Shadows In the Fog PDF

At this link, you’ll find a first draft of Shadows in the Fog, a new RPG set in an occult version of Jack the Ripper’s London.

Meta-Design Notes

The game is structured to have a pretty strong Narrativist perspective. That is, the players as players will have a great deal of control over the flow of the game, not necessarily limited by their characters’ perspectives. Insofar as there is an explicit premise, it has to do with developing and dealing with the characters’ increasing disjuncture between the world of Victorian social masks and the twisted reality they’re participating in.

The game has some Gamist elements. There is a definite sense in which a player can “win” through various kinds of play, ranging from in-character roleplay to out-of-character scene-writing, with a number of elements ranging in between.

The game uses Tarot cards for all its explicit mechanics.

The game is aimed at experienced play-groups interested in doing something a bit experimental. I don’t think or claim that any particular element here is brand new and whatnot, but I do think the total conception is somewhat unusual. I also think that newcomers to the RPG hobby will find the game somewhat bizarre and lacking in guidance.

If you want to play the game, go right ahead, but please let me know what you think: what works, what doesn’t, what needs fleshing out, what’s cool, and so forth.

Comments on the Current Draft

Here’s what’s not done (so please don’t tell me that it’s not done - - I know!):

1. Volumes 2 and 3, which will include detailed setting materials (vol. 2) and some adventure ideas and GMCs (vol. 3) are not done at all. It’ll be a while - - don’t hold your breath.

2. Descriptions of all the magic types are not done; some of them are here, but they’re sketches.

3. The Bibliography is missing a lot of entries, and some of the publication information is not there.

4. The layout is ugly - - pure prose, in book form. The final version will have lots of contemporary drawings and pictures, but I’m not there yet.

5. Text that will end up in neat little boxes is not that way now --- it just says [BOX: ]. I've put the contents of each box within the brackets, so it's readable, if unattractive.

Here’s what I really want suggestions about:

1. The mechanics, particularly the issues of Bidding, and of Interpreting for magic.

2. The general tone and stance.

Thanks a lot! I'm looking forward to some trenchant criticism, and who knows? maybe a brief play-test.
Chris Lehrich

Read through your game with great interest - it's almost exactly the same setting that I'm developing: a Victorian culture where the supernatural exists (which surprisingly evolved from a near future SF setting). I too wanted to make a game issue of the social and cultural tenisons of the period (late Victorian/Edwardian in my case) and in particular those centred on class and 'gentlemanliness'. That said, our mechanics differ widely. But this is more a matter of our respective tastes - mine lie more towards the sim end than the narrative end of the spectrum. So, what's my point?

Well, given that you delinate such an intricate world why do you insist so much on (the equally well delinated and deliciously juicy) the game being character driven? My point is this: your central theme can work as well in any setting - the premise being something like "what secrets do you keep hidden and what do you reveal". It seemed to me such a waste of the richness of Victorian Britain as a setting centred game.

Secondly, and more specifically, why do you so actively discourage working class characters? It was the working classes that developed and produced a thriving occult culture of spirit-summoning, talking with the dead, etc. that lead to such 'professional' (I've never been comfortable with middle class - as indeed you show in your 4-tier expanison of it) interest as manifested in the Society for Psychical Research and what not. Not only does the addition of w/class add more tension and potential for conflict (the classes in Britain still have difficulty communicating with each other), but it also introduces some political elements to the storytelling.

I'm not sure why cards and not dice are used. Maybe I've missed the point - I intend to re-read it carefully. But if it is simply a gimmick, I'd stick to dice. And you also talk a lot about 'in-character' behaviour which seems to me more a simulationist concern than a narrativist one. Not that you shouldn't try to combine them, of course, but just that it makes the game pull in two directions which may occassionally be uncomfortable.

As for your bibliography, what about the popular magazines of the period? They were full of short fiction - gothic, horror, SF - which are themselves reflections of (better, examples of) the fears of degeneration of decadency which characterised Late Victorian culture and which fed into interest in the occult, class-conflcit, 'mask' wearing as you put it.

I'm deeply interested in many levels in Victorian culture and have a PhD in the history of Victorian science - I'm pretty knowledgeable about the weird sciences of the period too (spiritualism, phrenology, etc.). If you want to chat about these things and how they could be translated into a game, send me a message. I'm be delghted to chew the fat.

Simon,

First of all, thanks for slogging through the material, and thanks also for your criticisms. Let me try to address (which is not to say deny) your concerns.

Well, given that you delinate such an intricate world why do you insist so much on (the equally well delinated and deliciously juicy) the game being character driven?

Secondly, and more specifically, why do you so actively discourage working class characters?

I'm not sure why cards and not dice are used. Maybe I've missed the point - I intend to re-read it carefully. But if it is simply a gimmick, I'd stick to dice.

And you also talk a lot about 'in-character' behaviour which seems to me more a simulationist concern than a narrativist one. Not that you shouldn't try to combine them, of course, but just that it makes the game pull in two directions which may occassionally be uncomfortable.

I read your game and the previous poster's reactions to it. Here, upon a brisk and therefore sketchy reading, is my two cents:

1) The use of Tarot for the magic aspect of Shadows in the Fog is well done! This is something that makes me slam my head into the wall and ask, "Why didn't *I* think of this?" I would be loath to change anything about it. Interpreting the cards is a good mechanic that (IMHO) rests easily on a solid foundation.

