Hi Iain,

Could you expand a little more on how the changes in hope/belief/doubt would be handled? When would the changes take place? And would this be up to the player alone, influenced by the results of tasks/conflicts, GM influenced? That would help make me slightly less confused about giving a response!

Cheers
Malc

Contested Ground Studios

How does the system account for those little ... happenings in a game? The toilet break? The unavoidable telephone call? The dread rules debate?

If a test is called does the clock stop or does it continue? What happens if the clock ticks over the minute when a player is calculating their doubt/hope adjustment. I'm not thinking about big numbers here, rather the times on the margin when one second can be the difference between success and failure.

I assume that the system is meant to deliver very fast and intense games? My concern would be that in that very short window you might only be able to squeeze out a couple of things. Or is it a 30 minute scene where things become more intense the longer the scene lasts?

Do you use a chess clock to cut out these problems?

Very interesting.

Neil

The clock never stops Neil, ever. Any rules debates are assumed to take up real in game time, and I will be creating the game so there aren't any, I hope. In the singular test game I have run I used a widget on my mac to run the clock.

The clock is only relevant at the moment an action is taken. As things are added and subtracted, time ticks on and must be refrenced again once a value is reached. It is very quickfire.

Sorry Malc, I should have said how the changes are going to happen. The game is split up into 6 30min knots that contain several events the team can manipulate. Before each knot the team plans how they are going to assault it. After each knot the team does a debrief where they can change their psych profile, the 3 elements mentioned above. These changes would be entirely up to the player, with some guidance from the rules.

Cheers

Iain

Mob Justice now available!

'The Giant Brain':Small games, big ideas.

So basically, no matter what a player is attempting to do, it's easy at the beginning of the game and difficult at the end? It's probably because I don't know the basic setting and concept behind the game, but at the moment to me the whole business with the clock seems arbitrary. Things get harder toward the end... because they do. When the game starts you could be defusing nuclear bombs while they are falling and leaping tall buildings in a single stride, by the end you won't even be able to tie your own shoelaces. Not wanting to sound like a negative nancy here, but if there isn't some solid reason why time makes all things harder, then it'll just feel like a gimmick, like you decided to use a stopclock as a resolution mechanic regardless of how appropriate or effective it was.

Anyway, that's by-the-by. Chances are you've already thought of that and provided guidelines or backstory to explain it elsewhere.

Another thought that springs to mind is that there's a lot of to-ing and fro-ing with beliefs and things moving up and down, presumably also based on time. Can I suggest you place a simple numbered track on the character sheet so that players can adjust those values by moving a glass bead or other counter along it, rather than constantly writing things down?

Ash

I'm curious: Are you intending that there be no limits to the changeability of the psych profile? Obviously, it must remain within the limits established (30), but I'm imagining that the 'guidance from the rules' would actually contain details of how the profile can be changed (and why). I'd be curious to know more about how you intend this process to work. It would also be good to hear how you envisage the different parts of the psych profile functioning: how would you use the different aspects and what roles do they serve?

Oh, and for the Stitch Deluxe Pack: Giant Brain branded chess clocks. Seriously. You can get them relatively cheaply in bulk. Or branded alarm clocks, especially the ones with the really cheesy, bright red displays. I am actually serious about this.

Cheers
Malc

Contested Ground Studios

...branded stopwatches, I'd say. It can't be a chess clock, because the clock never stops.

Sell them as an add-on product on the CE stall.

They're about $5 each, so £2.50, and they'd sell for a tenner.

Neat.

Graham

How does the system account for those little ... happenings in a game? The toilet break? The unavoidable telephone call? The dread rules debate?

That's the beauty of Stitch: that it's all in real time. You want to debate the rules? Take a phone call? Do it: but the clock's counting down.

Really, it's what excites me most about Stitch. It's incredibly intense. You'd have to turn your mobile off for that half hour. It's an event. Love it.

Ash, I think the idea of things getting harder would work well. It becomes a narrative constraint: at first, everything's easy, but, when you're on the deadline, the pressure piles on.

You're right that some pretext seems needed. So...say...everything gets harder because...um...the fabric of time...er...weakens the longer you stay in. That'll do. But it's a pretext and we understand it's all for dramatic purposes.

Iain, though, is there any reason the players can't just solve the whole thing within the first 15 minutes, while it's easy. I rather feel there should be a mechanical incentive for them to do everything at the last minute.

Like, the number of minutes on the clock, when you solve the thing, it the number you can change your Beliefs, Hopes and Doubts by. Or, better, the number of minutes minus 15 is the number you can change your Beliefs, Hopes and Doubts by. That way, there's an incentive for the players to play down to the wire. Just throwing out ideas, you understand.

Graham

I like the thought about changing beliefs, hopes and doubts between knots. One thing we noticed when we played at Spodley was that there simply wasn't time to handle changes to stats in the game itself, when the clock was running. Low-handling time is key here.

I'll second Malc's request to hear more about changing these in the debriefing scene.

