[Shooting the Moon] Volcano Goddesses of Dinosaur Island

[Jason Morningstar]

We playtested Shooting the Moon last night and I wanted to provide some critical feedback.  Some stuff went very well and some didn't, which is to be expected.  We played the three person variant, which really strikes me as the more interesting possibility.

On the positive side, we found it easy and engaging to create the situation and characters.  We quickly developed a 1930's jungle expedition, complete with a headstrong anthropologist and the women who loved him - one a socialite engaged to the Doctor's graduate assistant, the other the daughter of the island's cargo cult overlord.  Plus there was a volcano and dinosaurs, so we were stoked.  The synonym/antonym mechanism worked great.  Everybody liked the set-up procedures.  Adding complications worked great - I ended up as "The volcano god's chosen sacrifice", which was fun. 

On the negative side, we definitely had some criticisms at this stage:

--We only got through one set of hurdles and one goal in two hours of play, and we all thought the game took too long for what it promises.  A full game is what, 21 pretty involved scenes?  That seemed like a lot to us.  Perhaps we weren't playing right. 

--We thought the beloved (in the three player game)  was reactive and not that much fun to play.  Also, that player is a bit of a kingmaker, since granting or refusing three dice is a big deal. 

--The highly procedural nature of the game found us repeatedly following the steps without doing any actual roleplaying. 

--Narrating in elements becomes a sort of reducto ad absurdum, since you are compelled to bring in as many as possible to remain competitive.  Finding logical reasons to include six different things was difficult and stretched credibility at times, particularly when leaving bits of the world open for the beloved to, hopefully, help you out with.

--My native girl lost two out of three hurdles and never recovered.  I never felt competitive, even after the other players cut me some slack. 

--Maybe invert the beloveds information on the sheet, so that the three players need not sit side by side?  This might not work so well, but we found it awkward to sit side-by-side on a couch. 

Here are some specific questions for Emily:

p3:  ORDER - Do attributes get assigned in sequence, rotating one at a time, or all at once, two at a time for a three player game?

p6:  WORLD - Are there constraints on adding to the world web?  Can you add to it freely (except when resolving a hurdle), as much as you want, at any time?

p7:  PURSUING THE PRIZE:  Who chooses goals?  Is this strictly collaborative?

p9:  Activating dice is really, really confusing.  We read it a bunch of times and never got it right. 

All in all I'm really looking forward to seeing StM refined and improved, and I hope our feedback helps.  Guys, weigh in with any observations or things I missed!

[Emily Care]

Hi Jason,

Back to the drawing board! Thanks for giving it a spin. I'm very grateful for your feedback.

Your questions:
p3:  ORDER - Do attributes get assigned in sequence, rotating one at a time, or all at once, two at a time for a three player game?
Beloved attributes: in sequence using the default order (Suitor player 1, Suitor player 2, then Beloved's player).
Assigning antonyms/synonyms: SP1, SP2, Beloved's Player --as each assigns one to a Suitor, the other by default goes to the other Suitor.
Suitor Trait modifiers (this is different): Each of the Suitor players modify one trait on their character, then they modify a trait on the other Suitor, then the beloved's Player modifies one for each of the Suitors.

p6:  WORLD - Are there constraints on adding to the world web?  Can you add to it freely (except when resolving a hurdle), as much as you want, at any time?
No constraints. Does that make sense or seem like too much from how it went?

p7:  PURSUING THE PRIZE:  Who chooses goals?  Is this strictly collaborative?
The Suitor players come up with the goals collaboratively. Did this seem awkward?

p9:  Activating dice is really, really confusing.  We read it a bunch of times and never got it right.
Confusion! Let me try again. Each player will have a pool of some number of dice. Divide the pool into groups of 3 dice and in order for those to be rolled you activate them by narrating about your character pursuing the goal or blocking the others, or in the case of the Beloved's Players you describe obstacles that the Suitor Players run into. Players take turns narrating. Then roll.

--We only got through one set of hurdles and one goal in two hours of play, and we all thought the game took too long for what it promises.
How did you do the hurdles? Could you give me an example of how one ran? Did you have any ties?

best,
Emily

[Jason Morningstar]

p6:  WORLD - Are there constraints on adding to the world web?  Can you add to it freely (except when resolving a hurdle), as much as you want, at any time?
No constraints. Does that make sense or seem like too much from how it went?

We house-ruled adding one at a time, or one per hurdle.  At the end of the first goal we had about 13 items in our web, which seemed fine, since they were all pretty relevant.  FYI:

Tramp steamer, Anthropolgist's camp, ungracious living, terribly rainy, valley of mists, dangerous beasts, restless natives, secret passage, top of volcano, cult priest, "the airstrip", forest of night, and cave of jamu.

p7:  PURSUING THE PRIZE:  Who chooses goals?  Is this strictly collaborative?
The Suitor players come up with the goals collaboratively. Did this seem awkward?

Hard to say - we didn't have any trouble once we figured out what a goal should look like, and all three of us worked together.  Our goal was "Be the person to get Dr. McGow to the top of the volcano"

p9:  Activating dice is really, really confusing.  We read it a bunch of times and never got it right.
Confusion! Let me try again. Each player will have a pool of some number of dice. Divide the pool into groups of 3 dice and in order for those to be rolled you activate them by narrating about your character pursuing the goal or blocking the others, or in the case of the Beloved's Players you describe obstacles that the Suitor Players run into. Players take turns narrating. Then roll.

