Ron and I gave one of his three (four?) ongoing projects a playtest last night.  As our regular Tuesday night group has dwindled to just the two of us, it should come as no surprise that two-player games have become especially appealing.

"S/lay with Me" is a game about old-school fantasy.  When I say "old-school," I do not mean hack and slash dungeon crawling.  Not even close.  No, I mean full-on blood, sex, and temptation.  I mean everything that was evocative about fantasy art, stories, and games before they were sterilized.

Or at least that's what Ron tells me fantasy used to be like.  As I'm not even 30 yet, I had no idea what the fuck he was talking about.  What I do know is that S/lay with Me makes fantasy sexy -- and that's something that I didn't even know I was looking for.

The game is designed expressly for short-term play between two players.  Essentially, you tell a series of short stories that can also be linked together.

We only had an hour or so when we decided to play, so we only got through one story.  I was playing the protagonist, Typin (a sort of death mage).  Ron was playing the other two main characters, the "monster" and the "lover."

The entire premise of S/lay with Me is that the protagonist is searching for something.  On his quest, he encounters both a monster and a lover.  Generally, the monster exists to prevent the protagonist from obtaining his goal.  The lover will help the protagonist, but really just wants him to stay with her forever.  In an interesting twist, the monster and the lover can be the same person.

As protagonist, I started by selecting a few descriptions from some pre-generated lists in the game text.  These lists, to me, are key to setting the tone of both the character and the story.  For Typin, I chose, "I am lamed and sick, but my iron will commands even the dead."  I then added an additional ten words of description, establishing that Typin's face is pocked and horrifying.

I next chose a setting, again off a list.  My choice: "The cemetery that is also a city."  Finally, I had to create a goal.  I wrote, "Seeking the Orb of Marstat," which we established as giving power and beauty to its holder.

That was it for my prep.  It was very basic, but the lists worked well.  They were just intriguing enough to set me off creatively without boxing me in.

Ron had some secret prep as well that involved defining the lover and the monster, and assigning a numerical value to both.

From there, we started the story.  Ron narrated a bit about the cemetery city.  He decided that the city-dwellers had elevated the dead to equal status with the living.  Throughout the city -- in parks, alleyways, front lawns, and every other nook -- there were gravestones.  The opening scene was in a large expanse of cemetery.

Typin came riding into the story on a dark steed with eyes of fire.  As the two passed by the various obelisks, headstones, and mausoleums, they heard a great moaning.  Typin's horse became progressively weaker until it lay down to die.

At that moment, the doors of a mausoleum swung open and a beautiful woman emerged.  She was covered in funeral rags, aged and tattered.  Obviously displeased with her appearance, the woman tore off her rags and stood in the moonlight, naked from the waist up.  She looked at Typin's dead horse, smiled, and then turned to Typin directly.

Typin was taken aback by the woman’s beauty, but he was able to contain himself because he was so disgusted with his own appearance.  He did manage to ask the woman for help in finding the Orb.  She told him the story of the city and then pointed the way to a large tower.

Typin wasted no time and made off for the tower.  The woman followed.  From the tower a beautiful lion with the face of a man emerged.  It was literally beaming with light.  The lion, with all the arrogance it could muster, informed Typin that it would not allow him to have the Orb.

Typin pulled back the sleeve of his robe, revealing a decaying stump of flesh he called his arm, and thrust it into the ground.  He pulled up a corpse, cursed the lion, and breathed life into the body.  Typin ordered his new zombie to attack the lion and then retreated with the woman to her mausoleum.

The pair ran into the mausoleum, and Typin shut the doors behind them.  Turning to his lover, and now completely disguised by the pitch black, Typin found the confidence to take her right there on the cold floor.

Their moment of ecstasy didn't last long as the voice of the lion began to echo throughout the chamber.  The mausoleum started to crumble, and so Typin emerged to face down the lion.

He began a death chant to raise the corpses around him.  It all culminated when Typin took his staff and thrust it into the lion's shoulder so deep that the staff protruded from the other side.  Typin was now covered in the lion's blood.  He bolted for the tower, and also realized that his skin had healed wherever the lion's blood had touched him.

