[the Infected 2] Spanish Shadows

[Eric Provost]

Last night Lisa and I got together with Mark and Remi for my second playtest of the Infected 2, my monster-movie game, inspired by a variety of zombie movies, but also by stuff like The Thing and the Silent Hill series of games.  Remi was the only one of the four of us that hadn't been part of the first playtest, and I'm grateful that he had the time to playtest with us.

The changes I made to the system were primarily about scene framing, the preshow prep work, and working out the tie-roll snafu.  I brought with me a copy of the addendum to the main rules, which I handed to Mark and Lisa to read while I did a step-by-step explanation of the rules to Remi. 

It was totally fucking awesome.

The first thing I'd like to tell you about is my panic that started before the story even began.  See, I'd hit that part where I ask the players what the setting should be and what kind of movie it should be.  I think it was Remi who suggested that we go for a medieval setting.  My brain just stopped.  I know I had a totally terrified look on my face.  I'd never even considered playing in a pre-industrial setting.  I had no idea if any of the mechanisms I'd put together would be opposed to it.  After a moment or two or running through every single rule and subtlety of the mechanisms I could think of the panic cleared, my eyes refocused, and I agreed.  We settled on a medieval Spanish setting and a "cult classic" feel to the movie.

We quickly established that the infection would be of supernatural/industrial origins and then we got down to it.

Act 1
Remi is awesome.  When I explained that any of the players could and should start off the scene framing, and the GM was just supposed to be where the buck stopped for getting the action started, he dove right in and started framing our opening scene.  His character, Sir Borland, was the captain of the guard and was patrolling one of the walls of a castle on a high hill when he encountered some of his men, dead, with a shadowy monster making watery chewing noises while it dined on the entrails of the guards.  We had a quick conflict about if Borland would stand or run.  Remi lost the roll and Borland ran screaming away as a shadowy form flew past him, leaving a black scar behind his ear.

Nifty, and a great start full of color, but we stopped to chat about it, because it wasn't exactly how I wanted play to come out.  I kept hitting everyone with my new favourite phrase; "More Show, less Tell", with the explanation that it was a movie and our narration should be focused on what the audience might see and hear.  Also, I explained that I wanted the conflicts to come out a bit more 'organically', instead of being strong-arm framed.

Lisa took the reigns for the next scene and we had a bit of an issue with the Show & Tell thing, as well as conflict-framing.  Lisa went right for the throat of her Motivation card, wanting very much to frame a scene about loyalty.  Her character, Elizabeta, was nurse and nanny to the children of the lord and lady of the castle.  Lisa framed up a scene with the two children sick in bed, apparently due to gifts of perfumes brought from overseas.  The whole scene ended up being really bumpy as Lisa was really in Roach scene-framing & conflict-framing mode, and I was hell-bent on getting everyone around to just exactly the type of conflict and scene framing that I wanted.  Eventually the scene turned out cool.  Elizabeta, while at the bedside of the two children (Edwardo and Medina), discovers that the fever that had taken them is causing their skin to slough off.  When the Baroness Consuela comes to say goodnight to the children, Elizabeta freaks out, slamming the door on Consuela.

Fuck.  It just occurred to me that Lisa loaded up that scene with some awesomeness we could have used later on, but forgot about.  I remember Elizabeta shouting at Consuela through the door "You're pregnant!  You cannot be near this fever while you're with child!".  The potential awesomeness of the pregnancy comes up in just a bit.

Well, after Elizabeta chases Consuela away, the shadows show up and start carring the children around to taunt the poor nurse.  When the children wake up (after having been so recently dead) and start taunting her to come play with them, Elizabeta runs terrified from their room, down the hall, and collides with the priest of the castle, Father Reinald. 

Oh wait.  That was a later scene, wasn't it?  Yes.  Father Reinald had already been introduced in Remi's second scene.

When it got to be Mark's turn to introduce his character into the story, something really interesting happened.  Mark starts by giving us this really awesome and heavily flavored bit of narration about a tall Arab and a drunken Catholic walking into the village below the castle.  He then goes on to tell us that he's torn between which one he actually wants as his PC, and which one he wants as an important NPC.  So, Remi says to him; They're both the same character!  Play them as one PC!  So, again I had to take a moment to see if that was going to fuck with any of the rules.  I was a little concerned (but less panicked this time) because there's a lot going on in the rules about NPCs as your resource to accomplishing your goals.  But, I figured fuck it.  If it wouldn't work, we'd see real quick and could resolve it.  If it would work, then how could it not be awesome?  Mark purposefully did not name the characters.  They were known in the story only as the Arab and Catholic, and we quickly learned that they were on the trail of this evil.

