With all of the great advice Ron was giving me on this thread:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=12577

I thought I at least owed an Actual Play post even though things didn’t go quite as planned. Two of our gaming group failed to show without bothering to call and cancel (major breach of Social Contract), so the night’s gaming was a bit abbreviated and after a game of “Ticket to Ride” (fun!) we only had an hour or so to try out Elfs.

I decided to hold the Orlane scenario for the next get-together as I felt it would be shortchanged by getting started with it and then calling it for lack of time. So I went with the intro idea mentioned in the thread – all 3 characters are running from a human mob behind them when they collide in the middle of the sewers.

The first question was “Shouldn’t it be Elves?”. I delightedly read the “Shouldn’t it be Elves?” section from the rulebook and followed up by reading the “What are Elfs?” from the back cover of the book.

Stage set, we created characters. First up was “Fifi” who, despite the name, was a male, in the sense that the character from the Who’s “I’m a boy” is male: “I’m a boy, I’m a boy, but my ma won’t admit it.” Naturally he was stuck at the genital stage.

Next up were “Sparky” and “Stinky Finger” who were oral and anal, respectively.

Sparky’s player was the one I was most worried about as he is the munchkin player in the group. His sole goal is always to find the additional “+1” weapon or other way to add power to his character. Fifi’s player was dyed-in-the-wool, too, but he’s more willing to experiment and role-play rather than game-play. And Stinky Finger’s player – well, he’s the one who bought me Elfs at GenCon and spent the day at the Forge booth. No worries there at all!

Fifi and Sparky took large comic weapons once I explained they do more damage and took some miscellaneous items from the equipment list. Stinky Finger took, well, one of everything – since he was anal about it!

So, they all collided in the middle of the sewer. “Why are we running?” they asked.
“You tell me,” I said. (Exact quote from another Forge thread – how cool)
Fifi: “I didn’t know she wasn’t of legal age!”
Stinky Finger: “I don’t know how that jewel got in my pocket!”
Sparky: “He hit me first!”

So, to break them in I had them use their straight Spunk scores to take on the first humans emerging (one at a time, of course) into the sewer conjunction. Naturally, this didn’t go well, but surprisingly Stinky Finger managed to take down his opponent by rolling two 1’s and a 2.

At this point they were all acting very much like dysfunctional D&D players – trying to weigh the tactical advantages, etc.. Sparky even tried to get at the guy Stinky Finger was fighting so that they could team up on him. “Umm, you don’t even know this Elf.” “Yeah, but if we all fight our way down one tunnel we can get away.” Heh, heh, right – but this is Elfs gamer-boy!

So then I explained low cunning and dumb luck.
Fifi: “OK, Fifi wants to hit the guy in front of him, but as he goes back he accidentally hits the guy in back of him.” Yay! He gets it.
Stinky Finger: “Hmmm, anal stage, low cunning – OK, Stinky Finger picks up a turd from the sewer water and throws it at the human in front of him.”
And wonder of wonders, from gamer boy comes:
Sparky: “OK, Sparky wants to hit the guy in front of him. But I want him to just knock the guy over so that he knocks over the 17 guys behind him domino fashion.”

Dice were rolled. Fifi gets no successes, so I ruled that he hit the guy behind him by having his giant mallet fly out of his hands and he was now defenseless. Sparky leaps in front of Stinky Finger and knocks down the whole row of humans. And Stinky Finger finally lets his turd fly – hitting Sparky in the back of the head.

Next round, Stinky Finger starts running down the cleared hallway. Fifi picks up his mallet while accidentally tripping the next human coming from the other direction. And Sparky manages to tie some spikes to his feet and runs down the pipe deliberately stepping on the humans and trying to spike their eyes out! (Low cunning, indeed!)

After the game we talked a bit about theory and system, which was kind of cool. And everyone was up for playing again, so I said, “Well, there is a magic system we didn’t use. Does anyone want to have magic-slinging elf?”. I was very careful to phrase it that way – as an open-ended question.

Stinky Finger’s player: “Well, I assume it costs coins, so no.”
Fifi’s player: “Or ability points. I guess not.”
Sparky’s player: “Sure”

Guess who now has a magic-slinging elf? :-)

Overall, great fun. I was impressed that everyone grasped low cunning and dumb luck so quickly. And next time they can help explain the concepts to our other dysfunctional players.

Nick

Hi Nick,

Um, of course the Gamist guy got it so well. Elfs is Gamist!

I love Elfs actual play.

Best,
Ron