"Six Bullets for Vengeance" (hereafter 6B4V) is an RPG that is being designed by Andrew Kenrick of Steampower Publishing. I'd been wanting to play 6BV4 for ages since I first read about it, and Kenrick quite nicely sent through the latest revision of his game (version 0.6) so that we could give it a spin.
I need to explain just a wee bit about 6BV4 before launching into the Actual Play (AP) report, otherwise you might struggle to make sense of said report. The plot of 6BV4 centers around the quest for Vengeance of a single Protagonist: something bad - and I'm talking Burning In Hell kinda bad - happened in the life of the Protagonist and the story told through play is how she guns down those who wronged her in a ballet of bullets and bloody Vengeance. The default setting for 6BV4 is a Wild West that Never Quite Was. The game is named 6BV4 because there are six bullets in the six shooter that the Protagonist carries, and so we have six Chapters in play, one for each Antagonist that the Protagonist is going to gun down in the pursuit of her Vengeance.
Role-wise, one player is the Protagonist for the duration of the game, and the other players play the Antagonists: for a parallel in recent movie terms, think Kill Bill. In those flicks the Protagonist is Black Mamba (Uma), and the Antagonists are the members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, namely O-Ren Ishii, Copperhead, etc. and Bill.
So far, so good: 6B4V is structured in a pleasingly different fashion to most other RPGs, in that the scenes play out in reverse. Play starts at the end of the story, when the Protagonist has blown away all of the Antagonists. We then play out six chapters, one for each of the Antagonists, during which each Antagonist will be killed by the Protagonist: the fact that the Protagonist kills each Antagonist is never in doubt. In play, we found that the focus of each Chapter was not how does the Protagonist kill each Antagonist - this is boring and devoid of drama, because we already know that the Protagonist is successful in executing her Vengeance. Rather, the focus was what does this cost the Protagonist?
Excellent stuff: a GM-less, no-prep game, with a nice non-linear structure and a story that emerges through play. What more could an avid Story Gamer such as myself want? (Well, a Six Demon Bag of course, but I digress.) I'll lay out the players and story that emerged through play - remember that we had no prep at all - and then write about what worked and didn't work for us.
The Players
- Mick, playing the Protagonist, Sheriff McGraw, the Living Embodiment of Furious Vengeance.
- Alex, playing the Antagonist Sheriff Cox, a Drunkard (and a host of other characters).
- Toad, playing the Antagonist Pa McGregor, patriarch of a clan of wicked bootleggers (and a host of other characters).
- Rich, playing the Antagonist Roxy, a hatchet-faced hooer (and a host of other characters).
- Me (Pete), playing the Antagonist Coy Beams, a land-hungry Mayor (and a host of other characters).
- Alex (again), playing the Antagonist Old McCavvity, a Corrupt and Wealthy Miser (and a host of other characters).
- Rich (again), playing the Antagonist Joe McGregor, a Young and Most Wicked Rapist (and a host of other characters).
The Story (In Reverse)
The Epilogue: The game opened with Sheriff McGraw resting easy in his chair, his dusty boots plopped down on his desk, a mixture of emotions playing across his face, with gunsmoke rising from the barrel of his Winchester rifle. Old Jimmy Finnigan is gripping the iron bars of his cell real tight, and his mouth is agape revealing blackened teeth. Deputy Dewey has his hand on his pistol. Hazel, the Madam of the local cathouse is splattered with the bone, blood and brains of the man that the Sheriff has just blown away. The crumpled body of the former Sheriff, Gus Cox, lies on the floor, the back of his head clean blown out. All is silent, and we fade to black.
Chapter Six: Gus Cox, A Drunkard and Former Sheriff of Wainington, Nebraska: We open to a familiar Western scene: a saloon, filled with the usual mix of dirty cowboys fresh off the range, a bartender, assorted hooers, and a pianist plinky-plonking the ivories of a clapped out piano.
