Hello,

Tim Koppang and I decided to give Thy Vernal Chieftains a whirl last night. It turned out that, curiously, I did not possess some of the items required to play. We solved this with sticky notes with the relevant items written on them, as well as their usage (e.g. "clear polished quartz, SONG").

We played four turns and still have at least a couple to go before the overall story ends.

Lucius Aebitus Bestia, a 21 year old soldier's son, Creating 2 (engineer), Consuming 3 (I know a druid, I bathe a lot), Destroying 1 (my father's gladius), Understanding 3. His Goals in order: fix the broken dam, marry Lunet, teach Roman skills, legally have Nerthach executed. He gained the Traits tolerant, educated, cold associated with the second-through-fourth Goals; I rejected Tim's initial Trait offering of Leader (and hence became a chieftain later than his character). Given my rolling lots of continuances, no traits have been marked off even halfway. Prices along the way included ostracism by the town for slacking off on the dam, the revealing of his secret marriage to a Celtic woman, and one another I can't remember.

Arthur, a 29 year old Briton tradesman, Creating 3 (historian), Consuming/Understanding 4 (tradesman, my fortune was stolen / I hear the sea), Destroying 2. His Goals in order: retrieve my family fortune, eject remaining Romans from village, create a police force, end all trade with mainland Romans. He gained the Traits respected, holds a grudge, tough-minded, hates Rome; many Traits were marked off halfway by the end of our session. Prices along the way included his family fortune was stolen by a feared soldier, great storms ravage the coast, Nerthach seeks to kill me, and one other I can't remember.

One quick question: the logic for marking off Traits seems a little weird. Maybe it works better with more than two people playing. As it stands, only if you don't roll a continuance and no one else does, do you (half) mark off a trait. So far, that didn't happen to me at all; Tim had three end-without-closures and one fast closure, and I rolled three setbacks + closures and one end-without-closure. I actually wouldn't have minded using up more Traits along the way.

Here's a detailed example of how a given turn went, our second. Arthur was pretty pissed off about not being able to close the Goal to get the family money back, so now he went on the warpath to eject Romans from the town (Destroying). This was still personal, so it wasn't about policy so much as basically a vendetta. I offered the Trait Holds a grudge (Destroying), using Dust Devils logic that "vengeful" is ultimately too vague. Tim accepted it and my Price was to say that great storms ravaging the coast making it hard to eject anyone and keeping his enemy Corvus in town too. He rolled no 1's, meaning last-narration with progress but no closure. When you roll this straight-up, you're hosed - no Token can help you. So Tim's turn ended with this round, and as with his first turn, no closure. I offered the polished bloodstone anyway for Color, and Tim accepted it to add Bloody Events. Basically, Arthur killed Corvus and although the Romans remained, a lot of anger and tension racked up in town about that.

As for my character, in the first turn, Bestia had been enchanted by observing Celtic women bathing, which is why he'd slacked off on fixing the dam and left it to others. So now, his new Goal was to marry one of the women, Lunet (Consuming). Tim offered the Trait Tolerant (which amusingly, for a Roman, is placed under Consuming - "How American," I said), and when I accepted it, his price was Ostracism by the town. Bestia had Consuming 3, and included the Trait "Tolerant" for four dice. I rolled a continuance with a setback (three 1's!) and accepted Tim's offered Token of the sheep's knuckle-bone (Food) to bring it to two 1's (same result). I narrated that Bestia tried to hold a big feast to announce his wedding to Lunet, but that practically no one came and it was a fiasco.

For the second round, I used Consuming again (of course), using the Traits "I know a Druid" and "I bathe a lot," and rolled two ones. I accepted Tim's offered Token, the dark pearl, to achieve closure (one 1) with Secrets. That was easy: Bestia and Lunet had a secret ceremony to get married by the druid Nerthach deep in the forest, some kind of skinny-dipping pagan deal.

One really great thing about the rules is that the order of chosen Spheres for Goals is potentially quite consequential, at a kind of coarse-focus level. In my case, having closed two Goals in Creating and Consuming, I realized that the story would be very different depending on which of the remaining two I chose next. Create to Consume to Understand to Destroy seems potentially more tragic; Create to Consume to Destroy to Understand seems potentially more redemptive. This is speaking very broadly and also for simplicity assumes closure for all of them as you go along; also, I know that closure is not always narrating as success, as I did that for my first Goal. But it's a neat consideration as one plays.

