I ran Poison’d twice at Kapcon in Wellington this weekend, and I’m hoping to use the experience to try and better understand the ideas of reward cycles and currency.

The first run was a spectacular success: a group of seven players completely in the zone, well-briefed by me, who exploded into action once Brimstone Jack’s body hit the deck of the Dagger. To follow the actions of just one character through the game:

  + Patrick Marlow, quartermaster, immediately pulls out his brace of pistols and shoots two of the pirates he is ambitious to be revenged upon. He then guts Young Zeb Harris and claims the captaincy while holding Zeb’s intestines above his head as a trophy.

  + Following a successful raid on the Hyperion, the rest of the crew revolt at Patrick’s disgusting behaviour and throw him overboard. Patrick endures duress rather than fighting back.

  + Sinking into the ocean, Patrick strikes a bargain with God – who is cynical and doubting about Patrick’s willingness to follow through – and vows to build an orphanage to God’s glory if he’s allowed to reach shore. Patrick is then rescued by the crew of the Resolute, and impersonates a priest (‘Father Benedict’) using deceit.

  + It so happens that the Resolute is transporting the Prince of England, and Patrick subdues an unsuspecting and helpless opponent in order to fulfil one of his more sordid ambitions.

  + Finally reaching shore, Patrick begins construction of his orphanage but is ambushed by two pirates from the Dagger, who are following the Devil’s orders. Patrick endures duress rather than fight back, and we last see him being carried off to be sacrificed.

The second run was a fairly complete disaster, partially due to low energy levels from myself and the players. The pirates never left the Dagger, and the whole thing culminated in a disgusting scene of sexual revenge and violence that repelled the whole table, prompted me to suggest we close the game there, and triggered a really interesting debrief about the game’s mechanics and the social experience.

(Is it worth noting that I’ve run Poison’d twice before this – both times were enormously successful – and had less players. In both of these games the pirates left the ship, had great scenes on shore and got back aboard the Dagger.)

Now I don’t really need to talk too much about why it was a disaster. I think the key things I took from the experience were:

1.
Graham Walmsley’s advice to ‘get the pirates on shore as soon as possible’ is absolutely true. Scenes on shore give us the opportunity to see another side to each pirate – they can give us something to admire about them or want them to achieve. For example, in that first run of Poison’d Young Zeb Harris survived his gutting and managed to promenade with the Governor’s daughter, Abigail Winslow around a ballroom.

2.
The initial situation foments a whole bunch of tensions between the pirates. Getting them ashore gives them opportunities to pursue their other Ambitions, and then getting them back aboard the confined quarters of the ship ratchets the tension up to a whole other level.

What this second run inspired me to do, though, was draw up a chart of my understanding of the various systems in the game and how they work together. This is what I came up with (it’s a work in progress):

A chart of Poison'd's system

(I created this in Google Docs, and apparently it can only be shared as a .png file to download. If that's problematic to view, let me know and I'll try and find some other way of hosting it.)

A couple of things that were immediately obvious to me once I’d drawn up that chart. First, my second run of Poison’d at Kapcon only used the right hand side of the chart. We never dealt with Ambitions that took place ashore, Leisure, or Scenes on land.

The second thing is how brilliant Poison’d design is. In order to have scenes on shore, the pirates have to earn Leisure. But the amount of scenes you can have on land is strictly limited by the amount of Leisure you have available to spend. This forces the pirates (who might otherwise never get back onto the ship together after reaching land for the first time) to re-board the Dagger and go hunting for ships to plunder.

Maybe it’s weird, but that dynamic was never obvious to me until I drew the chart (despite having run this game four times).

What I’m hoping is that we can use this as the starting point for a discussion about what Currency is, and what the Reward Cycles in Poison’d are. The Provisional Glossary defines Currency as:

The exchange rate within and among Character Components. Currency may or may not be explicit (e.g. "character points"), but it is a universal feature of System, specifically as it relates to Character.

(a) The personal and social gratification derived from role-playing, a feature of Creative Agenda. (b) In-game changes, usually to a player-character, a feature of System and Character. (c) As a subset to (b), improvement to one or more of the character?s Components. Typically, the term refers to how (a) is facilitated by (b).

Ooooh! A system chart, drawn by someone besides myself!

I thank you for making it possible that some day, I might try playing Poison'd again.

Let's talk about reward cycles! I'll start with the small but crucial detail, from your chart, that Ambitions only pump arrows outwards. This means that in order to play Poison'd at all, the characters must strive to fulfill their Ambitions, frequently, imaginatively, and with verve. Now, there's something subtle about this - if that's all there were to it, then characters would be boring automatons. Conditions of the moment should also provide nuances and moderators of Ambitions, such as coping with a warship or storm or whatever, obviously, but also agreements to delay (for instance) opposed Ambitions between two pirates at least as long as it takes to achieve some common goal.

OK, that's the start: Ambitions, opportunities to get them, and moderating influences upon such efforts. By definition, therefore, a major reward cycle of play per character must be striving toward one or more Ambitions under circumstances A, seeing how that turns out, and then having some new profile of Ambitions which are being striven toward. This "new profile" can be constructed of different Ambitions or not, and the important ones last time around could have failed or succeeded or been delayed. It's "new," though, because something has changed significantly along the way, even if it's just the circumstances.

