Badass Dragoons of the Highlands - Player Postmortem

[gwwar]

Thanks for running this @messana! It was very fun, and must have been a lot of work to put together and run. A few notes:

• I’m personally not a huge fan of PVP, but I think keeping folks around for a few rounds before getting knocked out would have helped. I survived up until turn 7 but had trouble clicking with other characters because everyone I interacted with either turned up dead or killed me at the end.

• The secret orders and hidden information was very nice. I liked that I could submit my orders as early as I liked. I mostly chose arbitrary letters for my stances, and didn’t need to spend much time worrying about min maxing.

• I felt that the game ran out of steam at the end, but real life always comes first. If you choose to run another, maybe craft something that requires less maintenance, add more automation, or recruit a few helpers.

• The twist at the end with players refusing to fight, was very creative but I had no idea how that would resolve properly. I refused to join simply because I wanted the game to end in prompt manner, especially with so many players out of direct action.

• Perhaps add storytelling bonuses (especially for new players) to reward good interactions and encourage them.

[teknocholer]

It seems that some individuals attempted to use personal correspondence in order to socially engineer certain matchups, or to avoid them.

Curious that something so integral to our shared history to be missing from the record…

As a noob I was a little surprised when Mr. Collins contacted me (in character) under the pretext of wanting to see my journals and suggested we travel together. I was, of course, immediately skeptical and declined.

It was much later that the coalition formed. Looking back at our correspondence, it was @MalevolentPixy who first raised the possibility of banding together to fight the Kurgan in what became the Lost Cause.

Personally I would have no objection to any of the behind-the-scenes shenanigans being made public. If I had to do the same again I would, my friend The Ratchet @Pogo

[Pogo]

Interesting idea. Game related pm’s combined in a scroll by the Archivist and posted as a final thread before cubby holed away forever in the dusty ossified confines of our New Beige Hell…

[Pogo]

It occurs to me it’s unlikely there were not out of character discussions of game mechanics. While not something I’m interested in I think that’s a strong draw for the Excel crowd. If it’s public enough perhaps keep it in character, or take it to channels it won’t pull others out of the game.

[messana]

So what is the proper role of extra-game communication? To me, it allows ideas to be tested and provides a vital tool for bringing new players along for the fun. Why limit it?

Every Pen&Dice game I have ever played always involved passing notes that the GM and other players couldn’t see. Every one.

For the record, I fully support (and encourage!) extra-game communication via PM - especially when done in character. It both adds an important dimension and isn’t something a GM could prevent even if they wanted to. I’d fall on the side of keeping those exchanges private between the players and leave any decision to reveal those discussions to the players in the post-game wrap up.

The format of the upcoming game should leave much more room for coalition forming, skullduggery, back channel communication, and betrayal.

To a specific point that @hadley and @Nightflyer make: I’m looking for ways to help new players more quickly integrate with this community. I remember how intimidating it was my first game to try and find my footing among players that have worked together before. In the end, it was nothing more than my own feeling of awkwardness of being a new face at the party.

In general, our returning players do create a welcoming space but I’d love to find ways accelerate that process. I’m reminded of the ‘pre-game adventure’ threads from BASD2 in particular.

[messana]

So, it makes sense that current and future GMs will take more of a mentorship role, establishing the guardrails that bound the outer edges of the narrative and play mechanics, but also support and enable players in taking on voicing the supporting characters that further inhabit these worlds.

Very much yes to this. I try to put as few guardrails on the game as possible and let the story flourish, but still have to work with some unpleasant constraints - like real life and the fact that the game has to end at some point. I’d love to let one of these games go on indefinitely, but I’ve found that I start to burn out after about 8 weeks of running one of these.

This is an amazing batch of players and I love seeing where y’all take these stories. If I ever have to reveal that you’ve run up against a guardrail of the story, please know that it’s never meant to diminish your creativity, it’s meant to preserve my own sanity.

