Hello,

Jari Tuovinen stayed with me for a few days after GenCon, and we tried out a number of games at a superficial level, carrying out the setup rules in some cases, making up some characters and trying out conflict rules. We didn't really play a game in full, but got some snippets from a number of them. One of them was Rustbelt. I enjoyed the included CD quite a bit (kind of Tom Waits meets industrial meets IWW anthems), and that spurred me to spend the most time on this game. It actually ended up being pretty close to "real" play.

Jari began with the concept of a foreigner who's trying hard to get along:

Hunger = acceptance, starting Frustration = 15
Vice = opium, starting Grip = 5
Faith = hard work always pays off, starting Zeal = 20
Woe = wife and family left far away, starting Depth = 10

Tough 4, Savvy 4, Grizzled 7, Slick 3, Thorough 6, Personable 7, Cagey 6, Uncanny 1

As you can see, he's kind of a victimized guy, willing to get kicked around - the obvious thing to do was the drive spikes between the Vice and the Faith, as well as between the Hunger and the Woe. Sure, he can work all he wants, but he's not getting back to his family or allowed to help them. Nor should the Faith pay off like he expects it to, particularly regarding the reward of access to drugs. Jari began with the idea that he was Afghani, with a war-torn background and the opium, but I suggested we switch him to Finnish with no other changes. So, as Jari determined, his given name is Matti, but he goes by the more local "Matt" in order to fit in.

I prepared some scenario elements, beginning with my knowledge of a Wisconsin town called Baraboo, now reduced to a battered settlement surrounded by Expanse and threatened by the Rust. The usable living area is the remnants of the small-town downtown, two facing rows of brick block-long buildings. The rest of the town is long-gone to fire, disaster, overgrowth, and scariness, although it does include usable food fields and a lucrative poppy field in what used to be city parks. The community resources include the agricultural fields, homemade guns, a preserved store of pharmaceuticals that no one knows how to use properly, and adequate farming materials.

Two primary characters came to my mind. (1) A tough but unimaginative leader, working low-status community members to the bone and terrified of an imagined enemy upon which he blames everything that goes wrong. (2) An abused captive woman honing her hatred and spawning horrors upon the community by aiding the Rust; I figured she was the former leader. I added a twist to her and tied it to Matt's Vice by deciding the woman is also the guinea pig for trying out the drugs. You can see that I interpreted a settlement/community in this setting as being more than a little cultish.

I hope it's clear what I was doing: basically, if Matt satisfied his Hunger and/or followed his Faith in this situation, he'd automatically savage his Woe because he'd be worked to the bone forever, for nothing, and I also decided to make the drug aspect of the town a tightly-controlled insider secret to put some pressure on the Vice as well.

I assigned the two primary NPCs their scores as follows.

Mr. Richard, the leader, a big cinderblock of a guy
Tough 8, Savvy 1, Grizzled 6, Slick 2, Thorough 8, Personable 6, Cagey 5, Uncanny 0

Milla, the former leader, now a wretched, near-psychotic, but still defiant prisoner
Tough 4, Sexy 5, Grizzled 7, Slick 4, Thorough 3, Personable 3, Cagey 6, Uncanny 8

I put the Rust score at 12, just a hair over the basic usual weirdness level. For all the NPCs, I used generic scores of Tough, Thorough, and Grizzled at 4; Savvy, Slick, Personable, and Cagey at 3; and Uncanny at 2. To be clear, I allowed NPCs to Push, but the resulting Price was almost always applied in terms of Injury, or basically, damage. It worked really well.

How we played - assumed certain number of other scenes and decisions between each scene, talked a bit about them to frame up the next one to be played, sometimes directed it there based on what I wanted to try

I didn't explain anything about the situation except the superficially obvious features of the community. We began with Business as Usual, and Jari described how Matt was working his ass off every day and only sometimes being fed.

Scene 1, set in one of the agricultural fields where Matt labors. A tractor succumbs to the Rust, bleeding weird fluids from its orifices. Matt tries to fix it and fails. I showed how Mr. Richard deals with problems: blame the outsider, and blow up the offending object for "safety."

Scene 2, set in the scary abandoned corridor that runs behind the former shops in one of the downtown buildings. This is where they toss Matt, to see if he's really a person or an agent of the vaguely-conceived enemy. It's kind of like a witchcraft test - if he's traumatized and/or killed, they figure he was really OK. Unknown to Matt, Milla is imprisoned in the cellar underneath, and the corridor is a focal point for the Rust. I uncapped my usual GM fun with hallucinations, horrors, memories, and awful imagery of children making mewing scraping noises. It brought on serious Grizzled action with a surprisingly social solution - Matt was able to convince the other guys to let him out, and so he was accepted by the community. The Psyche scores got a major workout this time.

Scene 3 skipped ahead, as we figured Matt must be getting twitchy about his Vice. This was mainly some socializing, as he finds the opium field operation and scores a source.

Scene 4 skipped ahead again, this time in a very directed way that doesn't reflect how it might have gone with real role-playing. I simply revealed the existence of the pharmaceutical stash, and Jari had Matt try to steal some opium from the field as the slightly-less dangerous choice. We cut to the opium field at night, with two shotgun-armed patrollers catching him red-handed. This was pure fight, and it was a desperate, horrible affair. Matt won only by Pushing left and right, and thereby doing really nasty damage. It was a big turning point for Psyche, as this is where he figured out that Baraboo really wasn't the place for him.
totally brutal turning point

Matt's Pysche had changed a lot by this time, finally deciding to reduce Zeal, i.e., to stop being so loyal to the town. He went into the final scene with Frustration 8, Grip 11, Zeal 11, and Depth 11. You can see that he was shifting from mainly Zeal + Frustration to mainly Grip + Depth. Woe's Depth and Vice's Grip kept increasing bit by bit throughout, and the big flip-down in Zeal came with the fourth scene.