Since no arrows feed directly back into the Ambitions in obligatory mechanics terms, people playign Poison'd should be aware that such transitions are an emergent property of play. Since you've played several successful games of Poison'd, my prediction is that if you were take any number of player-characters from those games, and list out their personal arcs like you did for Patrick Marlow, you could see those Ambition cycles in action just like I think I can see two for Patrick.

It might be useful to re-draw your chart by flipping the Bargains-Success loop over to the other side, then rotating the whole thing so Ambitions are at the top. That way, it's clear that there are two separate mini-cycles at work, one about land & leisure and one about fights, and that the X system provides mechanical underpinning and nuance to the Ambitions cycle - because how many X's one has plays a big role in re-casting the circumstances of one's Ambitions, and how hard to drive toward them the next time around.

Let me know if that makes sense!

Best, Ron

Hooray!

I'll chime in when I have something to add, but so far, not a thing. Hooray!

-Vincent

The first thing I did when studying your system diagram (or any system diagram for that matter) was to look for a place to start.  To reiterate what Ron said, "Ambitions" is the only place that doesn't have arrows funneling into it, and, therefore, seems like a natural starting point. That to me says that the game revolves around Ambitions.  If the players aren't invested in or striving towards any of their Ambitions, then the game won't work.

This is all based simply on your diagram, but I think your diagram makes it clear where everyone should be pushing.  Ambitions lead to Scenes on Land, Fights, or Bargains.  From there, the rest of the game follows.  What I find interesting is that it sounds like your player-characters had Ambitions, but that they were only striving towards those ambitions by way of two of the three methods provided: Fights and Bargains.  So how important is it to follow all lines leading out of Ambitions in order to have a successful game?  It's not just Ambitions that matter, but how you pursue them.  Would you agree?

Hey, what about suffering new violence and committing new sins? They're features of the system, but they don't appear on your chart. Is that intentional?

-Vincent

Definitely not intentional! After posting last night, I realised I'd forgotten those - and when I thought about it, I also realised that I wasn't sure how to take into account that achieving Ambitions reduces your Ambition score (which I suspect has some interesting consequences on Sucess Rolls ... ah, it makes it easier to go into danger, but harder to act with stealth and deceit).

I'm also pondering whether there are elements of the Cruel Fortunes that should be on there.

I'll mull over your comments for a while and take another crack at redrawing the chart along the lines Ron suggested, with those additions.

A tiny correction! Achieving an ambition gives you the option to increase your ambition, by adding a new one, or to leave it where it is. Abandoning an ambition reduces your ambition.

But I should say that all three - achieving/abandoning ambitions, committing new sins, and suffering new violence - are mere additions, they shouldn't substantially change your chart or your or Ron's analysis so far.

-Vincent

Ron, I think that all makes sense. Consider all of this post to be me testing out whether I get what you're saying.

Tim, you’re absolutely right that the PCs in the second session were only using Fights and Bargains to achieve their Ambitions. One of the players described the game as feeling a bit ‘one note’, and that was my diagnosis for why that was (*)

[right](*) Although I’ve had a little bit of email correspondence with
him subsequently, and he thinks there’s a bit more going on.[/right]

To draw out Ron’s point: in my previous successful games, I could see a few ‘Ambition cycles’ in action. For instance, Henri the vicious French psychopath fulfilled his ambition to become captain, and then another ambition to have sex with the Governor’s daughter. At the same time Geoffrey Fenton the genteel surgeon struck a bargain with an agent of the King, in order to fulfill his ambition of being pardoned.

Those two strands intersected when both Henri and Geoffrey returned to the Dagger. Geoffrey’s player was repelled by Henri’s actions with the Governor’s daughter (as was Henri’s player, to be fair). This repulsion coupled with Geoffrey’s need to be pardoned led to a really satisfying betrayal and climactic fight between the two characters as the Dagger came under fire from the Resolute’s cannons.

The point is that I think Tim’s right that a successful game needs to follow all three lines out. (And it occurs to me that there’s probably a fourth line that leads out from Ambitions directly to Success Rolls.)

Ron, I’ve revised the system chart along the lines you’ve suggested.

The revised Poison’d systems chart

Doing that has helped me clarify your points, which I’m going to restate here:

• To play Poison’d effectively, the characters need to be fully committed to achieving their Ambitions.

• A major reward cycle of play consists of characters striving to achieve Ambitions. Characters and the situation change as a result of those attempts, which leads to players revising the list of Ambitions they want their characters to pursue.

• You said, “people playing Poison’d should be aware that such transitions are an emergent property of play.” I’m taking ‘emergent to mean that: players are responding to what happens in the fiction; they are caring about their characters; and they are caring about or hating other characters. (Let me know if that’s accurate.)

As an aside, thinking about all of that helps me see that all the different sub-systems in the systems chart basically ‘float’ in a sea of fiction, the moment-to-moment descriptions of scenery and character decisions, and it's the process of creating, enjoying and paying attention to the fiction leads to Poison’d rules being triggered.

Now, I’ve been doing a bit of study about reward systems on Vincent's blog. I'm going to put this next bit into a second post, because I’m not sure if it’s useful to info-dump it all at this point (and I want us to be able to ignore it easily if it’s not)

I’ve been studying this post (and the ensuing comments) on Vincent’s blog about reward systems. I’m not sure whether it’s useful to bring into the conversation at this point, but I think it's helped me get an insight into part of what’s going on.

