A narrative of my playtest

[slade the sniper]

Greetings,
some questions concerning my playtest(s) have come up concerning the length/quantity of them.  This is a (hopefully small) narrative of how each of the three playtests went.

The first playtest was used with completely different game mechanics, but the setting was the same, and as such can only be considered to be a "proof of interest".  That game went extremely well since all of the characters were City Guardsmen or allied therewith, there was an Female Interrogator, an Investigator, a Guardsman and a Pursuer, two private detectives and a coroner, all of which were alchemists.  The premise of the playtest was that they were a small task force assigned to stop a drug war.  They became embroiled in a conspiracy concerning the City Guard, the Imperial Senate, Dwarven Seperatists, Elven state supported terrorists (a proxy revolution) and various organized criminal groups.  They achieved their initial goals quickly, but the depth of the conspiracy went undiscovered and ended up killing the wrong guy, which led to their own deaths.

From that, I learned that deep intrigue/espionage games might not be the best mix for my group.

The second was conducted in Iraq and lasted approximately three hours.  There were four players, one with a lot of experience in D&D3E, one with a lot of experience in multiple systems, one rookie roleplayer (this would be his second character ever rolled up in any system), and another rookie player (who was doing me a favor and thought that table top couldn't be THAT different from computer RPG's).

The first hour was spent with me describing the world, the second was spent creating a character for my four players.  They each created a character in well under an hour, but of course the finishing touches took forever with the two new players.  The amount of skills and various magic/tech types (11 of them) were a bit confusing at the beginning, but some mid-creation editing fixed that problem (each character starts with 1 and if they want more, they pay a lot for it which reduces the highest level abilities as they become more of a jack of all trades, instead of a specialist based on race and technological/magical system.

The characters created were a feline barbarian shaman, a human mafia alchemical hitman, an elven special operations mage and a human alchemical crime boss.

That was an interesting mix, so of course I had to find out exactly why these characters were working together.  They spend the third hour picking equipment and fleshing out all of their contacts, lifestyles, personal history etc. while I wondered just how I was going to get them all together.  I had the adventure planned, but of course, I allowed them to "make a character you want to play" and was rewarded for this by getting that group.  I was saved from having to run the adventure because we got mortared, and that put a stop to that playtest.

I learned that the character creation system is simple and it works, but rookie players will run away with the freedom allowed.

The third playtest was MUCH more successful.  It had five players, all with a lot of experience in both table top and computer RPG's, which proved noteworthy because they found many parallels between my character creation paradigm and that of computer RPG's, which they said was easy and intuitive.

The characters created by this bunch were sadly, unable to work together.  Indeed two of the five characters were created with the express purpose of "breaking the game", both of these players have extensive knowledge of breaking games, as they have successfully broken characters in all three and a half versions of D&D, Call of Cthulhu, various d20 campaigns and various World of Darkness campaigns.

Character creation went well (giving me hope that this portion is actually good), and ended up with a harpy magical slave trader, a half elven mafia alchemical hitman, a human mage affected with Arcane Affective Disorder, a human librarian and a orc gang leader.  After the tacit irritation at the people who simply want to test the game by attempting to break it, (the harpy slave trader who used her resources to fund an almost limitless supply of slaves to do everything for her and the human mage who was able to gain an incredible amount of magical power by simply "going crazy").

The task was to discover who had killed off several influential members of high society for an unknown third party for a large amount of money.  The plot revolved around these "influential members of society" were all fake personas of a mercenary/adventuring party that had "hit it big" thirty years ago, and all of the people that these mercenaries had pissed off had come calling after someone found out who they really were.

That play session lasted 5 months, meeting weekly for an average of four hours each.

Character creation is easy, but I need a way to focus the group into something that WORKS together.  Having the ability to create any type of character is good, but I need a good way to keep the group dynamic instead of trying to hash the characters into a group of convenience, which is what happens in far too many games.  The setting is not forgiving of loners.

