Down In the Hole character sheet and ready to playtest

Absolutely, I think that would be great!

Per

AP here:
Streets of London

I really enjoyed the first/character generation session, but it wasn’t without issue.

I creating an old and jaded DC (Detective Constable) who joined the Met full of drive and ambition, but ended up being shunted from assignment to assignment in a career death-spiral after pissing off a soon-to-be superior. The only thing waiting for him was a too-soon retirement and an unhappy marriage and a daughter who’d gone off the rails (and dating one of the other PCs, which my character didn’t know about). DC Evans’ last assignment would be to a newly created special investigations unit within the Met that seemed devoid of drive or purpose. Fitting really.

Character generation went relatively smoothly, although I think it would have benefitted from a more coherent process for creating the initial setting along with a brief idea of differing ranks across police services. The playtest document, as it stood, was heavily US-centred, and could have benefited from a more international flavour. There was also talk of differing eras in play, however this was largely left up to the players and GM to flesh out. Again, a more detailed and internationalised aspect to the process could have made this easier. I think this is something that will either come from individual playtest groups or through increased feedback such that the rules are changed to facilitate this if it is thought to be an issue in play. There also seemed issues with only having a group of detectives, as this largely homogenised the group stat-wise. The general perception (I think) seemed to be that we would be all detectives and I don’t think we could quite see how a mixed group of characters could conceivably come together as a ‘party’.

The start of play was…rocky. To be fair to Per, we started play straight after character generation with only about 5 minutes of thought on his part as to how the game would start. I need to unpack this a bit I think. We created a special unit of detectives in London in the year 2010 without any clearly defined remit. I am the only Londoner, and thus we approached the game with a very vague and assumption-filled knowledge of the Met. From there we leapt straight into a phone call to one of the detectives from a rooky PC who’d been shot*. We headed to the crime scene and while Per’s character comforted the poor young constable we canvassed the crime-scene, arranged to have CCTV footage seized and sent to our office and tried to learn what happened. It was soon determined that there was a drive-by shooting of two police officers where the rookie stayed in the car while his colleague was gunned down in front of him. Not nice. We finished as the CCTV was flashed to my computer screen and sets up next session for a reveal on the car/van/persons that were involved.

I really think that real feedback on play will hit once we actually get to actual play, which will be monday evening. I do have to say that I’ve played online via iTT a couple of times, and skype once and that one time was during this game. It went incredibly smoothy, and I was very impressed with the techincal side of the evening. That’s not to say I wasn’t impressed with the hack Per has put together, but I feel there needs to be more hand-holding during setting and character creation, setting more than character. I am really looking forward to tomorrow night.

John

*I work for London’s emergency services and thought the start highly improbable. Police Constables do not generally telephone detectives after being shot. They have priority overide buttins on their radios that they would have used to call for priority assistance. A firearms incident then leads to a rendezvous point (RVP) being established, ambulances (LAS) and firearms teams (SO19) being requested and all sorts of shit hitting the fan. Once the firearms teams had secured the scene, ambulance and police would have entered the scene, removed the injured and the entire area shut down as a very high profile and high priority fcrime scene. Specialised police detectives would then ne allowed access to the scene. I didn’t mention it at the time because, well, that would be anal. We were all trying to come to the game with the same assumtions I think, and it really was a game starter that sought to throw our BITs into conflict. Simply sending us to an already live crime scene could have arrived at the same point however. I am a knitpicker.

Here’s the very abbreviated description of what happened during my initial playtest game a couple of weeks ago.

I’ve slightly formatted it for this forum, but left the text unchanged. It’s pretty raw.

[T]he “case” that I prepped was this, just this:

[ul][li]Police Officer Joseph Mulakowski, found dead a week ago in an abandoned project building. Off duty, in plain clothes.
[/li]> [li]The office of mayor is up for election - the murder of Mulakowski becomes a hot button issue for the election
[/li]> [li]The incumbent mayor wants the case resolved on his watch - “I won’t stand for police officers on my watch!”
[/li]> [li]The challenger wants the case delayed until he assumes office or screwed up so that it reflects badly on the incumbent. All of these NPCs were named, ala Apocalypse World, but I cannot remember the names off-hand.[/ul]
[/li]> Go!

