[Outside] Playtest Four, or Clyde get some direction. (Long)

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

So I just got in from riding my Bike home from today's playtest and was excited about the discussion I had with my players and wanted to see if other folks might be interested in chiming in. Basically I was told to get some focus. *grins*  The longer version follows.

After I had arrived and the three of us were at the table, I showed them the cards I had made for the game, they looked at them and I explained character creation would be the same as before. We ended up discussing where to go for food, then afterwards spent maybe an hour in a nearby RPG store looking at and talking about games. I thought that perhaps today was going to shape up as a non-gaming day. I was somewhat right but like the time before where there was some resistance from the testers to playing-- I learned a lot.

I'm going to run down the gist of the rules, some problems and then afterwards skip to some of the breakthrough. Doing so in that order should hopefully be profitable if you are so inclined to help me.

Part One: Quick rules summation.
The game is sort of GM-less (more about that later), and has five counters. Two of which are spent or used based on character actions; Reality which represents how far along a child is on the path to growing up, and Wonder which is used to create "imaginary" settings and gift oneself with "imaginary" powers. Reality is gained sometimes by doing imaginary things around adults. Wonder is lost to power those imaginary things and gained by overcoming adversity.

The other three counters are called Abuses and are used for conflict resolution. The game is intended to not use conflict resolution when players are playing in a, "Yes and ...", or a "Yes but..." manner, and their characters are the only ones involved. Conflict resolution is intended for when players/characters have cross purposes, or are dealing with other children or adults. Each player has a number to represent how abusive they can be and successful they are at abuse. Abuse is defined as narrating for something you don't own. Players own their characters and their imaginary creations. The Three abuses are Physical Abuse (Red), Social Abuse(Yellow), and Mental Abuse(Blue).

Conflict resolution works somewhat like betting. Each player will bid by placing a colored token in the middle of the table. They will each roll a d10 and add the amount of left over tokens to their total. This means one red token in the center of the table, and three red tokens left sitting on my character sheet equals a result of 1d10 +3. (If you are confused PM me.) Highest number is the winner, and winner takes the pot. They have grown in their power to abuse. The winner also has narration rights but their narration is constrained by the color of abuse they won with. So if they used a Red token they would need to describe something physical bringing about their desired result.

Conflict Resolution is further complicated by the fact that each player can press their luck and try winning with a different color. One chance for each color equals three chances at winning. The winner still takes the pot. Winning does have a downside, having too much abuse turns the player into a monster. (If Physical, Mental, or Social abuse equals wonder then this occurs.)

Reality or the so called real world is controlled by one player at a time. Whomever has what we have been calling, "The token of firstness", has control over reality, and can introduce NPC's and/or conflicts into the game. It can just be grabbed by anyone who is interested in having control of reality. Disputes are resolved by the children (not the players) vying for control via standard conflict resolution.

Part Two: Problems and possible solutions.

The conflict resolution system breaks down when more than two people are involved in a dispute. The winner gets too many tokens and becomes a Monster too quickly. This becomes worse when someone is introducing conflict as we have been having the players power the NPC's with the Childs tokens. When one player made a middle aged man who was trying to force any or all of the Player children into his car this became very evident as all of us wanted to win, even the player creating the conflict. It was a very disappointing place to break down as the tension the scene created was palpable.

An untested solution is a deck of npcs distributed randomly in a hand for the controller of reality to use. After talking with the guys today I'm thinking a deck of emotive content might work better.

There is presently no method to assign reality if no one wants to step up at the beginning of the game.

The Flags (previously discussed here) have been good in that players have pushed towards those flags even without a reward mechanism, but in their first test generated things like, "I want to drink Blue Kool-aid." I'm shooting for darker, and saying so has generated that. Perhaps that is all that's needed?

Players don't feel that assigning the abuses is helpful to their creation of character. By character I don't mean P.C. but the qualities of the persons behavior.

Part Three: The Revelation

So the question I was asked today was what are you trying to push the game towards? My testers have picked up on my uncharacteristic lack of bluntness. (Sorry... that trait doesn't always carry over to the internet.) I'm somewhat all over. I realized during this discussion that my design goals had changed. The wishy-washy-ness may be due to my not understanding that I had two noncongruent goals. I started wanting to create a game about growing up, and telling stories like Peter Pan, or Alice in Wonderland. After this experience, watching how much of themselves my friends put into the characters, I've been trying for a bit to make a game about growing up that also can serve as a way for people to explore the bad parts of their childhood they may still be draggin around. Peter Pan and my abusive life aren't working well together.

So what I would like to see from this thread is a discussion of what elements would help to create a game about exploring growing up in a dark enough way that folks might plumb some of their bad places, and what I have now that still works?