[Reel Adventures] Curse of the Glass Rose (Pt1)

[iain]

After a winter hiatus, the sunday group I am a part of got back together and helped me with the second playtest for Reel Adventures. You can find copies of the version 0.2 rules on my website which is the set we were playing with. At the end of the report is a series of issues that came up from playtest which I would appreciate comment upon.

Playtesters: Iain McAllister, Rebecca Carter, Chris Matthias

Synopsis
The film was to be about three archaeological students going to Persia on a dig. On arrival they find their Professor is missing, go to the dig, get pulled backwards through time and eventually have to save him from the clutches of an evil Vizier who is trying to take over the kingdom. Kind of 'Indiana Jones' meets 'Timeline'. The story was to be called the 'Curse of the Glass Rose'. What exactly the glass rose is was left undecided. Becki suggested that we should set a tone for the game, something I am going to add to the rules, which we settled on as 'light hearted but thrilling'.

Filling out the script sheet we set out the acts as follows:

Act 1: arrival in Persia, pulled back in time
Act 2: Where the hell are we, find the professor, gain allies
Act 3: Reveal the evil plot
Act 4: Defeat it

This was designed to keep us all on the right track whilst we wove our tale.

I was hoping to get the whole game done in one night, but several questions came up which distracted from play a bit. As such this report only covers the first two acts, with acts 3 & 4 to be played next week.

The 3 heroes of the tale, described in name and archetype only, are:
Johnathon Smith, The Geek – Iain McAllister
Lucy Abdulraman, Cheerleader – Rebecca Carter
Jeff Marini, Stoner - Chris Matthias

Act 1- Wherein the heroes arrive in Persia and fall through time.
I started us off as I was most familiar with the game, framing a scene enroute to Egypt that established Johnathon's connection with the Professor we were going to rescue. Subsequent scenes led to a hero vs. hero action with Becki's character, resulting in us following her to the dig straight away, and Johnathon and Becki getting to declare some Qualities and Traits.

Once at the dig site a series of scenes, started with an excellent one by Chris, established what the Glass Rose was, Chris using a nemesis scene to show it as a woman and to give the nemesis a Quality. We also established that Lucy's mother knew of the legend surrounding the glass rose, that she had magical powers, and that Lucy may be a direct descendant. We also said that she was sold by the Vizier to a 'man from the east' and that the money he made from that sale allowed him to gain control of the region and subjugate its people.

My character, whilst researching some ancient symbols, told the others how his father was into the occult and I wrote down the personal nemesis of 'My dad was a believer in the occult' and that that would be something I would have to square with at some point. In researching these symbols, and narrating my confusion of some mention of a 'sirens call through time' I opened a secret door that led us into the past and we started act 2 emerging into ancient Persia! So far we were on track with the script sheet which was excellent.

Act 2 – Wherein the characters arrive in the past and find the professor.
We emerged into ancient Persia with very little clue as to where we actually were, weird clothes and no money. Luckily Lucy knew the language and found out our location. We needed money to do anything and Lucy invented a singing background for herself which resulted in a piece of action against the plot. The action resulted in a draw gaining us some money, but denting her belief in her singing ability by 1 point of damage.

As we congratulated ourselves, Chris narrated a scene where a guard came running through the streets, shouting something about prisoners and wielding a large sword. Jeff showed off his Aikido, raising his Body to 3, and through the guy into a fruit cart allowing us to make our escape.

The next few scenes had Johnathon getting very stressed out over what had happened and wandering off. He met an old guy called Tariq in a pub who he had a very pleasant conversation with about legends and established that they were at the moment in time just before the Glass Rose was about to be sold. Johnathon decided the only way to get back home was to meet this woman and see if she could do anything, despite him not believing in any of that mumbo jumbo.

I framed a scene showing us splitting up and asking for information about the Glass Rose and found her to be in the tallest tower in the Sultan's palace, somewhere it would be very difficult to get to. The professor, who becki had shown earlier to be alive and well and being informed of our arrival, met us outside the palace and took us to safety. Explaining that he had been searching for the way back in time for a while he began to tell us why he was here. However we were rudely interrupted by some of the palace guard and the third act ended with the party being split as Jeff lost sight of us in the crowd when we made our escape.

Will the heroes be able to get back to their own time? Why has the professor come back in time? Will Johnathon get it on with the Glass Rose and become Lucy's great, great, great, great (etc. etc.) Grandfather? Find out next time in 'The Curse of the Glass Rose'.

Issues Arising from playtest – version 0.3 notes

Insert a piece on tone in the synopsis section.

Insert a piece on content, advising players on having a discussion about violence etc. before they begin play. This will sort of act like a rating for the story but I don't want to go as far as imposing a rating.

Tone and content form part of the social contract. Should this be talked about explicitly?

State explicitly when qualities and traits can be declared during a piece of action.

Hero vs. Hero conflict:
At the moment their is no mechanical reward for opposing another hero, merely the fact that your stake comes to pass. Should their be something that ties into momentum and impact?

Declaration of stake needs to be explicit, at the moment it is implied and not very well.

Descriptions: needs to be space on character sheet to write down a description of the character.

Make sequence of play a lot more obvious. So insert something along the lines of:
1) Move piece
2) Gain Momentum
3) Frame Scene
4) Shoot Scene
5) End Scene

Momentum
This is not right yet. The forcing of nemesis scenes to reduce momentum felt too forced. Need to recalculate for Nemesis with anchor value of 20-25. Becki felt she was being forced to frame scenes involving the nemesis in order to reduce momentum. I need to recalculate the flow of momentum.

Dice
Too many dice rolled as game progresses
Change backgrounds and connections to automatic successes?
This would mean you end up rolling only your ability
Could also change threats to be automatic successes

Connections – become contacts, phrase was too confusing when related to backgrounds.

I accidentally took out the fact that threats being defeated reduced momentum. Instead they only gave impact. This takes out the incentive to create threats but did force the players into spending more momentum on the nemesis. Threats do still need to be important so I need to either reintroduce the rule, or come up with another way to incentivise, horrible word I know, their creation. Any thoughts?

Well that is it for now. Second part should be up about same time next week.
Any feedback appreciated
Cheers
Iain

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Iain,

Here's my concern: to what extent did the story itself get created through characters' actions, and to what extent did it get created through storyboarding? In the latter case, characters' actions would be simply "acted out" or carried through as agreed upon.

Best, Ron

[iain]

Hi Ron,
The plot we outlined was very much the bare bones and is designed to be used more as guidelines then an actual full storyboard in the way you are thinking. We wrote down the following at the start of the game:

Synopsis: Three students on a dig in Persia are pulled back in time and have to rescue their professor from the clutches of an Evil Vizier.

Tone: Light hearted but thrilling

Content: Violence and some swearing ok, but little or no sexual content.

Act 1: Arrival in egypt, get pulled back in time.
Act 2: How the hell did we get here, find professor.
Act 3:The Vizier's evil plot.
Act 4: Final confrontation.

This gave all three of us an idea of where we wanted the story to be at the start of each act. How we actually got to those points, was up to individual character action. The actual details of plot, like who or what the glass rose was, were up to the players imaginations. At this stage of playtesting I am not entirely sure that the laying out of acts is necessary, it may be enough to just describe the synopsis.

I am also having problems with creating the nemesis of the story. This is a collectively created enemy that will appear in the final conflict. I know you had something similar in your supervillains game and was wondering what problems you ran into.

Cheers
Iain