Hi Andrew

Here's some wall-of-text feedback based on reading the first 15 pages of v0.7 of the text.

The focus of this feedback is rather myopic, in that it focuses on very low level page-by-page detail. I'll supply feedback on the remaining pages as well as some feedback about the flow of the text and the game as a whole later. I have also mostly not bothered with copy-edit level stuff such as typos, grammar and style. I'm running Six Bullets at Furnace next weekend, so I'll have some Actual Play in a week or so.

Page 7, The Role of the Protagonist

The English in the opening sentence of that sidebar reads oddly to me. "Although it may be blunt to say so..., but not".

Page 8, 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."

The Antagonist for that Chapter has a Scene Posse of 7 dice. If I am playing a Secondary Character, how many dice can I grab from the Scene Posse? 1? All 7? The text I've pasted is vague. It needs some direction from you about what is kosher. If I was the Antagonist and another player took 6 dice to play Silas the Deserting Confederate Hick, I'd be fine with Silas as a Secondary Character but I'd take those Scene Posse dice back sharpish. It's my Chapter, so I'll dole the Scene Posse dice out, take your hands off my dice!

Also, I want an example of a Scene involving a Secondary Character please. Show me how such a Secondary Character might "be narrated out of the scene or forced into the background somehow".

Also, "Scene" is not defined explicitly. What is a Scene? A Chapter is composed of 1 or more Scenes. So a Secondary Character narrated out of the first Scene in a Chapter can be narrated back in come the third Scene right?

Perhaps you meant "a Secondary Character must] be narrated out of the Chapter or forced into the background somehow"?

Page 9, Revelation Dice

"If spent to add a revelation to the revelation map, they become a regular spare dice in the player's scene posse."

Yes, much better!

Page 10

"Finally you have the reward posse ... and is made up of any dice that are lost during the game."

Lost? Better "rolled" surely?

Page 10, Rolling Dice

"The number of hits you rolled determines how successful the dice roll."

Sentence is malformed.

Page 11, Attributes

"At any time during the game – except when someone else is talking (that’s just bad manners!)– you can declare that you are creating a new attribute."

A lecture on manners from the text? How wonderfully English :)

Page 11, Negative Attributes

I'd like more discussion in the text about negative Attributes. As you state later in the text, there are no negative Attributes. So long as it makes sense, any Attribute can be narrated negatively. A list of example Attributes would help too.

Yes, I know. Some folks have a hard time making them up, so some examples would be good.

Page 11, Negative Attributes

"In a conflict you can use one of your opponent’s own attributes against them! To do so lean across and announce which of your opponent’s attributes is helping you, just like you would one of your own! Then give your opponent one of your spare dice for the privilege, and take the dice loaded into the attribute and roll them alongside your own!"

(I grok that the Protagonist can use an Antagonist's Attributes against them too. These examples just assume a one way street because I typed them up that way.)

An example. The Protagonist has 6 Attributes each loaded with 1 die. An Antagonist leans across, announces that one of the Protagonist's Attributes is his own, scoops up that single die. The Antagonist then takes a single die from his own Spare Dice Posse and hands it to the Protagonist. The Antagonist is no net dice up - he got one and then gave one away. Similarly, the Protagonist is no net dice up either. However, the Protagonist now has a Spare Die that she can immediately use to create a new Attribute loaded with that die.

What this means is that the Protagonist will veer towards having lots of fine-grained Attributes of 1 die, because mechanically it benefits her to do so until the Antagonists cotton on. I appreciate I am being quite Gamist here. Perhaps as a designer you want lots of fine-grained, low-dice Attributes as opposed to a few monolithic Attributes. If so, stating that explicitly might be good.

Another example. The Protagonist has 1 Attribute loaded with 6 dice. An Antagonist leans across, announces that the Protagonist's Attribute is his own, scoops up those six dice. The Antagonist then takes a single die from his own Spare Dice Posse and hands it to the Protagonist. In this case, the Antagonist is 5 dice up! The Protagonist is 5 dice down! Mechanically, this is so painful for the Protagonist that she will veer away from creating Attributes with lots of dice loaded into them. There are so few dice in the Protagonist's Posse (6 regular plus 6 Vengeance + odds and sods) that losing a whack really hurts! Again, is this by design?

I assume that one cannot do this action if one does not have one Spare Die with which to reward the other player?

Page 12

"Then we would set stakes and roll to see who ambushed who as with any other conflict..."