GM’s Turn

[ul][li]First Obstacle: pick up the kid that casually mentioned seeing a white guy gunned down to his social worker. Kid bolts (we started in media res) from school, CHASE!
[/li]> [li]Pursuit was Failed, Twisted into a messy siege surrounding one of the project high rises, gunshots fired, police and press arrive in force
[/li]> [li]Obstacle: push back the press and public from this warzone, Persuasion as I recall. Success!
[/li]> [li]Obstacle: SWAT team raid to go in and secure the kid, Leadership I think. Fail, imposed Anger condition, a member of the public was shot in the head in the ensuing gunfight.
[/li]> [li]Obstacle: Interrogation, get the kid to spill the beans. +1D from useful tools: (yeah yeah, not in the rules) a burger from the local In-&-Out. Success! Some names and photos get tacked to the investigation board.[/ul]
[/li]>
Players Turn

[ul][li]One player went to an Irish bar to cool off, sink some beers, beat up some Irish dock workers. (There being a lack of beetles to kick.) Success.
[/li]> [li]Another player, playing a Belief about doing good community policing, sorted out a foster family for the young project kid and had a touching scene in the drive-thru of the In-&-Out burger (yeah, that kid loved his burgers). Bureaucracy, Success.
[/li]> [li]The Lieutenant player phoned the office of the challenger for the mayor’s office - Belief: something like “Policing is my route to the top, ambition is everything” - and tried to secure a deal with the challenger to sponsor him for the position of Police Commissioner in a few years if the Lieutenant delayed or sabotaged the investigation (and thus made the incumbent look bad). Success! (What a bastard!) This player was not actively working against the successful outcome of the case. (Er, I ran with it at the time, but it caused fiction problems later in the next GM’s Turn, in terms of PVP. I think I just paced the GMs Turn badly in the second act, we could have left the PVP 'til the next Players Turn. Live and learn.)
[/li]> [li]And the last player used his Check to set up the wire on the new gang suspects. Bureaucracy, Success.[/ul]
[/li]>
Aw man, such an abbreviated AP. Time time time, sorry.

The folks I was playing with are not fans of Burning Wheel - they think it is overblown shit, a view I am slowly coming round to, rather crazily :o - and the biggest rub for them was gaining Checks. In Mouse Guard, it’s a fantasy, heroic, you’re playing mice - there’s some distance there between player and character.

In DitH, there ain’t so much distance - if you’d been born in Baltimore, and chose to be in the police, then you could have lived a life like that. Making things harder for yourself when a young kid’s life is on the line - nope, not gonna happen, and didn’t happen. Making things harder for yourself when you need to persuade a rabid journalist and her camera crew to back the fuck off? Again, not gonna happen, and it didn’t.

Nobody went for a single additional check in ~3 hours of play. I encouraged them to, and they knew how it worked having played MG with me once before, but they just pushed back against that.

Yeah, sorz for the BW hate in the closing bits. I’ve given up on BW and like a spurned lover I’m just letting it all hang out.

Cheers
Pete

And here is the text of my the email that swiftly followed the previous one.

This one is less AP-lite, more feedback. Again, I’ve just made the text look decent on this forum, and left the content as I sent it.

My earlier hastily scribbled email was just an abbreviated AP. What follows is feedback on DitH itself.

The players were a mix of hardcore fans of The Wire (me, and Rich), and folks with no exposure to the show at all. Those other players had seen crime dramas like Hill Street Blues, Miami Vice (!), and one or other flavour of CSI and/or Law & Order.

I was running, and I’ve run MG about ~20-25 times. Never played. A couple of the other players had played MG with me before, one other had read the text but never played, and the last player was coming to MG fresh. So some of the session was spent explaining MG through play.

  1. add the Nature descriptors to the character sheet.

  2. the Nature descriptors themselves worked for us, everyone liked them. Rich thought they captured The Wire quite well.

  3. the lists of Traits work and seem appropriate. Game on, we like lists.

  4. the contemporary nature of the setting - realistic - meant that the players pushed back against spending Checks. This was just one playtest session, so maybe that was just a freak thing. We’ll see tonight I guess. I will be farming Checks like crazy just to see what it feels like I reckon, so expect lots of Failures on my rolls and lots of Checks to accrue to me guys.

  5. concerning advancement, the players just went “bwuh?” And I went “bwuh?” right along with them. Who gives a shit in the fiction if McNulty has Detection(4) or Detection(5)? Like really, do we give a shit? Is that what this game is about, becoming “better”? Really? Obviously my tone conveys that I am of the opinion that I could care less about advancement in the context of DitH. It’s “system-noise” that just detracts from getting cool stuff done.

I understand System Matters, and for BE I’m onboard with the advancement system… but for the smaller scope and personal drama of The Wire, I just don’t give a shit about it. Burn it off. I grok that you chose MG as the system to base your hack on for a reason, so it’s cool obviously if you just discard my opinion. Really, game on.

