Yudhishthira’s Dice

Just had another very successful Crime and Punishment playtest in which many good things were learned and many areas for improvement explored. This time we got to play it with people not known to us, due to the awesomeness of the Toronto Indie RPG group. We got two games played at once, one doing Law and Order and one doing 24. Watching the differences between the groups and the games was amazing — between the by the numbers L&O and the insanity of the 24 game with everyone at the table jumping up and down and hurling chips around it really represented a good slice of diversity.

There is still stuff to work out, especially around procedure pacing and clarity on bidding issues, but man… this game generates energy like nothing else.

Also worth noting, again, that the Toronto Indie group is awesome, and I look forward to playing with them again. It’s a rare thing to get a group of people with that much energy and focus for a playtest of a smallest-of-small press game, and these folks really delivered — both in play and in commentary and help afterward.

Last night my Truth and Justice game came to an end. We’d played it for 19 months (from July 2005 until February 2007), with a 4 month break in the middle while I was in India. We had somewhere between 54 and 60 sessions in that time, with each averaging about 4 hours in length.

The game started with a scared girl who was a victim of life and the world, whose only friends were dolphins and a scatter brained old professor. She then became a neighborhood superhero, cleaned up crime on the streets, found her confidence, and had to deal with the issues that women who gain power and sexual identity in a media-blitz world have to face. From there she moved to a national then global level of power and influence, fighting ancient Egyptian sorcerers with the help of the sexy Darius the Great (known now as Sulieman the Magnificent), international crime cartels run by the Illuminati Immortals, Nazi cyborgs who were trying to nuke Greece, and something around 20 other major villains in plots going from dolphin brains in jars trying to melt the polar icecaps, to the PTS victims of a military mutant experiment trying to get vengeance on their abuser, to invasions of snake men from outerspace.

In the midst of all of this there was revenge, true love lost and found, sword fights, pirates, blowing up of major historical landmarks, ninjas, demon chicks, lost cities under the sea, ancient dolphin kings, race riots, friendship, betrayal, and sex.

The last arc of the story centered around DJ (Deja Vu, star of the show) finally using her precognitive powers to their full extent, and going all Professor X and trying to guide humanity to a better future than the destructive course it was currently on. After wars, murders, assassinations, alien invasions, a jihad in which DJ had to kill one of the men she respected most, and the mass uplift of humanity into post-humanity, the game ended with humanity breaking the cosmic egg, constructing a space elevator, and starting their millennia long exodus into the stars.

The final scene of the game was DJ looking down onto the cosmic egg of the earth, as whales flew by in space guiding humanity with their song, and the fist wave of men in their seed-like ships left from the top of the space elevator to begin the colonization of earth. With the color of prophecy in her eyes she said to the man she loved, with whom she was finally united and at peace for the first time in the series, “We will be well. In time, all will be well.”

It was a truly amazing game. T&J is a fun system, and one I highly recommend checking out. We did drift it towards the end, but its a system easy to drift, and the currency system of Hero Points helped us more than the dice in a lot of situations. Which for this very gestalty game was a real bonus.

Before I left for India I GMed the infamous Bitches in the Vineyard game on the Foundry. It was, as we all know, awesome. The town I made for the game hardly ended up mattering though, because the Bitches were all up in each other’s coolaid before we could even get into the sins of the town. But on the off chance anyone wanted to see what was going on, here is the writeup for Three Forks.

Three Forks

Pride: Sister Deborah Snow has a beautiful singing voice, probably the best in the territory. Because of this she has become the town’s prized choir leader, and is wanting to go to Bridal Falls to sing in the theaters there, when she should be helping her husband take care of the children.

Injustice: Brother Joseph Snow is a hard working man of no great talent, and he has become obsessed with the idea that his wife is going to leave him if she gets a taste of the evils of the city. Because of this and his wife’s distraction, he is not doing his job as Charity Counselor and no one is watching over the neediest of the congregation.

Sin: Sister Hester Brooksbridge has two very sick parents, and is in charge of distributing community donations to the other elders. Because Joseph is too distracted to help her, she has started falling behind in the work. Feeling that she needs it and justifying that it shouldn’t go to waste, she has started keeping chunks of the donations for her own family.

Demonic Attacks: Children in town are starting to get sick (the hearts of the fathers are not turned to the children), and several families have lost children in the prime of life to a scarlet fever of unusual virulence.

Habitual Sin: Hester has started hording, terrified that her parents could get the fever that has started striking down children. As a result there is less aid going out than should, and resentment is starting to show between the haves and have-nots of the town.

False Doctrine: One of the fathers of three sick children, Zachariah Smith, has gotten so angry with the wealthy of town, who aren’t giving enough to help his children stay alive, that he has started to believe that it is within the bounds of the laws of charity to steal from those who have more than they need to give to those who have not enough.

Corrupt Worship: Zachariah burgled the house of a rich gentile, Niles Strindberg the local head of the railroad station, and stole several valuable (but hard to sell) antiques – such as golden candle sticks and a set of silver. He used the money he stole to buy medicine for his children, but can’t get rid of the other things.

False Priesthood: In panic, Zachariah confessed to his wife Mary what he had done. Mary immediately backed her husband, and started speaking to other women whose children were sick, trying to get them to join them to find ways to steal and pass the goods off. Two other women: Althea and Judith, have agreed to help and are planning on taking a trip to Bridal Falls soon, where they hope to sell the stolen goods.

What they Want

Deborah: Deborah wants the Dogs to praise her talents and to give her permission to leave for Bridal Falls to “sing praises to God in the best of places.” She also wants them to stop her husband’s jealousy and temper.

Joseph: Joseph wants Deborah to stay. He loves her, and will be lost without her. He wants the Dogs to make her stay and raise her children and help with the farm. If they won’t, he may beat or kill her to make her stay.

Hester: Hester wants the Dogs to heal her parents and to help get the town back on its feet without discovering that she’s been stealing from the charity fund. She desperately wants to keep her good name in town, and even more wants to not face the fact that she has been responsible for the deaths of children. She is likely to paint Joseph as a villain.

Zachariah: Zachariah’s heart has got some real darkness in it now. His anger has turned to rage, and his shame over his theft has turned into pride and self-justification. He doesn’t just want his children to get better (though he does want that), he wants the rich folks of the town to suffer as he has suffered. He wants the Dogs to hurt or drive out Niles, and to force the rich of the town to start donating to charity properly – starting by seizing goods.

Mary: Mary wants to keep her husband safe and her children healed. She doesn’t, yet, want to hurt the wealthy folk of the town. She wants the Dogs to blame someone else for the crimes and to leave Zachariah alone, or at last resort to justify him for his actions.

Althea and Judith: Althea and Judith want their children, and Zachariah and Mary’s children, to be healed. They also want the rich of the town to suffer for their wickedness, but find that a secondary concern. They are alone and have dying kids and just want a chance to keep them alive. They want the Dogs to heal their children, and they want to be absolved of sin because they haven’t actually done anything wrong yet. (Just planned to.)

Niles: Niles has had historically good relations with the Faithful in town, but is getting angry as it seems the Church has turned against him. He knows that the thief just about had to be one of the congregation, and is getting pissed over being stonewalled. As a result, he is going to call in the Territorial Marshal. He has been made to feel helpless, excluded, and betrayed and will not take it lying down. He wants the Dogs to return his things and punish the thief and punish the members of the congregation who conspired to hide the thief and a force a full apology from the rest.

Felkirk: Steward, wants his town peaceful.

The Demons: The demons want Deborah to become so proud that she tries to leave, at which point they want Joseph to beat her to death. They want Niles to call in the Territorial Authority, causing Althea and Judith to form a false priesthood with Mary and Zachariah to avoid arrest. They want Zachariah to kill either Niles or Hester – preferably both. They then want the town to turn on Joseph and kill him, dirtying them all and driving many away from the church.

If the Dogs Never Came

Althea and Judith would be arrested in Bridal Falls, and their children would die. Deborah would become bitter, but wouldn’t leave Joseph until he was implicated in stealing charity funds – then she would take their children to Bridal Falls and let them fall in with bad crowds there as she pursued her singing. Zachariah and Mary would kill Hester when the Territorial Marshal found out that she was taking charity funds, and then the Marshal would kill Zachariah. The town would then turn on Niles after the Marshal left, ruining him and his life.

Now for something completely different. The following is a list of the 5 NPCs of mine of which I am most proud, have the fondest memories, or just have an unreasonable fondness for.

