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HoneyComb Engine: The Kiai-Megill Variant
By Corvus | September 10, 2009
Could you use the HoneyComb Engine to play something like Hills Like White Elephants? [1]
That’s the question that opened up my second playtest of the HoneyComb Engine at PAX last weekend. It was posed by one of the storytellers, Travis Megill, who had never played a traditional pen and paper RPG before this moment. It is, I suspect, the sort of question only someone that has zero experience with RPGs would ask. It is also very much the reason I love gaming with people who have never gamed before.
Deirdra Kiai, who was sitting in the seat next to Travis [2], chimed in to say her intent with the HoneyComb Engine ran exactly along those lines. In fact, Thursday evening Deirdra has asked if the HoneyComb Engine could be used for more romantic stories, such as a Pride & Prejudice (without the zombies) RPG. I had told her then what I told Travis now, “There’s no reason is couldn’t be.”
And then I realized–I had two storytellers sitting at the table with a particular storytelling need right now. And since the whole point of the HoneyComb Engine is to help storytellers create and share storyworlds that meet their own particular needs at the time, I would be horribly remiss if I didn’t demonstrate that in action. Also at the session were Joe Tortuga and Max Battcher, both of whom I believed could handle a bit of experimental improvisation.
So I asked them to give me a second and quickly created the Kiai-Megill Variant (KMV) and a scenario with which to test it.
For the purposes of the test, I outlined a scenario–four adult siblings were gathered together for their father’s funeral. They had not all four been together since their mother’s death in a car accident 18 months prior. An accident which also sent their father into the coma from which he never returned. Each sibling had a shame they were eager to keep hidden and a suspicion about another sibling. Here are the specifics:
- Carl, the youngest and a student, was supposed to have been taking his parents’ car in for regular service, but was pocking the money instead.
- Carl suspects that Larry never visited his father in the hospital.
- Judy, the third child and a waitress, had been borrowing money from her mother for her boyfriend’s drug rehab.
- Judy suspects Carl somehow caused the accident that resulted in their parents’ deaths.
- Larry, the second child with an undefined job, had the hospital pull the plug on his father.
- Larry suspects Ben has been working for the mob.
- Ben, the oldest and a lawyer, hadn’t worked for a year.
- Ben suspect Judy had been stealing jewelry to pay for her drug habit.
You’ll notice that there are a lot of gaps in this scenario. Had Ben saved up enough money that his period of unemployment didn’t matter? Since he’s ashamed of that fact, it’s unlikely (although still possible). What choices lead up to Larry having the hospital pull the plug? Why hadn’t the siblings spent much time together in the last year? The list of potential plot holes is pretty huge, given how little material I provided. This is intentional and a crucial detail to my approach to participatory storytelling. Leaving gaping holes in the fabric of your narrative allows the other storytellers involved to substantially add their own warp and woof, based upon their perspectives and life experiences. It’s a technique I’ll discuss in more depth here on the blog as I work on the second HoneyComb manual.
The system itself, in all modesty, didn’t require much changing. Each Influence on the Lifewheel incorporates a mental or spiritual attribute, so they all have applicable uses to dialog-driven storyplay. What I did change right off the bat was the definition of Ego, what usually correlates to hit points. In the KMV, Ego is associated with the secret shame each character harbors and as they are forced to reveal it, their Ego is reduced. This is quite in keeping with the way Ego is normally treated, excepting KMV characters don’t pass out when their Ego is eventually depleted. Characters with more Ego, give up their secrets in small ways during the course of play. Characters with very little Ego tend to blurt out their shame when provoked. We called will “curiosity” during play, but I’ve since decided that it’s not necessary to change the terms for either Ego or Will–just the means by which Ego is lost.
After creating an NPC-free storyworld and modifying the core mechanic on the fly, I needed some time to stand and drool a bit. My brain was racing to simulate problems we’d run into during play and I didn’t have a lot of focus/energy left to get the four storytellers moving. So Rachel jumped in and acted as storyteller prime for the session. She helped the storytellers set the scene and got the ball rolling. She was awesome and I can’t wait to see her run more sessions. Max, having just run a more-traditional session with me, decided to bow out and once I was done staring moon-eyed at the wall, I stepped into his role.
