First session of Cold City with the Durham 3 last night - me, Clinton, Remi, and Andy.  Yes, that's four - we invited Andy to join us because Cold City won't really work with two players.  Plus he's really nice.

So we've got Dr. Louis Trepper, a frail French psychologist interested in the mechanics of fear, Nicholas Bartlett, a dangerously amoral American ex-OSS "Cowboy", and Sergei Denisovich Yezhov, an obdurate and poker-faced MGB tool - or is he?

Cold City's core mechanic is very similar to Sorcerer, and I spent some time going back and forth with Malcolm, so I felt I had a good handle on it.  We're probably playing for three sessions.

We started the game with a bunch of STs (Specialeinsatztruppen, Special Purpose Troops, basically science zombies) in a bombed out sewage treatment plant.  I had envisioned a straight-up monster hunt, but Clinton and Remi both had reasons to recover technology from the heads of the walking corpses, so it wasn't as pyrotechnic as I had envisioned - they were never in any danger, really, and the whole scene came off a bit lackluster.

I'd made up some memoranda, giving each of them some specific goals from their own chains of command, and we all agreed to keep these to ourselves, even though player character hidden agendas are known to all.  This added a little frisson of mystery and distrust which was very pleasant.  I gave these out during a briefing, in which they were assigned to recover some arcano-tech junk from a pair of unscrupulous American black marketeers, Haensel and Mueller.  These guys were real dudes yanked from the steaming pages of history.

There's a second thread, which involves a British RPA officer named Feld who is killed in a mysterious way, ostensibly by people he owed money to.  There are dark hints of debt and badness, but nothing concrete in session one.

The characters immediately form lines of trust - it's France and Russia against America.  Remi, playing the American Bartlett, goes off and makes contact with Guido Zimmer, an aristocratic ex-SS officer who helped broker the German surrender in Italy in May 1945 (another real dude).  They do some verbal sparring and make enemies of each other.  That'll return next session with a vengeance.

Clinton and Andy, whose characters share socialist common feeling, shake down a STASI officer they met earlier and get the dirt on Haensel and Mueller, and the shenanigans begin.  There's some wheeling and dealing, threats and counter-threats, and Dr. Trepper convinces the Russian to actually leave the hangar where they are negotiating with the black marketeers for a few minutes.  Trepper tries to turn the pair to work for French intelligence.  He arranges a clandestine meeting and promises them money.

Bartlett tracks Mueller down himself later, and we learn that they served in OSS together,  Remi wastes no time and beats Mueller senseless, prepared to kill him if he doesn't spill what he knows abotu secret technology.  He wins a huge conflict and Mueller caves.

Two thirds of the way through the session all three characters are working their own angles, lying to each other, and calling in dodgy favors.  Trust is fraying.  At some point the RPA digs up a ducted fan flying saucer buried beneath the tarmac of RAF Gatow, a little morsel Mueller gave up to save his life.

The game went fine, but it wasn't spectacular.  The system didn't help us, really, which was a problem.  Most successes were slight (one over the opposition), so few consequences came into play.  Clinton's Dr. Trepper had exactly zero dice in most physical conflicts (Action 1, plus a negative trait), which was awkward.  I found myself talking more and rolling less.  I don't like arbitrarily assigning challenge as the GM, and in any unopposed conflict I have to do just that.  Trust didn't come into play mechanically very much.  I'll be thinking about ways to correct these issues for next week.  I'm hoping the rest of the crew will weigh in with their impressions. 

Hi Jason,

Idea, off the top of my head ... use lots of so-called unopposed rolls, against lots of dice. Maybe even standardize the latter at "always either one or six dice" or something like that. Mechanically, the effect would mean lots more consequences.

This suggestion runs a little counter to my own habits. Like you, I prefer character-character based rolls even when the characters are far away from one another, and one is using a contact-type skill to influence a political decision while the other is facing killers in an alley.

I guess I'm thinking about the role of Demonic Influence in Dogs in the Vineyard, which are basically the same as the (badly-named) "difficulty" dice in some Sorcerer rolls. I found that Vincent's tweak, which was to give it a name the characters would call it and to standardize its amount based on events in the situation, got rid of the whole "unopposed" conundrum. In other words, the answer to the very reasonable question, why roll?, is, because bad luck is perceived as a conflict-of-interest by the characters.

