Last Monday, after a nearly five-month break, I finally managed to schedule a game with my regular group. The players were:

Michal - he's been into table-top RPGs for four years (started from D&D), and most of the time he's been playing in my group, so I know him pretty well. Apart from D&D he has some significant experience with L5R, Exalted and New WoD. Also, he is practically addicted to trading card games.

Aga - she joined us nearly a year ago, and in the first half of the year played in about ten sessions of Exalted and one session of D&D (due to scheduling problems she omitted lots of games). Aga has no other experiences with table-top RPG I know about, although she could have had some contact through her brother's group. She plays a lot of Japanese console RPGs (and I mean: *a lot*).

Bartek - he's quite an experienced gamer for our country, as he's been playing for over ten years. I think he's been playing a lot of Warhammer and Old WoD (mainly Werewolf) in the past, but some years ago he switched to D&D. He knows me and Michal for nearly three years, played with both of us in some convention games, and in the last months of the last year he joined our regular Exalted campaign and run some D&D for us. Addicted to console games.

Only Aga had no previous contact with "indie" games (nor with anything other than Exalted and D&D), while the rest of us had contacts with dozens of games. Both Michal and Bartek had some occasional experiences with Forge-ish stuff during the last year. Bartek is quite enthusiastic about it. Michal still remains slightly skeptical to the new ideas, but he usually grasps new games instantly anyway.

We generally share interests outside role-playing, and socialize together from time to time.

Monday's game started a bit late and was pretty short, mainly due to Michal not making it on time. Also, we hadn't expected Bartek to arrive, as experienced some problems trying to contact him - but just before the game we tried once again, successfully, and he came in the middle of character creation. His arrival slightly disturbed the rest of the session, though, as he came with some news and brought his PSP, which kind of absorbed Aga's attention. In the end, the session lasted a bit over two hours, with an hour of preparation. Basically, it was more learning the game than playing. Also, we were all in quite a silly mood, and it affected the game.

Not expecting Bartek, we decided on the system without him - there was a proposition of Exalted, but I didn't felt like continuing our neverending campaign (in slightly more than two hours we wouldn't progress much with it, anyway), and so I gave them a choice between Fastlane and modified Wushu. Fastlane got picked by Michal, as Aga was indifferent.

(Note: after analyzing the game and talking with Alex, I decided on a number of small houserules, e.g. no zero-level Lives during character creation; collecting favors limited to an amount of chips invested in support of the debtor; paying a favor requires at least one conflict; offering interest requires the character to spend one chip or burn an equivalent; and collecting favor between two protagonists adds its value in chips to the croupier's bank - none of these changes came up during the game, though.)

I explained that we need to decide on the setting, and asked for propositions, but this created a problem. No one but me had any ideas, and it ended with them choosing between cyberpunk and pirate game, and picking the latter. This in turn turned out problematic, as they instantly got into "Pirates of the Caribbean" mindset, while I haven't seen the movie yet, and I've been thinking mainly in 7th Sea categories. I think we had more or less the same ideas about the genre, but Michal and Aga (and later Bartek, too) probably expected the session to emulate the film - although I stated clearly there's no chance it would be like that. At least once it created a certain disconnect. Obviously, we should have discussed the setting a bit more before we moved on.

Character creation was disturbed by Bartek's late arrival, and went with some problems with Aga. While Michal and Bartek quickly grasped the meaning of stuff on the character sheet, she had an obvious difficulty with getting the differences between Facets, Styles, Lives and Favours, and now it seems to me that my explanations were not sufficient, as she was still somewhat confused later in the game. Also, she was completely clueless when it came to choosing Lives - I asked her to define what is most important for her character, and I gave her some examples that would be typical for the genre. In the end, she chose "adventure" (which was previously taken by Michal) and in addition simply picked one of mine examples. Also, she gave her character a silly name, but seeing our slight disapproval she renamed her character to Lirael - still not very in-genre in style, but better.

