We began with the epilogue, the final scene of the game. Nimrod framed a scene of destruction in the blazing Shotgun, Shotgun Steve taking cover behind the bar, shouting obscenities at Martin whilst furiously reloading his gun. We then entered our first conflict as Steve leapt from the bar and tried to kill Martin, as this was the only scene of the game where the protagonist could die. Stakes were set and both Steve and Martin defined some attributes for their characters.

Martin won and Rich narrated a blowtorch flying over the bar, igniting spilt spirits and killing Steve. Rich closed with Martin walking over and lighting a cigarette on Steve’s smouldering corpse. As he had won the conflict he got a reward (a bonus die to his pool or an attribute for him, his opponent or the scene) and got to add a revelation to the map.

I’m debating whether Nimrod, as the lead antagonist, should have set up the epilogue, or whether that task should have fallen to Rich, as protagonist. This would create something of a symmetry as the protagonist sets up the prologue too, but I suspect it’s largely irrelevant.

Nimrod then set the scene for the first chapter, which was focused on Martin’s conflict with Shotgun Steve, which in turn would lead out into the epilogue we’d already narrated. Previously the first scene/epilogue was the sole scene with the lead villain in the spotlight, as I’d wanted to keep the opening scene and conflict short and bloody, but I think splitting them up like this worked nicely and gave Nimrod some time in the spotlight.

Nominal narrative control now falls to the antagonist whose scene it is, and it is their responsibility to set the scene and assign roles to all the other players so that everyone is involved and engaged. He does this with a pool of “scene dice” (we started with 10, but I’m not sure this was enough with 7 of us – I might make it 2 per player) to hand out to make NPCs, give the scene attributes and generally use as a pool of dice to hand out when cool things get done. Nimrod picked up the dice and passed 2 to each player, barking to them in his best cockney accent as he did so (“You, take this crowbar and whack him when he comes round the corner; you two, get that bloody guitar; and you, go darrn to the cellar and get ‘you know what’”). Although I hadn’t intended it to be done quite so definitively, it worked really well and Graham followed the same style when he set up the next chapter.

With the scene setup Rich narrated Martin coming into the cellar and whacking my mook as he came looking for ‘you know what.’ The conflicts kinda spilled out from there as Martin waded his way into the pub and through various mooks, played with enthusiasm and menace by the various players. Martin in turn battered my mook with a cricket bat, shot James’ mook with his revolver whilst hitting Scott’s in the face with his guitar, accidentally blowtorching Graham’s mook, and then Steve shot Pete’s mook in the groin for sleeping with his wife (which turned out to be important later, as we added it as a revelation). The key revelation that came out here, when the guitar broke, was that it had a packet addressed to Steve’s wife in it

I hadn’t intended conflicts to work as they did, intending them to represent the entirety of a fight, rather than a glorified combat round, but it worked well and the pace was good so we rolled with it.

At times we ended up with a 3 or 4 way conflict. Where we could we had each player take a side in a larger 2 way conflict, but there were times when everyone wanted something different. In these cases we daisy chained the sub-conflicts, with the outcome of one impacting on another which worked as a stop gap but wasn’t necessarily elegant.

Vengeance dice have remained in to help the protagonist out against all the other antagonists, but instead of requiring a death to be narrated when rolled, required some sort of bloody injury or maiming to be included. For some reason this kept being blood trickling into the eyes or someone having their eyes poked out or slashed out or whatever, which is where the game got its name from. I’m toying with including this as a requirement in the game, having the players pick a violence motif that has to be included in the narration whenever a vengeance dice is rolled.

With all the conflicts flying about, we kept forgetting to pick conflict rewards or write new revelations, and we eventually decided that although conflict rewards were good and useful, being forced to add a revelation when you might not have one in mind didn’t work so well. However some sort of mechanism to regulate this was needed.

