Category: Gaming

Mention Count: 2.

In Angel, characters have Drama Points, which can be used for a number of quasi-narrative purposes. PCs get either 10 or 20 at the start of the game, depending on how powerful they are otherwise. (Think of the difference between Angel or Buffy on the one hand and Xander or Wesley on the other hand.) They have five uses, as follows:

Heroic Feat, which gives you a +10 bonus on any one roll; I Think I’m OK, which instantly heals half the damage a character has taken to the point it’s used; Plot Twist, which creates a “lucky break” for the characters; Righteous Fury, which costs 2 Drama Points and gives a +5 bonus for all rolls for one fight; and Back From The Dead, which allows a character to come back from death.

You can get more Drama Points by trading in experience points or — more interestingly — acting in a number of ways which reinforce the genre. For example, self-sacrificing heroic actions earn Drama Points. The GM also has the option to give out Drama Points when he takes over narrative control of a situation. For example, if he narrates that a PC is knocked out without warning, said PC gets a few Drama Points in exchange.

Since Life and Death on Winter Hill is a short-term game, I don’t think it makes sense to hand out experience points. I’d cut out the middle-man and just grant 4 or 2 Drama Points per session, depending once more on the power level of the character.

What are the genre conventions I want to encourage? I do actively want this to take place in the Whedonverse, so I think giving out Drama Points for witty lines makes sense. Drama Points for angst doesn’t make as much sense. Loyalty, on the other hand, is fairly important. Perhaps 2 Drama Points every time someone makes a difficult decision involving loyalty? I’m not sure exactly how to codify that. Possibly Loyalty should be an disadvantage in character generation, much the same way as Honorable is in the base rules.

I’m also thinking about other ways to use Drama Points as narrative currency. I want to give players narrative control over NPCs, both because I like making players do my work for me and because I think I can leverage that control for more emotional involvement. (More on that in a later post.) It seems like you should be able to invent an NPC for 1 Drama Point, and take over long-term control of an NPC for something like 3-5 Drama Points.

A couple of quotes for Jere. First, about history:

Well, it was simple enough, he thought now. Anna was often on his mind these days because of Assaf. And so in the desert this morning his memory had abruptly tumbled back through the years to Stern, all the way back to Egypt and the Monastery where it had actually begun for Anna and him, although neither of them had known then that it was a beginning, so long ago in Cairo.

Stern… Anna… secret histories.

I suppose we all have them tucked away inside somewhere, thought Bell, these precious and secret events with their secret beginnings. Understanding as little as we do, we always seem to be connected to others in ways we never suspect, in a sweep of time we can’t fathom, in moments we’re only able to recognize years later. As if for each of us the important things in life become but one single story in the end, one beautiful secret dream we grasp too late.

And about the inevitable effects of undercover work:

As for the Runner, he was simply trying to survive in his innermost being, and what surprised him most was how remote his old self now seemed. He found himself recalling Yossi as he might recall a childhood friend. He knew every detail about the life of this other person, but it was all a memory from another world. Yossi’s hopes, Yossi’s fears… they were simply no longer his. Halim understood disguises, and the lean new face he saw in the mirror, with its deep-set eyes and white hair, meant little to him. It was the inner changes that astonished him as Yossi slipped away into the past.

The steps of survival were always so small, it seemed to the Runner. Yet how vast was the sad finality of these changes he was witnessing.

About history again:

Years ago in front of the fire in the great central room of his house, during the second winter of the Lebanese civil war, he had listened sadly, helplessly, to the outpourings of Ziad’s heart and watched the shadows of Ziad’s terror loom on the far walls of the room like some primitive dance of death in a cave on the edge of the underworld. He had felt very close to Ziad then, so close he had wondered whether he might be in danger of confusing Ziad’s destiny with his own.

Yes, well, his friend had given him many things over the years, far more than he ever knew. And wasn’t it strange how all of this had ineluctably come to pass for the Runner? Even with the most careful planning and all the will in the world, there never seemed a way to know which little moment from the past would mysteriously blossom into a man’s inevitable, entire future.

When did it begin, I wonder?

But when did what begin? Which part of the intricate scheme of things? The sordid nightmare of life which was Lebanon? His complex feelings for Ziad? A man’s estrangement from his country and culture?

And that was just it. For years he hadn’t had time to ask himself that sort of question, which a recluse like Bell pondered day in and day out. Yet once there had been long leisurely hours when he and Bell had explored it together in the ruins of the Omayyad palace in Jericho, sitting beside the magnificent mosaic of the pomegranate tree with its three gazelles and the lion.

Before the Six Day War. Yes, Halim remembered those times very well.

Edward Whittemore was a CIA field agent after World War II; in the 70s and 80s he wrote the Jerusalem Quartet, four novels about the Middle East. At first, they’re magic realism, but by the end they’re almost pure espionage. The final novel — Jericho Mosiac, from whence the above quotes originate — is a fictionalized account of Eli Cohen’s espionage career. As a whole, the Quartet is a superb depiction of the Middle East.

[More character noodling. This is for Rob’s Starchild game.]

“Is that Summer or Strummer?”

“Eh, you know, whatever…”

Kai Summer is immensely young, and the heavy overcoat he wears — down to his ankles, collar turned up to his ears — does nothing to hide this. It accentuates his slender frame, skinny like the loosely knotted tie he sometimes wears. His ragged boots swallow his feet whole. You could drop him into a Chicago winter and he’d vanish like he was just another bad poet with too much pride to work retail and not enough time to live.

I’ve never seen him without the overcoat off stage.

On stage, though, he’s someone else. He doesn’t get any bigger, but he uses his guitar to carve electric lines through the air in minor keys that owe more to madness than to music. If you squint just a little you can see a shimmering field of music around him like an aura of sound. I’ve noticed that people playing with him don’t get too close. I can’t blame them; I’d worry about getting sliced in two by a stray power chord.

It is trivial to say that he is the best guitarist of his generation because at the ripe old age of 17, he is the first guitarist of his generation. Perhaps in the end, if Mother doesn’t have her way, he will be known merely as the man who found the possibilities. Perhaps someone else will be the man who developed them.

But I wouldn’t bet on it.

He is playing tonight at the Broken Metronome. He told me the other week that he hopes to jam with Mary Pagan someday. It’s the first personal confidence I’ve ever heard from him. Mary? Are you out there? Can you hear me? This critic thinks you should make Kai’s dream come true.

From Lester Shots’ “Beating the Minutes” column in the ChicaGO alternative wheneverwecan.