Firstly, Vincent, thanks for putting this stuff out there. Dogs was my first play experience of an independent rpg and it has reinvigorated a passion. In particular the group I’m running Afraid with aborted the last campaign we played as it wasn’t any fun, and we’d given up on roleplay as a thing to do together.

Play logs and the like are here:
http://community.livejournal.com/fateofeden/4626.html

Some notes on social context, I’ve used player names to help me remember who is who.

We’re three couples who have a rotating dinner circle. I am with Helen (Leigh), Alex (Simon) is with Angyl (Jonah) and Tam (Dr Brown) and Sarah (Alicia) recently got married. We’re all twenty somethings, all but Angyl are uni’ graduates, we mostly know each other through uni. Most of us game with other groups outside of this game. We used to do Worlds of Darkness together, which Tam ran for ages. Then we sort of shared GMing for a bit, but the gaming became quite casual and in some cases unfun. I have run one offs of Dogs for the others and we agreed it was something to try on a long term basis.

We got a lot less play done than I’d have liked, because one of the players got back from work at 7.30, and we then sat down for a three course meal. I used the time before we ate to go through the monster creation rules communally with the players. This was loads of fun and I’d heartily recommend it. Even with no intention of running the Monsters in play, going through the human degeneration process, and the origin of victims, slaves and acolytes really helped people get a feel for the way things are going on behind the scenes. And whatever habit the players choose, the monster that pops out is hideous. (We were inspired by a curious local phenomena, an ice cream van that tours at about 11.00pm, with a distorted music box. The players were all laughing as the story of the mobile lair, ice cream zombies with their frozen organs, and Steve the lactose intolerant acolyte came into creation. But every now and then they would pause from the laughing, look at each other and remark how creepy it was. Brilliant.)

Character generation was good. There were the usual highlights. (“Aw, I’m not the brightest crayon in the packet.” “Have you got that as a trait?” “I have now.”)

But we were tired and people were pushing to leave/go to bed when it came to actually playing. As it was I ran through one scene with each person where their starting circumstance was implicit in the stakes, and then called it a night. With hindsight this may have been a mistake.

Some system notes:

Pre game prep took a lot longer than Dogs, but I wonder how much of that is my lack practice. I might try going through the pre game prep in half an hour one day just to see if I’m happy with it. Lot’s of Sister Nancy Piety is colour, and writing it out took a lot longer than just scribbling down notes.

Circumstances and scene framing is hard. Or maybe they aren’t. I thought I was really struggling to come up with scenes beginning with those circumstances, they seemed weak and contrived. And yet looking at them now they look like fairly obvious and strong interpretations. I think I’m probably more scared of them than the players at this stage. I totally messed up Dr Brown’s first scene by forgetting to roll dice. This was awful, we did this totally naff scene in which he was lost and then found, and were sort of doing the back and forth, but I never framed a conflict and we never rolled dice. “Say yes,” is no more important than “roll dice” and I blew it. Still, learning curve.

I was worried I didn’t properly explain how bond dice tie into victim dice. In Leigh’s opening conflict she rolled a pair of 6’s on her acuity, and then gave straight away when she saw my roll. The stakes were: “Does the Monster gain another level of Access?” and she gave, following up with “Does the Acolyte get away without me working out what he was up to?” It was a shame she gave as it was the only conflict that took place in the research arena, and we didn’t get any answers or challenges, so no real progress on investigating that front. I don’t want to question the way she handled it, but I want to make certain that casually giving the Monster an extra dice of victimisation was done from an informed position. (She tells me it was. Cool.)

I thought I understood escalating as an answer to a challenge. This line: “If your opponent escalates, you can't later escalate instead of answering if you're responding in kind.” Was sort of ambiguous, so I’ll just state explicitly how I explained it, and Vincent or anyone who's got this figured can correct me if I’m wrong.

You can answer an outstanding challenge by escalating and making a new challenge in a higher/worse/more severe arena than the initial challenge. This counts as a free block or dodge.

This only happened twice, and it didn’t seem to be especially decisive. I need to make sure it’s actually happening properly before I comment more on whether it works.

To finish off, I was worried the party weren’t coming together, but thankfully Afraid gives me the ideal mechanic to put that ball in the players’ court. So next week I’m going to have a brief chat about monster dice and then leap straight into a conflict with Sebastian Delacroix’s first level access as the stake, starting in the research arena. This should have the joint effect of testing the research arena and bringing the characters together.

Any questions welcome. I have no real questions as yet, but I expect to have some after next week and I thought I’d make sure this was up here.