However, the other poster perhaps raised a valid point in asking why, for mundane actions, dice were not used, with the caveat that a player could throw a Trump on them to make it magical and unassailable by ordinary means. Granted, this means GMs and Players learning two sets of rules for a game: one for mechanical acts, one for magic, but that will also emphasize the difference between magic and the mundane.

OTOH, cards give the players a little more control on their impact than dice do. My preference would be to stick with cards, but that's me. I bring it up to remind that there are those more comfortable with dice than with Tarot cards.

I *am* confused about why the GM isn't allowed to know the contents of a player's hand. Knowing what cards a player has defuses the temptation of a player re-stacking his or her deck between games, and the downside to a GM knowing a player's hand is...something I'm at a loss to grasp.

2) I believe the rule on Bidding should include the player giving an explanation *why* they are bidding this way, in reference to how it improves the story. (They can keep personal reasons to themselves, or share them, as they see fit.) Counter-bids should also come with a game-specific justification. This way, if there is Bidding, it is more likely to be constructive to the game rather than distracting from it. (A little bit of Universalis in there; if the players are responsible for moderating parts of the game, then they should be held somewhat accountable for the success of the evening's entertainment. The above is, IMHO, a valid guideline.)

That's it so far. And so far, bloody well done!

Spooky Fanboy,

Thanks for your input. And thanks for reading the thing!

A few remarks:

However, the other poster perhaps raised a valid point in asking why, for mundane actions, dice were not used, with the caveat that a player could throw a Trump on them to make it magical and unassailable by ordinary means.... OTOH, cards give the players a little more control on their impact than dice do.

I *am* confused about why the GM isn't allowed to know the contents of a player's hand. Knowing what cards a player has defuses the temptation of a player re-stacking his or her deck between games, and the downside to a GM knowing a player's hand is...something I'm at a loss to grasp.

2) I believe the rule on Bidding should include the player giving an explanation *why* they are bidding this way, in reference to how it improves the story. (They can keep personal reasons to themselves, or share them, as they see fit.) Counter-bids should also come with a game-specific justification. This way, if there is Bidding, it is more likely to be constructive to the game rather than distracting from it.

But actually I can't see that it would matter very much. Certainly I wouldn't be able to keep track of everyone's hands from moment to moment. Do you really think this is a significant advantage, apart from the question of possible cheating?

That said, one of the examples has someone bidding a difficulty up because she wants the guy to fail, mainly because her character is supposed to be the expert at this sort of thing. I think that's legitimate, but it would also be most effective if the player explains this.

Spooky,

Thanks. I haven't written a Nar-type game before (not even a sketch), so any advice you folks can offer on emphasizing or stressing things which I'm taking for granted is much appreciated. I will rewrite the remarks on players' commenting when bidding.

I like the idea of suggesting the envelopes for cards. Simplifies matters, I guess. Do you think there is any other reason the GM really needs to know the players' cards?

Thanks.

I like the idea of suggesting the envelopes for cards. Simplifies matters, I guess. Do you think there is any other reason the GM really needs to know the players' cards?

Also in the envelopes' favor: it helps people remember what cards they had between sessions. I know players: Real Life plays hell with the memory, and so few have the discipline to write down what went on. I can easily see some of them forgetting which cards they had.

I like the character creation quite a lot, particularly the way the process goes through layers of development from the exterior to the core of the characters. It is very well-suited to the Victorian setting. I also like the explicit "strike it from the record" rule; it's a nice touch to explicitly give the players permission to take that freedom. The warnings against making a crazy "gimmick" character are good, but are scattered throughout rather than being as explicit in intent as it might be right up front. I think at pg.11 it could be more clear what the term is referring to and why it is undesirable.

From my notes, I see that I didn't notice where it was mentioned how scenes are managed. Is it assumed that the reader is familiar with the process of kicking off, wrapping up, and changing scenes? Or did I miss that? Also, I'm not sure if I noticed what the pre-game role of the GM should be. What sort of prep is suggested?

I really like the way magic is handled. That is the stand-out feature of the game, and is an obvious winner.

The concessions examples aren't as clear as they might be because the skill of the sample character is always 0. It made me overlook that the skill reduces the number of concessions. You probably want an example where skill is not zero to clarify.

It might be nice to have more guidance regarding translating complications into damage.

On a related note, something I tinkered with after reading Chalk Outlines a while ago was making some guidelines for various level of concessions. SO, a 1-point concession is something like "I drop a somewhat distinctive button off of my jacket" and a 3-point concession is "I leave a monogrammed handkerchief behind" IMO, having a huge laundry list of concessions is a bit clunky, and I would prefer the feel of giving 2 3-point concessions rather than 6 concessions.

The skill differences seem very small compared to all the difficulty swinging that can happen with the cards. I can easily be convinced that it doesn't seem that way in actual play, but the numbers assigned to the cards are much more varied than the 3-point difference between Terrible and Brilliant. Also, maybe that's OK.

I was struck negatively by the idea of trading in cards for character improvement. Here's why: Although the "best of" bonusses at the end will tend to reward those who brought goodness to the play session, the card-turning-in mechanism seems to reward players who reign in their level of participation. Is that desirable? Why should a person who saved up 5 high-value cards have his character improve? I'd be more comfortable with a system that just turned "best of" votes into character improvements.

