[Committee for the Exploration of Mysteries] Two Dollops of Pulp Goodness

[Josh Roby]

Eric Boyd sent me ashcan copies of his new game The Committee for the Exploration of Mysteries and the Advancement of Mankind.  I played in two separate playtests, which I will outline here.

To Shangri-La!
The first playtest saw myself, Judson Lester, and Mark Vallianatos playing a trio of daring heroes trekking off to discover Shagri-La and the secret to everlasting peace that they had perfected.
Character creation was a snap, and is probably the piece of the game that requires the least work.  The "Of course the Committee knows..." mechanic that allows you to add details to others' characters was especially entertaining.
We found the "Build the Expedition" phase somewhat awkward and clunky, given that we did not have a good idea of what all this prep was really for – why were we listing stuff that might happen?  How would it be used?  Why did it have to be written down?  How should it be written down?  Most of these questions would be answered later, but a well-designed play aid here would go a long way to making this phase run smoothly.
Then we started off, adding elements to the Expedition Log as we went.  The Log seemed like half of a good idea, but needed some better organization, clearer rules, and better connection to the fiction in order to really "pop."  Since we were playing a one-shot we had divided the page into three segments and had written down the ideas from the prior phase along the left-hand side.  We used perhaps half of those and added in other elements, setting down poker chips (which were about two times to big for the space we had available) as we went.  We made some connections, and we made a lot of references, reaping lots of Acclaim in the process.  The text says that a reference only counts if something significant is revealed, but we did not find this to be much of a constraint – it was relatively easy to pull significant revelations out of our hats.  The result was a somewhat amorphous grouping of ideas that gave us some guidance in the development of the fiction, but not much.  The pre-generated ideas from the first phase were used, but mostly because they were amusing continuations of jokes rather than as inspiration when we couldn't think of anything else.  In specific, Mark suggested "Mole People" up in the highlands of Tibet, and I included it in an obstacle because it was funny, not necessarily because it "fit" anything else.
In discussion the Log after the playtest, we hit upon the suggestion that, instead of earning Acclaim for referencing elements, players could earn Acclaim for connecting elements, which seemed like it would replace the rather weak "significant revelation" with something a little more meaty.
In terms of obstacles, since it was the three of us there were always only one player available to help.  This turned out to be somewhat significant since we had to call for help a whole helluva lot of times.  We were not sure if the "Call for Help" was a request that could be turned down or a compulsion that could not.  We played it as a compulsion: if Mark asked for help, Judson had to help.  Which led on a few occasions to Mark playing three low dice and then compelling Judson into the obstacle, making him spend more than three dice to get their total to beat the obstacle difficulty.  We were also not certain if Mark could keep playing dice after Judson had joined the obstacle – we played that he could not.
Mark used the sabotage rules once, telling Judson that he was misremembering something and rerolling one of Judson's high, spent dice.  It did not change the result very much, did not seem to be a worthwhile use of Mark's Acclaim, and nobody touched the sabotage rules again.  Personally, I don't think they add much to the game and can be removed without much of a problem; alternately, they can be made optional or advanced rules.  On the other hand, we Switched Tactics and had Sudden Insights a whole lot, and found these to be engaging and added entertaining elements to the fiction.
At the head of the game we poured our tasty beverages out and were quite enthused about our glasses being an important part of the game, and were somewhat disappointed when they turned out not to be.  Toasting at the start was neat, toasting in the middle of the game seemed counterproductive to winning, and comparing the level of beverage in the glasses happened twice and seemed like a pretty pale rule.  I really wanted the glass and beverage to figure into the game in a stronger way.
We did not have a sandglass timer, and used a cellphone countdown alarm clock instead.  This was sub-optimal, to say the least.  I might go so far as to suggest that the book strongly encourage real sand-glass timers, since we had some technical troubles that were quite frustrating (okay, pause the clock... no wait, that reset it...  how much time was left?).
In our post-playtest conversation, we concluded that there were simply too many rules and options in the game.  It was difficult to remember what options were available to us at any given time, and there seemed to be rules "hanging off" and not having much essential use to them.  The most prominent of these were the sabotage rules, but the tasty beverage and the unexpected obstacles were also kind of limp additions.  That said, we did have a fun time and enjoyed ourselves – the game needs development, not a total rewrite.

