Over on Story Games, someone put together the “Play This with That” roleplaying challenge. You choose your rules system and get blindly assigned a setting. You must then go play a game combining those rules with that setting. Some rules hacking was allowed, but only as much as necessary to make the two fit.

Well, Jesse just weighed in with his report of Grey Ranks played with the Dirty Secrets system. As I’m playing Grey Ranks right now, this is doubly cool.

(Heh. I had fun with that title.)

No, I haven’t published anything new, but now that I’ve drawn you in with false advertising, I do have a helpful hint for playing Dirty Secrets.

When you’re playing Dirty Secrets, be sure to have a copy of your local phone book with you at the table. This is helpful for a couple of reasons.

First, if you’re stuck for a name, just flip open the phone book and grab a name. Not only is the phone book a massive list of names, it’s a list of names that comes from your locale. You can’t get much more true to your area than using names that are actually from your area. As a bonus, you’ll get an address to go with the name, which you can use, if you want.

The second reason is similar. If you’re needing a particular type of business, then just hit the Yellow Pages. I actually did this in a recent game of mine. We needed a high-class lawyer, so we consulted the phone book. In our case, we were pretty sure that we knew the one that we wanted, but we checked the phone book to get the correct name.

Other useful resources in a phone book include maps of the area, bus routes, government offices, and pizza coupons for in-game refreshments. It really is the best supplement to Dirty Secrets that you could own. And it’s free!

Thanks to Jason Corley for pointing this out.

Well, we started playing a game of Dirty Secrets last night. I’ll have a writeup later (along with audio, I hope), but for now, here’s an article about some of Peoria’s real-life crime history. Read the comments, too.

Christoph Boeckle writes up his game from Lasuanne, Switzerland.

Joe Murphy writes up his game from Scotland.

A Dirty Secrets player writes:

There’s one scene in particular I would like to talk about. The opening scene with Lucy (who was at this point a non-character) and the investigator. In it, Lucy describes the murder victim and how she was murdered, going into a fair amount of detail, including a blatant rip-off of, or, if one is generous, an homage to, Chinatown, all of which sets up a lot of the action to come.

It was a great opening scene in terms of serving the purpose of opening scenes (laying lots of clues to be followed up on in the middle part of the story).

Later, Lucy is now a character, and it turns out that the murder victim is actually a suicide victim and that Lucy helped cover it up. But, in the opening scene Lucy said it was a murder victim, and spoke about the murder in a very CSI manner, giving out lots of details.

Meaning, in the opening scene, Lucy was lying through her teeth. But the really amazing part is, in that opening scene, the two advisors, the investigator, the investigator’s player, and the narrator, all thought she was telling the truth.

Now the opening scene is incredible because it not only set up action, but it also had a character who was deeply involved in everything, up to and including the investigator’s back story, lying big time and nobody knew it.

I can’t think of another system that would make that happen.

Jesse Burneko writes up his game of Dirty Secrets.

Look at this cool thing that Jocelyn Robitaille did to prepare for his upcoming game of Dirty Secrets.

(This post has been cross-posted to the Forge.)

Last night we wrapped up our first game of Dirty Secrets. It’s been a bumpy ride at times, especially since the rules have shuffled around during this particular playtest, but it has been a worthwhile run, both from a playtest and story perspective.

Actual Play

When we last left our hero (such as is), Robert had just fought his way into a mobile home past Debbie Sandberg (his client) and Mollie George (his daughter), to discover that they were preparing for a violent confrontation of some kind. Oh yes, his client was accidentally shot, and, in the course of the struggle, he had knocked out his daughter.

So, Robert beats a hasty retreat from the mobile home, especially since the police were coming. Stepping over Debbie, he picks up the check that she had written for him and drives off. He decides that he needs to come clean with Steven Sandberg, the husband of his client. So he finds him and dumps everything on him while driving him to the hospital to see Debbie.

Then, in one of those odd convergences, Robert got a call from the mother of Stephanie Bloskovich. Robert had gone looking for Stephanie at her house earlier that day, and Stephanie’s mother was calling to say that Stephanie’s half-sister had called and left a message for Stephanie. She wanted Stephanie to meet her down at the Rhythm Kitchen. The half-sister? Courtney Jackson.

So Robert goes down to the Riverfront and stakes out the Rhythm Kitchen. Courtney and Stephanie eventually show up, and Robert tails them into the restaurant. Stephanie has been working with Courtney all along. Indeed, she was supposed to set up Debbie and Mollie, and thinks that she has been successful in doing so. Courtney is concerned that Jeff Stuber is going to double-cross them and thinks that Stephanie should keep her distance, but Stephanie isn’t really listening to her. Both of them are prepared for the deal that is about to go down nearby.

After they eat, they walk over to theRiverfront Village parking ramp, where they meet Jeff. He isn’t happy with how things are going. He doesn’t like how they are selling out Debbie, and he wants to back out, along with the drugs that Debbie provided. He pulls a gun to emphasize his point. At this point, the last person shows up: Steven Sandberg. He is drawing on his wife’s old drug connections to coordinate this sale, and then he will leave Debbie holding the bag. Jeff is very unhappy at this point and again demands that he be given the drugs. Steven accedes to his wishes and tells Courtney to get the drugs for Jeff. Courtney goes to a nearby car and pops the trunk. Reaching in, she pulls out a gun and fires.

