Conventioning - Gen Con 2017

GenCon!

Okay, so Gen Con happened this past week and everyone is running their recaps so I figured I should too! Because a lot of stuff happened, and this one felt like a weird Gen Con. Not a bad weird, more of kind of a strange weird. The lead up felt like it just kind of came up as a surprise, and the whole way there it didn't seem like it was actually happening.

Then we arrived, and it did. So let me give you a recap of what happened while I was there.

Booth Setup

We get there, and finally get the booth setup. It's always a great time, and the people who are doing all the hard work had done most of the annoying work first (the setup of all the flooring and the carpets on it) and then we got to work on setting up the booth.

The biggest issue came up when the big smirky ball in the sky wasn't inflating because the battery powered inflater we had ... died. Well the battery did. Thankfully the staff at the convention center is amazing and they found a way to pump it up for us and then floated it up right before the carpets went down.

IGDN Social

After that came the IGDN social. Now, at this point I have driven about 9-10 hours myself, and got about 3 hours of sleep in the afternoon before that so I'm a little ... exhausted. Now Exhausted Jonathan mixed with coffee and one drink turns into manic Jonathan pretty quickly so I was a little loud, and a little overly energetic.

That said! It was a great time. A bunch of Canadians took over the table by the door, and we indoctrinated a few of our American friends. They did accept the maple candy of citizenship so it was all okay. Particularly fun to hang out with Rob, Rachelle, Kate, and Anna who I have met peripherally a few times but was able to actually have conversations with.

If you've never been and are an indie designer, I highly recommend it. Loughmillers is a nice space (if small) and there are a lot of the smaller designers that you can hang out and talk with. The key is to get there early and grab a table because space is at a bit of a premium.

They announced the results of the Indie Ground Breaker awards, of which I probably should have kept track of but didn't because see manic Jonathan. I won one of the prizes and got a physical copy of Chariot which is great since I have the PDF. It's like I did the reverse bricks and mortar!

Stuff that happened

GenCon is always a bit of a blur. I got to spend most of it with my booth family, hanging out at the Smirk and Dagger booth. That said, I ran two RPGs.

We Used To Be Friends - Thursday

Ended up with a game of We Used To Be Friends, and it was a 4 hour slot because I find that the city creation and character creation takes a while because people get invested in it. It was nice to have a group of people who were invested in it but blazed through it. Fourty Five minutes and we were ready to go with our town with four clubs. It was a fun time where I got to play this game with Matt and his daughter Teagan. Matt was playing the Libertine and Teagan was playing a super Harriot the Spy like Plotter.

The Episode Mystery was based around why this equipment for this new nightclub got trashed. Which was a perfect episode mystery. For a while it looked like one of the character Duncan might have done it, but it turns out it was the family's security head honcho. It was heavily implied that Duncan's mom was getting kind of handsy with Security Dude at a party.

Shining Moments: 
-Omarr (Hard Boiled) coming out to Duncan (Socialite) and Opening Up, asking them out basically. Rolling a 6 and then the moment happens when that's when everything gets quiet and everyone hears so he basically came out to everyone and their parents.

When asked what Duncan was going to do the response was, "Pause ... and then just walk away without saying anything."

Then the Delinquent "started a fight" with Omarr to try to help them hide their embarrassment.

-Just outside Duncan went outside and had a moment with Matt's Libertine (whose character name I forget) and ended up also rolling a 6 which ended up being this moment where the Libertine thought he was having a moment but Duncan though he was hitting on him too.

"Is that what I am to all of you?" Duncan screamed.

Critical Go Westerly! - Faux Dungeon - Friday

This game was fun! I had a couple of people who had never really played RPGs before, and a bunch of people who I knew (Kate has owned this game for like 5 years and has yet to play it) as well as Michelle and her son Will. I had a table of 7 people but Critical is kind of the game where if you have more people it doesn't bog down too much.

We had everyone but Daphadiana and Tara, but that makes for a good group, and while there was a couple of times someone said something wincy (and I had to keep reminding someone that Angelique is a woman) it was fun. Laughter was had by much people!

Shining Moments:

-Urist has had enough of being trapped inside the demon's ball of invulnerability and wants out. The player goes, "Wait, there's like real stone beneath me. I want to find it, I want to find the real floor."

To which I replied, "So you're saying you want to disbelieve the dungeon?"

"Yes."

"Just checking."

-There was a RDI moment that made me smile.

"The wench over here --"

"HEY! I have a name. It's Mary."

I laughed because I think Mary would have approved of it had she been there.

-The players have messed with the mechanism and find themselves teleported to the actual realm of Ailee the Necromancer, and they see the house.

Barnabus, "Oh! I read about this in Magician's home weekly. It's 4 years out of date but it was very impressive architecture. I mean, there seems to be less bodies laying about the place but I guess that's to be expected."

