Barf Forth Apocalyptica
barf forth apocalyptica => roleplaying theory, hardcore => Topic started by: czipeter on March 01, 2011, 07:44:41 AM
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These are two questions, I think. If they are so unrelated (there is not only one answer for both), then say so and I'll separate them.
Why do people need different chances to not loose control/ground/etc. while making certain Moves?
Why do you check stats and why do you get "better"? I mean better in gamist terms is just better. But here we can see them just not interesting when they wont't roll a 6-.
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I think the best way to find out the answers to these questions is to remove those elements from the game and see what you get.
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I don't really understand what you're asking with your first question.
On the second question, the late game of AW is different from the early game, kinda like the intent behind different tiers in D&D. When you have the expanded moves (which are awesome) the higher stats make it more likely that you'll roll a 12+. Also, once your character has advanced that far, you're either playing multiple characters or quickly getting to the point where you're going to advance your character right out of the game by choosing "retire to safety" (especially when you have few other available options left for spending advances). That's part of the natural cycle of character rotation in AW, where you either make a new character or play ends.
Plus, trust me, even characters with +3 in most stats can roll failures, especially if the other characters are interfering (which also happens often in the late game, in my experience).
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To tell you the truth, I was in a hurry when writing the OP. This is maybe the cause of the shortness and baffling, unexplained nature.
Shreyas:
Do you?
In practice, I have played that way some times and I will do so again. Probably in my case trying the basic game would be the way, but 6-7 sessions is a bit too much for me to spend with a playtesty feel.
Jonathan:
The first one: what is the goal of the PCs having different levels of the stats (so the existence of the stats, fundamentally)?
The other one: I don't know the early version of AW. How was that different? As for the new character -- improvement -> retirement cycle: this is not so important for me and probably this is the reason for I'm not being able to fully get the whole stuff behind or connected to this.
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As far as the stats are concerned, its about Moves. It's easy to have a high weird (Vx wants players to open their brains) but hard to have a high cool. Thus, different high stats will influence the outcomes of the Moves and therefore the fiction.
Additionally, the serve a descriptive function - having high weird means you're a fucking creepy wierdo or something along those lines. A character cannot have a high weird and no be weird.
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6-7 sessions is a bit too much for me to spend with a playtesty feel.
There's your answer - if it worked properly it wouldn't feel like you are playtesting.
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Hello.
The other one: I don't know the early version of AW. How was that different? As for the new character -- improvement -> retirement cycle: this is not so important for me and probably this is the reason for I'm not being able to fully get the whole stuff behind or connected to this.
This is probably your disconnect, right here. The "early game" doesn't mean an earlier version of AW. It means "how the game feels when you're just starting with new characters". The various advancements serve to change the feeling of the game as you play on, just like "leveling up" in D&D produces a certain type of story: one of the heroes outgrowing their current challenges and moving on to tackle bigger things.
I'd imagine that you could play AW without advancements and still enjoy yourself... but it might be difficult for the game not to stagnate or devolve into an aimless fight for survival. Still, I'm sure it would be doable.
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Nathan:
I think the reason for I can't accept this perfectly is that I'm unable to act on two different things simultaneously. Being true to the feel/my assumptions of the character till then AND wanting to roll high. I could probably accept this for a game where the motivations of actions are not in the focus but AW seems so much more for me. ("I am harder than weird, so I do less weird stuff than hard stuff" is very limited in my opinion.)
I must agree with your second point to a certain degree. This descriptive (or so to say, prescriptive) function has meaning for me, but sadly not too much. The PCs can be casually compared in terms of Cool-ness, Hard-ness, etc., but this is not too much of a bonus. I mean, I can't see too much of a point of it.
I don't get the meaning of the scaling in absolute values. (Does Hard-1 mean I am puny and/or fragile? Is Weird-1 "normal"? Hot-1? Plane Jane or six-pack?) This gets even stronger when I am curious about [Stat]+0 or the difference between two positive values or two negative ones. I can make a Driver with a strong body and Hard-2. Probably he/she was not enough agressive, so he became a bodybuilder to compensate.
The words are appealing, anyway. I guess glancing at your character sheet and seeing words like Cool, Hard, Hot, Sharp, Weird is a fascinating thing which can make your experience better, the game more focused and fun.
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I don't get the meaning of the scaling in absolute values. (Does Hard-1 mean I am puny and/or fragile? Is Weird-1 "normal"? Hot-1? Plane Jane or six-pack?) This gets even stronger when I am curious about [Stat]+0 or the difference between two positive values or two negative ones. I can make a Driver with a strong body and Hard-2. Probably he/she was not enough agressive, so he became a bodybuilder to compensate.
