anyway.

What is it about play in which each player has a primary character that you like? You've said that you prefer this style of play (although you'd like to mix it up a bit more) over play in which player and character are less well connected. Why?

Also, do you think that the imagining takes care of itself if the communication works well, or do you figure the imagining is each player's own look out?

One more.

I may be running Dogs shortly. One of the things that confuses me about Dogs is the question of congruity between player morality and character morality. Now, for example, the culture in the setting is fairly strongly patriarchal, so a Steward who decides that he should treat his wife as an equal in handling the Stewardship of the faithful is fairly obviously following false doctrine according to the description of the Faith, but the decision over whether it really is false doctrine falls entirely to the Dogs.

This is fine.

Now, should the players have their Dogs judge based on the morality one imagines such a character in such a setting, who has undergone extensive training in the particulars of the Faith, might have, or should the players use their Dogs to make their own moral judgments about the world of the game, in which case we probably end up with a pack of feminist Dogs supporting egalitarian doctrine as though it were the established doctrine of the Faith. Do they have that power, or do they have to act covertly? Do you assume that there are other Dogs out there who are not PCs who's morality is congruent with the faith, who might be the next ones through a town that the Dogs have allowed to drift into an egalitarian faith, who are going to drag that Demoniacally influenced Steward and his wife out into the street and gun them both down, or do you assume that the world stops at the edge of the game? Even for a one-shot, it seems to me that those questions would come up in epilogue, even if they have no way of coming up in game.

Any answer to those questions seems fine, so long as it is somewhat consistent within the party. So, who decides which version you are playing? It seems to me that a frequent way for Dogs games to run (from what I've read of Actual Play Reports) is for the Dogs themselves to fall out over the moral questions, and end up gunning each other down. Frequently, the questions they split over seem to be questions where one player has their character accept the Faith's morality, and another player has their character react with modern liberal morality. Now those games in which nearly everyone ends up dead seem to be fun enough, but they basically mean there is no build from one session to another.

So either one of each of those decisions seems viable to me, but an incoherent mix of them doesn't (particularly for play lasting longer than a single session, where it becomes a little more important that the Dogs not end up gunning each other down half way through the first session).

Is this an issue you recognize, or am I off in the weeds here? If it is one you recognize, how do you recommend resolving it? Pre-game discussions? Avoiding making the moral dilemmas ones where my friends morality conflicts with 19th Mormon morality?

Charles, your Dogs question first.

As long as everyone plays a Dog whose first loyalty is to the actual suffering people of the towns they're visiting, moral codes don't matter. Confronted with the pain and problems of a town, they'll find common ground and not shoot each other.

If you've got two crusaders of opposite stripe instead, yeah, that can go bad. Take comfort from the fact that if it goes bad, it'll be because Barry and Kim are going to be replaying, in concentrated form, the essential struggle of America's transition to modernity.

On the GM's side, though, choosing your issues is not at all the same thing as pulling your punches, and there's nothing wrong with choosing issues where the 21st century and the 19th agree. Love triangles, child abuse and neglect, a husband leaving his wife in the lurch, rape, robber barony, the Faithful attacking and robbing the Mountain People - those are hard-hitting issues the PCs will broadly agree about.

(If you read something else in this space a few minutes ago, yeah, I edited it, it was poorly considered.)

Charles: Now, for example, the culture in the setting is fairly strongly patriarchal, so a Steward who decides that he should treat his wife as an equal in handling the Stewardship of the faithful is fairly obviously following false doctrine according to the description of the Faith, but the decision over whether it really is false doctrine falls entirely to the Dogs.

...Sort of.

The GM decides, in town creation, whether the Steward's following false doctrine. The GM and nobody else.

The players, via the Dogs, decide what to do about it.

They can't retroactively make it not false doctrine, they can only affirm it going forward (if that's what they decide to do) - and doing that doesn't undo the harm the steward's caused.

Here are a couple of (frustrating) conversations I've had on the subject, at the lumpley games Forge forum:
On removing homosexuality and violating gender roles as sins...
GM vs Players in Sin Hierarchy

I've linked to the second page of that first thread there because the first page isn't to your question. I don't figure you'll have to struggle to get it like some of those people do.

Charles: Also, do you think that the imagining takes care of itself if the communication works well, or do you figure the imagining is each player's own look out?

The former.

Out of the four or so games you're working on, which do you think will hit print first?  Also, about how close are you to done?

