[Musketeers!] Playtest - Ruffians, Spies, and… Nuns?

[hanschristianandersen]

With the twin distractions of Iron Game Chef and Big Work Deadline out of the way, I rounded up three friends, Monte, Thea, and Gordon, to test-drive an early version of The Amazing Adventures of His Majesty's Royal Musketeers.  (Previous thread http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=10292&highlight=">
Here)

I weaseled my way into having Monte GM the game, on the grounds that he would run the game as written, warts & all, even where the text failed to capture my intentions for the game.  Over the course of about two hours, we conducted character creation and played through one full Chapter, then spent some time in post-mortem.

It was... quite educational.  Really, there's nothing quite like seeing your game stumble in front of real live friends.  Especially when you just ran a rousing game of My Life With Master for those same friends the week before.  Musketeers! has some serious flaws in its current form.  Still, everyone ended the session with ear-to-ear grins.

We played through three scenes; Gordon's character escorted the wine-seller's daughter on an errand through a rough part of town, trading harsh words with a band of ruffians on the way.  My character found himself in a duel of blades and words with one Msr. Malfromage, who stole a signet ring from my patron at a Grande Ball, and was trying to effect his escape.  Thea's character engaged in a show-stopping midnight romp through a convent's courtyard garden, in search of a rare flower for her character's paramour.

A few choice moments:

Monte:  "And with that, you escort the young lady to the wine-seller."
Gordon:  (raises an eyebrow) "Oh my..."
Monte: (backpeddling furiously) "And with that, you escort the young lady to the SELLER of WINE."

Me: "With a flick of my rapier, I remove the ring from the Malfromage's finger."
Thea: "Ow!  How can he do that without taking the finger off?"
Monte: (deadpans) "He's a musketeer.  Musketeers can do stuff like that."
...
Monte:  "Malfromage gives you a distinctly moldy look before exiting the scene."

Thea: (upon being detected by a nun who attempts a scathing verbal rejoinder)  "I Counter by sweeping her up in an embrace - 'I am here on a mission, sweet sister!' "
Monte: (after rolling dice) "The nun is completely flabbergasted".
Thea: (next turn) "I pirouette her around, and blow the candle out, leaving the stunned watch-nun in darkness!"
Monte: (grinning) "I'm not even rolling against that one."

Writing out the full draft of the game was unexpectedly difficult.  The hardest part was in deciding in what order to present the rules, and I received a lot of feedback in the form of "Switch the ordering of these two rules so that the presentation is streamlined."

I'm rarely concise at the best of times, and I was concerned that in trying to convey the game's tongue-in-cheek style, I would end up with a ponderous, self-indulgent mess.  Happily, the text had my players (and two other friends, one a non-gamer) cracking up quite consistently.  When I suggested removing the "snappy titles" from the ten action rules, the players quickly shouted me down.

In all, the core Dashing/Daring/Duelling and Parry/Counter/Riposte mechanics worked exactly as I had hoped they would, directly fuelling the production of huge gobs of entertaining Color.  This one's a keeper.  Between that and the Ready/Not Ready rules, which Gordon instantly pegged as "Narrative Volleyball", the vibe of the game was like a slightly-more-structured version of Wushu.

Flaw:  The dice mechanics of d6+attribute+reputation vs. d6+attribute just doesn't work.  Even with initial Love or Reputation of 1 and 2, victory in a scene is a foregone conclusion; it's just a matter of time.  At higher values, characters will be nigh unstoppable, to the point where colorful counters become almost unnecessary; you could just plow your way through with the bonuses alone.

Fatal flaw:  Gordon's scene took 30 minutes, my scene took 15 minutes, and Thea's scene took 22 minutes.  When it's not your turn, that's a long time to sit through.  On the bright side, the scenes were entertaining to spectators... but that's still a long time without interaction. Thea suggested alternating between "group" and "solo" chapters, so as to give the characters reasons to interact and to lower the amount of time that any given player spends waiting for long stretches.  Personally, I think that's a great idea.  I also think that I need some mechanism for players to "intrude" on other peoples' scenes, a la Baron Munchausen, both to decrease down-time and to stave off narration fatigue on the part of the GM.

