The Setup

On Saturday morning at Conception I managed to gather a group of enthusiastic players to playtest the latest rules for Six Bullets for Vengeance, my game about revenge. There were 7 of us, which, although technically the right number (1 hero + 6 villains), had the potential to be a bit too many. As it happened, it worked rather well, and I got a lot of invaluable feedback out of it. Only me and Nimrod had played the game before, so this really was a fresh set of eyes for the game.

We started up with blank paper for our character sheets, a large pad of flip-chart paper that I’d nicked from work for the revelation map and a big pool of d6s. I did worry that I was requiring too many dice, but at least they’re the type people are likely to have around.

I explained the concept and we brainstormed ideas for the setting. We settled on a 1960s London gangster setting, akin to Get Carter et al, with a crime family like the Krays as the antagonists. We then came up with vague character concepts and names to fit:

• Nimrod Jones played Shotgun Steve, publican of the Shotgun pub and ringleader of the villains.
• Graham Walmsley played Sgt Bill Davis, a corrupt cop, days away from retirement.
• James played Freddie the Pervert, proprietor of an adult cinema, which it transpired during play we were all members of (“the Cinema Club”).
• Peter played Michael Carter, a smartly dressed hitman.
• Scott Dorward played Eddie the Weasel, whose name said it all.
• I played Jimmy the Knees, a low-ranking hardman enforcer.
• And Rich Stokes played Martin, the protagonist. Someone (I think Graham) remarked that Martin was a very middleclass English name, which we all seized upon as an interesting twist.

We had a quick discussion about what order the antagonists were likely to be fought in, but decided later in the game that it would be good if the protagonist picked who he wanted to face next.

We then wrote “Martin” and “the Shotgun” onto the revelation map as jumping off points and started the game.

The playtest was rather indepth and a lot of issues arose from it, so I’ll split the play report into 3 parts with a separate post of questions at the end.

We began with the epilogue, the final scene of the game. Nimrod framed a scene of destruction in the blazing Shotgun, Shotgun Steve taking cover behind the bar, shouting obscenities at Martin whilst furiously reloading his gun. We then entered our first conflict as Steve leapt from the bar and tried to kill Martin, as this was the only scene of the game where the protagonist could die. Stakes were set and both Steve and Martin defined some attributes for their characters.

Martin won and Rich narrated a blowtorch flying over the bar, igniting spilt spirits and killing Steve. Rich closed with Martin walking over and lighting a cigarette on Steve’s smouldering corpse. As he had won the conflict he got a reward (a bonus die to his pool or an attribute for him, his opponent or the scene) and got to add a revelation to the map.

I’m debating whether Nimrod, as the lead antagonist, should have set up the epilogue, or whether that task should have fallen to Rich, as protagonist. This would create something of a symmetry as the protagonist sets up the prologue too, but I suspect it’s largely irrelevant.

Nimrod then set the scene for the first chapter, which was focused on Martin’s conflict with Shotgun Steve, which in turn would lead out into the epilogue we’d already narrated. Previously the first scene/epilogue was the sole scene with the lead villain in the spotlight, as I’d wanted to keep the opening scene and conflict short and bloody, but I think splitting them up like this worked nicely and gave Nimrod some time in the spotlight.

Nominal narrative control now falls to the antagonist whose scene it is, and it is their responsibility to set the scene and assign roles to all the other players so that everyone is involved and engaged. He does this with a pool of “scene dice” (we started with 10, but I’m not sure this was enough with 7 of us – I might make it 2 per player) to hand out to make NPCs, give the scene attributes and generally use as a pool of dice to hand out when cool things get done. Nimrod picked up the dice and passed 2 to each player, barking to them in his best cockney accent as he did so (“You, take this crowbar and whack him when he comes round the corner; you two, get that bloody guitar; and you, go darrn to the cellar and get ‘you know what’”). Although I hadn’t intended it to be done quite so definitively, it worked really well and Graham followed the same style when he set up the next chapter.

