Tomato Judgment in the Garden Kingdom

[lumpley]

(This is my last GenCon play writeup for the year. The others are non-nostalgic D&D, [Gen Con] Ganakagok AP, and GenCon Poison'd, but you don't get the whole story.)

Not everybody knows, but I'm scared of Ben Lehman's games. Seriously scared. It's like he's got this flashlight and he's like, "cool! flashlight!" and he's shining it around, and he just doesn't care what lives down there. I mean, yikes. I got stuff living down there that do I want some yahoo with a flashlight waking it up? Polaris: wigs me out. Bliss Stage: wigs me out. The Land of 1000 Kings: wigs me right the hell out.

Read on and see if I'm wrong.

The first inkling of wig-out: in The Land of 1000 Kings you play yourself, so you only get to do character creation once. Once you're down on paper, well, there you are, right? You're the only you there is, so you don't ever get to make up a new you. Every time you play, you get to add to your character sheet, but you never ever get to start over from scratch.

And, it turns out, why would you want to? But still. I'm looking at it with narrow eyes. Then comes...

The first real wig-out: when you do character creation, here's how it works. For example's sake it's me, Matt, John, Julia, Seth, Ben. We go around the circle and we say things that we remember about each other, and why that makes us one of strong, sharp, kind, brave, beautiful. Like, I say "ever since last GenCon, John, I've been telling everybody that you know what's beautiful about John? He has Satan's eyebrows." And John's like, "aw, you noticed," and he gives himself a point of beautiful.

And then you have to sit there while your friends say nice things about you, about how strong, sharp, kind, brave and beautiful you are. It fucks my shit up. I'm trying not to cover my face and run screaming. And then, worse, Julia sits down to join us, she hadn't been there from the start, and SHE says nice things about me! Jesus Christ.

For the record, everybody? I'm strong 1, sharp 2, and kind 2. From now on. Until next time we play, and someone says about my hair, and then I'll be strong 1, sharp 2, kind 2, and beautiful 1.

Brr.

After that the next part is easy. It'd wig me out a little except I'm so wigged out by character creation that I don't even notice. It's: we find a doorway to the Land of 1000 Kings. There was this weird thing in the room we were in at the Embassy Suites, I don't know what it was, but it had a big shiny stainless panel on it. Ben pointed to it - Ben was the GM, which isn't called the GM in The Land of 1000 Kings, it's called the person who stays behind to make sure the door stays open and you don't get trapped down there, which is a little bit wiggy but not too bad - and said that we climbed in there and found a stairway down and eventually wound up in the Land of 1000 Kings.

We weren't together down there. We each said one fact about what it was like where we were, and they put us in different parts of the Land of 1000 Kings. Like, Matt and John were together on a high mountaintop and the stars were attacking the moons, and Seth was alone in a twisty maze of a city, and Julia and I were together in the Garden Kingdom and they called upon us to judge the annual tomato competition.

Here's a thing that doesn't wig me out at all: you roll dice of course, whenever you try to stop someone else, or they try to stop you, or you do something that's just dangerous. To get bonus dice, you tell real memories about your life. Anyone can tell a memory, and then give the bonus die to whoever. So, there's Matt and John climbing the stairs to the moon, and the stars are smashing into the stairs and trying to knock them off and stuff. I tell about camping in the high Utah mountains, where there's no light from any cities nearby and there's no moisture in the air, and how the stars there are NOT FOOLING AROUND, and I give my bonus die to the stars' side of the roll.

Here's another thing that doesn't wig me out, but nevertheless: Ben's designed an irresponsibly cool and effective dice mechanic. He hasn't given proper thought to how stupid he's going to make me feel when my new games' dice mechanics aren't as good. (Sharp +1 for you, Ben, next time you play, and take THAT.)

Anyhow Julia and I throw the tomato competition to the sweet little old lady, even though the pompous ass's tomato was the more delicious one. So Ben slapped me with a wound, called "Guilty 5." 5 is the seriousness of the wound, guiltiness is its thing. And here's the second real wig out: I still have that wound. It's down to a 4 now but it's still there. Fuckin' - I still have that wound, do you understand? I have it right now.

