[Heads of State] GenCon SoCal playtest

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On Saturday I ran games of Palace Gates and Sic Semper Tyrannus at Gencon Socal. Both games were part of a single session.  During Palace Gates, players invented a fictional Guatemalan dictator named Victor Manuel Vialobos, then tried to assassinate him in Sic Semper Tyrannus.

Tom Donnelly, Thomas Koch, Amy Puzia, Jim Fitzgerald, Rusty Williams, and Ezra Denney were the players: none of whom I knew previously. All HoS sessions had been played internally by our LAGames group. I was glad to have the chance to observe 'strangers' trying the games. The earlier playtests had mostly involved three players, so it was also useful to note how PG and SST handled (or didn't) 6 participants.

I didn't have a chance to ask the players about their gaming backgrounds, but they all could create on the fly, were flexible when my laptop shut down and I had to run the second game from memory, and gave good feedback on the games. As an added bonus, some were clearly also political/history junkies and Ezra was a fellow connoisseur of the excesses of tyrants, which made for some fun/disturbing references.

We started the session with the players each reading aloud from a list of short anecdote about real 20th century & contemporary despots. This was intended to get us into right frame of mind. In retrospect I should have also written down a summary of the nine games to hand out and help the players choose which games to play. We originally decided to try Palace gates + the disappeared + as I lay dying (if there was time).

Palace Gates (a game of object-based story creation framed as citizens exploring the tyrant's palace right after he dies). The players established some facts about the game's dictator, Victor Manuel Vialobos, who ruled a variant Guatemala at the head of a neo-indigenous religious theocracy. They invented a few features of the palace (edifice of a Greek temple, Dobermans patrolling grounds, lots of black marble within, secret private library, prominent crypt; tickets to tour cost $30 and each citizen is automatically charged for one visit annually). Then each created a character (with no mechanical effects/traits) to explore the gloomy interior.

They then took turns choosing an object from a list I brought and telling a story about it that revealed something about Vialobos. For the second round of stories, players picked an object and two other story elements (stage of life & mood) as a sort of challenge for an adjacent player to incorporate all 3 aspects into their stories. So:
*chest belt  + adolescence + spiritual: he is really a she
* earspoon + military academy + disgusting: used for survival course, stained with blood & mud, maybe to torture with?
* scrapbook with judy garland theatre programs & tickets + year abroad + happy: tyrant played the cowardly lion in wizard of Oz production in the seedy side of Berlin
* angel wings made from chicken feathers glued to cardboard + childhood + suicidal: leaped from roof of childhood home (plus blue-stained flock of chickens)
* 8 food long propeller + final days + ironic: relic/trophy from airforce of previous dictator, placed in home as display/trophy, fell on and squashed Vialobos
* French camo sniper's veil + year abroad + happy: first time tyrant killed someone was shooting compacted sand from a gun while in the French foreign legion

Comments on Palace Gates.

1. Players liked being challenged better than picking their own objects. I also think that the stories were cooler when more elements went into them. It could still work to have a warm-up round with just the object then add more elements.
2. The game would benefit for more interaction between players, ability to connect and influence different stories. Tom suggested using tokens like Baron Munchausen, players can pay to offer an amendment/suggestion to the active player, who can accept the payment and alter their story, or pay to keep their original narrative on course. [Example for chestband story in which (as Amy phrased it) Victor was actually Victoria. Challenge: 'Are you crazy? Everyone knows that the tyrant has fathered a dozen illegitimate kids.' Player can either accept modification ('that's true, the chest band was actually for one of the tyrant's lovers so she could disguise herself as a palace guard and slip into the dictator's bedroom'). Or counter it: 'who do you think spread those rumors ...']
Players could gain tokens by an incorporating previously established facts.
I think having this interactivity would benefit the play experience although I'll want to try it out to make sure the joint/amended stories that emerge are as interesting as those created solo under the old rules.
3. The list of objects worked pretty well as inspirations, although Rusty told me afterwards that he had assumed that they were actual items found in real dictator's homes. Hearing that they were just supposed to be interesting items (mainly taken from the book 1000 extra/ordinary objects, drawn from the Benneton mag Colors), he said that it somehow diminished the experience. I guess I could try to track lists of real tyrant possessions. I need to find/create more things to make the list longer, regardless of the source.

Sic Semper Tyrannus

Since PG was turn-based storytelling and Disappeared is also turn-taking storytelling/mystery solving (with a structural twist), we changed our plans to make the second game one of the more active, strategic ones. We decided to play Coup d'Etat, but my laptop ran out of power before we got started and I lost access to the rules. In my methodical gathering that morning of the cards, scrabble pieces, newspapers etc used in the various games – Tom labeled me the Carrot-top of rpg designers for all the props pile up, which I resent, since I'm clearly the Gallagher or pee wee herman of designers – I had forgotten a power cord. Since Coup is the most complicated of the nine games, we switched gears to sic semper tyrannus, a game of assassination plots and garbled communication.

