[Pinnacle Empty Quiver] Raid on the Spanish Fort

[Bryan Hansel]

PEQ went through its first playtest over the holidays. PEQ was my entry in the 2006 Game Chef competition where I got a ton of encouraging remarks about developing the game further. The game is about a group of Special Ops troops (the players) that have to either:

• 1. Defuse a nuclear bomb and let hostages die.
• 2. Rescue hostages – their loved ones – and let the bomb explode.
• 3. A third outcome can happen during play: The characters can die.

We had just over two hours to play, before having to be somewhere else, this time frame worked with the game, because the game has a time limit of two hours from start to finish, including character creation. This is timed. Before the playtest, I moved character creation out of the timed game, but since we only had two hours, we didn't get to play the full game from character creation to the finish battle.

Despite not playing the full game, the game worked on the levels I wanted it to. Mainly, it emphasized choice and teamwork. But there were also some snags that I'll list towards the end. I have a few ideas for solutions to the snags, but would love additional thoughts or ideas. And, man, this playtest was very valuable to me.

Players

We had a group of five players, but one sat the game out. So, I Gmed, and the others played. I was tired, so I'd say that I wasn't at my best and I stumbled a little in creating scenes that the players moved into. This actually helped uncover some issues about the game as I envisioned it being played before the playtest.
Of the other three players, two have played a couple of role-playing games, but they're more into classic board games. The third has played a lot of role-playing games, but hadn't played for the last couple of years.

Character Creation

   In PEQ, the players make up a Special Forces team based on US Green Beret and British Commando forces. For this game, they came up with:

• Special Force Unit Name: Bruisers
• Motto: Blood and Guts
• Logo: A crazy lightning bolt/blade with a skull behind it.
• Company Specialty: Air
• Insertion Method: HALO

The Company Specialty chosen offers certain Insertion Methods, which in turn give the players a few bonuses during play. HALO allows the players to role a Steel Die during the Insertion Phase of the game.
After the team was created, the players created their individual characters. The players assign numbers to six different traits, pick Specialties and then add together traits to come up with scores for skills – some of which all the characters have and others which only specialties have. The characters created were:

• Killer Kate, Commanding Officer/Communications (Boardgamer One), referred to as CO.
• Hot Stuff, Warrant Officer/ Medical (Boardgamer Two), referred to as WO.
• Big Black, Weapons Sergeant (Experienced RPGer), referred to as WS.

   Character creation took way too long. At around 45 minutes, it ate up a ton of time for our two-hour playtest. It was also tiring. Reminded me of why I can't stand games that take forever to create characters.

Situation Set-Up

   The next part of the game is explaining the skill system and the combat system. I skipped explaining the combat system until the first combat. Basically, the skill system is: roll equal or under your skill number on a d6 to have the skill succeed.  Sixes always fail. Plus, the players can also roll a Steel Die, which if the skill roll and the Steel Die roll are successful, the character's Threat Track moves ahead. The Threat Track shows how far along in the mission that the player is. At Threat Level Seven, the player is in the end game. For teams, all players have to be a Level Seven.
Failure on the Steel Die can either loose the Steel Die or if on a team loose the Steel Die or loose a Team Morale Point. A character can only ever have at max one Steel Die, so when it is lost, the player must initiate a combat and win to gain back a new Steel Die.
Then I read the introduction, which sets up that terrorists have invaded the player's home base, the terrorists took loved ones hostage, and they have a nuke. You can only 1. Defuse a nuclear bomb and let hostages die, or 2. Rescue hostages – their loved ones – and let the bomb explode killing 100,000 people. A third outcome can happen during play: The characters can die.
   There was a little conversation about what the team was going to do, but I quickly moved onto the next scene. This all took about 15 minutes, so after this step; one hour of our two-hour time frame was gone.

The Mission Breakdown

   At this point, I started the timer countdown for two hours, although I knew we wouldn't be able to make the time limit. But the countdown is also used for random events that start happening every 10 minutes after the first 30 minutes of play.

