For reference, my initial and somewhat confused stab at all this is here: The Iron City.

I started off on this project with the GNS model in the forefront of my mind. To work on this particular draft, however, I've tried to consciously let go of it, and set myself to simply writing it all out first. It's all working out and I'm slowly coming up with the kind of game that I'm aiming for.

In the past two weeks, I've realised that what I really wanted for the game was a system that would encourage (even demand) player input and enable that input to be structured into a cohesive whole in order to play out the style, atmosphere, and premise of the game.

Posted below is the sum total of my efforts thus far. I've reworked a great deal of my initial ideas, attempted to wrap my head around the things I'm aiming for, and tried to tie the whole mess together under a single coherent system. While, the stuff below still needs a great deal of refinement, it is nevertheless something approaching a complete sketch of the game.

Please take a look if you're interested:

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Iron City: A Roleplaying Game of Secrets and Subversives

I. Setting and Style

The City is for the most part a slightly surreal, sprawling, urbanised, steampunk version of socialist East Germany, the world behind the Berlin Wall (post-WWII, circa 1960 or so). Think of something along the lines of Fritz Lang's Metropolis (or better yet the recent Tezuka anime of the same title) complete with airships, trains, steam-powered robots, gasmasks, and bowler hats. The City has its own relentless force-of-nature version of the Stasi, East Germany's dreaded secret police.

I'm not intending the setting to be realistic. It really won't be anything more than a backdrop for the premise and characters to give both flavor, and a source of raw fuel for player input.

In terms of overall style and feel, the game takes its cue from The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton. The text of which is available for anyone's perusal at Project Gutenberg.


II. Core Elements of The Game

Meaning things that I'd like the game's system to explicitly address in some way. These elements are: (a) the state and its relentless secret police; (b) a cell of anarchists out to strike a blow against the established order; and (c) an atmosphere of unspeakable secrets, dangerous conspiracies, and ever-spiraling mystery.


III. Premise

In your own dark heart, you are a traitor to the state, and now your enemies are many and unseen. What hidden knowledge will you use against them? What mysteries are you willing to dare in your search for truth, your desire for vengeance? The secrets we play with can always come back to stab us in the back. So, what secrets are you willing to risk knowing?

(Note the the premise as I've stated it above isn't meant to reflect any pre-conditioned GNS goal I'm aiming for. I've really just written down what the game is about and what it's essential draw might be.)


IV. Basic Dice Rolling Method

Six-sided dice. Pool versus pool. The actual number of dice indicates the relative strengths of the two opposing sides. Basically, I wanted an easy way to increase or decrease the relative strengths of two opposing sides. I also knew I wanted dice-to-dice comparisons instead of adding them up, and leaning towards Fortune-In-The-Middle methods.

I haven't entirely worked out the details yet, but it's starting to look a bit like Sorcerer (but can't say for sure as I only have the Apprentice version). Unlike that game though, I need to set some absolute criteria for degrees of success: 1 dice rolled over your opponent's highest = marginal success, 2 dice over = complete success, 3 dice over = a resounding or noteworthy success.

All of this ties in with how I'm imagining the rest of the system to work. Whatever final method I decide on, the basic point to keep in mind for the rest of this draft is that more dice means a bigger advantage.


V. Characters

Simple and easily understandable characters will work well. I'm not intending the game to be particularly serious, despite the theme. No detailed backgrounds are really needed except for at least one usable plot hook per character since in key places, the system is built around this hook. Each player character has Purpose, Identities, and Traits.

PURPOSE

This is the hook. Simply put, this is a player character's source of anarchist motivation. A short sentence or two about his reason for turning against the state. It must include: (a) significant emotional involvement with a specific single person; (b) an unanswered question; and (c) a tie in to at least one other individual in the cell.

Example of Purpose: Looking for lost brother who was a staunch campaigner for social reform. Brother likely abducted by agents of the secret police. Masked six- fingered man was the last person seen with him. (Assume that six-fingered handprints have turned up in another cell member's Purpose write-up.)

Purpose is essentially a dice resource you add to any roll so long as the task at hand is directly related to your stated Purpose. It starts at zero at the beginning of the game and can be raised up to five by playing Portents (more on Portents later).

