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

[Victor Gijsbers]

The second session

We played the second and final session of this game some 10 days ago, using the two changes to the rules mentioned above (the World gets seven cards, players can help others with that player's supertrump). First, my assessment of these changes.

Assessment of rules changes

Giving the World seven cards is good. It makes him more of a presence in the game.

Allowing all players to play the supertrump to help someone else may be overdoing things a bit. We, and I guess we will be typical in this respect, had the unspoken convention that you'd always do this. The result of this is that every character gets his supertrump in every act, and that is just too much in my opinion. Maybe a good compromise between the original and the new rules is that only the World can help someone out with their supertrump - that about doubles the chance that you'll get to play your supertrump in an Act, without making it a certainty.


Assorted remarks

I also have a problem with supertrumps in Act 4. I had mine in my hand, and I knew that therefore I could get anything at all - and that just seemed to be too much power. I could have killed any of my fellow player's characters, and nobody would have been able to stop me. Doing so would have sucked though. Now, this may just be me, but I like driving play as hard as the rules will allow, pushing against the boundaries of my narrative power; but here, my power was too big and too unrestrained, because I could simply put one of the other players out of the game without them being able to do anything to stop that. That made me uncomfortable and more cautious than I would otherwise have been; in fact, I think I didn't push the stakes as I should have, in Act 4, and somewhat hurt the game with that. So in my opinion, there should be some mechanism that ensures that you can't use your supertrump to decide the final fate of the story alone.


It doesn't say so in the rules, I think, but we played a 'bridge' act at the end as an epilogue. This worked very well, and I recommend adding it to the rules.


So what happened?

I'll be much more concise than last time. Archibald fled the US after his destruction of Seattle, and was given asylum by Saddam Hussein who could use such a powerful agent in his exploits against the US. Natan continued his political career, trying to become president of the US as his grandmother, a powerful weapons lobbyist, was trying to oppose him. James, most of his Resistance destroyed in the destruction of Seattle, also tried to bring Natan down.

The third act started out by Natan having a TV-debate, where he was verbally beating the crap out of his grandmother as suddenly (I used a trump) there was a special news flash which showed the US embassy in Baghdad exploding in flames and Saddam Hussein declaring war on the US. Natan used this to his own advantage, and became ever more popular in the polls.

The rest of the third act basically consisted of Archibald, James and Jenny trying to meet up with Natan's grandmother in order to plan an assassination of Natan. We never met there, unfortunately, as several black cars with machine-gun wielding guys almost killed us, later assisted by a helicopter and - alas - Natan himself. The act ended with Archibald killing his coward driver, taking the seat himself and pressing down the gas as far as he could while steering the car right at Natan...


In the bridge, it was told how we missed Natan, but managed to escape to an old atomic bunker deep underground. Even as the Arab armies were invading the US, Natan tried to have us killed by a regiment of US soldiers - they failed, and Natan understood he had to go down himself.

In act four, he first killed Jenny, then found Archibald. Archibald reminded Natan of their common childhood, and asked, in tears: "What have we become? We should destroy ourselves, before we destroy the world." As an illustration of the evil of their powers, he showed a live cam shot of Boston, then, with a single gesture, set the entire city aflame. This was a supertrump, and I changed his Power from spades / 'fire' to hearts / 'memory'.

Natan was unimpressed, and he persuaded James that together they could bring paradie on earth. In the meantime, Iraqi soldiers were entering the complex, hoping to capture the three superheroes with special weapons that could disable their powers. I started a conflict with the stakes "The soldiers will come too late", leaving ambiguous what that meant, and we narrated how Archibald tried to show the others the memories of their common childhood and remind them of what they once were.

He failed, and lost his powers in the process. He wanted to die then, but the other two took him away and escaped the complex. Then, using both their supertrumps, they managed to take over the entire world and brought Heaven on earth.


Literally, it turned out. I used my episode to strongly imply that our coming had been the Apocalypse and the political utopia of Natan and James was the Kingdom Come. The Face of Angels, indeed! But I also told how everybody was happy except my character, who tried to incite revolt in the meek populace, without effect. In the end, he died and swallowed up by Hell.

The other characters did not fare better. Wilco told how James found out that the people he interacted with always lost their happiness and became restive, until he restored it for them. In the end, he saw that his place was not here, that he could not live in his own paradise, and he killed himself. Paul narrated how Natan, also disenchanted by the reality of Heaven, spent eternity trying to persuade people that they should think for themselves - but to no avail.

In the end, then, we had brought Heaven of Earth - but in the process, we ourselves had been excluded from bliss.



