[The Lucky Joneses] Some slow, latently homosexual playtesting

[hix]

I'm about to do a big playtesting spree for my game, The Lucky Joneses, which is set in a family sit-com universe and is (hopefully) about what it means to be a family.  The previous playtest thread is here.

In the first play test on Tuesday, the players selected the two grandparents and all the teenage boys who don't have a direct connection to the family (the adopted son, the boarder, and the cousin).

The Good: It seemed (to me) to be consistently fun, and we had an amazing 10 minute stretch of play involving one PC's Want.
The Not-So: Once again, I didn't get to see the longer-term currency (of Penalties) kick into action.

Anyway, starting with the amazing, Jenni (inspired by a movie she had seen recently) wondered if she could make her character's Want "to prove he's not gay".  I was really excited by that; I could see a lot of great conflicts and story possibilities coming out of it (and I might have actually pushed our group into buying into it).  This was definitely the most serious of the Wants.  The others were stuff like: throw a party, renew my drivers license, hang out with my nudist friends.

Jenni's character, Lee, ended up at a party where he was trying to sleep with Kelly and simultaneously avoid his friend Oscar confess his Lee-love in front of everybody.  It was edge of the seat stuff - me playing the increasingly direct Oscar, Wayne playing the increasningly suspicious Kelly.  Celeste, as the Knock, holding off on ending the scene, as things got tenser, and Gino covering his eyes, holding his knees around his chest, moaning in anticipation of the horror to come.

Quite a while ago, Ron asked:

I'm interested in just how madcap and freewheeling you want the basic conflicts of the show to be.

This scene sorted out for me that I want the characters' Wants (and therefore the game's starting conflicts) to be grounded in the real world, and then get more extreme and freewheeling as the game goes on, as the Knock introduces their options and everybody settles into a comedic groove.  Escalation of the stakes of the Wants seems to happen pretty naturally.

***

My frustration is the game still feels like it's taking 'too long' to play.  While I'm interested in the idea of long-term Lucky Jones play, primarily I want it to be a fun one-off, with people getting through 2 episodes in an evening.  The first episode is a fast intro to the basic concepts; the second introduces Penalties, which force the players to make choices about being selfish or altruistic towards the other players.

But after two hours of play, we hadn't finished the first episode.  Because of that, I still haven't seen the game's economy in action.  That was pretty frustrating, and that's probably the main reason the game didn't feel fast enough to me.

So, some questions for my playtesters:
- How did you feel about the pacing?
- If it was slow, was there any particular reason?
- Did the Role Cards help?
- General thoughts about the game?

So my plan is this: I'll be running 2 more playtests this weekend at a local con, and then I need to see what long-term play is like (so there's be at least one 4-part playtest), followed by a big re-edit of the rules, to eliminate all the redundancies I've seen in there.  And then I'll take it public.

This is my first real experience with prolonged playtesting.  I seem to be most concerned with getting the rules to facilitate a fast pace and functional social interactions, but if you've got any insights into other stuff I should be focusing on, let me know.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Steve,

One thing I'm not immediately seeing is whether the slower pacing is due to ...

1. getting to the conflicts, or

2. resolving the conflicts when in action

If it's the latter, then I advocate as decisive a mechanic as possible.

At least with my currently-limited understanding of the game, I'm thinking that a rather slap-the-table, this-is-it resolution is necessary. This is similar to the points Matt Wilson and I discussed during the development of Primetime Adventures, in which he decided that resolving current conflicts at hand is more important than merely deciding who gets to say what happens.

I could be facing in entirely the wrong direction, so I'll look forward to seeing and maybe trying out the game at GenCon.

Best, Ron

[petrova]

well, firstly, thanks for calling me amazing ;p

I had a blast playing this game, seriously loved it. Big props to you for having Oscar come down the stairs in Lee's shirt XD

Now, I answer your questions:

How did you feel about the pacing?

I thought it was just about right, personally. Some scenes could have been a natch longer even.

- Did the Role Cards help?

Yes, immensely. It gave you a clear idea of what you're supposed to be doing at any given time and your options. I think they are a really valuable addition.

- General thoughts about the game?

I still get confused about the dice rolls, they don't seem intuitive. That could just be me though. I thought the bonus system was neat, it's nice being able to re-roll sometimes!

[hix]

Ron, Jenni, I think I've identified what was going on.

The resolution system is pretty decisive.  Just as in PTA, a scene leads up to a point of conflict, and at that point there's a d6 roll.  Players can adjust that roll (in a process similar to Bumping in Heroquest) but all up it doesn't take longer than 15 seconds to determine what happens.

And, after thinking over Jenni's comments, I agree with her.  The scenes were fun and didn't feel drawn out – they felt reasonably paced, and Knocks were coming in at appropriate points.

So, my frustration feels like it stemmed from me (as the designer) wanting to play through two full cycles of Wants (which are the characters' goals for the episode) before the end of the night, and only getting about ¾ through one cycle.  That's probably due to the sheer number of scenes we had to play out.  I don't think I can reduce the time it takes to play a scene (and I haven't got the probability maths skills to calculate the average number of scenes in an episode.) 

My current solution is to reduce the number of scenes in the first episode – all starting players except for those who've had to bid to get a character will have a starting Want of 2.  I'll test that out today, during two games at a local con.

It's weird.  Like I said, it's my first time playtesting this extensively & it's taking some getting used to – juggling the different perspectives of player, explainer of rules, and designer/observer. It's also weird, having a increasingly clear picture of how I hope play will go, but not actually getting to that point yet.

[hix]

So, I ran two 3-hour playtests at Confusion this weekend.  I adjusted the Want Levels per episode (and therefore number of scenes it takes to complete an episode), with the aim of playing through 2 episodes in a single session.

In the first play test, everyone tried to succeed with a Want Level of 2.  This led to a coherent episode, that was very entertaining and actually finished, but it still took somewhere between 90 minutes to two hours to play out.  Too long for what I want.

In the hour between play tests, I adjusted the rules so that in the first episode, everybody would have a Want Level of 1.  And finally, this led to the sort of pacing I wanted ... the first episode of the second play test was completed in about an hour (and in eight scenes).

For the second episode of the second playtest, I maintained an even distribution of Want Levels between 2 and 6.  The difference between the two episodes was profound.  For a start, we didn't complete the episode; we played through 16 scenes and were only maybe halfway towards the end.  Coupled with that, the story got diffuse – The Lucky Joneses has an ensemble cast, and a smaller number of scenes helps keep track of the links between the different sub-plots.  With the huge amount of scenes in the second episode, it became hard to follow what the story actually was, who was succeeding or failing, and (in fact) why we should care.

I could feel the energy and focus going out of the group.

So, I've gotten the first ep working the way I want, and now I need to adjust the second.  I'm going to try reduce Want Levels to between 1 and 3, and change how they're assigned.  My goal is to simplify this game as much as possible - and now that I'm seeing how the game should play, I'm probably going to try out a completely different engine for the resolution system tonight – one that uses coins, not dice.

I also finally saw Penalties in action and was impressed with how they change the game.  There are big changes I'm going to try out with those tonight as well, so I'll start a separate thread to think about all that.

(One thing that this is confirming for me - rapid prototyping is the way to make rapid progress on a game.  Play, adjust rules, then play again ...)