Game session review #2 – Moulin Rouge
Game was just as interesting, if not more so, without having our intro character chat and going right into story. Rolling on a faction is much better this time around, as we have some minor plot and investment from the story session. Discussion comes up if you can mark a faction for a player that is already marked in the intro move. I imagine not, but if you have players that are jerks, well…
Everything flows smoothly during the course of play, Debts between PCs seem frivolous. Unless they are working at cross purposes, I can only see them being used provide help when no one really wants to roll dice and take the chance. When stats increase this will become another moot point.
Session ending move makes no sense. Why would I lose a rating in a faction if I increased my rep with another? If my game session only takes place for a few hours of an evening, is another faction actually going to take note that I didn’t play with them? It’s kind of like an obsessive spouse you get in trouble with if you don’t call when you’re late.
Need some time with other skins to play around with to figure them out.
If debts between PCs seem frivolous you must have very friendly PCs! I’ve yet to play a game where they weren’t relied upon! Not to mention the incentive of using PC debts to mark faction toward advances.
(edit) Apparently this is wrong woops! As far as I know, as written, the player tasked with spotlighting faction is free to choose any faction, regardless of whether it has already been marked toward an advancement.
As to decreasing faction at the end of session, the rationale there is twofold:
First, your faction rating is more than just the amount of social capital or leverage you have on a faction (that’s better represented by your actual debts); rather, faction is your understanding and familiarity with a faction. So it’s not just an issue of “you never call you never write” (it certainly can take that form, but it doesn’t have to.)
Second, if you’ve spent enough time and effort to learn new things about a faction, by learning those new things, you drive a small wedge between other things. This is the price of knowledge! If the Hunter learns about the night, she risks distancing herself from her own humanity, or from true power, or from the wild. Monsters, gaze, abyss, etc.
I thought so about the intro move, someone brought it up and I felt I should ask.
As for the end move, I disagree with the degrading. Unless it is called for in the fiction of the story, there is no reason for lowering a faction rating because of interaction with another faction, especially for doing something as simple as ‘learning something meaningful’. If you observe something to gain information that can be used against a group of people, then you have a stronger hold over them. That explains the increase. How would knowing something more about the way a group works weaking my existing relationship with my own faction or even my enemy? In fact, I should gain MORE for having a weapon against my enemies.
Further, how could a PC lose ground with a faction if the fiction has no reference for the loss? If time doesn’t advance, or the knowledge remains secret, what explains the weakening faction? Because you have to tag every faction to advance, you have to have a PC work with and against factions all the time.
As for PC on PC debts, I still feel there’s a lot there that’s done more with RP than anything else. Yeah, you can use it, but my group isn’t always going to want to work against each other, nor should they have to. I do agree, though, PCs should be forced into those situations, but the Debts don’t seem to be as strong for people in that kind of RP.
I think you’re still looking at Faction as social capital or leverage over the group, but that’s not accurate as I explained above. So “losing ground” is a somewhat limited and obtuse way to approach the fiction behind the gain/loss at the end of session.
If you choose to interpret Faction to fit the rationale you describe, I agree that it makes sense to alter the end-of-session move. Maybe eliminate the increase/decrease entirely, and simply focus on debts?
Maybe the end-of-session move prompt should read if you’ve learned something meaningful about one faction and distanced yourself in some way from another… making clear that both elements are necessary to trigger the move.