5. Chastity Jackson. I think that was her name anyway. From a Spaghetti Dogs in the Vineyard game, this woman was the most evil, vile, castrating mother that you’ve ever seen. She ruined one PC, her own son, and sent him right down the path to hell while at the same time forcing his partner to shoot her to death in the midst of a spectacular thunder storm.

4. The Black Prince. From a Truth and Justice game, the Black Prince is a dolphin brain in a jar who first erupted into the game when he tried to melt the polar ice caps to drown the monkey-children and save the dolphin race. I’m proud of this one because he started out every bit as serious as that premise sounds on first blush, and developed into the Magneto of that campaign — a powerful morally opposed character that drove the PCs to define themselves, their place in the world, and their relationship to violence. Plus I just love to refer to him as the Dolphin Jesus Christ Brain in a Jar.

3. Ahamishamarahnahraj. Also know as “the Dragon King” (because only Nicole and I could actually say his name) this was the first major NPC in the first game of Exalted I ever played. Every male player at the table respected and feared him, every female player at the table wanted to do him. In a lot of ways he became the iconic image of the elder Fireblood for everyone that played that game, and he rocked the world. The reason I’m proud of him, however, is that he managed to do that without being a pet NPC or Mary Sue.

2. Anthony Spiegel. The sexually confused little Jewish boy who became the sidekick in an Unknown Armies game. Over time it was revealed that he was actually former Force Recon, a third generation Sleeper, and a chief romantic interest who still really just was the sexually confused Jewish boy who used to sit next to Morgan in class. This one is fun to play, and his constant humanity and ability to do the right thing at all the wrong times makes him near and dear to my heart.

1. Estaban. This one is sure to shock, as Estaban was a minor character in a 7th Sea game of sex, romance, and cursed fates. Estaban was a normal decent, caring guy, even though good with a sword, in a world full of bad-ass unstoppable sociopath murder machines. He was introduced on a whim and a hunch as a complication to the fated game-mandated must-happen love-marriage of Fortuno and Olivia and ended up almost destroying the game when he nearly ended up breaking a love that was written in the stars with his simple human decency. Plus he had long beautiful silver hair, and that’s just cool.

My Roleplaying Summary

It all started with White Box D&D, back in about 79.

Then it went to Red Box D&D, and stayed in the various colors of boxes for eight years or so.

AD&D came next, at about the same time as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangenesses.

Pendragon and Champions introduced me to the fact that there were radically different types of games out there, and after that the flood gates opened.

Next came Shadowrun, Rifts, TORG, Battletech, Cyberpunk, Ars Magica, Marvel FACERIP, Ghostbusters, and Star Wars all in a huge rush. This was the era of the summer game where my group would play for 16 hours, sleep, move to someone elses house and play for 16 hours again. Insane and possibly unhealthy when I look back on it, but it rocked at the time.

I dimly remember some oneshots of Darksword Adventures, the Batman RPG, Skyrealms of Jorune, and Prince Vallient, but none of them caught on. My group shifted around as we moved into highschool, and there was a time of short games.

Vampire made a brief appearance, then faded out quickly.

Amber introduced me to diceless RPGs, and Theatrix followed quickly after to turn me into Lord Master Illusionist.

Then came a gold age of Dark Conspiracy, Cybergeneration, AD&D again, Earthdawn galore, Elric!, Middle Earth, Pendragon again, Shatterzone, and Everway.

Changeling: The Dreaming took me back into the land of White Wolf, and was followed in short order by Mage, Wraith, Werewolf, and Mummy. I also got into MUSH play at this point, and played lots of WoD, homebrew, and freeform play online.

In my non angst-gaming I did some Mekton, Paranoia, and Lace and Steel all leading me towards Castle Falkenstien and an abortive move into LARPing through CF rather than WoD LARPs.

Relativly late in the game I got into Feng Shui, Talislanta, and Fading Suns. At this point all of my play was pretty illusionist, and this lead to lots of short run games in which I didn’t get what I wanted — including Babylon Project, Jovian Chronicles, Blue Planet, and Call of Cuthluhu campaings that withered on the branch despite everyone being “really interested in the game.”

Tribe 8 and Unknown Armies were the next shift, and both resulted in a lot of new play and my first full book publications in RPGs. I played UA locally and played Tribe 8 with the Wicked Ink crew, developing a style of epic marathon game that I still enjoy to this day.

Joshua got me into 7th Sea, which I continue to play (slightly guiltily), and I had online games of it and BESM. I also got a single game of Nobilis out of the little pink book, and a session of Agone followed by a Sengoku game that was maybe my worst campaign ever.

Along with everyone else on earth I played D&D 3, with some success at first but followed by growing disconent. FVLMINATA briefly scratched my historical game itch, and Jadeclaw got some milage out of my TMNT naustalgia.

Riddle of Steel followed, and even though it didn’t last long it did give me a taste of something new and lead me to the Forge. From there I got into Sorcerer, and played a very terrible game of Sorcerer before giving up on Narrativism for a time.

Exalted then rocked my world and for years, as I moved to Toronto, dominated my gaming. More epic marathon games followed as I moved between two cities, and I got in a few oneshots of Wheel of Time and Buffy the Vampire Slayer along the way.

Then comes the current era, kicked off most notably by Heroquest and Dust Devils, which got me back into Nar play. Since then I’ve done Dogs, Breaking the Ice, PTA, Polaris, and a million other hippie games. I’ve also rediscovered my love of the bash with Iron Heroes, and of long run games with Burning Wheel and much more Exalted, drifted. I’ve also entered a new era of one-on-one games with Mo, and we play all sorts of those games in quantities to numerous to list, though Unknown Armies and Truth and Justice deserve mention for their lasting impact on play.

Now I’m in India and haven’t played for 3 months, my longest dry spell in 5 years.

As a note, a lot of this is clumped as it is because since late highschool I’ve almost never played only one game at a time.

While I was in Cali I played a game of pseudo-Trollbabe with my brother, whom we’ll call Z. It was short, intense, and a lot of fun. This is unusual, as games with Z tend to be long, slightly flat, and often a little disappointing.

Z is younger than me, has a speech impediment, and several learning disabilities. He sort of grew up in my shadow in a lot of ways (those of you who know me can probably appreciate how –not fun- it would be to be my younger brother). Not only that but he played with me as a GM in the very worst of my illusionist abusive whammy asshole GM days, and as a result turned into a classic example of several forms of abused player syndrome. He turtles, he always looks for the right answer, he only plays characters who are of the most white-bread middle class superhero morality, he freezes under pressure, and he waits for the GM to tell him a story rather than participating in creating the story himself.

Now, despite all of that he isn’t a horrible player. But historically he functioned best in semi-gamist games with clear expectations, easy and obvious answers to most of the problems presented, and rather pre-prepped set-pieces that were designed to allow him to step on up without actually having to step up. Anything more than that, and anxiety sets in.

So of course I figured, “hell, lets play a nar game with no morals and no ability for me to tell the story to him.” I’m just that kind of asshole.

We played using Trollbabe rules, but for various reasons (such as my personal inability to take trollbabes seriously, much less sell them to someone else) we didn’t do the “trollbabe” angle. Instead we did a pseudo-Hyborean age game. To do this we looked at a map of Howard’s world and I asked Z what he thought of the names (he’s never read much Conan). He liked Stygia, and when I said it was like evil Egypt, he proclaimed that he wanted to be a Stygian prince and necromancer.

This shocked the hell out of me. I jumped in to support, though, and a few minutes later we had his character sketched out and statted. He was a member of the nobility, looking for a way to lead his family to great power, and an initiate of the darkest and most ancient of Stygian arts. In every way this was a departure character from those Z normally plays, and one that felt in a lot of ways like it came right out of Howard – the kind of guy that would be Conan’s arch enemy.

For the game I used the setup stakes from the books about the shape-shifting cat being hunted by the brutal village warrior. I changed the cat to be a hot chick though, because romance and sexuality is another thing Z normally shied from in games and I wanted to see what would happen now that he seemed to have some boldness behind him.

Sure enough as the game started up, Z reverted to some of his bad habits. We’d set him up as being in the mountains looking for the magic of an ancient tribe who were said to worship snow cats and to gain connections with the local Afghuli tribe. But when I introduced a snow cat being stalked by the brutal Afghulis, his immediate reaction was to leave the area and avoid contact with either. When I asked why his answer was, “Because… it could be dangerous.”

