[Burning Empires] [DexCon] Demo feedback

[Nathan P.]

The first part of the post is the summary of the demo; the second is my feedback for Luke in particular; and the third is general comments about convention demos.

Part the First

So, I played in the first-ever (I think!) Burning Empires demo at DexCon. Crane ran it, and I was at the table with Alexander (who I played 3 other games with over the weekend - Mortal Coil, Carry, and Donjon), a fellow named Chris (an RPG.net regular and all-around nice guy, who was also in the Mortal Coil game with Alexander and myself), and a third guy who I don't remember the name of. The badge puzzle that intentionally misspelled everyones name on their tag made it tough to retain names. He wasn't familier with Burning Wheel, and I didn't manage to learn anything else about his roleplay preferances.

Luke prefaced the demo by saying that the scenario was a work in progress, and he would be using this session to evaulate it and tighten it up. Now, I know absolutely nothing about the world of the game, so apologies for not retaining the names of any of the alien races or anything. But the scenario was basically one reward cycle of play, set near the beginning of the invasion of an ice planet by worm-like aliens that inhabited the bodies of other lifeforms as hosts. Luke presented us with the choice to play the "good guys" (two human and two of a plant-derived genegineered alien race) or the "bad guys" (two worm-aliens, one human sympathizer...another worm-alien? My memory for details is teh suxxors). After some hesitation, we went with the good guys. During all of the selection process I kind of hesitated so that the guy I didn't know could make decisions - I felt a little bit like a ringer, and I noticed Alexander doing the same.

Anyway, we picked characters, and then played through the...well...play structure. Which was neat. The enforced scene progression structure is really good for pacing the narrative and keeping everyone moving swiftly through play. You get a color scene (free narration), an intersticial scene (a conversation), a building scene (making some rolls), and then the climax scene. For this Demo, we were going to have either a Firefight! or a Duel of Wits for the climax, I don't know if those are the only options in the full game. Oh, and each side gets the same progression, so each "movement" (I forget the actual word) of play has two big, meaningful scenes at the end.

We made our ultimate goal the taking of a giant elevator in the tether that connected the planet to the military base orbiting the planet, which had been taken over by the worm-aliens, in order to delay their landing of ground troops while we waited for galactic cavalry to arrive. We finished the game with an awesome Firefight! of our defending forces against the enemies trying to break out of the Tether, topped off with the complete pwning of Luke in a Duel of Wits with Chris's character. Overall, I had a good time. And I'm not even going to mention how gorgeous the book is. 

Part the Second

Now, keep in mind that this was at 9 in the morning after 4 hours of sleep. And Luke copped to giving a poor explanation of the rules, later. But anyway.

I was totally overwhelmed at the beginning by all the backstory and context provided for the characters. Also, the necessity of connecting all 8 characters (4 good, 4 bad) to each other in addition to a bevy of NPCs and secondary characters made it tough for us to keep track of who was who. Luke, later you were talking about how you're thinking of not offering the evil side for play, based on the second demo. I totally endorse this, and I think you should drop one of the evil characters. Having 4 good guys focused on 3 bad guys, or even 2, would make it way easier to keep track of who is who, and more importantly, who it is you hate and why. I was constantly going "Wait, why don't I like that guy again?" just because there were so many names happening. Whether there has to be four opposing characters in the rules, I don't know. But hey, its a demo, right?

Also, all of the details about the world and setting were a lot to absorb all at once. I think explaining them as they come up in play would serve the demo well. I mean, the situation is pretty clear-cut - the fascist aliens want to come take over your idealistic anarchic mining world. But all the stuff about Hammer and Anvil and which did what...I dunno. I knew it was all cool, but it just didn't penetrate because I was also trying to play this neat character and engage with these awesome mechanics. When you're familier with the source material, I'm sure it's all gravy, but when you're not...whoo.

The rules, actually, were no prob for me. Then again, I'm passingly familiar with Burning Wheel. I know the other guy ended the session saying that he had no idea how the rules worked, though.

So, those are my thoughts. Less exposition, maybe fewer bad guys, maybe have a cheat sheet with important setting details (like what the Hammer and Anvil and Iron are, and a list of all the aliens in the scenario).

Part the Third

Playing this demo really drove home the importance, to me, of having some way of dealing with players who come to your table having no idea of what the game's about, either in terms of (small-p) premise, or of setting and background. This seems to be a theme from DexCon in some ways (re: RobNJ's "guy who didn't like TV") And it helps explain why games with group-generated situation/theme/genre, like PTA and Mortal Coil, make rocking Con games. I think that there's two main ways to approach this - either head it off at the pass (as in, if you like/dislike A B and C, you will like/dislike this game), or plan for it at the table, by putting together some kind of summaries or cheat sheets of info to both teach and reinforce important setting and situation elements. I know that Luke, in particular, has been busting his balls to get everything together for Burning Empires, and I'm not saying that I blame him for not making it easier for me to get what was happening. But, for games with heavy or very important setting, it's definitly something to keep in mind.

[Luke]

Thanks, Nathan. You've confirmed some of my own gut feelings.

But there shall remain four villains!
-L