Typin rushed into the tower and barricaded the door.  He turned to face the Orb of Marstat, which was resting on a pedestal.  Wasting no time, Typin grabbed the Orb.  But he wasn't quick enough.  As soon as he held the Orb in his hands, the lion appeared.  It was unscathed, fully healed, and powerful.  The lion kicked Typin to the ground and held him there under its paw.  The Orb fell from Typin's grasp.

Typin strained to reach the Orb, but could not.  Knowing that the lion had overpowered him, Typin simply gave up.  Once the beast knew that it had won, it raised its paw and allowed Typin to leave.

Typin was utterly broken.  He wandered back to the mausoleum, where he had left his lover.  The (un)dead that Typin had raised were surrounding her.  She called out for Typin, but he was truly defeated:  "I'm no better than the dead who surround you now.  Goodbye."

---

I must say that I hated that lion.  And I think it came from the contrast between the lion and Typin.  The lion was so large, powerful, beautiful, and confident.  Typin was wretched.  Everything that the lion did or said just came off as supreme arrogance, which made Typin's defeat, while expected, all the more painful.  Typin wasn’t really a hero, but I still wanted him to accomplish something.  In the end, I think he defeated himself.

---

I should also talk about the game mechanics, which worked well.  They allow for great freedom of narration, but they are also very specific.

The action is handled as a series of "Goes."  A "Go" is just a snippet of narration by one player.  Goes are sort of like turns.  Ron and I traded narration back and forth, each time carrying the story forward.  Ron would Go, then I would Go, then Ron would Go, and so on.  The key was to make sure that we each kept the action moving forward.  Stalling is not allowed.

During my Go, if I narrated Typin as working towards his goal and/or the lover, I would get a die to roll.  I kept these dice in a stack in front of me.  Likewise, anytime Ron narrated the monster trying to kill me, he would get a die to add to his stack.

These dice are what build tension during the game.  By endgame, it's whoever has the highest total that achieves his goal.  For example, Ron had a higher total in our game, and so Typin did not achieve his goal of obtaining the Orb of Marstat.

However, as the protagonist, I also have a chance to "buy" certain positive results using my dice.  After comparing totals, you compare high dice.  For every one of my dice that was higher than Ron's lowest die, I was able to purchase a better end result for Typin.  Again, there's a list to choose from in the game text.

Since I had two dice that were better than Ron's lowest die, I was able to purchase a single decent outcome for Typin.  I chose to allow Typin to live.  If I hadn't done this, then Typin would have died.

This was not an easy choice, though.  Because I did not buy the other things on the list, Typin failed to achieve each one.  It's zero sum.  For example, because I didn't buy "kill the monster," Typin specifically failed to kill the monster.

This dynamic made my final choice difficult.  Everything on the list is good -- very good.  Because I knew that I would fail to achieve something if I didn't buy it, and because I had limited resources (dice) to use, I ended up sweating my decision quite a bit.  But in the end, I decided to go for the selfish option.

Given my penchant for zero sum decision making (e.g., Hero's Banner), this endgame mechanic is right up my alley.  I really dug it.

Finally, I had to decide how Typin would treat the lover.  Obviously, Typin chose to leave the lover to a grim fate.  But that was a choice that the rules forced me to make.  I could not simply leave the question open for another time.

And that, I think, is the key to S/lay with Me.  It doesn't let you off the hook.  It breeds dark but rewarding choices.  I could easily see how a series of great dice rolls would give my character a gleaming moment of triumph.  But that doesn't mean that the choices along the way would be easy.  It just means that I would have had more to work with during endgame.

--

Question for Ron:  Did we handle dialogue properly?  It seems like dialogue falls outside of the standard "Go" because it hands narrative power back to the other player when it's not really his turn.  Is that intended?  Does it matter?  Does the primary player have veto power over dialogue?

Hello,

Mostly clarifications.

... Generally, the monster exists to prevent the protagonist from obtaining his goal.  The lover will help the protagonist, but really just wants him to stay with her forever.  In an interesting twist, the monster and the lover can be the same person.

Ron had some secret prep as well that involved defining the lover and the monster, and assigning a numerical value to both.

I must say that I hated that lion.  And I think it came from the contrast between the lion and Typin.  The lion was so large, powerful, beautiful, and confident.  Typin was wretched.  Everything that the lion did or said just came off as supreme arrogance, which made Typin's defeat, while expected, all the more painful.  Typin wasn’t really a hero, but I still wanted him to accomplish something.  In the end, I think he defeated himself.