I decided to roll with it, and asked him if he wanted a contest to make something happen, or to say what he did besides just leave. Did he want to see if he could get away without the Afghuli’s noticing, for example? He thought about this for a minute, and then said, “No, I want to talk to the Afghulis and find out why they’re here, but first I want to scare the crap out of them.”

We rolled, he won, we described his character stepping out from behind an ancient standing stone – right into the face of the leader of the Afghulis who was shocked and horrified to discover a Stygian who could sneak up on him in his own home territory. Z then asked, very timidly, if he could make another roll to learn some information about why they were hunting the cat. I told him that he didn’t have to, that his roll to intimidate the Afghulis covered the whole conflict of finding out what they were doing.

Something changed in Z then, and he started getting aggressive. His character became domineering and frightening. He just about broke the Afghulis as men before letting them slink off back to their village. But once the scene was over he lost momentum again, and said he wanted to “scout the land.” When I asked why, he said so he would know… and then stopped, not sure what he even wanted to know.

At that point I asked if he wanted to just skip to something cool. He said yes, that would be better. So we jumped to him tracking the snow cat into the mountains, and stumbling across an ancient burial mound that was full of wicked energy. When he went into the sacred ground, a beautiful woman confronts him and tells him he is not welcome. He says that he’s going to make her let him in, and talk to him. I ask how, and he says, “I’m going to seduce her.” I tell him to roll, and he fails, fails, and then on his third reroll manages to win. By the rules this means that his character is down and out — but he gets to narrate his fate. So he up and falls in love with her, totally failing to get any information out of her. They do have sex, but in his own description “for the first time his dark cold heart knows the thrill of life.” It was interesting watching him fight for that third roll, even though he knew that going for it could toally FUBAR his character he was willing to take a huge risk to be able to describe how and why he went down.

And from that moment on, Z was on a tear. It was like he wanted to see how far he could push this stuff, like he finally saw something he’d always wanted and wasn’t going to stop until he had it. He started calling for conflicts left and right. He’d push his rerolls when he needed to win, and let his character lose when he decided it would be cool to have a setback.

After three days of bliss with his new lover, the Afghulis caught up. When the they attacked he used magic to rip their hearts out of their chests People of the Black Circle style. He turned their corpses into zombies and used them to track down and murder their chieftain in an 5 roll long series that came down to a nail-biting finale. And when the dying chieftain told him that he could not protect the snow cat because his whole village would see her dead, Z started a conflict that ended with him butchering their shaman in the main street of the village while the villagers watched on with horror (another moment that could have been right out of People of the Black Circle – which I know for a fact my brother never read), and then forcing the men of the village to tie up their women and children so that he could lead the bound captives into slavery in Stygian labor pits. The men he gave a choice, they could come into slavery and protect their families, or die and serve him forever as undead. Most chose slavery.

At the end of the game, when I’d narrated the people walking down the hill with the nooses about their necks and the snow cat watching from the top of a mountain, Z suddenly kicks in and says, “And he never sees the snow woman again, for she knows now that he is a monster and avoids him forever after. Thus it is that Amunku never knows of the child she bears, until the day when father and son finally meet in battle to the death.”

And that’s how the game ended, with my turtling, never makes a character statement, afraid of sexuality, morally upright playing brother taking over narration and putting in a statement about the stakes of the game and the story he had just told. The combination of conflict resolution, distributed narration, and the understanding that there was no “right” thing to do worked, and Z and I had the most fun in an RPG we’ve had in at least a decade.

Trollbabe rocks.

I’m in Canada, I’m working really hard to catch up on missed deadlines.

However, I wanted to take a moment to post a bit from an online game of Dogs that I played recently. The things I want to show with this are 1) the amount of OOC banter that went on, and how it influenced the game; and 2) the way that brainstorming as a gorup turned a vauge conflict into a nice directed one that led to some really good posing.

Now, it’s worth noting that for #1, part of the reason for the banter is the slowness with which you pose on a MU — this level of “banter to game” wouldn’t be normal in one of my TT games. However, even at the table I tend to have lots of talk going on around play, as people toss out ideas and swing in and out of scenes.

This scene is one of the five initiation conflicts we played out in the first game, bringing Brother Isacc into play. It isn’t a perfect example, watch me screw up at least three seperate times, but it is an honest reflection of what went on in play and pretty typical of the night.

Here is Brother Isacc’s character sheet:

Isaac

Acuity 4d6, Body 2d6, Heart 4d6, Will 5d6

My father put a devil in me, and I’ll never get it out 2d4
An abusive past that he refuses to discuss or even admit to; Mary, his true love, knows, and anyone from his hometown more or less knows it too. Everyone else just sees the symptoms. Details are left to the imagination for now.
I have a knack for violence 1d10
Just as it says. Not the same thing as him liking violence; quite the opposite, really. Part of his father’s legacy.
I will prove myself a worthy man 1d6
Almost entirely motivated by love; this thought had never crossed his mind or entered into his actions before meeting Mary.
I am faking it 1d6
‘It’ mostly refers to being a Dog. It might also refer to a number of other things.
Love is my salvation 1d10
Love brought him to the Temple, love is the reason he’ll be made a Dog…
Love will tear me apart 2d4
… too bad it’s not the love of God, but of a woman.

The Steward who called me 2d6
Isaac is convinced the Steward called him to the Temple get him away from his daughter, because the Steward thought he was a no-account, worthless boy from a bad family. He’s going to prove the Steward wrong, one way or another.
The Steward’s daughter, Mary 2d8
The only person he’s ever loved, but more importantly the only person he thinks has ever loved him. Despite his years at the Temple, Isaac considers himself Mary’s lover first, a Dog a distant second.
My father 2d6
He owes his father a lot. Or for a lot. One of those.
The Dogs 1d6
He has mixed feelings towards his fellow watchdogs, and the Temple at large: he’s afraid they might catch on to his motives, and toss him out; he wonders if he’s the only one with a ‘better’ reason for being here; he doesn’t really ‘get’ it, the whole thing; he thinks he’s unworthy, because of his past, and he spends a lot of energy waiting for somebody to notice.

Available: 1d6

A book of scripture given to me by my one true love 1d6
At first, he only read it because it reminded him of her. But after a few years, maybe some of it has finally started to sink in.

His Dog’s Coat 2d6: Mostly, it ain’t much to look at. Dull grays and blues in sharp, poorly-stitched patterns. On the left side, though, there’s a welcome interruption — a burst of colour and mindful quilting that begins at the waist and finishes at the end of the arm. Overall, a little schizophrenic.

His mother died when he was a kid, and his grandfolk don’t want anything to do with his father, but he has two sisters — they made the left half of his coat, with all the bitterness and stomped-down hope of convicts digging somebody else’s escape tunnel. At some point, however, Mary got her hands on it, and with the help of a few charitable townsfolk managed to fix it up a little. Even the dull parts won’t fall to pieces.

Now, for the rest of the document the following colors of text are important:

-**- This is out of character banter.

Blue Text is game mechanical stuff going on.

Red Text is the actual text of the game, the poses of the events that transpire.

Warning: This will be long. Ready?

-**- Brother Brand says “Who wants to go next?”

-**- Sister Josephine thinks Isaac should go because he knows the game well.

-**- Brother Brand says “Isaac?”

-**- Brother Adrian stands near the back of the line, still learning by watching.

-**- Brother Isaac will go, if no one else wants to, since he’s read the (1st ed.) book and such.

-**- Sister Josephine will go after Isaac.

-**- Brother Brand says “Okay, Isaac, what is your conflict?”

-**- Brother Isaac says “Er, sorry, game code confusing me. My conflict is something like ‘Will I learn to love being a Dog on its own terms, instead of because of what it gives me.’”

-**- Brother Isaac says “So I’m not sure how to frame that, conflict-wise — as in, who takes what side of what.”

-**- Brother Brand says “You’ll play your character, I’ll play some opposition. Just set the stakes to what you just told me, and then we’ll work out the scene framing together.”

-**- Sister Josephine says “Well, someone could be trying to persuade you one way or the other.”

-**- Sister Rebecca says “But doesn’t Issac take the side of Issac as he was, and Brand takes the side of Issac as he could be? Or am I misapplying?”

-**- Brother Brand says “Or something possibly noble and possibly selfish could happen, like do you do something hard but good, or something flashy to impress Mary?”

-**- Brother Brand says “We could also do that.”

Brother Isaac sets the stakes to “Will I learn to love being a Dog on its own terms, instead of because of what it gives me?”.

-**- Brother Isaac nods. “The book suggests that, so that’s what I wasn’t sure about.”

