You might want to freshen up with the original thread.

We added a new player, Dana, who was playing Alicia Tyloni, a sniper with rumored connections to the Mob... One of the interesting things about Dana as a player is she'd done a lot of freeform roleplaying online, but never really played with an acutal, agreed-upon formal "system" before... And she took to the Gift and Lapse mechanics -- with the strong Director stance -- like a duck to water.

This session was a lot more cinematic. Below are links to the logs. As before, the first link is a slightly edited log of the narration, and the second link is the OOC chatter, including die rolls.

http://ivanhoeunbound.com/unsung2_nar.txt
http://ivanhoeunbound.com/unsung2_ooc.txt

The OOC log is almost as excited as the narration log, as you can see a high amount of Gifts being given and taken. I had trouble keeping track of it all. We had at least two Lapses, and we nearly had more...

I'm very interested in what people -- particularly Mike, but I'd love to hear from anyone -- think of Alexander's suggestions for character advancement. He suggested ditching the whole curent advancement system, and just giving everyone 1 Gift Point at the start of every session -- advancement would only come from turning Gift Points earned in play to Story Points. This does have the advantage of focusing the game EVEN MORE on Gifts and Lapses...

I'd also love general comments about the game or the system. As a reminder, this is the system we're using:

http://ivanhoeunbound.com/unsung_playtest.html

...tho we're doing advancement after EVERY session rather than after every 5 sessions.

Ugh, those logs contained the previous session, too. I trimmed them so they're easier to digest.

First, I thought Dana went well (Is she Alicia? She was spelled Alica all night and I thought she was using some cool avant-garde spelling). Without her, I don't think we would have had nearly as MANY Gifts as we had, and the Lapses wouldn't have been nearly as interesting. She was really a natural, and I enjoyed her addition to the group. I have nothing bad to say about Dana's performance.

Meanwhile, I too am interested to hear people's thoughts on my suggestion to Kirt about ditching a lot of the "every five sessions, every ten sessions" dice-rolling point-giving crap, and just turning it into a Gift Point extravaganza. For those who were interested:

My suggestion was, basically, to give one Gift Point at the beginning of each session in addition to anything else that happened, instead of all the "every five sessions" group of dice rolling. Honestly, the math works out to be ROUGHLY equal to the same stuff. Especially since 3 Gift Points = 1 Story Point, so anything that's currently worth 1 story point could be worth 3 Gift Points. Makes everything simpler AND increases the focus on Gifts. My one change to this suggestion from what I gave in the logs, though, is: set it up so that 2 Gift Points can buy a new Descriptor (instead of three), but if you REALLY want it, you can spend that extra Gift point to get it "without a player vote" (which is what 1 Story Point, i.e. 3 Gift Points, allows).

Any ideas on this? Thoughts? Comments? Criticisms? Rude remarks?

Hey guys...

Yeah, for the record, it is Alica (pronounced; a-LI-sha - I know thats not technically correct, but I just like it that way). It's basicaly a spin off my ususal internet alias as Alica Tylon. I had a complete blank for a name and just fell back on my stock choice - thats why my yahoo group name is what it is.

I was also curious and had an idea about the rerolls - I think they should be allowed, with the ususal 1 point for responsibility, 2 pts for the others. HOWEVER, you should have to encorperate the failure into the narration. For example, if Alica botches her shot roll and I choose to reroll, she should have her gun jam for a second but then recover. What do you guys think?

Hmmm. My gut reaction is that rerolls, unlikes automatic successes, should be worth 1 Gift Point, no matter what attribute they're for. It just doesn't feel right to me, otherwise. It also makes someone a bit more likely to try a reroll... "Hmmm... automatic win for 2 gift points, or test my luck for 1 gift point?"

Just a thought.

I agree that either way, the failed roll should be incorporated into the narration, whether the final roll is a success or a failure.

Yeah - and a double botched reroll could be REALLY interesiting. I wonder if loki will like that mechanic

I like Alexander's idea for advancement. The idea of improvement doesn't make sense to me thematically. I mean, the characters "develop" already in play via the Responsiblity related mechanics. And that's what seems to be important. The rest is just what happens "around" that.

I think that by focusing on this aspect that you really have something with this game. I do think that it needs to be tweaked a bit in other ways, however. For one, I think that there's an assumption of the player as advocate for the character, which doesn't neccessarily bear out. If you want that to be the case, then you need to encode that somehow (I'm thinking some sort of metagame goal mechanic or something).

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: I like Alexander's idea for advancement. The idea of improvement doesn't make sense to me thematically. I mean, the characters "develop" already in play via the Responsiblity related mechanics. And that's what seems to be important. The rest is just what happens "around" that.

I think that by focusing on this aspect that you really have something with this game. I do think that it needs to be tweaked a bit in other ways, however. For one, I think that there's an assumption of the player as advocate for the character, which doesn't neccessarily bear out. If you want that to be the case, then you need to encode that somehow (I'm thinking some sort of metagame goal mechanic or something).

It's hard to explain. There seems to be an adversarial sort of process inherent. Maybe if you can explain to me why the player can't Gift his own character, I'd understand better.