So, you group-created a monster, but not the monster you're actually playing with, right? You created that monster by yourself beforehand, right?

That's REALLY interesting.

-Vincent

"So, you group-created a monster, but not the monster you're actually playing with, right? You created that monster by yourself beforehand, right?"

I'm hoping that what's interesting is that we group created a monster, and not that I created one on my own for actually playing with. Because if making a monster on my own is interesting to you then I've done something horribly wrong.

Actually, we did two monsters because two players were there from the start and then two others turned up so we started again. But the second Monster, Alginon Stacko the plumbing demon, kept slipping into a Jam sketch where a mother pays a plumber to fix her baby into the boiler, and we were too busy laughing at Jam to really concentrate. We went back to the Ice cream vendor and did an overview of victimisation, acolytes and slaves using him as the basis.

My group, and I expect this is not a local phenomenon, aren't especially turned on by rules. They expect the GM to know the rules and ensure they need to know all they need to know in order to play. I didn't expect them to read the playtest document though I did link to it, and I think one of them gave it a quick peruse and the rest left it. From a horror game I think they would normally expect to be pretty naive characters and for me to thrust the horrorifying situations on them. In Afraid I can't see that necessarily working. There's a lot of stuff with victims and the like that the players need to be informed about in order for them to really get with disrupting the monsters plans. And lets face it, you've written a wonderful piece on human degeneration right there in the Monster rules, that should be shared with the players. Right down to arguing what 'baroque' meant and how to pronounce it.

What more can I say? They enjoyed it. It creeped them out. It got them in with the large scale game mechanics for Monsters getting Power from victims, and with the idea of Monsters having wants at all. Making Afraid monsters is fun, doing it with other people is also fun.

At GenCon, Piers Brown gave me his idea for Afraid's version of Dogs' initiations. I'm still figuring out how precisely to implement it, but the idea is: the players each get a scene, before character creation even begins, of playing the monster's victim. The GM rolls the monster's dice, the players roll some standard dice, like the Dogs GM's 4d6+4d10. They each get a turn playing the same victim - the one you've already created? That's an implementation question - and the stakes of their conflicts are details of the poor person's victimization.

It's clear to me that getting the players informed and bought into how monsters work is essential. Your solution - having them go through the creation process themselves - is an interesting one.

Did they enjoy creating the monster more than they enjoyed playing the game?

-Vincent

Hmm. I think that the sad answer is yes. But then in context, we built a monster at 7.00, it was fun. Then we ate a three course meal. We did Victim introduction and then character gen at about 9.30 ish, we sat down to play at 10.30 with one player keen to get to bed in time for work, one player keen to leave because his allergies were playing up, and me tired. So what I'm saying is that making a monster can be a lot of fun, but that I can't tell if it overshadows the fun from the rest of the game, or if not being able to play with that monster is a disappointment. I'll run a few more one offs over the christmas period with different groups using this method and see what they say.

I see the problem you've got here. In Dogs iniation teaches players how to play conflicts, and it also bonds the player to their character. I think it would be fair to say that if the players don't know how town creation works it's not a big deal. In Afraid you still have to teach people how to play through conflicts, so you still want an 'initiation'. But you also need to teach them the Monster rules. Can the two be combined? I don't know. That seems to be what Piers is suggesting, and there's a lot to the idea. It introduces conflicts, but not the Player Characters. It bonds the Players to the Victim, and sets them up against the Monster, but it doesn't tie the characters together. It introduces the notion of victimisation and the levels of access for this particular monster which will help the Players later on because they'll know what to aim for.

It could work. I don't know how well it explains Monsters, but if you can get that in it could work.

Let me outline something that didn't work and then I'll go through my suggestion on how I might do things next time.

I played through one scene with each character, where the starting circumstance was impicit in the opening conflict as a sort of initiation and introducing scene faming/circumstances thing. Looking back on it the only person who was scared of how the circumstances were going to inform the scenes was me. When I got home the last thing my girlfriend said before we went to sleep was that she thought the preludes were really weak. "A prelude," she said "has to be it's own story, it has to have a start, a middle and an end." I didn't want to start an argument about how it wasn't meant to be a prelude. She was expecting an equivalent to initiation, she was expecting a prelude, and that was a perfectly reasonable assumption. I didn't give it to her.

Let me make another observation. Both of the veterans talked me through one key thing that identified there involvement with a past monster. Alicia talked through the conflict where Josiah Craw hideously cut up her face, in which she cowered behind her rosary and seemed to drive him off. Dr Brown talked about he was the one who administered Craw's lethal injection. Cool scenes that could only have been improved by being conflicts.