Our biggest concern is how to handle rolling (or getting bumped to) no 1's on the first round. I bumped Tim to this status on the first turn, but after that he rolled it straight-up two more turns in a row (one of which was a freak on six dice; nb I rolled three 1's on four dice at one point). The rules say, you make progress on your Goal, but this is your last narration and the Goal may not be closed. The thing is, closure includes both failure and success; if the Goal is not closed, it means that its issues and conditions must "hang fire" and not be concluded. Your turn ends with this being the case.

We interpreted it that the Goal (or the problems / circumstances prompting it) remain in the SIS acting as backdrop. Arther was forced to "not close" his Goal of getting the family goods back from Corvus. That means the goods are neither going to go away forever nor be restored, and that Tim's later turns will be about different Goals, with the uncomfortably "hanging fire" issue of the stolen goods being either in the background of those Goals or an unresolvable context for them.

This was especially consequential for both of us. Tim got this result three times in the first three turns, and closed a Goal on his fourth. Arthur received three Traits in those first three turns, meaning he became a chieftain, in a classic example of adversity breeding social power. He came to power because he was at the center of unresolved events. Neat!

I, on the other hand, was the opposite: I closed the first three Goals in my first three turns, and if I'd closed the fourth, the whole game would end, but I didn't. By getting that result on my fourth Goal, that guarantees two more rounds of play (because you can't repeat Spheres in sequence). Furthermore, since I'd refused the first Trait offering, Bestia didn't become a chieftain until a turn later than Arthur. So his story presence as a chieftain will have a lot more weight, length, and drama, as well as interesting back-story, than if I'd merely closed again on the fourth turn and closed the game out.

So: did we do that right? And if we did, once you've been "once around" the Spheres for Goals, can you repeat an outstanding/unclosed Goal when it's legal to repeat a Sphere? This is especially relevant for Tim right now. If he has the option to revisit "ejecting Romans," for instance, that will have major consequences for my character no matter what gets narrated.

As a side but related note, we played one detail how Paul and I discussed it on the phone: Britons have three Spheres, not four, for purposes of Goals, which makes closing out the game potentially faster for them. Not that that applies in this case, because Tim has so many unclosed Goals, but it is interesting that now that we are both "back around" for choosing Spheres, we're much more on equal footing in that regard than we'd be if his character were a Celt or another Roman. (I like this interpretation.)

It was pretty late when our fourth turn showed that where we are now: Arthur is a chieftain, unclosed at getting his fortune back (and having learned of some family secrets), unclosed at rejecting Romans (although he did kill Corvus), unclosed at making a police force (although he did form a 'band of brothers'), and finally succeeded at convincing the town to end trade with mainland Rome. Tim has kind of a talent for inadvertently creating and playing hard-luck characters. Aebitus Bestia is a chieftain, failed to fix the dam, married the Celtic woman in secret at the price of being ostracized for the dam, bounced back and regained his reputation by teaching engineering and other Roman skills (even weathering the outing of his marriage), but unclosed at having Nerthach legally executed. I have kind of a talent for creating and playing characters that fit right into the IAWA Oracle called "Blood and Sex."

I am especially happy with how interactions developed between the two characters without forcing it one bit. We agreed during the first turn that the two characters lived in the same community. Their Goals were at first not relevant to one another, and then Arthur's second Goal indirectly concerned Bestia because Bestia is Roman. Although since it was not closed, nothing conclusive happened to create adversity between them. In the third term, we used some cross-cutting elements, specifically Bestia's wife, in having the two narrations affect one another (she was hassled by one of Arthur's would-be cops and cited her marriage to me to get out out of trouble, thus revealing the marriage and undercutting the nascent police-force's authority). Although without direct confrontation or mutually-exclusive Goals, the two characters still seemed to be pretty much on opposite sides. That changed with my fourth Goal, which involved an alliance between them and a shift against the more extreme Celts. Since Arthur became a chieftain first, that means Bestia had to go to him relatively humbly for the alliance, and it also means that Bestia became a chieftain partly in the context of Arthur's power and approval. So the rules resulted in unplanned and opportunistic interactions which generated very powerful in-fiction logic, character development, and escalation of the story issues from the personal to the political.

