[Umlaut] Playtest In Wellington

[Malcolm Craig]

This report has also be cross-posted to a thread at The Collective Endeavour.

It was a Friday night in Wellington when we sat down with a quantity of beers and a burning desire to play test Umlaut to the fullest. A lo, did we did such a thing. In the manner of Iron Maiden at Donnington Monsters of Rock back in '87, we bestrode the musical world as colossi.

The play test group was made up of me, Morgan Davie, Stephen Hickey and Pearce Duncan. All of us were pretty familiar with the conventions and tropes of metal and we were fired up with a keen-ness to try out what Umlaut had to offer. I was the only person who had previous experience of the game, having participated in an earlier play test at Spodley Grange, earlier this year.

Band creation flowed smoothly, with few hiccups. And we ended up with four monsters of rock (or potential monsters of rock):

Boganical – A violent  thrash band under the control of Morgan
Cock Screw – A classic metal outfit under the control of Pearce
Full Shred -  A pretentious, jazz-influenced glam band under the control of Steve
Satan's Fucked! - A Christian death metal band under my control (just)

It was interesting that, without discussing it, we all managed to pick a different one of the four paths of metal.

Rather than give a blow by blow account of the scenes in the game, I'll raise a few points about what when on, how the mechanics worked. Others should totally feel free to highlight cool points in the game that they think we should talk about!

Hope: Hope just isn't used enough in the game, it seems a very under utilised holdover from Contenders. Now, one way of resolving this would be to give greater guidance in the endgame as to how hope influences the epilogue. Another way (and one which i think we all agreed upon) was that Hope should function in a Split Scene. At the moment, your defence against a split is based purely on cash. Why not have Ego vs. Hope + An amount of cash the band want to spend? I realise this could make splits less likely, but would give hope greater importance and avoid the utter cash-sink that split scenes proved to be.

Flaming Skulls: Again, these were collected in great quantity by some players and received comparatively little use. There could be ways of encouraging the use of flaming skulls to a great extent. Maybe they could do more in the game? Maybe they are required to do something more than they currently do?

Ego in Gig Scenes: Ego was crazily powerful, especially at the later stages of the game. And there were no consequences for using it. For example, when Show boating, there are severe penalties if it goes wrong. But using Ego (a far more powerful option) gives no consequences at all. I think this needs some change. There needs to be some form of penalty for dragging out your ego on stage.

Mechanical comments aside, I think I can speak for everyone in saying that we had immense fun playing Umlaut. We were entertained from start to finish. The game lasted around the four hour mark and there wasn't a single point where we felt the game was flagging or running out of steam.


Highlights (for Satan's Fucked!)

Their eventual abandonment of their Christianity (mainly due to the evil influence of their mentor Rev. Felch, whom they ended up hating) and the downturn this caused in their fortunes (really. In the game, as soon as I decided to make SF! Fall away from the path of God, the cards just wouldn't fall for them!)

The gig at the ice rink, where they show boated by rather unwisely bringing Wayne Gretsky on stage, then beating him up.

The loss of Captain Riff, their lead guitarist, due to use of a Split Scene (the three named band members also had bizarre stage names: Vocalzone, Captain Riff and Sonorous of the Bass Dimension).


I'm sure Morgue, Steve and Pearce will be able to pitch in with other memories and thoughts. The use of beer when playing Umlaut should be an inescapable part of the mechanics. We also had background music playing. The initial play list featured the likes of 'Seasons In The Abyss' by Slayer, 'Can I Play With Madness?' by Iron Maiden, 'Caught In a Mosh' by Anthrax, 'Join The Army' by Suicidal Tendencies and so on an so forth. Once we finished that play list, we moved on to Iron Maiden Live in 82, then onto a mix of AC/DC tracks. Wonderful.

There's a bit in the text that mentions the game taking a couple of hours. I'd change this. It took us about 4 hours to play through a full game with 4 bands, and that was with very little sidetracking and pretty tight scenes.

Overall, it was great fun, but as per the points above, there were a few things that caught our attention as needing work.

Cheers
Malc

[Malcolm Craig]

As a further note:

Rich pointed out this evening that the game should, in fact, utilise both Hope and Cash in a Split scene. However, all four of us playing the game failed to pick up on this, so it's something that would benefit from greater clarity within the text. It is certainly there, but our eyes obviously glossed over that part of it during play. Greater prominence would be especially good for those of us who might be playing Umlaut whilst partaking of a beverage or two.

Cheers
Malcolm