Looking at past experiences, Aga has some problems with envisioning her character - possibly due to being accustomed to being forced to play a specific character in console RPGs - and we worsened the problem by sparing her this effort in Exalted and D&D. In Exalted, since she haven't played table-top RPGs before, we had to help her in character creation. Back then, she was practically clueless even as to the general character concept, and after she managed to establish it, we've been trying to guide her through the mechanical side of chargen - but she gave us minimal input. It took hours, anyway. In D&D, she simply told us to create a fighter for her, and spent the process learning for her classes. Both Exalted and D&D are pretty complicated mechanically, and she wouldn't be able to create the character without any help - but I suppose we shouldn't do as much work instead of her. But the real problem is activating Aga's creativity, and it touches not only character generation - she is either afraid and reluctant to share her ideas, or maybe she is simply overly receptive and has no desire to influence the game in any way other than through combat decisions (probably due to her console RPGs habits). As I examine her performance in Exalted, outside combat she was way too passive, and given an opportunity to make any important decision (even character-specific) she seemed kind of frozen. Also, she rarely ever added any color, while everyone but her has been adding a lot of it (stunting seemed to be difficult for her). I could suppose Aga is s a casual player and has mostly social interest in gaming, but I still wonder if she can be engaged more, and by what (actually, I've been curious how will she do in a game with less complex mechanics, but it seems Fastlane isn't really much less complex).

Anyway, the group created pirate ship's crew. Michal's character was Captain Swift, and adventure, the ship and honor were his lives (Michal stated that "honor" is specifically *his* sense of honor - and I think he's being instinctively defensive here; note that during his first two years of gaming Michal was often exposed to various degrees of illusionism, he's an extremely illusionist GM himself, and he plays card games in an environment dominated by people who consider illusionism to be the proper way of playing RPGs, often frowning at anyone who doesn't provide railroaded stories to their players or who expects the GM to give players any real freedom). Aga created the first officer (note how she puts herself in a follower's role) named Lirael, with adventure and her sword as lives. Bartek made the boatswain, Greasy Hans, with adventure and treasure as lives, and an Evil Eye as a style (he explained that he wants to cause supernatural fear). He picked adventure as life without knowing about Michal's and Aga choices. Michal bought captain's brotherhood as one point faction, and both he and Bartek took 5-point favors. Generally, they seemed disinterested in taking favors from the moment I told them it requires balancing with favors owed, and increases NPC's Appraisal (even though I explained them it's the way of introducing new NPCs to the game, and provides chips).

I quickly created some supporting characters, spending 73 out of my 108 chips, mostly building antagonists around the Lives: commander of the crown's fleet with the Appraisal of 20, two officers of the mercenary ship both with Appraisal of 10 and natives with Appraisal of 10. In addition, I asked Aga if she has anything against her sword being possessed, and (as I expected, eh...) she agreed without any discussion - so I added sword's spirit NPC with an Appraisal of 15. Four 5-point NPCs were added from favors: Bartek owed a beggar from the port, and an old gypsy owed him; Michal had a favor from the port's governor, and owed Jack Sparrow. This is were we encountered the disconnect in our visions - when I've been summing up the cast I described this NPC on the basis of what Michal told me about him, but the whole group reacted with "this is not like Jack Sparrow!" - and I asked Michal to change his name, because with me not knowing the movie the disconnect would be too big. Reluctantly, Michal agreed that it won't be the same character, but asked me to leave the name - and I think I'll insist that he changed it next time, to avoid potential trouble (unless I manage to watch the movie, at least). I've spent some chips to add governor's niece (for the captain to rescue) and Polly the parrot.

I explained conflict and betting rules promptly (surprisingly, it turned out both Michal and Bartek played roulette before), and we moved on.

