[Doctor Chaos] Playtesting by hangout

[Ron Edwards]

The fact is, startup and early play goes swimmingly, and I've known that for a long time. There's a learning curve which is extremely consistent in content and easily met by everyone in play, the card-play works well, and various strategies suggest themselves as you go. Some narration stumbles and some soars, but it all comes together nicely and even a halting contribution is often validated when someone else picks it up. Cheerful table-talk is a given.

However, what I need is to see games finish. Given successful early-game play, I need to see how end-play works in a variety of situations. The former satisfies me that it's ready, but it's the latter I need to assess, especially mechanically, in pure numeric and procedural terms. Do the heroes have a fighting chance? Does Doctor Chaos? Does hero development play a decisive role? Does the lesser villain provide a hinge toward one side or the other without totally taking over? Does the random factor of card play take on a solid role, neither trivial nor overwhelming?

And only once assured of those, can I then go on to assess four-player and six-player games in comparison to the design-spot of five players.

So, all this to say that the latest playtest with Mike Holmes, Steve Hickey, and Justice Platt only did two episodes and yet again I gnaw my fingertips. But the good news is that maybe we can pick it up again next week, schedules permitting. I used to set up a card deck we could share for heroes and lesser villain over hangout, and with help from the much-appreciated Mark Malone, I got it working fine before we started. (Those who know me well will appreciate Mark too, as my incompetence with this and similar interfaces is legendary; you name it, I'll crash it.) We kept individual decks at our sides in realspace for Doctor Chaos play.

Our Doctor Chaos specialized in cosmic forces, with a small coterie of elemental-powered minions ("like Sapphire and Steel"), and he desired to Conquer and Rule. His great Plan's initial order of Conditions was to shift the Earth into a slightly neighboring dimension, to steal the Something Or Other (later clarified as the Time Sphere I think), and to perform a mighty ritual to focus the power of Time Itself. Let's see, he was physically huge, not Galactus-sized but maybe 12 feet tall, in a Destroyer-style suit of armor ("bands of black metal"), speaking with charismatic, compelling authority (no spit-spraying), with trippy reality-warping visuals when he uses his powers - a rare thing, usually his lieutenants take care of things.

Mike Holmes took on the role of the lesser villain the Grey Falcon, an international man of sinister espionage mystery, "unbelievably well-dressed," with an ever-handy wrist device.

In the first episode, Doctor Chaos as played by Justice was triumphant, using a bizarre physical moon-to-planet lever to shift the Earth into a new dimensional time-line, along the way humiliating and crushing the very existence from the hero Harbinger, including his past, and similarly indirectly revealing the Black Widow-esque hero Lady Jane to be simply out of her league, flowing lustrous 70s auburn hair and all. Much Kirby-esque bulbous-ended rods technology was involved. His lieutenant D'Nex was introduced as well, best understood as a 4th edition shardmind with a cool face of some kind which also averted pure copyright violation. We also learned of Doctor Chaos' prevailing Ideology, to provide perfect order, to make the Earth what it was supposed to be. The Grey Falcon began play in the ultravillain's control and simply contributed to this mighty outcome.

In the second episode, the Grey Falcon rebelled (as he actually had wanted the dimensional shift to happen but now had his own ideas), and both heroes returned in Developed form, resulting in significant mechanical advantage compared to the prior Episode. Lady Jane had been re-printed by her agency masters, but retained memory of what had really happened - you see, in this new dimension, everyone else's memories have altered to fit the new reality - and the Harbinger had now transformed, because having been banished to Nowhere, he was now Everywhere, and was renamed the Tomorrow Man. Each was now rounded out with a dramatic sense of Responsibility.

We learned of the Grey Falcon's and Lady Jane's undeclared, never acted-upon, but white-hot passionate attraction, and she did help him break free of control and oppose Doctor Chaos' plan (although I suspect the dastard is still up to his old ways and seeks to fulfill his own Plan, but that remains to be seen). The Tomorrow Man and Doctor Chaos had some kind of interpenetrating self-revelating glowing climactic confrontation (because that's not gay) which kept the Sphere of Time safe from the villain's grasp.

