So, we playtested The Rustbelt again, and, also again, I hadn't prepared at all.  You'd think last time would learn me, wouldn'tcha?  Nope.  But, still, things came out pretty well in the end, despite a rough patch in the middle where I became really confused about what I should and shouldn't be doing as GM, and I had to call a break and talk it out with the players.  But I'll get to that in a second.

Courtney opted to bring back her character Kitt from the first session, a creepy, antisocial self-stiled doctor with a dartgun for drugged darts and a Hunger for Experience.  Stephen drew up a new one, Brown Jenkins, a horribly scarred veteran mercenary, whose Hunger was Acceptance, and whose Woes dealt with his terrible appearance and his lack of a family.  He also had a Limit about never allowing children to be hurt, and a Vice that he chewed carob nuts incessantly, which stained his teeth brown.

We had a quick brainstorm for a starting situation, and we decided on this:  Brown Jenkins had been hired by Kitt for muscle to replace his previous muscle (presumably Tok from the first session) who had died of influenza, and the two of them were hired onto a caravan taking some cargo to the next County (which is a dangerous prospect, even when you stick to the Highway, as they soon found out).

They were approached in a seedy bar on the rough side of town by a young woman who was clearly out of her element.  She was going by the name of Rosetta S., which was clearly a fake name (we established prior to play that she was the Governor's daughter, going incognito).  Announcing that she was looking for a doctor who went by the name of Kitt, she was approached both by Kitt and by the well-known con-man slash low-rent criminal mastermind Chicago, who claimed to be Kitt.  Brown Jenkins shot him down at once, telling him "Piss off, Chicago."  Jenkins signaled for Kitt to take Rosetta outside before things got rough, which, sure enough, they did as soon as Chicago made a remark about Jenkins' scars, thus pinging his Woe, requiring that Jenkins either take a hit to Tears or have an emotional outburst--and grabbing a barstool and clocking someone over the head with it certainly qualifies as an emotional outburst.  The long and short of it is that Chicago ends up on the ground, bleeding and thoroughly without dignity, swearing at Jenkins and telling him that he won't forget this.  Jenkins had nothing to add but "Piss off, Chicago."

Rosetta had a job for Kitt on a caravan to the next County (we never named which County--and it never mattered); they needed a medic in case anybody got hurt.  Jenkins could come along, but they'd have to share the same cut.  The pay was 1,000 (the currency is called Naughts and there's a story behind why, but I don't think I ever mentioned that; you just say 1,000 and everybody's got the idea anyway); 200 up front and 800 when they got there.  Kitt managed to talk her up to 300 up front, and the lady actually was going to hand them the envelope outside, in broad daylight (playing up the fact that this was not her world).

In the next scene they met the other members of the caravan, which was being handled by a professional convoy company owned by Big Mama Flatts, who talked in a sneering drawl and hocched up something nasty and spit it on the ground every third sentence or so.  The company included a talkative mechanic named "Mule Ear" Joe and of course several faceless extras, plus two hired guns:  a young, red-haired, freckled faced guy named Ron Timer (who seemed out of his element) and the fearsome Syco Ratchet Davies, who, despite his reputation, didn't look so fearsome, but he had that look in his eyes that said, "My parents named me Syco Ratchet Davies and what do you think that did to my head?"
(We had established the names of all the caravan characters prior to play, but not much else except that Ron wasn't much of a gun hand and was actually only on the trip because he and "Rosetta" were secretly lovers)

There was one vehicle in the convoy that Big Mama Flatts told Kitt & Jenkins not to go near:  a big black van, with the windows painted over and a nasty brug* named Box riding shotgun.  Box was in charge of protecting this van, Big Mama said, and he was enough guard for ten men so he didn't need no help.  There wasn't to be any confusion about this once they got on the road:  Stay. Away. From. The. Van.
*Brugs are people who, due to the influence of the Rust, are really, really big (upwards of nine feet as adults, with limbs like tree trunks).  In terms of the mechanics, they're freakishly strong (Tough stat at 10 or even higher). As one of the Odd Peoples, they are shunned (although they've found a niche in the adventurer and mercenary cultures), which suits 'em 'cause they're so solitary anyhow.  They don't accept or offer favors.  And they take terrible offense to the term "brug."

Rosetta also told them, as she told everyone, to keep out of her car.

The drive was uneventful until late night on the first day. They had to stop at night because not all of the trucks' lights worked, and it was too easy to get separated on the dark Highway, which, in the middle of the Expanse is emphatically not a good thing.  It was Ron's and Jenkins' turn on watch, and Kitt was up too (Kitt doesn't sleep much).  "Mule Ear" Joe showed up with some coffee to brew over the campfire, and started talking their ears off. 

"You boys want some coffee?  Boy do I ever like me some coffee.  Say, Brown Jenkins, how come they call you Brown Jenkins?" [steely glare in response] "Well, Kitt, how come they call you Kitt?"
"Don't remember."
"Is it on account of that kit bag you got there?" 
"No." 
"It's not?  Well, you know why they call me Mule Ear don't ya?"
"No."
"You want me to show ya?" 
"No."
But he was already taking his cap off, revealing freakishly long ears.
"Yep, they call me Mule Ear Joe on account of I got these mule ears!" (I was having a blast playing this character)

Joe and Jenkins had a moment of recognition due to their shared freakishness  (I was shooting to hook Jenkins' Hunger with this one).

Then Jenkins started talking about how weird things got out in the Expanse, even if you stuck to the Highway.  He regaled them with the tale of a child he once saw walk onto the road, and when it turned to look at him, it had no face ("No face!  Can you imagine that?  Little feller had no face.  No face at all").  Then it walked off into the shadows and disappeared.  Yep, things get pretty weird out in the Expanse.  And that's when they heard the wolf howl.

So, I threw a bunch of Aberrant wolves at them, with the plan to (A) showcase Ron's greenness (he failed a Grizzled check and started flipping out, so Kitt sedated him), (B) play up on the bond between Joe and Jenkins (Jenkins actually saved his life twice, but not before Joe lost most of his face), and (C) introduce a child that appeared in the midst of the chaos, surrounded by wolves--such that Jenkins would have to choose between personal safety or saving the kid (triggering his Limit; he saved the kid, but lost some Blood in the process), and also because I had cooked up a plot twist.

Kitt had got on the CB to alert everyone, and finally Big Mama and Syco show up with big guns and help deal with the rest of the wolves.  Once the danger's passed, though, Big Mama has a word or two to say about Jenkins and the kid, demanding to know where the kid came from, and then demanding that Jenkins hand him over.  Jenkins refused (Big Mama: "You just hand that kid over now, y'understand?  He's accounted for." Jenkins: "'Course he is. I just told you that I'm takin' care of 'im"), and it came down to a stare-down, which Jenkins won thanks to his Grizzled score of 10 (I had Big Mama give--not based on whether or not "she would Give," but based on what made the scene more interesting to me).  Then, after Kitt had patched up Joe as best he could, Jenkins took the kid back over to the campfire where they had some coffee.

