Cage of Reason: 1st playtest

[redivider]

Three of us from our lagames group (Judson, Joshua & me) plus in-town-for-a-few-days Jason Morningstar tried out Cage of Reason, a game I wrote for the 06 game chef contest. Characters are age of enlightenment thinkers & reformers and their ideological stuggles are played out as professional wrestling matches.

We compressed the character creation/ planning session & first wrestling session and played out two tag team matches. There were some fun elements; the wrestling matches were balanced and lasted about the right amount of time;  but we also identified some big areas that could use improvement. The two main needs are simplifying character creation & adding some more strategic options to balance the randomized wrestling system.

The wrestling names of the four characters we made were: the Modern Woman, an upper class champion of the rights of women (Josh); Captain kampf, a merchant interested in spreading modern philosophy (Judson); The little prince, spoiled but enlightened heir to the throne of a slavic kingdom (mark);  and Kid Krampus, octogenarian aristocrat who delights in mocking superstitions. We decided that the characters were pushing to introduce universal education into a country. The 1st wrestling match would be a struggle to get textbooks printed; the 2nd match would be to distribute the books widely to every town and village.

The two matches were both 2 on 2 tag team events, each pitting two of our characters vs. two villain wrestlers (the preacher, the game's sample villain, and the Vivisector, the game's sample character- turned to the dark side for this event). We rushed through the pre-match ritual, just role-playing one question each of pre-game interviews. The characters won both matches but they were close bouts. Tag teams and use of traits to cancel pin attempts and submissions were key; the matches ended fairly soon after trait were used up. The three other players had some very helpful suggestions:

Observations:

character creation is complicated for a shortish game

Need more strategic options- otherwise the game is a series of rolls on move chart

tagging in is fun

reading out your eccentric enlightenment moves was fun (need to make sure they all can come up regularly)

should explore possibility of pre-programming outcomes of match or more limited drama point mechanisms


Rule changes & techniques


Keep track of damage on some central whiteboard or sheet so everyone can see

Character sheet: add spot for signature song, squares next to traits to check when you use them, cost column on character sheet

bringing signatures songs to play before matches & doing more pre-match rituals would add to atmosphere (maybe have some post match rituals or pause match to flash back to rituals)

Character creation:

switch from 2d6 curve to 1d10 flat roll which would simplify buying moves and make it more likely that all your moves would show up in play. (I have issues with non d6 dice but could maybe use playing cards)

make character creation easier with templates/ archetypes : ie bruisers, rope specialists, giants, scrappers etc. Each with position and damage amount of moves pre-set so players just need to name moves and adjust traits and damage. 

Create more special features (taunt, etc)

Allow character advancement between matches: add new special features, increase damage of moves, swap out moves, borrow moves from opponents, etc.

Maybe don't allow pins or submissions until one player declares- it's fighting time (to avoid 1-2 round matches, which, though rare, are possible)

Add some special effects for when you roll the same move twice or three times in a row (increase damage, etc.)

create appendix of weird, variant match types with special rules

[Josh Roby]

This was great wacky fun to play, although as it stands I would want more decisions being made if I was to play it for any longer than we did.  You look like you're on your way there.

Mark, another thing that the game 'needs' is more sample villains, perhaps from history?

[Jason Morningstar]

Hey Mark, good game!  And the exotic ambiance of booming jets from LAX only made it more exciting.

I was thinking about ways to speed up character creation - we discussed templates or classes, but what if you had "modules" of balanced sets of three offensive and two defensive moves, and you picked two of these (or took the same one twice)?  That'd give you a lot of tactical diversity.  You could have one, for example, that optimized a reversal move by sandwiching it between killer offensive choices. 

You mentioned using cards for the linear scale, and if you want to steer clear of weird dice I'm sure that would work. 

[Callan S.]

What a great idea - I love the idea of existential thought suddenly gettin' all meaty and wrestlerama!

With the tag in, could this be enhanced somewhat to show a sort of connection between philosophical lines of thought. Like when you tag someone, it says "I need YOUR philosophy to continue my battle, and by extension of saying that, I am linking my philosophy with yours, through inter dependance!"

Or something like that - a way of hybridising ideas by the way the practitioners draw on each other/tag each other.

[redivider]

Jason: I like the idea of sets of moves. With pre-made characters, templates, modules of moves, and rules on choosing your own moves players could get a wrestler ready in a few minutes or spend more time customizing the character.

Callan: as it now stands all the rules and dice rolling are in the wrestling side of the game. During our play test we slacked off on narrating the philisophical/ debating consequences of the twists and turns of the matches. So your idea of requiring/encouraging a narrative link at certain important points in the match, like tags, may be a good solution.