Playtest #2 of Super Action Now! last night.  Did I say the first one was a blast?  Well, I was wrong.  THIS was a blast.  I mean, DAMN we had one crazy-ass time.

The players were Stephen, Courtney, and myself, as last time.  We wrote up new characters (I don't think multi-session campaigns are really possible in this game; the characters get too beat up!):

me:  "My name is Bubba Bad, and I am a bad-ass biker bastard."

Stephen:  "My name is Prudence 'The End Is Nigh' Pulsifer, and I am a crazy homeless man."  This character had skills you would never expect, but which he refused to use if he could help it, like corporate merger skills, cult leader skills, pan-galactic navigational & advanced physics skills, and bear-wrestling skills.

Courtney:  "My name is Harley Foot, and I am a 17-year old spawn of Sasquatch."

WHAT HAPPENED
You know those days where after a night of hard partying you find yourself in a parking garage on the first sublevel of a shopping mall, and then this homeless guy pokes you awake so you break his nose, and then it's all down-hill from there?  Yeah, well, that's the kind of day this was for Bubba Bad.

I got my GOTCHA! ("If my hog even gets SCRATCHED I fly into a murderous rage 5d12") off in the first round when the son of sasquatch, who was in the parking garage because he got lost, knocked Bubba's bike over.  Stephen established during the scene framing that the floor of the parking garage was weak and might collapse at any moment, and damn if it didn't fall in while Bubba Bad and Harley Foot were duking it out.  Specifically, at the moment that Harley Foot hurled Bubba bodily at Prudence Pulsifer (using a Power to "Lift ANYTHING above my head" and a GOTCHA! for reading minds and thus pre-empting Bubba's murderous rage).  All three of them fall into the resultant hole, followed by Bubba's hog, 5 red little crotch-rocket Yamaha motorcycles (which fell onto Mr. Pulsifer), a hotdog vendor, and several Jehovah's Witnesses.

Guess what was underneath that floor.  Yep, you guessed it: the Aztec Temple of the Rat-People, complete with rat-people and lots of cacti.  So there's a several-round three-way melee, sasquatch vs. biker vs. LOTS of rat-people, as Harley Foot and Bubba Bad escape the pit several times only to get knocked back into it, while Prudence Pulsifer eats his way through enough hotdogs to take shelter from the rat-people in the vendor's cart.  The vendor, under Courtney's control, sprays Prudence with a fire-extinguisher (because they have those lying around at the Aztec Temple of the Rat-People) in order to disperse the horrible stench the hobo was emanating.  It turns out, GOTCHA!, that Prudence "The End Is Nigh" Pulsifer multiplies if he gets wet.  So, covered in fire extinguisher foam, he crawls out of the cart and undergoes some horrible mitosis, dividing and replicating until there's like 16 of him, which of course ends the biker-sasquatch-ratpeople fight as they look on in horror.  Even the cacti were horrified (did I mention that the cacti were sentient and could walk?  Well, they could).

Harley Foot escapes from the pit a last time by murdalizing like 25 rat-people (Courtney kept managing to activate so many dice in each situation!  That thing was unstoppable!) and climbing out of their pit on the corpses.  Bubba Bad couldn't go that way 'cause he'd have to leave behind his motorcycle, so he used his "Earthquake belch" power to collapse some more of the parking garage in the form of a ramp he could drive up (if I hadn't already used it once that scene, he just would have used his "Inadvisable motorcycle jump" power, using a rat-people as a ramp).  Then EVERYBODY (Harley Foot, Bubba Bad, the hot dog vendor, the cacti, the rat-people, the Jehovah's Witnesses, even the 5 little red plastic motorcycles) gets swept up in a tide of Prudence Pulsifers, as they rush for the food court in quest of free food.

