[Swords without Master] Pre-actual play musings.

[Joshua Bearden]

Has anyone here had any experience with the game Epidiah Ravachol so quietly releases last week?  The game which Vincent Baker says, is shifting the ground upon which we converse through role playing games? As innovative and paradigm shoving it is, I do think it carries some similar DNA to S/Lay w/ Me.

I'm reading now and getting very exited, I hope I can connive to get some live action play in my local scene here. One thought, like other games which reference Sword & Sorcery as something sui generis from other (post-Tolkien?) fantasy lit, I wonder if I'll have luck pitching it to people who are unaware or unconcerned about the distinction.

[Rafu]

Experience: yes, with the "quick play" kit released last year, City of Fire & Coin. The read-as-you-play format didn't work very well with on-the-fly translation to Italian, but still it left me hungry for more, and was immensely influential on my own designs.

As for pitching it, I guess it's best if you start by sharing w/prospective players some short stories to read, including those in the WWM magazine itself, and then have a discussion about your collective buy-in.

[Tim C Koppang]

It's a solid game. I've played a slightly modified version of the Fire & Coin demo from last year, and just recently played the release version from Eppy's zine. Forgive me if I blend the two experiences together.

I think your comparison to S/Lay w/Me is warranted. In many ways, Swords Without Master feels like multiplayer S/Lay w/Me (sort of). Vincent's enthusiasm notwithstanding, both games draw from gritty, sword and sorcery style fiction. Both also rely heavily on a turn-taking structure combined with straight-ahead narration. When it's your turn to narrate, you just go. There is no consensus-building. Whatever you say happens, happens. In Swords, you roll some dice before you narrate. The roll determines the tone of the scene (glum or jovial) and may also introduce a few creative constraints like your hero getting "stymied" in his or her intended action. You are free to riff off of that die roll however you like so long as you don't overstep any explicit restrictions.

Swords also makes use of a pacing mechanic that relies on re-integration of fictional elements called out by the players. This feels very similar to Annalise. When someone at the table feels like something narrated by another player is cool or interesting, he writes it on an index card. These elements are re-introduced into the fiction throughout the game, and when a number of them build up, the game moves to conclusion.

In play, I think the game can suffer from some uneven tone issues — not so much because of the dice, but rather because of the multi-player dynamic. I recommend reading Nathan Paoletta's write-up of our Swords game from this past weekend to understand what I mean. My biggest fear with the game, and one that I'm still unsure about, is that it could play out like a "pass the conch" type game, especially because the dice don't really have any teeth in terms of traditional success/failure. A "stymie" is usually just a temporary setback unless you want it to be a failure. So far this fear of mine has, delightfully, not reared its head. Play seems smooth, and there is enough opposition coming from the Overplayer to keep things interesting. I'd like to play it again in a regular, non-convention setting to solidify my opinion of the game.

If you have any questions, I'd be happy to report. Just let me know!

[ndpaoletta]

One thing that Eppy has mentioned in private conversation, tho it didn't make it explicitly into the published text (I think) is that the Overplayer has a lot of freedom to "prep" certain stuff for the game. For example, an older game I ran I presented with a specific pitch (something about finding treasure in the golden pyramid of the necromancer deep in the jungle); I made a list of names and enemies in and around the pyramid; and I asked the players to come up with the specific treasure they were trying to find. I think that game (that Tim also played in!) was more of a "true" sword-and-sorcery feel, while the one he linked too was a more blended S&S-by-way-of-anime-tropes kind of thing, due to the familiarity (or non-familiarity) of the genre to that mix of players.

While you literally can't prep "plot" or any kind of narrative, prepping stuff like locations, maybe a map and some monsters and treasure is certainly in bounds of play, and may help bridge the gap for people not as genre-familiar! The Overplayer has literally unlimited power to frame scenes (unless a Rogue player uses a Trick), so you'll always be able to throw in the key stuff you personally are hot on, and shouldn't be afraid to if it's going to make for productive play.