It's hard to summarize everything about game-play in which a few powerful rules interact very locally to produce distinctive this-time results. There are a lot of details I'm skipping which weren't mere Color. The only thing I'd like to throw into the mix here is that the story turned out to be very much about the Celts' strong presence and the Romans' strong presence in a basically Briton economy. There exist disgruntled minorities of both. Both characters have undergone reversals about this, Bestia more so. At first he was enchanted (in both senses of the word) by Celtic beauty and ignored his community obligations and standards, going so far as to accept druidic authority to get married secretly. Then he tried and succeeded to re-create his community role from a teaching standpoint, and then went so far as to have that same druid (who'd been trying to kill Arthur) legally executed by the community. That didn't happen, i.e. it stayed unclosed, but Bestia is trying hard to reconcile his love of Celtic beauty and local history with the good will and social expectations of his town. So he's basically finding Celts who are willing to assimilate to some degree.

That especially works given that I assigned him a high score for Understanding, which for a Roman means that he has a talent for it but no real means of expressing or applying it in a characteristic way.

I can't wait to play the upcoming turns in our next session. What kind of chieftains will these guys be? Will their uneasy compatibility at the moment fall apart? And what will their decisions mean for our modern age?

Best, Ron

One aspect of play that I enjoyed but didn't expect given my reading of the rules, was the transition from personal to community goals.  When your character becomes a chieftain (which can actually happen rather quickly), you can name goals that apply to your entire race as opposed to just your character personally.  But because personal goals come first, your character's larger goals are necessarily influenced by the type of person he was before he became a chieftain.  This transition provides wonderful context.  I suspect that in retrospect my fear was that the larger scope goals would be too historically abstract, and therefore difficult to define.  In practice, I found it was just the opposite because of the personal context provided by the characters.

Here's an example:  Much of Arthur's hatred for Rome stemmed from the fact that an ousted Roman (Corvus) walked off with his family fortune -- in the form of a ship full of trade goods.  From there, Arthur made the transition from revenge to a general desire for economic independence from Rome.  Each step in the process was a direct result of the goal-writing mechanics.

On the other hand, the question of dice was more frustrating to me.  As Ron said, I rolled zero 1s three times in a row.  This meant that for the first three rounds I was limited to a single turn of narration and no closure.  Although I made the best of it, I did feel snuffed.  I'm curious to know whether this was a fluke, a result of having only two players, or a genuine concern.  Ron and I talked about this towards the end of the game.  One possible suggestion is to allow the addition of tokens (magic, food, etc.) to decrease *or* increase the number of 1s rolled.  This way, the players would be able to work around an unlucky series of rolls.

The other bit of oddness I encountered was the relationship between the number of dice rolled, and my desired outcome as a player.  If closure is your goal for each round, then you'll want to roll as many dice as possible on your first turn to ensure a continuance.  From there, though, the strategy is murky.  You want to roll only one or two 1s, so that your final result (after tokens) is one 1 -- and therefore closure.  What's the best number of dice for that sort of outcome?  I could do an odds calculation, but that would seem to go against the intent of the game.

Paul,

To clarify about Tim's rolling, he actually rolled one 1 in the first turn. I bumped it to no 1's by offering a Token which he accepted. The second and third turns, though, he simply rolled nothin' each time.

For those who aren't Paul, and to clarify another point about the rules which I didn't make clear in my post, you don't state Goals as part of character creation. They're made turn by turn. So for us:

Turn 1: Bestia wanted to fix the dam (Creating) and Arthur wanted to get his family money back (Consuming)
Turn 2: Bestia wanted to marry Lunet (Consuming) and Arthur wanted to eject Romans from the town (Destroying)
Turn 3: Bestia wanted to establish a Roman-skills teaching relationship with others (Understanding) and Arthur wanted to form a police cadre (Creating)
Turn 4: Bestia wanted to get Nerthach legally executed (Destroying) and Arthur wanted the town to sever economic ties with Rome (Understanding)

Also for clarity's sake, a given roll establishes whether a Goal is stalled (stop your turn and the Goal progresses but is not closed), continues with progress, continues with a setback, or is closed (I'm summarizing two different tables, actually, but that's not important here). If it's closed, then you can narrate it turning out well or badly, succeeding or failing, and how, as you see fit. So the roll doesn't resolve the Goal, but rather establishes whether it gets resolved.

