[The Mountain Witch] Newbie feedback

[JC]

Six of us played TMW for the first time last Sunday. There was some good and some bad.

But first, a little background. Although we are all experienced role-players, none of us had ever played any kind of narrativist game before. We had also never played any kind of indie game before, except for a (heavily modified) "Dread" one-shot a couple of years back. Some of us had also never gamed together. Five guys, one girl, all late-twenties. I GMed. Oh yeah, and most of us were familiar with the basics of the "samurai culture" and had previously played L5R.

Next, about my prep. I'm a prep-maniac, because I'm a little on the slow side. I need to have a clear picture in my head of the basics of the story before I can really "get into it" (improvise, come up with colorful descriptions, "feel" the NPCs, etc.). Maybe I'm just an anxious control-freak :). Anyway, if I can't think things over for at least a day or two, I usually don't enjoy myself (by the way, same goes for when I just play a PC).

I'd also never used bangs before, or at least not explicitly. So I went through character creation with my players by e-mail during the week. Once I got their background, I put together two or three bangs per PC. I had some trouble at first, but got some advice from you nice folks at the Forge ;). I also shamelessly scavenged all the TMW Actual Play write-ups I could find for ideas. In the end, I think most of my bangs were decent, even if some were probably a little cliché. I should also add that this process really clarified what makes an event or encounter interesting and relevant in an adventure. A nice tool!

Now, I won't go through the whole session in detail, but I will try and summarize the highs and lows.


First, the good stuff.

Building the adventure, together, through shared narration and Fates, was pretty cool. It was quite disorienting for everyone at first, but we all got the hang of it after a scene or two. I had to force myself to let the others narrate, but soon found out that even though I'd lose a little control, it allowed me to tap into the creativity of the players, with the extra benefit of increasing their participation. Telling the players they meet a forest spirit and then asking them if anyone wants to describe the creature definitely makes life easier. I'll definitely be using this approach again. And the dramatic impact of a player revealing the Fate of his character is just wonderful.

We ended up with a very intricate story. It wasn't always very coherent, since everyone was improvising left right and center (anyone else get that problem?), but it was rich with drama. Dead brothers, dead sons, dead daimyos, helpless babies, tragic love affairs, greedy sorcerers, cursed families, suicide, remorse ... and of course lots of outright treason in the last chapter :).

We all enjoyed the "game world" very much. Lots of cool katana moves, blind old monks, rigid honor, etc.

I was very open about the chapter structure and other meta-game elements, which is something we never do. The players reacted well to this.

The Witch is a great McGuffin, and was identified as such by one of the players.

I liked the way that a character is very simply defined, with just a zodiac sign, three abilities, a Fate and two background questions. The background questions in particular I will use again for other games.


And now the bad stuff.

It says right in the book that one session isn't enough, but I went for it anyway. I tried to cram four chapters into eight (effective) hours of play. As would be expected, I had to rush things along in the end, which resulted in a few forced scenes. I think it would have been alright though if we'd had a longer session (as in: all day), and had been familiar with the rules. And maybe three or four PCs would have been better than five for a one-shot.

The players also complained about the system. By dinnertime, I had a full-blown rebellion on my hands :). I thought the rules were OK myself, but they felt that they were too simple (simplistic even), and that conflicts were either too hard or too easy. For example, they disliked the fact that six tengu had six dice but a blizzard only had one. Also, I had trouble deciding if I wanted to play out fights round by round or have them decided in a single roll. Aiding was also sometimes difficult to grasp in group conflicts. This resulted in Trust points not having the desired impact on play, as players ended up having too many. I'm not sure how much of the blame for this lies with me (probably most of it), how much lies with the system,  and how much with the evil gamist tendencies of the players. The players suggested either using a more complex system, or not using a system at all (in either case, they liked the Trust mechanic – especially the colored tokens – and thought it could be incorporated).
Finally, with five players, I get the impression that group conflicts don't do much of anything, as you'll end up with a 5 or a 6 on each side of the conflict more often than not.
As a side-note: How does a conflict between a ronin with a bow and tengu work? What happens if the tengu wins? You can only use "You're ashamed of yourself for missing." so many times.