To the Depths of the Amazon!
This last weekend at OrcCon, I ran a playtest of Committee for six players (seven, including myself).  In this playtest we were off to a temple in the Amazon basin that held a tremendous ruby.  In this game, the "Of course, the Committee knows..." mechanic ran into a bit of a snag, since we had six additions to each character, which was more than could be easily remembered.  Towards the end of character introductions we started allowing folks to pass if they didn't have anything especially interesting to add.
Because it was a four-hour con game with seven players, I did a little judicious trimming to the game format.  Each player ran through one obstacle per leg of the expedition instead of two, and each leg we reversed order, so I in the first stage I made the obstacle for the guy on my left and in the second stage I was the obstacle for the guy on my right.  We did not do any group hazards.  As can be expected, the resulting game felt rather "loose," and one of the post-game comments I got was that the players wanted a little more interaction between the characters, rather than going solo against the obstacles and occasionally teaming up.   However, my sense of it is that this would have been the case if we had run group hazards, as well.  There is little to no opportunity for my "civilized savage princess" character to contrast with your "turned by back on civilization pilot," which I would think would be entertaining.
I also implemented, quite by accident, our proposed fix for the Expedition Log, awarding Acclaim only for creating connections to elements with chips on them.  I simply misremembered the rules in the text.  But even if I screwed that up, it yielded data: the ensuing narrative was a lot tighter, with plot threads that developed and twisted more than the "variations on a theme" that the first playtest felt like.  On the other hand, the Log produced less Acclaim this way, too.
Despite explaining the sabotage rules, no one touched them the entire game.  We also had a lot fewer Calls for Help, and a few more Sudden Insights.  This may be that the players were more intent on being self-reliant, or just rolled well.
When we were looking at a time crunch in the last hour of the game, we resolved that we would do a round of obstacles where everyone would use their 1d10 obstacle.  This produced a very quick round, but a fun one, too.  More than once the 1d10 still required three or more dice to get rolled, which was amusing.
We were able to play with actual sand-in-hourglass timers, and actually had two, which was nice if one scene ended with the timer only half-gone.  Tipping the timer onto its side was simple and straightforward, and with seven players around the table somebody was always watching the timer.
The glasses of tasty beverage, on the other hand, were not used at all.  We toasted to begin the game, but after that they never came up again.  There were no unexpected hazards and while we passed Acclaim for fun contributions, we did it more fanmail-style, tossing chips rather than lifting glasses.
At the conclusion of the game, the consensus was twofold: (a) there were too many options to keep track of, and (b) the players wanted more opportunities to interact with each other.

Additionally, in both games it was hard to latch on to the "narrate in past tense first person" way that the game is (I think) supposed to play out.  I think one of the reasons for this is that the first bit of narration, the character introduction, is not done in first person.  Instead of "And on the appointed day, Jorge the Tiger arrived..." it should be "And on the appointed day, I, Jorge the Tiger arrived..."  Which is a minor, but I think rather high-impact, difference.

Eric, despite the slight awkwardness and creaking of the playtest rules, both of these games were a blast.  The folks at the convention walked away happy, and we told some great stories.  I'm looking forward to the end product!

[Eric J. Boyd]

Joshua,

Thanks so much for taking the time to give my game a try with your group and facilitate a playtest at OrcCon. Getting a view of how the game plays without my presence is invaluable. Here's some thoughts I have on your feedback. I would love to hear more info or suggestions as well. If any of the other playtesters would like to offer comments that would be great, too.

(1) The Build the Expedition Phase - I hadn't encountered a problem with this before, so it's good to hear about it. It sounds like my overview description of the game at the beginning of the text needs to better explian the purpose of this phase of the game to better guide creating the hazard list and such. A play aid is a great idea - any thoughts on what would make such a play aid well-designed to address this issue?

(2) The Expedition Log - This part of the design is what is giving me the biggest difficulties. I want to have a mechanism that encourages continuity in the story and rewards player creativity. But balancing the incentives without having Acclaim flow like water has been tough. I like your proposed fix of awarding Acclaim only for making connections between elements (the fact that you already playtested the fix and found it to work well also helps a lot).

In my own tinkering with the Log mechanics, I've been thinking of removing the need to invest a point of Acclaim to create a story element (so creation is free), and to reward only the player re-using the story element, not its initial creator. I also want to award only one Acclaim per scene, no matter how many elements you re-use. This no longer rewards the initial creativity of coming up with the element in a concrete way, but it still rewards continuity and creatively re-using elements.