This is all taken straight from Vincent’s blog (his words, with contributions from some of the commentators):

The reward system is just the game system at its largest repeat. From the provisional glossary:

Reward System: (a) The personal and social gratification derived from role-playing, a feature of Creative Agenda. (b) In-game changes, usually to a player-character, a feature of System and Character.

In a well-designed game you keep doing this thing and it gives you what you're after. (b) facilitates (a). Thus, the largest cycle of the game is rewarding.

The "reward" system (the game system at its largest repeat), will contain subsystems that aren't rewarding by themselves. It’s the highest-level system gives the subsystems their value.

design your games to work functionally over (at least) three timeframes, with interaction and feedback between them. "What do you do right this second, what do you do tonight, and what do you do in the game?" Then if you feel like it, you can retrospectively examine the game, find the little cluster of procedures that creates the said interaction and feedback, and name it "the reward system."

We're talking here about changes to your character and stuff over time. What's linked to your fulfillment isn't the moment of changing your character, but the whole process of changing your character.

If you ask, "Why should in-game changes, like putting a +1 on my character sheet, be linked to my fulfillment?", the answer is: it shouldn't. +1, -1, nobody cares, doesn't signify. A "Reward system" isn't about the changes themselves, it's about changing over time.

Hi David,

I think you're on track with most of this, with at least one exception I hope to deal with later in this post.

Concepts

1. For maximum clarity: "reward" is a real-person, social, psychological, and creative thing; "reward mechanics" function insofar as they aid that thing to happen. I've been trying to keep the two distinguished in my posting, but I'm pretty sure not everyone notices that. Experience points and levels are reward mechanics, but they are only rewards in the context of playing that particular game in a particular way. (Playing a game for rewards which do not match its reward mechanics is possible, but it's also how people get all bent out of shape about "real role-playing.")

2. Reward cycles are nested.

For example, in late-70s AD&D as I have played it, a fight is a mechanics reward cycle insofar as it represents risk, specific efforts, and outcomes, and it can be seen nested centrally in a larger mechanics reward cycle called "stay alive," and that can be seen as a major mechanics cycle within the biggest, called "advancement." All of which are at the service of a reward cycle which unfortunately was rather piecemeal and fumbling at the time, but probably manifested most as appreciation for however many EPs we got at the moment and to some extent as competition about that. (All of this is more coherent and for me, much more fun when playing Elfs or Tunnels & Trolls, but the "this" is the same.)

In Poison'd, it is crucial to understand that Fights don't fulfill Ambitions!! This is exactly what borked our absolutely disastrous attempt to play Poison'd. Fights exist only as extreme forms of getting X's and carry the risk of Deadly Wounds (that's from memory; correct me if I'm missing something), and the decision of whether to fight or not is rather different from its use/appearance in AD&D. The lesson is, someone must understand what the mini-mechanics-reward cycles do and must tell everyone else. This is really what's meant by "learning the rules," I think. You can blather all day about how to roll to hit, but unless I get how it ties into having fun, it's disorienting.

3. Rewards are not necessarily good outcomes for one's character, in character-view terms. Reward is about change, not fulfillment, completion, or advantage. Using the above AD&D example, I may not level up this session, but I may have made progress toward it - or perhaps I didn't make as much progress as I might have, and/or have experienced setbacks such as hit point loss, life loss (which is why that game needs resurrection; life loss is no fun as the top cycle), or (god damn it!) level loss. Here's the point: All of that, including a certain productive form of frustration, is reward insofar as my real-person, social, psychological, and creative thing got scratched by playing this game with these people. (Incidentally, all of that excess verbiage is easily covered by the short-hand, "Creative Agenda," as manifested in a specific way with this game, this set of fictional circumstances, and these people.)

I hope my point is clear: although I may want my character to level up, what makes play fun is whether the mechanics reward cycles are contributing to the relevance of leveling up, and whether play is socially validating my efforts - so play can indeed be fun when my character is totally fucked over by events. Getting this right means high mortality-risk Gamist play is fun, and everyone raises a toast to one's fallen character at GenCon, year after year. Getting this wrong - in a variety of ways ranging all the way up from Ephemera through Techniques through Exploration to Social Contract - means fucked-up, aggravating, un-rewarding play.

Related point for Narrativism and genre enthusiasts: actually being a protagonist must suck. One's physical, emotional, and ideological circumstances are placed under the harshest possible pressure, in a way such that this is it, the one time it matters most. All of us talk and think in terms of identifying with protagonists, and I absolutely agree with this in terms of the topics of fictional conflicts, but perhaps overlook that this must include a definite, specific personal safety from actual experiences like his. I've made this point in conversation many times, but I realize now I've never really brought it forward on-line before. It's one of the reasons I spread my hands and give up talking when people get all enthusiastic about "living their stories." No one wants to live a fucking story.

So David, I was pretty sure that you were all on the right track and going great guns, and I was planning on contributing the above points as a means of chatting along with you, until you said ...

The thing which made me grit my teeth

If you are jostling and jockeying for an "advantageous" epilogue when playing My Life with Master, you are mis-playing the game. That's not because strategy is somehow bad in Narrativist play, it's because the highest-level reward cycle in that particular game is about the relationship with the Master, specifically, the subordination of one's own esteem and loves to the service of someone driven by self-involvement. The game's top cycle is all about the question, "How's that working out for you?"