So that others have some perspective, at one point my character was approaching a bomb to defuse it, and nobody seemed prepared to give him a Gift, despite it seeming to me that this was exactly what he was designed for. So I asked if I could give on to my own character. I was told by Kirt that I couldn't, and the other players chimed in that this "wouldn't make sense", etc. Basically, the feeling seemed to me to be that the giving of Gifts is adversarial. Players are trying to dent the other character's shining armor (and in the process create some really neat play).

The point is that we all felt the same thing. When you have a player like myself playing in a very authorial stance, there's no reason to avoid Gifts. You welcome them, in fact, and wish that you could give yourself some. Because there's really little else to do in the game other than to explore the character's moral dilemmas.

Given that there's nothing saying that you have to be an advocate for the character's moral fibre, however, this all seems to fall down. That is, the player is allowed to roleplay Lapses whenever he wants to do so (in fact two of our characters seem pretty depraved at times). The Gift and Lapse rules just force him to do so. Given that the player could just declare these actions anyhow, and that the player can veto Gifts if he wants, that seems to make them like suggestions for which the suggesting players get a reward. There don't seem to be teeth.

What happens when a character reaches 0 Responsibility? Does the player lose the character? That would almost give the player an incentive to be the compass for the character, except that, again, the only interesting thing to do is to challenge the character's integrity, and that I think a character "loss" might be cool to play for.

This is especially true because I don't see this being a long-term game. I mean one could play it as an ongoing TV style serial or episodic game, but I think that after a while that you'd run into the same sort of problems with realism that you do in TV. I call this Magnum PI syndrome. I really bought Tom Selleck's portrayal. The thing that I couldn't get over was all the stuff that happened to him week after week after week. How many love interests does a guy have to go through, anyway?

It seems to me that Unsung seems to detail some crucial period in the lives of the characters. Some series of stressful events that lead to some ultimate conclusion. Very much like Sorcerer does. It just doesn't make sense to go on and on. In the original setting, the military at war, the characters are eventually going to get through the current battle or mission. Even go home, eventually. In the meanwhile, stuff happens to to challenge their morality, sure. And there's always another battle. But once you've presented the character with his shot at being good or bad, his story seems mostly told, IMO.

(The short term feel is also another reason why I would say that "advancement" isn't neccessary)

This may take many sessions to get through. But I think these stories need some sort of conclusion. As such, I think that playing for "bad guy" is just as valid as playing for "good guy". Someone should get to be SGT Barnes, just as someone should get to be Elias, and someone should be Chris; the main characters from Platoon. Note how our three characters started out with exactly that split. Barnes starts as overly pragmatic, and slides into depravity. Elias' morality gets him killed. And Chris is there to have to make the tough decisions based on the acts of his role-models. Classic.

So if we're playing to such a goal, then there's no adversarial process, and it seems senseless to restrict Gift giving to other player's characters only.

Mike

Well, first of all, no stat can go below 1 or above 19. Unlike Sorcerer, there is always a tiny amount of hope left -- it never truely bottoms out. Only death ends the character. This was a deliberate design decision -- when you hit rock bottom, you have a change to pull yourself out. I know it's stated in the rules somewhere but I might do well to restate it when talking about changes in Resposibility.

I guess it wasn't clear from your initial comments that self-Gifting was the issue. Part of it, I think, is a fear of Gamist creep -- if you can give yourself a Gift, it becomes much easier to get Gift points, and this strikes me as potentially "abusive" and subject to a form of creep. Perhaps this fear is unjustified given the power of GM veto, but I believe that was part of my thinking at the time.

That said other -- and bigger -- part of it was an intent of scene involvement. That is, I want to encourage people to pay attention to, and be involved with, scenes that their character is not in. If you cannot earn a Gift point with your own character, you have to be paying attention to what the other characters are doing, which gets them involved in those character's actions. If you can get a Gift point from self-Gifting, it's much easier to drift into a "My Guy" sort of mode where you're only concerned with your character's devolopment rather than what's going on with everyone else.

This is the same reason you don't get a Gift point for accepting a Gift. You are already being rewarded with attention.

All that said, if I said you couldn't Gift yourself, perhaps that's a heat-of-play knee-jerk decision that, on reflection, I don't fully agree with. I think you SHOULD be able to give your own character a Gift -- just not get a Gift point for it, for the above reasons, particularly the attention one. If you're in a moral dilemma, you're already being rewarded with attention, and you don't need a Gift point there.

Now, there is the assumption -- Hell, it's even built into the term Gift -- that the player sees attention on their character, positive or negative, to be a good thing, and enjoyable. The sort of person that Robin Laws calls "the casual gamer" might not get as much enjoyment out of Unsung for this reason.

THAT all said, there was no adversarial intent. Now, that may have evolved into the game because of the players and/or some sort of unconcious bias on my part, but it's not supposed to be an advesarial thing. Again, it's called a Gift for this reason. It's supposed to be: "Ooooh, I see an opportunity for character growth here, for you." And that earns a Gift point because the player is showing an interest in your character, which is something I want to reward. It's assumed everyone is interested in their own characters.

Now, I find your sense that Unsung is mainly good for short-term game interesting. I hadn't thought about it -- you may be right. Do you think that it could benefit from some sort of My Life With Master sort of Endgame? Or, at least, emphasizing the short-term nature in the text?