Syco and Big Mama had a whispered exchange, which prompted Stephen to immediately grab dice to roll Cagey to overhear it.  He overheard:

Syco:  "We got a problem here?"
Big Mama:  "Cool yer jets, Syco, it's just one.  Ain't no one keepin' that close a count anyhow."

Now, I intended this to be a Bang--namely, I intended this exchange to clue everyone into the fact that the secret cargo in the black van was actually a group of children (this had all just occurred to me before I sent the wolves out, and was the main reason I sent the wolves out) to be sold in the next County for some nefarious purpose (never defined; I didn't want to think about it).  But it appeared that Stephen was under the impression that the kid wandered in out of the Expanse--which had me thinking, "where the hell did he get that?" until I remembered Joe's little story about the kid with no face (which I had pulled out of my ass to serve as a creepy mood-setter; oh, the pitfalls of pulling things out of your ass).  So I was thinking, Oh well, I'll just set up a scene for the next day that'll prompt them into discovering what's in the----WHOA!  Whoa!  Suddenly this seemed an awful lot like railroading.

I found myself in a bit of a pickle.  Now, as a participant in the game, I had as much right to push my agenda in the story as anyone else, but of course I had no right to override someone else's right to the same thing.  But there were only a few things going on that I was interested in:  the children in the van; Rosetta and Ron's relationship; whether or not Rosetta was aware of the children in the van.  I had no idea how any of these things would resolve--because said resolution would require Stephen and Courtney's input--but I damn sure wanted to find out.  Other than those things, I had nothing to work with, no ideas.  In a game where the GM frames scenes, what is he to do when the players don't seem to take his offers, and the players don't present alternative offers of their own?

Now, when roleplaying in general, I'm pretty flexible and acquiescent about things that I don't especially care about, but the moment something comes up that I can sink my teeth into I become very proactive and assertive, even pushy at times.  Stephen and Courtney weren't being proactive or assertive, which had me thinking that there wasn't something for them to sink their teeth into (because sometimes I forget that other people aren't me, I guess).  And I realized I had nothing interesting up my sleeve except for the stuff that, it seemed to me, they weren't interested in.      I threw the children in because I took Jenkins' Hunger and Woes to be signs that said "Stephen is interested in a story involving these things" (which is part of what the Psyche components are supposed to do)--that is, I perceived an offer from Stephen, and made an offer back based on that, and it seemed he wasn't interested.  So where does my fair share of agenda-pushing end and railroading start?

(I should note that we were speaking in-character the majority of the time--which wasn't enforced or anything, it just sort of happened--and it sort of precluded table-talk.)

So I called for a break.  I laid out all my cards on the table, all the information (including the secret of the van) I had cooked up since the start of the game and admitted that I had nothing left up my sleeve besides railroading them into these things.  It turned out that they were interested in the stuff I was doing (and also with what was in Rosetta's car, which I had forgotten about.  Oops).  Stephen said that while he had been made very interested and suspicious by Syco's and Big Mama's whispers, he didn't think that Jenkins (who was Savvy for 3) was bright enough to connect the dots on that one, and also that Jenkins' and Kitt's motives here were mostly concerned with getting paid.  So I tried to explain that if he was interested, it was okay to control Jenkins based on that interest in addition to or even rather than Jenkins' fictional knowledge and motivations, and that he could even get quite proactive about it and twist bits of the circumstances or even request scenes that dealt with it.

Later on, it occurred to me also that perhaps I was just expecting things to happen too quickly--that it would have been perfectly all right to have some slow-paced, straight-up Exploration scenes.  I guess I didn't because I couldn't tell if the players were having fun or not, which made me paranoid that they weren't having fun (it turned out that they were).

So we sat back down to play.  I framed a lunch-time scene, with the "wagons" circled just off the road and the cook giving out beans and hardtack--and Box the brug cutting in front of Jenkins.  Jenkins was calm about it at first ("I don't mind if you cut in front of me, but you better ask all these people behind me first"), until it became clear that Box had the whole crew in fear of him, which disgusted Jenkins, prompting him to become confrontational.  Box only worsened it when he casually pointed out that he could fit Jenkins' entire head into his bowl (brugs are rumored to be cannibals).  Jenkins called him a brug, and that's when it came to blows, with Box clobbering him with the bowl full of beans and knocking him down (everyone goes down when a brug hits them).  Jenkins got to his feet and started throttling Box, which didn't much phase him.  Big Mama showed up then and intervened, telling them both to knock it off, and also telling Kitt, Jenkins, and the child to get out of line, they'd had enough to eat (of course, they hadn't eaten a thing yet).

This encounter was intended to serve the following purposes (which it did successfully):  intensify the conflict between Big Mama and Jenkins, and illustrate that even Jenkins could probably not beat Box in a fair fight.

What happened next?  Man, they didn't even get me a chance to frame the next scene, they basically did it themselves and, in character, decided that they had had enough of Big Mama; screw the payment, there's clearly something valuable in the van anyway, let's steal it and split.  But how will they deal with Box?  Easy, Kitt cooks up a concoction to take him out (horse tranquilizers spiked with blowfish poison).  They would take the child with them, of course, and they also enlisted Joe.

The caravan was coming through some mountains (Courtney's idea), and an avalanche cuts the road off ahead (also Courtney's idea) and creates chaos.  Kitt and Jenkins, with the kid and Joe in tow, took advantage of this moment to enact their plan.  Kitt's dart sank right into Box's neck and he went down like planned.  The van's driver got out with a gun, but Jenkins cowed him down pretty easily (those scars come with an advantage), taking the gun from him as he shook in fear.  Then they finally discovered what was in the van:  about a dozen children, from the ages of 7 to 9.  Great thing about this was, the players knew and the characters didn't, but the players were interested, so they cooked up a motivation (money and getting away from Big Mama) for the characters to find out about it on their own; the characters were expecting valuables, but it turns out that's something disgusting, and now they have to decide what they care about (of course, they've already screwed themselves on the original payment, but, y'know).

The characters are kicked out of the shock as Big Mama, with her big gun, comes after them.  They get away from her in the van, but Syco pursues on a motorcycle.  Jenkins disables the motorcycle with a good shot, and they drive without pause back to the County, where they take the kids to the Governor and explain what happened (Courtney and Stephen had totally jumped into the driver's seat here, I was just trying to keep up).

So I played the Governor:  "There must be some kind of mistake here.  Miss Flatts is an old friend of mine, and one of the biggest contributors to my campaign."

