[IGC:Dance & Dawn] First Playtest!

[DevP]

I playtested the Dance and the Dawn, finally! (It's short-form finite RPG about waltzing and fairy-tales and stuff. See also: original IGC post, prettier PDF version.)

Quirks We were in a time crunch, so play was hurried and at times distracted; we had to do the endgame about 1.5 nights to early (but there wasn't a major game impact). Also, we ran with only 2 players and 3 Lords (NPCs). whereas the game ought to be run with 3 players and 4 Lords. I left a few of the more minor rules out at first if they were unnecessary or inappropriate to a two player game, and ad hoc'd a few other small tweaks with that in mind.

Characters As per rules, each player created her lady, and I created the Lords. I added the rule about "write two couplets" to give me (as GM) time to come up with 3-4 quick NPCs, and I niceful found that it was enough time. I picked the Lords' destinies ("Will...") randomly, as I felt I should.

Lady Alerial, Knight (Player H): Once sailed the open sea, loved her crewmate, feared (something), lost her crewmate. Wished to sail the sea with crewmate again.
Lady Tess, Bishop (Player N): Once was a nun, loved Jesus, feared (something), lost her virginity (...). Wished to "understand the situation". (Semi philosophical connotation.)
Lord Cedric, Knight (Paladdin) Once was a beacon of light, loved God & Country, feared industrialists, lost his swords. Will sail the sea as the crewmate reborn.
Lord Belal, Rook (Barbarian) Once was the last of his people, loved the wild green, feared prison, lost his freedom. Will understand the situation.
Lord Theo, Bishop (Cleric) Once was the most prestigious in his choir, loved the Book, feared the doubters, lost his opportunity. Will never be yours. (The soulless one.)

And of course, the Ice Queen + Lord of Ash.

How did it play? Not too bad. More details to come in a bit.

[Ben Lehman]

Ouch!  That's a nasty setup on those lords.

How did the play go?  I mean, details!

yrs--
--Ben

[DevP]

Ouch! That's a nasty setup on those lords.

Really? I'm curious to hear why it sounds nasty. It is true that the Lords' traits would seem to point to different results than I said. The Barbarian should sail the open sea, the Paladdin or Cleric should "understand the siituation". I'm uncertain if this is alright, or if I should have made Lords, from the ground up, based around their "Will" characteristic.

Gameplay Gameplay itself was easy, although it oddly took a few turns to get the "move,talk,move,talk,move" thing down. This could be simplified by just making it 3 Moves, and you can talk after each move. I was worried about explaining my entire page-and-half of "rules of the dance", but it was said the rules were all sensical and built on each other in an understandable way; it still would have been best if they were read (rather than heard), and I could remove all of the corner cases from the rules (since players can figure that out on their own).

Players got right to the task of picking a random partner and furiously asking away with questions, trying to figure out the personality of the Lords. A problem came when it was hard to actually get to talk to the partner you wanted; bad luck and opponent meddling made it very possible to limit your time with the Lord of your choice. This might have led to some frustration (Alerial hardly got to talk with Cedric at all, and he was in fact his Lord), but that seems alright; I was trying to spur on some competitive pettiness between the players. (The players began to evolve a strategy of asking the Lords they were stuck with about the Lords they were actually interested in. I made sure not to give away too much useful info, but there was lots of opportunity for color.)

I liked how players used the Ash tokens and Ice tokens. There were some evil Ice-inspired insults ("Your wings are lovely dear, like a swollen and dying mallard". "Lovely dress - is that a STAIN?"), and Ash-inspired anecdotes (Alerial had a lovely anecdote about being rocked to sleep on a boat, and Tess used the anecdotes to develop the backstory). These were great. Once the Ice Tokens came out, there was a spur of greatly-escalating cattiness near the end of the second night. (Since Ice Tokens are not used up, but transferred to their victim. I like that.)

One potential problem is occaisional frustration on the part of the players. I said from the start "this game is not fair", so perhaps this is a feature and not a bug. Nonetheless, repeated or lost turns are well known sources of player frustration (thus spake James Earnest), and my tokens encourage both of those. I softened the blow of the Ice Token because its effect seemed a bit too powerful in a 2-player game. I'm uncertain if I want to mitigate this in the final version.

Speaking of frustration, I did have the rule that you asking for favors, insults, and interrogating your Lords would each count as one action, and you could only have one action per turn. In play, this restraint may have made turns a bit too short & limited - if you wanted to switch partners, you were sacrificing a lot of time for dialogue - and didn't add very much. (Players were already thinking far too long about where to move next.) So perhaps allowing multiple such actions on a turn, but still only one personal question, is a better way to go.

--

Okay, I'm catching a bus home now, but soon I'll put up the Endgame + some analysis. happy 4th all!

[DevP]

Forget the bus! On with the play report.

GMing stuff As it turns out, I picked Archetypes that were really easy to get into. The coarse Barbarian was of course the most fun for me to roleplay out, but the only hard part was quickly writing up 3 NPCs in a short minute or so. It is somewhat hard to figure out *how*, as a Narrator, I'm supposed to respond as my NPCs. The players are smart enough to ask questions that reveal an aspect of the character, and I tried to mix in an aspect of the character into the answer, and while I think this worked, I can imagine someone coming to this game cold, and not knowing how the Narrator is supposed to play the NPCs agains the players. This game is VERY dependent on the GMs subjective whiles, and that's why I say upfront "this game is not fair". The "scale" for setting up the difficulty of questions versus answers is very vague. Of course, this subjectiveness is something that Mike considered a good thing, I believe, keeping this finite RPG away from reducing to a board game.

I think I did a good job of mixing the player's "Will..." into their answers, and perhaps too much so: you see...

