[Trollbabe] Making an introductory writeup for new players

[skatay]

Okay, I'm at work and was thinking about how clear this game was in my mind, so I wanted to do a writeup on the game that's for players who haven't played a forge-type game that have some D&D experience. I'm open to suggestions, clarifications, expansions, edits and insults (if they point me to where this was already discussed.)

Anyhoo, here is my prelim statement:


You, the player, have story powers!

You play a trollbabe. Neither troll nor human, but heroic in at least some abilities to both. And you're a woman.

In this game, you get to declare conflicts as you see fit. It's very hard for you to die, unless you push for a few re-rolls to secure a victory. This makes your character sorta more like the main character of a novel rather than, say, a 1st lvl warrior with 6 hit points.

Declaring conflicts means you get to declare the nature of a conflict, and define some story. I tell you about a surly looking man in an inn-- maybe you walk up to and declare that surliness is because he is hiding something from you-- guess what, he really is hiding something from you, we're gonna resolve whether he'll tell you and/or what it is.

You can take it a bit further, too. Let's say all we've said about this adventure is the town and inn again, but maybe I said the surly guy is the mayor. You can declare a conflict to get him to reinforce his guard on the gate to the town, because you're saying there's a raiding party coming through.

You pick where you want to start on a map, I don't say it.

In conflicts, you narrate failures, I narrate successes. If you stand down on a conflict and choose not to do re-rolls, you have to sorta narrate a 'why' in there to make the situation understandable.

You can use things you have that are pertinent and relationships you gain for conflict re-rolls.

If you want to steer this story like crazy, lose a lot of conflicts without re-rolling! You get to throw a ton of curveballs!

You can't leave the adventure until we resolve a stakes issue, with a scale that is set before we begin play--that's sorta my problem, tho, I think, to keep working that back in to however this story changes.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

I recommend backing off a little bit on the player's ability to affect in-game content. That tends to get blown out of proportion in interpretation, and no one has to use it.

I think you're also going a little overboard yourself regarding information - the trollbabe player has no authority over information the surly man may or may not have.

But those are my only real quibbles. The rest is accurate. It seems like you ran into some trouble at the end, so if you have questions about that part, let me know what they are.

Now, how well it's suited to your audience, I don't know. I wrote Trollbabe simply to be learned and played without having to go into any lengthy explanations or justifications, and in practice, the power of the starting imagery is pretty effective toward that end. However, again, you know the folks you're writing to, and I don't. So let us know how it goes.

Best, Ron