[The Face of Angels] Playtest - Camera... lights... revolution!

[Victor Gijsbers]

We played our first session of Clinton's new game The Face of Angels yesterday. It rocked. It felt much more like playing a complete game than like playing a playtest - and I do not say that lightly. Of course, I do have quite a list of remarks, so I don't think the playtest was, as a playtest, useless. The rest of this post will have the following structure: first, I introduce the players; then, the characters; then, the events; then, our reflections.




Players

There were four of us, with Remko being the World. I don't know everybody's background very well, so my fellow players are invited to join in and correct me.

Remko van der Pluijm has been roleplaying for several years. He used to play World of Darkness and D&D, but in the last eight months or something has become infatuated with narrativistic indie-RPGs. I have played Dogs in the Vineyard, Polaris, The Mountain Witch, Sorcerer and Acts of Evil (playtest) with him, for a total of maybe ten sessions.

Paul Bakker has, I think, only played a few sessions of D&D and even a bit of Rolemaster(?). He has also played a four sessions game of My Life with Master with me, and one session of InSpectres.

Wilco Smits is a friend of Remko's, so I suppose that his background is roughly similar - but this is pure guesswork. (In fact, I'm not even sure about your surname Wilco! Make sure to speak up if it's wrong.)

I myself played some AD&D several years back, did some freeform after that, but played a lot of indie-games in the past 1.5 years. All the indie-games named above, and also Trollbabe, Universalis, Breaking the Ice and some others.

It is important to notice that all the players had been exposed to narrativistic techniques, and at least two of us (Remko and me) were well aware of the need to drive for conflicts. This may have been a factor that structured our play, which was structured like this: One of the players or, rarely, the World suggests a cool new conflict. Some free narration leads up to the situation. And then - the cards! Repeat as necessary. It would be good idea to make such a structure very clear to people who approach this game with different expectations of what an RPG looks like.

We graduated from secondary school in 1999, 2000 and 2001, so we chose 2000 as the starting year of the game. (And I put on some Greenday and The Offspring to get into the mood.)




Characters


Paul played Natan Gliservitsj, a Queen (of spades). He was into a somewhat extreme leftwing scene of squatters, animal liberators and so forth. (It says "militant environmental hippies" on his sheet.) His talent as a queen was to organise such militant groups of radicals. Relationships were Kenny O'Frannon, an Irish vegan guru who lived in his house (friend), Jenny McPhearson, a classmate whose father had a meat farm (foe) and Margaret Gliservitsj-Hadden, his rich grandmother who leads a pro-weapons lobby (nemesis).

Wilco played James Farran, a Jack (of hearts). His talent is poetry. He is a rather quiet boy who wants to become a great poet, creating deep emotions in people's hearts. His contacts were Janice Hoops, his English teacher (I think we said 'Dutch teacher', but this is illogical since we set the game in Seattle) who disliked his poetry and always tried to give him low marks (nemesis), Jenny McPhearson, the shy girl with whom he is secretly in love (friend) and Kenny O'Frannon, a militant vegan who has led protests against James' father's chicken farm (foe).

I played Archibald Wheatstalk, an Ace (of clubs) who is shunned by other people because of his unpredictable outbursts of extreme anger. This has left him very isolated. His relationships were Jenny McPhearson, the shy girl who is his only friend (friend), Bill Parker, the bully who is always provoking Archibald to get him into trouble (foe) and John Wheatstalk, his father, who believes that Archibald should be sent to a military academy to learn to curb his temper (nemesis).




Events

Normal type are events in the SIS. Italics are actions on the level of the players.


