Didn't see this anywhere - I'm guessing at least three, plus MC?

Is the Storming the Wizard's Tower playtest thing up anywhere? I'd love to get a look at it again.

So, in Dogs, you just keep on going until someone taps out. We're talking conflicts here. But Poison'd says at three rounds, we stop. Apocalypse World, too, if you use the combat moves, they give you the clock countdown and say, after a certain limit, we stop. In a Wicked Age says this as well: after three rounds, stop.

A few questions about that, Vincent!

1) Is there a reason for that? Talking about design here, what is it about conflict in these games that made you say, "these shouldn't keep going. I want to come to a decisive winner after three rounds," or whatever.

2) Why doesn't Dogs worry about that, but later games do? Dogs can keep going as long as they have dice as ammo. I'm betting this isn't a general game design statement and it's more situated with each individual game, but I don't know these things until I ask. Dogs can escalate forever and ever (as long as dice are there), but you can't do that in Poison'd or IAWA.

3) If the answer to the first question is anything along the lines of, "I don't dig when conflict just goes on and on and on back and forth and wanted to avoid that," then can you elaborate more on that? Do you feel it's bad design, or that it gets old and boring? In your opinion, and broadly, of course, not accounting for every game ever.

4) What do you think the three-round structure solves about conflict and about back-and-forths, if anything?

I'm tinkering with a game that goes back and forth repeatedly and these games came to mind!

1. Why the Touchstone's sex move? It has you scribble out possible advancements if you screw someone you don't love. Where does that fit in with the character? I'm not saying it doesn't! I'm saying I don't quite understand the angle.

2. The Quarantine can ask questions about the past at the beginning of each session. The MC answers questions on a hit, but on a miss, the player answers instead. Why? Specifically, why is that the miss option?

Let's say Alice and Bill are in conflict against each other.

Alice: (raise) "I charge through the blinding rain on my horse! It's a bad storm, near-impossible to see through, everything's just shadows to you."

Bill: (see) "I struggle along trying to find you for a long time, but then the rain lets up, so now I can see!"

Can that happen? Can players take control over outside events as part of their dice-setting? Here, Alice says she's going through this rain storm, but when it's Bill's turn, he transforms it. Nobody in particular owns the rainstorm, and I'm sure you can use it the way Alice did, but can you just change it whenever you like, as Bill had?

Or what if Bill had said, "Your horse hurts his leg. He's not out of it, but he slows down enough I can track you through the rain."

Here's another one. Say Alice wants to get out of having to go stand for judgment in front of the other Dogs. They're saying to her, "We really need to talk to you, and we're trying to be nice about this. You've wasted enough time, let's go." So Alice says, "I totally can't, because I'm too sick. I need bed rest for days!" which will hopefully buy her enough time to think of a plan to escape judgment.

Alice: (raise) "My nausea is so bad, my fever is going up, my vision is blurry - if I leave the bed, it'll be really bad." (This isn't the character speaking, this is the player saying something about her character. She's not faking it, either, she's legit sick.)

Bill: (see) "It's not that bad. You can come out here. It might be unpleasant, but we can still do this."

Here, Alice has invented something about her character. Can Bill do what he just did, and modify that property as part of his See? I see a distinction between this and the first example.

"(raise) I take the Steward's gun and blast holes through the wall!"
"(see) No way, turns out it wasn't loaded!"

or even,

"(see) Yeah, but it's a crappy gun and the walls are thick, so you just make little small holes."

Can the PCs control the weather, the setting, inanimate objects, the sun, etc.? Can they weaken, bolster, or otherwise transform an event already stated? (It's raining, but now it isn't. But now it is again! I'm sick! You're not sick enough!)

Played it with my girlfriend just now. She gets spooked easily. Unfortunately, this didn't do it for her - but that was mostly my clumsiness, and we're both eager to try again. I GMed, she played, and she's willing to do it the other way around, though normally she doesn't like GMing.

This went very slow, very awkward. I can't say there were very many navigation problems: we both understood to draw, to turn to things. It took her a little bit to remember she could discard her hand before drawing, but then she was using that to her advantage like a boss. I have no doubt that going into it next time, when we know what's up, it'll go smoother.

We got to a point where we were looping around a lot, a lot of interacting with ghosts but they didn't really do much towards her, so we were drawing cards and hopping pages but not really anything was happening. The idea I had was a couple who used to work in an old factory back in the thirties, they were a couple because the woman was cheating on her husband with this guy, and this guy was in a position of power and tried to burn the place down, and he hunted them down in the halls and bashed them over and over with a big sledgehammer. I couldn't really think of much evidence to show for it - threw some skeletons down there, showed the place in supreme disrepair. But I couldn't think of a way for it to be really transparent - there were just some ghosts here, and I couldn't think of any logical way to convey what kind of crime had transpired to them to the player.