With the scene setup Rich narrated Martin coming into the cellar and whacking my mook as he came looking for ‘you know what.’ The conflicts kinda spilled out from there as Martin waded his way into the pub and through various mooks, played with enthusiasm and menace by the various players. Martin in turn battered my mook with a cricket bat, shot James’ mook with his revolver whilst hitting Scott’s in the face with his guitar, accidentally blowtorching Graham’s mook, and then Steve shot Pete’s mook in the groin for sleeping with his wife (which turned out to be important later, as we added it as a revelation). The key revelation that came out here, when the guitar broke, was that it had a packet addressed to Steve’s wife in it

I hadn’t intended conflicts to work as they did, intending them to represent the entirety of a fight, rather than a glorified combat round, but it worked well and the pace was good so we rolled with it.

At times we ended up with a 3 or 4 way conflict. Where we could we had each player take a side in a larger 2 way conflict, but there were times when everyone wanted something different. In these cases we daisy chained the sub-conflicts, with the outcome of one impacting on another which worked as a stop gap but wasn’t necessarily elegant.

Vengeance dice have remained in to help the protagonist out against all the other antagonists, but instead of requiring a death to be narrated when rolled, required some sort of bloody injury or maiming to be included. For some reason this kept being blood trickling into the eyes or someone having their eyes poked out or slashed out or whatever, which is where the game got its name from. I’m toying with including this as a requirement in the game, having the players pick a violence motif that has to be included in the narration whenever a vengeance dice is rolled.

With all the conflicts flying about, we kept forgetting to pick conflict rewards or write new revelations, and we eventually decided that although conflict rewards were good and useful, being forced to add a revelation when you might not have one in mind didn’t work so well. However some sort of mechanism to regulate this was needed.

The chapter ended with mooks dead or dying, Martin’s eye poked out on a piece of splintered wood, the pub ablaze (after the blowtorch incident) and Steve cowering behind the bar, frantically reloading his shotgun. In a nice twist, as James’s mook died, he stumbled back and sent the blowtorch flying through the air … which was where the epilogue began.

Rich decided he wanted Martin to go after Graham’s corrupt cop next, so Graham framed a scene in a darkened alley where Martin was waiting for someone. Graham followed Nimrod’s lead by ordering his two policemen to get him, handing out some dice to each of them as well assigning 2 to an attribute for the alleyway of “dark alley.”

As this chapter began not all the players had roles to play, so James seized on the opportunity and grabbed some unused scene dice and decided to play Dave, who we had added to the revelation map earlier as Martin’s friend. We revealed that he was actually one of Martin’s bandmates, which tied in nicely to the growing significance of the guitar.

PC Sledge and PC Cutter were played by Nimrod and Scott and went for Martin, who lashed out with his cricket bat at them. Before he could shoot them, Graham narrated that the revolver Martin had used in the previous chapter has been his, and grabbed the dice from Rich’s character sheet to use in the conflict against him. We discussed the fairness of this, as it pretty much meant that Rich would lose that attribute, but ultimately decided it was rather cool.

Sgt Davis shot at Martin, but hit something steel in the guitar case. PC Sledge and Cutter went down, but Dave died too as he tried to snitch on Martin. Blood in the eyes remained a theme throughout.

We finished up with Sgt Davis revealing that Martin had been betrayed by the one guy he trusted – Steve, their band manager. We decided as we didn't have time to play more than 2 chapters, to work out what had set Martin on this path of vengeance, and decided between us that the mics had been left on too long at the recording studio where his band practiced, and he’d ended up with an incriminating tape (which was in the steel case in the packet in the guitar, en route to Steve’s wife, the police informer) which his bandmates had paid the price for.

As the revelations clicked into place we all got very excited, and it definitely helped having a visible map of them all laid out in front of us. The revelations are the core of the game and I’ve witnessed them working really well in all of the games I’ve ran, creating a great sense of satisfaction and enthusiasm as they are pieced together.

Working out how, when and if to regulate and control the flow of revelations is important. Forcing you to narrate a revelation after a conflict is sometimes intrusive, but conversely letting you add them in whenever you like is disruptive. I’m currently thinking about handing out revelation dice as rewards for conflicts, which could then be spent to add a revelation when required, so it regulates the revelations but doesn’t restrict them.

1. How many dice is too many? Is there such a thing as a game requiring too many dice?

2. Narration rights were fairly vague. The antagonist set the scene and assigned roles, but once the game got going people just stepped in and narrated as appropriate. Do you think this vagueness will be a problem?

