[Frigid Bitch] First Playtest Ever

[Lxndr]

Well, it's the first playtest as far as I'm aware.  For all I know, someone has played it on the sly and never told me about it.  But that's not very likely.  :)

We used rules that were slightly updated from their form posted in the IGC - the main differences being (a) mechanically differentiating the three core attributes, which in turn changed Luck slightly and (b) formalizing both Ice and Magic, including where they come into play.

For (a), I created a system where Gear varies, allowing for Gear to fail completely, or new things to be found; specifically, lost Luck points go into Gear, and in turn a failed Gear roll causes them to be lost.  Heart, on the other hand, became a greater test - doubling all challenges.  For (b), it was simple - Ice governs the forest, and Magic governs the castle.

Now players only need to make one choice - how they approach a problem.  Are they using the Gear, their Work, or their Heart?

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We only made it through the first part of the game - the Countryside - before someone had to leave.  Playtesting is always slow, and IRC gaming is also always slow, so put them together and you have one very, very slow game.  I had three players - anonymouse, talysman, and C. Edwards, to use their usernames on here.  We meant to start at 7:00 central time, but a 2nd player didn't show up until 21 after, and the last player (Chris) didn't show up until 5:30.

anonymouse's character, Teko, had 2 Gear, 1 Work, and 4 Heart at the start of the game; his Fear and Luck were both 3.  talysman's character, Olaf WyrmEyen, had a 1 Gear, 3 Work, and 3 Heart; his Fear and Luck were 4.  Chris, meanwhile, created a character with 1 Gear, 1 Work, and 5 Heart.

At this point I began to wonder if maybe I'd overinflated Heart.  But the play in game convinced me otherwise.

There was also some absurdity as a result of the rule "you may set your Fear and Luck at any number, as long as they are equal."  Chris wanted to set it at 5,000 until I made an impromptu ruling that he couldn't have more than what an average gamer could find in their bag.  Then he put it at 13, which I was fine with.

I then set Ice and Magic both at 2, because I was expecting a relatively short game.  Perhaps I didn't set them low enough.

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First thing that was noticed was that, as Narrator, I was describing everything in the past tense.  I think the game really calls out for it, and the next iteration will include some admonition on that point.  I also want to encourage Narrator editorializing.

As written in the rules, I had the players describe themselves, although I made it optional and one of the players bowed out.  In the future that will be mandatory because I think that the two players who did participate help to contribute to the mood of the story.

While walking down the slope of the bluff, they immediately came across a tree that the winter storms had blown across their pass.  "At first glance," I said, "it looked uncrossable."

There was some very minor contention on this point, as Chris apparently deals with downed trees often, and, well, you just climb on over them or walk around them.  I reminded him that (a) they were still on the path down the bluff, which meant steep slopes on either sides, (b) it was dark, and cold and they were all sort of scared, and (c) they're the losers anyway.

Once we got that out of the way, however, they quickly put their heads together and decided to get up and over.  They also quickly learned the value of the Trust dice as they Trusted Olaf to let him stand on their shoulders and get them up.  Then Olaf trusted Teko to toss him a line, but it broke... and so Olaf just jumped up, again trusting his friends to grab his hands and haul him over.

For those two successful rolls, they got a total of 8 Tale Points.  And they needed 70 to get to the Castle walls due to the formula I worked out.  Immediately after the first of the two successful rolls, it was decided this was too high.  Anonymouse in particular made the comment that it was "...a longass time before you get to the point of the game."  I agreed that yes, it was probably a long time, but also that the journey is part of the point of the game.  

For the playtest we agreed to divide the number by 5, to 14 points, but I think that's too low.  I want the number to be somewhat higher, but I also want to encourage more player interest in the journey (so there'll be less worries about getting to "the point of the game").  I have some ideas for that which I'll describe at the end of this post.

Anyway, now with eight out of 14 Tale Points, they should have almost been at the castle (see, too few Tale Points).  But for a playtest, that's okay.  And then comes Teko's poor series of errors.

Teko hears a growling coming from beside him, but thinks it's coming from inside him and goes "I'm so hungry."  Then a gnarled, evil-looking wolf came out of the brush.  Teko decided to mark his territory in an attempt to frighten the wolf (using his Heart)... but the wolf was unimpressed.  Teko tried pressing his Luck, which failed... but in the process raised his Gear.  The result?  He found a nice spear amidst the snow he melted.

He then proceeded to try to stab the wolf with the spear while Trusting his friends to distract it, but failed again.  The spear broke in two as it attempted to pierce the wolf's flesh.  Teko pressed his Luck a second time, to no avail.  Poor Teko.  Not a single roll of his succeeded all night.