The food court scene is where things really started getting bad for Bubba.  Harley Foot stole his spiked German helmet, and Prudence stole the keys out of his motorcycle and tried to throw them down Harley Foot's throat, but the sasquatch was too fast and caught them, then ran out of the foodcourt for the nurse's station to get treatment for the wounds he received in the pit.  Bubba ain't havin' none of this, so he uses his Earthquake Belch to knock down the glass pyramid ceiling, but none of the glass lands on the sasquatch (nooooo!).  Enraged, Bubba Bad produces, from his "beard so big I can hide stuff in it," a hand-grenade, which he hurls at Prudence Pulsifer, only to have 7 clones pile on top of it to shield the blast (but 10 points still made it out to the real Prudence, muahaha).  A rat-person, under Courtney's control, crawls up on the ceiling to fall on Bubba's face, but Courtney rolled Snake-Eyes so (on Stephen's call) the rat-person was siezed mid-air by a thunder-bird that had apparently been released from the Aztec Temple, complete with sound-effects, and we couldn't stop laughing for like 5 minutes.  I mean, we were having one hell of a time.  "I knew there was a reason I wrote this game," I said, "and THAT was it!"

Then hobo-clones steal Bubba Bad's biker boots, and run off in two different directions.  Bubba Bad gets out his shotgun, activates his "Drunken Rage" power and his Quirks "I'm bad to the bone" and "I like the movie Road House" and starts blastin' at hobos, but Courtney throws in a Twist and that damned thunderbird returns and steals the shotgun.  Thinking fast, Bubba Bad grabs one of the thunderbird's talons and uses his "Arm Wrestling" skill, but it wasn't enough.  So, now barefoot, helmet-less, keys-less, and shotgun-less, Bubba Bad must swallow his pride and outroll his own Quirk "I hate crotch-rockets" to get on one of the red Yamaha motorcycles and chase after the sasquatch, vowing to kill it.

Then we cut to the climactic chase scene, through the middle of a shopping mall.  Stephen established that there was a cart in the middle of the concourse selling those really gaudy "fantasy" swords, which gave me a great idea.  Bubba Bad, rolling his motorcycle skill, and "I'm bad to the bone," and raw Finnesse, and Inadvisable Motorcycle Jump, ramps over the escalator and tries to grab a sword, which, by my own Twist, all along had really been the sword of Crog the Thunder God, but Harley Foot pegs him in the FACE with a ROCK (where did the rock come from? Damn TILT!), knocking him off the bike.  Luckily, he landed on his 3d12 beer gut, so he was unharmed.  Then the thunderbird returns, this time ridden by the security guard from the food court, but he gets pegged in the face with a rock too.  And then the giant rat god -- of COURSE there was a giant rat god in that Aztec temple! -- bursts through the floor and gnaws at Bubba Bad, but he blocks the attack with his beer gut (that beer gut saved his ass so many times).

But the sasquatch got the sword, and defeated the consciousness of Crog the Thundergod that tried to invade his mind upon touching the sword, and slew the rat god.  Bubba Bad sees this as the perfect moment to exact his revenge and kill that sasquatch with a Sucker Punch 4d10, but the damned thing hears him coming and bashes him in the face, killing him first for like 21 points.

Afterwards, we had a little discussion regarding the session.  I thought it was extremely cool that we didn't set any victory conditions (couldn't think of any at the moment), but there was still a clear-cut winner, Courtney, because my character not only got killed but had all his favorite stuff stolen, and Stephen's character had gathered upwards of 60 total Inconvenience.  Plus Courtney's character murdalized like 25 rats, and like 22 Girlscouts during the motorcycle chase sequence--I established there was a troupe of Girlscouts, in order to distract Harley Foot long enough for Bubba Bad to get to him, because Harley Foot was "Driven by my hatred for human children ages 2-13."  It worked, with Harley Foot not only using up his turn but also his power to "Step on people's heads, preferably children ages 2-13."

Man, there was SO MUCH that happened; all that stuff up there is just the things I could remember, there was lots more, way more than should have been possible for what was merely a 2.5 hour session, once you subtracted the times for food runs and smoke breaks.  And, Courtney, I mean, damn, it's only her second time playing an RPG is she is just totally on top of things, and having just as much fun as everyone else. She even wrote, at the bottom of her character sheet, in big letters, "I WIN!" after the session ended.  She said to Stephen, "Why didn't you tell me that these kind of games existed?  I mean, how often do we spend hours just talking about shit like 'what would happen if such and such' and then someone says, 'YEAH, and then THIS happens,' and all along there were GAMES you could play like this for HOURS?"  So, yeah, that made me feel good as a designer.  Plus the fact that we didn't have to throw out or change any of the rules.  The narration got out-of-turn several times, but that was just because we were so busy laughing that we couldn't keep up with whose turn it was.

