[Carry] NC Gameday AP-ish

[Nathan P.]

Jeffrey Collyer, (forlorn1 on these boards) is a fine fellow that I've gamed with at Dreamation and Dex Con. He contacted me a couple of months ago about running carry at the most recent NC Gameday, which was awesome. He's a busy man, but he gave me permission to repost some of his thoughts that he sent me after the game. And he gave away a copy of it as a table prize,which I thought was really cool! So, thank you Jeffrey, and here's what he had to say about the game:

Well Carry went pretty well at NC Game Day.  It was an intimidating table.  I had Jason Morningstar (of the Durham 3) and Andy K. playing, along with a group of story gamers that had already had big fun at my morning Inspectres session.

The indie folks had all gotten together after lunch and decided to reschedule the afternoon games since there was a definite interest in playing more than what was scheduled.  They seemed to want a more dim-sum of games, than a full meal.  So my Carry game got squeezed to 3 hours from 4, but I got to play in Andy K.'s TBZ (ten -something japanese I can't remember- zero) way cool post apocalyptic, samurai with soul gems, people with war beetles in them, ninja fighting RPG thing. It was fun.  Folks also played Infected and Vampire Hunter, but I didn't get a chance to really take a good look at those games.
   
Here's my notes and ideas on the game.  I don't think the play really warrants an AP post.  It was good, but not gut wrenching intense, and I was a bit shakey with some of the rules - that probably didn't help.

Since I was shy on time, I eliminated Charlie company from the character picks.

Jason took "Temple" the new guy.  It seemed he had a hard time with not having dice alot of the time.  I had explained switching profiles, but he didn't seem to want to.  I'm kinda thinking that I should have steered him toward somebody with more month in, or eliminated him from the character pool instead of somebody from Charlie company.

He also didn't seem to like the agree/disagree dice/fallout dice mechanic (which I think is one of the coolest things about Carry), and kept wanting to try to even up the pools.

Everyone fell easily into intersquad conflicts, but not many of them actually pulled in their burdens.  And with a shortened game, that really didn't help the depth/intensity.

The epilogue was as usual my favorite part.  Ram ended up dieing from friendly fire from Saint.  Saint got a medal for staving off the overrunning hordes.  Temple went back home, got a degree and became a politician.

But the best was Jason who got to do Andy's.  Andy's burden was suspected infidelity of his wife, and he had actually hit on it a good bit in the game.  Jason just says "You die alone and unmourned" with the unspoken bit being that the infidelity was true.  It was brutal, but everyone really liked it.

The book went to the the guy who played Ram, who happened to be my friend Tim, which was cool.  I did it by table consensus and abstained from putting in my opinion.

I'll go over my game notes and see what else stands out, but thats the brief overview.

The interesting thing to me is the "people didn't pull in their Burden's" thing. This happened in playtest groups that I wasn't involved with as well. My question is whether the text doesn't make it clear how central bringing in Burden's is to really making the game fire on all cylinders - is this one of those things that I do when I run it that didn't make it into the book? I don't know, and I'm awaiting some more play reports to see if it's a trend...

[Eric Provost]

Hiya Nathan.

I was in that game and played Saint.  I'm afraid the session is a little rusty in my memory, and I can't seem to remember what went on with my burden at all.  I remember liking the pass it around the table mechanism for authoring it, but in actual play it just seemed to fall by the wayside.  I also seem to remember being more inspired to riff off of what was happening in other events, and my burden had some influence on how I responded to those other events, but my burden never quite made it into the spotlight. 

I think maybe it had something to do with the ratio of players to time.  I seem to remember that my burden had something to do with drugs and addiction.  My character was constantly fucking things up to score whatever intoxicant he could lay his hands on.  And now I remember that it defiantly had some effect on the not-combat scenes, but I think maybe that we just didn't have the time to get everyone's pot to boil.  Know what I mean?

What kind of timeframe does Carry usually run over?  I get the feeling that it just needed more time to do it's thing.

On a different subject, I do remember that there was one mechanism that I didn't particularly enjoy.  I'm hoping that maybe we were just doing it wrong.  After the squad leader would lay down his orders to us, we all had the opportunity to declare if we agreed or disagreed with those orders and then we got to narrate if we obeyed or disobeyed the orders.  I don't remember if there was any dice movement around obey/disobey, but I know we gave dice to the GM if we disagreed and dice to the leader if we agreed.  I commented to Jason after the game that I didn't really care for the agree/disagree bit, because I really just didn't care who agreed with the leader or not.  All I was interested in was who obeyed and who disobeyed. 

But I did reall enjoy the final scene.  I thought it was a little harsh (in a good way) when one of the players declared that I had shot our company leader in the confusion.  And it was much more harsh when the company leader's player narrated that I got a medal for it.  Awesome harshness.

-Eric

[Nathan P.]

Hey Eric, thanks for giving some feedback!

I think maybe it had something to do with the ratio of players to time.  I seem to remember that my burden had something to do with drugs and addiction.  My character was constantly fucking things up to score whatever intoxicant he could lay his hands on.  And now I remember that it defiantly had some effect on the not-combat scenes, but I think maybe that we just didn't have the time to get everyone's pot to boil.  Know what I mean?

What kind of timeframe does Carry usually run over?  I get the feeling that it just needed more time to do it's thing.

4 hours is the timeframe I've always run it in. I remember that my game with 3 players only took about 3.15, and the one with 6 took the full four hours, IIRC. It sounds like you guys had at least 4, so 3 hours was probably a little short, especially if Jeff didn't have all of the rules down.

On a different subject, I do remember that there was one mechanism that I didn't particularly enjoy.  I'm hoping that maybe we were just doing it wrong.  After the squad leader would lay down his orders to us, we all had the opportunity to declare if we agreed or disagreed with those orders and then we got to narrate if we obeyed or disobeyed the orders.  I don't remember if there was any dice movement around obey/disobey, but I know we gave dice to the GM if we disagreed and dice to the leader if we agreed.  I commented to Jason after the game that I didn't really care for the agree/disagree bit, because I really just didn't care who agreed with the leader or not.  All I was interested in was who obeyed and who disobeyed.

You guys played it correctely. This is one part of the game that people seem to either really like, or not really be into. Basically, it's about how what matter is why you're taking the actions, not what the actions are that you're taking....

I wasn't there, but I suspect that this not really working for you guys is related to how there wasn't a big focus on Burden's in play. In my experience, the Action scene's get really interesting midgame, when people start twisting their characters rationalizations for what they're thinking and doing because of how the dice are flowing, using their Burden's as channels, and these feed back into how characters interact with each other in the following scenes. But I'm sorry that that part of the game didn't work for you!

But I did reall enjoy the final scene.  I thought it was a little harsh (in a good way) when one of the players declared that I had shot our company leader in the confusion.  And it was much more harsh when the company leader's player narrated that I got a medal for it.  Awesome harshness.

Yeh. The epilogues always rock.

Thanks again, I really appreciate the comments!