[Fastlane]

[Lxndr]

Heh, :>, well I have to admit I really didn't do much thinking about the actual roulette odds when I placed my bets, nor what that would do to my chance of getting enough chips for victory. Just hoping to get lucky really... probably should have put about half my bets in really safe areas, then went risky with the other half.

As I bet it... Darryl was betting on a winner take all, high risk, blow her doors off racing style... and failed... "Hello Dead Man's Curve"... which wasn't actually how I would have had him do this, at least at the start of the contest.

Yeah, I should definitely emphasize that more in the rules.  It's one of the advantages of the whole Fastlane system - the rather fine control players have over how much risk they want to take vs. what rewards they'll get out of it.  The odds and the payouts are rather central to how resolution should work, and I probably should have spent more time emphasizing that in pre-play, as well as in the rules document itself.

Even if I had, the need to gain chips against the road should have been my priority. Trying to ensure a minimum at least...then using the excess to race Heather.

Thats a high recommedation for a good base of high probability stuff like Red and Black or whatever...you need some source of base to work from..

Oh yeah.  But playing it too safe can be boring.  ;)  I don't want to see people TOO huddled over the even money bets, clinging to them in safety.  Risks bring rewards, after all, and they're not all that safe at all.

Nonetheless, it's obvious I need to emphasize the roulette bets more, and discuss some various strategies.  One of the ones for real roulette is "don't bet against yourself."  In other words, always make sure there's at least one number where you can win it all.  That particular strategy isn't entirely true in Fastlane's case, but it's still worth mentioning.

I was afraid that the whole bidding, placing bets, and rolling would be time consuming, but it really didn't take long, especially considering it was the first use for most of us.

Using real chips on a real roullette betting table would be so cool...and even faster to play... :>

The bidding really worked out well, I think.  The style is absolutely PERFECT, and even without thinking too much about your bids, it was still made pretty clear how much risk can hurt you, and how much it can help.  I honestly expect the first few conflicts of any Fastlane game to be a learning experience, an orgy of chips dancing around back and forth as there's a lot of loss and gain and the risks are felt out.  People rather quickly learn what's good for them in situations like that, I've noticed.

And yeah, real chips on a real roulette spread would be even faster.  Even if you're using dice in person, a spread makes things sooo much simpler.  Of course, everything's faster in person as opposed to IRC.  ;)

Character creation I thought went very well.
As in most games it really helps that the character were created at the same time as a group, with the opportunity to interlink Favors and even Lifes.

I would stress that in the game.

It would seem very hard to run the game if all the character's were created in isolation and dropped in the GM's lap.

In the version I'm revising, I'm stressing that very much more.  The "pre-game roundtable" is a concept I've much fallen for since coming to the Forge.  I've also added some discussion about remaining bank, and a bit of discussion on "average."

Though at the same time, "average" in part depends on how many chips are handed out.  Fastlane seems flexible enough that you can make it more or less finely grained by handing out more or less chips.  I should discuss that somewhere.

I've also added a section in pre-play that pretty much forces the croupier to create major supporting characters and spend chips on them while the other players are creating their protagonists.  I think this would've helped our game, since y'all would've seen more characters dancing about, and thus might have come up with more favors or hooks.

This also gives the croupier something to do while the players are nudging their chips around, which I like.  And it's something for the croupier to spend his chips on - characters.  If he wants a supporting character to be important, he's got to put his money where his mouth is, and give him a higher appraisal.

So far, that's the only major change in the game.  Everything else are little tweaks, like favor chains, which I still need to figure out how to describe in the document.

I don't really see the need for the Handicap roll...since both players are rolling their own wheel who really cares if they both bet the same or get the same number? Maybe I missed something?

In the dicing system, the handicap works differently - it's there to see when the zero comes up.  Basically, it determines whether or not the GM roll is a zero, for your character.  Heather had a 1, and you had a 2.  Thus, if I rolled double ones, Heather's roll would have been trumped by my "zero."  If I rolled double twos, same thing for your roll.  But that didn't happen, since I didn't roll doubles.

The handicap system is a bit more complex for the american wheel, but we were using the European Wheel setup, and they work pretty much the same.

I had fun, even though I was really tired...

I really like the Lifes and Favors for impacting the setting and tone by "who I am"

I look forward to doing some more testing!

I'm glad you enjoyed yourself!  I, too, am looking forward to some more testing!  I'm also glad that the Lifes and the Favors supported their intended purpose :)  Hopefully, the "croupier creating supporting characters" bit will work the same way.

[Lxndr]

Fastlane version 0.3 alpha has been uploaded at my website, including a number of changes based on this playtest.  Any input is much welcomed, and I'd like to thank those who have posted already.  :)

My next step is, hopefully, a multisession playtest on IRC, and if possible maybe I can rope some gamers into doing something locally in person, too, so I can actually try out the feel of the WHEEL.