Cox is mouthing off about the new Sheriff and some folks in the saloon are mighty sympathetic. Hazel is trying to get Cox to go upstairs to spend some quality time with one of her freshest hooers, but Cox is looking rattled and demands more whiskey. The bartender has to say no to 'Coxy', because the new Sherrif has expressly told him not to supply Cox with any more drink because of his alcoholism. The Sheriff then enters the saloon, and Coxy starts badmouthing him, cursing his mother and father. Boise McGregor, a scion of the McGregor clan, local ne'er-do-wells, who has been quietly nursing a bottle of whisky, challenges the Sheriff to a duel out in the main street: Boise's eyes are red rimmed, and he is spitting angry about his kin "bein' killed for no good reason." Cox cheers Boise on, but the Sherrif guns down the lad without even breaking a sweat. As the local undertaker and tailor clears away the corpse, the Sheriff eyeballs Coxy with a steely glare that seems to say "C'mon, try me", before turning way and heading back to the Sheriff's Office.
Coxy has had enough: his courage up, he adjusts his gunbelt and storms towards the Sheriff's Office, kicking in the door and... [we fade to black].
Chapter Five: Pa McGregor, Patriarch of a clan of wicked bootleggers: we open to scene where Coxy is sitting in the McGregor moonshine distillery, drinking high-proof liquor with most of the McGregor boys. They're talking about what happened earlier that week in the town and how that new Sheriff turned down cold hard cash to look the other way to the illegal activities of the McGregors. When Coxy was Sheriff things were different and everyones palm was greased, but this new Sheriff has got some kind of bee in his bonnet. The Sheriff rides on in, and straight guns down every McGregor he finds, somehow missing or ignoring Coxy who has fallen to the floor in a drunken stupor.
[Yes, we had two scenes here in this single Chapter.]
Cut to a crummy cemetary on the outskirts of town, some days later: it's night, and the moon is hanging low in the sky. Pa McGregor, the patriarch of the McGregor clan and father to many of the boys gunned down by the Sheriff, is placing flowers by the grave of his deceased wife. The Sheriff appears from behind a blasted tree, and some heated words are exchanged... Pa McGregor says that the Sheriff will never find his daughter "'cos just like you gone taken mah boys away I gone taken yoah daughter from ya." It all ends badly for old Pa though, as the Sheriff coldy guns him down on top of the grave of his wife! In a crazy twist, as the Sheriff is dragging Pa's body off the grave, he hears muffled screams from a nearby grave: hurriedly digging down through fresh dirt, he finds his daughter - alive! - in the coffin that Pa McGregor has buried her alive in!
[We fade to black.]
Chapter Four: Roxy, a hatchet-faced hooer: the next scene opens in a dark alley of the Town. Deputy Dewey is arguing over the price of a dirty back-door hump with Roxy, a hooer with face that the wind really did freeze all nasty like. Roxy ain't one for messing round though: Dewey is the Sheriff's man and she has a bone to pick with the Sheriff. The Sheriff, who just happens to be strolling past, sees Dewey stumble out of the alley, holding his hands clasped tight aruond his blood-drenched crotch: that dirty hooer "has dang gone cut my snake off!"
A furious row ensues with Roxy and a fair lot of the Townsfolk railing something fierce against the Sheriff, telling him in no roundabout way that they have had enough of him and that they want him gone. Roxy screams that the Sheriff ain't no man of the Law, because he's gone and gunned down the Mayor! The Sheriff listens to all of this ranting with a stone cold expression, and then he pulls out his pistol and plain shoots the hooer "in the tits". Blam!
[We fade to black].
Chapter Three: Coy Beams, a land-hungry Mayor: it is a year previous to the last scene, and our camera swoops down onto a posse struggling to ride up a mountain pass in the middle of a freezing Nebraska snowstorm. Mayor Beams, the Sheriff, and a posse of gun-totin' men are chasing down Ben Toombs, a wicked murderer.
