Bee couldn't take me this time, nor join me, so I was as close to being "on my own" for this weekend as I ever was (She did have time to bring some of my stuff, bless her). I showed up almost too late, forgot too many things, couldn't find other things, and barely made it... but I DID make it. So after getting lost on the bike ride over there, I had finally arrived at my first KotK weekend alone.
After a quick dinner, we jumped straight into our first session, in this case, Desiree's Steampunk Gypsy game, mentioned in the previous blog post. Desiree chose to use no system (though I introduced one halfway into the game that was well received ;) ), so our characters amounted to a description and a picture. I arrived a touch late, so everyone had already picked their character, leaving me with Carlos, a very conservative gypsy concerned with the fading of his culture and owner of the last gypsy horse. The others offered to trade with me, but I honestly thought he was a perfect fit for me, so everyone was happy.
As I said, Desiree used no system, but after watching people toy with cards and dice, I suddenly suggested that we should play it like Calvin Ball, but, and I'm not kidding here, they had no idea what I was talking about (and it's not like Dutch people have no exposure to Calvin and Hobbes: Raoul knew exactly what I was talking about when I described the situation to him later on). So, after I explained the utterly arbitrary and ineffable and chaotic rules of Calvin Ball, they thought it was great fun, and our "system" devolved into people knocking over cans, drawing cards into weird patterns, rolling dice and then placing them on cards, connecting cards with forks, and positioning jewelry in odd configurations. In short, fun was had by all while onlookers couldn't figure out what the hell we were doing. Desiree declared it the most fun system she'd ever played with. I like to think she was making a statement against the arbitrary cargo cults that follow many more complex games (especially D&D), but I suspect she might have simply enjoyed the purity of Calvin Ball ^_^
To return to the story, Desiree began the game by introducing us to the courtship rituals of Gypsies: If a boy Gypsy and a girl Gypsie liked one another very much and her parents agreed to the match, the boy Gypsie "kidnapped" the girl Gyspe. And so, the tone was set: This was to be a game about romancing Gypsie girls! And so, our Gypsie family set out for the grand meeting of all the Gypsies in the area which, because of cultural and actual attrition, consisted of one single other family, who was the rival of ours. The other players had their own little stories, such as Erik playing Pedro as a dancing, womanizing fool, or Frank playing Gomez, a hunter and my younger brother who craved to be seen as my equal, Marco playing as Alejandro, a Gypsy inventor with a crazy steam car (and my rival), and Myrthe, playing Mariposa, an equally technologically-fascinated Gypsy girl from our rival family (they were a match made in heaven).
I think Desiree really liked how I played Carlos. I instantly had a connection with Allegria, the dancing daughter of the rival family (She found my storm-grey horse, Dancer fascinating. When she reached up to touch his nose, I asked if she knew how to ride. When she shyly confessed she didn't, I told her all Gypsies should know how to ride. She commented on the impracticality of this, but I only scowled, unwilling to admit she was right, and took her for a ride), but I never admitted it, never came out and said it. In my opinion, that's rule #1 about a good romance: Imply all feelings, don't state them outright until the climax or until they impossible to fulfill, if you state them at all (I think the Taming of the Shrew is a better romance than Romeo and Juliet). Instead, he played his guitar and tried to arrange marriages for the rest of his family, while struggling to pretend that Allegria's sensuous dance with Gomez didn't affect him, or that he was willing to give up everything to keep her safe.
At some point, I made the "mistake" of telling Allegria that I had a dream of finding a mare for Dancer, my horse, and breeding a new herd that I would use to rekindle the horse population of (wherever we were). Desiree instantly hit upon the idea of making me choose between Dancer and Allegria. I don't think she expected the choice I made, but was pleased with it nonetheless. First, Dancer wandered off, so I went looking for him while a storm brewed. I found him across a river eating some tasty but highly poisonous plants. I was able to force him to vomit up the plants, but problems mounted as I brought him back to the river. Before I could cross with Dancer, I saw Allegria (who had followed after me, worried about why I was gone for so long) falling into the river. Now, the storm grew close, and Desiree made it clear that if I chose to move my horse across the river first, that Allegria would die, but if I rescued Allegria, I might miss my chance to get my sick horse across the river. Of course, I saved Allegria.