We used the conflict timing mechanic to help regulate the flow of conversation. It was a bit clumsy at first, but as we got the hang of it, I felt it flowed better and better until conversation was happening quite smoothly, but leaving some time to think ahead. The big change we needed to make is in how successful conversational gambits were handled. Normally when you succeed at an action, you get to describe the action and the effect of the action on the other character. This works fine in combat scenarios, but not so much in conversation. So we declared that if you had a successful conversation move, the target had to respond appropriately on their next available opportunity. This allowed each storyteller to maintain character integrity based upon the unexpressed choices they’d made for them.
Now, we were doing this at a public table in the hallway where people could stop and watch us (and they did). None of us had gamed together before and none of us had gamed a session quite like this. Plus, we were busy assimilating new rules (even those of us well familiar with the HoneyComb Engine). Plus, we were stepping into brand new characters in a scenario that required the storytellers to feel safe in order to express the sort of emotional issues that might come up.
In other words–we had the perfect recipe for a complete disaster.
But the disaster never came. In fact, from my perspective, it seemed that we all became emotionally involved in these characters. Had we more time, we might have even been overtly emotional in our defense of them. From a system perspective, we even started using the Heroic Influences and Joe managed to divert a successful attempt to uncover his secret onto another storyteller–providing more nuance to the mechanics as we played. Some of the storytellers decided that revealing their shame willingly was a stronger narrative choice than keeping it hidden and cooperated fully with their accusers. This led to a short discussion about the goals of a HoneyComb Engine storytelling experience–namely to create a rich and rewarding storyworld that everyone could enjoy and that contributing successfully to the narrative overall made for a more rewarding storyplay experience than selfishly pursuing your own goals or agenda.
I feel that the HoneyComb Engine tests overall were a great success, but this session in particular showed me that what I’ve created really can be easily (and quickly) adapted to suit a wide variety of storyplay styles. In fact, I have a scenario plan for future gameplay demos that will highlight the variety of approaches to the system. If the people tempting me to attend PAX East get their way, you may get to see them in action there (and purchase a copy of the manual of course).
In the meantime, I’m interested in hearing the thoughts of Travis, Deirdra, Joe, Max, Randy, and anyone else who played over the weekend. We wrapped up each session pretty quickly and went our separate ways (oh, the challenges of cons), so I didn’t get a full post mortem with anyone at the time. How about it, storytellers? Have some thoughts you’d be willing to share in the comments or via trackbacks?
[1] For those of you who aren’t instantly familiar with this surprisingly sensitive work from Ernest Hemingway, it’s a conversation between two people that holds surprising depth and difficult emotional content. [return]
[2] Are you jealous of me yet? Well, keep reading. There’s nothing like getting creative people with a variety of backgrounds together for a game. [return]
Tagged:Honeycomb Engine. | 5 Comments »
September 10th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
I was right to be drooling for this post, Corvus. It’s absolute gold for Operation KTHMA. I just need to find a way to give each of my class-teams a secret–I think I can create the suspicions dynamically.
Many, many thanks.
September 10th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
I’m really curious to see how that regulated conversation went down.
September 11th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
I still regret letting a migraine distract me away from the game like that, but I think in the end that may have been for the best: I think that this was very much the sort of game that you needed to experience first hand, Corvus.
As for deeper thoughts, I may have to collect those. At a high level, I’m still not sure what I think of the HCE, I guess. I may have to ponder on it for a bit more. I’m awaiting your manual to help with that, as well.
September 12th, 2009 at 7:59 am
Max, I didn’t realize you had a migraine at the time. I’m so sorry.
I’ll be very curious to hear your reactions once I get the manual out!
September 24th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
I’m honored to have my family name included in this variant’s title. Participating in a HoneyComb Engine session was invigorating, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it yet. I’ve posted some extended thoughts on my blog: http://theautumnalcity.com/general/the-kiai-megill-variant-of-the-honeycomb-engine/