I'm also mildly concerned that the low-number cards are strictly less useful than the high-number cards. If there were some tradeoff that could be found, some mechanism where the low numbers were better than the high ones, that would be nice. Maybe in actual play it all tends to even out, but I was left with a worry that a run of bad cards could feel like unwarranted punishment.

Lastly, the GM is given 6 cards per scene, but told that he shouldn't be too heavy-handed in using them, but that he wants to "get the cards out of the players' hands." Is there a better way to make a mechanism that accomplishes these goals, or is it really necessary to rely on the GM that much to make things work out right? Or is it a non-issue during play, it just happens to work out OK?

Overall, I quite like the game idea. The main points are the Tarot Magic and the detailed character creation process. I'm not totally sold on the particulars of the difficulty->concession mechanism, but that's hard to judge without play. Your components do a good job of serving the intent and feel of the whole game. I enjoyed reading the rules, and would be interested in playing (not necessarily logistically possible for me, but theoretically, I'm interested.) Nice job.

marknau:

Thanks! Here's some remarks and responses.

The warnings against making a crazy "gimmick" character are good, but are scattered throughout rather than being as explicit in intent as it might be right up front. I think at pg.11 it could be more clear what the term is referring to and why it is undesirable.

From my notes, I see that I didn't notice where it was mentioned how scenes are managed. Is it assumed that the reader is familiar with the process of kicking off, wrapping up, and changing scenes? Or did I miss that? Also, I'm not sure if I noticed what the pre-game role of the GM should be. What sort of prep is suggested?

I really like the way magic is handled. That is the stand-out feature of the game, and is an obvious winner.

The concessions examples aren't as clear as they might be because the skill of the sample character is always 0. It made me overlook that the skill reduces the number of concessions. You probably want an example where skill is not zero to clarify.

It might be nice to have more guidance regarding translating complications into damage.

On a related note, something I tinkered with after reading Chalk Outlines a while ago was making some guidelines for various level of concessions. SO, a 1-point concession is something like "I drop a somewhat distinctive button off of my jacket" and a 3-point concession is "I leave a monogrammed handkerchief behind" IMO, having a huge laundry list of concessions is a bit clunky, and I would prefer the feel of giving 2 3-point concessions rather than 6 concessions.

The skill differences seem very small compared to all the difficulty swinging that can happen with the cards. I can easily be convinced that it doesn't seem that way in actual play, but the numbers assigned to the cards are much more varied than the 3-point difference between Terrible and Brilliant. Also, maybe that's OK.

Lastly, the GM is given 6 cards per scene, but told that he shouldn't be too heavy-handed in using them, but that he wants to "get the cards out of the players' hands." Is there a better way to make a mechanism that accomplishes these goals, or is it really necessary to rely on the GM that much to make things work out right? Or is it a non-issue during play, it just happens to work out OK?

I was struck negatively by the idea of trading in cards for character improvement. Here's why: Although the "best of" bonusses at the end will tend to reward those who brought goodness to the play session, the card-turning-in mechanism seems to reward players who reign in their level of participation. Is that desirable? Why should a person who saved up 5 high-value cards have his character improve? I'd be more comfortable with a system that just turned "best of" votes into character improvements.

I'm also mildly concerned that the low-number cards are strictly less useful than the high-number cards. If there were some tradeoff that could be found, some mechanism where the low numbers were better than the high ones, that would be nice. Maybe in actual play it all tends to even out, but I was left with a worry that a run of bad cards could feel like unwarranted punishment.

Overall, I quite like the game idea. The main points are the Tarot Magic and the detailed character creation process. I'm not totally sold on the particulars of the difficulty->concession mechanism, but that's hard to judge without play. Your components do a good job of serving the intent and feel of the whole game. I enjoyed reading the rules, and would be interested in playing (not necessarily logistically possible for me, but theoretically, I'm interested.) Nice job.

clehrich wrote:
Okay, I'm covering up my head here, but the reality is that I see SitF as a not-at-all incoherent blend of Sim/Gam/Nar concerns. I know from Ron's work that's impossible, but I don't agree with him.

Valamir,

I know what you're saying; really I do. If this turns into a debate, we should take it to the GNS forum, but here's what I mean:

1. There's a heavy Nar thing going on in Shadows, where the players as players construct and bend the universe by player action. Some of this is mechanical, but most of it is just a question of players essentially making up the universe's rules as they go along, to fit their conception of what sort of story they want to be in. The focus here is story and character arc, and revising the setting to fit.

2. The setting is a kind of mainstay for the game, and there is certainly significant emphasis on simulation in an historical mode. That is, the game stresses having characters who are reasonably plausible Victorians, not stereotypes. Exploration of Victorian London is a big deal here, but that world (since it's a real world) is so complex that it can be bent and twisted by the players without stopping being itself.

3. The gamist thing really comes in with players using mechanical devices and so forth to outdo each other and the GM. The game emphasizes these possibilities as legitimate and desirable. The GM is almost certain to construct detailed, intricate occult plots; the players are encouraged to use their various means to stun the GM. Similarly, a significant part of character improvement at a mechanical level is based on the group voting you the "best" at one or another thing in a given session. So you need to do better than the other guy.