The chapter ended with mooks dead or dying, Martin’s eye poked out on a piece of splintered wood, the pub ablaze (after the blowtorch incident) and Steve cowering behind the bar, frantically reloading his shotgun. In a nice twist, as James’s mook died, he stumbled back and sent the blowtorch flying through the air … which was where the epilogue began.

Rich decided he wanted Martin to go after Graham’s corrupt cop next, so Graham framed a scene in a darkened alley where Martin was waiting for someone. Graham followed Nimrod’s lead by ordering his two policemen to get him, handing out some dice to each of them as well assigning 2 to an attribute for the alleyway of “dark alley.”

As this chapter began not all the players had roles to play, so James seized on the opportunity and grabbed some unused scene dice and decided to play Dave, who we had added to the revelation map earlier as Martin’s friend. We revealed that he was actually one of Martin’s bandmates, which tied in nicely to the growing significance of the guitar.

PC Sledge and PC Cutter were played by Nimrod and Scott and went for Martin, who lashed out with his cricket bat at them. Before he could shoot them, Graham narrated that the revolver Martin had used in the previous chapter has been his, and grabbed the dice from Rich’s character sheet to use in the conflict against him. We discussed the fairness of this, as it pretty much meant that Rich would lose that attribute, but ultimately decided it was rather cool.

Sgt Davis shot at Martin, but hit something steel in the guitar case. PC Sledge and Cutter went down, but Dave died too as he tried to snitch on Martin. Blood in the eyes remained a theme throughout.

We finished up with Sgt Davis revealing that Martin had been betrayed by the one guy he trusted – Steve, their band manager. We decided as we didn't have time to play more than 2 chapters to work out what had set Martin on this path of vengeance, and decided between us that the mics had been left on too long at the recording studio where his band practiced, and he’d ended up with an incriminating tape (which was in the steel case in the packet in the guitar, en route to Steve’s wife, the police informer) which his bandmates had paid the price for.

As the revelations clicked into place we all got very excited, and it definitely helped having a visible map of them all laid out in front of us. The revelations are the core of the game and I’ve witnessed them working really well in all of the games I’ve ran, creating a great sense of satisfaction and enthusiasm as they are pieced together.

Working out how, when and if to regulate and control the flow of revelations is important. Forcing you to narrate a revelation after a conflict is sometimes intrusive, but conversely letting you add them in whenever you like is disruptive. I’m currently thinking about handing out revelation dice as rewards for conflicts, which could then be spent to add a revelation when required, so it regulates the revelations but doesn’t restrict them.

1. How many dice is too many? Is there such a thing as a game requiring too many dice?

2. Narration rights were fairly vague. The antagonist set the scene and assigned roles, but once the game got going people just stepped in and narrated as appropriate. Do you think this vagueness will be a problem?

3. Vengeance dice and violence motifs – should this be codified into the rules, or will it just happen anyway?

4. Conflicts – should they be more than “I stab him in the eye”? It seemed to work, at least from where I was sitting, to break the larger conflict into these various blow by blow conflicts, but does it have the potential to get clunky?

5. The revelation map worked well and provided a nice focus, but we also found ourselves adding other things to it like the odd note, or attributes created for a scene. Do you think this will prove too much of a distraction?

6. Originally revelations could only be added as a reward for winning a conflict, which sometimes proved frustrating when you didn’t have one in mind, or if you thought of one later. Do you think the narration of a revelation needs to be regulated at all?

7. Reward dice/‘fan mail’ – currently all spare dice from the scene, as well as other dice discarded as the game went on go into the middle of the table where they can be handed out as rewards for cool things. At times we found there weren’t enough in the middle and wondered about adding more. Should the amount of dice there be limited in any way?

I'll take a stab at as much as I can but, having not been involved in the playtest, I can't promise that all of my answers will be that helpful.

1. I don't think so; just look at the popularity of Exalted, a game that often requires individual characters to roll dice pools of 30+ d10's.