Do you think combining your "reward only for making a connection" fix with the fixes I've been musing makes a more robust system?

(3) Calling for Help - I find it really interesting that you guys ended up calling for aid so often. So the hazards presented a lot of difficulty that required it? Did you end up using Gear and Associations dice in addition to your attributes? Did you spend Acclaim to reroll your low die results? I've had another group find that the hazards have been too easy and proposed making them harder.

You are correct that after calling for help the first player no longer contributes dice, but asking for help currently isn't a compulsion. There may be ways to use the helping mechanics to get the additional character interaction you mention below.   

(4) Sabotage - No one is using these options, so you're not alone there. I like them for the ability to control inappropriate narration and tweak your fellow players, but relegating them to optional rule status seems the way to go.   

(5) Festive Beverages - Hmm, you're right that the beverages don't figure into the mechanics very strongly. I've been thinking of removing the current stymie rules and using the beverage levels to determine narration rights there. Perhaps allowing bonuses for draining a glass or accepting a refill would be useful, too. Any thoughts on how else to use them, or if I'm better off just removely them entirely? I do like the atmosphere they provide as props, but leaving them as a suggestion only would be fine with me, too. 

(6) The Hourglass - You're right that using the real thing really enhances game play. I plan on selling the game with a 3-minute hourglass to make sure that everyone has one.

(7) Too Many Options - This has been the consensus of all the external playtests, so many of the Acclaim spending options are being combined or removed. Unexpected obstacles don't really do much currently, so removing them is likely. I'd like to rescue the beverages, but they may end up on the cutting room floor, too.

( Character Interaction - You're absolutely correct that the format of the game doesn't allow much character interaction, since everyone is recounting tales of the expedition and highlighting their own accomplishments. Group hazards help a little, but still keep the individual focus. As I mentioned above, perhaps modifying the asking for help rules to provide more interaction would work. Do you think that adding additional free role-play scenes would help? Such scenes could be flashbacks to the expedition, or could be scenes at the Committee HQ? Perhaps each player gets several scenes to highlight their desire that falls outside the normal hazard rotation and must feature at least one other character?

Again, I really appreciate all the feedback, Joshua. I feel like my development of the game has been a process of accumulating various bits and pieces on top of one another and now I'm getting the chance to go back and chip the unnecessary bits away and get to the polished game underneath.

If anyone has other thoughts on these or any other issues with the game, I'd love to hear that, too. Hearing from some of the other playtesters who hadn't read through the game text would be awesome.

If anyone is interested in seeing the current state of the game, you can take a look here. Once I get these fixes made, I'll be looking for playtesters to take another go at the game in hopes of getting it published this summer and appearing at Gen Con (fingers crossed).

[redivider]

I took part in the Shangri-la playtest and had fun trying the game. I had two main impressions (and I'll also try to weigh in on a few of the issues Josh raised).

I played and enjoyed the game primarily for its story-generating feature. The accumulation of acclaim as a competition with the other players didn't engage me as much. We ended up with almost equal piles of chips but that wasn't the focus of our play. I liked the system for shaping scenes that seesaw between danger and the players' efforts to over coming the threat... and new complications emerging etc.
In our middle location, a teeming city in India, we hit a sweet spot with some really cool scenes involving thugees, secret passages in our hotel, resucuing a widow from immolation, a guru who was actually a dangerous cultist, hidden messages... The conclusion scenes got weirder with mole people, different hues of yetis.

Because the strength of the game for me was how is crafted intersting, punchy scenes, I agree with comments on paring back some of the options for using acclaim. The game was best when it was moving quickly.