John and Matt had a funny adventure where the King of the Stars loves the King of the Moon's daughter, and is convinced that she loves him too if only her father wouldn't come between them, but the King of the Moon's daughter loves the King of the Sea, and is convinced that he loves her too even though they've never met. She gave John a message to take to the King of the Sea, so that he'd be certain to marry her: "Hi I think you're cool we should hang out xoxoxo."

Seth had a slightly more serious adventure where he wound up with location: in the rat pit, reception: being chewed on by rats.

Julia and I fought off some tomato thugs - well, okay, Julia fought them off, and yes, I feel like kind of a coward. And here's the third and final thing that wigs me out: we were getting tired and to the end of our night, and Ben's like, "sure, we can wrap up, but, like, you have to find doorways back up here. It's not good to cut the game off while you're still down there."

I'm wigged out even writing that. Wigged out and - just a little bit curious. What would happen? How bad could it be?

I gotta get back there. I gotta get rid of this wound and maybe find my magic power.

The end of the actual play writeup.

You know that thing where our games sell mostly on actual play writeups? So games like (for instance) mine, that leave you unsettled enough to want to write about your game, sell better than games like (for instance) Meg's, that are probably more fun but don't leave you so unsettled? You're like, "yeah, we played 1001 Nights, it was great, but I'm having real trouble with our Dogs game, let me tell you all about it..." I think maybe Ben's beaten that. The Land of 1000 Kings is going to spread like crazy, that's my prediction, and it won't be mostly on its actual play writeups. It'll be because I'm going to play it with practically everybody I know, sooner or later, and so are they, and so are they, and so are they... And probably so are you too.

-Vincent

[lumpley]

Oops. She gave MATT a note to take to the King of the Sea. Matt.

-Vincent

[GreatWolf]

Land of 1000 Kings is totally the awesome.  There are several reasons for this. One of them is that I can play with my children, and they get it instinctively.  I'm in the process of writing it up to post here.

So, let's see.  Memories from the game.  (Heh.  That seems appropriate.)

The first real wig-out: when you do character creation, here's how it works. For example's sake it's me, Matt, John, Julia, Seth, Ben. We go around the circle and we say things that we remember about each other, and why that makes us one of strong, sharp, kind, brave, beautiful. Like, I say "ever since last GenCon, John, I've been telling everybody that you know what's beautiful about John? He has Satan's eyebrows." And John's like, "aw, you noticed," and he gives himself a point of beautiful.

And then you have to sit there while your friends say nice things about you, about how strong, sharp, kind, brave and beautiful you are. It fucks my shit up. I'm trying not to cover my face and run screaming. And then, worse, Julia sits down to join us, she hadn't been there from the start, and SHE says nice things about me!

So, we're in the middle of doing this, and I can tell that the process is totally freaking out Vincent.  I mean, I don't think that he was actually blushing, but people are saying nice things to him and he's squirming in his seat.  So, he pops down to my end of the table to talk to Julia.  So, I say, "Hey Vincent.  Are you the kind of guy who feels okay about having his ideas praised, but feels uncomfortable about being praised personally."

He nods.

"Me, too," I say.

Anyhow Julia and I throw the tomato competition to the sweet little old lady, even though the pompous ass's tomato was the more delicious one. So Ben slapped me with a wound, called "Guilty 5." 5 is the seriousness of the wound, guiltiness is its thing. And here's the second real wig out: I still have that wound. It's down to a 4 now but it's still there. Fuckin' - I still have that wound, do you understand? I have it right now.

Plus, a quotable from Vincent.  "I could totally compromise and maintain my integrity."  John Harper and I both wrote it down to make sure that it was preserved for posterity.

Seth had a slightly more serious adventure where he wound up with location: in the rat pit, reception: being chewed on by rats.

Yeah.  That was...um...bad.

On the other hand, when I played this with my children, a couple of them met Reginald the King of Rats, and he mentioned that the last visitor that his people had contacted was having his face chewed on.  My daughter laughed and said, "That was you, wasn't it, Daddy?"  I smiled and went on.