  1. character creation just works as per vanilla MG, not much to add here really. It gave us the space we needed to get into the characters and provided a platform for us to hammer out [Burden], Instinct and Credo.

  2. Credo. Yep, the players liked this. Cue standard BW fanboy swooning about this aspect of the system, it’s good.

  3. [Burden]. Ditto.

  4. Instinct. Whew, another one of those “don’t give a shit” aspects. Instincts are retarded, stone-age role-playing technology. The players created them dutifully, but nobody was really feeling them at all. Instinct really feels superfluous. I understand the role that Instinct plays in the “artha-reward” cycle, but in play these Instincts were farmed for Fate points “just because, um, well, we should”. No real fictional push to play up the Instinct, and Instinct would not have been missed fictionally if it had not been there. It wasn’t that the Instincts were poorly written, it’s just the very idea of Instincts that was sucky.

  5. The GM/Player Turn split worked nicely. The GM Turn was always about The Case. I really pushed them on that, while also introducing really short asides about the mayor and other loci of power bringing pressure to bear. This prompted at least one player to do things in their Player Turn to address that purely fictional pressure, and the others were aware of it. The lack of Checks to spend in the PT made the PT quite short, so we cracked back on with the case. In total, we played one full GM Turn, one full Player Turn, and most of a second GM Turn [before] we knocked it on the head at a suitable stopping point in the fiction.

In play, things went smoothly as they ever do in MG, apart from the aforementioned issue with Checks. Fun was had.

In the chill out chat we had afterwards, folks were of the opinion that while fun was had, MG didn’t bring a huge amount to the table. If you ain’t a fan of the Burning Wheel style of doing things, then MG ain’t bringing it. Advancement is a cornerstone of the BW-style of doing things - it’s in all Luke’s B* games - but there is little push to game that aspect in a game about gritty crime, politics, and relationships.

I appreciate that you are keen on MG and B*, that’s cool, game on. The players had fun - cheers! - but they wouldn’t play it again because of MG being the engine. I think that this hack has legs, so do carry on with it Per and realise your cool vision of The Wire through the lens of B*.

In essence, MG = BW = tl;dr. And yeah, I can totally see and feel where they are coming from.

Haha, I hope this hasn’t reduced your enthusiasm to game with me tonight. I’m still keen to bring it, and my personal issues with B* games won’t stop me hitting it fierce. I’m hoping to play in John’s BW game at DragonMeet on Saturday, and while I think that’s going to be my last hurrrah swansong with BW, I’m still going to be enthusiastic and bring it in spades.

Cheers
Pete

This is super-interesting AP, Pete. I’m glad you posted it.

The advancement thing is interesting. I do think that’s a philosophical thing buried in B* design philosophy, just like you said. Not sure if that’s a Luke hangup or just a disconnect between your players and the engine. I have players who are totally fucking addicted to advancement, so systems like this produce good story as a happy side effect. My other players are addicted to great storymaking, so advancement is sort of an inconvenient drag. My story-lovers have, however, reconciled advancement in a more meta sense, that as the story proceeds and the characters advance, the net result is that the players achieve more direct authorship over the story (due to the dwindling # of complications/failures/conditions arising from play…which may in fact interfere with the “good story” engine, come to think of it).

I almost wonder if DitH advancement should be more about, well, in-the-setting professional advancement. Not that it really matters what your skill ranks are, but rather you need certain skill rank thresholds in order to move from street cop to detective to captain, or whatever. So, yeah, your ranks are going up but only to facilitate your professional advancement. Just spitballing here.

Really interesting thought on Instinct. I don’t agree with your assessment – I think MG Instinct is different than “protect yourself from shitty GMing” BW Instincts – but I do think it could be heavily refined and focused for DitH purposes. Maybe…tie your Instinct into one of the character-making questions? So like “Instinct” might become a “When I’m in the shit, _____” type autoresponse, based on a question you answered when you made your cop. And there might only be like 4 or 5 versions: “…I double-tap any witnesses that might get me into trouble,” “…I call for backup and hide behind cover,” “…I take out the leader and deal with the consequences during the investigation,” “…I leave my partner behind while I get myself out of trouble.” That sort of thing.

Personally I think the “make things harder on yourself” problems are totally a player style/design style disconnect, not a fundamental flaw with the game design. It might be more visceral because you’re playing a Real World Cop instead of a Sword-Wielding Mouse, but they’re both RPGs. Sounds like your guys are all about advocating for their toons, rather than occasionally slipping over to the authorship thing. Which is totally cool, but a style gap to be sure.

