Nicotine Girls - an idea

[Jiri Petru]

Hi,

in my game group we've finally decided to try this interesting game. Thinking about the rules, I had an idea. You see... we'd only play a one-shot. And in a one-shot game there is a problem with Hope - The rules say that Hope can grow max. 1 point per session, which really isn't enough for a one-shot :)

Somewhere on the Forge, I found this quote:

[*]If you want a single-session game, allow an increase of Hope equal to each successful Hope roll that kicks in just prior to everyone rolling for their Dreams.

I don't know. It really didn't seem adequate for us, so we came up with another solution:

We'd divide the actual one-shot session to several "virtual sessions". So if the actual session would be 6 hours, we'd divide it to... say... 4 "virtual sessions", 1.5 hours each. This solution has two interesting outcomes:
- Hope will have more opportunities to grow
- Hope will see more uses. Even if you fail with your Hope roll, you can use it again when the next "virtual session" kicks in.

We're going to run the game tomorrow (wednesday) evening and I'll definitelly try to post a report to Actual play. But I'm posting this idea a bit earlier, to hear your oppinions, so I can eventually still change it before the play, if you think it's horrible ;)

So... what do you think about it?

Have a nice day,

Jiri

PS: Paul, are you still considering to work on the game some more? Or is already passé?
PPS: No matter how hard I try, I found only one report from Nicotine Girls game on the whole internet. It was here on the Forge and it was the report from Paul's first game. Does anybody actually play Nicotine Girls? ;)

[Paul Czege]

Hi Jiri,

I'm only aware of Nicotine Girls ever being played three times. So I'm very geeked that you're planning to play and post about it.

Flower of December posted about having played the game GMless on RPG.net back in December of 2002. The thread is here in the forum archive:

http://forum.rpg.net/archive/index.php/t-23496.html

I approve of your plan for "virtual sessions." My only concern would be that if you subdivide into virtual sessions that are too short you'll end up with only a couple of scenes per girl, and then I'm not sure how dramatically meaningful it would be to award Hope. Maybe a virtual session shouldn't be less than an hour and a half?

Are you going to be the GM? My one best piece of advice for your GM is to frame opening scenes for each character that could be interpreted as her Dreams might be passing her by. This creates the drama by establishing that we're watching life critical events.

Thanks Jiri. I'm really looking forward to hearing about the game. (And I can certainly see myself developing it further in response to feedback.)

Paul

[Jiri Petru]

Wow,

it's not every day you can say you're amongst the first few people on the globe who've played a particular game. Feels kind of... strange :)

Paul, thanks for the link. I browsed through Actual Play, but didn't take a look to archives. The topic came handy. And thanks for the advice about opening scenes - I'll definitelly try to begin the way exactly in this way.

My only concern would be that if you subdivide into virtual sessions that are too short you'll end up with only a couple of scenes per girl, and then I'm not sure how dramatically meaningful it would be to award Hope.

I guess we can't tell until we see it in game. I'll try to alter the length of virtual session according to the pacing and dramatical needs of the story. Can't tell in advance how long will they end up to be. 1.5 hours seems like a necessary minimum.

Anyway...  the game got adourned until the next week, so I'm afraid I can't post any notes yet. Stay tuned.

For now,

Jiri

PS: Sorry if my english is a bit clumsy. I'm used to reading, not writing in english :)

[matthijs]

I'm only aware of Nicotine Girls ever being played three times.

I'm not sure if I posted about this - but we played it at HolmCon this February, in Holmestrand, Norway. A great session, petered out at the end; I don't recall the details anymore, but we weren't entirely sure who said what when, and ended up freeforming it a bit. Without experience in scene framing etc I'm not sure how it would have worked. The characters were wonderful, and broke my heart.

[Jiri Petru]

We played the game yesterday evening. It was surprisingly fun, and we ended the game quite amazed. We all knew the game had a lot of potential, but noone expected it to be this interesting... In the end, one of the players said: "Well, it's even better than My Life with Master." I have to (reluctantly) agree.

We've experimented with the system, trying to explore the unexplored places (like the preparational session, and pacing of the scenes), and making some "rules" or "recommendations" for the blank spaces (for example, the rules lack any guidelines for the GM). I think a lot of these changes did quite a nice job for the game. I will definitelly speak about them in more detail later.

Why later? Because I'm leaving for vacation today, and won't have time to write the actual report until the end of the next week. I'm writing this post just to let you know I did't forgot. And to tell that Nicotine Girls rocks! More info coming next week. See you later.

[Paul Czege]

Hi Jiri,

Why later? Because I'm leaving for vacation today, and won't have time to write the actual report until the end of the next week. I'm writing this post just to let you know I did't forgot. And to tell that Nicotine Girls rocks! More info coming next week. See you later.

I'm still interested in hearing the rest of the story, as well as any advice you might have for further development of the game.

Paul

[Jiri Petru]

I've finally posted the report to Actual play. I'm terribly sorry for the huge delay. I've been both busy and lazy. :/

Here's the link.

[Mike Holmes]

Note that as Matthijs' post indicates, just because Paul has only been told by people that they've played three times, it's certain that the game has been played by a far greater number of people than this. Probably not a huge number of plays, but probably far more than we suspect.

The really elite group you're in here are the ones who've played and posted about it. Nice work.

I've always felt guilty about saying I'd never play the game. I think it's a great game. I just think that I'm totally disconnected from disadvantaged young girls. But I'm probably just afraid to try it out for some reason. More people should be so brave as to try it.

Mike

[Jiri Petru]

I just think that I'm totally disconnected from disadvantaged young girls.

I felt this way before, too. We were all afraid the game just isn't for us... but as soon as we started playing, we discovered it's not true. Somehow, the ideas simply started popping out by themselves. I guess playing in a comical mood for the first time helped a lot. Though I'm not sure we'd be able to play it at all, if we didn't have experience with My Life with Master.

What I miss about the game is some kind of advice how to play it. There's not a single word about scene framing, narrative rights, etc. etc. We came up with some ideas of our own (see the report linked above), and it went quite well... in our group. A few weeks ago I tried to play it with a different group, with different gaming style, and it didn't work. Seems like our group is heavily oriented towards acting, and we can enjoy the game even if it comprises of nothing else than acting - and our homemade mechanics reflected that. Only that.

A word of advice from the author, about how to actually play the game, would be very useful (wink, wink) ;). 

Thanks,

Jiri