-Andy

How often do you dance? Are cameras always rolling when you're dancing? Does your dancing trigger the cameras?

Andy: Out of the four or so games you're working on, which do you think will hit print first? Also, about how close are you to done?

Making a Tree.

Not too close. 85% of a first draft or so.

PDF first, then in print for GenCon, is my plan.

Jason: How often do you dance? Are cameras always rolling when you're dancing? Does your dancing trigger the cameras?

Hm. I believe you've seen 100% of my dancing when cameras were rolling.

I wish we would contradance more, me and Meg. That's fun.

On a more serious note:

Have you ever considered compiling your theory/discussions into a POD "How2 RPG"-type book? I know the discussion here is mostly ongoing but there's a lot of solid material here (obviously) that I think would be a great print resource.

Jason: Have you ever considered compiling your theory/discussions into a POD "How2 RPG"-type book?

You and Ben should join forces against me. I'll cave eventually, or maybe I'll hold out forever. Only time will tell!

Heya,

This is so newb of me to ask, but I've never learned.  What does FLGS stand for?

Peace,

-Troy

Is conflict resolution always about two or more players disagreeing?

For reference, see this thread on the Story Games forum.

You seem to have a knack—certainly better than my ability—of cutting through the noise and clearing some things up. Maybe you can shed some light here, where I've mostly just dimmed things?

Matt: Is conflict resolution always about two or more players disagreeing?

I was kind of hoping to miss this one. Oh well.

Conflict resolution is about in-game conflicts of interest - that is, conflict between characters. Whether there's also a corresponding disagreement between players about what should happen, depends on the game and circumstances.

Look at it this way: "the GM has final say," for instance, is a mechanic for resolving real-world disagreements. So is "everybody has final say about precisely what they own." Those are rules for getting the players on the same page quickly and fusslessly. It's from there, from a quick fussless everybody-on-the-same-page, that you can then go on to resolve the in-game conflict.

Heya,

As one of the five elements of Exlporation, what all does "Setting" encompass?

Peace,

-Troy

A print book of some of your theory work would be a nice artifact. I bet it'd sell reasonably well, too; you have a gift for couching complex ideas in pleasant and clear prose.

Why the resistance?

Ethan: A print book of some of your theory work would be a nice artifact. I bet it'd sell reasonably well, too; you have a gift for couching complex ideas in pleasant and clear prose.

Why the resistance?

You'll have to imagine my pleasant, good-natured, non-sarcastic tone, as we've never met and you can't naturally hear my voice in your head. Otherwise my reply will sound rude and snarky, which it isn't.

Carrying this piano on your back up to the top of Poet's Seat Tower would be awesome! I bet it would sound great up there, and it'd sure be an accomplishment you could be proud of. Why the resistance?

I contemplate the prospect and Lord, my shoulders fall and my back bends.

Troy: As one of the five elements of Exlporation, what all does "Setting" encompass?

What are the characters situated with regard to, that's not other characters? That's setting.

It'd help me if you provided some context, though - haven't we been over this? What's missing for you?

So it's everything in the SIS that's not a character, then?  Is that right?

Peace,

-Troy

Troy: yeah. Kind of.

But keep in mind what's color and what's setting. "A city with a big gap between rich and poor" is the setting. "18th-century London," as such, is color. A bunch of individual places like Tyburn Road, Newgate Prison, the Red Rose - they're color.

"I'm lurching in a cart on Tyburn Road, drunk and bound, with rotten fruit on my clothing and pus in my mouth, and you're watching me pass by with a mix of regret and disgust, but a pocketful of coins" - that's a colorful expression of how you and I are situated relative to one another and the city.

In fact, Tyburn Road, Newgate Prison, the Red Rose, take them to be primarily situation color, not setting color - they're colorful ways to describe where we are, how we're situated, in the city and relative to one another.

I don't have any idea if I'm making sense to you. I wish I had a better idea why you're asking.

Heya,

I think we're getting closer.  I guess I really want to know if Setting is more than just geography.  What else does it include?

Peace,

-Troy

Troy: Setting doesn't really include geography, even; geography is color. Like, the setting might be "a far-flung empire, incorporating many cultures," and its geography might be like Ancient Rome's, like the British Empire's, or all in outer space with whole planets instead of cities and islands. Geography, ethnography, technology - all color.

