One of the useful things about playtesting online is that it can bring into sharp relief a friction that is easy to paper over at a face-to-face table. The reverse can also be true.
I ran the first session of a four-part BLOCK BY BLOCK playtest over Google Hangouts last night. I'm still pondering and processing what we learnt but one thing stood out right away. As written currently, there's a turn-taking element to the flow of play. "It's the 5th of May, what do you do?" We play out that scene, go to the next detective. "What's your action today?" And so on. Then it's the 6th of May. The pace feels slow and at the same time, it's not slow enough: PCs are doing all their actions within a few days rather than getting through weeks at a time in rapid succession. Ideally, I'd like it to be possible to get through a year of detective work in one session.
In the face-to-face playtest, we quickly got into a more boardgamey setup where a player would quickly go "I'm rolling Hit the Streets", do so and if the results didn't hit a significant threshold, we'd just note the result and move on. Online, that doesn't happen, because handing over between players is a more laboured process. You can't just switch your gaze from person to person. You have to say someone's name, announce the shift in focus and so on.
And the fact that the daily turn-taking doesn't work online reveals to me that it also doesn't work face-to-face. In person we could handle it. But that doesn't mean it was actually good.
It's possible this is a function of starting at the lowest character level: detectives begin at level 2, so they're rolling 2d6 plus modifiers for Legwork. The longer-term arc is supposed to be that you get frustrated at first, but as you get better at being a cop, that changes. So in session 2, I'll begin with the same method as I have now, but switch to something more radical for handling time in the second half of the session, so that I have a control for comparison. More on which in a moment.
There's also, I have realised, an issue with the "you start bad but you get good" arc. Because another part of the system is attributes as depletable resources. In theory, as you play your detective and level up, your stats will inevitably deteriorate. You get older and slower and dumber and less charming, but while your modifiers from those attributes atrophy, your general ability to just be a cop, represented by your level, goes up. So in that sense, the dice pools maybe ought to be hovering around the same size all the time, and this talk of "it's bad now but it will get better" is a poor fig-leaf for this problem. The solution may simply be to be more generous with positive attribute modifiers in character generation.
As for the more radical time handling. The issue is (as I see it right now) that going "OK, what do you do today? And today? And what about now?" is basically boring. The passage of time is important – cases get harder to solve the older they get – but this isn't the way to do it.
So my thoroughly untested idea to try is this:
Currently, Legwork is a skill roll. You roll a number of d6es equal to your level plus your attribute modifier. E.g. if you're a level 3 detective with INT 13 going through an autopsy report, you'll roll 3d6 for your level, +1 for Intelligence of 13, for a total of 4d6.
Every 6 is Progress.
If you roll one or more 1s, that's a hunch: you can follow up on your hunch, which means that you reroll any dice showing 2 to 5. You get 1 point of Progress for every 1 or 6 showing, but each 1 also costs you a point of Stress.
Here's where the proposed change comes. If you get nothing on a Legwork roll, you can buy Progress with Stress on a 1 for 1 basis. Every point of Stress you take equals 1 Progress on the case and you advance the clock by a day – for the whole squad. You don't need to ask their permission. You can just do it. But it's probably a good idea to talk to the other players so they can do that SWAT raid they were planning for this afternoon before you push them into next week.
This keeps the PCs all synced up in terms of timelines, causes potential friction within the squad – and eliminates the very granular "How about today? And today? And today?" sequence, while keeping the focus on time elapsed and clearance rates.
Issues: It's clear what the player is doing that affects the squad but what is the character doing that makes time pass for the other detectives? It may just be, in the fiction, a coincidental lull in generating new leads, other duties that distract from the active caseload, etc. Which is... okay, but means that you may have a change in group dynamics between players that isn't reflected in-character. Maybe this represents 'burying yourself in the case'. You're not available for family and fellow cops; you don't show up to help. Each day advanced is something you could have done to be there for the squad but you weren't.
This feels unsatisfactory somehow. To be continued.
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