After School: Ready for playtest

[Clay]

After more than a year of dithering about with system, and trying to figure out what my game was about, I finally have a playable product that's ready to go.  After School is a game about childhood adventures and the continual quest to be cool.

I've run this through playtest with my group already. In fact, this game grew out of the playtest for the system I've been dithering with for so long. The file I have for download is a text-only pdf file. I'll get cool typesetting and graphics later, once it's been through some shakedown.

The areas that I'm most worried about:

1. How well does the "cool" mechanic work?

2. Can you follow the rules as written?

3. What additional things do you recommend be in the final product?  I intend to sell this is a PDF file.

Any feedback would be welcome.

[Andrew Martin]

3. What additional things do you recommend be in the final product?  I intend to sell this is a PDF file.

I noticed a number of spelling and grammar errors. It would be good idea to use a spelling and grammar checker on the text. "snuf" should be "snuff". I think "six pack" should be removed as it's inappropriate in a game about children. Figure 1 is refered to as "figure 1.1" in the text.

I'd like to see an example of a PC.

"Coolness" doesn't seem to fit in a game about children's activities after school. Instead "coolness" seems to better fit a game with teenagers or young adults. How about using Age instead?

The section on Advancement seems very odd to me. Could it be replaced with some thing more appropriate to the genre? Perhaps if the PC endures a visit by Aunt Millie who exclaims "oooh, who's a big boy now?!" or (horrors!) goes to school and learns something there? :)

[Clay]

I'd like to see an example of a PC.

I hope to put a complete adventure in, complete with sample PCs and NPCs.  Artwork will also be used to help get the flavor right.

[ghostwolf]

3. What additional things do you recommend be in the final product?  I intend to sell this is a PDF file.

I noticed a number of spelling and grammar errors. It would be good idea to use a spelling and grammar checker on the text. "snuf" should be "snuff". I think "six pack" should be removed as it's inappropriate in a game about children. Figure 1 is refered to as "figure 1.1" in the text.
<snip>

Six pack of soda isn't inappropriate though. :)

[Walt Freitag]

I think "six pack" should be removed as it's inappropriate in a game about children.

I don't understand this. The players are adults, right? Will the fictional child characters be traumatized or have their morals corrupted by the presence of alcohol at the table?

Anyhow, about the game...

The color throughout the presentation comes across, to me, as suggesting that "kids" mostly equals "boys" here. Perhaps you could plan an eventual supplement ("Uh oh! Girls!") covering girls as adventure elements (bossy big sisters, bratty little sisters, the mysterious behavior of the new girl in town, crushes, mushy stuff, etc.) and as player characters.

I agree that "coolness" doesn't exactly capture the combination of social status and ability you describe, but it might be as close as you can get. Age doesn't work as a substitute because losing age makes no sense. Though it would make the system more complex, have you considered making the "ability to do things" factor separate from the "social status" factor? The two certainly have little or no correlation in real life, nor in the conventions of the kid-adventure genre.

Speaking of genre conventions, I see physical types as an important part of imagining these characters. It seems in any group of preadolescent boys in fiction, there's always the skinny one, the fat one, the short weird one, and the generally-good-looking one, matching up to other characteristics. (Quick -- which one has an older brother in trouble with the law? Which two might know science stuff?) While you don't have to encourage every stereotype, the importance of physical characteristics in childrens' interaction would be difficult to overestimate.

Have you considered a resolution mechanism using baseball cards instead of playing cards?

- Walt

[pete_darby]

*snip*
"Coolness" doesn't seem to fit in a game about children's activities after school. Instead "coolness" seems to better fit a game with teenagers or young adults. How about using Age instead?

I'd have to disagree: the whole cool mechanic seems very familiar from my childhood, from about the time of primary school (er, probably grammar school to our American audience...) onwards.

The mechanic of "Cool people are cool because they do cool stuff cooler than everyone else: they can do this because they are cool," sounds painfully familiar to one to whom cool was painfully unobtainable.

Some folks have the idea that you're emulating a genre of children's fiction (or fiction about children, anyway)... looks to me more like a version of nicotine girls that hits closer to home for me. Already it seems to be an antidote to certain other games that claim to be about childhood, but are far more about nostalgia, or some idea that children really are innocent, not the vicious little bundles of id that I know them to be.

To paraphrase this rant by a greater mind than mine, I remember my childhood quite well, and have nodesire to either demonise or sanctify it. Revelling in it sounds quite fun though.

Oh, before I go, this pretty neatly sums up my own attitude to that certain other game about childhood I mentioned...

[Clay]

My game is in no way meant as a dig on other games about childhood.

I do like Walt's idea about a physical body type. I'm not sure how to work it into the mechanics, other than as a description.  If it does get added, it should play into the existing mechanics, and I'll have to think about that a bit.

We also used another rule which didn't make it out of playtest, but maybe should be put back in. Anything which had not already been created, but seemed possible and appropriate, could be created by any player. Thus a treehouse magically appeared to offer safe haven from Susie the Ball Buster (a real character from our playtest).

I like the idea of a girls supplement. You are correct in thinking that I had boys firmly in mind. That's because when I was a child, I was a boy. Girls were rarely part of our adventures. Once they were, it was an entirely different sort of adventure.

That said, I don't see why there couldn't be girls in the adventures. Tom Boys, of course, but they still can be there.

[pete_darby]

Just a clarification: I was trying to get across that I was getting honked off about other childhood RPG's being more about the perceptions adults have of children than the far more complex reality.

Self serving exception: eight which makes the whole thing explicit.

[Little_Rat]

I would say most children are innocent in some respect... I remember I did some volunteer work at the elementary school after 9/11 and one of the kids was "I heard there was a kid and the kid made a fart and then the building fell down and then there was a guy in a wheelchair and then he went down the side of the building." They just don't understand things the way adults too.
And actually, I recall having a very large imagination growing up. Aliens coming in through the window and giant mushrooms etc. really were freaking scary. I mean, they told us about strangers and candy... but some how the aliens were always much much scarier.