Recon

   The next scene occurred in a temporary tent base set up a short distance from the character's home base. The ODB commander was talking to the characters. During this scene, the players got a chance at performing Recon on the base to see what they were up against. They made some rolls and all succeeded. They set the base in a Spanish speaking country. The base itself was an old Spanish fort built in the 1700s and retrofitted for modern warfare. After their characters studied the map of the fort, they decided to HALO in right into the center of the base. A little bit of argument happened among the team.
The two inexperienced players actually decided to HALO into the center of the fort. The experienced player wanted to HALO outside the fort and work their way in. He didn't want to land right into the middle of the action. I'll note that it didn't really mater where they landed, because the TL of the game determines the number of enemy the characters will fight. Since the inexperienced players were CO and WO, they had their way as commanders of the team.

Mandatory Event One

   The next scene was a lesser Officer running into the briefing room and turning on the TV. On TV, the terrorists were forcing the PC's loved one to denounce their god, their country, beg for help, etc... The catch is that the players have to name one of their loved ones and then act out the scene as that loved one. They picked, an Uncle, a daughter, and a father.
This scene was a little weird and we stumbled through the role-playing. I felt like I really had to railroad the players to make the scene work as it should.
Right after the scene, the teams were formed. The two inexperienced players CO/WO picked right there that they were going to save their loved ones and let the nuke explode. The WS, the experience player, argued points with them about letting 100,000 people die, etc..., but he couldn't change any minds.

Insertion

   The next scene started 30,000 feet above the fort with the characters jumping down towards the fort. They all succeeded in hitting the landing zone, and the CO/WO both won their Steel Die Roll. The WS missed his Steel Die Roll. So, on the ground the CO/WO both had a Threat Level of 2, and the WS had a TL of 1.

Infiltration & Engagement

   So, the characters landed in the fort in the dark in the open, they decided to enter the main fort, so had to bypass security systems to get into a room. They managed to do this, but two of them lost their Steel Dice in the process. So, they started a fight. I'll cover this in a bit. After the fight, the players kind of got stuck. "Where do we go? What do we do?" they were asking each other, so I made up the room to have a high ceiling with dead soldiers hanging from ropes over an open pit in the floor (okay, a little too much D&D), but the players were fine with that, because now they had to get over the pit. Each of them failed and ended up in the pit, they managed to get out of the pit, and then the first random event happened.
   
Random Event One

   Bombing run. The team's country sent a B2 over the fort and bombed the heck out of it. Each player had to make a remark about why they did this: "They thought we'd fail." "We're going too slow." "They don't care about us." The team lost two TLs, so now all three players were at TL 1.

Back to Work

   For some reason, the CO decided that she wanted to get a view of the layout of the fort, so she sent the team up the ropes that were hanging the dead soldiers. Using her leadership skill, they all got bonuses to their skill roles. They got up high enough to look over the fort. At the top of the tower, the WS challenged the COs leadership ability. He went Rogue and dropped his TL to 0 by doing so. This whole issue took about 10 minutes.

Random Event Two

   Everyone is Ambushed. This actually works out, because two players needed Steel Dice. The rogue player had to fight alone. At a higher TL this would have been pretty hard for him.

On the Roof

   Over the next twenty minutes, there were a couple of combats. The WS started to recon the base, and we ran into a huge issue. He wanted to do something that isn't covered by a specific skill, so we tried to figure out which one was the closest. He wanted to roll a skill, because it is the only way to move forward the game, so we settled on something, and he gained a TL to 1. He also just wanted to find the bomb, so I said, you can't find the bomb until TL 7. He wondered why if he reconed and found it, he couldn't just walk to it.
The WO and CO crawled across a roof and managed both to score a couple of TLs.

The Tally

   At the end of the first hour of play, the CO was wounded with two wounds that reduced her skills and she was at a TL of 2. The WO was unwounded, but without a Steel Die at a TL of 2. The WS was rogue, unwounded, had a Steel Die, and was at TL 1. Team Morale had suffered only one blow. The team was working towards saving their loved ones and the rogue was attempting to disarm the nuke.

Combat

   I'm not going to go into too much detail about the combat, because it works, and it totally rocks! If anyone wants to hear more, let me know, and I'll elaborate on it. It does have one problem. Wounds reduce traits which reduce skills, which takes a ton of time to figure out which skills are reduced, so it needs changed.

