[General Mud]A short playtest

[sirogit]

Last Sunday me and two friends played some General Mud. It was a pretty good time, with a few misgivings.

Character creation went pretty smooth, but one of the players seemed to struggle a whole lot with choosing a negative and a fake trait, eventually settling on "Impulsive" and "Fearless". I really liked the character "Dilly the duck". who had the traits "positive: Is friendly and likable." "negative: spineless" "fake: He cares about you."

There were a few limitations on the game that I think made it an unideal playtest:

1) A strict 2 hour time limit.
2) No copy of the rules nearby, I was the source of rules knowledge from two readings of the game.
3) D10's instead of d6's.

I wasn't sure on a few of the rules:

1) In "Revoloution" it says add white + red + black dice, but I don't see any way of getting black dice for Revoloution. Did I miss something?

2) Can you add a die for every time you use a Trait or can you only add one per Trait per Narration? I went for every time the trait came up.

3) Does the GM keep the dice he puts on the table for the next round, or throw  them away? I ruled that he throws them away after someone is sent to a glue factory, but keeps them if all quota's are passed.

For some reason I kept screwing up on what sort of dice positive or negative traits give you. I'd put a suggestion for dotting an appropiate color on them on the character sheet.

It might of been the d10's skewing the randomness abit(Espicially because 10's were often rolled) but the revoloution seemed to drag on a little. Perhaps it was because I jumped the gun on one turn and narrarrated the animals killed the farmer, and it got a little confusing and anti-climatic after that.

There was a problem with me being the knower-of-rules guy, and yet getting other people to be the General Mud. One player struggled with jumping into presenting situation, and the other guy did pretty well, but I felt awkward with reminding him about some details "Pose a qeustion, past tense" when he's the GM and all.

Speaking of past tense, I was confused on how to narrarate revolting against general Mud, as that seems to make the Trials nonsensical in their occurence. Usually I went with "I didn't do that and instead gathered a bunch of birds outside to overthrow you, Commisar."

I kind of wonder if the Mud Puddle is nessecary, as the different places for dice got a little confusing(My hand, the table, the bank.) that it just seemed like an unnessecary complication.

All in all though, a pretty fun time with alternatingly cute, funny, and disturbing content.

[ptevis]

3) Does the GM keep the dice he puts on the table for the next round, or throw  them away? I ruled that he throws them away after someone is sent to a glue factory, but keeps them if all quota's are passed.

...

I kind of wonder if the Mud Puddle is nessecary, as the different places for dice got a little confusing(My hand, the table, the bank.) that it just seemed like an unnessecary complication.

The dice that the General puts on the table go into the Mud Puddle. This is a vital part of the currency of the game.

--Paul

[Rob MacDougall]

You played General Mud! Sweet!

(I know that that's the whole point of the Ronnies and getting these game designs out there, but I still have to say it kind of blows my mind to think of people I've never met sitting and down and playing this thing I cooked up.)

First:

"fake: He cares about you."

Ha! I love that. I hope Dilly got to be General.

To address (I won't say "answer", & you will soon see why) your questions:

1) In "Revoloution" it says add white + red + black dice, but I don't see any way of getting black dice for Revoloution. Did I miss something?

Yeah, the text is confusing on that issue because I was confused while writing. I think there should be no Mud dice during the Revolution (and references to Mud dice in the Revolution phase are just errors in the text). BUT, another way to do things would be to let people pull Mud dice out of the mud puddle (I think I said somewhere it started with a number of dice = # of players x 2 ?) in the Revolution phase, and say that General Mud did not actually appear until somebody began to use Mud dice.

2) Can you add a die for every time you use a Trait or can you only add one per Trait per Narration? I went for every time the trait came up.

That's a good question, and it goes to my question for you. As I said over in the first General Mud thread, I'm not really clear on how play should go. When you played, did people narrate for long stretches at a time? Did you go around the circle quickly several times before rolling, or just once or twice, or did people just sort of talk back and forth with the GM like in a more traditional rpg? The answer to those questions will help to answer specific questions about numbers of dice.

3) Does the GM keep the dice he puts on the table for the next round, or throw  them away? I ruled that he throws them away after someone is sent to a glue factory, but keeps them if all quota's are passed.

Paul's right, the dice the General rolls then go into the Mud Puddle. So indirectly the more the GM throws at the PCs, the more dice the PCs get to defend themselves, but only if they sling mud at one another. There's convoluted reasoning like that for all the dice currency. So a big question I have for you is if the currency seemed to work. Did all the dice end up in one place? Did anyone get an insurmountable lead? Or did positions move around fairly freely?

On the second page of the first GM thread, Ron said:

With that in mind, Rob, what will you be looking for in playtesting? My own list includes:

- what kinds of actions distinguish white from red dice

- the currency interactions in general, but especially whether the mud dice are overwhelming

- whether people find the basic conflicts among the broad types of actions worth pursuing

- what "winning" might or might not be, for this game

Any thoughts on any of those issues? Did the game come to an end or did you have to just stop when time ran out?

I feel like a slacker peppering you with all these questions, when I haven't had a chance to play the game myself, but I really appreciate your taking the time to play and to post about it. Thanks so much!

Rob