Conventioning - Breakout 2017

Breakout happened! There was a long list of guests and a lot of amazing games and tonnes of fun were had. That's thanks to the tireless efforts of all the volunteers from the GMs who volunteer to run events to the staff that work relentlessly to make sure everything is run as smoothly as possible. It's a great convention, and everyone I know had a great time.

That said! What did you do Jonathan?

That's a good question self.

Saturday was mostly about panels.

First Panel was on GM Troubleshooting, with Matt McFarland, Robin Laws, Anna Kreidar, and myself. I was there as a last minute replacement of the missing Emily Care Boss (who was ill) and Guest Boss (who was tending to the ill) and it went really well. It was thankfully not a lot of the standard "I hate my group and how do I make them change" but a lot of great questions in regards to preparation, and how do you feel you should structure things.

Second Panel I was just moderating but it was the State of the Industry Panel so that means it had Eric Lang, Michelle Lyons-McFarland, Robin Laws, and Jonathan Gilmour. It was a pretty good panel, with a lot of questions and only a few limited "I have a statement to show off how smart I am, but I'm going to pretend it's a question" moment. The biggest difficulty I had was that there were lots of board game questions and fewer and fewer RPG questions, so to throw things to our RPG guests I had to kind of find the RPG nugget in them and then pass them along to the RPG part of the panel. I think it was a great time, and lots of people seemed to enjoy the information and had a good time which was great.

That night I got to run a game of We Used To Be Friends with Megan, Duan, Bill and Amanda who were amazing. They were experienced players, and had been through a bunch of games together including The Watch by Anna Kreider and Andrew Medeiros which I have heard nothing but amazing things about, so that's great.

We had a Delinquent (Amanda's Zia), The Hard Boiled (Duan's Casey), The Libertine (Bill's Nadeem), The Socialite (Megan's Kobi), and my Ingenue (Sparrow). I wanted to play the Ingenue because I was interested to see how it would play and what it needs, I tend to usually play the Tech Geek because I have all the love for Mac.

Anyway, the episode mystery is that someone, my Rival Erika, got fired from her job for stealing tips and her little brother swore that she didn't do it and went to Zia for help. Zia talked to the kid for information, and Amanda rolled Gumshoe and asked "Why should I care about this" which is because someone that Zia had listed as an enemy was the person who was the first suspect and this would be a great way to bring her down. So she called Casey to help her figure this out.

Casey was at home with Sparrow because he had been kind of somewhat under "house arrest" since he ended up blowing the whistle on his cousin. Zia and Nadeem ended up showing up and Nadeem got their attention by throwing rock at the window, even though they didn't need that. Sparrow ran interference (because everyone loves him, how could you not believe him) and Zia asked for Casey's help which he was happy to give because it would give him something to get out of the house.

Nadeem got sent out to get Erika out of her house and over so that Casey, and Sparrow, could talk to her and see what's going on. They got some more clues and were going to meet up with Zia at the underground mining tunnel club that we had built when we built our town.

Kobi didn't really seem to have a spot, so Megan did the one thing that I really hoped would happen and started working on her personal mystery. Megan picked a scene where Kobi had just come home and her parents were arguing about telling her something, so she hid and tried to Gumshoe it. I think we messed up because she should have still received a clue, but she did hear something about a facility and her cliffhanger was her dad walking over to her and asking, almost shouting, "How long have you been there?"

Because there was a cliffhanger we moved on to the party where Nadeem was already there trying to flirt with the suspect. It was great because he failed to flirt and managed to get a clue anyway because the Libertine is meant to try and fail and be okay with it. But what was awesome was that the suspect (whose name escapes me) was totally aware of what Nadeem was doing and set a trap for him later and told him to meet her by the lake.

Casey and Sparrow show up, and Zia who likes to mess with Sparrow's mind drops down from the balcony above right in front terrifying Sparrow. Amanda went to the move "Sometimes I'm up all night thinking about myself" where if she does something dangerous to turn someone on. She made the 10, which means that Sparrow changed his relationship with her (it would be more than that but that's what it said at the time) and so I decided "Okay, it's Rival. You've got to stop doing that to me." And that became a thing where clearly the Delinquent had a thing for riling up the Ingenue.

This is getting long, so to quickly start summing things up. Nadeem ended up getting attacked by some guy who turned out to be the manager at the restaurant in the Casino where Erika and the suspect worked. Then he got arrested for trespassing and spent some time in a chair next to a cop while hitting on everyone.

Kobi watched it happen, and got away but fought with her friend (the suspect) about it, and then went home to do some sleuthing on her parents. She ended up finding the name of the institute they were talking about.

Casey solved the case, with help from Sparrow and Zia, and made Erika's little brother's day. Turns out that the manager was the suspects cousin. The suspect was the one stealing the tips, and the cousin didn't want to get her in trouble so he framed Erika for it.

