1001 Nights at JiffyCon

[Jon Hastings]

I got a chance to play a game of 1001 Nights at last weekend's JiffyCon event.  The group consisted of me, my friend Mark, Jasper (who I had just met), and Meg (who I had also just met and who wrote the game).  (Here's a playtest thread that describes the mechanics and procedures of play).

I played the Aged Nursemaid, Mark played the Visiting Scholar (of Music), Jasper played the Ridiculous Dancer, and Meg played the Chief Eunuch.  Our particular Sultan was a pretty decent fellow (as despots go), so the main impetus for our storytelling was simply that not being able to leave the palace got boring after a while.  I forget some of the details (and didn't take notes), but I do remember that my character envied the Visiting Scholar for the respect given to him and Meg's Eunuch envied the Dancer for his "unaltered" state.  I played my character as an insecure snob and I was really getting into the possibilities for sniping and playing out petty jealousies that the game sets up.

Jasper went first as GM and set up a story about a King who lived alone with his daughter in a big castle.  The daughter's only friend was a talking monkey.  Jasper had Meg play the monkey, Mark play the Princess, and me play the King.  What's neat is the way that you get to try to express your Character's personality/issues through the way they play characters within the story: so my Aged Nursemaid reveled in getting to play a King who got to tell everyone what to do and Mark's Visiting Scholar played a Princess who's happiness depended on being able to play music.

After this story we had a brief interlude catching up with our PCs back in the Sultan's palace and then it was Mark's turn as GM.  He set up a story about a Sultan dying and leaving his very young son as the new Sultan.  The kid immediately decrees that all music is banned except for banging & crashing cymbals and all food is banned except for super sweet pastries and cakes.  To back this up, he throws all the musicians, gardeners, and cooks (except for the pastry chef) into the dungeon.  Mark had Jasper play the head musician, Meg play the head gardener, and I got to play the head chef.  Luckily, we managed to get ourselves out of that situation and teach the rotten kid a lesson!

We had another court interlude where our characters all moved much closer to achieving their ambitions and then I got a chance to be GM.  The story I set up involved a weaver's son who didn't want to grow up to be a weaver.  Everything turned out alright in the end, although there was war, death, and slavery in between.

I had a blast playing.  It's very neat the way the central "staking" mechanic gives you a big (but sometimes subtle) influence over the direction of the story.  For instance, by the halfway point of "my" story, I had completely forgotten about the father, when Meg (I think) staked on the question: "Will his father come looking for him?"  And I thought, of course, his father will come looking for him.

On a more personal level, I'm generally not a big fan of doing a lot of in-character improvisation and I'm especially self-conscious about it when I'm in con situations.  But I really got into it during this game, partly because the other folks in the group were very encouraging, but also, I think, because the game provides subtle but strong support for it.  For example, in the first story I had no trouble just knowing what the King would say to his daughter and how he would talk to her.  It felt good to use muscles that I sometimes neglect while rpging.

A very minor problem was that we focused mostly on the storytelling aspect of the game, so I felt that the Sultan's palace stuff got a little short shrifted, but I think that's just part of the nature of a convention game.  Next time I play, I'm  going to try to create more of a connection between what's happening in the Sultan's palace and what's happening in the stories.

[Ben Lehman]

I'm another person who really doesn't like just improvising stories off the top of my head.  1001 nights is ... different, though.  Unlike Baron Munchausen, where people are trying to trip you up, other people are getting rewarded for helping you keep your story moving along and well-paced and well-managed.  It's a great feeling, like doing a daring, 1000 foot tightrope across Niagara Falls with a net

yrs--
--Ben

[Meguey]

One of my goals was to share out the GM grief by not only taking turns but by letting other people remember stuff or think of stuff for you when it is your turn, exactly as the bit with the father (yes, it was me) worked out. Another of my goals was *exactly* the kind of support you mention here:

On a more personal level, I'm generally not a big fan of doing a lot of in-character improvisation and I'm especially self-conscious about it when I'm in con situations.  But I really got into it during this game, partly because the other folks in the group were very encouraging, but also, I think, because the game provides subtle but strong support for it.

