Crux in playtest

[taalyn]

Hey all,

I've been playtesting Crux for about a month now, and introduced some new players last night. Here's what's been going on, and some thoughts sparked as a result:

The PCs: Vlad, Vampire Quem lexified by Larpers into something vaguely Brujah; Vinnie,  a retired ME with vampiric qualities (fangs, eats Quiddity instead of blood); Swan, a hippy gardener with Empress tarot card numina, and Jane, Book Quem who has had several identity crises (discovered her parenatge, accidentally shapeshifted into a 19-year old male body, etc.)

the New PCs: Michael, an alcoholic Native American shaman who refuses to tell anyone anything (his entire in-game presence was quiet and depended on lots of notes passed to me); Delia, an abnormal psychologist who is Psyche Nonsuch, though she doesn't know it; and Jim, a grease monkey with a thing for hammers.

The game:

We returned to our PCs - Jane dealing with suddenly having a much higher center of gravity and dealing with morning-wood issues, which was a lot of fun. Vinnie has been infected by a story-virus, and slowly discovered that feeding is no good - he has to read stories to survive. Vlad is dealing with issues via his "resist sunlight' feit, which he's only worked out, and which turns him purple (he's a purple people-eater!).

Delia interviewed the suspect in the recent murders, a Sarah Natter. Two days later, she escaped from jail. Looking for more info on the suspect, she was directed to Vinnie.

Jim was fiddling with the cultists' van when he discovered it was a magical van (no carburator - instead, it had a combustulator) and set of a common side-effect - he turned purple, right down to teeth and hair (for a moment, he was afraid of the purple-people eaater). He called HazMat, and was directed to the hospital, where a Noom doctor fixed his condition with a "shot".

Back at the garage again, Jim and Michael are chatting while Jim works on Michael's bike, and suddenly the van folds itself into nothing. They are both affected by the van's powering magic, and start to turn purple again. AT this point, they decide to go drinking, screw everything.

In the bar, they get accosted by a guy and his buddy, and when they take it outside, 2 others show up. In the end, Jim and Michael end up unconscious in the van, and are later dropped off in front of Vinnie's house, marked "You're next".

Jane (momentarily, Jack) explains the state of the Coil to Delia, who has shown up to talk with Vinnie. Vinnie and Vlad are downstairs figuring out what's wrong with Vinnie.  They find Jim and Mike, and spend a couple hours discovering that they've been magically transformed, and will be very large snakes within a month. They start to get into introducing Jim and Mike to the actual state of the world, when the baddies show up.

What follows is a conflict, with the players eventually wiping out everyone, including the big baddy, who looks like Sarah (the accused) and who becomes a giant snake, also shot and killed.

The other stuff:

There is an problem with powergaming - Vinnie in particular. he's rich, powerful and influential, and nigh impossible to stop. He wasn't supposed to kill the big baddy yet, for example. Some of it is my fault - I've let him get away with it, and didn't require a "wealthy" background - but he definitely played the numbers so that on certain things, he _does not fail_, ever. I should note that all three new players took Aspects that ranged to 3 at the high (and rare) end, while Vinnie's player took many Aspects at 5.

There was some confusion when genning new characters about Magenta/Perception/Artistic skills - they kept taking Aspects like "notices things about people" and deciding it was a magenta skill.

I addressed conflict issues and magic in threads over on the IndieGames board.

I can't think of anything else in particular to address...

Aidan