I wonder if there might be some way to better guide the “make things harder on yourself” rules to soften that a bit? You could always juice the artha economy such that you MUST have checks or else you’ll fail the investigation. Or make succumbing to your Burden really really bad, and if you’re not off dealing with it during your PT then it’s just getting worse. Ooh! Maybe there’s some counterbalance between your Burden and your Human Nature – like maybe your Burden, unaddressed, automatically reduces your Human Nature trait for that session. Like you HAVE TO spend a check at least once doing something related to addressing your Burden. That might be enough incentive.

Thanks for thoughtful feedback, Paul!

Second session yesterday, managed to finish GM turn and get in a player turn as well.

It was…interesting. We had a couple of disconnects - Joe balked at his character going to tell the shot policeman’s wife the news about her husband’s condition. We had a brief “this is not realistic”-kinda discussion - since it doesn’t bother me whether it’s realistic, I should have asked for advice, I’ll try and remember the next time. But it was “Whoa!” right there and I thought I had nearly dropped the game right there and then. We managed to retro-fit the scene to the hospital, and when Joe failed his roll for Kumar I introduced a newspaper crime reporter as a twist.

I thought we had some OK scenes, and am interrogation conflict where Harris and Riley were getting the owner of a car used at the crime scene to basically confess to the crime.

Joe was generally not feeling happy about it all, so perhaps he should chime in and describe his quibbles further - but when it came to the player round, Joe (I paraphrase) declared that he didn’t care much for his character and didn’t know him. And followed that up by saying he didn’t care for playing characters generally, making decisions for them, comparing it to moving chess pieces on a board etc. As you can imagine that quite baffled the other three of us, and even though we did discuss it extensively afterwards, I’m not sure I get it. And when I hold it up against the strong reaction against the circumstances of Joe’s wife visiting scene I understand even less.

Now, I not sure we are in Down in the Hole playtest territory any more as such, but I thought it would be interesting to at least mention it, because Joe came to the playtest at least partly because of love for the police drama genre and that he liked the playtest document. So, if Joe wants to unpack it a bit, that’s totally cool.

Happy to discuss other stuff from the session as well (I’m very happy to be roleplaying again!) - and if someone can explain to me why realism is important in this kind of game, please do. I know I’m not watching The Wire for it’s realism, for sure, heck I wouldn’t even know if what happened in it was realistic. I’m interested in the characters and the choices they make and the stories that flow fro that, and THAT’S what I want this hack to deliver.

Has Joe played RPGs before?

Yes, loads and loads - he prefers GM’ing (and GM’ed for me several times) and “GM-less” games I suppose. We’ve had many a good session, actually. He will chime in here if he wishes to explain further, but I’d prefer to keep it to “why does Down in the Hole not deliver what what it promises to me” - kinda thing.

Theory on realism: I think it’s pretty common for people to watch movies, read books, generally consume fiction in order to learn things. Might be literal facts, might be just learning more about the human condition. I think even escapist fiction, the good stuff, has some learning element to it. So if there’s something crunchy to be learned via play, that might be very appealing. A GM with lots of real-world cop experience would bring that to the table, and it’d be pretty neat.

Second theory on realism: Suspension of disbelief problems. Anyone who knows actual police work, or anyone who’s a hardcore fan of the genre, is going to have trouble staying in the fictional moment when they’re distracted by errors. Or what they perceive to be errors. Like, they might feel like the writers of The Wire are more credible than some Brit who’s watched too much American TV. :smiley:

I think if you were gonna write this hack for real money, you’d need to put in some seriously focused research on the subject.

Hi, everyone!

Yeah, I’ve been gaming since 1985 or so, went through Vampire etc in the 90s, then got into Jared Sorensen’s earliest games and joined The Forge in 2001. I’ve written, edited, played and discussed a metric f*ckton of indie games since then. Per, Joe Prince (writer of Contenders) and I tried to get a Burning Empires game off the ground a few years ago and Joe and I just couldn’t see why there was so much work involved to make what ended up pretty simple characters. I don’t think we got as far as the first session. But I bought MG when it came out, though I haven’t played it.

I’ll try and unpack my problems with realism first, though I think you’ve nailed it, Paul. There were a couple of moments that ‘pinged my disbelief suspenders’ in the game, which did make it harder for me to really commit. I don’t have very high standards for police procedure (I love CSI) but the order events happened in felt off to me. In the first session, I also figured our PCs wouldn’t be anything like the first responders, so having us just appear at a potential shooting felt unlikely, and I wondered if I’d misunderstood the tone of the game. (And perhaps we didn’t have enough touchstones for the tone - that could be part of the setup).