Fatal flaw Number Two:  Each character has three Passions and three Patrons.  That's six colorful player-invented NPCs each... and yet they spend almost all their time sitting on the character sheet.  The rules don't give you any real opportunities to leverage these characters to produce melodrama! The text makes some vague mentions of setting Passions and Patrons in opposition to one another, but it never really follows up.  Given the game's design goals (produce musketeer-movie color), this is an unforgivable omission.

That was that, really.  I suppose the next step is to incorporate the players' feedback into the text, and then rip out the dice mechanics en masse and try to come up with something new that promotes spectator interaction and increased passion/patron melodrama.  Then it'll be time to scrounge up the usual suspects again and have another go.

If anyone would like a copy of the draft as playtested, feel free to drop me a PM.

[Jeph]

Hi Hans,

Thea: (next turn) "I pirouette her around, and blow the candle out, leaving the stunned watch-nun in darkness!"
Monte: (grinning) "I'm not even rolling against that one."

First off, make this a written mechanic. Your game text should try to mimic the way that you play your game as closely as possible.

Flaw: This one seems the easiest to fix. Just give NPCs some corresponding source of bonuses.

Fatal Flaw: Hmm. Have you considered cutting between scenes? IE: "As you sneak through the abbey's garden, a harsh voice cries out, 'Who's there?!' And with that note--Gordon, you notice that a number of ruffians have been eying your charge rather lustfully."

Fatal Flaw The Second: Maybe take a sign from TROS, here? I got nuthin'.

Take care,
--Jeff

[TonyLB]

What do you think would happen if at least one of the characters Passions and one of their Patrons must appear on the Passions/Patrons list of at least one other PC?

Edit: Or maybe two... two is better (IMHO) with it being illegal for both to appear on the same other characters list.  Then you start getting a network of linkages, rather than just a set of pairings.

[hanschristianandersen]

Jeph wrote:

First off, make this a written mechanic. Your game text should try to mimic the way that you play your game as closely as possible.

Jeffrey,

I'm happy to say that the behavior in question was completely supported by the game text.  In the rules, all actions are successful if unopposed, and you have a choice of whether or not to oppose an action against you.  There's little benefit to *not* opposing an action against you, but it's your choice.

In this case,  Thea's character's action is Daring-based, and Monte chooses not to have the nun oppose the action.  Monte's rationale is based off of the SIS rather than the rules itself (he deems the nun too flabbergasted to respond), but that's his prerogative, and it was totally in line with our creative agenda (specifically, "Color Now!")

re: your other suggestions - heh, I'm usually the one saying "You should check out how TRoS does this".  It's  to be on the receiving end for once.  Yes, TRoS-style scene-interleaving could potentially fix the long-wait problem.  I'll see about adding it to the next draft.

As for Fatal Flaw The Second, part of my problem is that Passions and Patrons are mechanically identical in the current version, so there's no real interesting choice of one or the other, and nothing to encourage having a balance between the two.  Furthermore, the current scene-framing structure dictates that there is precisely one relevent Passion OR Patron per scene.  (Imagine if you could only have one SA "active" at a time in TRoS... yuck.)  I need to formalize a way for any given scene to have multiple conflicting priorities.

Thanks for the comments!

[hanschristianandersen]

TonyLB,

Thanks for the idea - it's definitely a step in the right direction.

[Paul Czege]

Hans,

It was...quite educational. Really, there's nothing quite like seeing your game stumble in front of real live friends. Especially when you just ran a rousing game of My Life With Master for those same friends the week before.

Hey, just so you know, I've been there. The World, the Flesh, and the Devil http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=2536">definitely stumbled when I ran it...quite a let-down after I'd had such success with The Pool.

And Musketeers looks like it has the makings of a very cool game. I'm definitely interested in seeing your next draft.

Paul

[hanschristianandersen]

Paul,

Musketeers! indeed stumbled... but it stumbled in style.  Looking at my post, it doesn't really convey how much of a rip-roaring good time we had, largely on the strength of the Dashing/Daring/Duelling Parry/Counter/Ripostes.  Those mechanics by themselves gave enough oomph for *at least* two hours of play.  And two hours was enough to expose many, many flaws in the rest of the game.

That's why I said that the playtest was "educational".  Not "discouraging", not a "let-down".  If the final version can consistently generate that kind of play after a first read-through, and sustain it for even just two full sessions, then I'll consider it to be a success.

