Character Creation, Take One, and Rules Explanation

We went around in a circle, starting with Thomas, to create characters. Coming up with names for characters was tricky; I need to supply a list of sample names, or a random generator, or something. Thomas named his character "Eagle Shadow," while Matt's was "Gray Dove" -- both good names. I needed to write these down, or I'd forget (ADD strikes!), violating right there my "no paper artifacts" rule. Well, it was good in theory.

Each player threaded one bead at a time, telling what they represented and then we went on to the next person. This approach worked well, I thought, and gave the result that I wanted: the other players feel as if they were in on the building of a character from the beginning, and in fact, they could build their character in reaction to the other's. When it came to my turn, as Spider Grandmother, I threaded a bead on the Story Cord.

This is a rules change from the version of the PDF submitted to Game Chef -- Spider Grandmother's Cord and the Story Cord are now one-and-the-same. The Story Cord is built up interactively just as the player characters' cords are, during the creation part of the game.

The first four beads for players represent what each character holds sacred; these define the core of the person. On the Story Cord, the first four beads represented the setting. (This would change in the next iteration, see below.) After this, a knot was tied off, and then players chose their Anathema Beads, threading them on the other end of the cords.

Then the next four beads were Ephemeral, and represent factors or influences at work in the character presently. At the same time, Spider Grandmother threaded beads for the theme of the story, saying "This story is about..." (See below, again.)

I think as my second or third Theme bead, I picked up a Blood Red bead and, threading it, said "This story will be about ... ANGER." And the other two guys at the table both went "Ooo..." softly, and Thomas later said that he deliberately picked a Silver Steel bead (representing a gun) as his next Ephemeral bead because of that.

Eagle Shadow turned out to be a guy was in love with a Spanish woman as his fatal flaw, and Gray Dove was a spirit-talking woman who helped ease the dying into their new states of existence. Neat to watch them develop through the bead-stringing and the creativity of the players involved.

Once the players each had 4 Ephemeral beads and the Story Cord had 4 theme beads, I threaded one bead saying something like, "There will be a conflict related to Silver Steel." Then I handed the Story Cord to Thomas, who chose another color of bead. Then Matt, then back to me for a final one. These are Conflict Beads, and define what kind of conflicts would be important in the game.

I also threaded up an NPC cord, representing Esmeralda, the Spaniard who was Eagle Shadow's love interest.

Next, I explained how conflicts are resolved. This is also a change from the Game Chef version, as it doesn't use dice. Equal numbers of beads (8 each, I think) of each color, and the same shape, were in the woven basket in front of me. Conflict resolution works like this:

1. One person is the conflict initiator. She chooses which bead color to use to start the conflict, and describes what she's hoping to do.
2. The other person is the respondent, and she can respond with either the same bead color as the initiator, or the color of her outermost (ephemeral) bead.
3. The respondent reaches into the basket and draws out (without looking at them) four beads.
4. The initiator draws out four beads as well.
5. Both participants reveal their drawn simultaneously.
6. Each adds up the beads of her chosen color on her own cord, plus any in her hand that she's drawn. For example, two red beads on the cord plus one in the draw equals three red beads.
7. Whoever has the most beads is victorious in the conflict. The loser removes her outermost ephemeral bead, and hands it to the victor.
8. If the victor can thread the bead, she may; if she can't (because of the rules on threading beads, as per the PDF version), she discards it into the pile of beads.
9. The loser of a conflict then gains narrative rights and narrates the story of the conflict: she has to take into account the two colors of beads used, the goals of each character in the conflict with the victor's goal being successful, and the result as determined by which bead was removed.
10. In case of a tie, neither side wins, it's a "push" with neither side being successful, and the respondent narrates the outcome.

This worked pretty well in my example, which was Esmeralda repeatedly shooting Gray Dove in the face, or pushing her off a cliff, or something. Fortunately, Matt didn't seem to mind.

Once I'd explained the mechanics, we talked about the rules some. I offered some alternate "bead pulling" mechanics, but ultimately they were just too confusing and not elegant enough to bother with. We also talked about what could happen if you were "killed" by losing your Anathema bead after all your Ephermal beads, and ongoing presence as a spirit. To be honest, while that idea seemed real cool in theory, in practice it sounded too much like either a Friendly Ghost or Obi-Wan Kenobi, and I probably should rethink the idea.

However, as the playtesters pointed out, it would be just as bad to have the game come to a halt while a player is rapidly stringing beads trying to get caught up.

Actual Play, at last!

Actual play began with Gray Dove, cultivating crops on the mesatop, spotting the arrival of the new priest, Father Jose. The chief called everyone in the village to come welcome him at the church. This led to the first conflict.

Morning Song just didn't want to go to the church; Gold is her Anathema bead color, and she disliked the way her father kissed up to the priests, especially after the Spanish had killed her mother. So Thomas initiated a conflict.

