Posted By: Ben RobbinsI could also see cases where it would make sense: you just escaped the monster, then in a non-combat scene you find a fire axe and grab it to carry to the next scene. Not sure what the solution is there.

You could narrate the taking of the axe without getting dice, and when the time comes where it happens to be useful, you get the dice--or not. You never know what might work against the monster, after all :)

Thanks for the good words, Ben. I'm glad you think the game's getting better as it keeps being developed further. Can you talk more about why you were dubious about the examples and what eventually won you over?

The only other change you might have missed is that the characters (like the menace) roll all their dice in every confrontation, which might potentially be controversial, if you've been playing the previous version. But try it out and see if you think it makes it more elegant and makes characters less likely to be hosed because their players unknowingly chose inappropriate survival or advantage dice.

Additionally, the pooling rules are somewhat new, or at least are much more clear than the original rules for teaming up in confrontations.

Christian's solution to the dice-defining is not a bad one, actually, and something that should probably be in the text. There's all this stuff in the game that doesn't necessarily have mechanical weight, right? Most characters still love their momma, even if they don't get advantage dice from it, yeah? It's really just that you can't define what actually gives you an advantage until right before you use it in a confrontation. So, yeah, grab an axe, pray for your life, discover the secret passcodes, kiss the frustratingly arrogant intelligence officer you've been bickering with for the entire movie. But only decide what's actually important once it matters, because if you decide what's important beforehand ("I have an ax!"), you might end up fighting a swarm of mind-controlled alien bees (as happened in the very first Geiger playtest) and your ax might not seem as appropriate anymore.

Honestly, handing traitorous characters properly has been a thorny issue throughout Geiger's development. The "Traitor" condition appeared in early drafts (like, back in the alien bee swarm days, when Geiger only could make Scifi Channel Original Movies) and, after reading your post, I think you may be right that it might work. I'd just dismissed it after early mediocre play, since EVERYONE wanted to be the traitor and I couldn't, at that point, figure out a way to implement it. If you have more suggestions in this regard, I'd be excited to hear them (since you were really helpful in making "Overrun" work), though my own wheels are beginning to turn on that issue as well. It's especially exciting that, with the recent addition of Buyoffs, you could actually redeem yourself from being the traitor...

One thing I didn't have room to include in the beta was what you do when you decide that one of the main characters is actually the menace, as sometimes happens in slasher movies like Scream. In the beginning, Geiger was an Afraid hack called Craven County, which was explicitly trying to replicate this, but you should still be able to do this in Geiger.

One other point that I didn't make explicit in the best rules is that, compared to many other small press games of the post-Forge school, Geiger Counter is more open to fudging and ad hoc solutions to immediate problems, partially because, since it's a one shot, the most important thing is making the game work right now. A single tweak for one scene, where you have a confrontation involving the traitor work one way, doesn't necessarily have to establish precedent for future conflicts involving the traitor. This isn't invoking the Golden Rule, really, but just allowing for flexibility rather than insisting on strictly following the established guidelines even in unusual circumstances. I probably fudge how conditions are parsed out at least once a game, based on what's happening in a given confrontation. For example, if one character decides to fight the menace by blowing the hatch on the airlock, then it makes sense that all the characters in that location have to beat their roll or gain a condition, even though characters can't normally attack everyone at once like that. Does that make sense?

Example maps are definitely coming in the next/final version. For now, I think the ones linked on the download page, in the play reports that have already been posted, do a pretty great job. I should probably indicate as much on the website.

Matthew, yeah, the intention is for one of the other players to frame a scene in which you fulfill the buyoff conditions, though this probably shouldn't just start with them just being like "Okay, you manage to work your way out from underneath the rubble. You're no longer Trapped." Instead, it should be more like, "Okay, you're trapped in the rubble and the whole corridor around you is creaking and groaning, like it's about to cave in or maybe the menace is lurking somewhere around here." And then you describe your character trying to free themselves and the director or other players describe complications, like "Okay, you're down to just this really big rock that's hard to move, but it's directly on your leg." And maybe your character grabs a metal bar that is lying around, something that used to be part of a support, a tries to pry the rock off their leg... but then the menace attacks! And, if there's an advantage die in the room, you grab it and declare that it's the metal bar, which you're going to bash the menace in the head with. And then, after the confrontation, assuming you're still alive, the other players agree that, yeah, you've fulfilled the buyoff conditions and are no longer trapped. Does that make sense?

Definitely, having some PTA experience helps, but there aren't really enough GMless games out there yet (though more coming all the time) that you can hope that people have that kind of background. I haven't had any really huge problems. Most of the issues I've had in play come from people being too into their individual characters or what they're personally narrating and not really jacking into the group experience. That can be a problem no matter what people's background is, but if you can get folks to invest as a group, I think it should work pretty well.

Posted By: Jonathan WaltonCan you talk more about why you were dubious about the examples and what eventually won you over?

Nothing rational that you should worry about. It just seemed like a lot of example text at first glance but when I read it it worked. I will admit one thing that distracted me was that "Sky Burial" and "Starlight, Starbright" were thematically very similar titles (sky / star) even though the stories themselves are (rightly) extremely different. Sharp contrast would be better. How does "Killer Commie Blood Wolves" grab you? ;)

The only other change you might have missed is that the characters (like the menace) roll all their dice in every confrontation, which might potentially be controversial, if you've been playing the previous version.

