As I said above the game went fine and we had a good time. There were some system things that came up (in a minor way) and got me reflecting on the system as I saw it in play.

System things...

Negative Traits
Malcolm strongly suggests using the variation in the 3rd printing (and in the Companion), where you add dice for bringing in negative traits. If successful with a negative trait you add some unfortunate narration related to your negative trait.

There was a strong case put forward for this and Malcolm switched to it. I wonder if it has some slight (?) unbalancing effects though: it encourages you to start the game with 9 traits since negative and positive ones are both good for adding to your pools. It creates larger pools for everyone (see below) which has an effect on the margin of victory. And a very minor quibble is that you need more dice (and fancy coloured too). :)

Having played it through using the original rules I'm not sure I completely agree that this new rule is necessary. Dice pools were getting large anyway, and adding extra coloured dice for Negative Traits would have escalated pool size even more. Everyone was quite open about declaring their Traits (both positive and negative) and where they made sense to the group we used them (either adding dice or subtracting them). So there was no need for me to encourage players to declare them (and as GM I could always use my authority to say: this or that negative trait does, or does not, apply).

But I got a sense that bringing in Negative Traits was open to abuse by the GM (I'm guessing that Joe Murphy felt that way?). But only as much as any positive trait is open to that, right? In the end I didn't include a couple of Negative Traits from affecting continuing conflicts, in other words I used them once in a scene and then dropped them. (Or tried to after realising that these were killing someone's pool, though arguably with reason.)

The suggested Companion solution of allowing whoring of Negative Traits in the PC's favour doesn't sit entirely well with me either. Other solutions such as "give a die to your Opponent" still don't answer the number of times a Trait can be dragged in (which affects both positive and negative traits alike). And that just comes down to trait usage...

And while it can be galling for a Negative Trait to take away a Positive one, well, it a Negative Trait is a consequence of losing a conflict, right?

Trait Whoring
This has been covered in a thread elsewhere and the solution is probably to not force use of a trait more times than everyone is comfortable with. In the end this reduces to perhaps once per scene for any Trait? That would be my house rule.

Doubling Agendas
These are very powerful. When you use a Hidden Agenda on a low Attribute (1 or 2) the effect is reasonable, adding 1 or 2 dice of course. When used with an Attribute of 3 or higher the effect is pronounced: an Attribute of 5 becomes a huge pool of 10. I think I'd like to have seen these Agendas reduced to just adding 2 dice, but that'd be my house rule. To add 3 dice to a roll is equivalent to three traits or a really high Trust. That's a lot.

Damage
Here's the big one that got flagged up in play but didn't affect our game too much. Weapons add a lot of consequences, and I found this alarming. I'm glad I only gave out a Walking Stick (+1), Sabre (+2) and various Handguns (+2). The potential imbalance caused by a shotgun (+6 consequences) is crazy. We had a Slight success which does 0 consequences if it's a fistfight, with a handgun there's two consequences going around instead. With a shotgun that would turn a slight success into six, one higher than a superlative success. I am uncomfortable with this and would prefer, if anything, for guns or potent possessions to add dice to the roll rather than the consequences. I could maybe live with a +1 or +2 consequence, but what this does is remove slight or standard successes from the range of outcomes. Effectively One Side wins = 1 consequence, Other Side wins = 6 consequences!

Dice Pool Size and Margins of Success
The effect of doubling for hidden agendas and using trust meant that pools could reasonably be quite large. This seemed to generate a lot of slight success, since mostly you were rolling at least one die higher than an 8, in a similarly high region to your opponent's roll. And it was those very high dice that would dictate the low number of successes. If you rolled a 10 then it capped your opponent's success level at how many 10s he got more than you, i.e. a slim margin.

With smaller dice pools the margin could be larger (though ultimately limited by how many dice you roll). So in a sense two large pools (say 3 dice apart in size such as 12 versus 15) might tend towards very small success. Whereas a smaller pool 3 dice apart (say 2 dice versus 5) would generate a wider range of success? That's a hunch and one I'm going to try out.

