[Verge] AdamCon play test

[Adam Dray]

This was my second playtest of my Verge RPG.

In brief, Verge needs lots more work. I was frustrated that it wasn't doing any of the things it was supposed to do. Part of that was due to me not being "on" as GM but most of the problem was just the game design. A little bit might be player expectation, as well.

I had four players. Two (Mike and SarahScott) are regular players of my local D&D 3E game. The other two (Melissa and Jon) are people I know from my online game, Firan. Jon also participated in the other playtest I ran a month ago. Of the four, only Jon had read the rules.

I explained the gist of the game -- genre expectations, Narrativism in a nutshell (without too much jargon), the idea of premise -- then asked them what they wanted their game to be about. Mike suggested he wanted an "action" game. I sensed some paralysis at first, so I gave some examples of questions we might build a theme around, then they started talking.

SarahScott suggested a question of the value of art versus the value of human life and the group discussed that for a while. In the end, we had a hard time coming up with scenarios that seemed like they'd work, given the "action-adventure" feel that the group wanted. We ended up ditching it.

I read some of the scenario and premise examples from the back of the Verge rulebook. The next idea the group latched onto was (my paraphrase) "at what cost, freedom?" Someone suggested human gene engineering and we riffed off that for a bit. In the end, we decided to play a game based on a team of federal agents who had recently been "repurposed" to track down illegal "altereds" and bring them to justice. The world was full of genetically altered people, most of whom just had abilities within the normal (though exceptional) range of human ability, though some were now exhibiting superhuman powers. Fundamental religious groups had taken control of the government and  had passed a law requiring registration of genetic alterations. Very X-Men, but with a cyberpunk flair. We were all pretty psyched about the premise.

I explained the parts of a character to the group and asked them to focus their characters on the "what cost, freedom?" premise and their individual Drives. We agreed that all the characters would be members of a team that had been together for many years -- all, essentially, best friends.

Mike built a "heavy" with the Drive of Loyalty (to his team and the agency). He was pure, unaltered human but very reliant on technology. SarahScott created a gearhead/hacker with a Drive of Addiction (to technology and being plugged into the net). She was a purebred human who truly believed (for religious reasons) that "altereds" were creepy. Melissa built an "altered" who had secret empath powers. Her Drive escapes me. Jon made a super-physically-enhanced martial arts guy with a Drive of Family and a Strength called "perfect physique." Jon wanted to make his character not have a family and he re-interpreted the Family Drive as wanting to have a family. I asked him if he thought that would work in a one-shot game, and he agreed that it wouldn't. I helped him by suggesting that his character was a "registered altered" and that essentially the government overlooked his and his family's altered genes because he was working for the feds, and if he left his job, they'd suffer. He liked that.

They each wrote a Hook (essentially a "kicker") and I thought all of them were pretty good.

The players really liked their characters. In the latest revision, I had ratched chargen back to 5 traits (instead of 8) in each category and the players seemed to be less "stuck" thinking of things. A couple players had trouble coming up with the fifth in one or more categories. That suggests that 4 may be easier for players but I found 5 Weaknesses and Enemies a bit more challenging to GM than 8. 4 would be even tougher. Perhaps 5 is a good balance. I'd also simplified the rules about relating traits to Drive (and put a Drive-relation check box on the character sheet) and players seemed to have no trouble with it this time.


Then we started play. As soon as I started, I knew it wasn't going to be my best day. I wasn't "on" and the game design wasn't helping me be a good GM. I tried to follow my own advice in the rules and focus play on the Hooks, the Drives, and the story's premise. In retrospect, I think I wasn't digging the premise, or seeing how I could really make the question ("what cost, freedom?") come into play. I forgot the Drives.