Now, to be fair, it's really hard to talk about the setting of a game without talking about its color. That's fine - more than fine, it's natural and probably inescapable, because "nailing down a setting" means "giving the setting its color."

What use is the Forge anymore? We've got amazing resources like your weblog and people are making games, probably more off it than on it.

Why should it keep going? Or even better, why should people keep going to it?

Clinton: What use is the Forge anymore? We've got amazing resources like your weblog and people are making games, probably more off it than on it.

Why should it keep going? Or even better, why should people keep going to it?

How come you aren't asking this in Site Discussion?

Charles: What is it about play in which each player has a primary character that you like? You've said that you prefer this style of play (although you'd like to mix it up a bit more) over play in which player and character are less well connected. Why?

I've been thinking about this.

I think it's the reverse: I like play in which all the significant characters have their own player responsible for them. That includes the significant NPCs and the GM in Dogs, for instance.

I like immersion a lot. I also like taking on responsibility for a character or characters and fulfilling it, to everyone else's enjoyment. I like when my fellow players do the same - a big part of the pleasure of participating in Soraya's story, for instance, was participating in Emily's portrayal of Soraya.

If each character has one player primarily responsible for her, that creates an intimacy between the character and the player that I enjoy a lot, whether I'm that player or that player's audience.

Matt: Is conflict resolution always about two or more players disagreeing?

Me, paraphrased: Nope.

Here's a bit more. You probably already read my post and thread about Shock: and Conflict Creation. In that particular session, we started out with a conflict resolution system that didn't also entail conflict of interest between the players. It a) worked, but b) was a little lifeless. Midsession, we switched to a conflict resolution system that fostered (short-term) player-level conflict of interest in support of the in-game conflict of interest. That a) also worked, and b) had lots more spark to it.

Conflict resolution doesn't depend on players disagreeing, but players disagreeing can really heighten conflict resolution.

WRT me hoping to miss it: in the future, and this goes for you too Troy, I'd rather be called overtly into a discussion elsewhere than be used off-site and unwittingly to back up somebody's side.

Clinton, since you're asking me, here are two of my three takes.

First take. Show me some other forum where people are really talking about their actual play, and then we can talk about whether the Forge has outlived its usefulness. I don't see it.

Second take. There's another question you have to deal with, you of all the people in the world: is hosting and running the Forge worth your time and resources? Given that it's a good thing, the Forge, which it is - is it good enough for you that it deserves your continued commitment?

Third take is better over the phone. Email me, I'll call you.

Hallo

I'm thinking of picking up Dogs, could you tell me why I need this game?

/Marcus

Marcus: "I'm thinking of picking up Dogs, could you tell me why I need this game?"

If you'd like to talk about the game, awesome, that's something I enjoy a lot. Ask me whatever's on your mind.

But no, I'm not going to try to sell it to you. That's between you and your money.

The thing is, I have found this to be an awsome way to find out what the designers idea was and then get what I should say to sell it to my gaming peers, something I think will be hard. I will probably buy the game either way, becouse of all the good press it got on the net.

/Marcus

Not your fault, Marcus! Bring money into the conversation and you have to deal with my whole ethical system.

The best way I've found to get people interested in the game - and here I'm talking to you as a fellow enthusiast, understand, pitching the game to people who might not pick it up on their own - the best way I've found is a ten-minute demo based on the scenario that opens the conflict resolution chapter.

"You're a kid, maybe 20; you're Christian; you're a Texas Ranger. You're in this town where the shopkeeper from Connecticut? His wife isn't his wife, she's a whore, he's the pimp. Your oldest brother lives in town, and his son - he's 14, your nephew - his son has been stealing money from him to take to visit her. Your brother's just found out. He's going to shoot her.

"You meet him on the road coming up from his farm, he's got his old carbine in his hand. He says, 'get out of my way brother, this ain't nothin of yours.' Here are your dice to answer him. You get these other dice too if you fight him, and these dice? They're your gun."

Play out that one conflict with just the one player, gather the rest of your group around to watch how it works. If the game's for them, they'll be totally sold.

If you're interested in what the game means to me personally, ask whatever you like, and maybe start here.

What does the "A.M." in Red Sky A.M. stand for?

Adam: What does the "A.M." in Red Sky A.M. stand for?

Charles is right. Sailors take warning.

