[Dirty Secrets] Too late playtest in Ontario

[Hans]

Hello:

Josh, Liz, Piers, and I decided, as sort of an afterthought, to playtest Dirty Secrets one in our last gaming session as a group (Josh and Liz are off to Europe pseudo-permanently, curse them) last week Saturday.  Here is the report.

As background, our games in the past year have been: 4-5 sessions of Burning Wheel (all enjoyed, but most agreed Burning Wheel wasn't our thing), about 10 sessions of a Shadow of Yesterday pirate themed thing (all enjoyed greatly, all decided TSoY was definitely our thing), a playtest of Afraid (Vincent Baker's horror themed hack of Dogs, enjoyed, but with caveats), 3 sessions of D&D dungeon crawling (to clear the indie weirdness out and just kill things for a few nights), and a session of Wilderness of Mirrors (enjoyed greatly by all).  That gives you the feel of what we usually play. 

We began the gaming late, what with ordering pizza and chatting and all.  We used the small crime grid, in order to have a hope in hades of finishing in a reasonable amount of time.  I explained the rules, but freely admit I should have reread them thoroughly before that night; I think I probably bungled the description.

The setting was Toronto, last week.

The initial characters were (from memory):

* Felicia, the investigator, a youngish poor black ex-convict
* Desiree Cho, the victim, a middle aged, middle-class asian citizen
* David, the suspect, a youngish, poor, white, federal agent (RCMP, we defined this as)
* Mandy Anderson, the other character, a youngish, rich, white federal agent

The first of the two crimes was a blackmail.  We marked the other one a murder.  Piers played Felicia, the investigator.

The scenes that were played, from memory and in the sketchiest form:
* Opening scene (Investigation) (me as authority):  We see Felicia in the parole office.  Desiree is her parole officer.  Felicia needs a form signed by Desiree.  Desiree essentially extorts Felicia into investigating David's activities, saying she will not sign the form unless Felicia gets the dirt on David.  (see comment below on Implied versus Explicit narration).  Desiree is written on the crime grid.
* Revelation scene: Piers picks sexual/romantic.  Josh picks David as one side.  The other side ends up as Mandy.  We see Mandy and David in a Asian mall in the Toronto area, eating sushi and arguing over something.  It becomes obvious that David has been seeing Mandy, and at the same time seeing Desiree (seeing in the euphemistic sense).  Mandy is angry, and David feels Mandy is being unjust.  Felicia just walks right up to the pair and says that Desiree has her watching them, and that they should pay Felicia 100 bucks to simply report whatever they want her to say, so that Desiree will sign her *%&#$^ form.  David storms off when he finds out that Desiree is having him followed.  Felicia and Mandy have a strange conversation about men.
* Investigation scene: We see Desiree and David having a telephone conversation, with Desiree at home.  Desiree's husband, Tim, a mild-mannered dentist, is watching CBC's the National in the other room, and periodically asks "is everything ok, honey?" as Desiree's voice keeps rising in anger.  Felicia is eavesdropping outside.  Tim lets the cat out, but doesn't see Felicia.  David appears to be trying to get Desiree's forgiveness for something, and Desiree is angry David has called her.  After that call, Desiree looks up the home phone of Felicia and finds that it is just a bar phone.  She asks if Felicia is there.  Then, out of suspicion, asks if David is there.  Some other guy, obviously not our David, comes to the phone.  Thinking that David and Felicia are somehow allied, Desiree calls a thug named Monty, and tells him to go over and beat up David at Finger's Bar and Grill.  After Desiree leaves the room, Felicia climbs into the office, steals Tim's camera, and photographs all of the papers.  This was the first conflict of the night, as Josh and Piers faced off over whether Felicia would be caught or get away with the photographs on a digital card.  Piers wins, and Felicia ambushes Tim in the bathroom, covering his head with a towel, and taking off.  Monty becomes a full character.  Desiree gets written on the crime grid.
* Violence scene.  Monty beats the crap out of poor bar David, not real David.  Felicia gets pictures secretly.  Poor, poor bar David.  Monty gets written on the Crime Grid.
* Investigation scene.  Felicia back at the Parole office.  Instead of Desiree, she meets Mandy.  Mandy informs Felicia that Desiree has been murdered (2nd crime), and accuses here of the crime, since her DNA is all over the bed room (from the document photographing).  Tim, Desiree's husband, shows up to collect Desiree's stuff.  Tim obviously recognizes Desiree.  (Tim becomes a character).  We find out that mild-mannered dentist Tim has been doing a lot of expensive "dental-work" for young women at his practice, Felicia being one of them.  Mandy now believes that both Tim and Desiree are in it together, and takes them both downtown.  Tim gets written on the crime grid.  The Pawn is now in a corner.
* Investigation scene: Mandy and David interrogating Tim and Felicia.  Mandy obviously thinks David is an idiot.  However, Mandy allows herself to become enraged at Felicia and hits her.  This scene triggers a resolution.  We roll, and Desiree comes up.  We then find out that Desiree has been blackmailing HERSELF, in order to get more money from her philandering husband.  Mandy discovers this in Desiree's bank records.

