[apocalypse girl] Unofficial Ronnies feedback

[Sydney Freedberg]

Important afterthought: What the Grail itself does is "hold fluid." What people feel about the Grail is the powerful factor.

[Unco Lober]

Remember also that even though a character is killed, their personality traits may still affect the story: maybe the terrible consequences of someone's Treachery are not apparent until long after their death, or the memory of their Love gives their friends the strength to go on. (There's a great dream sequence in the last act of Shakespeare's Richard III that shows such effects at work).

As I understand, You've already got Charges for that! :)

[Sydney Freedberg]

True; and there may be redundancy in the current system (as well as gaping holes).

Remember, though, that Charges decay with use, while Engines replenish themselves perpetually.

In Macbeth, when the consequences of Macbeth's treachery come back to bedevil him in the final battle, that's probably best modeled by a bunch of Charges created by the treacheries now being used by Macbeth's opponents.

In Spider-Man, when Peter Parker keeps on wrestling with guilt over Uncle Ben's death and remembering Uncle Ben's injunction that "with great power comes great responsibility," over and over without it ever letting up, that's probably best modeled by the Engine "I am Uncle Ben" having been eliminated from the game but the Engines "Uncle Ben's love for me" and "Uncle Ben's moral compass" still being in play.

I'm tremendously gratified by your interest; keep the questions and comments coming. And if you do indeed run the first-ever playtest, please allow me to put your name in the Acknowledgments.

[Unco Lober]

As I see it, "Uncle Ben's love for me" have been the new Engine spawned by the player using the Charges that were released by the destruction of Uncle Ben Engine.
-

And then, a small play-test report.

A shame that we couldn't play the full game - we didn't manage the time. Indeed, isn't that hard to get playtime in the middle of working Monday. But still, I've got things to say, though the full "upkeep" and several rounds took about an hour and a half, and that was just the time we got. A full game is scheduled on nearest Wednesday, btw.

Believe it or not, but mechanics as they were WORKED just fine. It was somewhat difficult to introduce the rules to one player, who wasn't adept in Englist too much, but having quite studied the rules before, I and another player did that in-game with quite enough success. Mind you, concept was easy captured in about 5 minutes of two examples, but not the rules. Though, I believe this can easily be solved if the rules-text went more popularly stated. Still, rules seem to have worked OK and that's it.

Then, we encountered something that needed more light: when and how the Gun's Meaning should be finally settled. We also discussed the use of the Gun, but haven't actually used it in the game (because we played only several rounds to see if the overall thing works or not at all as the main purpose). Ideas were, the Guns recoil is somewhat exaggerated. One idea was: if one uses a gun, he can use up to all of it's uses, and then the highest roll arbitres the recoil threshold. Eg. one shoots 4, 5, 2, 1 and a 3 - then, Engines and Cores with Aspects of 6+ lose 1 from those aspects. Thus, only Cores and the most outstanding of Engines are going to get damaged hard with the recoil.
Also a gun related problem was: a World player tried to introduce pestilence as an Engine. We agreed, that it more looks like a Gun. We also thought of a way of defining a gun, a simple and effective one: the Gun's Meaning is recorded on a card and is free to use when there comes to mind such a meaning that all players would agree to. I got to play the Girl, and both me and the Dragon player agreed that such a Gun can be quite handy to everyone.

Now then, there was another thought. Whether an Engine can use it's dice upon itself] or not. Well. Probably this is it (and maybe not): none except the Cores can throw it's dice upon itself for any purpose.

Another point was that its too easy, having 5-power cores from the start, to steal young engines. OK, it isn't hard to steal back, too, but that could possibly lead to Engine changing owners every turn, with it's Aspects regularly increased, until it's owner establishes it at last as a too powerful Engine to be stolen (because of its now high Loyalty), and that one owner only luck predicts - it probably won't be the one who created the Engine. But see the following.

Rules seem to mention no instant use of free dice in the other player's turns. Well, wouldn't that be nice if it was possible to keep dice until the beginning of your next turn and loose it only then. In that way if one wants, for example, to counter another's Conflict Dice on their Engines, they could do that in the way of those same mechanics, with which one can destroy x-1 sum of sides with the roll of "x".
Eg. One uses two dice to capture Another's 1 loyalty Engine. OK then, the Another had a die in store. The One rolls 1 and 4, and the Other rolls 5. Good for him: he may eliminate the 4 with his instant roll, and prolong his control over the disputed Engine.


To sum it up, mechanics seemed to be just OK, though not yet complete. But ideas of their completion were being born absolutely brain-pain free, meaning good for the future. What was really agreed when time ran out and we had to stop, is that the game is nice and we should definitely try and play a full tour.
I am also thinking of a game of AG with some non-roleplayers. I'm interested to see if they'll work for them, too, and signs are it would.

P.S. Gods, forgive my bad English.

[Unco Lober]

Aw, forgot a thing. Price for creating new Engines (which is one die) seems to be too low, and by too low I really meant it. Probably it should cost, liek, 3 dice to spawn an Engine, and 5 dice to spawn a character-Engine. Another way is limiting the number of Engines a player may have by, say, his Core's Power, or some abstract number, say 5.
Just thoughts..

