Vincent's Checklist

So I'm going through this useful-looking thing, trying to figure where Torchbearer stands. I'll update this post as work on TB continues, or alternatively just comment in the new stuff.

Mechanical Rules For...

Opposition

I hope that this is made clear in the mechanics of Trials and Trait/Fuel manipulations, which set one player against one another in a sort of uncomplicated way. It'd be interesting to give them some more active roles here, as opposed to simply setting them as narrators.

The more involved opposition would probably involve some kind of Fuel bidding procedure.

The major positioning mechanism lives here in the form of Torch offerings, but these are only positional for the parties who are not in fact pivotal to the Trial. This is kind of wonky, I think. What now?

Situation

Shit, man. I am not even sure I know what situation is. I need help here.

IIEE

Gotta work on this. I think, like, there needs to be a "say yes or roll the dice" model going on here, even though I like the "yes, but at what cost?" thing that I did with Mridangam. That's probably too freewheeling for this design, though. This thing needs to be separate from Trials and the pacing/structuring function they serve.

One possibility is this: During your scene, you narrate the actions of your hero and their consequences in the world. You can't solve the problems of an Ordeal with narration alone; you must resolve those via Trials. If the owner of your current Ordeal thinks you're trying to weasel out of it via narration, he may call for a Trial. However, you may declare other effects in the world. Your ability to do this is infinite, but bounded by the approval of the other players. Any other player may interrupt your narration to state that he objects to a particular result you have described. He must specify exactly what event he is objecting to, specify an alternative result, and spend some quantity of Fuel to purchase an equal number of dice. In response, you have several options. You may simply say that it's not worth it, and accept that your result doesn't happen. Alternatively, you may narrate some string of events that expresses your character's Traits and how those Traits lead to the event you desire. For each Trait you invoke, you may spend 1 Fuel to purchase a die. When you're done narrating your efforts, roll your dice against the objector's. If you have more successes, your result occurs. If not, then the objector's alternative result does.

The major reward mechanism, Fuel, lives here in EE.

Resolution & Outcome

Pretty much handled in Trials here.

Consensus About

What Each Player Should Do Right Now

This is really clear in my head, but not on paper yet.

Consensus On Two Of These

Characters

Yeah. All over that.

Situation

Please see above!

Setting

Not gonna go there. Setting is an ugly myth.

Colour

Yeah. Torches pwn j00.

The Other Two

Yeah, so, needing to write guidelines about this. I have some clues about what it means for a Torch to be expressed in the setting, and situation is still a black box to me.

The Big Six

Violence, sex, children, money, God, or art. Nothing firm on these yet, but they would do well to be discussed as good pegs to hang Torches on.