With Sparrow, I decided to use my Rival move with Zia. Ended up getting a 10+ which means I get a bonus, so I chose take +1 forward if you challenge them. Since Zia seemed to be intent on turning that into a game of I can make you feel things I used the Ingenue's turn someone on move, which is when you act innocent or naive. Rolled a 10+.

Zia's reaction was, "I've been waiting for this for a while. My place, or yours."
Sparrow demured and said, "My mother wouldn't approve."
Zia replies, "Hot. Your place then."

And scene.

It was a great game and it showed me a few things.

A. The "What should you care" question is so good early on because it provides that kind of impetus for a lot of things. It's not as useful later on, but that's why you get to ask other questions.
B. I think I made is explicit in the text that you have to deal with a cliffhanger before a character can appear in another scene, but I think I have to go back for it.
C. I ended up going over the few casefiles that had a "turn someone on move" and made them a bit more uniform and a lot more interesting. I had originally just replaced the "give them a string" with "change your relationship"
D. The question for the mystery was so good. When we were wondering how to make clues fit, going back to the question made it way easier to figure out.
E. The personal mysteries are perfect if your character really isn't doing much with the episode. If we were able to play with it longer you can kind of have two or three stories going on at the same time and it doesn't feel like it's dragging things apart. In fact, when we started to come up with ways to get Kobi into the episode, it felt more forced than letting her explore that mystery on her own.

Sunday I ran Critical!: Go Westerly - The Importance of being Gwendolyn

I had a bunch of players who were nice, and I had Michelle playing in the game which was awesome because she was supposed to play in this game when I first wrote it. I'm glad she got to play it because it's my version of Tom Stoppard's Travesties, where you have a game that's about a situation that is also about the Importance of being Ernest.

There were quite a few laughs and while I made the mistake of booking two hours (I had a thought to run Faux Dungeon, but switched my mind in regards to the game forgot to do so and so only had 2 hours of game) rather than 3 or 4. That said, it was super amusing and a good time!

I managed to playtest a bunch of stuff, as well as get a few board game moments in. It was a very good time, and something I recommend for everyone. Seriously, if you're looking to get someone into trying out games, or trying out conventions I can't recommend Breakout enough.

Veronica Monsterhearts - Hardboiled Inequality

I've been working on Veronica Monsterhearts for over a year and I haven't had a lot of opportunities to play it. I've had one or two play tests myself, and then Cheyenne ran at Gen Con last year so it's been a lot of theoretical kind of stuff rather than hard physical testing.

That said, something came up with Cheyenne's play test that I feel I really should talk about. An important part of the first session is the Welcome To Blank part of the game, where you build the city that you're going to be playing in. This sections was created because when we did our first play test, one thing that came up was that there was little to care about where the action was taking place. In a noir story, the location is just as much of a character as the players. In Veronica Mars the city of Neptune shapes the narrative in a lot of important ways and so I think it became important that there were some questions that were answered ahead of time. 

The questions that you ask in Welcome to Blank revolve around the city, and why there are large sections of inequality. It also focuses on the corruption of the police and local officials. Both of these are important for a Noir story because they end up creating the circumstances that create the need to go outside what's the "socially acceptable" method of handling problems, which is through the police or the authorities.

Corrupt officials are a standard part of the noir genre. It feels currently prescient with the current focus on police misconduct and the "blue wall" where organizations exist to protect officers regardless of what actions they might have done. It's currently nothing new, when you read Chandler that's one of the reasons why Marlowe decided to be a PI rather than stay a police officer in the 20s. Marlowe felt that the corruption was too much, and he's rather be a PI barely making it through than stand with the police. Through Chandler's novels the police are shown time and time again to be easily bribed, interested only in their immediately benefit, with the few exceptions frequently meeting bad ends. It isn't just the police, but really any authority figure. They have their own agendas, and desire, none of which are part of the public good. This attitude, and these actions, are what makes the detective, or to generalize it further the outlier, necessary. They become the foil against the police, doing what is necessary to bring a sense of justice to their clients that the authorities refuse to do.

This refusal stems from the authority's understanding of inequality. All those in power want to be on the side of the haves rather than the have nots, and will curry favour with those with greater power and influence than themselves. Which brings us to the point that noir stories have a kind of Aristotelian quality to them. They are frequently about people with wealth and power laid low by their own hubris. However, instead of fate or circumstance causing their fall from grace it is the outlier who provides the push that causes the fall.

The outlier's existence is just as that force for retribution. It can be violent like Continental Op in Red Harvest, enduring like Marlowe, subtle like Sam Spade, or the outcast like Veronica in Veronica Mars. It's the inequality in the society that forces people to look to them for justice. That's in part why I was interested in doing a Veronica Mars inspired game. There are many levels of inequality in a high school. There's the same societal inequality reflected in the school, where those with money have a higher social standing than those without. There's also a power imbalance between the students and the teachers, where if there is little recourse and few options for the students who need help from the teachers. That inequality is essential to a kind of hard boiled, noir story that I'm hoping Veronica Monsterhearts can give to people.