Like I said, it was a BLAST.

This is the hardest I've ever laughed reading an actual play account.  :)

Marshall wrote: But the sasquatch . . . slew the rat god.  Bubba Bad sees this as the perfect moment to exact his revenge and kill that sasquatch with a Sucker Punch 4d10, but the damned thing hears him coming and bashes him in the face, killing him first for like 21 points.

Rules used in the final sasquatch vs. Bubba conflict:
Ok, if I remember right, I said "I'm gonna kill me that sasquatch with a sucker punch in the back of the head right there!" I rolled 4d10 for Sucker Punch (power), +5d6 for raw Brawn (skill), +3d10 for Brawn->Close Combat->Grievous Bodily Harm (skill), +1d8 "I like the movie Roadhouse" (quirk).  I would have also rolled "I'm bad to the bone 1d12" (quirk) and Drunken Rage 4d12 (power) but I had already used them in that scene.

Courtney's response was to have Harley Foot respond not by defending, but by killing Bubba Bad first, by hearing him coming and whirling around to smash him in the face.  I don't remember all of her dice, but they were skills like "Sharp hearing" (to hear him coming) and "Willing to kill," as well as basic Brawn and some other stuff.  If I remember right, her actual rolls included three 12s, which I could neither Fudge nor cause her to re-roll because I had run out of TILT!

We totaled up all our dice; her total exceeded mine by like 21, so what she wanted to happen happened (Bubba Bad being killed) for 21 points.  That's how all the resolution works:  use any dice that would be relevant, and if your total is bigger then you get what you want (but you're supposed to specify what it is you want before the rolls are made).

After Bubba Bad died, we ended the game because it felt like a good place to stop.  I would still be able to play had we continued, by controlling NPCs, and I would still be able to gain TILT!.  I even had enough Drive left to ignore the mortal wound, but I conceded the victory; I had nothing left up my sleeve to throw at that sasquatch anyway.
But, anyway, it just seemed like an appropriate ending.  Plus we were getting a little worn out; laughing your head off every other minute starts to hurt after a while :)

It was a unanimous decision that Courtney had won.  Harley Foot just ran rough-shod over everyone.  Stephen didn't do so hot because he had a non-combat character, while me & Courtney had high-combat characters.  Apparently, in Super Action Now! you need to either be able to fight, be able to reliably avoid fighting, or be able to get someone else to fight for you.

Marshall, thanks for the info.  I'm gonna ask some more questions now.  These are not aimed at improving play as you've experienced it thus far -- that seems totally unnecessary.  I'm just trying to get a sense of how well your system makes this kind of play reproducible for others.  If you're not super interested in that right now, just let me know.

Marshall wrote: Rules used in the final sasquatch vs. Bubba conflict:
Ok, if I remember right, I said "I'm gonna kill me that sasquatch with a sucker punch in the back of the head right there!" I rolled 4d10 for Sucker Punch (power), +5d6 for raw Brawn (skill), +3d10 for Brawn->Close Combat->Grievous Bodily Harm (skill), +1d8 "I like the movie Roadhouse" (quirk).  I would have also rolled "I'm bad to the bone 1d12" (quirk) and Drunken Rage 4d12 (power) but I had already used them in that scene.

Courtney's response was to have Harley Foot respond not by defending, but by killing Bubba Bad first, by hearing him coming and whirling around to smash him in the face.  I don't remember all of her dice, but they were skills like "Sharp hearing" (to hear him coming) and "Willing to kill," as well as basic Brawn and some other stuff.  If I remember right, her actual rolls included three 12s, which I could neither Fudge nor cause her to re-roll because I had run out of TILT!