I don't think there is any "absolute values" to the stats: they're all relative to the other player characters, as only player characters use stats or roll dice. It's just "I'm as hard as Keeler" or "Spanner is even more weird than Bo!"
And look at the descriptions of the stats: high "Weird" doesn't just mean "freakish", it could also mean "extremely lucky"... their value and meaning comes from how you describe and play your character.
Being postive or negative doesn't mean anything other than allowing an elegant dice mechanic: it could be a range of +0 to +6 and still have the same effect.
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I think it relates to a couple of the principles.
Stats are there to make the world feel real. They are descriptors of the characters, give you a feel for what this character is like.
Advancement is there because there is no status quo in Apocalypse world. Things are always changing, it could be stats it could be other things like a new character showing up.
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Being true to the feel/my assumptions of the character till then AND wanting to roll high.
I don't really follow here. My characters in the game always want to succeed at what they try to do, so I always want to roll high for them.
Or are you saying that you want to increase all the stats (and other advances etc) regardless of whether it makes sense for the character?
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Shreyas:
True as hell, I guess. It's just my bad connotations of the word "testing". Like a good thing couldn't be tested. Or a test couldn't be interesting and fun. Hopefully, I'll get over these. I'm already a bit relieved for writing these down, so thank you.
Paul:
Sorry, I couldn't get the D&D thing before, but now I understand. My concern is that long-term cycle interferes with other things for me on the short term as well, and those are more important to me. Perhaps this is for not being able to choose and play games too much. So I never had the time to feel bored.
Mike:
First, a question: you are still in-character somehow, want to help your characters, or is that gambling (alea)? As for me, I am not playing her/him like a real person when I roll die.
I meant rolling high with dice and Stat added. I assumed, they (the characters) don't know the rules of the game. If they do, then your second question is not applicable, I think. (Of course they want to be better than everybody else.) Otherwise, my answer is "yes."
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I meant rolling high with dice and Stat added. I assumed, they (the characters) don't know the rules of the game.
Well, obviously they don't know the rules. But they would normally know what they're good at.
E.g. my battlebabe with Cool +3 isn't scared of anything. So I end up doing a lot of acting under fire on the grounds he's gonna charge in and do what he wants regardless of the fact that there is an unknown number of savage cannibals between him and his objective.
So rolling the dice, as such, doesn't force me out of character at all.
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These are two questions, I think. If they are so unrelated (there is not only one answer for both), then say so and I'll separate them.
Why do people need different chances to not loose control/ground/etc. while making certain Moves?
Why do you check stats and why do you get "better"? I mean better in gamist terms is just better. But here we can see them just not interesting when they wont't roll a 6-.
Why have a psychic maelstrom?
I think when you campaign, and this is a game supports campaigning, the general theme is one of rising stakes, rising challenge. For balance, you want your characters to improve at the same rate the challenges do.
But yeah, it is strange when you are rolling against a fixed level of difficulty -- having not played the game, yet alone played a campaign, can someone say how that pays out?
Off the top of my head, improving the character by learning new moves seems a mechanically more sound way to go, and a lot more interesting as well.
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But yeah, it is strange when you are rolling against a fixed level of difficulty -- having not played the game, yet alone played a campaign, can someone say how that pays out?
It's different. Basically the players succeed more often, which reinforces the idea that they're more bad ass then they used to be. It also enables them to take bigger risks and for the MC to put them in tighter situations. In my experience, these escalating stakes tend to push toward a conclusion of their story.
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Mike:
I don't think wanting to get the highest total on the roll (wanting my character to succeed to have more control (or is this really more or just an ephemeral stroke of feeling powerful?)) and acting purely on my vision of him/her and the situation produce the same thing (the same move or non-move action) every time. Is this one any clearer now?
In other words, I think, they have more to them ("real people" and AW characters) than their stats to base their decisions on.
Stefoid:
Why have a psychic maelstrom?
I think that's mainly for color reasons and whether it exists or not doesn't have a major/direct effect on resolution or the things I'm currently probing into. So I can't answer your question yet.
I think when you campaign, and this is a game supports campaigning, the general theme is one of rising stakes, rising challenge. For balance, you want your characters to improve at the same rate the challenges do.
I don't think campaign play must groove on this thing which is a strong contender nonetheless. I may be mistaken, but I have a feeling about Improvement not being about balance, not on purpose, at least. (Though it could be as it can fill some permanent stat damage gaps.)
John:
Good one about escalating stakes, but I don't know if/how Improvement brings this to us.
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they have more to them ("real people" and AW characters) than their stats to base their decisions on.
Oh, absolutely. But this doesn't lead to a conflict, for me.
