[Business Solutions] Three Ladies

[Jason Morningstar]

I got a chance to playtest Business Solutions last night with my regular Wednesday night group.  We were down by two due to childbirth and sickness respectively, so three guys played and I observed – a golden opportunity.

I've revised the rules substantially, so this was really a test of new procedures for resolving challenges and observing the dynamic with only one technician per player.  Previous versions had a Lead and a Trainee, which in a three-player game meant six discrete characters interacting across six scenes – sort of like a circus.  Happily, paring it down works just fine and gives the characters more focus and room to breathe.  It does mean that all six Attitudes and Roles don't get used, which makes me a tiny bit sad, but not too much.  The other major difference is the addition of Praise, which acts as a sour counterpoint to Blame – this was Remi's idea – too much Praise and you get promoted to assistant manager, which is an even worse fate than being fired.  So the game's about not being too competent and not being too much of a loser.  It's a fun dynamic in play. 

The tweaked card mechanic for resolving conflicts seems to work fine, although it needs more testing to poke at edge cases.  We came up with a nice way to handle blind bidding at the top of each service call – it's important that none of the players know how many cards the other two are electing to use in the scene, and more cards = more risk.  But there needs to be a practical upper limit to the number of cards you can bid.  So the answer to both of these parameters is to count to three and then show hands – one finger for each card you want to bid.  The upper limit is a comfortable-but-slightly-dangerous ten, obviously, and there's no way to know what somebody else will throw.  So that was a great discovery.

I learned that "special cards" interact in convoluted and somewhat unexpected ways.  Aces and jokers have specific mechanical effects, and face cards offer players a tactical decision.  In my head I'd always treated these as discrete events, but of course sometimes you get hands with an ace, a joker, and two face cards.  So ... uh ... Blame becomes Praise, and you are suddenly immune to Blame, which makes your technician partner groan, and you get to tweak the degree of success in advance of your opponents reveal.  You have to pay attention, but it's actually pretty fun. 

For example, at one point Mike, whose technician Susan had a ton of Blame already, found himself in a situation where he was going to take a stack more because Joel and Scott had each played a joker and become immune to Blame.  On his last reveal, he turned over an ace, switching Blame to Praise and saving his bacon.  It was a fun moment.  Susan still had a stack of Praise to deal with, but it was manageable.

We also discovered the fun of having the Client reveal cards one at a time, sort of like a PTA chase scene, to prolong the suspense .

Actual play was also very amusing.  Business Solutions hits so close to people's actual experience that it has a really joyful vibe filled with recognition and schadenfreude.  The guys chose to play using the "Slice of Life" tone, which is a weirdly popular choice among playtesters.  So we had Susan Wright, a bewildered single parent who needed sympathy, Barbara Wells, a compassionate old timer who needed power, and Jenny Murphy, an enthusiastic ex-con who needed technobedience.  They all played ladies, go figure.

The clients were The First Church of the Rock, Big Joe's Wrecker Service, and Best Buy store #42.  Over the course of the game we learned that Big Joe was, in fact, Susan's ex-husband (a friendly family member who needed her body, in game terms), and that she'd once attended the Church of the Rock before becoming a Jehovah's Witness, and that Barbara had a thing for young, stupid men (like Best Buy employee Bren, an unlucky sex object who needed time).  The way Complications (these troublemakers assoaciated with various clients) got incorporated was often very clever. 

In the end poor old Barbara had a whopping 20 Blame, and the shy, confused Susan had 16 Praise.  Susan was reluctantly promoted and forced to fire Barbara, leaving the tough-as-nails ex-felon Jenny as the clear winner.  The game took about two hours to play, which is right on the money as far as I'm concerned. 

[GreatWolf]

Business Solutions hits so close to people's actual experience that it has a really joyful vibe filled with recognition and schadenfreude.

The guys chose to play using the "Slice of Life" tone, which is a weirdly popular choice among playtesters.

You realize, of course, that the first sentence here pretty much explains the second one, right?  Speaking from personal experience, I don't really want over-the-top zany in my Business Solutions.  I have other games for that.  Instead, I want to play Business Solutions to work through my deep-seated rage issues about past jobs.  Er, rather, I mean that I want to interact with the fundamental humanity of service-industry workers.  Because nearly all of us have been in that place, right?  Where your job is basically dehumanizing and trivial, except that people (like managers) keep pretending that it's not.  There's enough painful humor in that basic situation without having to introduce escaped prisoners and suchlike.

And that's why Blame and Praise make so much sense to me.  Because, in that situation, there's this sense like you need to care enough to do good work and keep getting paid (i.e. dodge the Blame).  At the same time, there were always those folk who took it "too seriously".  They ended up as managers of a McDonald's for ten or fifteen years, and you just had to wonder why they stuck around (i.e. dodge the Praise) .  So, yeah, I like.

I'd almost go so far as to say that the game might be best with just the slice-of-life options.  I will suggest that maybe the slice-of-life choices should be the default setting, with other choices perhaps relegated to optional rules in the back.  If your playtesters keep being attracted to slice-of-life, then maybe you've discovered what your game is about.

Also, when you have another draft ready for beta testing, I must insist that you send it my way for further pummeling.

[Jason Morningstar]

Thanks Seth, I appreciate that. 

You're right that the attraction to Slice-of-Life is telling, and I need to think hard about that, but I absolutely want it to be playable and entertaining in ridiculous mode.  I think that's the sweet spot, because this stuff will be closer to home for some people than for others.  If framing it as a Mexican telenovela gives you the distance you need to have a fruitful game, I want that to be fine.  Ultimately tone choice is not a driver as much as people might think it is.  In a perfect world, a group that wasn't too comfortable really digging in to the larger implications the game raises would play it gonzo, then play it again half-straight, and then play it straight and have it be rewarding each time. 

I've gotten a lot of knee-jerk feedback along the lines of "I play games to escape my work life!", which is sad.  Not sure what to do about that. 

[GreatWolf]

You're right that the attraction to Slice-of-Life is telling, and I need to think hard about that, but I absolutely want it to be playable and entertaining in ridiculous mode.  I think that's the sweet spot, because this stuff will be closer to home for some people than for others.  If framing it as a Mexican telenovela gives you the distance you need to have a fruitful game, I want that to be fine.  Ultimately tone choice is not a driver as much as people might think it is.  In a perfect world, a group that wasn't too comfortable really digging in to the larger implications the game raises would play it gonzo, then play it again half-straight, and then play it straight and have it be rewarding each time. 

Well, based on my massive experience of one playtest, I found that we actually constantly adjusted this in play.  We chose "Slice-of-Life" and then proceeded to create exaggerated characters, both for techs and clients.  Now, those exaggerations were rooted in our own work histories, but they were fairly zany, all within the "Slice-of-Life" category.

Playtest will tell, to be sure.  But given the knee-jerk reaction that you cite, I wonder if the better way to "sell" people on the game is as an opportunity to lampoon their work experiences.  And that actually requires a more serious tone from you to give them space to be crazy.

Like the employee handbook text on your blog.  People will respond emotionally to that in play.  I know that I do.

Hey!  What if you had to read from the handbook during play?  Like Radio Lightning in Grey Ranks or something like that.  Maybe a different section for each day?  Just a thought....