[The Rustbelt] "Tell me who killed my cat." & solo play experiment

So, I was supposed to play the Rustbelt with Stephen and my cousin James this weekend, but Stephen couldn't make it, so me & James just played by ourselves.

I used to play with James all the time back in high school. We played mostly the various home-made games that our group of friends had been cooking up at the time (including the game what would eventually become the Rustbelt), and occasionally some Vampire. James has also played Werewolf, Mage, AD&D (3rd, I think), and probably a few others I don't know about.

We played at his house. He has a table with raised edges, which was great for rolling dice. There were, unfortunately, a lot of distractions from his 4-year old daughter and her approx. 7-yo cousin; "Who's winning?" "Can I roll the dice?" and that sort of thing, nothing too bad.

The story concerned a man called Machete Malcolm, a former slave who was currently apprenticed to a brujo called don Ricardo. Malcolm's only real friend in the world was his cat, Cat, who was killed one day while Malcolm was away. As he pines for the cat, Ricardo berates him for his self-indulgence, and Malcolm swears to find the killer. When he finds an anonymous tip on his door, he begins investigating. After some violence, schmoozing, and double-dealing, he finally arranges to meet the cat-killer under an old suspension bridge in the middle of town at sundown. Of course, the killer was none other than don Ricardo, who did it in a sincere attempt to teach Malcolm a lesson by presenting him with a worthy challenge. There was a brief battle in which Teddy Boy, a brug hired by Malcolm, hurled a bowling ball at Ricardo, who intercepted it mid-air with a thrown kernel of corn, doubtless magical. The bowling ball shattered. An attempt to frag-grenade the brujo proved fruitless when he became a crow and darted out of the blast-radius, hovering above the bridge. Ten men with rifles appeared on the bridge, and they turned out to be saguaro cacti when they were killed (by Teddy Boy, who gripped a broken cable dangling from the bridge and yanked on it to shake the men off). Finally, a truce was called, and Malcolm made his decision between his attachments and the sorcerous education that don Ricardo was offering him. He chose magic over love.

The Push criteria work very well. Early on, Malcolm was able to knock out Teddy Boy single-handedly because Malcolm believed in what he was doing and Teddy Boy had no real motivation, other than drunken anger, to fight. Motivation matters more than size? Awesome.

Advantage works perfectly. It has precisely the right impact, and, in fights, it is subject to constant fluctuation from round to round, making for nicely dramatic changes in momentum.

Playing with one player and a GM is really hard. I felt like I didn't have much to work with, and I also think that I came dangerously close to rail-roading. I planned no outcomes, and fudged nothing, and the only thing I had planned at all was that Ricardo killed the cat, but it felt as though there was only one direction in which things could go.

James, however, is in love with the game. He was very impressed at how smoothly it runs, voicing particular enjoyment with the fights and the minimal search time (he didn't say "search time," but it's what he meant). He didn't mind the extra handling time that goes into negotiating what form damage takes, because he enjoyed the flexibility of it. Within an hour after the game, he was already hounding me to contact Stephen and set up another one.

So, yeah, despite some difficulties, I'ma call this a successful playtest.
-Marshall