Jon, you and Mark did a super job of pulling your Courtier interests into the Stories. I also really liked the way you stuck with the son, and handed out the other Story characters as they came up. I think it might work with only two players because of that. Further testing will tell.

[TonyLB]

What's neat is the way that you get to try to express your Character's personality/issues through the way they play characters within the story: so my Aged Nursemaid reveled in getting to play a King who got to tell everyone what to do and Mark's Visiting Scholar played a Princess who's happiness depended on being able to play music.

Oooh ... fascinating.  And the game consistently reinforces that this is cool and powerful and okay, yes?

Did anyone make the connection to saying "And, of course, we as players do the same thing ... we bring our personal biases and agendas into playing characters in every RPG, ever"?

'cuz a game that trained people to be aware of that, and to use the power of that realization for good and not for evil, that'd be pretty cool.

[Jon Hastings]

Hi Tony,

Did anyone make the connection to saying "And, of course, we as players do the same thing ... we bring our personal biases and agendas into playing characters in every RPG, ever"?

Cool!  When Mark and I were explaining the game to one of our friends, we ended up talking about exactly that issue - how we bring out our biases & agendas in the way we create & play our RPG characters - but we didn't actually make the direct connection between "how we do that in every game" and "how we had our characters do that in 1001 Nights".  I guess it was working on us subconsciously.

We also felt that while the game is fun and straightforward and not at all daunting, there's potential for real depth because of the way the different levels can interact.  (It's as "meta" as the source material!)

-Jon

[Jasper]

I just mentioned this on the StoryGames thread, but now have seen this one, so I'll repeat it.

The ease with which we were able to just make up stories comes, I think in part, from having this extra distance from the characters: our PCs are written down in front of us, we have some investment in them, and we probably have some gamer baggage concerning no one else affecting "our" character (and not trusting anyone to do so "properly"); but when we switch to "story within a story" mode, all that goes away. The characters we're portraying are much more ephemeral and it's obvious that they're a tool for our PCs and ourselves. As Tony says, it makes it pretty obvious that this is always the case. It's a good lesson, and a fun one too.

[Meguey]

Exactly. The second layer gives distance and freedom to do crazy stuff. I certainly wouldn't have had the tiger eat the princess in the 1st JiffyCon game if she'd been a PC, but since she was just in the Story, it was ok.

Another huge point for me is that we as people don't need to come up with whole new worlds every time - we have a ton to stories waiting for us to use, and if we let go and trust ourselves and our creativity, we get pleasantly surprised.

[Meguey]

For the sake of talking about the game(s), I think the names of the Stories are as effective as the list of courtiers, so:

Jasper GMed "How the Monkey brought Music back to the King"
Mark GMed "The Tyrant Child"
Jon GMed "The Unbroken Threads"

I'm really thinking over the two-player option; I wish someone would give it a whirl and let me know if it worked. The GM would handle all the common characters, declared gems would work the same, the divvy process would be the same.....

[Nathan P.]

I just wanted to throw in that I had an awesome time in my game of 1001 Nights at JiffyCon as well. I was blown away by the deft handling of "GM fiat" into something both functional and terribly entertaining. The three stories from my game:

Meg's character, a palace gardener, told The Story Of Yasmina And Mahmoud As They Struggled Up The Mountain.

My character, the dwarf entertainer, told The Story Of The Boy Of The Earth As He Travelled To The Clouds (And Back Again).

Brennan's second character, an assistant Astrologer, told The Story Of The Magician And The Herbalist As They Healed The Sultan's Neice And Nephew Of Illnesses Of The Flesh And Spirit.

The game is very "meta" in the way that Tony identifies, but it's really an awesome story-telling game.