For example, I closed Bestia's first Goal on the second round, but narrated that the dam was fixed without his participation because he and a few others were all enchanted and besotted by the unclothed bathing singing Celtic women. So he personally failed.

I have a little question that might be a bit of a revelation. Paul, the rule is that you can't repeat a Sphere right away after trying for Goal in that Sphere. But do you have to go through all the other Spheres before returning to this one? Could I, say, try a Consuming, then a Destroying, and then a Consuming? I hope the answer is yes.

And on a related note, for whatever imaginable reason, can I try for a Goal in a Sphere for which I've already achieved a Goal? I realize this would be "unnecessary delay of game," but I can see the value of (and would like the option to) do so if there simply is a Goal in mind that I really want to go after for in-story, authorial reasons alone, and its Sphere is unequivocally one in which I've already achieved another Goal.

One other question: may I include an obvious trait (necessary even) but not use its die? Is that legal? For example, in the second round of our fourth turn, I had already made progress in the first round and hoped for a single 1 in this round. I was using Destroy (one die) with three dice conferred by Consuming, and I didn't want any more dice in fear of getting too many 1's. But one of my Consuming Traits is "I know a druid," who was Nerthach, the guy I was directing my Goal against.

So it seems as if using that Trait and hence raising my dice pool to five dice is required; I mean, that Trait is simply already implicated. Is that right? Or can I ignore the die and simply involve Nerthach "for free" as it were? And as a corollary, if I don't include that Trait and hence stay at the desired four dice, does that mean Nerthach is automatically excluded from the narration (which in this case would be nonsensical)?

Best, Ron

I'm rushing out the door, but a few quick clarifications:

It takes three usages to mark off a Trait. With your first usage you fill in the circle at one end. With your second usage you fill in the circle at the other end. With your third usage you connect the two filled circles, crossing out the Trait.

When you open a Goal at the beginning of a turn it is associated with a specific Sphere. If on a later roll during the turn you get Closure, you may Close any Goal associated with the Sphere of the Goal you opened at the beginning of the turn, not just the specific goal you opened.

I'm thinking Britons should have Traits and Goals associated with both Consuming and Understanding, and must complete one goal on Creating, Destroying, Consuming, and Understanding, the same as Romans and Celts.

The design goal of the offer and accept trait and price mechanics is to get players accepting creative input into how their characters are defined during play and how their narratives play out. So once a Trait has been accepted by a player its work upon the fiction is done, and it actually doesn't matter if the qualitative content of Trait fits or doesn't fit into the current circumstances of the narrative for the player to be able to use it for the extra dice. And a given Trait is never implicated for mandatory usage. The Trait, once accepted and written on the sheet, just represents available extra dice, entirely at the player's discretion, for Goals opened in the sphere to which the Trait is attached. And Traits used for extra dice exert no creative constraint upon narrated events. Using your "grandfather's gladius" in an argument with your wife, when the sphere is Destroying, doesn't mean you have to stab her, or that the weapon has to be featured at all. And when the Trait has been used three times, it doesn't mean you've lost or broken the gladius somehow. (This is how descriptors work in Story Engine. They define the character, but exert no moment-to-moment force upon in-fiction events when used for their mechanical benefit.)

Your game sounds fantastic.

Paul

Hi Paul,

It takes three usages to mark off a Trait. ...

When you open a Goal at the beginning of a turn it is associated with a specific Sphere. If on a later roll during the turn you get Closure, you may Close any Goal associated with the Sphere of the Goal you opened at the beginning of the turn, not just the specific goal you opened.

I'm thinking Britons should have Traits and Goals associated with both Consuming and Understanding, and must complete one goal on Creating, Destroying, Consuming, and Understanding, the same as Romans and Celts.

Paul wrote:
When you open a Goal at the beginning of a turn it is associated with a specific Sphere. If on a later roll during the turn you get Closure, you may Close any Goal associated with the Sphere of the Goal you opened at the beginning of the turn, not just the specific goal you opened.

Hey Ron,

As fun as they are, the sheets need some redesigning, I think. I'd like to move from separate lists of Traits attached to Spheres, to a combined list of Traits, and some way of recording an attached "pool" of available extra dice next to each Sphere value. So when you accept a Trait, you record the text of it on your list, without reference to a Sphere, and you record the availability of the extra dice next to the appropriate Sphere value. I think this would eliminate people thinking what's going on in the fiction requires or prohibits the use of specific Traits for extra dice, and that the use of specific Traits must be reflected in the resulting narrative.