-**- Brother Brand says “You can play your noble impulse, I your evil. Or you the evil and me the noble, depending on what you want.”

-**- Brother Isaac figures Isaac tends to see everything in terms of his love for Mary, so anything that forces him out of that would be in conflict with his current obsessiveness.

-**- Brother Brand says “Maybe if there is a teacher that you want to impress, rather than doting on Mary?”

-**- Brother Isaac says “I figure I’ll play Isaac as he is, and your job is to try and turn him away from that?”

-**- Brother Brand says “Okay. Now, what might turn him?”

-**- Brother Isaac hmms. “Kindness from other sources, or to other sources. Something else that appeals to his heart in a positive way?”

-**- Sister Rebecca says “I vote kindness to, rather than kindness from.”

-**- Brother Brand says “Right. Okay, what about another student who is getting hosed in combat training, and you have a chance to help her out with your good at violence?”

Brother Brand rolls 4d6 for “GM Dice” and gets 1, 4, 5, and 6.

Your dice are now 1 4 5 6.

Brother Brand rolls 4d10 for “GM Dice” and gets 4, 6, 6, and 7.

Your dice are now 1 4 4 5 6 6 6 7.

-**- Brother Brand says “Isaac, that sound good? Other ideas?”

-**- Brother Isaac says “Hrm, okay, I’m seeing how that could work out either way — Isaac associates his skill with violence as a bad thing, though, so the student or someone would have to bring the kindness into it (he wouldn’t see helping someone being better at violence as helpful.)”

-**- Brother Brand says “Oh, good point!”

-**- Sister Rebecca says “Or your skill at violence could be the driving force in your mind as you explain why it’s necessary but not optimal.”

-**- Brother Brand says “Or we could focus on Love. He’s got lots of love on his character sheet. Maybe learning to love something other than Mary? Even if its platonic and thus not threatening to Mary love?”

-**- Brother Isaac says “We could use what you described as the beginning of the conflict, followed up by some sort of conversation about it (either with the student, or with an instructor, after they see how uneasy Isaac is about it?”

-**- Brother Isaac nods. “That’s what I was thinking of with the kindness.”

-**- Brother Brand says “Okay. So do you want to start out talking or shooting?”

-**- Brother Isaac says “In theory, the Faith is about love as well as shooting sinners; right now he just sees it as a means to an end.”

-**- Brother Isaac says “Start out on the shootin’ range, maybe? Your call.”

-**- Brother Brand says “Okay, let me set scene.”

“In this world” said Brother Hemesh, “there are people that have the will to take a man’s life and those that don’t. Then there are they who have the desire to take a man’s life and those who don’t. To be a Dog you’ve got to have the first and lack the second.” He’d say that every day before shooting practice, like a prayer almost, until every one of you could say it with him.

Of those that it was obvious had neither the first nor the second, the most blatant was Sister Relief, a tall willowy girl who always looked like she should have a knitting needle in her hand, not a hunk of blazing steel. Most of the boys, and a handful of the girls, told her as much each day. She wasn’t going to make it as a Dog, and that seemed damn obvious.

That is, of course, until the day she came to Brother Isaac and begged him to teach her to shoot better, all tears in the corners of her eyes and honest desire to make herself more fitting to the King’s service.

-**- Brother Brand says “Jebus, and I was trying to make that a -short- post.”

-**- Brother Brand says “Okay, Isaac, wanna roll Acuity+Heart for talking so we can see who gets first Raise?”

-**- Sister Alice says “You’re both a bad Mormon and scene setter.”

Brother Isaac rolls 8d6 for “Acuity and Heart” and gets 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.

———————————- Conflict ———————————-

The stakes are: Will I learn to love being a Dog on its own terms, instead of because of what it gives me?

Brother Brand - 1 4 4 5 6 6 6 7

Brother Isaac - 1 1 1 2 3 4 5 6

——————————————————————————

roll = - spend - gain - fallout

——————————————————————————

-**- Brother Adrian says “Brand, that’s an awesome set scene.”

-**- Sister Josephine seconds that.

-**- Brother Isaac says “That’d be you. And everyone knows there’s no ’short poses’ in MU*ing.”

-**- Brother Brand says “Yea, I guess. Damn fuck fuck damn. Bad Mormon.”

-**- Sister Rebecca says “How do you determine who gets first raise, now? o.O”

-**- Brother Brand says “Best high pair gets first raise.”

-**- Sister Rebecca says “Okie”

-**- Brother Brand says “Which I forgot in your scene. Sorry.”

Sister Relief comes up all quiet, watching Isaac shoot for a long time — four full reloads — before she starts talking. “Brother Isaac?” She stops at the banging of a gun, wincing hard away from the noise behind her. “Brother Isaac? I need a favor, Brother. I … I need your help please.” She’s all blue eyes, sincerity, and a sense of failure hovering about her like a black cloak.

Your dice are now 1 4 6 6 6 7.

Brother Brand spends 4 5 for a total of 9.

Brother Isaac is shooting the same way he always does — like bullets are dirty, dangerous things to be gotten rid of, as quickly as possible. Bad memories smash one by one into the target, splinters and sawdust falling to the ground. When he hears his name he turns halfway to look at the Sister, gun lowered in his other hand. At first he responds like any human would — a look of concern — but then his face tightens. “I’m shooting right now, Sister… I don’t know what your problem is,” here he reloads the gun, “but I don’t think I’m the one to help you with it.”

Brother Isaac spends 5 4 for a total of 9.

-**- Brother Isaac blocks.

Brother Isaac spends 3 2 for a total of 5.

-**- Brother Isaac and raises. “Same pose will do as my raise.”

-**- Brother Brand says “Oh, brutal nice.”

-**- Sister Josephine says “Mental note: Brother Isaac Is A Dick.”

-**- Sister Alice says “Heh!”

———————————- Conflict ———————————-

The stakes are: Will I learn to love being a Dog on its own terms, instead of because of what it gives me?

Brother Brand - 1 4 6 6 6 7

Brother Isaac - 1 1 1 6

——————————————————————————

roll = - spend - gain - fallout

——————————————————————————

-**- Brother Isaac is not! “Not if you happen to be my one true love, I’m not.”

-**- Brother Isaac says “Oh, I forgot… trait roll from that pose.”

-**- Brother Brand says “Do it”

Brother Isaac rolls 2d4 for “My father put a devil in me, and I can’t never get it out.” and gets 1 and 1.

-**- Brother Brand says “OUCH”

Sister Relief crumples like a nice white Sunday dinner napkin stepped on by a plow horse. She starts crying and turns away, her gun falling to hang limp in her hand as she starts to drag her broken hearted self away from the scene of her final failure. She needs help, it’s damn obvious, and without it she’s done. This isn’t even asking with words anymore, it’s asking with everything she is, asking beyond the point of faith.

Your dice are now 1 4 6 6.

Brother Brand spends 6 7 for a total of 13 – this is the raise, because Brand screwed up.

-**- Brother Isaac says “Aw yeah.”

-**- Sister Rebecca says “Ew.”

-**- Brother Adrian sighs. “I still feel nooblike. Is it a block because Isaac matches the number? Or was that just the minimum needed to make the block?”

-**- Brother Brand says “You got it — he blocked because he matched my number.”

-**- Brother Isaac nods. “I have to match to see. If I can match in two dice, it’s a block.”

-**- Brother Isaac says “If I need more, it’s a Take the Blow.”

-**- Brother Brand says “But then I missed my dice, I needed to take the blow first.”

-**- Brother Brand says “So…”

Your dice are now 6 6.

Brother Brand spends 1 4 for a total of 5 – and here he finally remembers that he has to see before he raises.

-**- Brother Adrian says “And Taking the Blow is what results in Fallout?”

-**- Sister Rebecca says “Yes, Adrian.”

-**- Brother Isaac says “Is that a raise with 5, because you’re trying to be nice to me? :P”

-**- Brother Brand says “No, what I did was block for 5 (I couldn’t take the blow because my dice were to good), then Raise for 13 — in the same pose. So now Isaac has to see or take against a 13.”

-**- Sister Alice says “So it becomes mental note: Brother Isaac is a dick who seems to get hurt a lot.”

-**- Brother Isaac says “Oh okay.”

-**- Brother Brand says “It’s because I’m dumb and did my dice in reverse order.”

-**- Brother Isaac was confused. “So, I have to see a 13.”

-**- Brother Brand says “Yes. Sorry about that.”

-**- Brother Isaac doesn’t mind! “So, I’ll pose in an attempt to bring some traits into this so I can see.”