Powergamers are a problem in any rules system, but due to the playtesting, I have discovered that two methods (now incorporated into the game) have really reduced those loathesome creatures.
1.  I enforce a 3 second time limit on combat.  That means the player has 3 seconds to tell me what the character is doing.  The rolling might take longer, but the actual description lasts 3 seconds.  I also enforce a one minute time limit on combat mechanics per character.  That turns into a 3 second narration and one minute of rolling (usually much less).
2.  Roleplay the insanity of characters.  Two of my third playtest players wished to break the system.  They took some flaws to beef up their "powers".  One of them was a sadio-masochistic slave trader.  She had to expend several of her slaves (at quite a bit of financial loss) during her rampages of sadism.  Thusly, she killed several of her slaves when she got angry.  That hurt her reputation, made her a serial killer (in effect), a liability to the team (she was worth quite a bit of money if she were turned in), and made her lose money on her slave trading business.
The other player decided to make his character a ghoul...in exchange for a lot of magical benefits.  He quickly tired of this when he had to buy fresh humanoids to eat.  He thought he could save money by killing victims himself, except that he was a mage, not a professional criminal.  He also became a liability to the group.

The playtest assisted me greatly in rewriting the entire magical rules as well as increased the size of the equipment listing since the players came up with an amazing amount of additional stuff they would like to have.  Legal codes were also incorporated into the game, and became a very important setting dynamic since criminal behavior is so prevalent in RPG's.

I apologize if that was off topic, but I could think of no other place to post this entry.

-STS

[Valamir]

Cool.  This is a perfect spot for such a thread.

I'm glad you find my comments in Rocky's Thread helpful.

Given what the focus of your playtests have been so far, what do you think about making your game about the crime and the law enforcement?

"Fantasy Crime Lord" the RPG.

It would be like Dog Town with elves and magic.  An interesting exploration of law, crime, and society in a world with magic and several sentient species.  Rather than just warmed over Feudalism that most fantasy games deliver, I'd bet you'd discover a whole range of law and government organization that would evolve specifically to deal with fantasy criminals.

That would solve your "work together" problem...the characters would either be all part of the same criminal family or the same anti-crime task force (or both if you wanted a PvP game).  It would narrow down your game to developing a single setting in greater detail and provide the sort of focus I was talking about in the other thread.

[Thunder_God]

It'd also remove the "Working together" problem, for better and for worse.

About the 3 second limit, it'd reduce most actions to "I hit him with my sword", there won't be any complex actions possible, for meta-game reasons. Such as you trying to get an item and fallback in order to use it as a cover, I'd find it a bit too stiffling.

[slade the sniper]

First off, I would like to thank you Valamir, since you have given good points for me to expound upon and see this project with fresh eyes.

Secondly, in response to Thunder_God, I too have found that rule to be stifling to a point.  As originally conceived, multiple actions were an integral portion of combat, but the reason that I went with the three second rule is I tired of the munchkins flipping through their character sheets when it was their turn to find exactly what spell/effect they were going to use.  I have found that this is problem is most common in fantasy games where there are an abundance of powers.

What usually happened was it would be a players turn and I would call their characters name "Vladimir, you see Sseritha take two rounds from that orks pistol.  It looks like she was hit in the gut...what do you do?"  At that point, I looked at my watch...If they started talking and describing IN CHARACTER what they were doing within three seconds I would let it go.  If they looked at me and then looked down and scratched their head and flipped through their character sheet and then looked up and five or more seconds had passed I would say "and Vladimir stands there amazed that his partner was apparently cut down in the prime of her life.  Tabitha, you see Sseritha go down and Vladimir standing there frozen in shock...what do you do?"

After one session of that, all the players got the hint.  When added to the fact that characters can die quite easily since I tried to go with fast and lethal combat, they got the hint that hesitation IRL equals hesitation IC. 

The complex actions started coming later when they would already have their actions figured out before it was their turn and could begin speaking, usually excitedly and with great urgency what their characters were doing.  By initially stomping them for the "Fantasy Magic Lull" as I call it, they learned to be quick with their combat actions.  Sometimes their plans were great, sometimes not, but as with real combat, things don't always go as planned.

Plus, with combat rounds only lasting 3 seconds in game time, it wasn't too much of a penalty to be "stunned" for a round or two the first time they play.

