Barf Forth Apocalyptica
barf forth apocalyptica => Apocalypse World => Topic started by: Orion on July 22, 2010, 06:19:16 PM
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This post is about a potential problem I see reading through the rulebook. I haven't encountered it in play, but I'd like to hear from anyone who has (or better anyone who successfully avoided it), and ideally from Vincent for his take. The difficult is the interaction between
Stat-Substitution Moves and Stat Highlighting
My understanding is that highlighting stats is intended as a way to influence behavior. That is, if another player wants to see you take more risks and put yourself out there, he highlights Cool. If the MC wants you to pay attention to the Maelstrom, he highlights Weird. If someone wants to steer the session towards a focus on cultivating relationships, one highlights Sharp and Hot.
But, let's look at an example character, Wrench, a driver who aims to be a one-man "problem-solver" and protection racket. He starts off with Weather Eye. For his first advance he picks up Ice Cold so he put the pressure on his victims. For the second, he snags Easy to Trust so as to arrange better pay for his labors.
Let's look at the way the basic moves break down for him:
Cool: Act Under Fire, Go Aggro, Manipulate/Seduce
Hard: Seize by Force
Hot: Nothing
Sharp: Read a Sitch, Read a Person, Open Brain
Weird: Nothing
(Hx): Help/Hinder
Now let's say a new session starts and it's time to highlight stats. Two Problems arise:
First, you can't really manipulate his behavior by dangling XP any more. Let's say you want him to go commune with the spirits of the wastes, but he's been hanging around in town politicking. Well, highlighting Weird won't work, because he doesn't roll Weird anymore. But highlighting Sharp won't do it either, because he can still rack up the points by sticking with his negotiations. It's similarly impossible to encourage him to be more or less manipulative.
The second problem is that there's a risk of the highlighting process becoming more adversarial. If you highlight his Sharp and Cool, he'll get XP for nearly every roll he makes, which defeats the point of the mechanic and puts him ahead of the group. But there's no longer anything "interesting" about highlighting Hot or Weird; doing so serves no purpose except to screw him over. He only ever uses three stats now, which means there are only 3 stat combinations that even make sense, making it hard to follow the "try something different every time" suggestion.
This isn't the only build affected; it's possible to use Weird for almost everything, for instance. Anyway, I'm not sure what to do about it, but tentatively suggest awarding XP based on the default stat for all basic moves, not the one actually used.
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This actually came up during character creation at our first session on Tuesday. Nathan was playing a Gunlugger and chose Battle-hardened, which makes him roll+hard instead of +cool when acting under fire. Then I highlighted his cool, and then realized that, barring an optional battle move and custom moves (neither of which were in play for the first session), he'd never roll+cool, and so I had him highlight weird instead.
Anyway, yeah, it's kind of strange. But there're always custom moves and there're always the optional battle moves. I'm not sure if this solves all the problems you see, though (I'm only half-following your systematic accounting of all the stat-sub moves).
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It's not a problem in play. So the one character has always 2 of the same 3 stats highlighted, so that "which of my stats are highlighted? I can't wait to know!" isn't part of his fun. No big deal.
As MC, it's super not your job to worry about how quickly the characters are advancing compared to one another. Make sure that all the characters get good and interesting screen time, and don't give it another thought.
-Vincent
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Hey Vincent, is it cool to opt NOT to use your stat substitution move on a specific roll? Like, "This time, I'm not Ice Cold, actually. I'm yelling, my face is red, I'm gonna roll+hard."
Or are the special moves mandatory and always on?
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Plus, don't forget about GM custom moves. I was thinking about this kind of thing myself. One of the PCs is a Gunlugger who took... umm... the move whose name I can't remember right now that lets her roll+hard instead of +cool for acting under fire. I pointed out to the player that he might want to change his choice of stat line (he'd chosen one with a high cool) because he would hardly ever be using cool.
But it's not never. I've got at least one custom move on my front sheets that calls for the PCs to roll+cool. When/if Crille ever has to do that, she's gonna suck.
Not that I'm saying you should necessarily purposefully design custom moves to make people roll things that they don't normally have to roll. That's not what I was doing. I set the custom move up to use +cool because that was what seemed to make sense. I'm just reminding you that basic moves aren't the ONLY thing that may call for a character to roll a stat.
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Hey Vincent, is it cool to opt NOT to use your stat substitution move on a specific roll? Like, "This time, I'm not Ice Cold, actually. I'm yelling, my face is red, I'm gonna roll+hard."
Or are the special moves mandatory and always on?
I don't remember if Vincent weighed in on this one, but in one of the other threads there was some talk about how if a brainer with unnatural lust transfixion wanted to get someone interested in her based on her actual looks and personality, and not crazy psychic powers, then she'd roll+hot in that situation. Again, I dunno what the 'official' take is, but it sounds like a way to have more options for reflecting the fiction, so I'd definitely go with allowing it.
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Hey Vincent, is it cool to opt NOT to use your stat substitution move on a specific roll? Like, "This time, I'm not Ice Cold, actually. I'm yelling, my face is red, I'm gonna roll+hard."
Or are the special moves mandatory and always on?
I don't remember if Vincent weighed in on this one, but in one of the other threads there was some talk about how if a brainer with unnatural lust transfixion wanted to get someone interested in her based on her actual looks and personality, and not crazy psychic powers, then she'd roll+hot in that situation. Again, I dunno what the 'official' take is, but it sounds like a way to have more options for reflecting the fiction, so I'd definitely go with allowing it.
Yeah, that sounds awesome.
If a player is deliberately highlighting a stat someone doesn't use, that's not a game problem, that's a "you've got a dick in your group" problem. Just tell them not to highlight stuff that won't be rolled and let's get this game going.
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I don't get why that's a dick move. Like if there are certain aspects of a character I want to see and the player isn't pursuing it ever, then I highlight the stat accordingly. If the brainer is always using unnatural lust transfixion all the time and I want to see her use +hot, I'm gonna use +hot.
I don't get why that's a jerk thing to do. If you get to highlight a stat, it's your prerogative. I know I go out of my way to highlight stats that players aren't using.
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It's a dick move if the stat substitution is mandatory, and the MC has not introduced any custom moves that use that stat. In that case, you have no options that use the highlighted stat.
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Ooh, I see.
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I don't get why that's a dick move. Like if there are certain aspects of a character I want to see and the player isn't pursuing it ever, then I highlight the stat accordingly. If the brainer is always using unnatural lust transfixion all the time and I want to see her use +hot, I'm gonna use +hot.
I don't get why that's a jerk thing to do. If you get to highlight a stat, it's your prerogative. I know I go out of my way to highlight stats that players aren't using.
I dunno, I'd say it's only a dick move if the player in question has said "dude, I really don't want to use hot. I have no interest in doing that, and I'm not even going to do it just to get experience" and you still insist. There's probably a fine line between "coaxing your friend out of their shell" and "trying to impose too much of your creative vision on them".