[Nightflyer]

I was going to say, I didn’t do that much PM communication… but then I took a look back. Every “draw” round, I touched base with my opponent’s player to ask who’d write up the fight. I wouldn’t mind those discussions (or any of my PM game-talk) becoming public, but not without permission of the other parties involved.

As far as welcoming new players… I didn’t feel unwelcome, I felt awkward because I didn’t know what I was doing-- like @messana said, the “new face at the party” thing. But everyone I spoke to was warm and encouraging, and @messana was gracious in answering any questions I had-- that helped a lot. If I come up with any other ideas to aid new players, I’ll write them up.

[David_Falkayn]

it’s unlikely there were not out of character discussions of game mechanics

Thank you for raising the point. It’s trickier than it it looks.

For this game, the only person I had “out of charactdf discussions” about game mechanics was… @messana. I did pick up a key insight through careful, legitimate questioning of our Dear GM and I promptly shared that insight… with nobody. It was the only “edge” I could find in the entire game – Messana’s game was that well balanced.

In past games there have been mechanics discussions “offline”, but when your character is “David Falkayn – Star Trader” it’s a little weird to claim a spreadsheet P&L is “out of character.” That, and I was a running bank. And sharing (most) of my spreadsheet insights publicly as a tool to build towards my key objective: Keeping as many players alive as possible in world designed to attrition away less-careful players. That is, I was using my spreadsheets insights and discussions to keep players in the game, which is pretty much my definition of “winning” for a collaborative narrative.

For this game, I did share “spreadsheet” insights with key partners via pm, but these were entirely about stance strategy, and most of the information I posted publicly anyway. And … it didn’t work. The sample was just too small for the (tiny) game theoretic edge to overcome the large variance. Jane lost to Zero. I killed Other. GRRR.

I did initiate “out of channel” discussions via bbs.elsewhere.cafe PM and also on other “Post boing boing” discussion boards. To me these actions where “in the spirit of the game” because I was seeking to maximize player engagement. But when I got push back on one of those discussion boards, I stopped. I believe our game was poorer for it, but I was not about to risk antagonizing fellow players.

I welcome your feedback on my actions, and how you see improving them.

Thank You,

– that annoying dude who plays the hell out this shit while getting all preachy 8)

[Pogo]

Oh, please do not take my comments as a criticism or disapproval, simply an observation.

[David_Falkayn]

I took your comment as an opportunity for reflection and discussion.

We all want this to get even better, and that requires feedback. I welcome your questions – and criticisms!

Thanks!

[Donald_Petersen]

Ditto to what @Pogo said. Falkayn as a player is irreplaceably great fun, but a character like Collins is damned hard to play. I never forgot that his most infuriating attributes were entirely character-driven affectations, but that can be a thankless role to play if others do forget!

I remind myself that all of my Space Lizard characters are truly awful people, and I play them that way specifically because in person I’m too much of a boy scout. That is, in RPG-esque videogames, like Mass Effect or Red Dead Redemption or Skyrim or Fallout I always play a good guy, which is one of the reasons I don’t enjoy GTA (since it’s damned hard, if not impossible, to be a good guy in GTA), but the Badass games permit me the freedom to be crass, crotchety, slippery, and apparently selfish and backstabby, while still having room to redeem myself at any juncture. It tickles me no end to try to play as a foil to Falkayn/Zanetti/Landau/Collins, to employ a bit of low cunning id against his high-minded and carefully thought-out collaborative superego. I hope to have many more opportunities to do so!

[guest_account_7]

we can be direct here.

As always, I try to build co-operation.

Co-operation was not on your mind when you invited me to the opera. You had seen that I was growing stronger than the rest, asked me to meet you at the opera, I said sure (I lied, lol), and then you alerted the remaining immortals to what you thought were my intentions.

I didn’t trust a word of it, assuming skullduggery and all, but it adds depth.

Rest assured, @David_Falkayn knows skullduggery well. And I admire him for his prowess. He’s becoming the Tom Brady of badass games.