Valamir, as you have pointed out, there is a great deal of my game that does deal with crime and law enforcement.  I hadn't really thought about, but the game definitely has a gritty feel to it.  As a matter of fact in the GM section I have broken down several portions of a possible campaign into the following:
Campaign Types: Fantasy, Steampunk, High Tech, Cyberpunk and Polyglot
Reality Levels: Film Noir, Realistic, Action/Cinematic, Anime
Campaign Genre: Political Intrigue, Adventurers, Military/Mercenary, Shadow Teams, Covert Operations, Crime and Punishment, Superheroic, Small Time/Mean Streets, Horror and Explorers.

What I noticed is that in the Genre section, the majority of the campaigns described do have something to do with crime or law enforcement.  While I have made Legal Codes (denoting the legality of equipment and actions) and Liscenses a central portion of the setting, especially for the PC's and did not skimp on the NPC law enforcement organizations, I had not thought about making Crime and Punishment something more central to the player's experience.  Perhaps the introductory scenario should focus on that more heavily...

I would like to stay away from pre-generated characters, but narrowing the focus of first characters to a small time crime guild or law enforcement organization would really put the players where I want them, which is to say at the edge of a mega city full of danger and the wilderness which is untamed and just as lethal.  Plus, by starting them small, it precludes the use of a lot of the overpowered gear that is blatently illegal, but PC's for some reason always want.

Thanks.

-STS

[andrew_kenrick]

"Fantasy Crime Lord" the RPG.

I would be all over that.

It sounds like you've got a good game on your hands SoS, but perhaps it needs a little focus? From your list of genres and campaign types I wonder if you're trying to do too much, spread yourself too thin. When you focused the campaign for the playtest it sounded like it worked really well, so why not run with that? As the old adage goes, better to do one thing really well, then to do ten things half as good.

Also the 3 second rule. I agree with the others that it sounds a bit too limiting. Has this arisen out of experiences/problems you've had in the past? How has the 3 second rule helped alleviate this? Has it had any drawbacks?

[abjourne]

An Interesting setting Indeed.
Though you should reconsider the following ideas.

Focus the theme,
As the respondent before me stated, Creating a game with a focused central theme allows you to more fully develop as the most relevant aspects of a game. Trying to create an anything game will only waste time, come across sloppy & in all likelihood be incomplete.

Reduce the death probability to the players,
Fast & Lethal combat models have one small problem; Players hate loosing their beloved characters. One of the greatest strengths of a RPG is the development & attachment to an exceptional persona. The mechanics should allow players a reasonable chance to keep their characters alive, if even by retreating. If their characters die quick after spending some time playing them, they'll resent it. If you have to fidget the system to keep them going then they'll realize it & loose faith in the mechanics. Since your game has a techno-fantasy setting, you've got your work cut out for you. Consider techno-magically enhanced armors that minimize projectile damage to give characters a reasonable chance of survival/retreat.

Perks & Flaws,
These character generation systems are very easy to exploit & difficult to balance. Try randomizing & toning down flaws, so as to create tension in their selection. As for perks, consider sub-dividing them into categories that are more appropriate to character themes. This will help minimize exploitation & help define character roles.

The 3 Second Rule,
It appears like your giving players too much cake at the get go. Start character abilities off slow & let the system give the players the opportunity to build on their characters humble beginnings.

Good Luck.

[Ron Edwards]

I have a suggestion.

Many, many game designersa are used to seeing "flaws" lists in their games, with stuff like sado-masochistic and schizophrenic and claustrophobic, and so on, in there. So when they write a game, they include that stuff because they're used to seeing it.

Then they are surprised when either of two things happens consistently. (1) The players get lots of points for taking those flaws and then ignore them during play; (2) the players play those flaws to the hilt and therefore end up screwing up the scenario at hand and annoying one another.

The solution seems to be to remove such things from the game entirely. If they're only in there because you're used to seeing them, then it's a safe bet to assume that they have no place in the character creation (and play) process.

Now, I confess that I'm getting a little confused about the variety of game ideas that are jumpin' about at the Forge at this point, so I might well have forgotten that in your game, these psychological factors are central in some way. If they are, then totally ignore my point above, and consider instead when and how you've had fun with such things in previous play-experience, in other games. We can talk about that in another thread, if it applies.

Best, Ron