[Covenant] Warpcon : Sons of Joshua

[Matt Machell]

Warpcon is a reasonably sized convention in Cork, Ireland, which I attended in January. I ran Covenant just after lunch on the Saturday. I ended up with three players. All were new to the game and came to it clean, although some had Indie experience. Players were Richard, Liam and a guy whose name I appear to have lost...

After several previous attempts at running Covenant with pre-generated characters, I decided it was better to bite the bullet and use the game properly. Every time I've tried to dilute it "to make things easier for a con environment" it hasn't worked. It's a game that lives or dies on player engagement with their characters and their situations. That stuff's built into the game, why second guess it?

So with a slight delay in starting as folks turned up, we started with a blank cell sheet. A blank sheet is always intimidating, so I was careful to throw a few ideas into discussion to get it moving, but not hold onto those ideas too much. Looking back, I could have explained something more about how Conventions and Motifs are used, and it might have helped solidify them quicker.

Our cell ended up being a backwater recruitment centre in Providence, Texas called the Sons of Joshua.

Conventions:
The Truth Damages, We're still working on the end of the world, Persecution by the society, Technology obsession
Motifs:
Tumbleweeds, Vultures Circling, The Sherif's Badge, Bullet Holes
Important People:
"The Bishop" - Spiritual leader
Mr Fletcher - Drill Sergeant
Sherif Davies - Local sherif and non-member
Lower, the man who is the secret texts

Overall this left us with a nice juicy situation, where the society basically ran the local town to keep its training compound fed, but treated non-society members like cattle.

Characters followed, with each of the players taking a very different route with the situation we'd created:

Sullivan Bindle (Richard) - Keen Runaway, order of the Sword
Faction: Gatherers of the Flock - a faction who specialise in drawing people into the society
Agenda: Bring new members in to cover losses
Notable Edges: The Band, who want me back, born musician
Consequence: Junkie
Truisms: time is running out, your worst enemy isn't so bad, if you want people to listen, play them a song.
Crucible: The Bishop, His Father, The Band

Jonas Goodenough (Liam) - Narrow-minded Soldier, order of the sword
Faction: Delta Unit - Zealots who believe Satan is at work in the society
Agenda: Find his agents
Notable Edges: Fletcher's Favourite, Evil Ex Wife, Intimidating Presence
Truisms: Evil will always reveal itself, The bishop is always right, Only we stand between the world and the pit
Consequences: Messy Divorce
Crucible: Brother Cantwell, Fletcher, Mark Brown (pawn of satan), ex-wife

J.B  - Burnt out information gatherer, order of the sword
Faction: Life lines
Agenda: Find a way to escape the society
Notable Edges: Hates the Bishop, Trustyworthy, Girlfriend was once silenced by the society
Truisms: You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, the pen is mightier than the sword, every cloud has a silver lining
Consequences: Paranoia
Crucible: Mark Brown, Sam Farrell (Faction leader), His Father, The Bishop

Instantly we could tell there would be some real tensions in the characters almost diametrically opposed attitudes. One happy-clappy recruiter, one fanatic soldier and one guy looking for way out. Looking back, a little bit of chatting about the truisms might have helped more, some of Bindle's could have done with juicing up a bit.

With character creation done, the others popped off to find some snacks, and I started noting down important characters and some agendas for them to push. This is a pretty key part of Covenant prep and makes sure that all those implied antagonists are going to push hard on the PCs. From my vantage point, the Lifelines faction and Delta seemed the best factions to push, along with Bindle's former life. .

Sam Farrel : Lifelines faction leader, entrap weak society members who wish to leave
Mr Fletcher : Purge the unworthy
The Bishop: Hold the society together, hide that he knew
Cantwell : Takeover to prevent the society's collapse.
Deputy Bindle: Get his son back
Sherif Davies: Get to the bottom of things.

After this brief prep, we got mildly distracted by talking to Games Workshop's Jervis Johnson about Indie games. I didn't manage this as well as I could, as I'm a Bloodbowl fanboy, and it ate a bit of our time.

Distraction over, I handed the reigns to the players to frame their initial scenes. I always love this part, because it often throws you completely as Director. You'd seen one thing in the situation, and the players see another and throw you a curveball...

More to follow.

-Matt

[Ron Edwards]

Wow, Redneck Covenant!