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The general growth of characters is a tool used by a lot games designed with character growth and strong adversity in mind. They allow the stakes in play to shift over time. Character growth and change is an important feature of most character-centric fiction, and it seems to me that this is what AW is going for.
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John:
Good one about escalating stakes, but I don't know if/how Improvement brings this to us.
In theory terms: Risk = chance of failure * cost of failure. As chance of failure decreases, the cost of failure can be increased without increasing the over all risk.
The players/characters don't do this math explicitly, but it is built right into our decision making process (psychologically). So as the chance of failing a roll decreases, our willingness to put more at stake in a given roll will increase. Hence the stakes rise.
(Rolls are just an easy place to highlight. As characters become more capable in general they'll be more willing to enter high stakes situations in general.)
Note that all this risk assessment the player does then indirectly affects the options of the MC. It means they can up the stakes without the players/characters balking.
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Stefoid:
Why have a psychic maelstrom?
I think that's mainly for color reasons and whether it exists or not doesn't have a major/direct effect on resolution or the things I'm currently probing into. So I can't answer your question yet.
Well yeah, the game has 'magic', so my assumption is VB is trying to broaden its appeal by including some stuff which generally appears in mainstream games such as stat advancement and armor and stuff.
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John:
Good one about escalating stakes, but I don't know if/how Improvement brings this to us.
In theory terms: Risk = chance of failure * cost of failure. As chance of failure decreases, the cost of failure can be increased without increasing the over all risk.
The players/characters don't do this math explicitly, but it is built right into our decision making process (psychologically). So as the chance of failing a roll decreases, our willingness to put more at stake in a given roll will increase. Hence the stakes rise.
(Rolls are just an easy place to highlight. As characters become more capable in general they'll be more willing to enter high stakes situations in general.)
Note that all this risk assessment the player does then indirectly affects the options of the MC. It means they can up the stakes without the players/characters balking.
good point!
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Czipeter, I believe the 'inability' you have to 'do two things simultaneously' is actually a big part of any really good RPG, including AW. What's happening is this: Your interest as a player is to 'win'- to do well, to succeed at whatever it is the overall goal is perceived to be. Your character's interest, however, is to pursue their desires, dreams, and reasoning- sometimes at the cost of 'winning'. When you are asked to 'play your character', these two interests are in conflict.
Example of character interest trumping player interest: Dickinson and friends are fleeing a burning building. Dickinson sees the heavy steel door closing, and charges ahead to squeeze through right before it closes, shoving aside a wounded comrade to do so like the selfish git she is. The friends are trapped inside the burning building, and so are the documents they were paid to retrieve. Oops.
Example of player interest trumping character interest: Dickinson, a normally selfish character, holds open a heavy steel door long enough for the rest of the party to escape with the documents.. but not long enough for herself, so she dies in the conflagration. Oops.
The situation isn't always clear-cut, and sometimes you have to weigh one player's interests against another player's interests, or against everybody else's interests, and so on... but conflicting interests done well generates drama, which makes the situations interesting.
Some folks are used to this approach to role-playing, and some folks are not. Once you get used to it, though, it's a lot of fun. Hope it works out for you and yours!
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Not sure how alive this thread is, but since nobody quite explicitly said it:
One of the major reasons for advancement is to give the characters more power, and greater freedom from mechanical consequences, so that what the characters choose to do -- which is kind of what we're all playing to find out, really -- takes on a new dimension.
At first, what the characters choose to do is generally influenced by in-fiction concerns about survival/basic needs and out-of-fiction concerns about risk management and development. Your stats are lower, so you fail more, which creates adversity from outside. You also tend to focus more on your highlighted stats, because the options for advancement are wider and often more effective in terms of both not-failing-rolls (stat bonuses) and getting what you want out of your character in the fiction (identity-defining moves.)
Later, the characters are less likely to be concerned about survival or basic goals; they can usually get what they need with relatively little risk. Players are less worried about rolling 5- and so can take more actions, using a broader range of moves. Less failures means less external opposition in the form of hard moves. Instead, opposition comes out of the positive consequences of their actions, and from fallout from the more desperate actions they took earlier, when they had to make more difficult choices. At some point just being able to kill or seduce or mind-rape everyone in the room stops being a solution -- because of course it never was a solution to the problem of the apocalypse, it was only ever a solution to the problem of short-term survival.
So the question of 'what do the characters do?' changes shape -- its less about 'how do they cope with this basic shittiness' and more about 'now that they have coped, what now? What next?' Basically the game transitions between two aspects of the post-apocalyptic genre: from a story about survival to one about (re)building, from reactive actions to proactive ones. The characters grow powerful enough to pass judgment on civilization -- is it worth saving? is it worth rebuilding? and how? -- instead of just dealing with its absence.