Jumping off my previous post, I've been thinking about how to implement Attributes that actually work with target numbers.
We know that our typical dice pools result in:
8 if you keep 1 in a pool of any size
12-14 if you keep 2 in a pool of any size
16-17 if you keep 3 in a pool of 4
18-19 if you keep 3 in a pool of 5
20 for if you keep 3 in a pool of 6, or if you keep 4 in a pool of 5
22-25 if you keep 4 in a pool of 6
...which all together, means that you want about a 15/15 spread across your paired Attributes. You can succeed at low Technique levels, keeping 1 or 2 dice in these instances, only needing to spend Applause if your stats are too high or too low, and you don't have enough Talents to roll to get you over the threshold.
So, why would you have trouble breaking the target number? A few reasons, really. Maybe your Attribute is too high and you don't have enough Talents and Technique to get you over the threshold, or you don't have enough Technique points to keep more than 1-2 dice, resulting in middling rolls no matter how low your Attribute is.
We know Applause is a player-facing metacurrency. They can spend it freely to bump up their rolls. But what if the GM had a metacurrency of their own?
Imagine, if you will, the following scenario...
Fun fact: Madrona is a residential neighbourhood in east Seattle.
You are Doctor Frasier Crane. You’re standing in the centre
of your spacious Seattle penthouse, engaged in a heated discussion with your
brother Niles over the Shakespeare authorship debate. Niles insists the Bard
was, in fact, William Stanley, the 6th Earl of Derby, and you’re going red in
the face, your thinning hair frazzled into an unkempt mane, insisting that of course Shakespeare wrote those plays
himself, only raving lunatics would believe otherwise!
Your father, Martin, seated nearby in his favourite
recliner, quickly interjects that you’re not looking so sane yourself, right
about now. The live studio audience erupts in laughter.
...audience?
You stop, forget what you were about to say (no doubt a
cutting remark, you’re sure) and look around you.
To your right, you see your Jack Russell terrier, Eddie,
curled up on your plush, brown sofa, a seldom-used fireplace behind him. To
your left is the kitchen. Martin’s live-in physical therapist, Daphne, is
cutting carrots with a steak knife (good God woman, use the paring
knife!) and occasionally joins in with a witty, working-class aphorism. She
calls Shakespeare “Bill”, and in no time at all your brother has quickly
adopted this new appellation. The besotted fool.
You turn around. There’s Dad in his recliner, and behind
him, a picturesque Seattle skyline. You can even see the Space Needle from the
balcony!
Straight ahead, you see your front door, with a small
umbrella stand to its left, indicating for those unaware that you are, in fact,
in the rainy Pacific Northwest.
The 1st A.D. comes up to you, and stammers,
“Mister Grammer, your line...?”
The front door disappears, and you’re no longer in a Seattle
penthouse, but on a sound stage in Los Angeles. And you see them. And
they don’t approve.
“My line?” you say. Of course. It flows from you. The
front door returns, and the things vanish, like they never existed. This
is how the world is meant to be. You feel at ease. You feel like Frasier
again and push the intrusive thoughts from your mind.
“Dad, please. You wouldn’t know your Francis Bacons
from your Canadian Bacons!”
Laughter again.
You only catch a glimpse, but there it is. Out of the corner
of your eye. The front door is gone again. The entire fourth wall, in fact. In
its place, you see a writhing, shifting horde of... things. Shadows. The mere
outlines of human beings, seated in rows upon rows, backlit by lights stronger
than the sun itself. They’re watching you. Staring. Applauding. Laughing.
Laughing at you.
The nerve of them! The sheer gall! You went to Juilliard, for God’s sakes! You own two Golden Globes and three Primetime Emmys, and you won’t be laughed at! You are Allen Kelsey Grammer and you will show the Things Beyond the Fourth Wall that you’re done playing by their rules!
Enter, "Cancellation Tokens"
Truman (Jim Carrey) glimpses the world beyond the show, in The Truman Show (1998), directed by Peter Weir.
In Nobody Poops on TV, you're a character in a sitcom universe that obeys sitcom rules. However, for some reason, you've recently become aware that your life isn't your own. You're in fact a real, flesh-and-blood person, not a character, but an actor on a TV show. None of this is real, but if you let the audience know this, if the director or the producers, or the suits at Paramount become aware that you've broken containment, you risk cancellation.
And in a sitcom universe, cancellation means death.
The Jerry Seinfeld who lived opposite Cosmo Kramer, who used to date Elaine Benes but who are now just friends, who grew up with George Costanza... he doesn't exist in our world. And he doesn't exist in his world, either. After they were arrested and sentenced to a year in prison for breaking the Good Samaritan Law (sorry, spoilers for a 25-year-old TV show there), they stopped existing. The show went off the air. There is no more Seinfeld. He doesn't exist.
What happened to Ross and Rachel from Friends? Did they ever get back together? No, because they don't exist anymore. Did Troy Barnes and LeVar Burton ever escape the Somali pirates and make it back to Greendale on Community? Nope.
Once your show goes off the air, that's curtains for you and your entire world.
So, how does one get cancelled?
Just as player characters can garner Applause to improve their rolls, the GM can generate Heckles to hinder those same rolls. Instead of adding +1 to a result, the GM can add +1 to a target number per Heckle spent, making it harder to succeed. Suddenly, that Attribute of 9, which was previously so easy to exceed, is a much harder 13!
These exist in a pool that both sides of the table can access; whatever Applause the PCs don't take, the GM gains in the form of Heckles. When the GM spends a Heckle, the PCs have another Applause that they can take. When the PCs spend an Applause, that gives the GM a Heckle they now have access to.
This, for example, would be our Audience:
When the PCs garner Applause, they take tokens from this shared resource:
But, this leaves the GM free to take the remaining Audience tokens in the form of Heckles:
Players can then spend Applause, returning a token to the Audience pool...
...but in doing so, provide another potential Heckle that the GM can take:
...and on and on it goes, each side taking Applause, spending it, receiving Heckles, overcoming them with Applause, on and on and on.
And that brings us to Cancellation.
Should you fail a roll, by for example, being too weird and having an extremely high target number that you have no hope of exceeding, you gain a Cancellation Token.
The more Cancellation Tokens you accrue, the closer you come to Hiatus, and, should you not use your Hiatus period to reduce your Cancellation Tokens, you get cancelled.
Hiatus would be akin to the Winter Phase of Pendragon. It's a period of non-adventuring, when you instead have a chance at saving your show. Online petitions, talk show appearances, panels at Comic-Con, die-hard fans spread hashtags and spearheading letter-writing campaigns... whatever you need to do to stay on the air. If you successfully reduce your Cancellation Tokens below a certain threshold, your show is saved, and you return to the air.
I'm also going to have Winter Breaks, which are gaps between seasons, again like the Winter Phase, but these are instead in-universe gaps, when you can advance your character and progress in the world. More on these later!
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