Whereas instead of Demonic Influence, here it could be "the Cold" (ask Clinton what that means in spy terms) or political ambiguity or something else setting-specific. You could even use it as an add-on to character-based rolls, just like Demonic Influence in Dogs.

Best, Ron

Jason wrote:
The game went fine, but it wasn't spectacular.  The system didn't help us, really, which was a problem.  Most successes were slight (one over the opposition), so few consequences came into play.  Clinton's Dr. Trepper had exactly zero dice in most physical conflicts (Action 1, plus a negative trait), which was awkward.  I found myself talking more and rolling less.  I don't like arbitrarily assigning challenge as the GM, and in any unopposed conflict I have to do just that.  Trust didn't come into play mechanically very much.  I'll be thinking about ways to correct these issues for next week.  I'm hoping the rest of the crew will weigh in with their impressions. 

Malcolm wrote:
So, a question for you Jason: did this outcome from the system negatively impact the enjoyment of play around the table?

Oh, and as a note, Malcolm, I just decreed that you always had a single die as a minimum, which fixed Dr. Trepper's problem.  Not a perfect solution but the most obvious one in the moment.

Jason wrote:
Oh, and as a note, Malcolm, I just decreed that you always had a single die as a minimum, which fixed Dr. Trepper's problem.  Not a perfect solution but the most obvious one in the moment.

Clinton brought that up, Jon, and actually chafed a little at the non-Sorcerer bits of the Cold City mechanic, but I really wanted to play it as written, as I understood it, at least at first. 

I had a lot of fun in this session - I'd rate it below "Deep in the Blue," but above most other first sessions we've had as a group.

The system was functional, although I can't help but pick at systems these days, and it had plenty to pick at. The negative trait + attribute of 1 thing is an obvious one, but it wasn't a big deal. My character (who was shot badly by Germans in the war and now has a pronounced limp and walks with a cane) should outright fail at, say, chasing people. The trust mechanic went a lot better than I expected though. As written, you can use it as much as you want, and it's a renewable resource. We did not, however, overuse it.

Ron - I'm with you on "the Cold." The term got used several times, especially at my character's pivotal moment. He's worked his ass off trying to flip these two assholes to French intelligence and then only one shows up for their meeting, and then, after I put the screws to him, rebuffs me. (I rolled 10 dice vs his 4 and lost.) I found myself way out in the cold, and hated it (that is, as a character. As a player, I saw the potential for the future.)

Jason wrote:

Malcolm wrote:
So, a question for you Jason: did this outcome from the system negatively impact the enjoyment of play around the table?

I'd say yes, if only a little, because characters didn't change very much.

Ron wrote:
Whereas instead of Demonic Influence, here it could be "the Cold" (ask Clinton what that means in spy terms) or political ambiguity or something else setting-specific. You could even use it as an add-on to character-based rolls, just like Demonic Influence in Dogs.

Best, Ron

Jason wrote:
Oh, and as a note, Malcolm, I just decreed that you always had a single die as a minimum, which fixed Dr. Trepper's problem.  Not a perfect solution but the most obvious one in the moment.

Hey all: I had fun in this game as well, but I too felt that getting a "Success" (not a partial success) was a pretty damn hard thing to get, statistically. One side or the other has to get REALLY cold dice (or just low rolls on 1-3 dice) to get those full successes. 

Otherwise, I felt that a lot of the setup was incredibly awesome. Jason did some real homework in laying down the scenes, and I could feel Cold War Era Germany come alive around me as we ran through a broken sewage treatment plant, black market, etc.

However, once we finished the "cinematic in media res intro" bit, it started to feel like the AMBER RPG but in a Cold War setting. That is, the players (not just the PCs) are out to get each other, looking for openings to grab resources and backstab (but uncharacteristically being open about it, and also rolling with it when things go south: As what happened when I pretty much said to Clinton, "I'm destablizing the French Intelligence community in Berlin, is that cool?" and Clinton said "Cool. That's what I want to happen." Awesome. That usually doesn't happen in these kinds of games).

I feel a little like we ended the session in a place that the game intends for us to go, but not dwell in; namely, the backstabby place. Kinda like the Mountain Witch, I see that there's gonna be "the quest" or "the mission(s)", and along the way we'll be doing some potentially backstabby things, but if we put more focus in the long run totally on the backstabby and not at all on the quest, then we're probably playing AMBER (or Spione).

