The epilogue is one of only two scenes that the protagonist gets to setup and narrate, and is best thought of as the final scene of a movie. In past games it has showed the death of the final villain, but in this one it didn’t.

Malcolm narrated the closing credits: “James Pilgrim returned east and opened up a successful practice in New England.”

He then described the town in silence, with everybody huddled behind closed doors, and a small column of smoke rising from the mine entrance up on the mountainside. Pilgrim then appeared, walking purposefully through town with a rifle in one hand and a doctor’s bag in the other. He places it by the dead tree in the centre of town (which we added to the revelation map) and continues walking.

The protagonist gets to choose the order he’ll fight the antagonists in, and logic dictated that the final antagonist would be the company boss, Thomas Deacon.

At the start of the chapter I grabbed 2 dice per player to use to create scene attributes and npcs, handing 3 to James and 2 to Jan and investing the remaining dice into the attributes “old mine equipment” and “darkened tunnels.” I also had my own dice to use for creating attributes for Deacon.

I began outside the mine, with Deacon telling one of his men, Mason (who James played) to stay outside the mine, and ordering the other to follow him into the mines. James had Mason hide behind a boulder ready to spring an ambush when Pilgrim showed up.

Having reached a natural pause, narration then passed to Malcolm to describe what Pilgrim did. This would be the pattern followed throughout most of the game – the antagonist would set the scene, describe what his character was doing and who else was there before turning to the protagonist to react to the situation.

I’m not sure if this is a problem, or simply the way the game proceeds. Malcolm explained the concept of different types of authority (as he does here) and how this needed to be made clear in the game text.

So Pilgrim climbs up the mountain path and Mason springs his trap, dislodging a boulder to crash down onto him, the first conflict of the game as well as the first problem. Both James and Malcolm set stakes, which in themselves posed a problem. After all, Mason couldn’t actually be successful and kill Pilgrim with his ambush, so instead they settled for the stakes “does the ambush alert Deacon or not?”

We rolled, Mason won and the boulder crashed down the mountainside, its echoes reverberating around the town and causing the townsfolk to flee indoors. Deep inside the mine Deacon heard the sound of the boulder but ordered his minion to “keep digging.”

Ok, so conflict one worked ok, but now that the ambush was sprung there was another conflict brewing. If you recall the previous playtest, we adopted a more gritty, close-up, blow-by blow conflict mechanism, which almost worked like rounds. It worked, just about, although I did feel at the time that we were struggling against the system somewhat. It didn’t work this time round.

Malcolm and James set stakes once again, but yet again Mason couldn’t kill Pilgrim with his shovel, so instead Pilgrim tried to persuade Mason to stand aside and go back into town. The conflict was whether he would have to shoot Mason or not to get into the mine.

Now this was a more juicy conflict with a much more interesting scope. It wasn’t about the inevitable, which was that Pilgrim would get past Mason and into the mines, but instead about how complicated it would be, what sacrifices Pilgrim would have to make. They rolled again, this time tying, which was a grey area of the rules. We decided it made sense that the protagonist should win ties, so Pilgrim talked Mason down and he returned to town.

This is where we took a time out. It became obvious that stake setting was very important, and couldn’t concern the inevitabilities of the game (which is that the protagonist survives til the end, he dispatches each of the villains and so forth) but instead had to concern complications, sacrifices, whether the protagonist had to get his hands dirty along the way. Considering up til now stake setting has a single line in the text, I think this needs expanding into a whole chapter.

The other issue Malcolm brought up was that, because dice are a commodity in the game, spent on dice rolls and traits and gained as rewards for winning conflicts and doing cool stuff, he was being forced to waste dice on dispatching a single mook. This led to the very real possibility that by the time he reached the real villain, Deacon, he’d have used up all his dice and we’d all be forced to fudge things his way. The quick fix was to say that minions only ever take a single conflict to deal with, one way or another. We came up with a much bigger patch later in the playtest, but for now this seemed to make things right.

I resumed narration. Deep in the mines, surrounded by chundering equipment and with his man digging a deep pit was Deacon. Narration handed back to Malcolm, who asked to spend his revelation token (earnt for taking part in conflicts and spent to add stuff to the revelation map) to find a big crate of dynamite. This was just part of the narration, not a revelation, so Malcolm got it for free, describing Pilgrim emptying out one of the tubes and hurling it at Deacon. Deacon did the heroic thing and hurled his henchman at it whilst he dove the other way. No conflict here, it just happened.

