[ctd] New Systems

Well, I haven't posted about curse the darkness in a while, but I've been working on it. Some changes I'm making, with input from Sarah, Matt and Michelle:

• Streamline the Removal Challenge system. This is something that the playtesters have consistently not been real thrilled about (one of the playtesters mentioned it was like playing an RPG and then a bridge game breaks out).
  
• Add a story creation element. I admit to being influenced by Ganakagok here, but also games like Don't Rest Your Head, Misspent Youth, My Life With Master and many other indie games that eschew "GM does lots of prep" for "quick improvisation by entire group."
  
• A way to make the whole group invested in the immediacy of the scenario.

curse the darkness was never supposed to be about saving the world. It's about what's happening right now. That's why mortality needs to be high, and that's why I focus so much on Memory and not as much on, say, long character arc.

So, with all that mind, here are the changes I'm making (some have been playtested, some haven't):

Character Challenges: Instead of discarding a card when you go through a Character Challenge, you put it into the bank. Your "bank" holds three cards, and you cannot be involved in a Removal Challenge until it's full. Your bank cannot hold more than three cards, but you pick which ones. Example: I have 3H, 2S and 8S in my bank. Multiple suits are nice, because they help in Removal Challenges (see below), so when I play my next card (7S), I can choose to replace the 3H, or keep that, for whatever reason, and replace either of the other spaces.

Removal Challenges: So, instead of gathering up all your cards, you just use your bank and your Active cards. You don't pick anything up. The system otherwise works much the same, and so the "bridge" problem might remain, but in playtest we found that if you're playing cards that you have face-up as the Removal Challenge begins it doesn't disrupt things nearly as much.

So let's say I've got the bank above (3H, 2S, 8S) and my Active Cards are 7S, 9H, KC, and 10D. We start a Removal Challenge. I have those seven cards to play to Suit Assignment. I play my KC, 8S, 10D and 9H, since I don't have much in the way of high cards and I'm hoping the GM gets shafted on his draws.

The GM plays 10S, 2H, JC and 10D. We tie on diamonds, GM wins on spades and I win on hearts and clubs. I used three of my Active Cards, so I turn over new ones: 4C, JD and 7H. I now have those three, 7S, 3H and 2S to use in Condition Assignment.

I go first because my king of clubs is high. I only have one club left in my Active Cards and none left in my bank, so I assign clubs as Succeed/Leave. The next high card is the GM's 10 of spades. I have a bunch of spades, so naturally the GM calls spades as Fail/Leave. My nine of hearts is next, and I call it Succeed/Remain. That leaves diamonds (left till last because we tied) for Fail/Remain.

The GM grabs the aces from the Players' Decks (just four, though I've found that eight works better for Removal Challenges with more than three people). I contribute two cards from any cards I control - bank or Active. Duh. I put in the 2H from my bank and the 7H from my Active Cards. The GM can spend Between points to add more cards (from my bank, discard piles, but not my Active Cards) and I can spend Memory to remove them. And then I draw and see what happens.

Passing the GM's Hat: And here was the other idea we had and liked, though we haven't playtested it: If you leave play during a Removal Challenge, you become the GM. The former GM takes a character card (and should make a character, at least the numbers, at the beginning of play), writes the character into Memory, and joins at the next opportunity.

Yes, that might seem like a big jump, but here's the thing: GMing curse the darkness is mostly about narration and difficulty adjudication, and I'm going to include charts for the latter. The former, well, everyone, including all the players, will know at the outset what the stakes and goals are for that session (or story). How? Read on.

Story Creation: At the beginning of play, you draw four cards. The first one indicates what He wants and on what scale. So the suit indicates what the target is (same ideas as the attributes; Focus, Humanity, Stamina, Stability) and the number indicates the scale: Ace is one person, all the way up to a whole city. (I have charts for all of this, which I'm not going to reproduce here, though I'll be happy to post an example.)

Next card is the Between Card, and that indicates how many Between Points the GM starts with and how many are necessary to get His attention. What this means, basically, is how important this mission is to Him - the higher the number, the more points are necessary (and thus the less important this is to Him - or maybe it means that characters are better hidden? That's for the group to interpret).

Third card is the Situation Card, which is basically "where are we when this all starts?" Suit breaks down like it does for Scenario, the number raises the tension of the situation. So the ace of spades is the end of a sprint to catch a target (physical in nature, but not a lot of Between-related danger) while the king of spades is an armed firefight between two factions (which adds a Between Point right off the bat, it's so risky).