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Yeah, it's only messed up if there's no mechanical way to roll it, as in the case of a lot of stat subs. I never highlight a class's MAIN stat. But I am a dick, so there you go. :)
And yeah, if I'm highlighting Kreider's hot because I think it would be interesting to see Kreider's .... social side, but Jeff isn't comfortable with that and yet, I'm still digging my heels in, there's a dick factor going on there. Man, that sentence was coooomplicated.
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Not at all against choosing to roll the original stat as a fix for an individual game group, but I want to point out that the printed text does not say "you may use cool instead of hard" (or whatever), but "you use cool instead of hard." If rolling the original when the fiction demands is a necessary fix, then it should go in the text next time revisions happen.
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I also don't completely accept Vincent's assertion that it's not the MC's job to worry about how fast characters earn XP. If I understand him correctly, the assertion is that since failure is as interesting as success, having a "more powerful" character does not make the game more fun, and in any case different characters have such wildly different competencies that discrepancies in the number of avdances aren't really noticeable. (Is a Hocus going to be jealous of the Gunlugger because he has more advances? No, they're each doing their own thing.)
I'd agree that in a game where player's don't regularly go all out on each other, they all have their own schticks, and there's a little maturity, trying to keep the party "balanced" in the way you would when playing D&D or something isn't really necessary. But there's a bigger problem with advancement: it undermines the premise of the game.
The Character Creation session does a lot of setting the tone for the game to come, and which playbooks are chosen can be very important in that regard. If nobody takes one of the Leadership playbooks--say you have a Driver, a Gunlugger, and a Brainer--then often the PCs will end up a little less attached. The game can be more mobile and "pulling up stakes and leaving" is a viable respons eot some problems. On the other hand, with a Hocus, Chopper, or *especially* a Hardholder, the story is naturally going to end up revolving around the social groups the Character have created. Most of the game reports on this site revolve around the troubles of a PC Hardholder's holding.
Well, almost every character has the option to pick up a holding or some followers as an advancement, and the faster the advances come, the more likely you are to see that. Unfortunately, adding a new holding has a major effect on the entire game, not just that player. The overall mood can change, lots of new NPCs may need to be invented, and existing threats may need to change shape to remain relevant. The same effect can happen with certain more prosaic moves, too. Picking up "not to be fucked with" can make formerly scary raiders much more manageable.
The bottom line is, the faster advancement happens, the harder it is to predict the outcome of events, the faster existing threats will get churned through, the more of the MC's prep time will be wasted, and the more work will be required to keep up with the advancing story. Keeping the reigns on that is absolutely the MC's perogative.
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The bottom line is, the faster advancement happens, the harder it is to predict the outcome of events, the faster existing threats will get churned through, the more of the MC's prep time will be wasted, and the more work will be required to keep up with the advancing story. Keeping the reigns on that is absolutely the MC's perogative.
What? Nooooo. Absolutely not. Nothing about this game is about reigning anything in. They get a hold? Then they get a hold. One character is "more powerful" than another? Then they are.
If you're talking about wanting a mobile game and then having someone introduce stationary things into it, then tell everyone that at the onset that this is a mobile game and no one will pick "hold/follower" type stuff.
And as far as wasting prep time, that's never gonna happen. The fronts are going down. If the players stop them, then they do. The players aren't ruining an MC's prep by doing awesome stuff. They're just doing awesome stuff. Player stuff trumps my MC stuff every time.
And an MC should never be 'predicting' things. As an MC, I'm there to see what happens same as everyone else. That's why I come.
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If that's your philosophy, why have advancement rules at all? Why not just have the rule be, "players add a new move when they feel it's dramatically appropriate"?
All rules ultimately come form the MC, since even though Vincent wrote them, you're endorsing them and choosing not to hack them. By having advancement rules at all, you're implicitly stating that there is a desirable pace for advancement to go.
To look at it another way: advancement, by its very nature, changes things. The entire point is to alter the relationship between the characters and their environment. That means that sufficient advancement destroy the existing situation and replaces it with a new one. That's great if you (collectively) felt that the old circumstances were mined out, and things needed to be shaken up to keep life interesting. On the other hand, during the First Session you and your players presumably set up a situation that you liked and found interesting to explore. If character advancement destroys the situation while people were still having fun with it, that seems like a bad thing.
Or, for yet another angle: most games have an agenda beyond simply simulating the lives of the characters. There is an end toward which events trend. The MC may not know what it is ahead of time, but the point is that the story of a given game is finite. Vincent himself acknowledges this--a comment I've seen him make several times on this site is that some advancement options propel games toward their end. The Ungiven Future advanced moves, especially the 12+ Manipulate and Open Brain results, change the game in fundamental ways that tend eventually to end it.
If like Vincent, you believe that the game won't last long once Players can make Allies and see through the maelstrom, then your game probably won't see more than about 10 advances. And that means that the XP bubbles are a countdown clock. If you want your game to last, say, 7 sessions, you can't give out 2 advances per session. Are we such slaves to the "play to find out what happens" rule that we can't take action to prolong the life of a game we enjoy?
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Disclaimer: Orion and I know each other in real life, and he's going to be playing in my upcoming AW game.
Just popping in to point out that "add a new move when the fiction demands it" is already in the rules.
Page 177: "when the character’s fictional circumstances or capabilities change naturally, within the character’s fictional world, the player can and should change her character sheet to match."
That's different from "when it's dramatically appropriate", of course, but that's because AW is concerned with the fiction, not the story arc.
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Just saying: the rules as written work very well. I encourage you to give them a shot before you start fixing them.
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Peter: I think the whole concept of mechanical advancement actually pushes a game away from a fiction-based (as you use the word, or perhaps simulation-based is acceptable) space toward a trope-based or arc-based space. Here's why: (warning, LONG)
Let's start by talking about what supernatural or paranormal elements do to a game setting. Obviously the moment you introduce them, "realism" as it's most strictly defined goes out the window. But there's such a thing as "verisimilitude" and "coherence." You can make a world that *feels* real--you can combine suspension of disbelief with abstract reasoning to imagine what would happen in a world that wasn't like ours: you have to even without supernatural elements in *any* sci-fi setting. You have to be able to "simulate" the effects of economies and technologies that never were to run AW at all. That's verisimilitude. And you can make sure the world works "The same way every time"--that's coherence. And those standard's don't go out the window because you introduce a psychic. You can and should strive for a coherent world even with magic and monsters in it.
I'd argue, however, that something slippery happens when you apply the concept of coherence to magic: a change in what it means to work "the same way ever time." See, with a futuristic motorbike, you can straight-up DEFINE it's gas mileage, it's acceleration, the weight it can pull, if you really want to. And indeed once an MC has told you it takes 8 hours to drive from A to B, it had damn well better take 8 hours the next time unless you're redlining it or the weather is bad.
