Hey Man, well this is Babylon

(Eek! I wrote this a few nights ago but forgot to set it to auto-post. So it’s a bit late. My bad!)

This past weekend was Gamestorm 2012, which I like to call “Portland’s Annual Gaming Convention in Vancouver.” You can read about the convention in my post history and on its own website, so I’m just gonna skip on ahead to the highlights.

For me, the biggest and most awesome parts of the weekend were the two first-ever public playtests of Motobushido. I finally got to put my newest creation in the hands of total strangers who had never heard of it before. The results were pretty powerful: after two full sessions of play, I walked away not only with pages of rules tweaks and updates, but with some damn fine gaming memories as well. I found it interesting to see how the same basic scenario idea was so drastically altered between the two different groups. I’ll definitely be fleshing that one out a bit more and including it in the core book.

Aside from those demos, I really spent most of my time at the Indie Hurricane booth in the Dealer Room. I met some great new local gamers, and had some good discussions about gaming-related ideas that opened my mind to new perspectives. Some thanks and acknowledgements:

• Many, many thanks to Hans Otterson for the rides to the convention.
• Even more thanks to Joel Shempert for making the Indie Hurricane booth run smoothly, and for putting the whole effort together.
• Thanks to the guy at the FaceEater booth for finally teaching me how to play this game. It was a lot of fun, and I look forward to more games with my local pals.

I walked away with some cool swag from the GM Gift Room – namely a copy of Feng Shui, which I’ve been meaning to grab for some time now based on the recommendations of many. And of course, after the con, there was much sleeping.

I’m really eager to build some new semi-regular game-nights with those of you that I’ve just met. Let’s make this happen, folks!

The continually awesome Rick Marcks has given me the second piece of artwork for Project H66. This one showcases the second of the two main art styles I’m hoping to involve in the printed book.

Again, apologies for the watermark.

For a while now, I’ve been enamored with the idea of the motobushi each having an array of special empowerments at their fingertips, abilities which would let them bend certain rules to their favor in particular situations. While I’ve developed a hefty array of these powers, I’ve been struggling with the proper method for bringing them into play without totally destroying mechanical balance. After last night’s second playtest, I think I’ve finally figured it out.

One of the game’s main themes involves investing current power into future options, and the choice between what works right now and what might work in a few moments. I’m going to keep with that theme when implementing maneuvers. Instead of just being able to activate them left and right at will, or placing artificial “only once per shindig” limitations upon them, I’m going to require that players actually use cards from their hand to activate them. Each maneuver will have an Activation Rank, starting at 10 and going down with character advancement. By sacrificing a card from your hand with a face rank higher than the maneuver’s activation, you can use that maneuver’s ability.

This enhances the strategy behind the conflict, and should hopefully work nicely with the innate risk vs reward setup. Players will have to choose between holding onto the higher cards for use against their opponent, or investing them into their maneuvers for immediate effect.

Now it just remains to be tested.

Thanks to Jake Richmond, Ben Lehman, Mike Sugarbaker, and Joe Streckert for participating in the first-run playtest of Project H66, aka the Motorcycle Samurai game. Last night I got to see the First Founding and the character generation rules in action, and initial thoughts are mostly positive. Definite Success!

Initial player-established War details were wicked awesome: The war is an “undeclared foreign war” against “massive hordes of unwashed primitives.” Despite their side’s use of “rolling dreadnought tanks with massive 100+-member crews,” the war was ultimately lost, the home economy across the sea ravaged, and the soldiers were all stranded there with “nothing to go home to.” The locals are usually known by their derogative nickname, “the shitweeds.”

The First Founding featured four soldiers in a moment of crisis: The war is lost – do we follow the suicide charge orders, or do we retreat to live and fight another day? The Sergeant tried to convince everyone that this charge was their destiny, their duty as soldiers. The Recruit dissented, having a family back home, but was quickly insulted by the Sapper. This provoked the Recruit into lashing out, which spawned a vicious explosion-heavy fight between him and the Sapper. The Recruit ultimately took the Sapper’s head, but the fight was so traumatic that he then simply fell to his knees and wept as The Enemy ran him down. The Sergeant and the Veteran, meanwhile, finally agreed that this was indeed a waste of their lives, and they rode off into the night, retreating from the charge.

This resulted in their Pack’s First Founding being colored by the following three grabs: Desertion, Regicide, and Survivors. Ouch.

Character creation was next. Sarge and the Veteran remain in the pack today as Den Mother and Trail Blazer respectively, along with a new Leader (the Road Captain) and a Masked member from the local populace (The Enforcer). A nice variety of Bikes and Fighting Styles were chosen, although the group’s off-road capability is very, very limited.