Veronica Monsterhearts - Back to Work On It

Now that there has been some distance between me and this game, I think I'm going to take a break from Rent's Due and work a little bit more on Veronica Monsterhearts.

What I'm aiming for in v0.3

1. Better wording. I'm going to be looking at all the text and not just the moves and all that.
2. Better move decisions. I do want to look at the moves again, because one of the things that came up during the game that people had some issues with what to do for 7-9, so I've got to clean that up.
3. Keeping the Questions for the City Creation and making that the first session, and making up a first session section.
4. Making some moves that can be used if there's a problem in making a decision.

Or maybe even have that be a 7-9 thing. If you've done messed up, choose one of the moves and roll it. On my second thought it seems a little clunky and fractal (when in doubt refer to a move, which refers to another move, which refers to another move) but it is something to think about.

I think the basic moves are good. I think the handling of the mystery is good. I think I just need to clarify some things.

Veronica Monsterhearts - Playtesting Notes

Well, got some Veronica Monsterhearts playtesting done. Little playtesting done, but the character creation stuff gave me some thoughts.

1. Need to make everything immediate to the players. You just don't make it up and go, you have to make the city and I have to come up with that. Everything that's coming up is heavily influenced by 5 Fires, but I really don't want to just cut and paste that. It needs to fit this game, and not that one. However, that's the city creation that I'm enamoured with so it's going to be there.

2. Need to look at the scenes and how to frame them. There was a bit of panic about setting scenes with little or no direction on how to start them. I kind of did that in Geasa but I think this might be something that needs a little bit more direction since it's using AW.

I was directed to look at Murderous Ghosts but I didn't enjoy it too much when I read it the first time, but I'm sure that there is something there but I really don't want to do that.

3. I think I'll have to revisit the casefiles again, mainly because they need to be cleaned up a little bit and try to think about how to incorporate scene setting moves into them. No clue how I'm going to do that but that's there.

I think those are the three things I need to look over again, and then give it another playtest.

Veronica Monsterhearts - Looking anew at the Basic Moves

Why am I doing this? Because I didn't really like what was there, it was more the first thing that came to mind rather than something actually useful. There was also something that someone said about the difference between something like Apocalypse World and Dungeon World is that DW is about the players dealing with their environment and AW is about the players dealing with the other players. I think this game needs to be somewhere in the middle, and I don't feel that I managed to get there. The original Basic Moves as written are here. Let's see if I can improve them.

Basic Moves

Sweep the Scene

Whenever you're looking for information about a situation, a scene, or a crime, ROLL+eyes. On a 10+ you pick up 3 Clues. On a 7-9, you get 2 Clues, but you get interrupted, discovered, or attacked. You must spend at least 1 clue to ask one of these questions:

-Who should I talk to next?

-What am I missing here?

-Where is the next place to go?

-Why should I care about this?

-When is something going to happen?

On a 6- you get 1 Clue that you can't spend on any of those questions, and something bad happens ... good luck. 

Okay, I changed up the questions because I thought this is a little better. There's a few more leading questions that give the player a direction to go in rather than just have them answer questions about the environment. It should be more "how do I move this story forward."

I also wanted to make sure that you could get at least one clue from this move so that's why it got a -6 section as well. 

Open Up

When you reveal something personal to someone else, ROLL+Soft. On a 10+ you can either remove 2 conditions, or 1 condition you have and 1 condition they have. On a 7+ you can remove 1 condition you have, or 1 condition they have.

Confession time, I'm adding another change to AW here. I'm not using Harm or anything resembling an HP stat. I don't want this to be about damage, I want this to be about problems. With that in mind, I'm going to give people 4 conditions in 3 "branches." You hit the 4th condition in anyone of those branches and you're taken out. I don't know what that means yet, but I like that better for this game than Harm.

Three branches? Physical, Emotional, Social. Because that's where a lot of the hurt in Veronica Mars is. I like this a lot more now because you can open up to share, or you can open up to be selfish and I think that's really in keeping more with how the show goes than say filling up a circle or ticking marks of HP. I think that the one way everyone has to recover is more through opening up to other people which makes them possibly vulnerable later on is great. Maybe do it with four of them so that there's one for each STAT, and if you get a stat taken to -2 then you're taken out? That way if you have a high HARD 

And Action

Whenever you act where there's any immediate danger, ROLL+Rash. On a 10+ you get to act with no consequences of the danger. On a 7-9, you get to act but choose one: you take a condition; you get a cliffhanger even if you have another move.