When it comes to something like "open your brain" though, there aren't any real-world benchmarks to compare it to. You can't write out the mass and power of the Maelstrom, you can't say it's like a cross between a Honda and a Mazda, and you don't expect the results one character got from opening his brain to be reliable or replicable. So how do you prove to your players that you're "playing fair?" First, you give your world's Maelstrom a consistent theme, like ghosts or emotions or secrets or mental disorders. Your players will describe their game's Maelstrom to their friends by analogy, not to real objects, but to other fictional texts. They'll say, "our MC plays the Maelstrom like the underworld from Earthsea" or "like the Force" or "like the First Evil on Buffy" or whatever. Second, you make sure that even though what happens to Marie when she opens her brain may never have happened before or again, it feels appropriate--that after the fact it seems like it should have been predictable.
But that sense of propriety is, I would argue, an arc-based sensibility. We come up with "reasonable" supernatural scenes by modeling them on our favorite trances and haunting from movies, which used them to advance themes or resolve character arcs.
So what does this have to do with the advancement rules? Well, here on Earth I'm pretty comfortable saying that people essentially never suddenly gain a level in badass. Someone does not, from one day to the next, acquire Ice Cold or Good in the Clinch or even a +1 to hot. One especially does not, bleeding and forsaken by all allies in the wasteland when the raiders are coming, set his jaw, acquire NTBFW and murder the lot. (Notice I invoked a trope there). Sudden, dramatic change in capabilities are a fictional trope used to move the spotlight around an ensemble cast or resolve a previously irresolvable plotline.
The playbooks themselves are drama-based objects, created to bestow players with the powers of fictional protagonists for no in-universe reason. A Battlebabe's abilities, or a Driver's, are every bit as supernatural as a Brainer's. And the advancement rule is also tailored for the sake of drama: by giving when dice are rolled (and dice are only rolled when the shit hits the fan), the advancement rules actually assure that PCs usually *will* pick up new moves while they're broken, bleeding, or abandoned. For that reason, I think "when dramatically appropriate" would be a pretty good approximation of advancement as it stands.
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Oh man, double-post time. I'm certainly vomiting forth SOMETHING all right. This one is for Vincent: I'm rather disappointed by the attitude you take.
Look, I've read the rules and hypothesized that a subset of the possible characters have a bug. It's a large-enough subset to be of some concern, but it's far from the majority. Around here, we tend to play with groups of 3-4 players, so it's entirely possible that I won't even see one of the character's I'm worried about played. What would that prove, then? It wouldn't prove that there is no bug, just that I didn't run into it. But it's actually worse than that, because my belief that there is a problem means I *won't* be playing an Ice Cold, Easy to Trust character. And if my views spread to others in my group, they won't either. That means that no amount of playing will be able to prove there is no bug, but that the playspace for my group will be curtailed.
Your advice only makes sense if I amend it to, "play the character you think is a problem" before house ruling it, which, frankly, I don't consider to be especially good advice. I don't get a lot of opportunities to play RPGs, so I'm likely to play a full game of AW only once or twice in the foreseeable future. I should deliberately try to destabilize one of those games to prove my point?
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Go for it. You won't destabilize anything.
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@Orion- sorry man, I just don´t follow, what´s bugging you, really?
I get that you think something bad will happen with some combination of advancements but I don´t know what. Somehow I have a feeling that this is about How you relate to the game, or something.
So what if the game ends because of an advancement, what´s the problem? The MC can´t and shouldn´t foresee the game, so it doesn´t ruin anything.
And I don´t think the threats stops hungering because a character gets better at doing his shit- it´s not like the character won´t ever miss a roll- and even if they don´t- we get to see them doing pretty cool things in fiction, right?
A lot of the moves really introduces new badness- getting a hold or a crew for instances, even if they make old badness be less bad, they introduce new badness, and the story goes somewhere else.
With that said- maybe I missunderstood your concern...
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EDIT: It seems to me that what I ought to do is make a thread on Blood & Guts about the purpose of Advancement in AW.
Bret, if I were going to be convinced by bald assertion, I wouldn't *need* to playtest it. I'd accept there's no problem if
1: I saw such a character in play (for 5 or more session) and it wasn't a problem
2: I saw a convincing intellectual argument that there is no problem, or
3: I heard stories about groups who had those characters, and no problems, if those groups' playstyles sounded similar to mine.
Now, my MC isn't adopting this house rule, so it's totally possible that a friend will play this character, nothing bad will come of it, and you'll all be vindicated. But as long as *I* believe that the rule is problematic, it would in fact be *unethical* for me to play that character, and I won't do it. That means that if you happened to care what I thought, your best bet would be to convince me intellectually that the rule is okay. So far I've heard three arguments
1: It's okay because it's not a problem
2: It's okay because the MC needn't care how fast advancement happens
3: It's okay because it just is
I've made my counter-argument to option #2, and that's where we stand.
Now, I can't say that either you or Vincent *owes* me an explanation of anything--your time is your own. I do know that, personally, as designer, some of my priorities were
1: test destructively, to find breakpoints that casual play may not reveal
2: remove bugs that cause unintended results, even if they occur rarely, and
3: clarify design intent and the workings of mechanic whenever possible.
So if someone came to me with a concern about Bad Juju or Identity Crisis, in an ideal world I'd like to think I would
1: have already tested it, be willing to do so, or have my playtesters do so rather than asking the public to do the testing
2: explain what the rule was supposed to achieve--in this case, rouhgly how fast advancement is "supposed" to happen, what role advancement plays in the game, etc.
and
3: show mathematically when appropriate, or by example otherwise, how the rule does in fact produce the intended result.
Now I'm sure Vincent is a busy guy, and I realize the above is a heavy demand. I won't take it personally if he doesn't have time to explain it all to the little guy, but I don't like being told not to worry my pretty little head about it.
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NilsH-- I have several thoughts on your post, but to begin with, I flat-out disagree with the notion that the MC shouldn't try to foresee anything.
I go to a college where each academic session is 11 weeks long. Assume that one can't organize anything for the very first weekend, and that people want the weekends of reading period and finals free for studies. Assume further that I got away for the weekend once per term. That means that there are 8 weekends available for gaming. Finally, assume that I play RPGs mostly for the character development that happens one your basic situation is set up.
What happens if the game comes to end with the 6th session? We make new characters? We'd only get to play them twice; that's hardly satisfying or a good use of my time. I think in this situation I have a compelling interest to make sure my game runs for exactly 8 sessions.
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If the game ends after six sessions- then go do something else, with all respect- different games work differently- in AW the MC shoulnd´t foresee what will happen. If you do that, you arn´t playing AW.
And still with all respect, I play rpgs to have fun, to have a good time at the game table. I don´t think you can mathematically reach Fun land. There is no three advancments per session is fun, four is not fun.
I think you sort of already got the answer to your question.
Like this: In mys last session nobody made a sex move- so that rule didn´t "exist" in that session, it didn´t contribut to our shared fun. The operaters Crew really was the attention for a lot of the action- so that move/ rule/ piece of fiction really was a highway to fun.
In some session some of the things will make your fun. For some characters, after a while- highlightning won´t be what´s making it fun- something else hopefully is.
Highlightning isn´t the only way to influence someones behavior.