The trick is that I can't just have you increment the total in an "available dice" field next to the Sphere by three when you accept a Trait. Because having three Traits you can use for available dice three times each isn't the same as having nine available "extra dice". The mechanics only allow you to add one die per Trait attached to the Sphere. So I haven't figured out how to do it. Maybe some kind of "draw a triangle and then fill it in" notation? Seems awkward.

So anyway, if I'm already redesigning the sheet, how might I address the confusion it creates about the Briton only having three Spheres?

(One interesting mechanical effect of the Briton dividing his points across three base pools is that his base numbers in the Spheres are slightly higher than what the Celt and the Roman will have, and because the Celt and the Roman also each have a Sphere upon which they can't have Traits, they'll generally have a more difficult time ending the game than the Briton. Closing a goal on that thorny no-Trait Sphere is going to be hard for the Celt and the Roman. I think most games are likely to be ended by a Briton.)

Paul

Hi Paul,

Regarding your final point, I do see what you mean. It's interesting that I chose to create Aebitus Bestia with an Understanding of 3, partly as a matter of aesthetic choice as I thought of him as a little bit moony for a Roman, and in the knowledge that this represented a certain decrease of potential for all three other Spheres (because of their synergistic interaction). So he actually had a bit more of a shot at triggering the final turn, and indeed did succeed with that particular Sphere without trouble. It was Destroying that didn't work out for him after that. If someone were to create the Roman qua Roman, with an Understanding of 1, then definitely - they'll probably not be the one to trigger the final turn.

Regarding the Spheres and sheets and Traits and so on, I'm afraid I have little to offer. You're much better at designing such user-based graphics than I am.

Best, Ron

Here's how I conceptualize (or want to conceptualize) the spheres for the different races:

CELTS & ROMANS (FOUR SPHERES TOTAL).

- One sphere has no traits and gains nothing via conferring; and so is very weak on average.
- One sphere has traits but gains nothing via conferring.  It's average.
- Two spheres have traits and gain a lot via conferring.  They are both very strong -- stronger than any other sphere for any race.

BRITONS (THREE SPHERES TOTAL).

- Two spheres have traits and a slight point advantage.
- One sphere has two sets of traits and a slight point advantage.

On the one hand, I see that you want there to be four "spheres" for each race, but it just doesn't work out that way conceptually for me.  Britons, in mind, have only three spheres, one of which is a combo deal.  I think that the Britons should keep a separate list of traits for both consuming and understanding, but have access to both lists whenever they invoke their consuming/understanding sphere.  To keep things even, simply require a Briton character to close two goals in the consuming/understanding combo sphere.

I realize this isn't the way the rules are written.  I'm making a suggestion.

Hey Tim,

Yeah, you can switch up what Goal your narrative is addressing from round to round. In fact, last night in our own playtest, George Closed two goals on the same Sphere with his final narration of the Turn. Closing a Goal on each Sphere is what it takes to end the game, so although I hadn't anticipated anyone doing this when I was designing the mechanics, there wasn't any mechanical reason to prohibit Closing both of his open Goals when it made narrative sense to do so. Probably I'll specify this option when revising the text. Closure means you close at least one Goal on the Sphere you opened at the beginning of the Turn.

In fact, I've been toying a bit with the idea that maybe you don't open a Goal at the beginning of a Turn so much as you open a Sphere. Our playtest, with three players, has been a bit workshoppy at the beginnings of Turns, with the requirement of everyone coming up with Goals, and then of coming up with Trait offers. I wouldn't mind a bit of streamlining. The problem with "you open a Sphere" is that it wrecks what it means to be a Chieftain. And the Goals actually haven't been as difficult for us as the Trait offers. I swear, it's like I designed the perfect game for breaking Danielle's brain. She's awesome at delivering antagonism in games like PtA and MLwM, but ask her to offer a Trait to my character that heroizes him, that takes him in a direction she'd like to see, and she struggles.

Has it seemed workshoppy for you at the beginnings of Turns? Have you struggled creatively with the Goals, or the Trait offers? If a player only opened a Sphere, would making them a Trait offer be easier, or harder?

