Hi, folks;

I have come out of Game Chef with some feedback which is great and some which has be a bit lost. I am seeking some way to "write myself" out of the problems with the text. As such, I need some reviewers to check it out and reply to my handful of questions below.

For Mature Audiences

My Concerns:
1) Does the current text about framing and extending scenes help you see how to "ramp up" or "push" your issues and your fellows' issues?
2) Do you have any suggestions for ways in which play could be more personal and cathartic?
3) Did any particular mechanical rule or section of text confuse you as to the point of play?

Any other suggestions or advice are welcome. Yes, I know this is an unusual game; yes, I know its presentation is still a bit too "confrontational" or "edgy." I have plans for reworking the entire example of play and toning down some of the "emo" elements. But right now I want to see reviews of the original text, in part to see if there's any consistency of initial reactions to the original draft.

Thanks, any and all!
David

Hi!
  NGH is my play style. Just the idea of IWNAY makes my skin crawl.
  That being said, it seems like a fine text. The only play example that seemed weak or to miss the mark was the example of exiting a scene. The interaction between Forrest and Boop seems like an example of dysfunctional or broken play. Like each of the players were forced to interact and couldn't find a common narrative.
  Still the rest of it seems pretty solid. There seems to be a lot to work with andthe rules seem fairly clear.
  A couple things bother me though:
1) Tooth dealer - Why is he called that, it did not make sense to me...
2) The role of the Tooth Dealer seems pretty light. The players do the scene framing and escalation, so the role seems to not be a full time job, seems like the TD would spend a lot of time twiddling their fingers waiting for Damage and being a watchdog for the rules... Maybe the first person to Exit the last scene should be the Tooth Dealer for this scene? With the person to the right of the first player being the tooth dealer for the first scene?
3) Also, what is it that gives them life? y6ou hinted at it, but they were too vague for my pea-sized brain, lol
  Good start man and good luck!

Thanks for reading; I'll reply below:

dindenver wrote: NGH is my play style. Just the idea of IWNAY makes my skin crawl.

That being said, it seems like a fine text.

The only play example that seemed weak or to miss the mark was the example of exiting a scene. The interaction between Forrest and Boop seems like an example of dysfunctional or broken play. Like each of the players were forced to interact and couldn't find a common narrative.

1) Tooth dealer - Why is he called that, it did not make sense to me...

2) The role of the Tooth Dealer seems pretty light. The players do the scene framing and escalation, so the role seems to not be a full time job, seems like the TD would spend a lot of time twiddling their fingers waiting for Damage and being a watchdog for the rules...

Maybe the first person to Exit the last scene should be the Tooth Dealer for this scene? With the person to the right of the first player being the tooth dealer for the first scene?

3) Also, what is it that gives them life? you hinted at it, but they were too vague for my pea-sized brain, lol

Good start man and good luck!

Hi!
  OK, couple of thoughts:
1) Of course IWNAY is central to FMA and can't be played without it. Quite honestly I couldn't think of a hack of this game that would work with NGH...
2) I think artwork (especially artwork that inspired you) is WAY more valuable than photos of real plushies...
3) I think the sec was not over the top. It was overt and implied certain association with drug abuse, but it did not cross a line in my mind.
4) The portrayal of Forrest in the game is sort of incongruous with the rest of the cast. We have a dude who controls people by enabling their drug addiction. We have a gal who can only have fun when they are high and Forrest, who is too timid to show us what he is about. So the scene where he is sorta on the sidelines waving and when he is finally engaged, he backs off tells me that either the character is not fully formed in your mind or the player behind these actions is not engaged in the premise fo the game, you know? The intro to the game really talks about how important the premise of staying engaged even through the uncomfortable parts is to this game. And right here in the example we have a disengaged character. I don't think a picture of Forrest hanging out with Boop will make up for the shallow interactions between players portrayed here.
5) The idea of forcing the first person to exit a scene to be the Tooth Dealer would be to keep people engaged. In my mind I see a scene with three players and one Exits and the other two go on for a bit and this is the prize/penalty for not sticking to it with the other two players. TD time!
  I think you are close to a good game, so now your only real barrier is losing sight of your design goals and diluting your design...

I'd imagine that I'll probably be viewed as being "immature" for saying this about a game designed around this premise, but I really don't get the point. Players control avatars who are based on themselves, but then not, and are allowed to hurt each other in bizarrely abstract and spiteful ways, but then the game is supposed emphasize support.

I'm not trying to be a jerk about it or anything, I'm really not, so I hope you don't interpret it that way. I guess this just isn't a kind of game I would ever want to play, but I have to ask myself "what about this game makes me weary of it, and are my concerns things that other people should be concerned with too?"