I think we hardly (if ever) limited people using their starting advantage or survival dice that way for those same reasons.

Does that include advantage dice defined as the game goes on? If so doesn't that butt up against the "you said it's a fire axe but now we know the menace is a ghost so how does that help?" Of course with good description anything can work, so might be a non-issue.

But only decide what's actually important once it matters, because if you decide what's important beforehand ("I have an ax!"), you might end up fighting a swarm of mind-controlled alien bees (as happened in the very first Geiger playtest) and your ax might not seem as appropriate anymore.

How would that work with moving dice? Do you leave them where they were since you can't define them until a conflict occurs? Seems tricky.

a) One alternative would be to just let people grab and define mobile dice outside of conflicts, but be strict about ignoring them in conflicts where they shouldn't help (contradicting the point above).

b) Another alternative is to make a complete break in the advantage dice system: keep the stationary dice as is but put the mobile dice into a sidebar when they are placed instead of a location. Anyone can then grab and define one of those mobile advantage die if they are in a conflict (but only one can be defined per conflict). Too easy? I'm not sure I like it.

c) I could also see cases where stationary dice get remotely defined in roleplaying pre-conflict: there are 3 undefined stationary dice in the lab from when it was first created but there have been no conflicts there. While hiding in the steam tunnels Doc says if they can get to the lab he can brew up a pesticide to kill the plant monsters. He hasn't technically defined those dice, but everyone is kind of agreeing that is what those dice will be. This is basically what happened in The Silent Deep. I think it's a common pattern.

Option C could lead to a more general rule: you can define advantage dice if you are in the same location and in a conflict, or in any location you _aren't_ in even if there is no conflict ("we have to get the chainsaw from the toolshed!"). I kind of like that.

I'd just dismissed it after early mediocre play, since EVERYONE wanted to be the traitor and I couldn't, at that point, figure out a way to implement it.

Traitors rock. We've had lots of luck with traitors, and we never had everyone wanting to be traitors, but I suppose that depends on the type of scenario -- some genres are full of bastards.

The more I think about it the more I'm liking the traitor condition. You could also broaden it to "untrustworthy" with the same mechanics (no pooling).

By the way, redeemed traitor? Awesome. Of course you'd have to convince the other players to go for it which is doubly awesome...

One thing I didn't have room to include in the beta was what you do when you decide that one of the main characters is actually the menace, as sometimes happens in slasher movies like Scream.

That's supercool and I think quite easy in the current rules -- the character just "dies" and becomes the NPC menace (not under the original player's control). No special rules needed, but definitely deserves mention in the text.

Does that make sense?

Absolutely. It highlights what I really like about Geiger Counter: it hits that sweet spot between rules and trusting the players to work towards the fun. Some other games err too far in either direction, restricting the players too much or leaving them adrift and making them do all the work.

Example maps are definitely coming in the next/final version.

Cool. Maps are teh win.

After reading it thoroughly, I'm struck by how much you've cut out since the last version. Or, well, the version we played at GoPlayNW. No pre-made moments, no secret goals, no big ole list of characters jointly created and picked from. Overall it'll probably be smoother this way, but I'm wondering if secondary characters are going to be less featured now that you don't have a list of character names to start with. We did a lot with our extras in The Protocol, but if we hadn't brainstormed characters beforehand to pick primaries from, we wouldn't have had the same pool to pick secondaries from, complete with names and archetypes.

Well, we'll see. Plan is to play it tonight at Guardian Games (those of you who are in Portland, show up for Beer&Pizza Game Night!), so I'll report back after that experience :)

We played it tonight with three "vets" and three newbies to indie games. It was fun, albeit less than it could have been because two of the players had to go before the end. I do think I'd like to see the suggestion (as in: not required but listed as an option) of making up secondary characters beforehand, if only as archetype-name combos. As it was, we had some extras, but they had zero personality.

Matt's going to write more about the game soon.

Re the examples, the other thing that turned me off was that the formatting wasn't different from the rules. As you glance through the pages you can't tell how much is example and how much is rules. That makes the rules text look a lot longer than it is and hurts fast lookup.

Something simple like boxing or seriously indenting all the examples would make it visually clear they weren't core (insert actual knowledge of pretty layout here).

One of the PCs last night was on the menace's side, by the way, and that worked just fine without a traitor condition.

Christian: Awesome! I look forward to hearing about your most recent game.

Ben: I'm taking notes for future revisions including a list of "things Ben liked better in the Alpha" to reconsider. I definitely agree with you that the traitor and "becoming the menace" guidelines need to be sleek and easy.

Renato: Yup, taking notes on layout stuff as well, like the "needs page numbers!" you mentioned earlier.

Frederik: Glad you like Sky Burial, that was my favorite too. My intention was definitely to do something different with the examples. I think a lot of game examples aim for the lowest common denominator, in order to be accessible, but that prevents them from being interesting or sophisticated. I might rename Sky Burial and replace Starlight, Starbright with something else, but the wolves-and-Red-Guards example game is definitely staying in some form.

There's definitely a reason that there are "main characters" and not "PCs" in Geiger Counter. The relationship between player and character is something fairly different than it is in most traditional or face-stabby games.

You're probably right that the emphasis on creating a shared pool of characters -- as a way of emphasizing shared game ownership and responsibility -- probably needs to make a return in the next edition.