The epilogues are not reward vs. punishment, they are all reward(s), meaning, identifiable consequences for how the Master was conceived, how your character was conceived, and what your character did and did not do, and how much or how fast, during the course of play. Looking across those consequences and the specific arcs across the characters answers the question, for this particular manifestation of dysfunctional relationships as we saw in our particular game.

I have played the game with people trying to strategize their way to specific epilogue outcomes. It. Fucking. Sucks. It always sucks to play with people whose perception of the reward, and how the mechanics reward cycles play into it, differs from one's own. And if it doesn't suck, it's because one has given up on play itself as a source of fun. And in this particular case, I will go so far as to say that no, you can't play My Life with Master "this way" (i.e. seeking an epilogue), because doing so invalidates thematic commitment to things like the Loved NPCs, as a mechanics example, and to the more abstract but crucial component of genuine personal hatred for real people like the Master. I think the actual-play posting backs me up on this.

Therefore my point about not identifying "reward" with in-fiction success for the character is absolutely crucial. In-fiction success or failure - as a unit - for the character is the reward: specifically, the fact that no matter what, the old relationship with the Master is indeed over. Paul and I debated long, long ago about whether the Master had to die - he insisted the Master must die, case closed, and he was right, and that's why.

Interesting example
---
Graham's Poison'd character from the Color-first character creation project thread.

This is, in fact, Filthy Jackie, a Poison'd character.

Position: Surgeon

Sins committed: Adultery x2, Robbery, Murder

Suffered: Arrest, Beating (at the hands of Brimstone Jack), Imprisonment, Lashing (at the hands of Brimstone Jack), Rape

Ambitions: To be captain, to be pardoned, to be revenged upon Admiral Southgate, to fuck Admiral Southgate

Weapons: A fucking huge hatchet; Not a weapon, but she is quick, wiry-strong and vicious.

Devil 4, Soul 4, Brutality 5, Ambition 4, Brinkmanship 5, Profile 4

Outstanding bargains: Drunken Jack swore to back me for Ship's Captain.

The Dagger: It has a grim reputation; It's frightening to see. Profile: 10. Strength: Boarding and repelling boarders

The company of the Dagger: Its members are, by and large, unreprobate murderers; It's well-armed and eager to fight; It's been badly mistreated by Brimstone Jack. Profile: 6

Hi Ron,

Before I check my understanding of the rest of your post, it's probably worth working through the teeth-gritting moment. It may be a misunderstanding, as I'm talking about the jostling that occurs once the endgame mechanics are triggered rather than how players act through the whole game.

When I've run My Life with Master (only as one-shots at conventions), I've found the players throw themselves into the fictional events and do relate to the Master and potential connections as characters they care about. There hasn't been much (if any) gaming of the system during the majority of these one-shots - perhaps a little bit of "Oh crap, I really need to get some more Love or I'm going to be screwed", when people realise how the system works but no laser-like focus of particular scenes or outcomes.

In my experience, this changes a little bit once a minion successfully resists the Master's command. At that point, the more astute players check their character sheets and find out that they've got the possibility of achieving between about one to three of the Eoilogues.

As we alternate between scenes of jeopardy for each minion and scenes where each minion is allowed to call for a scene, I've seen players try to establish connections or commit acts of villainy in order to get the Epilogue they want (whether that be 'Become a source of Fear in their own right', or 'Integrate with the Townpeople' or whatever).

That's what I meant by, "jostling with My Life with Master’s endgame mechanics to get a satisfying outcome for your minion." I think the rules support that approach, when Paul says:

... all the while the players are sorting out the final trait values that will inform their individual Epilogues, likely working with intent towards having certain desired outcomes available to their characters.

I guess what I'm talking about it the sense of urgency that's created when you have a time-limit on the actions your character can take. Suddenly every action, every scene really really counts as this session becomes your last chance to get the best (or most appropriate) outcome that you want for your character.

I can live with that. My concern is with groups in which someone makes the mistake of talking all about the epilogues when introducing the game, and people get really hung up on engineering a favored outcome - which is nigh impossible to do early in play anyway - and the functioning dynamics of the rules become meaningless.

By the way, I don't know why I kept calling you "David."

Best, Ron

Ron, this is excellent stuff. I’ve definitely been thinking about reward systems in terms of mechanics rather than the thing about the game that creates satisfaction and fun for the people who are playing it. Like you describe, I have been thinking about rewards as 'advancement' (eg. leveling up) and as something that’s 'always positive' (eg. characters achieving success in the game's fiction).

So a reward system is the ‘Why’ of “Why we play this game”.

Let’s see if I get what you’re saying about Rewards also being about how the fictional characters we’re playing change (rather than how they fulfill their dreams or increase their power). Some examples of that would be:

• a minion who is killed by the townfolk in My Life with Master
• a Sorceror who zeros out in Humanity after relentless pursuing her need for revenge.
• a pirate in Poison’d who ends up hanged by the local constabulary after refusing a bargain with the Devil and instead spitting in his eye.

We may not be happy with these outcomes, we may have hoped for something better for that minion, sorcerer or pirate, but these endings provide tragedy or creative frustration that we as players find individually satisfying at a psychological and creative level, and socially satisfying to the group of players at the table (our ‘Creative Agenda’).

