(Super Action Now!) The post apocalyptic olympics

[whiteknife]

I recently got in a game of SAN!, which I had been wanting to play since I heard about it a month or so ago, but just now got the chance to play. I was using the rules available here: http://www.angelfire.com/indie/btw/SUPER_ACTION_NOW_3.htm so if they're out of date, then that's why. (Although as far as I know that's the most recent version).

Anyways, Me, Daniel, and Jason (two other players from my usual group, which is fairly traditional, having mostly played D&D) were present at the game, which took about 3 hours from the start of character creation to its finish.

Character Creation:
I played Johnston, a stone golem who's driven to collect exotic rocks. His shortcoming was moving quickly (which was quite a pain during play, as many events were race-like, but it forced me to be creative.

Daniel played Jack, a bandit driven to explore uncharted territory. He picked skills that were along the lines of "evade attacks" and powers like "strike 60 times with a dagger", and was entertaining, although sort of dominated things somewhat, as he tended to pick high values for most of his skills and powers, while me and Jason stuck with lower skills.

Jason played Black mamba, a ninja driven to assassinate people, but who would be very depressed after every kill. For some reason, he didn't kill a single person the entire game, and still managed to not run out of drive points by a combination of twisting or changing inconvenience against him into something else, and by the fact that for a lot of the game me and Daniel were at each others throats while he tended to stay in the background more.

I had decided to give each character six skills and two powers, although in the end, I think i should have given them more, since they got a bit stale after a few hours of play. I think that a guideline on how many starting powers would be useful for first time players at least (since obviously the amount would vary a lot, but any sort of guideline would have been helpful). Since everyone else came from a very structured roleplaying background, they wanted guides on how much to put in the attributes, I used 15 dice. For the skills I let them pick and choose, although one player put an awful lot of 5d20's (This is a sort of a hard thing to fix, because hard guidelines take away the funny but without them some players might be hogs. I know the game can be ruined by assholes, but people want their characters to be competent (even though in this game it's often just as funny to fail, so I guess that's the "balancing factor")

The games begin:
Anyways, we then set up the scenario. I rolled a d8 to pick from the suggested topics and rolled "Super Action Olympics" and we rolled with it. After  a suggestion that the first event be acid canoeing, we decided it was a post apocalyptic future and Satan was the announcer. As they say, hilarity ensued. Jack took gold in the first event, sinking my canoe (I was too heavy, being a stone golem and all) and sending black mamba to hell with a twist. (He got better) The next event was "abyss climbing" where the 666 layers of the abyss were set up like platforms in a mario game and the first one to the top won. I managed to win this with my gotcha "When verbally threatened, grows to 100 feet tall 4d12". Jack made me shrink again, but I used the super evil double eraser of doom to remove it. The next event was "extreme jeopardy" which black mamba won by default after we got tired of making up jeopardy questions. The final event was to be a dive into a pool filled with spiked explosive pillows with chainsaw wielding zombies swimming through them. I added the endowment "cartoon physics" so that the characters would be in midair after the dive for a long time. Jack won this too, by killing himself to activate his gotcha "when killed comes back with nuclear powered legs 5d20", but I used a twist that his medal was made out of chocolate covered in gold foil rather than real gold. After that, we were tied up and people had to leave soon, so the tiebreaker was spontaneously determined to be "grab all the dice you can on the table and roll them, most successes wins." In keeping with his luck, Daniel (playing as jack) won this by virtue of grabbing up almost 30 dice. Black mamba was frustrated by this and bombed the entire stadium with ninja magic. Everyone had spent all their twist on boosting the final roll off though, so this ended up happening. In the end, everyone died, but a good time was had by all.

Closing thoughts: I enjoyed the game a lot. Even though my friends sometimes have a hard time coming up with things on the fly, things seemed to flow pretty naturally. My favorite part was the gotchas, and I think next time I'll allow for more of those, since they tend to be pretty funny (especially one time when I tried to give someone kidney failure after drinking too much and they happened to have a gotcha specifically for such a situation. It was freaky.)
I think that the eraser could be a bit cheaper, since a similar effect can be produced with "change!" and I was completely out of tilt for a while after using that, which was no fun. Also, I found the examples you had were good, and I could have maybe done with even more. I think that if you end up publishing this, it should have lots and lots of big charts full of ideas. Funny flowed naturally most of the time, but sometimes there was silence, which was kind of awkward. One thing that might have helped was that I didn't do the "scene suggestions in a hat" and I think that might have been intended to stop such a situation. Overall though, it was a great time. Good luck on any further work you do on this or any other projects. I'll definitely be interested in it!

[Marshall Burns]

Hi!  Thanks for playing my game!  I'm really glad you enjoyed it.

I really love reading play accounts of this game.  Even if this is only the second one that wasn't written by me.  Postapocalympics?  Acid river canoeing?  That is hilarious.

And, yes, the version that you used (third draft) is the latest, and it seems to be reliably functional.  I've got some revisions in mind, but that version isn't broken or anything.