-**- Brother Brand says “For the OOC note, because Patience blocked, rather than taking the blow, it means that at some degree her tears are crocodile tears — he didn’t hurt her that bad.”

-**- Brother Isaac says “Relief, psst.”

-**- Sister Alice says “Relief. Unless Rebecca’s horse is back.”

-**- Brother Brand says “Sighs and goes to get more caffeine before his brain totally shuts off.”

-**- Sister Rebecca’s horse is Prudence; my Trait is Patience.

-**- Sister Josephine teaches Rebecca’s horse to shoot.

-**- Brother Brand says “Prudence, Patience, Relief, what the hell is wrong with these people and their names?”

-**- Sister Rebecca says “”I have a Ninja Black Ops Horse 2D8″”

-**- Sister Josephine says “That’s a BIG Ninja Black Ops horse you got there.”

Brother Isaac gets two more shots off before the tears sink in. He frowns and empties the rest of the clip, but the gun doesn’t get any lighter in his hand. He turns around, and holsters his gun this time. “Alrigh’, alrigh’…” he says, taking a step over towards the Sister and raising his hands in the universal gesture for ‘I ain’t gonna shoot you’. He crouches down. “Now what’s yer problem, exactly?”

-**- Brother Isaac will bring in his ‘I’m Faking It’ and his ‘I will prove myself a worthy man’ traits, since otherwise this scene will be over.

Brother Isaac rolls 1d6 for “I’m faking it” and gets 3.

Brother Isaac rolls 1d6 for “I will prove myself a worthy man.” and gets 4.

-**- Sister Rebecca says “You can bring in more than one Trait at once?”

-**- Sister Josephine says “You can roll 2 traits because they’re one die each?”

-**- Brother Isaac is pretty sure you can. “Anyways, I’ll roll some more of the Take-The-Blowy-ness into my raise, since I didn’t push that as much.”

Brother Isaac spends 6 4 1 1 1 for a total of 13 and gains 5 Fallout dice.

-**- Sister Alice says “Yay!”

-**- Sister Rebecca says “And that is why 1s and d4s are ‘problematic’. :)”

-**- Brother Brand says “And yes, you can bring in as many traits as fit your narration at once.”

-**- Brother Brand says “Your raise, btw.”

GAME: conflict

———————————- Conflict ———————————-

The stakes are: Will I learn to love being a Dog on its own terms, instead of because of what it gives me?

Brother Brand - 6 6

Brother Isaac - 1 1 3

——————————————————————————

roll = - spend - gain - fallout

——————————————————————————

-**- Brother Brand says “Or would you like me to do a fill pose with her telling you, then you can raise back?”

After all, isn’t that what he’s here for? To do some good? Isaac couldn’t spot crocodile tears if they came from an actual crocodile — all he sees is a poor girl who looks about as lost as he ever feels. “Sister Relief… c’mon now, I can’t help you if you won’t tell me what’s wrong. We’re all Dogs here,” he lies, “ain’t nobody gonna turn you away.”

Brother Isaac spends 3 1 for a total of 4.

-**- Brother Brand says “LIAR!”

-**- Brother Isaac notes that the ‘raise’ is in the lie.

-**- Brother Brand nods, “Good use of dice.”

-**- Sister Rebecca says “Oo, clever.”

-**- Sister Josephine says “Wait, I don’t get it.”

-**- Brother Isaac says “The stakes are whether Isaac realizes that helping other people is good for its own sake. But right now he’s still just playing the part (since I’m playing that side of the conflict).”

-**- Sister Josephine says “Cool.”

-**- Brother Isaac says “So he’s just saying what he thinks he needs to, not what he believes.”

She sniffles, she stops crying, she finally smiles. “Thank you brother.” She looks down at her gun, “I know you don’t like to shoot. I don’t like to shoot either. But you can do it. I can’t. And I need to.” Up come those blue eyes, looking deep into Brother Isaacs. “Help me, please?”

Your dice are now 6.

Brother Brand spends 6 for a total of 6.

-**- Brother Brand says “That will be a Reverse”

-**- Brother Isaac nods.

Your dice are now .

Brother Brand spends 6 for a total of 6.

-**- Brother Isaac says “So that’s a 12 total?”

-**- Brother Brand says “And that will be the raise for a total of 12.”

-**- Brother Brand says “That’s what you guys were talking about earlier, when you can see with one dice. You use it both to block and to counter.”

-**- Sister Rebecca says “Wha bam bam!”

-**- Sister Josephine says “Riposte!”

-**- Sister Rebecca says “Actually, yes, exactly.”

———————————- Conflict ———————————-

The stakes are: Will I learn to love being a Dog on its own terms, instead of because of what it gives me?

Brother Isaac - 1

——————————————————————————

roll = - spend - gain - fallout

——————————————————————————

-**- Brother Brand says “And Isaac is sitting there with a 1, so he needs to escalate, bring in traits, or fold out.”

-**- Brother Adrian says “I get what’s going on with the numbers, but not entirely how it relates to the scene. Is she basically buying into his forced generosity, and now he has to deal with it?”

-**- Brother Brand says “Yes.”

-**- Sister Josephine thinks this scene is strengthening her and weakening him.

-**- Brother Brand says “Yes”

-**- Sister Rebecca says “She (very passively) called him on it, and is pushing him to make good on what he said because he thought it was the thing to say.”

-**- Brother Adrian says “Okay. I’m seeing it better now.”

-**- Brother Adrian says “Man, this requires a very acute sense of seeing the win and the loss out of any situation.”

-**- Sister Rebecca says “And it’s all, all, all, up for interpretation, Adrian. :)”

-**- Brother Isaac says “okay, even if I bring in my knack for violence and roll a 10, I still have to give. So give it is, but let me pose something.”

-**- Brother Brand says “Sometimes. Mostly it requires an acute sense of your character as a human being, with all the trouble that entails. If you can see the good and bad in your character, you’ll be golden.”

-**- Sister Rebecca says “You can also escalate, Isaac.”

-**- Brother Brand nods, “Take one more pose and then I’ll take closing pose. Unless you want to punch her….”

-**- Sister Josephine says “Because beating her up would fix everything!”

-**- Brother Isaac could, but isn’t gonna.

-**- Sister Rebecca says “Pow!”

-**- Brother Isaac says “Well, I could put a hand on her arm or something.”

-**- Brother Isaac says “But Isaac don’t much like touchin’.”

-**- Brother Adrian says “What does Sister Relief get out of this, as far as game mechanics are concerned?”

-**- Sister Josephine says “So Physical includes stuff like that? A kiss is an escalation?”

-**- Brother Brand says “Or try to escape and run out of the room.”

-**- Brother Adrian says “A kiss sure as hell seems like a physical escalation to me.”

-**- Brother Brand says “Yea. Physical is anything that pushes it out of the level of talking. So kissing could be physical.”

-**- Sister Rebecca says “I could certainly see a kiss as escalation.”

-**- Sister Josephine says “Neat, thank you.”

-**- Brother Adrian says “Does sex count as fighting then? ;)”

-**- Sister Alice says “Hee!”

-**- Sister Josephine says “And sex with weapons… let’s not go there.”

-**- Brother Brand laughs.

-**- Brother Adrian says “Someone had to go there.”

-**- Sister Rebecca says “I’d comment, but yeah. Bad mormon.”

Brother Isaac stalls when the ‘problem’ comes out — the mask of confidence on his face darkens, and nearly disappears. At first, it’s real sympathy — she’s right, after all, they have something in common — and then anger at the request itself. He stands, as though to withdraw, but then catches himself. “Sister, I don’t know… shootin’ ain’t ever done no good, far as I’m concerned…” He sighs. “But you’re right about what you said.” He looks back towards the targets. “I guess there’s things we all gotta do.”

-**- Brother Isaac needs to pose fastar.

-**- Brother Adrian BRBs. Catfight in backyard. Damn neighbor cat

-**- Brother Isaac says “Incidentally, in situations like this it almost seems like Brand could easily pose stuff involving Isaac’s reactions and feelings. Since we’re basically taking two sides of an internal conflict. Of course, this goes against all that players hold true and dear in RPGs. :P”

She stands watching him for a long moment, and then comes to stand even with him, looking at the target. “I know brother. I know.” She goes to put a hand on his arm, then stops and drops it back to her side. “I did not want to do this…” she gestures to the gun, “But the King has called, and I must answer. I do not do this for what I want, I do it because it is my calling.”

