City of Birds on the Foundry

[Jasper]

Last night I was very happy to playtest City of Birds on the Foundry (which I only recently discovered). Commiserations over the lack of Dr. Who led to a several-hour long game. The players were myself, DaveC, TonyLB and Lxndr.

I wrote City of Birds just recently (you can read the whole thing, which is not very long, through that link). I consider it both a game and a statement. It's purpose was to show that things could be done differently -- that many of our common, underlying ideas about RPing are not necessary or universal. It's better if I not spell out specific goals, I think, though some will be obvious.


Setup

Anyway, City of Birds is always set within some sort of ancient, old-world city; the specifics are left up to the players. Tony asked, "Should we play the various aspiring claimants to the throne of an Empress who ravaged the land with horrors and built a massive empire of wealth and prosperity, but who now lurches unsteadily and angrily toward death without having named an heir?" Of course, we agreed. Character creation went fairly quickly, since there's not a lot to them. First, we established that the Empress was the Focus, and whom every character would be linked to. Here's what we came up with (I may be missing some things):

Tony played

Yang the Bold. Roles: General, Man of the People, Cuckold. Links: Empress (used to have her ear), wife, his men, Zhou-Yun ("the strapping young second-in-command, dutiful but passionate") and Mei-Xian, his mistress.

Dave played Arnis. Roles: Senator, Lover, Leader of the Cult of Snakes. Links with the Empress (has her ear), his wife, Zhou-Yun, Nipr.

I player Nipr the Eunuch. Role: Personal Servant, Poet, Second in Command of the Secret Police. Links: Empress, Zuko (years of faithful service), the Princess (who I've seen die in a dream), my own servant and trainee Tamo, and the Cult of Snakes.

Alexander played Zuko. Roles: Prince, Gifted Warrior, Dabbler in Arcane Arts, Snake Cultist. Linked to the Empress, Zhou-Yun, Nipr, Arnis (supported his takeover of the Cult), Snake Cult, and the Princess (his sister and secret lover).
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(I have a wiki installed on my site but thought it would be too much trouble to get set up on, since we didn't have a ton of time. We should have used it though, as it would have made referencing other other's characters much easier. Some of the above traits were forgotten during play, I think.)


Scenes

We had enough time so that each of us got to frame a scene as the Voice and have a scene focus on our character too. So the following makes sense: the Voice sets the scene, the Bird confronts it, the Snake decides the outcome of that attempt, and the Tiger moderates that outcome with far-reaching effects. Here's a brief run-down of the scenes:

I set a scene where Tony is the Bird. Yang and the other main characters are in the throne room. Yang tries to paint the snake cult as a danger and get carte-blanche to repress it. (Most of us thought Tony was going to try to kill her, I think.) Yang was granted even more powers than he'd asked for, and courtesy of the Tiger, the Empress dies soon thereafter of natural causes.

Yang has started his campaign against the Cult, and the Empress' funeral parades are under way. Alex sets a scene where Nipr is driving Zuko in a coah to visit his mother's body. A group of scared, crazed cultists stop them and plead for protection from Yang. Additionally, their leader proposes that Zuko initiate take-over of the Snake Cult. In the end, Zuko talks the cultist out of immediate action. The cultist's sister, Lin Yao, however, percieves Zuko's caution to be a sign that he has betrayed the cult.

In the third scene, Lin Yao speaks to Senator Arnis (the Snake Cult leader) in his house, in the midst of the ceremonial preparations. With the scene's resolution, Lin spills the beans on her brother and Zuko's plan. It's then that some of Yang's soldier come looking for cult members -- Arnis's role in the cult is entirely secret. Arnis turns Lin over to them and she plays along, pretending to be an assassin. The Tiger adds this complication: In the confusion of her mock-assassination attempt, Lin actually grazes Arnis with a poisoned blade.

The final scene finds Arnis sick in bed, having summoned Nipr before him. Arnis believes Zhou-Yang, General Yang's second, will be more sympathetic to the cult. He asks Nipr to arrange for Yang's mistress to be killed, and Zuko framed for it -- placing Yang into direct struggle with the soon-to-be Emperor. The Snake has Nipr become party to this plot. Yang's wife learns the truth behind the poisoning, but thanks Nipr for his work.