The Snags

   The problems. Overall, I think that things went okay.
Snag number one occurred in Infiltration & Engagement and On the Roof with the Rogue player: What to do? Where to go? We ran into problems on where things were going. All the players were unfamiliar with the genre of this game, so they didn't know that sneaking around, meeting informants, planting explosives, etc... are all cool things that Special Forces do on missions. Ideally, I think that a general outline of what must happen on each Threat Level would go a long way to solving this. The solutions that occur to me are: 1. Random situation creation tables, 2. A little pre-game planning by the GM, or 3. During Recon, each Threat Level is Reconed and decided on by the players. With failed rolls, the GM makes it up or uses random situations creation tables.

Snag number two occurred during character creation. It takes waaaaayyyyy too long. Currently there are six traits. I'm not even sure that they are needed. I narrowed down the skill list before play, but it still seems to have too many skills. Might have to broaden them. Or maybe a character sheet for each specialty would work. But what happens when players take two specialties. This might be a character sheet issue.

Snag number three was with the Steel Die. The players felt it unfair to loose a Steel Die if their skill roll failed. They suggested that they should only get to roll a Steel Die when the skill was successful in the first place. And they suggested a chance to get the Steel Die back when it was lost. I'm not sure that is needed. It would mean less combat, which tied as the most fun of the game with the race against each other.

Snag four. The plane attack inflicted too much loss in TLs. Maybe TL or a wound.

Snag number five. The Mandatory Event One was really hard to role-play. The players kept on being defiant in what they were suppose to say, which was cool, but it was hard for me to think like a terrorist and what would a televised terrorist do with a defiant hostage. Maybe a script to help out the GMs here. Maybe a full script that everyone reads from.

Snag number six is all the work to reduce skills after combat. It slows things down. Damage right now is taken to a character's trait, but it would be much faster if there were some sort of hit point concept. Right now adding up all the traits gives a character 10 wounds possible, which will probably never happen during the game. So, maybe I need to give each character 5 hit point type things and have wound levels reduce performance in all skills as the character gets more and more hurt.

Snag number seven was trying to find a skill that would work for an action that the WS wanted to do, but wasn't covered by the skills. Maybe broaden the skills. Maybe they just have to roll against a trait.

Snag number eight: I don't think that it is possible to hit TL 7 and win the game in two hours with three players. Might have to drop the TL max to 5 or 6. Only more playtesting will help here.

I appreciate any feedback or ideas or questions that could help me move the game forward specifically with the snags that I've outlined above. What do you think of the solutions I have come up with? Do you have other ideas for solutions?

And elsewhere, am I missing anything that I should be seeing?

Thanks,
Bryan

[Jason Morningstar]

First of all, enjoy this long drink from the cup of awesome, my friend - aaaah.  This looks like an incredibly fruitful playtest.  Any time you can tease out eight broke or dodgy things in a few hours, you are doing extremely well. 

Have you seen Agon?  It offers a nice way to generate situation keyed to providing a resource-based adversity, and I think it would be really interesting to you.  Generating situation via tables, In A Wicked Age style, would also work wonderfully for PEQ. 

Can you tell us a bit about your playtesters?  Were they hardened grognards or non-gamers?  I wonder if the long character generation is an artifact of inexperience.  Just a thought.

I really liked PEQ's Game Chef version and am glad you are moving forward with it!

[Graham W]

Hey Bryan. I like this game: I'm glad it's coming together.

On your snag number five. I wonder if the scene seemed difficult because it was an interruption to the action? After all (if I understand this right), the loved ones can't say anything that will affect the mission.

As a rough idea to kick around: how about if, in that scene, one player could raise the stakes of what could happen to their loved ones?

Player 1: Help us! They're not just going to shoot us. I think they're going to torture us to death!

Or similar.

I have a wider worry with that moral choice: save loved ones or save 100 000 people. My worry is that it doesn't seem to underlie the mission: it seems to occur twice, once near the beginning, once near the end.

