Driftwood Mini-con

[Jake Norwood]

Some friends came up over a few days and we played a bunch of games. we didn't actually finish any of the stories we started (too bad), but we did get to play the new Marvel Universe RPG, Sorcerer, and my own in-the-works Gods of War.

MURPG
I put ample preparation into running the adventure in the back of the core rulebook for MURPG. We used all established characters (from the core book and the newest supplement), including:

Nightcrawler (played by a low-key gamist, male)
Bishop (low-key sim player, male)
Elektra (sim player, "Bishop's" IRL wife)
Husk (Narr/gamist player, my wife)
Psylocke (Narr player, female)

All of the GNS denominations for these players are pretty loose--most of them know nothing about theory, and these are my best guesses. None of them is especially agressive in seeking after their particular category.

The Sim-element of the game, just hanging out and being X-men, was fun. It was pretty easy for most of the players to get into character, leading to some neat inter-character actions. The Elektra character was flirting with all of the male characters, and NPCs as well, but she does this with whatever her character is.

I provided the best handouts in years--this time consisting of highly doctored newspaper articles and the like. It didn't hook players the way I had hoped, and the "adventure proper" did start off so impressively.

Cool stuff: Husk's power, shape-shifting under her skin and leaving a "husk," was some of the best color I've seen in play. Gross, cool, etc.

The game: I think that the MURPG sytem is actually pretty good. It fails in a number of ways that I attribute to its diceless-ness. If the players aren't very familiar with either the system or the characters then it runs pretty slowly (kind of like TROS, but less intuitive, I felt). There also is no reason to not max out non-combat actions, resulting in a lack of challenge where the game designers seemed to feel that there should be some. And I missed the dice, I confess.

By that same note, I think that while the story in the pre-gen adventure is allright, it is blatantly G/S, and not N, which is actually the game's goal (according to the introduction). We played for a few short hours and didn't even get halfway through the prepared material.

Sorcerer
This may actually be the beginning of a longer campaign. We played with just 3 of us on a break between games.

We decided not to play "party style," and went instead for "3 separate stories that overlap significantly," which I find very effective, but difficult. It went very well. I think that the recent "Humanity as morality" thread helped me out a lot, along with a re-reading of Soul.

We defined Humanity as Altruism vs. Selfishness and we really pushed the idea that contacting/binding/summoning have to really push the selfish side of things. Having a solid definition is what I've really been missing in Sorcerer play and it made all the definition in the world. One character has allready torn his Humanity down to 1, in fact.

I am also forumulating my opinions on Needs and Desires. I feel that a Desire should generally run counter to convenience, which really pushes story and makes Bangs very easy. One player built a very strong (power 8) initial demon, and is at a 4 binding strength (demon's favor). The demon's need is classical music, its desire is mischief and mayhem. When the player called on his demon to avert a potential carjacking, the demon said "no," because it wanted to see some trouble start (it was going to come in at the "right" moment). The player even punished it with country music and still failed to control his demon. Funny stuff, and it really added to the intensity of the scenario.

Sorcerer, I continue to find, is a very rewarding and very difficult game to run and get right. I feel that after a year of (sporadic) trying I'm finally "getting it," and I'm loving it. I do have some mechanics questions, but I'll bring those up on the Adept Press forum.

Gods of War
This was really only a mechanics idea that I had almost exactly a year ago. My only existant notes can be found here.

We had a blast playing this and I found numerous mechanics tweaks and rules. I've decided to borrow a little from universalis in this, actually. It's funny, although I've only played Universalis once (and don't know if I'll play again in the near future...GenCon, maybe), I find it to be one of the most influential games I've read from a number of perspectives. If I can finish it in time, Gods of War will be available as a PDF at the end of the month. If.

Questions? Comments? Rude remarks?

Jake

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Jake,

I'd like to hear more about the Marvel game, as my brief toying with it leads me to think that "bigger pool wins" under pretty much all circumstances. Perhaps I'm missing a metagame or circumstantial mechanic of some kind.

As for Sorcerer,

I feel that a Desire should generally run counter to convenience, which really pushes story and makes Bangs very easy.

I agree, and it seems to me that this doesn't have to laid down in stone, so much simply as picked up and taken for granted by the GM (who plays the demons). I wrote the list of Desires with this very principle in mind, and I hasten to add that they can all apply to physical, social, and emotional conflicts. Desires are very general.

Best,
Ron

[Jake Norwood]

Re: MURPG, "bigger pool wins"

This is largely, but not only, the case. An "Action" (that's a skill set or superpower) is limited by it's score. So if you have a 4 in Close combat, even if you have 1000 stones in your energy reserve, you can only spend 4 of them in one round on close combat.

The thing is that why shouldn't the bigger pool win? Thus we're in a conundrum. The basic pretense of the game being diceless, as I understand it, is that failure through a bad roll isn't heroic (okay, I can cede to that). A hero has powers that can or can't overcome a given problem, given enough effort. This all makes a degree of sense, but in playability terms it's difficult to really have fun with. There is little sense of "maybe" or gamble to the challenge. Wolverine can cut through the door, or he can't, and that's that. A decent simulation? Perhaps so. Fun? I'm skeptical.

