Context: The real people.

I’ve been chatting a bit with Kaare (Negligent) about RPG theory. He and I are two of the more theory-interested tabletop gamers in Norway. When I heard he was designing a game, and I was going to Stavanger (where he lives) for X-mas, I decided to ask whether we could do some playtesting. He agreed. I’d never met him before, so I didn’t know what to expect.

So Kaare’s this nice guy with some military background, while I’m an (ex-)pacifist with Opinions about all things military. Since there was no beer involved, and this was the first time we met, I managed to STFU about all that. But since his game, Descent, is all about squads of marines going into alien-infested areas to obtain mission objectives, it’s relevant for my experience of the game.

We met his crowd, who are all cool. After the game, we had no time for chat, which sucked, but is just how it is a few days before Christmas when people are visiting in-laws, working, have new babies etc. In the car home, Kaare told me not to be afraid to hurt his feelings when I posted the Actual Play, so I won’t. (Hey K, your grandma’s ass looks like Dubya!)

Pre-play / context: Military stuff

The game is heavy with military jargon. It’s also very gung-ho. I have no idea what stuff like “CQB” means, only vaguely remember what “support” means in a military sense (hint: it’s not about sympathizing with others’ feelings), etc. And the few references to Iraq etc that are dropped by the players don’t surprise me. I feel a bit weird about playing a military man, and consider playing a low-key or reluctant character to test the waters, but hey, it’s role-playing, I don’t have time for mediocre play, and I decide to go for it. So I play a recon guy, with the “Code” Semper Fi. (Your code determines what sort of – mostly problematic – behaviour gets you extra Story Tokens; Story Tokens are used to get bonuses on rolls in conflicts). I’m always the first one in, and just want to push ahead.

Two things I wanted during play: A handbook of military/genre jargon, and a short description of what my function would be in a squad. (Simple stuff like: “RECON: When entering a new area, use your sensors to check for aliens.”)

Play: Making trouble is fun and dangerous

So when our squad lands on planet X, I just disappear into the snow and say: “This way.” When my squad leader tries to contact me to get me to pull back, I pretend I can’t hear him. This way, I force my squad into dangerous territory with no proper preparation, and – of course - there’s alienses. The interaction between myself and the squad leader is pretty cool, because our Codes are opposed:

Now, before you all go “fuckhead!”, here’s the thing. In Descent, you’re supposed to make trouble. It earns you Story Tokens; for yourself if you only get yourself into trouble, for the whole squad if it gets everyone into trouble. So everyone got points for that one.

How-ever. It’s a bit of a balancing act. Because there were times I felt like making more trouble, but didn’t, because I didn’t want a) the whole game to deteriorate into absurdity and b) people to thing I was a shithead. If you break the flow of a story too much, you’re either doing slapstick, or you’re annoying the audience. How can you help players walk the line between escalating for more tension, and just slowing down play?

In the game, it’s also not always that easy to know the game effects of your trouble-making. It’s all negotiated, mostly between the GM and the player introducing the trouble. So sometimes, we get one story token for meeting some aliens we would have met anyway; sometimes, we get one story token for deciding that we’re carrying a tracking bug and all the aliens know exactly where we are. Descent is pretty oriented towards resource management and risk balancing, which means you need to know approximately how a decision to make trouble will affect the game, mechanically.

Should the game continue to keep this “grey zone” where fiction manipulation affects game mechanics/bonuses? It’s mostly based on fortune-in-the-middle, but had some fortune-at-the-end bits in actual play.

Play: Stakes

In mission objectives, stakes tended to be one-sided. “If you find the ship’s log, you get this and this bonus. If not, you don’t”. Like a lot of people (esp Paka) have pointed out, play is more fun if losing a stake makes for interesting play as well. “If not, that means the aliens find it and do such and such, and you can get a new, but harder mission objective”.

Most of the time, the aliens’ intent was “rip their heads off”. This was one of the points where it seemed like the author (hey, third person, look, I’m a pro) hadn’t made up his mind: Is this game to be a tactical exercise, or more of a narrative-forming system (which isn’t the same as a narrativist game). What kicks, exactly, do you want players to look for and get out of the game?

What’s the game about?

It seemed to me to be mainly about this:
- Taking risks in order to achieve your objectives.

So things to think about would be:
- Should the risks be calculated or not? If not, who decides success – i. e. how much GM fiat is there?
- What’s the distribution of risk-introducing authority? Obviously, players are expected to make their own problems and pump up the adversity. The system says how bad the aliens get, when to roll for infestation etc. But what is the GM’s role in deciding/introducing risk?
- If I were to GM this game, I’d want to be able to escalate and really push the players. “So you think these aliens are going to be a pushover. You’re probably right. But THIS die says one of them is telepathic, THIS die says you were just thinking about how little ammo you had left, and oh, THIS die says that ladder you’re climbing is very close to a dangling electrical cable. Now what?”

One of the main decisions, I believe, is whether it’s going to be all up to the players to introduce new adversity or not. I’d love to hear Kaares comments on this!

