[Criminal Element] Playtesters Needed

[MPOSullivan]

Okay, everyone, I've never done this before.  So, bare with me. 

My name is Michael O'Sullivan and you may have never heard of me.  For those of you that fall into that category, I'm the creator of Criminal Element, a game that had its origins here, on the Forge, made during the first ever 24-hour RPG endeavor.  I've been working on it ever since and just recently got it to a stage where I feel it's ready for open playtesting.

The game itself has gone by with a little fanfair.  You can find a quick review and Actual Play of the game by Ron Edwards here and here, and a discussion of my desires for the game and an AP of my own here and here.

So, a little bit about the game.  Criminal Element is a Heist and Caper movie RPG.  Players take on the roles of heisters, conmen and thieves working together trying to pull down a score.  Inspired by movies like Heat, Heist, Killing Zoe and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, as well as the Sting, Reservoir Dogs, Sexy Beast and other fine crook flicks.  You can also look to the books of Westlake, Ellroy, Leonard and Chandler for influences.

The game uses a variation on the classic betting-man's game Blackjack for conflict resolution.  Draw a hand of cards and try and get up to 21 without going over.  Even bet your own experience points on your hands.  Win the hand and get back double, trpple or even quadruple the amount of experience points you bet on the hand. 

Characters are built of a number of flags and bang-generators, including Knacks, Motives and Vices.  Each not only generates story (and genre-specific story at that), they also reward and empower players.  They're each an important part of an system currency. 

Speaking of Vices, Players will also have to fight with them, representing their characters' inner demons.  During gameplay character will garner up a pile of Meltdown points that the GM can use to make a character freak out and cave in to his Vice.  Players never lose control of their characters, even when characters have lost control of themselves.  When a character snaps he does so in a way that the player decides.

I'm currently looking for people that are willing to have a flip through the latest itteration of the game, or even playtest it,  and give me feedback.  If you love this genre of film, as I really do, or even just like a good, violent action game with a lot of internal character stuff as well, then please check out CE.  All comers are welcome.  Just stop by the website or download the latest version of the game directly.  If you do get the chance to read or play the game please contact me with any comments you may have, or post an Actual Play here on the Forge. 

It's my hope to have the game ready for Gencon 2007 and getting a couple of blind playtests in would be incredibly helpful.  Thanks for the assist on this everyone.  I'm incredibly grateful for every single person that comes along and checks out this game.  It's been my baby for a couple of years now and it makes me insanely happy when a person comes along and just gives the game a flip-through.

[xenoss]

Hi, I am new to indie RPGs.  Getting started on Shooting the Moon right now and going to try running it so I can bug Emily with questions.  Reading and listening to some APs got me interested in thinking about "my own game" (a game I'd make if I were to make one); my first idea was a caper game.  Doing a search here on Forge however shows me that I wasn't the first.  At least 2 people thought of it.  Your Criminal Element and someone else's Caper (although I didnt notice any new posts of that game.  The 1 I saw was for that 24Hr RPG thing from 2004).

So, I will definitely check CE out (after I played at least a few StM sessions).

I wonder if this newbie that is myself will one day give you some competition?  Well anyway, good luck with CE.  It looks quite cool from reading about half of the pdf.

[Judd]

I am on this motherfucker.

I downloaded it last weekand it looks really hot.

I hope to get a playtest group together but things are hectic right now.  Let me see if I can round up da boys.

[MPOSullivan]

Xenoss, thanks for the interest.  Oh, and welcome to the Forge, man.  Hope you find as many helpful hints here as I do.  I've heard good things about StM, though I must admit I've yet to take alook at it.  Hope your games of that are fun.  And hey, I don't mind taking a back seat to Emily.  Just puts me in good company.  Oh, and about the competition?  Bring it, fella.  Bring your best.  Nothing makes for better games than a little bit of friendly competition. 

Paka, thanks for the kind words.  And the cursing.  More cursing in reference to this game is always appropriate.  I see that you have the same problems with your game group as I do mine.  I hope you get your group together as well, but even if you don't I would love to hear your opinons on the game.  I'm in that writing stage where I'm absolutely fiending for critiques of the core elements (system and the like), so that I know I have a good foundation to build the next draft of the game on.  Any tips, hints, insight or shit-kicking will be greatly appreciated. 

[Judd]

Michael,

I'm totally digging this game.  I'm seeing that seen from Heat where DeNiro talks about his lesson from the yard about ditching out on everything if you sense the heat around the corner.  There are some glimmers of the game's text talking with a hint of street, I'd like to see that a bit more.

The first paragraph of Chapter Four is where I first thought some more lingo could be used.  "This chapter is about what you do in this game when the shit starts flying around," or something.

I'd like more examples on assigning the Opposition levels for GM's.  I don't quite understand when you set the opposition level based on how hard the conflict is and when you set it based on the player's skill level.  That part could be a whole lot clearer to me and it seems awfully important.

The way defense works strikes me as very Sorcerer-like, in the assigning of defense and such.  It really needs to be clearer in the Defending Yourself section.

What you can do with Drama Points should be right on the character sheets ala DitV, where the sheet has everything the player needs for easy reference.

The second paragraph after The Return was unclear to me.