One of the characters had the "Revenge" Fate. I used a bang tailored for him in chapter 1, where a forest spirit told him the name of the man who had murdered his brother. That kind of made it difficult for him to introduce his Fate without confronting the character in question right away. Maybe I should have given him a clue, perhaps in the form of a sphinx-like enigma, instead of the name. Anyway, bad move on my part.

One thing that surprised me a little bit was that the PCs stuck together until the end, even though I piled on the suspicion inducing bangs. I asked the players about this afterwards, but they told me that they felt that they were going to need every man they had to bring the Witch down. Maybe I should have made those that chose to pursue their own agenda really pay a higher price. They did butcher each other once they reached the Witch though, so I guess it was alright in the end :).

Almost nobody bought narration. Also, almost nobody oriented narration to the advantage or disadvantage of someone else. I tried to remind people once or twice that they could do this, but to no avail. Maybe they thought they had to stick to neutral narration for some reason (NB: I don't mean neutral in the sense that it wasn't colorful). Maybe they didn't want to antagonize anyone. Or maybe some other reason ...

Coming up with good abilities was hard. Some players invented great stuff on their own, but other couldn't think of anything, or proposed things like "detect lies" or "terrorize people". In theses cases, I had a hard time giving them better ideas. Maybe we should have used only two abilities for this first session. Also, some abilities never got used in interesting ways, probably because of the lack of time.

The characters' stories were parallel most of the time, which was a pity. I should have concentrated on making their backgrounds mix up one way or another. To tell the truth, I was counting on the players to do this for me, through their Fates. Next time, I'll explicitly state that, although they should be careful not to deprotagonize each other's characters, it makes for a better story if they include the other PCs in their Fate narrations.


Finally, the other stuff.

I had chapter 2 take place outside the Fortress, and only had the characters enter it in chapter 3. This was because I had a hard time coming up with bangs that could take place inside the Fortress. I just could not come up with a good mental picture of the Fortress. I don't think this really was problematic, since the inter-character dynamics were in full gear by chapter 3, and I didn't really have to provide that much input. That and the fact that we didn't have much time left to play out chapter 3 in a lot of detail. Still, if anyone would like to contribute some description elements of the inside of the Fortress, these would be very much appreciated.


In the end, even though I seem very critical, I enjoyed the experience, and look forward to playing TMW again.


That's about it. Sorry for the disjointed writing. Comments, questions and advice are, of course, welcome.


JC

[Larry L.]

Hi JC!

Sounds like it was a really rockin' game!

We ended up with a very intricate story. It wasn't always very coherent, since everyone was improvising left right and center (anyone else get that problem?),

I think I know what you're talking about. In these newfangled player-driven games, where everyone is actively jamming together, I've noticed a certain sort of continual retconning of the narrative, where somebody comes up with some small detail about what just transpired that makes things that much cooler. It's small and unanimously mutual so it just occurs above the level of the system. If it's cool, it's cool, right?

This is in contrast to the sort of retcon that happens in the aftermath of crap games, where everyone sat around semi-bored for eight hours, a bunch of dice got rolled determining the outcomes of some attempted tasks, and it's later described by someone as the time "my character" did such-and-such something exciting. I actually once played in a game where the GM wrote up prose summaries of each tedious game session, often taking rather serious liberties with the intentions and statements of player characters, as though he were composing some grand fiction. (I guess the players' participation was incidental to the game or something.)

So I'm hoping you're talking about the first, good kind of "incoherent," eh? And not the icky latter kind of incoherent?



I am not awesome enough to sort out your thorny mechanics issues, but I hope someone else will field those.