Prologue: The birth

The three of us, Jenny and some 'alto' friends of Natan were standing outside the school because the music they were playing inside was too commercial (Natan), stupid (James) and popular (Archibald). Outside, Natan's friends had put up their own music installation and were listening to punk rock. I immediately stated that I wanted a conflict with Wilco. My stakes were that Jenny would like my company more than his and would walk away with me. His conflicts were that she would like him more than me. We grabbed the cards, and Archibald made fun about how writing more poetry was useless, since there already was enough of it. James tried to make Archibald look like an uncultured boor, but it turned out that Archibald had read an enjoyed a lot of poetry, and things were going his way - until James provoked him and he became a bit angry at James. Jenny didn't like that at all, said something along the lines of "Men!" and started walking away with James - leaving Archibald bereft of his only friend. I mainly lost the conflict because the World helped Wilco when things became critical. Paul helped me a bit, but not enough.

Then Paul called for a conflict between him and the World, where his stakes were that Natan would make Jenny cry. The World's stakes were that Jenny would embarrass him before the eyes of his friends. I very gleefully helped Paul; Wilco chimed in on the side of the World, but without much effect. We also had a lot of fun thinking up things for Paul's character to say. "You are as fat as your father's pigs," Natan said to Jenny. James tried to defend her, but after some more insults Jenny walked away crying and Natan felt really good about himself.

Lights... camera... revolution! (This is the title of an album by Suicidal Tendencies. Which I've never listened to, actually.) The lights were first. Strange lights, faces out of nowhere, a confusing dream-like sequence... and we all emerged with super powers!

Natan: Spades; "Revolution". (Inciting masses and the like.)
James: Hearts; "Desire". (Like reading and changing people's desires.)
Archibald: Clubs; "Fire". (Well. Burning, melting, you know the works.)


Bridge

Remko got to go first, and told us how it was two years later. There had been a string of kidnappings, all targeted against people who graduated from our school in the year we graduated there. He also told that James had become the (very young) host of popular poetry program on national TV, and Natan was making quite a political stir in the Seattle area with his ecological proposals. Then I chimed in and told how my character had been sent to the marines by his father, and was now a special op doing missions within the US. He had just been sent with three of my colleagues to kidnap a politically dangerous individual, Natan Gliservitsj, as he was preparing for the live show of James' program where he would appear. I think that Paul and Wilco mainly added a few details to the background that Remko and I had put up. (But maybe my memory is failing me?) Someone said that Jenny was James' girlfriend, though it was an unstable relationship.


Act One: The discovery

Once again I was quick to request the first conflict. I wanted a conflict with Paul. My stakes were that I would kidnap him. His stakes were that the organisation I worked for was exposed to the media trying to kidnap him. I remember that I had some high diamonds, so I described some cool military guns I had brought along - something I'd been very unlikely to do otherwise. This is a clear example of how the cards system forces you to be creative and makes sure that your character cannot fall into a single pattern of action. Well done! We set the tricks to best of five, but unfortunately the World helped Paul and I lost the conflict.

So masked man entered the TV building and tried to kidnap Natan, but there were too many of his followers around and the alarm bells went ringing.

In the last trick, which Paul started I knew I couldn't win anymore - so I chose to narrate my own defeat with my last card. I gave him his stakes, but without putting me at too much of a disadvantage. We wondered whether this was all right. Who gets to narrate the final realisation of the stakes? We couldn't find anything in the book, so we decided that the player with the highest card in the last trick has final authority - even if it is not the winning card.

Archibald escaped unidentified, vanishing into the corridors of the big building, but two of his men ran the wrong way and suddenly entered the stage of James' show where the camera's were already running. Soon, news of an attempt to kidnap Natan Gliservitsj was on all the channels.

The next conflict was between Wilco and the World. As the show began and Natan started to talk about how farmers mistreated animals, James' father - a chicken farmer - stood up from the audience and began shouting. Wilco's stakes: not to be embarrassed on TV. The world's stakes: to have Wilco not stop his own father, and thus embarrass himself.

James tried to talk some sense into his father, how got pretty angry and climbed on the stage where he started hitting Natan. Natan, however, hit him even harder, with James desperately trying to stop them fighting. The security guards that came to help James halted when they heard explosions coming from another part of the building, and decided to investigate the explosions first. More explosions made half of the set fall down on top of the combatants - but...