What do other people who've been playing the game think about Mike's assessment? Too much "meltdown" for long-term play? Not that this is neccessarily a bad thing -- a short burst of intense roleplaying is a wonderful thing.

I didn't bring up the self-Gifting thing at first because its a symptom that I knew would be misleading if I mentioned it. And I was right. I only mentioned it to point out that the Creative Agenda is confusing in the presentation, IMO.

I like what you've said, above, however, in general terms. The interesting thing is that players are rewarded for causing moral problems, but they have no incentive to play out the situations in which the character is redeemed. This seems to me to be the real problem. That is, the reward system only rewards the downward trend. So you feel a need to guard against this by creating what feels to me and others like a adversarial system, where you can only Gift other player's characters.

Let's say that a Gift could also be given to cause the opposite of a Lapse (is there a term for that? A Redemption?). If that were the case, then I don't think that it would matter if a player could do it to their own character. Because the rewards would be for whatever good situation the player could put himself in, not for a situation that tends to a particular direction.

Looking closely at the reward mechanic, we have to consider the two sides, what the reward is for, and what the player can do with it. The "what it's for" is definitely in line with what you want already as you only give points for making the situation more complicated. The only reason someone might go Gamist is that the rewards can be used for character success.

And here we see another problem. You could just say that Gifts can only be used to automatically succeed on a Responsibility roll. But then you have this odd situation where the player may be getting a reward that he doesn't want to use if he's authoring the downward slide (with the effectiveness boost options, you have a very "Dark Side of the Force" sort on an effect where the player can be moral, or more effective, but not both). Again, the system is saying that you want rewards because you must want the character to do well, and to keep from sliding into depravity. Unless the player is defined as an advocate for this, however, this isn't neccessarily true.

Looked at another way, it's odd that the same point you recieve for Gifting a player (who could have vetoed your Gift) can be used to automatically succeed at a Lapse roll for a Gift that he accepts. A player doing this would be accepting a test, but ensuring that he passed it. That's just a lot of control over the situation. To an extent, I think that the player veto is part of the problem.

Do you see where the trouble lies with the players trying to determine what their role is in play? I'm not saying that I think that you ought to go a particular way, but another way to go would be to embrace the adversarialism. Give it that Gamist edge where the players are trying to keep the characters moral, and the others are trying to drag him down. That could work quite well, IMO, as an alternative.

On another tangent, looking at the rules again something that occurs to me is that it would be cool for Responsibility checks due to Lapses to happen on the spot instead of at the end of the session. More rewarding that way, and less bookkeeping.

Mike

P.S. I just realized another interesting issue. The rate at which you recieve Gifts from other players, and the rate that you Gift, affect the players pool of Gift Points from which he can "protect" his character. That is, if there were only two players, and they essentially "took turns" Gifting, they'd have enough GP to always prevent each other's Gifts from being effective.

Looked at another way, it's odd that the same point you recieve for Gifting a player (who could have vetoed your Gift) can be used to automatically succeed at a Lapse roll for a Gift that he accepts.

Perhaps this is so subtle I'm missing it, or, being the creator of the game, I find this so intuitive I have trouble understanding what you're arguing for and/or against.

The idea behind the game is that the downward spiral is the interesting, and that is why the game focuses on that. However, you want to check it for as long as possible, because that extends this interesting play, and leads to more interesting and complicated situations.

The focus is not on going down, but the interesting situations that happen on the way down. The important thing isn't the loss, but the complications that lead up to the loss. The struggle is all, and it doesn't matter whether the character succeeds and/or fails in the struggle so much as it's happening. I am more concerned with the complication than the results of the complication.

That is why you get a point for introducing a complication -- it creates a struggle. You can't self-Gift because I want people to be interested in other characters -- we covered that. To me, the interesting thing about Vampire -- where a lot of the inspiration for the Responsbility mechanic comes from -- is not whether you become more or less human, but what happens to you while that's going on. Embrace your inhumanity, or fight it? The reason the Gift point is best used to make a Responsibility check is to encourage extending that complicated situation for as long as possible.

Now, I'm sure at this point you're saying: "This assumes that you're an advocate for the character's Responsibility staying high." Not so. If you want to embrace the darkness, then do so. That's why Gift points can be used for other things. It's cheaper for Responsibility checks because while I want to encourage moral struggle, I do not wish to require it. I want both modes to be equally valid, tho perhaps one is more difficult than the other. Ideally, for most interest, you should have people in the group that go both ways, for contrast, which is the other reason to try to get people interested in what other characters are going.

And for a player interested in jumping down the throat of the spiral, Gift points let you decide how and when that happens. It lets you extend that period of time where the character is not a total cad, where there is ambiguity about the character. Because once the character is totally out-of-control, the chance another PC or NPC puts a bullet in his brain is high. The most interesting villians have a scrap of morality left, a core they're holding on to, and I want to encourage people, if they go the out-of-control route, to be that sort of "villian".

There's no reward for setting up for an act of heroism, because heroism is supposed to be its own reward. Doing that right thing is supposed to be hard, and the main benefit it it makes it easier to do the right thing again. I have to admit that in the context of the gritty tone I'm going for, I find the idea of rewarding heroism any more than that to be counterintuitive.

And remember a potential Lapse can be a heroic opportunity as well. You can do the wrong thing, but it's also possible for you to do the RIGHT thing.