This is a forward reference. The rules for conflicts have not been covered yet, so 'stakes' means nothing yet.

Page 12, Scene Attributes

"You can use a scene attribute in a conflict just like any other attribute. If more than one participant wants to use the attribute, then split up the dice as evenly as possible."

I have my Gamist hat on again.

An example from Chapter 6. The Antagonist has 7 dice in his Scene Posse. He loads 3 dice into "Treacherous Mountain Pass, Rockslides!" and incorporates that Scene Attribute into his narration. The Protagonist states that she is using the Scene Attribute too. It is not stated explicitly in the text how 3 dice is split evenly. Does the Antagonist get 2 dice, because he created the Scene Attribute? Or does the Protagonist get 2 dice because she scoops up 2 of the dice first with her Player's quick fingers? 2 dice is ~28% of the Antagonist's Scene Posse! Ouch!

Also, why would any Player create a Scene Attribute loaded with more than 1 die? If the Player loads an even number of dice into it, then he or she is effectively decreasing her Scene Posse by x and giving the opposing Player - I assume a two Player game - x/2 dice for free. Dice are precious in this game, and giving your opponent free dice seems a tad off. I can't see myself doing this, for all that I like complications.

Also, when do Scene Attributes refresh? I assume that the dice can only be used once per Scene. A Chapter can have multiple Scenes though. The text might benefit from being explicit that a Scene Attribute refreshes - if it makes sense narratively - at the start of a new Scene.

Page 13, Stealing an Attribute

I love this. Add some more examples of this awesome mechanic please, just to really slam the awesomeness home.

However, the text is potentially confusing. Consider the following two sentences.

"To do this, spend a revelation die and narrate the twist in the story that has led you to steal the attribute."

"So I slide forward a revelation die and say..."

The first says spend a Revelation Die, the second says slide one forward.

Perhaps it is just my inference, but the second feels like the Revelation Die is being slid forward to the Player that is having his or her Attribute stolen, and that said Player will pick up the proffered Revelation Die and add it to his or her Spare Dice Posse.

Can I confirm that the Revelation Die is actually discarded to the Reward Posse when stealing an Attribute?

Page 15, Conflicts, specifically Aftermaths

I think that this section is out of date with the changes to Revelation Dice from Page 9. Page 9 states that:

"They can be used as a spare dice, in which case they are discarded as normal. But, instead of being rolled, a revelation die can be spent to introduce a new revelation, to counter another revelation or to steal an attribute from another player. If spent to add a revelation to the revelation map, they become a regular spare dice in the player's scene posse."

Page 15 states that:

"After a conflict, the winner and loser get to choose their aftermaths: take a die from the reward posse or gain a revelation die."

There doesn't seem to be a meaningful choice here. A Revelation Die is better than a regular die, because I can spend it immediately to narrate a Revelation, and then immediately get a regular die as a reward. So why wouldn't you always take a Revelation Die during the Aftermath? Also, the Reward Posse may be empty - unlikely - which means that you'll have to take a Revelation Die as your Aftermath. So everything seems to guide Players into taking a Revelation Die.

Could you perhaps explain what is going on here that I am missing, or is this section just stale in ight of the earlier revision to Revelation Dice?

About Terms

I'd capitalise all occurrences of terms that have game semantics. For example, "attribute" becomes "Attribute", "reward posse" becomes "Reward Posse". Such stuff helps folks know exactly what it is you're writing about.

I'm still enthusiastic about Six Bullets, looking forward to playing it at Furnace.

Cheers
Pete

Yo

Gee, this is a Wall of Text. Uh, yeah. Make a cuppa, read it in small chunks, take a few weeks to read it, it's all good.

Page 18, Chambering Scene Attributes

"If more than one player goes for the same scene attribute, then share the dice out as evenly as possible. If there aren't enough dice to go round, the chapter antagonist gets first pick, then the protagonist, then everybody else."

Ha! :) That answers one thing that I asked about in my earlier post. Cheers!

An upshot of this is that the spotlight Antagonist should never Load more than one die into a Scene Attribute, so that he doesn't have to share out his precious Scene Posse.

It has just struck me that Scene Posse is perhaps better named Chapter Posse. Since a Chapter can have more than one Scene. Or is your intention that every Chapter have just one vengeance-fuelled Scene?

Page 19, Rolling Vengeance Dice

"But rolling vengeance dice is messy business – conflicts in which you use them get nasty, bloody and violent, and if you don’t win the conflict it might well be you who gets the hurt."

