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jazzfishIt's a weird game. The setting is deliberately sketchy, with lots of hooks but few details. A great deal of lacunae, if you will. The mechanics are often vague and occasionally contradictory. I love it.
I run Lacuna much like I run Amber: I find the hooks and the holes in the backstory, I fill in one or two holes from a few hooks, I run the first session. In that first session I throw in a handful of odd events that relate back to other hooks. Afterwards I ask myself, "so what the heck did it mean that [deceased] Agent Gardiner's features flashed across the HP's face the first time they met him?" I ponder. I take mental notes as associations occur to me. The less ridiculous associations are usually converted to physical notes, and brought up in the next session. Repeat. Since I'm using a limited number of hooks, the events start referring back to the same hooks pretty quickly; this simulates continuity. Things happen. The players speculate in my hearing as to what's really going on. I smile and take note of their better ideas. After about three sessions I sit down and figure out the larger plot, based on what hooks have caught their attention, what aspects of the game they're focusing on, and what various NPCs have been doing. Since the players are so much in the dark to start with, the shift from "Tucker makes things up on the spot" and "Tucker had some of this planned out" is pretty seamless. Things then progress towards some sort of resolution. (Or non-resolution, in the case of my last Amber game, and thank god and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jedibfa for his delightful closing line of "I'm at Corwin's Pattern. Or what's left of it, anyway.")
Gareth-Michael Skarka, in his heavily-Neverwhere-inspired RPG Underworld, refers to this as intuitive continuity. A Google of the term turns up a post by Walt Freitag which sounds eerily familiar. "I'm the 0.1% who wings the setting." Yeah. Me too.
(I run Changeling in a similar fashion, I suppose, but it requires additional initial planning and often an explicit negation of aspects of the setting that I dislike.)
Lacuna is even better for this style than Amber is, because the ratio of "said" to "left unsaid" is almost obscenely low. I lowered it even more by starting my players with a large amount of traumatic amnesia. (Hey, I gave them the opportunity to play it normal, but they all wanted to go the more "interesting" route.) You wake up in a strange hotel room to a ringing phone, and the voice on the other end clues you in to what you're supposed to be doing, sort of, if you can fill in the gaps well enough. Then things happen that you weren't prepared for, and it sounds like the voice on the phone wasn't prepared for them either . . .
The mechanics are pretty simple: roll a number of d6 equal to your attribute (Force, Instinct, or Access), try to roll above an eleven. If you fail but you have an appropriate Talent (three for each attribute) you can roll an additional d6 to try and get a success anyway, and you can add equipment bonuses or Commendation points (like XP) to rolls to boost them. Even if you still fail you can try again, adding your second roll to the first roll. It's hard to actually fail at something. There are two kickers: first, failing (even if you succeed later) complicates the story, and second, any time you roll the dice you add the number rolled to your Heart Rate. Get your Heart Rate into its Target Range and you get bonuses; if it goes above your Maximum you start taking damage from failures. Player conflict is handled pretty similarly, except that you're just trying to roll higher than the other player(s).
This was easily the best purchase I made at Origins this year. I am chortling with glee over the things I can spring on unsuspecting players.
I run Lacuna much like I run Amber: I find the hooks and the holes in the backstory, I fill in one or two holes from a few hooks, I run the first session. In that first session I throw in a handful of odd events that relate back to other hooks. Afterwards I ask myself, "so what the heck did it mean that [deceased] Agent Gardiner's features flashed across the HP's face the first time they met him?" I ponder. I take mental notes as associations occur to me. The less ridiculous associations are usually converted to physical notes, and brought up in the next session. Repeat. Since I'm using a limited number of hooks, the events start referring back to the same hooks pretty quickly; this simulates continuity. Things happen. The players speculate in my hearing as to what's really going on. I smile and take note of their better ideas. After about three sessions I sit down and figure out the larger plot, based on what hooks have caught their attention, what aspects of the game they're focusing on, and what various NPCs have been doing. Since the players are so much in the dark to start with, the shift from "Tucker makes things up on the spot" and "Tucker had some of this planned out" is pretty seamless. Things then progress towards some sort of resolution. (Or non-resolution, in the case of my last Amber game, and thank god and
jedibfa for his delightful closing line of "I'm at Corwin's Pattern. Or what's left of it, anyway.")Gareth-Michael Skarka, in his heavily-Neverwhere-inspired RPG Underworld, refers to this as intuitive continuity. A Google of the term turns up a post by Walt Freitag which sounds eerily familiar. "I'm the 0.1% who wings the setting." Yeah. Me too.
(I run Changeling in a similar fashion, I suppose, but it requires additional initial planning and often an explicit negation of aspects of the setting that I dislike.)
Lacuna is even better for this style than Amber is, because the ratio of "said" to "left unsaid" is almost obscenely low. I lowered it even more by starting my players with a large amount of traumatic amnesia. (Hey, I gave them the opportunity to play it normal, but they all wanted to go the more "interesting" route.) You wake up in a strange hotel room to a ringing phone, and the voice on the other end clues you in to what you're supposed to be doing, sort of, if you can fill in the gaps well enough. Then things happen that you weren't prepared for, and it sounds like the voice on the phone wasn't prepared for them either . . .
The mechanics are pretty simple: roll a number of d6 equal to your attribute (Force, Instinct, or Access), try to roll above an eleven. If you fail but you have an appropriate Talent (three for each attribute) you can roll an additional d6 to try and get a success anyway, and you can add equipment bonuses or Commendation points (like XP) to rolls to boost them. Even if you still fail you can try again, adding your second roll to the first roll. It's hard to actually fail at something. There are two kickers: first, failing (even if you succeed later) complicates the story, and second, any time you roll the dice you add the number rolled to your Heart Rate. Get your Heart Rate into its Target Range and you get bonuses; if it goes above your Maximum you start taking damage from failures. Player conflict is handled pretty similarly, except that you're just trying to roll higher than the other player(s).
This was easily the best purchase I made at Origins this year. I am chortling with glee over the things I can spring on unsuspecting players.
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Date: 2007-09-08 03:22 pm (UTC)