OK, that's much clearer!

--We only got through one set of hurdles and one goal in two hours of play, and we all thought the game took too long for what it promises.
How did you do the hurdles? Could you give me an example of how one ran? Did you have any ties?

We had numerous ties - three in six tests IIRC.  Let's see - our third hurdle was, for Remi's prim rich girl, "abducted by the cargo cult", which let me bring in two complications/traits for double dice.  I brought in "Island God needs sacrifice", "John Jonah KNOWS (cult leader), and I think "terrrified" trait.  Remi countered with Polyglot, clumsy, overconfident, and a couple others.  Clinton sided with one of us (I forget) to keep the dice close to even in hopes of a tie.  Remi won and got extra dice from my side (sixes I rolled), making the final outcome even more unbalanced. 

For the goal it was Clinton 12 dice, Remi 12 dice, and me 7 dice.   

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Jason's right - it was three ties, although one got converted to a win with the bringing in of further complications. The ties are cool for the Beloved - on the first one, I added the complication that "the island god needs a virgin sacrifice" and added the trait "chosen of the god" to Jason's native girl character, and "virgin" to Remi's ingenue. (By the way, that was a totally fun one to put on there, defining a huge amount of stuff about his character."

I'll talk about the Beloved role, as I played that. It was fun, but really awkward. Deciding whether to give or not give dice to a player was difficult, as I didn't want to seem to take sides or judge their characters. Once I did withhold dice the first time, it seemed easier, but I basically rotated who I did or didn't give dice to, so I still maintained a balance. (I withheld dice the first time because Remi's character was in danger of being sullied by my grad student, McNutt, and I didn't want her virgin honor touched.)

It also feels like a GM role, and I think with good reason. It holds many of the traditional responsibilities. However, it does not hold the responsibility of presenting adversity, which made it feel like an impotent role to play. Again - it was fun. I loved my character. But my player role seemed to be only to pass judgment on who should win.

[Emily Care]

It was fun, but really awkward. Deciding whether to give or not give dice to a player was difficult, as I didn't want to seem to take sides or judge their characters.

Thanks,  Clinton. Yes, that's something I want to take out of playing this role.  Passing judgement is socially icky. It's funny though, the Guide does that in BtI, but making it a choice between 2 people makes it problematic.

I've got to figure out exactly what parts of the gm role belong to the Beloved. The design goal for this game is to make it fun & easy to provide adversity to others--so either the Beloved player collaborates on that with the suitors, or they should stick it to them all. And if that's not the role, I've got to figure out what it really is. I should probably give you more power to supply adversity across the board, as in the ties, and unconflicted power to make that happen.  Got to think on it. 

And Remi, Jason mentioned in email that the checklist to keep track of how to play hurdles gave you the willies.  Totally agreed.  It all needs to be quicker & simpler.

all the best,
Emily

[Jason Morningstar]

Emily, putting on my uber crazy hippie hat, but you've already dispensed with the "GM", why not go all the way and dispense with character ownership, rotating the responsibility for providing adversity among the players as well?  So every third hurdle, you'd take the role of the Beloved and try to out-do your friends. 

[Emily Care]

*blink-blink* 

Clinton suggested cutting the hurdles down to 3 or 4 total per goal, rotating who sets them up--which ends up giving you a similar dynamic. 

I suddenly see whole new vistas before me. Oh, yeah!

[Remi Treuer]

Emily, putting on my uber crazy hippie hat, but you've already dispensed with the "GM", why not go all the way and dispense with character ownership, rotating the responsibility for providing adversity among the players as well? 

This seemed to be the solution we (Jason and I) were creeping towards with regards to our own characters, anyway. I believe at one point we had an exchange that went along this line:
"I don't want to define your character."
"It's not my character, it's our characters."

Emily, as for the list, yeah. I haven't gotten the hang of heavily procedural games, and one of the big humps is that I just don't see where the roleplaying occurs. I can see the game, and the development of story, but not the characters from which story should spring. A for StM, setting scenes and all is fine, but in the case of Hurdles, it seemed somewhat divorced from the Goal of the round, because we'd set the scene, but ultimately it didn't have any effect on the Goal, because we had to be able to participate in the Goal scene. Other than being in a mechanically weak position, the Hurdles never came together in a coherent way to feel like obstacles. Does this make sense? Am I missing something?

I see stuff I like about the game. The character and world generation was a joy, but it felt like there wasn't enough space to play in the game.

[Emily Care]

Other than being in a mechanically weak position, the Hurdles never came together in a coherent way to feel like obstacles. Does this make sense?

Makes sense to me.  They are just supposed to be the obstacles you run into--not to take you out of the runnning, but to set you up better or worse for the rest of the race.  But that might not end up to be satisfying, ultimately. And there needs to be something to tie them together.  Maybe further development for the Beloved?

hmm....

best,
Em

[Josh Roby]

(Insert contentless enthusiasm that the game is at playtesting.)