[KueiCon] General Mud

[ptevis]

I brought General Mud with me to KueiCon because I really wanted to give it a try, and there turned out to be quite a bit of interest in it. Unfortunately we ended up playing it opposite an Iron Heroes game and only ended up with three players, but it turned out to be quite thought provoking. While the story was entertaining, I want to focus on the mechanics of the as we played it.

Highlights and thoughts (and Ben and Albert, correct me if I'm misremembering things):

1) We ended up having two pre-Revolution rounds. Ben (Lewis the Sheep) started off the narration with two red and two white dice. Albert (Timothy the Goose) followed with two red and three white dice. Not wanting to lose my chance to be General Mud, I (Peter the Rat) also put out two red and three white dice, with somewhat predictable results. The second time around, I again went last against almost the same dice and decided to throw myself on the grenade for the Revolution by playing three red and one white.  This time the Revolution was successful, with Timothy the Goose becoming General Mud. One of the things I took away from this was the importance of the order in which the pre-Revolution stories are told, as you only get one chance to put dice out.

2) As the low animal on the totem pole, I ended up not making quota in the first round, which set us as PCs back a good ways. With only two PCs, you need both of them to start an uprising, and a trip to the Glue Factory makes that hard. This would be less of an issue with more players.

3) Because there were only two PCs, we basically had one choice: collude to overthrow the General or not. There was essentially no opportunity for scheme and betrayal. Or if there was, we didn't see it.

3) One thing I think we did wrong is that we didn't allow the General to add more of his decide after the first round of a Trial if none of the PCs had any dice left. This was caused by a misreading of the rules, but is potentially worth thinking about.

4) The flow of dice from pool to pool worked quite well, we felt. It was reasonably easy to see how we could accomplish our goals, but also hard to actually make it happen.

5) The General should frame Laws that make it hard for the PCs to use their negative trait, as this denies them white dice, and force them to use their positive traits, as this makes them use red dice that the General will capture. We noticed this when General Mud was making Laws that actually made it easy for us to justify using our negative traits. The General caught on and gradually started revising those Laws in his favor.

Suggestions or omissions:

1) How many dice does the General start with after the Revolution? We didn't see it in the rules, so we just assumed it was the number of red dice played in that round, as it would be a Trial.

2) While the General can lie about the die result, we felt it would break the currency of the game for the General to be able announce absolutely any total. "I'm rolling five dice. . . Oh, look, a 60." There's nothing explicit in the rules about whether or not General Mud can do this, and it seemed important to be clear that he can't.

3) One thing hinted at in the Afterword is the possibility of the Soviet of Beasts collapsing, but there are no rules for that. Perhaps if during an uprising the red dice exceed the General's dice but the white dice have the highest total, that indicates the collapse?

Overall, the game seemed to work quite well. I think the game plays pretty much the way Rob intended it, and it was a lot of fun. I'd love to try it again with more people.

--Paul