These dice are what build tension during the game.  By endgame, it's whoever has the highest total that achieves his goal.  For example, Ron had a higher total in our game, and so Typin did not achieve his goal of obtaining the Orb of Marstat.

Since I had two dice that were better than Ron's lowest die, I was able to purchase a single decent outcome for Typin.  I chose to allow Typin to live.  If I hadn't done this, then Typin would have died.

Finally, I had to decide how Typin would treat the lover.  Obviously, Typin chose to leave the lover to a grim fate.  But that was a choice that the rules forced me to make.  I could not simply leave the question open for another time.

Question for Ron:  Did we handle dialogue properly?  It seems like dialogue falls outside of the standard "Go" because it hands narrative power back to the other player when it's not really his turn.  Is that intended?  Does it matter?  Does the primary player have veto power over dialogue?

Sheesh, that's a lot of clarifications.  You know, it's tough to balance rules summary with actual play descriptions.

A quick couple of comments:

When I said, "obviously," I only meant that, in the context of my post, I had already described Typin's choice.  During the game, the choice was anything but obvious.  It was one of those decisions that I had to sweat because I knew that it was a serious one.  I had contemplated rescuing Ramizah, but that just seemed too good for Typin.

One of the features of the game that differs from just about every other game of this sort is that there isn't any formal scene-framing. Goes are composed only of what happens next, and any speaker is free to shift location, time, and personnel as needed. So scenes get framed and ended, but player turns and speaking-privileges are not structured by them.

exactly how loose is left up to the pair of people playing. Quite loose means you'd play the monster and lover and anyone else pretty extensively on your Go, and I'd do the same for Typin on mine.

If you take the fairly strict my-turn-your-turn sequence of Mars Colony at one end of a spectrum, and the unstructured "start with the Reader's action and then just talk about it" method for scenes in Sweet Agatha at the other, then our S/Lay w/Me lay a little past the center on the Mars Colony side ... but only just past.

Regarding new scenes, we haven't yet, but we will. One of my goals for the game is that after people get good at it, they can 'graduate' from the one-location encounter-type stories and relax it out into more of a saga. In a previous playtest, the other player and I had two distinct locations which had distinct feels and roles in the story.

As an example, upon grasping the orb, you might have transported Typin to (or resurrected around him) this part of the city before Marstat's mis-use of the orb. Or perhaps have him travel across the city. Or perhaps have him lie with Ramizah for twenty years in the darkness of her mausoleum.

Another aspect of this which I hope to develop through play is bringing in lots more characters and playing them quite solidly. Given some scene-changing (as you can see, consequential ones), and given more of a cast with a range of interests and active goals, it should work pretty well.

Also, if I (the monster player) do not add monster actions, then I don't get a die, and the clock is temporarily stopped. I've seen that happen a few times already, when that player becomes more interested in the lover and other aspects of the situation, and likes the idea of giving the monster a rest for a while. The range for these dice is four to six. I think six dice plus these techniques could easily generate a novella.

I can certainly see that "It's snowing. A werewolf chases a buxom girl down the road. OK, I get a die, your Go." type scenarios will be most common at first, but there's more there if people want it.

Best, Ron

Regarding the list at the end, I should stress that play continues in Goes after the dice mechanic is concluded and the list items are chosen. You don't write an epilogue with the last phase of play; you keep playing with those components as known features to include.

That's where I'm coming from too, Gregor. In fact, in this game, there's no epilogue at all. It's merely playing through the climax with a few established components coming into the mix along the way. It's not that different from finishing a fight in standard play and continuing to play. Especially since, post-climax, the units of narration which involve dice are no longer operative, so the Goes are opened up quite a bit.

Early play (pre-Match, i.e. pre-dice): highly constrained as to what must be established.

Middle play (the Match): considerably less constrained, but when certain elements are brought in, dice are gained and Goes pass to the other player.

Late play (post-Match, dice are over): quite wide open, subject only to established constraints based on the Match outcome.

But all of this is composed of Goes and the general rules for them, which means absolute engagement with the fiction, making it move along (and allowing for "rests" and Color too, I might add). None of it involves negotiating, and as I said above, you can play one another's characters in your Go.

Best, Ron

Wow, from the sound of it -- I wish this game had been around five years ago.