Marshall wrote: After Bubba Bad died, we ended the game because it felt like a good place to stop.  I would still be able to play had we continued, by controlling NPCs, and I would still be able to gain TILT!.  I even had enough Drive left to ignore the mortal wound, but I conceded the victory; I had nothing left up my sleeve to throw at that sasquatch anyway.

Marshall wrote: Apparently, in Super Action Now! you need to either be able to fight, be able to reliably avoid fighting, or be able to get someone else to fight for you.

Marshall wrote: But, anyway, it just seemed like an appropriate ending.  Plus we were getting a little worn out; laughing your head off every other minute starts to hurt after a while :)

From this description, though, I'm wondering how certain calls were arbitrated.  If I was Courtney, I might have made the following arguments:
"I like the movie Roadhouse" doesn't actually help you sucker-punch me.  You used it earlier to shoot hobos.  Come on.  You can't just apply your 1d8 to anything that seems like it might be remotely related to the movie.

Okay, wow, great questions and points, guys.  Where do I start?

The first page of the rules states that "realism" has no place in the game a-tall, and also that "if this game is fair or balanced in any way, you're probably playing it wrong."  So, that being said, the idea in resolution is to name whatever stats apply in any way whatsoever.  If it just barely applies, let it ride; this is a "crazy-ass roleplaying game" after all.  If you pick something that clearly doesn't apply, and someone calls you on it, and you don't concede, then, well, you're being a dick. 

Frankly, if someone is going to be a dick, they're going to be a dick.  I don't think it's possible to write rules for anything that will prevent it.  I mean, does a 15-yard penalty prevent face-masking in football?  It doesn't seem to.  I might be wrong, but that's where I'm coming from.

Also, the primary player skills I want to stress in SAN! are lateral thinking, a sense of humor, and the ability to come up with something that NOBODY saw coming.  The resource management is part of it, sure, but it's not the big part.  I didn't see it coming that the sasquatch would try to kill Bubba before he could even hit; I should have considered it as a possibility, but I failed to do so.  That was an honest defeat, and I accept it with grace and admiration.  "At last I get to see the Shoryua Horse-Killing Technique," says the stricken samurai, and he dies with a smile on his face.

As for the "only speed-based things should apply," again, "realism" is right out the window on this game.  You get to add up the stats for Everything you are using in your attempt to accomplish your goal.  If your total is larger, then it worked.

All that being said, at one point I tried to Sucker Punch three hoboes that were stealing my boots.  Stephen said, "Hey, wait, how can you sucker punch all three of them?" and I said, "Like this," and mimed a hooking sucker punch with sound effects for each of the 3 collisions.  And he said, "Well, okay, but for the Popeye sucker punch you get half the dice."  And I said, "Okay, fair enough."  And that was that.  Is there a way to provide rules for this to be reproducible for other people?  I might be wrong, but I don't think so.  I did put a "don't be a jackass" section in the rules though.

ALSO -- if you don't like what somebody just decided to do, throw down 2 TILT and say "CHANGE!" and they have to do something else.  I'm also considering lowering the price to 1 TILT.

Oh, and I don't think it's just the first player to get domination over the others; there were plenty of times where the tide could have shifted dramatically, and Courtney kept winning conflicts by 1 point (which was hilarious).  Plus, Stephen was racking up TILT like crazy and had enough to put us all through the meat grinder.  I'm not sure why he didn't.

Okay, was that everything?  Oh, no, wait, the poker faces... No, we weren't really trying that hard, but that doesn't mean it was any less funny :)
-Marshall

Oh, one last thing, about conflict resolution in general.  I don't think you roll the dice to settle disputes between players; I think you roll the dice to settle in-game vagaries because the players are already in agreeance that it works that way.

From what I've observed, real life legal systems and politicians run off what is 'clearly doesn't apply' and other terms like it, which appear to refer to some galactic standard. It's not surprising the usage spreads. But it's rather strange to me that studying roleplay design has shown how deceptive these terms are to use, particularly where flesh and blood are on the line, rather than imagined space.