By this point in the evening, it is getting very late.  We decide to have one more scene, fill in one more box on the grid (for a total of five), and then resolve the last crime based on those that have been marked in.

* Investigation scene: Felicia and her lawyer meeting with Mandy and Mandy's lawyer, regarding a lawsuit Felicia is bringing for police brutality.  Felicia wants lots of money, but she is willing to settle if Mandy can come up with some evidence that will exonerate Felicia from killing Desiree.  Nothing really comes of this conflict; both parties leave without a deal.  David gets written on the grid.  Final resolution pops up DESIREE as the murderer.  She actually accidentally killed herself in the bathroom, and her husband tampered with the scene, accidentally making it look like murder.

Anyway, that's the story.  It may seem very dry from my description, but in reality it played like some kind of Tarantino movie, with a number of very humourous bits (Felicia and Mandy talking about men) mixed in with brutal bits (poor, poor bar David). 

Comments on Dirty Secrets as a game:
* It is essentially a board-game equivalent role-playing game.  By that I mean that once people have learned the rules, it takes about the same amount of time to play the small crime-grid as a long game of Settlers.  I think this might be the first RPG I introduce, in future and once I buy a copy, to my non-role-playing friends.  It fills a perfect niche halfway between a "Host a mystery" game and most other RPG's.  This is a big plus about the game, and to me is its strongest selling point.  How many other games can concentrate all that fun, and a full story, into just 2-3 hours of play?  In my experience, only Vincent Baker's playtest version of In a Wicked Age/ArtGraceGuts comes close.  Interestingly, both have similar ideas around spiking the gameplay with random but consistent information at the beginning, and concentrating on good scenes and interplayer conflict. 
* The conflict resolution mechanic is a lot of fun.  It has just enough detail to make it interesting, but not too much to make it hard to implement.
* The crime grid is the big innovation of the game.  The way it enforces the end game is fantastic.
* Really, none of the players had any suggestions for improving the game itself.  It worked exactly as it was intended to, any problems we faced had more to do with my crappy explanation of the rules than the rules themselves.
* I suggest that, in future versions, or maybe as a PDF extra, a flow chart of the whole game, from selecting the crime grid right through to the final scene after all crime resolution, would be a useful handout for the players. 