Now, the reason for player veto is that a Lapse can mean a loss of control of the character -- and some people might not want that to happen as often as others. Now, the GM can require a Lapse check at any time due to the situation, without a Gift, so no character is immune -- but it's there for player comfort, so they're not forced into an area they don't want to deal with. It's like having a safeword in S&M, without interuptting play. I'm not sure why the player veto is problematic in this context.

As for the "Dark Side of the Force" effect, remember that character action and giving Gifts are two different things. I can play a very moral character -- and still use Gifts to make things very complicated for the other characters. With all those Gift points, my character would be both moral and effective. In fact, doubly so, given the different uses for Gift points.

By the way, before I forget, I'd like to remind you that it also only costs 1 Gift point to allow ANOTHER PC to succeed at a Responsibility check. Does this help or hurt your concerns? The idea here is if you're interested in another character (and gaining Gift points), you can use those Gift points to extend their spiral for as long as you want, or even give them a chance for redemption.

Remember also that Responsibility isn't just for Lapses -- it's also for making people trust you, and, more importantly, when you do something heroic, you get a Responsibility check to increase Responsibility -- and you can use a Gift point for THAT.

I think what you're seeing as a problem, I'm seeing as a deliberate attempt at flexibility, given what I'm trying to do. Down or up, I want to encourage people to extend things for as long as possible, without making it too difficult to go down if that's what you WANT.

Now, I know there's a love here on the Forge for mechanics that do ONE THING and do it well, but I really don't want to emphasize one way or the other, except perhaps lightly. I want player options to remain flexible. If you want to advocate for Responsibility, great -- support is there. But it isn't required.

Also, while I wasn't aiming at an adversarial system, I'm not sure I'm opposed to that, either, so long as interesting complications result from it.

On another tangent, looking at the rules again something that occurs to me is that it would be cool for Responsibility checks due to Lapses to happen on the spot instead of at the end of the session. More rewarding that way, and less bookkeeping.

P.S. I just realized another interesting issue. The rate at which you recieve Gifts from other players, and the rate that you Gift, affect the players pool of Gift Points from which he can "protect" his character. That is, if there were only two players, and they essentially "took turns" Gifting, they'd have enough GP to always prevent each other's Gifts from being effective.

That'd be curing a symptom again, Dana, not the cause. I think something needs re-arranging at the root of all this, though I'm not sure what precisely. That's not as bad as it sounds. Often these things can be fixed with just a tweak in presentation, and a couple of rules fixes. But I'm not sure here.

That said, this is the sort of place in design where instances of elegant design occur. That is, in making this sort of adjustment you often improve other things simultaneously.

Can any of you other players corroborate of contradict the problem I'm trying to get at? It seems to work fine in play, so maybe I'm overthinking it.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: Can any of you other players corroborate of contradict the problem I'm trying to get at? It seems to work fine in play, so maybe I'm overthinking it.

I wasn't really paying attention to that last session. but this one i'll keep it in mind. if i do see it, i'll let you guys know.

EDIT: no session for wednesday, sept 17th - hurricane chased loki out.

I'm not entirely sure that "the reward system only rewards the downward trend."

The reward system is entirely "hey, put the spotlight on other people, and you'll get a bonus." That's what it is rewarding, it seems to me. It seems entirely indifferent on whether or not the character goes up or down.

That being said, the Gifts do seem to make a person choose, "do I mosey on down the spiral? or do I forego improving other parts of myself?"

Perhaps... the following, as a replacement for my initial suggestion. I don't know why I'm suggesting this entirely, only that it occurred to me after reading Mike's commentary, and feels like it could be appropriate:

* Whenever a Responsibility check succeeds, for whatever reason, you get a Gift Point.

I'm not sure why I'm suggesting this, like I said, but I think it has something to do with attempting to encourage stability, at the very least.

If you use this in conjunction with the automatic success rules, you can revise your Gift Point Cost Table thusly:

* One Gift Point can be spent to cause any other character to make a Responsibility check yadda yadda
* One Gift Point can be spent to re-roll ANY roll, after that roll is made, either for your own character or another.
* Two Gift Points can be spent to automatically succeed on any roll, either before or after the roll is made. Once again, either for yourself, or another character.
* One Gift Point can be spent to replace a current descriptor on any Trait(assuming the players vote along with it). An additional GP can be spent to trump the vote.
* Two Gift Points can be spent to add a new descriptor to any Trait (assuming the players vote along with it). An additional GP can be spent to trump the vote.
* Three Gift Points can be spent to raise or lower any Trait by one point.

Then, if you use 2 Gift Points to auto-succeed a Lapse, you get a Gift Point back, thus netting you a 1 Gift Point loss (equal to your old system). For an untested, just-spat-out-of-my-skull idea, I think it might add something to your game.

Bah, posting this for the second time, because the Laptop I'm using has buttons badly placed, such that I often press the back key when not meaning to. Anyway, I've had something of a turnaround about the Lapse system. At first I didn't like the Lapse system because it gave other people control over your character, although I've been glad to see for the most part that people have not abused this, and have done what it is intended to do. id est that the character will act on their most basic instincts, even if it is not the optimal situation. My favorite example of this would be Alica shooting the perp in the head, because deep down, it's what she wanted to do.