I also think it would be really cool if you would turn the question around. Vincent hasn´t written this game on the backside of a napkin. Of course he has tested it. Of course he thinks it works. So your question should really be- how can this still be fun- this part here seems unfun, please tell me.... not prove me this and that...
It´s not a court...
That´s my opinion anyway
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NilsH,
You and Chris have both emphasized the importance of the MC not predicting anything. Could you explain why you feel that way, and why its importance outweighs real-life scheduling concerns?
Also--It's possible and even likely that the rule has been tested and found good, but if that's the case, it shouldn't be difficult to show me the money. As a reminder, my assertion is that:
1: A character with multiple stat-substitution moves will earn improvements dramatically faster than other characters, and
2: That this will lead to an undesirable result
All Vincent, or anyone knowledgeable, needs to do is disprove one of those statements. Either tell me that those characters have been played and did not earn improvements especially fast (preferably accompanied by an approximate breakdown of where Xp was coming from) or by saying they've played successful games with rapidly advancing characters and explaining how it went.
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Your problem is with 2 - that advancing quickly is necessarily undesirable or is a problem. I think you have to prove to us that it is. So far you've said this:
The bottom line is, the faster advancement happens, the harder it is to predict the outcome of events, the faster existing threats will get churned through, the more of the MC's prep time will be wasted, and the more work will be required to keep up with the advancing story. Keeping the reigns on that is absolutely the MC's perogative
This is incorrect. The MC does not need to, and actually absolutely should not, predict the outcome of events. That is not his/her job as is explained in the rules. The reason for this is, I imagine, to emphasize PC protagonization, and to create an organic world for the PCs rather than trying to fit them into a 'story.'
The MCs prep time will not be wasted. The amount of time it takes to prep is not long. I can make four fronts in maybe an hour, and and I've had one front last four sessions. Character advancement is not so significant as to allow them to get through four fronts in a single session, and unless your pacing is absolutely frenetic I can't imagine them making it through two in a single session. Your mileage may vary, but since you have no mileage we're going to trust mine for now.
And finally, you don't need to worry about the story advancing. As the MC, that is not your job and if you are trying to do that you are incorrectly playing Apocalypse World. Your job is to play the world as though it were real and make the character's lives interesting. The 'story' then emerges from how your making a real, interesting world, and the players playing real, interesting characters intersect. Pacing is not required. (Edit: In this I mean pacing the advancement of the story in the way that you are describing.)
If you're worried about fitting a game into X amount of sessions, we could give you advice on that, but it is not related to advancement. If anything, it's related to Fronts.
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Hi Orion!
I think the MC shouldn´t predict the game because predicting the game makes the MC not curious to what will happen. It makes him not reacting with the gut of his characters. It makes him not building on the players input.
If the MC follows the instructions for when to announce badness and stuff it will be really hard to have a pre-prepared story. I know maybe this doesn´t answer the question like you want to- but I think the important part of AW isn´t the "hard" rules like how to punch someone- but the "soft" rules- how to act in the conversation when you create the shared imagination. Those rule are deeply linked to the setting of AW. In this world people die suddenly- for no reason. That´s part of the theme. To not looking through crosshairs, because that character is importent for the plot or the plan makes a different theme- a different world, a different game.
And I don´t really think the game could or should take responsibility for your personal life. It´s like saying- "The bottle is empty, but I´m still thirsty, how did you plan THAT Coca-Cola company!!??"
This
2: That this will lead to an undesirable result
is really the big question, isn´t it?
Do I understand you correctly if I say that your hypothesis is that some advancements will make the game come to an end more quikly- and that is a bad thing- or did I miss something?
Oh, sorry, you also said some advancements will make some threats less threatening and less fun, right.
I´m just taking it one step at a time trying to figure out what´s bothering you, to see if I can help you with your concern from my really short experience with the game.. :)
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Are we such slaves to the "play to find out what happens" rule that we can't take action to prolong the life of a game we enjoy?
Nope. But I think artificially extending it is silly and detrimental to game play. That's just me. Saying "Hey, guys, I really like this current thing we have going, so NO ONE DO ANYTHING" seems odd.
Now, I can't say that either you or Vincent *owes* me an explanation of anything--your time is your own.
Good. Personally, I think the onus is on you to prove that there IS a problem. I don't think you've done that. You've sort of jumped from a concern about stat substitutions to a concern about pacing.
What happens if the game comes to end with the 6th session? We make new characters? We'd only get to play them twice; that's hardly satisfying or a good use of my time. I think in this situation I have a compelling interest to make sure my game runs for exactly 8 sessions.
Sounds to me like you have a highly specific problem. While it'd be great if we could jump onto Vincent's forums and tell him his game is broken because it doesn't match up with our class schedule, it's just not a practical concern, man. If you NEED a game to end prematurely or extend longer than is "natural", then by all means, go for it. But you can't complain about the results if you're not following the proscribed rules.
You and Chris have both emphasized the importance of the MC not predicting anything. Could you explain why you feel that way, and why its importance outweighs real-life scheduling concerns?
Also--It's possible and even likely that the rule has been tested and found good, but if that's the case, it shouldn't be difficult to show me the money. As a reminder, my assertion is that:
1: A character with multiple stat-substitution moves will earn improvements dramatically faster than other characters, and
2: That this will lead to an undesirable result
All Vincent, or anyone knowledgeable, needs to do is disprove one of those statements. Either tell me that those characters have been played and did not earn improvements especially fast (preferably accompanied by an approximate breakdown of where Xp was coming from) or by saying they've played successful games with rapidly advancing characters and explaining how it went.
Sure. The game has a certain pace to it. There's flow to the game and it doesn't involve the MC laying things out. As you've said, if the MC DOES lay things out, it won't work anyway. I think the problem, if I understand you, is that the pace does not conform to your class schedule.
1) Yep
2) Nope. I think you mean that you'll find the result undesirable. Sure. But again, the game wasn't tailored for specific play schedules. It was designed to play out somewhat organically, within the parameters of the Fronts and the MC's principals. For me, the result is perfectly acceptable.
Again, that's pretty much it.
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couple of thoughts:
Your concerns about quick advancement. What I am understand to be your point is that if people advance too quickly, then it destabilizes the setting. Threats that were threats no longer count, interdependent relationships change as some people become more bad-ass (mechanically at least) than others, people might choose to take moves that change the overall dynamic of the story.
To counter this argument, I would look to pages 111-112 where the book talks about looking at things through crosshairs. Specifically, the text says: <quote>It’s one of the game’s slogans:“there are no status quos in Apocalypse World.”</quote> I see this as being true as much about players choices as it is about what the MC can or cannot target. It was a traveling setting, now it's about staying in one place? The guys on the run from terrible enemies who decide that here, now, is a place to take a stand is a great idea. Relationships changing due to imbalance? Just because Kodak's son Gris-Gris can now beat the shit out of him doesn't make it any less important or interesting that he is his SON. Threats are no longer really threatening? That gang of bikers that used to terrify the holding are now kind of a bunch of wimps. They might have just been a bunch of bullies, but the tyrant that they report to has something to say about you doing what you do. Change leads to... well, change. And change is interesting.