The scene I liked the mostest

We entered a new area: The Crash Site. Along the way, the GM had some evil powers (I forget why), and was allowed to give us a hard time. So we’re walking along a glacier, and there’s a huge crevasse in front of us, with a crane truck (if that’s what it’s called) next to it. We’ve got a civilian, Leroy, with us. I check sensors: Aliens behind us. Since I’d introduced the tracer earlier, they knew exactly where we were, and were running to get us.

So what’s at stake? The GM said it wasn’t really interesting whether we could blast one and one alien – what’s at stake is more like: Can we get across before they get us? I suggest to C. who plays “Animal” that we can lower the crane and swing it in a semi-circle, shoving all the aliens into the crevasse. C. agrees that would be cinematically cool, but there’s some talk about how the crane is perhaps too slow, and the group decides to go for something else: We extend the crane across the crevasse and run over it. Then we come up with more: The crane isn’t all that long – we have to drive the crane truck towards the crevasse, run up the crane, and jump over just as the truck topples into the crevasse. But we’re not satisfied yet. We split the problem in two: We also need to make sure the driver can jam the gas pedal and get up the crane without getting caught by the aliens. Now we’re talking!

I narrate how I’m standing way out on the crane (I’m always ahead, remember – “Semper Fi”), slipping on the icy metal. (I can do this without risk, because what’s at stake isn’t “Will Beer Money be able to keep his footing”). C., who’s in the drivers’ cabin, makes his roll (after some story token burning), and his character Animal runs up the crane. The aliens are after us. The squad leader, Pyro, played by O., has the civilian with him. O. realizes he’s in trouble: The civilian will give him a severe die penalty, and he’s not that good a jumper to begin with. E. volunteers: His character, Joker, will help the civilian. Pyro makes his jump – so does Joker, with some trouble.

Why I liked this? We were piling up trouble for ourselves, making up details. We decided what sort of rolls we wanted to make – splitting the whole conflict into two: More rolls! I could really see the scene taking place, it was dramatic and cool, the characters were all doing cool stuff that made them come alive. The players were bouncing ideas off each other, having fun just piecing it all together and rolling with it. Like when you’re playing squash, and just keeping the ball going for a long time; when the game flows. I love flow.

Other playtest comments:

Who narrates what when? Clearer rules! Who says what in an exchange, at what point? Who decides how the alien gets blasted when you roll 5 successes? Who narrates how it happened?

We were 4 players. I don’t know if the game has rules for what to do with less or fewer players, but I suspect it’d change the play balance a bit. What would a one-on-one be like? (In fact, what would SOLO play be like?)

You’re allowed to spend story tokens after seeing your roll. That’s cool! We had an exchange where I rolled three dice, failed, spent another token, got one more success but still not enough, spent another token, didn’t get that last success I needed, two more players chipped in, finally – success! This should definitely be tied in with narration – something like PTA’s chase rules; GM narrates each failed die, player each success, or something.

Stuff I wanted on the character sheet, or on a reference sheet:
- How to calculate secondary attributes.
- What attributes affect what rolls.
- What order to roll stuff in (positioning, shooting stuff etc).
- Basic loadout list – preferably printed on the character sheet, with a checkbox next to each item, to indicate whether you’re carrying that item or not.

War

Here's a general thing. I feel I have to talk about it wrt this game, although it doesn't necessarily reflect on the specific group. I'm not really talking that much about Kaare, C., O. and E. here.

I'm uncomfortable with war stories. The thing I'm the most unfomfortable with, is that people I know who have done (very) active service like these stories a lot. They love to watch WWII movies, they subscribe to "Soldier of Fortune", they use military jargon in everyday situations, they say stuff like "the best time in my life is when I'm on a mission".

What makes me uncomfy is that I don't know why they do that. It seems like on the one side, they have direct experience with guns & conflicts; on the other hand, they like fictionalized, romanticized, simplified war. Descent has no moral gray zones, except possibilities for in-squad conflicts. Aliens are to be killed, because they're evil and kill people. There's no war prisoners, no opponents who could be right, no reason to doubt why you're in there. Simple. War stories are mostly about the squad, hanging tight, taking a bullet for your friends. It's about being part of a team.

I have no experience with war. But from what I've read and heard, being a part of a team is the worst part of a war - for everyone else. Being a part of a team in a crisis means you're extremely susceptible to group-think, extreme ideologies, following authority (or team loyalty) blindly, losing perspective.

Perhaps romancing this is a safe way to get the team bonding kicks without the real risks? I don't know. I feel like somebody's mom. "But couldn't they do that in a nicer way? Does it all have to be so violent?" Or, rather: Do all stories about team bonding in wartime have to be about U. S. Marines? From where I stand, that's a group I really don't want to identify with.

Back to the game at hand. What would Descent be like if it were about forgotten warriors, like Russians in WWII? About past enemies, like the Vietnamese? About fantasy wars - something from the Empire of the Petal Throne?