Do you have any advice for designers interested in testing incomplete work? Is it worth testing pieces of a system in isolation without the context of the complete system? Should the system be tested in stages of completion, like an image coming into focus, each stage expanding on the stage before but still complete in itself?

NS: Is it worth testing pieces of a system in isolation without the context of the complete system?

Sure.

Should the system be tested in stages of completion, like an image coming into focus, each stage expanding on the stage before but still complete in itself?

You can do it that way. I wouldn't say that you should, but you can.

Let's see. Dogs in the Vineyard, I was testing its resolution rules before I had town creation, but I knew I needed a good grabby situation, so I just made one up. That's the shopkeeper-whore-brother-nephew situation. I used it to test resolution, figuring that I'd come up with rules to create such situations once resolution worked, and that's just what happened.

That the kind of thing you mean?

I've heard the term "flags" used now and again, but it's not in the Forge's Provisional Glossary.  What are they?

Judd's right.

Personally, I'm skeptical. I've never met a player - and I'm certainly not one myself - who can reliably say what's important right now, let alone what's going to be important a session from now or on an ongoing basis. You can't substitute reading a character sheet for watching what a player actually does and responds to.

But I'm reserving judgement until I see the game designs that the flags people make.

I've got a copy of Lagos Egri's "Art of Dramatic Writing" from the public library, and 82/300th's of the way in—
I am finding it to be quite a snore.

At the very least, his vernacular is dated.  He sounds like an old fuddy-dud.

Egri reminds me of 'how to roleplay' and 'how to gm' text from old games.  Yeah, -maybe- there's still some good tips buried in there.  But, yeesh, I'd much rather read fully-baked advice-text from a new Forge game.

Unless:

Is there something special in this book that you think makes it uniquely worth reading?  Or has it been superceded by 60 years of other books analyzing drama?

Fuddy-dud, yeah.

Reading The Art of Dramatic Writing worked for me. I'd been in serious conversation with Ron for a year and I was just beginning to figure it out. Egri made a bridge for me between what Ron was saying about roleplaying on this hand, and my grounding in fiction on the other. A two-way bridge: now I could see how to get the awesome stuff I'd written into my fiction in my games, and now (at last) I could see where my fiction was weak - I could see what my old teachers had been talking about, and I could also see why this section of my novel didn't move me the way this other section did.

I'm not going to generalize and say that reading The Art of Dramatic Writing will do that for everyone. It seems pretty circumstantial to me. Maybe even coincidental - but circumstantial at best.

I took a break from Egri and read David Mamet's "On Directing Film", instead.

107 lean pages, like a Forge-game rulebook.

Egri does a good job with some things, like breaking Premise into 3 parts:
This leads to THAT.

But you gotta know which parts of Egri to shrug-off/
or else you'd be convinced that a Character Sheet with 50 pages of backstory—makes a better PC than The Pool's 50 word limit.

Whereas Mamet's analysis is much-more about keeping the same building-blocks that Forge games focus on/ and discarding the dead weight.

There's little or nothing Mamet says that you & Ron don't know.  But Mamet tends to SAY it with with more virtuosity than you do.  That's what he's famous for, after all.

Any day where someone mentions me and David Mamet in the same sentence is a good day. I'll take "you know, Vincent, you're not as good as David Mamet," and be really flattered.

I'll read On Directing Film.

Heya Vincent,

I have a somewhat serious question for you.  The recent comments about feminism at the Forge Booth got me thinking about my upcomming game, Cutthroat.  In that game, a domineering male - submissive female relationship is at the heart of play.  While the game is totally not about examining or encouraging that sort of relationship, it is there none-the-less.  So, does that make me a bad person?  Would that game be welcome at the Forge Booth?  I'm kinda worried it would offend my friends and coworkers there.

Peace,

-Troy

Troy:

Strictly logistically, the Forge booth exercises absolutely no content oversight, at all. You buy in with your $100, you show up with your book, you're welcome there.

Morally, I'm not going to pass judgement on a game I haven't seen. You've got a conscience, use it.

Personally, I bet you've been using your conscience just fine, and you're just having jitters. That's okay. We all have 'em.

Hi Vincent,

In the section of you site marked "Roleplaying Theory hardcore", the introductory paragraph makes reference to a newest essay about Narrative Stances which doesn't actually apper to be there. Did you delete it, or am I missing it somehow, or what?

I'm loving Dogs, by the way. And Afraid also looks to be all kinds of awesome.