At this point, I could have threaded up a cord for her father, The Mayor -- but instead I just decided to use the Story Cord for everything. Which is another change in the rules from the GC 07 version.

In this version of BWBR, the Story Cord represents the forces of opposition to the characters, and Spider Grandmother may choose to use the Story Cord instead of a separate NPC cord.

The example I gave, based on a conversation with my wife, Liz, was of stealing a cannonball: If it's been defined as necessary to the plot to get a cannonball, then SGM can use the Story Cord's beads to represent the difficulty in getting a cannonball, rather than setting an arbitrary value (as in the Game Chef version) based on her judgment of how hard it would be. If there were someone guarding the cannonball, SGM could use that person's NPC cord instead. If it wasn't important to the plot at all, then there's no conflict to resolve, no beads exchanged, and it just happens -- "congrats, you now have a cannonball."

However, in actual play I found that making up NPC cords was not only going to be a time-waster, but it was also completely unnecessary. The Story Cord itself worked just for EVERY CONFLICT that resulted in the game.

The Story Cord retained the use as a game "timer" that Spider Grandmother's cord holds in the PDF version -- when the Story Cord loses all its Conflict beads (akin to Ephemeral beads on player cords), it's time to wrap up the game. (I do allow a caveat that if you want the game to keep going, you could use the Setting beads instead, which has the neat effect that everyone is forced into the same location for the big finish as the game winds down!)

So, back to the actual play -- Morning Song vs. The Mayor. MS is using her passion, her anger, her strong feelings (Blood Red beads) to try to sway her father. Looking at the Story Cord, he could respond with either the single Blood Red bead (matching her color), or with the outermost bead on the Story Cord, which was Gold, a Conflict bead. There were 3 other Gold beads on the Story Cord, so that was chosen.

It became "fact" there, then, that the Mayor himself was a Christian convert, and apparently strongly so, as he had four beads to MS's three red beads. We drew from the basket, but the Mayor won, which means: (a) Morning Song lost her outermost Ephemeral bead, which was a Silver Steel bead, (b) Morning Song was forced to concede to going to the church, and (c) Thomas (playing Morning Star) got to narrate the scene in which this happened.

Thomas voiced both Morning Song, pleading with her anger and pouring out her heart, and her father, resolutely determined to get her into church and basically bullying her into it. In the process, he smashes her loom (a technological item, of sorts; not what I'd choose, but I'm not narrating now, just kibitzing as SGM!), representing the loss of the Silver bead, and they go to the church.

The Story Cord really shouldn't accumulate lost beads from the players -- or else the story never ends -- so the lost Silver bead was simply thrown back in the pile, instead of being threaded.

Next, I wanted to introduce a conflict with Gray Dove, but I was drawing a blank. One of the players -- and I am sorry to say I have forgotten who! -- suggested that the newly arrived priest wanted GD's land for some reason. Perfect! We played out a scene in which the Father was asking for the land to build an observatory (he even brought star maps from Rome!), and the Mayor, who was turning into more and more of a jerk as the game went along, was willing to give it to him. Fearing loss to the community of a quarter of their crops, GD initiated a conflict against the Mayor to persuade him to change his mind, but it wasn't successful, and she also lost a bead.

Morning Song went out to get the people riled up against the priest, spitfire revolutionary that she is, and Gray Dove decided to go see the Priest and try to convince him to choose some other location for the observatory. The Priest, however, wasn't a particularly nice guy, and decided to instead take advantage of the woman who'd come into his new quarters. He (meaning me, SGM) initiated a conflict against GD, which ended in a push -- Matt (GD's player) was then asked to describe the scene in which neither really gets what they want. GD runs out of the priest's room, shirt torn, into the plaza.

The Priest follows and when she accuses him of rape, he accuses her of witchcraft and trying to seduce him. Morning Song tries to rally the people on Gray Dove's side, saying "she's provided food for our village for thirty years!" Suddenly, Gray Dove became a lot older than any of us had known, but that's all fun, right? The resulting conflict is another push, leaving the village generally confused about what to do. In the course of the conflict, the Mayor reveals that Gray Dove had made a pass at him years before, so she's now got a somewhat scandalous reputation as well.

Tactile Sensations

The players really, REALLY liked the cords. The cords were just plain fun to play with, to feel, to knot around their fingers, and so on. Matt was barely able to resist tying the cord around his head.

The beads worked too. One thing I really like about this game is the feel of it -- the sensations, having something to do with your hands. You get that in D&D and other traditional roleplaying games as well, but it's more invisible. You don't REALIZE how important it is to play with the funny shaped dice (people are ALWAYS touching them, have you noticed?) until you start playing with something else instead!

All in All

It was a really good playtest. It identified for me what I needed to fix -- more introduction materials for getting into and explaining the game -- and what worked. I particularly like the narration control rules and the way that the Story Cord works. Drawing beads may be a little too deterministic, but I don't mind that much (due to how narration control actually works).