You have also mentioned being concerned that the story should take 8 sessions, and that's it. My gaming group has been playing short-arc independent RPG's for a few months now, so that we can sample a bunch of games. Keeping a schedule in mind helps make for satisfying story arc while still doing so in a limited time frame, but that's not the concern of the MC: he doesn't have to work to wrap anything up, or to make sure everything get's dealt with. For the MC, he just does what he does: keeps life interesting, thinks about what's happening off-stage, and advances story whenever he feels like/it feels right. It's between all of us to say "hey, we want to wrap up in the next two sessions, so let's start dealing with the meat of the story." So far, we haven't had real burps with people not getting enough story in any one single game. It doesn't need managing, just keeping it in mind is enough. If you do end up a session or two short, well, play something short in the interim: I really recommend Fiasco.
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Yeah, if you're really that worried about players advancing at different paces, just stop the game, quiet everyone down, and take the player who's lagging behind and look him deep, deep in the eyes while softly gripping his shoulder.
And then you tell him: "Dude.................stop sucking at Apocalypse World"
Problem solved.
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Motipha,
You make an interesting point, and one I definitely intend to take to heart. It's definitely a big part of the answer. But consider: all RPGs can be said to take place somewhere on a continuum between reader's theater and improv theater.
At one extreme, you go in already knowing who lives, who dies, and who has sex with whom. The only thing the players provide is their rendition of the script, the depth of emotion or witty ad-libbed line that makes the character yours. This can still demand a lot of a player--we swoon over Jacoby's Claudius or Tennant's Hamlet, right? but many people do want more control of their fate.
In traditional tabletop gaming, I'd say this is most closely represented by D&D, where the adventure is written out ahead of time and it's generally assumed that the bad guys die, the PCs live, and the balance is restored to the force. Or for another example, I'm currently running a game of aWoD (http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=50434) which is basically the players living through a story I wrote. I came up with the plot, wrote all the PCs (with some feedback from the players) and gave them their interconnected backstory.
At the other extreme is improvisational theatre, where any participant can introduce new characters and elements at whim and there's no pre-arranged goal or endpoint. This area is explored by some games like Munchausen (reportedly, I haven't read it). The downside, quite simply, is that coming up with interesting new material takes effort and the more you allow things to deviate from a track, the more effort you spend inventing things on the spot, and the more things you came up with ahead of time get wasted.
Now it's pretty clear to me that AW trends toward the improve side of things, and that's fine. But it's also clear to me that AW is not intended to be some kind of ideologically pure expression of improv. After all, you fill out a worksheet full of threats ahead of time, right? And you spend time between-session working up a cast. If the characters somehow managed to kill off your entire cast of named characters during a session, you'd have to stop and make new ones, which would slow play and get exhausting. Same for if they solved all the threats you had planned; you'd need to send them home early or think really fast.
So I think the guideline of looking through crosshairs is a good one, but it's gotta be tempered by human fallibility. At the rate at which PCs kill named characters, solve threats, or acquire improvements goes to infinity, the game *will* become impossible for a human MC to run. The question becomes, "what is the highest rate of turnover a typical MC can accommodate", and "do stat-substituters push games over the edge." That's an empirical question for which I don't have the data, but I'd be grateful to hear from anyone who does.
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I think that "prepared ahead of time or not" and "blank page problem or not" are two orthogonal axes. In A Wicked Age is not prepared ahead of time at all, but I've never had a problem as GM with coming up with something to say. The characters (with their best interests) that I get from the oracles give me plenty of fodder.
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Orion,
Glad that you found my post of help. There's something about your concern I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around, as in I'm not quite seeing what the problem is, but I'll have a go.
First off, it still sounds like you are most concerned about the MC as the source of fresh material and going's on. This doesn't really sound like Apocalypse world to me, at least not the MC as the major or even primary contributor. The 1st session is not only about defining the world, but discovering what about the world is interesting/engaging for the players. They lead the game, not the MC. The MC just takes what happens in that session, and then says "ah, these non-PC things happened because of this" and makes that be something that's the players have shown is interesting. So while there is prep work done, it's much more about solidifying things that are alluded to during that first part of play.
After that, I don't really see a lot of ongoing prep. The MC spends most of his time turning the existing screws, not adding new ones. If you'll note the examples I gave, they were all accumulation upon existing fiction or changes to relationships with them, not the invention of completely new things. So yes, there is a certain burden of providing new information, but experience with these sorts of games shows that there is almost always a completely natural and exciting path the game takes from where it is before, especially if the players are fully protagonized and pursuing story that interests. Change, after all, doesn't necessarily mean destruction.
Your concern about the PC's wiping out the entire cast of named NPC's also doesn't ring true to me. While theoretically possible, I would guess that this rarely if ever would happen in a game like this, it certainly wasn't happening with my group. The idea of PC-NPC-PC triangles, for instance, means that while one PC might want to kill off a character he's more than likely fucking with the another player's character by doing so, which will have it's own repercussions. Also, terming NPC's "threats" does not mean that they are inherently people to dispose of. Pariah's daughters are a threat to his life in that one of them spends her time trying to help him in his goals (and fucking up pretty badly) and the other has started being able to hear peoples thoughts and insists on telling everybody about it. Is Pariah likely to just put a bullet in both of them and call it a day? not likely, but they definitely are threats to him getting what he wants/needs.
So I don't think coming up with new material is as much of a concern as it might appear. You'll have a number of things to keep the PC's occupied, and like has been pointed out before, the likelihood of the PC's clearing the decks in a single session are slim to nonexistent, especially if the MC is working those triangles so that they aren't always exactly on board with each other.
You also seem to allude that improvement makes the turnover of story elements faster. I don't buy that. Limerick seduces Kipper, getting her to sleep with him (fun in itself) but more importantly giving him a set of ears on the inside. Great: he succeeded because he's gotten good at seducing people. But now he's got to prove he's not just using her, and she wants out, so he's got to figure out how to string her along until he finds out what he needs, and then maybe, MAYBE he'll pull her out... As has been said before, failure is interesting in this game, but success really should be JUST AS interesting. Being able to do what you set out to do more often doesn't mean your life is any easier.
Or if the player takes new moves: It means they have more ways to try to get what they want, but it doesn't a) guarantee success or b) mean that success is without consequences.