Mysterious! I never wrote that bit, I started blogging stuff instead. I must've made that link proactively and then changed my mind or something.

Huh.

What I think about the narrative stances isn't interesting anyway. It's "they're different from the stances in GNS. If you're a narrative stances person and you want to talk about the narrative stances with a GNS person, I can help you translate the terms."

At the time, that might've long-shot been relevant. These days, I'd be SHOCKED to find that there are any narrative stances people who want to talk to GNS people left.

What's the "people" bit about that? Aren't stances just technique? How can they contradict or translate to GNS at all?

J: "The Narrative Stances" is a piece of pre-Big Model rpg theory, basically part of but detachable from GDS. It's about the different positions you can take, as a participant in the game, relative to the fictional material - a much broader and more interesting topic than the Big Model's stances. Most of the real meat of the narrative stances appears in the Big Model in places not called "stance" at all.

So a "narrative stances person" would be a roleplaying theorist from the RGFA days who hasn't learned the Big Model. Such a person would look to the Big Model's stances as one possible in, but then instead be put off by how impoverished they are. "But... where's the good stuff?"

I recall reading somewhere that Stances even in the Big Model don't have much currency any more. To the concepts of Actor, Author and Director stance still hold much utility for you, r do you reckon that in a restatement of the Big Mdoel theory as it now stands they could be omitted altogether?

Thomas: Yeah.

I think that the Big Model's stances are ... how do I say this. Useful mirages.

So what you've got is, who gets to say what about what, under what circumstances? Actor stance, author stance, director stance, they're just big blurry clusters of who gets to say what about what, under what circumstances. They're diverse within themselves and blurry between each other. If you're serious about talking about a game, saying "director stance vs. author stance vs. actor stance" just doesn't cut it. You have to talk precisely about who gets to say what about what, under what circumstances, instead.

However, "director stance vs. author stance vs. actor stance" is super useful when you're talking to someone new to rpg theory about the diversity of games. It's a manageable introduction.

So, if I were writing an introduction to the Big Model I'd include the stances, and if I were writing a summary of the Big Model for Big Model people I'd make them a footnote.

My opinion's the same about drama, fortune, karma too. Useful introductory mirages, but if you're serious about talking about a particular game, you have to dive in to a level of analysis where those distinctions aren't even real.

"So, if I were writing an introduction to the Big Model I'd include the stances, and if I were writing a summary of the Big Model for Big Model people I'd make them a footnote"

Would this be an introduction for people who already play "traditional" RPGs, an introduction for people who've played no RPGs, both or neither?

It'd be an introduction for people who want to design rpgs. (Design rpgs, not necessarily publish them.) Those are the only people I can imagine who'd have any use for the Big Model.

Yeah, a useful shorthand at a high level.

Someone recently described Shock: as working predominantly in Director stance, but really what's going on is the players aren't limited to describing their characters' actions and often have narrative responsibilities in the realm of "circumstance" rather than personal action.

"Director stance" is an OK shorthand for that. I've also had games where we felt pretty close, personally, to the characters.

Hey Vincent, could you explain "My Guy Syndrome" to me?  Like give me a definition and couple examples?  That would be great :)

thanks bro!

-Troy

My guy syndrome, huh.

I don't have easy access to the Forge just now so I can't provide any references, but as far as I recall it just means dodging responsibility for being a crappy player (meaning socially disruptive) by blaming your character for your crappy behavior.

"My guy totally screws everyone over and stabs them in the back." "The hell? You just ruined the game for us, this isn't that kind of game and you know it. If you don't want to play anymore, just say so." "Hey I'm just playing my guy!"

(As usual, the internet caught hold of this and turned it on its head, crying "I have my guy do what my guy would do, and now that makes me a crappy player? You GNS people are insane elitists who killed my dog!")

Hi again Vincent,

A few more Big Model questions, if you're up for it.

1. What, if any, is the difference between Authority and Credibility?

2. What standing theory exists for the classifying and analysing of Authority? Here Ron talks about a four way classification (into Content, Plot, Situation and Narration) but I haven't found any other discussions or essays written about these things.

1. My very first original rant says something like, "I call the authority underlying roleplaying 'credibility.'" As far as I figure it, they're synonymous. They're also pretty informal terms, not like "IIEE" or "Premise" or whatever, so you'll have to read context into them.

