[Gods] The Labyrinth, the Tuskers, and the King of the Black Citadel

[Bret Gillan]

Last night was supposed to be Charnel Gods night, but after some bullshitting and a couple of beers, we opted to playtest my Capes supplement/mod - Gods. It was just the three of us - me, my flatmate Bob who's as big on the games emerging out of the Forge as I am, and our friend Jeff who's pretty much played traditional games with the exception of the Sorcerer game I'm running and now this.

Having these two guys at the table was awesome. They're pretty critical guys and have no qualms about discussing what they thinks works and what doesn't as play goes on. I may not always agree with what they say, and even occasionally get frustrated, but they force me to think about my rules modifications and by the end of the session my brain was swirling with thoughts and ideas.

Some things I learned:

- The game startup needs to be more formalized. There needs to be a structure to the "Creation Myth" at the game's start, because we ended up sitting there awkwardly while I figured out how to steer it. There needs to be some sort of structured narrative while we're putting all the initial pieces in play. Bob recommended key phrases a la Polaris, which is a pretty good idea.

- Jeff recommended that before the game begins, there be some sort of collaborative stage-setting, and I grabbed right onto this idea. Basically we collaboratively generated "Creation" which was five checkoff traits. The current system is a bit cludgy - we each suggested two and then used a points distribution system to decide which we collectively felt were the most important. I think it's cool to have these static elements in the game that, while they may not be super-important, are recurring and reinforce specific ideas about the universe. The traits we came up with were: The Void, Black Sun, Limited Resources, Orion - City of Gold, and Mortality. This is definitely making its way into the next draft.

- The game went excellently. As I suspected, Capes rules provided a perfect framework for variable scope interactions. In the first Age of the game, I played The Labyrinth, a maze of caves that go throughout the world, Jeff played the King of the Black Citadel, and Bob played a race of warlike creatures called the Tuskers, and the resulting conflicts were cool. Tuskers attacked the Black Citadel, the King tried to use black magic to control the pale, sightless creatures that lurked in the Labyrinths, etc.

- I need to write up a section on "scene-setting." In Capes, one person sets the scene with a specific intention - a bank robbery, a royal ball, a meeting with the president, etc. It's more difficult to do that in Gods, and I feel as though the Scenes of the game are going to revolve more around introducing Creations, and then finding ways for those Creations to conflict. I had Labyrinth tunnels emerge in the Black Citadel and one of the home villages of the Tuskers, Bob had the Tuskers attack the Black Citadel, etc. Though I suppose I could also see the scene-setter requesting a certain scope and type of conflict in a scene - a worldwide war where the pawns are nations, or courtly intrigue where the pawns are individuals. But it's definitely something that needs to be developed further in the text.

- Bob got frustrated at one point with the differences between Events and Goals. I created the Event: Pale, sightless creatures emerge from the Labyrinth into the Black Citadel. He thought this was weak, and that it should be Goal: Pale, sightless creatures conquer Black Citadel. It was hard to explain the differences, and how just because the Event wasn't naming an explicit outcome didn't make it any weaker than the Goal, and that there were a lot of possible outcomes - maybe the pale, sightless creatures befriend the King of the Black Citadel, or maybe they overrun it and kill all the occupants (the latter is what occurred).

Even though the game was only one Scene (or Age, in Gods terms) it laid down some pretty fertile soil for some ideas to sprout. It's given me enough to write up a revision of the playtest rules with some additions and some revisions.

[Emily Care]

This sounds awesome, Bret.  You are telling Aria what for. : )  Beginning with Creation is great. This is a fantastic application of the Capes mechanics.

[Bret Gillan]

Aria is totally one of the inspirations for this game, though I'd completely forgotten about it until you just mentioned it.

Yeah, the Creation Myth and Creation are two things that the beginning of the game really needs. I think with Capes you can easily discuss what the game is about before it begins, but part of Gods gameplay is struggling over the setting itself, and doing that without some sort of formalization doesn't sit right with me. I like the idea of key phrases combined with some metarules specifically for the Creation myth to make sure the game begins on the right note and sets the tone of the game("In the beginning, there was X, etc.") and to ensure that everyone has a fair shake at establishing some core facts about the setting at the get-go, before Conflicts hit the table.

Thanks Emily! I agree that Capes works great for this purpose. I've wanted to design a deity/world-building game for quite awhile and grappled with the rules, and then I realized that Capes did everything I wanted - variable scope, competition and squabbling, and the ability to emphasize the micro or the macro flexibly.

[Valamir]

You might also want to formalize the "conflict in conflict out" variant that has been discussed on the Capes board.  This would ensure that no narration that was established with a struggle between the gods could be undone without another struggle between the gods.

So that once someone successfully claims the success side of the goal "cow the people of light with the power of the god of flame and darkness", the people of light stay cowed until someone else wins the goal "liberate the people of light from the tyranny of the god of flame and darkness" (or something similiar).

[Bret Gillan]

Ralph, I know the "conflict in conflict out" variant is something that's not agreed-on, so I think I'm going to leave it to the player group to decide whether they want to pursue that or not rather than incorporate it into the Gods rules.