Following that the players laid out the actual details of the Pack itself. Calling themselves the War Pigs, they all wear masks styled after demonic boars, which are required attire when astride their bikes. The leader’s command icon is an old bleached skull from a massive pig-monster which once almost wiped out the entire Pack. Called The Boar by the pack, each member has also secretly given it its own name that no one else knows. This skull is mounted as a standard on the leader’s chopper, and frequently adorned with trophies from fallen enemies. Attaching these trophies is called “feeding the Boar” and one of the Pack’s taboos is that the Boar must be regularly fed, or bad things happen to them. They ritually partake in copious amounts of drugs, frequently going on peyote-like spirit quests, guided by the Boar. They don’t care about hairstyles, as long as their facial hair is curled into Boar Tusks (one of them even has similar facial tattoos). Finally, they have a taboo against sleeping in the same bed twice, unless they are “on furlough.”

Their prospect-initiation ritual is rather gruesome. Upon being first allowed to ride as prospect, the newcomer must wear a mask made from an actual boar’s face, tanned and stinking. This mask must be worn until he makes his first solo kill of a marked enemy of the Pack. There was also discussion of the Prospect having to eventually stew and eat the mask, but I’m not sure if those details got hammered out and committed to Pack law.

I look forward to seeing The War Pigs in action in the coming sessions.

Post-Session Musings

The default “suicide charge” First Founding scene seems to work well enough, but I’m thinking it might not be fully apparent that committing to the charge doesn’t necessarily mean the characters are doomed to die. Believing that they are might factor into their decision.

The basic conflict mechanic worked out well, but needs some in-the-face clarification. I need to make a cheat sheet and print it on the character sheet itself, just a quick bullet list of things to consider (like the two ways in which Ki can be spent for bonus cards).

Some dragging aspects of the Pack Creation system were very immediately apparent. Sacrifices were too many, and took too long to come up with and then write down. Going forward, I’m changing it to a stripped-down, more group-inclusive process: define one sacrifice for yourself, and one each for the guys to your left and right.

There are too many initial Grabs. Revision: First Founding survivors get two free Grabs (those they inherited from the first scene). All characters get one free grab attached to each of their three Trappings (Role, Style, and Bike). The Pack as an entity itself has three Grabs as well, established at the end of the First Founding. Undecided if players can then nominate one last bonus Grab for the player next to them.

Also, the Rank bidding system is confusing and ultimately unnecessary. I’m stripping it out and replacing it with simple group discussion.

Now that I’ve finished (and rage-quit) A Dance With Dragons, it’s time to get back to the idea mill for Hagakure ’66. Now I want to talk about the First Founding, and introducing players to the game with a bang.

One very valid concern that was raised during a recent design-jamming session is related to the very nature of the motorcycle pack. In this game, the characters are all members of an outlaw motorcycle gang, and along with that membership come several assumptions that could feasibly be made about their natures. With this game I am envisioning play going back-and-forth between scenes involving exploration of setting and situation, and scenes involving motorcycle samurai action – y’know, sword duels and motorcycle races and all-out gang-on-gang warfare.

Given the typically rugged, brutal, take-what-you-want-by-force nature of the typical outlaw gang, the question was poised: what is to stop the gang from just rolling into town at the beginning of the scenario, putting everyone to the sword, taking what they want, and leaving, without taking the time to explore and network? Read more

I could use some input on this, folks.

On the homeward commute yesterday, I began considering the idea of using Playing cards, instead of dice, as the core tangible resolution mechanic. This thought process all started as I was trying to work out some ideas for the All-Out Pack Warfare rules. I was initially thinking it could be a system in which two players face off over a row of seven “fields” or spaces on the table. Each member of the pack would play a card in a field of their choice, showing their effort in that field of the battle. Cards would get played, revealed, and matched in an order currently undefined, wht the results of those matches would score the fields and ultimately declare a victor in the battle. A quick game of strategy to determine the tides of an entire battle. Future product tie-ins, as well, but that’s thinking much further down the line.

This got me thinking: why use dice at all, then? How about just do the entire thing in cards?

Re-working the cards ideas a bit, the variables could be modified as follows:

• Pack Rank: Determines # of cards in your set hand
• Alignment Scale Position: Determines maximum # of cards you can play at once during relevant conflicts (scaled from 3 at the lowest to 9 at the highest)
• Ki Pool: Spend tokens to add cards to your hand before playing
• Grabs: Evoke a Grab to play more cards from your existing hand.

Cards are still played in sets of either 3 cards or 7 cards. Ranks are added and used to beat targets, card combos multiply scores or add to them somehow. Possibly even anime-esque levels of power escalation and exponential growth. I can see a well-played seven-card set totally destroying a mountainside, that kind of thing.