After a tense scene where we worked to save Allegria's life, I was assured that she would be safe. Rain poured down outside, and still, I gathered my coat and left. The river had swollen too large for me to safely cross, and my horse stood shivering on the other side. By then, Gomez and Pedro had arrived and, Gomez being an excellent outdoorsman, had rope with them. So, I tied the rope to myself and struggled to cross the river (in retrospect, it probably would have made more sense to have Gomez cross, but I think Carlos was the kind of guy who took the weight of the world on his shoulders), where I covered my horse with my coat, intending to wait out the storm. However, Desiree stated that he looked very ill and probably wouldn't make it through the storm. So I tied the rope to the horse and tried to cross with him, swimming beside Dancer. I was, of course, going for broke: Rescue BOTH the girl AND the horse, because heroes don't quit just because of a little rain! However, I could tell Desiree wanted to exact a price: I couldn't save everyone, I had to be willing to give up something, and so she told me that I could tell that Pedro and Gomez were losing strength and that they couldn't draw us both across... and so I did the only thing I really could do (especially with the horse tied to the rope): I let go.
And so, long story short, Carlos died, but Dancer lived on.
The story ended, I believe, with Allegria wearing black and becoming a very conservative Gypsy herself who, nonetheless helped raise an entire herd of horses. Alejandro and Mariposa married, I believe, Gomez sort of took over as leader of the family, and I don't remember what happened to Pedro (it's possible he married Adelyne, the other, shy, young sister, but I'm not sure it worked out between them).
The death of my character provoked a discussion. I suggested two alternative paths: if she had intended to make me choose between my horse and Allegria, she could have simply taken Dancer from me when I chose Allegria. Alternatively, my arm had been mangled during my rescue attempts, so if she simply wanted to exact a price, she could have taken my arm. However, especially given it's one-shot nature, I didn't feel the death of Carlos was inappropriate. The only thing it cut short was the romance with Allegria, which was left unresolved, but I think Desiree wanted and/or enjoyed that ending, and I felt it was very in character for Carlos, who was willing to sacrifice everything for the safety of his culture and ideals. Raoul, upon observing the entire situation, commented on how GMing by fiat as Desiree was doing opened on up to criticism for "killing off a PC," and that chance-based systems provided a GM with cover. If we had been playing D&D, for example, then Desiree would have simply called for a Fortitude save, and if I failed my roll, well, it was out of her hands. I thought that was an interesting observation.
All in all, a very good game. A very different game from what you generally see the knights run. It was very laid back and reminded me of playing House with girls when I was a little boy, but it wasn't slow, it wasn't boring. Personally, I found it a much more satisfying game than Grimm (it certainly had better chemistry among the players_, and it gave me a lot to think about. All in all, I would call it a success, and a good one at that.
I'm glad you liked my game, and it gave you something to think about.
ReplyDeleteSo thanks for the positive review.
:-D
I think we actually observed several reasons to use a system:
ReplyDelete- To protect the GM first of all: If you kill off a character because it makes sense in your mind, people might get a little bit peeved.
- To give the GM a possible outcomes in which things are too close to just "eyeball": If you have a mouse vs. an orc, the outcome is clear, but what if you have two skilled swordsmen duking it out, who wins? In many cases, the GM cannot see the outcome.
- To create clarity and a shared mindset. If you GM by fiat, players have to be familiar with your premise and with what you think is fair, otherwise, they might end feeling betrayed if you rule against them (and their characters)
- To force the GM to make things dangerous. I am often inclined to be too nice towards my players. I won't hurt them a lot. I will actually let them get away with things they shouldn't be able to get away with. However, if the system says otherwise.
- To give interesting situations. Because a system always involves interaction between mechanics, it can result in tactical situations which challenge the players and makes a dull encounter something unusual.
