So in Grey Ranks, you've got a collective Mission in each Scene.  It's framed by a Mission Leader, which is a role that rotates from player to player per Scene.  The Mission Leader frames the Mission - "We're going to take a crate of ammunition to the machine-gunner at the Wilson Square barricade." 

Then each player frames a little Vignette around their contribution to the mission - "OK, Janek's crawling through a hole in the wall of the butcher shop and spills the ammo crate!  There's some frantic moments as we all throw the loose rounds back in, double handed."

And they put forward a die, which is their contribution to success or failure.  Once everyone has framed a Vignette, the Mission Leader rolls the pool of dice to see if they, collectively, succeeded or failed.  The Mission Leader then determines who was the Weak Link, and that character is punished.

So this is cool, because it reinforces that "we're all in it together" feeling, and that final collective roll has real drama. 

However, I have two problems.  First, since everyone is free to narrate success, complication, or failure, there's no stake-setting - even though the mission will succeed or fail based on the final roll.  I can see solving this by requiring the Mission Leader to make his big roll (with the final contribution) prior to the framing of the last Vignette.

More challenging to me is how to make the content of the Vignettes matter, and for the Mission Leader to have some guidance for determining the Weak Link (which is mechanically a big deal - it can get you killed).  Obviously the size of the die you contribute means something - if you share a low sized die, you are hurting the team's chances of success.  But that's it.

I suppose you could narrate thrilling success during your portion of the Mission, but if the Leader doesn't like the cut of your jib, he could always say "that's not how I saw it!" - maybe that's enough.  Originally I had each player roll during their respective Vignette, but a collective roll is much better, if I can make it work smoothly.  Thanks for your thoughts.

I would stick with having the Weak Link choice based purely on some non-mechanical guidance, make it a tough choice for the player who is mission leader. Who do they inflict this punishment on? Do they base it on previous experinece? Do they base it on narration in the vignettes? It's up to them. They have, perhaps, guidance on what makes good input into the vignettes, but they have to make that tough choice themselves. Grey Ranks is a powerful, tough game and any choice that reinforce that hard reality can and will benefit the game as a whole.

I think the guidance on vignettes should be detailed an specific, but should not say "You shall purely judge a vignette based on these criteria and these criteria alone". They should enforce a hard decision. The game should say that you might have to make a choice that gets one of your comrades killed and only you can make that choice. That's what I'd like to see from the guidance offered anyway.

I realise this doesn't offer a concrete answer to your question, but I hope it helps in some way.

Cheers
Malcolm

Thanks Malcolm, that really is helpful to hear.

In the "each player rolls as they complete their own bit of the mission" version, players actually narrate to a crisis point, roll, and then describe success or failure for their little piece of the overall action.  It gives the Leader something to chew on when he's making his decision about who to nail.  If he needs it, the Leader can always fall back on "You failed your roll - you dropped the ammo - you fucked up."

In the new version, there's no guidance for assigning the Weak Link beyond the size of die they contribute and their own scene framing.  Maybe this is fantastic (I can see it working with my local buddies), but I worry that some players will get in that position and feel a little lost.  Is this mis-placed?  Am I underestimating the players? 

Well, given what I know about Grey Ranks (and damn me if I'm not annoyed that I didn't manage to get into that game at Gen Con), I think the prospective players of this game will be attracted by the very choices that make the game difficult. In all honesty, a game that centres around the stories of kids fighting in the Warsaw Uprising screams out to me that hard choices will be involved. As a player, I would expect and want to faced with such choices. I think this only serves to enhance the game and do the subject matter justice.

In short, from my own personal point of view, I think players of Grey Ranks would get it. It's a game that sets out it stall and should clearly stick to that. It's a game I'd really like to play, for all the reasons given above.