By the end of training, Sister Relief is the sixth best shot in the class. Brother Hemesh, the teacher, watches the whole thing and on the last day approaches Brother Isaac and says, “Congratulations son, you’re starting to figure the other thing you need to be a Dog. The one I didn’t tell you.”

-**- Sister Rebecca says “Oh nose! My absolute control over my character is compromised… except it never was absolute in the first place!”

-**- Sister Josephine whistles.

-**- Brother Brand says “I could, but I didn’t. If you lose on a conflict, you lose — and if the conflict was about your emotions that does mean you lose control of them.”

-**- Brother Brand says “Although I did strongly push an agenda there….”

-**- Brother Isaac nods. “Sure, I’m not suggesting it’s necessary. Gotta externalize that stuff.”

-**- Brother Isaac says “Besides, I totally wanted to lose that conflict.”

-**- Brother Brand says “You need to roll your 5d4 fallout dude”

-**- Brother Brand says “I figured. It’d have been a hell of a conflict to win”

Brother Isaac takes 5d4 Fallout dice.

Brother Isaac rolls its Fallout of 5d4: 1 2 3 4 4, totalling 8.

It gains an item of Long Term Fallout.

It gains an item of Fallout Experience.

-**- Brother Isaac says “Ooh.”

-**- Brother Brand says “Ouch.”

-**- Brother Brand says “So a trait about being a Dog for its own sake, a longterm fallout, and an experience fallout.”

-**- Brother Brand says “Okay, so Isaac that’s all in your court. If you want ideas shout out. If not, tell us when you’ve got what you want. Who is next?”

-**- Sister Josephine says “Me!”

-**- Brother Isaac okays. “Lesse. d6 trait will be: I can help people 1d6. Experience fallout will add another die to “Love will be my salvation”, raising it to 2d10. And then long-term fallout will be adding another d4 to.. hmm.. my Father Put A Devil in Me trait, which is stretching it but damnit I like that trait.”

-**- Brother Brand says “Sounds good Isaac!”

-**- Brother Brand says “Okay, Jose, what is your conflict?”

I am not, contrary to internet rumor, dead. I am, however, having to leave the country for immigration purposes – which is a bit of a hassle. I also am finding myself on one deadline right after another. I have to learn to deal with my newfound popularity as a freelancer by not taking all the work that I think I can handle, and only taking the work I know I can handle.

OTOH, in the next year I’ll have put over a million new words into print.

In other news, I finally got to play Breaking the Ice. It is a very nifty game, very solidly designed and far, far more different than I thought it was going to be. I felt, going to play it, that I knew how it would run. I was wrong.

I would do a big actual play on it, but Mo beat me to it.

And now for something completely different: an actual play report that is short enough to fit in one post, doesn’t leave you hanging for months on end, and is about typical play by typical players – except that two of them were newbs.

I was a guest at the Canadian National Gaming Expo at the end of August, given all-access guest passes (which, I found out the hard way, does not let you just walk into the concession stand and take whatever you want) and guest privileges. It was mostly a dreary showing, as the Expo is mostly geared towards Anime and Sci-Fi fans, and most of them would look at my books with great interest, proclaim “THIS IS NOT A GRAPHIC NOVEL” look at me like I had betrayed them, then flee when I tried to explain about RPGs. In order to end the pain I signed up for a game of CyberGeneration – an old favorite of mine – and ran the hell away from my booth to go get some game action.

I ended up at a table with two of the guys who now own the game and two 16 year olds who had never played an RPG before that morning, when they’d played in the demo adventure for Cybergeneration. The old school gamers and I knew each other, though neither of us had realized the other was “in the biz.” The two kids, however, were the ones that caught my attention. (Yes, I will call them kids. I am 31, and anyone half my age is a child.)

One of them was a wild-haired anime fan (WHAF) who was hyper into the game. He was imaginative, impulsive, and energetic. At times a bit too energetic, and we often had to keep him from bouncing off the walls, but he managed to bring himself to the game in a way that’s rare for someone who plays with jaded gamers to see. The other was WHAF’s friend, a very cool guy (VCG) who was involved with the socialization at the table, but obviously didn’t give a fig about the game. I first met them while WHAF was pouring over the book, looking at all the options and pictures and saying, “DUDE! I could be an alchemis… no a Wiz… no a TINMAN! What are you again…” while VCG was looking at the ceiling, the other games, his feet, and everything but the book. This interaction would prove the model of all future interactions between the two of them and the game.

I shake hands round, make a character in 60 seconds flat, and we get rolling. It was good “fast in” action, and it got WHAF hyped to the point at which his head almost burst, but made not a dent on the wall of reserve that was VCG. We’re framed into our pad in the Combat Zone when the V-Term rings… and rings… and rings… until WHAF, unable to stand the tension, leaps to answer it. Its our boss, we have a job to do, we go to the mall get more info and… I’m sure you all know the drill.

We go outside, and finding that we have no transportation discover (shock) that the first part of the adventure will be us trying to get to the place where we have to be in order to get the information that will lead us to the dingus that is the goal. WHAF forces VCG to help him try to steal a car. They roll, they fail. They roll to see if the avoid getting noticed, they fail. A booster gang that thinks they are super heroes (Batman and Superman, to be specific) comes to teach us a lesson in doing good. Just before we get our asses kicked, I jump in and do a ham-acting job of wailing and moaning and spill out a sob story about being an orphan who was raised by circus acrobats and forced into a life of crime.

Two things happened at this point that I found interesting. The first was that VCG started laughing at my histrionics, I gave the kid tears in his eyes from the amount of the funnay that I was generating. For about 5 minutes he got into what was happening at the table – but only watching, he still wouldn’t participate directly.

The second was that while the table roared with laughter WHAF said, “Dude, what does he have to roll for that?” The GM then taught him an important lesson, one that I realized we all learn at some point in the road of Sim-Illusionism-Participationism that so much of game walks down at one point or another: “If you do something the GM thinks is cool, you succeed – dice don’t come into it.” At least this GM was honest about it. He didn’t have me roll only to ignore the results, he straight up bypassed the rolls to let the super-dorks fall for my line.

After that we hare about the city for a time, getting kidnapped from the bus stop, fighting bratty rich girls with massive Solo bodyguards, trying to catch the bus, fleeing from police, and being shot several times. Through it all WHAF jumps on anything and everything that looks interesting. At first he is all over the map, but as the game goes on and there start being consequences for his actions he starts to get over the “new interface control” issues, and starts to focus on the mission. While he’s going through that, VCG almost gets engaged with the game at one point – while we’re fighting the Solo – only to have his character KOed before he could do anything. From that moment on VCG only watched the game and joked with us around the table – any interest he had in the game as a game died instantly. I guess he felt his failure to step on up, and as that wasn’t the part of the game that was interesting to him (the funnay seemed to be the part that was, along with the potential to be cool and heroic, I think) he withdrew.

After many marry misadventures, and the total withdrawal of VCG as a presence in the game, we get to where we’re going and meet the new PC, played by a good friend of mine who joined the game just as we were getting into dingus territory, and he gives us the information. Something is hunting our friends through the access corridors of the archeology, and we have to stop it. Then comes the next hour and a half of game with us trying to buy guns.

I, at several points, have my character spazz out and lose his cool and nearly get us arrested. VCG laughs at this, but does not do anything in game even when the cops come. WHAF spontaneously develops a relationship between my character and his that basically says, “You get picked on a lot, but I stand up for you. That’s why you follow me as team leader and don’t cause trouble if you think it would make me mad.” I fully embrace this, he brings me into line, and we go about gun buying. Fresh off his success with making stuff up, WHAF comes up with an idea to overcome our problem with the guns, and promptly learns another “important” lesson.

The plan that WHAF comes up with, mostly as he goes, is thus – he calls home to talk to his mom. He sets up a story, talking really fast and obviously pulling it out of the air, about how his mom used to be an assassin and has a trunk of guns under her bed. The reason he left home is that his mother had a fight with him when she found him looking at the guns and he ran away. So now he calls home to try and get his mom to help out. The GM rolls odds or evens, the kid calls odd, the GM rolls even. He gets the answering machine. This, to me as an experienced player was a pretty obvious “this is not how you are supposed to get your guns, get back on the proper track” sign. WHAF, however, is undeterred and goes into a monologue with the answering machine and the players as his audience. He yells at his mom that he knows she’s there, that he knows she’s just drunk again (”like always, always when I needed you!”), and begs her to pick up, to help him, to come through for him for once in his life. The kid was nearly in tears by the end, and I was just sitting there struck by the pure story potential of this quest for mother-redemption in the midst of funny spazs and black market guns that you buy at Pizza Hut. (I actually started to wonder what the kid’s home life was like, as he was emoting really powerfully and in a way he hadn’t previously – the material was coming from somewhere personal. If not his own family, then someone he knows.)

