Gente Che Gioca > Gioco Concreto
[Il Silenzio dei minotauri] Alcune domande a Paul Czege
Daniele Di Rubbo:
A quanto pare, questo è il primo post di actual play su Il Silenzio dei minotauri (Paul Czege, 2014). Siccome stiamo giocando il gioco su “Giù lo Schermo”, per forza di cose, sono venute fuori alcune domande che, complice la tutto sommato prossima chiusura di Google+, abbiamo deciso di fargli su Twitter.
Riporto qui sotto le domande e le risposte, di modo che possano essere utili anche ad altri appassionati.
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We usually play very long scenes: at least 20 minutes each. We mostly have scenes with only one minotaur inside, usually interacting with the NPCs. If an inflection comes, we use the Krater according to the rules.
Would you say that we should play shorter scenes?
If you’ve got four players, that’s a long time to wait for your scene. But it may not be a problem if players are emotionally hooked on each other’s storylines. If I were going to have scenes that long, I’d make sure there was lots of crossing of NPCs between the scenes.
When an NPC from your storyline shows up in another minotaur’s storyline working some agenda you didn’t know about, that’s pretty engaging. If I were the GM, I’d be doing it a lot.
I would also be putting the player minotaurs into each other’s storylines. It can be as easy as an employer sending a minotaur on a special task.
The scenes of one of the minotaurs tend to have a lot of free play and only rarely inflections. We still think they are meaningful, even if little if none of the rules come into play (with the exception of the minotaur following the Silence).
Would you say this scenes are OK?
That’s absolutely how I do it. Lots of free play, and only use the Krater mechanics when it’s clear there’s an inflection. Don’t force it. Play at a natural pace.
When the minotaurs are in the jungle, should they be brought to feel a sense of discomfort and threat? How do you usually play these scenes in the role of the GM?
I think I play the jungle as slightly more threatening than the Dégringolade, but not much. Stuff happens in the Dégringolade that’s pretty threatening too. Once two bounty hunters violently raided a romantic brothel looking for a woman who’d left her husband and was hiding there.
Mostly I play the jungle as just regularly more surreal and with strange creatures. Exploding insects. Entities like the one that tells Eshmoteth about the chimera and the gargoyle. Though again, I’ll put surreal creatures in the Dégringolade too.
I once had a free health clinic run by an intelligent sheep. Her name was Vayperphai.
And I play the jungle as very permeable with the Dégringolade. When player minotaurs are in the jungle they sometimes run into characters from the Dégringolade. The storylines of some NPCs will span activities from both the Dégringolade and the jungle. Though their activities in the jungle are often a little more surreal or desperate.
The jungle is definitely threatening sometimes. I’m just saying the Dégringolade can be threatening too.
Moreno Roncucci:
Fan mail, e aggiunto all'indice dei thread importanti (che ho intenzione di tornare a tenere aggiornato...)
Daniele Di Rubbo:
Andando avanti a giocare, sono emerse altre domande. Anche qui abbiamo chiesto a Paul, che ci ha risposto.
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During the last session, we had a violent conflict between player minotaurs (p. 84). Can the winning player minotaur decree the death of the other one as the outcome for the conflict, or have we to find a reason why this can’t happen in the fiction?
That’s a good question. On one hand, I think if a player goes into a conflict with another player minotaur knowing the mechanics determine the outcome purely by archetype, then all possible consequences are available. However, I also think “decree” is a strong word.
Inflections are roleplayed out, not decreed, and this should be too. So maybe a player minotaur says, “I’m holding his head under water until he stops moving,” and then maybe the losing minotaur is dead from that and maybe he’s not. Death only comes from the Krater when a minotaur has previously risked and lost a life token. If the losing minotaur in this situation has done that, and is currently without a life token, then as gamemaster I might more likely think he’s dead. But if not, then I can’t imagine many roleplayed situations that wouldn’t leave some room for him to not actually be dead if the losing player doesn’t want to be dead.
While my minotaur was trying to escape to the jungle, he came back to rescue the body of another minotaur mortally wounded by the sword. This is one action but it could count against silence for both “do not want” and “do not express your emotions.” Have I to lose two tokens?
I don’t think I’d ever count one action for a loss of two tokens. I’ve taken two tokens in quick succession, but I’d never take two for one action.
Daniele Di Rubbo:
My minotaur is a true rebel: he can barely keep his silence for a bunch of scenes; therefore, I’m always in the jungle. The question is: while a minotaur is in the jungle, can he loose silence for breaking the code? Our guess is “no”, but we are asking you just to be sure.
There’s a point in the text that says minotaurs believe silence helps them “live well among men.” I think in the jungle I’d only take silence tokens if the minotaurs were interacting with men of the Dégringolade and in a situation that extended from it into the jungle.
Simone, our gamemaster, was wondering how NPCs deaths are handled through inflections. I mean: it seems nothing in the mechanics is determining the fate of the PNCs in term of “should they live or die?” Therefore, how do you handle PNCs deaths during the inflections?
The Krater never has anything to say about NPC deaths, so whatever you roleplay out is what happens. Though, as gamemaster I would never allow an NPC minotaur to die, if removing him would harm the story.
And, also, one of my principles when I run the game is “death that’s not death.” So I sometimes have versions of NPCs from parallel realities, or from the past or future, or returned from the dead in mysterious ways.