I gave the first scene to Aga, as I wanted to instantly throw her into a deep water. I narrated the ship being caught in the storm, and her descending into the cargo hold to check the recently acquired transport of slaves. The whole cargo, including the slaves, wasn't properly secured, and consequently endangered by the ship's tumbling. In addition, Lirael's sword demanded blood of the helpless slaves. Unfortunately, there were some problems with Aga. First, when I asked her to describe her character, she tried to avoid it, explaining that she has to think about it and she'll do it later (and by "later" she obviously meant "umm.. let's forget about it, okay?") - and despite our encouragement, none of us was able to change her mind. Her character remained covered by the shadows - but as I look at it now, I should have been more decisive and try stronger in encouraging her to use her imagination. Also, when we started the conflict, not being accustomed to conflict resolution Aga was pretty confused, and had troubles with deciding who of the other players can get involved, as well as with placing her bets. In the end, she asked that the boatswain go down and help her secure the cargo (and he brought the parrot). In addition, explaining how the Lives work turned out to be difficult (in part, I suppose, due to the linguistic issues). We rolled the dice, and Bartek managed to save the day - but unfortunately Aga lost all chips she bet, and couldn't stop her sword from possessing her and slaying some of the slaves. The scene ended with cargo hold partially demolished, Aga's character standing confused with slaves' blood on her sword, up to the knees in seawater turning red, and a parrot getting drunk with rum from a broken keg. And here, another issue. I explicitly ended the scene and proceeded to framing the next, and while both Michal and Bartek didn't find it a problem, Aga tried to artificially prolong it after a dramatic cut. I'm not sure if she actually tried to act on her own this time, or thought she's expected to deal with the mess - but judging from her confusion during the scene, I supose it's probably the latter. Now I wonder, how much of these problems resulted from her not having previous contact with conflict resolution and this kind of scene structure, how much from her general passiveness, and how much from me explaining things poorly.

We played two more scenes, and this time each of the players allowed the rest to get involved. I moved the time forward and I threatened Michal with crew's rebellion lead by the parrot, with the ship of the crown fleet's commander, carrying governor's niece Swift agreed to bring back to her uncle, appearing on the horizon. Michal completely crushed my opposition after rolling his lucky number. He won both the contest with the parrot and with the commander, and paradoxically he used Bartek's support as an opportunity to collect a favor from him. He humbled both the commander and the parrot to zero, and removed them from the game, narrating how he shoots the loud-mouthed bird from cannon, sinking the enemy ship, and still left himself an opportunity to collect the girl (he seemed to kill the parrot unwillingly, as no one at the table liked the idea, but it seems to me he instinctively acted in a defensive way and eliminated potential threat; now I regret that at the moment I didn't thought about explaining he doesn't have to completely remove the NPCs reduced to zero Appraisal from the game). Note that there was lots of humbling, but after the game I discovered that I totally forgot that humbling adds chips to the bank, so it could turn out some other way if not for my mistake.

Then, I framed a scene for Bartek, moving back in time and making his character an unknowing target of gypsy's curse. Again, Michal managed to win a straight bet and dominated the conflict, humbling the gypsy for 11 point favor and using the rest of his take to reduce her newly raised Appraisal to 2. Bartek and Aga both managed to win some secondary contests (it was already late and I think I messed up some rules then), and while Bartek made the gypsy fall in love with him, Aga, who attempted to make the gypsy tell her the secret of her sword, completely frozen when I told her "ok, you win, so now narrate what the gypsy tells you". She asked that somebody other resolves the contest for her, but I insisted she do it herself. She eventually produced short narration, but it was rather uninspired. Then, after a full round of conflicts I explained the spending of winnings, and we finished the game. (I despaired a bit about my bank falling down to 29 chips while Michal got to over 60, but fortunately it turns out I should have 73 chips total).

All in all, despite the issues with Aga, the session was enjoyable in a way - but due to all the problems I can't really describe it as better than so-so. In the end, we created the characters and learned the basics of the system (not getting to using favors), but we didn't get much of the living in the fast lane, mostly due to our silly mood, I think. Notably, the roulette mechanics didn't seem to interfere with the genre, but then I used themed roulette sheets. Michal and Bartek left discussing the probabilities of a roulette wheel, so I think I'll try to continue the game in the future - but I'm not really sure what to do with Aga in that case. I'm pretty sure she's going to come if we call her, but I'm not sure if she will enjoy this type of game, even after getting accustomed to the system (it seems she felt better in Exalted, where she could passively participate in the events). It would be easier if she actually complained about anything, I think.

I'm going to outright assume things about your players here based on what you wrote. I might be accurate, might be not, but I don't care to put in mediating clauses at the end of each paragraph, so just remember that you know much better than I do what's going on. I'm going to discuss some of the phenomenons you describe in your report. I hope you find this interesting.