Of course there was no answer from the mom, the GM steered us back to Pizza Hut, and we bought our guns the game approved way. And so WHAF learned his second lesson: when you are a player it is your job to play in the frame the GM gives you, not to make up plot and story on your own. It was a lesson he took to heart. Even though no one said anything negative to him (and my friend and I actually gave him props for his attempt), for the rest of the game he was concerned with doing everything by the book. I think that, as with VCG getting caught trying to be a hero by a gamist failure, WHAF got caught with his hands in the Nar jar and felt the sting when the lid slammed down. Unlike VCG it didn’t make him lose interest in the game, but it did make him lose interest in going out on a wire like that.

We then went into the dungeon of the arcology’s access vents, fought monsters and dealt with goths, and finally ended the game.

Just to be sure that it doesn’t sound like I’m slamming our GM too much – he was a fun GM, and a good guy. He did very well in the traditional simmy model of GMing, and much as I couldn’t help but react to some of his decision we certainly did have a lot of fun. In fact, we had a laugh riot so loud that the guys at the table next to us kept looking at us – half of them like they wanted us to shut up, half like they wanted to ditch their game and come join ours. That second part makes it a real tribute to the fun we had, and to our GM – as the people at that table were playing D&D with Gary Gygax. Man, did he look bored. I think he wanted to join our game too.

In conclusion, I found it very interesting to watch the ways in which we train each other on how to play – even without realizing that we are doing it. By the end of the game WHAF was getting pretty good at figuring out what the GM wanted and doing it, because that was the path to success. And while there is nothing wrong with that, I think that he is a new player set firmly on the path towards Illusionist/Participationist play because that is how, in his experience, gaming is supposed to work.

As he left the game he said “I hope I can get my friends to play these games, that was awesome!” At that point VCG rolled his eyes and dragged his buddy away from the table. Unfortunately I don’t see WHAF getting a lot of support from his friends – at least not judging by VCG’s response. And as I knew of no clubs, open games in stores, or other good venues for play to suggest, I watched WHAF being dragged away from the table with the feeling that he was being dragged away from gaming period.

If we want to get the WHAFs of the world into play, we need to do a better job both of realizing how we are training them to play and of getting them support and venues where they can play. Without clubs and public venues for play, his particular demographic isn’t going to get into game to stay. Perhaps, come college age, he’ll come back – but it’s a shaky bet. And if we want the VCGs of the world to play, we really need to look at our priorities in game. For a minute there he was interested, and then the gamism of the game drove him right back out again. That, luckily, is an easier issue than the social support one, as it can be fixed with good design and conscious GMing.

When last I wrote, my Mother in Law (MiL) and my wife’s characters had just ridden onto the scene of a cattle raid. My MiL saw her focus character, her foster son, hanging from the nose of a bull and trying not be gored. My wife saw her clan’s cattle, the only thing keeping them alive, about to be stolen as well as her love interest about to be mauled by enemy warriors. Things had been good up to this point, and then while I’m sitting there grinning like a moron up rushes a brick wall to knock me flat on my ass.

It started innocuously enough, with my MiL saying clearly and (I though) unambiguously “Right now my foster son has to be my first priority. I go to help him.” The problem with this, of course, is that she’s on my wife’s character’s horse – and my wife’s character is going to go straight for the enemy warriors and the cattle. So I up and think, “Great, we can have a contest between the characters and they’ll decide who goes where, and who gets the horse and so on as the stakes.” I start to propose this, and then…

Well, I’m still not exactly sure how it happened. It started, I think, with my wife saying something like “I can’t do that, I have to go to the other place” and my MiL saying “Can’t we do both?” and my wife answering, “No, at least not in time to save both completely.” (Have I mentioned that my wife’s family has a way of talking over people and can be a little verbally aggressive when riled up?) So then I finally manage to interject, “That’s okay, we can just have a contest and the two of you can try to convince or force each other to go where your character wants to go, or to split up and see who gets the horse.”

My MiL then became a bit confused as to why we would need to do this. She didn’t seem to have a problem with the idea of the contest, but was having a hard time seeing the situation and understanding why she couldn’t just save everyone in one action. So I broke the description down a little, used some books to block out threat areas, and tried to give her a better idea of the space – focusing heavily on “The bull is here and the warriors way over there – you can’t get to both in time to save everyone.” She clicked onto that, and then asked my wife what they should do.

My wife, during all of this, was having flashbacks to family games played as a child in which both her and her mother’s competitive streaks (which can be fierce as wolverines) ended up with the two of them getting hostile towards each other. She was terrified this was going to happen again, in this game, if they ended up in a character vs. character conflict. Because of this she decided that she needed to teach her mother that in RPGs you have to think about the other players and work together as players (if not characters) to resolve problems and work out situations.

In the mean time, I’m over in the other corner not realizing how freaked out my wife is (I wasn’t there for those childhood games), and thinking “If we introduce her to character vs. character conflict as something that isn’t a big deal, it probably won’t be a big deal for her – especially if we manage to keep player communication and cooperation together with the character conflict.” So I start trying to explain that when the characters in this game system have a disagreement, we play out a conflict and let the dice decide who wins. At the same time my wife starts talking about non-mechanical (lumpley principle system) ways to resolve conflicts.

The result is that for the next 30 minutes my wife and MiL have a conversation about what is happening, starting to guess at and project along the “if you do that, I’ll do this, and it will cause that” lines to not only a few turns/action in the future – but to the end of the scene and beyond. In the midst of this I was trying to bring some motion back to the game, to downplay the CvC conflict and to just let the characters do what they would do, and to find out what would happen by playing it rather than pre-playing it. If we’d been playing Polaris we probably could have gotten through this – but lacking the ritual phrases and with my wife far more freaked out than she ever gets at the gaming table, it ended up with a lot (LOT) of blocking, second guessing, and me finally running out of patience and saying “Look, it’s been a half hour now, and we’re guessing at everything that could happen. Lets get to the conflict, roll some dice, and see how it plays out.”

Now even at the time I knew this was probably not the best thing, but I’m hardly a perfect man and my patience is limited sometimes. As soon as I said that my wife’s back went up so hard that I could feel it all the way across the room. Her mother felt it too, and though she’d been confused and uncertain up to that point (in contrast to the certainty with which she had started the scene with her declaration that her foster son was the most important thing for her character) she now became paralyzed, not knowing exactly what had happened but knowing beyond a doubt that my wife was very unhappy with me at that moment and probably thinking she was the cause of it.

(BTW, Mo, if you have more to say about your PoV in this area please post about it. I want your side to be stated fully and fairly.)

So we sat there a moment, all very uncomfortable and by this point totally out of the game and the world, and then I called for them to look at their sheets to figure out what they would use for the contest to decide who went with whom and where the horse went. My wife, however, pissed and afraid of making her mother pissed, and probably knowing I was already pissed, stepped aside and had her character leap off the horse so that her mom’s character could use it to go save the foster son. It happened too suddenly, and obviously as a confrontation ender, and her mother was a bit taken aback by the whole business. (Both, I think, because of the social dynamic and because she’d been seeing the game as very much a historical realism/reenactment type thing, and the sudden acrobatics from horse back shook her assumptions about what characters could do.)

At that point all of us, being adults, took a second and had a deep breath, turned the CD back to some thematic music for the scene, and forced ourselves to focus and get a new start. My wife and I would have a talk about the issue later, and not come to an agreement even then, but for the time we managed to put the stuff aside and go with what was on the table. It was still awkward going back in, as at that point we were in the middle of an action scene but were lacking any momentum and with the immediate investment from the start of the scene washed away. I move to my MiL (not as a lab-rat, but just because she was looking the most ready to rock), and described to her the situation as she charged towards the raging bull and her foster son.

At this point, for the first time in the game, my MiL became very concerned about the system. I think it was partly because of the gravity of the situation (an important NPC possibly dying) and even more because she’d just seen some badness in the game and wanted to be sure she had enough understanding of the system to make sure she could do her part to keep it from happening again. I realized, at this point, that while she had a good innate dramatic grasp of traits and keywords and such she really had been playing without having any understanding of how the system worked. She knew to add her augments to her trait, but wasn’t even sure why she was doing that. She knew that they were all used because they all helped her character dramatically, but not why she needed to add them for system reasons. She also didn’t know exactly what the rolls meant or how they worked, even though we’d been over it in the contests she’d done earlier in the game. I realized at this point that I’d made a fairly bad mistake in introducing the system to her because I (a teacher, of all things) had forgotten a fundamental lesson of pedagogy: different people learn differently.