Robert is witnessing all this without intervening. When the shooting begins, he slips back to one of the Emergency buttons that are all over the Riverfront and summons the police. Then he thinks of Mollie. Maybe this will let her escape the mess that she is in.

Then Steven stumbles around the corner to take cover. He sees Robert and brings his gun around to fire. Robert already has his weapon drawn and uses it to strike Steven in the face. He stumbles backwards, firing wildly. Robert has no other choice but to shoot him. Down he goes, not dead, but seriously wounded. At this time, the police begin to arrive, so Robert makes good his escape.

Robert goes to the hospital to see Debbie and confront her with the truth. There never were any stolen drugs, because Debbie had actually stolen them and hidden them herself before she was arrested. She wanted to pin the blame on someone else for her own double-cross. Robert then takes out the check that she gave him and hands it back to her. “I would like to be paid,”? he says, “but only if you think that I’ve done something worth being paid for.” Then he leaves the hospital room.

Mollie is waiting for him at his apartment. She spills her story. While in the hospital, she lost the baby. But she was already miscarrying because of her drug habit. When she found this out, Bill killed himself out of guilt. He had gotten her pregnant, and he had gotten her hooked on drugs. He blamed himself, and so he killed himself.

When Mollie got up to leave, Robert asked her to wait. He said that she could stay with him. He said that he wanted to be a good father. He said that he wanted one last chance to make it right.

Mollie refused to listen to him. “You already had your last chance,”? she said. Then she walked out the door.

Robert chased after her. “Please,”? he begged. “Just one more chance. I have nothing left except you.”

Mollie turned to look at him. “You have nothing left? I have nothing left. Two days ago, I had a home, a man who loved me, and a baby. I have nothing left.”

Robert said, “We can help each other. We can take care of each other.”

Mollie paused for a moment.

“No.”

Robert watched her as she walked away from him down the street. Then she turned the corner and was gone.

The End.

Thoughts and Stuff

We were all fairly tired last night, which is really too bad. I didn’t feel the game as much as I might normally. Also, since this is a playtest, there were rough rules that we still tripped over.

The biggest one, as noted by Ralph in another thread, is that the 6 x 6 Grid is really big. When we started, the Grid rules were a bit different, but even so, there is a need to tweak it up some. I think that I will make a few center squares impassable. Between this and the addition of some special spaces, I think that it will work much better.

We tried out a rule for Crime Resolution. If you roll a blank space for Crime Resolution, in addition to filling in your current square, you can write in a name anywhere on the Grid. This seemed to work fairly well.

Oddly enough, two of the three Crimes that we had were committed by their Victims. Bill Cornman’s murder turned out to be suicide, and the cocaine theft was actually just a sham. This was particularly weird in Bill’s case, since his name only appeared on the Grid twice.

When you resolve all your Crimes, you play out one last scene, which has to resolve everything. Our final scene was the final conversation between Robert and Mollie. When I said that the conflict was going to be over if Mollie stayed or left, everyone became very intent. Strangely enough, I managed to overcome Crystal in conflict twice in a row during this scene. She never loses Liar’s Dice, but, for some reason, I had her number this time.

After the second exchange, Crystal decided to let the conflict end. She could have pushed further, but her aesthetic sense kicked in. I’m glad that the game allows for that.

As I said, we were all very tired, so there wasn’t a lot of post-game reflection or post-playtest rules thoughts. However, both Gabrielle and Crystal agreed that it had been a satisfying experience.

For myself, I’m pretty stoked that the game seems to be coming together. There are still rough edges that need to be smoothed out, but I’m confident that I will be able to do so.

And now, for a little post-game reflection.

At the time, it certainly seemed like a tragedy that Mollie did not want to be reconciled to Robert. But, thinking about it now, I’m not sure that is true. We had established that Robert was a lousy father when Mollie was younger. We had also established that he hadn’t done much better during the game itself. Sure, he gave Mollie shelter that one night, but when push came to shove, he shoved her. The case was more important that she was, and he physically attacked her as a result of that. Would she really have been safe staying with him? Probably not.

Where will she go now? I really don’t know. But, sadly, I think that it will probably be better than staying with Robert George. And that’s probably the saddest part of this story.

(This post has been cross-posted to the Forge.)

See, guys! I used the right name!

The last couple of Fridays, I was able to playtest Dirty Secrets with my regular gaming group. Last session was particularly memorable, and Ralph demanded that I write it up. I agreed with him, so here goes!

We actually played the first session of Dirty Secrets because Gabrielle wasn’t available for gaming that night. So, Ralph, Keith, Crystal, and I sat down to play.

Setup

Dirty Secrets has a quick-and-dirty situation generator that is intended to get the group up and running pretty quickly. This test worked pretty well, but it showed up a couple of interesting “features�. First, it was possible to end up with a private investigator that is only 12. The second is that, at least in the four-player game, the investigator player doesn’t actually get to name the investigator.

