YAUU: Yet Another Unsung Update

I've made some major changes this time. I've added to virtually every section, modified the Rule of Currency, the Rule of Gifts, and the combat rules, and added a "Advice" section right before the Designer's Notes, about running the game and the social contract.

Comments are not only welcomed, but encouraged and, nay, demanded! ;-)

Comments from old hands and those who've never looked at the game before are welcome.

Keep in mind this is sort of a work-in-progress -- I'm going to be turning it into a PDF sometimes soon, and perhaps taking advantage of some of that POD action I've heard so much about lately. All of those "Optional Rules" that sort of clutter up the rules will end up in sidebars.

This looks like a very nice pulling together of all the design issues discussed for Unsung on previous threads.

After reading it, the first suggestion that came to mind was to put the rules variations (I don't really see most of them as "optional" rules, because they replace rather than add onto the basic rules of the game) into sidebars. But you're already planning to do that.

Though it appears to me that the system will work as you intend it to, there's one aspect of it that bothers me, that I'm not sure I can express coherently. It's the nature of the game's exploration of moral issues. On the one hand, the exploration is very personal (specific to the individual character and to the player), but on the other hand, it's tied to an absolute objective scale of Responsibility which is enacted consensually by the other participants and the GM. For instance, I'm not a military man, but it occurs to me that some might regard preventing one's own troops from shooting a person who is attempting to reach enemy HQ which would cause many casualties -- just because the person is a child (in a setting when this would not be uncommon) -- as the Lapse rather than the opportunity to demonstrate Responsibility. I don't know which is the right way to interpret that situation, and I'm pretty sure my GM doesn't either, so how do we reach consensus on it? It would be nice if all the moral issues of war came down to choices between doing responsible things (which might cost us personally) or doing brutal instinctive things (which might benefit us personally), but in many cases good lives are in the balance either way and others can end up paying the cost for one's honorably-intended decisions.

One way to deepen the system's moral exploration, and at the same time add some leverage for determining when Lapses occur on a more situation-specific basis, might be to add one thing that I see as missing on the character description: the answer to the question, "Who or what is the Enemy?"

In the type of war scenarios you're addressing, how the individual perceives "the enemy" is paramount -- arguably, more crucial to behavior than some generalized Humanity trait (Responsibility-Instinct, in this case). Prior disposition and training determines the starting condition, and events that dehumanize or humanize the enemy (seeing victims massacred by the enemy, or having friends shot in battle, or being civilly treated as a prisoner, or hearing enemy troops sing Christmas carols in the trenches) can change it.

For example, for a narcotics cop in a mean streets scenario, "the enemy" might be:

- the devastating effects of drugs on people's lives
- drugs
- drug dealers
- ... and drug users
- ... and unwed mothers who make babies they can't take care of who grow up to be drug users and dealers
- ... and gutless ghetto trash who watch the drugs being sold right in front of them and won't lift a finger to try to clean up their own streets

I could see making checks as a result of events which, if failed, mean that your character's beliefs of who the enemy is will change. Such as, for example, when the neighborhood crowd who stood and watched while gang members beat your partner into a coma with clubs all deny having seen anything.

So... you protect the fleeing child because you don't see civilians as the enemy. This should be worth at least a bonus on the Lapse check. But when you see (or later learn) that the child does indeed warn enemy HQ and bring down artillery fire that decimates your unit, you might have to make another type of check, or change your mind about Union civilians.

- Walt

Hi Walt,

I'm seeing what you describe as a concern or perhaps minor puzzlement as a major feature of play.

1) Yes, a single action might garner no-Lapse or indeed-Lapse based at different moments of play - no Lapse for not firing on the fleeing child, but a Lapse upon learning that the child's escape led to the destruction of your HQ.

Similarly, a given action might be worth a Lapse in session A and not-a-Lapse in session B, depending on information known and details of the context. There's no "chart" for what constitutes a Lapse, or if there is, it's highly modified socially.

2) Yes, this all has to be governed through Social Contract and ongoing communication among members of the role-playing group. It helps to eliminate "intent" from the discussion and concentrate on it at the aesthetic level.

All this is classic Sorcerer territory and my upcoming supplement deals with it very deeply.

Best,
Ron

Obviously, I agree with Ron on this. It's supposed to shift around a lot, and a lot depends on the individual characters and the individual players, and especially the GM.

However, I admit I kinda like the idea of designating an "enemy" to help in guiding Lapses. I may include that idea in a sidebar, i.e. as another "optional rule". For certain scenarios, it might be a highly useful exercise.

[EDITED to say that I cross-posted this with Kirt.]

Ok, I see the point. That communication and social agreement is required isn't really the problem. It's the terms in which the issue must be resolved. Specifically, the single Responsibility-Instinct stat.

A system, even at this Narrativist a level, is still a model of something, and as with all models it embodies certain assumptions. One of those assumptions in Unsung is that Responsibility vs. Instinct can be described as a single number that applies to all of a character's behavior-under-fire. ("Fire" meaning all war situations requiring difficult moral decisions, not just combat conditions per se.)

That model says that if I shoot a bunch of surrendering death-camp guards in cold blood, it makes it more likely that I'll also shoot the liberated prisoners too if it becomes expedient to do so.

That might be a reasonable prediction, or it might not. But as far as Unsung is concerned, it appears to be an answered question. If I play the game by the rules, I buy into the principle.

It's certainly not an unusual model to present, in gaming or in fiction. In any movie about civil rights in Mississippi, you can be sure that the Klan bigot who helped lynch the black kid also beats his wife and probably molests his daughter too. But what about the guy who's a perfect gentleman toward all white people, but still abetted the lynching, because his entire hatred is focused on just one target? In some ways he's more of a monster, because he's harder to find. He's the real racist; the other guy is just an all-purpose violent bastard.

I guess what it comes down to is that I fear a single sliding Humanity score may be too simple a model to describe people's morality in war. It works for Sorcerer because Sorcerer is more abstract. Sorcerer doesn't depict people dealing with real-world situations in a real-world way. Demons don't actually exist in the form in which Sorcerer presents them. But Unsung is at least in large part about depicting real-world war as it's been experienced by real people. The morality of Faust is simpler (not easier, but simpler) than that of, say, Apocalypse Now or M*A*S*H. One size might not fit all.

- Walt

wfreitag wrote: It's certainly not an unusual model to present, in gaming or in fiction. In any movie about civil rights in Mississippi, you can be sure that the Klan bigot who helped lynch the black kid also beats his wife and probably molests his daughter too. But what about the guy who's a perfect gentleman toward all white people, but still abetted the lynching, because his entire hatred is focused on just one target? In some ways he's more of a monster, because he's harder to find. He's the real racist; the other guy is just an all-purpose violent bastard.

I guess what it comes down to is that I fear a single sliding Humanity score may be too simple a model to describe people's morality in war.

Hi there,

Jim Henley used to object to Humanity in Sorcerer in precisely these terms.

That's one of the main reasons I decided to publish Sex & Sorcery as a print supplement instead of just a little PDF. I'll only say here that I think I address this issue pretty well - one number does not mean a single gauge.

Best,
Ron

You're probably right, Mike.

I like Kirt's idea that I cross-posted with, making keeping track of the character's notion of who the enemy is (and, I would add, what an enemy is, something like a humanity score for the enemy, or rather the character's opinion of the enemy) an optional system element in a sidebar. That would be an excellent solution all around. I'd certainly use it, but without it I do see the game as being more accessible.

- Walt