Out of the snow a figure appears: a squaw, caught out by the sudden onset of the storm, and looking for shelter and aid. She is interrogated by the Indian tracker that the Sheriff has brought along, and she says that the man they are after is in the nearby Indian village. The Mayor is both incensed by and happy about this: he's been looking for a reason to get those damned savages off their land for some time now, and he orders the posse to plain ride into the village and slaughter every living thing. The Sheriff objects, but he is bushwhacked by two of the posse who side with the Mayor. The Sheriff's horse and guns are taken from him, and he is left to the elements atop the mountain. The posse rides down into the village and the Indians are slaughtered.
[Next bit was just narration by the winner of the conflict: the Mayor. He grows rich off the land that was seized, but unknown to him the Sheriff survives, and after spending winter huddled in a cave recovering from his wounds he rides back into Town and guns the Mayor down. We fade to black]
Chapter Two: Old McCavvity, a Wealthy Miser and Force of Corruption: the scene opens with Sheriff Cox - note that we are back in time to when Cox was the Sheriff - is having his palm greased by Old McCavvity, a prosperous mine owner. Good times for Coxy, but it's all about to end. A man rides into Town, wearing a Sheriffs badge and bearing a letter from Judge Clancey that removes Coxy from office and installs McGraw as the new Sheriff of Wainington.
This is hard news for Coxy to bear, and hard news for Old McCavvity too: he's spent years greasing the wheels of office, and Judge Clancey is an old enemy. This new Sheriff won't be bought, and McCavvity is stunned - not for long - when the Sheriff deputises an honest local man - Dewey - and pushes his revolver into McCavvity's mouth and blows his teeth out the back of his head. This Sheriff doesn't mess around - but he seemed to have it in for Old McCavvity from the get go!
[We fade to black].
Chapter One: Joe McGregor, a Young and Most Wicked Rapist: it is three years further back in time. A simple but prosperous ranch owner, a veteran of the Civil War, wakes up in bed to hear the screams of his daughter. His wife, an Indian, rises sleepily from bed. McGraw rushes downstairs in his red longjohns to see an obviously drunk young man riding off with his daughter tossed over the saddle. McGraw grabs his rifle and is about to head for the stables and his horse to give chase when he hears his wife screaming from upstairs! [At this point Mick is going tits! What to do?!?!] He takes a brief but telling look at kidnapper and the horse of the kidnapper, and then turns back to rush upstairs. A rifle-butt to the face knocks him out, but not before he sees his wife about to be violated. When he awakes, hours later, his wife lies dead on their marital bed, having been brutally used by her assailants: but wait! One of the villains is awakening from a drunken haze, and McGraw guns his down in his own bed over the cold corpse of his wife!
[We fade to black].
Prologue: we open to bucolic scenes of a hard working rancher, lassooing steers and enjoying a home-cooked meal with his squaw wife and half-caste young daughter. We then cut to a shot of the McGregor gang, returning from the Civil War and looting and pillaging the South on their way back north. We cut back to scenes of the rancher playing with his daughter, and kissing his wife in bed. We then cut back to a scene of the McGeregor boys, their eyes ablaze with Wickedness as they top a butte overlooking ther McGraw ranch, the bright rays of the dawn silhouetting their shapes before thy ride down to rape and kill and have a fine old time.
[We fade to black].
Plenty going on there story-wise, so how did it play out game-wise?
The Play Itself
That first chapter (six and the epilogue) took over an hour.
I was facilitating the game, and after I had explained the premise of 6B4V and outlined the structure, we dived straight in. One of the goals of the session was to provide feedback to Kenrick, so we decided to run the game as written (RAW). We spent the first ten or so minutes of that initial hour roleplaying the Epilogue and Chapter Six, and the other hour or so argiung about what the heck was going on. Lines like "Eh? I don't get it", "No no, it's like this... er, I think", and "This is utter wank/tosh/bollocks" were flowing like the spawning salmon of Capistrano. At one point in that first hour we were close to just giving up, or starting over from scratch "'cos we've obviously done it wrong".
