tellin' you.

This was particularly memorable because the very next thing Shawn did was to have Ralph explain, in very careful, unavoidable, terms that Becky couldn't be interested in Jacob, because Jacob was a total loser geek. Really, Ralph was just trying to protect the poor kid, he really was. It wasn't pleasant for Jacob to hear though, no it wasn't.

Wait...

Where's the broken part come in? It sounds like it's doing the right thing in play. I'm not seeing broken here.

(Or perhaps you mean this is the highlights reel from an otherwise unsuccessful to get the rules to work?)

Oh, this is very much the highlights reel.

The down-sides: We had no real idea what dice pools we should be rolling from, and chose them randomly. The traits as defined overlapped each other in uninteresting and confusing ways, so that we couldn't tell whether something was a promise or a threat (for instance), and chose at random. The misery mechanic reduced it (effectively) from a dice pool system to a single-die system, and flattened any possible strategic complexity to a thin layer of forced decisions.

The broken part was Tony's character wallowing in the misery hole with little chance getting out. Tony had 2 dice, he would hand me 1 to pay for the use of a trait. I would offer him the die back with a trait like "Fashion Nightmare" and he would have to take it. He needed the dice.

I probably could have done more to help Tony get his character out of the hole, but I think one of the points of the playtest was that Tony couldn't do it on his own.

I found our play disturbing, in a well modeled classic jock/nerd abusive relationship way. I would like to distance myself from my character, and with Misery Bubblegum I have an interesting excuse. Tony is the one who gave me those Traits. I was just playing to them.

I'm trying to build up a clearer picture of the session and the system. Aside from assigning Traits to each other's characters, what did the two of you do during the playtest?

Was there any particular part of the system that struck you as really fun or filled with a lot of potential to explore?

We didn't really do anything except torture each other. Another failing.

And Shawn... yeah... I think you have every right to distance yourself from Ralph. Ralph was my fault (despite the fact that you were playing him). It's Jacob you're responsible for. I'd almost managed to suppress my memory of the Trait "Fashion Nightmare."

Even though it sounds pretty rough in terms of system, the game has earned the highest praise it can from myself, the self-titled "Ooh mr.confrontationial-issues-in-games-man", in that reading this thread made me uncomfortable and pine for those nice roleplaying games with the wizards on the box.

I am totally facinated at seeing theory come into play here. Starting out with the idea that one can make a game that has a profound effect on the players then actually creating rules that do so. I get chills just thinking of it.

On a more specific note, I'm having trouble with the resolution system. Specificially I'd like to understand the split between succeeding at the task you've assigned for yourself and the What It Means bit. From this seat it seems like you've distilled the worst bits of task resolution and given them form. I'm assuming that I'm just not following the rest of the class somewhere.

Ok, so I say "I wanna cross the gauntlet of jocks and kiss the girl". One half of the roll determines who gets to say if I've actually kissed the girl or not, the other half of the roll determines who gets to extrapolate on the ramifications of kissing the girl or not. If I win the top half and loose the bottom half I may narrate kissing the girl while my opposing player narrates that I drool all over her in the process thus turning her off to me forever.

Is that a reasonable understanding of the system so far?

Because if it is, then it seems to me that the second half of the resolution gets to one-up the conflict that I chose for myself, likely cutting off the long-term goal that I really wanted to meet, but didn't want to address with a single roll of the dice.

To use DitV to put some perspective on what I'm thinking here, imagine if I set my goal as convincing the steward to mend his naughty ways. So, I make my goal, but loose control of the meaning. That would allow my opposing player to narrate that convincing the steward to mend his naughty ways ends up tearing the town apart, which totally breaks my larger-picture goal. Poo.

Perhaps there's some way to keep the opposing player from crapping all over the big picture for you when you loose control of the meaning. Or perhaps that's already there and I missed it. Or perhaps, the meaning of the roll is really the hefty and important part of the roll and I'm missing something else entirely.

-Eric

Shawn De Arment wrote: The broken part was Tony's character wallowing in the misery hole with little chance getting out.

Eric: You seem to understand the system pretty well. I don't think your objection is due to misunderstanding. Your recap seems solid, but then you go off into what (to me) looks like left field.

Comparing the TR in Misery Bubblegum to CR in DitV is just apples and oranges. There is no TR in DitV. Naturally, resolving a conflict under CR and then changing the Stakes would be unfair. But that's not what's going on here.

In the classic "Safe-cracking to find incriminating material" example, this is "You succeed at opening the safe, but because you failed to also get the Meaning, there is no incriminating material inside."