A solution to this is to stop the mechanical elements that ratchet up the size of pools, so I'd think of changing those.

Success Levels
The range of 1 = Slight to 5 = Superior (?) was most common to me in Vampire, but in that game you are rolling against a difficulty of 6 on a d10 with each die. So effectively your pool is halved into successes. A pool of 10 then may generate 5 successes. Competitively rolling and counting your highest die doesn't create the same behaviour or number of successes.

I thought I'd add a personal note on how I thought a priori that the PCs would behave...

Le Noir (French)
He was set up to be the trusted one and in a position to use this to his advnatge. I wondered if the player of Le Noir would do this or balk when the opportunity arose. He hesitated at first then plunged the dagger in when it seemed a way to save his hide.

Greenstreet (American)
He was set up to be antagonistic and out of touch with the others somewhat. I was curious to see if he could indeed bully the party or if he would become a weak man living on his reputation. I expected him to bluster and thunder but not be able to push people around. To my surprise he excelled at bullying as played by Joe, and would have carried the day had the Russian not turned on him. He didn't actually betray anyone.

Ledyakov (Russian)
He was set up to need support from the others, as he was being put in the cold from his nation. He had a dicey relationship with the American and I wondered if this would push him towards working with the French or British. In play he did gravitate to the Frenchman who then turned on him. Could have sat back and let the war hero and French military man deal with the monster, arguing he was just a man of papers. He tried to be a man of Action and paid the price.

White (British)
I thought she would have been interesting in that she was underestimated by everyone but could have tipped the balance in one or the other side's favour. Again she may have gravitated more towards the French rather than American. May have tried to recruit the Russian to the British cause, or at least helping her with her powers?

Yeah, I found that the negative trait die so rarely came up trumps in rolls that it just sat as an extra die for the character. When we played it wrong and had the negative trait add a die but always have an effect on the described outcome if you did use it, that worked out just fine, giving the player a reason not to take that extra die if the trait itself was one which had become boorish, over played or would have some sort of negative effect if evoked.

As for the die thing, just a note on, again, how we got it wrong but to good effect. Our rolls were handled in the manner of Risk, with dice ordered from highest downwards and compared die to die. By doing this, we got everything from slight to amazing successes, with the emphasis being on a happy medium at about 2-3 successes for a successful roll.

Anyway, they were errors which I would quite happily use as house rules, which might add something to the 2 relevant issues you mentioned.

Cheers,

Shevaun

Thanks for those ideas Shevy.

The system has actually got me thinking about using a quite modified version for something else. I like the way Covenant controls trait use actually and how Nine Worlds allows things to be "locked".

Oh, about Trust. This got big-time use in the final conflict as the PCs used their trust against each other, which was powerful in this short-form game. In a longer game I'd be interested to see how it ebbed and flowed between the need for more dice and the fear of those dice being used against you.

Gee whizz, that was bloody! Thanks for taking the time run CC at Gaelcon, much appreciated.

I'd add that the changes were tested in play and found to be a valid response to something that was creating a bit of a problem, rather than simply as a case put forward without any play.

So the traits were pretty broad, yes? In that they could be brought in to many situations? I guess I should wait to see the character sheets before going any further on this!)

To be honest (and this is purely my own experience), I've not experienced this kind of trait whoring to any great degree. However, there was an interesting thread on RPGnet where someone who had run the game was asking about just such this thing. His experience was that people were bringing in 3 - 4 traits per conflict. Mine was closer to people bring in 1 -2 traits per conflict. However, as you've pointed out above, the GM can exercise the power to question the legitimacy of a trait (as can any participant, to be honest). Cold City is, for all its 'indie' bits and bobs, still a game with a GM who has defined authority. If things are going too far with traits, then the GM should use that authority to find out if a trait is able to be used. If the player has a good reason, then fine. If it's a tenuous excuse, then the player, upon reflection, will likely realise that him/her self.