Now we had a good story there, so story-wise nothing was wrong and we were all in agreement about that. The issue boiled down to when the Epilogue and Chapter Six started and finished (and what dice were available). We started with the Epilogue and had a grabby scene in the Sheriff's Office with Coxy kicking the door in and levelling his six shooters at the Sheriff, telling him to clear off and let a real man do the job. The Sheriff listens to Coxy ranting, and Old Finnegan says his piece and then bang, the Sheriff just plain kills Cox. End of... well, end of the Epilogue or end of Chapter Six? Yes, the answer to that simple question burned an hour or so of game time.
We decided that that was the Epilogue, and moved on to Chapter Six. An hour or so back in time, at the saloon. Now I wasn't playing the Antagonist, but the scene started off slowly with no obvious conflict in sight to my mind, so I jumped in - wrongly we thought at the time - and narrated that Boise McGregor challenged the Sheriff to a duel. (I wanted to move things on.) Mmm, where do I get my dice from? Alex, the player of Coxy, had blown all of his dice in the Epilogue, and only had one dice left from the reward posse. Mick meanwhile, playing the Protagonist, had also blown his normal dice and only had his full complement of six Vengeance dice.
(Edit: I have subsequently found the rule that allowed me to do this jumping in to stir things up: "At the start of a chapter, the chapter antagonist dishes out roles and scene dice that can and should be used to play these secondary characters. You do not – and should not – have to wait for the chapter antagonist to dole out a character for you to play. If you have an idea for a character that fits in with the rest of the scene, grab some dice from the scene posse and bring them into play." Does this mean that I can physically reach across the table and take dice out of the hand of the spotlight Antagonist's player?)
The text was, to us, confusing here. It advocates that two players just step up to the plate prior to the Epilogue and through play we'll discover which of them is the Protagonist. Now the Protagonist gets 6 dice plus at most 6 Vengeance dice per scene, and the Antagonist gets 7 dice. So in the Epilogue, when the roles have yet to be decided, how many dice does each player get? And if we're meant to just discover the roles through freeform play (sans dice), then why not simply allow folks to choose to play the Protagonist since that's what happens anyway if you freeform it? (Mick ended up playing the Protagonist, when he really wanted to be an Antagonist.) The character sheet from the website also has (6 Vengeance Dice) noted next to the Epilogue portion of the Protagonists character sheet: now how can the Protagonist spend Vengeance dice when we don't know who the Protagonist is? In the end we just gave each player 7 dice in the Epilogue, with the Vengeance dice being assigned to the Sheriff after it rolled out that he was the Protagonist. Gah, confusing. Almost had us tossing the game in to watch Corrie. But we soldiered on because story-wise we were liking it and we wanted to give it a fair shot. (And I'm glad we did soldier on, 'cos after we got the Epilogue and Chapter Six out of the way, the game started flowing.)
(Edit: Again, I have subsequently found that part of the text that exlains what to do: "[sidebar]Going in blind: If you've decided to leap straight into the game with no setup whatsoever, then you won't yet know who is the protagonist and who is the antagonist! That's fine, it'll become clear soon enough. Let both players have six dice and let them share the vengeance dice for the epilogue only. Whichever character is left standing at the end of the scene gets to be the protagonist throughout rest of the story.")
We talked about the game for an hour or so after we finished up, and what follows is some of the points that were raised.
What Didn't Work For Us
Revelation Dice. Nope, not a single one was taken. The choice between 'take a Spare Die' or 'take a Revelation Die' always went with the Spare Die option. We're avid Story Gamers at the Pompey club, so we were narrating backstory through play: note that we were not pre-deciding things through narration, but rather we were providing hooks to each other to lead from chapter to chapter and to provide meat that other folks could weave into the story: as such the story of why the Sheriff was gunning down the folks that he did emerged slowly over the course of the chapters. The Spare Die provides mechanical advantage in conflicts, whereas the Revelation Die just seemed (or seems) to provide a means of doing what we were already doing. Maybe you are not meant to reveal the story through organic play, but can only do so via the Revelation Dice mechanics? But that seems... off. The comment was that the Revelation Dice mechanic punishes cool story contributions.