The first item is no good, and it prompted a rules change that minors can only be citizens. The second item is actually a feature for me. Even though the investigator is played by a single player, I still want there to be a sense of group ownership over the character. So, not forcing naming privileges to the investigator player is actually a good thing by my book.

Thus, in this case, we ended up with an investigator who a nineteen year old preppie who plays tennis at the country club. His name: Reginald Hastings, III. Or, as we all called him, “Reggie�.

We ended up with Jim Brown approaching Reggie for some help. Jim Brown is a retired police officer who works as a groundskeeper at the country club. Oh yes, he is black, and Reggie is white.

Actual Play, Part 1

This is my best recollections of two sessions worth of gameplay. These stories are turning out to be as twisty as the source material, which is good, but makes it a bit difficult to explain if you weren’t there. That being said, here goes….

Jim’s old police revolver has been stolen, and Jim thinks that his granddaughter LaTeesha might be responsible. Reggie used to babysit for LaTeesha, and Jim figures that Reggie can find out more easily than he can. A little weak as an opening, I admit, but, as you’ll see, it actually worked out well in play.

So, Reggie goes to confront LaTeesha. This led to a hysterically funny moment, as Reggie ultimately rips LaTeesha’s backpack away from her to go through it and ends up being chased down the street by a protective neighbor with a baseball bat. Reggie’s car gets smashed up a bit, and he finds nothing in the backpack except a notebook that says “I love Reggie� and things like that. Apparently LaTeesha has a bit of a crush on her former baby-sitter.

Overcome with guilty, Reggie attempts to return the backpack to LaTeesha’s house without being seen. Unfortunately, the police have been called and are interviewing LaTeesha and her parents. The helpful neighbor with the baseball bat points out Reggie, who tries to escape. The police give chase, which ends up resulting in Reggie’s crashing his car and being arrested by the police.

Reggie’s father bails him out. This led to our first Reflection scene, with Reggie staring out the window, brooding, while his father chewed him out on the way home from the police station. Then I tapped Reggie’s father (Reginald Hastings, II)

Reggie decided to find out from Jim Brown what is so important about this stupid gun anyways. So he drove over to Jim’s house in a rental car to talk to him. Jim wasn’t home. However, Jim’s girlfriend Cherry was at home with another man. They were arguing about something, but Reggie couldn’t hear what it was. So, when the other man left the house, Reggie called Jim and then tailed the man. This other man walked down the street into another house. Suddenly there was a gunshot. Reggie called 911 and waited while the police and emergency crews showed up. The murder victim: Mike Washington. LaTeesha’s father.

We got to resolve a Crime at this point and determined that, yes indeed, LaTeesha had stolen Jim’s revolver. Now, with her father dead, we wondered if she knew that something was going to go down….

At this point, we wrapped up for the night. We had some good rules discussion, and Ralph solved my Research problem.

Rules Excursus

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I’ve been struggling with the rules for Research. But no more! Ralph suggested that what Research really ought to do is “reveal� a new relationship between Characters. After all, the goal of Research is to provide inspiration to the players, not really to provide more raw data.

So, here are the new Research rules. If the investigator calls for Research, we create a new relationship between two Characters. The investigator may choose one of the two characters or choose the type of relationship from the Research table. The other two items are chosen randomly. After determining the new relationship, the investigator gets to narrate how he discovered this new relationship.

The options on the Research table are as follows: sexual/romantic, familial, business, friendship. Why yes, the table is weighted towards sexual and familial relationships? Why do you ask?

This system got a solid test in our next outing.

Actual Play, Part 2

So, last Friday, we gathered again to play. Gabrielle was with us this time, so we slid her in as another player. This was mechanically effective, although Gabrielle said that she never really felt like she got a grip on the Characters. So, that experiment had mixed results.

There were several moments of awesome in this session, though, that need to be reported.

The first was the use of the new Research rules. After being questioned by the police about the murder, Keith decided that Reggie would poke around at the Crime Scene after the cops were gone. He chose to include Mike Washington (the murder victim) in the Research. So the other character and the nature of the relationship were created randomly.

The other character: Reginald Hastings, II.

The relationship: romantic/sexual

This provoked an extensive out-of-game conversation about the rules, but we were okay with it for our game, so off we went.

At the crime scene, Reggie found love letters from his father to Mike Washington. This was one of those discoveries that turns everything sideways. But it got even better. The next scene: Reggie goes to confront his father.

Reggie finds his father on the back nine at the country club. Just as his father putts, he throws the rubber-banded packet of letters on the green, deflecting the ball. Reggie was furious, and when his father tried to talk down to him, Reggie started reading one of the letters out loud, so that all the people standing nearby could hear. Reggie’s father slapped the letters out of his hands. Reggie started to slap his father, but he wasn’t fast enough. His father punched him in the face, laying him out on the green. In the meantime, the wind blew away some of the letters, and various individuals who were nearby, including Jim Brown, pocketed some of them. As Reggie lay there on the green, Reggie’s father informed him that he needed to be moved out of the house by sundown. Then he strode away.