But I don't think there is any logical argument that can prove this point to you. As I said before, what you've pointed out is logically possible, but I would argue in fact highly highly unlikely if not downright not going to happen. Maybe someone does in fact min-max to the point where they are relying on only a couple stats, and those stats are being rolled at a ridiculous rate. Ok: what that buys them are a few more points, and some new abilities, and maybe new outcomes that lead the story in new ways, but they don't give them a pass on dealing with the "reality" of the game. You take an action, you succeed, and that means things happen, not all of them good for you.
finally: the rate at which players "PCs kill named characters, solve threats, or acquire improvements" does NOT go to infinity: it has a very real limit to how fast that will increase, even just looking at the rules and not playing. Even if you manage to collapse all rolls to just rolling one stat (impossible), unless you find a way to constantly increase the number of rolls you make (again, will hit a hard limit in play) AND decrease the number of rolls between taking improvements (not possible with the base ruleset, though that can be hacked) there is an upper limit to how fast a player can advance. As they advance, the list of options they have is limited: The lists in the individual playbooks are limited, saying "mark this once" then the ungiven future choices are also limited. Eventually, that character will run out of ways to improve.
As for your call for empirical data, well, all that can be pointed to are actual play sessions. I don't think anyone has collated a statistical analysis for the relative speeds of advancement or a measure of the fun had. As has been said, experience playing is the only real way to get a feel for what works and what doesn't. But again: the game has been pretty thoroughly playtested, and of those that have played no-one has seen this as an actual concern, rather than a possible one. Perhaps your experience will be different?
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No one has reported a problem with the advancement rules in play. None of us have seen problems.
It's an entirely hypothetical issue that did not arise in hundreds of sessions during playtest across dozens (hundreds?) of players.
There is no problem. All you have to do is play the game to see that. This discussion is so abstract and removed from play it's pointless.
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No one has reported a problem with the advancement rules in play. None of us have seen problems.
It's an entirely hypothetical issue that did not arise in hundreds of sessions during playtest across dozens (hundreds?) of players.
There is no problem. All you have to do is play the game to see that. This discussion is so abstract and removed from play it's pointless.
Yep. It's lonely complaining, which is worse than lonely fun.
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John, you're the fourth person, AT LEAST to step in to tell me "nothing to see here, move along."
First of all, I don't care how many playtest games you ran unless you can tell me that this game has been *destructively* tested.
Second, while I really have no reason to doubt your word, I also don't see why not one person can spare the time to tell me
"In our game we averaged N improvement per session, with the fastest characters achieving N+M. Characters with stat substitution moves advanced faster/slower/the same as character who took their playbooks' more unique abilities.
The introduction of new holdings and gangs had a positive effect/negative effect/didn't happen. When the game ended, approximately X improvements had been handed out and the characters' power level caused the game to end/had nothing to do with the game ending."
If you've playtested the game hundreds of times, there should be piles of this kind of thing lying around unless you didn't bother to actually collect data.
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It seems more and more like you like writing people's names, and then not actually discussing what they said. I thought I laid out pretty clearly, as have others, why we feel based on our play experiences that your concern is not one. You keep ignoring it so you can keep hammering this "problem." And you want data? There were playtests but this is not a scientific study. I don't know of a single game designer who collects playtest information in the way you are describing. I am pretty sure Luke Crane, who is one of the most insanely thorough designers as far as playtesting goes that I know, does not amass spreadsheets of data like this.
You are being more than a bit boorish by coming in, demanding that we prove you wrong, and when we try to engage you dismissing or ignoring every single thing we say. We have engaged your points, you ignore all of ours. You have reached the point of being insulting.
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Take a break, everybody!
-Vincent
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So in our game of Apocalypse World, we played approximately thirteen sessions before the game ended, and my character was the closest thing we had to something like you describe -- I had only one stat-substitution move, but it resulted in my not needing +weird at all and consequently, +weird was highlighted in only one of the sessions. The majority of my advancements were spent on stat increases, straightforwardly boosting my rate of success, and I also got a free +1 weird over the course of play because I had the Angel move where your +weird increases if somebody dies in your care. (This move was perfect, fictionally, even though it was a terrible choice min-max-wise because I only rolled +weird for some custom moves.) I had a stat at +3 very early and another at +2 not long after, and all my stats were +1 or higher for the majority of the game. I also switched from Angel to Battlebabe, gaining 'extra' moves as a result.
My character did not advance faster than the other PCs -- though the main point of comparison was the Brainer, who also ended up with a stat-substitution move. We had a Chopper join the game at the halfway point (so six sessions in) -- the Chopper had Hard highlighted for two sessions, and by the end of the game had actually caught up with my character in terms of advancements. I would guess that the other PCs averaged a little under one advance per session, though this often came in spurts based on the intersection of the highlighted stat and the opportunities presented by the fiction.
The rate of advancement in our game never seemed to be a problem. Our early sessions were slowly paced, in terms of fictional consequences (and time passing; our entire game happened over the course of two weeks of game-time) -- once the Chopper character showed up, the pace of things rapidly accelerated.
The Chopper's mid-campaign entry might be particularly interesting in terms of 'unbalanced' characters (advancement-wise). It is my opinion, which I am pretty sure my playgroup would echo, that the Chopper PC was equally or even MORE effective at getting things done than the other two PCs, from the very first session in which he appeared. Why? Because he had +2 hard and fairly quickly bought +3 hard, and the secondary stats just don't matter that much when it comes to getting shit done. As mentioned, the Chopper advanced far more rapidly than the other two PCs once introduced, but I would say that only his first few advancements had a serious impact on his basic character competence.
I bring this up because of the concern about the game somehow ending 'early' due to excessive character competence/growth/whatever. I really don't see it. The issue with certain moves (seeing through the Maelstrom in particular) seems more relevant to our game, but only because the Maelstrom turned out to be the primary focus of our fiction.
However, in our game, our Brainer took the relevant advance at approximately the three-quarter mark of the game -- like session 9 or 10 or so -- and successfully saw through the Maelstrom in either the same or the next session. It did not have any impact that I can see on the speed with which we pursued the final resolution of the game. It had a huge impact on how that resolution happened, but by the point the move came in to play we were already well on our way to doing what we eventually did to end the game.
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One thing that I haven't seen explicitly addressed (though maybe I missed it) is the fact that tying advancement to actual moves is a built-in pacing control. You can only gain advancements by doing things in the fiction -- and doing things in the fiction is already changing things. In fact, the impact of a move -- hit OR miss -- seems to vastly eclipse the impact of advancement, in terms of shifting the fiction in the way Orion seems to be concerned about.
Our game seems like as interesting an example as any, since I am sure if you plotted our 'number of rolls per session' on a graph it would look a lot like a slowly-sloping-upward line with a spike at the midway point (when the Chopper joined) and a plateau soon afterwards. I would guess we were rolling dice almost twice as much in the last four sessions as in the first four -- and less of those rolls were Reading the Situation or a Person.
To me this was the absolutely, self-evidently most overwhelming factor in the pacing of our game. My character's advancement played a part for sure, but really it was not comparable to the shift in how many moves and what sort of moves the fiction was demanding of us. Making moves push the fiction forward, and the fiction is when the game ends. The fact that my success rate increased by like 20 or 30 percent over the course of the game -- and the possibility that, with further min-maxing, I could have added very slightly to that curve (at some point you run out of relevant +stat advances, and for me that point was fairly early) -- was important, but far less important than the fact that early on I spent a lot of time having talky, social scenes and later on I spent a lot of time making hard physical and social moves to resolve the situation the way my character wanted. This was a natural outcome of both the fiction and my advances, but my feeling is that the fiction -- and the way the other PCs, even apart from the MC, had begun to push the fiction -- played a larger part.
