Hey,

I have a couple of questions for experienced In a Wicked Age... players.

1) How long does the Oracle part and creation of characters take you on average? That is, how long does it take before you actually dive in and play?

2) Have you found that you get faster with experience, or does it still take about the same time as your first few sessions?

3) Any tips for speeding up this process for the slow pokes around us (yup, that would be me and my group)?

4) Do you frequently have PC vs PC Best Interests in your games? (My own two chapters have sadly featured exclusively NPC vs PC Best Interests.)

5) What is your ratio of returning characters? Do you find that your players buy-in their characters in each chapter if they can, or is it mostly just the one returning PC?

TTFN,

Yoki

Darn... I meant to have a more descriptive subject, but can't edit it after the fact.

1) Depends on the group, but usually less than 30 minutes. Some of the folks I play with a very high context, and so it takes longer, and some folks are pretty low context, and so we can go so fast that the GM is always scrambling and trying to get down NPC forms before everyone starts yelling at him.

2) It gets faster with experience, mostly around the defining and setting of best interests. Not hugely faster, mind you, but a little faster. (Mostly it gets better, rather than faster.)

3) I dunno, what's your current process look like?

4) We usually end up with PCs with best interests that obliquely oppose other PC best interests. Like, we don't have a lot of "I need to kill the head of the temple" where the head of the temple is a PC, but we do have "steal the holy scepter from the temple" where the head of the temple is a PC.

5) Depends a lot on the player. Mo, for example, has almost all of her characters return a lot. My characters almost never return. Coincidentally (ha) Mo only really starts to get big buy-in on a second or third recurrence of a character, where I often buy-in best with a new character I can ride hard and leave dead. Others in the group fall kinda evenly between. I have noticed a slight tendency for most of the folks that aren't me to make one or two of their characters "their PC" and to play other characters more like NPCs -- with some buy in, but not the same focus on their recurring characters.

Thanks for the reply Brand.

Brand_Robins wrote: 1) Depends on the group, but usually less than 30 minutes. Some of the folks I play with a very high context, and so it takes longer, and some folks are pretty low context, and so we can go so fast that the GM is always scrambling and trying to get down NPC forms before everyone starts yelling at him.

Brand_Robins wrote: 2) It gets faster with experience, mostly around the defining and setting of best interests. Not hugely faster, mind you, but a little faster. (Mostly it gets better, rather than faster.)

Brand_Robins wrote: 3) I dunno, what's your current process look like?

Brand_Robins wrote:
4) We usually end up with PCs with best interests that obliquely oppose other PC best interests. Like, we don't have a lot of "I need to kill the head of the temple" where the head of the temple is a PC, but we do have "steal the holy scepter from the temple" where the head of the temple is a PC.

Brand_Robins wrote:
5) Depends a lot on the player. Mo, for example, has almost all of her characters return a lot. My characters almost never return. Coincidentally (ha) Mo only really starts to get big buy-in on a second or third recurrence of a character, where I often buy-in best with a new character I can ride hard and leave dead. Others in the group fall kinda evenly between. I have noticed a slight tendency for most of the folks that aren't me to make one or two of their characters "their PC" and to play other characters more like NPCs -- with some buy in, but not the same focus on their recurring characters.

If particular strengths are slowing you down, just don't make any. Nothing says your npcs have to have particular strengths.

Once your players have created several particular strengths, you can start giving those to your npcs, if any of them really need one.

You can also make up a batch of commonsense "standard" particular strengths outside of play, if you want. I'd wait until you've gotten a couple of sessions in, so they're tonally appropriate.

But most importantly, don't hang yourself up. Not every npc needs a particular strength, and it's perfectly fine if NO npcs have one.

-Vincent

Yokiboy wrote:
I think the reason I'm confused when we start describing Best Interests is that I hardly know who the PCs are at this point. I don't know what Forms they're best, or worst, at. Not knowing what they want yet, i.e. their Best Interests, I also feel like my first two Best Interests usually come out lame. Like, "He wants you dead" kind of lame.

Brand_Robins wrote: Truth is a lot of my NPCs BIs tend to be a little generic, at least at first (or until they show up later as PCs or whatever). "Keep my throne" "prove my worth to my dad" "wench and drink" and such get used a lot. Many, many NPCs only become viable as dynamic characters once they've had a throw down or two with PCs. That way they get rounded out in play, and I just need the barest thumbnail to hand on during prep.

Yokiboy wrote:
Now sometime during the Particular Strengths process, my players complete their characters and want to get on with Best Interests. Now this throws me for a loop again. I have to put aside fussing over my NPCs, and be the first one to come up with two cool Best Interests for one of my NPCs, and both should be direct attacks at PCs, preferably in a Form where they're weak.

I think the reason I'm confused when we start describing Best Interests is that I hardly know who the PCs are at this point. I don't know what Forms they're best, or worst, at. Not knowing what they want yet, i.e. their Best Interests, I also feel like my first two Best Interests usually come out lame. Like, "He wants you dead" kind of lame.

I think a campaign of IaWA (at least how we've played it) follows very closely the way a session of Universalis goes.  Initially there's lots of random stuff getting invented and thrown together and there's a joy in seeing all this stuff get jumbled up.  Then at some point people's inherent story-sense kicks in and it becomes natural to start taking all these disparate pieces and finding ways to tie them together.

Seth speaks wisdom.  Of played entire games where I had characters do stuff that "just felt right" and I still don't know *why* they did that stuff.

