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http://dreamcafe.com/words/2009/07/17/texas-wisdom-4/

http://dreamcafe.com/words/?p=526

One day, Billy-Bob Gautama drove down to The Roundup Bar and Grille and said to the bartender, “Russ, I want ten shots of Jim Beam.  Line ‘em up!”  The bartender (whose name was Orin) poured out ten shots of Jim Beam in a neat line, and Billy-Bob began to slam them.  He got seven of them down before the bartender said, “Now, if you’re going to drink ‘em like that, Goat, I’m going to have to cut you off.”  Billy-Bob said, “You’d drink ‘em like this too if you had what I have.”  “Why, what do you have?” said the bartender.  Billy-Bob thought for a moment, then said, “Uh, about eighty-five cents.”  Thus the bartender was Enlightened.

Copyright 2008 The Dream Cafe.

Texas Wisdom #4

©2009 Words Words Words. All Rights Reserved.

Act V, Scene 2b: A) Horatio tries to talk Hamlet out of the duel with Laertes, but Hamlet dismisses his concerns.

This is a procedural beat in which both of our remaining PCs debate Hamlet’s tactical situation. Horatio’s goal is practical, not emotional, so it’s a persuasion interaction. Horatio loses; Hamlet wins. But the audience, knowing that Claudius intends the duel as cover for a murder attempt, feels a sense of heightened anxiety. That makes this a downbeat moment, so we’ll enter the down arrow for Horatio as the more accurate indicator of the story’s direction.

B) Hamlet seeks Laertes’ pardon for wronging him; with some reservation, Laertes seems to grant it.

Here we have a mixed beat, where one participant pursues an emotional goal and the other has a procedural goal. Hamlet’s intent is dramatic; he wants forgiveness from Laertes. Laertes wants to conceal his intention to harm Hamlet, and so pretends to accept his attempt to make amends. As audience members, we know that Hamlet’s victory is only apparent, and that he remains ignorant of the plot to kill him. This is the second beat in a row in which his apparent victory in an exchange conceals a threat of defeat—and is again scored with a downward procedural arrow.

C) Hamlet offends Laertes by praising his reputation for swordsmanship in overly lofty terms. Laertes accuses him of mockery, which he denies.

This brief exchange can be played two ways—either Hamlet is cleverly provoking Laertes or has innocently triggered his opponent’s dangerous temper. All else being equal, the strongest choice is the one that provides contrast and rhythmic variance. After three successive procedural setbacks, Hamlet could use a win, if only a minor one. Let’s treat this as an intentional and successful attempt to rattle Laertes. (If Hamlet was a player character, he’d certainly be trash-talking his antagonist.) Hamlet’s victory is both procedural, rendering Laertes more prone to error, and dramatic—Hamlet establishes his dominance and superiority by so casually setting Laertes off. It’s his first procedural win in a long time—since before Ophelia’s death.



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After deciding to tune the Dying Earth system, in its new incarnation as Skulduggery, for one-shots requires an alteration of rules structures pegged for long-term play. The most obvious example is the tagline system, which has always been central to the game’s fun. In DEPRG, you’re rewarded for adroitly weaving supplied lines of dialogue into your scenes. This is how you earn improvement points to scale up your character. In a one-shot game or short series, that reward becomes meaningless, and must be replaced with some other juicy carrot.

Another goal with the new design is to reduce the rules overhead—you need fewer crunchy bits to explore if you’re only playing for short stints. In DEPRG each ability has a different suggested means of refreshing the resource pool connected to it. (You use points in the pool to pay for rerolls of die results you don’t like, or to keep going in contests against other players.)

The solution to the first problem cleans up the second. Now you don’t perform particular actions to refresh a particular ability. Now you refresh them by using taglines. The more aptly you use them, the more pools you refresh—or can soon refresh, if you’re currently up to snuff.

During in-house play we’ve seen much more tagline use than in DERPG runs. I’m not sure if the current group simply finds them easier to use, or if the more immediate reward for using them has ratched up their use.

More later...

View series to date here.

Although Michael Mann’s Public Enemies raked in an acceptable box office haul and scored a fresh Tomatometer rating, the film—which I quite liked—has been the subject of much concern trolling in movie blog land. Allegedly it’s too arty, too redolent of the filmmaker’s personal vision, to justify its budget in an era of tentpoles and CGI giant robots. I’m still puzzling that out: the Public Enemies I saw follows the conventional arc of an outlaws on the run flick. Mann’s adoring HD camera lovingly serves up the movie star charisma.

( Mild spoilers... )

http://dreamcafe.com/words/2009/07/14/texas-wisdom-3/

http://dreamcafe.com/words/?p=524

One day Annie Sue Perkins came to visit Billy-Bob Gautama and said, “Goat, if I freely explore my sensual needs and desires, am I in danger of harming my spiritual growth?”  Billy-Bob said, “Get in the truck, bitch.”  This is how Annie Sue Perkins achieved enlightenment.

Copyright 2008 The Dream Cafe.

Texas Wisdom #3

©2009 Words Words Words. All Rights Reserved.