[AG&G] Lights on the Water

[joshua neff]

My wife, Julie, and I were supposed to get together with some friends tonight for gaming--probably Ticket to Ride, maybe Universalis or Capes Lite. But they cancelled on us. Wondering what we'd do instead, and really wanting to play something, I suggested my wife and I do a playtest of Vincent's Art, Grace and Guts. My wife has been gaming since high school, but she rarely gets very psyched about games--she plays them, she has fun, it's all good. But when I read her Clinton's first playtest post of AG&G and showed her the "Clinton Oracle," she got more excited about a game than I think I've ever seen her. Just the other day, she had said, "I really want to try that Art, Grace and Guts." So, my suggestion was pretty well received. I printed out some character sheets and the playtest rules.

The Oracle gave us:
* Location: An old, proud fortress on an important mountain pass. (Military)
* Location: A fishing village with an inn of good quality. (Countryside)
* Location: An underground chamber, eerie with blue-green lights. (Magical)
* Character: A camp physician, her pockets full of salves and drugs. (Military)

We came up with some characters: the physician, obviously, and also the captain of the fortress and the innkeeper in the village. Julie asked if I minded playing the game not-entirely-seriously, and I told her I'd actually been thinking of something vaguely Discworld-y. (My wife is a huge Pratchett fan.) Because my wife never GMs ("I don't GM," she always maintains), I offered to be the GM-player. She chose to play the physician (Eilan Wheedown), while I would play the captain (Augustus Cabbage) and the innkeeper (Kevin Monk). We decided the fortress was on the pass, near a fishing village on a lake. Under the lake bed was a chamber that caused the surface of the water to glow eerily. The village had lost a lot of tourism, so the innkeeper wanted to destroy the chamber, thinking it was evil. Captain Cabbage wanted his soldiers to take control of the chamber, to exploit whatever magical resources it might have. Eilan, being more scientist than soldier, wanted to keep the military out of the chamber and wanted to examine it herself.

Because it was just the two of us, with Eilan being the only non-GM-character, we had a short chapter with only a few scenes. Julie was very aggressive--everytime I planned on starting a conflict (playing the GM characters as stubborn and driven), she would head me off by declaring "let's get the dice out--it's a conflict!" Because she kept declaring conflicts in which her dice-sides were smaller than the opposition, she ended up on the "We Owe" list a few times. She did one cross-off, and we both liked the "advantage die for a cross off" rule--I think it's better than doing a reroll. Despite having lower dice-side totals, she won both conflicts with Captain Cabbage, knocking down his Guts and Grace. But she lost both conflicts with the innkeeper, who conviced her to get gunpowder from the fortress so he could blow up the chamber.

We both liked the back and forth of the dice mechanic. Julie said, "I liked the game. It has a lot of potential." I can't think of any major issues or questions about the rules that came up. It seemed to work well with only two players. I was concerned that 4 elements from the Oracle would be a lot for two players, but it all worked out. I'm hoping Julie will see how easy the game is to GM (no real prep, just a lot of scene-framing and conflict-pushing), so that this will be the first game she'll seriously be the GM for.

[lumpley]

So, that sounds just fine. No questions for me?

Did you make any specializations?

With only the two of you, only her character gets to go on the we owe list. That seems like a problem to me for long-term play - but for a one-session thing, it doesn't matter.

The game is super easy to GM, it's true.

-Vincent

[joshua neff]

I didn't make any specializations for the NPCs. The chapter was so short, and we just did the one, there didn't seem much point. But for future chapters, if any of the NPCs are back in, I think specializations would be in order. Julie didn't make any specializations because the rules said you don't get specializations at the beginning of the first chapter. (It does say that, doesn't it?) If we do another chapter (and I think we will), I'll remind Julie of the specializations.

I could see the "We Owe" thing being a problem with long-term play with just the two of us, yeah. (Geez, why aren't there more RPGs that are designed so two people can play them easily?)

Otherwise, no I can't think of any questions.

[Bryan Hansel]

After I read the rules, I mistakenly assumed that even the GM characters would go on the "We Owe" list, and if playing a one-on-one game, I thought that the player would just take the name off the top of the "We Owe" list and play the character in the next chapter.  That's how Ilena and I were going to give it a try.

[joshua neff]

Now that you mention it, I thought the same thing, Bryan.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

That's how we've been doing it this whole time, too.

[Bryan Hansel]

Clinton, have you been rotating characters between players depending on the character on the top of the "We Owe" list?

[joshua neff]

That's how we've been doing it this whole time, too.

Vincent, is there any good reason not to do it this way? It seems like it would be especially appropriate when you have only two people playing.

[lumpley]

Well...

I have good reasons for designing the rule as written and keeping it that way in the published game. Namely, I take the GM's conflict-framing power seriously, and I don't want to give the GM an opportunity to be tempted to use it to set up her own NPCs as the main recurring characters. The GM shouldn't be rewarded for setting NPCs' low dice up against the PCs' high dice, since she has more power to make it happen than the other players do.

But if you're not having a problem with that, cool. I don't figure you're doing any harm.

The thing where one player is always the GM and the other always plays the character at the top of the list, no matter who that character is - that hadn't occured to me and it's very, very interesting.

-Vincent

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Clinton, have you been rotating characters between players depending on the character on the top of the "We Owe" list?

No, but we have no rules about who can play what character - they're all group-owned.