The next conflict saw Pilgrim take out the minion and told Deacon that he was here to exact his revenge for the townsfolk, and that he had evidence that Deacon was the reason women and children were dying – revelation token. We talked for a bit, scaring Janos who was sitting between us as we shot vengeful glares at one another, before Deacon laid out Pilgrim with a pickaxe handle, leaving unconscious whilst he finished digging. I narrated that I found a big chest and Malcolm spent another token – the chest was empty.

Whilst Deacon railed and screamed, Pilgrim had got up and had his rifle aimed at Deacon. Final conflict. Not whether Pilgrim killed Deacon or not, but whether Deacon died with dignity or not. He failed, and his end would be very undignified indeed. Pilgrim tied Deacon to the chundering, whirring machinery, tied a tourniquet round his arm and withdrew a huge syringe from his bag.

At this time James interjected, spending the revelation token he’d picked up earlier, declaring that “the machine has been killing the townspeople.” Both myself and Malcolm visibly recoiled at the idea – it jarred with my view of the game and Malcolm clearly had other ideas. But James had spent a token and his addition was valid, unless Malcolm disputed it with his last remaining token. We debated it for a bit, but both outcomes felt wrong – James’ revelation clearly didn’t fit with Malcolm’s idea, but Malcolm didn’t want to throw out a player contribution.

Instead we tabled the revelation and discussed it, with both James and Malcolm outlining what they were thinking. This should have been the way we handled it in the first place, as it led to a far more interesting outcome. Deacon’s mine was mining silver, using all the townsfolk to do so. The machine was washing the silver, producing mercury as a by-product that was poisoning the townsfolk. In a way, the machine was killing the townspeople.

Malcolm backtracked a little, narrating that Pilgrim filled his syringe with pure mercury and injected it into Deacon’s arm. He then emptied out the bullets from his rifle, from Deacon’s pistol, from his henchman’s sidearm, tossing them all down the pit so that Deacon knew there would be no escape from a slow and painful death. As Pilgrim left Deacon dying, screaming and blubbing and crying in pain and madness, he dynamited the entrance of the mine, leaving a pall of smoke behind him as he returned to town.

Which is of course where the epilogue began.

Questions and comments

Revelation tokens look to work, controlling the flow of revelations and rewarding people for taking part in conflicts, but I’m still not entirely sure whether there should be a mechanism for disputing them. On the one hand, I think there should be a way to counter a less-than-satisfactory revelation. But on the other hand, doesn’t that devalue one player’s contribution over the other. Do you think either are valid concerns?

I've been giving a lot of thought to this game since last weekend and I've focussed more specifically on my primary concern: is it a game with a GM?

When the game has been pitched before, I recall it being described as a game with 1 player and X GMs, or words to that effect. There were very definitely instances in the game referred to here though, where Malcolm was very strongly in the GM's role: he was outlining the scene and we were responding to it.

I actually thought that was a good thing: a single authoritative voice stringing all the chapters together seemed to make for a stronger story, rather than having each Antagonist make their own scene.

Bringing this back to your question, the use of revelation chips depends on the division of GM's responsibilities: as it is, both GM & player(s) are using the same resource, earned in the same way, to make significant addition to the story. It's my gut instinct to say that this shouldn't be so: shouldn't the minority side (player or GM) appraoch this in a different way?

If I'm the antagonist and in the GM's role, then I definitely want at least one revelation to spend in my scene, so that I can do something really cool with it. On the other hand, if the Protagonist is the sole GM, it feels like he should be able to narrate cool stuff witout having to spend a resource to do so. Why not say that Antagonists can spend tokens but the Protagonist is then in the GM's role of making them fit the story? Conversely, if the Antagonists are the GMs, then whoever has responsibility for that chapter also has responsibility for arbitrating this kind of contribution.

Thanks for posting this James. I'll admit, my initial reaction was recoiling in horror at the concept of a GM in Six Bullets! After all, its GMless ...

... isn't it?

We kinda discussed this at the table last weekend, and I think the outcome was that rather than GMless, it was a game where everyone was the GM.

The protagonist certainly emerged as the driving force and narrative (I think?) authority during the game. But equally it fell to the antagonists to setup a scene, describe where it took place and what opposition and complications awaited the protagonist there - the situational authority.

I think if you had one player as the de-facto GM, it'd look like a different game. Even if he ends up being the driving force in the game, description and detail remain distributed between all of the players. If there is an official GM, would you lose that altogether? Would he be expected to detail the setting and setup the opposition, as well as to provide the story?

I think you'd lose something there, although I remain open to the possibility!

I guess the person framing the scene appears to be a GM, but the GMing tasks/authorities are distributed throughout the game, scenes and group.

Emily Care uses the term "GMful", which upsets some people but I quite like.