Paul was helping Wilco against the World, even though it was kind of hard to see how hitting his father would save James any embarrassment. The explosions were me helping the world; my character may not have been present, but he was at least in the vicinity and could influence the scene indirectly. Right? We thought it was right. However, Wilco won the scene, so...

... luckily, the show wasn't really live, and in fact they weren't even taping at the moment. The TV-watchers never saw the embarrassing incident.

I then told Remko that I'd like to have the marines set me up as Natan's FBI bodyguard, assigned to him because of the attempted kidnapping. "We don't have to make a conflict out of it," I said. "Sure. They organise everything very quickly, and you're now clad in a black suit, have the right identity papers and can walk up to Natan." So we had a bit of free narration.

Natan accepted Archibald as his body guard, because he was more of a professional than his cronies. Then there were more explosions in the building, and Archibald got Natan, Jenny and James to move out of the building. There, Natan started to talk to all the reporters and onlookers, who were trying to find out what was happening. He spoke of the attempted kidnapping; he spoke of cruelty to animals and to people; he told people to revolt against the oppressors. Televisions everywhere suddenly turned on, automatically, all showing Natan preaching the revolution. In the end he told the people to go to the football stadium, where he would give his next speech.

This was a conflict between Paul and the World, but Wilco helped Paul by telling that meanwhile James' father was still trying to get at Natan while James tried to stop him. Paul's stakes were that people would be impressed by the injustice he spoke of; the World wanted the people to believe that all the explosions and stuff were created by left wing terrorists. In the end, in the fifth and last trick, Paul was winning. I then played a card to help the World and revealed Natan's secret: he was the criminal who had burned down the farm of James' father, killing two people. (The in-game event was that Archibald gave a briefcase with incriminating documents to a reporter.) So Paul could choose between saying the secret was true, in which case my card was a trump and the World would win the conflict; or saying that it was not true, in which case I could choose cards from his hand. He looked at me and said: "Dude, I have no cards left." And I was like: "Uhm... well... but it's cool if it's true, right?" "Yes, that's much cooler. So it's true." Thus the World won the conflict.

Everyone then drove to the stadium. Kenny O'Frannon drove the old bus, with Natan sitting next to him. Behind them were Jenny and Natan, and in the back Archibald. Who suddenly drew his gun, and told Kenny to turn left.

Conflict! My stakes were that I would kidnap Natan. Paul's stakes were something along the line of having me and the military exposed to the media as a repressing group. I used my character's Powers heavily in this scene, setting the cars of Natan's followers on fire and melting the bulletproof screen that protected Natan. I won.

The lot then drove to a farm that was actually a secret military base. There, all of them were to be imprisoned. It turned out that the army had been collecting all the graduates from our year, and Archibald had been framed into doing a job part of the objective of which was to imprison himself. Archibald got rather angry, and before they could put him in a cell with - of all people - his old foe Bill he started hitting the guards. James and Natan joined in, and after Archibald set fire to the general and several of his men (killing them), all the prisoners were free.

Interesting part of the conflict: Natan wanted to escape, but Paul wanted to help the World. So while James was diving for a gun dropped by one of the soldiers, Paul narrated Natan doing the same but clumsily knocking it out of reach of both of them.

However, Natan took this opportunity to have the other ex-prisoners lock up the soldier Archibald. This too was a conflict. Natan used his powers. We were using powers all the time, really. Hardly a trump-card has been played without being made into a trump. He set Bill to guard hm. (Gnh!) However, James and Jenny weren't too happy with that, and they tried to free Archibald after Natan had gone.