Paul

To be clear, I'm also suggesting that, when defining goals, Briton characters would not write separate goals for consuming and understanding.  They would write combo goals for the combo sphere.  By my logic, if Britons can't tell the difference between consuming and understanding, then why shouldn't they blur the edges between the two areas when defining goals?

I agree with Tim regarding the Briton material.

Paul, you wrote,

Has it seemed workshoppy for you at the beginnings of Turns? Have you struggled creatively with the Goals, or the Trait offers?

If a player only opened a Sphere, would making them a Trait offer be easier, or harder?

Paul:

Ron hit it on the mark.  I didn't sense a workshoppy feel at all.  At most, there was a bit of negotiation about traits.  But that's because both Ron and I wanted to accept traits more than reject them.

Defining goals was easy as pie.  In fact, defining new goals each round it what drove character development for me.  I love it.  If I was forced to offer a suggestion here, it might be to allow players to revise an existing goal as an alternative to creating a new goal.  But given the definition of closure (and that you're allowed to close more than one goal per round), I don't even think that's necessary.

I will admit that I sympathize with Danielle a bit.  A couple of times, I tried to offer negative traits to Ron.  He kept having to remind me that trait suggestions had to make the character look good.  I kept wanting to antagonize.  That said, by the end of the session, I was beginning to get the hang of things just fine.  I had to do a mental switch, but it wasn't too tough.

To be clear, the way I responded to negative Trait offers was to say, "You can hit me with that in the Price, and there's nothing I can do about it. Give me something good first." So it's not like the other person doesn't get to hit me with adversity at all.

Best, Ron

Yes, that's exactly right. You hook the other player with the Trait, and then if you wish, you deliver antagonism via the Price.

Here's a question. Have you had any Prices that you wouldn't consider to be antagonism?

Paul

They were all adverse, every time. Tim threw me a real nasty one with the ostracism by the town, because it pretty much forced Aebitus Bestia into pro-Celt mode. Even my "storms ravage the coast" was harsh because it meant that as Arthur tried to throw Romans out of town, they literally could not leave without intensive effort and risk and therefore had perfectly sensible reasons to consider him out of line.

As an unrelated point, I was thinking over our story and found that it made sense to me to have taken place so far over a fairly long period of time, as in years. That makes more sense in a lot of ways - for instance, if Arthur as a chieftain is now 39 instead of still 29. It also allows more room for Aebitus Bestia's rather radical reversal toward Nerthach, for the marriage to be comfortably established rather than still-fresh, and for any excitement over Arthur's killing of Corvus to have died down over time. I like the idea of Arthur's family fortune basically hanging over him like a shadow for that long too.

The rules don't stop us from doing that, and I'm not calling for any slavish mechanistic effect (every turn is a summer, blah blah), but perhaps acknowledging the possibibility can call the enjoyable features of this option to readers' attention.

Best, Ron

Yes, I like the possibility of the narrative playing out over many years. We haven't had that happen in our playtest, but George's closure of two Goals last night was effected via a montage.

Paul

We finished the game! To my surprise, it took four more full turns, which is something I'll discuss more in a minute.

For the fifth turn, Arthur had the Destroying goal to bring Celtic leadership under the Briton justice system. Tim accepted the Trait "tired of fighting" with its Price of a split between druids and secular Celts. This goal remained unclosed.

Aebitus Bestia had the Consuming goal to amass wealth, and as he was now a chieftain, in doing so to bring prosperity to the town (the sting in this was that I said he'd do this by establishing trade with Saxons). I accepted the Trait "viewed as a judge" and the Price that our Romans were hoarding and thus disinclined toward business ventures. I rolled a setback + closure, without Tokens.

I should mention here that Tim and I took care to have all rolls be genuine Fortune in the Middle. That meant that stating a goal, naming Traits, accepting Traits, and naming prices always became stated imagery and action. Something was being said or done by the character along the way, such that the final narration was a mini-ending rather than the beginning of in-fiction play. Both of us absolutely loathe story-boarding play and wanted to enjoy "being with the characters" as much as possible.

For the sixth turn, Arthur had the Consuming goal to subsume neighboring towns' and villages' resources, mainly by teaming up with Saxons. Tim accepted the Trait "tired of being poor" and its Price of Arthur harboring thoughts of suicide, which jarred him a little. This goal underwent progress and closure!