I have the receipts !

A preacher calling The Devil “Your Highest Lordship”… and you all thought Zero was truly evil one…

[guest_account_7]

On a different note, we need Peregrinus_bis and PenguinChris in for the next game. Does anyone have any sway to apprise them of yea olde next rounde?

[Donald_Petersen]

Give 'em an @ mention. @penguinchris was Nessie, of course, and I imagine would leap at the next Badass opportunity. Peregrinus can probably be hailed at the old place, I imagine.

[MrMonkey]

Civilized disobedience isn’t just for activism, it makes for good sport too.

I used to cheat when we’d play Illuminati by embezzling money from the bank, but I felt like it was kind of in the spirit of the game. All I’m saying is that it seems obvious that you shouldn’t let The Gnomes of Zurich run the bank.

I’ll admit that I haven’t followed any of the prior bbs games, but this postmortem thread has been pretty interesting reading. It looks like there was more going on than I would have guessed, and I’m looking forward to seeing what happens with the next one.

[Donald_Petersen]

Honestly, read some of the old Badass game threads. Even after the fact, you can usually follow what happened surprisingly closely, and they are remarkably entertaining.

[Pogo]

and I’m looking forward to seeing what happens with the next one.

Hopefully from the inside!

[messana]

Brief aside to say: the next outing has begun.

[Donald_Petersen]

Hot damn!

[penguinchris]

@guest_account_7

If Summoned, I will Return (and Reply). I am very thankful for those who summon me occasionally, since I’m unable to participate in the community as much as I once did (I totally missed why we’re even here, for one thing) and it frequently feels like it’s something acutely missing from my life.

Of course, I never miss a Badass event. In this case, though, after my character died, I kept up with the threads but far less diligently (though I had dedicated browser tabs open without interruption all those weeks) and I confess that I lost the thread of what was happening around round 7 (edit: actually around round 5), though I kept reading, sporadically. Based on what’s been discussed here in this thread, I clearly need to go back and re-read to catch up.

In any case though, it was unclear to me that I could still cause effect as a Force Ghost after the valiant Immortal who vanquished me was subsequently vanquished, and my keeping up with things became far more erratic as a result. I liked the game mechanic here but like others have said in various ways, I wish it was more engaging in some way for the vanquished - in a game meant to kill off the players far more aggressively than ever before, this mechanic didn’t work to keep me engaged. Despite my misunderstanding of how it worked in this game, I did understood it in concept - though I have only a vague conception of whether or not I actually ever watched the movies or the show, it somehow made a pretty big impact on me as a kid - and I realize that conceptually it doesn’t come from a desire just to keep vanquished players interested. It ultimately felt like a missed opportunity, although realistically, anything really interesting would probably have been a huge headache for the GM.

I’m late to this party and my points have already been covered but there you go anyway. I’ll end with my positive notes! Overall I thought the concept and execution was excellent, and really it solved many of the issues with our previous games. I suspect the new one may be the answer to this, but I think taking this level of abstraction (vs. getting bogged down in the details, e.g. space banking or vehicle repair) to our more traditional cooperation-based Lemonade Stand style game would be ideal, at least for this community (though on that point I wholeheartedly welcome the new players and the unique contributions everyone brings).

I did particularly like the prompts for us to give ourselves history lessons - clearly a lot of research went into setting up each round (or simply a brilliant mind I suppose) and the most fun part for me, really, since I didn’t feel I should attempt to weave my narrative with anyone else’s since I couldn’t fully commit a lot of time, was trying to find clever ways to work with the history. I ended up in a lot of wiki-holes.

I’m glad as always we had our full assortment of characters, from extremely silly to really rather serious, and that everyone somehow is able to mesh all of that together - here I chose an absurd character but wrote it with more-or-less a straight face so that was fun for me (that was my idea of doing something different with my character for once, though how different it actually was is arguable).