A big conflict ensued, halfway through which Natan cam back. Part of the fun was where I narrated how Archibald was slowly strangling Bill through the little window in his cell door, whispering, vary calmly, things like "You will die today, Billy." But the greatest fun, mechanical wise, was somewhere else. Halfway through the conflict, Wilco decided to reveal Natan's secret - something with Natan having blackmailed his teachers. Natan replied with an offhand: "That's not true.", and Wilco got to take some cards from Paul. "Hey, that's my super trump!", he said. "Hey, and you have mine!", Paul said. So Wilco took his supertrump and gave Paul his back in return - which he needed not have done. Just for fun. And it was fun:

Natan then used the most of his Powers, speaking over the intercom in such a commanding voice that all the soldiers on the farm became followers of his revolution. Archibald and James were overwhelmed and imprisoned.

Here we ended Act 1. We had just gone through the pile of cards, though the exiting conditions had been fulfilled almost from the start. Paul chose to rewrite his Power (as a transformation), because "Revolution" was a bit vague. He changed it to "Voice of Command".


Bridge

I got to go first, which was cool. I narrated that it was now six months later, and that Natan had control of all of Seattle - a city besieged by the US army as the US was contemplating whether to attack or deal with the problem in another way. (Stakes in the second chapter can involve the fate of cities, after all. And did.) Archibald had been kept imprisoned in the deepest dungeons of the farm, were he had been drugged continually while scientists experimented on his brain. Natan wanted to find the secret of Archibald's powers, so he could implant them into his followers. Wilco told how he and the other prisoners had been released after being imprisoned for two months - except for the few that had become crippled during the scientific tests performed on them. Those were mercifully killed by the new government, at Natan's orders. Paul told us a bit about the new autocratic government he had established, and his headquarters. Remko ended by telling us that James had become the leader of the resistance against the environmental dictatorship. (Remko later remarked how beautiful it was that James became the revolutionary at the moment that Natan changed his Power from "Revolution" to "Voice of command".) I also took Kenny O'Frannon as a new foe for my character.

[Victor Gijsbers]

Act 2: The Ascension

It's typical: I once again requested the first conflict. I wanted to escape from the farm, which was dubbed "Animal Farm" later. Remko told me that I was guarded by... uhm... Bill. Grh!

At seeing Bill, the fire of rage cleaned Archibald's mind from the drug-induced stupor. He then started to act as if he were in pain, hoping that Bill would open the chains that held him and bring him to the medical ward. Bill, however, just started laughing and hitting him - although he did unlock some of the chains so he could hit Archibald harder.

It seemed as if I were going to lose, but then Wilco did a brilliant trick. He narrated how he revealed my secret to someone else - the camera swung to another scene, as it were - the secret being that Archibald was the unidentified person who had killed Bill's sister in a car accident. I said it was true, and we justified Wilco's card being a trump that could help me by having me narrate thus:

"Bill," Archibald whispers. "You sister? That we me." And he grins stupidly.

At these words, Bill becomes mad with rage, hits Archibald everywhere but loses his caution - and is suddenly grabbed by Archibald's free arm and his neck snaps. Bill is dead. This was not part of the stakes, but the World agreed with it so we thought we could do it.

A bit later, Natan hears that something has gone wrong on Animal Farm, so he gets in his car and sets of to set things right. Will he get there in time to stop Archibald from escaping? Not if James gets his way, because when he sees Natan's car stopping in front of a traffic light, he immediately starts changing the desires of a truck driver nearby into driving his truck over the asshole dictator. By commanding the driver to stop, Natan makes sure there is no car crash. But now!

Wilco still had his super-trump, remember? He played it. His transformation was that from now on, people who look into his eyes see their greatest desire.

Amidst many special effects, he makes all the people around him desire to punish their leader for his many sins. A big, bloodthirsty crowd starts running towards Natan, and only the machinegun fire of his guards, killing dozens, keeps him safe. James escapes, and Natan is not in time to stop Archibald from escaping from Animal Farm.

At this point, we found out that Wilco was holding my super-trump. Well. I still had his secret, so we planned a conflict between the two of us with the explicit inter-player goal of having him give me my super-trump.