(Edit: the text states that if no dice can be taken as Reward from the Reward Posse during an Aftermath, then both the Protagonist and Antagonist must take a Revelation Die. Our Reward Posse was massive because we weren't assigning Attributes to the Antagonists. Balls! If we had been assigning Attributes, then folks would have found themselves forced to take Revelation Dice, and maybe it would've flowed from there. Oh well, that's what playtesting is about I guess, learning from mistakes.)
The backwards structure also took some getting used to. Once we were over the hump of the final Chapter (Six), we got into the swing of it, narrating in details of characters that could be used in earlier scenes, and referring back obliquely to events in history that were yet to happen in game time. Great! But man, that first scene was almost a killer... the comment made at the table was that 6B4V is not a pickup game because of this structure. Proactive players are mandatory for this game, and I wonder what it would game like at cons where you don't know who is going to sit down at the table: a table full of reactive players might well die a death.
The game also has a distributed GM structure, with each Antagonist responsible for framing their own Chapter and providing opposition to the Protagonist. This worked for us, we all liked doing it. Mick, as the Protagonist, had to play the Protagonist the whole way through the game, which while done with aplomb, was not as cool - we thought - as being able to play an Antagonist with their very own death Chapter, and then to be able to play a whole assortment of NPCs. I had great fun playing the bollock-stabbed Dewey and rotten-mouthed old Finnegan, and the other Antagonists likewise.
"What Does Killing This Antagonist Cost The Protagonist". In our opinion, this should be written in big red letters in the game text, because we felt it was the central theme that underpinned all conflicts. That the Antagonist will be killed - see my other comment futher below about this - is never in question, so having the Protagonist really having to Pay Mightily to see through their Vengeance seems golden.
Question: perhaps we missed this in the text, but it wasn't clear if loaded attributes could be reused in a later conflict in the same Chapter if they had already been used previously (in the same Chapter). I personally didn't see why not - it's a separate conflict - but other folks thought not, saying that it felt wrong to do so.
The number of dice provided to each Antagonist seems really low. (7) It seems like there will be only one or at most two conflicts per Chapter because of the paucity of dice. Is this intentional? The comment was made that 6B4V couldn't be a con game because you'll never stretch it out to last four hours. Most of our chapters were single conflicts, and we're not of a mindset to 'roleplay' interminably about crap that isn't meaty and dramatic, so we breezed through chapters, firing out what we thought was good story and having a blast roleplaying, but we were all done in under three hours - and that was with an hour or so pissing around about the Epilogue.
(Edit: Please take my youngest daughter and throw her down a well. The backwards structure of the game confused me when I was 'on the pot'... of course 7 dice on their lonesome is quite miserly. In Chapter Six the Antagonist loads 0-7 dice into Attributes of that Antagonist, whio is later killed. However, for the remaining Chapters of the story, that Antagonist is still ALIVE! Doh! So the Dice loaded say into "Cruel 3d" are available to later Antagonists if they narrate the very-much-still-alive Antagonist from Chapter Six into their Chapter. &#%$@! This totally changes the dynamics of the game, and means that more and more adversity starts raining down on the Protagonist as the story goes back to earlier Chapters, which is perfectly correct since more Antagonists are alive at that point in time. #@&^%$! Kenrick I doff my hat to you, I am a dullard. (Although perhaps the takeaway point from this is that the text needs to explicitly state this property of play via examples.) Bah, what should have been a central property of play was a non-emergent property of play. Sorry guys, I missed that one. Ultimate FAIL.)
I - personally - also wonder why each and every Antagonist has to die. The game would play out perhaps not better, but differently, if the option to humiliate, degrade, mutilate, or even forgive each Antagonist was an option. Modelling this mechanically would be nice, with the option not to kill the Antagonist only an option if no Vengeance dice are rolled: if you roll Vengeance dice then blam, brains must be flying out the backs of heads. (Maybe the text does say this, which is cool, but I can't see where.)