IDENTITIES

Basically, short-hand information about who a character is, including his professions, backgrounds, skill sets, and so on. The idea is similar to cliches from the Risus RPG by S John Ross. Every player character has three. These Identities mark out the limit and scope of a character's knowledge and skills.

Sample Identities: Gentleman Pirate, Stage Actress, Obscure Mathematician, Famous Orator, Opiate Dealer, Obsessed Serial Killer, Scheming Political Scion, Midget Trapeze Artist, Infamous Crime Lord, Daring Pilot, Stern Officer, Tough- talking Mechanic, Avid Sportsman, Amateur Sleuth, Hot-headed Duellist, Mad Inventor, Paranoid Alchemist.

Out of the three chosen, mark out two with an asterisk. These become Specialty Identities and add one or two dice to any task you make so long as the task is specific to one of these two identities.

Out of the two Identities so marked, choose one and add another asterisk to it. This becomes your Resource Identity, and your character possesses all of the contacts, equipment, political clout, and so on implied by it.

TRAITS

Each character has five traits. These five are Athletics, Intellect, Wits, Guile, and Composure. Rated from one to five. Each character has fifteen point to distribute among them. The average rating is 2, and 5 is highest. A rating of 1 indicates some disability or other such as paranoia (Composure 1), requiring a cane to walk (Athletics 1), being gentlemanly and honorable to a fault (Guile 1), and so on.

Trait ratings indicate the base number of dice a person rolls for a particular task. They are also used to track damage as appropriate. An explosion would, for example, knock your Prowess back 2 points and your Wits back 1 point. An opponent's taunt might knock back both Composure and Guile by 1. Should Cthullhu wander into the scence, your Composure might drop to 0 and you go stark raving mad.

How The Character Stats Work: Pick out the most relevant Trait for a task, add any dice from your specialty Identities (usually one or two, maybe three if both specialty Identities are specific to the task). Another Trait so long as it's not lower than two, can help out with one additional dice if its appropriate, such as say in a duel (Athletics is primary, Wits can help). Factor in whatever situational modifiers might be present. Finally, you can add a number of dice equal to your current Purpose count if it's a task directly related to your Purpose. Roll against an opposing pool.


VI. Purpose and Portents

Purpose starts at zero when the game starts. It's built up throughout the game (up to five or more, I'm not sure yet) by using Portents. A player may only play a Portent during significant moments of:

a. noteworthy success - you succeed a roll by three dice;

b. noteworthy failure - you fail by three dice; and

c. noteworthy struggle - if a task lasts for at least six or more sets of consecutive rolls.

(The above chart isn't fine tuned yet, but the basic idea is there.)

A Portent is any small bit of sensory detail (anything you can see, touch, observe, smell, notice, hear, etc.) that is directly related to your Purpose. A bit of directorial power is exercised by the player here. When playing a Portent he can "color" any item or person in a manner significant to his Purpose. Portents can only be played once per scene.

Portents example: After contending with the intricacies of a mysterious puzzle box, a player plays a Portent in and observes that the only way it can be worked is to hold the box with one hand, but with six-fingers! He's looking for the six-fingered man. Purpose goes up by one.

A player's current Purpose count is used to augment any roll explicitly related to Purpose. So if the player from the example above does meet the six-fingered man, he gets to roll extra dice. But only if he's played his Purpose up. The more Portents he plays, the higher his Purpose count, the more dice he gets against the six-fingered man, or other enemies who are clearly the six-fingered man's lackeys.

Should he encounter the six-fingered man without having built his Purpose up, he gets no dice against him. He can still play out one Portent in the encounter if he hasn't done so, but that the most he can do at that point.

Purpose and Restoring Damaged Traits: If a player is involved at any point in the game with anything directly related to his Purpose, he may restore any damaged Trait back to full by dropping his Purpose count by one. The effect here is risk against reward. The more you wait, the more points this particular use of Purpose actually restores, but also the greater the chances that you might be knocked dead, turned into a raving lunatic, or zapped into a mindless idiot.


VII. Secrets

Apart from Portents (and Purpose) players also have another director stance mechanic available with which to provide input for the game. This mechanic is called Secrets.