3. Vengeance dice and violence motifs – should this be codified into the rules, or will it just happen anyway?

4. Conflicts – should they be more than “I stab him in the eye”? It seemed to work, at least from where I was sitting, to break the larger conflict into these various blow by blow conflicts, but does it have the potential to get clunky?

5. The revelation map worked well and provided a nice focus, but we also found ourselves adding other things to it like the odd note, or attributes created for a scene. Do you think this will prove too much of a distraction?

6. Originally revelations could only be added as a reward for winning a conflict, which sometimes proved frustrating when you didn’t have one in mind, or if you thought of one later. Do you think the narration of a revelation needs to be regulated at all?

7. Reward dice/‘fan mail’ – currently all spare dice from the scene, as well as other dice discarded as the game went on go into the middle of the table where they can be handed out as rewards for cool things. At times we found there weren’t enough in the middle and wondered about adding more. Should the amount of dice there be limited in any way?

Hi Andrew!

Congratulations on the great playtest!

I make no claims to being the right guy or to having the right answers, but for what it's worth, here are my thoughts on your questions.

1. How many dice is too many? Is there such a thing as a game requiring too many dice?

2. Narration rights were fairly vague. The antagonist set the scene and assigned roles, but once the game got going people just stepped in and narrated as appropriate. Do you think this vagueness will be a problem?

3. Vengeance dice and violence motifs – should this be codified into the rules, or will it just happen anyway?

4. Conflicts – should they be more than “I stab him in the eye”? It seemed to work, at least from where I was sitting, to break the larger conflict into these various blow by blow conflicts, but does it have the potential to get clunky?

5. The revelation map worked well and provided a nice focus, but we also found ourselves adding other things to it like the odd note, or attributes created for a scene. Do you think this will prove too much of a distraction?

6. Originally revelations could only be added as a reward for winning a conflict, which sometimes proved frustrating when you didn’t have one in mind, or if you thought of one later. Do you think the narration of a revelation needs to be regulated at all?

7. Reward dice/‘fan mail’ – currently all spare dice from the scene, as well as other dice discarded as the game went on go into the middle of the table where they can be handed out as rewards for cool things. At times we found there weren’t enough in the middle and wondered about adding more. Should the amount of dice there be limited in any way?

Thanks Andrew, that was fun.

1. How many dice is too many? Is there such a thing as a game requiring too many dice?

2. Narration rights were fairly vague. The antagonist set the scene and assigned roles, but once the game got going people just stepped in and narrated as appropriate. Do you think this vagueness will be a problem?

3. Vengeance dice and violence motifs – should this be codified into the rules, or will it just happen anyway?

4. Conflicts – should they be more than “I stab him in the eye”? It seemed to work, at least from where I was sitting, to break the larger conflict into these various blow by blow conflicts, but does it have the potential to get clunky?

5. The revelation map worked well and provided a nice focus, but we also found ourselves adding other things to it like the odd note, or attributes created for a scene. Do you think this will prove too much of a distraction?

6. Originally revelations could only be added as a reward for winning a conflict, which sometimes proved frustrating when you didn’t have one in mind, or if you thought of one later. Do you think the narration of a revelation needs to be regulated at all?

7. Reward dice/‘fan mail’ – currently all spare dice from the scene, as well as other dice discarded as the game went on go into the middle of the table where they can be handed out as rewards for cool things. At times we found there weren’t enough in the middle and wondered about adding more. Should the amount of dice there be limited in any way?

Ron wrote:

1. How many dice is too many? Is there such a thing as a game requiring too many dice?

I don't really know if there's an answer for that. Some people used to bring up to 20d6 apiece to our old Champions games. How many did you end up using for this particular session?

Ron wrote:

3. Vengeance dice and violence motifs – should this be codified into the rules, or will it just happen anyway?

I like the vengeance dice, but I think the lesson from this playtest is that the specific violence motif should be left undefined. Play itself will develop it from there; I can see that it might be great fun to construct a specific one through synergy and inspiration (as this group did), but also great fun to let ever-more diverse or contrasting descriptions proliferate too. Whatever that particular group ends up doing should be OK.

Ron wrote:

4. Conflicts – should they be more than “I stab him in the eye”? It seemed to work, at least from where I was sitting, to break the larger conflict into these various blow by blow conflicts, but does it have the potential to get clunky?