I think, related to that point, the reason that we haven't put much use into the trust mechanics is because we really haven't had in-game opportunities to trust each other yet: At the beginning, we did an in media res situation where we were hunting zombie jews in the tunnels of an abandoned sewage plant; there, we had reason to trust each other (though it was too early int he game to do so meaningfully).  Unless we come together again on a Big Op of some kind, we're going to basically going to be shelving the trust mechanics.

I don't think that's really going to happpen, though; It was the first session and all, and we really got in there and set up some awesome conflicts, NPCs, and lines of conflict. So in the next two sessions, it's probably time to get us in a situation where we're forced to work together for a time. Maybe later, when there is more trust, start turning up the heat a little bit: We start receiving specific mission orders to harm or thwart the people that we're built trust with.  I think that will play out over the course of the next few sessions.  But if we all elect next session to, as players, focus more on the individual missions and backstabbery and stuff... well, we'll definitely have a fun time of it, but we'll probably want to shelve Trust and just operate in a "sorta Cold City, sorta PTA" zone, with some good AMBER interfighty play thrown in there.

I can't wait for the next session, to see where things go. I love the Nazi arcanotech stuff, but more than loving that I'm loving the idea of a 'party' together chasing it down half the time, the other half doing the "backstabby" stuff. I'm kinda thinking we need to start building a foundation if we want to enjoy tearing it down.

-Andy

Dude, those weren't zombie jews. Just to, you know, make it clear.

Ahhh, crap, sorry: It was the tattooed arms that threw me off. It really squicked me out (in The Good Way). We'll probably find more about them in the next session, which I'm very much looking forward to.

Thanks!
-Andy

I made the guy a French POW who'd been interned in Dachau, hoping to push Clinton's nationalist buttons. 

I'm really glad you guys are enjoying the game. 

Jason wrote:
Dude, those weren't zombie jews. Just to, you know, make it clear.

My great grandmother survived Dachau.

She was a mathematician and a jew, although brought up Lutheran... married to a Baron who was a physicist, who was totally a prussian christian.  Therefore, she was safe from the culling.    The Baron refused to work on the bomb.  He died of a broken heart in 1943 as he was a die hard pacifist.  The next night the Gestapo arrived at the door and carried my great grandmother to the ovens at Dachau.

Except, she was his secretary and all his notes on atomic theory were in shorthand code. Notes she had transcribed for him. The germans made her translate it, reams and reams of the stuff.  She had only a week of translating left when the Russians rolled through the east gate.

I never met her.  She died before I was born.  This is from a taped interview of my grandmother while floating down the Rhone by a grad student of history.  I never knew this story until I saw that tape about 4 years ago.

My grandmother didn't fall far from the tree.  She married my grandfather, also a german,and a mathematician.  They met in England during the Blitz.  Oddly, it was one of the happiest times in their lives.  Despite being bombed repeatedly by their own countrymen.

WwII has some really fucked up stories...

This was totally off topic.... but since i"m about to go into a campaign of Cold City... it has been foremost in my mind.

I don't really have anything to add, my main gripe about the session came from a decision I made that wasn't in keeping with the tone we were setting, and a related outburst on my part which I'm ashamed of. However, most of my family on my paternal grandfather's side died in the Holocaust, as well. I don't think I've said more than this to Jason or Clinton, but both of them were very, very clear in saying that we would probably be dealing with Jewish (it's a proper noun, guys!) zombies, and asked if that was OK with me. I am, and am prepared to face this as part of the setting, but I really appreciate that I'm gaming with people who would be that considerate of what is, on my part, a fairly personal subject.

That's all I have to say.

Remi wrote:
I don't really have anything to add, my main gripe about the session came from a decision I made that wasn't in keeping with the tone we were setting,

and a related outburst on my part which I'm ashamed of.

Clinton was going to leave my Trust at 1, after I had revealed all my (pertinent) information, including the location of the Saucer under the tarmac. After I had done this I realized I had no material reason to do it, it worked against my assignment, and when Clinton was like, "I still don't trust you," I kind of exasperatedly said, "WHAT?!? I spilled my guts to you!" and he raised his Trust in me. It didn't feel right, and thus I'm ashamed. I should have taken my lumps and played harder towards gaining trust instead of whinging about it.

