[The Mountain Witch] Standing on Giants

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Long ago, in a magical place called Seattle, I ran a weekly one-shot that got so popular that tens of people would come and lots of us would run one-shots and it was pretty much the most awesome thing in the world.

I'm trying that in New Orleans now, and I ran The Mountain Witch this weekend in the beautiful Puccino's Coffeeshop, where we role-played for four hours in public, surrounded by others. I don't know how many people actually noticed, but the concept was pretty great. We did get one stranger involved. A remote acquaintance (high school friend of my girlfriend) saw me and ended up sitting and watching for a while. He played some Star Wars RPG when he was a kid and thought the game was interesting.

Meta-discussion about Actual Play

When everything goes well with play, what do you talk about? Or more to the point, what do you talk about that others will be interested in. I've been trying to answer this for a long time.

A Game of Patience

The most interesting thing about this game to me was the lack of continuity, and how we rolled that into a game-world lack of continuity instead of a player-world lack of continuity. To give examples:

- Two of the characters met an old monk who lived in a cave on the mountainside, who had been waiting many years to re-enter the monastery on top of Mt. Fuji. Apparently, the Mountain Witch had occupied it, and he waited for the Witch's defeat.

- The Ice Maiden (Yuki-Onno, I think it is?) approached the other character in the cold and gave him the password for the Icy Gates (the entrance to the Witch's castle). She did this in exchange for the promise of her "release." We didn't know from what.

- The monk also gave the characters a secret way to enter the castle.

- When they reached the castle, the monk was the Mountain Witch and the Ice Maiden served him. While it seemed she served unwillingly, she also helped him by tricking one character.

- By killing one character, that character froze instead of dying and became the new Ice Maiden, for about ten seconds. Then the Witch died, and that character was left to be the new Witch.

It sounds sort of like it made sense here, but it didn't in play. A favorite moment was one player asking me to clarify the situation so she could play her character as being confused. It was too convuluted for her to be correctly confused, apparently.

Virtually nothing about the above was planned before play. It ended up, at least to me, that the Witch was basically part of the mountain and the mountain demanded a Witch. The monk was waiting for the monastery to be free, but he was the reason it was not, as the mountain had made him its own. He was both good and bad and lived his life as both entities. The consort, the Ice Maiden, was weird and I still don't know what was up with her. I think she hated the Witch, but made him. She was the real face of the cold mountain.

Standing on Giants
One scene involved one character standing on another's shoulders to throw sleeping medicine in a giant's nostrils so they could climb his beard without waking him. This was so good, and everyone used Trust to help everyone here.

But, I rarely saw Trust used to betray. It was once, and I can't remember why. Otherwise, everyone helped everyone out. Strangely, this did not mean Trust didn't ebb: it did, as characters left to persue their own agendas. Basically, I think everyone felt comfortable helping out, but when they wanted to betray, they role-played it instead of did it mechanically (and then role-played it.) I'm left wondering: did we play it "right?" In the end, did we miss something from our experience? I don't particuarly think we did. I think that mode of play works, and we were drawn to it as we weren't a group with a long history of play, more comfortable with screwing each other over. (Side note: two players are in some sort of relationship. I'm not sure of the particulars, but they are close male-female friends outside the group. This may have led to a reluctance to mechanically mess with each other. Still, these two role-played out betrayal several times, and the male ended up killing the female's character in a duel - using the I-Uchi rules! He lost a arm doing so! So I know nothing, really.)

The end of the Witch was awesome. One character revealed his fate to be a pact with the Witch, that the Witch would give him a fair fight. This character played Go with the monk earlier and lost. So, he and the Witch sat down for a game of Go. The character lost again, just barely, and then another character decided to slice the Witch's head off. The Go player spent Trust to help, and I asked, "What do you do?" He said, "I lower my eyes so the Witch cannot see the blade reflect off them."

Man, Japanese dishonor! It was a blast.

[Ron Edwards]

Omigod the first session of The Mountain Witch in which a game of Go was treated as a conflict. I think a dimensional rift just opened.

Clinton, I'm very puzzled about the "confusion" thing ... I mean, confused about what? Was anyone actually not clear about what was happening to their characters, or what the characters were up to?

'Cause if not, then all the conceptual strangeness is just fine by me.

Best,
Ron

[Keith Senkowski]

Clinton,

You question about the use of Trust to betray another is really good and I hope Tim pops in here.  I was thinking about it the other day when talking with a friend about Twilight Imperium (a game we used to play which was filled with all sorts of trust/betrayal issues) and we came to the conclusion that most of the betrayals came from tactical advantages or paranoid pre-emptive strikes.  I've been trying to see if those two reasons could apply to The Mountain Witch, and I really don't see it, unless there is some sort of winner takes all goal involved (which seems inappropriate).

Keith

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Clinton, I'm very puzzled about the "confusion" thing ... I mean, confused about what? Was anyone actually not clear about what was happening to their characters, or what the characters were up to?

At one point, the Ice Maiden pretended to be another character - but only to the one character who was blind, but did not need sight. We decided she affected only his senses. When they ran into the character - the one she was pretending to be - later, the blind character managed to get a Partial Success and shake off part of the illusion. So, there were two of one guy in his mind. The narration was a little weird and we had to go over it again to understand who was where. Once we had it nailed down, the player decided to go with the confusion and attack the real character, not the Ice Maiden who pretended to be the character.

'Sides that, it all made sense.

[timfire]

Hi y'all,

Continuity:  I'm curious, how much of all this did you (the GM) make up and what was inputted by the players? I'm assuming that the players made up a quite a bit of stuff, and that's why there was a lack of continuity.

But, I rarely saw Trust used to betray. It was once, and I can't remember why... I'm left wondering: did we play it "right?" In the end, did we miss something from our experience? I don't particuarly think we did.

Betrayal: Honestly, I hadn't seen much *mechanical* betrayal either. Rob McDougall also commented on this in [his playtest comments]. This is an interesting phenomonon, because alot of players still turn against each other, even if they don't mechanically betray one another.

I don't think is a bad thing, though. I think that the potential for mechanical betrayal is there, and players pick up on it, even if they don't use it. I think without it the Trust mechanic would break.

But you know, that's just not the game that tMW is. It's not like Paranoia were players will back-stab one another every other scene. I think that the slow build-up of Trust gives Trust a certain thematic weight that it wouldn't have if it were easier to betray one another.

Anyway, I don't have much time, I'll write more later.