Reggie packed up his things, then he went down to the Par-a-Dice Hotel, where he proceeded to run up his father’s credit card on an expensive hotel room and alcohol. This was our second Reflection scene.

In the morning, Jim Brown came knocking at the door. We figured that he was an ex-cop and knew how to find people. He had news: LaTeesha had gone missing. Reggie told him about seeing the mysterious man go into Mike Washington’s house, and Jim recognized the man. “Chainsaw�. So they drove to Chainsaw’s house and found him in the living room, hands in the air, with LaTeesha pointing a gun at him.

Reggie tried to talk her into putting down the gun, but she wasn’t having any of it. She had already shot a table lamp, and she shot another one, demanding that Chainsaw tell her why he had murdered her father.

So Reggie lays it all out. “LaTeesha, if you’re going to be my girl, this just won’t do.� In shock, LaTeesha turns to him and says, “What?� Then she accidentally pulls the trigger again, shooting her grandfather in the foot.

It was only one point of Violence, so it wasn’t too bad. I have to say this. Otherwise I would feel bad about how hard I was laughing during the scene. It was truly great.

After this, we ran out of steam pretty quickly. Another Research scene established that Chainsaw is the father of Emily Watson, a friend of LaTeesha’s, but that wasn’t providing any solid handles for us. So we called it in for the night.

Post-Game thoughts

Research suddenly jumped from being a trouble point to being a major cool point for this game. But it’s a scary cool point. There are no provisions for Lines within Research. Veils are easy to accomplish, but, as written, there are no Lines. Now, I think that this is ameliorated by the investigator’s being able to select one thing. If you don’t want the really icky stuff in your game, then always define the relationship type and all will be well. Still, this is definitely one of those “mature themes� games.

Between this playtest and our other playtest, I’ve had opportunity to see a fairly competent investigator and a fairly incompetent investigator. However, in both cases, the story continues to advance, despite the personal setbacks of the investigator. Also, in both cases, I have a strong empathy with the investigator, regardless of his actions. I want him to do well and to do right, even when he is being beaten up or being underhanded. I also want him ultimately to succeed, even though, as a player, I’m doing my best to oppose him at every turn. So that is definitely a win.

There was some confusion about termination of scenes, which I will need to address better in the next rules draft. However, I think that the rules are just about stabilized.

I’m really happy with how this game is coming together. I’m starting to write the manuscript right now, in fact, and I’d like to get a blind playtest draft together within the next couple of weeks. If all goes well, this should be ready by GenCon this year, which is much better than I had originally been anticipating.

(This post was cross-posted to the Forge.)

Yay! More playtesting! And today, since I’m getting into the groove, I’ll actually do it up as a full-blown AP report. Aren’t you happy?

Quotable

“I just want to see him get along with his daughter….�

“And not backhand her across the room?�

“Yeah.�

Play Report

Tracking this story is a bit difficult, especially as a large portion of the mental effort for the game has been tweaking rules and such. Plus, there’s the ongoing mysteries to which we, mere players, are not privy. Allowing for that, I’ll try to give a brief outline of the story so far.

The intro to the case was Debbie Sandberg’s coming to see Robert George, a DEA desk jockey. Agent George had been involved in Debbie’s arrest for drug dealing, but he had dealt fairly with her (or so she thought). Debbie suspected that her probation officer (Courtney Jackson) had stolen her address book, which still included a number of old drug-dealing contacts. She wanted Robert to recover the book for her.

Well, it’s been several sessions. In the intervening time, we’ve uncovered a possible drug-dealing ring headed up by Jackson (the P.O.), a murdered security guard that worked for Jackson, a couple of ugly love triangles, and discovered Robert’s estranged daughter is smack dab in the middle of it all. Oh yes, and she is pregnant with the child of the murdered security guard, who may or may not be dirty.

And there’s a stash of cocaine worth a million dollars hidden out there somewhere, and everyone wants it.

As Crystal said last night, “Why do we do this to ourselves?� Or, to quote the movie Brick, “There’s not much chance of coming out clean.� Nope. Not for any of them. Not even Robert George.

And last night, it got worse.

When we last left Robert, he had established that, indeed, Courtney had stolen Debbie’s address book, which lends a great deal of weight to Debbie’s claim that Courtney is running a drug ring. During this session, Robert went to follow up on another lead. He had discovered that Debbie had been in contact with her old cell mate, Stephanie, and he got the address where Stephanie had gone.

But first, he ended up meeting with Steven Sandberg, Debbie’s husband, who doesn’t know anything. Poor guy. He fell for a cute skirt, and now he’s starting to pay the price.

Robert refused to tell him anything, but since he is a DEA agent, Steven is starting to suspect something.

Then Robert went to where Stephanie had gone: her boyfriend’s house.

Turns out that the boyfriend’s “house� is actually a trailer in a local trailer park. Debbie’s car was there, too. Robert noticed a joint in the ashtray of her car. Then, when he knocked on the door of the trailer, his daughter Mollie answered. Upon seeing him, she slammed the door and locked it.

Debbie came out and tried to wrap up business with Robert so that he would go away and leave them alone. Instead, Robert tried to get into the trailer. When Debbie stood in front of the door, he pushed her out of the way and forced his way in. There stood Mollie, gun in hand, pointed at him.