I guess it might help if the actual goal was explained a bit better. Like, have you actually played sessions, and if so what have your players walked away with? I could really only see the game being frustrating, and even if the other players "stayed with me" through my frustration I think I would just come out feeling pissed. I really don't understand how I could be simultaneously supported/hurt by players who are trying to bring their own evils to light (which in turn gives more validity to the hurting part, and makes the support seem like BS).

- Gregory Zitelli

dindenver wrote: 2) I think artwork (especially artwork that inspired you) is WAY more valuable than photos of real plushies...

5) The idea of forcing the first person to exit a scene to be the Tooth Dealer would be to keep people engaged. In my mind I see a scene with three players and one Exits and the other two go on for a bit and this is the prize/penalty for not sticking to it with the other two players. TD time!

Illetizgerg wrote: I'm not trying to be a jerk about it or anything, I'm really not, so I hope you don't interpret it that way. I guess this just isn't a kind of game I would ever want to play, but I have to ask myself "what about this game makes me weary of it, and are my concerns things that other people should be concerned with too?"

I really don't understand how I could be simultaneously supported/hurt by players who are trying to bring their own evils to light (which in turn gives more validity to the hurting part, and makes the support seem like BS).

Hi!
  OK, the wording is carefully chosen:
The person who exited the last scene first is the TD for the current scene. With a proviso for the first scene.
  So, after the first scene, the TD already knows who they are and has plenty of time (the whole scene) to decide if they want to damage their own character and how much. My gut tells me that they will probably damage their own more than others, just so they don't get joshed for going easy on it...
  And yes, that means there is an almost guarantee that they will be damaging their own character, but if everyone has to do it, it will be as fair as possible.
  Alex C had a game with rotating GM responsibilities and it went pretty well, you might want to talk to him about the ups and downs he went up against.
  Good luck man!

dindenver wrote: The person who exited the last scene first is the TD for the current scene. With a proviso for the first scene.

So, after the first scene, the TD already knows who they are and has plenty of time (the whole scene) to decide if they want to damage their own character and how much. My gut tells me that they will probably damage their own more than others, just so they don't get joshed for going easy on it...

Good luck man!

I don't know, but to me a lot of the "rules" in the game seem very abstract. Now, that isn't a problem so long as it just enables free movement of the players, but if you cross a certain line you quickly run into the problem of losing the necessary level of structure required to invoke the "emotions" that you are supposedly trying to. You have to be careful - basically - that you aren't trying to hard.

Mechanically making people sad is an incredibly hard task, especially when you are so detached as the game maker is. What exactly does the damage mean aside from some abstract notion of "whatever the players want"? Many open games like this have a pacing system because they can enable such a system better than things like the Storyteller system, and it greatly tightens up the punch of things and keeps people on track, especially with such abstract things passing around. So I think you should consider some way of creating a fixed playtime of sorts so that players can look ahead and go where they need to go without dragging their feet (this was done in Shock: by forcing the Antagonist to spend points for every die he/she rolled, of which there was a fixed amount).

Can a plushie die? You do all of these things to the physical dolls, but you need to more concretely tie it to something to prevent it from becoming a gimmick. What if a plushie's limb is deflated because of damage? What happens when a plushie loses all of its stuffing? How many needles are players supposed to have (this is quite important for simple gameplay purposes)? The way you present it, if I were you, I'd be afraid of the physical dolls becoming glorified flowcharts or graphs of the gameplay (which they really already are). I'm not saying you need to just jump the whole thing and do it over, but try and come up with more concrete things, and be more specific.

I don't know how many hooking it takes on average to remove all the stuffing from a plushie, but I think it's a reasonable rule to say that when all the stuffing is gone from a plushie they are dead and their story is over. It can be said that their life-blood (as you've stated, literally blood) is being spent by their existence, and so every time they're damaged a little bit of their soul is killed until eventually there is nothing left and the return to an inanimate state. Also, when a limb is fully deflated, perhaps you could say that whatever part of the plushie's soul is associated is gone now and numb, so in the example of Boop's heart on her arm, perhaps if the arm is deflated it means that whatever scars are on her arm (the sexuality of the heart, and the addiction of the armpit mark) are now un-healable and unresolvable, and will now haunt her forever, maybe in a much worse state. So maybe that means that she still is promiscuous and seductive, but she feels dead inside, feels no desire for other plushies and is really just going through the motions. As for the addiction, perhaps the deflation for that would mean that she's given up hope of ever escaping it and has just fallen into the inevitable dark spiral. You could also physically manifest it in-game by saying that the plushie literally can barely move its arm, because their emotional harm has been adding up and killing them, and the inanimacy of the arm is a sign of its impending death. By tying literal death of the plushie to the wounds you generate a true fear of the hook, not to mention a sense of true payback. It also brings genuine emotional heaviness to the whole scenario, because inevitable demise is always a sad, painful thing, and by saying that the emotional pain a plushie feels is the same as their physical pain - that every emotional wound is actually killing them - it generates an image of sad toys that are doomed to fight, cry, suffer, and die. Much more punch there...