Scene 5 was purely my decree to skip ahead to a scene with Milla, as Matt finds her when he gets into the pharmaceuticals and discovers her prison in the basement. I had these images prepared all the way back to initial prep: Milla held in the center of a dripping concrete room by four chains attached to her iron collar, accompanied only by a dog dish, her eyes gleaming with pure bottled hatred, but with some of the woman still left. Matt apparently sympathized with her a lot, so the conflicts mostly involved her wanting to stay, i.e., embracing her hatred and the Rust so strongly that she preferred to be abused so she could strike back constantly, as he tried to coax her back to a chance for a normal life. So it was mostly her Cagey and Grizzled against Matt's Personable. I liked it! It wasn't a psychic fight scene but rather a subterranean psychological connection between two very different people.

Scene 6 was nothing but a final bit that represented Milla's revenge on the community as they left: the Rust unleashed with its score of 12, with Milla cooperating using her Uncanny of 8. So that's 2d10 + 22, I set the Challenge at 30, and asked what Matt was doing - Jari said he was helping too (harsh!). Basically, Baraboo was destroyed by a corruptive wave of war-torn flashback. The impact on Matt's Psyche was extreme, and he dealt with it with a double Outburst of Woe and Hunger. So there he is, falling to his knees next to his "new friend" as she spreads her arms in demonic triumph, screaming and crying hysterically in, well, Woe and Hunger, but knowing it was also just.

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Insights (stuff we enjoyed realizing during play)

1. The two end-stage coping mechanisms are basically Faith and Vice. With Faith, you can cope with anything, but it requires getting more and more fanatical. With Vice, you can cope with anything, but you need to keep scoring the substance or performing the ritualized/compulsive behavior. In other words, 1 point at a time, the character becomes less and less flexible or tolerable to those around him or her, via these methods. Sooner or later, you find yourself performing Outbursts or giving up on a local application of Faith or Hunger, in order to "clean out" your scores. It's cool!

2. The laissez-faire character creation is excellent and completely appropriate. Basically, whatever you're bad at, that's what will require Pushing. So in many ways, the characters with lower average scores become the most interesting and the most reflexively (i.e. self-directedly) consequential. At first, Jari thought that eight separate Attributes was excessive, but later we realized that it allowed for highly unique profiles that set up how the character was most likely to be forced to Push. I really like it.

3. Fucking hard-core damage! You better push when hit with a bullet or edged weapon, or you're toast. This was especially fun in the final round of the fight in scene 4, when Matt, smarting with pain after weathering a near-miss shotgun blast, maimed one guy and impaled another with a pitchfork - and then found out the latter was his friend ... The mechanics worked really well for it too, as the numbers were based on a tied roll for the guy who was trying to stop Matt, and subsequent bids that went pretty high.

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Cautions (these are all implicit in the text but might do well with a more direct presentation)

1. Don't let Hunger and Faith be too similar. In fact, none of the Psyche scores should be synonymous, like a Hunger for enjoyment and a Vice based on opiates. Any two of the Psyche scores should be at least potentially in conflict. We ran into this a little with Hunger (acceptance) and Faith (hard work pays off), so Jari made sure to contrast them during later scenes to keep the character from being a Zeal/Frustration hamster wheel.

2. The Psyche scores must be brutally adhered to in role-playing. This does not mean ordained character behavior, but rather the intensity and frequency with which the character pursues (e.g.) Grip, or the difficulty and stress associated with resisting it. To be clear, Matt had Zeal 21 for a while, and then finally had it get short-circuited by events, and then acted against it - which required extreme and wrenching actions and depictions.

3. For high Zeal in particular, but for all four actually, Jari and I both think that the text should emphasize ritual actions on the part of the character. Someone who is really addicted might not fix any more often than someone who's Gripped only at 5, but the way he fixes, with his little paraphernalia all set up and handled with obsessive care ... that's distinctive. Same goes for Zeal especially - none of these should be just "feelings," they should be actions and habits the character performs more and more stereotypically and compulsively at higher values. (And conversely, when resisting or contradicting the dictates of Zeal or whatever, the character might do so spastically and with many false steps, or so drastically and decisively that it's frightening - anything that shows how high the score is that he is fighting against.)

3. In Rustbelt, conflicts to convince others and to affect their behavior in the short-term are to be taken very seriously. This is one of those games in which you should be willing to have your guy do something stupid or risky because someone else succeeded in telling him to. As in The Dying Earth, this makes for excellent stories and problems, but you (meaning GM as well as player) have to get over it and understand that it's functional in this case. In our game, Matt rolled well to talk Milla down from her desire to "stay here in the dark, where I can hurt Mr. Richard, and he'll never ever see me." I would have been out of line to have her lose her temper and try to kill him because of that success. He also convinced the guys to let him out of the corridor. Personable turns out to be a rather significant Attribute.

4. The explanation of conflicts has a couple of holes in it. At one point, Matt was trying to hurt one guy, while the other two were trying to hurt him. Given my tired mind after all the hassles of the day, and that we couldn't find the appropriate model in the rules, I altered one of the guys to be trying to stop Matt from hurting the other guy.

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Criticisms (this is stuff that Jari and I agree actually harms the game and should be jettisoned)

1. Occasionally, the text mentions some kind of character type called Adventurers. This is, I think, an artifact of pre-existing texts and game concepts. In Rustbelt, any conceivable character can be made into a valid player-character and protagonist simply by assigning Psyche values. Even characters who venture into the Expanse seeking valuables are just more people hard-scrabbling by, in this setting. In our view, trying to make an in-game concept that justifies player-characters' existence is grossly artificial and unnecessary. It's only there to satisfy someone who wants to play a D&D character 'ported in, or who can't imagine playing any other sort of concept.

2. I think this one might hurt. All the magic rules, with that D&D spell-category terminology? Get rid of'em. Just cut'em out with a scissors and paste them in some file to be reserved for another game design. This stuff has no place in Rustbelt. The Rust itself, and possibly Devices, are sufficient for any and all psychic and "magical" effects. You can even take the Manaburn rules, rename them "Rust," and put them into the Price section with no change at all. I realize this is probably a surprising recommendation, but Jari and I are wholly in agreement about it. Here's a detail that helps make the point: of the four characters on the cover, which one does not immediately illustrate the Push and Psyche rules at first glance? I think the answer is quite clear.