So, seriously, what's wrong with that? Similarly, what's wrong with kissing the girl and having it make your relationship worse rather than better?

Well, I suppose there's nothing wrong with it at all. Just so long as I went into the game with a clear understanding of how the dice were gonna give me a result. See, I didn't read the rules and really understand that I would start out by defining a Task for my character. I just assumed a Conflict.

MB wrote: When you want your character to do something... [snip]

I nearly wrote: Something else just popped to mind.

I'd never set my target number below 6. Never.

If my real goal is to get that kiss and the task is to cross the cross the gauntlet of jocks then I really don't give a rat's ass about crossing the gauntlet. If the opposing player narrates that I get my ass kicked by the jocks it's no big deal. I can still narrate that the girl feels a swell of pity for my character and comes over to give me that kiss.

Actually, FWIW, the Victory/Misery mechanic is much more flexible than just "winner avoids Misery, loser gets Misery." I finally got the fictional example of play finished for the new rules, and it includes three characters each with a distinct Misery-strategy.

Clarice: Deliberately sets out to generate far more Misery than she needs to and dump it on other people by being victorious over them. Fear her wrath!

Dieter: Avoids generating Misery of his own, and often-times steps in to oppose a roll that generates Misery, in order to succeed at it and to take that Misery onto himself (sparing the person who generated it). Isn't that sweet?

Mark: Avoids generating Misery, and willingly sacrifices rolls where no Misery is at stake, but will go to great lengths to dump Misery on other people when it has been generated. He's just trying to survive! Why do they make him do these terrible things?

Shawn, Tony ...

I assume you guys are friends in RL. What was it like being friends, while in the game dicking on each other's characters and at the same time playing characters who (as I read it) had kind of a dysfunctional friendship?

My question probably applies even more to the example of play where the 3 characters seem to form a little clique of their own. Is part of the appeal of this game manipulating other people's characters into a position where their Traits give them no choice but to advance your agenda?

I don't really know. When I was solo-playtesting (i.e. writing up the fictional example of play) I found it much more satisfying to create things that would naturally come into conflict than try to make something that would force another player to play to my own desires.

Part of that is... well... how would you even do that? I mean, if Herr Doctor has a Desire "Oppress Others" and Igor has a Desire "Be oppressed" then, yeah, you have synergy, but Igor can scamper to another master to get that Desire, or (likewise) Herr Doctor can find someone else to oppress.

I think that's why we really felt the lack of a third player in our test, Shawn and I. Part of why it descended into "hell is other people" is because we were inherently locked into each other. There literally was nobody else in the game-universe for us to try to turn to.

And yet, isn't that always the case, in every game? You can only turn to each other. Even if one or more of you is playing many roles, it's the same player. So any game where your character is dependent upon the behavior patterns of other players will probably exhibit this property of cliqueish structuring.

Although Tony and I have only met over roleplaying, I consider him a friend. I have always had a good connection with him during play. I actually was becoming disturbed by the character’s relationship. I was trying to push Tony’s system, but as the game wore on it felt like I was just being mean to Tony.

The thing I have realized, in Misery Bubblegum, you don’t play your character, you play the character others make for you. We made Ralph the jock and Jacob the nerd as names. From that point on, all the traits were stereotypical jock/nerd traits. By the end, we had spiraled down to a cross between the movie Heathers and My Life with Master. I believe that you have to be very careful what traits you offer others. Not to push an agenda, but because you will have to play against/with these characters. If you make one trick ponies, don’t be surprised if you get one trick pony stories.

If more people were playing, it would have greatly improved the character’s interactions. But with only 2 people, we focused on the core mechanisms, which I think was best for the playtest.

TonyLB wrote: I mean, if Herr Doctor has a Desire "Oppress Others" and Igor has a Desire "Be oppressed" then, yeah, you have synergy, but Igor can scamper to another master to get that Desire, or (likewise) Herr Doctor can find someone else to oppress.

You have to get pretty detailed before a Desire can't be satisfied by another person than the one who created it.

Ilsa says "Yes, Igor, you serve our master well! Isn't it a pity that his arrogance prevents you from serving him better. Truly, to serve him best, we must protect him from himself!" Igor replies with a joyous smile "Yes, Ilsa! You make it so clear! I will prepare the chains!"

I'm genuinely not trying to be annoying about this. I totally see your point about how the more specific Desires force you to be more creative to work within their constraints. But I think it's cool that it's always so possible to subvert what seems like a clear "Be my subservient drone" desire.

This is why so many great mad-men are surrounded by idiots, I suppose... no matter what you do, people just don't work as reliably as gears and pulleys.