And the changes can be either positive or negative (and still rewarding) because as players, we’re advocating for what our characters think is the best thing to do right now. We’re not meta-gaming to try and get the best outcomes according to our real-world understanding of the rules.

So I think I get this. If the events we’re creating using the game are satisfying the group’s Creative Agenda, then the game is rewarding.

The question you’re raising is whether the sub-systems of a game’s reward mechanics contribute to that largest sense of ‘Reward’, right?

What are the nested reward cycles in Poison’d?

The short-term, in-the-moment reward mechanics for Poison’d seem to involve Fights, Success Rolls and gaining Leisure. They probably also include making Bargains, which players seem to get a lot of pleasure out of making and extracting.

I’d describe this short-term cycle as ‘Gaining the Advantage’.

(As an aside, Ron, do you ever write up some Actual Play of your previous experience playing Poison’d? I can see how the context of Fights in Poison’d – which are provoked by interpersonal conflict, Ambitions and Bargains – are much more incidental than the missions and quests of module-based AD&D play.)

The medium-term, about-a-session’s-worth reward mechanics for Poison'd seem to involve Xs and Bargains being accumulated, and all of the player characters acting and interacting to create opportunities to fulfill Ambition (and acting on those opportunities). As a result, new, temporary status quos are created (that are similar in impact to Brimestone Jack’s death at the start of the game). I think of this as the game taking in a deep breath before plunging in to the next round of betrayals and plots.

I’d describe this medium-term cycle as ‘Creating a new Situation’. By ‘Situation’, I’m talking about how ‘Characters with differing interests and motivations’ interact with ‘the wider Setting of Poison’d’.

Are there other short-term and medium-term reward cycles that I’m not seeing yet?

A question for Vincent (or anyone else who’s played Poison’d to the end)

So, if one thing I’m really interested in is what the end of long-term play looks like. Vincent, is there any chance you could describe what the end of a game of Poison’d looks like after everyone’s gone through a whole bunch of these short-term and medium-term reward cycles? What’s the payoff that the group gets for playing Poison’d for that long? How have the characters changed?

Hi Steve,

I try to respond point by point as rarely as possible, but in this case I will. The reason is that the vast majority of what you wrote is right on target, and I'm sort of shaving at or refining a couple of your choices of phrasing. So instead of invalidating your whole point by hacking at bits of it (the usual point-by-point tactic), I'm doing the opposite, I hope.

Let’s see if I get what you’re saying about Rewards also being about how the fictional characters we’re playing change (rather than how they fulfill their dreams or increase their power). Some examples of that would be:

    * a minion who is killed by the townfolk in My Life with Master
    * a Sorceror who zeros out in Humanity after relentless pursuing her need for revenge.
    * a pirate in Poison’d who ends up hanged by the local constabulary after refusing a bargain with the Devil and instead spitting in his eye.

We may not be happy with these outcomes, we may have hoped for something better for that minion, sorcerer or pirate, but these endings provide tragedy or creative frustration that we as players find individually satisfying at a psychological and creative level, and socially satisfying to the group of players at the table (our ‘Creative Agenda’).

The question you’re raising is whether the sub-systems of a game’s reward mechanics contribute to that largest sense of ‘Reward’, right?

There's a medium-term reward cycle in changing your stats - committing new sins, suffering new violence, achieving and/or abandoning your medium-term ambitions. Changing your stats shifts the balances between the various success rolls, fighting, and the consequences of skipping out on a bargain. In the early game, the shift might be in almost any direction, but over the course of play it'll be toward desperate and impulsive violence, away from patience, trust, and perserverence.

That is, the position from which your pirate pursues his ambitions doesn't just change, it decays.

Of course and on the other hand, some ambitions are better achieved from an utterly corrupt position.

-Vincent

Oh, here's kind of a thing about play at the longest term. Do you have Sorcerer, Steve? If you do, it might be interesting to compare the list in Poison'd on page 19 with the list in Sorcerer on page 123.

-Vincent

Vincent, I'm really pleased you mentioned that list in Sorcerer: it was in the back of my mind when I was thinking about Poison'd's end conditions. I have this theory that the end of long-term Poison'd play is about judging your pirate or positioning them for the closing credits. I'm figuring that because it seems that three of the key variables in the 'This is the final session' conditions are:

[x] you're alive or dead (and possible judged by God/The Devil)

[x] you're either a pirate or you're not

[x] you're either someone the players admire or you're not.

I see how that shares similarities with the four extremes of possible outcomes in Sorcerer (total failure and horror, pyhrric victory, success using sorcery, and success by renouncing sorcery). In Poison'd you could have a range of potential endings for your character including (but definitely not limited to) being: a pirate forever, stuck on the Dagger; a retired pirate, owning land but rejected by society; a noble pirate Captain; a former pirate, redeemed by God and trying to atone, but tempted to take revenge. There's a lot of exciting, interesting ways to finish your character's story (or, in some cases, not finish it but bring the curtains down on it).

For the moment, though, I'm happy to leave the question of figuring out the longest-term reward cycle for Poison'd to one side. I might have to get a game together and figure that one out for myself.

-- -- --

I also like the 'Changing your Stats' medium-term reward cycle you point out. When I first read the following quote, I thought I could see a little bit of authorial judgment about how the game should play out:

In the early game, the shift might be in almost any direction, but over the course of play it'll be toward desperate and impulsive violence, away from patience, trust, and perserverence.

