[SUtS]

[tj333]

       I've done 2 play tests since my post in First Thoughts on Strongest Under the Sun. I'm not sure how interesting this will be to other people but getting it written up has certainly been of use to me in thinking about how the game went.
       SUtS is a modified Dogs in the Vineyard game designed to give an action anime/manga feel to the game.

1st Playtest
       I have 2 players D and J. The first play test had the players write down their character concept and then we played a Death Stakes game to get the feel of the character. I liked using Death Stakes to start the game and noticed some changes after the 30 minutes of play in the characters. Death Stakes is also helpful for getting me some material to work with for the session. The entire rest of the nights game as based on J's winning Death Stakes narration.
       I think I'm going to make an expanded Death Stakes style game and use it as a drill to get my players into character, practicing narration, and to try and get some indication of what the players think is cool.
       After Death Stakes the players finished their characters.
       The game started with vampire ninja hunters on a train and the PCs trying to get through the train to the ninja's leader at the end. The character's were an elementalist shaman and Alucard look a like. For me it was a noticeable drop in narration and level of imagination used from the Death Stakes to the actual game but J and I picked back up once we got the rules sorted out but D who did not do so well in Death Stakes continued on about the same.
       It went slowly with the player working up to what there characters could do. If the players had a better idea of what there stats worked out to for in game effects before hand this wpould have gone quicker I think.
       Not much to say about how the game itself. Conflicts seemed to drag when people were trying to figure out what dice worked best for a raise or see and as orseo pointed out in my last thread Dogs does not work overly well for this style of game. The players are the kind that are slow to say anything bad about a game but thought it was a good beer and pretzel style of Dogs.

[tj333]

        Modifications to the rules after that was to make fallout based on how many groups of 2 attributes the player used for the character. You start with d0 fallout and work your way up by one die type for every group of 2 attributes you use to d12s.
        The level of fallout you take being set by the player taking it fits the setting much better.

        I increased the ki pool from 3 to 15 so that injury can be taken from ki as well as being added to fallout. So far even with the increased cost of using ki to reuse moves no one has chosen to use ki to absorb injury.

        Finally most of the fallout has been changed so that instead of removing dice you move dice into you unassined die pool. The characters total dice stay the same but they are encouraged (I would say forced but at later times they can add the dice back to the TRait it was removed from.) to change their character by this.

[tj333]

       A week later starting the next play test I found out the no one was using advantages because they did not understand them in the last game.
       Also up to this time I assumed that the players were more into manga then they were. So things that were rather self evident in the game to me did not make any sense to them. This came up partway through making character with the revised rules from the last session and they expressed their dislike of the game up to this point and how they did not overly like the last game and were not enjoying this one either.

       Up to this point I had left things very generic so it would fit whatever setting I went with in the end. I didn't really like taking a plot and setting whole from an other setting  but I went with the Naruto manga. The players found it very helpful. Like inn the story they were new graduates from the ninja college and assigned to a senior ninja for further training. The senior ninja was Jin Wicked (like the webcomic artist) Master of the Silver Staff.
       In the  manga the 3 student ninjas had had to get 2 bells from the the teacher. Whoever got a bell was allowed to eat lunch. The idea behind this is they need to work together to get a bell from the senior ninja to prove they can function as a team or otherwise show they could figure out to use teamwork together.
       Like in the manga they did not figure out they needed to work together to begin with but J and D started fighting with the goal of the conflict being that J keeps D out of the forest that Jin had hidden in with the bell. This conflict took all of D's ki as well as giving them both mid-level fallout scores. D won this conflict on lucky rolls. The new fallout rules worked well here. To me the player setting his own fallout level fit the genre better though I don't think the players noticed much.
       D then went on to take the bell from Jin since J did not have enough ki to compete in this one. Jin was made with extra trait and attribute dice over a starting character. Jin being able to use only traits dice (and no possibility of fallout) was a good move towards the invincible look for a superior opponent while keeping them from advancing so the players can begin catching up. By not using attribute dice I was also going easy on them.
       In this conflict and other where all of the character had separate goals it feels somewhat awkward to me. I don't know what to do about this though I don't think its too much of a problem.

       Since D got the bell his character got to eat. But they were both declared unfit for being ninjas since they did not work together. J and D started a conflict of proving they were strong enough to be ninjas. This fight was very hard against Jin and I realized that a lot of d6/8s on a character leaves you in fear of someone with a few d10s that rolls high and just hold onto them. After D rolled to 10s I don't think he used them the whole fight. During this fight D really started calling advantages and I found out it was awful hard to get any of my own advantages in a 2 to 1 foght. This is a part where the advantages really shaped the use of my dice in trying not to take fallout/injury on mine while trying to break my opponents advantages before he claimed them. To me this was the highpoint of the night.
       This fight was also cool since Jin has a pet rat (a d6 belonging) that she uses for stealth type actions and J started trying to use advantages to take it away from her and nearly succeed quit a few time and by the end of the fight he had assigned 3d8 into a Relationship with the rat. This could get interesting since Jin has a 2d6 relationship with the rat as well. Jin eventual gave on the conflict because J had pulled all of his attribute dice (This would have given him d12 fallout but he really wanted to get that rat.) and would have gotten the rat if the conflict had continued.
       Having fought together in this conflict and proven themselves a match for Jin they were allowed to continue their training to be ninjas.

       The second play test had more player involvement which lead to better play overall and happier players at the end. I need to get a more streamlined and varied advantages I think since I liked how  it shaped the fight so much in that last conflict.

[tj333]

Lessons learned:
       Make sure the players are on board with the idea behind the game before you start playing it, even if you think they already are.
       I still like how the Dog's dice system lets you see how strong you opponent is when you start fighting him. The dice being out in the open lets the players do a assessment of the opponent so I don't need additional mechanics to get the players going Whoa! or checking power levels when an other character rolls a pile of dice all at once.

And that's it for me for now.