Filip wrote:
Then, I framed a scene for Bartek, moving back in time and making his character an unknowing target of gypsy's curse. Again, Michal managed to win a straight bet and dominated the conflict, humbling the gypsy for 11 point favor and using the rest of his take to reduce her newly raised Appraisal to 2. Bartek and Aga both managed to win some secondary contests (it was already late and I think I messed up some rules then), and while Bartek made the gypsy fall in love with him, Aga, who attempted to make the gypsy tell her the secret of her sword, completely frozen when I told her "ok, you win, so now narrate what the gypsy tells you". She asked that somebody other resolves the contest for her, but I insisted she do it herself. She eventually produced short narration, but it was rather uninspired. Then, after a full round of conflicts I explained the spending of winnings, and we finished the game. (I despaired a bit about my bank falling down to 29 chips while Michal got to over 60, but fortunately it turns out I should have 73 chips total).

We played two more scenes, and this time each of the players allowed the rest to get involved. I moved the time forward and I threatened Michal with crew's rebellion lead by the parrot, with the ship of the crown fleet's commander, carrying governor's niece Swift agreed to bring back to her uncle, appearing on the horizon. Michal completely crushed my opposition after rolling his lucky number. He won both the contest with the parrot and with the commander, and paradoxically he used Bartek's support as an opportunity to collect a favor from him. He humbled both the commander and the parrot to zero, and removed them from the game, narrating how he shoots the loud-mouthed bird from cannon, sinking the enemy ship, and still left himself an opportunity to collect the girl (he seemed to kill the parrot unwillingly, as no one at the table liked the idea, but it seems to me he instinctively acted in a defensive way and eliminated potential threat; now I regret that at the moment I didn't thought about explaining he doesn't have to completely remove the NPCs reduced to zero Appraisal from the game). Note that there was lots of humbling, but after the game I discovered that I totally forgot that humbling adds chips to the bank, so it could turn out some other way if not for my mistake.

Whew, my answer turned out to be much, much longer than I expected, as I've been covering more and more stuff about my players. Way too long, in fact. I won't be surprised if it gets ignored due to its length. If not, keep in mind I'was mostly writing stuff my intuition told me, and it's late.

It might be inconsequential, but it seems to me that what you're doing here is what some call "no myth" style of playing, where you don't have prepared backgrounds for the game. That's well and good with Fastlane if you can spare the chips, but it also seems that you're combining no myth with shared backgrounds - you expect the player to participate in creating the background situation for the game, in the manner suggested by games like InSpectres. In other words, not only is nothing fixed, but you also insist the players to help in fixing it during the game.

Could you tell us why you told Aga to narrate for the gypsy?

I take this particular tidbit up because while no myth + player contribution works in some narrow situations really well (it's much more narrow than you'd think), passive and thematically hampered players participating in an exacting genre is not it. I've had lots of experiences with players very similar to what you have here, and Agata sounds like the kind that you have to bring up by hand. By which I mean, what you should offer her is very simple and basic means of having input in the game, and ramping up from there when she picks it up. When she stumbles and asks for help, give her a suggestion or two, perhaps explain how you can think up those suggestions, and in general help her feel like you're actually helping her play. I've never got positive results in these situations by throwing a person in the deep end and forcing them to stumble in the dark.

That's the gamemaster's job. And this is not just a traditional viewpoint, but a matter of practical game theory as well: if a player expects you to take her kicker (cursed sword) and run with it, lobbing it back to her corner can be an easy way to fizzle the whole idea. You're essentially saying that you don't know what to do with the element she introduced, after all.

As a practical data point, I spent much of last winter and spring playing The Shadow of Yesterday with a number of teenages hereabouts (...) So I'm forced to conclude that while I previously never had any efficient method of really reaching the dull, glazed people who only played to be passively entertained, the method I recommend above apparently works.

