As GM in this game and player in Scott's 'Hot War' playtest, the biggest issue so far has been knowing how your agenda is going to turn out 2 or 3 conflicts before it is 'complete'. This is the situation characters in both games have found themselves in, reaching a point where the player knows their PC is going to succeed or fail because more than half their outcomes have been +s or -s.

We came up with the idea of rolling +s vs. -s when the agenda is used up, so the outcome was only predetermined if you ended with all +s or all -s. In any other case, there was always a chance (though perhaps a slim one) that it could go either way in the end.

I think what we're having problems with is the idea of pre-stated outcomes effecting player-character actions, e.g. if I know that my agenda is going to fail in advance of completing it, I lose some of my incentive for calling it into play. Equally, as Neil says, if you know you are going to succeed no matter what, it feels constraining to have to wait for some artificial period of time to pass before you can complete that agenda and choose a new one.

Thanks for bringing this up, it's certainly a point worth highlighting and discussing.

Now that it's pointed out, knowing early on that your HA will resolve in a certain way could be a disincentive, so will certainly need to be sorted out. My thoughts on that revolve around a more narrative approach to the problem, rather than introducing another dice rolling element. So, for each negative that you have, someone from the group (when you are having the resolution scene) gets to introduce a complication into the fiction that affects how the agenda resolves. The more negatives, the less complete the agenda will be. Conversely, if your agenda is going to resolve negatively, the number of positives equal things that improve an otherwise bad situation.

Alternatively (or perhaps in combination with this) there is a final conflict during the resolution scene, to see how it finally all pans out. The character is acting to resolve the agenda and gains a bonus to their dice pool equal to the number of positives. In opposition, the GM rolls a fixed pool, plus the number of negatives.

How does that sound? Workable, nonsense?

Cheers
Malcolm

Contested Ground Studios

This I like. Good idea.

If there's a final conflict, who gets to frame it? Framing the conflict and setting the arena it's in can have a great effect on the odds of success for the PC.

Any thoughts on what we should do when events in the fiction overtake the hidden agenda (e.g. the love of my life gets killed by some monstrosity before I can marry him)?

Neil.

The way I'm looking at right now is that when you get to the stage of resolving a hidden agenda, there is no dice-based conflict. It's more like an epilogue for the agenda (and maybe even the character, if the player choses). The complications would be additional contributions to the fiction that add to the epilogue. Conversely, if the agenda has a negative resolution, then these contributions from other players can be positive things that come out of it. Once everyone has made their contributions, the player who is resolving the agenda gets to tie everything up and have the final say over what happens.

In the resolution of an agenda, the player would always have the authority to set things in in the way they choose.

As regards events in the fiction overtaking a hidden agenda, there are two things this makes me think of:

1) Why would a player allow, for example, the love of their life to be killed when their hidden agenda is to marry them. I can see this as the outcome of a failed hidden agenda, but would wonder why an agenda would be so radically blocked in the game.

2) If this were to happen, I think it would be a simple case of scratching that agenda, work out a new one and working this change into the game fiction.

Cheers
Malcolm

Contested Ground Studios

1. Because the players have chosen a closed game - quite a popular choice with my group - and therefore hidden agendas are, well, hidden! It's not blocking - it's just sad coincidence of storylines.

2. Because even if the player who is having their agenda shafted wants to stop it, there's these damned annoying little plastic randomisers that can get in the way of their valiant defence of their agenda.

3. With factionalised play, in an open game, players may well set their Factional Agendas against each other. It works like a dream in Cold City because of the perception that the game is destined to a relatively quick, explosive finale. The transfer of that learned behaviour from one game to another is inevitable.

Neil

Thats some fair points there, but I think the solution to the situation is relatively simple: as mentioned, the 'death' of the agenda is worked into the story and the players gets to integrate a new hidden agenda into play, perhaps driven by what came out of the last agenda. Perhaps even mandated as something that must come out of the agenda.

So, the characters love is killed. The simple follow on to that would be an agenda of revenge.

One thing this is making me think of: are hidden agendas mis-named? Do they simply function as motivations? Are they simply' agendas' and the players gets to decide if they are hidden or not?

Cheers
Malcolm

Contested Ground Studios

Something I thought of and discussed briefly with Scott, Neil and the other players for our last session of the Cold City game, was to make changing an agenda a conseqeunce of conflicts, as with changing attributes and traits.

Say you got 4+ successes on a conflict in which you invoked your agenda, you could:
1) Say that it is finished and get a scene to narrate the end of it.
2) Edit it to reflect a new target for the same methods or vice versa.

Equally, if you gor 4+ successes when your opponent had used their agenda, you could use those options to end or edit it in a fashion of your choosing.