3. There probably needs to be some discussion regarding the game's title. The very fact that the text includes an extensive explanation for what it doesn't mean is a tip-off.

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I like Rustbelt. Jari and I really, really enjoyed our game, even if it was a little truncated and example-based, concentrating on within-scene content, rather than truly player-driven from scene to scene. I look forward to playing again.

Best, Ron

Man, this is fantastic.

I'll have to get back to you later on a more detailed reply, but here's some quick stuff.

In case you need to do it again, in a fight where Jack (f'rinstance) is trying to hurt Riggs while Riggs and Caldwell are trying to hurt Jack works like this:
Caldwell is doing parallel interference against Jack.  So, if Caldwell outrolls Jack, Jack a) gets hurt by Caldwell AND b) must Push in order to hurt Riggs.  Jack vs. Riggs is a plain parallel conflict, so if Jack outrolled Riggs, Riggs gets hurt and must Push in order to hurt Jack.  If both Caldwell and Riggs outroll Jack, he's in deep shit, getting hurt twice and probably having to Push twice.

I've been wrestling with magic throughout this game's existence.  It allows me to do certain kinds of characters that I really like, characters who think they have a handle on the strangeness, but I have trouble finding a language for it (the current one is derived from western occult philosophy, not D&D, which I haven't read, so nyah) that actually fits.  Now, here's a thing that's just clicked, which should have been a tip-off:  while *I* love making and playing magician characters in the Rustbelt, most of my players have basically ignored the option.

-Marshall

I have to agree with Ron here, the magic rules do really stand out from everything else (and takes up a shitload of space). The only mystical things happening in my games have been the silent prayer duel between the satanist and the tribal shaman which was a simple Uncanny vs. Uncanny conflict (manaburn would have been a very cool price but I let them away with Sweat) and when the shaman asked the spirits for guidance which was mostly social conflicts trying to get the other PCs to listen to him, climbing to a top of a mountain to get away from the town (get to a higher Rust-level, didn't strike me till just now since I'm too lazy to assign Rust-levels, should start doing that) and getting in the zone with some magic shrooms (increase grip since he needed to push). Still, the other PCs (and players!) were like "well, that didn't really happen did it?" when the spirits did indeed guide him.

Okay, I'm back.

Ron, your assessment of the adventurers is correct; they're totally an artifact. (To tell the truth, I fully expected that there would be artifacts that I missed, and I'm totally glad that you're finding them).  Thing is, the earliest versions of the game revolved around outlaws, and, over time, the adventurer thing arose organically during play.  Because, as you said, people searching the Expanse for valuables are just people scraping to get by, just like everyone else.  So, if it can grow organically out of my play, it can grow organically out of other people's play, right? Just another bit of "canon" that needs excised.

Now, about the magic...
The primary reason that I put magic in the game is that it serves as a symbol for the Humanity vs. Rust conflict, in that you either make obeisance to the Rust or you pay through the nose for what you want. The idea with the Process/Power rules is that while a character thinks that he is "casting a spell," or "preparing a nostrum," or "building a regeneration engine," what he is actually doing is engaging in disturbing, antisocial, and morbid behavior that the Rust smiles upon.  Part of the power the Process stuff has for me derives from the fact that I find any ritualized behavior (including, say, Mass or the Pledge of Allegiance) to be unsettling on some level, or even in some cases terrifying.  That's very personal, however, which should have been a red flag.

As people who have been following know, there was a big overhaul for the game's mechanics within the last year, as I tried to eliminate rules that were unnecessary and/or didn't support the game's Premise.  The big thing was taking the resolution rules and eliminating as many steps as possible between Intent and Effect--the damage rules are an excellent example here; I thought, "Man, do I really need all these dodge and armor and response rolls and damage absorbtion charts and crap?  Fuck it, if you get hit with an edged weapon, you're either dead or grievously injured; let's skip to the effects we're wanting anyway."  For some reason, the magic rules got stripped down but the actual steps were never eliminated.  I think I can chalk this up to a lack of player interest in magician characters, which resulted in me never taking as close a look at those rules as I should have.

As I mentioned earlier, I've had some really cool magical characters.  Like Blackhart Joe, a coalminer turned cultist in order to cope with his father's death, who used "his" magic to deal with a case of the black lung disease (same thing that killed his father), which forestalled it but actually made it worse in the long run, requiring him to depend more and more on the magic.  When he discovered that his power came from some alien, malevolent force, he was broken.  Then there was Calloway, a hustler and conman who was a little crazy and thought he had a demon living in his hat. The demon, if granted control, would guide Calloway to "cast spells" of terrible effect. Performing them involved things like swallowing bullets and burning himself with an iron. He developed a reputation as a wizard among the underground, but he was so horrified of the demon that he took to drink to block out its voice, relying on bluff and reputation to get him through things until, inevitably, he found himself in such a predicament that it was either let the demon out or be destroyed.

Those guys were done under much older rules, and could be done by the current magic rules (which are effectively the same as the old ones, but a bit simpler). But, you know what?  Psyche (especially Faith) interacting with Rust and the Uncanny stat is totally sufficient to do that stuff.  Ron, I think you're pretty much right.  That's not the first thing implicit in the rules that I've totally missed.  Yep, I'm a total dork who writes rules that do things I don't even know about.

(Paul Czege, if you're following this, you've mentioned in passing that you like the way I was thinking about magic; not to call you out or anything, but can I get you to post here and elaborate on that?)

Ron wrote:
3. For high Zeal in particular, but for all four actually, Jari and I both think that the text should emphasize ritual actions on the part of the character.

3. In Rustbelt, conflicts to convince others and to affect their behavior in the short-term are to be taken very seriously [SNIP] Personable turns out to be a rather significant Attribute.

3. There probably needs to be some discussion regarding the game's title. The very fact that the text includes an extensive explanation for what it doesn't mean is a tip-off.

Oh, crap, I just remembered a question I wanted to ask you, Ron.

