[GenCon/tMW] First time up the mountain.

[Eric Provost]

I've taken my time preparing to post about this session.  I don't think anyone else from that game has yet.  I hope not, because I really would have like to read someone else's thoughts on that session before I published mine.  Oh well.  It's all finally digested into my brain so it's time to reflect here.

It sucked.

Ok, it didn't suck, but it didn't live up to my hopes and dreams of turning into some uberkewl storyline.  Bottom line up front: The Mountain Witch takes a little more skill to GM than I originally expected.

Problem #1;  My Bang-Fu is very very weak.  Of course I really only discovered that over the two days of GenCon where I was desperately trying to come up with some bangs to toss out and came up with squat.  Squat! 

Solution?  I think I'd have an easier time coming up with bangs for characters I know a little more about.  That's easy.  Tim wrote in that cool little bit about making the players author setting elements.  Like the thing about recognizing the head on a pike.  I mean, Tim even did that for our demo where we saw a painting my character was to recognize.  I think this technique will become a hard habit for me in tMW.  Today on the plane I came up with maybe two dozen different questions of that type that force a player to expose a bit of their character's background.  Both for the rest of us and for them.  Mostly for them.

It's not a complete solution by any means.  But I do think it'll make me a fine set of crutches 'till I improve that all-important bang-fu.

All my other problems with that session pretty much came down to an incomplete understanding of the way things are supposed to be done in tMW, possibly combined with the effects of running a game I've never run before for a bunch of people I've never met before.  One of them being the designer of the game.

I think that's all I really have to report.  Nothing super-significant occurred during the story.  It was mostly just a low-key monster parade, some excellent narration on the part of the players, and lots of fun trading poker chips back and forth.

Oh wait.  I did have one more thing to say.  The monster parade bored the hell out of me.  After lots and lots of digestion and comparing it to my thoughts on DitV I've come to realize that I no longer enjoy conflicts that are only about injury, physical pain, incapacitation, or death.  Unfortunately, during the session, it never occurred to me to make the goals of the monsters something besides injuring the ronin.  If I had considered the possibility of proposing that some monsters wanted the ronin to show fear in front of their companions or to otherwise affect the relationship between the ronin... well I think that would have made the game good all on it's own.

It's mentioned that the witch isn't the center of the story, but it may be worth considering that the only real center to this game are the Ronin, and everything else that gets introduced to cronfront, confound, or contradict them is only there to illuminate and intensifiy those relationships.  So, from now on, the monsters that show up aren't going to be there to hurt the ronin phsically, they'll be there to modifiy the relationships they have with each other.

-Eric

[Larry L.]

Eric,

Thanks for the write-up. Posts of "This isn't awesome. How do I make it awesome?" are the ones I find really useful.

TMW is on my long post-GenCon to-play list. I'm still absorbing the text; I certainly wouldn't have done any better on two days' notice.

Are you merely waiting for the other players to chime in before giving any details on how the people at the table interacted? It sounds vaguely like the players had a good time despite the dissapointing imagined events. That's something really important to note. Were you having fun?

How'd you end up running a game for Tim, anyhow?

[Eric Provost]

Oh it was certainly fun.  But at a considerably lower level than I know tMW is capable of producing.

We got Tim to play with us by um... asking him to play.  *L*  That was it.

-Eric

[Jason Morningstar]

Hey Eric,

I've only run tMW once and that pretty much ran itself.  What was up with your players, I wonder?  They had the tools to make a pretty compelling play experience even if you as GM were not hitting on all cylinders.  I hope they'll chime in.

As a side note, I think a game of tMW where the opposition was expressly not trying to physically hurt the ronin would rock. 

--Jason

[Gordon C. Landis]

Hi all,

I was a player in this game, as were Ralph (Valamir) and (as mentioned) Tim.  That I don't remember the names of my other shady quest-companions is a great dishonor.  Were I samurai, I might well kill myself over it.  As I am ronin - if you are offended, draw steel. I will answer in kind, and we will see whose "offense" is greater . . .

While it was kinda obvious Eric wasn't entirely comfortable with coming up with appropriate challenges to throw at us, I found the game quite enjoyable and a good initial education on The Mountain Witch.  While I was of course aware of the massive buzz about The Witch, I really knew almost nothing about it beyond the "ronin go up the mountain" framework.

