To recap, the Utrecht playtest focused my design attention as follows:

On a need to make Teachers more effective as antagonists in the early game.

On a need to increase the frequency of Humanizing across the whole universe of formulae, and also to think about the mechanical effects of Traits.

On a need to consider ways of inter-weaving the storylines of the individual characters (particularly in the early game), but not in a way that shortens gameplay by making player characters too vulnerable to each other, and not by starting all the characters in the same time and place, because I think starting at the cosmic scale is one of the main things that makes the game compelling.

On looking for dead ends in the formulae, where attribute values trap a player with no way to progress, and resolve them.

And in addition, I think we need to have some non-occultist NPCs stick around long enough to gain Traits and get interesting.

So, after much thought on these concerns, I am considering the following reformulation:

The GM would roll d4's for Teachers, for both Resolution Against Teachers and Change a Teacher to a Rival rolls.

If a player spends Power to unfavorably influence another player's roll, and that player succeeds anyway, the Power-spending player's character takes consequences as if they'd failed the roll themselves.

A character can cause a Teacher to take or send him to a specific location anywhere in time or space via a successful Resolution Against Teachers roll.

A character who fails at a Resolution Against Teachers must Humanize a human NPC, and must pay a point of Power to reduce his Used Capacity by one point, if he has both Power and any accrued Used Capacity.

A character who fails a Teacher to Rival Status Change undergoes a forced location shift (i.e. the Teacher casts him away to some other time or extradimensional location), as well as the other consequences already detailed in the rules.

A character who fails a Rival to Underling Status Change must Humanize a human NPC, and must pay a point of Power to reduce his Used Capacity by one point, if he has both Power and any accrued Used Capacity.

Immediately following a scene that ends on a successful roll, the player can spend one Power to re-set Used Capacity to zero.

Death, as it applies to NPCs, would be carefully defined and clarified. For occultist NPCs, any success outcome against them across the Resolution and Status Change formulae could be played as physical death if that seems dramatically appropriate. But this death is only a state change. Barring creative block on the part of the players, the occultist NPC is never actually eliminated from potential use. So, possibly we see them again as undead or something. Nobodies would be immune to death, until they're made into Victims via a Status Change. For Victims there would be a new Status Change formula, just for killing them. And Resolution Against Victims would be non-fatal.

So, non-murderous resolution against Victims would be:

For Resolution Against Victims, the player rolls a pool of dice equal to Rage plus Flesh/Voice/Imagination/Memory.
The GM rolls an opposing pool of d6's equal to the occultist character's Resistance plus Used Capacity, increased by one die for each prior Resolution Against Victims roll by the player in the current scene.
If the player rolls more primes than the GM, his occultist's Power is increased by one point.
If the player rolls fewer primes than the GM, or the same number of primes, increase his character's Rage by one point.

And Murders of Victims would be:

For Killing of Victims, the player rolls a pool of dice equal to Rage plus Flesh/Voice/Imagination/Memory.
The GM rolls an opposing pool of d6's equal to the occultist character's Resistance plus Used Capacity plus one d6 for each of the Victim's Traits.
If the player rolls more primes than the GM against an NPC who was originally Status Changed to a Victim by some other player, the Victim is killed and his occultist's power is increased by three points, plus one for each of the Victim's Traits. If the NPC being killed is one this occultist character made into a Victim, the Victim is killed and this occultist's Power is increased by one point for each of the Victim's traits.
If the player rolls fewer primes than the GM, or the same number of primes, increase his character's Rage by one point.

A character who fails to destroy Ephactha, and who chooses outcome #1, can spend a point of his dwindling pool of Power on his turn to either give a Trait or Traits to a Nobody, or to elevate a Victim to Nobody.

A character whose Clarity hits zero washes out of the tradition. The player makes up a new character.

Whaddya think?

Paul

Looks good!

Much better, Paul, I can't wait to try it out.

Thanks. I'm not quite sure it's perfect yet, though. My main desire at this point is that the mechanics help the game last a little longer, with some back-and-forth tension between the player characters. Your play reports gave me the distinct impression that no one ever spent Power into another character's roll without intending to kill the character if the roll was a failure. Nothing-Nothing-Nothing-Nothing-Nothing-KILLINGBLOW-Nothing-Nothing-Nothing, isn't as interesting to me as tense back-and-forth. I thought people would spend Power into each other's scenes for the chance of Direction, because they had an audience interest in the outcome, or a creative interest, and also to provoke consequences onto each other's characters. Initially, I envisioned death as color, so maybe someone would spend Power so they could by Direction prevent the death of a favored NPC. Now, I'm formalizing Death, which would seem to somewhat further skew for the Nothing-Nothing-Nothing-Nothing-KILLINGBLOW-Nothing-Nothing style of play, with players only spending Power into each other's scenes with the intent to kill. So as a small deterrent I wrote the rule:

If a player spends Power to unfavorably influence another player's roll, and that player succeeds anyway, the Power-spending player's character takes consequences as if they'd failed the roll themselves.

