At I-Con, Luke, Dro, Mayuran, Nathan and Thor made a game, while watching a terrible movie.  I listened, and remembered.  Here it is.  You should totally play it, and tell us how it works for you.  There's been very varied results just in the playtests that we did at the convention itself.  I want to hear what other people do with it.

Death Stakes is played as follows:  One player is the GM and everyone else is just ... players.  'cuz it's not one of those hippie games.

The GM describes a very dangerous situation:  "The Fellowship defeated the cave trolls, and now there's goblins coming out of the stonework, and they're running and running."  Then he uses one of the two key phrases:  "Now ... how does someone die?"

One of the players steps up to narrate how people die.  The narration should be a totally cool way for the person to die, not something lame.  "The goblin surround them.  Gandalf's staff is blazing with light, the only beacon in the sea of milling evil.  Gimli shouts defiance, raises his axe, and leaps into the horde.  He takes wound after wound as he cuts a path for the fellowship ... finally he falls, spitting blood, and they must leave him behind as they flee."

Then the GM uses the second ritual phrase.  He rolls his eyes and says "Aaaactuallly," and then explains what happens instead so that nobody dies.  This narration should also be very cool, and should link in to the next high-danger situation.  "Aaaactually, Gimli is about to leap into the goblin horde when there's this huge boom!  The goblins all freeze, then look off down the great hall, where flames are starting to rise.  Then the goblins all freakin' scatter.  The fellowship is alone to face the oncoming threat.  'What is that?' Aragorn asks, and Gandalf says 'A Balrog ... a monster of the old world.  RUN!'  And they're running, trying to get out before the Balrog catches them."

And then the GM repeats the initial key phrase:  "Now, how does someone die?"

Play continues until one of the following end-game conditions:

• A player narrates something lame and the GM accepts the lame death.  "Sam trips on his own shoelaces and breaks his neck."  "Fine.  Let's play something else."  Players lose.
• A player narrates something so cool the GM accepts the cool death.  "Gandalf says 'Fly, you fools!' and is pulled into the abyss."  "Works for me."  Players win.
• The GM narrates something so appalling that the players physically assult him.  "Then the Balrog raises his fifty foot sword of flame and plunges it into Frodo's heart."  "Aaaactually, Frodo is wearing his mitril armor, so ... ack!  ack!  Stop!  Get off me!"  Everybody wins.

I just wanted to say that I had loads of fun playing this for the very short time I was able to (then again, it's not something that requires a lot of time), and would totally want to see what else Tony has in mind for his "RPG exercise plan".

-- Ben

Death Stakes is teh awesome.

Here's a neat thought, that goes along with the whole "exercise plan" thing. Winning or losing the game is entirely up to the GM's opinion - unless the players walk. It's a neat illustration of the stark reality of illusionist/GM fiat resolution systems.

Nathan wrote:
Winning or losing the game is entirely up to the GM's opinion - unless the players walk.

Delicious!

I want to play this game with some of the friends I'm going out (former roleplayers). I'm sure they will like it a lot, but they will surely begin to add a turn system for the right to narrate a death, a point system to track successes and failures (whatever they mean), victory conditions and so on, until they destroy the game itself.

Arturo

Well, "walking out" is pretty loosly defined. In my view, cock-punching totally counts.

Arturo, we actually talked about putting some kind of token/bidding system in, but Tony sez that it's not necessary. There is beauty in simplicity.

Cite your sources, Tony: It was Best of the Best 2.

Death Stakes is also the official -- and ONLY -- game in which you can play COMMANDO .

Death Stakes is also rated GV for Gay Violence. It fully supports an oily, muscular sheen for accurate depiction of man on man violence.

-L

abzu wrote:
Death Stakes is also rated GV for Gay Violence. It fully supports an oily, muscular sheen for accurate depiction of man on man violence.

-L

Well, for what it's worth, I think that while the idea of Death Stakes was certainly fostered by the goofy and stupid violence in that movie, the game works much better when players aren't seeking that dynamic, but rather are trying to tell a good action story.

To my mind, if you're going for satire then you are distancing yourself from two of the key lessons of the game:

• That everything is better when the stakes are high
• And that being saved by fiat sucks even if the GMs narration is a million times better than your narration, because it's not yours.

But this is what playtest is for.  I'd like to hear the experiences of people who are coming to the ruleset as written, without the preconception of the inspiring source material.

Wow.

This game totally puts together several things I wouldn't think would place nice and makes them work.    Key hinge to this game? Opportunity for player input from the start.  I need to play this.

Chris

TonyLB wrote:
Well, for what it's worth, I think that while the idea of Death Stakes was certainly fostered by the goofy and stupid violence in that movie, the game works much better when players aren't seeking that dynamic, but rather are trying to tell a good action story.

To my mind, if you're going for satire then you are distancing yourself from two of the key lessons of the game:

• That everything is better when the stakes are high
• And that being saved by fiat sucks even if the GMs narration is a million times better than your narration, because it's not yours.

if anyone is interested in the CANON SETTING - here is the cover art.

mtiru wrote:
if anyone is interested in the CANON SETTING - here is the cover art.

I think we agreed on GV rating of 108%, no?