It's a tough one to adjudicate when you're not actually sitting in a chair at the game.

That's the way its meant to be. Hidden Agendas are one of the most powerful forces in the game and are intended to give a substantial bonus if they are brought into play. It is intended to be a lot because, well, these are massive motivating forces for the characters. Making them a blanket 2 dice bonus would, in my view, remove a lot of the centrality of the agendas as a key part of the game.

I can see the argument for giving other possession increased consequences, but not for removing the additional consequence damage done by weapons. Negative consequences stemming from weapon damage = you might die (or reach a crisis point whereby death is a potential option). If someone is waving a shotgun at you, would you really want to risk it? Firearms are a dangerous, risky, unpleasant business and if people start loosing them off, there's going to be all kinds of trouble as a result.

Removing weapons damage would necessitate a change to the way narration and the outcome of conflicts is handled, in that death (as an option) would have to be brought about in this fashion.

Can i ask for a moment how this was being handled? For example, if two rolls were:

2,3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10

2, 3, 4, 5, 6,7,7, 8, 8, 10

Then Pool 1 would win with 2 successes. One 10 would be deducted from each pool, leaving pool 2 with an 8 as the highest die and Pool 1 with two dice above that. Was it the case that is highest numbers were tied, you were taking away the matching numbers and then looking at lower numbers as well (so, you'll take away the highest numbers until one side has none of them, then you also look to see if there are any numbers below that that are above what is now the opponents highest - as per example above)?

The success level granularity is, on reflection, something that I would change, given the opportunity. My own thoughts on this would be to reduce it to three levels, with different outcomes for each. And as such, the nature of consequences would have to change as well, which would flow into the points raised about firearms damage and so forth.

In conclusion, I do intend to do a 'Cold City: revised' at some point over the next couple of years. While the core of the mechanics would stay (broadly) the same, there are changes that I will make and all this feedback is valuable stuff to be thrown in to the mix. And, as I'm intending on using a variant of CC for Everlasting Empire (well, testing it out anyway), all of these remarks are exceptionally useful. I'll look into how alternative consequence methods function and how to move away from the firearms damage thing towards a more single-consequence (or simplified) variant works in play. All very valuable.

Thanks for the detailed thoughts.

Cheers
Malcolm

edit: To correct some mis-spellings and clarify a point or two.

Contested Ground Studios

We did it as your first interpretation, taking off pairs where the highest number was tied. Typically there was a tie on the next number and we didn't compare how many of those were tied. And typically with a large pool on either side, there was a distribution of dice near the top values.

So, just doing a couple of rolls on my table of 10 verus 8 dice gives...
10, 6, 6, 5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 2, 1 versus
6, 5, 4, 4, 4, 4, 3, 1
for an outcome of 1 success, and
10, 10, 9, 9, 7, 5, 5, 5, 5, 2 versus
10, 9, 9, 8, 5, 4, 2, 1
for another 1 success, and
10, 9, 9, 8, 8, 6, 6, 4, 2, 1 versus
9, 7, 7, 6, 6, 3, 3, 1
is another 1 success (funnily in this example had pool 1 not rolled a 10 they would have scored more successes).

With big pools you get a couple of 'high' dice. Either your top or second-top die will 'cap' the successes. With a small pool these high dice may be either (a) mid to low in value meaning the other pool has dice free and above, or (b) the high dice are separated in values that allows more dice in as successes on a tie. It is these two factors that allow a larger pool to accumulate successes when the sizes of pools are lower, I think.

Oh, on negative traits adding to pools I came up with a thought experiment.

Curly and Mo have a conflict. They have 5 dice each.

Curly wins with 1 consequence, and Mo gains a negative trait from the conflict.

Curly and Mo have a follow-up conflict, Mo now has 6 dice versus Curly's 5, if that negative trait is relevant.

So, why would Curly not just add more relevant positive traits to himself, or boost his own Attributes or reduce Mo's Attributes? Adding a negative trait to Mo is giving Mo an extra dice in a follow-up conflict.