Again, as a rough idea, how would you feel about letting the players raise the stakes on both sides of the conflict, throughout the game? So, at the beginning, it's Save Loved Ones vs Save 100000 People. Then they discover it's Save Loved Ones From Torture vs Save 100000 people. Then it's Save Loved Ones From Torture vs Save A Million Lives From Radioactive Fallout.

Perhaps not exactly that solution, but it would be good to see that moral choice underpinning the game.

Graham

[jlester]

Snag number five. The Mandatory Event One was really hard to role-play. The players kept on being defiant in what they were suppose to say, which was cool, but it was hard for me to think like a terrorist and what would a televised terrorist do with a defiant hostage. Maybe a script to help out the GMs here. Maybe a full script that everyone reads from.

Um?  A televised terrorist with a defiant hostage would behead them.  If you've got a script, maybe there's a GM's ringer on first, who tries to be all tough and gets suddenly killed.  The loved ones can then either grovel or die, as the players like.

[Bryan Hansel]

Believe me, I'm kicking back and basking in the glow of an imaginary Mexican sun on a salty shoreline with a beer in my hand. And a lime. And some kid trying to sell me candy.

I think that I was lucky in finding the broken items, but because the game is meant to be played from start to finish in two hours, I feel that will help accelerate the process in future playtests. I haven't seen Agon. Something like In A Wicked Age was more along the line I was thinking, but I'm going to have to check out Agon, cause it looks pretty darn cool.

Character generation as an artifact of inexperience? You may be right. One of the playtesters, my brother, has played a bunch of different types of RPGs. He was by far the most experienced playtester other than myself and as I remember character creation, he had his character done up rather quickly. The other two players have played a lot of games, mostly strategy board games and classic board games, but few role-playing games. Although the player who played Killer Kate is one heck of a role-player. She really went to town with descriptions during combat and during the Mandatory Scenes. I also just remembered that the character sheets were passed around to trace the logo onto each others sheet.

Thanks for the encouragement. This version is pretty close to the Game Chef version with a bunch of clean-ups and Morale Points added as a rule (may or may not keep). When MPs are gone the team can split without any TL loss penalties, which I thought would be a nice touch towards the higher TLs. Combat is a little different, but still has the three phases: wide-angle, close-up, and one-on-one. Now there is a different reason to use each phase.

[Bryan Hansel]

Ohhhhh, Graham, that is an interesting idea, and the framework is already in the game as the Mandatory and Random Events. A little tweak here and there. One problem is when the team decides to work towards the same goal though, then the escalation fails. Or do you think the escalation would help later to split the team up as things become more dire?

Um?  A televised terrorist with a defiant hostage would behead them.  If you've got a script, maybe there's a GM's ringer on first, who tries to be all tough and gets suddenly killed.  The loved ones can then either grovel or die, as the players like.

Right on. I had the terrorist take the butt of his AK-47 and smash the hostage in the head, but still one of the other players was defiant. Still, if a hostage is executed right from the start, then the player might be less prone to act out. A random event actually kills one of the hostages.

[Jason Morningstar]

Snag Five - Maybe defiant behavior simply ends the scene.  There's a clipped scream as the terrorist turns off the camera and God only knows what's going on.

Snag Seven - "Soldiering" or some catch-all everybody gets free, maybe at a default level.  Your protagonists here are going to be bad-ass; they shouldn't flail around. 

[John Harper]

Well, Jason was right about the Agon connection. This game is right up my alley. I'm working on my own Spec Ops game, in fact, and this is inspiring me (or urging me to stop and let you do it -- not sure which).

I really like the detailed ability list. It adds a ton of color to the game. I think it would be a shame to see it get too streamlined. Maybe there's a faster way to get going in play, though, like having pregen characters. For this one-shot, 2-hour game, full-on chargen may not be necessary. Instead, you could provide six premade operators and let the players choose the one they want. The players could even customize them in some way, probably by choosing Squad Assignments.

I love, love, love the opening bit where each player plays a hostage. I think it's perfect, and the GM (as the terrorists) should go for the jugular. I would really sink my teeth into a scene like this, as would most of the people I game with. It may not have gone smoothly in your test, but trust me, it's solid gold.