Also, another suggestion: make scars mandatory. Scenes shouldn't start with players sticking themselves with needles, they should start with players sticking each other with needles; thus, all scenes start with conflict, mandatory. Then, at the end of scenes, the removal of needles should always result in at least one scar. Thus, all scenes end on drama, mandatory. Also, if you take my suggestion about stuffing being life force or whatnot, and the lost of all (or a predetermined amount of) stuffing results in the final climax of a plushie's story, then this will speed along the loss of stuffing and result in a game that doesn't last the whole day.

Thanks, TM (real name? I'm crediting folks for feedback in the final book.)

TempvsMortis wrote: I don't know, but to me a lot of the "rules" in the game seem very abstract. Now, that isn't a problem so long as it just enables free movement of the players, but if you cross a certain line you quickly run into the problem of losing the necessary level of structure required to invoke the "emotions" that you are supposedly trying to. You have to be careful - basically - that you aren't trying to hard.
...
Many open games like this have a pacing system because they can enable such a system better than things like the Storyteller system, and it greatly tightens up the punch of things and keeps people on track, especially with such abstract things passing around. So I think you should consider some way of creating a fixed playtime of sorts so that players can look ahead and go where they need to go without dragging their feet.

What exactly does the damage mean aside from some abstract notion of "whatever the players want"? Can a plushie die? You do all of these things to the physical dolls, but you need to more concretely tie it to something to prevent it from becoming a gimmick. What if a plushie's limb is deflated because of damage? What happens when a plushie loses all of its stuffing?

How many needles are players supposed to have (this is quite important for simple gameplay purposes)? The way you present it, if I were you, I'd be afraid of the physical dolls becoming glorified flowcharts or graphs of the gameplay (which they really already are). I'm not saying you need to just jump the whole thing and do it over, but try and come up with more concrete things, and be more specific.

...so in the example of Boop's heart on her arm, perhaps if the arm is deflated it means that whatever scars are on her arm (the sexuality of the heart, and the addiction of the armpit mark) are now un-healable and unresolvable, and will now haunt her forever, maybe in a much worse state.

By tying literal death of the plushie to the wounds you generate a true fear of the hook, not to mention a sense of true payback. It also brings genuine emotional heaviness to the whole scenario, because inevitable demise is always a sad, painful thing, and by saying that the emotional pain a plushie feels is the same as their physical pain - that every emotional wound is actually killing them - it generates an image of sad toys that are doomed to fight, cry, suffer, and die. Much more punch there...

Also, another suggestion: make scars mandatory. Scenes shouldn't start with players sticking themselves with needles, they should start with players sticking each other with needles; thus, all scenes start with conflict, mandatory.

Then, at the end of scenes, the removal of needles should always result in at least one scar.

Hmmmm... Okay, I'm going to have to say that this does seem a little strange to me, an RPG as therapy and only that? Isn't it no longer an RPG (G "Games" being the key here)? I don't think the essay you sourced necessarily thought it should just be one giant trip to the shrink. (I don't know if a long time alcoholic is really going to be emotionally saved by a series of mechanics...)

Well, anyway, name's William. You didn't say the game was about redemption, so I didn't pick that up when I red it, it just seemed like a lot of messing with people's heads. But yeah, I was thinking that every time a scene ends a plushie receives damage. Also, why two? And I'd like to say, the reason I suggested people spiking each OTHER to start scenes, and not being allowed to spike themselves, is it increases the immediate involvement of other people in the group and keeps the whole thing about interaction and the group, and not just people sulking with their plushie and being emo. And I get that you want to "show" what a character is going to do when they spike themselves, but I don't think that's really effective, because a) it's to abstract to clearly communicate anything that the other players would understand, and b) its ultimately unnecessary. A scene is a scene, and people are smart. They'll pick up how things are going and how harsh to be, you don't need some glorified loud-speaker. (This mechanic actually seemed the least useful to me when I read it.) This is the reason I was thinking that people spike each other only, to start scenes, because it increases interaction within the group and you know clearly what it means. (And why two? Really, if you increase it you can do more things with it, considering it's your only concrete thing there, you can actually count it, so make use of it.)