I like this one more than the previous And Action move. First of all it's a little more general, so that could be if there's a danger of getting caught, or a danger from another player. It provides you with the option to decide what happens if you get a 7-9, it immediately stops the scene or gives people damage in the way we're doing damage here. Is it too vague? I don't know, but I like it more because the immediate danger is less specific than "something physical."

Shut Someone Down

When you need to put someone in their place, ROLL+Hard. On a 10+ choose one: give them a Condition; they lose a String against you; if they held no Strings on you, gain a String on them. On a 7-9, choose one: you each give a Condition to one another; you each lose a String on one another.

I think this is something that belongs into the basic move section. I think shutting people down is something that should be tied to hard more than anything else so I think keeping it here is worth while. The others I think should be more open, and then I think we need to have the "Putting Clues together" move that I need to add.

Adaptable Moves

I'm going to keep Adaptable Moves for now because I still like the idea, I think it's workable, and I don't have something to replace it just yet. If I do, then we'll talk about it then, but right now let's keep this as is.

Pick which STAT will apply to each move. You must apply each STAT only once.

Manipulate an NPC

When you want to get NPC to do what you want them to, ROLL+. On a 10+ they'll do what you want depending on how you manipulate them except confess to a crime without evidence. On a 7-9, the MC will tell you what it'll take to get the NPC to do what you want. Do it and they will.

This is straight out of Monsterhearts with a little modification. I don't want people to manipulate the suspects with just a single move, so I modified it to make suspects a little harder to manipulate. You still need to be able to manipulate them to get them arrested, because solving the crime is 3/4 of the job ... the other 1/4 is getting them into the hands of the "authorities" with a smug sense of satisfaction.

Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!

When you want to hurt someone physically, emotionally, or socially, ROLL+. On a 10+ choose one: you give them 2 conditions,  you give them 1 condition and take a string on them or get a clue from them. On a 7-9 you give them a condition, but choose 1: They gain 1 String on you; They get a Clue from the exchange; They deal give 1 Condition to you.

Back to the conditions instead of Harm. I also like the fact that you can trade clues this way too. I think it's good that it doesn't generate new clues, but it still can move the clues around the table. I want to just leave it as hurt someone, but I think part of me feels that I should include physically, emotionally, or socially because that way there's less ambiguity. 

Hold OnWhenever you need to withstand something, ROLL+. On a 10+ you withstand whatever you needed to, and managed to get a clue, and a string on whoever was working against you. On a 7-9, you withstand whatever you needed to, but managed to get a clue or a string on whoever was working against you.

I like the results of this move a little bit more than it was before. Instead of being another avenue for conditions, it gives you the ability to get more clues and more strings by taking people's best shot and taking it. It's a little reminiscent of how you get more dice in Technoir when you take risks and damage. 

Put it All Together

Whenever you want to use a clue to help solve a mystery, ROLL+. On a 10+ you get to place two clues on a suspect. On a 7-9 you get to place a clue, and the player with the least clues get to place your second clue on a different suspect. On a 6- the player with the least clues places your clue on a suspect.

And this is the final one. I like that it's on the changeable scale, so you can be good at putting clues together even if you aren't good at getting them. I think this solves some other problems I had with how do you solve the mystery.

Veronica Monsterhearts - GM Less play

I think this is the next thing I need to talk about, because it's one of the big thoughts about this game on how I want to take AW and make it GMless. I mean, Murderous Ghosts kind of does that, but not really. It's very much a two person game, and it's got its on way to do things. I ended up writing down notes, because I think better with a pen in my hand than a keyboard in front of me, and here are some thoughts I have about GM less play and what that means for Veronica Monsterhearts.

1. Each person takes their turn as the Investigator. As the Investigator its your job to set the scene, describe who is there, and figure out what's going on. You have free reign to put NPCs in the scene, but you should probably ask if someone wants to have their PC there.

Side thought: Should there be a reward for being in a scene? One per episode mystery you gain 1 XP or 1 Clue for showing up. You can get each reward once and then after that you're there if it makes sense? Do I want to rely on "good playing" to get people involved, or do I want something mechanical to get them there.

2. Once the scene is set you can improvise as much as you want. If you want to have long discussions, and huge acting scenes because that's what you love then go for it. If you want to just describe things, have fun with that. Play it the way you have more fun in. However, in the scene you get to use two moves. Originally I had it written down as you get to do one basic move and one Casefile move but that might just be a little too limiting. I think that will have to be a test thing to see how that works.

When you're done, you resolve the scene by creating a cliffhanger. This can be a soft or hard move, depending on how well you did with you move, that you decide upon. You won't be able to resolve it, but it sets yourself up for your next turn as investigator. When you're done with your cliffhanger you pass that investigator hat onto the next person. Think of this as cutting

Who is that next person? You decide, you pick who goes next and because this is Marvel Initiative, everyone gets a turn at the investigator hat before it goes around again.