I thought your experience showed the opposite trend - the tendency for rolls to include more of a scene, not less. Did I misunderstand that?

Ron wrote:

5. The revelation map worked well and provided a nice focus, but we also found ourselves adding other things to it like the odd note, or attributes created for a scene. Do you think this will prove too much of a distraction?

Hey, that sounds like a gift from the gods to me. Put it in as a rule! "Feel free to add the odd note or scene attributes right onto the map." Everybody wins.

Ron wrote:

6. Originally revelations could only be added as a reward for winning a conflict, which sometimes proved frustrating when you didn’t have one in mind, or if you thought of one later. Do you think the narration of a revelation needs to be regulated at all?

H'm. Good question. Is it feasible to say that the winner of a conflict has judgment rights for a revelation to add? Meaning that anyone can suggest anything, but that person wields the gavel, so to speak. So that way, if you have a good idea for a revelation at some odd time during play, at least you know you can suggest it during the next opportunity to do so (i.e. when someone wins the conflict) and that it will be listened to.

Ron wrote:

7. Reward dice/‘fan mail’ – currently all spare dice from the scene, as well as other dice discarded as the game went on go into the middle of the table where they can be handed out as rewards for cool things. At times we found there weren’t enough in the middle and wondered about adding more. Should the amount of dice there be limited in any way?

Isn't that a good thing, that resources for rewards sometimes run out? I mean, there's a reason that one component of the fanmail system in PTA is called the Budget, after all. I think this playtest shows that one must really pick and choose when you want to give out those rewards, which I think is a good thing. Based on your account, I think you hit a sweet spot such that sometimes the rewards are a bit scarcer than one might like, and my suggestion is not to mess with it.

Graham wrote:
Thanks Andrew, that was fun.

Graham wrote:

1. How many dice is too many? Is there such a thing as a game requiring too many dice?

My instinct is to say no. But we used loads, didn't we? Six per player plus about twelve for the protagonist plus about twenty that we put it because we kept replenishing the dice pool in the centre. Oh, plus some to associate with motifs like Dark Alley.

Graham wrote:

2. Narration rights were fairly vague. The antagonist set the scene and assigned roles, but once the game got going people just stepped in and narrated as appropriate. Do you think this vagueness will be a problem?

That's funny. I don't remember it like that. I remember that the narration went broadly like this:

1. The Protagonist says what he's doing
2. One of the antagonist players (either a mook or the main villain for the scene) narrates a conflict at some point ("I swing the sledgehammer")
3. The conflict's resolved.
4. Whoever wins the conflict narrates how it ends.
5. Go back to step 1.

Now, within this, we kept making suggestions - "Oh! How about the object's a tape?" - and it was a bit more blurred when two mooks were attacking. But I thought it was fairly clear who was allowed to narrate.

Graham wrote:

3. Vengeance dice and violence motifs – should this be codified into the rules, or will it just happen anyway?

Vengeance dice in the sense of "If you use a vengeance die, there's going to be pain or blood" were good. They were very exciting, actually, especially when three dice were used and you knew someone was going to get badly, badly hurt. I don't think it'd be good to make it more specific than that.

Graham wrote:

4. Conflicts – should they be more than “I stab him in the eye”? It seemed to work, at least from where I was sitting, to break the larger conflict into these various blow by blow conflicts, but does it have the potential to get clunky?

Could you explain the problem with this? From my point of view, I thought conflicts flowed very naturally: someone attacks, there's a conflict.

Graham wrote: I was a bit confused about the revelation map. I wasn't sure whether it was just for revelations ("Steve is going bankrupt!") or for things to clarify later ("There's a guitar and it's significant") or for general things (like the classical guitar soundtrack I added, which I'm not sure was a good idea). I think it's important it includes things to clarify later, but I'm not sure about notes.

Graham wrote:

6. Originally revelations could only be added as a reward for winning a conflict, which sometimes proved frustrating when you didn’t have one in mind, or if you thought of one later. Do you think the narration of a revelation needs to be regulated at all?

I'm not sure it does. Often, we'd spontaneously decide things which seemed right ("The metal object's a tape!", "The revolver is mine!"), and it would be a shame to regulate that flow of ideas. And it worked the other way: sometimes you'd win a conflict but you couldn't think of an interesting revelation.