A few pithy examples here would be nice. Chambering Vengeance Dice ups the stakes essentially. Do we renegotiate the existing stakes to turn them up to 11? Or is is just unspokenly agreed that the winner of the Conflict will include some suitably vicious stuff into their narration? Ah, I read later on Page 21 that the narration of the outcome is affected, not the stakes. Cool.

Page 19, Conflicts with Secondary Characters

This section almost tangentially introduces the idea of multiple-Scene Conflicts with the spotlight Antagonist for a Chapter. I'd like to see an example here of a multiple-Scene Conflict please.

This section also answers one of my earlier questions, regarding the frequency at which a Secondary Character can appear. (At most one Conflict per Chapter. They can be present and used for narration multiple times in a Chapter though.) Cheers!

Page 20, Conflicts with Multiple Opponents

This is all good. The text for this conflict chapter has flowed fine so far, going neatly from Stakes, to Chambering, and then I'd expect it to flow into 'Picking Up the Pieces'. However, it segues off into 'Conflicts with Secondary Characters', which is important, but I'd rather have the flow of a Conflict done and dusted before introducing details such as multiple opponents.

Page 21, Violence Motifs Sidebar

Love it. Some examples would be nice.

Page 21, Aftermaths

Quickie. "If there are no dice left in the reward posse then both the winner and loser must choose to take a revelation die." 'must choose to take' sounds odd to me. I think this reads better: "If there are no dice left in the reward posse then both the winner and loser must take a revelation die."

Sweet, this latter part answers a question I had earlier about the non-choice in taking a Spare Die from the Reward Posse or taking a Revelation Die. I see that I can use a Spare Die from the Reward Posse to do things like add and Load an Attribute to the loser of the Conflict. I don't recall that from earlier versions of the text. This is cool!

Attributes are used to ensure consistent characterisation, so in effect a Spare Die from the Reward Posse used in this way is kinda like a Revelation. In that the Players now know something about the loser that they did not know before, and this knowledge is encoded mechanically.

So now winning a Conflict is cool both narratively and mechanically for pushing the story in a direction that you want it to go. I can see Antagonists in the early Chapters - 5 and 6 - winning Conflicts and then Loading Spare Dice from the Reward Posse into nasty Attributes on the Protagonist. (And vice versa.) That could really screw with the Player of the Protagonist if Attributes that are antithetical to her self-image are added on. Awesome-Sauce Plus BBQ! I look forward to trying that out at Furnace. Some guidance and examples about what Attributes are appropriate for adding to the loser would be good - they can't be wholly unrelated to the Conflict at hand.

"In the aftermath of a conflict there are two rewards up for grabs. Both winner and loser get to pick one of the following."

Is that two rewards - that is, literally two dice - or two types of reward - that is, Spare Dice from the Reward Posse and Revelation Dice, any number of them?

Let's say it is Chapter 4, and the three remaining Antagonists have ganged up on the Protagonist in one mother of a Conflict. In the Aftermath, does each participant - 3 Antagonists and the Protagonist - get to pick a reward? If so, then ganging up is awesome, because the Antagonists can then paint the Protagonist in a really bad light by loading her up with really nasty Attributes by spending the multiple Spare Dice from the Reward Posse that they get as a reward during the Aftermath.

Page 22, Continuing Conflicts

"Sometimes a conflict will conclude but the outcome will remain ambiguous, or the same stakes will still be up for grabs. This is often the case during a combat situation between a protagonist and an antagonist, where one or more of the participants remain standing. This is fine and, so long as you all agree, you can set up another conflict with the same stakes."

Another Conflict with the same Stakes? Really? That sounds a bit weak. If I win a Conflict, I have narration rights, so why would the outcome ever be ambiguous or the same stakes be up for grabs? What's your motivation behind including this small section?

Right, that's me out of the tedious low-level feedback. This version looks much improved over earlier ones. I'll post later in the week with higher level thoughts.

Cheers
Pete

We had a playtest last week at Joe P's house. We got one scene in before Matt Reid had to go home. I'll point Joe here as he was the one taking notes.

Ta!

Hey Pete - cheers for the low-level thoughts and for reading the manuscrupt! I'll spend some time this afternoon going through the manuscript and addressing the comments.

Thanks for taking the time to playtest it Gregor and Joe! Joe emailed me to say you had problems with the game - I look (tentatively :) forward to a post about them later.