And that's what I'm going to do next session. Also, I feel like I have a bit of groundwork for a tense relationship with Dr. Trepper next session, now that we've drunkenly revealed stuff to each other. (which was an excellent suggestion for a last scene from Mr. Nixon)

Second session last night and the game is picking up - it felt, as Remi put it "like a first session ought to feel".  Having just watched Germania Anno Zero, I tried to hammer home the desperation, and had kids begging for cigarettes, sad German women willing to do anything for a handful of ration coupons, and a tidal wave of human misery coloring every scene where I could.  I'd made it my goal to put a lot of pressure on their personal agendas while giving them an opportunity to work as a team and build trust if they wanted.  So there was a set-piece involving the exploration of a newly-discovered Nazi lab deep beneath Anhalter Bahnhof that had been sealed since '45, a creepy place with an active but trapped Incursor.  The whole point was to introduce the alienness of Incursors, put the characters at some risk, and give them a chance to get creeped out and work together.  It worked just fine.  We even got ridonkulous and turned out the lights to make it scarier.  Their trust in one another skyrocketed.

To hit personal agendas I just pushed back, introducing the things they cared about in ways they would have issues with.  The Russian wanted to meet up with his brother - I introduced an MGB handler with whom he was tasked with returning said brother to Soviet custody.  The American wanted to stay in Berlin - I had him reassigned to Dayton, Ohio by the dirty American RPA-GC being manipulated by evil nemesis Guido Zimmer.  The Frenchman wanted to find out what happened to Sophie, his lost love - He found out, and he wasn't happy about it.  Clinton's going to have to change his personal agenda, in fact, and I think it's going to go in a dark direction for him.  This is a little problematic, since he'd expressed a desire to have a redemptive story arc for Dr. Trepper, which is now largely out the window.  I see a way forward, but my handling of his personal agenda amy have been a little heavy-handed.

We still had dice issues - successes, with only a few exceptions, were slight. 

It's difficult to integrate non-Action conflicts - I found us playing through Instinct conflicts without rolling dice, and there was only one Reason conflict at all, if I recall correctly.  Maybe this is my weakness as a GM. 

Jason wrote:
The Frenchman wanted to find out what happened to Sophie, his lost love - He found out, and he wasn't happy about it.  Clinton's going to have to change his personal agenda, in fact, and I think it's going to go in a dark direction for him.  This is a little problematic, since he'd expressed a desire to have a redemptive story arc for Dr. Trepper, which is now largely out the window.  I see a way forward, but my handling of his personal agenda amy have been a little heavy-handed.

I'm glad you can see positive directions for your guy, and I can definitely support that.  One of my motivations for the big reveal of Sophie, dead, was to see how you'd handle the temptation to bring her back to a semblance of life, which is totally within your grasp.  I think on some level we miscommunicated about your overall intentions for Dr. Trepper, and I apologize for that. 

I had a great time and found more outlet for my character.  I think playing a revised "I'm Going To Make Your Character Awesome", including "How can I make your character awesome"? was totally needed to cut through some stuff and get us all on the same page of sorts and not flying off in all directions.

Also, I'll just throw this on the table: Retconning? I never have a problem with it, and I don't think a macho attitube need to be taken against it or anything, but if it's a direction that Clinton wasn't interested in going down (or didn't favor it as much as Another Route) then retconning the assassinated person to have been someone else only undoes like 3 minutes of play and might make people more happy.

As it stands, that outcome is ripe with drama for MY dude ("WTF have I done???" When he realizes what that person meant to him), but I'm totally willing to go in another direction if that's what Clinton wants.

Aside (out of curiosity): Do you guys ever retcon? I have this impression that it would be something Never Done, kinda in a macho improv sense (like getting the "Hard Game" at ComedySportz, or the Hard Idea from the audience at the improv-melody-thing). Is that accurate or am I totally misreading?

-Andy

I think we've done very minor retconning, but not much, and not often. 

Andy, thanks for reminding me of another motivation for having Sophie on the slab - reincorporation.  Last week Andy's Russian asked the MGB to "kill a random member of the French intelligence community", which they enthusiastically did.  It brought you and Clinton into indirect conflict, which seemed awesome when I thought it up, but may not play out so amazing in actual fact. 

I'm totally open for rewinding if it'll make the game better.  I've got nothing invested in any particular outcome; I'm just trying to push all your buttons.