And again, I now had the chance to end the game. Aebitus Bestia had the Destroying goal to burn the druids' Sacred Grove. (Remember, Destroying was his only Sphere without a closed goal; that's why I kept coming back to it when I could.) I accepted the trait "atheist" with its Price of his wife's opposition. I rolled a failure to close the goal, but accepted the Magic token anyway because it fit nicely into the narration.

For the seventh turn, Arthur had the Creating goal to construct a Celtic monument to "remember" their culture, implying an upcoming catastrophe for them. It was a little bit incoherent. I think Tim was getting a little tired and frustrated, and his goal creation was becoming simultaneously flailing and directed toward some story-before. I don't blame him. My failing to end the game on the previous turn was a downturn for both of us. The game had become a grind. Anyway, Tim accepted the Trait "I will be remembered" and its Price of being grievously wounded. (I considered naming the Price "you die" but decided to stay away from that for now.) This goal also underwent progress and closure!

I was a little bit at sea having failed both attempts at Destroying, was fatigued at the thought of busting through two more full turns, and couldn't think of much to do with the character in the other Spheres. I finally decided Aebitus Bestia pursed the Understanding goal of conducting, for lack of a better word, nature tours for Britons and Romans around the Celtic woods and homes. My relatively weak justification was that he started out by assessing possible targets for the eventual purpose of burning the grove, but as time went by, this aim for him and others sort of petered out as people got more into the improved contact. I rejected the offer of the Trait "distrusts Celts" and therefore gained no Price either. This goal underwent Progress + Closure with a single 1, so without Tokens.

For the eighth turn, Arthur's goal was Destroying, specifically to hire Saxons to massacre the druids. Tim rejected my offered trait (I can't remember what it was), and the goal remained unclosed. Again.

Aebitus Bestia had the Destroying goal to neuter druidic political power. I accepted the trait "they want to believe me" with the price of losing someone close. This goal made progress with Song, and closure without a Token. I resolved all three open Destroying goals. First, the druids remained as a cultural feature but became hip and quaint - people got married in the sacred groves and grooved on the secret chants and stuff, but it wasn't really religion any more. The Song came in because I said the sacred songs became popular ballads. The sacred grove was therefore not burned, and in a little fit of vindictiveness, I said that Nerthach was not executed, but grew old watching his religion dwindle even as it was adopted by everyone, with no political power.

Epilogues

Throughout Europe (and with attendant consequences for areas east as well), religion remains personal and does not become an institutionalized, political power. So, uh, that's really a big deal. In Britain (-on?), police/security forces do not develop to their historical extent. We mused that although oppression of that sort doesn't arise, dissent typically escalates to civil strife instead.

Looking over our experience thematically, it is no surprise that politicized religion and security issues were front and center for us. After all, Tim and I mix it up about these issues in real-people political talk all the time.

Rules issues

1. Britons don't close goals. We played eight turns. Tim closed two goals out of eight, and his character was absolutely defined by frustration and impotence that turned to violence. If Britons are supposed to be a constructive blend of Roman and Celtic values, Tim's Arthur was a grim and borderline-evil counter-example. And believe me, I used every Token possible to help him out.

The frustrating thing is that I think play would be wonderfully fun if closing vs. not-closing were both enjoyable outcomes, with one or the other preferred on strictly aesthetic grounds in individual cases. But with one character having such a fucking hard time closing, it (a) put the story-ending totally on me, which led to the sense of a dull grind waiting for the dice to let us end the game; and (b) made closing more valuable and desirable, completely independently of the SIS.

2. The Tokens are not having much effect, because their impact, to remove a 1, was absolutely the opposite of what we wanted to do, having so many rolls with a single 1 (and significantly, so many without any). A lot of the time, we want to use them for the content but do not want to affect the dice. Our game was distressingly lacking in all that Color, or rather, the fun of accepting imposed Color from player to player, due to this issue.

3. Crossing off Traits does not happen enough. I think I understand the concept and I really like the idea of a character's "Trait profile" evolving through play, but the signal to mark a Trait (you don't roll a Continuance and someone else does) is not very interesting and not very common. I suggest that the signal be something that happens more often, and also not to be an if-this-and-this sort of signal, either. One thing: when you roll a 6, when you don't roll a Continuance, when you do roll a Continuance, when you give a Token ... none of these are serious suggestions, but rather illustrating that it can be anything and it should be one thing rather than two.