And as for Michal:

Michal plays with me long enough to know that PC death tends to be extremely rare in my games. Also, he knows my games are very mechanical and that I stick to the rules or write down my changes for everyone to see. In the games we've been running most often in the last two years, penalties for losing were not so harsh (e.g. in New WoD it was easy to lose consciousness, but quite difficult to die, while in Exalted creating a virtually indestructible starting character is no problem), some other games we tried had rules that blocked unwanted PC death (e.g. 7th Sea, and to some extent L5R that allows for "additional life" advantages and flaws), and sometimes I introduced such houserules. The penalties for losing in my games rarely include death or even losing accumulated stuff - more often these were story level consequences. And Michal is aware of that.

Also, victory certainly lies amongst our points of game, but more and more often we keep mechanical and story level victory as separate things. (Actually, I think Fastlane lends itself pretty well to this kind of play.)

I'm pretty sure the fault lies on my side here, as if I stated more clearly that humbling NPC to zero Appraisal allows, but doesn't automatically force him to remove the NPC from the game, and that the removal doesn't have to equal death, he would probably played differently (at first, he simply declared that he gets rid of the parrot by shooting it from the cannon - he changed his mind when I reminded him about humbling option). Also, if I didn't forget that humbling returns tokens to the bank, I suppose he would have certainly had tactical reasons not to humble.

I don't think the problem of Michal's mentality is not simply "survival commando" mode, although certainly old D&D habits are one of the factors. Examine these things:

First, Michal plays a lot of card games, and he's hardcore. I don't know how he fares currently, but when I still played CCGs, he tended to create overkill decks which worked by completely dominating play and crushing the enemy as fast as possible, without giving him any chance to pose opposition (e.g. Unicorn cavalry decks in L5R CCG which, combined with his extreme luck, frustrated everyone he played with immensely). Ruthless, kind of paranoid, but careless as well, since Michal often depends on his luck. This is partially reflected in the way he creates his characters, I think. He rarely optimizes them well, although he certainly wants them optimized - but he's way too careless to tinker with the numbers enough to get the best possible effect (I'm suppose it doesn't help that it is practically impossible to get an optimized deck before testing it in play a few times and adjusting stuff - so he has a habit of worrying about the mechanical details only when they start getting in his way). The moment I started introducing social and mental challenges in WoD and Exalted, he automatically started optimizing his character to deal with these kinds of challenges as well as combat. Now, when it comes to story level "threats", he instinctively "optimizes" himself as well against them, hence preference to eliminate the opposition (although we discussed the fallacies of "enemy flaws" in many games a lot - that is, no matter how many enemies the character has, it doesn't really hurt the player, cause there's practically no session without any conflict, and only so much conflict can fit in one session). That's why he explicitly states his honor is his own sense of honor - so that it couldn't be used against him. And I anticipate that as soon as family or followers of his character start being conflicted with him, he's going to start playing loners. Basically, both of us are able to analyze story in "tactical" terms.

The second thing is, Michal's mentality is rather like cat's mentality, and he likes playing with mice before he eats them. This is visible in the way he stunts in Exalted - often highlighting how his character belittles and carelessly dominates his opponent, no matter how I try to portray the NPC. This might have been the case here, as he simply prefers to hurt the opposition as much as he can (also, notice how he reduced Gypsy's Appraisal to minimum after humbling a high value favor out of her). He obviously aims for total domination, whether it includes killing or not.

Also, I don't think Michal shows any initiative unless he is somehow threatened first (and it doesn't include being threatened physically, or even personally - I remember WoD games when he was pretty passive for half the session, until one of his character's underlings got kidnapped). Earlier I mentioned an Exalted game in which I placed him in media res without any non-immediate background - and it's the only instance when he got active without actually being threatened I can think about now. But usually he waits till he's threatened, and then proceeds to secure himself by defeating the threat. I've already learned that I need to hook him with some kind of threat in any game if I want him to be active.

Basically, it's all nothing compared with Aga. Michal is entangled in this "needs to be threatened but instinctively avoids exposing himself for threats" paradox, but he's certainly making progress with that, and the domination thing isn't really an issue for me.

Interesting character sketches, Filip, thanks for taking the time to lay them out. Now that you've done it, consider directing your friends to this thread. Should prove interesting for them to read in such detail about what you see.