Jason wrote:
Andy, thanks for reminding me of another motivation for having Sophie on the slab - reincorporation.  Last week Andy's Russian asked the MGB to "kill a random member of the French intelligence community", which they enthusiastically did.  It brought you and Clinton into indirect conflict, which seemed awesome when I thought it up, but may not play out so amazing in actual fact. 

Jason wrote:
We still had dice issues - successes, with only a few exceptions, were slight. 

It's difficult to integrate non-Action conflicts - I found us playing through Instinct conflicts without rolling dice, and there was only one Reason conflict at all, if I recall correctly.  Maybe this is my weakness as a GM. 

Clinton wrote: The key to narrativist role-playing, I think, is asking what a character will do to achieve his goals. What lengths will one person go to? By eliminating the ability to succeed, you eliminate the ability to see where a character will go to succeed. If Sophie had been in desperate trouble, or maybe she had become, say, the wife of Guido Zimmer, or even the wife of my boss, well, that would have left me with choices as to how to pursue her. (My character was in love with her.) As it is, I can either complete my task easily (hold a funeral) or go all dark and try and use evil Nazi tech to raise her from the dead, but that's just wallowing in depravity, and I'm sick and tired of every game being about being debased.

I can tell you where I will take this, and hopefully, it will work out. I will find out who killed her (I know a Russian did it, recently) and will decide if vengeance is worth it. I will fight to send her remains home to France, and I will search for her child, as I established in my character background that she was a single mother. If I find the child, I will raise it. And I want Louis to find another outlet for his overly romantic notions. There's two women in his life that need saving right now: Varina Meyer, the poor German lady who is a passable look-alike for Sophie, but possibly just a simple lady, and Emma Szabo, who is smart and beautiful and in need, as she is pregnant and the father is dead, but is possibly a war criminal. All of this should give me enough to have an interesting story with lots of choices, and not end up a huge weirdo, which is what I'm trying to avoid, and is what all the pressure in the game seems to be pushing me towards.

Clinton wrote:
I wouldn't retcon a thing. The fact that it emotionally grabbed me, like I, Clinton R. Nixon, was actually really pissed off, is an awesome and good thing. It makes the story between Andy's character and mine great, as I've just given him the thing he's wanted (the location of his brother) and he's just destroyed my life's quest.

The principal problem is that a guy like Dr. Trepper, who is optimized for Reason and Instinct, doesn't get a chance to gain consequences in the areas of his strength, and rarely positive ones at all.  Remi's guy Bartlett is also buffed up in Instinct, IIRC.  I think I have a difficulty identifying conflict moments for those attributes.  Reason conflicts feel like they need to be created and are rarely opposed. 

Malcolm,
I very conciously said, "I'm going to work hard to trust you guys, and earn your trust" at the the beginning of this session. Last session it felt like we were cutting each other's throats at every turn, and thus the trust wasn't coming into play. I was being open with information, and, when it turned out my commanding officer, a creature of a black marketeer, was trying to ship me out, actively tried to recruit Clinton and Andy's character's to my cause. This will make the knife-sticking far, far more brutal and satisfying when it comes down to it (if it does), but it also made the mission more fun, because we were all following each other around, trying to figure out what the heck was going on.

Jason,
Bartlett's buffed in Action. I won that Instinct roll against the kid by luck (I had 2 dice!). I did buff Reason after a big success earlier, but that was temporary. I also had a helluva night last night. I don't think I lost a single conflict, whereas Clinton and Andy both took a ton of damage from the Incursor. I worry that because Action conflicts are so easy to frame, it's easy for me to go into situations where I can just fall back on physicality, and it's more difficult to do that with Reason or Instinct.

Overall, I had a great time, and am on much more solid footing when it comes to what I should be doing and how to interact with the other characters.

Remi wrote:
Malcolm,
I very conciously said, "I'm going to work hard to trust you guys, and earn your trust" at the the beginning of this session. Last session it felt like we were cutting each other's throats at every turn, and thus the trust wasn't coming into play. I was being open with information, and, when it turned out my commanding officer, a creature of a black marketeer, was trying to ship me out, actively tried to recruit Clinton and Andy's character's to my cause. This will make the knife-sticking far, far more brutal and satisfying when it comes down to it (if it does), but it also made the mission more fun, because we were all following each other around, trying to figure out what the heck was going on.