I'm really psyched about this game. I'll throw it in my bag (with some pregens) and maybe try to get a playtest in the next time my group has an empty slot.

[andrew_kenrick]

Sounds like an excellent playtest - I'd love to see how this game runs myself, I think my group would have a blast with it (no pun intended).

I really like the detailed ability list. It adds a ton of color to the game. I think it would be a shame to see it get too streamlined. Maybe there's a faster way to get going in play, though, like having pregen characters. For this one-shot, 2-hour game, full-on chargen may not be necessary. Instead, you could provide six premade operators and let the players choose the one they want. The players could even customize them in some way, probably by choosing Squad Assignments.

I was just thinking that myself. Because you've got such a tight premise and genre, why not create half a dozen ready-made characters. They needn't be anything more than a series of archetypes with skills and traits all worked out. Players can then pick one and fill in some blanks. You could have as much or as little detail here as you wanted - either have everything ready made save for names and personalities, or allow some customisation (such as "choose this skill or this skill").

I think getting bogged down in a lengthy character creation could create the wrong impression about the game, especially as the game itself is so fast paced. It seems suited to just picking up and playing when a group has a short period of time to play in.

[Bryan Hansel]

Jason, that's another great way to end the defiance. I'm going to pen that one in. And I'll write in the ringer hostage getting killed. And maybe the GM needs to let the players know that the loved ones that they are going to be playing have been beaten down and now very little defiance left in them. And maybe like John is suggesting, it just happened to be this test where we encountered the problem -- maybe more of an issue with my GMing in this case. When I look back on the scene, it did accomplish what I had hoped and that was to solidify the sides the team members were going to take. Maybe some examples in the text of how this scene has played out will help a GM.

I think everyone is right about the pregens. That would get the game going quickly enough. Plus, the way it is now set-up pregens make a ton of sense, because each character specialty is geared towards a certain arrangement of points in the traits. The Nickname, description, tattoos, plus picking three extra skills, etc... can help flag a player's interest in their character. Plus they get to make up the team. This would remove all the fiddly stuff from play, and leave the stuff that my players had the most fun with like drawing the logo and decided that they would get to jump from 30,000 feet out of a C-130 pulling their chute's cord at the last second.

"Soldiering"? This just made something click for me. So, these characters are all specialized in something, right? Well, then do what you're specialized in and you're bad-assed. Want to do something else: roll a 3 or less. This also speeds up using skills that the character doesn't have.

I'm really curious about what anyone thinks about Snag Six: Damage. I know that fiddling with revaluing skills based on traits during play is just too cumbersome. I'm trying hard to remember how wounds were handled in James Bond, but my copy is packed away in a box buried under a pile of camping gear  -- I sort of remember that I liked the system. Anyone want to jog my memory. I'm thinking something like a set of boxes on the character sheet labeled Superficial/Bleeding/Vicious/Something/Mortally then dead. With the something resulting in a -1 to Specialty Skills and Mortally -2 to Specialty Skills and -1 to Basic Skills. This would certainly be the fastest way to handle it. It's simple too. Plus, in the movies, the soldiers are always at their top level until they get really wounded.

John and Andrew or anyone else, if one of you want an updated version of the rules vs. the Game Chef version, let me know, and I'll send you the current rules. And John, Spec Ops are cool. More games the merrier. Plus, I don't have a regular meeting group right now, so it'll be some time before the next playtest on my side.

[Graham W]

Bryan, yes, I can see how recording the damage to traits becomes annoying.

What about considering other ways to record the traits? If you used poker chips, say, you could still use your "Damage to traits" system. Or you could have a slider for each one on the character sheet. Or something like that.

By the way, I like the pre-gen idea, but it would be worth thinking about some kind of partial character generation system: like the Capes Click-Lock system. That way, characters are quick to create, but players can still have some fun assigning their skills.

Oh, and we haven't talked much about the Steel Die. I'm a bit confused about the problem. Is the problem that it's too easy to lose it? Or that you can only get it back by starting a combat?

Graham

[Jason Morningstar]

Bryan, pre-gens are a good idea.  See carry:  a game about war for a great example of how this constraint can drive play.  You have a fairly detailed platoon roster, but you author the hopes and fears of the grunt you select in that game. 