Now, in my experience, negotiating damage ends up having a relatively high handling time with new players, sometimes a really long time when there's high damage numbers  (shotgun blasts, hit by a car, etc.).  I think Wilmer has mentioned this in passing a few times too.  Some people stop being such weasely pansies about it after a while, but some people either don't or are just taking their sweet time with it.  I'm inclined to think that I shouldn't be worried about it, but it still niggles at me sometimes.  Did this issue crop up at all?  Was there ever a moment when somebody got saddled with 40+ damage and was at a loss what to do with it?

Hiya,

I suggest that every single thing you wrote in all these posts in the thread, about magic, can simply be handled by Rust and Uncanny. And that's all. You can have all the ritualization be part of the character's Faith. And there you are. Spells, plus the uncertainty. Weird shit, plus the potential lack of control. Pop Manaburn by some other name into the Price list, and you're done.

See what I mean? You don't have to lose one eensy bit of all the eldritch shit you want in the game. The point is that you already have the rules you need to deal with it.

I mean, look at what you just wrote:

The primary reason that I put magic in the game is that it serves as a symbol for the Humanity vs. Rust conflict, in that you either make obeisance to the Rust or you pay through the nose for what you want.

The idea with the Process/Power rules is that while a character thinks that he is "casting a spell," or "preparing a nostrum," or "building a regeneration engine," what he is actually doing is engaging in disturbing, antisocial, and morbid behavior that the Rust smiles upon.

Hi Ron,
Yeah, I'm totally following you on the magic issue.

Regarding the damage, I've been allowing large pools of "raw" damage to be broken up into two or three actual implementations of the consequences of being hit.  This allows certain situations and eventualities that I'm fond of.

Take, for instance, a guy who's Tough for 10.  Let's say he gets shot in the head with a handgun, and it's a median  damage roll (20).  Since he's so Tough, he can take 10 to Sweat, and there's only 10 remaining which could be implemented as a knockout, with no other lasting damage.  Even on a maxed roll (30), that could be 10 Sweat, 10 Blood, and a KO, no other consequential (at least not immediately) damage.  If that sounds familiar, it's because my model for "Tough for 10" was Marv from Sin City.

Or, let's say that Jack has a shotgun and Riggs is unarmed.  Jack's intent is to shoot Riggs, while Riggs' is to get the shotgun away from Jack.  That's a parallel conflict, because Riggs could get shot and still get the gun if he Pushed.  So, the fact that he's willing to endure one shot (for 22 to 40 damage--i.e. from almost-certainly grievously injured to losing a limb, or else a mortal wound) goes a long way toward determining his edge in the fight--in fact, if Jack is not willing to get shot, then Riggs has probably just won.  I like the possibility that he can do that, no matter how badly he gets shot that first time. 

For an even worse example of the same thing, let's say that Jack's in a truck at highway speeds, and Riggs has a gun.  Jack's player says, "I run him over!" (50 damage if it hits), and Riggs' says, "Go ahead.  I stand dead in the middle of the road and shoot you between your eyes."  As GM, I'd let that 50 damage go down as the bones in both of Riggs' legs being reduced to shards.

I've had things like that happen a handful of times.  All of the players have been chickens about it at first, trying to weasel out of the damage or delaying their choices between the options I lay out (I try to offer 2 or 3 ways to implement damage), but most of them have got past that, and even realized how fuckin' scary and cool it is to, say, lose a kneecap and still win the fight (which happened).  There's a few that haven't, but maybe this just isn't the game for them.

But, again, the GM is really the authority on interpreting how much raw damage can be allocated to Injury, so it's a customizable issue, I think.  I really like it when both people in a fight hurt eachother at the same time, so I'm inclined to interpret damage in a way that keeps that possibility open, or even encourages it.  In a group that prefers fights that are more tactically sound, it could be done otherwise.

-Marshall

I haven't had a chance to play yet, but Ive read through the rules once and will be reading through them again harder shortly.

Everything said about Magic so far...100% agree with.  I honestly got to that point in the book tried to read it...found it kept going and going and going...did a quick page count (it accounts for some serious number of pages) and honestly bagged it.  I might of gone for a mad-tinkerer-fooling-with-old-technology sort of "magic" but the supernatural stuff I felt not only unnecessary but really counter productive.  Despite being an agent of the Rust it actually distracted and thus detracted from it.  I'll happily see it gone.

The Adventurers bit I'm not sure I agree with.  Unless I misread the text, I thought it was clear that PCs were never to be Adventurers...that was an NPC only schtick...that basically allowed for wierdo pretty-far-gone type threats to come out of the expanse to trade or raid like some kind of inland Rust Vikings.  The term wasn't particularly flavorful...but I liked the concept...did I invent all that out of my own brain?

Valamir wrote:
Unless I misread the text, I thought it was clear that PCs were never to be Adventurers...that was an NPC only schtick...that basically allowed for wierdo pretty-far-gone type threats to come out of the expanse to trade or raid like some kind of inland Rust Vikings.  The term wasn't particularly flavorful...but I liked the concept...did I invent all that out of my own brain?

Hi Marshall,

Looking over your post, I was astonished to realize that you under-play your own damage system. As this is the Playtesting forum, I feel OK in giving you the feedback I think this deserves: Stop wussing out.

Specifically, 20 Blood (or 20 Injury) is defined in the text variously as fatal and mortal. At the very least, it puts the character out of action, and his or her continued life is put into question. As I see it, and as I think is best integrated with the other rules of the game:

If he's stabbed with a pitchfork, the tines come out his back.
If he's shot by a gun, a bloody hole appears at the location of a vital organ.
If he's bludgeoned, there's a terrible sound and his body flops and convulses.

Beefing up to 30 or 40 damage does such awful things to the body that the character is essentially obliterated. I'm astonished that you'd interpret 50 as merely breaking the characters' legs, however badly. What I'm driving at is that there's no reason to avoid the need to Push. If my character gets run over by a tank, missing the roll by, say, 8, with 50 Blood in the offing, then I see no reason at all for the GM to be so friendly about what that 50 means. I should be facing total obliteration of the character, or (duh) Push for, say, a deal between 8 Blood or 8 points of Danger that the GM has lurking for later.