2. I think that it will depend on the group. You were blessed with a cool group of people for your playtest who have a good chunk of experience playing indie games and rolling with the whole player narration angle. Of course I would have to imagine that the same would be true for most people who would be likely to pick up Six Bullets in the first place so there's some mitigation right there. Still, it might be worth trying out a more structured format for determining narration rights in your next playtest, see how it flows. If it doesn't work you can always switch back to 'whoever seems best placed to narrate does so.'

3. I think that it's cool and will help tie the scenes and overall theme of the game together so, yes, put a violence motif into the rules and have it required when spending vengence dice.

4. Difficult to say from my perspective as I've not seen the game in action. Essentially Six Bullets boils down to the protagonist taking bloody vengence against the various antagonists, correct? As such it's, at heart, a series of cool, stylish, violent scenes resulting in the death of an antagonist, yes? In that case I don't think that it's inappropriate to have smaller, more detailed conflicts to graphically play out the blows of the fights. Of course it has the potential to get clunky, any system, even an almost purely narrativist one, that gets down to the individual combat actions rather than just rolling for the outcome of the combat as a whole does. That doesn't make it a bad thing. If it flows well and seems appropriate like that in playtestesting then stick with it.

5. It could although, having never seen it in action, I don't really feel qualified to comment! Still, using the map for things other than the revelations could certainly serve to dilute its presence and focus somewhat. Maybe require notes to be made in standard roleplaying format? I.e. on a bit of paper in front of the relevant player? Of course if groups want to use it to make notes and find it convenient they will and, again, that's not a bad thing.

6. Yes, from what you've said there should be some kind of trigger to generate revelations, otherwise the map will likely get bloated and confusing very quickly (that or end up bare, like the revelatory equivalent of a tumbleweed rolling past.) I personally thought that your suggestion of the relevant trigger letting a revelation die (or other counter, if it's not going to actually be rolled then there's no real reason that it has to be a die) be handed out to be cashed in whenever seems appropriate made perfect sense. Test it out, if it flies then go that way.

7. I think that some kind of limit is necessary. For instance the power points in Mortal Coil was limited to (iirc) 2 per player/GM in a pot in the middle. Mostly they were handed out for exceptionally funny jokes or cool additions to scenes (it was late, we were drinking and tired, it all seemed to go well) but the number worked out about right. I think there was 1 left in the pot come the end of the session. What you need to do is find the right balance between limiting it so that bonus dice aren't handed out all of the time (it will dilute the 'that was so awesome' factor of giving them out) and not having enough to cover the awesome that the players are generating. That's a matter of testing more than anything and a realisation that there will never be a perfect balance that works for every group. Some groups just fire off wicked cool shit almost constantly and others far less so. Having played Mortal Coil with a good chunk of your Six Bullets playtesters I can confidently say that your playtest group was the former, which may have been why it seemed a potential problem!

1) That really depends on your target audience. If you only expect gamers to pick it up the you should be ok. Otherwise you need to think about how to reduce the number of dice. Geoff's point about exalted is fine but Exalted is a white wolf game and most of these fans will have bucket loads of dice anyway.

2) One thing I am reading up on for Reel Adventures is the 'rules' and guidelines of improvisational theatre. Including stuff like that might help guide how narration goes in scenes without providing hard and fast rules.

3) Seem fine as is but I would really need to play the game to give you a proper opinion.

4) In most of the more narrative games I have played, tight conflicts like the ones you are describing are better than rambling scenes.

5) I think if you find that players are using the revelation map for things other than revelations you should let them. Maybe make a space on the map for notes. If they didn't find it distracting then I don't think that you should stop them.

6) Forcing players to narrate something, was an issue that cropped up in an earlier version of Reel Adventures. I had a balance issue with momentum that meant players were forced too much to frame nemesis scenes. What this resulted in was them running out of ideas very quickly to pad out the nemesis. Maybe you should just say that they 'can' be narrated when you win a conflict rather than 'must'. There is reward in winning a conflict from just getting the narration rights.

7) Could you just have a mechanic where you can hand out dice as rewards without the restriction of a number of dice to pull from. Failing that this is just a numbers game the solution to which will come from playtesting. If you need a hand send me the game and I will run it by one of my groups.