Some comments on how to play Dirty Secrets, and less about the game itself:
* Implicit vs. Explicit narration:  At several points along the way, we realized there was a disconnect between what some people thought was going on, and what others thought was going on.  This was do primarily to Piers and I reveling in what I implicit narration.  For example, in the first scene, Desiree never comes right out and says that David is blackmailing her, nor does she ever really explicity state that she is extorting a service from Felicia.  Piers and I knew exactly what we were talking about, but later on we figured out that Liz really hadn't gotten the subtext as the "audience" for that narration.  In a movie, the "audience" not getting it until later in the movie is fine, but in a game where you are trying to have some kind of fairly coherent narrative, it doesn't work as well.  Its one thing for a player to say "I know you what you were implying before, but I'm totally taking things in a new direction."  That's cool.  Its another for a player to say "What, that's what you thought was going on?  I didn't see that at all, that's why I did this other thing."  I'm not sure where the sweet spot is between explicit ("Just so you know, Desiree is really extorting service out of Felicia through her power as a parole-officer") and implicit narrative, but its something to think about.
* Paying attention to details: Its hard to do, but you really have to pay attention in this game.  I mean, really pay attention.  The whole idea behind the game, I think, is building up all of this stuff that has happened, and then, at some point, making it all suddenly fit together.  While I agree with the advice in the rules to not try to make things make sense, it is important to keep things from being nonsense, and to do that you have to pay attention.  For example, at one point in our game it became obvious about halfway through the scene that one of us had completely mistaken which character was involved in a previous scene.  I've seen this same kind of thing in both Capes and Primetime Adventures; its important that you not CARE too much about the details, but it is also important that you pay attention to them.

As I said above, I don't think there was any significant feedback of use to you, Seth, from this session, other than "Cool game, when can we buy it?"  And I do highly recommend this game to anyone who will be looking for something to pick up at GenCon or afterward.

[GreatWolf]

Thanks for the playtest, Hans!  I just have a couple brief notes.

* It is essentially a board-game equivalent role-playing game.  By that I mean that once people have learned the rules, it takes about the same amount of time to play the small crime-grid as a long game of Settlers.  I think this might be the first RPG I introduce, in future and once I buy a copy, to my non-role-playing friends.  It fills a perfect niche halfway between a "Host a mystery" game and most other RPG's.  This is a big plus about the game, and to me is its strongest selling point.  How many other games can concentrate all that fun, and a full story, into just 2-3 hours of play?

I agree with this, although I have found that you generally need at least one experienced player to make a Short Story length game tick well.  There's not a lot of time to work with, so you have to drive hard towards a conclusion.  If you've never done this before, it can be a little intimidating.  I actually recommend that starting players work with a Novella.  It's a bit longer, but that gives them more room to experiment without the pressure to "make something happen".

Now, I say this as one who really wanted Dirty Secrets to be primarily a one-shot game.  But, during playtest, I've discovered that it actually plays better when the story has more room to breathe.

* Paying attention to details: Its hard to do, but you really have to pay attention in this game.  I mean, really pay attention.  The whole idea behind the game, I think, is building up all of this stuff that has happened, and then, at some point, making it all suddenly fit together.  While I agree with the advice in the rules to not try to make things make sense, it is important to keep things from being nonsense, and to do that you have to pay attention.  For example, at one point in our game it became obvious about halfway through the scene that one of us had completely mistaken which character was involved in a previous scene.  I've seen this same kind of thing in both Capes and Primetime Adventures; its important that you not CARE too much about the details, but it is also important that you pay attention to them.

I just wanted to point to this and nod.  There's a lot of information flying around in the game.  I provided some tools to help track it all (especially the Investigator's Notebook), but you do need to pay attention.

I also wanted to note that three of my four blind playtest groups were outside the United States.  That's pretty cool!

Glad that you enjoyed the game!

[jaw6]

Hello -- This is Josh, from the playtest group. I had fun, but that's not much feedback... One thing that came up (and this is as likely as not due to Hans' quickie rules intro), it was less-than-totally-clear who, when or how to initiate a conflict. Playing/narrating/interacting has a very "improv-y feel", where it's easier to go with the flow to maintain coherence. It can be hard to step back and call out for a dice-loaded conflict, when the narration is so freely flowing. Otherwise, like Hans said, "Cool game, when can we buy it?"

[GreatWolf]

I think that I discussed this in the playtest rules, but it's definitely in the final rules.  Declaring a Conflict is just like Declaring a Character or Crime.  Anyone can do it, and, like anything else, it is subject to Appeal.

And I should be getting my proof tomorrow.  So, to answer your second question, soon.....