A problem

As I write this down, I think: cool. And it was cool, but not, in my opinion, nearly as cool as the first session. Most of the thematic goodness in this second session came from the epilogues, and that was just us jumping onto a cool idea without any help from the system. Act three in particular was mostly 'going through the motions', and act four, although it had its moments, felt a little flat too.

I'm not sure the other players agree with me here, but I'll ask them to chime in.

And I think I know the reason for this problem.

See, you make a character that has certain problems - at the very least, he has an enemy or nemesis, which gives some tension to his situation. Then, you give him superpowers, and suddenly two questions arise: How is he going to cope with these powers? And how are they going to influence the problems created during character creation? These two questions are enough to kick the story off, get it up to steam and keep it moving for, oh, two acts.

But the situations change, often radically, foes and nemeses easily get out of sight (who cared about Kenny O'Frannon anymore in the third act? Archibald killed him to hurt Natan, and I forgot to mention that in the above) and there is nothing that keeps the story going. Escalating stakes and the exiting conditions are simply not enough.

So, in the second act Archibald was all about taking revenge on Natan. I even nuked Seattle to do that! Nothing could top that - blowing up a city or a world is not a more powerful statement of the same premise, it is merely a further exaggeration of it. But I didn't have anything else to drive Archibald, so I kept pushing the revenge theme... and it didn't really work. In act four I substituted a 'we must stop ourselves' theme for the revenge theme, but it was dramatically unmotivated and, what is worse, not provoked by the system in any way. It was just me trying to stave off boredom by changing the drive of my character, not the system helping me to keep the story going.

What I'm saying, then, is that the system as it stands kicks the story off nicely enough, but doesn't give you the mechanics you need to keep it running. Escalating the stakes doesn't really do anything in that regard, since 'the fate of a nation' or 'the fate of the world' is - storywise - just 'the fate of a city' writ in large letters. We can't identify with such entities anymore, they're all just big. And the exit conditions don't do much either - I think we had already fulfilled those of act 3 when we started the act, and even if we hadn't, they don't actually guarantee steam to keep the dramatic engine running.

So I think the system needs something more, something extra, something that will keep the tale progressing. Perhaps something like the 'issue' of PTA, and making it part of the exit conditions of each act that for every character there must have been a conflict where at least one of the sides had as stakes that this issue were to be changed into something else. That's just the first thing that came to my mind, though, not something I actually thought through.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Victor,

One thing I noticed here - did people take new relationships during the game? I didn't see any. I think connections with new people might have helped drive the later acts.

On killing characters: both sides have to agree to the stakes before a conflict starts. If they don't, there's no conflict.

[Victor Gijsbers]

One thing I noticed here - did people take new relationships during the game? I didn't see any. I think connections with new people might have helped drive the later acts.

I took Saddam Hussein as a mentor, but it was just too silly yo have him actually turn up. I think there was one other relationship added, but I can't remember which at the moment.

However, there were no important NPCs we didn't already have as relationships. This was mostly due, I suppose, to the fact that the first two acts were very much player character versus player character - no NPCs were needed to drive the game. That also meant that no interesting NPCs got added to the story.

On killing characters: both sides have to agree to the stakes before a conflict starts. If they don't, there's no conflict.

What - really? I can say "My stakes are that your character dies" and then you go "No way, think up something else"? If that is so, we completely missed it. That gives effective veto power to all the players, at least as far as they are the ones who get to set the stakes!

How does that work, by the way? Can I start a conflict with the World where my stakes include things happening to someone else's character? Such phrases as "there are no restrictions on the stakes" do suggest that this is the case.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

On killing characters: both sides have to agree to the stakes before a conflict starts. If they don't, there's no conflict.

What - really? I can say "My stakes are that your character dies" and then you go "No way, think up something else"? If that is so, we completely missed it. That gives effective veto power to all the players, at least as far as they are the ones who get to set the stakes!

How does that work, by the way? Can I start a conflict with the World where my stakes include things happening to someone else's character? Such phrases as "there are no restrictions on the stakes" do suggest that this is the case.

Yeah, really. It's not so weird or bizarre - only because traditional RPG design is so defensive is this considered weird. Think about poker - for stuff, not money. One guy bets his car, and the other guy bets his watch. If the first guy thinks the watch is worth the car, ok, he might go for it. But he could always say no way. In The Face of Angels, it works similarly. You can always say, "Ok, if I win, I want you to die." But if I say, "No way," we're not going to have that conflict or scene.

With that said, this is still in playtest! Like in early alpha playtest, where it should be broken. So, maybe it is.