Instead, she was really just trying to get out and get away from the ghosts. She met one, a male ghost, all smashed and distorted, trying to do his job, repairs around the big open room she was in. She ended up leaving this room because the ghost started calling her by name, and screw that. The next room featured a woman ghost - the pacing felt weird, not dramatic or tense, just "get to the point", I was keeping the game's timeframe in mind - and this woman was trying to escape, and in her hellish ghost world of the past, the place was burning and she was trapped. The player attempted to leave, only to find a big set of locked doors barring her way. The ghost noticed her and tried to get her to help her escape, but the player couldn't figure out how: she wanted to leave through those double doors, but there's no way to open them! Locked, rusted shut, something. So eventually the ghost gets pissed and threatens her for not cooperating, and pulls off a layer of sheet metal from the wall and all its nasty, rusty nails, and throws it at the player. She leaps out of the way and returns to the room she just came from - no other way out!

This room was empty now, so she headed up to an office on the second floor. She goes inside to investigate and the male ghost from before enters, muttering about people being after him, saying he's got to leave. The ghost notices the player and attacks her, she gets strangled and dies. The end.

Afterwards, the player noted how dismal most all of the endings were. Appropriate, given the story we're telling. I don't feel comfortable saying the game didn't go well since it was awkward and our first time with a new system, especially one as weird as this (in a good way: my girlfriend asked, "Why doesn't he just make a goddamn d20 game like everyone else?", in jest).

We weren't aware at first if the player was supposed to read aloud the section they turned to. Like, it tells you on 2 to pick what you hope the ghost doesn't do, and the way her hand went, she told me that and what the ghost did instead. At this point, we weren't telling each other what our sections said, so when I started having ghosts do other things that were on the list, we had to stop for a moment and figure out how transparent this information is supposed to be. We went with her telling me everything from the player's book, and me being kind of secretive about my information. Not sure how it was supposed to be handled.

The repetition got kind of bad, because it turned into, "I can't think of a logical reason why these ghosts would do this, so they're going to stay to their own devices." Even after we did the back and forth and figured things out, I guess I just made some piss-poor ghosts. It was a little frustrating, letting the pace of things be dictated by the jumps and card draws, because we felt like it was trying to get us to do one thing but we wanted our characters, NPCs to do another.

Next time, at least, we're going to draw a map.

Also, first time around, we didn't realize how much prompting and improv would be required of us. It was jarring, and led to some bare-bones description. It didn't feel cohesive. There were a lot of instances where we read things and thought about the consequences, but it led to some weak narration. We didn't have any idea where we were headed or what was expected of us. I know it's just a playtest document, and it's without any glitz or glamour, no introductions or supporting information really, but as per request, I'm playing it as if it were a complete game.

We liked it though. We're eager to try it again. Probably some of the issues we had can be tidied up with a bit more experience under our belts as well as a deeper narrative, knowing now what's expected of us. However, I'm worried that there's only four, five games tops to be had out of this, that even though it all loops around to help craft a ghost story, that it's a very limited tale, and not one I'd want to revisit that often. But it's really neat.

So I've been experimenting with different prep sheets and different ways of organizing / teasing information from what comes out of the session. Thought I might share some things with everyone!

All this comes into play strictly by the second session, never the first. I let everything learned from the first session sink in before worrying about all this. Kinda like fronts!

1.) Barf Forth Apocalyptica Sheet
This is all done in a spiral bound notebook, all of these are. Target had some clearance notebooks on sale, and they were selling a bunch of them for 3 cents a piece! I loaded up.

Anyway, after getting a handle on what kind of world / environment we're dealing with (in my current game, it's a frozen-over wasteland), I fill this out with details. It helps me when I need apocalyptica, mainly by keeping it focused and consistent.

At the top of the sheet I write DESCRIPTORS, and I think of three words that best sum up the Apocalypse World our group has made. For this one, I've got: "cold, mists, wind". They're prompts, basically. I try to tie in a lot of my apocalpytica with those three words, but at the same time, I don't force it. If I can come up with something that deals with the cold, with mists, or with wind, then there you go - if not, no big deal. But these are a reminder of what the world is known for, and what will tie in consistency with the group. They're prompts that say, "Don't use these exclusively, but use them often."

Under that, I write QUESTIONS, and these are pretty much like the I Wonder... part on the first session sheet. Here, I write things I want to find out or that jump to me. I always write: "What's the maelstrom like, and what do people call it?" on there, as a rule. Treating the maelstrom like an NPC, giving it a name, description, and self-interests - and oh boy, PC-NPC-PC triangles! - stops it from being a faceless answering machine.

Other questions I have are:
- How does the cold weather impact travel?
- What do the mists obscure?
- What's carried on the wind?

These aren't stakes, but they very well might end up as such! But no, these are things I look for in the PC's answers and descriptions of the world, and in what the apocalyptica is shaping to. Most of this is just bits of flavor that don't have the weight of stakes or I Wonders..., but instead make intriguing set dressing. Notice how, though, I've got "How does the cold weather impact travel?" We've got a Driver in the group, so that's totally going over to the 1st session sheet. Sometimes it happens, and it's cool.

What do the mists obscure? Very open-ended. Could be any given thing at any given time. Could be symbolic or literal! But they're mists, and they're damn sure obscuring something, and I want to know what. What's carried on the wind? I know that sulfurous, smelly, salt-water-garbage air is one answer, but what else? Sounds? What kind of sounds? Animal howling? Gunshots?