Archibald quickly finds his way to the leader of the resistance, James. (When he looks into James' eyes, he briefly gets a vision of Natan dying in a really painful way.) There, they have a small conflict about the leadership of the movement. "I am a skilled marine, you are a poet. I should lead." "You are a good fighter, but I know the hearts of men. I am the man for this position." "You know the hearts of men? You didn't even write your own poetry! You just found it on a cellar!" "What are you talking about? This is nonsense." "Oh, uh... sorry. You're right, you are the right man to lead the resistance." But hey, I had my super-trump!

Next, Natan finds out who did the things with the crowd - the special effects gave James pretty much away - and moves towards the house with soldiers and even a few tanks. First, Archibald manages to escape in James' car before a single shot is lost, and drives away from the city. Then the attack starts, but James manages to make the soldiers want to betray each other, and in the terrible confusion he too escapes, leaving the city followed by Natan and his man (and his hostage, Jenny, who had hid herself in James' cellar).

Here we exhausted the pile of cards for the first time. But hey, I still had a super-trump, and I asked the other players not to end the act. So I looked at the World, and then described:

Archibald makes his way to a secret military base that he know because he had to stop a terrorist attack on it once.

At which point I said: "I want a conflict. My stakes are that I nuke Seattle off the map. And we don't have to bother about your stakes or the number of tricks, because I'm going to play my super-trump right away."

Archibald sends fiery death of immense proportions throughout the entire complex. In the process his skins turns the black of burnt flesh, but everybody on the base is dead. He then makes his way to the control center, presses a few buttons - and mere minutes later, a mushroom cloud marks the place where Seattle once was. (Implicitely, all the relationships and such were too far away to die.)

Man, I nuked Seattle - and nobody could stop me.

End of Act 2.



Reflections

Clinton, anything I don't touch upon: ask me. Here are some things we wrote down or which strike me now.

• First, I have to say it was tremendous fun. We all felt that we had been playing, rather than playtesting, a game. It is great. Also, I never had so easy a time to remember everything that happened during the session. Never. That's good too.


• Of course, a final version of the game should contain a lot more flavour text than the present version does. It was your actual play report that gave us an idea of what kind of story we could play; the rules themselves don't currently do much to convey this.


• It strikes me that knowing popular culture is not as important in the game as the game text claims it to be. Both our game and your playtest quickly moved from 'college kids' to something else entirely - for a large part already in the first bridge. I don't think Dazed and confused is a relevant reference at all.


• We noticed that the World was pretty weak. Having no trumps is not balanced by having one extra card. This makes the position of the World perhaps a tad too passive, as he cannot often influence the story. Perhaps it would be good to give him a bit more power - maybe seven cards would do the trick, maybe something else.


• Related to the previous point: we think the game will be boring if the players stick together. Only by having conflicts against each other do you get real resistance, and real fun. I think you should actively encourage antagonism between the players in the text.


• We did not understand who got to narrate how the stakes of a conflict are fulfilled. Ofttimes, you win a conflict and thus your stakes, but it still open in what manner you get your stakes. Our solution worked pretty well: the person who played the highest card in the final trick has final authority. (Though others may narrate.)


• The exiting conditions are very easy to get to; at least in our game, they were generally fulfilled ten minutes after we started an act, or even before we started the act. I'm not sure this is a problem, but it is something you might want to be aware of.


• A rules question: When a queen is in a conflict, and plays card A; and he is helped by another player, who gives him a better card B, so that the final result is B + x; is the x in this formula 3, because the underlying card was played by the queen, or 1, because the queen isn't really helping someone else?


• The transformation are a bit underwhelming, we thought. I'm not sure if they are supposed to be relatively subtle, in which case it is cool; but if they are supposed to carry a lot of punch, they are too weak. They don't really allow you to punish your character - and that's what you want, right?


• I don't remember a situation in which we used a potential trump without using our powers and thus playing it as a trump. Is this a problem?


• The card system rules. I love the way you have to think out of the box in order to justify putting down those, say, diamonds. I also love how you know you're gonna kick ass in your next conflict, because you have great cards, and intentionally make the stakes very high.


