[TSoY] Good times, bad times

[Ricky Donato]

Good times, bad times, you know I've had my share. I just finished playing Shadow of Yesterday with two buddies, Eric and Pat. The game went mostly well, but there were some hangups that I'd like to thrash out.

The idea for this game started a couple of weeks ago. Pat and I had been discussing the RPGs we play. The conversation went something like this:

Pat: So that's the kind of game I like to play.

Me: So let me see if I understand what you've been saying. You like to play a game where the characters have beliefs and values, and those beliefs and values get challenged.

Pat: Yes, that's correct.

Me: Pat, have I got a game system for you...

I told Pat about TSoY and pointed him to the online text version. He read it and was really interested by it, and he suggested bringing Eric in as well, because he felt that Eric was interested in the same type of game. Eric was very interested when I said that we could have useful sessions that were only 3 hours long; he was thrilled by this idea because he works a lot of overtime.

The three of us met today with a 3.5 hour window to play. We spent the first 2 hours going over the rules and making the characters (I was the SG). That took longer than expected but I figure we were just getting used to the system.

Eric created a Maldorian human man named Alejandro, a bisexual minor noble who prides himself on sexual conquests. Pat created a Zaru named Asok whose family was thrown out of Zaru and who is collecting Zu words to restore his family's honor.

We decided that the game would be set in Maldor. I thought this was good because it would let me run Rat Moon Rising. As it turned out, we never got there, and it looked like we would never get there. I say that as a good thing, not a criticism; it implies to me that I could run a game with no prep at all and still have a successful game.

Eric set the tenor of the game fast when I asked, "So how do your characters know each other?"

He responded, "We wake up in an inn in bed naked together."

The opening scene was quickly established as a morning-after following an orgy with the two of them, the innkeeper's daughter and a goat. Based on some other AP I've read, it seems common that players who are used to having very little power go over the top the first time they try a game that explicitly gives them a lot of power. They push a lot of boundaries just to make sure that they actually do have all that power, that it's not an illusion.

Here are the good things that I found about the game:

• The game was really funny and wild.
• It required no prep work from me.
• I sometimes had nothing to do; I could just sit there and watch Eric and Pat play off each other.
• In a recent D&D game, I got bored as the players (of which I was one) hunted around through some ruins. We went from room to room looking for action, as it were, and grew bored because we spent 20 minutes trying to find something interesting in these rooms and there wasn't anything, until we found the room that had the ghosts in it. I would have much rather the DM state something like, "you hunt through the ruins, going from room to room, until you walk into a room with ghosts in it." That would have cut through the boringness and thrown the action into our laps. That problem rarely happens with TSoY; the action is consistently thrown into your lap.

Here are the problems and questions I have:

1) In the 1.5 hours that we played, Pat and Eric each racked up 15 XP. We all felt that this was a lot. Is that normal?
2) We started off with the scene that Eric suggested, and we never got to the part where Rat Moon Rising was supposed to start. As a result, we never got to any Key Scenes so I never distributed Key Scene XP. Should I have simply given out Key Scene XP for one of the scenes, even if I had not planned to?
3) Eric started off the game trying to seduce Pat's character, because this played to his Keys. After a few minutes, Eric apologized for "being a munchkin". I think he was referring to the same complaint described in this thread about how TSoY encourages people to play to their Keys too much. I'm not sure how to respond to this concern.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Here are the problems and questions I have:

1) In the 1.5 hours that we played, Pat and Eric each racked up 15 XP. We all felt that this was a lot. Is that normal?
2) We started off with the scene that Eric suggested, and we never got to the part where Rat Moon Rising was supposed to start. As a result, we never got to any Key Scenes so I never distributed Key Scene XP. Should I have simply given out Key Scene XP for one of the scenes, even if I had not planned to?
3) Eric started off the game trying to seduce Pat's character, because this played to his Keys. After a few minutes, Eric apologized for "being a munchkin". I think he was referring to the same complaint described in this thread about how TSoY encourages people to play to their Keys too much. I'm not sure how to respond to this concern.

Ricky,

First things first: I want to check and make sure Pat was ok with your beginning scene. It seemed like Eric set that up, and I was just interested.

As for your questions, let's see. 15 XP in an hour and a half sounds like a lot of Key-filled play, which is great and fine. That's a lot, but a lot is good in TSOY: it means people are hitting their Keys a lot, which is the point. This ties in to your last question, actually. People do have this issue in TSOY of "oh, I'm being a munchkin." While I understand where they're coming from, I have a hard time dealing with it. Here's why: I know well that in other games, gaining experience hand-over-fist is considered somehow juvenile. But, gaining experience is what players what to do. So, if players have something they want to do, but have been conditioned not to do, that's a situation I don't quite know what to do with.

As for Key Scenes: if you didn't hit any, you didn't hit any. No big deal, and you had plenty of XP flying around anyway. Remember that a Key Scene can be pretty open, so that you can use it anywhere, like "a PC should fly through a window head-first."

[Ricky Donato]

Thanks for the reply, Clinton.

Pat was fine with that scene after he clarified that his character was straight and he didn't enjoy anything that happened. This prompted Eric to say, "How do you know? I'm Adept in Allure! Maybe I turned you!" This prompted me to say, "OK, then let's have a flashback scene where we narrate what happened the night before." This eventually brought about the innkeeper's daughter and the goat. Good opening scene.

After some thought, I have two more questions:

1) Most of the XP generated that session was by the players hitting their Keys for the 1 XP bonus. I think that we mishandled this. I think that the 1 XP bonus is supposed to come when you fulfil your Key at a small cost/penalty/risk, but we were creating situations that gave XP for no cost/penalty/risk. Is that what you intended for the Keys?

2) I've read contradictory statements from the book and on the forum, so I'll go straight to the source. Named SGCs cannot be killed outside of BDTP. Do PCs have that same protection?

[Clinton R. Nixon]

1) Most of the XP generated that session was by the players hitting their Keys for the 1 XP bonus. I think that we mishandled this. I think that the 1 XP bonus is supposed to come when you fulfil your Key at a small cost/penalty/risk, but we were creating situations that gave XP for no cost/penalty/risk. Is that what you intended for the Keys?

Ok. Look at page 69 - "Everything else. When the Key comes up in play, gain an experience point. (You can use this three times per session. This applies to all Keys below.)."

2) I've read contradictory statements from the book and on the forum, so I'll go straight to the source. Named SGCs cannot be killed outside of BDTP. Do PCs have that same protection?

Um, maybe. Here's my advice: don't do it unless you really, truly know what you're doing. People don't want their characters to die. Saying "he's going to try to kill your character!" forces people into BDTP. You shouldn't force people into BDTP. It's a weak spot, and one I've got to work on.