Then Robert drew on her. “Let me in,� he said. Then he moved forward, pushing her gun hand to the side.

The gun went off. Outside Debbie screamed.

Mollie tried to bring the gun back in line. Robert chopped at her wrist and then backhanded her. For a split second, he had a flash of doing the same to her mother. She fell backwards, hitting her head and lying quite still. Alive, but unconscious.

Stephanie was in the living room with a shocked look on her face. Laid out on the coffee table were several firearms. Apparently these women were going to war. But why?

The answer would have to wait until another day. We declared the session over.

The Setting

I don’t want Dirty Secretsto have to be about the noir genre in its look-and-feel. I wrote Legends of Alyria to try to get at the roots of fantasy without needing to have orks and elves and things like that. In a similar way, Dirty Secrets isn’t about femme fatales making eyes across a smoky nightclub. You can certainly do that, but I wanted to bring it closer to home.

Thus, my default setting, which I phrase like this: Your town, last week.

The idea is that you should set your story in your town, drawing on your knowledge of the geography and underside of your town. As a result, our game is set in Peoria. So far, that’s been working quite well. There’s the silly fun of messing around with familiar locations in our town. But, more significantly, geography becomes an easy way of communicating character to each other, simply by defining where different characters live. So, for example, Steven and Debbie Sandberg are fairly well-off. So, they live up in the Lynnhurst subdivision. (Actually, they live in Ralph’s house. That was fun.) Conversely, Bill Cornman and Mollie George were living together in one of the projects on the South Side, and Jeff’s trailer was located in King’s Park, next door to Billy Dennis. The players are all familiar with these locations, and there was general nods of agreement when characters were situated accordingly.

Some System Insights

How about that final scene? Pretty nasty, wasn’t it? Yeah, we didn’t like it, either. In fact, we really don’t like Robert at all. He is going to have to do something fairly impressive to redeem himself in our eyes.

I was the opposing player for the final scene. In certain respects, that makes me the “GM� for the scene. I decided that I wanted to mix some things up a bit. First, I introduced Mollie into the scene, which no one was expecting. Her relationship with her father is quite possibly the only humanizing point about Robert right now, and I wanted to put it under stress. Next, as we headed into conflict, I decided to put Robert in a situation where he and Mollie were forcefully opposed to each other. Having two of the Violence sync up was helpful as well.

That’s when I figured something out about my game. Conflict resolution can be tricky to win, especially if you’re opposed by a player who is good at Liar’s Dice. But, if you’re willing to sacrifice some dice, you can dictate at least most of the Violence in the scene. So, in this case, my Violence die and the public Violence die were both “6�s. That means that, if the final bid was for dice with a face value of six, there would be two points of Violence required in the narration, regardless of who won. And so, that’s what I did. I bid in 6’s, which I was hoping to win, I admit. However, even though I lost, I was able to shape the corresponding narration through the Violence Dice.

Then, I pushed the conflict with a Violence conflict. This is similar to the “Challenge� round of regular Liar’s Dice. Whoever makes the initial bid locks the face value of the bid. Aces are not wild for this round. Then, when it is called, instead of losing dice, the difference between the bid and actual number of dice is the amount of Violence produced by the conflict. This portion of the conflict resulted in Robert’s actual attack on Mollie. Again, even though I lost the conflict, I was able to shape the outcome through Violence.

Now, there’s an important point to be made here. The rules state that the winner of the conflict gets to assign the Violence to any Character that he wants, and that it must be the result of Character agency. What that means is that you can win a conflict and assign the Violence to your own character. In this case, it means that Crystal could have chosen to assign that Violence to Robert, if she had wanted. This allowed her to choose the thematic statement being made with the Violence. Would Robert sacrifice himself to be a loving father? Or was the job more important?

His answer was very clear.

This was nifty because, while the game has certain random requirements that are dictated to the players, it still allows a lot of freedom to guide the story within the parameters given. Ultimately, the outcome of that final scene was informed by the dice but chosen by the players. Which is exactly the way I want it to work.

More Research Help

We tested the Research idea from the last post about drawing random words or phrases from a hat. It didn’t really work out well. I’m thinking that I’ll try with a preset word list, or something. So, the quest still goes on for a good research system. I’m open to ideas.

(This playtest account was cross-posted to the Forge.)

We playtested Dirty Secrets again on Monday. (Our regularly scheduled playtest on Thursday night was cancelled, due to sick children.) In this session, we finally got around to resolving a Crime, which is probably the major system of the game that hasn’t received any real testing yet. This gives me the opportunity to elaborate on how this works.

The Crime Grid

One of the goals of Dirty Secrets is preserving the essential mystery about the key Crimes that have occurred during the course of the game. This is an attempt to preserve the shock and surprise of reading a detective novel when the Reveal finally happens. At first, I was keeping track of Facts which incriminated various Characters and whatnot, but then I discarded all of this in favor of a different system.

Let’s face it. The average detective novel is ridiculously convoluted, and rarely are they set up as a whodunit. Rather, the shock of the Reveal is usually not because of the logical direction of the evidence, but rather because of the relational context in which it occurred.

