[Gnostigmata] The Gospel of Michael

[John Kirk]

You can download the current version of Gnostigmata from here

The Social Aspects of our first play-test
The players were:  Bill Boucher, Kim Boucher, Ralph Buttner, John Kirk, Melissa Kirk, and Adam Reid

For a first play-test, the social aspects surrounding the game weren't the best.  We had a last-minute host change, which caused one player to drop out of the session entirely.  We also had one player show up late and another two leave early.  On the bright side, we had two new players that we weren't originally expecting.

Due to the host change, play started later than expected at 8:30 pm and ended early (about 11:30).  So, it lasted about three hours.  In that time, we:

1)   Negotiated the stakes for the climax and set basic setting parameters
2)   Discussed and worked up characters
3)   Negotiated the stakes for Act I and Scene I
4)   Framed and played out Scene 1 to its conclusion.  We were kind of rushed at the end of the evening, so we ended up skipping the final narration of the scene.  I asked the winner of the scene to provide a narration the next day.

So, play didn't last as long as I had originally hoped, we did not have a uniform group of players throughout, and the end of the evening was rushed.

Ughhh.

Even so, the game ran smoothly, although it was slow at times.

The Stakes of the Climax and Setting Parameters
The first thing that needs to be resolved in Gnostigmata is the determination of what the winners and losers of the game get at the climax of the story and making sure everyone is on the same page concerning time-periods and other setting details.  Our group decided on the following after a good deal of open discussion:

The time is 1975, but time-travel is allowed.

The story is about the Gnostics trying to obtain the Gospel of Michael, which is a Gnostic gospel told from the perspective of the Archangel Michael.  The Vatican holds the only known copy of this ancient obscure text somewhere deep in its vaults.

If the Gnostics win:  They obtain the Gospel of Michael and are free to narrate some magical effect concerning it.  One possibility of a magical effect that was discussed is that it takes the readers back in time to the Creation so that they can actually witness it first-hand.  It was decided to leave the specifics open to the imaginations of the winners at the time of winning, though.

If the Catholics win: The Gospel of Michael is destroyed and is substituted with a forgery that says whatever they want it to say, most likely to refute the validity of some other Gnostic scripts known to exist.

A question arose concerning why the Catholic Church is merely keeping the Gospel of Michael secret rather than just destroying it if they believe it is a Satanic work.  To explain this, the rationalization was created that the Catholics are studying the gospel in order to better understand Satan so that they can better combat him in the future.  Very few people in the Catholic Church know about its existence, however.  One group that does know about it is a secret society of Stigmatics within the church who call themselves "The Hounds of God". (Does anyone have a Latin translation for this name?)

Working up the Characters
After negotiating the stakes for the climax, we talked about what characters people would like to play that would be appropriate for telling a story like this.  So that you could take a look at them in their full glory, I entered them into Word and output them as a .pdf file.  You can download them from here.

In short, we have the following characters:

The Gnostics
A)   Catherine (played by Kim Boucher) is a claustrophobic rich Materials Scientist with a taste for the finer things in life.  Catherine is fond of Ruprecht, but has no great love for him.
B)   Terry Coleman (played by Bill Boucher) is a typical hippie teenager of the 1970's with a love of muscle cars and Rock-n-Roll and a distrust of cops.  Terry is a student of Ruprecht's and the two have formed a strong bond of friendship.
C)   Ruprecht (played by John Kirk) is a rotund, tweed-wearing Art History Professor with a penchant for chocolate and gourmet food and a fear of dogs.  Ruprecht is deeply in love with Catherine.

The Stigmatics
D)   Geoffrey St. Cyr (played by Ralph Buttner) is an arms dealer that has close ties to the church and who supplies weapons to the Hounds of God when necessary.  Geoffrey hates both rodents and cats.  He is a widower and the son of a heretical father.  Geoffrey is great friends with John Keyes, but barely knows Mileva exists.
E)   Mileva Moscoso (played by Melissa Kirk) is a devout Catholic astronomer with an interest in archeology and a fondness for dogs.  Mileva lusts after Geoffrey.
F)   Father John Michael Keyes (played by Adam Reid) is a Catholic priest with an interest in fencing and all things dealing with the Middle Ages.  He collects swords, and depends on Geoffrey to provide rare antique specimens.  The Father has both a gambling and a drinking problem.  He is friendly with Mileva, but has no strong emotions concerning her.

During character generation, some of the players were confused as to what kinds of things would be good traits for the various categories.  I had to explain several times to Ralph that Material Desires and Fears had to be physical things.  I would explain this and he would come back with a desire trait of something like "recognition".  So, I would explain to him that "recognition" is not a physical object.  I would then give him some more suggestions and we would repeat the same process over again.  Ralph is a bright guy, so I don't know why this was so difficult a concept to convey.  Obviously, he wanted his character's desires to be abstract.  But, this would not work in actual play since his desires and fears will be brought into play as concrete things in scenes in which his character is not present (when he is using Coincidence).  After three rounds of this, his traits in this category were mostly physical things, but he still had "sex" listed.  I gave up at this point because he had a list that would work reasonably well, and it will be interesting to see if he can get any good use out of an abstract trait like that.  Perhaps I'm the one that has it "wrong", and not he.