Note on not mentioning the move thing you see in all *World games.
I get the idea behind it, it's just reinforcing the idea that you want to sell the reaction and the fiction rather than say "You're now split up" but even AW breaks that rule when you tell them how much harm they're taking. The stronger phrase, and the one that I think the focus should completely be on, is tie the moves to the fiction. Also, because this game is GMless you're all taking part as the GM which means that you'll all get to use/see those moves anyway.

3. Dealing with Cliffhangers
You can deal with a Cliffhanger as the next scene, or even the next scene with another player in them. Basically player X gets his two moves, and creates a cliffhanger that now Player Y deals with because she was there at the same scene. Or when you get back to your turn you can deal with it.  There was also a though on how you could deal with a cliffhanger if you wanted to set your next scene elsewhere, you could handle it like a flashback but at the cost of a clue or something. Not sure how to do that, but I do like that whole kind of Leverage feel to it (it might be because I'm currently watching a lot of Leverage).

It's a little bit of everything really, a little bit of Geasa for GMlessness, but with a lot more control on the part of the person being the Investigator. A little bit of M:HR when it comes to the initiative because it's the best way to handle initiative I have seen, ever.

One thought could be to try to Fiasco it up a bit, where you either get to set the scene or choose the cliffhanger. That might be something to incorporate into the game. Still thinking about a lot of things really.

Veronica Monsterhearts - Get A Clue

I think I need to talk about how this whole Clue/String thing works, the difference between the two and how it affect GMless play for Veronica Monsterhearts.

1. Strings stay the way that they are

Strings are perhaps one of the best things mechanically about Monsterhearts is the concept of strings. Here are some nebulous things that get held over each other's head. You know where they come from, because they come out in the play, but mechanically it's just something one player has on another, or on an NPC.

They get used to push players to do things, either by making it harder to affect someone who has strings on them, but also to get someone to do something that you want. It's great because you can play up the roleplaying aspect if you want to, and talk about where the string came from and how it interacts with the story, or not. If you aren't someone who is big on improvisational roleplay then you can just talk about what happened and move on. Either way, it's great so I don't want to change anything there.

2. Clues are used for the mystery

Part of what makes a mystery fun, is watching the mystery unfold. Usually that requires someone having some outside knowledge of the whole caper, and the ability to not try to get the people playing the game stuck. That's a big problem in any RPG really, when you have the players who have to uncover something be unable to because they didn't get a particular thing, or talk to a particular person. These chokepoints cause a lot of problems.

This is where Clues come into play. Clues, like their counterpart Strings, are a neutral mechanic that discovers a character's ability to control the mystery. They can take the place of the GM as the players shape what's going on by what they find out. When a player uses a Clue to solve the mystery, then they're the ones who are figuring out who did it as they go along. As long as there's a steady stream of clues, then the action will continue to move forward.

The question becomes how do you spend them? Right now you can just spend them. Here are some thoughts on how you can spend them.

A. You can spend one of them when you're the investigator (person who is being the GM).

That way it limits the amount of clues you can spend so you can't overwhelm a story and have a super twist that comes out of no where. Not that those aren't fun, but if you get a bunch of people who hoard them and spend them all at once then there's less of a teasing out and more of a RUSH TO COMPLETE THE MISSION, which throws me for a loop.

That means as the investigator you can spend a clue on the mystery of the day, your personal mystery, and the season mystery. Depending on the amount of clues you have and the amount of times the investigation goes around the table you can go far on any individual.

B. You have to spend them as you get them, which means when you're investigating you have to say what you're going to spend them on before you get them. That will probably mean tweaking the moves a bit, but I like that because I'm not feeling to happy with the Hard Boiled.

C. You have to make a move to spend them. I like this because it has me thinking that there are too many basic moves in the game and that if I take out some of them there is room for a "Spending Clue Move."

Now to keep things going, you will always get to spend clues, the trick is how many or what control do you have over those clues? That's going to be the question of the move.

Ultimately when spending a clue, you need to explain how it ties that one suspect to the crime. That's something you can talk about as a group and figure it out, but the person spending the clue has the final say.

Another thought: It costs more to spend clues in order to get them moving on your personal mystery, over the daily mystery, over the season mystery. That way if you're going to spend an episode on the season mystery you can do that while others figure out the episode mystery.

3. Clues allow for tension and are the timer

Because there isn't a GM, and the players have to have a point in time that tells you that the mystery is done. They should be different for each, the episode mystery should be shorter than the personal mystery which should be should shorter than the season mystery.

As a starting line the idea would be to have 5 clues applies to a suspect to have them be the culprit of the episode mystery, 8 clues for a personal mystery and 10 clues for the season mystery. The closer you get to an ending, the more tension there's going to be if everyone has a reason for picking a different suspect.