ETA: Cross-posted with Vincent. Taking a break now!
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Okay, Orion!
First off, if you're concerned about one character advancing further and faster than another, you should notice that it's an option to retire your character and create a new one -- which is practically guaranteed to introduce a serious imbalance between the characters. If imbalance is a problem, it's a problem there far worse than it is with stat-substitution moves.
Now, no, the game's not designed with any particular advances-per-session in mind at all. It cares about advances per character, not advances per session -- it considers the character action, not the session, to be the fundamental unit of play.
For instance, play a character in a game with GM + 2 players, and she'll advance twice as fast per session, roughly, as the same character in a game with GM + 5 players. Play her with my group in our 2-hour sessions, and she'll advance half as fast per session as in a group that does 4-hour sessions, and a third as fast as in a group that does 6-hour sessions. I don't know or care, and the game doesn't know or care, how many players you're playing with, or how long and how often your sessions are. Within broad limits, it doesn't concern itself with these questions at all.
The questions the game DOES concern itself with are these: what fraction of a character's action should be moves? What fraction of a character's action should contribute to the character's advancement? How much character action should it take to resolve a front? How many fronts should a character resolve, in her lifetime as a character? What's the minimum amount of action before she should count as a character, what's the minimum amount before she should possibly be finished as a character, and what's the maximum amount before she should definitely be finished as a character?
The game has answers to all these! I'll be happy to talk you through them. Along the way, we can hit "does a character with all stat-substitution moves advance faster than she develops (if you see what I mean)? Can a character's advancements make her resolve threats faster than they deserve?" We can even wrap up with per-session stuff, if you want to, but I think by then you won't find it any more interesting than I do.
With me?
Everybody else, please keep holding off for now. Thank you!
-Vincent
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Daniel, Thanks so much for taking the time to post your experiences. I found them an interesting and mostly reassuring read.
Vincent, your point about the uselessness of "session" as a rubric is well-taken. I guess I was treating "session" as a unit of playtime rather than and individual meeting, I guess I care less about improvements/session than improvements/45 minutes of spotlight. (that's the same as per-session for a 4-player, 3-hour session.)
I also especially like your formulation of the problem as advancement vs. development, and I think that's really the heart of my concern. It takes time, or perhaps a better way to phrase it would be, it takes moves to set up a character for an improvement to be fictionally appropriate, so the question becomes, can you justify a stat-substituting character's improvement in the potentially as few as 5 moves it takes to earn that advance. I can certainly imagine a number of five-move sequences that could leave the fiction wanting an improvement, but I'm not sure yet how often moves will be spent "dithering".
I also realize that I've assumed that the game ends at the same point for all characters, but it sounds to me as though you're suggesting that characters can phase out one by one as theirs stories end. I guess my only concern with that is whether it's practical to introduce a new character if you know practical constraints will limit the lifespan of the group.
Thanks so much for taking the time to look at this, and I regret the adversarial tone I ended up taking.
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Sure thing.
Playing with an externally-imposed end date means that you risk leaving some characters hanging. Many or most of us have gaming stories like "man, I wish we'd gotten to finish that campaign...," especially from college. There are worse fates.
Okay. Next thing to notice is that it's perfectly possible to advance in 5 moves even if you don't have stat substitution moves. (Fewer than 5, in fact, occasionally, because of Hx, but set that aside.) Be a gunlugger going into battle with your hard and your sharp highlighted, for instance, and you get an advance in 5 moves on basic moves alone, in about 20 minutes of play.
So now, "is 5 moves per advance too many?" The answer is no, not in absolute terms; if it were, that gunlugger would be a catastrophe. In fact, probably all of us have seen it in play, with no ill effect. I know that I have, a bunch of times.
Stat substitution moves don't increase your maximum speed at all, see it?
They might increase your overall speed, right, decrease your average moves per advance. But I see two interesting possibilities. Check these out.
Possibility 1: a character takes action without regard to her highlighted stats. There are 7 basic moves assigned to 5 stats, two of which are highlighted, so let's say that this character marks experience 2-4 times per 7 moves, for an overall rate of 1 advance per 9-18 moves. Two stat substitution moves would bump this up to 4-6 xp per 7 moves, 1 advance per 6-9 moves.
Possibility 2: a character takes her highlighted stats into account and makes her moves to pursue them. Let's say, a little generously, that she can choose her moves so that 2/3 to 3/4 of them are highlighted stat moves. This puts her at 1 advance per 6-8 moves. The price for playing this way is harsh: you are not your character's master. She's driven around by impulses she doesn't understand.
What happens when this character gets some stat substitution moves? It's a big relief. Now you can keep your 1-advance-per-6-to-8-moves pace, but your character's yours again. You never really go to 5xp per 5 moves -- there might be a way or two, but they'd require some serious dedication. What happens instead is that you have more choices at 2xp per 3 moves.
These 2 possibilities are the ends of a spectrum, of course; most characters fall in between. But in both cases, and thus anywhere along the spectrum: two stat substitution moves means that you can play the character you want to play, at a sustained advancement rate of 6-8 or 6-9 moves per advance.
Still with me? Next we look at the advancement options.
-Vincent
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So I take it the game assumes that advances will come more like 1/8 than like 1/15 anyway? That does make sense.
One thing nobody mentioned yet is that the alternative to taking substitution moves is frequently taking moves that themselves offer opportunities to roll. Merciless doesn't intrinsically earn XP (except for making it a hell of a lot easier to *survive* rolling your hard), but if you pick up Augury, Lost, and Healing Touch there's a *lot* of opportunities to roll Weird. I initially discounted that because playbook-move based characters are easier to regulate--you could just refuse to highlight Weird for a couple sessions if your Brainer was advancing undesirably fast, but it's quite possible that moves like Sexy & Dangerous, Hypnosis, and Fuck This Shit let you keep pace with the substitutions with favorable highlighting.
At this point I'm pretty convinced that stat substitution moves are not, per se, a problem--as long as advancing every 7 moves or so isn't. And I don't have a clear enough perception of how the game plays to take a stand on that, so I'm happy to take my chances. That said, I'd certainly love to hear about what that rate of advancement looks like and how it plays out.
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The first game I ever played, I was a Gunlugger with the move that let me roll Hard to Act Under Fire. I also had Fuck This Shit (Only used it once or twice though) I had Hard highlighted in pretty much every session (the player doing my highlighting was using my character as musle, so it was beneficial for both of us). I usually advanced about one and a half times per session we played (probably about 3-4 hours on IRC with 4 PCs, although one wasn't particularly active). I pretty quickly got a move or two ahead of the other PCs and stayed there (maybe even three moves ahead eventually). Eventually, I pretty much ran out of advancement options, so I started playing a new character.
