[Continuum] Crashed & Burned

[Michael S. Miller]

This is in response to Michael Goins' request for Continuum Actual Play accounts.

I ran Continuum at GenCon 1999 (where it debuted--I had gotten the preview edition the autumn before). I have no blow-by-blow, but I do remember the game  going poorly. It's still a bit of a raw nerve, actually.

The scenario (which I had worked out, using the preview editions to work from) revolved around a Narcissist trying to kill the PCs in retribution for stopping him from commiting some crime ten years ago. Of course, they hadn't yet gone back to stop him, so that went into their Yet. Most of the game was them trying to piece together exactly how the crime-foiling had happened, so they could do it right. They did the legwork and the skullwork necessary to make this happen.

They scoped out the spot where they had to stop this Nar from  mugging a woman. They got ready to ambush him as soon as he struck her (so that she would have the scar they had already seen her with in the future). Everything went according to plan ... they leapt out as he stood over the woman's unconscious form ... and couldn't hit to save their lives! The Frag mounted because the damn dice wouldn't roll the highly improbable numbers that even the combat-intensive character needed to hit. And the players have no Fate/Luck/Hero/Yet points to spend to help out, because the system doesn't have any. The session ended on quite a whimper.

IMHO, the Continuum task resolution system is one of the great failures of game design. What is a pure-luck Fortune system doing in a game about Predestination? In a game where God emphatically does NOT play dice with the universe, why do the players?

I'd also caution you to read and reread the Time Combat stuff half a dozen times. Figure out what you're going to do when a player (or NPC) fails the Time Combat action they're trying. IIRC, the extensive example of Time Combat in the book does not include any instances of failure. Everything the example characters try, they succeed at.

If I were to run this beast again, I'd rework the resolution system from the ground up. I'd likely take something completely diceless like Nobilis as a base. If there's no fortune in the game world, there should be no Fortune in the System.

Good luck to you. I look forward to reading about how the game goes.

[xiombarg]

I do remember thinking, as I read the book, that there was a high "whiff" factor in the task resolution system...