This is double dissapointing to me because I really want to like the game and play it. I've spent more money on it that any other game in recent memory, so I've got some emotional (and financial) investment in a game that rocks my world. But my world is only teetering at best.

Jake

[jburneko]

Hello,

I'm also curious about the Marvel Game and I'm wondering if your play included an observation that is only suggested by the text but not explored in detail.

Everying in the book is described in terms of Panels, sometimes this gets broken down into actual units of time and space but usually such text is prefaced with a lot of irritating hand-waving text about how this is only for people who really need it and most people just ignore it, blah, blah, blah.

Anway, I noticed that litterally EVERYTHING is discussed in terms of Panels including tradional "down town."  This makes Panels a litttle different that typical RPG combat rounds because most RPGs that have such a construct diferenciate between stuff handled in rounds and stuff handled in non-rounds.

It occured to me that if you take this to its logical extreme conclusion then one of the bigest limiters on character effectiveness would be story structure itself because you regenerate stones on a per Panel basis rather than any fixed amount of "in world" game time.  Example:

In Panel A I spend a lot of stones on some given conflict.  In Panel B we have an establishing description of plane flying my character to London with the caption "12 hours latter..."  Then Panel C is the top of some new conflict.  If you keep the game focused on this panel structure then I will have only regenerated ONE Panel's worth of stones between the conflict in Panel A and the Conflict in Panel C even though 12 hours of time has passed between them.

I'm wondering if this interpretation of the rules showed up in your play at all and to what degree it impacted play?

Thanks.

Jesse

[Bankuei]

Hi guys,

I've actually been looking at my set of MU rules, looking to discuss it :)

In agreeance with Jesse, if you utilize Panels as literally, Panels, then the player is never guaranteed a "refresh" before something major goes down.  Which, of course, opens up a whole can of IIEE + Scene framing issues, which are not adequately addressed in the book.

As far as the basic resolution system, so far, the only two things that I can see that limit the biggest wins situation are the spending limits(as previously noted) and the Situtational Modifiers.  Unfortunately the Sit Mods are kind of loosely organized, so there's not a solid strategy towards using them, nor towards the GM rewarding them.

Two things of note, though.  Jake, did you find yourself handing out Sit Mods based on motivation and emotion(SA sitmods) such as "saving your best friend" etc.?  Second, did anyone take any Challenges during play itself?  Or utilize them during play?

These two things are the Nar + features of MU, IMO.  Its the rather extensive list of Sim based Sit Mods and the Impossible Thing sprayed across the GM's section that I felt were the two steps backward.

Thoughts?

Chris

[jburneko]

Chris,

I totally agree with you about the Challenges thing being a Narrativist facilitator.  Something I missed on my first reading was that awards for taking on Challenges are meassured in original character creation values NOT the usual lines of experience.  That means that you can wait four to six sessions to improve your character the slow way or you can just decide to have a villain kidnap your girlfriend and improve now.  That's a KICK ASS mechanic in my opinion.

I also agree with you about the IIEE nightmare.  But if you take a look you'll notice that Announcment + Resolution for a given panel is VERY VERY similar to that of Sorcerer.   Sprinkle with a few techniques from Trollbabe and I think that the Panel-To-Panel interpreation of game play will become very functional.  Unfortunately, the text of the actual game is a mess about this.

But since I haven't actually tried any of this I too am wondering if any of these issues came up or were addressed in Jake's game.

Jesse

[Bankuei]

Hi Jesse,

Challenges are very, very exciting for me, especially since you can take them at any time, which allows you to fulfill all the standard comic book genre expectations....

-You go through a mess of crap, and then, Boom!, you "level up" in power and kick ass! (Dragonball Z)

-You get more powerful, which then results in a whole mess of new problems...  (Angel to Archangel...)

I also see them as a sort of Kicker, which gives players a big input into play, which is very cool.

On note of the IIEE issue, I suspect it probably also has a simple answer as well, but I'll have to play it to figure out what's going on.

Chris

[Jake Norwood]

I agree with all of this. The panel thing is very unclear in most of the text, as is order of declaration of actions, when you reveal your stones compared to others and when you reveal your intentions, etc.

Challenges are really neat, and are clearly the "SA's" waiting to happen in MU.

The problem with "panels" is that they really act as turns around a table, and I'm not digging that. I think that if the game was more clearly explained and you had a dedicated group it would work, but MU is getting more and more complicated all the time, and I'm sensing a fairly steep learning curve.

Jake

[Bankuei]

Hi Jake,

I don't know how much you intend on running more MU, but I had been thinking about it, especially since I'd like to try it out.  I think in order for panels to work, you have to do some hard scene framing, with the emphasis around conflict or major plot twist as the focal point.  That is, "Moon Knight kicks in the door, searches the warehouse using X stones..." cut, and then cut to the next point you think stones are going to be used...this way, the player can't putz around and regenerate.

The most confusing part is the chart that then rates time to panels, which is totally counter to the concept of panels...

Chris

[Jake Norwood]

Chris-

I agree with you--that would be the way to do it. The module runs counter to this, but hey.

Jake