Graham wrote:

7. Reward dice/‘fan mail’ – currently all spare dice from the scene, as well as other dice discarded as the game went on go into the middle of the table where they can be handed out as rewards for cool things. At times we found there weren’t enough in the middle and wondered about adding more. Should the amount of dice there be limited in any way?

I generally found the fan mail system difficult: rewarding narration with dice didn't feel natural, somehow; I had to remind myself I was meant to be doing this and make an effort to give dice. (This was the case in my playtest, too, which followed yours: in mine, the fanmail system was just abandoned).

Okay, seeing as you appear to be ignoring me on the CE forum I'll repost my responses here :p

andrew_kenrick wrote:
1. How many dice is too many? Is there such a thing as a game requiring too many dice?

andrew_kenrick wrote:
2. Narration rights were fairly vague. The antagonist set the scene and assigned roles, but once the game got going people just stepped in and narrated as appropriate. Do you think this vagueness will be a problem?

andrew_kenrick wrote:
3. Vengeance dice and violence motifs – should this be codified into the rules, or will it just happen anyway?

andrew_kenrick wrote:
4. Conflicts – should they be more than “I stab him in the eye”? It seemed to work, at least from where I was sitting, to break the larger conflict into these various blow by blow conflicts, but does it have the potential to get clunky?

andrew_kenrick wrote:
5. The revelation map worked well and provided a nice focus, but we also found ourselves adding other things to it like the odd note, or attributes created for a scene. Do you think this will prove too much of a distraction?

andrew_kenrick wrote:
6. Originally revelations could only be added as a reward for winning a conflict, which sometimes proved frustrating when you didn’t have one in mind, or if you thought of one later. Do you think the narration of a revelation needs to be regulated at all?

andrew_kenrick wrote:
7. Reward dice/‘fan mail’ – currently all spare dice from the scene, as well as other dice discarded as the game went on go into the middle of the table where they can be handed out as rewards for cool things. At times we found there weren’t enough in the middle and wondered about adding more. Should the amount of dice there be limited in any way?

Yeh, we did use a fair few! I don't think it's really a problem, but worth considering. Should the dice used for setting the chapter out and the dice used for fan mail be one and the same?

Except the conflict wasn't always resolved by that point, especially if the antagonist won! I remember some of the hero vs mook fights went on for quite a few conflicts.

I went into the game intending it to just be for revelations, but as the game went on it seemed natural to put other things on it. Did it become clearer as the game went on? Did you think it was a problem for the rev-map to have all these things on it? Does what a revelation is exactly need to be defined?

I'm a little worried about just letting people narrate a revelation at any time, as then you have the question about who decides if it's valid or not? At least with a conflict, you can have that decision fall to the winner.

Do you think it needed a reward system at all? This was the first time it's had one at all, and I thought it worked quite well, but was fairly ad hoc and haphazard.

Andrew,

The first thing I have to say is that I really, really enjoyed that playtest.  I'd deliberately avoided learning too much about the game and it's system before coming down to conception to make the playtest more interesting.

Before I look at your questions too deeply, I'll list some thoughts about the game:

The system seemed to work, but I couldn't help feeling that things were a bit "wooly" here and there.  For example, everyone got an extra d6 every time I won a conflict.  These dice were be kept in a pool along with the 6 I started with and could either be spent 1:1 on any roll or used to add traits to my character.  Dice "used" just to add to a roll are lost, but dice converted into traits stick around while that trait sticks around.  I started off by creating the trait "Revolver" for 2 dice for example.  The problem is that I can't see why I would want to just spend dice and lose them.  Why not just create a new trait with them?  Either way I lose the die from my pool, but by creating a new trait I might get to use that die again later.

I think the whole "adding a revelation to the map" thing works superbly, but with the caveat that there was this big pause whenever it came up.  What happened was there was this really intense, bloody violence with a wicked-cool fast paced narrative.  Then dice are rolled, which takes next to no time and the outcome is also narrated as really fast paced.  Then there was this choice: Take an extra die or add an extra attribute to yourself or someone else, then add something to the revelation map.  So often during the playtest, there was this pause in the narrative where people thought about what to add to the revelation map if they didn't have anything in mind.

