[a|state] GenCon Demos

[Malcolm Craig]

Well, it's been a while since GenCon, but as things have been fairly hectic since I got back, I'm only now drawing my thoughts together about the demo experience on the booth.

In the first instance, running a 20 minute demo of a|state at GenCon was a new experience for me and one which I approached with no small degree of trepidation. In order to better analyse how things went, I've written down a condensed version of my thoughts on the entire demo experience. Rather than look at individual demos, I've taken an overview of the demoing experience as a whole, looking at various player reactions, how the chosen demo situation functioned in play and how the characters stood up in play.

Any responses from those who played in the demo would be very much appreciated.

Demo Outline

The demo consisted of placing the group of characters in media res, in a situation with a strong moral/ethical content which they would need to resolve. The situation was represented as the end of a an extended investigative adventure session, where they characters had discovered the existence of a brutal children's workhouse being run for profit under their very noses. The nature of the characters and the descriptions given implied that this was something that was offensive to their own morals and ethics, thereby setting up a demonstration of how 'hope' and 'despair' are important facets of a|state. Time pressure was added by having a mob of angry locals heading for the workhouse in order to resolve the situation themselves. It was made plain that such an ending would result in carnage and the death or injury of some or all of the children.

The opposition in this demo was personified by Hosanna Nicely, the 'brains' behind the workhouse and her three thugs. Nicely was not intended to be a typical psychotic, leering criminal, but a woman firmly convinced that she was actually doing some good by teaching the poor children a trade.

The Demo In Play

Although reactions to the situation varied quite widely, the feeling that I had was that all the players who took part found it fairly easy to key in to the motivations and goals of the characters.

Resolutions to the situation varied quite a lot as well. All of those participating felt the pressure created by the impending arrival of the mob and this served as a spur to the characters. The most common resolution combined both violence and negotiation, shocking the NPCs with a sudden action, followed by a period of talk where the consequences of the situation were explained to them. Commonly, this involved a discourse with Nicely, appraising her of all that might happen and then letting her go (if she wished) with a promise never to return to Mire End. Players attempt to convince Nicely that, far from being a 'good' woman, that her actions were indeed causing pain and suffering, not only to the children but by extension, to the community at large. The explicit threat of vengeance by the mob (used well by almost all groups) gave a point of leverage that they could use against Nicely. Conflicts such as this were mainly handled by role-playing out the situation, followed by contested rolls against appropriate skills and attributes (persuasion and willpower being the common ones). Failure on the part of the player encouraged them to wither redouble their efforts or resort to other forms of coercion, again against the pressure of time and the mob.

When the resolution ended in violence, this was often handled with the explicitly intention of appeasing the mob through the death of Nicely or through giving Nicely (and possibly her henchmen) to the mob. An example of this was the swift beheading of Nicely and the dramatic display of her decapitation to the crowd outside, with dramatic effect.

I found that even with one player (which only happened once), the game ran very well if run with the one character who could be truly said to straddle the line between an overtly combative character and an overtly cerebral character. One on one play was interesting, as it's not something I've ever really engaged in and it was useful to watch as all decisions devolved onto one single person and how this affected their reactions. In this case, the element of surprise was vital to the character, followed by skilful negotiation and resolution through argument and persuasion, even though they were physically outnumbered by NPCs.

Thoughts After Play

Reactions to the demo were, I'm happy to say, very positive. Many people felt that it did indeed give them a feeling for key aspects of the setting: the grimness and deprivation of many areas, the themes of community and hope, the fact that the characters were tied to the community and so forth. In addition, the theme of 'hope' as reflected through the reward mechanic and how this allows characters to improve themselves was explained briefly in the post-demo phase.

If using this demo again, I might perhaps think about altering the characters slightly to see what effect this has. There were two characters who's strengths obviously lay on the more combative side of things, whilst the other two were most definitely on the more cerebral side. Perhaps leaning the characters more towards a less combative mode would skew things in a different direction, only further play will tell.

Despite my initial trepidations, I was, in the end, pleased with the way the demo ran. I need to thank Jasper for running one of the demos and giving me a chance to see how it ran from the 'outside' (so to speak).

Any thoughts and musings, especially from those who took part, would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers
Malc

[Robert Bohl]

I really loved the atmosphere and mood of the game.  The character names were great (Hosanna Nicely--I wish I had that kind of talent for names).  I also liked the switching of gender roles in the game I played, making the man the less physical and the woman the deadly one.

Critically, the game wound up feeling more an exercise in tactics than in Themes and stuff.  When it came down to it, I got unlucky with the dice when trying to be social and my talky-guy wound up engaging in half-assed physicality (clamping on to one guy's leg for dear life).  That's probably an artifact of the fact that the dice didn't go my way and it was a very abbreviated game.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

I was in that session with you, Rob. It was the very first one you did, right Malcolm?

The dice definitely favored my ninja-bitch slicer-dicer over your rather decent detective guy, and as it turned out, the whole thing turned into butchery. (I was the head-displayer that Malcolm mentioned above) We didn't have any dialogue with Hosanna to speak of, and in fact, I didn't even know, until just now, that she even had any personal/internal justification for what she was doing. We interacted primarily with the thugs.

Which isn't a bad thing - it's just the way events turned out given a couple whiffs at the beginning. The thugs were on you, and I was enjoying playing my character as having a serious lech for yours, just wholly unrecognized by herself ... she was getting a major love/commitment charge out of killing other people for your sake, without realizing it and masking it with "showing you up." It would have been a lot of fun to keep playing that conflict/potential up through more scenarios.

I'm fascinated with the more peaceful solutions. You must have played Hosanna very engagingly, very sincerely, for people not simply to kill her as a solution to the problem. What happened in the very beginnings of these demos, such that the characters, unlike ours, were not engaged in a rather desperate physical struggle from the get-go?