I think #2 is the most important. If you work with that in some way, then #1 ceases to be an issue. #3 is relatively minor and can be dealt with in isolation.

Best, Ron

Hey Ron,

Ron wrote:
I should mention here that Tim and I took care to have all rolls be genuine Fortune in the Middle. That meant that stating a goal, naming Traits, accepting Traits, and naming prices always became stated imagery and action. Something was being said or done by the character along the way, such that the final narration was a mini-ending rather than the beginning of in-fiction play. Both of us absolutely loathe story-boarding play and wanted to enjoy "being with the characters" as much as possible.

Paul,

Perhaps I can provide an example, although I'm not sure what stage of the game your group is having trouble with.

One of Arthur's goals in the last session was to stamp out bordering tribes by absorbing all of their trade partners.  When I announced my goal, I gave a few reasons as to why Arthur had become so obsessed with domination.  Long story short, it was all linked to his previous inability to reclaim his lost family fortune.  This wasn't a long narration on my part; just a bit of background so that Ron would know what I was thinking.

Ron then suggested the trait, "tired of being poor" and "thoughts of suicide" as the price.  While making these suggestions, Ron offered up a bit of his thoughts as to why the trait/price combination made sense.  Essentially, he was communicating his ideas about where my character was heading.  There wasn't any extensive discussion of the issue; just a suggestion.  As Ron said, I was a bit thrown by his price, but I decided that I liked the twist.

You'll notice that at this point, I hadn't narrated much of anything regarding the fiction of how Arthur did or did not stamp out the bordering tribe.  We waited until after the dice hit the table.  On the other hand, we both had a pretty solid grounding as to what Arthur was up to.

My first roll was a continuance, and I narrated how Arthur befriended the Saxon invaders and made his way up the coast -- essentially with a band of thugs for some intimidation.  I stopped my narration just as we were entering the town to the north.  It wasn't clear how the villagers would react.  They were afraid of us, sure, but I had no idea if they would react with violence or some other form of rejection.

My second roll was a closure (hurray!).  My narration was all about how the villagers basically gave in.  Arthur and his gang bullied the village into submission.  We took what we wanted, and made it clear that all trade ships should be sent down south.  The penalty for disobeying would be a Saxon smack-down.

Finally, on the voyage back, I narrated a bit about Arthur's regrets.  With him staring out into the ocean, he mused about how far he'd fallen.  And of course he contemplated throwing himself overboard in an effort to repent for his sins.

Throughout these narrations, Ron may have offered up a few clarifying suggestions, but it was largely up to me.  There wasn't much back and forth.  Minor revisions aside, it was understood that what I was narrating was the story's fiction as it was happening.

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Paul, I hope this helps.  I'll be honest, I'm not exactly sure what sort of trouble you're group is experiencing.  Perhaps you could give me a counter-example?

Hi,

My take is that there are several points at which narration, or the description of the fiction, can be applied.

1. Just before the statement of the goal

2. Just after the acceptance/rejection of offered traits

3. After the various rolls (this is where the text says "narrate")

4. At the very end of the turn, i.e., after others' narrations

I want to stress that I'm not talking about formal SIS back-and-forth among players within any of these. There's no need for GMing one another, or for me to say, "OK, you play the Celt chief ..."

What I'm talking about is simply the potential existence of 1, 2, and 4. In my scene with amassing wealth, I did #2, describing before the roll how Aebitus Bestia had a number of notables over for meetings and snacks, one by one, as my wife (whom they all used to cut dead) served them trays as a respected hostess.

I could have done this after the roll, sure, but it helped me a lot to do this first. I like my fiction re-visited or re-entered if you will, at a fairly constant during play, and as I mentioned earlier, to a certain extent before the roll as well as after.

I'm not suggesting that any of this be mandated except for #3, which it already is. What I'm suggesting is that a given group may consider being open to the additional narrational opportunities for people to use as they like. I know that at the very beginning of play, I had an image in mind of Aebitus Bestia looking at his father's sword and stepping out of his house in the morning looking very un-soldierly (kind of weedy, friendly-seeming). I wish I'd stated it at that point (#1) because it informed my thinking throughout that crucial first turn.

Basically, when you imagine something that you like, and as long as you don't introduce a goal, adversity, or decisive actions about them when you shouldn't, then say it. That's where I'm coming from.

Best, Ron