There's nothing explicit about this in the rules, but everyone who has a character or relationship involved in a scene should get a veto.

[Mark Causey]

One guy bets his car, and the other guy bets his watch. If the first guy thinks the watch is worth the car, ok, he might go for it. But he could always say no way. In The Face of Angels, it works similarly. You can always say, "Ok, if I win, I want you to die." But if I say, "No way," we're not going to have that conflict or scene.

In the poker bet above, with the two betting their car and watch, the guy betting his car might also go, "The watch is almost enough. Give me that and the woman you walked in with tonight, and we'll call this and see who wins." And the other desperate man might just accept his offer.

So, if you want to kill the character, there might be further negotiation in the stakes if the player would be okay with that if something else were addendumed. To wit:

A: "If I win, I kill your character with my soul wrenching power."
B: "Hmm, that's bold. How about if you win, you kill my character, but some shred of my soul gets absorbed by you, and you have to deal with the guilt of knowing me that intimately your entire life."
A: "Freaky, but okay!"
B: "And if I win, your soul wrench power backfires, and your soul separates from your body, killing you."
A: "Practice what you preach! If you win, my soul separates from my body, and so does the entire crowd here in Times Square on New Year's Eve!"
B: "No, that won't work. Maybe we should go back to square one."

And so on, until all matters of the stakes are resolved.

[Paul Bakker]

Hi,

As a player at the same session (Paul/Natan) I must concur with Victor: Natan's megalomania was extremely cool to play the first session, during the second session it was still quite ok, but a second 'motive' was missing, more and more as the session progressed. As a player I was less conscious of this during the play itself, but it felt like the character became a bit flat.

With superpowers, the goals of a character will become enormous as well, and that create limits: normal people can imagine only so much over-the-top goals for their character (like conquering the world). Perhaps characters should have 'weaknesses' (world uses this color as a trump/cards of this color are worth 4 points less (a 10 of spades played by a player with a weakness in this suit counts as a 6)). Perhaps it's just me or us, but I'd like the characters, even with all these superpowers, to have difficulty dealing with some daily life problems (like Spiderman or some other bad examples).

In the end I let Natans motive shift slightly: he became honestly convinced that they could make the world a better place. As he picked up a new superpower after I played my supertrump (queen of dimes/'telepathy'), he could influence people over large distances, but also received feedback that he could not ignore (he didn't really listen/take serious the protests of others before).
In the epilogue, when 'heaven' on earth was created, and Natan and James were 'gods', he heard so many prayers of people directed to him, that he became insane: with his powers he could still not do much about these problems, and this problems that came to him in prayers made him see that the world was in fact not really a better place. This lost him his powers.
More than a bit crazy, he tried to convince people that this was not the way, but failed, and died of old age in mental agony.

What I would also have liked in our session (but opinions seemed to vary upon that) that there would slowly be a 'storyline' about how the superpowers came into the world. We gave it something of an apocalypse theme, but it would be nice if there was some mysterious force that the players and characters slowly discover more about, and a bigger plan that this force (God for example, or the aliens/angels/unicorns that gave the character the powers) has. This might bring limits for the creativity though, which should of course be avoided.

And Victor...
Oh my God! You killed Kenny! :)

[Victor Gijsbers]

Yeah, really. It's not so weird or bizarre - only because traditional RPG design is so defensive is this considered weird.

No, it's not weird as such, the weird thing is that this would have really changed the way we played the game. You should really make this abundantly clear in the text, because it is so different from Dogs, TSoY, Polaris, Trollbabe and so forth where stakes are simply declared. (I'm not sure I get what you say about traditional RPG design being defensive; it seems to me that negotiating stakes is more 'defensive' than declaring them?)

So, what happens when I want to do A, and the other guys just tell me that they don't want to start a conflict about it? I don't get A? Because that kind of veto power could be quite disrupting. "No, you can't dismantle the bomb in time to save the village, I refuse to have a conflict about it!" "Yeah? Yeah? Well don't you try telling that the village blows up, because I don't want that and will also refuse to have a conflict about it. Ha!" "I'm the World and I'm going to tell what I damn well like and I don't even have to start a conflict about it; the village is mine for the blowing up!"

Uh, well. You see what I mean. At the very least I think that the text should make it very, very clear who gets to have veto power over what.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

With superpowers, the goals of a character will become enormous as well, and that create limits: normal people can imagine only so much over-the-top goals for their character (like conquering the world). Perhaps characters should have 'weaknesses' (world uses this color as a trump/cards of this color are worth 4 points less (a 10 of spades played by a player with a weakness in this suit counts as a 6)). Perhaps it's just me or us, but I'd like the characters, even with all these superpowers, to have difficulty dealing with some daily life problems (like Spiderman or some other bad examples).