The exchange rate within and among Character Components. Currency may or may not be explicit (e.g. "character points"), but it is a universal feature of System, specifically as it relates to Character.

Poison'd has the virtue of providing a visible transition between successful rolls and other concrete elements of play. A lot of games have a causal but (unless you know what you're looking for) invisible connection. Consider the relationship between successful rolls and leveling up in any iteration of D&D, for example. It's mediated through concepts like character survival or not, victorious fights or not, various types of teamwork or not (which is an interesting one because if you're a good teammate, you can still get XPs even without successful rolls in an encounter), actions which do not require rolls, and more. Whereas in Poison'd, an X is achieved in a particular way, and it can be expended in particular ways, all out in the open.

I provided that comparison to illustrate what Currency is. It's the way certain game mechanics can be traded off among one another. The most obvious example can be seen in character creation in point-build games. In old-school Champions (3rd ed. and before), I can spend 10 character points, on 20 more Endurance, 5 more Ego, or 1 more Speed. And I only have so many character points. That's very easy because all of those are attributes, but there are sneaky elements and breakpoints, e.g., you have higher base Endurance (a secondary attribute) by buying a high Constitution (a primary attribute). And I have a base value for every skill derived from my attributes, but I can buy up a skill or two cheaply from there too.

So, that's Currency among various numbers on the sheet. The tricky thing is that I consider less point-build games to still have Currency, but with a fair amount of it already "fixed" into certain proportions, like a planned economy, if you will. This can be illustrated by a very common hack of the 1977-79 AD&D, in which GPs and XPs were equivalent, and every item had a cost in GPs, and every magic item had a rating in XPs, as did levels. The hack was to assign a base number of generic points (XP/GP), and then let everyone buy a character as they saw fit from there, to whatever level, armed with whatever equipment and items, that they could afford.

Now add the element of time, and it should become clear that the quantities of system in action are directly linked into the Currency as well. Sometimes it's obvious: in old-school T&T, when you made a saving roll, you added exactly the number you rolled, multiplied by the level (difficulty) of the saving roll, as XPs. Sometimes it's not: in old-school D&D of various sorts, you got so many XPs from defeating a specific monster, but exactly what you did to accomplish this was left wide open ... but often had a great deal to do with what magic items, equipment, and other GP/XP rated things you had with you. And in either case, so many XPs meant you leveled up, i.e., changed stuff on your sheet.

Is this making more sense now? Plus, the realization that improvement mechanics (i.e., gaining more hit points upon leveling up) and damage mechanics (i.e. losing hit points in combat) are all the same thing (and modulated by the intermediate version called healing)?

Best, Ron

I'm enjoying this thread.  At this point, I'd find it helpful to see an illustration of Currency in action via changing a stat in Poison'd.  The full arc (shortest possible path is fine), from "right after I changed my last stat" to "and now I'm changing this one".  Anyone feel like obliging?

I'm going to restate Ron's post above, just to check I get what he's saying:

The key phrase seems to be, "Currency is the way certain game mechanics can be traded off among one another."

Using the Provisional Glossary and Vincent's post about "Things on a character sheet (2)", the categories of things that currency can be exchanged between include:

[x] Effectiveness, which seems to be about the character's ability to take action (in the Provisional Glossary, "quantities or terms which are directly used to determine the success or extent of a character's actions during play.") Some generic examples would be skill levels, stats, weapons you're currently armed with.

[x]Positioning, which I think covers the character's place in the world, their relationship with other people, and the amount they care about events (either what's happening right now or what they want to achieve in the future). Would I be right in saying that all of this can either be defined on the character sheet or exist purely in the fiction?

[x]Resources, which I'd describe as the character's ability to keep taking actions. The Provisional Glossary calls it, "an available quantity upon which Effectiveness or Positioning mechanics may draw, or which are reduced to reflect harm to the character." Some generic examples would be hit points and endurance.

It feels like their might also be a fourth category: the character's position in the fictional world. This might be covered by 'Positioning', but in Vincent's post on Reliable and Unreliable currency he talks about having the advantage for higher ground. And that reminded me of some of the sort of D&D play Ron was talking about above with actions that don't require rolls, like moving successfully through the dungeon, or finding an undetectable spot to spy on the enemy.

... anyway, the way that changes in these 3 (or 4) areas affect each other is what currency is all about.

But based on the D&D and Tunnels and Trolls examples, it looks like current can either be 'easy to see' (the accumulation and spending of Xs in Poison'd) or 'hard to see' (everything that's involved in eventually levelling up a D&D character). Related to that, I wasn't quite sure what this means:

Now add the element of time, and it should become clear that the quantities of system in action are directly linked into the Currency as well.

David and Steve in a thread - together? No! This is like seeing your mailman and Captain Midnight at the same time!

Android technology ... gotta be.

Anyway, Steve, I think you have stated it fairly. Positioning definitely includes larger-scale issues about the character, such as alignment in D&D or most setting-based information such as country of origin, and any number of similar things. Oh yes, and notably, many of common psychological descriptors (somewhat confusingly billed as "Disadvantages" or "Limitations" in many games). One of favorite my Positioning variables from the older versions of Champions were Public Identity, Secret Identity, and the very interesting option of having neither.

Best, Ron

Huh.  Steve, apparently we've been tasked to collaboratively make Ron's brain explode.