Now, if negative traits subtract dice then Curly could give Mo a relevant negative trait and have it be a penalty.

Or is it the case that Curly picks a positive consequence for himself, and Mo picks a negative consequence for himself? If so, is that really 2 consequences?

Edit: edited to add that, as I understand it, you pick your own negative trait if you get one. So when I say "gives him a negative trait" I mean "allocates him a negative trait that Mo then chooses in line with the narration".

Interesting. And I mean that in the sense of "Hmmm, that has given me a substantial amount of food for thought and I must let it digest for a spell."

Putting it in those words makes for interesting reading, that does get my thought processes going off in different directions. But I'll need to consider it for a bit before responding more fully. But in the meantime, thanks for sparking off these thoughts!

Cheers
Malc

Edit: what this means, minus the verbosity, is that I really should go away and think about this!

Contested Ground Studios

I've put the character sheets online in this thread.

The traits are possibly too broad (?), but for the short form game they serve two functions (1) get across the character to the player, (2) are actually useful in that they can be employed in a variety of ways.

The problem that Graham had with Aeternal Legends, for example, was that he had things on his character sheet which were unusable in the game, which sucked really. (He had a power that took weeks to use...)

Thanks Gregor, much appreciated.

As a side issue, this thread had indeed influenced my current thinking on Everlasting Empire and how the Cold City mechanics could provide a basis for that game. It's been useful in highlighting area that could be beneficially changed and altered without destroying the flow of the system.

Cheers
Malc

Contested Ground Studios

Ha! I was very conscious that if I led the group, I could really lead the group. The other players were a bit more hesitant, so I figured I could encourage them to give chase, but leave them to work out the details. Lots of spotlight for them.

Thinking about it, I didn't like the first scene, for the obvious reason that there's no _choice_ to it. While players could faff a bit and describe the search, it was still pretty obvious we'd bump into the guy later on. It's not an open-ended scene.

I wasn't immediately grabbed, as there was no conflict to intrigue me. I think that's maybe one reason we faffed a bit.

The second scene was a peach, though.

It would be cool if part of the setup was deciding what our relationship to Kneissel was. In fact, you make him a former member of the RPA, rather than a Nazi (or Monster), so that the morality was more obviously grey. The players would then describe how they hated, feared, loved or ignored this mad scientist. And would then have a more obvious agenda when they encounter him in the tunnels.

Don't get me wrong, the session was a lot of fun. =)

Joe.

In a game like CC, adding traits to your pool involves some bullshitting. And traits change a lot, so your character sheet is always in flux.

In D&D, testing your wits against the GM's clever trap is fun. Trait use is like a minigame of this. Gaps that require judgement are a _lot_ of fun.

I am less interested in games where negative traits are a penalty. Jared Sorensen had that example of a pirate character whose one eye triggered firearm penalties due to poor depth perception. But the only reason he took a character with one eye was for the imagery.

But I really enjoy games where the player can take a risk, throwing in that Massively Obese dice, knowing there's a chance he'll have to narrate the consequences. So I like this being something the player can control. In much the same way that they choose to betray or support. It's a statement the player makes.

Joe.

Sure, Joe, Negative Traits in the third printing do cater towards your preference, and I think that's a good choice for your needs.

The slight problem is that it changes the economy of the reward system if a Negative Trait is now just another flavour of Positive Trait, rather than a penalty, whereas a reduction in an Attribute is definedly a penalty.

Certainly, consequences become either (a) Positive Trait = positive mechanical effect, or (b) Negative Trait = positive mechanical effect with twist in fiction.

Is that right?

Ah! I'd forgotten how consequences tied in. And that does, obviously, screw up the economy somewhat.

I suppose one could say that consequences were genuinely negative - reductions to traits, pools, or ongoing situational penalties. A little negotiation between the players would help - 'Want to be wounded? Demoralised? Lose your toolkit?'.