All the best
Iain

Lead Developer Mob Justice RPG
http://www.contestedground.co.uk
Check out my home brew games like 'Reel Adventures'
http://www.iainmcallister.co.uk

Just thought I would post up this link to a page I found about improvisational techniques.

Improv Advice

Some obvious stuff there once you come to think about it but very relevant to what we do.
Cheers
Iain

Lead Developer Mob Justice RPG

Check out my home brew games like 'Reel Adventures'

The Durham3 (Jason Morningstar, Clinton Nixon and Rmei Treuer) are into Improv as well as RP if I recall.

1 & 7. I did feel at some point that there were a little too many d6 on the table. Of course, there is the difficulty that if you limit the reward pool, then someone is possibly missing out on getting a reward for doing cool stuff, or just won't do cool stuff, in which case the game will suffer. In fact, the best thing I can think of is instead to keep track of dice and rewards on paper as opposed to physical dice. These can be ticked off when they are spent, or marked down. Of course, there's nothing stopping you from using dice instead of marking them on paper if you have them. You could probably play with only 12d6 with half-and-half in colour or, at least, 6 the same colour. Everyone can then share the dice. Hell, in university we played White Wolf games with only half a dozen dice between all the players and the GM. If we needed to roll more dice we just remembered how many successes we had or just roll failures.

2. I think there are two options here and both, IMHO, could be presented as viable. In the way that I set up by assigning the dice and alotting albeit loose roles, I was effectively handing over narration rights to the players by giving them roles within the scene. Whereas, the alternative (as with the first playtest) people only stepped in when they saw an NPC they wanted to play or introduce and narration rights stayed more with the scene's antagonist. These are two options that should be both available, IMHO, as they make different contributions to the game.

3. Hmm. I'd be wary of requiring a violent motif with the use of Vengeance Dice, although that should be the default, and most common form. But I can see the possibility of using this system for more intricate (and possibly online) games involving political games in which Vengeance Dice might be used in a final stroke against a political opponent to seal the scandal that will bring them down, or the blackmail that will cause them to resign. However, in the written rules this kind of play could be presented as 'alternatives' to the default for the more 'advanced' gamer.

4. As with Everway, I think this should be left to player discretion/agreement, although you should probably mention the two styles in the text. For your 'old-fashioned' gamer the blow-by-blow option might be more preferable, but for someone, or a group, who is more a storyteller a more narrative form might be appealing, capturing bouts of action (narrating other characters' actions and so forth). Therefore, action can be as clunky or as light as the players are comfortable and happy with.

5. I think perhaps the Revelation Map needs clearer defining in presenting its purpose. I felt, and possibly because people were being "forced" to ut something down, that some of the things getting written down seemed almost arbitrary. I felt as though I wanted to say, at times, "What? That's not a revelation or even relevant. Put down something we don't already know, or something." However, your question relates more to our placing scene attributes (like 'power cut' and 'on fire' for The Shotgun) and stuff like my putting the name of that NPC down who got his nuts shot off because he was discovered banging Shotgun Steve's wife. Rightly, the latter should have been just a note for myself and not put onto the map. If a group doesn't mind the added paperwork a scene sheet somewhat akin to the character sheets we discussed could be made, so that we could keep track of any scene and location attributes for the sake of maintaining backwards continuity. Otherwise, I didn't find putting attributes there being a distraction, although a note as to what scene it applies would be important.

6. I quite liked the idea we came up with about Revelation Counters that can be saved up until such time as someone comes up with a Revelation that they're happy with.

First of all, thanks for the game Andrew, we had a blast (as you could no doubt tell)

1. I don't think number of dice is a big worry in this game and at least they're all the same type, which keeps things simple.

2. Vague is good: I've played in and run games where narrative rights were tightly controlled and the two things that went wrong were a)wanting badly to add something when it wasn't your turn and b) having to add something on your turn but having no idea of what to say.