1. Yeah, char creation went well and the committee knows...element  was great
2. I actually didn't have problems with the expedition log. I thought it was nice to have a set of anticipated themes layed out in advance and don't mind if it's sort of a loose resource, a pool of ideas, rather than a 1 for 1 match to scenes or any other kinds of tight, automatic integration.
3. I wonder if we just had back luck with rolling or if the challenges just happened to be with a lot of dice when our characters were down to out low die pool traits? I know I was forced to call for help at least a couple of times because otherwise I would have lost- I may have used it once strategically to draw down my helper.
4. Yes, keep the option to sabotage, especially for groups where the characters have some fun ideological or agenda clashes.
5. Having the glasses was fun- maybe keep them if only for the color.
6. I feel like we usually went over the time limit- mainly because we were considering the options and rules.
7.  Agreed.
8. I didn't feel this was a problem but that's partially because I'm big on exploration of setting and weird color/events so the character-to-character stuff is less crucial to me. 

looking farward to the final produce

mark

[Jason Morningstar]

Hey Eric,

A broad question - can you talk about how this game has changed, post Game Chef?  You've retained a lot of the original constraints to good effect, and I've found that this is generally hit-and-miss with me - stuff that gets inserted to meet GC requirements gets dropped along the way.  What have you dropped/modified and how has the game evolved?

[Eric J. Boyd]

Jason,

The game has stayed the same at its core (free-form narration of pulp adventure under a time constraint to keep up the pace and tension), while changing a lot in other ways. The game was based on the words "glass," "ancient," and "committee" using the 3 sessions of 3 hours time constraint.

Since Game Chef, the time requirements have been completely removed - you can play a one shot or over several sessions depending upon how you want to pace the expedition. The Committee as a group of peers judging the characters' storytelling still features strongly in the game's color. Ancient referred generally to the secrets being unearthed during the expedition - it was pure color and I've removed the term to allow the expedition's goal to be anything the players choose. Glass referred to the hourglass used in conflict resolution and the glasses of beverage used tangentially in the mechanics and as props to evoke the club-like atmosphere. The hourglass is key and will stay on, but the glasses and drinking aspect sound like they're a Game Chef remnant that needs to be reduced solely to color.

The main change to the game is in story development. The original version relied on every player writing down several long lists of potential hazards, swapping them, and inflicting them on each other throughout the game. These lists are replaced by a general brainstorming session at the beginning of play and maintaining an "expedition log" of story elements that everyone adds to throughout the game to tie the story together. The result is much more improvisational, and it also encourages the plot threads to be tied together rather than meandering this way and that. It's still a work in progress, but with the feedback I've received I think I know where to go with it now.

A second change is in focusing on each character having a desire that requires acclaim and attention to achieve, justifying their going on the expedition. At the end of play, currency is tallied and epilogues are given in descending order describing whether the character succeeded or failed in leveraging the expedition's results to achieve their desire. In addition to providing a reward for "winning" by having the most currency, these desires and epilogues give the characters a more human feel than the typical pulp heroes since several may come to a less than glorious end. Very My Life with Master without the scripted endings based upon attributes.

A lot of the crunchy mechanical changes built up during early playtesting when I was finding my way through what game development was supposed to be like. Many of these have worked out great and will stay in. However, the layers of options and tweaks definitely grew too thick, and I'm now going back and paring down to only those that are absolutely necessary. What's emerging has me excited - a no-prep, GM-less, game of pulp storytelling that is both crunchy in its currency manipulation and free-form in its fast-paced timed narration.

[Eric J. Boyd]

Mark,

Thanks so much for your thoughts. It sounds like your approach to the game is much like what I have in mind

I played and enjoyed the game primarily for its story-generating feature. The accumulation of acclaim as a competition with the other players didn't engage me as much. We ended up with almost equal piles of chips but that wasn't the focus of our play. I liked the system for shaping scenes that seesaw between danger and the players' efforts to over coming the threat... and new complications emerging etc.

I know that by using currency to keep score and having a nominal "winner" who gets the rosiest epilogue, I've created a game with some gamist competition. At the same time, though, I want the story emerging among the players to be entertaining and play to be fun no matter how much currency you end up with. Purely pursuing currency to the exclusion of caring about your narration and its effects on the story could become unfun for your fellow players. In my playtests I haven't seen this problem, but did it come up during either of these playtests? Did most of your fellow players take your view, Mark, or did some also assume a pure competitive stance and play the game differently? Did the story ever suffer due to the pursuit of Acclaim?

Thanks again for posting and trying out the game.

[redivider]

Did most of your fellow players take your view, Mark, or did some also assume a pure competitive stance and play the game differently? Did the story ever suffer due to the pursuit of Acclaim?

The other players were also fucused on shaping the story and trying the rules. If anything, I competed the most since I sabotaged once. So the story never suffered from acclaim.