But I must say, I think Desirée is braver than me for running something without a system. I always imagine system-less games of running amock because it gives players a lot of power. However, after playing puppetland, with responsible and well-adjusted players I think a system-less game could be a lot of fun.
And on top of that, systems often require some investment from a GM. Not only to understand them, but also to apply them. And players often tend to use the system as a (not so) sneaky method to get away with powergaming and griefing.
But in the end, I guess most people use systems to resolve situations for them that they don't want to resolve themselves, so they can focus on the story. I think it requires a lot of skill to create a balanced story that feels right for the players without such a tool to aid you.
It's interesting that you say that, Raoul. I think proponents of system-less play would disagree with you point for point.
ReplyDelete- First, they would point out that even with a system, people tend to be peeved when they die (Ron raged against Erwin for letting the dice lie where they may and killing off his character, and he would have raged at Desiree if he had been playing Carlos. Even so, I think your point remains: The system creates an excuse: "I didn't kill your character, that naturally emerged from the dice and your choices.")
- Those are, indeed, tough situations, and I think having something like a basic die roll or a draw of a card will help. I secretly suspect Desiree actually used the Calvin Ball rules to do this more than once: If the cards or dice or whatever "looked" right or wrong, and she wasn't sure what was supposed to happen, she let it guide her.
- I happen to agree with this. Even if you don't use a system, you should have a character sheet that describes what your character is about. If I think I'm a master swordsman and I don't say so, either by writing "Swords-25" in GURPS, or simply telling Desiree "I'm a master swordsman" in her approach, then how is someone to know that my character really should win? I wasn't really surprised that Carlos couldn't make it across that river for a third time... but I imagine she might have allowed Gomez to do it. But I would point out that she did, in fact, have character sheets, they were just qualitative, rather than quantitative (that is, she told us what we could do, rather than showed us via system).
- Desiree didn't need a system to force us into danger.
- Yeah, definitely. The dice and what have you will create situations that never would come up without them. For example, I never would have guessed that the Executioner would have been able to disarm Rene like that. It surprised everyone, and forced him to fight in a different manner... which, fortunately, I had prepared him for, and he pulled his disarm trick on Tsao Bei. Never would have happened in a systemless game.
I'll add another one: Systems are fun. People like to play games like Chess and Apples to Apples because they have rules. Nobody seriously talks about systemless Chess, because such a thing wouldn't make sense. Really, what Desiree is trying to do is something completely different from what most RPGers do: She's not trying to run a game, she's trying to run a story, which is a completely different goal than, say, a fun encounter in a dungeon. Incidentally, the Calvin Ball system fulfilled this goal, because it was fun, even if (or especially because) it made no sense.
I think you can also use systems to tell stories. I think Desiree only understood some things about Yukiko after seeing how her mechanics played out. She knew that Yukiko was beautiful and elegant, but she hadn't really grasped what I meant by "insightful" until she had her scene with Satomi, in which suddenly her Empathy (insight into how people feel) kicked in and told her what was really going on, and then her Common Sense kicked in (insight into what a proper course of action might be) and I was able to suggest how she might best use this. I always pictured Yukiko as a wise character who had earned her wisdom from the harsh realities she had been forced to face. And in that scene, I think Desiree grasped that... and she never would have without mechanics.
But these last two points are less important for Desiree. She doesn't want to tell a story with mechanics, and she's not playing with rules because she doesn't actually find them fun (fiddling with this stat or that isn't her idea of a good time). However, your points are pretty insightful into why someone who doesn't particularly enjoy systems might still use one, as a storytelling aid.
I wasn't trying to suggest that people have to use systems, just to be clear, they were just reasons to use one. Desiree perfectly proved to us that you can have a good game without a system ;)
ReplyDeleteI am a system-user myself, and I do love it when a system can tell a story. Nothing gives me more pleasure than seeing a combination of advantages and disadvantages on a GURPS character sheet that shows what someone is like.
But I must say that using Calvinball sounds like a lot of fun. What was that system that you suggested again? The one with the pictures.
Everway
ReplyDelete