3. I like the motif idea; it worked well in this game and, as you say, also suggested a title for the movie! On the other hand, this was something that emerged organically from our game, we didn't make that choice at the start alongside our other choices about setting, tone, genre and characters. Whether it would work if you said to the group at the start, "Choose a motif..." I really don't know.

4. I think its up to the group to agree on this kind of convention at the start of the game or for individual players to act out as feels right to them. The memory of Scott's cop with his helmet pressed down over his eyes, swinging his sdledgehammer about blindly, will stay with me for a long time and I think actions like that will only emerge when combat takes place in rounds like this.

5. I didn't find the map distracting, as such, but then I wasn't entirely clear what the focus of it was anyway. As you say, a lot of other details ended up on it that might perhaps have been better off on character sheets or as someone else suggested, you could have sheets for each scene which record the qualities they have and reserve the revelation sheet for the big, story-arc stuff.

6. I like the idea of regulating it: with the number of conflicts we were having, and with a revelation hitting the map after each one, that sheet could have ended up completely covered in details by the end of 6 scenes. I recall a suggestion that, when you won a conflict, you chose between receiving a revelation token (which you could cash in at any time)or editing a character, e.g. giving them a new trait or adjusting their die pool.

7. I did wonder about that mechanic whilst we were playing: it seemed like you had a scene pool sitting in the middle, your own personal pool that you had throughout the game and a personal scene pool that the antagonist gave to you for that scene only. I was pretty confused over which dice I could use when and what happened to them , e.g. were they locked to my character as a trait, did they leave play or did they return to one of the pools? So I can't really comment on how many dice should be available as I couldn't get my head around the exchange of dice from one pool to another.

It was a fantastic game and if we ever got the chance to finsih the story off (or start it, I should say) then Freddie the Pervert will be ready!

James's idea about revelation tokens is good. You could also tie it further in and replace the fanmail options with those tokens.

On the subject of narration, don't sweat it. Once people get engaged they'll suggest away all the time, this is a good thing. The rights are more about one person at once having the authority to choose which of these suggestions actually get added to the fiction.

-Matt

Realms Publishing

Ooh, lots of juicy replies. I'll try to get to each of you in turn.

Geoff: yeh, I'm not sure dice is really a problem. As I said to Ron, I think any problems arise from me using them as counters and tokens, which can easily be rectified. Having said that, of all the die types, d6s are the least likely to be in short supply.

I agree with you about the short bloody vignettes and conflicts - yes, that is what the game is all about, although it's not all of what it's about. I definitely see the potential for more talky scenes, and although that never really came into this playtest, it has done in previous ones. Some games will end up very fast paced and bloody, others less so.

I think I'm leaning towards loose guidelines for narration and conflicts, with slightly firmer guidelines for revelations. And a limit for the reward dice sounds sensible too, ensuring that they are actually valuable.

Morat: valid point about the dice. I don;t think I'm going to bother changing it, but I will put a note saying "don't sweat the dice - use tokens or write down how many of each sort you have."

I think you're right about forcing narrative - options are always better, rather than trying to require creativity at certain points.

Thanks for the pointers for improv techniques - well worth a read! I recognise a lot of the advice from rp advice in other games, but some of it is excellent. I like things like "don't deny," "say yes and ..." and "ask yourself if this is true, what else is true?" Great stuff.

Zencadet: I agree that the setting of the scene could easily go both ways - it can either be very overtly set, as you did (and Graham did, to a lesser extent) or players can leap in and assign roles themselves (as James did, when he decided he wanted to play David).

I agree about the vengeance dice and any associated motif - our great example emerged organically, but I don't think it would have emerged had we tried to come up with one upfront.

I think revelation counters are coming into the next draft of the rules. I like them in principle, so I'd like to see how they work out.

James: I got that impression, and so did I! You guys managed to gruesome me out at times though ... eww with the violence!

I think everyone agrees that the rev map works, but needs either more focus or more definition as to what it's for.

I could tell that several of you were confused by the different pools - would having a single pool of dice per player that everything comes out of make it simpler? Or would that be open to abuse?