Best,
Ron

[Judd]

I played in the demo and it was solid.  Malcom, your enthusiasm is infectious and your descriptions of the neighborhood puts us right there.

The demo felt solid.

[Malcolm Craig]

I really loved the atmosphere and mood of the game.  The character names were great (Hosanna Nicely--I wish I had that kind of talent for names).  I also liked the switching of gender roles in the game I played, making the man the less physical and the woman the deadly one.

Critically, the game wound up feeling more an exercise in tactics than in Themes and stuff.  When it came down to it, I got unlucky with the dice when trying to be social and my talky-guy wound up engaging in half-assed physicality (clamping on to one guy's leg for dear life).  That's probably an artifact of the fact that the dice didn't go my way and it was a very abbreviated game.

One thing that I was thinking of in regard to your point about the game being something of a 'tactics exercise': does the use of a map of floorplan (in this case the map of the tenement) make the game less story and character driven and more tactics driven? I'm intrigued by this, as it goes back to a very productive discussion I had with Luke prior to heading out to GenCon, where the use of the map (or maps in general) did come up.

I think it's a fair point that some people did become focussed on the map, the positions of the NPCs and so forth.

I was in that session with you, Rob. It was the very first one you did, right Malcolm?

The dice definitely favored my ninja-bitch slicer-dicer over your rather decent detective guy, and as it turned out, the whole thing turned into butchery. (I was the head-displayer that Malcolm mentioned above) We didn't have any dialogue with Hosanna to speak of, and in fact, I didn't even know, until just now, that she even had any personal/internal justification for what she was doing. We interacted primarily with the thugs.

Which isn't a bad thing - it's just the way events turned out given a couple whiffs at the beginning. The thugs were on you, and I was enjoying playing my character as having a serious lech for yours, just wholly unrecognized by herself ... she was getting a major love/commitment charge out of killing other people for your sake, without realizing it and masking it with "showing you up." It would have been a lot of fun to keep playing that conflict/potential up through more scenarios.

I'm fascinated with the more peaceful solutions. You must have played Hosanna very engagingly, very sincerely, for people not simply to kill her as a solution to the problem. What happened in the very beginnings of these demos, such that the characters, unlike ours, were not engaged in a rather desperate physical struggle from the get-go?

The relationship between Kripitsch (the 'detective type guy') and Card (the 'ninja type woman') played out quite interestingly in several of the demos. It was something that a lot of players keyed into very quickly and actually made it part of the play experience, making use of this little character detail to bring more characterisation into a short space of time.

As for the more peaceful solutions, they generally played out with the players initially deciding on a more violent route (witnessing Nicely beating a child as they enter the room) but ending up with them being engaged by Nicely as she atttempted to make them aware of her position and I attempted to portray the fact that perhaps the situation was not as black and white as it first seemed. The general rule in these situations was that the more overtly cerebral characters engaged Nicely in conversation while some of the mor ephysically characters intimidated the thugs into submission and started releasing the children. One thing I would liked to have done, in retrospect, is make the thugs less generic and have more involvement in the situation, as opposed to just making them 'cannon fodder' and prototypical heavy bruisers from NPC Central Casting. Although, in the space of time, I'm not sure if this would have served any useful purpose or have acheived anything further within the context of the game.

I played in the demo and it was solid.  Malcom, your enthusiasm is infectious and your descriptions of the neighborhood puts us right there.

The demo felt solid.

I'm glad the descriptive element of the game worked well from your point of view, as thats a big part of the game for me.

Cheers
Malcolm

[Robert Bohl]

One thing that I was thinking of in regard to your point about the game being something of a 'tactics exercise': does the use of a map of floorplan (in this case the map of the tenement) make the game less story and character driven and more tactics driven? I'm intrigued by this, as it goes back to a very productive discussion I had with Luke prior to heading out to GenCon, where the use of the map (or maps in general) did come up.

I think it's a fair point that some people did become focussed on the map, the positions of the NPCs and so forth.

That's interesting.  That may have helped.  Part of it may have also been that it's inheritly an intrusion up the back alley.  For example, a social character might have gone in the front door and tried to reason with her.  But I can't be sure that my whole problem wasn't simply down to terrible dice rolls.

[thelostgm]

The demo that Paka and I ran through was, as he said, solid.  In it I played Card, and while her very combative nature seemed to pull me towards acts of violence.  I ended up using her more for intimidation while the detective (Paka) talked.

The thing that most impressed me with the demo was the characters and their connections / histories.  While they didn't all play out at the table, they were there, just below the surface.  Malcom's NPCs had a life to them that just inspired me.

Great demo.

[Malcolm Craig]

One thing that I was thinking of in regard to your point about the game being something of a 'tactics exercise': does the use of a map of floorplan (in this case the map of the tenement) make the game less story and character driven and more tactics driven? I'm intrigued by this, as it goes back to a very productive discussion I had with Luke prior to heading out to GenCon, where the use of the map (or maps in general) did come up.

I think it's a fair point that some people did become focussed on the map, the positions of the NPCs and so forth.

That's interesting.  That may have helped.  Part of it may have also been that it's inheritly an intrusion up the back alley.  For example, a social character might have gone in the front door and tried to reason with her.  But I can't be sure that my whole problem wasn't simply down to terrible dice rolls.

Well, I think you were particularly unlucky in that regard. In the first stages of planning, I had mooted giving the characters a choice of how to approach the situation but it was felt that, under pressure of time, this wasn't ideal for the environment of the Forge booth.

I think I may try again with an alternative opening that gives the players the choice of where to start the encounter. However, I think would add some time to the entire thing.

Cheers
Malcolm