Which brings me to the point where there needs to be a different incentive in order to make people want to pick different suspects, or even change who the suspects are. There also needs to be a point where it's too much and the criminal gets away, or someone gets caught who is innocent. I don't quite know how to do that yet, but it's in the thought process.

Veronica Monsterhearts - The Hard Boiled

Goal

What am I trying to do here? I think the Hard Boiled should have a lot to do with clues and strings. There should be a lot of flexibility with how the Hard Boiled uses them, and ways other than the regular way for the Hard Boiled to get more clues faster. They are the gum-shoe, so they should be the one dealing with the bulk of the investigating. 

One of the things that happens when you have half your basic moves be associated with what the player thinks they should be associated with is that you end up removing one of the easier Casefile moves you get which is Instead of Stat X for this move, you get to use Stat Y. This may make me want to rethink using a modular system for half of the moves that everyone can access. Or not, because then that kind of gives players the freedom to do what they want.

Anyway, on to the Casefiles!

STATS - Choose One

EYES: +1, RASH: 0, HARD: +1, SOFT: 0

or
EYES: +1, RASH: -1, HARD: +2, SOFT: 0
or
EYES: +2, RASH: 0, HARD: +1, SOFT: -1

Other thought here, we might just give people a stat line. Something that they use like in Dungeon World where you pick an array so something like and make it across the board.
+1, 0, +1, 0 or +1, -1, +2, 0

MOVES - Choose Two

Tequila Shots ... Never Again
If you need to talk your way into a place you shouldn't be, ROLL+Eyes. On a 10+ you get into the location, and pick up 1 Clue on the way in. On a 7-9, you get into the location but you raise suspicion, choose one: You don't get full access, you get interrupted, or trouble shows up.

I Know Who You Did Last Summer
If you want to make a character talk to you, ROLL+Hard. On a 10+ they stop what they're doing and talk to you, and have information that is helpful so you gain a Clue. On a 7-9, they can ignore you unless you spend a string on them. Then they mark XP and you talk to them.

It was the Butler's son ...
If there you want to solve a mystery and there are three or more clues in a episode mystery, five or more clues in a personal mystery, or eight or more clues in a season mystery, ROLL+Eyes. On a 10+ you figure out who did it, you just now need to bring them to justice. On a 7-9, you can add a clue to whoever you think did it, but you expose yourself to danger. 6-, you add a new suspect, and give them that clue and a clue from the suspect you thought committed the crime as well as expose yourself to danger.

3rd Degree
If you interrogate someone to get information, ROLL+Hard. On a 10+ you get some information, get 2 clues. On a 7-9 you get some information, you get 1 clue, but you also expose yourself to danger.

Get Mad, Get Even
You can use the Manipulate an NPC with Hard. If you've already chosen Hard for that move then you get +1 forward to all your rolls using that move.

You're a Marshmallow
Whenever you take on a case for someone else, you can either gain a string on them or gain 1XP.

Putting It All Together
When you would use a move that gets you a clue, you gain an extra clue.


Let's Make a Deal
You may spend clues as if they were strings.

RELATIONSHIPS

You've got dirt on everyone, take a string on everyone.

Someone used to be your friend, they now go out of their way to harrass you. They take a string on you.

You've spent extra time investigating a person, gain an extra string on them.

SEX MOVE

You've decided that this is someone you can open yourself up to, it's a touching moment and you both lose a string on each other. That doesn't mean that you aren't going to take this opportunity to do some sleuthing, so gain a clue that you can immediately apply if the person you had sex with is a suspect.

PERSONAL MYSTERY

A family member abandoned you out of the blue?
1XP - When you discover out where they are.
2XP - When you discover out why they left.
3XP - When you convince them to come back.

Are you related to one of the wealthiest families in town?
1XP - When you discover which family you might be related to.
2XP - When you uncover which of your parents had the affair.
3XP - When you find out, one way or the other, if you are related to this other family or not.

RESPONSIBILITY

You are primarily responsible for the Victim. Your secondary responsibility are the Suspects.

ADVANCEMENT

Gain +1 EYES (Max +3)

Gain +1 RASH (Max +3)

Gain +1 HARD (Max +3)

Gain +1 SOFT (Max +3)

Gain a Hard Boiled Move

Gain a Hard Boiled Move

Gain a Hard Boiled Move

Gain a move from Another Casefile

Gain a move from Another Casefile

Veronica Monsterhearts - The CaseFiles

Since this is going to be a *World game, it's gonna need those playbooks (or as we're going to call them Casefiles) and so that's something I think that I should be thinking about at least.

Let's see if we can find analogues for the characters in Veronica Mars that were reoccurring or talking enough in the show that they probably deserved some kind of look

Veronica Mars
Wallace Fennel
Logan Echolls
Duncan Kane
Eli "Weevil" Navarro
Cindi "Mac" Mackenzie
Dick Casablancas
Cassidy "Beaver" Casablancas
Madison Sinclair
Meg Manning

Discussion on this list is a good thing, because this is still just talk. Do you think there are characters that need to be included?