Matt: But who should have that right? And what happens when they disagree? I nominally say that the antagonist has "narrative control" during his chapter, which I suppose means he has the ultimate power of veto. Too vague?

A personal & consistent die pool taking the place of all the other pools sounds promising, so working out the consequences of that...

- No scene pool, per se: when you want to join a scene in any way, take the dice from your own pool.
- Spent dice go to a 'fan mail' pile and can be reassigned to players for doing cool stuff, so spending your dice doesn't feel like losing them.
- Dice converted to traits stay 'locked' and cannot be spent, which works because the narrative flows backwards, so even though Bob dies in the scene where I create his Trait, he can still come back in the hext scene in play order.
- This adds an element of tactics: lock your dice early and you have less to spend for improvisations later on. Spend dice capriciously
and you may run out before you get to lock any.

But conversely ... might players be inclined to hoard dice given out to them as scene dice for their own use, instead of using them to play npcs?

I'd be inclined to spend my dice early on NPCs, because I know then that they can come back in subsequently played scenes. Also, spending = earning: if everybody sits on their dice and doesn't use them, there is no 'fan mail' to hand out (and the Protagonist breezes through each scene with little consequence)

Given the very loose & participatory nature of the narraive, dice hoarding means I don't get to say much about what's happening; I have to spend them in one way or another to take part.

Yes, that's a very good way of looking at it. You have to spend some to earn some. Thanks!

So how about revelation dice/tokens? Should they just be regular dice, or do I really want to differentiate them in someway? My gut reaction is that I do, so that they are a tangible (and different) reward.

Just to really confuse things, here are some comments I made over on the Forge and have just realised I didn't duplicate here:

The first thing I have to say is that I really, really enjoyed that playtest. I'd deliberately avoided learning too much about the game and it's system before coming down to conception to make the playtest more interesting.

Before I look at your questions too deeply, I'll list some thoughts about the game:

The system seemed to work, but I couldn't help feeling that things were a bit "wooly" here and there. For example, everyone got an extra d6 every time I won a conflict. These dice were be kept in a pool along with the 6 I started with and could either be spent 1:1 on any roll or used to add traits to my character. Dice "used" just to add to a roll are lost, but dice converted into traits stick around while that trait sticks around. I started off by creating the trait "Revolver" for 2 dice for example. The problem is that I can't see why I would want to just spend dice and lose them. Why not just create a new trait with them? Either way I lose the die from my pool, but by creating a new trait I might get to use that die again later.

I think the whole "adding a revelation to the map" thing works superbly, but with the caveat that there was this big pause whenever it came up. What happened was there was this really intense, bloody violence with a wicked-cool fast paced narrative. Then dice are rolled, which takes next to no time and the outcome is also narrated as really fast paced. Then there was this choice: Take an extra die or add an extra attribute to yourself or someone else, then add something to the revelation map. So often during the playtest, there was this pause in the narrative where people thought about what to add to the revelation map if they didn't have anything in mind.

I was thinking about how to overcome this and still remain pretty flexible. The best solution I could come up with looked something like:

The winner of the conflict gets an extra die from somewhere.
They can immediately spend it to either:

a) Create a new attribute for a character (their own or someone else's as long as that new attribute makes sense in context of the conflict and it's narrative)*. When creating an attribute in this way, players can spend other dice from their pool as well.**

b) Add a revelation to the map or create an attribute on the map ***.

This way, I think there's a reasonable limit to the revelations (as in, you can only create one if you win a conflict) but nobody ever feels like they have to create something when they don't have any ideas to hand.

I think the "Blood in your eyes" motif came about pretty organically. I'd hate to try and force that, but at the same time, I think that the idea of a motif worked very well. I think that a mention of a motif is a good idea, but trying to force it is going to lead to a lot of pauses as people try to think of ways that work and after a while it'll get kinda tedious (I mean, how many times can someone get shot/stabbed in the eye before it becomes boring?)