A single solution to how to jerk entrenched gamers out of their bizarre assumptions about the "right" way to play RPGs is, in my opinion, something of a Holy Grail. As in, I'm always looking, but I halfway don't expect to find such a thing. If it's really bothering you, you'll have to go into specifics about your particular players.

[GreatWolf]

As a side-note: How does a conflict between a ronin with a bow and tengu work? What happens if the tengu wins? You can only use "You're ashamed of yourself for missing." so many times.

There is an art to the creative narration of failure in any RPG, one that is frequently overlooked, IMHO.

Someone (either Ron or the Scarlet Jester) has pointed out that a failure can mean one of two things:  a)  failure to complete the action or b) successful completion of the action that fails to have the desired effect.

Now, I've not played the Mountain Witch, so some of these suggestions might not be quite in genre, but here are some thoughts:

"Your arrow sticks in the tengu.  Despite his wound, he continues his advance against you."

"The tengu bats your arrow out of the air with its staff."

"Your arrow embeds itself in the tengu's staff.  It flaps in surprise and takes cover."

"The tengu hears the arrow whistling through the air and dives out of the way."

"The tengu makes a ritual gesture, and the arrow passes harmlessly through it."

Each of these narrations is a failure of the ronin to attack, but they are (I hope) all more interesting than "you miss".  Of course, the reason for the failure changes, but that's cool, too.  Now, rather than a failure meaning that the gamespace has not been affected (aka a "whiff"), now a failure still means that interesting narration occurs and the gamespace is still affected.  It's just not what the player was expecting.

You'll know it's working when you narrate a failure and someone at the table mutters, "Cool..."

[Eero Tuovinen]

I've not played TMW myself, but I've played lots of other games instead. Here's my take on the tengu-and-bow, based on reading the book once:

The key idea is that when you win a conflict, you can either narrate a fact or cause damage. Thus, when the tengu wins, it will obviously take the fact rather than cause damage, being that it's not near enough to do damage, right? So what happens is that in the first conflict the ronin with the bow has the goal of damaging the tengu, and the tengu has the goal of getting close enough to the ronin to attack. If ronin wins, tengu gets wounded, but if tengu wins, he gets close enough (use of terrain, magic, ronin's mistake, whatever) to actually wound the ronin in the next conflict. The principle is the same as in the example about a ronin breaking his leg: you can either choose to represent it as damage, or as a limiting fact (difficulty in running and climbing). Similarly, the tengu winning can either mean damage in the form of shame, or some tactical advantage for the tengu.

So that's the bow-and-tengu. Next, how to describe adventures in the fortress? I find this pretty trivial, because the fortress is the dungeon. Do you generally have trouble with coming up with dungeons in D&D or whatever? It's just the same. For actual color, I recommend Spirited Away. Have moving walls, strange creatures, gardens, magical items, traps, diabolical machinery, baths, bedrooms, concubines, servants, a kitchen scene, a library, the witch himself flitting in and out with mocking dialogue, high towers, open yards with bowmen on the walls, gates to be closed/opened/raced through, big curtains, a theatre, a shrine or two, shrine maidens (oh yeah), dungeons (of course) with chains and chained monsters, more traps (the kind that causes a change in scenery, not just dull D&D stuff), a granary that catches in fire, a smithy with big-ass weapons, an airship dock-yard (well, maybe not), soldiers running here and there, a shogun's emissary coming to guest at the castle, prisoners (including any important NPCs implied by the fates), twisting corridors that separate the ronin from one another, an alchemical laboratory, a grave-shed for servants, catacombs below the castle (a possible route inside, and a place to end up through traps), more gardens with huge bushes and a carefully crafted stream with stones, and so on.

How to get less wacky shared-narration: To get restrained and minimalistic story with less surprise, the main thing for the group to realize is that the guy telling the thing can censor himself. So if everybody's on board with the minimalistic aesthetic and more believable turns of events, then you'll get that. It is very common for stories to be on the wacky side when you first let players loose, but with time it should become possible to coordinate certain moods and stylistic conventions just by asking.