[Matt Machell]

I haven't seen this. It sounds marvelous, have you got a version I can look at?

Regarding Fatal Flaw no 2, why not tie the passions and patrons to reputation (which sounds important)? Not having seen the system I can't say how...


-Matt

[hanschristianandersen]

Matt,

Send me a PM with your preferred email address, and I'll send you the draft.

re: "...why not tie the passions and patrons to reputation..." - Passions and Patrons are tied to Love and Reputation, respectively.  Love and Reputation are added to all die rolls - but you can only use one *or* the other, and there's no choice in the matter - it depends on whether the Focus of the scene is one of your passions.  At present, this is the only effect that Passions and Patrons have on the game.

In practice, that makes both Passions and Patrons into distant figures with little emotional relevance and no mechanical differentiation.  Ergo, an unacceptable lack of melodrama.

[TonyLB]

Is your goal for the Passions & Patrons to be the tools that players use to address stories?  Or are they meant to be the seeds by which stories are actually started?

In other words are they duelling the Cardinals men because that's what musketeers do?  Or are they duelling their romantic rivals and the evil rogue student of their old fencing teacher because those are the people who they're connected to?

[hanschristianandersen]

Tony,

Is your goal for the Passions & Patrons to be the tools that players use to address stories?

'adddress stories'?  If you mean that in a narrativist sense, my answer is an emphatic NO.  Musketeers! doesn't seek to address anything beyond a simple declaration that Swashbuckling Antics Are Cool, And Wouldn't You Like To Join In?  If you want to address premise through play, thereby creating story, Musketeers!  ain't the game for you.

In other words are they duelling the Cardinals men because that's what musketeers do?

Absofrickinglutely.  At least, if *I* were a musketeer, I would *certainly* duel with the Cardinal's men at least four times a week.  Five times where possible.

Or are they duelling their romantic rivals and the evil rogue student of their old fencing teacher because those are the people who they're connected to?

Passions and Patrons are meant to serve as an excuse that will get musketeers out of their taverns and onto the streets of Paris, where deeds of derring-do await.  Sure, they have connections to the player characters, but I'm not interested in writing a game that permits me to explore these obligations and connections in depth.  I already have TRoS and MLwM for that.

Instead, Musketeers! is meant to be about playing a gentleman-at-arms, who, finding himself in perilous circumstances, must Dash, Dare, and Duel his way to victory, to the delight of your fellow players.  Passions and Patrons are meant to provide melodramatic explanations for how and why the character wound up in perilous circumstances in the first place.  zzi would like passions and patrons to also be able to serve as complicating factors in a scene, making the perilous circumstances that much more perilous and exciting... but the focus should remain on swashbuckling your way to victory.

Okay, enough self-promotion for one thread.  Time to get cracking on a new draft.

[Matt Machell]

Tony,
Musketeers! doesn't seek to address anything beyond a simple declaration that Swashbuckling Antics Are Cool, And Wouldn't You Like To Join In?

I definitely got the feel of "What means more, your reputation or your friends?" vibe from the intro. I reckon it could drift pretty easily...

Problem 1, I'd be tempted to allow players to spend panache to have their character turn up at a scene in the nick of time, as long as they can describe a suitable excuse...

As to problem two, perhaps explicitly state that any chapter must put a passsion at peril from a patron?

-Matt

[Valamir]

Make that someone's patron and combine it with the previous idea of having multiple characters with the same patron, and I think you're on to something.

There are a few ways you could do this system wise.  Perhaps the player of the character whose scene it is determines the passion at stake while the GM determines the patron putting it at risk.

Perhaps as a way of getting other player more involved in a lengthy scene each player around the table adds one element to define the situation.

[TonyLB]

If the Passions and Patrons are only meant to be an incitement to derring-do, do you really need to have any numerical representation for them?  Are some passions supposed to be more of an incitement to action than others?  

Hrm... that sounds more confrontational than I really wanted.  I'm basically wondering if maybe the reason the numbers aren't showing up in the game-mechanic is that there's no place for them in the feel you want.  And if that's true you might get more mileage out of streamlining that part of the system rather than expanding it.

[hanschristianandersen]

Folks,

A big, continuing "thank you!" for all of your feedback and encouragement.

I've put my latest replies in a http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=11333">new thread over in the Indie Game Design forum.