Then Gunji stepped up to bat, tackling the wolf - Teko trusting Gunji to take it out, Olaf trusting Gunji by tackling with him.  Unfortunately for him, he was up against 17 dice - he had that Fear of 13, and using Heart doubled the Ice.  So yeah, he lost, but he pushed his Luck and, lo and behold, he won.  Gunji's pounce didn't hurt the wolf, but it did slam the wolf into the ground back-up, where it was pierced by an old, rusty beartrap that snapped the wolf's spine.  Lucky break, that.

(And here was where the game ended, but I forgot to apply one last rule - Gunji's successful Luck roll should've reduced the Fears of both Teko and Olaf.  But anonymouse/Teko was already on hisway out the door, so it was a hectic time.)

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So:

1.  It seems as though there's some encouragement to absurdity through the "you can set your Fear as high as you want!" ruling.  But it seems to me that, in real-world play, it'll often be kept down due to limitations of dice if nothing else.  Apart from the handling issues, however, it looks like the system can ostensibly support bizarrely high values.  I'll put a "don't be stupid" note, but I'm not going to artificially cap Fear or Luck.

2.  The Luck->Gear "funnel", as I call it, seems to work well in play.  Every 6 rolled on a Luck roll siphons a point from Luck to Gear, meaning that yes, even a high Luck can be emptied in a single shot, although that's unlikely.  And every failed Gear roll reduces it by one, so...

3.  Tale Points.  Right now it's "Ice + Magic + # of players" x 10 for the first section.  But that doesn't take into account how Tale Points are earned:  Fear and Luck.  A character gets a number of Tale Points equal to his Fear when he succeeds an attribute roll, or a number of TP equal to his Luck on a Luck roll.

So here's what I'm currently imagining:  the sum of all the character's starting Fear, multiplied by Ice, plus Magic.  For the game above, that'd be (13+3+4) or 20 x Ice (2) = 40 + Magic (2) = 42.  The justification for this is that I generally want each player to make a successful roll at least once (sum of Fears) and I want the challenges to make the journey longer (hence multiplied by the primary Challenge, then added to the secondary one).

Tale Points in the 2nd section (the Castle) need to be handled differently as well - currently it's a flat 25 points.  Which players need to collect individually.  25 now possibly sounds too high.  I'm thinking of this formula:  (TP for the Countryside)/(# of players) + (Ice + Magic).  That'd make it 18 apiece for the game above.

3.  I need to make the Countryside more interesting.  The Castle is interesting already (splitting up, screwing people over, etc.) and wooing is its own section.  But the Countryside needs more player investment.  So I came up with this:

The Scariest Thing I've Heard About The Forest

Each character comes up with a scary story seed that he knows about the forest.  The Narrator is then obligated to do his best to work all these things (evil wolves, dancing fairies) into the game, so that the players can come across them.  Perhaps this will help encourage player interest and participation in the Countryside, instead of seeing it as something to "get through to get to the point"?

Anyway.  I have to go now.  But thanks for reading this far.

[Mike Holmes]

What there was seemed to have gone pretty well. The mechanics seem to be doing what they're supposed to in pacing things out, and changing the characters as they go. I think once the Tale Points have been worked out, that you should have no problem. What I'm thinking there is that you may be able to set an overall multiplier for the game that would be tailorable for groups to have short or long games.

In general, however, I'm thinking shorter is better. Too many conflicts and I think that they're going to start to all run together somewhat. I mean, if you go 3 for country (averaging), and 4 for the castle, I think that's plenty of lead up. Do the characters really need more alteration before getting to the really salient moments? Again, I'd allow groups to add to this if they feel they want a longer game.

Mike

[anonymouse]

Player thoughts.

1) Felt wretched about bailing there at the end. FB looked very awesome to me in the IGC thread and I harassed Lx to run a game. I hope he and the other players are interested in picking up where we left off, and continuing on.

2) I've been wanting to play a game that mimicked computer adventure games (think both Infocom and Sierra/Lucasarts) for a very, very long time. At first blush, FB seems to be EXACTLY this; so much so it's freaky.

Those games are essentially puzzle games, with the puzzles providing framework for a narrative; puzzles are solved either by objects you've found (Gear in FB), or interacting directly with the environment and inhabitants (Heart/Work depending on situation).

It feels like this is exactly how FB is going to work, so I'm not only excited to see the standard game + setting, but other ways in which I could spin it.

3) I really dug the old-and-mythic style of fairy tale the text suggests; thus my attempt to beat the wolf at his own game. ;p It seemed appropriate, like something you might read (and feel slightly naughty and/or embarassed about reading) in a collection of old Germanic tales from a couple thousand years ago. I could be totally out of my mind and not know what I'm talking about here, but that's the impression I got, and I thought it was pretty cool.

[Valamir]

I've been wanting to play a game that mimicked computer adventure games (think both Infocom and Sierra/Lucasarts) for a very, very long time. At first blush, FB seems to be EXACTLY this; so much so it's freaky.

