To Be Resolved

Cleaning up Exploration and Metacurrencies

In one of my earliest posts I drafted an idea for an overloaded encounter table that used blackjack mechanics. It has been a standout part of setting the stakes for scenes in Hellbenders playtests. Blackjack has a great game feel, and my players enjoyed the experience of "gambling" against what sort of scene they would encounter. The first few revisions of this mechanic were a little bit finnicky because I had slightly different versions of it for each timescale (Travel, Exploration, and Investigation). Revision U4, which is live as of last week, went with a unified exploration mechanic across timescales and added something new, the Push that was alluded to in the third session play report.

Pushing in Exploration

Basic Procedure

Travel Rounds, Exploration Rounds, and Investigation Rounds during excursions resolve according to the following procedure.

  1. The Dealer provides players with a brief summary of the current state of the Players’ current location, including any obvious sights, sounds, or smells
  2. Players declare an intended Excursion Action (enumerated in the rules). If Players are acting together, one Player is designated the “shot caller”. Otherwise, each Player taking an action is a shot caller.
  3. The Dealer deals two face up cards to each shot caller, as in a hand of Blackjack
  4. Shot callers now choose whether to Stay (resolve the hand), Hit (draw another card), or Push (wager Reserves to modify their hand of cards)
  5. Once all shot callers have elected to Stay, the Dealer compares final hand values against the resolution table to determine any hazards or encounters and the resultant scene is played out
Hand Value Outcome
2-16 Very slow travel. H/D: light flickers, S/C: Clock advances
17-20 Cautious travel. H/D: Percept (clue, spoor), S/C: Complication/Hazard
21 total Smooth sailing! Proceed to next Hand
Blackjack Smooth sailing, and you may take an additional action
Bust (21+) Too reckless. H/D: Encounter, S/C: Stakes Escalate AND Hazard

Push

This resolution mechanic for Excursions reflects the attitude and approach of the characters toward travel, exploration, and investigation. Playing conservatively reflects acting cautiously in the scene; if you are overly cautious, then it takes longer than anticipated to complete your task, and consequently a resource is consumed or a “clock” advances. On the other hand, playing recklessly invites more chaotic outcomes like a random encounter or a complication. With this in mind, the Push mechanic allows players to spend Reserves to place bets on characteristics of the next card drawn. Rather than a Hit, which adds the Rank of the next card to the current value of the shot caller’s hand, a Push potentially adds small number values to the value of the shot caller’s hand. The base options for a Push are:

When a Push is made, the player(s) wagering Reserves on the hand explain how they are contributing to the action in accordance with the suit of the wagered Reserves. If the Push is successful, the shot caller may choose to Hit or Push again, and any Reserves wagered are added to the [Good Luck Pot, need a snappy name]. If the Push is unsuccessful, the hand resolves and any Reserves wagered are added to the Bad Bets.

Commentary

I think this is a lot of fun in play. What you can immediately see, however, is that this now introduces an extra metacurrency for the Dealer/GM to interact with; basically successful bets and bad bets. I took this into playtest and just didn't worry about what to do with the wagered chips! I was more interested in the gamefeel of pushing than I was in addressing the incompleteness I'd just created.

In the intervening few weeks, however, I've been reading some neat theory. First, at recommendation from Jay Dragon, I sat down and read The Rule Book from MIT press. Second, based on a footnote in The Rule Book I've been reading Patterns in Game Design, an analysis of different patterns and incentive structures. It focuses primarily on video games, but the patterns hold across lots of media so I've been using it as a brainstorming tool for how to address the "completeness" problem I've created for myself.

Wait a Minute...Are Metacurrencies Even Fun?

I run a lot of games with some form of resource management minigame. His Majesty the Worm is built around resource management! But metacurrencies are a slightly different beast. I was recently chatting online about Cypher and Fabula Ultima, two games that sort of center metacurrencies (XP and Fabula Points, respectively). In both, if you can build enough of a pool of the respective resource, you can make some form of permanent advancement, but you can also use the resource to reroll dice and get short term gains to grease the skids a little bit. A lot of people experience this adult TRPG version of the marshmallow experiment with no small amount of tension.

I still do think that using nondiegetic resources to exert authorial control in scenes is rad, so here is a sketch of what I intend to playtest next, subject to the following criteria:

  1. I do not want to incentivize making bad bets
  2. I want expenditure of a player-facing metacurrency to facilitate interesting role play
  3. I want there to be a small number of common uses of the player-facing metacurrency and a small number of unique uses based on the characters, probably based on their Past Lives
  4. As the GM, I don't need to spend a currency to add chaos to a scene, orcs can attack when I say so

The game design patterns that sort of spurred me along were the idea of a Shared Resource (good bets) that can still inspire some combination of both Cooperation or Competition - players should want to build enough of a pool of resources that they can use their unique abilities. Additionally, I realized that I hadn't mechanized ways of introducing Clues into scenes; in His Majesty the Worm, a draw of XXI: The World on the Meatgrinder table injects some clue about the party's current quest into the room. I think this is a treat, and I don't see why we couldn't make that a player-facing tool.

I wanted the opposite resource pool, say, the Bad Bets to be a tool that the GM can use. However, Bad Bets will mostly be filled out by players triggering negative consequences to begin with; I don't need to make it an overt death spiral. So I decided to combine Bad Bets with the other aspect of incompleteness I've been wrestling with - what to do with Joker cards. I've wanted some mechanical implementation of Jokers ever since my player accidentally drew one a few sessions ago.

What's Good Luck For?

I think the primary use cases of Good Luck are:

And What about Bad Luck?

This one is pretty straightforward. For every 7 Bad Bets, the Dealer can shuffle a Joker into the deck. If a player draws a Joker during exploration, it triggers the loss of something in their inventory or the introduction of an unfortunate element from their past into the scene. If a player draws a Joker during combat, it's probably just a dead card - but I will need to consider how that interacts with the ability to Discard/Replenish cards from the player's hands.

If the Dealer draws a Joker during combat, I think they either get to draw an additional action card or the Dealer gets to decide what the NPC does with maximal effect.

What's Left for this iteration of Hellbenders?

I think the metacurrencies around how Reserves are spent and the existence of Jokers in the deck are my biggest "completeness" gaps in the rules right now - once I formalize a writeup on the topics and integrate them into the current rule baseline, I think I'll be officially in beta testing. I'm really pleased with the development process and just think I need more table time. If you want to play or want to facilitate a playtest, please reach out to me!

Other than that, I'm working on a second test adventure with a slightly different structure. The Pharoah of Phillippi centers around a timeline of events, but I want to develop a Hellbenders-compatible version of Murkdice's excellent Event Matrix concept as an alternative to strict timelines. I have gotten pretty thoroughly into the ideation phase for Frank Cox's Final Ride and need to put pen to paper.

In the meantime, I want to write more about diegesis both in relation to rules and in relation to design patterns, but there's only so many hours in the day!