Some people prefer one term to the other. I figure it's just the loody poody again and don't think about it too hard.

2. That formulation of Ron's of a 4-way classification is new. I like it.

Interesting.

Working with Ron's new Authority classifications, then, would I be right in figuring IIEE as a kind of subset of Narrational Authority?

In dealing with IIEE a given rules-set tells us both by whom and under what circumstances the Intent, Initation, Execution and Effect of a given character's actions is/are narrated - in short, it is the set of principles by which Narrational Authority for particular characters is assigned.

Does that make any sense?

Having tried In a Wicked Age a couple of times - and overall being very enthusiastic about it - I'd really like to know what your deadline for the game is... Also, hearing more about the process and your visions of the finished product could be awesome somewhere down the line...

Well cool.

My original October 15 deadline is looking, well, like I set it before my dad died. I won't be able to release the game on that day, but there's still a pretty good chance I'll start taking preorders then and release the book 2-3 weeks later. We'll see. Otherwise I'll bump the whole thing back a month, and so it goes.

The book'll be 7"x9" landscape by Lulu, like Agon. The illustrations are coming together well. I'm struggling with the text about framing scenes but otherwise the text is pretty good. I think I've written a couple of paragraphs in particular that really NAIL a topic, the way that Dogs' text does once or twice, so that feels good. It'll be as well-written a game as Dogs is.

There's a section that makes me happy called "How to become king." It starts with "1. Come over the hill with ten guys. Congratulations, now you're mayor." I laughed to read Joshua B-R's recent Bettering the Self, as about a month ago I wrote a more cynical version of the same.

I've totally redesigned the dice game. I ripped out everything inside of "exhaust or injure" and replaced it with something that's a little slicker and (more importantly) more neutral in tone, more adaptable to other setups.

I'm calling the game's rules The Anthology Machine (with a nod to Paul Czege for insisting on the word). In a Wicked Age is The Anthology Machine's first game. The second will be either No King's Men or Do Not Cross, depending which grabs me this time next year. I'm holding my breath for Do Not Cross but on the other hand, if it's No King's Men I'm going to hire Anna to do the illustrations and I want that too. (Do Not Cross is about cops, No King's Men is about the revolutions of the 18th Century.)

What is the significant difference between demon powers in Sorcerer and disciplines in Vampire?

That's an easy one. In Sorcerer, the demon decides case-by-case whether you get to use the power. In order to use the power at all, you have to maintain a working relationship with a particular (in every sense of the word) NPC.

There's a significant technical difference too - Sorcerer's demon powers are designed effect-first - but who owns the power is the big deal. It's what drives the game, in fact.

There may be an even better answer, but I haven't played Sorcerer to know it.

Duh. Thanks.

Hi!  I was kind of burning out on roleplaying when I stumbled across the whole "Narrative" game concept and I'm really excited about it.  I haven't played DitV yet, but I bought it and look forward to playing it.

Anyway, I'm trying to gather all of the tools I can to trick my emotionally stunted self into being able to run cool thematic games.  So, my question is about escalation, in general.  I wish I could articulate this question better.  What is escalation, and how do you achieve it?  How do you promote it?  I've read some of the articles that mention it in passing, but couldn't get my head around it.  If there's a specific article I've missed, I'll gladly take a link to that.

Thanks.

Here's a harder one: What is a reward system?

Ok, Dogs question.

What do you do if you have enough dice to See a raise, but then have no dice left to Raise back?  Do you just Give?

Yes. If it's your turn to raise, and you don't, whether its because you don't want to or you don't have the dice, you've given. When it's your turn to raise, you have to raise or give.

Apropos of very little here...

Did you get the email I sent you in response yesterday? Your email made me wonder if you'd gotten previous ones I'd sent.

And I'm sorry I used the word 'apropos.'

Matt: I got the yesterday one, but naturally I'm not sure if I've gotten all the ones you've sent. If I've been blowing you off, it's because I haven't been getting 'em.

Is the Dragon Killer project still alive?

In deep slumber, at best.

Hi,
Can I stick some of the mechaton session reports and pictures from this site over on http://boardgamegeek.com?  The game's page over there is woefully thin and I would like to show people how groovy it looks.  Plus, I love your writing style.

craniac

at

gmail.com

Absolutely!

In A Wicked Age

Giving vs Taking the Blow

Is Taking The Blow the same as Giving except that the loser also takes mechanical damage, or is there supposed to be a qualitative difference (I think this only applies to a lethal challenge, but maybe it could apply elsewhere)?