Frankly, my feeling about Ron's model is that it is excellent and a great mine for theoretical perspectives, but I don't agree with his basic conclusion. As I read it, his thesis is that since these GNS priorities are somewhat mutually contradictory (I'd agree, on the moment-to-moment in-session level that the model deals with), therefore a game that tries to serve them all is incoherent. But what I think he actually means here is that a game which says, "Hey, no matter what your perspective, you'll love this!" is going to be incoherent. That I'd agree with, but I also think that most experienced players have a wide range of GNS abilities, and can enjoy different takes on things from moment to moment. So this game says, "There are ways to use those different styles in this game, and they will all have value; if you pick one and ignore the rest, you will need to revise heavily." I think that's a very different thing, and I think this is a logical flaw in Ron's model.

But if you want to debate this, let's take it the GNS forum. I'd be genuinely interested in doing so, but I don't know if you would.

clehrich,

Here is my major question. Exactly how much am I going to have to research and memorize about Victorian culture to understand or enjoy this game?

I know pretty much nothing about the Victorian time period and it doesn't necessarily strike me as anything I would like to learn a whole lot about. I'd bewilling to learn some basic stuff, but are the basics all I need to play the game?

For example, the Legend of the Five Rings which was released (before the do20 sys version) was a cool game. I liked the card games and the world was rich and well-developed!

But when it got time to roleplay my character, I felt as though I had to take a bunch of 400 level Japanese culture classes so I knew when to bow, who to bow to, what to call this guy on feast days and what to call him on saturdays. It was rediculous and we never once played the game.

So, does your game put this kind of demand on the players? I'm willing to try your game because I think it has a very well thought out system (and an interesting magic system), but I'm weary of the tons of things I am going to have to remember in order to roleplay correctly.

Gwen,

Can I just say how good a question I think that is? I think you've hit the big difficulty with Shadows in the Fog, and it's something I've thought about a great deal. Let me try to respond coherently.

1. I have run several versions of this, with 2 different groups of players, and rather varied mechanics. In one run especially, there was the difficulty that some players didn't know enough Victorian stuff to be able to play comfortably, and they felt frustrated. Not only did they not know enough, but there was also the sense that I had obviously done a lot of research and thus did know, and I think here and there I gave the impression (my fault, totally) that if you did something non-Victorian, I'd stomp on you. So this has been a problem in the past.

2. This problem got me thinking about balance. Not the usual RPG balance question (is everyone equally powerful?), but the balance between work (research, etc.) and freedom. What I want, ideally, is for this game to have a certain initial learning barrier (you have to be willing to do some background reading), but for that to be (1) not insane and (2) liberating in terms of play. If that works, the theory is that players who are enjoying themselves and notice that reading up on things helps them enjoy themselves will now start doing more reading. Eventually everyone will have a high familiarity with the setting, without a lot of pain and hard research.

3. The mechanics are intended to lower the barrier by encouraging what I call "faking it." Provided you can sort of talk the talk, you don't have to walk the walk --- you don't have to know what you're talking about, so long as it sounds right. This is, after all, how many SF games work: you don't have to understand physics to tinker with a Warp Drive, you just wave your hands and say "I'm turning the 3-8 Dilithium power coupling down to minimal flux, which will rebalance the system towards the left nacelle I/O linkage; this will let me access the membrane plasma conduit in the right nacelle without danger, and then I can fix the problem by just re-routing power from the Impulse drives." All complete bullshit, but boy, you just know it's going to work. So all you need to research is how to talk that talk.

4. I further break this down into three parts.

First, there's learning to talk the social talk, for which there is lots of support in the character generation section. The research for this is reading Sherlock Holmes, which shouldn't be any great burden.

Second, there's learning to talk the magic talk. Since you only need to know about your particular kind of magic, you just read a fairly short section (a few pages) of Volume 2 [on which see below], play with some Tarot cards at home, and make it up. You don't have to know much about real astrology; you just have to be able to sound like your version of astrology makes some sort of vague sense. See the example of the dowser going into trance about Lambert the butler: what does the player actually need to know about dowsing here?

Third, there's learning to talk the London talk. This is much harder, and a potentially serious difficulty for the game. This is really the point of Volume 2, when I someday actually finish it. It will be a much-condensed primer on Victorian London, covering a range of topics briefly. The idea is that you don't really need to know much, but you need to have a kind of vague sense of what and where. Then there are lots of notes and such, which will help if you decide to follow something up for one reason or another. For example, you really do sort of need to have a vague sense (one sentence would do it) of what the Parnell Affair was, since it dominated all the news for most of 1888-89. But if your character is going to be an Irishman with a political bent, you probably want to be able to talk the talk of the Parnell Affair.

5. One of the big points of using various Nar-style mechanical tricks to put power into player hands is to stop GMs from doing what I accidentally did: it becomes much more difficult to say, "No, you can't do that, that's not really Victorian." The question is really whether the group at large considers things sufficiently historically accurate, not what the GM thinks. If you say, "I'm going to hop into my car and drive down to the local internet cafe," I sure as hell hope your group will assume you're joking. But if you don't happen to know which kind of carriage is a growler, who cares?

So I think ultimately a lot will depend on Volume 2 for this. At the moment, um, yeah --- you'd have to do a lot of research. Sorry. When Volume 2 is ready, however, it should pretty much do this for you.