The episode with the fallen tree seems exactly perfect in that regard.

How many times have you sat at an adventure game clicking (or typing text commands on the way-back tip) only to have the game respond "You can't do that here".

It makes absolutely no difference that you should be able to climb over the log.  The game has declared it an impassible obstacle with a limited set of solutions.  Your job as a player is to discover the answer from the limited set of solutions, not worry about whether the obstacle itself makes total sense".

I remember the old Sherwood Forest adventure game.  You had to cross a log bridge to continue the adventure, but the log bridge was guarded by Little John.  You could not beat Little John.  It was simply impossible.  There was no "I wait till he falls asleep and then sneak past"...no...that wasn't an option.  The only way to get past Little John was to get a suit of Lincoln Green made so that he'd recognize you and you could run off together...recognize you?  "Hey John...its me...."  Nope...not without the suit of Lincoln Green...because that's how it was programmed.

Of course to get a suit made you had to find the bolt of Lincoln Green cloth (under a haystack or something like that) and take it to the tailor.  Of course, the Tailor wasn't there.  You had to leave the cloth there and then come back later.  You couldn't wait for the tailor.  You couldn't leave and come back some other time when he was in.  The tailor was NEVER coming back until you left the bolt of Lincoln Green there and then left and triggered something else somewhere else.

That's how those old games worked.  If Frigid Bitch can capture that feel without needing to script out all of the possibilities in advance it should be a pretty slick game.

[Nev the Deranged]

This sounds interesting, cool, and really similar to another thread.... oh yeah, the Mountain Witch thread... do these threads bear some relation or is it just me? Maybe two games in the same system?

Speaking of, where are the rules and whatnot for this game (or these two games, if they aren't related)? Presumably under one of the other Indie headings? I'd like to check it/them out so these threads make more sense to me... they sound cool but without knowing the basic mechanics it's hard to follow what exactly is going on. =/

[Bob McNamee]

These were both Iron Game Chef -  Fantasy entries.

The index of the Iron Game Chef entries.
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=10885

Post with a link to Mountain Witch
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=10960

(edited to fix bad link)
Enjoy!

[Lxndr]

And the most updated Frigid Bitch rules are here:

http://www.twistedconfessions.com/atheneum/frigid.php

Both Frigid Bitch and Mountain Witch have an "itch" in their names, and use a Trust mechanic.  Otherwise, I haven't seen the similarities much (although I admit, I've only skimmed Mountain Witch at this point).  If you find more similarities, I'd be interested in seeing what they are, since I know they were created more-or-less in a vacuum.

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Valamir:

The episode with the fallen tree was just "it looks impassable at first glance."  Not only could they climb over the log - they actually did, more or less.  That said, everything they tried had a chance of failure, and if it did fail, they'd have to find another way of going about it rather than just trying again.  So, yeah, there's some Infocom-esque elements in the game, although I didn't put them there deliberately.  Still cool.

AND I REMEMBER THAT SHERWOOD FOREST GAME.  Wow.  I remember it being "cool" 'cause it had, y'know, blocky pictures, unlike a lot of the text games which were all text.  Wow.  Blast from the past.

[Nev the Deranged]

I think it was probably the Trust mechanic that had me thinking they were linked... after all, how many games have one of those, right? And what are the chances they'd have concurrent Actual Play threads?

Anyway they both look interesting. ^_^

[talysman]

I think the game went pretty well, considering we were all learning as we went along. Trust mechanics may be a big issue; since we weren't familiar with the rules, but were getting accustomed to the strategy of each section (Countryside, Castle, Courtship) as we went along, we immediately saw that using Trust in the first section was the best strategy and used it constantly. however, in theory we should have been weighing the benefits of using Trust to overcome early obstacles versus the risks of giving too much Trust to others that they could use against us later.

I think on further reflection that guaranteeing this perception of Trust is going to be problematic. even when everyone is familair with the rules, almost every group is going to wind up always trusting or always distrusting depending on the personal dynamics of the group that have already been established. many groups are going to whizz right through the Country and Castle without any trust issues at all, and the game will feel like a goody-goody fairytale with not much challenge; other groups will play it like an every-man-for-himself dungeon crawl right from the start and never build up the Trust needed for the later backstabbing.

I think you might need to loosen the boundary and allow backstabbing throughout the story, so that weighing the options becomes a more immediate concern: if I trust my colleague *now*, will he backstab me on the *next* turn? this means that the differences between the first two "chapters" is purely a matter of group Tale versus individual Tale.

but then this means that there has to be some other advantage a player can gain in the first chapter besides "slowing the other guy down", since all the players must make it past all Country challenges in order to make it to the next chapter. perhaps players can spend Trust in the beginning to screw a comrade temporarily, which translates into a point of *personal Tale, seperate from the communal pool... when the communal Tale hits the right level, everyone enters the castle, but in the order determined by personal Tale points.

a little more bookkeeping, I know, but it might work.