Thank you, Thomas and Matt! I feel much better about going forward with this game and explaining/demoing/playtesting it with other people now. It's getting better all the time.

Hey, congratulations on a successful playtest!

Posted By: KynnBut Morning Song can't wait that long! Or so says Thomas, who wants to see how the system handles her internal battle. The conflict is her Blood Red against the Turquoise (Community) of the Story Cord -- somewhere, the Gold outermost Ephemeral was lost -- and she loses. Which means Thomas narrates. And so, in the dark outside of the church, Morning Song contemplates bursting in a day early and murdering the attempted-rapist Priest, knife in her hand.

She eventually decides against it, Thomas says, but as she's going to leave, she's spotted by the Priest's visitor -- who is none other than her father, the Mayor, speaking to the Priest. She drops the knife and runs back toward Eagle Shadow, across the plaza, as the Mayor comes out, and we rush toward a climax of the story.

With the game mechanics, we threw down Morning Song's red beads (for passion and bloodlust) against what her rash actions would mean to the community as a whole if the revolution began before the other villages were ready. This was represented by SGM's turquoise (community) beads. Although Morning Song had something like three reds on her cord to begin with, Kynn managed to outdraw me on the random bead grab. The result was Morning Song wasn't going to be able to kill the priest and I had to pop the outermost bead off of her character cord. This bead was turquoise which meant that Morning Song's failure had to result in her losing face in the community.

This played out by having Morning Song ready to kill the priest, entering the priest's quarters but shocked to find her father meeting with the priest. The two men started shouting, which brought out townspeople to see what was going on. Morning Song froze, dropped her knife, and ran from the scene while her fellow villagers watched.

Posted By: Ice Cream EmperorOne thing I am curious about, though: if the Story Cord is the pacing mechanism, as well as the only cord PCs have conflicts against, doesn't that mean that conflicts actually geteasieras the game progresses? Especially with your comment about how the Story Cord shouldn't get beads from players?

Did you notice that kind of trend in play? Or is the difference between the number of beads too small, given the variety of colours? On the one hand it seems like it might make things too predictable, but on the other hand it's a pretty typical story arc -- at the beginning, protagonists experience setbacks (SC has lots of beads), but eventually they triumph in the end (SC has fewer beads).

When we created our initial characters, Eagle Shadow had no more than two beads of the same color. When creating Morning Song, she wound up with three red beads (passion, blood, physicality). This made her pretty tough when it came to scenes that drew from powerful emotions, especially at the end when we saw her with four beads. But this is balanced by the size of the story cord -- characters start with nine beads and can lose all but five and still be alive and effective, but the story cord starts with 10 plus the number of players and can only go down to eight before the endgame.

The story did have that typical story arc feel. Both Matt and I blew or pushed early conflicts, but when the story came around to provoking the community to act through Morning Song's rabble-rousing, she was dominating social conflicts because of her three red beads. Even at the last conflict -- Morning Song jumping in front of her new husband's rifle -- I think we tied. (Morning Song didn't get to jump in front of the gun and Eagle Shadow didn't get to kill her father. We narrated that she pushed the rifle aside and he missed.) Things seemed easier in the last part of the game for me, but that's probably because Morning Song was involved in conflicts she was very powerful in.

Also with the way characters are built, you can't have beads of the same color next to each other. This results in a character with three beads of any color placing them in the Ephemeral section of the cord, which run a good chance of being popped off. From our play, character strength boils down to this: 1 bead = weak, 2 = average, 3 = strong, 4 = massive, 5 = uber. However, those strong, massive, and uber beads are going to be in the Ephemeral section and could easily be popped off if the conflict doesn't involve them. That is, if Morning Song was involved in a spiritual-based conflict, she only had one white bead. Losing that conflict, her outermost bead (red) would have been popped and she would have been weaker in blood-based conflicts.

Oh, and looking at the image at the top of this page, the small hex-shaped beads are what we used as randomizers. The red and white cord coming out of the basket is a min-maxed character that's very passionate about his strong relationship to the spirit world. Around the base of the basket is the story cord -- unfortunately for our character, the story is all about the church, money, and the Spanish military.

That's nice stuff. I'm glad it went well. It sounds like your playtesters were superb.

One of the massive strengths about this game is that it's a game with beads in it. Anyone walking past your table, at a convention, is going to think: what's that game with the beads?

Interesting that you drew a blank while thinking up one of the conflicts and took a suggestion from a player. I wonder if you should formalise the taking of suggestions from players in some way? It's pretty powerful if the players get to set some of their own conflicts.

I'm interested in Daniel's points about the Story Cord: conflicts getting easier and characters being powerful. It might be something to keep an eye on.

As a quick suggestion, how would you feel about Spider Grandmother's epilogue coming first, rather than last? I guess I'm thinking it'd put the emphasis on the players, rather than the GM, at the end.

Anyway, yeah, very glad it went well.

Graham