Jason,
Bartlett's buffed in Action. I won that Instinct roll against the kid by luck (I had 2 dice!). I did buff Reason after a big success earlier, but that was temporary. I also had a helluva night last night. I don't think I lost a single conflict, whereas Clinton and Andy both took a ton of damage from the Incursor. I worry that because Action conflicts are so easy to frame, it's easy for me to go into situations where I can just fall back on physicality, and it's more difficult to do that with Reason or Instinct.

Overall, I had a great time, and am on much more solid footing when it comes to what I should be doing and how to interact with the other characters.

Too much TSOY in my diet, sorry about that.

OK, actual play example:  Captain Bartlett storms into Colonel Crossley's office and lays into him for reassigning him to a stateside base.  Remi indicates it is his intention to intimidate him, and Bartlett's a sociopathic nut-job.  I concede that yes, indeed, Crossley is going to be intimidated.  There's no Influence conflict there, although we both feel like there should be, just because it's a rare opportunity for an Influence roll. 

Dr. Trepper is monkeying around with a Nazi arcano-tech artifact that directly relates to his agendas.  Can he figure out its function?  Of course he can, because that is more fun than a brick wall, but we do a Reason roll anyway.  We've never had actively contested Reason rolls, and I'm not sure how they would come up in play. 

Malcolm wrote: Very seldom have I seen an explicit setting out of trust like this, especially when it comes to postively gaining and giving out trust. So, it appear that this made the entire experience much more satisfying for you (looking at botht he trust situation and the overall game session). Would I be correct in thinking this?

Jason wrote:
Too much TSOY in my diet, sorry about that.

OK, actual play example:  Captain Bartlett storms into Colonel Crossley's office and lays into him for reassigning him to a stateside base.  Remi indicates it is his intention to intimidate him, and Bartlett's a sociopathic nut-job.  I concede that yes, indeed, Crossley is going to be intimidated.  There's no Influence conflict there, although we both feel like there should be, just because it's a rare opportunity for an Influence roll. 

Dr. Trepper is monkeying around with a Nazi arcano-tech artifact that directly relates to his agendas.  Can he figure out its function?  Of course he can, because that is more fun than a brick wall, but we do a Reason roll anyway.  We've never had actively contested Reason rolls, and I'm not sure how they would come up in play. 

Session three was last night and we had fun.  Interestingly, the characters have vascillated between free agency and team work - they started out apart in part one, came together in part two, then split up again in part three.  By all accounts they'll return to teamwork for the conclusion next week.

With good players any game can run itself and Cold City is no exception - everybody had powerful motivations and I just tried to either help challenge or help resolve those.  Thus Trepper got a cold-ass lecture on the exingencies of intelligence work and also killed the man he thought responsible for the death of his beloved Sophie (wrong!), Yezhov found his brother (and more than he bargained for), and Bartlett made his move to become King of the Berlin underground. 

Worth noting - Clinton's play experience suffered a little because he resolved his personal hidden agenda - again.  So first it was "find Sophie and either keep her safe or honor her remains", which he did.  Then it was "Punish the dude who killed her", which, to Trepper's knowledge, he also did.  Andy's Russian sold him a bill of goods and persuaded Trepper to kill his MGB handler - convenient for everybody, and a satisfyingly awful scene.  But it leaves Trepper a little directionless at present.  Personal agendas can change fast.

Another thing - Remi won a conflict with nine successes. This is sort of an atom bomb level of victory.  He'd shepherded his resources toward a conflict that was critically important to his guy, and it turned out great, but the possibility of an upward success spiral became apparent.  In play it was really cool - his intention was "I want to own this guy" - this guy being Guido Zimmer, ex-nazi underground kingpin and all around dangerous creep.  So what do nine successes mean?  I decided to take it literally.  Zimmer revealed himself as a deeply kinky submissive and accepted Bartlett as his literal master.  So this scary villain suddenly becomes a complete and utter tool.  I think it was a good move.

Jason wrote:
Worth noting - Clinton's play experience suffered a little because he resolved his personal hidden agenda - again.  So first it was "find Sophie and either keep her safe or honor her remains", which he did.  Then it was "Punish the dude who killed her", which, to Trepper's knowledge, he also did.  Andy's Russian sold him a bill of goods and persuaded Trepper to kill his MGB handler - convenient for everybody, and a satisfyingly awful scene.  But it leaves Trepper a little directionless at present.  Personal agendas can change fast.