I'd like to ask a couple of questions: a.) how long, real time, did the described play session take? And b.) Ron, was that Color-First Character Design thing from a while back driving at this?

Rod wrote:
how long, real time, did the described play session take?

Hi Rod!! Please get in touch. I'm re-using your Trollbabe art.

You're going to love this game and the artwork. One thing we haven't talked about in the thread is that people trade roles. The one session with Tim playing Typin and me GMing was a unit of play. Typically, we move on to another unit where I introduce a hero and Tim GMs. The processes for making the adventure are always the same. Once you make a hero, you keep playing him or her until the character's story ends (a couple of ways). But play itself alternates; you play an adventure for your hero, then you GM the other person's hero, then you trade back, and so on.

So how long you play in a given get-together is a function of how many units (adventures) you want to play. I would like to do two or three at a session, personally. It'd be like reading a whole issue of Weird Tales, or a modest REH story collection.

Also, a given unit varies, because the number of Goes which actually include dice are set (for one person anyway), but the number of Goes played can exceed that by quite a bit, theoretically. Still, even the most measured play of S/Lay w/Me is going to be damned fast-paced in real time compared to most ordinary play. I think Tim's estimate is just right, but also that two people who really know the game, and if they are effectively playing a short-story, few-characters scenario (no need to decide on this beforehand, by the way), will probably bust it out in 30-40 minutes without it feeling rushed.

I have not yet playtested the round-robin version which is intended for one more or a couple of more people being involved. Person A would be GMed by person B (to the left), person B would be GMed by person C, and person C would be GMed by person A, for three. Whether this is boring for the "off person" or persons, I am pretty sure not, but again, I haven't tried it yet.

Best, Ron

P.S. Tim really is bonkers about Mars. Lookit what he named the orb.

Sorry for being intrusive here but from what I'm reading both from this message and Paul's one, I would be passionate about actually playing this game. It feels a bit odd to be reading playtesting examples and not being able to play the same game myself, almost feels like I'm reading a teaser. The twist that gave me so much motivation to play it comes from Paul's message:

Paul wrote: I can totally see how it's your idealized play experience from your gaming adolescence, Ron. :)

Thanks to you, Patrice. This kind of dialogue is part of why the Forge is here.

I design from desire. It's the way I do it, somehow. The weird thing is that new desires show up, and often I don't think about their roots, even though years later I say it was so obvious why I had to do that game. And by why, I mean motivationally, reaching back into my early personal history as well as that particular moment.

You mentioned one thing that doesn't "chime" for me, though. For me, the desire is never about impersonation. I play characters I admire, or occasionally loathe - they rivet me. The occasional exceptions I count as simple failures to participate from the ground up. But being them isn't a thing, except insofar as an actor or author will sometimes talk about the character speaking to them or being that character for a time. It's a sensation, not a goal.

For me, where you wrote impersonation, I would write dialogue. I mean, I could read all the fantastic phantasmagoric fiction out there, and as far as lives are concerned, I've managed to put a pretty good dent in the available material (very broadly defined, too; certain world-spanning religious texts definitely count). And I could conceivably write, or try to write, offerings of my own which are exactly what it all "means" to me. I did some of that a while ago.

But I like doing it with others. I want to see what they do with what I do, and I like the medium we (badly) call "role-playing" because of the back-and-forth interaction that the Shared Imagined Space requires. It often turns out not only better than I think I could do myself alone, but most importantly, better and more original than anything I've ever seen except from the very very greats (Fritz Leiber, Frank Frazetta, Ross MacDonald).

As far as I can tell, most shared-author creative methods really blow chunks. Even hierarchical methods such as theater and film have a very low "get it right" rate. Yet here we have something which is reliably good once certain crusty nonsense that accumulated between 1980 and 2000 gets scrubbed away. It's composed of dialogue, and the fiction in question changes and becomes something as you actually do it.

Well, enough ranting and raving. Your post spoke to me except for that one word and I thought it'd be interesting to pursue that. I think the distinction lies at the heart of S/Lay w/Me's functionality, too.

Best, Ron

Ron wrote:
But being them isn't a thing, except insofar as an actor or author will sometimes talk about the character speaking to them or being that character for a time. It's a sensation, not a goal.

Ron wrote: It often turns out not only better than I think I could do myself alone, but most importantly, better and more original than anything I've ever seen except from the very very greats (Fritz Leiber, Frank Frazetta, Ross MacDonald).