This gives me a whole new idea for implementing the Risk Investment theme of the Broad Scenes. To re-cap, what I’m calling “Broad Scenes” function primarily as storytelling and narrative exploration scenes. It is in the Broad Scenes that the stakes are set for future Action Scenes. While exploring Broad Scenes, characters can pursue side goals and missions to attempt to Up the Stakes for action scenes, such as persuading the town guard to fight for your cause, or convincing the mistress to reveal your enemy’s secret weakness.

Previously, I had figured these could give extra dice if established before a conflict, at the risk of higher stakes for loss. Instead, I’m conceptualizing a way for players to find these side goals, work them, and then invest face-down cards into them for future use. Say, work the mistress over, and then place one or more cards face down on the side for her, which can then be re-drawn into your hand as bonus cards later, should you work her into an actual conflict.

Aside from providing roleplaying direction and serving as separate character lifelines, the three Codes’ scales will directly relate to the conflict resolution mechanics. Your positions on the scales will set your base number of dice rolled in these action scenes. My goal is to have each of the three codes empower two modes of conflict resolution.

For example, I’m currently aiming at having the Code “Way of the Sword” empower the resolution of conflicts via both the direct application of violence and the complete avoidance of violence altogether. A character who is at Balance within this Code (aka “Rank 4″ out of seven spots on the scale) will roll a base of five dice in either situation. Each space further outward on this Code (towards the seventh spot) will raise the Violence ability by one die while likewise lowering the Non-Violence ability, with the furthest-outward space giving the character eight dice for violent acts and only two for non-violence. Likewise, moving instead inward does the opposite, and at the innermost space (spot #1) the samurai would have eight dice for non-violent ways, and only two for acts of violence.

I’m hoping to set each of the other two codes into a similar template. What mechanical empowerments, then, would the Codes of the Pack and the Highway respectively provide? The Code of the Pack represents the balance between individualism and Pack Identity – further inward makes the character more self-empowered, further outward makes him stronger as a member of the group. My immediate thought is that it would be the difference between “Acting alone” and “Acting With the Pack,” but that actually seems a bit too situational. Another idea would be to connect this to Honor, using it as a means to an end much in the same way that the Way of the Sword uses violence. Further inward could then empower your use of your own personal Honor as a tool (as well as when you defend it), while the outward could empower your application and defense of your Pack’s honor. I’m not sold on this yet, as I’m not picturing any exciting conflict scenes in which these would be used.

As for the Highway, I’m equally perplexed. The immediate reaction to the question is to apply it to your character’s riding skill, but what would be the relevant dichotomy? What could the Code of the Highway, which represents the balance between human empathy and a zen-like connection to your bike, bring to the table that isn’t already covered by the violence/peace empowerment of the Way of the Sword?

Or is the Way of the Sword too broad as it is?

My goal is to have the Pack Roles inspire out-of-conflict role-playing while also directly tying into the Pack Warfare rules. I’m seeing the latter as an almost Diplomacy-like minigame of strategy and moves, involving the Roles themselves as chesspiece-like tools in the battle.

First, let’s address the roles specifically. These are separate from the pack Ranks, mind you. Ranks cover things like Leader, Core Guard, Masked, and Prospect. Roles, on the other hand, describe your duties and responsibilities within the Pack, both in daily life and in Battle.

I’m wanting there to be at least seven roles available, each with its own narrative guidelines and battle mechanics. So far, here are the few notes I’ve drafted up last night on these Roles:

The Tail Gunner

1. Always rides at the rear of the convoy, usually with a heavy and/or loud bike. Responsible for carrying medical and other important supplies for the Pack.
2. When the pack retreats, the Gunner is responsible for issuing a “parting challenge” to the pursuing enemy, in order to stain their honor somehow. “Bet you can’t hit this target!” or the like.
3. Battle Move: “Parting Challenge”

The Historian

1. Responsible for keeping the Pack’s records, and maintaining their “mon” (badges)
2. During Battle, the Historian chants the lineages of the members and the exploits of the Pack. This should be done aloud and in character. This is to both bolster the Pack’s confidence and intimidate the enemy.
3. Battle Move: “Litany of Glory”

The Road Captain

1. The Road Captain rides at the front of the convoy, and in Battle, he always leads the charge.
2. This is the rider the enemy will see first, thus the Road Captain must be visually representative of his Pack’s spirit.
3. Battle Move: “Rallying Charge”

The Trail Blazer

1. A good ‘Blazer scouts out the battlefield in advance.
2. When traveling, the ‘Blazer rides ahead of the pack, sometimes far, but rarely closer than just visible cresting that far hill.
3. Battle Move: Undecided

The Armsman

1. Responsible for keeping the pack in line, and enforcing Pack Law within the ranks at the behest of the Leader.
2. Is rarely the leader, but more frequently the Leader’s right hand man.
3. Acts primarily as a thug and enforcer.
4. Battle Move: Undecided