I did use the Hooks. I tossed the players into the situations they'd asked for, but made a crucial mistake. I made a lynchpin plot "connecter" into a conflict. That is, I made a certain conflict ("locate the hacker who is behind a threat against the city records computer") the only way to move forward on a particular plot line. I'd brought the team together in an agency briefing room and got them all invested in the plot together, then SarahScott's hacker character failed her rolls during her conflict. Granted, she had the means to win the conflict, via burning traits for more rerolls and more dice, etc., and she decided to stop, but that brought that thread to a dead halt. It was the first scene of the game, too, and that meant that SarahScott was learning the practical application of the dice mechanic via play, and she literally froze up and got upset that she didn't know what to do. I tried to help her and prompt her but I didn't want to make the decision for her outright. I think, because she was upset, she stopped trying to win the conflict so we'd move on to something else and take the spotlight off her.

I tried to give the players another angle into the plot, tying their hooks together in a grand-scheme conspiracy theory plotline (and they seemed to enjoy that). But I repeated my mistake and made the plot-glue into a conflict, which the next player (I think Jon) failed. Another dead end. Note to self: Get to the Bangs. I think I thought the "find the guy" conflict was the bang but, looking back, I don't think so. Where's the real choice there? Of course, they want to find the guy. No meaningful choice.

Melissa had a cool Hook about being blackmailed by an unknown party about her secret and unregistered "empath" genes. She had to pay a lot of money or this person would take the proof to the feds. Meaningful choice and all that. I put the squeeze on her a bit and set up a meeting between her and the blackmailer ("come alone to Federal Plaza with $100,000 or we'll turn you in") and I asked her if she would go alone or pull in her team. She decided to pull in Jon's character only. This set up some nice dramatic tension (what would Mike's team-driven character think when/if he found out?).  The deal went bad -- she didn't take any money or even an empty briefcase, plus she empathically figured out that the guy she was meeting was terrified of getting shot (it was a set-up to shoot her). I don't know why I threw in that twist and it wasn't really what she asked for in her Hook. I need to untrain my old DMing ways. Anyway, Melissa and Jon had a nice gunfight and for a while the rules provided a fun and exciting scene. I did realize that I'd removed a way to put Drive on the line during life-or-death scenes and that (to me, anyway) removed the real threat of the scene.

There was a good deal of freeform role-play after that. I had Mike's character's superior officer (an Ally on his sheet and an Enemy on Jon's PC's sheet) start asking questions about the public shooting involving Mike's team members. He didn't know anything about it. He pulled the others into a briefing room scene with him and they discussed what was going on. Melissa kept her "altered" status secret from him but told him about the setup and the shooting.

I let them find the location of the hacker from the original scene. They played out a SWAT-style setup with recon and electronic surveillance. This was important to SarahScott's character identity, so I made it a conflict, but there were no choices to be made in the scene. Stakes were, "she gets the hacker's place wired up for surveillance without spooking the perp."  She burned more traits this time, pushing her Gear hard for more dice, and won the conflict. I realized that the scene had no positive impact on the scene after it. That is, how well she succeeded made no difference for the "go in and get him" scene that followed but if she'd failed, the plot might have dead-ended (though I'd likely have made it a chase scene then).

The characters blasted through the door, shot mooks, and got the bad guy. I was testing a new "multiple players per scene" rule and it fell flat. I'd had one player contribute initial dice and had other players contribute rerolls. The players uniformly didn't like that, as they felt their strong traits got short thrift when all they could do is burn for rerolls.

I called the game to a close. I didn't think it was going very well and I was already running into the time allotted for another guest's Shadowrun game (and two of my players were going to play in that). I wanted some time for discussion of what worked and what didn't.

Throughout the game, the players seemed disinterested in the Pump up the Volume rules (the focus player sets the difficulty of the challenge and each other player may contribute 0-2 dice to make it more difficult). In the wrap-up, they explained that setting their own difficulty jarred them out of player-space and into GM-space (granted, they're all accustomed to a strong GM-player split). They also felt that adding dice to the difficulty of other players felt "vindictive."

They felt that chargen worked well but took too long (it took us about an hour, so I don't agree). They loved the characters they produced this way though.