We're agreeing quite profoundly. You're also helping me think about how to articulate the issue to others.

Best, Ron

On a side note, getting back to S/lay with Me when I was asking myself the question "what would my idealized play experience be?" this afternoon, taking a few notes in the process, I eventually ended up with a 2-players game. Funny. I wouldn't dare try to guess nor explain why at the moment, though.

Tim and I continued our game. He'll play Typin again in the next round; this time I did my first adventure, choosing the "escaped apprentice, defiant and scorned, armed with the weapon I invented." My visual description: harsh-looking boy, stolen guild over-tunic, left hand concealed. I chose the Crystal Court, whose queen remains unknown, with the Goal to be appointed to a high court post "worthy of me" there.

I was experimenting with possible Goal ranges here; the rules were written with the default idea that a given adventurer is going somewhere in order to get something and then to leave, and I wanted to see if a Goal which included staying was logically functional with the rest of the rules. I didn't give my character a name, which I regret and will do when his turn comes around again.

Tim went to town with the setting, making the Crystal Court cloistered, subterranean, exotic, and mannered to the point of clockwork. My adventurer entered by stowing away in one of the rare caravans from the surface and he was not shy about making an impact as quickly as possible. Tim introduced the Lover with a neat application of the "unknown queen" idea - there were six identical beautiful women acting in concert, in fact in unison, as queen.  Sometimes they even merged into a single body, and sometimes it was clear that different personalities were dominant at different times, and could even hop bodies when separate! The queen's name was Naseen, but at least one of the various personae of the six women was the Monster, and quite likely a demon external to whatever weirdness underlay the sextuplets in the first place. "Unknown queen" indeed!

My adventurer was very up-front, ignoring the rituals of the Court and instantly befriending the queen, and as it happened, transforming his simple if arrogant ambition to become the Crystal Court's military minister into a desperate desire to win the real Naseen's heart. This was probably the first time in play that I found my character absolutely smitten by a Lover fairly early in the story.

As the various events unfolded, one powerful element which emerged was the weapon in my character's starting phrase. I found myself unable to define it before play, which is why I specified the concealed left hand, and when the demon-Naseen stabbed my adventurer, I went ahead and strongly implied that he was indeed mortally-wounded ... but that the device, which apparently he's holding against his chest under the guild tunic, hums, and he arose with immense power, dissolving a portion of the crystal halls and passages.

Basically, what I established and then worked with, was that the device traded around life and death. When ten guards charged him with pikes, five of them were struck dead and the other five stopped short, suddenly feeling weird and extra healthy, because I'd just granted them extra lifespans equal to the life I'd ripped from the others. We had a lot of fun with this because the issue for the Monster was how to kill it without having to kill Naseen along with it. I should specify that which dies (or both or neither) is chosen rather than mechanically specifically determined, but for some reason, that makes the logistics of the SIS up until the end of the Match all the more subject to the need for plausibility. People don't just wait for the end of the Match and then pick what they want; they go to great pains during the Match to make the powerful choices later more plausible (and I don't mean the preferred option within a choice, I mean the choice itself).

I got lots of dice because it was easy to fold the Lover and the Goal and fighting the Monster into the same Goes, and I also enjoyed great rolls. My Good Dice and total got the Goal, saved the people, suffered no lasting harm, killed the Monster ... but Naseen had to die. Or rather, that's how I chose from the possible available combinations. It sort of came down to (i) whether I wanted the Crystal Court people to be killed vs. her being killed, as well as (ii) whether I wanted the Monster to be killed. The subtleties of our SIS played a role too, as I did get the Goal (high office/post) ... but if the Court were destroyed, or if the queen died, or if the Monster lived, then it would be a matter of "getting what I want but not being very happy." And it had to be one of those after all. So in terms of the choices about the Lover, he abandoned her to a grim fate.

I really like this character and look forwarding to naming him and seeing what he'll do next.

Best, Ron

Ron does a nice job summarizing the story.  I was especially taken with the "crystal" part of the Crystal Court.  It served as the jumping off point for the entire setting, the lover, and the monster.

For example, I really enjoyed all of the "multi-faceted" imagery that we brought into the fiction.  For example, when the lover switched personalities, she leaned up against one of the quartz walls within the cavern.  Ron's character (did you give him a name?) saw the lover's reflection as a six-way refraction.  She then transformed into the demon version of herself and stabbed the main character.

