[Last Breath] first playtest: altering play flow

[talysman]

Yesterday was a quick playtest of Last Breath, my October Ronnies submission. Quite a bit went on during my Thanksgiving vacation and the playtest kept getting postponed; we finally managed a one-hour playtest right before I rushed off to catch a bus; it's our intention to continue the playtest online.

I've played with both of the other players several times over the years. One, B., is an RPG designer/publisher; our past play sessions were mainly various versions of his game system, with him GMing. The other player, T., also played D&D and Traveller with me prior to this. B. and T. are married and have a one-year-old child; this did make focussing on the game a little difficult, but the same thing happened when playtesting B.'s latest game the night before.

Both players playstyles focus on the GM setting up the situation and the fiction unfolding in a linear fashion, with very little cutting/framing or director stance techniques. The players play out how the characters meet and what they do to get to where the action is supposed to occur; if there is a change in location, random enounters during travel time may also need to be played out. Last Breath is the first nontraditional RPG they have tried, that I know of, and I think their expected playstyle influenced the way we played out this session.

I made a few changes to the rules. Basically, all the changes I describe in this thread. Dice pools are now spilt and wagered during the "free and clear" phase before rolling the dice. Pennies/tokens are only used to indicate the power of a resource; in this case, we didn't have tokens because of the baby's presence, so we used tally marks on scratch paper instead. Conflict rolls are now handled in a more fluid way, instead of with the strict scene divisions I used before. These were the main rule changes that surfaced during play, although I also had the players pick three things they liked about civilization before the plague and one thing they disliked; these are to provide focus for Painful Memories rolls as well as for a reward system (which I haven't worked out yet.) I explained the way Pain dice now work, but they didn't appear this early in the game.

B.'s character, Toby, is an urban skater teen; he took Loud Music, Monster Movies, and Drugs as his likes and Authority as his dislike.

T.'s character, Veronica, is a college anthropology student and amateur gymnast. She took Olympic Gymnastics, Taco Bell, and Science as likes and Sororities as a dislike.

With only one hour of play, including character creation, there was still a lot of die rolling and a lot of fictional events occurring. I take this as a positive sign, since it means the system is actually firing (doing stuff) instead of most of the roleplaying being handled by informal drama techniques that are not part of the written rules at all.

The first snag occurred right at the beginning. I started to describe the start of the plague and asked what the characters are doing (the first Survival scene, as described in the rules.) Toby went looting for antibiotics, but Veronica decides to make a break for it in her car, to try to reach her family. This is a perfectly reasonable reaction within the context of the fictional world and I don't intend the game to be played in an Illusionist or railroaded fashion, so I went with T.'s desires, despite the fact that officially, the PCs are supposed to describe how they meet first, then focus on Food/Water/Shelter/Clean resources.

However, the system did seem to be adaptable to this, especially with the new rules. I described a few potential obstacles, the players matched dice against mine, and we rolled. Here's where one potential problem arose: with the looser, more fluid way rolls and scenes are handled, I wasn't sure whether we should all roll simultaneously, or whether we should handle conflicts separately unless both characters are together combining efforts. I went with the latter, but in one conflict, I split my five dice between two different tasks, while in another, I rolled five dice for each task. I'm going to have to make a decision, here.

Another point about the "fleeing the city" scene relates to the player's unfamiliarity with having a little more authorial power than in other RPGs. T. stated Veronica was trying to get to her family and  asked me where her family lived. I said "I don't know; you tell me." Later, they seemed to adapt a little; I suggested that B. could use an extra success he earned when clearing dead bodies from the sidewalk to find an object and he immediately suggested a cane that could be used as a club.

There was another peculiar situation when the PCs first met. Toby offered Veronica pilfered antibiotics in trade for a ride; Veronica replied "no thanks". I suggested that joining together improves their chances against the GM, since they can aid each other with dice (plus, they need to meet in order to form an Attachment, which adds bonus dice for internal conflicts like Painful Memories or Meaning scenes.) This reminds me that I'm going to have to work out what to do about PCs that don't join up or that split up later.

During the journey, Toby helped warn Veronica about an accident on the highway, loaning a success die to Veronica's attempt to dodge. This raised another point about rules continuity I will need to think about: loaning dice or successes to another player. In this instance, B. rolled dice, cancelled my successes, and used a remaining success to add one die to T.'s roll. In a different conflict, B. added dice before rolling as part of the splitting of dice pools in "free and clear". Both approaches seem appropriate, but I will need to clarify exactly when each method is used.

As I said, there were a large number of dice rolls in such a short time period (each player rolling five times, with each die roll resolving multiple fictional events.) I'm happy with some of the results; it felt very fast and fluid. Still, I have questions:

• Should I actually ditch the formal first Survival scene and merely describe Food, Water, Shelter, and Clean in a chapter on handling resources?
• Should I ditch the formal rules on Food/Water/etc. completely, and just have them as generic resources, with hunger, thirst and disease as examples of obstacles?
• Should I fix the rules to skip the "describe how you meet and how you react to the plague" phase, or should I fix them to encourage playing out the plague attack from the beginning? Was this just a fluke of the other players' uisual playstyle (playing out everything in chronological order?) Or does this seem like the kind of play that would really be desirable in an RPG about an apocalyptic plague?