That said, I do think a certain amount of work is in order. I don't know 5 Rings, so I can't comment, but I really can't stand the sort of player (I don't think this is you) who says, "Well, I haven't thought about my character or the game or the setting at all until right now, at the session, so you have to let me do whatever I want." That's just plain laziness. On the other hand if someone says, "Look, I've read some Holmes, and I've really worked on this character, and I've thought about my magic, and I'm ready to go," then that player should not be stomped on because he doesn't know that St. John's Wood is an infamous place for rich men to keep their mistresses.

While Gwen raised a good point, I wouldn't worry too much about it for the following reasons:-

1. While experts on Victorian culture be made rare, that isn't what is called for here. Almost everyone has an idea of what life was like in Victorian times - whether true or stereotypical. More than any other historical period it forms the bulk of our immediate cultural heritage.

2. For SintheF (as I see it) the only important thing to know is that society is class structured and the maintenance of this structure induces a certain level of hypocrisy in social relations. Everything else is icing.

3. Even those who haven't actually read Dickens, Conan Doyle and the other authors you mention will no doubt have a pretty good idea of the themes and issues they deal with, making it much easier than, say, a hard SF rpg to 'learn' the culture. Again this is because Victorian culture constantly irrigates our own.

4. In the final analysis, this is your game and you play with your friends who, being friends, will probably know something about your interests even if they don't share those interests. An example of this being that one of my friends is French and, by default rather than interest, I've picked up a (admittedly crude and basic) understanding of common themes in French film. Friends know each other and knowing each other invariably extends to knowing what they like to know about.

That said, it makes the game less attractive to people like Gwen who couldn't give a fig about Victorian culture (perfectly reasonable stance) and who certainly wouldn't be bothered to study it. As a sort of counterbalance to this you could write a couple of paragraphs or so underscoring just how much somebody who claims to be ignorant of Victorian culture is actually knowledgeable - at least kowledgeable enough to be able to play.

Simon.

marknau wrote: I'm also mildly concerned that the low-number cards are strictly less useful than the high-number cards.

clehrich wrote: The easy way would be to allow more than one card to be used at a time, up to some maximum number of points. The problem is that you lose a card each time you play two, and saying that you get to draw two if you play them means that people will "dump" low cards haphazardly. I don't know. I think you're right, but I'm not sure what to do about it. If I scale up the cards, then the skills have to scale up or someone can really slam you very hard, but then the effect scales down, so.... and so on. Anyone have any ideas here? I'm thinking.

From my notes, I see that I didn't notice where it was mentioned how scenes are managed. Is it assumed that the reader is familiar with the process of kicking off, wrapping up, and changing scenes? Or did I miss that? Also, I'm not sure if I noticed what the pre-game role of the GM should be. What sort of prep is suggested?

The skill differences seem very small compared to all the difficulty swinging that can happen with the cards. I can easily be convinced that it doesn't seem that way in actual play, but the numbers assigned to the cards are much more varied than the 3-point difference between Terrible and Brilliant. Also, maybe that's OK.

I'd be more comfortable with a system that just turned "best of" votes into character improvements.

I'm also mildly concerned that the low-number cards are strictly less useful than the high-number cards. If there were some tradeoff that could be found, some mechanism where the low numbers were better than the high ones, that would be nice. Maybe in actual play it all tends to even out, but I was left with a worry that a run of bad cards could feel like unwarranted punishment.

Lastly, the GM is given 6 cards per scene, but told that he shouldn't be too heavy-handed in using them, but that he wants to "get the cards out of the players' hands." Is there a better way to make a mechanism that accomplishes these goals, or is it really necessary to rely on the GM that much to make things work out right? Or is it a non-issue during play, it just happens to work out OK?

Hi guys,

Thanks for continuing to think about this game. I'm seeing problems I hadn't even imagined, but I'm also learning how to go about managing them and fixing things.

I really like the "best of" as XP thing, i.e. of trading in "best of" votes for skill improvement. My only concern is that in my experience, there are some players who, though very good players and helpful to the game, will very rarely get these awards. They're facilitators, second bananas. One solution, of course, would be to add a Second Banana award, but I don't think that's the way to go. Another possibility would be to keep the card trade-in system, rebalanced considerably, and up the number of cards you get for a "Best." This would mean that the more "Bests" you get, the quicker you can get skill improvement. In addition, we might have an immediate trade-in, where if you get a "Best," you can immediately trade it for improvement instead of cards, at a better exchange rate, but you can't bank it. I don't know, this may be too baroque.

As to lowest-card use, another possibility is simply to rebalance the relative valuation of cards with respect to actions, skills, and whatnot. The current problem is that there is too wide a range, so that a two is really just not worth much. I don't want to set things up to encourage "dumping," which I think would happen to some degree with any mechanic that rewards low card play with more cards. I don't know; I really need to think about cards and their uses.

One point I'd make here is that the low cards really aren't strictly speaking less useful, since you can always succeed no matter what the difficulty, even without playing any card. Suppose the difficulty is around 8. You could play a high card, but actually Concessions are more interesting from a scene point of view, so you deliberately play a low card and take some Concessions. Doing this well is far more likely to get you a "best" than is playing a high card, which will lead to "I win, no concessions." Perhaps emphasizing this as a dramatic possibility would go a very long way.