Similarly, let's say there's a Price at hand, maybe a big one like 16 or 18 points. The GM states a numerical Price based on some combination of Blood, Sweat, and Tears - and perhaps, also a non-numerical one (or more accurately, it's numerical in terms of the 16 or 18, but not in terms of mechanical impact) that the player may select or reject in favor of the numerical option. What I'm saying here is that there's no reason for the GM to weeny out in any way if the non-numerical price is Injury. I would favor keeping Injury levels right in the same standards as Blood damage, so that if you're up against a pure Price in Blood, Injury isn't any particularly different. Bearing in mind, of course, that I would treat Injury or Blood of 25 or higher as at least including amputations, crippling, disfigurement, and so on anyway.

I think it's possible that the fun and fiddliness of splitting Price into pieces has become a softener for you rather than a diversifier. Like you, I like the idea of it as a diversifier - if a player-character is low in Blood and high in Sweat, for instance, it's fun and in-game-logical to assign the points to Sweat to pump him over the limit and do some Blood that way, rather than just assign it to Blood, or maybe the situation is such that I think Tears should get 10 out of the 12 points and Blood only gets 2. But I also say, Don't wuss out! The points are the points, and the rules of increments of 5s should hold no matter what.

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Regarding the last couple of posts, I want to emphasize that I think characters who go adventuring (in the sense of exploring or combing the Expanse) are cool as hell. My objections are to (1) any in-setting characterization of them ("I wanna grow up and be an Adventurer, daddy!") and (2) any textual game terms which distinguish such activity from any other as a viable play option. It's the difference between Adventurer the proper noun and adventuring as a verb that a character might do.

I'm writing this because my objections were all about the "A" kind, and your replies seem to be all about justifying the "a" kind.

Best, Ron

Hi Ron,

I think we might be handling the combat conflicts differently.  The way I've been doing it, if you're attacking me and I'm attacking you, and you out-roll me, I get hurt, period.  At that point, I can Push to still hurt you, but I can't change the fact that I get hurt.  Is that the way you did it?

-Marshall

Hi Marshall,

Unfortunately, that never came up in our scenes. The fight scene was a more three-cornered thing, and as it happened, I don't think any mutual attacking occurred. Although I think you're right - Matt probably should have taken damage in there, among all the confusion, which got missed.

How does that apply to the truck example, though, or for that matter, the situation in which A is hitting B but B is merely dodging?

Let's keep it simple, with the truck. Let's say it's bearing down on your guy, and I, the GM, say that the Challenge is (um) 25. You roll and get a 15. Fuck. I tell you, if it hits you, you're taking 40 Blood, period (it's a hell of a truck, a killer truck, a truck from the apocalypse). And it has hit, you, unless you Push.

Well, duh, you Push, and now you're looking at a Price of 10. H'mm, I say. OK, it's 10 in Sweat for the effort to get out of the way, or 10 points of injury, let's say a busted arm. And then you choose the one you like better.

Do I have all of that right? I'm pretty sure I do.

So, now let's take it to the guy trying to shoot your character, and all you're doing is getting out of the way. Isn't that pretty much the same as dodging the truck? If so, then I don't really understand why I have to take any damage in Blood if I go ahead and Push.

What am I missing?

Best, Ron

Hi Ron,

Yes, both of those examples you just gave are correct.  Although I'd make the driver of the truck roll against rather than setting a Challenge, but that's probably a stylistic issue.  Well, actually, since it's a Truck from the Apocalypse, I'd make the Rust roll; whatever.  But I'm not sure where this is coming from:

If so, then I don't really understand why I have to take any damage in Blood if I go ahead and Push.

Hi Marshall,

That post explains it perfectly, and I finally get it. I think you just hit upon the revised text for that section of the rules. I had thought of Blood as "the real thing" and Injury as a too-convenient way to dodge it.

Okay, in my truck example, the guy wasn't trying to get out of the way.  His stated intent was to shoot the driver.  Therefore, he can only Push to shoot the driver.  This can unfold in the following ways:
...
Are we good on that?

Hi Marshall,

Quick subject change, also based on these smallish play-experiences ...

Before reading the rest of this post, please listen to Heroin and I'm Just Waiting for the Man by the Velvet Underground, Dead Flowers and Sister Morphine by the Rolling Stones, China Girl (original version) by David Bowie and Iggy Pop, and The Needle and the Damage Done by Neil Young. I figure you know them all by heart, but just to get in the mood ...

'Cause the game text that would help me the most in GMing and playing The Rustbelt is encapsulated in those songs. Drug text in role-playing games hasn't been the hobby's strong point. One of the best might be a combination: the original Cyberpunk juxtaposed with the supplement Hardwired, because they present different views. Over the Edge did a pretty good job mainly through being completely matter-of-fact and experienced, and I was sort of on the same wavelength with my casual references in Sorcerer. Otherwise, though, I think they're pretty lightweight.

And, um, when The Rustbelt isn't primarily about getting your ass kicked sideways, or about ritualizing belief systems, then it's about scoring, using, and twitching.

I'm not looking for fiddly penalties, rules-for-recovery, or durations of effects. I'm talking about situation authority, primarily but not limited to scene framing, in which the stages of the Grip are identifiable and consistent with the current numbers. As far as doing it myself as a GM, no problem - drugs have often been a major player in the fiction, in my games. I'd like to get the dialogue going for how you want to address it in your game.

Best, Ron

Hi Ron,

Yep, I do know those by heart.  Also, allow me to add "Skeletal History" and "Methamphetamine Blues" by Mark Lanegan to the mix; check 'em out if you can (they're on the EP Here Comes That Weird Chill).

So, yeah, the text is very weak on that issue.  I've been handling it informally ("So, you're running low by now, right? Okay, so, you're waiting on Blackwood Street for the man, right?").  I know, I know, the thing that I & my group do without thinking is exactly what my text needs to tell others how to do.

But, when it comes to situation-authority and textual advice, I'm not sure where to start on this issue.