Thanks Matthijs...

After the game/post analysis.
My inital impression as we packed up the game was that something in the game was broken. This hesitation, this lack of clear narration rights that Matthijs speaks of and ambivalence of the effect of complications (as it is called in game) all this made me scratch my head. It pissed me off, 'cause I thought I had it nailed.
Then in the car, on the way to work a few, too short, hours later, it struck me.
I was trying to build a narrativist (or maybe it really is narrative forming game) with sim mechanics. Light bulbs where flashing all over the place, and then I got to work.
I realised I had built a sim-Aliens the movie game or more accurately I had built Sim Aliens vs Predator, the first person shooter PC-game RPG.
DOH.
But it is salvageable.

Pregame Jitters.
I was pleasantly surprised when Matthijs asked me if we were going to play a game together this Christmas, and since we've often fought on the same side on the northern front (and yes Matthijs I know you hate that metaphor) I looked forward to it. But it was a bit daunting to. Shit it was Matthijs, a guy whose opinion I respect, and a guy who've had one RPG published (as far as I know one of two), and one board game just going to the printers. And to boot he knows what I am talking about when I speak of what I want from this game.

Then in the car he tells me he has Opinions about all things military. And I keep rattling about how I regret not going for an officer career. I'm amazed he managed to STFU as he kindly puts it.

Now to his comments.

Lets start with what the game is about.
I began with Troy's big three. But somewhere I lost my way it seems.
The game is about a group of Marines  . . .in a deteriorating situation.
Nah, doesn't cover it.

Matthijs wrote: It seemed to me to be mainly about this:
- Taking risks in order to achieve your objectives.

What’s the distribution of risk-introducing authority? Obviously, players are expected to make their own problems and pump up the adversity. The system says how bad the aliens get, when to roll for infestation etc. But what is the GM’s role in deciding/introducing risk?

If I were to GM this game, I’d want to be able to escalate and really push the players. “So you think these aliens are going to be a pushover. You’re probably right. But THIS die says one of them is telepathic, THIS die says you were just thinking about how little ammo you had left, and oh, THIS die says that ladder you’re climbing is very close to a dangling electrical cable. Now what?”

How can you help players walk the line between escalating for more tension, and just slowing down play?

This way, I force my squad into dangerous territory with no proper preparation, and – of course - there’s alienses.

Who narrates what when? Clearer rules! Who says what in an exchange, at what point? Who decides how the alien gets blasted when you roll 5 successes? Who narrates how it happened?

You’re allowed to spend story tokens after seeing your roll. That’s cool! We had an exchange where I rolled three dice, failed, spent another token, got one more success but still not enough, spent another token, didn’t get that last success I needed, two more players chipped in, finally – success! This should definitely be tied in with narration – something like PTA’s chase rules; GM narrates each failed die, player each success, or something.

I was trying to build a narrativist (or maybe it really is narrative forming game) with sim mechanics.

How can you help players walk the line between escalating for more tension, and just slowing down play?

Can these be done rules wise, or will it become contrite and be best left to advice?

I see where you are getting at. Funny, same stuff went through my head last night.

Here's how the new Complication rules, or Risk Management look.
A story token buys a victory on any test.
A story token lets a MP take part in a conflict that he originally wasn't a part in. e.g. O. helps C. fight an alien that C. was facing alone.

At any time when loosing a conflict the Marine Player (MP) may claim a complication. He retains narration rights and gets to narrate how he wins the conflict. He must however include a "yes, but" element. e.g. Beermoney makes the jump across the crevasse, but he barely makes it, his gun tumbling into the deep.

A MP may complicate any conflict or scene. This is done by him suggesting the complication and how many Story Tokens he is to gain from this complication. He also get to choose whether it is an immediate or if it is a long term complication. e.g. an immediate complication is Animal falling through an hole in the floor leaving him alone with an alien, a longterm complication is the tracer bug on his uniform.
He gains the story tokens, and narrates the complication.
The difference is that everytime the longterm complication enters play, the MP gets more story tokens.
There is a caveat.
For every story token gained this way, long or short term, the GM also get a similar number of story tokens.
These can either buy victories, temporary alien upgrades and numbers or in simple conflicts increase the obstacle.
When initially given the MP may convert these story token into aliens in direct combat with his marine like the Animal example above.
The GM is free to use these at any stage.
The bidding back and forth is narrate as we discussed earlier

I'll be changing the Codes a bit, and come up with something to challenge the personal side of the characters. Maybe an almagation of these two.

Oh and the Alien Evolution and Points of No Return mechanic still stands, just slightly modded.

The characters are greatly simplified to eliminate all that unnecessary math.

Merry Christmas. . . .  again.

I really like what I see. I've liked the idea since the first thread (and also MikeSands version of this idea, Badass Space Marines), and have been thinking a simple system of my own for this kind of game. But it seems that propably won't need my own system. Maybe I just tweak it a little to meet my needs, after you have finished it. :-)

-Antti Luukkonen