As to the GM "getting cards out of hands" issue, I think I just overstated that. My point is that you don't want what hyphz called the "bunker" mentality (Actual Play: Star Wars and Railroading), in which the players hoard their resources "in case" things later on go bad. What you want is for them to use those resources to create a good session, not hold on to them for future possible gains in actions or skill improvement. I think having the GM have a lot of cards assists this process, because it gives her a mechanical way to pry cards loose from recalcitrant players. The danger, which should also be emphasized, is that the GM will start relying on cards instead of challenging situations, and that will lead to more Us-vs-GM than I think is appropriate. I should note that I'm not actually opposed to such things, but a little goes a long way.

So, how have things progressed so far on this game? Did you iron out any problems with the smaller cards? What did you decide on the advance-ment mechanic? How have you redesigned the concessions mechanic, if indeed you have added to or subtracted from it?

Perspiring minds want to know! %-)

Spooky,

So, how have things progressed so far on this game?

Did you iron out any problems with the smaller cards?

What did you decide on the advancement mechanic?

How have you redesigned the concessions mechanic, if indeed you have added to or subtracted from it?

The problem, as you may recall, is that by trading in cards for skill advancement, you reward players for not using cards in play. I floated a question about this on the Pool forum, because the Pool has a somewhat analogous mechanic: if you succeed at a roll, you can either take an additional die to your pool or else narrate an MoV (Monologue of Victory), where you get pretty complete narrative control. The Pool folks seemed to feel that the mechanic there works, because it's not that you either get rewarded or get control, but rather that they are equivalent rewards. I'm now thinking about how in Shadows in the Fog to balance the reward of relatively slow skill advancement against the reward of present victory or control.

The thing is that Shadows in the Fog essentially has two card-based narration mechanics. One is Trump play (magic), and is positive, like MoV's in the Pool; the other is concessions, which are negative, that is you get to narrate success (and add interest and complexity) via failure (or rather, imperfect success).

See, I'd stick with a reward system based on the Best Of rewards, with one Best Of being necessary to gain a skill at Terrible, two to boost Terrible to Acceptable, Acceptable to Good, and three to Boost a Good trait to Brilliant.

A quick thought on what do do with low cards:

One way to cut the range of results a hand gives is to allow the players to use multiple cards on a single test with an upper limit on the total result. That total can either be equal to the highest possible card or some slightly lower number. However, if you insist that the cards must be equal or less than that limit you make low cards actually somewhat valuable, as they can be used to get as close as possible to a maximal result.

Of course, this may mean fiddling with the card refresh mechanism and hand size, but it might work.

And about experience:

I agree that the effect of holding back cards for experience encourages people to restrict their actual play in a given session, but I think the idea of 'cards for experience' has something going for it if you don't think of it as 'not playing' as much as not playing now.

By which I mean, how about tying the experience system to 'long term' rather than 'short term' card play. Instead of the cards being held back to the end of the game I'd:

i) Have them used during play in some way to mark particular events and settings as important to the character.

ii) Have them thematically decide what's going on with the character based on some sort of tarot reading.

iii) And have this define experience.

That's really fuzzy, but I think the idea of 'setting cards aside' becomes much more interesting if it is instead read as 'playing into the next session' and the signification of the card is read as very important.

I hope that's helpful rather than random.

I skimmed Falkenstein a few years back, but I don't remember anything except the suit system. How does improvement work there?

Piers Brown wrote: One way to cut the range of results a hand gives is to allow the players to use multiple cards on a single test with an upper limit on the total result. That total can either be equal to the highest possible card or some slightly lower number. However, if you insist that the cards must be equal or less than that limit you make low cards actually somewhat valuable, as they can be used to get as close as possible to a maximal result.

i) Have them [cards] used during play in some way to mark particular events and settings as important to the character.
ii) Have them thematically decide what's going on with the character based on some sort of tarot reading.
iii) And have this define experience.

That's really fuzzy, but I think the idea of 'setting cards aside' becomes much more interesting if it is instead read as 'playing into the next session' and the signification of the card is read as very important.
I hope that's helpful rather than random.

Yeah, or you could do that, instead. ;-)

I'm going to mull this over for a bit, then I'll post a revised rules set; when I do, you guys will be the first to hear. I'll shoot for a week, but I do have a big article deadline looming. If anyone wants to do any number-crunching, or has other brilliant ideas, I'd be delighted --- you guys have massively improved these game mechanics. I guess that's why I posted to the Forge, right?

I'm just hoping I can write it up so it doesn't sound too baroque. After all, if it ain't baroque, I won't have to fix it.

<remainder of post cancelled while author is beaten senseless>

I'm just hoping I can write it up so it doesn't sound too baroque. After all, if it ain't baroque, I won't have to fix it.

<remainder of post cancelled while author is beaten senseless>

If it was me, I'd have the player choose between buying off Concessions and/or buying successes, *or* putting cards away for experience. Kinda how the hard knocks make you want to improve more. Cards should be coming in slowly enough (and the action fast and furious enough) that having enough cards to do both should be rare.

Hang on, I don't understand. Do you mean that when you lay off cards for later improvement, that means you can't play cards to decrease concessions? If so, I think I agree, but as you say, I need to see a playtest.

But I prefer the nastiness of "learning hard lessons" or "chalking it up to experience," as it were.

So, I know it's kind of impolite to just start re-writing things, but I couldn't get to sleep last night and I ended up fiddling with the task resolution system and experience and this came out. Hopefully bits of it might be of some use.