Clinton wrote:

Jason wrote:
Worth noting - Clinton's play experience suffered a little because he resolved his personal hidden agenda - again.  So first it was "find Sophie and either keep her safe or honor her remains", which he did.  Then it was "Punish the dude who killed her", which, to Trepper's knowledge, he also did.  Andy's Russian sold him a bill of goods and persuaded Trepper to kill his MGB handler - convenient for everybody, and a satisfyingly awful scene.  But it leaves Trepper a little directionless at present.  Personal agendas can change fast.

It suffered a little because I've had, at my count, two marginal successes (no consequences) and two successes with 1 consequence each total the entire game. This is an epic level of failure.

Jason wrote: Another thing - Remi won a conflict with nine successes. This is sort of an atom bomb level of victory.  He'd shepherded his resources toward a conflict that was critically important to his guy, and it turned out great, but the possibility of an upward success spiral became apparent.  In play it was really cool - his intention was "I want to own this guy" - this guy being Guido Zimmer, ex-nazi underground kingpin and all around dangerous creep.  So what do nine successes mean?  I decided to take it literally.  Zimmer revealed himself as a deeply kinky submissive and accepted Bartlett as his literal master.  So this scary villain suddenly becomes a complete and utter tool.  I think it was a good move.

Remi's dominance of Guido Zimmer didn't alter the game especially, although in the back of my mind I'd imagined a big reveal that won't be possible now that they've got a man on the inside who knows pretty much everything - no big deal.  It opens up other, funner possibilities.  The mechanical concerns are bigger - he's topped out on positive consequences that he can roll back into future conflicts, which he will invariably win. 

Malcolm wrote:

Clinton wrote:
It suffered a little because I've had, at my count, two marginal successes (no consequences) and two successes with 1 consequence each total the entire game. This is an epic level of failure.

This is really interesting. Do you consider it an epic level of failure on the part of the character or on the part of the system? I'm seeing quite a few instances here of the slight success (and how common it appear to be) being a cause of disatisfaction.

We had our fourth and last session of Cold City last night.  It was really just the tail end of the story arc, about two hours of play, wrapping up a lot of loose ends and bringing all the characters to their (bloody) conclusions. 

Of note:  The final betrayal featured Andy and Remi each rolling upward of 25 dice, which was a little ridonkulous.  We had to ask Clinton's cat, Violet, for the d10 she was playing with to beef up our numbers.

I had some trouble with representing environmental hazards.  There were these two guys who'd been hacked by the Nazis into screaming machines (see title of post) and could emit a 190 decibel sound, louder than a gun fired at one meter, almost loud enough to be turned into pure heat.  And the players successfully beat the scream to "keep their shit together".  After that, I wasn't sure how to include it in future conflicts - I couldn't assign a penalty die like I'm used to in TSOY. 

Various bits were dissatisfying, like Clinton's character never succeeding at anything, ever, but we played by the rules as written and wrapped up our tale. 

Clinton wrote:
Only on the character's part, and just the luck of my dice. I have some honest concerns with the system, but they aren't big and aren't that worrisome, really.

Jason wrote: We had our fourth and last session of Cold City last night.  It was really just the tail end of the story arc, about two hours of play, wrapping up a lot of loose ends and bringing all the characters to their (bloody) conclusions. 

Of note:  The final betrayal featured Andy and Remi each rolling upward of 25 dice, which was a little ridonkulous.  We had to ask Clinton's cat, Violet, for the d10 she was playing with to beef up our numbers.

I had some trouble with representing environmental hazards.  There were these two guys who'd been hacked by the Nazis into screaming machines (see title of post) and could emit a 190 decibel sound, louder than a gun fired at one meter, almost loud enough to be turned into pure heat.  And the players successfully beat the scream to "keep their shit together".  After that, I wasn't sure how to include it in future conflicts - I couldn't assign a penalty die like I'm used to in TSOY.

Various bits were dissatisfying, like Clinton's character never succeeding at anything, ever, but we played by the rules as written and wrapped up our tale. 

Malcolm wrote:
25? really? Good heavens! I'm intrigued by such a high number of dice needing to be rolled, enevr having come across such a situation myself. How did that come about? I've been attempting to work out in my head how such a pool could be created (maximum attribute, doubled for a hidden agenda, pklus betraying two toher characters who trust you at 5, plus 5 positive traits, but that seems a little extreme!).