Group conflicts: It's a feature of the system that more participants means less extreme successes. You can control this through the self-sacrifice rules, as well as by splitting the conflict into smaller groups. The feature can be considered a method for controlling the size of the stakes in conflict, if you wish; if players think that they can handle higher stakes for their character, encourage them to challenge the leader of the opposite group into a duel, or simply suggest a daring tactic that allows them to split the enemy into smaller groups. One or two ronin can, for example, circle behind the enemy and engage their rear-guard while the rest keep the main group busy.

Conflict challenge: in TMW the GM has a high freedom in deciding how many dice to use. I think the book explicitly allows you to represent even a bigger group of creatures with only one die. They're just so weak creatures. Similarly, for a blizzard: give one die to it's freezing effects, one die to the high snow cover that makes movement difficult, one die to the evil magics in the wind, one die to the wolf-pack snapping at the group's heels, one die to the blinding effect of the flying snow, one die to the dark that makes it difficult to find the way, one die to the steepness of the mountain... furthermore, let the players narrate their tactics towards these dangers separately in the group conflict manner described above; one player might take on the cold in one-on-one duel, for instance, using his fire-making stones and lots of wood, for example. Two might go ahead and make way for the rest, while one turns back to deal with the wolves. Lots of challenge in a blizzard, if you want it to be. Just remember that decisions about the challenge level shouldn't be left for group discussion; the GM decides how big a deal he wants the blizzard to be mechanically. If the characters are fighting the blizzard and the tengu simultaneously, the blizzard well might only have one die.

Conflict complexity: one reason for players bitching about rules simplicity is that they're feeling that their character's uniqueness is not given due attention. In traditional games the GM can signal his favor or disfavor of player ideas by the size of the bonus or penalty they give to the roll; if such a player comes to a game where their ideas are ignored mechanically, they might naturally interpret it negatively. The solution is to make a point of emphasizing the narrative aspects of detail: all that detail about armaments, tactics, natural conditions and other things is important and perfectly viable inside the story, so it does matter. For instance: the reason your character doesn't get a bonus for his kewl hama-guchi sword is that all the characters just happen to have equally cool equipment. Equally cool however doesn't mean that it doesn't matter: no other character could slice a horse in half like yours does with his bitch-ass hama-guchi (what ever hama-gutchi happens to be). The same holds true for whatever other narrative details the players feel they should supply: they matter, insofar as the players are interested in the story that develops. If they feel that story only matters as far as it helps with the dice, then the game might not be their cup of tea.

Those're my answers. No guarantees. I'll try to play the game this week.

[timfire]

Eero, that was a great post! I think you explained things better than I probably would have! Now, let's see the issues you didn't cover...

It says right in the book that one session isn't enough, but I went for it anyway...  And maybe three or four PCs would have been better than five for a one-shot.

You're not the first, and I doubt you'll be the last. Live and learn. But did you actually play for 8 hours? That's actually a decent amount. Less players usually make for a shorter game, as things don't get as complicate/intricate. So I that sense less players might be helpful for a one-shot.

The players also complained about the system... I thought the rules were OK myself, but they felt that they were too simple (simplistic even), and that conflicts were either too hard or too easy...Finally, with five players, I get the impression that group conflicts don't do much of anything, as you'll end up with a 5 or a 6 on each side of the conflict more often than not.

How much did the players use Trust? If players never use Trust, things get difficult. If they always Trust, things get real easy. It's a feature of the system, it's suppose to be that way. In big group conflicts, I usually try and break the group up. I specifically have the monsters go after certain samurai. I usually use the opportunity to highlight trust-related issues between characters, either by sticking two people together that don't like each other, or by making one player choose between helping others. That helps break up some of the monotomy of big Conflicts. 6 dice vs 6 dice (especially without Trust) has potential to drag.