Gasp!  He was in on it!  Luckily he was unprepared, and the only obstacle to getting out of there was a lone security guard (not the tough type, but the type you find in places where there's not much expectation to have to actually, y'know, guard stuff).

So, where to now?  Stephen suggested going into the next County before Big Mama caught up with them, but realized that they didn't have the money or the provisions to make such a long trip.  Keeping in mind Jenkins' Hunger and Woes, I suggested that they come across an abandoned ranch house outside of town somewhere, and that they could basically live there, and Jenkins (who was determined to protect these kids) could raise the kids as his own--thus satisfying his Hunger (which I decided should call for a rewrite of the character) as well as healing his Woe about not having a family.  Stephen liked this idea.  Joe would come along, and Kitt decided to as well; laying low would be a good idea, and, besides, his Hunger was Experience and he had yet to experience living in a ranch house surrounded by a dozen children.  (We had fun envisioning what Kitt would be like should his Hunger ever be satisfied and he decided to retire; sitting on a porch somewhere, yelling at kids to get off his lawn and shooting them with mild tranquilizers.)

Oh yeah, and the little kid had been mute the whole time because he was traumatized, but he finally spoke to Jenkins:  "Thank you."

There was also a grimly humorous line during the drive back to the County, where the children were afraid of Joe because of the damage done to his face.  Joe said, "Whatsa matter, ain't you never seen a man with no face?  I seen a kid with no face once."  Well, I thought it was funny at least, and I thought it heartening that, though he had lost his face, he hadn't lost his sense of humor.

So what happens next?  Will Mama Flatts and the Governor track them down?  Was Rosetta in the know about the cruel cargo?  Will Chicago get his revenge?  And what about Box, who survived the dart but was abandoned? (Because blowfish poison suppresses vital signs and they thought he was dead--thank you, random knowledge database in my brain.) Hell hath no fury like a brug left for dead, so there's a nice, interesting triangle to work with.

I can't wait 'til the next session.  I'm even going to prepare--not just because it'd be advisable, but because I actually want to:  I've got these great characters and brewing situations to work with, and I'm really looking forward to fleshing them out and having something real meaty to offer my players next session.  Everybody's also really liking the Brown Jenkins character, and even Kitt has been growing on us--I mean, yeah, he's creepy, and antisocial, and he has no sense of humor, and he smells bad, and he once killed a man by giving him the wrong antivenin, but, you know what?  He's honest, he looks you in the eye, and he's no hypocrite.  He's basically a grumpy old man, even if he's not old yet, and sort of lovable in the same manner.

Oh yeah, and anybody who's got Narrativist GM advice to throw at me, it'd be appreciated, especially regarding the issue of railroading.

Also, on the subject of the game's design:  Vice has so far been just a matter of color; I'm not sure whether that's a bad thing though.  Woes and Limits seem to be excellent tools for the GM.  And I'm considering having Hungers selected from a set list rather than made up on the fly.  And I think I'm making it a rule about re-writing a character when Hunger is satisfied.  Other than that, there doesn't seem to be anything that needs changing... yet.

-Marshall

As a general technique thing, hone up on your scene framing. There are a variety of ways in which the GM can bring relevant issues to the fore that have nothing to do with railroading. The simplest of these is to simply cut to a situation. My first instinct for the children in the car, for example, would have been to frame to next morning and one of the PCs stumbling upon the secret by accident. It's my job as the GM to introduce the situation in a way that cannot be ignored by the characters - the players shouldn't have to think up justifications for their characters to find things out. It is, of course, quite fun if the player wants to take the initiative, but if he doesn't, that is not a signal to ignore the situation, but to heighten it. So if a player is ignoring a child slavery ring whispered of in the darkness, your next step is to allow him to affirm it by showing him the same thing in daylight - is he really not going to do anything about it?

(Not saying that you didn't handle it well as a group, by the way. Still, the players clearly stepped in to help you in a way that might or might not be central to the way you want to play your game. Some games are absolutely predicated on players cooperating in maneuvering characters into bang situations, while others rely on the GM to provide.)

The scene framing is relevant here both because it allows you to jump directly to the good stuff, and because it allows you to ignore the usual procedural method for getting from point A to point B. You want the characters to find out about something? The story is not in getting there, it only truly begins when you have made your reveal and ask the players to decide what their characters do. That's a huge difference between narrativistic and simulationistic adventure gaming: in a traditional set-up the story is very much about whether the characters find out the secret or not. In a narrativistic game that utilizes scene framing and wants to get quickly to the good stuff is very much not the case - you should just cook up a coincidence that allows the character to get into the situation you want him to be in.

Also, I don't know if this was a problem, but you should feel free to elaborate on information out-of-game if it seems that communication is not happening: if an in-character dialogue between NPCs is intended to reveal something to the players, say, I usually make sure that they get it by appending a clarifying explanation. While the characters still might not get it, it's good that the players are on the same page with my vague hints. Ambivalent information has its places, but you as the GM should know when you want players to know something and when you don't. Use that knowledge and outright tell your players. For example, I might just say that "It's pretty obvious to us, the audience, that they're keeping children in the trunk, right?" or something like that if I thought that letting the players know about it right now is good and proper for the game.

Hi Marshall,

I'm glad you handled the I'm-a Railroading Them flub the way you did. However, since clearly that was the role-playing equivalent of slapping on a pressure patch, I want to talk about how to avoid finding yourself in that position.

You wrote,

Now, I intended this to be a Bang--namely, I intended this exchange to clue everyone into the fact that the secret cargo in the black van was actually a group of children (this had all just occurred to me before I sent the wolves out, and was the main reason I sent the wolves out) to be sold in the next County for some nefarious purpose (never defined; I didn't want to think about it).  But it appeared that Stephen was under the impression that the kid wandered in out of the Expanse--which had me thinking, "where the hell did he get that?" ...

... In a game where the GM frames scenes, what is he to do when the players don't seem to take his offers, and the players don't present alternative offers of their own?

Now, as a participant in the game, I had as much right to push my agenda in the story as anyone else, but of course I had no right to override someone else's right to the same thing.

Eero, Ron,

Wow, okay, this is good stuff.  Thanks a million.

I'll probably cook up a more cogent response at some point, but for now I want to mention something that I've been having problems with regarding Narrativist concepts, and that is that, for a while, I was confounding heavy pressure with Force (this is one of the things that confused me upon reading Sorcerer).  I gradually came to grips with the idea that they are two different things.  But, still, I found myself slipping back and wondering if there's a place where pressure becomes Force, or at least starts to look like it from a player's point of view.  I find myself imagining a player who, his character suddenly finding himself in the midst of a gunfight, says, "But, I didn't want to be in a gunfight!  You railroading bastard!"  (Of course, this is just an imagined player, in an imagined session, and it's pretty obvious how un-useful that kind of speculation is)

Then, having read Ron's response, I looked back over the glossary, and realized that Force is control over someone else's character's decisions, not over what happens to them, not at all.