[Mike Holmes]

Other similarities between Witch and Bitch - Segmented structured play that both involve segements that are approaching a fortress, and inside the fortress. In each case you have to encounter the named being at the end to resolve play.

There are a lot of similarities. OTOH, there's a lot that make them different. I agree that the game has that "infocom" feel, hence my review comments, and putting Bitch into the "finite RPG" category mentally. Whereas Witch doesn't seem to belong to the category.

Mike

[Lxndr]

Well, we finally got together for a second game on Tuesday... one of the players in the first game wound up not showing, and there was promise for another player (who wound up not showing) so we decided to start a game anew.  We almost managed to play through the whole story in one session, on IRC - and any of you who've done IRC knows how hard it is to go from start to end in an IRC game in one night.  I beleive we would have done the whole thing in one night if not for the playtest-related rules divergence discussions.

A number of things showed up in the longer-term play.  

* First, I obviously overcompensated for the "too many Tale Points" complaint the first time around, and there wound up being too few in the second section (the first section's was fine - perfect, if I may say so myself).  I instituted a quick fix which has now become a part of the rules.  

* Second, Fear seemed to rise a little too high, especially for the wooing at the end.  Part of this might have just been the fact that there were only two players, and thus not a lot of chances for either Luck-related reduction or Trust-related successes.  (They still did pretty good, but the bigger the group, the larger the impacts of Trust).  The biggest issue was at the final challenge, where Chris wound up rolling, like, 2 dice vs his 13 fear + his 7 luck... or 20 dice total.

My solution here came in three parts:

1.  Heart now goes UP after each successful use.  (There was some concerns when I suggested this initially about people min-maxing all their points into Heart, but I think the "challenges are double when using Heart will help with that).
2.  Heart can now be REDUCED to reduce Fear on a 1:1 basis.
3.  A successful Luck roll now reduces EVERYONE's Fear by one, instead of just "the fear of everyone but the person rolling."

In addition, I implemented in the past (before this game) the ruling that wooing the Ice Queen reduces your Fear for each successful attempt - she's a lot scarier BEFORE you meet her.

* Gear seemed to have too quick a death spiral - going down on every failure at the same time Fear went up was way too quick, and furthermore was just a pure double-penalty.  Now the ruling is "you may choose to reduce Gear instead of having Fear rise by one point".  Tied rolls also reduce Gear by one point

* I made escaping too easy.  Now there's only one chance, and one roll - no time to push your luck.

Things that worked:

* The "Things That Scare You Most About The Countryside" worked like a charm.  I've thought about using something similar for the Castle, but it seems kind of... boring... to have the same thing twice.  Perhaps "A Secret I Know About The Castle"?
* The "sum of all fears" approach to the Countryside pacing.
* The majority of the game, really, barring these two minor bits.

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For those interested, the game with all revisions can be seen here:

http://www.twistedconfessions.com/atheneum/frigid.php

Compare to this:

http://www.twistedconfessions.com/atheneum/frigid-old.php

[sirogit]

I was the guy who ended up not showing, sorry, I got a little hung over the night before and than slept through it.

I think the reason Heart seems to be chosen so much is what drawed me to the game: It mechanically support playing Butters from Southpark.

Reading the logs the game runs pretty nice, I'm going to run a game of it when my brother gets back from vacation.

[anonymouse]

Thoughts on playing through a second time:

1: Two people is just not enough. It CAN be done, but there's just not the real how-far-do-you-trust-someone thing once you get past the castle. I ditched Chris' character Boris as soon as we got to the castle walls. With more players, I probably would've stuck together with someone a little longer.. at least long enough for them to rack up a lot of Fear, and then bail on them, essentially leaving them "stuck with the check".

It also makes the Countryside a little short. Yeah, the point is to get to the FB, but I would've liked another encounter or two on the way.

2: I'm still not sure there's much reason to balance your scores. Leave either Gear or Work at 1, give the other one 3 and make Heart a 3. Heart's the only thing that'll let you win the game, and you want one of the other two scores to help you get there. Maybe do a 4 for your Gear or Work, and a 2 for Heart, just to keep the Fear down. Especially if Heart can go up.

3: I really don't like the "all suitors in the room"/dating-show feel when more than one player has reached the Bitch and are at that stage of the game at the same time. Would prefer if the Bitch is basically "instanced" for each player; one of them is talking to her in the Tower, one is talking to her in the Library, and so on. If the players fail to woo her, they discover that their bitch is a fake one (monster in disguise, hallucination from poisoned wine, whatever) which would also allow for more personal escape narrations. And if someone succeeds, all the other ones are still fake; maybe they find themselves talking to reanimated statues or somethin', who knows.

Anyway, them's mah thinkin's for the moment.