Hand Sizes
The Gamemaster has a hand size of 6
Players have a base hand size of 5 and a maximum of 6. At the start of each session, if their hand size is less than 5 it becomes five. At the end of each session, players vote for the Best Character and Best Scene, and their creators receive an increase in hand size.

Task Resolution
1. Gamemaster sets Base Difficulty (0-3) for task.
2. Gamemaster plays a card (from the deck or from his hand) into the difficulty pool.
3. All Players, except the active player, may each add no more than one card to the difficulty pool. No card added may increase the total in the difficulty pool to more than 15. If a card would increase the difficulty to more than 15, it may not be played unless it is a trump. If a trump is played, it trumps the difficulty, erasing previous cards and automatically increasing the difficulty pool to fifteen. If multiple players wish to bid, bidding proceeds widdershins from the Gamemaster (or in 5, below, from the Active Player).
4. The active player determines his Base Competence for the task according to his appropriate skill (Terrible ?1, Average 0, Good 1, Brilliant 2)
5. The Active Player plays a card into his success pool.
6. All other players, except the Gamemaster, may add cards to the success pool as 3 above.
7. The Gamemaster and Active Player may now take turns adding cards to the Difficulty and Success Pools respectively until they both either cannot or do not want to play further cards.
8. Base Difficulty + Difficulty Pool is compared to Base Success + Success Pool. Concessions are made as follows: If Total Success is greater than Total Difficulty, the Player succeeds and the Gamemaster makes the difference in concessions to player. If Total Success is less than Total Difficulty then the Player, the player succeeds but must make up the difference in concessions. If the Total success is less than the difficulty minus three, the player fails, and must make concessions equal to the difference.
9. All played cards are place in the appropriate player?s discard pile, except Trumps which are set aside. A played Trump does not return to the deck until the next session.
10. Refresh all hands to their current size.

Character versus Character
Resolution as above, except both Characters use Success Pool plus Skill. NPCs have a base pool according to their best skill (Terrible: None, Average: One, Good: Two, Brilliant: Three).

End of Scene
At the end of the scene, both the Players and the Gamemaster may if they wish:
1. Play a Trump for Experience (see below).
2. Discard as many cards from their hand as they wish.
3. Shuffle their discard pile into their deck, if they desire. Note that discarded Trumps may return to the deck, but played Trumps may not.
4. Draw to refill their hand if they discarded.

Comments:
This keeps something of the feel of the original design while putting limits on both the bidding phase and the actual play of cards. It gives both the Gamemaster and the Active Player a chance each to use their high cards before everyone throws in. Then bidding allows everyone to throw a spanner in the works as before. Finally, the last contest between Player and Gamemaster gives them a final chance to see how important the contest is.
The turnover of cards in this version is much faster than in the original, because hands continually refresh after each contest, but it has some in-built stops. The erosion of Trumps poses a very important dilemma for the characters. Because they are both very powerful in card play and the only way to use magic the players will tend to hoard them. At the same time, the ability to continually play cards will tend to run through the deck, making Trumps accumulate in the hand. If a player interferes too much in a given scene, pretty soon they should have nothing but Trumps to play. Then they will have to use some of them and shuffle some of the others back into the deck. At which point they will start to find it hard to locate trumps. All sorts of weird interactions should go on based on the end of scene effects.
Note, also, the odd effect of bidding in this version. If either the Gamemaster or the Player are trying to play a combination of cards, the other Players can interfere by playing a mediumish card which may prevent the combination. Or it might make it easier for them to get close to fifteen.

Playing Trumps for Experience
At the end of any scene, each player has the option of playing a Trump to ?mark? a particular aspect of that scene as important to his or her character. This aspect is usually a character, place or series of events. It does not necessarily have to appear in the scene, but it should be mentioned or alluded to in some way. The player plays the Trump from their hand, and interprets it, suggesting how the card relates to the particular thing named, and how the character might be involved with it. The Trump is then set aside, not merely removed from the player?s deck until the end of the session, but until the character in some way resolves his or her involvement with the marked thing. Furthermore, the player?s Hand Size decreases by one.

Resolution
Marking a place, character or other element of setting makes them central to the character?s interests and associations in the game. It essentially indicates the Gamemaster and the other Players that this is soething they wish to pursue as part of their story. Once that interaction is resolved in some way, or the relationship changes significantly, the player retrieves the Trump, returning it to his or her deck and receives a skill increase. Note that often the player may then continue the association by playing a new Trump, and interacting with the thing in a new way.

Example
Albert St. Simeon is involved in a scene at the Seven Dials. At the end of the scene, he decides that this mystical landmark will be important to his quest for magical knowledge, and he plays the Chariot?triumph, victory, the road to success. In subsequent sessions, Albert becomes involved with a series of occult societies associated with this location, as he seeks knowledge and initiation. Eventually, after aiding their members in resolving a murder, one of the Society of the Silver Twilight accepts Albert into its ranks. Albert?s player returns the Chariot Trump to his deck, and Albert increases his Occult skill. Albert?s player decides that the society will continue to be a central part of his interaction with the occult underworld of London, but decides that he will wait until and appropriate moment before playing a new Trump against them.

Limits
One a particular Trump has been played to in this way, no other player may play that Trump for experience except on the same thing. In other words, there may only be one thing in the campaign primarily associated with that particular Trump. Players may, however, play different Trumps on the same thing. Indeed, this will often happen with central elements of a campaign?the main villain, a vital artefact, or something similar.