Okay, so I'll be playing another game of Afraid with different people over the Christmas break, so here's what I'll try if you think it's worth trying out. It draws on the reality that prep work in Afraid is a lot more thorough than in Dogs, and that I expect the game to last longer in terms of Monster:Town ratio. And also that there's a lot of information for the players to take in, how the conflict mechanics work, how Monsters work, and then trying to get the players enthused about their characters and caring about their victims.

Build a monster communally. Build a few if you want, but make sure you go all the way through the process with atleast one, and consider how the Monster would act next to access its' victims and get more.

Then introduce the Victim. Talk about them, and how their life is falling apart.

Then introduce the character backgrounds. Walk the players through character gen with the exception of their circumstance.

Then for Investigators, Attached and Entangled characters they get an initiation scene with a single conflict that is set at some point during or after the Victims first two victimisations. It should reflect how the Victims life is falling apart, and allow the characters to suspect some supernatural force. At the end of the conflict they get an extra d6 trait to reflect what they've experienced. They also get to give the Victim a d6 trait of their choosing. The Victim gets some special rules for how it can 'group' with player characters against the monster.

Then Veteran characters get an initiation scene. That monster we created communally, that's the monster they fought in the past. It's dead now, and the Veteran's scene should be a part of the story of it's defeat. At the end of their scene they get a d6 trait.

Then introduce circumstances and get everyone to pick one from their approved list.

Then start play proper.

What do you think? Worth a try?

Oh no, you should definitely always create the monster in private. If you collaborate on the monster, your players will be repulsed the wrong kind of way - see My Life with Master. It's fun but it's a different game.

About prep: a game of Afraid is one monster. I'd expect it to play out in 4-6 sessions. If you want to play again with (some of) the same characters, you can, but totally don't think of a monster as a 1 or 2 session town.

That's why it's okay that prepping a monster is more work than prepping a town. You only do it once, not 4-6 times.

I think that going in to play, all the players really need to know about the monster is how victimization works - what it takes, what it gives the monster. I don't think they need to know about slaves or acolytes or anything else, and they certainly don't need to know a monster's habit -> ritual -> nightmare history.

So I'm pretty sold on Piers' idea, but the implementation questions need answering. That means me trying it myself.

-Vincent

So as far as what the players should know:

They know:
How a monster works structurally.
Who the victim is and the nature of her victimization.

They don't know:
Who the monster is

What's the nature of information in the game? Are the players as ignorant as their characters, or how much more do they know? In Dogs info about the town flowed freely from GM to players. In Afraid, should I only give out info if it's staked in a conflict?

As far as I gather, and this is how I'm running it, the Monster's identity and resources are not revealed until they are brought into play. The Monster's motivations are kept as obtuse as they can be until stakes, or fallout, determine that they must be revealed.

But the Monster's actions are all out in the open. The Monster can take no consequential action without the GM declaring the action and giving the players a chance to oppose it.

I was actually just about to write to you about this, Vincent.  I may be running Afraid again later this week, and I wanted to run a version of this sort of initiation by you.

Here’s a draft of the proceedure for initiation that I was going to propose:

1.  Make the monster first.  Follow the basic proceedures, but you will also need to determine, a) the trait the monster seeks, b) the levels of victimization.

2. Tell the players where the game is set, what sort of people live there, etc.  Do not tell them about the monster.  (My Monster is designed for a Greek Islands in the middle of the summer, so natives, ex-pats, tourists, etc.)

3. The players and the gamemaster collaboratively make the victim.  They get dice, etc., just like a PC, and I’m thinking that an Entangled character has probably the most appropriate set of dice (esp. a variety of relationship dice), though that might need modification.  This is both a Character Creation tutorial, and a way to heighten connection with the Victim.

4.  Don’t start with stats; start with traits.  Give the character the trait that the monster seeks, and tell the players this fact.  Let them pick the rest of the traits—they’ll make sure that they fit to their satisfaction.  (This is meant to consciously mimic the how to pick traits suggestions from Dogs: take a shooting trait; now what fits with that? Etc.  One thing I really like about this is that it gives the players the opportunity of fucking themselves up by also taking this trait.)

5.  After traits, go back to stats, then on to relationships and belongings as usual.  Let the players take the lead—the GM should only interject if the process is stalling. 