Cheers
malcolm

Hi,

I playtested with Hans last weekend. Apparently we mis-read the rules and played this a little differently--each of us framed a personal mission vignette that tied into the larger scene mission, and defined individual success or failure stakes. We then rolled the die on each vignette rather than simply contributing to a pool of dice. We used the scene # as the target # for the individual vignette success or failure. The rolled numbers of each vignette were recorded and totalled up once everyone had played out their vignettes.

Whoops, I guess I should read the whole thread before posting a response. Anyway, yeah, we played it the old way and it seemed to work really well. Despite the presence of an easy mechanical device, I think we ended up choosing the Weakest Link based on how important the character contribution seemed to be, not on the outcome of the roll.

That's good feedback - I'm looking forward to the AP report.  And yes, you played it as written!  This change came after your draft. 

Jason,

I'm not sure why you're so concerned about the stake setting. A single roll for success or failure sounds fine to me, without explicit stake-setting, especially as the stakes will, to some extent, have been implicitly set when the Leader frames the mission.

The Weak Link thing is harder. I like Malcolm's thoughts.

My first thought is that you should use the Paranoia solution: think about the behaviour you want from the players, then explicitly use the Weak Link to reward that behaviour (or, rather, punish lack of it). For example, if you want the players to take the story deeper into danger, give explicit instructions to the Leader: "When deciding who is the Weak Link, consider which player shied away from taking the story into danger".

The problem, of course, is that that doesn't reward good behaviour, it punishes bad behaviour, and that's not so much fun. Can I make an off-the-wall suggestion?

Decide the behaviour you want from the players: let's say, for the sake of argument, it's "Taking the story into dark places". Then encourage the Mission Leader to give tokens to any player who displays that behaviour: "If you see someone who takes the story into dark places, reward them with a token". Then, at the end, any player with a token is immune from being the Weak Link. Hence, you're rewarding good play, not punishing bad play.

Does that help at all? It's a bit of a ramble, I'm afraid, but I think that the principle of rewarding good play rather than punishing bad play is sound.

Graham

Thanks Graham, I agree that rewarding positive behavior is a good approach.  The token thing could be very cool.  There are only four players normally, so getting a token would be a big deal, and there could only be one (totem?).  It'd be something to work for.  I'll think on that.

It's also insightful to suggest explicitly pushing the metagame agenda through reward and penalty.  So "The player who puts other characters in the least danger is a good candidate for Weak Link".  I fully expect that in actual play, you'll get jealous rival characters Weak Linking each other out of spite, over a girl.  Which is fantastic, of course. 

I think Graham makes some excellent points there, particularly in regard to positive/negative reward reinforcement.

I'm interested, Jason, in your mention of having only one token/totem to go around the four players. Do you want to actively create competition between the players for this token/totem and thereby push the themes of the game through this? Having one, constantly shifting, item that allows a very powerful in-game effect could certainly serve to influence the players in certain ways. It certainly seems like a good idea, though.

Cheers
Malcolm

My thinking there was that for the standard four person game (no GM) if you have one "immunity" thing, that leaves the Leader with two choices, plus himself.  So that's a pretty serious winnowing right there.  Two of those and it's down to the Leader and one other guy, which seems wrong.  This also wouldn't work for a three-player game, for the same reason.

One option would be to complexify it with multiple tokens, so you could have more than another guy, but I really don't want to get into that. 

I really do want competition among the players, although less than I used to ... I think it will come organically with engaged players, and I'm toning down the overtly competitive elements.  Originally I had the resource economy in the game heavily encourage competition but that's becoming less pronounced.  One really cool thing that hasn't changed is that if someone invoked the one thing in the world that they hold dear (for a critical mechanical bonus), it becomes fair game to be destroyed by any player for an identical bonus later.  These are things like "My Faith".   

Hi Jason,

i think that Malcom & Graham's advice & your thoughts are heading in a good direction: some guidance, maybe tokens to show who is hitting the right mood in each mission.

to get other options out of the way:

* rotate who is weak link each mission. pros: there is no perceived 'unfairness,' the player who will be the weak link can frame an appropriate contribution. cons: life/war is unfair, other players might slack off since they are under less pressure

* randomly rolled afterwards. pros: takes pressure off players to pick from among their friends. cons: reduces pressure.