My brother has a bit of the same problem, mostly because the great majority of his narrativistic experiences have been with games without a strong GM role. Now he's running Burning Wheel, and constantly worrying about whether everybody will like his decisions - his basic instinct is to leave everything up to group consensus. "Is it OK with you if the bandits attack now? Would you be interested in a scene like that?" and so on. Pretty amusing, actually.

When it comes to scene framing, the line between railroading and just using punchy scene framing is pretty simple: if the scene you frame is something where the PC wouldn't have gone just like that, then it's railroading. Luckily, it's very easy to take back - if the player says that he wanted to do something else first, or he wanted to do something completely different, then you just throw that scene away and frame something else. Usually it doesn't come to this, though, because the GM makes pretty obvious jumps: if the character's daily routine has him visit a coffee-shop, then a frame starting with "the next day, in the coffee shop..." is far from unreasonable. You don't need to ask a player whether his character is going to go to the coffee shop, again. And the most important thing is, you don't even need to ask that when there's going to be a firefight in the coffee shop.

This is really good stuff so far, but I feel that I may perhaps have something to add.

The issue here seems to be that you wanted your players to check out the van, but they didnt seem to be that interested in doing so. Railroading them into checking the van is bad, and waiting for them to pick up on obscure hints is also bad.

However, Letting them walk right by the 'adventure' isnt really all that great either. There is alot to be said for player choice, but often, if the players dont pick up on the plot you have in mind, alot of nothing interesting happens.

I have found that a little knowledge of your players (and their characters) combined with a bit of scene framing and description can go a long way.

For example: I ran a one shot using d20 modern that was a crazy action movie boom-fest. The characters were pursuing commie-nazi-ninja-aliens into area 51 to get a thingy. One of the scenes was a fight on the set where they filmed the moon landing. (oh yea, it was THAT dumb >:)

In framing the scene, I drew specific attention to the lunar lander suspended over the moonscape by a crane. When the alien dudes attacked, there were some in the lunar lander.

I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that by the end of the fight, that lunar lander would be crashed on the ground.

And lo and behold, it was. :)

Possible ways to push your characters into making the connection with the kids in the van:

When Big Mama wants Jenkins to hand over the kid, have the kid react with terror. (Spawning the idea that the kid knows her somehow)
Allow the characters to notice food being brought to the van. (Implying that it holds live cargo)
You could also make it obvious that whatever is in the van is being held there by how the food is put in, possibly have one of the children try to jump out, or even just whimper. (whimpers are great, because it pretty much says without a doubt that whatever is in there is helpless, and unhappy)

Anyway, sounds like things went well, Ima have to see If I can put that playtest document to use sometime soon :)

Okay, based on the whole Push/Price/Psyche mechanics and their interplays, and the fact that they're intended to produce the sort of play that was most captivating in older versions of the game, and the fact that having them work would require a GM with lotsa power, and the great responses you guys have given me, I'm thinking that this is a picture of how the game must be operated to be reliably exciting: 
So, you've got the players.  In front of them, you have a carrot.  Let's say this carrot represents "the player's character does something that interests us, developing him/her as a protagonist and furthering the story" -- not any specific thing (like "find the clues" or "destroy the big bad"); what I'm looking for here is a type of thing, and it requires the player's decisions, so it's not railroading.  Now, due to the general aesthetic of the Rustbelt, "doing something that interests us" will almost always entail the character being hurt in some way.  In the older games, and in the stories I've written about the Rustbelt, characters haven't been worth squat as protagonists until they've been HURT (physically, mentally, emotionally, it's all the same).  Underneath the players, we have a fire.  Let's say this fire represents pressure and adversity.

GM:  So, you can get burned or you can go for that carrot.
Player:  But, that carrot's rigged to explode!
GM:  We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.  Burn or carrot?
Player:  But it's gonna explode!
GM:  What's that?  You want me to crank up the flame?  Well, okay, if you say so...

The thing here is, since protagonism in this setting tends to imply that the character gets HURT, it's important that the players are willing to let their characters get HURT.  So, what I need to do is make this clear with the players, then take the kid gloves off, and HAMMER them to make them know that I'm not kidding, the fire is for real.

Does this sound viable or have I crossed over somewhere into the realm of the psychotic?

-Marshall

Works for me. I'm almost tempted to have the question "How have you just been hurt?" begin every session.

Best, Ron

Ah, excellent.  Tonight's the next session, so we'll see what happens.

There's something else that I was just thinking about; Ron, you wrote this in that post up there:

Ron wrote:
(he could not tell us what he wanted directly; he simply could not).

I'm on the fence about this. On the one hand, I'd never do it as you did, and just lay it down out-of-character. But you definitely don't want to keep tossing them bones trying to get them to figure out the secret. Toss 'em one or two, see if they rise to the bait. Some players live for that sort of thing, ferretting out the secret, and you would have crushed their fun if you'd done it the way you did. But if they don't seem to be wanting to take that lead, then you've every right to lay it down for them explicitly, but IN-CHARACTER.

This goes back to Dogs in the Vineyard's advice on running a town.. Your job as GM is to aggressively play the agendas of all people in the town, and to reveal everything to the Dogs in-play so they are forced to pass judgement on it all, without any way to wiggle out of judging something because they didn't catch some hint or other.

...maybe I'm not so on the fence at all.

Also this?

Does this sound viable or have I crossed over somewhere into the realm of the psychotic?

Wolfen wrote:
Some players live for that sort of thing, ferretting out the secret, and you would have crushed their fun if you'd done it the way you did. But if they don't seem to be wanting to take that lead, then you've every right to lay it down for them explicitly, but IN-CHARACTER.

Wolfen wrote:
Also this?

Does this sound viable or have I crossed over somewhere into the realm of the psychotic?

Both sounds about right. Why can't it be both?

I wanted to add something regarding the ferretting out of secrets:

Consider the film Citizen Kane.  How important was the secret of "Rosebud" really?  Not much.  Orson Welles himself said it was a gimmick.  In a film class I took once, when they showed us that movie, the professor told us all up front that Rosebud was a frickin' sled, because she didn't want us to be distracted by it; she wanted us to focus on the film, on the story, and for us not to be busy wondering, "Well, what the heck is this darn Rosebud anyway?"  I already knew about it, but I can only applaud her decision.  For my money, she was dead right.  Spoilers schmoilers.  If you ask me, a narrative that can be spoiled by revealing some plot detail ain't much of a narrative.

In response to the character generation thing:

Perhaps your focusing too much on characters being hurt.

You seem to be having a problem with Kitt, since he is a heartless bastard and you cant think of a decent way to hurt him. And your having trouble making interesting stories around him because you cant hurt him.