As to Ash's comment - it's all to do with stress. In game, you are inserted into a key point in time but are yanked back to your own time after 30 minutes. To start with, you have all the time in the world, so it's easy to do difficult things. But as time gets short and the stress kicks in and things start to get trickier.

We thought we'd solve it all in the first 15 minutes, but it all went horribly wrong and we were right up to about 27 minutes.

I think that's the job of the GM - to ride ride ride the players all the way to the finihsing line!

Thats going to produce some really intense games. I love the idea of being inserted in time for 30 minutes real time only and having to solve a problem. It reeks - absolutely REEKS - of old 2000AD stories, Sapphire and Steel and Dr Who-style antics. And the time-travel antics explain why things get harder as the time progresses - to start with you are 'external' to the time stream and it cannot act against you but then it detects you and effectively seeks to eject you as an alien invader and regain it's equilibrium. Brilliant. I can think of dozens of ideas for games just based on that. It panders to the 'What If' merchants perfectly.

Neil

Right, that makes sense to an extent, but do you have any modifiers that the GM can add in so that difficult tasks are still more difficult early in the game?

I second Graham's comment about the 'first fifteen minute kill' too, but that's likely one problem that can only really be solved by the GM carefully manipulating the story so that the problem cannot be solved until later in the game. Some extensive GM's guidelines would be a necessity in this game I'd say.

Mind you, having run games that I'd expected to last for a couple of hours and watched them spin out to ten or twenty, I do think that half an hour is a leeeeeetle at the sharp end. I mean, I've seen relatively simple combat scenes run to half an hour. Hmmm...

What if you allowed every player five minutes of 'tactical time'? Like, any player can pause the game timer for exactly five minutes, once per session only? While tactical time goes on, game time does not, so players can discuss but characters can't do anything material. It'd probably be a bitch to administrate, but if you could find a way around that it might be an interesting addition.

Ash

I've never been comfortable with the effects of the above and what it brings to the gaming table - one effect being that you have the ability, nay the right!, to stop the game and ponder what your next action will be because you are not that person, with that persons instincts and knowledges and you need to think through the character at the problem and that takes longer.

What I see here is something that palpably requires the players to react NOW to what is going on. No pondering a few siderules or chatting about tactics. It has to happen now or it is going to shit. I really like that as long as the players are still playing their characters rather than playing themselves in the shell of their characters - but thats another conversation completely.

Anyway, speaking to the original post one thing that I noticed is that there is no reason why you would have your beliefs at anything other than 15/15/0 - to do otherwise would introduce more times in the game when your character became ineffectual. Indeed there will be times when a character who doesn't have this configuration will become 'impotent in time'. Whilst I know that there are many people who will enjoy 'sub optimal builds' if everyone does this - say they all did 10/10/10 then the last 5 minutes of the knot would be lost.

Now this is either a very bad thing, as it forces the players to metagame to be able to stand a chance of continuing in the knot OR it is a very good thing because it effectively allows you to mimic the PTA screen presence rules by building combinations of beliefs that mean that ONLY one or two characters will still be effective in the 25-30 minute zone.

Neil

Right this has kind of split off into two questions now, one about time in the game and the basic system, and the other regarding what is now become the 'Psych Profile' of the player. I will answer the psych profile question here and spin off the time question as it goes to some other stuff I am thinking about.

The use of 5/10/15 is mainly due to the need for quick calculation. I will not be coming away from that setup unless someone can convince me otherwise.

First, the use of the psych profile.

When a player wants to do something the GM can ask for an action to take place. He may not, but he has the option. When an action is called for the following happens:

a) Looks at clock. If skill is greater than minutes then he has passed. If not he has failed.

b) If passed GM can bring in a responsibility or part of his psych profile to reduce his skill by the amount of the component brought in.

c) If the GM does the above, or the player is failing the action he can bring in a component to increase his skill level.

This goes back and forth, GM and player bringing in components of the character in a negative and positive fashion respectively. Everytime the player brings something in he checks the clock to see if he has succeeded. Each component of a character, his 3 skills, 3 responsibilities and 3 parts of his psych profile, can only be brought in once per action. Their are tokens with the game to mark this.

I can see each part of the psych profile being used by either GM or player i.e. either negative or positive.

Hope: Positive use is obvious. Negative use would be if the character was trying to do something immoral or downright evil, that could impact on that hope.

Doubt: Negative use is obvious. Positive not so much actually now I come to think about it. Maybe use it to justify desperate acts? Advice here please.

Belief: Could be used either positive or negative depending on circumstances.

Originally the characters just had 3 beliefs that could go either way I just think breaking them down like this is a bit more interesting. The idea is that psych profile is the morale makeup of the character. It may need altered further to realise that. Andrew how did you find it in the game we played?

The idea of the debrief is each character reflects on the knot just occured and how their hope/belief and doubt helped or hindered them. They can then alter them as discussed, moving 5 points around at a time.

I dont want people making notes within a knot itself, that would detract from the pressure applied by the clock. I hope that the players will remember what helped and hindered them and change things appropriately.

One other way to do it would be to mark them with counters in some way. At the moment I have counters for showing what has been used in a conflict and for physical damage.