The last thing on the sheet is APOCALYPTICA, and these are pre-generated color statements for when I need one quick but I'm drawing a blank. They tend to follow as possible answers from the questions above, but they don't always have to.

- The tree-people, who wear thick furs, hides, and human skins.
- Frozen-over landscapes just barely hinted at in the sunlight, buried deep, deep down.
- Bumping into something large and scary in the mists.

So I'll just cross them out when I use them and apply them to the situation at hand. "Boxer, you're trying to find your way back to the station? It's thick as all hell out here, you can't see anything. Then, like, you're slamming into something hard and heavy, and you fall on your ass, and you look up to see gleaming red lights eight or nine feet above you."

Miscellaneous features include a memo: "Remember to Digress!"

2.) Questions Sheet
For asking provocative questions!

Up at the top, I remind myself: "immediate and intimate details of their experiences," and under that, "sometimes follow-up questions that promote character development or antagonism." With that last part, when I feel like, I ask a related questions, but try to cut deeper into the character. Or sometimes I ask someone else something, see what it reveals about them. It's really cool to see how someone else's answer to a question fleshes out YOUR character. And then sometimes, I try to start shit between people in the group - "Hey, Pallor, which of these guys is the easiest to kill, do you think?"

Anyway, under that, I've got question prompts. I have a small list, but enough room to add more as we play. They're prompts that I think best bring out intimate and immediate details. Just like the ones listed in the book, pretty much! Sounds, tastes, specific details, history, thoughts and feelings. That's so you can ask, "Why is Stork Row surrounded by walls?"

"What does the mist smell like?"

"How do you combat the cold weather?"

And, as I said, plenty of room to add more prompts if I suddenly go, "Man, what about emotions? Huh!"

Then down underneath that, at the bottom, the PROCESS:

1) barf apocalyptica on it
2) refer to it later in play
3) use it and its implications to inform your aesthetic

Just a reminder!

3.) Play Sheet
This sits right next to my 1st session worksheet. It's basically where I write my notes, answers, and scribbles before finalizing it anywhere else.

Up at the top I've got the DOCKING BAY, which is where, when I ask a question, I write the answer down. "How do you combat the cold?"

"Thick jackets, furs."

And room to write down which PCs this applies to, as well as extra space to barf apocalyptica on it - and then, later on in play, I can scan the list and reincorporate it! This helps facilitate the Process from the previous sheet.

Thick jackets and furs - PCs: Boxer, Jag - how to keep warm. Dirty but warm jackets, stretched animal hides and mottled fur, little spines and grooves on the skins. Maybe little tassels or rabbit's feet or something hanging from them?

I also put plans or objectives the PCs undertake: Pallor went to go find a medic for Boxer. Jag wants to avoid Winkle. Boxer needs medical attention.

None of those need to be connected, don't look at it that way. Sometimes they are. But look at each one as its own individual thing. I only put stuff that gives me a chance to respond in a big, interesting way, or things that might take some time - like if I could jump to a new scene before resolving it. But it's there so that I can scribble down some notes:

How could I respond with fuckery?
What apocalyptica applies here?
Does this beg some questions?
How will this invoke any PC-NPC-PC triangles?

Lastly, at the very bottom, there's OFF-SCREEN ACTION. If I'm thinking, "Brace Win is totally going to gather some people, start some trouble," then I'll write it down there. I'll bring it in when it seems appropriate. Any "Announce off-screen badness" goes here, as well as any open-ended "Announce future badness."

4.) NPCs

Lastly, on the back of Front sheets, I write down some things about my NPCs.

Name - current self-interest - how does this NPC engage in a PC-NPC-PC triangle?

Here's Krin. A basic run-down, Pallor the brainer froze her in place with Puppet Strings, and kinda forgot about her, so she had to stay and watch while he raped and abused the love of her life (he did it for the Deep Brain Scan sex move, for a job) - so now she tries to attack him whenever possible, and enlists powerful people to help hunt him down (like the group's gunlugger, Boxer!):

Krin - wants to torture Pallor - shows undying love (to her dead boyfriend) and strength to Pallor, and shows desperation and need to Boxer.

The goal of these sheets is to help facilitate the prep, which sometimes, when things get hectic, I run into trouble doing! When I go to make a move, I pick one, and see if anything in the Docking Bay or off-screen action needs attention. Then I dress it up with apocalyptica. Then I ask questions! It's not for everyone, and it's a lot of paperwork, but it's helpful.

I might have missed this in the book, but...

Our Driver read the situation, and it turns out that killing some guards was the answer to one of his questions (who is most vulnerable?) and that crashing through the flimsy wooden wall with his ambulance (what's my best way in?) was the answer to another.

The driver's player asks, "So the guards are standing there right in front of the wall? If I charge into them and crush them into the wall, and in the process crash through it, will I get +2? For doing both?"

The player was seizing by force. An entry, if I recall correctly. I gave her the +2 for both, sure, but is that how it works?