Demo How-To?

[Lisa Padol]

Okay, I've bemoaned the lack of longer-than-a-quick-demo things for me to get into. I'd like to be part of the solution.

Picking just five games, I want to focus on PTA, Polaris, DitV, Mountain Witch, and Sorcerer. These are games that I think I should be able to get confident enough to run at the drop of a hat over the next year.

Apart from the games themselves, and from actually running them whenever opportunity presents, what resources should I look at? I'm interested in anything from a one page "how to demo this game" to full scenarios (where that's applicable) to "Okay, here's what did and didn't work in the past, and here's why."

I want to be able to run the 10 minute demo, the 2 hour mini-session, and the 4 hour full session.

How I can I make myself part of the solution?

-Lisa

[Munkholt]

I'll be particularly interested in input on the 4-hour demo. In April I plan to run a couple of demos (or at least be able to offer them). The convention I have in mind is usually very reasonable about providing time-slots and playing space.

I should also add that I am from Denmark, and as has been discussed previously, we have a very strong tradition for playing freeform scenarios: People will expect to participate in a well-prepared story with pre-defined characters. So for me, the first obstacle will be to make people join in the process, as is central to most of the games by Lisa (and I'll add Under the Bed to my list).

[TonyLB]

I have run a lot (more than a dozen, probably less than thirty) of short Dogs demos.  It's an easy ten minute demo.

10 Minute DitV demo:

Here's your patter while you put out dice:  "So yer brother's son, he been stealin' money from his pa to pay for sex with a whore on the edge of town.  Yer brother, he found out, and he stormed out with his rifle to kill the woman who led his boy into sin.  You rode out to catch him, 'cuz killin' her would be a terrible weight on his soul."

Make four piles of 4d6 each.  Point to each:  "This here's your Acuity, for thinkin'.  This here's your Body for doin'.  This here's your Heart, for carin' about people.  This here's your Will, for doin' what others won't."  4 piles of 4d6 in front of yourself.  "Same thing, for your brother."

Put down 4d4 by the player:  "You get these the moment you make how your daddy raised the two of you important to the issue at hand."  Put down 2d8:  "This here?  This is your gun."  They should be looking at those dice nervously by now.  Put down 2d10.  "You get these the moment you declare that this ain't about the two of you as brothers, it's about your role as a Watchdog of God."  Most people will now look at those dice as if they were venemous serpents.  Don't worry, they'll be rolling them later.

"Yer just talkin', right?  So that's Acuity plus Heart.  Roll 'em."

Play out the scene.  Play it hard-ball.  Take fallout on the brother like there's no tomorrow.  Have him club down the Dog with the butt of his rifle. 

My favorite reliable end of this demo scene involves the brother sobbing out his desperation ("I cain't just stand by and not hurt anybody about this... but I love my boy!", for instance) while pointing his rifle at the (supposedly) defenseless face of the Dog.  People like the feel of being in control of the situation, even with the rifle pointed straight at their character's face.  They like it a lot.

[Lisa Padol]

Here's your patter while you put out dice:  "So yer brother's son, he been stealin' money from his pa to pay for sex with a whore on the edge of town.  Yer brother, he found out, and he stormed out with his rifle to kill the woman who led his boy into sin.  You rode out to catch him, 'cuz killin' her would be a terrible weight on his soul."

Cool. Like Ben's current Polaris demo -- Ben, if you're reading this, what were the two set ups you said you were using? I know one was having someone catch an unfaithful spouse/loved one in the act, and I think there was another one -- it drops the player immediately into the thick of things. This is Story Now, correct?

Make four piles of 4d6 each.  Point to each:  "This here's your Acuity, for thinkin'.  This here's your Body for doin'.  This here's your Heart, for carin' about people.  This here's your Will, for doin' what others won't."  4 piles of 4d6 in front of yourself.  "Same thing, for your brother."

Sweet. Right to the point.

Put down 4d4 by the player:  "You get these the moment you make how your daddy raised the two of you important to the issue at hand."  Put down 2d8:  "This here?  This is your gun."  They should be looking at those dice nervously by now.  Put down 2d10.  "You get these the moment you declare that this ain't about the two of you as brothers, it's about your role as a Watchdog of God."  Most people will now look at those dice as if they were venemous serpents.  Don't worry, they'll be rolling them later.

Okay, at this point, while it's still cool, that's an awful lot of stuff to keep track of. Do you find people have any difficulty remembering which pile is which? Do you have a page with boxes with identifying captions that you put the piles of dice on?

"Yer just talkin', right?  So that's Acuity plus Heart.  Roll 'em."

Right, note to self: GM must have Cheat Sheet/Summary of all of the variables right there.

Play out the scene.  Play it hard-ball.  Take fallout on the brother like there's no tomorrow.  Have him club down the Dog with the butt of his rifle. 

My favorite reliable end of this demo scene involves the brother sobbing out his desperation ("I cain't just stand by and not hurt anybody about this... but I love my boy!", for instance) while pointing his rifle at the (supposedly) defenseless face of the Dog.  People like the feel of being in control of the situation, even with the rifle pointed straight at their character's face.  They like it a lot.

Totally. It's a great power dynamic. Does the player always win the conflict? What are the stakes?

Thank you so much for this!

-Lisa

[TonyLB]

I don't have a caption sheet, largely because I made all of this up off the cuff at DEXCON (man, the fact that they want that all-caps is starting to grate a little).  Anyway, it's not (yet) as thoroughly prepped as my demoes for Capes.  I sometimes have to prompt people:   "You've still got those dice, if you want to pull your gun on him," for instance.

The stakes are not formally established (it being a fast demo) but are implicitly "Does your brother go out and kill this woman."  Nobody has ever questioned that they are absolutely the last line of defense...which is interesting, now I come to think of it.  They don't say "Well, I'll let him go and maybe I can go hide the woman before he gets there."  Maybe the idea that the actions of protagonists determine the outcome of everything is more natural to players than I thought.  Or maybe it's because of the demo setting.

I've never seen the player fail to win the conflict (unsurprising, given the huge dice advantage I hand them).  I've seen some players who were very sorely pressed, accumulated a massive amount of Fallout, and shot their own brother in the leg.  But I've never seen them let the brother commit murder.