One of the characters had the "Revenge" Fate. I used a bang tailored for him in chapter 1, where a forest spirit told him the name of the man who had murdered his brother. That kind of made it difficult for him to introduce his Fate without confronting the character in question right away. Maybe I should have given him a clue, perhaps in the form of a sphinx-like enigma, instead of the name. Anyway, bad move on my part.

Yeah, you know this was bad. This type of bang, while it would work great in other games, is a little dangerous in tMW. Telling the player the name of man has serious potential to take away the player's power to define his own Fate. You need to be careful of stuff like that.

One thing that surprised me a little bit was that the PCs stuck together until the end, even though I piled on the suspicion inducing bangs.  I asked the players about this afterwards, but they told me that they felt that they were going to need every man they had to bring the Witch down. Maybe I should have made those that chose to pursue their own agenda really pay a higher price. They did butcher each other once they reached the Witch though, so I guess it was alright in the end :).

That's interesting. That might be a sign of your gamist tendencies. Stick together as long as you need to and then sprint for the prize? Maybe. Interesting.

Almost nobody bought narration. Also, almost nobody oriented narration to the advantage or disadvantage of someone else. I tried to remind people once or twice that they could do this, but to no avail. Maybe they thought they had to stick to neutral narration for some reason (NB: I don't mean neutral in the sense that it wasn't colorful). Maybe they didn't want to antagonize anyone. Or maybe some other reason ...

Don't know. Buying Narration tends to be an underused option, IME. It might also be related to the learning curve of the game. People don't realize the potential of buying narration at first.

The characters' stories were parallel most of the time, which was a pity. I should have concentrated on making their backgrounds mix up one way or another.

This works great when a couple people do it, but if everyone does, it will start feeling contrived.

I had chapter 2 take place outside the Fortress, and only had the characters enter it in chapter 3.

Don't sweat it. That's not a big deal.

I'm glad you had fun!

[JC]

I've not played TMW myself, but I've played lots of other games instead. Here's my take on the tengu-and-bow, based on reading the book once:

The key idea is that when you win a conflict, you can either narrate a fact or cause damage. Thus, when the tengu wins, it will obviously take the fact rather than cause damage, being that it's not near enough to do damage, right? So what happens is that in the first conflict the ronin with the bow has the goal of damaging the tengu, and the tengu has the goal of getting close enough to the ronin to attack. If ronin wins, tengu gets wounded, but if tengu wins, he gets close enough (use of terrain, magic, ronin's mistake, whatever) to actually wound the ronin in the next conflict. The principle is the same as in the example about a ronin breaking his leg: you can either choose to represent it as damage, or as a limiting fact (difficulty in running and climbing). Similarly, the tengu winning can either mean damage in the form of shame, or some tactical advantage for the tengu.

yep, good point

I'm writing this one down ;)

So that's the bow-and-tengu. Next, how to describe adventures in the fortress? I find this pretty trivial, because the fortress is the dungeon. Do you generally have trouble with coming up with dungeons in D&D or whatever? It's just the same. For actual color, I recommend Spirited Away. Have moving walls, strange creatures, gardens, magical items, traps, diabolical machinery, baths, bedrooms, concubines, servants, a kitchen scene, a library, the witch himself flitting in and out with mocking dialogue, high towers, open yards with bowmen on the walls, gates to be closed/opened/raced through, big curtains, a theatre, a shrine or two, shrine maidens (oh yeah), dungeons (of course) with chains and chained monsters, more traps (the kind that causes a change in scenery, not just dull D&D stuff), a granary that catches in fire, a smithy with big-ass weapons, an airship dock-yard (well, maybe not), soldiers running here and there, a shogun's emissary coming to guest at the castle, prisoners (including any important NPCs implied by the fates), twisting corridors that separate the ronin from one another, an alchemical laboratory, a grave-shed for servants, catacombs below the castle (a possible route inside, and a place to end up through traps), more gardens with huge bushes and a carefully crafted stream with stones, and so on.