Dishing out the dice at the start of the scene worked very well indeed, but there needs to be a bit more guidance for how many dice there are and how they get distributed. Even if it's a case of "here are 2 dice per player, distribute them as you see fit, but make sure everyone gets at least 1". Also, what exactly do these mooks get? Do they just get 2 dice or whatever to use in all the conflicts they are involved in, (so one might look like "DI Cutter: 2d") or do they have specific traits? (DI Cutter: Police Brutality - 1d, Bolt Croppers - 1d)

So, I want to see:

1) A good reason to spend dice directly from my pool. This might be as simple as saying you can only create attributes at certain points.

2) A more structured way of resolving the rewards for winning a conflict

3) Tightening up on the way the "extras" were created and worked

As for your specific questions:

1) There's no such thing as too many dice. You're using d6s and only really expecting there to be about 15 per player abs max. No problem.

2) The vague narration worked very well, but I have a feeling that you'll find it wasn't all that vague really. I rather think that there were rules to what we were doing, I just don't really know what they were. I think this is something that needs close attention in the next playtest. There was the "Start with a conflict, winner narrates the outcome", but then who sets up the next conflict? We started off by going around the table, but then it was just someone's idea and I think it went from there. It certyainly felt a lot more structured to me.

3) I say let the violence motifs just crop up organically.

4) I think the bite sized conflicts worked rather well, but I can see the need for certain scenes not to just be "Kill the boss and his mooks as graphically as possible". I had a great time with the 2 scenes we played, but I can see that getting boring if all the scenes followed the same format. I don't think they would have, but there might need to be some guidance or mechanic for that.

5) Adding all kinds of funky stuff really worked for me. I like that.

6) I suggested earlier that you can maybe spend dice when you come up with a revelation.

7) I didn't really dwell much on the reward mechanic. I was busy killing people with massive vengeance!

* For example, I lost the struggle with Scott's mook in the first scene and Martin got his eye spiked on the jagged wood, Scott decides to use the die he got from winning the conflict to give Martin the "Poor Depth Perception - 1d" trait.

** Shortly afterwards, I win a conflict and Martin shoots Scott's mook in the head. Getting an extra die, I decide that I'll spend it on a new trait "Cold Blooded - 1d". I decide that I'll also spend one of my other dice to make that "Cold Blooded - 2d"

*** The scene in the pub where Martin pulls the fuse and the power goes out. I won the conflict and used he die I gained to create the trait "The Power Is Out - 1d" on the pub.

WRT scenes and the dice for them:

I can think of two ways to distribute the dice for a given scene:

First, the focal antagonist gets a big pile of dice at the start of the scene and uses them to create traits for the scene. The exact number and how that's calculated is TBA right now, but lets say it's 2 per antagonist. So for example, at the start of the second scene, Graham grabs. 12 dice and uses them to create all the stuff in the scene. He starts with DI Cutter, DI Sledge, Dave and a dark alley. So at the start of the scene, the scene has the following attributes:

Scene 2
Dark Alley - 2d
Dave, Martin's mate - 2d
DI Sledge - 3d
DI Cutter - 3d

Graham also keeps 2 dice back to create additional stuff as and when it's needed.

People agree roles or perhaps they don't have to. No reason why James couldn't have just narrated something to do with the Dark Alley for his narration without using any of the other characters. It worked very well having the supporting cast played by individual players, but I can see all the scenes ending up being Protagonist vs N mooks + one Boss if we'd stuck to that.

The other way I can think of is to give each of the antagonists a pool of dice to use for scenes in which their antagonist does not appear. Make the pools dependent on when their antagonist appears, so the guy playing the big boss gets fewer than the guy playing the lowly goon who was the first (chronologically) to die because the big boss could appear more often (possibly every scene even) than the goon (who can only appear in the last scene). Then say that for each scene, they can use some of these dice to create stuff. Extra earned dice can be put in this pool or the antagonist pool at the player's discretion.