I was thinking about how to overcome this and still remain pretty flexible.  The best solution I could come up with looked something like:

The winner of the conflict gets an extra die from somewhere.
They can immediately spend it to either:

a) Create a new attribute for a character (their own or someone else's as long as that new attribute makes sense in context of the conflict and it's narrative)*.  When creating an attribute in this way, players can spend other dice from their pool as well.**

b) Add a revelation to the map or create an attribute on the map ***.

This way, I think there's a reasonable limit to the revelations (as in, you can only create one if you win a conflict) but nobody ever feels like they have to create something when they don't have any ideas to hand.

I think the "Blood in your eyes" motif came about pretty organically.  I'd hate to try and force that, but at the same time, I think that the idea of a motif worked very well.  I think that a mention of a motif is a good idea, but trying to force it is going to lead to a lot of pauses as people try to think of ways that work and after a while it'll get kinda tedious (I mean, how many times can someone get shot/stabbed in the eye before it becomes boring?)

Dishing out the dice at the start of the scene worked very well indeed, but there needs to be a bit more guidance for how many dice there are and how they get distributed.  Even if it's a case of "here are 2 dice per player, distribute them as you see fit, but make sure everyone gets at least 1".  Also, what exactly do these mooks get?  Do they just get 2 dice or whatever to use in all the conflicts they are involved in, (so one might look like "DI Cutter: 2d") or do they have specific traits? (DI Cutter: Police Brutality - 1d, Bolt Croppers - 1d)

So, I want to see:

1) A good reason to spend dice directly from my pool.  This might be as simple as saying you can only create attributes at certain points.

2) A more structured way of resolving the rewards for winning a conflict

3) Tightening up on the way the "extras" were created and worked

As for your specific questions:

1) There's no such thing as too many dice.  You're using d6s and only really expecting there to be about 15 per player abs max.  No problem.

2) The vague narration worked very well, but I have a feeling that you'll find it wasn't all that vague really.  I rather think that there were rules to what we were doing, I just don't really know what they were.  I think this is something that needs close attention in the next playtest.  There was the "Start with a conflict, winner narrates the outcome", but then who sets up the next conflict?  We started off by going around the table, but then it was just someone's idea and I think it went from there.  It certyainly felt a lot more structured to me.

3) I say let the violence motifs just crop up organically.

4) I think the bite sized conflicts worked rather well, but I can see the need for certain scenes not to just be "Kill the boss and his mooks as graphically as possible".  I had a great time with the 2 scenes we played, but I can see that getting boring if all the scenes followed the same format.  I don't think they would have, but there might need to be some guidance or mechanic for that.

5) Adding all kinds of funky stuff really worked for me.  I like that.

6) I suggested earlier that you can maybe spend dice when you come up with a revelation.

7) I didn't really dwell much on the reward mechanic.  I was busy killing people with massive vengeance!

Ok, lots of things to reply to, so one at a time:

Geoff: yeh, I'm not sure dice is really a problem. As I said to Ron, I think any problems arise from me using them as counters and tokens, which can easily be rectified. Having said that, of all the die types, d6s are the least likely to be in short supply.

I agree with you about the short bloody vignettes and conflicts - yes, that is what the game is all about, although it's not all of what it's about. I definitely see the potential for more talky scenes, and although that never really came into this playtest, it has done in previous ones. Some games will end up very fast paced and bloody, others less so.

I think I'm leaning towards loose guidelines for narration and conflicts, with slightly firmer guidelines for revelations. And a limit for the reward dice sounds sensible too, ensuring that they are actually valuable.

Graham: I agree about setting stakes for the conflict. To be honest, it worked well from my pov, so I just need to find a way to channel that back into the game! I think specifying fairly broad stakes ("I shoot the mook" "I hit him with the crowbar") works well, but stating that there is the possibility that the outcome of this conflict will not be final, that it can and should be taken further.

Yes, I agree that the rev-map needs tightening up as to what it is used for exactly. Whilst I don't want it to turn into a general space for notes, and want it to remain focused on the revelations, I think using it for notes and attributes is handy, so I'm in two minds.

As for narrating a revelation, I think we got lucky about narrating them - they always fitted the plot nicely. I've certainly encountered some problems with previous playtests where the players disagreed, and we ended up dicing off for it, which didn't really satisfy anyone. I like to think that the new rules avoid that situation, but I'll keep an eye on it. For now I'd like a mechanic to stay.

