[5:24pm] evilseanbot: One thing I’m wondering about
[5:24pm] evilseanbot: is
[5:25pm] evilseanbot: Can you say “I don’t want the job”?
[5:25pm] Elizabeth: I.. guess?
[5:25pm] Elizabeth: But that ’s kind of like being approached in the tavern by the dude in the dark corner and when he is like “I have a mission of vital importance” you’re like “But I wanted to stay home and throw a barbecue for my friends”
[5:26pm] evilseanbot: I know
[5:26pm] evilseanbot: Its exactly like that
[5:26pm] evilseanbot: I think it would be good to put in big bold letters “YOU TAKE THE JOB BECAUSE THAT IS HOW THE GAME IS PLAYED.”
[5:27pm] evilseanbot: Or possibly put in some sort of sub-system.
[5:27pm] evilseanbot: Like
[5:27pm] evilseanbot: You can express Resistance.
[5:28pm] evilseanbot: And then when you express Resistance, one of 3 things can happen: A) Another character can jump on the oppurtunity to take the job, He’ll better his offer and you take the job, or C) They make it -personal-.
[5:28pm] evilseanbot: Either way, job is taken, but it adds a few options.
[5:28pm] Elizabeth: Ooooh.
[5:29pm] Elizabeth: I like that a lot.

Filed under: Blowback, Uncategorized by Elizabeth
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Analysis scenes happen before the job itself. There can be any number of these scenes, depending on what exactly you need to do in order to prepare yourself for the job at hand. The first Analysis scene in a job usually involves the following:

•    Being approached by the Client
•    Getting a rundown of the job
•    Determining payment, if any

Then the group decides who is running this job. Sometimes, maybe even most  of the time, the person who should run this particular job will be obvious anyway. The person in charge gets to use his or her skills and whatnots for free, of course. Bringing in the other team members costs a favor each. Of course, sometimes the client has a tie to one of the team members who, for whatever reason, isn’t suited to running the job; putting someone else in charge on a job where you brought in the client yourself costs you a favor.
The person in charge of the job brings in the team members who will be involved and delegates tasks. These tasks can involve the following:
•    Doing reconnaissance
•    Laying traps
•    Rallying forces
•    Creating diversions

There are special mechanics for doing these things, which can get you tokens to place or burn during the Mission scenes, or can cost you in the Mission scenes as well. This is the stuff where your skills and whatnots are really useful; the dice mechanic here is probably a simplified version of the pendulum mechanic* used in the Mission scenes, or maybe is an independent mechanic that informs the pendulum mechanic.
Anyway, there are a series of scenes in which individual characters do awesome things in order to set themselves up for success on the mission, and people get together at the end of the Analysis phase to finish planning for the job.

*More on the pendulum mechanic in a following post

Filed under: Blowback, Dissolute Games by Elizabeth
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(Let’s call GMs “The Agency” for a little extra flavor.)

So when you begin a game, you come up with your characters– the stuff I mentioned earlier, you know, your dossier. Everyone plays an Artist or a Lifer, as well as a Civillian who is important to another player’s Professional. Just because you come up with a Civillian doesn’t mean they have to be involved in every job or every session of the game; sometimes it’s nice to have them waiting in the wings for when they’re needed, and some Civillians will turn out to be more important than others. The Agency controls everyone else.

The Professionals are trapped in the same town where the players are playing the game. They’re stuck there after one big job went horribly, terribly wrong, and the Agency blacklisted them as a result. The group can brainstorm the details that the Professionals would already know: where the job took place, what the goal of the job was, what the unexpected issue was that tanked the mission, and how they barely got out alive. Since everything was planned meticulously for a job that big, obviously the job was sabotaged or the team was set up. Throughout the game, the characters will learn bits and pieces of the truth behind that fateful mission, and eventually be confronted with the choice to return to the life of a spy, retire, or something in between.. And then live (or die) with the consequences.

They find out this information in a progression of jobs for folks around town.

When making a job, The Agency rolls a d6 to determine a client:

1. Dirty Gone Clean
2. Innocent Bystander
3. Fall Guy
4. Justice Seeker
5. One of the Professionals
6. One of the Civillians

There’s always a bad guy who’s the entry point into the operation. The team will have to do some recon to figure out who it is and come up with a plan to exploit the person, but for the general template of the Mook, roll another d6:

1. Club Kid
2. Hired Muscle
3. Suit
4. Con Man
5. Zealot
6. Honeypot

And finally, roll a d6 to find out who the Boss will be. Sometimes they know it upfront, and sometimes it’s dramatically revealed later. Which works best for you should be obvious (ie, the Sleeper isn’t known from the beginning), or you can decide it later:

1. Magnificent Bastard
2. Old Friend
3. Agent
4. Sleeper
5. Mastermind
6. Crazy

Once The Agency has got the basic idea of what the job is, play can begin.