My character (I'm looking at the sheet, here) was Goro Umeki, Dog, who became a ronin by finding fault in his lord too often (once or twice was probably all it took).  My brother has a large family and is a total scoundrel - I need the money to keep them from sinking into hopeless poverty and starvation.  My Fate was "Desperately in Love" and my Abilities were Sense Weakness and Opportune Forgetfulness.  Dogs have Dragons as an Enemy - Ralph was playing a Dragon (as an obnoxious old-master type, with sorceous knowledge).  That led to some cool interchanges.

In the first fight, Goro got beat up pretty bad (one chapter and one permanenet wound, with more than a few flesh wounds along the way), and stumbled off alone, holding his guts in.  I found that I gained a lot of sympathy from the other players as a result of this.  Or from me RPing the wounds well, or some other factor - or maybe my perception is wrong.  But it seemed to me the other players were more willing to help me out because I really got banged-up early on, and I found that very interesting.

At one point, Tim's Fate card was sitting face-up on his char sheet, so I saw that he had the "Deal with the Witch" card.  I'm not sure how badly that messes up the game, but we played right past it, and it seemed mostly OK.  Though when Tim had his character be mysteriously absent during our penetration of the castle, I certainly wasn't surprised.

Lamest moment was when I used my characters' Sense Weakness ability against the skeltons guarding the castle gates.  "What's the weakness?", I'm asked.  "Uh . . mice.  Skeletons fear mice.  I say "unleash the mice!" and point behind them, to distract them."  Ugh.  Suckage.  In an attempt to make ammends, I explain how mice nibble on bones for the calcium, and this causes an irrational fear . . . ugh.  It was late.

Coolest moment was almost at the end of the evening (not, unfortunately, the end of our quest - our ronin shall remain forever within the walls of the Witch's castle, awaiting their confrontation with his fearsome powers), when Fates were starting to be revealed.  Tim had initiated a scene with the Witch's mistress, negotiating how to betray us all.  I threw down my Fate and had her add "if you cannot do it, there is another amongst you who can - who will do what I ask him to.  ANYTHING I ask him to." 

I knew that I had just totally screwed my character, but I HAD to do it.  I physically could NOT stop myself from choosing the mistress as the target of my Desperately in Love.  I'd considered other options as play was evolving - my lord's wife?  One of the other ronin?  But the mistress just - fit.  The only thing that almost held me back was the fear that I was stepping on Tim's storyline, but in the end - we were wrapping up for the night (too late), so I went ahead and did it.

I'm not sure how much of our play was strongly guided by "the book", as I had not read it yet (and still have only just started), but - like I said, a positive introduction to the game despite some awkwardness.  That we did not continue the game the next evening saddened me.

Gordon

[Lisa Padol]

Coolest moment was almost at the end of the evening (not, unfortunately, the end of our quest - our ronin shall remain forever within the walls of the Witch's castle, awaiting their confrontation with his fearsome powers), when Fates were starting to be revealed.  Tim had initiated a scene with the Witch's mistress, negotiating how to betray us all.  I threw down my Fate and had her add "if you cannot do it, there is another amongst you who can - who will do what I ask him to.  ANYTHING I ask him to." 

I knew that I had just totally screwed my character, but I HAD to do it.  I physically could NOT stop myself from choosing the mistress as the target of my Desperately in Love.  I'd considered other options as play was evolving - my lord's wife?  One of the other ronin?  But the mistress just - fit.  The only thing that almost held me back was the fear that I was stepping on Tim's storyline, but in the end - we were wrapping up for the night (too late), so I went ahead and did it.

That is awesome. I agree that it fits.

It's not just that it's cool that the player is stepping back and saying, "Okay, I will have fun screwing my character." It's that in a game like this, you are sending a signal that you are cool with this plot twist, as you're the one who created it, and that, since no one else sees your fate card, you pretty much have to be the one to set it up.

-Lisa

[Nev the Deranged]

K, first off, this game did not suck. It got me to buy the book.

It was clear that Eric was still learning the game, and I don't think anybody felt too put out by it. I know how hard it is to put your full creativity into a game when you're trying to get the rules down straight, so no worries there. It was still a good time. I was disappointed we didn't get to confront the Witch, but ah well.

It was cool how Goro got hosed right off the bat. I think most of our sympathy for him was OOC, because as players it's rough to watch a fellow player... well, get hosed right off the bat. Or in this case, BY the bat. Several of them, actually. With big, pointy teeth. That scene also set up the rest of the adventure, as Goro stumbled off ahead of us to encounter the Cat-Minstrel-Demon-Guy and succumb to his machinations. Good use was made of Zenchi's demon lore and Usagi's hypnotism, while the minstrel's illusions worked better on some of us than others.