The Errand Boy

1. Usually filled by the Prospect
2. Cleans the bikes, gets the coffee, packs the gear, executes all the items on the Honeydew lists.
3. Battle Move: Undecided

The Den Mother

1. Strong samurai packs keep their ranks free of women and avoid the wily affairs of the fairer sex. The strongest Packs dismiss this superstition, and ride with a strong Den Mother in their ranks.
2. The Den Mother is a unifying force on the battlefield, bolstering those who ride with her.
3. Battle Move: Undecided

I’m mulling over ideas on how to both A) further define these roles outside of combat, and B) further define the rules of actual Pack Warfare. I’m also considering having the rules be changeable in-game. Maybe give each role two special moves – one for whoever happens to switch into that role in the fly, and one additional move that only the true holder of that role knows (the guy who chose it during character creation).

I have mostly been using a private journal for the small-scale fielding of initial ideas, before bringing them more into focus and posting here. Lately, a flood of these have been discussed, and here are the most recent revisions of my newest ideas on this game.

On Stages of Play

I’m seeing actual play happening in two major stages, which for now (and lack of better theme-appropriate terms) I’m calling the Broad stage and the Action stage. Play will flow freely between the two stages, often with definite scene breaks to signify their transitions. Musings on these follow.

The Broad Stage:

In the Broad stage, the players guide their characters along, trying to complete a mission given to them by their Patron, whoever that may be in the scenario. This is akin to “exploration” and “open” scenes and play from other more mainstream rpgs. It is through Broad stage play that the players explore the setting and scenario.

The only real mechanic is based in the uncovering and completion of minor scenario objectives. These involve the character putting something important on the line now in order to reap the benefits of it later. The samurai puts his life on the line by swearing to provide protection to the troubled magistrate, in order to secure the magistrate’s backing against the town council. He puts his honor on the line by talking to the prostitute, in order to learn the secrets she knows about the evil Lone Ronin. Read more

I’ve been having a hard time putting my thoughts down on paper at this point, in a fashion understandable to an outside reader. Last night it hit me: Mass Effect 2. In this video game, everything in the game leads up to a multi-staged final mission through a gateway into the unknown. Leading up to this point in the game, you spend a large amount of time and effort first recruiting a full team of commandos, and then subsequently following up with those teammates in order to secure their ultimate loyalty. This last bit is always secured by the results of a special focus side mission, and these missions vary frequently in their approach and implementation.

For example, one guy’s mission is a pretty standard jaunt through an area killing a lot of bad guys, getting to an important life-changing conversation at the very end. Another is just a simple stalk-and-observe, with little combat at all. Each of them varies pretty widely, although most use the standard combat mechanic at least once. At the end, if you did well, your squad mate will be absolutely loyal to you, and gain more abilities and bonuses.

But more importantly: they will most likely not die at the end of the game. See, during the End Run, depending on the choices you’ve made and the way you’ve played the game, one or more (or all!) of your squad can die off in extremely heart-wrenching cut scenes. Fail to secure the loyalty of Guy #7, and he might waver in the face of the enemy and be mowed down, just outside of your reach. Gil #4 might be sucked out of an airlock into the cold of space.

The End Run of the game is a mostly-linear dungeon run, with a few Big Decisions interspersed between its areas. Regardless of who you take and who survives, the layout of the maps is the same, as are the battle locations and such. However, the presence of different people at different times affects your survivability pretty heavily, as do other non-companion-related decisions you made earlier in the game. So while the Main Objective remains the same (aka Kill the Big Bad), your earlier choices have direct mechanical impact on the attempt to achieve that goal.

So, bringing this back around to Hagakure 66, I see the major conflict mechanics being resolved primarily in pre-set Fields of Play: The Tarmac, the Parlor, the Duel, etc. A standard affair of theme-specific generalized Fields will be offered in the game text. When a new scenario is set forth, the GM states a simple opening scenario goal: “In this scenario, your pack will go to Hornsfirth Hill and secure the loyalty of the Mayor for your Patron’s cause.” He will already have written down one or more Fields which this scenario will feature.Then, each player writes down and submits an additional Field, effectively telling the GM “this is where I want to see action happen.” These can be from the game text, or made up by the player. Once the scenario begins, all major conflicts will be resolved on these fields.Once a conflict reaches a Field, the mechanics will play out as normal (still undefined at this moment). However, depending on the conflict and its relevance to the GM’s scenario plans, there might be unknown background conditionals at play. “If the players don’t tie Story Thread X up before this conflict, then apply Modifiers Y.”

Thus the players will be encouraged to explore the setting and the situation a bit to find these triggers and resolve certain conditionals. Getting the influential madame on your side can affect your conflict to drive the slaver out of town, for example. But pissing her off might actually get you in the Slaver’s good graces.

More on this as it comes to me.