6. Relationships is slightly tricky, as this method doesn’t integrate with the questions that the game provides.  Let the players choose, and remind them that these relationships are potential characters for later.  Make them hold back half the relationship dice, as in normal Char Gen—these are for the GM to work through with the questions so as to fill in other characters, and also to allow them to take relationships with characters who appear during the Victimization.

7. Let them choose one condition.  (Maybe: add one yourself which will fit the upcoming scene.

8.  Now, Victimization.  This is the second Victimization.  Tell the players what happened in the first.  (This is important because it means that this is a real conflict—the GM provides adversity—and the Victim still needs to be protected even if they win against the Monster.  However, if they do the Monster only has 9d10 in bond dice to start.)  Play out the attempt at Victimization—that’s what’s at stake—with the players controlling the character collectively (or maybe switching control with each escalation).  (Should this be only one scene, or?)

9.  Now break and make characters for real.  Let players add relationships to the Victim if their character is no already on the sheet and needs to be. 

10.  Start play again.

What do you guys think?

Dick, scratch what I said above. Last night I played a very straightforward “Actively reveal the Monster in play.” My NPC’s spilled their guts and it only made the pace better. I’m still not sure how to handle giving the players info, certainly tricks like the Dogs tradition of telling the players that the NPC’s are lying doesn’t feel like it would work, but meaningful conflicts can only happen if the players are informed, so I think I’d still err on the side of generosity with info. There’s loads to a Monster and giving the players some information only launches them into trying to find out the rest.

Piers, thanks for sharing that as I was totally thrown by the idea.

I’m still struggling to imagine this, and I’m a little worried that I wouldn’t be able to back up any expectations I may have. So if you don’t object I’ll steal the idea, try it and get back to you.

Two quick questions then, does this method limit you to certain kinds of Victimisations? Also, the group you’re planning on playing this with, have they played any Afraid or Dogs before?

Piers, I like the idea of playing the victim collaboratively better than taking turns. Cool.

-Vincent

Vincent:

That was my first instinct.  I was thinking about Ron's one character Sorceror demos. 

Tim:

I can't think of any Victimizations that wouldn't work.  I guess the answer is, choose a victimization that you think will fit, in fact, one you think will be fun.

And, no, they haven't played either before--or maybe a couple have played Dogs, but I'm not sure.  They are down with the indie games though, so I'm not expecting any more than ordinary difficulty.  On the other hand, I kind of loused up the game of Afraid I ran at Gen Con.  I didn't drive at them hard enough, and was having trouble integrating their characters with my premade victim--which is the background behind this idea.

Piers
For convention gaming with people who are down with indie stuff I think that would work really well. It's fast and it throws the monster at you. (I was mulling over victimisations where the Victim is a willing/tricked party in the degeneration, because I think it's easier for the players to resist such a thing, but I think the resolution system should still allow for that to work.)

Trying to sell Afraid to roleplayers from a more trad background I'd be wary of collaborative play, purely because it takes people a while to get a handle on, and it's a skill that they'd throw out the window once the initiation is done. There's so many other bits of info to get to grips with that I would be worried about overload, or even worse the players just getting into the swing of collaborative gaming when the initiation was over. I would have been more tempted by a Dogs-esque scene involving the Victim and the PC, set during the course of the first few victimisations so that the impact of the nightmarish influences could be seen.

But like I say, I'll pinch the idea and give it a go and see whether people actually struggle or whether it all falls into place. The prospect of facing a first stage victim with only 9d10 is pretty scary, as that's just one conflict away from salvation and reflection fallout all round. That would really force the Monster to go in all guns blazing.

The monster would still get all its stats and traits and stuff, right? Not just its 9d10.

The victim is UTTERLY outclassed.

-Vincent

Wow, of course. Even if we're outside the lair the Victims on borrowed time.

Vincent -

I had a thought recently about initiatory conflicts. I think that the great thing about the monster creation is how natural it seems, as though it could happen to anybody, and probably happens all the time, sans supernatural. So, surely the PCs have encountered someone before in their life who was victimizing someone else? You could have the PCs create a monster in the figurative sense - a corrupt cop or politician, an abusive spouse - and attempt to break the bond of victimization. For Veterans, there would be some element of the supernatural. Then the players become familiar with the monster creation, to an extent, as well as getting to know their character better.

As a GM, I would rather not let the players have any input into the nature of the (big deal) monster and her victims. From my experience with CoC, one of my favorite parts was the "dawning horror" - the gradual realization on the parts of the players/characters of how far they were in over their heads. But that's just me, and maybe you're going for something different with Afraid. I'll give it a playtest when I get back to school. They guys that I turned on to Dogs are stoked.

--Dick