Let's see:

Hugh's player's choice to reject the Devil's aid nabs him two Positions, "in prison" and "unarmed", the latter of which is recorded as a loss of Profile.  Had Hugh's player chosen to accept the Devil's aid, Hugh might have kept his Profile and improved his Position to "free" but at the cost of... uh... what's the downside of accepting the Devil's aid?  I'll just call it Devilness for now.

Anyway, so that's one level of the game's Currency system: the possible exchange between Position ("in prison"/"free"), Profile ("armed"/"unarmed") and Devilness in that moment, and between other Positions and game quantities in other moments.  Right?

To the extent that Currency-manipulating mechanics are triggered by player decisions made based on the fiction (rather than, e.g., "It's my turn, I can do one of these 5 moves, I'll pick this one."), every iota of narration is Currency.  If the GM narrates that the thug is yelling about revenge as he attacks, that gives me an opportunity to turn a crappy Fighting roll into an excellent Manipulation roll if I'm clever enough to re-position my character accordingly.  "It was a cover-up!" I yell.  "I'm after the real culprit too!"  Hey, maybe I even earn XP for rolling Manipulation and not for Fighting!

Ron, any synapses auto-destructing yet?

The downside of making a bargain with the devil is that now the devil can mechanically smack you (with, I believe, the hardest smack in the game) if you don't hold up your end.

So, yes! The simple principle throughout is: mechanical causes have fictional effects, and fictional causes have mechanical effects.

Steve, the way I think of your proposed fourth category is that wholly fictional things can easily be part of effectiveness, resources, OR positioning. The fact that my character's at the top of the stairs looking down at yours might figure in effectiveness; the fact that mine's the loyal lieutenant of the mob boss and yours is a rookie cop might figure in positioning; it all depends on how the game's designed to treat those facts.

-Vincent

Vincent's final paragraph is key. In some games, information like who's at the top of the stairs has a specific role to affect the way Currency-based stuff is currently distributed, and in others, it doesn't. When it does, then how that information gets there either has Currency-based ways to get into play, or it doesn't.

Vincent's more recent designs aim at nailing down both ends, for "yes it does" for each, but without relying on such explicit devices as in Universalis or more recently, Annalise.

Specifying and shaping the extent to which the fictional input may draw upon non-Currency sources, which is to say, "I do this," "I say so," "This happens" more or less out of the blue, is a very touchy topic. I think it is possible to provide such shaping-procedures in productive ways - Spione is an example, I think - and I think other designers have gone this route in a variety of ways.

My reading of many of Callan's posts and points leads me to think he is mainly criticizing play/games in which "it" (above) does have a specific role to affect existing Currency distribution, but doesn't have any Currency-based way to get into play. Instead, it gets into play just because a designated person says so, all the time, in an unconstructed fashion. So for Callan, the vast majority of what in most games is calling "GMing" is a flat-out disruptive interjection into what could otherwise be a solid Currency-interactive activity. it makes all Currency-based play into a kind of little kids' plastic steering wheel, and they get to turn it and go "Pbbbbt" while the GM actually drives the car. And I think he's right about that, actually, although we may differ regarding the extent of the problem, or whether it's present in, for example, my own games.

Best, Ron

Ron wrote: My reading of many of Callan's posts and points leads me to think he is mainly criticizing play/games in which [information like who's at the top of the stairs -D.B.] does have a specific role to affect existing Currency distribution, but doesn't have any Currency-based way to get into play. Instead, it gets into play just because a designated person says so, all the time, in an unconstructed fashion.

Hi David,

There are in fact games which link that kind of thing (in fact, everything) to Currency. Universalis is the perfect example. Your account of the guard would most likely be a piece of narration by the winner of a dice comparison, placing the coin gained by one of the successful dice into the play-space, on a card or otherwise recorded as notes, as "flying elbow smash." Or conceivably it could have been established by spending a coin in a non-combat situation, in the same way, only from one's own coin reserves instead of "earning" a coin through a die roll, and then applied during the combat scene setup narration.

There are some few bits of stated material in Universalis which are free, simply pure Color ... but not much. Not much at all. Everything we ordinarily think of as just talking, in most games, costs money in Universalis. A lot of games have been influenced by it, including Fastlane (an underrated variant) and more recently, Annalise.

My take is that there exists a working middle ground between hard-and-fast paid for and effectively dysfunctional freeform under one person's control. I think my own games are built in that middle ground, especially Sorcerer. It does mean that the talking has to have some kind of understood constraint and scope and content, and although (in that game) the GM and others have different kinds of such limitations and formalizations, they all have something of the kind. My Life with Master is similar but with far more fixed and explicit features of this kind, as are all of Paul's games. Whereas Polaris is situated in a nice equidistant spot between Sorcerer and Universalis regarding such things.

H'mmm. OK:

Universalis ................... Polaris ....... My Life with Master .. Sorcerer ............................ (a long way!) ........ [Shadowrun, Vampire, AD&D2, et cetera]

Put Dust Devils and Dogs in the Vineyard exactly where Sorcerer is. Put Annalise just to the right of Universalis.

Best, Ron

Hi Ron,

I get your overall point, and my personal taste tends to lie in the middle ground you spoke of, but I'm still confused about Currency in my example.  I played Universalis for the first time (only a few hours) last month, and my takeaways were exactly what I suggested as problematic in my last post.