There was so much cool stuff in this game.  I'd better start summarizing and hitting on just the high notes or this will get way too long.

After the introduction of the Arab and Catholic we find that Borland and Consuela have been having an affair behind the Baron's back for quite some time.  And that's where we (or at least, I) missed the awesomeness that Consuela was pregnant.  Damn.  Anyway, Borland goes to Consuela's bed chambers and seduces her again, and against her protests, and we get our first hint at what the infection is doing inside Borland's head.

Later on, we see Borland meeting with the mysterious Arab and Catholic duo at a church outside the castle, where Borland invites the two of them inside to murder the Baron.  Borland explains that the Baron is a terrible, terrible man, and is the cause of all the evils in the castle.  Awesome part:  As the players, we have no idea if that's true or not yet.

The act wrapped up with Borland successfully fighting against the shadow within him, preventing it from infecting a dozen men in the dungeon of the castle.  But!  The best scene of the first act was when Elizabeta went running to the Baron, Baron Escobar (a "dirty Italian"), to seek his help.  To tell him that his children were killed and that there was evil afoot.  Well, it was right then and there that we discovered that Escobar really was a piece of work.  He proceeded to pressure Elizabeta to bend over the kitchen table for him with total disregard for the lives of his children.  And what made the scene so terribly awesome was Lisa's final description of Elizabeta watching under the door of the kitchen as two guards were killed and consumed by the shadow, all while Escobar was taking her.

Dang, that's way more than I'd expected to write for the first act.  I'm gonna take a quick break to get a munchie, then I'll come back and give a somewhat more brief explination of the second act, which will include the wall of un-awesome we hit in the very last scene.

[Eric Provost]

After the first act, I mentioned that I'd wanted to do away with the idea of a 'bridge' between acts.  It'd never been part of the rules, and was something that we just kind of did during the first playtest session to keep things flowing.  I told everyone how I figured that such a mechanism was totally unnecessary when the story is actually flowing, and the story was certainly flowing then.

But then Remi pointed out that a bridge between acts can still be terribly useful.  Something to "cleanse the palate" was what got stuck in my head.  It's an excellent idea, and I can see where it would have improved the game.  But, as I couldn't seem to figure out just who's responsiblity would be what for the bridge, we decided to just push on with the game as-is.

Act II
I started things off by narrating how one of the young accolytes of Father Renald was frantically searching through the castle for him.  The accolyte had tried to get into the Father's private chambers, but found the door locked from the inside.  Which was interesting because we saw the Father consumed by the shadows in one of the great halls in Act I. 

Mark and Remi jumped right into the scene.  The Arab and Catholic as well as Sir Borland grabbed hold of the young accolyte and went charging down to the door in question with the intent of kicking it in.  When Mark inquired if they could hear anything from beyoned the door I replied that they could hear some hissing.  Remi declares "I'm kicking in the door!"  to which Lisa replies "And there you find Elizabeta, pouring cold water over hot coals, creating steam to help her in prayer!"  And I'm like "Yay!  Fucking awesome!"

So, once again, all the characters didn't come together until the second act.  But this time, instead of feeling like there were three different unconnected stories going on, we all got the vibe very early that these three (um... four) characters were tied together somehow.

So, after a brief introduction between the PCs, the dead figure of Father Renald kind of soaks through the walls behind them.  And... wow.  While I remember that there was a really nifty fight here, I just can't remember what it was really about.  I remember the figure of the Father screaming Latin at the PCs ("Your sins will eat your flesh!"), and the acolyte's prayer keeping the figure at bay.  Hrm.  Someone from last night correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember that the scene was all about the opportunity to do violence to Father Renald?

From there we cut to a scene with up in Baron Escobar's trophy room.  Sir Borland walks in (remember that Borland is the captain of the guard) and Escobar greets him.  Borland lays down all this horrific news for the Baron, including that there's a plot to kill him.  Dismissive and pompous about it all the while, the Baron is offering Borland a glass of something to drink when he asks "Who could possibly want to kill me?", to which Borland replies "I am going to kill you.".  Escobar, being a bit of a coward, drops the glass in terror and starts running away, just in time for the Arab and Catholic to burst in, declaring that they're there to protect the Baron's life!!