Finally, the Complication card adds a wrinkle into things. Might be a natural disaster, a sugar crash, the sudden arrival of another group of rebels from the Between. The GM keeps it secret and the players can ask the GM to play it any time to reduce the number of Between Points in front of the GM. Or, the GM can cash in a black joker, if he has one, to introduce it (but more importantly, screw the players out of the chance to do so).

So! That's where we're at. Been trying to playtest this, but life, weather and illness haven't been cooperative. Next Monday, I hope. :)

Character Creation: Misspent Youth

Hey, ho, etc.

The Game: Misspent Youth
The Publisher: Fragging Unicorns
Degree of Familiarity: None. I've read it. It was one of several games I took with me to Arizona, read, and thought, "ooh, must run it." 
Books Required: Just the one.

 
You know, when I was younger and working at the coffee shop, there was a girl who worked with me who was very into counter-culture, activism, etc. (to what degree I don't know, since we didn't socialize out of work). I do remember her quoting a song once at work: "When the revolution comes, I'll be right up front/Finger on the trigger, puffing on a blunt." (I Google'd, can't find it, never knew the artist or the song.) I remember thinking that was stupid. What revolution? You don't know how good you have it? What people have reason for revolution here?

What people, indeed? Guess it depends on what you want.

Anyway, Misspent Youth is a game about young people (the PCs are even called "Youthful Offenders") rebelling against an oppressive authority. That's the only given; the exact setting varies and in fact the example of play that follows you through the book (which is a format I love, and I'm totally stealing for curse the darkness) is Star Wars with the names changed. But you could just as easily do Matrix, Middle Earth under Sauron, or E.T. (another example of play). All you need is a control system that wants to subvert, and some young folks to say, "Yeah, fuck that."

In some dark, dirty part of my heart, this game excites me, and I don't know if I have players who would get into it. I mean, I know I have some. I'm keen to find out. 

Anydangway, since normally we'd make up the setting with the group, but I ain't got one, I'll use the one in the example (not Star Wars, the one listed for an example of setting creation). In this setting, people are "gentled" (killed) at age 18. The world is otherwise a technocratic utopia, so you pretty much get everything you want. The Authority here has lots of neat methods of non-lethal control. Also free-love is compulsory.

The "clique" here is a group of kids called the Underground Network, who help folks about to be gentled get the fuck out. Part of making characters is tossing out a bunch of concepts, which I liked because it would (hopefully) weed out the ideas that are obviously ripoffs of other properties (first ideas) or just too damned weird and special-snowflake (second ideas). Looking at the list of concepts these folks came up with, and grabbing one that isn't already represented, I like "basement weapons engineer." I see in this kid a nerdy fixation with machines and electronics, and he excels in hacking apart the Authority's non-lethal stuff and making them...less non-lethal.

The Surface: Here I do name, age and sex. Well, male. I don't want to go "child prodigy," so I'll say he's 17, a year off being gentled. For name, folks call him "Wanna." Free-love is compulsory, and on some level this guy always got that that wasn't cool, but he still, y'know, liked it. So he'd try to ask potential partners in such a way that wasn't forceful. "Wanna?"

I fill in looks, too. The author recommends against having all-white, all-guy cliques (never had the "all-guy" problem, m'self), and I get that. This kid, though, I don't see as being other than white. I'll say Wanna is white, thin, and his fingers are nicked up from the work he does. His back has this ugly net-like scarring pattern. He was rigging up a stolen net-gun to heat the wire net up before firing. It worked, but he forget to disarm it first and it shot him.

Convictions: These are deeply-held beliefs and motivations. Neat thing: You can sell them out in play, winning die rolls, but becoming more like the Authority.

Means: How I get what I want. For Wanna, he's definitely Smart (which will sell out to Pedantic).

Motive: Why doesn't Wanna swallow the Authority's bullshit? Because he's Outraged. Wanna hides it, but one of the reasons he's so willing to turn a pacifying weapon into a lethal one is because he's horrified at what the Morpheans do. This sells out to Wrathful, and frankly the scene in which Wanna sells out that conviction would be awesome to play.

Opportunity: How/why I've managed to get in the position I'm in. Tempted to say "Trusted," but that sells out to "Believer" and I don't know if I like that...no, actually, I'm OK with that. Might be a fun progression if he feels guilty about killing people. I'll say that excelled in design and some of the existing weapons have improvements based on his notes. That's why they trust him.

MO: This is my concept, what I do best. Wanna is the Weapons Expert. That doesn't sell out to something specific, but it can still sell out.

Disorder: My fatal flaw, the last Conviction to sell out. I think Wanna is Blinded by Passion. A good cause, a hot girl, anything like that can get the better of him. (And I think it'd sell out to something like "Twice Shy").

And that's it, actually. Everything else on the sheet is note space for the other characters or in-game events. Rule!