A Secret is a statement that belies but does not countermand the obvious facts framed by the GM for a scene. Each Secret must involve:

a. exactly two people, one of which can be the player declaring the secret if he so wishes; and

b. exactly one item of mystery, which can be: a phrase, a name, an address, a tattoo, a symbol, a book title, a mathematical formula -- something small and obscure but hinting at bigger things.

Secret example: The headmaster of the strange school we are scouting owes me a grand debt of gratitude. He wears a strange sickle-shaped red scar on the nape of his neck. In this Secret there are two people (headmaster and the player himself) and one item of mystery (the sickle scar).

Each player has one Secret per run of the game. A run is a complete set of Three Acts (as explained below). Secrets they can only be played into the game at specific points (Act I or Act II, but not Act III).


VIII. Structuring Play

In order to arrange player input into a manner coherent with the game's premise and overall feel, I'm using a framework to structure play. The framework is in Three Acts: Act I- The Meeting, Act II - Perpetration, c. Act III: The Chase.

ACT I - THE MEETING

It is during this opening phase that our underground cell of anarchists meet in their secret lair to plan their next strike against the ruling order.

They can gloat and laugh maniacally to each other, assured that their safehouse is completely immune to all the dangers of the outside world. In this phase, the anarchists cannot venture outside their hidden fortress -- or maybe they can, I'm not sure yet. Nothing from the outside world, except for a few personal effects and perhaps some bottles of wine, can be brought into the safehouse.

I'm intending Act I to be that area of the game where the players can get a good feel of their characters by hamming up their roles. Ease them into the game by providing some formally defined game space with little or no consequences for their character actions. In this phase, they can show each other their scars and trophies from the last run and other such things.

Act I is also meant to be some sort of invitation to play more protagonistic roles. The main purpose of this Act is for the cell to plan their caper, formally putting the players in a active rather than reactive role. If need be, and the player ideas are going nowhere, the GM can always have a mysterious knock on the door happen and deliver them a bit more material to work on.

Each player can spin his one Secret in Act I. Giving them the ability to pre-load, according to their Purposes, the upcoming scenes of play. No Portents may be played in this phase.

ACT II - PERPETRATION

This is the moment of truth, when the plan hatched during The Meeting is executed.

Having set up all the pieces of their latest plot, by playing out one or more of their Secrets in the previous Act, our anarchists now sally forth from their lair to set the torch to the powder keg with daring and aplomb. The plan might succeed or it might fail miserably. In both cases, action, danger, and mayhem is involved. Secrets, whatever is left of them from Act I can be played in Act II. Portents as well can also be played here.

ACT III - THE CHASE

Every criminal expects a chase, and subversives even more so.

In this final phase, our anarchists go about tying all the loose ends that may remain after capitalising on the secrets they have uncovered in the previous two acts. Each Secret revealed in the plot (Act I) and its execution (Act II) returns in some form in Act III. Our anarchists must meet any challenges that these may pose, all the time doggedly pursued by agents of the Secret Police.

Only Portents can be played in this part. This Act is when those Secrets you've played in the previous two Acts can bite you back.

The items of mystery stated in the Secrets previously played might be explored here in detail (eg: like that sickle scar in the example above), or the people implicated in those Secrets (eg: the school headmaster) might confront our anarchists. In the "strange school" example above, the players might discover that the headmaster is a member of a crazed cult of druids, maybe that the cult worships a six- fingered god, and maybe the cult is actually a tool being used by the Secret Police to keep tabs on the crazy underground cult scene.

Why are the anarchists compelled to do all this mopping up anyway? Well, the essential nature of their existence means they must try to cover all their tracks and tie up all loose ends if they are to survive and continue their fight against the system.

Act III may begin immediately after Act II, as the anarchists flee the scene of the crime. Or parts of it can happen days after Perpetration. Such as when a lone anarchist, far from his allies and their secret safehouse, is confronted by an assasin wearing a sickle scar. The thing to remember is that each Secret played out warrants at least one scene of play.