The reward system is one of the newest additions, so it's definitely on probation until it proves itself!

Rich wrote:
The system seemed to work, but I couldn't help feeling that things were a bit "wooly" here and there.  For example, everyone got an extra d6 every time I won a conflict.  These dice were be kept in a pool along with the 6 I started with and could either be spent 1:1 on any roll or used to add traits to my character.  Dice "used" just to add to a roll are lost, but dice converted into traits stick around while that trait sticks around.  I started off by creating the trait "Revolver" for 2 dice for example.  The problem is that I can't see why I would want to just spend dice and lose them.  Why not just create a new trait with them?  Either way I lose the die from my pool, but by creating a new trait I might get to use that die again later.

Rich wrote: I think the whole "adding a revelation to the map" thing works superbly, but with the caveat that there was this big pause whenever it came up.  What happened was there was this really intense, bloody violence with a wicked-cool fast paced narrative.  Then dice are rolled, which takes next to no time and the outcome is also narrated as really fast paced.  Then there was this choice: Take an extra die or add an extra attribute to yourself or someone else, then add something to the revelation map.  So often during the playtest, there was this pause in the narrative where people thought about what to add to the revelation map if they didn't have anything in mind.

Rich wrote: I was thinking about how to overcome this and still remain pretty flexible.  The best solution I could come up with looked something like:

The winner of the conflict gets an extra die from somewhere.
They can immediately spend it to either:

a) Create a new attribute for a character (their own or someone else's as long as that new attribute makes sense in context of the conflict and it's narrative)*.  When creating an attribute in this way, players can spend other dice from their pool as well.**

b) Add a revelation to the map or create an attribute on the map ***.

This way, I think there's a reasonable limit to the revelations (as in, you can only create one if you win a conflict) but nobody ever feels like they have to create something when they don't have any ideas to hand.

Rich wrote: I think the "Blood in your eyes" motif came about pretty organically.  I'd hate to try and force that, but at the same time, I think that the idea of a motif worked very well.  I think that a mention of a motif is a good idea, but trying to force it is going to lead to a lot of pauses as people try to think of ways that work and after a while it'll get kinda tedious (I mean, how many times can someone get shot/stabbed in the eye before it becomes boring?)

Rich wrote: Dishing out the dice at the start of the scene worked very well indeed, but there needs to be a bit more guidance for how many dice there are and how they get distributed.  Even if it's a case of "here are 2 dice per player, distribute them as you see fit, but make sure everyone gets at least 1".  Also, what exactly do these mooks get?  Do they just get 2 dice or whatever to use in all the conflicts they are involved in, (so one might look like "DI Cutter: 2d") or do they have specific traits? (DI Cutter: Police Brutality - 1d, Bolt Croppers - 1d)

andrew_kenrick wrote: Did you mean to refer to something with the asterisks?

Before I get onto your latest reply, I'd like to address one of your previous answers.

Rich Stokes wrote: I think the bite sized conflicts worked rather well, but I can see the need for certain scenes not to just be "Kill the boss and his mooks as graphically as possible".  I had a great time with the 2 scenes we played, but I can see that getting boring if all the scenes followed the same format.  I don't think they would have, but there might need to be some guidance or mechanic for that.

I like the idea of keeping pools streamlined. So, there's a single scene pool that's also the reward pool, from which dice for the scene attributes are dished out as well as dice for npcs, and rewards once play starts. Then each player has his own single pool of dice that he uses as a common pool for his own character, for making any npcs out of and for contributing to the game and that sort of thing.

One of the things I noticed during the playtest was that we had several pools each and it got confusing and muddled. Several times I'd hand people a die for cool narration and they'd be unsure what to do with it. Single pools should hopefully eliminate that. Can anyone see a problem with this?

I do like the idea about going round the table and getting each player to contribute something to the scene. Perhaps once the protagonist has set the scene up, you could go round and everyone could add something with their dice or the scene dice. That way you'd double check that everybody had had some input and the opportunity to get involved.

As for the stealing of other people's attributes, that was in the playtest version of the rules but I forgot about it when it happened in the game! You can use someone else's attribute as though it were your own, if appropriate, but you have to give them a dice as "payment." Of course, this doesn't account for losing it though - maybe the protagonist has to pay twice as much? It worked well in the game though. Can anyone think of a more elegant way of handling this?