Here's an example of what I mean (I'm Alexei, you're Boris):

I challenge "Alexei chops off Boris's head with his axe".
You lose.
You decide to give.
Boris has no head.
If you want to narrate any further action with Boris, you have to make it flow from that point (e.g. the foul magics of the temple Boris was murdered in cause him to rise from the dead filled only with lust for revenge on Alexei).

I challenge "Alexei chops off Boris's head with his axe".
You are doubled.
We negotiate consequences and can only agree on you losing 2 die sizes so we change the narration to "Alexei swings and knocks Boris flying. He leaves him for dead in a puddle of blood."
A few minutes later, Boris gets up battered & bruised, but still alive.
You get to carry on playing Boris.

Taking the blow means that the blow lands, not that the consequences are as declared. The taker of the blow says how the blow lands. In Dogs, fallout then determines what the consequences actually turn out to be - "I have no head" would come from the fallout roll after the conflict, not directly as a consequence of taking the blow.

Same goes for In a Wicked Age.

If you want to get technical, then a challenge should never include the consequences of your character's action. "Alexei hits Boris in the throat with his axe," not "Alexei chops off Boris's head with his axe." When I take the blow, I'm admitting that yes, Alexei hit my character in the throat with his axe, without admitting any consequences whatsoever. If I give, then there are no consequences, except that I've ditched out of the conflict and Alexei can go forward with whatever action he likes, unopposed by me.

Thanks Vince. That helps, but I still need a bit more.

Does that mean, if you gave I get to say how the blow lands, or is that still you?

e.g. Can I now say "Alexei's blow slices off Boris' head and it goes sailing through the air"?

2) If so, then can you still use Boris in a future conflict, as long as you allow for the fact that Boris has no head, and you do not violate the rules of the groups SIS?

A couple of examples:
a) The foul magics of the temple animate his headless corpse as a revenant filled with thirst for revenge.
b) You want Dimitry (Boris' brother) to seek vengeance on Alexei. The GM (Dimitry is an NPC) disagrees so enters a conflict with you over family loyalty - Boris uses his "Influence Others" to have generated enough loyalty that Dimitry starts a vendetta.

No. I get to say how the blow lands. If I give, and then you go on with an action I can't stand - oops, I guess I didn't give after all. You get the advantage and we roll into the next round. Giving isn't binding the way being exhausted or injured is.

Now, I might say that Alexei chops Boris' head off, and then go forward with either of your examples or others besides. But you never get to say that my character's head is off.

Vincent, I'd like to repeat back to you what I think you have said (here just now and elsewhere), regarding action and consequence in IaWA, to ensure I understand it.

* "Taking the blow", "totally sucking it up", etc. are all synonyms for "the challenge happens in the fiction as stated".  If the challenge is "I stab you in the throat" then taking the blow means saying "Yep, you stab me in the throat".  No more, no less.
* As the challenge happens as stated both with giving and doubling, there is no difference between the two with respect to the challenge itself.
* Any consequence specified in the challenge itself (i.e. "I chop your head off") is at most a suggestion of what the actual consequence of the challenge will be, and is in no way binding on the person receiving the challenge ("You cut my neck, but my head is still on my body").
* The only real difference between giving and doubling is that with giving there is "only" the narrative outcome of the challenge as interpreted by the receiving player ("Yep, I'm stabbed in the throat, that hurt a lot") but with doubling there is the narrative outcome ("Yep, I"m stabbed in the throat, that hurt a lot...") and also persistent and binding (mechanical or otherwise) consequence ("...and I've lost a die size in Art and can't use my 'Siren's Voice' mastery for the rest of the chapter").

Exactly!

Hello Mr. Baker, I??d like you to point me to tell me about "not if, but how". I know it has been discussed here but I cannot find it (googling IF and HOW didn??t get me far...).

If I remember it correctly, one of your principles in your game design is that it is never or rarely uncertain if the protagonist overcomes the challenge. The suspense lies in how much it will cost him. Could you elaborate me on that - or point me to where you have already elaborated it?

Would you say this point is more salient in fictin or more salient in game?

Thank you.

I said that a long time ago. In some kind of intro to Otherkind, maybe?

Here's where I really elaborate on it, though: Creating Theme. Read that and come back with any questions.

Welcome!