In the second session, I couldn’t see how the wife wouldn’t have already been called by someone senior, and why we’d been left with the job - if we’d known the victim, maybe it would have been a moment of pride. In both cases, as it’s a strongly GM-led game, I figured I’d leave Per to it. But as there’s no opportunity in the GM turn for the players to pipe up and ask for an explanation or make a recommendation or request a scene, I just had to react react react. This put me back in my mid-90s gaming shoes, where there’s no opportunity to discuss what’s about to happen in order to really nail it. And I hate those shoes.

If there’d been space in the game for Per to say ‘I’d like a shooting. How can we make that happen?’ I might have suggested, say, the PCs are on their way home and happen across a shooting. But if we’re individually not 100% in agreement on tone, there’s no room to hash any of that out. John’s got real-world experience, I’m a fan, but if Per and Pete aren’t so bothered by realism, we need to sort that. In a game like Capes, Dogs, Universalis or Mortal Coil, that discussion could be part of the meat of the game, but in DitH, it has to break up the rhythm somewhat. Which is unfortunate.

Similarly, we had a moment early on where Pete’s character phones my character with a racist jibe. Now, I’ve no problem whatsoever with racism in games, but I was pretty thrown by that. In-fiction, it’s 8am and we’re at the end of our shifts - really? And as we don’t know the characters well, is this the sort of thing I should react to with shock, or amusement, or is it a bro-loving sign of affection? I had no way to tell, coz again we don’t get to talk about scenes before we’re in scenes.

Joe.

Hi, everyone!

Yeah, I’ve been gaming since 1985 or so, went through The Vampire Disillusionment etc in the 90s, then got into Jared Sorensen’s earliest games and joined The Forge in 2001. I’ve written, edited, played and discussed a metric f*ckton of indie games since then. Per, Joe Prince (writer of Contenders) and I tried to get a Burning Empires game off the ground a few years ago and Joe and I just couldn’t see why there was so much work involved to make what ended up pretty simple characters. I don’t think we got as far as the first session. But I bought MG when it came out, though I haven’t played it. I’ve gamed with Per a lot face to face - Contenders, The Shadow of Yesterday, Dirty Secrets and others.

I’ll try and unpack my problems with realism first, though I think you’ve nailed it, Paul. There were a couple of moments that ‘pinged my disbelief suspenders’ in the game, which did make it harder for me to really commit. I don’t have very high standards for police procedure (I <3 CSI) but some events felt off to me. In the first session, I also figured our PCs wouldn’t be anything like the first responders, so having us just wander up to a potential shooting felt unlikely, and I wondered if I’d misunderstood the tone of the game. We didn’t really address tone or genre beyond ‘This is like The Wire’, so I don’t know even know the extent of my characters’s capabilities - can I interrogate someone roughly with no consequences? Assume I’m carrying a firearm at all times? Tone’s probably easier to agree on in Mouse Guard, as it’s right there in the imagery. But despite us all (right?) having seen The Wire, we disagreed on tone.

(And Per, that’s where my interest in realism lies: can my character beat up an interviewee and it’s a-ok or will he get suspended? How much can I get away with? Character choices are - as you know - something I love. But they don’t make choices in a vaccuum and I don’t know yet what size of bubble we’re in).

In the second session, I couldn’t see how the wife wouldn’t have already been called by someone senior, and why we’d been left with the job - if we’d known the victim, maybe it would have been a moment of pride. In both cases, as it’s a strongly GM-led game, I figured I’d leave Per to it. But as there’s no opportunity in the GM turn for the players to pipe up and ask for an explanation or make a recommendation or request a scene, I just had to react react react. This put me back in my mid-90s gaming shoes, where there’s no opportunity to discuss what’s about to happen in order to really nail it. And I hate those shoes.

If there’d been space in the game for Per to say ‘I’d like a shooting. How can we make that happen?’ I might have suggested, say, the PCs are on their way home and happen across a shooting. It would help to know what he’s getting at. It strongly reminded me of a con experience, where one player asked questions like ‘Can I find a stone? Can I pick it up?’ as he’d been so burned by obstructive GMs. He was trying to read my mind and test my limts, and didn’t realise my job was to encourage and ellicit, not prevent.

