playtest session 17 -- scenario M4m1 rocks out
12/09/08 -- me GMing for John, Merlin and Dan at John's place
"Speed & Focus" dial
First time playing with the Speed & Detail paper dial I made. Showing it at the beginning seemed to make the players aware of their options, and John and Dan each used it once in the session. That's about how often they say to me "let's FFW" or some such, so I'm not sure if it made a difference or not. I could probably test it better by absolutely sticking to the level of Speed & Detail indicated, and forcing them to move the indicator when I went too slow or too fast. But in tonight's session, which was very heavy on the danger, there were plenty of pointed questions for me to answer, and when that's happening, that communication pretty much dictates the pace.
Reward Quandary
John brilliantly solved my puzzle of which herbs to put on which dials to get the seal to work, but didn't seem too stoked about it because the immediate impact wasn't a big deal (semi-open magic door is now MORE open) and the ultimate payoff was completely unknown.
The series of fights in collapsing caves really got everyone excited, reinforcing the fact that play benefits from drama. Oddly, John kind of sabotaged the adrenaline flow by looting the bodies in detail. We all kind of wanted to say, "You grab what you have time for as we're dashing away! Figure it out later!" but he really wanted to know what the options were, and make the right choice about whether to take boots or breastplates or swords.
After a bunch of daring and cleverness, the players pulled off a big accomplishment -- they killed 7 of the Cursed, wounded their monstrous pet, and saved the 15 virgins they were about to sacrifice. We stopped play with them stumbling into town to deliver the rescued girls and claim the thanks and adoration of the villagers, which seemed like a pretty solid payoff for Dan and Merlin. John, though, was frustrated by how all this striving and prevailing had failed to make his character more capable and powerful.
I mentioned that now was a good time to hand out character points for skill advancement, and that got everyone started talking about pumping their stats, fighting skills, and maybe stealth and climbing. John asked me if he could really get anything out of pumping his character's big stats, Herbalism and Healing, any further. I had to say no -- Healing rolls have been few and far between, as no one's been on the brink of death, so it's been a kind of yes/no deal, where knowing what to do and having the supplies is all there is, and a rank 1 is as good as a rank 5. Likewise with a fuzzily-defined knowledge "skill" like Herbalism. The skill system does a poor job of signalling "this isn't D&D!", so no matter how many times I tell John that, he's still looking for familiar sources of "progress".
Making them so damn poor that every piece of metal they find screams "valuable!" at them is also a pointer in the wrong direction. Although only John seems truly obsessed with getting enough wealth and gear to buy metal armor. I wonder if that'll always be a goal until PCs have the best gear they could hope for, or whether better Secret-trails would distract the players from all that.
After the session, I had to bring up that they'd just solved Door #2, and that the last time I asked them, their keenest interest had been in solving Door #1, so now, what had they achieved? "Oh!" Dan said. "We could go open Door #1 now!!"
John grumbled. "So? We'd have to go all the way back there to something we've already seen. It'd be better if doing this cave mission got us somewhere new." This is another testament to the importance of leading the players to form firm goals to pursue. If their goals are vague, achieving them isn't as functional a payoff.
Basically, all this just drives home what I've been thinking recently -- that the key for Delve scenario design is to pose distinct questions and offer ways to answer those questions that announce themselves as such. "We want X, X requires Y, Z claims to offer Y, so we'll go do Z," is way better than, "We want X... and Z might be related... let's see what we can find in Z."
The lack of an easy-to-identify Reward mechanism is vexing me. Perception Abilities are nicely apt, but it's really hard to incrementally advance those. Each new sense you gain is a field of 12 new symbols to learn and map. Making them non-redundant from character to character, once each character has 2 powers, that's a total of 72 meanings for me to generate and track! Ack!
As for using the Perception powers, now that it's occurred to folks to experiment, we're starting to edge toward "use them all the time to gather data", which I fear will render them bland and grating. It hasn't happened yet... but I still wonder if reintroducing some cost for use might be wise.
For them to count as a payoff, I need to ask more questions that Perception Abilities are uniquely suited to answer.
Voluntary "Involuntary Responses"
My "you all take one point of Shock" rule for seeing the Queen Grell was great. Exactly what I hoped for -- players worked in portrayals at their own comfort level, covering the range from traumatized to unflinching.
Maneuver Checks
Combatants' opposed attempts to control positioning -- this is a brilliant thing to incorporate into resolution of realistic combats.
Big Argument Over Weird Situation
There's a general rule I use that gives bonuses to fighting a "non-threat". If you have a sword, you get bonuses to hit and defend against someone with bare fists. Where exactly does the bonus to defend come from, though? What does that assume, and did it apply to the case that arose in play?
Dan's character was trying to splash acid on an Orc that was trying to stab him. The Orc didn't know about the acid, and charged right at him to gut him. Dan's roll to hit was not sufficient to hit using the "non-threat" rules, but John made a vehement argument that splashing the Orc should actually be easy.
We even modeled this -- Dan actually flung a cup of water at me, while I swung a boffer sword at him. He basically dove at me, flung it, then skidded past, which was cool, cuz it helped us all visualize what happened in-game.
In the end, this just reinforced for me that no rule of thumb or realistic mechanic can take the place of case-by-case "what would happen here?" judgment calls. Whenever we can't agree on "what would happen" it's messy, rules or no. In this case, the agreement would have been easier if I'd just said, "what you say sounds sensible, fuck the 'Non-Threat State' condition," but I didn't want to cave to player wheedling for advantage, and I wanted to give the rules a shot to do my job for me. Oh well.