1) Paying for everything slows down the fiction and is a pain in the ass.

2) Even if you paid for (a) the guard and (b) his elbow attack and (c) the fact that the elbow attack does more damage from a height, you still didn't pay for the event (the characters walking down some stairs) that granted him the height advantage.

I'm not trying to prove a point here; instead, I'm hoping to be shown a functional solution so that I can understand how to act on some of the criticisms Callan voices.  I have a better grasp on "understood constraints on the talking" than I do on how a perfectly pervasive Currency can coexist with the activity of imagining fiction.

Actually, strike "activity of imagining fiction".  I know how that can coexist with pervasive Currency: daydreaming about checkout desk payments when someone lands on your hotel in Monopoly.  (I might even say, "Please come again, sir!" at the table.)

What I really meant was, how can Total Currency (that's for you, Dutch soccer fans) coexist with active fiction, in which fictional states and events invoke Currency mechanics?

Passive fiction is always an option, but that'd be a shame if it's the only one.

Hi David,

Sorry for missing your post for a few days.

I'm going to stay with the elbow strike. As I remember Universalis, the degree to which you enforced every last little contribution to the fiction was left open to the group. In my games, we were a bit strict about it. Getting the higher ground would indeed have cost a coin. Free input was limited to extremely minor things, so minor that I'm not even remembering examples. Even the color of a character's eyes cost a coin.

Regarding the pain in the ass part, well, yeah. That can be the case.

I do not agree with you that active fiction is Currency-linked at all times, and passive fiction is not. When one first grasps my idea of Currency, they often get really excited and want to make an all-Currency-for-talking, all-the-time game. That's fine. Universalis is actually damned functional, and I like stuff like Annalise and the current alpha idea of Realization Dawning. But Currency exists within an SIS framework, it doesn't itself make that framework.

The framework is actually constructed of talking and listening. That does not mean freeform, which is an abomination. It means good game design means good rules, i.e. dynamics and constraints, for talking and listening, and then good Currency rules inside that for organizing further procedural dynamics and constraints.

Also, if you haven't seen my post to Elizabeth in the They Became Flesh Ronnies thread, about hard and soft rules, check it out. That concept can apply to the talk-and-listen rules and to the Currency rules.

Best, Ron

I have a question that's related to "things on character sheets". Ron, Vincent I'd like to hear your oppinion. If it's too far off-track from the current discussion, I can start another thread.

The "problem" is that often a single stat can behave like any two or more from the list.
Frex, Level/XP in D&D. At first glance it's obviously Positioning - it determines my place in the world. But at times it also behaves like a Resource - it can get lowered to represent harm (undead level drain) and I may deplete it to acheive something (spending XP to craft magic items).
Or Abilities for example - Strength is Effectiveness, but then I get hit by a Ray of Enfeeblement and it gets depleted like a resource.
I'm using D&D examples because they're easily recognisable. I first noticed this when comparing one of my design versus the P-E-R schema and realized many of the numbers on my game's character sheet could be either. Maybe I'm confused regarding the definitions or is this a normal thing that happens?

That's precisely currency in action! Trade positioning for resources, bank effectiveness toward better positioning, burn resources to spike effectiveness, suffer lost resources or positioning when your effectiveness fails - all very common. It's a game's currency rules that create those active relationships, the details of the trading, burning, banking, suffering and so on.

-Vincent

Vincent, you're right, but I'm not sure that addresses the question.

A key feature of the Currency concept is that a given game item is perfectly capable of being more than one of Effectiveness, Positioning, and/or Resources. I am emphatically not recommending that a game designer parse out every little detail on the sheet into one and only one of them.

Some related points.

1. Character sheets from different games aren't as immediately comparable as they might seem. "Native land: Perspicania," on one sheet might tie directly into attribute scores that are primarily about Effectiveness. And in some other game the equivalent notation might be specifically about Positioning, whether political or psychological.  And in Hero Wars (now HeroQuest), the equivalent notation provides so much framing information that tons of Effectiveness and Positioning details are set into place, or option-sets are set into place, by that notation.

2. I also want to articulate a subtler point about Currency which I think may be getting lost in this thread. Currency exchange may occur within a given character component category, i.e., within different kinds of Effectiveness; as well as among those categories, e.g., between Effectiveness and Resources.

3. And finally, to reference the older Color-First threads yet again, one of my main points there was that game design itself as well as character creation were acts of "setting the starting game board" for Currency. I wanted to investigate the diversity between fixing this setup prior to player choices vs. due to player choices, and to see whether apparent player choice was illustory in some games. Another was that many games left a crucial step of that process in a sort of limbo between prep and play, and I wanted to see which were productive limbos and which weren't.

Best, Ron

Excellent. Thank you both.

Hi Ron,

Ron wrote: I do not agree with you that active fiction is Currency-linked at all times, and passive fiction is not.

Hey guys, I'm burning out. There's too much going on with eighty different things to talk about. I think I was able to help with the thread topic, and can't muster the energy to branch out into the next things.

Best, Ron

Does anybody have any questions left about how Poison'd works?

-Vincent

Hi Vincent,

I think I'm good. Thanks to you, Ron, and everyone for digging into this so deeply.

I'll take what I have learned from this thread and apply it to (a) running another game of Poison'd, and (b) designing Left Coast. I think this thread is going to become a regular reference for me!