Similarly, we had a moment early on where Pete’s character phones mine with a racist jibe. I was thrown by that too, because it introduced an odd tone I wasn’t sure how to take. Shock and astonishment? Was it a good-natured ribbing or bro-love? In-fiction, It didn’t seem hugely likely for characters at the end of a stressful shift. But as in the rest of the game, with no space to discuss scenes before scenes happen, I feel like I’m mind-reading. Which is even less easy over Skype. =)

So if we’re individually not 100% lockstep in agreement on tone and setting, there’s no room to hash any of that out. John’s got real-world experience, I’m a fan, but if Per and Pete aren’t so bothered by realism, we need to sort that somehow. In a game like Capes, Dogs or Universalis, that discussion could be part of the meat of the game, but in DitH, it has to break up the rhythm somewhat, which is unfortunate.

Joe.

And secondly, my playing style. I probably went in with some assumptions about play, or things play would allow. It’s entirely possible my approach to gaming is mental, but:

I usually GM, and usually use NPCs as much as play them. I give them minimal background and simple motivations, and all that’s subject to change based on their first encounter with the PCs. I retcon unspoken motivations, rewrite unseen histories and have them fall passionately in love/hate with PCs in order to prod the PCs a bit more. I often discourage players from explaining elements of their character, and would sooner see it revealed at the table. I just love that. And some games work well with that - Contenders being so loose and Polaris’ sense of bathos are really rewarding for me.

(I had a gruseome experience once in the late 90s - a player presented me a list showing where he’d be spending his next hundred experience points. As if no story I presented would be interesting enough for him to react or change his plans).

In much the same way, when I’m playing a PC I almost always want to start with a couple of minimal motivations and then have them organically respond to play at the table. ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be interesting if my guy was actually dying’ or ‘Hey, if you’re a prettyboy, I’ll be gay’. Once it’s out in play, it’s sacrosanct, of course. No backsies. But I do favor systems where, say, I have a pool of 10 skills to buy in-play rather than set up beforehand, or where I can flip a motivation over (like selling keys in The Shadow of Yesterday) and have my conscientous objector decide enough is enough. Per will remember a game of In A Wicked Age where in a shapechanging wizard duel, my character dodged a bite attack because ‘I have no genitals!’ That wasn’t something I’d thought of til then, but it made sense for a 700 year old guy, and as marriage was a motivation for my character, it made my life a lot harder.

I also like play to cross over the table - I want my PC’s girlfriend to be your ex, or your grudge to be against my father. (DitH doesn’t have that, and so our enemies/friends/mentors feel a bit disconnected to me - it’s potentially too big a cast for me). And I like games that emphasise improvisation, where I can do all that in play (‘And then the demon appears, and it’s totally your boyfriend’) are hugely rewarding for me. My PC in DitH has business and IT and I figure his family pressured him into taking on the family business. But I don’t yet know if he went to university to study - if in-game the characters all visited a university, I might decide Kumar had attended. Or been ejected. I don’t really know if I can improvise that sort of thing in DitH.

In general, I can’t know the PC until things happen at the table and he interacts with the setting, situation and other PCs. In DitH, without a few scenes to learn my character’s voice or develop some motivations, any decisions I had to make for the character felt arbitrary and flat. And I don’t really want to always advocate for my character - I like them sucking at some things. In DitH, I don’t have that power.

So in MG and DitH, there are two systems that work against me from the get-go. I need to build a pretty precise character without knowing what will actually be important (useful or interesting) in the game, and I have to leave ‘importance’ up to a GM. And I need to develop a background (plus motivations) without knowing the tone or direction of the game.

And then in play, I feel disempowered for the various reasons above.

Joe.

Here’s a few notes on the mechanics and where either I just don’t see the point, or where they seem to be working against the themes of DitH. Like I said on Skype, there’s some lovely stuff in the hack too. But I am definitely, definitely struggling to see the fun in B* games again - they just seem overcomplicated, incoherent and full of odd prejudices and throwbacks.

If the characters split up (which perhaps doesn’t happen so often in MG) and one character gets a short roll and the others get an extended conflict, it’s hella dull. Lacking an enthusiasm mechanic like fanmail or gift dice, it’s difficult to stay engaged. I didn’t have anything to do but listen. And if the other players get a bunch of checks, they get even more to do during the player turn. That will snowball.

(And Per, genuinely don’t feel bad, but I think I got 20 minutes of play in 3 hours. It’s totally fine, and I’m not full of fury but it’s an imbalance in the game that I didn’t enjoy. In exactly the same way Pete suggested it’s like extended skills in D&D. Or playing a hacker in Cyberpunk or Shadowrun).

For that matter, I still can’t see why one roll was short and one was long. I don’t see why the GM’s interest in that roll is all that matters. What the hell does he know? =) Other games expand rolls depending on player interest or table interest. Or you could have failed rolls turn into extended rolls. Or you could have one extended roll set up as a requirement of the GM turn.