No, that was just that our own GV dropped for a little bit. It racheted back up to 110% when the man-grapes hit table, though. No pun intended.

Callan, the point of the game is to hilight the (IMO dysfunctional) nature of hidden all-GM fiat as a resolution system. It's not really a RPG, its more a "gaming exercise" that you play in order to warm up, or learn something about how RPGs work. That's "straight play" of Death Stakes. Satirical play, on the other hand, is just to celebrate awful movies.

Callan,

It's not about suffering- it's a game about buy-in.  If you sell a good enough death scene, the GM accepts and you win.  Otherwise, the GM has to come up with a good enough not-death scene so that everyone still wants to play.

Instead of simply "oops, your character's dead, go sit in the corner", what's at stake of the game is that death means the game is over OR, the GM being lame means the game is over.  In other words- everyone has to step up or everyone "sits in the corner" (or in reality- goes and does something else fun instead).

And, since the game is explicitly about characters dying, why would you get deeply invested?

Chris

The first rule of Death Stakes is that you do not talk about Death Stakes.

The second rule of Death Stakes is that you do not talk about Death Stakes.

Seriously, it's something that has to be witnessed first-hand to be truly understood.

-- Ben

It's a game to encourage Narration and Competition.

In it you have to be able to come up with a good narration, something appropriate and intriguing.
Then the other side tries to one-up you!

Great before playing CSI games(My new term, Competitive Story Interaction Games!) or things like Baron Munchmausen, on drugs!

Thunder_God wrote:
It's a game to encourage Narration and Competition.

Thought. I'll try and playtest it next week, and bugger all if I won't post a blow-by-blow playtest report!

Bankuei wrote:
Callan,

It's not about suffering- it's a game about buy-in.  If you sell a good enough death scene, the GM accepts and you win.  Otherwise, the GM has to come up with a good enough not-death scene so that everyone still wants to play.

Instead of simply "oops, your character's dead, go sit in the corner", what's at stake of the game is that death means the game is over OR, the GM being lame means the game is over.  In other words- everyone has to step up or everyone "sits in the corner" (or in reality- goes and does something else fun instead).

And, since the game is explicitly about characters dying, why would you get deeply invested?

Callan,

Read my reply again- it's not winning or losing, it's not victory that's the point- it's buy-in.  The one-ups-manship is based on impressing each other.  That's where the engagement happens (or the game ends).  I don't see how it necessarily translates to masochism, since nothing says that characters dying has to be anything of the sort of painful.

Chris

Chris,

Okay, reread it and I think that constitutes a third way the game could go in addition to the two I listed previously. Though I wish you wouldn't use the words 'step up' or 'win', as it's confusing. I've never won chess by impressing the other person, for example.

I think it can translate to masochism, if that 'impress the GM' doesn't interest the player.

Attempted actual play

I attempted to play it with my six year old son, using star wars as the base. This didn't work out well...he just started to repeat the 'deaths' that happened in star wars, like C3PO being blown up or Han getting frozen. He got confused by my changing things to 'Actually, they are alive'. Although on greater reflection, it shows the technique those movies and many more use...'Oh no, he's dead/frozen in carbonite...oh thank god, he's alive, but he's above a 'digest you for a thousand years' worm pit.

I described it to my partner. She wasn't interested in playing, but could see the 'oh thank god their alive' angle. Though she persisted that there should be a 'There's a quest they can do'. When I pushed for who 'they are', she meant the player...something they could do to bring themselves out of it.

Although I wish conversations like tha were recorded...it's hard to both grasp the concepts involved and mentally record a log of the conversation.

Callan wrote:
This didn't work out well...he just started to repeat the 'deaths' that happened in star wars, like C3PO being blown up or Han getting frozen.

TonyLB wrote: What you're describing ("And then C-3PO gets blown into tiny little bits ... he's dead!"  "Aaaactually, Chewbacca finds the pieces in the garbage and puts them back together and he's fine") seems like standard game-play to me.  Do you feel that it worked out poorly because you were expecting something different than that?  Or was it because of your son's confusion when you diverged from canon?  Or something else?

Beat you to it, I'm afraid.  Though I'd certainly be thrilled if people want to set up a second one.

Having read that, do any of the players actually say 'Bond is dead' at the end of their narration?

Hey guys,

This thread is starting to fragment. Let's focus it or call it done.

Best,
Ron

Sounds good.  If I understand the new forum structure correctly, folks who intend to playtest the game in particular venues, or who have actual playtesting results to post, should do it in their own threads.

This sounds remarkably like the near-game "Fortunately... Unfortunately" that we used to play at Primary School. One person sets the scene, then play continues with one player (or team) attempting to save and help the protagonist (Fortunately) and the other player or team trying to kill or hinder him (Unfortunately).

For example, "Fortunately, Ted's shoelace snags a flagpole and stops his fatal fall!"
"Unfortunately the flagpole is five feet from the ground... and Ted is six-two..."

It used to run for hours - days, even - but then we were six years old and any attempt to really bring the game to a conclusion tended to be frowned upon.

Sounds like a Drill to me, character attachment, Giam fiat and coming up with cool narration?

I like to think of it as a Warmup.