How it works in TSOY doesn't really matter, the point is that there is a mechanism for increasing or decreasing objective hazard.  I wasn't sure how to do this in Cold City.  Should I just give myself more dice in every conflict because of the hell-throat was screaming?

After finishing the fourth session, my overall impression was that the setting of Cold City is brilliant, but that the mechanics don't always help support it.  It's possible, likely even, that we were playing wrong, but I was unsatisfied by the way the dice worked and the outcomes of straight conflicts most of the time. 

Marginal successes were extremely common, and they are the hardest to narrate.  We had, if I recall correctly, three successes the entire game that involved more than a two die advantage.  We'd roll and groan at another partial success, usually in the GM's favor. 

Reason conflicts were difficult to frame and didn't occur very much - we tended to be deep into an organic conflict where Reason decision points had been roleplayed over before realizing it.  This particularly hurt Clinton, who'd built a cerebral character.

Clinton wrote:

Malcolm wrote:
25? really? Good heavens! I'm intrigued by such a high number of dice needing to be rolled, enevr having come across such a situation myself. How did that come about? I've been attempting to work out in my head how such a pool could be created (maximum attribute, doubled for a hidden agenda, pklus betraying two toher characters who trust you at 5, plus 5 positive traits, but that seems a little extreme!).

There was a wave of dice coming off an Action roll with a few successes. The way you can spend positive consquences for more dice in your next roll builds upon itself. Remi would often have 5-10 successes, which meant his next roll would start at 9-14 dice. Doubling that for a hidden agenda (which may well be wrong, now that I think about it, but the book doesn't address this that I know of) means you'll have 18-28 dice. (Even if it's wrong, you'd have 13-18 dice.)

Jason wrote:
After finishing the fourth session, my overall impression was that the setting of Cold City is brilliant, but that the mechanics don't always help support it.  It's possible, likely even, that we were playing wrong, but I was unsatisfied by the way the dice worked and the outcomes of straight conflicts most of the time.

Marginal successes were extremely common, and they are the hardest to narrate.  We had, if I recall correctly, three successes the entire game that involved more than a two die advantage.  We'd roll and groan at another partial success, usually in the GM's favor. 

Reason conflicts were difficult to frame and didn't occur very much - we tended to be deep into an organic conflict where Reason decision points had been roleplayed over before realizing it.  This particularly hurt Clinton, who'd built a cerebral character.

Malcolm, it was "a" that we did in play.  Maybe Remi can do a breakdown of how his dice were assembled.

And you are certainly welcome!  We had a good time overall.

Malcolm wrote:
The things that in particular that have come out of this thread for me (in relation to the mechanics) are: ...

Clinton wrote:

Malcolm wrote:
The things that in particular that have come out of this thread for me (in relation to the mechanics) are: ...

Malcolm,

There's one other thing I'd like to bring up: consequences. There's too much of them. The reward system for this game is a mash-up of Sorcerer and Dogs in the Vineyard (not to slight the game: I can just see both of them there) and it's way too busy. The giant rolls occur from this as well: successes rolling into new rolls is also in Sorcerer, but the wave crests and dies because it has to be a related roll, instead of just the next roll any time later.

- Clinton

I see where we screwed up, now. What is an attributes maximum? I was playing (and we all might have been) playing with no roof for an attribute. I was wandering around with an Action of 14 at one point.

The maximum for a PC is 5 -- almost superhuman (p. 27).

And just to note that success consequences (p. 53) can be spent to temporarily increase an appropriate attribute for only the next conflict involving that attribute, i.e. it doesn't carry and it's not just extra dice. It's not explicit, but I assumed that you couldn't bump an attribute above 5 with consequences, though I've never played or run Cold City myself.

I do think you have hit the nail on  the head though with the setting and system comments. Malcolm creates great settings that are pregnant with gaming potential. The system part is the bit that he is learning on, so feedback threads like this are worth their weight in gold.

Remi wrote:
I see where we screwed up, now. What is an attributes maximum? I was playing (and we all might have been) playing with no roof for an attribute. I was wandering around with an Action of 14 at one point.

Gregor wrote: I do think you have hit the nail on  the head though with the setting and system comments. Malcolm creates great settings that are pregnant with gaming potential. The system part is the bit that he is learning on, so feedback threads like this are worth their weight in gold.