[Mountain Witch] Playing with my non-gamer friends

[timfire]

So yesterday I got to do something I've been looking forward to for a while, I got to play The Mountain Witch with some of my non-gamer friends. I had asked a few of them to read over the text of my book before I printed it, and it got them interested.

I had 4 players---2 male, 2 females. One of the males had played Vampire, I think, once or twice in the mid-'90's. The others had no experience whatsoever, other than just reading my book. We played 1.5 Chapters over, like, 3--3.5 hours. I honestly had alot of fun.

They picked it up without a problem. They had a hard time picking Abilities and coming up with character backgrounds, but that's not too unusual even for experienced players. We spent a little more time on chargen than I usually do, but not that much more. They came up with fairly basic Abilities, nothing of much interest except for my friend with previous role-playing experience---he choose two very "pragmatic" Ablities: "Detect Lies" and "Detect Traps".

They came up with some pretty good backgrounds. Unfortunately I can only remember 2 of them: One of them gambled away her family's money while attempting to win enough to buy some rare, ancient texts. Another got kicked out of his school for refusing to believe the school's mysticism.

Playing with them reinforced some of my other experiences with playing with non-gamers. For the most part, they had no trouble taking narration, other than some confusion over Partial vs Regular Success (but that, too, is not unusual for experienced gamers). In fact, they often wanted to go past the official boundaries of narration and narrate the entire scene (gawd, I hate quelching raw creativity, but rules are rules).

One thing that was interesting was that they were very much into building consensus. They would discuss all their decisions as a group, and then make the decision as a collective.

They seemed to like joking with each other about whether or not they "trusted" each other. They also made some interesting choices when it came time to re-evaluate Trust, but during play itself none of them seemed to purposely act suspicious. They spent a decent amount of Trust Aiding one another, and did a little strategizing on who should spend Trust when. But that's OK, though.

Actually, that strategizing created an interesting situation. I was having them roll to "defeat" the mountain as they climbed, and one of them (my friend with previous experience) said that if everyone gave him Trust, he would give them Aid in their next conflict, whatever it may be... He still owes a couple people, I need to take advantage of that (*evil grin*).

The session had a pretty "light" and playful atmosphere, but I still feel they "got" the whole Trust & tragedy thing.

Only at the very end of the session did they start to seriously foreshadow their Fates. In the opening Chapter I didn't push it, but at the start of the second I made a point to say that as the game progressed, developing one's Fate would become more and more important.

One thing I did that didn't work so well was I gave them each a dream sequence. In my infamous Dreamation game, the players all just jump on the dream sequence as a opportunity for exposition. I thought it would work again, but these guys didn't seem to love it like the Dreamation crew.

Now maybe it was my imagination, but their playing seemed to have a ... "raw" quality about it, like they weren't really playing a role. It was kinda refreshing, I could see each of their personalities in their characters, more than I usually do with gamers. But maybe that's just my imagination since I know these people so well.

We're going to play again next weekend, and hopefully finish. Like I said, I had a real good time.

[Jason Morningstar]

Tim,

Do you think their light-hearted attitude was the result of uncertainty or discomfort?  Were they familiar with the genre?  I guess they were into it, if they agreed to a follow-up session, but did you get the feeling they were really engaged?  One of the things I'd really like to do is overcome my shyness about inviting non-gamers to try roleplaying, because it is always rewarding, and I'd love to hear about how you approached your friends and tailored the game to them.

--Jason

[Ron Edwards]

Hey,

I've been looking forward to reading this since you told me you would be running this game.

I think one thing to recognize as fruitful is the rather slow slide into more seriousness. It's not apparent yet, but many games of Sorcerer with non-gamers has schooled me in recognizing the early stages. It doesn't look like they are into the darker themes, and the Fates haven't acquired a brooding presence yet ... but just wait. Non-gamers have much, much better instincts about how to pace and develop these things than gamers do. All you have to do is keep GMing, keep hitting them with adversity, give them lots of surrealist fantasy and colorful adversity (think of my tengu, when we played). Very soon you're going to see rivalries, romances, player-delighted inter-character misunderstandings, and blood will soak the snow.

Best,
Ron

[timfire]

Do you think their light-hearted attitude was the result of uncertainty or discomfort?  Were they familiar with the genre?

Part of the light-hearted atmosphere, I think, was just because we were all good friends so we naturally joked around. Though I must point out that on a whole we stayed very focused on playing, we did not have any of those 5-10 minute diversions where we changed subjects, which seems to plagued many gaming groups.

One thing, though, the player of the refusing-to-believe-mysticism character sometimes seemed to not to know what to do, so he just did crazy stuff. That brought about a couple of laughs. But I don't want to say he was lost in play---actually, he did[/i] seem to have some solid thematic intuitive there. He just seemed to express it in exaggerated ways. (Which I must admit fits that player's personality very much.)

For example, at one point he encountered a non-PC ronin, who thought that the PC was there to kill him. To prove that he wasn't, the PC tied himself to a tree. We all laughed, but I was a bit touched by the gesture, especially after he gave the non-PC his head-ban so that the ronin would remember him later (oh, I just have to find a way to bring the ronin back).

The two males were familiar with the genre, I'm not sure to what extent the females were. Though I must admit that one of the females was my wife, so she's heard me talk about samurai stuff for months.

One of the things I'd really like to do is overcome my shyness about inviting non-gamers to try roleplaying, because it is always rewarding, and I'd love to hear about how you approached your friends and tailored the game to them.

You know, I didn't tailor the game for them at all, except that I'm trying to run a short game (we can only meet one more time before 2 of them leave for a trip). I'm running a straight-up regular game of tMW.