My head's totally snapping around, just trying to keep up with the awesome plot twists that Remi and Mark are throwing at me.  The end of the conflict between Remi and Mark leaves them in a tie, and giving me the narration.  IIRC, the Catholic chases Borland out of the trophy room and the Arab throws Escobar against the wall a bit too hard.  There's a cracking sound, like something important on the Baron's body has been broken.

Back out in the hallway, guards are appearing, seeing the fight between their captain and two strangers.  There's some great narration about how Borland starts out fighting the two and is outnumbered, but then gathers his men around him and outnumbers them.  Right before Remi and Mark are ready to roll the dice to see if the Arab and Catholic can escape, I narrate how some of those spears the guards are carrying are now at Borland's neck.  It seems that the Baron had come to, now filled with the shadow-infection, and was ordering that all three of them be taken to prison.

Now here's another awesome twist.  All of a sudden, Elizabeta shows up and is totally fawning over Escobar.  She's there to back him up and do his bidding.  Lisa is making it pretty clear that this is totally about loyalty for her and Elizabeta.  So Remi narrates that Consuella shows up to try to protect Borland.  It was an awesome cluster-fuck.  Remi lost every roll, pushing as far as he could go.  In the end, Lisa won the narration, and told us how Elizabeta burried a dagger in her former mistresses head!

It was getting a bit late at that point, and Lisa especially was showing her fatigue.  With only two infected dice left in my pool for the Act, we agreed that we should hit on one last scene for the night and leave it at that.  And that's where things suddenly went wrong.

Remi decided that since it was going to be the last scene, he wanted the last conflict to be about achieving his goal.  Lisa agreed and said that it would be about her too!  The scene was Escobar, dragging Elizabeta to his private chambers in the top of one of the towers, where he could seek shelter from the attackers.  Borland was using his newfound shadow powers to climb the outside of the tower, with the intent to kill the baron.  Elizabeta was following the Baron around, right at his heels, trying to be as faithful and loyal a servant as she could possibly be.

Now here's where the system failed us a bit.  Before Lisa and Remi declared that it would be their climatic goal scene, it was just a conflict between the two of them.  When they both handed over their chips to me, that pulled me into the conflict, and required that I oppose them both.  I threw in my bit of narration for to set up how it might be that neither of them were successful and we threw some dice.  Remi got a 12, best roll he can make.  But, I had a crapload of dice.  Both Lisa and Remi had two chips left, giving me 4 extra dice on top of everything I already had.  So, naturally, I also got a 12.  Tie.  Ties go to the GM.  It's a cool rule, and it works, but the problem was suddenly that Remi was out of options.  He failed his roll, and failing to narrate in an NPC, he didn't have the option of pushing the conflict into a second round.  Neither did Lisa.

Right after the dice hit the table, before anyone even tried to narrate anything, I saw that look on Remi's face and knew all the awesome had been sucked out of the room.  What ensued was a 30-minute long conversation where we dove at the heart of the issue.  The sudden lack of awesome.  And what we finally came up with was a pretty easy solution.  An ever-so-slight tweak in the rules that let you bring in important NPCs after the first roll to push.  So, even if your initial narration doesn't include help from anyone, you can totally bring in help if you decide that the conflict is important enough to risk their lives in.

Killer.

Well, at that point, we gave the new rule a go, but my dice were still just too damned hot.  I don't think I rolled less than 3 sixes on any given roll at that point.  Which leads me to see that the rules need to be explicit about just how much those chips are worth to the GM, and what it means when two players go for their goals at the same time.  Especially when those goals are in opposition to each other. 

So, thanks for reading.  I had an awesome time at this playtest, and I enjoy rambling on about it all afternoon.  I hope I have another successful session to tell you about very soon.

-Eric

[Remi Treuer]

Hey Eric,
I just wanted to pop in and say that I had a blast with Infected last night. If you can codify everything that happened at the table last night, I think you've got something serious on your hands.

A couple things:
1. Not having a character sheet WORKS. Your character is your 'everything' die and your infected dice. The important NPCs being cards, and those cards being a limited resource, forced us to make a relationship with those, or at least have an opinion about them. I think the game hung together really well because of this. The game was about people and the demons that haunt them, as it should be. This impressed me the most about the game, and I wanted to say it again.