* mission leader makes a gamist/dramatic choice to screw their rivals (as you suggest in your last post). pros: tie player and character motives together, gets rid of need to judge other players' contributions strategically and aesthetically; cons: could become predictable who a player will choose, reducing incentives for all players to try their best each mission

* mission leader makes a gut choice. pros: this kind of decision may be best kept unstructured; the weak link may tend to jump out at the mission leader. cons: sometimes there will not be a clear choice and/or some people may be uncomfortable punishing their friends

* mission leader chooses with guidance (reward tokens, or a set of judging criteria). pros: make people more comfortable choosing, can help steer game; cons: maybe slow things down or reduce instinctual evolution ...

* some combo of choice, gut instinct & guidance

Thanks, Mark.  The more I think about this, the less I like the token idea.  I really do want to find a way to encourage dramatic vignettes, but I don't see the immunity thing working in practice.  There will be three vignettes, plus a fourth by the Leader.  It seems like the immunity token is either dispensed early or late, and either way it sucks a bit of the fun out of the upcoming vignettes.  It seems arbitrary and a little forced.

So what I have is a situation where each player has unlimited narrative control, guided only by the Leader's initial framing of the general mission.  They can generate whatever circumstances and interactions they like, good or bad, and when it is all over the Leader chooses one of them to punish by whatever criteria he likes.  The only actual choice is which die size to share with the group.  I really want to rein this in a little, but in a satisfying way.

I want missions to be fraught with peril and full of action.  I want them to be full of difficult choices and painful decisions.  I want players to have the freedom to create scenes that reflect on their character's interior life in interesting ways.  Right now all that is possible and encouraged but not in any way supported.  Still thinking...

Hey, that was my 900th post!

What if you contribute your die to the collective mission pool when you add detail, adversity, and excitement to somebody else's vignette?

GRAHAM:  All right, we're moving from basement to basement through the warren of tenements in the Wola district.  Everybody has a big crate of loose ammunition on their back.  It's too much to carry but we have no choice.  We arrive at the Leszno street barricade and...

MALCOLM:  Hold on there, sport.  There are muted sounds behind us.  Some of Dirlewanger's partisan-hunters have followed us, and we've brought them directly to the Wola Home Army headquarters.  (Hands the Leader his die)

GRAHAM:  Shit.

I think I figured this out.  The size of the die you contribute to the Mission pool influences the color of your narration.  The higher the die size (and the more helpful), the more you have to fuck things up.

If a player contributes a d4, their Mission Vignette must include some collective triumph.  Something goes right for the entire crew, and there is a noteworthy group accomplishment toward the overall Mission goal.

If a player contributes a d6, their Mission Vignette must include some personal success.  Their particular moment in the spotlight should go well, and their character should achieve something worthwhile.

If a player contributes a d8, their Mission Vignette must include some personal failure.  Something goes wrong and it is their fault, or some task in their care is neglected.

If a player contributes a d10 or d12, their Mission Vignette must include some disaster for the crew.  Something very unpleasant happens, or something tragic, or otherwise heartbreaking.

Thus the more helpful you are mechanically, the more hardship you cause, and the more likely you'll be seen as the Weak Link. 

Also, instead of age moving a die up or down by one point, it moves the die size up or down one.  So if you are fifteen, and you contribute a d6 to a Personal Vignette, you roll a d4.  But that same d6, contributed by a fifteen year old for the Mission, is turned into a d8.  This completely eliminates stupid addition and subtraction and makes age choice really important.  A tactically-minded bunch of players are going to want to balance 15 and 17 year olds, which is cool.

I'd love some feedback on whether this is a sound approach - my worries are:

1.  Providing "you must" guidelines tying die size to narration is restrictive and/or excessively hand-holding and
2.  Moving a whole die size up and down every Scene will be either burdensome or unbalancing.

Thanks!