Neil, I understand the concern about builds as that has occured to me as well. I think though if you go for the 15/15 build, it leaves you open to having one negated by the other straight away. I need to think more on this though so will get back to it later.

Keep it coming guys, this is really helping me out.

Cheers

Iain

Mob Justice now available!

'The Giant Brain':Small games, big ideas.

...Iain, how does the GM-player trading with Beliefs etc play out?

See, I worry you'll have this situation:

* I name my Hope. I pass!

* The GM names my Doubt. I fail! I am pissed off at the GM, because it seemed a bit arbitrary.

* I'm now forced to name my Belief. It seems a bit crowbarred in, but I do it anyway.

Do you see what I mean? It's two separate worries.

Firstly, I worry that the GM will basically have two options: use the Doubt (or perhaps Hope) or don't. At particular times, pretty much, he'll decide whether the player wins or loses.

Secondly, I worry you'll have what I'll affectionately call the Covenant Situation: your trait doesn't really apply, but you'll lose if you don't bring it in, so you bring it in, even though it feels dodgy.

How would I win in the last five minutes of the knot? Would I need to narrate all three (Hope, Belief and Doubt) in? If so, I'd feel that would lead to some serious crowbarring.

I...have an idea for how I'd handle this, but I don't want to rewrite your central mechanic.

Graham

That is a possible worry, but the emphasis is very much on only introducing things that are relevant. This will need some very careful writing to show the players and GM how to do things. I may be able to figure a way to sort that mechanically.

Please give me your idea, maybe in a seperate thread:
[Stitch] Rewriting the mechanic, or similar.

There are rules for helping each other out as well as individual tasks, which will help a lot in the final stages of a knot. Remember please that you also have responsibilites that can be brought in to help you out. They can be used negatively as well.

So how do I ensure people don't bring in inappropriate elements of their character? I will ponder this and hope you lot will to.

Cheers

Iain

Mob Justice now available!

'The Giant Brain':Small games, big ideas.

However two things do spring to mind. The first is that a lot of efforts take longer to describe and to adjudicate than they would to simply do. Especially if there has to be any kind of discussion to ascertain precisely what or how the player is doing something. This isn't the primary concern, but it is one of them.

More importantly though, as you quite rightly say the player is not the person he is playing. He may therefore need that extra time to consider what his character might do given the situation. The only real way around that one is if everyone plays themselves.

Also to clarify, being able to stop the game for only five minutes in its entire length isn't a hell of a lot of time. Once you've used up your five minutes, that's it! And your characters can't do anything in that five minutes, it's purely for talking tactics and working out what you're going to do. Sure the players can stop the game, but the emphasis on time limit is still there. I think this would lead to people hoarding those minutes for dire emergencies. It also kinda ties in with the whole 'time travelling' vibe I'm picking up. Anyway, it was just an idea.

One other thing that does concern me is that the impending time limit may lead to people ignoring the role-playing aspect altogether. Instead of playing their character, chatting with people in-character and the like, it might lead to an ethic of 'a little less conversation a little more action.' It's quicker to say 'my character persuades person X to give him the widget of power' than to actually try and do it, and in fact conversations like that can take up so much time that it would actually be advisable to do this. Invariably you end up with the winning tactic being to describe what your character does without any IC speech at all.

This isn't necessarily a problem, if that's the kind of game you like. I've always been a more social role-player though, I like getting into lengthy IC debates and sitting around the campfire musing. I think it helps to pace the story better and gives people a chance to develop their characters on a social and psychological level. On that basis, this game probably wouldn't be for me anyway, so you might just as well disregard these comments as subjective.

Ash

I respectfully disagree Ash. The game is all about hitting the ground running, both IC and OOC. Being able to ponder for ages about whether to whack the professor or not will detract from this tension, not add to it. It's all about what you're prepared to do under pressure, and that genuinely means being under pressure. It has to be experienced to be believed, but we all felt genuinely tense and sick going into the knot, and when the clock started ticking Claire screamed and we really were under stress.

What Iain hasn't mentioned is the planning phase - half an hour before you go back in time where you plan out what your objectives are and how you're going to achieve them. I like to think this will negate any necessity to stop and plan once the clock is running.

I am SO intrigued by this game.

Iain, hook me up with a document please? vodkashok-at-gmail.com

Cheers
Neil

Stitch was a Game Chef entry, and Iain posted the original draft here. I'm not sure how much has changed, but you'll get a fairly good idea of how it all works from that file.

Neil one is winging its way to you. I have not got a full pdf so it will come in bits. I would be really grateful if you play it Neil, even a couple of knots. I need to know how the advice, so far helps you, what tricks you play to get the players stressed out etc.

I really should have mentioned planning, sorry.

When the players are presented with the 3 events in the knot they decide in which order they want to tackle them. They also tell the Master how they are going to tackle them, which basically gives him the cues for where to put opposition. There is a bunch of advice I am working on that will be included in the book.

Cheers

Iain

Mob Justice now available!

'The Giant Brain':Small games, big ideas.

Ahhh, now that makes more sense! Yes, that ought to work then.

Ash