But why is Kitt such a heartless bastard? People dont start out that way. Your having trouble finding a way to hurt him cause something in his past wounded him so severely that he is already dead.

You dont need to find a way to hurt him. Hes already hurt. All you need to do is find a way to make him remember just how hurt he is.

And if there is no deep wound in his past? If he IS really just a jerk?

Kill him.

Hes a boring unrealistic character. :P

Or you can force him to grow a 3rd dimension, cause that works too. :)

Sometimes you need to have the characters heal, even if its only so they can survive future hurts. And sometimes all you need is the threat of hurt. You dont have to KILL (or maim) the kids to give jenkins interesting stories. You just have to threaten them. See how hard he will push to keep them safe.

Knarfy wrote:
You dont have to KILL (or maim) the kids to give jenkins interesting stories. You just have to threaten them. See how hard he will push to keep them safe.

Marshall wrote:
The players have two doors to choose from:  Push or Give.  In order for the play to be satisfying and exciting, the GM has to respond fully to the door they choose, and he can't expect them to choose any particular one -- the buck stops with the player on this one.

Knarfy wrote:
But in the rustbelt, the horrible thing happens because the player chose to let it, not because you created the situation.

Knarfy wrote:
(Or would he surprise you? maby grow a soul? :)

It's just that he's not a protagonist.

The trouble with the damage system is that it causes narration to bog down and get tangled up (otherwise it's fine).  I think I want to go with a plain-jane, un-mechanized narration system.  By which I mean there are no rules that say who narrates what, and as for "what is said" versus "what actually happened," the buck stops with whoever the character in question belongs to (constrained by resolution results, of course).  It's just easier to keep track of this way (for me).

Now, this bog-down tangle-up problem is due to the interplay of rolling damage, the current "stunt" system, and narration in general.  If you take out the "stunt" system, there's no bogging down, but there's still the potential for lame, even de-protagonizing rolls, which bugs me.  That's why I'm thinking I'll shift from the rolls to a base-level Hard damage that can be reduced as part of the attacker's Price, or of course increased by paying additional Price as per the current rules.  I just have to decide on what I want those base-levels to be for each Arms Level.

Knarfy wrote:
I dont think I would use a "drama dice" style system, as I think It would detract from the push/give mechanic to give the players bonus dice to spend.

Perhaps another method for using attack stunts could be to 'force' qualative injuries onto enemies?

Maby you could "buy" special wound effects to add to your attacks by pushing? Like if you push with a few points of sweat you can punch them extra hard right in the guts, debilitating them for a bit, but spraining something in the process?

That would tie the description to the effect pretty strongly, as well as making sure that the qualative injuries get used often. It would also give really brutal attacks an immediate effect above and beyond "He loses some blood, oh noes"

It also means that combat isnt just a bidding war, where one player hits the enemy once and pushes a bunch of points to bleed down the other guy. Making combat more a matter of who is more angry and violent rather than who has more points at the moment.

That is, in general, a good idea, but I don't want to use it; lemme explain why.
See, when there's combat going down and damage being dealt, here's the breakdown in how it's done: 

1. The attacker's player determines where the attack hits and how many points of "damage" are inflicted (based on his weapon and any Pushing for additional damage, or damage reduction used to Push for a hit).  (Oh, and the defender's player can add to the damage by Pushing to also get a hit in) 

2. The GM offers injuries or possibly damage to equipment to buy off damage.  (Also, anybody can suggest such effects, but the GM is arbiter of how many points they're worth).

3.  The defender's player determines how exactly the "damage" points are allocated.  He can take up to 5 Sweat and the rest on Blood, or he can take the whole she-bang on Blood, or he can take Injuries, or a combination thereof.  It's even possible that all the damage can be bought off in terms of Injury.  You can, in theory, get beat up forever and not hit 20 Blood.  But, on the other hand, taking it all to Blood is a really nice Medea-style "Fuck You," and so can give the fiction that extra charge in the right circumstances.

4.  Somebody narrates the effects of all this into the fiction. This is where the stunt rules got us tripped up, by the way, because you had to describe your attack before rolling damage, and describe the effect a few steps afterward.  Really awkward and clunky.

This arrangement was designed especially with PC vs. PC combat in mind.  I'm sort of surprised that no one has said anything about #3, because (as far as I know) that's pretty darn unusual.  But I decided on this arrangement for a specific reason:  all the players involved are now collaborating on how the defending character is hurt.  It's not "Me vs. You, winner take all" it's "My character vs. Your character, and we all have a say in it."  I figured this would be optimal for keeping combat within the storytelling process and to prevent bickering and resentment over PCs being hurt by PCs.  Hell, I think it's pretty darn innovative and clever, but, then, I've got an ego the size of Texas.  (No, scratch that, Texas is the size of my ego)

This arrangement was designed especially with PC vs. PC combat in mind.  I'm sort of surprised that no one has said anything about #3, because (as far as I know) that's pretty darn unusual.  But I decided on this arrangement for a specific reason:  all the players involved are now collaborating on how the defending character is hurt.  It's not "Me vs. You, winner take all" it's "My character vs. Your character, and we all have a say in it."  I figured this would be optimal for keeping combat within the storytelling process and to prevent bickering and resentment over PCs being hurt by PCs.  Hell, I think it's pretty darn innovative and clever, but, then, I've got an ego the size of Texas.  (No, scratch that, Texas is the size of my ego)

Somebody narrates the effects of all this into the fiction. This is where the stunt rules got us tripped up, by the way, because you had to describe your attack before rolling damage, and describe the effect a few steps afterward.  Really awkward and clunky.

Marshall,

Here's a thought, take it or leave it.  But it seems to me some of the numerics behind your Blood/Sweat/Tears/Injury are rooted in the older, crunchier version of Rustbelt, and don't flow as naturally with the new goals.

Currently, you can take up to 20 points of Blood/Sweat/Tears, and then bad things happen... where's the dramatic power in having 15/20 Sweat or Blood?  How does that add to the gritty, tooth-crunching combat and psychological trauma that you're going for?  It seems almost to fall into the same problem as D&D: "Ok, that sword hit me and i took 13 damage, but that's ok, I still have 10 HP left..."  You want every blow (psychological, physical, whatever) to _hurt_.  But being able to absorb up to 20 points in whatever category shields people from the hurt.

I thought briefly about a replacement, but it might not capture what you want.  Also, as i read your play descriptions and think about how i'd like the system to flow, i keep yearning for a dice-pool sort of mechanic, so I'm going to intentionally ditch your 20-point scale for something less defined.