More on the idea that Best Interests are at the author level.  It's entirely possible that the fiction ends up in a state such that the original Best Interests make no sense.  That's fine.  Don't write new Best Interests, just play from the current state of the fiction.

It's also entirely possible that a character never sees, realizes or has the opportunity to act on his Best Interests.  That's fine to.  Just play from the fiction.

Best Interests are jumping off points and indicators of end points.  But they aren't the plot.

Jesse

Yeah, ditto all of the above.

When I think of best interests my thought process goes something like this:

1) Pick the obvious thing for the character to be doing.  In other words you have this situation created by the oracles, you have a character who is here...why?  Why is that character even in this place at this time.  That is an easy first Best Interest.  Often the answer is right in the Oracle itself for at least some of the characters.  If the oracle says a character is "seeking a marriage alliance with a desert cult"...then the easy BI is "It is in my best interest to obtain an alliance with a desert cult".  Or if you want to get all crazy with it...reverse the obvious "It is in my best interest to start a feud with the desert cult" (or more specifically the character representing the cult).  or even "It is in my best interest to marry the woman myself" if that character is in play.

2) Pick a thing that is clearly not in the best interests of one of the other characters, but is independent of their actual best interests.  This is a definite story generator because there's many ways you can go.  You can team up with the person who is at the other end of your target's Best Interest...the ole "enemy of my enemy" ploy.  Or you can help your target get his Best Interest on the grounds that the player might be willing to just give you yours as payment for your aid.  Or you can get your target to help you go for your other Best Interest with the promise of not pursuing the one targeted at them.  Lots of possibilities for ingame development.  

And you don't have to think to hard about it.  In our last game the "proprieter of the waystation" was a character.  He had best interests like "Trap the others in the waystation forever".  So I picked replacing him as proprieter of the waystation as mine.  Why?  Because I knew it would be something that character would wouldn't want to happen and as such it becomes immediate currency.  

As it happened this whole story line never went anywhere, which is another important note.  Don't be concerned if your Best Interests never leave the ground.  If it becomes necessary as GM to frame a scene, use the BIs to help you decide what to frame...frame a scene where one of your NPCs is going after one of their BI's at the expense of a PC.  Frame a scene where 2 PCs with opposing BIs (or just intersecting if your players are good with handling subtle opportunities) have the opportunity to pursue them.  After that, most scene framing will be obvious and you may never get to some BI that's floating out there.  That's fine, just leave it there and don't force it.

3) Play your Players.  Use your knowledge of your players to pick BIs that push their buttons.  If you know you have a player who has a thing about animals...give an NPC a Best Interest involving an animal that that player would be naturally inclined to be opposed to...even if their character wouldn't.  I picked "It is in Zahir's Best Interest to get Valkyr to fall in love with him" largely because I knew it would give Raquel something to stew about for many sessions.  

When it comes to Particular Strengths, I say go special effects all the way.  You know your characters are going to have some Best Interests...ask yourself how they are going to get them.  "How does this character approach Conflicts" or "What is this characters secret weapon / ace in the hole" are good questions.  As Play Unsafe recommends...be obvious.  The guy is a warlord?  Oh...so his Particular Strength is his Legion (or his big sword, or his ability to command...whatever we'd see this guy doing in a movie as his schtick...that's his PS).  Then just fill in the color...is it a potent Legion?  Is is Consequential damaging "with Violence" and "Self Preservation".  Is it "Far Reaching" (i.e. the warlord sends a messenger to forces all over the place).  It falls into place easily.  Valkyr was a general, Raquel decided she was the inspirational leader type of General and so gave her "Inspire Loyalty" as a particular strength.  Don't overlook what the oracle hands you.  The Oracle pegged Zahir as a "Self Important Master of Strategy"...ok...my particular strength..."Master Strategist".  We had a Fertility God...his Particular Strength  "Fertility Powers".  We had "a woman recently berift of love from a long line of sorceresses and poisoners"...her Particular Strength "Poison".  Zahir's brother was a character in one chapter, he was a Garrison Commander...you can guess his particular strength...

Personally, I'd rather have a particular strength I never use than not give an NPC a Particular Strength.  You want your NPCs to be fit challengers to the PCs and you have the luxury of not caring about getting on the Owe list, so you want the ability to pound dice at them where appropriate.  Just don't try too hard.  

Here's a fun trick with Particular Strengths from our play.  Two (or maybe it was three) sessions ago we did a back-in-time session which involved one of our existing characters (Valkyr as it turns out) as a younger version of herself.  Since you recreate your whole character when you introduce a new version, she was given a new Particular Strength different from the one she has as an adult (which opens up all the questions about how that transformation happened).  But here's the thing...the Particular Strength she took was "Loyalty" and she made it "Unique".  Which meant that at that particular moment in time, the only truly loyal person in the world was the young Valkyr.

That's pretty neat and says a ton about our setting all by itself...but here's the next neat bit.  Our most recent session was set back in the time where Valkyr was an adult.  As an adult she doesn't have "Loyalty" as a Particular Strength any more.  So operating on the theory that Unique means no more than one at-a-time, we decided that no one had a claim on the Loyalty PS in this time period...so I picked up "Loyalty" as a new Particular Strength for Zahir as my "level up" feature...establishing that at this time Zahir is the only truly loyal person in the world.  

So reusing existing PSes is really really cool.  Seth's gotten alot of mileage out of "Devouring Hunger" (or something like that)