[Robots and Rapiers] The Power of Power

[GreatWolf]

i]Robots and Rapiers<Questing for Power<An Aside on Power<Robots and Rapiers<Riding in Style<Robots and Rapiers<huge<Fighting for the Faithful<Xavier set up us the Bomb<Not Raising the Dead<On Initiative<players<Concluding Remarks

A PvP session like this will end up with repercussions.  I predict that we will look back at this scenario as being the tipping point, when the group finally began to shred apart into warring factions.  I certainly hope so.
Robots and RapieQuesting for Power<An Aside on Power<Robots and Rapiers<Riding in Style<Robots and Rapiers<huge<Fighting for the Faithful<Xavier set up us the Bomb<Not Raising the Dead<On Initiative<players<Concluding Remarks

A PvP session like this will end up with repercussions.  I predict that we will look back at this scenario as being the tipping point, when the group finally began to shred apart into warring factions.  I certainly hope so.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Seth,

I think Robots & Rapiers is a game built upon tipping points. One of my favorite experiences with it, in a much earlier version, was playing 5 Spark robots. I found the constant, roughly 50% conflict between programming and whims to be incredibly fun; it was right at the point in which the programming could not reliably produce "the adventure," for the whole group, and the whims could not reliably add up to a real personality, for a given robot. So what happened was simultaneously spastic and yet completely understandable.

All of which is a fancy way to ask, "What was the Spark level" for the player characters in this session?

Ralph and I have infrequent but intense bull sessions about Robots & Rapiers. I think the game design turned an important corner of its own over the last few months, and I can't wait to see it take its final shape.

Best, Ron

[GreatWolf]

I don't have the character sheets to hand right now, but there's currently a range of Self-Awareness between the PCs.  Gerard is the lowest, with a 1 (I think), while Yves is up to 6.  The others are around 3-4.

Right now our game is on hold for further work to the Tapestry rules.  I think that the in-game rules are just about ready, but the world mechanics are moving too slowly to keep up with the robots' transformation.

[Valamir]

Yeah, I'm really pleased with where the game is now.

A few <ahem>years<cough> ago when the "quick start" rules were released at GenCon the game was doing everything I wanted it to do.  Except for one small thing...it was totally not fun to play.  I* didn't even want to play it.

Thankfully, as an indie publisher who isn't trying to pay the bills with the revenue I had the luxury of taking it back to specs and in the several iterations since then have reached a spot where the actual in-game action is a freakin' blast to play. Some minor tweaks and some better structure to the text and its pretty much golden at this point.

But now we're able to get to the parts of the game that had received the least attention before.  The interlude and world building aspects...things I didn't get to see much of until the actual play part got nailed down.  In a familiar refrain, its doing everything I wanted it to.  Except...it's totally not fun to play...not even for me.  But now being able to see what the actual hurdles are I think fixing it will not take much more than the Will on my part to rip my beloved mechanics to shreds and do it differently. 

Hopefully that will be proven correct when we pick back up and finish.