First, Blood/Sweat/Tears is much more thematic than Blood/Sweat/Tears/Injury.  So I propose _only_ having Blood, Sweat, and Tears.  However, each of those _only_ contains "injuries".  Every bit of damage counts, every bit of damage is felt.  The health of my character could be described as (explanation of the numbers to follow):

Blood
----
(2) Broken Jaw
(1) Cracked Rib
(4) Permanent Limp

Sweat
----
(1) Sucking Air
(3) Long-Term Exhaustion

Tears
----
(4) Saw brother die
(1) Revolted and puking

Each injury has a value showing it's severity/persistence.  I'll arbitrarily choose may favourite 5-point scale:
(1) Short term, inconvenient
(2) Significant or lasting
(3) Debilitating but transient, significant but lasting
(4) Permanent but significant, Debilitating and lasting
(5) Debilitating and permanent

When you are going to take a certain amount of 'damage' in any category, the players/gm throw out suggestions of injuries and values (most of the time it'll be pretty clear from the description of the attack), and decide on enough to satisfy the damage.  When you've taken "too many" damage in a given category, you become useless/incapacitated: broken and dying, unconscious, catatonic and sitting in the corner, etc.

At the risk of rambling, this also fits well with a dice-pool mechanic.  The number of successes indicate the damage, and if you Push for N dice, you have to take N points of injury.  You could even have it as follows:
1. When you push, you roll N dice and take N damage.
2. If that succeeds, you are done.
3. If not, you can push again, when you roll M dice and take M+1 damage.
4. Repeat, where after K pushes, you take an extra K damage in addition to the dice you use.

This would mean you can try to push a little for less effect, or a lot for a great effect -- but you can still keep pushing to victory, at ever steeper cost.

This post turned out longer than i'd anticipated.  Whoops...  But it does seem to me that your current numerics don't add to the atmosphere that you want, so it might be worth pondering alternatives.

james

James,

Well, it's a good thought, a working thought, and I appreciate it, but I'm gonna have to leave it.  But I'll explain why.

The numerics of Blood/Sweat/Tears (Injury has been jettisoned as a resource pool, now represented only by effects that apply increased difficulty to applicable tasks) are indeed rooted in the older, crunchier mechanics.  I've broken away from the Purist for System values of the old system, but not from "modeling" in its entirety.  I know that Sorcerer doesn't model anything, and neither does InSpectres, and, hell, neither does Super Action Now!; I know that it's a viable way to design things.  But, for this game, I want to keep it.

Now, there's a reason for this, and it's due in part to my own proclivities and abilities as a GM.  See, without enough mechanical "meat" to guide me, I start having trouble.  I've tried running InSpectres twice and I can't do it right.  I've thought about it, and I think I've identified the reason:  as far as I can tell, the InSpectres GM has no mechanics-based presence except for when the players fail a roll.  When they fail a roll, I really seize the heck out of it.  But, other than that, what am I to do?  I know that the PCs need adversity, but I have no mechanical "handles" to throw it at them.  This has two problems for me:  one is a dearth of creative constraint, and the other is that it causes me to REstrain myself.  Without some kind of mechanics to justify it, I feel guilty for throwing stuff at the players, so I restrain myself, and then nothing interesting happens.

The system of The Rustbelt as it currently stands is designed so that this problem never arises.  It's a personal problem, I know, but this is also MY game, so it has to be a game that I can actually run and play.  Now, in some of the older versions, nearly everything the GM did had to be justified mechanically.  Not so much now; I've shot for a balance between the two.

Blood, Sweat, and Tears have absolutely no concrete fictional effect until they hit 20, and being able to absorb up to 20 points does shield people.  However, it doesn't do so for long.  They add up quick.  So, what do you do?  You save them for when it's really important.  Maybe you even hoard them.  Good.  That means you'll be stacking up effect-based consequences like crazy.

Now, I have a bunch of red, white, and blue poker chips that I bought for my game Witch Trails but have since found a way to use in nearly every game.  In The Rustbelt, I give the players stacks of 20:  red for Blood, white for Sweat, and blue for Tears.  Where's the drama when those start running low?  In-game, in the fiction, there is none.  But when the player fails a roll and I ask "Do you Push or do you Give?" and he reaches instinctively for his chips but realizes, SEES, that there's only five left, that hand falters, and he gets nervous, and he starts asking what Injuries or whatever he can take instead.  It's not there in-game, but it's there at the table, and, well, I don't think it ever will be in the game if it's not at the table first.

So, there's actually three reasons for them:  as part of a modeling system to springboard and provide creative constraint; as buffers against terrible consequences when it really, really counts; as part of a somewhat sinister reverse-psychology ploy to get people to have their characters suffer terrible consequences.

(I wanted to note that your injury under Tears "Saw my brother die" is covered by the Woe component of the Psyche mechanic, and that whenever Woe is triggered (somebody says something about your brother, f'rinstance) the character either takes a hit to Tears or has an emotional outburst of some kind.  As we all know from being people, emotional outbursts can cause all kinds of problems on their own.)

Now, the system you suggested would probably work, and it would probably take care of all the problems I talked about, but I shudder at the thought of dice pools in this game.  They work great in Super Action Now!, but their results can be a bit arbitrary for a gritty game like The Rustbelt.  Say a scrawny guy with a Tough of 1 is in a fist-fight with a burly miner at Tough 8; if that scrawny guy rolls better than the miner, I'd frankly be disgusted (however, if his roll is worse and he wins anyway through Pushing, that's fine with me).  The system has to produce results that are within the range of the players' expectations.  The results have to be plausible.  This is why Fortune only produces half of the Performance value.

In SAN!, everything is plausible; Brawn 1 wins vs. Brawn 5 (Tweety Bird beans Sylvester over the head with an enormous mallet) all the time.  In The Rustbelt, Tough 1 winning vs. Tough 8 just isn't plausible, although any score winning through sheer willpower vs. any score is.

I want to point out that I don't think that Stamina 1 vs. Stamina 6 or whatever in Sorcerer is at all the same thing; for one thing, characters in Sorcerer are, as a baseline, competent.  Not everybody in The Rustbelt is competent, at least not before willpower comes into play.

Also, willpower is and always has been the most important character component in The Rustbelt (going all the way back to the first version when it was a stat called "Resilience").  Everything else is meaningless in comparison to it.  The catch is when and how it comes into play; the rest of the system is there to determine this.  The important bit is, willpower solves anything.  So I'd be incredibly uncomfortable with leaving its influence up to dice; there's not a chance that it will work, it just WORKS, and then you pay for it.  That's a sticking point for me.

Knarfy,
Sorry, but I'm just not feelin' it.  I think I'm just scrapping the "stunt" system altogether and leaving it up to "people will do cool things because they're cool."

That's the underlying property of all Narrativist play, anyway, right?  That players gain the greatest reward from the goals they create themselves?