The only addiction I've had is to cigarettes (I say "had," but you know how it is), although I've been known to use alcohol to Cope, as it were.  My experience with harder stuff is second-hand, from having friends who were on cocaine, crack, and/or meth (and also acid and dextromethorphan, but those don't seem to be habit-forming).  Meth is also rampant in my town; there are little old ladies here who do it.  As far as opiates, I have to go a further step removed and draw on all the William S. Burroughs that I've read.  Junky is especially good for this, being very downplayed and unromanticized, but being set in the 1940s is possibly a problem (the current landscape of junk could be very different, for all I know).

In play, little details of this stuff come to me unbidden (I don't actively think about it much) and I rush to bring them into play.  A crackhead's house, completely devoid of lightbulbs. Potheads' faucets missing the screens, such that they spray water everywhere when you turn them on.  A loaded junky staring at the end of his shoe for hours while his friends are visiting and trying to engage him in conversation.  Going to place X to score, only to find out that you're gonna to have to go to place Y, which leads to place Z, and so on, for hours, before you actually find any stuff.  A tweaker trying to sell you a fake gold bracelet, which he insists is from Paris ("You know where that is?  It's in France") and therefore valuable.  Buying a packet of cigarettes with nothing but loose change that you found under the couch cushions, then trying to look nonchalant as you count them out to the cashier.  Pulling out the stashed flask of whiskey, only to find that you finished it at some earlier time that you can't remember.

When it comes to giving the readers these tools, I'm at a loss right now; I don't know where to begin.

-Marshall

I think you just did. That's the start of some absolutely excellent game text right there.

In the interest of (mild) disclosure, I am about to be 44, and I grew up largely in the counterculture of the California coast. Strangely, I was also firmly embedded in military culture and later, in affluent prep-school culture. So drugs were - how does one put it - a part of life, and I saw just about each subcultural angle on every one, from peyote plants on someone's kitchen shelf to high-grade cocaine used with personal spoons. Back then, pot was ... well, like beer.

I might be able, with some effort, to characterize how I incorporate my experience into play. It's not really with speeches or discourses, it's just ... well, environment. The way people talk. The stuff that's around and what they do with it. I guess it makes most sense to think about how not to do it. In modern movies, the drug-using characters are so coded and distinctive and blinking with DRUG-DRUG that it's silly. It's more like ... well, did you ever see The Breakfast Club? When all the cliquey teenagers share a doobie, it's not breaking rules or being daring or anything - it's the one thing to do that's not cliquey, it's a meeting-ground. It's the most normal part of their lives.

I kind of get that same vibe from your post, so I have no fear your text will convey what the reader needs, in terms of pure content, atmosphere, and characterization. The trick will come in incorporating it into player-driven decisions, rather than GM-delivered setting stuff.

How does that turn into scene framing and situational authority for specific characters who use drugs (or more generally, Vices, in the sense that watching TV as a Vice is fully a drug in Rustbelt terms)? The level of Grip is a great mechanical indicator, and maybe it's possible to start with that without being too fiddly. What are your thoughts on that?

Best, Ron

Hi Ron,

Here's a thing that just came to mind.  Maybe the GM is perfectly justified in framing things such that, at any given moment, a character finds himself in a problematic situation directly due to his drug (f'rinstance) use.  Like the "go to X to score; nope, gotta go to Y; nope, gotta go to Z" thing, for an example.  Basically, a situation that presents the choice to either face obstacles, difficulties, and annoyances, or go into Withdrawal.

Going at it this way, the Grip is a stick, because of the lasting Tears/Sweat damage it produces during Withdrawal.  If you think of the Vice as a character, this stick puts the Vice in a bargaining position with the PC -- go through this crap that I want you to go through, or suffer.  If the Grip is low, then the problems would have to be of similarly small scope; otherwise, the decision is easy:  give it up.  If the Grip is high, then the problems can be bigger.  At 20 Grip, we could be looking at situations where you might have to kill someone.

The lasting Tears/Sweat can really be a problem, when this sort of Waiting For the Man (so to speak) is integrated as a single piece of a larger story, with some other over-arcing Conflict, some reason that the PC would probably need his resources in top-shape.

There's one problem that occurs to me, though.  In the GM Guide chapter, there's a rule about not taking away something important to a PC without giving him a legitimate chance to defend it.  There's some situations where, for the above idea to work, the GM would have to take something away without the chance to defend it.  The PC is addicted to watching TV?  Today, he gets home and the TV's broken.  Now he has to find/steal a new one, or find/earn/steal the money to buy a new one, or face Withdrawal.  That strikes me as fun, despite breaking my "taking away something important" rule.  Maybe that rule isn't as good as I thought it was.

-Marshall

I think that both principles can operate in tandem, rather than either (1) the GM can fuck up your character's stuff whenever he likes or (2) the GM can only threaten your stuff through conflicts. The key to doing both well is the Grip.

The way I see it, the Grip is not only the actual sensation of need for the Vice, but also anxiety about it. What that means to me in practical terms is that if the Grip is, say, 10 or higher, and if the character has access to the stuff, then anxiety about it can legitimately be imposed by external circumstances. Perhaps the stash looks like it's maybe been tampered with. Perhaps the so-far reliable connection isn't answering his phone, or answers late with weird excuses.

I guess what I'm saying is that by the very nature of the concept of the Vice, it's never wholly reliably present. And if circumstances (i.e. rolls) have made it reasonably accessible for the moment, and if Grip is nice and high, then that means the character is wide open for any little thing to set off anxiety that's conceivably as bad as not actually have access.

And by "wide open for any little thing," I mean GM situational authority, including scene framing.

In the TV example, I'd say that the TV doesn't get broken, but it fritzes out too often, or at least that's how the character perceives it. Maybe a friend tells the character about how some TVs really are demonic possession devices (positing that the character fears demonic possession as part of his Faith). Or maybe a really really spiff TV has arrived on the scene, owned by the character's annoying neighbor, and the fucker only watches it maybe half an hour every couple of days. So he couldn't really need it, could he ....? Not like I do ...