In this last game, I accepted gifts, but stopped the roll for a Lapse in order to prevent Frix from losing responsibility at the end of the session. I pretty much just realized that I had been going about this the wrong way. I should instead be using the GP to succeed in the responsibility check at the end of the session, and have him Lapse away in the meantime. Fits the character much better IMHO. Towards this end, I agree with Kirt that by having the responsibility check at the end, you are actually slowing down the downward cycle. In fact, I also think that the Story Point can be effectively removed, with an expensive GP cost instead, as Lxndr suggests. I would go so far to support this that if Kirt allows us to use the story point we got last session, I will use it for something besides responsibility. Frix is supposed to stay on the edge, not really going either way.

In terms of character advancement, I agree with Mike that this seems to be a short story arc game. This game focuses on a time of extreme Crisis, otherwise its not interesting. But at some point, Frix either pulls out of his funk or gets sacked. If people are interested in continuing a certain campaign, they could create new characters, with the setting slightly after the last one session ended, and focusing on another aspect of the world, with the current PCs becoming very distant NPCs.

Frex, Frix(sorry had to) does get sacked, and the other players feel after another few sessions that they've taken it as far as they can, but want to keep playing the SWAT aspect of it. The players could then take on the guise of an underworld syndicate that is being busted open by SWAT, albiet a different team than the one the players were on. Thus the gangster Willie Wack'em has heard of the team lead by Lt. Guerrera, but feels relieved that he is facing another one. I'm afraid I might be rambling, so I'll stop for now.

I thought that you had to make a responsibility roll for each Lapse at the end of the session?

The downward spiral is in that, all Gifts cause Lapse checks, AFAICT. All actual Lapses cause a check to see if Responsiblility goes down. So the Gift mechanic seems to cause the downward force in the game. With only player willingness as a force to cause upward gains.

Am I confused on how something works?

Josh, didn't you have another name on the Forge previously? If not, and this is really your first post, welcome aboard. :-)

Mike

You make one Responsibility roll at the end of each session, no matter how many Lapses you wound up having during that session. At least, that's how it's been played so far. If I remember right, your character Ricky had two lapses last session:

1. The one that ended with him dropping the locator device squarely between Frix and Guerrera

and

2. The one that ended with him running out of the building instead of disarming the bomb.

And you had to check against your Responsibility once, despite having Lapsed twice.

Mike, I most certainly did have another name on the Forge, but for the life of me, I can't remember what it is.

Lxndr, I'm not sure about the accounting, but you're right about the rule, looking at the text. Interestingly, if the character does something heinous the GM can call for a roll at any time. I guess I'm just calling for this to be simplified to one roll for each Lapse, each of which are, after all, bad things.

It's also interesting to note that there's a rule that says that a player is allowed to have the character fail a Responsibility roll at any time. That says that there's no incentive to go downward so it's not prevented if the player wants to do so. But you aren't allowed to ascend so easily. So the mechanics are saying that this is the player challenge, to be the advocate. Again, mixed signals when compared to the CA that Kirt's saying he wants.

Feels odd talking about someone when they're about to be in a hurricane and can't respond...

Mike

I'm back! Stayed out of the rain, and my house is still around after the hurricane -- all good things.

Mike, I think you're hung up on Gift Points as the only reward in this game. I thought about this a lot while riding away from the hurricane and this is the deal: If you want to author the downward spiral, you are rewarded with attention. That character is going to have a lot of Lapse checks and a lot of spotlight time. This, to me, is reward enough. It is an assumption of the game that getting attention for one's character is a fun reward into itself.

Now, as I said, you CAN Gift yourself -- but you don't get a point for that, because you're already rewarded with attention.

Also, your concern about this seems to speak to something I think you're not getting about why the Gift mechanic is the way it is. Your perspective seems to be "I'm not properly rewarded for engineering, as an author, the downward spiral."

When what's really going on is you're not being rewarded for ignoring your co-authors -- the other players. That is, instead of asking "How can I engineer my downward spiral?" the question should be: "How can WE engineer my downward spiral?"

That is, instead of trying to author the spiral yourself through Gifts, the current mechanic is supposed to make you turn to the other players and be honest with your agenda: "Guys, I want to see this character take a fall, big-time. So I'm going to need the Gifts from you all in order to do it."

As this plays out, you and your character are rewarded with spotlight time and attention. The other players get Gift Points for paying attention to something other than their own character.

Does this make sense? Or have I mis-characterized your concern?

Mis-characterized.

Let me ask you this. Why do the other players decide on what makes for an appropriate Lapse? Why doesn't the player do it himself?

It seems to me that the notion is that the player can't be trusted to narrate his own character's failure properly. Which says that, again, the player is an advocate for the character's morality. How am I supposed to see that?

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: Mis-characterized.

Let me ask you this. Why do the other players decide on what makes for an appropriate Lapse? Why doesn't the player do it himself?

It seems to me that the notion is that the player can't be trusted to narrate his own character's failure properly. Which says that, again, the player is an advocate for the character's morality. How am I supposed to see that?