IX. The Secret Police and Act III

Remember that each Secret includes exactly two people, and exactly one item of mystery. Each of these (excluding the anarchist if he's one of the two people involved in his Secret) converts to one Lead point in Act III. Leads represent an abstract way of accounting for anything that the near-ubiquitous and highly competent Secret Police can use against the perpetrators of the crime in Act II. For example, they might represent a criminal profile that the Secret Police are formulating based on analysis of forensice evidence at the scene of the crime, interviews of the people at the scene, and so on.

Leads directly translate to added dice to be distributed to any agent or agents of the Secret Police that may be lurking anywhere in Act III. These dice are used in only one way: to augment an agent's roll so long as the task involves an action against the anarchists.


X. Purpose, Leads, and Villains

Only the characters created and run by the players possess Purpose. All other individuals in the game, since they aren't the main characters of the story, do not have Purpose to use as additional dice.

Unless of course that individual is a Villain. A Villain is always emotionally involved with one or more of the players. They always possess a Purpose count and they can use them much like the PCs do, except it's always assumed they've played all their Portents and are injected into play with the maximum Purpose count.

There are also other special individuals in the game. The agents of the Secret Police possess Leads, which are in a way similar to Purpose in their use (except that they can't restore damage to Traits).

All of this implies that the most powerful Villains the game can produce come from the ranks of the Secret Police. These guys have both Lead points and Purpose points, both add up in some way.


XI. Some Last Minute Closing Notes

How The Game Ends: When Act III is sufficiently dealt with, the anarchists have been successful at avoiding detection and any connection to the perpetrated crime against the state. They begin the next run with another Act I, but this time there are new elements for the players to think of from all the spiraling mysteries and unanswered questions that may have been produced in the last Act III.

The Role Of Setting: The game setting and its details really become fuel for the players to base their Secrets on. They might draw inspiration from a pre-provided list of cults and conspiracies detailed in the setting write-up. They could implicate officials and various personages named and written up for the setting, and so on.

Role Of The GM: The referee for the game is called the Sunday. Apart from all the standard referee tasks, the Sunday is there primarily to ensure that all the various implicated people and items of mystery the anarchist players come up with are in some way related to their Purpose write- ups. The Sunday provides the opportunities for the anarchists to play in their Portents and spin out their Secrets.

Secrets And Their Use: The Secrets mechanic allows a player to retroactively "fill in the blanks" of their character's background, as both a product of ongoing play and as significant elements of the evolving story.

Purpose and Changing It: I imagine that at some point in time, every anarchist character can get to resolve their Purpose with some finality, or otherwise experience some shift of Purpose. I'm thinking of requiring that the only way this is possible is through a significant involvement in death. For example, the character finally confronts and kills the six-fingered man. Or perhaps one of his fellow cell-members dies a tragic death at the hands of the Secret Police, and that can if the player wishes refocus his Purpose on vengeance for this specific loss.

Purpose Decay: I think there also needs to be some constraints placed on the effects of Portents on Purpose build up. Such that the build up degrades over time. Like say, for example, two points of Purpose might be lost per day or something.

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Whew. Poured out all I've got up there. That's it so far. The game is of course still not very refined, but hopefully a working picture of the system is emerging.

Any feedback or critique of the work above will be greatly appreciated. I'm interested in whether people think this will all work, that is if the game as its shaping up looks like it has some teeth and may be worthy of further development. Is the approach to the theme and premise a feasible and playable one? Might the play structure prove to be too limiting? I'm also wondering if there are other systems out there with similarities to the approach above that I can look into.

I'm hoping to run a short playtest of the ideas above in the coming month or so, with my group here at home. I'll be refining the draft above and laying out all the rules in the meantime. On a side note, I'm also looking to illustrate the game myself (horrors!) so that it ends up with the look and feel that I'm aiming for.

My sincere thanks for taking a look at Iron City.

Hey WD,

Iron City is very very cool. I like the whole setting and style. And I like that I can't imagine a play group wanting indefinite play. I think there's something about the concept that makes Iron City a game that people will want to bring to closure in four or five sessions, which is cool because when a player's natural instincts are to achieve closure you actually don't have to work very hard mechanically to force theme-addressing play.

Assorted thoughts and questions:

1. Am I correct in assuming that Guile represents a capacity for deception? At first I was thinking "cunning" and it was too close to Wits. What distinction do you make between Intellect and Wits? Can you give an example of when Guile would apply to a conflict, but not Wits?