-Marshall

Erm, I want to clarify that I'm not knocking InSpectres.  I think it's very cool.  It's just -- well, to take it to metaphor, it's a different instrument.  If you hand a pianist a piece of music written for guitar, well, there's not much he can do with it besides butcher it.  Let's say I'm that pianist; InSpectres is written for guitar, and The Rustbelt is written for piano.  And that metaphor won't go any further'n you kin throw it, so please nobody try to extend it.

And, James, I want to re-iterate that I appreciate your thoughts, even if it looks like I was arguing them away -- your idea was good, I mean that. It's just that it doesn't mesh with my design goals and priorities.  Which is exactly why I appreciate you posting it:  the more I clarify those goals and priorities, the more I understand them myself.

See, I've figured out that the Karma and Resource heavy mechanics are there because they provide Hard Facts.  In a full-on Fortune system, there are no Hard Facts.  Which is fantastic in the right place, but not what I want here.  See, in Rustbelt stories, there comes a time when it's "Them's the breaks, kid.  You gotta take a broad, general view of things."  Let's say that, for example, there's a guy racing across town in his car to rescue his kidnapped daughter.  In most fiction, he makes it there, after a lot of near-misses with traffic, or maybe even a minor crash or two.  In the Rustbelt, sometimes he gets hit by a bus and dies bleeding.  Them's the breaks, kid.  Things that should be possible are indeed possible.  Things that should be insurmountable, like being hit by a bus, are indeed insurmountable (rather than chance determining whether X is insurmountable today).  Until willpower kicks in, anyway, and he crawls out of the flaming wreck, hijacks the bus, and crashes it through the building his daughter is held in, snaps the chains holding her to the chair, and strangles her captors with them.

Which brings me to something else that I haven't really mentioned:  a Push needs to look like something in the fiction.  Here's a fairly extreme example of what a Push might look like for someone trying to break down a door with his shoulder, with the Price being a broken arm:

He rammed the door with his full strength, but it didn't budge.  So he did it again.  And again.  And again.  When the bone snapped, something deep inside him snapped too.  He took one last charge at the door, and it was like passing through a sheet of water.

The thing that I love about this whole system so much is that it maps so cleanly to the stories I've written about the Rustbelt, even in many areas that I hadn't planned for.  I can go through the stories and, for nearly every moment, I can figure out what system inputs and outputs would create that same eventuality--and they're all as probable as I would like them to be.  It's a bit more than I dreamed it could be.

Heh, I'm such a dork; the solution to the "stunt" issue is so simple.  All you have to do is give the full description of your attack when declaring your intent.  It might not work out the way you said it, but them's the breaks, and that's why there's dice involved anyway.  That is, you could say, "I grab a corkscrew out of the drawer and gouge his eye out with it!" but the other guy's eye might stay in his head, or even stay unharmed.  Heck, depending on what else happens ("As he reaches for the corkscrew, I smash his wrist with this cast-iron skillet!"), you might not even get the corkscrew. 

I think this method of stating intents would be more likely to get the hype up too, edge those players toward the boiling point.  Much better than the rather dry method shown in the rules.

Now, here's a question:  should I stick with the "Hardening damage" method, or should some other reward be in order?  Extra dice, like the Traits, that could be applied to Performance or Damage at player discretion?  Or maybe points that could be added directly to Performance or Damage values?

And here's another thing:  in the last session, Brown Jenkins was involved in a car crash.  There was a scene early on where Mule Ear Joe told him how to cut brake lines on cars (so that he could sabotage a shady character who showed up), and much, much later he was taken prisoner at gunpoint by some NPCs.  Stephen had him escape from their grasp and roll under the car, and at first he was a loss as to what should happen next, then he said, "Oh!  He cuts the brake line.  That is, if it's in the same place on this car as it was on the last one," to which I could only respond, "It is NOW!"  So, Jenkins plays it off like rolling under the car was a dumb desperation move, and now he's ready to go quietly.  When they all get in the car, he puts on his seatbelt.  All these seedy, grizzled, unsavory types in the car, and one guy puts on his seatbelt; I dunno, it struck me as very funny.  Especially because they were mocking him and telling him about how they were going to torture him to death, and he just puts his seatbelt on and tries to keep a straight face because he knows something they don't know.

And then, of course, they can't stop at a red light and they are hit by a truck.  Jenkins was miraculously unharmed (a successful Uncanny roll).  Thing was, I gave him a bonus to that roll because he put on the seatbelt.  Not to reperesent the seatbelt protecting him, but because I loved that action.  It was just cool.  I think this ties into the "stunt" stuff, and I think I need more general rules for this sort of thing.  Single-point bonuses are sounding good to me right now (I don't want the players to be able to rely on having their bacon saved by the bonuses), and what if other players can give them out too?  But I need to think about it more.

In the spirit of pushing you so that you think about your mechanics and the reasons behind them more, I'm going to argue against a couple points of your post.  BUT, i'm not doing it to push my particular proposal -- I really like your description, and it's persuaded me about your mechanic.  My goal is to be helpfully pedantic.

Marshall wrote:
Now, there's a reason for this, and it's due in part to my own proclivities and abilities as a GM.  See, without enough mechanical "meat" to guide me, I start having trouble.  I've tried running InSpectres twice and I can't do it right.  I've thought about it, and I think I've identified the reason:  as far as I can tell, the InSpectres GM has no mechanics-based presence except for when the players fail a roll.  When they fail a roll, I really seize the heck out of it.  But, other than that, what am I to do?  I know that the PCs need adversity, but I have no mechanical "handles" to throw it at them.  This has two problems for me:  one is a dearth of creative constraint, and the other is that it causes me to REstrain myself.  Without some kind of mechanics to justify it, I feel guilty for throwing stuff at the players, so I restrain myself, and then nothing interesting happens.

The system of The Rustbelt as it currently stands is designed so that this problem never arises.  It's a personal problem, I know, but this is also MY game, so it has to be a game that I can actually run and play.  Now, in some of the older versions, nearly everything the GM did had to be justified mechanically.  Not so much now; I've shot for a balance between the two.

Marshall wrote:
Blood, Sweat, and Tears have absolutely no concrete fictional effect until they hit 20, and being able to absorb up to 20 points does shield people.  However, it doesn't do so for long.  They add up quick.  So, what do you do?  You save them for when it's really important.  Maybe you even hoard them.  Good.  That means you'll be stacking up effect-based consequences like crazy.

Now, I have a bunch of red, white, and blue poker chips that I bought for my game Witch Trails but have since found a way to use in nearly every game.  In The Rustbelt, I give the players stacks of 20:  red for Blood, white for Sweat, and blue for Tears.  Where's the drama when those start running low?  In-game, in the fiction, there is none.  But when the player fails a roll and I ask "Do you Push or do you Give?" and he reaches instinctively for his chips but realizes, SEES, that there's only five left, that hand falters, and he gets nervous, and he starts asking what Injuries or whatever he can take instead.  It's not there in-game, but it's there at the table, and, well, I don't think it ever will be in the game if it's not at the table first.

