Today, I’ve made a start on the revisions to Kannagara based on the results of the first playtest. I’m looking at making quite a fundamental revision: I’m working on dropping the dice mechanic.
This is a bit painful, because I really like that dice mechanic. I think the probability distributions it gives have some very nice properties, and I think it would work very well for some games. However, I’m not convinced that it works well for Kannagara. I think it might create complexity in the wrong place. I’m not opposed to complexity in games, obviously, but it is important to make sure that the complexity is in the right place, supporting the mood and themes of the game rather than undermining them.
The only way to test this is to try putting the mechanics together without the dice mechanic. Fortunately, there was quite a lot of other mechanical structure in the first version of Kannagara, and I think I can keep nearly all of it. Gathering evidence, building theories based on the evidence, and creating things out of elements can all stay, as can different abilities. As I mentioned in my last post, I’m also looking at making heavy use of cards, and putting the various elements onto cards, so that players do not have to remember everything.
There was one big element that the dice mechanic brought to the game. That was the element of the unexpected. In my experience, this is an important part of the fun of roleplaying, and in a game with no GM the only way to introduce it is through randomisers. To retain this, I will still be using dice, but in a different way.
Whenever a persona gains kegare in the game, the player must roll a number of dice equal to the persona’s total kegare. If at least two of dice come up ‘1’, a complication arises. (Obviously, this means that a persona’s first point of kegare is safe.) Possible complications will be defined by the scenario, and by features of the persona. I think that a player will always be able to freely introduce a personal complication, but global complications will be a bit more involved. I think that they will come in ranks, and only a limited number will be available. The player can choose freely from the lowest available rank, but must have the agreement of all other players to choose from a higher rank. This is because the highest ranked complication will, in many cases, be the failure condition for the scenario. Choosing that early on would be what I believe is technically known as a “dick move”, but in my experience it is better for game rules to make it clear that you can’t do that. Of course, if that is the lowest available rank, then the player has to make the scenario fail, but that is a possible source of tension, and should only happen after a considerable amount of playing time.
As before, kegare will also increase the difficulty of matsuri, and I think it will have one further effect. I think that some actions will only be available to personae with less than a certain amount of kegare.
While working on this, I thought of a way to incorporate one of the more problematic traditional beliefs of Shinto, the belief that menstruation causes kegare. Players of female personae may declare that the persona is menstruating, and move any or all of the persona’s kegare onto the menstruation. That kegare then applies to matsuri, but to nothing else. It does not count against the limit for taking actions, nor does it provide dice to roll to see whether a complication arises. It does not count for harae, either; it cannot be removed by harae, and does not need to be for a harae to be effective in removing other kegare. The persona is effectively excluded from participating in matsuri, but can do things that create a lot of kegare without worrying. In longer scenarios, the condition goes away in a few days, like it does, and takes all its kegare with it. In sagas with strict timekeeping, the player then has to wait at least a couple of weeks of game time before using it again.
This may, in fact, be too good, in that it might mean that an all-female group would always succeed, but given the centrality of matsuri to the game I think it might be balanced. It is something for playtest, but possibly not the first playtest.
The other problem that came up in playtest, that of too much information too early, is very important. I’m addressing that by reorganising the scenario, but I’ve only just started on that, so I’ll go into detail next time, after a little more progress.
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