When we finally got to the Witch's castle, I thought Eric did a good job of keeping the monster-bashing at least more interesting than D&D style. When one of your band is going up the mountain to search for her lost sister, and then one of the zombies shambling across the bridge looks a bit too familiar... heh. Nice. We nearly got our asses handed to us by those zombies, by the way. Combat in tMW is brutal. We spent Trust like water to make it through that encounter alive.

There were some more cool moments, everyone's Fates started to come into play as we moved through the castle to the final encounter. Mine was the alterior motive- I had decided early on that I actually was willing to sell my comrades out to the Witch in exchange for an elixir to bring my ailing neice out of a coma. Too bad I never got to betray them- although I think it would have been but one of several betrayals flying back and forth.

All in all it was a good game that I was disappointed not to finish. And like I said, I bought the book, so it couldn't have sucked too bad.

As long as you learned lessons you will take to the next session, Eric, it's all good. And it sounds like you did, so, yay ^_^

Dave.

[Eric Provost]

Yay!  People had fun!

In that case, it was a screaming success. 

I mean, if the GM can stumble in totally unconfident and floundering, and yet everyone has a good time... bangup job of game design. 

Now we just need to hear from Tim I think.

-Eric

And for the record... I loved the fear of mice thing.  I really did. 

[timfire]

Hi everyone,

Sorry, I didn't mean to ignore this thread, school started up again for me so this week ended up being kinda busy. Anyway, I should mention up front to everyone that I purposely took a "hands-off" approach. I could have made suggestions that would have changed how the game played, but I wanted to see how Eric handed the game.

That said, Eric, you shouldn't be so hard on yourself. I admit that I think there were some issues with the game, but after some thought I think the biggest issue was just that this was a Con game. Running a Con game is hard, and if you're not prepared, it will exaggerate your issues.

Your issues with bangs wouldn't have been a big deal if we had been planning on playing couple of sessions. I mean, I think you were running the game fairly by the book. I tell you not to worry about things during the opening Chapter. But with a Con game, you can't wait for things to develop naturally. You have to hit the players HARD and FAST in order to get things rolling. IF we had more time, you could have waited a to see what types of issues developed, and then played off those. I think tMW is a game that gets easier to GM as the progresses.

The other issue which wouldn't have been a big deal if it weren't a Con game was that, if I may say, the others players weren't purposely trying to antagonize each other. There was alot of Trust floating around and being used. The players weren't purposely acting suspicious and no one was actively foreshadowing their Fate. Now, I'm not sure how familiar everyone was with the game, so maybe not everyone realized this was how they were suppose to be acting. You, Eric, also weren't reminding people this was how they were suppose to be acting. TMW is really a game about a character interaction, and the stuff I'm mentioning is what really makes the game buzz. When people don't act this way, Trust just builds and builds, and teh game becomes an increasing kill-fest, which it was starting to in our session. That's just not fun, because tMW isn't a tactical system.

But like I said, that wouldn't have been an issue if we were planning to play a couple more sessions. Rialries, alliances, and grudges all develop over time. If we had had more time, I'm sure they would have. But this was a Con game.

But I will mention that this session made me realize something I didn't discuss in the book. Something I do all the time is play up the moral ambiguity of the Witch and his minions. If theWitch is nothing but pure evil, then there's no reason to turn against the other characters. The only "reasonable" action is to stick with the company. But if the Witch is honorable, and if he is willing to give the characters what they want (when the other character's won't), then it becomes a hard decision to stay with the party. Eric, you made all the minions obviously evil, so it was the "reasonable" choice to band together.

I'm going to revise the last chapter of the book a bit and discuss that idea. Don't worry, I'll make the updated chapter available for those who have already bought the book.

[Lisa Provost]

K, first off, this game did not suck.

I totally agree.  This was the first session I had ever played tMW so I was fubling as well.  I personally loved the idea that Tim gave us all for using the poker chips to track trust.  :) 

When one of your band is going up the mountain to search for her lost sister, and then one of the zombies shambling across the bridge looks a bit too familiar... heh. Nice. We nearly got our asses handed to us by those zombies, by the way. Combat in tMW is brutal. We spent Trust like water to make it through that encounter alive.

I got this idea for my character Hiroko because I had the "Worst Fear" fate card. I had -no- idea what to do with it.  When I saw the zombies, I just played that card, screaming something about my "dearest little sister" and Eric ran with it.  I thought it was a great scene too.

Like Tim said, it was a 'Con' game and it was thrown together at the last minute.  I personally had not even cracked the book when we sat down to play.  I had kind of skimmed it on the shelf and talked with Eric about what he had read so I think all things considered it went well.