But I strongly considered an alternate rule, rewriting player character Death/Destruction:

Any time failure is determined by a die roll, and the Director is not the GM, he is empowered if his character has a lower Resistance than that of the failing character, to say that the failing character gets his Lovecraftian comeuppance.

The latter just seemed a less effective deterrent. I expect players would just compare Resistances before deciding whether to spend Power into a roll or not. The former has the advantage of uncertainty. I expect it will mildly slow the pace of character killings. But it's still not an incentive to the kind of player creative investment I'm wanting. So I'm hoping the increased meaningfulness of Traits is going to deliver on that. But I'm far from certain.

Paul

Paul,

If I understand your train of thought correctly, I don't think your Power spending mechanics are doing what you want. What you have is a resource you'd like players to spend in varied amounts based on the SIS particulars.You want the player to look at the story at hand and derive his spending decision based on his own interpretation of what happens and where he wants to go. I don't think you get that kind of play at all with the stick-approach. Whatever kind of punishment you heap over the player spending Power, that doesn't change the original motivation of the player to spend Power in the first place. If the only reason to spend Power is to get to kill somebody, then that's what the players will try to do, whatever the deterrent. If you get a good enough deterrent, that just means that the players will cease to spend Power alltogether. The problem is in motivation, not in game balance.

Now, my suggestion is to go into the SIS a bit and give meaning to that spent Power. For example, you could allow a player to add one fact into the scene for each point of Power he spent in the roll. Then the players could and would do stuff like:
- Have their character posses a participanting NPC to help or hinder the roll.
- Change the weather to better or worse, altering the consequences and helping or hindering the roll.
- Call the beasts of the air to harass the other player's poor character.
By giving some authorship power before the roll you motivate players to do other things than killing with the Power. After all, why use the Power to kill, when you can instead save somebody with it, taunt the other occultist and narrate some magical special effects in the process? Furthermore, because this fact-adding exercise happens before the roll, it's a separate effect from the Directorial power gained afterwards; it both complicates huge Power expenditures (because it requires more pre-roll narration) and justifies them.

Another option would be to limit the spending of Power through various requirements. For instance, you could require characters to set up emphatic sorcerous connections before spending Power becomes possible. Like, a character could have a wolf in a cage, and he'd have to kill the wolf to spend Power in any scene where wolves matter (his own, or perhaps another character elsewhere is having wolf-problems). If he didn't have the wolf, he couldn't spend the Power. This solution has the benefit of giving the characters something to actually do (as it actually matters now what McGuffin of magical power your character is after, what he already owns, and how he manages his holdings), as well as making the players very aware of each other's activities: if the other character researchs the life of a colleague in a library, say, the created sorcerous preparation clearly signals that the player's going to meddle in the colleague's activities. Similarly, the other players know to avoid the woods if a player has the aforementioned wolf just waiting for an opportunity to sacrifice it.

In the larger picture it seems to me that the problems of the mechanics tend to stem from not enough crunch. It's like, because every mechanic is abstract and there's nothing special to do ever, the players fail to care about the SIS. I think the chronospatial displacement of the characters compared to each other is a secondary problem compared to this. Consider how the nature of the teacher is changed by the simple addition of a special teacher power of time-travel; now the role has a mechanical meaning that suggests a game activity (I think it's much more interesting to roll a resolution against a teacher if the result allows me a perk that is not normally available; even if this perk is purely a matter of fiction, like time travel is). If I was playing the game, I'd be constantly pestering various teachers to send my character to exotic places just because they can. Consider adding similar broadly interesting "crunchy bits" to other parts of the game structure.

I utterly agree with Eero. Linking the mechanics up with stuff in the SIS is a good idea. I wouldn't worry too much about the complexity of the game, since it is intended to be played over several sessions anyway. (If you're going to spend more time playing it, you can have a longer learning curve.)

Also, on second thoughts, this rule isn't going to do what you want it to:

The GM would roll d4's for Teachers, for both Resolution Against Teachers and Change a Teacher to a Rival rolls.

Victor wrote:
IAlso, on second thoughts, this rule isn't going to do what you want it to:

The GM would roll d4's for Teachers, for both Resolution Against Teachers and Change a Teacher to a Rival rolls.

Let the GM roll his d4 all he wants, if I have 5 d8 to roll I'm not impressed. The problem was that Teachers don't get to roll enough dice when Resistance is low (as it is at the start of the game), not that their die is too big. Perhaps you could just have the player characters start out with more Resistance?

Or alternatively, if you want to keep the symmetries in the formulae...

Have the benefits of a conflict against a Teacher be always lessened somehow compared to a similar conflict with a Rival. So yes, you can win it just as easily as any other conflict, but they are small and petty victories, little gain for a big risk. For example, you could say that whatever the stakes are, a victory against a Teacher only gives you half of it (a la TMW half success), and a loss is always double (again, like TMW double success). The Teacher always maneuvers the student, even when the student is seemingly victorious. Also, note that the above principle subsumes the idea of the Teacher sending a failing student to another dimension: that's just one possible other half of a "double loss"; the character lost the stakes AND got evicted to Arcturus.