To this end, I came upon the following system for Crime resolution. At the beginning of the game, there are a certain number of Crime sheets (similar to Character sheets) available for use during the game. One of them has to be a Murder. In addition, there is a Crime grid set in the middle of the table. This is either a 3×3, a 3×6, or a 6×6 grid, depending on the length of game that the players want. At the beginning of the game, a counter is randomly placed on the Crime Grid. After each Investigation scene, whoever won the scene’s conflict gets to move the counter a certain number of spaces in a straight line, based on the intensity of the conflict. The player then gets to write down a Character name in the space where the counter ends up. The counter has to be moved across all empty spaces. If this isn’t possible, then the player tries to resolve a Crime. He selects one of the available Crimes and then rolls two dice, which will give Grid coordinates. This is where the counter ends up. If the space is blank, the Crime goes unresolved for now, and the player writes a name in the space where the counter ended up. Otherwise, the Character whose name is in the space is the perpetrator of the Crime. The players then use the currently established facts to justify this outcome.

As the Grid fills up, it gets harder and harder to move the counter legally, thus forcing an eventual resolution of all Crimes in play. Once all Crimes have been created and resolved, the game ends.

Currently, we are playing with a 6×6 Grid. This seems to be working fairly well, although it definitely produces a “novel-length” game. We’re about five sessions into this story, and we’re just finally resolving our first Crime. The next time through, I’m definitely going to need to try with a smaller Grid and see what happens. I’d like this game to be able to be used for a quick, pick-up game. Five sessions isn’t exactly a pick-up game (he noted dryly).

In play, it all worked out rather nicely. The investigator (Robert George) was breaking into the house of his client’s probation officer (Courtney Jackson) to see if she had stolen his client’s address book. (This was the Crime that started everything off.) Crystal had been angling for this scene for a while, so she had maneuvered the counter into a corner of the Grid to make it easier to trigger a Crime resolution. She also pushed in the scene conflict, thus forcing the counter to move two spaces instead of one. The conflict, by the way, was getting past the large German shepherd that was guarding Courtney’s house. Eventually, George was triumphant, allowing him to enter and search the house for the book. Crystal then narrated finding the book and ended the scene. Because of the location of the counter, Crystal was able to trigger a Crime resolution. She selected the theft of the book and rolled. Oddly enough, the counter landed on a space with the name “Courtney Jackson”. So, officially, by the rules of the game, Courtney had indeed stolen the book. Otherwise, we would have had to justify how the book had ended up in Courtney’s house.

Of course, we had established the importance of this address book earlier, since Robert’s client (Debbie Sandberg) was a major drug dealer at one point before being caught and going to jail. According to Debbie, Courtney is running a drug ring out of the Probation Office and wanted the contact information in Debbie’s address book so that she could expand her network of contacts. Although, now that I think about it, I wonder if it has anything to do with the large shipment of cocaine that went missing just after Debbie was thrown in jail….

Anyways, the point is that it was very easy to justify why Courtney had stolen the book.

So, at least for the first time out of the gate, the Crime Grid seems to be working. A good thing, too, because this is the system that I’ve probably been the most nervous about. It’s a tricky thing to balance player authorship and GMful play on this side with a desire to create complete audience surprise on the other side. I think that I’ve managed to do it, but this is a system that will need a lot of testing.

Division of Authority

In a previous post, I said:

However, last night, I realized that I also need to be looking for the techniques that we apply during gameplay. After all, the three of us have gamed together for quite some time, and there are a variety of techniques that we apply without really thinking about it. If the success of the game relies, even in part, on these techniques, then I need to be sure that I know about it so that I can communicate them in the rules manuscript. I’m not just testing the rules; I need to observe the emergent behavior that the rules produce and be able to explain to a stranger how to produce similar effects.

One major area that has turned up has to do with the division of narration authority. Who gets the final say on what? We had an extensive discussion about this in the wake of our last playtest. This was really helpful, because it finally helped me put words to what I’ve meant the game to do. Essentially, the game relies on a balance of two factors.

The first factor is an explicit assigning of narration authority to certain players. The investigator player has final say over the status and actions of the investigator. The current opposing player has final say over everything else. However, there is a Challenge rule, which states that any narration by any player may be overridden by the unanimous consent of the other players. In other words, if the rest of the group doesn’t like what you’ve said, then they can veto it. (Hat tip: Spione and Universalis) So, at any given time, it should be clear who has the authority to say “Yea” or “Nay”.

The second factor, though, is what I am currently calling “friendly trespass”. What I mean by this is that any player should feel free to narrate anything, even if it wanders onto someone else’s territory. In fact, all narration should be almost a free-for-all of ideas and suggestions being pitched out by all players. Of necessity, this will result in someone entering into an area that is controlled by someone else. But that’s okay; it’s “friendly trespass”. Of course, it should be understood that the appropriate person can say, “No, I have a better idea” and overrule your idea.

In other words, the game plays as a free-for-all, with an explicit authority structure to fall back on when necessary.