I'm interested in how the game went, because I like Covenant - however, every time I sit down to think about playing it, I get a kind of "play before play" vibe that pops it to second place. That frustrates me because I really like the premise a lot, and I'm at least suspicious that I'm not giving the game-in-play a chance to show its potential.

I'm most interested in knowing whether a potential conflict which seems locked and loaded once the sheets are finished can turn into something else, or even not become a conflict at all, depending on what else happens in the interim. It'd be great to know that play does not simply turn into acting out and concluding a bunch of stuff which is pre-ordained on the sheets.

Best, Ron

[Matt Machell]

Play before play is certainly a danger, it's a case of balancing having a rich tapestry to work with and defining exactly what's going to happen upfront. The fact that the entire setup is about doubt should mean that nothing is certain and turnarounds abound... There's a nice kind of ripple effect once you hit play and conflicts shift the shape of crucibles and resolved truisms upset the balance of influence.

As it turned out, we got the obvious conflict out of the way and only really saw ripples of its impact. We ended up with several vignettes rotating around the collapse of the compound, and characters working out what they really cared about.

J.B.'s player framed his opening scene with everybody present at a briefing. The Bishop and Fletcher announcing that superiors had passed on information that there was traitor in the compound.

You could see Liam's eyes light up. "I believe the traitor to be Mark Burn, sir!" and we were straight into conflict. J.B. tries to convince the Bishop and Goodenough of his brother's innocence. It's actually quite brief, as Goodenough isn't quite social enough to handle it. There's some great interplay though, as J.B. brings up the messy divorce as a snide sidewipe. J.B. wins the conflict and is left as the golden boy, ready to go off an analyse the data correctly with the Bishop's blessing...

I like this kind of opener, as it allows people to get the hang of the way traits and narration interact. It's especially satisfying to see people move from the whole, "rolling dice in social interaction, no way!" to being convinced.

-Matt

[Ron Edwards]

I think my solution will have to be mentally aiming, not toward the resolutions which are begging to happen on the character sheets (which are going to happen for sure anyway), but rather toward the grey zone that exists beyond that.

It's very similar to regular Sorcerer play, in fact, which is after each Kicker's immediate concerns are at least met, and when the various other aspects of prep are looming up ... and that's when play really begins, when the choices made by players are emerging out of existing SIS and not out of prep at all.

I am speculating a little, but it seems to me that Covenant was designed in part to overcome the lurching sense of "what the hell do we do?" that people may encounter in reading Sorcerer. And yet, in a way, that lurch is not eliminated, but rather deferred to a distinct second phase of play. It's providing comfort or context for the first session or so, but making that elevator-shaft drop all the more present and (one hopes) more manageable because GM and players are in motion when it happens.

Does that make sense? All of this is pretty much about me working out how I want to prep play for Go Play Peoria and Forge Midwest, so whatever you think will help me do that.

Best, Ron

[Matt Machell]

I am speculating a little, but it seems to me that Covenant was designed in part to overcome the lurching sense of "what the hell do we do?" that people may encounter in reading Sorcerer. And yet, in a way, that lurch is not eliminated, but rather deferred to a distinct second phase of play. It's providing comfort or context for the first session or so, but making that elevator-shaft drop all the more present and (one hopes) more manageable because GM and players are in motion when it happens.

Yes, you'd be right in thinking there are those issues mixed in. Covenant was written fairly consciously as a game where people who'd come from a similar background to myself (lots of White Wolf and nineties games), but found it frustrating, could transition to narrativist play. Whether it totally succeeds at this, I'm still not sure.

There's a section in the book where I talk about the three chapters, and how the first one starts with everything being fairly low key, and then in the middle chapter things really start to fall apart. It's exactly that kind of lurch as the system shifts gear from, let's resolve some conflicts to let's resolve some conflicts and some truisms. That's the grey zone. The bit where all the doubts of the characters and the interest of the players are.

For this game, being a convention game, I pushed a quicker pace, so it's maybe not the best example of this stuff. Or maybe it is, as it's compacted into a smaller span. As an example, Liam's character's next scene was one where he went to meet with the leader of his faction, who wants to stage a takeover right now and remove the Bishop. The initial conflict that seemed so big, is now just providing that little bit of spice (in the form of doubts set in place) to make this conflict more interesting, does Jonas go with his faction or the Bishop "who is always right"? Everybody else at the table was watching pretty intently, knowing that whichever way this went would have a big effect.

-Matt