The Stakes of Act I
After working up characters, the next task is to negotiate the stakes of Act I.  This took very little time after I threw out some suggestions.  All in all, the stakes for Act I probably took 5 minutes.  We ended up with the following stakes:

If the Gnostics Win: The Gnostics learn about the Gospel of Michael.  All Gnostics set their Agony value to zero.  All Stigmatics lose all of their Pieces of Silver.

If the Stigmatics Win: The Stigmatics learn there is a threat to the Gospel of Michael.  All Stigmatics set their Agony value to zero and all Gnostics lose all of their Pieces of Silver.

The Stakes of Scene I
Once the Stakes for Act I are negotiated, the stakes for Scene I must also be negotiated.  Since there are six players, we looked up in the Scene tables what characters were going to appear in Scene I.  It turned out to be Catherine (character A) and Terry (character B), both of which are Gnostics. Here are the stakes we negotiated for the scene:

If the Gnostics Win: Catherine and Terry become friends and get to add a free rank in one Relationship between them.

If the Stigmatics Win: Catherine and Terry become antagonistic toward one another and each gains a point of Agony.

Framing Scene I
Scene Framing in Gnostigmata takes place through a simple card game (using the Tarot deck).  The scene framing went smoothly, although Melissa thought it took too long.  (I agree.)  Many times, people agonized over what to add.  In general, the slower people were those that had no GM-ing experience.  So, the delays might just be due to lack of practice.

Scene I was set in a classroom.  Student desks are lined up in rows and the teacher's desk is at the front of the room.  There is a large fish tank in the corner a well.  Art books lay on the teacher's desk.  Outside it is dark and windy and snow is falling.  Trees can be seen just outside the windows.   There is a young couple flirting at the back of the classroom pretending to look at the fish.  A teacher is at the front of the room explaining something to a student.  Terry is walking into the room carrying some artwork followed by two wet dogs.  The first is rabid.  The second is Mileva's pet.  A dog catcher and his assistant are hurriedly chasing the dogs.  Catherine is also chasing the dogs but is trailing behind and has not yet entered the room.

At the start of the scene framing, people were very hesitant to add elements to the scene.  They would stare at their card for a while and then add a tree or put a person somewhere, but didn't really seem to know what to do.  When it got around to me (I was the last person to play a card on the first trick), I added the classroom, desks, and fish tank.  People were surprised that I could add so much at once, but I then re-explained that a person can add as much as he wants as long as he adds something tenuously related to the card he plays and it doesn't contradict what has gone before.  After that, they loosened up and started adding more elements.  I don't think they have yet figured out that they can influence how much control they have over conflicts in a scene by introducing scene elements related to their characters' Material Desires & Fears.  I didn't explain this to them, since I want to see how long it takes them to catch on to this fact without my guidance (other people won't have me there to explain this).  Just to be clear, I added the first dog.  My character, Ruprecht, is afraid of dogs.  So, this gave me a little more leverage in the scene, although we ended up losing anyway.  After introducing the dog, other players quickly added elements related to the dog.  Bill gave it rabies and Kim quickly followed on with a dog catcher.  Thereafter, I introduced the dog catcher's assistant so that I would have a human NPC of my own to control in the scene if needed.  (The person that introduces an NPC to a scene has control over it for the duration of the scene.)

People had a strong tendency to want to start acting out the scene before the framing was complete.  (Kim wanted the dog catcher to catch the dog even though it had already been stated the dog was in the process of running through the door.  Bill tried to have the dog run to the teacher to be petted.)  I probably need to add more text explaining that if this were a scene in a movie, then we are painting the first instant of the scene as if we had hit the "pause" button on the remote.

Playing Out Scene I
The way the scene played out was a little weird.  It was not really what I was expecting.  Since we only played one scene, I'm not sure if it's a weakness of the system or a strength.  The only two player characters that appeared in the scene were Terry and Catherine, which were played by Bill and Kim respectively.  Bill went to bed after the first round (he can never stay awake past 11 pm), leaving his character essentially a non-entity for the remainder of the scene.  However, Adam's first action was to have the door slam shut from a strong wind that came in from a window that blew open.  He narrated that the door became jammed and wouldn't open.  Kim tried to use magic to open the door and a conflict arose concerning whether she could do this.  She failed, and so the door remained jammed.  I tried helping her get in the room by narrating that the door's frame was loose, but the scene was over before my efforts had any real effect.  The long and the short of this is that for most of the duration of the scene, most of the action was played out by NPC's controlled by players whose character did not appear in the scene.  Kim's character spent the entire scene just trying to get through the door.  Even so, the mechanical aspects of the conflict resolution worked pretty much as I had hoped.