Ron's addition about the ten guards suddenly "combining" (at least in terms of life-force) into five was another riff on the same imagery.  I think at this point, both Ron and I are finding our rhythm so that the game feels much more collaborative as opposed to simply additive.

As far as the dice went, I got hosed.  I think my first roll was a 1, which set up the possibility for a lot of "Good Dice" for Ron.  He then started hammering away, and ended up with 7 dice to my 4.  There were a couple of Goes where I didn't even roll any dice (it just didn't make sense in terms of the story).  I'm just glad that I set the monster value at 4.  But this brings up a question that I've been wondering about...

Ron, the text doesn't get into why you might set the lover die at 1 instead of 2, or the monster die at 4 instead of 5 or 6.

For those of you following along, the person playing the monster/lover, sets the monster value at 4, 5, or 6.  He then sets the lover value at 1 or 2.  The lover value is the maximum number of dice that the player may accumulate for bringing the lover into the story during Goes.  There is no limit on the number of dice the player may gain through working towards the Goal.  The monster value is the maximum number of dice that the person playing the monster may accumulate before the match ends.

In my situation, I was glad I set the monster at 4, because it allowed me to end the match sooner before you were able to gain any more Good Dice.  If I had set it at 6, the system would have basically handed you two additional Good Dice (assuming your rolled anything but a 1).  I realize that I shouldn't be thinking about this competitively, but then that raises the question of why you made these values adjustable in the first place.  What should I be thinking about when I set the lover and monster values at the beginning of the round?

I'm also mindful of the fact that the player can end the match early by toppling the other's stack of dice.  But if the monster/lover player gets into a tight spot, he has to suck it up and watch the hero walk all over the monster, etc.  Don't get me wrong, I like this aspect of the game.  But setting the monster value high can certainly exacerbate a bad run of luck in these situations.  Or at least it would have in our game.

Hi Tim,

There are several related design points involved to answer your questions, all of which I'm happy to say are being validated across all the various players and playtests so far.

1. The number of Lover dice varies because the Monster/Lover is setting the mechanical impact of the Lover. I even considered briefly allowing for no Lover dice being an option, but decided that he or she should always mechanically matter. Basically, if you are the Monster/Lover player, and for whatever imaginable reason, you want the Lover to be maximally mechanically relevant, then set it at 2, or if for whatever reason, you want the Lover to be minimally mechanically relevant, then set it at 1. It helps this player get a "feel" for how he or she wants to play the characters relative to one another. The difference is mathematically real. But actually, this whole point is merely a set-up for point #2, which concerns the other player.

2. For the adventurer player, what I'm after is an interesting tension between the SIS and the dice. Simplistically, the less-dice Lover should be less important to this player, right? But the fact that in most cases the Lover is still in the picture after his or her dice have been "used up," and the fact that the content of those Goes in which those dice were gained occurred early in the story (and that content isn't just grunting "hello," as you know; the adventurer had to promise or very strongly indicate one of those listed things) ... those two facts make the simplistic "dice = important" idea vanish in favor of a much more interesting commitment to the SIS itself as the Match draws to a close.

The one vs. two dice puts a little variety into the nature of this tension from adventure to adventure, so they aren't all mechanically the same.

Monster 4, Lover 1; Monster 5, Lover 1; Monster 6, Lover 1; Monster 4, Lover 2; Monster 5, Lover 2; Monster 6, Lover 2 -- each of these represents a unique fraction of Lover over Monster, and I wanted a wide range, as it happens six possibilties.

3. The number of Monster dice varies (and is fixed per adventure) at 4, 5, or 6, as you said. This is purely a matter of desired pacing on the part of that player, although it's not 100% mechanically fixed by design because neither player is required to get dice on a Go. The pacing I'm talking about has a lot to do with how many threat-based forward-moving events there are. In turn, this has a lot to do with the actual story structure. As play has shown, 4-dice adventurers are more short-story like and 6-dice adventures are either very eventful long-ish short stories, or could (with an eye toward scene transitions) even become novellas.

If that player picks a higher number of dice, and then makes a Monster which really has nothing to do but attack (rrrahhh!), then yes, the fourth, fifth, and sixth dice may seem a bit forced. But that's due to lack of imagination and commitment to a more structured story than merely "I met and fought this thing." Basically, if you pick a higher number, then be prepared for the Monster's mode of threatening the adventurer to undergo some changes of direction, and perhaps even of specific purpose.