So, for example, during the German shepherd conflict, Crystal wanted Robert to have a flashback to pitching for his Little League team when he was growing up. This was to justify Robert’s being able to hit the dog with a chunk of concrete. This was within her authority, since she is the investigator player for our game. However, Gabrielle and I weren’t buying. We accepted Robert’s throwing the concrete; we just didn’t think that Robert was enough of a team player to have been a baseball player, and we didn’t think that it was really an appropriate time for a flashback anyways. Thus, the rest of the table vetoed a portion of Crystal’s narration.

This requires a functional game group, but I’m finding that it works quite well in play.

My Research Scenes Are Awful

And now, an appeal for ideas. Dirty Secrets has several scene types to encompass several broad types of action. One scene type is the “Research scene”. This is when the investigator goes poking around a crime scene or in records of some kind to find out some raw information. From a structural perspective, the point is to introduce some new facts to give the investigator some direction when he is stalled out. Here’s my dilemma. I don’t want a research scene to allow for a massive data dump. There needs to be some constraint. On the other hand, it doesn’t really make any sense to use the standard conflict system for a research scene. Trust me; we’ve tried. So I need a simple research system.

What I currently have is this: the investigator describes the actions that he is taking to research and lays out the sort of information that he is looking for. The opposing player then makes up 1d6 facts for the investigator, based on the investigator’s narration.

This works okay, but it feels boring. Any ideas on improving this?

What Now?

The next step is to finish the current story that we’re playing through. After that, I figure that I’ll write up a basic playtest draft, both to gather my scattered thoughts and to allow others to take the game for a spin. At that point, I’ll probably solicit for some blind playtesters and do some more testing myself.

I’m feeling pretty good, actually. The game feels like it is coming together well.

(cross-posted to the Forge)

Last night we playtested Dirty Secrets some more. Came across some more rules bumps, as expected, and lots of areas that need more clarity. I still think that I’m on the right track. I know how I want most of the things to work; it’s mostly a matter of expressing it in words.

But that’s not what I want to talk about. Instead, I want to discuss the last scene that we played through.

Robert George is our investigator character. He’s a DEA agent doing a little moonlighting for some extra cash. Even though he is in his mid-40s, he has not advanced in the ranks. Indeed, he is essentially a desk jockey, who is unconsciously living out some of his power fantasies through pursuing this investigation. In our previous session, we had established that he once was married, but his wife divorced him about 10 years ago.

Actually, it was worse than that. Robert came home one day and caught his wife in bed with another man. Robert chased the man off and got into a screaming fight with his wife. During this fight, she told him that she had set things up so that he would find them. He had abandoned and neglected her, and so she wanted to hurt him as badly as he had hurt her. Enraged, he slapped her across the face.

Their five-year old daughter saw it all.

For the last ten years, Mollie hasn’t said a word to her father.

Until this night, when she called her father, because she was in trouble. Robert found her in the apartment of her boyfriend, who was lying on the floor, shot through the head. That’s where we picked up our story last night.

We didn’t get very far last night. We started too late (mostly because of a last-minute beer run), and we ran into some rules snags. But finally, we found Robert back at his apartment with his daughter Mollie. It’s 3 a.m. Mollie’s boyfriend and father of her unborn child is dead. Mollie and Robert haven’t spoken in 10 years.

Now what?

It was heart-wrenching to me. Crystal (narrating for Robert) described his pathetic efforts to fix some food for Mollie. He put together a bologna sandwich, made from cheap bologna, white bread, and squeeze mayonnaise, sprinkled with crushed potato chips, served on a styrofoam place. He tried to make some chamomile tea from some old loose tea that a co-worker had once given him. Of course, he fumbled the tea ball, so there are tea leaves floating in the tea, which he served in an old, chipped mug.

He wasn’t trying to be cruel, you understand. What made this all so heart-wrenching was that this was the best that he had to offer.

Even the tea was significant. The co-worker who had given him the tea was an “attractive woman”, who had been hoping that she could maybe start a relationship with Robert. But he was oblivious to what was going on. Now, at least for the audience, the tea is just one more reminder of the failure of this man as a human being.

So, Robert serves this meal to his daughter. And then he proceeded to pump her for information. Because, even now, the case still has a priority. He wants to try to reconnect with his daughter, but he can’t quite get out of “work mode” to really do the job.

When we got into conflict, both Crystal and I dialed our own Violence dice to 1, where they couldn’t hurt anyone. The third Violence die rolled a 1, which put it out of play, for which we were all happy. Afterwards, Crystal admitted that she had prayed that the public Violence die would roll a 1, because none of us could bear the thought of Violence in this very fragile scene.

Still, it hurt to watch.

I’m not sure what my point is, really. But this was such a deeply meaningful scene to me, I had to share it.

(cross-posted fromthe Forge)

In this thread, I said:

In another post, I’ll write up what I’ve done so far, and I’ll scrawl notes as I go through my ongoing playtest as I learn about the process. Maybe, as we compare our experiences, we can start extracting some principles.

This is that thread! This week was the first full week of “serious” playtest for Dirty Secrets, and I’m pretty stoked with how things are going so far. So this seems like a good time to start this thread. Besides, Jason has been holding down his end of the bargain, so it’s time for me to pony up.