Just seems problematic in delivery. Can't say exactly why at the moment. Note all the OOC catcalls about, "I'm so gonna get your character for that Gift!". Isn't that the players thinking that they're adversaries? Good naturedly, to be sure, but then that's the essence of all good competition. I think it's precisely the encouragement in #4 that leads to this. Even Josh playing the bad-guy character kept talking about how he had to give out Gifts in order to keep his character's head above water. Refering to not spiraling down to a 1 in Responsibility. Well, why worry about it? It's that encouragement, which comes in the form of the other players being set up as foils. It's like, if they're there to do bad things to my character, I must be here to do good things.

There probably is a simple "Horror Revealed" level solution, but I can't think of it at the moment.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: Just seems problematic in delivery. Can't say exactly why at the moment. Note all the OOC catcalls about, "I'm so gonna get your character for that Gift!". Isn't that the players thinking that they're adversaries? Good naturedly, to be sure, but then that's the essence of all good competition. I think it's precisely the encouragement in #4 that leads to this.

Even Josh playing the bad-guy character kept talking about how he had to give out Gifts in order to keep his character's head above water. Refering to not spiraling down to a 1 in Responsibility. Well, why worry about it?

It's that encouragement, which comes in the form of the other players being set up as foils. It's like, if they're there to do bad things to my character, I must be here to do good things.

There probably is a simple "Horror Revealed" level solution, but I can't think of it at the moment.

I honestly didn't notice much of an adversarial thing between Josh and myself at all. Any comments of "I'm gonna get you" were, at least on my end, made in jest if I made them at all (I'm not saying I didn't, I just honestly don't remember). I had FUN with the Gifts, and while I was looking for places to give them, I wasn't doing so adversarially, or looking for anyone in particular to single out. I was just happy to give them (and to get the points, which are dang nifty things).

Heck, I think I gave more Gifts to Ricky last session than anyone else. Our new player really added a new dynamic to Gift-giving that made them more common overall, though that might have also been the rest of us getting more used to the mechanic. I know there were exponentially more Gifts in the 2nd session than the first.

Actually I was thinking of Dana.

It's precisely that this game doesn't have a single idea behind how to play that's problematic. Not that I think that there should be only one option. Not that I think that players should, or should not be adversarial particularly. Just that the rules as written and played don't seem to me to convey to players just what play is about in a coherent sense. And that's why I kept pointing out that Dana was having trouble with exactly this all game long.

Alex and Josh have played together, and all three of us have the Indie Netgaming vibe to fall back on. So we're not really good judges. It's the fact that Dana (sorry you had to be the guinnea pig) didn't see things how we did, IMO, that was the problem.

Alex, if there's no incoherence between the elements, then I propose that your "good natured" chiding such as it was, wouldn't have been humorous. It's like when you play D&D and you say, "I'm going to kill the baby kobolds because they aren't worth any EXP alive." It specifically points out the game's incoherent nature or your drift from it's priorities.

All this said, perhaps I'm just hypersensitive to these things and there's no real problem. But if there is a problem its that the rules seem to have multiple thrusts in effect, which has the potential to be confusing to players, IMO. How to fix it, if there is a problem, is much more difficult.

Kirt, I find it troublesome that it seems that your goals were constructed after the design was partly done. I think that this might be the source of the problem (should it exist).

Mike

Well, that's important to know, Alexander -- it sounds like you're not seeing this adversarial situation at all. I have to admit, not to pile on Mike, that I didn't see it, either, tho I can see how Mike might have felt that way.

(BTW, check out the thread in Indie Design -- Ben made an interesting suggestion.)

ssooo....

The problem is I got too enthusiastic?

Look, I had no intention of being adversarial. My main agenda that night was to have fun. I really wasn't foucusing on anything mechanically. I was foucusing on having fun, making sure I didn't blatently screw up, and maybe even impressing you guys since it was my first session and your all probibly twice my age. And when I get kinda excited, I tend to make weird jokes and act a little agressive. That's where the "I'm so gunna gift you". That wasn't anger. That wasn't me being adversarial. Perhaps I should have tagged this on "when i think of something pretty cool that would add something". So like Alex, I was just having fun. At worst I got the same descriptor I gave my character at the end of the session "tends to get carried away".

Does this help at all? Because from what I'm reading I'm the primary problem, and I'd like to help fix that. And next time if I am doing soemthing problematic, I'd like to be informed. I'm always open to feedback.

Dana, I didn't find your play problematic at all. That's my opinion, at least. In fact, I think you made the game much more vital than it was previously, tho part of that might have just been people getting used to things.

Mike, I have to admit I viewed Dana's actions more in the way she characterized it than the way you're characterizing it. That is, she was excited and full of ideas. "I'm gonna Gift you!" was more an expression of "Cool, I get to do this" than anything else. She seemed to enjoy bad stuff happening to her character just as much as it happening to other people. Not adversarial at all.

(Dana or Mike, feel free to hit me if I've mis-characterized anyone. I've already done it to Mike a few times in this thread...)

Given this, I'm starting to think that the whole adversarial thing is a red herring.

Now, here's the heart of things:

All this said, perhaps I'm just hypersensitive to these things and there's no real problem. But if there is a problem its that the rules seem to have multiple thrusts in effect, which has the potential to be confusing to players, IMO. How to fix it, if there is a problem, is much more difficult.

Kirt, I find it troublesome that it seems that your goals were constructed after the design was partly done. I think that this might be the source of the problem (should it exist).