Okay, on topic: If someone picks something that 'clearly' doesn't apply, then they must think it applies. So it isn't clear that it doesn't apply - whether it applies or not needs some resolution system, otherwise it'll default to some cult of personality/alpha male system to resolve it (which sadly legal systems and policitcal 'discussion' seem to resort to...ooops, off topic again). Anyway, it isn't clear that it doesn't apply if you consider that other person a peer - as a peer their word is just as strong as yours and their word is that it applies. To assert your words about what clearly applies is to place your words being above theirs - which has been practiced for thousands of years in human dispute management, but only really works when you have more guns or spears than the other guy.

This applies to the 'This game isn't about realism, chuck that out the window!'. If there's a difference on whether it applies, that difference needs to be resolved.

Those are my thoughts about when something 'clearly' doesn't apply. I also have some doubts about things just barely applying, in terms of predictibly consistant use of them, but it's less of an issue than the above.

All that being said, at one point I tried to Sucker Punch three hoboes that were stealing my boots.  Stephen said, "Hey, wait, how can you sucker punch all three of them?" and I said, "Like this," and mimed a hooking sucker punch with sound effects for each of the 3 collisions.  And he said, "Well, okay, but for the Popeye sucker punch you get half the dice."  And I said, "Okay, fair enough."  And that was that.  Is there a way to provide rules for this to be reproducible for other people?  I might be wrong, but I don't think so.  I did put a "don't be a jackass" section in the rules though.

ALSO -- if you don't like what somebody just decided to do, throw down 2 TILT and say "CHANGE!" and they have to do something else.  I'm also considering lowering the price to 1 TILT.

Is there a way to provide rules for this to be reproducible for other people?  I might be wrong, but I don't think so.

Marshall wrote: Plus, Stephen was racking up TILT like crazy and had enough to put us all through the meat grinder.  I'm not sure why he didn't
. . .
the poker faces... No, we weren't really trying that hard, but that doesn't mean it was any less funny

Callan,
I love the concept of "If you don't like it, TILT me," and that's kindof what I was going for in the text itself, though for some reason I never spelled it out like that.  The only thing that worries me is that people will do stupid shit to drain other people's TILT -- but that's where "don't be a jackass" comes in.  So, here's a new rule:  who's to say a given player is being a jackass?  That player himself.  Before you try something, ask yourself, "Am I being a jackass?"  I think you will know the answer.

As to why neither me or Stephen applied TILT in that situation, I'm not sure.  I think Stephen might actually have done so, but I can't recall.  Sometimes he tries to spend TILT when it's not actually required, or when the cost is lower than what he's putting back into the bank, and I have to stop him.  Also, CHANGE! was a new rule at the time.  So I think it boils down to a lack of experience at this crazy new game, on all of our parts; it's only been played three times now, as of last night.

David,
The fun shit that comes out of competition is very important, but the competition is the core of it.  And competing over hilarity is also a component of the competition.

I gotta say that I don't think competition is about winning.  I don't think Gamist play is about winning.  I think it's about testing and demonstrating your abilities.  The winning is there, but it's not that big of a deal.  Frankly, winning gets stale.  It's exciting the first four or five times in a row, when I'm all amped up like "No power in the universe can stop me! YES!" but after a while I'm saying, "sigh, isn't there anyone who can stop me?  Don't make me jump off the mountain myself."

Furthermore, I like losing, on two conditions:
1.  I don't lose due to things that I can't influence in any way, or never had a chance to influence.
2.  I lose because the other person performed better than I did.

I think competitive games are about putting your full level of ability against the other guy, but secretly hoping that you'll lose.  Why?  Because loss always presents an opportunity to learn something.  That is the point of testing your ability.  Plus, lots of way cool shit happens that was fun to watch, and you get to talk about it later.  "Man, I can't believe you ripped my head off!  That was awesome!"

Last night we started some crazy-ass Olympic Dodecathlon of Doom.  We only had time for three of the twelve events (Deep Sea Fishin', Underwater Basket Weaving, and a Drinking Contest).  The competition in these was FIERCE, between the characters as well as the players.  The basket weaving was especially good; only Courtney's character actually managed to make a basket (my character, a cybernetically enhanced rhinocerous, didn't even have fingers), but the rules of the event said that our baskets would be judged after a time limit elapsed, so the rest of the event consisted of me and Stephen trying to gain possession of the basket so we could take credit for it.  We really pulled out all the stops in that one.
-Marshall

Marshall,

I am trying to envision playing this game, and it seems to me like I'd experience it as follows:
1) one of the types of personal performance this game rewards is the abiliy to keep a poker face
2) I have a good poker face, I expect to kick some ass
3) Wait, what's going on?  I'm gaining more TILT than my opponents, but they seem to be having more fun by cracking up at everything.