Dirty Secrets is my game of noir detective stories. The idea had been kicking around in my head for a while, but I started actual development work on Dirty Secrets in August 2006. The core premise at the time was having to divide attention between actually solving the case and simultaneously resisting the degrading effects on the investigator’s emotions. The initial system was awful. I never actually playtested it; I could just tell that it lacked that necessary essential spark of fun. But I kept plugging away at it, twisting this part and bending that part, trying to see if it would settle into place.

In the meantime, I immersed myself in the genre stories. I watched Chinatown, The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, and Brick. I read Dashiell Hammett, and then Raymond Chandler, and then (via Ron’s recommendation) Ross MacDonald. I even tracked down some issues of Fell and read them. Slowly, the style and feel began to settle into my brain.

The breakthrough came sometime toward the end of the year. I honestly don’t remember when I got the idea to use Liars’ Dice as a core mechanic. I know that, in part, I was influenced by the back-and-forth of Dogs in the Vineyard, which I liked. Plus, it seemed to fit the genre well. Most conflicts in the genre tend to be between two people, fencing back and forth, trying to discover what secrets the other person has without giving up his own. A bluffing game like Liars’ Dice seemed perfect. Plus, with its bidding structure, it has that back-and-forth feel built into the game.

I had some other design constraints as well. Mostly, I wanted a game that I would actually play. Increasingly, I have little patience for out-of-game prep. I want to be able to sit down at the table and get to work. Prep at the table is fine with me, but I don’t want to have to worry about the game in between sessions. Also, I wanted to make a GMless game. Again, this is mostly because this is the sort of game that I would like to play.

At the same time, I wanted a game that my wife would play. Crystal doesn’t usually like the free-wheeling storygames, where you aren’t specifically associated with a given character. She actually likes getting behind the eyes of her character and engaging the story in that way. Thus, I gradually evolved the current setup, which consists of one player who runs the investigator and the remaining players, who play everything else. I jokingly say that this is a game for one player and many GMs, but there’s a chunk of truth in that.

Finally, I wanted a game that combined real player authorship with the ability to enjoy the surprise reveal when the mystery is solved.

I poked at the system for a bit longer, but I soon came to realize that I needed to put the game through its paces. It wasn’t done. In fact, there were large chunks of the rules that didn’t even exist yet. However, I needed to have a test of concept playtest, partly to reveal areas of weakness in the game, and partly to see if the core concept even worked at all.

So, one night, I sat down with Crystal and Gabrielle. The prototype was on the table, and we were about to play. I made all sorts of suicide statements (”This isn’t a complete game”, “I hope that it isn’t awful”, and stuff like that), then we got into it. As expected, there was all kinds of ugliness, but there were three positive outcomes. First, we proved that the fundamental system concept was functional. Second, we uncovered all sorts of areas that needed to be addressed. (For example, how do you handle research in a game where the players just get to make everything up?)

And third, my playtesters said that they had fun.

That was quite possibly the most important item.

Since then, I’ve worked on refining the design, which has included conversations with various friends. In particular, Crystal and I had a highly profitable conversation while driving back from Champaign one evening. Also, I’ve continued to read detective stories and dig up other movies, asking myself the question, “Could I do this scene in Dirty Secrets? What about this scene?”

And now we are into full-blown formal playtest. Each session starts with a report of new rules, then we play, then I gather final feedback for the night, in addition to any comments during the game. In particular, I try to home in on areas that caused a strong reaction from the players, be it good or bad. If it’s bad, I want to fix it. If it’s good, I want to do more of it.

However, last night, I realized that I also need to be looking for the techniques that we apply during gameplay. After all, the three of us have gamed together for quite some time, and there are a variety of techniques that we apply without really thinking about it. If the success of the game relies, even in part, on these techniques, then I need to be sure that I know about it so that I can communicate them in the rules manuscript. I’m not just testing the rules; I need to observe the emergent behavior that the rules produce and be able to explain to a stranger how to produce similar effects.

I also realized that I’ve found my answer regarding the age-old question: “Do you change rules in the middle of a playtest?” My current answer is, “Do not change rules in the middle of that rule’s cycle.” So, you need to see a full iteration of the rule’s effects before changing it. Some rules have a small cycle, so they can be changed fairly quickly. Others have a long cycle and shouldn’t be tweaked until later. I’m also working with an alpha version. Once I get to a stable beta, I’ll probably tighten up and play through an entire story with the same ruleset. I’m also not going to be dogmatic about this. It’s working so far, but I reserve the right to change my mind.

So, in summation, some thoughts from my playtesting so far:

–Don’t be afraid to run “proof of concept” playtests before your alpha is finished.
–Have friends around who can critique your work and offer helpful insight.
–If your playtest is producing functional play, be watching to see what techniques are being employed so that you can explicitly describe them.
–Be careful when you change your rules.

My current playtest goal is to finish out our current story, which will also be the finish of the Mystery Resolution system cycle, which is my current area of concern. Once I get that into rough shape, I’ll probably write up a formal playtest document. Until then, it’s scrawls in my notebook.