[Fingerprints] Second (?) Playtest

[migo]

This was my first exposure to Fingerprints http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=16592.0html, cool game I enjoyed it more than I expected considering my current attitude towards virtually rulesless games, but the lack of GM changed the effect of no rules.

I'll just mix my comments and description of the events together, it's 3AM and I haven't really thought of a structure.

First with the character creation, the basic concepts I don't think I really caught on to what all of the people were, by the time we got to the superpowers I forgot the basic precept of the characters. I think this might have been caused by only reading out the new writing on the sheet instead of everything. Some repetition might help with other players just remembering who the other characters are.

I picked a baby, the rest were middle aged to old adults. Anat made a single mom so we decided she was my mom. The power I ended up getting was the ability to influence people around me to benefit me. Denzil got the ability to make people see "what could have happened". Aaron had the ability to turn anything he touches into green boomerangs, Steve changed size according to how inflated his ego was. The two other guys whose names I forget were a guy who could eat stone and turned anything he bit into stone, and a normal environmental activist. Allan was a homeless woman.

Right around this stage of character creation there are two things I'd suggest for changes, one, normals should also have additions to their character sheet, they could be anything, but give them a more fleshed out background. There is a significant disadvantage for normals being able to affect things on a large scale when they take personal actions because they have such a small fingerprint, and most likely the dice will have to be turned over from white space, the chance of 1s and other low numbers is much higher for normals. Touched get a much better chance at 6s since they have writing all over the character sheet.

I think a rule should be solidly added in so that each power can only have one effect, and the next cycle around should be other players only putting constraints and restrictions on the power, not creating any other powers. Since the player gets final say on the power it screws things up if another player writes an additional power in afterwards. For instance Denzil had the effect that anyone she showed "what could have been" would also end up dying. That's two effects, that could have worked the other way around if the death touch was the original power decided upon, but I think that might have been what killed her desire to play her character since she didn't want to kill anyone, so introducing her character with her power would have likely had an effect she really didn't want. So it should be clear that the power just has a single effect and that the next pass around stage is only constraints. For normals, they should just be continuing to flesh out their character, more background, etc. That way they have the same size finger print, they can't affect the world in weird ways but they can affect the world to the same degree. They don't have any superpowers but they also don't have to worry about any consequences of their powers. That could be the incentive to be normal, you don't get saddled with a really inconvenient power.

I think it might also help to have another pass around where the implications of the power are written down. For instance Aaron's boomerang janitor couldn't shake hands with anyone because they'd turn into boomerangs. That would be a social implication. An implication for stone eating hobo could be that because stones only provide mineral sustenance he would have to find liquid sources of other nutrition. Normals would continue to have their character fleshed out. Normals would also have much more variance since there is much more freedom in their character development, while touched have to follow the cycle of brainstorm, create power, constrain power, and implications. This is assuming it's adopted, but I'm thinking with the issue of my baby essentially having mind control, if implications were put into place in advance as well as the after power stage clearly being constraints that might have not been as big a problem.

On that note, I think the original brainstorm stage is ok as it is, but when working on constraints I think after each addition everyone should say what they added so anyone who has an objection can object right away. This could have curbed the death touch addition for Denzil's character.

Next, certain characters had more active roles than others. I think it's interesting to note that the characters with selfish characteristics were largely more active themselves. Professor Ego was interested in recognition so the player had a clear set goal to work towards, stone eating hobo was hungry and had the motivation to get out of being a hobo (I'm not sure if this was initial or happened during play), my baby was interested in himself and everyone making him feel better, so I did stuff that served that goal. The environmental activist had his goal in his character. The single mom, homeless woman, and janitor (and I completely forget what Denzil's character started out as) didn't have any goals. They played agencies on the map and never really got the urge to play their characters. Maybe having a section of character creation, either at the beginning or somewhere during the process that sets at least one goal for the character. Then the player can see somewhere to go.

I think we came to the conclusion that the initiative system we had was broken, although there's really no concensus on how to fix it. I just had another thought in addition to the other ones discussed (which were probably written down) is a dice bidding system. You can bid dice to go first in an action, but maybe that restricts the ammount of reactions you can have. I haven't thought this out clearly, but I imagine the initiative system would have to be playtested in several ways before something that really works crops up.

I think the general order of events was that environmental activist started a pamphlet about healthy eating, some purist bigots were created as an agency. I think after that I threw in a quarantine organisation that wanted to quarantine all the touched. Then there was the extreme tooth pain one on the quarantine corp, that one was fun because it was completely bizarre and Aaron was eventually able to construct the consequences of businesses run by touched refusing services to the quarantine corp. After that I think Denzil made the "Humans are just Jealous" billboard which started a global church worshipping the touched. Professor Ego had made several attempts at recognition but wasn't getting too far. My baby didn't like the worshipping of the touched since people weren't acting in my interests anymore (I figured the baby didn't understand he was touched himself, or really what touched was, just that there wasn't a worship of him) so he managed to create a babytopia where the whole country worshipped him instead. Professor Ego tried to get off that and managed to grow fairly large by taking interest in my baby and convincing people that he was acting in my interests and that his interests were my interests. I can't remember what negated that. After that Aaron got a 5 that he really wasn't able to do anything with which was a pity, I think by that time we had decided that whoever had the die had control of what happened so nobody else was throwing in suggestions. I think there suggestions would have really helped but the general attitude of the table seemed to be not to throw them out. I had some rough ideas but I didn't say anything because I hadn't spent my dice and it wasn't my turn. We definitely needed some more encouragement for suggestions. Allan tried starting a religious war, that didn't really happen although we did get nationwide riots. Steve acted as an agency that resulted in another baby like mine for competition. I decided to team up with the other baby and got a 4 on my roll so we ended up being the CEOs of the country. Stone eating hobo managed to get a business running along with that. I think that was the point we ended at, and began discussion on how the game went and where we needed work.

If you've got any questions, just ask. I haven't really tried to make this too coherent, I've just been shooting this post out as I think of stuff.

[Mikael]

Which rules did you use/start with? Any significant changes to the rules described in the Design thread?

Cheers,
+ Mikael

[migo]

We used the rules in the design thread, no changes as far as I remember.