• We only got super-trumps by trading them using secrets. If we hadn't done that, there wouldn't have been a super-trump played at all during this first half of the game. Are they supposed to be that rare? They are so cool... If you want to raise the chances of getting one, you could take the 2's to 6's out of the deck and put in the exit conditions that you have to go through the deck twice instead of once.


• People constantly help others in order to dump their bad cards. Sometimes this is very cool. Sometimes, it is far-fetched and takes too much time. It would be good to have the former and not have the latter. Wilco expressed the desire to have some other way of dumping bad cards, but the rest of us weren't sure about that.


• It would be cool to put in the rules that you can use a secret even if your character is nowhere near the scene in question. Simply allow the other player to reveal the secret himself, and thus let you help him with a card that becomes a trump. We sort of did this in Archibald's fight with Bill.


• I, personally, think secrets should not be disclosed at the start of the game.


• Sometimes, we let our narrative sensibilities override the stakes set down in the rules. "You can only affect small groups"... hm... but having all the televisions in the city (or perhaps the nation) jump on is cool, and it's not like it disrupts the story arc.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Dude, holy fuck, you nuked Seattle. I laughed until I cried when I read this post.

Question: was anyone pissed about this? Was anyone rankled by the fact you got to slap down that super-trump?

You're right about the frequency of super-trumps. We've had the same problem in our game in that they don't come up enough. My plan: if you want to, you can help someone with their super-trump, and it counts. We'll see if it works out.

A rules question: When a queen is in a conflict, and plays card A; and he is helped by another player, who gives him a better card B, so that the final result is B + x; is the x in this formula 3, because the underlying card was played by the queen, or 1, because the queen isn't really helping someone else?

It's B + 1. It only counts when the queen helps someone else.

I don't know what else to say! You guys hit the game head on, driving for conflicts, fighting each other, and sharing relationships. None of these things are currently explicit in the rules, so I better make them so!

You know what's funny? When I played, the World was responsible for final narration rights. And that's kind of retarded. I like what you did even more.

Are you guys going to finish the game and play it through?

[Victor Gijsbers]

Dude, holy fuck, you nuked Seattle. I laughed until I cried when I read this post.

Question: was anyone pissed about this? Was anyone rankled by the fact you got to slap down that super-trump?

No, absolutely not. I told them in the scene before that it would be 'convenient if they left Seattle', so they must have figured that something like this was coming. Also, it didn't really destroy anything they had invested in - Seattle was, after all, only background. Furthermore, it's not like the Super-trump is more powerful than what you can do in the Bridge!

You're right about the frequency of super-trumps. We've had the same problem in our game in that they don't come up enough. My plan: if you want to, you can help someone with their super-trump, and it counts. We'll see if it works out.

Cool idea. Do you want us to try that rule in our second session?

Are you guys going to finish the game and play it through?

Certainly! The date has been set for wednesday the 28th. Expect more mayhem. ;)

[Clinton R. Nixon]

You're right about the frequency of super-trumps. We've had the same problem in our game in that they don't come up enough. My plan: if you want to, you can help someone with their super-trump, and it counts. We'll see if it works out.

Cool idea. Do you want us to try that rule in our second session?

Sure thing. I like the fact that with this rule, you might be able to pull your super-trump more often, but only if others want to give you that chance.

[Roger]

Victor, I don't have a good sense of how much real-world time these sessions took.  Could you give us an idea?



Cheers,
Roger

[Victor Gijsbers]

Victor, I don't have a good sense of how much real-world time these sessions took.  Could you give us an idea?

Good point! I said to myself: don't forget to mention how long you played - so I forgot.

We started around 20:00 hours and stoppen at about 1:30, so that would be 5 and a half hours of play. We had a few bathroom breaks and open-the-bottle-of-port breaks, but these didn't take up much time.