I don’t see the point in having both fate and persona points. Sure, they do slightly different things. But you could add a third kind of point that did something else entirely… and that would be lame too. They just seem like complexity for complexity’s sake.

At the beginning of play, incorporating negative traits to gain checks feels like a parody. It’s cool to find out Grissom in CSI is insect-obsessed, but if we find it out in his very first scene, he’s just twitchy bug guy from then on. There’s no deft layering, it just feels like pantomime. And for what it’s worth, in DitH they don’t feel professional - it’s fine for a mouse to always be tiny, but cops aren’t perpetual drunks or they’d get fired. And as became obvious in play, I need checks, so I need to throw in a negative trait every roll I get. Thus, the characters have no nuance.

Following that, I don’t see why using traits as an advantage should cost something. Isn’t advantage/disadvantage a little simplistic, anyway? You could just as easily say incorporating a trait in any way gains you a check.

There’s a lot going on in character generation and I wonder if there’s too many choices. I thought one way it could work would be to make a big, top-level choice like in Dogs - prioritise your skills, your contacts or your experience. Then work your way down from there - I’m experience-heavy, so I have fewer skills but more wises and reasonable traits. Some things had too fine a grain for my taste - I had to pick a natural skill and a specialisation skill?

And at the end of character generation, the characters seemed massively underskilled. It was really easy to come out with detectives who lacked detection, investigation, or report-writing to say nothing of combat skills or technical skills. Instead, you could give everyone free ranks in some. Or offer a template package - if you’re from the beat, you get London-wise and Report-writing, where if you’re straight out of university, you get Psychology and IT. Or you could give everyone a ‘detective’ skill based on their rank, or allow Rank to cover for certain abilities, much like Human Nature umbrellas for conniving and empathy.

(I also wondered if it’d be useful to research what a real-world baseline constable is able to do)

It’s not hugely clear what each skill represents and doesn’t represent. Can I persuade with communication? Can I communicate with persuasion?

I don’t know why the only traits listed are the only traits available. I had an idea for my PC and went looking for something close to ‘Distracted’ and there was nothing close. Can I invent traits? Or if you want, as a designer, to keep the game on a certain track, why these traits?

Credo is neat, but difficult to write. I’d love some examples, and some examples of what not to do. As a GM, Per, you’re somewhat laissez-faire, but it’s also completely cool if you say ‘I don’t think that will work’. Burdens seem fine.

As Pete says above in his feedback from his game, Instincts feel clunky. I also think ‘instinct’ is the wrong word - you use Bunk’s as an example, but how is that an instinct? It’s just a quirk.

Upthread, there was some discussion of advancement. In the Wire, the bit where McNulty is effectively demoted is hilarious. Could DitH allow for that? Is rank actually important, or might it just be a choice the players make? I can’t see where ‘levelling up’ in this setting would make sense.

That said, I really like some of the questions and the attitude and tone inherent in those questions. ‘What did your sergeant beat into you?’ rocks. I quite like the range of skills, though I wonder if some of them should be squished together - particularly if all characters get ~15 skill points. I like the wises and thought they could derive from setting up the campaign - trafficking-wise would be appropriate for where we’re going, but maybe media-wise not so much. And I do like how some of the questions, like the ones about family and where you’re from, provides an opportunity to play an outsider.

Best,

Joe.

If you don’t like B* games when they’re working correctly, then yes, I think this may not be the experiment for you. :slight_smile:

(Re: splitting up) I think of MG as a party-based thrill ride - splitting up is dangerous, and the party is regularly (and suddenly) in situations where outside events compel them to react.

Thanks for the extensive reply, Joe, I’ll return to more of your points, but let’s take on the realism thingy first. Keep your points coming!

Now, choosing The Wire as inspiration was a very very much on purpose. The Wire may feel real, but I don’t think it’s realistic at all, and if it was I think my interest in it would diminish greatly. Unlike clean-washed shows like CSI and all its permutations (I here assume that they at least try pretend to be realistic, maybe they don’t). I can’t stand CSI as TV - it leaves me cold, the characters are too clicheed or even worse so bland it hurts.

