Today fell into Ron's "Parlor Narration" category in the October Ronnies, about which Ron said the following:

Ron wrote:
PARLOR NARRATION

These games raise an interesting issue. They are essentially "I get to say what the dice tell me" procedures, organized into specific scenes and what-to-roll rituals. Unfortunately, this is not an SIS-generating procedure, any more than putting on a funny hat and voice when playing Monopoly is role-playing. These games are entirely too structured in terms of what a character "is," imaginatively speaking, and more generally, what "can happen" during play. In contrast with fairly ritualized games like My Life with Master and Polaris, I think these are marked by a complete inability for characters actually to do stuff outside the immediate instructions of the rules, up to and including making crucial choices about relationships with other characters.

Which begs the question, however, of whether these games work. Mechanically, they well might, in the sense that gears will shift and cogs will revolve. Imaginatively and motivationally? That will be a very, very local question, and my judgment at this point is that all of these entries have gone over a crucial line, to the point where the role of human input is restricted only to the end-process of resolution, too much so for it to play a conflict-generating role.

The good news is that none of them suck. I think all of them could well be brought back over that crucial boundary into the zone that I think yields successful play, with a conceptual modification, mostly affecting when Fortune is applied and how scenes may be constructed. I hope to be able to articulate how this might be done for each game in the feedback threads.

Smithy, I think I see what Ron's getting at, too. I was going to post comments that I think would jive with his angle.

Basically, I really liked the game concept. But, what I did not like was that, essentially, it's up to the dice, not the people. When I read the rules, I kept thinking "Cool, but where's the part where I get to make some decisions and alter those damn die rolls for or against my character?"

So, maybe that will help -- to think about Today in terms of how the player can make decisions, rather than how the mechanics can, essentially, force the character to suffer. It appears to be entirely up to chance (and he'd have to be DAMN lucky, if I understand the rules correctly) for a character to find redemption. For my tastes, that inevitability, and certainly my lack to alter it, is the thing I most want to see changed in the game.

P.S. I haven't forgotten your excellent questions to Red Rain. I've penned about half the answers. I'll post when I can.

Smithy,

I think I agree with Matt. At the moment, the interaction between the dice and the narration is pretty much one way: I roll the dice, they tell me whether it's a good or bad result, I alter my narration to suit.

I'd like it to work the other way too: so that I'm thinking of ways to escape from the pain, I'm using all the character's resources to try and reverse their decline, and all that affects the dice roll somehow.

By the way, one part about this game that really interested me was the idea of characters being associated with each other's Pain. I almost think this should be mandatory: making the characters' stories intertwined. Or perhaps two characters could have the same NPC associated with their different Pains, in different ways.

On your specific questions...

Smithy wrote:
So in getting a head start on conceptual realignment, what do you see as necessary to restore player input and allow the characters to make crucial choices? Remove the 5 scene + epilogue structure?

Smithy wrote:
Remove the mandatory minimum bids for each Pain scene?

Smithy wrote:
Expand character creation to include ability scores or other ways to differentiate characters and encourage different approaches to the situation?

Smithy wrote:
Revise the resolution system to allow more freedom in narration?

Hi Eric ("Smithy" is Eric Boyd),

This is now the official Ronnies feedback thread for your game!

Today gets my recognition for the most direct, uncompromising use of a single term as a central feature of play, of all the entries. This is raw agony, full of exposed-nerve humanity. However, that's difficult subject matter for fiction. I think audiences, me included, have a threshold of pain-content, per character, beyond which they classify the character into either "victim" or "loser." In either case, the character is no longer considered seriously as a decision-maker, but is now an object to be moved around or to be utilized by some other, decision-making character. It's terribly unfair, but I think it's a given feature of personal/audience behavior.

As I mentioned in [Ronnies] October winners, this game suffers from the "parlor narration" problem. The dice are essentially acting-cues, doing every bit of the work of "what changes, what does he do, how does it work out" during play, much like the dice operate in Trivial Pursuit if Trivial Pursuit didn't have the question cards. The big picture of play seems to me like a grim grind, a student-acting or public-speaking assignment based on "describe how this looks," "depict how the character feels" for a string of scenes.

In many ways, this entry has more heart than all the others put together, and if you revised the basic framework, but retained the thematic content, then you'd really have a great game.

Best,
Ron

Thank you all for your comments; they've been really helpful to me in assessing the game where it stands now and understanding what needs to be changed to allow the players to truly address the premise rather than dictating results to them. I've also found the discussion about The Fruitful Void to be very eye-opening.

The problem with Today is that the essential question of play--does the character overcome their Pain and move forward or become lost in it--is the game's fruitful void but right now it is completely filled in and dictated by mechanics. My next draft will likely keep most of character creation and progression of play the same (though with a variable number and arrangement of scenes), but the mechanics are going to need thorough reworking to point at and facilitate the answering of the premise without forcing the hands of the players. The bidding system probably will be replaced by something less rigid. I just finished reading Breaking the Ice and Nicotine Girls and both do a brilliant job of handling similar emotional and relational issues. They're likely to become a big inspiration for the next draft.

Graham, your suggestion that linking the Pain of the characters be mandatory is a good one. I think I'll go that route. You're also right that the current narration system is almost completely free. I'm thinking that is bit of a cop out--the players need decisions to make beyond what kind of good or bad result they want to narrate. Such decisions need mechanical support based on character traits or something similar that can be used by the players to shape their results.

Ron, your point about characters of this type slipping from protagonists to losers is well taken. Anyone have thoughts on how to skirt the edge of this situation without going over the line? More empowering mechanics will play a large role in that, but I don't want the characters themselves to undercut them.

Thanks again.

Eric