writing this down as well ... I've never really played D&D (can't stand that game)

Conflict challenge: in TMW the GM has a high freedom in deciding how many dice to use. I think the book explicitly allows you to represent even a bigger group of creatures with only one die. They're just so weak creatures. Similarly, for a blizzard: give one die to it's freezing effects, one die to the high snow cover that makes movement difficult, one die to the evil magics in the wind, one die to the wolf-pack snapping at the group's heels, one die to the blinding effect of the flying snow, one die to the dark that makes it difficult to find the way, one die to the steepness of the mountain... furthermore, let the players narrate their tactics towards these dangers separately in the group conflict manner described above; one player might take on the cold in one-on-one duel, for instance, using his fire-making stones and lots of wood, for example. Two might go ahead and make way for the rest, while one turns back to deal with the wolves. Lots of challenge in a blizzard, if you want it to be. Just remember that decisions about the challenge level shouldn't be left for group discussion; the GM decides how big a deal he wants the blizzard to be mechanically. If the characters are fighting the blizzard and the tengu simultaneously, the blizzard well might only have one die.

I must have missed that in the book

this changes things quite a bit


thanks !

JC

[Tim Alexander]

Hey Folks,

Don't know. Buying Narration tends to be an underused option, IME. It might also be related to the learning curve of the game. People don't realize the potential of buying narration at first.

I would guess that the neutral narrations played into this as well, or at least I've seen similar things in Dust Devils with the buy narration mechanic. When the other players see no risk in someone else narrating they have much less incentive to buy the narration.

-Tim

[JC]

The players also complained about the system... I thought the rules were OK myself, but they felt that they were too simple (simplistic even), and that conflicts were either too hard or too easy...Finally, with five players, I get the impression that group conflicts don't do much of anything, as you'll end up with a 5 or a 6 on each side of the conflict more often than not.

How much did the players use Trust? If players never use Trust, things get difficult. If they always Trust, things get real easy. It's a feature of the system, it's suppose to be that way. In big group conflicts, I usually try and break the group up. I specifically have the monsters go after certain samurai. I usually use the opportunity to highlight trust-related issues between characters, either by sticking two people together that don't like each other, or by making one player choose between helping others. That helps break up some of the monotomy of big Conflicts. 6 dice vs 6 dice (especially without Trust) has potential to drag.

I'll have to give "breaking up the party" more thought next time I prep

thanks for all the input !


JC

[Nev the Deranged]

Conflict complexity: one reason for players bitching about rules simplicity is that they're feeling that their character's uniqueness is not given due attention. In traditional games the GM can signal his favor or disfavor of player ideas by the size of the bonus or penalty they give to the roll; if such a player comes to a game where their ideas are ignored mechanically, they might naturally interpret it negatively. The solution is to make a point of emphasizing the narrative aspects of detail: all that detail about armaments, tactics, natural conditions and other things is important and perfectly viable inside the story, so it does matter. For instance: the reason your character doesn't get a bonus for his kewl hama-guchi sword is that all the characters just happen to have equally cool equipment. Equally cool however doesn't mean that it doesn't matter: no other character could slice a horse in half like yours does with his bitch-ass hama-guchi (what ever hama-gutchi happens to be). The same holds true for whatever other narrative details the players feel they should supply: they matter, insofar as the players are interested in the story that develops. If they feel that story only matters as far as it helps with the dice, then the game might not be their cup of tea.

That is an excellent point, which actually answers a lot of issues I hadn't even thought about until you brought it up. Thanks.

Also, for anyone who cares, the horse-cutting-in-half sword can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanbatou in both it's fantastic and real-life variants.
Here http://www1.kamakuranet.ne.jp/sankaido/zanbatou1.htm is a picture of one version.