[Covenant]Boston Legal

[Matt Machell]

Following on from previous discussions on revising the scenario design text. I'm posting particularly about those changes, since I'm really pleased with how they turned out.

I did a runthrough of Covenant from scratch with the revised version of the text last Friday. It brought up a couple of minor wrinkles, but generally went very well. About what I'd expect for this very late stage. I'm particularly pleased at how well group preperation came together.

We carefully followed the text as written (I printed a couple of copies). I was particularly careful to try and avoid adding extra
clarifications to the text that weren't there (and if I felt tempted, I noted them down instead). I guess all that usability testing  comes in handy here.

All three players are people I've known for a long time. Two had played a pre-written scenario of an earlier draft and one has played a few Indie games.

Stage one was creating a cell playsheet. I gave only the barest of setting details and the players took the tools that are part of the process and just started riffing off each other. The intial concept, suggested almost as a joke by one player, was "I've been watching Boston Legal, let's do something like that." I was great to watch that evolve, become more serious and shape their thinking.

I very carefully kept my contributions to a minimum of clarifying concepts and adding the details that every player is required to (a convention and motif). The biggest comment from the players was that it felt odd creating some of these details before the characters. In the current draft the cell details come first, then characters. This allows for a solid idea of situation and game expectations before you decide on your character. I wonder if perhaps the name is the problem, and it should just a prep-sheet. Perhaps the text just needs to emphasise that you can make amendments later as your ideas solidify.

We ended up with the following Cell :

Location: Boston
Orders from: Overseer McAndrews, Clerk to Supreme Court
Former Purpose: Political control and stasis
Conventions: The truth doesn't matter, red tape is our friend, power is self propogating, everybody has something to hide
Motifs: Messy murders, dazzling lights, trouble with the press, back alley violence
Important People: The Sushi Chefs (hired killers), Inner Council Member Judge Johnson, Judy Thomas (Another Overseer)

This set up the players expectations for a game that mixed political and legal wrangling with out and out violence. I love the way conventions and motifs set this up, and then encouraged them to play out in the mechanics.

With cell creation out of the way, we moved to characters. Here the re-ordering of the text really kicked in nicely, and the truisms quickly chosen from the list acted as a springboard for ideas as to just who the characters were. This fed into players deciding who the characters in the the 3-way split of the crucible (people important to self, society and faction) were.

One note here is that the society region prompted the question "is that society as a whole or just the Covenant?" This is something that needs clarifying in the text.

Our characters were (edges and consequences not included):

Morrison Tate, Jaded Senator
Truisms: We look after our own, I am my own master, to everything a price
Faction: Old boy's network
Agenda: Maintian status quo
Order: Crown
Crucible: My trophy wife veronica (self), "the sushi chefs" (self/society), Overseer (society), The President(faction)

Geoff Harding, Rugged IRS Investigator
Truisms: Money makes the world go round, if you look hard enough you find the truth, we're the greatest country in the world
Faction: The Harding Family
Agenda: Find our missing money
Order: Crown
Crucible: Grandpa Harding, old and feeble (self), Grandma Harding, hard and self serving (self, faction), Overseer(society), Prof. Irving Harding (faction)

Leo Blanc, Burnt out assassin
Truisms: Some secrets are too dangerous, the end justifies the means, I matter to the society
Faction: Sons and Daughters of Saturn
Agenda: Judy Thomas must die
Crucible: My Sweetheart Lousia (Self), Father Saturn, diviner of stars (faction), Judy Thomas (Faction,Society), Overseer McAndrews (Society)
Shared Cell Orders: Bring down the person manipulating the DA.

I enjoyed watching these characters form, simple concepts put forth as style / focus combinations grew into nicely rounded characters. Prep took just under and hour, which is slightly longer than I'd want, but quicker than a great many games. Part of that was my desire not to curtail the creativity too soon. I did note that when told they had to include at least one character from the cell sheet, most went with their overseer and put him in the society section, meaning he's somebody who expects you to follow orders . It's the obvious choice, and I wonder if it's too obvious and the text should read "at least one person from the important people list" to encourage more diversity.

The players were all keen on how the character sheets really drove the scenario. One commented that it was a game for "lazy GMs", because I could pull things together with such ease from their prep. There was some great feedback came about the layout of the character sheet and prep sheets too. Particularly a few suggestions on emphasising the, conflict > truism > moment of truth, flow.

I'll post some highlights of the scenario in play later.

-Matt