[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<<

[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