They agreed with me that the dice mechanic had a fun mounting-tension feel as player and GM took turns trying to get ahead.

Everyone agreed that we really didn't explore the "at what cost, freedom?" premise at all. They didn't feel that their Drives contributed much to the game, either.

I think the playtest was a success, if the game itself wasn't. I got lots of great feedback and know where I need to focus my efforts on the design. Jon, who had played in the last playtest too, said he thought this game was more fun than the last one. That really surprised me, because I thought this game didn't go nearly as well but that may have been me seeing through game designer glasses. I felt that all the good parts of this playtest game were due to my forcing it (even railroading) as a GM, not due to the game rules making things fun.

As ever, back to the drawing board!

[Adam Dray]

Oh, another thing I realized.

The reward mechanic is skewed. Players routinely earned 2-5 Experience from just going through the scene using the dice mechanics, which award 1 Experience every time the GM burns a character's Weakness or Enemy for a reroll. Yet the big exciting reward-for-risk dice roll after the scene is over usually netted 0 Experience (sometimes 1-2). It felt small compared to the reward for just showing up, so players have little incentive to really take a large risk, thus they had no reason to set "exciting" levels of Volume (GM dice).

Part of me wonders if players would have enjoyed the Pump up the Volume mechanic better if there was a higher reward for doing so (or if I eliminated the "just show up" reward). Even so, the player-GM-mode "thrash" is still there.

I knocked around a few design solutions for increasing reward potential based on increased risk. Generally, I think I need to remove dice from Gear and Drive in the player reward roll, thus increasing the likelihood that the GM successes minus player successes will net a larger reward.

[Andy Kitkowski]

I'll post my own playtest session on my thread, and rulebook fixes on my Livejournal in the next few days ("zigguratbuilder").

It went well, incredibly well. But it was just me and two players.  Everyone was on, though.

The reward mechanic is skewed. Players routinely earned 2-5 Experience from just going through the scene using the dice mechanics, which award 1 Experience every time the GM burns a character's Weakness or Enemy for a reroll. Yet the big exciting reward-for-risk dice roll after the scene is over usually netted 0 Experience (sometimes 1-2).

Two suggestions:

This assumes that experience is ONLY rewarded if the player succeeds in their scene (which isn't clear by the rules, but logically that should be the case, otherwise we'll see small action scenes of minor consequence where the player Pumps Up to 30 dice, and rolls like 2 in defense, etc).

1) The GM rolls his dice (minus drive), vs NOTHING. THe player does not reroll his dice. THe GMs successes = the amount of exp the player gets.  This seems to be the most obvious choice, considering that xp use itself is a gamble: In your game, Having lots of XP doesn't mean that you WILL be able to use it (you have to "risk" it). Even if you consistently get 10 xp per action scene, you might still blow your dev scenes and be left with no character improvements or weakness reductions each time.

So I suggest to go ahead, and take off the breaks.  No resistance for the XP roll. Since the dev scene XP roll itself is, too, a gamble, then there's nothing to say that the player will be able to use those extra XP gained anyway.*

Maybe even let the player roll the dice that the GM used (just hand that amount to the player and say "roll your XP"), to control his own fate when it comes to XP.

2) Do as you normally do, just set up a chart that says "1-4 volume = 1 extra success, 5-8=2, 9-12=3, etc".  However, if you do so no one will ever ask to pump up the volume to "10", they'll always just jump to the bottom tier of the next category: 5, 9, 13, etc.

IMO, after playing about 1 hours' worth, and 4 scenes, I think option one is the easiest and most sensible.

-Andy

* You may want to "put on the breaks" later by saying "A dev scene where you put XP on the line: your Volume must be at least equal to the base Strength you roll with".  But honestly? Probably not needed.

[Adam Dray]

I like the suggestion a lot and I'm letting it ferment in my mind for a bit. I look forward to your play report! Thanks for running Verge!