Which would lead me to:
4a) I win!  I showed everyone what a good poker face I have!  Hmm, I get the impression that they don't care how good my poker face was.  They weren't competing with me in this regard.  My victory feels hollow.  Plus, I seemed to ruin their fun by not laughing at their contributions.
or
4b) Fuck poker faces, I want in on the merriment!  If they're not trying to win, why should I?  I may lose, but it says nothing about my skills, because I wasn't doing everything that I could to win.

This seems (to me) like an area of relevant tension between your written rules and your actual play experiences.

-David

P.S. I compete in field sports, martial arts, word games, races, trivia contests, and board games -- I have never ever "secretly hoped that I'd lose".  Now, I have played in all of the above where I was hoping to lose -- for example, playing "against" small children or my senile grandma.  I'm still demonstrating my abilities, and I still feel good at accomplishing what I came for (help them have a good time), but dude, this is not competition.  (Likewise, "Sigh; is there anyone who can stop me?" isn't competition either, as you are no longer trying to win -- you can win without trying.)  Whether SAN is Gamist or not, I mention all this stuff now to explain my (perhaps odd-sounding) take in the numbered points above.

I gotta say that I don't think competition is about winning.  I don't think Gamist play is about winning.  I think it's about testing and demonstrating your abilities.  The winning is there, but it's not that big of a deal.  Frankly, winning gets stale.  It's exciting the first four or five times in a row, when I'm all amped up like "No power in the universe can stop me! YES!" but after a while I'm saying, "sigh, isn't there anyone who can stop me?  Don't make me jump off the mountain myself."

Damn, David, you just won't let go of those poker faces, will ya?
I think we're looking at 'em differently.  It's not that keeping a poker face is a necessary skill for SAN!; it's that playing and narrating so it's impossible for anyone to keep a poker face is a necessary skill.  I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that if anyone can play this game and keep a poker face throughout, then everyone at the table is playing it wrong.

And let's look at this competition thing again.  It's definitely part of Gamist play, but it's not the whole.  The key of Gamist play is the test & demonstration of ability--that's what's happening when someone Steps on Up.  In order for play to be Successful (fun for everyone), every player must be afforded an arena to accomplish those two things.  If I'm so good at the game that nobody can touch me, then I don't have an arena to test my ability (without the possibility of failure, it's not really a test) -- also, the other people don't have an arena to test their abilities either (without the possibility of success, it's not really a test).  So, at that point, I'm no longer having fun.  If I don't lose periodically, or at least come close to losing, the fun goes right out the window.  But, if I lose on purpose, that doesn't really count either (it's not a test if you don't really attempt it).  So I have to put my full ability, constrained by the rules of the game, into the mix, while secretly hoping that I lose (in order to facilitate fun all around).

Callan, when I say "game" I don't necessarily mean something that can be "beaten" or "won" or "completed."  When I say "game," I mean one thing: a structured activity engaged in for amusement or diversion; the level of structure may vary.  (If I remember right, Webster's will back me up on that.)  Some games definitely can be completed, but if it's a game for multiple players in competitive roles, then such a possibility is either due to the other players really just sucking (which I always hope is not the case; I have optimistic ideals regarding individual capability) or a design flaw.  At least, I would consider it a design flaw.

-Marshall

Just rewinding for a moment, I've noticed something about your conclusion that gamist play is not about winning...

I gotta say that I don't think competition is about winning.  I don't think Gamist play is about winning.  I think it's about testing and demonstrating your abilities.  The winning is there, but it's not that big of a deal.  Frankly, winning gets stale.  It's exciting the first four or five times in a row, when I'm all amped up like "No power in the universe can stop me! YES!" but after a while I'm saying, "sigh, isn't there anyone who can stop me?  Don't make me jump off the mountain myself."