There IS a big, fat, glaring hole in the thing, and that is communicating to first-timers (A) how many traits & powers they should have, (B) what the nature of those traits & powers should be, and (C) how to rank them dice-wise.  My group even screwed it up the first time we played; I didn't have enough traits (so I had to recourse to repetitive tactics -- I think I used my "dance like I'm drunk" trait like five times in a row), another guy had too many (so a lot of his effort was wasted), and another had a lot of traits at high dice that weren't very funny in application (stuff in the line of "evade attacks").  I'm still not sure what to do about that, but it does seem to work its way out after a few sessions.

The From-The-Hat rules have a huge impact on gameplay, and I can't recommend them strongly enough (one of the revisions I have in mind is in fact a more detailed and more strongly stressed version of those rules).  We actually didn't use them until the fourth session or so, but we've used the hell out of them ever since.  As you've surmised, they do go a long way toward keeping the game in motion and the ideas flowing.  We do still have some moments of complete silence, but that's when we take a break -- the game can be very demanding (in a good way).  Pulling things out of the hat also gets addictive.  Sometimes, we frame scenes entirely from the hat.

I've got mixed feelings about charts of ideas.  One of the reasons I developed this game is due to dissatisfaction with Toon.  It's not the original reason I wrote the game (which was as an experiment and a lark, but after the Bubba Bad session I knew I was onto something), but the reason I kept going with it was because it did everything that I wished Toon would do.  Now, Toon had these wonderful rolling charts, and I had a blast reading over them and imagining what I would do if I rolled such-and-such result in such-and-such situation.  And that was one of the things that dissatisfied me in play -- I had drained all of the spontaneity out of those things (the main other thing was hitpoints, which aren't funny.  Unlike Inconvenience).  But I can see where a few ideas, not presented as rules or rolling charts or anything, could be a good thing.  Especially as examples for From-The-Hat stuff.

...and sending black mamba to hell with a twist. (He got better)

I love it
Is Inconvenience the funniest "damage" mechanic ever or what?

-Marshall

[Marshall Burns]

although one player put an awful lot of 5d20's (This is a sort of a hard thing to fix, because hard guidelines take away the funny but without them some players might be hogs. I know the game can be ruined by assholes, but people want their characters to be competent (even though in this game it's often just as funny to fail, so I guess that's the "balancing factor")

There's a thing here.  Fact is, nobody is competent in this game.  The characters are all hopeless goofs.  Even when they have something that they do well, it can and will get turned right around at them.  Somebody who makes a badass ninja with traits like "badass ninja stars 5d20" is especially vulnerable:

"I throw a badass ninja star!"
"TWIST!  You drop it on your badass eye."

Now he's facing "Inconvenience: Ninja starred in the eye" equal to the successes on his own 5d20 minus whatever successes he can manage to roll against that (and I have no clue what the hell kind of traits he'd be rolling against that, except maybe Finesse with d6s).  This guy is less vulnerable than the guy who makes a French baker, with traits like "Making & handling hard-crusty bread" and uses it to hit you in the head with it.

The baker here is less vulnerable because we're already laughing at what he's doing ("Hit to the head with une hard piece of bread!  Like zut!") and are therefore less likely to be able to think of anything to do against it. The ninja, on the other hand, is very vulnerable because he's playing it straight.  He's being the straight-man, which of course makes him the butt of the gag.

And here's another thing, which I need to figure out how to get into the rules.  There's a basic social dynamic that my group sort of fell into, and it makes SAN! rock really hard.  It starts with the spiky, confrontational, BRING IT stuff, such that when we come into the ancient tomb and there's the pedestal holding the golden baboon idol (complete with ruby-encrusted ass), the first thing out of my mouth is, "I trip you and grab it first!"

But that's just the first step.  The second step is that when I say, "I trip you and grab it first!" what I'm really saying is, "I want to see how you stop me."  Because I know you're gonna try, and I trust that it will be funny, and therefore I want to hear it so I can laugh.

-Marshall

[whiteknife]

Now he's facing "Inconvenience: Ninja starred in the eye" equal to the successes on his own 5d20 minus whatever successes he can manage to roll against that (and I have no clue what the hell kind of traits he'd be rolling against that, except maybe Finesse with d6s).  This guy is less vulnerable than the guy who makes a French baker, with traits like "Making & handling hard-crusty bread" and uses it to hit you in the head with it.

Oh, that makes sense. I didn't realize that you would use someones own value against them in such a case. I think that's a great discouragement for people who love max stats a little too much.

I think that the game does work best in the mode you described where everyone is trying to get to something first. It happened a lot when I played, seeing as there were a lot of races and such going on.

Also, yes, inconvenience is the funniest damage mechanic ever. My favorite thing about is is figuring out how to remove it, because no matter what happens, it's guaranteed to be funnier than drinking a cure light wounds potion. (Well, unless its some sort of crazy potion that turns you into a wererabbit or something, but I digress). 

[Marshall Burns]

Yeah, I wasn't very clear about using people's traits against them in the rules.  Actually, I don't think I even mentioned it; I probably thought it was "obvious."  (The rules really could use some revision, because I know things now about writing out rules that I didn't know then)

And, crap, there's a typo in my post up there:

This guy is less vulnerable than the guy who makes a French baker, with traits like "Making & handling hard-crusty bread" and uses it to hit you in the head with it.

That "less" should have been "more."  But you probably figured that out.