I won't try to contest your evaluation of how these people play. Rather, let me note one rules-thing just to make sure it's not overlooked:

She won the contest, and by the rules of Fastlane she acquired complete authorial power over its resolution. Also, I think I oversimplified it in the report - we explicitly outlined Aga what she should do then, including explaining her how to do it, e.g. Michal suggested that she take inspiration from some book, or something (also, by then she had already seen how other players resolved their contests). Still - I was careful not to let anybody suggest her any content, and I'll explain why in a moment.

I won't try to contest your evaluation of how these people play.

It's been a while since I read the rules, but I'm pretty sure that Fastlane doesn't support explicit no myth in the sense you mean here. What I mean is, while the player certainly has the narrative power of the moment, it is in no way intented to override the gamemaster's prepared backgrounds or to retcon the past of the fiction just because the narrator of the moment says so. In this sense it's completely reasonable for the player to expect you to participate in the resolution: she might have the job of narrating how the she gets the gypsy to talk, but it's your gypsy, so what she reveals to her could very well be up to you as the GM.

From what you write Agata seems quite a passive person socially, as well. Do you think she has any wish to be more active or to gain any kind of social esteem in the group? I'm asking because of course it's difficult to help anybody learn anything if they don't see the value in the effort. If she's happy with the kind of play she's currently allowed, of course she's not going to change. I think that is a much more important thing than whether she's teenage or adult, myself.

Fastlane, in my experience, gains speed with subsequent sessions. Perhaps the in-built reward cycles can become a motivation for all the players to play in an engaging manner.

Filip wrote:
Hmm, I checked the book once again, and it seems there really isn't anything that suggests InSpectres model. I might have suggested myself with the acknowledgements for The Pool shared narration model, or maybe Capes mindset lingered after two months of exclusively playing it (and both Bartek and Michal, who played Capes last month, automatically got into "we can describe the results as we like" mode). But then, I'd say the limits of narration are not really stated explicitly enough in the game - there's lots of rules about how to resolve conflict, but no real suggestions as to how much can be achieved and established if the contest is won. And however I look at the rules, no matter the authors intentions, I don't really see anything that would hamper the model of narration distribution we assumed, and I can't think of any reason why it shouldn't work (I still don't see it as the root of the issues with Aga, it's rather the problems with Aga surfaced when she got confronted with this narration approach).

In general, she is geekish, but she seems to be a rather sociable person (e.g. she's definitely much more sociable than me). But whether she is active or passive socially I can't be fully sure. We two didn't socialize too much outside gaming yet, but she's rather passive around me, I think. And yes, this might be an important point here. Since after over ten games she still sacrifices her time to play with us, she must have her reasons - and I suspect these might be mostly social reasons now. It's certainly possible she's currently running mainly on our attention, and feels no real need to look for ways of increasing her enjoyment with play itself (possibly not really being conscious there are different levels of play that can be enjoyed).

Fastlane, in my experience, gains speed with subsequent sessions. Perhaps the in-built reward cycles can become a motivation for all the players to play in an engaging manner.

I'm not fully sure what you mean here, as Fastlane doesn't really reward playing in an engaging manner, or I don't see it clearly at least. Two forms of rewards in Fastlane are winnings and favors. Winnings are gained with luck and smart betting, favors either produced by winning/losing, or by supporting/being supported by others. Both these things seem to be mostly tactical play rewards to me, although there's a bit more to favors than that (but then, we didn't get to calling favors yet, and I believe the group doesn't really see their value after the first game).

Ah, I understood that what you meant was "rewards for playing in a manner that engages others". And yes, I forgot about Lives.

Still, I think the tactics in Fastlane are not limited to the roulette bets only, but also to using favors, involving Lives etc. can be approached tactically, to minimize loses for as long as possible. I anticipate we might wind up drifting the game in this direction, with mechanical choices and color in the foreground and story more in the background.

Anyway, my experience here, as I wrote, has been that this kind of player responds well to simple yet insistent tutoring, where you play with them fully, but are always ready to explain, elaborate and open up their options. You do this OR you do that, and this is how I might do it, and this is why I might do it this way. I don't know if this is the small and easy steps approach you wrote about, but if it is, I've never had anybody get stuck in the preliminary stages: as a player gets one aspect of what you're trying to teach, you drop the explanations and concentrate on some finer points next.