Daniele Di Rubbo:
Can a minotaur NPC be an intrinsic?
I would do it. He would be a minotaur who had gone way over into human-like thinking. He’d be an antagonist. Maybe he’d be drawn to a player minotaur, trying to change how he thinks.
Can I insert in the story and show a named minotaur as an NPC, or do you think he could deprotagonistize the players’ minotaurs?
I use named NPC minotaurs all the time. Ashtavede, who’s mentioned in the text, is an NPC minotaur I used during playtest games. I once even had a player minotaur encounter a future named version of himself.
Did you also tell what his name was? I’m asking because I wonder if this could be problematic because maybe, the other players, could feel forced to give that name to that minotaur when the time will come for it. What do you think about it?
I did tell them his name. He had a significant job defending the Dégringolade against reptiles, and a team of interesting and colorful human and minotaur reptile fighters who worked for him. I figured I could trust the players to see there would be interesting tension around what name he was offered and the relationships he had with those other characters if he ever met any of them in his own timeline.
Out of curiosity, what name was given to him, in the end, when he gained one in the “right” timeline?
I don’t remember the exact name, but it wasn’t the same as the future version’s name.
And was ever the minotaur offered the job as a defender against the reptiles by the GM, during the campaign?
That would have been interesting, but it never happened.
If a minotaur NPC goes frantic near my minotaur, do I still have to test my silence? And can the game master simply declare that a minotaur NPC goes frantic?
I’ve done that as well. I decided an NPC minotaur went frantic, and the player minotaurs had to draw to see if they also went frantic.
The initial situation in the fiction where a the narrator ends up in the jungle fighting a scourge with another minotaur is essentially an example of that other minotaur, an NPC, going frantic and the player minotaur getting swept up as well.
The externals are always intrinsics. However, I guess they never count towards the three intrinsics the game master has to keep active in each moment. Am I right?
The secret function of the intrinsics is to catalyze a certain thinking and play of NPCs by the gamemaster. As long as you have two or three independent intrinsic NPCs who are involved significantly in the lives of the player minotaurs it happens. It bleeds out into your play of other NPCs and the Dégringolade has the right feel and themes.
So if you have a group of externals that are involved in the lives of the minotaurs in a significant way, I’d probably treat them collectively as one intrinsic, and then have two others too.
I did some preparation, just in case I have to run a demo.
I have this intrinsic with quid quo pro thinking: he is an ass who is dismissing his former employees to recruit cheaper manpower, uniquely for his own gain.
He’s definitely making “self-justified decisions with effects that others have to deal with”. Is this enough to mark him as an intrinsic with quid pro quo thinking or am I missing the “rationalize […] that you don’t deserve consequences for your actions” part?
I think it has to be a little more personal than pure economic gain. He has to believe his own gain is deserved, and the suffering of his displaced workers is deserved. He rationalizes that people deserve what he does to them, and that he doesn’t deserve what others do to him. And when he takes actual revenge it’s excessive. They deserve excessive punishment.
In our last session, we played a situation in the jungle with both the Still Voice and the Red Voice in it. The Still Voice was acting as a host of ghosts of deserters of the Everwar, while the Red Voice was possessing their former comrades who wanted to execute them for their treason.
It really was a charged and cool situation to play!
Have you ever had inflections with more than one Voice involved at the same time?
I have. It’s fun. It’s like being caught between petty godlings.
During our last session, a herd of NPC minotaurs went frantic near Luca’s nameless minotaur and we asked ourselves: can a player decide their minotaur voluntarily loses control and goes frantic?
Simone, the game master, thinks one can, but maybe they must renounce every Silence token they have, in analogy with the situation in which a player’s minotaur renounces higher employment and better life circumstances, and forfeits all their the Name tokens (page 94).
Yeah, I wouldn’t let a minotaur just decide to go frantic. He’d need to figure out how to get rid of his Silence tokens to actually go frantic. But he could just follow the stampede of frantic minotaurs willingly into the jungle if he wanted, without going frantic.
Normally you choose the Foremost following the procedure described on page 93.
However, during our last session, Luca’s nameless minotaur followed the herd of frantic NPC minotaurs on his free will (he previously resisted to the frenzy test). We considered Luca’s minotaur as part of the group of NPCs (we just followed what seemed to make sense with the fiction to us) and determined the Foremost as usual.
How do you determine the Foremost in these cases?
I would have done it exactly the same way. He followed them, so he’s a part of the group, so he’s involved in the determination of the foremost just as if he’d been swept up with the group by going frantic.
In the campaign I’m playing with my friends Antonio and Alberto, during my preparation, I wrote a jungle encounter with the Red Voice in which the Voice possesses an intrinsic NPC. Since an encounter with a Voice is always an unnatural encounter, surely it will result in an inflection. Therefore, I wonder: in this case, shall I put in the Krater both the Courage token (for the intrinsic) and the Red Voice token (for the Red Voice)? Or shall I put in only the Red Voice token?
If the intrinsic NPC is completely suppressed by the Voice, then I think I would not include the Courage token. The NPC isn’t really present. But if the NPC has expressed itself somehow despite the possession, maybe through eye contact, or by temporarily having control of its body, then I would include the Courage token.
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