"Speed & Focus" dial
First time playing with the Speed & Detail paper dial I made. Showing it at the beginning seemed to make the players aware of their options, and John and Dan each used it once in the session. That's about how often they say to me "let's FFW" or some such, so I'm not sure if it made a difference or not. I could probably test it better by absolutely sticking to the level of Speed & Detail indicated, and forcing them to move the indicator when I went too slow or too fast. But in tonight's session, which was very heavy on the danger, there were plenty of pointed questions for me to answer, and when that's happening, that communication pretty much dictates the pace.
Reward Quandary
John brilliantly solved my puzzle of which herbs to put on which dials to get the seal to work, but didn't seem too stoked about it because the immediate impact wasn't a big deal (semi-open magic door is now MORE open) and the ultimate payoff was completely unknown.
The series of fights in collapsing caves really got everyone excited, reinforcing the fact that play benefits from drama. Oddly, John kind of sabotaged the adrenaline flow by looting the bodies in detail. We all kind of wanted to say, "You grab what you have time for as we're dashing away! Figure it out later!" but he really wanted to know what the options were, and make the right choice about whether to take boots or breastplates or swords.
After a bunch of daring and cleverness, the players pulled off a big accomplishment -- they killed 7 of the Cursed, wounded their monstrous pet, and saved the 15 virgins they were about to sacrifice. We stopped play with them stumbling into town to deliver the rescued girls and claim the thanks and adoration of the villagers, which seemed like a pretty solid payoff for Dan and Merlin. John, though, was frustrated by how all this striving and prevailing had failed to make his character more capable and powerful.
I mentioned that now was a good time to hand out character points for skill advancement, and that got everyone started talking about pumping their stats, fighting skills, and maybe stealth and climbing. John asked me if he could really get anything out of pumping his character's big stats, Herbalism and Healing, any further. I had to say no -- Healing rolls have been few and far between, as no one's been on the brink of death, so it's been a kind of yes/no deal, where knowing what to do and having the supplies is all there is, and a rank 1 is as good as a rank 5. Likewise with a fuzzily-defined knowledge "skill" like Herbalism. The skill system does a poor job of signalling "this isn't D&D!", so no matter how many times I tell John that, he's still looking for familiar sources of "progress".
Making them so damn poor that every piece of metal they find screams "valuable!" at them is also a pointer in the wrong direction. Although only John seems truly obsessed with getting enough wealth and gear to buy metal armor. I wonder if that'll always be a goal until PCs have the best gear they could hope for, or whether better Secret-trails would distract the players from all that.
After the session, I had to bring up that they'd just solved Door #2, and that the last time I asked them, their keenest interest had been in solving Door #1, so now, what had they achieved? "Oh!" Dan said. "We could go open Door #1 now!!"
John grumbled. "So? We'd have to go all the way back there to something we've already seen. It'd be better if doing this cave mission got us somewhere new." This is another testament to the importance of leading the players to form firm goals to pursue. If their goals are vague, achieving them isn't as functional a payoff.
Basically, all this just drives home what I've been thinking recently -- that the key for Delve scenario design is to pose distinct questions and offer ways to answer those questions that announce themselves as such. "We want X, X requires Y, Z claims to offer Y, so we'll go do Z," is way better than, "We want X... and Z might be related... let's see what we can find in Z."
The lack of an easy-to-identify Reward mechanism is vexing me. Perception Abilities are nicely apt, but it's really hard to incrementally advance those. Each new sense you gain is a field of 12 new symbols to learn and map. Making them non-redundant from character to character, once each character has 2 powers, that's a total of 72 meanings for me to generate and track! Ack!
As for using the Perception powers, now that it's occurred to folks to experiment, we're starting to edge toward "use them all the time to gather data", which I fear will render them bland and grating. It hasn't happened yet... but I still wonder if reintroducing some cost for use might be wise.
For them to count as a payoff, I need to ask more questions that Perception Abilities are uniquely suited to answer.
Voluntary "Involuntary Responses"
My "you all take one point of Shock" rule for seeing the Queen Grell was great. Exactly what I hoped for -- players worked in portrayals at their own comfort level, covering the range from traumatized to unflinching.
Maneuver Checks
Combatants' opposed attempts to control positioning -- this is a brilliant thing to incorporate into resolution of realistic combats.
Big Argument Over Weird Situation
There's a general rule I use that gives bonuses to fighting a "non-threat". If you have a sword, you get bonuses to hit and defend against someone with bare fists. Where exactly does the bonus to defend come from, though? What does that assume, and did it apply to the case that arose in play?
Dan's character was trying to splash acid on an Orc that was trying to stab him. The Orc didn't know about the acid, and charged right at him to gut him. Dan's roll to hit was not sufficient to hit using the "non-threat" rules, but John made a vehement argument that splashing the Orc should actually be easy.
We even modeled this -- Dan actually flung a cup of water at me, while I swung a boffer sword at him. He basically dove at me, flung it, then skidded past, which was cool, cuz it helped us all visualize what happened in-game.
In the end, this just reinforced for me that no rule of thumb or realistic mechanic can take the place of case-by-case "what would happen here?" judgment calls. Whenever we can't agree on "what would happen" it's messy, rules or no. In this case, the agreement would have been easier if I'd just said, "what you say sounds sensible, fuck the 'Non-Threat State' condition," but I didn't want to cave to player wheedling for advantage, and I wanted to give the rules a shot to do my job for me. Oh well.