I have posted a revised playtest rules text, with the following key changes:

1. Setting creation is streamlined, and no longer includes the creation of any NPCs. And the term "plaga" has been set aside.

2. No longer do players have the option of framing scenes. On his turn a player chooses what NPC type he wants and the GM frames the scene. As per usual, the GM can invent new Nobodies and Teachers, and other player characters start as Rivals, but Victims, Underlings, and NPC Rivals must have been created previously through status changes. {This is me killing my darlings, because with the passage of time and the input of playtests I'm realizing that 1) as GM I enjoy having ownership of all NPCs, 2) I've jumped through a lot of hoops design-wise in the effort to incentivize player scene framing, both because Danielle came up with the mechanic and also because I really like its cleverness, and 3) my various mechanics actually weren't very successful at incentivizing player scene framing and I can make the game leaner and better by eliminating them.}

3. Traits are gone and Eero's suggestion of a number that just increments every time the non-occultist NPC is framed into a scene is realized as the Purpose stat. Additionally, an inspiration yesterday afternoon for mechanics to manage tension for non-occultist NPCs has been realized by a new stat called Agency and a reworking of the Questions mechanics as Congruence.

I'm enthusiastic about the potential for #3 to drive player interest in the non-occultist NPCs by managing and exposing tension between various outcomes:

1. The NPC being unremarkable in his life of successes and failures against conflict resolutions and status changes.
2. The NPC getting his Congruence answered, giving closure to his story.
3. The NPC thwarting the occult ambitions of a player character.

But it's uncharted design territory, so I'm by no means sure what I've come up with will achieve the desired effect.

Thoughts/reactions requested. Does it seem worth playtesting, or are there apparent flaws that I'm just not seeing? Thanks again.

Paul

It does seem worth playtesting, but I think that in both Agency and Purpose, you've focused too hard on how the occultist is penalized if they lose against NPCs with these stats. There is no reward associated with them, thus every reason in the world for the players to steer their occultists away from established NPCs (i.e. those w/ Agency & Purpose) and try to victimize anonymous NPC after anoynmous NPC. I think you should gain as much Power as the Purpose of a Nobody, not just one point. Then, the players WANT and DON'T WANT to involve the established NPCs.

Okay, just reread Agency and I see that splitting the die pool makes it easier to beat, so I can see where that is useful.

I also see that vesting full scene framing with the GM means that the player can't entirely choose which NPCs he interacts with. The GM will continually be throwing the established NPCs in the players' faces. Which is somewhat like the villian being continually foiled by the heroes again and again.

But let's playtest and see how it works.

It looks good. (Though you should go through the text, especially the last part, and remove all talk of players framing their own scenes.) In fact, I am excited at the changes made since my last playtest, and I will get a new one together.

Hi Paul,

Checked up your changes and they look like a real big step up. Can't wait to try to playtest it again with one of my groups.

Yours,

Remko

Last evening we had a usage of the new Agency and Congruence mechanics at the end of the first session of a planned multi-session playtest.

Tim Kleinert's character is an african man in Hiroshima during the time immediately following the bomb. In an earlier scene he'd met a mother sitting on the front steps of a collapsed building, cradling and singing to her infant child, oblivious, of course, to the fact of her baby being dead. Tim had made her a Victim by accusation of bad mothering and taking her "baby" into his own custody, despite her pleas. Subsequent events, however, had saddled him with a high Resistance and relegated him to Underling status under Scott Knipe's character (who is himself a seven month old child).

So Tim's character's last scene of the evening was chosen by Scott: a Nobody scene. I framed a confrontation with a Japanese soldier from an earlier scene, a pointed gun and the demand of an explanation. "Where did you get that baby?" Tim used Imagination to Dali-ize the landscape in an effort to freak the soldier out, and was successful. So the scene could continue. With the soldier, if Tim chose to pursue him, or with Scott's character or the mother of the dead child, who were both present in my initial scene framing. Tim wanted the Victim, rather than Scott or the soldier, so we discussed and established a conflict. During the confrontation with the soldier, Tim had dropped the dead baby. And the mother had scurried up and snatched it. "No one will ever take you from me again." Tim found himself pointing the soldier's abandoned pistol at the mother. "I told you not to touch him. Give him to me." Using Voice and Rage, Tim would be rolling three dice. And with his high Resistance, I'd be rolling seven. So he creates a Congruence with the woman. "Will she ever see her husband (a loved one) again?" And sets her Agency at two. So I roll a pool of five non-Agency dice and two Agency dice. Tim wins against the Agency dice, but not the rest. So it's a failure for Tim (no Power gained) and the resolution must answer her question. She walks toward him, puts her hand on the pistol. "You'll never take him from me." And squeezes just hard enough to depress the trigger through Tim's own grip, firing a bullet through her cradled "baby" and herself.

So yeah, it's just one test. But I'm pretty geeked.

Paul

I think we'll have some productive discussion here.

Tim suggested after the game that he felt like he was watching the NPCs' stories unfold, rather than helping to shape those stories.  And maybe it was this moment that made him feel that way, because when it came time to answer the Victim's question (as posed by Tim when he created the Congruence), I suggested that the obvious answer was no, she'll never see her loved ones again, because Tim's character is going to kill her, and you riffed on that, narrating her suicide.  Of course, I thought it was spiffy, and I told you on the ride home that I didn't have the same reaction that Tim did.  But maybe that's because I had input where he didn't, even though it was his scene.  Tim, any thoughts on this?

I think the new rules are good.  If it turns out the NPCs are dropping out of the story too quickly they made need to be tweaked, but so far I like how they work and l like what they do.  So long as the NPCs are around long enough to make an impact, I think the problems of player investment can be solved within the current structure of the game (and without making it a narration-trading game).

Best,
Scott

hardcoremoose wrote:
Tim suggested after the game that he felt like he was watching the NPCs' stories unfold, rather than helping to shape those stories.  And maybe it was this moment that made him feel that way, because when it came time to answer the Victim's question (as posed by Tim when he created the Congruence).