2. When do you envision Composure being the most relevant trait for a conflict? I'm having a hard time envisioning it ever being primary. Composure doesn't seem like the other traits, in that it doesn't allow someone to get anything done. It just protects a person from consequences.

3. I think you might need a chart of example damage for various "attacks." I can see players taking issue if the Sunday's assignment of Composure damage seems arbitrary. "No, I don't lose my composure."

Or perhaps the GM can assign damage, but the player can re-interpret and reassign it to any Traits they used in the conflict, if they've used a Trait that is different than where the GM assigned the damage. This could be really cool, because the more I think about it, the gamism of being effective is about keeping your Composure from dropping below 2. You aren't going to do much where Composure is a primary trait, but you're almost always going to get a bonus dice from it if it's not less than 2. What conflict isn't enhanced by composure? I like this. Effectiveness is about regulating your Composure.

4. Here's the real issue though: I'm not a statistics guy, but I think you have a real problem with dice probabilities. Mike Holmes once told me, "See, using the Sorcerer mechanic, after just a few dice adding more doesn't do hardly anything to your average outcome. Using d12s you go from 6.5 to 8.5 with an increase from one to two dice and then to 9.5 with the third and 10 with the fourth." And that "packing" up near the top of the range is even more pronounced with pools of smaller sized dice. You've got mechanics where the player needs to introduce a Portent in order to raise his Purpose, and in order to introduce a Portent he needs to succeed or fail by three more successes than his opponent. At the modest quantities of dice you're going to have your players rolling, I think this is going to be exceedingly rare.

One other thing about the Sorcerer mechanic at modest quantities of dice, in my experience, is that it's flukey. I think you'll see the underdog winning a lot, with one or maybe two successes. When Ron runs the game, he throws bonus dice around like they're candy. It doesn't cause problems, because the mechanic is very tolerant of having lots of dice in play. I think both of these things are at odds with your stated goal of "more dice means a bigger advantage." Extra dice are very hard-earned in Iron City...so I think you need mechanics where each dice means more.

I've been thinking about how I might personally solve this since you posted yesterday. Are you familiar with FUDGE dice? They're d6s, with two blank sides, two sides marked with plus symbols, and two marked with minus symbols. The mechanic I might go with: Each side throws a pool of FUDGE dice, and looks to see what they got the most of. The total of what they got the most of is their score. Compare to the opponent's score to determine victory, and subtract to determine any "noteworthiness" that would allow for Portents to come into play. My gut tells me the probabilities are closer to what you're looking for.

5. Are Lead dice lost from the pool when they're used by Secret Agents? Does the Sunday performa a fixed allocation of Lead dice to individual NPC Secret Agents, or is it a single pool that he can pull from as necessary?

6. Regarding how the game ends, have you seen Extreme Vengeance? It's an action movie roleplaying game that has very cool mechanics for the action heroes growing their Guts score over the course of play. The characters cannot confront the main villain until they've achieved a certain level of Guts.

Anyway...very cool game idea.

Paul

Hiya Paul:

Ah. Water falls on parched earth! :) I'm glad you like the game. All the feedback, questions, and advice really goes a long way. Thank you for helping out with all this.

Now on to some return fire:

Paul Czege wrote: I like that I can't imagine a play group wanting indefinite play. I think there's something about the concept that makes Iron City a game that people will want to bring to closure in four or five sessions...

Am I correct in assuming that Guile represents a capacity for deception? At first I was thinking "cunning" and it was too close to Wits. What distinction do you make between Intellect and Wits? Can you give an example of when Guile would apply to a conflict, but not Wits?

2. When do you envision Composure being the most relevant trait for a conflict? I'm having a hard time envisioning it ever being primary. Composure doesn't seem like the other traits, in that it doesn't allow someone to get anything done. It just protects a person from consequences.

3. I think you might need a chart of example damage for various "attacks." I can see players taking issue if the Sunday's assignment of Composure damage seems arbitrary. "No, I don't lose my composure."