2. Narration rights. I mentioned this last night and I wanted to reiterate that I think it's important to take a hard look at how narration rights are assigned. Right now it's winner=narrator, and this runs a bit counter to the spirit of the game, I think. Having someone narrating your victories can be fun, but, and this is important, narrating your own defeat, especially in a game about fighting the inevitable, is something that would totally kick ass. I don't think this is just my personal taste, but something that could enhance the game greatly.

3. I worry that trying to become King of Zombies is going to be the most appealing move for many people in play. Is there a mechanical reason for not trying to get as many Infected dice as you can right away? In the Roach you can't 'win' if you've got the Roach, is there a similar condition for people who stick it out and avoid Infection? Or is the big red arrow pointing towards 'get infected now' intentional?

4. Stress in the written rules that PvP play is not only encouraged, but essential for building up NPCs and getting rid of Goal tokens, and also genre-appropriate. Going up against PCs with no Infected dice is way easier than fighting the GM with his piles of dice.

[Jason Morningstar]

Hey dude,

I'm not getting the awesome getting sucked out of the room bit.  Explain it to me better, because as GM you should totally be playing as hard as you can, right?  You kicked his ass fair and square, right?  Yes, it was a lucky roll, but lucky rolls happen, bully for you.  Please clarify - I'm excited about running this blind, Eric.

[Eric Provost]

Hiya Remi!  Thanks for posting.  I'm going to hit on your comments in the order you've put them in.

1.  No character sheet.  It was accidental, but once I noticed it, I realized that it was an important feature of the game.  I'm really happy that it's worked out as well as I'd hoped it would.  In fact, I'd say that it's working out even better than I'd imagined.

2.  Narration rights.  I suspect that you're right, but I have one issue.  See, in a system where the players are only declaring their intent before the dice are rolled, I don't feel comfortable narrating their successes (my failures).  Even in The Mountain Witch, when there's a Mixed Success to narrate, I often find myself hung up on giving the other guy what he wants.  I'm often inclined to just outright ask what they want and then incorporate that into my narration.  If I could find myself comfortable with that switch in narration then maybe I'd consider the change.  Maybe some Trollbabe play is in order.

3.  King of the Zombies.  There's no mechanical reason not to get all the infected dice you can, but there is a mechanical limit on how many dice you can get in any act.  Remembering that the GM is limited to one infected die in the first act, then two in the second and three in the third, this becomes the limit to how many infected dice any player may have in any act too.  The big red arrow of the system isn't in getting the dice, but in using them.  The idea being to ask the question "How much of a monster will this character become in their search for what they need?"  And I don't think there's any problem if the common answer is "The biggest monster of all!"

4.  Dice Strategies.  I think I'll want a whole chapter about them.  There are plenty of tiny strategies that the players need to be aware of before playing.  I'll want to spell them out and illustrate them as well as I can right there in the text.  So, hells yes, I totally agree.

-Eric

[Eric Provost]

I think the issue was in the timing of positioning.  Lemmie see if I can explain this well.

You know Vincent's jargon-term "positioning mechanism"?  That's the rules that allow the players to say "This thing right here is really important to me."  It's often characterized by some form of currency that the players can use to their advantage in a conflict.

Well, in the Infected, there are really two positioning mechanisms; a player's infected dice (become the monster to get what you want) and their NPCs (sacrifice everyone around you for your own needs).  In the rules last night, you could turn your infected dice on and off between rounds of a conflict, but you had to bring in NPCs at the beginning of the conflict or not at all.  And, without an NPC on your side, you can't push a conflict into a second or third round.

When Remi, excited by the impending finale, declared himself all-in, he obviously wasn't considering that he had to narrate in an NPC as a sacrificial lamb just in case things went wrong.  And when things went wrong (and I'm guessing at what was inside Remi's head) he felt shorted.  Because there's all those wonderful NPCs there on the table that he totally could have pulled in to take his fall for him.

And I think that's where it's at.  The just in case feature of the rules last night.  It meant that the players had to enter any important and exciting conflict with careful thought.  Our excitement opposed the careful thought.  Had it been the other way around, where Remi was conscious of his need for a potential second round of conflict, then I think that it would have sucked some of the fun out in a different way.

I don't know that I'm explaining it very well.  Does any of that make sense?  If not, we should poke Remi and Lisa with a blunt stick to come in and explain it from their point of view.  Because, 100% honestly, I felt only a minor pang of awesome-loss, but I knew it was bad for Remi when I looked up from the dice to his reaction.

-Eric