[Nine Worlds] Initial text comments

[Mike Holmes]

But, as you've suggested wonderfully, tie the nine muses to the nine worlds, literally. Earth Muse, Hades Muse, etc.

Yay, setting linked Narrativisim!

I was thinking that you'd just use the system as it stands, and assign a world to each of your muses. So if you were new, you might have a lot of Earth muses, still. But older Archons might not have any ties to Earth any more. Just a thought.

Mike

[Paul Czege]

Hey Matt,

If it were me trying to deliver your premise, what I'd be working toward would be sets of benefits/consequences associated with the two paths that make them equivalently viable choices, just different. Just riffing here, but if a character chooses to go down the "I will live and defend a world made by others" path, perhaps that choice comes with a grant of power from the maker, contingent upon attending to various obligations and loyalties. And if a player chooses to go down the "I will live in a world of my own making" path, perhaps the character's power flows with less constraint, but the character somehow assumes responsibility for the well-being of others.

Paul

[The GM]

Hear ye, hear ye...
Well, my long awaited test play of 9W came last night.  The  night's session was run by none other than Matt himself, (it's neato to have connections so that the designer actually comes to your house to play test his new game;) ) Anyhoo, good news is that 9W passes my most important test, and that's the fun factor. I guess I don't really care too much about mechanics (I run perhaps the only dice-less ShadowRun game in existence), so setting, character concepts, and the potential for really great stories is what I focus on.

I should back up a smidge and talk a little about the look of the text itself. In a word, wow. I'd put the look of the game up against any 'professional' effort any day of the week, and twice on Sundays. I think it was artist Tim Bradstreet who commented that the art for any given game is the money shot, and that's what causes the initial 'buy' impulse when someone is leafing through a book. If that's true, then 9W should attract people who appreciate clean lines and thoughtfully drawn concepts. The layout is streamlined and easy to follow, functional and aesthetically pleasing at the same time. I could immediately find what I was looking for, despite the lack of a table of contents. Good stuff.

Fortunately, the game is as cool as the test play copy looks. While my copy of the test play didn't delve terribly deep into setting, Matt was pretty good about answering my 101 questions and fleshing out the game world. Other threads here touch on this, and so I'm not going to rehash overly much except to say that I was groovin' on the concept that reality as the characters know it is a lie, and that there's 'something else' out there. I think that's what Mage:tA and other games have attempted to do, but 9W has its own flair and carries the concept nicely. Despite general play test slow down, I think that once the card mechanics are solidified, 9W will actually play smoother than the aforementioned Mage.

Speaking of cards, (o'Lordy) this was the hardest part for me. As written, the mechanics are pretty cut and dried. However (and here's the caveat) Tony (another player) and Matt entered into a discussion about the mechanics and how to tweak them. This is where I took a wrong turn at Albuquerque and found myself completely lost. I have been assured that this was a great conversation in terms of solidifying rules, but it's hard for me to comment on the conversation or the rules because I wasn't quite following ;). The one thing that I can comment on, and gets a hardy thumbs up from me, is character creation. After finding a concept, it took me maybe 5 minutes to create a character. This is good from where I sit, as I always dread filling out tons of boxes with stats, gear, and other misc.

As a read through, 9W manages to be informative w/out being dry. The examples given are useful and easy to follow.

Overall, the play test was fun stuff. I think a full version of the game will be great. Nice job, Matt.