The only thing worse than a junkie who can't fix is a junkie who can, and thereby has the time to hone his obsessions ever finer. (I've always wondered why in the world a person would ever, imaginably, want to speedball, but maybe that's why.)

How does that sound?

Best, Ron

Hi Ron,

Anxiety, yes, yes, awesome.

And here's another angle that I just thought of.  With the broken TV (although the one that is perceived to be broken is great too), the GM has taken away the TV itself, but access to TV is still available.  So, really, the GM hasn't taken away something without an opportunity to defend it; the PC has to work to get it, but that's effectively the same thing as threatening something through conflict, right?

Take, for instance, when I misplace my cigarettes.  I go to my desk, where I thought I left them, but they're gone.  As I start looking around the desk to see if they fell off, my mind gradually goes from "Hm, they must be around here somewhere" to "Where the fuck ARE they?" and maybe even "Dammit, who took them? Those motherfuckers!" and I start searching that much more fervently*.  Anxiety indeed.  So, in game terms, this could be a Thorough check, searching the house for the damned things, or maybe my roommate took them, so it's a conflict with him.

*This internal process, by which the more time I spend looking for the cigarettes (f'rinstance), the more important they become to me in that moment, possibly leading me to panic and/or rage -- very fascinating.  This needs discussion in the rules, right?

-Marshall

Hi Marshall,

Regarding your first point, I getcha fine, but in role-playing terms, many people have been scarred by the following sequence:

Me: "My character Ned is a bartender. It's a great bar, everyone goes there. He's curiously knowledgeable about war and weapons for a mild-mannered bartender, and he has a Multi-gat 9000 hidden at knee level behind the bar itself." (multitude of character creation options back all of this up)

GM, during first scene in play: "Your bar is blown up by a bomb. Total smithereens."

So I tend to aim more toward the physical placement of things, alternatives to them, and curious details about them that may prompt action without requiring it, rather than damaging the things or otherwise really interfering with them. That's based on experiences and knowledge of our subculture, rather than an actual argument against your proposal, which is in fact logical. If you want to present it in the text, I suggest putting some effort into showing how it's not the same as blowing up the bar.

You also wrote,

This internal process, by which the more time I spend looking for the cigarettes (f'rinstance), the more important they become to me in that moment, possibly leading me to panic and/or rage -- very fascinating.  This needs discussion in the rules, right?

Hi Ron,

Yeah, I guess I can hear you about that sort of scarring.  It's one of those things I'm not directly familiar with (due to my gaming experience being almost entirely with home-made games), but I can understand it.  My only problem with the subtler alternative is that I'm not particularly good at being subtle :)

I'm working on two pieces of text, one to help players in roleplaying to Psyche using the scores as a rubric (with roughish milestones, especially at 5s, 10s, and 20s), and one to help the GM introduce the hassles and problems inherent in Vice (I'm really liking the phrase Waiting For The Man to refer to it, much like Business As Usual and Give 'Em Hell, Kid).  I'll post 'em once they're fit for human consumption.

Ron wrote:
Nothing special beyond the Psyche dynamics in action, aren't they?

Here's what I've got so far:

ROLEPLAYING TO YOUR PSYCHE

The Psyche components, including their scores, should guide your roleplaying.  The decisions are in your hands totally, but the intensity of those decisions and the way the character enacts them should correspond to the scores.  While you are allowed to break a Faith with Zeal 20 just as much as one with Zeal 5, you should roleplay breaking the higher one as something hard for the character to do, or perhaps with such decisiveness that it’s scary, or in some other manner with appropriate intensity.
One point at a time, as the scores increase, you should escalate the intensity a notch.  There’s some milestones here, and some other concerns that are more subtle, so let’s look at them in some detail.

Hunger
At Frustration scores 5 and below, Hunger is just a niggling thing in the back of your mind.  It gradually becomes harder to ignore, and by the time you hit 10 Frustration, it has become totally clear that you are missing something vital, even if you don’t know what it is.  At 20 and higher, we’re talking about a huge, yawning void inside you that simply cannot be ignored – the desire to fill it consumes you.  Which isn’t to say that you must pursue your Hunger, just that refraining from pursuing it is that much harder.

Vice
Under 5 Grip, the Vice is something that you aren’t really used to yet; you’re probably clumsy and awkward about it.  Between 5 and 10 is where you become increasingly comfortable with it, even casual.  As it gets above 10, it starts transforming from an activity into a lifestyle; you start ritualizing it, and/or you start indulging in bigger doses (figuratively speaking, in the case of non-drug Vice) with more pronounced and intense effect.  At 20 and higher, the Vice is threatening to be your entire life, the end at which all your means are directed, rollin’ just to keep on rollin’.
As the Grip increases, not only does your sensation of need for the Vice increase, but so does your anxiety about fixing, and about having enough to fix tomorrow, and about having the ritualized environs of your Vice in proper order.
Those environs deserve some special consideration.  With any addiction, people will endure certain inconveniences and annoyances for the sake of the addiction.  Some examples:  crack users tend to not have enough lightbulbs in the house, as they use them to improvise glass-pipes; pot heads take the screens out of faucets to replace those in their pipes, and the faucets spray water in uncontrolled blasts without them; junkies’ spoons are burned on the bottom because they use them to “cook up” (dissolving the drug into water heated by a flame held under the spoon, so that it can be drawn into the needle).  There’s also the way in which people actively arrange their surroundings to focus on the Vice; for instance, meth users who make their own construct what amounts to a chemistry lab in their home.
Now, while those examples all deal with drug-based Vice, the same principles apply to social and behavioral Vice.  Someone who is addicted to watching television will arrange things around that activity.  He probably doesn’t take meals in the dining room, instead eating on the couch from a tray table, while the dining room table is neglected and/or relegated to shelf-space, covered in various objects.  Perhaps he has programming guides strewn about the living room.  After all, you gotta know when your shows are coming on, right?
Consider factors like this when roleplaying your character.  Think about the way Vice influences his surroundings, his mannerisms, the way he talks.  Think about the way he justifies and rationalizes all of this.

