[BtI] Sealed lips, chained heart

[Sam!]

Disclaimer<Leading up to the playing<Breaking the Ice<Contenders or Breaking the Ice<Setup and fiction content<The way we playedsupport, not to restrict

[Eero Tuovinen]

Ha, nice to see that her first efforts with roleplaying went well. Interesting actual play account. I don't consider BtI exactly a beginner's game because of the one-on-one nature of the game, but perhaps it's a good idea for people who come into the hobby with performance anxiety to play "in private" like that. Rules-wise you might consider playing another game of BtI at some point - perhaps knowing the rules from the start will help appreciate them more. Or not, freeforming is certainly alluring for many.

If you're going to continue with the one-on-one roleplaying experiments, you might wish to consider a GM-based adventure game. Something with concretely adventurous challenges, constraint and action. Something like the Moomin adventure you wrote a while back, perhaps, or Trollbabe. Might be interesting and different from the sentimental style of BtI.

I find your comments on nerd behaviour interesting. I've certainly encountered many people for whom roleplaying together is quite a big deal in many different ways. I've done a lot myself to reinvent the social structure of rpgs in that regard, both in my own play and in writing.

Also, I'm going to be in Helsinki for a couple of days after Tracon. I'd love to meet up with you two at some point - let me know if you're interested.

[Emily Care]

Hi Sami,

Thanks for your great play report! I'm very glad it was a good experience for your girlfriend. The two player nature of the game was meant to give people exactly the kind of safe space to explore and not feel self-conscious that you provided her with it. Also, being encouraged to help eachother out with what happens next makes it easier to not freeze up which can make a role playing experience not fun, or even traumatic.

	Logged

Koti ei ole koti ilman saunaa.

Black & Green Games

[Sam!]

I don't consider BtI exactly a beginner's game because of the one-on-one nature of the game, but perhaps it's a good idea for people who come into the hobby with performance anxiety to play "in private" like that.

It's not only the one-on-one thingie, which I consider the strenght of BtI. It's also about the genre, character creation and strong structure, which I suppose to be easy to catch for a beginner. I really cannot praise the character creation enough: It's really feeding one's imagination quite unlike most of roleplaying games, where you have to start with a blank page.

If you're going to continue with the one-on-one roleplaying experiments, you might wish to consider a GM-based adventure game. Something with concretely adventurous challenges, constraint and action. Something like the Moomin adventure you wrote a while back, perhaps, or Trollbabe. Might be interesting and different from the sentimental style of BtI.

Actually, as strange as it might sound, we opted for Dogs in the Vineyard as a next game. We invited her brother as well to build a familiar playing group. We'll see what comes out of that.

This is just how I envision play. Free play, in character or not, but brainstormy between the two players, with the dice awarded in response to reinforce what was described, and as you said, structure play. I generally do the bonus dice first, but interspersing the re-rolls works fine, too. I'll have to work on conveying all of that better when I revise the game.

It's pretty clear already, I'd say. It was so cool when I read to her the list of things the Active Player gets dice for (p. 27), and she was like "So all kinds of nice and entertaining narration, right?"

And yes, we did play the game so that different dice types followed one after another (first the Attraction dice, then Bonus dice, then Re-rolls etc.). We didn't always have time to go through them all, in case we already rolled enough successes or if we just run out of situation. I tried to play as close to the rules text as possible to provide a clear structure. However, I might have gone a bit on the excessive side, because she wished for freeformish approach at the beginning of the third date. Still, in my opinion it's better to move from structure to free play than to start out in free mode and then grasp for rules in order to hold the chaos together. As Eero said, second time should be a smoother ride now that we both know the rules and have some experience under our belts.