The players rated Vialobos in paranoia, security, and luck then created characters. They assigned themselves points in Regime, Society, and Cell (with inadequate explanation of what these 3 categories represented). As GM, I constructed the diagram of their cell, with Ezra's character Francisco (code name Padre) having the highest cell rating and thereby heading the conspiracy. Ezra sent the first messages to the two players whose characters Padre 'handled; they in turn sent our messages to the remaining 3 plotters.

The key to SST is that every message is accompanied by a flip of coins to see how clearly it reaches the recipient. Most messages have words crossed out or words replaced. So players received messages like:
'You must renounce the faculty to the cobweb center. Your penis plan is a good one'
'XXXX the XXXX doctor. I will XXXX or her'
Once the players had passed lots of messages back and forth (sometimes flipping less coins so their messages would be less skewed, with the un-flipped coins going into the Tyrant's suspicion pool) they thought they had a decent plan. The plan that Ezra's priest had set in motion was to have a bomb inserted in a paintball gun that some kids would present the tyrant on national youth day.  At the same time, Jim's doctor was sneaking around on an (an admittedly clever) plan of his own, thinking he would detonate a bomb hidden in his stethoscope. Thomas' male prostitute seduced the tyrant rather than the tyrant's guard (although who can say whether this had a strategic impact). Rusty's celebrity photographer and Amy's maid barely connected in the passing off of the bomb components.

Players revealed their character's roles in the conspiracy and I awarded them each 0-2 coins based on how well they were contributing to the overall plan. Players flipped these coins against the dictator's suspicion coins (to see if they were arrested during the plotting- the players won), against the tyrant's paranoia coins (to see if they got close enough to pull off an attempt- the players won), and then against the dictator's security score (to see if they succeeded in killing Vialobos- the players lost). After the game ended I realized I had forgotten to award the players a creativity bonus for the paranoia test and a strategy bonus for the security test. 

Comments:
1. six players are probably too many for this game. There were so many messages flying around that I as GM became a choke point and by the end I was just scratching out words since it took to long to replace words.
2. As is, the society trait is basically meaningless. The players had two suggestions. Either make society reduce the tyrant's suspicion and/or paranoia (you're not going to suspect a celebrity is going to assassinate you). Or change society to something like connections that shows how easily your character can send a message without losing fidelity. For each point of connection you could change (or re-flip) a coin and therefore get messages through more clearly.
3. The rules organize message sending round by round, with each player sending one message per round. Since there were so many players I let them send as many messages as they wanted, at one point setting a time limit (the next 20 minutes). This mad scramble actually was sort of fun, but it could be abused by players sending repeat short messages so that one is bound to go through un-skewed. I should keep the round-by-round structure, but consider offering a final, time-limited 'scramble round' to allow last minute frantic planning. Maybe players could decide if they needed the extra timed round, but it would give the dictator a bunch of coins.
4. Rusty observed it wasn't really a 'game' because player's strategy and choices didn't meaningfully impact the outcome. There is a nominal challenge structure of player coins vs. dictator coins, but this is overpowered by the chaos of communicating. He suggested I rework the game to strengthen the structure, then add the story element back on top. Rusty thought it could work well with a board or cards. I actually agree with this critique but think that there is enough play value embedded in the chaos of communication that I don't need to make a huge shift. What I should do is make sure not to pitch this game as being about the strategy of planning a coup. The fun is in the miscommunication and seeing what weird kind of plot emerges, and both palytests I have run of SST have been pretty entertaining. This should be stressed and supported. I do like the idea of a board/card game about assassinating a despot (I can envision a perverse, inside-out version of clue) but that could be a separate project. In terms of calling any of the nine games 'games' something Amy referenced at the end about how the techniques of heads of state are similar to creative writing exercises strikes a chord with me. They are hybrids of parlor games, rpgs, literary games etc. However for pitching purposes I should be clear about the experience they offer.

I'm eager to take the latest lessons and get drafts finished for a round of exterior playtesting. Thanks again to the players. I'll inform them of this post in the hopes they have additional impressions and ideas.

[Jason Morningstar]

I'm glad you got to try out a couple of your games with strangers - always exhilarating.  It sounds like the two games you ran went pretty well.  The tyrant games all sound to me like more intimate experiences - I'm not surprised 4+ players got a little hectic. 

One suggestion - set up an automated tyrant object submission/retrieval page like SJGames' Warehouse 23 basement. 

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  One suggestion - set up an automated tyrant object submission/retrieval page like SJGames' Warehouse 23 basement. 

Jason, that's a good idea. I should also be fishing through auction catalogs and the like for interesting things.
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