Marshall,

I've suggested that the kinds of performance and ability that are rewarded in your play are more about humor (which wouldn't be Gamist) than about strategy & guts (which would be Gamist).  If you've compared this idea to your actual experiences and said, "Nope.  It's funny, but I'm really competing out there!  And when I compete well, I get props for that!" then I'll take your word for it.

Maybe it is possible to develop a context in which it is, as you said, impossible to keep a poker face, rather than a context in which it is simply less fun to bother trying to keep a poker face.  I don't think I've ever been in such a context in my life, so I'm just having trouble imagining it.

Ps,
-David

Callan,
I think I covered that in the middle paragraph of my previous post: "also, the other people don't have an arena to test their abilities either (without the possibility of success, it's not really a test)."

But if you're actually talking about something completely different, please feel free to correct me.

David,
Ah, here we are, here's the little frog under the fountain that's causing all the problems:  I patently disagree with your first sentence.

The kinds of performance and ability that SAN! rewards and is designed to reward is being gutsy and being funnier than the other guy, in a very one-upmanship kind of fashion.  Is this Gamist?  I say "Hell yes!"  There's more to Gamism than resource management, point husbanding, extrapolating probabilities, and other such crunchy bits; that's all just shit we've been left with from wargames!  (I say that as a former system-monkey.)  Historically, that seems to be all there's been to Step on Up about in terms of game texts, but you can Step on Up about anything; if one guy says, "Hey, I bet I can do (blank) better than you!" and the other guy says, "Oh yeah?  BRING IT!" then they're gonna be Stepping on Up.  Ever been to a poetry slam?  That's people competing based on the performance and creativity of their (usually improvised) poems, and it gets scary fierce.  If people can compete about creativity there, they can do it in RPGs.

You really can compete over just about anything.  As a side example, that one time I played Vampire, we were competing to see who could be the kewlest, darkest, spookiest, most gothin'-est guy in the group (it was middle school, what can I say?).  Not explicitly, but that's what was really going on.  We weren't exercising any Right to Dream, we certainly weren't trying to make Story Now; we were Stepping on Up.

-Marshall

Hi Marshall,

It doesn't answer my question. Whether at that point it's a trial or not is kind of ancillary . Is it a big deal or stale, when someone else is on a winning streak? I mean at the moment it becomes apparent they are.

Hi Callan,
The way I see it, the fun produced by Gamist play results from the test & demonstration, and if an arena for those is not present, or the process of pursuing them is undercut by unforeseen (and probably unagreed-upon) factors, the player will feel screwed and stop having fun.

Now, the moment that it becomes apparent that someone is on a winning streak, it can still be fun for the other guys because they're just that much more motivated to defeat that guy.  What I'm talking about is winning (whether by in-game rubrics, textual win-loss conditions, or Social Contract based challenges) consistently over several sessions of play.  Which it seems I wasn't very clear about.  Now, in my experience, when that's happened it's been me in that winning chair (this was rare in RPGs, mostly happened with board games and video games), people became unwilling to play me until a great deal of time had passed.

Does that answer your question?
-Marshall

It seems clear to me that:
1. This game can be 'broken' by players who don't cooperate with the spirit of the game.
2. This game can be a riot for at least one game group.

The first is common to most RPGs.  The second is a good start.  The big question is whether the game is as enjoyable with more groups and their different dynamics.  That can only be answered by more playtests with different people.

It seems David is concerned mostly with the first point, which is that the optimal rule strategy isn't the desired social strategy.  Part of this might come down to the social contract -- by playing this game, everyone needs to implicitly agree to the statement "Tonight we're going to play a silly game with vague victory conditions.  Sure, you can be a jackass, and you might even win, but we'll frown at you while applauding the disco samurai that win-loses."

So your social reward, the real one, is sometimes conflicting with the mechanical reward -- at the end of the night, if one player spend half the time off his chair laughing, while the other only snickered twice, who actually won?