Now let's turn them into Casefiles.

Veronica Mars - The Hardboiled
Wallace Fennel - The Bestfriend
Logan Echolls - The Bad Boy (I want to keep it gender neutral in the file, but that's kind of what we'd call it, no? Thoughts?)
Duncan Kane - The Socialite
Eli "Weevil" Navarro - The Gang Leader
Cindi "Mac" Mackenzie - The Tech Geek
Dick Casablancas - The Ne'er Do Well
Cassidy "Beaver" Casablancas - The Schemer
Madison Sinclair - The ... (This is one I'm stuck with. I don't want to use the word Bitch because of the really bad gendered association with it, but Rich Bitch was the only thing that came to mind)
Meg Manning - The Innocent

What do they do? Who knows! Right now those are the general names and kind of direction I'd like to go with them.

Veronica Monsterhearts - We don't need no stinkin' MC

I've ditched the previously generated tag because that should be for stuff that's already created that I'm doing things for. Modules, adventure hooks, ideas, whatever. This is starting to become a thing so it's probably going to get it's own label and header because why not. It's something that's on my mind.

I commented earlier today that I'm wondering why does AW need an MC? Not to say that it shouldn't, or couldn't since that's what is has, but does any sort of *World game need one. I've had some thoughts about this game, and that it might not need an MC because the players are going to give themselves hard moves for fun, profit, clues and experience.

This all ties into the idea of the mystery, and not necessarily knowing the full details of the mystery when you play. Just the what happened to cause the mystery. Now usually the MC is the one who knows all the details of what happened and lays out the mystery, but do you even need that? Can you build towards a mystery without having some outside force guide it?

I'm thinking about that when I was reading the Gumshoe SRD:

Assuming that they look in the right place and apply appropriate abilities to the task, GUMSHOE ensures that the heroes get the basic clues they need to move through the story. The question it asks is:

What will the heroes do with the information once they’ve got it?

If you think about it, this is how the source materials we base our mystery scenarios on handle clues. You don’t see the forensic techies on CSI failing to successfully use their lab equipment, or Sherlock Holmes stymied and unable to move forward because he blew his Zoology roll.

You don’t see this because, in a story failure to gain information is rarely more interesting than getting it. New information opens up new narrative possibilities, new choices and actions for the characters. Failure to get information is a null result that takes you nowhere.

In a fictional procedural, whether it’s a mystery novel or an episode of a cop show, the emphasis isn’t on finding the clues in the first place. When it really matters, you may get a paragraph telling you how difficult the search was, or a montage of a CSI team tossing an apartment. But the action really starts after the clues are gathered.

That's why I wanted to talk about clues. The idea is that I don't think we want to limit clues at all, we want to make sure that they're plentiful enough that there's sense at the end that the players have uncovered the mystery. The trick is that no one knows exactly what the mystery is until you've finished it.  You've seen clues showing up in moves, and I think that they need to be worked at a little bit more to make it more cohesive as an idea, but with clues you actually get to point the action toward a certain goal.

What are those goals? Well, if we look at the structure of Veronica Mars, one of the things that I enjoyed was that there was the episode mystery and then there was the season mystery. You had the mystery of who killed Lilly Kane that took place over the entire Season, there were personal mysteries and then the mystery due jour which was the focus of the episode. I think that's the kind of feeling we'll need to have in order to have the game go right.

How do we do that? Well, each file (because let's be thematic and call playbooks files) should have it's own Season Long Mystery, let's call them personal mysteries. The idea really comes from the Milestones in Marvel: Heroic Roleplaying, but instead of choosing what direction you want the character to go you're going to talk about your personal mystery, the thing that drives you. There's also going to be a Season mystery and the episode mysteries but those are things that you're going to build as a group.

To use Veronica Mars as an example you have the Season mystery that affected a large group of people, which was who killed Lilly Kane. Then you had the personal mysteries, Veronica and her mother ... Logan and her mother ... Mac and her family ... there were a lot of family mysteries in Veronica Mars but they were all to the individual and carried over for a bunch of episodes. Then there was the mystery of the day which depended on the episode.

The idea is that there needs to be a way to figure out those various mysteries and "clue tokens" are the path to it, at least right now. This may change depending on the casefiles (changing the name again from file to casefile because that's even better) and how they interact with each other and the clues. The hope is that you can piece together what happened and what the resolution of the case is by letting the players use the tokens to create the connections that will make up the mystery (kind of like the plot map in Technoir, but really only in basic idea).

---

Thoughts about anything before or what's going on now? Again this is all vague, but it's what's percolating in my head at the moment.