Hmm... the above principle could be extented to other classes of opposition as well. Like this:
Teachers: half the benefit, double the loss
Rivals: normal
Underlings: double the benefit, half the loss (you should probably make the formula identical to the one used by Teachers/Rivals if you use this, though; which is good, because then you'd basicly have only one 'occultist' class with one formula, instead of three classes with their own, almost identical formulae)
Nobodies: double the benefit, normal loss
Victims: normal benefit, half loss
Of course, making the balance of the Teacher/Rival distinction only a matter of SIS stakes means that the players will have to make those stakes count, but at least in TMW I've found that it's both easy, fun and profitable. A double success is great fun, because you practically get two conflicts for the price of one. Half successes are even funnier, because most of the time they translate to "one success, and one for the opposition", which makes for great drama.

If you'd rather just strenghten Teachers conventionally: I don't much appreciate the "d4 for Teachers" or "Resistance +3" solutions, actually. They both feel clunky. But I agree with Remko that you need to strenghten Teachers specifically, not everybody. My solution would be to manipulate the formulae; if you're anyway having separate formula entries for Teachers, Rivals and Underlings, then there's no particular reason to keep the formulas for Teachers and Rivals the same. So what you'd do with Teachers is, make them roll Resistance+Clarity. That would mean that Teachers will always roll at least one die more than the player, which is pretty sensible. And with more experienced (more Resistance) characters Teachers become more scary, too, which is a good thing.

By the by, now that I think of it: I think there's no reason for having five classes of NPCs. Or rather, I think you'll improve the readability of the rules if you group them into "occultists" and "others", and emphasize the common features within the two classes first, and the differences only second. But that's another topic.

Excellent and thought-provoking suggestions. Thank you. I was thinking in circles.

Victor, Remko, Eva, what can you tell me about how Direction played in your two sessions? Am I right that you only ever spent Power out of intent to kill the other player's character? If the other player was successful in his roll anyway, did you Direct the outcome? Do you think that if you had more Power, or the storylines of your characters were inter-woven more with common NPCs, that you would have spent Power into the scenes of other players out of audience interest in the outcome, or out of creative interest?

Paul

Paul wrote:
Excellent and thought-provoking suggestions. Thank you. I was thinking in circles.

Victor, Remko, Eva, what can you tell me about how Direction played in your two sessions? Am I right that you only ever spent Power out of intent to kill the other player's character? If the other player was successful in his roll anyway, did you Direct the outcome? Do you think that if you had more Power, or the storylines of your characters were inter-woven more with common NPCs, that you would have spent Power into the scenes of other players out of audience interest in the outcome, or out of creative interest?

Your game facilitates gamism.

Tell me about the gamism. Do you feel the other players as expressions of force and power? Do you think strategically about your decisions? Do you think more than one turn ahead? Is the game experience tense? Thrilling?

Paul

Paul wrote:
Your game facilitates gamism.

Tell me about the gamism. Do you feel the other players as expressions of force and power? Do you think strategically about your decisions? Do you think more than one turn ahead? Is the game experience tense? Thrilling?

Paul

Remko,

You are torturing us... (Sarcastic remark at the end)

A player said this? In reference to the slowness of advancement?

Is this what you wanted to know?

Yes, exactly. Thank you.

Paul

I'll chime in on this. The reason you will not spend Power on things like direction is simply that it will make you that much more vulnerable to other player's intentions to kill you, without giving an appropriate benefit. Remember that everything you do against occultists - and you need to be doing quite a bit of that - gives the other player the opportunity to try and kill you with Power. Better make sure you have enough in reserve!

So what you need to do to make people spend power on things like survival is simply to make it non-necessary to have a load of Power in order to survive. I believe that my suggestion in the "Tragedy of the Commons" thread actually does this: if you can only be killed when you try to impose a Status Change on another player character, then it is in your hands when your character is at risk. So you don't ever have to build up Power in order to survive; it only becomes important to survival when you are outright attacking the other players.

Then, if you somehow strengthen the role of the SIS, taking directorial Power actually becomes a pretty great thing to do.

Something to think about: suppose that every session has a smaller story arc. All the occultists are after something (have this be thought up by the GM), and if anyone actually obtains it, he'll get a mechanical benefit that carries over to the next session. This means that (1) every sessions is actually about something, (2) the SIS becomes important, (3) the bigger story of the occultists striving for godhood is slowly generated as a result of playing out these shorter stories.

Obviously, this is still a very vague idea, but I do think it is important. The possibility to ascend to godhood cannot inspire players and create tension when it is clear that this possibilit lies at least 5 session in the future. There should be something more immediate driving the game. And this something should be tied very closely to the SIS (while also helping in the ascension), for reasons Eero made clear.

What you would need to do is to somehow think up a framework to achieve such an 'episode goal' by something other than GM fiat. I can see occultists teaming up with each other and betraying each other here... hm... this idea excites me.

Paul wrote:
Remko,

You are torturing us... (Sarcastic remark at the end)

A player said this? In reference to the slowness of advancement?