Because, obviously, I'm sitting right here now, so it couldn't have been that bad.

I'm also distressed, because I had to take an important call from my wife in the middle of the game.  It was an important thing which really couldn't wait, but I feel like I let the rest of the group down.

Finally, this:

At the end of the game, someone (I think that it was John Harper) announces to the table that he feels like we've all gotten closer as a result of this game.  We all nod in agreement.  It's still true.  I feel like I made friends that night, just because we went to the Land of 1000 Kings together.  Because you're sharing memories with each other, you get a glimpse into each other's lives, and that can be a very good thing.

And here's what I mean.  Of all the people at the table, I've met only one before GenCon.  (That would be Matt Wilson.)  The others I've only interacted with on the Internet.  So, if I'm remembering correctly, the conflict at hand is that John Harper is jumping off the moon.  (This also earned him the super-ability "On Fire", which is completely awesome.)  So, we're all sharing moon stories and the like for extra dice.  I think that I said something about camping with my wife, who thought that the light from the full moon coming through the tent wall was actually sunlight.  But then, I realized that I had another moon memory that I wanted to share.  Sadly, it was too late, and I couldn't share this memory.  Only one memory per dice roll.  But, in that special space that the game created, I actually wanted to share something special and important to me.

In fact, I still want to, so here it is:  my "other" moon memory.

The night my mom died, I was driving across I-74 from Peoria towards Erie.  We had got the phone call that she had collapsed and that she was on death's door.  My wife and I were in a rented car, hurtling across the plains.  We were somewhere between Bloomington and Champaign (I think) when my father called on the cell phone to say that Mom had died.  I had to pull over as the enormity of it all crashed over me.  There I was, sobbing in the front seat of the car while my wife held me.  And I look up in the sky, and the moon is blood-red.  It's like it knew somehow and had veiled itself in mourning.

I wanted to say this on Thursday night, and I offer this as a gift, such as it is, to my friends who came with me to the Land of 1000 Kings.

[Ben Lehman]

So Seth and Vincent and Alexis and I were going to play Polaris. But then Vincent didn't show up for a while and Alexis's leg really hurt and she was tired so she went to bed. Just as she goes to bed, Vincent shows up. Well crap. We can't play Polaris now: Alexis will totally have my head beause she's been wanting to play it again for, jeez, a year now? People are hanging around and chatting and I know John Harper wants to play with Vincent and it seems like people want to play a game but there's no one saying anything.

Crap! Ben! Organize something. I don't want to do Con PTA... It's not that it's bad but it's like I've done Con PTA so damned much ... Can't do Polaris ... Sick of Bliss Stage after playtesting ... hey, wait. I could totally do 1000 kings. It's like the easiest pick-up game in the world. Plus, so far I've only played it with Alexis there, so I'd like to playtest it with other people.

"Who wants to play 1000 kings?" nets me Matt, John, Seth, and Vincent. Julia shows up later. Okay, full group.

We do our thing. Vincent gets all kerfludded. I think that he does this to himself basically every game he plays, but 1000 kings is totally right in the good stuff. Talking with Tony about the game at DexCon, I said "it's about facing your inner angels" which is basically washing over everyone's faces. Julia is eating it up, of course. John Harper and Matt Wilson are all too cool for school.  Shit, are they going to just sit there the whole time? Man, why did I write such an embarrassing game?

Okay, so here's the interesting thing to me: Watching John over the course of the game. I didn't really know what to do with him so, okay, uh ... shit ... fetchquests? When in doubt, fetchquests. There's this thing in the game where you can just blow off shit you don't care about and something else interesting will come along, I did tell everyone that, right? So I don't have to worry about doing something uninteresting -- if the player doesn't find it interesting, they'll move on. So fetchquests.

I'm watching John play, and he's accelerating. Matt's like too cool for school the whole time, but John is getting into it... What's up with that?

Holy shit he's on fire.

John, we really gotta play this game again. I wanna see what happens with the magicians and the fire.