Or perhaps the GM can assign damage, but the player can re-interpret and reassign it to any Traits they used in the conflict, if they've used a Trait that is different than where the GM assigned the damage. This could be really cool, because the more I think about it, the gamism of being effective is about keeping your Composure from dropping below 2. You aren't going to do much where Composure is a primary trait, but you're almost always going to get a bonus dice from it if it's not less than 2. What conflict isn't enhanced by composure? I like this. Effectiveness is about regulating your Composure.

4. Here's the real issue though: I'm not a statistics guy, but I think you have a real problem with dice probabilities....

One other thing about the Sorcerer mechanic at modest quantities of dice, in my experience, is that it's flukey. I think you'll see the underdog winning a lot, with one or maybe two successes...

I've been thinking about how I might personally solve this since you posted yesterday. Are you familiar with FUDGE dice? They're d6s, with two blank sides, two sides marked with plus symbols, and two marked with minus symbols...

My gut tells me the probabilities are closer to what you're looking for.

5. Are Lead dice lost from the pool when they're used by Secret Agents? Does the Sunday performa a fixed allocation of Lead dice to individual NPC Secret Agents, or is it a single pool that he can pull from as necessary?

6. Regarding how the game ends, have you seen Extreme Vengeance? It's an action movie roleplaying game that has very cool mechanics for the action heroes growing their Guts score over the course of play. The characters cannot confront the main villain until they've achieved a certain level of Guts.

Something I've re-drafted again lately is the Secrets mechanic. Below, I've tried to focus and simplify it, in the process eating up the whole "item of mystery" idea (which seems to be horribly numinous in my pervious write-up). If I've done my job right, it should be much easier to understand:

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Iron City: Player Secrets

Secrets can be spoken out only after the Sunday presents a scenario during Act I. They may be played into the game during Act I or Act II, but not Act III. Each Secret must be spoken of only the individuals and elements already brought into play by the Sunday after he frames the intial scenario.

A Secret is hidden knowledge, uncommon information. It is about what you know, not about what you have. It deals with knowledge of past occurences, never future events; that is, something your character already knows, or information he has somehow recently acquired.

Every Secret always begins with a specific person and and ends with a mystery or an unanswered question. Always be specific about the person your Secret begins with. The person need not be named, but his details need to represent a specific individual. Whatever mystery or question left hanging must be sufficiently engaging and never trivial. The Sunday remains the final arbiter for such matters and may if necessary modify the wording or focus of a Secret's mystery.

Every Secret spoken must belie the observed scene but may never countermand it. Secrets can be about your own character, but it cannot be about any of the other players' characters.

A Secret may be used to: (1) assume prior relationships of trust, distrust, loyalty, treachery, love, hate, and hidden or otherwise obscured motives; (2) assume prior connections to or memberships in a certain group; (3) assume the prior existence of any special object, equipment, or knowledge in the hands of any a person other than the player characters.

(* Note: By "assume" I mean that the process of speaking out a Secret retroactively creates whatever elements that Secret deals with. Whether or not these elements were actually in the scene as framed by the Sunday. Thus, there's the stipulation that Secrets should always belie and never countermand the scene.)

The first Secret spoken into the game holds precedence over any succeeding Secrets. The succeeding Secret may be related to the one before it but it must never countermand any of the prior Secrets.


The Secrets Template:

I know that ________. What I don't know is ________.


Single Secret Examples:

(a) I know that Jory Pendle, an important member of the city water council, has grown to trust me explicity over the years. What I don't know is where he got that strange twitching limp from.

(b) I know that lately, Holm Maven, the head antiquarian of the museum we're visiting tonight has been busy examing a special archeological discovery, probably one involving an ancient manuscript. What I don't know is what exactly that discovery is.


Chaining Secrets Example:

(Assume that several players are speaking out their Secrets one after another.)

I know that Holm Maven, the head antiquarian of the museum we're visiting tonight has been busy examing a special archeological discovery. What I don't know is what exactly that discovery is.

I know that he, this Holm Maven character, is also involved in illegal arms trafficking. What I don't know is who his arms supplier is.

I know that his supplier wears the same scar I saw on the man who killed my father. What I don't know is what that scar means and who else might be wearing it.

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Might the above re-statement of how Secrets work be clearer? Is it easily understandable? Again, thanks for taking a look and thanks for any feedback that may be forthcoming.