[The Infected] Anger Management

[MikeSands]

Just ran a playtest of The Infected. It was doubly a playtest, as it was a test run for a Halloween mini-con I'm going to be hosting a game at in a couple of weeks.

Me, and this group, had played the game before, with the patch 2 version of the rules. The current patch 4/ashcan v2 version was a real improvement. We all felt that the game flowed better and that the rules were more intuitive.

Because it's a con scenario, I had primed the players with some setup – that they were part of a group that had been hiking or camping in the wilderness for a week, and just heading back to civilization. Who the group are is still to be decided at the beginning of play, but I figured that this would help people come up with something quickly.

In this case, they were the members of an anger-management therapy group, who had been on holiday as the final part of their course. The player characters were the assistant counselor and three  of the patients. A couple of the other patients got written on to the first three NPC cards, and the head counselor was named, but didn't get put on a card until later.

We started slow with a bunch of spooky stuff going on as they went into town.

I think my biggest problem with the current version of the rules is the spotlight/scene framing mechanic. Right at this point we had problems, as people hadn't yet decided how to push for their goals. It also seemed to work against the slow reveal of the horrors that I had planned. I ended up, as GM, suggesting a lot of elements into the other scenes, and I think that the game would have worked better with me framing all scenes, and simply letting the players request their own scenes when they had an idea.

The new dice mechanics were good, but we came up with one problem that I cant remember addressed in the rules – what happens when there are several people on each side of a conflict, re: desperation and crazed attempts. The way we ended up doing this was that anyone who used these options got to re-roll their set of dice (including NPCs that they had pulled in) but everyone else's dice stayed put. Eric, is that how things are intended to work? This also allows other PCs to re-roll if the updated results don't suit.

The infection rules this time round seemed much better paced. We had two of four characters monsters by the end (and one dead) and the other two on one and two infected dice. The NPCs also lasted a lot longer, with only one monster (but several infected).

We had a good end too – the good guy assistant counselor marrying his girlfriend after a marriage proposal in the heat of battle against the zombie horde. They were under the direction of Margaret, one of the NPC patients from the anger management group, with the two zombie PCs as her officers. The final narrations involved some zombies smuggled away in black helicopters, another causing an infection to break out in the midwest, a solution to the plague via nuclear cleansing, the broken PC (who failed in his goal to overcome his anger issues - "Health") becoming a zombie-killing hermit and finally marriage between Stu and Jessica. Lovely.

As I said above, I don't like the scene framing token. However, I like the idea that it is instead a 'who gets infected' token. Just have the players pass it around every time the scene ends or someone gains an infected dice. That gives the whole feeling of doom, but I think in the zombie-film style it helps to have the GM responsible for all the scene framing.

[Steve Segedy]

Hey Mike,

Thanks for writing this up.   The story sounds like fun, and it's great that it ended in a wedding!

I can see your point about the "spotlight" token- in our last playtest (using the v2 rules) the game would've probably run more smoothly if the GM had framed each scene, with input from the players.   As it was, the pacing was a bit uneven, and the players had a hard time introducing the infection into their scenes (I used the "GM's character" option for generating the infection, so they didn't really know what it was).

[Eric Provost]

Hiya Mike,

I'm really glad to hear that you liked most of the changes to the v2 rules.  I guess I'm not terribly surprised at this point to hear that the rotating scene-framing thing didn't work out for you.  It hasn't worked out for anyone so far.  I'll be fixing that.  I'll also be working on a better framework and guideline for players and their motivations and for GMs and the monsters.  You can probably expect to see v2.1 in a week or so.

The new dice mechanics were good, but we came up with one problem that I cant remember addressed in the rules – what happens when there are several people on each side of a conflict, re: desperation and crazed attempts. The way we ended up doing this was that anyone who used these options got to re-roll their set of dice (including NPCs that they had pulled in) but everyone else's dice stayed put. Eric, is that how things are intended to work? This also allows other PCs to re-roll if the updated results don't suit.

It shouldn't matter who's on which side of a conflict.  When a PC goes desperate or crazed then everyone re-rolls their dice.  All of their dice.  None of the dice get left as-is.

As I said above, I don't like the scene framing token. However, I like the idea that it is instead a 'who gets infected' token. Just have the players pass it around every time the scene ends or someone gains an infected dice. That gives the whole feeling of doom, but I think in the zombie-film style it helps to have the GM responsible for all the scene framing.

I think that's exactly what I'll do with it.

[MikeSands]

When a PC goes desperate or crazed then everyone re-rolls their dice.  All of their dice.  None of the dice get left as-is.

I just checked, and the rules do state that - I just forgot during the game. Oh well.

The other changes you mention sound good too.

There was still a bit of an issue with players working towards their goals. I think in some ways the need to frame a scene distracted from coming up with ways to advance the goal. Still, tokens were gained and attempts were made at the goals, although only one succeeded. The two monster PCs both tried after they got turned, so it isn't surprising that they failed. The last attempt was defeated due to my misreading the re-roll rules, which is a bit sad. On the other hand, the player took his failure and made a good third reel out of it, so no real harm was done.

[Eric Provost]

I think in some ways the need to frame a scene distracted from coming up with ways to advance the goal.

I'm not sure what to make of this.  It seems crazy-backwards to me.  The authority & responsibility to frame scenes was intended as a tool for the players to shoot right for their goals. 

If you can, would you possibly elaborate on how the scene framing responsiblity got in the way of goals? 

[MikeSands]

It's because everyone wanted to advance the story about the zombies at the same time. So, we'd finish one scene and (for example) they were driving towards some particular spot, and the next person to have a turn would have to balance any ideas they had against where we left the group. Sometimes that worked fine (like 'we drive up to my girlfriend's place that's just out of town') but other times it left people flat, even if they had an idea about what they would like to try next.

The problem was that tension between 'what my character wants' and 'where the story should go next' (or would go if it were a movie). That led to some problems coming up with scenes in a few cases, and in some others seemed to mess up the pacing a little.

My feeling is that if the GM has the sole responsibility to frame scenes, then that pressure to keep the story going and the tension building up is no longer something the other players have to worry about. They would, however, need to have the authority to add things to the scene that help them with their goals and encouragement to request scenes from the GM if they wanted a particular one.

[Steve Segedy]

Perhaps it would help to adopt something like the scene mechanic from Grey Ranks, where each player has both a Mission scene and a Personal scene.  That way you can drive the overall infection plot while at the same time having individual moments for players to explore their characters and move toward their goals. 

In such a case, you'd obviously want to modify the mechanic to accommodate the GM role.  Maybe the GM frames "infection" scenes and players frame character "development" scenes (for lack of a better term), which might be flashbacks, asides, or otherwise more personal moments in the story.  Also, there's no reason why both scene types couldn't be used to pursue goals, if appropriate.

[MikeSands]

I don't think that explicitly setting scene types would help. It seems like it would also distract focus, especially as the rules are now very smooth.

If you want to keep the player scene framing, maybe the way to go is alternate GM/player scenes (with each player taking turns). Personally, I still think that having the GM frame everything with plenty of player input (scene requests, adding elements) will do the trick.