Endgame Everyone had a happy ending! Alerial set sail with Cedric on an ice boat, and Tess and Belal went off to found their own church ("...you know, with blackjack! And hookers!" - player N) Theo was very obviously soulless, and was heartily ditched. (Indeed, Tess's last question was in fact just a rhetorical one, totally tearing Theo apart at the seams.) So yeah, happy ending, and folks thought it was enjoyable.

Introspection... Dammit, everyone had a happy ending. On one hand, there was an enjoyable play-through of some fairy-tale tropes, and this is a success for a lot of what I wanted to do.

But not everything. This came out more in my game text (as I kept on writing) rather than in the design, but I wanted *MORE* evil from the players, and I wanted in my heart some unhappy endings. Dark secret ahead: much of me personally detests fairytales and princesses in white dresses who are rewarded for waifness with magical princes. I wanted my game to suggest the big point: "Fairy Tales don't work." Maybe I should keep my Ice Tokens potent, so that the cruellers players who frustrate others DO win the game ultimately.

It was ultimately easy to figure out who was who. Maybe because we had just 2 players and 3 lords - amping it to 3 players and 4 lords could have caused enough "collision" to keep players a bit more in the dark. Maybe I should have played harder to keep things secret, and maybe I shouldn't have given away so much when a player asked Lord A about Lord B.

Another concern: archetypes. I plug those in, and it makes for REALLY easy Lord-generation. Very important. But will this result in overly limited actual character types? I think repeated play will stat that out.

Also, a big something was indeed missing: depth on the part of the Ladies. Of course! I really loved it when the Ice & Ash tokens revealed aspects of the Ladies' own personalities. But all the questions were player->NPC. I definitely need to encourage NPC->player questioning for the purpose of getting more detail on the Ladies.

I would love some mechanics suggestions here; I'll come up with my own shortly.

[Ben Lehman]

Okay.

You want some mechanics suggestions, you're going to get them.

If you want the game to be hard, you should take into account that the first game lasted only half the listed time, and had all happy endings.  Thus -- and this is important -- do not make it easier just because players like it.

a) Don't tone down the Ice Tokens.  If anything, add a more significant advantage for the player who uses them -- remember that they are giving up a chance to interrogate their dance partner.  Perhaps they get to ask a question of the dance partner of the girl they snubbed?  Perhaps they can change partners as well, if they like.  Possibly let Ice Tokens be used to attack Lords, as well, keeping them off the dance floor, so that if you get a hunch that a certain Lord is right for the competition, you can eliminate him.

b) Don't speed up the pace of questioning -- slow it down!  Say, for example, that polite conversation is two way, and so before you ask your lord a personal question you must let him ask you one.  This is particularly helpful if the player's backgrounds are hidden at the start of play -- it gives the other players a chance to understand the competition, and thus exploit their weaknesses (see above.)

c)  Give a real *reason* for the players to compete.  Right now, this is a game that everyone can win.  I submit that this is a bad idea.  Make them really want to do nasty things to each other.

yrs--
--Ben

[DevP]

Thanks, Ben.

a) Don't tone down the Ice Tokens.  If anything, add a more significant advantage for the player who uses them -- remember that they are giving up a chance to interrogate their dance partner.  Perhaps they get to ask a question of the dance partner of the girl they snubbed?  Perhaps they can change partners as well, if they like.  Possibly let Ice Tokens be used to attack Lords, as well, keeping them off the dance floor, so that if you get a hunch that a certain Lord is right for the competition, you can eliminate him.

Well, this encourages me to make that change, that using Ice Tokens and/or switching partners does NOT make you sacrifice a interrogation question. I don't want people to turn down Ice Token use just in order to get information and constructively win, and there isn't much point for that wall to be there. (In some sense its "easier" by allowing them more actions, but it ought to promote the behavior I'd rather see.)

b) Don't speed up the pace of questioning -- slow it down!  Say, for example, that polite conversation is two way, and so before you ask your lord a personal question you must let him ask you one.  This is particularly helpful if the player's backgrounds are hidden at the start of play -- it gives the other players a chance to understand the competition, and thus exploit their weaknesses (see above.)

c)  Give a real *reason* for the players to compete.  Right now, this is a game that everyone can win.  I submit that this is a bad idea.  Make them really want to do nasty things to each other.

Good call; that's something I just never saw at all. Suggested fixes: like what you said for polite "two-way" conversation, make conversation take the form of the player answering a Lord's question, and if and only if the Lord (subjectively) likes the answer, will the Lord consent to truthfully answering a question. Ash tokens will now be able to force a new question to be asked. The player makes their three moves on the board and can make that dialogue happen at any time therein; other stuff (Ice Tokens, favoring-asking, partner-switching) can happen at any time. Once I sit down and rephrase that, it will in fact be a simpler rule.

Now, how to make it more cut-throat? The rules say clearly that the higher ranked pieces go first in everything, except the final selection in which the lowest ranked pieces go first. So, first, only one person can have the "happy" ending (i.e. going back to Homeland). As soon as someone has found their One True Love, they get to go back to Homeland, and anyone else - even if they picked the right person - still gets only the bittersweet (eternity on Island of Ash) ending.

Second part: (this might be overcomplicated, but it seems to work out) A player uses Slander, spending 1 Ash + 1 Ice tokens. Both are spent (given to the Narrator), and the player gossips about a target player. The Narrator randomly picks one of the two tokens (in secret), and if it is the Ice Token that is picked, then that player will reject the target player if she chooses him. (Resulting in the worst-case trapped-in-ice ending.) Having just written that, that part seems almost too nasty, but maybe that's good (and I'll appreciate that in the morning).