Comments:
What I?m trying to do here is to allow characters to have an explicit method of stitching their interests into the campaign, and at the same time to tie the Trumps into that process. The hand size rules interact with the experience rules in order to give a temporary penalty for setting up a Trump. This is intended to prevent players making too many attachments too quickly?essentially, it?s to prevent the players spinning too many plots strands all at once. Together with the role-playing awards, the limit to one trump per scene and the incentive to play the trump as late in the session as possible, these should act as a brake on the system getting out of control. Finally, the removal of Trumps from the deck until their resolution acts as a tangible way of forcing the player to focus on a limited number of things, and also puts an interesting check on their magical powers?the card that is most useful for that particular predicament is not available for use in magic. Hopefully, players will note this problem and only have a few Trumps out of use at once.

Thoughts?

Piers,

Thanks a lot for your suggestions. There are lots of interesting ideas here. I don't love all of it, but let me walk through stepwise.

Task Resolution
1. The idea of setting an upper limit on difficulty, such that players can't keep throwing on more and more difficulties, seems not at all unreasonable, but I think one of the advantages of keeping cards intrinsically more valuable (i.e. not constantly refreshing hands) is that nobody's going to do this anyway, as it's pointless. If you really want the difficulty to be very high anyway, you're going to have to explain why, since (following Spooky's suggestion) you now have to explain your bids.(1) In this version, I think players are encouraged to bid on everything, which will slow down resolution greatly.

2. I don't like the fact that ultimately it boils down to Active Player vs. GM. This strikes me as not only unnecessary, but also shifting the focus of bidding, which I think of as a way for non-Active players to influence what are traditionally GM-only decisions (difficulty, etc.). Thus I see bidding as primarily a way for non-Acting players to "disagree" with the GM about the desirability of success at a given moment.

3. All my objections here really boil down to this: "If the Total success is less than the difficulty minus three, the player fails, and must make concessions equal to the difference." For me, the whole point of the card resolution system is that you never, ever, really have to fail. There's always a way out, by concessions, or playing high cards, or Trumping, or whatever. It's just a question of balance: how much are you willing to pay for success on this?

4. In addition, "If a trump is played, it trumps the difficulty, erasing previous cards and automatically increasing the difficulty pool to fifteen," means that Trumps are not necessarily magical. For me, that's exactly what they are: if you Trump, you shift the nature of the resolution, not just change the difficulty.

Marking Things With Trumps
This I like very much. Most particularly, I like the idea that a given trump can only be marking one game-world thing at a time. What happens here is that the player claims to impose a magical structure on some person or object, and indicates that she is wililing to devote considerable time to realizing the connection. That special sort of task, when accomplished, generates skill increases. I do think, however, that this does not cover all forms of skill increase equally, since some lend themselves to this sort of framework more than others, and so I can't see this as a replacement for any other skill system.

I think it works best as a way for players to create subplots and give them an overarching Trump structure. So if my character decides that he really, really wants to court some woman, and thinks that The Lovers is a good card for this, I play that card to mark the new subplot, and any and all actions happening in that subplot need to happen under the sign of The Lovers, as it were.

In essence, this is a long-term magical action system. You can't fully control things through narration, and you don't know how long it will take, but your personal subplot now has a magical dimension, and when that plot is resolved you will be rewarded in some way (skill, etc.).

I think the rewards for resolution of such plots should be fairly open-ended, in the sense that there should be a number of suggestions for good types of rewards. Then the group decides, by vote or whatever, which reward is appropriate, taking into account whatever the player said he wanted.

Removing Trumps
I personally would tend to avoid the removal of Trumps thing, but only in the sense that I would generally have as many decks shuffled together as there are players plus GM. There are only 78 cards in a Tarot deck, and if you have 5 players plus GM, that's 31 cards immediately out in a hand. This means that any card in your hand is also out of circulation, which allows a lot of card-counting stuff that I don't consider helpful. As far as I'm concerned, you could have twenty decks shuffled together. The point being that if you're doing something involving The Devil, I don't want the odds of The Devil showing up elsewhere (such as in someone else's hand) reducing too drastically, and certainly not to zero.


I'm going to have to sit down and think out some hands and some deals here, and I may well borrow more from your version than I've stated here. At this stage, though, I think it puts too much emphasis on Action Resolution, which I'd prefer to be relatively unusual --- and quick! --- and encourages somewhat wild card play.

Notes
(1) The idea here is that if you want to bid as a non-Acting player, you should have a good reason for it. This is usually a meta-reason, e.g. you think that this scene would make a great source of real conflict and drama if the Actor failed or nearly so. Again, you might think that this Actor has a habit of trying to be good at everything, and needs a tough lesson. This may also be a response to another bid, e.g. you think that the scene is likely simply to become dull and focused on a single character's failure (rather than involving larger themes or other people), so you want to bid back down that raised difficulty.
' This also functions as a group approval/disapproval structure, in that if one player bids the difficulty up or down for what the rest of the group considers a bad reason, especially if it's out of boredom, mean-spiritedness (I want him to lose because I like to watch people fail), or general-purpose power-gaming (I want him to succeed because success is success and lets us beat the GM), the rest of the group is likely to bid it back the other way.

(Next up: some remarks on session structure and the use of Trumps as plot/story elements.)