The major aspects of the action transpired as follows:

1)   At first, people didn't seem to know what to do.  So, I narrated how the rabid dog did various obnoxious things trying to get some kind of objection from someone.  The players looked at me in wonder but nobody complained about anything the dog did.  Finally, I had the dog run over to the girl by the fish tank and narrated that it ripped out her throat.  Startled, Melissa emitted a concerned "No!" (the girl was an NPC she controlled).  I explained then that we must have a conflict and proceeded to explain the attribute (Coincidence) and trait pair (Dogs/Catherine) that I was planning on using.  At this point, I could almost see a light-bulb pop into existence above everyone's head as they suddenly realized what I was doing.

2)   The door immediately slammed shut in front of Catherine, barring her from entering.  A conflict arose concerning this fact, which was to occupy Catherine for the rest of the scene.

3)   The girl by the fish tank screamed at the rabid dog and Mileva's pet dog (Nephthys) attacked it.  The two dogs then got into a fight that lasted two rounds.  Melissa won both rounds.  The first round resulted in my taking two points of Agony.   Melissa tried to narrate that the rabid dog had been killed as a result of the fight, but I objected.  I explained that we had not negotiated the dog's death as a condition of her victory (I might have spent more silver on the conflict had that been the case.)  She understood this readily, and we negotiated the dog's death prior to the second round.  I lost this one as well, so the rabid dog died.

4)   I then narrated that the Dog Catcher's assistant captured the remaining dog with his net.  Melissa objected.  She spent a Piece of Silver to narrate that the girl held a sword.  She threatened the Dog Catcher's assistant with it.  (Obviously, the group I play with is heavily into traditional RPG's.  Games like Gnostigmata are almost completely out of their experience.  I doubt it will take very long for Melissa to learn that swords aren't necessary; the girl would have been just as effective swinging her purse or just arguing with the man.)  In any case, the Dog Catcher's assistant tried to bat aside the sword with his net and lunge at the dog, but Melissa ended up winning this conflict as well, which earned her a fifth white Rosary bead to win the scene.  (Melissa had also been devoting dice to the Catherine / door conflict and had earned some Rosary beads in those conflicts as well.)

Winning the scene gave Melissa the right to narrate the outcome.  She chose to narrate the Stigmatic side winning.  So, she earned a single black Rosary bead for her side (instead of the two she would have earned if she narrated their failure).  According to the negotiated stakes of the scene, Terry and Catherine each gained a point of Agony and became antagonistic toward one another.  Melissa ended up narrating the outcome as follows:

"Terry runs over to the rabid dog lying on the floor trying to give it aid, getting blood all over his hands.  Catherine finally kicks in the door, frame and all.  She runs to the lifeless dog as a pool of blood forms around its neck as she screams, "What have you done to my dog!  Get away from him!"  Turning to the raving woman, Terry yells out, "Is this beast yours!  You should take better care of your pets, Wench!"  At this point, Catherine slumps to the floor holding the dead dog in her arms and begins sobbing."

Fade to black.  End of session.

Changes
As a consequence of this play-test, I made some changes (resulting in the Beta 3.0 version).  In summary, the changes are the following:

1)   The collection plate, cup of Christ, and candle were nice thematic ideas, but they ended up cluttering the center of the table.  So, I eliminated them.

2)   The scene framing ended up taking too long and was fleshed out with more detail than was really necessary.  So, I made a rule that players throwing "trash" cards on a trick were not allowed to add any setting detail for that card.  I hope this will also make it seem like more of a privilege to add setting detail.

3)   The play of the scene also ended up taking a little too long.  In Beta 2.0, the rules allowed both sides to narrate their successes, unless the winner negates all of the loser's successes by spending some of his own.  This added an extra time-consuming decision to the process that really wasn't necessary, since the winners always ended up negating all of the losers' successes anyway.  So, I made this negation process automatic.  I might add this option back in later if it just turns out to be an issue of player familiarity with the rules.

4)   Players also spent a lot of time on figuring out what trait pairs to use and how to use them.  I think this might be because the Vices and Virtues trait categories are so abstract.  It's was hard to figure out how to narrate "Charity" or "Pride".  I think this may be because the trait had to first be translated into some verb before being paired with some other trait.  So, I'm now requiring Vice and Virtue traits to be written as verbs to begin with.  (i.e. "Sacrifice" instead of "Charity" or "Brag" instead of "Pride").

I would welcome any ideas on how to speed up play further.

[drnuncheon]

One group that does know about it is a secret society of Stigmatics within the church who call themselves "The Hounds of God". (Does anyone have a Latin translation for this name?)

This is probably (pardon the pun) dog-Latin, but: Canis Dei.

J