Why do you have a player playing their own family member?  Why not have somebody else play the family member, so you get eye contact and button-pushing?

[Bryan Hansel]

Ideally for the traits and skills with damage, everyone would have a laptop with a spreadsheet of the character sheet. And it would update everything automatically. It wasn't so much the part of marking down the trait, but the problem was revaluing all the skills. So, for example, Intelligence takes a hit, so in Specialty Skills, you have to reduce: Area Assessment, Battlefield Engineering, Computers & Communications, etc...

You know for the pregens, it might be ideal to have pregens for the groups that want to quickly play a one-off and still have a complete character creation system for groups that dig character creation. In thinking about the pregens, this is what I'll try next: pick a pregen character of a specialty. Each specialty has a separate character sheet. The specialty gives the character certain skills, then if less than 8 players are playing the player can pick another specialty which gives more skills with a few restrictions - these extra specialties are all listed on the character sheet for the player to circle the one he wants. Sort of works like the Click-Lock system without the click and lock of separate sheets. The player gets to pick some more skills. I'll have to check out carry: a game about war, but I just bought Agon and that cool Arctic game with the weird name, which I totally am dying to play next...

Family members? I was thinking for speed, but having somebody else play the family member sure could be fun and really get some of the players wound up. I'll try this in the next go around.

Steel Die? The problem that the players felt was that it was too easy to lose. The primary problem felt was that they had to decide to roll a Steel Die before they rolled against a skill. They would then roll them together, and if the skill roll failed, they would accomplish nothing and still had a chance to loose the Steel Die. The players felt it would be more fair if they could roll the skill, and then if it succeeded they could roll the Steel Die, but if the skill roll failed they wouldn't have to risk the Steel Die. A couple of Steel Dice were lost when the skill roll failed. Maybe this isn't an issue? How do you feel about the fairness?

To separate combat out from the Steel Die issue, the amount of combat in the game felt perfect. Getting a Steel Die back via combat was pretty darn fun for both the players and me. I thought the combats where an absolute blast. We tweaked it during play though. At first, I was having the players describe what the mooks where doing in Close-Up combat, but it was a little boring for me and a little too much work for them. So, I switched it to the GM describing what the mooks were doing, and the players worrying about their character's action. The description got much better all around and way more fun.

[Jason Morningstar]

Just bouncing off your post, a few ideas and comments.  First, Ganakagok is a great game and does some very interesting things with social networking in-game that might be worth checking out for PEQ.

What if your pre-generated character had three states, as represented by gradually degrading skills and competencies, either noted on the sheet (5/4/2) or as three individual sheets you'd fold over one at a time as you took damage?  It'd actually be fun during character generation to script out the "injured you" and the "on death's door you".  It'd completely eliminate all the number crunching issues. 

I disagree that the steel die is too easy to lose - it should be unpredictable and a little unfair at times.  It's war, for God's sake. 

It sounds like you are ready for another playtest - you should write up the changes you want to make and make a new draft available.  John expressed interest and I'd love to give it a try if I could.

[Graham W]

It wasn't so much the part of marking down the trait, but the problem was revaluing all the skills. So, for example, Intelligence takes a hit, so in Specialty Skills, you have to reduce: Area Assessment, Battlefield Engineering, Computers & Communications, etc...

Oh, I see. There must be some way of fixing that by presenting the skills differently. For example, you could list the skills as "+1" to the trait rather than an absolute score. (That's not a great solution, but there's got to be a way.)

I like the solution to the pre-gens; and I like the idea of other players playing the family members.

I can see how losing Steel Dice is frustrating, especially if you can lose more than one, and especially if you also fail the roll. Some obvious solutions are:

1. You can only lose one Steel Die per round.
2. You only lose a Steel Die if you roll a 6 on it (5 or 6 for rogue operatives, perhaps).
3. Switch it round, so you lose Steel Dice on low numbers (so you'll usually lose them on wins).
4. Steel Dice aren't automatically lost when they roll high numbers. Instead, if you fail the roll, you can exchange them for a success. (This one's probably too much of a change, but it's interesting.)

Graham