Oh, right, everyone else. Uh, the game did its thing, for the most part. I'm still in the "watch and wait" mode, but I have this theory that there's a tension between the players and their sheets. So, like, Vincent isn't actually guilty, but he has to go back to prove that he's not guilty. Or maybe he was just bullshitting me the next day.

yrs--
--Ben

[lumpley]

> I mean, yikes. I got stuff living down there that do I want some yahoo with a flashlight waking it up?

> I said "it's about facing your inner angels"

You see? You SEE?

-Vincent

[Ben Lehman]

> I mean, yikes. I got stuff living down there that do I want some yahoo with a flashlight waking it up?

> I said "it's about facing your inner angels"

You see? You SEE?

-Vincent

Did you think you were going to distract me with all the games about facing your inner demons?

Hah. More'n'likely. It's your fault anyway. I could have written this game as a Dogs supplement.

yrs--
--Ben

[Eero Tuovinen]

Man, Ben's obviously stealing my game right from the front of my nose. My dream game is totally about going into a fairy tale land as yourself to have adventures. Or it would be if I ever got it finished. And for some reason I haven't even gotten a playtest document of this, so I don't get to play. Now I'm bitter.

[Ben Lehman]

Man, Ben's obviously stealing my game right from the front of my nose. My dream game is totally about going into a fairy tale land as yourself to have adventures. Or it would be if I ever got it finished. And for some reason I haven't even gotten a playtest document of this, so I don't get to play. Now I'm bitter.

Hmm... It's quite possible that I totally stole your idea.  Oops.

If you want to extort me for money in exchange for your silence, or if you don't, you should e-mail me.

yrs--
--Ben

[John Harper]

I am still on fire!

What a game that was. Vincent tells it right, plus makes you fall in love with the game sight unseen, so that's all covered. Plus he does it all Br'er Rabbit style, begging not to be thrown in the briar patch. If you're not sufficiently in love yet, I can't help you.

This is me, by the way. But don't be fooled. I'm only Brave because of the fire thing, which happened right at the end. Before that? ZERO. So I went and jumped off the moon, because there are few things in a game I like more than using my worst ability. Also, getting all beat up. I got to have both!

Ben noticed a thing I do when I play a game for the first time. I hadn't noticed it before, but I did it again in the Poison'd game, and Ben confirmed it. I kind of have to get a running start at a game. I start slow and disconnected, then I gather steam as the session goes on. By the end, I was really into it. I was kind of feeling my way around what the game wanted from me, but now I totally know what that is. I can't wait to play again.

We did indeed become better friends because of the game. After 1000 Kings, you don't just have a "game story" to bore your friends with. You also have real memories from your fellow players, and you know more about them as people. Besides filling Vincent with a dread greater than the grave, this creates instant bonds and empathy. It's powerful stuff.

Oh and Ben: From a playtesting perspective, I think the notion that your sheet is stuff you have to go back and deal with is working really well. That's exactly how I feel.

[Meguey]

I want to play this game.

[ironick]

Damn it, now I want to play this game too, and you people don't even know me.

[GB Steve]

I would like to play this game with my English friends. The ones who, like me, cannot watch the Office because it's too squirmy. I'm not sure we'd even get past character creation.

But I'd like to see if the distance that we like to maintain between each other can't be reeled in a bit for a while.

[Anna Kreider]

Nick: That's okay. We can Baconize this game when it comes out. I want to play it too.

Vincent: I'm kind of amused that praise made you that uncomfortable, and yet you were totally unphased by my professions of fangirldom.

Ben: Jeez. When you told me about 1000 Kings at GenCon, you just gave me a super brief summary. Why didn't you tell me it was totally filled with awesome?? I feel like I have to play it now.

~Anna

[ironick]

I agree, Anna.  We need to Baconize the hell out of this game just like we did to Dogs and Grey Ranks.  Except I don't think 1000 Kings is all about the masochistic character screwing that we specialize in.  I don't know if we can be nice enough to each other (and to ourselves) to do this game justice.

[Robert Bohl]

This game is amazing.

And I make up impossible stuff with my mind. For the record.