I've been following a lot of Emily's design posts about SiS and she's been going through a lot of the same issues with a GMless game as me. The first instinct is to say "there are no GMs!", but then you get to questions of who can do what and it all falls down. GMful is a good word to describe the situation where everyone is a GM!

I have to ask what, exactly, GMful means. Does it mean the distribution of traditional GM powers around the group? I'm genuinely interested to know.

Anyway, I feel that 6B does work by not having a defined GM role and distributing the authority for what would normally be GM tasks throughout the group. I got the feeling that, in many moments during the game, I was taking a GM role, sometimes in a very traditional sense. Maybe this was because I had, at that point in play, a very strong idea of what I would like to see develop. At other times, others had this strong idea.

Not sure what I'm getting at here, but I would shy away from the inclusion of the term 'GM' at any point in the text, even in a tangential "there is no GM!" kind of way.

Cheers
Malcolm

Contested Ground Studios

I have to ask what, exactly, GMful means. Does it mean the distribution of traditional GM powers around the group? I'm genuinely interested to know.

Yes, that's it. It's not that there's no GM. Everyone's a GM. It's full of GM!

I find it confusing that GM-ful essentially means GM-less.

Graham

Except that GM-less implies nobody is a GM, whilst the reality is that everybody is a GM! Like some sort of hippy GM paradise ;-)

I love Emily to bits but GM-ful is a daft term for having no Games Master. How can you all be a Games Master, it makes no sense!

I've been using GM-ful to describe a game with the traditional one GM who is god and can overule the mechanics at will (even if the book says they shouldn't they can).

GM-less is where all players are equal in terms of narrative authority - i.e dependent upon the mechanics. You need concrete mechanics for who has authority at any given time. So players don't argue the toss all the time.

+++
JoE
+++

Prince of Darkness Games
Rock N' Role-Play....

From The Provisional Glossary:

GM-ful play
The Technique of distributing GMing Tasks across all the members of a role-playing group, up to and including re-distributing them during play, as opposed to concentrating them in one person. Coined by Emily Care Boss.

---
A question I have is: Is it possible to have a game without a GM where the authority that would have rested with the GM is not distributed across the group? Board games?

Your use of GM-ful seems to describe GM Force, JoE?

Maybe we should spin this off into a separate thread?

But to answer your question, a game without any GM authority would be weird. That would mean that no one would have the authority to create setting or description or characters, or to narrate anything beyond their character's actions, or to adjudicate the rules in any way.

Thus, a board or card game with a very tight set of rules and situation!

As valuable as the discussion so far has been, I'd still like to address my original question. Do you think that disputing a revelation runs the risk of devaluing a player's contribution, or is it a needed mechanic to prevent player abuse?

Yes, I thinking it does. If someone contends a contribution you make in most spheres of endeavour, you feel (at least in some small way) that your contribution to that endeavour is being diminished. Human nature and not a lot you can do about it.

However, in the context of 6B, it's something that needs looked at. There was a point in the playtest when I felt very bad for challenging the contribution made by James, it was something he wanted to see in the game, but something that I (as only one participant out of four) didn't see as part of the story. It should be the nature of evolving stories in the games we play that they should be flexible, adaptable, indeed always changing with twists and turns. The problem lies in this: Is someones contribution just stupid or does it just not sit well with others (with James contribution falling in to the latter category).

In both caes, it's hard to deal with: how do you tell someone that their cool idea isn't wnated in the game. It's hard and it can disrupt the game. Removing the option to challenge means that those who contribute are going to be happy. Those who would want to challenge would not have the opportunity. Who is being fairly treated? Well, neither side really.

In the end, I think it comes down to solid advice on how to handle these situations AND the opportunity to challenge them. Perhaps if someone is challenged and their idea set aside, they get some reward, perhaps a couple of Revelation tokens in return, to show them that their ideas are valued and that they are welcome to make contributions to the game. This, plus good advice, might be a way to go.

Cheers
Malcolm

Contested Ground Studios

I'm also in two minds, and that moment at Spodley brings it all home. On the one hand, James had a cool idea he had to share, but on the other you had an idea for the story and it didn't fit. It was a case of both your views of the story crashing together, and not entirely happily.

We did get an awesome resolution tho, just by talking it over. I wonder if you'd just spent a chip to dispute it if it would have been half as good.

So maybe you need to spend a chip to dispute, and then have a quick chat about the revelation, where people see it fitting and what they had in mind. Then, if everyone agrees, the chip you spent goes to the person with the original idea, so they get a bonus and a "better luck next time" incentive to try again.

Plus - micro-bidding system in the event of people not being able to decide amicably.