This is spiraling all out of control. I'm making statements and people are assuming all manner of crazy things that I have not said.

Dana, you weren't a "problem", and you didn't do anything wrong; if anything I'd say you played quite well (not that it matters for purposes of what we're discussing here). I said that to you that night, and I haven't said that you were doing anything wrong here. You were a new player, and I can understand if you're feeling some anxiety over the situation, but it wasn't my intent to cause any, nor is there any actual reason for you to feel any. I fear going on with this discussion while Dana feels that she's being attacked.

Incoherence is a circumstance brought about by the system. It's what happens when the system gives mixed signals in terms of what play should look like, and players make assumptions to fill in the gaps (which they must). Therefore, it's just as much my "fault" that there were differencs in perception of the mode of play, if blame has to be assigned. Which it doesn't in terms of players. In any case, there was definitely some small examples of certain interesting kinds of Incoherence going on (some caused by the Indie Netgaming bias, actually). OTOH, they were hardly problematic. I think that's part of the problem here is that the incoherence didn't become problematic at any point, going entirely unnoticed by anyone but myself. So, in the absence of a real problem, it's hard to point out what I think is a potential problem in play.

And, worse, to the extent that it's potential it might never become an actual problem meaning that my concerns are unimportant. I wouldn't put money on it, however.

By using the term Adversarial I don't mean to imply rancor. If we're playing basketball, I expect you to both be adversarial and friendly at the same time. These are in no way mutually exclusive. In fact, you don't have to even believe in your side of the "case". As an analogy, if we're both lawyers and you don't think that your client is guilty, you're still required to play your part in the adversarial system. So it has nothing to do with emotional content. It has to do with the rules.

Now, as to whether anything was actually adversarial or not, I can't really say. All I've said so far is that it wouldn't surprise me if, given the rules as written and employed that night, that there wasn't some adversarial effects going on.

But now, again, we're overfocused on that one point, which is minor. I'm still talking about symptoms trying to get at what I feel is a root cause. Let's try something else.

Dana, if your character were to be attacked by a thug, would you see it as your role to do what you could to see that your character survived?

Mike

I didn't think you were attacking me and I'm sorry if I responded in a defensive manner. Relax =). If anything, i appreciated the feedback, and I just wish I got it sooner. *hug*


as for your question, I'm assuming you mean within our game. granted I wouldn't be thrilled with the idea of my character dying. However, if it's from a gift, and I have to roll, I'd see the result. If it says survive, ce la vie. if it says die and I have a chance to change the roll, i'd consider the story impact before making a descision.

You know, I think I'll leave you boys to the mechanics. I'm over my head here. But i will stay tuned and if I got something to say, trust me, I'll speak out.

I'm still not communicating, Dana. Further, we need you for empirical data. Like I said, you're a good guinea pig because you don't know the theory here, and therefore have no bias surrounding it. So let's try again (please :-) ).

In the game we're playing, your character comes to a door. You as the player know that there's a bad guy on the other side of the door who wants to see your character dead and is quite capable of making that happen.

Do you have your character:

- call for backup.
- storm through the door.

Now, why would you take the choice that you did? There are no right or wrong answers here, so please just go with your gut reaction. That's what we need.

Mike

ahhh I see

Well within this case I'd say a. call for back up. I'd make this call becuase it goes with my charatcers write up. She isn't an outgoing type - I describe her quiet and observent. and she knows that she's no frix in that she can't take too many hits. She'd wait. Also since she is the villan (or at least, thats what I'm aiming for, subtle villan with a moral core on her own terms.) and she has no real desire for any of the group to live, she'd rather have them risk their lives then risk her pretty little head. She's not a nice lady right now. But that could change.

at root, I'm not basing this off the idea that I wanna save my char. I'm doing it because thats what my character would do.. she's a bit of a self preservationist ... jerk. and I try, when i roleplay, to keep true to the char sheet.


does that help?

That does help, Dana, thanks for your participation. I think I've got it now.

Do you see how this relates to what Ben was saying, Kirt? Basically the problem is that I'm disincentivized from providing my own character's protagonism - no Gift Point. Dana is playing "correctly", following the idea that she shouldn't be pushing her own character's protagonism (other than in little ways - calling in the other teammates, frex). She didn't feel a need to find problematic situations. I did. The game was telling me that it was all about the moral conundra that characterize it. So I was trying to get into those.

Basically, you've got a very odd game. You're only encouraged to protagonize the other player's characters, mechanically, but informed by that same mechanic that the game is about protagonization through it. Is it a surprise that I wanted to use the mechanic on the character I was most interested in, my own?

The incoherence is that, given these conflicting messages, you have players who will play their characters either Sim or Nar, depending on their interperetation and/or their tradition. And that was exactly the small instances of incoherence that I was noting. Dana kept with a traditional "in-game" view of information. The rest of us pervy narrativist sorts kept playing with OOC info.

It didn't happen to result in problems in our case, but that's not to say it wouldn't in other groups. Our play was congruent, but if Dana hadn't been so open-minded about the Nar angle, might not my need to Gift my own character have potentially thrown a Sim player (who was enjoying the OOC Nar portions of the game, which do not conflict because of the separation)?

Mike

Well, I was aiming at a Sim/Nar hybrid.