...

What I would also have liked in our session (but opinions seemed to vary upon that) that there would slowly be a 'storyline' about how the superpowers came into the world.

Paul,

You nailed two things that should happen right there. As for the first, I'm honestly baffled why that didn't come up - just because you can set stakes as high as blowing up cities doesn't mean ordinary people can't still be a problem. In three out of the four arenas, you can still lose easily to the World's characters.

As for the second, I left any rules about that out on purpose so that you'd have to figure it out for yourself - but was that a good decision? I'm looking for feedback on whether there's enough to really work for you here.

[Victor Gijsbers]

You nailed two things that should happen right there. As for the first, I'm honestly baffled why that didn't come up - just because you can set stakes as high as blowing up cities doesn't mean ordinary people can't still be a problem. In three out of the four arenas, you can still lose easily to the World's characters.

I'm not sure what you mean with that last sentence. It is true that your trumps will only help you to win one out of four tricks, but that does mean that you'll win about 1/4 + 3/8 = 5 out of 8 tricks, and since you'll dump lots of non-trumps as help cards in other people's conflicts, I think it's not so hard to boost that even higher. With those numbers, you rarely loose against an unaided World.

As for the second, I left any rules about that out on purpose so that you'd have to figure it out for yourself - but was that a good decision? I'm looking for feedback on whether there's enough to really work for you here.

Personally, I'm not so hot about making something like that explicit. In general, I wouldn't care where the superpowers came from. (This is purely a statement of my own preference, which carries no generality beyond that.)

[Clinton R. Nixon]

You nailed two things that should happen right there. As for the first, I'm honestly baffled why that didn't come up - just because you can set stakes as high as blowing up cities doesn't mean ordinary people can't still be a problem. In three out of the four arenas, you can still lose easily to the World's characters.

I'm not sure what you mean with that last sentence. It is true that your trumps will only help you to win one out of four tricks, but that does mean that you'll win about 1/4 + 3/8 = 5 out of 8 tricks, and since you'll dump lots of non-trumps as help cards in other people's conflicts, I think it's not so hard to boost that even higher. With those numbers, you rarely loose against an unaided World.

You're right - I think. I'd have to sit down with the math to see.

The one rules change I've made that should help with this is that the World's hand size is now 5 + Act number. So, in the prologue, it's 5; in Act 1, it's 6; carrying on to Act 4, where it is 9. This should significantly change things.

[Victor Gijsbers]

You're right - I think. I'd have to sit down with the math to see.

The one rules change I've made that should help with this is that the World's hand size is now 5 + Act number. So, in the prologue, it's 5; in Act 1, it's 6; carrying on to Act 4, where it is 9. This should significantly change things.

The math is hard and depends on too many factors to be very useful - I wouldn't worry about it. This rule sounds very cool.

[Paul Bakker]

Personally, I'm not so hot about making something like that explicit. In general, I wouldn't care where the superpowers came from. (This is purely a statement of my own preference, which carries no generality beyond that.)

I would like like to have explored this. Well, I guess it's just a thing in the interaction between the players (I should have tried harder to get in in the story :) ), something the players should decide for themselves, not something that should be explicit in the rules.
It might give opportunities though, granting the world supernatural abilities in some situations as well, and an anchor about what could be the end-goal of the character (or is this the 'endboss-syndrome'?)

I think the world was stronger in the second session, having more cards, but I also think less players helped him. I think playing the world is not easy (but perhaps Remko can say more about that), and a hint or two would not be out of place: about how to create NPC's that become important for the story and, when there's a conflict between the world and a player (or two players), how to get the others to help one of the sides in the conflict

[Remko]

I think the world was stronger in the second session, having more cards, but I also think less players helped him. I think playing the world is not easy (but perhaps Remko can say more about that), and a hint or two would not be out of place: about how to create NPC's that become important for the story and, when there's a conflict between the world and a player (or two players), how to get the others to help one of the sides in the conflict

Playing the world isn't easy, but isn't damn hard too. I must agree with Clinton that you guys should have created more important NPCs... on the other hand, I should create more enjoyable NPCs for you to chew on. I think that would have driven the game far more in the end. Risks about status, the world and stuff aren't as close as risky as are risks for the ones you love / care for.

Also: I should have underlined the risks of using powers: You can get exposed, there's a possibility of a public outcry, people'll want to resist against such unhuman powers, etc.