So, there's actually three reasons for them:  as part of a modeling system to springboard and provide creative constraint; as buffers against terrible consequences when it really, really counts; as part of a somewhat sinister reverse-psychology ploy to get people to have their characters suffer terrible consequences.

Marshall wrote:
Now, the system you suggested would probably work, and it would probably take care of all the problems I talked about, but I shudder at the thought of dice pools in this game.  They work great in Super Action Now!, but their results can be a bit arbitrary for a gritty game like The Rustbelt.  Say a scrawny guy with a Tough of 1 is in a fist-fight with a burly miner at Tough 8; if that scrawny guy rolls better than the miner, I'd frankly be disgusted (however, if his roll is worse and he wins anyway through Pushing, that's fine with me).  The system has to produce results that are within the range of the players' expectations.  The results have to be plausible.  This is why Fortune only produces half of the Performance value.

In SAN!, everything is plausible; Brawn 1 wins vs. Brawn 5 (Tweety Bird beans Sylvester over the head with an enormous mallet) all the time.  In The Rustbelt, Tough 1 winning vs. Tough 8 just isn't plausible, although any score winning through sheer willpower vs. any score is.

James,

All right, sounds good, I'm game.

All that about modeling and whatnot wasn't really directed at your points; it was a sorta pre(r)amble regarding design goals in general.  As I said, the system you proposed would probably take care of those issues just as well.  Also, your assessment of the system is nominally correct.  What I balked at in your post was removing the "damage" pools and the switch to dice pools from die + stat.

Here's another good reason for the damage pools.  Well, er, not really another one, more like an explication of one that I sorta-kinda pointed out:  they are a safety catch of sorts.  For one, they prevent the GM from laying down specific Prices as fiat, as there's always at least one default option.  I don't anticipate that would really be a problem, but that's something.  Also, I expect that there are times when you really just can't afford to lose an arm (or eye or whatever) -- when the only applicable effects-based Prices are things that you can't afford to lose at the moment because they would mess up what you're trying to do with your character in a de-protagonizing sortof way, you can substitute Blood, Sweat, or Tears.

All of that is to say that I see it the other way around from what you've posted:  Injuries (and other effects-based Prices) don't enable you to ignore Blood/Sweat/Tears so much as B/S/T enables you to ignore Injuries.  Although I didn't have that in mind initially, it has worked that way in play.

I wanna come back to the comparison to D&D hitpoints real quick.  I think that the main reason that hitpoints don't really count for much is that they're too easy to get back.  I mean, all you gotta do is have the cleric hit you with a Cure Moderate Wounds after the fight, and you're good as new.  Laaaame.  In The Rustbelt, they ain't so easy to get back.  Blood comes back at 1 per (fictional) week, faster if you're receiving treatment.  You get back half of your Sweat everytime you have a chance to rest (which, due to the nature of this game's fiction, is not too often; there's always somewhere you gotta get or someone else you gotta kill right now).  Tears come back at 1 a week, or they can be purged through emotional outbursts (ones that get you in to trouble work the best).  While you can technically reverse damage through magic, it's considered "high magic," meaning that it's highly dangerous and/or costly for the magician.

(Here's a thought:  what if Blood and Sweat had "purge" options linked to story-driving narrative actions like Tears does? Hmm.)

As for the dice pools...  Well, to be honest, the only reason that dice are used at all in the game is so that I wouldn't have to come up with the tons of situational modifiers necessary for Karma-only.  Instead, I figure I can just throw a d10 to abstractly simulate that sort of thing. 

It's not so much that I consider pure Fortune to be too random; it's the arbitrarity that bugs me.  Er, well, that's semantics; lemme rephrase that.  With dice pools, it's "he wins because he rolled better" more than it is "he wins because he's bigger than you."  When arbitrary is good (as in SAN!) then dice pools are fine.  Or when a failed roll can mean inconvenience rather than straight-up failure, dice pools sound fine.  In The Rustbelt, however, I want a failed roll to mean plain-vanilla failure, in order to emphasize the Push.

The arbitrarity of dice pools is good in that it is consistently able to deliver dramatic upsets -- but, again, that's not something I want in this game.  It's a good source of protagonism, but not the sort that I'm looking for.  Protagonism in this game is intended to emerge from two sources:  sheer in-your-face tenacity and will, and making a moral stand at one of the three big nodes -- Good, Bad*, or Ugly.  Due to the nature of the setting, both of these are intrinsically linked with a great deal of suffering as circumstances demand that you prove whether or not you really mean it.  Which is where the Push comes in:  it makes sure that the suffering means something, every time, because it's the suffering you chose, whether you Pushed or Gave.  However, using dice pools, there is the chance (however slim) of succeeding consistently without having to Push -- which would seem to carry the danger of devaluing the Push and the reliable protag-engine.  That bugs me.

*Can you be Bad and still be a protagonist?  I think so.  Consider American Psycho or Clive Barker's Mr. B. Gone; the protagonists are terrible -- HORRIBLE -- but for some reason we are interested in them.  We want them to get what they want, to be happy, so that they can maybe have a turnaround; we really, really want them to not be as bad as they seem.  Then there's the sharper edge:  choosing Bad as a cut-to-the-bone criticism of "Good."  Have I mentioned that I like fiction that makes it hurt?

(As a side note, that stuff about protagonism and morality has given me an idea for a tagline:  "Tales of tenacity, depravity, and hope.")

Speaking of devaluing the Push -- I was wrong to give out that bonus on Jenkins' roll.  It devalued the Push.  So would, I think, any reward mechanic integrated with resolution, including "stunt" rules.  Thank you for making me think about this enough to catch that!

(But, then again, given what I wrote about protagonism above, could the Push be considered a reward mechanic?  That's gonna bear some thinking about.) 

One final thing is that a switch to dicepools requires a completely new currency.  Which is not really a good reason; it's just that I'm growing fond of this currency.  I'm currently tightening it up a bit and working out the phrasing to make it explicit in the rules.  I'm calling it the "Rule of 20."  Basically, 20 points of anything is something serious.  20 points of Blood puts you in shock; 20 points of damage can kill you or break a major bone, which imposes a 20-point penalty; a sword deals 20 damage, small guns deal a median of 20 damage, and big guns have a baseline of 20 damage (only gun damage is randomized now); 20 points of Challenge is the upper limit of human capability -- that is, only someone with a score of 10 (freakish) who rolled a 10 (10% chance without Traits) can do it without Pushing.  (Pushing can be considered to be beyond human capability).  By the way, I picked 20 for no good reason other than it's a nice, round number with easily understood fractions.  The previous version of the system was based around the number 100; I went down to 20 because 1% increments seemed unnecessarily granular.

-Marshall