Thoughts

At this point it was getting late, so we stopped and reflected on the game. There was only one significant, recurrant hang-up. This was was knowing when the Snake needs to declare Crisis, which terminates back-and-forth dialog and activates the resolution system. As Tony pointed, out, you often need to know what the Bird is thinking, and where he wants to go, to do this wekk. When we were playing, one person might yell Crisis and take someone else by surprise. In a face-to-face game, this might not be such a problem...but it seems that the Bird may logically be in a better position to say "Crisis," depending on circumstances. We all agreed that either Bird or Snake should be able to, with the other's approval.

Relating to the above, the build-up phase sometimes dragged a bit. I think that while the situations created were all rife with potential trouble (as they're supposed to be) immediate, pressing confrontation was generally lacking from the outset. There's nothing wrong with this, but it does require the players to create their own crisis on the fly. That, in turn, may have made identifying that Crisis moment harder. I'm thinking that during build-up, there should be a suggestion for players to narrate not just self-contained actions but also their effects, and if another player doesn't like those effects and wants to prevent them, a Crisis becomes naturally emerges.

Other suggestions included: Require fewer initial Links but provide starting Coins that players can then use to purchase Links with mid-play. Second, make it so the Voice can be the Bird as well (setting up a situation where his own character is central).

I'm also thinking about the turn rotation, which is governed by passing around stones. As it was, the Voice usually became the Bird in the next scene. There's nothing wrong with that, really, but it's a little too orderly: more mixing and matching would be good. Someone suggested a simpler scheme, where a new Voice simply pays a stone to the old Voice; nevermind who the Bird is. My goal is for everyone to be Voice and Bird regularly, but not have a strict turn order. Hm.


Conclusion: City of Birds was a fun way to spend an evening and I'll definitely keep developing it. It was certainly quite playable. Thanks again to my fellow players. If you guys, in particular, have any other thoughts, I'd love to hear them. I may get a chance to playtest it live soon.

[TonyLB]

It was a fun, fun game.  I definitely like the way that one player gets to decide success or failure, but then the other player gets to counteract that with benefit or complications ... when I played Snake, the thought that I could get long-term worse results for the Bird by giving him what he wanted and drawing the Tiger to do my dirty-work was definitely foremost in my mind.

I do think it asked a lot of us in terms of our skills in setting up and driving conflicts.  I'd be interested to see how it plays with people who don't have that skill-set so well established.  Would they pick it up, or just flounder?

[Jasper]

Tony: Yeah, I don't know. We'll just have to see.

Here's something I forgot from before. During the last scene of play, Arnis was dying of poison. I think it was Alex (who wasn't playing Arnis) who asked "If I'm the Snake or Tiger, can I just kill Arnis?" Hrm. At the time, I said that it would be better to have Dave's permission, but that I didn't see why not. Here's a more concrete idea:

You can only kill a main character if that player agrees to it (so you can always kill or dispose of your own)...UNLESS the Situation and Crisis explicitly involves the character dying, in which case the decision is in the Snake's hands. But if the Snake decides to kill the PC, the Tiger's role switches to the Bird player: thus, the dead character's player names the "after-effects" of the death.

And whenever a PC dies, that player immediately takes up a new character. Could be an NPC, or he could make a new one.

Does that work?

A similar question popped into my head yesterday: Can the Snake or Tiger change a character's traits if it makes sense? For instance, a Situation might involve the potential disolution of a friendship. If the Snake says, "Boris tells you he doesn't know you, and spits on the ground." can he change the Elements on the character's Boris Link? Say from "close friend" to "ex-friend"?

Seems like he should be able to, without making anyone use a coin. But obviously the change should make sense. Maybe the Snake can try to argue for such a change, but it's the Tiger who says if it's really justified? Would that decision get in the way of the Tiger's main duties? Maybe we could just leave it to the Bird to record such a change if he wants to (for free). Hm...