It does raise the question (probably related to the big question above) of whether there's a rules modification that brings the mechanical reward more in line with the social one, but honestly that might not even matter.  A game that, when approached with the right attitude, causes hilarity is an awesome one.  It just might not be suitable for the player who only cares about mechanical rewards.

james

Hi Marshall,

Yeah, that's alot more clear. I get that issolation, but basically it's the nature of people. In such an environment, your left weighing up getting a consistant opportunity to play Vs kicking ass. Tieing this back to resolution, I could see the conflict between wanting both of them influencing what stats are treated as part of a roll. Might be useful to test whether its there, next playtest.

James,
I see your points.  However, I would like to say that I don't think ANY game is not vulnerable to breaking by people who aren't willing to cooperate with the spirit of it.  As Ron pointed out, you can always knock the pieces off the board.

Perhaps the real problem here is, "How can I write the text such that it properly informs prospective players about the spirit of the game?"  Maybe the text already does that for some people, and maybe it doesn't for others.  I'm in the process of a third draft to clarify things and present them in a tastier fashion, so when I get done I'll have to ask for input on this issue.

jag wrote:
So your social reward, the real one, is sometimes conflicting with the mechanical reward -- at the end of the night, if one player spend half the time off his chair laughing, while the other only snickered twice, who actually won?

Marshall,

I think our posts are actually mostly in agreement, although the language I used was deceptively neutral.  Any RPG can be broken, so the fact that there is some method to break your game isn't a big problem.  I also agree totally that mechanical rewards aren't the real rewards; it's always the social rewards that matter.  And an appropriate social contract between the players is all that's needed to make your game awesome.

BUT, having your mechanical rewards in line with the social ones might make this social contract easier easier.  Since the social contract is fuzzy (absent a forge-esque pre-game chat), what players see (after they briefly glance at the introduction) is the rule that 'If i laugh, i give the other person resources to use against me.'

I guess i want to reëmphasize that i think your game concept looks awesome, and this isn't some fatal flaw.  But it seems it would be some how "cleaner", and certainly more portable to random gamers you've never met, if following the mechanically preferred strategy was also the socially preferred (and therefor more important) strategy.

An example that comes to mind when i think of your game is the board game RoboRally.  Briefly, you pilot robots through a factory replete with conveyor belts, crushers, bottomless pits, and lasers, trying to get to the goal first.  To move your robots, you "program" them (with cards you draw) at the beginning of the turn.  Where the game shines is that each phase, the robot does what you instructed to, regardless of whether something has intervened -- so a set of instructions that made perfect sense in isolation can, after you've just been pushed slightly aside by someone else's robot, send you onto a conveyor belt that leads you into a crusher.

Now, in RoboRally, the mechanical rewards are getting power-ups and getting to the goal, but I can't honestly remember which games I've won and which i've lost.  The social reward comes when you slightly interfere with someone else's robot, so that their beautiful program that would have brought victory instead sends them into an endless pit, and the laughter and "oh shit!"s that result.

The point of this digression is that by pursuing the mechanical rewards/goals in RoboRally, you are unwittingly enabling the social ones.  You explicitly did this in SAN! by giving TILT! when you make other people laugh, which is awesome.  The flip side of this, tho, is that you give TILT! to other people when you laugh, so mechanically you should never be the first to laugh.  If you made it so there wasn't a mechanical incentive not to laugh, i think it would mesh even better.

Again, it looks like it'll play really well now, as long as people approach it in the right mindset.  But by resolving that one conflict, i think you might be increasing the number of mindsets[1] that make it work.

james
[1] As if one could quantify mindsets.

James,

Yeah, okay, I see what you mean.  And RoboRally sounds like a blast.

However, everything that I've said about the "point" of SAN! up to now might be wrong...  I had a chat with David yesterday, and it turns out I completely misunderstood what he was getting at, and what he was getting at made pretty damn good sense--and called stuff I thought I knew about the game into doubt.  I'm preparing a post for tomorrow dealing with David's points and the fact that I'm not sure what the game was actually doing, with a new play account with detailed use of the mechanics so that I can get outside opinions of what's really going on.  Plus I'ma have a discussion about it with the group Thursday.

-Marshall