For example, doing it this way, each of the players in turn creates something for the scene. Scott decides to create DI Sledge and put 3 of his "other stuff" dice into that. Nimrod decides he likes that and creates DI Cutter with three of his. James pulls Dave's name off the revelation map and decides to play him, putting 2 of his "other stuff" dice forward. Graham decides to plonk 2 of his "other stuff" dice into "Dark Alley" and then we're off.

As a side point, perhaps Antagonists can spend their own dice to "nick" stuff from the Protagonist. So when Graham was creating his character, he just assigns 2 dice to "Revolver" and says, that's the one Martin was using in the first scene and bingo, Martin loses it, it started out belonging to Sgt Davies and Martin obviously acquired it at some point between now and the start of the first scene.

Glad the improv advice helped. I am planning to add an 'advice on improv' section to Reel Adventures and possibly other projects. It seems like a useful thing to include in our hobby.

Can i ask a question about dice. Are thay a resource that is used as 'expereince' as well as to manipulate narrative. If so I would offer a word of warning. I have seen things like 'drama' dice in 7th sea that are used as both and players tend to hoard them for experience rather than spend them on dramatic scenes. Don't know if that is a problem with 6 bullets.

Cheers
Iain

Lead Developer Mob Justice RPG

Check out my home brew games like 'Reel Adventures'

I like the idea of keeping pools streamlined. So, there's a single scene pool that's also the reward pool, from which dice for the scene attributes are dished out as well as dice for npcs, and rewards once play starts. Then each player has his own single pool of dice that he uses as a common pool for his own character, for making any npcs out of and for contributing to the game and that sort of thing.

One of the things I noticed during the playtest was that we had several pools each and it got confusing and muddled. Several times I'd hand people a die for cool narration and they'd be unsure what to do with it. Single pools should hopefully eliminate that. Can anyone see a problem with this?

I do like the idea about going round the table and getting each player to contribute something to the scene. Perhaps once the protagonist has set the scene up, you could go round and everyone could add something with their dice or the scene dice. That way you'd double check that everybody had had some input and the opportunity to get involved.

As for the stealing of other people's attributes, that was in the playtest version of the rules but I forgot about it when it happened in the game! You can use someone else's attribute as though it were your own, if appropriate, but you have to give them a dice as "payment." Of course, this doesn't account for losing it though - maybe the protagonist has to pay twice as much? It worked well in the game though. Can anyone think of a more elegant way of handling this?

They're not experience - you spend them like drama dice to boost dice rolls and create attributes. Hopefully there'll be enough incentive to spend them ...

There's two cases here, really, aren't there? There's stealing attributes (e.g. "That revolver was mine and I'm firing it at you"), which effectively stops the protagonist using that attribute earlier in the story. And there's using attributes against someone temporarily (e.g. "Since you Don't Know The Meaning Of Fear, you don't notice the thugs closing in until it's too late").

If you're stealing attributes, it stops Protagonist using them later in the game (earlier in the story). How about it "frees up" their dice so they can use them for another attribute? And perhaps I have to pay for the attribute, on my character sheet, with my own dice. That way there's no tangible incentive to steal attributes but no-one gets penalised for it either.

If you're using them temporarily, I think the rules we used were fine: you temporarily get to use their dice.

Graham

Yes, I think you're right there Graham - the first issue is taking someone else's attribute from them, which perhaps should be a revelation in addition to buying it as normal. Freeing up their dice sounds like the easiest way of dealing with it.

Then there's using someone else's attribute against them - I see this cropping up with injuries, for example, and attributes created for other people as conflict aftermaths.

Andrew, I'm really liking the idea that the players use their pool of dice for creating NPCs within scenes. I would add one suggestion though: Cap these pools so that players cannot ever have more than (say) 6 dice in the pool. That way, players who do not participate in scenes by creating characters and spending dice cannot receive rewards for awesomeness. Having said that, you can't receive a reward for awesomeness if you aren't doing anything at all. Also, it prevents one person (usually Claire!) from getting all the reward dice ;)