Faith
Faith runs parallel to Vice in most regards.  The milestones are essentially the same:  the period of awkwardness; the increasing casualness and comfort; the transition from belief and axiom into lifestyle, complete with attendant ritualization; the shift from being a part of your life to being the focus of your life.  As Zeal increases, Faith-based issues should also be seen in increasingly black-and-white terms by your character; at 20 Zeal, there is no gray at all.  Again, you can still choose the “black” option, but that choice is going to have that much more gravity.
Faith also creates its own environment.  The more Zealous you become, the more this should be reflected in the way you talk, the people you associate with and how you treat them, and the objects you keep with you and in your home.  Consider the decent, church-going lady with all her crucifixes on the walls and religious books on the coffee table, or the monk with his hair-shirt, studying scriptures by dim light in a cramped, unadorned cell -- and he chooses this.

Woe
Woe is harder to graduate.  The primary function of the Depth value is to indicate how intense and involved your coping mechanisms have to be when the Woe is triggered.  But, also, as Depth increases, so do your feelings of guilt, at being at fault for what happened.  At low Depths, your perception of the Woe and its inciting event will include mitigations, places where you acknowledge factors beyond your control and responsibility.  On the other hand, by Depth 20, you’ve taken responsibility for the entire thing onto your shoulders, even if it was the work of another person – if you gain Woe from failing to save your brother from murder, by the time you hit 20 Depth, you no longer consider the murderer’s agency in this at all; it is all your fault, as far as you can see, and seeing it otherwise would require considerable prompting or effort.

Hey everyone,

What do you think of "The Rust Age" as a title?  Y'know, like the Iron Age, the Industrial Age, the Rust Age...

I think it gets the idea across nicely, without being something that can be misconstrued as something else (like Rustbelt).  Do you see any problems with it?  Any important things that it fails to communicate?

-Marshall

Hi Marshall,

Sorry about the delay in replying. I think that I'm not alone in having difficulty with title-my-game topics. As far as I know, nobody really knows what a good title is, nor how it can be identified or justified. Ultimately, it must rest with your sense of rightness and inspiration.

Carping about a title that doesn't work is another story (obviously; I've done enough of it in this thread). If a distinct objection appears over and over, which it has in this case, then yeah, it's time to re-think. But I really can't act as a judge or confirming party regarding a positive choice, and I betcha a lot of others feel the same way. Even if some don't, and if twenty suggestions suddenly appear here in this thread, it's really up to you.

Ultimately, it does come down to the game itself. I know I've seen a lot of games validate what seemed like a mediocre title simply by being good, and I've seen a lot of good titles fail to save a crap game. The best I can say is that your title should not impede understanding of why and how your game is good.

Best, Ron

Hi Marshall,

I liked what I read here.

So, after downloading and the reading, I had the impression that Vice could mean everything you are addicted to.

I know You won't like that interpretation much, because the Rustbelt is that way. But I thought it could fit with any substance - not just the materialistic ones, the more psychological - like an abusive relationship or so -  the better!

MfG
Dirk

That's a good point, Dirk. The first character I made up was based on the picture of the gun-wielding mother on the cover, and the Vice that sprang to mind was "Obsessive cleaning and neatening."

Marshall, would that be a legitimate Vice?

Best, Ron

Hi Dirk,
Actually, that's exactly what Vice is supposed to be.  In the scenario I scraped up for Paul Czege to run at GenCon, one character's Vice was buying expensive things, another's was listening to a certain person sing, and another's was cutting himself with a razorblade.

This is an issue that's not particularly obvious from reading the rules, but it's a little more clear in the ashcan version.  I'm still working out the whole issue of properly writing a text.

Also, I'm glad you like the look of the game! 

Ron,
Oh, hell yes, that's a legitimate Vice.  I don't suppose you were moved to do a whole write-up for her?  'Cause if so, I'd be interested to see it.

-Marshall

Hell yeah!

I like this game even better!

MfG
Dirk

Hi Marshall,

I tried to find my notes, but they eluded me. I'll try to reconstruct. I think I named her "Daphne."

Tough 4 Savvy 4 Grizzled 6 Slick 6 Thorough 7 Personable 3 Cagey 7 Uncanny 7

Hunger to Raise My Kid Right 15
Vice of Obsessive Neatening and Cleaning 5
Faith that Everything Will Be Back to Normal 10
Woe for how They Killed My Husband and Burned Our Home 15

I should really emphasize that this is an interpetation of the illustration, focusing on the idea that she isn't much removed from the homemaker she was, or not yet anyway. I know that for some reason this interpretation was strongly prompted by her shoes. I thought of the Grizzled and Cagey being very recently influenced, and also for her to be crazy-lucky. I also wanted the kid to be a positive feature, not (for instance) having raising or disciplining him be the Vice. I set the scores for Hunger and Woe really high because I thought of her in action from the moment of starting play; that might be softened depending on the Business as Usual for a given start of play. I also wanted the Vice to start mild, just a bit fidgety.

My point is that there are clearly a hundred different characters this illustration could inspire, and I'd like to preserve that potential rather than generate any sort of single rules-set that the picture might represent.

Best, Ron

My point is that there are clearly a hundred different characters this illustration could inspire, and I'd like to preserve that potential rather than generate any sort of single rules-set that the picture might represent.

Hey Ron,
There's a thing from waaaay back in the initial post that I wanted to discuss.

Ron wrote:
1. Don't let Hunger and Faith be too similar. In fact, none of the Psyche scores should be synonymous, like a Hunger for enjoyment and a Vice based on opiates. Any two of the Psyche scores should be at least potentially in conflict. We ran into this a little with Hunger (acceptance) and Faith (hard work pays off), so Jari made sure to contrast them during later scenes to keep the character from being a Zeal/Frustration hamster wheel.

Hi Marshall,

That seems like a valid playtest question. There's no way to know whether the hamster-wheel effect for that Vice-Woe combination is a neat rules application or a one-note letdown.

I definitely agree with you about the Hunger.

Best, Ron

Marshall wrote:
What do you think of "The Rust Age" as a title?

David wrote:
Dunno if there's a better place for name-storming than the third page of a playtest thread...