In games in general, and RPGs in specific, we often deal with object oriented thinkers who learn the system best and most comfortably by getting in and playing. Once they start to play and have the system described to them as they work their way through, they get a handle on the components and start to manipulate them – bringing a growing understanding of how the system works as a conceptual model that they have played through. So my (and many GMs) traditional style of introducing newbs is to give a very short overview of the system, then get into play to let them mess about with it and get their mental digits on the conceptual tinker toys. When it works, it works well and avoids boring mechanical descriptions in order to get to the meat.

My MiL, however, is (just like my wife) a process thinker. She works best when she is given a full schema of how a system or process works in an intellectual process model (and often in written form, though they’re both decent audial learners as well). I had never given that to her, or at least had not given her enough of one, and so she was having problems putting the tinker toys together, because I’d never given her the booklet that shows how all the parts fit together, much less explained what it was we were trying to use the tinker toys to build. Because of that the contests she’d already been through had seemed like Greek to her. They didn’t help her learn the system, because she learns by reading/hearing about the process first and then applying experience to the model.

The lesson I learned, as I did a quick process-procedural rundown of the system for her, was that we need better tools as GMs and RPG designers for introducing people with different learning modes and skill sets into RPGs. We’re still, I think, in the post-progamer/computer/math geek days where RPGs were dominated by component and object-oriented learners and have geared much of our approach to that kind of learning process. I suspect that a large number of players have either been kept out of RPGs, or had a much harder time getting into them, because they learn in modes not well supported by either our texts or the “GM Urban Legends” ways that we have been taught to introduce newbs.

Once I’d given her some better mapping of the system (which she still seemed a little uncomfortable from, but which did allow her to use the system in the contest and the next one in the game), we got to her saving her foster son. I asked her, in order to get the exact stakes she was playing with and her exact goal for the contest, what the best and worst things she could conceive of happening were. Thus I got her to describe her total victory (saving her foster son and using the bull to cause a stampede to move the cattle away from the raiders) and total failure conditions (the boy being killed, her being knocked from her horse, and the raiders seizing the bull). Doing this helped me, not just her, understand the goal with more clarity than any of the other goals in the previous contests and to set the stage with a clear sense of urgency when the dice started rolling, as everyone knew exactly what was at stake. I’ve started using a modified version of this when doing contests in HQ in other games – not just getting goal statements, but short statements about best and worst possible outcomes. It works tremendously well for focusing contests. (And thanks to the Trollbabe “free and clear” stage for the idea.) She picks her stats, figures her target number, rolls and gets a Total Success – the first Total Success in a closely matched conflict I’ve seen in HeroQuest. So she saves the boy, stampedes the cattle away from the raiders, and rides free and clear. She’s happy again, both because she had a better understanding of the system, and because she’d won something that was important to her.

My wife, meanwhile, jumps into the middle of the enemy raiders and immediately calls on her “Sacrosanct” ability. My MiL, at this point, says in a slightly exasperated voice, “I didn’t know we could do THAT!” We stopped the game to explain that the stat was part of her Druid keyword – as no one can harm a druid without suffering vengeance from the gods. She then gets a look in her eye as we finish the rest of the scene. My wife beats the raiders, so they can’t get past her to get at the stampeding cattle, and then she threatens to satire them – making them flee in fear for their manhood. They leave behind one straggler, whom Drassal Bull Neck (the strongest warrior in the PC’s clan) is about to murder.

At this point I tell my MiL she’s getting back to the scene, and she and my wife work together to use their female and druidic powers to make the big male warrior back down. Between satire and the “hearth fire respect” of the two women, they back the warrior off and claim the hostage. My wife and I have a quick sequence of exchanges where we switch up fast between IC and OOC, knowing each other so well we didn’t do much to mark the shift between except for our normal mode-shifting body-language methods. A three way debate as to his fate then starts up. My MiL, having heard Drassal talk about blood and vengeance one time too many, up and says “I’m sacrosanct, and a woman, and older than him, and I probably helped birth the nasty jerk.” Then shifts IC and says “Dras, shut up and go away.” She volunteers the stats for the contest without me asking, and Drassal shuts up and goes away like a good little boy.

This struck me two ways. First, I loved the archetypal unstoppable warrior man of all RPGs in history being sent home with his tail between his legs by the dismissive words of a woman. It was one of the reasons I love me some HeroQuest. Second, I was impressed by the way my MiL was quick about picking up the contest this time, and the way she was shifting between IC and OOC. At first she’d been a good narrator, but was unsure about what she was doing with voices and stances. But by this point in the game she was starting to become comfortable with them. Part of it, I know, was from watching my wife and I. She watched the IC/OOC switch up with great interest, and obviously learned from it. However, it wasn’t all that as she never used either mode in quite the same way that we did. She started to develop her own style, and even though I later found out it made her a little uncomfortable as she figured it out, it was a remarkable thing to see.

So with Drassal gone the women face off again. This time, they gear up over what to do with the hostage. My MiL wants to let him go scot-free. My wife wants to geas him and send him back in disgraces. (Drassal had wanted to take him hostage and beat him.) However, just as it starts to look like we’re going to have to either take the conflict to dice or have a repeat of the previous badness, my MiL folds out of the contest – saying that my wife’s character was the expert on inter-tribal politics (being a diplomat and all), and so she had to have final say on it.

This was an interesting little exchange. It was obvious that my MiL had just, on her own and without any real prompting from us (other than talking about their characters profession keywords during char-gen) developed the idea of niche protection in order to avoid CvC conflict. She was in no way upset about dropping the conflict, and in fact seemed quite pleased with the way she’d resolved it, so I didn’t push. My wife, glad to avoid the badness, didn’t either and went on to give the poor captive a satire (during which my MiL said, “Oh, that’s how you do it!” when she saw my wife summarize an artistic performance without actually doing it) before sending him home.

It was at that point that I was sitting there trying to figure out how the enemy clan would react to this – easily taken as a sign of weakness and certainly a blow to their pride in a world where both things are critical – when I finally felt something click. In this type of game, with this system, I don’t have to judge for the world. I do not need to figure out “what a real feudal Irish chieftain would do” or even what I think they should do in order to push the plot in a specific direction. In fact, doing so is harmful to this kind of game. What I have to do is push the NPCs and turn things into contests between them and the PCs. How would the NPC chieftain react? That would depend on the results of a conflict between his pride and vengeful and the PCs stats.

Seriously, when they let the hostage go I went to say “They’ll screw you for that” — but of course, that isn’t how it should work. There should be a contest, then or later, that lets them turn the issue into story meat and push on it the way they want it to be pushed on. This is a setting, after all, in which great works of mercy and vengeance come out of the same characters within pages of each other (seriously, have any of you read the annals of the kings of Ireland?) and the way to replicate that isn’t to decide what is right, but to make it into a contest between moderation and extremism, between compassion and violence. I saw it in big bright letters of fire behind my too-long illusionist and simulations eyes: “These things are contests that lead to questions, not judgments that lead to punishment or reward.”

And lo, the heavens opened. And lo, the clock struck 2 in the morning, and the game ended with the PCs going to gather up the cows while Drassal told my MiL’s foster child that he saw him wrestle the bull and knew he would grow up to be a “great man slayer, skull splitter, brain rainer, blood drinker.” My MiL’s character clenched up, my wife’s character went to get her horse, and the game ended.

I never got to kill of the chieftain, nor have the kin-strife fun.

In conclusion, it was a fascinating and fun experience. Were I to continue it I would probably switch up the system a little – neither my wife or MiL would have any patience for an Extended Contest, for example, as it intrudes the system too much on their way of playing. They are both skilled dramatists, and find much of the “system support for story structure” to be “system blocking creativity” or “system sliding in where I want to do my own thing.” For my wife I can blame this on years of training about what RPGs are supposed to be, but for my MiL it was an honest reaction based on her experiences of the system and of RPing. With time she may have changed, but my gut doubts it.

Next Up: More Actual Play — Brand plays at a Con Game with Simmers and 16 year old newbs and learns how we train each other to play and not play.

Later: Emotional Agenda — putting the humanity back into theory.