Next: a breakdown of the three types of scenes.

Filed under: Dissolute Games by Elizabeth
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(Yes, the game has a new and better title now!)

So the game has a specific premise of sorts, now. You and your friends/crew/whatever were working a job, and for a reason you’re not sure of– sabotage, perhaps, or outside influences– the job went horribly awry. As a result you’ve been completely blown, and you’re stuck in your hometown with your friends until you can win your way back into the agency’s good graces. You start knowing very little about the job, what the goal was, and who was involved, but as things progress in the game you get more and more clues. Right now I’m waffling between creating some kind of mechanized output system that generates clues at appropriate times in the fiction, or just making that one of the GM’s jobs.

The character sheet is a dossier: real name, known aliases, picture. Specializations and calling cards. And then there are two other parts:

Profile: this is what your character thinks they want. The thing that you’re making clear is your objective– you want to get out of the city and get back into the agency, you want to retire peacefully and get everyone to leave you alone, you want to defect, you want to go into witness protection.

Psychological evaluation: this contains all of the stuff your character doesn’t realize they are or they want, but seems obvious to outsiders. This is the stuff your character isn’t self-aware enough to notice, or would deny, or doesn’t realize is as important as it is: “Subject is clearly in love with his demolitionist, has delusions of grandeur and enjoys playing hero. Dangerous thrillseeking tendencies, perhaps due to a broken childhood.” and so on. You can add to or change this stuff as the game goes on.

The game progresses in a series of jobs, and each job has three types of scenes: Analysis, Mission, and Blowback.

Analysis scenes are about carefully prepping for the job at hand. Coming up with contingencies, bugging phones, surveillance, information gathering. During Analysis scenes, your relationships are used as bonuses, and favors can be exchanged.

Mission scenes are about doing the hands-on work. Infiltrating a gang on a job, exchanging money for a hostage, confronting a Boss, showing your true identity/face to the enemy. During Mission scenes, your relationships can be used as penalties, and fallout from favors can be revealed.

Blowback scenes are about what happens after and between missions, relationship issues, and dealing with fallout. During Blowback scenes, relationships can grow, diminish, or break.

More later.

Filed under: Dissolute Games by Elizabeth
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So, as I mentioned before, there are a couple different types of characters you can play, as well as an exciting list of professional abilities (demolition, heavy artillery, surveillance, hand-to-hand, linguistics, hacking, knife-throwing, battlefield medicine, poisons, and whatever else you can think of). The characters also have relationships with the other players. Both the abilities and the relationships exist on a scale of one to five.

• Lifers get four professional skills: one 4-point, two 3-points, and one two-point. They also get one 3-point relationship and one 2-point relationship. Everything else is at 1.
• Artists get three professional skills: one 5-point, one 2-point, and one 1-point. They also get a 4-point relationship and two 2-point relationships. Everything else is at 1. They also get a Workshop.
• Civillians get two choices with professional skills: either one 2-point or two 1-point. They also get a 5-point relationship and 3-point relationships. Everything else is at 2. They also get a Hideout.

The number of points you have in your professional skills denotes how many times you can roll that skill during a job. If you run out of points in a profession and want to roll it anyway, you can sacrifice a point of relationship.

Professional conflict usually involves having to roll a number of successes equal to the relevant professional skill before rolling a number of failures equal to the relevant relationship. When dealing with personal conflict, the opposite is true.

Filed under: Dissolute Games by Elizabeth
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These are just the first thoughts for the game. (This is based on Burn Notice, one of the best shows on television.)

So you’re all a bunch of people who have spent your lives outside the law, right– ex CIA maybe, or ex-FBI, or you’re in Witness Protection, or you’re a gun-smuggler wanted in a bunch of countries and now you’re laying low. Whatever the reason, you’re all stuck in the same town, and you’re making a little extra money by helping people, while trying to fend off the bad dudes who got you stuck in this town in the first place.

The town you-the-characters are stuck in is the town that you-the-players are stuck in. (Why? Mission prep and Important Details. Like, if I know my character’s going to be in a car chase, you can bet your butt that I’m taking him under the one-car bridge on Arch Street. And that Korean restaurant on main street, Manna House? It’s perfect for covert meetings because you can never see who’s in there.)