[Remko]

Well, I guess Victor has pretty much told it all. I've playtested the game again with Wilco and a number of other players (who have played just D&D, WoD, a few tries of me with MLwM and a few poorly designed modifications on D&D), which was my original group.

It didn't come close to anything like this and this was clearly because all except me and Wilco weren't experienced with playing indie RPG's. It didn't bring up really good and juicy information about your game though, so I won't post about it unless you would like me to.

By the way Vic, I've also played Breaking the Ice with you ;).

[Victor Gijsbers]

It didn't come close to anything like this and this was clearly because all except me and Wilco weren't experienced with playing indie RPG's. It didn't bring up really good and juicy information about your game though, so I won't post about it unless you would like me to.

Sad to hear. I would like you to post about (in a different topic).

Also, please post here what you just posted on mandragon, about how it is to play the World.

[Remko]

Well, the thing I mentioned on Mandragon was that the lack of narration control for the World (especially after the Prologue), because, even when the characters have a lot of enemies (which means I could draw more cards), only a few suit cards are neccesary.

There isn't a real drawback against playing a trumpsuit card without using it that way (or at least no mechanical drawback), which means all those cards are impossible for me to win. And one draws statistically at least one trumpsuit card.

Playing the world means having significantly less power to change elements of the story.

(I'll talk about my other session another time, Victor).

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Well, the thing I mentioned on Mandragon was that the lack of narration control for the World (especially after the Prologue), because, even when the characters have a lot of enemies (which means I could draw more cards), only a few suit cards are neccesary.

This is interesting. The original rules was 5 cards + 1 per character player, but that seemed overwhelming against the two players I had. I beat them down often.

Perhaps 4 + 1 per character player would work better. In your game, that would have given you 7, which might have worked out better. Still - if people aren't helping each other, it just makes the World much more powerful, and I want to encourage fighting as much as helping. Hm. Perhaps just moving to 7 all around would be enough.

[Remko]

Well, the thing I mentioned on Mandragon was that the lack of narration control for the World (especially after the Prologue), because, even when the characters have a lot of enemies (which means I could draw more cards), only a few suit cards are neccesary.

This is interesting. The original rules was 5 cards + 1 per character player, but that seemed overwhelming against the two players I had. I beat them down often.

Perhaps 4 + 1 per character player would work better. In your game, that would have given you 7, which might have worked out better. Still - if people aren't helping each other, it just makes the World much more powerful, and I want to encourage fighting as much as helping. Hm. Perhaps just moving to 7 all around would be enough.

Hmm, strange. Perhaps my cards weren't just right. But my opponents had a lot of trumpsuit cards, which meant an overwelming power. I guess that the well-placed secrets created that situation: Often, the players gained (next to their supertrump) at least one or two extra trump cards. That really meant the uselessness for me as a World.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Hmm, strange. Perhaps my cards weren't just right. But my opponents had a lot of trumpsuit cards, which meant an overwelming power. I guess that the well-placed secrets created that situation: Often, the players gained (next to their supertrump) at least one or two extra trump cards. That really meant the uselessness for me as a World.

That makes sense, though. The randomness of it can result in very different acts. In Act 1 of my current game, one player didn't pull a single trump card the entire act. That's when I shifted the World back to 6, but I think 7 was a better sweet spot.

[Remko]

That makes sense, though. The randomness of it can result in very different acts. In Act 1 of my current game, one player didn't pull a single trump card the entire act. That's when I shifted the World back to 6, but I think 7 was a better sweet spot.

Ok. Wednesday next week, we'll play with the 7 cards for the World and see how it works out.

[Wilco Smits]

Next to the reflections posted by Victor, one thing that worries me is the fact that only two Secrets remain in play, both property of Paul. In my opinion Secrets were the coolest elements of gameplay, arguably tied on that spot with Supertrumps. I would surely enjoy more Secrets (either created at the initial Secret creation phase or 'discovered' in the 2nd to 3rd bridge [or any bridge for that matter]) as I think it would largely contribute to story development.