The text says that an Antagonist gets 7 dice at the start of their Chapter. However, these dice are called a Scene Posse. Earlier in the text it states that a single Chapter may be composed of one or possibly more Scenes. So does the Antagonist have to spread their Scene Posse dice over the course of all Scenes in a Chapter? Or do they get new Scene Posse dice in each new Scene? If it is the first, then I suggest renaming the Scene Posse into the Chapter Posse.
The text states that "Finally you have the reward posse, which sits in the centre of the table and is made up of any dice that are lost during the game. It is used to give out reward dice or to create new scene attributes." Well dang. We were using it to give out rewards, but not for use as a pool of potential Scene Attributes.
Concerning loaded attributes: if a loaded attribute is invalidated by some 'later in game time but earlier in the narrative' narration, what happens to the dice? Do they become Spare Dice again? Example: Mick loaded Deputy Dewey as an attribute in Chapter Six. In Chapter Two, he deputised Dewey, because he just met him there and then. So what happened to those dice in Chapter One when Dewey was not a deputy yet?
The following text is a tad tortuous: "Although it may be blunt to say so, but not every player is suited to playing the protagonist." I would favour being implicitly blunt and just writing "Not every player is suited to playing the protagonist." However, in our play, we found that the Protagonist didn't have to be proactive at all! Mick was forever reacting to the proactivity forced on the Antagonists by the structure of the game. The Antagonists were throwing adversity at the Protagonist, who just soaked it up and kept talking/shooting/whatever.
Other assorted comments:
- Merge the Epilogue and Chapter Six into the single Chapter Six. (Dice-wise they are the same chapter.) Alternatively, provide explicit examples of the Epilogue and Chapter Six. (The text is only v 0.6 so the lack of example in this area is cool for now.) (Edit: I am of the opinion that the Epilogue must be preserved and all that is needed is a few compelling examples in the text.)
- Provide an incentive to choose the Revelation Die option in the Aftermath. We couldn't see any value in them.
- About half the group disliked the default Western setting. Feels like a bit of a snarky comment, 'cos it's Kenricks game and he can damn well choose whatever genre he wants. 6B4V does lend itself to playing in any time though, so a Point Blank setting is totally doable.
- The text contains some Americanisms such as purty, folks'll and suchlike. It feels a bit forced and this language is not maintained consistently through the text.
- The paragraph in the text that starts with "So, what's the point? Well, for a start..." is written from the POV of a male Protagonist, when the text uses the POV of a female Protagonist everywhere else.
- The stealing attributes example is golden! Yeah baby! Go Kenrick go!
- "Picking your targets" This phrase feels forced. Why not just call it setting the stakes. Why introduce a new phrase?
- The text uses example of mooks in conflicts. Yet other advice in the text says "Don't get carried away with the little stuff - save the nitty-gritty details and the blow-by-blow action for the narration. When picking your targets, go for the big, broad, over-arching targets that span an entire conflict, not just a small part of it. This is doubly true for conflicts involving secondary characters - the story should zoom past them as quickly as possible to get to where it's interesting, the conflict between protagonist and antagonist." So why bother even rolling dice for mooks? If these are un-interesting, then why are we bothering to roll dice here? Let's just narrate blasting by the mooks and get to the 'interesting' part. Let's start there instead of having to get there. I don't care about mooks.
- Capitalisation of important game terms. The terms 'protagonist' and 'antagonist' are used in lowercase forms throughout the text. Since they are special game terms, I would capitalise them to make them pop out of the text. Similarly for 'attribute', I'd make it 'Attribute'.
A fun game, yessir. One that I'd certainly buy once it is published. I hope the other guys will chime in with comments of their own: I've tried to capture the majority of the comments that were raised, but I'm all written out for the evening. I look forward to playing it again, possibly at Conception with Kenrick in tow
Kenricks thoughts would be cool too, because we may well have misinterpreted entire swathes of the text... them's the way it rolled so's that's the way I've told it.Cheers
Pete