I guess all I can say is I don't see why you're not rewarded, and why you're disincentivized. Attention on your character is a big reward, and even if you don't decide what happens during the Lapse, the fallout is entirely on your character, controlled by you. It very much puts the spotlight on your character.

Why should you be rewarded twice? The incentive is to play along because it spotlights your character, and because it's more interesting that way.

You can Gift yourself, you just don't get a point for that, because you're already being rewarded with attention. I know that's all the incentive I need to get my character in interesting moral situations.

Do you not believe that attention is a reward? Does the reward have to be less "soft" for it to "count"? I mean, would this problem melt away entirely if you got a Gift point for Gifting yourself? Or a Gift point every time you Lapsed?

xiombarg wrote: Do you not believe that attention is a reward?

But you can control whether you accept a Gift or not through veto!

Sigh.

Look, the reason you lose control is for the surprise factor. I honestly believe that having the other players make my character do something I don't expect and then having to deal with it is fun, not unlike the "self hosing" (aka "In the Crapper") from Metal Öpera. If you can control what your character does during the Lapse, the one thing I like most about the system -- my overall vision for the game -- is gone, and we might as well be playing Universalis. And there's nothing wrong with that, but this is another game.

I know I would enjoy that sort of thing, the angst-bunny that I am. And to me, the attention from the fallout of the Lapse would be enjoyable to me. Would we have had as many scenes with Alica if she hadn't blown that guy's head off in the Lapse?

So, the loss of control from the Lapse mechanic is not going to change. Given this, you didn't answer my questions from before:

* Would get a Gift point from self-Gifting fix the problem?
* What about getting a Gift point every time you Lapsed?
* What about getting a Gift point every time you passed a Responsibility check?

As for "what it would hurt" for you to get a point from a Self-Gift, well, it's very, very easy to slip into a situation where you're only paying attention to your own character. Time and time again, I've seen players use narrative control to take the spotlight away from other players. And I want to encourage a more "ensemble cast" feel.

Yes, I know, in theory if you have a mature, sensitive group spotlight-hogging won't happen. But it's easy to do by accident. I fall into it pretty often myself, when I'm a player.

And, yes, hogging the spotlight can be fun, but it's not the sort of game I want for Unsung.

I have to admit to a certain amount of frustration here, Mike. It sounds like, to me, that you're complaining that the game does exactly what I want it to do.

xiombarg wrote: But you can control whether you accept a Gift or not through veto!

Look, the reason you lose control is for the surprise factor. I honestly believe that having the other players make my character do something I don't expect and then having to deal with it is fun, not unlike the "self hosing" (aka "In the Crapper") from Metal Öpera.

* Would get a Gift point from self-Gifting fix the problem?
* What about getting a Gift point every time you Lapsed?
* What about getting a Gift point every time you passed a Responsibility check?

As for "what it would hurt" for you to get a point from a Self-Gift, well, it's very, very easy to slip into a situation where you're only paying attention to your own character. Time and time again, I've seen players use narrative control to take the spotlight away from other players. And I want to encourage a more "ensemble cast" feel.

I have to admit to a certain amount of frustration here, Mike. It sounds like, to me, that you're complaining that the game does exactly what I want it to do.

Indeed this does end up like Universalis in the end. Where all the players are playing all the characters. Except in this case for the player who created the character. The game needs some player goal for his own character that he can achieve through play.

There's some good stuff in there, I think. The Gift point for the Lapse might work. Then you have an incentive to Gift yourself, hoping for the Lapse to occur. But still....

I agree that it's the characters we've created. And saying it's play is only to say that it's the character in return. That is, I truely haven't felt that any situations have arisen that I could have played better. They haven't grabbed me. But that's basically because I've created a character looking for a conflict (as you point out). I don't feel that I can provide that conflict. There should be hooks for each character, like the ones that the rest of the players put in to prevent my error (actually I think my archetype is cool, and would like to see some rule where he has to pick upa conflict early on - sorta DIP). I think this ought to be mechanical somehow. Perhaps related in some way to the descriptors. Which in turn would be the player's way of directing the character's conflicts over time. Something in that vein, I dunno.

For the extra reward, just have the first Gift given to a particular character in a session worth 2 points instead of one. This doesn't pertain to the problem in question at all, IMO, but I think it would be a cool rule.

The Confessional thing I'm not sure about, but it could be cool. At least you're really stretching the noodle on that. Good thinking. What do others think? I do love how they work in InSpectres....

What I think is really the answer would be to give some use for the Gift points that has some real meaning to play of the character. See, since the game is about the moral choices, I have little interest in the combat, etc. So I'm really not all that interested in using the Gift Points after I get them. I think if the player wanted them because of something cool they could do with them, that would be the missing link.

For example, if there was some target number of successes to finish a mission, like InSpectres Franchise dice (you have me thinking that way now) that would be generated per the rule of currency, then there'd be some focus on the character action that would be benefited by the current Gift mechanic. It changes the premise of the game somewhat to something like "can you get your job done while facing moral adversity" but I think that's not too far from what you wanted. Anyhow, I think something in there would be the solution to the problem.

Mike

Hmmm, I will have to cogitate on that one a bit, I think.

In the meantime, futher commentary and ideas are welcome...