It seems to me that the returns on betting when you are in the midst of a conflict taking place during a meltdown should be higher, encouraging players to push for conflicts when they meltdown but this is just a vibe/feeling, not born of any AP.

I would like something with Meltdowns where the other players can earn Drama by calling another player a wimp for not going far enough, some enticement for them to rat each other out and show that there's no honor among thieves but I fully admit that this is a half-baked idea.

The New Guy section reminds me of the Wheel Man in the final scenes of Heat.

I found a few typos but I'll e-mail that stuff to ya.

I hope that is some kind of help and I look forward to giving this sucker a playtest and can't wait for the final product.

Thanks.

[MPOSullivan]

Thanks, Paka!  Glad to hear that you liked the game.  I can see that you picked up on one of my biggest inspirations right away.  Heat is a huge part of this game for me.  I wind up watching it about once a month just to keep the juices flowing. 

I have to admit, I was a little scared about the way I was writing the game, the tone and language of it.  I wanted it to feel informal and communicate the feeling of the material that I'm trying to emulate but I was afraid that I was maybe being too dense or cheeky.  It's cool to know that it helped you get a feeling off of the game. 

Most of your suggestions, especially the tect-related stuff I turned around and put right into the game text.  I'm hoping to have another edition of the game up in about two weeks, so you'll be able to see most of it then.  I might post some of the stuff here just to see what your feelings are on it. 

I've been experimenting lately with the fashion in which the turn is played out.  Whenever I sit down for a session of CE there always seems to be too many cards on the table.  My only change to the way things go is to have opposition hands be polayed only when a player is about to resolve his hand.  That way there's only one OH sitting on the table, cluttering things up.  Players still bet on their hands after they see the face up card of the opposition hand, they just have to wait until their initiative comes up.  a round would now look like this:

1. Declare Intent: Each player declares what their characters intend to do during the upcoming round, including the intentions of all of the Director's characters.
2. Determine Draw: The Director determines the appropriate Traits for each player's actions and whether a Knack or Vice will impact the action. Using this, all players determine their hand size and initial facing.
3. Form Draw: Each player draws their hand, playing face-up and face-down cards appropriately. Players can examine their draws freely. Initiative is determined, the player with the highest face-up card getting first Initiative, the second highest acting second, and so on.
4. Resolve Actions: Actions are resolved individually based on Intiative order.  Opposition Hands are drawn for each action in turn as appropriate.  After the Opposition Hand is drawn a Player may bet Drama Points on his action.  Hands are revealed and immediate fallout (ie: damage, etc.) is applied.  Players that bet Drama Points pay out if their action failed or get a pay-out based on the Return (see below) if their draw was successful. 
5. Consequences: The Director narrates the outcome of all of the action of the completed Round and sets the stage for the next.

FrEx, Players Annie and Bob and Director Corey are playing Criminal Element.  The PCs have just gotten into a nast brawl with some thugs.  Everyone's declared actions boil down to "I'm attacking someone".  Everyone draws the hands for their actions and initiative order is Annie, Bob, NPC1 and NPC2.  The Director starts at Annie and says "Okay, lets resolve your attack on NPC2".  He then draws the Opposition Hand for NPC2's defense.  Annie bets now if she wants to, then the action gets resolved.  When that's done the Director moves on to the next player, that being Bob.  He would then draw any OHs for Bob's action, etc. 

Doing this makes the steps of play more compartmentalized and, hopefully, easier during play.  This may impact the way that I do defense though.  I dont' think I've ever been happy with the 'one draw to dodge them all' approach of the game, as is.  I did it mainly to keep the table clutter down.  Since I'm doing the other thing to clean up the table (a lot) I may have players draw an individual OH for every attack that comes at them.  That way players only have to worry about having one hand on the table in a round and can just fire through any OHs they have to draw and discard them quickly. 

In regards to the meltdown return, I've thought about this myself.  I must admit that i'm leary of upping it simply because of the game currency.  Too much of a return might mess up the ol' "balance".  Do you think that's something that I should even be concerned about?  Even if I keep it as is, i'll probably suggest that play groups can tweak the return values a little if they want a more frenetic, over-the-top type game.  Still mulling it over. 

And the other thing, with the extra DPs for punking other PCs, while I'm not sure it would work for every game, it is totally a perfect example of house rewards.  A little something that the Director can set up to juice the PCs some.  Just tell the players at the beginning of the session "I'll pay out one DP any time you punk another PC to his face.  I'll make it two if you do it in front of others."  Totally turn up the dials on the inter-character rivalry. 

As to the Dramatic Shifts, I'm actually still in the midst of putting together a good list of them.  You haven't got any suggestions, have you?  Once I do I'll probably put them on the character sheet like you suggest.  I just want to be sure that players know they can also make up their own DSs. 

And now I'm spent.  Long day at work has me exhausted.  Once again, thanks for the attention, Judd.  Incredibly, undeniably fucking killer of you to look at the work.  Any words of advice are a help, but you definitely laid down some good stuff for me.  I'm hopefully going to have that version with the suggestions added in ready in about a week or so.  I'll email you when it's set up. 

Now, i'm going to throw on an episode of the Wire and zone for a little while.