You’ve got personal skills and professional skills, and if you’ve been this kind of professional for most of your adult life, then your personal skills aren’t gonna be so hot. Likewise, if you’ve never been in this line of work and spent your time, I dunno, going on dates and visiting your family, you’re not going to be much good at improvising a sticky bomb with tile cement and a mop.

There are a couple different kinds of characters you can play.

Lifers are renaissance men and women. They’ve been at this a long time and have the skill sets to keep them alive in a job with high turnover rates. Of course, the skills it takes to be a good operative make for a lousy friend, lover, daughter or dad. (In the world of Burn Notice, Michael and Sam are lifers.)

Artists specialize in one area, and boy, do they shine. Because they haven’t been quite as consumed by their job as the lifers, they’re a little better at having friends and family, but they still have.. issues. (In the world of Burn Notice, Fiona and Barry are Artists.)

Civillians don’t know how to take apart and put back together an AK in the back of a moving vehicle that’s being chased by covert operatives, but they do have people they can ask to borrow a cup of sugar from without having to come up with a cover ID. They’re the friends and family of the Lifers and Artists, or as close to friends and family as those kids can have. As such they might have picked up a few tricks– maybe they’ve helped out with surveillance in the past, or picked up a couple tips on interrogation– but their big assets are their stability, willingness to lend an ear, and being an unexpected place to hide. (In the world of Burn Notice, Michael’s mom and brother are Civillians.)

There are some other characters that the GM makes up, too. First are Clients, the people you’re trying to help. There are a couple different types:

Dirty gone clean: These guys were in it, and now they want out. The trouble they’re in is sort of their own doing, but they’ll tell you man, they never thought it would go down like THIS. Swear.

Innocent bystander: This person saw something they shouldn’t have, or has something someone else wants. They were minding their own business, and now whoops, they’re in trouble.

Fall guy: This dude was totally set up. Probably by his boss, or her boyfriend or something.

Justice seeker: Justice seekers are dangerous. They’re not professionals, but they’re going to try to right a wrong with or without you. It’s just that without you, they’ll die. Quick.

So when you’re trying to serve your Client, you’re probably going to run into some Mooks. They’re the lower-level scumbags you have to trick, beat, or infiltrate into giving up their Boss. They come in a couple different flavors:

Club kids: Mostly drug dealers and the like, they like to pretend to be the boss in order to get free drinks and lots of sex. They talk a big game but they aren’t terribly bright, and some of them are scared of real guns.

Hired Muscle: Bodyguards, mercenaries, and the ilk. Sometimes you can just get away with paying them more than their boss does, but don’t count on it.

Suits: Ops who think they’re covert, government workers, people who are licensed to conceal but would be just as happy to bury you in paperwork or cause trouble with the local police.

And, as I said, the Mooks have Bosses:

Magnificent Bastards: These dudes don’t get their hands dirty, they’ve got people for that. Corrupt politicians, businessmen, white-collar criminals. They’re hard to get to, but once you’re up close and personal, they’re probably not armed. Or if they are, it’s not going to be with much.

Agents: These are the real deal, don’t mistake them for suits. They’ve got the power of an entire country behind them, and it’s usually not one that grants extradition. Interpol files and a band of not-so-merry men. Tread lightly.

Old Friends: In this line of work, you’re likely to piss people off now and then. Problem is, if you’ve done something bad enough to make them mad, then they’re mad enough to not stop until you’re dead or sold to the highest bidder.

Sleepers: Arguably the most dangerous Boss of all, because you don’t see them coming. They masquerade as Mooks or Clients.

Mooks and Clients can turn out to be Sleepers, and Characters can be Clients (especially if the Boss is an Old Friend.)

There’s more coming, but this is already a pretty long post. Tomorrow.

Filed under: Dissolute Games by Elizabeth
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Filed under: Dissolute Games by Elizabeth
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This is the official website for Two Scooters Press. It’s currently under construction, but the blog is active and awesome, and we’re going to start posting in it now. Feel free to add us to your RSS conglomerators, your Google readers, your whatevers.

Unfortunately, Shreyas and I aren’t going to be at GenCon this year, but our games will be! You’ll be able to pick up Mist-Robed Gate; at IPR, and if I can get the layout done in time, free playtest documents for Homecoming: one soldier’s story at the Pirate Jenny booth. It’s Complicated will not be in attendance due to being out of print, but if you’re hankering for a PDF or can’t wait until the con to get your hands on ;Mist-Robed Gate both are available at The Unstore.

Filed under: site stuff by Elizabeth
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