4. Yes, it's mechanically possible for the adventurer player to "get a jump" early on by the Monster/Lover player rolling a 1 early on. What this means is that this adventure is one of those stories where we really get to see the adventurer shine as a bad-ass, even though grim choices do remain. I think such an adventure once in a while is a good thing.

5. On a related point, but not synonymous, adventures vary extremely widely in terms of how easy it is for the adventurer player to rack up dice. The relevant variables are (i) how much the Monster/Lover player wants to push the Monster, rather than, say, pure Lover-based soap opera; and (ii) how easy it is for the adventurer player to concentrate on the Goal as such relative to all the other stuff going on. It's purely and simply based on the SIS as it forms in any one case. In my character's adventure with you, these were remarkably synonymous - by combating the Monster I was also seeking my Goal and pursuing the relationship. Whereas in my other character's adventure with Maura, doing any one thing (Lover, Monster, Goal) was almost impossible to combine with another in a single Go - it's hard to carry out a grim, silence-filled, nuanced conversation with an ex-partner while fighting a hydra by yourself.

Best, Ron

Ron:

Your explanation of the Monster dice as a pacing mechanic helps a lot.  I think I was making the mistake of treating the value as a measure of the Monster's effectiveness.  Instead, if I understand you correctly, a low value means I want a quick story with a generally straightforward monster.  A high value means I want a longer story with a more multi-faceted monster.  This is an important distinction, and one that I don't think is apparent from the text.  Intuitively, a lot of people are going to think nothing more than high value = bad-ass, which isn't necessarily true.  Even one sentence of explanation could clear this up.

Now that I understand what the Monster dice are for, all of your additional explanation about pacing and story construction follow rather naturally.

The Lover dice I'm not as solid on.  I look at the choice between 1 and 2, and think, "really, what's the difference?"  It may be that I simply need to pay closer attention to the numbers over a series of stories.

On the other hand, your second numbered point makes a lot of sense to me.  During our games, we both interacted meaningfully with the Lover long after we had used up our Lover dice.  The desire to earn the Lover dice served as a nice catalyst for those future interactions.

Out of curiosity, why did you decide the make working towards the goal a source of infinite dice as opposed to the lover?

If I can speculate on an answer to my own question, here's what I think:

The monster and the lover are both attempting to draw the hero away from his goal, even if only subtly.  The goal exists for the hero alone, and so it makes sense that his major mechanical motivation is related to the goal.  Plus...

(1) The monster/lover player's source of dice is derived exclusively from playing the monster.  So the monster is always in the story.

(2) The hero gains dice (almost) exclusively by working towards the goal.  So the goal is always in the story.

(3) This leaves the lover.  The monster/lover player is forced to introduce the lover, but has no other mechanical encouragement to foist the lover on the hero.  But... the hero can pick up a couple of dice by interacting with the lover.  And that's enough to get the ball rolling (per your point #2).

Does that sum up your intentions?  If so, I find it interesting that the lover seems like the odd man out.  You must have a lot of faith that the players will create a strong relationship between the hero and the lover.

Hi Tim,

The Lover dice I'm not as solid on.  I look at the choice between 1 and 2, and think, "really, what's the difference?"  ...

Out of curiosity, why did you decide the make working towards the goal a source of infinite dice as opposed to the lover?

... I find it interesting that the lover seems like the odd man out.  You must have a lot of faith that the players will create a strong relationship between the hero and the lover.

Ron wrote:
It may not turn out that way in play - a one-die Lover and a two-dice Lover are probably not that different in terms of pure interest and usage - but it is important as prep. In other words, you have to think about the Lover a little when prepping him or her.

You kind of have it backwards. I set it up this way so that the adventurer character is absolutely free to reject the Lover, or in fact to be totally uninterested in him or her. The adventurer even gets Lover dice for saying "Begone!" and backhanding the Lover, after all, or leaving him or her to be whatever'ed by whatever. I'm speaking to an approach to playing one's adventurer which is absolutely visceral, and rooted in the opening spoken phrases. If that turns out to be "get my Goal, kick monster ass, who's this chick/dude and who cares anyway," then that's cool too.