He was a Brainer who used Wierd to Go Aggro and to Act Under fire (Also he used In Brain Puppet Strings a lot). Again, his Wierd was highlighted 90% of the time and I advanced like crazy.
Our game never broke or became unfun. It ended because the hardhold I had taken over was burnt to the ground in a war with the mutants, not because we ran out of advancements or anything. (I never retired my character to safety because him being in danger was fun and a driving focus of play.)
I've played with a different group where advancement was much slower and less "powergaming" focused. Both games played out pretty similarly as far as I can tell.
Is there anything specific you want to know?
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So far in our games, it's been more about incenting sides of the PCs we want to see, rather than figuring what the advantages might be. So I'm likely to say "Amanual, I wanna see your cool" when I'm curious what it looks like when Amanual acts under fire, regardless of what her strengths may be. This leads to some sessions when there's much less marking up than others. Sometimes players will check that and go for the highlighted stat instead of something they might have defaulted to, which is always fun to see.
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FigureFour,
What I'm curious about is what you did with that pile of advances. Your Gunlugger, for instance, "pretty much ran out of advancement options". Does that include the crew, the gang, and the hardhold? If so, how did the other players react to the introduction of all these extra characters? Or did the MC use NPCs you guys already knew and loved (or loved to hate) for the gang members and hold citizens?
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I never got a crew, but I did get a hardhold and a gang. They fit into our story pretty seemlessly, since we tried to tie the advancements into the fiction. The gang was what remained of an NPC hardholder's gang after she was killed in a massive raid (actually, I killed her, but that's another story). We jumped ahead a bit after that session, so it seemed to make sense that, as the toughest and most savage guy around, the remaining gang of savage toughs would follow me. At least as long as I could keep them scared and in line.
The hardhold came later, and I spent a few sessions taking action trying to assert control over the hardhold. Nothing really NEW was introduced, but my relationship to it changed.
Some NPCs were new, some were old, but the new ones weren't NEW people, they were just people who were previously unimportant.
Does that help?
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I think I might have been in the faster end of the scale with my operator, Wilson. A short way into the first session I had both Easy to like and Ice cold, so I had three basic moves on Cool+2, and another two on Sharp+2, as normal. Since my character was so all about being cool and being sharp, and the others wanted to see him rock, I had both those stats highlighted, and so I got xp marks like crazy. I hit three advances in a rather short first session, maybe one and a half hour or something of active play. We had a 2+1 group.
Second session, the others felt, not surprisingly, that we had enough for now with highlighting Cool, so I got my Weird-1 highlighted instead. I still kept progressing fast, with three more advances in maybe three hours this time, but the dynamics felt slightly different.
In the first session I drove hard at what I wanted, rocked most of the time and was rewarded with xp for being good at what I did. And with success came new complications in the fiction. That was great fun.
In the second session, success was its own reward when I did what I was good at, but at the same time I was rewarded with xp for doing what I sucked at. I started opening my brain quite a lot (I was aiming at that ungiven future, dammit, I needed to become a gunlugger to bring down my enemies!), failed most of the time, and opened up for a lot of direct badness. This was also great fun!
The brilliant thing with this reward system, like with Keys in Solar System/The Shadow of Yesterday, which is similar, is that you decide what gets rewarded based on what you think would make the game the most fun at the moment. You can get xp for rocking hard, and you can get xp for failing equally hard. The important thing is that progression comes from doing stuff, from taking action. And that you can change the xp triggers when it would be more fun differently.
My two cents on this. :)
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FigureFour, thanks for the help, and I'm glad your game wnet well!
Simon, if you don't mind indulging me
--did you always feel that you had a logical place to put your advancements when they came?
--how long did you play the character, and did you feel "done" with him when you stopped?
I think I'm unused to the idea of characters having a planned obsolescence of 3 or 4 sessions. My prior experience tends toward the superheroic game style, like D&D, and as I haven't had a lot of chances to run long games, I tend to enjoy best the rare chance to get in a character's head for 8 or more sessions.
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"Planned obsolescence of 3 or 4 sessions" is plain nonsense. Don't bring that crap to the game or you'll screw yourself up.
Some characters last 3 or 4 sessions. Other characters last dozens. All fall under a bell curve, naturally. Your characters will too.
-Vincent
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Of course I don't mind! :)
Yes, I had things that were natural to take. Fact is, I wanted those advances, wanted them now, dammit! That's why I was hitting those keys... sorry, highlights, so hard. At a different point in play it would have been slower, and that would have been fun at that point. My group has been playing Solar System campaigns for years now, and it has always been up and down the way those xp flow, and never exactly synced between characters. Some sessions you get loads, others you get hardly any. And it has never been a problem. Partly because it tends to even out in the long run. But even when it hasn't, that hasn't affected Fun.
Thing is, these games are built for play to flow organically. There are no point pools for the GM to build threats with. They just throw in stuff that seems good and fun at the moment, and that builds on what's gone before. Same with advancement. There is no mechanic that keeps balance between player characters, because it's not needed for the game to rock. Every character grows and develops at its own pace. Check what Vincent said about how it's unproblematic for a new character to enter play a good ways into the campaign. We've often had new characters enter play in the middle, or the end, of a Solar System campaign, and they have naturally been made as starting characters, with no extra advances to put them on par with the old ones.
Like I mentioned above, since you keep adjusting the xp triggers throughout the game, there's no reason to fear the game is going to "break" because of some character's setup, or "build" if you like.
With all due respect to "destructively" playtesting the hard mechanics of a game, I believe it has never been a good idea to play it destructively. Presumably you play to have fun. I mean, you can ruin any game if you want to, but I hope that's not what you or anyone else is aiming for. It might be especially important in this kind of game, where it's actually the "soft" rules that are the most important. Play to find out, and make the characters' lives not boring. Fuck with them, don't fuck them over all the time. Give them what they work for, but introduce complications.
Those things can't be hardwired. But luckily you've picked up a game where the hard mechanics actively support the soft rules making the game awesome.
Uhm, back to your questions! :)
We haven't played more than those two sessions, we live in different cities, but I surely don't plan to see that character obsolete in two more sessions, no sir, I don't! As I said before, I trust the pace to adjust organically, because it's we who play the game, and at the moment we want it to go on. Maybe at some point I'll want Wilson to retire, but that will be because I'll want him to, not because he's become to good or something like that.
On a tangent, I was a bit worried when Vincent said somewhere that the game will start rocking hard after about six sessions. I mean, I want it to rock now! Now, though, after two smoking first sessions, where so much change is going on, I got a whiff of how it's going to be even better when we have even more play behind us with Wilson and his world. Not going to be obsolete after three or four sessions, oh no! Or he will be, but I'll know that then, won't I?
I'll gladly keep talking if you're interested in more. Sorry for all the emphasis, I get excited about this stuff. :)
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(Sorry for the crankiness, Orion. It came out crankier than I meant it, I'm just pressed for time.)
-Vincent
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No problem, Vincent, you've already addressed the issue to my satisfaction, anyway. I'm just asking for stories at this point because, hey, who doesn't like stories?