[Sydney Freedberg]

Unco, thanks very much. I've posted my thoughts on the specific issues raised in your playtesting (the first apocalypse girl games ever, as far as I know) over in your Actual Play thread, here (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=17702.0).

Anyone with more general responses to my questions a couple of posts back, please feel free to keep posting in this thread. Anyone with specific thoughts on Unco's playtest, let's post those over in that thread.

[Ramidel]

Hello, de-lurking from occasional lackadaisical readings to give advice...

You can use a Gun die without risk to create an engine. Is this intentional or a bug? (We played it as a bug after I did exactly that on the first turn.)

[Sydney Freedberg]

Good catch! That's a bug -- though I'm not sure how to fix it except by saying "you can never use the Gun to create or strengthen an Engine, only to weaken one," and that's way too limiting: What if I want to create an Engine like "Atmosphere of Random Violence" or "You're afraid of me!"

Of course, there's never a use of a Gun die that is "without risk"....

[Sydney Freedberg]

P.S. Where are my manners?! B.J., welcome to the Forge, and I'm gratified my game got you to unlurk.

So you guys played some apocalypse girl? That's great. If you'd like to post in the Actual Play forum to report on how it went and what you found good, bad, or ugly, it'd be a big help to me as I revise the game.

[Ramidel]

My fix would be: "If you use a gun die to create an Engine, roll it for ricochet purposes." Normally, you don't roll a Create Engine die.

[Ramidel]

P.S. Thank you for the welcome! Glad to be of help, and will post my first-game results.

[Sydney Freedberg]

My fix would be: "If you use a gun die to create an Engine, roll it for ricochet purposes." Normally, you don't roll a Create Engine die.

Aha. That's so subtle it had escaped me, and I wrote these rules. Very, very good catch.

[Roger]

This post contains my own thoughts on the game, as well as replies to some issues mentioned in this thread and also the Actual Play thread.

I like it.  Lots.  Reminds me of Illuminati (the card game) and its close offspring, Illuminati: New World Order.  Perhaps because of this, I imagine most of the Engines in play not to be Joe Schmo, local plebe, but, say, the Pope, the Pentagon, Bjorne the Purple Dinosaur, etc etc.

Also, whenever I read about the Gun and its random damage, I can't help but think "Oh man, I shot Marvin in the face."  Which is great.

Perhaps this is implicit, but I think it would help to explicitly give Engines the additional attribute of Name, in addition to Meaning, Power, and Loyalty.  All three of the latter can change in play, but (as far as I can tell) it's still the same entity.  I'd like that continuity to be more explicit.  Alternatively, or additionally, instead of changing Meaning, the rule could be that players can only add to the Meaning.  That might be a fun sort of way to show the Engine getting progressively more messed up as the various powers jerk it around.

For whatever it's worth, I thought the "only roll one die per turn" mechanic was clear enough.  I hear that's up for a change anyway, but I thought I'd mention it.

I was a little confused by Conflict Piles.  I first thought they were literally piles: the players stacked up dice, one atop the other, until their little tower of dice reached some qualifying height.  I know that isn't the case now, so maybe that literal reading was just a personal quirk.

I wasn't exactly sure what you meant in the end game with the comparison of "all the dice a player has."  I'm guessing you mean all the dice in all Ready Piles under their control, but I'm still not sure.

The Gun.  Ah, that lovely shiny Gun.  I think it's perfectly sensible to not let the Gun create any new Engines, but the other solutions are also good.

As far as fallout and random damage... my inclination would be to let the player or players who were not involved in the conflict to pick a target to damage.  By involved, I mean having Conflict Piles or control of the Engine that was targetted by the Gun.  That might turn out to be too fiddly, but my hunch is it would be kinda fun.  Also give a tactical reason to intentionally not get into fights over particular Engines.


Cheers,
Roger

[Frank T]

The game sounds wicked cool. Unfortunately, I find myself unable to extract from the document how to actually play it. That's probably because I haven't read Capes (yet). I'm looking very forward to the next version, which hopefully includes some examples. Keep up the good work!

- Frank

[Sydney Freedberg]

Thanks, Frank.

I find myself unable to extract from the document how to actually play it.

Aha. Now let me ask you exactly what aspect of "how to actually play" eluded you, because there are significant distinctions that will make a difference to me as I revise:

1) "The rules were simply unclear." (understandable, given it's a first, hasty draft)
2) "The rules were clear as far as they went, but I need examples to see how the pieces fit together in actual play." (again, understandable, given zero examples in the draft)
3) "The rules were clear enough, but I don't understand what the imaginary characters are doing in the fictional world" (i.e. Shared Imagined Space, ugly term that it is)
4) "I understand the rules, and I understand the fiction, but I don't understand how these mechanics can possibly produce this kind of story." (This was Ben's problem at the start of this thread, and a very common one with Capes itself -- this is a model of RPG where the mechanics often precede the fiction rather than having players imagine the fiction and then translate it into mechanics as needed for resolution).