[Carry] I-CON Game

[Nathan P.]

Played Carry at I-CON with Dro, Thor and Mayuran. They called my game B&B (broken and boring), and I wept bitter tears.

Seriously though, I couldn't ask for three more awesome, or more helpful, guys to play with. It's kind of like escalation in Dogs - they were all "so, this works right now, but what about now? What about NOW? What if I do this extreme thing, does it still work then?" which was very valuable.

I was fairly tired at the time and took only mechanics-related notes, but they basically took their characters (I beleive that Thor played David "Anaconda" Steinbeck, Mayuran played Elmo "Saint" Smith, and Dro played Coyote, the medic) and ran them straight into conflict with each other, against the backdrop of the general squad denoument. My two favorite scenes were one where Anaconda and Saint made Coyote go into a village and kill the Papa-san to make up for his previous failure in battle - while his Burden included something like "afraid to shoot others" and "macho to cover up his fear"; and a shouting match between Anaconda and Saint that escalated through all four Approaches, building each time, ending with them just bellowing at each other as the entire camp listened on.

I'm still awaiting some more detailed feedback, but there's two large changes happening, stemming from early playtests and pretty much proved in this one. First, Burdens will now be able to be resolved. The stakes of a conflict can be to resolve a part of your Burden. If you succeed, it is no longer a Burden, but you must choose something else coming out of play thus far to replace it. If you fail, you keep it, and gain a new Burden on top of it. The amount of Burdens you have at the end of the game will have an impact on Endgame.

The second is that I'm going to drop d4s out of the game, and see how it runs. This means that Profile has less prominence (probably eliminating the donotions of "cardinel" and "transition" and just have them all be Profiles), and Burdens more (as you start with a d6 Burden die and go up from there). This is how it should be. In play, d4s just sit there, mocking you with their smallness, and I think the advantages of taking them out far outweigh any problems it might create. But we will see as playtests continue.

Questions about the playtest process itself, and this session in particular, are welcome, in addition to questions or comments about the game.

[Mayuran]

if it's cool, i'm going to post our feedback here rather than via email.

this is looking up. please send us the rules revisions based on our playtest, and i think we could get a group together one evening to give it a shot here in NYC.

i have comments re: "Action Scenes." these have a genre appropriate "set piece" feel, but so far don't mesh with the burdens and the conflict scenes.

there doesn't seem to be much at stake except the build towards the endgame, by eliminating the squad. the burdens don't have any place in the action scenes (except in the last scene, where it was ABOUT the burdens even though it didn't deal with them - in that case the scene was much stronger).

mechanically, if i "disagree" and help the GM or "agree" and help the commander (Thor, in this case), it just affects the number of NPCs who get killed at the end. it's also a judgement on whether i think Thor's idea is cool and creative, but not a judgement on whether the GMs idea is cool or creative (because the GM doesn't have to contribute a cool or creative idea). perhaps the GM has to propose a situation that is in direct contradiction to the orders of the Commander.

Example (from my POV): Thor says "get up on that hill and identify the enemy position" and the GM says "you can see that if you go up that hill, the enemy snipers will have an easy time picking you off."

this just gives us more color, but doesn't quite get to the source of my discomfort.

if i "obey" my order or "disobey" my order, it affects roleplay in followup conflict scenes - but leads to scenes that won't be about our burdens. so the disconnect still remains, in many ways.

so, i felt that those action scenes lacked weight. this was very obvious in the 2nd Action Scene, where Dro almost had Coyote commit suicide. there was NO WAY in the mechanics for him to do that, but it was his response to the fact that he had no way of using the action scene to reflect what had happened in the previous conflict (where he had killed an innocent man on Thor's orders) - thus no way to make the scene about his burdens.

the number of rounds it takes to resolve an action scene is completely arbitrary. i think it needs to either be only 1 round, or there has to be something happening within those rounds to raise the stakes.

peace

mayuran

[Nathan P.]

Thanks for posting, man.

This is the part where I go "mmmmm...." and nod in agreement, while I ponder possible solutions. I definitly like the idea about the GM has to contradict the commanding officer, in order to make the responses more about real choices. That's cool, and is a good step towards putting more guidance on the GM for action scenes.

I guess the counter-argument to the issue that burdens don't factor into the action scenes is that they give a structured place where more grist for the conflict scenes is created. The statement in the structure is that combat doesn't actually solve anything, it just gives more fuel to the actual problems the squad is dealing with. Now, the question is whether that makes it a better or worse game, and I see what you're saying about how they feel flat compared to the main conflict scenes. Hence, the pondering.

I hope to have a rewrite done by the end of the week, which I will certainly get to you guys.