Steve was cursed by bad draws, and thus this Condition not only failed, but was destroyed, leaving the Plan with two Conditions, both unchecked. This is important because it forces endgame in two more Episodes: two failures, two wins, or one complete failure will end the game. The only way for it to go on past that is to alternate win, partial failure, win, et cetera, and I now have text to deal with that just in case.

At which point  we had to stop, but hope springs anew for a resumption of play next week.

[Steve Hickey]

As Doctor Chaos I was able to draw seven cards + up to four extra cards.

My impression was that against two Developed heroes and a lesser villain who was working against me, Doctor Chaos would have a tough time beating them. Especially if the cardplay lasted longer than a couple of rounds.  (I'm a pretty good Gin Rummy / Rummikub player, and I'm still shaking my head at that final score of 14 to 0!)

[Ron Edwards]

You must have been terribly hosed by the current shuffle. That was two or three draws, right? Anyway, getting one Condition destroyed isn't so bad. However, one more loses the game (I forgot to include that in the above list of two-Condition outcomes).

Any other color-stuff you want to tell about? I couldn't remember it all - one never can, with this game.

[Steve Hickey]

I found the game provided a great framework to elicit creativity from everyone:

• * Justice describing how Doctor Chaos had actually genetically engineered Harbinger, so he won the first fight against him by travelling back in time and turning off the power to Harbinger's incubation pod
• * Everyone describing perfect character encapsulations of how their characters escaped from a spaceship that had crashed from orbit and exploded. Lady Jane leaps free; D'Nex strides out of the explosion; we pan up to see Gray Falcon floating down, having ejected earlier
• * I got to go a bit wild, describing an Inverted City hanging above the west coast of the US, surrounded by Doctor Chaos' helicopters and fighter jets, as he attempted to steal the Sphere (I have it written down as 'The Sphere of Tomorrow' in my notes)

Plus, I really dug what you did to transform Harbinger into the Tomorrow Man, bringing him back from being erased from existence. You might not have seen it, but I was nodding my head going 'Yes, that's exactly what would have happened.'

[Steve Hickey]

I've been too busy to write up my notes until now, but I enjoyed our second / final session of this. While it didn't come to a clean conclusion, it did lead to a design conversation that I hope was useful.

I thought I'd write some of my thoughts down:

Ron said "There's a learning curve which is extremely consistent in content and easily met by everyone in play, the card-play works well." I noted that all three of us were initially confused about how (or if) our card draws needed to relate to our narration. I'm guessing that's part of the learning curve.

There seemed to be two (related) variables that contribute to that confusion:

1.
When does narration happen? Before or after the card draw, or a mix of both (doing some initial narration, drawing the cards, and then rounding the narration off)?

Currently the answer seems to be 'whenever you'd like'.


2.
Should a good or bad card-draw impact on how we narrate our heroes' (or Doctor Chaos') effectiveness?

'Good' or 'bad' in this game's case refers to whether or not you've increased the number of cards in melds in your hand.

I noted that the only discussion about your hand's strength that's currently allowed is to say whether or not you want a particular card that's been discarded.

I proposed that you could use your narration as another way of signalling to the players you're working with about how good your hand is.

For instance, you could describe a hand that's now filled with a large number of melds by having your hero over-run a dimension-shifting nexus-point and eliminating the minion guarding it.


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We also discussed whether the turn-taking structure contributed to the heroes being likely to be isolated from each other. In between sessions, I realised I was genuinely concerned about this. In our Hangouts game, that happened in the first episode and the third episode.

One idea I had was to introduce crosses between players narrations, to mechanically justify developed characters being able to trade each other's cards. That seemed like a way to encourage the riffing off of each others' Colour contributions that this game is great at bringing out.

[Ron Edwards]

My current thinking is that you talk before you draw. I recall that was the original intent. I really don't want the card itself to influence narration. Yes, I know it's tempting; trust me, it doesn't fit the design.

I agree about the Crosses. The rules for heroes may even mandate pulling them together as much as possible, in the spirit of Super Summer Double-Sized Annual content. I also think it might be helpful to limit activity to the location(s) described by the current villain players - you can change scope, but not place.