So, if you think The Wire is realistic, I disagree entirely. It’s fiction, and it’s very well designed and constructed fiction (some would argue: the best there is so far, kicking even the first season of Twin Peaks out of the ballpark). I’m not after documenting reality, I’m after putting interesting characters in difficult situations and see what happens, within the framework of a story now preference that I think MG can deliver. There has been stuff written about The Wire’s originality etc., I can shoot over a couple of links but Googling The Wire and realism will help you. I like the way a Guardian columnist put it: “its realism is in creative tension with its self-consciousness as art.” and then describing how the truly original stuff in the series is the language, which “is not realistic at all – or if it’s realistic, it’s a real description of a surreal culture. The modes of speech in David Simon’s Baltimore are as formalised as those in Amis, Mamet or Pinter. It’s an estranging device. True, that.”

If you are coming to Down in the Hole to explore realism, you are not playing the same game as me, and hence it’s obvious there’s a disconnect. I might be the only roleplayer who thinks that, and if so, this hack is dead as a door nail.

Now, if this was RPGNet, which it fortunately isn’t, I would now have to fend off why, based on what I just said, why for example it would be OK to bring a laser gun or time travel into the game (it’s not “realistic”, right? GGGG) - let’s not go there.

Within the constraints of the genre (let’s call it police drama), which is of course in itself a limitation, Joe might be right that it’s necessary to agree on playstyle etc. with the players before delving into the game, similar to discussing lines and veils - interestingly enough racism wasn’t mentioned in our pre-game discussion, and Joe still had big issues with it coming up during the game, so I don’t think you can totally pre-empt everything anyway.

I apologise for spelling mistakes already.

Hey Per! This whole thing you just wrote? Maybe edit it down a bit and add it to the beginning of your hack documentation. I think it might help set expectations better.

Re. realism and learning: Just so I’m clear, I’m totally not talking (just) about the learning-hard-facts element of watching CSI. I fucking hate CSI! But friends I know who luuuurve CSI like it because they learn technical details about how it all works. Whatever, that’s on them. I guess when I say “learning” I want to make it clear that you also learn things from watching The Wire – not technical or procedural details, but character-level stuff, human nature, maybe even about art. The Wire is not passive junk-food escapism. It’s on you to explain what you think the meat of a show like The Wire is. I’m going to sound like a jerk, but just dismissing this conversation as “The Wire isn’t realistic” is taking the easy way out. :slight_smile:

Paul, I wasn’t trying to dismiss the conversation - sorry if my previous rant came across that was. As I said to Joe in an email earlier: I need this conversation, so your input is great and valid.

It wasn’t especially pounding at you either - you definitely learn things from the Wire, all the time. Plus it gives you ideas (like: this hack!), even better.

I wrote in my notes after the last playtest session, that I might have to do two things: 1. move away from using “THE WIRE” as a reference, and instead talk broader about police drama. 2. Streamline MG even more, boil it even more down to support player preferences like Joe’s, who are attracted by the fictional colour and not but so much by the medium (which is story now roleplaying).

Yes, this.

Referencing The Wire ain’t helping. It sets expectations of tone and to a degree on content too - I know in the playtest that I ran that folks were looking to hit wiretaps, muscly vernacular language, racism, corridors of power, corruption, and the whole “both sides of the divide thing, criminals and cops”.

This hack very deliberately doesn’t set out to emulate The Wire - that’s always been at the top of the text - but the expectation is nevertheless there. Yeah, good call, burn off the reference.

Really?

Build the game you wanna play Per.

And I thought Mouse Guard was Story Now? Actually, phrasing that as a question is weak sauce… MG is SN.

Remember that we’re only in our second session, we’re learning about each other, how to game via the technology, and we’re working through the design of a hack. It’s “bitty” sure, but the pace will accelerate soon I’m sure.

Cheers
Pete

Darn.

I gotta say that I saw Joe’s picking of an immigrant cop as a flag. A flag that he wanted hammered… but evidently not.

My bad. I didn’t ask “hey, is your making an Indian character a flag Joe?” I just assumed it was and I ran with it. I tossed in some casual racism and hazing on the spur of the moment - no big deal.

My brother is in the forces and, fuck me, the racism and hazing is pretty full on. I’ve only had a taste of it, but my bro tells me it’s cool and it’s just banter. The racist piss take scene felt odd to me too, but I was just kinda running with a moment. We can take it off the table, sure thing.

When I ran the earlier playtest, we used Baltimore as the setting. I took lots of pictures of recently arrested folk off the Baltimore PD twitter, and damn, 99% of those folks were black. Our playtest was thick with racism, more of a class war thing, but expressed in the language of race. It was pretty relentless in places, and it sure wasn’t a barrel of laughs. Much like The Wire then, and one of the players “dug” the racist lens that we played the session through, as did I. (Read “dug” generously - it ain’t like we were revelling in oppressing folk of colour through a “game”, thanks.)

Cheers
Pete